by Darren Hynes
“Let me drive you to the clinic?” Terry says.
She shakes her head. Takes another sip before twisting the top back on the Gatorade. Holds out her arms like a child who longs to be picked up.
Terry goes over.
“Sit a minute longer,” Emily says.
“I’m alright.”
Terry helps her to her feet.
The rain’s steadier now.
“Come inside,” Terry says.
“No.” Irene puts the hood of her raincoat over her head and draws the string. “A bit of rain won’t hurt.” She holds up the Gatorade. “How much?”
Terry sticks out his palm. “I won’t hear of it.”
The pregnant woman puts the drink in her coat pocket, her face strained with pain, and turns to Emily. “I wish you wouldn’t have lied about it, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily says. “I was hoping for a miracle, I guess. That maybe the layoffs wouldn’t happen after all.”
Irene stays looking at her for a moment, then turns around and starts walking.
Emily and Terry watch until the woman disappears around the corner.
The rain suddenly comes – cold, hard enough to split your skin.
Terry runs for the door. Turns back once he gets there. “Come in!”
She stays where she is, staring off at where Irene had just gone, the woman’s words still ringing in her ears. How will we live? Fear rises to the back of her throat. She swallows it back down. Uncertainty takes fear’s place then, so she swallows that too. You’ll never get away with it, she thinks. Kidnapping your own youngsters.
“You’re getting drenched!” Terry shouts.
She ignores him, allowing Irene’s words to float around in her mind still: How will we live? It occurs to her that that’s why she’s going in the first place. So that she can live. So that her children can too.
Terry’s voice again. “Please come in!”
Finally she turns to him, but can barely see through the blinding rain. Still she doesn’t go in, preferring instead to linger in the same spot, letting the drops pound against her head, her face, soaking her uniform. This kind of weather reminds her, sometimes, that she’s alive.
4
SHE TURNS THE CORNER ONTO HER STREET. The hand in her pocket has a tight grip around the electric bill, while the other hangs at her side. No need for the hood of her jacket since the rain has stopped. A piece of blue sky is visible now through the clouds, and the strong wind of earlier has abated to a lackluster breeze that’s verging on warm, almost pleasant.
She walks slowly, her eyes focused on the tips of her sneakers. Not looking, really, so much as thinking. Mostly about Friday. Going over everything in her mind: 7:00 – Wake, 7:05 – Wake kids, 7:07 – Get money from downstairs…
The first pangs of a headache now. Lynette’s giraffe, it occurs to her. Can’t leave without that. Lynette’ll need that more than food. More than a bed.
She’s surprised to see her father’s Pontiac Bonneville in the driveway. In Kent’s spot.
A knocking sound makes her look up. Her mother’s there in the front window, one of her hands pulling apart the drapes while the other struggles to hold onto Lynette.
It’s Lynette’s little fist pounding the glass, excited eyes and a smile that’s missing one of its front teeth.
Emily waves, then continues along the driveway and up the porch steps.
Near the door she stops, wondering if the reason for her parents’ visit is because her mother has that ‘feeling’ again. The one she often gets whenever something big is happening in Emily’s life: the tightening abdomen, the dreams, the cold sensation in her hands and feet, all of it culminating in the voice that her mother swears is not her own yet comes from somewhere inside her, the voice that had predicted Kent’s marriage proposal the night before it happened and the boy Emily would have less than a year later. In junior high, her mother had spoken about the burst appendix before Emily had felt a single stab of pain.
She grips the knob of the door, but still doesn’t go in, thinking how odd it is that, in all the years she and Kent have been together, her mother had not once foreseen a single slap or whispered threat or hand gripping her daughter’s neck and pinning her against the wall.
Her mother and Lynette are just inside the door to greet her when she finally walks in.
Lynette runs over.
Emily’s too tired to lift her, so she crouches on her knees and gives her daughter a hug. “Mom,” she says, her chin resting on Lynette’s shoulder, “this is unexpected.”
“I wish you wouldn’t leave those two alone.”
“It’s only for half an hour.” Emily lets Lynette go and then kicks off her sneakers. “Just until I get home from work. Less sometimes.”
“I don’t know why you do that job anyway.”
“Mom – ”
“It’s not like you need the money – ”
“Don’t start –”
“The poor things were starving. Jeremy’s hands were in the Fruit Loops.”
“They’re always in the Fruit Loops.”
She comes into the kitchen. Stands in front of her mother.
“No kiss or what?” her mother says.
Emily takes a step closer and pecks the offered cheek. Gives a weak hug.
“My Lord, you’re nothing but a skeleton underneath that raincoat.”
Emily tries to push away, but her mother latches on.
“Didn’t I say that you weren’t to lose another pound?”
She manages to disentangle herself. “Don’t exaggerate, Mom.” Emily unzips her jacket and makes her way farther into the kitchen. There’s a bucket of take-out chicken on the table, a container of coleslaw, two boxes of fries, and a huge mound of macaroni salad. Cokes set at every place. Paper plates and plastic knives and forks. “What’s all this?”
Her mother comes closer. “With the layoffs and everything else going on, we figured that cooking would be the last thing you and Kent would want to do.”
“How did you know?”
“It’s all over the news.”
“Is it?”
“Poor Kent.”
Quiet for a moment, then her mother adds, “How’s he holding up?”
“He’s fine.” She takes off her raincoat, drapes it across the back of a chair and then sits down.
Her mother gasps. “Just look at you!”
“That’s enough, Mom.”
Her mother starts plopping food on Emily’s plate: two chicken breasts, two scoops of macaroni salad, a scoop of coleslaw, and way too many fries.
“Do you want my stomach to explode?”
“Eat it.” Her mother turns to Lynette. “Call your brother and grandfather in from the garage will you, sweetheart?”
Lynette runs out.
Emily peels a piece of skin from a chicken breast and puts it in her mouth; her mother’s eyes on her. She swallows despite its greasiness, its saltiness. She doesn’t want to be thin either. Or make herself sick by not eating. What good is she to the children then? She’ll need every bit of strength in Vancouver. There’ll be jobs to look for, an apartment to rent, a school for the kids that’s close by, welfare forms to fill out. That on top of all the emotional support her babies will need. Will she be able to keep them happy, she wonders? Content in a strange place without their father? What about herself? Will she be able to find happiness too?
“Don’t count on Kent,” Emily says. “He hasn’t been home before eight in nearly a month.” She puts some macaroni in her mouth.
“I wish your father was more like him.”
She stops chewing. Looks up just in time to see her mother pick something invisible off her blouse.
“I just mean that he works so hard. Not like that thing I married. If there was a job for sleeping your father’d be employee of the century.”
Emily looks away, managing to swallow what’s in her mouth before pushing her plate aside.
Her mother slide
s the food back.
Emily glares at her. “I’ve had enough.”
“You’ve barely touched it.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat.”
“I’m not a youngster.”
“Eat.”
“You EAT!”
Her mother stares at her for a long time, then hauls out a chair and sits down. Snatches a fry from Emily’s plate and takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. Then says, “Is he behaving himself?”
Emily looks up from the tablecloth. “Who?”
“You know who?”
She pauses for a second, then says, “There’s isn’t a woman in this town that’s not envious.”
Her mother reaches for another fry, holding it out in front of her as if it were a fine cigar. “Better than McDonald’s these chips are.” She puts the whole thing in her mouth this time. Leans towards her daughter. Talks while she chews. “He hasn’t laid a finger on you then?”
She shakes her head.
The older woman sucks the French fry grease from her fingers, then says, “All that men like Kent need is a strong woman.” Another fry. Another licking of lips. “Look at your father sure, no one knows the kind of trouble I had with him in the beginning – the boozing and the coming home at all hours, the light bill going down his gullet. The grocery money –”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Emily’s mother stops speaking for a moment. Looks towards the porch door, then turns back to her daughter. “But look at him now. Doesn’t touch a drop, does he? Barely raises his voice, even when he’s contrary at me for one thing or another. Still the laziest thing going, mind you, but at least now I know where he is come evening. And it’s all because I refused to put up with his foolishness.”
Foolishness. It’s like that jug of cold water being thrown in her face all over again, except in slow motion, every ounce of her humiliation being drawn out, like wringing the last drop of water from a soaked dishcloth. Foolishness. It takes all of her willpower not to pick up the plate of food and send it flying across the room. Coleslaw and the grease from the chicken running down the walls and pieces of broken plate and macaroni bits scattered all over the hardwood floor. Foolishness.
“Leaving him that time was the best thing you could have done.”
The few forkfuls that she’s managed to swallow threaten to come back up. She tries breathing the sensation away.
“Put the fear of God in him, it did… the possibility of losing you, the youngsters. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
She’s too busy concentrating on her breathing to say anything.
“We’ve all got something. No one’s perfect, God knows. Plus, there’s Lynette and Jeremy to think about. They need their father – ”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“Just stop!”
Emily’s dad comes in then, one grandchild on each side of him.
“Pop likes the new bench press,” Jeremy says.
“You didn’t try lifting anything, did you, Felix?” her mother says to her father.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“He did a pull up and some arm curls,” Jeremy practically shouts.
Her mother shakes her head. “And he’s still walking?”
“There’s plenty I can do yet my dear. Don’t you worry.”
Emily offers her cheek for her father to kiss. His moustache tickles. There’s Tetley tea on his breath.
“He should charge admission,” her father says, pointing behind him in the direction of the garage. Before sitting himself, he pulls out chairs for his grandchildren.
She’s struck, suddenly, by how old her father looks. Had he always been so rounded at the shoulders, his hair so grey?
Her mother piles his plate, then serves Lynette and Jeremy, and finally herself.
Emily sips her Coke and watches them eat. No one’s perfect, God knows, her mother had just said. They need their father.
Her Dad’s just said something to her.
“What?”
“Chew what’s in your mouth first, Felix,” her mother says.
Felix does, then says, “I asked if he’ll be home before the final crossing? We can’t miss the last ferry.”
She doesn’t answer right away, still taken by the years, it seems, her father has aged in the weeks since she last saw him. She shakes her head. “I doubt it.”
Her father nods then goes back to eating.
It’s not so much his growing older, it occurs to her, as it is the time that’s been slipping away almost without her realizing. Time that can never be gotten back.
She turns towards the window. Breathes deeply, letting it out slowly, thinking of all the days and weeks and months and years that have been wasted. Nearly thirty and it’s as if she’s never lived. Not re- ally. In someone else’s body it seems, someone other than herself waking up each morning, walking the children to school, checking groceries through, coming back home at the end of the day, and then lying beside him. Leaving him was the best thing you could have done.
She looks at them all again: Lynette’s humming while she chews; Jeremy’s reaching across the table for more chicken; her mother watching her; her father’s face hung over his plate as if he’s the only one in the room.
No one’s perfect, God knows.
She’ll start over on Friday, she thinks. A second chance to get right what she couldn’t the first time.
* * *
HER DAD’S DOZING IN THE LA-Z-BOY. Jeremy and Lynette are on the floor in front of the widescreen television; Jeremy holding the remote and flicking through the stations while Lynette braids her own hair.
Her mother holds open a garbage bag while Emily throws in paper plates full of chicken bones, used napkins, and empty Coke cans.
Her mother looks at her. “You barely said a word during supper.”
Emily throws in the last of the garbage. “You said enough for us both.”
Her mother ties the bag, but is unsure what to do with it.
“Here.” Emily takes it to the porch. She’s just back in the kitchen when she hears the sound of his truck in the driveway.
Her mother turns. “Kent?”
Emily goes back into the porch and looks through the window at the top of the door. It’s him. She looks at her watch: six o’clock. Wonders what him being home so early means. Whatever mood he’s in will have to wait until her parents leave, she thinks. Always on his best behaviour when they’re around. Loves her mother more than his own.
“Wake up, Felix!” her mother yells into the living room. “Kent’s home.”
Emily hears a snore cut short, then her father saying to himself but loud enough for them all to hear, “Wake the dead that one would.”
Emily’s still watching Kent. He turns off the ignition and sits there for a moment, hands on the wheel and face forward, lost in thought, like someone needing a few more seconds in order to summon the courage to face the world. Like Emily herself, lately.
Kent reaches over to the passenger side and grabs something sitting on the seat. Two brown paper bags, she sees as he steps out, and a bottle of something tucked underneath his arm, close to the pit. He presses the lock on the keychain before heading to the porch. Who does he think is going to break in?
He starts climbing the steps.
Jeremy’s already waiting there, like a well-trained dog; Lynette too, except that she’s more fixated on her hair. Her father’s up now, running a hand over the back of his head where some hair is sticking up. Her mother smoothes her slacks, as if she’s about to meet the premier or something.
Before Kent has a chance to open the door, Emily is there to do it for him.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he says, coming in, the bags covering his face to just below the eyes. Above the eyebrow on his left are six neatly sewn stitches.
“You didn’t bring food, did you?” She steps aside to give him ro
om to enter.
“Why?”
“Cause we brought your supper already,” her mother says. She points her head in the direction of her husband. “Felix, take a bag why don’t you.”
“Chicken?” Kent says.
“And fries and coleslaw…”
“You must have been reading my mind, Shirley,” Kent says.
Emily’s father is there now. He takes one of the bags before noticing Kent’s eye. “You walk into a pole or what?”
Kent laughs. “I wish.”
Her mother rushes over, practically knocking Felix out of the way. “Your eye!” She says it like Kent’s unaware of the gash himself. With her free hand, she appraises the damage, gently running two fingers along the freshly stitched wound like one would do on a piece of furniture to check for dust.
“A scratch is all.” Kent wriggles out of his shoes. “People tend to get upset when their livelihoods are being threatened.”
“Just take a look at this, Felix,” her mother says.
“I just did.”
“That’s the thanks you get for all you’ve done?” Her mother lowers her hand. Takes a step back, then turns to Emily. “You report it?”
Kent laughs. “No need for that.”
Shirley looks back at Kent. “Aren’t you on their side?”
“It was crazy yesterday. I don’t think even they knew who they were swinging at half the time,” Kent says.
Emily goes over and takes the other bag from Kent, bringing it to the kitchen table. Puts it down and then stares across at them. When had her mother ever fussed over her like that?
Kent comes in, takes the bottle out from underneath his arm, and holds it up with the label towards Emily. “I got the Aussie kind.”
Jeremy runs over to him. “Pop did a pull up.”
“He did?” Kent says. “Wow.”
“Feel, feel.” Jeremy flexes his bicep until he turns red in the face.
“Almost as big as your old man,” Kent says.
“Hi, Daddy.” Lynette still holds a section of her hair.
“Hello, my love.” He lifts her into his arms and carries her into the kitchen. He puts her down in one of the chairs.
“Are we celebrating something?” Emily asks. When was the last time he brought wine home?
