Blue Vengeance

by Alison Preston

  They kept on riding, Janine with a devilish smile on her face, Danny with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. His only thought was that he was glad he hadn’t eaten any supper. If he had he would have spewed it all over himself.

  36

  Janine spied in the coming days. Danny didn’t have it in him to join her. She reported that Mrs. Flood was using one crutch. It delighted her. Danny didn’t want to see another roof nail as long as he lived.

  It puzzled him that the imagined sensation of stomping on nails didn’t bother Janine. He admired her for it one minute, and the next wondered if it was such a good thing. Maybe she didn’t let herself imagine it.

  His plan for Miss Hartley didn’t allow for physical suffering, but he admitted to himself that he hadn’t thought about it before now.

  On Wednesday afternoon of the following week Danny found a perfect stone in the back lane behind Birchdale Betty’s house. It was smooth, round, and the perfect size for his task. He carried it around in his pocket to help him with his continually threatened focus.

  Dot returned on Friday. On Saturday afternoon Danny was upstairs when he heard hisses rising up from the living room. He crept into the hallway and sat at the top of the stairs.

  “Barbara, we’ve been over this so many times over the years. I find it unconscionable that you haven’t told him.”

  “Well, I haven’t.”

  “You’ve said you would countless times. You convinced me that you meant it.”

  “I did mean it, Dot. It has just never seemed like the right time.”

  “Believe me, Barbara, I don’t like harping on at you. But I can’t believe that the right time hasn’t presented itself in so many years.”

  “It’s hard to believe you don’t like harping at me.”

  “That’s not fair, Barb. It’s because I love you and Danny and want what’s best for you both. You should tell him, so he understands there was more to it than his being born, and you getting sick. He might be dwelling on it, for all we know. And he doesn’t have Cookie anymore, his ally in all things father-related.”

  “Jesus, Dot. Could you at least sit down so I don’t have to strain my neck?”

  Danny heard Dot’s voice come up from a slightly different location.

  “When we told him all those years ago that Art was alive, I was under the impression that he thought it was somehow his fault that his dad left. That may still be the case.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “You tell him then.”

  “It’s not my place to tell him.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “We can tell him together.”

  Danny snuck down the stairs and out the back door.

  Art? Was his dad’s name Art? He could scarcely believe he had never known, never asked.

  He wanted whatever they were arguing about to disappear. It sounded bad; it sounded like an avalanche. He didn’t want to smother under an avalanche. That would be worse than drowning.

  Maybe his dad was in jail; maybe he was a murderer; maybe he fought on the side of the Germans and was a torturer; maybe he was the newly dead Adolf Eichmann and had been hiding behind the name Art Blue. He fingered the stone in his pocket as he trudged along the riverbank with Russell galloping ahead.

  His mum had said it was ridiculous that he thought Art leaving was his fault. That was good news, anyway.

  When he got home, Aunt Dot was the first to speak.

  “Danny, could you come into the front room, please? Your mother has something she’d like to talk to you about.”

  His mum was in a chair with a blanket over her knees. An invalid still, but an upright one. He wondered if what she had been doing since Cookie’s death qualified as a nervous breakdown.

  “What’s my dad’s name?” he said.

  “Arthur,” said his mum.

  “That’s my name. That’s my middle name.”

  “Yes.”

  “Arthur what?”

  “Arthur Scirrow.”

  “Is his last name Blue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sit down, honey,” Dot said.

  “I don’t think I want to sit down.” He leaned against the archway between the front room and the hall. “This is something bad, isn’t it? Something big and bad.”

  “It’s something that happened, dear, at the time you were born.”

  Dot looked at her sister. “Barbara?”

  Barbara lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out straight in front of her. Maybe she thought that was talking.

  “It’s hard for her,” Dot said. “She doesn’t want to tell you, but I more or less insisted on it, so I guess it falls to me.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Danny said. “I’m fine with not knowing whatever it is.”

  “When you were born,” said Dot, paying him no mind, “there was another baby too. Another baby boy.”

  Danny slid down the archway and sat on the floor.

  “Your mum and dad called him James.”

  Danny stared at the hardwood. The lines inside the wood were sinuous and lovely. He had never noticed them before. He waited for the rest of it.

  “The baby died,” said Dot. “A few days after he was born.”

  “Six days.” It was his mother’s voice now.

  “I’m a twin,” said Danny.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “St. Vital Cemetery.”

  “Near Cookie?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She uttered a squeak of annoyance.

  “I don’t know, honey,” said Dot. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what matters.”

  “It was about space,” said his mum. “There wasn’t enough space beside James.”

  “Who came first? Him or me?”

  “What?”

  “Who was born first, me or…or James?”

  “You.”

  “Why did he die?”

  He stared at the lines in the wood. No one answered.

  “Why did he die?”

  “He…” Dot stopped.

  “He was dropped.” His mum’s voice quavered. “And his tiny head hit the floor.”

  Danny heard a ringing in his ears that he’d never heard before. He stood up.

  “My dad dropped him.”

  “Yes, honey,” said Dot. “He didn’t mean to, but he dropped him. It was an accident.”

  He walked out of the room and out the back door. The first order of business was to get away from the ringing.

  Dot called after him, but he ran. If he ran far enough and fast enough it would stop, and he would be able to think clearly about the two pieces of information he had been given. One at a time. He wished he just had one for now. The first one: he had a twin brother. A dead one, but that seemed secondary at the moment.

  He stopped running. He wished he hadn’t asked why James had died.

  “James,” he said.

  He shouldn’t have asked. His mum would have been happy never to tell him. Dot probably would have made her, eventually, but he would have been safe from the information today.

  When Janine’s house came into view the ringing stopped, but he didn’t want to see her or anyone else. He went home for his bike. As he rode to St. Vital Cemetery, he took in nothing of his surroundings.

  And then he roamed. Roamed and roamed.

  Finally there it was: a small slab of stone. James Scirrow Blue. June 24 1950 – June 29 1950.

  Danny didn’t want him to be so far away from Cookie; he wanted them side by side.

  His brother lay in the shade of an oak; Danny lay down beside him. He looked up at the dee
p blue sky through the changing leaves and felt the solid earth beneath him.

  He wondered if he were to find his dad and tell him that it was okay, that as far as he was concerned it was okay, if his dad would have him.

  When he stood up and looked around he realized that he was standing pretty much where the Cadillac man had stood when they had looked at each other over the graves. That had been on his birthday. His and James’s birthday. He tried to picture the man but couldn’t.

  Danny walked over to speak to Cookie. Just a few words, there was too much in his head. He wanted to tell her that Janine liked her and would have been her friend. Maybe she already knew. Who knows what kinds of things girls tell each other? Especially messed-up, unsettled girls. Then he retrieved his bike from the parking lot and rode home.

  The sun was low in the sky by now, the sunset a fiery background for the world across the river.

  His mum was alone in the living room.

  “What kind of car does my dad drive?”

  His mother coughed out the last drag of a cigarette.

  “I don’t know.”

  Dot’s kitchen clattering grew quiet, and she scooted into the living room, drying her hands on a tea towel.

  “Does he know that Cookie died?” said Danny.

  “Yes,” his mum said. “He knows.”

  He stared at her. “Why do we have his last name if you hate him so much?”

  “I don’t hate him, Danny.”

  “He didn’t mean to drop the baby.”

  “I know that.”

  “Can’t you please forgive him and let him come back?”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Could you please explain it to me then, so I get it better and stop wanting him to come home?”

  “No, not today, I can’t.”

  “Some day?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  37

  In the early morning just before he woke up Danny dreamed about Cookie. They were at The Bay, looking for a Christmas present for their mum. They checked their coats on the mezzanine floor so they wouldn’t be weighed down. The idea was to start at the top, on the sixth floor and sail their way down to the basement where they would end up for chocolate malts, or Bay basements, as they called them.

  They found earrings for their mum. Sparkly ones that clipped on.

  He woke up before the chocolate malt part. Just as well, he thought. Cookie might have behaved badly if they’d gotten to the chocolate malts.

  So James was his second thought when he woke up, not his first. He imagined being inside of his mother, not alone. He pictured the first six days of his life. Not alone. He missed James more than he could have imagined missing anyone and he knew through to his marrow that that would never change. He had missed him before he had ever heard of him.

  Cookie would have been barely two years old, but maybe deep inside her head, she’d had a hazy recollection of another baby boy. Just not enough of a memory to talk about out loud. Danny wanted to turn back the clock and take Cookie to a hypnotist who would take her back in time. And then she would tell him everything, every minute detail, of those first six days.

  He dreamed of a day when he could ask it of his mother.

  The statement she uttered on Sydney I. Robinson day: my dear lost boy. It took on a whole new meaning. The realization was no comfort, but at least the words made sense now. And it didn’t seem strange to him that she loved his dead brother more than him.

  A quiet wave of buoyancy passed through Danny when he smelled bacon cooking and heard it sizzling in the pan. James.

  He got dressed and went downstairs.

  The three of them settled themselves around the kitchen table.

  Danny looked at his mother the way he had looked at Janine when he convinced her that Miss Hartley was directly responsible for Cookie’s death (even though he had always known it wasn’t true). He looked straight into her grey eyes.

  She met his gaze.

  “Did he look like me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very much like you.”

  “Were we identical or fraternal twins?” He had learned about that in science.

  “I don’t know for sure. It was too soon to tell. But I think identical.”

  “Did we weigh the same?”

  “You weighed a wee bit more.”

  No one touched a bite.

  “Did he cry?”

  “Yes, you both cried.”

  “Who cried more?”

  “Danny…” said Dot.

  “No, Dot. It’s okay. You cried more, Danny. I remember thinking afterwards you must have known.”

  “Known?”

  “Yes. Known you were going to lose him. That’s crazy, I know.” She finally cast her eyes down.

  “No, it’s not crazy.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes, and he felt a pull towards her, but he couldn’t move.

  Dot stood up and put an arm around her sister and handed her a Kleenex from her apron pocket.

  He went upstairs after breakfast and sat in his chair. He realized he would be unable to tell Janine the story of James. He didn’t want her to see his dad in a bad light.

  38

  Danny talked Janine into getting the job done before Thanksgiving, and then she talked him into letting her do it. He had lost track of any reason why she shouldn’t.

  Pumpkins were on sale at Dominion. He figured the rinds would be perfect for some last-minute practice and to use as targets the night of the “accident.” They could place chunks on top of the posts that edged the new parking lot. A big pumpkin was too unwieldy for his bike, so he bought three smallish ones and fit them into his carrier.

  Dot was at the house when he got home. As usual, he hadn’t known she was coming.

  “Pumpkins.” There was pleasure in her voice. “Are you going to carve some jack-o’-lanterns, honey?”

  “Yup.”

  “Save the pulp and I’ll whip up a pie or two.”

  “’Kay.”

  “I’m just here till tomorrow morning. The rapeseed is coming off the fields and I have to get home.”

  She slid some scalloped potatoes into the oven.

  “Uh, Paul has invited me over for supper,” Danny said. “I already said okay.”

  “That’s fine, dear. I’m not making anything fancy.”

  Danny took the pumpkins, a sharp knife, and a bowl out to a spot behind the shed to get away from the eagle eye of his aunt. He cut up the pumpkins and separated the pulp from the rind. He put the pulp in the bowl and took it in the house.

  “Thanks, dear. How’s the carving going?”

  “Slow.”

  “Would you like a hand?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He went back outside, where he divided the target-sized chunks of rind into two plastic bags and hid one inside the shed for the next day.

  After cleaning up the mess, he willed Aunt Dot to be out of question range and ran inside for his jacket and slingshot. He put Russell in the house, shouted a good-bye to his aunt, and headed back to the school with the bag of rinds banging against his thigh and some excellent stones in his pockets.

  It was just after 5:30 and edges were beginning to blur in the fading light. The sky was a pastel blue behind the transparent clouds, one or two shades paler than the ’57 Cadillac that haunted his daydreams.

  Janine was already there.

  “Pumpkin rinds,” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “Good idea. All I brought is a few cans. Now we won’t have to waste time on retrieval.”

  “That’s what I was thinkin’,” said Danny.

  It was what they were calling the dress rehearsal. The eve of the grand performance: everythin
g in place but the real thing.

  He set up the rinds on the fence posts that had been built on two sides of the parking lot. They were flat on top, just like the ones in his yard.

  Janine shot at them. He set up more rinds, and she shot at those, missing some just in case someone was watching

  “Uh oh,” she said. “There’s Russell.”

  Sure enough, there was Russell running full speed towards them.

  “My aunt Dot’s here,” said Danny. “She must have let her out.”

  “Is she going to be here tomorrow?”

  “No, thank Christ. She’s leavin’ in the morning.”

  They shot at the remaining rinds and left them where they lay, as evidence of the reality of their practice area. Few people had been by to witness their charade, which disappointed them both.

  When Danny and Russell got home, Dot was in the kitchen rolling out the crust for pies.

  “Hello, Danny. You’re home early. It’s good you and Paul have taken up again. I went outside to have a look at your jack-o’-lanterns, but I couldn’t find them.”

  “I ruined them. I threw them away.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yup.”

  39

  The next morning Dot knocked on Danny’s bedroom door.

  “Shit.” He whispered it to Russell, who lay beside him on the bed.

  “May I come in, Danny?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your mum’s still sleeping. She finally managed to nod off after being awake most of the night.”

  She perched on the edge of his bed.

  “I see a change in her,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, honey, I do. I think she’s coming round some. She’s trying to take fewer pills, and I think it’s making a difference. She seems a little more…alert, I guess is the word.”

  Danny hadn’t noticed, but he hadn’t been paying the slightest attention. And now he was in the middle of realizing that today was the day, so he had to struggle to listen to his aunt.

  “I just wanted to mention it so you could maybe try to be…I don’t know, receptive to her if she makes an effort.”