Thirty-Six
Perhaps the grade twelve book list—Things Fall Apart, The Crucible, 1984—should make me a little antsy, but Mikey and I are pretty much invisible. One week back and the Dick’s only expectations are for me to take care of Mikey and put clothes on Mum. The latter being by far the greater challenge.
On Friday, we connect with Todd on the corner. Mikey asks, “What’s the plan again?”
“You go with Todd to his work while I get you a weekend pass.”
“He’ll never buy it.”
Todd arms Mikey away. “He might. Pretending you’re taking up hockey will score big.”
I push myself crapward. From the hall I see Mum standing in the kitchen wearing the blue sweater I gave her this morning and what looks like off-white seersucker pants. As my eyes adjust, her cottage cheesy legs and baggy bum skin come into focus. “Oh, for pity sake, Mum.” She turns and her face is smeared with jam. “Get upstairs, right now.”
She complies without a word. On the steps I find her underpants and polyester slacks. I assume she’s had a romp until I see they’re wet with pee. I load her into the tub and she says plain as Palmolive, “Some bubbles.”
The Dick nearly drowned Mikey and me in this very tub and I wonder for a minute what Mum’s face would look like under the water, eyes bulging, little bubbles escaping. I pour in a dollop of shampoo and agitate until there’s enough foam to hide her skeletal frame. The yellow of her skin pops against the white froth.
I hear a bluster of cops and robbers clambering in and go down. The Dick’s poker buddies, holding buckets of KFC, chorus, “Hey, Hari. Welcome back.”
Poker on a Friday night is something new. The Dick says, “Tell Mikey chow’s up.”
“Um, I tried to call you at work for permission, but I guess you were out on a case. Jennah’s taking Dean to try out for hockey. I thought maybe if Mikey went, it might get him interested.”
Todd was so right on. The Dick puffs up like he might ejaculate a hockey stick. “He shoots. He scores!”
“If he plays, it’ll eat up his weekends.”
“Better hockey than stayin’ with that cocksucker mother of his.”
O’Toole says, “What the little ass wipe needs to man him up.”
They all grunt and adjust their pants as they shinny up to the table.
I find a dress that will cover Mum’s boney butt if her pants go missing again. I push her toward the bed. “Stay up here so you’re closer to the toilet. You want some chicken?”
She articulates perfectly: “Cupcakes.”
For frig sake, die already.
I retrieve Mikey and we catch the streetcar to Sabina’s. “Ari, what if Pops wants to see me play?”
“We’ll scheme something up. Jennah’s got a team jersey for you and Aaron can teach you to skate a bit.” Worry is felt in his tense arm against mine. “Right now, he’s too all up in mafia mayhem to be bothered.”
Mikey hesitates as I open the door to Sabina’s Boutique. “What if I . . . if I . . . Can I stay with you?”
“I work way late.” I crouch to meet his pale eyes. “Listen. Those new guys hanging around crapdom scare the piss out of me, too.” His head hangs with the shame of peeing his cot this week. “Hey, let’s nip down to the basement and find my old sleeping bag. You can roll it out on the floor and tell Sabina you want to pretend you’re camping.”
“Wish we could just run away.”
“If it comes to it, we will.” My knees complain as I straighten up. “Come on. You’ll have two glorious days of peace here.”
“Promise you won’t go back there.”
“I’ll be safe at the nest.”
There is never a molecule of resentment over the imposition Mikey and I foist on Sabina. Her welcome back is generous and genuine. I give her a dozen necklaces I made, hammered metal statement pieces, more suited for an upscale boutique than my usual flower-power love-beads. “Oh, corka, how beautiful. Customers have been asking what new is in store from my resident designer.”
“As soon as I get some tools, I’ll whip up more.”
“Aaron left this.” She hands me a note.
“You saw him?”
“He brought the boys each an arrowhead from Peru. He is such a nice young man.”
“He just knows where his paczkis come from.” I peek at his note.
Ari, If you’re reading this, know I’m smiling because you’re back. I’ll be at our bench Sunday. Hope you’re free.
We’re free. We’re free.
Please don’t start stirring all this up again.
Being back at the Riverboat anchors me. Time in the nest works out the ache of empty hands and arms. I need clay. I want Jake.
Sunday morning comes too soon. I scan my clothes. Babcia’s hand-embroidered peasant blouse slips over my damp hair. I appraise the fit of my jeans in the full-length mirror, pack chruscikis, and lock up.
Aaron is on our bench, head bent to a book. He checks over his shoulder, spots me, and hurries into an extra-long hug. “Geez, I missed you.”
“Maybe so, but it’s quite evident you spent the summer in your proper element.”
We sit, side by each, his face shiny with adventure. “It’s hard to describe where I’ve been.” He lifts his head to a pair of geese lifting off the lake. “So many times I found myself thinking, ‘So this is what Ari feels when she wakes up in Pleasant Cove.’” He places a perfect cowrie shell on my palm. “I picked this up one morning wondering what discoveries you were finding on a shore on the other side of the world.”
“Once I figured out how to transmute nightmares into art, I finally got some sleep.”
“And Mikey?”
“Tripped over joy all summer.”
“And now?”
“I’m not sure what’s churning in that head of his. His teacher does bloody ‘current events’ every morning. You know Mikey, he’s likely the only fourth grader who thinks about what he’s reading. He’s scared Ricky’s going to be sent to Vietnam. He frets about nuclear tests, hurricanes, downed planes . . . Maybe it’s just the weirdness in crapdom more than planetary turmoil, but he’s a jitter of worries.”
“The Dick isn’t hurting you or Mike again, is he?”
“No. There’s a new kind of mayhem. Not sure what’s up, but I’m certain it’s a house of illegal cards and the Dick is going to get royally flushed.”
He tosses crumbs for a flutter of sparrows. “And your mum?”
“Her mind-melt is a horror. I prefer her mean and scrappy.” I examine the shell’s markings. Finger its smooth curves. “When she’s gone and Len’s money is out of the equation, what can I do? This is the last year I have to get Mikey out of that house.”
“We’ll run away to South America if we have to.”
I want to ask if the “we” includes me, but I’m as afraid of a no as I am of a yes. “I do have a weekend escape plan. It’s a long shot, or is it a slap shot in hockey? You up to whipping Mikey into a Bobby Howe?”
“That would be Orr or Gordie.”
“I need both.”
He stands, inviting me for a ramble. “I’ll give it my best shot.”
The sun warms my neck as we stroll the shore. Aaron gathers stones, giving five to me to throw, one each for grandma, Len, Iggy, Jet, and Natasha. “You’ve seen me through so many deaths.”
“I was thinking about that this summer. I worked with people who’d lost their entire families in the earthquake and here I am, turning twenty-seven and have never had anyone close to me die.”
“Not a grandparent?”
“Nope. They’re all alive.”
“Often I feel I attract destruction.”
“Think it’s more accurate to say you attract energy.”
“Either way, nor’easters can kick up such a fuss, you lose all sense o
f which way is open water and which is solid ground.”
He tucks his hands and his feelings in his pockets as we head toward the parking lot. “So, how’s Jake?”
“He got accepted to Dalhousie.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Should be, would be, could be, but I called Huey yesterday hoping he’d heard how his first week went and he told me that school was on hold until after the freeze.”
“Why?”
“A neighbour busted his leg and begged Huey to keep his boat running in return for half the haul. Huey couldn’t let Cap down and Jake wouldn’t let Huey go it alone or leave the Missus with the extra load.” I pitch the last stone. “There’re two dozen men that would’ve jumped at the work.”
“It’s easier to do what you know.”
“What I know is Jake loathes fishing. He doesn’t mind catching a meal to feed the kids but hauling creatures out of the ocean, the flopping and struggle for air, just wrecks him. He isn’t following what he knows deep down.”
We reach his jeep and he asks, “Can I take you to lunch?”
“Promised Sabina an autumn in Paris backdrop for her window. Come help and you’ll get some cabbage rolls.”
Day’s end, Aaron drops us at the corner of misery and mayhem. “Um, I have a class at OISE on Wednesday. You guys want a lift home after volleyball?”
Mikey says yes before I can shake no.
Our walk to crapdom is like a pair heading to the gallows. Mikey asks, “Is it Mennonites that have lots of wives?”
“No. That’s Mormons.”
“More moms? Is there a fewer moms?”
“I’d join that church.”
“Scouts was at a church.”
“Did you like it?”
“A lot. A whole lot.” Mikey ploughs open the door, walks past Todd watching Hogan’s Heroes, Mum comatose on the chair, to the Dick.
“Hey, kid. Still got all your teeth?”
Mikey extends a hockey puck. “Scored a goal.”
The Dick nabs it, roughs Mikey’s hair. “That’s my kid.”
Ascending the stairs, I ask, “Where’d you get the puck?”
Mikey boldly runs interference with O’Toole’s hand reaching for a tit squeeze as he descends. He fakes left, then skits right into the boys’ room. “Bought it yesterday. I’m a boy scout now.”
I watch him cross-legged on the floor finishing his diorama for school. He painted the inside of a boot box like an arena, crafted players holding balsa wood hockey sticks. Made a Stanley Cup from cigarette pack liners. A magnet underneath moves Number 14, Davie Keon, down the ice. What it demonstrates is not his love of hockey but his emerging brilliance at Dickhandling.
Todd picks it up for a closer gander. “This is genius. Let’s show Pops.”
I watch from the stairs as the Dick peers with rapt wonderment. “Holy Christ. Leave this here so I can show the boys.”
* * *
Noise is a given on poker nights but not like this. Downstairs, clutter flies, glass breaks, voices bellow. I corkscrew into Mikey’s tent and he curves into me like an armadillo into its shell. My heartbeat, ragged and off-beat, thuds in my ears. I want Jake. Want Jake. Want Jake. Want, want.
Come morning, I tip-toe down. The place looks like a cyclone hit. The Dick spots me and mutters “Christ. Look.” I follow his gutted eyes to where Mikey’s diorama is squashed on Mum’s chair. “Pinto moved it off the table so we could play. That bloody O’Toole sat on it.” He picks up his jacket, checking out before a faceoff with Mikey.
Mikey hovers at the top of the stairs in blue underpants, unravelling at the waistband, and a threadbare cowboy PJ top. “Is it safe?”
“I’m afraid your diorama took a body check.” His shrug is absent of caring. “Get dressed and don’t come down in bare feet.”
He comes down carrying a popsicle stick schooner he constructed last year, drags his diorama like a dead possum to the curb, and heads to school in resigned silence.
Thirty-Seven
I fall asleep to the boys from Creedence Clearwater Revival jamming on the Riverboat’s back porch. I wake to “Bad Moon Rising” looping through my thoughts. Across the China Sea, war rages. To the east, Jake is lost in a fog. West of the Oh shit point, Montreal is exploding with the FLQ crisis, and Toronto is a mafia minefield.
I head to the lake for some time with Len before Aaron arrives, rereading Jake’s letter as I walk.
The other day I got swallowed by a fog. It rolled in so thick I couldn’t get my bearings. I’d get myself tuned to the foghorn, then hear it behind. About midnight, I heard a shotgun, waiting for a count, then firing again. I knew it was Huey signalling. Two things came to me so clear in that mist: one, I’m best leaving the fishing to those with a heart for it and two, I should’ve gone to school like I promised you. I’m sorry. What if I told you the new term will find me right where I should be?
* * *
I’d say, I’ll believe it when I live it.
“You’re here early.” I catch a whiff of lime-scented shaving cream as Aaron sits.
“Jasper needed the sound of the waves.”
And our sou’wester to talk us through our sea of disquiet.
Hours in, hunger replaces the roil in my gut. Aaron laughs at my belly growls. “Let’s get some lunch.”
There is colour in the air, like amber glass and yards of autumn-coloured leaves underfoot. Cattails and slender grass plume from a gully. Red-winged blackbirds take flight as we pass. I stop. Listen. Aaron says, “What?”
“There should be a poem in this. All I need is a friggin’ haiku.”
“For school?”
“Yeah. If you can believe it, English is my toughest subject right now. I can’t seem to write a bloody thing.”
“You know why ninety-nine percent of what lands on my desk is awful?”
“Why?”
“Because grade eights try so hard to be poetic. They think it to death. Any string of words that reaches another person comes from the gut, the heart, flesh and bone. Stop thinking about it.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk, Mister Lister.”
“Number forty-two on the list happens to be: stop overthinking everything.”
An old man in a flannel robe shuffles toward the boardwalk. A woman emerges from one of the lakefront houses and hurries to catch him. “Daddy!” When they meet, the curve of his shoulders matches the exquisite swell of her pregnant belly. “Come on, Dad. Tea’s ready.”
My hands lift, the right curving like the half moon of the man’s shoulders, the left like the full moon of her belly. Aaron follows my line of sight. “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m not, I’m seeing something.”
“A poem?”
“I need gems and wire.”
“First line of a haiku right there.”
Thirty-Eight
Sleeping in the closet, I gather intel through the vent in the floor when thugs are loading and unloading inventory in the cellar and through the paper-thin wall while persons wait for the toilet across the hall.
Last night I heard O’Toole growling, “Don’t fucking mess this up, Irwin.”
And the Dick snapping back, “I’m getting out of the hole, then I’m out. Capisce?”
“You ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of that pit.”
Now, this morning in the hall, I hear Pinto say, “Wait ’til Tino gets a load of Irwin’s girl.”
And Snake says, “I wanna be around for that.” There are other possibilities, I know—Ronnie, Mum, maybe the Dick has a chippie on the side—but I have a niggly feeling they’re referring to me.
I hear Mum exit the bathroom. “Mornin’, you bug legs, beg lugs, big hugs.”
Pinto says, “Mornin’ Theresa.”
Snake must turn his head to the wall, be
cause “What a piece of shit” lands like bird crap on my chest.
The sadness is so gummy, I can’t move. That my mum was a rare beauty was, perhaps, my only treasure of her.
“Ari?” Mikey peeks behind the sheet. “We’re gonna be late.”
“Just give me five minutes. Go pack your lunch.”
I didn’t undress last night so I’m ready in two minutes. I open the door and O’Toole is in the bathroom, pissing, door open.
I say, “You might want to have that checked. Looks like a bad case of smallcox.” He elbows the door closed.
Todd walks with Mikey and me to the corner. I ask, “Have you figured out this expanded operation?”
“Snake’s moving goods and O’Toole and Pop are just making sure the cops are looking the other way.”
“What about this guy Tino?”
“Alls I know is everyone’s scared shitless of him.”
“Do you know how much money the Dick owes?”
“Gotta be a bundle. Long as I’ve been around, he’s been betting on sure things.”
“He’s going to blow it, isn’t he? The whole detective thing.”
“Odds are fucksure. You have volleyball tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m working late. Meet me at the clinic so we can walk home together.”
Mikey flaps his arms around Todd in a sincere hug. In my four years in crapdom, I can’t remember seeing Todd embraced by anyone. I hug his upper half. “Thanks, Todd. You’re a spectacular big brother.”
Mikey hoists his droopy pack as we reach his schoolyard. “Make sure you eat your carrots, Ari.”
“You put carrots in my lunch, bro?”
“And Frosted Flakes.”
“That’s grrreat!”
On the way to Jarvis, I count the syllables in fragmented thoughts, trying to find inspiration for a haiku due by two. That’s six syllables.
How about “Behind sleepless sheet
Wall listens, girl hears thug talk
Cracked Pots Page 17
