WEST ISN’T PICKING UP AT THE TAVERN OR AT HOME either. I’ve been calling for two days straight. When the phone finally rings, I rip the receiver from the cradle.
“I was starting to think you were dead in a ditch.”
“If I am, the afterlife is as shitty as the real one.”
It’s Detective Surette.
“Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
“I’m sorry I’m not someone else too. It would solve a lot of my problems.” Surette coughs. “Enough of my sparkling wit. I’m just calling to let you know that your father’s house fell off the town grid.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that seeing as how it’s on a dirt road with its own well water and no power hooked up since the family left, best I can tell, you’re clear on taxes. I hear it’s in pretty rough shape, though.”
“That’s why I asked for bulldozers.”
“I’m working on it. You’ll have to go legit if you rebuild. This is a one-time loophole.”
“Fine. What’s the update on Swimmer?”
“Detective McNeil’s been getting a lot of false leads. I think certain people are wasting his time on purpose.”
“We all know who did it.”
“Nobody knows anything for sure. Not even you.”
I slam down the receiver and go back to driving myself bonkers over West. I’m worried Troy found out he gave us an alibi and sent someone after him. By the time the phone rings again the next afternoon, I’m half hysterical.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Abriel showed up here,” West says.
“What?” My chest pinches. “At the tavern?”
“At the house.”
“At your house?”
“Well, it’s not all mine. Not yet.”
I wish phones had TV screens so you could see the expression on the other person’s face.
“What did she want?”
“She wants to get back together. I told her I’m done with her, but she won’t listen. She keeps talking to me like I’ve got amnesia, saying everything was my fault and she’s been trying to come back all this time.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
He hesitates a half second too long.
“She’s making it real hard to say no, I suppose.” I wind the phone cord around my finger so tight, the skin turns blue.
“Tabby, I didn’t see this coming. I need to sort a few things out.”
“What things?”
“I got some questions for her.”
I hang up on him even harder than I did on Surette. All I can see in my head is that auburn hair splayed out on my pillow. I bet she took one look around and decided the place wasn’t so bad after all with the plants and the new curtains. She probably put my apron on and started frying up eggs. Even if she’s gone again, she’ll always be back.
I grab my purse, bang out the door and start running down the road. I veer up the driveway of the blue house and barge in the door, shove Bird’s yellowed feet into his ugly Velcro sneakers, stick his arms through his denim jacket. I wheel him down the uneven ramp to the bottom of the driveway and start along the dirt road as fast as I can go. He bumps up and down, trucker hat veering to one side of his head. When his protest noises get louder, I stop to light a cigarette. My hands shake as I push his wheelchair down the ditch into the woods. About twenty feet into the trees, I can’t manoeuvre his chair any farther. I park him next to a log and sit on it.
“He said if she came back, he’d tell her to go to hell,” I say. “He said he doesn’t have feelings for her, that it was over as soon as she walked out the door.”
Bird tries to reach for my cigarette. I hold it up to his lips for a drag and he snatches it from me. I watch him perch it daintily between his fingertips and puff on it like a little old lady. I wonder how it is he can hold a cigarette but not a spoon, and why he can rip the shit out of the wallpaper but can’t put on his own pants. I bet Ma treats him like a baby just so she can take care of him, the same way she comes in and hands me a towel the minute she hears me turn on the tap. She can’t protect us from getting our brains kicked in or being raped by some motel slumlord, but she shows up with hot soup and clean towels.
I tap another smoke out of my pack and stick it in my teeth. “What the hell did I come back here for? Daddy got what he deserved. Poppy’s a mess. Janis and Swimmer will be the ones on drugs soon enough. Jackie’s going to wind up in jail. And Ma, well, Ma’s never going to be happy, is she? And here I am a grown woman with no house, no job, no car, no husband. You want to know why it took me so long to come find everybody? I wanted to have something to show for all these years. Joke’s on me.” I kick my purse. “I don’t even have a social insurance number, which means I don’t exist, just like the house we grew up in.”
My lighter’s dead. I flick it ten times then whip it at a tree.
“I don’t even know West’s real fucking name.”
The fog sinks lower into the tree branches, mingling with Bird’s cigarette smoke. We sit there so long my mind wanders all sorts of strange places. I start to imagine that Swimmer’s been in these woods all along, eating fiddleheads and berries and babbling with the birds. I can almost see him toddling out of the mist with pine cones in his hair.
After a while it starts getting cold, so I button up Bird’s coat and wheel him back up the road.
JANIS WANTS TO COME WITH ME TO SOLACE RIVER. SHE’S never been. I don’t know if she’s ever been anywhere. I feel uneasy leaving Ma alone, but I need to sort out where we’re going to live.
“I picture it’s cloudy and the water’s all black and everybody looks like this.” Janis twists her face into a snarl. She clambers into the front seat of Ma’s car, starts rolling the windows up and down and looking under the floor mats for dimes. “Are we going to visit West at his house?”
I pretend not to hear and distract her by telling her to pick a good song on the radio. She scans through every channel twice and finally settles on Dutch Mason, sits back nodding her head like an old bluesman.
“Janis, what do you want to be when you grow up?” I’m genuinely curious.
She bolts upright. “A bagpipe blower.”
“Why?”
I get the feeling she’s been dying for someone to ask her this question.
“Because. You walk at parades and you have hangy things on your socks, and a purse that goes in the front, and you don’t got to put on no underpants. Everybody goes ‘ooh aah’ and takes pictures of you. They can hear you coming for a long time, and there’s a person at the back who bangs on a drum this big.” She flings her arms wide. “And old men watch and cry because they wish they got to play the bagpipes and now they’re too old.”
“What goes in those bagpipers’ purses?”
“Tissues and gum.”
I point to her sequined purse in her lap. “Is that what’s in yours?”
“In here?” She unzips it and shows me a one-dollar bill, a ceramic rabbit figurine and some lip gloss called Ghostberry.
“Where did you get a one-dollar bill? They don’t even make those anymore. It might be worth something someday.”
She unrolls it. “How much?”
“Maybe a hundred dollars if you wait a long time.”
Ma’s car leaks oil, so we have to stop at four different gas stations along the way. One of them has a convenience store attached and Janis unclips her belt, says she’ll be right back. I stare at the door until she re-emerges with a root beer slushie, a box of Cracker Jack and some licorice twists. She’s clutching a five-dollar bill and a bunch of change in one fist.
“I thought you only had a buck?”
“I did, but I told the teenager in there that a one-dollar bill will be worth a hundred dollars someday and he bought it off me for ten bucks.”
I lean over and sip her slushie. “You’re just like your aunt Tabby, you know that?”
“Yup.” Janis nods, adjusting her sunglasses.
It must be lunch break when we arrive at the house. The bulldozers are parked willy-nilly and there’s no one around. They’ve already torn down the garage and the sheds and have started to pull the house apart from the back.
I paint Janis a picture. “You can have a swing set there, and a tree house back there. I bet Uncle Jackie will build you one if you ask him nicely.”
“Like this?” She cups both her hands under her chin and flutters her eyelashes. “That’s what I do at church group so Mr. Northwood will let me pound the nails into Jesus.”
When we get back in the car and drive into town, I realize the real estate office is only a few buildings down from the Four Horses. I spy West’s truck in the parking lot and hurry Janis across the street.
We walk into the tiny beige office and she starts pawing the house models, poking her candy-coated fingers in the windows of a mock-up of a prefab called the Buckingham.
“I was thinking something more like this.” I redirect her to the Brunswick. “It’s got enough space, and we won’t piss off the Queen.”
The saleswoman is about nineteen years old, wearing a long lavender floral dress with a lace collar that might be considered a “go-getter look” on an Amish egg farm. She seems to be timing us on her watch, and at about four minutes strolls over and recites the brochure word for word.
“The Brunswick is a spacious two-level house designed for modern living. It boasts four elegant bedrooms, three bathrooms and a two-car garage.”
“TWO-CAR GARAGE?” Janis screams.
The woman continues giving the specs, and after enduring an hour’s worth of questions from Janis and me, ranging from “Are the appliances included?” (me) to “How many people can fit in the bathtub?” (Janis), she finally asks, “Would you like to discuss financing?”
“We’ll be paying cash.”
She blinks a few times. “For the down payment?”
“For the whole payment.”
“We’re rich,” Janis explains, one hand on her hip.
I nudge her behind me. “We’ve received a large inheritance.”
The woman gets me to fill out some forms and select some siding and floor samples. I let Janis hold all the little rectangular blocks and she shuffles them in the car, informing me which are boring and which are gorgeous. I allow myself one quick glance toward the tavern.
When we’re almost off the main street, I realize Janis hasn’t seen anything interesting. I find a scraggly little park and we sit and chuck sticks in the water. Then we walk to the general store for snacks and buy Swimmer a T-shirt. Solace River: Going with the flow since 1768. Janis insisted. It was hanging in the window next to one that said, I Shaved My Balls for This?
“Don’t tell people we’re rich, okay?” I say to her.
“Why not?”
“Because. We don’t want it to get back to the sorcerer.”
“Gimme a break.”
Poppy told Janis we inherited the money from Grandma Jean. She should have left it at that, but instead she spun a big yarn only a crack addict would cook up. She said Grandma Jean was a princess who had been hidden away in Solace River from an evil sorcerer who wanted to steal her soul. The royal family sent the princess her inheritance when she turned eighteen, but Grandma Jean saved it all for us. This didn’t jive with Janis at first. She had a million questions. If Great-grandma Jean was a princess, why did she use bad words and cut the necks off turkeys? And if she was so nice, why did she always go around spitting sunflower seeds on the carpet and making Janis pick up all the soggy shells?
She conks out in the car after ten minutes and sleeps most of the way back to Jubilant. I spend the drive trying not to think about West. Part of me regrets not going into the tavern. Maybe I should have stormed in and demanded he send Abriel packing like he claimed he would.
Just before we hit the Jubilant exit, Janis wakes up and yells, “Holy ship!”
I glance where she’s pointing and almost slam on the brakes right there on the highway. It’s the Rubik’s cube rock. Inside new black grid lines, it’s been painted solid orange on one side, blue on another. I pull the car over to the shoulder, jump out and run up to it. The remaining visible sides are slathered in green, red and white respectively. It’s been solved the easy way.
“What is it?” Janis sticks her head out the car window.
“It’s a sign!” I call, jogging back.
“It’s not a sign. It’s a painted-up rock.”
“It’s a sign.”
She looks back at the rock for a minute then tilts her sunglasses down at me. “You been eating crazy crackers again?”
THE MORONS IN JODY’S GARAGE TELL ME LYLE’S NOT around. They can’t believe I just walked right in. One of them asks me if I’m looking for a good time and I tell him my idea of a good time is a shower that stays hot long enough for me to shave my armpits. Another one looks me up and down and asks if I’m like my sister.
“Not really,” I say. “She’s a Pisces. I’m Gemini.”
The first guy says Lyle won’t be back until tomorrow, but in case he’s full of shit, I stall by getting him to look under Ma’s hood. He does a quick fix on some wires, charges up the battery and patches the hole in the oil tank. Then he gives me what he thinks is a sexy look and invites me for a test ride. I tell him I have a gyno appointment to get to and he hands me the keys pinched between two fingers, worried he’ll get a yeast infection if our hands touch.
On my way back to the trailer, I take a wrong turn and wind up on a deserted road full of potholes too narrow to turn around on. It occurs to me there could be an old cabin back here where Troy’s hiding Swimmer, so I keep going till the pavement turns to dirt. Then the dirt gives way to sand and I’m at a deserted beach. I turn off the ignition and unroll the windows. A cold wind wafts off the sea, swishing the eelgrass back and forth all along the dunes and weaving through the knit of my sweater. The planks from an old boardwalk are scattered like teeth punched out of a mouth, and an old lighthouse ladder is mangled into a heart shape. It’s hard to tell if the storm happened ten years ago or last week.
I get out and walk along the shore trying to spot any cabins farther up the coastline. If Lyle had been at the garage I was going to tell him he had twenty-four hours to deliver Swimmer or else I’d put up every cent of the money I promised him as a reward for Swimmer’s return. The entire town of Jubilant would be scrambling to sell out Troy for that kind of cash. But now that the sea wind’s blowing fresh oxygen into my brain, I can’t shake what Surette said about Troy being smart enough to keep himself out of prison all this time. If Troy found out the cops were coming, what might he do to avoid getting caught? He could hand Swimmer over to one of his goons to dispose of like a sack of garbage.
I come upon a firepit littered with empty Keith’s cans, sit down on a driftwood log and watch the ocean rise and fall back on itself. A seagull hops over, but when I say hello, it flinches and flies off.
Something bobbing out on the water catches my eye. It ducks behind the waves then comes back into view, disappears, re-emerges. I stand up for a better look and make out a black plastic bag knotted at one end. I watch it for several minutes until I feel queasy. I can’t shake the awful thought creeping into my brain.
I roll my jeans up to my knees and kick off my boots. The first touch of my bare feet to the cold sea shocks me to the eyeballs. I make my way in till the water’s at my waist and reach out my fingers far enough to grab a corner of the bag. Just as I have it in my grip, a wave picks me up and my feet can’t touch bottom. I kick and pull as the current tugs at the bag. The icy water takes my breath and I start to panic, but then the next wave carries me to where I can get a footing. I tear through the plastic bag right there in the water until I’m surrounded by floating milk cartons and empty margarine tubs. I wade back to shore and drop to my knees on the sand. It’s not until I’m back in the car that I start sobbing with relief.
“WHO TOLD YOU TO SLAP ALL THAT MONEY DOWN ON A big fucking mansion we’ll never afford in the long run?” Jackie hollers.
“You decided Ma’s getting a house. We can’t all sit around watching Wheel of Fortune. We’re almost out of time.”
“You don’t trust me with all that money hanging around, do you? You think I’m going to take off with it.”
I don’t answer and he storms out. I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe I should have. I noticed when we were sitting side by side counting the money that he has Daddy’s same tapered thumbs, the extra lines around the knuckles.
Once I hear the car peel off, I curl up on the sofa and watch drops of water break loose from the clouds. The sky surrenders and the rain heaves, smearing everything beyond the windows. I lie back and nod off until late afternoon, when I wake to the storm trying to slash through the walls. I sit up in the window and watch the wind drag the plastic swan planter across the lawn, entrails of sludgy garbage trailing out behind it.
I was dreaming about Raspberry again. This time I was walking down those hallways with the stupid murals painted to look like graffiti. I passed the grey cafeteria and started up Staircase A. We used to call this staircase Rachel Roulette because the middle landing wasn’t visible to either floor and you never knew if this girl Rachel was waiting on it with her fist cocked. Staircase B was a safer bet, but it was all the way at the other end of the building. Anyhow, in the dream the whole building was empty, so I took Staircase A, turned left on the third floor and stopped at the fourth door on the right, my old room. Everything was just as I left it: the pointless chair, the bed with the scratchy comforter, the pilled hooded sweatshirts hanging in the closet. On a little shelf by the bed, there were bottles of nail polish and a copy of the New Testament I read for kicks. I walked over and opened it, and on the inside cover where it was inscribed This Bible belongs to, my handwriting said: The Bitch I stole it from. The bed opposite mine was bare. No sheets, no pillow. In real life, that side of the room was reserved for a rotating sideshow of hateful weirdos. First there was a cutter who tried to drown her baby cousin. She was a ball of fun. When she left, the bed was stripped down to the mattress stain and remade for a pyromaniac who told me to eat shit and die any time I tried to strike up a conversation. All these psychos came and went, and I was there indefinitely. It made no sense.
On Sundays at Raspberry, family members could visit, and sometimes I would go down to get a look at people’s mothers. Then I’d trudge back to my room and stand at my window staring out at the fields rippling beyond the basketball court. I used to worry that the sky and grass were just painted on the other side of the glass, that if I punched through the pane, there’d be just another room on the other side. Some nights, when I was trying to sleep, I’d imagine someone trapped in that room. If I thought about it too long, I could almost hear the breathing.
In the dream, I did it—punched through the window—and sure enough there was a dark, windowless room hidden behind it. A little girl was slumped in the corner and when she lifted her face, it was my own fourteen-year-old self staring back at me.
I get up from the sofa and wander up and down the trailer, but it’s like I’m still in the dream, walking the hallways of Raspberry. I can see the fluorescent lights and practically smell the bleach on the floors. I smoke about ten cigarettes before Ma and Janis finally return from the blue house. I run over and help Janis strip off her coat.
“We have to build a ark!” she tells me, wet hair slathered to her cheeks. “Jesus said!” She disappears into the bathroom for a while and twenty minutes later I step over her lying in front of the television. I ask her what happened to the ark, and she says she didn’t have the right boards.
Later that night, the phone rings and Ma tries to pass it to me. I shake my head no. It’s taking all my mental power not to picture West playing house with Abriel, and hearing his voice would transport me right to his kitchen table. I’d have to watch the two of them play footsie by candlelight or some shit.
“It’s Jackie,” Ma snaps. “The police got a search warrant for Troy’s.”
I grab the receiver.
“Don’t tell Ma,” Jackie says, “the cops have already searched the place. They didn’t find Swimmer’s shirt. No guns or drugs neither. Troy must have cleaned the whole place out.”
“Jackie, I don’t like this. Swimmer’s becoming a hot potato. What if …” My insides clench.
“Troy don’t have the balls.”
“How do you know? Because he didn’t kill Bird? Maybe he only kept Bird alive to punish you.”
“Look, just shut up for a sec. I called to tell you that I ain’t mad at you no more about the house.” I hear his foot tapping. “I looked it up, and property taxes are pretty low on the old dirt road, so it’s just the bills we need to worry about. Did you show Ma the pictures of it in them brochures you got?”
“No.”
“Don’t show her. Let’s surprise the shit out of her.”
“Janis already told her how many rooms it has.”
“She knows Janis makes shit up.”
“Is this why you called?”
“No. Troy’s bitch cornered Jewell after a doctor appointment, told her when the baby comes out, she better watch it every minute. Jewell came to see me at work shaking like a wet cat. I ain’t thrilled about leaving, but we’ve been talking about how we’d like some family around for the baby, Bird and everybody. You know, when me and you was up in Solace the other day, it didn’t seem as much of a shithole as I remembered. Anyway, Jewell and I are coming to stay with you guys in the new house till we can sell this one and buy our own.” His foot starts up again. “So are we cool?”
“Is that your way of saying sorry?”
“Yes, Christ. I said I was.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Guess what, Tabby?” His voice softens. “It’s going to be a little girl.”
I tell him congrats, hang up and return to the table.
“What’d I miss?” I ask Ma.
“Some jackass whacking off in the cemetery.”
I’ve become addicted to the police scanner now too. Nothing ever happens, and then everything happens at once, so we have to be on the ball. Last night, within the span of one hour, some loser threatened to choke out the family cat if his wife didn’t go buy him another six-pack, a group of underage kids crashed their ATV into the lake, and a meth head stole a stack of scratch-offs from the convenience store before returning twenty minutes later trying to claim a winning ticket. The cops use code over the radio, but it’s pretty easy to crack if you spent time in juvie.
“Holy shit, Ma!” Flares start firing off in my brain. “I bet Troy has a scanner.”
“Yeah, so what? All the dealers do so they know where the cops are at.”
I grab the phone, call down to the station and tell Surette my idea.
“You’re going to cost me my job.”
“The job you’re not doing?”
“I said I’ll think about it.”
He must think fast, because I crank the scanner volume and within minutes the cops on duty are sent to investigate the robbery of a liquor store in Halifax: Tabatha Mary Saint. Caucasian female, mid-twenties, five foot six, 120 pounds, sighted in the Jubilant area. According to what’s rolled out over the scanner in the next few days, the cops will question me, search the woods and the trailer but find no trace of the six grand I collected from the registers. They don’t have serial numbers for any of the bills and the security camera at the liquor store wasn’t functioning during the time of the robbery. Worse, procedure wasn’t followed fast enough and there’s not a single usable fingerprint. At one point, one of the cops leaves his radio on “by mistake” and we overhear him say that the whole investigation’s such a fuck-up, the chief called in a favour to keep it out of the papers.
But by Saturday morning, I still haven’t heard from Lyle. I’m starting to have fantasies that involve kerosene, matches and his shiny new truck. I get up early to try the garage again, but Ma stops me.
“Happy Jubilant Day.” She takes a shot of Pepto-Bismol. “There’s a parade downtown in an hour.”
She’s wearing the same clothes she was wearing last night. I don’t think she’s slept at all the past few nights. All she does is keep her ear to the scanner and wait for the phone to ring.
“I’ll take Janis.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I always do.”
“Then I’ll come. I can’t just sit here.”
I walk down the hall and duck my head in Janis’s room. Her leg is hanging over the side of the bunk and I shake it gently. Three of her toes are poking out of one sock.
“Who wants to go to the parade?”
“Me.” She opens one eye then the other. “Swimmer will be there. He claps when those Shiners go by in those little cars honking the horns.”
She finds her sunglasses in the sheets and jumps down off the bed. I watch her dig through a laundry basket and pull out a lobster claw hat from three festivals ago. It’s too small for her now. Every time she yanks it down on her forehead, it slowly creeps back up on top of her head.
“Nope, they’re called Shiners!” she screams. “Because they shine everything! Like those little cars. If you need something shined, you call them and they drive over right away!”
I try to take the hat off her head to brush out her hair, but she squirms past me, runs down the hall, through the kitchen all the way out to the driveway to buckle Swimmer’s stuffed husky dog into the back seat of the car. Then she comes back in, sets herself up at the table with a bag of tobacco and starts pumping paper tubes one at a time into Ma’s sliding machine, lining up the finished cigarettes in a neat row. In the meantime Ma showers, does a few dishes, tidies up and fills a Thermos with tea. She inspects Janis’s work, hands her a Baggie, and Janis tosses the smokes in, twist-ties it and places it in Ma’s purse. Then they both turn and walk in opposite directions, checking to make sure all the lights and the stove are off. This must be their routine.
“Let’s pick up Bird,” I say as we’re pulling out of the driveway.
Ma shakes her head. “Jackie won’t like that.”
“Why? He wants Bird to stay inside peeling the walls off every day?”
“He don’t want anyone to know how bad off Bird is.”
“That’s the whole point. Everyone needs to know. Let them talk about how Bird can barely hold his head up and Troy will realize he won the war a long time ago.”
She clicks her tongue but stays silent as I pull in to the blue house. Bird is sitting out on the porch. I bring him down, lift him out of his chair, and Ma folds it up and puts it in the trunk. As I’m wrangling him into the back seat, I suggest we squeeze in the other two Musketeers, but Ma says we better not.
“They’re too unpredictable, those two. I took them with me to get groceries once and they attacked each other in the pasta aisle. There were noodles goddamn everywhere.”
Once we’re on the road, I glance in the rear-view mirror and say, “Hey, Janis, you should tell everyone at the parade we’re moving to Solace River.”
“Why?”
“So when they see a big house riding on a truck, they won’t think it got lost from the parade. They’ll say, ‘Hey look! There goes Janis Saint’s brand new house!’”
“Yup.” Janis nods. “They’ll say, ‘There goes the fastest house in the world!’ Right, Uncle Bird?”
He turns his head side to side, drooling.
It takes a while to find a place to park and then we have to walk along the street trying to find an empty spot to watch the parade. Every time Bird sees a little girl with pigtails on either side of her head, he grunts and starts pointing. Ma has to say, “No, Birdie. That’s not Josie,” every time.
I ask someone where we can buy festival hats and he tells me to go to the festival kiosk. We walk all over hell’s half acre before I realize the “kiosk” is just two sawhorses with a sign taped between them. It’s manned by the town stoner, a teenage boy who looks like he’s fast asleep except for the big greasy grin. Once he remembers why he’s sitting there, he sells me a headband with light-up antennae, but then it takes him five hundred years to figure out my change.
I clamp the headband crooked on Bird’s head, trying to make him look as pathetic as possible. I spy some kids with plastic lobster bibs and buy one of those too. Ma has no energy to fight me. She just looks down at the lights bobbing around on Bird’s head and sighs.
Finally, a troupe of ten majorettes comes marching around the corner. The chubby, freckle-faced kid keeps dropping her baton. She throws it in the air, misses right in front of us, and sighs, “Fuuuck.” She picks it up, shakes it angrily at the sky and yells, “Seriously?” then yanks out her wedgie one-handed and runs panting to catch up with the others.
“She said the F-word,” Janis informs everyone around us.
Two teenage girls are carrying the parade banner: TOWN OF JUBILANT: PRIDE AND PROGRESS. One of them has a lit cigarette in her hand. Ma points to her.
“That’s Frosty’s daughter.”
“His name’s not Frosty,” I tell her. “That’s just the name of his store.”
She lowers her voice. “Progress, my ass. That Frosty’s still renting out porn movies on VHS. He tapes them off the Quebec channel, and he don’t know French, so he makes up the titles. They all got ‘Miss Frenchie’ in them.”
The Jubilant Lobster Fishermen’s Association’s float has a bunch of people in sou’westers standing single file under a sign painted UNEMPLOYMENT LINE. Some lobster traps tied to the back of the truck drag empty along the pavement. The crowd falls silent as it passes.
When the pipe band comes into view, I tap Janis on the shoulder.
“I know,” she snaps, shrugging me off. She steps off the curb and gives each piper a thumbs-up.
“You really think you can blow that much air into those bags?” I ask.
“Yup,” she says. “I blew up six hundred balloons for Swimmer’s birthday party.”
“Six hundred?”
“Probably seven hundred.”
The Jubilant Day Queen has a big hickey on her neck, which didn’t make her think twice about an updo. She waves to the crowd in white gloves like she’s been doing this her whole life. As if Ma and I didn’t just see her half an hour ago bumming change outside the liquor store, screeching to someone in a car, “Where’s Jimmy at? He said he was getting hash for the Gravitron!”
“What’s the Gravitron?” Ma asked me once we’d passed.
“It’s a carnival ride that looks like a UFO and spins around at warp speed blasting Mötley Crüe songs until everybody’s pinned to the walls. Then sometimes one of the workers will do tricks, skulking sideways across the seats or flipping upside down. You’d be surprised at how often those tricks get carnies laid.”
“I’m sure I would,” Ma barked. “What’s the hash for? That sounds like enough on its own.”
WHEN THE PARADE CLEARS, THE CROWD JAMS THE street. Janis takes out one of her drawings of Swimmer, unfolds it and stops different kids to ask if they’ve seen him. She says, “He’s wearing a yellow shirt in this picture, but now he might be wearing a blue one, or an orange one, or a green one. But not brown. He won’t wear brown shirts, because brown makes him need to poop.” She runs up to a little boy who looks like Swimmer from behind and grabs him by the hair.
“Control her,” the boy’s mother says to Ma. Then she narrows her eyes. “I know who you are.”
“Do you know who I am?” I ask. She starts to make a snarky comment, but I lean in and whisper, “You open that tacky lipstick mouth again, I’ll find out who your husband is and fuck his ever-loving brains out.”
It was the only thing I could think of. She yanks her son away and as soon as they’re at a safe distance, she spins around and gives me the double middle finger.
Looking around, all I see are idiots stuffing their faces with hot dogs and cigarettes, pushing their baby strollers, hollering at their older kids who are whining because they blew all their junk food money on face tattoos. Camouflage gear seems to be the prevailing fashion trend and I can’t imagine the draw. A three-hundred-pound woman in a camo skirt will not blend into her surroundings. Even if she was standing in a thicket, she’d be hard to miss with the rhinestone belt and the seeming inability to stop screeching, “Mama’s getting on the hooch!”
I take a look at us, and we’re no better. Ma didn’t even comb her hair. Janis looks like she’s dressed as a hobo for Halloween, with two different shoes on again and a bright orange stain on her shirt front. I find some Wet-naps in my purse and clean her up a bit, tuck in her shirt.
We make our way down the road to the fire hall parking lot where the carnival games are set up, and Ma starts making that furball noise in her throat. I ask her if she wants to go home, but she shakes her head no. She silently weeps as we walk around watching people whack moles and toss rings. I buy some wilted cotton candy that no one eats and try to smile every time Janis looks up. Ma tells me there used to be a big tug-of-war match after the parade, but the Jubilant Day Committee banned it after last year’s accident.
“What happened?”
“Buddy had the rope twisted around his wrist,” Janis jumps in. “The other guys pulled the rope over and saw a bloody hand hanging off it. I said to the newspaper, ‘That’s the craziest thing I ever seen in my life.’ After the ambulance drove away, they had to bring a fire truck out and hose all the different-colour barf off the street.”
“She didn’t see it,” Ma says. “We were in the bathroom changing Swimmer’s diaper. But she did tell the reporter that. We have the newspaper article at home with her name in it.”
“Wait.” Janis sticks her arm out in front of us. “I see something for Uncle Bird.”
She turns and wheels Bird up to the craft tables and we overhear her ask how much the tissue paper angels cost. She talks the old lady down to two dollars then zips her sequined purse back up. She grabs a delicate angel from the lady’s outstretched hands and drops it into Bird’s lap. I turn my head as Bird starts ripping the thing to shreds.
Angela from the Lighthouse is leaning against the fire hall. She’s got those leopard shoes on again. She looks right at me, but I don’t seem to register. She must have been drunk as a porcupine that night.
Janis pulls up her shirt and shows me she wore her bathing suit under her clothes so she can go in the dunk tank. We take her over to the rickety old thing and when it’s her turn, she climbs up on the swing and sways back and forth in her sunglasses, trash-talking grown men. No one knocks her down and after half an hour Ma starts to get impatient in the heat. Her nerves are so fried I can almost smell the sizzle.
“Oh, yeah, right,” Janis groans when Ma buys a ball from the man. She barely gets that out of her mouth when Ma fires it underhand and smacks the orange target dead-on. The seat collapses and Janis vanishes. She stays down extra long on purpose. Eventually, her head pops up and she crawls out of the booth dripping wet, fake gasping for air. I ask her how it was and she puts her hand on her chest, huffing away. Ma tells her it’s time to leave and she drops the act, gets a panicked look on her face.
Janis grabs Bird’s chair handles and pushes him with all her strength up to the auction booth. The auction’s over, but the auctioneer is still there packing up.
“I bet she’s asking him if she can sing into his microphone,” Ma says.
We watch as the man lifts Janis up onto his platform, switches on the microphone and places it in her hands.
“Hey, everybody!” she yells into it, then “WHAT?” when the man tries to tell her not to press it directly to her mouth. “I’m Janis and this is Uncle Bird. Say hello, Bird.” She crouches and shoves the microphone at Bird, but he’s half asleep. She stands back up. “Does anyone here know where’s my little brother, Swimmer? I have a picture right here.” She holds up her drawing. “See. He has brown hair and he’s only this big.” She pushes the palm of her hand down six inches from the ground. “And he likes Dolly Pardon and dogs and candy.”
I look around and notice people are actually listening. The guy working the dunk booth has stopped selling balls while she’s talking. Some elderly women are shushing people and pointing up at the platform.
“If you have him up at your house, please give him back.” Her lip trembles and big tears start rolling down her cheeks. “Because he’s my brother. We have to go to live at Saw-liss River, but we can’t go without Swimmer because he won’t know how to find us and I have his husky dog from Grandma Jean.” She puts the microphone down and it makes a big thump into the speaker. Then she wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, picks the mic back up in both hands and presses it right up to her mouth. “And if anyone wants me to, I can sing a song.”
Ma goes over to collect her.
EVERYBODY’S QUIET ON THE DRIVE HOME. I GET OUT AT the blue house with Bird, draw him a bath and feed him supper. The Musketeers are having a music night. The fat one’s strumming an old guitar with three strings and making up lyrics, most of them about how he’s a sharp-tooth man that ain’t gonna go down to the river. Eye Patch Stanley grunts along, tapping the table off time with a wooden spoon, as Bird rocks back and forth, dancing in his chair. After his bath, he makes me put his antennae back on him. I sit for one more song before I say good night. Halfway across the field, I turn to see the colourful lights on Bird’s head swaying in the window.
I kick my boots off in the trailer and the phone rings a single time. I run over to pick it up, but there’s a dial tone. Two minutes later, same thing. Ma says it’s been happening for the past hour. I wonder if it could be Lyle trying to send a message. I put my boots back on without explaining, get in her car and speed down to Jody’s Garage.
Lyle’s there. He sticks his neck out as I arrive, looks up and down the street, then tells me to park around back. He lets me in a side door, locking it behind us.
“Well?” My heart is thrashing around my chest like a bird trapped in the house. I look for somewhere to sit, but everything’s covered in car grease.
“They want money for the kid.” Lyle’s eyes are bloodshot and there’s booze on his breath. “Six grand.”
My knees almost give out with relief. I jam my hands in my jacket pockets to hide how badly they’re shaking. “Six grand. That’s a lot of money.” I try hard to look surprised.
“That’s what it will cost to buy back the Wanda Lust.” Lyle slides a mickey of fireball whisky out of his jacket and unscrews the cap. “Course, getting the real Wanda back might not be so easy.”
“Am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Jimmy’s lobster boat. When he got out of the clink, he sold it to pay down his debts. Wanda left him because he had no boat to put down traps. No traps, no money. She’s up in Black’s Point fucking some DFO asshole while he’s drinking himself stupid. He takes his empties down to get the deposit back just so he can buy more booze.” He gestures to a stack of empty two-fours in the corner. “Everybody’s saving bottles for poor fucking Jimmy.”
I have no idea who Jimmy is or why Lyle’s telling me all this, but I take the whisky when he offers it just so he’ll keep talking. The first sip burns my throat.
“Wanda Lust, get it? Jimmy’s old boat was called Crack of Dawn,” Lyle says. “‘Cause he was doing this girl, Dawn.”
“So Jimmy is Troy’s brother, the one who got caught ripping off vending machines?”
Lyle realizes he just fucked up, telling me all these names. I see the hamster wheel in his brain struggle to make a full rotation. He wipes the sweat from his forehead.
“Whatever,” I say. “You’ll get the six grand plus your cut as soon as we get Swimmer. We can trade off tomorrow morning.”
“You-all get your shit packed up first. They want proof you’re getting gone. You got three days.” He snatches the flask back.
“Fine.” My hands start to shake again, so I pretend to fish around in my purse for my keys. “Did you see him?”
“Who?”
“Swimmer.”
“I don’t know nothing about nothing.”
MA’S LYING ON THE SOFA WHEN I GET BACK, THE PUPPY sweater she knitted for Swimmer draped over her chest.
“We’re getting Swimmer back.”
“What?” She sits upright. “When?”
“It worked this time. Troy wants the six grand he thinks I stole. As soon as we get the moving trucks packed up, Swimmer’s all ours.”
I show her where I keep the money hidden in the kids’ bedroom in case she has to hand it over to Lyle.
“What if it’s a trick?” she asks.
“It’s not.”
She dials Jackie and talks so fast he can’t possibly make out a word. I pry the phone from her and she collapses into a chair, laughing and crying at the same time. I tell Jackie everything Lyle said. I expect Jackie to balk when I tell him to get packing, but he says Jewell’s already wrapping up her knick-knacks in newspaper. He has us on speakerphone and she yells in the background, “Are you kidding me? I can’t wait to turn the corner in the grocery store and not run into one of his exes with one of his kids.”
The only thing Jackie wants to know is how we’re going to get the six grand back after we hand it over.
“We’re not,” I say.
“WHAT? We’re just going to give that fucktard Daddy’s money?”
“It’s not Daddy’s money and you know it.”
I hang up with a tidy click and he doesn’t call back. As soon as my adrenalin subsides, I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. I crash the instant my head hits the pillow. All night long my dreams stick together and pull apart. I wake before Ma and Janis and start making a list of things we need to do to get out of Jubilant for good. First off, I have to make sure the old house in Solace River comes down before the concrete guy shows up to pour the new foundation. I leave a note and sneak out to Ma’s car.
The highway is deserted this early and my mind is free to bounce around. I start wondering what West is up to, but thinking about him gives me a pain in my chest, so I crank up the radio and try to get interested in a CBC documentary about the collapse of the cod fishery.
I reach Solace River around noon. Victory Road is full of puddles. I roll down the window and the air is warm and fresh from a recent rain. When I round the bend, my heart gallops. All I see is a dark field of mud where the house used to sit.
I park at the top of the driveway and the foreman waddles over.
“You must be Tabby,” he yells over the banging.
I shake his hand through the window and he tells me it’ll take about three more days to get the whole mess gone. I ask him if his guys could cut that time in half if I gave them each a hundred bucks cash right now.
He raises one thick eyebrow. “For a hundred bucks each, these fellers will probably have her done before the liquor store closes tonight.”
I count it out and he says, “Hold on. I saved something for you.” He goes off toward one of the trucks, returns with an old yellowed copy of the Solace River Review under one arm. “The boys found it in the walls, thought maybe it was there for a reason.” He passes it through the window.
I thank him and hang around a few minutes to see my money start to work its magic. When I pull back out onto the road, I pause for one last look at the pile of debris. I can’t help but think of the suffering those walls held in over the years. Now all that misery is free to blow out over the river and settle deep down in the sediment.
I glance down at the newspaper on the passenger seat and pick it up. Halfway down the first page there’s a story about Grandpa Jack winning the house in a card game. The paper’s so parched it’s ready to disintegrate, but I can still read the faded type. It says Private Jack Saint and his infant son were renting a room in town when the woman who owned this house passed on. The place was in poor condition, but the land it sat on was viable. The woman’s son put word out that he was willing to trade the house and property for some healthy livestock or a year’s worth of manual labour. Grandpa Jack apparently tracked the man down in a barber’s chair and proposed a game of poker. The terms were set that if the man won, Jack would pay him 10 percent of his military pension every month for the rest of his life. But if Jack won, he would simply take the drafty old firetrap off the man’s hands. The enterprising Private Saint must have been born under lucky stars, the article says.
Of course, it fails to mention that Grandpa Jack threatened a priest who’d already offered the man some fine horses, and that his violent temper preceded him when his boots came stomping into the barber shop. It also left out the part where Jack plied the farmer with Pusser’s rum and had the ace of spades beating like a telltale heart under his left thigh until it miraculously found its way into a winning full house. Grandma Jean told me the real story. I’m sure her version is much closer to the truth, even if she added the more poetic details.
Part of me thinks I should burn the newspaper with my cigarette lighter right now, let the history go down with the house. My other half, the Saint half, thinks we should frame it on the wall in the new house.
When I hit the main road, I come to a dead stop. Left or right? My mind and body duke it out till my foot presses the accelerator and I steer toward town. I cruise slowly down Main Street then speed up and zip past the tavern. I do that three more times, back and forth, but I can’t see a thing through the frosted windows. Finally, I just park the car and walk in on shaky legs.
West is alone, counting up the bottles in the beer fridge. He doesn’t see me until he turns to crank up the stereo. I take a stool as he slowly removes the pencil from his teeth and sticks it behind one ear. He pulls down a bottle of Jim Beam and I think he’s pouring me a shot, but it’s not for me. I watch the muscles in his jaw twitch as he flicks it down his throat.
“They’re going to give us Swimmer back.” My voice sounds warped, like a vinyl record left out in the rain.
He goes right back to counting like I’m not even there. I stare at the backs of his thighs straining against his jeans as if he wants to run, and it’s the damnedest thing, I just start bawling. Everything that’s happened in the last weeks comes crashing down on me.
West comes around the bar, drops his clipboard on the counter and takes the stool next to me. He places his fingers under my chin and turns my face toward him. “What’s the matter?”
I shrug. He wipes some snot off my nose with his sleeve, pushes my hair off my forehead and grabs onto my eyes with his. He sits there staring into me through a whole cycle of the dishwasher and three John Cougar Mellencamp songs.
“Why do you look at me like that?” I whisper.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m somebody.”
“You are somebody.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “You’re Tabby Saint.”
He closes up the tavern and I tail his truck to the house. Abriel’s white Rabbit convertible is in the driveway, so I have to park on the street. I finish my third cigarette in a row, flick it in the gutter and join West in his driveway. He’s nervous, jingling the spare change in his pocket.
“Ready?” He puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me inside before I can answer.
There’s music playing and laughter at the end of the hall. When we walk into the living room, Abriel is standing at the stereo with a drink in her hand. She looks the exact same as in the picture. She’s wearing a halter sundress and I can tell she’s still got the body. Her mouth drops as she looks from me to West then back again. Danny is seated on the sofa smoking a joint with a man who looks enough like Abriel to be the brother West mentioned.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Abriel says to West, ice cubes popping loudly in her glass. I can tell she’s well on her way to getting drunk. She sets her drink down, grabs West by the arm and points a long fingernail at my chest. “You stay right there,” she orders me.
I follow right behind them into the kitchen as the volume lowers on the stereo. I glance around the room and everything looks mostly the same except for Abriel’s car keys hanging on the hook and a lipstick kiss on a Post-it Note stuck to the fridge.
“What’s going on, baby?” Abriel whispers to West. “Why is she here?”
“I want her here.” West leans his arm against the cupboard as if he needs it for support. “Abriel, you can’t stay. I told you. I want a divorce.”
“My name is on this house.”
“Fine, take it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Take it. Or I’ll buy you out and you can get your own house.”
She’s shocked silent.
“Sounds fair,” I say.
“Who the hell asked you?” She spins around. “What kind of person are you, anyway, going around sleeping with other people’s husbands?”
The gold flecks in her eyes match the tones of her dress and I wish I wasn’t wearing Ma’s old Where’s the Beef? sweatshirt.
I walk over to the fridge and rip off her lipstick kiss. She screams like I pulled her hair.
“Tommy!” she yells. “Get in here!”
He appears around the corner with Danny right behind him. “What’s going on here, West?”
“None of your business, Tommy,” West says. “As fucking usual.”
I open the fridge door to reach in for a beer. Abriel tries to grab it from my hand and West wrenches it back, takes another for himself.
“Tabby and I are going to drink these outside. The rest of you go home.”
“I am home!” Abriel screams.
“Well, Tabby’s sleeping here tonight, so you’ll have to take the sofa.”
She starts calling him every name in the book and a few more. He takes me by the hand and pulls me out the door, leads me around to a little back porch I didn’t even know existed. He twists the caps off the beers with the inside of his elbow and hands me one, sits down and pats the spot next to him. The window’s open and we can hear Abriel say she’s not going anywhere, that I’m the one who’ll be leaving.
West doesn’t drink his beer, just holds it between his knees. He’s staring up at the moon, but I can tell he’s not really looking at it. He told her she’ll have to take the sofa if I stay, which means she’s been sleeping in his bed. I want to ask where he’s been sleeping, but I don’t. I just sit there not looking at the moon either. After a while the two men drive off and West finally drops his shoulders. He takes a sip of his beer, and I take a sip of mine.
ABRIEL STICKS AROUND ALL THE NEXT DAY, PEACOCKING up and down the hall. She runs outside in a bathing suit in the pouring rain, comes in all breathless and dripping, asking West to open a mustard jar with her tits in his face.
While I’m boiling rice at the stove, she paints her toenails at the kitchen table, tells me she’s been in love with West ever since she was in junior high school and he popped a wheelie on his bicycle outside her house. When she goes back down the hall singing “Stand By Your Man,” I glance out the window to make sure West isn’t coming before slipping off my panties and straining the rice through them. When the three of us sit down to supper and West asks me why I haven’t got any rice on my plate, I just tell him I’m cutting back on starch.
In the morning, she and I walk into the kitchen at the same time. We hesitate then both go for the coffee maker. She snatches the pot from me and turns on the tap. I can tell she’s starting to smell defeat. She’s already wearing a little less makeup. The cat wanders in and looks to each of us before trotting over to me and rubbing himself along my shins.
“Oh, fuck you,” she snaps at him. “Asshole.”
I pick him up and stroke his back while the coffee percolates. Drip, drip, drip. Purr. Purr. Purr.
“Well?” She glares at me, slamming two mugs down on the countertop. “Do you take sugar or are you goddamn sweet enough?”
Finally, she and West sit down and have a big talk about money. The bedroom door is shut, so I have to stand on the other side of it to listen. She sobs, “What am I supposed to do now, baby? What about me?”
I want to burst in and yell, “Who cares about you, you lying, cheating, leaving, skanking, can’t sing, can’t cook, MANIPULATING FUCKNUT?”
When the door opens, I pretend I just happen to be in the hallway getting the vacuum cleaner from the closet.
West walks Abriel to her car, so I start vacuuming in the living room where I can keep an eye on them through the front window. She drives away in that white car looking a little too satisfied for the deal to have been fair. West comes back in and I unplug the vacuum cleaner in time to hear a giant fart.
“I heard that,” I call out. “So you hold it in while she’s here and let it all out for me?”
He comes in and flops down on the sofa. “Sorry. I couldn’t relax until she was gone.”
“Why not?”
He rakes his hair back with one hand, looks up at me and sighs. “I felt we were dangerously close to a threesome.”
“What?”
“It seemed like it was headed in that direction.”
“WHAT?”
His mouth contorts into a smile.
“Hilarious.” I cross my arms. “Did you get the answers you wanted or what?”
“That low-life she took off with said he’d take her around the world, but he left her alone all the time to go gambling. They went to Niagara Falls once, that’s it.”
“So?”
It pisses me off that he forgave her so easily. Here he is at the tavern every night trying to make the numbers work and she probably made off with half of everything he owns just for pouting her lip.
“I’ve never been to Niagara Falls,” I say.
“Me neither,” he yawns.
I sigh as loud as I can, but he’s already drifting off.
WHEN I PHONE MA IN THE MORNING, THERE’S BEEN NO word from Lyle. It’s day three. I tell her I have to run a quick errand and then I’ll be on the highway. I head over to Victory Road to wait for the trucks to arrive with the first of the prefab parts, but when there’s no sign of them by 9 a.m., I give up and dart into town. Ma gave me my birth certificate when I first got back and told me I’ll need it to get my social insurance number if I want to get a job. It turns out you just mail an application in and they send you a plastic card with your number on it. It arrived at West’s house yesterday and he told me I can use it to open a bank account and deposit the money rather than leave it sitting in the trailer.
The bank manager isn’t even curious why I’ve never opened a bank account before. On the phone she told me that, other than my SIN, all I needed was a reference letter from a client in good standing. Now she says, “Oh, how do you know West?” then walks away to photocopy something without waiting for an answer.
After the bank, I duck into the tavern to show West my shiny new bank card. He holds it up to the light, pretending to check if it’s a fake.
“Nice. Now you can get your licence and stop driving my truck around illegally.”
“I can’t go completely straight. What would people think?”
I tell him I’m on my way to get Swimmer and he stops smiling.
“Are you sure you don’t want to involve the police?”
“If I do, Troy will get arrested, Jackie will be ahead in the Game of Fuckheads, and it will start all over.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Lyle might spook if he sees someone he doesn’t recognize.”
West knits his eyebrows. “Be careful.”
He breathes on my bank card and polishes it on his ass pocket before handing it back. I tell him what Janis said about Ma checking out his rear end.
“Oh yeah? I do clenching exercises while I’m standing behind the bar. It’s nice to know someone’s paying attention.”
“Wait. So, you’re serving drinks to Hells Angels, listening to them talk about motorcycles and putting bullets in people’s foreheads or whatever, and the whole time you’re standing there squeezing your cheeks?” I shake my head. “You have got to be a Gene.”
“Gene can’t multi-task like that.”
“When are you going to tell me your name?”
“About two weeks after you stop bugging me about it.”