Billy hated this place. The fake plants and fake smiling woman at the front desk. He hated Nick most of all.
Her room felt like a prison cell. A stupid blue couch, too small to lie out on. The paint a pukey green, same as her hospital room. There were a few ugly prints on the walls, pictures of puppies wearing hats and kittens in a basket, nothing his grandma or anyone with taste could stand to look at. The bathroom had no bathtub, just a showerhead and a drain like you’d find at a dog wash.
He wished they were still in Chetville, except there’d be no house to go back to. The Got Junk truck pulled up as they pulled away, swooping in to empty out the last traces of them. Their pail of striped rocks they had collected for no reason. His grandma’s ceramic mixing bowl. The broken cuckoo clock that never cuckooed. All of it to be thrown out like trash.
They’d have done okay in that house if people had left them alone. His grandma still had good days where she joked and laughed. Every morning he’d divvied out her pills and made her tea, hiding the old kettle under his bed so she wouldn’t let it run dry and start the house on fire. He reminded her to brush her hair and teeth and helped set up her paints, then hurried to and from school, which wasn’t a problem since he had nowhere else to go. He shovelled sidewalks and mowed grass and planted potatoes and dug up potatoes and did grocery runs and stood in pharmacy lines. Their system worked. She could still make great pies if he measured the ingredients, still make him laugh so hard he nearly peed himself. But when she wound up in the hospital everyone poked their nose in their business. Early onset Alzheimer’s, they called it. Captain Bananas taking charge. The social worker said they both suffered from neglect. This will be a fresh start. Right. It felt like the end.
It’s not like Nick wanted him, or his grandma, who he was only too happy to lock up and forget. Billy couldn’t remember his mother, but his feelings about her went down a notch when Nick showed up at the hospital. She chose this guy? Nick was accompanied by the social worker, who propped him up and pushed him through the door. He scowled and pumped his hand, mumbling incoherently about how great it was to meet. He looked scared of Evie, who was half his weight and wouldn’t hurt a bug.
Billy yanked the ugly purple blanket off her bed and stuffed it in the closet, replacing it with her comforter from the box.
“Billy, it’s time to go home now,” his grandma said.
He had no way to fix it. All he could do was tell her what she wanted. Yes, they’d go in a minute. Sure, he would water the garden. The beans would be up soon. They’d put the chicken in the oven. He’d learned to lie when she got scared. The first time was in the middle of the night when she woke crying for her mamma. He was so rattled he almost cried too. She died, like a long time ago, he told her, which made her sob louder. He finally figured out that she needed to believe her mamma was coming back. So that’s what he told her. She’ll be here for breakfast, and we’ll have pancakes. She says you’re supposed to sleep now. Which she did. He’d gotten better at telling stories since then.
He tore down Nick’s lame prints and stacked them by the door to dump in the garbage. Then he ripped open the artwork he’d brought from home.
“Check this out, Grandma.” He held up a still life of red poppies in a field of green and hung it on a leftover nail over her bed.
“How about these?” He spread out the set of four miniature garden scenes, which she wanted next to her armchair.
Most were summer paintings, brilliant purple and yellow flowers tucked against wood fences or along curved pathways. She’d used oil on canvas back then, teaching him to sketch first with charcoal, then paint in layers, fat over lean. By the time Billy was in school, she’d switched to watercolours, so their mistakes could not be easily brushed over.
There wasn’t enough wall space.
“Grandma, I’m gonna look for a hammer and nails.”
He headed down the corridor with its horrible walls, peering through open doors. Old men shrivelled in wheelchairs, on beds. Old women slumped sideways in chairs. Some milled about in the hallway. One carried a baby doll by its feet, its plastic pink toes thumping against her chest. No one acknowledged him, or each other, as they moved past him like zombies.
Sarah came out of a bad-smelling room with a mop and a bucket, her face shiny with sweat.
“Billy, how are you making out with Evie?”
“I need something to hang her paintings. They’re not framed, so they don’t weigh much.”
“Then goop should do. Come on. I’ll find you some.”
She took his arm and guided him into a cramped room with washers and dryers and a row of baskets with names taped to each.
“I know it’s here somewhere.” She stood on her toes and peered into the highest cupboard. “There. Can you reach to the back?”
Billy stretched and brought down a package of mounting poster putty.
“Pull off a piece for each corner. Mush it in your fingers, then use your fist like a hammer and give it a good whack.” She demonstrated by banging her fist hard against the cupboard door.
Billy could hear a sharp scream down the hallway. He gripped the package tightly, unable to move.
Sarah smiled. “That’s Edith. She makes those noises sometimes. But she’s not afraid or upset. It’s how she says hello to the world.” Her face softened. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? You okay?”
“Grandma’s not like these people.”
“No, she’s not. She’s her own person. She has a sparkle in her eye.”
“She shouldn’t be here. She’s only sixty-five. Everybody else looks like they’re at least a hundred. They’re way worse than her. Grandma would never scream for no reason.”
“I know it’s hard.” Sarah leaned closer and rested her hand on his shoulder. “But I bet it’s been hard for you too, especially watching over Evie all by yourself. Now she’s got a whole team supporting her.”
“This place is going to kill her,” he muttered, sure it was true. “She won’t understand why she’s here.”
“That’s our job, isn’t it? To help her every day. And every day, it will get a little easier for her. And for you.”
While he didn’t believe her, his chest filled with new air. The unwanted relief made him feel guilty, like he was to blame. He fled the laundry room and barrelled down the hallway, sidestepping walkers and wheelchairs. His grandma slept while he hung her paintings, oblivious to his banging. By the time he was done, the walls from floor to ceiling were covered with Evie’s colours, his fist swollen and stinging, a bruise of bright red.
When Sarah pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building, she turned the car too sharply and bumped the steel post. It was a ridiculous spot for a bicycle rack; she’d never once seen a bike parked there.
“You hit it again,” Carter shouted from the back seat.
“Thank you, Carter,” she said. “You’re very helpful.”
She backed up, swinging wide this time, and eased into her spot, thankful the truck in number eight was not yet there. He always parked over the line, leaving her barely enough room to open her door and slide sideways.
“Should we call the police?” Carter had become enamoured with the police since the officer’s visit to his kindergarten class.
“It was just a little bump. Police don’t come for bumps.”
“Yes, they do. Police always come if you call.”
“That’s only for emergencies. Come on, buddy. Let’s go.”
Carter tumbled out of the car, wearing his helmet and rain boots, dragging his backpack behind him. “Like if you crashed into a cat and it got hurt really bad, then the police would come.”
Carter had exceptional verbal skills. That’s what Miss Pam had told her at their first meet-the-teacher meeting. Teachers’ code for your child won’t shut up.
He prattled on. “Or if you were playing with matches and started a box on fire, and then the box started a different box on fire, and then all the boxes started on fire, then the police would come and so would the fire truck and they would use their water hose.”
“That’s why you definitely don’t play with matches.”
He’d stopped by their complex’s main door, bending over to check out a beetle. “Can I play outside?”
He asked this every time, even though there was no good place to play and no one to play with.
“It’s supper time. Aren’t you starving?”
He slumped his shoulders forward and sat in the dirt. Sarah tugged on his arm, scooped up his backpack, and dragged him inside.
Their apartment was on the second of three grungy floors, wedged between old Mr. McGreary, who they’d glimpsed only twice in the seven months since they’d moved in, and a twenty-something goth boy who came and went without nodding in their direction. It was the yahoos above them that caused the real grief. She’d asked the landlord to deal with their loud music, which he’d assured her he’d do, but his smirk said otherwise. What do you expect, lady? This is a dump.
It was a pathetic place for a boy, but the only rental in Rigsbee that Sarah could afford. When she and Carter moved here last December, she had just enough money to cover the deposit and pay for her winter classes, draining her rainy-day jar to buy a few gifts from Santa. She couldn’t afford the Hot Wheels Colossal Crash Tracks he wanted most. She’d been putting away extra every paycheque, determined to make Christmas more special this year.
“How about spaghetti?” she asked. “And you cannot wear your helmet in the house, so put it away, please.”
“No sauce,” he yelled, his head in the closet.
Carter didn’t want his food groups to overlap. “Just a little sauce. Now go to the bathroom and wash your hands. With soap. And I’m going to check.”
As Sarah sliced tomatoes and mushrooms, she reminded herself that she could do this. It was a mantra she repeated a hundred times a day. She would finish her nursing classes, move up in the ranks, get out of housekeeping. She could earn enough money to move Carter into a real house. He’d have his own room stuffed with toys, a fenced backyard with a swing set. Proper before and after school care. The best daycare each summer.
At supper, she tried not to rush him as he twirled his noodles into a fat blob at the end of his fork.
“Did you have a good day at Mrs. Brandon’s?”
He shrugged, noodles dangling from his mouth. He’d been with Mrs. Brandon since the school year ended, a week now, and had little good to say about her or his days. Sarah wished she could have put him in the daycare in Willowridge, with its jungle gym and cartoon-character walls and smiling teachers and his best buddy, Ryan, from kindergarten, but Mrs. Brandon was half the price. She took in two other kids, a pair of dull sisters with stringy hair and bags under their eyes, both younger than Carter. He had little good to say about them either.
“Well, what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
She hoped Mrs. Brandon hadn’t sat them in front of the TV all day. She was in her late fifties and not spry, her children long grown. “That’s impossible. Unless you’re a statue. Wait a minute. You’re not a statue, are you?”
Carter yanked up his arms and froze. They both laughed.
“I found two earthworms,” he announced.
“That’s cool. You were outside playing?”
“I wanted to do the Earthworm Shuffle, but Kelly and Carly don’t know how.”
“The Earthworm Shuffle! That’s your favourite.” Carter had shown her plenty of times by wriggling on his belly. As far as Sarah could tell, Miss Pam had turned the classroom into an obstacle course and the kids into earthworms.
“No, it’s not my favourite. Frog on the Dog is. We do Frog on the Dog on Thursdays. But that’s only at school. Mrs. Brandon doesn’t know how.”
“Maybe next time you find an earthworm you could teach Kelly and Carly how to do the shuffle. Over, under, in, on. Right?”
“You forgot beside. Earthworms go beside too. They’re very strong.” Carter dropped his fork and flexed his muscles like a wrestler. “They make slime that makes the gardens grow. Kelly and Carly hate worms. And frogs. And dogs. I can make slime. Want me to show you?”
“I want you to eat your tomatoes. Three more bites.”
“Earthworms dig way down deep where they can be slimiest. But they have to come out if it rains so that they don’t drown and then they get stepped on, bam, which is worser than getting drowned, so they’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”
Sarah laughed. Between a rock and a hard place was her most worn-out expression.
“Okay, buddy, drink some milk. It’s your turn to ask me about my day.”
Carter made a moustache of white around his tomato lips. “Did you have a good day, Mommy?”
“Well, yes, I did, Carter. Thanks for asking.”
A day like any other. Washing, wiping, scouring, dusting. A series of re-dos. Ruth had watered her plastic flowers again, creating a puddle in her drawer that drenched her just-laundered panties. Clement had another explosive accident, his third this week, a river of brown trailing down his leg and following him into the hall. In the dining room, lunchtime usually a hushed affair, Edith refused to swallow her pills and flung them out of her hand and into Mazie’s soup. Later, when Mazie refused to leave Edith’s room, claiming it was hers, their angry voices carried into the hall. Sarah squeezed in on the couch between them and talked about the weather—wasn’t it such a warm summer, wouldn’t the farmers be happy—until the three of them were discussing blue skies, and how there had never been a better year for the saskatoons. They sat like that until Dorothy stopped at the doorway and glared, as if to imply that Sarah had better things to do. She didn’t. Helping her residents find a little joy was worth more than clean socks.
“We had a new grandma move in today,” Sarah told Carter, who was slapping his rubber boots together under the table. “Her name’s Evie and her grandson is fourteen years old, and his name is Billy. They’re very nice.”
“Is Billy going to live in her room?”
Carter had been to Prairie View once for the Mother’s Day tea. He was captivated by all the doors, wanting to poke his head in every room.
“Billy’s going to live with his dad and come visit his grandma.” She hoped Billy would visit. So many families dropped off their person and forgot about them.
“I don’t have a grandma.”
“No, you don’t, Carter.”
“Ryan has three grandmas. He brought one for show and share.”
“Well, he’s very lucky, isn’t he?”
At bedtime, Carter stalled by grilling her about the solar system. The sun was a star, and the moon was not. There were eight planets, and Jupiter was the hugest with a whole bunch of moons. By the time he finally settled, she wanted to crawl into bed herself.
She sat at the kitchen table, her textbook opened to the “Overmedicating of the Elderly” chapter. She was concentrating on benzodiazepines, lost in the world of pharmaceutical side effects, barely registering the slam of the door above her, the stomping of feet. Then it started. The pounding of drums, the shrieking bass, shaking her walls, hurting her bones. She looked in on Carter, arms above his head, his sheet a tangle at his feet, mouth ajar and blowing out small puffs of air.
She went back to her textbook and stared at the page, the words blurring to a sea of black. It was eleven o’clock, hours yet before the pounding would stop. She wanted to scream, Shut up you morons! but knew it would be pointless, her voice drowned inside the wretched drumbeat. A tune her mother used to sing floated back to her. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the evening. She did in fact have a hammer. She wished she could use it to crack open their flat, empty skulls.