On Tuesday Frank knocked off work a little early and went home to work on his garage. And to see his kids. Just Emma and Sadie were home; Garth had stayed at school for soccer practice.
Frank had an idea involving Jane Mallet, the daughter Greta Bower had given up for adoption. It was a feeble hunch — no alarms were ringing — but it was a hunch nonetheless. And it was the only thing he had when it came to the rain barrel baby, so he supposed he should follow it up.
His arms were getting tired. He had been scraping old paint off his garage for only thirty minutes but he was ready to pack it in.
I must really be out of shape, he thought, if I can’t even prepare my own garage for paint without feeling as though I’m going to have a major health episode of some kind.
Frank’s hunch, as well as being feeble, seemed a little far-fetched, so he had kept quiet about it. He didn’t share it with Detective Sergeant Fred Staples, or with his boss, Superintendent Ed Flagston. The official reason he gave himself was that he was grasping at straws, but there were other reasons swimming about in Frank’s thoughts. Reasons that had to do with Fred’s black and white way of seeing things, and his own tendency to hide the police manual under his mattress at times.
He didn’t want to involve Greta unnecessarily. She seemed so emotionally frail to him. He supposed he could be making that up, casting himself in the role of protector to make up for all his failures.
He couldn’t save Denise and worried that he was the root of her problems. She had seemed so…well…unalcoholic when he had first met her. She had been working hard to put herself through university. And she had done it — graduated with a degree in anthropology.
Her plan then was to work for awhile — she got a job with the provincial government in the archives — and then go back and get her master’s degree. She wanted to go on archeological digs, research the past. She wanted to go to Egypt.
Denise hadn’t wanted kids; she’d been definite about that. Frank had wanted them so badly he could taste it, but he wanted her, too, and figured she’d come around and get over her desire to travel the world looking for things that happened thousands of years ago.
She didn’t come around, but she got pregnant by accident and Emma was born. Frank had been so afraid she would have an abortion that he lost thirty pounds. He thanked God for the Catholicism that had been drilled into Denise as a kid.
They had both agreed that Emma shouldn’t be an only child and then, oddly, it had taken five years for Denise to become pregnant again.
She had been fairly well organized in her drinking. Never touching a drop when she was pregnant or breast feeding, but then going on binges. She usually managed to get supper on the table and the kids tended to, half-heartedly, but sometimes just barely. Frank had insisted on a mother’s helper part of the time and had taken two fairly lengthy leaves of absence from his own job to help out at home. Denise’s drinking had gotten worse since Sadie was weaned over five years ago.
Frank had suggested more than once that she try heading back to university for a course or two towards that once longed-for master’s degree. But she didn’t figure she could do both that and be a mother.
You combine being a mother and drinking like a wild woman! he had wanted to shout. You could substitute the courses for your benders. It would be easier! But he never had. He supposed the whole mess was his fault. He had wanted kids so badly. Surely that wasn’t wrong, was it?
“Hi, Dad.” It was Garth, smiling full tilt into the sun.
“Hi, Garth!” Frank came down off the step-ladder. “Do you want to help me scrape the garage?”
“No thanks.”
Frank chuckled. “I don’t blame you. It’s a horrible job. How was soccer practice?”
“Okay, I guess.”
Frank noticed that Garth’s neck was dirty. “Maybe you should have a bath. What do you think?”
“No. I’m fine, thanks.” Garth continued along into the house.
Frank wondered if Sadie’s neck was also dirty. He’d have to check. And if Garth wasn’t cleaned up at bedtime he’d make him take a bath and clean out the tub afterwards.
Frank sat down in a shady spot and leaned against the old wood of his garage.
Greta had been taking care of herself reasonably well for forty-two years. She had a hugely successful baking business and as for her drinking, Frank figured he was probably just overly sensitive to it because of Denise. But he didn’t want Greta involved unless she had to be. She was so messy.
He also didn’t want to embroil the mysterious Jane Mallet in something unless it became necessary. And he hadn’t even met her yet. But it was time to find her; he had a feeling it wouldn’t be hard. He could start with the River City Health Centre.
In the 1960s when a baby was adopted, the names of the birth parents were still put on the adoption order. A copy of this order was given to the adoptive parents if they wanted it. Frank had checked. Greta had told him as much, but he didn’t put a lot of stock in what Greta said.
Frank pictured the adoption order filed in a shoe box of important papers high on a shelf in Mother Mallet’s closet. And young Jane, snooping as children do, through the mysteries of her mother’s fabrics and scents, for secrets better left alone.
Frank took off his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his eyes. It was too hot for this kind of work. He made a pillow out of his shirt and placed it behind his head. Now all he needed was a cold drink. He was going to have to have a shower before figuring out what to do about supper. Manual labour on such a hot day was a stupid idea. Frank felt as though he was full of stupid ideas.
Jane Mallet knew who her mother was. Frank didn’t doubt that. Nurse and happy marriage stories aside, he believed the basic information that Greta had given him: her daughter had been in touch. But why? She hadn’t wanted to get together with Greta, but she obviously knew where Greta lived if she had contacted her. That was a little odd.
Greta Bower was also a little odd and sometimes that ran in families. She was also a woman who had given away her child. Being given away was as good a reason as any for hating someone, Frank thought, for wanting to punish them. Perhaps Jane Mallet had placed her own dead baby in her mother’s rain barrel as a form of twisted revenge.
Emma held the screen door for Sadie, who balanced a tray containing a frosty glass of lemonade and three chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven. She approached her father carefully and didn’t spill a drop.