34.

THE MORNING OF THE GARAGE SALE, Emma woke up in her old bed at number 66, with Lester snoring in her ear. He had been drunk the night before. They all had. After the service, everyone had gone back to the house for drinks and sandwiches. Rachel had stocked up, so the booze flowed until the birds started chirping.

Emma was in her underwear and bra, the old turtle pendant around her neck. She touched it, and thought for a moment about Wanda. She hadn’t been surprised that her mother wasn’t well – the yelling lady on the streetcar had prepared Emma for that. What had come as a shock was how old, tired, and bewildered Wanda had seemed. It was as if they, her own children, had become strangers to her now. What had it taken out of her to make the trip back to Toronto? And why had she come? Had it been a sense of duty, or had she needed to say goodbye? Emma had waited after the service for Wanda to join them at the house, but when Nina arrived, she said she had dropped their mother off at a hotel. Nina would go by in the morning to get the paperwork finalized, and then drive Wanda to the airport.

Emma knew that was it. They would never see their mother again.

She sat up, and wiggled herself out from under the covers. She was pinned between the wall and Lester, who was still fully clothed. Emma looked down; her own clothes were in a ball on the floor at the bottom of the bed. She bent over to look at them, and found they were covered in dirt. She tried to remember what had happened. She had danced on the coffee table to Harry Belafonte at some point, she knew that much. She laughed to herself as she remembered that she had also taken the old astrology book out of her room, and had started telling people about how to cast a birth chart. She remembered Rachel playing hostess, and getting mad at Emma for smoking a joint with Billy. Billy the Kid, Emma thought, chuckled to herself for a moment, and then stopped. It was a clue, some piece to the puzzle of what happened the night before. Something about her and Billy being outlaws – not like Bonnie and Clyde, more like Robin Hood. Yes, she had a whiff of it now – Robin Hood and his merry band of Bison. Bison? Emma reached into her memory for more, but her mind just laughed, and sloshed around in the puddle of a hangover that promised to be a tsunami by noon. Harry Belafonte, Billy the Kid, dancing on the coffee table, dirty clothes left in a mound on the floor. Turtle pendant – that was it, the trail went cold.

Emma had seen Billy at the funeral, and wondered who he was – this big, bald, rough-looking guy who had showed-up on a Harley Davidson. When he came to the house and introduced himself after the service, he told Emma that he met Grandma on a plane to Florida once, a long time ago. He had said she had given him some advice on how to get back together with a girlfriend he had cheated on. “I’ll never forget,” Emma remembered him saying, “I was pounding back double JD’s, and she made it so simple,” he’d said. “She said, if you love her, you have to beg her forgiveness and hope that she gives it to you.” Billy had laughed. “I kept coming up with excuses, trying to weasel out of it, and she kept saying, ‘you’ve got to own up to your mistakes, William, and that’s that’.” Billy had only seen their grandmother once after that, when she had asked him to come scare Sam straight when he was getting in trouble as a teenager.

Rachel had been angry about the pot. She’d said that at least they could have gone outside instead of in the garage, stinking up the whole house. She had even accused Billy of being a criminal. She hadn’t minded him so much later, though, when Lester and Sam got into it, and Billy had stepped in and told them both to knock it off.

Emma got out of bed, and stood up. Lester was still asleep. She looked down at him, and remembered how he had flirted with Nina Buziak the night before. Nina had dropped Wanda off at the airport, and then gone back to the house. Lester was standing with Emma at first, saying, “She looks good, eh? Who would have thought she’d turn out to be such a knockout. I wonder if she’d let me take her picture sometime.”

“Why don’t you go ask her?” Emma remembered saying.

Lester had looked at her, a little suspicious, then he had shrugged his shoulders and off he went. Emma had stood there like an idiot, feeling jealous and abandoned as she watched him flirt with Nina, at her grandmother’s wake, no less. So much for the gallant knight, so much for Mr. Save-the-Day.

Emma picked her dirty clothes off the floor and placed them gently over Lester’s head, rubbing them together a bit before letting them drop, so some of the dirt fell into his hair. He, oblivious, slept on. Nina Buziak, of all people. At least she’d had the decency to look uncomfortable, and to leave the house shortly after. Emma vaguely remembered crying. She looked in the mirror. Her eyes were small, the skin around them puffy and tight. Yes, she must have cried. She remembered Sam had gone over to Lester, yelling and calling him a slimy little shit. Then, the pushing had started between Sam and Lester until Billy stepped in. After that? Emma couldn’t remember. The rest of the evening sank like a stone below consciousness.

Emma looked around the room for her purse, then gave up, and sat on the floor with her back to the bed, rummaging around in her duffle bag for her indigo cotton dress. Already, it was too hot, and she’d be spending the day outside with Rachel, selling all their memories off to the highest bidder.

Lester began snoring loudly. He had tossed off Emma’s dirty clothes and flipped onto his back. Lester. He had to be the centre of attention, always had to be the meat of the sandwich. Emma looked at him again, and had the urge to pull out the corners of the sheet underneath him. Then what would she do? Roll him out of bed, and dump him into a heap onto the floor? Or wrap him up as if she was swaddling him? She wanted to do both.

Outside, the woodpecker egged her on. Emma put her housecoat on and left the room.