A Strange Kind of Comfort

by Gaylene Dutchyshen

  Charlie’s sitting on the couch, his feet propped on the coffee table between stacks of old hot-rod magazines. “What if I want another glass?”

  “Then you’ll go back to the fridge and take it out again.” Sarah stomps across the room and turns the volume down herself. “And what’s with that mess you left on the table? Who’s supposed to clean that up?”

  Charlie grins and points at himself, an overdramatic circling of his thumb to his chest, and Sarah tries not to smile, but she can’t help herself. He can be a little pain in the ass, she knows, and she’s spoiled him; it’s her fault he gets away with as much as he does. Charlie was only three years old when their mom left and Sarah’s mothered him ever since. She taught him to print his name and how to tie his shoes. She used to let him climb into her warm bed when he was up too early on Saturday mornings and she never made him eat his canned peas. Even though he’s thirteen, she still sees him as that freckle-faced little boy with the sparkling blue eyes that had her wrapped around his little finger.

  “Where’s Brian?”

  “He’s at Mikey’s house. They’re planning to find someone to cruise around with tonight.”

  “What about you? Is Terry’s mom taking you out in the country again this year?”

  “Nah,” Charlie says. “We’re just going in town this year.”

  This will be Charlie’s last year trick-or-treating. She knows he says he’s going out for candy, but she imagines he’ll get himself into some kind of harmless trouble. Knock over a few garbage cans, soap a few windows. She remembers when Charlie used to tag along with her and Addie; she can still feel his sticky little hand in hers, hear the swish of his pillowcase, loaded with candy, dragging on the ground. He was a ghost for more years than she can remember, the only costume she could easily make: an old pillowcase torn up the seams and draped over his head then two circles cut out for his eyes. She always dressed up like a hobo. Colourful patches sewn on an outgrown pair of jeans and stuffing from an old pillow stitched into a square, cut from one of her father’s old shirts, and tied to the end of a stick. Becca had a new costume every year — Little Red Riding Hood in grade three, several fairy princesses, and a cheerleader with shimmery pompoms one year when she was older.

  Sarah is making supper when her father comes home. She hears the door slam and the thump-thump as he kicks off his boots. He looks tired, as he often does, and she wonders how long he can keep it up, hefting around that heavy steel. He shrugs off his coveralls and leaves them by the door.

  “I noticed a couple shingles in the backyard,” Sarah says as she opens a tin of mushrooms. “That strong wind last night must have blown off a few more.”

  He sits down heavily at the table and rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll need to crawl up there and put a proper patch on it. It’s always one damn thing after another around here.”

  The house is getting more rundown with each passing year. Her father stopped caring when her mother walked out and the weight of his despair has crippled the house — scoured the paint off the siding and wrenched the front porch right off its foundation. Sarah is ashamed of it, that quick-put-your-head-down-and-don’t-look kind of feeling she gets when she walks up. Last year, she heard Cady Hubley bragging about the eighty-six trick-or-treaters who showed up at their house on Park Street. No one, except the kids who live nearby, goes trick-or-treating on Sarah’s side of the tracks. She handed out to only twelve kids last year (including her brothers), two suckers each plus a popcorn ball she made herself, so brittle Brian and Charlie batted them around like softballs with two wooden spoons the day after Hallowe’en.

  She dumps the mushrooms into six whisked eggs and adds it all to the onions and chopped wieners frying in the pan. Omelettes-on-toast, she calls this creation, one of Charlie’s favourites.

  “You going out tonight after you hand out the treats?”

  “I guess so. The girls are coming to town and we’ll hang out for a while.”

  As if on cue, the phone rings. It’s Addie. “Hey, I just talked to Bec and she’s not coming with us tonight. She was acting all mysterious and she wouldn’t say why. Did she say anything to you?”

  Sarah agrees to call and find out what’s going on. Becca answers the phone on the first ring. Dishes clatter in the background; it’s suppertime at the Webbs’ and she can almost see Caroline bustling around the kitchen in her apron, pulling out a pot roast with oven-mitted hands.

  “Just a sec,” Becca says. Sarah hears the receiver banging against the wall, a pause, then a click, then Becca’s back on the line. Becca has an extension in her room (she and Cady are the only girls in their class who have them).

  “Mom? I’m on. You can hang it up now.” Becca waits for a click and the kitchen sounds go quiet. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Addie says you’re not coming with us tonight.”

  “I got stuff to do.”

  “What stuff? It’s Hallowe’en!”

  Becca skates around Sarah’s questions, half answering them with vague explanations. Becca didn’t come out the weekend before, either, although she showed up at school on Monday with her eyes all sparkly like she’d had the best time in the world sitting at home doing nothing. Something is going on with her. Sarah wonders if Becca has found a new group of friends, girls who are popular and more fun to be with than Addie and her, and it bugs her to think about it.

  “Why don’t you come and sleep over tomorrow?”

  Becca hesitates again, a long empty pause. “I’ll have to see if Mom will let me.”

  Again, Sarah is puzzled. Becca doesn’t usually need Caroline’s permission; she tells Caroline what she’s going to do, not the other way around.

  Sarah is taking her last bite of omelette-on-toast when someone pounds on the door.

  “Trick or treat! Hallowe’en apples!”

  Sarah hurries to the cupboard where she’s hidden the bubble gum, licorice, and peanuts and finds the licorice bag torn open, the candy half-gone. Three little masked faces look up at her when she opens the door. One of them, dressed like a pirate, is holding a flashlight nearly as long as his leg. She tosses a handful of peanuts and three pieces of bubble gum into each of their bags and hesitates before throwing in a couple sticks of licorice (stiff as pencils but what else can she do?). The smallest one, Herman Munster, she thinks, keeps holding his bag out, waiting for more, until the tallest one in the middle mumbles thank you from behind his mask and nudges the other two to do the same before they turn and scurry off to better, more generous houses, following the bouncing beam lighting their way.

  NOVEMBER

  Sarah is in bed, sick with the flu, listening to sleet pepper her bedroom window and a gusty wind flap the porch door, a rhythmic bang keeping time with the excruciating pain throbbing in her head. Every muscle in her body aches, even ones she didn’t know existed before today. She wishes Baba were here to brew one of her healing teas.

  Downstairs, the telephone rings. Five, six, seven rings and it stops then starts up again. Where are those boys and why aren’t they answering it?

  Sarah struggles out of bed, every muscle screaming, and wraps an afghan around her shoulders then hurries downstairs.

  “Sarah? Did I wake you?” It’s Caroline, sounding all chipper. She’s likely been awake, baking cookies or something, since the crack of dawn.

  “No, I’m just sick,” Sarah croaks.

  “November’s such a nasty month, isn’t it? Not quite yet winter, but acting like it, with all those cold north winds and everyone coming down with the flu. If I’d known you weren’t well, I wouldn’t have allowed Becca to spend the night. Is she there? I need to speak to her.”

  Sarah’s heart skips a beat and she feels a little queasy. The hammer in her head feels like it’s smashing the backs of her eyeballs. She has no idea where Becca is.

  “Uh … she’s in the shower right now. Can I give her a message?”

  “Get her to call me back as soon as she can.”

  Sarah sits on
a chair, stretching the telephone cord as far as it goes from the wall to the table. Now what should she say?

  “On the other hand,” Caroline continues, “just tell her she’s to stop in at her grandmother’s house. She’s been so busy lately — there’s more homework and extra projects this year than I can recall her ever having before — that she’s missed the last two Sunday visits with Elvina. I’m the one having to listen to her complain that Becca never comes to see her.”

  “Sure, I’ll tell her as soon as she’s out of the shower,” Sarah says.

  “Very well. And don’t be a stranger. I’ve missed you. I keep asking Becca why you girls don’t come to our house to work on these projects of yours anymore, but she says she gets more accomplished at your house, although I don’t see how, with those little brothers of yours running around.” Caroline laughs, a strained, put-on sort of laugh. “She says she works better amid chaos. I suppose it’s good training for the dormitory next year.”

  After she hangs up, Sarah pours herself a glass of orange juice and taps two Aspirin out of the bottle. She considers phoning Addie to see if Becca is there but she remembers Addie and her family are away for the weekend, gone to Saskatchewan for her aunt and uncle’s fortieth anniversary. Where else could Becca be? Her toes are cold from the icy kitchen floor so she goes back upstairs, slips on a pair of socks, and climbs into bed.

  Outside her window the sky is flat and grey, as bleak as everything else in November, and it makes Sarah feel out of sorts, as though she’s misplaced something valuable that wasn’t hers to begin with. Becca’s up to something, she’s sure of it now. She’s been different, quiet and aloof, as though she’s guarding a secret, and it bugs Sarah to think Becca’s keeping something from her. And using her, too. Telling Caroline she’s been doing homework and spending nights at her house when she’s off having fun with other girls. A hot wave of anger rolls through her when she pictures Becca, laughing at some party, maybe even at Cady’s house, flitting around the room with a beer in her hand. And it’s shame she feels, too, when she thinks Becca’s finally figured out that Sarah, with her runaway mother, quick-fisted brothers, and shabby old house, isn’t quite good enough to be friends with her. It hasn’t been enough, she hasn’t been enough or done enough to do better than the rest of the Coyles, and now it’s cost her a friend.

  On Monday morning, Sarah squats by her locker, turning binders and notebooks and textbooks upside down, killing time, pretending she’s looking for something. She is giving Becca the silent treatment, although Becca doesn’t seem to notice; she’s waiting for Sarah to stand up and talk to her like she always does. Addie’s telling Becca about a second cousin she met for the first time over the weekend.

  “He was such a hunk. I’d date him if I could.”

  “Eww,” Becca says. “That’s sick.”

  “It’s not like we did anything,” Addie says defensively. “He was just interesting, you know? And I just thought it’s too bad he lives in Saskatoon and we’re related.”

  “You can’t date your own cousin,” Becca says.

  “He’s not my first cousin. Besides, cousins married cousins all the time in royal families; we learned about it in history.”

  “Well, the whole idea is gross. Don’t you think so, Sarah?”

  Sarah stands up and shuts her locker. It makes her mad to see Becca acting as though everything’s the same between them, as though there isn’t a secret she’s keeping, one Sarah isn’t worthy of knowing. She’s dying to know where Becca was on Friday night and what happened at home when she showed up without stopping to visit her grandmother, but she’s not going to ask her. Becca’s sure to have lied to her mother, coming up with a story on the spur of the moment, and Caroline, as usual, likely believed her.

  Sarah cradles her chemistry text in the crook of her arm, drapes her purse over her shoulder, and heads off to class, Becca and Addie following behind. She imagines the look — What’s up with Sarah? — that passes between them.

  Mr. Lawson is away for the morning and there’s a substitute teacher, a grey-haired woman with more wrinkles than Baba, and she tells them to work on their own, no lesson today. Immediately the class starts to buzz as students turn around in their desks, heads bent, talking to each other. Becca is sitting behind Sarah and she pokes her, but Sarah ignores her. She flips open her notebook and considers going back to her locker to get her unfinished history assignment but Becca pokes her again, a blunt tip nudging her back. Then Becca comes around and sits in the empty desk in front of her, planting her crossed arms on Sarah’s desk. “What is your problem? Are you mad at me about something?”

  And all the irritation that’s been churning inside her comes bubbling forth. “I thought I was your best friend. I thought I meant more to you than a handy excuse to use when you’re off sneaking around with your new friends. You’ve been telling me you’re at home and you’ve been telling your mom you’re with me. So, yeah, I’m just a little pissed off.”

  Becca is stunned. “When did you talk to my mom?”

  “On Saturday morning. And I didn’t appreciate having to lie to her. I had to cover for you without even knowing where you were. What if something had happened to you? If you’d been hurt or in an accident? Where were you anyway?”

  Becca gets up and grabs Sarah’s hand, pulling her out of her desk. She drags her across the room while the substitute shouts, “Girls! You must have a hall pass if you’re leaving the room.”

  In the washroom, Becca lets go of Sarah’s hand. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been awful, putting you and Addie off every weekend, but there’s something … I didn’t know how to tell you, so I’ve been keeping it to myself, and I wanted to tell. I really did.”

  “I’m listening,” Sarah says. Becca sounds like Charlie, making excuses after she’s told him he has to do his homework and turn off the TV. “This better be good.”

  “I’ve been seeing someone.” Becca’s voice quivers a bit. “I didn’t tell you because … No one else knows, just the two of us. I can’t risk Mom and Dad finding out.”

  Sarah feels like she’s been kneed in the gut, the air stripped from her lungs. She knows, without Becca saying it, that it’s Jack she’s been seeing. She pictures them all on the road that day, the Camaro spun around facing town and Jack walking toward them, staring them down, until there was a softening in the hard line of his jaw. She thought his concern was for her, but of course it wasn’t. He must have been looking at Becca.

  The little conversations Sarah’s composed in her mind for her first meeting with Jack, rehearsing them over and over before she falls asleep, float off in her mind like bits of paper blown away on the wind. She’ll never use them now, never get to know him as anyone else but Becca’s boyfriend.

  She remembers the day she told Becca she liked him, the sudden way her foot stopped moving in the air, the look on her face when she told Sarah she couldn’t help her. “Were you already seeing him when I told you I liked him?”

  Becca has a pained look on her face. “I met him on the road one day not long after Eddie nearly ran his truck off the road. I stopped and we talked for a while and then went for a drive. I could tell he really liked me. We decided to meet at the elm tree by the stone pile and things kind of went on from there.” Her voice trails off.

  Sarah nods, trying to hide her crushing disappointment. “Why didn’t you say something and stop me from making a fool of myself?”

  “It was so awkward. I didn’t know what to tell you. I thought it might just be a passing thing, you know, but he wanted to keep seeing me. We met all through the fall and when it got cold out, I’d take my car and we’d meet somewhere in the country,” Becca continues. “I’d tell Mom I was at your house, or Addie’s, and she always believed me.”

  It makes Sarah almost physically sick to think about Jack and Becca together, and angry, too, realizing how Becca fooled her. “It was risky, don’t you think, using me and Addie like that without letting us in on it. How was I s
upposed to know what to say when your mom called?”

  Becca nods her head knowingly. “Now I know why she asked me if I’d seen my grandma when I came home on Saturday. I wondered what she meant by that so I said Grandma wasn’t home. That seemed to satisfy her.” A visible look of relief steals across her face. “I’m lucky she fell for it. It’s because of you, you know. She trusts you. She’d never suspect you weren’t telling her the truth.”

  And Sarah feels the troubling weight of it, the burden of having to keep Becca’s secret. How will she be able to look Caroline straight in the eye from now on? Cady and Arlene Mills burst through the doors just then and, when they see Becca and Sarah, they look at each other and start giggling.

  “Did you two have a fight?” Cady leans in to a mirror and fluffs her hair with her fingers. “Are you breaking up?” she asks in a mocking way.

  Arlene snickers.

  “As if we’d ever tell you what we’re talking about.” Becca stands next to Cady and stares her down in the mirror.

  “What will you do without Sarah? Following you around, hanging on every word, doing whatever the hell you tell her to do. Huh, Becca? Everyone knows you only wanted to be friends with her so you could be the coolest one in your new little group.”

  “Shut up, Cady,” Becca says. “C’mon, Sarah, let’s get out of here.”

  Cady blocks their way, putting one hand on the door. “You couldn’t stand to stay friends with me because I was the most popular girl in town and you couldn’t handle the competition. So you found yourself a charity case to be your new friend.”

  Sarah is stunned. She knows Cady is mean but she never expected her to actually come right out and say such terrible things in front of her. Worse yet, could what she was saying be true? Sarah always wondered about the ease with which she’d fallen into the sphere of Becca’s world, not by any choice Becca made, not really, but by convenience. A matter of being in the right place at the right time, standing alone by the Ferris wheel. Had Becca grabbed her hand, breaking away from Cady and her other friends to ride the wheel with Sarah, just to spite Cady Hubley?