by Vicki Delany
“That was a stupid thing to do,” she declared, dropping her coat onto the floor. “Don’t you ever call the cops on me again.” She marched down the hall, leaving wet footprints in her wake and slammed the door to her room.
Joanna pulled out the card the young officer had given to her and slowly dialed the number printed on it. He was back within minutes.
Alexis came out of her room grudgingly enough when she heard that the police were back. They all stood in the front hall, Joanna sobbing quietly, Alexis coldly defiant.
Joanna looked at her daughter, her heart aching. “No, I don’t want to press charges,” she told him, “I just want us to get along again.”
Alexis said nothing.
“Are you going to promise me that there will be no more trouble here tonight?” the officer asked Alexis.
She crossed her arms. “I can’t predict the future, you know.”
His face tightened. “Look, if you can’t tell me that you won’t hit your mother again, I will have to take you in with me. I am not going to come back. Do you understand?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay,” she mumbled. “There won’t be any more trouble.”
True to her word, for once, there was no more trouble that night. In fact Alexis began to calm down from that point. She dropped out of school the month she turned sixteen and spent her days lying in bed, only getting up in time to go out at night. Her circle of friends changed again. Not that she ever brought friends home, but Joanna saw them occasionally at the mall or on the street and they seemed a slightly less threatening, less aggressive group.
Slowly life was getting back on track. Joanna was working hard again and starting to achieve results once more. Wendy had left for university and James seemed content to spend more time at home. To Joanna’s frustration her daughter wasn’t going to school and was doing nothing about finding a job but she decided to let it ride for a while.
Then one lovely summer morning, when she was enjoying the warmth of the rising sun on the back deck with the newspaper and bagels and orange juice, she heard Alexis come in. The girl had not been home the night before.
Alexis went straight to her room and rummaged through her things.
Finally she came out to face her mother. Her bulging backpack drooped across one shoulder. “I have found The Way,” she declared solemnly.
Joanna spluttered orange juice.
“I am going to live with a group of the Accepted Ones. I will not be back.”
Joanna leapt to her feet. The pages of the newspaper fluttered in the breeze. “What do you mean you won’t be back?”
“When we are accepted into the circle of the Believers we must cast off all our worldly ties. I will never speak to you again, it is forbidden.”
Unnoticed, the wind picked at pages of the paper and carried them gently across the well-groomed lawn.
“You can’t be serious,” was all Joanna could say.
“I am very serious, I have never been more serious. I have found The Way and now I will be saved. Good-bye.”
“Wait,” Joanna cried. “Where are you going, what is this way?”
“They are a group of Holy Ones, ones who have found The Way to a life of Peace and Contentment. I have been chosen to follow them and if I am very good, I also may be able to find The Way.” She shifted her pack to the other shoulder and rubbed her hands through her curly blond hair, growing out to its natural color for the first time in years. “They are waiting for me now. Good-bye,” she said again.
“Who is this group, where do they live, where are they taking you?” Joanna asked.
“They are the Holy Ones, I told you that. In that their physical bodies must live on this earth, they currently have a camp outside of Toronto, but the leader, the first of the chosen ones, lives in California.”
“Where, ‘outside of Toronto’?” She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. The day was perfect, how could this crazy thing happen on a lovely summer day like today?
“I cannot tell you, it’s secret,” Alexis said stiffly. “I must go now, they are waiting. Good-bye.”
“Are you crazy?” Joanna yelled, reaching out a hand to stop her. She grabbed Alexis’ pack and held on. “You can’t just go off with people you hardly know.”
All of Alexis’ composure disappeared in a flash. “You fucking old bitch. I’ll go where I want, where you can’t ever find me. Let go of me.”
Joanna held on, tighter. “Alexis, stop. This is crazy. Think about it first, then if it’s really what you want I’ll take you to these people.”
Alexis’ fist lashed out and caught her mother on the jaw. With a cry, Joanna fell to the deck. Alexis turned and ran.
Joanna stumbled to her feet. She got to the front of the house in time to see an old van turning the corner at the end of the road. Then it was gone from sight.
She immediately hired a private detective to find out what he could about this group. A cult they told her, a cult like so many others. Confused kids, powerful controlling men, rules and privacy. But nothing illegal. Nothing they could be charged with. Alexis was over sixteen, no one could force her to leave if she didn’t want to. The police interviewed her at the cult compound, but she told them she was happy and not being held against her will. She refused to speak to her mother or her father or even her siblings. Their letters were returned, unopened, and the compound did not have a phone. The detective’s last report told Joanna that her daughter had left with several group members for the cult’s headquarters in California. They were very sorry, there was nothing more they could do for her, there was no point in taking any more of her money.
Joanna collapsed.
The next few months passed in a daze of depression and psychiatric drugs. She took her four weeks annual vacation and spent three of them in the psych ward of the local hospital, telling her colleagues and her sister that she was off for a sun-soaked month in the south of France. James went to live with his dad, commuting by bus to and from school and to visit his mother in the hospital. Elaine dropped by almost every day. She brought mounds of flowers and cards and the melodramatic gothic novels they both loved. When Joanna took notice of the flowers and glanced at the books and asked for computer magazines her doctors agreed that she was ready to return home.
One more week of vacation was spent at home and Joanna went back to work, although her doctor strongly advised against it. James returned from his dad’s and everyone tried to forget Alexis and pretend that life was back to normal.
Joanna tossed and turned in an agony of memories before she fell asleep at last.
This time the dream was jumbled and wildly distorted. Not clear and sharp, like the other dreams, but a confusing flash of images, of pictures and sounds and feelings.
The girl with the peroxide hair was there, no longer throwing up over the porch rail but her swollen belly strained at the seams of her ragged dress, the one that used to be too big across her breasts and hips. It now fitted her snugly, a fact not one of her brothers had failed to notice.
Her mother was even more careworn than before, if that were possible. She gripped her baby daughter to her chest every nonexistent moment that her hands were free. Anxious and confused, the baby fussed and struggled to escape the suffocating grip of her mother’s doughy arms.
Even the boys were quieter now. They crept through the house like ghosts, afraid to disturb the strange equilibrium that had settled over the household. The calm before the storm.
The father rarely came home much before dawn. He was drinking more than ever and his wife and children were careful to keep out of the way of his swinging fists and scathing tongue. Only the baby still held up her arms and smiled a gleeful toothless smile at his approach. She was rarely disappointed, for he would swing her in a high arc almost at the height of his head, around and around, singing the songs of his father, until she shrieked with delight and her mother cried out in fear.
At
the back of the property the oldest boy swung his axe against the tree trunks and nurtured the anger in his breast.
Then one day the dress ripped right up the back as the girl with the peroxide hair falling over her cornflower blue eyes bent over to pick up a slice of bread off the kitchen floor.
Outside the snow gathered strength off the lake and winter closed in.
Chapter 23
A light tap at the door roused Joanna from her sleep. “Time to get up, Mom,” Wendy said, peeking softly into the room. “I hope you had a nice nap.”
She swam thickly up through a storm-tossed sea of memories, real and imagined, and emerged into partial consciousness. “Is that you, Wendy?”
“Yes, Mom, it’s me. Time to get up. The Christmas dinner is almost ready. Robert is starving and I don’t think we can keep the poor boy from the sacrificial poultry any longer. I thought that we would phone James before dinner. Imagine, spending Christmas skiing in Whistler. The little jerk. How did he get so lucky?” Wendy stepped into the room. “Are you okay, Mom?”
Joanna sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. It was nice to be woken up by her daughter again, funny how much she missed that. “Yes, dear, I’m fine. Now. Bit of a shock, I guess, to think about Alexis.” She took a deep breath. “I’m glad, very glad, that your father tried to see her, even if nothing came of it. I guess I didn’t react to the news very well. I’m sorry.”
Wendy nodded, relieved. “Why don’t you come out and join us now. Dinner will be ready soon.” She shut the door gently behind her.
Joanna climbed out of bed and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom to wash the sleep out of her face. She stared at herself in the little mirror with the silver finishing chipping all down one side, and thought about the amazingly realistic dreams she had been having. Funny how lifelike that dream was, like the other ones. She had never experienced anything similar before. Every other dream drifted softly around the edges of her consciousness as soon as she awoke but all-to-soon they were gone. Even the fun ones that you tried to remember in order to relish them again and again, but try as you might they were gone like a whiff of wood smoke on a windy fall day in the country. But this one lingered in the mind, every detail so clear, so crisp. Almost like a memory. She stared in the mirror for a long time, thinking that memories of the last few years of life with Alexis must be interfering with her dream process. She was mixing them up, perhaps that is why the dreams seemed so realistic. Though why she should confuse the woman with the faded cornflower blue eyes and the drunken husband and the pack of surly boys with herself and her own life she could not understand. “Rather you than me,” Joanna said to the mirror. She splashed water onto her face and brushed her hair. Refreshed, she joined her family for Christmas dinner.
Wendy and Robert left early on Boxing Day. Robert’s job started in the New Year and they had all the formalities and all the work involved in relocating still ahead of them. They departed with many hugs and kisses, promises to e-mail and call often, and an open invitation for Joanna to visit anytime she was able. “Any time I just happen to be passing through the Yukon, you mean,” she said to Robert as he placed the suitcases into the trunk of the car.
He laughed and smiled. “Believe it or not, Joanna. I do mean any time at all.” They smiled at each other until Wendy came bustling out of the cabin with the last of the now-opened Christmas presents and tossed them into the back seat.
Joanna walked up to the road and stood in the snow watching the taillights of their car long after it crested a small hill and was gone.
When she was a child it was the custom for family and friends to drop in and visit on Boxing Day. Nothing was planned, everything was unannounced, but it was understood that some people went visiting and some would stay at home to receive visitors. She never understood how, but it always seemed that when they were the visitors everyone they called upon was at home, and the years that her family was at home all the visitors would find them. A quaint custom, long forgotten, especially by Joanna who planned to spend the rest of the week catching up on the work waiting for her. Nothing of any significance would be happening in any office on Bay Street until the New Year. She had more than enough time to get the work finished and be ready to show off her progress at the next meeting with her clients.
She was settling down to her computer, cup of coffee close at hand, rough notes piled high, when she heard the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. She sighed mightily and looked up. Oh, great, Nancy Miller. Joanna groaned audibly. Just the one to spoil a productive day.
She could barely summon up a smile as she opened the door to her unwelcome visitor.
Nancy, on the other hand, was grinning across the entire width of her pudgy face. “Merry Christmas, Joanna, and all the best for the New Year.” She held out a parcel wrapped in gaudy Christmas paper: Bugs Bunny dressed up as Santa Claus. Joanna stood aside and waved Nancy into the room.
“Wow,” Nancy gushed, looking around the cabin interior. “I just love your tree, and all those fabulous decorations.” Uninvited, she pulled off her winter coat and hung it on the coat rack. She was wearing an oversized hand-knitted Christmas sweater with a motif of a traditional Christmas tree complete with colored balls, ribbons and piles of wrapped presents underneath. Tiny colored lights twinkled across the tree, powered by a small battery knitted into the hem of the sweater. She quickly slipped off salt-crusted boots and walked further into the room. “Your house looks so beautiful, Joanna, just like Christmas in a fancy magazine. Next year will you help me to do my place just like this?” She looked at Joanna, naked pleading in her eyes.
“Of course,” Joanna said, good manners preceding thinking. “It would be my pleasure. It’s nothing really, a bit of greenery and berries I gathered from of the woods. Nothing much at all.”
Nancy beamed. “I don’t think it’s nothing. Not at all. It looks so nice, so, well, so Christmassy.”
Despite herself Joanna was pleased.
Nancy thrust the Bugs Bunny package into her arms. “Merry Christmas.”
Joanna placed the parcel on her worktable and unwrapped it. Beneath the gaudy paper lay a froth of crinkly cellophane and bouncy red and green ribbons. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed, meaning it, “really beautiful.”
“That’s just the store wrapping,” Nancy said, beaming from ear to ear. “Go ahead, open it.”
Gently she peeled off the layers of cellophane and ribbon to uncover a wicker gift basket filled with aromatic bath beads, skin creams and essential oils. “This is lovely, Nancy. Very thoughtful of you.” She cringed with embarrassment at the memory of her continually condescending attitude toward her visitor. “But I didn’t get you anything.”
Nancy blushed ever so slightly and waved her hand in the air. “I didn’t expect anything. I just dropped by because it’s Boxing Day.”
“Well have a seat, why don’t you. Would you like something to drink? I still have a bit of eggnog left, maybe I could put a splash of rum in it, what do you think?”
Nancy laughed. “No rum for me. I still have calls to make. But a bit of eggnog would be very nice. I am always partial to eggnog at Christmas.”
“Be right back.” Joanna slipped into the kitchen and quickly prepared a tray. She pulled her special Christmas glasses out of the sink and rinsed them off hastily. They were a gift from her former mother-in-law, rimmed with patterns of holly and berries and a few snowflakes. She had always thought them a bit gaudy but the children loved them. She poured eggnog into the glasses, placed a few decorated cookies and some of Wendy’s rich Christmas cake onto a platter, added a splash of rum to her own glass and carried the tray out to the living room.
The women lifted their glasses and toasted each other. Nancy selected a slice of the cake and bit into it appreciatively. “I do love Christmas. Don’t you, Joanna?” she mumbled through a huge mouthful of cake.
Joanna smiled. “Yes I do.”
“Sergeant Reynolds was in the store the other day,�
�� Nancy said. She had finished her cake and was dabbing daintily at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “He was asking about the night poor Luke was killed. Everyone in town is really upset, you know.”
“I can imagine.”
“Not just ‘cause they knew Luke and all, although he kept pretty much to himself. But a murder here in Hope River. Who woulda believed it?” She shook her head. “What is the world coming to?”
“I’m sure you’ve had problems in Hope River before,” Joanna ventured to guess. “This can’t be the first incident, can it?”
“Oh, we’ve had our share of troubles, let me tell you. But nothing that involved the police. People usually sort things out among themselves, or else keep quiet about it. But murder. Can’t much keep quiet about that, I guess.”
“I don’t think so. More eggnog?”
Nancy held out her cup in appreciation. “Don’t mind if I do. And them cookies was real nice, too. Where was I…Oh, yes. Troubles in Hope River. I guess some people ‘round here can’t really face up to the idea of outsiders, the police and the like, getting involved in folks’ troubles. But you can’t always keep them out, and sometimes it ain’t right to try, I say. Why, just last week young Ethan Elderbridge was rushed off to the hospital in the middle of the night. His mama don’t want no one knowing about it, let me tell you. But soon enough the whole town heard the story. Drugs, it was.”
“Drugs?”
“Yup. Bad drugs and too much of them, we heard. No one’s saying where the story started but it must have been Maggie Black what works at the hospital as an orderly. They woulda all tried to keep it hushed up, like, but I think it’s better that everyone’s talking about it. If someone’s taken bad drugs you can bet that that ain’t the last of them, right Joanna?”
Joanna was quite sure that that wouldn’t be the last of them.