Winning Chance

by Katherine Koller

  “Quiet one. Boy or girl?”

  “Girl, same age as yours.”

  “Really? So … delicate.” Shauna sniffed. “Do you need a diaper? A bottle? Is that why you came?”

  “I like your sunflowers.”

  “They’re my favourite colour.” Shauna looked at them for a moment. Smiled at them.

  It was all Molly needed. She braced the door open with her foot, slid in, pushed Shauna, cradling the bag, outside with her stupid sunflowers and closed the door. Locked it. Molly didn’t have a favourite colour. Never did.

  Molly watched Shauna grab the porch railing, stumbling, but protecting the bag against her chest with her other arm. She put the bag down under the mailbox, out of the way. Shauna rapped on the window.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  Molly waited for Shauna to stop hitting the glass.

  “I’m pretending I’m you, like in the magazine.”

  Molly looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her eyes, dark as tunnels. Greasy hair tucked inside the coat, greyish pink. Why have a favourite colour when it only gets dirty? She could smell hamburger frying. Heard the TV in another room. Couches, soft leather, in the front room. Chairs. Rugs on the floor. A fireplace. Pictures. On every wall. A plant, even, here in the front hall.

  “Wait!” Shauna lowered her voice. “That’s not visualizing. That’s….”

  “Trading,” Molly said. Her voice was scratchy. So thirsty. All the time.

  “But my kids! Your baby!”

  Molly tied Shauna’s apron over her parka. A bit damp. Molly wiped a hand on the wet spot. Dirt came off on the yellow stripes.

  “This fits, anyway.”

  “What do you want?”

  Molly saw Shauna on the other side of the window, her hands sweating on it, making prints. It took a while to think of all she wanted, but Molly could only answer Shauna with a question.

  “Why do you have all this, and everything I have is in that bag?”

  “She’s a beautiful baby.” But Shauna kept her eyes on Molly.

  “Failure. Failure to thrive, that’s what they said. And I gotta work.”

  They heard, “Yabba-dabba-doo!”

  “Is that their favourite?”

  “If you turn it off, they’ll scream.”

  “I like The Flintstones.” She’d seen it at the teen drop-in at church. They had free snacks. After her cousin kicked her out for getting knocked up with no job yet, they let her snooze sitting up, no legs on the sofa, because of her belly.

  Shauna’s eyes got teary. Then turned away, gazing at the sunflowers again.

  Molly pulled out the crumpled page with Shauna’s picture on it, from Modern Parent. Molly could read Shauna’s mind by the bit that was underlined: Whenever I have a problem, I use visualization.

  Shauna closed her eyes.

  Molly read on, I close my eyes and imagine that the problem is solved. I don’t worry about how it gets solved. I exchange the problem for a picture of the resolution.

  She had asked the bus driver. Resolution, that means the ending.

  Shauna whispered, but Molly could make it out, “I’m in my house.”

  Molly read slowly, I look at that picture in my mind and I know…

  Shauna flipped down the “Baby Napping” sign over the doorbell. Molly’s was asleep, too, in the bag under the mailbox. Always sleeping.

  Shauna held her hands to her head, eyes still shut. On the doorstep, but far away, babbling on. “Then I went out to weed the sunflowers. The kids played house on the steps with my keys. When the baby cried, we took the stroller around to the back. The kids left the keys … for grandma. They always make me the grandma…”

  Molly looked back down at the page, I know I’ll find a way.

  Shauna reached in the mailbox.

  The key turned the lock, the door banged Molly’s shoulder, and Shauna grabbed a parka sleeve, yanked her out. Molly’s hand hit hard against the metal railing.

  The door locked again.

  Molly dropped the page with Shauna’s picture in the mailbox, slammed the lid, and shook out her hurt hand. The kid didn’t wake up. Hardly ever opened her eyes. Molly bent down.

  She planted a kiss on her stinging thumb, brushed the baby’s forehead with it, and ran down the steps. Shauna opened the door.

  “Wait.”

  Molly hurried through the sunflower walk.

  Shauna picked up the bag.

  “Molly! Your baby!”

  Molly stopped. She held up her hand. Then the other one. Both hands light, like branches to the sky. If she could be a tree. Birds would come to her. Even in winter.

  Shauna said, “I can’t keep her.” But she stayed on

  the porch.

  “Until I have sunflowers, too.”

  “You could go to the church. Or the clinic, the hospital, the children’s aid.” Shauna’s boys looked out the door.

  Molly could make a run for it up the stone path, get the bag, push past them and inside that yellow door. But she’d smash the mirror. That would feel good. With the frying pan. The burnt hamburger all over the plants, the window, the floor.

  But she had work. The guy at The Keg said.

  Molly picked out a few black sunflower seeds and dropped them in her pocket. She’d never grown anything in her life. Find the right place. Where there’s sun. And a river, somewhere.

  Molly crossed the street. So tired. The driver would probably let her stay on and sleep until the end of his shift. Then kick her out at the terminal. She’ll sneak under another bus. The one time she slept in the open, under a tree in the church parking lot waiting for the Food Bank to open, some dude helped himself, hand over her mouth, and here she was.

  “Wait!” Shauna shouted. “What’s her name?”

  Molly checked her watch. The bus was late. She fished out her transfer and waited at the bus stop.

  “Molly, tell me her name!”

  “You know that, too, Shauna.”

  Shauna was doing that dance with the bag again. Shoulders hunched, forehead wrinkled up. Her kids clutched her skirt. Noisy in church, but mice now. Like the bag baby.

  “Molly?”

  “Shauna.”

  Molly took off the apron. It would keep her parka dry at the sink all day. Hands, warm in the water. She hoped for rubber gloves. Yellow.

  As the bus pulled away, Molly looked back. Shauna had her out of the bag, nuzzled against her neck. Then houses, more houses, but no sunflowers. Molly bunched the apron under her own neck. She rocked gently to the tiny ticks of her watch.

  The Care & Feeding of Small Birds

  Cloudy looked out at snow falling like dust. He rubbed his eyes. There was a crust on them. And crud on the sidewalks.

  Mom liked the walks swept down to the bricks. Last year, Cloudy did it every other day. This winter, didn’t go outside. Not even to go bowling.

  This morning, only one red sock left in the drawer.

  Mom talked in his head. Always wear matching socks, Cloudy.

  Clinging to the single sock was a ringlet of white hair, held by thin blue elastic.

  “Ha, Mom.”

  He explored the cut edge of hair with his thumb. He used to feel his moustache like this, but she made him shave it off. Mom’s lock of hair buzzed with electricity, like an alarm clock, so he buried it in his pocket. He pawed his beard.

  Go slow so you don’t cut yourself.

  He hadn’t shaved all winter either, and he still didn’t feel like it. To find a shirt, he forked through the pile in front of his closet.

  March 11, beamed his clock as he buttoned his shirt, bottom to top. 1:45 p.m.

  He mimicked Mom: “Me an old lady, and then the gift of you.”

  Today you’re thirty-two.

  Already, a curl of her hai
r as a birthday present. He hoped for birthday pie.

  Before winter he had loaded casseroles, stews, squares, and cookies into the deep freeze in the basement for Mom.

  In case I die.

  All winter he brought the frozen food up, one container at a time.

  Today, one round dish and one square one sat on the bottom of the freezer. He wiggled the toes in his left socked foot, then the naked right ones, cold on the basement concrete. Bent over the side, his head and chest in the chill, he grinned because Mom, five feet tall in her little white top bun, could never reach the last pie plate on the floor of the deep freeze.

  The label read, Peach, for Prayer. Mom’s specialty. He was Prayer’s special helper. Prayer called him my man.

  He carried the pie up the stairs and set it on the counter. Cloudy wondered if Prayer was eating. He’d never seen

  her cook.

  To share.

  He patted his pocket. “I know, Mom.”

  Prayer’s sidewalks, like his own, had been waiting. He got on his boots, his coat, and cap. Cloudy had to see Prayer, to explain about the winter. The bear winter.

  Always cover your ears, Cloudy.

  He pulled the earflaps down.

  Mom called him Cloudy. You never cried as a baby. Instead, your face clouded up.

  “Ha, you’re the one who wanted to cry.” But Mom never did, even after Daddy ran away when Cloudy was a baby who never cried.

  He took the pie and walked to Prayer’s. His bare foot inside the boot wanted to warm up so it went faster than the sock foot until they both stopped at the house next door to Prayer.

  The monstrosity, she called it. Bulldozers had wrecked the lawn in years of house renovations. Prayer’s lawn had a thin layer of melting snow, but this had none. Flat and green as a football field on TV. Cloudy took off his glove and bent down to touch.

  Plastic. Like toy grass.

  Prayer’s sidewalk needed chipping. Prayer would be upset. Junk mail hung out of her mailbox.

  Flapping like a flag to say nobody’s home.

  The doorbell did not work because he had disconnected it. Prayer didn’t like people at the door unless they were invited. She feared for her golden statues and the hangings from Burma. Prayer also had him nail a brass plate over the mail slot on the door so the cold air couldn’t get in.

  Bad for the bird.

  Cloudy was in charge of cleaning the birdcage and changing the feed and water for Prayer’s budgerigar. Each time Budge the bird died, Cloudy buried it in a special place in the backyard and Prayer poured two glasses of Glenlivet 25 Year. Their secret.

  He put the pie down and picked up all the mail, even the pieces in the flowerbeds under the snow blanket.

  Take your time.

  Prayer was an old lady. Her friends died a lot, so she drank to the dead regularly. Her glass was full but his was a splash because he had work to do.

  After, she said, Now, Cloudy, and they’d each have a Scotch mint. She washed the glasses and he dried and put them away because he was taller and could reach the cupboards better. Never drink alone.

  Every time Budge died, the next day he and Prayer would go to Pet World and buy another Budge. Prayer had old eyes so she paid for driving lessons and the tests so Cloudy could drive her silver Oldsmobile. He passed his learner’s permit after three tries (Prayer said one didn’t count because he was getting a cold that day) and the in-car test the first time. After Cloudy became her driver, Prayer paid him extra. They went to the liquor store for Glenlivet 25 Year and to Safeway for groceries, to the hardware store and the plant nursery, to the doctor and the dentist and the bank. And to Pet World. Cloudy liked going to the bank and to Pet World the best. Pet World was beside Bear Paw Bowling.

  Arms now full of flyers and letters, Cloudy rapped the door with his elbow, so it was muffled, but he did it five times anyway, their signal: Clou-dy’s-here-to-work.

  He looked down at the mail. At home there was a spreading hill under the mail slot. Bills, bills. Bills he did not know what to do with. He would fill a Be Kind to Our Planet grocery bag and take the bag to the bank.

  “Ha, the teller will tell me.”

  Cloudy elbowed the door again. He knew Prayer moved slowly so he waited. He wondered if Prayer had gone on holiday to Victoria again with Buster, her son from Toronto. No answer.

  Cloudy stacked the mail on the porch and fished for his keys, fanning them out: car, home, Prayer’s garage, and Prayer’s house, for emergencies only. Prayer would count the overflowing mail an emergency. He popped the key in the lock and pushed open the door to the smell of overheated dust, same as always.

  He took off his boots and made two trips to carry the pie and the mail to the sunny kitchen. His bare foot spread wide on the warm hardwood.

  “Hello?” Prayer wasn’t home but he could hear her voice.

  Junk mail is junk.

  He opened the cupboard under the sink to get a recycling bag and knocked over two empty Glenlivet 25 Year bottles that shouldn’t be there. They lay on the floor like two bowling pins after a decent roll.

  What do you do with dead soldiers?

  He wrapped the bottles inside newspaper flyers in the bottom of the recycling bag. He sorted the junk mail out from a few pieces of real mail. The flyers and advertising cards went on top of the bottles in the bag so neighbours and bottle pickers and Mom couldn’t see. But Mom could see now.

  Oh, I knew, but I never let on. Prayer’s the boss.

  “No more secrets.” Cloudy patted his pocket happily.

  Cloudy saved one newspaper flyer for Budge. If the bottles hadn’t been cleared out, then what about the cage?

  The birdcage was empty.

  Cloudy sighed and slowly fetched the key behind the picture of Prayer’s dead husband with a giant ibis bird in one hand and the gun that shot it in the other. Cloudy unlocked the liquor cabinet. Inside were one half and two full Glenlivet 25 Years.

  He twirled Mom’s tuft of hair between his fingers and then tipped the half bottle so the Scotch barely covered the bottom of the glass. “Never drink alone.” He dipped the ends of the curl into the golden liquid and turned them upside down. “Here’s to Budge.”

  This was Budge number eleven. He waited for the warmth after two small sips. Then he felt inside the little crystal bowl beside the toothpicks in the cupboard. No Scotch mints. Only two white leftover particles. Prayer must have toasted a lot without him, and no one to pick up more mints at Safeway. He licked the mint specks off his finger.

  Better than nothing.

  He always felt a bit low until there was a new Budge. So he hummed the happy birthday tune to himself, made a cup of tea, shined a fork, and went at the pie.

  But after the Scotch, the song, the tea, and the whole pie, the heavy sadness crept over him. It had held him down like a sleeping bear all winter. He pushed Mom’s curls back in his pocket but he heard her anyway.

  Time to get busy, Cloudy.

  He washed his fork and tumbler and took the aluminum pie plate and the recycling bag to the alley trash. The walks needed doing out back, too. He breathed in the snowy air. If he could clean up at Prayer’s, why not the garbage and mess at home? But how, with no radio on loud at six, no eggs over easy, no matching socks, no shirt hot from the iron, no one turning off the TV at night?

  When Cloudy had questions, Prayer always gave the same answer: Maybe you need a wee wooly nap.

  He lay down on the day bed in Prayer’s spare room, under the red tartan mohair blanket.

  Cloudy didn’t hear the front door. Buster wore a black suit.

  “Look who’s here. Mom’s man. With a beard. You look like a grizzly. What’s up?”

  “I brought in the mail.”

  “How about a drink? Lost your sock?”

  Cloudy bent down and changed his sock to the other foot
.

  As he followed Buster to the kitchen, Cloudy worried if he’d put away the Glenlivet 25 Year.

  Good habits are worth keeping.

  Nothing left on the counter but his tumbler, not yet dry. Buster gave that one to him.

  The liquor cabinet creaked open again. Cloudy thumbed the fluff of hair in his pocket. He wanted to ask where

  Prayer was.

  “Who died?”

  Buster held his glass up to the weakening sun. “To mothers in heaven, mine and yours.”

  “Here’s to Mom,” Cloudy answered. It was a painful exhale, a balloon of hurt. He paused. “Here’s to Prayer.” Her name came out cracked, with edges, and tore his heart.

  He closed his eyes. He had never liked the taste. But he did it for Prayer. He hoped Prayer and Mom found each other in heaven. Prayer needed Mom to manage, and Mom needed Prayer for everything. They were like sisters. Prayer was almost an auntie to him. And now he was alone. Buster drank heartily.

  “She called you to drive her to the doctor’s office. I thought maybe you went wild with the allowance she set up for you. Mother was pleased you took a little holiday.”

  Cloudy’s face burned. He remembered that the phone rang for a while, a few days in a row, before it stopped. Buster went on and on like a phone that wouldn’t quit.

  “She eventually hired twenty-four-hour help. She even sent somebody over to check on you. No answer at your place.”

  Cloudy didn’t recall anyone knocking on the door, but then he could have been in the basement. Or in a heap, hibernating under a hill of dirty clothes.

  “One of them dented her car. After that, Mother took cabs.”

  Cloudy knew she’d hate that. He wondered if Buster could hear Prayer, too.

  Taxis are for tourists.

  And Mom echoing, That’s for sure. Strangers at all hours. No privacy. Goodbye peace and quiet.

  His hand drifted to his pocket to silence her.

  “Some of the help stole, too. Remember her smiling gold Buddha? Vamoose. I’ve done an inventory.”

  Cloudy’s chin dropped to his chest.