Cool Water

by Dianne Warren

  “I said that?” Mr. Cruikshank asks. “Well, I suppose I was referring to the player who hit the ball and how he went back to the minors and then who knows where, and I imagine he was surprised by how his life turned out because he thought he was going to be a big-leaguer and get into the Hall of Fame, but other things happened to him instead. Important things, I imagine. You’ll be surprised too. That’s what I meant.”

  Martin says that doesn’t really make sense, and then little Lucille sits up and looks at him and puts her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she says to him, “be polite.”

  This makes Vicki smile, especially since Lucille’s hair still looks so funny.

  Just then a nurse’s aide arrives to take Mr. Cruikshank for his bath. Mr. Cruikshank asks Martin to put the ball back where it belongs. “Be careful of the bag,” he says. “It’s special, my daughter made it for me.”

  On the way back to the Health Centre, Vicki pats Martin on the head. “You’re a sweet boy,” she says.

  Martin doesn’t like to be called a sweet boy. He runs ahead.

  The door to the treatment room is still closed. Vicki puts her ear to the door and is relieved to hear silence instead of Daisy screaming. There’s a stack of children’s books on a table, so she seats the kids and reads aloud to them from Dr. Seuss.

  When the door finally opens and Daisy emerges, she has a plaster cast on her arm.

  “I’m assuming it’s a hairline fracture,” the doctor says. “The cast will stabilize it but I want you to take her into Swift Current tomorrow, just to be sure.” He hands Vicki a referral.

  Daisy is admiring her cast. She’s tapping it with a pen the doctor gave her for getting people to sign it. She can’t believe the cast has turned so hard. It’s magic.

  “Thank you so much,” Vicki says to the doctor. He looks exhausted. There’s a rumour about town that he’d like to go back to South Africa, and if he does, it will be almost impossible to replace him. “We’re so lucky to have you here,” Vicki says.

  The doctor nods, as though he agrees with her.

  “You be careful with that arm,” Vicki says to Daisy a few minutes later as the kids pile into the car. “The doctor’s gone home for supper and he doesn’t want to see us again for a while, I can tell you that.” The other kids agree that Daisy should get to sit in the front. The chocolate cake is on the seat and Vicki picks it up and hands it to Martin in the back. No one asks why they aren’t dropping it off at Karla’s.

  It’s now almost six. Vicki drives around town to have one last look for Shiloh. The streets are deserted. She’s starting to get worried, but she supposes there’ll be a message when she gets home; he’ll be going to the drive-in with someone else’s family, a friend from school, that boy who plays hockey. Right now she’s too tired to decide whether punishment is in order, grounding perhaps. She turns toward home, trying not to worry about Shiloh or the beans or Daisy or Blaine’s lunch for tomorrow. She can’t believe that in all that time in town she didn’t buy anything for Blaine’s lunch. All she did was lose Shiloh and break Daisy’s arm. She’ll have to mislead Blaine a little about the details of Daisy’s accident, she thinks. Perhaps she can tell the story without giving the exact time. They went into town for a blancher and a few groceries, then Shiloh disappeared and Daisy had a wreck and it took forever to get a doctor to look at her, and then back to trying to track down Shiloh, and by then the stores were closed and where in the world does the time go?

  They pass the Petro-Can and Vicki decides she’d better stop at the convenience store to pick up frozen Pizza Pops for supper. She doesn’t dare try the debit card again, but she can write a cheque. Blaine hates Pizza Pops—he says he can’t stand the smell—but at least they’re fast. Vicki buys a dozen. There’s a canned ham on the shelf and she buys that too. And coffee. So the day wasn’t a complete waste. At least Blaine will get a decent lunch tomorrow. Maybe the smell of Pizza Pops will make him so mad that he’ll forget about the beans. Daisy’s arm will help too. And Shiloh will be a distraction, how he’s getting home and whether someone will have to drive back to town for him.

  So everything will be all right after all, and anyway, what’s another day? What does it matter whether the beans get done today or tomorrow? There’s just a few hours of darkness—one sleep, as the kids say—between this day and the next, just like there’s only a breath between being alive and being dead. She heard someone say that on the radio once—some famous person who was dying, one of those people who thinks about things—and it made a lot of sense. The image of a dying person’s last breath had come back to her many times since then, and it was a comfort. It made dying seem like something you could actually do without being terrified out of your mind.

  By the time Vicki pulls into the yard and turns the car off, she’s decided not to worry about whether Blaine will be mad that the beans are still sitting in plastic tubs, although she can’t quite convince herself not to worry about Shiloh. She runs her fingers through her hair and has a quick look at herself in the rear-view mirror.

  Lucille notices and says, “You look pretty, Mom.”

  Vicki accepts the compliment, but really she thinks she just looks worn out.

  Cocktails

  This has never, ever happened in all the years of Marian’s living in this house. Not while Ed was alive. Not since his death. Come to think of it, Willard has never entered any house at what they call “happy hour” and had a fancy alcoholic beverage waiting for him on the coffee table. He walks in the door after a day of odd jobs around the yard, and there’s Marian, sitting on the couch in an outfit he’s never seen before, with her hair piled up on top of her head, and two glasses of green something-or-other on a tray, along with some kind of tarts or pastries on a plate. It’s so unusual that he decides the drink is not for him after all, she must be expecting someone else, another lady from town.

  “I’ll just get out of your way, then,” he says, and starts down the hall to his room. He’s not sure what he’ll do in there while Marian entertains, but it’s what comes to mind in a moment of awkwardness. Outside would be better, at least he knows what to do outside.

  “Willard,” Marian says to his back, “I thought we could have a drink before supper.”

  He can smell a roast in the oven. That’s unusual too, for such a hot day.

  Willard stops, not quite sure what to do now. “You mean me? You and me?”

  “That’s right,” Marian says. “I found a recipe. ‘Perfect for a summer day,’ the magazine said. I thought I’d try it out. You’re the guinea pig.”

  “I’ll just wash up, then,” Willard says, and continues down the hall.

  This is very strange, he thinks in the privacy of the bathroom. He washes the day’s dirt off his hands and face, and looks at himself in the mirror. He has grey stubble all over his chin. He wonders how many days it’s been since he shaved. Shaving is not a thing he does very conscientiously, and sometimes he leaves it long enough that he tells people he’s growing a beard, even though he never really is. He thinks about Marian in a new outfit with her hair done, and decides he has to shave. There’s hardly ever a time when Willard shaves for a reason other than his face gets itchy or he gets tired of looking at stubble in the mirror, but shaving will buy some time while he tries to figure this out.

  He gets his electric shaver out of the drawer in the cabinet and goes to work on his beard. Is it the change of life? he wonders. He has no idea how old Marian is. Younger than Ed by a good bit, that’s all he knows. Or maybe today is her birthday and that’s what the drinks are in aid of. She knows when his birthday is—every year she bakes him his favourite carrot cake and gives him a card that he’s never sure what to do with because he knows she doesn’t like paper left lying around, so he reads it and says thank you and puts it in the recycling, hoping that’s the right choice—but he has no idea when her birthday is, and as far as he knows, no one else does either. He can’t remember a time when a birthday card came in the mail. He
should ask her when her birthday is and take care to buy her a card. Although if it’s today, it’s too late.

  Once he gets his face cleaned up, his work shirt looks comparatively dirty and ragged around the collar. He decides to slip into his bedroom and change into a clean one. While he’s doing this, he has the thought, once again, that Marian is about to tell him she’s leaving, and this is her way of delivering the news. Maybe she needs a shot of alcohol to get the conversation started, or maybe she thinks Willard will need a shot of alcohol to receive the news that he’s going to have to look after himself from now on, and run the drive-in alone, and listen to his own voice as he sits at the supper table eating fried eggs and canned pork and beans while the recycling piles up around him, the Western Producer and all the flyers that appear in his mailbox, and the dishes pile up in the sink until he’s forced to wash them, or maybe he could get into the habit of using just one plate and one knife and fork, and that way he could manage to get them washed up after each meal. He hopes he won’t turn into one of those old bachelors who sleeps in the same sheets until they wear out, and then doesn’t bother with sheets at all, and eventually doesn’t bother washing the one dirty plate, just gives it to the dog to lick and calls it good enough. He’s heard the stories, he knows there are a few of those old men around the countryside. Elton Sutter, for example, who had a famous fit when some of the ladies in town decided to surprise him with a clean house. Story was, he came in from the field one night and saw his house all spiffed up. The ladies didn’t get a bit of thanks for their trouble, even though they’d left a big pot of beef stew on the stove and a bag of homemade buns on the table. Elton had taken the pot of stew and thrown it to the dogs. Or at least that’s what he told people. Willard suspected that he’d eaten it but just didn’t want to admit it. What man who cooked for himself could turn down a good homemade stew, no matter what the circumstances?

  Once Willard has changed into a clean plaid shirt, he’s embarrassed to go out to the living room and join Marian. What will she think when she sees him all cleaned up? She might assume something—the wrong something. Well, maybe not wrong; he wants her to stay, but he knows he has no right to expect that. He gets so self-conscious about having cleaned himself up that he sits on the bed for a while like a kid with a crush, when the object of his crush has given some sign that she just might be interested. Willard remembers this from a long time ago. Maybe that’s why he never married. He just couldn’t stand it—the idea that some pretty little girl might actually like him, and that he’d never be able to live up to whatever idea she had in her head about who he was, but it had to be a wrong idea, because if it was right she’d like someone else and not him. Ed, probably. There was that time when one of the pretty little girls had invited him to dance with her and he’d actually done it and thought of nothing else for days afterwards, had dared to dream of marrying this girl, and then found out that she had her sights on Ed and not him, and that he’d been her sly introduction. When she found out that Ed wasn’t interested, she turned cold as ice, wouldn’t even say hello to Willard on the street. For fear of encouraging him, Willard supposed.

  Well, he can’t sit here on the bed all day when Marian is sitting out there on the couch waiting for him. She’s waited long enough already. What Willard decides to do is put his old work shirt back on, that way the change won’t be too drastic, but when he does he can smell the dust and oil on himself and he thinks he can’t go out and sit with Marian like that, it wouldn’t be right when she’s gone to the trouble she has, so he changes once again into the clean shirt. Then he clears his throat and runs his hands through his hair and goes to face the music, whatever that music might be.

  When Marian sees him she says, “Don’t you look nice,” which throws him completely for a loop and makes him think he should have left the old shirt on after all.

  “Sit down, Willard, and give this a try.”

  He sits, not beside her on the couch, of course, but in the armchair opposite where she is sitting. Ed’s chair. She hands him one of the glasses. “It’s supposed to have crushed ice in it,” she says, “but the ice melted. I hope I didn’t add too much gin.”

  “Sorry,” Willard says, taking the drink. “I guess I took too long.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” says Marian. “It’s worth it, to see you clean-shaven. I thought you were growing a beard again.”

  Willard takes a sip of the drink. It tastes like mint.

  “Good,” he says. To tell the truth, it tastes more like peppermint soda than an alcoholic beverage, but he isn’t going to say that. He’s not sure what to say because he doesn’t know what would be the right thing.

  Marian picks up the plate of pastries and holds it out for Willard.

  “Try these,” she says. “They’re supposed to be perfect for a summer day too.”

  Willard thinks it’s a little strange to be eating dessert before dinner, but when he bites into one of the pastries he realizes that it’s filled with egg. Cold egg and cheese.

  “Umm,” he says, not committing himself, not used to the idea of cold egg in a tart, although it’s pretty darned good. He remembers Lynn Trass’s green pie and thinks it’s his lucky day, as far as sampling home cooking goes.

  “Hors d’oeuvres,” says Marian.

  “Good,” says Willard. He takes another. Marian looks pleased.

  “There’s a new movie tonight,” Willard says.

  “Yes,” Marian says. “I saw the poster. A love story, I think. I enjoy the love stories.”

  “Is that so?” he asks. He didn’t think she did.

  “I do, although they aren’t what they used to be, are they.”

  Willard wonders if this is the last movie she’ll watch through Ed’s picture window. He looks at her hair and wonders what’s holding it up there.

  “Sometimes I find love stories to be disappointing in the end,” Marian says. “There’s something missing. Real life, I suppose that’s what’s missing. Even when the lovers die in the end. You’d think death would be about as real life as it gets, but death at the end of a movie seems artificial. Don’t you think?”

  Willard doesn’t know what to think. He’s still back on the word lovers, the way it so easily left Marian’s lips and blended in with the rest of her words, as though it’s a word you use every day like rain or mail or gasoline. But it’s not one of those words. Lovers is a word you might not say once in your entire life. He’s pretty sure he’s never said the word lovers.

  Then she asks him a strange question.

  “Willard,” she says, “do you think Ed had any idea he was a dying man?”

  “What do you mean?” Willard asks.

  “You don’t just up and have a heart attack without there being something wrong with your heart. Do you think he knew?”

  Willard has never thought about this before. “Ed never went to a doctor,” he says. “So I guess not. It just hit him like lightning. That would be my guess.”

  Marian pauses and then says, “You know, it might not be a bad idea for you to have a checkup. Just to be sure.”

  Willard doesn’t like doctors any better than Ed did. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me,” he says.

  “Will you promise me you’ll go to the Centre if you ever do think something is wrong? If you have chest pain, say, or dizzy spells?”

  This is just so strange. Marian is saying things that are getting right under his skin, or maybe even deeper than that. Her words—words like promise and pain—are burrowing all the way to his heart, the one she seems to be worrying about.

  “I promise,” he says.

  “Good,” Marian says, “because men are not very careful about their bodies.”

  There she goes again. The word bodies. It bites at his skin like a tick. How is it that this has never happened before? In all the years they’ve lived just the two of them in this house, her words have never had this effect. That last one—bodies—has made him dizzy. He lifts Marian’s special
summer drink to his lips and drains it. From far away he hears her saying, “Would you like another?”

  “Yes, please,” he says, and he can hear her laughing as she takes his empty glass to the kitchen.

  When she returns she places the fresh drink on the coffee table and sits down again.

  “We’d best be careful,” she says, still laughing, “or neither of us will be in good enough shape to run the movie.”

  Why, Willard wonders, is she so happy? That laugh, a girl’s laugh. He allows himself to think, please stay, even though he would never be able to say that out loud. If he could, he would use Marian’s words, the potent ones. “Promise me . . .” he would say. Or, “It gives me pain . . .” But if he could say these things out loud he would be a different person, and he would have asked her to marry him years ago, and she might even have said yes because he would not be Willard, but someone else more interesting. He can’t bear the thought of sitting at the table with her for the last time, eating roast beef—not now, not tonight—and he says, “Perhaps I’d better not,” and stands.

  “Perhaps you’d better not what?” Marian asks, a look of alarm crossing her face.

  “One drink is about all I can manage,” he says. “It was good, though. Very good. Thank you. I’ve just remembered. . . .” and he leaves without finishing the sentence because he can’t think of what he might have just remembered.

  He goes back outside and gets in his truck and drives away from the yard. Toward town. The Oasis. He’ll go to the Oasis for supper. They’re used to him there. He can sit at a table and eat his meal and probably no one will talk to him, but if someone does, it will be about the weather, or grain prices, or football. And he won’t have to hear the words, I’m leaving, Willard. I thought you’d better know . . .

  Just go, he thinks, just go while I’m not home, and I’ll pretend that you’ve gone to visit relatives somewhere. Eventually, I will get used to the idea that you’re not coming back.

  Bandito