Dallas drops Wanda’s hand. She retrieves a pack of Benson and Hedges Menthol out her pocket and hands her the candle. Wanda roots in her pocket for a light, but Dallas pops a smoke in her mouth and lights it off the candle flame.
“And now she’s gone. She went to the store and she’s gone.” Dallas sucks hard on her cigarette.
“I’m sorry.” Maybe she should tell her she saw Ella in the store. No, she might make Dallas upset. Or become overwhelmed herself—who knows what she might disclose then.
“Look at this bunch,” Dallas gestures to a group of about a dozen people in royal-blue raincoats. They stand to the side of the awning with clasped hands and bowed heads. A woman with long red hair cradles a stack of pamphlets like a baby.
“Who are they?”
“They call themselves The Workers for Modern Christianity.” Dallas’s raisin eyes glint with malevolence. “They show up everywhere: funerals, protests. They say they’re giving support to the masses. Load of bull. They only want to enlarge their membership base.”
“Like, missionaries?”
“They’re bible literalists in the way they believe everything is the will of God, as in he is sovereign. ‘The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord,’ kind of thing. Which you know, fine for them, you want to say. Until you check their website and see the links to gay reprogramming camps. And when it comes to women and men, they have all our assigned places mapped out.”
“Really? Shit.”
“I just can’t trust anyone who hands out propaganda at something like this. Who sees people in this state of mind and thinks membership drive?” Dallas gestures to the three figures by D’arcy Fadden’s photo, a woman, two kids. Maybe his twins.
“Yes, it’s pretty gross.”
Dallas takes a harsh mentholated drag. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Wanda Jaynes.”
“Wanda Jaynes, you take care of yourself. You tell your beautiful people you love them. Do it before they’re gone. But you know that, Wanda Jaynes. You know that now, anyway.”
Dallas moves her smoke over the Mason jar for a moment, like it’s an ashtray. Then she remembers and flicks the ash to the side. She shuffles towards the awning and stops beside a cluster of people. Her mouth moves. Heads turn. They don’t know her either.
Wanda watches the red-haired woman with the pamphlets make her way down the line. She stops in front of the photo of Michael Snow and proffers a brochure to an elderly couple. The woman looks up, her face pink and streaming. She waves a hand to dismiss her. What are you doing, Red-Haired Lady? That woman could be his mother. How to Get a Smack in the Face.
Wanda shakes her head. A familiar, residual relief expands through her, the one she first experienced at twenty when she realized she believed in nothing. Shelly Knowling, her roommate at the time, had discovered spirituality in the form of karma and the power of personal energy. Everything happens for a reason was Shelley’s response to both positive and inconvenient events: finding money on the street, missing the bus, contracting ringworm. Wanda was in the library, doing research for a sociology course on African children and HIV. After hours of literature on desperate statistics and Western apathy, she broke down in tears in the stacks. No, there is no reason for this, no check and balance. There is no God keeping score, no source, no magic energy. Things happen all the time, for no reason at all. The sudden acceptance was a tonic. Years of Anglicanism and shrugging agnosticism and, finally, something felt right. She went home and told Shelly, who promptly burst into tears.
Leo arrives beside her. “Hey, Jaynes.” He slips a small silver flask into her hand. “I’m driving, but you help yourself.”
“Thank you, sir.” She takes a sip. The shock of Scotch glows warm against the cold grey. “Where’s Ivan?”
“Right there.”
Ivan stands about twenty feet away, shaking hands with someone. It’s the cop from yesterday, the young looking one. What’s his name? The cop notices her and nods. He is all soft round mouth and gaze. Gawd, he looks about twelve. Wee baby cop. She goes over.
“Ms. Jaynes. How are you doing?” Baby Cop says.
“I’m okay. Processing I guess.” What’s his name? He got her water and held her hand. What a forgetful arsehole she is.
He leans into her ear: “I know they don’t know you personally, but this town is grateful for you.” She glances at his profile. His lashes are Minnie Mouse long. “All you need to do is look over there to know it.”
She follows his gaze. On the ground to the side of Dr. Collier’s picture is a separate cluster of gifts and flowers. No photograph, but a number of Bristol-board signs and notes are tacked to the wall. She reads a yellow cardboard sign, words in a child’s handwriting. Thank you, Hero. We love you. There are masses of similar pictures and signs. Thank God for the hero. Thank you for saving my father. Thank you for saving my sister.
“People need to say thanks, even when they don’t have a face or a name,” Baby Cop says.
She swallows and tastes bile. Everything inside her is full to the brim.
“I know you’re in shock,” he says. “Your boyfriend says you don’t want people to know what happened. And as an officer, I don’t feel I should ever encourage a citizen to take matters into their own hands. But that said, I want to say thank you myself. After seeing the contents of that backpack and witnessing his state of mind… well, things could have been much worse.”
“Thanks,” she says. The urge to stroke his cheek is strong. Her hand even floats up, but she tucks her hair behind her ear instead. “That’s nice to hear.”
His brow wrinkles slightly. Adorable, like an intense kitten. “I’m wondering about something. No pressure. But there is someone who wants to meet you.”
He nods towards the end of the parking lot. A man and woman, both Asian, sit on a bench. The woman bends forward, swaying back and forth. The man next to her keeps one arm around her shoulders. He mutters into her ear.
“The security footage shows her in the aisle next to you, when you confront the shooter.”
She remembers the sounds next to her, the pleading. “I remember her voice,” Wanda says. “I didn’t understand the language.”
“Yes. Her name is Liang-Yi. Her family came here from Taiwan when she was a teen. She said it looked like she was about to be next when you threw that can. Would you like to say hello?”
The woman, Liang-Yi, presses her hands to her face, like otherwise it will slide off.
“I don’t want to disturb her,” Wanda says.
“I don’t think she’ll mind.” He sniffs and his delicate nostrils flare. What do people do when he writes them up for speeding? Pass him their license and a cookie?
Wanda nods. Baby Cop walks in front of her. The Asian woman’s long dark hair drapes forward. Like in that Japanese horror movie, The Grudge. Jesus, Wanda, don’t compare her to The Grudge.
“Excuse me, Ms. Chen?” Baby Cop says. Her face emerges from the hair sheath, heart-shaped and dainty. Her mouth is parted in mid sob or gasp.
“Do you remember me from yesterday?” he says. He extends his hand to her. “Constable Lance.” Yes, that is his name! Remember it. Lance, rhymes with trance.
“Wanda, this is Liang-Yi Chen. Ms. Chen, this is Wanda Jaynes. Wanda was the one who threw the can.” Threw the can. The can thrower. Wanda don’t want to work, she just want to throw the can all day.
Liang-Yi sits up. The man beside her asks something and she rattles back at him in Mandarin. They both erupt: “Thank you, thank you.”
Wanda’s hands have no purpose. Putting them in her pockets feels rude, yet they can’t seem to dangle right. Liang-Yi stands and takes both Wanda’s hands in hers. “I told my brother that I thought my life was over. All I could think was he had chosen me to die. And then he fell.” Her hands tighten on Wanda’s. “Thank y
ou.”
“You’re welcome.” What a stupid thing to say. Like she held the door for her.
“I have so much I want to say. But my English is not good when I’m upset.”
“Your English sounds great to me.” Maybe she could teach ESL when ABE ends? How hard would it be?
Liang-Yi peers at her. Her eyes are ridged with wet light. “How did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” Wanda says. The laughter spurts from some unconscious well. She clamps a hand over her mouth. Liang-Yi peers at her. Wanda shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I remember being terrified. Then he was on the ground.”
“You are like a baseball player,” the man next to Liang-Yi says.
Liang-Yi ignores him. “I wish I was like you,” she says. “I remember everything.”
“Baseball player. Monster slayer,” the man says.
“I’m neither of those,” Wanda says. What is there to say besides all she remembers is fear? That her stomach may always feel like a jar of mustard pickles at the thought of yesterday? She glances towards Ivan. He cranes his neck, looking around for her. “I should go,” she says. “My boyfriend is looking for me.” She retracts her hand and steps back.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Liang-Yi says.
“You don’t need to. You don’t need to feel that way.”
Liang-Yi coils her empty arms around herself and nods. “I understand. But thank you, anyway. Thank you, Wanda Jaynes.”
5
THE flickering red lights tease through Wanda’s eyelids. What is wrong with Ivan he can’t close the bedroom door? She peeks around the room. 1:17am.
It isn’t the door. The lights are outside. They flash through the cracks in the venetian blinds. She approaches the window and peels down one of the slots. Whenever Nikki would look through blinds like this, she’d say, “80s detective show.”
The flashing lights belong to a police car. A uniformed cop stands on the sidewalk. Headlights make silhouettes of bodies milling about. Cameras flash, people hold their phones straight-armed from their bodies. Wanda recognizes a few of her neighbours and a local reporter.
“Ho-lee fuck!” Ivan’s voice downstairs.
“What’s going on?”
The doorbell rings. Ivan’s footsteps hammer across the floor. The front door opens. She cannot make out what Ivan says, but he’s using his Mature Voice, the one he uses for employers and senior citizens. “No, I’m afraid this is all a surprise. We’ll keep that in mind.”
The door shuts. Ivan moving around, his feet on the stairs. He enters with his laptop.
“Okay. So, this is happening.” He sets his laptop on the comforter. The YouTube page is open to a video entitled ST. JOHN’S GROCERY STORE SHOOTER TAKEDOWN.
“The security footage?”
“No. Someone filmed it.”
She blinks at the screen. The paused video shows three grocery aisles and the edge of the produce section, shot from above. “Someone took a video?” she says.
“Yeah. Apparently, someone was hiding in the upstairs security office. There’s a window that looks out over the store. They hid on the floor and propped their phone against the glass.”
“Fuck.”
“It’s messed up. People are fucked. Everyone is filming everything all the time.”
“This can’t be legal. They can’t just put that up.”
“It was just on the news. Less than an hour online. 40,000 hits already.”
She hugs her knees. “I might ralph.”
“Do you want to see it?” He looks from the laptop to her: “It’s up to you.”
Get it over with. She nods. He clicks Play.
The video shows the end of the two aisles, side by side. Wanda stands in one and, in the other, the Asian woman—what was her name? Liang-Yi. Her long dark hair hangs along her shoulders and she wears jeans and a blazer. She and Liang-Yi are separated by the aisle shelves. The man, the shooter, Edward Rumstead, faces them, his back to the camera. Wanda cringes as she sees herself. She resembles one of those pop-out paper dolls, the kind which came in books with perforated lines, outfits with little tabs to fold over their limbs. She slicked back her hair in a ponytail for the gym and it makes her head look extra round and ball shaped. A hairstyle to avoid, really. She wears her sky-blue coat from work, the one they gave out free to all employees with the institute’s emblem, although in the video, the acronym looks like a smudge on the left side of her chest. Black pants, grey sneakers, big puffy green purse, like a dangling watermelon in her left hand. As Edward Rumstead turns with the gun, Liang-Yi falls to her knees in a begging stance.
“Stop.” She buries her head in her knees. “I can’t watch this.”
He snaps the laptop closed. “I’m sorry.” His body around hers, warm hands on her back.
“What the fuck is going on outside?”
“There are a few reporters. I don’t know from where. And… people, people who want to know who you are. And people who know you.” He pulls out his phone. “I turned the volume down hours ago, but my voicemail is full and I have several hundred million text messages. Yours will be the same.”
“What a mess.”
“I told the reporters you need rest. But I imagine they’ll be out there for a while.”
“How long is a while?” Her brain is a ball of lint, stuffy and purposeless. She lies down on her side and curls up. “Everybody knows. I can’t believe everybody knows.”
“Yes, they do.” His hand smooths down her spine. “But you know, they were going to find out anyway, when the trial started.”
“Not necessarily. I might have figured out a way to avoid it by then. I could have made a plan.”
“Maybe it’s better that it’s happening now.”
“How?”
“It beats the stress of waiting?” He shrugs.
Her hands cover her face. “Can’t deal with this now.” She snatches the edge of the sheet and tugs, trying to get it out from underneath her.
“Of course, sweetie. I’m going to turn off all the lights. That’ll give them a big hint.”
“Can I have one of your mom’s Valium? And can you cover the window? Their light is getting in.”
“Whatever you need.” He kisses her cheek and leaves the room. She puts her face in her pillow. More than 40,000 views. More than the population of Trepassey. More people than she’s ever known, all watching the worst moment of her life. Sitting at their screens. Probably eating chips. Touching their keyboards with their sticky fingers, typing some semi-literate observation. Clicking the mouse to share it with the followers of their egos. Look at this now. Something else, isn’t it.
She shifts her hips and her muscles whine. She ran straight down that aisle. What if he hadn’t been knocked out? He could have shot her in the back. Imagine that video. The addition of a second or a centimetre would make it a snuff film. Or, angle the camera slightly, it could have caught the distant shape of Ella Collier’s corpse at the end of the aisle.
Ivan returns to the bedroom with a bath towel and a glass of water. He produces the small blue pill. She accepts it open-palmed. She downs most of the water while he drapes the towel over the blinds. A few cracks of light escape around the edges, but the room feels cloaked. He gets into bed and lies behind her, the big spoon. She fits herself into the cleft of his chest and becomes small and encapsulated. He presses his lips to her neck, sighing into her. Soon his breathing is rhythmic and lulling.
The pill settles in. With her body finally still, the leftover ringing of the gunshots, the pitch of panic, feet scrambling, all those things continue to circulate, but they thin out. She leans her back into Ivan and squeezes her eyes closed against the images. She matches it until the pill thickens her awareness, making it too marbled and solid to permeate.
The next morning, she opens the window
just enough to flick out her cigarette ashes. No one below seems to notice. Two shiny, official vans are parked in front of the house. A bearded guy stands with a TV camera. A young man with slightly spiky dark hair holds a microphone into the face of a short, apple-shaped woman, her hair a familiar mop of greying brown waves. Pascale Aggressive. Maybe it’s not about the shooting. Maybe the media have a separate reason to talk to Pascale. Here’s Pascale Fleming, owner of the largest My Little Pony collection in Eastern Canada. Pascale Fleming, no one expected her to be the madam of a highly successful brothel.
Wanda pads down to the living room. Ivan is nowhere to be seen, but he has closed up the house: windows darkened, doors bolted. The TV is on, but muted. St. John’s Woman, Hero tickers along the bottom of the screen. Her picture flashes on the screen, her sitting on the rocks at Cape Spear. Where did they get that? Her LinkedIn profile. Ugh, that hasn’t been updated in a long time.
A news anchor mouths words. She perches on the edge of the couch and presses the volume button on the remote.
“Now, watch this amazing video, captured on the cellphone of a worker from the Dominion store. Here we see the take-down of Rumstead by Ms. Jaynes. This clip was posted to YouTube last night and has already received close to eight hundred thousand hits.”
Eight hundred thousand motherfucking views. Her guts gnaw at her. Not even twenty-four hours and it’s happened for almost a million people. It will be a million people today.
The anchor continues: “The video shows Rumstead turning towards Wanda Jaynes when he notices Liang-Yi Chen in the next aisle. Just as Rumstead points the gun at Ms. Chen, Ms. Jaynes hurls a can at Rumstead….” She scrambles for the remote. Change the channel, now. She leaves the TV on an infomercial. A woman gushes over the power of her food processor.
“Good morning.”
Wanda jumps. Ivan stands behind her. He’s rosy cheeked—he was outside.
“Where have you been?”
The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes Page 5