The Crash Palace

by Andrew Wedderburn

  All of this is to say, in as concise a manner as I can manage, that the execution of the Alex Main estate has largely been a formality, in that there is nothing to execute. Alex died with whatever was in the pockets of his pants. (Had he been wearing a jacket, he might have lived a little longer, I suppose.) There is nothing else.

  Over the years, Alex gave a few things to me. For safekeeping. I came across one of these trinkets recently and thought of you.

  I need to stress that what is enclosed is not the property of Alex Aiver, and in a strict sense, I should return it to his sister or some other family member. However, I believe the point to be moot as the Aiver family has discharged themselves of this recently as well. I understand that the developer who acquired the property has plans to turn it into a boutique resort. (All those walleye, you know, just waiting to be caught.) I would imagine they’ve changed the locks already. I consider it, therefore, as I said, a trinket. A memento. A harmless and inconsequential one, and nothing more, and supply it as such.

  I hope you aren’t overburdened with any of this, and wish you and your daughter the best.

  Sincerely,

  The signature was just a scrawl.

  She turned the envelope and a single key fell into her hand. A thick steel key with a square of blackened masking tape stuck to the bow. She stood quietly in the kitchen holding it, staring ahead, not looking at anything.

  ‘I want to leave and never come back,’ she’d told him. ‘I want to never see Alex again.’

  ‘We can totally make that happen,’ he’d replied.

  She found a clean mason jar and dropped the key inside. It pinged as it hit the glass. She set the jar on top of the fridge. Thought about crumpling or shredding or burning the letter, but instead put it back in the envelope. Later she put it in the drawer of her night table.

  Awake in bed, she thought about him finding the house. The Skinny Cowboy walking up 12th Avenue, looking through the gap in the caragana hedge and thinking, This is it, Audrey Cole’s home. Audrey Cole and her daughter. This raced around her mind like a plastic train on a well-constructed toy train track. Each little boxcar packed with a set of carefully chosen lawyer words that didn’t seem so lawyerly considered on their own.

  She stared at the ceiling, wide awake, while the train ran around the curves and through the junctions, over and over.

  §

  The next day was Sunday, and in the afternoon Madeline Cole packed her clothes and toiletries back into her black suitcase. She peeled the linen off the hide-a-bed and folded it carefully. Then she heaved the creaking mattress back inside the couch. Put the square sofa cushions back in place. She picked up the linen with every intention of walking it to the back of the house to the rattly old single-piece washer-dryer Audrey had found in the Bargain Finder. Audrey cut her off and took the linen from her.

  ‘I’ll take care of it, Mom.’

  Madeline shrugged.

  Shelly sat down on the floor in front of her grandmother. Folded her arms and stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Gramamama,’ she said. ‘Gramamama, don’t go. Stay night.’

  ‘I have to go home, sweetie bear,’ said Madeline, leaning over to hug the toddler. ‘I have to go back home to see Grandpa, but I’ll be back so soon. And you’ll call me on the phone. And I’ll be back so soon.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ asked Shelly.

  ‘I won’t be back tomorrow, no, baby. But soon.’

  Shelly waddled away to the other side of the room. She pulled her toy blocks out of the Rubbermaid tub and moaned quietly to herself. Picked up blocks and dropped them on the floor, over and over, moaning melodramatically.

  Madeline rolled her suitcase to the door. Pulled on her jacket and her toque. Audrey stood hugging the linen against her chest.

  ‘Audrey, you know I have a busy month coming up. Helen at the library is on a six-week cruise to Alaska so I’ll be in twice as often. And then we have the annual general meeting for the historical society. I have a haircut and I have to take the car in.’

  ‘Don’t take it to the dealership,’ Audrey said. ‘They’re ripping you off. Every time you take it in for an oil change they find some phantom problem that needs fixing and you just go along with it.’

  ‘I have to take the car in and I’m getting my hair cut and coloured. What I’m saying is I can’t be down on a moment’s notice. But obviously if anything happens you give me a call and I’ll make arrangements. I’ll figure something out if there’s an emergency.’

  ‘Mom, we are perfectly capable of handling anything that happens,’ said Audrey.

  §

  In the morning, Audrey stopped at the doorway to Joe Wahl’s office.

  ‘Joe,’ she said.

  Joe Wahl looked up from the aluminium desk in his closet-sized office at the front of the church. He always kept the door open, and Audrey would see him in the morning when she brought Shelly down the stairs. Scribbling on a yellow notepad, or squinting at the screen of his laptop. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that he’d pull half-off any time he needed to look at something, leaving them hanging off an ear by one arm, the lenses under his chin.

  Across the hall, the toddlers clamoured around a little wooden table while the Misses did their best to sort them out for breakfast. Audrey could see the back of Shelly’s head, sitting in a little wooden chair. Shelly Cole sat in her chair holding her favourite green plastic cup, watching the Misses, waiting for her morning milk.

  ‘Audrey. Hi, Audrey.’

  ‘Hi, Joe,’ she said.

  He waited.

  She was going to say never mind and head up the stairs, but he waited and didn’t say anything, and just watched her. She felt held in place.

  Audrey, she said to herself, you wanted to talk to him, remember.

  ‘Joe,’ she said eventually, ‘you’re a minister.’

  ‘I’ve got paperwork,’ he said. ‘Something from the United Church of Canada. Signed by the moderator. I’ve got something from St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon. I can provide you copies if you need.’

  ‘And you do – I mean, it’s more than just the sermons. You do weddings. You’re involved in the …’

  ‘Are you getting married, Audrey? You need an officiant?’

  ‘You’re involved in the – I mean, there’s a legal side.’

  ‘Sure. I’ve got duties as stipulated by the province. It’s more than just the sermons, sure.’

  ‘You do funerals.’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘When people die … how much do you know about … I mean, how much involvement do you have with the … with the estate?’

  Joe pulled his glasses half-off, one arm hung off one ear, and squinted at her. ‘You have estate obligations from that funeral the other week?’

  She stood in the doorway, framing the answer that was also a question in her mind. ‘No. I mean, I guess not. They didn’t say anything about obligations.’

  ‘They didn’t say – You’re talking to a lawyer?’

  ‘No. I mean, I heard from a lawyer. Sort of. We didn’t talk directly.’

  ‘The funeral. Is this a family member?’

  She felt the pained expression on her face and knew she couldn’t help it being there. She didn’t say anything, but she realized what she was saying was loud and clear anyway and flushed.

  ‘When this lawyer described the situation regarding the estate and the instructions around its distribution, were you surprised? Disappointed?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just … it’s just that they found me, Joe.’

  Joe nodded and leaned back in his chair. When he nodded, the lenses of his glasses knocked against his Adam’s apple. ‘Audrey,’ he said, ‘you’re a pretty private person.’

  She nodded quickly.

  ‘I’ve known you what, a year now? Year and a half?’

  ‘Shelly started daycare two years ago,’ she said. ‘A little longer than two years.’

  ‘Two years. You bring in your dau
ghter, you go to work. I don’t know much about you. You get the groceries for us a few times a month to save on child-care costs because you’re a single mother. Your own mother comes and stays with you once or twice a month so you can get a little break. But I don’t think you take breaks, Audrey. And so you’re worn out and tired and in a haze, just like all the other single mothers who bring their kids to our place because with the subsidy we’re the best rate in the inner city. I see that tired haze a lot and so I don’t ask questions, and anyway,’ he said, leaning back over his desk, ‘you’re a pretty private person.’

  ‘Pretty private, Joe,’ said Audrey Cole.

  He sat and didn’t say anything, just watched her, tapping the end of his nose with his fingers. He sat watching her and the silence made her itchy.

  ‘It was all going to be temporary,’ she said eventually, just to say something to fill the silence.

  ‘Temporary?’

  ‘You know,’ she said, casting around, ‘all of it. Working at Goetz. Needing a daycare subsidy. It was a step to get started. Something in between until …’

  ‘Until …’

  She wanted to stop talking and run away. Stop talking and turn around and walk out.

  You could tell him more, Audrey. You could tell him the whole story. Joe Wahl was a lumpy, absent-minded man who ran a daycare out of his church. Who ran his church out of a community centre basement. He held a men’s fellowship on Tuesday nights, and a lot of recovering alcoholics sat around in the basement drinking coffee and chatting or they played euchre sometimes. He used the kitchen to serve free meals to street people on weekends. Audrey, you could sit in his office and tell him the whole sad story of your circumstances. He hears sad-circumstance stories all the time. If ever there was someone to talk to, it’s lumpy old Joe Wahl.

  ‘Pretty private,’ she said instead.

  ‘Well, Audrey, I mean, I don’t know. Generally if a lawyer needs someone to do something as part of the estate execution, they’re pretty clear. They’ll tell you. So if there aren’t any obligations, then there aren’t any obligations. So from that perspective – the legal perspective – you’re probably done with it all.

  ‘And sure, they found you. It’s what they do. They’ve got to do their due diligence and wrap up the loose ends. They’re not trying to invade your privacy. Well, I guess they are, in a manner of speaking. But it’s just what they do. They track people down, even people who don’t want to be tracked down. They do it all the time and they’re good at it.’

  Audrey just nodded.

  ‘As for anything else? As for grief and healing and closure? Now, that’s definitely the part that I have some knowledge about, if you ever need someone to listen.’

  She nodded again, the smallest nod she could manage.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s helpful, Audrey,’ said Joe. He pulled his glasses back up properly in front of his eyes.

  ‘That’s helpful enough,’ said Audrey. ‘Thanks.’

  §

  ‘It was all going to be temporary, kiddo,’ she said later to Shelly while the little girl splashed in the tub.

  Shelly sat in the bath, surrounded by floating toys. Plastic ducks and whales and frogs, all bright yellows and blues and reds, and a little submarine with a monkey inside. Shelly pulled a string on the back of the submarine and a little propeller spun, churning the submarine through the sudsy bathwater.

  Audrey sat beside her on a little plastic stool, the latest copy of the Bargain Finder in her lap. Audrey liked to read the Bargain Finder while Shelly was in the tub. She liked to hunt for appliances, to see if she could upgrade the old washer-dryer that didn’t really dry their clothes. She kept an eye out for refrigerators. She had a feeling that their fridge was on its last legs and she wanted to get ahead of the breakdown if she could. Instead of waiting around for Wade Clave to do something about it. Find something more reliable and send him the receipt.

  Tonight the Bargain Finder stayed folded in her lap. She leaned against the wall, not really looking at anything, and talked, not really to her daughter.

  ‘“This house is too big, Audrey.” That’s what your grandma always says. This house is too big and we pay too much for it. She’s right. But I found it and it was cheap for the size, all things considered, because I got a good deal on it. A goddamn good deal, Shelly.

  ‘I thought we’d be glad to have the space. And we are. You like having your own room, your Big Girl room. Your playroom. You like having space to keep your train set up. We’ve got space when Grandma comes to visit.’

  Shelly dropped the whale and the frog over the side of the tub. Leaned over the tub side to pick them up back up, slopping water onto the tiled floor. Usually when Shelly did this, Audrey would mop the water up and scold the little girl. ‘These tiles,’ she’d usually say, ‘they’re barely grouted. This water will be dripping on our heads downstairs.’ But tonight she just stayed leaning on the wall, not really looking at anything.

  ‘I was probably overcompensating a little bit. I was living in a little studio apartment in Renfrew that I could practically touch every corner of. It wasn’t big enough to lie down on the floor. You were just a growing little peanut inside Mommy still.’

  Shelly looked up at her mother and grinned. ‘Peanut! Peanut!’

  ‘That was hard but not the hardest. I mean, before that I lived in the Blue Goose Motel on 16th Avenue for two whole weeks. That was hard, kiddo.’

  Shelly pulled the cord and the monkey submarine zipped through the water, kicking up a soapy wake. Shelly giggled and slapped her hands on the water top, splashing.

  ‘I was washing dishes at a fish-and-chips restaurant, living in a 400-square-foot studio, getting more and more pregnant. I was applying for other jobs. I think I’d applied with Harold already. And then I found this place. And I thought, You know, when we’re a family, we’ll want the space.

  ‘I couldn’t afford it. I can barely afford it now, and Harold pays me more than I was making washing dishes. But it was all going to be temporary. I was going to figure …’

  She stopped and watched her daughter splash for a while.

  ‘I was going to figure out something else, eventually.’

  Shelly slopped more water over the side of the tub. Looked up at Audrey. ‘When Gramamama come back?’

  ‘She’ll come back in a few weeks, baby. It’s just us for a little while.’

  Shelly bunched up her face in a frown. ‘I miss Gramamama, Mommy.’

  ‘I know, baby, you love your grandma.’

  When Shelly was in bed, she went downstairs and poured herself a glass of water. She sat at the kitchen table, facing the refrigerator. It was an old off-white fridge with a bad condenser that hummed and rattled loudly on and off in the night. Glen Aarpy’s black-marker kitten smiled at her from its creased paper home. Above the freezer sat the glass jar. She stared at the glass jar, drinking her water. After a while, she stood up and pulled it down and, yes, the key was still inside. She set it back on top of the fridge. Poured herself another glass of water. Sat down again, listening to the fridge.

  8

  DECEMBER 2009

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  She sat, wet and shivering, on the couch. Her fire had gone out while she’d been away, and any warmth it had brought into the building had vanished. All the woodsmoke humidity was already soaked up into dry concrete, with just a burnt smell left behind in the hard cold. The wind outside whipped against the glass, tearing and spilling winds blowing thick white snow down into the valley. Truckloads of snow. Boxcars of snow. Sea cans of snow.

  She’d walked, arms wrapped around her shoulders, and head pointed forward, up and down the hill in the louder and louder wind to get back.

  Her phone said 1:45, and No Service, and a third of a battery. They drain faster, she knew, this far from their towers. Run down while searching the air for grippable frequencies.

  She pulled the blanket around her shoulders on the couch and squeezed her arms around
a pillow. The cold leached upward from the concrete into her damp jeans and jacket.

  She hugged the pillow, hands in front, prayer-clasped around her cell-phone. The plastic box made no sound. Didn’t move or vibrate. She leaned her face toward it in case the rings were too quiet to catch. She opened it and it didn’t make any sounds or tones and didn’t hold the small searching voice of Madeline Cole back in Calgary. Audrey, where are you? it didn’t ask. Audrey, Shelly is fine, she isn’t worried, take your time, be home safe when you can, it didn’t say. Her phone said 1:47 and No Service and a third of a battery.

  When she was in junior high, they had gym class first session a few days a week. In the late fall and early spring, the girls changed into their terry-cloth shorts and loose T-shirts and went outside to run. They ran across the grass playground, then single file out the chain-link fence and onto a gravel side street, and ran a long loop around the south end of town, down the length of Policeman’s Creek and back. They ran single file on cold mornings when their breath puffed and clouded, and the cold always made her ears hurt. Like she’d jumped off a wood pier into a cold lake and the lake water plunged into her ears all the way into the middle of her skull.

  She sat on the couch shivering, pain in her numb wet feet, and her ears hurt deep inside her head, like running along Policeman’s Creek on an early October morning.

  Audrey Cole heard a sound then, something soft and inquisitive, and turned her head. A tiny orange kitten sat on the floor under the archway. Little triangle ears twitched and it opened its mouth to mew.

  Audrey stared at the kitten without moving for a long time. It leaned away from her stare, squashing backward into its shoulders. They looked at each other, only moving to blink.