The Crash Palace

by Andrew Wedderburn

  Audrey stood out of the blanket and built up the fire. There were fewer logs and she didn’t think they’d burn through the whole night for her. She stood in front of the fire and the floor wasn’t cold on her bare feet now and the heat on her bare legs felt good.

  ‘Come on over here, Kitten, this will warm you up. Come on, get closer. Come on.’ The kitten lapped at the bowl and looked up at her. It sat still, watching her.

  ‘Well, Kitten, we’ll burn up all this stuff tonight and stay warm. And then tomorrow the snow will stop and I’ll find warm clothes and we’ll be able to get the car started again,’ she said. She stirred the fire and enjoyed the sparks and crackles. An ember spit out and burned the top of her foot. She winced and swore but she stirred the fire more and the heat felt good up the front of her body.

  ‘You know what though, Kitten? Even if the car doesn’t start, whatever. We’ll just walk back to town. I mean, it’s a long way. But it’s not like it’s the worst thing that ever happened to anybody. Walking through the snow a few kilometres. There are more clothes around the place and we’ll bundle up good. If the car doesn’t start, we’ll just walk back to town and get help there.’

  The kitten stretched and then walked carefully across the room. It sat down on the warm concrete in front of the fire and purred. Audrey started to reach out for a pet but stopped herself.

  ‘You know what that miserable son of a bitch had stashed away up there, Kitten? He had $1,600 in a zip-lock bag. Sixteen hundred dollars in twenties and fifties. We’ll walk back to town and buy a cup of coffee from the gas station and we’ll buy that old Honda Civic. What’d they say, $600 or best offer? We’ll buy it with cash. A hot cup of coffee and we’ll drive that Honda Civic out of town.’

  The kitten purred and she reached out to touch it behind its ears and stopped herself again.

  ‘I got excited last night, Kitten, because I thought this car for sale in the village was my old car. My baby. But we’ve established that it can’t be because it’s not as boxy as the ’88 model, and besides which my old car was in fact totalled and crushed into a cube just over three years ago. So there’s that.’

  Audrey took a sip of whisky out of the bottle and made a face. She had a drink and sighed.

  ‘Shelly is going to love you, Kitten.’

  She reached for it and it scampered away, under the couch. She saw its little green eyes, reflecting the firelight back out of the darkness.

  Audrey had a sip of whisky and made a face. She put whisky and red vermouth into the cocktail shaker. No ice to shake it with. Just a little bit of the Cinzano, Koop had told her. You just want to kiss it. Some places use a spritzer bottle. A spritz kiss of Cinzano mist.

  ‘Hold tight, Kitten, be right back.’

  She went outside barefoot and bare-legged. Shook the shaker and stuck it into a snowbank to chill. She hopped from foot to foot. The wind blew on her bare legs and she hugged her arms. She wanted to take off the rest of her clothes and run out to the lake again. Slide on that stinging ice, supported above the black bottom by a skin of cold. She wanted to run, feeling the ice melt under her feet with each step.

  If the coyotes came back, she’d just run with them, barefoot on the black ice. Run amongst the hot fur, ropy muscles. Howling in the night. Run and break a sweat and get hotter and hotter.

  She gulped breath and her lungs felt overly large and underused.

  Inside, she sat on the pillow sipping her Manhattan straight from the steel tin. She stretched her neck up as best she could, sitting straight, and sharp clenches held the muscles, hip bones to skull bottom tight and sore. Another night on this sofa won’t help, she thought. The whisky was sweet and the sharp steel lip of the shaker added an electric metal taste.

  Another night on that sofa and you won’t be able to walk tomorrow, Audrey. Maybe it folds out.

  She pulled the cushions off and, yes, there was a metal handle. She pulled and the interior creak-clanked open and out, a mattress accordioned into thirds, spring-spranged out with her pull, unfolding brown steel legs. She pulled the mattress out flat and in the flickering firelight couldn’t get a good idea of the colour or condition, which she decided was for the best.

  ‘Kitten, it’s a goddamn Christmas miracle.’

  She lay flat on the mattress, and the springs creaked underneath her. Spread her arms and legs open and wide and tilted her head back. The padding was thin and she felt the springs. It smelled mildewy and old. It was heaven. All she needed was a kitten to tickle behind its little ears.

  ‘C’mere, Kitten. We’ve got a bed. I bought a bed like this for Mom to sleep in when we moved Shelly into her own room. Found it in the Bargain Finder and the guy – this kid named Rusty – brought it in the back of his Ford F150. He had a nice new one, Kitten, one of those extended cab deals.’ She giggled. ‘Just between you and me, Kitten, this Rusty – maybe I ought to buy more furniture out of the Bargain Finder.’

  She giggled and rolled over, legs crossed backward at the ankles behind, and reached out for the Manhattan.

  I probably made this too sweet. Should’ve found a spritzer.

  She remembered the umbrellas. Stood up and walked over to the table. Unfolded an umbrella and set it on the lip of the shaker. If it’s too sweet you could put a little more whisky in it, Audrey. The fire was hot and she shrugged out of her shirt and laid it across the chair. She felt her pants, and the fabric was dry and hot. She pushed the chairs away from the fire. Felt inside her boots and they were dry.

  ‘The shitty thing is, Kitten, and we won’t dwell on it, is that almost-but-not-quite-identical to my beloved Honda Civic will basically be a one-way trip back. Can’t drive it, see. Not regularly. You see, Kitten,’ she said seriously, ‘I’ve got no automobile insurance. And let me tell you, our little household is close enough to the wire, financially, that a $400 driving-without-proper-insurance ticket is the last thing we need.’

  She had a drink.

  ‘I mean, it’s one thing to drive around Joe Wahl’s van under the care of the 12th Avenue United Church’s automobile insurance. But I’m still looking at – what did they quote me last time? – $2,400 annually. Two hundred bucks a month, twelve months a year, to insure a vehicle. Harold Goetz does not pay this single mother that much, Kitten. No sir.

  ‘How’s that for a boring, stupid problem?’

  She had a long drink and pointed a finger at the kitten.

  ‘That’s his fault.’ She stabbed a finger into the mattress. ‘His. Fault. His crash. Didn’t just wreck my car, he blew up my insurability for a decade.’ She spread her fingers wide. ‘Kablam.

  ‘I’d brought it up here, from Calgary. Up from the airport. Brought it up here and then he took it out and crashed it. A total writeoff.

  ‘You know what the worst part was, Kitten? He comes in the door … ’ Audrey looked around to get her bearings and then pointed at the front door. ‘That door. And he just hands me a phone and says, “You’ve got to talk to this cop. You need to explain to him,’’’ and she chewed off the words: ‘“You need to explain to him that it’s your car and it was fine that I was driving it.”

  ‘That’s what he said, Kitten. After he killed my baby.’

  She rolled over onto her back. Lifted up her feet and flexed her toes.

  ‘I mean, I did. I let him drive it, Kitten. My baby. I let him take my baby out for a drive and he crashed it. I gave him permission. Sure, I said. And he crashed it.

  ‘Kitten, I’d like to tell you about all the good reasons that surely I had, but the truth is mostly I was just coasting downhill in neutral, and it was easy. It was easy and exciting, and then it got dull and repetitive. And then I started to get a little smarter and it got … worrisome. I was a little slow on the uptake, Kitten. Maybe wilfully so. I mean, I lived out here for, what?’ She counted fingers. ‘Five months? Wrists drove me back to Calgary in May. Six months. So maybe a little wilfully slow figuring out why all these kids were coming out to stay here for three nights at a
time and why the only money changing hands was going to large men in black leather vests.

  ‘But he crashed it. My baby. A total writeoff. I was so mad, Kitten. Just livid.

  ‘I’d like to tell you that was the moment of clarity, but of course it wasn’t. It took a little blue plus sign on a stick a month or so later. And then everything went from worrisome to scary and then I understood a lot of things awfully clearly.’

  She drained the last of the whisky and squeezed her eyes shut.

  ‘Kitten, the hardest thing I ever did was to get the courage to ask the man in charge permission to leave. You had to ask him, see. Nothing happened without him saying so. I spent a few weeks worried, not knowing what to do, and then one night I went out and stood at the lakefront and yowled like a coyote. And I realized I just had to go ask the man in charge to leave. And he said, “Sure thing, Audrey Cole, we can totally make that happen.” And I never heard from him again. Until I did.’

  She thought about making another drink, but the bottle seemed far away. The bottle seemed far away and as hot as the fire had been, there still wasn’t much warmth in the room. The cold was out there, squeezing the building. She pulled the blanket around herself more tightly and the bedsprings creaked.

  ‘We’ve got a windfall now though, Kitten,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll buy that Honda with cash and still have a thousand dollars left over. A thousand dollars of Alex’s hidden-away-in-his-secret-painkiller-nest money. That’ll solve a few single-mother problems.’

  She thought about all the voice-mail messages that were piling up inside her phone. Audrey, where are you, we’re worried, her mother must have said, every hour and then every half-hour. And then at a certain point the mailbox would have filled up. The cellular mailbox is full, a digital voice will have told Madeline Cole hours and hours ago.

  I’ll be home soon and I’ll tell you everything, Mom. I’ll tell you and Shelly everything. Moose Leg and the Legendary Lever Men and the six months I lived at this crazy building in the middle of nowhere. And Shelly’s dad and the funeral and why I wanted to come back up here to see it all one last time before they knocked it down.

  ‘I mean, Kitten, we can’t complain,’ Audrey whispered, lying on her back. ‘We love Shelly and you’ll love her when you meet her tomorrow. I mean, who knows, Kitten. Who knows?’

  PART FOUR

  HAVE YOU

  LOOKED ON THE

  MOON?

  11

  NOVEMBER 2009

  CALGARY

  A few days after the funeral, she thought she saw the Skinny Cowboy. She stepped out of the silver office building, feeling the early evening, colder than the morning wind, cut through her jacket, and was thinking about maybe catching the number 3 bus the seven blocks south to 12th Avenue United to pick up Shelly. Audrey, it’s pretty cold, she thought, spend the few bucks and take the bus.

  So she walked to the corner, and she saw him. She saw the Skinny Cowboy on the opposite corner of 5th Avenue. A skinny old man in a brown leather jacket underneath a wide black hat. Her stomach dropped.

  The light turned to Walk and a crush of people started crossing. Has to be him, she thought. The Skinny Cowboy stopped in the middle of the street and, without looking to either side, squatted down and kicked both his legs back, arms out in a prone push-up, right on the asphalt. The crowd parted, people looked down, surprised, and bumped into each other, trying not to step on the man lying in the middle of the road. He put his ear down against the black iron City of Calgary manhole, listening. The light blinked Don’t Walk red and the crowd made it to the other side, and Audrey hadn’t even moved, still staring. The Skinny Cowboy jumped up, pushed his fists into his pockets, and finished crossing the street, stepping onto the curve a few seconds after the red hand finished blinking. He walked right past Audrey and she got a good look at him: his long hair wasn’t silver but a cheap drugstore-bottle red dye job, and his long black duster jacket wasn’t the soft brown leather with the roses stitched into the shoulders, and he coughed into spindly fingers with black-painted nails. He walked by Audrey close enough that she could smell dispenser hand soap and mouthwash, and he was a young man maybe in his late twenties and he wasn’t the Skinny Cowboy at all.

  §

  She got a phone call from the daycare a little after lunch. ‘Shelly threw up,’ Miss Aphra told her, speaking loudly over the shouting toddlers in the background, ‘and she has a fever. You need to come and pick her up.’

  ‘You’re killing me, Cole,’ said Harold when she stood in his doorway.

  ‘They need me to take her out, right now. They get strict when they think the kids are contagious. Zero tolerance.’

  ‘I ought to have a zero tolerance for the kids I hire booking out halfway through the day any time they feel like it,’ Harold grumbled. ‘It’s not a goddamn petting zoo we’re running.’

  ‘Harold …’

  ‘Sure, sure. I need all the expenses for Christina Lake filed tomorrow.’

  ‘I can’t …’

  ‘I need all of that to the bookkeeper in time for quarter end and the latest I can go to see her is Thursday so that means tomorrow.’

  She turned around and walked away before he could say anything else. Put on her jacket in a huff and stood over her desk, steaming red. She stood there for a few seconds grinding her teeth. A few seconds that felt like a whole lot longer and then she sat down and pushed receipts and file folders into her bag. She went the long way back through the office, through the emergency exit into the building stairwell. To not walk past his office. She walked down the stairs, stomping on the concrete, going as fast as she could manage. Around and around, past keycard-locked doors that led into law offices and engineering firms, or whatever it was all the men in the suits looking at their cellphones in the elevator did. She stomped down eighteen flights of stairs and then stood outside on the sidewalk in the cold, wheezing a bit to catch her breath. Sweating and wheezing, but at least that’s why her face was red now. Eighteen flights of stairs, not because she was angry and hurt and embarrassed.

  At home she sat on the couch watching cartoons, Shelly in her pyjamas curled up beside her, eyelids droopy, one thumb in her mouth. Her forehead was hot and her face was flushed. Audrey gave her a plastic dropperful of children’s Tylenol. They watched animal astronauts explore the surface of the moon. Brave little ducks and pigs and even a llama, each in a bubble astronaut helmet, taking big bounding steps across the cratered moon surface. The llama had a big magnifying glass and bent down with her long neck to peer at moon rocks and craters.

  When Shelly was asleep, Audrey went downstairs and spread the receipts out across the kitchen table. She could at least do the sorting tonight, she figured. Uncapped her highlighters. She sat holding a highlighter, staring past it at the jar on top of the refrigerator for a long while before she realized what she was doing.

  §

  She saw the Skinny Cowboy at the Wholesale Club. While she pushed her cart through the aisles, picking up Joe Wahl’s groceries. Shelly sat in the top basket of the cart, swinging her feet and singing to herself. Audrey pulled up in the produce aisle to get a bag of onions and a few bunches of celery and she saw him. He had his back to her: black hat, long jacket. He was picking mushrooms out of the cardboard mushroom box and breaking off the stems before putting the white caps into a brown paper bag. Audrey stood watching him with her mouth a little bit open, and for a moment all she could think of was all the mushroom stems she never ate in her life, weighed out at what, a dollar sixty or so a hundred grams? What does that come to? The Skinny Cowboy put the bag of mushroom caps into his shopping basket and turned around. He had green eyes, and the line of his jaw was lantern-shaped, almost superhero square, with freckles powdering the top of his chest above a low T-shirt neckline, and he wasn’t the Skinny Cowboy at all. What are you thinking, Audrey, she asked herself, that’s not him at all, not even close.

  ‘Mum Mum Glarpy later magic,’ said Shelly.

  ‘Sure, ba
by,’ said Audrey, watching the man who clearly wasn’t the Skinny Cowboy as he picked up bags of potatoes, hefting them like he was testing their weight. ‘Sure thing, baby, magic later.’

  ‘What if it was him anyway,’ she asked herself that night on the couch, staring at the wall just above the eleven o’clock TV news. ‘What if it was? You don’t owe him anything. “Hey, Skinny Cowboy,” you can say to him, “Go haunt some other single mom. I’m not afraid of you.”’

  I’m not afraid of you, she said to herself, just forming the shapes of the words with her lips. In the kitchen, the refrigerator condenser kicked in, the buzzing rattle cutting through the night.

  ‘You should talk to your landlord about that,’ her dad had said, the first time he heard that refrigerator condenser. He’d come down from Canmore with her mother exactly once, for two weeks, when Shelly was born. Audrey had insisted on going home to the mustard-coloured house when she got out of the hospital. Not back with them to Canmore. ‘I want to learn how to do it all in the place where I’ll be doing it,’ she said to her mother.

  They brought Shelly home from the hospital to the little mustard-coloured house on 12th Avenue and took turns holding her and changing her. Shelly was a little pink screaming force, a tiny wrinkly face that opened up to screech or coo or suckle. Audrey did her best to feed her every two hours or every three hours or every hour or whenever she cried, which felt like all the time. Her parents took turns holding her when they could. Her mother held Shelly in between feedings and sang her songs, and Audrey tried to learn the lyrics so she’d be able to sing them herself when her mother finally went home, but mostly she was too tired in these between-feeding lulls and slept instead.

  Her father held his granddaughter, sitting on Audrey’s lumpy old sofa or pacing around the creaking floor.

  And they never asked her. Her mother had never asked, not even the first day, when Audrey finally broke down and phoned her, eleven months after disappearing from Moose Leg. ‘Mom, I need help,’ she told her mother on the phone. And when Madeline Cole arrived at the mustard-coloured house on 12th Avenue behind its ragged caragana hedge and saw her six-months-pregnant daughter for the first time in a year, she didn’t ask any questions. She led her back inside and sat down at the kitchen table and Audrey sat down across from her and cried. Cried and cried for a long time, not saying anything, then eventually went upstairs and crawled into bed.