Algoma

by Dani Couture

  The red and white emergency lights turned off and the driver’s door opened. An officer emerged and took off his hat and adjusted his duty belt. When he looked directly at the house, Algoma collapsed to the living room floor.

  “Ma’am?” The police officer held the back of Algoma’s head with one hand, her chin with the other. He gently shook her face. “Mrs. Beaudoin. Algoma Beaudoin. Wake up. Come on now. Time to get up.” He patted her cheeks and her eyes winked open.

  “Ferd. What happened to Ferd? How did it happen?” she asked, her face ashen.

  “He’s right here,” the officer said. “He’s sitting in the kitchen. See?”

  Algoma, still lying on the floor, propped herself up and looked more closely at the officer, her eyes tiny, suspicious slits. “In the kitchen?”

  “Yep, right there,” the officer pointed. “Look for yourself.”

  Algoma looked over and Ferd waved. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his legs swinging back and forth. He was eating from a bag of chips, his T-shirt littered with crumbs. “Look Mom, new flavour.” He held up the bag.

  Before she could ask any more questions, the officer threaded one of his arms through hers and lifted her up. “I think you hit your head on the coffee table. You should get it looked at.”

  Algoma touched her head and felt a sticky liquid matting the back of her hair. She pulled her hand back and looked at her bloody fingers. The room shimmered like heat waves over hot summer asphalt. “Maybe I should sit down.” She watched the police officer’s mouth move but she could no longer hear the words.

  “Do you wanna try a chip, Mom?” Ferd asked.

  “I should drive you to the hospital, Ma’am. Do you remember what happened?” The officer reached for his radio to call it in.

  Algoma’s vision flickered like a neon light about to burn out. “I can’t see.” She slapped her face, her hands like moths to a porch light.

  Three nurses sat behind the Plexiglas barricade of the triage like stone-faced poker players who gave away nothing to the patients who sat slumped before them. Health cards and driver’s licenses were laid face up on the table. Histories and allergies exchanged. Next of kin noted. “Just a formality.”

  The endless carousel of ragged patients, nurses, doctors, and paramedics was dizzying, all set to a soundtrack of sputtering coughs, beeping machines and the automatic doors whooshing open and closed every minute. Gusts of cold air filled the room. Flu-fuelled bodies, like small furnaces, trying to stabilize the temperature, their cheeks and foreheads bright red coals.

  Seated on a gurney, Algoma buttoned up her shirt and gathered her purse. Her vision had come back hours ago, only minutes after she’d arrived in the emergency room, but the hospital staff had still asked her to stay. The gash, they’d pointed out.

  “I’m fine now,” she’d argued, but they’d ignored her and carried on with their poking and prodding.

  She disliked the stitches the most, the idea of being held together by thread. For most of the hospital visit, Ferd remained in the care of an elderly volunteer who told him the history of the hospital. She showed him what wing she’d had hip surgery and the room in which her husband had died.

  “It’s a short walk from birth to the good Lord. Mine’s just taking a little longer than Matthew’s,” she said while fingering the ancient wedding ring looped through her silver necklace. When Algoma tried to offer the woman a few dollars for watching Ferd, the woman waved her away with thick, arthritic hands. “Nice to be of use.”

  Algoma had her hand on the door, ready to leave, when she saw the officer seated in the waiting room. He was flipping through a copy of Châtelaine. She walked over to him. “Did you call my husband?”

  Startled, he coughed nervously, folded the magazine shut, and tucked it under the side of his left thigh. “I, well, I called the bar. They said he was out, so I left a message.” He looked apologetic, “out” meaning so many things.

  “Oh,” Algoma said. She looked at the floor and started to chew on an already ragged nail.

  Ferd ran up to them and began to recite from the book he’d brought with him, The Field Guide to Eastern Region Trees: “Bear oak. Much-branched shrub or sometimes small tree with rounded crown.” He looked at his mother and then the officer. Neither said anything.

  The officer stood up and stretched uncomfortably under Algoma’s stare. “Well, I guess I’ll let you two be if everything is okay.”

  “Everything is okay,” she lied. Her head throbbed.

  The officer nodded and tucked in the back of his uniform shirt as he walked away. He stopped at the door and turned his head. “Yeah, I bet he’s on his way. Don’t worry. You’ve got that one to take care of you,” he said, pointing at Ferd.

  Algoma looked at Ferd. “I should be taking care of him.”

  The officer smiled tightly, nodded and walked out the door. Algoma took a final look around the waiting room. Maybe she hadn’t noticed Gaetan. Maybe he was waiting for her, worried. The waiting room smelled like a mixture of hand sanitizer and rubber. Some of the illnesses and injuries were obvious—a poorly wrapped gash on a teenager’s forearm or a woman with road rash across her cheek, bits of pebbles still embedded in her torn flesh—while others were hidden in the body. An elderly woman fast asleep, her thin face pressed up against the wall, a curl of grey hair tucked into her half-open mouth.

  Algoma watched as a paramedic tried to skirt past a gurney being wheeled in from an ambulance outside. The patient on the gurney was large and drunk, her cheeks flushed, lips covered in dried spittle. She flailed about, the gurney threatening to collapse beneath her, as the hospital staff tried to take her vitals. She let out a blood-curdling howl. “You’re killing me! I hate you!”

  She looked around a final time. Every seat was filled, but no Gaetan.

  Algoma turned to Ferd who was staring wide-eyed at the woman. “How did we get here?” she asked.

  “Cop car,” he stuttered.

  The drunk woman kicked a paramedic in the face. Algoma winced.

  “Oh. Well, I guess we should—”

  “Take a cab? There’s one outside, let’s go.”

  Maybe he will take care of things, she thought.

  A wheezing pregnant woman got out of the cab. While she paid the driver, Algoma and Ferd climbed into the back seat. There were only a few cabs in town. They were lucky to have seen one of them.

  “Home. We need to go home now,” she said, and placed her hands on the driver’s shoulder like he was family.

  Ferd was in the middle of explaining the difference between a black spruce and a red spruce when the cab pulled up in front of the house.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said the cab driver as he leaned back to accept a ten-dollar bill from Algoma.

  “Please keep the change.”

  He nodded appreciatively and smiled to reveal a set of bright white teeth, too many, she thought, to be in one mouth. Like a shark.

  The elderly woman woke up with a start and pulled the strand of hair out of her mouth.

  She didn’t know where she was until she saw the bank of nurses, parked gurneys. The hospital. She exhaled and her shoulders slackened. She touched her knee. It still hurt from where she’d spilled a pot of hot soup on it at lunch. It all came back to her.

  She licked her chapped lips. Her mouth was unbearably dry, a complication of one of her medications, maybe all of them. She got out of her seat and set out to find a water fountain and immediately spotted one at the end of the hallway that connected the emergency room to the diabetes care clinic.

  The fountain was not one of the flimsy metal ones the hospital had installed a few years back that always had “Out of Order” signs taped to front with strips of surgical tape. This one was white porcelain, the same kind they’d had years ago. She turned the silver knob and a stream o
f cold water arced from the spout. It was only when she leaned down to drink that she noticed the folded note—white paper on white porcelain—blocking the drain, water pooling over it. She picked it up. Att: Leo, it read on the outside in a child’s handwriting.

  In the background, the woman heard her name called by an impatient nurse. She dropped the note back into the fountain where it spun in circles as the water emptied down the drain.

  Algoma rummaged through the stack of board games she had stored in the front closet. The doctor who’d treated her at the hospital had suggested she stay up for the next twelve hours.

  “Just in case,” he’d said.

  Worried that people would think she was cursed with bad luck, Algoma kept her hospital visit to herself and didn’t call any of her sisters. When the doctor had asked if she had someone to stay with her, she had said “yes.” With no word from Gaetan, she relied on Ferd to keep her awake.

  Algoma looked back over her shoulder. “What game do you want to play?”

  “All of them!” Ferd had forgotten why his mother had to stay up. He was just excited to be the centre of her attention.

  After their fifth game of Sorry!—four to one for Ferd—and before they had set up the Monopoly board, Algoma called the bar again.

  “Well, where did he go?” she asked, on the verge of tears again. Gaetan was always reachable at the bar.

  Daniel mumbled incoherently on the other end. “Yeah, soon I’m sure…”

  She pressed the receiver hard to her ear, so that she would be able to hear what he wasn’t saying. In the kitchen, Ferd poured his fifth glass of Coke. The foam overflowed onto the counter and he wiped it up with his sleeve.

  “He said he was getting some smokes or a sandwich or something. I’m sure everything’s fine, Al.” The line crackled.

  “Sure, thanks,” Algoma said, not believing a word of it. She’d packed Gaetan’s lunch (ham on rye) and he’d picked up two packs of cigarettes the day before. There was nothing else he needed, she thought, no reason to leave the bar. Something had to be wrong. She pictured him face-down in a snowbank, the victim of a hit and run.

  Nervous, Daniel rambled on: “You want to come over for a drink? It’ll calm you down. You can bring the kid, too. It’s no problem. Nobody’ll say anything and you’ll be here when Gaetan shows up… I mean gets back.”

  Algoma carefully replaced the receiver on the cradle. Ferd was counting out brightly coloured Monopoly money, carefully tucking each money pile under the lip of the board.

  Algoma sat down at the table. “I want to be the old boot.”

  ______________

  7:12 a.m. -16°C. Winds from all directions, raw.

  Broken tree branches littering the snow.

  Thin rays of winter sun filtered through the living room window and illuminated the vase of plastic tiger lilies on the coffee table. The bouquet with its sharp and vibrant petals looked like a nesting bird. Algoma’s eyes fluttered open. Her head throbbed a deep bass line. She reached up to touch the source of her pain and felt a crisp railroad of stitches across the back of her head. Confused, she sat up too quickly and a constellation of black dots speckled her vision. She tried to stand, but a wave of nausea overwhelmed her. She reached for the worn arm of the couch for support.

  Ferd crested the basement stairs and found his mother on her knees, cleaning something up beside the couch. The smell in the air unmistakable.

  Hearing his footsteps, Algoma stood up. “Hi,” she smiled weakly, wiping her mouth with the back of her shirtsleeve. “Just excuse me for a minute.Stay over there. Okay?” She scrubbed the carpet a little more and then disappeared into the washroom, her face green-tinged.

  Ferd went to inspect the shoe rack beside the side door. His father’s boots were not there.

  Algoma came out of the washroom, her face now dishwater grey. “Breakfast in a minute?”

  Ferd nodded, “Sure.”

  But first she went into Gaetan’s bedroom. She stared at the bed. Its tightly tucked corners were unchanged from yesterday and the decorative pillows she’d placed there were still in their careful arrangement. She sat down on the bed.

  The Shop. Ferd. Stitches. Gaetan.

  It all came flooding back to her at once. Nausea rippled through her body. She could hear Ferd rummaging through the pots and pans in the kitchen. He had been allowed to make breakfast for himself since he was eight. Unlike Leo, Ferd was a careful cook; he made precise measurements and movements. He navigated the kitchen with confidence. Most importantly, he always remembered to turn off the stove.

  Algoma worried about fire almost as much as she worried about money. Before she left the house each day, she checked to make sure each element on the stove was turned off, the coffee pot and toaster unplugged, and the iron cold to touch even if she had not used it in weeks. Every morning, she toured the house and touched each item: Off, off, off. On busy days when she forgot her ritual, she was consumed by worry that she would return to find her house in ruins, her life in ashes. She sometimes pictured the entire neighbourhood burnt down to the foundations. Every last photo album, house pet, and fifty-year-old recipe card incinerated by her forgetful hand. However deep her paranoia ran regarding her home, the same care did not extend to The Shop—that was Josie’s domain; however, she would never forgive herself for not checking everything before she’d left the night of the fire. She was sure she must have left a light on, maybe the radio plugged in, a loose wire that had sparked the flame. Somehow, it had to be her fault. She felt responsible for every bad thing that happened around her.

  Algoma’s stomach growled. The house now smelled of fried bacon and fresh coffee. She listened to the muffled thump of dishes being placed on the tablecloth, the splash of coffee being poured.

  The side door creaked open. Algoma stood up too quickly, nearly falling over from dizziness.

  “Hello?” she said, louder than she’d intended. Her voice echoed inside her skull.

  Cen and Steel stood in the doorway, identical in appearance and demeanour. Long and lean like goal posts.

  “It’s Aunt Cen and Aunt Steel,” Ferd said, his face breaking into a big grin. He dropped the spatula he’d been holding onto the counter and ran to hug Cen.

  “Well, hello there.” Cen’s voice was deep and soothing.

  “We heard about your fall,” Steel said to Algoma. She put a cotton bag overflowing with groceries on the kitchen table.

  Algoma shot a look at Ferd, who then hid behind Cen.

  Steel walked over to Algoma and gently touched the side of her youngest sister’s head. “Really, I just don’t understand how you—”

  “—always manage to get in trouble, Al,” Cen finished.

  Algoma smiled half-heartedly at her sisters in a weak effort to offer them some sort of assurance that everything was alright. Steel had let her straight blonde hair grow long until it was a pale cape across her narrow back. Cen, in an effort to be different, had cut her hair into a sharply angled bob. Still, it did little to separate them. They could not change their features. They shared the same wide-set almond eyes that seemed to take in every detail, long delicate noses, wide generous mouths, and high foreheads with only a small map of wrinkles. Elizabethan, Cen had said after learning the word in her high school English class. After that, their father had referred to them as his Renaissance girls, which pleased them as much as it did him.

  Steel unpacked the grocery bag, placing canned goods down on the table. Algoma immediately recognized the ingredients for her favourite dish: mushroom and wild rice casserole. “How did you find out?” she asked, rolling a large white mushroom between her palms.

  “This morning from Bay who heard it from—” Cen looked over at Ferd. She picked up a can of cream of mushroom soup. “If we had known, we would have been there for you, you know. You don’t have to always do that
kind of thing on your own.”

  Algoma rolled her eyes, an old habit that still surfaced when her two eldest sisters were around. Steel grabbed Algoma by her shoulders and turned her around, her hands delicately searching Algoma’s body head to toe for injuries. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Algoma said. “Just a few stitches.” She ran a finger along the crisp ridges. “Do you think I’ll have to go back to get these taken out, or will they just dissolve?” She hoped they would dissolve and not have to be ripped out of her scalp like twine out of a roasted turkey. She couldn’t remember what the doctor had said.

  “At least it’s not on your face,” Steel said touching Algoma’s cheek.

  Algoma brushed her sister’s hand away. “Stop touching me. I’m good. Really.”

  Amid the concerned chatter, Ferd had finished eating the bacon and eggs he had cooked, put his dishes into the sink, and gone to the basement to write. The eggs, bacon, and dry toast he’d made for his mother sat cold on the table.

  Steel and Cen worked on the casserole in tandem. While one opened the cans, the other emptied them out into a bowl. While one washed the vegetables, the other chopped. An endless partnership. It was no wonder they’d never married, Algoma thought. There was no room between them for anyone else.

  “Oh, we should be quiet,” Cen stage whispered. “Gaetan’s sleeping, right?”

  All six sisters accompanied Algoma to file the missing persons report. They ascended the steps of the police station with their arms linked, a solid front.

  “Just give it a couple more days,” Algoma had begged, but her sisters ignored her, as they always did. “He’ll turn up. He has to. He has kids… kid, a kid.”

  Inside the station, Cen pointed out the duty sergeant and guided Algoma to his desk. He looked up from his paperwork. Algoma studied his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, his face grey and wrinkled. Sloppy origami. In that moment she decided he wouldn’t be able to help her and tried to walk away.