“Did I tell you that my daughter is a nurse?” Greta asked.
“Pardon me?”
“My daughter. She’s a nurse. She got in touch with me a few years back.” Greta’s face was shiny and red, as though she had scrubbed it too hard.
“I filled out a form ages ago at the Provincial Registry, you know, in case my daughter was looking for me? My baby girl? Nothing ever came of that, but she found me on her own.”
“You met her then? You saw her?” Frank wondered if Greta was a booze hound.
“Well, no, I didn’t. It was a bit of a disappointment really. She wrote me a letter, but she didn’t want to see me. The letter was on River City Health Centre stationery. That’s where she said she was a nurse. She didn’t want me to know where she lived, I guess.”
The cat, Ailsa, wound her way around Frank’s legs. He reached down to scratch her forehead.
“Her last name is Mallet,” Greta said. “And her first name’s still Jane. I was pleased about that. They must have thought it was good enough to keep. I phoned every Mallet in the phone book, but none of them knew what I was talking about.”
“How did she find you if she didn’t sign on at the Registry?” Frank stroked Ailsa’s soft gray fur. The cat stood with her two front paws on Frank’s thigh.
“Simple,” Greta said. “In 1968, when I gave her away, my name was written on the adoption order. She must have seen it at some point. And I’m in the phone book.
“I phoned River City looking for her. But they told me that they didn’t have a nurse there named Jane Mallet. I guess she lied to me about that.”
Greta drank greedily from her glass and poured herself some more. Frank was just approaching his first sip.
“I believe she is a nurse, though,” Greta said. “Why would she make that up? She probably just didn’t want me to know how to get in touch with her. I mean, she would hate me, wouldn’t she?”
Frank drank.
“I tried every hospital in town. No one had a Nurse Jane Mallet. But she could be a private nurse, couldn’t she? Or something like that.”
“Yes,” Frank said. “Or she could be in another city.”
“Yeah. Something like that. She got in touch once more, just last year, by phone that time. Just wanted me to know she was happily married and still successfully employed, I guess. That was about all she talked about.”
“Is she still going by the name Mallet?” Frank asked.
“I think so. That’s what she called herself. Jane Mallet.”
Greta drained her glass again and watched Frank from under heavy eyelids. “She talked kinda funny, Jane did.”
“What do you mean, funny?” Frank asked. And what’s the matter with your eyes? But he kept that question to himself. He didn’t want her bursting into tears. Frank was pretty sure she was swacked, even though her words came out crisp around the edges.
“Sort of slow,” Greta said. “As though she had to think really hard about each word.”
She got up from the table and walked around behind Frank. She leaned into him until his head was cushioned between her breasts. One for each ear. He remembered what it had been like to bury his face in those breasts. It seemed like a hundred years ago. Greta’s breasts were far and away the biggest ones he’d ever dealt with. Pneumatic. He’d enjoyed it very much, he recalled now.
“Frank, would you like to have sex with me?” Crisp words. She caressed his hair with gentle fingers.
Shudders ran through him and he leapt to his feet startling Ailsa and knocking over his chair. He had very little room to manoeuvre.
“I’m sure that’d be very nice, Greta, but I’m married and I should get going.”
She laughed.
Frank stared at her body inside her summer dress.
She undid a few buttons.
Frank reached out and then stopped. “I can’t do this.”
She took his hand and covered her face with it.
“You have beautiful hands, Frank. I love big hands.”
She ran her tongue the length of his middle finger and took it in her mouth. She sucked it gently to the last knuckle holding his eyes all the while.
He groaned and reached out with his other hand to touch her hair. It was so soft. Rain water. Tinged with…
“Oh, God, Greta. I’d really love to, but I can’t.” He pulled his hand away. “I gotta go now. I’ll be in touch.”
She smiled and so did he.
As he walked down the street toward his house he felt her mouth swallowing his finger. He looked at it. It was still wet. It felt different from his other fingers. He pictured licking her and biting her and fucking her till he was spent. He loved that she had looked at him. Denise always looked away.
It would have been so easy. But the consequences could be anything but. Greta was unpredictable. He imagined her phoning, sending letters, befriending Denise and threatening to tell her if he didn’t fuck her more often or let her act out her wildest fantasies in his presence.
Frank chuckled to himself. He liked that Greta wanted him and he was pleased with himself for turning her down.
He’d run out of there so fast there’d been no chance for her to offer him a cherry tart for the road. Oh well. He was pretty sure there was a Sara Lee cake in the freezer at home. That’d have to do.
CHAPTER 10
Emma and Delia smoked cigars by the river. Emma had stolen hers from Frank. He kept a small stash in the freezer and enjoyed one now and then in the summer. Delia bought hers at Shoppers Drug Mart. She looked older than her fourteen years and was sometimes able to buy tobacco, depending who was working the till. Today she’d been lucky.
Emma’s cigar was made from pipe tobacco and smelled a lot better than Delia’s, which stank like a regular stogie. They were careful not to breathe in the smoke. Emma had inhaled once, a Cuban cigar stolen from Delia’s mother’s boyfriend, and she had coughed for half an hour solid, and then intermittently for an hour after that.
She wanted to tell Delia about her mother wetting her pants, but she couldn’t. She had tried once to talk about her mum’s drunkenness with her friend, but Delia had laughed and Emma had wished more than anything that she hadn’t bothered. The laughter came as a complete surprise to her. It had made her feel very alone.
So they talked about boys. Donald in particular and a boy named Vince that Delia yearned for.
“Okay, first we have to fix it so that Donald and Vince become friends,” Delia said, “so that they hang around together. It’ll be easier for us if they do.”
“Then they’ll pursue us,” Emma said. “Overcoming all kinds of obstacles, like other guys who will also be madly in love with us. Especially me.”
“No. Especially me.” Delia pushed Emma.
“No, me.” Emma pushed back. “Vince’s parents will go out of town and Donald will stay at his house.” She puffed thoughtfully on her sweet-smelling cigar.
“And they’ll invite us over for the night,” Delia said. “You’ll say you’re sleeping at my house and I’ll say I’m sleeping at yours and we’ll stay with Vince and Donald all night long.”
“Donald and Vince.”
“Vince and Donald.”
“Donald and Vinnie.”
“Vince and Don-boy.”
“Shut up!”
“You started it!”
“We’ll have dinner and listen to Sheryl Crow,” Emma said.
“Who’s gonna cook?”
“We’ll order in. From Santa Lucia. They make great dinners. We can pretend to the guys that we did the cooking so they’ll wanna marry us.”
“I don’t wanna marry anybody.” Delia blew a perfect smoke ring.
“I do,” Emma said. “After supper we’ll retire to two separate bedrooms.”
“Retire?”
“Yeah. Me and Donald will go to Vince’s parents’ bedroom and you and Vince will go to his bedroom.”
“I wanna use the parents’ room. It’ll be nicer.”
&nb
sp; “No. Sorry. Dibs on the parents’ room. Anyway, Vince’ll want to show you his stuff, like his model airplanes and his Pamela Lee collection.”
“Fuck off! He won’t have stuff like that. He’ll have like, knives and bullets and stuff.”
“I’ll talk to Donald.” Emma tried a smoke ring but, as usual, it didn’t come close. “He’ll listen and he’ll tell me his secrets and I’ll understand. And we’ll kiss and talk till morning comes. I won’t smoke any cigars that day.”
“Won’t you be having sex?”
“No.”
“I’m pretty sure I will be,” Delia said. “I think Vince has had shitloads of experience with women. He’s probably been seduced by one of his mother’s friends, I figure. He’ll be the one to show me how to have sex. God, I am so ready for this.”
Emma was so not ready for that yet. On this first occasion it would just be kisses.
When their cigars were finished Emma and Delia followed the path up from the river and headed for the 7-Eleven for food and drink to get rid of the horrible tastes in their mouths.
That night Emma gazed out her open window at the bright back garden. The moon shone in such a way that the shadows fell elsewhere. A rabbit sat in the centre of the yard, perfectly still. It could have been made of glass. Emma made a sound at the window, just a breath really, but enough to alert the rabbit. It didn’t turn its head to see her, or run away to avoid her. It stayed the same except for a quiver. Her sound was too small to cause more than that, but too big for things to stay as they were. The rabbit was in limbo. Purgatory.
Emma shivered. The rabbit’s fear was for its life. What else was there? It didn’t have to worry about its breasts not growing or having stared too long at a boy that it wanted to kiss. All it had to worry about was being killed.
“Don’t worry, little rabbit,” Emma called. “I’m not gonna hurt ya.”
A car door clicked shut at the same time that Emma spoke. She didn’t hear it, but the rabbit did and hopped into the darkness under the almond hedge.
CHAPTER 11
1958
He’s eleven to her seven, a big kid. He leans against the apple tree and makes room against his chest for her small and trembly body. The ache in her neck is the worst. She can hardly move her head.
Ray holds her gently and rests his chin on her tangled hair. He sings a song from the radio. Words of love. Buddy Holly is his favourite. She feels light-headed, disconnected, but the fear in her gut begins to subside.
The scent of apple blossom fills the air, mingled with the unbearably sweet fragrance of the plum. Ray strokes her hair. The sunlight slants through the new leaves and hurts her eyes, but it’s a good hurt. Not like when her mother shakes her.
A few doors down a push mower clatters quietly through its task. “Just the boulevard, Ronnie, dear,” a mother calls. “The rest of the grass doesn’t really need it yet.”
Ray laughs. A kid who cuts the lawn before it really needs it.
She feels safe with Ray on this evening in spring, cool breeze on her hot face. She trusts him; he’s her brother.
CHAPTER 12
The Present
In the dream his love moved inside her. He was her husband. And her friend.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he says and kisses her face.
He offers her cherry pound cake and she bites into the sweet dense pastry.
“Mmm,” Denise Foote murmured in her sleep.
He sits next to her and when she moves away he follows.
She longs to be desired, even if it’s only because of her hair and smooth skin. She’s nineteen.
Denise woke up.
The loss of sharing her kisses felt like the biggest loss of her life. She saw now that it might be wrong to feel that way. Wrong-headed, as her mother used to say. It might not be right, but it was true. How can something true be wrong? Easy. It was true that she loved one of her children less than the other two and that couldn’t be right, could it?
Denise closed her eyes and felt Sadie insinuating herself between her and Frank in their bed. This morning? No. Nowhere near this morning. Denise had pressed her face into Sadie’s hair and smelled sweet, warm grass. She kissed the spot where her daughter’s soft brown hair parted and Sadie had nestled up against her.
“Help, Nurse!”
Denise heard the call from the next bed but she couldn’t rouse herself to help. A terrible smell filled her whole world and what seemed like hours passed.
“What is it, Mrs. Blagden?”the nurse finally asked. “What do you need?”
“I think I’ve pooped in the bed.” Mrs. Blagden started to cry.
“Yes, I think you have,” said the nurse. “Just hang on and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
Denise wanted back inside her dream or back into bed with Sadie. She wanted to think about kisses some more. Not about the woman in the next bed. It could have been her.
The day at the mall came back to her. Maybe it was a dream. She had been drunk, just a little. Only Frank and Emma would have realized it. The rest of the world didn’t know her well enough to mark the changes in her when she drank. It had been so much easier when Emma was younger and hadn’t taken issue with everything. All the time. Being a secret drunk was hard work but Denise thought she was pretty good at it. Lying was second nature to her.
“Hi, Denise. How’s it goin’?” The soft voice had startled her while she shopped and her hand flew to her chest. Little bottles rolled.
“Jesus!” she said, and looked into the pale eyes of someone she realized she was supposed to know. Someone from the neighbourhood?
Another man, this one wearing an apron, busied himself at her feet cleaning up the mess.
“Smirnoff, eh?” The stranger’s voice rasped through thin lips.
Who was this guy?
“In the wee bottles,” he said. “An old lady’s trick. Expensive habit. I guess you think you’re fooling someone.”
“Who are you?” Denise spluttered.
The flat face smirked.
She couldn’t remember for a moment if she’d finished her business there but it no longer mattered. She had run from the liquor store.
Denise shuddered now as she remembered. It was no dream. She recalled too where she had seen the man before. He had been a member of a group she had belonged to once when she was trying to quit drinking. He’d been bossy and arrogant and one of the reasons she’d quit going. That was the trouble with groups. They had people in them.
She hadn’t stopped running till she’d reached her car and locked the doors. She panted like a dog on a hot day, bathed in sweat and self-loathing. So little had actually happened. That was the worst knowledge of all.
Something stank. After a few minutes she had raised her head from the steering wheel, breathed in deeply and realized to her horror that she had wet her pants.
She groaned aloud now as she heard the nurse fussing over Mrs. Blagden.
“Everything all right, Mrs. Foote?” the night nurse asked.
“Terrific, thanks.”
CHAPTER 13
Greta Bower is mowing her lawn in the early morning and Gus goes over to have a word with her. The sound of the gas mower roars through his chest and it astonishes him that anyone could be so insensitive. It’s barely dawn!
As he approaches Greta, her pretty face turns into the head of the woman he saw in front of Frank’s place the other night. She is all sunglasses and red lips. Only this time, the lips open in a stiff smile to reveal a row of broken teeth, bluish in colour. The half-teeth move, and on closer inspection Gus sees that tiny blue worms slither over the jagged surfaces. The heads of the worms are black, and the creatures have teeth of their own, sharp teeth that gnaw at their own blue bodies.
Gus jerked himself awake before the dream went further. He put on a coat and shuffled out to his front porch to breathe some fresh air and try to forget the terrible picture left in his brain. He had been reading about Blue-footed Boobies earlier in the day a
nd suspected that was why his dream worms were two-toned. And Greta didn’t even own a lawn mower. She let her yard go to rack and ruin all in the name of something that Gus couldn’t remember.
“Howdy, Gus,” Frank called over from his own front porch next door.
“Frank. Just the man,” Gus whispered as loudly as he could. “Get yourself over here, why don’t ya, so we don’t have to shout and wake up the whole neighbourhood?”
Frank chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone whisper as loud as you, Gus. When it gets to be that loud most folks would turn it into talking.” He sauntered over to where Gus leaned on the railing, and looked up at him.
“Let’s have a drink,” Gus said. “I don’t think Greta quite wiped out that bottle of brandy.”
“Not for me, thanks, Gus, but I’ll sit with you a while.” He climbed the steps to the porch and plunked himself down on one of the two straight-backed chairs.
“Do you want to go inside, Frank? It’s pretty chilly out here.”
Both men wore winter parkas with the hoods up.
“No, I’ve got enough clothes on. I was suffocating indoors.”
“How ’bout some cocoa?”
“No thanks, Gus, but you go ahead. The caffeine in the chocolate keeps me awake and I sure don’t need that.”
“Water?”
“No thanks, I’m fine as is. If I drink water after supper, then I end up going to the bathroom all night long.”
“Jesus, Frank. What the hell are you going to be like when you get to be my age?”
Gus sat down in the other chair.
“Trouble sleeping?” he asked.
“Yeah, most nights, I guess.”
“Is it the baby in the rain barrel, Frank?”
“No, Gus. Awful as that is, it’s not what keeps me awake nights.”
Gus was quiet and Frank was grateful to him for not pushing. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk or not. Maybe just sitting a while would be good. They could start with sitting anyway.
The Rain Barrel Baby Page 4