The Rain Barrel Baby

by Alison Preston

  “How did you find me?” Frank asked.

  “Oh. I heard you had become a policeman years ago. You weren’t at all hard to find with that big of a clue. Anyway, I figured with your being with the police and still living in Norwood that you’d probably have a line on far more people than I do.”

  “How did you know I still live in Norwood?” Frank knew he was babbling.

  “You’re in the phone book, Frank. Even your first name. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that’s a bad idea? Claremont Avenue. Just a few streets over from where you grew up. You must really like the neighbourhood.”

  Frank was panicking inside. Everything she said seemed two-edged, sharp as knives. But the whole spiel was cushioned in her fresh scent and her apparent guilelessness. Anyone else uttering the same words and Frank would be day dreaming. She held him riveted, motionless with alarm.

  Suddenly his head grew too heavy for his neck and he had to support it with his hands.

  “I hope it’s not asking too much. I’m sure you’re a very busy man.”

  She looked around the room and her eyes rested on a picture of Emma, Garth and Sadie on his desk.

  “Are those your children?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Frank picked up the photograph and held it to his chest. “Forgive me, Ivy, but…”

  “What, Frank? What is it?”

  “Well it’s just, I know I’m a cop and all and that I live in the neighbourhood, but still…why me? I mean you must have terrible memories of me. I can’t believe you’d want to be in the same room with me.”

  He knew what her answer would be and knew it was wrong. It was crazy.

  “Because you were nice,” she said.

  “Oh, Ivy. God help me. God help you. I wasn’t nice!”

  She thought he was nice. He wanted to hit her over the head with a piece of lumber. Maybe that would convince her that he wasn’t. He wished she were dead. He wished he were dead.

  “God help us all,” he said.

  Ivy smiled. “I saw you as good. I mean, relatively speaking, you were. What you did. What you didn’t do. You were just a kid after all.”

  Frank cringed. “Please don’t make excuses for me, Ivy. I do enough of that for myself.”

  He walked to the window and looked out at the bench where he had sat several days ago, way back before Ivy had walked into his office. He had thought he had troubles then. That time looked positively idyllic from where he stood now. All he’d had on his plate was an alcoholic wife and an urge to do a little wandering.

  He heard her voice behind him, but he had stopped listening. He was thinking about the Simkins, Dwight and Duane — Greta Bower’s stepbrothers. They had been there. Duane was the worst, no question.

  “I’d be happy to help you, Ivy,” Frank said, turning to face her.

  “Good! Thank you, Frank.” Ivy smiled.

  Frank smiled back as best he could.

  “Let’s meet somewhere nicer to talk about it, shall we?” she said. “Like The Forks.”

  She stood up to leave. “I’ll make a list of the people I’m having trouble tracking down and bring it along. I didn’t want to presume too much by bringing it this time.” She smiled again.

  “Call me then, Ivy, and we’ll set something up.”

  Frank saw her to the door and then sat down behind his desk. He felt heavy, as though seeing Ivy Srutwa had added forty pounds to his body weight.

  He hauled out his wool and began to knit.

  Now Frank was sitting in the parking lot of the hospital, finishing his milkshake. He made loud slurping sounds through his straw to get every last bit, the kind of sounds he was always telling his kids not to make because it was bad manners.

  Frank was confused. What was Ivy up to? He knew there was a Nelson Mac reunion coming up in the fall but he was sure that her visit had nothing to do with that. Frank knew he had a reputation for being a little naive at times but even he wasn’t thick enough to believe her community-minded cover story.

  He left his car doors unlocked. That way there would be less physical damage if someone stole it.

  He whistled “Happy Birthday” quietly to himself as he walked along toward the ancient building that housed the Chemical Withdrawal Unit. He was so tired of this.

  CHAPTER 31

  1965

  Ivy doesn’t make a sound. Nor does she struggle as the boy ties her wrists and ankles to the rough wood of the filthy penalty box. It’s just the one boy doing the tying. Duane Simkin.

  One of the other boys is nervous and says, “Come on, Duane. You don’t have to tie her. It’s not like she’s gonna get away or anything.”

  Duane ignores him and yanks the rope tighter.

  “I can’t be a part of this,” the nervous boy says.

  “So fuck off, then,” says Duane and the nervous boy is gone.

  Her legs are spread so wide apart she feels as though her thighs will become detached from her body when he starts shoving himself inside her. Like the thighs that her mother rips away from the chicken body at Sunday supper.

  She hears herself gasp as he rams himself home. The groans of the boy are louder than her own. He sounds like he is the one in pain.

  Her legs remain intact though, through four boys and through the wooden hammer handle that the one named Duane pushes into her. That is the worst part. That is when she can feel herself tearing and knows there will be blood and trouble. She’ll have slivers inside her. How will she ever get them out? Maybe it will be the slivers that kill her.

  Her mother won’t look at her but will make her chores harder than usual. Like going to visit her grandma, for instance, in the sour dark of her apartment.

  “Rub Grandma’s ankles,” the old woman will croak and Ivy will take a thick foot in her lap and press the swollen flesh, dry as dusty cardboard.

  She wonders now who will find her. It will have to come to that because there is no way in the world she’ll be able to untie the knots. They’re too tight.

  In the end it’s the nervous boy who lets her go. The one who was against tying her in the first place. He comes back.

  “Sorry,” he mutters as he cuts the ropes with his pocket knife.

  “What?” Ivy can’t believe her ears.

  He doesn’t have the wherewithal to say it again.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Present

  “Do you know anything about volcanoes?” Emma asked.

  Donald sat leaning against a tree in front of the school. He was alone, which didn’t happen very often, so Emma figured she’d speak to him even though his eyes were closed. After all, he’d touched her shoulder the other day. And looked at her while he did it. She had gone over it again and again in her mind. It was the best thing that had ever happened to her boy-wise. She loved that he had looked right at her when he touched her. That seemed so brave to her.

  Donald opened his eyes and smiled. “Hi, Em.”

  “Hi.”

  He smiled some more and she admired his silence.

  “Well, do ya?” she said.

  “Do I what?” he asked.

  “Know anything about volcanoes?”

  “Oh. Well, a little bit, I guess. I know about Mount St. Helens.”

  “What’s Mount St. Helens?”

  “It’s a volcano. Sit down. I can’t see you properly looking into the sun.”

  Emma sat and Donald told her what he knew about Mount St. Helens and Emma told him about her desire to make a volcano for her science project, one that could erupt. That would be the hard part, she said.

  “What a great idea!” he said. “I’ll help you if you want.”

  “That’d be great.” Emma stood up. “I gotta go now or I’ll be late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Oh, I’ve got this thing.”

  She didn’t have a thing, but she was too nervous to sit with him any longer.

  “See ya, Donald.” She said his name out loud. She made herself do it and was glad she did. Up till now she
hadn’t thought about people’s names as anything other than what people were called. But now they seemed magic. The word Donald was magic, and even more so when spoken aloud. And her name, Em, when Donald said it, made her feel the way she had felt when he touched her the other day. It did the same thing to the inside of her.

  “Okay, I’ll see ya then, Em,” he said. “Let’s get together soon to talk about your volcano.”

  “Okay.” She smiled as she backed away. “See ya.”

  I’m the happiest girl in the world, Emma thought. I love Donald Griffiths and I’m pretty sure he likes me. I said his name out loud and he said mine and we’re gonna talk some more about volcanoes.

  “I love volcanoes,” she said.

  Emma phoned Delia to tell her what had happened.

  “What’re ya, mental?” Delia asked when Emma got to the part about how she got up and left him there under the tree. “You shoulda like, played it out, you crazy idiot. He might have walked you home or made a date or kissed you or something.”

  “I couldn’t, Dele. I couldn’t take anymore just then. It’s okay what I did. It all feels perfect to me.”

  Emma caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she talked to her friend. She liked what she saw and stared amazed, as this animated girl with colour in her cheeks gestured and smiled and lived a life. She hoped that this was what she had looked like when she had been talking to Donald.

  The trouble with mirrors, she realized, when she hung up the phone and was left with a quiet picture of herself, was that they caught you at your dullest. Who looks nice when they’re gazing stupidly and self-absorbedly into the mirror looking for pimples? Maybe movie stars like Winona Ryder and Claire Danes, but no normal people.

  Emma stretched out on her bed and reviewed the newest Donald experience in her mind. Then she went over the one again when he touched her shoulder. If she had to pick, she’d pick that one.

  CHAPTER 33

  It was twilight and Gus prepared for a seeding. He placed the bag of birdseed beside him on the car seat and headed out. It wouldn’t be hard to find what he was looking for. There were men at work everywhere these days: on sidewalks, city roads, private driveways, and parking lots. They were correcting the damage from the winter frost and the years of wear and tear, laying new cement, smoothing it with their special equipment, and then leaving it precariously guarded with barricades. Sometimes on private property there would be a flimsy piece of cardboard with an invitation: KEEP OFF.

  He didn’t have to travel very far tonight to find a good spot. It was a driveway right on the street where he lived, towards the park end. Two guys were still at it so he drove to the end of the block and sat awhile waiting for them to finish up. This was perfect. It was important that the cement be wet.

  In the fading light he drove the old Buick back to the freshly poured driveway. It was easy; he could manage it without getting out of the car. Behind his open door he sowed a careful layer of birdseed on the gentle slope that joined the new driveway with the city street. And then he drove away.

  Ivy watched from behind her tinted glass. She could remember going as a kid to these magic play sites and carefully printing her name in the fresh cement to leave her mark. Back then she had imagined herself as a grown woman coming back to her home town and seeking out her name in the cement. She had invented nostalgia for herself and marveled at the achy wonder of it.

  Ivy didn’t like the old man. He was her enemy and she’d known it from the first time she saw him; she suspected he knew it too. She shouldn’t have spoken to him the other evening. What did she say? Whatever it was it was too much and she should have known better. It had caused him to notice her and she didn’t want attention coming from the wrong person. She didn’t want any interference.

  “I probably scare him.” She spoke to the stale air inside the car. “I scare myself sometimes.”

  Ivy rolled down her window after he drove off and was surprised at how dark it had become. Sometimes she wished she could live inside the light and change with it. Maybe then she wouldn’t get so bored with the sameness of things.

  CHAPTER 34

  In the wee hours Emma lay awake. She rose from her bed and tiptoed over to the window. She felt expectant. It was something about the night.

  The tall figure leaned against the lamppost, smoking in the drizzle. Emma stared. She would have been frightened if the man had stared back but he didn’t. If indeed it was a man. There was a femaleness in the way he held the cigarette and shook his hair back off the pale blank oval that was his face.

  Emma watched as the figure smoked in the glow from the street light. She wondered if he, or maybe she, was connected to her in some way. The person stood close enough to her bedroom window that she could smell the smoke. She hoped it had nothing to do with her.

  Emma ran down the stairs and out the back door. By the time she crossed the yard the lane was empty. There wasn’t even anyone disappearing down the alleyway.

  It was just Emma and the rain. She shivered in the damp as she imagined what she must look like standing there by the lamppost, in its eerie glow. She was afraid to look up at her bedroom window in case she saw her own face gazing down.

  In the morning Emma asked her dad to join her on her paper route.

  They ran into Rupe and the fluffy dog named Easy and Emma introduced them to her father.

  “Isn’t Easy great!” she said. “I just love the way he carries himself.”

  Rupe and Frank smiled at each other.

  They passed the Marlboro Man and Emma pointed him out.

  She told her dad about the slow-driving car and last night in the drizzle and they talked again about getting a dog.

  By the time the paper wagon was empty Frank had agreed to take her to the Humane Society to pick out a pup — real soon.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ivy placed the handcuffs in her bag of pointed objects. They must have come from Frank’s workplace but she couldn’t remember.

  I hope I haven’t been putting myself at risk, she thought. How can I be careful if I’m not there?

  She did recall Frank being very preoccupied with himself — so much so she probably could have stolen the shoes off his feet and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  Ivy drove to Brookside Cemetery on the north side of the city. She was going to visit her brother Ray, who died thirty-four summers ago.

  She pictured him beneath the ground, gone to dust. His grave was in the children’s section. She watched a young couple in their good clothes putting flowers on a grave a few rows over. They huddled together for comfort. Their child. Ivy’s eyes met those of the mother and the woman smiled sadly, willing to share her pain with a stranger who she probably thought mourned her own baby.

  Ivy did that once, but it was a very long time ago.

  She turned away and stared at the ground. She had a picture of Ray in her head. It didn’t look anything like the photograph behind plastic in her wallet. She took it out and looked at it. He was fourteen years old in the photo. It was a school picture. His hair was slicked back with Wild Root Cream Oil. Ivy remembered the smell.

  Ray wasn’t smiling in the photograph, so he looked better in her mind’s eye. There he always had a smile. She had a sense of him now and then — a morning feeling that came over her in the summer sometimes, when she glimpsed a section of unpaved road or a patch of grass long enough to bend in the wind.

  And she had his face in her mind’s eye.

  When Ivy looked up again she saw the geezer from last night. Frank’s next-door neighbour. He leaned over what looked to be a new grave and placed a handful of crocuses on it.

  This isn’t a good sign, thought Ivy, not a good sign at all.

  It was important that the old crow not see her, but it was too late. He looked at her and recognition flickered across his weathered face. He glanced at her Lincoln parked on the road in front of his old Buick. And then back at her.

  Ivy waved and he nodded his head in acknowledgem
ent. He didn’t want to; worry creased his face, like ruts in a dirt road.

  Rightly so, thought Ivy. Rightly so.

  She envied the dead children in the graveyard. How easy it was for them! To be loved and treasured so, before they were old enough to start messing up and doing all the things that would make people hate them and run from them. Like the old man wanted to run from her now. The love for the dead children would never waver. It had nothing to do with the people they would have become.

  Families of geese scratched about on the banks of the creek that ran through the graveyard. Mothers fussed over their young ones in an annoyingly human way as Ivy approached. Counting the geese was hard because new ones kept swimming out of the reeds or waddling over from further down the creek. And then she wouldn’t know if the ones she had already counted were the same ones or entirely new. It reminded her of something and she felt a roiling in her guts.

  She took out her notebook to record the number of birds. One tear splatted onto the page and smudged the marks she had made there. For a terrible moment the uselessness of her act slipped through her line of vision, like a quick view of a squashed movie title that occupied only the central portion of the screen. Then it was gone.

  She sat with the geese until a maintenance truck parked too close. Three men got out and began the noisy job of trimming trees, keeping things nice and neat for the dead.

  As Ivy walked back to her car she thought about Frank’s daughter, Emma. She’d heard the geezer call the girl by name. She’s a pretty thing, Ivy thought, tiny, waif-like. Ivy didn’t like that Frank had a photograph of his kids on his desk. And she hated that he had picked it up and held it to his chest as though he had to protect it from her. Frank had good instincts. He just wasn’t too bright and had a lot on his mind.

  The old man’s Buick was gone. Good.

  Ivy was confused. She knew she was going to have to get her thoughts in some kind of order. Gruck had vanished without a trace, abandoned ship, left her in the lurch. Between no G and the voice called Reuben and the muddled Squeaks, she felt as though everything she was working towards might fall to pieces around her.