The Rain Barrel Baby

by Alison Preston

  MRS. POO-PANTS LIVES HERE!

  He found Ivy to tell her, figured she should know. She had told him then, six years ago, that it hadn’t been necessary for him to get in touch, so she wasn’t surprised not to have heard from him since.

  Wilf was an important part of Ivy’s past. He’d always been there in the background. It was his money that had supported Olive and her all the years she lived at home, ever since he had been old enough to hold a job. Always at the Bay. He had started in men’s shoes and that’s where he still was as far as Ivy knew. Just at a different Bay in a different city. At least he got away.

  “Why do you ask?” Wilf said now. “Are you going to visit her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. She’s my mother.” Ivy was tempted to come clean, to tell Wilf what she intended to do, but she knew it wasn’t safe to do that, not yet.

  She had some nasty thoughts. What if I didn’t get the HIV virus from that guy in Vancouver? The test could have been wrong. What if I’m not going to die? What if Wim Winston isn’t going to die after all those hours of bloody sex?

  She had bitten Wim’s lip on that last night, hard enough to draw blood. And she had pulled out her own tooth! Ivy couldn’t bear to think that all her hard work had been in vain. None of this would be any good if she wasn’t going to die soon. She put the thought out of her head — she’d had the test. She carried the disease. But she decided to proceed with caution anyway. There was no need to broadcast her plans.

  “So where is she?” Ivy asked.

  “Just a minute and I’ll get you the address and phone number.”

  Ivy turned to a new page in her notebook and copied Wilf’s words. She ripped out the preceding page — the page that said: Phone Wilf.

  The nursing home was in the Osborne Village area, which Ivy knew well. On many occasions she had passed by the building where her mother had lived for the past six years. She remembered noticing the residents outside on warm days, drooped in their chairs, breathing in exhaust fumes as the traffic whizzed past on Stradbrook Avenue. It was possible that one of those outdoor sitters had been her mother.

  “Thanks, Wilf,” she said. “Take care now.”

  “Wait, Ivy! God! Shouldn’t we be asking each other how we are? How are you? How’s Simon? How’s life treating you?”

  “Fine, thanks, Wilf. I really do have to go. Something’s burning. Bye now.”

  Ivy watched the “Phone Wilf” page disintegrate into ashes in the ashtray, which she seldom used for cigarettes these days. She was losing her desire to smoke, but liked to have ashtrays in all the usual places for her regular burnings. This one was beside a comfy lawn chair next to her new swimming pool.

  “Life feels good,” Ivy said and closed her eyes against the sun. I’ll just lie here awhile and then pop in for another swim.

  CHAPTER 58

  No matter how flat the afternoon or hollow the evening, no matter how dark the night, the summer mornings nudge Ivy to life, even if only for a few seconds while she remembers something sweet that never happened or a place she’s never been. A soft fragrant breeze wafts against her face and she feels smooth and new and innocent. The moment of quiet is eternal and she sees her young self and Ray, riding their bikes no hands to the river. The slow-moving Red.

  Ivy asked for directions to her mother’s room. She wished the staff weren’t so interested in her. She wanted just to slide in and slide out with barely a ripple, the way she does when she slips through the turquoise surface of her swimming pool.

  But they fussed over her.

  “Well, I declare!” an aide exclaimed. Her name tag said: Harriet Fimster.

  “I didn’t even realize that Olive had a daughter,” she went on. “Have you traveled far, dear, to see your mum?”

  “Yes, actually,” Ivy said. “I’ve just flown in from Kuala Lumpur.”

  It still mattered to her that complete strangers not know the sour nature of the relationship between her and her mother.

  “Goodness, that does sound far away,” Harriet said.

  “Yes, it is. That’s where I live.”

  What harm are lies compared to the deed I have come for? I should have just said, friend of the family. It would have made me less noticeable.

  Perhaps sour is too vital a word to describe what’s between Olive and me, Ivy thought. It implies something that still has life in it. Well, there must be something in it, or I wouldn’t be standing here now, telling lies to a harmless old nurse’s aide. As long my mother draws breath, there’s a connection between us.

  “Could you point me in the right direction, please? I don’t have a lot of time.”

  Harriet Fimster guided Ivy down a hall peopled with elderly residents: sitting, standing, staring, drooling, snoozing, sloping, dying. They all looked like her mother. Even the men looked like her mother. She wouldn’t have been surprised had the aide stopped at any one of these people and announced that this was Olive Srutwa.

  Olive was in a room with three others. Two of her roommates were missing. They must have been part of the hordes roaming the halls. Harriet left Ivy at the door, perhaps guessing that it was going to be a less than merry reunion. Ivy didn’t want her to go. For one thing, she wasn’t sure which of these creatures was related to her. She was going to have to get much closer and the one seated at the window looked insane.

  “Yoo-hoo,” the old crone cried out. “Over here, dear. I’m over here.”

  Ivy walked over to the window and peered into a wizened face.

  “Mum?”

  “Yoo-hoo, over here, dear!” The woman blasted noise and foul air at Ivy, knocking her backwards toward the other bed, where her mother lay dying.

  The figure on the bed barely made a rise in the blankets. It was so thin. Ivy stared at the familiar face. How could she have thought she wouldn’t know her? Some of the lines and bumps were in the same places as Ivy’s own lines and bumps had been before she’d had the cosmetic surgery done on her face and neck.

  Her mother’s eyes were closed and she breathed with difficulty.

  A tender feeling flowed through Ivy and confusion clouded her brain, threatening to spoil her plan.

  What Olive had done with the baby that she tore from her daughter’s young body remained a mystery. It was only in Ivy’s mind that she saw the tiny creature alone by the river’s edge.

  “He was alive,” Ivy said and understood where her feelings of tenderness belonged. “My baby boy was alive. What did you do with him?”

  Olive’s eyelids snapped open. The whites of her eyes were a dull yellow — the wakened face a grotesque mask of death.

  “Ivy, is that you?” Her voice scratched out the words. It was as if she hadn’t spoken in years. Maybe she hadn’t. Her eyes closed again.

  “I did what had to be done.”

  Her breaths came more quickly now, like those of a smaller animal, one with a much shorter life span, like a squirrel.

  The woman at the window fussed and mumbled. Ivy walked over to where she sat and turned the wheelchair so it faced away from Olive. She saw the name above the woman’s bed. Annie Parrot.

  “Okay, Annie baby. Let’s just get you pointed in a different direction, shall we? A little different view for you. There we go. You can look at the pretty beige wall for a while.”

  “Yoo-hoo,” Annie Parrot said softly.

  From a bar fastened to Olive’s bedside table hung a threadbare hand towel. Ivy reached for it. An odour rose from the towel, a dark, familiar stench, one that had haunted the edge of her memory all the days of her life. Her mother’s fear; fear of her mother. A lifetime of fear scrunched up in a thin dank towel.

  Ivy placed it over her mother’s face and pressed firmly for twenty-nine seconds. That was all it took. The eyes didn’t open again and there was the smallest struggle imaginable, a few twitches.

  “Yoo-hoo!” called Annie Parrot as Ivy returned the hand-towel to the bar on the bedside table.
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  She poked her head out the door.

  “Nurse Fimster,” she called. “Could you come, please?”

  Ivy sails down Osborne Street toward her car. The sky is so blue. It has never been so blue. Ivy feels as though she has completed the definitive act of her life. She smiles at the deadbeats and stops to pat their dogs. In Ivy’s eyes, the street people glow. The air around her is so clean and pure she can see all the way to Riverview and all the way to Ray.

  She pictures him on his bike at the top of the paths they call the Monkey Speedway. He rides the trails faster than anyone. He’s the champ! He lets her accompany him, even though she’s a girl with a girl’s slow bike. And she’s scared to go fast. They find the circle of stones in the clearing and he builds a smudgy fire with sticks and leaves and wooden matches from Winnipeg Supply. They heat a can of beans. And pull crabapples and plums from their pockets. Big kids come and they leave her alone because she’s with her brother Ray, the champion of the Monkey Speedway.

  Ivy stops for a cappuccino at Baked Expectations and wonders why she has never done this before. She sits outside and watches the world pass. The air is hers to breathe and the ground hers to walk on.

  CHAPTER 59

  Emma dreamed about Byron, her big old tabby cat who had died about a year ago. She often met him in her dreams. He was always glad to see her and would place his warm loving face next to hers. Tonight’s dream started the same but turned out differently.

  She sees her cat and moves toward him. He seems a little odd around the eyes. Her new cat Hugh is there too. She pats them both and grows uneasy when she notices that Byron feels cool to the touch. She pats warm Hugh and then cool Byron and the coolness passes through her fingers into her body.

  The two cats scamper down some stairs and she is glad Byron is gone. He scares her. Emma knows she is dreaming now and worries that her good dreams of Byron will never be the same.

  She peers down the stairs, willing the cat to stay away. He creeps into view and lunges toward her open face, screaming like a human.

  Emma’s own cry woke her up.

  The house stood still around her. She hoped she hadn’t woken anyone. She lay chilly under her quilt staring at the darkness in front of her eyes. Byron in her dreams had been something to look forward to, something she could count on as a good thing. This dream seemed like a cruel trick to her, something she didn’t deserve. She was prepared for fear in the waking hours. But how could whoever was in charge of dreams have thought it was a good idea to turn Byron against her? It was so not right.

  Emma believed in God, but only because she was scared not to. She found no comfort in a looming presence that operated against her. She prayed anyway. Maybe God did love her and had just made a mistake or lost track of things for a moment or two.

  “You know what really bugs me, Dad?”

  It was morning now and Emma was home from her papers. She had the Free Press opened to the obituaries.

  “What?” Frank was trying to catch up on the Winnipeg Blue Bomber news which was on the front page of the section Emma was reading.

  “I wish they wouldn’t always put the deaths and the sports in the same section,” he said. “I wonder if other families have this problem.”

  “What bugs me,” said Emma, “is that about a thousand days ago it said: ‘Longer obituary to follow,’ after Esme Jones’ death announcement, and then it never happened. Nothing followed.”

  “Maybe you just missed it,” Frank said.

  “I knew you’d say that. I didn’t miss it. I checked every day.”

  “Well, maybe the people close to her felt so sad that they didn’t feel up to writing a longer version.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Emma said. “She deserves better.”

  “Maybe it’s still coming. Maybe her brother wanted to write it and he was in a car accident that resulted in a coma and they have to wait till he snaps out of it. They probably think he’d be upset if someone else went ahead and did it instead.”

  Emma laughed. “That’s a little far-fetched isn’t it?”

  “Yup, but life is far-fetched, Emma, don’t you think? How’s the volcano coming?”

  “Great! It’s practically done. We just haven’t rehearsed the actual eruption part. In case when we do, it wrecks the volcano. I’ll save it for the presentation.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Wednesday. The day after tomorrow. I sure hope nothing goes wrong.”

  “I’m sure it won’t, Em. You’re certain to be the belle of science project day.”

  “Dad. You say the stupidest things sometimes. Here’s the Sports Section. I gotta go. I’m meeting Donald before school. He’s got some stuff called graphite he wants to show me.”

  “Oh yeah. Graphite. We have that stuff at the office. What does Donald plan to do with it?”

  “He says it’s black and kind of smoky lookin’. So we’re thinkin’ it could maybe add little puffs of smoke to the volcano if we can rig it up properly.”

  “Great idea!” Frank drained his coffee cup. He was so glad that he liked Donald. The idea of Emma and Donald busy with little bursts of greasy smoke made him positively jubilant.

  CHAPTER 60

  Frank dropped his car off at Minute Muffler on the way home from work on Tuesday and walked the rest of the way. On Lyndale Drive he passed four different sets of people and their dogs. Two of the dogs were Labradors and they were the two that made a point of coming over to see him. On the weekend he’d take Emma to the Humane Society to pick one out. Hopefully there’d be a Lab, or at least a mongrel with lots of Lab in it.

  Frank looked forward to having a dog in the family, now that he was used to the idea. He had discussed it with Denise and she seemed fine with it. She liked dogs all right.

  He had driven her to the group home today, and it had gone rather nicely, he thought, except for the part when she said it was good to die young. Oh, and the part where she didn’t want to talk about Donald and how great he was. Other than that she had chatted with him and smiled at him and appeared bright in the shade of the old oaks.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it, Frank,” she had said, “the types of things that stay with you over the years? I remember the silliest things.”

  They were sitting at a picnic table in the yard of the old house on River Avenue where Denise was stationed for the next phase of her recovery, as they called it. This thing she was doing that Frank was afraid to hope for.

  “And if I ever learned anything important,” she went on, “I sure don’t recall it now.”

  “What silly thing are you thinking about?” Frank asked.

  Denise lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, as if to force the nicotine along to every drug-starved nook and cranny in her body.

  “Well, I had this aunt, Aunt Floss,” she said. “Her name was Florence, but no one called her that. She was all pink and fluffy and she moved about in clouds of powder and perfume. Her job was being a cosmetics clerk at The Bay.”

  “I’ve never heard of Aunt Flossie before.” Frank reached across for Denise’s free hand.

  “Just Floss.” She laughed.

  Frank knew that one day when Denise laughed like that it would be for the last time. And he might not be there for it. And even if he was, he wouldn’t know it was the last time. This could be it, right now! This could be her last laugh.

  “Anyway,” Denise said, “she was my dad’s oldest sister. She’s dead now. Died pretty young of a heart attack; she was forty-four I think. A good age to die.”

  “Why on earth would you think forty-four is a good age to die?” Frank asked. “That’s younger than me. It’s awfully young, don’t you think?”

  “No.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray where it joined an assortment of other butts.

  The wind rose at that moment and all the ashes from the ashtray blew away, many of them into Denise’s face. Frank wished they had landed on him instead. It seemed a very nasty thing to have happened to his wife
. But she didn’t seem to mind. He considered telling her about Garth’s wish to be cremated and then decided it wasn’t the right time. It was, after all, a rather dark anecdote.

  “Floss gave me one of the most useless pieces of advice I’ve ever received from a person, but it’s one that stuck with me.”

  “What was it?” Frank pushed the ashtray with its naked butts to the far end of the table.

  “When she came to visit us,” Denise said, “she used to sleep in my room with me and I would stand and watch while she went through her beauty routine.”

  “Did she sleep in your bed with you?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “That must have been weird.”

  “I don’t remember that part of it being weird.” Denise lit another cigarette. “Are you going to let me tell my story?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Okay. So Floss would set herself up at my desk with her makeup mirror and a whole bunch of little pots of goop. She’d undress from the waist up and I would stare at her swaying breasts and the soft rolls of fat that folded over the waistband of her half slip.

  “Her advice was: ‘Always remember, Denise, that in the world of skin care, the face includes the neck, the chest and the breasts too.’ She’d place her hand flat under her breasts till it disappeared entirely, to show me where her face ended and the rest of her began. I would be bundled in my flannelette pajamas, housecoat and slippers, watching Floss in her flimsy slip, her breasts pointed towards the floor, bravely rubbing the perfumed lotions into her skin. Anyway, I retained that particular piece of advice.”

  Frank was lost in the picture of Floss’ downward pointing breasts.

  He digested the story and watched Denise smoke. She flicked her butt onto the grass, where it smoldered and died. Frank forced himself not to retrieve it and place it in the ashtray where it belonged.

  “Emma has a boyfriend,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?” Denise lit yet another cigarette.

  “His name’s Donald Griffiths and he seems really nice.”