by William Bell
— Who was?
— The big-shot class president and all his suck-ups. You know—rugby team, dance committee, Students’ Council. The Lakeside crowd.
— That’s what you call the in-crowd at this school?
— Most of them live in Lakeside. They’re a clique.
— Did they bother Khan a lot?
— He was a jerk. I guess he asked for it. But every once in a while one of them, especially Tattaglia, would really get on his case. Goad him, like. They wouldn’t leave him alone.
— Getting back to May 3. What did you see?
— It happened fast. Tattaglia walks past Khan. He was sitting alone, minding his own business. She says something to him. He jumps up and goes after her. Next thing you know, the rugby goons have him down on the floor.
— And it ended there?
— Yeah, except …
— Except what?
— Popham goes over and messes with Khan’s lunch somehow. I couldn’t see what he did, though.
[tape ends]
TAPE #10
— All right, Miss Tattaglia. Just a few more points and we’ll have to let this investigation take its course. I’m not sure what the Chief of Police wants next.
— What do you mean, “take its course”? I told you everything I know.
— We’ve been talking to Mr. Popham.
— Jason? So?
— So we know what happened. All of it.
— All of it? All of what?
— I think it’s important that, before we go any further, I should inform you of your rights.
— My—Hey! Wait a minute! What the hell’s going on here?
— You have the right—
— Stop! Shut up! What are you doing? What did he say?
— to have a lawyer present. I am arrest—
— I said shut up! Look, it wasn’t me! It was his idea, right from the start!
— What was his idea?
— The whole thing. It was Jason’s idea.
— Let’s continue this down at the detachment.
[tape ends]
TAPE #11
— It was Gina’s idea.
— Just a minute, Jason. For the record this interview is recorded at the 21st detachment on May 10. I am Sergeant Carl Poole, badge number 1875. Present at the interview are the witness, Jason Popham, his counsel—Identify yourself for the record, please, ma’am.
— Margaret Linford.
— And Sergeant Harry Singleton. Go ahead, Jason. What was whose idea?
— The whole thing. Gina came up with the plan, and we went along. It was … it was supposed to be a prank. He was so damn high and mighty all the time. You—
— You mean Akmed Khan?
— Yeah. Anyway, you should have heard him, saying we were all inferior, with low morals. He called us … he actually used the word decadent. I mean, how pompous, how conceited can you get?
— You wanted to take him down a peg.
— Yeah, that was it. That was all. It wasn’t … We didn’t …
— Go ahead.
— Well, Gina said it would be funny if we could get him drunk. Because he was so death on alcohol and all that. Saying it was a sin. So the bunch of us, we’re sitting around one day during lunch, outside, it was a nice day, and she suggested the idea. Somebody said, how can you get a guy who won’t drink to drink? She laughed and said it would be easy.
He always sat by himself in the caf. He always drank a can of root beer, like a kid in elementary school, with a straw. She would find a way to get him to leave his place for a few minutes, then I would pour some vodka into his root beer. You know, because you can’t smell it or taste it. So that day, she walks by and leans over and says something to him. I don’t know what. Something dirty, probably. He blushed like crazy and his eyes bugged out. He jumped to his feet and ran after her, and then grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. Can I have something to drink?
— Sergeant Singleton?
— Sure. Be right back.
— Go ahead, Jason.
— Well, I guess Gina wasn’t expecting him to grab her. She let out a shriek and slapped him. Then a couple of guys, they’re on the rugby team with me, they wrestled him down. When they saw the teacher monitor coming, they let him up and took off fast. So did Gina.
— And you accomplished your mission?
— Yeah, I got a good four ounces into the can. When he came back to his spot he looked even madder. He gulped most of the pop down in one shot, gathered up his lunch stuff and left. We all sort of followed him, hung back, like, so he wouldn’t notice. He went outside and sat on one of the benches by the field. Then when the bell sounded he headed back in. He was wobbling a little by then.
— Here’s your drink. Water okay?
— Thanks. So, anyway, we followed him up to his locker. Then we sort of …
— Do you want to take a moment, Jason?
— I want to … to get this out. We, we stood around him and made fun of him. Insults, like. Saying stupid things. Allah this and that, and shouldn’t he be home, grovelling on his prayer mat. He slammed his locker shut and pushed through us. He was weaving pretty good by then and he had a funny look on his face like he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.
We followed him down the hall, hounding him all the way. He reached the top of the stairs and he just … he just …
— Take it easy, Jason.
— He seemed like he was trying to walk out into thin air. Like there were no stairs there at all, as if the hallway continued. And he … just dropped down out of sight. Disappeared. Somebody screamed, but by then we were all moving fast in the opposite direction.
— Take your time. There’s no hurry.
— I called everyone together and we made sure we got our story straight. We knew somebody would be asking us what happened. Look, we didn’t want to hurt him. It was an accident. If only …
— Only what, Jason?
— If only he’d been more like us.
[tape ends]
the leaves in this country
Mrs. Perkins awoke to the double tap of cat feet on her duvet. Without opening her eyes, she reached out her hand and ruffled the fur along Sadie’s arched back, earning a contented purr.
Hello, old girl. You want your saucer of milk, don’t you? Well, be patient. I can’t get out of bed as quickly as I used.
The cat leaped indignantly to the floor as Mrs. Perkins drew her knees to her chest, pushed aside the duvet and levered herself upright. She pulled on her housecoat, slid her feet into her slippers and slowly got to her feet, her lower back cracking audibly. She made her way slowly toward the kitchen, tying the belt of her housecoat into a bow.
It seemed her joints, especially her feet, were stiffer with every passing day. Look at the way I walk, rocking side to side on club feet like a decrepit old hag, she thought. They’ll be after me to use a cane next. Oh well, my back is still straight. I can still hold my head up.
The kitchen was bright with morning sunshine. Mrs. Perkins plugged in the kettle, removed the milk jug from the refrigerator, and poured some into Sadie’s saucer before placing the jug on the table. The tea things had been laid out the night before, as usual: the Spode pot and sugar bowl with the sterling silver spoon, the single cup and plate, the crystal butter dish. She’d have to start keeping the butter in the refrigerator overnight. Summer was on its way.
Mrs. Perkins put two slices of bread in the toaster, then padded into the living room to draw the drapes. The rising sun lit the garish white bricks of the apartment building at the bottom of the street, the garbage pails in front of the houses, the cars parked bumper to bumper along the curb.
That seedy-looking man in the triplex, the one who seemed never to wear a shirt, had left the mattress on his lawn again, with the sign on it: $25. Heavens, as if anyone would buy it. Turning the whole street into a yard sale. The entire nest of them in that building didn’t care a whit about how the neig
hbourhood looked. Mrs. Perkins made a mental note to phone the city again and complain.
She remembered the way it used to be, the street canopied by elms, the clip-clop of the horses that drew milk wagon and bread wagon, every car in its own driveway. Course, in those days no one had two cars. Some people didn’t even have a car at all. And you knew your neighbours then. You could send the boys three blocks away to the park to skate or play baseball without worrying. You could see the lake from here, and Mrs. Bunn’s house and crabapple trees. When the boys were children they climbed those trees. But they had torn down Mrs. Bunn’s lovely bungalow and chain-sawed the fruit trees to make room for that monstrous white apartment building.
The boys. Grown now. Men. Simon in Vancouver and Andrew somewhere or other in the Caribbean.
Her reverie was broken when she heard the toaster pop. She returned to the kitchen, made the tea, sat down with her toast and butter. Today she would work in the potting shed for a while, repotting her houseplants, then make a start on the garden. The frost was long out of the ground. Summer already—well, not quite. The beginning of June, then. The years pass so quickly, she mused, spreading butter on her toast, and yet each day seems to drag.
June, she said out loud. Her birthday, in fact. She thought about the boys again, hoping that Simon would call. Andrew wouldn’t, she was sure. How different they were. Simon a successful stockbroker, a good head for business like his father, and far more successful than poor Gerald ever was. Still, Gerald’s insurance business had provided well for them over the years. This house, education for the boys, the occasional holiday. If he fell short of the hopes she had had when she married him, at least it wasn’t for want of hard work. But Andrew, well, she didn’t know what to think. Marrying that black girl and teaching English in the Caribbean village where she grew up. What a waste. A master’s degree from a good university and look where he ended up. Not that Mrs. Perkins had anything against the blacks. But what could Andrew and that girl have been thinking? What about children, neither fish nor fowl, belonging to neither group? Mrs. Perkins had seen it before. That friend of Gerald’s who married that Jewish girl years ago. Nothing but trouble there.
Mrs. Perkins looked at the clock. Goodness, she’d been sitting and thinking and lost track of the time! She got up and washed her dishes and rinsed out the teapot, then went to her bedroom to change.
The sun on her back was comforting as she toiled in the potting shed. She was pleasantly warm in her cardigan and smock. Repotting her houseplants was an almost daunting task, but she enjoyed it. It was as if she were giving each plant a new home. On his last visit Simon had counted them—the ivies, the hibiscus, African violets, every one of them—and had announced that she cared for thirty-one plants. Why do you need so many? he had asked, sipping his scotch in the living room, his legs crossed, one arm resting languidly on the arm of the sofa. They must be a lot of work. They keep me company, she had replied pointedly. But the remark had been lost on him.
I wonder if he’ll remember to call and wish me happy birthday, she reflected once again. She couldn’t remember if he had telephoned last year. These days, bits of her memory were breaking off, crumbling away like loose dirt.
A child’s shout drew her attention from the spider plant she was dividing. She tamped down the soil impatiently and walked across the grass to look. The two boys were in her driveway again, bouncing a tennis ball off the side of her house, their shouts echoing in the space between her home and her neighbour’s. She had told the boys a dozen times not to play there.
Go away! she demanded. You’re damaging the bricks. Go and play in your own driveway.
We’re not hurtin’ nothin’, the older of the two said.
My heavens, Mrs. Perkins muttered, angered by his atrocious grammar as much as his impertinence. When was it that children his age ceased respecting their elders? Not to mention their betters. Look at him. His hands and face are dirty, his hair unkempt, the mud on his arm smeared over that fading bruise.
Why do you insist on coming here? she asked. Play in your own yard.
Mom says we can’t, the younger one sniffled, so quietly she could barely hear him.
The two urchins, brothers, belonged to a single mother who lived in the triplex. Mrs. Perkins knew for a fact that she left them alone sometimes, taking off with men who swept into the driveway in flashy cars and honked their horns impatiently. Just yesterday afternoon the woman, in her late twenties—probably had the brats when she was still a teenager, and a good chance it was with two different fathers—was sunning herself in the front yard, lolling on a chaise longue, smoking and sipping from a plastic glass. Drinking up her welfare cheque, no doubt. Flipping through magazines, pausing only to holler at her two boys. A hard-looking character, to be sure.
Still, it wasn’t their fault, Mrs. Perkins supposed. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so hard on them. She addressed the older boy, who stood holding the ball.
Well, I’d rather you didn’t play here. You’ll mark the brick with that ball, she repeated. When he didn’t reply she added, What happened to your arm? Did you fall?
None of your business, he said in a low voice. His brother giggled.
Mrs. Perkins felt the flush of anger on her neck. Go on, then! she ordered. At once!
The older boy defiantly bounced the tennis ball a few times to make his point, then turned and sauntered off, his brother, wiping a smear of mucus from his upper lip, trailing behind. Mrs. Perkins kept her eye on them until they had crossed the street.
I told you to go play someplace else! she heard behind her back as she returned to her task. The mother, howling like a shrew so the entire neighbourhood knew her business. Honestly!
After she had worked a while longer, Mrs. Perkins sat down on the steps of her back stoop and pulled off her work gloves. Mrs. Perkins cast her eye over her yard, where, within a month, her garden would begin to flourish. Her pride. Still, she never saw the blooms without wishing this place was more like the England of her youth. There, the coming of spring was gentle, like a soft breeze that grew slightly warmer each day. There, you could watch the trees and hedges bud and green, swelling with life. Flowers emerged delicately, their hues gradually changing the appearance of the garden every day.
Here, there was no spring, really. One day snow covered the ground, another it had melted off and the first blush of red on the maples appeared. The new season charged in like a bully into an elevator. The leaves in this country had no subtlety; they burst out overnight, brash and impatient.
Sighing, Mrs. Perkins got slowly to her feet and went inside to prepare lunch.
As she ate her soup and tuna sandwich, her eyes repeatedly rose to the clock on the wall above the sink. One o’clock and still no telephone call from Simon. Her mail lay on the table before her—flyers and bills, not a birthday card in the lot. How inconvenient would it be, she thought, to pick up a card, sign it and drop it in the post?
She put her dishes in the sink and donned her gardening smock, intending to spend the afternoon putting in a few beds of annuals. Some of her perennials were already peeking above the soil. She went outside to find the two boys in her driveway again, this time chalking the outline of a hopscotch game on the asphalt.
Here! You! Stop that! I told you to stay out of my drive. Now go home or I’ll call the police!
The boys gathered up their coloured chalk and raced across the street, then turned to stare. The little one stuck out his tongue.
She returned to the yard, grumbling to herself, and knelt at the edge of the grass. To calm herself, she savoured the rich aroma of the damp earth as she turned it with a trowel. After a few minutes, she got up off her knees, walked to the house and propped the kitchen door open. If the telephone rang, she wanted to hear it.
The bedside alarm rang shrilly at five o’clock. Mrs. Perkins always set it when she took her afternoon nap. If she slept too long she would be awake all night. Even as it was, she often had periods of wakefulness. She would
read until she felt sleepy again. Part of getting old, she told herself.
She went to the front door, picked up the newspaper from the verandah and carried it through to the kitchen. She tuned the radio to an afternoon phone-in talk show. Today’s topic was free daycare. The moderator, an articulate young man who remained refreshingly objective during the show, was explaining how a cabinet minister had floated the idea of subsidized daycare, including no-cost service for the poor.
More handouts, Mrs. Perkins grumbled to herself as she sliced the excess fat from two small pork chops. Everybody has their hand out to the government nowadays. What help did Gerald and I ever get? What’s the point of working hard if you get everything for free? Like that woman across the road. Two kids, probably never worked a day in her life. Mrs. Cowan at church last week had opined that some of these young women have kids so they can get the baby bonus or mother’s allowance—whatever it’s called—and not have to get a job.
Mrs. Perkins glanced at the clock, then poured a tin of mushroom soup over the chops and placed the pan in the oven. She emptied a can of peas into a small pot and put it on the stove, ready to be turned on at the right moment, and began to peel two potatoes. She hoped Simon would call before dinner was ready; it would make her meal so much more pleasant.
But she ate her dinner in front of the television, watching a British drama on the public television network. The British are so much
more civilized, she thought. You always say that, Andrew used to taunt her. Ever heard of soccer riots? he would add. Still, she knew she was right.
The movie ended at seven. Mrs. Perkins got wearily to her feet, went into the kitchen and began to wash the supper dishes. I was hungry today, she thought to herself. Two chops and two potatoes! Well, I’m stiff in the mornings and my memory quits on me sometimes, but I still have a healthy appetite. She glanced at the telephone on the wall.
He’s not going to call. He’s forgotten.
She hung up the tea towel and returned to the living room. She sat in her rocking chair by the window where she would often knit for a while before the nine o’clock news. I’ll give him until the news comes on, she decided. Perhaps he’s late getting home from work. And yet he always calls as soon as he gets home, she reminded herself, clamping her lips together to stop the quivering of her chin.