by Carrie Mac
“Dad?” I sat up.
“Maevey. Maevey Gravy. Groovy Maevey Gravy.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Sure.”
“Where have you been?”
“Here and there. Sometimes here. Sometimes there.”
He groped the wall until he found the switch for the living room. All of a sudden everything was illuminated in that hot, bright light that happens after the darkest dark. His face glistened with sweat. His T-shirt was soaked under each arm. His hair was flattened. There was a stain down the front of his shirt.
“Did you puke on yourself?”
“Maybe just a little.” He held his thumb and finger apart about an inch.
“Where’s your truck?”
“Friend.”
“A friend drove? A friend has your truck?”
“She drove. She has the truck.”
“Who is she?”
“There is no she,” he growled. “I’m not so drunk that I don’t get what you’re implying. Besides, it’s none of your business.”
“Not my business?”
“Nope.”
“Where the fuck are you, Dad?”
“Here, baby.”
He yanked me into a hug. He reeked of vomit and booze and sweat. I tried to pull away, and he held me tighter, the damp from his armpit wetting the back of my neck.
“You’re not here.” I twisted out of his grip. “You’re totally gone!”
He let out a long, boozy sigh. “You want to talk existentialism?”
“No.”
“Existentialism. The study of existence. That painting.” He flung his arm, gesturing at the painting of us in the meadow. “Did that moment exist?”
“Why are we talking about the painting?”
“Do you, Maeve Glover, believe in the existence of that moment?”
“I remember it. I remember the smell of flowers everywhere. I remember we drove up there in the truck. You brought apples.”
“Now, see.” He wagged a finger in my face. “That’s where you’re wrong. I made that moment up. It never happened. It never existed. Because your mom never let me see you when you were that old.”
“Because you were drunk then. Just like now.”
“Sure, if you want to simplify it.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Tears welled up, but I was not going to cry. I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut. “This is so—”
“So what?” He opened his arms, his empty palms face up, part appeal, part surrender. “So what, Maeve?”
“The painting is a lie.”
“But it’s not. I made it up. Now it exists. And you have all those wonderful memories. That is magic.”
It wasn’t magic. He had just destroyed one of my best memories. It was mean and cruel, and he could never take it back.
What now?
The baby was due in fifty-eight days.
The boys were killing off the kings in Gnomenville.
Claire kept pacing the house. Upstairs, downstairs, in each room, as if maybe if she looked often enough, she would find him.
But maybe on one of her trips through the house, she would walk right out the door. Because she had once before, when the twins were about a year old. He was sober when they got married, and he stayed sober until the boys were born, and then he slipped, and instead of getting back up, he kept falling and falling, until she packed the babies up and went to the Sunshine Coast and stayed with Grandma until he drove into the ditch and blacked out. When he came to, he had scared himself enough that he stopped.
“I’m going to bed,” I said. “You should too.”
“Great idea.” He stripped off his soiled shirt and curled up on the couch and shut his eyes. “Night-night, Maeve.”
I picked up his shirt, holding the stinking thing away from me with two fingers. I was going to wash it for him, help him hide this one little part. I watched him slip quickly into sleep, one hand resting on the floor, the other resting on his chest as his breathing slowed into snoring. He was ugly. He was an ugly drunk.
I dropped the shirt and went to bed, conjuring Salix’s kisses, those sweet, weightless moments. I wouldn’t let Dad take over. I wouldn’t worry about him. Or at least I’d try not to.
—
When I got up the next morning, Claire was sitting cross-legged at one end of the couch, knitting. Her belly sat on her lap. It looked like the baby had grown significantly overnight.
“Did you see him?” Claire set down her knitting. “I can still smell it. Even with the doors and windows open, I can smell it.” She nodded at a throw pillow tossed on the floor by the stairs. “I can even tell he used that pillow. It reeks.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Claire picked up her knitting and started again, hooking the yarn around the needle in quick, angry motions. “It’s not your fault.”
But maybe it was? Maybe when I came, the balance shifted, and everything slid off-kilter.
“This is your dad’s problem,” Claire said to her needles. “Not yours. We’ve been here before. And he was here with your mother, too. And before that it was even worse. Let’s hope he gets through and comes back new and improved before the baby arrives. That’s the best I’ve got right now. I don’t have the energy or inclination to kick him out, so we’ll just stumble along like this for a while.”
—
After the kisses last night, I’d pictured this morning. I would tell Claire everything—climbing the ropes, the picnic at the top, the flamingo glasses, the three boys, the drummers, tea and cookies and the peacocks on the teacups and Salix playing the violin, the kiss good night. And she would smile and gush and be so happy for me. I wasn’t going to tell her about the other kisses, or about Salix’s hand up my shirt. I was going to tell her everything up to that.
Instead I didn’t tell her about any of it, and I didn’t tell her about seeing Dad, either. What was the point? She was too distracted by the one to hear anything about the other. I kicked the pillow down the stairs and followed it. I stuffed it into the washing machine—there was the soiled shirt; he must’ve put it there before he left—and turned it on. I put both hands on the counter and stared at the floor. Dust, lint, a wayward gnome, a quarter, and a stub of one of the thick red pencils Dad used at work. I closed my eyes and went back to that first kiss, and then the one after that, and the one after that, and so on. I folded them into my palm like so many jasmine petals, fragrant and delicate, and I held on to them, perhaps a little too tight.
Salix arrived on her bike promptly at two o’clock that afternoon. I had completely forgotten that we’d made plans to take the boys to the spray park in Strathcona. When I answered the door, I was still in my pajamas, and I hadn’t so much as washed my face or brushed my teeth. I’d been sitting up in bed, sketching and worrying about Dad, and had finally decided to text my mom about something more meaningful than how the weather was, and yes, I was taking my vitamins. I still had my phone in my hand. Send.
Dad is drinking too much again. He’s messing everything up. Claire is so angry. I kissed Salix. Please advise.
“Salix! Hi!” I tucked myself behind the door as if I were naked and not just disheveled. “You’re here!”
“Am I early?”
“Nope.” I invited her in. “I’m not ready, that’s all. Wait here for a minute.”
I dashed upstairs and found the boys on the deck, smashing handfuls of gnomes together on a piece of green felt covered with dried red paint.
“Carnage,” Corbin said.
“That’s all blood,” Owen said.
“Okay, the war needs to pause because I’m taking you to the water park right now,” I said. “Like, get your suits while I pack a snack and we’re leaving right now. My friend is here and she’s ready to go and I totally forgot all about it because—” I stopped myself. “Whatever. Let’s go. Now!”
“Your friend?” Owen said.
“You don’t have any frie
nds,” Corbin said.
“It’s the girl from the ferry,” I said. “The one you sold jokes to? And then the park? She brought you drinks.”
“That girl is here?” He still sat on the floor, a pile of presumably dead gnomes in his lap.
“Is she your girlfriend now?” Owen asked.
“None of your business,” I said. “Let’s go. Grab your bike helmets.”
“But I can’t ride with a broken arm!” Corbin said.
“Shit.” I thought quickly. “You’ll ride in the trailer.”
“That’s for groceries,” Corbin protested. “Or babies. I changed my mind. I can ride.”
“No you can’t.”
“I can!”
Why had I agreed to bike there? Maybe the kisses had made me a bit stupid, because I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was ten, when I fell off and broke my wrist and wisely declared never again.
Maeve Glover died suddenly today while riding a bicycle that she had no business riding. She was hit by a semi truck after she failed to stop at a stop sign because she forgot how to work the brakes. Survived by her twin brothers and the Miraculous Girlfriend, she will be remembered as stupid in the end, despite being a talented artist who—
“Maeve?” Claire called from inside. “Honey? Do you want me to offer Salix some tea or something?”
“No! We’re coming.” I grabbed the boys’ hands and pulled them inside. And then, in a whisper: “Just get ready to go. Please?”
—
Owen didn’t want to ride his bike. He said it was too far. With too many streets to cross. And too steep on the way back.
“I’ll make sure we’re all safe,” Salix said. “And I’ll help you walk your bike up on the way home, okay?”
“I guess.” Owen stuffed Hibou into his bike basket and climbed on. “If I have to.”
Corbin stood beside the bike trailer, arms crossed, his blue cast dirty and covered in marker.
“I can ride with one arm!”
“Either get in the trailer,” I said, “or stay home. Those are your two choices. I don’t care which one you go with.”
“Stupid.” Corbin flopped into the trailer. “Dumb trailer.”
“Going happily? Both of you?” I said. “Or not at all. Choose now.”
“Going!” Corbin hollered.
“Going,” Owen muttered. He did up his helmet and sighed. “Happily, I guess.”
I tried to focus on the road, the stop signs, the turns, Salix to my left and so comfortable on the bike that it was nothing for her to twist and face me, chatting, or to ride with one hand. I clutched the handlebars of Claire’s bike, testing the brakes every few seconds, lurching down the hill. Owen stuck close to me, doing the same, with Corbin piping up from the rear.
“Go faster!”
“You don’t even know how to ride a bike right.”
“You’re too slow!”
“Shut up, Corbin!” I hollered.
“I don’t have a little brother,” Salix said, like she was making an excuse for my outburst. “Let alone two the same age.” But it didn’t matter, because I was embarrassed that I’d shouted at him like that.
“Sorry, Corbin.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It does,” Salix said. “Apologize to her, man. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Sorry, Maeve,” he groaned.
Both boys forgot they were grumpy by the time we arrived. With their helmets and clothes still on, they ran straight for the water, which shot up from the concrete and out of old hydrants and along a little culvert running along the edge, where kids could float boats and race sticks to the drain.
Salix and I found a spot on the grass in the shade and spread out a blanket. I sat cross-legged, and Salix sat with her long tanned legs stretched out in front, leaning back on her hands. After a couple of minutes she lay back with one arm folded behind her head. She pointed to the sky.
“That cloud looks like an elephant.”
The boys were jumping and stomping in the little stream. Salix reached for my hand. “Come on.” She drew me down beside her.
“It doesn’t look like an elephant,” I said. “It looks like a velociraptor.”
“It does not look like a velociraptor.”
“Wings.” I pointed. “Beaky head. There.”
And then Owen was standing beside her, dripping and shivering and blocking the sun.
“I’m hungry.”
I sat up and pulled out the snacks. Owen wrapped himself in a towel and then took a muffin and an apple into a wedge of hot sunshine by the playground.
Salix patted the blanket. “Come back?”
“Wait for it,” I said.
“What?”
“Just wait,” I said. And then: “See?”
Corbin sprinted toward us. He’d commandeered a water gun from somewhere—no guns allowed at our house—and was scanning the area, the gun wedged under his broken arm.
“Hostile territory!” he shouted. “Food drop required! Now, now!”
I tossed him a muffin. He caught it and kept running, circling back around to the spray park to join a group of armed boys crouched behind a wall.
“Do you want a muffin too?” I said. “Raspberry oatmeal. Claire made them. She’s a really good baker.”
“Thanks.” Salix sat up. “She seems really nice.”
“I lucked out in the stepmother department.”
But Claire was more than just a stepmother. She’d parented me for almost twelve years, even if it was part-time. She was my brothers’ mother. She was my dad’s wife. If she left—and of course she’d take the boys with her—Dad would have nothing left here.
And it would be his fault if he ended up in a seedy room in one of the cockroach- and bedbug-infested hotels. Or a room in a shared house. And where would I stay when I came to visit? With Claire and the boys? With Dad? What a mess.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” I didn’t want to unload on Salix again. I didn’t want Salix to think that my life was always wobbly, even if it was. I pulled out my sketchbook and searched for something to draw. A toddler in the sandbox, filling a red bucket with tiny handfuls of sand. Two old ladies sitting on a bench. Orthopedic shoes.
“Show me?” Salix said.
“No.” I closed the sketchbook. “Sorry.”
“Someday, though. Right?”
“Right.” I picked at the grass and sprinkled some on her shirt. “Gnomenical weeds,” I said. “According to Gnomantic legend, grass carries magical powers. The leaders of the Percival and Wren kingdoms have used it for centuries in their battle for domination over each other.”
“I have no idea what you just said. Does that mean that you just put a spell on me?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Salix said. “I don’t mind. But now I’m going to stop talking about it so that I don’t end up saying something really, supremely corny.”
“Go ahead.” I sprinkled more grass on her. “By the power of Gnomenical weed, I command you to tell me.”
“Okay. How about…” Salix paused. “How about: Baby, you don’t need to work your magic on me, because I’ve been under your spell since the moment we met.” She blushed. Deeply. From her neck up. “Oh, God.” Salix flopped back onto the blanket.
Salix had meant it to be a joke. Only we both knew it wasn’t. Not really. Not quite.
“That is corny as hell.” I laughed.
“I know, right?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah. Corny.” I lay beside her, staring at the sky again. I reached for Salix’s hand and pointed to a cloud. “That one actually looks like a stalk of corn.”
“No it doesn’t.” Salix’s hand was warm in mine. “It looks like a velociraptor.”
—
The ride home was a lot harder, and by the time we got to the last hill, we were all pushing bikes, except Corbin, who ran ahead to open the bike locker. Once the bi
kes were all back where they belonged, the boys disappeared inside and Salix and I made our way up the parking garage ramp. Salix took my hand and stopped me in the alley. Up above, orchestra music drifted out of Mr. Heidelman’s open windows. Cymbals clashed, flutes twittered.
“Was it weird?” Salix said. “What I said? At the park? I was trying to be funny, but—”
“What’s weird is talking about Gnomenical legend,” I said. I’d gone on to explain about Gnomenville at length, so much that Salix was now completely up to date with the political situation and the threats to the warring factions and the daily goings-on of innocent Percivals and Wrens caught up in the crossfire. “And by talking, I mean on and on and on and on. Sorry about that. I start rambling when I’m—”
“Nervous,” Salix said. “Me too.”
Her hand was hot in mine. The heat traveled up my arm and across my chest. Up to my cheeks.
“I like you, Maeve.” Salix bit her lip. She looked away before adding, “A lot.”
“I like you.” The heat sank down, and I ached with a warm heaviness between my legs. “A lot too.”
We stood there for a moment, both looking away, and then looking at each other, and then we kissed. And kissed again. And again. Until the boys sang out from the deck above, “Maeve and Salix, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!” I pulled away and looked up. Corbin and Owen and Claire all leaned over the railing, grinning down at us.
“Don’t let us interrupt.” Claire waved. “But I do have lemonade, and cookies.”
Mr. Heidelman peered over his railing too. “I wondered what the noise was about.”
“Come over, Mr. Heidelman,” Claire said. “Lemonade and cookies!”
“Come up, Salix!” Corbin called down. “We’ll show you Gnomenville.”
“How can I resist that?” Salix said. “Now that I know so much about it.” She grinned at me.
Something fell from up above. It was Hibou, landing in the rowan tree by the gate.