by Fran Kimmel
“Then will she come?”
“Maybe,” Eddy said. I threw him a warning look but he couldn’t help himself, he had this obligation to answer each of her questions. “We left her that note. On Auntie Vic’s apartment door. Remember? The note tells her to look for the flag.”
She looked around wildly for Elizabeth to pop out of nowhere and land in that tree. A Slow Down, Children Playing sign was getting ready to drop off its post. What children? And what business did they have playing on the road anyway? You’d never guess that shacks were hidden in the tangle of bushes beyond with people in them, children no less. Unless we were the only ones left.
“What if the note falls off?”
“We taped it on good. It’ll stick.”
Rebee held her breath, crossing her arms over her middle and squeezing. “What if a wind blows it away?”
Eddy scooped her up and pressed his fingers over hers and yanked on the bottom of the flag. “See? It’s not going anywhere.”
I could have killed my sister just then. “Enough already. Let’s go back.”
Eddy hoisted Rebee onto his shoulders and I weaved along behind them into the cabin, swatting and slapping. We fixed ourselves cheese and pickle sandwiches, and Eddy packed extra to take with him to the plant. Then we made a bed on the floor for Rebee with the blankets I brought up in the car. It wasn’t fancy, but she was used to less and never seemed to notice where she got put.
“So, you gonna be all right?” Eddy asked on the way out.
It was weird, me seeing him off to work like that, Rebee underfoot, like we were an ordinary family saying ordinary goodbyes. “Sure, yah. Don’t work too hard.”
“Never do.”
“Are you coming back?” Rebee looked at Eddy, pitifully earnest. That kid had so much coming and going in her life she couldn’t trust the difference. There was nothing ordinary here.
“’Course I’m coming back,” Eddy assured her. “You’ll still be sleeping on that nice bed there. Then I’ll make you some pancakes.”
Rebee watched him go like she almost believed him.
* * *
Eddy did three nights at the plant — six to six — then he pulled some time off for what he called our “summer vacation.” Some vacation. Me hobbling about, Elizabeth milling around in the back of our thoughts. Rebee kept insisting we walk down to the tree to check on the flag. She wanted to make that trip a hundred times a day. Either that, or park her butt in the dirt by the side of the road to wait.
Eddy rigged up a “build your own forest” game with an apple crate box lined with wax paper. He and Rebee kept going into the trees and coming back to the shack with as much as they could carry. Chunks of moss and rocks and twigs. Dead leaves and pinecones and other forest stuff. They arranged it all in the bottom of the crate. He got her to pretend they were angels looking down from heaven and the apple crate was their special kingdom. Only angels could see the tiny people running through the forest and swimming in the rusty old jar lid filled with water, which Eddy insisted was a lake so deep no one would ever find the bottom. Rebee kept bending over the crate, her bum in the air, and yelling, “There’s one. He’s a boy.” Eddy told her his name was Sam. I couldn’t find Sam myself, only bugs crawling and slithering and buzzing about on top of the moss.
After Rebee went to sleep that night, Eddy asked me how many kids I wanted. We’d just made love, so slow and quiet and achingly tender that I felt flushed from head to toe, like all the feelings bottled up inside me had been sucked to my skin, leaving warm purple welts of undeserved Eddy all over me. I might have cried if Rebee wasn’t right there, panting her little girl sleeping breaths on the floor beside us.
He said he wanted lots. He wouldn’t let it go, or me either, for that matter, wrapped so sticky tight I could hardly breathe. Eight maybe. Or ten. Girls preferably. He’d fix up an old school bus and his girls could pile in and out like every day was a church picnic.
Eddy had had enough of boys. He had six brothers, five uncles, twenty-six boy cousins and a cement plant crammed with men. Where he grew up, four shared a bed in a shabby room with a slat of a window too small to climb out of. It had a cracked concrete floor painted grey. I asked Eddy once how they did it, how they crammed themselves into that bed night after night. He said, when one got too big he just left home.
“You’ll make a good mother,” he whispered in the shadows. I wanted to believe him. I stayed in Eddy’s arms even after they went slack, trying to match his slow, steady breaths, trying to find a place for myself inside his pretend kingdom.
* * *
By day five, there was still no sign of Elizabeth. I remember hoping she’d never come back, that she’d disappear forever. What kind of a god-awful sister wished such a thing? But we were traipsing through the trees on the deer path, the forest so thick all around that it felt like we were being woven right into it, my toes so gloriously unhurting they could break into a jog, Rebee on Eddy’s shoulders, both their shorts riding low, matching bum cracks. I could have flipped through a magazine and seen this same picture, assumed it was some daddy with his little girl on his shoulders and mom following close behind, and I’d have thought it’s a damn shame how some folks get to do life while others just get to see it in a magazine. It would never have occurred to me I could be that woman, stepping into this perfect moment with these carefree feet.
“Where are we going, Eddy?” I asked.
“A secret place,” he called back.
“Well how far then?” I was surprised with my hardiness, the spring in my step. I wasn’t even craving a smoke.
“You’ll see.”
The thing that made me crazy was she used to be normal. I’d be blowing smoke rings out the bedroom window, or sneaking out in the middle of the night, while she did homework or sewed curtains or put on an apron and made pudding. He was a miserable old man, our father. A circuit judge. Still is, I’m sure — miserably holding court. I haven’t seen the man in nearly a decade. All those years in that house on Blueberry Hill. It should have been the sisters against the Judge, but she was so damn sweet and cheery, so damn in love with our pathetic little world that I gave up on sisterhood, packed my bags and left her behind. She was only twelve years old. I can’t forgive her for that. For making me believe she’d be all right in that house.
Rebee bounced along the narrow path on top of Eddy’s shoulders, her fingers wrapped in his hair. She didn’t stop nattering. Eddy’s a natterer, too. His best conversations were when nobody was around and he could mumble to himself uninterrupted. He’d be under his truck, plugging some leaky thing, and I’d come up beside and ask, “Who you talking to under there?” and he’d pop his head out, not the least bit embarrassed to get caught, and say, “You find company as good as mine, you can’t shut up.”
We made it to the end of the trail, the foot of his mountain. Eddy’s kingdom was even better than the apple crate, a waterfall seeping out of the mossy rock and falling into a pool of green-blue water.
“So, whadda you think?” Eddy asked, turning quickly so he could see my face. Rebee whipped around with him, giggling. He’d been saving this moment for me, for us, and he was practically bursting to give it away. Eddy was like that. He once waited in his truck in the Lucky Dollar lot for over three hours until a break in my shift just so he could give me the silver necklace with the fairy pendant. When I opened the box and lifted the cotton, I could hear him sigh deeply, like he’d been holding the air in his lungs for hours. The fairy sits cradled naked in the slit of a moon, reaching up to a dangling pink crystal. Silver makes my skin hot and itchy, but I’ve been wearing it ever since.
I stepped over the smooth rocks to the edge and swished my fingers through the water. “It’s our private hot tub. Only really cold.”
Rebee wiggled about on Eddy’s shoulders, wanting down. “Can I go swimming?” she asked, like I was her mother. “Can I?”
“It’s not a swimming pool, Rebee. It’s just something to look at.” Edd
y’s eyes flashed with hurt when I said this. “And you don’t even have a bathing suit,” I added.
Eddy put Rebee on the ground and started to strip out of his boots, socks and jeans. “Come on, Vic. Rebee wants a swim.”
Rebee tucked her arms to her sides and started to shudder, trembling in anticipation. I’d never seen her like that, wanting something that badly.
“All right, then,” I bent to help her with the buckles on her sandals. “But leave your panties on. And I’m not coming in there with you.”
Eddy squatted at the edge and lowered himself slowly to his waist, grimacing as he cut through the water. “Shit, it’s cold,” he muttered, turning towards us from the centre of the small pool, all teeth.
Rebee hopped up and down, pulling down her shorts and yanking off her top as she scuttled over the rocks. I thought she’d throw herself into the pool but she stopped abruptly at the edge.
“What’s wrong, Rebee?” I asked.
Eddy stood in the water, his arms stretched wide. He was just a couple of feet away from her. “Come on, Rebee, jump. Swim to me.”
Rebee backed up a step and hugged her chest.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked again. She couldn’t be cold yet. Her toes were still dry. “Don’t you want to go for a swim?”
“I can’t swim,” she said, small shoulders curling forward. Eddy laughed. Eddy always laughed. “I’m freezing my balls off here, kiddo.”
“I’m gonna drown.” She said this like it was inevitable, like she could feel her lungs filling with water.
“All right. Look. I’m coming. You jump and I’ll catch you.” Eddy got close enough to reach up and grab her. But Rebee took another step backward, butting up against my legs.
“I’m not allowed.”
When I put my hand on her bare back, she flinched. “What do you mean you’re not allowed? I said you could, didn’t I?”
“I’m sposint to stay on the edge,” she pressed against my knees.
I whipped her around by the shoulders so that she faced me. “Did you hear me say that?”
Rebee wouldn’t look at me. Eddy bobbed up and down in the background like an apple, trying to catch my eye.
“No? Well, who then? Who says you’re supposed to stay on the edge?” It was cruel but I was going to make her say it anyway.
“Mommy.” She wasn’t moving a muscle, only the shell of her body left standing on the rock.
“Well, look around. She’s not here, is she?” I pressed too hard, leaving dents on her skin, so I lowered my hands and dropped to my knees in front of her. Rebee stared at the fairy on the end of my chain. “Don’t be a baby, Rebee. We’re not gonna let you drown. Do you want to swim or not?”
“Come on, girl. You can do it,” Eddy shouted enthusiastically behind us. “Don’t leave me out here by myself. Look, I’m a humpback whale.” He fell backwards into a float, boxers ballooning with air.
“I’m not allowed,” she repeated stubbornly, not even turning around to see what Eddy was up to.
“Do you want me to carry you?” I hated the thought of going in there, but I was the only aunt she had.
Rebee shook her head no, looking like she might cry. I sort of hoped she would — it’s what a normal kid would have done — but she just squatted on the rock to put her legs back into her shorts.
Eddy plowed back to the edge, hoisted himself up out of the water and walked over to his clothes, leaving large wet stains on the rock.
“No big deal,” he said, drying his legs with his T-shirt before lighting a smoke. He took a long drag and handed it to me, a dark look passing between us, like we’d failed her somehow. Rebee concentrated on her sandals while Eddy slid his jeans over his wet boxers. “We’ll go swimming with your mom next time, Rebee,” he offered. “How about that?”
Rebee slumped on the cool rock, dazedly staring at Eddy’s shrinking footprints. If my sister were there I’d of drowned her myself. Not that I’d win that fight either. Elizabeth could move through the water like an eel. When the town kids got bused from school to the Chesterfield Hotel pool year after year, Elizabeth glided through the levels, miles ahead of the group. She sewed each new badge to her bathing suit, wearing them like medals. I wondered how many times Rebee was supposed to wait on the water’s edge? How many times had she watched her mother slither from reach, arms dipping in and out, becoming smaller and smaller until she was nothing but a dark speck on the water’s surface?
We silently retraced our steps through the winding forest trail, Eddy in front, me taking up the rear. Rebee wouldn’t ride on Eddy’s shoulders on the way back. A chipmunk shot past without so much as a second glance from her. I wanted to scoop her in my arms and hold her close to my breast. But I wasn’t her mother. I lit a cigarette instead and kept stomping along.
* * *
I told Eddy I was heading into Canmore for a loaf of bread, but I’d have driven to South America to get a drink, to get off that mountain. And I couldn’t bring the bottle back, or Eddy’d pour it down his gullet and that would be that. He wasn’t a mean drunk, but he waxed philosophical and felt sorry for himself. I’d rather get punched in the ear than mop up a man’s tears.
It was easy enough to find Canmore’s main drag. I squeezed my rusted car into a space between two shiny BMWS and slunk along the crowded sidewalk, past the accented voices sipping wine at patio tables, past the beaded bracelets and muscular legs and sun-drenched mountain skin and the trendy little shops with flowers at their doors and crystals in their windows. I kept seeing her face. Where did she go? What happened to the girl with her once-rosy cheeks?
It didn’t take long to find the right place. A real bar reeks of booze-soaked terrycloth and stale cigarettes, makes the ground tremble with its booming bass. There were no women down in that dark hole, just the hard waitress in a skimpy top, shovelling popcorn into wooden bowls from the machine in the corner. The men huddled around tables in their work boots and lumberjack shirts. They looked whipped, like they’d come straight from a shift at Eddy’s cement plant. The bartender never raised an eyebrow, just bagged the bottle like I asked. I pushed up and out again into the hazy evening, and when I got to my car I started to reach in my pocket for my key but hugged my paper bag instead and kept on walking. There’s a creek that winds through the town. I followed its pebbled edge for a long way, until the cheery foreigners and the mountain townspeople finally disappeared, their bubbled chatter no longer in my head. I plunked down in the grass, mountains rising around me like breasts.
I wanted to be like her once. She was easy from the day she was born, no simple feat, seeing as how her arrival brought about the end of my mother, and the end of the Judge, too, for that matter. After my mother’s funeral, Mrs. Nielsen from next door took over. She was our substitute mother, a woman who cooked and sewed and doted over Elizabeth from dusk to dawn. I was four years old when Mrs. Nielsen marched into our lives, same as Rebee was then, only Rebee had a cocktail waitress for a stand-in who was piss poor at the mothering job.
Sometimes when we were little, after Mrs. Nielsen tidied the kitchen and kissed us goodbye and the Judge closed himself in his room for the night, I would climb into Elizabeth’s bed. She’d give a soft squeeze first with her tiny fist and I’d squeeze back. We’d do this over and over until she fell asleep. It was clearly against the Judge’s rules. We were to stay in our own beds in the room we shared. But I’d slip out from under the covers anyway once the room was dark and tiptoe across the cold floor to reach for her hand. I think she couldn’t bear the loneliness of being the only one left awake in the world. Outlasting her in the dark was all she ever asked of me. That and these heartbreak Rebee stints.
I sat on the grass by the creek, the vodka going down like a friend’s encouragement. You’ve done your best, it said. Or maybe it was Eddy I heard.
Eddy always wanted a sister. He had this romantic notion that a sister would have brought out the best in them all. The brothers could have walked her to scho
ol. Bought her dolls for Christmas. They certainly wouldn’t have banged on her head until she screamed uncle, or made her stand with her arms outstretched, a stack of encyclopedias in each.
Sisters were overrated in my opinion. I’d told Eddy this, several times. Maybe he finally believed me, having met the mess that was mine. When Elizabeth stood at my door that first time, a bedraggled sixteen, I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t whispered my name. “Vic, it’s me. Let us in.” She looked hollow, haunted, like she’d been chased through the night. I took the bundle that was wrapped in her sweater, and when I pulled back the layers, I saw my niece for the first time, a scabby plucked chicken with stick arms and legs.
I knew nothing about babies. I dumped out the laundry basket and stuffed it with a cushion from the couch and laid her limp body on top, stomach down at first, but she was sucking pillow so I flipped her onto her side, and wedged her against a towel. Elizabeth collapsed on the floor beside her. I didn’t have a clue what to do next so I left them like that and marched for blocks through the pouring rain to the Army & Navy. I had barely enough cash for a box of diapers. I trolled the aisles and stuffed whatever else looked right down the front of my jacket — sleepers, bibs, blankets, bottles, baby’s applesauce and mashed peas. I can do this, I thought then, as I stood at the till, arms crossed, feet ready to hightail it outta there, while the lady cheerfully counted my Pampers change. Later, as I watched the two, Elizabeth staring blankly at nothing, Rebee sucking at her breast with all her concentration to try and get what she needed, I felt less sure. I told Elizabeth that I stole for her. I told her I’d do it again, as many times as it took to get us through. She pulled a fat wad of cash from her pockets and said I didn’t need to bother — I owed her nothing.
It was something unspeakable. For all my trying to get Elizabeth to talk about it, she said nothing. Not of the father. Not of my father. She’s stayed silent still. I’ve had this dream about going back to Chesterfield to break down the Judge, to hold a knife to his throat until he poured out the story, but the waking part of me can’t face knowing.