Late Breaking

by K. D. Miller

  She isn’t even angry with Halvor. For years after his death, if something bad happened, she would get furious with him for not being there to help her deal with it. Well, maybe that’s the last bit of her grief gone. She’s heard of people actually forgetting what their dead spouses looked like, having to use photographs to bring them to mind. That’s not happening to her, surely. She could still paint Halvor from memory.

  She carries her cobbled-together lunch to the table and sits down. Saws off a slice of baguette and butters it. Patrick gave her the butter bell, after she complained that because she’s on her own it takes her forever to work her way through a pound of butter, so her choices are rancid or hard. There you go, Harriet. All your butter problems solved. She likes Patrick. He’s short and plumpish, a little like her. The two of them can smile directly into each other’s eyes while Ranald stands apart and watches. Patrick teaches grade three—They’re just getting interesting at that age, Harriet, turning into real little individuals—and he acts as a buffer between her and Ranald. Now, can I trust you two while I go and do the dishes? Treating the tension between them like a naughty joke, something to shake a finger at.

  She crunches a sugar snap, thinking how much Halvor would have liked Patrick. Halvor was the one who first got the news that Ranald was gay. She herself had suspected it for years. She felt guilty about his having gone to his father. Wasn’t the mother supposed to be the approachable one?

  But right from the first, Ranald had been like a little pebble. She skidded off him. Couldn’t get in. Trying to interpret his shrieking, wordless demands exhausted her and scattered her wits. She could hardly get a sentence out to Halvor, and when she tried to return to a painting she had started in her seventh month, it was like staring at some stranger’s graffiti.

  Even when he went from being a baby to being a little boy, Ranald stayed closed off from her. She would find him hunched over a skinned knee, crying soundlessly, and would have to beg him to let her see it, let her clean it and put a bandage on it. The two of them spent their days living for the moment Halvor walked through the door. Harriet should have been jealous of the way the boy ran to his father, but all she could feel was guilty relief.

  So of course he came out to Halvor. It happened when he was in third year, doing a combined major in art history and math. They had sold the bungalow by then and moved into the two-bedroom-plus-den condominium Harriet still lives in, and that Ranald is pressuring her to sell. She remembers trying to paint that afternoon in the south-facing den she had turned into a studio, but not being able to concentrate, too aware that Halvor had been with Ranald in his room for hours with the door shut. Was Ranald having second thoughts about being an architect? Then when the door opened and she saw them standing together—the boy with his father’s height, her hair, and a perfect mix of their features—she knew exactly what they had been talking about, what had happened. Ranald’s eyes were wet. He came to her and hugged her, awkwardly. She has tried to remember the embrace alone, to forget the small gesture Halvor made just before it, as if cuing his son to do something he had managed to convince him to do.

  Harriet goes to saw off another slice of baguette, then thinks no. The last time he saw her, Ranald asked pointedly if she had been gaining weight. Patrick said, “Ranald!” but did not contradict him. She has thought about asking Patrick to call her Mom. Would Ranald take it badly? Probably.

  She shakes her head, putting the bread knife down. She did her job, all the mother things, as well as she could. She walked Ranald to school, holding his wrist, since he would not open his hand to hers. She hosted birthday parties with balloons and paper streamers and themed cakes—cowboys, pirates, space rangers. She made Halloween costumes and stuck drawings onto the fridge door and took pictures at every milestone event. But all three of them knew it was a waiting game for her. Just a matter of getting through, doing her time, till she could get back to her brushes and paint. “I was a fake mother, Halvor,” she says, chewing a chunk of tomato. It’s the first time she’s talked to him today. “Totally bogus.” Harriet, you did your best. When she imagines him answering her his accent is as thick as it was when they first met. And the boy survived. He’s as happy as he’s going to be. So.

  She’s pretty sure that’s what he would say, the attitude he would take. He didn’t seem to mind having to be a parent and a half. And the two men loved each other—no doubt about that. She remembers them bent over the blueprints of this cottage—Ranald the young architect answering the questions of Halvor the engineer. The happiest she ever saw Ranald was when he and his father were supervising the construction.

  “I still get a laugh out of the ramp,” Halvor chuckled to her in bed that Friday night after they had driven up to the cottage to spend the weekend by themselves. It was the last night of his life. “He’s got his old parents in wheelchairs already.”

  He drowned the next morning. He had gone for the swim he always took while she fixed lunch for the two of them. She got interested in a talk show on the radio and didn’t notice for a while that he had been in the water longer than usual. The autopsy showed signs of a heart attack.

  Harriet forks a bit of meat loaf. Dips it in mustard. Feels a twinge in her elbow and wonders what her attacker is spending her money on right now. She can just hear Ranald: He’s probably divvying the cash among his friends, having a big old laugh about how easy it was. And he’ll be back. But he’ll bring his friends with him. They’ll take baseball bats to the windows, get in and trash the place. And God help you if you’re here when they come.

  “Keep your hopes up, Ranald.”

  The tone of her voice shocks her—not just the fact that she has spoken aloud. She’s been talking to Halvor for years, but never to Ranald. Would she ever say something like that to his face, something flat and hard like a slap, when he gets going about how utterly helpless she is? Maybe. It would upset Patrick. But for once she can imagine herself doing it.

  She’s always been so careful around her son. There’s never been a big blow-up between them, she’s seen to that. For the first year after Halvor drowned, Ranald could hardly look at her. Hoping to siphon off some of his rage, she made a point of telling him that she blamed herself for his father’s death, that she couldn’t stop wondering whether Halvor had called for her. He never swam far out. If the radio hadn’t been on, might she have heard him?

  As the years passed, she and Ranald achieved a kind of sullen peace. The question they both knew he was silently asking in those early days—why couldn’t it have been you in the water instead of him—was never given voice. She wonders sometimes if he ever voiced it to Patrick. She can imagine Patrick listening calmly, then forgiving and comforting Ranald as he would one of his grade threes.

  Harriet finishes her apple and decides she doesn’t really want ice cream after all. Instead, maybe when she gets back from town she’ll treat herself to a gin and tonic. She carries her lunch dishes into the kitchen, puts them on the counter and squirts dish detergent into the sink. Then decides the cleaning up can wait. And she doesn’t really have to go to town right now either, does she? She could she leave it till tomorrow morning.

  So what does she want to do? She stands still in the middle of the kitchen, feeling vague, distracted. Maybe a nap?

  Curled up on the bed, still in her bathing suit, she stares at the wall where the first painting she ever did of the lake is hung. For a year after Halvor drowned, she didn’t paint at all. Then when she did finally pick up her brushes she took the lake as her subject. This first one shows the end of the dock in the foreground—the spot where Halvor would have entered the water. It’s not terribly good. The waves are too opaque. She’s gotten better over the years at capturing their translucence and movement. But she never paints the lake alone. Always, there is something solid—a bit of the dock, the frame of the window—as a counterpoint to the water. Context. Something to ground it.

  She turns on
to her back. Sighs. This nap isn’t going to happen. She gets up and pads barefoot into the living room. There, propped on her easel, is her half-finished painting of the lake as seen through the window. It’s going to be good. One of her best. But it needs something. It’s too neat. Predictable. She picks up a brush. Puts it down. Studies the tubes of paint she selected, the coloured stains on her scraped palette. Finds herself, oddly, thinking about her car keys. The plastic daisy on the key chain. Should she add them in, maybe have them sitting on the windowsill? Would that give the painting some oddness, a bit of an edge?

  This is getting silly. She needs to get her act together. Do those dishes. Then drive into town and get some money.

  She changes out of her bathing suit into shorts, a T-shirt and sandals. Washes and dries the lunch dishes. Goes and gets her car keys. Scoops them up. Turns toward the door. Stops. Turns back. Stands looking at the arrangement of objects on the mantle.

  Something is wrong. Something is missing. She didn’t notice before, at least not consciously, because she was so relieved that the keys were still there. But now she takes inventory. There’s that piece of driftwood shaped like a horse’s head that she and Halvor found. The mason jars of rocks and shells they collected over the years. Framed photographs. Her and Halvor on the deck raising champagne glasses to the newly finished cottage. Ranald and Patrick in their white tuxedos, paddling their canoe up to the dock where the wedding guests waited. And in the middle, a long, shiny space free of dust.

  The wooden bookmark. That’s what’s gone.

  Ranald whittled the bookmark for her the summer he went to art camp. He was twelve. When they picked him up to take him home at the end of the month, he held it out to her, eyes averted, mouth grim. He had shaved an oblong of pine thin at one end. At the thick end, he had shaped a raven—caught the hulking posture of the bird, and with just a few nicks suggested ruffled feathers.

  She knows where the bookmark is. The narrow end is what she felt poking her in the back.

  “How dare you!” She can hardly get the words out, her jaw is so tight with rage. Rising. Filling her up to her hair roots. “How dare you!” She grips her car keys. Stomps to the back door. Yanks it open. Slams it shut behind her and locks it. She can feel her blood pulsing as she starts the car. Righteous wrath. That’s what this is. And it feels good. Feels good even just to say it. “Righteous wrath!”

  She wasn’t sure she liked the bookmark at first. But she tried, loyally, to use it. The thin end wasn’t thin enough. It bent the covers of her books and kept falling out. So she tried opening letters with it, but the edge was too dull. Finally she said brightly to the young Ranald, “I want people to see this. I’m going to display it on the mantle in the living room.” Ranald said nothing, his face as closed to her as it ever was. And in bed that night, Halvor made one of his rare criticisms. “You should have told him what the problem was. That way, he could have fixed it. Or he could have made you a new one. A better one.”

  It was one of the few times she got really angry with Halvor—a deep, sulky, childish anger that hung between them for more than a week. It would have been so easy to make things right—agree with her husband and tell her son the truth. And maybe, she realizes now in the car on the way to town, if Halvor had said why don’t you instead of you should have, she might have approached Ranald. Had that conversation. But she never did. The bookmark, still useless, stayed on the living room mantle. Years later, when the cottage was built, she brought it up and displayed it there.

  She drives straight to the 7-Eleven. And there they are, slumped against the wall in their hoodies like crows on a wire. She pulls into the parking lot. Brakes hard. Gets out and slams the car door behind her. Marches straight toward the line of boys, thinking, Righteous wrath. Crackling with it.

  Their lips curl at the sight of her, then sag as she keeps coming. When she doesn’t stop, they glance at each other and melt away, back behind the wall, down the alley. All but the one in the middle. The one who recognizes her. He stands as if impaled by her approach, his eyes frozen on hers.

  She plants herself in front of him. Glares up. The boy’s lip and chin are a rubble of pimples and stray black hairs. What is he—fifteen? She leans in and takes a whiff. Juicy Fruit.

  She puts her hand out. “Give it back.”

  He blinks. Slumps. Reaches into the pocket of his hoodie jacket and pulls out some crumpled bills.

  “No. Not the money. You can keep that. But you’re going to earn it.” She keeps her hand out.

  More slowly, he reaches under the bottom of his jacket. His jeans pocket. A secret place, hidden from his gang. He pulls out the bookmark. Holds it toward her.

  “Handle first!”

  He turns it and she takes it from him. Holds it up in front of his face. “My son made this. For me. When he was younger than you. Look at me!” The eyes jump back to hers. “He made it! Do you understand what I’m saying to you? You can make things!” Oh, she could grab him by the shoulders, big as he is, and shake the living daylights out of him. She could haul back and slap him silly.

  “Turn around.” He does. “Pull your hood down.” His hands shake. His hair at the back is a greasy mullet. “Put it back up.” He does. And yes. There it is. Exactly what she needs.

  “All right. You can turn around again. Look at me. I’m a painter. I need you to pose for me with your hood up. I’ll paint you from the back. It’s hard work. You have to stand still for long stretches until I say you can take a break. That’s how you’ll earn the money you took from me. And if it takes longer than this afternoon, I’ll pay you more. Come to my place in an hour. You know where it is.”

  Back in the cottage she retrieves Halvor’s photograph of her coming up the ramp and tapes it to the top of her easel. The angle is going to be tricky. Everything as seen through the hidden eyes of the hooded figure that will occupy the foreground. The window will be centered. Through it, a bit of the lake will show. And off to one side, in the bottom corner of the window frame, she will paint herself. The way he saw her.

  That’s important. She has to capture the aloneness. The unawareness of being watched. Waited for. It’s not just a question of adding years. She has to look at this woman and see someone she no longer is. Get past the familiar. Paint what is already strange and gone.

  It’s easier to imagine the boy. Sent there by his gang to get money. Distracted by the bookmark. Looking at it and seeing a dagger. A raven totem. Picking it up. Turning and holding it to the light. Catching sight of her coming up the ramp.

  With a few strokes, she outlines the woman ascending. And in the foreground, the hooded figure waiting. Watching.

  She paints. It would be so easy to lose track of time. But she keeps an ear cocked for the sound of the back door opening.

  OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE

  I was playing jacks. Trying to. The ball kept getting away from me. I was almost crying when all of a sudden there was a hand. Palm up. And a voice. “Here. Give it to me.”

  One bounce of the ball. Two. By the third bounce, she had scooped up all the jacks. “These are mine now,” she said, putting them in her pocket. “I just won them, so they belong to me. That’s the rule.”

  Maude was very fond of rules. I thought they were real, grown-up rules that she knew about because she was three months and five days older. Also smarter. And prettier. As she liked to remind me.

  My mother tried to talk some sense into me. “Don’t always do what Maude tells you to,” she said. “She’s no better than you. Find somebody else to be friends with. Somebody who doesn’t boss you around.”

  But my mother did not understand that someone like Maude can come along and just scoop you up. Scoop up your whole life. Put it in their pocket. Make it theirs.

  *

  When Miranda moved into the co-op, her insurance rates fell by six dollars a month. The reason for this, she was told, was the prox
imity of her new domicile to a police station. Though she welcomed the saving, the rationale puzzled her. Did the insurers think having police nearby would deter would-be burglars and murderers? Or was it about reduced response time? Provided, of course, she was alive and able to call 911?

  Whenever she walks past the police station on her way to the supermarket or the cleaners or the library, she slows her steps, sometimes coming to a full stop. An onlooker might think she was momentarily confused, even lost. But Miranda knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s weighing the pros and cons of pulling open the door, approaching the front desk and saying to whoever is behind it, I need to speak with someone. About something I believe I did.

  She’s not afraid of the consequences. After all this time, there might not even be any. You were a child, Miss Shankland, she can imagine someone in authority saying. Eight years old. Frightened. Confused. Maybe you’re still a bit confused, in fact? About exactly what happened all those years ago?

  No. She is not. She resumes walking—a little more briskly than before—past the police station on her way to the supermarket or the cleaners or the library. The only thing that confuses her is why she keeps doing this to herself.

  *

  Fiona is watching Leo eat his breakfast. She has some information she should convey to him—information she has been caressing mentally the way she would caress a smooth stone hidden in her pocket. Some mornings, when she watches Leo first butter his toast, then tear it into bite-sized pieces, then eat those pieces one by one with butter-shiny fingers, she feels very close to pulling that stone out and throwing it at him.