The Dime Box

by Karen Grose

  Ian grunted, pushing his full weight on the door. A loud popping sound rang out and Greta felt the door give way. One by one, Ian’s fingers curled round the inside of the boards. She cowered back as his arm snaked through the gap and flailed around erratically, swatting at the hook. Suddenly, she heard her mother’s stern voice nearby.

  “Ian, that’s enough.”

  His arm dropped. There was quiet for a moment, and then a slap before something fell to the ground. Greta shot straight up from the seat and peered through the knot in the wood. Her mother’s cheek burned an angry pink. Ian stood, his fist raised above her.

  “Leave the kid be,” she said.

  His fist swung. Another thud. Greta heard her mother moan. Then he disappeared from her sight. She counted to ten five times over, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Her mother rolled to her side slowly, wiping blood from her nose before getting to her feet.

  “Honey, you’re okay.” She passed over the roll of toilet paper. “Finish up.”

  Greta sat back down on the seat and rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand. Red-faced, she stared at the ground. “I hate him.”

  “We’ll go for a walk.”

  “I hate those, too.”

  “Come on. I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

  Detective Perez traced a finger along her jawline. “I’m beginning to see why you didn’t like him.”

  She blurted a little laugh. “You think?”

  “It’s a good thing you and your mom are so close.”

  “We did everything together. She knew everything about me back then.” Greta struggled to speak through the lump in her throat. “The stuff I liked to eat, what I thought about, my dreams, my favourite colour. We shared all our secrets.”

  It was kind of true, just not the whole truth. Because, as it turned out, her mother had kept secrets she never dreamed of.

  THIRTEEN

  G reta sauntered around the corner to the front of the cabin and to find her mother waiting for her on the porch. After she kissed her on the forehead, they fell in step beside each other, the gravel crunching under their feet. Neither spoke of Ian’s stupid outhouse games, his clenched fists or Emily’s bruised face.

  “We lived in four places in three years,” her mother said after they made their way up the laneway. “The first was in Lindsay in a widow’s basement. It was freezing with snowdrifts five feet high.”

  Greta stopped. She was pretty sure that was taller than she was. Was it taller than her mother?

  “And there wasn’t a lot of light because there was foil wrapped over the windows.”

  “Was the old lady a vampire or something?” Greta remembered a book she’d found in the library that explained how vampires stayed in the dark because they thought if they went outside they’d burn in the sun. She stuck her teeth over her bottom lip.

  Her mother laughed. “No, not those either. It keeps the house cool in the summer and it’s cheaper than curtains. I think she just forgot to take it off for the winter.”

  “I get it,” she said. But she didn’t. She was in the midst of doing a double-check, walking quickly through their cabin in her mind.

  It was made of long, knotty, logs stacked together in a way her mother described as having character. Two small four-pane windows framed either side of the wooden front door. The windows were identical in shape, and looked almost like the Japanese origami she’d made at school in Craft Club. Inside the front door, just on the left, was a closet. Beside it, a towering wood stand to hang sweaters and jackets. The kitchen was inside the front door to the right. A long beige counter stretched under the light that filtered in from the window, next to the fridge and stove. That was where the rules were posted, stuck to the side of the fridge. By the end of Grade Two, Greta was able to read them. They were written in her father’s hand:

  Silence is golden.

  No crying.

  Speak only when spoken to.

  Tell the truth.

  Clothes were made to be modest and cover the body completely.

  No games allowed in the house.

  No TV after 7pm.

  Saturday is for cleaning.

  Sunday is for church.

  Down the hall from the kitchen was the main room. A window stretched from the floor to the ceiling, welcoming in daylight that bounced off the plastic wrapping the furniture. On the left side of the main room, a crooked wooden staircase had been built straight up close to the wall; the stairs moved when she walked up and down them, no matter how carefully she trod. The second floor, with its oddly peaked roof, extended the width of the cabin. She’d learned the hard way that Ian didn’t believe it to be a suitable place to play jacks. Or hopscotch. Or bowling. Her parents’ bedroom—the larger of the two—was to the left. Her bedroom, much smaller, was across the hall on the right. Greta stopped her mind from wandering. She hadn’t seen curtains. Was it because they couldn’t afford them? How much tinfoil would they need to cover these windows?

  “What was the apartment like?” she asked, encouraging her mother to continue.

  “The ceiling was low and the rooms were damp. By February, your dad and I had nasty winter flus. We were young then. We had no idea what to do. Two sick people in one small space didn’t make it any easier.”

  “How’d you go to work if you were puking?”

  “I didn’t. Your dad did; part-time.”

  “Is that enough money for food?”

  “Money was for rent. We were a little short, but we did chores around the house to help pay for it all. The widow’s son didn’t like it at first but I think having tenants living with his mother through the winter gave him some peace of mind.”

  “Sweet. He let you and Ian live there for free?” Greta marveled. “I’m going to try me that out when I’m older.”

  “No, you won’t,” said her mother. “And it’s not ‘I’m going to try me that out’. It’s ‘I’ll try it out’. How many times do I need to tell you it’s important to speak properly?”

  The late-afternoon sun was setting and the mosquitos were coming out in droves. They were buzzing around the nape of her neck, scouting out a location for their next big feed. She swatted them away, but they returned, insistent, making her peevish and uncomfortable. If their talk was starting to feel a little drawn out, her mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “If you liked it there, why move?” Greta asked.

  “The old lady was frightened by something. You know how the elderly can get.”

  “No, I don’t.” She kept her eyes fixed to the stones on the path as they made their way home. They were crumbling in places and looked almost ready to slice open her bare feet like a hot knife through butter. “I don’t know any old people. I don’t know your parents. I don’t know Ian’s parents. Do I even have grandparents?” She thought of Latoya’s birthday party. “All the kids in my class do. I don’t even know this Aunt Hannah. Is she old—”

  “She’s not.”

  “The only ones I know are from church and they smell.” It was gross. Even though they didn’t sit beside her, there were times she wanted to plug her nose from across the aisle. “They shut their eyes and tilt their heads back so far in the pews during Minister Marcello’s sermon sometimes I think they’re dead. But they aren’t because, when he’s done, they wake back up.”

  Her mother stopped in the laneway, her hands on her hips, astonished.

  “And after the service when we get cookies in the basement, they hug me so hard that their chin hairs leave scratches all over my cheeks. It’s disgusting. So, except for that, I don’t know how the elderly get.”

  Her mother opened her mouth but then quickly closed it, and as they rounded the end of the laneway and stopped at the front door, she turned to Greta. “Well, never mind then,” she said, shoo-shooing it away. “What matters is that the old lady asked us to move. So we found a new place in Peterborough.”

  The sun faded, leaving the northern sky a deep crimson red, yet the heat of
the day remained. Ian was at work so, after dinner, Greta suggested they head to the back patio to hear the rest of the story.

  “Where’s Peterborough?” she asked.

  “About 45 kilometers east of Lindsay,” her mother said, settling in a chair beside her.

  Greta had no idea how far that was. She’d heard her father say the laneway was a kilometer long, so the distance between Lindsay and Peterborough would be like running up and back forty-five times without stopping. No rest. If it weren’t so hot tomorrow, maybe she’d try. “Was the new place nice?”

  “The ground floor? It had a living room with a stone fireplace, a bedroom, and a tiny kitchen at the back. It was tucked in the middle of a Victorian row house on the edge of the Trent River. We lived in Number Six, with neighbours on both sides.”

  “Was there tinfoil on the windows?”

  “No, we had big open windows like here in the cabin.” She pointed over her shoulder to the back outside wall.

  “Then curtains?”

  “Yes. They were blue like a robin’s egg, and they had flounces.”

  “Sounds lame.” Greta thought about it. “Why did you and Ian have curtains there and not here?”

  Her mother closed her eyes while Greta sat and waited. “Back then, your father didn’t want anyone looking in,” her mother said.

  “Was he doing something he shouldn’t have been? Like breaking the law?” She’d seen handcuffs in her parents’ bedroom, the same ones Officer Pappas had strapped to his black belt when he came to visit at school. Her mind was spinning—right out of control. “Was Ian a criminal? Is that why you have handcuffs in your dresser?”

  Her mother snorted. “Of course not. And you shouldn’t be snooping in our room.”

  She ignored her. “Then why don’t we have curtains here?”

  “Look around, sweet child. What do you see? We’ve got privacy ten miles in each direction.”

  Greta stared out into the forest. Her mother had a point. Besides the red flowers her mother planted around the small, smooth white collection of stones every year, all she could see were trees and bushes. The forest was so dense she couldn’t even see through it. “What did you do in Peterborough?”

  “Dad looked for a job, but almost everything was taken by the students from Trent University trying to make money for school.”

  “Did you go to university, Mom? At Trent?”

  “No, sweetheart,” she said. “It wasn’t in the cards for me.”

  Greta looked over to see if her mother was serious. She was.

  “Within a couple of weeks, your father found something part-time at The Lift Lock. It was physical work, outdoors in the late evening heat. But it left our days free to do what we wanted.”

  She wasn’t sure what her mother liked to do. She always did what Ian told her to, but maybe that was her choice, too; after all, they were married and she was pretty sure that’s what married people did—together stuff.

  “Some days we packed a lunch and went to the Sandy Lake Beach in Buckhorn for a picnic. Other days we walked through the trails at the Riverside Zoo. We saw camels, two-toed sloths, yaks and emus. On hot days we stayed home and walked out our back door and just jumped in the river.”

  Greta’s eyes narrowed, blade-thin. Something was off. “That’s not true,” she said. “You’re scared of water.”

  Her mother looked away, her face clouding against the long shadows across the length of the patio, and gazed far off deep down into the ends of the back yard. Greta imagined inky pools full of wild animals, lions, cheetahs, and wild boars, long in the tooth and short on patience.

  “So what’s the deal?” she said.

  “You know the lock’s dual lifts on the Trent Severn-Waterway? Back then, they were the highest hydraulic boatlifts in the world,” her mother said. “A true Canadian treasure.”

  Greta groaned. Here we go again. She would not be sucked into the history game. Not this time.

  “How’d you jump in the river, Mom?” she repeated, determined to uncover the truth. “You can’t swim.”

  Her mother looked right through her and bypassed the question. “Your father did his best that summer. He worked hard but, with all the stress, he missed a couple shifts. Maybe more than two. Probably a few. When his boss called, he told me to say he was sick. I did but his boss didn’t believe me, and so Ian lost his job. With money tight, the landlord evicted us.”

  “What does that mean?” Greta thought she already knew, but she wanted to be sure.

  “Leave, darling. We had to leave our house by the river. So Dad and I packed up what little we had as fast as we could before the police showed up at the door.”

  Detective Perez tapped her pencil on the desk. “Stop for a sec. Did your mother say anything else about these evictions?”

  “No.”

  Tap, tap.

  “Did the police ever show up?”

  “I don’t know. She never said and I was maybe nine years old when she told me.”

  Tap, tap.

  “Did she say why not?”

  Why the detective asked the questions she did was beyond her; she didn’t appreciate her game of cat and mouse. She thought back to all the events that had led up to that point.

  “Understood. But those details would’ve been good for me to know.”

  “You? I wasn’t thinking about you. I was digging for myself. Looking for hints she’d drop. And that night she was pissing me off like you are.”

  The detective tossed her pencil down, causing it to roll across the desk. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “No.” She reached out and shoved it back.

  Back on the patio, Greta’s long bony arms were covered in goose bumps and the mosquitos had worsened in the mid-evening air. They were using her ankles as an all-you-can-eat buffet, turning them red and swollen. She yawned, unsure whether she could go on. If she couldn’t, she knew there might not be another chance to hear the rest of the story. Love. Two houses. Eviction. Police. She knew there were things that didn’t add up. But what were they? She decided to change her approach. Tone it down a little. Be gentler on her mother. After all, she used to be her best friend—until she got real friends, like Latoya.

  “Mom…” She allowed her face to reflect mild surprise. “That’s crazy. You had to move again? I feel bad for you.”

  Her mother looked at her, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Her mouth turned slowly into a smile. Greta smiled back at her. “It wasn’t the worst thing that happened,” her mother said.

  She stopped dead in her tracks. Was this the moment? Was her mother about to tell her whatever she’d been hiding? Adrenaline cursed through her body and gave her the second wind she needed to stay awake. “What do you mean?” She made sure to match her mother’s sweet, low tone. “About it not being the worst thing, I mean.”

  “Oh,” her mother said, waving a hand in the air. “It’s just one of those adult expressions.”

  She kicked the legs of her chair.

  Her mother appeared not to notice. “Remind me. Where were we?”

  Heat rose in her cheeks. “You and Ian were evicted. You said Ian wasn’t a criminal but I think he was, and I bet you know he was, too. You’re just not saying.”

  Her mother shot her the warning look. She caught it but she was frustrated; she had asked her mother to tell her the story because she wanted to hear the whole thing. The truth—the whole truth. Nothing that wasn’t true. It pissed her off. It was like she didn’t want to tell her the story. She stuck out her lip, pouting.

  “The third place was Bracebridge. We’d never been that far north before. By the time we got there, the fall colours had spread through Muskoka, covering it like a blanket. Yellows, reds and oranges, all floating from the trees, spinning on the breeze, leaving a river of colour that ran through the streets of the town.” She leaned forward, half-smiling, lost in thought. “It was beautiful. How can anyone go wrong living in a town like that? It’s home to Santa’s Villag
e—a Christmas theme park.” She looked at Greta. “Coincidentally, do you know Santa’s Village sits at a 45-degree latitude, exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole? How cool is that?”

  “Cool, really cool,” she shot back. How would she know? Her parents hadn’t bothered to take her.

  Her mother looked away, as if she’d read her mind. “Dad got a job with the municipality before we arrived. The same one he has now.”

  “Keeping the roads safe.” She’d seen all the cars on the road on the way to school, not to mention in the parking lot at church on Sunday.

  “And full-time meant benefits.”

  “Like prizes?” she asked. Was that why the furniture in their main room was wrapped in plastic?

  Emily laughed. “Health insurance and holidays.”

  Greta smirked. Another lie. They’d never been on a holiday.

  “It was like we’d won the lottery.”

  “How much money does Ian make?”

  Her mother looked as puzzled as she felt. “No idea. I’ve never asked him. He takes care of the finances.”

  Greta’s chest tightened. Wasn’t that the truth—more for himself, no doubt. She’d seen the faces of the families who watched them scour the hand-me-downs at BFT. BFT was what the kids called it. Bracebridge Fashion Boutique. But it wasn’t. It was Bracebridge Thrift. It made her angry how her father bought shiny new shoes and white shirts with button-down collars when all they ever got were second-hand sweaters and long pants. She made a mental note that the next time she was on the computer in the school library, she would find out how much money a full-time worker in Bracebridge was paid.

  “Our third place was quaint,” her mother told her.

  “That’s weird,” she said, scrunching up her nose.

  “Exactly. Whimsical. A summer cottage. No water, and the old well around the back was dry as a bone. Dad’s new friends came to help us out.”

  She kept her face straight. Dad’s new friends… Like someone like him could ever have any. In the eight years she’d been in the cabin, she couldn’t remember a single time they’d had visitors.