Mandy has swivelled in Darren’s direction. Bill watches Darren recognize her and smile warmly.
“Who’s our hostess?” Bill asks Jeanette.
“That’s Isabella Martin. Her husband died last year. Forgive me for saying so, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it.”
Heather, Bill realizes, has not come all the way into the room, but is hanging back a few feet, gripping her casserole dish as though it’s either red-hot or explosive. He is about to go to her, but Darren gets there first — another warm smile from the man — and takes the casserole.
Bill looks around, searching for Mandy, but she has left the room. The bathroom, he figures, given today’s biology. She is so fixated on the Suse girl. If only Suse this, if only Suse that. What’s going on with her? It’s possible she decided to walk home without telling him.
But he finds her in the living room with the boy — the crawler. The two are sitting together on the sofa with Mandy’s bag of Doritos, like teenaged boyfriend and girlfriend. She looks up at Bill and does that thing with her eyes: squeezing them together and briefly staring at him hard. It’s a far cry from an expression of love and warmth, but he takes a seat beside her anyway.
“I’ve always had an amazing imagination too” she is telling the boy. “All kinds of crazy stuff.”
“Sweet.”
“I think it helps with my writing.”
Bill sniffs covertly. He smells something tangy and sweet. Could it be coming off the boy? Perhaps he needs a bath.
“For example,” Mandy tells the boy, “when I was a kid I had a problem swallowing. For like three years the only thing I could eat was Campbell’s tomato soup.”
“Hardcore.”
“Poor Mandy,” Bill says, thinking she would do better to confide in him, so that it is with good reason, he believes, that she turns to him now.
He reaches out to rub her shoulder, but she immediately turns back to the boy and says, “No one knew. Except for my sister.”
“Holy crap. My father can’t eat shit.”
“Which one is he?”
“Not here,” the boy says.
Bill wants to press close to Mandy’s body flooded with its hormones. He tries to recall the sharp, pinpoint smell of her underarms. He imagines lifting her arm and pressing his nose into that soft hidden tissue.
But he wants to tell her something. What is it? That what happened to that girl, Suse Hayes, could have happened to anyone. That’s been his point all along, he realizes. Foul play or not, it could have happened to anyone. There is no promise for anyone that life will go well. She’s taking it too goddamn personally.
“Mandy, let’s go.”
“Do you want to know how to make fake blood?” the boy says.
“Why? What time is it?” Mandy asks Bill.
The boy lifts a bony wrist and inspects an invisible watch. Then he looks at Bill and says, “Half past, kiss my ass, quarter to your hole.”
Mandy laughs. “Did you hear that, Bill?”
“Do you want to know how to make fake blood? I got an awesome recipe.”
“Hi, Heather.”
Heather has come partway into the room. She stops and stares at the three of them. She looks around and slowly lowers herself onto a box. “I was looking for the bathroom,” she says to the boy.
“What’s wrong, Heather?”
“You’re crushing our new pool,” the boy says.
Bill watches Heather get to her feet as quickly as possible. She lurches left, then right.
“You okay?” he asks, feeling guilty that he talked her into coming.
“Perfect.” She sounds winded.
When Mandy begins talking about Suse Hayes, Bill wants to groan out loud. But she is ignoring him, speaking exclusively to Heather and the boy. He listens to Mandy confirm what he told them that snowy night driving back from Cape Broyle, but she is embellishing and after a few minutes Bill finds himself spellbound. She explains that Suse knows where that old cow will be. Suse never just gets lost. Her first spasm had come earlier in the day. It was mild and distant but she knew what it was. Suse has not menstruated for months. And remember, Mandy says, she’s clever. Cow hunting so late in the day is no accident. Now the spasms involve everything God has placed in her abdominal cavity: uterus, ovaries, intestines, bladder, vagina and rectum — though Mandy admits Suse probably doesn’t know these are the words for them. When Suse emerges onto the edge of that meadow, she sees the cow. It’s always in the same spot. She sits among the goldenrod and purple asters, still blooming this late in the year, and takes off her sunbonnet and wipes her forehead. She tells the cow she’ll be back for it as soon as she can, though maybe not until the next day. She knows it won’t be long before people are out looking for her and she is eager to escape any attempt to rescue her. She stands and walks a while until she trips and slides down a gully. At the bottom, she curls onto her side and realizes she left her sunbonnet with the cow. It’s a whopper of a pain and it will last for hours, well into the night, obliterating the world.
Heather is still standing. She looks at Bill and he can see how upset she is by the story. He wishes the boy hadn’t heard it.
“How do you know she was pregnant?” Heather whispers.
“She doesn’t,” Bill says. “She made it up.”
“What a terrible, sad story,” Heather says.
“It’s possible,” Mandy says.
“It’s possible she just got lost,” Bill says.
“Hardcore,” the boy says.
Bill can hear the hum of the not-so-lively party in the kitchen and a gravelly, exhausted barking from the basement. He feels old. Much older than Mandy. And he feels the differences between them becoming too important. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
Heather says, “Excuse me.”
“Just who was that?” Cooper asks.
Mandy turns back to the boy and explains, “My sister Heather. Her feet got frostbitten. I was with her when it happened.”
But the boy is up and reaching for a huge orange and purple Super Soaker at his feet.
“Do you need help with that, Cooper?”
The boy ignores the question. He staggers slightly under the weight of the thing, then straightens and marches out of the room.
Heather found the bathroom and locked herself in. Darren had asked for her diagnosis of the boy — Benny’s boy — and instead she stood by while her sister provided that horrific story. Her abdomen tightened. Not now, she thought. She leaned her head against the back of the door and closed her eyes. So Darren’s neighbour was Isabella Martin. And now she was in Isabella’s bathroom, surrounded by Isabella’s things. Heather hadn’t known she and the boy had moved, but how would she? It was a long time since she had driven by their house beside the park.
She thought of Suse’s sunbonnet on the bog, of herself — months ago — wandering through the woods in her stockinged feet, of her desire to dart off the path and deep into the interior of the headland. To run and run until no one could find her. She thought of coming face to face with Darren under the canopy of crossbills.
She would only stay another few minutes. If she never saw her casserole dish again it would be just fine. She’d make excuses to Darren later. She opened the door and went into the hall and hesitated. Left or right? She was confused. Her cellphone vibrated in her jacket pocket, but she ignored it. Carrying it around was habit. Whoever it was could leave a message, though she’d been ignoring those, too. She knew the callers and their messages: Darren reminding her of the barbeque; Mandy backing out, then changing her mind, then backing out again; a few clients who had managed to get her cell number wondering when she would be taking appointments again.
Why didn’t they just see someone else?
She eventually made her way back into the kitchen. Isabella was at the other end of the room talking to Darren. Heather was aware of Darren glancing at her, trying to get her attention so he could introduce her. She was certain Isabella had recognized h
er. And the son — she sensed he had as well. Just then he entered the kitchen with something on his back. He began to approach his mother, then veered away from her. He looked as though he hadn’t grown at all since she saw him in the kitchen that day with the pancake sandwich, when she realized Benny’s love and attachment for his son were overriding. Heather knew she had become derailed that day. She had felt a sudden looseness, the beginning of falling.
She was standing beside two men in conversation. She inched closer to them, trying to avoid being seen by Benny’s wife and son.
“Question for you, Byron,” one of the men was saying. “Decades ago there was a grad student working for Tom Brookes out there on parasites. Using mist nets.”
The men had not — through eye contact or body language of any kind — invited Heather to join their conversation, but she stood with them, watching each talking face in turn.
“I was looking through the data,” the man continued. “They caught a lot of mourning warblers. You’d be hard pressed to find a mourning warbler now.”
“Right.”
“But it was all cut-over then. Give it another twenty years.”
“A fire.”
“Right. Now my question is this. They also had a lot of Lincoln’s sparrows.”
“Misidentification.”
“That’s what I was thinking. So what the heck were they catching?”
The second man — Byron — was wearing shorts and had hiker’s legs: sculpted and strong. Heather had a fleeting moment of self-disgust, remembering that her own hiking experience had gone so poorly. She noticed that Cooper seemed to be circling her and the two men, and fiddling with something.
“I think I saw a bananaquit,” Heather announced, though even before they turned to her, she knew she’d made a mistake. She was stepping from side to side in order to keep the men between her and Benny’s orbiting son. The men looked puzzled.
“Excuse me?”
“Bananaquit.”
“In the Caribbean, were you?”
“No. No Caribbean for me. St. John’s. At my feeder.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Cooper!”
Heather waited for the other man’s comment, the one with the legs, but he did not get beyond opening his mouth. It happened so quickly — the fabric of his white shirt flooding a dark crimson — that had she still been looking at his legs she would have assumed, as did a few people, including the man himself, that the substance had originated from his bloodstream and not from the long rope of red fluid ejected from the Super Soaker backpack worn by Cooper.
“Someone grab that kid!”
Cooper had opened fire on the room, but Heather knew he was aiming at her. He never looked directly at her, but certainly she, and the people nearest her, were receiving the brunt of it. It was fruity and sweet smelling, heavy, gluey. The backpack was leaking and dripping onto the kitchen floor behind him. Although mortified — as the seconds passed it was obvious she was his primary target — Heather was relieved to think that once Cooper was finished, she could go home. She also registered that there was nothing wrong with his legs. He was standing there erect as any little soldier amidst the growing puddle.
People shouted and cursed, jostling each other into corners then out of the room. As Isabella came across the room, she slipped, and if not for Darren, who put a hand out to steady her, she would have fallen. As soon as she reached Cooper she stopped. She looked dumbfounded.
It was Darren, saying “All right now,” who lifted Cooper up. Heather saw the boy close his eyes as the Super Soaker backpack slipped off and clattered onto the floor, and Darren carried him out of the room.
Heather took a few steps backwards, away from Isabella, and bumped into the man in shorts who had suffered the initial attack. She was surprised he was still in the kitchen. She apologized but he stared at her blankly. Behind him she saw the liquid dripping off the cupboard doors and pooling on the countertop. She could feel it across her belly and thighs. It was sticky. She was also beginning to cool off; the room had been chilly to begin with. It was then the dog came in, snorting and wiggling his rear end, though his movements were stiff.
“Inky,” Heather said, without thinking.
He had become an old dog.
Finally, she was forced to face Isabella. Almost everyone else had left the room. She could hear the commotion in the hall as people prepared to go home.
“I had no idea,” Heather said, meaning she had not known Isabella had moved. But she wondered if Isabella thought she meant she had no idea — at first when it might have made a difference — that Benny was married.
“I had no idea you lived here.”
Isabella nodded. Heather could see she was struggling with the knowledge that Heather was pregnant. Estimating her due date. Tallying the months. There was no reason to stay on, but Heather knew Isabella didn’t want her to leave yet. There was something Isabella wanted to say.
She moved quite close to Heather, and Heather froze. Isabella seemed shocked and fascinated. Heather didn’t blame her.
Suddenly Heather smelled Benny. It was the laundry soap, dog, cooking, Isabella herself — all those things Benny would have carried with him.
“Can I ask you something?” Isabella asked. She was barely audible.
Oh, God, Heather thought. What will I tell her? She nodded.
“How long did you know him?”
She stared at Isabella and tried to focus. Was it a trick question? Never had she imagined standing so close to this woman. As close as lovers. This was a face weighted by disappointment, curiosity, long nights.
“It was six years, until he got sick.”
“What time of year did you meet? Do you recall the month?”
“June.”
“Is that his?”
Heather wanted to ignore this question. A look of anguish crossed Isabella’s face.
“Did he know?” Isabella asked.
“No.”
Isabella’s expression seemed to soften and fall. Heather thought of the boys on the ice and for the first time it occurred to her she might have done a kind thing by not telling Benny she was carrying his child. Not a terrible thing. She could see this on Isabella’s face. The relief made her feel light, then bold.
“How was he . . . ?” Heather asked.
“How was he at the end?”
Heather nodded. Did he ask for me?
“They kept him comfortable.”
They stared at each other, as though they might learn a little more about Benny from each other’s face.
“He was cremated,” Isabella added.
Heather had not wanted to know that. His body destroyed. Burned. His arms, fingers, mouth, hair.
There were sounds behind them: a thud and a yelp. The man named Byron was on the floor. He lifted himself onto one elbow and blinked. Isabella turned and went immediately to his side, as did Inky, and Heather left the room.
Darren was standing beside her car. It had stopped snowing, but a thin layer had settled in the cooler zones: car roofs, hedges, walkways. The house had emptied quickly. Cries of disgust at the snow were followed by car doors slamming and engines starting. She had no idea at what point Mandy and Bill had departed. Hers was one of only a few remaining cars. She began to shiver.
“There you are,” Darren said. “Are you okay?”
“I need to get home.”
“The way you were walking, I thought you’d gone into labour. Can I drive you?”
“I have my car. Thanks.” Then she remembered. “That boy will be fine, Darren.”
“Oh, right.”
“I better go, Darren. Excuse me.” He was blocking her car door.
“You know, he talks as though his father is alive.”
“But he does know the truth?”
“Yes. I’ve heard Isabella tell him, more than once. And the man was dying in their house for months.”
“If Cooper’s mother is interested in counselling,
I’m sure it would be an excellent idea. People respond to grief in different, sometimes peculiar ways. It can take a while to accept that something bad happened. He’s only a boy. He’s taking his time.”
“That sounds too simple.”
“It’s not simple at all. It’s complicated. That’s why it’s hard to understand. How can it be so goddamn cold this time of year?”
Darren sighed, and to her dismay she realized he was taking her question literally. “Strictly speaking, it’s a southwesterly,” he said. “But the fact is, it’s a northern system that’s looped back around. It’s the coldest southwesterly you’ll ever get. I just wish everyone — ”
At that moment someone began calling to them from the house.
It was Byron. He came quickly down across the lawn, holding the side of his head. He stopped and glanced back and forth between them, but each time his eyes sought out Heather’s she looked away. She was too tired to make eye contact with this man.
“Darren, I fell. I slipped and fell against the stove and hit my head. I can’t tell if I’m bleeding or not, I’m so covered with that kid’s fake blood.”
Fake blood? Heather thought. Fake blood. It hadn’t registered.
“Of course, the brain can be injured without penetration to the skull.”
“How do you feel, Byron?” Darren asked patiently. “Do you feel dizzy? Drowsy? Confused?”
“I should be checked. I’m developing a brutal headache. I thought I’d been shot.”
“You’re probably right. But you shouldn’t drive, Byron. I better give you a lift over.”
“Good point. I shouldn’t drive. Another thing, that woman in there — awfully nice, by the way — she’s a bit upset.”
Heather could see Darren hesitating.
“You realize you’re going to have quite a wait, Byron,” Darren said. “Because of the strike?”
“What strike?”
“The doctors in the province are on strike,” Heather told Byron, hoping, for Darren’s sake, the plain facts would persuade him to wait until morning.
“They’re not.”
“Where have you been?” Darren wanted to know. “Everybody and his missus will be in for a sore throat.”
Darren Effect Page 21