No Good Asking

by Fran Kimmel

  She snaked her way past the holiday chatter—news of twenty-five-pound turkeys and old doors on sawhorses to accommodate the Christmas guests—past the shampoos and hairsprays and reading glasses on a revolving shelf. When she came up behind her son, Dr. Dave handed him a small package that he quickly stuffed into his jacket pocket.

  “Mrs. Nyland,” the man said with a wave, an effeminate gesture, spread fingers, limp wrist. Danny looked over, startled. “Having a nice chat with your boy here.”

  I bet you are. Was it a package of condoms he’d handed over? The man wasn’t even a real doctor. She ignored Dr. Dave, grabbed a fistful of Danny’s collar, and pulled him toward her. “I said five minutes.”

  Her son shook himself free, face red.

  “Let’s go.” She turned without a nod.

  Danny clomped behind her. “Aren’t you even gonna look? Hannah might like some of this stuff. Barrettes or something.”

  A fifty-percent-off bin sat near the front exit. She reached in and pulled out the first thing her hand found. Three small hand lotions crammed into a zippered plastic bag. Then she stomped to the checkout and threw the lotions on the counter.

  “That will be $3.67 please.” The girl wore a Santa hat several sizes too big. She pushed it up her forehead with the tip of her thumb, only to have it slide down again. Ellie fished a five-dollar bill from her wallet and dropped it on the counter. Danny had fled, presumably not willing to be associated with her.

  “I mean $3.65. We don’t use pennies anymore,” the girl chattered on. She’d made a mess of the makeup caked on her pimply chin. “Would you like a—”

  “Thank you but I don’t need a bag and I don’t need a receipt and I don’t need change.”

  Ellie swept the lotions off the counter, threw them in her purse, and walked away.

  He was waiting for her in the passenger side of the van. “You’re a piece of work, Mom.”

  They were silent after that. Danny stared out his window without fidgeting, refusing to look in her direction. She followed the centre line as best she could, though it was drifted over in places and she mostly just guessed. Her hands hurt from gripping the wheel too hard, but she kept steady pressure on the gas, even when they rounded the curve before Hodgins’s quarter section. She steeled herself at the sight of their house in the distance. There were no flames licking the sky behind their trees, only the billowing grey beard of their chimney stack, the tranquility of the scene making it worse somehow.

  She swung the van into their long driveway, sliding into the grooves she’d made on her way out, finding nothing amiss, no stranger’s tracks. It was a peculiar light, the world out the window not quite real. The cold west sun ricocheted against the pocks in the glass, making it hard to see ahead as the van eased forward.

  He leaned into the dashboard, his head tilted sideways, squinting into the sun. Then he flung himself back again. “Call the fire department. There’s your big emergency.”

  It took a few seconds for Ellie to find them, there, close to the apple tree, near where the bird feeder lay buried in snow, the dog running in circles like his hips weren’t arthritic. Sammy was decked out in winter gear like he was made of balloons, every inch of skin covered. Hannah was beside him in her too-thin coat, a scarf wrapped around her ears and tied under her chin.

  She eased the van into its usual spot and cut the engine, not taking her eyes off the children. They had two impossibly large balls of wet, white snow piled one on top of the other, forked sticks for arms poking out the sides. Sammy was down on his knees, rolling a third, smaller ball for the head, while Hannah bent, scooped, and helped him along.

  “Satisfied?” Danny said.

  She’d forgotten there could be snowmen. Forgotten Danny was still there beside her. When she glanced over, he was staring at her in disgust.

  “Danny . . . look—”

  “Thanks for the swell time.” He climbed down from his seat and slammed the door.

  She got out of the van too, each step an effort, her boots filled with concrete.

  “Hey, buddy,” Danny called to his brother, traipsing through the yard’s deep snow toward him.

  “Go back,” Sammy yelled, falling sideways in his stuffed suit.

  Daniel threw his hands up in mock despair. “Go back? Whaddaya mean? We just got home.”

  “We’re not done.” Sammy rolled in the snow before he got to his knees.

  Thorn bounded over, butting his nose between Daniel’s legs, then turned and pranced back to Sammy, ignoring Ellie, who stopped at the bottom of the stairs, unable to move further.

  “Want some help?” Daniel said.

  “Got a nose?” Hannah laughed, wading toward him, stomping her feet. “We were having a race. We wanted to finish before you got home.”

  A heavy knocking sound came from inside the house. They looked up to see Walter’s face at the window, the hook of his cane drumming against the glass. Hannah lifted both arms above her head and waved like she was bringing in an aircraft; Sammy too.

  “We signal when he bangs on the window,” she said. “He likes that.”

  Ellie stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs, clutching the handrail and her useless purse. It was too much for her, this Norman Rockwell scene, as if everything bad lived only in her head.

  Hannah called over to her. “Did you get what you needed? From the store?”

  Daniel snorted and mumbled a string of words Ellie thankfully couldn’t hear.

  Hannah looked from Daniel to Ellie, less sure now. “Is it okay I borrowed a scarf?”

  Ellie took a deep breath, the air stinging her lungs. Standing near her two children, the girl looked like some hillbilly’s child left out in the cold. The old scarf came from the front closet. She needed a decent coat, boots too. She needed more.

  “Why didn’t you answer the phone, Hannah?” It was the only thought she had left to cling to. “I called so many times.”

  Hannah went stiff-still as she felt a change in the air.

  “Give it a rest, Mom.” Daniel glared at her. “It’s a snowman. No one’s been bludgeoned with a cleaver.”

  “I didn’t hear it ring,” Hannah said, barely above a whisper.

  “Help,” Sammy yelled, trying to lift the lopsided head on top of his snowman. Thorn leaped and fell over, tried again.

  “Are your socks dry inside your boots?” Ellie called over. He was right there, just fine. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Too hot.” He dropped the head and a piece fell off.

  “Come on. Let’s finish this thing.” Daniel yanked Hannah’s arm, pulling her backward through the snow toward Sammy. She didn’t take her eyes off Ellie, who started up the stairs.

  Ellie turned and called back, “You can hear the phone, even from the yard,” which was likely not true, not in the dead of winter, windows shut tight. But she continued anyway, “It’s set to the loudest ring. You can hear it clear as a bell.”

  Ellie didn’t know what Hannah had heard, the phone, her words. If she thought too hard, she might explode. She somehow got herself through her door and into the stifling warmth of her kitchen. Walter, an afghan over his knees, was in a chair set up by the window with a view of the yard. Beside him, a TV table held his favourite cup and the blue teapot with the crack along the spout, the bowl of sugar, and a spoon sitting on a paper napkin. Hannah must have arranged all this so she could keep an eye on the demented old man while she somehow stuffed the skittish boy into his snow pants and face mask and led him blindly and without fuss into the great white world.

  Ellie moved through the kitchen, opening cupboards for no reason, closing them again. Walter sat forward in his chair, looking out the window with interest. She refused to go near him, refused to look out.

  “That nurse . . .” he said. “She’s a corker.” There was a gentleness in his voice she hadn’t hear
d for a long time.

  Ellie sucked air between her teeth. “She’s a girl, Dad, not a nurse. Just a perfect little girl who’s doing her best.” Little girls had no use for purse-sized hand lotions. They needed fruity lip balms and fuzzy socks and a multitude of encouraging words.

  Walter cracked against the glass hard with his cane. Ellie could hear the faint hoots and hollers on the other side. The kids were putting on a show for him. She opened the fridge door, broccoli and cabbage fumes filling the back of her throat.

  “Now who’s that out there?” he yelled.

  His eyesight was getting worse by the week. He needed cataract surgery, one more thing she’d put off.

  “Sammy and Danny are with Hannah. And Thorn. Thorn’s with them too. He’ll be stiff tomorrow with all that running around.”

  “What about that other one? The fellow in the white coat.”

  “It’s a snowman, Dad.”

  Kids build snowmen and laugh and play.

  She closed the fridge door, finding nothing on the crammed shelves she was looking for. She would not call them inside. She didn’t trust herself to get the timing right. They could stay out till night if they wanted.

  Sammy had left scattered Lego pieces on top of the telephone nook beside the fridge. Ellie scooped them into her palm and looked about the room for their Tupperware container. She found the tray wedged between the wall and the Christmas tree. Crouching low, she pulled it out from its hiding spot, popped off its top, and dropped the pieces into their slots, colour by colour, the wheels to the dip in the centre.

  It occurred to her then what was missing. The phone. It was not on its cradle.

  She whipped around, spilling the tray, Lego bricks pinging across the floor.

  “Dad, have you done something with the phone?”

  “I gotta make a call,” Walter yelled back, his eyes on the window. “Where’s the phone?”

  “I’m asking you. Do you know where the phone is?” Of course not. The answer clung to a misfiring neuron. Why did this not come to her before now? At the Peavey Mart parking lot, when she was making such a fool of herself. Or at Dave’s, when she stood behind her son, watching him slip the God-knows-what package into his pocket.

  Walter repeatedly called the 5-1-1 number, enamored with the voice-activated Road Reporting Service. Bare, dry, wet. Fog, snow, ice. Partly covered. Poor visibility. No visibility. Driving not recommended. He relished the gritty details, shouting his opinions to the automated voice on the other end of the line.

  Ellie marched to the empty cradle, pressed the half-moon locator button, and listened for the pinging noise that would lead her to the phone. She followed the muffled sound, moving forward, backing up, heading down the hallway into Walter’s room, getting hotter now, each ping more grating as she rooted through the bed covers and flung open the drawers. There. It had been buried under a pile of the old man’s undershirts, a string of eight missed messages on the caller list, each one from her.

  —

  Later that afternoon, Ellie knocked and waited. When she got no response, she tried again, then inched open Danny’s door and stepped into his territory. Her son was on the floor, leaning against the wall between his bed and dresser, legs stretched in front of him, iPad on his lap.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  He shrugged without looking up. “It’s your house. And you already did.”

  She took a few steps and sat on the edge of the rumpled bed. The air smelled of sweaty shirts and sour socks and expired chicken bits. How long had it been since she’d bulldozed through with a pail and the vacuum? Weeks? Months? She sat without moving for as long as she could, resisting the urge to sweep the room with her eyes.

  “So what are you doing down here?” she asked.

  His finger kept swooshing across the small screen. “Not burning down the house.”

  “Hope I’m not interrupting a game.” She tried to sound light and unintentional, but her voice cracked midway.

  “What do you want, Mom?”

  “I want to start over.”

  Nothing.

  “I was a witch today. In the van. At Dave’s. I had no right to treat you like that.”

  “Ya think?” He still wouldn’t look at her, but his response was a start.

  She leaned forward, planting her hands on her knees. “I do. This is not your fault. You did nothing wrong, and I ruined it for us. I’m really sorry, Danny.”

  He shoved his iPad out of the way and raised his knees to his chest. “You go crazy for no reason. Not just today.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “I know it must seem like that. Like Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “Yep.” He was still for a minute and then asked, “Is that the one with Christian Bale?”

  “Um, I think that was Batman.”

  “Which one’s the monster—Jekyll or Hyde?”

  “I always get them mixed up. The doctor is the professor. But there really is no Mr. Hyde, that’s the point. Hyde is just Jekyll, who has turned his body into something ugly.”

  “We got a lot better monsters since then.”

  “I know. They’re everywhere. On TV. In your phone. Sitting beside you in the front of the van.”

  Daniel laughed in spite of himself. “You make a crappy monster. You’re not scary enough.” Then his face went dark again. “But you can be crazy. Lately, a lot. Sorry.”

  “I know. Like a momma bear who keeps losing her cub.”

  “It’s stupid. Sammy’s gonna be okay. And hello, I exist.”

  She began to suspect that she would always be apologizing, a withered old lady choking on dried-up words.

  Her son rubbed his forehead in a way that reminded her of Eric. Then he looked up and asked, “Are you getting a divorce?”

  God. “Where did that come from?”

  He picked at the lint on his sweater. “Every time a parent sits down with their kid and says this is not your fault, the next thing out of their mouth is Daddy’s leaving, but he loves you very much, we’ll get you a puppy, yada yada. Everybody knows that.”

  “That is certainly not—”

  “I’m not completely stupid.” He rose up off the floor and flounced on the bed behind her. “You can’t even look at him without finding his flaws. You’re mad that he brought Hannah here. You’re mad that he brought us here, even though it was your idea. You’re mad that it’s Christmas. You’re mad about everything.”

  Her regret was too great; she was doubled over with the weight of it.

  “I’m going to do better, Danny,” she said, turning to face him. “We’re not getting a divorce; of course we’re not.” Although she had thought about it, back when Eric was gone day and night dousing other families’ fires. She’d even ordered that damn used book from Amazon. She didn’t read past the first few pages; neither its words, nor the world, made any sense to her without Eric. She couldn’t imagine waking up in an empty bed, no more jangling keys, the silence deafening. “I love your father very much,” she told her son now.

  “What about Hannah?”

  His question caught her off guard.

  “She’s the one you should apologize to. You were so mean out there in the yard. You know you can hear the phone ringing. Any idiot can hear the phone ringing.”

  Shame washed over her. “Is that how I sounded?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, just shoot me now.” She raised a hand to her head and pulled the trigger finger.

  He threw his head back on the pillow. “She probably didn’t even hear.”

  “She didn’t say anything, did she?”

  “Nope.”

  Of course she didn’t. If the girl could live life in that vile house, she could certainly manage to keep her thoughts to herself.

  Ellie grabbed hold of his socked foot and squeezed. “
I’m going to do better. Can we start over?”

  He tried to wrestle his foot out of her grasp while she held on tight.

  “Pretty please?” she pleaded.

  “I guess,” he said. He seemed to mean it.

  “Okay, deal.” Ellie stood. “Are you coming up soon?”

  “In a minute.”

  When she got to the door, she turned and looked back. He seemed so innocent, a little boy waking up from his nap. Her boy.

  “Danny, what were you looking for at Dave’s? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “I wasn’t looking for anything. I was taking something back.”

  “Oh. You okay?”

  He shrugged, his shoulders defeated. “I guess.”

  “Does it have something to do with that girl?” There was a girl, she was sure.

  His eyes narrowed. “What girl?”

  “The one you were going to see the night you had your . . . accident. You never told us her name.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not completely stupid either, Danny. You were going to see a girl.”

  Daniel stared at her for a full ten seconds. Finally, he said, “She texted a whole bunch of times. She sounded like she was in trouble.”

  “You thought this girl needed help, so you went to her. Or at least you tried. Have I got that right?”

  He nodded, cheeks reddening.

  “Well, I’d say that’s pretty honourable. It didn’t turn out the way you wanted, but your intentions were good, and that’s where goodness starts.”

  “Her name’s Melissa,” he said. “She dumped me.”

  She hung on to the doorframe to keep from running back to him. “Oh. That sucks. When?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I dumped her. Anyway, it’s over. It was inevitable. I got her a necklace for Christmas. That’s why I needed to go to Dave’s. To take it back.”

  “A smart decision.”

  “She was a jerk. I don’t know what I ever saw in her. I feel kind of relieved actually.”

  Ellie felt no small relief herself. “Then I’m glad. She doesn’t deserve you.”