Maxine

by Claire Wilkshire

  Maxine looked up in horror when she heard Barb’s voice crack and caught her rubbing her eye: Yes, Barb, sure, don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll work something out. Barb, sorry but I’m expecting a call, it’s kind of important, gotta run. Don’t worry, I’ll do it, OK?

  Maxine, in the Larsens’ car, waits for the green at Rawlins Cross and a shiny black crow on the sidewalk keeps a suspicious eye on her. It turns its head toward the car and away, toward and away, and then does one sideways hop closer to snatch up a bright orange crumb. There’s another big crumb, even closer to the car; it looks like a goldfish cracker. The crow hesitates and then jumps again. Every possible colour is bound into its glossy black feathers. When the crow seems to face Maxine, she realizes suddenly, it can’t see her. It’s when it turns away that the eye on the side of its head fixes her savagely. This seems both significant and disconcertingly not-human, and the light changes, and Maxine drives away.

  Maxine, were you listening?

  Sure, Ky.

  What was the last bit I said?

  Um, the, uh, book club. I’ll read the book you’re reading in your book club.

  The High King. And you’ll come on Reading Buddy Day and talk about it.

  Oh.

  And do you remember when Reading Buddy Day is?

  It’s. Thursday.

  Friday at three.

  Next Friday? Actually, you know, it’s too bad, but I don’t think I have that book.

  It’s on the 16th. And I have a library copy here for you.

  You little frigger.

  Kyle uses a singsong voice: Max-iine. Lan-guage.

  All right. Just write me a little note, OK? With the day and the time.

  So what are your settings?

  I don’t know much about that stuff, Ky. I mostly just do word processing.

  No, no—your settings. This site says “No scene can take place nowhere. Each scene happens somewhere. It has a spay-teal context—”

  Spatial.

  “Spatial context of which readers should generally be aware, since the details of setting will reinforce, oppose or render more vivid the action of the narrative.” Have you thought about your settings?

  Yeah, they’ve crossed my mind.

  Well are readers, you know, generally aware of them, do you think?

  Isn’t it time the North Koreans conquered the Romans or something? Oh. OK.

  Frédérique bent over the keyboard, pounding at it with her fingers. She was describing galaxies. She was mapping the stars.

  Mapping the stars is probably a cliché. The Andromeda Galaxy looks like a shallow soup bowl with a wide rim, angled on its side. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a primitive sea creature, the indistinct amoebic ancestor of a sea-horse. What would interest Frédérique most about the Local Group, which is her principal area of expertise? The Milky Way? “Peuh,” scoffed Frédérique.“Everyone’s done stellar populations in the Milky Way.” Right, then—the Pegasus dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Peg dSph). That can be Frédérique’s area, pretty darn cutting edge, since no one consciously laid eyes on it until about four years ago. Peg, Frédérique calls it, but thinks of it as male. Peg the boy-dwarf galaxy is gorgeous, a splatter of blue dots of light, tiny balls dangling in an earring cluster, foregrounded in a 1999 photo by several much larger yellow stars with red, purple, and orange aureolae, each sliced though vertically like a cherry on a toothpick by a thin line of light. It’s about two thousand light-years across and Frédérique asks it questions occasionally because it is beautiful, her lovely boy galaxy—small, diffuse, pointillist, sapphire and lapis lazuli. The colour, she knows, is in the photograph, not in the sky. Also he’s much older than the sun, so hardly a boy, but it’s how she likes to think of him. Peg so rarely contradicts, which is satisfying, his views at times naive and requiring guidance but unfailingly well-intentioned.

  It’s true that Maxine doesn’t fully understand Frédérique’s work. For that matter, she does not partially understand it either. But she thinks it goes something like this: in addition to examining and describing Peg in his current state (current being of course a vague and relative term in such a context, given the instability of what we think of as time when it crosses large distances), Frédérique may also be constructing for him an informed if speculative biography— a past based on where he is and how others have arrived in similar situations, and what sort of destiny might await him. It’s not at all unlike charting a human life, when you think about it, except that Frédérique is much more passionate about Peg than she is about most humans, especially her departmental colleagues. So Maxine obsesses about Frédérique, Frédérique about Peg. And there she is, Frédérique, crafting her unauthorized galactic biography, including several controversial bits, which is why she’s hammering away at the keyboard.

  So what are your settings? Frédérique’s office, Maxine thinks. It’s the small bedroom of her small condo. A computer desk not unlike Maxine’s own, but bigger and with more drawers and hutches and surface space. The condo was an exceptional find, a Victoria mansion chopped up into minuscule units, an amazing lawn. Frédérique hasn’t really realized it but she loves living in a mansion, even if it’s only a tiny corner of one. She loves cruising up the long driveway, surrounded by mercilessly clipped greenery. It looks like something from a coffee table book, Stately English Homes. In Victoria, where Maxine’s parents retired, for the weather and the gardening and the many good reasons a lot of other people did the same. The computer chair, the study, the condo, the mansion, Victoria, Vancouver Island, Planet Earth. This is how Frédérique might have written out her settings in Grade 2, if they had been the same. Your setting and your address are more or less the same. Planet Earth, Milky Way, Local Group. It all depends which way the telescope’s pointing.

  C’mon, Bluebird, time to scrub out your bowl, get you some nice clean water. I forgot to do you last week, didn’t I? Maybe you’d like to live downstairs with Mr. Jenkins and his nice big furry... CAT hahaha. Just get in the frigging cup or you’ll be wrapped in breadcrumbs. That’s better. Now we’ll rinse your gravel and you can go back in with the good water. Have a pellet on the house. Don’t look at me like that—Sylvester Stallone talks to his fish, all right?

  Out of the blue, Maxine notices that Barb has improved. It hasn’t come naturally, but she’s learned to be less invasive. Sometimes Maxine starts to think that if she had come to know Barb in some fairly ordinary way, instead of being hurtled into the Larsens’ world by a catastrophe—but, in fact, no: if she hadn’t been hurtled in, she wouldn’t be there at all. Maxine and Barb would not have become friends. As things stand now, Barb is more like family. Maxine didn’t choose her, but she’s very much there all the same. However, thinks Maxine, feeling magnanimous for noticing this, Barb no longer calls several times a day or before eight on weekend mornings. Although the fact that someone who can receive messages might not wish to return calls immediately remains a source of mystery and annoyance to her, Barb has desisted somewhat.

  It’s not that Barb is not in some ways a nice person. She lacks a little self-awareness, but we all have our flaws. She can be generous and she means well much of the time, which is more than you can say for lots of people. One piece of self-awareness Barb lacks concerns her resemblance to a besieging army. Maxine knows quite a lot about besieging armies because of one of Kyle’s games. You can amass points. You’d do quite well with Barb as your besieging army. She’d get you points for Food, Determination, Fearlessness, and Strength. It’s true you’d lose out on Numbers and Weapons, but Barb is nothing if not resourceful. She could probably bake some fibre-filled weapons, or produce a heavy garden spade.

  Barb isn’t wholly oblivious to of the wishes of others—she just happens to be highly motivated by goals, and the pursuit of those goals is much, much more important to her than anything else, including the wishes of others. In fact, the wishes of others are so insignificant they barely register at all.

  It’s a single goal, really. Her
goal is to keep Kyle happy, and she knows Kyle is happy seeing Maxine fairly regularly, and therefore she must keep Maxine happy, and so she must offer the car now and then, provide food, make nice. In fact, Maxine’s impression is that Barb genuinely finds her mostly likeable, if a bit puzzling and frustratingly reclusive, and is pleased to be able to provide the things she does. It is no doubt picky and sullen of Maxine not to feel more grateful for Barb’s offerings, and she might be more gracious if it weren’t for the blatant movement toward an end product. There’s a ruthlessness in Barb. If Maxine were not helping her to achieve a goal, Barb might step over her as she lay writhing on the sidewalk.

  Maxine is always pleased to discover other people are worrying about something that doesn’t trouble her in the least. Gail, for example, has got all antsy about the water, how there are rumours that terrorists might poison the supply. They had an international expert on the radio. She calls to discuss this with Maxine.

  They might already have done it—we could all be drinking it right now, Gail says. This would be the perfect place for them to try something like that.

  Ah, go on, says Maxine cheerily. The teabag makes a little fizzing noise when she sloshes boiling water on it.

  I’m serious—it would be so easy for them. Thousands of people, bang. What kind of security do you imagine we have here? Gail’s voice is getting louder. They could put something in the reservoir any time, you know. Don’t you think that’s just a little alarming?

  Nah.

  You can worry about these completely crazy things—and when there’s an actual, reasonable threat— Gail. Osama’s never heard of Bay Bulls Big Pond.

  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  It’s not about what’s reasonable, though. It’s responsibility. That’s part of it anyway. What you can prevent, change, make happen. Maxine can’t do anything about the water supply. But for other things, if you’re constantly on alert, if you are informed and watchful at all times, if you never let your guard down, if you always know the risks and monitor the situation constantly and never look away...then you might be able to avert a catastrophic event.

  A catastrophic event usually involves death.

  So you watch your back. And everyone else’s back, because they’re not watching carefully enough. Always. That’s pretty much all you’ll have time for.

  8

  frédérique wasn’t a worrier. She tended to assume that bad things wouldn’t happen to her. A dog would have been good, though. A dog might have barked when Frédérique’s suite was being broken into. They might not have done it then. Her laptop was so new that fortunately she hadn’t transferred many files onto it yet. They hadn’t wanted the TV, jewellery, anything like that, just her study— papers everywhere—and the computer.

  There are going to be meetings, Barb says at Maxine’s door. With Kristina, and a company lawyer, and probably a few other people. Barb’s eyes look like those laser pointers that shoot red light.

  Kristina?

  Area manager.

  Ah.

  Meetings to discuss exactly what he did. Go over it. The ins and outs. Barb is looking out over the wooden railing her hand is resting on and her red laser eyes are shooting poisonous jets of blood across the road at where her husband would be if he were to open their front door. You’re supposed to support them through good times and bad, Maxine, but I don’t know.

  I guess you should come in.

  When we go west, Maxine, it’s looking more like early fall now. The guy in charge of the investigation, he’s been in chemo. And they all take forever to get together anyway. They’re travelling all the time. Barb is a taut ball of fury; she’s charged; she is the ball at the Science Centre you put your hand on and it makes your hair stand straight up. She is the clear glass sphere you touch and it immediately zaps from its core a brightly coloured jet of light right at your finger. She bounces off her heels down the hall and into the kitchen, stands behind a chair, and leans on the back.

  It’s Bermuda, Barb says. Something happened in Bermuda. She bends her elbows and does a sort of push-up, leaning into the back of the chair and pressing herself away again: Oh I’ll stand by him through the hearings. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

  Maxine places a glass of water on the white table in front of Barb. She sits at the table, and Barb sits too. Maxine folds her arms and leans on her elbows, but Barb sits up stiff and twitchy.

  If he did something unethical, Barb continues, I’m not matching the socks of a crook. I’m not reaching over in the night and...and wrapping my arm around the belly of a criminal. Barb is declaiming with volume and precision, and the words sound like lines in a play. Maxine realizes that Barb has probably tried this out a few times. Barb would like Dave to hear what she’s saying and has probably been practising in the shower. Maxine is a kind of non-confrontational stand-in for Dave here. She is a crash test dummy, smooth-faced and beigy-grey, with articulated limbs. Her job is to go Whump at the right moment and then everyone can come over and have a look and see if any pieces of her came off. She wonders what would happen to Kyle if his parents split up, but she just has to look at Barb to know the answer. Kyle would be with Barb. There’s not a force on earth that could stand up to her. Dave would be lucky to get alternate weekends. It feels a bit disloyal but Maxine can’t help thinking that even if Dave does turn out to be a criminal, he might be a better option for Kyle than all Barb all the time. Maybe a third criminality, two-thirds Barb, Maxine thought. Or half criminality—

  No way José! Barb’s ponytail swings an emphatic negative back and forth. No way Dave, Barb says. This last statement seems to pierce her anger, and her voice drops and quavers.

  Barb, is there any chance he didn’t do it, that it was someone else, or maybe a mistake? Sometimes the wrong people get blamed for things.

  I have to go, says Barb.

  Maxine is supposed to be working but she’s curled up on the couch under half a green blanket reading The High King. The other half of the blanket covers Kyle, who’s doing the same thing, leaning his elbow on the armrest at the other end.

  What page you on, Ky?

  What about you?

  You tell me first.

  Seventy-two. Do you like it so far?

  I love it.

  Frédérique loves her research. She loves the sky. The people are a bit of an annoyance but in a university it’s hard to get away from them. When Frédérique started out she also loved her students and was inspired by her colleagues. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe the students were always like this. Maybe her colleagues were always like this. That’s not how Frédérique remembers it, though.

  Frédérique taught I to A, the Intro to Astronomy course, last term. Many of her students didn’t know what a star was. Some of them could barely spell star. They were belligerent about mistakes they made on tests. They demanded extra marks for things that weren’t close to right. They plagiarized essays and then lied about it. One student lifted a three-page essay off the Internet without bothering to change a word. He assured her it was a coincidence— he’d never even gone on the web. He stood up and grasped her hand and shook it, looking her in the eye: I would never lie to you about something like this, he said. Another pretended he’d done—passed in and had returned to him—a month of sky journal entries he never actually handed in. He showed her the folder in the last week of term, having written his own comments in the margins, as if he’d made regular submissions and she had corrected the journal herself. I pity you was one comment in red pencil. Frédérique would never say something so patronizing. Anyway, she did not pity him. She was disgusted by him, by his amorality, his sense of entitlement. Furious that he had assumed the right to waste her time in this way. The fourth years might have been better but it was hard to tell, since they generally didn’t trouble themselves to attend classes. A friend of Frédérique’s resigned her position. In the letter to her head of department, she said, I have lost my passion for teaching.

  Fréd
érique’s fight for tenure was motivated by sheer irritation. She’d worked her butt off for years teaching large numbers of classes, with large numbers of students writing large numbers of assignments. Paying her dues. Short-term contracts, research unpaid and crammed into the summer. And when Physics and Astronomy had a chance to make a permanent hire in her area, they said No thanks, it’s a bit complicated, but our department isn’t really interested. She thought briefly about the McDonald Observatory and the disaffected employee who emptied a clip in the direction of his supervisor and the primary mirror in the early 70s. All the reports say that the mirror hasn’t been the same since. They don’t mention the supervisor. Frédérique has no desire to damage the imaging spectrograph. Anyway, that sort of thing wasn’t worthy of her. Instead she grieved, on principle, and won, slave labour having been unionized a few months before. And marked more assignments. She’s not sure who came out on top there.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  It’s because we’re friends, Maxine. Friends help. Gail is using her schoolteachery voice.

  Is this thin enough?

  No.

  Shit.

  If it’s too thick you won’t be able to tie it.

  Around what?

  The spring roll.

  We’re tying carrot strips— Ribbons, Max.

  Around four hundred spring rolls? Couldn’t you just sprinkle a bit of parsley on them?

  No.

  Groaner. Can we have another beer, then? It’s almost one-thirty. I might fall asleep and stab myself in the eye with the peeler here.

  In fifteen minutes we can have another beer, to keep us awake.

  Right. Let us not have an unscheduled beer.

  And then we start the mains.

  I hope you asked for a shitload more money for the short notice.