“What does that mean?”
“It means we get it checked regularly.”
“How regularly?”
“I don’t know. Once every while.”
“How often is that?”
“Danny, for goodness’ sake. Twice a year. How’s that?”
“Is that often enough?”
“Yes.”
“Does Cookie know?”
“Of course she knows.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“I guess no one thought to tell you. I’ll be sure to tell you every little thing from here on in.”
The hole in Cookie’s heart seemed far from being a little thing to Danny, but he was sick of his mother’s way and her words so he stomped off. He heard Dot ask again what Cookie did to herself, and his mother say, more loudly this time, “Nothing, Dot.”
And sure enough, it wasn’t her heart that killed her.
He walked his bike out of the cemetery and began the long ride home. His tire held up.
When he approached the screen door Russell flung herself against it from the inside. She greeted him as if he’d been gone for her whole life. His mother and Aunt Dot were in the front room. Dot was flipping through a Family Circle magazine; his mum lay on the couch with droopy eyelids. They were neither open nor closed. A forgotten cigarette smouldered in an ashtray on the coffee table beside her along with four bottles of pills, two standing and two on their sides.
Dot smiled at him; his mother didn’t.
“Why does the stone say Cordelia?” Danny said.
“What?” said his mum.
“Why does Cookie’s gravestone say Cordelia?”
“That was her name.”
“No one called her that.”
“I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“It’s a stupid name.” Danny tried to summon up a conversation between his mother and his sister. He couldn’t remember her calling her Cookie, let alone Cordelia. Maybe she tried it out for a while before he was born, but not since he entered the picture. He was sure of it.
“The stone should say Cookie.”
His mum sighed and looked at her sister. Dot had stopped flipping, but she held her tongue.
Danny stared at his mother. There was nothing about her face that he liked. He wanted to press it into the carpet till her nose broke. He could like that about it: a broken nose.
“We need to change it,” he said.
“No.”
“I’m going to save up and buy a new headstone.”
“We’re not changing it. Anyway, what are you going to save up?”
She had a point. He didn’t have a penny of his own. He was at her mercy.
“I’ll get a job,” he said. “I’ll steal.”
There was money in the kitchen drawer. Perhaps he’d rob it.
“Oh, Danny.” Dot stood up, but he was gone — up the stairs, where he slammed his door behind him.
He heard his mum’s voice.
“Dot. Leave him.”
6
The next afternoon Danny walked over to Paul’s house. It was time to forgive him. He had been fine as a friend till the Sydney I. Robinson business, and Danny didn’t want to think about that anymore.
It had been strange not having a sidekick. Paul had been around off and on since grade one. They even lay on top of each other once. It had stirred them both but they never did it again.
Danny knew that he was actually the sidekick. Paul was the main guy — the Lone Ranger to his Tonto — but he could never let him know that, not even if someone threatened to pull out his teeth with pliers.
Paul was in his backyard messing around with liquids and powders and beakers. Mrs. Carter was turning the earth over in a flowerbed. She was on her knees.
“Hi,” said Danny.
They both looked up from what they were doing.
“Danny, hello,” said Mrs. Carter.
Her first name was Jean. Danny wished that his mum’s first name was Jean or maybe Donna — something other than Barbara. Barbara reminded him of fences that hurt you when you tried to climb them.
“What’s up?” he said.
“I’m tryin’ to manufacture an explosive device,” said Paul.
“He could probably use some help,” his mother said.
Danny cringed at her effort to bring them together. This was hard enough without a grownup all over them.
“Wanna go down to the river?” he said.
“Sure.” Paul looked at his mum.
She stood up, and Danny noticed that she had very smooth legs, way nicer than his mum’s. Hers had veins that stuck out.
“Paul’s still not entirely out of the doghouse, Danny. If I let him go, this will be the first time for him to leave the yard since that dreadful day at Sydney I. Robinson, except to call in on you a few times. Under strict supervision, I might add.”
“Will you let me?” said Paul.
“I wish you had checked with me before you agreed to go,” said Mrs. Carter. “I’m inclined to think you haven’t learned your lesson.”
“Please, Mum. We won’t be long, will we, Danny?”
“No.”
It annoyed him to be hauled into it. What if they were long? Then what, would it be his fault?
“Well, all right then,” she said. “But don’t swim in the river. And don’t do anything bad.”
They started out the back gate.
“For goodness’ sake, Paul, clean up your explosive materials before you go.”
Paul rolled his eyes but started back.
“And that’s enough of that attitude, young man. You’re awfully quick to forget the trouble you’re in.”
Paul gathered up his stuff and put it in the garage.
“’Bye,” said Danny.
“’Bye, Danny. Come back for supper if you like.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Carter.”
“Check with your mum first.”
“I will.”
They walked the short distance to the river.
“My mum is drivin’ me nuts,” said Paul.
“Your mum’s great,” said Danny. “You should try havin’ mine.”
They came to a clearing off the monkey speedway and sat down on a log.
“I hate my mum,” said Danny.
“You can’t hate her.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“She’s gone really weird since Cookie…you know…”
“Died?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s always been sick and stuff, but it’s gotten worse. She’s not like other mums. Yours, for instance.”
“She never yells at you,” said Paul.
“I wish she would. Silence is way worse than yelling.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is. And so is quiet talk. You don’t know.”
He suddenly remembered her saying my dear lost boy and tears stung his eyes. He forced them back.
“She doesn’t hit us or anything,” he said, trying to bring back the hate — he couldn’t have Paul witness his tears. “But she’s still mean.”
He realized he’d have to get used to saying me instead of us, and all the variations on those words. There were a lot of extras added on to the matter of your sister dying.
“Plus, she never teaches us…me anything. Aren’t parents supposed to teach you stuff?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know…how to be. How not to die.”
Paul was whittling a Y-shaped stick with his pocketknife.
“Maybe if you had a dad, he’d teach you stuff.”
Danny turned to look at his friend. “That’s a tremendously stupid thing to say.”
“Sorry.”
“Where the hell am I gonna get a dad?”
“Nowhere, I guess.”
“What are you makin’?”
“A new slingshot. My old one broke.”
Danny longed to tell Paul about his plan. He was bursting with it, but he resisted the impulse. He didn’t want to put it in the wrong hands.
“Maybe if my dad is teaching me something, I could phone you, and you could come over and learn it along with me,” Paul said.
“That’s not a bad idea. What types of things do you think he’ll be teachin’ you?”
“I don’t know. How to change a tire?”
“That’s a good one. It’d be worth knowin’ for later, when we have cars.”
“A red ’58 Thunderbird convertible,” said Paul. “That’s what I’m gonna have.”
“I’m gonna have a ’57 Cadillac,” said Danny. “Powder blue.” He pictured the car he had seen through the rain at Cookie’s funeral.
“Powder blue’s a suckhole colour,” said Paul.
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
They walked back to Paul’s house for supper. Danny didn’t let his mum or aunt know what he was doing, and when Mrs. Carter asked him if he had, he said yes.
Supper was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans.
Mr. Carter was a slow eater. Danny knew this from having eaten there before. He decided to take a bite only when Mr. Carter took a bite and to choose the same thing as he did each time. Meat loaf, beans, potatoes. Beans, beans, potatoes, meat loaf. He hoped no one was paying attention to what he was doing. It was the most fun he’d had since before Cookie died. He might tell Paul about it later, but he might not. It was more the type of thing he told Cookie.
7
During the next few days Danny cruised the neighbourhood for suitable stones, which he brought home and placed on a shelf in the shed.
Since he was up from his chair and out and around, Dot decided she could go home, at least for a few days. Mid-week, Danny heard whispers coming from the living room as he sat at the kitchen table eating fried eggs and sausages that Dot had prepared for him. The words pills and pull yourself together were uttered more than once. From his mother’s side of the conversation came mostly sighs.
She suffered from something called fibrositis. It was the cause of her fatigue and her pain. Heaven help you if you touched her — it hurt too much. She couldn’t bear to be touched. She needed pills for all kinds of things: stiffness, sleeplessness, what she called her excruciating pain. There were some yellow ones that she took just to make me feel a little better. The pills worried Dot. In her opinion there were far too many of them, and she objected on the grounds that they didn’t seem to help anyway.
“Do you want me to suffer, Dot? Is that it?” said Barbara.
“Of course not, Barb, of course not. I just worry that you’re overdoing the pills, that you lose track of them sometimes.”
“I’m a big girl, Dot.”
The eggs on Danny’s plate looked a little too jiggly this morning. He liked them sunny side up, but with no jiggle to them. Dot’s mind hadn’t been on her cooking.
Edwin drove in to pick her up. They left the cupboards and fridge full of eats, as Edwin called them, and a brand new pile of money in the kitchen drawer. The money in the drawer was nothing new. It always arrived by way of Dot.
Barbara got off the couch to say goodbye to her sister. It was the first time in a couple of days that Danny had seen her upright, and he wondered if the whole time he had stayed in his room, she had stayed on the couch — if she had remained horizontal except for her ghostly appearances on her way to the bathroom in the night. She put a hand on his shoulder now, a feeble unwanted pressure, and he forced himself not to shrug her off.
“Take care of your mother, son,” Edwin said as he started up his Olds. “She’ll need your help now more than ever.”
Those words hit Danny hard in the gut. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would have to look after anybody but himself. It reminded him of one Hallowe’en, when he was much younger. His teacher had passed out cards with little slits in them that were supposed to be filled with dimes. The whole scheme was called The March of Dimes, and it was to help people all across Canada who had been crippled by polio. Danny had thought that it was up to him to take his dime card to them wherever they lived and he wondered why none of his classmates looked as alarmed as he felt, with his silent questions about train derailments and dog sled travel to the Northwest Territories where he imagined some of them lived, in particular the ones he was responsible for. He was afraid to ask anyone for details, so he hid the card in a shoe box at the back of his closet and did nothing more about it. After a week or so, when the subject hadn’t come up again, he stopped worrying.
He had a similar feeling now, when Uncle Edwin mentioned taking care of his mother. At first he had been relieved that Dot was leaving, but now he understood that he hadn’t given any real thought to the meals that had turned up three times a day, or the clean clothes that fluttered and snapped on the clothesline. He did not doubt that he could cook and do laundry for himself — he and Cookie had been doing that for years. Well, mostly Cookie; he had helped. But when he thought about looking after the human lump on the couch, it seemed way harder than taking dimes to the Arctic Circle.
Dot kissed her sister on the cheek and Danny on top of his head and gave Uncle Edwin a look that went along with the way Danny felt. If she were to speak then, he was sure her words would be: Edwin, don’t scare the boy.
When she was settled in the passenger seat she rolled down the window. “We’ll come in to town and check on you from time to time.”
“When?” Danny said.
He knew it would be hard for them to get away. Farmers couldn’t just up and leave anytime they liked, or anytime their sister lay limp and pathetic on a chesterfield. He had spent a week with them a couple of summers ago and watched them rise with the sun and work all day long. He had helped, but not very much; mostly he had sought out modest adventures with two brothers from a neighbouring farm.
Dot took his hand and squeezed.
“Soon.”
She looked at her sister as she spoke. The line of her lips went straight across, no up or down to it.
Danny watched them drive away. He was on his own.
When he turned around, his mother was gone. He glanced at the house and saw nothing in any of the windows. He went inside and found her on the couch.
“Can I have a shelf in the shed all my own?” A stupid question but he needed to say something to sort of kick off their new life together.
And his thoughts had returned to the gathering of stones.
“Sure,” she said.
He figured if he asked her if he could take a piss on the rug she would agree to that too.
She lay with the back of her forearm covering her eyes. The living room was thick with her smoke.
He started to open a window.
“Don’t,” she said.
So she cared about something.
8
Danny enlisted Paul’s help. They worked in back lanes mostly. He didn’t want the sharp edges of gravel, but they found rounded stones, often in groups.
“Why are we doin’ this?” Paul said on day two.
“For slingshot practice, what else?”
“We haven’t shot our slingshots once. This is weird.”
“I thought it would be a good idea to gather up a million stones first.”
“I’m sick of it.”
Paul quit that day, so Danny did too. He didn’t want to be weird.
They deposited what stones they had in the shed and biked over to the Rowing Club, where they sat on the dock and watched the rowers.
“I don’t like rowers,” said Paul.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I just don’t.”
Russell came scrabbling down to the dock and leapt into the river, splashing both boys.
“Jesus, Russell,” said Paul.
Two rowers manoeuvred their way around the dog and glared at the boys as they lifted their craft out of the water and headed up to the club.
“Is that your dog?” one of them called out.
“No.” They answered in unison.
“See?” Paul said. “They’re assholes.”
Danny took off his sneakers and socks and dangled his feet in the river. It was still a little swollen from the spring melt.
“Christ, that’s cold,” he said. “Imagine your mum thinkin’ we might go swimmin’.”
“She’s out of her head,” said Paul.
“No, she’s not.”
Paul took off his socks and shoes and lowered his feet into the water alongside Danny’s.
Russell swam over in a frenzy of excitement.
“Easy, Russ,” Paul said. “We’re not comin’ in.”
“Do you have conversations at your house?” said Danny.
“What do you mean?”
“You know, do you talk to each other?”
“Not much. I mean my mum and dad talk, my sisters never shut up, but I don’t listen. If I’m involved it’s just mainly to be yelled at or ordered around.”
“I guess that’s normal.”
Danny thought about the way his house was, had been as long as he could remember. At Paul’s there were his two older sisters who put rollers in their hair and talked too long on the phone — like girls on television did — like Gidget did. And there was a mum who made good suppers and was nice about it if one was interrupted.
One day, last winter, when he had knocked on their door Mrs. Carter had answered and said, “We’re just sitting down to supper, Danny, but I’ll tell Paul you dropped by.”
“Oh, sorry, Mrs. Carter,” he said.
“It’s okay, dear. We’re eating a little earlier than usual. Sherry has CGIT. I can easily set another place, if you’d like to join us.”
“No, thanks,” he said and walked away. He remembered that he hadn’t wanted to go home that day. But it had been too cold to do anything else.
Blue Vengeance Page 3