“Yeah. What did you think?”
“Nothing, I guess.” Danny said, although he had been wondering where she’d learned her French swear words.
“Did you not think my name sounded kind of French?”
Danny realized that he didn’t know her last name.
“Yeah. I guess.” It was way too late to ask her now.
“Why do you think people make fun of me for the way I talk?”
“I didn’t know they did. I like the way you talk.”
He loved the way she talked, but he didn’t want to say the word love in case she thought he loved her, which he did.
“My dad’s name is really Jacques,” Janine went on. “But he didn’t like the way English people pronounced it, like Jock, so he changed it to Jake.”
“Do you speak French?” Danny said.
“We spoke nothing but French for the first few years of my life. My dad and I still speak it sometimes around the house.”
It hadn’t occurred to Danny before that the way she talked was because she had a hint of a French accent.
“I wish I could speak French,” he said.
“You take it in school, don’t you?”
“School doesn’t count.”
“Yeah, they don’t do a very good job of it. They teach grammar and stuff, but not how to speak. I got a hundred in French last term.”
“Really?”
“Yup. It was the first hundred I ever got. I couldn’t believe it. Let’s get going.”
“Do I still have chocolate on my face?”
“Oui.”
“I know what that means.” Danny dragged his sleeve across his face again.
They rode down the back lane of Claremont towards Janine’s house. Frank Foote was in his yard playing catch with another boy. His sister was sitting in her wheelchair on the patio watching them, or facing them, anyway. Frank waved at Danny and Janine, and they waved back.
“Frank doesn’t make fun of me,” said Janine.
“No,” said Danny. “He wouldn’t.” He didn’t know if Janine knew that Frank had been the one to find Cookie. He suspected she did. Probably everyone in Norwood knew everything about what had happened that day.
“You know what’s really stupid?” she said. “Speaking of things that are stupid?”
“What?”
“The way Mrs. Flood calls herself Mrs. Randolph Flood as though her own first name is Randolph.”
“Maybe it is.” Danny smiled so she wouldn’t think he was a moron who didn’t know that women weren’t named Randolph and who couldn’t eat without getting food on his face like a toddler.
“We could maybe use that to torture her in some way,” said Janine.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Danny was concerned about the way Janine’s ideas of revenge had taken a turn and begun to focus on Mrs. Flood. As far as he knew there was no reason to torture Mrs. Randolph Flood.
“Come inside while I put this stuff away.”
They were back at Janine’s house where the groceries sat on the stoop where she had left them.
Danny followed her in and sat down at the kitchen table. A lot of the things she was putting away were the same types of things he bought when he went shopping.
“Oh, jeez, the ice cream has melted,” said Janine.
“What did you expect?”
“Let’s eat it right now. We can just pretend it’s soft ice cream, but better than usual because it Neapolitan.”
She opened up the carton, got a couple of spoons, and they set to.
“Cookie would have loved this,” said Danny. “In the olden days, I mean. First Fudgsicles and now soft ice cream.”
“Were you close to your sister?”
“Yeah, pretty close, I guess.”
“What was up with her, Danny? Why did she puke all the time?”
“You know about that?”
“Yeah, I heard her in the washroom at school. More than once. I know other kids heard her sometimes too. I saw her at the river once but I’m pretty sure she didn’t see me.”
“So, does everybody know then?”
“Well, I never told anyone, but I can’t say about the others. It probably got around. I heard a couple of them making gagging sounds as she walked by them one day. I told them to lay off, but it didn’t help. No way were they going to listen to me.”
“I don’t really understand it,” Danny said. “The way she was. I know she wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn. She was her idol. Ever since she saw Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“Jeez, I don’t blame her. Audrey Hepburn is beautiful.”
“I guess so. Cookie used to ask me if I thought she was fat. I’d say no, but I didn’t know what more to say. I wish I’d known what more to say.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Danny.”
“I’d hear her cryin’ and I’d knock on her door, but she wouldn’t let me in. Everything was a secret with her. I didn’t get it, still don’t.”
“Some things are beyond getting,” said Janine. She swirled the three flavours of ice cream together.
“My mum used to criticize her…tell her she took after the broad-beamed side of the family.”
“That wasn’t very nice of your mum.”
Danny put down his spoon.
“Aunt Dot is worried that you’re too mature for me to be hangin’ around with,” he said.
“Screw Aunt Dot.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“I do, but screw her anyway.”
“She eased up a bit when I told her you were Cookie’s friend.”
“Good. That’s good that you told her I was her friend. I hope Cookie knew that I was, or would have been, or something.”
“I hope so too,” said Danny. “I guess it looks weird from the outside lookin’ in — you and me hangin’ around together. People must think so.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. People. Others.”
“So what?”
“So nothing, I guess. I’m mostly just thinkin’ about how it fits in with the whole Miss Hardass thing.”
“What about Uncle Edwin?” Janine said. “What does he think?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing, unless Dot starts harpin’ on at him about it.”
He stood up. “I gotta go home and make my mum a very late lunch.”
“Come back when you’re done,” said Janine. “We need to work on our tactics.”
28
On the ride home Danny wondered what their tactics were going to be. He didn’t want them to lose sight of the original plan and he thought that Janine went off on tangents too easily. She probably couldn’t stay focussed because her mind kept drifting off to kissing Rock Sand.
It was possible that they stuck their tongues in each other’s mouths. He wished she would save her tongue for him. Next time he saw her he would try to catch a glimpse of it, see how it moved inside her mouth.
When he got home he sprawled on the Muskoka chair and stared at the pool. Russell began hurling herself at the screen door, so Danny got up and let her out. Lena was inside. He had forgotten she was coming.
He wished he could talk to Cookie about the best way to avenge her death. Was Miss Hartley the right target? How about those girls who made gagging sounds as Cookie walked by? They deserved something. Where would she stand on the subject? Maybe nowhere. She’d probably be thinking about cake.
One day last winter Danny had come home from school a little earlier than usual. His mum was on one of her rare outings, to see a doctor about her muscle spasms.
When he walked into the house on that frozen February day a warm chocolaty aroma welcomed him. Cookie sat at the kitchen table with a partially baked cake in front of her. She looked to h
ave been eating the crusty parts from the top and around the edges. He wanted to run, but he didn’t.
“I couldn’t wait for it to be done,” she said.
Her face was a blotchy red with embarrassment, and tears ran down her gaunt cheeks. She put down her spoon. There was chocolate on her face and her clothes and her hands and her forearms. There was chocolate in her hair.
She ran out of the room, and Danny soon heard water thundering into the bathtub.
He threw away the rest of the cake. There was no point to it. This was the most bizarre thing he had ever walked in on. All he could think to do was clean up the mess.
When his mother walked in the door he was putting his winter moccasins back on, not sure where he was going. She was a little worse for the wear from her outing, so he didn’t have any trouble bolting out the door with little in the way of an explanation.
It must have been the worst thing in the world being Cookie, Danny thought now. Of course there were worse things. He had seen pictures from the war, but that was war. This was regular life. Surely it hadn’t had to be that way.
Russell was lying beside his chair, on her side with her eyes open. Danny stared at her till he was sure of the up and down of her breathing.
The things Cookie had done didn’t make her feel good, or even okay. They did the opposite of those things. He knew that much because of her crying.
It was as though she had been starving, like those pictures of the people in concentration camps. So she filled herself up. But then she emptied herself out so she was starving again. Her methods for whatever it was she was trying to accomplish (satisfying her hunger? looking like Audrey Hepburn?) were at odds with each other. Surely she saw that. But it wasn’t a matter of seeing, he supposed. He had started a letter to Audrey Hepburn once to enlist her help. But he hadn’t finished it and wouldn’t have known where to send it if he had.
He didn’t want to think about it anymore. Sometimes it seemed as if there was way more stuff he didn’t want to think about than stuff he did.
His thoughts turned to Janine and Miss Hartley and Mrs. Flood and Rock Sand and back to Janine, and a tiny ray of optimism poked through when he realized he could see her again as soon as he wanted to.
He didn’t want to have to work around Lena, so he hopped on his bike and headed back over to Janine’s.
“What did you make for lunch?” she said.
“Nothing,” said Danny, and they both laughed.
29
“I’ve smelled booze on Hardass’s breath,” said Janine.
They were at the river.
“Really?”
Danny caught glimpses of her wet tongue as she talked. He wanted to ask her to give it to him.
“Yup. She and her sister probably drink their heads off.”
They chewed grass ends in silence for a while.
“They probably get drunk and try to talk French to each other,” said Danny. “And then go out and make fools of themselves tryin’ to talk French to people in the neighbourhood.”
Russell bounded across the field to where they sat, the back half of her body twisting from side to side the way it did.
“The paper boy must have finished his rounds.” Danny welcomed his dog.
“We’re going to have to get around to spying on them,” said Janine.
“We don’t wanna get too diverted,” said Danny. “Our slingshot practice should still be the most important thing.”
“The spying can be mixed in with our practice,” said Janine. “It’ll make both things more fun.”
So they spied. And they practised.
Mrs. Flood did not go out to work each day.
“Maybe she’s a teacher, like Hardass,” said Janine.
They concluded that Roger Dubois, the tenant of the third apartment, was away on a holiday, as they never saw him. They never saw any man at the house on rue Valade, so they also concluded that Mrs. Flood no longer had a husband.
“She’s a divorcée,” said Danny.
“Or a widow,” said Janine.
“Nah, a divorcée.”
“She could be a spinster,” said Janine, “like Hardass. And she just calls herself Mrs. Flood so people will think that once upon a time a man liked her.”
“Nope. She’s a divorcée.” Danny liked the word. It conjured up pictures of spike heels and whiskey laughs and blouses with sweat marks underneath the arms.
During the last week of August they discovered that she worked at Queen Elizabeth School. Miss Hartley dropped her off before driving over to Nelson Mac. The teachers were getting ready for the school year.
“Why are we spendin’ so much time on the divorcée Flood?” Danny said.
They were in Coronation Park, on their way home from the library, where Janine had dropped off seven books and picked up four more.
“I don’t know. It’s something to do. It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Rock went to Q.E. I wonder if he had her for anything,” said Janine.
“Rock went to Q.E. I wonder if he had her for anything.” Danny said it in a high mimicky voice.
“Shut up, Danny.”
“Sorry.”
“You could be friends with him if you weren’t such a jerk.”
“I’m not a jerk. And anyway, if I start havin’ a seventeen-year-old guy friend, Aunt Dot will have me committed to an insane asylum.”
“He just turned eighteen.”
“Way worse.”
“It’s okay to have a best friend, Danny, but you need others too, so you don’t count entirely on the one person.”
“Yeah, you’ve already pretty much said that.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Who’s your best friend?”
“I don’t really have one, but you’re the person who I tell the most stuff to. Like about my dad and that.”
“I’m kinda new, aren’t I, as friends go?”
“Yeah, but I think we’re sort of kindred spirits, like Anne of Green Gables and Diana.”
Danny hadn’t read Anne of Green Gables but Cookie had. It was still on the bookshelf in her room.
“Why do you think that?”
“I just do, that’s all.”
“What’s it to do with?”
“Well…I think I understand your wish to avenge Cookie’s death. To hurt someone.”
Hurt.
“And there’s a certain amount of comfort in that.”
“Comfort?”
“Yeah. I feel like this plan of ours kind of intertwines us.”
Danny wanted badly to be intertwined with her but he wasn’t sure about the comfort part. He wanted to be with her all the time, but he rarely felt comfortable. Maybe he didn’t know what comfort was.
“What about Rock Sand?” he said. “Is he a kindred spirit?”
“Yeah, but it’s different with him.”
“How?”
“Well…I’m not sure how to explain it to you, but you’ll get it in a year or two.”
Blood rushed to Danny’s head. “Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“What you just said.”
She hadn’t said when you’re a little older like people usually did when they thought he was too dense to get something, but what she said meant the exact same thing.
He kicked the base of a well-established tree so hard that he hurt his foot.
“Careful there,” she said, as though he were four years old.
“I have to go now.” He limped across St. Mary’s Road and down Claremont towards the river.
Janine didn’t come after him; Danny looked back a couple of times.
He wondered if Rock Sand felt that Janine was a kindred spirit. He probably had no clue what it m
eant.
When he got to the river he took his slingshot out of his back pocket and shot a few stones, aiming at nothing. Just the act of settling the stone, pulling the sling, and watching it soar over the water soothed him.
Russell ran towards him from the direction of home and circled around.
Being friends with a girl was way too hard, especially an older one who thought she was queen of the world. He should be good at it, having hung around with Cookie all those years; she was a girl, after all. But Janine was nothing like Cookie. Maybe she was right. Maybe he didn’t yet possess the wherewithal to process all the words and starry-eyed gazes of a fifteen-year-old girl. She was still fifteen — would be until December 9th. He had asked.
She had said they were intertwined. It was the best thing she’d said to him so far, but then it was annihilated with her talk of Rock Sand. And that was his own fault; he shouldn’t have mentioned him.
“Oooh,” he said. His body ached. “I wanna touch her, Russ. I wanna intertwine with her.”
He walked slowly along, and Russell followed with considerably more enthusiasm.
A cool wind blew — an unlikely wind for August. Again, time felt as if it were running out, but it couldn’t be. It was all around him — all the time in the world. He wanted to go back to Janine, but it was too late. She would have had enough of him for today.
He arrived home with a sore big toe. He was ashamed of himself. She had told him her innermost secrets, and he hadn’t come close to telling her that that was his new most precious treasure.
For supper he put one of Dot’s casseroles in the oven. When he dished it up, he saw that it was her ham and chicken concoction. As he ate at the kitchen table he was almost certain he heard his mother say, Mmm. When he retrieved her tray he found that she had eaten the entire portion on her plate. He washed the dishes, put the lid on the remains of the casserole, and put it in the fridge, wondering for a split second if it would still be there in the morning. Of course it would. Cookie was no longer there to eliminate any chance of leftovers.
He noticed some spillage and wiped it up. Lena didn’t clean anything that wasn’t out in the open for all to see. If Dot was going to keep on with spot checks, he was going to have to improve his efforts. He didn’t want to end up living on a farm near Baldur because a small fridge spillage put her over the top.
Blue Vengeance Page 15