Crush. Candy. Corpse.

by Sylvia McNicoll

  I hate all the pressure I’ve caused. I should have gone to jail instead, made it easier for them.

  Dad orders Thai food over the phone: two dishes of pad thai, one of steamed pork dumplings, a mango chicken, and a seaweed glass-noodle salad. Then we listen to the day’s events from Wolfie’s point of view: which service people came to which buildings as promised, how the garage was leaking in the Empress building, when the next of board-of-directors meeting for the Princess building could be scheduled.

  “How did it go for you, Sunny?” my brother asks. He’s short and broad like Dad but has Mom’s blond hair.

  “I don’t know. People repeated things about me that make me sound so bad. And I didn’t get a chance to explain. I should have just pleaded guilty.”

  “Don’t say that,” Wolfie says, grabbing my hand.

  “Well, it would be easier on all of you, too. You wouldn’t have to work at night to keep up.”

  “We always work nights.” My father reaches his arm over my shoulders. “Did we ever complain, Sunny? I will spend my money on lawyers any time to prove you are innocent.”

  The food arrives. By the time Dad has paid, and we each have helped ourselves, Mom comes in silent and pale.

  Something’s wrong.

  She doesn’t even reach for a plate. Just sits down and massages her forehead with her hand.

  “Did they find something?” I ask, voicing everyone’s fear.

  Mom squeezes her eyes closed and nods.

  Dad puts his arm around her and waits for her to explain.

  “It’s probably nothing. But I will have an ultrasound tomorrow early, before court and then . . . we will see for sure.”

  “You have to eat,” Dad says and dishes out some pad thai for her.

  She smiles at him.

  I pile the seaweed salad I saved for her on her plate. Our favourite. We discovered it when we heard that it was packed with anticarcinogens.

  My mother takes a forkful and then rests. She turns to Wolfgang. “Did Alexis bring Sunny’s homework?”

  My big brother nods.

  The ordinary stuff, that’s all my mother can focus on. I get that. The office for them and school for me. So I use the lemon Wetnaps that came with the Thai and head for Dad’s desk to work as hard as I can on my assignments. I have to do brilliantly at school now, to make up for all this trouble I’ve caused. To help Mom feel better when she’s so sick.

  That night I find it hard to sleep and when I finally do, my grandmother comes to me in a dream. Bald from her cancer treatments, she grins at me with flashing teeth and bright blue eyes.

  In the dream, I cry out and back away. But then her grin softens into a beautiful smile and she starts singing softly. It is a German lullaby, one she sang to me a hundred times or more, whenever I was sad or afraid. She translated and explained it once. Something about how God counts the stars in the sky to make sure none are missing. How he also knows about you and loves you too.

  In the dream she finishes singing and reaches out to hug me. “Ich liebe dich auch.” I love you too. I hug her back.

  The Eighth Visit — twenty-four hours left

  There’s no way I can interview any of the residents for Remembrance Day, the way you suggested, Mr. Brooks. Of the thirty-two residents in the lockup ward, only one seems to have served in the armed forces, judging from the photos displayed in the windows in front of all their rooms. Most of the pictures show very young, beautiful people. If the old people only remember the past and confuse it with the present, what do they think when they see themselves in the mirror? I’ll think of something else, though.

  At school we had a Remembrance Day assembly and a two-minute silence at eleven o’clock. With my parents being German, all the talk of soldiers giving their lives so the rest of us could have freedom hits kind of a sour note. Our whole family wears poppies. “Good public relations,” Dad says, but two of my great-grandfathers fought for the Nazis and died in prisoners-of-war camps. Mom usually says something like, “Good young boys died on both sides.” Nothing you want to spend even two minutes reminiscing about. Instead, I caught up with Alexis during the official “silence” and got a detention. Mr. Brooks let me serve it at lunchtime so I could still volunteer at the home that afternoon.

  After school, even though the air was nippy, I rode my bike over to Paradise Manor, catching up to Cole for the last block again. Cole wasn’t hot like Donovan. He was awkward, and a bad dancer and singer, and the golden eyes didn’t make up for all that. But each time we met at the Manor, I found myself lighting up.

  When we arrived, I used my Smooth on him just like last time, forcing a few cute little spikes into his messy helmet hair. I felt my face warming.

  As we strolled through the ward, a young woman approached us, looking confused. She couldn’t be a new resident — she seemed too active and determined and definitely too young.

  “Can we help you? Are you looking for someone?” Cole asked.

  “Yes. My father. He’s not in his room or in the recreation centre. But he usually walks around with a woman.”

  “We saw Fred with Marlene when we came in,” I told her.

  “Fred? No, my father’s name is Walter. About this tall,” she showed a height just above her own shoulders, “and the woman is my height. They’re not married. They’ve just sort of latched onto each other.”

  “Just like Fred and Marlene,” I explained. “I don’t know your dad but I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

  She continued past us.

  “Can you just walk with me?” I asked Cole. “I want to look at all the photos in the residents’ display windows. To see if I can find any veterans.”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t mind knowing more about the old folks, too,” Cole said as we continued the hall circuit side by side. “I’ve seen another couple walking together. Probably that guy was Walter. Just didn’t see them today.”

  Our fingers accidentally brushed and my hand tingled from the touch. But Cole didn’t grab on. The Manor kind of shook the ground beneath my feet and made me feel wobbly. I suddenly needed to hold on to him too, like Marlene did to Fred. So I took his hand. He smiled at me.

  We slowed down at the door to each room. Many of the windows were empty. Most contained a wedding photo and a family portrait. Marlene looked blissfully happy in the arms of a slick-haired groom. In other shots she held the hands of two children, smiling, on the verge of laughing even. Jeannette’s contained a portrait photo of a beautiful woman with a ’60s-style pageboy cut. In front of her face she held a Nikon camera.

  “Jeannette was a photographer?” I asked.

  Cole shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”

  I sighed. Alexis wanted to take pictures for a living too. It was a cool job.

  Susan’s display window showed a dark-haired woman with a white, square cap marked by a black stripe. She held a newborn baby in her arms. “Wow. It looks like Susan was a pediatric nurse.” Another great job.

  Fred’s photo showed him in the full red uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Poor Fred, now he wandered the halls in stained sweatpants. From the photo, he looked directly into my eyes. His lips twisted slightly, as though he was amused about something he saw in me. I fidgeted with the sides of my hair.

  Photographer, nurse, police officer — good jobs, worthwhile, useful people, now all more or less turned into wheelchair gnomes parked along the hall.

  Johann wore a uniform in his photo too. “Is that a German uniform?” I asked Cole.

  “Sure is,” he answered.

  “Guess he wouldn’t have much to say about the war, anyway.”

  “No. Although who knows what he’s always ranting about, it could be some battle. Hi, Susan,” he called.

  She sat in a chair near the recreation room, a strange grin on her
face. She half-covered her fully clothed baby doll with her own sweater as she rocked it.

  “Those aren’t her regular glasses,” I told Cole.

  “You’re right. Hers are silver-rimmed. Those frames are purple.”

  It was almost time for us to head for the dining room, but we split up to search for her glasses anyway. No luck.

  In between feeding our old people mouthfuls of mush, we scrutinized the faces and eyes of the other seniors around us.

  “Over there, that lady. She’s wearing Susan’s glasses, I’m sure of it,” I told Cole and we flagged the cafeteria goth over to help us make the switch. Mystery solved, a success!

  Johann ate through his entire pork schnitzel, too, at least that’s what the menu posted on the bulletin board suggested the brown puddle was. A smaller success but still fulfilling. Detention aside, I felt pretty good about the day’s events.

  That Friday, after school in the car, I talked to Donovan about my volunteer work. “Yeah, yeah,” he answered in two quick sound bites, a code that signalled the topic was too boring for him. Of course, he had to watch the road ahead of him, too, so he didn’t make eye contact.

  Then I told him about how I’d noticed that one lady had stolen the other’s glasses.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he answered.

  “First we went to the shower room to see if her glasses had been left there after her bath. But they weren’t. And the attendant said she knew she’d put the silver-rimmed ones on her that morning.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Well, Gillian told us that they visit each other’s rooms and sometimes steal from each other. Silly things, too. Family photos, combs, creams. In this case we figure she switched her eyeglasses.”

  “No kidding. What does the staff do when something valuable disappears?” He looked my way for a moment.

  “I’ve never heard about anything like that happening,” I answered. “They shouldn’t have valuables lying around. Hey!” I gripped Donovan’s arm. “Watch out for the woman with the stroller!”

  He turned his attention to the road again and braked sharply. “But that lady you dyed the hair for — didn’t she have money in her drawer?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “And the married ones, wouldn’t they all have diamond rings? Do the families just take them away?”

  “I don’t know, Donny. What do you care?”

  “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  chapter nine

  The next day the jury walks in dressed in the same array of jeans and sweatsuits as the day before. Kiwi lady wears a blueberry-coloured track suit with not so much as a tick-mark logo on it. The plaid-shirt man with the relaxed-fit jeans looks like he’s wearing exactly the same clothes as before. Maybe he has a whole closet of red plaid shirts. I shouldn’t judge. The lady with the stained top wears a clean one today. Could be it only stains during lunch.

  The chubby guy wears a bright yellow golf shirt that screams, “Look at my potbelly.” The other members of the jury look a bit rumpled, maybe a bit more tired.

  As I take my place in the courtroom, I stare at the judge’s shiny bald head. It bothers me for some reason, tugging at some image stuck somewhere in my head. Then it hits me — the dream about Omi.

  Sitting in the courtroom now, I can hear her singing again in my head and my eyes fill up. She would help me if she could, wherever she was. Still, it doesn’t matter if God counts me with his stars in the heavens or whether Omi loves me or not. It only matters what those twelve rumpled, tired jurors think as they listen to all the witnesses testifying.

  “Would Donovan Petrocelli take the stand, please?”

  Oh no, here it comes. I squeeze my eyes shut for a minute.

  “Show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” my mother said when I got caught shoplifting last summer. I had explained to her that I never stole anything. Donovan just passed a leather jacket to me to hold while he grabbed something else. The secret shopper pointed both of us out to the security guard and the two of them cornered us.

  The charges were dropped for me but not for Donovan. Mom and Dad forbade me to see him. But, really, how could they stop me when they were busy working at the condo or were at tests and treatments for Mom?

  Donovan’s wearing a white shirt, dark tie, and a dark jacket. Dressed for court, or maybe a funeral. He affirms instead of swearing in on the Bible. You have that choice if you’re not religious, but already it sets him apart from everyone else. His eyes, constantly moving, twitching almost, also set him apart. I don’t know whether he still likes me or if he’ll say bad things deliberately. But his eyes stop twitching as he sees me and he smiles.

  “Donovan, under what circumstances did you meet Sonja Ehret, the defendant?”

  “A couple of summers ago, I was working with a lawn-cutting company and we got hired by her old man’s condo management company. One day I was mowing the lawn and she came out with a cold glass of water.”

  “How would you characterize your relationship?”

  “Say what?”

  “Were you just friends, or romantically involved . . .” the buzzard waves a hand windshield-wiper style, “you know, boyfriend, girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I asked her out after I finished the glass of water. She goes to my high school and I’d seen her around before.”

  “So she would have been sixteen and you would have been seventeen, is that correct?”

  Donovan shakes his head. “No, she was sixteen. I was nineteen.”

  The buzzard taps his chin. “A three-year age difference. Do you know whether or not her parents approved of your relationship?”

  “They forbade her to see me.”

  “But you remained a couple for how long?”

  “Um . . . um . . .” He glances at my parents, knowing that we were supposed to have broken up that August when the security guard called Mom in. “We stopped goin’ out in February.”

  “That’s seven months that Sonja had to sneak around and deceive her parents in order to see you.”

  “Objection!” my lawyer calls.

  “Sustained,” the judge answers.

  Heh, heh, the plaid-shirt guy coughs. The chubby guy wipes his forehead hard and fast. Another statement they’re not supposed to listen to and yet they react to it anyway.

  “Can you tell the court why your relationship ended?”

  “She got really involved with the old people at the home. It was supposed to be just to get her volunteer hours to graduate, but then it was all she ever talked about.”

  “Can you tell us some of the things she said to you about them?”

  “Well, sure. You can see for yourself that Sunny is a hot . . . I mean, an attractive girl. She wanted them all to look better — to wear nicer clothes, to have their hair styled. We used to shop for them. She wanted to make them all happier and better.”

  “How did she react when instead the seniors slipped further away?”

  “She was really bummed out. She said she’d rather die than live the way they did.”

  “Objection!” my lawyer calls.

  “Overruled,” the judge says. “This is not hearsay. Mr. Petrocelli actually heard these words himself.”

  That’s because I must have said that line a hundred times to him before I even met Helen Demers, like when we were just shopping in the mall on Senior’s Day. Lining up behind the old folks as they stuttered forward on their canes or walkers, watching runny eyes trying to read the fine print on a coupon or shaky fingers groping for change in a clutch purse, or hearing clerks call the seniors “Dear” as they returned the change.

  “Just shoot me,” Donovan would agree as a scooter driven by an old guy on oxygen rolled along beside us.

  But I’ve changed! Now, every t
ime I see one of those elderly people struggling with their shopping, I want to call out “Good for you! Good you can still do it. You’re a hundred times better off than those old people back in Paradise Manor.”

  “Donovan, in front of you is a record of crimes you have committed. Do you acknowledge these?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You agree this a true representation of your crimes.”

  “Yeah, but Sunny had nothing to do with these.”

  Don’t do me any favours, Donny.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have before you Donovan Petrocelli’s criminal record, which shows several convictions for shoplifting. No further questions.”

  Donovan meant well, but he did harm. I can tell by the way the guy with the yellow shirt folds his arms. “Show me your friends . . .” my mother had said. That guy thought he knew who I was from the boyfriend I used to have. What that whole jury didn’t understand was that I grew out of Donovan and a lot of the feelings I used to have. And I really put a lot of myself into my work at Paradise Manor. They just had to check my journal.

  The Ninth Visit — twenty-two hours left

  Mrs. Johnson may tell you I broke the rules again, Mr. Brooks, but I have to tell you I feel really good about my volunteer work today. I spent some time alone with Johann Schwartz and I was able to feed him his entire meal after he’d had a very rough morning.

  For the first snowfall of the season, I sure didn’t ride my bike to Paradise Manor. From my seat by the window of the bus I spotted Cole, though, riding his. He wore a blue toque under his red helmet. I shook my head. What his hair would look like after that!

  I’d actually borrowed some of Donovan’s hair glue, permanently, and kept it in my purse especially for Cole. When we walked into the home together, after sterilizing our hands, I gelled down his hair. I could smell his breath as I used my own comb to place the strands of his hair just so. Wintergreen, much nicer than mint.

  He drew closer but then pulled away. “You have a boyfriend, don’t you, Sunny.”