Crush. Candy. Corpse.

by Sylvia McNicoll

  “Miss Meredith?”

  “Just as he left he gave her a candy.”

  “Was it a hard candy?”

  Alexis hesitates again. The jury members get restless, scratching, forehead scrubbing, and coughing.

  Come on, Lexie, answer already. She was calling too much attention to the stupid question.

  “I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like it came from a bag of Werther’s Originals.”

  “No further questions.”

  Oh, come on. It shouldn’t be about what Cole gave his grandma. The trial should be about what I did.

  The Eleventh Visit — eighteen hours left

  Besides feeding the old folk, today I helped decorate the common areas for Christmas. Even Mrs. Johnson admired my work. She asked me and the other volunteer, Cole, to come back on the weekend to decorate the small trees they raffle off as prizes. So if you’re not counting the first visit cancelled due to smell, let’s count that extra Saturday visit. And by the way, do you want to buy a ticket, Mr. Brooks? You could use the tree in the classroom. Frankly, it’s a bit drab in there. They’ll be raffled off next week at the party.

  “Tell me why you’re not going Christmas shopping with me again?” Donovan asked on the phone when I said I had volunteer duties on Saturday.

  As we talked, I tucked the phone in my shoulder and started picking up lint from the Berber carpet in my bedroom. “It’s a fundraiser for Paradise Manor. You can come help too. Alexis is.” I forced myself to sound hopeful. My room is painted a chirpy canary yellow and I find focusing on bright colours always helps.

  But really, I counted on Donovan not volunteering with us. I thought he’d make fun of the old people. Also I didn’t know how I’d feel with him and Cole in the same room. Donovan was way hotter, there was no doubt about that, but Cole was considerate and kind. I really didn’t want him shown up.

  There was another nagging feeling tugging at me. Cole’s personality might just totally show Donovan up. I still had my heart set on attending his graduation prom. It would be practice for my own. Nothing’s quite as big as a grad dance, unless maybe it’s your wedding. I pitched the lint from my hand into the wastepaper basket and straightened.

  “You’re going to want me to steal presents for the old folks soon. We could have started today,” Donovan told me.

  “I don’t want you to steal anything.” My duvet looked annoyingly wrinkled so I straightened and smoothed it. “Get another job, Donny. The stores are all looking for help.” Of course, with his shoplifting conviction, maybe no one would hire him.

  “But it’s the challenge, Sunny. Nothing gives me quite the rush. I try to pay sometimes and this feeling just comes over me . . . and I can’t help myself.”

  “Well, go enjoy then.” I punched hard at the pillows on my bed to plump them up.

  “Let me take you for lunch first and I’ll drive you to the home after.”

  I stared at the sunshine of my walls and breathed in deeply. “Alexis is coming too, remember?”

  “So I’ll swing round and pick her up too.”

  Another inhale of the brightness. “Sure, that sounds great.” Donny did have his good points. He could be very generous. We agreed that I would be ready for eleven and then we hung up.

  That Saturday he ended up taking me and Alexis to lunch and he even paid. I squirmed in my seat when he honked at the red bicycle ahead of us turning onto the Manor drive.

  “What kind of idiot drives a bike in winter?” he said.

  “Someone who wants to stay fit and cares for the environment,” Alexis answered. “Is that the guy you were telling me about, Sunny?”

  Donovan drove us to the front door where Cole was locking up his bike. I don’t know if he saw or not, but Donny picked then to give me the slowest kiss of the decade. Alexis had jumped out of the car and introduced herself to Cole by the time it ended.

  Alexis is a lot taller than me and thin like Cole. Her hair curls around her face like a lion’s mane and her eyes make her stand out in a girl-next-door kind of way. Plus she’s smart, way smarter than me. Standing with Cole chatting, she looked like she belonged with him and that made something crack open inside of me. Something I didn’t even know was there.

  Donovan gave a double honk on his horn and I waved goodbye without looking back. “Hey, Cole,” I called. Even though his hair stuck up rooster style as usual, I didn’t feel comfortable fixing it for him in front of Alexis.

  “Hi, Sunny,” he answered back stiff and uncomfortable, as though I’d interrupted something. Or was it Donovan’s kiss that was bothering him?

  We went inside. Alexis loved the jaunty bow and cap I’d given the ceramic bulldog in the foyer. “That fireplace could use some stockings hung in a row, though.”

  I shrugged. “We worked with what we had.”

  “Maybe I can get a store to donate some,” Alexis said. “I got sponsors to give us dog treats for the shelter.”

  I thought about the sweatpants Donovan had stolen for Fred and Johann. You could say we had forced a store into sponsorship.

  We headed into the crafts room on the second floor. Some silver-haired ladies there were crocheting slippers for a bazaar that would be held the day before the party. Gillian walked around, chatting with them.

  There were ten trees spread along the counters that lined the wall and plastic bags of brand-new decorations on the table across from the crocheters. A boom box in the corner played Christmas music. At that moment, one of Dad’s crooners, Bing Crosby I think, was singing “White Christmas.”

  One of the ladies sang along, another hummed.

  Cole broke into song as he ripped open a bag of little pink-and-gold angels playing trumpets and harps.

  Alexis smiled an admiring yet sympathetic kind of smirk.

  I don’t know what got into me, but I sang, too, as I attached tiny red-velvet bows to a tree.

  Alexis hung golden bells on her tree. When “White Christmas” ended, the “The Little Drummer Boy” began. Alexis started singing that one in her best crystal tones. One of the crocheting ladies told her she had a lovely voice. These women didn’t live in the lockup unit. It didn’t seem like they had any form of dementia. I missed Jeannette’s compliments.

  “Don’t hang that.” I yanked down a silver ball from Cole’s angel-covered tree.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “You have enough on already. And you don’t want to mix silver with gold. No one will buy tickets for it.”

  “Christmas is all about too much,” Alexis said. “Anything goes.” To bug me she added a silver ball to her tree.

  But I thought she was wrong. Christmas is about beautiful things: my grandmother’s advent candles sitting on an evergreen wreath, the scent of burnt candles and pine needles, an elegant table set with linen, crystal glasses, and bone-coloured dishes. My mother, in a silk dress, well and smiling over it all.

  “Don’t use too many decorations on one tree,” Gillian warned. “Or we’ll run out.”

  “Yeah, Alexis.” I yanked off the silver ball.

  When we were finished all the trees looked good, even the garish Snoopy tree Cole did. We wrapped small, empty tissue boxes to hold the ballot tickets.

  Afterwards we went into the lockup to see Mrs. Demers. We drank apple juice and ate ornament-shaped sugar cookies at the window overlooking the courtyard. Of course, Cole’s grandma just had a plain tea biscuit. She didn’t say anything but her eyes looked warmly at Cole. Whether she recognized him or not, she loved him.

  “Where did you get those? I never got anything to eat and I’m starving,” Marlene complained as she shuffled by with Fred.

  “Here, have mine,” I held out my plate.

  She took it and ate the cookie standing up.

  “Are you Diane?” Fred asked m
e.

  “No. Sunny.”

  “No it’s not. It’s snowing outside,” Marlene said. She finished the cookie and pointed to Cole’s. “Where did you get that? They never gave me any and I’m starving.”

  By the time we left, Marlene had eaten six cookies and was still starving. She also needed a loaf of bread and Fred wanted us to take him to Canadian Tire.

  As Cole kissed his grandma goodbye, he unwrapped a butterscotch candy and slipped it into her mouth.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled around it, the candy clicking against her teeth. They were her only words that afternoon.

  “I love you, Grandma. No matter what.”

  “Bye Helen. Bye Fred. Bye Marlene.” Alexis waved to everyone.

  Someone grabbed my arm. When I turned, I saw it was Jeannette. “Those are beautiful shoes you have on.” Jeannette didn’t even glance Alexis’s way. At least she was loyal.

  “Thank you.” I was wearing lace-up leather boots up to my knees. Still, her oddball comment made me feel appreciated. In that one small way, she reminded me of my grandmother. “See you at the Christmas party.”

  “Merry Christmas,” she said and shuffled off.

  Cole didn’t want to join us at the mall no matter how Alexis coaxed him.

  “Gawd, could you make yourself any more desperate?” I said in frustration as we boarded the bus.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, picking the first double seat at the front.

  “You. Chasing Cole. He obviously didn’t want to come shopping with us and you kept at him.” I slid in beside her.

  She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, then stared out the window.

  “And the whole time you flirted with him.”

  She turned towards me. “So? What’s wrong with that? I’m not going out with anyone.”

  “Doesn’t mean you have to smother a guy.”

  “You have Donovan.” She raised her voice and sputtered, “You said you don’t even like Cole. Why can’t I have him? Is there one boy on earth you don’t have to have?”

  Sitting on the long seat just ahead of us, a lady with a fun-fur Cossack hat turned around to stare.

  I lowered my voice. She faced the front again. “I can’t help it if Cole likes me.”

  “Sunny, he finds you pretty. All boys do.” Her voice rose and the Cossack hat flipped around again. “’Cause you are! You are beautiful.” She noogied the side of my head. “Get that through your skull!”

  “Watch the hair!” I pulled my head away. “You know what? I really don’t feel like shopping after all.” I stood up, yanked the signal bell and walked to the front of the bus.

  “Sunny, come back!”

  But I couldn’t. Because even though I still wanted to go out with Donovan, I knew then that I also wanted to keep Cole all to myself. Maybe if I had just been honest about how I felt about Cole instead of taking it out on Alexis, I wouldn’t be in this courtroom today.

  chapter twelve

  “Alexis, you stated before that Sonja Ehret was your best friend. What qualities did you see in her to form such a relationship?”

  “Well, we live in the same neighbourhood and have been in the same class since about kindergarten.”

  “Go on.”

  “We enjoy the same things — fashion, boys.” My lawyer nods and she continues. “But what I really like about Sunny is that she’s kind and generous. She’s really sensitive, too, but she covers that up. She always tries to be cheery.”

  “Is that where she got her nickname?”

  “Yeah. Her family calls her that so of course her friends do.”

  “Can you give us an example of her sensitivity?”

  “Well, when her mom got sick I knew she was really down about it even though most people didn’t see it. So I suggested we sign up for Run for the Cure.”

  “And she agreed.”

  “Yes, and she hates jogging. But then when she had to get pledges, she found she couldn’t talk about it. So we didn’t run. That’s when she streaked her hair pink.”

  “So you’re saying she colours her hair to increase awareness of breast cancer?”

  “Yeah, but she still can’t really talk about it, so I don’t know if that’s exactly working out.”

  “Would you say Sonja is the kind of person who likes to take charge, or is she more of a follower?”

  Alexis thinks this question over. She is my best friend and she wants to answer what’s right for me, I know it. But her hesitation makes her seem unsure. “Sunny is a leader.”

  I know what my lawyer wanted from that question. Just because Cole made a promise to his grandmother, it didn’t mean I would follow his plan. Would they draw the right conclusion though? I look at the jury. Nobody seems to be dozing off today. Or will they just think Sunny didn’t just assist with a suicide because of a boy she loved. Sunny led the way.

  The Twelfth Visit — sixteen hours left

  At the Christmas party tons of people came and there was lots of food. My job was to get residents with no family their refreshments. That was Johann and Marlene. That’s right, Mr. Brooks, Johann came back. Fred’s wife attended the party so I really felt bad for Marlene. Also, sorry to say, you didn’t win a tree.

  No one told me Johann was returning but when I arrived at Paradise Manor, an ambulance was parked in front. As I passed through the two sets of doors, I saw a small reception crew fussing: Katherine and Gillian, Mrs. Johnson and a new male nurse I didn’t know. In the middle I could make out Johann sitting in a wheelchair.

  “You came back just in time. Santa Claus is coming today, Papa,” the nurse told him.

  “We’re so happy you’re home,” Katherine said. I liked her better because she really sounded as though she meant it.

  I rushed over. “Frohe Weihnachten!” I told him. “Merry Christmas” in German. Then I hugged him and kissed his cheek, which was warm but stiff. He needed a good moisturizer.

  I looked in his eyes. The pupils were as small as needle points and he didn’t even blink. He no longer ranted. He seemed somewhere else but here in this chair sat his body as a place mark.

  I frowned, feeling like I’d lost something, too.

  As they wheeled him back to his room to get him ready for the party, I joined Cole in the dining room. A Santa Claus who looked familiar was setting up a speaker system.

  “Elvis is back,” Cole told me, waggling his eyebrows.

  On the right side of the room a banquet table held festive-looking food: a shrimp tree, meatballs in a crockpot, crustless sandwiches on green and pink bread, multi-grain rolls and roses of butter, sausages in puff pastry, and squares and cookies of every flavour and shape.

  The regular tables were crowded with residents and their families. I saw the pirate boy from Halloween with some kind of red punch staining the corners of his mouth: Boo Berry juice turned Christmas Cranberry. He carried a plateful of meatballs over to a table where his grandmother sat. She was one of the seniors I still didn’t know.

  By another table, I saw Fred being kissed by a leopard-print-wearing blonde. Hussy! Although the lady probably was his real wife. Still, how was Marlene going to take this? She sat at the corner of a table with Susan. Luckily, Cole’s grandmother was parked there too, so Cole and I could work together.

  “Merry Christmas, Marlene!” I said. I strolled over to the table to load up a plate with two rolls and some meatballs and gravy. “Here you go. Look Marlene, see all the nice bread. You won’t have to go to the store today.”

  That made her turn her head towards Fred’s table. She always walked the halls with Fred to shop for her imaginary bread. She gave him a wave once or twice but he didn’t even look her way.

  “Do you like shrimp? I can get you some.”

  She didn’t answer. Inst
ead she picked up her fork and continued to watch Fred and his leopard-spotted wife. She was feeding him shrimp. I saw a handsome man maybe my father’s age who looked just like Fred. His son. You could see what Fred must have been like when he was healthier.

  At that moment, Gillian wheeled Johann in and parked him right by Marlene.

  I got him some sausages. I thought they might be soft enough for him.

  Marlene put her hand on his.

  There you go Marlene, there are more fish in the sea. Santa Elvis began to sing. “I’ll have a bluh, bluh blue Christmas without you.”

  I looked around. Maybe it wasn’t exactly a blue Christmas at Paradise Manor. There were lots of people dressed in Santa hats and bright colours trying to seem festive, pretending everyone was having fun.

  “Merry Christmas!” Gillian gurgled, her Rudolph brooch flashing red at its nose. Was she really this enthusiastic? Most of the residents responded the same as they always did, which was not at all. They just stared off, slack-jawed, mumbling, or even snoring. Only Jeannette smiled, her head swaying in time to the music. Of course at any minute, if she had a mood switch, she might threaten to kill Santa.

  I cut up the little sausage rolls for Johann and put one in his mouth. He began coughing immediately. I watched his colour and waited. Meanwhile I buttered Marlene’s roll. Cole winked at me as he slipped his grandmother a toffee square from the desert table. Yeah, like that was dietetic.

  “Do you want a drink, Johann?”

  He coughed some more. Hek, hek, hek, hek.

  I held a glass of the red punch to his lips and he drank some. At least I saw his Adam’s apple bob a few times as though he were swallowing. But some of the red stained his face just like it had the young pirate.

  “Better to let him catch his breath on his own. Don’t give him anything to drink till he does,” Gillian told me as she drifted closer. “Are you okay, Johann?”

  He ignored her and continued his little coughs. Gradually they slowed down. I got him some trifle, which was more custard then cake, and he did much better on that.