What We All Want

by Michelle Berry

  “What is it then?”

  Thomas takes a shot and misses his ball. He almost drops his club. “I live across the country.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “And Tess?” Thomas asks, changing the subject.

  “What about her?”

  “How is she?”

  Billy looks again at Grace. “You just saw her. You tell me how she’s doing.”

  Thomas lines up his ball. “She didn’t say much. She looks good.” “Good?”

  “Yes.” Thomas clears his throat. He is astonished at Tess’s weight. She has ballooned enormously since he last saw her. Thomas feels she might burst. “You know,” he says, “I play golf at home.”

  “Minigolf?”

  “No, real golf. I have golf meetings and luncheons and golf parties. I can play real golf.”

  “Just not minigolf.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sure,” Billy says, “you’re a real golfer.”

  Thomas stares at his club. It feels heavy in his hand.

  “You seeing anyone?” Billy asks. “Marianne?”

  “No, not really. That was a long time ago.” Thomas tries to remember Marianne, a lover’s sister, the girl he paid to take to Billy’s wedding. He remembers getting drunk and telling them all he was going to marry her. He tries to remember what else he said about her but he comes up blank She sat silently at the wedding, staring at the wall. She wouldn’t dance with him. She wouldn’t talk with his mother. She said that would cost him extra. She got a free train ride across the country from it but that didn’t impress her very much.

  Thomas putts and misses again. “Goddamnit.”

  “Nice shot.”

  An hour later Billy takes the clubs back to Grace and she gives him such a sweet look that he pauses for a minute. He suddenly asks her if she would like to have a drink sometime. Grace nods and says yes, she would be happy to go out with him sometime. Billy says he’ll come back someday soon. He takes his receipt and meets Thomas in the parking lot. On his way to the car he wonders if he should ask Grace if he could get a job at Greenhomes. A ball collector. Work behind the cash register. He could do that. Billy won’t call on Grace, but the fact that she said yes, that she would go out with him, buoys his spirits. He slaps Thomas on the back and opens the door of the car.

  “Want to go for a drink before heading back?” Billy climbs into the car and starts the engine. He pulls out of the lot.

  “No,” Thomas says. “I’m tired.”

  “You always sulked after playing minigolf.” Billy laughs. “I’d forgotten that.You always sulked when we were kids.”

  “I’m not sulking, I’m just tired. Seeing Hilary, seeing the house after all these years, it makes me tired.” Thomas rolls down his window and lets the cool breeze into the car. He hangs his hand out into the air. “It’s just those dolls. They’re everywhere. I can’t move without seeing one staring at me.”

  “They’re just dolls. She’s always had dolls.”

  “But not this many. For Christ’s sake, there was one in the shower with me last night.”

  Billy doesn’t want to talk about that house. It gives him the creeps. “You’re just a sore loser. That’s why you won’t go for a drink.”

  “No, I’m not. Really.” Thomas tries to laugh, to lighten the mood. “It’s the dolls.” He rubs his eyes. “It’s the mess. The house is a shit hole.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “What’s happened there?”

  Billy shrugs. “I guess we left,” he says.”Hilary’s been on her own for too long.”

  Thomas forms a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and shoots the trees as they drive past.

  “Hit anything?” Billy asks.

  Thomas smiles.

  “We’ve got to sell that house,” Billy says.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll sell it.”

  “Yeah, Hilary will see those cute condominiums over on Trellis Street and she’ll be the first one packing all her dolls,” Billy says.

  “She does seem stubborn. You might have to be patient, Billy. We might have to let her stay there for a while, get her used to the idea of living on her own first and then move her.”

  “I need the money,” Billy says quietly.

  “I told you, there might not be anything left for us. Let’s just not push it right now. Let’s wait until after the burial.”

  “Just go for a drink with me,” Billy says. “One drink. A small one.”

  “No, thanks. Just take me back to the house. I’m going to go to bed early tonight. I’m going to close my eyes and try to forget about those plastic eyes staring at me.”

  “What about groceries?”

  “Oh, shit. Can we stop somewhere quickly?”

  They drive through the darkening streets towards Becka’s house. Thomas tightens his neck muscles and back. He braces himself. He made it through one whole day and night. He wonders if he can handle six more.

  Billy waits in the car at the all-night mini-mart. Thomas walks the aisles. He carries a small red-plastic basket in his hands. The boy behind the counter is watching a black-and-white TV. Thomas can’t see what program is on but he hears a man say, “Got fourteen holes in it,” and a woman reply, “Ain’t no use no more.” Thomas wonders if it’s a repeat of “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

  Fruits, vegetables, and bread. Thomas takes his time picking out the produce. He likes being in a grocery store. His mind is only on shopping and nothing else. He likes the white lights overhead and the bright colours of the packages of food. Thomas wishes Jonathan were here with him. He misses him. Thomas noted the stacks of toilet paper and Kleenex and paper towels in the basement of Becka’s house and so he walks quickly down the house-hold-products aisle. The next aisle is the pastas and sauces and baking goods. Thomas stocks up on fresh noodles and gourmet sauces. He finds the coffee next to the cereals in the last aisle and he gets milk and cheese and butter from the fridge near the front counter. The boy at the counter hasn’t moved since Thomas came into the store.

  “Nice night,” Thomas says.

  “Yeah.” The boy rings in his purchases. The commercial on the TV is about panty liners, about super absorbency, about fresh-as-afield-of-daisies feelings. Thomas turns away. He looks out the window at Billy in the car. He can see the dark shape of his brother. Thomas is tired. He yawns. A boy in a black leather jacket enters the store and nods at the one ringing in Thomas’s food. He saunters over to the counter and leans upon it.

  “Fucking cold.”

  “Yeah,” the boy behind the counter says as he bags Thomas’s groceries.

  “Fucking freeze your balls off.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you off?”

  The boy looks up at the clock behind him. “John’s taking over in twenty minutes.”

  Thomas pays the boy, takes the bags in his hands, and leaves the store. As he walks out he hears the volume on the TV increase and the boy in the leather jacket says, “You gotta love that ass.”

  Thomas flatters himself by thinking that the boy was referring to him. And then he remembers that he is, once again, that confused and secretive boy who used to live with his sad mother in an old house.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Billy says.

  He starts the engine and begins to drive Thomas home.

  “First stop at the liquor store,” Thomas says. “I need to buy a bottle of Scotch.”

  Billy nods. He completely understands.

  “Mother,” Sue says, “can’t you get a grip? You’re getting huge.”

  Tess is sitting in the kitchen of her home, eating a tub of ice cream. She can’t help herself. Sue has come down the stairs in full swing. She is mad at Tess for everything under the sun: for vacuuming in the morning before ten o’clock, for making coffee when she knows the smell makes Sue sick, for going out all day and not saying where she was going, for refusing to buy Sue another pair of cowboy boots, the ones with the purple fringe.

  “H
ave some ice cream,” Tess says.

  Sue pats her growing belly. “My baby isn’t going to have anyone to look after it if you die from overeating.”

  “What about you?” Tess says. “You’ll look after it. You’re the mother.”

  “Don’t you have any self-respect? Don’t you like yourself at all? Look at you. You’re huge. You’re gross.” Sue points with her long, painted black fingernails. Her eyes are lined in black, her hair is dyed black. “Besides, I can’t eat ice cream. I’m dieting.”

  Tess sighs.

  When Tess was pregnant with Sue, she thinks, all she ever wanted in the world was a big tub of Neapolitan ice cream. She’d leave the strawberry because it tasted awful but she’d eat the vanilla and chocolate right down. “Why not just buy vanilla and chocolate ice cream?” Billy would ask and Tess would tsk and think, This man knows nothing about the world if he thinks brown and white are happy without a little pink to spruce up their cold, plastic existence. In a way, this kind of behaviour from Billy, this kind of thinking, is what made her fall deeper in love with him. Here was a man who needed to be watched over, taken care of. His mother had failed to ensure he saw sweet, colourful things when his head hit the pillow at night. As a result Billy still has trouble sleeping, always tossing and turning like he’s on a storm-wrecked ship. Tess knows that if he just imagined a little pink dab of light here and there, beside the browns and whites of the world, he’d drift off quicker.

  “Jesus, get your life in order, Mother.” Sue drinks a glass of water. She marks off how many glasses she’s had today on a list held up with magnets on the fridge. Seventeen glasses of water for a seventeen-year-old pregnant girl.

  “Sue, you’re going to lose that baby if you don’t eat.”

  “I’m not getting fat. There’s no way I’m going to look like you.” “But, Sue, the baby —”

  “The baby, the baby, is that all you ever think about? What about me?” Sue leaves the kitchen. She stomps upstairs to her room.

  Tess digs down into her ice cream. What happened to that nice little two-year-old? The shy one with the curly brown hair? Tess decides that she’ll just eat a little something solid until she calms a bit. She reaches into the cookie jar and starts on the chocolate chips she made this afternoon.

  Tess is waiting for Billy to come home from minigolf. She is looking out into the dimming early evening. Anxious. Tess fears for Billy. She is sure it hasn’t quite hit home that his mother is dead and she knows that when it does the pain will come swift and hard like a good kick in the butt from God. When a person’s mother dies, Tess thinks, no matter what she’s like, that is when a person starts to realize that they themselves are not long for this world. Tess is sure there must be an attachment between a mother and a child that can’t be broken by death and so, when one or the other passes, she thinks there will always be a hand poking up from the earth, ready to pull the living down.

  Besides, Tess thinks, Billy’s not been quite the same lately. Something is eating him.

  “He needs some watching,” Tess says to the dark outside. “He needs someone to watch over him.”

  “Are you talking to yourself?” Sue startles Tess. She is standing in the doorway of the living room. “Have you gone over the edge? What’s wrong with you?”

  It takes a lot of energy for Tess to imagine the bond between herself and Sue.

  6. Annunciation

  It is morning and the sky is dark and gloomy. Rain pours down. Hilary is standing in the backyard with her thin arms wrapped around her body, praying. Water streams down her face. She took up praying when her mother was told she only had weeks to live. Mother’s liver was enlarged and the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She was lucky to still be standing, the doctors said. After two chemotherapy treatments, a week in the hospital, they told Hilary to take her home and wait for it. There was nothing they could do any more.

  And they waited. And waited.

  “A miracle,” the doctors said.

  And Hilary began to pray.

  One day in the kitchen Hilary was helping her mother wash her thinning hair in the sink when she heard a radio program about praying and how, when a person is dying and someone prays, that person lives longer and sometimes even recovers. Studies have been done, the voice on the radio said, among heart attack victims. All who were prayed for recovered. They didn’t even know that someone was praying for them. Most of the patients weren’t even religious. “Silly thing,” Mother said. “Imagine that.”

  Hilary scrubbed her mother’s head harder.

  “Be careful. You’ll pull the rest of the hair out.” Mother leaned over the sink and gagged.

  Mother’s hair came out in chunks in Hilary’s hand. She was weak, drained, turning yellow with the first signs of jaundice. Her kidneys were beginning to fail. Her feet were swollen and sore.

  “Who ever heard of praying saving anyone,” Mother said. “We all die. We can pray until our tongues turn purple and fall out but we still die.” Mother stopped talking, the water in her hair dripped into the sink. “If praying worked,” she suddenly whispered, “don’t you think your daddy would have come back to me? Don’t you think?”

  This was the first time since Hilary was very young that she had heard her mother mention her daddy. Hilary felt electrified, as if everything in the kitchen was a live wire. She moved back from steadying her dying mother and she stood in the centre of the kitchen, afraid to touch anything.

  “Hilary” Mother groaned, “hold me. I’m weak. I’ll fall.”

  And her mother did topple a little, but Hilary caught her quickly and led her to a chair.

  Hilary started to pray that day. She took the advice of the radio. She lined up some of her dolls in the upstairs hallway and pretended she was at church. She made her grandfather doll the minister. He was propped up at the head of the dolls on a toilet paper box and he stared down at them meaningfully. Hilary knelt amongst the faithful and she bowed her head and clasped her hands together. She prayed for her mother who sat downstairs in front of the TV.

  Sometimes Hilary felt that if she stopped praying her mother wouldn’t have to suffer so much pain. Hilary wondered if, by praying, she was punishing her mother, making her hold on to her aching life. It was only in the last few days of her mother’s life that Hilary stopped praying.

  Now Hilary wanders around the garden. She pats a tree, touches a bush, steps over cat shit. And she prays alone. Without her congregation of dolls. The rain falls hard and Hilary prays for her mother’s soul which she assumes is hovering somewhere above her body at Mortimer’s Funeral Home. And then Hilary prays for her own soul which she knows is stationed inside her cold body, right here on unstable ground.

  She turns abruptly and goes into the house. She dries her face and hair on the stained dishtowel.

  Hilary walks around the filthy kitchen fingering the crumbs on the counter, wondering if her mother is looking down from above.

  There was a time, before the sick smell of death, when Hilary and her mother moved in sync, when the days rotated around their routine. Mother emerged from her room in the morning, timid and fragile Hilary rushed the coffee, the toast, and her mother ate sparingly, standing at the counter. They would look together outside, at the weather, as if expecting to go out. And sometimes Hilary took a bus to the grocery store, the pharmacy. But mostly they settled in front of the TV, Hilary with her cocoa and her mother with a mug of coffee. They watched hours of TV: game shows, talk shows, commercials. Anything. Hilary then fixed lunch—grilled cheese, a tomato, water—which they ate in front of the TV.

  And, inevitably, Hilary remembered, her mother would start to talk. She talked about superficial things—what needed to be done around the house, the preserves they should do next year. She talked about flying out to visit Thomas or maybe just dropping in on Billy, and she seemed to make herself believe that they went out every day, that they travelled and saw the world. She talked about cleaning, about the dust that was floating in the su
nshine around her head.

  And then her mother would become bored with the TV and she would begin to roam the house like a ghost, her mug of coffee in one hand, her cigarette in the other. She would stand by the front window for hours, looking out, watching the world pass her by. Sometimes she would take a mop and begin to clean, make a small effort. But then she would lie on the couch and remember that she really didn’t like to clean.

  The house really is a mess. Hilary strolls from room to room. She remembers when it was clean, when she and Thomas and Billy would spend every second Sunday with their sleeves rolled up. Billy in the garden doing heavy lawn work (mowing, raking, weeding), Thomas cleaning the bathrooms, his hands gloved, up to his elbows in the toilet, and Hilary wandering the house with her duster, her bucket, her vacuum cleaner.

  Where is that vacuum cleaner? Hilary runs her hands over a doll resting on the windowsill in the hallway.

  Hilary’s dolls. Their little legs and arms so perfect, the rubbery or porcelain limbs. Hilary has always had a doll to hold in her arms, to snuggle, to cuddle, to pretend that it is real.

  She enters the living room and stares at her rocks. For a moment, like a flash of lightning, she sees how strange they must look to others. But then she tentatively steps upon them, watching her footing, and she feels on edge and solid all at the same time. She feels steady and precarious. Even and tipped.

  Hilary tiptoes back over the rocks and walks up the stairs to the second floor. She sits on the floor in the hallway with her dolls. She pretends she isn’t all alone. She pretends that the house isn’t so quiet around her. Hilary then stands and walks towards her mother’s room. She opens the door. She peeks inside. The room is bright and clean. It was the one thing she knew she could do for her mother. Keep the sickroom clean. Her mother moaning in the bed while Hilary drowned out the sound with the roar of a vacuum.

  Her mother was her largest doll, lying stiff and wrinkled, yellowed and swollen.

  Hilary looks at her face in the mirror above her mother’s dresser. Her damp, stringy hair.

  Hilary rummages in her mother’s drawers. Hilary looks at her mother’s underwear. She looks at her socks, her nylons. Everything well worn, holey, elastics gone. She thinks she didn’t really take care of Mother as she should have.