Cracked Pots

by Heather Tucker

  “Pardon?”

  “Your game. What I saw out there just now.”

  “Been playing with a community league.”

  “Where?”

  “U of T.”

  “Wow. I mean it. Wow.”

  “Um, I kinda got offered a scholarship.”

  “To where?”

  “Dalhousie.”

  “Oh, boy, oh, boy. They’ve a hot team. Wouldn’t surprise me if they go all the way this year.”

  “I told them you were my coach. They said they’d want to talk to you.” She smiles with her whole face and I ask, “When you talk to them, can you tell them that I’m not dirt-dumb, but that there’s just been a lot of crap with Nat and stuff.”

  “You bet. Would you go next year?”

  “I’d like to, more than anything.”

  “You should. You have to.” She nods. “I’m proud of you, Ari.”

  I’m still smiling as I claim the unoccupied end of the uncool table in the cafeteria. I pour tea from my thermos, unwrap the sausage rolls, and begin the climb out of the academic hole I’m in. I’ve labelled my muscled runner and am a good seven hundred words into my movement paper and halfway through my pagnottini when Riley sits down across from me. “Hi, Ari.” I keep plodding and he picks up my drawing. “How can you do this?”

  “How do you sticky-finger a football on the run?”

  He nudges my hand with a pencil crayon. “So, you free this weekend?”

  “Not even a minute to piss.”

  “Don’t you ever just have fun?”

  “Oh, my life’s a laugh-a-minute amusement park.”

  “Go out with me.”

  I take in his ruddy, team-captain face. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “A thousand miles away. Where’s the fun in that? So, how about tonight?”

  “Work.”

  “Saturday?”

  “Homework, homework, and work.”

  “You don’t work Sunday.”

  “I do. I make jewellery for a boutique.”

  “I’m going to keep asking ’til you say yes.” He tilts his head and I just know there’s a bet on the line and a plot being hatched.

  * * *

  After dinner, as Sabina’s Otto helps the boys make birdhouses for their woodworking badge, I lay out the highs and lows of my week.

  Ellis says, “Snake? A guy named Snake’s living at the house?”

  “Snake and his snakelets are many rungs higher on the evolutionary ladder than the copperheads.”

  “The whole lot are venomous. We’ve got to get Mikey to the Butters and you to Dalhousie.”

  “What the Dick really wants is to be a detective, but he owes so much money he can’t get out from under. The answer lies in Len’s money.”

  Mina asks, “How much money is at stake here?”

  I shrug. “No idea. He and O’Toole talk about a hundred thousand dollar windfall, but there’s no way. Len left me ninety-eight. Mr. Lukeman has sent two hundred fifty dollars monthly for almost four years. Then how much are lawyer fees?”

  Ellis asks, “How can that bastard think the money’s his?”

  “Because he married Mum and she told him he could have it.”

  “It’s not hers to give.”

  “When has rationality ever defined Mum?” I stretch my long bones and take dessert plates to the sink. “I should get to work.”

  “I’ll give you a lift.” Aaron is quiet all the way to the Riverboat.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Sabina’s brew knocked the cold out.” He zips into a parking spot.

  “Want to come in and listen to some folksy jazz?”

  “I’ve an essay and I’m still kind of wiped.”

  Knowing Aaron, his essay is typed, sourced, and has five appendices. “I really make your life chaotic, don’t I?”

  “Yes.” He smiles, a sad smile. “I want chaos, Ari.” In a blink, like a curtain closing, his want disappears. “And I want you safely settled where you belong.”

  I hop out before I churn up more turmoil. “Thank you. You’re a friend in a million.”

  “Can we connect Sunday?”

  “If you’re up for a study date at Sabina’s.”

  “That works. I’ll bring Mikey the book he needs on the Great Lakes.”

  I watch the jeep slip down Yorkville. How does one girl meet two perfect guys?

  ’Cause you’re a cracked pot and there are pieces of you in two places.

  Thirty-Nine

  I can’t remember the last time I slept until ten. I remain in bed savouring the quiet of my nest until the ringing phone shatters my Zen. What new peril, Jasper?

  “Hello?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right.”

  “Jake?”

  “I have a ‘what if’ that can’t wait for a letter.”

  “What?”

  “Duncan’s parents rent a flat. Small, but close to campus. Cheap. I wouldn’t ask this now but it’s coming open and I have to let them know by Monday. Do we want it?”

  “What do you want?”

  “For you to be free to choose.”

  “Jennah thinks I should be a regular kid in residence.”

  “It’s okay if you want to. Just being in the same town will be something for us.”

  “If I did, where would you live? Residence?”

  “Oh, that’d be like a submarine full of teenage fosters. No thanks. Duncan’s aunt has single rooms for rent. Call me tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  I hear his smile when he says, “We’re so close to everything, I can taste it.”

  “It’s sweet, eh.”

  As I redeem all the minutes of the day, it’s like Jake is here with me, barefoot, blue-jeaned, sweet and salty, toes touching as we read on either side of the bed. He hums. I draw. I know what Jennah thinks, but I don’t want to live with a bunch of volleyball girls. Don’t want to share a room with any messy devil girls or find a strange boy in my bed.

  I know it’s dinner-time confusion when I call the Butters. “Hi, Huey. Jake there?”

  “Hang on, he’s half out the door.”

  “Ari?”

  “What if I said I don’t need until tomorrow to know I want to be with you every minute I can?”

  “Really? You sure?”

  “What if I said I am?”

  “Then I’d say hot damn.”

  Forty

  Two weeks of dry-cleaning, draining, and nourishing gives Mum more life to waste. She shuffles in like an anorexic penguin and looks at the sofa. “Oh, look, a new cough. He gets me pretty things.” The only man who ever gave Mum pretty things was Len: dresses, furniture, flowers . . .

  The hospital sent Mum home with eight hours of nursing, which Jennah organized into two hours, four days a week. Wilf’s faults are many but generosity isn’t one of them. He’s paying for six more hours of nursing and arranged the loan of a Morris Minor car, old as me but shiny as mint. It’s the colour of sky and taking pissed sheets to the laundry is no longer an Everest of a chore. I park it around the block so the Dick doesn’t see it as his property.

  There’s a sense that a sinkhole is about to swallow the craphouse whole. Mikey, Todd, and I are poised to bail. It’s seven a.m., Mum is in her bed crying, or more snivelling. A lament over a lost red shoe?

  The Dick is somewhere downstairs, quiet, too quiet. He came in at three twenty a.m. and his rage in the cellar with O’Toole could be felt through the vent, the only clear words being “fuck” and “fucking fuck.”

  I wake Mikey. Tell him to keep low and silent while I head downstairs to scout for crapmines. O’Toole is passed out on the sofa. The Dick’s suit is a heap in the hall. He’s standing at the sink in plaid boxers and a filthy muscle shirt. An angry
outbreak of pimples circle his neck. He scrubs his bristling head under running water and mops it with the tea towel. “Morning,” I say, small and unobtrusive.

  “Oh, you. Make coffee, would ya.” Disappointment leaks out of his every pore.

  “I’m doing laundry after school. Just throw what you want washed in the hall.”

  He says, “Thanks.” Dick Irwin said thanks? “Take my suit to the cleaners? Tough case last night. Got blood on it.”

  “Sure.”

  I make him Nescafé and take tea up to Mum. She amounts to nothing more than a smear of mustard in a nightie. Mikey stands behind me, making sense of things as he does. “You know about forces? Pull and push?”

  “Sorta,” I say.

  “Last year was gravity. Everyone pulled together. Least that made the awful feel a little okay. This year’s like same poles of magnets pushing everything apart.”

  “Yeah. It does feel more unsteady.”

  I rummage through the closet in the alcove and find Todd’s navy blazer and gray suit pants that fit him when he was thirty pounds heavier.

  The Dick has moved to the cluttered table. I hang the suit on the pantry door. “This might do until your suit’s ready.”

  “Yeah. Good. Can you spot me a ten?”

  I sacrifice ten bucks. Before I can skedaddle out the door, O’Toole is polluting the hall with a wonky boner under his tighties. “Mornin’ pussy pat.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Be more fun with you.”

  Seven weeks until Christmas break.

  Things are going to blow. I can feel it.

  * * *

  The doctor told Mum she’d die if she didn’t lay off all shit, especially booze. I’d make her one-hundred-proof tea if I didn’t know I’d be the one cleaning up bloody vomit. She’s weepy and whiny without her chemical props, and her despair isn’t about a wasted life, it’s over the Dick’s abandonment.

  The nurse got her bathed, diapered, dressed, and planted downstairs, where she sits crying into a pair of substantial white panties. “Ava, I found these by the bed. They aren’t mine.”

  Lucid moments are so rare and this is what she clues into? “Probably just Ronnie’s. Most the time she’s so wasted she doesn’t know where her bed is.”

  “Ronnie lost her arm.”

  “What?”

  She yellow-eyed stares. “Gone.” Patches stain her face and her hair has turned witch-straw.

  “Mikey needs his hair cut. Come with and Francine will do yours, too.”

  “That’d be nice, Jen.”

  Upstairs, I tell Mikey to go call a taxi. He says, “But we have a car.”

  “One, I’m not having Mum piss in it and two, we don’t want anyone here knowing.”

  I poke my head into Devil Girl’s cave to see if she’s in possession of her limbs. She looks up from her sulk on the bed. “Whadda you want, bitchface?”

  “Taking Mum to get her hair done. You want to come? My treat.”

  “Why not.”

  “You okay?”

  “Pinto dumped me. He’s a total fuckin’ perv.” She struggles her odd body into a lime sweater dress. Ronnie is bum, belly, and boobs connected by skinny legs, arms, and neck. She wipes smudges from under her eyes and adds makeup to an already caked face, then shoves bare feet into scuffed go-go boots.

  Considering what could go wrong, the outing is stellar. Mikey and I go to the deli and buy turkey clubs, broth for Mum, and sweet rolls for Charmaine and Francine. Mum doesn’t barf, she pees—mercifully in the toilet—and hums to the music playing. Charmaine gives Ronnie a makeup lesson in hopes that she’ll purchase some product. For sixty-seven dollars, including tip and taxi, bellies are full, spirits lifted, and I get a thank you from Ronnie who happily clutches a zippered pouch with new blush and lip gloss. Two Irwin thank yous in one day? Watch out, Ari.

  The taxi returns us better than we left. Mum has a teased-up ’do that hides her baldness. Ronnie has a shiny bob. Mikey looks handsome and somehow taller, and my mane is trimmed up six inches and hairdresser silky.

  By the curb is a black Lincoln. On the porch stands the Dick and two fine-suited men. The shorter of the two looks us over, then over again. The Dick says, “Tino, these are my daughters, my wife, and my son. This is Mr. Constantine.”

  Mikey, with his I’m-never-getting-hit-again savvy, extends his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

  Ronnie opens like a flower on a hot day. “Hi, I’m Ronnie. Veronica, actually.”

  Mum says, “It’s fin, feen, fine.”

  It’s the last of the fresh cool before winter’s cold. “Yes, it’s a fine day. Very fine.” Mr. Constantine motions a tip of his fedora and lays claim to my face. “And you are?”

  “Hariet.” I want to say Ari Zajac, but I’m not giving this creep my cherished name. “Excuse me. My mum needs to get off her feet.” Being a head taller than Ronnie makes disappearing impossible and I wish I’d dressed Amish instead of in tight jeans.

  I need a shower, Jasper.

  He’s the one the Dick owes big.

  A hearty goodbye can be heard at the door. Before I can say, “There’s a sandwich,” the Dick yanks me by the hair into the pantry and pincers my ear. “Don’t you ever disrespect Mr. Constantine like that again, you hear.”

  “How did I—”

  “Walking away like he was nothin’.”

  “Didn’t think you’d want Mum pissing on his shoes.”

  His clamp eases. “Listen, I just need you to be nice.”

  Todd answers a ringing phone and yells, “Pop, it’s for you.”

  “Not home.”

  “It’s Providence Villa.”

  “Tell ’em to call Edwin.”

  Twenty seconds later Todd stands at the opening. “Grandpops croaked.”

  The Dick’s hand drops. For a millisecond, his face is an eight-year-old’s discovering his dead puppy. His voice projects inward. “Did you tell ’em to call Ed?”

  “Yep.”

  I say what people always say. “I’m sorry.”

  “No skin off my nose. He’s nothing to me.”

  “That’s when it wrecks you most.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” He points a finger at me, then Todd. “I’m not here. Clear?”

  I’ve had only three face-to-face encounters with the Irwin patriarch during my incarceration in crapdom. Deplorable sums him up in a word. “Who’s Edwin?” I ask.

  “Pop’s brother.”

  “Didn’t know he had a brother.”

  “He’s got two and a sister and there’s, like, a ton of cousins.”

  * * *

  Third Sunday in November, Aaron brings the coffee and pictures of Zodiac sleeping by the fire. He asks, “How was the funeral?”

  “Weird. Pathetic. Beside the Dick, Todd, and me, there were only six people there. No flowers. No eulogy from his kids. Not a tear shed. The reception was whiskey, packaged cookies, and lies. The Dick said Todd was a vet. Ricky, a race car driver in California. Mum was in Europe visiting her daughter. He let people think I was Ronnie and said I was a volleyball champ.”

  “And Mikey?”

  “The whole reason he let me leave him at Sabina’s was so he could say Mikey was playing hockey and he had to make a quick exit to get to his game. The only emotion I saw from the Dick was terror that he might get stuck with any part of the bill.”

  “That’s the most depressing send-off I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Not me. My dad was unceremoniously disposed of without ritual. Jennah was adamant that he be cremated and buried in a lead box, numbered rather than named.”

  Aaron’s head tilts with the weight of caring. “Understandable given how he treated all of you.”

  “But how do you ever resolve anything if you burn it, bury it, and refuse to name
it?”

  “I took psych for four years and that astute question never would’ve occurred to me.”

  “That wisdom comes from studying boat restoration with Huey Butters.”

  “Did Ricky come home for the funeral?”

  “Todd called him, but he said he’s waiting for a bigger crowd to make an entrance.”

  “I’m still not clear why the Dick finding out that Ricky’s in the army is such a big deal.”

  “Well, apparently, it was the Dick’s dream to be a soldier but he was triple-rejected. Ricky’s coming back in full uniform, when everyone will see he’s better than the Dick.”

  “What a family.”

  “That’s the thing. Todd has evolved into a tub of kindness. Ricky is GI-go-go Joe. Mikey is, well, Mikey.” I snug up closer to absorb his warmth.

  He does something easy and without hesitation: puts his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go somewhere with heat.”

  I happily move toward the warmth of Sabina’s. “Think I might take psychology next year. I need to sort the nature versus nurture confusion.”

  “No one can because it’s not either/or and the weights are always in flux. Like, you’re a volleyball ace because you’re tall and athletic, also because a coach saw potential and you practise hard.”

  “And because so many people piss me off and you set me up with Giselle.” I keep hold of his arm. “Maybe I should return the kindness and set you up with Mikey’s teacher.”

  “She a match for my animal?”

  “She’s a manta ray. So, no, not an exact match. But she’s gentle and graceful.”

  “Check with me in the new year when my course load’s a little lighter.”

  In two months, I sense there will be a new excuse why this odd tango is where we both need to be.

  Forty-One

  The absence of mayhem is like being on an ice floe: it seems solid but you know there is open water underneath. A chunk can break away without warning, setting you helplessly adrift. For three weeks, there has been bliss in crapdom. Instead of a funeral bill, the Dick received a cheque for three hundred and eighty-nine dollars as his share of what was left in his father’s account. His wallet is fat with twice that and hope runs big that he’s well on his way to a day of reckoning with his employer.