Friday night, Mr. Constantine saunters into the Riverboat with a glamour gal whose face-gunk hides her twenty young years. I pace in the kitchen. Crystal says, “Girl, you’re killing me. Get out there.”
“That man at the corner table thinks I’m payment for a debt.”
“Worst thing you can do is show him you’re scared. Players like him take whatever they can, but they respect ballsy women.”
Do seahorses have balls?
None to boast about. Best go with the lion in you.
I adjust the growing situation in my pants and head out with a tray. Before he can eye-undress me I grab a chair. “Why the hell are you here?”
He closed-mouth smiles. “I like jazz.”
“Bullshit. If you think you’re buying a young virgin with that Dick’s IOU, you can just keep your wallet and everything else in your fancy suit.”
He laughs, a head-back laugh, and sends his bimbette to the little girl’s room. “Your father just thought we might—”
“That Dick is not my father. My dad blew his brains out and my mum killed my papa, and I swear if you come anywhere near me, I’ll cut off your dick and shove it down your throat.”
A slow draw makes his cigarette fire. “One dinner and a single dance.”
“I’m seventeen. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You have a certain”—his head shimmies—“je ne sais quoi.” His French has a distinctive Bugs Bunny ring to it.
“Merde.” I push away from the table. “Vous êtes un cochon dégoûtant.”
You’re right, he is a disgusting pig, but . . . Ari, he might be just the ticket for saving our bacon.
He stays until closing, leaving a hundred-dollar tip. Crystal follows him out, waving the bill before stuffing it in her shirt. “Thanks, appreciate it.”
Two fingers graze his eyebrow in salute before he gets in the back of a shiny black car.
Forty-Four
With his cast, Mikey can’t swim or play hockey, so Aaron and I take him to a movie. After, at the diner, Aaron says, “Sorry, guys. Who knew that a Disney film with animated cats would have mayhem over an inheritance?”
Mikey’s take on The AristoCats is a relief. “But the cats got home and the bad guy got his comeuppance.”
“True.” Aaron nudges my plate closer. “Would you rather try soup?”
I force down a bite of grilled cheese. “No, I’m good.”
At the drop-off, I say, “Thanks. We both really appreciate this.”
“You free Saturday?”
“Free? No.”
“Available?” I nod, my cheek tilting to meet his hand reaching through the window. His fingers slip through my hair. “You need an escape, even if it’s just for a day.”
* * *
Saturday morning, Aaron drives north through snow-sugared trees, giving the gift of unquestioning miles. We come to a gallery nestled in nature’s art, and for unmeasured time I’m lost in lines, colour, motion, shadow, light . . . The paintings speak with clarity and mystery. I’m inside First Snow, Pic Island, Algoma Waterfall . . . I resist as Aaron nudges me to the exit. “If you eat, I’ll bring you back until closing.”
The restaurant is cozy, the air bready. The soup and crusty rolls would’ve sated me, but the cheese-stuffed pasta and winter squash is ambrosia. Aaron talks about a meal in an ocean village called Positano. “It’s on a cliff; below, the sea was more green than blue and my uncle said, ‘Let’s go rent one of those boats and sail off the world.’”
“You spent a summer in Europe? You’re an odd Amish, Aaron West.”
“Mennonite. My Uncle Pete said he needed to go back as a pilgrimage after serving there during the war.”
“Again, weird.”
“Dad and him were medics. No bearing arms. Anyway, he sold my going and seeing the world as educational to my parents. I think they knew I’d explode if they didn’t give me some openings.”
“You’re having the longest rumspringa in history, aren’t you.”
“That’s more an Amish thing, but my family does expect me to come back and settle down.”
“The earliest I see you doing that is when you’re eighty-two, even that’s an outside shot.” I mop up sauce with bread. “Does your uncle have a family?”
“His wife died before I was born.”
“No kids?”
“Me and my sisters are his kids. He’s had a girlfriend or ten, but everyone pretends they don’t know a thing about them.”
“I like him.”
“He likes you, too.”
“You talk about me?”
“He’s the one who told me that this friendship was the most valuable thing in my life and not to lose it.”
“He did not. Did he?”
“He said you get me, more than I get myself.” He checks his watch and looks for the waiter. “Shall we go back?”
“I want some gelato first.”
On the drive home, trees are underlit by the setting sun. “How do I thank you for this?”
“It was nice having someone to enjoy it with.”
“Can we go again?”
“For sure.” He reaches over the seat and nabs a white paper bag. “Here, just in case you need an escape before we do.”
Inside is a book, The Group of Seven by Peter Mellen. I flip it over, scanning the artists. “Aaron, this one looks”—I tilt it to the last of the light—“like the man on the cedar bench, the one I sat beside.”
“A.Y. Jackson is often there. Did you talk?”
“I said, ‘This is nirvana, isn’t it.’ He just smiled into my bliss.”
As we enter the city, Aaron asks, “Where do you need to go?”
The ocean, the potter’s wheel . . . “Work. Just drop me around back of the Riverboat.”
He opens my door like his mother taught him to do. Aaron is a paradox, his face is soft and strong, boyish with the five o’clock shadowing of a man, he’s bound and boundless, set in stone and fluid. As I step from the jeep, I slip into a hug, long and longing. “I really, really needed this today.”
He holds me for sixteen beats of his heart, then his lips brush my forehead. “Me, too. See you tomorrow.”
Forty-Five
Mum is home after a week in hospital. Cleaned out, she’s pitifully more tuned in. She’s curled on the couch, crying, “Richard doesn’t love me anymore.”
I tuck the shawl under her chin and answer the knock on the door. An explosion of roses appear to have hands and legs. “Delivery for Miss Irwin.” I take the heavy vase, hand the guy a buck, and read the card. Miss Irwin: You are fireworks in a night sky. Tino.
Irwin? Oh, as if we don’t have enough trouble keeping food down.
“Who’s there, Elsie?”
“Look, Mum. The Dick sent you flowers.”
“No. Did he? What say the card do?”
“Theresa: You are fireworks in a night sky, love Richard.”
Big tears spill as she sniffs a pink rose. “I have to pee.”
In three months, I’ll be eighteen and I need a solid plan. On the way to the bathroom, step one comes into focus: get Mum out of the equation. “I’m going east next week. I’ll take you to your sister’s for a holiday and pick you up on the way back.”
She shakes at her reflection in the mirror. “I’m nothing but a rag hag.” It’s the closest thing to poetry I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth. “What’d I ever do to deserve this?”
“Really? You had big brains, Mum. Where’d you think this road would land you?”
She turns, slaps me with the force of a baloney slice. It hurts more than anything the Dick ever dished out. I leave her on the toilet and call Jennah to ask permission to drive the car to Montreal.
“When?”
“Saturday. I can’t wait for a nursing home spot to ope
n. I’m taking Aunt Elsie up on her offer to help.”
“What about school?”
“Nothing adds up without Jake. I need to see him.”
“You’re not losing that scholarship. Let me call the school. I’ll tell them Mum’s at death’s door and get a list of what work needs doing. It’s the only way I’ll agree.”
“Okay.”
I lie and tell the Dick that March break is early and take Mikey to Sabina’s.
Eight a.m., Saturday March 6, I realize the value of planning and lists. She’s going to piss in our car.
I nab the red-checked oilcloth from the kitchen table and spread it over the tiny back seat. We’ll have to crack her legs to corkscrew her in here. I’m in a bit of a sweat when I crawl out and there, pulling up to the curb, is Jennah in her shiny silver car. Sitting beside her is Jory.
“You can’t drive that wobbly bucket on the highway.” Jennah directs Jory to move gear from the Morris to the precisely ordered trunk of the Cougar.
“Jen?”
“Road trip. Jory and I’ll drive. You’ll study.”
Mum has the whole back seat if she needs it and we have more music, laughs, and crap food than anybody deserves. The last hundred miles, Mum reclines, head on my lap, taking in the blue sky. “I meant to be something else.”
“Pardon?”
“Something Mary could never be.”
“What?”
“One summer I was a Double Bubble Girl at the CBB.”
“The CNE?”
“Mm-hmm. Pink short-shorts and candy-striped top.” Her lucidity makes me think this is a final neuron rally before lights out. “I was fourteen, earning a dollar a week until this man said I was prettier than Jean Harlow. He put me in a flexy red dress by a Ford Super Deluxe for five whole dollars a day. A trade show’s where I met my Vincent. Said he’d buy the car if I came with it. Oh, he was a looker, like Cary Grant.”
My hand hushes her arm. “I never knew that.”
“For two yams I neared fame, in magazines and everything. Then babies came . . . and the war.” She drifts to Elvis singing “Love Me Tender.” “He was raised from the dead?”
“Elvis?”
“No, Vincent. When he was small as Marky. He was out for three days, then woke full of life, like Jesus.”
Jory turns around. “I heard that one.”
“From who?” I ask.
“Nana Appleton. Grandpa crowned him with a full bottle of Crown Royal.”
“Is Nana expecting us?”
“No, Mum, Elsie.”
“Won’t Grandma be surprised?”
“Yeah.”
Auntie Elsie swallows her horror as she helps Mum out of the back seat and into the house. Jillianne scans the near corpse on the couch. “She’s done, isn’t she.”
“Yep,” I say.
“Are we supposed to care?”
“I say focus on the living.”
I snap around to the long-missed voice. “Jacquie? Oh, Jacquie.”
“Surprise!”
I cling to the solid and soft of her. “How?”
“Franc wanted to do some work on the Toronto boutique before we move there. He’s gone ahead with Babcia to Sabina’s. We’re staying here for a bit.”
“Where’s my new nephew?”
She hushes with her finger and we tip-toe over to the pram in the sunroom. “Ari, meet Leonek Ignatius Zajac. We call him Leo.”
I scoop up the tiny sleeping bundle. “Hello, little lion. I’m your auntie.” He’s the sweetest-cheeked baby I’ve ever seen, and by the shine on Jacquie’s face, I know he’s a bit of gold filling the crack in her heart. “Where’s Arielle?”
“Over at Auntie D’s playing with Celine. Mum is no one and nothing she needs to see.”
I have much to learn from my sisters about erasing Theresa and Vincent Appleton from mind, body, and soul.
* * *
Auntie Elsie keeps Mum and shoos us to Dolores’s house. “Go have a bit of fun.”
We are five sisters tucked on comfy seats in Auntie D’s rec room. She comes down, opens the fridge, and loads the coffee table with sundae fixings. “Lambs are asleep. I’ll bring Leo down when he’s ready for a feed.”
Jacquie says, “We’ll hear him. Believe me. Stay. We’re missing our sixth.”
I’m usually the one pining for the missing sister. When Dolores sits, Jennah lifts a spoon of butterscotch ripple in a toast. “To June, and to Auntie D, standing in for the walls of the sister-house.”
“Say what?”
Jory says, “I’m the roof. Jen’s the windows. Jill—uh, pardon me, Anne is the floor. Jacquie’s the door and June the walls. Ari built it.”
Dolores fills a bowl with Neapolitan. “Given how your home was always falling apart, I can understand why you would. And what part of the house were you, Ari?”
Four sisters chime, “The electricity.”
Dolores smiles. “Mary, Elsie, and me are so proud of you girls.”
Jacquie splits a banana and loads her bowl. “The best three out of the four Trembley sisters ain’t bad.”
“That mother of yours has always had her heart turned in on herself. She’s not a reflection of you, and not a one of you are a reflection of her.”
Anne says, “It’s astonishing, really. I mean, what are the odds that five of us would be sitting here living relatively unfucked lives?”
Jennah says, “Let’s give credit where credit is due: I raised your sorry asses and did a damn fine job.” We raise our bowls to Jennah. For as long as I can remember, there has been a chasm between sister number one and three. Anne speculates it’s because Daddy replaced Jennah with Jacquie as the apple of his eye-rection. Jennah stands. “But I wasn’t the only one. A toast to Jacquie. Ballsy at business. Mother of three beautiful children. Wife to Franc, a man as gentle as our Len, and, and, and—the one brave enough to open the door and tell the world our truth. I don’t believe in all that God stuff that was crammed down our throats. Sorry, Jory. But the truth set us free.”
Jory says, “Amen.”
“Daddy fucked us. Mum fucked us over.” Jacquie smiles at Jennah. “Yet look at us, we’re fucking awesome.”
“Oh, I fucking love you girls.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Dolores swear. “Don’t know if this is the time or place, but when your grandma died, your mum made her own wishes known.”
Jacquie says, “Don’t tell me. A gold casket with eight buff, naked men carrying her.”
“She was definite that she was not to be burned or buried. A mausoleum suited her. In Montreal, not Toronto near Grandma. Oh, and she said she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing black.”
Jory, who hasn’t a spiteful bone in her skinny body, says, “So, I propose cremation, a black urn, and burial in the same plot as Grandma. All in favour, raise a spoon.” Six spoons lift. “Motion carried.”
* * *
Six a.m., Jennah gives me her keys. She feels both fragile and invincible as she hugs me off. “I’m pulling for you. Go get him.”
* * *
Pleasant Cove appears like a storybook village. As I have aged, I’ve come to see the imperfections: poverty, bitter wives, wayward children, and many salty dogs. Still, it’s the best place on Earth, filled with music, art, and neighbourliness. Can’t quite fathom that Jake is one of the ones wandering on the dark side of the moon.
Jake sits, staring at the waves, looking thin and weathered. Many times we’ve leaned against this log and dreamed. Today the sand chills my bum. He folds his arms against the March bite. “Jake, wherever your journey takes you, I’m at the other end waiting.”
Quiet hangs for as long as it takes the sun to fall. “I don’t want you there.”
“Knock it off. You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean.”
“Maybe I see inside now, what I really am.”
“Bloody fool. You can’t see anything at all.” The sunless wind chills me to my marrow. I stand. “I’m sure the Missus has the kettle on.” He sits, unmoved. “Get your sorry self up. Now. I’m cold.”
I wade through days of too many pills and ocean big silences.
He lies beached on the bed. I snug up beside him. “I have to take the car back tomorrow.”
“Ari, let me go.”
“No.”
“We’re done.”
I sit up. “Never. Now, you get yourself back to rehab. We’re going to school in September.”
“I’m not going.”
“Why? You didn’t lose your brain or your heart. Stop this. Please.”
“I don’t care about any of it anymore.”
“I’ve thought hard about losing one of my hands. How big the loss would be if I couldn’t turn pots. But Uncle Iggy would spirit-kick me ’round the planets if I didn’t use what I had left. You’ll figure out how, but you have to do something first.”
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“You’ve been waiting for a reason to say, ‘See, told you I’m not good enough.’ When you stand nose to nose with your father and tell him he’s a big fat liar and you’re deserving of a thousand Ari Zajacs, then everything you set your hand to will make music.”
“If I’d gone to school like I promised. If I had—”
“You’d still have that fear in your belly. Keep your promises now. You promised to fight for us no matter what.”
He drowns his face in the pillow, escaping into jerky dreams.
Pain wakes him in the emptiest hours of the night. He hunches over the side of the bed, moaning and rocking. Huey lumbers out of his room with Jake’s pills.
“Wait. When Uncle Iggy had bad pains, Len joined him up with his legs.”
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