by Exile
“It’s a mom, like you,” said Reenie. “Pretty.”
Lori laughed. “More famous than me, that’s for sure. You know, we had that picture in church when I was little.”
Lori and Ren, Reenie’s dad, had had one of their special discussions about church. Ren said he didn’t know what Reenie’s grandparents would have thought if they saw Reenie was growing up without going to church. Lori said that if he wanted her to go so bad he could stay home and take her. Then Ren said that he was working to give them a better life, and Lori said Reenie was turning out just fine and Ren said he couldn’t argue with that, that’s for sure, and they went back to cooking hot dogs on the grill. That was back home in Fahler; well, back in their old home. This was home now.
“Fahler’s the honey capital of Canada,” said Renée to Cubbie.
“Well, that’s a wonder,” said Cubbie. “You both were born up there, then?”
“Yep, just a little honey from Fahler,” said Lori. “The kids used to tease me about that until I cried. I was so glad to shake the dust of that place off my feet, and then damned if I didn’t end up back there with Ren. Pardon my French.”
“How come ‘pardon my French’ means ‘sorry I swore’?” asked Reenie. “Because in Frenchimmersion nobody swears. Except the teacher said Celeste said a bad thing when she called me stupid. But Mommy, I am…” Reenie’s lip trembled despite herself. She got down and ran to get her backpack. “Here’s my test. I got three wrong. I’m sorry.” She began to sob. Lori reached out and put an arm around her shoulder, gathered her in.
“Those damn kids. Are you crying just because of three wrong in subtraction?”
“I promised…to be good while Daddy was in hospital.”
Lori looked up at Cubbie. It seemed to Reenie that Lori didn’t know what to say. What Cubbie said didn’t really make sense either. “You’re not much more than a kid yourself. Give yourself a break.”
Lori took Renée’s chin and turned her face so they could see each other’s eyes. “Reenie, honey, I just didn’t want any temper tantrums, I didn’t mean you couldn’t make a mistake or two. Everybody makes a mistake or two. You shoulda seen me today trying to add up all the stuff this one old lady had in her cart. I had to do it three times. She was mad as he…heck at me, but I got it right in the end. That’s all that matters, kiddo.”
“Well,” said Reenie. “That’s a wonder.” She wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “Okay. You gonna help me with my jigsaw?”
Lori laughed her little laugh, more like a snort. “You don’t like the weather, wait five minutes,” she said.
“Cubbie’s making crêpes.”
“I haven’t had crêpes” – her mom said it more like craypse – “since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. My granny used to make them.”
“Well, it’s my first time, so don’t expect granny quality,” said Cubbie. “But it’s worth a try. All else fails, we’ll have a Kraft Dinner.”
“I never tried to make them myself, me,” Lori said, rummaging in the box for blue dress pieces. “They hard?”
The upshot was that Renée finished her puzzle alone while Cubbie and Lori learned how to make crêpes.
When it was time, Cubbie let Reenie set the yellow Arborite kitchen table. Reenie put out the pink plastic place mats and carried three sets of knives and forks – Cubbie called them “silverware” and they were brighter and paler than the knives and forks Lori had got from the dollar store. Then they all sat down and ate the crêpes. They were basically to pancakes what Lori was to Cubbie, and then with stuff all wrapped up in them. They were good.
“Reenie’s named after her daddy,” Lori said between bites. “His name is René too, without the extra ‘e’ at the end. But everybody calls him Ren.” Reenie didn’t know that. She sat very quietly. “Ren’s in the burn unit over at the University Hospital. He got caught in a blowout. He was lucky. The other three didn’t make it.”
Reenie didn’t understand that. “Like I didn’t make three questions on my arithmetic?”
“That’s not what I meant, hon,” said Lori.
“What did you mean?”
Lori looked at Cubbie. Finally she said, “It means they were too badly hurt, sweetie. They died.”
Renée didn’t ask out loud. Was Ren going to die?
The next day after school it was time to choose a new puzzle. Reenie was looking at the pictures, and she was trying to choose between some dogs dressed up in people clothes, and a Where’s Waldo, when Cubbie came up behind her.
“I think you should start on this one today,” she said, reaching up to a higher shelf of the puzzle closet. She handed Renée a puzzle box that had “1000 PIECES” printed on the side.
“That’s a lot of pieces,” said Reenie.
“One thousand,” said Cubbie. “But if you put your mind to it, you can do it all right.”
The picture on the box was of some people working. There were a lot of pipes and rails around them. A lot of the puzzle was different colours of grey. “It looks hard,” said Reenie.
“It is hard,” said Cubbie. “If things were different, maybe you could work up to it slower, but from what your mom said last night, we don’t have that kind of time.”
“Can you help me?”
Cubbie shook her head. “No, honey. If I helped you, it wouldn’t work, and you don’t want that.”
“I guess not.”
“Trust me, honey, that’s the right answer. Just start the way I showed you, with the edges first. It’s just one piece at a time, just like the other ones.”
The edges of this jigsaw were just as hard as the middles of other puzzles. By the end of the first day she hadn’t even found all the edge pieces, and the parts that she had found and put together didn’t join up. When Lori came, Reenie went home dispiritedly, and after their dinner, bologna and cheese sandwiches because Lori was tired, Reenie did homework. They had started multiplication, which had a special chant with it called the times tables. She had to write out her one- and two- and three-times tables. She suddenly realized when she got to the threes that there was a pattern that made them easier and easier. She took a new piece of paper and wrote them out in good.
“Look, Mom!” she said. “They’re pretty!”
“That’s good, kiddo,” said Lori. Reenie put her homework in her backpack.
Lori hugged her. “See, you’ll be acing that arithmetic stuff in no time.”
“Mom, it’s called mathematiques!”
“Kid, it’s called bedtime.”
The next afternoon as she sat down to the puzzle table, she saw the piece with the eyes right away. They were just a bit like how her daddy’s eyes looked when he smiled down at her. She reached out for the piece. It felt warm. She knew it should go right in the middle. She knew she should finish the border first, but instead she placed the eyes piece in the middle of the felt, and looked back into the box. She remembered the pink pieces of the other puzzle. Would pink pieces in this one be easier to find?
Reenie thought for a minute. She hardly noticed Cubbie bringing her a glass of lemonade. She sipped it while she stirred her finger around in the box. The pieces were all every which way. That wasn’t right. There was only a picture on one side. She looked at the table.
“Cubbie, how big is this puzzle? I mean, is it as big as the table?”
“Oh, no, there’s plenty of room around a puzzle that size.” Cubbie went back to her baking. It was chocolate chip day, but Renée hadn’t even remembered to ask for batter. She got up on her knees on the chair and leaned over the table.
“You be careful you don’t tip over!” Cubbie called from the sink without even looking.
“Well, that’s a wonder!” Renée said to herself, but she didn’t get down. She tilted the box and carefully poured out all the pieces onto the table. Then she began to turn all of them over onto their cardboard backs so the colours faced up. As she did, she looked for the face-coloured pieces – lots of different face colours from
pink like her dad to brown. She put all those pieces over on the left side of where she had put her daddy’s eyes, where the middle of the puzzle was going to be.
After a bit, she noticed that she could also sort the other colours into colour families at the same time, grey and black and blue and even some green she hadn’t noticed before, so she went back and did that. She also started to put all the edge pieces over on the right edge of the table.
This took a long time. She sat down and sipped her lemonade. Two chocolate chip cookies on a plate had appeared on the other bridge chair when she wasn’t looking, so she ate one while she looked at the face pieces.
After the cookie was done, she reached out and finished the middle face. The more she looked at it, the more she thought he looked like her daddy. Then she realized that the green pieces were the colour of his shirt. She remembered from before the accident. He had more than one of those shirts and he wore them every workday. She realized for the first time that there was a patch with his name embroidered into it, René, sewn on just above the left pocket.
The other people had green shirts too, with name patches: “Sam” and “Nadine” and “Jeff.” Their faces looked sad to Renée, even though they were smiling. Were they the ones who “didn’t make it?” Were they sad because they were dead? Maybe it was Reenie who was sad because they were dead. She would be sad if her dad were dead, that’s for sure.
“She’s right patient, that one,” said Cubbie.
“Reenie is?” said her mom, sounding surprised. Reenie hadn’t noticed her come in, but she couldn’t stop now. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to make sense. Lori picked up the cookie plate and absently ate the cookie while she started looking for edge pieces. But Reenie kept doing the middle.
“Were Jeff and Nadine and Sam friends of Daddy?” Renée asked as she worked.
“How’d you know that, baby?”
“Says on their shirts,” said Renée. “See?”
“Those are a bit like the rig company shirts,” said Lori. “But these are blue.”
“Green,” said Renée.
“So they are,” said Lori.
After their tuna melt and soup Renée went to bed early, she was so tired! “Well, that’s a wonder!” Lori said, and came and kissed her goodnight. But when she was in bed, in the grey darkness that was never quite black because of all the city lights, Renée couldn’t sleep for a while, worrying about stuff.
By Friday Reenie was so tired when she went to school that Lori had to tell her three times to hurry up. Finally Lori grabbed her hand and hurried her along. Why on earth was she such a slowpoke? When it was her turn to answer, Madame had to ask her twice. When Reenie came in to Cubbie’s, Cubbie said, “What’s your daddy’s favourite kind of pie?”
“Saskatoon,” said Renée. “Why?”
“While you’re finishing that jigsaw, I think I’ll bake me a saskatoon pie. You and your mom and I can have a piece when she comes to get you tonight. Can’t hurt.”
“Can you come talk to me?”
“You just work away there, and I’ll work away in here. Pie’s kinda labour-intensive.”
When her mom came to Cubbie’s door, Reenie didn’t hear the knock. She was deep into the pieces of her daddy. By supper, Renée had finished all the face and his left arm, but his right arm was only half there, and the legs still weren’t done.
Cubbie had added extra macaroni and grated cheese to a Kraft Dinner to make it stretch, and had cut one of the saskatoon pies for their dessert. Reenie could hardly concentrate on finishing her Kraft Dinner for the enticing smell of the pie sitting there above her dinner plate, but she was good and ate every bite of macaroni first.
“We can’t keep coming over here to eat,” said Lori. “We’ll eat you out of house and home.”
“If I can’t make Kraft Dinner for my friends now and again, it’s a pretty poor home,” said Cubbie comfortably, clearing the plates to the counter. “Keep your fork.”
Renée licked every bit of cheese off the fork before she took the first bite of pie. Usually she liked to start at the crust end and work her way down to the tip, saving the best part for last. But today she very slowly and carefully lined up her fork across the tip so it was perfectly even, then gently pressed. The triangle that tilted onto her fork was as perfect as she could make it. She put it into her mouth and it melted on her tongue as if it were something else besides pie: air or water or blood or mathematiques.
“We should go home right after the dishes,” said Lori. She was eating her pie the same way, slowly and gently. “I’m sure Reenie has homework.”
Before Reenie could protest, Cubbie said, “Let her bide for tonight and work on her puzzle. She’s that worried about her dad.”
“I am too,” said Lori.
After the last bite of the saskatoon pie, Reenie remembered to ask to be excused before she got down and went back to the puzzle on the bridge table. She put three or four pieces in fast, and Lori came and helped her a bit with background, then went off to the kitchen to dry dishes for Cubbie.
There was a really hard part on her dad’s right leg that wasn’t coming clear. Renée looked through all the pieces that were left. What she needed wasn’t there.
“Cubbie, there are some bits missing!”
“Maybe they got stuck in the box,” Cubbie said. “Look in the lid too. And check if they fell on the floor.”
Reenie found two pieces stuck in the corner of the box lid where it had split a little, and one sticking up from the pile of the shag carpet right by the fern stand beside the puzzle table. That almost did it. Then she found the one with the right thumb on it, on the floor way over underneath the coffee table. Now how did it get there? She imagined it scuttling over on its little puzzle feet while they were having dinner. She giggled as she turned it all four ways. There! It fit! That was it for the hand and legs! There were only a few more pieces…
Renée sighed with relief. The puzzle was done. Then she blinked at Lori and Cubbie. They were sitting on the couch watching TV. The clock above the couch had both hands pointing to the nine. That was wrong! That was fifteen minutes past her bedtime! Reenie walked over and sat by her mom, drooping against her shoulder.
“My goodness, kiddo, we better get you home!” Lori said. Reenie was so sleepy she wanted her mom to hoist her up, but Lori said, “Oof, you’re too big! You have to use your own feet.”
“Take the rest of the pie,” urged Cubbie. “Have it for breakfast.”
Reenie giggled at the idea.
“Nothing like saskatoon pie to round out a healthy breakfast,” said Lori. “Why not? Ren loves this pie more than almost anything.”
“Except you two,” said Cubbie.
They did have pie for breakfast. The phone rang while they were eating it. Lori came back from the call grinning. “Put your coat on, kiddo,” she said jubilantly. “We’re going to see your daddy! He took a turn for the better last night!” She hugged Reenie.
As they went out, Cubbie was on her porch, hanging her delicates wash on a wooden rack that unfolded like an accordion.
“Cubbie, we’re going to see my daddy!” said Reenie. Cubbie hugged them, then left her hand on Renée’s shoulder to hold her back as Lori started away. “You did well this week,” she said quietly.
“You made the pie,” said Renée.
“You did well,” Cubbie repeated. “Your daddy is going to be fine now. You can stop worrying.”
“Hurry up, Reenie, we’ll miss the bus!” Lori called. She ran.
It was all winter before her daddy could come home, and when he did, he leaned on crutches and was thin as a rake, Cubbie said – but he was home.
Reenie and Cubbie didn’t talk much about what happened. All Cubbie said was, “When my Mr. Cubb was first sick, I did the red dot. I put on my grandmother’s girdle, and I’ll tell you, that was a stretch, more ways than one. I had my mother’s floral polyester dress, and I bought support pantyhose in an egg from Vic’s Super Drugs.
But we had ten more good years together.”
“What was his favourite pie?”
“Flapper,” Cubbie said, and let out that big laugh that set all her rolls to quivering again. “Me, I like a good bread pudding. That’s easy to make. Flapper pie, now, takes a meringue topping and cream filling, easy to mess those up. The only easy thing is the graham wafer crumb crust.”
Time settled down and quit stretching out, so it went on in a relaxed and happy way for a few years without seeming to take as long as those few months had taken. Renée’s dad went to vocational retraining and became a health-and-safety officer, which Renée thought was a pretty strange kind of a thing – didn’t everybody want health and safety? She and Cubbie talked that over one day.
“Accidents happen,” said Cubbie. “But they don’t have to always happen. Things can be done.” Reenie thought of the puzzles and pie, and smiled a little. She learned to make bread pudding with Cubbie and Lori, and later attended to the making of flapper pie, and all four of them ate it.
One June day when Lori came to tell Reenie it was time to come home, Cubbie said, “You have some time tomorrow? I’d like us to make an angel food cake, and maybe you all could pop over for supper Friday.”
“What’s the occasion?” Lori joked.
“It’s my eightieth birthday,” said Cubbie, “and I thought the four of us might want to celebrate a tad.”
“No way you’re eighty!” said Lori.
“I sure am!” Cubbie laughed and set her rolls to quivering, but Renée noticed then, and the next day as they all worked in Cubbie’s kitchen, that there weren’t as many rolls as there used to be, and more wrinkles. Under Cubbie’s arm when she reached up to get down the multicoloured sprinkles for the angel food, a fold of skin now swung, and her neck was wattled. The world swung a little too, and settled down in a new path. Cubbie was eighty years old!