Algoma (21 page)

Algoma sighed. “I hope we can still get a seat.”

“Or two,” Bay said, looking at Algoma’s stomach.

Algoma crossed her fingers behind her back and prayed for a bomb threat, anything to end the lunch early.

The restaurant was new, which was why Bay had recommended it. Unlike most other restaurants in town, Mocha Mocha had a small patio. Flower containers and homemade wasp traps (mutilated bleach bottles containing a mixture of pop and antifreeze) hung from the railing. While the restaurant had been open for several months, the “Just Opened!” banner was still hanging from the door. Even though it was the middle of the week, the patio was full of people enjoying the subtle summer warmth, which always seemed to leave too soon. Bay and Port had to sit so close their legs crossed over one another’s. Algoma sat on the other side of the table.

Bay immediately ordered drinks for everyone. Mimosas for her and Port. Orange juice for Algoma.

“Perfection,” she said, downing her mimosa in one shot, as soon as it arrived.

“Maybe you want some water with that,” Port said sarcastically.

“What? It’s Friday, or will be tomorrow. I’m tired.” Bay looked at the waiter whom she appeared to know better than she let on. Even though he was taking orders from another table, she yelled out: “Another round, Mitch!”

Mitch nodded and returned with a fresh round of drinks only minutes later.

Algoma drew her finger along the condensation on her glass. Her sisters ignored her and spent the next twenty minutes catching up. Algoma shifted in her seat. She had to use the washroom, but dreaded trying to walk through the packed patio. It could wait. She stared at her sisters, waiting for the break in the conversation that would allow her to leave. She could walk back to The Shop, if need be.

Port looked like the casual Friday version of Bay. She swapped nylons for bare legs, heels for flats, and flat-ironed hair for a loose ponytail. Algoma picked at her shirt self-consciously. While it pulled at her armpits and belly, the fabric ballooned at the neck and bust line. Her already short skirt had ridden up even higher on her thighs when she sat down. She was grateful to be facing her sisters and not another table. She was keenly aware of the scuff on her left shoe, her pinned hemline, the cheap fabric of her shirt. Her clothes felt like an awkward second skin that she had shed but could not lose.

Mitch set down a third round of mimosas in front of Port and Algoma and another orange juice in front of Bay, who quickly carouseled the drinks to the proper owners.

“Can I take this extra chair for another group?” Mitch asked Algoma, pointing to the chair beside her.

She nodded. Her entire life, people were always expecting a second version of her to show up and assume the place beside her. When they realized no one was coming, they seemed disappointed, like they’d been tricked.

Mitch was about to pick up the chair when Bay’s hand shot out. “Wait, I need it.” She tossed her oversized purse onto the empty seat. “There, now it doesn’t have to sit on the floor.”

Algoma looked apologetically at the waiter and shrugged.

Bay stared at her youngest sister while her twin told a tedious story about the parking ticket she’d received the day before. Since they had arrived at the restaurant, Bay had been waiting for a reaction. She was waiting for Algoma’s intuition to kick in. Before she had left that morning, she’d put Gaetan’s latest postcard in her purse, one of Riverdale Farm that showed two jersey cows fenced into a miniature field. Somehow, she’d expected her sister to sense it, but Algoma hadn’t even looked at the purse. She should be looking at it, Bay thought, noting Algoma’s cotton bag, the blue ink stain in the bottom corner. Her own purse had cost her three hundred dollars, a small fortune.

“Did you know there’s a farm in the middle of Toronto?” asked Bay, interrupting her twin’s description of the police officer’s handwriting. “Cows and everything. Even those pretty ones—what are they called?”

“Jerseys?” Port offered.

“And the restaurant at the top of the CN Tower rotates. Some woman put her purse down beside her and it disappeared, but then it came back ten minutes later with everything still inside. Can you even believe it?”

Algoma shifted in her seat. Her tailbone ached from sitting still so long. “Are you planning a trip?”

Bay, realizing that she’d said too much, pressed her lips together. “No. Well, maybe.”

“Maybe she’s going to move there,” Port said. “Work at one of the big fancy hotels like The Fairmont York.”

“It’s The Fairmont Royal York.”

“Royal,” Port drawled, mocking her sister. “Whatever, she goes on and on about it like it’s a person or something.”

Bay rolled her eyes.

“I have to get back to work soon,” Algoma said, looking at her bare wrist.

The twins tag-teamed Algoma and convinced her to stay long enough to have some food. “You still haven’t told us why Simon is living at your house,” said Bay. “I wouldn’t even have let him in the door, let alone sleeping in my bed.”

“He’s sleeping in the basement,” Algoma said.

“Has he said how long he’s staying? I hope he’s giving you money.”

Algoma said she’d stay for lunch on the condition that Bay lay off Simon. “He’s family,” she said.

“He’s Gaetan’s family,” Bay snapped, her face reddening at even the mention of his name.

Mitch arrived at the table. “Ready to order?”

After their meals arrived, the sisters performed their individual food rituals. Algoma removed the pickles from her burger and placed the ketchup-covered dills on the edge of Port’s plate. Port plucked every black olive out of her heaping Greek salad and placed them on Bay’s Cobb salad. Bay spooned the grated cheddar from her salad onto Algoma’s fries.

“Have you heard from him?” Bay asked Algoma, forking a salted wedge of egg into her mouth. She was tired of waiting.

Port elbowed her twin in the ribs and glared. “Bay.”

Algoma felt a wave of nausea. “Nothing except for the envelopes,” she said, referring to the cash.

Bay nodded sympathetically and asked her twin what time it was. The mailman would have already passed her house. “Time to go soon, yes?”

______________

3:15 p.m. 21°C. Wind SE, light.
A pack of cigarettes resting on the toaster.

As soon as Algoma had left for work, Simon had picked up the newspaper she’d purposefully left behind on the table for him, and tossed it into the garbage. He’d already read the paper the day before; there were at least a half dozen jobs he was qualified for, but he wasn’t interested. It would mean he would have to leave the house, and he was not ready to be seen yet.

Le Pin was the town of his youth; he’d undoubtedly be recognized within minutes. Even the thought of being in town fatigued him. Instead of looking for a job, or a new place to live, he’d crawled back into his unmade bed downstairs. If he slept, he didn’t have to think about why he was back in the town he said he’d never return to.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Simon woke. He went upstairs to smoke. Afternoons had become his favourite time of day. If mornings were his anxious times, afternoons were when he busied himself with problems that were easily resolved and not his own. Algoma’s house was an embarrassment of riches when it came to things that needed repair. Everything, it seemed, needed fixing. It almost felt like after Gaetan had left, the house had given up, though he was sure the issues were a result of several years of neglect. Like a geologist, he felt like he could pinpoint the exact year the cataclysmic event had happened: the year Leo had died.

When Simon’s cousin Louise had called to tell him what had happened to Leo, he’d immediately called his brother. They hadn’t spoken for some time, but Simon felt that his brother needed his support and might even accept it. He’d been wrong. As soon as Gaetan heard Simon’s voice on the other end of the line, he’d hung up.

Simon opened up the kitchen window and lit a cigarette. Algoma forbade smoking in the house, but if he smoked close to the open window when she was gone, she was never able to tell, or at least she never let on that she could. Since he’d first met Algoma when she’d started dating his older brother, he knew she could keep secrets. He wondered how much she was keeping from herself. Her life was built on an outdated routine that she kept performing like a caged animal who didn’t, or refused to, see the open door.

He leaned over the counter to exhale the smoke out the window and did a mental calculation of the cash he had left. Eighty dollars. A week of cigarettes. Instead of worrying about it, he set about his work for the day—fixing the pipes under the kitchen sink—but first he had to take everything out of the cupboard. Simon butted his cigarette on a dirty dish in the sink and sat down on the linoleum he’d scrubbed the day before. He opened the cupboard doors and began to remove everything inside, placing the items on the floor around him. Bright, glowing bottles of cleaner, heaps of dingy rags, and an assortment of brushes and scouring pads. When he grabbed the bucket behind the S-pipe, he saw a cardboard shoebox. He tossed the bucket behind him and grabbed the box, which was half-destroyed from the leaking pipe, and set it behind him.

His working space around the pipe clear, Simon went downstairs to get his brother’s toolbox to fix what should have been his brother’s problem. He couldn’t deny that part of him was happy to be doing it—cleaning up his brother’s mess. Somehow it made him right in the end, about everything, every argument he’d ever had with his brother now recalibrated.

Once the pipes were cleared, replaced, and tightened, Simon began to put everything back under the sink. When he picked up the shoebox, the still-wet cardboard buckled and ripped in his hands. Folded pieces of paper fell into his lap and onto the floor. Most of the notes were written on paper, but some were written on scraps of cloth, leaves, and pieces of torn wallpaper. Simon rested the shoebox in his lap. He picked up one of the notes and began to read.

______________

3:12 p.m. 19°C. Wind N, gusting.
Lightning charred oak still standing.

Ferd found a large boulder to sit on and laid his shotgun down with the barrel facing into the woods, the safety on. The wind was coming from the north. There was a bite to it, which made it feel like the beginning of fall, not the end of summer. He took off his canvas backpack and searched through it for his lunch. A tinfoil-wrapped turkey sandwich with two thick slices of mozzarella cheese and three slices of dill pickle. No butter or mustard. It was only when he made his own sandwiches—as was the case more and more these days—that they remained whole, uncut. His mother was partial to cutting sandwiches into four squares.

“It makes lunch seem smaller,” he’d argued.

His mother said it was more “civilized.” How butchering something was more civilized, Ferd didn’t understand. When left to his own devices, a knife never saw his sandwiches. They were simple hunks of bread, cheese, meat like he imagined Vikings or voyageurs used to eat, without the pickles, of course. After he unwrapped his sandwich, he flattened out the tinfoil and laid it down on the rock, so he could sit on it.

It was the first time that year that Ferd had gone hunting. It had taken him an entire afternoon to find his gear in the basement and the shed, to clean it, and ensure it was all in working order, just like his father had shown him. It was also the first time that he had gone hunting alone. Without his brother, the woods seemed denser, the air colder.

From his perch, Ferd faced the railway tracks that he’d walked along all morning in search of hares. Shining parallels of rail that went clear across the province, north to south. The hunting was hard going without another body to walk along the bottom to flush out the hares, but he kept pressing on, hoping that, either perseverance or luck, would prevail. It was not like he could ask any of the kids at school to join him. He listened to their stories about their mothers’ lasagnas, pizzas, and taco dinners. At Ferd’s house, it was hare stew, moose steak, and tourtière made with ground deer meat, complete with sides from his mother’s garden. The kids at school would sooner starve than harvest their own dinner, but then again, Ferd had thought that an avocado was a type of car until his teacher brought one into class one day. He’d readily admit that there were things his classmates didn’t know about him and he didn’t know about his classmates. But the one thing he knew for certain was that an avocado, whatever it was, was not a meal.

As he sucked on his juice box, he heard a train approach. It sounded its horn several times. He had no idea who they were warning. There were no houses around for miles.

“Twenty-six,” he said out loud. He guessed the train would have twenty-six cars. It was a game that he used to play with his brother, a game Leo always won. Ferd had suspected his twin had better eyesight, but Leo tried to convince him that he was psychic. As the cars passed with their freight, he counted each one. Every other car was covered in graffiti. It was like code, sent from one city to another. Spy messages hidden in plain sight. Thirty-two cars was the final count. He was wrong again.

Ferd balled up his tinfoil seat, tossed it into his backpack, and resumed his hunt. He was ready, but still careful. A year ago, Ferd had heard a story about a hunter in town who’d been surprised by a hare that had run right across his feet. The hunter had reacted too quickly and fired off a shot. He’d killed the hare dead but the meat was blasted apart and useless. And so was his foot.

Focus.

The day was overcast, the sky cluttered with thick grey clouds, but it was the cluster of darker clouds on the horizon that worried him. He didn’t want to get caught in the rain. His rain jacket was the one thing he’d not found the day before. His sweater would keep him warm so long as he didn’t get wet. He crossed himself as he saw his mother sometimes do when things became dire. The wind picked up and tree branches creaked eerily. The only bird Ferd could hear was a crow off in the distance, a persistent, urgent caw. He looked both ways down the tracks. No train. He carried on.

When Ferd had hunted this spot with his brother and father, Gaetan had walked the rails.