Any Day Now (17 page)

“Fuck me,” Foster said.

“Sit down, Foster. Now.”

Surprisingly, he did. “I thought you were different,” he said, his visible eye woeful.

“You name one teacher who would have agreed to be interviewed about the mental health of her family. You bet your life I'm different.” He'd gotten her angry enough so she could finally hear herself. And what she heard was crazy and familiar. What else had she expected? If you followed someone onto the Tornado, eventually you'd find yourself hurtling down the tracks with them, going way up and way down, arms in the air, yelling your head off.

“I need to get going, Foster. We've been advised to not stick around too late.”

“Oooh, the goblins,” said Foster.

“No, the flyer.”

“Oh, that,” said Foster, and he smiled with a mix of pride and pain. “I might know something about that. But don't ask,” he said, and she saw he was dying to be asked.

“Let's go,” she said.

He followed her out, switching subjects a dozen times by the time they reached the parking lot: his man in Gaza, the lack of talent in class, his computer problems, his certainty that someone in class was the person calling late at night making death threats, his need to graduate, the murderous recent actions of Israelis against Palestinians, his parents' divorce drama, Ted Manley's dickheadedness. The guy had wide-ranging interests. But when they got to her car, he vaporized with a “Thanks, Sandy. I know you're trying,” and she stood there, key in hand, trying to make sense of even a piece of the day. The parking lot, after years of clamouring from campus women's groups, was dark and unattended. She got into her car.
Oh, well,
as Rip had said.

Cookie would be home now, having scored a trillion goals off her cute hard head and twinkly little feet, and she and Rip would be having the kind of sex you only have in the first month or what might be the last. Rip and Cookie would go on because they had to. There were four kids and a house and reputations. And love, she guessed.

She put the key in the ignition, though it seemed like too much effort to make the thing
go
. Foster would graduate this year if she had anything to do with it. But he'd use up his fine mind negotiating mental health benefits, checking himself in and out of hospitals, driving a lot more people to distraction, though not nearly as crazy or unhappy as he would make himself.

Their student-teacher collision hadn't proven as witty, or as illuminating, as the characters' in
Oleanna
. She was no Mamet, just a mother, teacher, mistress, writer of cautionary tales — Is your kid on drugs? — a watcher of plays.

Steve, her ex — she hadn't gotten around to telling Foster this — wasn't watching anymore. On a freezing night eight years ago he'd swallowed enough lithium to kill three Steves. A note for Danny, a note for her, a black-and-white Polaroid of what seemed to be the inside of his kitchen cabinet and another of the snow, just snow, outside his basement apartment, and he was gone.

She still watched Danny for signs of his father's glittering, bouncy mind, but Danny, so far, so thank-you-God far, was a plodder, an earnest kid who liked hockey,
not
reading, who loved her and his grandparents and his friends and possessed not an iota of strangeness. Or originality. It depended on how you looked at it.

Once, on vacation in Cape Cod — good to get away, Steve's psychiatrist had advised — she'd held her emaciated husband on her lap while he cried and shook at the end of a whopper high. Her arms and legs did what was necessary: stroked, rocked, soothed, because the rest of her had stopped working. There was not one comforting thing left to say, nowhere she could take him with words. He sobbed all through the night, occasionally landing a punch on her. The next day he didn't remember any of it.

A figure emerged from the dark a few cars away, and the surprise of it forced her to finally put the car in reverse and back up. She needed to get home, even if there was only cheese and bread to eat and no one to talk to and pages of bad writing to make better. Sandy watched the figure — a young man it looked like — from her rear-view mirror. He was standing next to a parked van now, waiting.

She wasn't in the best shape herself, true. Plenty neurotic, anxious around the edges, and this mess with Rip made her feel like she was going nowhere at all. Just her history with men was enough to keep a therapist in business for years, and then there was her stalled writing career
.
She so missed writing, real writing. It felt like homesickness.

But as Sandy drove out through the gate, it came to her, as it hadn't in all the years of dodging the minds of those closest to her, that her own mind was a strangely marvellous thing. She could lean into it, and out would come song lyrics, what she had to do on Saturday, lesson plans, something to remind Danny about, a funny moment from third grade — all in
some
kind of order. Her own personal think-tank! Every now and then, too, it opened onto a place that was an absence of place. Water, sky, not even. Her mind, such a smart mind, gave her a place away from itself. And in this unexpected clearing, she drove herself home.

Backing out of the convent's too-narrow driveway Clément clipped the nuns' Rose of Sharon bush as he usually did. At least no blossoms pressed themselves accusingly against his window. It was early December and bare branches scraped the glass. “Heard that,” said Georgette from the back seat.

“Sister Joan's going to come after you with her spade,” said Odile, laughing, also from the back seat. She'd had a girlish giggle about a million years ago; now his wife's laugh was a weak growl. “Sexy,” Clément called it.

He almost said so now, stopped himself because Georgette, long-widowed, didn't like him “talking dirty.” She didn't like knowing that he and Odile, her older sister, sometimes still got it on, as the kids called it. Things had to be just right for them: no arthritis business for her, no bad gas for him, no worrying calls from the kids, or bad news on TV, or a snowstorm. So much could come between people, but sometimes it was like old, yelping good times.

“Remind me to get Maddy to give me back my coral sweater and that book I lent her. She'll start thinking they're hers,” said Odile.

“What book?” Georgette asked.

“Oh, that one. You know.”

Clément heard the new vagueness again. “The one about near-death experiences,” he prompted.

People were still coming out of St. Mary's: old
mémés
in dark wool coats and silk scarves cupped around crisp dos. He saw Benoit and Alexandrine, old friends, and gave them a salute. Benoit held up both arms, sent back the victory sign.

“That Benoit,” Clément said. “They don't make them like that anymore.”

“Near-death experiences? I call those things near-death disasters,” said Georgette. “I swear if I see any of our dead relatives heading my way down some blue tunnel, I'm turning back right then and there.”

“And going where,
chérie?”
asked Clément, as he accelerated gradually. Odile had begun complaining lately: “You used to be such a smooth driver.”

“Well, not
there,
” said Georgette.

“This could be the one time where your indomitable will won't count for much,” said Clément. As he turned onto East Street, he felt the tires of the Camry lose it for a second. First frost and already the roads were something you had to think about.

“I hate winter,” he said.

“Indominable…whatever. You and your big words,” Georgette said. “Why don't you just call a spade a spade? I'm bossy.”

“No really, what are you going to say? ‘Sorry, can't die right now, I've got a roast in the oven, stuff at the cleaners, and I need to find out what's happening with Erica on
All
My Children'?”

“Oh, just shut up, You,” Georgette said.

“Yeah, just drive, You,” Odile said.

He was their driver. Every Sunday, after Father Bruce said mass, after holy communion — and this
wasn't
like sex: snowstorm, sore back, September 11th, it was wine and bread, blood and body — the three would get back in the car, go pick up Maddy in Springfield, and head out. Sometimes they went looking for tag sales, though this was more Georgette's and Clément's thing, a competitive thing almost. Sometimes they'd just end up at the Friendly's near Maddy for a late lunch of shrimp in a basket. Sometimes they just drove. Lately, though, there'd been changes. Lately things had turned a bit funny out Maddy's way.

“Damn, I forgot the pyx again,” said Clément, feeling in his pocket for the small container.

“I wish you would just say darn,” said Odile. “Or shoot. Shoot is good.”

“It's not like she really cares about communion or anything to do with religion anymore,” Georgette said. “Why can't you get that? Maddy doesn't care. She's into other stuff, as she says, so why should we care? She probably doesn't even know it's Advent.”

“She's my sister-in-law, too. I care about her,” said Clément, and then added less forcibly, “I care about her soul.”

“Well, just stop. It's wearing you out,” said Georgette.

“What?” said Clément. “Who's wearing what?”

“Forget it,” said Georgette. In the mirror Clement saw Georgette nudge Odile and tap her ear.

They were now safely on the highway, so he could relax a bit, especially since the highway guys had already spread a layer of sand. He felt more traction, more bite, under them as he sailed to the far left lane. He liked to speed, good safe speeding, when the girls weren't paying attention.

“Look at that,” Odile said to Georgette. “Another Big Y. They're building another Big Y out here.” He glanced at them through the mirror as they looked out Odile's window. People still thought they were twins. Just eleven months apart, the same shade (Miss Clairol Catalina Gold) on their fine, permed curls, the same Deauville jaw (square, a bit bullying). And those same pale blue eyes.

“Teeny weeny bladder time, ” said Odile.

“We just got on the road,” said Georgette, but Clément was already signalling and moving right.

It was a new service station, or an old station under new ownership, they noticed when the women got out. “This used to be a Shell, didn't it?” said Odile, brushing crumbs from her fur coat. Their maman had always packed saltines in little waxed paper bags in case one of the seven kids got carsick. Now Odile's and Georgette's granddaughters packed crackers for their little guys. “No, it was an Exxon,” insisted Georgette. “And an Esso before that.”

“That's not what I remember,” said Odile.

Clément watched the sisters, arms linked because water had frozen around the pumps. If either slipped on the ice, they'd go down together. Georgette was probably right about its being an Exxon. Odile's memory was…well, it wasn't Alzheimer's or anything, but it wasn't like it had been. She'd always been so definite, so sure of things, like how to make the best pork and beef
tourtière
, how to serve communion, how to discipline a child. You didn't argue with Odile when she was in her domain: home, church and everything in between. But now that she was in her leisure years — a term they
all
agreed was hilarious — she was growing uncertain.

While the attendant filled the gas tank, Clément paced, popped a Tums. The three of them would have to talk about Maddy sooner or later. But when the sisters got back in the car they were deep into their soaps. If Tad and Aidan and Boyd hadn't locked Michael in a dumpster, would Michael really have raised a ruckus at Erica and Jack's wedding? And who really is Greenlee's father? And that mystery man, Juan-Pablo, isn't he
something
, having romanced (Georgette's word) not only Simone, but Mia and Kendall, too? They went back and forth from French to English, mostly French, their kind of French, a Beauce
patois
from the fifties, and he hadn't the heart to interrupt them and bring them back to the other soap opera.

The SUV was the first thing they'd seen when they'd pulled up in front of Maddy's last Sunday. It sat huge and silver in the driveway.

“Oops,” said Odile.

“You'd think she'd have some decency,” said Georgette, but she was already hurrying out of the car.

Clément had beat them both to the door. “Hi, you,” Maddy said when she opened it. She smelled good. Maddy always smelled good, and the
same
good, spraying on quantities of Emeraude for fifty years of mornings. Two-cheeked kisses, the old Quebec way, and then the other sisters were behind him and sniffing around like bloodhounds.

“Is he here?” asked Georgette. “You might have had him leave before us, you know.”

“Who?” asked Maddy, and she'd looked genuinely mystified, not like she had the usual something up her sleeve. She'd had her hair cut since the week before and maybe lightened, too, Clément noticed. She was wearing a smart little red pantsuit and low black boots.

Georgette motioned her thumb to the driveway. “Who is he this time, Madeleine?” And Maddy had laughed so long and so happily that the three had ended up grinning in the hallway with her. How bad could it be if she was this happy?

“I actually turned on
Passions
this week,” Odile was saying from the back seat now. They were back to English, probably not even aware they'd switched. Clément inched up the speedometer again, slipped into cruise control just as the back tires fishtailed a tad.

“Traitor!” said Georgette, then added, “OK, I surf now and then, too. Who's doing what to whom?”

“I couldn't figure out right away,” said Odile, looking up to see Clément's amused eyes on hers and waving him off, “but it seems that when Luis came to search Mrs. Wallace's house...”

“I remember her,” said Georgette.

“Well, he notices something strange about Beth because she forgot to strap on the bag of sugar she's been using to pretend she's pregnant.”

“No!” said Georgette.

“Who's pretending to be president?” asked Clément.

“For the last time, would you please get your hearing checked?” said Georgette.

Last Sunday Clément had also forgotten to bring the pyx for Maddy. (Strictly speaking, you were only supposed to bring communion to someone infirm. But, Clément reasoned, that sort of fit in Maddy's case.)

“He's not just having senior moments, he's having a senior decade,” Georgette said after Clément had apologized for forgetting the wafer.

“Oh, don't worry about me. I've been saved,” Maddy had laughed. She'd sat them down in her sunroom, mixed everyone rum and Cokes. “We can take my new wheels to Friendly's,” she said.

A year before, there
had
been a guy parked in the driveway, a guy named Larry, but he'd driven a 1988 Plymouth Voyager van, a real beater. Nice enough guy, though at fifty-five a bit young for Maddy who, like all of them, was either coming up on seventy or just nudged past it.

“What's in it for him, do you think?” Georgette had asked on the way home one Sunday after the
five
of them had gone out for shrimp in a basket.

“I know what's in it for her,” Odile had said. “She told me he has a big…basket,” And she'd let out one of her laugh-growls.

“Thanks,” Georgette had said. “I needed to know that.”

The snow was starting to pile up now, giving the road a pillowy, lopsided feel. Clément moved out of the passing lane, and the new furrows he had to cross caused the Camry to shimmy.

“Whoa!” said Odile.

“Let's not kill ourselves,” Georgette said.

Surprised to find his hands shaking, Clément said, “Shouldn't we talk about your sister?”

“She's already gotten way too much attention in this family,” said Georgette.

Two months after he'd appeared, Larry and his Voyager were gone. But Maddy was soon hanging out with a new crowd. These friends greeted Odile, Clément and Georgette like long-lost family. “Clem, Clem, so good to see you! Maddy's told us so much about you all.” Too-long hugs and too-tight handshakes and too many people standing too close and assuming too much. It was only when Maddy invited them to an official intro night that they'd seen all this earnest interest and down-home warmth for what it was: Amway. Maddy had toiled on the bottom rung of the pyramid for six months, long enough to drag every family member to an intro night and invest in a lifetime supply of biodegradeable cleaning products.

Then it was Hindu meditation with chanting tapes, incense and photos of a porky little Indian fellow in every corner of the house. Then this spring it was another man. This one, Pierre, was into cooking, really into it. Maddy was still in the throes of replacing her white appliances with brushed stainless steel and converting her kitchen from electric to gas, when the guy upped for L.A. to open a Cajun takeout.

This one hurt. When they'd taken her out for Sunday lunches late in the summer, Maddy had barely eaten. She laughed and cried at the wrong places in a conversation. If it hadn't been for the money that Alain, Maddy's second husband, had left her, she'd really be up shit creek now, they all agreed.

But it wasn't the money that worried Clément, not fundamentally. He could only guess what worried Georgette — probably her year-younger sister getting too much sex and liking it a lot, or blowing all her money on a gigolo. Odile? These days Odile almost had to be reminded to worry. She'd turned into a laissez-faire kind of gal, lost her judgmental edge.

Which left him to do all the serious worrying. And what worried Clément the most — he could hardly say it out loud, though he'd tossed it in earlier when the two were ragging on him in the car — OK, here it was…was her soul. Not that Maddy was going to go straight to hell for her untethered tendencies in later life. It was just the idea that when the time came — and, at seventy, one had to finally admit that it was going to be sooner than later — one wished for a soul in a state of greater repose. That's why the old rituals felt so precious now.
Peace be with you. And also with you.
A restless spirit at seventy seemed to Clément a sad, sad thing.

The car slipped onto another, bigger drift — where were those highway guys? This stuff was layering thick and fast — and both women yelled to him to watch it and maybe they should stop and call Maddy.

“No,” said Clément, knowing it would be more dangerous to try to turn around out here. He dreaded having to change lanes for any reason now. If they could just make it to the exit after this, he could ease off the ramp and slow-motion it on side streets to Maddy's. When he thought his voice would come out sounding almost normal, he said, “OK,
mesdames
, what are we going to do about
votre
soeur
?” Because after last week Clément had to admit that maybe Maddy needed some help.