Any Day Now (4 page)

“I don't think I'm being unreasonable,” began Alexandrine in what she hoped was her most reasonable voice.

“I'm missing a few things,” said Benoit, already at the door. “Like cornmeal.”

“Forgot the case of champagne, did you?” she asked. “Surely those folks are expecting champagne.”

Benoit looked at her, and then he did something she couldn't remember his ever having done before. He slowly shook his head. No peck on the cheek, no
À bientot
. He was gone.

She switched on the TV in the living room, the one they'd moved from the downstairs rumpus room when the last of the kids left. It was set pretty much permanently at Channel 22, the cable Catholic station, and angled so they could watch it either from the couch or the kitchen table. Sometimes she watched the daily mass. Sometimes it was just on — people talking about Jesus or the saints, news about the pope, women crying about terminally ill kids and how praying was the only thing you could do in a case like that. Alexandrine still prayed her rosary morning and night, just like Ma had taught them. It was a nice little moment each day. But it didn't,
Tabernuche!,
make things go away. It didn't solve the problem, for example, of Benoit and his big, bleeding wallet.

The phone rang. It was Chantal, their youngest daughter, and if Alexandrine were honest, not someone she always wanted to hear from. With Chantal it was forever me and what's coming to me. Roger was a sweetheart, good provider, too, at least as good as a schoolteacher could be. But he was getting mixed up as he was getting older. He'd joined some men's group, Chantal said, and was going off to the woods every weekend to play drums and run around in deer shit.

“What's up, Ma?” Chantal asked on the phone.

“Waiting for Dad,” Alexandrine said.

“At the store again?” Chantal asked. Even when they were a much younger family, Benoit would take off for Safeway — this was before it got converted to a Big Y — nearly every night. The noise level in the house got to him, all those kids fussing about their homework, the dishes being noisily, resentfully washed by whoever's turn it was, the radio blasting upstairs, the TV squawking downstairs, the phone always ringing. Not that Alexandrine appreciated his going out like this, leaving her to cope, to do what she'd already been doing all day, but she also saw it as his concession to her domestic authority, her superiority. And he'd come back with something they were just on the verge of running out of — usually bread, always milk — so those little trips were useful, too.“Cornmeal,” said Alexandrine. “We're out.”

“Baking again,” said Chantal. “He's turning into a regular Jacques Pepin.”

Alexandrine, wanting to get to the point — Chantal always had a point — said, “What do you want, honey?”

Roger was off on one of his weekends and a girlfriend had just called with tickets for a concert and did she think that she might be able to babysit on short notice? “I can bring the kids to you, if that would help,” Chantal offered and Alexandrine (thinking: No! Worse!) said, “You need to get yourself a regular sitter, Chantal. You can't count on your father and me to help you out.”

“OK,” said Chantal, but her voice had cooled. Cozy as anything when she needed something. Alexandrine had warned all the kids when they started having their own kids: I am not going to be your babysitter. Been there, done that…isn't that what they said nowadays? And she had the stretched out, stained, over-laundered, mémé-size T-shirt to prove it.
Done that.

She went back to the TV: a nun was being interviewed, a missionary sister. She had a weathered face, like she'd spent too much time in some country where there was lots of sun but not much else.

“It was my calling,” said the sister.

“How did you know?” pressed the interviewer. “What were the signs? Did you feel God was trying to tell you something?”

The nun smiled and for a moment she was beautiful, this woman you wouldn't look at twice if you weren't watching her on TV. “Oh,” she said, dropping her head, still with the smile, but a more secret smile. “You
know
.”

The phone rang again. Shit and double shit.

“Ma, it's me.” All the kids said this as if she should be able to tell their voices apart. “Ma, can I come over? It's important. It's really, really important.” The urgency could only be Jacinthe's. Her brothers called her
la drame dame
.

“Is Dad there?” she asked when Alexandrine didn't answer right away. She was
not
going to sit for little Joey. When were the kids going to get it? This was her Sunday.

“It's just me and the nuns,” said Alexandrine. “On TV.”

“Ma, I mean it. I'm desperate. Jess has gone off and I need to find him to talk to him.” Since September, Jacinthe had been seeing some guy from work. They'd invited him over for pie on Thanksgiving, but he'd called at the last minute to say he couldn't make it, sorry, and they still hadn't met him. Chantal said Jacinthe was crazy in love with him.

“She's always crazy in love,” Alexandrine had answered. “When is she not crazy in love?” Jacinthe, in her opinion, was a lot like her father in her sudden, blinding enthusiasms. She just hoped Jacinthe wasn't sleeping with the guy, though she had to assume that the crazy in love might have something to do with that.

“Ma, come on. Joey's good, you know that,” said Jacinthe on the phone. “When I asked him who he wanted to take care of him, he said, ‘Mémé.' Just like that. That's what he said.”

Alexandrine held on. “It's not convenient today, Jacinthe. Dad's not here and I don't know when he's coming back” — the thought came
, if
he's coming back — “so why don't you call one of your friends who has kids?”

Jacinthe hung up, called back five minutes later as they were showing footage of the nun's mission. Native people with rings in their noses beamed white-white teeth at the shaky camera.

“Ma, please.” Jacinthe was crying now and it didn't sound as if she was faking it. “We had a misunderstanding. I have to take care of this. Please.”

Joey and his toys (“Bring him something to amuse himself with,” Alexandrine had instructed) were deposited at the kitchen door fifteen minutes later. She hadn't seen Jacinthe for a couple of weeks and was surprised to see her looking starvation size. Jacinthe had always been slender, but now her hipbones poked out from her stretch jeans.

“Don't get anorexic there, kiddo,” Alexandrine said.

“It's the love diet, Ma,” said Jacinthe, and teared up again.

“When can I expect you back?”

“As soon as I am able, Mother, I will be back.”

“Just asking,” said Alexandrine. “Your father and I have plans tonight.”
Plans?
The only thing she would be curling up with was a skein of yarn.

“So, my man, let's you and I watch a little TV,” Alexandrine said after they'd watched Jacinthe drive off, too fast and not checking her mirrors.

“No nuns,” said Joey, pointing to the TV. He was a big boy for four, husky, and always bumping into things, breaking things. She'd have to keep him busy.

Alexandrine fixed them some microwave popcorn, then searched through their limited videos. Benoit had a thing for World War II documentaries, but Joey probably wouldn't sit still for that. Joey had a problem with sitting still anyway. She had a video of the pope's visit to Cuba.

“That!” said Joey, pointing.

Thank God the grandkids did visit from time to time because there it was buried at the back, the bright box for
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. Chantal had brought it over months before and kept forgetting to take it home.

They were sitting side by side on the couch, Joey being unusually good, unusually quiet, and they were just getting to the part where Quasimodo is ringing the bells, when the boy burped and threw up all over himself.

“Holy shit!” yelled Alexandrine. “Why didn't you tell me?”

She hauled the boy off the sofa, dragging him toward the bathroom. En route he did damage to the arm of the sofa, the carpet, the kitchen floor and her fur mules. His shoulders shuddered over the toilet.

“Why didn't you tell Mémé?” she asked. “Now Mémé has to clean all this mess up.”

“I'm sick,” he announced.

She felt his forehead with her forearm, such an old reflex, and almost yelled again. The kid was burning up. How had she not noticed before? How had Jacinthe not noticed? Or had she, in fact, noticed? She wanted to kill her, to kill all of them.

“You, young man, don't move,” and she gripped Joey's shoulders to make sure he understood. On her way to the kitchen, she slipped on vomit. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. But then, standing in the kitchen, she didn't know what to do. Call Jacinthe? She was out chasing down her man. Call the kid's doctor? But who was that? Call a pharmacist?

She called Chantal, because she, at least, was still doing this. No answer. An emergency room? They'd think she was some hysterical, out-of-practice grandmother. A little puke, what was that compared to a car accident, a heart attack? She checked the kitchen cabinet where Benoit had lined up all their drugs. Not even Junior Tylenol. But then she always told her kids not to bring their kids over if they were sick. “We don't need to catch anything at our age,” she told them. Spotting a large bottle of Rolaids, she took one out. It couldn't hurt.

Back in the bathroom, Joey was still standing, but his eyes were closed.

“Any more coming out?” she asked.

“I wanna sleep,” Joey said and slumped to the floor. She didn't want to risk her bedspread, so they limp-walked to the extra bedroom, the girls' old room, which still had two twin beds in it. Joey climbed up on the one closest to the door and curled into the middle.

“Do you want a blanket?” she asked. He nodded and then fell asleep, just like that, not even stirring a minute later when she put her least-favourite afghan (you never knew) over him. It was only when she was back in the kitchen, plugging in the kettle for a quick coffee, that she realized Benoit had been gone for nearly two hours. Cornmeal, sure. He was probably standing right now in front of the extra-large fridges at Leon's Appliances. Why stop at toaster ovens?

Coffee in hand, she wandered back to the TV.
Tabernuche!
The puke. Back to the kitchen for paper towel, the whole roll. How had she ever done this times five? The shit, the puke, the tears. You rush and you push and hurry everyone along, trying to get them sorted out right, and then this: more puke. But also — and her stomach dropped, as she remembered Benoit's face when he was leaving — such a terrible quiet. Even with the TV on it was too quiet.

She tried Chantal again, let it ring fifteen, twenty times. As she was opening the jar of Taster's Choice, she heard something hit the wall, hard. If that kid was throwing up again, she was going to tell Jacinthe, Chantal, too, and Guy with his brood of three, no more kids over here. No more babysitting handouts, no more… Joey was on his back, arched, eyes wide open, throat gurgling. He grabbed at the air, the blanket. She tried to pick him up, but he resisted with amazing strength. He didn't look at her, didn't seem to be seeing anything. Her hand accidentally brushed his forehead. Why hadn't she tried to get some aspirin into him before? Even adult aspirin. She dropped him back on the bed — he didn't seem to notice — ran for the thermometer in the bathroom. What had she been thinking about earlier? She
hadn't
been thinking, she hadn't been thinking at all.

But then, standing over him with the old family rectal in her hand, she didn't know how she could use it. She couldn't turn him over. She couldn't get him to do anything. She reached under the boy's behind, pulled down his pants, aimed the thermometer in roughly the right place. Joey howled as she struck more resistance, then found the yielding spot.

“Calm down, calm down,” she told him, though he made no eye contact, just whimpered and held stiff. When she finally pulled the thermometer free it was time to panic for real. She'd never read a number like this on a human thermometer before. One oh five.

He made no sound as she wedged her hands under him, lifted him, staggered to the bathroom, stripped him and placed him in the bottom of the tub. The old porcelain was cold, she knew, but cold was the plan, her only plan. She turned on the tap. Cold water, but not freezing cold: From somewhere came the old advice.

The phone rang just as Joey began to gag.
Tabernac!
And as she thought it, just thought that worst of all words, she realized how scared she was. It didn't mean much here in America, where everyone said fuck and cunt and cocksucker, but in her world, in her maman's world, there was no greater blasphemy. She had just desecrated the holy tabernacle.

The phone rang. She scooped cool water over her grandson's shaking knees. So white, those legs! The phone rang. She lapped the water around his quivering ribs. The phone rang. She filled her hands with water and opened them over his head. She'd never really noticed how curly his hair was. Or that his eyes — staring scarily at the ceiling — were the exact same colour as Jacinthe's.

“Lord, help me,” said Alexandrine.

The phone stopped. The vibration in Joey's body turned to a shiver. She lifted him from the tub, pulled the plug. The weight of his body was not reassuring. Was he conscious? He lay across her lap, his big-boy legs stretching so far that his feet scrunched the olive-green bath mat against the wall. His little penis was standing up, probably from the cold. She looked away, remembering washing her boys when they were little, trying to be careful and thorough, but uninterested, too.

The kitchen door opened. Thank God, someone was back. It didn't matter who at this point, just someone. If it was Benoit — it
should
be Benoit — then he could take the boy into Emergency. If it was Jacinthe, then together they'd be able to get him in the car and haul off to Providence Hospital.