Bishop's Road (24 page)

Simple folk they were, who made a fortune in packaging materials when Missus complained once that sending a parcel was hit or miss every time and so Mister came up with something better and the world beat a path to his door. They bought the biggest house and the nicest cars and raised their children in the lap of luxury even if they didn't have a clue which fork to use. Rachel didn't bother to speak until she went to school and discovered that merely pointing at an object and yelling was no guarantee that she could have it. Nothing ever changed at home though, and her wish was her family's command. She grew up beautiful on the out-side and warty mean on the inside but she was rich so no one cared.

Prison suits her. If she had a metal cup she'd be banging it on the bars of her cell day and night. Instead she elbows people in the side for no reason, trips them when they walk past her, preferably when they are carrying trays of lunch, picks a spot on their bodies to stare at hard for an hour or so, a shoulder, a nose, an ear. She's a bully, pure and simple, but subtle and it's not easy to pinpoint exactly what she's doing wrong. After enough complaints the guards try solitary confinement to teach her a lesson but Crazy Rachel doesn't learn lessons, uses her time alone to fortify herself and is always worse when they let her out.

Odd how we get from there to here. How life goes on and we work and play and grow and in a still sudden moment we stop and wonder - how did this come to be? It was just yesterday, wasn't it, when I was that person and now here I am this one and what transpired to make this happen? How did I get to be living
in this place and putting my dishes in this cupboard and taking my bath in this tub? How did I come to be looking at these walls and where are the ones that came before?

Ruth stares at her little tree with the white lights and pretty glass balls from the big sale at work. Snuggles down under a quilt and is pondering just such questions when Patrick comes by with champagne and roses and a diamond ring in a blue velvet box. Makes her cry until her nose runs and her eyes are red. And she looks at him long and hard. Says yes she will marry him but not yet. There is something she needs to know and it is in this place alone with her. Alone with no one else around. When she sits in the quiet she has the sense that it is just there. Or there. If she moves her head quickly enough at the right second of time in a certain light she will have it and if she hasn't yet that doesn't mean that tomorrow - or tomorrow - the knowing that is so close will not be in her grasp. “I wouldn't mind dying,” she says. “I have a bone to pick with God, and so many questions.” She smiles and the knowing skitters away to hide until Patrick leaves.

Downtown is aglow with Christmas except for the empty shops and two or three houses where nobody bothers and the city looks silly all green and red in the fog. Everyone wants snow but it looks like there won't be any in time and after the twenty-fifth it doesn't matter if it never comes. Parents who bought toboggans and skis for the youngsters are thinking they should exchange them for scooters and skateboards but it's probably too late now anyway and they ready themselves for the disappointment. Those who remember the rules make a big deal of putting the shovels and winter boots away, taking out raincoats and pretending that this suits them just fine in hope that the gods are listening and will fling a storm their way just to mess up their plans. Forgetting, of course, that the gods know what's really going on and can recognize a fake-out miles away.

The people who haven't finished their shopping keep putting
it off and retail business has come to a standstill with customers poking around half-heartedly and leaving the stores with nothing and no one is thinking of saying Merry Christmas when they stop to chat.

In prison it doesn't matter if it rains or snows and Ginny Mustard is still putting a holiday together for her outside world. She has pictures of the tree full of little cats who find the branches just perfect for napping and tormenting Harvey who can't climb, and has taped them to the wall at eye level all around her cell. Joe Snake takes a roll of film a day and has it developed at the one-hour place, sends the pictures to her by courier and after the guards have finished looking at them she puts them up.

Christmas. Cold now. Earth round and sweet. Worried. A bubble on some giant's tongue who can spit or swallow - makes no difference to him and either way, we fall together and most things land where they began the day. Paper and gifts and some sad some happy same as last year and the one before that except for maybe Uncle Fred didn't get in from the rig or Aunt Floss died in July and is missed or there's a brand new baby who has never seen the pretty lights before and tries to eat any tinsel that the cat didn't get.

Our friends recount the year's blessings and sorrows and make resolutions. Ginny Mustard puts hers to rhyme and sings them to her belly that she has taken to protecting with both hands whenever Crazy Rachel is about for she sees what is on the warped mind and has a sharp kitchen knife tucked away in her mattress just in case. She sings, “Daddy's gonna take you to our pretty house,” and “You're gonna be a smart little girl” to the tune of
Hush Uttle Baby
and never in the same order so her dreams are many different songs. Soft and no one hears.

Mrs. Miflin was in a boarding house on Caine's Street until she took herself to the waterfront and walked off the edge of the wharf leading some to believe that she was a few bricks short of
a load and after they fished her out they put her in the hospital for the mentally deficient where she waits. Sometimes quietly and sometimes not so - especially on the days when she tucks her happy pills under her tongue and pretends to swallow and spits them in the toilet when nobody's looking. When the new owners of her house came to move in, she still hadn't moved out and there was quite a to-do until poor Fred the real estate agent dragged her to Caine's Street and signed her up for a month at Mrs. Pretty's house. Even paid with his own money. And put her furniture in storage. He still has the key.

When Mrs. Miflin forgot that she had a fat bank account and couldn't figure out what she'd do when her time was up at Mrs. Pretty's place, she tried to end it all. Not realizing that of the hundred or so people taking a walk on the waterfront there'd be at least a dozen who would try to save her.

Ruth has a lovely Christmas but for the knowing that waits for the quiet and has become a nagging thing lately - pulling her away from wherever she happens to be - calling her to come and find secrets. And so she leaves what she's doing and hurries to her womb. That's what she calls home - it being too small to be a real apartment. Once she told Patrick that she was going to the wash-room when they were at a very good movie but when she reached the lobby - well - she just kept going. And halfway through dinner at Peter and Sarah's house she upped herself from the table before dessert and coffee and said, “Good-bye. I have to go now.” They worry about her but there's nothing they can do. No more can Ruth. It beckons and she's gone.

Judy is in constant pain - she's that angry. Maggie has left her and she hasn't felt this alone since Grammy Hagen died.
When Mrs. Eldridge came back from Cuba without her mister he got it with both barrels - never mind that the man has a bad heart - and was sent packing with half of everything they had accumulated over the years and a yearning to see the world with his daughter. They had their passports in no time flat and were on their way - to Egypt and Belgium and England and Peru - though not necessarily in that order. And if Judy had been around to say good-bye she'd have known that Maggie will send a postcard every week and will miss her and wishes she could come but school is first if Judy is ever to be set free of the watchful eye of the law.

While Maggie awaits her flight arm in arm with her dad, Judy sits on her favourite swing in the schoolyard and won't leave even when the principal comes out and threatens to have her expelled if she isn't back in her classroom by the time he counts to five. She yells at him that she doesn't go to his friggin' school anyway and he can take a flying fuck at the moon for all she cares and he goes inside to call the cops but litde Josie Gullage has a nosebleed and he has to take her to the hospital. Between the jigs and the reels, Judy is left swinging until four in the morning when Joe Snake finds her and tells her to get on home out of it.

And Judy has sworn off friends forever and doesn't care if she never sees Maggie again but she cries in her pillow at night and has dark circles under her eyes and a sad droopy way of walking with her text books folded hard against her breasts and holes in her shoes where she drags her toes every slow step.

Joe Snake worries about her and tries to get her to eat vegetables but she is unbearably lonely downstairs and he is unbearably lonely upstairs and even though they watch television together sometimes they don't have much to say and neither is any help to the other. They take the little cats and their momma to be spayed or neutered - depending on which is which - and don't speak a word the whole time going or coming.

Harvey haunts the house on Bishop's Road looking for Ginny Mustard. Joanie Harris keeps shooing him away when he comes crying at the front door so now he's digging a hole under the gate to the backyard. Through the snow and his big paws are raw from working the cold earth. Every time a door is opened at Ginny Mustard's house he's away. Joanie calls Animal Control but they can never catch him in the act. By the time they come around Joe Snake's been out looking and has talked him into going home. And now he's in the house and Joanie finds him in the attic so she says what the hell and leaves him there. When Joe Snake comes to fetch him yet again they reach an agreement. Harvey can go back and forth and live wherever he pleases. Joe Snake explains that Ginny Mustard will be home some day and Harvey will be with her and out of Joanie's hair for good. Joanie says that will be fine with her. She gets lonely in the big house all day when the children are at school and can use company.

Lonely is only one of the things she is feeling of late. Nervous is another but that's nothing new. She tries to convince herself that she's tired and when she gets used to the house she won't be imagining things the way she does now but still, there, out of the corner of her eye the tail of a black dress disappearing. She finds herself humming
hush little baby
when her mind relaxes for a minute and at night when the moon is on the garden someone in a red sweater is moving about. Looking for something.

There is a day in February when the sun is warm and snow melts a little and you can open windows and air the house as long as you remember to close them again when it gets dark. It is reprieve for people in places like this. A short reminder that the season will not last forever. And in March when the rest of the country is shaking off the cold for good and you still can't see over the snow banks to the sidewalk, you remember that day in February when you opened the windows and aired the house and you are strengthened for the duration. Joanie Harris doesn't know
this and should be in rough shape by the time May rolls around.