Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (11 page)

She made tea and brought out the Peek Freans, my favourite, and some home-made scones. Julia hasn’t made scones for tea in years. Serving me with her Royal Albert Country Rose china, she chatted lightly about her various neighbours’ feats and foibles.

Finally, she sat in her Queen Anne chair with Matthew Fox (named after the theologian), her golden Lhasa Apso, curled up in her lap like a cat. Matthew Fox looked quite comfy. Stroking him lightly, she sighed.

“I am afraid that I am finally losing my faculties,” she said. “And since I have no other living relatives, as you know, I want to confirm with you your role as executor of my will.”

I took a Peek Frean. Julia isn’t one for histrionics.

“I don’t really know how to explain,” she said, “so I’ll simply come out and say it. I have been having delightful intercourse with Matthew Fox all week.” I have explained to Julia on several occasions that we rarely use the “I” word for anything but sex anymore. She doesn’t seem to pay heed to my advice. On the other hand, Julia doesn’t get out much, so it probably doesn’t matter. “You see,” she continued, “he . . . he has been participating. In fact he is becoming quite the interlocutor. I am discovering that he has a unique and poignant perspective. Quite refreshing, I might add.”

I swallowed my Peek Frean.

“The first thing he said to me was ‘No.’ Just like a child. An important first word for anyone wishing to develop a critical mind, don’t you think? ‘No, what?’ I asked him. We were about to have tea, just like this. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s very good,’ I told him—it’s always important to reward good manners—but that wasn’t what I meant. I explained that I wanted to know why he said ‘No.’ ‘I don’t like Peek Freans,’ he said, ‘and we always have Peek Freans now. You used to make scones. I like those better.’ So I made him some scones. He was quite beside himself with delight.”

Matthew Fox looked up at her, a perfect Disney-dog gaze.

“It’s not you, Julia,” I said, thankful that I would no longer have to share the Peek Freans with the dog. “You’re not losing your marbles. The universe has gone kind of wonky. Not really in a bad way, though.” Slime grabbing Mrs. Miller by the head wasn’t such a bad thing, was it?

I told her about Mrs. Miller and about Frank and Lisa and Brigitte. I left out the part about the Berkowitzes. “I’m not really sure what God has in mind,” I said to her as a kind of conclusion.

Julia stroked the rim of her teacup with her index finger. “Honestly, David, it sounds to me as if God is quite out of the picture. God just doesn’t have this rich a sense of humour; God has more of a knock-knock joke sense of humour.”

I chewed. Atheists will use anything to get a leg up in the existence-of-God debate.

Julia fed Matthew Fox a piece of scone.

I stopped in at Mrs. Miller’s on the way home from Julia’s. I’m not sure why. I just felt I needed to.

I had never heard Nathan shout before, but he was shouting now. “You asked me to come, and I agreed. But I’ve had enough. I’m leaving!”

Whoa. Wait a second. Nathan is dead, remember? You buried him, for Pete’s sake. Three years ago.

“Please, Nathan. Please stay.” Mrs. M. was actually begging.

She must have felt me come into the dining room because she turned to me, her eyes wide. “I just want to talk to him, if only for a while. It’s been so long. Please, David, please make him stay.”

David. Wow
, she was desperate.

“Hey, Nathan. Uh, good to see you again. You’re looking great.” He looked younger than I remembered. In fact, he looked better dead than he had those last couple of years before his heart attack.

“Hi, Dave. You’re looking pretty good yourself. You lost some weight?”

I blushed. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been working out this summer.” That was a bald-faced lie, but I pumped my arms up and down to show him anyway. I made a mental note to order some new short-sleeved clergy shirts—mine
were
getting snug around the biceps.

“Reverend!” Mrs. Miller stamped her foot.

“See?” Nathan said. “You always nose in, take over the conversation, work it around to something you want to talk about. And since I’m here anyway: that’s not all. Remember how you were always accusing me of running around on you, rolling in the hay with some secretary from work? Well, I’d have been nuts to: you’d have skinned me alive. So just so you know, I never did, even though you never believed me. You’re just a jealous, bitter-hearted woman. And you have been from the day Francis was born.”

“That’s not true. Tell him that’s not true, Reverend.”

I held up my hands, more to protect myself than to defer. I’m as afraid of her as Nathan was. But he’s already dead and I’m not, and I don’t want to be, so I just kept my mouth shut.

There was silence. A stalemate. But something had changed in Mrs. Miller. I could taste it, more like black pepper, less like aspirin. She looked at Nathan and spoke, her voice soft, quiet, like I’ve never heard it before. “Did you ever love me, Nathan?”

“Yes, Lil, I did. For a long time. Then, after Francis was born, things changed. Inside me, inside you; between us. And it was never the same after that.” He sighed. “How is Francis?”

“He left home, Nathan. He flew away.”

Nathan simply nodded, as if Frank’s flying away was an ordinary thing. An expected thing.

“What’s going on, Nathan?” I asked.

He looked at me and shrugged. “The universe is growing up, Dave. It’s transmogrifying—I think that’s what Calvin would call it.”

“John Calvin, the Reformer?”

He snorted. “No, Calvin of
Calvin and Hobbes
!”

“Oh,” I said. “
That
Calvin.” Mrs. Miller used to complain that Nathan did all his reading on the toilet. (The things people tell you when you’re a minister.)

Nathan shrugged again. “The universe is going through a gawky adolescent period right now. Bending, folding—melting down all the walls. Your lives will soon be more like my life, more like what life is like on this side.

“But until those barriers are gone completely, I’d rather stay over here on my side.” He turned to Mrs. Miller. “It’s been too long between us, Lil.”

Something snapped inside my head. I heard it, like the crack of a timber under weight. I tasted wood ash again.

Mrs. Miller nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. She took a moment to look at him, to really look at him. “Good-bye Nathan.”

Nathan said nothing in response, but waved to me, then slowly dissolved into the air.

Mrs. M. tipped her head back and howled. Like one of the Hounds of Hell. The windows rattled. I slapped my hands over my ears. The house began to shake and white-hot flames roared around us. But there was no rage left in her, just sheer, unadulterated grief.

I reached out, pulled her tiny body against mine, and held her hard. I was no longer afraid. Of her, or anything else.

Her howling filled me, wound through my body, coursing electric. I tasted her bitter life. It melted in my mouth. The bitterness became turmeric, then lemon rind. I wanted to spit it out of my body, but it was part of me now. Had always been part of me.

After a long time the howling ebbed. Then slowly, the flames fell back, as this first wave of grief eased.

Then there was silence. And the gentleness that comes after the long, harsh storm.

So, the universe is transmogrifying, I thought. Growing up. The dead should know.

Might as well get used to it, I told myself.

And so, as I held Mrs. Miller, I rained iris blossoms on us, right there in her dining room, because I remembered that she said once how much she loved irises. They rained like purple snow, their rich sweetness surrounding us, filling the air we breathed.

Originally published in On Spec Summer 1999 Vol 11 No 2 #37

Steven Mills
lives in Burnaby, BC, with the delight of his heart, Holly Phillips, in a tiny 17th floor apartment with a cat who is rather unsure of her own mind. His first short story sale was to 
On Spec
! He has published over a dozen stories and one novel, 
Burning Stones
.

Holly Phillips

Was it irony that when Kev told her the company had won the bid for the new courthouse park, the only thing Emily felt was relief? Relief that Mr. Berl couldn’t use the excuse of a slow spring to fire her. She knew damn well he’d only hired her, an ex-con, because she was Kev’s friend.

(
No such thing as an ex-con
, Bernice had told her the morning of the parole hearing.)

Even when she was there, planting with the rest of the crew, Emily didn’t give it much thought. The new courthouse was nothing like the old one, it sparked no memories. She dug holes and tried to remember what had been on that corner before. As a bike courier, she’d known every building in every block this side of the river. Still hard not to miss the riding, but at least she was fit again. No hope of getting her old job back, of course, a felon isn’t bondable.

Felon. Convict. Accessory to murder.

Stomp the spade deep, heave out the heavy load of black wet dirt. The hole had to be big, they were putting in four-year-old elms here, American elms that could resist the blight.

“Emily Lake.” The man’s voice asserted rather than questioned.

Emily looked up. “Detective Bailor.” She shook off her gloves and cap, raked her short hair into spikes and jammed the cap back on.

“I heard you were out,” he said. “What was it, three years?”

“And a half.” With a kind of delayed shock, the hatred she’d once learned for that raspy smoker’s voice welled up and burst in her chest like a bubble of mud.

He nodded once, looked her over. Looked over the worksite. Nodded again and left, crossing the plaza to climb the stairs to the courthouse doors. The rain started up again, dripping off the bill of her cap. She pulled on her wet gloves and went back to her shovel.

“So who was that?” Kev asked when they quit for lunch.

“Some guy,” Emily said, shoulders hunched, face like stone.

No such thing as an ex-con.

Ugly, running into Bailor like that, but she couldn’t blame him for the nightmares. Those were already waiting, same as they always were, filling her boarding house room like the fat stench of decay. Memory. What god laughed when he came up with that one?

The women, of course, mute ghosts haunting her in memory as they’d haunted her in fact. And the dreams of murder, the ache of terror when she’d been sure she was going nuts, the unbearable relief of the letter to the cops, that had not, in the end, been any kind of relief at all. All of that in Emily’s mind as she showered off the mud and sweat, ate a sandwich and crawled into bed. She only knew she cried in her dreams by the pain in her throat in the morning, every morning.

Bailor came again, of course. She was checking the inventory of the plants just delivered by the nursery. Another rainy day, the sheets of paper on the clipboard were soaked and flimsy, hard to read. She was trying to decide if that was 10 junipers or 18 when that familiar rasp said, “They working you hard?”

It had to be a 10, because otherwise they were short by nine plants. “Yeah.” Her pencil made a hole in the paper.

“Had any more dreams?”

God
, she thought wearily,
what a shit
. But when she looked up, she saw no mockery in his small blue eyes. He looked uneasy behind the cop’s moustache. All the same, she said, “Screw you, Bailor.”

He snorted, “You used to have better manners.”

“Yeah, well, prison’s funny that way.” She dropped her eyes to the clipboard, made a careful note.

“Actually,” Bailor said, and stopped.