Crush. Candy. Corpse. (7 page)

My lawyer decides he wants to question Donovan, and I switch my attention back to the witness stand.

“You said you met Sonja two summers ago while mowing the lawn. Can you tell us how she acted towards you?”

“Sorry. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Did she laugh a lot, flirt maybe?”

“No, she was very quiet. If anything she acted bored mostly. There wasn’t anything for her to do at the condo office. She was supposed to be helping out, answering the phone and opening the mail ’cause her mom was recovering from surgery.”

“How did Sunny react to her mother being treated for cancer?”

“I dunno. I thought she was just angry about spending her summer at the condo office. But it was more than that. Like she was just angry at her mother about something else.”

“When you met her, did she have pink streaks in her hair?”

“Not right away. That’s something she did after we went out.”

“Do you think she would have gone out with you if her mother didn’t have cancer?”

“Objection!” the buzzard calls out.

“Sustained,” the judge answers.

Michael smiles. He’s made his point anyway. Maybe I snuck around behind my parents’ backs to go out with a shoplifter, as the Crown showed, but I only did it because my mother’s illness put me in a crazy state of mind. “No further questions.”

The Tenth Visit — twenty hours left

I missed feeding Johann today. They shipped him off to St. Peter’s Hospital where they have more staff so they can adjust his medication and get him to stop yelling. Instead I sat with Fred and Marlene and three other residents. I fed two at a time. I’m getting good at this, Mr. Brooks.

What I didn’t tell him in that journal entry is how it felt when I arrived ahead of Cole and hunted for Johann all by myself. It’s not easy to spot a specific inmate when you’re looking for him because most of them have grey hair, sleep a lot, and slump forward in their wheelchairs as they snooze. I walked the circuit twice, stopping in the recreation room. No ranting or crying in German or otherwise. Then, I remembered, they probably still had him locked behind yellow tape. I rushed past Jeannette.

“Hello, Gorgeous,” she called after me.

At Johann’s room, the door was open. The bed had been stripped as though no one lived there anymore. Was he dead?

“Good riddance.”

I jumped. Jeannette’s voice came from just behind me. When I turned around, there she stood with her bright lipsticked grin. “The old fool went on a trip.”

“What kind of trip?”

She shrugged her shoulders, her grin a smirk now.

I rushed to the nursing station but couldn’t find anyone. I caught a cleaner by her sleeve and asked about Johann. She told me to talk to Gillian.

“But I don’t see her anywhere either!”

“Check the front desk.”

Gillian wasn’t there, but the hand sanitizing commando, Katherine, had returned to her post. That’s how I found out about Johann’s “trip.” And I might have been relieved, but by the tone of Katherine’s voice, I knew this was not a good thing.

“Is he ever coming back?” I asked her.

“I hope so. Not many people do.”

Cole came in then. When I told him what had happened, he just hugged me. Together we headed for the dining room and helped our old people eat. Marlene kissed Fred and he kissed her back.

“Aren’t we lucky,” she told him.

“Are you Diane?” he returned.

She ignored his question as he did hers. Instead she continued to repeat how lucky they were.

He continued to wonder out loud when Diane would come.

Finally Jeannette told them to shut up or she would take them both out.

Leaving Paradise Manor that day certainly made me feel lucky.

That evening I asked Wolfie for help with my Remembrance Day project.

“Remembrance Day, seriously?” Wolfie shook his head. “Sunny, that was three weeks ago!”

“I’m a little late.” More like a month. “But I had trouble with it. I don’t like ‘remembering’ war.”

“WelI, it doesn’t get any easier if you drag it out. You’re a smart girl. Figure out what you have to do to get your marks.”

“I did! And Mr. Brooks understands. I told him I wanted to forget about war. And I wanted to talk about losing remembrance instead. He gave me an extension.”

Wolfie raised an eyebrow. “So what kind of help do you need?”

I took out my phone. “I want to download these photos and put them in a slideshow.” I showed him the research I’d done and told him my idea. Together we figured out how to put it together and then I practiced in front of him.

“Sunny, you’re so creative. Are you sure you want to become a hairdresser?”

“You know I’ve loved playing with hair since I was little. I can be creative with styling.”

“Well, once you have all the education and training you need, I’ll partner with you to buy your own salon.” That was high praise from my brother. He knows everything about making good investments.

The next day I stood in front of the class, a large screen behind me. I felt pretty confident presenting my version of a Remembrance project. “Alzheimer’s is a disease affecting one in eight people over age sixty-five. On the left you see a normal brain, on the right is one affected by Alzheimer’s.” I used my laser pointer to show the pockets of plaque.

“Gross,” Shane called out. “That must be what Jordan has.”

“See me after class,” Mr. Brooks snapped.

I smiled and continued.

“People used to accept forgetfulness and dementia as a normal symptom of aging.” The next slide was a picture of an older man with a brush cut, moustache, and glasses attached to a string.

“That was until Alois Alzheimer came along and examined the brain of a fifty-one-year-old woman who had exhibited strange behaviour and died in his insane asylum. He discovered this plaque.

“If I were Alois, I sure wouldn’t want to have a brain-destroying illness named after me because I was the person to discover it,” I commented.

Julie and Lena snickered over this one.

“Me neither,” Jordan called out.

“Class!” Mr. Brooks warned from his seat in the back. They quieted down immediately. “You’re off track, Sunny,” Mr. Brooks told me.

“Sorry.” I flipped back to the previous slide with the brains. “Because the plaques destroy nerve cells, the patient loses memory and cognitive reasoning. They can’t think. Then eventually they can’t read, walk, go to the bathroom by themselves, eat, swallow . . . or breathe. And they die.

“But it can take a long time. Seven to fourteen years before they finally forget how to live.” I flipped ahead again. “Here are some photos of the people I’ve worked with at Paradise Manor.”

I showed them Fred, Marlene, Johann, Jeannette, and Cole’s grandma, and told them what they had been and the things they did now.

“Wow, that must drive you crazy,” Julie commented.

“No. But it is hard as a volunteer to even know how best to help them sometimes. You want to humour them, but then they get confused and anxious about whatever you’ve said or done to go along with them. Fred looked like he was going to cry when I gave him the old shifter from my Dad’s Mustang. Jeannette nearly hit me when I suggested she had to make new friends. Sometimes the patients cry, go into rages, laugh on and on, or yell. Or they just sit and sleep.

“I think the hardest thing about the disease is the effect it has on the family. I mean the person herself is . . . like almost comatose. How much could it bother her at that point? But I’ve seen other people visit their relatives in the home and even I just find it hard to deal with the shell that the victim becomes.

“I used to be afraid of cancer. My grandmother died of it at the age of fifty-six and my mother is in remission since last summer.

“Now I’m way more afraid of Alzheimer’s Disease. I’d rather die of cancer.

“In conclusion, I would like to say that researchers are working on vaccines and pills that carry antibodies for Alzheimer’s. It just takes a long time to see if the medicines work. And while we’re waiting, brain cells die just like that.” I snapped my fingers. “Imaginative and intelligent people turn into zombies.” The last slides showed famous people who died of Alzheimer’s. “Movie stars Rita Hayworth, Charles Bronson, and Charlton Heston; boxer Sugar Ray Robinson; singer Perry Como; famous British dude from World War II, Winston Churchill —”

“Wait a minute . . .” Mr. Brooks interrupted, “Winston Churchill had Alzheimer’s?”

“Some people say that. Others argue that it was a different version of dementia. And the fortieth American president, Ronald Reagan.” I paused to look around the room and make eye contact one final time. “Thank you for listening to my presentation on Alzheimer’s.”

Everyone clapped politely, the way we were taught.

“Thank you, Sunny,” Mr. Brooks said when the applause ended. “Good work. Any questions or comments?”

Lena asked if there was any way to prevent people from getting the disease.

“I don’t believe there is. You’re supposed to exercise and keep your blood pressure and weight down. But that’s the doctors’ answers to everything. Just like washing your hands.”

“What about blueberries? I heard eating them improves your memory,” Julie asked.

“Vitamin E,” Brittany called.

“Fish is brain food,” Jordan argued.

“You’re supposed to do puzzles, like crosswords or Sudoku,” Shawna said. “My grandfather likes word searches.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Nobody really knows yet. And there are some really smart people in Paradise Manor. I mean they used to be smart. I don’t think they chowed down on junk food or anything.”

“I heard that if we don’t find the cure, baby boomers will bankrupt the healthcare system as they get Alzheimer’s.”

“What do you think about that, Sunny?” Mr. Brooks asked me.

“I don’t know. But scientists are curing all the diseases that used to kill us before getting to the point where our brains started rotting. Maybe we’ll have to decide when to put people to sleep. The residents I volunteer with sleep most of the time anyway. We do it for our pets. We decide they’re suffering too much and put them out of their misery.”

“But Sunny, aren’t these seniors well looked after? Are they really suffering?” Mr. Brooks asked.

“They’ve lost their memories and the lives they used to know. They’re mixed up, sad, and anxious sometimes. Yes, I think they’re suffering a lot.”

Mr. Brooks gave me an A+ on this presentation. I felt sure I was almost home free on the volunteer requirement and journal. When I was charged, though, the principal decided my forty hours at the residence couldn’t be counted. Or my journal either. Unless I was acquitted.

“The crown calls Alexis Meredith to the stand.”

Alexis is my best friend, despite everything that’s happened. She’s stuck with me throughout this whole year no matter what the other kids said. My lawyer said if she hadn’t agreed to testify for the Crown, they would have subpoenaed her anyway. Still, what can the buzzard ask her that will make me seem in the wrong?

She states her name and swears on the Bible. Alexis keeps her hair its natural golden colour. She wears a minimal amount of makeup: a clear lip balm and mascara only because her eyelashes would otherwise appear white. But her eyes are large and blue and she’s wearing a navy blue V-necked sweater over a white shirt paired with navy slacks. The sweater looks soft, angora maybe? Anyhow, the total effect is that Lexie looks angelic. The jury’s going to like her.

The buzzard starts. “Miss Meredith, what’s your relationship to Sonja Ehret?”

“She’s my best friend.”

“And what kind of things do you do together?”

“Oh, you know, hang out, play Wii games, Guitar Hero . . . We shop.”

“She invited you to Paradise Manor, did she not?”

“Yes, one time when we decorated trees for a raffle. Sunny is always good with that kind of thing.”

Only one time
. Yes, I had been small-minded about keeping her away from Cole. I didn’t invite her back for the party.

“How did you find Sunny treated the residents?”

“She was really nice to them. She humoured them, you know?”

“Would you say she would do anything they asked?”

“Objection! Leading,” my lawyer shouts.

“Sustained,” the judge answers.

“What about Cole? Were you able to form an opinion on how he treated his grandma?”

“He was really kind to all the seniors. Gentle with his grandma.”

“Can you tell us of any specific behaviours?”

“Sure. He helped her put on a sweater. Got her another cup of tea when she spilled the first one. Held her hand.”

“Did he give her things to eat?”

Alexis stays quiet. Her lips purse.

Heh, heh,
the plaid-shirted guy coughs.

“Miss Meredith?”

“Just as he left he gave her a candy.”

“Was it a hard candy?”

Alexis hesitates again. The jury members get restless, scratching, forehead scrubbing, and coughing.

Come on, Lexie, answer already.
She was calling too much attention to the stupid question.

“I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked like it came from a bag of Werther’s Originals.”

“No further questions.”

Oh, come on. It shouldn’t be about what Cole gave his grandma. The trial should be about what I did.

The Eleventh Visit — eighteen hours left

Besides feeding the old folk, today I helped decorate the common areas for Christmas. Even Mrs. Johnson admired my work. She asked me and the other volunteer, Cole, to come back on the weekend to decorate the small trees they raffle off as prizes. So if you’re not counting the first visit cancelled due to smell, let’s count that extra Saturday visit. And by the way, do you want to buy a ticket, Mr. Brooks? You could use the tree in the classroom. Frankly, it’s a bit drab in there. They’ll be raffled off next week at the party.

“Tell me why you’re not going Christmas shopping with me again?” Donovan asked on the phone when I said I had volunteer duties on Saturday.

As we talked, I tucked the phone in my shoulder and started picking up lint from the Berber carpet in my bedroom. “It’s a fundraiser for Paradise Manor. You can come help too. Alexis is.” I forced myself to sound hopeful. My room is painted a chirpy canary yellow and I find focusing on bright colours always helps.

But really, I counted on Donovan not volunteering with us. I thought he’d make fun of the old people. Also I didn’t know how I’d feel with him and Cole in the same room. Donovan was way hotter, there was no doubt about that, but Cole was considerate and kind. I really didn’t want him shown up.

There was another nagging feeling tugging at me. Cole’s personality might just totally show Donovan up. I still had my heart set on attending his graduation prom. It would be practice for my own. Nothing’s quite as big as a grad dance, unless maybe it’s your wedding. I pitched the lint from my hand into the wastepaper basket and straightened.

“You’re going to want me to steal presents for the old folks soon. We could have started today,” Donovan told me.

“I don’t want you to steal anything.” My duvet looked annoyingly wrinkled so I straightened and smoothed it. “Get another job, Donny. The stores are all looking for help.” Of course, with his shoplifting conviction, maybe no one would hire him.

“But it’s the challenge, Sunny. Nothing gives me quite the rush. I try to pay sometimes and this feeling just comes over me . . . and I can’t help myself.”

“Well, go enjoy then.” I punched hard at the pillows on my bed to plump them up.

“Let me take you for lunch first and I’ll drive you to the home after.”

I stared at the sunshine of my walls and breathed in deeply. “Alexis is coming too, remember?”

“So I’ll swing round and pick her up too.”

Another inhale of the brightness. “Sure, that sounds great.” Donny did have his good points. He could be very generous. We agreed that I would be ready for eleven and then we hung up.

That Saturday he ended up taking me and Alexis to lunch and he even paid. I squirmed in my seat when he honked at the red bicycle ahead of us turning onto the Manor drive.

“What kind of idiot drives a bike in winter?” he said.

“Someone who wants to stay fit and cares for the environment,” Alexis answered. “Is that the guy you were telling me about, Sunny?”

Donovan drove us to the front door where Cole was locking up his bike. I don’t know if he saw or not, but Donny picked then to give me the slowest kiss of the decade. Alexis had jumped out of the car and introduced herself to Cole by the time it ended.

Alexis is a lot taller than me and thin like Cole. Her hair curls around her face like a lion’s mane and her eyes make her stand out in a girl-next-door kind of way. Plus she’s smart, way smarter than me. Standing with Cole chatting, she looked like she belonged with him and that made something crack open inside of me. Something I didn’t even know was there.

Donovan gave a double honk on his horn and I waved goodbye without looking back. “Hey, Cole,” I called. Even though his hair stuck up rooster style as usual, I didn’t feel comfortable fixing it for him in front of Alexis.

“Hi, Sunny,” he answered back stiff and uncomfortable, as though I’d interrupted something. Or was it Donovan’s kiss that was bothering him?

We went inside. Alexis loved the jaunty bow and cap I’d given the ceramic bulldog in the foyer. “That fireplace could use some stockings hung in a row, though.”

I shrugged. “We worked with what we had.”

“Maybe I can get a store to donate some,” Alexis said. “I got sponsors to give us dog treats for the shelter.”

I thought about the sweatpants Donovan had stolen for Fred and Johann. You could say we had forced a store into sponsorship.

We headed into the crafts room on the second floor. Some silver-haired ladies there were crocheting slippers for a bazaar that would be held the day before the party. Gillian walked around, chatting with them.

There were ten trees spread along the counters that lined the wall and plastic bags of brand-new decorations on the table across from the crocheters. A boom box in the corner played Christmas music. At that moment, one of Dad’s crooners, Bing Crosby I think, was singing “White Christmas.”

One of the ladies sang along, another hummed.

Cole broke into song as he ripped open a bag of little pink-and-gold angels playing trumpets and harps.

Alexis smiled an admiring yet sympathetic kind of smirk.

I don’t know what got into me, but I sang, too, as I attached tiny red-velvet bows to a tree.

Alexis hung golden bells on her tree. When “White Christmas” ended, the “The Little Drummer Boy” began. Alexis started singing that one in her best crystal tones. One of the crocheting ladies told her she had a lovely voice. These women didn’t live in the lockup unit. It didn’t seem like they had any form of dementia. I missed Jeannette’s compliments.

“Don’t hang that.” I yanked down a silver ball from Cole’s angel-covered tree.

“Why not?” he asked.

“You have enough on already. And you don’t want to mix silver with gold. No one will buy tickets for it.”

“Christmas is all about too much,” Alexis said. “Anything goes.” To bug me she added a silver ball to her tree.

But I thought she was wrong. Christmas is about beautiful things: my grandmother’s advent candles sitting on an evergreen wreath, the scent of burnt candles and pine needles, an elegant table set with linen, crystal glasses, and bone-coloured dishes. My mother, in a silk dress, well and smiling over it all.

“Don’t use too many decorations on one tree,” Gillian warned. “Or we’ll run out.”

“Yeah, Alexis.” I yanked off the silver ball.

When we were finished all the trees looked good, even the garish Snoopy tree Cole did. We wrapped small, empty tissue boxes to hold the ballot tickets.

Afterwards we went into the lockup to see Mrs. Demers. We drank apple juice and ate ornament-shaped sugar cookies at the window overlooking the courtyard. Of course, Cole’s grandma just had a plain tea biscuit. She didn’t say anything but her eyes looked warmly at Cole. Whether she recognized him or not, she loved him.

“Where did you get those? I never got anything to eat and I’m starving,” Marlene complained as she shuffled by with Fred.

“Here, have mine,” I held out my plate.

She took it and ate the cookie standing up.

“Are you Diane?” Fred asked me.

“No. Sunny.”

“No it’s not. It’s snowing outside,” Marlene said. She finished the cookie and pointed to Cole’s. “Where did you get that? They never gave me any and I’m starving.”

By the time we left, Marlene had eaten six cookies and was still starving. She also needed a loaf of bread and Fred wanted us to take him to Canadian Tire.

As Cole kissed his grandma goodbye, he unwrapped a butterscotch candy and slipped it into her mouth.

“Thank you,” she mumbled around it, the candy clicking against her teeth. They were her only words that afternoon.

“I love you, Grandma. No matter what.”

“Bye Helen. Bye Fred. Bye Marlene.” Alexis waved to everyone.

Someone grabbed my arm. When I turned, I saw it was Jeannette. “Those are beautiful shoes you have on.” Jeannette didn’t even glance Alexis’s way. At least she was loyal.

“Thank you.” I was wearing lace-up leather boots up to my knees. Still, her oddball comment made me feel appreciated. In that one small way, she reminded me of my grandmother. “See you at the Christmas party.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said and shuffled off.

Cole didn’t want to join us at the mall no matter how Alexis coaxed him.

“Gawd, could you make yourself any more desperate?” I said in frustration as we boarded the bus.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, picking the first double seat at the front.

“You. Chasing Cole. He obviously didn’t want to come shopping with us and you kept at him.” I slid in beside her.

She clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes, then stared out the window.

“And the whole time you flirted with him.”

She turned towards me. “So? What’s wrong with that? I’m not going out with anyone.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to smother a guy.”

“You have Donovan.” She raised her voice and sputtered, “You said you don’t even like Cole. Why can’t I have him? Is there one boy on earth you don’t have to have?”

Sitting on the long seat just ahead of us, a lady with a fun-fur Cossack hat turned around to stare.

I lowered my voice. She faced the front again. “I can’t help it if Cole likes me.”

“Sunny, he finds you pretty. All boys do.” Her voice rose and the Cossack hat flipped around again. “’Cause you are! You are beautiful.” She noogied the side of my head. “Get that through your skull!”

“Watch the hair!” I pulled my head away. “You know what? I really don’t feel like shopping after all.” I stood up, yanked the signal bell and walked to the front of the bus.

“Sunny, come back!”

But I couldn’t. Because even though I still wanted to go out with Donovan, I knew then that I also wanted to keep Cole all to myself. Maybe if I had just been honest about how I felt about Cole instead of taking it out on Alexis, I wouldn’t be in this courtroom today.