Falling (18 page)

Sandra ran down the dusty driveway, glancing behind her. Queenie was following her, barking and barking.

No, Queenie, she gasped. No.

But Queenie came with her. They took a shortcut across the front lawn, the wide expanse of golden-green grass, beginning to be burned by the sun. She stumbled once, and the dry grass felt like little spikes against her skin. There was no one behind her, but still she ran. She went to the meadow, with its trickle of water flowing through. The wolf willow rose up to meet her with its fragrant scent. She scrambled down to the thin line of glittering water and followed the stream bed to her grandmother’s house, cutting her feet on the stones as she went.

Her grandmother was at home, bundling sheets off the line into the wide laundry basket. Sandra ran to her, panting, and threw herself against her.

What is it, dear? Look at you. What is it?

She’d cut herself on something, and a thread of blood was running down her leg. The yellow bathing suit was covered in dust and bits of grass. Sandra stood with her head down since it was impossible to speak.

What’s the matter, dear?

Jasmine stepped back and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

Once, my sister kissed me, Damian said. We were children. She kissed me, right on the lips. She told me to kiss her back, so I did.

That’s the kind of thing kids do.

You’re right, he said. That’s what they do.

He reached over to her and she shivered at his touch. All he’d wanted to do was tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. He stroked her cheek.

I could come in or go home, whatever you want, he said.

I don’t know what I want.

He put his lips to her ear. What if I don’t stay long? he murmured.

All right. You can come in, she said, still unsure.

He came into the house with her, following her to the bedroom.

Maybe we could just open the door of the refrigerator and sit in front of it, she said, turning on the fan. It’s so humid.

She gathered up the drawings he’d done of her that afternoon. Some of them were on the floor and one was still clipped to the drawing board. She rolled them all up and found a hair elastic to put around them. That afternoon he’d been so tender, drawing one picture of her, then another.

There, she said, handing the drawings to him.

He took them, silently, crushing the papers in his hand and letting them fall. He held her, hard, against him.

What are you going to do with them?

With what?

Those drawings.

They’re no good.

What is it? she asked. Tell me.

But he wouldn’t tell her anything. It made her tired to think of it, and she undressed and got into bed, still feeling a little stoned.

Nothing had happened when Sandra ran away from Gary. But something had happened the second time, four years later, when he came to the mud room when Sandra was doing the laundry. He hadn’t moved out of her way when she tried to go past him. What would she do, she wondered, holding the laundry basket, full of a stack of neatly folded clothes? The laundry basket was between them, but he was looking at her. He wouldn’t let her go past. She put the laundry basket on top of the dryer and kicked him in the groin, the way Lindsay Ruel had kicked Liam Andersen. And that was the end of that, or so she thought.

Damian yanked off his clothes and got into bed, pulling her against him, roughly, so he could kiss her. His tongue filled her mouth, and as he kissed her he shifted position, so he was on top of her.

Damian, she said, breaking free of his kiss.

But he didn’t take his time, and even the way he held her body – his fingers pressing into the skin of her buttocks – was uncomfortable. He pushed himself into her.

Damian,
stop
– what are you doing?

He was gone; he was far away.

He didn’t stop even when her head began to hit the wall each time he shoved against her. Both of them were
sweating, and his body slapped against hers. She wanted it to be over, but he kept on.

He moaned as he came, and she drew away from him before he was quite finished.

Jasmine. His voice went up and down as if he’d lost control of it.

My God, she whispered.

I’m sorry, Jasmine. I’m so sorry.

I could hate you for that –

I’m sorry.

You’re
sorry
.

And then – right then – Gary had his second heart attack. He’d made an awful groaning sound, tried to hold the edge of the washing machine, and toppled to the floor. He’d almost fallen on her. It was uncanny to see him lying there. He was such a large man, sprawled like a prostrate bull on the floor.

Sandra stepped around him and went into the kitchen – whether he was dead or dying, she didn’t know. She put a slice of raisin bread in the toaster, waited for it to come up, buttered it, and ate it slowly. Then she cleared the crumbs off the table and went back to the mud room.

There was a pale cast to Gary’s face as she peered down at it. Something about his mouth was different. She didn’t touch him; she went back into the kitchen and phoned 911. In a level voice, she told a woman that her brother-in-law had fallen down and she couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. Then she returned to Gary, bending down to touch his cold neck, and went into the bathroom and threw up.

She turned away from Damian and curled up on her side of the mattress, without saying a word.

He dressed. She heard the sound of paper in his hands – maybe he was picking up the drawings. But she didn’t care about the drawings. She hated them.

He left. She heard the door.

Her eyes were stinging with tears. She’d allowed it to happen because she thought she was in love with him, but the truth was that she didn’t even know him.

What had he done?

He’d fucked her.

DAMIAN WAS SITTING ON THE PORCH
beside several unopened cans of paint. He hadn’t started painting the steps as he said he was going to do, and here it was nearly noon. And if he wasn’t going to paint the steps, the least he could do was phone his girlfriend, Ingrid told him. But he wouldn’t. He was stubborn as an ox.

It’s not a good idea – a party. She won’t come.

The most he would do was to give Jasmine’s phone number to his mother.

As she went back into the house, it occurred to Ingrid that maybe he was right; maybe it wasn’t a good idea. Had he seen Jasmine at all in the past few days? She wasn’t sure what he was doing with himself.

This is absolutely insane, she muttered. The mother phoning the girlfriend.

But she’d been hard on Jasmine the first time, when nothing had worked out.

Sorry, who’s calling? Jasmine asked when Ingrid phoned.

Damian’s mother, said Ingrid.

Oh, I didn’t –

And it’s your birthday, said Ingrid. Happy birthday. We’ve prepared a little celebration for you –

For me?

Yes, you’d said you wanted a party.

I did?

Yes.

Ingrid looked at everything she’d arrayed in the kitchen: the cut-glass bowl for punch, the Limoges dessert plates stacked on the counter, the goblets for champagne, because she’d even gone out and bought some Veuve Clicquot, the newly iced cake, on which the small pink roses, the ones she had so carefully made with the icing bag, were beginning to droop in the heat.

You can’t make it? said Ingrid.

No – I’m sorry. I help out my friend sometimes – at a tattoo parlour – and I already told her I’d cover her shift.

Well, that changes things. I guess I should have reminded Damian, said Ingrid. I just assumed, and I went ahead and made a cake.

Thank you for making a cake.

It’s got your name on it. It says “Happy Birthday Jasmine” in pink letters, though it’s a white cake, not a chocolate cake. You’d said you’d be nineteen, Ingrid added. So I got candles in the shape of a one and a nine. It’s really very nice.

She’d wanted to stop herself from chattering, but she couldn’t. If Roger had been there, he’d have pointed it out.

Maybe I’ll get a chance to come by later, said Jasmine.

Well, it’s yours. The cake. You could take it home.

Did Damian – Oh, I’m sorry about this. All the confusion.

No, don’t be sorry. It doesn’t matter.

When she hung up the phone, Ingrid looked at the ridiculous pink and purple streamers, and, as if on cue, one of them came down. She’d taped them to the ceiling, twisting them before she fastened them with bits of tape she’d stuck like tags on her T-shirt sleeve. To fasten them, she’d had to stand on a chair to get onto the table, but she’d fallen off the chair while getting down. She’d hurt her shin; it would leave a bad bruise.

She opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen peas. She’d stubbornly gone ahead with it all. A part of her was sure she could bring the family together by putting up streamers and making a cake for someone she didn’t know. Why had it been so important to her? A girl turning nineteen wouldn’t have wanted a birthday party like this. She wouldn’t have wanted streamers, or candles shaped like numbers on her cake.

Ingrid sat with her leg propped up on the table, the bag of frozen peas like a saddlebag over her shin. After a few minutes she got up, tossed the peas back into the freezer, and took the Veuve Clicquot out of the fridge. She popped the cork and watched as it hit the ceiling. It might have made a mark, though she couldn’t be certain.

Well, it’s not my house, she said cheerfully. Her voice sounded loud. She was alone in the house except for Damian, who was outside, and Elvis, who wandered in and out like a lost soul.

She poured the champagne into one of the goblets and took a gulp. It was like drinking a thin, bubbly stream of pure gold. Was it the first time she had ever stood in this kitchen with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a goblet in the other? Yes, she thought it was.

So much had happened in this kitchen. She took another gulp, though she knew it wasn’t the way to drink it. She should be sipping it. Oh, what the hell, she thought. She drained the glass, poured another, and drained that one too; she set the glass down in the sink. It was the strangest of coincidences that August 2 should be Jasmine’s birthday and that it should also be Greg’s birthday. It was his fifty-fifth birthday. Carrying the bottle by the neck, she stepped outside, drew the screened door shut behind her, and sat down on the steps. She and Greg had got married in this very backyard, in May, when the crabapple trees were in bloom.

There they were. It was broad daylight, but she saw them dancing under the trees, exactly as they had done at the wedding. A curve of moon. Voices, laughter. She saw the crabapple blossoms in her own hair. She saw the lacy shawl, fine as a spiderweb, over her smooth young shoulders, the one Greg had brought back from Antwerp. It had to be perfect, he’d told her. Perfect for her. But she wouldn’t look at the ghosts: her own mother, and her father, gesturing as he conversed with her friend Marilyn – Marilyn, who had Stage Four breast cancer now – she walked through them all. There was J.J., playing the guitar, and just beyond him was Roger, without his white cane. Younger, wilder. Roger, with his arm around Marnie. Just about now, the bride would catch her satin-shod foot on the rotted stump of the plum tree because she hadn’t seen it in the shadows – yes, just there – and the groom would catch her and laugh. He’d kiss her and everyone would clap.

There, all the ghosts were clapping.

Greg, she murmured, with a pang.

There’s a cake, said Elvis. A nice cake. But it’s getting all slidey. The flowers on top are slidey.

Ingrid, still sitting on the steps outside, thought Elvis was talking to her. She turned to talk to him through the screened door, but Damian spoke.

Why aren’t you at the workshop?

Damian sounded annoyed.

It’s a day off, Elvis explained. Bruce said we get August 1 and August 2 for holidays. We get weekends too, but holidays are extra.

Well, don’t eat the cake. My mother made it for Jasmine.

A cake for Jasmine Jane Blakeney. August 2, 1989. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Yes. Don’t you have something you want to do?

I’m waiting for the party.

There’s not going to
be
a party. Elvis, can’t you go somewhere?

No.

Well, do what you like.

There was the sound of someone’s bare feet going away down the hall. Damian, thought Ingrid. If she stayed where she was, Elvis would discover her and ask about the party. She put the champagne bottle down on the grass beside the steps, got up, and walked to the carriage house.

Ingrid woke to find Damian standing over her. She jumped. How had he found her here, asleep in the carriage house, lying on a bed with a hundred happy faces? He looked terrible. He stood rigidly, the way he had long ago, when he’d scared her one night after he’d had a nightmare.

What? She sat up quickly. Is it Roger? Has something happened?

Elvis has taken Lisa’s ashes. He’s taken the box and gone off and I have no idea where he is and –

Are you sure it was Elvis?

Who else could it be? Elvis was in the house, wanting to eat the cake, and I wouldn’t let him. Who else could it possibly be?

Damian, she said, putting her hand gently on his arm.

I have to find him. He’s got Lisa’s ashes and I don’t know what he’ll do with them.

I’ll come with you, she said.

No. No, I’ll go. You look around the streets here. I don’t know – he might not have gone far.

I’ll do that – you take the car, she said. The keys are in my bedroom. Take them.

No, I don’t want the car. He flung up his arms. God, how could Elvis do it? How could he?

It’ll be all right, Damian.

But Damian tore away from her, leaving the door wide open behind him.

Ingrid gathered herself and went into Elvis’s bathroom, where she was confronted by a full-length Elvis Presley on the shower curtain, with his guitar slung low across his hips.

Oh, for God’s sake, she said.

What would Elvis do? she wondered. He was liable to do anything. She stared at herself in the mirror of the old medicine cabinet. And what would Elvis do with Lisa, the dust of Lisa? She splashed her face with water.