February (22 page)

My water broke, Cathy said. I wish you were here.

Me too, Helen said.

I want my mother, Cathy said.

I’m coming.

Don’t come, Cathy said. I have to do this by myself.

And Helen hadn’t heard anything until seven the next morning. Helen had not said, Please keep the baby. She sat up all night and did not say, Please keep the baby. She had worked on the wedding dress. John came down in the morning and Helen was still in her chair.

She had the baby, Helen said.

What is it, John asked.

It’s a little girl, Helen said. John went into the kitchen and she heard him getting down a plate and she heard him push down the toaster, and open the fridge, and then she heard him smash the plate.

Lulu came into the room.

She had the baby? Lulu asked. She was yawning and she had the heel of her hand dug into her eye and she was wearing baby dolls. Is she okay?

She’s okay. They’re both okay.

After the call in the morning there was no other call and so Helen phoned for a taxi. Cathy might be signing adoption papers. Helen had to get up there. She would intervene. She would convince.

The taxi was outside and the phone rang and Cathy said, Mom, she has Dad’s ears.

I’m coming, Helen said.

I’m keeping her, Mom.

Are you, honey?

She has a big head of hair.

Cathy and Claire had lived with Helen, and Helen loved her granddaughter in a leisurely way. She read to her every night. She said to Cathy, Go out. Have fun.

Helen had not disciplined Claire because there was no need. She made Claire dresses with smocking. Her own girls she had dressed like boys. They had to be tough; that must have been what she was thinking. They had to be ready. They had been girls with grass stains on their knees and dirt under their nails.

But for Claire she bought white ankle socks with lace. She made Claire three dresses from the same pattern, pale lemon, pale pink and pale blue, and the smocking took ages and there was a bow at the back and a Peter Pan collar, and she bought patent leather shoes, and one of the worst fights she and Cathy ever had: Helen got Claire’s ears pierced when the child was three. Two gold studs.

They must have said. When Claire was five, Helen’s grown children must have got together and had a talk. They must have sat Cathy down and given her a good talking-to about moving out. Nobody wanted to be stuck taking care of an old lady. That’s what they must have said.

She’ll suck the life out of you, Cathy, Lulu must have said. It’s okay now, but ten, fifteen years from now, you won’t be able to leave.

Get out while you can, John would have said. John must have said for Cathy to get an apartment. John had been giving Cathy money. John was making it possible.

The hurt had been monstrous. The only thing bigger than the hurt was Helen’s desire to make sure that her children never guessed it.

I’m sick of picking up after you, she told Cathy. Or: Nice to have the space back.

Helen was afraid of being alone. She went to the doctor because of shortness of breath and the doctor said an inhaler. The doctor said a mild tranquilizer. Sleeping pills. Helen was afraid of being robbed. She was afraid of ghosts. What if she had a medical emergency? Knock, knock. Who’s there? Nobody.

But Helen did not say anything to Cathy.

She said, Take the bowl. Yes, you can have the bowl.

We’re only two streets away, Cathy said. We’re just around the corner.

Helen was down in the basement going through old dishes and Cathy came down and stood beside her. The basement had a damp mineral smell. The walls were stone and there were musty knapsacks they had all taken on trips and a pile of suitcases and boxes of Christmas decorations. They had moved most of Cathy’s things earlier in the week, and Helen had been digging in a box for a spatula. She would not have Cathy buy a new spatula when there was an extra one.

That’s just a waste, she’d said.

Helen had spent days looking through boxes for the spatula. She had turned up a key chain that had a marijuana leaf encased in clear plastic and a pair of cords Cathy had worn when she was seven—two-tone, purple and wine coloured. Cathy could not believe how small they were. There was a Disney plastic cup with sparkles that floated up and down whenever it tipped, and tiny plastic shoes that floated up and down, and Cinderella in her gown. The spatula sat beside Helen on the cold concrete floor. It was spotted with rust. Helen was on her knees and she had something in her fist and her fist was held against her chest.

She opened her hand. It was a roll of film. She’d found a roll of undeveloped film.

This is from God knows when, she told Cathy.

And afterwards Helen picked up the envelope of photos from the drugstore and sat in the car and she took her time opening it. She just sat there and watched a woman with a toddler in a shopping cart, and all her grocery bags fluttering in the wind, and big drops of rain hitting the windshield. The splats of water big as loonies.

The first two photos were of aspen trees. Just the tops of the trees and a lot of empty, bleached-out sky.

The third picture was Cal at the regatta. He had on a faded blue sweatshirt with a hood and he was wearing the grey corduroy Snugli.

Who was it? Was it John in the Snugli? It must be John. Cal had on black sunglasses and there was a crowd all around him and the sun and the water behind and pink spangles of sunshine from the light hitting the lens at the wrong angle or because the film was so old.

Three spangles of light, one inside the other, pink and yellow and white, floating out of the sun. Cal was holding out a cone of pink cotton candy overexposed along the edges, white as a light bulb.

And of course, Cathy met someone. Mark Hamlin lived in the apartment below. A PhD in musicology, hair down to his shoulder blades. Helen liked him the moment she met him.

. . . . .

Helen and Louise in Florida, 1998

LOUISE PUT FOURTEEN
casseroles in the deep freezer for her husband, each labelled with a piece of masking tape that said the date it had to be defrosted. She and Helen went to Florida. They drank by the side of the pool and they walked the beach and read all day long. They cooked their own meals because they had got a place with a kitchenette, and they knew everybody. All the Newfoundlanders went to St. Pete’s in the winter. The Murrays were there when Louise and Helen went, and the O’Driscolls and the Roaches. Meredith Gardiner was there; she’d met a rich widower with a condo. Meredith had them over for supper.

Helen and Louise just lay on the beach, and the water was warm, and they got very brown, and they shopped for the grandchildren. They bought shorts sets and snorkels and masks and clear plastic shoes with red lights in the heels.

One day Louise drove down an off-ramp and screamed: What are these bloody fools doing?

It had got dark and all the headlights coming at them, careering to the side, scraping along the concrete retaining wall, a shower of sparks, horns blaring.

You’re going the wrong way, Helen screamed back.

Louise put her feet on the accelerator and the brake at the same time and they spun three or four times and went over the median, the front passenger wheel cracking down hard, and Helen’s head hit the windshield, and then the rest of the car bounced or jumped, and the tail end might have hit something. The sound of horns as they zoomed past, and then their car was facing in the right direction. They snaked, and there were more horns, and Helen looked back and saw some cars had hit each other in their wake. Louise kept going; they did not slow down. You can’t slow on those highways. They didn’t slow down until they pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food outlet—what was it, a McDonald’s or Arby’s or Wendy’s? One of those places, and Helen and Louise just sat, but the car still seemed to be spinning slowly underneath them. Helen put down the visor and checked her face in the mirror and there was blood dripping down her forehead from her hair and she looked very white.

For several months after, Helen would wake to feel her bed turning like a slow carousel in an empty park with just a bit of wind. She remembered the feeling from childhood of hanging on to the carousel with both arms and letting her head drop back so the treetops moved in a lazy wheel, with all the clouds in the centre.

. . . . .

Another Lesson, 1998

WHAT YOU WANT
to do, the instructor said, is ease in.

I’m easing, said Helen. This is me, easing.

The instructor said, You’re going to want to indicate.

Helen’s shirt was soaked under the arms and it stuck to her back. The other cars were very bright in the sunshine. The sun spanked on their red hoods and blue hoods and on the chrome.

That’s it, said Jim Picco, the driving instructor. It’s very easy. When you’re a mature student.

Helen lurched forward and the seat belt cut her and she bounced back.

That was . . . Jim said. I had to use my brake because we were headed for the telephone pole. Pull over.

I can’t do this, Helen said.

You were drifting into the other lane.

I’m too old.

You can’t drift.

You have no bloody idea, Helen said.

Jim lifted his pelvis slightly and tugged at the ironed creases in his pants so they were straight. He touched the cuffs of his shirt, snagging one down from inside his jacket. Then he worked a kink in his neck and clamped his hands on his knees. Mrs. O’Mara, you’re going to take a moment, he said. Then you’re going to indicate and check your blind spot and check your rearview. Then you’re going to ease into traffic.

Jim Picco had hard grey bristles on his chin and Helen had the feeling fright had made them stand up, because she had not noticed them before. He moved his hands up and down his thighs vigorously.

I’m ready, he said. Are you ready?

Helen put on the indicator like Jim said. She put the car in gear. Jim turned and looked behind and sat forward and rolled his shoulders, and then he said she could go, and she put her foot on the accelerator, but she hit it too hard and she’d had the car in reverse, not drive, and they slammed backwards, burning rubber, and lurched to a stop, and she bounced against the seat belt hard, and so, she saw, did Mr. Picco.

Mrs. O’Mara, he said. Can I call you Helen?

Yes, she said.

Helen, we have to go forward.

. . . . .

Tug-of-War, 1978

CAL WAS ON
the other team. The parents picked up the heavy rope from the grass and joked and sidled in next to each other and watched out for elbows and where they placed their feet. Don’t step on me.

Helen was behind Felix Brown’s dad. The school secretary, who had a child in grade one with cerebral palsy, was behind Helen. The secretary was all muscle. Then there was Monique LeBlanc, who affected a helpless girlishness, and Maggie Ferguson, and Maggie’s husband, Brad. The Ferguson twins standing on the sidelines to watch their parents. The twins had cans of pop and special plastic drinking straws that wiggled out of the cans and formed eyeglasses that hooked over their ears and came down below the jawline into the corners of their mouths. They sucked in unison and orange pop zoomed up the clear tubing and circled one eye, then the other, and disappeared. The parents chattered and giggled and their shoulders knocked and jostled.

The sky was pristine blue mottled with cloud, and the buttercups in the shade at the edges of the field were yellow and shiny, as if they had been lacquered. The sun baked the tops of the parents’ heads and blotched the field emerald and lime, and under the trees it was a dark, dark green. Almost black. It was the first warm day they’d had. A whiff of boiling wieners and soggy buns.

There was an experimental pull from the other side and Helen’s side stumbled forward, a step or two, and pulled back. She couldn’t believe Cal was on the other team.

Hey, what are you doing over there, she shouted to him. Why is my husband on the other side? But Cal didn’t hear her.

There was a shrill whistle. Parents, wait for the flag, please, the gym teacher said. Quiet, please. She said it sardonically, and the children loved to see the parents scolded in this way and they doubled over in giggles.

John’s first Sports Day. He was in kindergarten and had already won a ribbon for the three-legged race.

Earlier that morning it had looked like everything would be cancelled. It had been cold and overcast for days. Fog like wet concrete crawling down Signal Hill.

But the radio had said that Sports Day events all over the city were going ahead and had rattled off all the schools and warned about sun hats and snacks.

Clearing mid-morning, the radio had said. Sunny and twenty degrees all afternoon.

Helen had hung some laundry in the garden very early, and the scent of the lilacs had been strong and she had felt the wind change. The leaves on the maple trees had suddenly brightened. Things change instantly, she thought. Things can change for no apparent reason.

That night when Helen put John to bed, he asked, Do you still dream when you’re dead?

She was reading him a story and she put the book down on her chest and closed her eyes. She had hurt her neck and she knew exactly how. The whistle had cut shrilly through the hazy air and she’d been startled by how hard the other side had pulled. They were pulling as hard as they could, and it knocked her off balance. She decided to pull back. Helen put her whole self into it. She scudded her heels into the grass and the mud beneath the grass. She gritted her teeth and tugged hard and didn’t give up.

Her team started to lean back, and there was a knot in the middle of the rope they had to pull over the tip of a pylon, and the knot was inching towards their side.

Helen and the other parents on her side were leaning all the way back, knees bent, their bums close to the ground, and it suddenly struck her as funny that Cal was on the other side. What was he doing over there? How had they become separated? She leaned out slightly and saw his face. His eyes were screwed shut and his upper lip was wrenched back and all his teeth showed. It was the way his head was thrown back; she was convulsed with kinks of laughter. The kinks worked themselves all through her body and she gave up. She gave up pulling because she was weak with spasms of silent laughter and somehow she’d hurt her neck.