Flood (18 page)

This coming into a new school just before Christmas had aroused much interest and curiosity among the other kids. But now he found himself accepted. He had already put his name down for the soccer team. Many of the boys wore Moosehead shirts. One of them, John Bowman, crazy about hockey, was amazed that Andy had never played, and offered to coach him. There was lots of equipment at the school, he said.

Already Brick, stronger and healthier, was starting to
show an interest in his surroundings. Andy joined the library and borrowed a book on dog training, He and his uncle shopped for puppy things: a rubber bone to chew on, a collar and a leash, food, special vitamins. Soon Brick would need shots.

At home, Andy helped with Gran now, walking her to the downstairs toilet and helping her back again. Sometimes it took the two of them, Andy and Aunt Mona, to support her, for Gran's leg muscles were deteriorating from lack of use, though some days were better for her than others. On her good days she was bossy and noisy, demanding attention, and could hobble on Andy's arm without any trouble. Brick followed awkwardly, dodging their feet. But on her off days Gran dozed in front of the TV, and even when awake seemed insensible to most of what was going on around her. Her doctor said she should walk around the house for exercise, but she didn't like it and wouldn't do it, protesting loudly if Aunt Mona tried to make her.

“She seems to like me,” Andy said to Aunt Mona one afternoon after school. “Maybe I could walk her about a bit; what do you think?”

“You can try if you like, but unless it's the toilet she wants, she'll scream at you, wait and see.”

But Gran didn't scream at him. Andy and Brick walked her a few times around the small living room through the clutter of furniture, out to the hallway, around the potted aspidistra in her parlor bedroom, back to the hall, out to the kitchen, then back to her chair in front of the TV, Andy
holding her under the elbow, taking some of her weight as she wobbled feebly along, imagining he was like a gas pump, pouring some of his own strength into her. Gran collapsed into her chair with a sigh at the end of it all. “Twice a day, Gran,” Andy told her. “We'll do it twice a day, and as you get stronger we can try increasing the distance, okay?”

“I'm too old for all this running about, Andy,” Gran whimpered. “My legs hurt.”

“Wonders'll never cease,” said Aunt Mona afterward.

“What's a word that means both ‘space vehicle' and ‘pill,' beginning with a c and ending with an e?” Uncle Hugh had started involving Andy in his evening struggles.

“How many letters?”

“Seven.”

Andy thought hard. “How about ‘capsule'?”

“That's it, Andy. Thanks.”

Andy and Aunt Mona and Brick — who had his own special bowl — were eating breakfast together on a Tuesday morning in the middle of January. Uncle Hugh had already gone to work and Gran was still in bed. Aunt Mona said, “I got this letter yesterday. It's from the lawyer in Vancouver, about your stepfather's estate.”

Andy listened. His aunt, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, explained that “estate” meant what had been left in his mother's and stepfather's will, and that everything was to come to Andy in trust.

“What's ‘in trust' mean?”

“Nobody can touch it. It's normal. The money from their bank accounts and from insurance and from the government flood relief fund will stay in the bank gathering interest until you're eighteen. Then you can do what you like with it.”

“How much is there?”

Aunt Mona showed him the letter.

“That's a lot of money!”

“Not so very much. But with the interest it will be enough to start you off in life, pay for your education perhaps, if you decide to go to college.”

“Can't I spend any of it now?”

“Not a penny. Nobody can touch that money, not even yourself who owns it, for seven years.”

“That doesn't seem right. You spend money on me, and you need things here.”

“Nothing is needed here,” she snapped, standing abruptly. “Help me clear away the dishes.” She pointed to the clock. “Lookit! You'll be late for school if you don't move yourself.”

He helped with the dishes and then pulled on his parka and his boots. “See you later,” he yelled into the kitchen, ready to fly out the door, Brick bouncing excitedly about his feet.

“Don't forget your lunch,” Aunt Mona yelled back.

Andy grabbed his lunch bag off the sideboard, crammed it into his bag, and turned to run. “G'bye, Brick, see you later.” But Brick didn't respond, for he was busy
chasing his tail, something he'd just started doing lately; he ran around in circles, barking happily, as if trying to bite some imaginary tormentor.

“Wait! Let me look at you.” Aunt Mona came hurrying from the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel.

“I'm late!” Andy protested. “Una's waiting for me.”

Aunt Mona made a quick inspection of Andy's boots, pulled his parka down at the back, and fussed rapidly with his hair. “You need a haircut. Don't go racing across the road. Watch out for traffic. Don't be late home.”

And he was gone.

He walked home from school with Una and John Bowman and a few others who lived in the same direction.

“Are you looking forward to living with your father?” Una asked him when only she and Andy were left and the other kids had gone their different ways.

“Of course. But I'll miss my aunt and uncle. And Gran.”

“When will your father send for you, do you think?”

Andy looked up at dark gray banks of cloud massing over the houses. “I'm not sure. Soon, I expect.” He didn't mention that Vinny hadn't phoned.

Una said, “Uncle Hugh and Aunt Mona are good people.”

“Are you saying my father isn't a good person?”

“No, I am not saying that at all. Don't get angry for nothing.”

“You've heard your mum and dad talking, haven't you? About my father. What do they say?”

“It's nothing, just that your father is used to living alone. And he's away a lot. You'd be on your own sometimes —”

“You're talking about him going to jail, aren't you? Well, he's finished with all that. He's getting a job soon — ”

“The swings are empty,” said Una. “Let's sit a minute.”

“It looks like it's going to pour.”

“Let's live dangerously, Andy, in the wild, remember? Come on.”

They sat idly swinging while the air grew still and cold about them and the clouds gathered black and menacing over their heads.

“Andy? Promise you won't get mad at me if I ask you something.”

“Like what?”

“Promise first.”

Andy shrugged. “Okay.”

“What if your dad doesn't send for you? And you have to stay with Aunt Mona.”

Andy didn't want to think. “I don't know, Una.”

A few spots of rain. “That's enough danger. Let's go,” Una yelled, slipping off the swing and running, “before we get soaked.”

When he got home, he found Gran asleep in front of the TV with the
Oprah
show on too loud and Aunt Mona rattling her broom about the kitchen. Brick followed him up the stairs to his room; he needed to be alone for a while to think about Una's unsettling question. He lay on the bed,
Brick prancing about beside him, and stared at the cracks on the ceiling, broken eggshell patterns he was coming to know so well.

“What if your dad doesn't…”

He stared around the room. He used to hate it, but now… He hadn't noticed until recently, but the wardrobe he'd thought ugly was actually very old, with fine carving around the edges of the set-in mirror, and was finished in a deep burnt-red polish… Some of his books and papers were stacked in the wardrobe; others were piled on the chest… The lemon wallpaper with the white butterflies, picked out by his aunt, made him think of spring when he woke every morning in the big bed… It was a good room… he liked it. And he'd made it his own, with schoolbooks and clothes and a few posters: pinup Mia Hamm of the U.S. women's soccer team; Ronaldo of Brazil; Wayne Gretzky.

What if your dad doesn't…

Brick had his own box for sleeping, right beside Andy's bed, though more often than not he ended up sleeping on the bed with his master, which was one part of the training that wasn't working too well. But he had put on weight and was livelier, too lively sometimes, and was learning fast.

“What if your dad…”

He rolled off the bed and went to the window, open at the top for fresh air. Brick stood alertly on the bed, watching to see where Andy would move next. The storm was gathering itself. Andy looked over the roofs of the houses at the black sky.

Down in the neighboring backyards Mrs. Fahey and
Mrs. O'Mahoney, neighbors he had come to know, were enjoying a shouted conversation as they raced the rain, snatching the washing off their lines and dropping clothespins and washing into plastic baskets as fast as they could. The rain started with a gust of cold air and a rush, and it pelted down hard. Andy grinned as Mrs. Fahey and Mrs. O'Mahoney, caught in the downpour, decided to save what they had and make a run for their back doors, screaming at the sky like gulls. Mrs. Fahey tripped and stumbled, tumbling her basket of clean clothes onto the slushy snow. Mrs. O'Mahoney's trailing bedsheet caught on the handlebar of her husband's rusty bicycle leaning against the wall dividing the two houses, and she stopped to disentangle it. Andy heard the sound of someone's wind chimes as the two women recovered themselves, gathered their soiled wash, and disappeared into their houses.

He stayed at the window for a while watching the rain, thinking about Vinny.

He is sleepy but can't sleep.

The rain stopped several hours ago, and now a gibbous moon sails high behind webs of cloud.

Thoughts and images keep up a slow drip in his head and he can't turn them off.

He thinks about his mother.

He worries about Vinny climbing down the broken fire escape, worries about Fingers Agostino coming after Vinny with a long sharp knife, worries about the police throwing his father in prison.

A tracery of cracks, the ones on the ceiling above the window, form a pair of faces in profile, joined together so that one looks out the window at the stars, and the other faces the opposite way at the blank wall. Like Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings. Andy remembers Janus because of January, the month that looks back at the old year and forward to the new. He has never noticed the ceiling faces in the daylight; they're a trick of silver moonlight and black shadows.

The next day he came home from school to find Aunt Mona washing vegetables at the kitchen sink and asked her if she needed a hand. She told him to go do his homework, as she usually did: schoolwork was more important than kitchen work, she always said.

Brick jumped up on him, desperate for his attention.

Andy didn't ask his aunt if his father had called because he already knew the answer. He lingered, crouching to pet Brick. “Maybe on Saturday I'll visit my father.”

Aunt Mona said nothing, but lifted a shoulder in a tiny shrug.

“He'll call eventually, I'm sure, when he gets a job.”

His aunt said nothing.

“Don't you think?”

Her lips tightened. She turned off the running water.

Andy said, “It was good of you and Uncle Hugh to have me here all this time — while we're waiting, I mean.”

Aunt Mona nodded her head without looking up from her task. “Judith was my sister. I'm not one to shirk my duty.”

Duty. Andy felt his stomach lurch. “Isn't a duty something you must do even if you don't want to? Like… like washing dishes?”

Aunt Mona dropped what she was doing, dried her hands hastily on a towel, and turned quickly to glare at him, hands on hips. “You've the quick tongue, Andy Flynn. You take me wrong. I'm thankful to God for such a duty. Haven't we been praying to the Blessed Virgin every day for your peace of mind, praying you'll settle happy here with us!” She turned back to the sink with busy hands.

Silence.

Then she said, “Hugh would miss you terrible if you left us.”

“What about you, Aunt Mona? Would you miss me terrible, too?”

She did not answer but became very still. Then she said to the tiny kitchen window in front of her, “After you ran off… in the bus station… I cried. Destroyed with the pain of it I was. Someone helped me to a seat. To this day I don't remember who it was, man, woman, or child.” She tried to say more, but her voice failed her.

Andy waited in silence.

Then, quietly emphatic, Aunt Mona said, “Would I miss you? Of
course
I would miss you!”

Andy stared at her stiff back, then saw her shoulders loosen.

With a catch in her voice, she said again softly, “I would miss you, Andy. I'd be desperate, and that's the truth.” She turned to him, her eyes wet with tears.

Brick barked at Andy for attention.

“You had better go up and do your homework,” whispered Aunt Mona.

Andy grabbed Brick and carried him up the stairs to his room.

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON he went to the hockey game with John and a bunch of the other kids. The Mooseheads were at home to the Moncton Wildcats. Andy and his friends high-fived the players as they came onto the ice. The Mooseheads won. It was a good game. “Do the hockey pucks always disappear like that, during a game, and they have to bring on new ones?” Andy asked his friends.

Thinking of Vinny.

Lying in his bed, Sunday morning early, listening to the sounds of the house, then Hugh's quiet tread on the stair bringing Mona tea in bed, then Mona up and rattling about the kitchen. Lying in bed, Brick beside him but eager to go downstairs, staring at the cracks and thinking of Vinny. Vinny and Judith dancing the whole night through — I missed you something dreadful, Andy, it's brilliant you're here — astonished to see you — a new purpose now — a fine young man you are — not easy to raise a young boy, but don't worry, leave it to me — take good care of you
— promise — leave it to me — promise — leave it to me — to me —