Natural Order (15 page)

“Joyce …”

“It’s true, Charlie.” I turned around. “Your father and I are very proud of you.”

Proud. I stepped back inside a house that smelled like cinnamon. It was a quarter after four. John should’ve been home a half-hour ago. I tried calling the school, but got no answer. That secretary was hopeless. I’d had run-ins with her in the past. I turned off the oven and grabbed my overcoat and hurried down the porch steps, walking as quickly as I could towards the yellow bricks of the school.

At first, I saw a patchwork of colours in the far corner of the schoolyard. Blues, reds, a square of yellow. Winter jackets. The backs of boys’ heads.

They’re playing a game
, I thought, scanning the crowd for John’s new green jacket. He’d picked it out himself the previous week, even though I thought it was too formal for school. It was three-quarter length with shiny brass buttons running along the side. It looked smart on him and he was in love with it as soon as he tried it on. He couldn’t stop looking at himself in the dressing room mirror. So what if it was a few dollars more than what I was expecting to pay? So what if it was different? Charlie didn’t need to know everything. We had our share of secrets, my son and I.

I made my way across the field, annoyed at my son’s lateness but happy to see him with friends. I’d been after him for some time about making some. I was getting tired of seeing him mope around the house on Saturday afternoons, restless and looking to me for entertainment.

“I don’t know what it is you want to do,” I’d say, after running through a list of possibilities. Nothing interested him and I didn’t care for his petulance.

“Grown boys don’t sulk,” I’d say to him. “It’s not becoming.”

“I’m not a sulk,” he’d reply, but the whine in his tone was like nails on a chalkboard. His constant lingering got under my skin. I needed breathing room.

“Does Mark cling to you?” I remember asking Helen once. It was one of the few times I decided to reach out. I needed to talk to someone, if only to vent.

“Oh, god no,” Helen replied. “I can barely keep him in the same room as me for two seconds. Welcome to the teenaged years. Why are you asking?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Is John clingy with you?”

“A little. He’s more frustrated than anything.”

“John is more emotional than Mark. Remember when the boys were young and we took them to that amusement park? We put the two of them on that merry-go-round.” She laughed. “John howled throughout the entire ride and I couldn’t get Mark off his horse at the end.”

I had no memory of that merry-go-round, no memory of my howling son. I stepped into cold puddles and water crept into my shoes. I hadn’t thought to wear galoshes. The field behind the school seemed bigger than I remembered. The boys were tucked away in the far corner. There were six or seven of them from what I could see at this distance. Around the field’s perimeter was a wooden fence threaded with twisted wire. The wood was reddish brown. I thought of meat. Brisket. As I approached, the noises the boys were making shifted from sounds to words—words I hadn’t heard in years, words that still shocked me with their brutality. My feet stopped dead centre in a puddle. The words grew louder. My ears began to ring. And then I caught a glimpse of something, or rather
someone
, in the centre of the circle of boys. But he wasn’t standing. He was lying on the cold, wet ground, curled up into a ball. The other boys were kicking him with their boots and sneakers. I heard the swipe of old snow, slick as steel, under their soles. And I knew, even before I saw the green coat, that my son was in the centre of this circle, surrounded by these boys and their spiteful words.

I must’ve made some sound because a couple of the boys turned around. I began running towards them, puddles shooting up my calves. But I tripped and fell. My hands slid in front of me, burning, as though the grass was fire. The boys took off, each one running in a different direction. They were going home. Back to their mothers.

John was lying on his back. He was bleeding from a wound above his eye. A thin trickle of blood slipped down the side of his dirty face. His pants were ripped, exposing the delicate pink oval of his knee.

“John,” I said and sank down next to him. “What happened?”

His eyes were not on me but on the sky overhead. “Why did you come here?” His tone was seething, as though I was the one who’d just done this damage to him.

I didn’t understand his question or the anger behind it. I told him we had to get home. I helped him stand up and he put his arm around my shoulder as we clumsily hobbled our way across the schoolyard, back to our home and my half-baked cookies.

To this day, I play this scene over and over again. The field. The freezing puddles. Sometimes I’m barefoot. Sometimes the number of boys in the circle quadruples. My son’s question hangs in the air, like fog.

Why did you come here?

It was only years afterwards, once he was long gone and I was left with a name on a granite tombstone, that I understood what he meant. If I hadn’t left the house that afternoon, if I hadn’t stumbled on that scene, if I hadn’t heard him being called those names or hovered over him as he lay bleeding on the ground, John would’ve been able to preserve some scrap of dignity. The boys would’ve bored of him. They would’ve gone on to other targets. He would’ve eventually gotten up. He would’ve made his way home on his own that day. He’d have thought up a story to explain things. That he’d fallen. That he’d stepped in to help another boy. Anything but the truth.

I would’ve believed him with all my heart.

I call Fern to tell her about Mr. Sparrow, hoping that I’m not too transparent. I need a ride to Andover, after all, and Fern has no problems taking her car on the highway, or anywhere else for that matter. The only thing she refuses to do is parallel park, but I don’t blame her. Her car is the size of a boat. She’s had it since the ’80s, when big cars were all the rage. She should trade it in for something more compact on account of the environment, but she says she can’t be bothered.

“A woman has to have a lot of car around her to feel safe,” she told me.

“There he was, the poor soul,” I tell her, “sprawled out on the bath mat. He had no idea how long he’d been there.”

“He must have been terrified,” Fern says.

“They’re sending him home tomorrow. I’m just not sure how to bring him back. I don’t trust that nephew.”

“I don’t blame you. My car needs a good run. I’ll do it.”

I hear the
Wheel of Fortune
theme in the background.

“Are you sure you don’t mind, Fern? I wouldn’t want to interfere with your day.”

“The only thing I have on my agenda tomorrow is changing the light bulb in my bedroom. I’m sure I’ll be able to squeeze in a drive to Andover.”

“It’s so strange to look out my living room window and know he isn’t home. I opened my front door this morning and there wasn’t a single vegetable waiting for me.”

“He’s such a kind man,” Fern says. “I don’t know why you never considered taking things beyond zucchinis and peppers.”

“I don’t like him in that way. And I don’t want the responsibility of looking after someone.”

“But isn’t that what you’re doing already?”

She has a point. “No,” I say.

“If there was a widower with a garden and no obvious signs of deformity living across the street from me, I’d get myself over there lickety-split with nothing on but a pair of pantyhose.”

I laugh despite myself. “You would not! Don’t even try that with me.” I pause. “About last night …” But I don’t know what it was I intended to say. What
about
last night? “There’s a perfectly rational explanation for that card. I’m just not sure what it is.”

Fern wants to know what I plan to say to Mrs. Pender. “This is somewhat sticky.”

“I’ll have to think this through,” I say.

Fern tells me she’ll pick me up at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We hang up and I stare at the phone. I should call Helen and tell her about Mr. Sparrow, too. If she learns about it from Fern and not me, I won’t hear the end of it. But I can’t bring myself to dial Helen’s number.

I get up early, the memory of John still weighing heavily on my mind. I dress and go over to Mr. Sparrow’s house to tidy things up. He’ll appreciate coming home to a clean house. I put a change of his clothes in a plastic bag and place a chicken pot pie I got at the grocery store in his freezer. Back home, I put on my lavender pantsuit. I remember Mr. Sparrow complimenting me once on how nicely the colour went with my silver hair. Then I brush my cheeks with blush, trace twin lines of grey pencil above my eyes and put on some lipstick to match my pantsuit. The face staring back from the medicine cabinet mirror feels like a stranger’s. The cold slap of time. These wrinkles, droopy eyelids, the pulled-taffy tendons of my neck. I can’t believe I was ever young.

I’m not expecting to see my sister in the passenger seat of Fern’s car when it pulls into the driveway, but there she is, waving and wearing that stupid straw hat again.

“I hope you don’t mind me tagging along,” she calls out.

“Mr. Sparrow won’t be in a wheelchair, will he?” Fern asks. “I’ve got bags of sweaters in the trunk.”

“Those aren’t the ones for Goodwill, are they?” Helen asks. “You’ve had them in there for weeks. They’re going to smell.”

“I’m not dropping them off until the weather cools down,” Fern says. “No one will be buying sweaters in this heat. Including the destitute.”

“Mr. Sparrow won’t have a wheelchair,” I say. “At least, I don’t think so.”

Fern announces she’s taking the old highway as there are fewer trucks to contend with. It will take us longer to get to Andover, but the scenery helps pass the time. I haven’t been out this way in ages and I’m struck by how little has changed over the years. We drive through towns with soft-drink signs hanging over convenience store entrances. The view seems so peaceful from my air-conditioned back seat. I picture happiness. A simple life.

I think of Charlie, wondering how much of himself he’d left behind when he moved out East. We’d travel back to the Prairies every couple of years, load up the car and take the American route to avoid the long haul around the Great Lakes. Those summer afternoons in the car, windows wide open, John in the back seat, blinking against the swirling wind, and Charlie smiling at the road in front of us. A snapshot of a happy family. No room in that car for doubts. No mud-soaked jackets. Only the open road and a destination.

Helen announces she’s always wanted to live in the country.

“Imagine how peaceful it would be. Just you and Mother Nature.”

“You’d go bonkers out here,” I tell her. “You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself.”

“That’s not true,” Helen says. “I’d find plenty to do. I’d probably be busier than I am now.”

“Milking cows is time consuming,” Fern says with a wink.

“And even if I wasn’t as busy,” Helen says, “I’d be more content. I really would. Life is getting the better of me these days.”

My sister is silent for a few moments, her straw hat motionless in front of me. I’d ask about Dickie, but what would she say? He’s fine. Everything was as well as could be expected. But I know she’s terrified. What will happen to her when he goes? Will she stay in the house? Will she move to be closer to Mark and Marianne? Will she leave me alone in Balsden? I’m terrified as well. She’s the only family I have left in the world.

The fields fall away as we reach Andover’s city limits. Traffic builds, and Fern’s hands grip the steering wheel tighter. Stores and subdivisions rise from the ground, big grey boxes surrounded by beige houses with no more than a couple of feet between them. I used to love coming to Andover. But it’s not the same. Everything is built for convenience and minivans. I watch as we pass a Wal-Mart and try to imagine trees. The memory of a deer surfaces.

“My goodness, they’ve really built things up,” Helen says. The brim of her hat scratches the car roof. “I hardly recognize anything.”

Something falls. I look down. There’s a small dark circle on my lavender thigh. My finger touches it. I scrounge through my purse, looking for a Kleenex.

“Joyce?”

I find one and press it against my eyes. I won’t have this. Not now. This is supposed to be a happy day. Mr. Sparrow is coming home. But the deer. I can’t stop seeing it—the brown liquid eyes, its velvet coat. I remember seeing it among the trees all those years ago, before the construction started behind our house. I was so young then. Charlie, too. John. There was so much life. Such promise. Where did the deer go when they cut down the trees? I need to know it made it to safety. I need to know it survived. I need to know that everything turned out all right in the end.

Two summers ago, Fern and I went on a cruise around the Thousand Islands.

“Is this where the salad dressing was invented?” she asked the tour guide, but she got a vacant stare in response.

The boat was one of those old-fashioned steamers that cater to tourists. It looked like it had seen better days, and I’d heard stories of boats capsizing on Sunday-afternoon trips, spilling people into the water.

“Those types of accidents only happen in the southern states,” Fern said. “You have nothing to worry about.”

I wasn’t so sure. I never learned how to swim, which made me anxious about boats in general. Charlie had tried to teach me once, but I hated being in the water. I didn’t like the feel of nothingness beneath my feet, the sense of suspension.

We sat for lunch with a couple from Montreal. They were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary.

“How nice for you,” Fern said, giving my thigh a sharp pinch under the table.

Once the servers collected the dessert plates, a chubby man in a top hat came out and told us we were in store for a wonderful treat. He grinned broadly, like a children’s television host.

“Please join me in welcoming the Steamboat Dancers!”

We clapped as four young men and women skipped to the centre of the room, wearing white pants with red sequined vests and matching bowler hats. They assembled in two lines while the chubby man sat down behind a piano and began to play “Swanee River.”