Natural Order (17 page)

“Joyce found a card from him in Mrs. Pender’s room at the Golden Sunset retirement home,” Fern says. “Dated 1977.”

“It doesn’t
mean
anything,” I say.

“You’re acting like we’ve done something wrong,” Helen says. “We didn’t ask to find this out.”

“
You
made me go back to the home.”

“I didn’t make you
do
anything.”

“We stole a Mother’s Day card from an old woman.”

“Borrowed,” Helen insists. “Besides, Joyce, you’re the one who brought this on yourself. You didn’t have to tell anyone about the card. You could have kept your mouth shut and we’d be none the wiser.”

I snap up the newspaper. It’s indecipherable, the words a blur of black and white.

Mr. Sparrow holds his hand up. “I’m having a hard time following this. Women talk so fast when they’re together.”

I put the paper down again and tell him about the card and the date on it. Helen and Fern’s theories. The kettle comes to a boil. I get up from the table.

“What do you make of all this, Mr. Sparrow?” Fern asks.

“It does seem a little strange. Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to ask Mrs. Pender.”

“Mr. Sparrow, you’re a man who makes perfect sense,” Fern says.

“I wish my wife were still alive to hear you say that.”

He asks us to stay. There’s a frozen pizza in the fridge. It’ll take no time to warm up. “I’ve got Uno cards, too,” he says. “You don’t have to rush off.”

But I’m desperate to get away. I can think of nothing but my bed. The silence of my house. I’ll close my eyes to these memories that keep bubbling to the surface.

“You’ve had a long day,” I say to Mr. Sparrow. “You need nothing more than to rest.”

“But I’ve been resting at the hospital. Besides, I’ll have plenty of time for resting when I’d dead.”

“Don’t say that.” My tone is harsher than I mean it to be. “You’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“I never said I was.”

At the foot of my driveway, Helen places a hand on my arm. “Do you want some company? You don’t seem yourself.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re looking awfully tired,” Fern says.

“It’s been a busy couple of days. I just need a good night’s sleep.”

They look at me, unconvinced. My sister’s mouth puckers. “What are you going to do about the card?”

“I’ll have to bring it back to Mrs. Pender. I’ll slip it into her drawer at some point. Maybe I can pretend to find it while she’s in the room. I’d feel better about doing things that way. At least it seems more honest.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Fern says. “Let us know if you want company.”

“I think the three of us have done enough for now,” I say.

Even though I’m not hungry, I heat up a pasta dish in the microwave for dinner. I push small mushroom cubes around with my fork. My thoughts bounce back and forth. I can’t ask Mrs. Pender about Freddy. I have to ask Mrs. Pender about Freddy.

I get up from the table and scoop the remains into a plastic container. On the wall behind me, the clock chimes.

Television laughter floats out from the rooms of the Golden Sunset as I make my way down the hall. I’ll tell Mrs. Pender I looked for the library book. Then I’ll mention finding the Mother’s Day card.

“There it was,” I’ll say with a casual laugh. “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for it.”

She’s asleep in her chair when I enter the room, snores ruffling the hair hanging over her face. Mrs. Ogilvy is propped up in her bed, working on a crossword puzzle. I mouth the word “Hello.” I hadn’t anticipated Mrs. Pender being asleep and contemplate waking her. I notice her cardigan. It’s a beautiful cranberry colour.

“Whuh-whuh.”

Mrs. Ogilvy is pointing at Mrs. Pender.

“It’s a nice cardigan,” I whisper. “Is it new?”

Mrs. Ogilvy nods and points to something over my shoulder. I turn to see Mrs. Pender still sound asleep behind me.

“Whuh,” Mrs. Ogilvy says again, jabbing her finger in the air.

My eyes follow the invisible line. She’s pointing to the dresser.

I scan the top of it and see a white business card. “Is this what you want, Mrs. Ogilvy?” I ask.

She nods. “Whuh.”

“The Seahorse Motel” is written in black script. The Seahorse? That’s in Andover. I’m positive the card wasn’t here the other day. Then I turn the card over. There’s handwriting on the back. I bring it close to my face and squint.
Call me if you want to talk. I go back to Miami on Friday
.

Mrs. Ogilvy grunts. She’s nodding again and pointing at something else on the dresser—Freddy’s picture.

“That’s her son,” I say.

“Whuh.” Mrs. Ogilvy touches her sleeve and stares at Mrs. Pender.

I feel a thousand pin pricks beneath my skin. “Are you telling me that’s who gave her the cardigan?”

A wide, satisfied smile spreads across Mrs. Ogilvy’s face. “Whuh,” she exhales.

CHAPTER SEVEN

J
UST BEFORE THREE
, I get out of bed, defeated by my mind’s relentless thoughts. Sleep will not come tonight. That’s the only thing I know for certain. I wrap my housecoat tightly around myself and go into the living room. For the first time in a long while, I’m frightened of my house. The walls threaten to fall away, leaving me exposed and vulnerable to the night. In dark corners, animals wait to pounce. Things rattle inside boxes in the basement, wanting to be released. The central air comes on, sending the white sheers fluttering like phantoms. I stand in the centre of the living room, hands cupping elbows, trying to calm my racing heart.

I stood in this same spot many mornings, watching from the front window as John made his way to high school. He refused to allow me to accompany him when he started grade nine, which even I admitted would have been crossing a line. My mind understood that he needed to do things on his own, to be out there, in the world outside our front door. But my heart ached as I watched him go and there were many mornings when fears would overwhelm me and I’d burst into tears. I’d keep picturing that day in the field. What other dangers lay waiting for my son?

Still, I had hoped that high school was a new beginning, not just for John, but for me as well. I needed to let go. I wanted to feel clean, to rid myself of the constant dread that nipped at my heels. My son wasn’t perfect. He had some problems. I knew that. But there wasn’t anything
seriously
wrong with him. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. Growing pains, I told myself. All boys went through stages. He’d thin out. Make new friends. Join a sports team. Sign up for student council. I imagined the phone ringing with invitations to parties and championship games. All that was needed was a fresh start. It would only be a matter of time before I’d be laughing at my foolish worries.

So why couldn’t I shake my fears?

At first, things seemed to go well. John said there were no problems with his classmates, and I believed him. He made a new friend named Ralph who sometimes came over after school. Ralph was as thin as a licorice whip with acne covering his face. He rarely looked me in the eye, but he seemed like a nice enough boy. The two of them would watch
The Lucy Show
or
Batman
in the basement. I’d bring them cookies and milk, even though John repeatedly told me not to bother them.

“It’s embarrassing,” he’d say.

“Ralph appreciates my thoughtfulness,” I’d say. “It’s too bad my son doesn’t.”

But Ralph disappeared midway through the year, leaving John to watch his TV shows alone.

“Did you get into a fight?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Ralph got weird.”

So John had been the one to abandon the friendship. I was relieved.

“What do you mean by weird?”

“Just weird.”

That was as much as I ever got. I never saw Ralph again.

I was thrilled when I noticed John cutting back on his eating halfway through the year. His pants got looser and he was perpetually pulling them up. One day, Charlie said, “Take this,” putting two twenty-dollar bills on the table. “John needs a pair of pants that fit him properly.” He turned to John. “Don’t you think you deserve it?”

“I guess so,” John said with a shrug.

He said he wanted jeans, so we went to Sears. A young salesgirl came by to help us. She looked only a few years older than John and I soon discovered they both went to the same high school.

“Isn’t that something?” I remarked while John turned three shades of crimson. Her name was Janice and she was sixteen. Her mother worked in the jewellery department. While she went in search of jeans for John, I eyed her up and down. She seemed like a perfectly nice girl. I even noticed a gold crucifix nestled in the V of her neck.

“Do you know anything about her?” I asked John. I was considering making a run to the jewellery department to see if I could get a glimpse of her mother.

“Keep your voice down,” John said. “She goes with a different crowd.”

“What do you mean by different?” I asked.

“Different from me,” he said. “She’s part of a group. Please don’t say anything more to her.”

While John was in the change room, I mentioned to Janice that this was his first pair of jeans.

“Well,
teenaged
jeans,” I said with a laugh. “He has to keep up with the latest styles.”

Janice gave me a peculiar look. I wasn’t sure if I liked her after all.

“He’s recently lost some weight,” I said. “He was a bit on the pudgy side, but I knew he’d grow out of it. He’s always go, go, go. I can barely keep track of him.”

Why did I care what she thought?

“His father was fed up with the way his jeans kept sliding off. Not fed up in an angry way. He was good-natured about it. He and John are similar in that way. Fathers and sons.”

Janice glanced absently at another corner of the store.

“Maybe sometime you and John could get together. To study, of course. Or grab a bite to eat. He’s extremely friendly.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean—” I laughed and waved my hand. “Never mind. I’m just being foolish.”

The door opened a crack. John’s hand emerged, holding a pair of jeans.

“They don’t fit right,” he said quietly. Janice went off to find another pair.

When I stepped over to the change room door, I peered through the crack and saw a reflection of my son in the mirror. He was standing beneath the harsh fluorescent lights in his white briefs and sweatshirt, crying. My hand instinctively went to the door handle, but I managed, for once, to stop myself.

When he was sixteen, John signed up for the school band, which put me on cloud nine.

“He’ll be the next Benny Goodman,” I said to Helen, laughing. She’d called to express her concerns about Mark signing up for the football team.

For once, I felt superior. “John says the band goes on a trip every year. They’re planning to go to Winnipeg in the spring for the national finals, if you can believe it.”

“What did you say he’s playing again?”

“The baritone.”

“What is that? Some kind of trombone?”

“More like a tuba. A baby tuba.”

“Oh.”

When John brought his new instrument home the first time, I was perplexed. “Of all the instruments in the world,” I said, “you picked this one?”

“I felt bad for it.”

“You felt bad for an instrument?”

“No one wanted it. Everyone else wanted the clarinet or the trombone. The baritone was just sitting there by itself. So I took it.”

“Is anyone else in band playing the baritone?” I asked. Maybe it would draw too much attention.

“I’m the only one,” he said. “Isn’t that terrific?”

Charlie asked him to play it for us.

“I don’t know any songs yet,” John said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “I’d like to hear how it sounds. Besides, you’ve got to get used to playing in front of an audience.”

Charlie was still trying to make connections with his son. He would ask John questions about school, homework, life in general. But all he ever got were one-word answers and mumbles. As the years went by, John seemed to wind himself tighter and tighter, like a spool of thread with no visible loose end to unravel it.

I look back on those years now and can only imagine what my son was going through, what darkness his mind must’ve held. Demons chased him down the school hallways and the hallways of his own house. There would’ve been no escape, no safe haven to tuck into.

I clung to my hopes during his teenage years, always believing we were only one step away from the normalcy that I craved. A baritone, then. That would do it. It was the hobby my son needed.

Up until that point, the only things that had held John’s interest were movies. Every Saturday afternoon, he’d ride his bike downtown to the Capitol Theatre. The previous year, he’d become obsessed with
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
and took me to see it. He even paid my admission, which I thought was very generous. But it bothered me that he was drawn to such a dark film. I couldn’t take all the screaming and drinking.

“This doesn’t remind you of your father and me, does it?” I asked when we came out of the theatre.

“Elizabeth Taylor is the best actress in the world,” he said. “I want to meet her someday.”

I felt a pang of jealousy, I admit. It’s hard for mothers to compete with film stars. He went to see the movie three times. Likely more, although I can’t say for sure. I began to wonder how many of those Saturday afternoons he claimed to be at the library were really spent at the Capitol. And I couldn’t help but be reminded of those Friday nights I’d spent with Freddy at the theatre.

So band was a welcome change and I was never so happy to hear those horrible sounds coming from his bedroom night after night. Before long those sounds turned into notes, and within a few months, I could detect melodies. I imagined him playing in an orchestra one day. Things began looking up.

Then came the trip to Winnipeg.

I fall asleep listening to one of those public television music specials and wake up just as morning is sliding across the neighbourhood. I slowly raise my head, wincing. My neck has turned as hard as cement. The wall clock reads 6:04. It takes me a moment to remember Mrs. Pender’s cardigan and the “whuh” of Mrs. Ogilvy’s confirmation and the plan I came up with in the wee hours of the morning. I need to get going. There’s no time to lose.