Natural Order (19 page)

I clear my throat and grip the wheel tighter. In my rearview mirror, a transport truck shimmers to life. Within moments, it’ll be right behind me. I’ll make out the angry expression on the driver’s face. He’ll honk his horn. I’ll press my foot down on the gas pedal to appease him. But it won’t work. I can’t go fast enough for him. I’ll start to lose—

Stop.

I give my head a quick shake. Enough. I’m getting worked up over nothing. I’m on the highway to find out if Freddy Pender is alive and well and staying at the Seahorse Motel. This is insanity. It can’t be real. I must be inside a dream.

I sometimes wondered what would’ve happened had Freddy stayed in Balsden. Would I have convinced myself that someone like him could’ve fallen in love with someone like me? Would we have had a relationship? Gotten married? Impossible. I knew it even back then. Freddy had his sights set on other things besides Balsden or me.

This, perhaps, is what upset me the most when he left. Not that he hadn’t liked me, but that he found a way out. He escaped and left me standing on the sidelines.

My fingers grip the wheel. Why am I doing this, risking my life on this highway to confront a man I haven’t seen in over fifty years? I’m not the person I used to be, so he won’t be the same either. Freddy Pender can’t make everything all right again.

There are only two cars in the parking lot at the Seahorse: one red, the other silver. No white limo. I pull into what seems like a discreet spot beneath a large maple tree and wait for my heart to return to its regular rhythm. My mind jumps to the drive home. The highway will be busier by that time, filled with trucks like lumbering dinosaurs. I take the compact from my purse and anxiously blot the shine from my nose.

Behind me sits a U-shape of red bricks and blue doors and the white backs of curtains. Is he in one of these rooms right now? Or is it all just a misunderstanding? I start to doubt myself again. Maybe I should’ve just gone back to Mrs. Pender and asked her directly. Would she lie about her own son’s death? Never mind. I’m here now. I step out of the car, squinting against the sun’s glare, and walk to the motel office, keeping my head down and my purse tight against my stomach.

A chubby girl with glasses is sitting behind a desk in the small office. She’s watching a talk show on a television suspended from the ceiling by a pole. I hear someone yelling accusations, followed by audience applause.

“Can I help you?” Her eyes dart between the television and me.

“I’m looking for someone who might be staying here.”

The girl moves over to her computer. “What’s the last name?”

“Pender. Fred Pender.” It feels surreal saying it.

The girl begins to type the name and I notice her dark roots running down the centre of her head. On TV, someone is told that the DNA results confirm that he’s the baby’s father, followed by a chorus of boos. When did stupidity become entertainment?

The girl blinks slowly. “No one here by that name.”

“You’re sure? Perhaps he might have checked out already.”

The girl looks over my shoulder at the television. “No one here by that name.”

“Thank you,” I say as politely as I can.

Outside, the humidity slaps me like a damp washcloth. The asphalt beneath my sandals is a burnt crust. A car horn honks in the distance but I don’t look up. It’s not meant for me. I’ve already made myself a fool too many times today.

“Table for one,” I tell the girl in gingham at the café across the street from the Seahorse. She takes a menu and leads me through a waist-level cloud of grey and white heads. We’re everywhere, it seems. Seniors. We congregate in coffee shops with our bran muffins and decaf. We clog up lines at banks and drugstores. We smile from behind volunteer desks and ask if the question can be repeated. What nuisances we are.

I order tea and a muffin and sit back to scan the faces around me. Mouths pucker and stretch. Heads tilt. Fingers fumble with foil lids of butter packets. I thought things would be different at this stage of my life. I thought I might have some wisdom in return for sticking it out, some guru-on-the-mountain insight not found in people whose lives rolled out as perfectly as pastry. But there’s nothing I can claim. No answers found. No riddles solved. Time moves from one tiny dot to the next, as it always has.

Cruel the way life cuts down hope. Seems to me the only way to cope is to have no hope at all.

There. That’s my insight.

“Here we are.”

The gingham girl places my muffin in front of me, a fat spaceship.

The morning after my phone call to Angela, I watched John eat his breakfast. I’d gotten up earlier to make him oatmeal with brown sugar.

“Busy day ahead of you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I have a geography test this afternoon.”

“You never mentioned you had a test.”

He looked up from his bowl. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

“You hardly talk to me anymore. I never know what’s going on in your world.” I looked down at my red-flecked nails and decided to paint them that morning. John might like that. Did I still have a chance of being “pretty mommy” again?

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Oh?”

“Nothing interesting.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you bringing this up?”

“No reason. Just an observation.” I took his empty bowl from him. “I suppose it’s to be expected. You’re getting older.”

I set the bowl in the sink and turned on the tap. “Certainly too old to be mothered. You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Not for a couple of years. I want to get my grade twelve.”

“And then?”

He got up from the table. “I don’t know.”

“Not the refineries, John. Even your father doesn’t want you doing shift work.”

“There aren’t many other choices in Balsden.”

“I think you’d make a wonderful teacher.”

“I don’t.”

“Or a social worker. You’re so good with people.”

“I likely won’t stay in Balsden.”

I felt a tremor in my knees. “You say that now.”

“There’s nothing here for me.”

I stood at the living room window, watching him walk down the sidewalk to school.
There’s nothing here for me
. When I couldn’t see him any longer, I immediately went to his bedroom.

I shouldn’t have let him go on that trip
, I thought as I tossed sock balls from his dresser onto the floor. My hands slid between sweaters. I was certain I’d find something. A note I could confront him with. Hard evidence of what he was hiding. Who was this trumpet player? I’d demand. And what exactly happened on that trip? Don’t you lie to me. I got down on my knees and opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. Next, I’d check his closet. And under the mattress. I knew a thing or two about hiding places.

“What are you doing?”

I glanced sideways and saw my son’s shoes in the doorway.

“I was reorganizing things,” I said, using the open drawers to help myself stand up again. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“I forgot a book.” He took a step towards me and I took a step back. “What are you looking for?”

“I told you what—”

He tried to snatch the jeans I had in my hand. “Drugs? Stolen goods?”

“I wasn’t looking for anything. I was tidying up. Honestly, John, you’re the messiest—”

“Don’t lie to me! You’re always lying to me!”

I took another step backwards. “I’m not lying.”

“You’re a hypocrite. You make me out to be the greatest son in the world and the second my back is turned, you’re snooping through my stuff. You have no idea who I am.”

A fuse lit inside of me. “I know plenty about you, mister. How is your friend in Quebec doing?”

There was a brief flash of confusion on his face. Then fear. Then rage, red as hot coal.

“You don’t know anything. You’re an idiot.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that!”

“You’re a horrible, selfish person.”

“John!”

“I can’t wait to get away from you.”

He grabbed a book from his desk and tore off down the hall. I heard the front door slam. I stood there in the silence, balled socks at my feet, a pair of lifeless jeans in my hands, and tried to catch my breath.

——

That morning in John’s bedroom was the beginning of the end. A line had been crossed. Which one of us betrayed the other first? I think about these things sometimes, when I’m lying in bed at night or sitting in a café, a picked-apart muffin and a cup of lukewarm tea in front of me.

“Can I get you anything else?” gingham girl asks.

I shake my head. “Just the bill,” I say.

I walk back to my car. My key touches the door lock and stops.

I’ll take my life today
.

The thought comes from nowhere. There’s a bottle of pills in my dresser drawer. Charlie’s painkillers, remnants from the final stages of his cancer. I’ve held on to them all these years. Expired, no doubt, but they’ll do. Now everything falls into place. A feeling sweeps over me. A warm tide. A surrender. I’m ready to let all of this go. The key slides into the lock.

As I’m getting in, a white car pulls into the parking lot. It swerves into a spot farther down. I spin around to see the driver, holding my breath. No, I remind myself. He isn’t here. Freddy’s dead. Nevertheless, I dig through my purse to find my sunglasses and slide them on. I hear a car door open. Slowly, I turn my head. It’s a man. From this distance and angle, I can’t see his face. But he looks short. And chubby. He closes the trunk and walks towards a blue door.

I don’t remember Freddy as short. No, he was taller than me, I’m sure of it. But still. People shrink with age. Damn these sunglasses. Everything looks like dusk.

The curtains remain closed. I count to ten before slowly making my way across the parking lot, keeping my head down. What I wouldn’t give for Helen’s straw hat. I reach the back of the white car. I let my car keys fall from my hand.

“Silly me,” I say, in case someone can hear, but there’s no one in sight.

My knees crunch as I kneel down to pick them up. Placing my hand on the back bumper to steady myself, I focus on the licence place. There’s a circle between the numbers. I take off my sunglasses and squint. An orange. Beneath it are two words in green letters.

Sunshine State
.

I’m in no mood for parties. I don’t know how many times I need to tell Hilda this, but she’s not getting the point.

“I don’t care for music,” I say. “Especially those tin drums. How is anyone supposed to enjoy that racket?”

“They’re steel pan drums,” Hilda says. “The band has travelled all the way from Toronto to play for the residents today.” She frowns at me, as though I’m a naughty two-year-old. “It would be a shame.”

Today is the annual Chestnut Park gala and all the chubby volunteers have descended on the home like seagulls on a bread crumb. All morning, I’ve been watching them hang pennants in the parking lot. Last year’s gala theme was Italy Fest, and I couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into green, white and red balloons. The volunteers scurried around with kerchiefs tied around their heads, saying things like “mamma mia” and “bunjurno” as they served us plates of mushy pasta and chicken cutlets sprinkled with oregano. Dessert was spumoni, which I’ve never been fond of. You’re either a candied peel person or you’re not.

Imagine the confusion among the residents when it came time for the entertainment and a dozen Ukrainian dancers came skipping out in their brocade vests and flowered headbands.

“The Italian singer we booked came down with laryngitis,” Hilda told me later. “Thank god I still had the number for the Stoyko Dance Ensemble from last year.”

This year’s theme is “A Taste of the Caribbean.” The Filipina nurse is wearing a T-shirt with “Jamaica … Yeah mon!” in scrawling letters across her tiny bust.

Hilda asks me to consider changing my mind. She’d hate for me to be sitting up here all alone while the party goes on.

“It might do you some good, Joyce,” she said, placing her hand on the arm of my wheelchair.

I feel a hot flush of shame. I know what she’s trying to tell me. I’m an ornery old woman, stuck in the misery of my own making. A wrinkled ball of harshness. I imagine the music of the steel drums sweeping over me, transporting me, awakening something inside I haven’t felt for years.

I keep my hands in my lap and stare down at the grey smoke rolling out from the barbecue. Hilda tells me they’re cooking something called jerk chicken. I manage to hold my tongue. If I see Timothy, I may go down. It would be rude not to say hello.

As if reading my mind, Hilda says, “Timothy won’t be there. He didn’t respond to my email.”

“I’m fine right where I am,” I say.

Ruth is still in the hospital. It’s been three weeks now and they won’t tell me anything. Not even the hospital where she’s staying. I’m bothered by thoughts of her lying terrified in a strange bed wearing that green mask. Does she know if she’s coming back here? Does she understand that people are concerned about her?

“Maybe I can help,” Timothy had said.

“How?”

“I’ll visit her.”

“They won’t tell you where she is.”