Prerequisites for Sleep (9 page)

Outside there were gunshots, five or six, then silence. From the window, Jake saw Einstein race towards the pen and into the safety of his doghouse. He took two bottles of beer from the fridge and stepped out the back door, carrying them with their necks between his fingers.

Eugene's house had once been a cottage, but it had been raised over thirty years ago to put in a concrete basement. The yellow siding, coated with grey mildew that resembled a thin layer of bird shit, had to be at least that old. Except for the deck, the rest of the place looked older. So the man did yard work and roofing. Jake never suspected. No doubt Darlene did casseroles. “Here,” he said, climbing the stairs. The .22 leaned against the railing, the box of bullets stowed under Gene's chair.

Gene took the beer and nodded towards a plastic chair beside him. Jake sat down, opened his bottle and took a sip. They drank quietly, staring at the meandering water. On the far shore, blue jays, voicing their opinions, flitted between the maples. Crows, high up in the spruce trees, argued back. A fish jumped, its body mooning them for a second, then disappeared.

“Guess I should have taken the kids fishing,” Gene said a few minutes later.

Jake inhaled, then released his breath, letting it whistle between his teeth. “You know, I don't claim to be an expert, but maybe you don't want to spend your time thinking of should haves. Maybe you should just make it happen. Sell your crop and buy them a plane ticket. Spend a couple of weeks with them. Take them fishing if that's what you want.”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. What gave him the right to tell Eugene what to do? He'd never told Maxine. God knows he'd wanted to.

It started to rain, beginning slow enough that Jake could identify every drop. The echoing of indents in the river. The burst and roll from the waxed surfaces of leaves. Flicks, followed by whispers of absorption into the ground. Muffled slaps each time one hit the wooden deck. Then it started to pour, drowning the individual drops with the rush of many, running through the gutters to resurrect an odour of dead leaves and mud.

Gene's long hair fell forward in wet curls that dripped down the side of his face. He raked it back with his fingers. “Took some shots at that tree earlier,” he said, pointing to a large pine between the deck and the river.

Even through the rain, Jake could see that the bark was ripped in several places where the bullets hit. He decided to take a page from Elsa's book and keep things light. “And I thought you were taking potshots at my dog.”

Gene turned and looked at Jake. His mouth was twisted up on one side in a half grin, half smirk. “I just felt like fucking hitting something.”

Jake was immediately aware of the weight of his drenched clothes, the rigidity of his neck and shoulders, the way his one hand gripped the bottle too tight and the other was clenched into a fist. He placed the bottle on the deck, stood up and reached for Gene's rifle. “May I?” he said.

Gene nodded, amusement still flickering across his face. He watched Jake load the rifle, surprised that Jake knew how, because it was a skill that Gene figured only a certain type of man acquired. He'd never considered Jake to be that type.

It was a skill that Jake hadn't exercised since he was a teen, hunting with his father, half a dozen years before he met Maxine. He dropped in the cartridges, noting with satisfaction that Gene used the safety, then adjusted his stance and raised the barrel, tucking the stock comfortably into his shoulder. He chose an old spruce with a thick trunk, branchless for the bottom ten feet, focused on a spot about five feet off the ground and pulled the trigger. Then he pulled it again, and again, and again, each time taking in the crack of the shot, the splintering of bark, the satisfaction that comes with tearing through exterior layers to reveal what's underneath, shooting until he finished the round.

 

There are bugs in Christina's cupboard, little brown bugs with crusty exteriors like fleas. But they can't be fleas. Fleas don't live in cupboards. Fleas don't crawl comfortably through Uncle Ben's converted rice, somehow managing to enter the bag, which had been folded over three times and clipped with a blue plastic clothespin. They don't glide happily in flakes of rolled oats, waving tiny appendages at their brothers, sisters, and cousins, who are doing the same. Fleas don't eat people food; they're bloodsuckers and live on dogs and cats. Christina still has doubts; the only thing she knows for sure is that these bugs are not cockroaches or ants. They are the devil she doesn't know.

She ponders all this as she scours the shelves with detergent while inhaling a green-apple scent. Maybe she should be using bleach or some sort of spray, but the environment is one of those things she feels guilty about. Her list is long: quality time, perpetually stained toilets, work, sometimes the lack of work, kids, lumpy mashed potatoes, store-bought cookies and now bugs in the cupboard, just to name a few.

For supper, Christina had planned to make rice because it was faster than potatoes and she was running late. She doesn't make ordinary rice, as everyone finds it pale and uninspiring. Instead she makes yellow rice, coloured and flavoured with a little chicken stock and a lot of curry. Nose-running spicy rice, a family favourite that quickly disappears from pots and plates, a creation she is proud of.

“Pour a cup of rice in the measuring pitcher, please,” she'd asked Sara. Christina now regrets those words. She wishes that she had discovered the vagrants herself and quietly disposed of them when no one was looking.

Her daughter is fifteen and has spent the last two years moving from baggy jeans to bum-hugging skirts, while daring to pass judgment on the rest of the world. According to Melissa's mother, she also has a boyfriend, a seventeen-year-old string bean with greasy hair, the type of guy who doesn't look a mother in the eye. Melissa is Sara's best friend. Her mother and Christina have a pact to share information. Christina caught a glimpse of the bean a few weeks ago when she picked up Sara from the mall. Alarm bells have been going off in her head ever since.

Sara shrieked and dropped the measuring cup as bodies began surfacing in the oblong grains. It landed in the kitchen sink, both creatures and rice scattering across stainless steel. Can they swim? Christina wondered, turning on the tap.

Further investigation revealed the rice, flour, and oats were infested, and the cupboard was crawling. “This is so disgusting,” Sara said. “Don't you ever clean?” As if it was Christina's fault, and only Christina's fault. Sara stormed out of the kitchen with a look of horror on her face.

What Christina considers disgusting are the oven fries she makes to replace the yellow rice.

“Don't worry, she'll get over it,” Robert says. Bugs don't bother him. He is Mr. Boy Scout. Mr. Great Outdoors, the man she used to camp with in tents that spiders loved. They tolerated ants, wasps, horseflies, and mosquitoes in order to catch fish and spy on deer and beaver from their canoe. The kids don't like camping; the boys long for their video games and Sara mopes, loudly. The tent, damp and mouldy after their last miserable trip, was put at the curb with the garbage two years ago.

 

At Zellers, Christina fills her cart with plastic containers, in all shapes and sizes, to hold everything from flour to instant onion soup. Her neighbour, Paula Spence, literally runs into her en route to the checkout. Paula looks too coordinated, like she just stepped out of a Sears flyer. Maybe she failed to stop because she was too busy admiring her outfit in the glass doors of the pop cooler.

“Oh, hi,” she offers, as if an apology isn't necessary when the collision is with someone you know. “Those on sale?”

“No,” Christina says, rubbing her sideswiped hip. “I've been cleaning cupboards.”

“I absolutely hate cleaning cupboards.” Paula admits. “I only do it when they get so disgusting that I can't stand them any longer.”

“Me too,” Christina says, but she has the sinking feeling that Paula's definition of disgusting doesn't include bugs.

 

Sara enters the kitchen after school with contempt further clouding her disposition. “What's there to eat in this place that comes in a sealed package?” She says this looking down, her hair falling forward to hide the appearance of bravado mixed with fear. She is pretending it isn't directed towards anyone in particular, although her mother is the only other person in the room.

“Well, if you don't like this restaurant, you can always go eat at Shelby's in the plaza by Blockbuster Video. According to the paper, there was a problem with mice last year, but I'm sure it's okay now.” According to Christina's memory, they had had their own mice problem. Almost every morning between April and November, Robert had emptied and reset the trap hidden behind the furnace. Mice, she thought, whose fault is that?

At dinner, Sara picks through her pasta, leaving anything she can't identify on the side of her plate. Christina watches the pile grow, knowing it contains tarragon and basil, things Sara has eaten before but doesn't know the names of.

“How's business?” Robert asks. He leans forward, intentionally trying to distract her.

“Take a look at my office. It's much too neat to be productive. I have some package shots to close-crop for Medi-Nourish and I'm expecting the Richardson job sometime next week. These slow days make me restless.”

“You could learn to enjoy your slow times.”

“You could clean,” Sara interjects. Her gaze and her fork continue to dissect the food on her plate.

Everyone stops chewing. Jeremy and Graham, both younger than Sara, stare at Christina. A line has been crossed.

“Go to your room,” Robert says before Christina can reply.

Sara bangs her dishes on the counter and slams her bedroom door. The rest of the meal is silent except for utensils cautiously wearing against plates, and glasses being set down after muted sips. What would Christina say anyway? Would she launch into one of those when-I-was-your-age lectures, or explode in a defensive rage, camouflaged by a rant about how untidy Sara's bedroom is? She doesn't know.

“Sara hates me,” Christina says to Robert while undressing for bed.

“It's just a phase.” He slides his hands down her hips. His wedding ring feels cold and goosebumps rise on her skin.

“Lock the door,” she says.

 

Christina spent her sixteenth birthday doing housecleaning during one of her mother's semiannual bucket brigades. Every nook and cranny, closet and shelf had to be scrubbed. How dare her mother steal her milestone, one of the most important days of her young life, for the sake of fall housecleaning? “After all,” she had wanted to yell so loud that the echo reverberating from across the lake would emphasize her point, “fall lasts three months.”

Several months later, her best friend Suzanne celebrated her sixteenth with a sleepover, a roomful of girls who tittered at thoughts of school dances, makeup, boys, and sex. Christina didn't titter. She lay on an inflatable mattress with cramps that she blamed on overindulgence in homemade chocolate sundaes. The following morning she had her first period. “Better late than never,” her mother said, handing her a box of pads that had been stashed in the linen closet for five years.

 

Sitting at her computer working in Photoshop, Christina guides and clicks the mouse, creating vector points and Bezier curves around the contours of a bottle, some kind of tube-feeding solution the colour of milky tea. Flip open the lid, attach the pump and — voilà — dinner. She has adopted an attitude of crude humour towards these products. It is either that or spend too much time thinking about what it must be like to be old or sick, with nothing but ugly bottles to look forward to. Jean Pierre, their overweight chocolate Lab, has positioned himself under her desk and is resting his head on his front paws, just inches from her feet. Every few minutes he releases a sound, either a sigh or a snort, to remind her that she has yet to take him for a walk.

In the corner of her office is a drafting table stacked with papers. A
T
-square and angles lean against the wall next to boxes of dockets and proofs. She stopped using them about the same time that she stopped wearing leotards and Doc Martens. Sometimes that doesn't feel like so long ago. Sometimes it feels like an eternity. Christina had taken to the computer easily. Several friends from art college had rebelled against the new technology that stormed their industry in the late eighties. In the end, many were jobless or had to hire someone else to execute their work. She, at least, maintained a client base — maybe not the most exciting clients, but paying clients nonetheless.

“Enough of this,” she mutters after cropping several images. She rolls the chair back and stands up, startling Jean Pierre, who has fallen into doggy dreams. He yelps, as if she'd just run over his paws with the casters. “Come on, we may as well go for that walk.”

She stops to check the cupboard on the way to the back door. There are a couple of stray bugs wandering between the new plastic containers for flour and brown sugar. She squishes them with her thumb before washing their crusty bodies down the drain.

When she returns, there is a message on her answering machine: “Christina, Jack Richardson. Call me.” Talk about short and sweet. She presses the speed dial.

“Jack, it's Christina.”

“I need you to send the illustration files for our instruction books to Simon Kent at Kent Graves.”

“An agency. I thought you were happy with my work.”

“Don't take it personal, Christina. Simon is the Chair of the Board of Trade Marketing Committee. We have the same tee-off time at the club.”

“Are you telling me I should take up golf?” Christina has never felt so diminished in her life.

 

Dinner is safe: pork chops, mashed potatoes, and frozen peas.

“Good potatoes,” says Graham.

“Yeah, Mom, good potatoes,” Jeremy says, mimicking his brother, except that he just stuffed a forkful into his mouth and they are beginning to coagulate.

“Jeremy, you're so gross. Didn't anyone ever tell you that you're not supposed to talk with your mouth full?” Sara's voice has that self-appointed-expert tone, as if she now considers herself the authority on all things revolting. “Dad, there's some papers in the living room that I need you to sign.”

“Don't you think I should read them first?”

“Sure, if you want. Melissa asked me to sleep over. Can I?”

“What do you think, Christina? Can she?”

Christina knows that he wants to roll his eyes, but Sara is watching. Instead, he shoves a forkful of peas into his mouth, then bends over to retrieve two that fall on the floor.

When Robert leaves to drive Sara to Melissa's, Christina asks him to detour to the liquor store for a six-pack and a large bottle of red wine. “Make it a screw top,” she says. The two boys park themselves in front of the PlayStation in the family room. Grunts and the sounds of imaginary weapons drift up the stairs and attest to their activities. On the coffee table Christina sees Sara's papers, two tests (requiring signatures), and a form for Take Your Kid to Work Day, already completed with Robert's job information.

“Ahhhh, wine,” she says, reaching for the bottle as soon as Robert returns. “I'll pour?”

 

The walls of her doctor's office are the colour of sweat-stained undershirts. They make Christina want to puke. She is there for the results of her tests. Last week she told Mildred that she wasn't feeling quite right. That something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

“Well,” says Mildred, “we've ruled out premeno-pause.”

“Considering I was a late bloomer, that's nice to know.”

“Your tests indicate that you're pregnant.”

“Oh,” says Christina, cupping her hand over her mouth as the room begins to spin, “I think I'm going to be sick.”

“I can't believe that you could make this kind of stupid mistake,” Sara shrieks when Christina and Robert announce the news. “This is so disgusting. You two are old.” She lectures them as if she is the parent, tossing in words like responsible, adult and birth control. This time Christina wants to roll her eyes but pours herself a glass of milk instead. From behind the frosted glass rim, she watches Robert hold a straight face. Later, they will lock the bedroom door, crawl under the duvet, and giggle like chastised teens.

 

In her fifth month, Christina pours chocolate sauce over a dish of brownie delight ice cream, then sprinkles it with pecans and drops on a maraschino cherry. She's in the mood to celebrate. Yesterday, she acquired a new client, sent to her by Jack Richardson. Guilt, she figures. The infestation of her kitchen is over, and her second trimester is progressing nicely. Everyone is excited at the prospect of a new brother. Everyone except Sara, that is. She has yet to come around. These days, Christina worries a bit less about her daughter. It has something to do with the subtle differences in her appearance — skirts not as tight, makeup not as thick. Melissa's mother just called to say that the string bean was history, definitely reason to celebrate. Still, there is the guilt over the fact that her unexpected pregnancy bothers Sara so much. She scoops a large spoonful of ice cream, making sure to include the cherry and copious amounts of sauce and pecans, then proceeds to seduce her taste buds by moving the spoon in and out of her mouth, savouring the flavour bit by bit. By the time she has finished her dessert, she realizes that all the chocolate sauce in the world won't alleviate this guilt; and she stares out the window wondering if she will ever have a relationship with her daughter again.