Red Girl Rat Boy (2 page)

In unison, “
You’ve got to think about a pension!
” The king hadn’t lived to collect his. We smiled a bit.

Looking back at Will’s workspace as he was locking up, I said, “How Jeanie’s kids must love this!”

“Children aren’t allowed in here. Dangerous.”

Twenty years after Dad died I slept in my childhood home one more time, just before we moved the queen off the board into care.

In the night I heard Mum, alone in their bedroom.

“Ray, I never understood, never. Her hands were cold. Will gone. The cutting, the other. And why’s Kenny that way?” Sobs.

Coral wasn’t in our house to hear her. Will wasn’t either. Nothing for it: the youngest must get out of bed and cross the dark hall, must be slave.

Mum had forgotten I was home.

“Not sleeping, Kenny? Do you want some hot milk?” The old face red from crying. Arm in arm—she stepped with difficulty—we got slowly down to the kitchen. Ivan had taught me to sprinkle cinnamon. She enjoyed that.

At night now, there’s no one to hear me talk.
And whose fault is that?
As Mum would say. She liked Ivan, as much as she could. They played aggressive Scrabble, laughing, sometimes even when I was out of town.

Ivan. Five years.

We met at the only orgy I ever attended. Another playground, bodies all over, the scents of flesh, excitement’s edge crinkling with nerves, a man gazing down at me. Ivan’s dreamy look: at once addictive. Probably I’d be in charge? The youngest, the pawn, always seeks control.

I was important to Ivan, yes, very, but, as it turned out, not necessary. At a disadvantage because I wanted him more than he wanted me, I figured fatherhood would subtract from the sum of us.

Ivan rejected my calculations. “I love you! I’m as surprised as you that I want a child so much.” He looked about our living room, at the full wineglasses, as if they were novelties.

“Making your list for a fair division of the household goods?”

“Oh, Kenny. . .”

“Oh, Ivan, who suddenly wants so bad to be a daddy.”

He grabbed my hand. “Can’t you reach to this? For me? For once not be the star of the high school debate team?”

Briefly I failed to fake indifference. Ivan attempted comfort, but at the end said, “You’re a loner, Kenny. You’ll be fine.”

The next time Will and I met, in his workshop with the maples outside and the Atlantic beyond, he swept the floor and set tools in order while I told about Ivan.

That done, I felt old enough to ask about Annie.

The broom stopped. “I was five. Dad was on strike, hardly ever home. I had a bad flu but was getting better fast. So, when Annie ran a high fever. . .”

“Mum assumed flu?”

Swish swish, the bristles. “If I hadn’t been so healthy, she’d have worried more. Fact, Kenny. But I refused to live with guilt. Or to live anywhere near hers.”

I held the dustpan. A small service for him.

Once in care, Mum went downhill fast.

Coral and I had planned to rent the house short-term. Then with tenants’ eyes we inspected the small rooms.
No,
said the stained and collapsing furniture, the faded paint, the ancient water heater and the fridge that dripped. We began to clear the place for sale, talking and talking as we worked.

Once I reminisced about my somersaults in the playground, done for her, but Coral didn’t remember that. Just then we were tackling the living room shelves, where, among much other detritus, the photo albums lived.

“Coral, you’ll take these?”

Already she was paging through one volume.

“Look, Kenny! My eighth birthday! You were four.”

Her Polaroid cake had turned orange, her dress cerise, and time had paled our official school pictures. How old-fashioned our family looked, by the backyard barbecue and at the lake—Will’s big glasses, Dad’s too, everyone’s weird clothes and shoes. In every scene we were laughing.

An envelope fell out. Two tiny black-and-whites with rippled edges. High contrast.

“Who’s she?”

“Silly! Mum, with weird long hair. Are those flowers on her head?” She frowned at the baby’s face, shaded by a bonnet. Turned over the shiny squares. No names.

“Kenny. It has to be her.”

We stared.

Coral dropped the photos as if they were alight. “Damn Annie, why the hell didn’t she live? I wasn’t enough, they needed her, and I made so much trouble!”

Crying, she let my arm stay round her.

“Take her to Will,” wiping her eyes, “when you go next.”

I had enlargements made for all three of us.

Flying no longer excites me. In the plane’s washroom, the blurry mirror shows neither youthful charm nor aged dignity. Just a suit, a briefcase, a phone. Union delegates sneer, yet approve their lawyer’s looks. Sometimes there’s applause.

Will’s workshop smelled good, as always.

I handed Annie over.

His turn to stare.

“Mum, so young? How I loved her long hair! See her daisy crown? I made that for her.” He peered. “Wait now.” At the window, he held the image to the light. “He’s here.” Relief, warmth, satisfaction.

Behind our mother and Annie, slightly to one side, almost blended into a shiny black hedge stood our father, stiff even then, his body ground down by the mill, smiling gently.

“Dad let me use his camera.” Will’s voice thickened. “That casing’s the kitchen window of our house. Mum got Annie’s new bonnet that day.”

Excluded from this nostalgia, not even born, I waited in darkness for my brother to step down the years to me.

Eggs and Bones

The eggs hit the pan. too much sizzle.
Probably he’d set the heat at 5 again, not 3. For sure he hadn’t whisked the eggs long enough, she’d counted the strokes. He’d see too late that the mixture was streaky, then stir and disturb the setting process.

Kyra lay in their king-sized bed, listening to Norman cook.

Likely he’s using butter
and
oil. Stupid. That metal spatula, skr-skr-skr. It’ll wake Maeve. I can’t bear it, truly. Why won’t she sleep through the night? Oh lucky me with my mat leave! A whole year to enjoy my baby. Her birthday next week. Use the
plastic
one. Right there, in the utensil jar. That pan’s scarred already.

The colic’s over months ago but still she wakes, wakes,
wakes. She has daytime naps, I’m exhausted, I sleep too.
No work. I’m thirty. It’s time.

He shouldn’t scrape yet anyway. Just tip, slide the liquid under, but those eggs’ll be nearly cooked now. Frizzled, more like.

For Norman, earplugs work, but even if I shove them in till I think they’re touching my brain and move her crib right to the end of the hall I still hear Maeve. She’s not hungry. Won’t feed. Cries a while, sleeps again. I don’t. I can’t. The clock radio’s turned to hide time rushing on, but in May the birds start at four. If I do sleep it’s like an instant till she cries again.

What’s he taking out of the fridge? Please not chorizo.

Not just my ears but all of me senses Maeve. Three floors away I’d feel her crying. Mushrooms? I’m starting to work from home. So many women want to do just that, so lucky me. Cheese? The office. I’ve tried to stay connected, but visiting there with Maeve feels unreal. Maybe once I get into my projects? How can I? In all the hours, where’s the time? I need sleep.

Oh God he’s slicing onion.

I will not rage about Norman’s damned tibula, fibia, whatever. Not not not. Recrimination does no good, Kyra, especially to you. We all make mistakes, I’ve told you that easily five hundred times since it happened and he’s been here, here in this small apartment 24/7 except for physio.

Raw cold onion wrapped in leather: my breakfast, after another hellish night.

Now Norman can get about, he takes Maeve out a bit so I can work. They just go to Starbucks. That’s fine. I don’t care. She crawls about and people say, “So cute!” I sleep, after setting the alarm so I can pretend to have been busy, but soon he’ll go back to work. I can’t bear it.

We need to get out of this. The weather’s warmer these days.

The pan’s in the sink, tap’s running. Where the hell is my food?

Coffee’s on. That’s something.

I know, he’s trying to wash off the mushy egg-scum. Won’t work. The problem’s deeper. He’s overheated the pan, and that makes the fat form a hard scale all round, just where the sides curve up. It seems only a slight discolouration, but run a finger over the metal and it’s rough, scabby.

Where? A park. The beach. Maeve loves sun. Sweet, her little dresses.

Further use causes more harm. Foods catch, stick on that scaliness, scorch. With uneven heat, the pan becomes unusable. Has to be tossed.

We’d take the bus. He won’t like that. Maeve will love it.

Sluicing, sluicing. He’s trying the scrubber. Now the dish-brush. Plastic in this situation isn’t effective. How many times have I shown him?

I’m so hungry. So tired.

Ah. He’s remembered baking soda. Dampen a soft cloth, dip it, rub.

Rub rub rub, soft, almost soothing, but how long? When will this end? Where’s my food? Maeve’ll walk soon. I can’t bear it.

Now rinsing. Now stopped. Still no coffee. Somewhere beautiful. I want a new summer dress.

Beside her in the bed, the flung-back duvet created negative space around the shape of Norman. Maeve’s father. Impossible.

Enough!

Kitchen smells juiced up Kyra’s mouth.

From their bed to the stove was fifteen steps, but she got there in ten.

Leaning against the sink, Norman niggled at the pan, his gaze concentrated as when reading student papers.

On a white plate, a thick yellow envelope had split to ooze chorizo, onion, salsa, melted cheddar. Grabbing a fork and the food, Kyra shoved in one huge bite of red orange yellow before crying out. For the first time in their shared life, Norman had heated a plate. It slid from her hand to the counter’s edge, stayed. Just.

For comfort, Kyra crossed her smarting fingers over her body and into her armpit while she glared and ate.

“Let’s all go out,” she said through a mouthful of eggs.

Maeve cried.

N

His wife had purchased for the occasion
a sundress with ruffled straps. The fabric’s red seemed too deep for the tentative heat of May on the west coast.

Red filled Norman’s vision as he sat in the crowded bus holding the baby, while Kyra stood gripping the handhold above. He looked up at her face and arms. Bony. At least the skirt hid her legs. His glance slid off to other passengers’ summery bags and sandals, their bare limbs, then past the sleeping baby and down to his cast. So heavy. Wasn’t there better stuff now, high-tech foam, something? Weeks of physio. Still the crutch. Walking to the bus stop with his family, he’d felt himself a prisoner attempting escape with the irons still attached.

His eyes couldn’t resist looking again at Kyra. Jaw, chin, cheekbones, all hard lines. Short hair, brushed back. It didn’t dare tickle her soft earlobe.

A cramp began. With effort Norman adjusted himself so his daughter’s relaxed body weighed less on his good leg, more on his arm.

Kyra said, “Don’t look so put-upon. At least you’ve got a seat.”

The baby’s eyelashes, delicate.

As the bus lurched, he took another glance up. Kyra’s arm stretched downward from the handhold, straight and lean to a fully exposed pit.

Norman closed his eyes.

Opened.

The stance made of her armpit a startlingly large hollow. Dark but not hairy, no no, shorn, more than shorn, chemically denuded (perhaps below the epidermis some brave follicles endured?), and dry, and deep. Rimmed by taut lumpy muscles, ligaments, something. Bones? There must be bones. That red frill, ruffle, whatever. If a person put a thumb in the pit and an index finger on the frill and squeezed, the digits might nearly meet through a band of gristle. He couldn’t do it.

“What’s that ugly look for? Does she need to be changed?”

“Maeve’s fine, Kyra. It’s just a few blocks to the beach.”

“Garbage, shopping, laundry, I’ve been on my feet for hours already.”

“You wanted this outing.”

As his wife frowned anxiously at Maeve, her eyeshadow wrinkled and flakes of mascara jostled one another. Bending, she exhibited her clavicle and chest, not quite her cleavage, but the red fabric did stick out. The breasts must still be there. To touch, unimaginable. Norman winced. Pain needled his leg. He lost hold of his crutch. Maeve stirred.

“Can’t you even sit still? She’ll wake.”

“If you had a driver’s license, we could have come in the car.”

“Norman, you know I don’t have a good spatial sense.”

“Adults do learn to drive, Kyra. Of course, some effort’s required.”

“It’s her birthday! Can’t you think about anyone but yourself?”

Turning away, she switched to the handhold across the aisle.

Maeve relaxed and happily crawled further into dream. She drew on a year of life to create peacock-blue fantasies that swirled, clouded, then broke into the gold stars her dad had shown her through the apartment window.

Norman travelled too, riding the Number Five up up and away into the brightness over English Bay, past the Planetarium and south to Pacific Spirit Park. Here the bus landed by a trailhead. Easily, he stepped off to walk into the forest smelling of warm resin, bark, earth, leaves and needles, animal scat. Nearby sounded dropping water. In all the green, the only noise. No birds. What made birds fall silent? He knew he knew, but couldn’t say till he saw the little merlin on a swaying cedar branch. Her beak, such a curve! Sharp, to rip. All the other feathers in the wood folded down still, still, while she stared. At him? No, at a world hard to live in.

At the beach, Norman insisted they have their picnic by a bench.

“Why not sit on the sand, like everyone else?”

“If I go down that far I’ll never get up. Is that what you want?”

“Can you at least get our lunch out? Find the bottle-opener?”

“I don’t see any pickles.”

“They’re in the fridge. You know, in the kitchen?”

“It hurts me to walk, remember?” Norman waved his crutch.

“So. I’m to spend all afternoon trudging about with her.”

They ate.

Then Maeve smiled at the sloshing noisy blue as her mother applied sunscreen to the exquisite skin. Eased the child into her yellow bathing suit. Set on a floppy hat. Kissed her.

“The water looks great. Wish I could wade!”

“Whose fault is that?”

When Kyra shed her dress, her bikini (black and white stripes, unfamiliar) enabled the sight of many knobs. Her spine, a bony snake. Did humans have three hundred bones? Two? In wrists and knees alone, dozens. Norman had broken his tibia and fibula, fibia tibula, whatever. How had he ever desired her? If he tried to remember the afternoon when they’d made Maeve (enchanting sweetness), his penis shrank.

Her cheeks shone. “I try to look nice.”

With the baby in her arms, his wife walked into the ocean. A Teacup Yorkie barked angrily at the waves, and Maeve laughed.

Unable to sketch a scenario in which his wife would drown but his daughter survive, Norman turned to memories of his skiing accident. This video now slid by as if professionally directed. On the mountain. A last run, maybe the last of the season. Late afternoon, still bright, no, not too late, and just ahead something broke the smooth dim white, what, how? Lurch, tumble. Bone-crack, snowy echo.

An abandoned ski pole.

“It shouldn’t have been there.”

“
You
shouldn’t have been there.”

Kyra repelled all attempts to edit that dialogue.

Norman gritted his teeth. Tomorrow he’d be back on campus. Hours of solitude. New hearers for his tale.

Smiling, he saw on the ocean Maeve’s yellow bum. Alongside floated the hat. Where was Kyra?

How did Norman stumble across the collapsing sand and wade through loud water, cursing brandishing his crutch shouting their names?

His wife stood up. God but she looked tired. Mother and baby kissed, giggled. He fell on them, full of tears. Through the wet bikini Kyra’s breasts were warm. Other bathers helped them to shore, brought their gear to the curb, phoned for a taxi. The pain was huge. Maeve stopped howling.

His wife sniffled, wringing out the hat. “I
will
learn to drive.”

“My leg, my fault.” He patted a red frill. “It’s been hard for you.”

Thus they spoke, helplessly wound in and wounded by these early attempts to manage, make a meal of it, articulate the bones, marry.