This Cake is for the Party (20 page)

Franny watches the way Pima moves. Her purse hovers at her side as if it's the curve of her waist that holds it in place, as though the straps are merely decorative. The way her arm hangs from her collarbone is mesmerizing. Pima's arms are suspended weightlessly from her shoulders at two perfect ninety-degree angles. She thought that Pima was moving tightly before, but now Franny marvels at such a delicate connection, the clasp of shoulder blade to collarbone fine and precise.

Wait, Franny says.

Pima stops. She turns around.

Franny stands up. She can't think of what it was she wanted to say.

You're perfect, she says.

Oh—how unfortunate for it to come out that way! She moves closer to Pima and tries again.

What I meant is, I want us to be friends.

Pima looks her up and down and says, You are a piece of work.

Franny takes Pima's hand. It's a formal gesture. Aware of how absurd she looks, but unable to stop herself, trying to do it as gracefully as she can, she presses her face into Pima's hand. She slides her face down until her lips meet Pima's fingertips. She resists the urge to put them in her mouth. They smell like cigarette smoke.

When she looks up, she sees Pima's face moving closer to her own and Franny thinks Pima is going to spit in her face. What she does is this: Pima kisses her on the mouth. It's a hot, persistent kiss and it tastes dry, her smoky breath mixed with rose-flavoured lip balm and the bitter press of coffee.

There, says Pima. You got what you wanted, didn't you?

Franny stares at her.

God, you're such a coward, says Pima.

When Franny gets home, the door is unlocked. She pushes it open but feels afraid to go inside. It feels like a plum is lodged in the base of her throat. The paint is peeling all around the door frame. Flakes of dark brown curl and crack into an archipelago she's never noticed before. She realizes that she's tense: she jumps when she hears a screen door shut behind her. It's just the neighbour, with a yellow cloth in his hand. He smiles at Franny, waving the cloth like a flag. In his driveway there's a bucket full of suds and a sponge lying in a puddle. He's been washing his bicycles. He has three of them—two mountain bikes and a racing bike with curved handles.

Are you waiting for somebody? he asks her.

I was just looking at the door frame, Franny says. I think it needs to be repainted.

It's that ocean air, he says. You gotta love it.

When she goes inside, Franny finds Richard in the kitchen peeling prawns. He rinses his hands under the faucet before hugging her. His arms make a cold-water belt around her waist, but his neck is warm when she leans into it. He smells like salt and fish.

I'm taking the tails off, he tells her. I know you like them better that way.

That's not very gourmet, she says. Not very
Food and
Wine
.

I didn't know if you wanted red or white, he says.

I'll open the wine, she says. You keep doing what you're doing.

She finds a bottle of red in the cupboard next to the sink. A bowl on the counter is filled with a pile of prawns that look like jelly, the colour of bruises.

How was it? he asks.

She's angry, Franny says. She told me that you've always been unfaithful and that you'll probably cheat on me.

He peels two prawns before saying anything. Then he says, Pima can be judgmental. Did you tell her about us? I mean, getting married.

No, she says. I thought you could tell her that.

She uses the point of a paring knife to slice the black shrink wrap that's around the bottle neck and peels the rest off with her fingers. She's going to take diving lessons, Franny tells him.

Pima's been saying that for years.

I might do it with her.

Franny puts the bottle neck under the lever and pushes. Richard scoops the prawn shells out of the sink with his hand and throws them into a plastic bag. He turns around to face her, drying his hands on his jeans.

Are you serious?

Why not? she asks him.

I thought you hated water, he says. He takes the wine bottle from her hands now that she's opened it. He pours her a glass. Then it's like he's talking to himself. He says, Never mind. I think it's great. Of course, you two are friends, you do things together. That's great.

Franny's eyes follow the dark streaks up and down his thighs from where he wiped his hands. I never said that I hated water, she says. Then, We're going to have to eat something else with the prawns. I'll make a salad.

He bows and hands her the wineglass. As you wish, he says.

Something chirps near his waist. His cellphone. He reaches for his side with one hand, as though he's wearing a holster, and pulls the silver phone out. His eyes narrow at the little screen in his hand. He recognizes the number and looks up and says, Sorry, Fran, I have to take this.

He leaves her in the kitchen. Hello, he says. The hydraulic pull of the screen door separates them. The last thing she hears him say is, It's you. Yes, yes, no, it's fine. How are you?

Franny stands in the kitchen smelling ocean from the sink. There are prawn legs that Richard has missed stuck to the edge of the sink and part of one shell, pale blue, curled in the drain. The raw prawns in the bowl look like they're melting into each other. They don't even look like they used to be alive. They could be anything.

One Thousand
Wax Buddhas

I've tried to think how it started, since you keep asking. It was right after the Island Daze craft sale, the day Stu and Olivia came for dinner. The cat had diarrhea. I knew it was my fault, I knew I'd given her the wrong kind of food, which is exactly why I was so pissed when I found the soft spread hardening on the mat by the door. You know how that is—I was mad because I could have prevented it. Story of my life.

You fed her Cat Chow, Robin said. You know she's allergic to it and you gave it to her anyway. Robin's light brown eyes had that glassy look. Sticky, like maple syrup.

I'm sorry, I told her, I thought it wouldn't hurt her if I just gave it to her once. And it was all they had.

She just looked at me with holes where her pupils should be, as if to say:
Typical
.

I couldn't think of anything else to tell her, which I suppose
is
typical. I'm that guy, I know I am. I have no sense of subtlety or social delicacy. I make Robin roll her eyes and throw up her hands. Had I believed her when she told me about the allergy to chicken protein? Yes. Did I think one bag of Cat Chow was going to make the cat sick? No.

I'm sorry, I said. How can I make this better?

Robin said in a papery voice, Keane, the cat will get over it. I just hate cleaning it up.

I'll clean it, I told her. It came out angrily, which is not how I meant it.

You clean it, then, she said. I'm going to work. Her voice was thin.

Work was about a hundred feet away, in a studio out back. We made candles there. We were coming to the end of our countdown for the season—Christmas orders start in August, believe it or not—and there was only one more week before they would all be polished, packed into boxes and swaddled with plastic wrap onto wooden pallets, and shoved into a transport truck and driven west to Toronto for the first round of shows. We were going to meet them there later. We always flew with WestJet because Robin didn't trust Air Canada.

Not only is candle wax heavy—it's delicate. I wrap every single candle in four layers, like it's glass, so it won't get nicked during shipping. First I give it a close skin of tissue paper, then a sheath of bubble wrap, then a sleeve of newspaper, and only then do I slide it into a cardboard box. I put about fifteen boxes on a pallet. I seal the boxes with packing tape and wrap everything onto the pallet with stretches of plastic, and then I just cross my fingers that the guys at Manitoulin Transport don't stick their forklifts into the boxes like they did two years ago. Stabbed the wax right through the box, ruined a day's sales. Nine candles per layer times four layers equals thirty-six candles at twenty-five dollars apiece equals nine hundred dollars per box. My mind works in equations. I can't help it—I get it from my father, a produce man, who worked for Loblaws when I was growing up. Remember those William Shatner commercials? By gosh, the price is right.

Every summer, we book a craft table at the community centre for the Island Daze Celebrations. That's
Daze
spelled with a
z
. Candles aren't the only export for this island, if you catch my driftwood. There are events for everybody: a cardboard boat regatta, a craft sale, a pie-eating contest, a prize for the best salalberry jam. On the last night, a local band plays the community hall. The music is usually good. Everyone gets a chance to shake and flap around on the dance floor.

Robin worked the sale this year. I stayed home to finish our numbers for that day. It was a Thursday. We were only slightly behind on production at that point— still doing well, considering it was only early July. But we had invited Stu and Olivia for dinner on Friday, which would mean lower numbers. And we were both planning to take Saturday night off, which was Robin's birthday. I was working overtime to make up for it.

When she got home, Robin told me what happened. The postal clerk, Maryanne, was giving away balloons to the kids. The balloons were blue, green and white, the same colours as our community flag. Ocean, forest and sky.

We had piles of balloons, Robin said. We were mauled by the kids.

They were helium balloons? I asked.

Tons of them, she said. One kid asked, Can I have the last white one? Then another kid yanked it out of my hand right in front of him. It was madness. Then they started sucking it and squeaking at each other. The sound of all of those little voices around me. God.

Their parents let them inhale it? I said, with some tone in my voice.

She looked at me.

It's bad for you. They shouldn't have been inhaling it.

Come on.

No, it's bad. The parents were doing it too? It's not good for your brain.

Why is it so bad?

You inhale it, Robin. Your body absorbs it.

I don't think it's so bad. Helium is really stable. It's inert.

It kills brain cells.

Keane, helium is really difficult to split.

What is that supposed to mean?

My wife has always been too intelligent for me.

So on Friday morning I cleaned up the cat's mess like I said I would, and by the time I got to the studio, Robin was already in the back filling the Buddha moulds with blue wax. She said, Keane, I meant to tell you this, there's a strange sound in the car.

What kind of sound? I asked.

When the heater's running, there's this sound, she said. Like:
rrrrrrrrrrr
.

When did you notice it?

Last night, coming back from Island Daze.

And it's a whirring sound.

No, she said. More like a rattle. I hit a pothole on Mary Point Road and then the fan started rattling. It's pretty loud.

Let me take a look, I said.

Keane, she said. Her voice thin and grainy, uncooked rice.

I tried not to get sucked in. What is it? I asked calmly.

The mileage. It's listed there. Seven seven six three oh seven.

What?

It's there, she said. Talking to herself now.
Seven seven
six three oh seven.

Look at it this way:
7
/
7
/
63
/
07
. Do you see it? Robin sees these things. She can read the patterns. I would never see this stuff if she didn't point it out, but once you see it, you can't unsee it. She was born on July
7
,
1963
. She was trying to tell me that it was there in the mileage. That it was a sign. The last two numbers—
07
—that's this year.

I didn't ask her to explain it to me. I didn't want to get into it. But I knew the day was going to be a writeoff as far as production went. Robin was filling another set of moulds, but I meant to get a whole box of cubes finished and priced and packed before the next day. I didn't want us to work so much on her birthday, like I said before.

Before going under the hood, I checked the mileage. There it was:
00776307
. A coincidence, right? I put the key in the ignition and turned on the heat and listened for myself. A loud, sick-sounding
fwap-fwap-fwap
reverberated through the dash. I turned the fan on low, and it rattled more quietly. Then I turned it off and thought about how on earth I was going to get in there, to get at the fan itself. The car needed a good vacuum. There were raisins and dried cranberries scattered on the floor mats and stuck inside the crevices of the stick shift and the cup holders. A while back, Robin had an accident with a bag of trail mix. She hadn't vacuumed since then—it had been about three weeks. I guess you tend to let things go when you're in Christmas production. I noticed that there weren't any nuts left in the mess—just the raisins and berries.

It was no easy task getting into the heater from under the hood. I fumbled and heard my father's voice come out of my own mouth,
motherfucker goddammit
, as I twisted upside down to peer into the cavern of the Honda's innards. I screwed my hand into the space I saw next to the glove compartment, thinking the fan should be right next to it. My fingers landed on something soft. I should have grabbed my headlamp.

I hitched my neck at the most uncomfortable angle I could manage and was rewarded with a better view. There was a nest. Snipped bits of plastic and chewed-up fibres from a hole in the car seat, a pile of peanuts sitting cozily on the ledge of the glovebox. And right beside it, the plastic wheel that sits in the heater. I pulled it out. The poor mouse must have been in his nest when Robin hit the bump. Knocked right out of bed and straight into the rotors. The fan tore his body to shreds. There weren't even any bones left. But his head was whole, and his eyes were still open, wide and scared to death.