Three Little Words (12 page)

“Wain, dear, slow down,” she says. “It's not a race.”

Wain looks up at her and says, “You try eating crackers for a week.”

Sid wants to knock Wain's plate to the floor and make him apologize to Elizabeth, but he knows he won't. For one thing, he's too tired to confront Wain; for another, it's not his job to discipline his little brother, although he knows what Caleb would have done: taken away the food and frog-marched Wain out of the restaurant. Phil and Elizabeth exchange a glance across the table, and Elizabeth shakes her head slightly. Not tonight, she seems to be saying. Phil returns to his bowl of pasta, Elizabeth picks at her salad and Sid takes a few bites of his halibut burger. It's good, but he's lost his appetite.

“You gonna eat that?” Wain points at Sid's plate.

“No.”

“Can I have it?”

“Sure.” Sid pushes the plate across to Wain, who shovels the food into his mouth, barely chewing it before he swallows. When the plate is empty, he belches loudly and grins. There is a piece of lettuce in his teeth.

Phil stands up, leaves a pile of bills on the table and helps Elizabeth to her feet. A middle-aged woman at the next table frowns at Wain as he walks by. He glares at her and says, “What are you lookin' at?”

“You gotta tone it down, buddy,” Phil says to Wain as they leave the restaurant and walk to the car.

Sid snorts and Wain turns on him. “What's your problem, man?” He flicks Sid's curls with a large greasy finger.

“That's enough, Wain,” Elizabeth says, her voice sharp and even. She links her arm in Sid's and they continue in silence to the car. Wain runs ahead of them, whacking each parking meter that he passes with an open palm. It must hurt, but he keeps it up for two blocks. When they get to Elizabeth's car, he is sitting cross-legged on the hood, listening to his iPod and singing along to some Kanye garbage. Sid hates Kanye.

No one speaks on the ride back to Phil's house. Wain is still plugged into his iPod, Elizabeth closes her eyes and rests her head against the window and Phil drives, his mouth clamped shut in a hard line. A muscle in his jaw twitches. When they get to Phil's, Elizabeth gets into the driver's seat as Wain disappears into Devi's house without a backward glance. Phil leans down and kisses Elizabeth on the cheek. Sid squats down to pet the cats, who always appear when a car pulls into the driveway.

“I'm sorry,” Phil says. “I shouldn't have suggested going out.”

“Not your fault,” Elizabeth replies. “It's hard for Wain. People coming and going out of his life. Devi gone, Sid here.” She looks at Sid. “I don't mean that you shouldn't have come, dear. It's just confusing. For everybody.”

Sid nods and stands up, brushing the cat hair off his hands. He can't pet the cats for too long or his eyes start to itch. Thanks, Devi, he thinks.

“It's no excuse for rudeness, Elizabeth,” Phil is saying.

“Ah, but it is,” Elizabeth replies.

Phi shakes his head.

“Maybe not an excuse then,” Elizabeth says. “A reason. A good reason.”

Phil shrugs. “I don't know. I can't stand it when he behaves that way—like he's never been taught any manners. Like he's some kid from the projects, for chris-sakes.” He straightens up and slaps the top of the car, hard enough to leave a dent. “Let's talk soon,” he says before he turns away and walks toward Devi's house. Sid is glad he is staying in the garage. He doesn't want to be around Wain right now, even though he does feel kind of sorry for him. But Phil is pissed, and Sid doubts whether he's going to make hot chocolate and read Wain a bedtime story.

Elizabeth turns to Sid. “Lunch tomorrow?” she asks.

“Sure,” he says.

“He didn't come home last night.” Sid can hear Phil talking on the phone downstairs. It's early—barely light—and there are still some stars visible through the skylight. Phil must be talking to Elizabeth, who is an early riser.

“I'm calling the police,” Phil says. “This is bullshit. He's only been back three days and he's already pulling this kind of stunt. Yeah, I know he's unhappy, but he's not the only one.” There is a pause, and then Phil says, “Okay, if he doesn't come back today, I'm calling the cops in the morning. And Social Services. Neither of us can take him on when he's like this. It's too much. For you, for me. The kid's got some problems—he needs more help than we can give. You know that.” Phil ends the call with a promise to let Elizabeth know if Wain turns up.

Social Services, Sid thinks. Foster care. He doesn't care what Phil and Elizabeth say about Devi. She's still a shitty mother. Abandoning first Sid and now Wain. Letting them be looked after by other people. He doesn't care about her illness or her reasons for going off her meds. He deserved better. Wain deserves better. Sid was lucky Megan and Caleb wanted him. Lots of other kids aren't so lucky—he knows that. He's heard the horror stories: foster parents who are just in it for the money, who abuse the kids in their care. Is that what will happen to Wain?

Sid sits up in bed. His sketchbook is on the floor beside the bed. Elizabeth has taken him to a different place every day since he found Wain. Sid has sketched until his hand cramped and his eyes twitched. Wicker tables set for tea in a lush seaside garden. A square concrete WWII lookout with rickety wooden steps. First Nations canoes sliding across glassy water as the sun sets on a pebbled beach. Children climbing on a green sea monster and a giant red octopus. He draws Elizabeth sitting on the sea monster's tail, her hair whipped by the wind off the water. He hasn't thought of Billy in days. He's almost embarrassed when he recalls the hours and hours—a lifetime, it seems—drawing imaginary characters in an imaginary world, when there is so much material right in front of him. He has a sudden vivid image of Megan working in her garden—weeding the dahlia beds, picking runner beans, staking tomatoes. How could he not have wanted to draw her? Or Caleb on the
Caprice
? Or Chloe at the lake? Or Tobin playing the guitar? He is suddenly and violently homesick. He needs to go home. But he can't abandon Wain. There's only one solution he can think of: Wain will have to come home with him.

He gets out of bed, pulls on some shorts and scrambles down the ladder. He can hear the shower running as he makes some toast and pours a glass of juice. He is sitting at the table, reading one of Phil's woodworking magazines, when Phil comes out of the bathroom, wrapped only in a worn blue towel.

“You're up early,” Phil says.

“I'm going home,” Sid says. “When Wain comes back.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, he probably went to a friend's house or something. Maybe he just fell asleep.”

“Maybe,” Phil says as he measures coarsely ground coffee into a glass carafe. The smell is amazing, even though Sid hates the taste of coffee. When he was little, he used to stand over Megan's fresh mug of coffee, inhale deeply, and say, “I want to drink the smell.” They all still say that when something smells particularly good—lilac blossoms, cinnamon buns, fresh sawdust, their neighbor Marly's baby (although that can go either way).

Sid stands up and goes to the sink with his dishes. With his back to Phil, he says, “I think Wain should come home with me.”

“What?”

Sid turns around to face Phil. “I think Wain should come home with me. Until school starts anyway. Megan and Caleb will be cool with it. There's lots of room right now—just one other kid besides me. And Megan says Wain is family and family should—” He stops. Maybe Megan was wrong. Maybe he was crazy to think he could help. He has a vision of Wain wringing Fred's long pink flamingo neck. He can hear Fariza wail.

“Should what?”

“Help each other, I guess. If they can. If Wain came with me, it would help Elizabeth, right? And maybe it would help Wain. It can't hurt.”

Phil presses the plunger down on his coffee. “Wain's pretty messed up,” he says.

Sid nods. “Yeah, I get that. If it doesn't work out, you can come and get him.” He's already starting to regret suggesting that Wain come with him.

Phil pours a mug of coffee and sits down at the table. He looks tired—there are bags under his eyes that weren't there when Sid first met him.

“Let's see what Elizabeth says. And your parents. They may not want another juvenile delinquent on their hands.”

Sid laughs. “Megan loves a challenge.”

“Well, Wain's a challenge, all right. Big-time. You call your mom and I'll call Elizabeth. If he comes back, we should be ready to roll. Don't want to give him the opportunity to take off again.”

“
When
he comes back, you mean.” Sid dries his hands and picks up the phone.

“Ah, the eternal optimism of youth,” Phil says.

Join the Club

“W
ant to see Devi's stuff?” Phil asks. He and Sid are sitting in the overgrown garden between the garage and the main house. It's midafternoon and there's still no sign of Wain. Sid has spent the morning sleeping and drawing while Phil sawed and sanded in his studio. Lunch was cream cheese on a stale bagel. A wrinkled peach. A glass of tap water. Sid wonders if he should offer to go grocery shopping. Or mow the lawn.

“Her stuff?” For a minute Sid isn't sure what Phil means. Why would he want to see anything of Devi's? He has no intention of getting to know her—he doesn't even want to meet her—and what would her stuff tell him about her anyway? That she likes bright colors? That she reads vampire novels? That she doesn't care if her dishes match?

“Her studio,” Phil explains. “I thought you might like to see what she does in there.”

Sid looks at Devi's house. The studio windows run the entire width of the back of the house. North facing. Perfect light. Despite himself, he is curious. And a little freaked out. He's thought about it a lot since he's been here, that artistic ability could be inherited. And so could craziness. Maybe they are one and the same. He shivers and says, “Okay.” Devi is a stranger, he thinks. A stranger connected to me by a loop of
DNA
. Might as well check it out.

As they cross the back porch of Devi's house, Sid notices that Wain's bike is gone. He's not sure if this is a good sign or not. It probably means he hasn't gone back to Jimmy Chicken, but beyond that, Sid can only guess. Maybe Wain has sold his bike on the street and jumped on a bus for parts unknown. He looks older than thirteen. Would anyone stop him—a kid in the summer, taking a bus to visit his grandma in Alberta or Ontario? Except his grandma is here. That must count for something, even in Wain's messed-up head.

Phil leads him through the unlocked back door and into the studio.

“Guess she hasn't been in here for a while,” Phil says. “Usually there's a work or two in progress.”

Sid looks around. Everything—the long scarred wooden worktable, the jumble of tiler's tools, the jars of shells and stones and sea glass, the huge cork board covered in layers of curling, yellowed sketches—is shrouded in dust. The windows are so dirty they are almost opaque. The light is sepia-toned, like an old photograph. Sid walks over to the cork board and stares at the drawings, which look as if they were done in India ink with a nibbed pen. The lines are strong, almost savage, and the paper is torn in places where the artist—Devi—used too much pressure. He lifts the top drawing to look at another, and then another. All the drawings are of crows: crows in flight, crows in trees, crows on power lines, crows fighting over garbage, dead crows on the road, crows on picket fences, crows popping out of a pie, crows dive-bombing a short woman with gray curls. Self-Portrait with Crows, Sid thinks. Another version of this drawing shows the same woman lying on the ground; crows are pecking out her eyes, there is blood on the ground. The woman is smiling. At the top of the drawing are the words
My Murder by Crows
.

Sid's stomach churns and he looks away, but not before he sees a scrap of monogrammed notepaper at the top of the board. The gold-embossed initials are plain but elegant.
E.E.
Elizabeth Eikenboom. The handwriting below is angular and upright. “
Arrange whatever pieces
come your way
.
Virginia Woolf,
” Sid reads.

“Devi used that as the inspiration for one of her best pieces.” Sid jumps at the sound of Phil's voice. He has forgotten Phil is in the room. He moves away from the cork board and stands at the worktable. He doesn't want to think about crows, but there are two in the apple tree outside the window. Not fighting or pecking out anyone's eyes. Just sitting, probably thinking about how to achieve world domination.

“It's a cool quote,” Sid says.

“She made the piece from Cowichan River stones. It weighs a ton. I framed it in cedar and helped her hang it over her bed. Elizabeth said it would kill her in an earthquake and Devi just laughed and said, ‘That's the idea, Mom.'”

“River stones,” Sid says. “Isn't that how Virginia Woolf killed herself? Filling her pockets with river stones?”

Phil nods. “I'm impressed. You know about Virginia Woolf?”

Sid shrugs. “Megan's book group had a Bloomsbury phase. I eavesdropped.”

“You're a funny kid,” Phil says. “Devi has a strange sense of humor too.”

“I'll say,” Sid replies, although he's tempted to tell Phil he's full of shit. You can't inherit a sense of humor. But he does see Devi's point. Killed by your own art. It is kind of funny.

“Most of the work she does now is on commission. Memorial stones. For gardens.”

“Memorial stones?” Sid can't imagine what these might be. Surely people don't put mosaic tombstones in their gardens. Then again, some people keep their loved ones in decorative urns on the mantelpiece. Anything is possible when it comes to the dead.