Maxine (15 page)

Barb peers uncertainly at Maxine. Come in, she says. Come in and have a coffee. Tea, you like tea don't you. I'll make— No thanks, Barb, sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to make sure, have to finish a chapter today, see you after swimming, ciao!!

Maxine does her best cheery smile and, halfway down the steps, turns and waves. Barb has closed the screen door but stands watching her, so Maxine turns right, whispering curses, gusts of snow like tiny arrows in her face, and makes for the bakery to buy bread she'll have to put in the freezer.

If you want a job in this town you can get the weekend paper, go through the ads, circle anything that looks interesting. You can carefully tailor a different version of your CV to each job and do up a nice cover letter and send it all in on time. Or you can spend that time hove off on the couch guzzling Turtles. It's all the same. If you want a job in this town, you let it be known. Mention it around and hang tight. Be prepared to hang tight for several months. No need to stir yourself, though. The job will come to you.

Karen said that when Theresa was between jobs—what a silly expression, as if you missed your footing and slipped down the crack between the elevator and the floor—Theresa was in a car accident. A van ran a red at Mayor and Merrymeeting and ploughed into the side of their Corolla. That was it for the Corolla and it could have been it for Theresa but she was lucky, it was all soft tissue—slow to heal but nowhere close to life-threatening. Theresa got herself to the Constabulary a few blocks away. She called Karen to let her know the car was a write-off and she was waiting to give a statement. Next thing Theresa's mother's friend was at the Constabulary offering to drive Theresa to the hospital, which was puzzling but appreciated. They were at the lights by the Health Sciences when something occurred toTheresa and she said, I didn't think to ask, how did you know I was there?

I called you at home. Karen told me.

Oh…Why were you calling?

Nothing, said Theresa's mother's friend, not to worry, you see the doctor and make sure you're fine. Call me in a couple of days.

What is it, though?

It's a job. A job you might be interested in.

Theresa's still working there. And because that is the way things happen in this town, and because Gail's cousin Heather works in a urology office where they're putting together a few information pamphlets for their patients, and because the doctors want it done but don't have time to write the pamphlets themselves, and because Maxine is in need of an influx of cash, here she is sitting in a urology office in the new Healthplex in the west end. There's a massage and chiropractic clinic, doctors' offices, a natural remedies outlet, and assorted other health-giving sites. And here in the urology clinic waiting room are seven men over sixty, a poinsettia with curling leaves, andMaxine, waiting to receive an envelope full of information about prostates and catheters.

The portable CD machine plays Elton John and then the Irish Descendants. A man in a biker jacket studies an ad in a magazine. It's a woman in a gauzy mauve dress on a beach. The bottom half of the photo is sand and the top is ocean and the woman transects them. He surveys the ad critically, bottom to top and back down again, as if he might not be sure whether the exposure is right. He's not impressed with the beach. He doesn't even look at the woman the first time. After that he gives her the once over but without unnecessary interest. Then he studies the beach again, licks the tip of his index finger, and flips the page.

Two of the remaining six men know each other. They know each other from way back.

How's Jack doing?

Jack's up in Toronto now, driving a cab. Wife left him.

Did she?

Second wife.

Mm.

What about Edgar?

Edgar? My God, Edgar. There's not two like him. Never changes.

I was talking to Tom the other day.

Haven't seen Tom in a dog's age.

Tom got diabetes. Not doing too well.

I seen Fred.

Fred Tobin.

Fred Chalker.

Fred Chalker, that's right. And Cy Kavanagh, he's dead.

Is he?

A couple years.

I thought I saw Cy there a few weeks back.

Not Cy.

You all right?

I had a touch of it myself. Just a touch.

There's that thing where they scrape it out.

Mm.

Maxine has been trying to write in her notebook. Her own writing has not been going especially well. Her electricity bill has sat unopened on the kitchen counter for a week. Whenever Maxine sees it, she looks away the way a dog does when it is disturbed by a human's behaviour. She has been trying to read the newspaper. It's hard, with all this talk of disease, of dying friends.

She feels her shoulders all crunched up and she doesn't want to hold out a horizontal palm, to assess shakiness.

What about Bert, Bert Noseworthy?

Gone.

Maxine leaps out of her seat and paces the perimeter of the room. Andromeda. M33, Andromeda, M33, Leo I, Leo II, Peg dSph, Cass dSph, why isn't the goddamn envelope ready? She stops in front of a Doisneau photograph at the far end of the room, a long row of boys peeing. Two of them have very white feet and one of those has a pigeon on his head. Maybe all urology clinics have photos of people peeing. Maybe urologists can buy the poster at a discount. It could be a joke, or a subliminal message.
You too can do this.
Maxine tries to pull a long, slow breath into her belly but it shudders high in her chest. The envelope was supposed to be ready.

The thing about death, even an expected death, is that it continues to be a surprise, long after it's happened. You see the person in the toothpaste aisle and you thinkThere's X—good old X, been a while, I'll go and have a word. And then you are shocked to recall that whoever that person is, it can't be X, because X died a month ago, or three months ago. You blunder through a period of such surprises—Oh! and Oh! and No, wrong again!—before some part of your brain decisively lays a small, ragged bouquet in an imaginary graveyard and you begin to realize that you're not going to be seeing X any more. This can take a long time.

Kyle has started talking about himself in the third person. It began with the computer: Larsen the Lethal defeats the enemy again! But today he clicks away at his game and says: Kyle wondered whether Maxine went to the bakery.

Maxine is in mid-paragraph so she doesn't answer right away.

Kyle says: I wonder if Maxine went to the bakery today said Kyle hopefully.

Maxine says:Maxine was in the middle of her paragraph so she hoped Kyle would go look on the kitchen table.

If Maxine teases Kyle too much—if something comes out sounding a tad cruel instead of funny, or if he's feeling a bit too raw for banter, he reaches for pathos. He's crumbling a blueberry muffin at the Aquarena after his swimming lesson. There's a smudge of blue under his lower lip thatMaxine would like to wipe off but she leaves him be and fiddles instead with the brown plastic lid of the coffee, trying to get the flippy square to stay open; there's the stink of chlorine, the unnatural warmth, and whatever she's just said has sent Kyle into a mini-huff. He gazes past her, pretending to be in a trance, flutters his eyelids melodramatically, and, after several seconds, snaps back to attention, saying Whaaaah? Did you say something?

It's so phoney she wants to smile, but that would be crushing, so she reaches over and pats his upper arm and says, Buddy, you're not even eating that, let's get out of here.

Maxine stops into the pet shop before noon and James insists he was about to close for lunch anyway; he flips theOpen sign around and locks up and they have a sandwich near theWar Memorial.

You know, says James, I didn't think you'd come by. I'm really glad.

And Maxine feels glad too because it turns out she and James have read a lot of the same books and have the same views on many things. He is surprisingly easy to have a conversation with; there are nomoments of toe-clenching awkwardness, no silences in which she searches frantically for something to say that could possibly be of interest to another human being. And when they've finished and split the bill she walks back to the shop with him and he writes down her email address so he can send her information about a book. She waves at him through the window and the walk back up the hill to home is not at all a disagreeable one.

Max! There's been a coup.

Wow. Provincial or federal?

No, the gym. My class resigned in protest. The whole class. Gail is trying to sound matter-of-fact but you can hear her pride rushing through the wires. You could probably track a bright orange line of pride flowing uphill from Gower Street.

Are you serious? Oh Gail, that's great. Militant fitness-seekers. I'm really glad.

Well a couple didn't. But literally two or three, the new ones. Everyone else—they went downstairs and demanded their fees back, so the management caved. I'm back on deck.

I bet those poor two or three will be ruing the day. Ha, get it, Gay—foodies regretting something—they roux the day.

They'll be doing one-handed push-ups from here on in.

You're no longer on the shelf.

I'm way off that shelf, baby.

Your shelf life was short-lived.

Gail's parents split up when she was twelve, and she asked to live with her father, who had been taken aback but not unwilling. Her mother moved to Alberta and, later, somewhere like Texas or New Mexico. Her father, a tall, reserved, dark-haired man, kept her fed and clothed and secretly hoped that whatever advice and womanly things were required would materialize from some other quarter, one of his several sisters, although when Gail was fifteen he made an appointment and dropped her off at Planned Parenthood, where a nurse explained about birth control in a calm, friendly, matter-of-fact way. When he retired, he moved to the Codroy Valley, where he'd grown up, and bought several acres. Gail's grandmother has since moved into a home in St. John's, but in the fall Gail drives out and cooks her father's fresh-caught fish. She visits family and fills his deep-freeze with caribou stew and soup made from his vegetables, and if it's warm enough they sit on his deck in the evening with blankets and a bottle of red. He comes into town at Christmas, and for brief visits. He'd like to see you, Gail says. Come for dinner on Saturday. I'm thinking plain but hearty.

Maxine?…Maxine. What'll you do with Bluebird?

What? When?

When, you know, if you have go to Paris for anything. You can't take him on the plane.

No, I couldn't.

I could look after him. I'd feed him every day. I wouldn't forget, I promise.

Otherwise Bluebird would be fish meal.

He'd be a fish stick.

Things would be looking fishy over your way.

There might be an o-fish-al investigation.

Hey that's a pretty good one, boy.

“I'll have the fish # 2,” said Jerome, closing his plastic menu and handing it to the waitress. “With extra tartar sauce.” “And for you, miss?” Frédérique did not raise her head. She was wearing sunglasses, a long, navy, belted coat and a dark, peaked cap with her hair tucked into it. When Jerome arrived, he'd walked past without recognizing her and sat at another table. She had joined him, sitting with her back to the wall.

“Coffee,” said Frédérique, and waited until the waitress had gone some distance away. She leaned in close to Jerome. “Did you do it?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Tell me slowly, exactly where it is.”

“OK.” Jerome looked excited. His cheeks were still pink from the walk. “At the back of the—”

“Ssh!”

“Oh yeah, sorry,” he whispered. “Well the guinea pigs are at the back of the store. Next to them there's a door leading out to the alley. And in the middle guinea pig cage there's a kind of low wooden box that has two ramps going up to it. It's just for exercise. They walk up the ramp and over the box and then down the other side. I made it for them, the exercise structure. The box had one missing side—it didn't need to be closed in on every side. So I put your thing in there, and I used the same wood and cut a piece to finish it off, to make it into a closed box. It's the piece at the back. If you picked it up right now, the ramps would come with it because they're nailed on, but it's not very heavy. You'd reach around to the back and that back is tacked on with a few tiny nails. You could push it in easily. But even if someone knew it was in the store somewhere, and I don't know how they could figure that out, even then that ramp is covered in shavings and stuff. I can't imagine anyone would look there. And there's a small blue chalk mark on the base of the cage, on the far right, just like you said to.”

“Jerome, you have done so well.”

Maxine calls him Ray now, of course, but she'd prefer Mr. Fiander still. He stands tall, near the fire, hands clasped behind his back, in a flannel shirt and navy sweater, looking neat and clean as he used to in uniform. It's a soft, thick wool with buttons down the middle and pockets on either side, the cardigan Gail gave him on Christmas Day, which is the last time Maxine saw him. Always the military bearing, short hair, straight back, and a seriousness of the face. Ray Fiander doesn't say a lot and he won't tell you any lies. He could kill you quickly or slowly if he wanted, but he's not tough for the sake of it and already the angles of his eyes and cheek seem softer as Gail pulls on his arm and gives him a plate with four small, delicate hors d'oeuvres.

That's smoked char, Dad, OK, with lemon. And bruschetta with Oka and chutney. Ted'll bring you some, Max. You look cold, is it freezing out there? Get in by the fire and get warm. Don't be hogging the fire, Dad. Let's get some wine open here.

Maxine's own father taught physics at the university until his retirement. Maxine grew up thinking normal people packed up the car with blankets and thermoses and a telescope on nights that would be especially clear and headed to a good spot to set up. They brought sandwiches with cheese singles and Miracle Whip and wax paper wrapping. She can smell those sandwiches any time she thinks of it. Sunny Bee white bread. Sometimes she makes them. You have to get the brand-name cheese slices, with the folded-over plastic envelope. Often she fell asleep on the grass wrapped up in a blanket.