“I haven’t heard this song in ages,” Fern whispered to me.
The dancers began their routine, arms jutting out this way and that.
They weren’t very good, which might explain why they were performing on an old ship on a Sunday afternoon for tourists. But their mediocrity charmed me and I found myself drawn to one blond dancer in particular. He wasn’t much better than the rest of them, but he did have a certain spark. It was as though this was his last chance to get things right. One never knew who was sitting in the audience.
White clothes. Young boy. How many Freddy Penders did this world churn out?
The song ended. I managed a smile and an agreeable nod at the Montreal couple. The dancers took their bows. Just as quickly as he’d come into the room, the young man danced away.
It was impossible to concentrate on anything after that. The woman from Montreal kept asking me questions. Had I ever been to Montreal? How far away was Balsden? How did Fern and I know each other? When I could no longer stand the small talk, I excused myself, claiming a headache.
“I need to get some air.”
I went out on the deck. It was a cool July day. I stood at the railing, looking out across the water. It wasn’t the first time suicide had crossed my mind. In the days and years following John’s death, it was all I could do to keep the blood flowing through my veins. If it hadn’t been for Charlie, for the presence of another devastated human in the house, I doubt I would’ve ever gotten out of bed in the mornings. I would’ve lain there forever, letting the worms work through my withering insides.
There were meals to cook and volunteer groups to attend and sympathies to receive from well-meaning acquaintances. There was a life—or rather, a semblance of one—that needed to be picked up and put back together. I’d sit at the kitchen table, day after day, week after week, trying to fit together what pieces I could, trying to recompose some familiar landscape. But all I ever managed were fragments: a piece of sky, half a window, the tip of a smile.
I curled my hands around the railing of that boat, overwhelmed by solitude, a tidal wave’s wall gathering above me. There was no one left in the world. Everything I once held dear was gone. My foot stepped up onto the railing’s lowest rung. It would all happen so quickly and quietly. Everything would fade to black.
I heard voices behind me and turned around. Two young girls came onto the deck. I realized they were in the dance troupe, although it took a few moments to place them because they were now in their street clothes. They went to the far end of the deck and huddled together, talking in whispers—speculating about him? Calling him names? One of the girls laughed, and if Fern hadn’t stepped onto the deck at that moment, I would’ve marched right over to them.
“You don’t know the first thing about anyone,” I would’ve said.
“No one told me the Andrews Sisters were coming to pick me up.”
Mr. Sparrow is sitting in a wheelchair, his bathrobe wrapped tightly around his small frame. He looks better than I expected, in spite of a bandage stuck diagonally over his right eye. Seeing him again is like claiming a small piece of home.
“We’re here for our Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” Fern says.
“I brought you a change of clothes,” I tell Mr. Sparrow. “I didn’t imagine you’d want to go home in your pyjamas.”
“That’s very kind of you.” He takes the bag from me. “Excuse me for a moment.” He slowly gets up from his chair and shuffles to the bathroom. I want to take his arm and help him along. I’m nervous about him falling.
“He should have a walker,” Helen whispers.
The three of us stand in silence while Mr. Sparrow changes in the bathroom. I feel Helen’s eyes on me, but I focus on the white walls. I managed to collect myself in the car, stopping the tears as quickly as they’d started. I won’t cry here.
The door to the bathroom opens and Mr. Sparrow comes out dressed in the brown pants and striped shirt I’d picked out for him.
“Have they been treating you well?” Helen asks him.
“As well as can be expected,” he says as he shuffles back across the room. (Has he gotten shorter?) “The food isn’t as bad as they make it out to be.”
Fern guides Mr. Sparrow into the wheelchair. “You’re not taking this chair with you, I hope.”
I watch with irritation as she lays a blanket across his lap. He doesn’t need that. It’s too hot out. I step over to the wheelchair, informing them that I’ll do the pushing.
“Sure is nice to be going home,” Mr. Sparrow says as we make our way down the hall.
A young nurse waves. “Take care, Mr. Sparrow,” she calls.
“She was quite taken with me,” he says once we’re in the elevator. I’m still lost inside my own head. I stare down at the bandage on Mr. Sparrow’s forehead.
Luckily, Charlie was working days. There was time to get my son cleaned up before his father came home. It was John who insisted Charlie couldn’t know.
“I don’t feel comfortable lying,” I said, dabbing a wet facecloth against the gash on his forehead. He was sitting at the kitchen table. I had to hold his chin in my hand to keep his head up. He refused to look at me. A few damp tendrils of hair framed his face. Smudges of mud on his cheeks were hardening to grey. He smelled like something left in the rain. The wound above his eye was superficial, thankfully, in spite of its jagged redness. There was no need for hospitals, although I was still tempted to take him.
“Your father needs to know,” I said, dipping the facecloth in the bowl of water next to me.
“No, he doesn’t,” John said. “He doesn’t need to know anything.”
I wrung out the cloth. My hands were shaking, still burning from my fall.
“You should’ve fought back, John. That’s what your father would’ve done.”
Silence.
“Sometimes, in life, we have to stand up for ourselves. People have to know they can’t push you around, that you’re not a victim.”
Water dripped.
“You have to be tough.”
His eyes remained downcast. He seemed weak. I needed to light a fire in my son. I was desperate for some sign of anger and rebellion. Something that would signal that we’d recover. Shake this off.
“Did you say something to upset the boys?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t even talk to them.”
“Did you
do
something?”
Another head shake. His green jacket was curled up in his lap. He’d refused to let me take it from him. He clutched it as if it were a part of him.
“Did one of the boys say something to
you?”
I didn’t look at him then. I couldn’t. Those ugly names I’d heard.
“No.” The voice was small. “Are you going to tell Dad?”
I sighed and pressed the facecloth against his wound. “Why don’t you want your father to know?”
“I don’t want him to think of me like that.”
I paused. “Like what?”
“Like I’m different.”
“Your father loves you, John. He may have trouble saying it, but he does. You know that, don’t you?”
“I don’t want to embarrass him.”
“Why would you think—?”
His hand grabbed my wrist. “Please don’t say anything. Please.”
His eyes brimmed with tears; his voice was thin with desperation.
“All right,” I said quietly. “Let’s think of a story to tell your father.”
“He was walking home and slipped in the parking lot,” I said when Charlie got home from work that night. I didn’t look at him and pretended to be occupied by something in a magazine. “I just bought him new pants and now they have a rip in the knee. I don’t know if I have any patches.”
“Are you sure he’s all right?” Charlie said, getting up from his chair. He went down the hall towards John’s room.
“He’s perfectly fine,” I called out, hoping he didn’t notice the twinge in my voice. I watched him knock softly on John’s door. He stood there, his head down, hands in his pockets, wearing the same beige work shirt he wore for all his shifts. Inside the collar was a small strip of white tape with “C. Sparks” written on it. Direct. Simple. I made things that way. Easier for him. To think then, that at the end, he was the one who would embrace things far more complex than I ever could.
John’s door opened and Charlie disappeared into the room. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with the two of them alone like that. So I got up and walked down the hall. I stopped just short of the doorway and listened.
“You’re very lucky, young man. You got very close to your eye. Another half inch and you would have done some real damage. Does it hurt?”
“Not really.” I heard a slight touch of bravado in my son’s voice.
“You should put some ice on it.”
“Mom made me keep a bag of frozen peas on it all after noon.”
“One time, when I was your age, maybe a year or two younger, I tripped over a rock in a field and blacked out. When I woke up, it was night. Pitch black, not even a star in the sky. I couldn’t see anything around me. But I heard my mom calling my name and I followed the sound until I found her.”
His voice was quiet, his tone a gentle one I’d often heard but never paid much attention to. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall.
“She was pretty relieved when she saw me. I had a bump on my forehead the size of an egg for a week afterwards, but I got by all right. It could have been worse.”
“I suppose.”
I quickly tiptoed down the hall again to my seat at the kitchen table.
“I’m surprised you’re so calm about this,” Charlie said when he sat back down at the table. He blew on a forkful of scalloped potatoes.
“Boys fall,” I said, breaking my snickerdoodle cookie into pieces. Charlie said nothing else during the rest of dinner.
Afterwards, while John and Charlie sat in the living room watching TV, I scoured my pan, working away at the blackened spots of fat. My son wasn’t what those boys had been calling him. I scrubbed and scrubbed, trapped in a hell that would only deepen as the years progressed.
The next day, I kept John home from school. He wouldn’t have to face those boys. For another day, at least. After a big breakfast of pancakes and eggs, I sat him down in the living room. I hadn’t slept a wink all night.
“I’ll make sure those boys never hurt you again,” I promised.
“You said you wouldn’t say anything.”
“This problem needs to be fixed, John.”
“You’ll only make things worse! You always do!”
He stormed out of the living room and down the hall. I flinched when his bedroom door slammed shut.
Every day for the rest of the year, I walked him to school in the morning and met him at the edge of the schoolyard at the end of each day. He hated me for it, but I wasn’t bothered. My son was safe now. He was protected. This was my job, whether he liked it or not. He refused to let us walk side by side. I respected that and kept my distance behind him.
It’s a matter of pride
, I thought as I watched him hurry away from me.
Helen wants to join Mr. Sparrow and me in the back seat.
“Just in case,” she whispers.
“In case of what?” I ask.
“Something happens. Again.”
“He’s fine, Helen. You sit up front with Fern. Besides, you get carsick when you’re in the back.”
When we pull up in Mr. Sparrow’s driveway, he makes a soft, choked sound. He reaches over and grabs my hand.
“You’re home again,” I say.
We help him out of the car, although he seems to be pretty steady on his feet. As soon as he’s standing, he scurries up his driveway.
“Just want to check things out back,” he says.
“I watered the tomatoes,” I call out, hoping that nothing is dead. The drive back did me some good. When we reached the outskirts of Balsden, I could feel myself sink into the grey upholstery of the back seat. I was back on home ground.
I catch Helen’s scrutinizing gaze. I look away.
Mr. Sparrow invites us into the house for tea. “It’s the least I can do in return for your kindness.”
“That’s not necessary,” Fern says, but Mr. Sparrow insists.
The air inside is thick with heat.
“I’m going to fire up the air conditioner in the bedroom,” he says. “That should cool things off a bit.” He disappears down the hall, leaving the three of us sitting around his kitchen table.
“I can’t stay here,” Helen says in a low voice. She picks a newspaper off the kitchen table and begins to fan herself. “It’s unbearable.”
“What’s that smell?” Fern’s nose crinkles up. “He didn’t leave any meat out, did he?”
“Of course not,” I say. “The house just needs a good scrubbing. I’ve been meaning to come over and give the floors a wash.”
“Did I tell you I hired a cleaning lady?” Helen asks. “She started last week. I pay her ten dollars an hour, but it’s worth it. She got my bathtub looking like new again.” She leans across the table. “Forearms like rolls of deli meat.”
“I wouldn’t want a maid,” Fern says. “I wouldn’t feel safe.”
“Don’t be silly,” Helen says. “Grace is the sweetest thing.”
“It’s not Grace I’d be worried about,” Fern says. “It’s the unemployed husband she goes home to after cleaning your toilet.
He’s
the one to watch out for.”
“You’re getting more and more paranoid in your old age,” Helen says.
A loud
bang
comes from the hallway, causing the three of us to jump.
“What on earth …?”
“The air conditioner,” I remind them.
Mr. Sparrow returns to the kitchen. “You should start feeling cooler air soon,” he says, wiping his hands on his pants.
“Does it always sound like that?” Helen asks.
“Like what?” Mr. Sparrow says, which answers the question. He goes to the sink to fill up the kettle. “So, what have I missed while I was away? Anyone die?”
“It depends on who you ask,” I say, holding the newspaper in front of my face.
“What do you mean?” Mr. Sparrow asks.
“Don’t get all wound up again,” Helen says.
I flip the newspaper down. “He’s either dead or he isn’t. Let’s see what a reasonable man like Mr. Sparrow thinks.”
“Who’s not dead?” Mr. Sparrow sets the kettle on the stovetop.
“Freddy Pender,” I say.
Mr. Sparrow’s brow furrows in concentration. “Pender … Pender. You mean the one who drowned years ago?”