The Matter of Sylvie (11 page)

She can't quite believe this holey kismet-knit sweater is hers. She's such a lover of animals, of life in general. Surely the kindred spirit of Saint Francis? She's done this through her rushing about, her own rash stupidity, never taking the time to think things through, her reckless, high-wire ways. And here again speeding down the highway this morning like a maniacal woman desperate for redemption from the past, the present tension between her mother/lover/sister/brother. Her uncertain future rolled all into one garbage-filled trough on the side of Highway 2 with a dead coyote in it.

The doorbell rings at 10:45 PM. It's not her husband who some-times >misplaces his keys, nor is it the kind constable from next door, but his wife, Mary-Lynn. Jacqueline does a cursory glance at the state of her living room before she opens the door. She's tucked a peach-coloured bath towel around Nate, who is slumbering heavily, snoring lightly on the chesterfield; the broken wicker basket full of newly dirtied clothes, the splash of vomit on the carpet almost dry and only faintly odorous. The washed Lego spread out across the bookshelf and on top of the muted television drying. She opens the door.

“Come in,” Jacqueline whispers.

“I've come to see if everything is all right, I heard your husband—” Mary-Lynn says.

She doesn't make a move to enter the house. She sees sleeping Nate.

“Isn't home.” Jacqueline finishes the sentence for her.

From the flush on Mary-Lynn's normally pale face, Jacqueline knows that her husband's truancy is now public information, and by tomorrow will be all over the neighbourhood. She can't stand the idea of every wife on the block indignant on her behalf, she imagines, because who could side with her husband in such a case? No, it's not on her behalf she truly cares about, but the children's. Her husband wasn't there for his children, and that betrayal is far worse than any woman he may have slept with. The chickadees, two-note refrain of
Be-there
>where her husband is concerned died a long time ago, years before this afternoon. In truth his presence fades with each child they have. She can't think about the swirling baby in her uterus, it makes her anxious, nauseated.

“Thank you for your help this afternoon with Nate and Lesa,” Jacqueline says to steer the conversation away from her husband.

She knows she should be used to his absence by now, like half the other RCMP wives on the block, Mary-Lynn as well, but she's not. She's twenty-seven, young enough to still want her husband despite his duplicity. And there are times in this life that simply you need someone.

“It's the least I could do, considering,” Mary-Lynn says and looks down the quiet, dark street at a flash of lightning.

Does she know about the reckless hug? Jacqueline wonders. Did her husband tell her that too? No, she will not feel shame for that—it was need, honest-to-God, down-on-your-knees need. Regardless, her face burns. She can't look Mary-Lynn in the eye.

She's enormously thankful for Mary-Lynn, who ran through the neighbourhood this afternoon after the man in the station wagon sped away, gathering Nate and Lesa for her, alerting the other mothers. Jacqueline is also acutely aware that none of the mothers came over afterward, nor called. And tomorrow when news of her absent husband reaches them, if they offer nothing, not sympathy, not indignation, then she will be fine. It's what she expects anyway.

Mary-Lynn stands stiffly in the doorway.

“Are you sure you won't come in?” Jacqueline asks.

She knows Mary-Lynn means well, in spite of her standoffish nature. Otherwise why else would Mary-Lynn be here at 10:45 at night? Notwithstanding, she has to admit, it's a little like receiving solace from the Queen, distant and cold, however well intended. Besides, she doesn't want pity from her or any of the other mothers in the neighbourhood. She wants to put Sylvie, who is still wandering about the house, to bed and sleep for twenty-four hours straight in the hope that when she wakes up, this will all be a remote memory, a faded nightmare.

“I don't want to wake your children, it's late. I wanted to make sure you were all right,” Mary-Lynn says and turns to go down the steps.

At the bottom, she pauses and looks back at Jacqueline.

“God looks after us all,” she says, and when Jacqueline fails to respond, “Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm tired,” says Jacqueline, “so God-forsaken tired.”

Jacqueline feels the metal burrs she collects beneath her skin so her children won't have to.

Lloyd's the first to spot Constable Pete as he bursts into Neville's lounge, standing a moment at the front door to adjust his vision to the darkened room.

“Over here, constable,” Lloyd says. The paramedics, the waitress, the bartender, the security guard, several other patrons pause briefly to stare at Constable Pete, then go back to the important business of imbibing and selling.

Pete sprints across the room. He's out of breath, covered in snow and cow shit, straw and calf blood, reeks to some low manger.

“Jesus, Saint Peter, you could have cleaned up a little.” Lloyd waves his cigar in the air to cover the stench of heemno.

Judge Wade smiles, doesn't offer the constable a seat. Constable Pete stands uncomfortably in front of them. He's bursting with something.

“Well, Pete, what is it?” Corporal Lloyd asks.

Pete can't speak for breathing.

“I ran over,” he says. “Didn't want the inspector to see the car here.”

He tries to catch his breath; it's a full twelve country blocks from the detachment to Neville's in the frigid cold.

“Inspector?” Lloyd cocks his ear to one side, his face paling despite the full bloom of Southern Comfort.

Yes, he's off duty but in full uniform in a licensed lounge. Good thing he left the cruiser parked at the courthouse, an unplanned alibi, if it comes to that.

“He got wind, I don't know how—but he knows. He's on his way over here now.”

Lloyd stands up, light-headed, almost falls back into his chair, stops to butt his cigar out in the overflowing ashtray.

“No, go, get out.” Constable Pete motions toward the back door of the lounge.

“Shchastluvo,” the judge says, hands him the napkin.

Lloyd tips his hat at the judge. He's going to need all the good Ukrainian luck he can find. He stuffs the napkin sight unseen into the breast pocket of his beige shirt.

Corporal Lloyd and Constable Pete leave through the back door. The inspector from Edmonton enters through the front door.

Judge Wade waves him over, impervious.

“Seen Corporal Lloyd?” The inspector asks, dense black brows knotted on his porpoise-broad forehead.

Judge Wade gestures in the thick air, puffs on his cigar.

“Not today,” the judge says.

The inspector's mouth is set in a straight lip as he surveys the patrons of the lounge, the RCMP parka on the back of the chair across from the judge, the still-burning cigar in the ashtray. Judge Wade watches him through half-closed eyes, sips his Southern Comfort. He's got nothing to worry about; more power than an inspector, and they both know it. The inspector doesn't bother saying goodbye.

In the trench, Lesa thinks she sees the animal's soul rising like discernible vapours, like a watery wake of smoke from its inert body, heavenbound for good, for great, for God this time. She lets out a final sob, takes a deep breath, regains herself, looks up at the wide blue sky, finds an undersized comfort, like too-small underwear, but consoling nonetheless.

She digs around her Spandex body for a tissue, finds a slightly used Air Canada napkin tucked into the top of her boots, wipes the salt water leaking from her eyes, down her cheeks, her chin, her neck. She glances over at the dead animal, realizes in horror/joy that the animal's chest is heaving. The thing is still alive! The coyote is alive! She jumps to her feet, unsteady in the wake of everything, dances around the ditch. She checks her non-existent pockets again for something to stop the bleeding. Comes up with nothing. She fumbles with the knotted string at her throat, instead rips it off, and holds the black cape out like the Grim Reaper's toreador.

The animal's chest is labouring heavily, plainly, she doesn't know how she missed that before. And the troubling pool of black blood around the coyote's mouth is spreading, but its dark eye is alive, glittering with the life she and Saint Francis hold so dear. Oh, she's sure, she's so sure she can save it. She's elated at this second chance. The idea of darning the hole in her thin kismet. She stops dancing, crouches down on her hands and knees so as not to terrify the poor animal. But then as she moves closer, the coyote bares its awful yellow sharp(!) teeth and snarls. She stands up abruptly, alpha woman. The animal watches wildly through one eye, tries to drag its chest-labouring shattered body away from her. Oh God, she thinks, not that. She can't be yet the second coming of the coyote's demise. She puts her hand out as if to stop the animal or perhaps herself, but the coyote struggles back anyway, leaving the slick dark trail of its leaky blood over the blond stubble wheat. Each drag pierces her body.

Maintaining a safe distance from the coyote, she averts her eyes, so as not to appear confrontational; wonders if she should run up and find another pay phone, call Mr. Green at his office? Would he be back yet? She glances at her watch, 10:30 AM. He's likely not back. Not really an option given the circumstances of her sudden disappearance. Perhaps she could flag down a truck driver on the highway, get him to radio a veterinarian. Although she doesn't know what vet would come out to fight a flea-infested coyote for its life. Fish and Game possibly, but she knows in her animal heart that the solution would be a single gunshot wound to the head, not the reassurance of a fire-retardant cape belonging to a super woman. She looks down the ditch at the kilometres of garbage, everything, including herself, the waning coyote, covered in grey highway grit from the passing cars above.

She realizes there is nothing to be done, flimsy kismet and knitted sweaters alike. All she can do in this definitive moment, which has nothing to do with God is good or God is great, let us thank him for our food, but everything earthly, human: morass, muck and thorny crowns. All she can do is act as witness. Carry out the animal's rightful wake, watch it draw its last secular breath. She gazes up at the wild blue sky, a white cloud congealing on the distant horizon. She looks back at the coyote, but all she sees is her mother in the front seat of her father's Plymouth Fury, something in her arms, a lethal white cloud solidifying in a closed car. Lesa powerless to stop it.

Sheets of white light flash across the dark horizon for a split second, followed by the distant reverberation of thunder. A summer storm is brewing. Jacqueline is grateful; the humidity in the house is unbearable, though thunder makes her uneasy. She counts after each flash: one, two, three, four seconds waiting for the disquieting
crack
like a leather whip as she sits on their split toilet lid, smoking, watching Sylvie play in the tub.

“Keep the water in the tub, Sylvie,” she says every minute or so, regardless of what Sylvie is doing, to remind her not to raise both her arms then drop them like rag doll limbs into the water. Sylvie looks at her curiously, and then goes back to plummeting Lesa's Barbie that Sylvie cut all the hair off of last week into the cloud of white bubbles. She puts her arms over her head.

“Arms down, Sylvie.”

Sylvie looks at her again, startled, as if she just realizes Jacqueline is there.

Jacqueline shakes her head. Sylvie puts her arms down.

“Let's get you to bed. It's almost midnight. Mommy wash your hair?” Jacqueline says. Sylvie loves getting her hair washed. It's one of three things, along with Smarties and drawing, that Sylvie can be still through.

Jacqueline folds a towel beside the tub and gets down on her knees.

“Lay back, Sylvie. Mommy will hold your head.”

Sylvie stretches out freely, trusting herself wholly to Jacqueline, who cradles her head in her hands. Sylvie moves her small, sinewy body back and forth, agile like a snake as she floats on the surface of the water; lucent ripples radiate out from her, lap against the side of the tub, spill over.

“Be still, Sylvie.”

But Sylvie can't hear her; she's in her own faraway world.

Such sweet purity, Jacqueline thinks as she pours water from a plastic measuring cup over Sylvie's thick black hair. Jacqueline massages shampoo that smells like lilacs into Sylvie's scalp. Sylvie stops moving and closes her eyes. She loves this part. Jacqueline examines her sun-browned face, her marred lips, the uneven tilt of her eyes. And all at once, Jacqueline feels the weight of mother love, dangerous, crashing, crushing; it takes her breath away. She comprehends in this simple act of hair washing what she's always known—that Sylvie will never be capable of looking after herself, never be able to navigate the world without her or the very least her sister, Lesa, at her side.

Sylvie opens her eyes as if on cue and Jacqueline looks into them searching for something that will ease the moment. Some silvery lining, however tarnished, some slim sliver of hope that says otherwise. How can Jacqueline keep her safe for an entire lifetime when she narrowly managed to save her from
that man
this afternoon? Simply because she left coffee simmering on the stove? What kind of shaky providence is that? Certainly not the divine intervention of the God that Mary-Lynn mentioned earlier. How anyone can find solace in a God capable of such treachery and flimsy intercession eludes Jacqueline. Perhaps it's fear, out-and-out fear that keeps people in faith, keeps faith in check. The unknown worse than the known, however horrific that may be. She looks deep inside Sylvie's eyes to where the daughter of her dreams lies: lucid Sylvie, smart Sylvie,
safe
Sylvie, but Sylvie's darkness is as indecipherable as any God's.