The Rain Barrel Baby (4 page)

Emma and Delia smoked cigars by the river. Emma had stolen hers from Frank. He kept a small stash in the freezer and enjoyed one now and then in the summer. Delia bought hers at Shoppers Drug Mart. She looked older than her fourteen years and was sometimes able to buy tobacco, depending who was working the till. Today she’d been lucky.

Emma’s cigar was made from pipe tobacco and smelled a lot better than Delia’s, which stank like a regular stogie. They were careful not to breathe in the smoke. Emma had inhaled once, a Cuban cigar stolen from Delia’s mother’s boyfriend, and she had coughed for half an hour solid, and then intermittently for an hour after that.

She wanted to tell Delia about her mother wetting her pants, but she couldn’t. She had tried once to talk about her mum’s drunkenness with her friend, but Delia had laughed and Emma had wished more than anything that she hadn’t bothered. The laughter came as a complete surprise to her. It had made her feel very alone.

So they talked about boys. Donald in particular and a boy named Vince that Delia yearned for.

“Okay, first we have to fix it so that Donald and Vince become friends,” Delia said, “so that they hang around together. It’ll be easier for us if they do.”

“Then they’ll pursue us,” Emma said. “Overcoming all kinds of obstacles, like other guys who will also be madly in love with us. Especially me.”

“No. Especially me.” Delia pushed Emma.

“No, me.” Emma pushed back. “Vince’s parents will go out of town and Donald will stay at his house.” She puffed thoughtfully on her sweet-smelling cigar.

“And they’ll invite us over for the night,” Delia said. “You’ll say you’re sleeping at my house and I’ll say I’m sleeping at yours and we’ll stay with Vince and Donald all night long.”

“Donald and Vince.”

“Vince and Donald.”

“Donald and Vinnie.”

“Vince and Don-boy.”

“Shut up!”

“You started it!”

“We’ll have dinner and listen to Sheryl Crow,” Emma said.

“Who’s gonna cook?”

“We’ll order in. From Santa Lucia. They make great dinners. We can pretend to the guys that we did the cooking so they’ll wanna marry us.”

“I don’t wanna marry anybody.” Delia blew a perfect smoke ring.

“I do,” Emma said. “After supper we’ll retire to two separate bedrooms.”

“Retire?”

“Yeah. Me and Donald will go to Vince’s parents’ bedroom and you and Vince will go to his bedroom.”

“I wanna use the parents’ room. It’ll be nicer.”

“No. Sorry. Dibs on the parents’ room. Anyway, Vince’ll want to show you his stuff, like his model airplanes and his Pamela Lee collection.”

“Fuck off! He won’t have stuff like that. He’ll have like, knives and bullets and stuff.”

“I’ll talk to Donald.” Emma tried a smoke ring but, as usual, it didn’t come close. “He’ll listen and he’ll tell me his secrets and I’ll understand. And we’ll kiss and talk till morning comes. I won’t smoke any cigars that day.”

“Won’t you be having sex?”

“No.”

“I’m pretty sure I will be,” Delia said. “I think Vince has had shitloads of experience with women. He’s probably been seduced by one of his mother’s friends, I figure. He’ll be the one to show me how to have sex. God, I am so ready for this.”

Emma was so not ready for that yet. On this first occasion it would just be kisses.

When their cigars were finished Emma and Delia followed the path up from the river and headed for the 7-Eleven for food and drink to get rid of the horrible tastes in their mouths.

That night Emma gazed out her open window at the bright back garden. The moon shone in such a way that the shadows fell elsewhere. A rabbit sat in the centre of the yard, perfectly still. It could have been made of glass. Emma made a sound at the window, just a breath really, but enough to alert the rabbit. It didn’t turn its head to see her, or run away to avoid her. It stayed the same except for a quiver. Her sound was too small to cause more than that, but too big for things to stay as they were. The rabbit was in limbo. Purgatory.

Emma shivered. The rabbit’s fear was for its life. What else was there? It didn’t have to worry about its breasts not growing or having stared too long at a boy that it wanted to kiss. All it had to worry about was being killed.

“Don’t worry, little rabbit,” Emma called. “I’m not gonna hurt ya.”

A car door clicked shut at the same time that Emma spoke. She didn’t hear it, but the rabbit did and hopped into the darkness under the almond hedge.

1958

He’s eleven to her seven, a big kid. He leans against the apple tree and makes room against his chest for her small and trembly body. The ache in her neck is the worst. She can hardly move her head.

Ray holds her gently and rests his chin on her tangled hair. He sings a song from the radio. Words of love. Buddy Holly is his favourite. She feels light-headed, disconnected, but the fear in her gut begins to subside.

The scent of apple blossom fills the air, mingled with the unbearably sweet fragrance of the plum. Ray strokes her hair. The sunlight slants through the new leaves and hurts her eyes, but it’s a good hurt. Not like when her mother shakes her.

A few doors down a push mower clatters quietly through its task. “Just the boulevard, Ronnie, dear,” a mother calls. “The rest of the grass doesn’t really need it yet.”

Ray laughs. A kid who cuts the lawn before it really needs it.

She feels safe with Ray on this evening in spring, cool breeze on her hot face. She trusts him; he’s her brother.

The Present

In the dream his love moved inside her. He was her husband. And her friend.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he says and kisses her face.

He offers her cherry pound cake and she bites into the sweet dense pastry.

“Mmm,” Denise Foote murmured in her sleep.

He sits next to her and when she moves away he follows.

She longs to be desired, even if it’s only because of her hair and smooth skin. She’s nineteen.

Denise woke up.

The loss of sharing her kisses felt like the biggest loss of her life. She saw now that it might be wrong to feel that way. Wrong-headed, as her mother used to say. It might not be right, but it was true. How can something true be wrong? Easy. It was true that she loved one of her children less than the other two and that couldn’t be right, could it?

Denise closed her eyes and felt Sadie insinuating herself between her and Frank in their bed. This morning? No. Nowhere near this morning. Denise had pressed her face into Sadie’s hair and smelled sweet, warm grass. She kissed the spot where her daughter’s soft brown hair parted and Sadie had nestled up against her.

“Help, Nurse!”

Denise heard the call from the next bed but she couldn’t rouse herself to help. A terrible smell filled her whole world and what seemed like hours passed.

“What is it, Mrs. Blagden?”the nurse finally asked. “What do you need?”

“I think I’ve pooped in the bed.” Mrs. Blagden started to cry.

“Yes, I think you have,” said the nurse. “Just hang on and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Denise wanted back inside her dream or back into bed with Sadie. She wanted to think about kisses some more. Not about the woman in the next bed. It could have been her.

The day at the mall came back to her. Maybe it was a dream. She had been drunk, just a little. Only Frank and Emma would have realized it. The rest of the world didn’t know her well enough to mark the changes in her when she drank. It had been so much easier when Emma was younger and hadn’t taken issue with everything. All the time. Being a secret drunk was hard work but Denise thought she was pretty good at it. Lying was second nature to her.

“Hi, Denise. How’s it goin’?” The soft voice had startled her while she shopped and her hand flew to her chest. Little bottles rolled.

“Jesus!” she said, and looked into the pale eyes of someone she realized she was supposed to know. Someone from the neighbourhood?

Another man, this one wearing an apron, busied himself at her feet cleaning up the mess.

“Smirnoff, eh?” The stranger’s voice rasped through thin lips.

Who was this guy?

“In the wee bottles,” he said. “An old lady’s trick. Expensive habit. I guess you think you’re fooling someone.”

“Who are you?” Denise spluttered.

The flat face smirked.

She couldn’t remember for a moment if she’d finished her business there but it no longer mattered. She had run from the liquor store.

Denise shuddered now as she remembered. It was no dream. She recalled too where she had seen the man before. He had been a member of a group she had belonged to once when she was trying to quit drinking. He’d been bossy and arrogant and one of the reasons she’d quit going. That was the trouble with groups. They had people in them.

She hadn’t stopped running till she’d reached her car and locked the doors. She panted like a dog on a hot day, bathed in sweat and self-loathing. So little had actually happened. That was the worst knowledge of all.

Something stank. After a few minutes she had raised her head from the steering wheel, breathed in deeply and realized to her horror that she had wet her pants.

She groaned aloud now as she heard the nurse fussing over Mrs. Blagden.

“Everything all right, Mrs. Foote?” the night nurse asked.

“Terrific, thanks.”

Greta Bower is mowing her lawn in the early morning and Gus goes over to have a word with her. The sound of the gas mower roars through his chest and it astonishes him that anyone could be so insensitive. It’s barely dawn!

As he approaches Greta, her pretty face turns into the head of the woman he saw in front of Frank’s place the other night. She is all sunglasses and red lips. Only this time, the lips open in a stiff smile to reveal a row of broken teeth, bluish in colour. The half-teeth move, and on closer inspection Gus sees that tiny blue worms slither over the jagged surfaces. The heads of the worms are black, and the creatures have teeth of their own, sharp teeth that gnaw at their own blue bodies.

Gus jerked himself awake before the dream went further. He put on a coat and shuffled out to his front porch to breathe some fresh air and try to forget the terrible picture left in his brain. He had been reading about Blue-footed Boobies earlier in the day and suspected that was why his dream worms were two-toned. And Greta didn’t even own a lawn mower. She let her yard go to rack and ruin all in the name of something that Gus couldn’t remember.

“Howdy, Gus,” Frank called over from his own front porch next door.

“Frank. Just the man,” Gus whispered as loudly as he could. “Get yourself over here, why don’t ya, so we don’t have to shout and wake up the whole neighbourhood?”

Frank chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone whisper as loud as you, Gus. When it gets to be that loud most folks would turn it into talking.” He sauntered over to where Gus leaned on the railing, and looked up at him.

“Let’s have a drink,” Gus said. “I don’t think Greta quite wiped out that bottle of brandy.”

“Not for me, thanks, Gus, but I’ll sit with you a while.” He climbed the steps to the porch and plunked himself down on one of the two straight-backed chairs.

“Do you want to go inside, Frank? It’s pretty chilly out here.”

Both men wore winter parkas with the hoods up.

“No, I’ve got enough clothes on. I was suffocating indoors.”

“How ’bout some cocoa?”

“No thanks, Gus, but you go ahead. The caffeine in the chocolate keeps me awake and I sure don’t need that.”

“Water?”

“No thanks, I’m fine as is. If I drink water after supper, then I end up going to the bathroom all night long.”

“Jesus, Frank. What the hell are you going to be like when you get to be my age?”

Gus sat down in the other chair.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asked.

“Yeah, most nights, I guess.”

“Is it the baby in the rain barrel, Frank?”

“No, Gus. Awful as that is, it’s not what keeps me awake nights.”

Gus was quiet and Frank was grateful to him for not pushing. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk or not. Maybe just sitting a while would be good. They could start with sitting anyway.

Venus was so bright it looked like more than a star. Frank stared at it till his eyes lost their focus and the light became fantastic. He pulled himself back.

“How are you getting along with it, Gus? The baby, I mean.”

“Well, I must say, it’s not an easy thing to put behind me. I think about it a lot and dream about it a bit, but it’s not as bad as it was.”

“I wake up after three hours,” Frank said, “and then I can’t get back to sleep. It’s always just three hours. I don’t think I can live on that.” He looked over at Gus. “Sometimes I think I’m going insane.”

“Jeez, Frank, that sounds horrible. All I can say is that I’m sure it’ll eventually pass. I know that doesn’t do you much good right now. I went through a similar bout once. Around the time they forced me to retire. I used to sit out here for hours — thank God it was summer — and watch the sun come up. But it wasn’t fun, I’ll tell ya. I wasn’t really worried about anything in particular. I just couldn’t come up with anything good to think about. And my mind was too jittery for sleep.” Gus put his feet up on the wooden railing that ran around the porch. “I should put something more comfortable out here to sit on,” he said. “Something that would accommodate a man’s legs and feet. In the daytime,” he went on, “I would roam around the house and yard lookin’ at things that needed doing that I didn’t have the energy for. I swear to God, I broke down and wept more than once, scared the bejesus out of Irma. I felt like my life was over, except I hadn’t died. And then I got better. Just like that.”

“I wish I could have met Irma.” Frank stretched out his long legs and rested his feet on the rail next to Gus’.

“I wish you could’ve too, Frank. She was great.”

“I knew her to see her. I knew who you both were way back when. She was pretty. I remember thinking she was pretty.”

“That she was, Frank. That she was.”

Frank was worried about his kids. He worried a lot, especially about Em, who seemed so old somehow. He wondered if they shouldn’t have named her Emma. Maybe a little girl’s name like Amy or Tracy would have been better.

Morning had come early that day to the Foote house, with Sadie leaping into action at the first sign of light. Her mother’s absence hadn’t made her any less joyful. She sat in her yellow pajamas atop Frank, who was trying to stay inside his daydream for a few moments longer. Or maybe he was asleep. Anyway, it was a marvelous dream in which he was ordered by some higher law to have sex with Audrey. They were in the desert at night, under a million stars like in that old Eagles song. They were sometimes their young selves and sometimes their present selves. They gazed into each other’s faces and at some points, if the concentration was strong enough, they could move smoothly into each other’s consciousnesses.

“Good morning, Daddy.”

“Good morning, Sadie dear.” Frank could hear the television. Garth must be up too.

“Time to jump up,” Sadie said.

Frank smiled. “Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing much jumping this morning, but I guess it is time I was up.”

He got out of bed slowly, feeling a tight lump of pain between his shoulders. He pictured himself with ice for his neck, a huge cup of coffee and the newspaper, heading straight back to bed.

When he looked in on Emma he saw her elfin face turned inward to a worrisome dream. Sadie started towards her, but Frank swept her up and away to her morning rituals, and closed the door so his other daughter might sleep on. His back was killing him so he took one of the anti-inflammatory pills that Dr. Kowalski had prescribed. They were pretty good and there wasn’t going to be time for ice.

Sadie was soon set up beside her brother in front of the
TV
with a bowl of cereal. Garth had already eaten, judging from the small array of items laid out in front of him. There was an expertly opened empty tin of sardines, a spoon, and a glass of chocolate milk. Frank had to repress his gagging instinct, but admired his son for his expertise with the key on the sardine tin. Not a ripped finger in sight.

“Howdy, Garth.”

“Hi, Dad.” Garth’s eyes didn’t leave the
TV
. It was an
Avengers
rerun.

“Mrs. Peel,” said Sadie happily as she settled in beside Garth.

“Yup, that’s her all right.” Frank smiled down at his kids. “Don’t forget to clean up your breakfast stuff, Garth, before Hugh gets too interested.”

Hugh was their one-year-old cat who sat in a corner of the room staring at the sardine tin.

Frank made coffee and called the hospital. Denise had had a quiet night. He went back upstairs and looked in on Emma, who was now sitting at her computer in her pajamas.

“Hi, Em. How’s it goin’?”

She erased the screen. “Hi, Dad. Pretty good, I guess. I have to do a science project and I don’t know where to start.”

“Science project, eh? Hmm.” Frank paused so his daughter would think he was giving this some serious thought. He also knew that she knew better. She was impossible to lie to, even silently. He supposed this was a good thing. It kept him on his toes.

“I’m thinkin’ about a volcano,” she said.

“That’s a good idea. It could erupt.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinkin’.”

“Would you mind coming downstairs for a minute, Em, so I can speak to all of you at the same time?”

“What about?”

“Well, your mum and stuff.”

Emma sighed as she put on her robe and slippers to accompany Frank downstairs.

“My head aches, Gus,” Frank said now, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “It aches all the time.”

Gus grunted companionably and said, “How’re those kids of yours?”

Frank turned to look at his neighbour. “God, I’m so worried about them, Gus. Em seems so old and Garth can’t take his eyes off the
TV
and all they ever seem to want to talk about is death. I don’t think I can bear it if Sadie ever gets less happy than she was first thing this morning. And it’s got to happen. It’s happening right now and I don’t feel as though I’m up to it.”

Gus reached over and touched Frank’s shoulder. “It’s hard being a father, Frank. And you’re doin’ good. I know you are. You’re doin’ real good, in fact.”

“Do you really think so, Gus? You’re not just saying that?”

Frank recalled how adrift he had felt that morning as he gently pushed Emma ahead of him into the living room, where he turned off the
TV
in an effort to get everyone’s attention.

“Hey!” shouted Garth.

“Quiet,” Frank said. “I want your serious attention for a few minutes.”

Emma and Sadie both looked at Garth to see how he would react to missing the resolution of Mrs. Peel and Steed’s latest adventure.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve already seen this one.”

“Good,” said Frank. “Okay. I’m not sure how long your mum is going to be away this time, but it could be for longer than a few days. I’ve decided not to ask Bosco to come and stay with us and we’ll just see how it goes. We’ll see if we can manage, the four of us.”

“Who’s Bosco?” Sadie asked.

“Oh. I guess you don’t remember him, Sadie. It’s been a couple of years. He stayed with us the last time your mum went away. He’s your great uncle, my dad’s brother.”

“Who’s your dad?” Sadie asked.

“My dad is your grandfather, but he’s been dead for several years, so you never got to meet him.”

“How did he die?” Garth asked.

“He had a heart attack,” Frank said.

“Massive?”

“Yeah. I guess so. He died from it, so it must have been pretty big.”

“Did he die quickly?” Emma asked.

“Yeah,” Frank sighed. “I don’t think he knew what hit him.”

“Where’s Mummy?” Sadie climbed onto Frank’s lap and he was glad to change the subject back to the even more difficult one of Denise’s absence.

“Well, Sadie, Mummy hasn’t been feeling very well, so she’s gone into the hospital for a rest.”

“To the Chemical Withdrawal Unit?” Garth asked.

“Well…yes.”

“Is it because she wet her pants?” Sadie asked.

Frank pictured his grown-up daughter at a support group in the twenty-first century, sharing, “My mother wet her pants when I was six. I never got over it.”

“Well, that’s part of it, I guess,” he said. “Anyway, she misses you all very much and trusts that we’ll all be able to take care of ourselves. And she asked me to ask Gus, next door, to keep an eye on us too.”

Emma made a kind of huffy sound at this point.

“Em, I know you feel you don’t need taking care of, but Sadie and Garth do. With my work and your school, we’ll be busy, you and me. We should be really grateful to Gus for being such a generous neighbour. Maybe he’d help you with your science project. He’s real good at stuff like that.”

“I don’t need taking care of,” Garth said.

“I do, Daddy,” Sadie said.

“I know you do, Sweetie, and you’re going to be taken care of real well.”

“I’m not old enough to take care of myself yet.” Sadie looked at her father with fear on her little face.

A thin outline of pain had settled itself around Frank’s head and stayed there all day.

He turned to Gus now. “Thanks, Gus. You’re a good neighbour and friend.”

“Anytime, Frank. Anytime.”

When Frank stood up to leave, Gus asked, “Have they buried the little gal yet?”

“Yes, they have. At Brookside Cemetery. In the children’s section.”

“Is there a marker for the grave?”

“Yeah, one of those white slabs. It says Jane on it. That’s my fault, I guess. They wanted a name and that’s the one I came up with.”

“Jane’s a beautiful name, Frank. That’s one of my grandmothers’ names.”

Frank didn’t mention to Gus that Jane was also the name of the baby Greta gave away twenty-seven years ago. It had seemed like a secret when she told him. That Jane had been on Frank’s mind a lot. She was on his mind now as he trudged back across the yard to his own house.

And Gus didn’t tell Frank about the woman in the car, although he started to once or twice. He decided that now wasn’t the time. The poor guy had enough on his plate.

Gus stayed up. He’d had enough of sleep for one night if it was going to mean being frightened by images of evil women with rotten teeth. And he didn’t have a job to get up for or a family to synchronize his meals or moods with.

The weight of Frank’s woes saddened him and left him wondering how he could better help his friend. But alongside the sadness was a whir of energy that buoyed him up and he knew better than to question or ignore it. He saw the paling of the sky in the east and trusted with all his heart the good feeling and the new day.