There's a scream suddenly. Then crying. Lynette.
She rewraps the towel around herself and pushes open the bathroom door. The bottoms of her feet are still wet and she nearly slips on the hardwood.
“Get off!” she hears Lynette say.
“What's going on in there?” She quickens her pace, nearly tears the handle off Lynette's bedroom door when she opens it.
Jeremy's on top of his sister, using his knees to pin Lynette's arms down. He's hauling on her hair.
“Mom!” Lynette screams.
“That's right, cry to Mommy you little bitch,” Jeremy says.
She stands in the doorway for a moment, unable to move. “Get off your sister!” she screams. It's a voice unlike her own.
Jeremy barely has time to turn around before she's gripping himunderneath each armpit, pulling him off as easily as if he were a stuffed toy. He falls onto his back. She gets on top of him. One hand holds her towel in place while the other, it's palm open, draws back and then comes down hard across his face, the sound of it filling the room. She hits him again on the same cheek before Jeremy can raise his hands to protect himself. A smack accompanies each word she says now: “
You're â never â to â hit â
your â sister
!” Two land on the crown of his head, the others against the back of his hands. The last one, because of a sliver of space between Jeremy's pinkies, makes partial contact with the tip of his nose.
She sits looking down on him now, hardly able to catch her breath, beads of sweat in the space between her breasts.
So quiet. What happened to Lynette's crying?
She turns around, sees that her daughter has backed herself up against the closet door. Big eyes and a face wet with tears. Her giraffe is lying prostrate near to her toes.
“Who started it?”
Lynette doesn't answer.
Jeremy wiggles beneath her. It's him crying now, she realizes, his shoulders and lower belly bouncing, his hands still pressed against his face. Not making a sound though.
She's never hit her children, not before this. Nor has Kent. They'd decided long before Jeremy was born that a palm would never make contact with a cheek. That a belt would never be unbuckled.
She tries to pry Jeremy's fingers away from his face.
“Don't touch me!”
“Jeremy â ”
“Don't!”
“Mommy's sorry.” She feels her bottom lip quiver, a thickness at the back of her throat.
You've taught him, haven't you
?
Beaten him up in
front of his little sister.
She gets off of him, tries to stop him from running away, but he yanks himself free from her grip. “Come back!”
She listens to his steps down the hall. Then him fiddling in the porch. “You've got school!”
Before opening and then slamming the front door, he says, “I hate you!”
She stands up, the remnants of the slaps in her palms. She lays them on the moist towel, against each thigh. After a moment she turns to Lynette. “Why aren't you dressed?”
Lynette doesn't answer.
“Didn't I tell you to?”
Lynette nods.
“Hurry up then, we need to go and find him.”
IT'S WET AND COLD. The sky has that: I-might-dump-some-snow-on-you look. The wind is like November wind, like it could crack your skin.
Lynette's walking beside her, her little fists clenched in spite of her mittens. Wearing her favourite toque with the fluffy tassel. Head pointed down towards her green sneakers with the multi-coloured laces.
At least one of them is dressed for the weather, Emily thinks. She wishes now that she'd put a sweater on underneath her windbreaker.
Her daughter, usually humming the latest pop song by now, is quiet. Hasn't so much as opened her mouth since Emily came charging into her bedroom earlier.
“Cold, baby?”
Lynette shakes her head.
“Hold my hand.”
Lynette offers hers without looking up.
So far they've looked for Jeremy in the garage; the playground three streets over from their house; the beach where, three weeks ago, Kent had helped him erect a makeshift fort; and the shabbily built baseball diamond behind the Lightning Cove Museum, half of its backstop fencing hanging down, the third base missing altogether.
Emily looks at her watch: nine-thirty. Half an hour late for work already; the kids an hour late for school.
Where is he, she thinks? He's never just run off before. Freezing by now without his jacket still on its hanger in the closet. Nothing on his fatless frame but a
Simpson's
T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
She tugs on Lynette's hand. “Hold on, baby.” Why didn't she think of this before? He's at school already. Of course. “This way,” she says, pulling Lynette in the opposite direction.
She quickens her pace, Lynette having to speed-walk to keep up.
She wonders if she's left finger marks on his cheeks. Imagines Mrs. Pike, his homeroom teacher, looking at him above the frames of her black-rimmed glasses. “Who did that to you?” she asks. Then Jeremy saying, “Mom.” A police cruiser waiting for her when she gets home. Child Services from Gander.
Crying without making a sound, she remembers, his fingers pressed to his face in spite of her trying to pry them off.
What kind of mother are you
?
He'll fight her now, she knows, to stay with his father once he learns the truth. She sees him refusing to get on the plane. Him looking for some way, once they're in Vancouver, to contact his father.
They pass the Royal Bank.
A tapping against the glass makes her turn. It's Sonya, the teller, her hand a collage of sparkly rings and polished nails inches long. A fat wrist with a fatter gold bangle. Lipstick and too much eyeliner for a face as round as hers. She's pointing at the wall clock behind her, then at Lynette, the fat underneath her arm jiggling.
Emily considers mouthing:
fuck you
, but instead says, “I know.” She pulls Lynette harder than she means to in order to get out of Sonya's field of vision; Lynette's feet almost lose contact with the pavement.
“Too fast, Mommy.”
“Sorry, sweetie.” She looks back to be sure that Sonya isn't stealing a peek at them from the corner of the bank entrance, then turns back around. “I'm glad you're talking to me again.”
They walk the length of Main Street without seeing another soul and then take a right onto Trinity. The smell of fish coming from Hanrahan's Seafood makes her dry heave; Anique's Antiques, a little farther along, has a big âWe're Closed' sign in the window. Odd for Wednesday, Emily thinks.
She hears the sound of an approaching vehicle going too fast for a residential street. Its front appears over the rise in the road ahead, glittering grill and bumper despite the heavy cloud cover, big front tires, and treads deep enough to fit your hand into.
She stops cold. It's Kent. Sitting so high in his seat that the top of his head is nearly touching the roof. Someone's sitting in the passenger side. Jeremy, she realizes. Jeremy. He must have run all the way to his father's work.
Not expecting Kent to honk his horn, she and Lynette jump with fright when he does. Her daughter's grip tightens.
He's not slowing down. Going faster, actually. The revving engine making a racket.
She waves her hand in the air, as if flagging a taxicab. I suppose he sees us, she thinks. The only two people out. “Come here,” she says to Lynette, pulling her farther onto the road's shoulder.
The truck speeds past, flicking gravel into the air. They lower their heads so as not to get anything in their eyes.
The screeching of tires on pavement then. A black mark on the road; Emily sees it when she raises her head. Gears shifting now, the truck's rear-lights aglow. His arm draped over the seat, his head cocked back. Reversing. Again too fast. When he's positioned the truck so that the driver's side is facing her, he slams on the brakes. Lowers the power window. Rests his forearm on the window ledge, then juts his head out. Looks at her.
She goes to him, still holding Lynette's hand. Near the door, she stops, looks past him to get a better view of Jeremy. Despite the darkness of the cab's interior, she can still make out the red blotches on his face. “Thank God you found him.”
“Found
me
, more like it,” Kent says. “Right in the middle of a meeting too.”
She doesn't say anything.
“Barged right in, he did.” He pauses before saying, “Imagine the looks I got.”
Jeremy's staring straight ahead like she's not even there. He looks older to her, somehow. More man than boy, suddenly.
“Jeremy,” she says, “Mommy's sorry â ”
“Your goddamn handprints are all over his face, Emily!”
“I didn't mean it â ”
“I got enough to worry about at work.”
In the silence, Lynette tries to slip her hand out from inside her mother's, but Emily holds on tighter. A car approaches from the other direction and slows down as it nears the truck. Young Alan Cross, she notices, the one Kent had said was taking his wife and getting the hell out of Lightning Cove. He's just about to stop, but Kent honks his horn and waves him on. Alan looks right at her, raises his hand in a wave as he passes.
They listen until the sound of his engine dies away.
“Get in,” Kent says, finally.
“I'll walk them from here â ”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they're not going to school today.”
“But I want to,” Lynette says.
“You heard me.” Then, “Not with your brother's face the way it is.” The last bit, Emily notices, is directed at herself.
Funny how he's never bothered hiding me indoors
. “But I've got work. I'm already so late.”
He sticks his head out farther. Lowers his voice like a late-night radio DJ. “Get in. Now.”
There it is, she knows â that look. Calm almost but not quite. The lines in his often-wrinkled brow gone, those few in the corners of his eyes gone too. Lids slightly lowered over cold eyes. Dead eyes.
Kent opens his door. Pushes his seat forward so that Emily and Lynette can climb into the back. Puts the truck in gear and presses hard on the gas before Emily has a chance to fasten Lynette's seatbelt. She doesn't bother with her own.
He drives fast. Not talking. Staring back at her in the rear-view mirror.
So she doesn't have to meet his eyes, she turns to gaze out the window at the passing world: patchy lawns in front of paint-chipped bungalows; lopsided two-storey homes that seem on the verge of falling over; a grey, endless sea, and icebergs in the distance. She knows this world â
her
world, as well as she knows the bodies of her own babies, as well as she knows the smell that Kent leaves on his pillow, yet somehow it all seems strange. Like she doesn't belong. A foreigner.
He pulls into the driveway. Breaks too hard.
Lynette's seatbelt digs into her chest; Emily braces her palms against the back of Jeremy's seat.
He shuts off the engine, then goes to open his door.
“
You're
coming in?” she asks.
He stops. Looks back at her.
Those eyes
. If not for them, she thinks, she might be able to cope. Maybe. “I thought you were in the middle of a meeting?”
He's still looking at her, not saying a thing.
“Go in you two,” she says to Lynette and Jeremy.
Lynette starts to leave, but Jeremy pretends he hasn't heard her.
“We're
all
going in,” Kent says, turning from her in order to look at Jeremy.
Jeremy undoes his seatbelt and goes; Lynette's already halfway to the porch.
Kent gets out. Slams his door with so much force that Emily can feel the inside of the truck shake. He takes a step back to where she's still sitting in the back seat. Raps the knuckle of his middle finger against the glass as casually as if he were knocking on the door of a buddy's place, then signals for her to get out by crooking his forefinger.
She doesn't move. Looks instead to the front door of the house. Even though her brother had pinned her down this morning, Lynette is holding it open for him. He walks past her. Lynette comes out, still holding the doorknob, wondering what's taking her and Kent so long, probably. Emily waves her inside.
He's knocking again, except that now he's using all four knuckles. Without thinking, she reaches up and locks the door. Then slides her bum to the centre of the backseat.
I'm safe as long as I don't go into the house.
It's the sound of his laughing that makes her turn to face him. Big teeth. He raises his keychain, and dangles it teasingly in front of her, then presses the unlock button. Laughs again, before saying, “Come inside so we can talk.”
She shakes her head. “Is that what you call it?”
“Come in, Emily â ”
“No.” She slides all the way over to the other side.
His knuckles hitting the window again. How has the glass not shattered? “Don't make me come in there.”
Liar. You won't. A neighbour might see.
He walks around to her side.
She locks the door again.
He unlocks it again.
It starts to snow. Wet flakes.
He puts his face close to the window, his nose nearly touching, his eyes as big as Frisbee's. “Come in.” He pauses for a second, then says, “Last chance.”
She considers it. Then imagines what will be waiting for her if she does, and how long it will last. It's the just-before time she most dreads.
Just before
he grabs her or
just before
he slaps her face or
just before
he kicks her stomach. How strange that the anticipation should be worse than the act. But it is. Every time. At least once it's begun she knows that the ending is closer. It's all about getting to the end. To the point where he's an exhausted lump of remorse. On his knees with his hands resting on his thighs, down-turned mouth, pale face, watering eyes, and forever that rising and falling chest, like something inside him struggling to get out.