It's when he's thinking this that she comes around the corner. Mary-Beth. Of course. Tom thinks, Of course. He can't help himself. It's as if this was planned. There she is, on a Saturday. Mary-Beth. And Tom. Alone in the office.
“Hi,” Tom says.
“Oh, hi Tom,” Mary-Beth says, startled. “I didn't know you were working today.” Mary-Beth moves towards him. “I didn't know anyone was on this floor. I was going to raid the fridge, see if there was any juice up here.” She smiles. She is wearing tight jeans, flat shoes, a t-shirt that is scooped at the neck and hugs every part of her. Tom stares.
“I'm sure we have juice,” he says. “Here, I'll get you some.”
Mary-Beth follows closely behind.
Is he reading into this? Is he imagining this? Is it part of some weird fantasy? Something he's seen in the movies or on TV? Should he stop and turn and kiss her? Should he push her against the fridge, the counter, the table? Should he run his hand down her back as she bends towards the fridge? What should he do? Should he do nothing? Anything? Something?
Mary-Beth takes the juice he hands to her. She pops the lid off and sips. “Thanks,” she says. And then she turns and walks away from him. Tom watches her ass, the way her legs move, the flip of her hair. She stops and turns back to him. “Have a great day, Tom,” she says. And she's off. Gone.
That answers his question.
Maria is pacing in the kitchen when he comes home. Tom opens a beer and takes several long swallows. He burps. Maria scowls.
“Marge called.”
“Marge?” Tom asks.
“The principal. Becky's principal. Marge Tanner. Jesus, Tom, where do you live? What are you thinking all the time? God, Tom.” Maria slumps down into a kitchen chair and glares at him.
“Sorry,
that
Marge. What did she want? On a Saturday?”
“It seems that a bunch of the kids felt bad. It seems they were lying. That it was all made up. They lied about Becky and the boy. In particular, it was two girls, Veronica and Sharon. I don't know them. I've never even seen them. I don't know how,” Maria sighs, “how they even know about oral sex. I mean, they are only twelve. What kind of girls are these?”
Tom sits down hard. They were lying. Of course they were lying.
He looks up and Becky is standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “I told you,” she says, quietly. “I told you they lied. You didn't believe me.”
“But why?” Maria throws her hands in the air. “What did you do, Becky, to make them lie about something like this?”
Becky sucks in her breath. Tom hears this. He pays attention. He stands quickly. Smacks his beer down on the table. It foams over. “Don't you dare, Maria,” he says. Pointing his finger hard at Maria, stabbing towards her with his finger, stabbing the air around her. “Don't you dare blame her.”
“Pardon me?” Maria looks shocked.
Becky, leaning in the doorway, looks at her father. He looks back at her. She smiles slightly and turns and leaves the room. He can hear her thump up the stairs. Dog follows behind. Tom hears her bedroom door shut. He hears her TV turn on. He hears her DustBuster start up.
“What was the meaning of that?” Maria says. But she is red-faced and it is not from anger. She is ashamed. Tom knows that Maria is aware of what she has done, of what she has said. Tom knows he doesn't have to say anything. For the first time Tom knows exactly who he is and where he stands. He might not like himself very much right now, he might not like Maria very much right now, but he does know that he's a different man from who he was several months ago. He's a man who is awake to the world around him. He is a man who is suddenly alive and full of all the confusing stuff that alive people are full of â emotions, feelings, soul. Tom finally feels as if he is something. And the funny thing is, he didn't know before that he wasn't something. He didn't have a clue that he wasn't whole.
From: [email protected]
Subject: I know where you live
Dayton,
That's it. I've had it. I'm coming. I'm going to bring Carrie back home. Now.
John
Dear Dad,
Hey, Dad. How are you? I haven't written in a long time, I know. So sorry. Things have been crazy busy with work and home life. Maria and Becky and Dog send their love. I hope you've been enjoying Florida this year. How are Mom's migraines? The warm weather probably clears them up.
Listen, the reason I'm writing is that I've been remembering something from my childhood lately and I was wondering if you might clear it up for me. Did Grandpa Mel keep a collection of postcards of circus freaks in his basement? On the shelf above the workbench? I keep thinking about them and I hope I've not remembered incorrectly. I remember going through them as a child and I've been wondering lately, well, why? Why did he collect these postcards? Where did he get them from? Antique shows? I know he collected a lot of things, but these postcards weren't displayed like most of his collections, they were hidden in an album and up high. Was there a reason for this? If you have time, I'd love to hear more about the postcards.
Thanks, Dad. Say hi to Mom for me.
Love,
Tom
Dear Tom,
Your mother sends her love. Her headaches aren't any better but, even so, we've decided to stay into summer this year. Maybe the intense heat will make them go away? I don't know. Your mother wants to stay down until the beginning of August. I've been playing a lot of golf when it doesn't rain and when my sciatica isn't acting up. Of course, I also have that damned arthritis in my fingers. Can barely hold the golf club somedays.
I don't remember any postcards of circus freaks. You must be thinking of someone else or maybe a book you read or a movie you watched. Why would your grandfather collect something weird like that? He was a proper, respectable man. You'd do best not to mention this to your mother. Unfounded rumours such as these, when the man is already dead and can't defend himself, would kill her.
Your mother wants me to ask if you're ever going to come down and visit? Remember last year when you said you would come down and see us? Well, we've seen not hide nor hair of you yet. We wouldn't mind seeing our granddaughter once more before it's too late. Your brother, as you know, brought down his brood this year. We enjoyed showing them off to everyone here. Now that we're staying later this year you have plenty of opportunity to come visit.
Your mother says you need to put flowers on Aunt Betty's grave on Easter. Don't forget. She loved Easter.
Sincerely,
Dad
13
Leah is on the ice. She bends forward at the blue line, waiting for the puck to drop. In her mind she sees the puck hit the ice and bounce back towards her. In her mind she sees herself smack it hard towards the goal. But it doesn't and she doesn't. Leah's team gets the puck and off they skate toward the red team's goalie. Leah follows. Her mind is elsewhere. Back with Hannah, earlier today, after school. Back with Terry as he melted down after dinner. She held him tight until he calmed. She smoked on the back porch for an hour after, just to calm herself. Leah wonders what they are doing now, her kids, but then sees the puck sail past her and she turns and follows it, shaking her head. It bothers her that she fades-out on the ice. Leah wonders if she has attention deficit disorder because she can't seem to pay attention to anything these days. But then, Leah thinks, she's always been like this. Even as a kid. Her mind whirls around, hundreds of miles per hour. Always thinking. Mostly about nothing important, but always on.
“Behind you, behind you,” someone shouts.
Leah is on the puck but a red player hooks her stick and yanks hard. Leah falls. She can't believe the woman didn't say sorry. Perhaps she isn't aggressive enough for this game.
“Good try, Leah,” someone shouts from the bench. “That is Leah, right? Is that her name?”
Leah doesn't say much in the change room. The other women talk back and forth but Leah changes quietly and listens. She knows that they think she is new to the game even though she's been playing for years. Leah just hasn't got any better. She started seven years ago but she's so quiet and she hasn't improved at all and so they all think she's brand new every year. And she's so shy she's never made any connections in the change room. She comes in from the parking lot reeking of cigarette smoke, knowing she's not like anyone else here, and she puts on her jill and shin pads and socks and hockey pants and she sits on the bench breathing hard in her own small world. Leah knows it's not that they don't like her. It's just that when they try to talk to her she feels herself backing off, looking down, moving away. She can't help it. She knows they feel this too. All these women seem to come from a world different from her own.
Meaning: for one thing, none of them smoke and, even if they did, she would bet anyone a million dollars that no one on her team works at Walmart.
When her kids were young Leah would bring them to the rink to watch her play. They are older now and not interested in seeing her games anymore. Which is probably good. Terry fell that one time from the seats. He was leaning over the railing and he flipped over somehow and landed below, near the change rooms. Luckily he landed on his side, not his back or his head â although Margie, at work, said in a half-joking way that if he had landed on his head it wouldn't have mattered.
Meaning: he's stupid anyway.
Meaning: he's brain damaged.
Leah skates over to the bench to wait for her next shift. Margie is as stupid as Terry, if not stupider.
Terry's not stupid, Leah's caseworker would say, “He's challenged.” Or “He's special.” Or “He's just different.”
Different, Leah thinks. My ass. The anger Leah feels about Terry's situation is almost as fierce as her love for him. Leah thought that her anger would be gone by now. He is, after all, fifteen. But it's a burning anger, a violent-unfair-temper-tantrum-furious anger. Why him? Why her? It's not fair for either of them.
“Nice shot. That was good, wasn't it?” One of the women on her team is chatting to her on the bench. Leah smiles and nods her head in the helmet. The helmet bobs a bit. She stretches her jaw out into the chin pad and moves her helmet up and down using her chin. Some games her helmet seems too tight. Some games it wobbles. The woman who is talking to her smiles nicely out of her face mask. Leah can't remember her name. Trisha? Tasha? She comes with that skinny woman from California, the one who looks haunted and sad.
Leah feels haunted and sad.
Margie, at work, is haunted and sad. But that's because she's married to an asshole who has been off work for three years because of a work-related “disability.” In quotes. “Disability.”
Meaning: he lifted a box and pulled his fat back.
Meaning: Margie works full time at Walmart and lifts boxes every day â big boxes â over her fat stomach. She bends her short little legs to lift, carefully, and then she goes home and takes care of her lazy husband, who spends all day watching TV.
Leah goes back out on the ice. At least Margie has a husband. Leah smiles to herself. That's a joke, she thinks. Thank god she's not married anymore. Leah never had to take care of Carl, in fact she rarely saw him, but maybe if she had taken care of him she would have noticed what he was up to. Problem with marrying a guy who is always on the road? You can't ever know what he's doing. Or, more correctly, who he's doing. When he says he won't be home for three days, you think it might just have something to do with work.
“Leah, take it up!” Leah has the puck on her stick and she's moving up towards the red team's blue line. Over the blue line. She's not even off-side. She's near the net. Takes a shot. It hits the post.
“Good try. Woo hoo.” This from the Tasha/Trisha woman who is playing defence beside her.
Leah instinctively looks up into the seats, she looks up half-expecting to see her kids there. As if maybe they did come to watch her. But the seats are almost empty. Except for one man, a handsome man. Watching the game from afar. He's hidden a bit in the corner. Leah doesn't think anyone else has noticed him there. And there's the guy with his BlackBerry, paying no attention but always there. And that kid in the hoodie. Leah wonders if his mother ever washes it. Same hoodie every time, hands in his pouch.
When Terry would climb and squirm and move around at the rink, Hannah would sit nicely, properly, in the seat and cheer Leah on. She used to wave when Leah looked up. Once she made a big sign that said, “Go Mom Go!” in pink letters and glitter glue and she flapped it around furiously. She would talk to other people in the seats. She would try to watch her brother. But she was young then, six or seven, and Terry was ten and larger and would take off in the opposite direction, scattering hats, gloves, coat throughout the arena seats. Hannah couldn't keep up. And Carl left before Hannah was born, so he was no help. Now, eleven and fifteen, Hannah and Terry are at home alone while Leah plays hockey.
Meaning: Terry's roaming the house touching things, touching himself, crying, agitated, or happy, singing to himself, always moving, and Hannah is watching TV, occasionally keeping an eye on the oven to make sure Terry didn't turn it on, her ears alert for any noises she doesn't understand. Like the time she heard the lawn mower start up in the garage.
“It's a hard enough life,” Hannah sings when she is in a good mood. She dances often, little spins and twirls in the kitchen. She's a happy kid, despite everything.
Leah pulls her ponytail and laughs. “You've got it made, baby,” she tells Hannah. “Compared to my life, yours will be just swell.”
But Hannah is right. Leah shouldn't leave Terry with her. She's too young. It's not fair.
Meaning: life is not fair.
“Shit, I missed.” One of her own teammates crashes into Leah. “Sorry, sorry.”
“No problem,” Leah says, stumbling into the boards.
Her mind won't stay in the game tonight. She's fractured and confused. It's these short shifts â two minutes on is ridiculous. Leah finds that once she's finally playing well, at about a minute in, she is pulled off to sit on the bench again. Off. On. Leah would rather stay on until she dropped. Get in the zone. Become one with the game. She's noticed lately that when she is in the game she breathes funny. She pulls air through tight, half-open lips, closed teeth, makes a sucking noise.
Red scores on the white team and they crash their sticks along the wall in front of the bench, bang them hard, shouting, “Woo hoo.”
In Texas, Leah thinks, they'd say, “Yeehaw.”
In Texas they might shoot you if you scored on them. That's a joke. She wonders what they'd say in California. She should ask the skinny, blond, sad woman. “Right on.” Or maybe, “Too cool.”
Why is Leah thinking about Texas? Because that's where Carl went on his last “work-related trip.”
Meaning: he stayed here, in town, in the Days Inn on Belevedere Street, and screwed one of the many women he was seeing.
In the change room earlier Leah heard the other women talking about their kids. Some neighbour whose kid cleans all the time â and she thinks this is a problem? Another kid who can't put down the basketball, even when it's snowing. One kid who should be getting all A's at school but never tries hard enough and so comes home with B's. According to his mom, according to the teacher, the kid is a literal genius. One woman talks about her neighbour's dog, which is always barking. She wonders aloud if she should open the back gate of her neighbour's house and let the dog run away one day. Shout, “out of here,” and pat the dog on the butt, watch him run. The California woman laughs, she agrees. She says she lives right across the street from the dog and she actually saw it disappear this morning, “So you don't need to worry, Trish.” She says the woman who owns the dog pulled her back out when the dog took off and had to lie down on her kitchen floor almost all day. Although she feels sorry for the neighbour, she hates the noise the dog makes and she too hopes the dog never comes back. Leah doesn't know much about dogs but she could talk about Hannah. She never does, however. There isn't much to share. In school Hannah does okay â not an A student, but she isn't failing either. She's nice to kids, she's nice to teachers. Actually, the only thing wrong with Hannah is that she's too nice. Too trusting. Bringing people home. And stray cats. Talking to everyone on the street. One day, Leah thinks, someone's going to walk off with Hannah. And Hannah will go peacefully with them. Happily. Probably hold the guy's hand.
Leah thinks that Hannah will probably find this missing dog and adopt him.
The California woman and the Trisha woman are getting better at hockey. They are new to the game this year and Leah has noticed improvement. The other new woman still can't skate that well, but she handles the puck heroically.
The handsome man in the seats stands and begins to walk down towards the glass. A few women on the team notice him. The new woman who is weak on her skates notices him and almost falls over. Not that it matters, but when you thought you were alone as you played it makes you slightly self-conscious to see that you were being watched.
Terry scares away anyone Hannah brings home anyway. The ones who come over after school, the few friends Hannah manages to make. He thumps himself down in a chair in the kitchen and rubs at his crotch or picks his nose and Hannah's friends up and leave.
Leah's caseworker says that's because he's lonely.
Meaning: don't you know a boy needs his father?
Leah doesn't know why her caseworker seems to hate her so much. She's just trying to get help for Terry. Leah can't understand why this woman is making her jump through hoops for it. Leah thought the woman would take one look at Terry and make sure he has the proper help at school.
“Can't you see he needs help?” she asks. The woman just nods her head stiffly and looks around Leah's overcrowded living room. She takes in the ashtray, which Leah just cleaned, and the TV, which, sure, is always on â Leah likes background noise. Sue her. Then the woman sniffs. She sniffs.
Leah is at the net and the puck is between her skates and there are three red players on her. The white goalie is shouting at Leah to move away, that she can't see. Move? But isn't she helping? Making sure the puck doesn't go in their net?
What the goalie means is: Leah is always in the way.
Leah takes the puck around the back but a red player comes out at her, crazy-large, and Leah swears the woman's eyes are on fire. She smashes hard into Leah and Leah's stick becomes stuck in the goalie's net. She can hear her team shouting. It happens so fast, but somehow the crazy red player takes Leah's stick up in her arms like she's holding a baby, and tosses it hard at the boards. The stick almost hits the referee. He stands there, looking amazed. Leah's team boos. And, as Leah is struggling to pick up her stick with her huge hockey gloves on, like trying to pick up a penny from the floor, or like trying to turn the page of a book with dry-fingers, the insane red player scores.
Meaning: she doesn't, not even for a second, turn and say, “I'm sorry.” What kind of a woman is she?
And this, this makes Leah mad. Mad at herself and her wimpiness.
“Fuck,” Leah says under her breath as she comes around to the front of the net. The goalie pats her shoulder.
“That should've been a penalty,” the goalie says.
And where is Carl these days? Terry's father. Leah would like to know that herself. Just for the money, though, not because she ever wants to see him again. He owes her a lot of child support. Right when they figured out something was wrong with Terry, something was different, Carl up and left. Went out on the road, to “Texas,” and never came back. Yeehaw. Leah used to like to imagine that he was killed somewhere, that she hadn't heard from him because he was brutally murdered, but inside Leah knows he's probably off somewhere with a new family, a new kid, this one normal. She never even got divorce papers, but she doesn't have the money or energy to track him down.
Hannah's father is a different story. Leah sees him every day in Walmart, stocking the shelves, helping Margie pick up those heavy boxes. He stocks the shelves with no sense of urgency, as if his life is clean and clear. Leah guesses it is. After all, he doesn't know he's got an eleven-year-old girl. He knows nothing except that he had drunken sex with Leah after a work party eleven years, nine months ago. He knows that this happens once in his lifetime. He knows that Leah let him in once, and will never do that again. Sometimes Leah wonders at his stupidity. After all, he saw her pregnant, he signed the card given to her from the staff when she gave birth to Hannah. Leah supposes he can't add, she supposes he never finished high school. Or maybe he does know, but doesn't want to know. Leah doesn't want to know anything about him. His name is Hank. He is thirty-six years old. He's been working at Walmart since he was twenty-four. Since he finished university. He might still live at home with his parents. Leah doesn't know. Who the hell pays to go to university and then settles with working at Walmart? Someday Leah knows Hannah will have questions and she'll have to come clean but, for now, she really doesn't care.