When the Saints (24 page)

West walks Abriel to her car, so I start vacuuming in the living room where I can keep an eye on them through the front window. She drives away in that white car looking a little too satisfied for the deal to have been fair. West comes back in and I unplug the vacuum cleaner in time to hear a giant fart.

“I heard that,” I call out. “So you hold it in while she’s here and let it all out for me?”

He comes in and flops down on the sofa. “Sorry. I couldn’t relax until she was gone.”

“Why not?”

He rakes his hair back with one hand, looks up at me and sighs. “I felt we were dangerously close to a threesome.”

“What?”

“It seemed like it was headed in that direction.”

“WHAT?”

His mouth contorts into a smile.

“Hilarious.” I cross my arms. “Did you get the answers you wanted or what?”

“That low-life she took off with said he’d take her around the world, but he left her alone all the time to go gambling. They went to Niagara Falls once, that’s it.”

“So?”

It pisses me off that he forgave her so easily. Here he is at the tavern every night trying to make the numbers work and she probably made off with half of everything he owns just for pouting her lip.

“
I’ve
never been to Niagara Falls,” I say.

“Me neither,” he yawns.

I sigh as loud as I can, but he’s already drifting off.

W
HEN
I
PHONE MA IN THE MORNING, THERE’S BEEN NO
word from Lyle. It’s day three. I tell her I have to run a quick errand and then I’ll be on the highway. I head over to Victory Road to wait for the trucks to arrive with the first of the prefab parts, but when there’s no sign of them by 9 a.m., I give up and dart into town. Ma gave me my birth certificate when I first got back and told me I’ll need it to get my social insurance number if I want to get a job. It turns out you just mail an application in and they send you a plastic card with your number on it. It arrived at West’s house yesterday and he told me I can use it to open a bank account and deposit the money rather than leave it sitting in the trailer.

The bank manager isn’t even curious why I’ve never opened a bank account before. On the phone she told me that, other than my
SIN
, all I needed was a reference letter from a client in good standing. Now she says, “Oh, how do you know West?” then walks away to photocopy something without waiting for an answer.

After the bank, I duck into the tavern to show West my shiny new bank card. He holds it up to the light, pretending to check if it’s a fake.

“Nice. Now you can get your licence and stop driving my truck around illegally.”

“I can’t go completely straight. What would people think?”

I tell him I’m on my way to get Swimmer and he stops smiling.

“Are you sure you don’t want to involve the police?”

“If I do, Troy will get arrested, Jackie will be ahead in the Game of Fuckheads, and it will start all over.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Lyle might spook if he sees someone he doesn’t recognize.”

West knits his eyebrows. “Be careful.”

He breathes on my bank card and polishes it on his ass pocket before handing it back. I tell him what Janis said about Ma checking out his rear end.

“Oh yeah? I do clenching exercises while I’m standing behind the bar. It’s nice to know someone’s paying attention.”

“Wait. So, you’re serving drinks to Hells Angels, listening to them talk about motorcycles and putting bullets in people’s foreheads or whatever, and the whole time you’re standing there squeezing your cheeks?” I shake my head. “You have got to be a Gene.”

“Gene can’t multi-task like that.”

“When are you going to tell me your name?”

“About two weeks after you stop bugging me about it.”

T
HE RAIN FOLLOWS ME ALL THE WAY BACK TO JUBILANT.
Ma’s got clothes on the line soaking wet. She and Janis are putting things into boxes and marking the contents on the outside with a black Sharpie. At least three of them are designated
CRAP.

“Why are we keeping crap?”

Ma glances at the boxes. “I got no clue what Poppy wants and don’t want.”

I reach into one and pull out a pair of ripped fuchsia nylons, a pamphlet explaining how to identify magic mushrooms in the woods, and a troll doll with no arms. There’s also a kitten calendar from five years ago, a pack of rum-sticky playing cards, one silver earring and two cans of dried-out playdough. I pick up the marker and make it
FREE CRAP.
When the rain dries up, Janis and I put the boxes out at the end of the driveway and they’re gone within ten minutes.

The only things we hold on to from those boxes are some Styrofoam heads left over from when Poppy was learning how to
do hairdos on corpses. “For Uncle Bird,” Janis says, lining them up on the windowsill. “To chop up.” Every time I turn the corner and see the eyeless faces, I think of Troy and his gang. I’ve been obsessing about where they have Swimmer stashed. For some reason, the way Troy had his hand on his woman’s knee the night Jackie almost shot their heads off makes me think they’re treating him decent. Sometimes I picture Swimmer in a rec room laughing and chasing around a battery-operated frog. I don’t know why.

Yesterday I saw one of Janis’s posters yellowing on a telephone pole. Poppy’s been getting letters from other mothers of missing children, but we don’t mention it to her.

“What would she write back?” I ask Ma. “‘Dear So-and-So. Sorry about your tragedy, and thank you for your prayers, but I know where my kid’s at. See, I went out to score a few weeks ago and he was taken by this low-life Troy whose teenage cousin was knocked up by my brother and almost died from having a rusty coat hanger rammed up her hoo-ha. Now, you’d think that putting my other brother in a wheelchair and getting me hooked on crack would be payback enough, but you know how it is with guys like Troy.’”

“Jesus.” Ma sits down and rubs her temples. “When you put it like that.”

I pick up a U-Haul truck so Troy’s spies will see it parked and ready. Jackie and I decided that if it comes down to it, we’ll stay at a motel in Solace River until the new house is finished.

Janis immediately sets about making the U-Haul her new pad. She hauls her toys in there and dances on the steel floor wearing tap shoes she made herself by crazy-gluing beer caps to the bottoms of
her fuzzy slippers. When she asks me if I want to come over to her place and gossip, I’m curious enough to take her up on it.

“What’s the news?” I ask, climbing in. “Lippy the bear still being a dog?”

“I chucked Lippy in one of them junk boxes. All the stuffing came out of his head after I ripped his ears off.”

“Why’d you rip his ears off?”

“Because he said he was working late when he was really out partying.”

“Is that the gossip?”

“No.”

“You said you had gossip.”

“No, I asked if you wanted to gossip.”

“And I said yes, so what’s the gossip?”

She thinks. “Want to know what Auntie Jewell told Uncle Jackie?”

“I already know. They’re having a baby girl.”

Janis puts her hands on her hips. “Everybody knows that.”

“Well, what then?”

“Auntie Jewell told Uncle Jackie if he didn’t get rid of the naked pictures of his ex-girlfriends, she was going to cut his wiener off and feed it to her neighbour’s iguanas. I seen them once. Axl and Slash.”

I laugh.

“Be quiet!” Janis scolds. “It’s a secret.”

“If it’s a secret, how do you know?”

“Because I was on the toilet and Auntie Jewell thought I was Uncle Jackie in there. She said it right by the door, and I yelled,
‘It’s me, Janis!’ And she said, ‘Oh, sorry, Janis. That’s a secret, okay, honey?’ And I said, ‘Can I finish having my pee now?’”

“You didn’t say anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Because you knew it was too good to keep a secret.”

“Yup.”

“Let’s go tell Ma.”

Janis pushes me out of the way. “I get to say it first!”

By late afternoon, the U-Haul is packed up with anything worth taking. Some of Jackie’s furniture is in there too. He brought it over and loaded it on, said the rest of his and Jewell’s stuff is sitting in his driveway. After he’s gone, I take a sneaky drive by to make sure. He’s not lying. He must have packed up as soon as I relayed the message from Lyle because he’s got a utility trailer loaded and hitched onto the Tercel. The tarps tied down over it are pooled with the rain that’s been turning on and off for days. I stare at the wet blue plastic flapping in the breeze, turn around and drive right back to the trailer.

Janis and I stare out the window for hours on end, as if Swimmer might magically descend on a rainbow cloud. We play Scrabble, eat Kraft Dinner off paper plates and grow more uneasy. Janis starts picking fights with Ma and me for no reason. She hides Ma’s Game Boy and won’t tell her where it is. I ask her what her problem is and she smashes a biscuit with her fist. Then she “accidentally” drops both Ma’s and my toothbrushes in the toilet.

“Do you need a time out, missy?” Ma asks her.

“Time out from WHAT?” she screams, kicking over the stand-up ashtray. “Who’s Missy?!”

“Be careful with that! It belonged to Grandma Jean!” Ma rights the heavy base and reattaches the brass doe and fawn that had been peacefully basking at a pond of butts.

“Janis,” I say. “Come here.”

“Why?” Her face is streaked in tears and orange cheese powder.

“Just come here. I’ll give you five bucks.”

She stomps over with her arms crossed. I try to lift her sunglasses, but she kicks me. I somehow manage to get her into my lap and start rubbing her back in big circles until she stops struggling.

“Swimmer’s on his way,” I tell her. “He has to walk slow because of his big pumpkin head. Maybe if we sing his favourite song, he’ll hurry up. What do you think it is? ‘I Believe in Santa Claus’?”

She won’t uncross her arms. “I DON’T believe in Santa Claus.”

I don’t blame her.

“How about drunken sailors? You believe in those, right?”

She thinks for a minute. “Yup.”

We sing Daddy’s song until she finally falls asleep. I put her in pyjamas and tuck her in bed. She snores like a smoker, all raspy.

“Thank you,” Ma says when I come back out. “I was about to call Troy and tell him he can have her too.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

She makes tea and we sit in the near dark with only the lamp on. It makes it easier to see outside whenever we hear a car coming.

Where the fuck is Lyle? My head is pounding. I get up and pace around the bare walls. I’m worried. Maybe Mrs. Dunphy from Raspberry was right. I’m too smart for anyone’s good. My plan was so solid, no one thought about a backup.

I stop in front of two white rectangular outlines left on the wall where the velvet paintings were hanging. “Why the hell does Janis think there are palm trees in Toronto?”

Ma glances over. “Poppy talks about moving there and taking the kids. She says she’ll make ten times more money in the big-city clubs. She made it sound like a fairyland so Janis would get excited. I worry myself sick over it. I got no way to stop her from going and I won’t know if the kids are okay, or if she’s dead or alive.”

“There is
one
way to stop her.”

“What’s that?”

“You become Janis and Swimmer’s legal guardian.”

“Take Poppy’s kids away from her?” Ma jams her teabag in and out of the hot water. “She won’t let me do that.”

“Just on paper. She’s going to lose them if you don’t.”

We both stare at the two empty white spaces.

“Why ain’t that Lyle here by now?” Mama tosses her teabag on the table. “We did everything they told us to.”

“Maybe they’re waiting for us to leave.”

“How the hell are they going to bring Swimmer back to us if we’re not here, Tabby? Use your head.”

“I am using my head. Stop yelling at me.” I sit. “I don’t know why you keep making tea. You never drink it.”

“I have to do something.”

I suddenly notice how gaunt she is. Her cheekbones have sunk in and the jowls are weighing down all the loose skin. I think back, and I haven’t seen her eat anything in days. I get up and go to the cupboards, but all that’s left on the shelves is a half-empty
box of Shreddies, a few teabags, a bag of loose tobacco and half a pack of cigarettes.

“Go ahead,” Ma says. “Jewell’s picking me up a carton tomorrow.”

“I’m looking for food. Maybe you forgot what that is.” I snatch the pack anyway.

Ma clasps her hands together and presses the thumbs between her eyes. “Tabby, I did try to find you. After we came to Jubilant, I got a phone hooked up and called all over. Barbara Best had moved and unlisted her phone number. She didn’t even write me to tell me you weren’t with her no more. I think she was afraid your father was going to come after her, and he would have, too. After I told him what I done, he put a shotgun to my head. I had to tell him Barbara’s last name was something different so he couldn’t find you.”

I light a cigarette for myself and set another on the table in front of her.

“That day she came to get you,” Ma says, “I tried to stop her. I screamed and hollered, chased that car all the way into town, but you were gone. So I kept telling myself it was the right thing.” She shakes her head. “Now I wish I could take it back.”

We’re quiet for a long time. I finish my smoke, crush it out and say, “Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll stay up and keep watch.”

“I ain’t moving till I know where Swimmer’s at.”

I switch off the police scanner and she flicks it right back on. I pace a bit more, check the phone to make sure it’s still working. Then I dial Jackie.

“Hello?”

“Have you heard anything?”

“No.”

I lower my voice. “Promise me you haven’t contacted Troy.”

“I haven’t done shit fuck all. I’m just sitting here in my gitch banging my stupid head against the wall.” His words slur together. “But I swear to fuck, if Swimmer’s not back in his bed by midnight, I’m going to jail tomorrow for what I’m going to do to that psychopath.” His voice catches. “Tabby, if that happens, I need you to look out for Jewell. Move her to the new house and make sure she gets a good doctor.”