Red Girl Rat Boy Page 5

  “What about Olivia?”

  His sister frowned. “You still haven’t decided?”

  Fetching her laptop, she found the email, hit Reply, and typed so fast the words vanished almost before Ronald read them.

  Unfortunately I’ll be out of town at a convention. Enjoy your visit. Joyce.

  “Easy peasy!”

  Seconds later their sister-in-law, if she was that, responded.

  Exciting! Where are you off to?

  Sister and brother gasped.

  “Creepy!”

  “It’s as if she were waiting for us.”

  Joyce snorted, deleted. “Do as you please, Ronald. No skin off my nose.”

  On leaving her apartment, he flung into the building’s dumpster the leftovers she’d insisted on bagging up for “the dog.”

  Driving home calmed him.

  So did taking Sadie out for her last pee. The lamplit walkway behind his building skirted the enormous park, and once past a towering laurel hedge the dog and man moved through damp green semi-darkness, rooty-smelling, wildish. They started across the heronry. Leafless trees held nests in their upper branches, at the ready for next month’s great arrival. Even from sixty feet below, the bowls of sticks looked huge against the sky.

  In long-ago childhood summers when his brother went away, Ronald could, though he didn’t often, invite friends over. His parents weren’t whispering behind doors. No one cried (he meant Mum). His sister, teaching squash and golf, wasn’t often home to hector. The medicine cabinet held Aspirin, cough syrup. What kind of camp accepted teenagers on antidepressants?

  Nor had he been sorry when Alan and Olivia moved away. His sister-in-law had pretty hair, was pleasant, but had read nothing. Nothing. A featherhead, whose voice rose at the ends of declarative sentences. She was nice to their mother, and to their father in his decay, but a family dinner with Alan at the table was just work, done for Mum. Thank heaven she’d died first.

  Now a scuttle, a rush in bushes near the path. Dog and man alert, sniffing.

  No, not skunk. Coyote? Too small. Raccoon, or big rat.

  Ronald gripped Sadie’s leash (her hybrid could be assertively protective) and pulled her along towards the tennis courts.

  Olivia’s email—the punctuation so characteristic, also the smiley-face. Always a tendency to cuteness, to paper napkins printed with kittens or ladybugs, yet this sister-in-law had endured years with Alan and successfully run a small mail-order business. Perhaps still did?

  Sweet box scented the air by the front steps. Spring, soon. Reading week, thus some free time. Altogether there seemed no reason not to see the putative sister-in-law.

  After Sadie went to sleep in her crate, Ronald considered. Lunch would be best, a commitment less dismissive than drinks but reliably shorter than dinner. He reserved at a not unfashionable Yaletown bistro that served a fish soup he liked, and emailed Olivia. As he was about to close his computer, her exclamations arrived.

  Is she always online?

  In the stillness of his study Ronald gazed at his books, erect with others on the tradition of courtly love. Many academics displayed their own titles separately, but his were in with the rest, alphabetical by author. His took up most of a shelf, though.

  The engineering school at that New Mexico university had courted Alan. There, would his brother have been not depressed? To Ronald, a degree-granting institution lacking medieval studies was incomplete.

  Going down the hall to bed, he touched the frame of a Japanese print, a heron standing by water. For some years Louisa’s photo had hung there. Where had he put it?

  N

  Ronald turned off his cellphone at lunch, to concentrate on the situation before him.

  After the goodbyes he walked quietly in the clear winter sunshine, nearly home, before opening his phone. At once it rang.

  “I’ve called you three times! What was it like?”

  “They’ve taken that chowder off the menu.”

  “Ron-nie!”

  “She looks very well,” slowly.

  “Did she stick you with the bill? What was she w—”

  “Olivia was sorry not to see you.”

  “Yeah sure.”

  The sun on English Bay was brassy, almost hurtful. He ended the call.

  Standing at his own front door, Ronald heard silence. His stomach clenched. Then came Sadie’s bark. In relief he closed his eyes. The dog ran ecstatic spirals about the hall while he gathered her leash and a poop bag. All the way down seventeen floors, she squealed with delight.

  What to tell Joyce? The word husband wasn’t used, yet clearly this Thomas, solid and prosperous, belonged to Olivia. He enjoyed the wine, savoured each fat mussel as if it were the best ever, and emptied his cone of frites except for two she accepted. He beamed at her.

  “Isn’t this delicious?” She ate a salad and drank San Pellegrino. Her hair was silver, still pretty, well-cut.

  Thomas spooned up icky-sticky toffee pudding while he described their recent Hawaiian holiday and new bamboo floors.

  A trade show had brought the pair to Vancouver. “Going great,” affably. “Selling’s what I do best. Used to be in toilets, before that window-coverings. I just switched up to Olivia!” He kissed her hand.

  “He’s made such a difference, Ronald.”

  “Honey, your company was doing great. I only nudged a bit.”

  To his surprise, Ronald would have welcomed details, but just then Olivia exclaimed about the yachts in the Creek. Her speech habits hadn’t changed. Thomas responded to her enthusiasm, and over coffee he took up the bill with élan.

  A hell of a lot better, for her.

  Thomas’s handshake felt warm. “Great restaurants you’ve got here, Ron. We aim to try as many as we can.”

  Done.

  Now the elevator door opened to a lobby full of light.

  Ronald jogged towards the beach, Sadie trotting alongside so fast her legs twinkled.

  Thomas must have found our addresses. Or his secretary did.

  At the tideline lay shards of ice, strewn with sand and seaweed, glistening in the sun.

  Would Olivia have brought her man along if Joyce had come to lunch? Ronald struggled to picture his sister facing Thomas.

  The dog found a dead crab and attacked.

  “Not now!”

  She insisted on dealing with her prey, though the wind fanned her fur so that her pink skin was visible.

  “Some dogs agree to wear jackets,” Ronald pointed out. He himself felt chilly when they resumed walking.

  After the trek to Second Beach and round Lost Lagoon to bark at the incurious swans, then back to English Bay, the ice had melted. The crab was gone too. Once sure of that, Sadie bustled home contented.

  N

  “Hello.”

  “Oh Joyce you’re back early from your convention?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, I was just going to leave a message, say Hi to you and Stanley, but if? Could I? It’s years since I’ve seen him?”

  Looking at the sofa where her boy snored, such a beautiful baby he’d been, Joyce ground her teeth.

  Shortly she phoned her brother, who was about to record a program on the later pre-Raphaelites. “Just like her to sneak up on me.”

  “Why’d you answer the phone?” Why did he?

  “Because it’ll be the college or the shrink or the group-therapy guy about something Stanley’s done, hasn’t done, correction, I should make him do. Or my unit manager, asking what day it is. I have to. You know that.”

  “I’ve told you I’d stay with Stanley for a bit, give you a break.”

  “I hardly even play golf. You know that too.”

  “Are you going to take care of him your whole life?”

  Ronald hadn’t intended to ask that. Had Joyc
e even heard? His phone didn’t ring angrily.

  Without stopping, Sadie went by to her food dish.

  He reached for the remote.

  N

  Sadie sniffed the guest’s shoes. Ronald nearly said, “She can be shy,” when the tail began to wag.

  “Oh, what a sweetie!” Sadie permitted ear-pulls, followed Olivia to the living room and sat nearby.

  “Such a view! So misty by the Lagoon, the trees half gone? Like those Asian scroll things, you know?”

  He brought in coffee.

  “So fresh! Lovely. I loved that lunch, Ronald, didn’t you? I’m glad to see you alone, though.” She sipped. “I need to say, about my mistake? I tried to make your brother happy.”

  Alarmed, he pushed the biscotti towards her.

  “Alan did love me, at first anyway, and I just thought Here’s this wonderful man but he’s so sad. I’ll change that! Impossible.” Her silver hair hung like a bell. “You can’t make someone anything.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Your family, so intellectual. The dictionary at the dinner table? On and on about poems? Analyzing. Alan hadn’t ever seen real movies, just those Bergman things? He didn’t know how to have fun.”

  “Joyce isn’t intellectual.”

  “No, I was so surprised when she and Harris got married? He didn’t play golf or tennis or anything. Brave, both of them. But I talked to your mum before she died? Well of course before, that’s the sort of thing Alan got mad at me for. She understood. She thought I should leave him.”

  Sadie nosed Olivia’s knee.

  “Is this okay for her?” She held the smallest biscotto.

  Instead Ronald opened a drawer in the coffee table to get Sadie’s treats. The dog gave an offended look but delicately nipped the tidbit from Olivia’s fingers and flung it up in the air, to catch.

  “Clever girl!”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Can’t we go on now, the weather, her impressions of a changed Vancouver, anything?

  “Instead Alan left me. That’s why Albuquerque. He wanted a fresh start, you know? Then the crash? Oh, I felt so bad.”

  “He always drove too fast.”

  “I even wondered, suicide?” Olivia shook her bell as if surprised at herself. By her feet Sadie lay couchant, guardian.

  Ronald did not say that he believed Alan had had far too high an opinion of himself to deprive the world of his presence.

  “When I met Thomas,” tenderly, “he helped me. Contacted the police, troopers, whatever they have in New Mexico. No problem, oh that reminds me, flowers for Joyce of course but Stanley? Does he like movies?”

  “What did the authorities say?”

  “Oh, they had photocopies, the officer attending? It wasn’t all Alan’s fault. The point is, we can’t be for another person?”

  Sadie rested her head on Olivia’s ankle.

  “Japanese. Maybe martial arts.”

  Guessing thus made Ronald dizzy. He’d never carried flowers to Joyce, nor invited Stanley to a theatre, nor assessed Harris’s character. He and his sister, after their brother’s death, had pursued no inquiries.

  “Don’t you just love sushi, except the eels? Fascinating! But I must go, Ronald. The booth, Thomas.”

  Later he discovered her glove in the hall. Such small hands.

  Heavy rain began.

  After half an hour in the park, man and dog were soaking, but Sadie still yanked at her leash, determined to revisit the shrubbery where that scuffle had occurred. Leaves and branches resisted Ronald. When he got through, Sadie was inspecting a rat. She looked up, proved right. The animal’s eyes were gone, its stomach and haunches torn. The fur inside its ears looked soft.

  At home, Ronald towelled the dog off, dried his own hair and put on his dressing gown. “Nap-time, Sadie.”

  But at the heron he turned the other way, to his computer.

  The trade show’s website sparkled with the colours of cocktail stirrers, name tags, matchbooks (who still uses those?), iPhone cases, napkins, swags of ribbon. Among the exhibitors was Olivia’s Greetings. Each card bore her printed signature, the handwriting legible if not distinctive. So many festivities to grace each month and year, so many special birthdays.

  On the way to his nap, he remembered that his parents, especially his mother, had been very fond of Louisa.

  N

  “Oh Joyce, you look well!” Olivia came in. “Your place is exactly how I remember it!”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? There’s no money to renovate.”

  “For you.”

  Joyce took the blue irises. “You want coffee or something?”

  The two women gazed at Stanley on the living room sofa. Silent, the Weather Channel showed a blizzard moving from the American Midwest towards the eastern seaboard, as far north as Nova Scotia.

  Joyce went over to turn off the TV. “Sometimes that does it. Sit up, son.” He stirred, releasing unwashed-body odour, stretched and closed his eyes.

  His mother returned to the kitchen area.

  “So much like Alan, amazing!”

  “Stanley’s father never liked hearing that. Made him feel quote invisible.” Joyce shook instant into mugs, touched the kettle, made an It’ll do face, poured. “Powdered’s here. Sugar.”

  With her drink, Olivia moved towards Stanley.

  Joyce found an old mayo jar and ran water. As she stuffed the irises in, one fell. She bent to retrieve it. Deep in each petal’s throat ran an irregular golden streak.

  A knock at the door.

  “Always something.” Joyce went. “Oh no, not again!”

  Some minutes later she walked back into the apartment saying, “Some people never learn. They get told and told but it doesn’t sink in.”

  Murmurs came from the sofa, then Stanley laughed.

  Joyce reached the living room area just as Olivia, giggling, set a pile of DVDs on Stanley’s stomach. He started reading the cover copy on one as Joyce grabbed another.

  “Cartoons, little girls, what the hell, Olivia? D’you think time stands still?”

  “Miyazaki, Joyce! Lovely stories. The animals only look scary? And all the kids get brave.”

  Reading, grinning, Stanley rose. He snatched the DVD from his mother and went to his room. Joyce took a few steps after him, stopped.

  When she turned, Olivia was gathering up her things.

  “I’d better go? Thank you, Joyce.” She put her coffee mug on the kitchen counter. It was empty, her hostess saw, except for some milky goo at the bottom.

  To watch Olivia disappear, Joyce picked up the irises again and carried them over to the window, where she set the jar on the sill.

  At first the sister-in-law moved slowly along the sidewalk, several times raising her face to feel the raindrops. Then she speeded up, but not to the corner where the taxis shot by in yellow blurts. Instead she darted under the red awning of a restaurant, Italian, fancy, newly opened.

  Joyce hesitated.

  Hesitated.

  Thrashed into her old winter coat and left the apartment.

  N

  Ronald became aware of Sadie in the living room. Not napping. Slobbering. At her crate, he knelt to peer and feel inside.

  Grrr.

  His hand met Olivia’s glove. Her favour was damp, the leather pocked by teeth. He held on to it, held against Sadie’s pull. Growling again, the dog let go and withdrew to the rear of her private space, where she lay down with her back to him.

  Ronald too lay down, curled on the silk carpet purchased in Istanbul on his last sabbatical.

  Why had he never invited Joyce out for a really good Italian dinner? He held his knees and tried to control his breathing, urgent, wildish. Was Harris still extant? Did Stanley ever see his dad? Why had Ronald himself so rarely visited his own (demented
) father?

  Olivia had sent the old man cards, which he saved. After his death, Joyce got cross because their mother wouldn’t throw them out right away. But now they weren’t children any more, not rivalrous children to say Serve you right when a playmate tears her knee, when a brother dies.

  “Louisa,” he sobbed, “darling Louisa.”

  Sadie emerged to stand by Ronald. She sniffed at his crotch and then his ear, licked his wet cheek. He gave her the glove.

  Care

  On Thursday evening

  The Boss Lady in her tailored suit knelt before Bed 2’s assigned closet and scuffed things off its floor as a dog scuffs up dirt, backwards. Out shot gauze rolls, bottles of body wash, packs of Depends, the Rec Director’s clicker for locked wards, sunglasses, a pashmina, jigsaw bits.

  Bed 2’s occupant, The Wanderer, wasn’t around.

  In Bed 1 lay silent Teevee-gal, unpicking her sheet’s hem while staring at a dark screen. Her remote was out of reach.

  The Boss Lady tossed Tim Hortons cups, lipsticks, grumpy-baby photos, tiny flags, a driver’s license, Tylenol, lumps of hard porridge, a blue folder, shampoo.

  Grabbing that folder, she rose, and did not stop to wipe the angry tears but strode towards the door of 17-B where small brown care aides and LPNs clustered.

  “You idiots didn’t notice this garbage? Clean it up. That woman must go.”

  Stilettos carried the Boss Lady away.

  The Wanderer just then was at work on a cash machine in the care home’s basement. Once she’d jammed it. Not tonight, but the deposit envelopes went into her wheelchair’s basket, and in the caf she scored a Danish and a banana before Hey you! sounded. Quickly she whir-whirred to the hall by the service elevator used to excrete corpses, dirty dishes, waste. She ate, waiting till she figured the care aides had finished with all the others and would be too tired to fuss.

  She tossed the peel onto the floor.

  How Friday began for Sally, Lorraine, Annabel

  All night the summer air had wafted into 17-A, sweet air, for the dumpsters below the window held only a day’s load, yet unable fully to refresh the room. By the big containers a coyote sidled, sniffing, while raccoons waddled across the parking lot towards their tree-homes. Birds conversed.