Red Girl Rat Boy Part 6

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.

"h.e.l.lO."

"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 Joyce 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 fres.h.!.+ 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? a.n.a.lyzing. 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.

"j.a.panese. Maybe martial arts."

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

"Don't you just love sus.h.i.+, 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 c.o.c.ktail 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 h.e.l.l, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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. s...o...b..ring. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.signed 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, sungla.s.ses, 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 cl.u.s.tered.

"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 bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 racc.o.o.ns waddled across the parking lot towards their tree-homes. Birds conversed.

The old white women lay quiet.