Cool Water (28 page)

“Now you lot behave yourselves,” Vicki had said to the rest of the kids when they got inside. “We don't need any more excitement.”

From the open doorway to the treatment room, Vicki keeps her eye on her brood and on Daisy at the same time. She watches as Martin seats himself in a wheelchair waiting by the receptionist's desk, and then all of a sudden the chair is rolling across the vinyl flooring, and then all the kids get into the picture and they and the chair disappear from view. Luckily, the doctor's back is to the door.

“I think you're going to have to take this girl into Swift Current,” the doctor says in his South African accent while Daisy cries and holds her arm away so that he can't get a good look at it. “Here, little girl,” he says, reaching out his hand as though he were offering it to a dog to sniff.

“Daisy,” Vicki says, tired of the racket and the whole complicated day. “For heaven's sake, let the nice doctor look so we can get you fixed up and go home.” To the doctor she says, “Please do what you can here. I can't take all these kids into Swift Current now. I just can't.” She knows she sounds like she's begging, but she doesn't care.

Daisy stops crying for a few seconds and retreats to a far corner of the room. The doctor turns to Vicki. “Why don't you wait with the other children,” he says. “Perhaps she'll be better if you aren't in the room. That sometimes helps with the difficult ones.”

Vicki wants to tell him that Daisy is
not
a difficult child, but then she looks at her daughter cowering in the corner like a wolf pup. She leaves the room, closing the door after her, and listens for the crying to start up again, but it doesn't.

The waiting area is deserted. Vicki can't see the other kids anywhere. She steps out into the parking lot, thinking they may have taken the wheelchair outside, but they aren't there either. They must be in the nursing home, then, visiting Mr. Cruikshank, a Second World War veteran who has a major league baseball he likes to show the kids. She knows Martin and some other boys from school sometimes visit him during the noon hour. After Mr. Cruikshank has had his lunch, Martin tells her, he takes them back to his room and asks one of them to go to the drawer and get his baseball, which is in a red satin bag made especially for the ball by his daughter. Apparently he caught it at a game in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1947, after the war and before he returned home to Saskatchewan. He can't remember the name of the player who hit the ball, someone who got sent back to the minors and disappeared from baseball history.

Vicki walks around the corner to the nursing home entrance, passes through the lounge with its big-screen TV, and goes down the short hallway that she knows leads to Mr. Cruikshank's room. She's familiar with the building, having visited elderly neighbours here many times. The hallways and public spaces in the home are decorated cheerily with wicker baskets and dried flowers and little brass pots that look as if they belong in an English country garden. The bedrooms are jam-packed with odd, mismatched furniture from the last places the residents called home, the places they left in a flurry of dispersal, saving only the few favourite items that would fit in one small room: an armchair, a dresser, a small television set. There are crocheted afghans and home-made quilts with matching pillow slips, and almost all of the residents have brought with them a picture to hang on the wall above the bed or the armchair: a generic oil painting of maple trees in the fall; a calendar print of a lone cowboy; or perhaps a paint-by-number completed years ago by a member of the family. And photographs. Every surface in every bedroom is covered with framed photographs of ancestors and descendants, babies and children, teenagers in graduation caps and gowns, family portraits. Reminders of the past, and reminders that the world is still happening out there.

As Vicki approaches Mr. Cruikshank's open doorway, she can hear him telling the story of how he caught the ball in his army cap, and how he wishes he'd stood in line to get some of the players to sign it but he didn't, there you go, too late now. She peeks around the corner and her children are all listening to Mr. Cruikshank's story, calm as can be. Lucille is sucking her thumb, leaning up against her big brother Martin on the floor. The twins are both seated on the edge of the bed. She can't see the wheelchair; they must have ditched it somewhere.

Vicki hears Martin ask, “What should I be surprised about? You said I would be surprised.”

“I said that?” Mr. Cruikshank asks. “Well, I suppose I was referring to the player who hit the ball and how he went back to the minors and then who knows where, and I imagine he was surprised by how his life turned out because he thought he was going to be a big-leaguer and get into the Hall of Fame, but other things happened to him instead. Important things, I imagine. You'll be surprised too. That's what I meant.”

Martin says that doesn't really make sense, and then little Lucille sits up and looks at him and puts her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she says to him, “be polite.”

This makes Vicki smile, especially since Lucille's hair still looks so funny.

Just then a nurse's aide arrives to take Mr. Cruikshank for his bath. Mr. Cruikshank asks Martin to put the ball back where it belongs. “Be careful of the bag,” he says. “It's special, my daughter made it for me.”

On the way back to the Health Centre, Vicki pats Martin on the head. “You're a sweet boy,” she says.

Martin doesn't like to be called a sweet boy. He runs ahead.

The door to the treatment room is still closed. Vicki puts her ear to the door and is relieved to hear silence instead of Daisy screaming. There's a stack of children's books on a table, so she seats the kids and reads aloud to them from Dr. Seuss.

When the door finally opens and Daisy emerges, she has a plaster cast on her arm.

“I'm assuming it's a hairline fracture,” the doctor says. “The cast will stabilize it but I want you to take her into Swift Current tomorrow, just to be sure.” He hands Vicki a referral.

Daisy is admiring her cast. She's tapping it with a pen the doctor gave her for getting people to sign it. She can't believe the cast has turned so hard. It's magic.

“Thank you so much,” Vicki says to the doctor. He looks exhausted. There's a rumour about town that he'd like to go back to South Africa, and if he does, it will be almost impossible to replace him. “We're so lucky to have you here,” Vicki says.

The doctor nods, as though he agrees with her.

“You be careful with that arm,” Vicki says to Daisy a few minutes later as the kids pile into the car. “The doctor's gone home for supper and he doesn't want to see us again for a while, I can tell you that.” The other kids agree that Daisy should get to sit in the front. The chocolate cake is on the seat and Vicki picks it up and hands it to Martin in the back. No one asks why they aren't dropping it off at Karla's.

It's now almost six. Vicki drives around town to have one last look for Shiloh. The streets are deserted. She's starting to get worried, but she supposes there'll be a message when she gets home; he'll be going to the drive-in with someone else's family, a friend from school, that boy who plays hockey. Right now she's too tired to decide whether punishment is in order, grounding perhaps. She turns toward home, trying not to worry about Shiloh or the beans or Daisy or Blaine's lunch for tomorrow. She can't believe that in all that time in town she didn't buy anything for Blaine's lunch. All she did was lose Shiloh and break Daisy's arm. She'll have to mislead Blaine a little about the details of Daisy's accident, she thinks. Perhaps she can tell the story without giving the exact time. They went into town for a blancher and a few groceries, then Shiloh disappeared and Daisy had a wreck and it took forever to get a doctor to look at her, and then back to trying to track down Shiloh, and by then the stores were closed and where in the world does the time go?

They pass the Petro-Can and Vicki decides she'd better stop at the convenience store to pick up frozen Pizza Pops for supper. She doesn't dare try the debit card again, but she can write a cheque. Blaine hates Pizza Pops—he says he can't stand the smell—but at least they're fast. Vicki buys a dozen. There's a canned ham on the shelf and she buys that too. And coffee. So the day wasn't a complete waste. At least Blaine will get a decent lunch tomorrow. Maybe the smell of Pizza Pops will make him so mad that he'll forget about the beans. Daisy's arm will help too. And Shiloh will be a distraction, how he's getting home and whether someone will have to drive back to town for him.

So everything will be all right after all, and anyway, what's another day? What does it matter whether the beans get done today or tomorrow? There's just a few hours of darkness—one sleep, as the kids say—between this day and the next, just like there's only a breath between being alive and being dead. She heard someone say that on the radio once—some famous person who was dying, one of those people who
thinks
about things—and it made a lot of sense. The image of a dying person's last breath had come back to her many times since then, and it was a comfort. It made dying seem like something you could actually do without being terrified out of your mind.

By the time Vicki pulls into the yard and turns the car off, she's decided not to worry about whether Blaine will be mad that the beans are still sitting in plastic tubs, although she can't quite convince herself not to worry about Shiloh. She runs her fingers through her hair and has a quick look at herself in the rear-view mirror.

Lucille notices and says, “You look pretty, Mom.”

Vicki accepts the compliment, but really she thinks she just looks worn out.

Cocktails

This has never, ever happened in all the years of Marian's living in this house. Not while Ed was alive. Not since his death. Come to think of it, Willard has never entered any house at what they call “happy hour” and had a fancy alcoholic beverage waiting for him on the coffee table. He walks in the door after a day of odd jobs around the yard, and there's Marian, sitting on the couch in an outfit he's never seen before, with her hair piled up on top of her head, and two glasses of green something-or-other on a tray, along with some kind of tarts or pastries on a plate. It's so unusual that he decides the drink is not for him after all, she must be expecting someone else, another lady from town.

“I'll just get out of your way, then,” he says, and starts down the hall to his room. He's not sure what he'll do in there while Marian entertains, but it's what comes to mind in a moment of awkwardness. Outside would be better, at least he knows what to do outside.

“Willard,” Marian says to his back, “I thought we could have a drink before supper.”

He can smell a roast in the oven. That's unusual too, for such a hot day.

Willard stops, not quite sure what to do now. “You mean me? You and me?”

“That's right,” Marian says. “I found a recipe. ‘Perfect for a summer day,' the magazine said. I thought I'd try it out. You're the guinea pig.”

“I'll just wash up, then,” Willard says, and continues down the hall.

This is very strange, he thinks in the privacy of the bathroom. He washes the day's dirt off his hands and face, and looks at himself in the mirror. He has grey stubble all over his chin. He wonders how many days it's been since he shaved. Shaving is not a thing he does very conscientiously, and sometimes he leaves it long enough that he tells people he's growing a beard, even though he never really is. He thinks about Marian in a new outfit with her hair done, and decides he has to shave. There's hardly ever a time when Willard shaves for a reason other than his face gets itchy or he gets tired of looking at stubble in the mirror, but shaving will buy some time while he tries to figure this out.

He gets his electric shaver out of the drawer in the cabinet and goes to work on his beard. Is it the change of life? he wonders. He has no idea how old Marian is. Younger than Ed by a good bit, that's all he knows. Or maybe today is her birthday and that's what the drinks are in aid of. She knows when
his
birthday is—every year she bakes him his favourite carrot cake and gives him a card that he's never sure what to do with because he knows she doesn't like paper left lying around, so he reads it and says thank you and puts it in the recycling, hoping that's the right choice—but he has no idea when her birthday is, and as far as he knows, no one else does either. He can't remember a time when a birthday card came in the mail. He should ask her when her birthday is and take care to buy her a card. Although if it's today, it's too late.

Once he gets his face cleaned up, his work shirt looks comparatively dirty and ragged around the collar. He decides to slip into his bedroom and change into a clean one. While he's doing this, he has the thought, once again, that Marian is about to tell him she's leaving, and this is her way of delivering the news. Maybe she needs a shot of alcohol to get the conversation started, or maybe she thinks Willard will need a shot of alcohol to receive the news that he's going to have to look after himself from now on, and run the drive-in alone, and listen to his own voice as he sits at the supper table eating fried eggs and canned pork and beans while the recycling piles up around him, the
Western Producer
and all the flyers that appear in his mailbox, and the dishes pile up in the sink until he's forced to wash them, or maybe he could get into the habit of using just one plate and one knife and fork, and that way he could manage to get them washed up after each meal. He hopes he won't turn into one of those old bachelors who sleeps in the same sheets until they wear out, and then doesn't bother with sheets at all, and eventually doesn't bother washing the one dirty plate, just gives it to the dog to lick and calls it good enough. He's heard the stories, he knows there are a few of those old men around the countryside. Elton Sutter, for example, who had a famous fit when some of the ladies in town decided to surprise him with a clean house. Story was, he came in from the field one night and saw his house all spiffed up. The ladies didn't get a bit of thanks for their trouble, even though they'd left a big pot of beef stew on the stove and a bag of homemade buns on the table. Elton had taken the pot of stew and thrown it to the dogs. Or at least that's what he told people. Willard suspected that he'd eaten it but just didn't want to admit it. What man who cooked for himself could turn down a good homemade stew, no matter what the circumstances?