Galveston (8 page)

She lasted at the job because she was pleasant and, Beverly supposed, because Mr. Pilmer felt sorry for her. She saved up enough for the trip, did the research and located the least expensive resort. She had the whole thing arranged by early fall, and Margaret had weeks of feeling normal in at least this tiny regard. Beverly even found herself looking forward to the trip. She put the brochure about Vista Playa de Oro in the washroom with the old
House & Garden
magazines. Every so often she would open it and review the amenities and activities.

One night, she noticed an odd sentence sitting in the middle of a paragraph about water sports:
sometimes there is
a strong undertow.
Of course, she’d seen that sentence before—she’d read the brochure countless times—but caught up perhaps in Margaret’s childish enthusiasm, she’d been interpreting this as another selling point.
A strong undertow
was perhaps a condition favoured by surfers or fishermen. The truth made her skin go clammy.
A strong undertow
meant:
There is a monster in the water and it wants to steal your child.

She went to the library the next afternoon, in order to research undertows. The public library was staffed by three elderly ladies, and as soon as Beverly mentioned the subject of
undertows
, they began a litany of horror stories, an eerie chant of warning. But the library’s card catalogue didn’t turn up any actual books on the subject.

Seeking credible information, Beverly made a phone call to her high school science teacher, Mr. Hardy. She used her married name when she said hello, so Mr. Hardy did not remember her at first. When she said her maiden name, Mr. Hardy went silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Yes, Beverly?” very pleasantly.

Beverly used to make Mr. Hardy uncomfortable, but she had hoped he’d got over it in ten-plus years. She made him uncomfortable on a lot of different accounts. For one thing, he’d been friends with her mother, had grown up on the same street, attended the same schools. So Mr. Hardy was not only aware of what had happened to Beverly’s mother—everyone in town was
aware
—but he could count it as a personal loss. Mr. Hardy also felt uncomfortable because, in chemistry class, he would often come and stand over Beverly as she worked at the microscope. He would ask how she was coming along and spy
down her shirt front. He gave Beverly very high marks, but it all made him very uncomfortable, and apparently still did, because he repeated:

“Yes, Beverly?”

“Do you know anything about undertows?”

“Excuse me?”

“Undertows.” Beverly spoke with as much precision as she could muster.

“Beverly, I’m not really following you.”

Beverly explained that she had arranged a holiday for her daughter but was now very frightened by the idea of undertows.

“Uh-huh. But what can I do for you?”

Beverly claimed she didn’t know and rang off, but she was angry, because she
did
know. Mr. Hard-on was a science teacher, after all. He could tell her whether or not science could battle such things, whether or not knowledge could vanquish the undertow. She read his reaction as negative, so if knowledge was not the ticket, preparation was.

When they went to Coronation Park on a hot summer’s day, Margaret would paddle about in the water like any small child. She could even swim, after a fashion, although it was very idiosyncratic; she would keep her arms at her side and propel herself forward by kicking. When she needed air, she would wave her hands briefly in front of her, making her head bob up. It was strangely graceful, Margaret’s swimming, and reminded Beverly of some aquatic animal. An otter, perhaps, especially since Margaret wore a bathing cap to contain her long golden hair, and her head looked bald and sleek. But the undertow was waiting for little girls who’d learned to swim in
tame Canadian bays and inlets. So Beverly got on the telephone and started inquiring about swimming lessons.

Beverly looked up. Everyone in the dining room was staring at her, and she wondered if she’d made a sound. Maybe she’d let down her guard and a moan had escaped her. Beverly suspected this was the case, because when she met their eyes, they looked away. Gail and Sorvig returned their attention to their desserts, Maywell Hope withdrew into the bar proper, Polly went over to a little table and dealt with a coffee urn, and Jimmy Newton concentrated on pouring the dregs of his Coke can into a glass.

The phys. ed. teacher, though, had finally removed his sunglasses and was staring at her. His eyes were blue, blue as a cloudless sky. The colour reminded Beverly of a scientific fact, one of a handful she’d managed to retain: even if the sky is empty, clear all the way to heaven, there is still potential rain there, enough for a deluge.

J
AIME AND
A
NDY GOT HOME
a few minutes after Caldwell had hung up. He hadn’t moved off the white stool beside the wall phone, but sat there staring through the window at the falling snow. The flakes were becoming thuggish, pounding against the pane and making it rattle.

Jaime bounded up the half-stairs from the mud room with her coat still on—having kicked off her boots—and began to water the plants that were collected on the countertops. Snow was on her shoulders, in her hair, melting now and making her glisten. The flakes were huge and intricately fashioned, lake-effect snow blowing off the big bay. Caldwell’s wife always got back from hockey practice full of industry and energy. The plant-watering was part rebuke, albeit a good-natured one. It was something both husband and wife did, coming back from hockey practice with ever more little chores to perform, making the other feel guilty. Which the other would, obligingly, not very convincingly.

Andy came to the kitchen table and flipped open the newspaper, finding the scores from last night’s hockey games. He studied them intently. The kid could not retain multiplication tables, but name any player in the NHL and he could rattle off goals and assists; name one of his favourites and he could recite shot percentages and penalty minutes; name one of his heroes and Andy would go through the entire career,
commencing with Junior B. Andy knelt on a chair, his hands banded across his forehead to keep his hair out of his blue eyes. For a long moment there was silence, and Caldwell didn’t suspect it was the last moment of peace he would ever know.

The silence registered on Jaime, who straightened up from her watering, a look of concern on her face. “What’s up?” she demanded. She shook her arms and shrugged her shoulders, dropping her coat onto the kitchen floor. As clothes became useless for any reason—if she no longer needed their warmth, if she wanted to be naked—she would throw them off wherever she stood.

“Lemieux got a hat trick,” said Andy.

“What’s up is,” said Caldwell carefully, “we’re rich.”

When Jaime encountered a sentence she didn’t understand, her reaction was to bristle, to furrow her brow. She would search the deliverer’s eyes for enlightenment. This is what she did now, looking deeply into Caldwell, trying to see what lay in there. “Okay,” she said finally, relaxing, “what the heck are you talking about?”

She began to remove her sweatshirt—it announced the existence of the Barrie Berries, a women’s hockey team that Jaime played goal for—yanking up her undershirt in the process, so that for an instant Caldwell saw his wife’s breasts.

“What I’m talking about is …” Caldwell snapped his fingers, making the thick paper pop. He didn’t know how long he’d been holding the ticket. “We won the lottery.”

“Bullwhip.” Jaime didn’t swear, wouldn’t say “shit” if she stepped in it. She had a repertoire of tamer stuff: “bullwhip,” “fudge,” “cheesy cripes” and, of course, “A-hole.”

Caldwell held out the ticket with a hand that shook slightly. “Son,” he said—Andy jerked his head up from the statistics only then, apparently the statement “we’re rich” had made little impact on him—“son, do you see those numbers at the top of the front page?”

Andy found the right page, dragged it across the table. He spotted the numbers and, collapsed over his folded arms, read them aloud. Jaime took a few steps forward so that the ticket pulled into focus, and when the last of the six numbers was read aloud, she shrieked. “What do we have to do, what do we have to do, we have to—” Jaime stopped suddenly. “Did you call your mother?”

Caldwell’s shoulders sank suddenly. “No.”

“Why not?”

Not because his first thoughts were of Darla Featherstone. No, Caldwell hadn’t called his mother because, well, he could legitimately claim some concern for her fragile health, her brittle mental faculties. Caldwell’s mother wandered through the hallways of a private nursing home, all leathery wrinkles in a fuzzy housecoat. Her nervous system was faulty, the wiring frayed, allowing her no moments of respite. News of this magnitude might well cause an overload, make her fizzle, spark, rattle, and come to a dead stop. Plus, Caldwell just plain didn’t get along with her. He tried to avoid the subject, addressing the first of Jaime’s questions, even though it had not been completed. “I have to go down to the lottery office.”

“Check.”

“Oh, but …” Caldwell laughed lightly. “There’s a news
crew coming over here. They want to film me, you know, leaving to go down to the place.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know …”

Jaime thought about it briefly, decided she didn’t care, shrugged her shoulders and advanced on Caldwell. Caldwell braced, unsure of his wife’s intentions. Jaime reached out and took the telephone receiver from its cradle beside his head, started poking out numbers on the touchpad. “I’m calling your mother,” she said.

Jaime got along well with Caldwell’s mother. She’d got along well with Caldwell’s father too, had been able to converse with him when he was dying of lung cancer and all Caldwell saw was a shrivelled, nicotine-stained creature with no interest in anything.

“Mrs. Caldwell, please,” Jaime said into the phone. As they went to seek the ancient woman, she turned and asked, “Where’s the lottery office?”

“Right down on Simcoe. In the bank building.” Caldwell was surprised at his sure knowledge. He supposed he’d noticed the logo on one of the dark windows of the town’s one true skyscraper. Or he might more properly have
noted
it, in some clairvoyant expectation of this day.

“Hi, Mom,” said Jaime. “Here’s your bouncing baby boy.” Jaime held out the receiver toward Caldwell, who accepted it, but only after a long moment. “Mom?”

“Has there been an accident?” Mrs. Caldwell demanded. That had been her reaction to the unusual all her life. If a relative should appear unexpectedly at the doorstep, even during
a festive season, even bearing gifts and bottles of liquor, Mrs. Caldwell would demand, “Has there been an accident?” The irony being, of course, that there never had been an accident, a calamitous event, not in all her many years, just a slow, steady decline.

Caldwell said, “I won the lottery!”

“My husband Fred won the lottery once,” she replied. “He won ten thousand dollars. He took me on my dream vacation.” None of this had happened. Caldwell’s father had once won a
thousand
dollars, had been so excited that he’d called his son and indeed announced plans for a dream vacation, but in the end, Caldwell suspected, the money just went into the cigarette fund.

Caldwell pretended he could have a normal conversation with his mother. “Yeah, well, hey, I won just a
little
bit more than that.” His mother fell silent, and he rushed to fill the quiet. “I won about sixteen million dollars.”

Jaime began to cough like Lou Costello, pounding on her chest with a fist, trying to force out the first syllable in the phrase “sixteen million dollars.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Caldwell. “Yes, that is more than ten thousand. Are you taking me on a dream vacation?”

“I sure as hell am,” Caldwell said enthusiastically. He wondered where his mother might want to go, but was afraid to ask.

Jaime grabbed the receiver away and started making plans. “Okay. I’m coming to pick you up. Caldwell’s got to wait here for a cameraman or something. So me and Andy will come get you, and we’ll meet him downtown at the lottery office and then we’ll have the biggest breakfast in the history of breakfast. Are you in?”

Jaime nodded at some reply Caldwell’s mother made, although Caldwell couldn’t imagine it being more elaborate than a grunt. She replaced the receiver, gave her husband a kiss and started regathering her things. “Come, young Andrew,” she said grandly, “we must go claim the
monah.”

“Can I get a new Game Boy?” asked Andy shyly.

“Son,” said Caldwell, “you can have a
hundred
Game Boys. Not to mention a Game Girl. We is rich folk.”

“I,” said Jaime, “think I must be dreaming. Except that Antonio Banderas isn’t hanging around naked, so maybe this is happening after all. Is it, Caldwell? Is it really happening?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “it’s really happening.”

Beverly drove to the YMCA, which stood upon a hill on the outskirts of town. It was late afternoon and the sun was dropping behind the building, turning it into a hard, hulking shadow. Margaret sat in the seat beside her, twisting the knob on the radio, searching for news, weather and traffic reports from Toronto, a hundred kilometres to the south. Margaret resented the fact that they lived in Orillia, a town of only a few thousand citizens. Millions lived in the megacity, Margaret had found out, so she wanted to live there too. But she couldn’t, because her mother was bound to the little town in some way that Margaret couldn’t begin to fathom.

They entered the building and Beverly’s first thought was that it looked like a hospital. The walls were clean, there was a long reception desk and behind it several young people wearing white shirts. It looked more like a hospital than the local hospital did. Beverly knew the hospital very well from driving
her grandfather there in the middle of many nights. He woke up dying at least twice a month; he would call Beverly and demand he be taken to Emerge. He always wore his housecoat, never belted tightly enough, and wandered into the registration area with the robe gaping open. They would wait much of the night—Beverly leafing through ancient news magazines—and then a doctor would once again tell the old man that he was just an alcoholic, that he wasn’t dying yet.