Grave Concern (6 page)

The night before Kate was to leave her Prairie prison in the tiny Drive-Away crammed with her worldly possessions, a hive of bees swarmed her insides. Below her window, the aptly named subcompact hunkered at the curb, vaguely threatening. Then, just as sleep began to wrap its healing gauze, stark images of childhood, a kaleidoscope of memories, arrived to break up her date with oblivion.

Toward morning, but well before dawn, an old lady's face came into Kate's head. The old lady was not her mother, but was a real person. Kate had been about eight or nine. It was the town's summer festival, and Kate's mother had deemed Kate old enough to go the grounds by herself, with a friend. Kate and Greta headed straight for the one tent they'd always wanted to enter. They each paid a quarter (Kate's entire allowance) to get in. There was hardly any lineup, and before she knew it, Kate stood before a woman with dark, searching eyes. There was no crystal ball, but rather a set of hanging glass chimes, which the woman would tinkle before she spoke. The chimes made an ethereal sound Kate would forever associate with the occult. The woman, Madama Della, nodded at Kate to sit down. Kate sat on the wooden chair and thrust her hands under her bottom to stop a sudden tremor.

Kate thought of her father proclaiming telepathic powers “pure balderdash but likely harmless.” She thought of her mother, who had frowned when told of Kate's plan to visit the tent of the gypsy-lady and said, “Are you
sure
that's how you'd like to spend your allowance?” As far as Kate was concerned, her parents couldn't have been more misguided. The gypsy was obviously genuine, her eyes so sharp Kate could hardly hold her gaze. Kate's eyes strayed to the woman's forehead (high and narrow), the eyebrows (frowning and thick).

After a bit, she noticed the gypsy's hand resting on the table, palm up, as though asking for something. How long had she been waiting for Kate to reciprocate? Kate retrieved her right hand, red and sweaty from being sat on, and placed it tentatively on the exotic tablecloth. The woman took hold of Kate's fingers, and Kate instinctively pulled away. But the woman's hand was strong, and Kate had no choice but to relax in its firm grip. Madama Della lay Kate's arm open across the table. Kate twisted around to look for Greta, who, Kate would soon discover, had run out of the tent. Kate turned back to the fortune-teller, terrified but determined. She knew this woman could see deeper inside her than anyone ever had or would.

The woman asked Kate some questions, easy ones: what her name was and if she liked school. She asked Kate's favourite colour and what month she was born. The questions seemed unnecessary to Kate, who found them trivial and beside the point. But then Kate had never visited a fortune-teller. Perhaps this was standard procedure, some kind of warm-up for what was to come. Finally, with a knobbly finger, Madama Della traced the lines on Kate's palm. It tickled, but Kate didn't flinch. She wanted badly to hear the message of her hand.

Madama Della tinkled the chimes. “Long life,” she said, in a voice more abrupt than Kate had expected. “Is good.”

Her attention moved up Kate's palm toward her fingers. “Heart has many roads, lines going out, coming in, here and there. One very strong all through.”

Kate hoped for more explanation, but it wasn't forthcoming. And the gypsy's gruff tone and definitive pronouncements didn't exactly make it easy to ask. The gypsy seemed to lose interest, leaned back in her chair, and gazed at the ceiling. Was that all, Kate wondered? A whole week's allowance for that?

As Kate gathered courage to rise, the chimes tinkled again. “You are very fortunate girl,” came Madama Della's voice, “overall. However, sorrow is coming.”

Kate didn't like the sound of this. Maybe her parents were right, she shouldn't have come. But Madama Della, it seemed, was just getting started.

“You will have sorrow, yes, but happiness too. You will meet a tall, dark stranger. You will travel far, far away. For many years, you will be not completely happy nor completely sad.”

The woman checked Kate's palm again, as though taking a second look at a word on a page. “Yes, confused, disoriented. But you will, after a long journey, find your heart again.”

Madama Della sat back as though satisfied.

Not sure of proper protocol, Kate said, “Uh, thank you,” and stood up. Madama Della once more tinkled the chimes and opened her hand, indicating Kate's chair. Kate sat down again.

“No rush, dear,” said Madama Della. “Old Della not see so good any more. Your eyes. What colour are they?”

The question seemed odd to Kate after such deep prophecies of the heart. But then everything had been odd, from the moment she'd walked in. “Uh, sort of brown, I guess,” Kate said.

“I see,” sighed Madama Della. “Just two things more. You will come back here, Kate. You will return to this town. This is real message of the hand.”

Madama Della leaned back into the darkness as though done. She pulled her hands off the dimly lit table and folded them comfortably over the front of her many-layered skirts.

And the other thing? Kate wondered.

“Oh, and prophecies I have given, these are no in order,” said the Madama. “What spirits tell me will not be tamed or harnessed. These are more like wild horses, running free everywhere. The future will come, everything, as I have said it, all in time. But most caution,
Do not try to bring future
by what you hear now.”

Kate pushed off the duvet and lay naked in the cool morning air. This memory of Madama Della had been like a weird echo of itself — was she remembering the actual encounter? Or
her
memory of the encounter
the night before she'd pointed the Drive-Away toward home?
Jeezus
, as Mary would say,
déjà vu all over again
.

Outside her window, the snow fell gently on. Kate got up and walked downstairs. The old Fahrenheit thermometer read twenty-nine. Just below freezing. She tapped the glass face of the old barometer. As a teenager watching her dad do this, Kate was scornful:
Who still kept a barometer on their wall
? Now she read it with equanimity.
Fair.
A perfect winter day that also happened to be Christmas. Kate decided to walk the three kilometres, give or take, to Mary's house.

“Blow into his nose,” commanded Mary, standing stolid but relaxed in rubber boots.

“What?”

“You heard me. It's how they get to know you.”

Skeptical, Kate did as she was told. Ned Nickers pulled away. “There, you see? I told you no living creature could withstand this breath.”

“Coincidence,” said Mary, and laughed. “C'mon. You must be starved. Go on into the house while I get Ned Nickers his Christmas hay.”

Over way too many Pillsbury croissants spread with real Newfoundland cloudberry jam — “an old Christmas tradition,” Mary grinned — Kate, at Mary's urging, filled in the details of John Marcotte's request.

Mary admitted she was puzzled. “Why would he suddenly want to know where his son is buried, do you think?”

“Dunno. I don't think there's anything deep or nefarious about it. I just figure, time passing, getting older, you know. Maybe he's feeling guilty about J.P.'s upbringing, which wasn't exactly a model of positive discipline. Maybe he's lonely, softening up in his old age. People change. Well.
Some
people change.”

“True. You can see him sitting there all alone watching TV, maybe starting to blame himself for the way things turned out.”

“One time when J.P. was hanging around with his smoking buddies, he had a huge black eye and swollen cheek. I just put it out of my mind, avoiding embarrassment, I guess.”

“For him.”

“For me. Myself. I hate to say it, but I think I felt ashamed of my weakness.”

“Weakness?”

“In thinking his situation shameful, that I was somehow better than him. Am I making any sense?”

“Not much.”

Kate hesitated, then ploughed on. “You know, whatever he was proclaiming there by the drugstore was four-lettered, but at the same time it was like he was absolving the perpetrator. As though he
deserved
ill treatment. Very weird.”

“Not that weird, I guess. Teen torn in two, still trying to believe in the happy family myth. In any case, it would all go a long way to explaining J.P.'s direction in life.”

“Yeah.”

“And you were doing that female thing, wanting to rescue him. Good job things turned out the way they did, or, in my experience, you'd be the one underground.”

“You saying I'm one of those bad-boy groupies bent on reforming the poor dear?”

“You don't really seem the type, I have to admit. But it's been decades, Kate. You were both so young. People do change, as you say.” Mary pulled her feet off the chair where they'd rested and stood up, looming over Kate. Long-legged and square-framed with a square-ish face to match, Mary exuded reassurance, an old-fashioned kind of faith in the mundane. “Look, dear, I believe the sun's after trying to come out. It's Christmas. A beautiful day for a stroll in the country. I'm thoroughly sick of the bad in this world, aren't you? Let's go out and look for the good.”

Tactical Assault
,
Terminator 4
,
TRON
. Exactly a week after a lovely Christmas Day spent with Mary, Kate stood in deep despair before the DVD rentals shelf at Ho Lam Video and Electronic. Why hadn't she figured out how to get pay-on-demand on her parents' TV? She knew why. It would require a whole new set-up, not the rabbit ears her parents had been perfectly happy with. And that would require more monthly expense, not so easy to square with a marginal business model such as Grave Concern.

Okay, Kate told herself, quit the pity party. Try the B's.
Bachelor Party Massacre
,
Bachelor Tom and His Bikini Playmates
,
Back to the Planet of the Apes
. Kate felt warm in her winter coat. Way too warm. A hot flash was making her dizzy and a little short of breath. Sweat broke through her antiperspirant and congealed under her arms, threatening to trickle down her sides. Someone lingered behind her. Okay, so she knew she'd already spent way too long here. She stifled a scream, arising not from fear of the lingerer but dread of the lame New Year's Eve she would endure if she left movie-less.

Before Kate's eyes, a DVD materialized.

“Excuse me, Miss.”

Miss,
not
Ma'am.
Kate's mood lifted considerably.

“May I recommend this one? If you haven't seen it, that is,” said the lingerer, who apparently belonged here. It said so on his nametag: Lanh (Leonard) Ho Lam, Manager.

Julie and Julia
. Kate restrained the urge to grab the movie from his hand. Yes, she'd heard of it. Yes, this could save the day. And, more important, the night. She thanked her deliverer, whom she now recognized as the all-grown-up son of the Vietnamese couple who'd set up shop here back in the eighties. She'd of course left town by then, but learned these new truths on occasional visits. Kate had never really considered such “new” arrivals true townies, though they'd been here, what, well over twenty years.
As long as Kate herself
.