Roost (12 page)

I immediately tell Dan
about Dad’s bedbugs and that he has to call an exterminator, and then I call two different pharmacists and inquire about a morning-after pill for having unprotected hugging with a bedbug carrier. There is no such pill, so I take my third shower in less than twelve hours. My skin is raw from the scrubbing.

Monday morning, I go outside and tie off the garbage bag of clothes I burned the day before. The kids mill about the house in their pajamas.

“Do we have to go to school today?” Wes asks when I come back inside.

“Yes, but you’re going to be late.”

“How come?”

“Because we’re running late.”

Joan asks, “Because Grandpa has bugs?”

I reply, “Yes” and immediately regret it because she will spread the word.

“Wes, go put your clothes on.”

For no apparent reason, other than being four, Wes drops to the ground and crawls to the bedroom with his tongue hanging out.

“That’s nice, Wes,” I comment.

Joan bobs for Rice Krispies at the table. Milk drips from her face.

“Are you almost finished?”

She replies by pulling on the skin below her eyes.

I say, “Does that mean you’re done?”

She excuses herself, goes to the living room, turns on the
TV
, and stands an inch from it.

It takes me a second to realize I’m scratching my back and I think of the bedbugs and my blood pressure goes up. I go to the bathroom and fold the mirrors around my body to look for bites but don’t see any. Wes appears at the door with a helicopter.

“Are we going yet?”

“Five minutes,” I say.

He spins the blades.

It takes another fifteen minutes before we’re actually pulling out of the driveway. I put on a kids’
CD
and a happy person sings
Who built the ark?
and some happy kids reply
Noah! Noah!
Joan kicks her feet to the music and in my head I sing
Who brought the bugs? Father! Father!
and shiver.

Dan finally calls me back to say he can’t get an exterminator into Dad’s until the weekend.

“That’s not good enough!” I say. “Call them back.”

“You call them. Why is it my job anyway? Why can’t Dad call his own exterminator?”

“It’s your job to take care of bug things,” I assert, pulling into the parking lot of Turtle Grove.

I hang up the phone and walk the kids into daycare where they hang their raincoats on their respective hooks and the school’s director comes out of her office and greets them, and as they toddle off into the classroom, Wes sings “Who built the ark?” And Joan replies, “No one! No one!”

Glen agrees to pick up the kids from school
Wednesday so I can work late.

He emails,
Why don’t you just come for supper and I’ll take the kids tonight? That way you don’t have to drop them off tomorrow
.

I email back,
That would be great
.

I spend hours sorting through sponsorship requests from ball teams and animal shelters. In lieu of funding I offer ham sandwiches and store brand juice. Saying no depresses me. I print off my boarding pass and training schedule before shutting down and chatting with my assistant. I can’t help but notice she looks pregnant. She catches me staring at her belly but says nothing.

“If the Legion calls, tell them I’ve approved their request and a letter is on the way.”

She makes note of my instruction on a yellow pad, then sticks the pen behind her ear. “Have fun,” she says, in reference to my trip.

“I’ll try,” I reply sarcastically.

I hurry out of the office feeling nauseous from work. Photocopies and light bulbs and the glass bowl of unwrapped spearmints in reception. I stop at home to finish packing before going to Glen’s for dinner. When I arrive they have already eaten.

“Yours is in the oven,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Mommy!” Wes calls enthusiastically from the hall. “Joan pooped on the toilet!”

I look at Glen for confirmation.

“True story,” he says.

I find my girl with a colouring book on the kitchen floor and congratulate her. She elbows me out of the way and continues her work. I give her a dirty look she doesn’t see and go to the table. Glen joins me out of courtesy. He’s made salmon.

“This is good,” I say.

“You sound surprised.”

“Didn’t mean to.”

We talk casually. About work, his art, my dad. I notice my painting
In Contempt
is no longer on the wall behind him. I want to inquire about its whereabouts but am distracted. There is something different about Glen I can’t pinpoint. It’s not the shirt I’ve never seen before or the dill sauce he’s put on the salmon. It’s his demeanour. His contentedness. I see it in his arms, relaxed on the table, and in his eyes. And I see it everywhere else too. His clean countertops. The rapid thumping of George’s tail against the floor.

“Claudia?” he asks.

“What?”

“I asked if you’re okay?”

“Yes.” I apologize, “Sorry. I have a bit of a headache.”

“Why don’t you go lie down?”

Wes calls an
American Idol
contestant an idiot in the next room.

“No, I should go home.”

I fork the remainder of my spinach into my mouth.

“You sure?”

“Maybe for a few minutes.”

I go off to Glen’s room feeling equal parts fatigued and
out of sorts. I keep the lights off and the door ajar. His pillow does not smell like head the way it did when we lived together. It smells like grass. I drift off as he’s telling the kids to brush their teeth.

When I wake up it is just after nine and I come to the questionable but likely conclusion that I’ve had an orgasm in my sleep. It leaves me confused and feeling a bit violated because I remember nothing about my dream other than trying to pass off a box of Band-Aids as a meat casserole.

Glen pops his head in the door. “You up?”

“Yeah.”

“The kids are both asleep,” he says.

“Oh.”

I sit up in his bed and he continues to stand at the door, his hand still on the knob. I ponder the orgasm. Think about all the times I had to try really hard to make it happen awake and feel both fascinated and cheated.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll get out of your bed,” I say, folding back the covers.

“No rush,” he says. “Jays are on
TV
. Eleventh inning.”

I go to the fridge and pour a glass of water, then nearly choke on the temperature.

“Don’t forget Wes has a Beavers thing tomorrow night.”

“Got it written down,” Glen says in the other room. I notice that he does. It’s on the fridge calendar.

I thank him for dinner and go to the kids’ room.

“I’m proud of you,” I whisper into Joan’s ear. She stirs but stays asleep. I then climb the ladder to the upper bunk. “Bye Wes.” I knock my shin on the way back down.

Outside the night air is cool and gives me a chill. I should’ve done up my jacket. I should’ve stopped eating when I was full. I should’ve known he’d found someone new.

I go from work to the airport
. My flight to Calgary is delayed and I walk around the Halifax airport. It’s too big to have character like an island airport and too small to get lost in the crowd. Everyone sits and stares at each other. A boy uses a box of lobster packed for travel as a seat. Seniors in blue tartan wander around ready to show off their Nova Scotian friendliness. My Kobo isn’t charged.

It’s another hour before we finally board, and after we do, the flight’s not much better than the airport. The plane bounces around and they cancel the first drink service and neglect to pass out the little snacks normally fed to parrots. I stare out the window at nothingness and wonder where my mom was sitting before she died. Impossible. It’s not even the same airline, but I touch everything around me just in case. Press my cheek against the window.

My shoe slips off my foot and I nearly have a panic attack trying to retrieve it. The seats are too close. By the time I manage to get it back on my foot, sweat is dripping down my chest.

“Can I get you a drink?”

A male flight attendant leans into the seat. I order a ginger ale. He hands me a package of cranberry citrus cookies that taste like cranberries and citrus and nothing like cookies.

“These are gross,” I say to my neighbour, holding up the empty wrapper. He nods and goes back to reading an article on Mitt Romney, which I periodically attempt to read over his
shoulder. I drink my orange juice too fast. Practically shoot it because I can’t move or do anything as long as my tray table is down and any second now the flight attendant will want to collect my cup even though he just handed it over. I put it in the seat pocket and doze off.

On our way to Calgary, we divert to Toronto for a medical emergency. A woman in the rear of the plane is in labour. She breathes and snorts like a mechanical horse. Paramedics meet the plane. The flight attendant and a passenger guide her down the aisle and send her down the stairs and I wonder if it would have been easier if they’d inflated the giant yellow slide and rolled her down. I watch from my window as she is loaded into the back of the ambulance, her youthful face twisted, her pants wet. I start to get restless in my seat. Wish the flight attendant would escort me off too. Help me down the stairs and into a waiting
SUV
full of Swiss Chalet fries and the flaming cheese they serve in Greek restaurants. Another flight attendant opens one of the overhead compartments and pulls out a large charcoal-coloured carry-on bag she then delivers to the ambulance. The captain comes on a few minutes later, unnecessarily explains the reason for our landing in Toronto, and says we will be back in the air shortly. First the pregnant woman’s suitcase needs to be removed. In the meantime the ambulance takes off. It looks like a toy beside the planes. The luggage, I presume, will be held for the woman in the airport or perhaps delivered to the hospital. I watch below as the guy loads a black suitcase onto a waiting luggage trolley. It has a green tag and an orange bandana tied to the handle and if you look really closely you can see where Joan rubbed my deodorant across the zipper. The door closes, the flight attendant prepares for take-off, the plane begins to taxi, and I go to yell “stop” but it comes
out like a dull “uhh” the way it does in dreams where you’re being chased and you have no voice.

I think about pressing the call button, but the flight attendant has already fastened his seat belt and he might get mad or play the flute or something. Somewhere over Manitoba I realize it’s too late to do anything but dig through my purse for a distraction. I find a small juice box left over from the Senior Olympics in the side pocket of my bag. I’m surprised it got through security. I remove the straw from its plastic and jam it in the box. A fountain of purple juice sprays out of the straw with the force of a pressure washer. It gets the top half of my shift dress. I resemble a gross teething baby. My neighbour offers me his single-ply plane-issued napkin, which I use to wipe my chin and pat my chest.

When we finally get to Calgary, I wait at the luggage carousel in denial, hoping perhaps my bag made it to Alberta via large bird. It takes a while for the carousel to start up. People mingle and discuss the flight, its detour, the collective suspicion that a relative of Andre the Giant was sitting in the first row. I don’t know why I wait with them. Why I don’t identity myself at the baggage claim and explain that my bag was mistaken for the pregnant lady’s.

Finally the red light flashes and the carousel lurches forward. Passengers gather around the perimeter watching and waiting for their bags to descend from the chute. One by one they claim their duffle bags and hard shells. The odd cardboard box with St. John’s tags.

Eventually I am the last woman standing. A single grey bag makes its rounds unaware that its owner is giving birth somewhere in the
GTA
. I watch it round the corner and chug closer and closer. My dress sticks to my chest. Sweet grape. It will stain and I won’t have any clothes to wear tomorrow
and the Mac’s at the end of the terminal only sells bananas and Certs. A WestJet employee emerges from baggage claim and walks towards the carousel behind me. It is now just me and the bag. In four seconds it will be in front of me. In six it will have already passed and will be snatched up and sent back to Toronto. I will have nothing to wear to the training in the morning. I haul the bag off the belt and make like a criminal for the nearest exit.

After a short ride to the hotel, I ride the elevator with anticipation to the fourth floor. The suitcase is like a giant grab bag. I rub my eyes leaving makeup smudges on my hands. Once I’m in my room, I haul the suitcase onto the second bed and read the luggage tag: Mallory Pepper.

Inside are stacks of maternity clothes. Pants with big spandex panels. Shirts with empire waists. Seamless stretchy underwear. If I can’t get the grape juice out of my dress, I will have to go the training pregnant. I empty the rest of the suitcase and find a hairdryer, a bag of toiletries closed off in a freezer bag, some Mary Jane Crocs, pajamas, which I change into, and a notebook with the Eiffel Tower on the cover.

I retrieve my mini toothpaste and brush from my own carry-on. Wash my face with water only and then my underwear. I soak my dress in the tub with green tea hotel shampoo. Mallory’s pajama pants sag, so I tie them off with the drawstring. I turn off the main light, and trip a few times, feeling my way to the bedside table lamp. After I’ve clicked it on and I’m in bed, I open the notebook and flip furiously through it, but it’s blank. I feel twelve. I decide she intended it to be her birthing journal. I turn back to the first page, grab the hotel pen, and write:
7:30 pm-ish,
EST
(?), went into labour over Vermont? Syracuse?
I close the book, toss it in the open suitcase, and begin searching for signs of bedbugs.

It’s too late to call the kids. It is almost three back home. I roll over in my bed, manoeuvring my head across the gel pillow, and realize I’m in possession of stolen property. There’s still time to call the airline and tell them I mistakenly picked up Mallory Pepper’s luggage, but then I will have to take off her pajamas and they are surprisingly comfortable and smell like vanilla. Calming. I think about how late it is and how tired I’m going to be in the morning and fall asleep hoping the rest of her clothes smell like coffee or Red Bull.