Sweet Jesus (19 page)

It had taken them only five days to plan the trip, from the moment Connie called her until now. She liked the idea of being there for her sister, who rarely, if ever, appealed to her for help. She hadn’t seen Connie in a long time and was amazed by what was happening to her. To have your house repossessed, and all the things you thought you owned? It was unbelievable. She’d never had the luxury of having any money to lose. It had always been a struggle.

Besides, now was as good a time as any for a getaway. She wanted Norm to stew over the baby thing – and she really liked the idea of seeing Zeus again. Connie had asked her to call him, and she’d agreed. Then she and Connie had talked about how Hannah should introduce herself after so long and what to say to him. When they’d come up with a plan, she made the call and found Zeus easy to talk to and open to their offer of getting him at least part of the way to New Mexico. The last time she saw him, he was fourteen and still living with her parents in Toronto. She’d been visiting from London and had taken him to her favourite bakery on Queen Street, where they sat by the window and ordered mint tea and ginger muffins with lemon
curd. It was an incredibly sunny day and she remembered how the yellow curd had gleamed like amber. Zeus had hung on her every word – aloof and yet with a smouldering intensity that signalled he was in need of attention himself.

He’d carefully smoothed the lacquered curd across the open face of his muffin, then offered to roll a joint.

My God, Zeus, she said, how old are you?

I’m fourteen, he said.

I guess that’s about as old as we ever get.

Look at me, he said, shrugging helplessly. I live in a rectory. I don’t have many friends.

When they got up, Hannah had hugged him, exuberantly, then felt silly because she hardly knew him. They left the bakery and she said, Come on, and took him to the roof of an old warehouse downtown, where they sat looking out over the skyline and got high. It started to get dark and a fog came in off the lake in a milky haze, blurring the bright billboards and neon ads. They could just make out the name of the Sutton Place Hotel. The letters seemed to hover in the air, attached to nothing, like the lurid dreamscape of a futuristic city. They rechristened it Mutton Face, then the Lamb Chop Hotel. They spoke in cat and dog noises. They talked about staging an opera consisting entirely of barks and meows and police sirens. Hannah da-da-dee’d the finale to
Turandot
while Zeus swung one-handed from the fire escape. They both froze and stared when his trucker’s cap came off and floated down to rest on a flat expanse of pebbled roof twenty feet below.

How could Hannah have forgotten about a boy like that? What monkey selfishness was she carrying around on her back that she hadn’t considered his need for a phone call once in a while? She hadn’t bothered, not once, to go see him. She was pulling these memories out like the soft ear of some forgotten
pocket of her past and feeling remorse for not having taken her role as a big sister more seriously. She would go with him and her sister to Kansas. She would make amends. She would think about calling Caiden Brock. He and Julia live in Wichita now, Connie had said. Apparently, they had three boys, that’s what Mom had told Connie.

Caiden’s parents were friends of the family, and whenever they’d come over to visit, Caiden would pull her aside when no one was looking and feel her up. He had his foot in her crotch at Christmas dinner one year, the whole time under the table. It turned her on so much. But she was so young – just thirteen, fourteen – and he was nine years older. Hannah didn’t know what to do. He’d come by the house and take her for a ride on his motorcycle, then drop her off and leave. It drove her wild with helplessness. She wasn’t sure he was interested in talking to her at all. She just wanted him to keep doing those things to her body. She used to like going to his parents’ place, even when he wasn’t there, because his mother would always pamper her. She’d order Chinese food. They never had food like that at home. Mrs. Brock was the only person she’d ever heard speak in tongues. It happened in her living room. Hannah hadn’t wanted to be rude, so she pretended to be moved.

There was another time she faked it, at Anglican summer camp. Caiden was there as a camp counsellor. They sat together at the big final worship service, where all these urban kids from non-religious families were getting up and approaching the rustic communion rail to be saved and converted. Hannah wanted to show him how spiritually deep she was so pretended to be having a religious experience. She even stood up and lifted her hands into the air and pretended to cry a little.

Nothing like this was going to happen at that church on the outskirts of Wichita because she had no intention of
actually going inside, but something about the trip excited her. Something about a bland life having no taste. Like the white of an egg, she thought, noticing a box full of quail’s eggs that an old man was selling. He was sitting on a red bucket, the eggs on an up-ended wooden crate. Beside him, a woman selling tiny bird’s-eye chili peppers out of a styrofoam takeout container.

I need to go to the bank, Connie said, and exchange some money. Are you taking any cash?

Hannah shook her head. I booked us a rental and got
CAA
maps, so don’t go faulting me, as usual, for doing nothing.

Let’s try not to fault each other for anything on this trip, okay?

Hannah said she was fine with that, and soon they were crossing a nearly empty lot towards a car rental office. This is the place you chose? Connie said. It looked dilapidated.

Hannah said she’d reserved a Prius, but they couldn’t see a Prius anywhere. The only two vehicles in the lot were a Cadillac and a small, brand-new, white pickup truck. They got a really cheap deal on the truck, a Ford Ranger, and this is what they took.

Connie was too tired to drive and complained of having to do so much of it at home, so Hannah drove, aggressively and with the lock-jawed concentration of someone who rarely drives. They lurched and bolted their way out of the city. Traffic thinned past the suburbs, and after an hour or so, they started to come across open farmland. Properties divided by a single line of trees, their trunks grey and black, like fences made of tarnished cutlery. Here and there, marooned in the fields, small islands of green conifers. In the shelter of a long escarpment, the trees still dark red and orange.

Connie was leaning against the door, her cheek resting against the cold glass. Her body gave a sudden jolt. In a fraction of a second she’d imagined it – sucked out onto the shoulder, the rip and claw of gravel as she hit the ditch. I thought the door was swinging open, she said. Once again, she double-checked the power locks by pressing the switch four times.

That’s the third time you’ve done that since we got in, Hannah said.

Is it? Connie said distractedly. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She was missing her children, their ripe pear-scented breath. And then she conceded. I don’t know why I’m so nervous, she said.

It comes from trying to conceal a desperation, Hannah said. You know, the loss of all your worldly possessions? Maybe you just need to let it go and grieve.

What, and make the tragic spectacle of my life even more public?

I’m not public, Hannah said.

Look, I can only behave the way I know how to behave, Connie said. And at the moment, I’d rather keep my feelings to myself.

Sorry
, Hannah said.

Connie didn’t want to open up to her sister but found she couldn’t help herself. I don’t want to care about the house, she confessed, but it’s crushing me.

Maybe it’s good not to get so attached to that kind of thing, Hannah said.

Well, of course I was attached! I know that’s hard for you bohemian types to understand, but I was very attached to the way things were. My house, and my family in it. It took me years to collect all that stuff, my artwork, my furniture, my rugs. I don’t care if it seems shallow and unenlightened, but it
really hurts to lose it all now. I used to look around the house and think, oh yeah, this is who I am. This is what I’ve built with my life.

So do you think people who haven’t amassed all that stuff haven’t built anything with their lives?

No, all I’m saying is that, for me, it was reassuring.

Hannah had, on more than one occasion, rolled her eyes at her sister’s big house and fancy cars and closet full of expensive clothes. She’d once stood in Connie’s closet and stroked one of her folded cashmere sweaters and heard the muted crinkle of tissue paper beneath the exquisite wool. The price tag was still on. Connie’s lifestyle was excessive, and Hannah felt her sister wasn’t even aware of this. And it seemed odd, especially in light of her Christian faith. But, in fact, Hannah
was
sympathetic to the material – the need for embellishment, to make things beautiful – and often found the most heartbreaking vulnerability to be expressed through the material, especially when money was scarce. In the acquisition of a thing that had no intrinsic value but could cause such joy. Her mother had once made a special trip to
IKEA
to buy some pretty paper napkins that were on sale for half-price. It was a trivial gesture pinned to the hope of something small and sweet, to be available at some future opportunity for hospitality. This was the kind of thing that made Hannah want to weep. I mean, Hannah said. And then she didn’t know what to say.

Connie felt unfairly criticized and had retreated into angry silence. Why did her sister insist on challenging her, and at such a low point? Her anger kept ricocheting between what she knew to be Harlan’s failure and what she perceived to be her own. She was angry that the man she had chosen to marry had screwed up so badly, but what did it say about her own judgment? She had tried to avoid weakness, but that’s exactly
what she’d married into. And she was at a loss now to explain how she could have been so wrong about the quality that lay barely beneath the surface of her own life. Look, Connie said, I just want to meditate quietly on the landscape, if that’s okay with you.

I never said it wasn’t, Hannah said and wondered why she couldn’t be soft.

I’m trying to get the colours right, Connie said, and it took all her concentration not to cry. The late October sky was like milk with a drop of blue paint in it. The ground scrubby, the fields shaved and corrugated. Buzzed rows of mustard-coloured stalks. Last night’s rain had left ribbons of bright water in the furrows, like incisions revealing another sky that lay beneath the earth.

They drove on broodingly, past some crows yelling at each other in a field. I made a road trip
CD
, Hannah said and reached for her bag. Can you get it for me?

Nick Cave sang a woeful, gritty ballad.

Hannah took a quick look at her sister. She was tolerating the music. I had a dream last night, Hannah said, about Emma.

Connie closed her eyes.

I dreamt she was having a baby.

Do I want to hear this?

No, Hannah said, probably not. And it was true, the dream had been lurid. There were some body parts in a bag, a T-bone steak, which was part of the new baby. Emma was giving birth and her little right leg was deflated like the finger of an empty rubber glove. She was holding her hands above her head and trying to squeeze the baby out. The dream had made Hannah feel dirty, for having such thoughts about her niece, with their implication of sex and adult behaviour, but then she’d realized what it was all about. Of course the dream had nothing to do
with Emma, Hannah said. It’s about my own thwarted desire to have a baby, that’s all.

Connie was silent, then said, I can’t be casual about my children, okay? I just can’t be. And I would like you to exercise some restraint about the things you tell me on this trip. I want you, just a little, if it’s possible, to take my feelings into account. I mean, my situation – is that going to be too hard for you?

No, Hannah said. I just keep forgetting, okay? Her sister could be so severe. You know, Harlan doesn’t need to be damned, she said. He’s not a bad man.

I’m not even thinking about him, Connie said, and again she felt the painful vulnerability of talking about her intimate life, and yet she was compelled. It had something to do with a desire to be known.
To be known
. Now that would compensate a little for this feeling of fear. It’s just that being a mother is so terrifying at times, she said, and as soon as she did, she was flooded with the reassuring confidence of love. That’s what being a mother was like too, she thought, overruled constantly by love. Emma’s getting really independent, she said. She’s so headstrong. I overheard her talking to some of her little friends recently about how she crosses the street with her eyes closed and that she’s never been hit by a car. This totally freaked me out, of course, but it also made me think how for some people the prospect of opening their eyes is more terrifying than keeping them shut.

Sometimes I think we all live by faith when we’re children, Hannah said, and then spend the rest of our adult lives trying to regain that trust.

The sun had punched through the clouds and the sisters drove through a pulsing corridor of tall dark trees and came out along some more shorn fields. Long, straight alleys of bright yellow
stalks slid and stretched, then flashed by, one after another. They stopped for tea at Tim Hortons and Connie wandered out alone behind the squat, brown-brick building. The back half was made of grey cinder blocks. Beyond it, an empty trailer park, the grass wet and shiny like fish scales. A little mirrored pond where the ground had been flooded, yellow leaves in the clear water, still as fossils. Her best audience wasn’t there to witness this and somehow that’s what made things real, was sharing them with Harlan and the kids. Without them the world felt insubstantial, made of theatrical sets and facades. Like this building, the best bricks reserved for the front, the rest just cinder blocks. Cinder blocks! They might as well have been selling doughnuts out of a bunker. She looked up and the landscape looked stripped and abandoned. Would she ever get her family back together again?