The Chrome Suite (34 page)

The ping-pong table is covered with newspaper and sitting around it with him are several children. “I told Marlene I’d keep my eyes open for you. They’re out back,” he says and Amy sees colour rise in his neck.

“Look.” A little girl sitting beside Hank demands Amy’s attention. She holds up a white object for Amy to see. Her sun-browned fingers are tinged with white dust. “I’m making a turtle.”

“And I’m making a gopher,” the girl across the table from her says loudly. They’re the same two girls she’d seen in the washroom the day before. They look up at her and their eyes are inquisitive, their faces shine with intelligence.

“Not bad,” Amy says against her will.

“Soap carving. We went out first to scout an animal we might carve,” Hank explains.

“I didn’t, I didn’t,” the girl interrupts Hank. “I didn’t actually
see
a turtle. It was a rock that looked like a turtle.”

Cute, Amy thinks.

“Mostly we’re making a mess. I’m no good at this.” Hank laughs, a nervous little cough.

She’s surprised to discover that there’s a large vegetable garden behind the Community Centre building. Elaine sits on the back steps with a bucket of peeled potatoes at her side and a basket of unpeeled ones between her legs. Beyond, Marlene stands among the vegetables, hoeing. “Howdy,” she calls when she sees Amy. “Man, oh man, were you ever sawing logs when I got up this morning.”

“You have two gardens?” Amy asks.

“No,” Elaine says. “This is the community garden. We take turns looking after it. Some of the old folks don’t have it in them any more.” She squints up at Amy, searching her face. “How you feeling? Better, I’ll bet.”

“Yes.”

Elaine moves over on the step, indicating that Amy should sit down. She hands her a peeler and a potato. “We’ve got fries on the menu every single day.” Her voice drops. “Your mother says hello. Talked to her this morning.” Amy’s hand stiffens around the potato and her stomach tightens.

“And?”

“And that’s about it. Here.” She takes the peeler from Amy and demonstrates how to use it. “She said, ‘Please say hello and tell her’ “ – Elaine coughs and clears her throat – “ ‘tell her that I’m praying for her.’ Is your mother religious?”

Amy watches the wrinkled skin give way to white flesh as she scrapes at the potato. Marlene drops the hoe and walks through the garden towards them.

“You could stay with us,” Elaine says quickly. “We’d find something for you to do.” Her voice becomes businesslike. “Marlene’s always harped about not having a sister. You’d be good for her.”

Yeah, sure, fine, Amy thinks. I am a stray dog to be fed, fattened, my coat brushed until it shines, and in return, of course, I will wag my tail and look up adoringly at every pat, and all for the sake of your darling daughter. What if it isn’t good for me, eh? And anyway, this is probably a pretty dull and boring place. She sees Marlene’s feet stop in front of her own. “I think Hank’s got a crush on you,” Marlene says. Amy doesn’t notice Elaine’s sharp sideways glance, or how her hands have stopped moving for a moment.

Twit, Amy thinks. “How come there aren’t any churches in Spectrail?” A diversionary question.

“We’ve got enough trouble without asking for more,” Elaine replies curtly. “There’s a Denver sandwich in the oven. You’re probably starving.”

She is starving. She feels weak with hunger, and her legs are rubbery as she climbs the stairs and goes back inside. She hears the
children’s low chattering in the ping-pong room as she stands behind the counter, hands trembling as she devours the sandwich, and then sucks bits of egg and butter from her fingers. She senses that she’s being watched and turns and sees a girl sitting on a stool. She sees only her head, dark braids trailing down either side of it, brown eyes fixed steadily on Amy’s face. Jill, Amy thinks, and wonders what she would look like now. If she had not died, would I be here in this place or still back in Carona?

“What’s you name?” the girl lisps.

Amy wants to turn away from that steady gaze and ignore the question. It seems that each time she tells someone her name, a piece of her is given away.

“What’s you
name
?” the child insists.

“Alice,” Hank says from the doorway, “come on now. You’re not finished yet.” Alice slides from the stool and walks over to him. “Her won’t tell me her name,” she complains. Hank laughs. “Amy. Her’s Amy,” he whispers loudly, taking the child by the hand as they leave the room. Amy hears him whistling a tune between his teeth. And her’s getting out of this creepy place, Amy thinks.

Hank was still whistling when he worked at the ping-pong table with the children for the rest of that morning. But even if Amy had been listening, she wouldn’t have recognized the song.

It was a song he’d absentmindedly sing while driving down the road on a Saturday night on his way to play with a pick-up band at an anniversary or wedding social, or when Jerry called and he’d take the bus into the city, or, years later, in bed, Hank would whistle between his teeth, or sing softly under his breath “The Girl That I Marry” – the song a brand or a legacy from his mother.

ain Street isn’t where I thought it would be
, Amy writes in her notebook.
And it goes nowhere. Ends suddenly at a war memorial. No hotel. And no churches either
. Elaine and Marlene have hitched a ride with friends Steve and Laura and have driven to Brandon, a major centre which is known as the wheat city of the west. Steve is a jovial, pot-bellied butcher, who agreed to give Amy a few hours’ work on Fridays and Saturdays. And although he winced her first day when he discovered that she’d fed a whole tray of sirloin steaks into the meat grinder for hamburger, he made jokes about it later, saying that his customers kept coming in after that and demanding the grade “A” grind; “A” for Amy. Laura, his stringbean Duchess of Windsor look-alike wife, putters constantly in the four-stool coffee bar set up in one corner of the shop, which is a tilting wood frame building, painted bright green on the outside and coral inside. She makes pathetic-looking gingersnaps and chocolate chip cookies that people refer to as “Laura’s hockey pucks” but nonetheless feel obligated to buy. Elaine travels to Brandon with the couple three times a year. In spring for her gardening needs, before Christmas, and now,
at the beginning of September, to shop for back-to-school supplies and clothes for Marlene. Amy is at home, babysitting the old bugger.

She glances out the window and sees the old man below in the garden where he likes to sit, and which, except for the cornstalks stripped bare of their cobs and several root vegetables grown too large and pithy to be eaten, is now bare. Earlier in the week Amy had helped Marlene dig the potatoes and carry them basket by basket to the bin beneath the cellar stairs. Elaine also has a root room for storing turnips, parsnips, and carrots. Amy had collected poppy seeds for her, emptying the little brown seed shakers into a jar so Elaine could use them when she baked poppyseed bread during the winter. They were like animals, Amy thought, in a frenzy to store food for the winter. When Elaine proudly pointed out that there wouldn’t be the need to buy a single can of anything, Amy felt some of her pride too.

They’re poor, she realizes. The old man always wears the same shirt, and his jacket has been mended at the cuffs and elbows many times. He receives a pension from the First War which is not enough for them to live on. Marlene is vague when it comes to answering questions about her father but Amy has learned enough to understand that the old bugger fought for the other side. For a full hour now he has been working over his stamp album. A strand of his hair lifts and flutters. There’s a breeze. Perhaps she should go and bring him inside. She closes her notebook and her eyes turn to the page of the dictionary lying open to one side. Love. The word she’d been searching for earlier. “Love is a zero score in tennis.” She likes that line. Unlike her mother’s journal, Amy’s is forceful, witty, and creative. The day it begins to sound snivelly, I will burn it, she thinks. Love. Love could also be a table. The table Elaine rescued from the dump, scrubbed, painted, and set down in front of the window so that Amy can look out from time to time while she reads or writes. She has read almost two full shelves of books from the strange little
library in town, and, although she sometimes hears footsteps on the other side of the door and smells pipe smoke, she hasn’t seen the long-nosed librarian again.

A movement in the garden draws her attention. The top of a cornstalk dips and sways wildly and then she sees Hank attempting to wrench it loose from the earth and failing. “It’s okay,” Elaine had said when Hank offered to come over and clean up the corn. “Wait until the first hard frost. It’s easier then.” But Hank would not be deterred. The cornstalks had to be pulled out. Today. He steps back from it, puts his hands in his pockets, and studies it. His legs are short, most of his length in his trunk, she sees, as she studies him and imagines for a moment that he might make a good back-up musician for her life. Her mind jumps with possibilities; hanging out with Hank the way she’d hung out with Cam and Gord. Leading the way to adventure, and Hank following behind carrying the suitcases, the required male presence to get her through doors and backstage. She does not realize that churning beneath his genial and rather placid expression is the excruciating desire to mate with her and merge.

Hank circles the cornstalk and lunges at it again. He yanks and falls backwards as it comes loose. He turns and looks at the old man, who has spoken. The sound of the man’s voice is like a rusty gate in need of oil, Amy thinks. Hank gets up and heads off out of sight and returns moments later carrying the garden fork. Use the proper tool for the job, Amy thinks, remembering how Timothy once took away the rock she was using to pound a nail into a board and replaced it with a hammer.

“Love,” she reads in the dictionary, “is an attraction based on physical desire.” In the weeks that she’s been in Spectrail she’s become rounder, though not by much, and her hair is a little longer and two-toned. She can’t imagine anyone desiring her. She watches as a cornstalk flies through the air, landing beside the garden. She doesn’t see anything particularly sexy about Hank’s solid, utilitarian
body. But he is unusually kind and thoughtful, and she wonders why she doesn’t find that attractive. Oh well, she thinks, he likes to be useful.

At first, her writing and reading had been a covert activity, snatched on the run. Sometimes she would simply disappear for hours into the country outside of town with a book and offer no explanation for her absence. But all that changed in one day. She had been sitting on the edge of the bed too engrossed in what she was reading to hear Elaine come up the stairs. When she looked up for a moment she saw that Elaine was standing, and for God only knew how long, in the doorway with her hands on her wide hips. Oh fart, Amy thought, I guess I should be down there doing something. Elaine strode towards her and in a single movement lifted both of Amy’s legs, swung them onto the bed, and heaped pillows behind her head. “You really should be comfortable when you read,” she said. It was after this that she’d gone and scrounged the table and a larger bureau, too, and added them to the furnishings of the sparse room. The two bottom drawers are Amy’s and are surprisingly full given what she had the day she arrived. In one corner of the bottom drawer is a tobacco tin where she keeps her savings. She feels a bit guilty over the fact that she isn’t proving to be the sister Marlene has always wanted. She declined joining the teen bowling league and going down to the Craft Collective with Marlene in the evenings to learn how to make papier mâché bowls.

The old man’s eyes follow Amy as she crosses the yard now carrying a
TV
tray and checker game box. The breeze that dips and sways in the tree’s branches in the centre of the garden is full and moist. She stops and turns her face up to the sun. Here I am, she thinks. This is me. She absorbs its light and heat. “I think I was meant to live outdoors,” she says to no one. Another cornstalk arcs through the air and shushes down on top of what is now a large heap. Hank leans against the fork watching Amy. “Why don’t we go camping one of
these weekends?” he asks. “You, me, and Marlene. Before it gets too cold. I’ve got a tent.”

His voice startled her and she feels silly to be caught, mouth open, gaping at the sky. She sets the game down on the ground and struggles to set up the
TV
tray. Hank is at her side instantly. He takes the tray from her and wrestles it into place. “I’ll go and get a chair,” he says and rushes off into the house. The old man looks at her. She sees the knot of puzzlement in his forehead give way to a single word, What? And then a whole sentence unravels. What is this?

A reasonable question, she knows. She has never spoken to him and sees him only at the evening meal when he sits hunched and silent, his chin almost resting against the tabletop, looking down at the food on his plate or at his hand grasping the fork. They talk around him as though he’s invisible and it seems to Amy that no sooner is he done eating than he’s whisked away out of sight.