The Geranium Girls (4 page)

The part he liked best was filling her mouth with dirt. He was surprised that it was hard to keep open. It wanted to shut itself against his efforts. He had to pack it full. Her mouth wouldn’t open and her eyes wouldn’t close. She watched him all the while. He would have preferred that she didn’t, but in a way it was better. It stirred him; his body told him so.

His hand reaches now for his glass of water. The thirst never goes away; he hates his thirst. Without taking even a sip he hurls the water down the drain.

He pictures the flower pots that used to line the window sill above the kitchen sink. The old wood frame house belonged to Aunt Hortense in those days. Or Auntie Cunt as he thought of her. Auntie Cunt and her geraniums.

How he hates the smell of geraniums! Heavy, oily, pungent stink. And then they change and smell like apricots. Tricky, nasty flowers. He hates apricots too.

She had needled him into helping her. Always with the dirt. Feel the dirt on your hands, Boyo. Don’t be afraid of the dirt.

Boyo feared far more than dirt but he didn’t let on. He smiled. Because she told him to. He smiled because if he didn’t she tied his mouth open with one of her slippery woman scarves. She hadn’t wanted any gloomy Guses in her house!

It was on one of those dirt days that Hortense finally told him something about his mother.

“Your ma was a ’tard, if you must know,” she said.

“She was a what?’”

“A retardo. Dull as that lump of dirt in your hand, Boyo. Born that way.”

He dropped the soil and ran.

If his own mother had been retarded, what hope was there for him? He did well enough at school, but Aunt Hort could not be satisfied. If he got a B, he was punished for not working hard enough; if he got an A, his mark was regarded with suspicion: he must have cheated; the teacher must be a moron.

His punishments were many. Much of the time he had no idea what he had done wrong. If he had, he would have gladly apologized, not that it would have helped.

The punishments usually took some form of denial. The worst one was when she wouldn’t let him use the biffy, as she called it. She would see him walking towards the bathroom and shout, “Not so fast, Boyo! Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the bathroom,” he said.

“Let’s just see if you can hold on a little longer,” she said. “Are we talkin’ number one or number two?”

“Both, I think.”

“See if you can hold on till morning.”

So he would try to go at school, when he was away from her, but often, to his huge frustration, he would sit and sit inside a cubicle in the boys’ room but nothing would come out. More than once, he wet his pants in the classroom or in the gymnasium during physical education. He was tormented mercilessly by the other kids in the class. Stink Boy, they called him.

Sometimes, on his way home from school, he would go down to the river and seek out a little privacy there to do his business. One time Hort saw him coming up from the bushes lining the river bank and suspected him of doing just that. She got out the duct tape that time and covered the head of his shrivelled penis. He wasn’t allowed out all weekend. She kept him in the house where she could keep an eye on him and use him for what she called a scrub and rub.

Hortense’s house belongs to him now — has for years. It came to him by default, as her closest living relative, her only one. She didn’t leave a will. She hadn’t expected to die.

He writes a name on the doodle pad they gave him for free at St. Leon Gardens, the market where he buys his fruit. Beryl Kyte, he writes. It’s the name of the woman who found the tall one. He wonders what the person called Beryl is doing right now.

Beryl was watching her neighbours to the south, the Kruck-Boulbrias, heading out to their mini-van on Sunday morning. They had two squirrels in a cage.

They did it all the time — captured squirrels and drove them someplace.

“We live in a treed neighbourhood,” she said, after saying good morning and not meaning it. She did not wish them a good morning. She wished them different personalities, that would allow them to leave the squirrels where they belonged.

“In these parts wherever there are trees there are bound to be squirrels,” she went on, yanking weeds out of the garden along the fence where she had planted lettuce and carrots.

Mort, the husband, looked sheepish. “My wife is afraid of the squirrels,” he said. “She hears them on the roof and they scare her.”

They both did that — called each other “my wife” and “my husband” instead of using their actual names.

Ariadne, the wife, was already in the vehicle with the door closed and the window rolled up, looking straight ahead.

Beryl wanted to say, “Why don’t the two of you move into a cement building surrounded by cement and leave the squirrels alone?”

But she didn’t. She left it and went back to pulling out the little elm and maple seedlings that were trying to take root in her tiny vegetable garden.

Why am I so grumpy? she wondered. Why can’t I be more like Stan, with his easygoing ways, his ability to laugh at stuff rather than throw fits about it? He’d probably be best friends with the Kruck-Boulbrias. He’d probably teach them to like squirrels.

The phone rang and she ran to listen to the message. She was hoping to hear from Dhani. They were planning an evening out.

It was Joe. He didn’t give his usual spiel about how he thought she might want to talk, he knew he did, and so on. This message was short and to the point: “Hello, Beryl. Joe Paine here. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be bothering you anymore. So, good luck, I guess, and that’s about it. Okay, bye.” It was obvious by the odd lilt at the end of his sentences that he was trying to keep the resentment out of his voice, but he didn’t quite manage it.

An uneasiness crept in, only mildly tempered with relief. What had happened other than the fact that she had never been nice to him when he called? Maybe Stan had said something to him. She tried to recall if he’d said anything about having to take Scrug or Leo to the vet lately. She didn’t think so, but couldn’t be sure.

Beryl had been whining a lot to Stan about Joe but she hadn’t actually wanted him to do anything about it. I should just keep my whining to myself, she thought, and talk to Stan about football and the post office. But both of those topics would probably involve whining too.

She wished she hadn’t recycled Sergeant Christie’s phone number. She hadn’t returned his call and was mildly curious that he hadn’t tried again.

Beryl wondered how the investigation was going, wondered if the cops would tell her anything if she phoned.

After the first flurry of stories in the
Free Press
, about the discovery of the body, there hadn’t been much. Just a short paragraph a few days later, saying that the police were following up some leads, that the trail was by no means cold. That could mean something or absolutely nothing.

And they mentioned a hooker, Charise Rondeau, who had been murdered about a year and a half ago. Her killer had never been found. They hinted at a possible connection between the two deaths. Charise’s body had been dumped in a parking lot off Higgins Avenue, close to the Low Track, on a bitterly cold winter night. There was no mention of how either woman had died.

Beryl’s picture had been in the paper on that first Sunday. She’d been huddled under a blanket by the side of the road. They identified her as Beryl Kyte, the “jogger” who had tripped over the body. She wasn’t a jogger; she never ran if she could help it. But at least her name had been spelled correctly.

The phone rang again and this time it was Hermione, so Beryl picked it up. Her friend just wanted to know how she was getting along. It had been awhile since they had seen each other face to face, although they had spoken on the phone several times since the events in the park. The two of them decided that Beryl would drop by the shop one day soon on her way home from work, so they could get properly caught up with each other.

Beryl and Stan sorted their mail side by side, with conveyor belts rumbling over their heads. The sound always caused Beryl to feel that she was wearing a hat that was far too tight. Something needed a lube job this morning. There was a terrible screech every few seconds.

“Have you been to the vet lately?” Beryl asked.

“What!”

“Have you taken either of your guys to the vet lately?” Beryl shouted above the cacophony.

“No. I’ve been there, but only to pick up Scrug’s food. Why?”

“Did you say anything to Joe Paine about me?”

“Jesus! Me, me, me! Yeah, actually I did.”

“I knew it. Damn! What did you say?”

“Let’s go for a smoke.”

“I don’t smoke on weekday mornings.”

“That’s okay. You can watch me. We should get out of here for a few minutes anyway, before we do permanent damage to our ears.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

They sat on a low pebbled wall across the street at the library. It was cool there in the shade of the downtown buildings, a relief from the sticky heat inside the post office.

“I wish you hadn’t said anything to him, Stan. What did you say, anyway?”

“Nothing. I was just kidding. I didn’t even see Joe. I just dealt with the folks out front. If I had seen him I probably would’ve said something, though. I mean, you’ve been going on and on and on about how much he’s been driving you crazy with his phone calls.”

“Wait a minute. You were kidding? You didn’t say anything?” Beryl stood up and faced Stan.

“Yeah. No. Whatever. No. I didn’t say anything.”

“Jesus Christ, Stan! I should slap you.” Beryl did give him a little shove but it didn’t move him anywhere.

Stan inhaled deeply, letting a little smoke out first so it could travel up his nose.

“May I have one of those?” Beryl asked.

“No.”

“Why are you being so mean to me this morning?” Beryl’s voice shook a little. “Stan, you shouldn’t tease me about stuff like Joe. It’s not a good joke.” She slumped back down beside him on the wall.

Stan gave her his second-last smoke and lit it.

“I’m sorry. The post office brings out the worst in me.”

He left a message on my machine,” Beryl said, “saying he wasn’t going to bother me anymore. I feel kind of bad about it.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “Ah. God, that’s good.”

Stan took one last puff on his, right to the filter, and rubbed it out on the wall beside him.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he asked. “Him not bothering you anymore?”

“Well yeah, I guess. It’s just that I don’t want to have hurt his feelings. Or, what if he’s insane and I’ve sort of set him off or something?”

“I don’t think he’s insane,” Stan said. “I think he was probably genuinely worried about you and feeling weird himself about what the two of you saw in the park. Also, he may have a bit of a crush on you.”

“How do you know he’s not wacko? He’s phoned me a wacky number of times.”

“Because he’s a successful veterinarian.”

“So!”

“So animals wouldn’t like him if he was insane in a dangerous way, I don’t think. Do you?”

“No. I guess not. That’s a good point. I wonder if any murderers get along well with animals. I wonder if Ted Bundy had any pets. He was a fairly personable killer.”

“Are you actually thinking that Joe may have been involved in the girl’s death?”

Beryl flicked her butt out onto the road and a transit bus drove over it.

“We better get back,” she said. “No, I’m not thinking that, I guess. Jesus, I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

They crossed Smith Street, digging in their pockets for their identification cards, and entered the employees’ entrance of the post office.

“I guess it was just my unresponsiveness and nastiness that made him decide not to bother me anymore,” Beryl said, as they rode the escalators back up to the third floor.

“That’d likely do it,” Stan said.

Their supervisor, Ed, was looking for both of them when they got back. He had a new bag for Beryl and a complaint for Stan. The complaint was from a woman who thought Stan was too rough with her mail. She had accused him of bending things that didn’t need to be bent for what she had described as “the sheer joy of bending.”

“The sheer joy of bending?” Stan said.

“That’s what it says here,” Ed said, waving a piece of paper. “I’m just telling you what the customer service people sent along to me.”

“Oh, man.” Stan heaved a sigh. “This place is gonna kill me.”

Beryl fumbled around with her new double bag, fastening big buckles and little ones, trying to adjust the straps.

“I think this is a two-person job,” she muttered. “How do people know how to do these things?”

Two of her fellow letter carriers, a man and a woman, stopped what they were doing and fastened Beryl into her new bag. They fussed and discussed and rearranged what she had already done till it was just right and she felt six years old and very cozy.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both.” She was alarmed to find her eyes filling with tears.

Good Lord, not now, she prayed.

Her eyes filled up at the drop of a hat. This was something new for her too, along with cutting coupons and washing her hair too often. She supposed it would pass.

Dhani and Beryl stepped out the open door of Pasquale’s Restaurant into the summer night. Cars whizzed by on Marion Street and they walked quickly till they reached the flood bowl and then the quiet street by the river that led to Beryl’s house. The night was still, not a whisper of a breeze, and the mosquitoes were elsewhere, maybe in the scrubby vegetation near the water or bothering other people in their yards.

Beryl looked sideways at Dhani as they walked. She liked his appearance. He was strong looking and not thin. She didn’t trust thin past a certain age. There was a steady look to his deep brown eyes.

They fell into step under the clear night sky. The stars were barely visible — too much light from the city.

Beryl carried a small box with most of a Neapolitan pizza inside. Dhani carried nothing. He left his entire sausage and mushroom pizza at the restaurant. They had eaten so many appetizers that they had been almost full before their main courses arrived. Beryl had been mildly ashamed at her own gluttony, if not Dhani’s, but he had convinced her not to worry about it.

“We’re celebrating,” he had said. “And besides, we can take our leftovers home. We’ll eat them. Nothing will be wasted.”

But then his pizza had arrived and the mushrooms stared across the table at Beryl and she found herself blurting out a version of her experience in the park. Dhani knew about it, the murder, he had read the bits in the paper. But he hadn’t known about Beryl’s part in it. Her name was in the paper just the once, a week before they met. The conversation pretty much put an end to eating, but Dhani was such a kind and eager listener that Beryl felt good about sharing her story with him.

“I’m worried that I’ll never be able to eat mushrooms again,” she said, “and I used to really like them.”

Dhani reached across the table for her hand. “I’m sorry I ordered mushrooms on my pizza,” he said.

Beryl smiled. “It’s okay. You didn’t know.

“I really like tomatoes,” she had gone on, “probably even more than before. They seem pure to me, friendly even.”

“I love summer,” Dhani said now as they strolled down Lyndale.

Beryl could feel his eyes on her bare arms and on the curve of her breasts beneath the pale blue cotton of her dress.

She laughed, a light sound.

“Why?” She had an inkling of what he was thinking but didn’t think he would really say it.

Dhani gestured widely to take in the whole of Beryl and a little of the river park area — to safen it up a bit, she supposed.

At that moment, at the moment of Dhani’s safe gesture, two cars screamed past them down the drive and screeched to a halt just a half-block away. Both drivers leapt from their vehicles. One shouted and the other stared in disbelief. It was as though he was caught up in a standoff against his will: the reckless chase and roadside confrontation had happened to him. He had let them, though, and now he was paying. The two men stood in the bright light from a street lamp and Beryl realized at once that the quiet one was the policeman from the neighbourhood, the one who had spoken to her in the park.

“You dumb fuck!” yelled the other man. “You could have caused an accident back there! If I wasn’t such a skilled driver, you would have, you careless prick!”

Beryl hoped for violence. More than just the shouting. Shouting was nothing, old hat. She didn’t want to be a witness to nothing.

The policeman stared at the man, who was standing too close to him. He was in his face.

“Or maybe you’re drunk, are you?” the man shouted, “keeping company with your piss-tank of a wife.”

The policeman swung at the hollering man. Perhaps he felt like Beryl did about empty shouts. It was a solid punch and she and Dhani were near enough now to hear a bone crack. And to see the blood flow. It shut the man up for a moment. Then he called his attacker by name.

“Fuck me, Frank. You’ve broken my nose.”

“They know each other,” Beryl whispered to Dhani. They edged closer. Close enough to see the shoulders of the man who had thrown the punch. Frank’s shoulders. Beryl placed him more particularly now, seeing him once more and hearing his name; he lived on Claremont. She had seen him with his kids on their bikes and in the flood bowl with their dog. The dog’s name was Doris.

The punched man started yelling again. This time about suing and lawyers and dead meat.

Not a word from Frank.

Hit him again, thought Beryl. Hit him again.

Dhani moved to intervene and Beryl grabbed his arm. “No!”

Frank didn’t hit him again, though. He got into his car and pulled away, slowing down to speak to the woman who sat immobile in the punched man’s car.

“Sorry, Sylvie,” he called. “Sorry about all this.”

Sylvie looked straight ahead till Frank drove off. Beryl approached and leaned down to the open window on the driver’s side. She could see from the look on Sylvie’s face that she, too, was glad that Frank had thrown the punch.

“Are you all right?” Beryl asked, hearing the feebleness of her question, but not knowing what else to say.

“No,” said Sylvie.

The man with the broken nose sat on the curb with his head back, swallowing blood.

Dhani crouched beside him and said, “I’m a pharmacist.”

“Congratulations,” said the man.

Dhani took a phone from his pocket.

“Please don’t!” shouted Sylvie. “Please don’t call anyone.”

“Are you sure?” Beryl asked.

It didn’t do any good, Dhani not calling for help. Someone else must have phoned the police because they were suddenly there, arguing with the injured man about going to the hospital. He didn’t want to; he didn’t even want to press charges. A sheepishness seemed to have taken him over.

Beryl and Dhani had to tell the police what they had seen.

Frank had spoken to Beryl on that day two weeks ago, the day of the mushroom girl. I’m sorry you had to see her, he’d said. She didn’t want to say anything now that would get him into trouble.

So mostly she said, I don’t know and I didn’t really see much — things like that — while Dhani stared at her. For his part he answered truthfully and completely and it came out as though they were describing two different movies.

It seemed unbelievable to Beryl that she had to speak to the cops twice in so short a time. Some people must go through life giving no statements to the police. Or statements connected to break-ins or car thefts or mischievous kids. Not because twice in less than two weeks they were witness to something terrible.

When Dhani and Beryl were done they turned to Sylvie to see how she was getting along and saw that she had left, on foot. Beryl didn’t blame her, wouldn’t if she kept right on walking. It wouldn’t take long to get your fill of someone like Menno Maersk. That was what the guy’s name turned out to be.

“Women in dresses,” Dhani said.

“What?”

“Women in summer dresses, like the one you’re wearing. That’s why I love it so much. Summer, I mean.”

They sat drinking Lynchburg Lemonades at Muddy Waters’ bar by the river; they were too wound up to go home. Dhani ordered a dessert, a huge brownie with ice cream and chocolate sauce.

The river was high, inches from the sidewalk. It was going to cover the walkway again, the paper had said, because of all the rain. Beryl was enjoying sitting here with Dhani, listening to him and wondering if they would have sex.

“It’s one of the reasons, anyway,” he said. “One of the big ones.”

Pleasure nudged at Beryl, pleasure and bourbon. She smiled.

“Would you like a bite? Dhani asked.

“No, thanks.” Beryl didn’t think brownies went very well with Lynchburg Lemonade, but she kept that to herself.

She thought about Frank, the beleaguered policeman, and was glad he lived in her neighbourhood.

Dhani ate the ice cream but asked the waitress to package up the brownie for him.

“Why did you lie to the police tonight?” he asked Beryl.

“I didn’t lie,” she said. “I just pretended I didn’t see much.”

“Pretending is the same as lying when you’re talking to cops.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

Beryl explained to Dhani that Frank was the policeman from the park, the one that had made her feel a wee bit better on that horrible occasion.

“He seems kind of hot-headed to be a policeman,” Dhani said.

Beryl sighed. “I like Frank and I didn’t like that Menno character at all,” she said. “He was nasty and violent.”

“And Frank wasn’t?”

“No. That guy insulted Frank’s wife. Didn’t you hear him? What would you have Frank do? Nothing?” Beryl sipped her golden drink.

“Besides, the guy didn’t want to press charges, anyway. Not everything has to go through official channels. It didn’t matter what I said.”

“Yes, it did,” said Dhani.

Beryl felt some disappointment in Dhani.

“Also, Beryl…” Dhani was drinking through a straw. “Why did you stop me from intervening, when it looked as though Frank might hit Menno a second time?”

“I didn’t stop you. You could easily have shaken me off.”

“But why did you put your hand on my arm?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you said ‘no.’ Why did you say ‘no’?”

“I don’t know, Dhani. I guess I wanted it to run its natural course.”

“Hmm.”

“What do you mean, hmm?”

“Just hmm.”

“That sounds like kind of a judgmental hmm to me,” Beryl said.

“Well, it probably is,” Dhani said, draining his glass. “Come on, let’s walk you home.” He picked up his brownie in its large Styrofoam container.

Beryl began to wish she hadn’t confided in Dhani about the mushroom girl. She left her pizza at the bar on purpose. It was probably spoiled by now anyway.

They crossed the foot bridge and the Norwood Bridge and walked all the way down Lyndale Drive to Beryl’s street without saying a word. Dhani threw his brownie into a public waste container on the drive.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Beryl didn’t know if he was talking to her or the metal garbage can.

She wondered when they parted at her door if she would ever see him again outside his capacity as a pharmacist.

But then he touched her cheek before he turned away and said, “What are you up to tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Do you want to do something with me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”