The Rain Barrel Baby (7 page)

Emma and Delia went for a walk after supper. They didn’t have much homework these days with school being almost over. And they’d had two substitute teachers today. One in science and one in geography.

“Do you think Miss Forbes is away because we’re driving her insane?” Emma asked.

“Maybe.”

“I think she was actually crying yesterday.” Emma wore a huge sweater that slipped down to expose one pale thin shoulder and she kept trying to push it back up where she felt it belonged.

“I hate this stupid top,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it.” It was Delia who had talked her into the sweater in the first place. “It looks cool when it’s falling off.”

She reached over and plucked it off Emma’s shoulder so it fell back to where she thought it should be.

“Anyway,” Emma said, “I thought maybe we should ease up on her a bit when she comes back.”

“Who?”

“Miss Forbes. I mean with the humming and everything.”

Delia wasn’t listening. Donald and another boy from their homeroom, Richard, skidded to a halt beside them at the curb.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“What’s up with you?” Richard asked.

“Nothin’ much,” Delia said. “Just hangin’ around.”

Donald stared at Emma and Emma stared back.

“We were just talking about Miss Forbes,” she said, “thinking maybe we should be nicer to her when she comes back. I think we might be driving her crazy. Like, literally.”

“I think you might be right,” Donald said. “Especially with the humming. She can’t tell where it’s coming from when a lot of us are doing it and she doesn’t know who to yell at.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of pitiful,” Emma said.

Donald reached over from his bike and gently placed Emma’s sweater up on her shoulder where she thought it belonged. Her inclination was to turn her eyes away. But she held his gaze, feeling herself enter delicious new territory. Delicious and very scary.

“See ya.”

“See ya.”

The boys sped away and Emma could feel Donald’s fingers on her skin. She lowered herself to the curb and sat with both arms hugging her mid-section. Her stomach did crazy things.

“Delia, he touched me,” she said. “I’m gonna marry him. Did you see what he did? He did do it, didn’t he? Did you see it, what he did?”

“He loves you, Em.” Delia smiled. “Let’s go get cigars and like, celebrate.”

The trail leading away from Greta Bower’s rain barrel was ice cold. Detective Sergeant Fred Staples had checked with hospitals in the two neighbouring provinces and come up with nothing. They were officially out of ideas.

All Frank had was a feeling that came and went, that it had everything to do with at least one of Greta’s stepbrothers, Dwight or Duane Simkins. But Duane was in jail and Dwight was dead. So how could that be?

Frank checked with the prison system in Quebec and confirmed Duane’s incarceration. He had killed an off-duty policewoman so he wouldn’t be released in the foreseeable future. Frank checked further and found out that Dwight had been killed during the commission of the same crime that sent his brother to jail. He was shot through the eye by an errant bullet from the gun of a third member of their bumbling gang.

Little Jane Doe’s blood was in the fridge and there it would stay till they had something to compare it to.

Late Friday afternoon there was a knock on Frank’s office door. He sighed and stuffed his knitting into a drawer. It had turned into a scarf for Emma, a good long one to keep her warm in winter. There really had been no decision to make about what the object would be. Who was he kidding? Scarves were all he knew how to do.

“Come in, Fred.”

Fred had wanted to come by and talk about the case. He didn’t like unsolved mysteries. Frank was thinking that sometimes puzzles were better left unsolved. And further, that some were meant only to be known by Those Who Can’t Be Seen. The same Ones Who Knew how many orgasms Frank had had in his life and how many times he had laughed.

Fred was very quiet for someone who wanted to talk. He didn’t seem his usual soldierly self and there were dark circles under his eyes. They looked out of place on his tidy face.

“Are you all right, Fred?” Frank asked. “You don’t seem yourself.”

“Yes, sir. I’m fine. I just haven’t been sleeping very well lately is all.”

“Lots on your mind, eh?”

“I guess so, sir. I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. I’m sorry, Fred. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, it’s okay. You weren’t prying, sir.”

Frank looked down at the thin file on his desk. The Rain Barrel Baby.

“It had to have been the mother who left her there,” he said, veering away from the subject of young Fred’s troubles. “Who else, except maybe some sort of slippery boyfriend?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“One thing seems clear to me,” Frank continued, “and that is that the mother was complicit in this crime. If she wasn’t, then surely she would have reported a missing baby. Wouldn’t she?”

“I guess so, sir.”

“It’s impossible to guess people’s motives these days,” Frank said. “It seems harder than it used to be. Maybe I’m getting stupider, or maybe people’s reasons for doing things really are getting more complicated.”

“You’re not getting stupider, sir.”

Frank smiled at his sergeant and wondered why he had come. “Is there anything in particular you want to discuss, Fred?” He glanced toward his wool drawer.

“I guess not, sir. I just thought maybe we could bounce ideas back and forth till we came up with something.”

Frank chuckled. “I’m afraid I’ve about bounced everything I have, Fred. Right now anyway. Is there anything you’d like to add?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, in that case, I’m going home. And on the way I’m going to stop at Greta Bower’s house to tell her that we’re not closing the case, but that we’re no longer going to actively pursue it. I’m pretty sure she won’t care, but we should keep her posted.”

“Goodnight then, sir.”

“Goodnight, Fred. Take it easy.”

Frank wanted to ask him again not to call him “sir,” but didn’t think now was the time. Fred had something on his mind and Frank worried about him in spite of his effort not to.

He decided to wait till after supper and then till after Garth and Sadie were in bed before walking down the back lane to speak to Greta. He would tell her, too, about his Wednesday afternoon visit with Jane. She could do what she pleased with the information.

The sun was just setting and lights were going on in the houses. As Frank reached for her gate he saw Greta through the sliding glass doors to her dining room. She was naked and she was rubbing something onto her skin. He watched, motionless, as she massaged the lotion into her breasts with particular gentle care.

Frank knew he couldn’t go in to see her but he also couldn’t walk away.

This woman is wacko, Frank thought. What if I were a rapist or a murderer? Or a Peeping Tom? He watched the motion of her hands on her body for a few more moments and then forced himself to turn around and trudge back down the lane.

A great sadness entered Frank as he sorted laundry in the basement of his house. He threw in a load and went upstairs to kiss his kids goodnight.

And as for letting Greta know the status of the rain barrel case, he would call Fred in the morning and ask him to drop by on her. He should have done that in the first place.

He’d have to tell her about Jane himself, though. He couldn’t pawn that one off on his sergeant.

But not tonight. Maybe even not tomorrow. But soon.

Ivy had lived out the entire year away from the big house on Wellington Crescent because her prayers hadn’t told her to go back. She had what she needed after five months, but had stayed in Vancouver because Gruck had told her: one year.

Now as she lay in the big brass bed that she shared with no one she recalled the Saturday night her search had ended. She had wanted to die before he stopped. She had wanted him to nail her to the wall. He had hurt her almost enough.

He was also the one. She knew it as surely as if it had been emblazoned on his forehead.

“You’ve got
AIDS
, don’t you?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Possibly,” he said. “Probably, I guess.”

“Why did you have sex with me then?”

Ivy knew she must be sad because she felt a tear make its way down the soft curve of her cheek. It had been a long time since she had cried.

“Why do you fuck people when you know you may be killing them?” she asked.

“Because I don’t care.” He stroked himself and grew hard again.

“You don’t fuck like you don’t care.” Ivy touched his hand, the one that held his dick.

He shook her off.

“I care about fucking,” he said. “Just not about you.”

The words stung, like pain from another life, one already lived. She was going to use his gift of death, she had shopped for it. But still, the toxic dart of his uncaring clouded her vision for a few seconds. She brushed the tear aside, there was just the one.

“Would you mind once more?” she asked when her voice returned. “A rear entry this time?”

She had made little nicks in herself with a razor blade, front and back, before going out to find a man. She always did that. It didn’t hurt to help things along. And she took a form of pleasure, too, in the pain the nicks provided. One of the few pleasures she could manage.

Afterwards, the man made Ivy wait till he was ready to come again. This time on her face. No touching, no movement.

No problem.

He hadn’t even taken his boots off.

After he left, Ivy lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. There was no space in her life for words that could hurt her, so she buried them. Deep. Like nuclear waste in salt rooms under the ocean. No leaking in this lifetime.

Phase One of her plan was complete and she knew that this was where the hard part began. It had been easy to get any old guy to fuck her. What came next was entirely different. Her work was cut out for her. Ivy had received inklings of what came next, but no particulars.

On the Sunday morning after the Saturday night that she met with success Ivy lingered in the park across the street from a cathedral. It was too damp to sit. Fog bathed Vancouver but the sun was there in the sky beyond. She could see it.

“I’ve done it,” she said. “I have what I need.” She realized she had spoken aloud and laughed. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the damp grass and the open doors of the cathedral and the sun beyond the mist. She watched the church people come and go.

My God, what have I done?
The realization of what she had achieved struck a blow to her chest that brought her to her knees in the wet grass of the church park.

She had been to a clinic and it had been confirmed. She was
HIV
-positive. It was underway.

Seven months later, on her way home, Ivy was slightly breathless and her chest felt heavy underneath her traveling clothes.

She was pregnant. For the second time in her life. The first time, she had wanted the baby. But he had been taken from her. She hadn’t even held him, didn’t know where he had gone. She often pictured him at the river, cold and alone.

This time she didn’t want the baby. It was a death child. And it had made her fat, just when she needed most to be perfect. It was an unexpected and unfortunate complication, but Ivy had decided to incorporate it into her plans. What else could she do with it?

She would return to the house on Wellington Crescent and wait for her time to come. It wouldn’t be long now; she could feel it getting ready inside her. Simon need never know. She wondered if she could pull that off and knew that she could. This was not a big baby, not a big deal.

And then she would…well, she hadn’t quite figured that part out yet. But she would do something marvelous with it. She would punish somebody with this baby.

And then she would wait and listen for the next step. And after everything, when it was finally over, she could die alongside Simon. A warm feeling settled in her chest, crept into the empty spaces surrounding the weight. She almost looked forward to seeing her husband, her protector, the only one she’d had since Ray.

She smelled apple blossoms mixed with the painfully sweet scent of the plum. She heard a radio playing softly, a song from 1961. There was a tender movement at the very corner of her consciousness. For just a moment she felt that everything was going to be all right.

But the warm feeling didn’t last. She had closed her eyes then and waited for sleep.

Ivy felt hollow now as she swung her long legs over the side of the bed. It was time to get started on the day, such as it was. It hadn’t occurred to her that Gruck wouldn’t always be there to guide her. Her only comfort was that death was hers already. She wouldn’t have to plod on and on, through brittle middle-age to a bleak and airless existence as a dry old crone. She’d be better off ashes, like her dad, like Ray.

Today she would go to see Frank Foote. It was Tuesday and Tuesdays were good. By herself she would take this next step. Maybe G was testing her to see if she had any ideas of her own. Well, she would try. She couldn’t wait forever. Forever might not be that far away.

The male voice, the one she had come to call Reuben, came to her now and she leaned into it. It hinted at another plan and Ivy sighed with exhaustion. The task at hand was huge. She didn’t want any more to do, but she supposed that she had no choice.

“Psst! Happy birthday, Dad!” Emma caught Frank early, in the garage as he got into the car.

She had bought him a pile of wool in all different colours. She knew he wanted his knitting to be a secret, but she figured this would be okay. Besides, she couldn’t pass it up. It had been displayed in an apple barrel outside the door of a going-out-of-business crafts store. Pink and deep blue and green and gold. Red and purple and orange and white. Some of the balls were even two-toned. Emma had wanted to dive into the barrel of wool. But she bought it instead, in its entirety. It cost quite a bit, even marked down the way it was. But she didn’t care. She loved her dad and besides, her stupid mum probably wouldn’t even remember his birthday, let alone buy him anything.

Emma had decided to give her dad the wool when no one else was around. That way she wouldn’t be letting the cat out of the bag about his hobby. She understood how he might feel kind of funny about it. She knew she wouldn’t want Donald or Vince or even Delia to see her dad knitting. They would make fun of him for sure.

The wool wasn’t wrapped, just heaped mumbo jumbo into a plastic laundry basket with a big bow on top. The early sun shone through the small window high up on the garage wall, illuminating Emma and the basket of wool.

Her worry that he would be upset vanished when she saw the look on his face.

“Oh, Emmy. How did you know? Never mind. This is the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. You and a pile of wool, standing in a sunbeam.”

He hugged her and blinked furiously to keep the tears from landing on her head. “Thank you, Em. This is the best birthday present I’ve ever had. Far and away the best.”