When the Saints (21 page)

The saleswoman is about nineteen years old, wearing a long lavender floral dress with a lace collar that might be considered a “go-getter look” on an Amish egg farm. She seems to be timing us on her watch, and at about four minutes strolls over and recites the brochure word for word.

“The Brunswick is a spacious two-level house designed for modern living. It boasts four elegant bedrooms, three bathrooms and a two-car garage.”

“TWO-CAR GARAGE?” Janis screams.

The woman continues giving the specs, and after enduring an hour’s worth of questions from Janis and me, ranging from “Are the appliances included?” (me) to “How many people can fit in the bathtub?” (Janis), she finally asks, “Would you like to discuss financing?”

“We’ll be paying cash.”

She blinks a few times. “For the down payment?”

“For the whole payment.”

“We’re rich,” Janis explains, one hand on her hip.

I nudge her behind me. “We’ve received a large inheritance.”

The woman gets me to fill out some forms and select some siding and floor samples. I let Janis hold all the little rectangular blocks and she shuffles them in the car, informing me which are boring and which are gorgeous. I allow myself one quick glance toward the tavern.

When we’re almost off the main street, I realize Janis hasn’t seen anything interesting. I find a scraggly little park and we sit and chuck sticks in the water. Then we walk to the general store for snacks and buy Swimmer a T-shirt.
Solace River: Going with the flow since 1768.
Janis insisted. It was hanging in the window next to one that said,
I Shaved My Balls for This?

“Don’t tell people we’re rich, okay?” I say to her.

“Why not?”

“Because. We don’t want it to get back to the sorcerer.”

“Gimme a break.”

Poppy told Janis we inherited the money from Grandma Jean. She should have left it at that, but instead she spun a big yarn only a crack addict would cook up. She said Grandma Jean was a princess who had been hidden away in Solace River from an evil sorcerer who wanted to steal her soul. The royal family sent the princess her inheritance when she turned eighteen, but Grandma Jean saved it all for us. This didn’t jive with Janis at first. She had a million questions. If Great-grandma Jean was a princess, why did she use bad words and cut the necks off turkeys?
And if she was so nice, why did she always go around spitting sunflower seeds on the carpet and making Janis pick up all the soggy shells?

She conks out in the car after ten minutes and sleeps most of the way back to Jubilant. I spend the drive trying not to think about West. Part of me regrets not going into the tavern. Maybe I should have stormed in and demanded he send Abriel packing like he claimed he would.

Just before we hit the Jubilant exit, Janis wakes up and yells, “Holy ship!”

I glance where she’s pointing and almost slam on the brakes right there on the highway. It’s the Rubik’s cube rock. Inside new black grid lines, it’s been painted solid orange on one side, blue on another. I pull the car over to the shoulder, jump out and run up to it. The remaining visible sides are slathered in green, red and white respectively. It’s been solved the easy way.

“What is it?” Janis sticks her head out the car window.

“It’s a sign!” I call, jogging back.

“It’s not a sign. It’s a painted-up rock.”

“It’s
a sign
.”

She looks back at the rock for a minute then tilts her sunglasses down at me. “You been eating crazy crackers again?”

T
HE MORONS IN
J
ODY’S
G
ARAGE TELL ME
L
YLE’S NOT
around. They can’t believe I just walked right in. One of them asks me if I’m looking for a good time and I tell him my idea of a
good time is a shower that stays hot long enough for me to shave my armpits. Another one looks me up and down and asks if I’m like my sister.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a Pisces. I’m Gemini.”

The first guy says Lyle won’t be back until tomorrow, but in case he’s full of shit, I stall by getting him to look under Ma’s hood. He does a quick fix on some wires, charges up the battery and patches the hole in the oil tank. Then he gives me what he thinks is a sexy look and invites me for a test ride. I tell him I have a gyno appointment to get to and he hands me the keys pinched between two fingers, worried he’ll get a yeast infection if our hands touch.

On my way back to the trailer, I take a wrong turn and wind up on a deserted road full of potholes too narrow to turn around on. It occurs to me there could be an old cabin back here where Troy’s hiding Swimmer, so I keep going till the pavement turns to dirt. Then the dirt gives way to sand and I’m at a deserted beach. I turn off the ignition and unroll the windows. A cold wind wafts off the sea, swishing the eelgrass back and forth all along the dunes and weaving through the knit of my sweater. The planks from an old boardwalk are scattered like teeth punched out of a mouth, and an old lighthouse ladder is mangled into a heart shape. It’s hard to tell if the storm happened ten years ago or last week.

I get out and walk along the shore trying to spot any cabins farther up the coastline. If Lyle had been at the garage I was going to tell him he had twenty-four hours to deliver Swimmer or else I’d put up every cent of the money I promised him as a reward for
Swimmer’s return. The entire town of Jubilant would be scrambling to sell out Troy for that kind of cash. But now that the sea wind’s blowing fresh oxygen into my brain, I can’t shake what Surette said about Troy being smart enough to keep himself out of prison all this time. If Troy found out the cops were coming, what might he do to avoid getting caught? He could hand Swimmer over to one of his goons to dispose of like a sack of garbage.

I come upon a firepit littered with empty Keith’s cans, sit down on a driftwood log and watch the ocean rise and fall back on itself. A seagull hops over, but when I say hello, it flinches and flies off.

Something bobbing out on the water catches my eye. It ducks behind the waves then comes back into view, disappears, re-emerges. I stand up for a better look and make out a black plastic bag knotted at one end. I watch it for several minutes until I feel queasy. I can’t shake the awful thought creeping into my brain.

I roll my jeans up to my knees and kick off my boots. The first touch of my bare feet to the cold sea shocks me to the eyeballs. I make my way in till the water’s at my waist and reach out my fingers far enough to grab a corner of the bag. Just as I have it in my grip, a wave picks me up and my feet can’t touch bottom. I kick and pull as the current tugs at the bag. The icy water takes my breath and I start to panic, but then the next wave carries me to where I can get a footing. I tear through the plastic bag right there in the water until I’m surrounded by floating milk cartons and empty margarine tubs. I wade back to shore and drop to my knees on the sand. It’s not until I’m back in the car that I start sobbing with relief.

“WHO TOLD YOU TO SLAP ALL THAT MONEY DOWN ON A
big fucking mansion we’ll never afford in the long run?” Jackie hollers.

“
You
decided Ma’s getting a house. We can’t all sit around watching
Wheel of Fortune.
We’re almost out of time.”

“You don’t trust me with all that money hanging around, do you? You think I’m going to take off with it.”

I don’t answer and he storms out. I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe I should have. I noticed when we were sitting side by side counting the money that he has Daddy’s same tapered thumbs, the extra lines around the knuckles.

Once I hear the car peel off, I curl up on the sofa and watch drops of water break loose from the clouds. The sky surrenders and the rain heaves, smearing everything beyond the windows. I lie back and nod off until late afternoon, when I wake to the storm trying to slash through the walls. I sit up in the window and watch the wind drag the plastic swan planter across the lawn, entrails of sludgy garbage trailing out behind it.

I was dreaming about Raspberry again. This time I was walking down those hallways with the stupid murals painted to look like graffiti. I passed the grey cafeteria and started up Staircase A. We used to call this staircase Rachel Roulette because the middle landing wasn’t visible to either floor and you never knew if this girl Rachel was waiting on it with her fist cocked. Staircase B was a safer bet, but it was all the way at the other end of the building. Anyhow, in the dream the whole building was empty, so I took Staircase A, turned left on the third floor and stopped at the fourth door on the right, my old room. Everything was just as
I left it: the pointless chair, the bed with the scratchy comforter, the pilled hooded sweatshirts hanging in the closet. On a little shelf by the bed, there were bottles of nail polish and a copy of the New Testament I read for kicks. I walked over and opened it, and on the inside cover where it was inscribed
This Bible belongs to,
my handwriting said:
The Bitch I stole it from.
The bed opposite mine was bare. No sheets, no pillow. In real life, that side of the room was reserved for a rotating sideshow of hateful weirdos. First there was a cutter who tried to drown her baby cousin. She was a ball of fun. When she left, the bed was stripped down to the mattress stain and remade for a pyromaniac who told me to eat shit and die any time I tried to strike up a conversation. All these psychos came and went, and I was there indefinitely. It made no sense.

On Sundays at Raspberry, family members could visit, and sometimes I would go down to get a look at people’s mothers. Then I’d trudge back to my room and stand at my window staring out at the fields rippling beyond the basketball court. I used to worry that the sky and grass were just painted on the other side of the glass, that if I punched through the pane, there’d be just another room on the other side. Some nights, when I was trying to sleep, I’d imagine someone trapped in that room. If I thought about it too long, I could almost hear the breathing.

In the dream, I did it—punched through the window—and sure enough there was a dark, windowless room hidden behind it. A little girl was slumped in the corner and when she lifted her face, it was my own fourteen-year-old self staring back at me.

Talk about a mindfuck.

I get up from the sofa and wander up and down the trailer, but it’s like I’m still in the dream, walking the hallways of Raspberry. I can see the fluorescent lights and practically smell the bleach on the floors. I smoke about ten cigarettes before Ma and Janis finally return from the blue house. I run over and help Janis strip off her coat.

“We have to build a ark!” she tells me, wet hair slathered to her cheeks. “Jesus said!” She disappears into the bathroom for a while and twenty minutes later I step over her lying in front of the television. I ask her what happened to the ark, and she says she didn’t have the right boards.

Later that night, the phone rings and Ma tries to pass it to me. I shake my head no. It’s taking all my mental power not to picture West playing house with Abriel, and hearing his voice would transport me right to his kitchen table. I’d have to watch the two of them play footsie by candlelight or some shit.

“It’s Jackie,” Ma snaps. “The police got a search warrant for Troy’s.”

I grab the receiver.

“Don’t tell Ma,” Jackie says, “the cops have already searched the place. They didn’t find Swimmer’s shirt. No guns or drugs neither. Troy must have cleaned the whole place out.”

“Jackie, I don’t like this. Swimmer’s becoming a hot potato. What if …” My insides clench.

“Troy don’t have the balls.”

“How do you know? Because he didn’t kill Bird? Maybe he only kept Bird alive to punish you.”

“Look, just shut up for a sec. I called to tell you that I ain’t mad at you no more about the house.” I hear his foot tapping. “I looked it up, and property taxes are pretty low on the old dirt road, so it’s just the bills we need to worry about. Did you show Ma the pictures of it in them brochures you got?”

“No.”

“Don’t show her. Let’s surprise the shit out of her.”

“Janis already told her how many rooms it has.”

“She knows Janis makes shit up.”

“Is this why you called?”

“No. Troy’s bitch cornered Jewell after a doctor appointment, told her when the baby comes out, she better watch it every minute. Jewell came to see me at work shaking like a wet cat. I ain’t thrilled about leaving, but we’ve been talking about how we’d like some family around for the baby, Bird and everybody. You know, when me and you was up in Solace the other day, it didn’t seem as much of a shithole as I remembered. Anyway, Jewell and I are coming to stay with you guys in the new house till we can sell this one and buy our own.” His foot starts up again. “So are we cool?”

“Is that your way of saying sorry?”

“Yes, Christ. I said I was.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Guess what, Tabby?” His voice softens. “It’s going to be a little girl.”

I tell him congrats, hang up and return to the table.

“What’d I miss?” I ask Ma.

“Some jackass whacking off in the cemetery.”

I’ve become addicted to the police scanner now too. Nothing ever happens, and then everything happens at once, so we have to be on the ball. Last night, within the span of one hour, some loser threatened to choke out the family cat if his wife didn’t go buy him another six-pack, a group of underage kids crashed their ATV into the lake, and a meth head stole a stack of scratch-offs from the convenience store before returning twenty minutes later trying to claim a winning ticket. The cops use code over the radio, but it’s pretty easy to crack if you spent time in juvie.

“Holy shit, Ma!” Flares start firing off in my brain. “I bet Troy has a scanner.”

“Yeah, so what? All the dealers do so they know where the cops are at.”

I grab the phone, call down to the station and tell Surette my idea.

“You’re going to cost me my job.”

“The job you’re
not doing
?”

“I said I’ll think about it.”

He must think fast, because I crank the scanner volume and within minutes the cops on duty are sent to investigate the robbery of a liquor store in Halifax: Tabatha Mary Saint. Caucasian female, mid-twenties, five foot six, 120 pounds, sighted in the Jubilant area. According to what’s rolled out over the scanner in the next few days, the cops will question me, search the woods and the trailer but find no trace of the six grand I collected from the registers. They don’t have serial numbers for any of the bills and the security camera at the liquor store wasn’t functioning during the time of the robbery. Worse, procedure wasn’t followed
fast enough and there’s not a single usable fingerprint. At one point, one of the cops leaves his radio on “by mistake” and we overhear him say that the whole investigation’s such a fuck-up, the chief called in a favour to keep it out of the papers.