When the Saints (6 page)

In the morning, Janis drops a piece of toast on my chest from over the back of the sofa and it scares the living shit out of me.

“Shhh,” Janis whispers. “Grandma’s sleeping.” She climbs under the blanket with me and chews loudly, raining crumbs all over both of us.

“This is delicious,” I whisper. “You’re a good cook.” I lift up her sunglasses and see my baby sister Poppy looking back at me.

“What’s the matter?”

“You look just like your mother.”

“Why are you making a sad face?”

“I miss her, I guess.”

Janis sighs, her mouth circled in strawberry jam. “I miss her too.”

A cat jumps on top of us. When I put my hand out to pet it, Janis says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

I sit up so fast, I knock Janis to the floor.

“That’s Gord the Ferret,” she says as it slithers away. “We got him for our pet so he would kill the rat, but Swimmer’s more scared of Gord than the rat, so Grandma put Gord out to the woods, but he keeps on coming back in here whenever he feels like it.” She throws a hunk of toast at its face. “He always has poop and bugs on him.”

I look around at the room in daylight. Aside from the ratty
furniture, there’s a stereo, a lamp, a stand-up ashtray, a peeling plastic rocking horse on springs, and that’s about it. The grey carpet is just about worn through to the plywood floor underneath, and the whole place needs a bucket of bleach.

Janis gets up and straddles the plastic horse, bounces on it a few times for my benefit. Then she stands up on its back and starts to lift one shaky leg in the air behind her like a figure skater. I realize I should probably stop the show, but I’m not sure what the safety rules are around here. Before I can speak up, she loses her balance and crashes down on the saddle. If it hurt, she doesn’t let on. I look away and she follows my gaze to matching velvet paintings of palm trees hanging on the wall.

“Those are some pictures of Toronto. Mama says when we get there, we’ll be rich. Everyone there has white cars and gold teeth. We might go soon if the bad people come.”

“Bad people?”

“They think she stoled their money, but it wasn’t her. It was Petunia.”

“Who?”

“PET-OO-NEE-YA. She’s always getting in trouble. Mama had to sleep in jail one time because of her.”

“Have you ever met Petunia?”

“Nope. Don’t want to neither.”

Petunia my
ass.
“Hey, Janis.” I glance at the clock. “Do you think Ma would mind if you came with me to run some errands?”

“Mind?” Janis leaps off the horse like she’s going to Disney World. “She’ll be glad to get rid of me!”

She changes into elastic-waist blue jeans but leaves her pyjama top on. I offer to comb some of the tangles out of her long brown pigtails, but she won’t let me. I leave a note for Ma and just as we’re going out the door, Swimmer stumbles into the hallway. His head is so much larger than the rest of him that he walks like a drunk, all leaned over toward one wall.

“You stay here with your cartoon shows, Swimmer,” Janis says, pushing him back into the bedroom and shutting the door. “Quick, before he gets out!” she yells.

“Can’t Swimmer come too?”

Janis looks as if she might cry if I insist, so I don’t. She runs out ahead of me and hauls the truck door open all by herself. When I get in, she’s touching the knobs on the dash, careful not to turn any, though I can tell she’s dying to. She takes a good long survey of the bench seat and pats the vinyl.

“Nice ride.”

“Thanks. It’s not mine, though.”

“I know. What’s your man’s name?”

“West.” I feel a little guilty for letting on like he’s my boyfriend.

She nods. “That’s a good name.”

“Speaking of names,” I say, changing the subject. “Are you a Saint?”

“Yup. But I ain’t no saint. That’s what Ma says. She says
saint
means someone who’s good all the time.”

“Have you ever had a different last name?”

“Nope.”

“You know who your father is?”

“His name is Bruce or Barty. Something stupid like that.”

“You ever met him?”

“Nope.”

“Do you wish you had a daddy?”

She shrugs. “It don’t make no difference.”

She’s a Saint all right,
I think, revving up the truck.

J
UBILANT ISN’T MUCH OF A TOWN.
J
ANIS GIVES ME THE
lowdown. It’s got a movie theatre that only shows movies on Saturday nights, and the duct-taped popcorn machine catches on fire when it gets too hot. The trains are all gone. Janis said they ripped up all the tracks and made footpaths that nobody can walk on because of all the ATV riders hot-rodding up and down.

“Ran buddy’s foot right over. There was blood squirting out of him like this!” She flings her fingers in every direction.

“You saw it?”

“And we got one of them nail salons, but I never been in there.”

“Do you think they paint little pictures on people’s fingernails? Your grandma used to do that. She could even make shooting stars.”

I wonder if Ma remembers when she used to do my nails. She would get out her blow-dryer and dry them one at a time. Maybe she’d be rich now if she’d started her own business.

Janis points out Frosty’s Convenience Store in case I need any Cracker Jack. There’s a giant neon orange sign in the window:
We Cash EI Cheques!
We come to a stoplight and I turn left onto the main street of town, drive along a row of faded businesses with
the ocean whitecapping between them until I find the salon. I easily nab a place to park and we go inside. The sign on the wall lists prices for hair, nails, waxing, body piercing and pet portraits. There’s a camera set up on a tripod in the corner next to a shelf of props, including chef hats and bow ties. Janis shakes her head no when I ask her if she knows the woman cleaning the sink.

“Hi there!” I call out. “This one needs her nails done.”

The woman lays down her towel, comes over, picks up Janis’s hand and examines it like a surgeon. “All right, honey. Come over here with me and have a seat.”

“I’m getting my nails done?” Janis can hardly sit still. She chooses turquoise with glow-in-the-dark ladybugs. Every time the woman finishes a nail, Janis whispers, “Oh. My. God.”

“You hiring?” I ask, trying to imagine how I’d get a cat to hold still while I drape it in a feather boa.

“No one is.”

“Well, there goes that idea. I’d planned on popping into a few gift shops after this, figuring they might need someone to hand-paint
Bay of Fundy
on all those conch shells they import from the Bahamas.”

The back window looks out onto a rain-slickened wharf where some fishermen are stacking traps. I watch them finish the job and start goofing off, scooping up mussel shells and tossing them at each other. It quickly leads to a shoving match.

“You ever have Poppy Saint in here getting her nails done?”

The woman pauses with her nail brush mid-air and stares at me.

“Poppy’s this little girl’s mother before you say anything,” I say. “She’s gone
AWOL
and we can’t find her.”

“She’s been in here once or twice. I haven’t seen her lately. You want to ask Lyle Kenzie.”

“Who’s he, now?”

“He hangs out down at Jody’s.”

“Jody’s? Is that around here?”

She points with her free hand down the street. When she finishes up, I pay her with the money West gave me for truck emergencies. She hands Janis a coupon for 10 percent off a pet portrait, but Janis hands it back and says, “My dog got run over by the garbage truck.” The woman turns white, apologizes to us twice. When we get back on the road, Janis tells me she never had a dog.

“Why’d you say you did?”

She tilts her sunglasses down to look me in the eye. “Because if I said I don’t got no dog, she’d say, ‘Well then, honey, give it to your friend.’ I only know one kid that got a dog and I wouldn’t give that girl a used fart.”

“What’s a used fart?”

“A fart that’s already used. My mama called the mailman a used fart because he keeps giving us flyers with toys on them, and Swimmer sees them and wants her to go buy them all.”

“But how do you use a fart?”

“You fart, then you smell it, then when someone else smells it, it’s already used.”

“She called him that to his face?”

“Yup. She hates his guts ever since he told on her.”

“Told on her for what?”

“For leaving me and Swimmer alone when he was just a baby. I hotted up the milk in the microwave and when he
pooped in his diaper, I chucked it out the window so it didn’t stink him up.”

I lean to put my arm around her, but she straightens up and slaps my hand. I put it back on the wheel and she relaxes again.

J
ODY’S
G
ARAGE IS A BUSINESS ATTACHED TO SOMEONE’S
house. It’s empty except for some old cars in various stages of dismantle and a sea of fast-food wrappers. I whisper to Janis that the place smells like a used fart. She nods sagely. When we walk out, some woman sticks her head out the front door of the house and yells, “They’re all down at the diner!” so we get back in the car.

Dot’s Daughter’s Diner is long and narrow, half full of customers who stare outright at whoever walks in. Janis holds up her nails and tells the woman at the cash register, “They glow in the dark. If the power goes out, you’ll know where I’m at, so I can’t steal nothing.”

We grab a booth.

“Have you been in here before?” I ask Janis.

She nods. “Grandma brings us here when my mother forgets to cook dinner.”

I look around. One whole wall is plastered in photographs of customers posing with their meals. At the centre is a framed eight-by-ten of a bemused-looking Rita MacNeil holding up a bowl and spoon. The inscription says
Cape Breton’s First Lady of Song Getting Her Mac ‘N’ Cheese On.

“Is your mother in any of these pictures?”

Janis shakes her head. “They tried to get us in their camera, but Mama wouldn’t let them. She said she’d bring them in one of her mug shots.”

I laugh.

“What?”

“Do you know what a mug shot is?”

“Yup. It’s a picture of a lady sitting in a lawn chair drinking coffee.”

The laminated menu posted above the table informs us that customers come to Jubilant from far and wide to taste Dot’s legendary recipes handed down to her daughter. I glance around, but no one in here looks like they’re from farther down the road than the old fish meal factory I saw yesterday. The rest of the menu is barely legible from all the revisions made with a ballpoint pen. Most of the fixes are to prices, but I notice someone crossed out the words “home-cooked” in
Home-cooked lasagna – just like Dot used to make!
It’s a thinker. I keep running my finger down the list. A scary set of quotation marks were added to
Try Our World Famous Fresh-From-The-Boat Lobster Roll.
Not to “world famous,” or even “fresh-from-the-boat,” but to “lobster.”

The waitress comes over with her pencil.

“You must be Dot’s daughter,” I say.

She rolls her eyes.

“I don’t suppose you’re hiring?”

“I don’t suppose I am.”

“We’ll have a double order of Tater Dots and a smile.”

“And a milkshake.” Janis swings her legs.

“Strawberry okay?” The waitress lowers her pad. “We’re all out of chocolate.”

Janis mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “Bullshit.”

“Has Janis’s mother been in here today, by any chance?” I ask quickly.

“No.”

“How about yesterday?”

“Haven’t seen her in ages.”

“Is one of those men over there Lyle Kenzie?”

She follows my gaze. “Black baseball cap.” She walks off, comes back a few minutes later with the milkshake and a look that tells me I better not ask any more questions that aren’t about the food.

“I hope Dot has more than one daughter,” I whisper to Janis. “This one’s kind of crusty.”

Janis ignores the straw and takes a big sip from the rim of her shake, coating half her face in it. “She forgot the smile. You should order another one. Ask for one that looks like this.” She sets down her heavy glass and stretches her mouth into an exaggerated grimace.

“How’s the milkshake?” I ask, feeling my stomach gnaw on itself. “Better than the service?”

She shimmies her shoulders, which I take it means yes. She seems to have a whole set of moves. Pumping her fist up and down means, Drive! Putting her hands together in prayer means, Please stop asking me questions.

“I was going to order strawberry anyway,” she says when she comes up for air. “My mother says I should try every kind.”

“Well,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at Lyle Kenzie, “she certainly practises what she preaches.” I lower my voice. “Do you know the man in the black baseball hat?”

“He’s been over at our trailer.”

“Farewell to Nova Scotia” is playing on the jukebox and it’s stuck on the line “But still there was no rest for me … But still there was no rest for me … But still there was no rest for me …” Janis hops down, picks up a hammer lying next to the machine and gives the side of the jukebox a good whack. It skips to the next song.

“That’s what the hammer’s there for,” she tells me.

I keep my eye on Lyle Kenzie as he puts on his jacket. He’s staring right back at me.

“Sit tight a minute, okay?” I tell Janis. I get up and walk outside.

Lyle pauses in the doorway a moment before letting the screen creak closed. “You looking for me?” He adjusts the pasty beer gut flopping over the waistband of his jeans and reaches into a grease-stained shirt pocket for cigarettes.

“I’m looking for Poppy Saint.”

“You and me both.” He lights a smoke, jams his lighter back in his pocket.

“My name is Opal Kent. I work for the police department.” I try not to blink. Opal Kent was one of my favourite characters when I lived in a group home and got addicted to soaps. She had steel-blue eyes and a matching blazer.

“You’re a cop?”

“I’m a private investigator working with the Jubilant Police Department.”

He sneers and starts walking away toward a new Ford truck.