When the Saints (9 page)

Janis is on to us. “You tell that Poppy Saint to get her butt back here,” she says, crossing her arms. “Tell her Janis said Swimmer’s only a dawdler and he needs his mama.”

He stumbles over sucking his fingers and leans against his sister, staring up at us with his big, solemn eyes. Jewell unzips their coats and steers them to the table while we duck out.

“I might strangle Poppy if we find her,” Ma threatens.

“Has she always been such a train wreck?” I toss Jackie West’s keys as Ma and I get in the other side of the truck.

“Not always,” Jackie says. “She had Janis when she was only sixteen and was headed nowhere, but then she had to go to court-ordered night school. Halfway through, she actually started reading her books and finished with straight Bs. We couldn’t believe it. Then she took a course to be one of those people who do makeovers on dead people—”

“Somebody who gets dead bodies spiffed up for the funeral,” Ma cuts in.

“Right,” Jackie says, backing the truck out of the driveway. “She got the certificate, but nobody would hire her.”

“Why not?”

“Because Daddy blackmailed the funeral home in Solace and word gets around.”

“I was just in there the other day. How’d he manage that?”

“He found out they were burying bodies in expensive coffins then bringing them back up and wrapping them in burlap. They’d stick the bodies back in the ground, clean up the caskets and resell them. That’s why all them corpses went bobbing around after the flood.”

“How’d Daddy find that out?”

“Who knows? Crooks can probably smell each other like dogs.”

“What’s any of that got to do with Poppy? She’s not Daddy.”

Jackie sighs. “Shit, Tabby, if life was fair, I’d have grown up playing Little League and going to Grandma’s house for Sunday ham.”

Ma glares at him. “But instead you beat kids up with a baseball bat and called your grandma a fat whore.”

I don’t know why that strikes me funny. I start to giggle, then I’m shaking with laughter. Jackie snorts then Ma joins in and the three of us are howling all the way down the highway.

“She
was
a fat whore,” Jackie squeaks between breaths, wiping his eyes.

“I know it!” Ma bellows, and off we go again.

B
LUEBELLES IS BUSY.
I
T’S LIKE THE GROCERY STORE ON
sample day, greasy men hovering and salivating over the goods. We grab a table and a server finally comes over, doesn’t bother
with hello, just informs us beer costs a dollar more on weekends. Ma asks for a cup of tea, but they don’t serve that, so Jackie orders her a virgin pina colada. The waitress brings it in a plastic wineglass with a fake orange wheel glued to the rim. Ma looks at it like it might bite her.

“Ma,” Jackie says. “How did you get through all them years with Daddy without a stiff drink?”

“I don’t know.” She glances around at all the customers tipping bottles to their lips. “I figured somebody had to stay dry or we’d all just wash away.”

Jackie looks uncomfortable sitting beside his mother in a place like this. He waves over another waitress. “Excuse me, can I get me some action in the backroom tonight?”

She doesn’t even stop. “You got to talk to Charlie.”

“Okay.” He stands up and taps her arm. “Where’s Charlie at?”

She gestures to the ammunition belt full of shooters slung around her waist. “I’m busy, hon. Give me ten minutes.”

“He’s on a weekend pass,” I interrupt. “He hasn’t got many minutes left.”

She snaps her fingers. “Come on, then.”

Jackie shoots me a dirty look and follows her across the floor.

Ma nervously turns a beer coaster around on the tabletop. “Look at this place,” she says. “Good lord. There’s a woman over there with the ass cut out of her pants. What’s the point of that?”

A new dancer appears onstage slathered in oil. Ma stares, transfixed, then says, “I don’t want Janis and Swimmer to grow up the way you did.” Her words hang between us as the woman starts to writhe around in chains. “I know that must have been
hard. I never stopped praying for you, Tabby. I told myself you were okay, that you had been brought up right by that woman. I thought she put you in a nice house with a pretty pink bedroom. I figured you had a new life and you were better than us now and didn’t want to come back. I had no clue how to find you.”

“Not that you tried.”

“Maybe you didn’t go to a fancy school and you’re not wearing a fur coat or nothing like that, but you seem like you got a lot going for you.”

“You think they have pretty pink bedrooms at the Raspberry Home for Damaged Goods? That’s where I grew up.”

Ma makes a sound in her throat like a cat trying to heave up a furball then reaches in her purse and finds a crumpled tissue, wipes the mascara under her eyes before it runs. All her hair is grey under these blue lights. “You ever get into the drugs?” she asks me.

“I tried. They were hard to get in Raspberry.”

“How long were you in there?”

“Four years.” I raise my voice over the music so she’ll hear every word. “Then I was in a group home for a while, but I ran away and crashed in an abandoned building in Saint John with a bunch of crackheads. They used to go around collecting broken electronics in shopping carts. They’d take the wires out and fry the plastic casings off on a little hibachi, sell the copper for a few bucks at a metal salvage place. That was their whole goal in life: find some old tape decks, fry the wires, sell them, buy drugs, fry their brains. You really want to see what drugs can do to people, take a walk through one of those places.”

Ma taps two cigarettes out of her pack, offers me one. “You think Poppy could wind up like that?”

“Sure,” I say, digging in my pocket for my lighter. “One of the junkies I met in there grew up in a mansion in Ontario. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. When I met her, she’d scratched almost all of the skin off her face and neck and thought she was on fire all the time. She’d scream at people to put out the flames.”

“How could you live with those junkies?”

“I didn’t have a choice. But after a few days I hitched a ride with a girl who took me out to a pot farm outside Oromocto. She introduced me to her brother, a tattoo artist, and I wound up moving in with him. He was all right. He had a few problems.”

Ma leans in for a light. “What kind of problems?”

“Nothing serious. He had a thing for women’s shoes. He’d buy new pairs and get me to wear them around for a few weeks. Then I’d have to give them back.”

“Why?”

“He liked the smell.”

“That’s disgusting, Tabby.”

“What did I care? He gave me a place to stay, food to eat, let me drive his car around. And every two weeks or so I got a tattoo and a flashy new pair of heels. I was spoiled rotten if you think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

I eye her mocktail. “You going to drink that?”

She pushes it over and I take a few sips between drags on the cigarette, all the while glancing toward the back door.

“What about you?” I ask.

“What about me?”

“When did you and Daddy split?”

“After we came to Jubilant, I couldn’t even smell his farts on the wind. About a year later, he showed up on the doorstep. I told him I was done with him, called the cops on him so he’d leave. He came back maybe two or three times after that, but I wouldn’t let him past the steps. Then, a few months ago, he called me up to tell me he caught the cancer. He was expecting me to rush over and be his bed nurse, gave me some big fish tale about how he never loved any other woman. I told him to go die on the cross. The Mounties had a warrant on him and heard he’d been lurking around Jubilant, came over to the trailer to ask me if I’d seen him. I didn’t tell them nothing, but a few weeks later they called to tell me he was in hospital, said they took one look at him and knew it wasn’t worth the taxpayers’ money dragging him through the courts.” Ma grips the edge of the table. “Here comes Jackie.”

I stamp out my cigarette and watch Jackie weave through the crowd toward us.

“She don’t believe me that you’re with us, Tabby,” he says when he reaches our table. “I told her to meet us at the back door in two minutes and I’d prove it.”

“Is she going to come out?” I grab my purse.

“I don’t know.” He glances over his shoulder. “Let’s talk outside. The bouncer’s all over my ass.”

“What happened?” Ma asks as we hurry out to the truck.

“I asked for Poppy, and they took me to a room. She came in and when she saw it was me, she tried to bolt. I had to put her in
a chokehold. I told her what Janis said about Swimmer needing his mother around. She kind of fell apart then, started crying and talking crazy. She’s all messed up.”

“What kind of crazy?”

“Junkie crazy. Who’s out to get her and shit.”

“Who
is
out to get her?”

Jackie ushers us into the truck and drives it around to the back of the building. We sit staring at the grey door lit by a No Entry sign. The breeze rustling through the trees behind us sounds like a deck of cards being shuffled. Jackie twists the brim of his hat and Ma starts humming one of her old church songs.

“Come on, Jackie,” Ma whispers. “Pray with us.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

“Because you’re my son.”

The door opens and there she is. My heart shoots up to the roof then crashes down to my knees. Her eyes are like two dark tunnels. She’s got long spindly legs and tall clacky heels on. She keeps trying to pull down her skin-tight dress to cover her thighs.

“Jackie?” She squints into the headlights. Her voice is high like a little girl’s.

He keeps the engine running as he opens his door and steps out. Ma gets out the other door.

“Poppy,” Ma says, “it’s time to come home and get yourself better. I can’t take care of those kids by myself.”

Poppy clutches one arm, shivering. “I will. Just not right now.”

“Right now!” Jackie yells at her. “I’ll throw you in the goddamn back if I have to.”

She cranes her neck to try to see beyond him. She’s ready to
run back inside, so I get out of the truck and take a few steps. She clicks up on those heels and puts her face right up to mine. Even in the dim light, I can see the holes in her arms.

“This ain’t Tabby,” she says. “How much did you pay this bitch?”

“Forget it,” Jackie says to Ma. “She don’t want her kids. You’ll have to give them to social services. Let’s go.”

Poppy tries to slap him, but he ducks.

“Get in the fucking truck!” he hollers.

A scream erupts from Poppy that echoes across the parking lot and gives me gooseflesh all down my back. I heard the same sound once before when a cat got caught in one of the rabbit snares behind our house. We watch her kick off her shiny shoes one at a time and hurl them at the back wall of Bluebelles. Then she limps over and gets in the fucking truck.

“Stop being so dramatic,” Ma scolds.

We all squeeze in around her and Ma hauls a seat belt out from between the vinyl cushions, reaching over my lap to try to clip it over Poppy’s waist. Jackie peels us out of there before he even has his door shut. With the four of us packed in like sardines, he can barely manoeuvre his arms to steer.

“I remember you.” Poppy’s eyes are so glazed it’s hard to tell if she’s looking at me. She drops her head on my shoulder, smearing makeup on my shirt. “You were sitting on our old roof with a towel tied around you like a cape. I watched you fly away, sailing over the hills.” She lifts her bony arm and tries to make a wave motion.

Ma and Jackie sit like statues.

When we get back to the trailer, Poppy teeters down the hall to the kids’ room and doesn’t come back out. Jackie decides to stay the night in case she tries to take off. We watch
Wheel of Fortune
reruns in the living room and around 1 a.m., Ma stands up and says she’s going to bed.

“One of you better stay awake,” she advises.

After her door shuts, Jackie says, “So, tell me about this West guy. He don’t mind that you used to be a Saint?”

“I’m still a Saint. I didn’t walk into some presto-chango chamber.” I hand him one of my blankets.

“Buddy must be pretty serious lending you his truck like that. Before I met Jewell, I wouldn’t let a woman leave a box of tampons at my place, never mind take something with her.”

I chew on my thumbnail. “How did you know Jewell was the one?”

He twists around trying to get comfortable on the floor. “She was leaving town, so I told her I was dying. Then I couldn’t think of what I was dying from, so I told her she couldn’t leave because I needed help moving a fridge. She said, ‘Fine, let’s move it,’ so I told her it wasn’t getting delivered till Wednesday. Then she asks me why the delivery person can’t help me move it, so I said
he
was dying. Finally, she just yelled, ‘Jackie, are you asking me to stay?’ and I was like, Holy shit, I think I am.”

I bust out laughing and Ma shushes us from the bedroom.

“This time is different.” He stretches his arms over his head and stares up at the ceiling. “I’m going to be the best dad in Jubilant.”

“In all of Jubilant?” I mock.

He catches the cushion I toss at him and puts it under his
head. Neither of us trusts the other not to fall asleep, so we both lie awake all night. When it’s almost daylight, I drag myself to the kitchen to make coffee. Jackie joins me and we drink the whole pot in silence. I’m brewing another as Jewell arrives with the kids.

“Is she here?” Janis hollers, practically kicking the door down. She takes off down the hall, sliding on her socks and smacking into the wall at the other end.

Jewell comes in behind her, balancing Swimmer on one hip. She sets him down and holds his hands up in the air to show us his purple-stained fingers. “I left my craft supplies out and when I got off the phone, Janis was playing nail parlour, putting fabric dye on his fingernails with a paintbrush.” She eases down on a chair and gives Jackie a once over. “How did it go?”

We all pause, listening to Poppy murmuring something to Janis. Swimmer toddles down the hall toward her voice.

“She’s here at least,” Jackie says.