Bow Grip (14 page)

She stood up and shook my hand. Her hand was ultra soft, and felt like how her voice sounded. Like bathroom tiles against your bare feet on a real scorcher of a summer day.

By the time I got back out to my truck, it was almost five and rush hour was in full swing. It was nearly dark, which felt a bit weird. I wasn’t used to sleeping in, and it felt like the night had snuck up behind me somehow. I wasn’t used to not having any real work done at the end of a day, either. Wasn’t like me at all. My other unfinished business was weighing heavy on my mind.

I had an hour before I had to be back at the motel to babysit Raylene. I could try calling Allyson again, and go drop off her boxes. I wouldn’t have much time to hang around and talk, which I considered a plus. But I thought I should try Cecilia again. Her place was on the other side of town and it was rush hour, but if I hauled ass I could whip over and still get back to the motel on time. I could meet with Ally first thing tomorrow morning, hopefully, and then get hold of the cello teacher. My next appointment with the shrink was Monday, early afternoon. I could have a cello lesson sometime over the weekend, get my head shrunk one more time, and be back in Drumheller by dinnertime. My mom usually made lasagna on Mondays, and I was really starting to miss my dog. The last time Buck Buck and I were separated for this long was the honeymoon, when Ally and I went to Mexico for six days. According to Franco, the poor dog refused to eat anything except raw weiners, wouldn’t budge from the front door, and ate a pair of Franco’s Italian leather dress shoes in protest.

The porch light at Cecelia’s was on, and the door to the glass sunroom was ajar. Inside I could see there was a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray perched on the arm of a faded loveseat. I pressed the doorbell, but didn’t hear it buzz inside. I could hear a distant radio, but no footsteps. I knocked on the door, and the little dog inside went ballistic
again. Then a woman’s muffled call underneath it:
be right there
.

The deadbolt soon clicked, and the smell of steam and corn-on-the-cob escaped as the door swung open.

Cecelia Carson was one of the most beautiful women I ever laid my eyes upon in real life. She was wearing a men’s waffled undershirt that was once white, a pair of kneeless jeans, and leather moccasins. One long braid trailed from the back of her neck over her shoulder and all the way down to her hips. That was some long hair, if she ever shook it loose. Brown feather duster eyelashes.

“Yes?”

“Hello, my name is Joseph Cooper. I’m an acquaintance of your husband, Jim. I know him from Drumheller.”

“James is my brother, not my husband. I’m not married.”

“My mistake, Ms Carson, I apologize.” Her brother, not her husband. I stared at my feet, feeling awkward. “So a couple of days before your brother left town, he traded me his cell for a used car I had for sale.”

“He gave away the cello? I can’t believe that.”

“Well, like I said, he didn’t give it away, I traded him a car for it. Anyways, the car broke down, and he had me tow it back to my shop and fix it up for him. I fixed it right away and brought it back the next day, but your brother had left town. No forwarding address. So now I’ve got his car, and it’s running fine, but I don’t know how to get hold of him to find out what he wants me to do with it. I found your address on a postcard he left behind in his bus. So here I am.”

She said nothing as she stood in the doorway, one hip leaning against the doorframe, and fiddled with the end of
her braid. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I just can’t get over the fact that he let go of Elaine’s cello. It was in her family for years. Tell you what, I’m expecting to hear from him tomorrow, he’s supposed to call here. I don’t have a number I can reach him at, as usual. But I’ll be sure to ask him about the car. We’ll figure out what he wants to do with it. He’s not that into owning much in the way of material belongings. You’ve probably already figured that out, if you knew him at all.”

“Not really. I mean, I’d see him around here and there, I knew who he was, but I never talked to him until he came around asking about the car.”

“What did he want a car for? That’s not like Jim at all. You can’t live in a car. Did his old bus break down?”

“No, actually, I fired it up the day I tried to drop the car off for him, and it turned right over.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Why the hell didn’t he just do the deed in his bus? Wouldn’t that have been cheaper? The bus had started up just fine.

“He left the bus behind, too?” Cecilia knit her eyebrows together and fished the half-smoked cigarette out of the ashtray by the door, felt her pockets for a lighter. I fumbled mine out of my jacket pocket and lit it for her. My hands were shaking just a little. I could smell her shampoo. I found myself trying not to look directly at her, just in case I couldn’t stop.

She took a slow drag and half-sat on the arm of the loveseat. “I can’t believe he left the bus, too. Now that is really weird. One of his kids was born in that little bus. When he and Elaine were in their hippie phase. He loved that thing. Had it for twenty years.”

His kid was born in it. He couldn’t die there. That made sense to me.

Cecelia stared at the red end of her cigarette like it might know something neither of us did. “Something is up with my brother. I’ll figure it all out when he calls here tomorrow. Why don’t you drop by here tomorrow night, after seven? Do you have a pen? I’ll give you my number.”

She crushed the butt of her smoke and stood up. I could smell her shampoo again, and it made my heart speed up. I did, indeed, have a pen, and the notebook from the doctor. I had tucked them under my arm when I got out of the truck, just in case I had to leave a note.

The very first thing I wrote in my stress journal was Cecelia Carson’s phone number, and seven p.m.

“Nice to meet you, Joseph Cooper. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She waved at me and closed the door behind her.

“Nice to meet you too, Cecelia Carson,” I said, and finally let out my breath.

I
ended up back at the motel right at six-thirty, just as Kelly rounded the corner next to the parking lot, with Raylene and what looked like a stuffed moose in tow. Kelly’s back-and what looked like a stuffed moose in tow. Kelly’s backpack was bulging with books. How much could you learn about dog grooming from a book, I wondered.

“Hey Joseph, here we are, all ready for Mommy to go to school, right, honey?”

Raylene glowered at me from under the hood of her parka.

“She always plays shy for the first little while. She’ll snap out of it, won’t you, honey?” Kelly tugged on Raylene’s arm for an answer, but Raylene just scrunched her mouth up into a silent little knot.

I reached out to take the girl’s hand, but she white-knuckled it, wouldn’t let go of Kelly’s. Popped the thumb of her other hand into her mouth. Kelly brushed Raylene’s thumb out of her mouth with her free hand.

“No thumb, Bug. Mommy can’t afford a retainer for you.”

The kid screwed up her face like she was trying to squeeze out a tear, but Kelly ignored it.

“You’re going to stay with Joseph for a while so I can go to school and learn how to take care of our new puppy.”

“We don’t have a puppy yet.”

“We will, Bug, if you let me go to school.”

I unlocked my door and Kelly led Raylene into my room, sat her on the chair, and took off her boots. But Raylene wouldn’t let Kelly take her coat off.

“It’s too cold in here.”

The kid was right. It was freezing. I crossed the room and turned on the heater under the window.

“I can take her coat off for her in a minute then, once it warms up in here,” I said.

“I can take my own coat off my own self,” Raylene snipped, her tiny arms crossed over her chest.

“He knows you can take off your own coat, Raylene, he’s just being a gentleman. You’re not used to that. Don’t be rude to the man, he’s doing us a favour.”

Kelly stood up and turned to face me. She was wearing a bit of eye shadow, and smelled like fresh nail polish. “I should head out, or I’m gonna miss my bus. Thanks a lot, Joseph, you’re a real lifesaver. I talked to Lenny already, told him you were a real nice guy and that he shouldn’t be ripping you off so much for this dinky little room. He told me he’d cut you a bit of a deal. Make sure he doesn’t weasel out of it. I’ll see you two in a few hours.” Kelly opened her backpack, took out a colouring book and a zip-lock bag of crayons, put them on the unused bed. “Give Mommy a little kiss, Bug, and you be on your best behaviour for Joseph, or it’s no zoo for you this weekend.”

Kelly ran her hand over an errant blonde tuft of bangs that was sticking out from under the hood of Raylene’s parka and leaned over as the kid tilted one cheek up, permitted it to be kissed. Kicked her feet out and let them bounce back against the legs of the chair, her thumbs folded into her fists.

And then Kelly was gone, and it was just me and Raylene, still perched on the chair in the corner. The kid kind of freaked me out a bit. One of those know-all, see-all, red rum types of kid you run into every once in a while.
Her little mittens were hanging from pink wool strings out the ends of her parka sleeves. Pink rubber boots with fake sheepskin around the top, dark pink pants, a plastic daisy bracelet around one wrist. The kid was styling, in the same way as her mother. Capri Motor Court dazzle.

“You want something to drink?’

She shook her head.

“Want to watch TV?”

She shrugged once, still silent.

“You need to go to the bathroom or anything? You want to take your coat off, or at least untie your hood?”

Another shake of her head. She stared at me. It was starting to look like it was going to be a long night, for both of us.

“Well I have to keep a journal, write down all the things I did today, so I’m going to go ahead and do that now. You can watch TV, or colour, or whatever you want. You just let me know if you need anything.”

I grabbed my journal off the side table and flipped it open on the bed in front of me. On the inside of the front cover, I wrote my name, address, and phone number, in case I ever lost it. Then I thought about someone finding it, and considered crossing that information out, but I decided instead that I would never let the journal out of my sight. I turned past Cecelia’s phone number to a fresh clean page. Wrote the date and time in the top left corner. Capri Motor Court, room 119 after that. Then I ran out of ideas for a minute, so I laid my pen down, and looked at the kid.

She still had her parka on, but had sat down on the other bed, cross-legged, just like I was. Her colouring book open in front of her, a black crayon poised in the air above it. She put it down when she felt me looking at her, crossed
her skinny little arms over her chest again. Uncrossed them, let out a big dramatic sigh.

“I’m writing my day down, too. In a picture. I’m drawing the swing set at daycare,” she informed me, all business-like.

“Good idea.”

I picked up my pen again. Started to write whatever came into my head.

“Are you writing about babysitting me?” Raylene kept drawing right through her question, didn’t look up.

“No. I haven’t got to that bit yet,” I lied, not sure why I was doing it.

“Tell me when you’re writing about me then. I could draw you a picture of me and you to go with your story.” She flipped to a clean page, smoothed it flat with one hand, the pink tip of her tongue poking out one side of her mouth. She was cute when she wasn’t scowling at something.

“That’s a great idea, Raylene. I would like that a lot.” For some reason this tugged at my chest a little, like when one of my nieces wrapped their little monkey arms around my neck, or jumped up and down when I came through their front door. She was warming up to me. Just liked to take her time about it. I could respect that.

“Do you want me to put my momma in the picture too?”

“Whatever you like, Raylene, it’s your picture. You’re the artist here.”

“But I’m making it for you.”

“Well, my story is about me babysitting you, so I guess it should be a picture of just you and me, if it’s going to go with my story.”

“I thought you weren’t writing that part yet.”

There wasn’t much that got past this kid.

“Well, I’m just getting there now.”

Raylene eyed me for a long second, and exchanged her black crayon for a yellow one.

“Do you want to kiss her?”

“Do I want to kiss who?”

“My momma, stupid head.”

Did the kid just call me stupid head?

“I don’t want to kiss your mommy. We’re just friends, is all. She’s a really nice person, but I’m way to old to be kissing her.”

“Mr Big Ass is even older than you, and he wants to kiss my mom all the time.”

I laughed out loud at that one. “I bet he does. Who is Mr Big Ass?”

“The man who lives here all the time. He takes our money so we can stay here. My mom says he has eight arms and wants to kiss her. But I want her to kiss you instead of him.”

That fucking Lenny. I thought of his hairy hands, his shrunken wife coming around here every morning, cleaning out my little trash can, talking to me about the weather,
asking if I need clean towels. I felt like hitting him. I picked my pen up again.