February (29 page)

Would Barry take off the baseball cap?

He said the room was shaping up. What do you think, he said. They were standing together in the empty room.

I’m almost done, Helen, he said.

It looks pretty good.

I have to say, he agreed. He nodded at the ceiling.

The girl falls all at once, the girl is tumbling to the stage, tumbling and unwrapping, tipping, somersaulting towards the stage, and there is no net and the audience cries out, and she snags halfway down. Helen flings out an arm in terror and hits Louise in the seat next to her. A smack on the chest.

The girl dangles in mid air, triumphant. Wild clapping that breaks like waves.

Louise grips Helen’s wrist. It’s part of the show, Louise whispers.

Helen will ask Barry for supper. She will risk candles. What the hell. She will risk candles if she bloody well feels like candles.

THE NEW YEAR

Fireworks, January 2009

THE FIREWORKS WERE
moved from the harbour to Quidi Vidi Lake because it occurred to someone to be careful of the oil tanks over on the South Side. Barry said they could park the truck up in the White Hills.

I’ll come get you, he said.

That sounds nice, said Helen.

You know, there by the school, the building, whatever it is they have up there.

The building up there, Helen said.

There’s a good view, Barry said.

I’d say that’d be the spot, all right, Helen said.

Around eleven thirty, then.

Barry had finished the renovations three weeks before. He’d left his tools and said he’d be back to get them. A few days later his stuff was gone and Helen’s house key glittered on the bristly welcome mat.

Imagine if a spark from them fireworks landed on those oil tanks, Barry said. Helen was talking on the phone and looking out her bedroom window. The South Side Hills had long, dangerous icicles all over their craggy cliffs. Snow streaked the smooth bare rock farther up. The five white tanks, fat and implacable against the blue sky.

What if I cooked supper for us, Helen said. She had not meant to say it. She heard something crunch. It must have been an empty pop can. Barry had crunched a pop can in his fist.

I don’t want you to go to any trouble, he said.

If you’re too busy, she said.

What time, he asked.

Everybody in town had the same idea. Helen and Barry couldn’t get near the White Hills because of the traffic. They parked, and it was snowing lightly and the ground crunched and squeaked with new snow. They walked down to the lake. There were long lines of traffic and the snow fell between the crawling cars and shone in the soft fans of the yellow headlights.

There were teenagers hanging out of a van in the Employment and Immigration parking lot. The doors of the van were open and music was thumping into the cold air. The kids had fake ice cubes in their drinks that crackled with light. The girls were shrill. One swaying blonde in a rabbit-fur bomber jacket yelled Happy New Year to Helen and raised her glass so beer slopped over the side and sizzles of light from the fake ice cubes shot out through her fingers.

Earlier, Helen had answered the door after the bell rang and she was dressed up and Barry was not dressed up. He wore jeans speckled with paint and a plaid shirt. They’d sat down to eat almost at once because there was nothing to say. The risotto had been gluey and cold. The beef was grey. Helen had just finished serving herself and she pushed out her chair and it screeched over the hardwood. Barry glanced up, startled and guilty looking. He was wiping his empty plate clean with a chunk of bread before she had even started.

There had been a hole in the centre of the dining room and all the things a man and woman could say to each other had dropped into the hole, and it had closed over, and the new hardwood floor gleamed shiny and mute. It was a silence full of what they expected, and what they expected was turned up on bust, and it was sexual and full of need and too much to expect. Helen had the dryer going at the back of the house and she and Barry listened to the clothes tumbling around. Something with snaps scraped and was muffled and scraped again, over and over.

Then Barry brought up the subject of his ex-wife. He glossed over the subject. He put his hand against the edge of the table and pushed his chair out and ran his other hand down the front of his shirt, and bread crumbs bounced onto the floor, and then he just casually mentioned his ex-wife.

She took up with my best friend, he said. Old story. This was long ago. They collect meteors in Nevada.

Helen’s plate was full of food and she didn’t want to touch it but she couldn’t leave it there. The gravy had congealed with a crackled sheen over the cold risotto.

You mean, like comet tails, she said. She stabbed a limp shred of colourless broccoli, then shook it off her fork.

Worth their weight in gold, Barry said. Chunks as big as your head. The two of them out there, shovelling sand. They got a house built almost entirely of glass. That’s not what they do for a living, he said. That’s what they do for fun.

And this was the wistful closing statement about the ex-wife. The mother of his son. He did not begrudge his ex-wife falling stars.

Helen suddenly remembered to put on music. Something perverse or decadent made her choose Frank Zappa. Barry poured them a second glass of wine.

I’m not kidding, Helen, he said. This is a fine meal.

Helen’s mouth was full. She chewed and swallowed and flapped at the kitchen with her white napkin.

Go, she said. Help yourself.

Do you mind, he said.

She laid her hand flat on her chest and swallowed and gulped wine. Be my guest, she said.

Barry came back with his plate heaped up and he was saying about the journalist who’d thrown a shoe at Bush. Did you see that on the Net? Then he said about the mayor who had thrown up in her purse years ago. He’d done her floors too. She was a ticket, Barry said. And then the new mayor had demanded that a councillor bring him
DDT
in a cereal bowl with a spoon and he’d eat the whole goddamn thing for breakfast. Because there was nothing wrong with it.
DDT
wouldn’t hurt a fly, that mayor had told the
TV
cameras.

Helen said, Shut up. Stop. She was laughing. Barry had worked his hand into his pocket and then he took out a lighter and lit the candles. He walked over to the wall switch and dimmed the lights while he was talking.

Helen raised her hand, clutching her napkin, and lifted one finger to make him stop. I have to show you, she said.

What?

She was already up the stairs and he was following two at a time.

You have to see, she said. Helen stumbled forward in the dark and turned on the gooseneck lamp on her dresser. The wedding dress she’d been working on lay over the arm of a chair. It was finished.

That’s really something, Barry said.

And the girl who is going to wear it, Helen said.

That’s a beautiful thing, Barry said.

Helen had a hundred-watt bulb in that lamp and it hit the white satin and the dress was blazing white. Pearls and sequins sparking, light spilling along the folds, beading up like mercury and spreading in all directions.

Then it struck Helen that they were in her bedroom, and the wine hit too. Her bed was appalling. The pillows were appalling and the personal things on her dresser were appalling: her deodorant; a pair of nylons that still held the shape of the ball of her foot, shiny with dirt, and the rest like a crumpled reptile skin, faintly shiny and lewd; a black patent-leather evening purse with a broken strap. She had come into her bedroom forgetting it was her bedroom. She had come in by accident. She turned off the light to make the bed go away, and Barry said her name.

Then they were in the dark. Just standing in the dark, and Barry was not sure what to do. Helen fumbled around for the light and turned it back on. It was an uncompromising light. Barry looked at his watch.

It’s time to get down to the lake, he said. Or we’ll miss the fireworks.

And now Helen and Barry were in a crowd at the lake. A
bang
clapped against the low hills and they both turned. The explosion of light seemed to reach through the darkness towards them. It was coming at them fast. Silence followed the
bang
, deepened and became fathomless. The light flew into their faces as silent as something at the bottom of the ocean. Helen stepped back. The snow crunching under her boots. Then the booms overlapped. The fireworks looked like underwater plants. Starfish, phosphorescent flowers with stamens and petals and seeds. They pushed up out of the dark and were extinguished by it before they could touch or come anywhere near her.

A family of ducks on a pan of ice tried to flee, all huddled together in a pack, waddling fast and then stopping. Staying still. They waited, and with the next bang the ducks turned together and waddled in the other direction. Helen was close enough to hear the ducks, but they didn’t make any noise at all. A red spurting fountain shot up a geyser of white spirals. More flowers over their heads dropping petals.

A girl a few yards behind them was counting down with her boyfriend. Five, four, three, two, one. And then the girl yelled Happy New Year, hopping up and down.
Boom
,
crack
,
boom crack
,
boom
, and Barry drew Helen into his arms and his mouth was on her mouth and they pressed hard together, and his tongue and the firm strength of his body and his hand under her jacket on the back of her cashmere sweater. They kissed for a long time.

When they drew apart, the dark sky had clouds of smoke and the crowd had started back up over the hill, and Helen said, Do you want to come back for coffee or a whisky or something. And Barry said, Yes I do.

In the kitchen, Helen screwed the espresso maker together and put it on the stove. She had whipped cream in the fridge and a bottle of Baileys, and she set those things out. Barry was on the couch in the living room and Helen went out and flopped down beside him, and it was ordinary. They were friends and it was well past midnight and her thighs were cold.

Then his hand was on her crotch, moving, and she lifted her hips towards his hand. He was looking into her eyes. It wasn’t ordinary. She was mistaken. His thumb on the seam of her jeans, rubbing intently. The reflection of his watch face, a disc of light, was jiggling on the faded pink floral fabric of the couch. It was a frenetic, crazed jiggling.

The espresso maker on the kitchen stove began to bubble. Helen hadn’t screwed down the top canister tightly enough. Steam was escaping through a groove that hadn’t been threaded properly. The metal canister was whistling, high-pitched, and then chugging like an engine. Then it was screamingly high again. Helen pressed hard against Barry’s hand and turned her face into the sofa.

I am going to come, she said. She was not speaking to Barry, and he didn’t answer. The jiggling oval from his watch fluttered over a printed flower on the couch near her mouth. Helen pushed her face into the cushion so he could not watch her. She put out her tongue to touch the disc of light. She could feel the texture of the Scotchgarded couch. It tasted of sawdust.

Then Barry was tearing her jeans down. He was a little rough. Helen held his ass with her hands and their feet hooked together. He was wearing slippery nylon socks. He grimaced during orgasm the way she had once seen him grimace while lifting a sheet of plywood into place, holding it with his shoulder while digging for a nail in his carpenter’s apron. And he grunted. It was a sound so unselfconscious and from so deep inside him that it thrilled her. He said, God almighty. A thrill ran the length of her body like a spill of icy water. Then he said, Goddamn. Goddamn. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath and he kissed her collarbone.

Somebody should turn off the coffee, Helen said. But the espresso maker kept whistling. Finally Barry stood and pulled up his jeans and fastened the leather belt. He walked to the window and parted the curtains. People were walking up from downtown. A cop car went past with the lights on and a few whoops of the siren.

Helen walked into the kitchen and the bottom of the espresso maker was glowing orange as if it were about to melt.

. . . . .

What Did He Say

THERE WERE A
lot of men in the water. There wasn’t very much time, Helen. We were trying to get to them
.

What did Cal say? Did he say anything? Helen wanted to hear that Cal had said her name. She wanted to hear that he knew she loved him. She wanted to hear: tell Helen this or that.

It didn’t have to be love.

It didn’t have to be her name.

Just some shout to show that he knew what he was leaving behind. Some shout to acknowledge that she would have to raise four children by herself now. That she would have to get through without love. That she was pregnant. She would like to think some part of him knew, or had intuited, or that some paranormal force had let him know, there was a baby coming.

Helen would like to know that Cal understood how dark the rest of the winter would be, and how the fetus in her womb was kicking and making her throw up, and how the baby would have the cord wrapped around her neck and would be blue, bluish, as none of the others had been, and the terror that Helen would lose the baby now, and how she could not lose her.

Helen had not believed in an afterlife before Cal died and she still did not think of it. But she listened for Cal after he died. She listened for his tread on the stairs; she listened for his advice. She listened for him pouring cereal out of a box, the clink of his spoon; she listened for the dog’s nails on the hardwood as Cal set out its food in the back porch. She listened for his breathing at night. If she was lost in sewing and the kettle whistled, she expected Cal to turn it off. She asked him what he thought of the girls.

And then a murmur, a collective gasp went up, and it turned out her baby girl was fine, just fine, what a big girl, and Helen found herself thinking, Look, Cal, look. She would have liked him to tell her certain things, and she knows exactly what they are: