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Authors: Barbara Gowdy

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BOOK: Helpless
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Ron’s father said, “Well, that was great.” He looked at Ron. “Wasn’t that great, Buddy?”

“Yeah,” Ron said.

One corner of Jenny’s mouth twitched. She slipped the notebook back into the pocket of her dress.

Ron went on looking at her. Her bent little head with its strands of pinkish hair.

Chapter Ten

I
IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT,
nine thirty. Rachel is lying on the porch sofa, listening to Evanescence. The iPod is Mika’s, as is the penlight she’s waving around. She directs the beam at her feet. After almost an entire week her nail polish is still perfect, not a single chip.

Inside, at his dining room table, Mika marks exam papers. Rachel can see the top of his head and his white hair—his
flaxen
hair—flitting up in the breeze from the rotating fan. Her mother is at the motel and won’t be back until late because Bernie Silver is on holiday, so she’s playing his sets.

At ten o’clock, her mother is going to call. Rachel can’t decide whether or not she’ll talk to her. Felix was the one who knocked over the lemonade, but her mother blamed
her
for putting the glass on a pile of books. And then she wouldn’t let her help clean up. “I’ll do it!” she yelled, grabbing the paper towels Rachel had raced to get from the kitchen.

As she was leaving she said she was sorry for losing her temper, and Rachel said, “That’s okay,” but only to avoid more aggravation. When you don’t have a father, it isn’t fair to have a mother who gets so mad. Maybe Rachel will tell her. She
pictures her at the motel, her spiky hair and nobody putting money in the vase, and she lets out a frustrated moan to feel her anger softening. She turns onto her side, facing the street.

This next song is her favourite, “My Immortal.” She sings along: “And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave…” She switches the penlight off and on to the beat. In ten days she’s going to music camp. She wonders if Mika will let her take the iPod.

“G
O AHEAD
and fire me,” Nancy says. She sinks onto the stool next to the chopping block and lights a cigarette.

“Forget about it,” Frank says. “Nobody got splashed. Only one glass broke.”

“By some miracle,” Nancy says.

“You provided the entertainment.” He gives the grill a last swipe with the wire brush, then tosses the brush in the sink. “Did you see how Andria clapped?”

Andria, his one-year-old daughter. He has four kids under the age of seven, and every Friday night his wife, Bianca, brings them to the restaurant for supper. Their tray of drinks was what Nancy dropped.

“She’s so cute,” Nancy says about Andria. “You’re so lucky.”

“I thank God every day.” He pulls off his chef’s hat and rubs his head. He’s a large, bald, pink-faced man with round blue eyes that widen when he’s listening to you, as if he’s never met anybody more interesting. Even with his wife he does this.

“Are you okay to drive?” he asks.

“Yeah, sure.” She rubs her knee. “Anyways, when I’m sitting it never—”

“Never what?”

She waves her cigarette. She’s crying.

“Hey. What’s going on with you?” He comes over to her. “Is it Ron?”

She shrugs.

“You still think he’s fooling around on you?”

“No.” She dabs her eyes with the hem of her apron. “I don’t know.”

“He’s not hitting you, is he?”

That makes her laugh. “Ron? Are you kidding? He’d have to
see
me to hit me.”

“Okay, look. Take some time off. Go visit your sisters. Relax.”

His eager pink face hangs in front of her like a party balloon, and she finds herself ashamed of her unhappiness, and of her bad leg, too. She comes to her feet. “I’m good now, Frank,” she says. She tells him to run on home and tuck in the kids, she’ll close up.

When he’s gone, she starts lowering the blinds in the restaurant windows. The Korean variety store across the street is still open, and the old man, the grandfather, is out watering the flowers they have for sale on the sidewalk. Big crayon-coloured flowers in the shape of birds’ heads and scorpions and feather dusters. They sell black flowers, too: black tulips and lilies. Who buys those? Devil worshippers?

Devil worshippers make her think of her psychic pouch, and she takes it out of her apron pocket (she’s glad she never got around to throwing it away), presses it against her heart, and goes through the rigamarole of chanting, “Red is your blood, red is my heart…” and so on, while trying to imagine Ron smiling at her lovingly. When was the last time he smiled
at her lovingly? She can’t even remember. No, she can: it was the night he said he wanted to adopt. They were so happy, weren’t they?
She
was. But then he got all wrapped up in renovating the basement apartment, which she understood…sort of. Well, now the renovation is done, it’s perfect, there’s even baby shampoo and Ivory soap in the bathroom, and instead of taking the next step he’s drinking hard again, and every time she tries to talk to him about phoning adoption agencies, he puts her off. He’s says he’s too busy to think about it right now, he’s behind in the shop.

If he has changed his mind about wanting to adopt, which she prays to God he hasn’t, why did he buy the soap and shampoo? A couple of nights ago he wanted the two of them to watch a National Geographic DVD about cheetahs, and when she suggested that they watch it on the new bigscreen TV, you should have seen the look he gave her!

“I don’t mean have sex or anything,” she said. But she thought, So what if we do? It’s not like it’s our little girl’s bedroom or anything, not yet.

She puts the psychic pouch back in her pocket and lowers the last few blinds. Maybe Frank’s right, she tells herself. Maybe she needs to go away and leave Ron alone to work through whatever it is he has to work through.

“Y
OU DON’T
know what love is,” Celia sings to the businessman across from her. On a red ribbon around his neck he wears the plastic identity badge from whatever convention he was at earlier. Things couldn’t have gone all that well because here he is, getting plastered all by himself. He moans along to the songs, occasionally shouts a lyric or two.

Except for him and a pair of hectically smiling middleaged
women who glance at the door whenever Wanda, tonight’s waitress, comes in (it would seem they’ve been misled about the Casa Hernandez’s eligible-bachelor population), the place is empty. At night, as Celia is discovering, people show up for Bernie, and when they find out he’s on holiday they go either to some other bar or outside to the patio for the breeze off the lake.

She finishes the song with a little riff she picked up from Diana Krall. The man claps twice, two whacks of his outstretched hands, as if he were summoning slaves. The women smile apologetically and stand to leave.

Celia starts in on “Love for Sale.”

“For sale!” the man blares.

Wanda comes over to pick up Celia’s empty wine glass. “Cheapsteaks” she hisses, referring to the two women and meaning, of course, “cheapskates.” She’s from Serbia; she’s only been in the country a year. Since the time she was tipped a hundred dollars by a table of French-Canadian hockey players, her idea of a reasonable tip has skyrocketed. She wags Celia’s glass: Refill?

Celia shakes her head. At the end of this set she’ll have a beer down in the kitchen with George. Before that, though, she’ll phone Rachel. She can’t believe she jumped down her throat over spilled lemonade. She can only think that the heat in their apartment is getting to her.

R
ACHEL AIMS
the flashlight in his direction and switches it off and on. Is she signalling somebody? Ron checks his rearview mirrors. Other than a woman climbing into her SUV, the lane’s deserted.

He has parked next to the dumpster. People park here all
the time, and the streetlight up ahead is burned out, so even with all the windows down he feels invisible. For a change, the landlord isn’t on the porch. Neither are the dogs. It’s just Rachel, by herself.

“Shine it at your feet,” he says.

He wishes he’d brought along a pair of binoculars. And then it occurs to him: maybe he has. In the trunk he keeps finding things—nylon cord, a blanket—he can’t remember having put there. He opens the glove compartment and fumbles around. Nope, no flashlight. Only his
Perly’s
guide and the roll of duct tape he bought to secure the broken rearview mirror.

He takes out the tape and sets it on the dashboard. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says. Her light seems to intensify and it is from this, rather than from the sudden dimness of the world around him, that he becomes conscious of the power failure. He climbs out of the car.

Rachel descends the porch steps. “I just want to see!” she calls over her shoulder. Ron starts moving toward her. It’s dark but not pitch black, because of the cars on Parliament. Rachel aims her light that way, then sweeps it past him and looks down her own street.

He reaches the curb.

Should he cross? No, he thinks. Yes.

He takes a step.

She turns and runs into the house.

Through the living room window he makes out her staggering beam.

C
ELIA IS
wrapping up her set with “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and Wanda is over by the window, gazing dreamily at the Scotia
Bank building, where her married boyfriend works as a security guard, when the lights go out.

“Oh, my God,” Wanda says.

The businessman across from Celia jerks awake. In the stumpy flame from his candle his face is ancient.

“The whole city, it went poof!” Wanda says.

“What?” the businessman says.

“Looks like a power failure,” Celia tells him.

“Maybe is the terrorists!” Wanda gasps.

“I think it’s too many air conditioners,” Celia says, although she’s feeling a twist of unease.

The man slides a cell phone out of his jacket pocket. Celia picks up a candle from the nearest table and heads for the bar to use the phone there.

“Forgot to charge the damn thing,” the man mutters.

Celia gets a speeded-up busy signal. She tries again, but now there’s no dial tone.

“This calls for a Manhattan!” the man declares. He slaps the table and turns to Wanda.

Wanda remains at the window. “Not one single light,” she says.

“I’m going home,” Celia announces.

The man comes to his feet. “I’d wait if I were you,” he says. By grasping the backs of chairs he’s making his own way to the bar. “Driving’ll be chaos. Hell on wheels.”

N
ANCY POKES
her head out her kitchen window. “Ah, jeez,” she says. She thinks it’s her fault. Just as she turned on her air conditioner the electricity went off…in the entire neighbourhood, from what she can see.

“I
HAVE
a battery-powered fluorescent lantern,” Mika tells Rachel. “Also a windup radio. We’ll be able to find out what the story is out there.”

He is heading toward the stairwell, Rachel illuminating his path with her penlight.

“You better have it,” she says about the light.

“I’m okay,” he says. “You just keep guiding me.”

He takes a step down. The dogs follow. He orders them back upstairs, but Osmo squeezes by on his right side. Then Happy tries to go through his legs, and he trips. His head hits the wall. He reels, makes a grab for the railing and misses. He tumbles to the floor.

“Mika!” Rachel cries.

No answer, not a sound.

She races down the stairs, calling his name. She drops to her knees. His eyes are closed. He isn’t moving. She shakes his shoulder. The dogs lick his face. The penlight slips from her hand and rolls away.

In total darkness she scrambles up the stairs. She gets to the kitchen phone and presses what she thinks is 9—1—1. Nothing happens. She drops the phone and runs outside.

At the bottom of the porch steps she bumps into someone. A man.

“Hey,” he says, catching her arm. “What’s going on in there?”

“I need to phone nine-one-one!” she cries.

“Are you hurt?”

“No! Mika, he fell! I think he’s dead!” She starts sobbing.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I have a phone in my car. Come on. We’ll phone.”

Chapter Eleven

T
HE DRIVING ISN’T
bad. It’s the pedestrians you’ve got to watch out for. All the way up Yonge Street gangs of teenagers are strolling into traffic, slapping hoods. There’s a lot of excited shouting and hooting. Not having a car radio, Celia still doesn’t know what happened but it seems unlikely there’s been a terrorist attack.

And yet she can’t shake her anxiety. She has to keep telling herself that Rachel is with Mika, and nobody is better prepared for disaster than Mika with his gas generator and windup radio and his boxes of candles and batteries. Right now, he and Rachel will be out on the porch. It’s a clear night…they’ll be looking up at the stars.

She holds on to this picture until she turns off Parliament and sees the police cars. She pulls over, slamming her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake and mounting the curb. She gets out. Kicks off her high heels. People are in the lane, people with flashlights. A plank of light falls alongside her.

Two policemen stand in the middle of Mika’s living room. They blind her, then lower their beams. Mika is on the
sofa. He holds a towel to his head. Seeing her, he opens his mouth.

“Are you Celia Fox?” the nearest policeman asks.

“Where’s my daughter?” she says. Everything pulses: the room, the men.

“I’
M NOT
going to hurt you,” Ron tells her. “I’m taking you somewhere where nobody will ever hurt you again.”

She’s on the floor. He didn’t put her there…she slid off the seat. It crossed his mind that he should put her in the trunk but he was afraid she’d suffocate. Anyway, without streetlights, you can’t really see into other people’s vehicles.

“How are you doing?” he asks. He glances over. Her face is turned away. He can make out only the tender curve of her neck and the earlobe with its pearl stud, like a drop of saliva. “Is the air conditioning too cold for you there?” He adjusts the direction of the vents.

She’s able to breathe, he knows that. He was careful not to tape her nostrils. It was like taping a doll. He had her mouth covered before she even began to put up a struggle. Which was pathetically easy to contain. He quickly bound her hands and feet and that was the end of it.

He has seen the same thing happen on nature programs: animals giving up once they accept they’ve been overpowered. He tries to explain the phenomenon to her: “You’re in a state of shock. It keeps you from feeling pain or getting too excited. It’s like being injected with a tranquilizing dart. Have you seen those TV shows, you know—
Discovery
and
National Geographic
, where the scientists shoot tranquilizing darts at the animals so they can give them medicine or take their measurements?”

He wonders if he’s speaking too technically. That he can speak at all astounds him. His heart is going like a pump drill. His hands, from touching her, feel irradiated. Not since he was a child himself has he touched a child. This time he only did what was necessary to get her into the car and subdued.

The trip isn’t a long one: fifteen minutes. He turns into the delivery lane and parks next to his garage, switching on his high beams. All the neighbouring businesses are closed for the day. Still, when he’s out of the car he waits, listening, before going around to her door. “Ups-a-daisy,” he whispers. He drapes her over his shoulder. She’s as weightless as a garment bag.

His high beams, though he stays out of them, guide him across the lawn to the back entrance and straight through the house to the shop. Here, it is completely dark. With his free hand he feels along the counter to the basement door. “Good girl,” he says, descending the stairs. At the bottom he puts her down while he goes to get flashlights from the furnace room and to move the car around to the front. When he returns, she’s twisting and making choking noises.

“Hold on,” he says, alarmed. His hands shake. He has trouble inserting the key. “Bingo,” he says, finally jamming it in. He enters the apartment and sets the flashlights on their ends, then comes back for her. She has gone still and quiet. He carries her to the bed and makes a place for her among the stuffed animals. For the first time he notices how fast she’s breathing, the rapid throbbing of her chest.

“Okay, let’s get that tape off,” he says.

His hands won’t stop shaking but he finds a corner of the tape and gently pulls. Her lovely mouth, revealed, unsteadies
him. He staggers to one side. “I’m a little nervous about all this,” he confesses. He has a harder time unwinding the twisted tape from her wrists and ankles. He picks up one of the flashlights and leaves the room to get a knife.

“This should do the trick,” he says when he comes back. She hasn’t budged. He positions one of the flashlights to shine on her wrists and starts sawing. If he cuts her…He doesn’t. He gets the tape off, then moves the light again and does her ankles. Her bare feet squirm under the duvet.

“Are you cold?” he asks.

She curls onto her side and begins to whimper—a pathetic animal sound, like a dog left to die.

What should he do? What he
wants
to do is sit on the bed and stroke her quivering little form. If he has ever witnessed anything more heartwrenching, he can’t remember. He lifts the duvet and drops it over her legs. She flinches.

“I’ll leave you to get yourself settled,” he says. “There’s a bathroom behind you, a clean glass if you’re thirsty.” The whimpering doesn’t let up. He’s not even sure she hears him. He keeps talking anyway, just in case. It’s important she understand he isn’t some kind of pervert. “If you get hungry or anything, bang on the door. I’ll hear you. There’s a twenty-four-hour variety store at the corner, and I can run out and get you whatever you like. Ice cream. A chocolate bar. Or I can fix you a sandwich. Grilled cheese. Bacon and tomato. Whatever you like.”

The canopy’s net curtains are tied back, and for the sake of being able to see her from the doorway he decides to leave them that way. He goes out and double bolts the lock. Her cries seep through. “It’s for her own good,” he mutters. “For
her own good.” The apprehension of what he’s done, and what it signifies, is striking him in short, stunning blasts: he has abducted her; there’s no turning back; it’s too late.

He heaves himself up the stairs.

In the shop he paws through drawers until he finds a pack of matches. He strikes one after another as he heads for the kitchen. Nancy brought over a big scented candle a couple of weeks ago, and once he has that lit, he takes a couple of gulps of rye, then carries the candle and his drink back to the shop. He picks up the phone to call Nancy, but the line’s dead. He tries his cell. It works, but at Nancy’s end there’s a rapid busy signal. She has only the one phone. He’ll have to wait.

He walks over to the stairwell and listens. She’s still whimpering. He returns to the counter and forces out a few whimpers of his own. He can’t keep it up, though. A little wick of elation has ignited inside him and is burning through the pity and astonishment, the fear.

He has her. She’s his.

BOOK: Helpless
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