The Second Trial (31 page)

Danny narrowed his eyes.

“Let's take a hypothetical situation. Let's say there's a small child – three or four years old. And let's say that child found some matches.”

Danny stayed silent.

“And let's say that child was striking those matches and watching the little flames – playing with fire. And the child was having a good time.”

Danny chewed his lip. He started to see where this was going.

“And then, before he got burned or set the house on fire, his mother came by and pulled the matches from him. Do you think that would be the right thing to do? Even if you cried over the injustice of losing your plaything?”

The question bore into Danny's consciousness like a drill.
Ishii
knows
.
If she can tell, then I can tell,
Danny thought.

His curfew had ended and Danny was free to meet Nixxie for a movie on Friday.

He spent the half-hour bus ride trying to keep his hands steady. He hustled off the bus ahead of Nixxie and looked quickly right and left, then right again.

She cocked her head to one side. “It's this way,” she said, pointing.

“No. We need to talk.”

“Talk?” She paused. “What about the movie?”

“It can wait,” he replied. He remembered a park bench in a coin-sized green space between two office towers. “This way.”

The temperature dropped with the sun and the park had emptied. Danny hoped Nixxie would think his hands were trembling with cold.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen? Are you all right? Is something wrong with your mom?”

“No, nothing like that.” He paused. “Well it kinda is.”

“Is she sick? Was she in an accident?”

“No.”

The concerned look on Nixxie's face turned to puzzlement.

He interlaced his fingers to stop the shaking. He leaned forward and rested his forearms along his thighs, and started talking. The story spilled from him like blood from a wound, pumped until there was nothing left in the hollow muscle that was his heart.

Danny talked with Nixxie almost every day. He told her what Mr. Ishii had said, trying to focus his thoughts by talking them out.

“My mom – Denise – had a lot of good intentions,” she replied, “but she couldn't follow through. She didn't know who to be, so she ended up being nothing.”

“Do you hate her?”

“Sometimes, but not as often as I used to. She used to say she'd visit me all the time, we'd go places, and do fun things together. She told me I was lucky because I had
two
mothers. She said she'd teach me how to be Native, but she couldn't because she didn't know how to be one herself. When we went to the reserve, I didn't want to see her. I started resenting her more and more, and my parents stopped taking me see her so often. And now, I don't know if there's a future in being Native.”

“But you
are
Native,” he replied.

“Sometimes I
wish
I were, but most of the time I don't. I just want to be Nixxie, be my own person, but it's not easy. It's complicated.”

“You sound like Mr. Ishii.”

Nixxie stared straight at Danny. “That's because he counseled me, too.”

“He
did?
”

She nodded.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“He asked me not to. He said it was better that way.” She rubbed her arm. “He was Denise's school counselor. Later, when I needed someone to talk to, Mr. Ishii was there.”

His face was rigid when he met the counselor. As soon as he sat in the chair, he confronted Mr. Ishii. “You know, don't you?”

“Yes,” Mr. Ishii replied.

“How long?”

“Your mother told me a while ago.”

“After she told us – no,
lectured
us –
everybody
lectured us –we could never tell, never breathe a word?!”

“Your mother moved you here to give you a better life, but she's afraid she'll still lose you. She told me because she thought it was the only way to save you. Not from your dad this time, but from yourself.” He paused. “Don't you think you can trust your mother, David?”

“My name's not David. And it's
her
fault.”

“Are you sure?”

“How could she let it happen?”

Mr. Ishii put down his pen. “Maybe that's not the right question.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's easy to blame the victim. I'm sure some people thought Everett – and your mother – ‘had it coming.' But isn't the real question, ‘Why did the abuser do what he did?'”

“But she
lied
to us.”

“Your mother made an error in judgment. Haven't you ever done that?”

“What, like the shoplifting?” Danny challenged.

“And the bullying?” Mr. Ishii countered.

Danny was silent.

“So. Why did
you
do it?”

This time, Danny asked the questions. “How can I be sure my dad really did all those things that Mom said?”

Mr. Ishii tilted his head. “How long had you lived in your Edmonton house?”

“All my life.”

“Did you ever worry about it blowing up?”

Danny bit his lip. “No.”

“There really isn't any question he did it, is there?”

“I guess not.”

“And if he did that, isn't he capable of anything? Including murder?”

My gut tells me Mr. McMillan is one of the most dangerous men
I have ever met.
“I guess.” Danny speared his fingers through his hair. “But
why
did he do it?”

“Anger is a choice. Bullying is learned. Your dad believed your mom was worthless, and neither the law – nor society – stepped in to stop him. And he didn't destroy just your mother. He destroyed all of you.”

“But I
loved
my father!”

“Every person in a family can have different relationships with the other people in that family. Your dad was kind to you, gave you opportunities to thrive. He supported you – or so it seemed. But in the end, when he couldn't mould you into him, he threw you away.”

Suppose the blow to her head killed her instead of just knocking her
unconscious. You would be here today being sentenced for murder, and
you would be in jail for many, many years. Had that happened, Mr.
McMillan, your children would be no better than orphans
.

Danny sat thinking, then got up and quietly left the room.

Mr. Ishii reached into a drawer and pulled out a form:
In the
Provincial Court of Manitoba, Judicial District of Winnipeg. Report
of Psychologist.
He flipped to the last page, where a dozen blank lines followed
Conclusions and Recommendations.
He wrote, “David is a bright young man at a difficult point in his life. Like many other teenagers, he is a work in progress. I believe he will go on to live well. He has attended every counseling session. I recommend the Court consider it ‘time served' and the charge be withdrawn.”

Chapter 26

“You told him!”

“Yes,” his mother answered. She stopped wiping the table. “Do you understand why?”

He paused. “Maybe.”

She pulled her chair beside him and reached for his hands. “When the police showed up at the door, I knew I was on the brink of losing you forever. Things were spiraling out of control – again. I know how I spent so many years lying to myself about your father that I started to believe the lies myself. And those lies nearly killed me. This time, it was you. You couldn't seem to stop lying to yourself about your dad either. If I hadn't done something, those lies might have killed you too. Telling Mr. Ishii was a gamble. I knew I was risking Jen's life – and mine – but I decided it was worth it. And it was.”

He shifted his feet. “Mom…I told someone too.”

She stroked his arm. “It's okay. We're going to take one day at a time.”

Buddy lay down after his walk, and quiet settled over the condo. Danny's conversation with his mom left him unsettled. He headed for his room, but suddenly angled into hers.

She'd decorated. She'd pinned up their school pictures in their cardboard frames. She'd hung a colorful scarf – a Picasso print he'd given her one year for her birthday – across the plaster holes in one wall. She'd arranged a bouquet of silk orchids on her dresser, and an amateur painting of a rose garden hung above her bed.

He knew where she kept them – on the floor in her closet. He'd seen Mom and Julia pull them out from time to time, but he'd not looked at them since they moved. He opened the closet door, and there they were – the photo albums.

Mom kept them in order, each spine numbered. He lifted the first book and flipped through it.

There he was. A chubby blue-eyed baby in a blue carriage. Standing in his crib in his duckling-yellow sleepers, both hands firmly grasping the bars. Sitting cross-legged in his first bed – a mattress on the floor – the navy blue striped duvet snuggled up under his nose. The bathtub shot, a white bubble beard hanging from his chin. He pulled out the second album. Now Julia appeared, red-faced in a rocking horse print blanket. Julia taking her first shaky steps around the coffee table. Her pink heart-shaped birthday cake with one burning candle. Danny and Julia in bathing suits in the sandbox, throwing sand with a green pail and matching shovel. The Hallowe'en when he was four and his mom had sewed the purple and green brontosaurus costume. Now he started having his own memories – Mom holding the camera and telling them to say
pleeeease
instead of
cheese
. Mom snapping pictures as they tore through gifts on Christmas morning. Mom showing off her Mother's Day tea towels, Julia on one knee and Danny on the other. Mom demonstrating proper Hula-hoop technique in the back yard. Mom leaning over to write his name in the sand on the beach. He remembered her holding his hand.

He started the third album and leafed through the pages. Mickey Mouse towering over Julia in Disneyland. Julia skipping rope on the front lawn. Julia sticking a stone smile on a snowman. Julia with her friends, playing the game of all-hold-hands. Julia holding up a painting of a beaver she'd done at school. Danny thought about the container of rocks on his dresser, and decided he'd carry the Buddy stone in his pocket.

He didn't need to look at the rest of the albums. He knew what they held – the history of a three-person family.

Nixxie had invited him to the lake for Canada Day. Their log cabin nestled in a snug semi-circle of evergreens and smelled of the forest. The kitchen windows faced the gray lake.

“Have a seat anywhere, David,” Mrs. Solem offered. “Don't worry about your shoes.”

He looked about, uncertain. His hand automatically went into his pocket and he rubbed the two stones.

Nixxie rescued him. “Come n' see my room.”

The air smelled faintly of old leather. Sunlight touched all corners of the room. She'd placed a flat-lidded red cedar chest under one window. A bentwood rocking chair with a pair of beaded moccasins on the seat waited in the corner.

Nixxie ducked her head and sat on the patchwork quilt covering the bunk bed's bottom mattress. A jumbled zoo of stuffed animals nested on the top bunk. “Like it? My home away from home.”

Danny nodded.

“My favorite thing is the cedar chest,” she said, pointing. “We brought it back from Vancouver. It was made by a First Nations artist. It wouldn't fit in the trunk, so I had to squeeze in beside it in the back seat for the whole drive home. Our car smelled like a hamster cage for weeks.”

The chest's elaborate black metal hinges matched the front latch. When she went to open it, her body casually brushed up against his.

Layers of folded clothes lay inside. “I keep my favorites in here,” she said. “The cedar keeps the insects out.” She pulled out a striped sweater and pressed it against her face. Her eyes closed as she inhaled the spiced-earth smell.

Danny explored the room. She'd thumb tacked posters on the walls –
54 Ways to Lighten Up
by NACM, the Native Alcohol Counselors of Manitoba, and a
Don't Worry, Be Happy
photo of three tabby kittens curled into a ball. Another one of those willow hoops with the web-like sinew hung in the window. Its downy white feathers were like the ones he and Grandma had collected underneath the owl's nest.

He was distracted by sounds from the kitchen – the murmur of voices, the slow scrape of cupboards and drawers being opened and shut, the crumpling of bags, and the monotone hum of the refrigerator now brought to life.

“Come and have a snack,” Mrs. Solem called.

Nixxie grinned. “Every time we get here, it's the first food we have. It's Mom's little ritual.”

Mrs. Solem had laid two place settings – a full glass of milk beside a plate with a slice of bread, thickly buttered and spread with amber honey.

“My mom calls this the Land of Milk and Honey,” Nixxie said, pointing to the lake. Mrs. Solem laughed as she wiped her hands on her apron.

The milk was ice cold, just as he liked it. The bread was soft and white and his teeth left indentations in the butter. Honey dripped onto his fingers as he rushed to finish it without losing a drop. They were done in minutes. Mrs. Solem cleared the table and said, “Nixxie, why don't you show David around outside? We'll have our Canada Day dinner later, around seven.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“Take your jackets. It gets chilly when the wind blows off the water.”

Evergreens and saskatoon bushes twice Nixxie's height screened the Solems' cabin from its neighbors. The branches hung low with clusters of ripe purplish-blue berries. A flagstone path led to the lake. Metamorphic rock. The name popped into his head. This was his first trip out of the city since… He pushed the thought aside.

The beach faced south, and wave-tumbled stones caught the sun's heat. A weathered cedar plank led to a boat ramp extending into the water.