Things Withered (30 page)

I never blamed Hazel, at least not publicly. Maybe others did—neighbourhood gossip. She wasn’t a good neighbour. There was something about her that
set
her outside the rest of us. There are people like that. As adults we think we can ignore differences in favour of inclusion, unlike when we’re young. We think we’re better once we’ve grown, but really, it’s just more subtle. There are just people who set themselves up.

Hazel’s place in the neighbourhood did not change, not on the surface. How would you tell, if it had? No one went there for coffee. No one yelled across the fence at her to come and see the new drapes. No one dropped their kids off for an hour in the afternoon to play with Cuth. No one asked her to babysit.

And they just kept at it, the not-doing.

A few days before the funeral, I was in the front yard, watering my peonies and—I think—repeatedly looking over at Rita’s house and wondering how it all happened so fast.

The funeral was going to be on the Wednesday. There was no word, just gossip as to whether Rita was going to be well enough to attend. I couldn’t imagine such a choice. I couldn’t imagine missing my own son’s funeral, but then, I couldn’t imagine attending it either, and so I had no opinion on the subject. I had heard that Darren and his father were staying with family and that Darren had spent a couple of days in the hospital since the accident.

I supposed he had. Another two steps or so and it would have been his head. Or, Rita’s.

Hazel saw me in the front yard. I saw her as well. I ignored her as long as I could stand it, then relented finally and met her eyes. I saw Cuth inside the house. Or rather, I saw his shadow move behind the curtains and realized he was likely getting up from in front of the television to go into the fridge and devour whatever Hazel had been planning to serve for dinner.

I looked over and let her give me one of her patented half-waves. The uncommitted alliance.

They blame me
, she said.

That’s not exactly the way it happened, of course. First she complimented me on my peonies, which was fair; they were beautiful that year, and they had sprung open over those few days between the accident and the funeral, as though feeding off of the anxiety and horror of the neighbourhood. They were in full bloom when Hazel stood in my front yard and uncharacteristically questioned herself. I eventually squeezed the hose in half to shut off the flow of water and stood there with her, nodding sympathetically, for the better part of an hour. Twice Dan had come to the window making vague hand gestures that could have been
Can you make me a sandwich
? or
Do you need rescuing?
equally. I didn’t respond to either.

They blame me
, she said.
They think it’s my fault.

Do they?
I said.

It had all happened so fast that day. Even my memories of it are choppy and I was right there. I was the one who leapt forward and pulled Rita away, tucking her head as best I could into my chest. I was the one who screamed to Todd to go inside and call an ambulance. I was the one who told the rest of the kids to go across the street, to our house, to get inside and wait until someone came to get them.

Not that!
I shrieked at one of the workers, when he tried to cover poor Tommy—in pieces, dear god he was in pieces—with a filthy tarp from the pickup truck in front of the house.

I had physically kept Rita from running over to Tommy’s body. I had to. What would a mother do, her son lying in two pieces, there on her front lawn amidst rotting, mouldy shingles and dog shit? What would she have done? What if she had picked up his—

Rita fainted after struggling and one of the roof guys carried her inside. By then the ambulance was there and when she came to, they gave her a shot. She was hysterical. Just kept screaming. The shot shut her right up. They did that sort of thing then, without asking even. But if they had asked me—

—and it was clear who was in charge—

—I would have told them to go ahead and give it to her. Two maybe.

I called Mac at work.

It was me who packed a bag for all of them, so they didn’t have to come back to the house after the ambulance took Rita away. It was me who drove Darren to the hospital.

The only thing I had no hand in, the only information I didn’t create on my own, was what exactly it was that Hazel was saying to the men on the roof in the minutes before we went back there and everything happened.

It was so loud
, she told me on my front lawn, hose water dripping off the shiny leaves of my peonies, like any other summer day.

I didn’t mean to be a pest,
she said
. I just wanted to know how long they were going to be. I’m better if I have a deadline
, she said. She smiled weakly at that, and I knew she meant it. I saw her in my head then, inside her house, checking timers, waiting for relief. It touched me. Maybe I even felt a little guilty. In the seconds that passed while she waited for me to say something, I imagined her life since her husband had died: an endless waiting for things to improve, marking time, the minimal comforts she seemed able to provide herself. The narrowness of her happiness.

No one blames you
, I lied. It wasn’t strictly a lie, since no one openly claimed it was Hazel’s fault. But her name came up in all the conversations. Old biddy, busy-body, old witch. No one would have said
bitch
, of course, but they might have thought it.

Labels.

To Hazel’s credit, she did not reply to that.
I don’t know if I should go to the funeral.
I don’t know how it would look, either way.

I nodded. Gave it some thought—although just for form’s sake, since there was really no going around it, no matter how you think something truly is, how other people will see it, is entirely outside of most people’s control. For that reason it is always important that you do what will be perceived in the long run as the
right
thing. It would only look worse if you didn’t.

You have to go,
I told her.
Things will be worse if you don’t.

Of course, I meant that.

We saw them again, Rita and Mac, Darren. At the funeral I spoke to a very, very stoned Rita, but it wasn’t like seeing them outside the tragedy. The tragedy at that point was still going on, even if it was the last part.

Me and Dan went over to their new rented place with Mac and the cousins and helped to settle them in. It was a nice enough house, even chosen in haste.

We moved furniture and unpacked boxes that day, the reverse of what we’d done just a couple of weeks earlier.
You’ll feel at home in no time
, I told Rita.

She smiled but I don’t think she heard me.

Someone had picked up takeout fried chicken and we all sat around the still-unadorned kitchen table and ate primitively. There were beers and I remember thinking about how much it looked the way things used to look, and how much it was not.

Rita was a mess. She was wearing an old house dress. Her hair was like a live thing, maybe two-three days unwashed and beginning to clump. Her face was slack and doughy and I suspected she was still taking some “medication.” Later I asked Mac and he said she was taking Valium for a while. Just until she felt better.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. Without it, the guns hung unhappily down to her middle. It was very sad.

I think I said goodbye to her then. In my heart.

Everyone wondered if Hazel or some other helpful neighbour was going to tell prospective buyers about the accident at Rita and Mac’s old place, and that may have been the case because that adorable, well-cared for little house—and let’s not forget the fresh shingles—stayed empty for seven months. Just a month or so before Christmas, a young couple, no children, moved in. They looked nice. I took a cake over a week later, decorated with holly made from icing. Real holly is poisonous.

They were the Jansens. She was an educated young woman, with a Bachelor of Science and a teaching degree. He was an executive for a national car rental company. They used to live near the airport. They were looking forward to the quiet.

That made me laugh. I explained that there were at least two kids to every adult on the block and that she shouldn’t expect too much peace and quiet. She reddened then and looked down shyly, whether at her expensive shoes or the cake still in her hands, or her belly. It was flat as a freeway.

Actually
, she said,
we’re expecting.

Isn’t that lovely!
I told her.

I promised to have her over for coffee soon and she and her husband over for dinner after that.
We’ll see if you like us, first
, I joked. It was strange to be standing out on Rita’s stoop and to not be asked in.

She did make a gesture, of course. She said
I’d invite you in, but I’m in the middle of something.

(Ah.)

Her name was Terry. She took her time getting around to asking about my children and I have to admit, there was a touchy moment when I was reluctant to tell her I was home all day with two kids in school. Not just in school, but actually carting themselves off to their own activities after school, also. In another year or so, Todd would be taller than me. Kerry was still working his way up.

Oh I admire you
, she said.
For staying home. I just wish I could. I’ve been off work for two months now and I’m about going mad!

I told her you keep busy. Once the children came along, she would have trouble finding time to (bitch) think.
Motherhood
,
I said,
was all-consuming
. I even laughed a little, to soften the blow.

She did not laugh with me. Instead she nodded earnestly and said,
Do you feel like you’ve missed out on other opportunities? I mean, like, careers?

I must have dropped my jaw onto Rita’s stoop (not Rita’s any more, I guess) because she quickly clarified what she meant.
Oh oh, please don’t misunderstand, I’m only posing a question. I think it’s marvellous

(marvellous)

what you’re doing, setting your own intellectual needs aside, for your family. It’s the greatest sacrifice!

Oh.

In fact
, she said, this time smiling slyly as though letting me in on a stock tip. Giving me the name of a horse in the third. Throwing me a bone.
I’m thinking of starting a women’s consciousness raising group, right here in the neighbourhood.

Oh.

We had one in my old neighbourhood. It was very enlightening
.

I was tempted, so tempted:
we have a Tupperware group
or
we meet once a week to practise rolling over
or
we have a dusting club we like to meet for prayer meet for recipes meet to discuss keeping our mouths shut wearing saran wrap carrying a martini—

But I said,
How interesting. Do let me know when.

Oh,
please
do.

By June, Terry was enormous with pregnancy and looking very much a woman who might not be forming a consciousness raising group. Whatever freedoms and liberations she had gained pre-pregnancy, it was clear that they had no bearing on the fact that she was now large enough to require help up and down stairs, in and out of her husband’s car, and it looked to me—when I checked—that her shoes were all slip-on. Boy or girl, that was going to be one big baby.

Her women’s group in the neighbourhood never really caught fire and while the camaraderie of the Rita days had dimmed somewhat, there was still a lot of back-and-forthing among the moms and ladies of Burlington Street to raise the consciousness of whoever we needed to talk about. Course, the women’s “movement” was something we had all heard about. Much was made of burning bras, something that seemed to titillate rather than enlighten, but I didn’t know anyone who did it.

If we talked about Terry around the neighbourhood, and we did—as we would any newcomer, but particularly one who wanted to obliterate our way of life—it was about her surprising friendship with Hazel Kummel. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that.

I understood it, though.

It was just by chance that I saw Hazel going over to Terry and Martin’s house one afternoon not very long after they moved in. It was December, still before Christmas and I knew the weather would turn soon and I would be trapped inside the house, when I wasn’t trapped inside the car. I decided to pull my old-lady-cart to the grocery and get some fresh air. I had an unobstructed view of Hazel, some kind of small package in hand, crossing the lane and going up the walk to the Jansens’ back door. She didn’t see me. It all seemed shifty and suspicious, and had I seen anyone other than Hazel skulking around the way she was, casing the joint like some nervous teenager, I might have called something out.
Hey you!
Or maybe
Excuse me!
Canadian threats.

But it was Hazel. And as she got closer to the back door I could see that the small package in her hand was wrapped in pink paper and I wondered if it wasn’t a baby gift. Since that was well before Terry was showing, I realized Hazel must just know.

I guessed then that they were friends.

Really?

Looking back, it’s always so very easy to see where things get started. At the time something is happening, it’s less obvious that a
moment
is taking place. Case in point: when someone is murdered, no one runs up and down the street, screaming that a serial killer is on the loose. It all happens at a much slower, more stunted pace. Another body, and another body, and another body, until someone claims it was all the same knife.

It was just like that, with Hazel and that terrible song.

The folks on one side of us had a little dog by the name of Peanuts. Probably named so because he was about as smart as a bag of them. Peanuts, cute as he was, was a barker, with one of those high-pitched barks that curdle your brain. He was also reluctant to stop barking once wound up, so if you had to walk past their house, for any reason, you would set him off and then his bark would be echoing up the street for a good twenty minutes after you’d passed. Most of us learned to walk on the other side of the street. Bark, bark, bark, right next door to me. It seemed the only thing the animal could do. Cute though.