Web of Angels (2 page)

“Mom.”

She looked over her shoulder. Her son’s eyes were wet. His girlfriend must have dumped him. How could anyone dump her kid? But it wasn’t that. She knew it wasn’t though she pushed away any other thought of what it could be.

“Mom.” Her boy was trying to talk and getting no further than, “Mom.” She went to him and knelt. “Cathy …” Josh flung his arms around his mother.

His heart beat against her chest, her arms tightening as he clung to her. “What did she say?”

“Her sister. She …” He stopped, swallowed, began again. “Cathy’s sister killed herself.”

“No!” What about the high chair in the basement? Sharon had offered her the high chair. How could Heather do this?

Josh leaned against her as she stroked his hair, letting his words crash into her, waves against a rock. Cathy’s sister was dead. She’d put a gun to her ear and shot herself. Her mom used a kitchen knife to get the baby out and then called 911. The baby was a girl. Heather was still lying there on the bed with a hole in her when Cathy had called Josh and screamed into the phone, “I hate her!” Josh didn’t even know who she hated, her sister or her mother or the little baby.

This was Sharon’s first-born, the child who’d made her a mother, now shrugging out of her arms, his pained eyes a shade lighter than his father’s, a bit of tape still stuck to his right ear. “What am I supposed to do, Mom?” he asked, twisting a rubber band around his fingers.

“You can let her friends know,” Sharon said. “Then Cathy doesn’t have to tell them.”

“Okay.” He turned to the computer, tossing the rubber band on his desk and reaching for the mouse.

Dan was calling,
I can’t find my keys
, and the girls were calling,
Where are you, Mom
, and before she could get out of her son’s room to ward them off, they were here. She had to get them away from Josh and she needed to talk to Dan and she had to figure out what to tell the girls. Her hands went up to herd them out, but there was too much noise in her head, her ears ringing. Nina said,
Josh is crying!
and he said,
Shut up!
and Sharon was thinking of a kitchen knife used for chopping mushrooms and onions in a mother’s hand, descending on a daughter.

She looked down for an instant, the room receding, every sound faintly muffled. When she was able to look up again, her face was paler, the freckles across her nose standing out, her eyes the green of bracken and moss. And she was someone else, someone who could carry on the day.

“M
ama, why is Josh crying?”

“Don’t bug him,” she said.
Shit shit shit. Fucking hell. Heather had picked out colours for the baby clothes. This didn’t make sense. Why’d the kid have to go and off herself?
Those were the thoughts in her head, and,
This is too scary
, and behind that an echo,
Scared scared scared
. She pulled forward, away from the words and the thoughts, the shivers and the panic inside, getting firmly into the outside. “He’s busy. You want breakfast?”

Josh was still in his pajamas, plaid bottoms and a T-shirt from last year’s Mayfest. He had his back to them, but Nina was walking around the desk to peer at him. “Busy doing what?” she asked as he twisted away.

“Slowpoke!” Her mom grabbed her sleeve. “Who’s slower, you or Emmie?”

“Her!” Nina said with that funny little smile she got when her mom’s eyes turned dark green.

“You’re both turtles.”

“No I’m not. First of you,” Nina shouted, pushing ahead of her sister, and Emmie, saying “No fair!” ran as fast as
she could, both of them pell-mell, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Dan followed, checking his watch as he went to put the trash out. The kitchen, like the inside of his wife’s head, managed to expand to hold everything in it, now just the blue Arborite table, but on Sundays also the extra table they set up for dinner guests between the washer and dryer stacked in the corner, the granite countertop and the fridge with magnets holding up kids’ pictures and Dan’s lists.

He was back by the time she had everything out for breakfast. “Raisins or chocolate chips in your cereal?” she asked the kids, shoving the laundry basket aside with her foot.

“Chocolate chips? No eggs?” He looked surprised.

She shrugged. Sometimes she thought of saying to him,
Hey, my name is Lyssa and I don’t cook
. But it never came out. And it was better that way. Like running was better than standing still. Like being mad was better than sad, and wanting nothing better than being laughed at for asking. She put five bowls in a row, sloshed in the cereal and milk, dumped in raisins, threw in some chocolate chips. Five spoons and you had breakfast. The coffee was made; Dan always set the timer before he went to bed. While he poured himself coffee, she put the kids’ bowls on the table.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, glass doors opening to the garden where Sharon grew sugar snaps, tomatoes, lettuce. There was no room for flowers in back. Dan’s car was parked on the pad behind the garden, his keys on the counter where he’d left them last night.

“Here you go,” she said, pushing the keys toward him. She picked up her own bowl with its extra helping of
chocolate chips, shifting from foot to foot as if she was going to dash off at any moment. Dan stood beside her at the counter even though he hated to stand while eating. He poured coffee into Sharon’s special mug, the gold one, and set it beside her.

“What’s up with Josh?” he asked quietly.

“It’s so fucked,” she whispered. “Cathy’s sister killed herself.”

“No!”

“I know. It’s crazy.”

“Sad. She was always different. All the times she ran away. You know?”

“No, I don’t.” She wanted to smash something. A plate, a cup, anything that would make a satisfying sound. She snapped her fingers instead, right in Dan’s face, making him flinch. “I mean not just herself but the baby.”

“What baby?” Nina asked, her hearing suddenly acute.

“Are you having a baby, Mommy?” Emmie asked.

“No, Heather’s. Her baby was born this morning.”

Dan was looking at her as if she’d suddenly grown a tail like one of those fox-women who sucked the life out of men in Chinese stories. Sexy and tricky and a downright liar. “She died,” he whispered.

“No, wait.” Lyssa pulled him closer, her lips to his ear. The kids were talking, all excited,
When can we go and see the baby, can we bring a toy?
“Emergency C-section. What do I say?”

“They’ve got to get to school,” he said to her. And then to the girls, “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Awwww,” Nina protested. “But …”

“Heather is sleeping,” he said desperately, looking at his wife for help. He had the wrong one for that.

Sleeping. Okay, whatever. She emptied her coffee into the sink, set the cup on the counter. The only hot drink she liked was cocoa. “You’re taking Josh?”

He nodded, putting the mug in the dishwasher. He kissed the girls goodbye, unpeeling them as they hugged him around the waist and the legs. Then he shouted for Josh, who came downstairs and through the kitchen, not looking at anyone, backpack on one shoulder, face shrouded by a hoodie. The glass doors slid open and closed, and they were gone.

Lyssa was cold down to her bones, but she had to get out of her PJs and the girls did, too. She eyed the laundry basket suspiciously. Something they could wear ought to be in there amid the folds of beige. She crouched down, rifling through it. Nina and Emmie crouched beside her, curious to see what the mom who gave them chocolate chips for breakfast would do. “Hey you two. Teeth,” she said, without much conviction. Getting kids dressed, cleaned, schooled, that was Sharon’s job. Except that she was inside, don’t call us we’ll call you, and Lyssa was out here in the world, on her own.

Alarm bells were ringing. Lockdown! The sound scattered the inside children through the inside house. They hid in the upstairs rooms, in closets, under beds, those were good hiding places. Behind curtains, no not there, feet stick out.
Here comes a punisher, pulling you out and dragging you down the stairs, bump, bump, bump. Bells clanging. Shut up, shut up, shut up! Something bad happened. Bad means trouble. Trouble means you get it if you can’t stop the sound coming out of your mouth. A punisher reaches under the bed, long arms, spider hands. He’s got someone by the hair. He’s turning to the closet. Someone is in there breathing too loud. Bang, it opens. The punisher’s face is big and white. I’ll give you something to cry about. I’ll give you what for. Down you go. Down to the basement. In the dark. With the monsters. That’s where crybabies go.

Ally wasn’t a crybaby. She knew what to do. The other lils ran ahead of the punishers, trying to get as high as they could before they were caught, but she crept down the back stairs, Echo holding her hand, making him hurry on his crooked feet. The safest place was in the boot closet, behind the kitchen. It had a little door and a little latch and nobody would notice it. Come on, Echo. She was as cold as if she was sitting naked on the North Pole, but she pushed him inside and snuck in after him.

Echo was sniffling. “Shh,” she whispered.

Ally sat quiet as a mouse, holding the tiny teddy bear she kept hidden in her pocket so the punishers wouldn’t take it away. She wished she had an outside teddy, a real one with fur and eyes and overalls but nobody was supposed to know there were lils inside. Or else.

If she peeked through the knothole in the boot closet, she could see into the kitchen. It was warm in the kitchen. Sharon was there, under the eye of the Housekeeper, but
Sharon’s eyes were closed. She couldn’t see how nice it was and bright like there were windows and something outside the windows like a field where you could run or trees that you could climb. Ally couldn’t see much, but she could hear the Housekeeper humming and she could smell something like cinnamon and the air that came through the knothole was warm. When the punishers were done with the lils, they’d get Sharon out. They’d call her name and she’d go and then they’d have a nice little talk with her. If Ally knew how to get into the kitchen nobody would ever get her out.

I
n Seaton Grove the streets were narrow and parking expensive so people walked. From home, it took Nina, Emmie and Josh five minutes to get to the junior school, seven minutes to the subway, three to the boys and girls club, six to the grocery store. Eleven minutes to the fortune cookie factory and twelve to the former typesetting shop, now rented as a film studio. It was eight minutes to the house painted like candy or the luxury condos built where the slaughterhouse had burnt down. Three more minutes from there to Magee’s for cocoa or down to the fruit and vegetable store. Add extra time for bouncing a ball. Even more if they decided to go down into the big playground at Christie Pits. If you squinted you could see the shadows of the boys who rioted there in the 1930s when this was a working-class neighbourhood. The first families here had had names like Valiant and Goodchild, and they’d ignored people who called the neighbourhood Satan’s Grove because of the smell from the glue factory, conveniently located near the abattoir. But now it smelled of baking,
courtesy of the fortune cookie factory, which stood beside the railway tracks.

Mrs. Agostino, the Italian grandma who lived next door to the Lewises, was already sitting on her porch, keeping watch on the street from her plump and pink armchair. While Lyssa turned to lock the door, Mrs. Agostino gestured to the girls to zip up their coats. Stout and grey, she didn’t speak any English but every year at Christmas she gave bags of candies to Nina and Emmie, even Josh, the big boy. Sometimes, on summer evenings, she offered them homemade pizza on paper plates. The girls, obedient to a maternal authority that surpassed language, zipped up.

The three of them walked down Ontario Street, pausing to watch the garbage trucks. Nina was slightly in front as she was in most things: hopping into the bath before her little sister, going through the front door two steps ahead, losing her teeth first and learning to read first. Only in one category did Emmie stake her territory. Her backpack was pink and her jacket was pink and when Nina had attempted to sneak the pink elephant into her own bed, Emmie had said, “Stop! That’s mine. See,” pointing to her own head as if red hair, in its chromatic relationship to pink, entitled her. Nina had bowed to this irrefutable evidence. Her backpack was blue.

“Come on, let’s run,” their mom said. And they did, running for the joy of it, not because they were late. She grabbed her girls’ hands, this mom with the moss green eyes and the pointy chin, freckles standing out across her nose, and the reckless run making a dance of her feet on the pavement. Down Ontario Street and across Seaton they ran,
catching their breath at the candy-coloured house, left on Lumley toward the school and the last remaining cottages of the original village. Then they stopped short.

Several police cars blocked the road. An ambulance and the local TV news van were parked on a slant, half on the sidewalk. In front of them on the sidewalk stood a reporter, young and easy on the eyes, wearing a short jacket and short skirt. A few feet behind her, a cameraman was panning the street, taking in the raindrops dripping from eaves, the sunshine pouring through the mist, the boarded-up cottage across the street, once the home of Mrs. Brown, an escaped slave who’d lived to be 111 years old. He turned his camera on the yard signs that said
RENOVATIONS BY
 …, the matted lawns, the bare gardens, parents holding kids’ hands, toddlers in strollers or riding on shoulders, gawking.

“This is Nicole Antonopoulos, reporting live for Citytv.” She pushed her microphone at Lyssa. “Did you know the deceased?”

“What’s ‘deceased’?” Nina asked.

Lyssa scowled at the cow with the microphone. “I’m getting the kids to school.” She wanted to say more, but the hands in hers, Nina’s and Emmie’s, were soft and small and trusting, and Lyssa wasn’t going to do anything to shock them. So she just added, “You mind?” and didn’t even flip her the finger. While she led the girls around the reporter, moving toward the schoolyard, Emmie was saying,
Ambulances come in emergencies
and
What is the emergency?
and
Why are there police cars, did a burglar come and will the burglar rob our house?
Nina piped up that the burglar must have fallen out of the window and
that was why there was an ambulance and they had reading buddies today and she was luckier than Emmie because their cousin was her reading buddy and not Emmie’s and Emmie said,
I want Judy to be my reading buddy. No fair
.