The Rain Barrel Baby (14 page)

Denise was being released soon to a room in a house for recovering addicts. She was neither glad nor sad. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about running into Wim at the hospital anymore. He had stopped coming to see her a couple of weeks before, but she didn’t feel safe from him, knowing that he could appear at any time, breezing into the ward with his doctor’s badge.

She pulled the curtain around and lay down on her bed to wait for her husband to come by.

Frank hung up his phone and sighed. This time when he called, he knew that the secretary was lying because he could hear Wim in the background. “If it’s Frank Foote, tell him I’m not here,” he said. “If it’s Frank Foote, tell him I’m gone.”

Okay, Wim. You win.

It was time to visit Denise.

Wim Winston was a prick.

He wanted to fuck her by the river and in the back of his car and in the washroom at the golf club. Tara had seen him with his wife at dinner in the restaurant and she pitied the woman who shared her life with such a loathsome man. She knew there was a chance she would be killing the wife as well, but she couldn’t think too much about that. And anyway, what was so terrible about death?

Ivy approved of Wim’s taste in places. Blood mixed better with grass and old blankets than it did with crisp hotel sheets.

But she didn’t want to have to do this for much longer. It was odious work. It wasn’t that Wim was a lousy fuck, as fucks went. But she hated every single thing about him. There was nothing that she didn’t hate. She would rather have fucked a mean dog.

She didn’t want to have to kiss him anymore. If he could just do her it wouldn’t be so bad. But he wanted to smooch and cuddle and talk and she didn’t think she could stomach one more night of that.

Ivy yanked out one of her back teeth. She used pliers and it took forever. The tooth broke and there was a horrible mess in her mouth by the time she held the roots in her hand. She grinned at her bloody face in the mirror over her bathroom sink.

“You taste like blood,” Wim said.

It was late Friday night and they lay on a blanket behind the pavilion in City Park.

She hated the way he kissed her mouth while he fucked her. He opened his own mouth so wide he got her face all wet. And his tongue was pointed, like a snake’s head; it darted about leaving no corner unsullied. She was so glad it was over. Wim Winston was dead.

“I pulled a tooth today,” she said.

“What?” Wim stopped.

“I had a tooth pulled today.” She changed the words to suit him.

“I can’t get enough of you, Tara,” he said, and buried his face in her hair. “You’re killing me.”

Ivy smiled. If he only knew. “I won’t be able to see you after tonight,” she said.

“What!”

“I can’t see you anymore, Wim.” Ivy lit a cigarette, lay back and gazed at the sliver of a moon.

“What are you talking about? You can’t not see me anymore!”

“Yes, I can’t.” She giggled. A silvery new moon sound. “Go away now, Wim. I can walk home from here.”

Ivy lay naked and beautiful in the starlight and Wim hounded her while she laughed at him. He begged for an explanation but she didn’t think he deserved one. When he slapped her face she howled. He struggled with his shoes and finally ran off half clothed towards Park Boulevard where he had left his car.

Ivy watched the dark night enshroud his pale form before he reached the street. It would be easy never to lay eyes on him again. She would just quit the club.

Emma and Donald were baby-sitting Garth and Sadie. They still hadn’t kissed and Emma thought about it all the time. There was no way she was going to be the one to start it. But she would be ready when it finally happened.

They built a mountain, smoothing the papier mâché into shape, adding water to keep it workable till it looked just right. They leaned over the volcano from opposite sides of the kitchen table, meeting in the middle. Emma worked at forming the opening at the top, where they hoped their dry ice and baking powder mixture would do its job of simulating an eruption. They were going to light it up from the inside with a couple of reddish-orange Christmas lights to give it a fiery glow. An unsteady light — Donald was working on that.

He had spoken to a friend of his, Leonard, who was an ice-cream man, about getting a slab of dry ice. And he had a book called
Let’s Experiment
which he had brought with him tonight. They planned to pore over it later to see if it contained any tips on modest explosions.

Donald started to kiss her for the first time, on the lips, there over the volcano. At the precise moment that his lips touched hers a scream echoed wildly through the house from the direction of Garth’s bedroom. Emma and Donald raced up the stairs to find a terrified Garth on the floor beside his bed. His small body quivered and Emma held him in her mucky papier mâché arms.

“Shh, little guy. It was just a bad dream.”

“I dreamed I was buried alive,” Garth whispered.

“Oh, Garth.” Emma kissed his damp forehead. “That’s what comes from watching those scary movies.”

He’d had a friend over to sleep the night before, and Emma had heard them sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and then the television sounds.

“You’re all wet,” Garth said.

“We’re working on the volcano.”

“What movie did you watch?” Donald asked.

“
Premature Burial
.”

“Oh boy. I saw that one too. It scared the hell out of me. ’Specially that scene when they dug the guy up. No wonder you were frightened right out of your bed. I’m surprised you weren’t propelled clear out the window.”

Garth smiled a little. “Yeah, that was the part that scared me too.”

“Do you wanna come down and help us build the volcano for a while?” Emma asked. “We could make some cocoa.”

“Yes, please.”

When Emma bundled Garth into his little maroon robe and slippers she noticed that he was wearing two watches.

“What’s with the watches, Garth?”

“Well…if I wear two, I’ll still know what time it is when one of them stops…while I get a new battery. And then I can be sure the new battery will tide me over when the other watch stops. It’s foolproof. Unless a huge rock falls on my wrist or something.”

“Sounds complicated,” Emma said.

“Not really.” Garth checked his wrist and then his alarm clock.

“Why do you wear them to bed?” Donald asked.

“It saves putting them on in the morning. Also, if there’s a fire in the night and we have to escape and leave everything behind, I’ll at least have my watches and know what time it is.”

“Whew!” Emma hoped Donald didn’t think Garth was too weird. She carried her brother down the stairs piggyback, stopping first to check on Sadie, who was sound asleep.

“Amazing,” Emma said.

When they were settled around the volcano, with their cocoa and marshmallows, Garth said, “I don’t want anybody to die.”

Emma looked at Donald and he looked back at her. Garth watched them look at each other.

“No one’s gonna die,” Emma said.

“Yes they are. Mum and Dad are gonna die because they’re way older than us.”

“Well, someday, yeah. But not for a long, long, long, long time. Not until you’ve been a grownup yourself for many, many years. And by that time you’ll get that it’s okay.”

“No, I won’t,” Garth said.

Emma didn’t argue.

“My dad died,” Donald said. “He was in a car accident a few years ago.”

Emma and Garth stared at him.

“The way I got to finally thinking about it is that if a great guy like my dad died, it must be okay to die.”

“My dad’s great too,” Garth said.

“I’m sorry about your dad, Donald,” Emma said. “I figured your parents were probably divorced or something.”

“It’s okay. I’m really okay with it. I mean, I miss him and all, but…”

“Do you think guys get buried alive very often?” Garth asked.

The back door slammed.

“I’ll bury you alive in a minute!”

“Dad!” Garth zoomed into his father’s arms.

“Garth’s a little freaked out from watching
Premature Burial
,” Emma said.

“Oh he is, is he? And what’s he doing watching something like that? Hi, Donald.”

“Hi, Mr. Foote.”

“Him and Gilbert watched it last night in secret,” Emma said. “Do you want some cocoa, Dad? There’s lots.”

“Well, maybe just this once, Em. Just half a cup.” Frank sat down with Garth on his knee.

“You’d think the way I sleep I’d wake up long enough to holler at my boy in the middle of the night when he’s doing something stupid. Wow! Look at your volcano! It looks wonderful!”

“Yeah,” Emma said. “It’s comin’ along.”

Frank smoothed the hair back off Garth’s forehead. “The answer to your buried alive question is no. People never get buried alive.”

Emma placed a steaming mug of cocoa on the table in front of her dad.

“Thanks, Em.” He gently nudged Garth off his knee. “The folks who get the bodies ready for burial, the undertakers they call them, make one hundred per cent certain that people are dead forever before they put them in their coffins.”

“What if there’s an evil undertaker?” Garth asked.

“He’s really freaked,” Emma explained.

“Well, something else you can do is be cremated.” Frank sipped his drink. “Mmm. This is great.”

“What’s that?” Garth asked. “What’s cremated?”

“Well, the body gets burned in a big fire so that nothing is left but ashes. Kind of an enclosed bonfire. No one watches or anything.”

“Hmm,” Garth said.

“That sounds good to me,” Donald said. “Sign me up.”

“Yeah, that does sound good,” Garth said. “How do you let people know that’s what you want to have happen to you?”

“Well, most folks make their wishes known before they die. To their loved ones and so on. Or they can write them down on a piece of paper and put it in a safe place. And be sure to let someone know where that safe place is.”

“What if you have no one to let your wishes be known to or to tell where the piece of paper is?” Garth asked.

“Then you attach it to your fridge with a fridge magnet,” Emma said.

“That’s a good idea, Em.” Frank drained his mug. “Is there any more of that cocoa?”

“I’ll make some more,” Emma said. “I don’t think anyone’s very sleepy yet.”

“Yeah, what the heck,” Frank said.

The next morning when he was getting cream for his coffee Frank saw a piece of foolscap attached firmly to the fridge with a magnet on each corner. He recognized Garth’s backhanded printing:

I Garth Foote wish to be kreemated when I die. Thanks.

And then his carefully written signature.

Frank would have preferred that his son’s wishes involved going to the Red River Exhibition or maybe taking swimming lessons this summer, but what could you do? Garth had made his wishes known.

Frank began to think up some answers for questions he figured would be coming up in the near future. Avalanches, earthquakes and other natural disasters that could result in someone being buried alive. But not on the Canadian prairies.

1975

Ivy has been employed for six years as a legal secretary at the firm of Grace, Royston & Wells on Portage Avenue. She has been promoted to the position of personal secretary to Simon Grace, a founder and partner in the firm. He pays her one hundred dollars a week to start. She has paid Wilf back the money he fronted her when she first left home.

Ivy has set up a life for herself in an apartment on Dorchester Avenue for which she pays one hundred and twenty dollars a month. She drives a ’59 Chevy that she bought from the brother of one of the girls at work.

She has no real friends. That has never come easily to her. But the girls in the office seem to respect her position and her abilities. No one types faster than she does. They invite her to showers and for drinks after work. Sometimes she joins in, mostly she doesn’t.

Simon Grace admires Ivy Srutwa; he finds her beautiful. It takes her a while to notice this and to really understand what it could mean for her. When he tries to kiss her, she lets him. She doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t hate it because she’s concentrating on the larger good: Simon Grace can save her.

She tells him she’s from Victoria. She admits to a brother, Wilf, but to no other ties. Her brother is ten years older than she is, but she doesn’t tell Simon that he has a different dad. She doesn’t want any suggestion of sleaziness sticking to her. Because of the age difference, she says, she never really got to know her brother. They see very little of each other.

Simon Grace never meets Wilf Srutwa.

In 1975, he marries Ivy.

She doesn’t invite her brother to the wedding. She doesn’t want to risk it.

The Present

Simon wanted to please her. Ivy’s pool was built in a hurry and it was almost as big as the one at the golf club. The workers had to chop down a poplar and three weeping birches to do it, but other than that, it was just a matter of digging up the lawn.

Simon hated to see the birches go, the quiet trees he’d had planted himself. He liked the way their leaves didn’t fall in the winter. Once, during an ice storm, way back before Ivy, each leaf had looked as if it were encased in glass. The wind, a warm wind for January, blew through the leaves and they made a delicate clattering sound. Simon thought it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. He felt it in his gut, even now with the memory. He would never hear that sound again.

On a Saturday, just past mid-June, the pool was ready. Ivy swam and Simon watched. He had never seen her like this. He hadn’t known there could be such a thing as a happy Ivy. She swam and then she wrote in that book of hers. Oh, how I would love to get my hands on that notebook, he thought.

There wasn’t much in Ivy’s notebook because she burned the pages after she was done with them. All the notes she had made relating to Task Number One had been destroyed.

It was Task Number Two she was thinking about now and the joy of it was she would be able to concentrate so much better now that she had her own pool.

Reuben had led her to this task. She waited for him to come now and he did. He was always there. It sometimes just took him a while to make his way to the front. With the voice came a taste, a flavour that was too faint to hold onto long enough to name. Sometimes it seemed more of a texture than a taste. Grit?

At first she had fought Reuben on Task Two because he seemed off base with what he said. Surely all these years later the mother was in the ground or scattered to the winds or in a can somewhere. But he persisted and anyway, Ivy knew it deep inside.

Sure enough, when she contacted Wilf, he confirmed that Olive’s heart was still beating.

“I haven’t seen her, though,” Wilf said. “I haven’t laid eyes on her since the day I dropped her off — what was it? — six years ago.”

“But you know that she’s still alive,” Ivy said.

“Oh yeah, they’d have contacted me if anything had happened.”

Wilf lived out east in Ontario, a place called Brockville. They hadn’t spoken to each other since he tracked her down to tell her that he was placing Olive in a home because she could no longer manage on her own. She was soiling herself and lighting things on fire.

The manager of Olive’s apartment block in Winnipeg had contacted Wilf and told him that it was time for her to go. Wilf arrived at his mother’s suite, smelled her filth in the hallway and read the scrawled letters on the wall beside her door:

MRS. POO-PANTS LIVES HERE!

He found Ivy to tell her, figured she should know. She had told him then, six years ago, that it hadn’t been necessary for him to get in touch, so she wasn’t surprised not to have heard from him since.

Wilf was an important part of Ivy’s past. He’d always been there in the background. It was his money that had supported Olive and her all the years she lived at home, ever since he had been old enough to hold a job. Always at the Bay. He had started in men’s shoes and that’s where he still was as far as Ivy knew. Just at a different Bay in a different city. At least he got away.

“Why do you ask?” Wilf said now. “Are you going to visit her?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She’s my mother.” Ivy was tempted to come clean, to tell Wilf what she intended to do, but she knew it wasn’t safe to do that, not yet.

She had some nasty thoughts. What if I didn’t get the
HIV
virus from that guy in Vancouver? The test could have been wrong. What if I’m not going to die? What if Wim Winston isn’t going to die after all those hours of bloody sex?

She had bitten Wim’s lip on that last night, hard enough to draw blood. And she had pulled out her own tooth! Ivy couldn’t bear to think that all her hard work had been in vain. None of this would be any good if she wasn’t going to die soon. She put the thought out of her head — she’d had the test. She carried the disease. But she decided to proceed with caution anyway. There was no need to broadcast her plans.

“So where is she?” Ivy asked.

“Just a minute and I’ll get you the address and phone number.”

Ivy turned to a new page in her notebook and copied Wilf’s words. She ripped out the preceding page — the page that said: Phone Wilf.

The nursing home was in the Osborne Village area, which Ivy knew well. On many occasions she had passed by the building where her mother had lived for the past six years. She remembered noticing the residents outside on warm days, drooped in their chairs, breathing in exhaust fumes as the traffic whizzed past on Stradbrook Avenue. It was possible that one of those outdoor sitters had been her mother.

“Thanks, Wilf,” she said. “Take care now.”

“Wait, Ivy! God! Shouldn’t we be asking each other how we are? How are you? How’s Simon? How’s life treating you?”

“Fine, thanks, Wilf. I really do have to go. Something’s burning. Bye now.”

Ivy watched the “Phone Wilf” page disintegrate into ashes in the ashtray, which she seldom used for cigarettes these days. She was losing her desire to smoke, but liked to have ashtrays in all the usual places for her regular burnings. This one was beside a comfy lawn chair next to her new swimming pool.

“Life feels good,” Ivy said and closed her eyes against the sun. I’ll just lie here awhile and then pop in for another swim.