The Rain Barrel Baby (17 page)

Frank sat at his desk thinking about Ivy Grace. Over the last week he had found out a few things about Ivy, not the least being that she had probably killed her own mother.

He stared down at a report that Ed Flagston had dropped on his desk last Friday morning, two days after Emma’s ordeal. The report contained the findings of the
DNA
test on Ivy’s cigarette butt, and a comparison of those findings with the
DNA
of little Jane Doe. The lab was hanging on to her hair for further testing, but the cigarette butt was enough.

Frank’s chest ached with thoughts of his daughter. He had been so relieved when she’d asked about Denise. She missed her mother. She didn’t hate her anymore. Just him. Things would never be the same between them; he was a bad guy in Emma’s eyes. He couldn’t bear it. Yes, he could.

Ivy Grace must have hated her mother, Frank thought, as he closed his middle drawer on Emma’s finished scarf. But Ivy was insane. Something had snapped in her. Who knew how these things happened? Her dad had hung himself in the basement of the family home. Ivy was probably marked long before the thugs got hold of her in the penalty box.

Frank couldn’t bring himself to give Emma the scarf just yet. It seemed too lame a present after all that had happened.

He picked up his keys and headed out to his car.

Greta was sitting on her front steps waiting for him. She had two little pink boxes, both containing butter tarts — one box for Frank and one for Jane.

They made the short trip out of town to the River City Health Centre so that Greta could meet her daughter for the first time. Or the second, if you counted holding her for a few moments in 1968.

They were quiet on the drive out, each lost in thought. Frank reached into his little box and took out a tart. Then he put it back.

“What if she doesn’t want to see me?” Greta said as they pulled into the parking lot.

“Then we’ll turn around and drive home,” Frank said. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.” He wasn’t as sure as he sounded.

But it wasn’t Jane he was thinking about.

Frank knew that Ivy Grace was somewhere in the vicinity, under lock and key for a period of evaluation. He worried that she wouldn’t be guarded closely enough. She could escape and hurt someone. Emma.

He wondered if Ivy was looking out at him now as they walked down the white-hot sidewalk toward the shady stone steps of the administration building. His hands were cold and his feet were numb. He walked without moving his arms, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. All natural motion left him as he lurched toward their destination.

Inside the door he found a water fountain where he drank and drank till he realized that his thirst would not be satisfied. He straightened up and accompanied Greta to take care of the business at hand, which had nothing to do with Ivy.

Frank walked with her as far as the door to Jane’s room. Then he stepped back and let her go in alone. He found a chair where he sat awhile but he couldn’t get comfortable. So he stood up and paced the sunny institutional halls.

He pictured Ivy Grace, the smooth face that she had paid to have pulled and stretched to wipe out any living that she had done. Crazy as a shithouse rat.

Greta stayed with Jane for a long time. Frank was glad of this; it was a good thing.

She was quiet on the way home, but there was a peacefulness about her. Frank didn’t ask any questions.

“Thanks, Frank,” she said when she got out of the car. “Thanks for everything.”

“It’s okay, Greta.”

“Maybe sometime you’d like to visit Jane with me. We could take her out somewhere.”

“That’d be nice,” Frank said, but all he could think about was Emma.

He turned his smoothly running Toyota into the parking lot of the Bridge Drive-In where he sat in his car and stared at the river awhile before strolling up to the counter.

“A chocolate milkshake please, thin.”

“Here, let me get that,” said a voice behind him and he turned to see Gus.

They hadn’t seen much of each other the past few days. After the horror of last Wednesday they had both needed a little time. They hadn’t been avoiding each other really, just not seeking one another out.

“I need to talk to you, Frank,” Gus said, and they started a slow walk over the Elm Park Bridge, milkshakes in hand.

“What is it, Gus?” Frank didn’t feel up to much; he hoped it wasn’t big.

“It’s my fault, what happened to Emma.” Gus stopped walking and rested his shake on a railing.

A dizziness washed over Frank and he sat down on a curb that had been built to separate the cyclists from the pedestrians. They didn’t have the sense to stick to their own sides without it. The curb didn’t seem to help much, but it gave Frank a place to sit.

“What on earth are you talking about, Gus? What do you mean it’s your fault? Of course it isn’t your fault.” He set his milkshake aside and held onto his temples with both hands.

“Yeah, it is,” Gus said and sat down beside Frank. “I’d seen that woman before. I meant to tell you about it, to discuss her with you, because she made me so nervous, but I never got around to it. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that she was actually dangerous. She scared me, but I thought it was just me being old. If I’d only told you about her, you could probably have nipped her in the bud.”

“Whoa there, Gus. I’d seen her before too. Lots of times. I’d talked to her, Christ, I’d had lunch with her! Nothing’s your fault. Do you hear me? You saved Emma, you and your odd little bird-seed hobby.”

“You know about that?” Gus asked.

Frank smiled and put his arm around his friend. “Where did you see her, Gus?”

“On the street. Out front. She was driving slow and she stopped to ask me if that was where you lived. I didn’t tell her. Like I said, she scared me. And she pointed to Greta’s house and asked if that was where the Simkins lived. I didn’t tell her that either.”

Frank stared at Gus, who had turned his attention back to his milkshake. He had a right to know everything. And Frank would have to be the one to tell him. He did so now.

Afterwards they sat quietly on the curb and Gus finished his shake. Frank didn’t even get started on his.

Finally, Gus spoke. “So the woman’s saliva, this Ivy person’s
DNA
, turned out to be the same as that poor little baby’s.”

“Yeah. The results came back last week, two days after Emma…”

“Oh, Frank.” It was Gus’ turn to put his arm around his friend. “Emma will be fine. You’ll see.”

“She’ll get tested too, for the
HIV
virus, just to be on the safe side. But there wasn’t any blood or anything. Thank God. There wasn’t, was there, Gus?”

Last Wednesday was such a mess in Frank’s head that he couldn’t stay sure of anything. He knew that he knew this, but he had to check it again with Gus, hear him say it.

“No, Frank. There for sure wasn’t. No worries there.”

“Gus, thanks for the milkshake. Don’t you worry about anything. Nothing’s your fault. I mean it. Nothing.” Frank was on his feet and walking quickly back across the bridge toward his car.

When asked, Ivy had freely admitted giving birth to a tiny baby last October, shortly after returning from Vancouver. She admitted to everything. Frank kicked himself for not just coming out and asking her in the first place. She probably would have told him. He’d been so busy tiptoeing around her. How could he not have realized what she was capable of?

She had punished the Simkin boys in her own mind by smothering her sick baby, wrapping it in swaddling clothes and laying it, no, dropping it into their rain barrel. A grisly offering, which never even reached the intended recipients, just their poor stepsister, Greta Bower. It was a crazy, horrendous, pitiful crime.

When Frank got back to the office there was a message on his machine from Wim Winston. It was urgent, said Wim. Something to do with a picture he had seen in the Free Press of this woman, Ivy Grace, who had been causing all kinds of trouble.

Frank didn’t return Wim’s call.

One Month Later

Frank took his family, minus Denise, plus Doris, to the lake. Gus and Donald came too. They all fit in the station wagon. Gus was more excited than any of them.

“I wonder if pelicans still turn up out there,” he said.

“I’m sure they do, Gus. Why wouldn’t they?” Frank asked.

“I don’t know. I’m always hearing stories about whole species disappearing all of a sudden or turning into something else. Did you read that mutated frog story in the paper?”

“Yeah, actually, I did,” Frank said. “That’s not exactly turning into something else. I mean, they’re still frogs. They just have an extra leg or two.”

“Ew! Gross!” Garth said. “They probably wish they were dead.”

“Frogs don’t wish,” said Emma. She was stretched out on a slab of foam in the back.

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“I saw a pelican as recently as last summer,” Donald said.

“Did you, Donald?” said Sadie. She had taken quite a shine to Emma’s new friend and figured on marrying him some day.

“Yeah, how’d you know?” Donald asked.

Sadie whooped with laughter. “Oh, Donald!”

Frank followed Main Street to get out of town. It was either that or McPhillips and McPhillips made him feel glum. He didn’t mention this. That a city street could affect him in this way wasn’t something he felt he could share with his kids. Gus maybe. Regent Avenue did it to him too and St. James Street. Frank felt a little woozy just thinking about them.

Donald carried Emma and laid her gently on a blanket on the beach. He settled a legless beach chair behind her, an umbrella above her, and himself beside her. It was her fourteenth birthday.

Gus, Sadie and Doris frolicked at the water’s edge.

Garth buried his head in a comic book. An Edgar Allan Poe comic book. What next? Frank wondered.

He watched the waves breaking on the shore. He walked to the edge of the water where it passed over small smooth stones. Past the stones was the sand where he had walked out and farther out on long ago boyhood days. Maybe if I keep on walking, Frank thought, if the sandbars take me further than I was ever able to go, maybe I can get to a place that went before. And change things some.

When he was up to his neck in Lake Winnipeg, he looked back to shore and saw his family. They were very small on the beach, but he could make each one out. Garth, fully clothed, with his comic book, Sadie at the shore line with Gus and Doris. There was one lone pelican south of his family in shallow water and Frank watched Gus gesturing wildly as he pointed it out to everyone. He tried to imagine what it would be like to get that excited about seeing a big white water bird. He couldn’t.

Emma sat on her blanket beside Donald. Emma. Her hand was above her head. It took Frank a moment to realize what was happening. His daughter was waving at him. Who am I to warrant such a gift? he wondered. Who can I be that she sees fit to raise her hand to me? He waved back and his tears mixed with the lake as he made his way slowly back to shore.

Alison Preston was born and raised in Winnipeg. After trying on a number of other cities, she returned to her hometown, where she currently resides. All of her mysteries are set in the idyllic Norwood Flats area of Winnipeg, including
The Rain Barrel Baby
,
Cherry Bites
,
The Geranium Girls
,
Sunny Dreams
, and
The Girl in the Wall
. A graduate of the University of Winnipeg, and a letter carrier for 28 years, Alison was twice nominated for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, and was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for
Cherry Bites
and the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher for
Sunny Dreams
.