The Rain Barrel Baby (2 page)

“He’s been in love with you for, like, ever,” Delia said.

“He has not!” Emma shouted.

They were smoking cigars at the swollen river’s edge and talking about Donald and Vince, the boys they thought about the most.

“Ew! What’s that?” Delia asked.

“What’s what?” Emma glanced over her shoulder to where Delia stared, distaste scrunching up her smooth young face.

“I think it’s something dead,” Delia said.

Then Emma saw the cloudy eyes and the dull matted fur. “Let’s get out of here.”

Delia picked up a stick and poked at the dead thing, disturbing its grave of mouldy leaves.

“Delia, don’t!” Emma screamed. “For God’s sake, leave it alone!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing’s the matter with me.” Emma started up the path to the road. “What’s the matter with you, for Christ’s sake, fooling around with something gross and dead?”

Delia threw her stick over the cliff into the Red River.

It was rolling towards its destination in Lake Winnipeg. The spring melt this year tested the banks all along the river’s run through the city and beyond.

“It’s just a little furry animal.” Delia brushed dust off her falling-down jeans and followed her friend up to Lyndale Drive.

“But it’s dead!” Emma’s hands were on her hips, scolding. “Its fur isn’t even furry anymore.”

“So what! It probably lived a full and happy life.”

“So why does that mean you have to poke around at it with a stick? Sometimes you gross me out completely.”

“Well, thanks very much!” Delia was still smoking her cigar in full view of the cars whizzing by on the drive.

Emma sighed. “I gotta go, Dele. I’ll phone ya later.”

“’Kay.”

“Dele?” Emma turned back to her friend.

“What?” She was blowing smoke rings above her head.

Perfect smoke rings. Emma was filled with admiration. She had never been able to manage one.

“Don’t get caught with that thing. If you get grounded I won’t have anyone decent to talk to.”

Later, in the kitchen, Emma said to her dad, “We saw something dead down at the river.”

“What kind of a something dead?” Frank’s stomach turned. He thought of last Sunday and pictured the swaddled baby from the rain barrel. Then he imagined it beneath its shroud and wondered why he had to do that to himself.

“Something that was once furry but is now just dead,” Emma said.

“For sure it was once furry?” Frank pictured slime, not fur. He threw the dish cloth he had been wiping the counter with down the cellar stairs.

“Yeah.” Emma looked at her father as though he was asking the wrong questions.

Frank wondered if dead babies ever had a furry look to them. He supposed it was possible. He had heard of babies being born with a coat of hair that was almost always shed soon after birth. Almost always.

“Not hairy, but furry?” Frank found a fresh dish cloth in a drawer and resumed his chore.

“Yeah. Dad, what’s with you? You’re freakin’ me out.”

“Sorry, Em. It’s okay to have seen a dead animal at the river. They have to go somewhere to die and I guess the river is as good a place as any. Why does it smell like cigars in here? Emma, why do you smell like cigars?”

“I don’t know.” Emma was spreading Friday’s
Free Press
out on the kitchen table.

“Have you been smoking a cigar?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jeez, Emma, I hope you didn’t inhale at least.”

“No, Dad. And I won’t likely be doing it again either.”

“Well, good! Was it Delia who put you up to it?”

“No! I am capable of doing something without Delia putting me up to it, you know. Why do you always think bad things about my best friend in the whole world?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t her pants kinda big?” Frank rinsed his cloth and draped it over the window crank to dry.

“All the kids’ pants are kinda big, Dad. Look!” Emma pulled up her sweatshirt to reveal her own jeans hanging four inches below her belly-button.

“Good God, Emma! What if they fall down?”

“They did once, actually.” Emma laughed. “At a football game, when I jumped up to cheer. But I had a long shirt on, so it was okay. I mean, everybody laughed and made fun of me and everything, but it was okay. I always wear a big shirt.”

“What’s the point of it?” Frank asked. “The big pants, I mean.”

“They’re comfy.”

“How can they be, if you have to worry about them falling off?”

“They are.”

“Yeah, okay. Well, what about all Delia’s makeup and weird hair and everything?”

“She’s artistic, is all. And she’s not a bad influence on me. She listens to me and has all kinds of great ideas.”

“Like smoking cigars at the river?” Frank smiled.

“No! Da-ad!”

“Sorry.”

There I go, apologizing, Frank thought. He had made a promise to himself to say “I’m sorry” fewer times each day than was his custom, but he never remembered till after the fact.

“Dead things scare me,” Emma said.

She turned to the obituaries. First, page two, for the short version, and then Section C, with its full pages of deaths, the long versions, with photographs and whole life stories. A picture of a young girl in a baseball cap smiled up at her: Esme Jones, 1982-1995.

“Jesus,” Emma said.

“Jesus?” Frank turned to face Emma from his spot at the sink.

“Yeah. This person who’s dead is about my age.”

“Do you ever read about anything except who died?”

“Yeah, of course. I just start with the deaths. In case somebody I know dies. I hate the thought of not knowing that someone is dead. I almost feel as though I should know without being told.”

“What do you say to pizza for supper?” Frank transferred yesterday’s dry dishes from the rack into the cupboards. “Garth and Sadie are both keen on it.”

“Where’s Mum?”

“She’s havin’ a bit of a lie down. She’s a little under the weather.”

Emma snorted. “Yeah. Pizza’s fine, Dad. I don’t want any meat, though.”

“We’ll get two, so we’ll all be happy. Garth, Sadie!” He spoke as loudly as he dared in the direction of the living room. “We’re having pizza!”

Quiet hooting sounds made their way back to the kitchen. No one wanted to wake Denise.

Frank watched Emma stare at the face of Esme Jones. He saw the private thoughts come and go on her lovely little face. What did she imagine about the dead girl? Did she picture her alive and loving a boy? Or dead? And the thing at the river. Was she going to dream of that as well? Frank looked over her shoulder at the photograph and wondered if his daughter pictured her own face where Esme’s grinned up at her above the words: “Suddenly, on May 3.”

“She died suddenly,” Emma said.

Frank sighed. “Well, she probably didn’t suffer then.”

“She looks younger than me, don’t ya think, in this picture?” Emma held it up for her dad’s inspection.

“Maybe it’s not a recent photograph.”

“Maybe not. It says here: Longer obituary to follow.”

“Well, we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for that, won’t we?” Frank said. “Run and get your brother and sister now and we’ll figure out this pizza business.”

At dusk, a Lincoln Town Car cruised slowly down Frank Foote’s street. He wasn’t around to see it but Gus Olsen was, and he didn’t like the look of it. The tinted windows hid the driver. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. It could have been a bear cub for all he knew. That’s how dark the glass was. He didn’t like the look of it, with its slowness and its windows.

Gus trusted his instincts. He knew when something wasn’t right. Like the time he had mentioned to Frank that he felt uneasy about not seeing old lady Rundle for a few days. Sure enough, they found her sitting dead in her easy chair, supper stiff on her lap and the
TV
blaring at her no-good ears.

He hadn’t seen the rain barrel business coming though. The rain barrel business flew in out of the blue.

The car was the colour of Lake Winnipeg. What colour is that? Gus wondered. What name did the car people give to a vehicle that’s the same colour as the lake? Maybe Frank would know.

The car rounded the corner and edged out of sight. Gus sat down on his front steps and imagined being at the lake. He loved it there. It had been years, but maybe he could try to get out there for a few days this summer, or at least a day. He could take the bus. The west side of the lake was his favourite. The sand wasn’t quite as fine as on the east side, but he felt more at home there.

The car passed by again, this time even more slowly. It stopped outside Frank’s house. Then it crept forward and stopped in front of Gus.

The window slid down halfway and he could see a woman’s head behind a huge pair of sunglasses.

How can she possibly see to drive? The sun has set, the car windows are almost black and she has sunglasses on to boot.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said in a voice low enough to irritate Gus. Now he was going to have to get up and go towards the car if he wanted to hear what she had to say. And he did. He moved slowly and that bothered him too. He knew that what she saw was an old man, a crippled-up old man. And that infuriated him.

A year from now he’d be moving a damn sight more sprightly. Gus was in line for a new knee and his doctor had told him it would be this summer at the latest.

“Does a Frank Foote live next door to you in that house with the five windows?” the woman asked.

What the hell kind of way was that to describe a house? Five windows!

“What’s a frank foot and who’s askin’?” Gus felt protective of Frank, who was the best neighbour he’d ever had. Him and poor Denise and their three kids. Even the kids were good neighbours. The youngest one, Sadie, helped him with his vegetables in the summer. She thinned his carrots and talked him into keeping even the tiniest of the potatoes. She was a bit bossy for a youngster, maybe, but in his experience most women were that way. Right from the get-go.

“Frank Foote’s the name of a man, sir, and I’m just an old friend.” She tried to smile but it didn’t work. Maybe it was all that red lipstick weighing down her lips.

Why did women always do that to themselves? he wondered. They troweled it on so you could no longer get any idea of what they really looked like. It pissed him off, the same as it pissed him off to be called sir. He didn’t believe that Frank would have such a friend.

“Sorry ma’am, I wouldn’t know.” There. He’d called her ma’am. See how she liked that.

“And the Simkins, they live there, don’t they?” she asked, pointing at Greta Bower’s house. Gus looked at her again, the red lips and the smooth black hair.

“What colour would you call this car?” he asked, his fingers clutching the glass of the part-way-down window.

It started to slide up and the car moved forward.

“And how can you see to drive behind all that tinted glass?” he shouted as he was forced to let go his grip on the window.

She burned rubber as she sped away.

Gus felt a certain amount of satisfaction from his encounter. He’d have to tell Frank about the way he’d handled the strange woman. Snooping around the neighbourhood. Ha. He could hardly wait to tell Frank about how he’d run her off.

The Norwood Flats was a town in itself, in the middle of the larger city. A triangle with river on two sides, main drag on the third. Lower middle and middle class. Some homes were almost a century old but most were built after the Second World War. Young families, young trees, lots of sunshine and Kick the Can for a couple of decades.

It was blue and gold to look back on, but Frank Foote knew better than that. Horrible things had happened in the middle of the century — he had seen some of them.

“Denise? How’s it goin’?” Frank spoke into his desk phone, a familiar tightness in his throat as he talked to his wife of fifteen years.

She spoke so quietly he could hardly hear her.

“Okay, I think. It’s good I’m here.”

“I miss you,” he lied. He covered his eyes with his hand.

“Yeah, me too. I’m sorry, Frank, I gotta go. I’m so very, very tired.”

Frank hung up and took his coffee to the window. He was lucky to have one that opened. He pushed it up and took a deep breath of the cold spring air. It had been the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in decades and Frank could still feel it in his bones. He pictured himself on a beach somewhere soaking up the sun, getting so hot he felt dizzy and then wading into the water to cool down.

Frank didn’t usually come to work on Sundays but he wanted to review the paperwork on the rain barrel baby. And truth be told, he wanted to get away on his own for short while. Emma was home with the kids.

Frank did miss Denise. He missed his wife of fifteen years ago when she had been smart and kind and funny. Now the sparkle in her hazel eyes was gone. She looked only inward. And when she smiled she pressed her lips together till they disappeared. She looked as though she was trying with all her might to shut out the world.

“Leave me alone!” her smile shouted.

Frank felt two ways about this new smile of hers. When she used it on him and the kids he felt bereft. When she used it on anyone else he breathed relief. He wanted her to shut out the rest of the world. And in the past when her old smile, her rich open smile had been for him and Emma and Garth and Sadie, Frank had felt blessed. But when it had shone out to others…well, he wasn’t proud of those feelings. He’d rather not think about them.

She was in the Detox Ward now; she had been there before.

Yesterday, Frank had stopped by home in the mid-afternoon to check on his kids. He worried about them, especially Emma. He found her in the kitchen making sandwiches for the two younger ones.

“Hi, guy. Kinda late for lunch, isn’t it?” Frank tousled her hair.

He could hear television noise from the living room where the other two would be gazing transfixed. It was probably Garth and Sadie he should be concerned about with their
TV
fixation. Maybe all that was foisted upon Em would make her a stronger more resourceful person, with only the odd pocket of anxiety that wouldn’t get too odd.

“Hi, Dad.” Emma’s face lit up when she saw her father. She kept on with the bread and lettuce and sliced hard-boiled eggs. “We were pretty late with breakfast this morning.”

“Where’s your mum?”

“Upstairs lying down. She’s been out to the mall but she didn’t buy anything.” Emma spread tidy amounts of mayo on one side of each sandwich and finished them off with a couple of grinds of pepper.

“How did you get along holding the fort this morning?”

“No problemo. But I think something should be done about the amount of
TV
those two yobs watch.” She pointed her thumb towards the living room. “It’s sick. They’re gonna end up with no brains. And Sadie has potential.”

“What about Garth?”

“I think it’s too late for him already.” Emma grinned.

Frank chuckled. “I’ll go up and see how your mother’s doing. Nice job on the sandwiches, Em. Don’t forget to make one for yourself.”

“Yeah, Dad. Would you please tell the zombies their lunch is ready? I’m not giving it to them in front of the tube.”

Frank scooped up his other two children and placed them where Emma wanted them.

“Mummy wet her pants.” Sadie’s eyes were big and she wasn’t smiling.

Frank felt the bottom slip out — a shift, that freed his insides, tossed them every which way. He looked at Emma, who busied herself at the sink.

“Eat the sandwiches your sister made for you. I’ll go on up and see your mum.”

“I don’t think Mummy wants to be disturbed right now, Daddy,” Sadie said.

“Well, maybe she’ll make an exception for me. Now, what do you say to Emma for making such a nice lunch?”

“Thank you very much for the sandwich, Em,” Sadie said.

Frank kissed his younger daughter as he left the kitchen.

Denise lay awake on the bed in her terry towel robe. She had showered and her long wet hair was fanned out around her face like seaweed on the pillow. She didn’t look at her husband when he entered the room.

Frank got a towel, laid it gently under her head and switched pillows on her. The one she had been lying on was soaking wet. Her face was puffy and bruised looking as though she had beaten herself up.

“Oh God, Frank, what must our children think of me?”

Frank couldn’t think of a single thing to say so he put his arms around her and she let loose with a barrage of tears. Her hair smelled like apples, the same as it had the first time he had been close enough to notice. He had seen her then as filled with light, knowable. She had put old fears to rest. He denied for years that she had conjured up new ones that he hadn’t known before.

He handed her some Kleenex now and waited.

“Do you hate me, Frank?”

“No, I don’t hate you. I’m worried about you and I’m worried about our family, but I could never hate you.”

They sounded like old words to Frank, used words that should have been thrown out with yesterday’s garbage. But he didn’t want to upset her, he didn’t feel up to it. He hoped she wouldn’t ask him if he loved her.

In the beginning, their conflicts had erupted and resolved themselves, securely fastened within the boundaries of their love. But as the years went by, those boundaries quivered and thinned; words and actions could bust clear through and fly around out there, testing the waters of a vast loneliness.

“Do you still love me, Frank?”

“Yes.” He didn’t pretty it up and he could see his doubts on her face, but it was the best he could do.

She stopped crying. “I’ll go back to the hospital, Frank. Will you help me?”

“Of course.” He kissed her on the temple as he got up to leave. “See if you can sleep awhile and I’ll try and have it worked out by the time you wake up.”

“Thanks.” She sighed and laid down her head.

Frank was enjoying her absence in a way. The house was easier without her. It took a little getting used to, not trying to keep everyone quiet, talking in whispers. It was noisier, healthier. And Emma was old enough now that he probably wouldn’t need to get Uncle Bosco to come from Regina to help with the kids. Gus would be happy to help out if it came to that. Poor Gus. He still seemed a little wobbly after the events of last Sunday.

Frank carried his coffee outside to a bench in the yard of the police station. New blades of grass poked through the matted lawn and a green sheen attached itself to the Manitoba Maples. The sun warmed a patch big enough for one person on the park bench.

Was there any way in the world that Denise would be able to turn her life around? Frank doubted it — she had tried on other occasions. He would be here for her again this time, but he didn’t know if he could go on this way indefinitely. It was wearing him down.

He thought about Audrey, his girlfriend from high school days. They’d had a brief dalliance two summers ago. He wasn’t proud of that, but not ashamed either. How had Audrey put it? Old business, something like that. Not to be worried about. Amazingly enough, he hadn’t worried.

He admired the way she had just taken off. He didn’t even wish he’d gone with her. It wasn’t Audrey he wanted.

Frank couldn’t let go of a thin shred of hope. Maybe some day he and Denise would do that — take off. Maybe on a motorcycle. When the kids were grown and he’d saved some money they could do it.

A squirrel approached; it was fat and fearless. Frank had nothing to offer.

He figured he wasn’t cut out to be happy. Even when things were going well, like when Denise went for a period without drinking, he felt that he wasn’t really inside of his life. Oh, he noticed the spring air and even felt an inkling of excitement at the change in the season. But it was tempered with something. There was a giant “if only” hanging over his head. If only I could really be here so I could smell that air and feel that excitement. I know it’s good but it doesn’t penetrate to the soul of me. Frank feared for his soul. He thought maybe it was lost.

What if Denise managed a new start and he was the one to let everyone down?

Frank apologized to the squirrel.

A wave of hopelessness washed over him. They weren’t going to be taking a trip to anywhere. It was too late for motorcycles, maybe even motor homes.

He went back to his office, avoiding the main lobby. He didn’t want to hobnob with the group of boisterous uniformed cops behind the reception counter.

The clock on the wall in his office told him he should be getting home soon. He couldn’t put so much responsibility on Emma. Frank sat down at his desk and opened the rain barrel baby file. The mystery of the baby was very likely unsolvable. A week had already gone by since Gus had found her. Frank went over the facts of the case, forcing himself not to speculate. Just the facts.

The baby had lived outside of the womb. She was born alive approximately thirty-three weeks after conception and she died minutes later. She had breathed the air but had not tasted her mother’s milk. Frank thought a baby would be bigger at eight months; she was so small. The birth and death occurred last fall. And as Gus suspected, the tiny girl wintered in the rain barrel.

It was a very small comfort that she was smothered before being dropped into the cold water. At least she didn’t drown. Frank imagined drowning to be the worst death of all.

One last fact glared up at him from the medical examiner’s report. The baby had been
HIV
-positive.

The only fingerprints on the barrel and its coverings were Gus’ and Greta’s. The same with the ladder and other items that could have been used to climb up on.

Fred Staples, one of the detective sergeants who worked under Frank, had checked with every hospital in the province for records of slightly premature babies born during the period in question. Nothing connected.

Frank phoned Fred to see if he was in. He was, so Frank asked him to drop by his office.

“The way I see it, Fred, there are three possibilities.” Frank counted them off on his fingers. “One, the baby came from further afield than Manitoba; two, she was born outside a hospital; or three, she slipped through the cracks at a hospital within the province.”

Fred stood at attention in front of the desk. Frank wished he wouldn’t do that. Frank stood up and moved to the window where the late afternoon sun warmed the cold glass.

“I’d been thinking along the same lines,” Fred said. “And I’m inclined to think that possibility number two may be the ticket: born outside of a hospital.”

“In which case we’re pretty much out of luck, aren’t we?” Frank rattled the change in his pocket. “This may just end up being a really sad story that we can do nothing about. I mean, even if we found the mother that did this, what good would it do? She’s pretty much got a death sentence anyway. The baby was
HIV
-positive, so she must be too, mustn’t she?”

“She should be taken to task, sir.”

Frank sighed. He didn’t want to take anyone to task. And he wished Fred wouldn’t call him sir. He’d asked him not to, but Fred couldn’t seem to help it.

“Let’s check hospitals in north Ontario and south Saskatchewan and then I think we may as well let it go,” Frank said.

“I’ll get on that right away, sir.” Fred spun around on his heel. Frank wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d saluted or if he’d continued spinning, clear around till he was facing the same way he’d started.

“How’s Frances?” Frank asked before Fred closed the door.

He poked his head back in. “Fine, thanks, sir, I guess.”

Frank had hoped that Fred’s new wife would help loosen him up some, but so far there had been no evidence of it.

Frank sat down in his ergonomically correct chair. His ankles ached for no good reason. He worked for a few minutes trying to clear at least one item from his desk. It was a request from one of his sergeants for a transfer, out of Frank’s division. He wondered if it had anything to do with him.

Reason for Transfer: Desire for change.

That didn’t tell him much.

Frank set it aside. There was so much paperwork. His job now seemed to be mainly paperwork. And he didn’t feel like doing it; he never felt like doing it.

So he opened his second from top drawer and dragged the soft woolen contents from their hiding spot over to his lap. He found his place and began to knit. Frank wasn’t sure yet what he was building. The wool was blue, an irresistible blue. There was a ways to go before he had to decide on a particular item.

Just fifteen minutes and then he would go home and give Emma a break.