Blue Vengeance (17 page)

 

Danny waited till school was back in before he visited Janine again. He was in grade nine now, at Nelson Mac, and he had seen her at a distance, always alone. He hadn't approached her in case she didn't want him to.

The last time he'd left her he'd been in a huff — not a friendship- destroying one — but a huff nonetheless.

He biked over after four with Russell along for support. She was sitting on the stoop with Pearl. He approached slowly, not wanting to startle her.

He wanted to say
I love you
, but he just said, “Hi.”

“Hi, Danny.”

“You look sad,” he said, and she did too, as if something bad had happened. Maybe Rock didn't want to kiss her anymore.

“No, I'm good,” she said. “Sit down.”

He wondered if maybe her dad was on a bender. But then he heard sounds from inside and knew Jake was home safe.

The sun was warm on the stoop, but the warmth inside the breeze was gone, along with summer. Pearl was stretched out, but not as languorously as she had been in the summer months. Russell stationed herself in the middle of the yard.

“About our project,” Danny said.

“Maybe we should wait till spring,” said Janine.

“No way. I won't be as good in the spring after a winter of not practising.”

“Yes, you will.”

“Maybe not.”

“Anyway, I thought we decided I was going to do it.”

“No, we didn't. I can't believe you think we decided that.”

“Oh. I thought we did.”

“How's school?”

“Okay, I guess. How is it with you?”

“Not bad. The girls in my class have Miss Hardass for phys ed. It's weird seein' her around.”

“All the girls in the whole school have Hardass for phys ed,” said Janine. “It'd be weird to not see her around.”

“There are different kinds of weird,” said Danny.

He ran his hand gently down the length of Pearl.

“Things are looser at Nelson Mac than at Nordale,” he went on. “Like we don't have to line up for anything. I like that about it. And if you're in the hall or something, somewhere where you're not supposed to be, nobody grills you. Plus, there's way more kids; that's good too. It's not so noticeable that people hate you.”

“That'll change,” said Janine, “people hating you, I mean.”

She said it by way of comfort, he supposed.

“I notice you don't seem to have much in the way of friends,” he said.

“Very observant.”

“Well…I wouldn't mention it if…it's just…you told me, more than once, I might add, that I need to have more than one friend.”

“Yeah, but you can.”

“And you can't?”

“It's different with me.”

“Why?”

“'Cause I'm poor, 'cause I wear the same clothes every day, 'cause my dad's an alky, and I don't have a mum, 'cause I'm not pretty, and I cut my own hair, all kinds of reasons.”

“I think you're pretty. Your hair suits you, and your clothes are interesting because of the things you sew onto them.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, but she didn't mean it.

She was wearing a jean jacket with Goofy on the arm and sparkles that looked like diamonds on one of the pockets.

“Being poor means no one wants to hang around with you unless they're poor too,” Janine said.

“I don't think that's true,” said Danny. “I'm not poor, and I wanna hang around with you. Plus, loads of poor kids go to Nelson Mac. I think you're way off base with this idea.”

“Do you?”

A margin of light lit her face when she said this, as though it was a new thought, a brand new good thought.

“Yes.”

Pearl stretched and rolled onto her back. Danny rubbed her tummy, and she purred her crackly purr.

“My dad's not an alky,” Danny said, “but he's nowhere. And my mum is nailed to a couch. I think that equals poor. Plus, I wear pretty much the same thing every day.”

Janine rubbed Pearl's ears. All this attention seemed too much for her. She leapt up and ran around the corner of the house. Russell immediately took her place on the stoop.

“What happened to your mum?” Danny said.

Janine stood up. “Let's go,” she said.

“Where are we goin'?”

“To the river. You can leave your bike here. Come on, Russ.”

They made the short trek and found a spot on the grass near the edge of the top bank.

“Somebody killed her,” said Janine. “My mum.”

Danny's scalp tingled.

“It was a lady did it. A big shot vice-principal. She rammed into our tiny Studebaker with her gigantic Edsel and killed her. She died the instant we were hit.” Tears filled her eyes.

How do you act when someone tells you something like this?
I'm sorry for your loss
was okay for Jake's dead brother, Daniel, but it wasn't good enough for this. Danny tried to remember other things that people had said to him after Cookie died. All he could remember was that the words made no sense. They had seemed unrelated to what had happened. They could have been placed in a small word pile and lit on fire, and no one would have missed them.
My condolences.
That was another one.
May I offer my condolences.
Add that one to the pile. He knew way better than to say it. At its best, it could be a joke.

“The big shot was drunk,” said Janine, “and she didn't go to prison. She didn't even almost go to prison.”

“She should have been hanged,” said Danny.

Janine spurted out a laugh through her tears.

“Yeah, I thought so. Hanged at the very least.”

“By the neck until dead. What was her name?”

“Miss Chapman.”

“Miss Chapped Ass. Let's go get her.”

“Believe me, I've thought about it. Me and my dad both. But we can't. It'd be too obvious.”

“When did it happen?”

“Four years ago. But it still rips my guts apart. And I know my dad's guts are still ripped apart too. It's why he goes on benders. That's my theory, anyway.”

They sat, Danny pulling up blades of grass and chewing on the white parts, Janine turning her face to the lowering sun, allowing her tears.

“Chapped Ass — thanks for that, Danny — didn't even say she was sorry. Not to us anyway.”

Danny loved to hear her say his name. It didn't happen often enough.

“She probably said it to some cop,” said Janine, “while she was busy giving him a blow job.”

He hadn't heard anything like that from her before. Blowjob: he still hadn't figured out the blow part. It couldn't be right. He could imagine his dick inside a mouth for sure, being licked, sucked on, having all kinds of things happen to it there, but not being blown like some sort of live whistle. He stirred inside his jeans and tried to concentrate on the fallen tree below them where he used to come to build fires with the friends he no longer had.

“My mum had just gotten her licence,” said Janine. “My dad was in the passenger seat, and I was in the back. We were playing I Spy. Dad and me. My mum was concentrating on her driving. I remember him saying,
I spy with my little eye something that is red.
And the next thing I remember is my mum's blood and then the stink coming off Chapped Ass who stood by the side of the road with a cop's arm around her. Ambulance workers saw to my mum, and somebody told me to stay with the killer and the cop.

“My dad was getting in the way. They had to keep telling him to stand back. Finally he did stand back and then he noticed that Chapped Ass stank of booze. Four cops had to restrain him — one for each limb. I knew my mum was dead. You couldn't look the way she did and not be dead.”

Danny forced himself not to ask about the way she looked. He pictured Cookie inside her coffin, with so much goop on her face that she looked like a stranger. She hadn't worn much makeup before her death, just pink lipstick sometimes.

He had worried for a second that God wouldn't recognize her and then he remembered that God wasn't there and that even if he was, he was an asshole, so who cared anyway.

Russell walked up to them now with a large tree limb in her mouth. She could barely manage it. Danny threw it for her anyway, not very far, and she walked after it.

“Is this why you said you understood my wish to hurt someone?” Danny said.

“What? Oh. Yeah, I guess.”

“Your mum and my sister both died on account of teachers.”

“Chapped Ass isn't a teacher. She's a vice-principal.”

“Same thing. You have to start out as a teacher to become a principal.”

“Vice-principal,” said Janine. “Plus Hardass didn't actually kill Cookie.”

Danny turned his head and looked at her steady green eyes.

“Yes, she did.”

He stared into her eyes longer than was comfortable. It gave him a chilly thrill, like the time he didn't say
You're
welcome
to his mum when she thanked him.

“Okay,” said Janine. “I give. Hardass is directly responsible for Cookie's death.”

“Okay,” said Danny. “Good then.”

It was because he had looked at her for so long and so steadily that she came around to his way of thinking; he was sure of it. The power of the discovery felt huge. He hadn't known it was going to happen. He hoped he could pull it off again.

“Before my mum was killed we used to have suppers like the one Aunt Dot made,” said Janine. “My dad still talks about them.”

Danny thought then that it wasn't so far-fetched that they invite Jake over sometime to enjoy one of Dot's meals. He stood up and heaved Russell's tree limb again.

“Maybe we should forget about Mrs. Flood,” Janine said. “This is getting to be too much.”

“My sentiments exactly,” said Danny.

He hadn't spent much time thinking about her at all, except for wondering why Janine wasted so much time on her.

 

The sun had disappeared and it started to rain gently, a fine rain that was almost fog. The season was getting away on them.

“We gotta set a date,” Danny said.

“There's no hurry.”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn't. There's no reason it couldn't be done in winter.”

“What, are you crazy? What about snow? What about mitts and hats? Why are you draggin' your feet?”

“I'm not. We could do it on a nice winter day.”

“A nice winter day doesn't mean Miss Hardass won't be wearin' a hat or a hood.”

“The cover would be better light-wise,” said Janine.

“The cover would be pitch black,” said Danny. “And no one practises with slingshots in the winter. You've lost interest.”

“No, I haven't.”

“Yes, you have.”

They watched Russell gnaw on the limb. She finally seemed to realize it was more for gnawing than for chasing.

“Where's your dad, Danny?”

“Where'd that come from?” he said.

“I don't know. From because I told you about my mum, I guess.”

 

When sound information about their dad had finally come their way several years ago it was from Aunt Dot, who was visiting at the time.

“Auntie Dot?” Danny had said.

“Yes, pet.”

“Where's our dad?”

She had turned an unbecoming colour of red and stammered a little. “I think that's something for your mum to tell you about.”

“But she won't. She just won't. She keeps saying he's dead, but we're pretty sure she's lying. If he were just dead, she wouldn't be so weird about it. Loads of people are dead. It's gotta be something worse than that.”

Cookie was standing behind him for moral support. She was licking Jell-O powder out of its waxy paper. Lime.

Dot turned to her and tried to talk her out of her choice of snacks. Cookie left the room and tromped upstairs. She licked as she walked, not missing a beat.

Danny knew that even if Dot would tell them something, she'd need to consult with their mother first. He went upstairs to his own room. Cookie had closed her door; he left his open. He sat in his chair with his feet on the windowsill and looked out at the river.

Voices rose up from the living room. Quiet murmurs turned to hisses like never before. Aunt Dot called them both downstairs. They met in the hallway. Cookie's lips were green, and she had a slightly dazed look about her. When they passed the front room, Uncle Edwin was in the big chair, sheltered behind the
Free Press
.

They settled themselves at the kitchen table, and their mother leaned against a doorframe with her arms folded in front of her, inside the sleeves of a sloppy cardigan. She gave them her new version of what had become of their dad. It went as follows:

“I began having my health problems soon after you were born, Danny. Your dad couldn't manage it. He left us two years later.”

“Our dad isn't dead.”

“No.”

“Why did you tell us that he was?”

“I don't know. I guess I didn't feel up to telling you what happened and I thought you were too young to understand it. You probably still are.”

“What's to understand?”

She had no answer for that.

“Where is he?”

“I don't know.”

She pushed herself away from the doorframe with one of her thin shoulders and turned to leave them.

“Is that it?”

She stopped but didn't turn around. “Yes, that's it.” She made for her bedroom.

“What caused your health problems?” Danny called after her. “Was it because I was born? Did I give them to you?”

The door clicked shut behind her.

“No,” said Dot, who had been busying herself at the counter transferring cookies from a cookie sheet to a plate. “Definitely not.”

“Why does she hate us, Auntie Dot?” Cookie said.

“Oh, sweetheart, she doesn't hate you.” Dot crouched down and put her arms around Cookie, who stiffened ever so slightly.

“She's just worried, that's all. About her health mainly. The doctors have given a name to what she has but that doesn't really help because they don't know how to treat it. All they can really do is give her something for the pain and to help her sleep. Life isn't very much fun for her lately.”

“What name did they give it?” said Cookie.

“Fibrositis,” said Dot. “It's a puzzling disease, honey, one they don't seem to know much about.”

“Will she have it forever?” said Danny.

Dot placed the plate of chocolate chip cookies between them instead of answering that question, but tried to fill in some other gaping holes in the story.

Their mother's condition worsened, and their family doctor hadn't been able to diagnose it back then. He came to the conclusion that it was all in her head and sent her to a psychiatrist who prescribed drugs that didn't work.

“A tiredness got its clutches into her and wouldn't let her be, but it wasn't the kind of tiredness that helps you fall asleep,” said Dot. “It was very hard on her.”

“What kind of tiredness was it?” said Cookie.

Dot sighed. “Well, it's hard to describe. It probably doesn't make good sense to say it was the kind of tiredness that keeps you awake, but that's the best I can do.”

She covered one of Danny's hands with her own.

“I lived here for a year,” she said. “You probably don't remember.”

“No,” they said together.

“What about our dad?” Danny retrieved his hand.

“Well, he was here for two or so years after you were born, honey, but then, like your mum said, he went away.

“He provides for you,” she went on. “That's where the money in the drawer comes from. He sends it to me, and I put it there. He sends me enough that I can pay all your bills. More than enough.”

“Is he rich?” Cookie said around a mouthful of cookie.

Danny reached for one, seeing that if he didn't, he'd miss out entirely.

“He seems to be a wealthy man. He was an engineer before he left, so I guess he still is.”

“He drives a train?” Danny perked up at this.

“No, honey, a different kind of engineer. He designs bridges and things like that. He's very smart. That's why you and your sister are so clever.”

“What if he dies,” said Cookie, “and the money in the drawer stops coming?”

“Don't worry about that.” Dot smoothed Cookie's hair back from her forehead. “You'll always be provided for.”

Edwin's newspaper crackled from the front room, and Dot adjusted her posture.

“Anyway, your mother got some better. They put her on a drug that eased her pain for a time. She began caring for you two, doing the things a mother should do. When I thought she was well enough, I went home to the farm.”

“Where is he?” said Danny.

“He travels a lot for his work.” She pushed the plate of cookies towards him.

“But his home. Where's his home?”

Dot hesitated and then said, “I don't know, honey.”

That was how it was left; that was all they got. Danny felt as though he didn't know a heck of a lot more than he did before, except that for sure their dad was alive. He had tried to feel happy about that but couldn't. His dad wasn't a magic man. He travelled, but not with a circus. He drew pictures of bridges, maybe shared them with a few people. Not with him.

 

Danny gave Janine a condensed version of the story, and she wanted to celebrate the fact that his dad was alive, but he couldn't muster up any celebratory feelings.