Ellen in Pieces (26 page)

“Drink it. Mom. Drink it.”

Seeing Georgia with a pot in her hands, Mimi floated over. She’d inherited her grace from her father—Georgia could picture her as a long-ago butterfly. She’d taught dance to both Ellen’s daughters, but only Mimi had talent.

“I’ll come back another time,” Georgia said, offering the pot to Mimi.

“No, stay,” Ellen said. “Mimi and Moira are going out in a second. Gerhard’s leaving too.”

He showed some surprise, rubbing his ringed hand all over his shaved head.

“Come back later,” Ellen told him. “I need to talk to Georgia.”

To-and-froing. Kisses, partings. Then Ellen and Georgia were finally alone. Ellen pointed to the green drink.

“Please pour it down the sink. She won’t let up until it’s gone.”

When Georgia returned, Ellen said, “She’s found God. Or something like that.”

“Mimi?”

“Ten years ago, if you’d asked me? I would have predicted she’d find Satan. Anyway, she’s more pleasant to be around, except for her concoctions. Sit here. Sit beside me.” Ellen patted the place. “How is Gary? Is he ever going to visit me?”

“He’d love to. You know that.”

With a nod Ellen acknowledged the principles that precluded Gary from ever being in the same room as Larry Silver. The man
was loyal; no one could deny it. Ellen reached for the box of tissues on the coffee table, plucked one free and handed it to Georgia even before she started crying.

“You always look so sad. Tell me what’s bothering you. Besides me.”

Georgia looked at the ceiling, but this only made the tears stream faster. She staunched the flow with more tissues that Ellen passed her. “Gary,” she admitted. “I just don’t want to be around him. It’s terrible. But I can’t help it.”

“Did he do something?” Ellen asked.

“Him? No,” Georgia said. “He didn’t do anything. Yet I’m so angry with him all the time.”

“He’s so fat now,” Ellen said. “Are you mad about that?”

Georgia didn’t think so. It didn’t make sense even to her. If she was going to blame the victim, she should blame Ellen too. But she didn’t. Why not? Back then, after Larry left, she’d put Gary through several hellish years that really only ended with Maximilian’s birth. But now Larry was back, reminding her of everything that had happened.

Reminding her right now.

When the door opened, Georgia sprang to her feet automatically, like in the days of The Larry and Gary Show. “I brought soup,” she told Ellen. “Borscht. Mimi put it in the fridge.”

“Borscht!” Larry said, stepping inside.

“Don’t run off,” Ellen said.

But that was exactly what Georgia did. She pushed past Larry, pulled on her boots and bolted. Out the door and down the drizzling street, sobbing now.

After a few blocks, she leaned against a tree, searched her pockets for one of Ellen’s tissues, resorted to her sleeve. Stupidly, she’d
run in the opposite direction of where she’d parked the car. Also, she’d left her umbrella and coat. Never mind. She’d go home and phone Ellen later to apologize. She’d pick up her things next time.

She’d just started back in the direction of the car when she saw Larry walking toward her. She recognized his springy gait, so odd in a moody man, and stopped. As though turning and running again weren’t an option.

He crossed the street, not hurrying, simply coming to meet her with a perplexed expression on his face. As he got closer, she noticed the dutiful set of his jaw. Ellen had sent him. People used to say that Ellen had wasted her life in the service of Larry Silver, but now Larry was serving her and no one said it was a waste.

He took her in his arms like he’d done that night, August 25, 1991, after they’d made love on the grass a stone’s throw from their trusting mates. That night they’d run inside, stooped and hand in hand. In Ellen’s basement rec room, Larry had enfolded Georgia against his bare chest. The flesh of her cheek pressed its wetness and felt the rebel thing inside him kick. He kissed her again, then signalled that he would go ahead. In a daze, she’d watched him go, naked, taking the stairs two at a time. She’d waited, then gone as well, up the stairs and through the kitchen and outside to the deck. When she slid into the scalding tub, the others applauded. It seemed hot enough to sterilize her, but wasn’t.

Now Georgia looked Larry in the eye. “I need to get it off my chest before it’s too late. Is that selfish?”

“What?” Larry asked.

“You didn’t leave because of me, did you?”

“When? The other day? I can’t meditate. My back’s shot. Also, you know.” He made claws at his forehead and shook them, signifying, Georgia guessed, mental unrest.

She placed both hands flat against his chest, pushed.

Larry staggered back, surprised, then offended. She could tell he wanted to storm away. But he’d been given his orders and now he scratched his head where the curls were thickest, wondering what to try next. Something that had probably worked a thousand times before: an arm around her shoulder, a reassuring squeeze. He guided her into taking a step. In her confusion, Georgia responded. Could it be he didn’t remember? Or was he pretending?

“The Larry and Gary Show?” she tried.

“How is Gary?” asked Larry, steering her on toward Ellen’s.

“He was helping you with your play.
The Something Something.
About the Winnipeg General Strike.”

“Please,” Larry said, sounding genuinely pained.

They walked the remaining block in silence. The only way a man could screw his wife’s best friend right under her nose,
literally
, was if, afterward, he just put it out of his mind. The solution was almost more audacious than the crime. Larry had probably behaved like this his whole life—but here was where he stopped. At Ellen’s door.

He gestured Georgia inside. “Ta-da,” he said to Ellen, before leaving again himself.

“Better?” Ellen asked from the couch.

Georgia nodded, though she wasn’t sure.

“Did he say something?”

“Larry? No. Not really.”

“Maybe that’s better?”

Georgia came over and looked down at Ellen.
What do you mean?
Georgia wanted to ask, but when she opened her mouth, “Borscht?” came out.

“That would be wonderful.” Ellen sighed.

Georgia went to heat it up. Every time she peeked out of the kitchen, she saw Ellen lying in the same position on the couch, half asleep. Once their eyes did meet (those blue, blue eyes!) and it seemed like Ellen was about to laugh, but she simply fluttered her hands and amended her expression.

M
om brought the Tech Deck mini skateboards from Vancouver when she went to visit Nonny Ellen. She got them at Toys “R” Us. There were two Shark decks in the pack too, and an ATM Click deck with a skull that’s Eli’s second favourite. But now Tru has the black Zero Cole Tech Deck with the cobra logo and it’s Eli’s. It is!

At recess Eli follows Tru around the side of the school to the skate park, the one they made themselves. Some of it’s Playmobil, some cardboard. The rails are chopsticks. “It’s mine,” Eli says, but suddenly Tru’s way ahead. He’s practically at the park. Then he is, squatting in the dirt playing with the Zero Cole Tech Deck with the cobra logo that he took from Eli, saying, “Awesome! Backside three-sixty kick flip!” though no way can he do these things. He can hardly ollie, even with his fingers. Also, he says his T-shirt’s camo when it’s tie-dye.

“That’s my deck,” Eli says.

“You’re an alien,” Tru says without looking up.

Everybody calls him that. Eli’s dad said, “Cool. Alien Workshop, right?” which is a skate brand. Eli felt good about it then, but now
he doesn’t because Tru means something else, plus he has Eli’s black Zero Cole Tech Deck with the cobra logo.

Use your words, Eli
, Lindy, the teacher, always says. Well, Eli just tried and his words failed. He stalks over to where Tru squats with the mini skateboard, spinning it in the air about two hundred times and making jet noises so that spit comes out.

And Eli kicks him. Kicks hard.

But his foot doesn’t connect. He kicks the air and almost lands on his own butt. How messed up is that?

W
HEN
Mom picks him up with Fern, Lindy says, “Yolanda? Can we have a little talk?” So they all go into the classroom. Fern screams to be put down, then runs around looking for things to mess up. Mom has to follow her, taking stuff out of her hand.

Lindy says, “The first place to start is a hearing test.”

While they’re talking, Eli sneaks over to Tru’s table. Fern breaks free and makes it to the art centre, spills the paintbrushes on the floor.

Then Mom’s saying, “Honey, you’ve got to listen to Lindy, right?”

Eli’s hand is in the book slot where Tru sits, feeling for the Tech Deck. Tru didn’t put it back in his case. Eli stopped him after school and checked.

“His dad’s dreamy too,” Mom says.

Books are in the book slot, and something old-sandwichy. A pencil case. Balls of worksheets. Eli crouches and looks.

“Eli?
Eli!
” She’s pulling on the neck of his shirt so it chokes him. “I said we’re going now.”

As he follows Mom out, Lindy says, “See you tomorrow,” and smiles like she’s not mad at him, though she is, she’s mad all the time. She’s had just about enough of him two hundred times a day.

Eli runs ahead and climbs in the truck. Then Mom’s buckling Fern in her seat and Fern’s saying, “Me want! Me want!” and grabbing at him.

“Stop it, you two,” Mom says.

Fern bites Eli on the shoulder and he smacks her one.

Mom leans on the horn.
HONNNKKK!
“I can only take so much more! Do you hear? Then I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

She hardly ever yells and never has she honked. Both Eli and Fern stop fighting and stare. Mom starts bawling and so does Fern.

“Me want!” she cries like the two-year-old that she is.

“What does she want?” Mom asks, all watery, like she’s drowning. “Eli, please. Just give it to her.”

And he looks in his hand and sees it, the black Zero Cole Tech Deck with the cobra logo. He has no idea how it got there.

“W
HEN
I call you, buddy, you come, right? Supper’s ready. How did you get wet?”

He’s playing down by the water, turning over the stones. Living under each stone are mini camo crabs. Crabs have outside skeletons, like armour. They’re soldiers and each is a different camo colour. If you take a mini camo crab from under one rock and drop it in a tide pool with a bunch of mini camo crabs from under different rocks, they battle. Eli’s not allowed guns. “What’s the worst thing in the world,” he asked his dad. “War,” Dad said, but Mom said, “Cancer.”

Now his dad’s here telling Eli he called and called, but Eli heard nothing over the sound of the mini camo crabs in the tide pool blowing each other up with the bomb-stones Eli threw in.

“You’re all wet and there’s mud on your face. Eli, buddy. We’re about to eat.”

First he was kneeling beside the tide pool, then he was lying beside it with his face on the barnaclely rocks.

“Your cheek’s bleeding,” Dad says.

Eli wipes the side of his face with his palm, proud to see red smears. He didn’t even cry, just like a real skateboarding soldier wouldn’t.

He walks with Dad up the path to the cabin, his rubber boot making sucky sounds because it’s full of water and trying to pull off his sock. They stop outside at the hose for Eli to wash.

“Mom’s not feeling so great today. Let’s try not to upset her even more.”

“Is she sick?”

“No, she’s sad about Nonny Ellen.”

Last time Eli saw Nonny was at Christmas. Her hair was different, wispy like Fern’s when she finally stopped being bald. She didn’t smell like Nonny anymore.

“Come on, buddy. Don’t just stand there.”

“I’m sad about Nonny too,” Eli says.

A
T
supper he announces he’s not going to school anymore. “Everybody calls me alien.”

“Cool,” Dad says.

“What do they mean, alien?” Mom asks. “Does Lindy know?”

Fern keeps spitting out her tofu and squawking like a crow.

“And today? Tru stole my black Zero Cole Tech Deck with the cobra logo.”

Eli’s in the middle of telling them how they played together before school, sharing their Tech Decks, but then Tru took the black Zero Cole. Tru said if Eli was Nyjah Huston then he couldn’t
ride a Chris Cole deck, that was the rule. Tru has a real Tech Deck case with a see-through lid and Eli saw through it. Eli keeps his decks in an old
Toy Story
lunch box he got at the Free Store. They rattle and tangle. Tru’s don’t, they snap in.

Dad’s shaking his arm. “Buddy! Buddy!”

“What’s happening, Eli? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong?”

They’re on either side of him, grabbing him, and Mom’s crying again, but probably about Nonny, he knows now.

A
ND
the next day he doesn’t have to go to school! Easy-peasy! He makes a skate park on the examination table with some Dixie cups and the thing that’s for looking in ears. The tongue thing is the rail. The paper crackles when he ollies and grinds.

“Mid-sentence he stops and sort of stiffens, staring into space. He was holding his fork so tightly I couldn’t pull it out of his hand.”

“How long did this go on for?”

“Forever! We yelled at him, but he wouldn’t snap out of it. Finally, he did.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. He just seemed confused.”

Only when the doctor says, “Eli, do you remember Mommy and Daddy shouting yesterday?” does he realize that Mom’s talking about him.

“Yes.”

“Do you know why they were shouting at you? Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m an alien.”

But that’s not what Eli thinks about himself. He thinks he’s a soldier who really can backside three-sixty kick flip.

T
HEY
take the ferry to Vancouver Island, where a machine is going to draw pictures of what’s happening in Eli’s brain. There are waves in your brain like the waves the ferry rides on. He counts twenty-six seals on the trip. Their heads pop up, black and shiny, then duck under again. Under the waves. Seizures are when it gets so wavy inside your brain it messes you up.

Fern makes stinky-butt on the trip. Dad decides to wait till they dock to change her because the bathroom’s too small on the boat. Everybody jokes about it. They say Fern’s cute but she stinks, and she laughs because she doesn’t get it the way Eli gets that
alien
is mean. It stinks so bad by the time they dock Eli wants to throw up.

“Honey, are you okay? Honey?” Mom asks.

They find the car. It’s Mom’s friend Amber’s car that she leaves parked at the ferry. Amber used to live with Grandpa. But now Grandpa lives with Nonny. Dad changes Fern on the hood and poop gets on it.

They drive Amber’s poopy car to the hospital. “Are you scared?” Dad asks.

He didn’t know there was a reason to be, but now he does. “Will it hurt?”

“Eli? Are you scared, buddy?”

Didn’t he already say?

“W
HAT
grade are you in, Eli?”

“Two.”

“Lie down. Nice. Do you see these wires? And this is glue. I’m going to stick these wires all over your head. Isn’t that funny? Yoo-hoo, Eli?”

“What?”

“Isn’t that funny? Are you ready?”

Mom stays with him while Dad takes Fern for a walk around the hospital. Mom promised that after they finish they can go to a restaurant and Eli can have meat like a real skateboarding soldier. While Eli lies there deciding what kind of meat, the nurse fixes the wires to his head. The machine takes forever and the whole time Mom watches and cries. She’s vegetarian. It must be drawing a hamburger, Eli thinks.

When they pull the wires off, his hair is full of goop.

Dad and Fern go into a room with Mom, but Eli has to wait outside. They let him buy a drink. The machine’s claw hand shows Eli the can, then drops it.
Thunk!

There aren’t any drink machines on Cordova Island.

Mom and Dad and Fern are in the room forever. Eli’s almost finished the Coke when they come out. He’s burped nine times. Mom’s crying harder and Dad’s hugging her and carrying Fern.

“I want bacon,” Eli says.

Dad high-fives him.

“W
HERE
do you go?” Nonny asks him when he and Mom get back from Children’s Hospital.

She’s in her new bed with buttons. No more old-fashioned dentist’s chair. Eli loved playing with the levers on the chair, but the bed’s better, it’s electric.

Eli pushes a button and Nonny on her bed rises up, up toward
the ceiling. “We went to the children’s hospital. They put me in a machine. Boing, boing, boing! I had to wear earplugs. I have more than one hundred seizures a day.”

“When you have the seizures where do you go?” Nonny asks. “I can see on your face that you’re not here.”

“Really?” Eli says. Then he knows where he must be. “I go to outer space. It’s where I’m from.”

Nonny laughs and laughs.

“I’m bringing you back to earth now, Nonny.” He pushes the button to lower the bed and only then does he get it. They’re called absent seizures, the doctor told him. Absent means you’re not there. He’s absent from school. Yay! When he has a seizure, he’s present and absent at the same time.

“It was nice up there,” Nonny tells him. “Looking down on you. When I’m not here, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Nonny. You can hardly get out of bed.”

Nonny pees in a bag now. Eli doesn’t know how, but the bag’s hanging on a hook at the side of the bed. Lines on the bag measure the pee. Every time Eli checks, there’s more yellow. And she has a tube in her arm. Grandpa puts a needle in the tube and squirts in her medicine. That way it doesn’t hurt.

They’re staying with Nonny while they go to the appointments. Mom is happy to be closer to Nonny, happy that they’ve found out what’s wrong with Eli. He could’ve had a tumour in his brain, but he doesn’t. Tumours kill you so epilepsy’s better. They sleep in the little room under Nonny’s ceiling that they climb the ladder to. Grandpa has the couch. Auntie Mimi’s here too, helping Nonny, but she sleeps next door where the man who made the movie of Nonny lives. Gerhard. He wears earrings.

Appointment, appointment, then Toys “R” Us. Eli picks the exact same pack so he owns two black Zero Cole Tech Decks with the cobra logo that he won’t ever let Tru touch.

One hundred seizures means one hundred times a day Eli shoots into outer space. He’s an alien. The thing about being an alien? Whenever you’re on earth, you can’t remember anything about being in outer space.

He tells Mom and Grandpa and Auntie Mimi this at supper in Nonny’s studio. Nonny’s not at the table. She’s lying in the hospital bed watching them.

“There,” Mom says. “You just had one. I can tell now. It’s so obvious once you know.”

“I did?” Eli says. “I just flew to outer space and back?”

Everybody laughs. Then Grandpa sees Nonny’s awake. He goes over to hold her hand. “Ellen? Do you need anything, babe? Are you in pain?”

“No,” Nonny says. “What would I need? We’re finally all together.”

“Dad’s not here,” Eli tells Nonny. “Fern’s not here.”

“Well, they should come,” Nonny says. “They should come.”

After supper, Mom and Auntie Mimi wash the dishes. Auntie Mimi says, “She’s been talking to her mother.”

“To her mother?”

“Who’s Nonny’s mother?” Eli asks.

“Someone who died a long time ago.”

“Then how does Nonny talk to her?”

“Shh,” Mom says.

But Auntie Mimi says, “She talks to her on the phone.”

“
What
?” Mom says.

“That’s what she told me. I asked if her father phoned too.
And she said no. She said he never phoned. She would have to phone him.”

Because Nonny’s dead mom phoned, Auntie Mimi starts calling all Nonny’s friends so that they can say goodbye. And Mom phones Dad and Fern.

E
LI
isn’t ever allowed to be alone, not until they know the medicine works. The medicine’s pills you have to be a skateboarding soldier to swallow.

“Remember how I found you playing in the bay?” Dad told him. “You were wet. You cut your cheek on the rocks. You’re lucky you didn’t fall face first in the water. Because if that happened while you were having a seizure, you would drown.”

There are so many things he’s not allowed to do now, like ride a bike or skateboard or go down the slide. Not the slide because to go down, first he has to go up. If he has a seizure on the ladder, he could fall and bust his head.

It takes Eli forever to swallow the pill. He gags and gags. When the cats get sick, Dad holds their sharp mouths open and Mom pokes the pill down. “I’ll do it myself!” he yells.