Going Down Swinging (25 page)

After Charlie left, I went back and sat on the bed, my feelings all mangled so I had no words, and weaved my toes in and out of each other. Hairs on my arms stuck up like cat whiskers testing for close stuff, but it was getting so hollow where we were. If we could just take off, go to some other city, Mum’d get better again, get a job again. And maybe George would come back and come with us.

Mum groaned and reached for her bottle of
222s
. This was her best in three days of lying there; she was sitting up some and talking a little. “Well, that’s that,” she said, and she dropped her hands on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “She hates my guts, doesn’t she?”

I said no, but I kind of wasn’t sure. Charlie seemed like she wanted Mum to say something before she left, beg her out of it or tell her to come live with us again. But Mum couldn’t take living with Charlie any more. Mum couldn’t take anybody but us two.

“I love her, I do. I just can’t stand her,” and her chin and lips wobbled. We sat quiet like that a couple minutes, her wiping her eyes and me just staring at the air. Like a brain cloud, like Sheryl said.

Mum tried to sit up. “Oh shit.” She ducked her head down and held on to her forehead with one hand. “Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph,” then “Will you go in my top drawer and find my yellow pills—um, in the left corner,” and she fell back into her squashed pillow.

I put her last yellow one in her mouth and she jerked her head to help it down. She stared at the ceiling a second, then said, “What about dinner, have something good for you, have a carrot and some meat and—uh. Christ, my stomach feels like the bottom of an old birdcage.”

“Theres nothing hardly left, just, well, there’s Jell-O, but it’s kinda crusty at the top now. And there’s cake, I made chocolate cake. And I was going to go to the store but there’s no money in your purse and um—” I’d put ten of the secret emergency money in a bank account Mum started for me a few months before and the rest I spent on a new Danskin like Sadie’s and a baton. I was going to start baton lessons next Saturday morning.

I picked at the Explorers badge on my blouse. I’d started another group the week before, kind of like Girl Guides, where we wore uniforms (a white blouse and navy blue skirt) and sat in a circle singing campfire songs with good manners and stuff. Today was my second once-a-week meeting. I got Mum to sew the badge on my blouse before she got sick, and it turned out we put it on the wrong pocket. I started to ask the leaders why it mattered, but they gave me the Anus look, the one about how unmanageable I was. Felt like all the girls looked at me that way—a whole circle of Anus faces. I figured I’d probably quit. Maybe after the Halloween party.

Mum moaned again. “Oh. I feel like a big pizza.”

I was still depressed about Charlie. “We don’t have any money.”

“Where’s—did we give Charlie her Family Allowance cheque?” My sister’s cheques were still getting mailed to our place and I forgot all about the last one, which made me feel even more bad. “Sweety, come on, don’t be sad, Charlie’s not gone forever, you know she always comes back and she’d want to cheer you up if she could. So why don’t we cheer ourselves up. It’s the least she could do, walking out of your life yet again.” I decided Mum was right, Charlie was the one who left and besides, we couldn’t get the cheque to her before she went away anyhow.

Mum ripped open the envelope while I looked up
Pizza
in the Yellow Pages. I wrote down all the stuff we wanted and Mum signed the back of the cheque and “extra cheese,” she said, “I feel gooey tonight.” I dialled Gigi’s Pizza—the trick was to not ask if they took welfare cheques until they showed up with a large with everything on it.

We polished off everything except one piece and sat on the bed, brushing off our hands over the box and laughing at what good scammers we were. Mum told stories about when she was young and I screened phone calls. She also let me take her old nail polish off and paint on new stuff. Her hands were mostly stopped shaking, but I liked to be the one to paint her. I had to get rid of two phone callers before I got a coat of
Peach Caravan
on every nail.

Being Mum’s secretary was practically my favourite thing to do. You had to have a good ear-memory and be able to tell who the voices were plus remember if Mum liked them right now or not. She was sick of most men and some women and my job was to say she was out and have no idea where she was and then pretend to take a number and hang up. I could tape-record almost the whole conversation in my brain, so after I hung up I could tell her the words exactly and how they said them. Once in a while I got to tell a guy to get lost, she didn’t want to hear from him again; that hardly ever happened, but it was the best.

Her nails were still wet from the second coat when her friend Doreen called. I held the phone to her ear while she drooped her hands out like rained-on flowers and told Doreen that her manicurist was on a tight schedule so be quick about it. I could hear Doreen’s loud gravelly voice from the earpiece.

I don’t know why they suddenly got to be friends, but it seemed like they liked each other best when they were drinking. Doreen was a friend of Alice and Ray’s, Sadie and Eddy’s parents, and I saw her around their house or sometimes at Rays used-furniture store. She was usually drunk and swearing and laughing at all the wrong times and wearing too-small clothes in super-bright colours that kept almost showing something every time she moved. She was around Mums age with long black hair, high on top like a country singer, bright blue eyelids and frosty pink lips. Doreen was the only one lately who could get my mum out of bed by just talking on the phone a little. Mum talked a lot of pig Latin with her and the
ee-iz
language.

After three or four minutes she said goodbye and I hung up the phone. Mum stretched. “Well, I’m feeling not-too-baggy now.”

“Wanna piece of chocolate cake? Actually, never mind, this one’s no good, it’s all salty, I think I must’ve put salt instead of sugar or something or maybe I put a tablespoon instead of a pinch or something.”

“Yick. Why do you keep making chocolate cakes anyway? Seems like you’ve made about ten in the last month.”

“I don’t know. It’s fun. I like measuring the stuff and I like icing it afterwards, making all those swirly-doos with the knife. And plus, it’s nice to offer cake to guests when they arrive.” I did like doing all the cookbook steps, but it was also because I kept hearing them say, “Tastes as if it was made from scratch,” on cake-mix commercials and when I found out what it meant, I never wanted to buy another cake mix. I wanted to make my own just so I could say, “Here, would you like some Scratch Cake?” whenever I could. It sounded cool.

Mum snorted. “Guests! Well, la-dee-dah. Like who? Who comes over here?”

“Like. Well, guests! Like Josh maybe, or like Sadie and Eddy. Or Doreen even.”

“You’re one wacky dame, kiddo.”

I cackled at her. I liked it when she called me a dame or a broad and I was just about to say we should pack up her pillows and blankets and go watch TV in the living room when she told me she was meeting Doreen in a while.

“Why! You’re sick.”

“Well, I’m not doing too bad now and I need some fresh air and the thing is, we haven’t got a dime in the house.” She sat up and pulled off her nightie and held it in front of her boobs. “Can you pass me my bra hanging on the doorknob there?—and a friend of mine owes me some money, so we’re going to go over and say hi and maybe I can get us a little moolah.”

I passed her her bra. She looked tired, her eyes were deep in her head and the skin was drooping off her arm-bones. It took ages for her to get her bra on and I didn’t help, just told her, “Be careful of your nails.” She asked me to grab her a pair of underpants from her drawer. She wanted a good pair and I couldn’t see much difference. I said that and “Who’s going to see them anyway?” “Well, I might get in a car accident.” Then she got up and went to her closet, turned back around and went through the stuff tangled in sheets at the foot of her bed. She found her baby blue sweater and held it up in front of her, looking for dirt. She sat at the foot of the bed to scratch off some crusty yellow gook on the sleeve, then pulled it over her head and did a fast makeup job before the garter belt, stockings, skirt and shoes came on. Then more scrounging in her dresser while she tried to bribe me—she said, “How ’bout tomorrow night we get some junk food and play switcheroo—it’s a good TV night, isn’t it, isn’t tomorrow night when
Happy Days
and
Good Times
are on?” She dropped a string of beads over her head. Switcheroo was what we called it when we couldn’t decide what to watch and one of us jumped up and switched fast to the other show during the commercials or when we got bored. It was fun and there was action, but I was crabbed at her right now. I shrugged and looked at a hunk of pizza crust on the floor. I knew I should clean up a little, at least my own stuff, at least change the litter box, but I didn’t feel like it. I figured most of it was hers anyway—the bottles, and they were mostly her clothes chucked around the room. A lot were probably mine too, but I made chocolate cake yesterday, I cooked; my work was done. The sink was full of cake dishes and Strawberry Quik milk glasses and they were starting to stink, but I was more in the mood to bust them all and make her get new ones. I thought about going downstairs and remembered Josh had some hockey-thing tonight. He decided lately that he wanted to try and be a jock-guy. Which reminded me about my baton lessons starting and I figured maybe I should just stay in and practise. Last time I’d tossed my baton I busted a vase, so I definitely wanted to practise tonight.

It was getting light out when Mum came in the next morning. She stunk when she kissed me and I couldn’t get back to sleep. There was another hour before I had to get up and my eyes were stinging from staying awake to watch a horror movie.

I got up and tripped over a beer box she’d left in the doorway. In the kitchen I hucked the pizza box off the counter onto the floor so I could sit where it’d been and eat the last piece; cold pizza for breakfast was the best. I thought about getting Mum to order it more on school nights so I could have it for breakfast. Fast and good-for-you. She was snoring. She snored more when she was sick like this. We should go to Portland, I thought, maybe she’d go back to eating vitamins and brewer’s yeast and reading Adelle Davis and maybe she’d take up sailing and Ian’s dad would introduce her to a tall guy with glasses like George.

When I got home from school, nothing was changed. Except she had a bucket beside her bed again and she was whimpering. I still never did the dishes and everything smelled like sour milk and cat pee. Henry was sitting on the kitchen counter meowing. His litter box was in the corner of the kitchen and he went on the newspaper under it instead of in it today. I figured it was a hint that he’d go in my bed next if I didn’t do something. The phone rang and my mum whimpered again.

It was Eddy. “Hi, what’re you do—” and then banging and Sadie’s voice, “He said for
me
to call, stupid—Grace! Guess what! Your dad’s here.” I thought she was about to tell me some dumb joke until her dad grabbed the phone. “Hey, Grace? Hiya, uh, guess who’s here, I got Sadie to call in case your mum answered—your dad’s here! At the store! He’s sittin’ right in front of me, right this minute!”

I took the phone down the hall and whispered, “My dad?”

“Yeah! Can you get down here? He’ll be here for a little while. Don’t tell your mother, now,—can you get down here?”

“Um. Yeah. At the store?”

I hung up and tried to get his face in my mind. I could sort of see him. Or maybe just hear him. Actually, I didn’t know if I’d even recognize him. Mum coughed and asked who was on the phone. I told her it was Sadie and I was going out to play. Then the buzzer went. It was Doreen. Mum was too sick for her right now, but I buzzed her up anyway.

I opened the door to Doreen wearing a silver coat with a bottle of wine under one arm and a white bag that smelled like food under the other. Tons of makeup on, like she thought she was Miss America, as usual. She barged past me, saying, “Hi hon,” and tromped her high heels to the bedroom. “Jesus, Eilleen, you look like shit. But looky here, doll, I brought you a little hair of the dog and a scrumptious barbecue chicken.” Mum made a noise like she was going to barf. Doreen untied her coat. “Christ, open the window; joint smells like something died.”

When I got to the store, my chest was killing and my spit tasted like blood from running so hard. I shoved open the door and the bell jingled. Everyone was at the back of the store, so I moved through the faded junk and old armchairs and lamps, throw rugs and wood cabinets, being careful not to bust anything. Someone whispered “Grace” behind me. I turned fast and knocked my head against a lampstand, then grabbed it before it wobbled right over. But there was no one there. There was no time for them now—no whispers, no voices. I turned around fast to make sure no one saw. I kept going to where Ray was chuckling and Sadie and Eddy were hollering at each other about whether white chocolate was really chocolate. Then the English Lady laughed in my head and said, “You are little more than a dog.” Something got knocked over and what sounded like a million beans bounced on the floor. “Shut up!” I was grateful for her sometimes, like now when everything was loud like Sadie and Eddy and the beads bouncing and whispers. Except that I said “Shut up” this time, not her, I think. Because it got so quiet I tripped and fell on one knee.

A man on a stool swivelled around and watched me get up. It was my dad all right. “Yeah, you kids shut up back there,” he said in a babyish voice over his shoulder at Sadie and Eddy. He grinned at me and stood up and held his arms out. I stayed where I was a second with my knee aching until I could breathe again and went to him, not knowing what to do with those arms—shake hands? Stand between them and get hugged? I couldn’t remember us hugging before.

Sadie and Eddy were quiet a second, one of them poured another handful of the buttons back in the jar and they both said hi. Ray grinned from me to my dad. “She’s big, eh! Skinny as a bloody Biafran, but she’s gettin big.”