Maxine (10 page)

When Maxine was that age she'd sit at a table in the Arts and Culture Centre kids' library writing in her notebook or poring over emergency handbooks.
How to Survive After a Plane Crash
.Maxine the Younger could have erected a sturdy bivouac. Knew, in theory at least, how to condense water out of a hole in the desert sand and onto a piece of plastic sheeting propped over it by a twig. Inside Maxine's backpack, next to her math book, she carried her emergency kit: a Twinings tea tin containing waterproof matches, pencil and candle ends, a small plastic cup, beef jerky, yellow ribbon, pocket knife, string, a clear groundsheet folded into a tiny square, and a red foil emergency blanket ditto. Most of these were scavenged but she had to ask for the beef jerky and the emergency blanket and matches. Maxine's mother didn't seem to mind about the beef jerky; she even offered a few peppermints. With this kit every morning, Maxine crossed the road, snuck along a driveway and into someone's yard, and hopped the fence into the grounds of Vanier Elementary.

Pass the dictionary would you Ky, it's right there by the monitor.

What word are you looking up?

A grownup word. Over here, buddy, please.

Here.What's the word?

Minutemen. I sort of know what they are, Maxine says untruthfully. But I want a precise definition.

Oh, are you writing about the American Revolution? Kyle swings his chair around and looks interested.

…No. Actually, I'm, um, having a little break and doing the crossword.

Aren't the minutemen the guys who had to be all ready to drop everything, like drop their stuff out in the fields and run off to be in the war with just a minute's notice?What does it say?

Um...yeah. Yeah, I guess that's pretty much what it says.

And then all of a sudden the season sweeps them up and even the Scrooges of the world are forced to take notice—Maxine brings Gail and Ted to a small Christmas Eve drop-in at the Larsens' at which Kyle is allowed to open the game and asks to go over and install it immediately on Maxine's computer and Barb says No. They finish the evening at Ted's brother's annual party. Maxine sleeps in on Christmas Day and then opens her half-bottle of champagne and some expensive orange juice, arranges them on a tray with a glass and brings them happily back to bed with a dictionary and the giant Christmas crossword. In the afternoon Kyle shows up brandishing his game. Supper is with Gail and Ted and Gail's father; the extended weekend between Christmas and New Year's includes at least one party a day, and by New Year's Eve, Maxine is telling Gail she's more than ready to go back to long, quiet days of peering at a screen.

I know, says Gail. It's so much effort, all that getting dressed up and eating and drinking.The thing is, though, this is it. After New Year's it's just months of blizzards and claustrophobia. So we have to make the effort now.

They're having coffee in the place where people used to have their hair cut. They have changed seats because Maxine does not want to see herself in the huge mirror, whereas Gail doesn't actually mind all that much.

Look, Gail, I need your help. I need a plot. I am so completely stuck. I'm afraid to start at it again because I don't know what to write. Please please please tell me a plot or I won't be able to carry on, and then I'll have wasted all this time.

Gail seems quite unsurprised at what appears to be a life-or-death confession. She does a kind of squinty-frowny thing that shows she's thinking hard.

OK, Max. The way I see it, you have three choices—

Wait, Maxine says. Halt. I changed my mind. I think I'll realize I can't do any of them and then I'll feel inadequate and discouraged.

Don't be so—

No, no, I mean it. I'm not kidding, don't tell me, OK?

Your first choice—

Lalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaa—

—is to brazen it out. If someone tells you there's no plot, act as if it's a complete surprise. Say:Hello? Frédérique has her hair done?

You can roll your eyes a little, like obviously they didn't read it closely enough.

Are you saying I should
pretend
there's a plot?

Basically. OK now another thing you could do is make one up. Give yourself ten minutes and write any kind of ridiculous story you like. Frédérique is taking her parrot to the vet and on the way her brakes fail and she has to be pried out of the car with the Jaws of Life and the, uh, the—the fireman, who pops her out of there, he's just been left by his wife, he dissolves in tears in her lap—she's fine, not a scratch, but the parrot's neck is broken, and—

Firefighter.

What?

They call them firefighters these days.

Oh no honey, this is a fireMAN.

It sounds good but I think the dead pet thing is you know kind of overdone in fiction— Fine. The parrot lives. It has a broken paw.

Claw.

Max, this is not your plot. I'm saying you make your plot up. It doesn't matter what your plot is. It's what you do with it.

Is there one choice left?

Option Three. Get the paper. Pick a story—pick a couple and squish them together. Now if you go this route, bear in mind that your novel will probably have to include, let me see, a politician, a death, a prize winner and amissing child...Hey, you've got the child nailed.

Oh, ha. Ha.

I don't know why you're so touchy about that. It's all over.

Look, this plot. Do you really think anything can happen?

It doesn't just happen, Max. You have to
make
it happen.

7

january 2003

t
his one looks rather good, says Kyle, who's just coming off an Enid Blyton phase. I found this one by accident. You win, and then off you go to Paris.

Really?Maxine leans across the arm of the couch and reads over his shoulder—
English language press...thriller competition...one week accommodation...heart of the City of Light
. Oh yeah, that looks nice.

Kyle visits most weekdays now. They've long since settled into a pattern. By three-thirty she has finished with the computer and shifted to the couch. Some days she hardly notices he's there—he'll come over and play one of his games and go again, and she spends the entire time on the couch with a pen behind her ear, scowling at printed drafts. Other times she's ready to take a break and have a cup of tea while she watches him excavate a relic or set up one of the weirdly ahistorical battles that pit the Aztecs against Hirohito's forces. Sometimes she'll have gone to the corner bakery and chosen them a treat before he arrives.

Remember when you didn't
know
you had any games on your computer? He still finds this hilarious although he never plays them. They aren't nearly as interesting as his own empire-building extravaganzas. He's funny, Maxine has learned, and quite knowledgeable about all kinds of things. The Sumerians, for example. Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, assorted Greek and Nordic deities. She helps with the details. (They're e-leet troops, Ky. Not e-light.— Oh yeah.) There are lots of things he won't talk about at all—try asking him what happened at school, for example—but once he starts explaining how to amass enough siege weapons to launch an attack on a castle, there's no shutting him up. He is her Extreme Researcher, the one who trawls the web looking for contests and writing tips. He's good at it.

The Eiffel Tower, Kyle says. Sweet. This is the one.

Maxine opens her mouth to explain the impossibility of it, but some part of her senses you're not supposed to say that sort of thing to children. You're not supposed to highlight impossibility or hopelessness. Maxine hadn't quite realized how relentlessly negative her patterns of thinking were, until she started filtering them for Kyle. She feels as if she's been given a second chance and she'd better not blow it this time. What are you supposed to say? If you work hard enough, your dreams will come true. Well she's not feeding him that bullshit. Cindy worked damn hard and she wound up emaciated, bald, and delusional.

Although that is perhaps not something to mention either.

Can I print it, the entry form? Kyle has the mouse hovering over the printer icon. He's turned his round face to look at her, his eyes big with the question, a fringe of light brown hair drifting down into his eyebrows, a smile so eager and ingratiating that she has to laugh.

Ok, boy, I guess so.

Great!

Uh, Extreme Researcher, you've done a great job. But I'm not making a commitment here, OK? Why don't you go look in the brown paper bag on the kitchen table.

Maxine?

Mm.

I'm only asking, but did they have lemon squares?

Dave has to buy Kyle skates for school. Maxine rarely sees Dave. Mostly they just say a quickHi as Kyle is passed fromone set of eyes to another. She's been to the Larsens' for Sunday dinner, Christmas Eve—the invitations she was unequal to the task of refusing.What she knows is what she has observed, and what Barb has told her. His voice is deep and Maxine sometimes has the urge to say Ssshh! as if a baby were asleep in the house. He works long hours downtown. Maxine doesn't know any more about the investigation at work. She wonders if Barb could be exaggerating. Barb does tend to see things in black and white, and to have strong feelings about them. Maybe it's amisunderstanding. Dave grew up in a small town where his dad had a store. They sold tools, seed, fertilizer, and other supplies to people like Barb's parents, and indeed to Barb's parents, and when it came time for high school in a slightly larger town nearby, all the young people in the area took the bus there together. The first year he pulled her ponytail. By the time they graduated he was carrying her books. They waited a long time for Kyle to come along and it was a tough birth.

Today Dave's a little late and Karen has already come to collect Maxine when he arrives. The three adults and Kyle stand in the street for a brief conversation. Maxine introduces Dave and Karen, and then Dave puts an arm around his son's shoulders and draws him away. Maxine and Karen start down the street.

Not from here, are they? says Karen.

Prairies.

That guy, his voice. It sounds familiar. What does he do? Karen has a bionic ear. She sings barbershop and doesn't forget an accent.

I can never remember the name of it. Some investment thing downtown.

I don't know his face but I've heard that voice.

Go on. Mainlanders all sound like that.

It would be nice to know if you were normal. If there were some easy test like putting a normalcy thermometer under your tongue and watching the red line creep into the range that says NORMAL in simple black caps, unadorned and reassuring. You could just carry on. But if the red line didn't stop there, if it carried on into the ABERRANT zone, requiring who knows what, or maybe even worse, maybe into FUTILE... It would be better not to have had the thermometer then.

The good thing about being hungover is that the remorse it produces may trigger significant change. Ever since her headache in the supermarket in December, Maxine has clocked in and out, ignored the phone, worked a concentrated five hours a day, evenings and weekends free. At first it's weird, artificial, and excruciating, but gradually she's gotten used to it. At the moment Maxine is on a lunch break and the guy in the pet store is telling her about dogs. Maxine waded through thigh-deep snow on the footpath that draws you in behind some long, thin back yards and spits you out into the Basilica parking lot. In the distance, on top of the Southside Hills, she could see evergreens outlined against the fragile winter sun like a chain of paper-doll trees. She came down the steep hill to the pet store to ask about a dog, and the guy has told her a number of things already and every timeMaxine looks on the verge of leaving the store he thinks of something else that could be useful. Often, what he has to say takes the form of a question. He is asking about Maxine's life so he can make an informed assessment of how a dog would fit into it. He leans on the store counter and looks earnestly pleasant.

So if it's mostly because you want a reason to get out and that, well great, because he'd need a walk every day. You can take snowshoes if necessary or, you know, the trailer park is clear all winter, now that's a nice little groomed loop up in the trees, in Pippy Park. Have you been up there? I might be going up there this weekend as a matter of fact, if you wanted a ride. You can rent skis or snowshoes.

Maxine leans on the counter and then away from it. She shifts her weight fromone leg to another so her torso tips fromside to side like an erratic metronome. She scratches the back of her neck and then wants to unscratch it.

When Maxine turns down onto her street, she can see Barb popping the trunk on the little black Mazda. Barb waves her over. Maxine can feel the snow compressing under her boots with every step. What has Kyle told her about karate, Barb wants urgently to know.

Nothing.

On Boxing Day a man was mowing his lawn farther down the street. Since then, it's been two blizzards a week and the snowbanks are taller than Maxine. The roadways are narrow, with snow piled high on either side.

I'm going to move him to a different programme, Barb says. That sensei is a nitwit. Kyle should have had his brown belt a long time ago. Dave doesn't seem to care that he's not advancing. I don't think he's getting enough one-on-one.

How many kids are in the group?

When a child in your class has a gift, you pay attention. You develop it. Kyle is an exceptional boy.

Barb's trunk has cardboard boxes to prevent the groceries from rolling around. She hands Maxine four plastic bags.

Would you mind? Since you're here. Barb hauls two big handfuls of bags up and out of the car. They climb the concrete steps together and set the groceries at the top. Barb opens the screen door. Thanks, Maxine. Coffee?

Oh no, thanks, I actually have to—

You know, I hardly see you these days. Barb locks Maxine in place with iron green eyes. I'll have to kidnap you, she says, and drag you over for a glass of wine sometime soon.