Mud Girl (10 page)

“Fridge,” Abi reminds him. Click, click, click, go the needles. She likes the sound. She suddenly realizes the tv's off. “Hey, what's with…” she starts to say, but then shuts up. Why remind him?

He sits at the table. Still seems to be looking for something or somebody.

“Dad.” Abi speaks as if he's a songbird just landed on the windowsill. “Dad, eat.”

He does, tentatively.

They sit, almost like any other daughter and father, eating breakfast. “Did you sleep well?” she asks.

It's supposed to be the question the parent asks the teenager, and it's supposed to annoy the teenager.

“Huh?” he asks. “Oh. Yeah.”

Does he remember what I just said?

“I could make you a cup of coffee,” she says, her mind scrambling to think of where some might be. “We could sit out back.” Dangle our legs over the edge, listen to the water on the move.

He stares at her blankly. She wishes he'd wear his glasses. She imagines what she looks like to him. Something like the way his one and only honeymoon photo looks to her: fuzzy.

The ring of the phone is so loud they both jump. Is this the call that was supposed to come yesterday? Is he going to say something about forgetting? What is she going to say? Should she just let it go? She doesn't get it until the third ring, and she's still not sure.

“Abi?”

“Jude.”

“Are we still on for today?” he asks.

That was yesterday.

“We can drive in to Vancouver, walk in the sun, have an ice cream.”

That must mean Dyl will be with them. Probably means ice cream will end up on her shirt.

“Sure,” is all she says. Dad's not even going to notice she's gone.

There's a summer skirt somewhere in Mum's drawer, and a
T
-shirt, comfortably stretched and white. She knots it in front. Pulls on sandals. Pretends her hands aren't shaking.
He's just a boy.
Pushes the knitting under her pillow, though she has no intention, ever, to let Jude see this hole of a room.

Dad's still sitting at the table when she comes out. Not waiting for that coffee she mentioned, is he? He's looking toward the door, his face with no expression. None Abi can read. What's he thinking when he's like that? Almost seems to be listening to voices in his head. Whose voices? Mum's? Abi's when she was little? His own mother's? Father's? Or is he just sitting, listening to the silence, now that all those people are no longer here?

She looks through the screen door. No blue pickup in sight. Not yet.

In the cupboard there's a small jar of instant coffee. She puts the kettle on the stove. Jude will probably be here before the water boils. Dad won't miss the coffee, she suspects.

A watched pot never boils.

If you watch it long enough, it does.

She makes the coffee and sets it in front of Dad. He says nothing at first, then he wraps both of his hands around it as if he's cold on this hot July day. His hands are big, capable-looking. He murmurs a thank you, as if he's suddenly remembered some part of himself.

“You're welcome.” She watches as he slowly drinks the coffee. After each sip he peers into the mug, hands still tight to the ceramic. Makes her think of a little kid – Dyl, with his glass of juice.

Maybe that's why Jude is taking a long time: something's happening with Dyl.

Then she hears the churn of gravel, the honk of a horn. Dad looks up. “I always said, if a boy comes calling for my girl with a honk of the horn, I'll…” He drifts off, trying to remember his threat. Then he goes on. “I'll…rip out his wires. That's what I always said.”

He's left Abi speechless. Motionless, too. She can't seem to move from where she is – halfway to the door, but he makes no move either; so much for his threat.

Jude's horn sounds again. Twice. Impatient.

She's out the door and hauling herself up the passenger side of the raised pickup.

“Starting to wonder if you were going to come through that door,” says Jude. He's smiling, but she's not.

“I was starting to wonder if you were going to
come
!” she says.

He reaches over and clasps her kneecap. “Didn't think I'd stand you up, did you?”

“No.” She pauses. “Not really.”

He starts the truck. “My mum's sick again. I had to settle Dyl down with a video and convince Mum she'd be okay for a while.”

“Why didn't you bring him then?”

He'd put his hand to the stick shift to get into gear, but
abruptly he reaches out to Abi and crushes her in his arms. She can hear his heart beating fast, she can smell deodorant, a faint smell of smoke, paint thinner, and yes, a whiff of apple juice. There's an urgency in his hug.

“I was hoping we could be alone,” he says as they move apart, and he shifts into first with such a determined push, pulls the truck out into the road, shifts to second, quickly to third.

She's certain he can hear her heart clear across the truck over the open-window traffic noise. She looks out her window. Isn't this what ballet dancers do to keep themselves from falling over when they turn quick pirouettes? They fix on a point, find it with their eyes, hold on it, hold, hold…

“How about you?” asks Jude.

“Me what?”

“Weren't you hoping we could be alone?”

“Me. Yeah. Sure. Of course,” she adds.
Fix on a point. Hold. Holding.
She can't look at him right now; she's too full, might overflow.
Yes, of course that's what I wanted.

For some reason, she can see Mum, that time she cried. She pushes the mental picture away.

“You're shivering!” says Jude. “What's with that?”

“Just the cool air blowing in the window, I guess.”

He's doing that looking-at-her again.

“Watch the road; you make me nervous.”

She thinks of Horace's bus driving.
Why are all these people converging in my head at just this time? GO!!

They drive all the way into the city, where different smells rise from the summer pavement, where there's a pulse.

“Let's go to the ice cream place at the beach,” Jude says, tapping the steering wheel in time with the music.

They drive, looking for a place to park. The beach is covered with people. There's the springy thwacks of tennis balls in the courts, and a guitar picks out a tune – she can hear it through thin strains of radio. Jude takes her hand as they walk slowly between the strolling and wheeling people. He walks ahead of her as they thread through to the food stand, and she follows, their arms stretched.

“Does the vanilla have the little black specks?” she asks the boy behind the counter.

“Black specks?” Jude raises a brow.

But the boy knows what she means. He grins. “You mean, is it
real
vanilla! Yes, it is.” He gives her an extra scoop.

Jude orders black cherry gelato, whatever that is.

On the other side of the food stand, there's a grassy hill. The benches are full, but there is a big tree, too broad to wrap your arms around, with thick roots bunching into the ground. “Let's sit there.” Abi leads the way, sits on the ground, back to the trunk, elbow resting on a root. There's enough room for Jude beside her. It's comfy; the shape of the tree, and
the late afternoon sun. Jude stands over her, gives the tree a quick look, then shades his eyes to see farther down the beach.

“I told some friends I'd be here,” he says, and starts off. She feels suddenly foolish in her tree roots and moves quickly to stand. The
T
-shirt snags on rough bark, and she tugs at it, hears the fabric open. Jude is halfway down the beach. She hurries after him. “I thought you wanted to be alone,” she says, as she reaches him.

He flashes that smile, that brilliant, beautiful smile. “I want my friends to meet you.”

She reminds herself not to skip.

There's a group playing volleyball, who look as if they've been here all day. Girls in tankinis, surf shorts; boys with bare chests, red cresting their shoulders.

“Jude!” Two of the girls cry out. “Man – where you been?” says a boy with a bleached flat-top. “We been waiting for you!”

Jude wraps an arm around Abi. “You know how it is,” he says.

The volleyball boy looks at her as if he hasn't noticed her before. And he probably hasn't. “Oh, yeah. How it is,” he repeats, and smirks at her. The two girls come closer, look at Abi carefully, unsmiling. Another girl nears too, but she's staring at Jude, and a puppy wriggles under her arm. She's not
letting him go, though, no matter how much he wriggles. “Where's the Dyl-boy?” is her question.

“With Grandma,” says Jude shortly.

“I brought Mortimer here to play with him,” the girl goes on. She's the only one of the group not in a bathing suit. Rather, she's wearing an old sweatshirt, with the sleeves cut off in deep circles, and a piece of Indian fabric tied around her round hips. Her legs are sturdy. The puppy fits easily in her hands. She turns her eyes on Abi. The girl's eyes are round too, and big.

A feeling comes over Abi, a feeling she wants to put words to:
No matter where this girl lives, you feel at home there. If you're a friend.

But the girl says nothing to Abi.

“You're on,” says the flat-top boy, throwing the volleyball to Jude. And that's it: Jude's out in the sand, and it's just Abi and…

When they're standing alone, the girl holds out her hand. “I'm Amanda.”

“Amanda,” Abi says. “I was just thinking of you as Mortimer's Mum-person. Now I don't have to.”

Amanda laughs, a loud, wonderful laugh. “You're all right!” she says. “So what are you doing hanging out with Jude Arden?” There's a coldness in her last words.

The suddenness of the question surprises Abi. Before she can think of an answer, Amanda asks, “You've met his son, Dyl?”

Abi nods.

Amanda scratches the pup's ears, floppy and golden. “Sit with me,” she says. She has a bright red blanket, looks like an old bedspread, with a pile of softcover books spread at one end. Every one of them looks as if it's been read many times. One cover has been torn off and then mended with tape.

“A dictionary!” Abi says. There are pieces of paper hanging out the edges, covered with ink and pencil scribbles.

“I've found a few good words in there,” says Amanda.

Abi nods, and picks up a book of poetry. Someone named Jan Zwicky.

“Is it good?”

“Oh yeah,” is the answer. “You like poetry?”

“It kinda scares me. But I do read the dictionary.”

“Nothing to be scared of.”

“Not understanding something,” Abi says, “can be scary.”

Amanda picks up the dictionary with one hand, and takes the book of poetry from her with her other. “Poetry's sort of like…a dictionary of emotion. You can find definitions of stuff that's hard to define, and you can understand it. Sometimes it's just not anything you're looking for…then, you say you don't understand it.”

Amanda had put Mortimer down on the blanket. Now he makes a curious snuffling noise, and they realize he's fallen asleep, and is snoring. “Puppies are babies,” says Amanda.
“They nap just the same.” She sits beside the puppy and strokes him gently with two fingers. “Having Mortimer makes me wonder what it's like to have a little guy like Dyl.” Her hand doesn't stop moving, but she does stare out to the volleyball net. “Maybe I'd run away too,” she says, almost more to herself than to Abi.

Abi wants to make sure she understands Amanda. “You're talking about Dyl's mother?”

She nods slowly. Then says, “But I couldn't – I just couldn't run.” She pulls the sleeping Mortimer onto her lap, upsets his sleep. “That's why,” she says fiercely, holding the poor waking puppy, “that's why I will not get pregnant. I won't.”

“Ever?”

She shakes her head. Again, her movements are jerky, vehement. “I don't think so, no. It's such a crappy world to bring another kid into!”

She's talking downward, to Mortimer, and Abi's glad for it; she's shaking suddenly.

“You think that?” she asks. “That the world is that bad?”

Amanda stares at her, and Abi wonders if anyone ever makes her stop and think about what she says. Finally, Amanda speaks. “Well, I know
I
don't want to make one more kid for this place.” She reaches out to scratch the puppy's ears and he twitches in his sleep.

“Why don't you just let him sleep?” Abi asks.

“That's what they say, isn't it?” Amanda laughs. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“That's not what I meant,” Abi says, but Amanda's not listening. Abi doesn't like her laughter. She doesn't remember ever liking and disliking one person so many times in such a short time as this girl. She wants to grab the puppy from her arms, knock her over, and run away. Instead, she picks up the dictionary, and says, “I'm going for a walk,” but when she's one log away, down the beach, she falls into a jog. Then she goes until the bunch of them – the skinny Barbie girls, Amanda, the volleyball gang – are out of sight. Here, the beach narrows, the sand is gone. It is rocks, rocks with edges and rocks rounded from tumbling, that she sits on with her feet in the water. She looks out across the water to the other side of the inlet, to where she can see expansive rooftops of homes with wide, deep windows. Of course, it's too far away to see anything in the glass, but Abi imagines what it must be to be on the other side of the window…bare feet in thick carpet, hands wrapped around a mug of real coffee, looking out to the view of the water, the city, the wooded Stanley Park, everything green and blue, and everything else blue and green. No river brown. No grey cement industrial buildings.