Mud Girl (12 page)

There's a thunk at the front door, the phone books that are delivered every summer. The heavy white pages book that
includes all the city listings and the slim local white and yellow. Here there are job possibilities.

She sits at the table, with a bowl of Muffets and milk between herself and the book, and flips through the pages. She sees a full-page ad for the lunch place, Mack's Coffee. It's in the Industrial Park, walking distance. Oh well. Rule out that one. There are a lot of other businesses in the Park. Maybe she should just walk there and take the résumés. Dad used to work there, at the Milwood Homes place. Abi doesn't like the idea of running into any of his old workmates. Hadn't thought of
that
when she phoned the coffee shop. Maybe it's just as well she never got to the interview. Still. There are only so many jobs around here, and if she gets something that doesn't require bus fare, it's like earning an extra half-hour's wages.

There's the recycling place, the ice arena – they probably have a concession. How about driving the Zamboni? Ha! The tire store – can't be anything there for her. All those auto places.
RV
rentals. She could work the desk and then, when she hears someone plotting a trip to the Maritimes, she could stow away.
Dreamin'!
Then there's all those big windowless buildings with
BIG
orange or red names – words like
BAMCO
or
LIDSCON
. Who knows what. Does anyone actually like working in those places? Maybe they really enjoy the lunch break at Mack's. Maybe she should go and talk to the manager,
and explain to him about Jude, and having to look after Dyl. No, she couldn't; it would be just too embarrassing.

She plops her bowl and spoon in the sink, rinses them out, puts them in the dish rack. There's a paper boat caught in the wires of the rack. She pulls it out.

She crumples it into the garbage.

Dad doesn't notice Abi passing in front of his chair, going into his room, rustling through his clothes closet. There's another skirt. Denim. Almost new. Here's the white shirt. The juice stain still shows. She goes through the other clothes and finds a summer dress she doesn't remember. It'll do. It'll have to.

She takes it to her room and puts it on. Her mirror doesn't allow her to see anything below her waist, so she can't really see what the dress looks like, unless she stands on her tiptoes, close to the mirror. She's suddenly conscious of her hair, untrimmed and longer than it's ever been. She remembers how Mum always pulled it into a loose sort of ponytail, doubled up in an elastic, and she tries to do the same. It'll have to do.

She puts the résumés in the folder that the Career and Personal Planning teacher gave out, and slings the purse over her shoulder. Last: Cinnamon lipstick.

It's about twenty minutes to the Park. What a thing – to call it a Park. On her way, she passes two houses, with windows
and doors boarded and development signs out front. That would be her house – if they didn't live in it. If Abi's mother had had her way, that would be their house. And where would they be?
Where would we be, Mum, if it had all been up to you? Would you have taken us with you?
The answer is obvious, but Abi doesn't want to let the word into her head.

The parking lot of the ice arena is filling with cars, and kids – mostly boys – are piling out of the vehicles, geared up for hockey.
SUMMER SKILLS SCHOOL
, reads the large sign over the door. The kids look about seven or eight. “You have to go,” Abi overhears a mother say. “I've paid over three hundred dollars for this!”

Abi steals a look at the boy's face. His expression says “So?”

“And I have to go to work,” adds the mother. She climbs back into the car. “I'll pick you up at four.” She zooms off, leaving the kid at the door, hockey bag at his feet. He waits until the car is out of sight, then with his big hockey gloves he twice swipes at the ground where his stick has fallen. Abi picks it up for him.

“Thanks,” he says, not looking her in the eye. Then makes a swipe at the bag. Abi picks it up, slings it over her shoulder, and opens the door for him. He lumbers in on his skate guards.

A man meets them at the opening of a hallway. “Adam!” he greets the boy. “You're with us again this year.”

The boy mumbles something and grabs his bag from Abi before he clumps into a dressing room. The man turns to her. “You must be the big sister.”

She shakes her head. “No. I'm just…looking for a job,” she blurts out. “I was…thinking of the concession stand.”

The man is moving away. “No openings there,” he says. “Too many schoolgirls working there. We hardly have enough hours to go around. I believe we do need a bartender, though, up in the restaurant.” He's walking off to the dressing room.

“Bartender?” she echoes.

“Leave a résumé upstairs,” he calls over his shoulder as he disappears into the room. As the door closes, she glimpses red and blue uniforms.

“I'm not…”

But he's gone before she can tell him she's not old enough. She reaches up and touches the ponytail of hair, tugs at a strap of the dress. So. He thinks she's old enough to tend bar. He can't have looked very closely at her. Still. She feels a bit strange, walking back out into the warm summer day. She's never thought that she looks older than she is. No one at school has ever noticed. If so, they've never said anything. But then, when does she ever speak to them?

Abi leaves résumés at three of the windowless places.

She's passing Mack's Coffee, her head turned away from the window, when she hears her name.

“Abi Jones!” Someone has stepped out from the door of the coffee shop. Takes her a minute to recognize him: Seth MacGregor. He worked with Dad at Milwood Homes. He used to come around after Dad was laid off. Even when the others stopped. Seems to Abi he even came once after Mum left.

“It is Abi, isn't it?” He peers at her, looking somewhat mystified, nervous even, and she realizes she needs to say something.

“Yes.”

Now Seth is beginning to look as if he regrets saying anything. “So. Um.” He waves his thumb into the door of the coffee shop, just to let her know someone's waiting for him.

She steps back.
Go if you want.

“How's your dad?” he asks. Because he has to. “He's…” What can she say? “He's the same.” He'll know what that means.

He nods vigorously. “Well. That's…how it is then, I guess.” He gives her a funny, tired-looking smile.

“How are you?” she remembers to ask.

More nodding. “Fine, girl, fine. Took a while, but I got a position at West Coast Cedar.” A happy flash of smile, then he remembers who he's talking to and he looks somewhat embarrassed and clears his throat. “Your dad will find some-thing…when he's ready. A man of his abilities can't go too long without something.”

Abilities.

“Want to join us?” he asks.

She looks in Mack's and sees half a dozen vaguely familiar faces. “I can't,” she mumbles. “I'm busy at the moment.”

Seth squints at her with washed-out blue eyes. “That's right,” he says. “I heard you were looking for a job. Mack said a word to me…about an interview…” His voice falls away. Now he
really
has nothing to say.

“Bye,” she says. One of them has to.

“See you around,” he says.

So. Mack told Seth she had a job interview. She can hear him now: “Yep. She's like her old man when it comes to work.”

Her face burns with shame.

She can imagine Seth saying, “At least she tries,” and old Mack harrumphing at that.

Abi hurries away, tries to run from the memory pushing into her head. They'd all come over that day. Gotten their pink slips and gone to Billy's for a beer. Mum had made sandwiches. Abi remembers how Mum set the plate down with a thunk and walked out the back door, to the greenhouse, and she stayed there for hours, until long after the last of them had left, after all their EI papers had been filled out, until every last rotten anecdote of a rotten boss had been threshed out. Abi remembers Dad's voice, his strong laugh. He didn't have a
rotten story – he'd just been one of the numbers sent out the door – but he knew exactly what the others were talking about.

After they'd left, there'd been silence. Was that the last time Abi had heard his laugh? That's when Dad moved into that chair. Seems he's never gotten out. The silence settled over all three of them. Even the river rumble seemed subdued – as if Abi had on those big old earmuffs, as if she'd wrapped herself in a thick wool felt blanket. Mum was on the other side of that blanket. Maybe in a blanket of her own. She always did feel a little pulled-away after that. That was the beginning.

Abi had gone down to the greenhouse as the sun was setting.

“Uncle Bernard,” Mum had said, not looking at her. “He's going to be Uncle Bernard.”

Uncle Bernard had lived his entire life in this house. He was sixty when he died, and left it to Dad. There was no one else to leave it to.

“Who?” Abi asked, even though she knew what Mum's answer would be.

“Your father.” She peered through the floorboards, to the river. “He's going to turn into Uncle Bernard now, and I don't want to be married to Uncle Bernard,” she said. That's how it had been; that was the other time Abi saw Mum cry.

“I don't remember much about Uncle Bernard,” Abi had said. Mum had looked at her with sad, sad eyes.

“He was a dreamer,” she said. “Always sending off letters in bottles, never going anywhere – when he did go somewhere, he was always late. He always wore these old clothes – rags, really – never bought any new clothes.”

“Why?” asked Abi.

Mum shook her head. “He said new clothes were itchy. So. He just sat around this little rotting house. And then he died.” Mum looked up at the blue of the back wall as she finished speaking and her eyes could've set the whole rambling shack on fire.

A giant mill truck sweeps by Abi at the side of the road, and Abi remembers how that look scared her. Maybe that look was one of the first answer-pieces Mum gave her. She really did loathe the house. It wasn't home. Nothing in it was
home
.

Abi can see the house now. She wishes she had other shoes, more comfortable for all this walking. She remembers something else now. One of few memories of Uncle Bernard. Memories of him aren't complete: they're usually just an image, or a snatch of song, the feel of a soft flannel shirt in a hug. This memory is Christmas, and mostly what Abi remembers is candles – everywhere. She's never been in a church, but since that Christmas she's been quite certain that
must be what it's like. If it's not, that's what it should be like. She recalls the walls and the windows behind all those candles, the layout of the place. It was the house she lives in now.

Makes her stop for a minute, pause to look at this place she's grown up in. Really?
This
was the candle house?

She pushes the front door and the screen slams behind. Dad turns in his chair.

“Mary.” He speaks in a clear voice, clear as a crystal bell, cutting as a fine-edged metal blade.

Her mother's name makes Abi go cold.

But when she looks at him, his eyes aren't on her; they're on the dress, and then she understands.

By the time she's halfway across the floor, she's pulled the elastic from her hair, and as soon as she's inside the bedroom door, the dress is off. She pulls an old sweatshirt over her head and gathers up the sundress. She leans out the window and throws the dress down into the water. She doesn't have to run to the other side of the house to watch it disappear. She knows exactly how it looks, the river pulling it, pushing at it, the cloth swaying, rushing away. She buries her head on her arms there on the windowsill, and hair spills over her face, the summer wind catching it.

She hears a sound she's never heard in all these months. If Abi thought she went cold before, now she's ice.

Her father crying. No. Sobbing. Dad sobbing.

Abi holds on to the sill until he stops and it feels safe again.

Manila Envelope

D
ad is leaning over the railing, looking into the water below. He'll be there for a while, Abi knows.

She goes into his room. The window is closed even on this hot day, and the curtains hang across the window. It smells musty-warm. Abi would like to pull aside the curtains and open the windows, but she doesn't. The light blanket on the bed is rumpled on one side. The other side is perfectly smooth. How does he do that? Sleep without pulling at the blankets that used to cover Mum?

She opens the door of the narrow wardrobe that is his closet, and the hinges squeak.

He should have done this months ago, no? She reaches into the far end and gathers Mum's clothes into her arms.
Mum's not going to wear a one of them now, and they can't be doing him any good. Abi takes them into her own room, and then goes back for the bits and pieces – the wedding shoes in their box, the belt, a scarf or two. She didn't take much with her, as far as Abi can tell. That would make you think it was a spontaneous decision, but Abi knows better now.