The Birthday Lunch (14 page)

Claudia looks at her father. “Dad, the telephone.”

Hal says, “You answer.”

“It’s Welland. You answer.”

“All right.”

Hal plods to the kitchen and picks up the phone.

“Harold, it’s Welland.”

“Hello, Welland.”

“Harold, I want to say how sorry I am.”

“Thank you, Welland.”

“Sudden deaths are the most difficult for …”

“The rest of us,” Hal says.

“Lily was wonderful. She was …”

“Yes, she was.” Hal does not want to hear his brother say another word about Lily. He hardly knew her. If he thought she was so wonderful why didn’t he visit more often?

“Lanie told me there will be a reception on Sunday. If it’s all right with you I will fly up on Saturday.”

“Well, sure it’s all right.” Hal is astonished and inexplicably grateful.

“Unfortunately, Lanie can’t come.”

Hal is relieved. He was close to Welland’s first wife, Marilyn, who supported Welland through a four-year residency while he was having an affair with Lanie, who was married to another resident.

“I’ll rent a car at the airport and drive to Sussex. Where should I stay?”

Hal pulls himself together. “Adair’s,” he says, “the reception will be at Adair’s. You could stay there.”

“Fine. I wanted to speak to you first before making a reservation.”

When did his brother become so considerate?

Hal tells Welland that Matt or Claudia could pick him up at the airport.

“Thanks, but I’m not going to bother your family about transportation. I’ll rent a car.”

“Whatever suits you best,” Hal says, and hanging up the telephone, he returns to the living room.

“She got away with it,” Claudia says.

“Who got away with what?”

“The constable’s wife. She and the police inspector ate the leg of lamb she used to murder her husband.”

“Welland arrives on Saturday and will be staying at Adair’s. He’ll call us when he gets in.”

“It’s good that he’s coming,” Claudia says.

No longer interested in the movie, Hal says that he is going to bed.

“I’ll bring you a sleeping pill.”

After her father is settled, Claudia takes a sleeping pill and to avoid sleeping in the enclosed porch, she makes up a bed on the sofa. Settling herself between the covers, she falls asleep listening to the soft thump and pop of fireworks bursting into the night sky above the town. Later, much later, the hot rods race past the windows, but by then Claudia is fast asleep.

Since leaving the obituary on the dining room table, Matt has poured himself a second round of coffee and has a plate of pancakes warming in the oven. “Something smells good,” a voice says from the kitchen doorway and there stands Hal in his bathrobe. Matt asks his father how many pancakes he can eat. “One pancake is enough for me,” Hal says. Matt slides pancakes onto two plates and sets them on the table along with butter and syrup. They eat in silence and afterwards Hal lights a cigarette and blows the smoke through the open window where it vanishes in the grey light of day. The air, heavy with unspent rain, muffles the sound of early traffic. “Sleep okay, Dad?” Matt asks.

“All right,” Hal says. He doesn’t tell Matt that once again during the night he was bolted awake by the picture of Lily lying on the road and sat on the edge of the bed until the picture faded and he could lie down again. Fearful of being ambushed by the same nightmare Hal tried to stay awake, but he must have slept because it was the sound of Matt’s footsteps in the hallway that woke him.

Before Matt can ask Hal if he wants more coffee, he hears footsteps on the back stairs. The door opens and there is Laverne wearing a fresh blouse and slacks, her curls brushed out and her face made up. “Good morning, Auntie,” Matt says. “Would you like a couple of pancakes?” Like Hal, she tells him one pancake will be enough. “It’s good to see you, Laverne,” Hal says, and he means it. Although he and Laverne have had their differences, he has been troubled that she has kept to herself so much since the accident.

Claudia appears soon after wearing a loose green dress
and sandals, wet hair braided and coiled. “Hello, sleepy head,” Hal says.

“Well, well,” she says, grinning at Matt. “I can hardly believe it. My brother knows how to cook.”

“I’ll have you know that sometimes I make Saturday breakfast
and
Sunday dinner,” Matt says. “Do you want me to flip you a couple of pancakes?”

“Sure.”

The three of them watch as Matt flips one pancake and then another, catching them on a plate. Claudia asks how he learned to do that.

“I taught myself. Anyone for another pancake?” Matt waits. “No? Then I resign.”

“Leaving me to do the dishes,” Claudia says, but good-naturedly. The mood in the kitchen is companionable. The pancakes and coffee, the casual banter has granted them a temporary reprieve from sorrow.

The doorbell chimes.

“I’ll get it.” Matt goes down the front stairs and opens the door to a teenager wearing a buttoned-up shirt, a heavy tweed jacket and a brown felt cap. The teenager snatches off the cap and stares at the doormat. Without the cap the cropped hair and low forehead give him a scrunched-up look as if a concrete block has been set on top of his head. “I come to say I’m sorry,” he says. Matt asks what he is sorry for.

“For hitting Mrs.…” Groping for the name, he fiddles with the cap. “The woman crossing the street.”

“The woman crossing the street,” Matt says, his voice
coming from far away. “Are you telling me you are the truck driver who hit my mother?”

There is a flutter of pale eyelashes and the teenager nods.

Is this possible? This teenager is a runt, barely five feet tall. Matt asks his age.

“Eighteen.”

Not quite a man.

“Your name?”

“Curtis Parlee.”

“You do know, Curtis Parlee,” Matt says, his voice distant and cold, “that you killed my mother.”

“Did I?” Curtis has yet to meet his eye. “I knew I hit her but …”

“You know you killed her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Matt says, fighting back the urge to wring Curtis Parlee’s neck. Above him in the hallway, Matt hears his sister asking who the visitor is. “Curtis Parlee,” Matt says, “the truck driver who killed Mom.”

“What did you say?” Claudia cannot believe her ears, she cannot believe that this puny specimen killed their mother. But when Matt tells her again, she glares at Curtis and says, “You had better come upstairs.”

Curtis’s eyes dart sideways and for a moment it looks as if he might bolt, but he climbs the stairs, one miserable step at a time, Matt behind him, Claudia in front, two sheepdogs herding him through the dining room and into the kitchen where Hal and Laverne sit on opposite sides of the table. Matt places a warning hand on his father’s shoulder.
“Dad,” he says, “this is Curtis Parlee, the truck driver who killed Mom.”

Curtis hangs his head. “I come to say I’m sorry I done it. I never did it on purpose.”

Hal peers at him. Has he heard right? Is this the person who hit Lily? He hardly looks old enough to drive a truck. What was he doing behind the wheel?

“But you were going twice the speed limit on purpose,” Matt says and asks Curtis how long he has been driving a gravel truck.

“A year.”

“Ever hit anybody before?”

Curtis Parlee shakes his head.

Switching tactics, Matt asks Curtis where he lives.

“Sussex Corner.”

“You walked from there?”

“My mother drove me.”

“Is that because the police took away your driver’s licence?”

“No.” Curtis stares at the oak floor.

“No what?”

“The police never took away my licence.” With a frightened glance at his interrogator, Curtis says, “I need it for my job.”

“Your truck-driving job.”

“Don’t bully him, Matthew,” Laverne says. She approaches Curtis Parlee.

Claudia watches as her aunt takes hold of Curtis Parlee’s jacket lapels and says, “It took courage for you to come here today.” If only her aunt had stopped there, but she didn’t stop.
Still holding the lapels, Laverne says, “I want you to know, Curt, that the accident wasn’t your fault.”

His eyes widen. Has he heard right? Is the old biddy sticking up for him? She failed him in French and here she is telling him the accident wasn’t his fault.

Matt steps between Curtis and Laverne. “So whose fault was it?”

Laverne remembers Lily getting out of the Volkswagen and scooting across the crosswalk to the Creamery. She remembers waiting in the shade of the elm tree for her sister to return with the ice cream. She doesn’t remember falling into a doze, but she remembers hearing a blaring horn and squealing brakes and glancing over her shoulder, she saw her sister in the crosswalk, carrying an ice cream cone in either hand. “It was Lily’s fault,” Laverne says. “She ran in front of the truck.”

Matt is astounded. “How can you say that, Laverne? Did you see her run in front of the truck?”

“No, but Lily could be careless. Often she didn’t pay attention to where she was going.”

“You are confused, Laverne. Look at the facts,” Matt says. “From where you were parked you couldn’t have seen the accident because the truck came between you and the crosswalk. According to a witness, Mom was in the crosswalk and this driver was going so fast he couldn’t stop. You should take a look at the tire marks on the pavement that run straight over the crosswalk, no attempt to swerve to the side and miss Mom. Furthermore, after the crosswalk, the tire marks run another sixty feet, proving that Curtis, or Curt as you call him, was
driving at least sixty miles an hour, twice the speed limit. And would you believe it?” By now Matt is shouting. “After killing Mom, he still has his driver’s licence!”

Matt hears the faraway voice of his sister. “Back off, Matt,” she is saying. “Back off.” Matt feels her hand on his arm. “That’s enough for now,” Claudia says, and turning to Curtis Parlee, she tells him he had better go. Head down, Curtis leaves the kitchen, walks through the dining room and down the front stairs, Claudia at his heels. Before he can open the door, she opens it for him and stands watching as he gets into a small grey car parked at the driveway entrance, a dark-haired woman at the wheel.

Claudia’s anger gives way to despair and leaning against the closed door, she covers her eyes. What kind of a god would permit a stupid kid to get behind the wheel of a vehicle,
any
vehicle, let alone a gravel truck? A futile question. No wonder her mother did not believe in God.

Using the bannister to pull herself upstairs, Claudia makes her way back to the kitchen. By now her aunt has retreated downstairs but her father and brother are still in the kitchen, Hal’s forehead wrinkled in confusion, Matt’s hands knuckled together on the table. “Curtis’s mother was waiting for him in the car,” Claudia says. “She probably put him up to coming here.”

“You think so?” Hal says.

“I doubt Curtis Parlee thought of coming here himself,” Claudia says. “What do you think, Matt?”

“I think you’re right.”

Hal looks at his son. “What do you make of Laverne? Why would she say a fool thing like that?”

“I don’t know what to make of it, Dad. The fact is that she couldn’t have seen the accident.”

“Then why did she say she did?”

“Who knows?” Matt says. “Who understands Laverne? She has always been a mystery to me. I’ve never understood why, for instance, when we were in France, she drove off in the Citroën one morning and left me stranded in Lagrasse for the day. When she eventually showed up, I asked her why she had left me there, and she said that I’d spoiled her day by sleeping in.”

“She was teaching you a lesson,” Claudia says.

Matt holds up a thumb and finger measuring the space between them. “I was this close to hopping on a bus to Paris.” Matt looks at his father. “Dad, would you mind if Claudia and I went to the police station? We need to find out if they’ve followed up on the accident.”

“Someone should go,” Hal says while behind him on the wall, the tanager sings the hour. Twelve o’clock noon and already he is tired. “I’m not up to going myself.”

Matt looks at his sister. “But you’ll come?”

“I’ll come after you have written the obituary,” Claudia says.

“It’s on the dining room table. And to finish it, I need some facts.” Matt retrieves the notepad from the dining room then asks his father the maiden name of his maternal grandmother.

“Leake.”

“What speciality did Mom undertake in Boston?”

“Ear, nose and throat.”

“Do you know Laverne’s middle name?”

“Agnes. It’s on the mortgage agreement.”

“One last question. Mom’s stepmother. What was her name and is she still alive?”

“As I recall her name is Eunice and she wasn’t a stepmother. She and Lou didn’t marry until after Lily left home. The last time Lily mentioned Eunice, she was in a senior’s home in Saskatoon. I wouldn’t include her in the obituary.”

“Where would I find a snapshot of Mom?”

“You know your mother never liked having her picture taken. But I have a photo of her in my wallet. You can use it but I want it back.”

“Be sure to mention that the reception at Adair’s will be on Sunday between two and four p.m.,” Claudia says and turns to her father. “Dad, your brother is coming all this way and I think we should invite him to the family dinner we’re having after the reception. And in spite of what has happened, we have to include Laverne.”