The Geranium Girls (8 page)

It was very dark as Beryl carefully made her way back to their camp near the stage. She had gone for popcorn, lots of it, and she left a little trail behind her as she walked.

For a few minutes she couldn’t find the spot because no one was there. Not even Yolanda in her wheelchair.

Then she saw Wally, hugging his knees, staring not at the stage, but at something in his own head that Beryl was glad she didn’t have to see.

She sat. Los Lobos were playing “Down by the River.” She munched on the popcorn and offered some to Wally, who shook his head. The popcorn was stale. Beryl considered returning it to the popcorn man for a refund.

“Where is everyone?” she asked. “Where’s Yolanda?”

“They’ve taken her to the loo,” Wally said.

Everything suddenly seemed a bit weird to Beryl and she couldn’t settle in to the music.

“Down by the river, I shot my baby,” Los Lobos sang.

“They’ve taken Yolanda to the loo,” Wally repeated, louder this time.

“Yeah. Thanks, Wally. I heard you the first time!” Beryl stood up and someone behind her heaved a sigh.

“Sorry,” she said, gathering up her popcorn. She had decided to return it; she had spent seven dollars. If the popcorn man made a fuss, she would write a letter to the editor.

As Beryl moved through the crowd she kept an eye out for her friends. She wished Stan would appear.

She stood at the edge of the food area, rethinking her decision about the popcorn. It made her uncomfortable. Maybe if she was pleasant, yet firm, the popcorn man wouldn’t give her too much trouble.

There was a lineup.

Joe Paine was in it, standing alone, looking rigid and stern. Beryl was pretty sure he hadn’t seen her. She turned around and, tossing her popcorn into a garbage bin, walked quickly off in the opposite direction. She had trouble relating the sight of Joe to the veterinarian that everyone raved about. He was so tall, taller even than Wally, who must have been over six feet when he wasn’t slouching. He had a terrible slouch. There seemed to be a lot of tall thinness going around.

“Dead. Ooh, I shot her dead.” Los Lobos sang on. A Neil Young song. Beryl wondered if the guys in the band knew they were in Neil’s home town.

She decided to use the washroom before heading back. It was pitch black inside and not the sort of place you wanted to feel your way around in. She hoped Yolanda had made out all right.

By the time Beryl got back to their spot, Stan, Raylene, and Yolanda were comfortably ensconced, listening to something soft and beautiful coming from the stage. Beryl was so glad to see them she felt a little wobbly in the knees. She sat close to Stan, hoping Raylene wouldn’t think it was too close. Wally was gone.

“Joe Paine is here,” she said, but not loudly enough for anyone to hear.

Fear shook Beryl awake in the night. It loomed huge behind her eyes. Fear coursed through her veins; it was in her blood.

While she slept someone had stitched a soggy balloon, heavy with toxic waste, behind her eyes; that’s how it felt. It dripped down her throat and spread poison through her system.

When morning finally came, she phoned in to book off work.

“Is it your feet?” Ed, her supervisor, asked.

“Pardon?”

“Is it your feet again? Have you maybe stepped on a rusty nail this time?”

“No. No, nothing like that,” she said. “This is more of an inside-of-me sickness.”

“Will you be seeing a doctor?” Ed asked.

“What? I don’t know. No, I doubt very much if it’ll come to that.”

After putting down the phone Beryl sat and stared at the toaster for awhile. She didn’t want to be famous for her feet.

She stepped out the back door to look at the day, checking first to make sure no one was about. Her body quivered with unease as she reached for the newspaper, lips pressed together to protect the teeth that she pictured being whacked out of her head with a baseball bat. She wouldn’t have the energy for false teeth; she’d rather die.

It was a clear, sharp-edged morning. Clouds would have been better. Drizzle even, but not rain. She would have to think about rain and she didn’t want to think on this day, not about anything. Thinking was what hurt.

Sticking the newspaper under her arm, she held her wrists with opposite hands as best she could, to prevent her hands being lopped off by a stray axe or power saw. She wouldn’t have the energy for prosthetic devices. She’d rather be dead.

This was Beryl having a hangover. This was how she paid.

A bird fell out of the sky and landed at her feet. A crow. It was huge and it was dead. She’d seen plenty of dead birds in her time; they were always banging into glass in the city. But this one hadn’t banged into anything. It seemed to die of natural causes at Beryl’s feet.

This must happen all the time, she thought, birds plummeting from the sky — landing next to unsuspecting people. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened to me before. At least it didn’t land on my head.

It felt more significant than that, but Beryl wouldn’t think about it now, not till after a couple more sleeps, when her hangover had faded and her thoughts were better connected to the real world.

She couldn’t touch the bird, so she left it there on her doorstep. Hopefully it would disappear during the course of the day while she hid behind closed doors. And if it didn’t, she would figure out what to do about it later. Maybe she could carry it in a shovel to the river.

What if the crow moved? What if it wasn’t dead? What if she was so afraid of death that she couldn’t help a dying creature in its last moments? No. It was a goner. In all her life she had only seen one other thing look more dead than this crow. A picture of the mushroom girl tangled itself up in the swamp inside her brain.

There’s alive and there’s dead. And there’s the moment when life leaves the body. It was that moment that Beryl feared today and she didn’t know why. It had something to do with power that wasn’t hers; it had something to do with everything.

She rubbed her eyes, hard. These were the kinds of thoughts she wanted to put on hold till she felt better. These and thoughts that the bird was especially for her.

The folk festival wasn’t something she wanted to think about either. Or Wally; he seemed so lame to her. A wave of nausea welled up inside Beryl when she thought about him, but maybe it wasn’t related. She must remember not to mention her thoughts about Wally to Stan. He was always accusing her of not liking anyone.

Joe Paine was at the folk festival. That was something else she didn’t want to think about.

The phone rang and Beryl jumped. What if it was Joe? What if he had changed his mind about not wanting to bother her anymore? She let the answering machine take it.

It was Dhani, wanting to talk about their “differences,” as he put it.

They hadn’t seen each other since the day in the drugstore, the day of the lobelia.

Beryl watched the machine as Dhani talked, but she didn’t feel up to picking up the phone. It might make her feel worse and she didn’t think she could go on living if she felt any worse. She needed to talk to someone, but not Dhani. Maybe Hermione, but later.

“Come on, Beryl,” Dhani said. “I bet you’re standing right there looking at the machine. I know you’re at home because I called you at work and they said you were sick. Pick up, please. I won’t ask anything of you or accuse you of anything. I shouldn’t have criticized you for lying to the police and I’m sorry. Anyway, give me a call.”

What the hell was he talking about?

He recited his phone number twice and Beryl didn’t write it down either time. She had it, anyway; he should know that by now.

She sat down at the kitchen table and forced herself to think hard enough to figure out what Dhani was talking about. They’d had so many fights since he’d accused her of lying to the police that she could hardly fathom that being the thing he picked to apologize for. Maybe he was totally cuckoo in a polite, quiet sort of way.

A hot shower made Beryl feel better for the few minutes that it lasted. She arranged a towel on her pillow and crawled back into bed. Even there, some days, she feared for her dependable teeth and fragile wrists. There was nothing special about either her hands or her teeth. It was just that for some reason, maybe some long-ago dream that stuck with her, she feared for their loss.

She drifted off with a Robert Frost poem front and centre in her brain. The one called “Out, Out,” where a boy loses his hand to a power saw and the life rushes out of him.

Beryl dreamed about her mother.

When she enters the dark apartment, she sees the familiar soft white hair. A feeling of tenderness rushes through her and she is relieved to see the television set tuned to Canada AM. A good sign that her mum is still interested in something. And her hair looks so clean. Maybe I’ll hug her, Beryl thinks, kiss her. Maybe we’ll have a conversation.

She pushes further into the room, through the thick dank air full of her mother’s filth. When she comes even with the chair, the one with the up and down switch that makes life so grand, her mother turns her head so that Beryl can see her face.

It’s worse than any live face she has ever seen. The skin is the texture of a cantaloupe, the outer rind. And the eyes are yellow. Yellow eyes that don’t see at first and then do, and it was better when they were blind. Her head bobs. Bobs a lot. A bobbing head like a diseased marionette. An evil puppet.

“Fine, thanks,” growls the monster head in a deep voice Beryl has never heard before. Fine, thanks.

She awoke and stumbled from her bed. The dead bird was better than this.

Beryl walked home from work on Thursday and as she crossed the two rivers she began making plans for a party. She wanted to have it when it was still summer so her guests could be outside on the deck. Stan should meet Dhani. Hermione should meet Dhani. They would probably have a lot in common.

Then Beryl remembered the secret she was keeping from Dhani, about Beatrice Fontaine being Herm’s customer, and she realized she couldn’t chance a meeting between the two of them. Dhani would accuse Beryl of all kinds of things. Maybe she should tell him. Or was it too late?

Who was she kidding? There could be no party. Not till the killer was found, anyway, and maybe not even then. Unless she left Dhani off the invitation list, which seemed kind of stupid since he was her favourite person in the world right now.

Beryl decided not to have a party. Somebody else could have a party.

As she entered her street she kept an eye out for her cat, Jude, who had slipped out on her this morning when she hadn’t had time to catch her. There was a by-law in Winnipeg outlawing cats on the streets, so Beryl was a little worried about Jude, a white Siamese with beige tips. She hoped Jude hadn’t been trapped by a vengeful neighbour.

Then she saw her cat, bright in the summer sunshine, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk several houses away. Jude bounded towards her and rolled over on her back to have her tummy rubbed. Beryl scratched her ears and under her pink collar. She pulled her hand away abruptly, involuntarily, as though she’d received a shock. Her cat didn’t wear a collar, hadn’t since she had become an indoor cat several years ago.

Jude sat up straight, looking regal and proud; she liked her new accessory.

Beryl couldn’t catch a breath. Who had done this? Fumbling with the collar she got it off and threw it into a cherry bush. Then she snatched it back, holding onto Jude all the while, so tightly that the cat squirmed and cried. Beryl ran the rest of the way home and retrieved her key from its new spot in the garage. She placed her now panic-stricken pet indoors while she thought about what to do with the collar.

It wouldn’t do to have it in the house, but she didn’t want to leave it outside for the lunatic that was tormenting her to find and dispose of; it might be evidence. Beryl burst into tears when she imagined herself reporting this new crime to the police. It equaled the deadheading of her lobelia in absurdity: Yes, hello, I’d like to report the fact that an attractive pink collar has been fastened around my cat’s neck. Oh, and she seems very fond of it.

This guy, whoever the fuck he was, knew what he was doing.

Beryl stuffed the collar down inside a window well on the north side of the house. Then she covered it with rocks. It wasn’t a secure hiding place but it would have to do. She didn’t want it in her house.

Then she put her key in her pocket. No more leaving it outside if there was a maniac in her life.

No one was home next door on the north side; that was where Clive Boucher lived and he was never around. He lived on his own, in a house that had been in his family for years. It had fallen to him when he was the only one left to inherit it.

Clive was in a band that had been quite famous in the sixties and early seventies. It was called Crimson Soul. Even after all these years it was still very much in demand for fairs and exhibitions. For all the time Clive spent in the house he may as well rent it out, Beryl thought. But then she’d see him even less and she supposed she’d miss his scruffy presence if he disappeared completely.

His house was a mess, from the outside, anyway. The paint was so old it was hard to tell what colour it was supposed to be. Maybe a beige sort of colour that now looked pretty much like nothing. As close as you could get to the colour of nothing. And peeling badly at that, leaving the worn grey wood at the mercy of the elements. Unlike Beryl’s house, which was stucco like most of the others in the area, Clive’s house was made of wood.

His house was older than hers, too. It was probably here way back when this part of the Norwood Flats was a golf course. Maybe it was where the greenskeeper had lived. Maybe Clive’s long-dead relatives had been greenskeepers.

She knocked on the door of her other next-door neighbours, the Kruck-Boulbrias, on the south side. No one was home there either, which wasn’t surprising. It was only four o’clock on a weekday and both of them were teachers at Red River College.

Beryl wasn’t sure if it was just Ariadne who went by Kruck-Boulbria or if Mort had also adopted the name. Maybe he was just Boulbria. She wondered if Ariadne Kruck-Boulbria’s students made fun of her because of her name. She hoped so.

As she stood knocking, Beryl realized that she largely disapproved of these neighbours because of their behaviour with squirrels. Ariadne couldn’t help her fear of the noisy little critters. With all my crazy fears, Beryl thought, I should try harder to give my neighbours a break. I barely know them at all.

And as for the people two doors down on the south side, she didn’t even know their names. Things were vastly different from when she was a kid and knew the first and last names of everyone of her street, all their children’s names and ages and the names of all their pets. Everyone had kids in those days, so you were more likely to be in and out of their houses. And everyone had a dog, too, that ran free. Now even the cats were chained. No wonder the crows were taking over!

Beryl thought about the black bird that had landed at her feet a few days ago. She had taken it to the river, eased it onto her gardening shovel and carried it down. She didn’t want to picture it resting in the bottom of her garbage can, so she took it clear away. After dark, so no one would see her performing the sinister task.

Someone did see her, though, a man out walking his dog. And she had to explain herself or felt she did and he looked at her askance. She wanted to throw the bird at his head and run away. Why couldn’t he have been nice to her? His dog even hung back. She had thrown it over the cliff off Lyndale Drive Park, not looking to see whether it landed on the bank or in the muddy water. It was gone, no longer her responsibility.

Beryl glanced across the lane and saw Mrs. Frobisher working in her garden. She walked over.

“Hi, Mrs. Frobisher.”

“Hello, Beryl. How are you?” She looked up from thinning her carrots and smiled.

Rachel Frobisher was a beautiful old woman that Beryl admired. She was Ukrainian, though you’d never know it from either of her names. She had been a violinist, then a violin teacher for many years, giving lessons in her home. Her hair was a pure white cloud around her face and her cheeks were pink from her exertions.

“Pretty good, I guess,” Beryl said. “How are you?”

“A little stiff from all this bending over, but other than that I can’t complain. I’m just ready to take a break. May I offer you a drink?” She looked at her watch. “I don’t think it’s too early for a cocktail.”

“Well, why not?” Beryl said.

Mrs. Frobisher shook them up a pair of Manhattans and they sat on her back patio watching the gradual arrivals of the other people who lived on the street. Except for Clive Boucher and the Kruck-Boulbrias, who probably had some kind of extra-curricular activities.

“I wanted to ask you, Mrs. Frobisher, if you’ve seen anyone in my yard lately who looked like they didn’t belong there. Today maybe, or any other day. Last week perhaps?” Beryl couldn’t remember the exact day that her lobelia had been deadheaded.

“Please call me Rachel, Beryl. I’d like it much better if you did.”

“Okay, Rachel.”

“Well, let me think. I know I didn’t see anyone today. Except that beautiful little white cat of yours. She dropped over and sat with me awhile.”

“Did she?” Beryl spilled several drops of her drink on her shirt. She had tipped her glass before it reached her lips.

“Shoot! You’d think I’d have learned how to drink from a glass by now, wouldn’t you?”

Rachel laughed. “Would you like to go inside and try and get it out before it sets?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a post office shirt. This’ll sound crazy, I know,” Beryl went on, “but you didn’t attach a collar to Jude when she was over here visiting, did you?”

Rachel laughed again, this time heartily and she spilled a little of her own drink.

“No, Beryl. No, I didn’t, but I did notice the collar. Are you all right, dear? I’m sorry for laughing. It just seems like such an odd question.”

“Yeah, I know it is.”

Beryl didn’t know whether to confide in her or not. Maybe there was a screw loose under those snow white curls and it was Mrs. Frobisher herself wreaking havoc in Beryl’s yard.

“Have you seen anyone, Rachel?” she asked. “Anyone around my house besides me? Besides me and Jude?”

“I don’t think so, dear.” Rachel pondered the question. “Let me just think a minute.” Her forehead wrinkled as she looked backward in time, searching for something that would be of help.

“Just the old woman, I guess, and that would have been last week sometime, maybe even the week before, the last time I saw her. Since I stopped working, the days aren’t as structured as they were and one week pretty much runs into another. Yes, just Clive’s mother. At least I assume that’s who she is. She’s the only one I’ve seen, dear.”

A silence surrounded Rachel Frobisher’s words, like a picture frame. The words hung between the two women in the clear air.

“Clive’s mother?” A coolness flowed down over Beryl’s face. She pictured Gatorade running over the coach’s head when the Blue Bombers won an important game. It was like that. Only this was in slow motion and it turned warm very quickly.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “Does she do some gardening for you?”

“Clive doesn’t have a mother,” Beryl said.

“Oh?” Rachel looked shaken. “I see her there in his yard. Who is she? An aunt? I…I just assumed…”

“I don’t know who she is, Rachel. I’ve never even seen her. But I have a feeling that she isn’t anyone, I mean, anyone that’s supposed to be there. Anyone Clive knows.”

“What do you mean, Beryl?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

This bright new knowledge spun around inside Beryl’s head till she felt dizzy and very tired. She didn’t want it, any of it. She wanted to go home and lie under a blanket on the couch.

“What did this person look like?” she asked in a flat voice, placing her drink on the ground beside her chair. She didn’t want it, either. It was too sweet, sickly sweet. It reminded her of the wine she and her friends used to get their hands on when they were teenagers. Wine with names like Prince of Denmark. They’d drink and then sometimes they’d barf.

“Let me see,” Rachel said now. “The woman was tall and slim, I know that much.”

“Who isn’t?” Beryl muttered.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing, Rachel. Go on. Please.”

“I didn’t see her up close.”

Rachel looked as if she was struggling with a picture inside her head. “I’m sure I’ll see her again soon, so I’ll pay better attention and give you a full report. Maybe I’ll introduce myself.”

“What was she wearing?”

“A dress. She always wears a dress. An old-fashioned flowered one, now that I think of it. And her hair is grey and pulled back in a bun at the base of her neck. Very old-fashioned, as I say.” Rachel looked down at her own overalls and fluffed out the cloud of white hair around her face.

Beryl smiled at her. “Not like you.”

Rachel smiled back. “She has big feet,” she said. “Too big for the rest of her. Or maybe it was just the shoes she was wearing. Clumpy big things. Usually if you see someone of that age in a dress their footwear goes along with it. You know, ladylike. Not great thunderous shoes.”

“Thunderous?” Beryl hoped that Rachel wasn’t creating someone just to please her. She didn’t doubt that there had been an old woman. But she didn’t know Rachel well enough to know if she was remembering a picture of her or creating one.