When the Saints (26 page)

“Jackie won’t let me see the new house till it’s done,” Ma says. “He went over there and offered to help out to try to speed things up.” She pats Bird’s shoulder. “Took this one with him and parked him with a hard hat on. I guess they got into a fight about how to level floors,” she laughs. “Just like the old days.”

“You been in town yet?” I ask.

“What for?” She sticks a spoon into the mashed potatoes on her plate and brings it to Swimmer’s mouth. She’s been feeding him like he’s a baby ever since he came back, just like she did with Bird after his accident.

“Aren’t you wondering what’s changed?”

“Nothing’s changed.”

“Some things have. There’s a gas station now.”

“Whoop dee frigging doo.” She drops the spoon on a plate.

I look down at Swimmer. The eyeglasses are finally fading, but there’s still a black ring around one eye. He reminds me of the dog from the Little Rascals.

“Look what I learned him,” Janis says. She puts her palms out and he slaps ten, coating her hands in his mashed potatoes.

“Hey, Swimmer,” I say. “Do you want to come with me and meet West?”

He nods. “Mee Wes.”

Ma stiffens.

“It’s fine, Ma,” I say. “We’ll be just down the road.”

I lift Swimmer out of his booster chair and take him back to the room to change his clothes. I change too and put on the dress Poppy gave me. When we come back out to get in the car,
Janis is leaned back in the passenger seat with her arm dangling out the window.

“Grandma said I could come.”

“Grandma’s not the boss.”

She gets out, slams the door and goes stomping back into the motel. I wait a few minutes and she reappears with her purse, climbs in and hands me a five-dollar bill.

“Gas money.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re just using me for a ride to your boyfriend’s house.”

I start the car as she slathers Ghostberry lip gloss all over her mouth. Then she clicks the cap back on and pumps her fist.

The air finally smells like summer and it’s hot enough to have all the windows down. When we pull into his driveway, West comes out of the house bare-chested carrying a giant box over his head. Janis and Swimmer scramble out of the car to see what’s in it. They watch wide-eyed as he pulls out a plastic sprinkler set and sets it up for them on the lawn.

“Fank yoo.” Swimmer grins up at him.

“You’re welcome, buddy.”

Swimmer holds his arms open and when West bends down to give him a hug, Janis tears across the grass and flings her arms around West’s neck. I almost can’t believe my eyes. I’ve never seen her willingly touch anyone. She announces that she has to do a safety inspection, walks around tapping all the star-shaped nozzles and then tells West to let her rip.

He turns a tap on the side of the house before joining me on the front steps. We sip near-beers, watching the kids run back
and forth through the spray. Janis keeps trying to make Swimmer pretend he’s drowning so she can save him, but he won’t hold still.

I turn the label on my bottle. “What’s with the fakes?”

“Abriel thought I should cut back.” West takes a sip of foam.

“Hell-bent on your self-improvement, that woman. Meanwhile, she had a rye and ginger in her hand the whole time she was here.” I pause. “I’ll bet that wasn’t the only thing she had in her hand.”

He frowns. “I guess I wanted to see if there was a chance.” He rolls his bottle back and forth between his palms. “Like, maybe if we still had the sex part.”

“Maybe if you still had the sex part what?”

“I woke up one morning and looked at her face and she don’t even look like the same person to me. She crawled all on top of me, and after she said she wanted me to take her dancing. And you know what I thought? Me and Tabby should go dancing. I told her that, too.” He takes another sip.

I start to ask him why the hell he made me picture that, but I’m distracted by some guy traipsing around in wrestling pants across the street. He drags a lawn chair all over his yard trying to find the perfect spot for a sunburn. Finally, he sets up smack dab in the middle, pours a drink from a forty of white rum and sets the bottle on the grass beside him. He sees us and gives a little air guitar riff.

West laughs. “My neighbour, Dennis. He’s been on a bender since his cat died. God love him. He used to have a mullet, but then he grew it all out long, said he wanted to party in the front too.” West catches my expression and starts massaging his neck.
“Here, give me that piss.” He snatches the near-beer from my hand and takes it inside.

When I glance back across the street, the neighbour draws a heart in the air and blows it at me. I think about joining his party in the front so I can get a real drink.

I watch the kids playing then look up at the blue sky and over at West’s fresh-washed truck gleaming in the driveway. I can’t help but think this scene would be perfect if I weren’t so fucking pissed off.

West comes back out and hands me a Ten-Penny. He’s holding a bottle back at his thigh, hoping I won’t notice he got himself another fake. I open my mouth to protest, but Swimmer screams out and we both snap our heads to look. Janis is lying on her belly gnashing at his heels like a shark. So much for playing hero.

West sits down and puts his arm around me. “Christ,” he says, “you sure know how to wear a dress.”

He leans in for a kiss. I follow his laugh lines to those copper eyes and can’t help but kiss him back. Then he leaps up to start the barbecue.

After we eat cheeseburgers, the kids and I say goodbye and head over to the hospital to visit Poppy. There are wildflowers sprouting up all along the road and we pull over and make a bouquet of lupines and some bright violet ones I don’t know the name of. I tell Janis they’re called Grandma Jean’s Crown Jewels. This gets her going again.

“Why’d the wizard want to skin Grandma Jean alive?”

“He didn’t want to skin her alive, he wanted to steal her soul.”

“What’s a soul?”

“You tell me. You must have learned that in church group.”

“Oh yeah. I know what that is.”

“What is it, then?”

She scratches her elbow. “Jesus said not to talk about it too much.”

“Sure he did.”

T
HE ROOMS AT
S
OLACE
G
ENERAL HAVE GOTTEN A FACE-
lift since Ma was in there with that infection all those years ago. Poppy’s got a big clean window and two comfy upholstered chairs.

“Prize!” Swimmer says, running to the bed.

“SA-PRIZE,” Janis corrects him.

“You look good,” I say to Poppy.

She does, too. She’s gained at least five pounds in the past week and looks like she got some sleep last night. When she takes the flowers out of Janis’s outstretched hands and sticks them in her water jug, her hands don’t even shake. I help Janis and Swimmer scramble up on either side of her and they start pawing the tarot cards spread out on her lap.

“What’s your future?” Janis asks.

“I have to stay in here for a long time,” Poppy tells her. “Longer than I want to. But I seen a counsellor yesterday, and they have a program to help people like me. The sessions are right here in the hospital twice a week. Isn’t that great?”

“Dat’s gweat!” Swimmer says.

Janis doesn’t answer.

“How’d you learn to read cards?” I ask.

“On the soap I watch, this rich woman always goes to a tarot reader to find out if her husband’s cheating on her. I thought it would be a handy skill to have. I mean, shitloads of women want to know if some asshole’s lying to her face, right? So I asked around and this girl I used to dance with says her grandmother’s been reading cards forever, learned it from her own grandmother. I call up the old witch and she says to come on by with a box of wine and a couple cartons of Player’s. She taught me everything she knew.”

“Let’s do Aunt Tabby’s fortune,” Janis insists.

Poppy gathers up the cards and hands them to me. “Shuffle.”

I stare at the deck sitting in my palm and questions start to churn.
Will Ma ever be happy?
Is
Jackie capable of being with one woman? Will Poppy stay clean?
Is
Bird going to see his daughters again? Will Janis learn to play the bagpipes?
I swallow.
Do West and I stand a snowball’s chance in hell?
I hand the cards back. “I’m afraid to ask.”

Janis rifles through the deck and pulls out a card with a picture of a man and a woman facing each other under a giant sun. She points to the woman. “This is you, Aunt Tabby.” She taps the man’s head. “And that’s West.”

“How do you know it’s West?”

She rolls her eyes. “Because that’s the same face he makes when he looks at you. It’s like you’re his favourite TV show.”

J
ACKIE IS THREATENING TO BUST SOME HEADS.
H
E WENT
to the bank to deposit the money in my account and says the assistant manager made up a bunch of new rules when he told him his name.

“Fucking Freddy thinks he’s king shit walking around in green leather shoes,” he says to me. “I asked him where he found those, the douchebag bin at Twat ‘n’ Co?”

I take the money and go down myself. He’s right. The teller suddenly has a list of questions. She calls Fucking Freddy over, and I have to explain that I’ve been saving my babysitting and dog-walking money since I was knee-high to a gas pump. He makes me nervous and I end up depositing only half the cash. I glance down at his feet, but now he’s got penny loafers on.

“That your retirement fund?” I ask, pointing to the coins in the slots.

He crosses his arms and tells me Jackie’s lucky they didn’t press charges. He points to a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a smiling old lady and says Jackie knocked it over as he was leaving the bank.

“Is there a law against assaulting a piece of cardboard?”

“There certainly is. It’s called destruction of property.”

I walk over to it. The sign attached says
We Treat Our Customers Like Family.

“Aw, come on. Nana’s fine.” I pat her shoulder and her head droops. “A little shaken up is all.”

He narrows his eyes at me and I almost give Nana another smack. The other clerks start whispering to each other as I walk
out. Now
I
feel like busting some heads. I march down the sidewalk and stop at Beula’s Beauty Parlour.

“Beula!” I yell, punching the door open.

“She don’t own this place no more,” a voice says.

A woman in a paisley dress emerges from the back. I recognize her face. I saw her through the window that first day I visted Solace River. She sets down her diet soda and motions to one of the swivel chairs. They’re the same minty green colour they always were, slightly more faded and dye-stained. I sit and dig my fingernail stubs into the vinyl armrests.

“You been in here before?” she asks.

“Twice. The first time, my mother was laughed out the door for having the nerve to ask for a job.” I feel my face grow hot. “The second time, I was about eleven years old and won a contest for guessing how many pop caps were strung around the school Christmas tree. The prize was getting my hair done at Beula Dean’s. I saved it up until there was a Valentine’s Day party at school, came in with all these pictures I’d drawn of the hairstyle of my dreams. Beula told me my win had expired.” My ears are burning. “She wasn’t even busy. She was leaning on the counter doing a scratch ticket.”

The woman walks over to a cooler and pours me a Dixie cup of water. Her earrings jingle like tiny gold bells as she hands it to me. “Beula got alopecia now.”

“What’s that?”

“It makes your hair fall out. Baldy won’t even leave the house because that expensive wig she ordered from New York City
turned blue when she washed it.” She winks. “How’s that for poetic justice?”

“I’d rather she died in a fiery car crash or drowned in the bathtub.”

“I might be for hire if business stays slow.”

I look around. The framed posters on the walls of fashion models with blue eyeshadow and pink pearl necklaces are even more outdated than they were when I was a kid. The place is spotless, though.

“When did you take over?”

“October. I tried to buy it years ago when I heard she was looking to sell, put in a nice offer. It got back to me that she didn’t want to sell to a black woman. Then, wouldn’t you know, as soon as that first lock of hair fell into her tomato soup, guess who’s calling me up.” She sits down in the chair next to me and laces her fingers between her knees. “This time my offer wasn’t so nice.”

I raise my paper cup to her, stick my other hand out. “I’m Tabby Saint.”

“Olivia Sparks.” She shakes my hand and scoops up her soda. “You live around here?”

“I used to.”

She squints, waits for me to say more. Then she gestures to a machine at the back that looks like a torture chamber.

“You want your nipples pierced? I bought that piece of junk and it just sits there. You look like you could use … something.”

“How about a drink?” I drain the Dixie cup and crush it. “A real drink.”

She glances at the clock, drumming her fingernails on the soda can.

“Come on,” I say. “They’re free down at the tavern.”

“How so?”

“I’m with West.”

“For real?” She slaps the countertop. “It’s about time somebody hit that.”

T
HE NEW HOUSE HAS BEEN VANDALIZED.
S
OMEONE
spray-painted
Dirty Money Bastards
along one wall. Jewell calls West’s house to tell me.

“They spelled it
t-u-r-d-s,
the morons. Jackie’s managed to scrub most of it off, but now he’s on the warpath.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He went stomping out of here in his fighting shirt.”

“Is that an expression?”

“No, it’s a slippery old football jersey with no buttons to grab on to.”

“What’s he going to do, pick a fist fight our first week back here, let everyone know the Saints still haven’t developed opposable thumbs?”

“He’s all talk most of the time.”

“Let’s hope this is one of those times.”

I hang up the phone, haul my boots on and stomp down to the tavern. It’s packed inside and I can smell the beer sweating
out of everyone’s pores. I forgot it was Saturday night. West is busy, but I get his attention over the bar. He nods over at Jackie brooding in a corner.