In Case I Go Read online

  She’s not talking to me, not really, so I don’t say anything back. I let the silence stay as long as I can, and then I tell her, “Sam is two years younger than you, actually. Not your age.” I like knowing things that Lucy doesn’t. “You could come with me to Sam’s,” I say. “He could be your friend too.”

  “My friend?” Her laugh sounds sad. “I’ve never even spoken to the man.”

  But when I go to his yard to watch him work, I see her in the window, her eyes on me.

  “I find it strange,” Mary says, “your mother hovering there all the time. Staring at you.” Mary pulls my fingers until they touch her cheek. Where our skin meets, mine turns so cold it hurts, like a warm tongue on a frozen fencepost. I want to pull my hand from hers and run, but her grip tightens. I don’t dare move. “Should I be jealous of your mother, Elijah?”

  That seems like a funny kind of question, but I feel a new kind of embarrassed, with my hand there on Mary’s face. The heat from my belly melts the pain in the tips of my fingers. I don’t say a word.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I have to hide from the sun. Nicholas says it’s hotter than usual for this time of the year, but Lucy tells him there’s no such thing as usual anymore. Lucy won’t let us talk about “weird weather” at our house. She says “weird weather” is the “language of liars and deniers.” I say that maybe some people just don’t know. She says nobody is that ignorant, not anymore.

  Sam isn’t wearing a shirt, but that’s not unusual. He has one outfit: the same pair of dirty blue jeans he wears no matter the heat and the same thin navy-blue T-shirt, hanging from the back of his belt. In today’s heat, he pulls the shirt from his pants every fifteen minutes or so, lifts his yellow Ktunaxa ball cap, and wipes the sweat from his forehead and eyes. I knew Lucy would come to Sam’s today. She gave it away in her questions over breakfast.

  “Doesn’t he mind you hanging out there watching him all day? You and the girl who never talks?”

  “Don’t you think he should meet your parents?”

  “Does he think it strange we haven’t come by?”

  “Are we being too standoffish? Too city?”

  “He knows I’m watching from the window, right?”

  “You’ve been hanging out there for a month now. More. I’ll need to go over and say hi, won’t I?”

  Lucy looks silly picking her way through the bushes into Sam’s yard, but if she walked up the front steps and knocked on the door, nobody would be there to answer.

  When she pushes through onto Sam’s side, I wave at her, but she’s already looking at Sam.

  “Hi, I’m ...” She stretches her hand toward Sam, but pulls it back when she notices his are full, like always. He’s carrying an armload of loose branches cleaned off the back graves. I wonder how she will finish her sentence. “Eli’s mom,” she finally says. “He’s spending so much time here, I thought we should meet. You can call me Lucy.”

  Sam drops his armload and wipes his hands on his dirty jeans. “I’ve been waiting for you to come say hello.” He puts his hand in Lucy’s, and she holds it for too long. “I didn’t want to rush you. Coffee?” Sam asks the question without dropping her hand. They’re both starting to annoy me, actually.

  Lucy nods yes, moving toward the back door of the house before she notices Sam keeps his coffee pot right here on the deck. She sits where he points, crouching on the stairs with her knees pulled to her chest. I miss the Lucy from the university. That Lucy would never sit because someone pointed her to sit.

  “Eli likes it over here so much,” she says. “I hope you don’t mind him coming. I do watch from the window. He’s told me about your niece. Her—” She looks to Mary who sits as quiet as a ghost on the grass. Mary won’t stop staring at her, but Lucy looks quickly to her own feet, brushing imaginary dirt off the scuffed toes of her shoes. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay with Eli here.” She smiles at me. “It’s nice you’ve been a friend to him in his early Coalton days. You and your niece. Of course, I’m hoping he’ll make friends with the neighbourhood children soon. The other neighbourhood children. Friends more his age.”

  “Well, Eli can come here whenever he likes,” says Sam. “You can strike that off your list of things to worry about. We’re not too fussed about age, me and Eli. Or Mary.” Sam moves closer to Lucy as he talks. Men like Lucy. They stand near. It’s because of her black hair and blue eyes—the black makes the blue pop right out of her face. Her eyes can “bewitch” a man. That’s what Nicholas said they did to him. I’m afraid Lucy’s eyes are bewitching Sam right now. “Whether he decides he wants younger friends too, younger than me and Mary, or not, I guess that’s up to him.”

  Sam pulls his T-shirt back on, watching Lucy as he pokes a hand through each armhole, his eyes still on her as he tugs the shirt over his chest. Just as slowly, he tucks the shirt into one side of his waistband and then the other. This is not the Sam I know. I want him to keep working while he tells her about the “Mountain that Moves.” I want Sam to tell Lucy the Legend of the Ghost Rider too, repeating the story with that meanness like he’s glad Coalton got cursed because of the old white man betraying the Indian Chief. This new Sam hands Lucy an empty cup and fills it with coffee before filling his own.

  “So, let’s get to know each other, and then you won’t have to worry about Eli being over here.” He sits down next to her on the step. I look to make sure their legs aren’t touching. “What do you do, Lucy? For a living.” He picks a spoon off his deck, holds it up to his face as if to see if it’s clean or not, and then licks it before clinking it against the rim of his mug. “That’s the question people ask, isn’t it? When they’re getting to know each other?”

  “What do I do?” Lucy giggles. “I’m Eli’s mom.”

  “What else? Eli’s only—”

  “Ten.” I say this not because Lucy can’t answer for herself, but to remind them I’m here. “Yes. Ten.” Sam says but not to me. Neither of them looks at me. “You must’ve been something before you were Eli’s mom. There any of that Lucy left?”

  I can’t tell if Lucy enjoys this kind of attention or not. I can’t even decide what kind of attention it is. But I know one thing: I do not like it.

  “Well…” She’s still brushing at her toes, balancing the cup of coffee against her knee with her free hand. “I used to be a Medievalist. I taught at the university in Calgary. I like the mystics.” She laughs. I don’t see what Lucy’s got to be so giggly about all of a sudden.

  I want Mary. With Lucy and Sam here, she becomes silent and disappears. But then, as if my wish has brought her to me, there she is, her warm Elijah right in my ear, even though she’s across the yard, leaning against a pine at the back of the lot, picking at the sap on its trunk, waiting. The way she slouches makes her look bored and sad. I want to tell her what Lucy always tells me: shoulders back, chin high.

  When I go to her, neither Lucy nor Sam looks my way.

  “Come to my house, Mary,” I say, but I already know Mary won’t follow me. There are a lot of places she won’t go, not only the school. She never comes inside Elijah’s house. That, she says, also has to do with “white men and white men’s lies.” She smiles at me lazily like I’ve made an old joke. “I’ve been in your house, Elijah Mountain. Nothing good ever came of that.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I’m used to that with Mary. “You’ve never been in my house, Mary.” I try to swallow the sulk, to sound older and more in control than I feel.

  She moves away from her tree, coming closer to me, and cocks her head to the side. I like the way her long hair hangs, the tips brushing against her waist. She swings her head, and her hair slides across her bare arm and shoulder. I bet it tickles. When I imagine her hair swinging against my skin, I cannot stop my smile.

  “I’ve never been in your house?” Mary smirks, raising her eyebrows. It’s a look that means we both know I’m lying. “Are you sure?”

  I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. I
want to shake my hands hard. The tingle calms me. Not knowing everything—that makes me uncalm. Sometimes with Mary I feel like I don’t know anything at all. Not even her real name.

  I try to distract her by pointing out the Nodding Thistle sprouting up on the floor of the forest. When Nicholas takes me walking, he helps me remember the names of invasive plant species, showing me how to tell the difference between the native ones that belong and the invasive ones that don’t (the Lupine and the Fireweed versus the Nodding Thistle and the Leafy Spurge). “Like you and your family, Elijah,” Mary says. “You’re an invasive species.”

  I look back at Lucy and Sam. They’re only talking on the steps, nothing wrong that most people would see, but I’m not most people, and I don’t like it. I shake my hands again and again, and I don’t even care. Right now, I don’t like Sam or Lucy or Mary. I’ll do whatever I want with my own hands.

  “Come on, Mary! Let’s go!” I reach for her hand, but she steps back into the forest. Shadows fall across her face, so her eyes look sunk into dark skeletal holes.

  “Five little ducks went out one day,” she sings. The meanness in her voice does not match the child’s rhyme. “Over the hills and far away.” With each word, Mary steps farther into the forest and her sound gets softer, so I have to follow her to hear. “Mother Duck went quack quack quack ...” The leaves cast rippling lines under Mary’s eyes and leave a dark pit where her mouth should be.

  “Stop,” I say. “Please stop, Mary.”

  “ ... but only four little ducks came waddling back.”

  “Stop it, I said.”

  “Four little ducks went out one day ...” The trees have nearly swallowed Mary now, but her arm reaches for me. “Over the hills and far—”

  “Stop it, I said!” I yell so loudly that even Lucy and Sam remember me. When Lucy comes to me at a quick jog, stumbling across Sam’s lawn, Mary disappears into the forest. I point at the branches still shaking where she stood, but Lucy only pulls me closer. “Shhh. It’s okay, Elly. Shhh.”

  ***

  I curl tightly under my bed covers. Only a thin line of light slips into my room from the crack above the door. I run my fingers across the blankets, up and down that line of light—four cars racing each other, the forefinger in the lead. That’s what I used to pretend when I was little. Now that I’m big, they’re just fingers, but I like the way they change colours as they pass in and out of the light.

  Sometimes I need to strain to hear Lucy and Nicholas from my bed, but tonight it’s easy.

  “I’m not yelling!” Nicholas yells. When he talks again, he sounds like he’s holding his breath to try to make his voice come out quieter. “I’m just agreeing with your doctor. Maybe if you took the medication he suggested, life would be easier. For everyone.”

  “Right. It’s not you fucking your intern that’s the problem. It’s not your ‘racquetball’ lunch dates. The problem is I’m not medicated.”

  “You helped that happen, Lucy. ‘There’s something there! Something between you!’ You said it over and over until it came true.” Nicholas doesn’t say Danica’s name. He doesn’t need to. The house gets quiet again as Nicholas and I both wait for Lucy to say something. Minutes pass, but I hear only her choked sobs. “I’ve said I’m sorry, Lucy. I am sorry. We moved here. Clean slate, remember?”

  “Here to your home.” Lucy shoots the words, as if she’s forgotten Coalton was her idea. The two of us were coming here with or without Nicholas to make it our home.

  “I want it to be a home for all of us,” he says. “I’m doing as good as I can.” He sounds tired. Soon he will give up. Doors will slam.

  “Well. You’re doing as well as you can. Good is an adjective. You need the adverb.”

  “Don’t do this, Lucy. You know I hate it when you play professor with me. I’m not your student.”

  “That’s right. I don’t have any students.” Her words have that wetness they get when she drinks. It comes after three pomegranate vodkas. I know how bad the conversation can go wrong from here. The air sticks in my chest, too heavy, too tight.

  “That was your decision, Lucy. Nobody made you quit teaching.” I didn’t think Nicholas could speak any louder, but his “your” rattles my bedroom door, and each word after it gets louder yet. I push my palms hard over my ears, bite my pillow. “You did that for Eli. Not for me. You wanted him to have your evenings, your weekends, you didn’t want to share your time with anyone but him.”

  Then, silence.

  I move my car-fingers faster along the line of light. I hear clinking and shuffling and imagine Nicholas turning his back on her, taking the vodka from the cupboard above the sink and refilling his glass. Lucy is crying now and so am I. I hold my fingers over my mouth so they don’t hear me. I wish for Nicholas to go to Lucy, to pull her into his arms and tell her everything will be okay, but if he tries, it doesn’t work.

  The collar of my pyjamas is in my mouth, and I know I will chew a hole straight through it. I don’t care. My crying gets louder until I let out a sob they will be sure to hear. When their arguing stops, I wonder if I made that noise on purpose.

  Later, Lucy comes and lies beside me, facing me. She’s small enough to fit in my bed, her knees curled up between us. I stay perfectly still, barely breathing, not wanting her to know I’m awake. But she talks to me anyway, a low whisper I feel as a warm wind at the part in my hair. Nicholas says vodka has no smell, but I can smell it. I plug my nose from the inside and part my lips enough to let the air in.

  I can talk to you like this, Eli, she always says. You’re an old soul.

  Mary says that too. I think of her—how she smells like earth and leaves, not like Lucy with her soaps and perfumes. Imagining Mary helps me hold Lucy’s words at a distance.

  “I didn’t want this life for you, Eli. The drinking and the fighting. That was my childhood. I thought we could do better for you.” She almost whispers, as if she’s afraid to wake me, which I don’t get. Isn’t it me she’s talking to?

  I don’t dare move, but I keep my eyes open, staring into the hollow curve near the bottom of her neck. I don’t like how thin the skin gets there. I can see each intake of air, each jump of her heart. I try to focus instead on the memory of Mary, the way she first said Elijah, like she was welcoming me home. I don’t think of Lucy’s smell, her breath, her words. I think of Mary rubbing berries into her bottom lip.

  “I know I need to forget about Daddy’s friend Danica,” Lucy says in a quiet voice. She doesn’t spit that woman like usual. “I know I need to stop.”

  I roll over as if in my sleep, turning my back to Lucy as she talks. She winds her fingers in the hair tucked behind my ears.

  “It all makes me feel so tired and ugly and old.” Her words sound sloppy. She rests her forehead against the back of my head. Her belly shakes, and I expect her tears to drip onto my neck. “I wish he were dead.”

  Sometimes I just wish Lucy would talk to me like I’m a kid.

  It’s not long before her body loosens, her head slouching heavy and warm into my shoulder. Her breath relaxes into long deep sighs, and I slow my breath to match hers.

  I like it better when I fall asleep first.

  ***

  In the morning, Lucy’s skin puffs out so it’s nearly impossible to see her eyes, sunken into her flesh like two pieces of dog poop dropped in snow.

  That’s not true. Even this morning, Lucy’s eyes sparkle blue like my best marbles. But I don’t care. Today, I focus on the ugly. Today, to me, Lucy’s face looks like bad breath.

  When I woke in the night, she was gone, and I stretched across the mattress, thankful for the room. Nicholas came in the dark morning before he left for the coal mine, kissing me on the cheek as he always does. “I love you,” he whispered in a whoof of soapy air. His wet bangs sprinkled drops of water on my forehead. “I’m sorry.”

  Minutes, hours, centuries later, Lucy finally got up. I heard her moving around in the kitchen for a long time before I decided t
o join her. She had already set the table, only for me. One bowl. One spoon. One mug.

  “Good morning, Elly Belly,” she says, pretend-cheerful. Her tone does not match her dog poop face. “Eli. Okay,” she says when I don’t look at her or say anything at all. “Not Elly.” I can stay mad for a long time when I make up my mind. “Sorry.” She stands behind me with her fingers in my hair as I pour my cereal.

  When Lucy brings me hot milk and adds an extra spoon of honey, I still don’t smile. Not this time. Last night—wishing Nicholas was dead (my dad-a-tat, dead!)—that was different.

  Lucy sighs, a heavy sound for someone so small, and sits across from me, her forearms pressed into the table, fingers splayed toward me. “Look, Eli, I am sorry.” I swirl my spoon around in the milk. If I do it fast enough, I can make a whirlpool. I pretend each Rice Krispy is a person getting sucked deep beneath the sea. “Look at me, Eli.” When I still don’t look, her tone changes. She still sounds sorry, but there’s an edge in it. “Look at me. I feel awful. I do. Nicholas and I shouldn’t fight. Not like that. But there are things you don’t understand about adult life. And it’s going to get better. I’ll try.”

  I look at her then. I don’t like what I see. And Lucy doesn’t like my face today either. Whatever she sees there makes her sigh again. She pushes up from the table, lines of muscle straining in her thin arms. She walks to the cupboard above the sink. I want to jump up. I’m sorry! I’ll look at you! I’ll smile! See! Look! I’m afraid she’s going there to make herself a drink. She’s never done that before, not at breakfast. But when she reaches up to the cupboard—she needs a stool—she pulls all the bottles down, not just her one with pomegranates, but Nicholas’s plain vodka too, and another bottle, its liquid shining brown-gold in the light from the kitchen window. One by one, she empties the bottles, the stinking liquid spilling down the kitchen drain, the strong smell overpowering the stale hint of it I’d woken to.