A Rhinestone Button (27 page)

“Herb was working on this the afternoon he died. Left it and his paints on the kitchen table. I planned on giving him hell for it. Then the police car drove up. You can see where he didn’t get around to finishing the swim trunks.” Jonah’s behind was bare wood. “It’s yours.” She pushed the whale into his hands, then followed Job as he carried it to
his truck. “Don’t know why I hung on to that thing. I hate it. I hate all of them. Couldn’t understand why he took this up as a hobby.” She flung an arm at the whirligigs whirring and clicking in the breeze around them. “Look at it! I’ve let this whole place go to hell.” She held up the stained skirt of her dress as if for inspection. “Why did I let this happen?”

Job parked in the yard in front of the cabin and eyed the poppy Abe had pinned to the visor so he wouldn’t have to buy another the next Remembrance Day. Job had been driving the truck all that time and hadn’t noticed the poppy. He guessed that was how it was with much of his life; he knew it so well he didn’t see it. But was looking now.

He glanced down at Herb Spitzer’s whale, grinning at him from the seat of the truck. Jonah’s arms were raised and waving, as Job opened the door and the cold air caught the propeller on the whale’s nose and fluttered the sail on the whale’s tiny mast. The cheesy smile of the whale, the pathetic little man. Job lifted the whale and hurled it onto the snow in front of the cabin. He expected the whale to break apart, and Jonah and the mast to splinter off. But the whirligig landed whole and rocked to one side, the propeller on the whale’s nose whirring, Jonah waving. He gave the whale a kick and marched off across the road, past the house and across the snowy fields. His anger dissipated as he reached the top of the coulee.

He dropped to the snow and hugged his knees as he looked down into the valley to the frozen lake below. The bawls of the cows behind Job echoed against the far coulee wall. Below, in the valley, a herd of mule deer. He counted
ten, led by a large buck, as one by one they ran down the steep hill, across the ravine and up into the bush of the bank just below him, where they gathered for a moment before running back across the coulee again. The sound of them snorting, their hooves against frozen earth and snow. They were playing, enjoying the warmth of the winter sun. It was instinctive; they ran in response to their hearts quickening their blood. They didn’t ask God if they could do it, or who they could do it with; they didn’t think of God at all.

The little girl named Sherry at church that morning was right. He didn’t need God in order to change. Or live. He’d spent his life trying to fulfill the wishes of others, to cater to Abe and Jacob’s needs. But why couldn’t he think of himself for a change? He could decide what he wanted, and do it. The thought was a revelation, a thrill running through him. But where to start? What did he want?

He ran back to the yard, excitement carrying him, a feeling as though he could hover over the prairies as he sometimes did in dreams, just by choosing to. He stopped short at the whale he’d tossed to the ground and picked it up, then carried it to a fence post along the driveway and, after hunting down a hammer, knocked the whale on its spike into the top of the fence post. Then he set the propeller spinning. The wide-eyed, bare-assed Jonah flung his arms in panic, hoping to be seen and rescued.

When Job knocked, the door flew open, Liv was dressed all in grey: grey sweatpants and sweatshirt with an oversized man’s sweater over top. She wore glasses, and didn’t look herself. She’d been crying. “Job,” she said. “Thought you were Darren, forgetting his key again.” She turned her back to him and blew her nose into a wad of toilet paper. “He didn’t come home last night.”

A hummingbird made of stained glass hung by fishing line in the window, scattering sunlight on the hardwood floor. Job kept his eyes on the light on the floor, wondering if it had really been wise to stop in on Liv. Crystal had told him Liv was at home alone when he came into the café for breakfast, and had urged him to go over to see her. But now that he was here he was afraid of some embarrassing domestic scene. What if Darren suddenly came home and caught him here at this early hour. It wasn’t nine o’clock.

“Come into the kitchen,” said Liv. “I just made tea.”

A good-sized kitchen. A high ceiling. Walls painted periwinkle blue. Pots hung from the rack above the stove. Open shelves were stocked with gallon pickle jars filled with chickpeas, dried kidney beans, rice, flour and oats. Jars of spices labelled neatly in Liv’s hand. The smell of cinnamon. A wooden table big enough to hold eight comfortably.
“Steinke had that sitting in his barn,” she said, rapping her knuckles on it. “I offered him fifty bucks for it and he took it.” She took down blue teacups and saucers to match from a cupboard.

Job lifted a mayonnaise jar of brightly coloured buttons from the shelf. “My mother kept a jar of buttons in the kitchen,” he said. “She did her sewing on the kitchen table.” He put the jar back on the shelf as Liv handed him his tea.

“I just like the look of them,” she said. She unwound a fresh wad of toilet paper from the roll on the table and wiped her nose with it. “They make me happy.”

Job remembered a jar of buttons from his childhood, in his grade one class. One button covered in rhinestone, shining within a jar of others made from horn, bone, jet and coloured plastic. He dumped the buttons on the floor to get at it, then played with it in the sunlight that came in from the window, sending shards of light across the ceiling, distracting the class. He wouldn’t stop or hand over the button when the teacher told him to, and pulled his hand into a fist to protect it. As punishment, he stood outside in the sun, on the steps of the school, sending slivers of light over the wall. He had known what he wanted then, and had dumped the jar of buttons to get it. Made a fist to keep it. “There’s something about a jar of buttons,” he said, as he sat at the table with Liv.

“It’s the abundance,” said Liv. “The choice.”

“Mom put buttons of one kind on a safety pin, to keep them together. Jacob and I played with those safety pins full of buttons, making like they were electric razors. Dad would lift me onto the sink and Jacob would stand on the toilet, and all three of us would look into the mirror and
shave. The buttons just rolled over my cheeks. I thought I was shaving. Being a man.”

They sat in silence for a while, sipping tea. Liv put her cup back in its saucer. “So, you come for anything in particular?”

“Just a visit. Ruth said you came to church. Crystal said you’d been asking after me.”

“I thought at least you’d turn up at church, if not the café.”

She
had
been looking for him. There was a crack from the ceiling, then another and another, as if someone were walking overhead. “That Jason?” said Job.

“No. He stayed overnight with one of his friends. That’s likely the ghost.”

“You really think it is a ghost?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I go into a room and feel like I’ve just scared something off. When the furnace is on, I think I hear a voice. I’ve even called out a couple of times, thinking Darren or Jason had come home without me knowing, but no one was in the house with me.” She picked up the teapot and refilled both their cups. “You ever see a ghost?”

“No.”

“But you believe in a spirit, or a soul, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Though, increasingly, he wasn’t so sure.

Liv poured milk into her tea. “I remember this one time I woke up outside myself. I was awake, but I was floating just above my chest. It only lasted a moment, but while it lasted, I had this sensation of expansion, as if I were air escaping a balloon. I would have been happy to stay like that and never go back to my body.”

Job sat forward, excitement pumping through him. “Really? I’ve had that happen too,” he said. “The feeling of expansion.” He thought of telling her about the colours he had heard, how he had lost himself to the singing of the church choir. How he missed the colours, the sensations in his hands, that feeling of losing himself, the certainty that God was real. But what if she didn’t understand and thought him crazy, a religious nut? As he was sure he’d appeared when he’d been interviewed about the crop circle. “It’s like when you’re driving down the road,” he said. “And you get lost in the sky; you feel like you’re a part of it. And then you come to an intersection and wake up and feel small.”

“Yes,” said Liv. “Exactly.”

Job reached out and took Liv’s hand, a rhinestone button in his grip. The thrill, the relief, of finally finding someone who understood this. He could justify himself. Something of his experience was hers too. He wasn’t so different, after all. Not so strange.

She squeezed his hand and let go. “Listen, you want to go for a walk?” she said. “I don’t want to be home when Darren gets back.”

“Sure.”

“Let me put some clothes on.”

Liv came downstairs dressed in a long black skirt with leggings underneath. A pair of black boots. A thick fishermanknit sweater under a man’s tweed jacket. Looking a little more like herself again. She had put contacts in, but she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her face was still mottled red from crying. As they stepped from the house, she put on a black fedora over her sweep of red hair and pulled on black woollen gloves. “What a glorious day,” she said.

Everything, from the roofs of the town to the trucks and cars and surrounding trees, was covered in hoarfrost, casting the world in a brightness that made Job squint. Hoarfrost iced the branches of the trees and drifted down in large flakes that caught the sunlight and glittered like the coloured Christmas lights on the tree outside the community hall.

They passed the hedge of caragana on Dithy Spitzer’s fenceline. The whirligigs on her snowy lawn. A large red bow at her gate, a cheerful nod to the season. Chickadees kept up with their pace, flying from tree to tree just ahead of them. A small flock of blue jays flew up as they approached, not as a group, but individually and in a line, one after the other.

“Can I ask you something?” said Job.

“Sure.”

“Why do you stay with Darren? Why don’t you just leave?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s the practicality of it, for one thing. I can’t just walk out the door. I don’t know how I could arrange everything, find a place, move all my stuff out before he gets home from a haul. I’d have to come back for things—it’s inevitable—and then I’d have to face him, and he’d get into one of his rages. I’d have to ask him for money. I’ve got Jason to think about. And he is going to the counsellor with me and Jason. He’s making an effort.”

“But then he didn’t come home last night.”

“Yeah, then he doesn’t come home.”

They reached the Sunstrum farm gate. Job thought he should ask her in, but then where to entertain? The dinginess of the cabin. Instead, they stopped at the gate and turned back, heading for town.

“You get angry at this other person for doing this to you,” said Liv. “But you get more angry at yourself for letting it happen. I mean, how did I go from that girl who hitchhiked by herself across the country to this woman who’s afraid to drive a car to the grocery store? Why did I let that happen?”

Job glanced at her to see if she expected an answer, then tucked his chin back into his chest.

A pickup roared up behind them. “Oh, shit,” said Liv. “Speak of the devil.”

Darren stopped the truck and jumped out. The crunch of gravel and snow under his boots. “What the hell are you doing with that freak!” he yelled, and turned to Job. “You suddenly got a taste for women?”

When Liv turned from him and started walking away, he grabbed her arm. “You sleeping with this pansy?” He waved a hand back at the Sunstrum farm. “You stay at his place last night?”

“What do you care?” said Liv. “Where were you last night, huh? If I’d gone over to Rhonda Cooper’s would I have seen the truck parked there? Would I?”

Darren kicked gravel. “None of your business where I was.”

“I’m your wife, for God’s sake. When you don’t come home at night it is my business.”

Job stepped back. Of course Liv was Darren’s wife. What was he doing with her?

Darren pulled Liv to the truck. “Come on. I’m not going to discuss this in front of this fairy.”

Liv yanked her arm out of Darren’s grasp. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“What is it? You got a thing for Princess?” He waved a hand at Job. “You going to take off with him?”

“Of course not,” said Liv.

“What is it, Pretty Boy? You got a thing for my wife?” He pushed Job in the chest. Job stumbled back into the snow-filled ditch and nearly lost his footing. Spittle was on the side of Darren’s mouth as he sucked in air in his rage, as Abe had, as he beat unruly cows with a stick.

“Leave him alone,” said Liv. “We were just taking a walk. We’re just friends.”

“What do you need with friends?”

Liv stared at him a moment with her arms crossed, then started walking down the road. Job trotted to catch up to her.

“Wait!” said Darren. “I brought you a present.” He rummaged in his truck and scrambled to catch up to Liv. He pulled a gift-wrapped box from a brown paper bag and held it out to her.