Henry's Sisters (14 page)

‘But what about the credit cards?’ Parker’s voice sounded like a weak-willed weasel’s.

I heard Bob The Man in Charge grunt. ‘Hey, Parker, you ran those up, they’re your cards, you signed each slip, I’ve seen ’em. She’s not going to agree to take on your and Constance’s Botox, lip plumpers, and colon flushings. Ever. A judge isn’t going to make her pay for them, either. They’re not generally sympathetic to people who cheat, go to Mexico with their girlfriends, and try to get the wife to split the cost.’

Cherie’s eyebrows flew up.

Parker swore. Always the tough guy. ‘But the child support! God! $3,000? Each month? It doesn’t take that much to raise kids.’

‘Yes, it does,’ The Water Tower said. ‘I have five kids. I handle the money in our house because my wife is too busy to do it. Your payment is based on a formula that the state of Oregon uses according to your income. You’re not going to wriggle out of that one, Parker, so give it up.’

Parker swore again. ‘She’s like an albatross around my neck. She’s jealous. She’s a sick, manipulative,
fat—’

‘We counselled you to settle more than nine months ago,’ Bob The Man in Charge said. ‘You have already paid us $35,000 in fees. You’re on the hook for another $10,000. You’re gonna pay Cherie’s fees, too. You can’t afford to not settle this. You got that, buddy? You can’t afford it. Get the divorce done, then go out and marry that woman. What’s her name again?’

‘Constance.’

‘Constance. Marry her.’

‘Yes, do go and marry Constance the colon flusher,’ Cecilia whispered. ‘Please do. Immediately.’

‘You’ve overcharged
me—’

‘All charges deserved,’ Bob The Man in Charge drawled.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ We could hear Parker breathing heavily.

‘It means that you’re an asshole. You cheat on your wife with some
bimbo—’

‘Don’t call her a bimbo,’ Cecilia whispered. ‘Don’t put any ideas in his head. He needs to marry the bimbo!’

‘Constance is not a bimbo,’ Parker said, but his voice wasn’t too convinced.

‘Constance is—’ Bob The Man in Charge laughed. ‘OK, Parker. We’re done.’

‘Cut my fees or I sue you, Bob. I’ll sue you for…for…’

‘For?’ Bob paused.

I decided I liked Bob.

‘I’ll sue you. I’m not paying you a dime more.’

‘There isn’t an attorney in town who will take your case, Parker. Not a one. If you don’t have that money on my desk in thirty days I’ll attach your pay-cheque at that fancy business you work at so fast snot will fly out of your nose. Think your boss will like that?’

Parker’s hands slapped against the table again. They had to be hurtin’.

We were summoned in and tried not to laugh upon entry, although Cecilia was still boiling at the fat comments.

I subtly raised my middle finger at Parker and waved it. Janie grinned, her face serene, amused.

When we sat down, I saw her smiling at Parker, her fingers tapping the table, one, two, three, four. When he caught her gaze he said, ‘What?’ in this accusatory tone.

‘What?’ Janie said, pleasantly. She bit her lip. I knew her. She was already killing Parker again in her head for another book.

‘Why are you even here, Janie?’ Parker said. ‘Don’t you have someone to kill?’

His lawyers tensed.

‘No, no, don’t worry,’ I said, with reassurance. I kicked Janie. She was gazing at Parker as if she adored him. She detests the guy as most of us would detest a tarantula attached to our nipple, but when she gets a plot going in her head, there’s no stopping her rampant, free-flowing joy.

‘Janie’s a crime fiction writer,’ I said.

The face of Bob The Man in Charge settled into perplexed lines, but then his face cleared and he sat straight up. ‘Well, I’ll be darned!’

I was surprised by his exclamation.
Well
,
I’ll be darned?

‘You’re
Janie Bommarito
, aren’t you?’ He was delighted. A treasure had been found! ‘I can’t believe I didn’t put it together!’

‘Janie Bommarito!’ The Water Tower laughed. ‘We read your book
Devon’s Scars
for our office book club. It scared me so much I could only read it during the day. I even took a day off work to stay home
and—’

He clamped his mouth shut tight and lickety-split pleaded his case to Bob. ‘I mean, I was
sick
. I was bedridden sick. It was that day after the trial with the
Mallorys—’

Bob The Man in Charge hardly noticed, his excitement at the grand privilege of meeting Janie making him wriggle with unrestrained joy in his seat.

‘I’ve read all of your books.
All of them
. Some twice. I’ve already pre-ordered your next one,
Melody’s Slashing
, online. It’s a pleasure to meet you in person, Ms Bommarito. You are the only crime writer I read. I tend more towards reading the classics.
Pride and Prejudice
.
Jane Eyre
.
Wuthering Heights
.’

Now that stopped us all up a bit. This huge man loved
Wuthering Heights
? I would have thought he would be reading books on sharks.

‘You’re a classics lover!’ Janie breathed. ‘One of my hobbies is to collect early editions by the Brontë sisters!’

‘Are you serious?’ The Man in Charge gasped. ‘I do the same! Collector’s editions! I’ve created an English-style garden, too!’

I thought Janie was going to faint. She put a hand to her chest.

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did!’ Bob’s smile reached ear to ear. ‘I’ve built stone walls, paths, fountains, a pond, a bridge, all to the period!’

Janie gasped again. ‘Oh my goodness! My goodness!’ She leant forward, eyes shining. ‘Can I come and see it?’

‘It would be my deepest pleasure. I would be delighted. It would be my privilege.’ He inhaled, his fingers continuing the forward circle motion with his pen, only faster. ‘Could you bring part of your collection? It would be an
honour—’

‘Yes, absolutely! We can look at them in the garden! It will be so authentic, so historical, so literary! I’ll bring my favourite teas!’

My mouth dropped open. I tried to shut it. Was that
Janie
agreeing to go to a man’s house with her books and teas and tapping?

The Man in Charge slid his card across the table, grinning, eyes twinkling like strobes. ‘I love tea! I’ll get the scones!’

Now I thought Janie was going to keel over. A man who loved tea! Next we’d find out he loved Yo-Yo Ma.

‘Shit, Bob, shit!’ Parker protested. ‘Can we end the lovefest on the classics now? Could we? This is about my long-overdue divorce from the fat cow sitting over there who wants to suck me dry because she’s a jealous, vindictive, vengeful bitch!’

Oh, I couldn’t help myself.

I was up and out of my chair before I knew it and Parker was sprawled again on his face.

‘I apologise for helping to create a tense environment,’ I said, so polite, to the attorneys.

‘Apology accepted!’ Bob The Man in Charge grinned.

No one helped Parker up.

Thinking we would kill two bloodsucking birds with one stone, we went to see Momma. She was soon to be discharged. She had battled an infection, then another one, but was getting better.

She wasn’t pleased with life at the hospital.

The doctors had the educations of water rats.

One of the nurses was ‘the blackest person she’d ever seen. Never stops smiling.’ That nurse had brought her a crocheted shawl she’d made herself. I figured the woman was a saint to reach out to our grouchy momma like that. ‘I wear it to make her feel good.’ She sniffed. We pretended not to see the sheen in her eyes as she fingered that beautiful, colourful shawl.

Momma would not take it off for weeks.

She did not like the food. ‘It was made with dog food, probably, dead horses…’

We kissed her, left.

Sighed when we got in the car.

We burnt Cecilia’s wedding dress in a bonfire on the back lawn after a typical Bommarito family dinner that night.

We’d set the kitchen table with Grandma’s china and silverware and all the candles we had to celebrate Cecilia’s freedom. We put flowers in the coloured bottles from Momma’s collection and scattered them across the table. Cecilia brought over a huge pan of steaming lasagne, melted cheese layering the top. ‘Parker loved this lasagne. He said it was the only thing I did right. Too bad I never put arsenic in it.’

I brought Bommarito’s Heavenly Cupcakes from the bakery designed in an Alice in Wonderland sort of way with colourful purple mushrooms and wildflowers.

Velvet wore a green velvet dress and a pink flowered hat. ‘Remember, Cecilia, sugar, men are only for dessert, not the main course. Think: treat. Not: meat. You have that, child?’

Kayla wore a Jewish beanie and carried the Old Testament. Riley wore a bright red headband over her hair and discussed all she understood about quantum physics while plucking a few hairs out.

Henry wore a shirt with a picture of a basset hound on it, a Batman cape, and a black mask. ‘Ta da!’ he yelled when he jumped into the kitchen, holding the cape to his nose. ‘I Bat Man! Yeah, yeah! I save you, Is! I am hero!’

Grandma prayed, ‘Dear God, this is Amelia. Planes should be piloted by women. Men will crash them. They have pea brains. Except my co-pilot. You screwed up on them. Amen. Dear God.’

Our conversation at the table was eclectic as usual: the finding of human poop in a cave in southern Oregon that dates back 15,000 years, Neptune (Why is it blue?), Riley’s use of ‘excessive force’ in dodgeball at school and how she was suspended for two days.

Janie got up twice and checked to make sure the stove and oven were off, and seemed distracted. I figured it was Bob The Man in Charge.

‘Are you going to call him?’

‘No. Yes. No. Too scared.’ She tapped her fingers together.

I remembered that rhythmic circling Bob did with the pencil.

‘I think you should.’ I handed her the cranberry nut salad. ‘Take a dare.’

‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ She steepled her fingers. ‘I’m so strange. He’ll think I’m strange. A nut-head, nutcase. What would Emily Brontë do?’

Baffled me, it did. ‘I’ll ask her,’ I drawled. ‘I think the Ouija board is still in the attic.’

Grandma interrupted our conversation by lifting her middle fingers in the air. ‘Amelia Earhart does not have time for sexual frivolity. I will not be a servant to what a man with a pea brain wants. That’s no way for a woman to live her life, by golly! Who cares what men want?’

We all held up our wineglasses – we always use wineglasses even when there’s milk in them – and cheered Amelia Earhart.

‘I will abstain from intercourse until I am married for religious reasons,’ Kayla said. She put her hand on the Old Testament.

We quieted down a bit.

‘That’s the best thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth for ten years,’ Cecilia growled.

Kayla glowered at her.

‘To abstaining!’ Janie shouted. We cheered and clinked glasses again.

‘And cheers to physics,’ Riley said. ‘Especially quantum.’

‘I Bat Man!’ Henry announced, climbing on his chair and swirling the cape. ‘I got a cape.’

Grandma farted, middle fingers pointed upward. ‘Gas in the tank!’

‘Remember,’ Velvet intoned, adjusting her pink flowered hat. ‘Men are treats, not meat.’

After the girls were in bed, Cecilia, Janie, Henry, and I danced around the bonfire, twirling and spinning. Henry insisted that we do the hokey pokey. He loves the hokey pokey. ‘Put your whole self in, Is!’ he encouraged me. ‘Put your whole self in!’

I thought that was rather philosophical, but Henry really gets it. Gets life.

The tears streamed down Cecilia’s face, but she didn’t stop hokey pokey-ing.

Henry saw this and said, ‘I kiss you! I love you, Cecilia! You my sister!’ He kissed her on the cheek.

See? He gets it.

We hugged in a mob as the ashes of the wedding dress drifted towards the night sky on a spiral of wind, the stars sprinkled above, Henry’s laughter bopping all around us like peace.

Later we put Henry to bed with a heating pad. His stomach was hurting, and we have learnt over the years that this is the way to handle it. He said he ate too much Alice in Wonderland cupcake.

The three of us sisters collapsed in my bed. I woke up the next morning hugging Cecilia’s backside, Janie hugging me.

I felt better.

The darkness on the edges of my brain matter was back in its cave again. I knew it was waiting for me, waiting for a weak moment, but at least I had it contained, controlled, if only for a little while.

‘Your mother, Ms Merry Sunshine, is ready to go, ladies,’ Dr Janns announced with great gusto. ‘The ship is leaving the port. The shuttle is ready for takeoff. The quarterback has thrown the ball.’

I raised an eyebrow at Dr Janns. Janie giggled. Cecilia sighed.

He shot his arm across the air in front of him, signalling a shuttle blasting off.

‘He always does things like that,’ Momma complained from the bed, her pink robe wrapped around her, as she fiddled with her crocheted shawl. ‘He’s a midget.’

‘A bit out of the midget range, I’d say,’ Cecilia said, tilting her head up at Dr Janns.

‘He’s a midget,’ Momma insisted. ‘A midget in his head. Dr Janns, you have a spot on your coat that reminds me of blood and I am uncomfortable with your hygiene.’

Such a genteel lady, our momma.

‘And I’m uncomfortable because you won’t get up and dance with me, Mrs Bommarito.’ He bowed. ‘I have been craving a dance with you since the second you told me I reminded you of a bad crossword puzzle.’

I had no idea why she said that.

Momma waved her hand in the air. I could tell she was trying to hide a smile. ‘I’m not going to dance with you. You would crush my feet. Your shoes are the size of canoes. Dear me.’

The doctor leant way, way over to gape sorrowfully at his canoes. ‘Big and healthy. Please, relieve me of my broken heart. Dance with me down this hallway.’

‘Never,’ she said. The smile curved up again before she forced it right back down.

‘A tiny waltz? A tango? A fox-trot? I take dance, you know, at a studio right around the corner from here.’

‘You’ve told me, midget,’ Momma said.

‘My happy days at this hospital are numbered, Mrs Bommarito. You’re leaving me.’

‘These girls are insisting that I go to a retirement centre to rest up. I don’t need to rest. I’m fine. Fit as a fiddle. They’re forcing me against my will to go and live with old people. Old people. How boring.’

‘They’re smart daughters.’

Momma was still weak and there was no way she could handle Grandma and Henry and the business.

Mostly we bad daughters were not prepared to handle Momma.

We had discussed the ‘movin’ and groovin’ retirement centre again with Dr Janns. It cost an arm and a leg, but Janie and I were going to pay for it.

‘She’ll love it!’ Dr Janns had told us. ‘It’ll groove her out. It’s not for old, sick people, it’s for old people who wanna live, rock out, go on trips, meet people. My aunt was there for twenty years. She lived to be 106.’

Spare us, I thought. Oh,
spare us
.

In the end Momma waltzed with Dr Janns, gently, gingerly, elegantly, down the corridor of the hospital, doctors and nurses clapping.

Momma smiled, her beautiful shawl swirling around her.

She cried and cried when she hugged the nurse who gave it to her.

It was a long afternoon, but we got Momma settled in Brickstone Retirement Centre in Portland.

She hated it. (‘It’s a prison. You’re putting me in a prison.’) She hated all the other residents. (‘Old people. They’re all old, creaky old. I am not old.’) She hated her room. (‘Too small. The view is of the city skyscrapers. All that crime!’) She hated the dining room. (‘Big enough to hide a molester.’) She hated the location. (‘Portland! Liberal freak town. Earth lovers and savers. Bicyclists who don’t pay attention to road signs. Hippies with dreadlocks. Women with no make-up.’) She hated us. (‘Ungrateful daughters. After all the years I spent caring for you all…’)

We were so exhausted on the way home to Trillium River, we didn’t even speak.

I spent a long time laying on the grass studying the stars that night, wondering if other aliens on other planets had mommas as difficult as mine.

Did they have to go on drugs?

The Man in Charge called Janie. For a manly man, and a tough-ass attorney at that, I could tell the poor guy was nervous.

I took the call – Janie was at the bakery at the time – and relayed the message.

‘Oh, I can’t call back!’ she said, tap-tap-tapping her fingers on the kitchen counter that night.

‘Yes, you can,’ I said gently.

‘I can’t. I’m odd. Weird. Then he’ll know I’m odd. Weird.’

We argued.

She couldn’t. She didn’t.

‘She’s gone!’ Janie yelled as she burst into the bakery, the door smashing into the jamb. ‘She’s gone!’

I jumped in my seat in the booth, as did Bao, who actually leapt out and got in a crouched position. I gaped at him, baffled for a second, but then threw my attention back to Janie. Half her hair was out of her bun and she clapped her hands together four times, paused, clapped them together again.

‘What? Who’s gone?’

‘I’ve been trying to call you on your cell!’ she said, trying to catch her breath. ‘I called and called. I left the house without checking the stove and the oven and the door and came here right away because she’s gone. I have to go back and
check—’

‘
Who is gone?
’ I shouted. Momma? Henry? I fought down panic.

‘Grandma.
Grandma’s gone
.’

Grandma? Gone? Grandma should never go ‘gone’. I felt my stomach dive-bomb to my toes.

Janie grabbed me and shoved me towards the door.

‘Velvet called a few minutes ago,’ she puffed. ‘One, two, three, four. Grandma was taking a nap on the couch, so she darted out to drop Henry off at his art class and when she got home, Grandma wasn’t there. Velvet searched for about a half hour and couldn’t find her.’

‘Oh
shit
,’ I said. I took off after Janie, then stopped. There were ten people in the bakery and we were closing soon. ‘Bao? Bao?’

Bao was up from his crouch. I saw a line of sweat on his brow. The man did not like sudden noises. It had to have something to do with that scar, but I didn’t have time to think of it.

‘Go, go, Isabelle,’ he said, his voice strangled. ‘I take care of bakery. Go. I help find Grandma when I done. I help find Grandma.’

Belinda sat up in her booth and burst into tears. She gets scared easy, too.

‘Help Belinda, Bao,’ I said. We were off and running.

‘We’re going to check the river again first thing in the morning, Ms Bommarito,’ the police chief said to me. She nodded at Janie. ‘Ms Bommarito. First thing.’

Lyla Luchenko was about fifty-five years old. Her white hair was in a ponytail and she had a youngish face. ‘It’s midnight. We can’t search it any more now.’

The two other detectives in our grandma’s parlour were almost ashen. The entire police force and hundreds of volunteers had been searching for hours.

I had called Father Mike and he immediately put out the call to the congregation for help. They had responded in force, as had our neighbours, Cecilia’s teacher friends and students’ parents, and almost all the other people I’d ever even seen in Trillium River. ‘My prayers for Stella’s safety begin now!’ he boomed.

Headquarters for the search was our house. There were people in our home I’d never met working the phone and handing out stacks of fliers for other people I didn’t know to take and hang up in stores, bus stations, truck stops, and restaurants.

Police and other searchers were studying maps and ordering people to different areas to search for Grandma, including a state park, logging roads, and smaller towns.

I stumbled out onto the deck and put my head on the rail.
Oh
,
Grandma
, I thought, devastated. Grandma. All alone. Maybe outside. Cold. Scared. So confused.

The wind whipped up my hair, back and forth, back and forth.

I heard the police giving orders to drag the river.

Please.
Not the river
.

We didn’t sleep. We were out the door by four thirty. By five o’clock, a mass of boats were out searching the Columbia River. Cecilia, Janie, and I stood huddled at the river’s edge as the sun rose, without much colour, without fanfare. We had left Henry with Velvet, quivering with fear over Grandma, clutching the pilot’s hat she’d given him.

Under that sun, and the wind that never quit, we waited, grim and deathly afraid.

I felt myself age about ten years standing on the side of that river. We watched search boats scour the sides. We wanted them to find Grandma, but on the banks of the river, not in the river, bloated full of water and nibbled on by fish.

The media was there and we tried to avoid the cameras and the reporters. We asked that they not take photos of us. Having Janie there made it all the more newsworthy. All I wanted to do was smash their cameras.

At one point, we got in Cecilia’s van and drove down the river to another spot to avoid the cameras.