New Year's Eve (5 page)

I wanted to tell her I did that, too. But it seemed disloyal to Grady, to tell someone that I thought about leaving him. Thought about it pretty much every day.

“What—” I broke off. None of my business.

“What what?” Jade flicked water at me.

“What happened, I was going to ask. That your husband’s going to leave you.”

“I told him I’m in love with somebody else. I have been for a while.”

Sharla shouted from the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what she wanted.

“The stupid thing is, I’m not even doing anything about it,” Jade said.

I didn’t say anything.

Jade’s hands clenched and unclenched under the water. She looked at the fans her fingers made. “He’s married.”

You are, too, I thought.

“He doesn’t know,” Jade said. “I mean, the guy. I haven’t told him. It’s just hard.”

She was staring at me, trying to tell me something in code.

I thought, it’s Grady. She’s trying to let me know.

But that was dumb. Grady had never even met Jade, as far as I knew.

But he might have, when he was on a course or something. Or at the hockey tournament. I couldn’t go last year because I was pregnant and sick. I was pretty pissed off that Grady went, in fact. He got his mom to come and help me out while he was gone.

Sharla came back with a tray, carrying the police radio by its antenna. The radio was crackling again.

I could hear Ron. He was saying, “We’ll be 10-77, you can reach us here.”

In the radio code, 10-77 is
at home
.

Just as I figured that out, Ron put his head around the sunroom door. He grinned at us and waved. He said 10-4 into the small radio on his shoulder and clicked it off.

“Hey, ladies!” Ron said. “Grady, we picked the right time to come home! It’s a strip show!”

Grady stuck his head around the door, like a cop checking the scene before entering. He can’t help it. In a restaurant he always has to sit with his back against the wall.

“This is Jade, Tim Lamont’s better half,” Ron was telling Grady. “Really great you could make it, Jade—I thought you were stuck helping with the teen party?”

Sharla talked over him. “We found her at the hall. Did you guys even see us? I was right there on the dance floor when that all started.”

Sharla was trying to cover up the mean thing she’d done, but it was too plain. She must have told Ron that Jade couldn’t come. But really, she had never invited Jade.

Jade looked at Ron, then at Sharla. “I—no, it turns out. They went to Donna’s, so they didn’t need me.”

Ron didn’t seem to notice that Sharla had been mean. Or that Jade had figured out the truth and was playing along, being kind. Guys miss things. They expect everyone to be as straightforward as they are.

Grady had seen the truth, though. He didn’t like Ron being fooled.

He passed Sharla and came to say hi to Jade.

“I know Tim from a course,” he said.

Jade looked up—she had been staring down into the water.

“He taught the new member course when Ron and I were on it a couple of years ago. Good guy.”

“Yeah,” Jade said. “He likes teaching. Means a few weeks away from here.”

“He’s an excellent teacher,” Grady said. He undid his parka. “Hot in here!”

Sharla hurried through. Her robe was coming open, showing the top of her pink chest.

“Now you can finally relax,” she told Grady. She pressed a White Russian into his hand.

He took the glass but didn’t drink.

Ron threw his coat on a chair. He undid his collar.

“Wish I could jump in there with you,” he said to Jade. “Grady, you should peel off. Hey, Sharla, no drink for me?”

Sharla gave him a dirty look. She went back to the kitchen.

“What took you guys so long?” she called back.

“Had to wait for a guard. Those boys needed some Band-Aids, too,” Ron said. He smiled at Jade. “Can’t let their moms see them like that. Good thing your boys weren’t in on the fight. I’d hate to have to deal with
their
mom later. I hear she’s a firecracker.”

Jade laughed, her face bright and happy. “They only fight with each other. That’s enough blood for me.”

Daisy began to kick her legs and complain, reaching with her arms. She wanted to go to Grady. He heard her and came over. He lifted her up with his big hands and settled her in the crook of his arm. He didn’t seem to mind the water getting on his shirt.

“Who’s the baby?” he asked her. “Who’s the baby girl?” Sap. Daisy loved it, though.

“We did meet,” Jade said to Grady.

She smiled at him. Her teeth were as nice as Sharla’s. But she was way better looking, I thought.

And way more Grady’s type.

“We met at Moxie’s, in Edmonton,” Jade told him. “During the course. I went in a few times to have dinner with Tim. I remember you. And Ron.”

Grady laughed. “I was in a daze, trying to remember what I’d been taught. Hoping not to screw up in front of Tim, probably.”

Hearing about Grady being out with other people always makes me jealous. It’s just because I hardly ever get to go.

But if I met him, I’d be in love with him. I mean, when I did meet him, I was. I am. I should not have had that drink, I thought. It’s making me stupid.

“Who did your hair?” Grady asked me. “You look like Princess Buttercup at the wedding.”

“Yeah, Robin Wright,
The Princess Bride
!” Sharla said. She had brought Ron’s drink in from the kitchen. “She was my idol. I looked like her, back then.”

She put down a platter of egg rolls and slid out of her robe and into the water like a bare pink fish. Sharla still looked like a princess, a lot more than I did, anyway.

“Sharla did my hair,” I said. “She did a good job, eh?”

Grady looked at me over Daisy’s head. He crossed his eyes.

“Oh, yeahhh,” he said, in a voice that meant,
What the hell has she done to you? Where’s my real wife?

I laughed.

I stopped worrying. Jade was not in love with Grady. He wouldn’t do that, let someone be in love with him.

Ron picked up his drink and sat on the edge of the hot tub between Jade and Sharla.

“So,” he said. “When do I dare get out of this uniform and make you women happy?”

The radio jumped on the tray.

“Jinx,” Grady said.

“We forgot to tell you, the buffalo got out again,” I told him. We should have phoned Control. It hadn’t occurred to me then. I didn’t say anything about nearly getting mowed down.

Ron was already up and in his coat.

He moved fast, talking to the control room. An MVA—motor vehicle accident.

Grady gave me Daisy and his untouched drink, grabbed his coat, and went out the door with Ron. Daisy looked after him, lost and lonely.

“It’s okay, baby,” I told her. “He’ll be back.”

Ron turned and gave us a quick wave. I looked over at Sharla—she didn’t look up from her egg roll.

But Jade was watching him go. Her face had the same look as Daisy’s. Like she’d been left by her beloved.

Oh shit,
I thought—and
thank goodness,
tangled up in the same thought. It’s Ron.

Sharla’s purple dress lay on the floor, where she’d dropped it when we first got into the hot tub. The sparkly necklace spread over it like fireworks.

Midnight must be close, I thought.
Please
let midnight come soon, so I can go to bed.

We had finished the egg rolls and more wings. The caramel apple pie oozed half-eaten on the edge of the tub.

Jade broke a fingernail getting a Diet Coke open.
Tsk,
went Sharla, sucking her teeth. She brought out her nail polish case. After she fixed Jade’s nail, she painted all our nails and glued a little fake diamond on each tip. My hands looked like they belonged to somebody else. To Sharla, actually.

Jade and Sharla kept talking and talking while I stayed quiet.

If a person thinks she knows something, should she tell? And tell who, anyway—Sharla? Ron?

I could tell Grady, maybe, but he looks down on gossip. I could just keep quiet. I thought, too, about Sharla’s three babies that didn’t happen.

By then Jade and Sharla were deep into the high school teacher issue. Whether she really had a thing going on with some boy. Whether or not she would be fired, although they seemed to agree she
should
be.

Sharla was betting the teacher would be canned for sure. Jade said the story might just be wishful thinking by the students. Sharla snorted at that.

“I’ve seen her giving Ron the eye,” Sharla said. “She should have her teaching licence taken away.”

They got into a bit of a fight, in a mild way.

While they argued, I got out and found a diaper for Daisy. I sat on the edge of the tub to cool down a bit and let Daisy stay dry. I sang along to the music playing on the radio. Quietly,
quietly, me and Daisy alone together. The others didn’t notice. I sipped my drink. Grady’s drink.

“What do you think, Dixie?” Sharla said. She wanted someone on her side.

“About what?”

Sharla ground her teeth. “About the teacher!”

Daisy had drifted into sleep on my shoulder.

“I guess—I don’t know. Does she love the guy?”

“I don’t think that’s the point,” Sharla said sharply.

I stared at her. She was so pretty on the outside and so prickly on the inside.

“I think I am a bit drunk,” I said. “Isn’t love always the point?”

Jade shook her head. “Not to me, not if the boy was my son. If it’s true, then it’s
abuse
—”

But that wasn’t what I meant. I talked faster.

“I mean, if she really loves the guy, she won’t want to wreck his life. So she wouldn’t sleep with him, because that would wreck his life.”

They stared at me.

“If she
doesn’t
love him, she might have slept with him. Abused him. Or just—told him
she’s in love with him, or something. Whatever really happened.”

Hard to talk about a teacher I’d never seen. I kept imagining her: really beautiful, with long dark hair. And lonely.

“I remember high school,” I said. “It’s like a very small town. Hardly any possible men. You know, the drama teacher is gay, the principal is old... So the one good man seems like everything. Maybe he has a mean girlfriend. Or maybe he’s just really decent, really kind, and she—maybe she does love him.”

My strategy was not working. I had almost talked myself onto Jade’s side.

“You can get carried away by that secret, the secret of loving somebody,” I said. “She might feel like wrecking her own life, losing her kids—I mean, the school kids. The job.”

Sharla stared at me, as if a fish had started to talk.

“I mean, what she feels isn’t necessarily real love.” I knew I wasn’t making any sense.

Jade looked at her hands under the water. The fake diamonds on her nails glittered.

“Anyway, we don’t know what happened,” I said. “So we can’t judge her.”

I sounded like Grady.

I bent down and slid Daisy, fast asleep, into her car seat.

Then my arms felt so light.

“It’s got to be midnight by now,” I said. “Shouldn’t we bang the pots and pans or sing?”

Sharla stood up in the water.

“It’s so
hot
in here,” she said. “I’m boiling. I need some air!”

She jumped out and pulled open the patio door.

Beyond the misted glass, the night outside had changed. It had warmed up, and the wind was gone. Clean snow lay over the back yard like a blank sheet of paper.

Jade got out, too. She went to the door. Steam rose in clouds off her long back and legs. “Oh, this is good,” she said. “I needed this!”

She took a deep breath and then ran out onto the deck and down the stairs. She jumped full-length into the snow, face down.

Sharla gave a short scream, as if Jade was in danger.

Running into the snow looked like a really good idea to me.

I went past Sharla and out, walking barefoot through the snow. I’d been hot and sleepy for so long, I felt great. I slid down the deck steps and fell backwards into a patch of untouched snow.

The snow was so, so, so cold! It felt like burning on my skin. I flapped my arms and legs to make an angel.

Sharla was laughing her head off. The night was quiet. Her laughter crackled in the air. She said, “Oh, I can’t, I can’t!” But she did. She ran out into the snow. She had nothing on, she must have frozen instantly.

I stood up to check my snow angel. Not bad. My feet were numb. Jade flapped her legs and arms, too, and Sharla managed to flap once before she had to jump up and run back. I almost beat her back, to slide into the hot water again.

Jade came more slowly. Her skin was beet red in the blue light from the tub.

We thawed.

“Okay,” Sharla said. “I’m putting coffee on. If those guys don’t come back in fifteen minutes, I’m going to bed.”

She hauled herself out one last time and went to the kitchen.

Jade said, “I didn’t tell my husband who the guy is. The one I’m in love with.”

I nodded.

“I had that much sense,” she added.

I laughed.

After a minute, she said, “You were right to say what you did. I don’t want to wreck Ron’s life. Or mine.”