Web of Angels (21 page)

In the middle of May, Sharon woke up before the alarm clock went off, thinking it was the sun that had awakened her. She pulled her pillow over her head, half-waking Dan,
who rolled over, punching his own pillow and settling back to sleep. She had an urge to search the dining room. It needled her. It itched her like an unscratchable itch in her nipple or deep inside her ear. It felt like something grey. A bland colour, the colour of lampposts, and cold, like brushed aluminum appliances that showed every smudge. She rolled to one side, turned over again. Sighing, she flung back her side of the comforter and got up.

Taking the broom from the pantry, she figured she might as well get the threads and dust bunnies out from under the dining room table, though Franky wouldn’t thank her for it. As she swept, he jumped in and out of the dustpan, batting a dust bunny, trying to stand on his hind legs as it floated. Then he caught another on his claw and as he shook it, something hard skittered across the room, hitting the oak cabinet. He chased it. Squatting on her heels, Sharon pushed the kitty away from his prize and picked it up. A grey flash drive. She was sure it didn’t belong to anyone in this house, but a normal, sane person would first ask her husband and son if it was theirs, so she went upstairs to do so. The pipes squealed. Dan was having his shower.

It was her day at the animal clinic, which shared the block on Crookshank’s Lane with a dry cleaner, Berliner’s Hardware and the Korean pharmacy, ivy growing up the bricks topped by a grey canopy that still had
SAMUEL GOODCHILD DRUGGIST
and
BROMO SELTZER FOR HEADACHES
printed on it. The maple tree out front had been planted when the streetcar lines were
laid down a hundred and seventeen years earlier, ending at the railroad tracks. Back then the trains passed at street level, and Grossman’s Surgical Supply, on the other side of the tracks, had gotten its start supplying prosthetic feet and legs to unfortunate pedestrians. Now there was an overpass for the train, and the maple tree shaded a homeless man who slept in the deep entrance of the Korean pharmacy.

The veterinary clinic had a large glass storefront, a reception area with chairs on three sides where an assortment of people sat. Carriers were on the floor and inside them pets shed fur, peeing in their anxiety. The receptionist’s counter was to the rear on the left. Sharon sat beside shelves stocked with vet-recommended pet food: diets for fat cats and elderly dogs, for male cats with crystals in their urinary tract, dogs that were diabetic, desultory kittens, runty puppies. A weight-sensitive switch under the doormat triggered the first few notes of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” whenever someone came in or out, which was every five minutes on a Saturday. The office was behind the reception area, a small room about the size of the bathroom that was directly opposite. When Sharon absolutely had to use the toilet, she closed the office door so the smell wouldn’t penetrate and dashed across the hall, eyes averted from the surgery. Behind it were the kennels and the keening animals incarcerated there. Even in the office, she could hear dogs and cats and the occasional guinea pig voicing their unhappiness while she entered invoices and payments, receipts and inventory.

“I’ve got a puppy for you,” Amy said. Her lab coat had paw marks on the chest where one of her favourite patients,
a Great Dane, had greeted her with enthusiasm. Standing at a filing cabinet, she pulled out a drawer, removing a file to check a patient’s previous test results. Her practice still wasn’t fully computerized.

“We don’t need a puppy,” Sharon said, ignoring the inside ruckus of
we do, we do
. She’d been arguing with Dan about getting their cat fixed. Males spray, he’d said. She knew he was right and that she’d have to give in eventually. But she just couldn’t stand the thought of Franky in the vet’s back room, waking up from surgery, scared, hurting, with things done to him that he couldn’t remember. Cheque number 517. Sunnycare Rehab, where Amy’s brother was installed. Account: shareholder’s loan. When money changes hands, there are no secrets from the bookkeeper.

“I didn’t say you need one—but I have one.” Amy’s head was bent over the file, the sun burnishing her hair red like the new maple leaves, making her cousin to Sharon but only when she stood in the light from the window.

“We just got a kitten.”

“Oh, it’ll be a couple of weeks yet.” Replacing the file, Amy took out another, leaning with her elbow on the filing cabinet as she perused it. “The puppies are still with their mom. She’s a yellow Lab. When she was in heat a neighbourhood dog broke through the fence and the owner doesn’t want the puppies. One of them has your name on it, Sharon. She’s the smallest but very alert. I don’t think she’s going to grow up small. She’s got big paws and big ears.”

From
inside, yes yes yes yes yes
. “We’ll see,” Sharon said. “For now I’ll just get on with the bookkeeping, shall I?” It was an
odd word for something that had no relationship to books or keeping them anymore, but Sharon still remembered the heft of specially lined paper bound in heavy ledgers.

Her mother had kept the books, and so the privacy, of the family business. There were two sets: one was for the law firm downtown; the other was for other things, and locked away in a fireproof cabinet. She’d taught Sharon to keep accounts. Debit cash three hundred dollars. Credit revenue. The numbers had to balance. The adding machine was old and heavy and as the paper tape unfurled from it, numbers blue and red cancelled each other out, amounting to zero. If they didn’t, Sharon had to check every page, looking for the error or her mother would have something to say about it. She worked in pen. That was mandatory. When she made a mistake, she crossed out the number, using a ruler to keep the line straight, and wrote the correct amount above. Film, cameraman’s fee, straps. She didn’t remember the purpose and she wasn’t allowed to ask. Credit cash, debit expenses. There were many numbers crossed out, sometimes towers of them one above the other, and her mother’s mouth would tighten at her daughter’s ineptitude. Sharon began to write in pencil, then overwrite it in pen, carefully erasing the pencil, blowing the shavings into her cupped hand, disposing of them in the garden where eraser shavings blended with mulch.

Her cellphone rang. “Hi Josh. What’s going on? Uh huh. Uh huh. No problem,” she said. “Can I talk to Dad?” When Dan picked up, she said, “There’s a pan of lasagna in the freezer. Go ahead. I’m not hungry. Yes, I will. I’m sure I won’t be long.”

She missed her mother. That was what the others inside didn’t understand. She remembered going to Flo’s Kitchen for lunch, just the two of them, her mother in a halter top, long flowered skirt and canvas espadrilles laced up her calves. Sharon wore a short plaid jumper with a ruffled blouse under it. She had a hand on her mum’s bare arm, feeling the softness of the underskin as they were led to a table. Sharon ordered a milkshake, a hamburger well done. Her mother had steak and salad. They shared a plate of fries, Mum dipping hers in mayonnaise. It broke Sharon’s heart to stay away.

“Problem?” Amy asked.

“Cathy needs help with babysitting,” Sharon said. “I’ll pop over as soon as I’m finished here.”

“Just another month next door for us,” Amy said. “Ingrid can’t wait to move, but I’m glad we have some overlap with the new place. It gives us time to clean and get set up.”

“So it’s working out?” Just a few more cheques to enter. Number 525. Payer: Sadowsky Realtors. Amount: $1731. Account: rent. Taxes: category 1.

Amy nodded. “We painted and put a better lock on the basement door. Ingrid is OCD about the gun cabinet now.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“And then with Cathy, well it didn’t help.”

“What with Cathy?” Sharon looked up quickly then back at the computer.

“You know we caught Cathy sneaking into the house again and trying to get into the gun cabinet.”

“Uh huh,” Sharon muttered concomitantly as if this wasn’t news to her. “When was that exactly?”

“Right before Ingrid went to the shooting range with you.”

The target from that day had gone up on her wall in March. It was now nearly Mother’s Day. “That long ago,” she said.

“Ingrid didn’t tell you?” Amy asked.

“Not right then.”

“I guess she was too upset. I heard a noise and went downstairs, thinking the dogs needed to be let out. It was pretty funny really. I was calling the dogs and walked in on Cathy looking at me blankly, bold as you please, with a credit card in her hand. Probably her mom’s. I was ready to call the police and charge her, but Ingrid said to forget it. No harm done and she’s been through enough. I thought, And she’s the good one! Her parents have their hands full still. So of course I said that Ingrid had to tell you.”

“Of course,” Sharon said.

Amy put her hands on her hips. “I know that look, Sharon. She didn’t tell you, did she? Typical. Well now you know.”

“Yes, I do.” But she didn’t really. Two and two wasn’t giving her four, but three and a third or some other odd number like the square root of negative five. She turned off the computer. “I’m all done for today.”

“I’ll write you a cheque.”

“Thanks,” she said.

The receptionist was coming from the surgery as Sharon left the office, and they nearly collided. Behind her Sharon could see the sinks, scales large and small, operating tables, on one a dog anaesthetized, the other vet scaling his teeth.
There was a smell of wet dog around the receptionist. Sharon said, “See you,” and rushed out. “Old MacDonald” chimed, and the clinic door closed behind her.

Sharon turned onto Seaton Street, the wind chasing clouds above her head. Cathy had called, asking Josh if his mom would please please come over because the baby wouldn’t stop crying and her parents were away and she didn’t know what to do. Sharon walked past the yard of the candy-coloured house, where the fountain was running, the boy peeing into the garden of tulips, the lamppost in the corner hidden within lush ivy, its leafy arms stretched along the hydro wires. She turned left onto Lumley. Down the street was the school and the ramshackle cottage, which had been called Mammy Brown’s in a less informed time, and was boarded over, still unworthy of a heritage plaque. Sharon looked up at the sky and the roofs of her neighbourhood: pink, green, grey, brown, two-toned. Her own house had black shingles, curled by age, and lately Dan had been talking to roofers. Cathy’s house had the highest grade of architectural shingles, a textured look meant to imitate slate. Sharon rang the bell.

“Oh, Mrs. Lewis!” Cathy opened the door, her face panicked. Barefoot, jeans rolled up, she was wearing a white blouse discoloured in a couple of places, smelling faintly of deodorant. There was mail on the hall table, bills addressed to Rick Edwards, a flowery envelope from a women’s shelter for Dr. D. Dawson, a magazine renewal for Heather Edwards. “She won’t stop!”

“Let’s go see,” Sharon said, leaving her bag on the hall table.

The den smelled of air freshener, which took away most of the baby poop odour. Cathy’s textbooks and binders were on the couch, the TV on. Scattered everywhere: diapers, bottles, baby toys in bright colours, soft, expensive, intended to stimulate a brain already over-stimulated by the myriad sounds and sights outside a darkling womb. The baby’s face was red and scrunched, mouth round as she wailed from her infant seat on the rug.

“What’s wrong?” Cathy asked, her own face scrunched up. “I fed her, I burped her, I changed her. She won’t stop.”

“Eh eh eh,” hiccup, “Eh eh eh eh.” Such was the baby’s commentary from her infant seat on the rug.

“I know, I know,” Sharon said, kneeling. Soothing the baby with her voice, she unbuckled the harness, moving a hand under the soft curve of the baby’s skull as she lifted her out of the infant seat. Sharon’s breasts were slightly sore as if she could make milk on demand. “Linny might need to burp again.”

“Is that all?”

The crying was less intense as she lifted Madeline. That powdery baby smell—Sharon had missed it more than she’d realized. Her arms still remembered how to hold a baby, her hands the right way to cup the head as she put the baby against her shoulder, patting her.

Cathy turned off the TV. “Did Linny burp?”

“Not yet.” Sharon moved the baby to her lap, holding Madeline face down while she rubbed the baby’s back. Then
a pat. Rub, rub, pat. The little back tensed. Released. Ahh, there it was. Sharon turned Linny over, smiling while the tiny mouth found her fist. Tongue like a kitten’s darting in and out. A rosebud mouth sucking strong. Eyes blue-grey, the true colour unknown as yet. A baldy still.

“I thought she was having some kind of attack,” Cathy said, squatting, examining the baby for signs of the terrible ordeal they’d just been through. The baby was fine; it was Cathy who was shaky.

“I think she could probably have some more formula. Can you get the bottle?”

The den was quiet now that the baby had stopped crying. Sharon held the bottle, warm from the microwave, and cooed, “aren’t you a cutie” and “aren’t you a good girl” as the baby nursed. There was a new family portrait on the wall. In it Debra held the baby, Rick’s arm was around Debra, Cathy standing beside him with her all-purpose smile. The four of them were shot close within the frame of the photograph, little foreground and no background as if nothing and nobody mattered outside their tight grouping, casting out all memory of what might be missing.

“She’s still hungry I guess,” Cathy said, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside them. “They decided that I should take care of her every day after school and on weekends. It’s my punishment for having a sister that got pregnant.”

“Is it a bad one?” Sharon asked.

“No—not that bad.”

When she’d had enough, the baby pushed at the bottle and thrust out the nipple with lips and tongue. Another great
burp emerged as her back was patted. Then Sharon held the baby upright, feet touching the floor. How wonderful to be vertical! Baby had a name, Madeline, she had a pet name, Linny, and she had reconciled herself to existence, her eyes no longer on the light around things but on things themselves, focused, bright, meeting Sharon’s gaze. She turned her head to find her young auntie. A smile as she saw Cathy who smiled back lovingly, gently bouncing the baby’s fist on her palm, letting her grab a finger. It occurred to Sharon that what was intended as punishment instead was providing solace for both these children.