When the Saints (23 page)

“They want money for the kid.” Lyle’s eyes are bloodshot and there’s booze on his breath. “Six grand.”

My knees almost give out with relief. I jam my hands in my jacket pockets to hide how badly they’re shaking. “Six grand. That’s a lot of money.” I try hard to look surprised.

“That’s what it will cost to buy back the
Wanda Lust
.” Lyle slides a mickey of fireball whisky out of his jacket and unscrews the cap. “Course, getting the real Wanda back might not be so easy.”

“Am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?”

“Jimmy’s lobster boat. When he got out of the clink, he sold it to pay down his debts. Wanda left him because he had no
boat to put down traps. No traps, no money. She’s up in Black’s Point fucking some DFO asshole while he’s drinking himself stupid. He takes his empties down to get the deposit back just so he can buy more booze.” He gestures to a stack of empty two-fours in the corner. “Everybody’s saving bottles for poor fucking Jimmy.”

I have no idea who Jimmy is or why Lyle’s telling me all this, but I take the whisky when he offers it just so he’ll keep talking. The first sip burns my throat.

“
Wanda Lust,
get it? Jimmy’s old boat was called
Crack of Dawn,
” Lyle says. “‘Cause he was doing this girl, Dawn.”

“So Jimmy is Troy’s brother, the one who got caught ripping off vending machines?”

Lyle realizes he just fucked up, telling me all these names. I see the hamster wheel in his brain struggle to make a full rotation. He wipes the sweat from his forehead.

“Whatever,” I say. “You’ll get the six grand plus your cut as soon as we get Swimmer. We can trade off tomorrow morning.”

“You-all get your shit packed up first. They want proof you’re getting gone. You got three days.” He snatches the flask back.

“Fine.” My hands start to shake again, so I pretend to fish around in my purse for my keys. “Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“Swimmer.”

“I don’t know nothing about nothing.”

M
A’S LYING ON THE SOFA WHEN
I
GET BACK, THE PUPPY
sweater she knitted for Swimmer draped over her chest.

“We’re getting Swimmer back.”

“What?” She sits upright. “When?”

“It worked this time. Troy wants the six grand he thinks I stole. As soon as we get the moving trucks packed up, Swimmer’s all ours.”

I show her where I keep the money hidden in the kids’ bedroom in case she has to hand it over to Lyle.

“What if it’s a trick?” she asks.

“It’s not.”

She dials Jackie and talks so fast he can’t possibly make out a word. I pry the phone from her and she collapses into a chair, laughing and crying at the same time. I tell Jackie everything Lyle said. I expect Jackie to balk when I tell him to get packing, but he says Jewell’s already wrapping up her knick-knacks in newspaper. He has us on speakerphone and she yells in the background, “Are you kidding me? I can’t wait to turn the corner in the grocery store and not run into one of his exes with one of his kids.”

The only thing Jackie wants to know is how we’re going to get the six grand back after we hand it over.

“We’re not,” I say.

“WHAT? We’re just going to give that fucktard Daddy’s money?”

“It’s not Daddy’s money and you know it.”

I hang up with a tidy click and he doesn’t call back. As soon as my adrenalin subsides, I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. I crash the instant my head hits the pillow. All night long
my dreams stick together and pull apart. I wake before Ma and Janis and start making a list of things we need to do to get out of Jubilant for good. First off, I have to make sure the old house in Solace River comes down before the concrete guy shows up to pour the new foundation. I leave a note and sneak out to Ma’s car.

The highway is deserted this early and my mind is free to bounce around. I start wondering what West is up to, but thinking about him gives me a pain in my chest, so I crank up the radio and try to get interested in a CBC documentary about the collapse of the cod fishery.

I reach Solace River around noon. Victory Road is full of puddles. I roll down the window and the air is warm and fresh from a recent rain. When I round the bend, my heart gallops. All I see is a dark field of mud where the house used to sit.

I park at the top of the driveway and the foreman waddles over.

“You must be Tabby,” he yells over the banging.

I shake his hand through the window and he tells me it’ll take about three more days to get the whole mess gone. I ask him if his guys could cut that time in half if I gave them each a hundred bucks cash right now.

He raises one thick eyebrow. “For a hundred bucks each, these fellers will probably have her done before the liquor store closes tonight.”

I count it out and he says, “Hold on. I saved something for you.” He goes off toward one of the trucks, returns with an old yellowed copy of the
Solace River Review
under one arm. “The boys found it in the walls, thought maybe it was there for a reason.” He passes it through the window.

I thank him and hang around a few minutes to see my money start to work its magic. When I pull back out onto the road, I pause for one last look at the pile of debris. I can’t help but think of the suffering those walls held in over the years. Now all that misery is free to blow out over the river and settle deep down in the sediment.

I glance down at the newspaper on the passenger seat and pick it up. Halfway down the first page there’s a story about Grandpa Jack winning the house in a card game. The paper’s so parched it’s ready to disintegrate, but I can still read the faded type. It says Private Jack Saint and his infant son were renting a room in town when the woman who owned this house passed on. The place was in poor condition, but the land it sat on was viable. The woman’s son put word out that he was willing to trade the house and property for some healthy livestock or a year’s worth of manual labour. Grandpa Jack apparently tracked the man down in a barber’s chair and proposed a game of poker. The terms were set that if the man won, Jack would pay him 10 percent of his military pension every month for the rest of his life. But if Jack won, he would simply take the drafty old firetrap off the man’s hands. The enterprising Private Saint must have been born under lucky stars, the article says.

Of course, it fails to mention that Grandpa Jack threatened a priest who’d already offered the man some fine horses, and that his violent temper preceded him when his boots came stomping into the barber shop. It also left out the part where Jack plied the farmer with Pusser’s rum and had the ace of spades beating like a telltale heart under his left thigh until it miraculously found its way into a winning full house. Grandma Jean told me the real
story. I’m sure her version is much closer to the truth, even if she added the more poetic details.

Part of me thinks I should burn the newspaper with my cigarette lighter right now, let the history go down with the house. My other half, the Saint half, thinks we should frame it on the wall in the new house.

When I hit the main road, I come to a dead stop. Left or right? My mind and body duke it out till my foot presses the accelerator and I steer toward town. I cruise slowly down Main Street then speed up and zip past the tavern. I do that three more times, back and forth, but I can’t see a thing through the frosted windows. Finally, I just park the car and walk in on shaky legs.

West is alone, counting up the bottles in the beer fridge. He doesn’t see me until he turns to crank up the stereo. I take a stool as he slowly removes the pencil from his teeth and sticks it behind one ear. He pulls down a bottle of Jim Beam and I think he’s pouring me a shot, but it’s not for me. I watch the muscles in his jaw twitch as he flicks it down his throat.

“They’re going to give us Swimmer back.” My voice sounds warped, like a vinyl record left out in the rain.

He goes right back to counting like I’m not even there. I stare at the backs of his thighs straining against his jeans as if he wants to run, and it’s the damnedest thing, I just start bawling. Everything that’s happened in the last weeks comes crashing down on me.

West comes around the bar, drops his clipboard on the counter and takes the stool next to me. He places his fingers under my chin and turns my face toward him. “What’s the matter?”

I shrug. He wipes some snot off my nose with his sleeve, pushes my hair off my forehead and grabs onto my eyes with his. He sits there staring into me through a whole cycle of the dishwasher and three John Cougar Mellencamp songs.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I whisper.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m somebody.”

“You are somebody.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “You’re Tabby Saint.”

He closes up the tavern and I tail his truck to the house. Abriel’s white Rabbit convertible is in the driveway, so I have to park on the street. I finish my third cigarette in a row, flick it in the gutter and join West in his driveway. He’s nervous, jingling the spare change in his pocket.

“Ready?” He puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me inside before I can answer.

There’s music playing and laughter at the end of the hall. When we walk into the living room, Abriel is standing at the stereo with a drink in her hand. She looks the exact same as in the picture. She’s wearing a halter sundress and I can tell she’s still got the body. Her mouth drops as she looks from me to West then back again. Danny is seated on the sofa smoking a joint with a man who looks enough like Abriel to be the brother West mentioned.

“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Abriel says to West, ice cubes popping loudly in her glass. I can tell she’s well on her way to getting drunk. She sets her drink down, grabs West by the arm and points a long fingernail at my chest. “You stay right there,” she orders me.

I follow right behind them into the kitchen as the volume
lowers on the stereo. I glance around the room and everything looks mostly the same except for Abriel’s car keys hanging on the hook and a lipstick kiss on a Post-it Note stuck to the fridge.

“What’s going on, baby?” Abriel whispers to West. “Why is she here?”

“I want her here.” West leans his arm against the cupboard as if he needs it for support. “Abriel, you can’t stay. I told you. I want a divorce.”

“My name is on this house.”

“Fine, take it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Take it. Or I’ll buy you out and you can get your own house.”

She’s shocked silent.

“Sounds fair,” I say.

“Who the hell asked you?” She spins around. “What kind of person are you, anyway, going around sleeping with other people’s husbands?”

The gold flecks in her eyes match the tones of her dress and I wish I wasn’t wearing Ma’s old
Where’s the Beef?
sweatshirt.

I walk over to the fridge and rip off her lipstick kiss. She screams like I pulled her hair.

“Tommy!” she yells. “Get in here!”

He appears around the corner with Danny right behind him. “What’s going on here, West?”

“None of your business, Tommy,” West says. “As fucking usual.”

I open the fridge door to reach in for a beer. Abriel tries to grab it from my hand and West wrenches it back, takes another for himself.

“Tabby and I are going to drink these outside. The rest of you go home.”

“I
am
home!” Abriel screams.

“Well, Tabby’s sleeping here tonight, so you’ll have to take the sofa.”

She starts calling him every name in the book and a few more. He takes me by the hand and pulls me out the door, leads me around to a little back porch I didn’t even know existed. He twists the caps off the beers with the inside of his elbow and hands me one, sits down and pats the spot next to him. The window’s open and we can hear Abriel say she’s not going anywhere, that I’m the one who’ll be leaving.

West doesn’t drink his beer, just holds it between his knees. He’s staring up at the moon, but I can tell he’s not really looking at it. He told her she’ll have to take the sofa if I stay, which means she’s been sleeping in his bed. I want to ask where he’s been sleeping, but I don’t. I just sit there not looking at the moon either. After a while the two men drive off and West finally drops his shoulders. He takes a sip of his beer, and I take a sip of mine.

A
BRIEL STICKS AROUND ALL THE NEXT DAY, PEACOCKING
up and down the hall. She runs outside in a bathing suit in the pouring rain, comes in all breathless and dripping, asking West to open a mustard jar with her tits in his face.

While I’m boiling rice at the stove, she paints her toenails at the kitchen table, tells me she’s been in love with West ever
since she was in junior high school and he popped a wheelie on his bicycle outside her house. When she goes back down the hall singing “Stand By Your Man,” I glance out the window to make sure West isn’t coming before slipping off my panties and straining the rice through them. When the three of us sit down to supper and West asks me why I haven’t got any rice on my plate, I just tell him I’m cutting back on starch.

In the morning, she and I walk into the kitchen at the same time. We hesitate then both go for the coffee maker. She snatches the pot from me and turns on the tap. I can tell she’s starting to smell defeat. She’s already wearing a little less makeup. The cat wanders in and looks to each of us before trotting over to me and rubbing himself along my shins.

“Oh, fuck you,” she snaps at him. “Asshole.”

I pick him up and stroke his back while the coffee percolates. Drip, drip, drip. Purr. Purr. Purr.

“Well?” She glares at me, slamming two mugs down on the countertop. “Do you take sugar or are you goddamn sweet enough?”

Finally, she and West sit down and have a big talk about money. The bedroom door is shut, so I have to stand on the other side of it to listen. She sobs, “What am I supposed to do now, baby? What about me?”

I want to burst in and yell, “Who cares about you, you lying, cheating, leaving, skanking, can’t sing, can’t cook, MANIPULATING FUCKNUT?”

When the door opens, I pretend I just happen to be in the hallway getting the vacuum cleaner from the closet.