Alison Preston - Norwood Flats 01 - The Rain Barrel Baby Read online

  Gus had gone home and Frank and Greta were sitting across from each other at her huge kitchen table. It was an amazing kitchen, totally remodeled to accommodate Greta’s baking business.

  “No,” Frank said. “No, Greta, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” He looked around him. “This is some kitchen! Real professional.”

  “She’s twenty-seven now,” Greta said. “A full-fledged woman.”

  “Edgin’ up on us,” Frank said.

  “Yeah. So you didn’t know? It felt to me at the time like everybody knew.”

  “No,” Frank repeated and wished he had brought Gus’ brandy with him. Talking to Greta made him uncomfortable.

  “I named her Jane before they took her away. They let me hold her for a while. I didn’t know then if the people who took her would know she was called Jane or if they would keep it as her name, but that’s what I called her. Would you like to see a picture?”

  When Greta left the room Frank read the clipped cartoons attached to one of her fridges — she had two. She liked Calvin and Hobbes. So did Frank.

  She had cut out the one where Calvin says: “My watch tells the time, the day, and the date. It doesn’t tell what month it is, though. I need a watch that tells the month.” And Hobbes says: “I suppose they figure if you don’t know what month it is, you’re not the type who’d wear a watch.”

  Frank was chuckling when Greta came back with a photograph in a little gold frame.

  “Having fun, Frank?” She looked confused.

  “Sorry.” He sat back down and looked at the picture of a newborn baby with its eyes closed. It had a thatch of dark hair atop its head and Frank could see Greta in its tiny face.

  “She’s beautiful, Greta.” Frank tried to imagine what it would have been like to hold his own newborn daughter in his arms, see himself in her small face and then hand her over to a woman in white who would never bring her back.

  “I wish whoever put that little girl in the rain barrel had knocked on my door instead,” Greta said, tears streaming down her face. “I would have taken the baby off her hands, no question. If only she’d known that this was a door she could have knocked on.”

  “Oh, Greta,” Frank said. “Is there someone you can call to come and stay with you awhile?”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  A huge smoky cat leapt up onto the kitchen table.

  “Hi, Ailsa.” Frank had met the cat before. She roamed the neighbourhood.

  Ailsa pressed her face against his. He objected to a cat on a table especially when he ate cakes and tarts prepared on it. But he said nothing.

  “Atta girl.” Frank scratched Ailsa’s ears and she flopped down on her side, so he rubbed her stomach.

  Greta had stopped crying and was snuffling quietly into Frank’s handkerchief.

  “Will Ailsa be company enough for you then, Greta? I really should be getting home to my kids.”

  “Yes. I’m feeling quite tired after all this. I’ll probably lie down for a nap.”

  “We’ll let you know if anything develops,” Frank said, “but to tell you the truth I don’t have a lot of hope that we’ll ever get to the bottom of this.” He stood up to go. “The trail’s pretty darn cold.”

  “Thanks, Frank. Thanks for everything.”

  “It could be a kid’s baby,” Frank said, mostly to himself, and thought again of Emma and her nutcase friend, Delia. Not them, but some other kid.

  “Or someone too sick or tired or crazy for a baby,” he said, and thought of his wife, Denise, and Greta Bower. Not them, but some other sick or crazy woman.

  “Where are your brothers these days?” Frank asked. “What are they up to?” He tried to sound casual, friendly, so she wouldn’t think he suspected them of anything.

  Greta was getting heavy lidded. “Stepbrothers.”

  “Sorry. Stepbrothers.”

  “Duane’s in prison in Quebec. For the long haul. And Dwight’s dead, has been since 1983. To tell you the truth, I’m glad he’s dead. And I’m glad Duane’s in jail. I hope he never gets out. It would turn my life upside down if he ever came home.”

  “Like a baby in a rain barrel?” said Frank.

  “Worse than that.”

  Frank pushed his chair in flush with the table and gave Ailsa a last scratch under her chin. He wondered what had killed Dwight Bower, but wanted very badly to go home right now.

  “I’ll see ya, Greta.”

  Her eyes were closed and she didn’t reply. Did she not know that her robe was gaping open and that her breasts were in full view? Maybe not. Frank sighed and slipped out the back door. Maybe not.

  CHAPTER 3

  “He’s been in love with you for, like, ever,” Delia said.

  “He has not!” Emma shouted.

  They were smoking cigars at the swollen river’s edge and talking about Donald and Vince, the boys they thought about the most.

  “Ew! What’s that?” Delia asked.

  “What’s what?” Emma glanced over her shoulder to where Delia stared, distaste scrunching up her smooth young face.

  “I think it’s something dead,” Delia said.

  Then Emma saw the cloudy eyes and the dull matted fur. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Delia picked up a stick and poked at the dead thing, disturbing its grave of mouldy leaves.

  “Delia, don’t!” Emma screamed. “For God’s sake, leave it alone!”

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Emma started up the path to the road. “What’s the matter with you, for Christ’s sake, fooling around with something gross and dead?”

  Delia threw her stick over the cliff into the Red River.

  It was rolling towards its destination in Lake Winnipeg. The spring melt this year tested the banks all along the river’s run through the city and beyond.

  “It’s just a little furry animal.” Delia brushed dust off her falling-down jeans and followed her friend up to Lyndale Drive.

  “But it’s dead!” Emma’s hands were on her hips, scolding. “Its fur isn’t even furry anymore.”

  “So what! It probably lived a full and happy life.”

  “So why does that mean you have to poke around at it with a stick? Sometimes you gross me out completely.”

  “Well, thanks very much!” Delia was still smoking her cigar in full view of the cars whizzing by on the drive.

  Emma sighed. “I gotta go, Dele. I’ll phone ya later.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Dele?” Emma turned back to her friend.

  “What?” She was blowing smoke rings above her head.

  Perfect smoke rings. Emma was filled with admiration. She had never been able to manage one.

  “Don’t get caught with that thing. If you get grounded, I won’t have anyone decent to talk to.”

  Later, in the kitchen, Emma said to her dad, “We saw something dead down at the river.”

  “What kind of a something dead?” Frank’s stomach turned. He thought of last Sunday and pictured the swaddled baby from the rain barrel. Then he imagined it beneath its shroud and wondered why he had to do that to himself.

  “Something that was once furry but is now just dead,” Emma said.

  “For sure it was once furry?” Frank pictured slime, not fur. He threw the dish cloth he had been wiping the counter with down the cellar stairs.

  “Yeah.” Emma looked at her father as though he was asking the wrong questions.

  Frank wondered if dead babies ever had a furry look to them. He supposed it was possible. He had heard of babies being born with a coat of hair that was almost always shed soon after birth. Almost always.

  “Not hairy, but furry?” Frank found a fresh dish cloth in a drawer and resumed his chore.

  “Yeah. Dad, what’s with you? You’re freakin’ me out.”

  “Sorry, Em. It’s okay to have seen a dead animal at the river. They have to go somewhere to die, and I guess the river is as good a place as any. Why does
it smell like cigars in here? Emma, why do you smell like cigars?”

  “I don’t know.” Emma was spreading Friday’s Free Press out on the kitchen table.

  “Have you been smoking a cigar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jeez, Emma, I hope you didn’t inhale, at least.”

  “No, Dad. And I won’t likely be doing it again either.”

  “Well, good! Was it Delia who put you up to it?”

  “No! I am capable of doing something without Delia putting me up to it, you know. Why do you always think bad things about my best friend in the whole world?”

  “I don’t know. Aren’t her pants kinda big?” Frank rinsed his cloth and draped it over the window crank to dry.

  “All the kids’ pants are kinda big, Dad. Look!” Emma pulled up her sweatshirt to reveal her own jeans hanging four inches below her belly-button.

  “Good God, Emma! What if they fall down?”

  “They did once, actually.” Emma laughed. “At a football game, when I jumped up to cheer. But I had a long shirt on, so it was okay. I mean, everybody laughed and made fun of me and everything, but it was okay. I always wear a big shirt.”

  “What’s the point of it?” Frank asked. “The big pants, I mean.”

  “They’re comfy.”

  “How can they be, if you have to worry about them falling off?”

  “They are.”

  “Yeah, okay. Well, what about all Delia’s makeup and weird hair and everything?”

  “She’s artistic, is all. And she’s not a bad influence on me. She listens to me and has all kinds of great ideas.”

  “Like smoking cigars at the river?” Frank smiled.

  “No! Da-ad!”

  “Sorry.”

  There I go, apologizing, Frank thought. He had made a promise to himself to say “I’m sorry” fewer times each day than was his custom, but he never remembered till after the fact.

  “Dead things scare me,” Emma said.

  She turned to the obituaries. First, page two, for the short version, and then Section C, with its full pages of deaths, the long versions, with photographs and whole life stories. A picture of a young girl in a baseball cap smiled up at her: Esme Jones, 1982-1995.

  “Jesus,” Emma said.

  “Jesus?” Frank turned to face Emma from his spot at the sink.

  “Yeah. This person who’s dead is about my age.”

  “Do you ever read about anything except who died?”

  “Yeah, of course. I just start with the deaths. In case somebody I know dies. I hate the thought of not knowing that someone is dead. I almost feel as though I should know without being told.”

  “What do you say to pizza for supper?” Frank transferred yesterday’s dry dishes from the rack into the cupboards. “Garth and Sadie are both keen on it.”

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “She’s havin’ a bit of a lie down. She’s a little under the weather.”

  Emma snorted. “Yeah. Pizza’s fine, Dad. I don’t want any meat, though.”

  “We’ll get two, so we’ll all be happy. Garth, Sadie!” He spoke as loudly as he dared in the direction of the living room. “We’re having pizza!”

  Quiet hooting sounds made their way back to the kitchen. No one wanted to wake Denise.

  Frank watched Emma stare at the face of Esme Jones. He saw the private thoughts come and go on her lovely little face. What did she imagine about the dead girl? Did she picture her alive and loving a boy? Or dead? And the thing at the river. Was she going to dream of that as well? Frank looked over her shoulder at the photograph and wondered if his daughter pictured her own face where Esme’s grinned up at her above the words: “Suddenly, on May 3.”

  “She died suddenly,” Emma said.

  Frank sighed. “Well, she probably didn’t suffer then.”

  “She looks younger than me, don’t ya think, in this picture?” Emma held it up for her dad’s inspection.

  “Maybe it’s not a recent photograph.”

  “Maybe not. It says here: Longer obituary to follow.”

  “Well, we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for that, won’t we?” Frank said. “Run and get your brother and sister now and we’ll figure out this pizza business.”

  CHAPTER 4

  At dusk, a Lincoln Town Car cruised slowly down Frank Foote’s street. He wasn’t around to see it but Gus Olsen was, and he didn’t like the look of it. The tinted windows hid the driver. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. It could have been a bear cub for all he knew. That’s how dark the glass was. He didn’t like the look of it, with its slowness and its windows.

  Gus trusted his instincts. He knew when something wasn’t right. Like the time he had mentioned to Frank that he felt uneasy about not seeing old lady Rundle for a few days. Sure enough, they found her sitting dead in her easy chair, supper stiff on her lap and the TV blaring at her no-good ears.

  He hadn’t seen the rain barrel business coming though. The rain barrel business flew in out of the blue.

  The car was the colour of Lake Winnipeg. What colour is that? Gus wondered. What name did the car people give to a vehicle that’s the same colour as the lake? Maybe Frank would know.

  The car rounded the corner and edged out of sight. Gus sat down on his front steps and imagined being at the lake. He loved it there. It had been years, but maybe he could try to get out there for a few days this summer, or at least a day. He could take the bus. The west side of the lake was his favourite. The sand wasn’t quite as fine as on the east side, but he felt more at home there.

  The car passed by again, this time even more slowly. It stopped outside Frank’s house. Then it crept forward and stopped in front of Gus.

  The window slid down halfway and he could see a woman’s head behind a huge pair of sunglasses.

  How can she possibly see to drive? The sun has set, the car windows are almost black and she has sunglasses on to boot.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said in a voice low enough to irritate Gus. Now he was going to have to get up and go towards the car if he wanted to hear what she had to say. And he did. He moved slowly and that bothered him too. He knew that what she saw was an old man, a crippled-up old man. And that infuriated him.

  A year from now he’d be moving a damn sight more sprightly. Gus was in line for a new knee and his doctor had told him it would be this summer at the latest.

  “Does a Frank Foote live next door to you in that house with the five windows?” the woman asked.

  What the hell kind of way was that to describe a house? Five windows!

  “What’s a frank foot and who’s askin’?” Gus felt protective of Frank, who was the best neighbour he’d ever had. Him and poor Denise and their three kids. Even the kids were good neighbours. The youngest one, Sadie, helped him with his vegetables in the summer. She thinned his carrots and talked him into keeping even the tiniest of the potatoes. She was a bit bossy for a youngster, maybe, but in his experience most women were that way. Right from the get-go.

  “Frank Foote’s the name of a man, sir, and I’m just an old friend.” She tried to smile but it didn’t work. Maybe it was all that red lipstick weighing down her lips.

  Why did women always do that to themselves? he wondered. They troweled it on so you could no longer get any idea of what they really looked like. It pissed him off, the same as it pissed him off to be called sir. He didn’t believe that Frank would have such a friend.

  “Sorry ma’am, I wouldn’t know.” There. He’d called her ma’am. See how she liked that.

  “And the Simkins, they live there, don’t they?” she asked, pointing at Greta Bower’s house. Gus looked at her again, the red lips and the smooth black hair.

  “What colour would you call this car?” he asked, his fingers clutching the glass of the part-way-down window.

  It started to slide up and the car moved forward.

  “And how can you see to drive behind all that tinted glass?” he shouted as h
e was forced to let go his grip on the window.

  She burned rubber as she sped away.

  Gus felt a certain amount of satisfaction from his encounter. He’d have to tell Frank about the way he’d handled the strange woman. Snooping around the neighbourhood. Ha. He could hardly wait to tell Frank about how he’d run her off.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Norwood Flats was a town in itself, in the middle of the larger city. A triangle with river on two sides, main drag on the third. Lower middle and middle class. Some homes were almost a century old but most were built after the Second World War. Young families, young trees, lots of sunshine and Kick the Can for a couple of decades.

  It was blue and gold to look back on, but Frank Foote knew better than that. Horrible things had happened in the middle of the century — he had seen some of them.

  “Denise? How’s it goin’?” Frank spoke into his desk phone, a familiar tightness in his throat as he talked to his wife of fifteen years.

  She spoke so quietly he could hardly hear her.

  “Okay, I think. It’s good I’m here.”

  “I miss you,” he lied. He covered his eyes with his hand.

  “Yeah, me too. I’m sorry, Frank, I gotta go. I’m so very, very tired.”

  Frank hung up and took his coffee to the window. He was lucky to have one that opened. He pushed it up and took a deep breath of the cold spring air. It had been the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in decades and Frank could still feel it in his bones. He pictured himself on a beach somewhere soaking up the sun, getting so hot he felt dizzy and then wading into the water to cool down.

  Frank didn’t usually come to work on Sundays but he wanted to review the paperwork on the rain barrel baby. And truth be told, he wanted to get away on his own for short while. Emma was home with the kids.

  Frank did miss Denise. He missed his wife of fifteen years ago when she had been smart and kind and funny. Now the sparkle in her hazel eyes was gone. She looked only inward. And when she smiled she pressed her lips together till they disappeared. She looked as though she was trying with all her might to shut out the world.