Pleased to Meet You / The Sky is Falling Read online

  “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

  “A whole boxful. I’m not in any hurry to unpack it.”

  Before Inge can ask what she means, the phone rings on the table in the hall. “Coming! I’m coming! Hello? Ahh!” Sheila slams the receiver down.

  “Who was it?” asks a startled Inge.

  “The Devil.”

  A vein in Inge’s temple begins to throb. She stares at Sheila marching back to the kitchen to unplug the screaming kettle. Over the glug of the teapot being filled, the ceramic clink of the lid, Sheila explains, “That library computer. It sounds like Satan himself. My book is in.”

  She carries in a tray. “It’s the latest Stephen King. I just love him. As if life isn’t horrible enough, eh? Just throw that stuff on the couch. What a damn mess.” She waits while Inge gathers up the newspaper sections, the flyers with the coupons cut out, and sets them neatly on the arm of the couch. Sheila unloads the tray then pulls her chair in under herself, shifting hen-like on the seat. “Here. Go ahead. Fix it the way you like. I don’t have real sugar.”

  “I don’t take it.”

  “So tell me all about Wallace. What’s he like?”

  Inge rubs a tiny circle over the pain. “He’s wonderful. A very considerate son. He has a good job.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Yes. But you still worry, don’t you?”

  Sheila reaches for a cookie, gesturing that Inge should help herself too. “What are you worried about?”

  “He’s an adult, of course. I’m not responsible anymore for his happiness or his safety.”

  Crumbs cling to Sheila’s bright lipstick. “He’s unhappy?”

  “I don’t know. I just worry. What if he is? Is it my fault? Is it because of mistakes I made?”

  Sheila, holding a crescent of cookie in her teeth, lifts the teapot with both hands. “What mother hasn’t made mistakes?” She showers Inge in crumbs. But the relief Inge feels just hearing Sheila say this makes her glad she came. This is what she really needs, someone impartial to talk to. She fills her own mug. World’s Greatest Nag.

  Sheila dumps an envelope of sweetener in hers. “Have you got a headache?”

  “It’s nothing.” Inge waves it off. “You know, I even feel responsible for his character. Isn’t that silly?”

  “What’s the matter with him? He sounds like a dream.”

  “He always was a good boy, but sensitive. The type that can easily fall in with the wrong people. His father died when he was hardly more than a baby.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  Inge stiffens. “Pardon me?”

  “Is it your fault his father died?”

  “No. Of course not. It was a work accident.”

  “Then what are you so guilty about?”

  Inge adds milk to her tea, makes a whirlpool with the spoon. Though Sheila talks sense, Inge finds, once again, that she doesn’t care for the way she talks it.

  “Where does he live?” Sheila asks.

  The tea tastes dusty. Inge wonders how old it is. “He’s with me at the moment. Things didn’t work out with his partner.”

  “Ah,” says Sheila with the look of someone who has just won a bet. “That’s what I thought. A good-looking, clean-cut boy. Takes his old mom to the symphony. Lives with her.”

  “He’s looking for his own place.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a son like that. I really wouldn’t.” Sheila flaps her wrist. “Oo-la-la!”

  Inge stares. Sheila thinks Wallace is a homosexual? “He was married,” she hastens to add.

  “I just don’t like those mannish haircuts on the women. And they’re so angry all the time.”

  “Who?”

  “The lesbians. I saw one the other day. You won’t believe this.” Sheila leans forward, relishing the detail. “She actually had a beard.”

  The conversation has taken so ridiculous a turn, Inge starts to laugh, but to her dismay, tears come fast behind. “Excuse me,” she says. “Where is your. . . ?”

  Sheila, looking baffled, points down the hall.

  Inge negotiates the obstacle course of furniture. In the bathroom, she splashes cold water on her embarrassed face then dries it with the monogrammed guest towel in the basket next to the basin. Under the towel is a trove of old motel soaps, brought from Peterborough by the look of them. Lack of sleep. That’s Inge’s trouble. If she could get a good night’s sleep she wouldn’t feel so distraught. She sits on the toilet and closes her eyes. When she opens them, she sees an index card taped above the tissue roll. Without her glasses, she can only make out the larger print of the title: Prayer For Cancer Patients. How odd, thinks Inge. Sheila prays while she’s going to the toilet.

  She turns on the tap again to wash her hands, still puzzled. If Sheila isn’t Jewish—and even if she is, so what?

  “What’s the matter with you? Are you having a breakdown or something?” Sheila asks when Inge returns to retrieve her purse and excuse herself.

  “It’s stress.” Another CBC word. “I’m sorry to leave like this. I need a lie-down.”

  Sheila follows her to the door. “Should I call a cab?”

  “No. I’m three blocks away. I’ll be all right. Thank you for tea.”

  “He doesn’t have AIDS, does he?”

  “Oh!” Inge claps a hand over her mouth. “I hope not!”

  Only now, at the mention of disease, does the prayer taped on the bathroom wall register. Sheila, the poor woman—she’s ill. Even as Inge is attempting escape, she feels compelled to say something kind. “We didn’t get the chance to talk about your daughter. We’ll have to do that next time.”

  An actual physical change takes place in Sheila. Genie-like, she seems to swell. The flowers on her blouse grow and open. “She wants me to accept her. Fine, I say. I accept you. But I don’t accept her. A big fat mama with chains hanging off her. None of them shave. It turns my stomach.”

  Inge withers in Sheila’s wind. She draws her purse to her chest. Sheila’s hand is still on the doorknob, tight.

  “I had no idea this is what she came out here for. I moved here to be closer to her and now she won’t speak to me. She won’t speak to me until I accept her situation. What she really wants is for me to approve. Well, I don’t. I’m sure you feel the same about your son.”

  Inge presses her temple.

  “You love him, but you can’t deny you’d much rather he found a nice girl to give you a grandchild before you die. I knew you’d understand.”

  Sheila opens the door and points Inge into the hall.

  Inge says, “I’ll see you at Aquafit, Sheila.”

  It must have been the second or third Saturday of Saturday school that Inge woke to the sound of crying. She found Wallace backed into the corner of his bed behind a defensive wall of covers. “I’m scared,” he said.

  “Of what?”

  He couldn’t say. If it was a dream, it defied description. She got him settled and went back to bed, was just slipping into unconsciousness when he cried out again. It had been four years since she’d slept with another person. She was accustomed to a queen’s space. Wallace thrashed. His teeth crunched gravel. He stayed with her till Wednesday.

  On Saturday morning, as Inge was divvying up the pancakes between their three plates, Wallace asked, “Where’s Daddy?”

  “He’s dead,” Lisa said.

  “Can he talk to me?”

  “No,” said Inge. “But you can talk to him.”

  “See?” Wallace told Lisa.

  The doorbell rang—the girls coming to collect them. Wallace shrank down.

  Lisa said, “You’re a baby, Wallace.”

  “I am not!” He slid off his chair and ran to open the door.

  And still Inge didn’t put two and two together. Not that night when Wallace whimpered as she shut off the light, or later when his shrieks cut the night.

  “What is wrong? What are you afraid of?”

  He held his whole body stiff. />
  When she saw them off the next Saturday, Wallace looked back over his shoulder at her. She’d seen just that look—hollow, imploring—somewhere before.

  Even so. Despite this. Although, deep down, she must have known.

  She smiled and waved goodbye.

  It is the middle of the afternoon yet Wallace’s car is parked in front of the house. Inge, coming from her aborted tea with Sheila, is made sick with fear at the sight of it. Forgetting the unpleasantness at Sheila’s, she starts to run. When she reaches the front steps, she has to pause and grip the railing, a hand to her chest, panting.

  “Wallace!” she calls from the door.

  “Yo!”

  He’s in the kitchen spreading peanut butter on toast.

  “What are you doing home?”

  “I’m getting a cold.”

  “A cold!” She stares at him. “Don’t eat that! No! I’ll make soup.”

  “Mom.”

  “Run a bath. Now. Go.” She points a trembling finger.

  He puts an arm around her shoulder, leans his head against hers. Their two skulls clunk. Wallace says, “Ow,” and walks off rubbing the place.

  “As hot as you can stand!”

  Bouillon cubes. She’s filled with shame. There’s no time to go to the store for fresh chicken. She chops the onion on the board, weeping tears of gratitude—to whom?

  He’s safe, for now.

  An hour later, she carries down a tray. Still bath-pinkened, Wallace lies under the yellow field of flowers with his hands behind his head, twisted tissue plugs in both nostrils. He sits up when she comes in, arranges the pillows to lean against.

  “Take those things out of your nose.” She sets the tray across his lap and sits on the edge of the bed, anxiously watching his first sip. “It’s no good,” she says.

  “Delicious!”

  “Really? It’s only bouillon.”

  “Needs salt.”

  She speaks slowly, not meeting his eye, looking at the age-speckled hands in her lap. “Wallace. You are not going to believe this. I’m out of salt.”

  “I took it, Mom. I’m sorry. I meant to pick up another box.”

  It occurs to Inge to feign surprise. Now she can ask. A whole box? What would you need a whole box of salt for? Instead she says, “Do you remember those girls? When you were little, they came and took you and Lisa to their Saturday-Sunday school.”

  “The haunted house?” He sucks broth off the spoon.

  “Is that what it was?”

  “They blindfolded us and made us put our fingers in bowls of stuff.”

  Inge recoils. “What stuff?”

  “Peeled grapes. They said it was eyeballs. They poked sticks into our backs and said it was the Devil’s horns. Lis loved it. She told them our dad was dead. We had a seance.”

  “You had nightmares.”

  “I was scared shitless.”

  She thinks how to phrase it. Why is there a knife in a box of salt under the bed, Wallace? What kind of meetings are you going to, Wallace?

  “How’s your case going?” she asks.

  “Which one?”

  “The fellow who’s never paid taxes.”

  Wallace lowers his spoon in disgust. “He’s against taxes. He’s not against roads, of course, or doctors, or parks, or the sewage system. These he’s enjoyed for twenty-three years. He’s only against personally contributing to them.”

  “It’s hard to believe people can be so selfish.”

  “Selfish?” says Wallace. “He’s more than that.”

  She places a hand on her child’s forehead. He looks up at her, still her child.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “It’s just a cold.”

  “You finish that and get some sleep.”

  “Stop worrying.”

  That next Saturday morning when the doorbell rang, Inge told Lisa and Wallace to stay where they were at the table. She opened the door to the dark-haired girl with the bunny barrettes, chin skinned, one knee stained red with Mercurochrome. She must have had a fall. In the middle of her smile, she flinched with pain and Inge felt a spasm of pity for her.

  “Lisa and Wallace aren’t coming anymore.”

  All week, Wallace’s backward glance had haunted her. Haunted her until she placed it. Old photographs. Children being loaded onto trains.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing,” Inge went on, “but it’s not nice to frighten little children.”

  “It’s just a game.”

  “Does your mother know?”

  Back in the kitchen, five-year-old Wallace gazed at her with grateful eyes. Lisa scooped swollen Shreddies out of her bowl then let them plunge back in the milk, over and over. All day long she punished Inge with her sulking.

  Why then, Inge wonders climbing the stairs, why is Wallace attracted to these dark things? Pentagrams and knives. She shakes her head. But what is he actually up to? Sacrificing babies? Hanging crucifixes upside down? A man who thinks not paying taxes is—what? Evil? He works for the Crown! No. Whatever he’s up to, it can’t be that bad.

  She reaches the top of the stairs absolved.

  Later, she sits down to a bowl of unsalted soup herself, has barely taken a sip when the doorbell rings. Wearily, she refolds her napkin.

  Sheila is on the porch waving a brown envelope. Inge is annoyed to see her again so soon, to see her here at all. But the woman has cancer, Inge remembers, and she swallows the wasp of her resentment.

  “How are you feeling?” Sheila asks.

  “Better, thank you.”

  “I found it!” she sings, flapping the envelope again.

  “I’m sorry. Found what?”

  “Those damn papers I need a witness for.”

  Inge steps aside. “Come into the kitchen.”

  Sheila peeks in every door they pass and clucks. “Very nice home. Are these antiques?”

  “I suppose. It’s my mother’s furniture.”

  Inge doesn’t offer a seat. She wipes the kitchen counter with a tea towel to make sure it’s dry. “I’ll just get my glasses.”

  When she returns, Sheila has two documents laid out side by side, open where the coloured tape is stuck on. “It’s my will.”

  “Ah,” says Inge, going over to the phone to get a pen. “Where should I sign?”

  “I have to do it first.” Sheila plicks the pen from Inge’s hand and makes a show of putting on her glasses. “Watch me.” She produces an illegible flourish, then another. “I was going to write her out, but I thought of something better. I’m leaving her a dollar.”

  Inge is taken aback. She’s more than surprised. She’s shocked. Shocked that a mother could do such a thing, that she, Inge, would be asked to bear witness to it. A shudder moves through her, small but perceptible, and her right eyelid twitches. An electrical disturbance. What comes to mind is the image of the girl again, turning and running down Inge’s front steps. A child. A harmless little girl. Who would guess? Inge watched her run down the steps and into the future. Three and a half decades would pass before Inge thought of her again.

  Sheila is old and sick. In her mind’s eye Inge sees her not as she stands before her now, triumphant with her avenging pen, but asleep on her feet at Aquafit in the chest-deep water. Sheila drenched and struggling out of the pool, clutching the railing, makeup smeared. Her scalp as pink as the inside of a shell.

  Hauska Tutustua

  Dear Mr. Elton,

  We have received your letter dated 5 May, 2003, concerning the heir to the deceased Mr. Mikko Virtanen. All the information you provided to us we forwarded to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Finland. We will contact you as soon as we have a response.

  Sincerely,

  Sari Nurmi, Assistant to the Ambassador

  It was indeed hard to find. David counted—correctly it turned out, but for a quarter of an hour he wasn’t sure—to the third unmarked gravel road. He set the odometer and measured the way from there. Some of the co
untry he passed was marshy, probably Reserve, some forest. At 3.8 kilometres he slowed, watching the left side as instructed until he noticed a place where the lower boughs had been cut away to form a darkened arch. Shaggy tree arms scraped the roof of the car and for the few hundred metres that the driveway carried on David felt he was in a dream, or the victim of enchantment, steering over two red tracks spongy from centuries of fallen cedar. At last a clearing opened at the end, large enough for a mobile home, the shed behind it he hoped wasn’t an outhouse, a pit to burn garbage, and a silver NewYorker put to rest under cedar boughs cut and laid across its hood and trunk and roof.

  He climbed the wooden steps and knocked. Beside the door, over a decomposing cardboard box of serious empties, hung a flower basket filled with yellowed stalks.

  “What?” Weak, from inside.

  “Mr. Virtanen? It’s David Elton from the Hospice Society. Did they tell you I was coming?”

  He filled the long pause wondering what he would do if Mr. Virtanen died during the visit. This replaced his previous fear that Mr. Virtanen would already be dead by the time he found the place.

  “I can’t get up,” Mr. Virtanen finally called out. “They took me to Victoria yesterday. I had the radiation.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t care. Why not?”

  David opened the door on a great stink, like the trailer had farted. He covered his nose and came inside, followed Mr. Virtanen’s coughing and found him in bed, a huge moustached man with yellowed hair and yellowed whites around the fierce blue of his eyes. He looked entirely tobacco stained and certainly his fingers were. David shook his hand and introduced himself again then went to empty the Mason jar that sat on the bedside table even though they’d told him Hospice volunteers weren’t required to perform domestic duties. He wasn’t going to sit and chat next to a jar of cloudy-looking pee.

  “Don’t you have a homemaker? I’ll open a window. Do you mind?”

  “She couldn’t find the place.”