Sweet Jesus (10 page)

Harlan was holding his son’s superball in the work area of his store. The space was empty except for a taped cardboard box and the
Yellow Pages
on a stool. There were lighter rectangles on the walls where his pictures and bulletin boards had been. The polished cement floor was pale grey, and gradually over the last ten days, the room had taken on the look and feel of an asylum – refuge and madness both.

Harlan threw the superball down with force and cowered, covering his head with his arms. The ball bounced up, hit the ceiling, spronged off a dent in the floor, hit the wall, boinged towards the centre of the room, and petered out. It was the size of a golf ball and bright fuchsia, and Harlan weighed it in his hand. He threw it harder – this time at the wall. He cowered again. The ball triangulated before dribbling to a stop in the same low spot on the floor. Harlan wondered what height a man would have to jump from in order to kill himself on a cement floor.

He heard a car pull up and park outside the store. Home Protection Plus. The name was ridiculous to him now. Harlan
looked through the milky glare of his dirty storefront window and saw Connie’s Volvo. Two years old. The familiar outline of her hair. His wife got out, walked around the car to the other side, opened the door, hauled Theo’s umbrella stroller off the back seat, and kicked it open in mid-air.

Judgment day, Harlan said.

Connie was just coming through the door when Harlan rushed out of the backroom and blurted, Okay, so I lost the business, but it’s not like I killed anyone!

What are you talking about? Connie said and leaned sideways to flick the wheel lock on the stroller with her foot. The store was completely empty. In her sudden bewilderment, she took a puzzled look around.

So I messed up, Harlan said as if in mid-conversation.

Connie brushed the front of her jacket.

I’ve ruined everything, he said.

She squatted in front of Theo to ask him if he wanted to run around. He got out and she could see the parking lot through the dark blue canvas of his stroller, porous in the sunlight. She stood up. The room was so bright, the sun was hammering it into a flat shape, drawing the corners out like empty pockets, her husband’s elongated shadow against the wall behind him.

I’m trying to level with you here, Harlan said.

Connie shook her head like she was dismissing a compliment. I think you’re being a little annoying, she said. In this empty, illuminated space, in his light blue summer suit, he looked like a candidate for baptism, penitent at the bottom of a white tiled pool, waist-deep in water.

Where is everything? she said, nudging Theo into the vacant space.

That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Con.

Connie smacked her hands together and squeezed them hard. If you’re trying to surprise me, Harl, I think you could do better than this! So you finally moved to a new location? Where is it? I hope it’s bigger than this one. Is it nice? You should have let me see it first. I could have given you some good decorating advice.

I didn’t move.

Connie was chewing her cheek, the bottom half of her face twisted to one side.

The store’s gone, he said.

What do you mean, it’s gone? You own the business.

Not anymore. They came and took everything away.

Who did?

The heavies, the debt collectors – whatever you want to call them. Harlan hung his head.

Anyways, Connie said triumphantly, if that’s true, they took a lot of junk with no resale value. Where are the tourist posters we picked up in Greece?

They took those as well, Harlan spoke quietly. They’re also in the business of humiliation.

Come on, she said to Theo and lifted him up by the straps of his overalls and dumped him back in the stroller. I’m not listening to anymore of this crap. Connie spun him around and leaned forward to push the door open and jammed the stroller through and left the store.

She walked the length of the short strip mall and stood facing an access road and a dense patch of dark conifers. Forest had the ability to appear so still. In the distance, a glint of ocean. She thumbed Mary-Beth’s number on her cell phone and stood there, waiting for her to answer.

On the ground at her feet was a tarnished orange loonie in a grey clot of matted debris that Connie felt she should pick
up. Something to do with money. At the back of her mind an old frugality was standing up and brushing itself off. Connie looked over at the highway as an eighteen-wheeler shot through the intersection, some fir trees shook, and she heard a song lyric in her head.
These are the best days of your life
.

There was no answer. She snapped her phone shut and nudged the loonie with her foot, then bent to pick it up. It was an old ginger beer bottle cap. How strange things can appear, and she thought again of the doctor’s gloves at Theo’s birth. Like red woollen mittens. How the doctor had raised them up and Connie had thought – a Christmas present.

She turned the stroller around and walked back. She saw the sign in the window,
LIQUIDATION SALE
. How had she missed that before? She opened the door and walked in. Harlan hadn’t moved. Once again, Connie took Theo out of his stroller and turned to face her husband. She took a new stab at optimism. So please, tell me again what’s going on.

All the sturdiness went out of Harlan’s posture. He fell back and without looking put his hands out to catch himself against the counter, as if he’d been dealt a soft blow. The counter was the only furniture left on the display floor, if you could call it furniture. It was just the hollow box of a counter, fastened to the floor. There was that, and a small, dark green, metal garbage can. It frightened her how thoroughly a room can be emptied, and how quickly. She had known this room. But she didn’t know it anymore.

Harlan lifted a hand and smoothed his eyebrows with his fingertips. We’re totally bankrupt, Connie. I lost the store, the business. All our assets.

And there it was, she could see it in his face, the sweet, immense relief of confession.
How
, Harlan? How could this happen?

I got carried away.

But you’re not impulsive. You’re reliable. You were going to build bridges, design highways.

And I landed in security.

See what I mean? You think that was an accident? Connie could not yet grasp what her husband was telling her.

Maybe it was an irony.

No, Harl, we all choose our paths in life.

Sometimes things get beyond our control.

That’s just an excuse weak people make.

Is that what you really think? Haven’t you ever felt overwhelmed?

Theo had walked over to the garbage can and was rocking it back and forth.

Why do you always have to be the victim? Connie said. You always have other things to blame – your parents, your upbringing. When are you going to take responsibility for yourself?

But I am! That’s what I’m saying. I made a mistake!

Do you think this is what God had in mind for you?

I don’t know what God has in mind.

I mean, don’t you think he wanted you to rise above your station and excel?

My
station
?

Connie was saying words she didn’t know she was going to say. It was as if her mouth opened and a voice spoke. But she condoned the message. You know, she said, your disadvantaged background? Connie flicked her hair. She kept her eyes down. She stifled a sudden desire to be soft, to cry and lament. Instead, she threw a log on her anger and her judgment. I mean, how does a thing like this happen?

I couldn’t resist it, Con. The big jackpot. The stock market.

What are you talking about? A sharpness in her voice made Theo gravitate back from where he had wandered off.

Please, Constance, don’t condemn me. Just listen.

You never call me Constance.

Sweetheart, we’re broke. I thought I could make – I made some bad investments. They were supposed to, well, I should’ve stopped, declared bankruptcy, but instead I kept borrowing, and signed liens on everything I could lay my hands on, and now –

How could you fall for that, Harl? The stock market? You’ve got a master’s in engineering, you were supposed to
work
for a living. There’s no such thing as free money.

Not unless you come by it honestly at birth, he said.

What’s
that
supposed to mean?

You’re middle class, Connie. I don’t expect you to understand. How was I supposed to give you the life you wanted? Selling burglar alarms and deadbolts?

What about your patent? Couldn’t you have tried to come up with another one?

I
did
, Harlan said. I wanted it all too, for you, for the kids. What have you ever been tempted by?

I try really hard, all the time, to do the right thing!

I know you do, Harlan said. And that’s all you care about. As far as I know, you’ve never done a spontaneous thing in your life.

Connie closed her eyes and clenched her fists. Look, Harlan, you’re a strong man and I want you to be strong now.

Harlan felt exhausted. He wanted to sweep Connie up in his arms and take the children and fly somewhere far away where they could start again, from scratch, from hard stone and rippling brook and tree bark. He’d done that once, but he’d done it alone. Could he do it again and with a family?

You’ve never understood me, Connie said, and her heart ached because already her prescient self had walked forward down the long corridor of the future and understood the hardship that lay ahead. What’s going to happen to us?

Harlan crouched and held his arms out to his son with such little confidence Theo thought better of it and stayed where he was, attached to his mother’s leg. Harlan rose again. I’m going to work as hard as I can to make it up to you, he said.

Connie walked over to a wall and slid down with her back against it and sat on the floor, her elbows resting on her knees. Theo squirmed his way onto her lap. Connie hugged her son. Inhaled the warm fabric smell of his head. Do you know, she said, slightly amused, as if it had just occurred to her, that I thought of killing myself recently?

Oh, Connie, Harlan said, and his voice was beseeching.

Not seriously, she said. Not really. Just out of some malaise, the thought struck me. But then I didn’t think I had any reason to be depressed. I mean, I have everything, right? A beautiful house, faithful husband, three healthy kids in five years. Do you know what it’s like to be so full of life you squirt breast milk halfway across the room? I thought, I am at the very centre of this family. I mean, I am so necessary to this life we have together, so integral. This big life we have, Emma and Si and Theo, it all literally came out of me, out of my body. And yet I’ve never felt so invisible either, so unimportant. I’m just a mother. People don’t respect that. People don’t even open the door for a pregnant woman anymore. I saw a pregnant woman hitchhiking in the rain the other day. Oh my God, I should have picked her up!

Connie stopped talking and the stark emptiness of the store struck her as embarrassingly obvious. Does the whole town know about this?

Harlan shook his head. I don’t think so. He was fussing with a loose thread on the outside seam of his blue pants. A dark hourglass shape walked past the window from left to right. Fingerprints and smudges glowed on the glass. The sun was too harsh, it was peeling everything back.

Stop that! Connie said. Stop that goddamn fiddling! Can’t you control yourself?

Don’t swear at me! Harlan yelled back and grabbed at his hair.

No, Mama! Theo said and raised his hand and smacked Connie on the nose.

Ow! Connie shouted and shoved her son onto the floor and stood up and watched him roll onto his stomach and kick the floor in a parody of outrage. I’m sorry, sweetie, she said, crouching down again and rubbing his back. I didn’t mean to do that.

Harlan took a step forward, towards this unhappy, fragile unit of his family, but Connie threw him a look that was feral.

Don’t, Connie said. Get the fuck away from me!

Stop
swearing
! Harlan bellowed, and an instinct so deep and primordial Connie didn’t even know she had was alerted. She picked Theo up and slung him into the crook of her elbow and kicked the stroller around. Harlan bent and picked up the small dark green garbage can and launched it into the air. It soared over her head and detonated the front window. The glass exploded, a waterfall of diamonds pouring over the edge of some place they had never gone before. The noise came after and lasted longer, petering out until it was the delicate tinkling of icicles. It was as if they had been forewarned, had had time to stand and turn and face the solid window to prepare, for a second, before the spectacle of its shattering. Theo was quiet. Connie held him tight, then her arms shot forward
and he hung suspended in the air and flapping as she spun him right, then left. No blood. No cuts. Thank God. She pulled him towards her again and propped him on her hip and rattled the stroller viciously with one hand until it started to close and fold down against the floor.

Harlan stared at the now-clear view through the jagged frame of his storefront window at the parking lot where Connie had pulled up, eleven years ago, with her doorbell in a box, and her soft brown hair, and an air of wholesome promise. He shuddered and clamped down on a deep necessity to cry.

Several seconds later voices began to accumulate outside and Harlan’s neighbours started gathering from the other businesses along the short strip mall.

Connie was trembling so violently it was hard to navigate the wreckage. She made a crunching path through the glass. She didn’t use the door but stepped over the spiky mountain range of the lower sill. She excused herself past a woman from the bakery, who was still holding a plate with a slice of carrot cake, and opened the back door of the Volvo and sat her bawling son in his car seat. It took both hands to steady the buckle enough to slide it into the lock. She heard a man say, What the hell, Harlan? What the H Christ is going on here?

She winced at the man’s crudeness. It held the frightening potential of a crass new life she had just stepped into where people lost their tempers, lost control, where they swore and fought and threw garbage cans through windows.