Part 7 (1/2)

Vera's eyes overflowed and the tears splashed onto Danny's head. ”Grace,” she croaked. ”You can have another baby. Please don't take him away from me. Please.”

Grace knew the size of that grief, how it obliterated the world and left you a blind, naked, howling creature. ”I'm sorry,” she said and opened her arms for her child.

Theresa said everything for her. She said that they were doing the right thing, that Grace talked about nothing but her little boy and how much she wanted him back. She said that Grace was doing very well on her own and that she had good friends who would help if she needed help. She said Frank and Vera should come down to Peterborough to see them, and she would drive Grace and Danny back up in the summer for a visit. She said this to Frank. Vera had gone upstairs. They could hear her crying.

Frank went up and came down with a bag of Danny's clothes and added some of his toys. They looked, but they couldn't find the dog in the shoe, and finally Theresa said they'd better start back. Frank carried Danny out to the car. Danny had his arms around Frank's neck and was playing with his collar. When Grace reached for him, he hung on to Frank. Frank kissed him and unhooked his hands from his neck and handed him to Grace. ”You go with your mommy now,” he said.

”Mommy!” Danny cried out, reaching for Frank. ”Mommy.”

”Take good care of him, Gracie,” Frank said, his voice quivering. He turned his face away as they climbed into the car.

Danny cried in her arms and would not stop. ”It's all right, Danny, it's all right,” she kept saying. He flailed and wailed and choked on his tears. She held him and tried to kiss him, but he writhed and twisted and pulled away. ”Mommy, mommy, mommy,” he cried.

”He'll be all right,” Theresa said. ”It's going to take some time.”

They turned onto the highway, pa.s.sing through Garden River and Bruce Mines, and still Danny cried. Grace cried, and even Theresa had to stop driving to blow her nose.

”Stop, Theresa,” Grace said finally. ”Stop.”

Theresa manoeuvred the car onto the side of the road. Danny had stopped flailing and screaming, but he was still crying in Grace's arms. ”Mommy,” he said. His voice was broken into pieces by hiccups and sobs. ”Mommy, mommy.” Grace stared ahead, blinded by tears. This was worse than when she had left. It was worse than all the nights without him. It was worse than anything she had ever felt.

”Grace?” Theresa asked softly. ”Grace, what do you want to do?”

YELLOW BRICK ROAD.

While the beginning was still ending, before the real ending began and everything fell to pieces and went to h.e.l.l in a handbasket, there was a brief period when it seemed their luck had changed and things were going to work out after all. Dawn came downstairs one morning to find Geraldine and Jimmy murmuring over a jar of grape jelly. Geraldine smiled at her over Jimmy's tousled blond head and said, ”The day has Dawned.” She hadn't said that in a long time.

Jimmy said, ”Look, Dawn. A secret message.” Inside the jar, a small patch of white gleamed. They tried to dig it out with a knife and then a fork, and finally they emptied the thick purple ma.s.s into a bowl and Geraldine plucked out the paper and opened it. She burst into laughter.

”What is it?” Dawn and Jimmy yelled.

She showed them. It said, Boo. Geraldine was still laughing. ”Your father,” she said. She kissed them both on the top of the head and made them jam sandwiches for lunch, singing, ” *When you're near, there's such an air of spring about it. I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.' ”

”That was a nice morning,” Jimmy said on the way to school. But Dawn thought it was more than that, and by the end of the day, she had proof. First, Dean announced he wouldn't be going away on business anymore because he was opening his own business, right here in town, and if they would give him their full and undivided attention for a moment, he would tell them all about it.

They were eating a double supper: the Kentucky Fried Chicken and fries that Dean had brought home and the pork chops, peas and mashed potatoes that Geraldine had already cooked because apparently Dean had never heard of this new invention called The Phone. Dean said it was great that she had cooked, because now they could have an all-you-can-eat buffet feast, and he even set it up like a buffet, using all the bowls and serving platters they had. He loaded their plates: a mashed potato volcano spilling peas, with chicken and pork chops like houses at the base and a forest of fries climbing the slopes.

”Dig in, kids,” he said, ”and I'll let you in on The Plan.”

The Plan was this: downtown, a few doors from the Sunset Cafe, Dean was opening a club the likes of which this town had never seen. ”Club” meant nightclub, where grown-ups went at night to talk and listen to music.

Jimmy said, ”You mean a barroom?”

Dean laughed. ”No, Uncle Frank. Not a barroom.” It didn't look like anything now, because the carpenters were ripping it up and stripping it down, but in a few weeks, when the lights were installed and the round mahogany bar had been built, oh man, the bar was going to be the centrepiece, the showpiece of the whole place, right in the middle of the main room.

”Who's paying for this?” Geraldine asked.

”The investors,” Dean said. ”They're really excited-”

Geraldine snorted. ”The investors? Dean, you're getting in over your head with this guy.”

”This is nothing for Del. Peanuts. With all the deals he's got going, this is small change.”

Geraldine sighed.

Dean said, ”Don't worry, Ger, I've got him just where I want him.”

Dean hadn't come up with a name yet, but he was open to suggestions. He leapt up and played a drum roll on the table with his index fingers. ”Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, ”guys and dolls, cats and chicks, Turner Enterprises is pleased to present, all the way from Toronto-”

”Donny Osmond!” Dawn said.

”The Jackson 5!” Jimmy said.

Dean sighed. ”Well, that's not quite the calibre I had in mind, but who knows, maybe we'll bring them up to do a special concert and you two can emcee.” He drew the room for Dawn and Jimmy with some cutlery, the salt shaker and a straw. ”The whole place goes completely black. Then a single ray of light cuts through the darkness. It hits the edge of a guitar ...” He stopped and shook his head. ”All I can say is, minds are going to be blown.”

Dean put his arm around Geraldine, and she leaned against him, and that's when Dawn saw that things really were going to be different. Because Dean wouldn't be away on business now, so Geraldine wouldn't have to do everything by herself-work all day and then come home and look after the kids, make dinner, wash the clothes, do the shopping-and the club would be a smas.h.i.+ng success and make bushels of money so Geraldine wouldn't have to worry about the bills on top of the fridge (and Dawn wouldn't have to stand on a chair to count them), and things would finally get back to normal and start to come true.

And then, more luck: at school Dawn made a new friend. Brenda Nolan (Big Brenda or Beluga Brenda) had watery eyes and white-blond hair. Her father owned a grocery store and they had a swimming pool in the backyard. Brenda said she and Dawn would have pool parties in the summer while Marlene from their cla.s.s and all her stupid friends sat around on their front steps with nothing to do except fan themselves with their hands and bore themselves to death.

Aside from the promise of pool parties, the main advantage to being friends with Brenda was that Dawn had someone to eat lunch with. Plus, it was nice to be able to say things like, ”I'm going over to my friend Brenda's” or ”My friend Brenda has a pool.” Normal things that normal kids said. The main disadvantage was that anyone who was friends with Brenda could never be friends with Marlene or anyone Marlene was friends with, and Mike Harrison called them Laurel and Hardy and sang whenever he saw them: ”Fatty and Skinny went to bed, Skinny blew a fart and Fatty fell dead.”

”How can Fatty fall dead if she's already lying in bed?” Brenda yelled.

”She was sitting in bed, cutting her big fat toenails and eating her toe jam,” Mike yelled back, and Marlene laughed so hard she cried. Or pretended to.

Still, Dawn felt fortunate to have a friend, especially considering that the change in luck had stalled at home. Now when Geraldine came home from work, she took her swollen hands and feet straight to bed. She got up and drank water straight from the tap, then went back to bed, one hand on the wall to steady herself. Her eyes, slits in her moon face, looked the same whether she was awake or asleep. Too sick to get up and yell, she threw things against the bedroom door if Dawn and Jimmy made too much noise. Mostly they were things that thudded, but once, something shattered. Dawn only hoped it wasn't a mirror. So she took Jimmy to Brenda's after school almost every day, and Brenda didn't mind that she couldn't come to their house. That was the other advantage to Brenda: she hardly ever minded anything.

On Sat.u.r.days, they went to help Dean with the club. He often needed skilled a.s.sistants for special missions. ”Yep,” he said, inspecting Jimmy's eyes with an imaginary magnifying gla.s.s. ”Eagle eyes. Perfect for the flea market.”

”We're going to look for fleas?” Jimmy asked.

”Not fleas. Funk. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find little pieces of funk. There's a fine line between junk and funk, but I believe you two will be able to discern it.”

The flea market was row upon row of wooden tables inside a big barn-like building. Dean showed them funk: a handful of old-fas.h.i.+oned keys, a fan made out of feathers, a tiny green bottle with a rubber stopper. Then he showed them junk: an ashtray with an Algoma Steel logo, a book called Teach Yourself Typing. Jimmy found a pair of sparkly red shoes with bows, and Dawn found a framed photo of someone's great-grandmother, looking stern and stiff in a long black dress with a white lace collar. Dean said they had the knack, the eye, and they would be amply rewarded.

The club, which was going to be called Tangerine-or maybe Pipe Dreams in honour of Vera, who said Dean was full of them-was a series of interconnected rooms on the main floor, with bathrooms and an office in the bas.e.m.e.nt. In the main room, Antoine was doing the mural. Short and bald, Antoine had apple cheeks, wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and a tangle of feather and leather pendants dangling from his neck. He reached into the basket at his feet and pulled out an earring and a silver spoon. With his other hand, he dipped a paintbrush into a can of glue. He worked fast, painting and sticking and then drying the glue with a hair dryer. A path of doll shoes led to a lake of blue gla.s.s surrounded by paper umbrella trees. An eye painted on a saucer cried a pearl. A sunburst brooch rose out of a teacup.

Antoine shrieked when he saw the shoes. He dropped his brush and grabbed Dean by the shoulder. ”Yellow,” he said. ”I need yellow. I need a lot.”

Dean said sure, he would keep an eye out for yellow pieces.

”No, no,” Antoine said. ”I need yellow now. Right now.” He was clutching the shoes to his chest, and his round blue eyes were huge and blinking frantically. ”You won't be sorry.” He began prying pieces of his mural off the wall. ”Go! Yellow!”

So they went back out, and at the Sally Ann they found a white scarf with yellow flowers, a gold belt and a plastic banana. ”Not enough,” Dean said. Jimmy had to pee, so Dean drove them home. He took a dollar out of his pocket. ”Whoever collects the most yellow gets this.” They kicked each other getting out of the car. ”And whoever wakes up Geraldine gets a spanking,” Dean called as they raced inside. ”I'll be back in an hour.”

Dawn found a bottle of Sunlight dish detergent, a plastic lemon in the fridge and a bar of yellow soap. Jimmy found some pencils, several pieces of plastic race track and a picture of a yellow dress in Geraldine's box of photos.

They both spotted the phone book at the same time, but Jimmy reached it first. They were ripping out the yellow pages and hissing when Geraldine came into the kitchen. Her stomach was a basketball under her purple bathrobe. ”What is this?” she asked, looking at the mess on the floor-snips of paper and a slick of dish soap. ”We need yellow things for the mural,” Dawn told her. ”Look at all the stuff we got.”

Geraldine pretended to look in the bag before opening the fridge. Then she turned back to them. ”Let me see that bag again,” she said slowly.