Thirteen Shells Read online

  By the time they sit down, the hockey game has already started. It’s the playoffs and Montreal is on home ice, so Dad keeps the kitchen radio on low. He opens another beer, of which Shell gets a juice glass, half full. Mum spoons Dad a big pile of steamed fiddleheads, taking for herself only a few — Shell counts ten, the same number as Shell receives when she holds out her plate. Butter is passed, pepper and salt. Dad declares the fiddleheads excellent. “Come on, Shell,” he says of Shell’s untouched pile. “Folks’re paying big bucks for these downtown.”

  “Poor-people food,” Shell says quietly. Shell picks up a fiddlehead with her fork and holds it to her lips. Across the table, Mum’s put one in her mouth, then a quick forkful of the wild rice. Dad watches Shell chew. The bitterness makes her throat close, so she shifts the clump to her front teeth, where it mixes with trout residue.

  “They’re okay, Dad,” Shell says, swallowing.

  Dad grinds pepper on his fish. “If the weather’s cool, there might be some left next week.”

  Dad turns up the radio as Montreal scores.

  “I want my red ribbon back,” Shell says over the announcer, who must be bouncing in his seat, yelling like Shell’s not allowed to.

  “What ribbon?” Mum says.

  Dad and Shell keep eating.

  “What were you up to?” Mum asks again, looking over at Shell, who can’t remember the last time Mum looked at Dad or Dad at Mum.

  Shell gobbles the rest of the fiddleheads and smiles big at Dad, and when he smiles back, rice in his teeth, Shell’s sure he won’t go away and leave her like the man in the ravine did his son.

  Dad takes his sherbet out to the studio. Mum and Shell have theirs in cones. The sherbet is smooth and pure white, though the flavour is the biggest brightest yellow, like swallowing the smell of Mum’s laundry soap.

  “Mum,” Shell says, “I don’t want to go back to Olivia’s again.”

  Mum frowns. “What happened?”

  Shell thinks of the locked basement door and the piece of soap that she treasures but Olivia will never know is gone in a million years. “They name the streets for the cut-down trees and dead Indian people and there’s no sidewalks, so how can it be safe for a kid to learn bike riding?”

  If Shell doesn’t want to go back, she can bag nuts with Mum next week. Mum touches Shell’s head. “We really need to get you into some kind of activity.” The dishes are draining in the rack, but Mum won’t let out the dishwater until she goes to bed. “It’s such a waste to keep running the tap,” she always says. This is also why she takes a bath in Shell’s used water. Mum, like Dad, grew up hauling water and milking cows and saving pennies to get the bus to some other place.

  “I’m glad there’s no ravine and we’ve got sidewalks,” Shell says, getting into her pyjamas.

  “Yes,” Mum says. She tucks Shell into bed and leaves the door open a crack and then halfway when Shell asks.

  Downstairs, Dad comes in from the studio.

  “Did something happen at that woman’s?” Mum says.

  Dad says no. “Why?”

  Next are those hard whispers. Shell doesn’t need to understand the words. She feels in her bones the vibration of Mum’s clenched jaw and Dad’s shoulders pinching at the back. Shell stands at her door. She’s going to run downstairs and shout how they, like her, are so lucky to not have to eat sardines in a ravine. But then the back door closes again. Mum lets the water out of the sink and Shell climbs back into bed.

  Please Don’t Pass Me By

  A Thrifty van trundles up Cashel Street and parks on the lawn of the angel-brick bungalow five doors down. Two men with sunglasses on their heads carry loads of belongings through the shadowy front door. Shell goes in from the porch and says this time there’s a little girl’s stuff among the furniture and boxes. Mum frowns, pouring hot milk into a row of little glass jars. In twelve hours there will be tart, runny yogurt. “Starting at a new school is hard at the best of times, never mind so far into the year.” If she’s in Shell’s grade two class, Shell can help her catch up. Mum says they will have to wait and see how old the new girl is.

  It seems like overnight, purple crocuses with egg-yolk centres rise up all over the front lawn. Then water starts running in the gutters, and dirty snowbanks recede down to grass, revealing last year’s chocolate bar wrappers, cigarette butts, and so much dog poo. Then the special seeds Dad ordered in January arrive in the mail and the baby tomato plants that have been growing under lights in the basement are almost ready to go in.

  Down the block, the garden under the front windows of the angel-brick bungalow stays muddy and the driveway, since the Thrifty van left, has only ever been empty. If the new girl and her fat mum didn’t walk down to Princess Anne Elementary in the morning, Shell would think no one lived there at all. The girl’s hair is what Mum calls “strawberry blond,” and she wears those runners with Velcro closures Mum won’t buy because they lack arch support. The girl’s mum wears Velcro runners too, and her chubby feet hang out over the edge like when your skates aren’t tied up tight enough and you end up sliding around on your ankles. And though they only live three blocks from Princess Anne, the mum walks so slow that sometimes she sends the girl in an On-the-Town taxi.

  “Oh, Shell, you should offer to walk with her!” Mum cries when Shell says she would like to go to school in a taxi too.

  Shell says the girl is too young for her. “Only in grade one.”

  “That’s why you should walk her, then.”

  But she probably can’t even read yet. What would they talk about?

  Mum sighs and sends Shell down to Bun King to get onion buns for a hamburger supper. She gives Shell a one-dollar bill, enough for four buns, and makes her promise to walk up an extra block when she crosses because there’s no other corner with a light.

  Then, on the way back, the new girl pops out from the screen door of her bungalow. Shell keeps going, head down, stepping over a dirty puddle.

  The girl goes: “Hey, you my age?” She scrambles onto a collapsing lawn chair, kicking out her legs. “Hey girl!”

  Shell’s so close to home. Dad’s pruning the mountain ash on the front lawn. When he’s done with that, he’ll light the charcoal. They’re always the first ones on the street to have a barbecue, and that’s not even counting the sausages and bacon Dad and Kremski smoked this winter in the tin smokehouse they built out back.

  The girl stands up. “I’m six.”

  The sun is right above the bungalow, so when Shell turns around, she has to squint. “I’m seven,” Shell says.

  “My mum already said you can come over.” The girl is down the steps and halfway across the muddy lawn. “You shy? I used to be too.”

  “Well, really, I’m almost eight,” Shell says, clutching the onion buns. There’s an Aero bar wrapper under the girl’s sneaker.

  The girl’s name is Vicki.

  “Shell.’’

  Vicki says, “What’s that short for?”

  “Nothing. It’s just Shell. Not Sheila or Shelley or Michelle or she-sells-sea-shells-by-the-sea-shore, so don’t even try.”

  Vicki says she’s just Vicki too. Not Victoria, even though that’s pretty, like the actress on Dallas. She says Shell can come inside and see her room.

  “Gotta ask my dad.” Shell points down the block. Dad — cap, glasses, beard, and overalls — is on the kitchen stepladder. Shiny mountain ash leaves fall away from his clippers.

  Vicki says her dad lives in Michigan and Shell should see how much cereal you can get down there but not here. “Peanut Butter Balls, Tropical O’s…How about just sit on the porch?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Vicki kicks around in the muck, spattering her Velcro shoes. “I got a Cadbury’s Easter Creme. We can share it.”

  Vicki’s cement porch is covered with green plastic carpeting like in minigolf. It�
�s damp, so Shell sits on her hands while Vicki goes inside to get the chocolate. Not even Mum, who sometimes hides a Kit Kat at the bottom of her purse, will ever let Shell taste a Cadbury’s Easter Creme Egg. “There’s far too much sugar for a child in one of those things.” The older kids at Princess Anne say there’s a commercial where a boy asks the man in the store for six thousand Creme Eggs. They say too that Creme Eggs are available only at Easter.

  Shell knocks a snail off the step with the toe of her sneaker, then opens the Bun King bag and one by one picks the onion bits off the top of one of the buns. The bits are dark and chewy and sweet. They could come as a snack like chips or sunflower seeds and Shell would buy them like that and eat them. Dad thinks they’re the best part of the bun too. If they’re out of onion buns at Bun King, Shell is to get the poppy seed ones, though poppy seeds have no taste at all.

  The egg is wrapped in red and purple foil. Cross-legged, Vicki pushes back her hair and peels it.

  Shell tells Vicki how last week her grade two class went real roller skating. There was a class trip to Bootin’ roller rink, and their teacher fell and broke her wrist.

  “Oh, sure.” Vicki goes to Bootin’ with her mum and Clarke, her mum’s boyfriend, all the time. So often that she’s getting her own roller skates for Easter. Not the adjustable kind with the key like Shell has, but the boot ones, with laces and everything. “What’re you asking the Easter Bunny for?” Vicki balances the unwrapped chocolate egg on her knee, covers her face with her hands, and sneezes.

  Shell didn’t know you could ask for stuff for Easter.

  “Oh, sure you can.” Vicki sinks her small teeth into the top of the egg. She flutters her eyelashes. Then she pulls the bottom half away from her lips, passing it to Shell; white goop oozes out. The yolk centre is the same colour as the inside of crocuses.

  Shell puts the whole of her half in her mouth. Sweetness creeps up her jaw into her eyes and gets wedged at the front of her scalp. She chews slowly, squishing slime between her teeth.

  Vicki says, “If the Easter Bunny brings you roller skates, we can go around the block.”

  But the Easter Bunny doesn’t bring toys, that’s Santa’s job.

  Well, the Easter Bunny brings her, Vicki, whatever she wants. It’s simple: instead of hanging up stockings, Vicki and her mum put baskets on top of the TV, and on the morning of Easter there are wrapped presents inside.

  Doesn’t Vicki hunt for chocolate eggs the Easter Bunny hides around the house? Shell says that’s what happens in her house, and sometimes they’re in such hard places only Dad can find them.

  Vicki says, oh, yeah, she does an egg hunt too. But after she opens her presents. “Maybe you need to pray to the Easter Bunny if you want presents.”

  Vicki crumples up the chocolate foil and throws it onto the muddy lawn. She says that once at Bootin’ a kid tried to wear those old-fashioned strap-on skates and he had to leave.

  “Really?” And because Vicki says maybe Shell can come to Bootin’ with her mum and Clarke someday, Shell lets her eat the bits off the last onion bun. Now the buns are evenly plain and she can tell Mum Bun King was out of the poppy seed kind too. A rich charcoal tinge floats in the air. Shell gets up and — “Well, goodbye!” — goes home.

  In the furnace room, among ice skates, ski boots, and wooden snowshoes, Shell finds her roller skates. Since she put them away last summer, the rust has deepened in both colour and texture, and the wide plastic toe guards have turned the shade of the Yellow Pages. Though stretched and cracked, the leather ankle straps have not rotted through. The length of kitchen twine attaching the wide metal key to the left skate is easily cut away with the utility knife on the top of Dad’s tool box. Having worked the key into the socket of the left skate, Shell wrenches at the hinges so it comes apart, front from back. Then she does the same to the right. She wipes her rusty orange hands on her pants and buries the key under the cardinal bush out back.

  “Well, then, you’d better remember where you put it,” Dad says of the missing key. Without it, he can’t put Shell’s skates together. That or they’ll look for another pair when the garage sales start up. Then he goes back to his cookbooks. Easter is only a few days away and Kremski is coming to celebrate.

  Shell asks what they’re supposed to be celebrating when there’s no God in their house or Jesus to rise again.

  “Look,” Dad says, putting down Old-Fashioned Ukrainian Cookery. “Kremski’s from a place where you can go to jail for believing in the wrong things.”

  Shell nods and repeats after Dad that what they’re celebrating is the coming of spring and how lucky they are to have enough to eat when people in the Soviet Union wait six hours in line just to get a sausage.

  Good Friday morning, Scooby-Doo is blaring through Vicki’s screen door. Shell’s never seen that cartoon before. She watches through the mesh before she knocks.

  “Hi!” Vicki’s eating Froot Loops from a Tupperware jelly mould; the milk she slurps has gone violet. Her pyjamas are just a long T-shirt and her hair is in what Mum would call a rat’s nest.

  Though Shell is still full of Dad’s wheat-germ pancakes, she asks Vicki for a bowl of cereal. It tastes of Life Savers candy, like Shell dreamed it would. While Vicki’s couch is shiny black velveteen, the rest of the living room furniture is lacquered wicker with forest-green upholstery. Giant Chinese fans and framed Rolling Stones posters decorate the lavender walls, freshly painted. On top of the TV — wood panelled like the station wagon across the street — Vicki and her mum have their Easter baskets all ready to go.

  Vicki’s mum is named Bonita. She wants to watch The Twilight Zone now that Vicki’s show is over. She already has eyeshadow and blush on, and though she is so fat she can’t sit in the wicker furniture, she’s still so pretty.

  “Let’s go,” Vicki says.

  Vicki’s bedroom is a clammy add-on in the back. The plywood door bangs into the desk when she opens it, and because there is no closet, Vicki’s clothes are in garbage bags piled on the floor. Her mum doesn’t work right now, but Vicki has all the latest toys. And she doesn’t have a car either, so they get to bring their colourful groceries home in a cab. Shell watched them unload last week — Viva Puffs cookies, cheese Bugles, cases of Heinz soups and Chef Boyardee ravioli. Posters of Blondie and Bruce Springsteen are taped up over Vicki’s bed, which is itself a mountain of blank-eyed Barbies in stretchy jeans, Big Birds, Holly Hobbies, and a Snoopy Punch Me toy.

  Vicki’s Easter roller skates are on page ninety-four of the Canadian Tire catalogue she keeps under her pillow. The sturdy boots are sleek white, while the thick wheels and stopper on the front are clown-nose red. Her mum’s skates will be the exact same, only she’s getting black ones.

  “See?” Vicki flips to page ninety-three.

  “They’re nice,” says Shell. Maybe it’s easier for her mum to skate than to walk.

  “You been praying for yours? Easter’s only tomorrow, you know.”

  “Pray?” Shell doesn’t know how.

  Vicki scratches her knotted head and leans against her bed, knocking a pile of toys onto the floor. She picks up a stuffed rabbit with matted pink fur. An ex-boyfriend of her mum’s won it at the county fair. While the rabbit’s torso is squat, its arms and legs are spidery; iron-on facial features are coming unstuck; and the paws and belly and ears look like the dirty patch of snow on Vicki’s front lawn.

  “Here.” Vicki tucks the rabbit into Shell’s arms. It smells of sticky perfume. “Take Kevin home and just think really hard about roller skates. I bet you’ll get some skates in your Easter basket too.”

  Vicki lets Shell out the back door. The stoop is piled with wet cardboard boxes marked Living Room and Fragile, Kitchen. One big one marked Toys is full of TV Guides and what look to be dozens of balled-up Cadbury’s Easter Creme foils.

  Kevin goes next to the creaky antique teddy bear lounging on Shell�
��s bed. In the gardening shed there is a wooden strawberry basket not too stained with which Shell makes her own Easter basket. She fills it with the Styrofoam peanuts Mum saves, and decorates it with pictures of chicks and rabbits and hot cross buns cut from grocery store flyers. Because they do not have a television, the basket goes on top of the turntable.

  Shell sits on the floor in front of the stereo thinking hard about new roller skates. She truly believes in God, but only in secret. But it’s always been okay to believe in the Easter Bunny. Sort of like how Shell gets to hang up a stocking and open presents on Christmas morning. Dad’s always bugging her about how Santa can’t get in because the doors are locked and they have no chimney. But on Christmas Eve he’ll sit for hours, with whiskey and a bowl of nuts, watching the fairy lights glow on the spruce tree they themselves cut down in a farmer’s field every year.

  Dad reminds Shell not to touch the stereo. He sets the berry basket on the floor. “This filthy thing belongs outside.”

  “But the Easter Bunny won’t find it outside, so how will he leave my new roller skates?”

  Shell already has skates. Sorensen Sports called to say they’re fixed.

  “They’re not the right kind. When me and Vicki go to Bootin’, they’ll kick me out.”

  Boot skates are ridiculous for a growing child. “In six months you’ll need another pair.”

  With his hands on his knees, Dad leans in to read the spines of his records. “Besides, who says you’re going anywhere with Vicki?”

  “The Easter Bunny says,” Shell answers. Then: “I’m praying to him so he’ll bring me boot skates along with my chocolates.”

  “Your chocolates?” Dad pulls out the Leonard Cohen record with the live recording of the “oh please don’t pass me by” song. Mum hates this record worse than the other Leonard Cohen records, and Mum hates those a lot. Once, Dad turned that song up so loud Mum got up in the middle of supper and went for a walk in the cold winter dark without a hat. Dad did the dishes and tucked Shell into bed. Shell rubbed Dad’s beard and asked what she had done wrong.