She Wished

She was the first to see him. He slipped through the sliding glass door to the living room behind a couple girls that had been outside smoking. He wiped his hands down the front of his black hoodie and scanned the party. His hair was damp but still blonde. His skate shoes looked wet but he shuffled them gently on the carpet to dry the soles. When he looked up and across the room, his ice blue eyes locked her in place. She didn’t notice the search light slowly panning across the glass door that was opaque with condensation but it backlit him, for just a moment, like a shadow dancer.

He crossed the room directly at her. She paused on the stairs before the bottom so she stood taller than him. “You’re red trying to be blue,” he said.

“Excuse me?” she cocked her head slightly to the right.

“Your aura. You’re a fireball. But you're hiding it for some reason,” he continued with a smile. “Don’t.” Someone spotted him and called his name from the kitchen and he raised his chin in acknowledgement. He looked up at her, “I’ll be back.”

Silas.

Two months later she was pregnant.

Now I don’t need to tell you about the birds and the bees because that’s not how it happened. On the night in question, Silas sang Mustang Sally as he lay on his side, propped up on one beautiful elbow, in sheets printed with overblown peonies like a fantastic garden. His fingers traced lightly across the length of her side. It was bigger than their biological embrace, a magic between them that sometimes puttered like a honey bee dipping from flower to flower and other times popped with the intensity of a mitfull of sparklers. She knew she was pregnant. She felt it like she had been told.

Three months later he was arrested.

It was nothing, really. If you were at the Driftwood Mall that evening you might have seen Silas in the phone booth down the end closest to 26th Ave. It was raining lightly but you would have been able to see him in there, talking, leaning on one arm pressed on the wall beside the phone. Suddenly he was out. He shoved the phone booth once, twice. He started to walk towards 26th, then spun around and charged at the booth, knocking it over. The booth tipped into the street with a crash and the lights flickered out. Now you know there’s always cops at the Timmy’s on 26th and they would have been watching from their table. They jumped in their cars as Silas gave chase.

You know how slippery it is when it hasn’t rained in a while, all that oil and grease on the roads beads it right up. The cops were careful so Silas got a good start. He ran across 26th and through the 7-11 parking lot. He crossed the street and cut through KalTire. His shoes were slippery too but it’s all four-way stops around there so the cars couldn’t pick up much speed. Silas got almost all the way down Fitzgerald to Puntledge Park when he saw them rounding the corner. He cut through an alley and into the back of the townhouse where he scored his weed. There were girls out in the yard and the door was open.

Somebody saw him that day and held that secret like a mouthful of water for almost five months before they spit it out.

“Do you accept a collect call from…”

“Silas.” A recording of his voice.

“Sure do, ma’am.”

A long silence.

“Dad?”

“Call me Ricky, Silas, that’s my LA name.”

“OK. Ricky?” Silas focussed on the black and chrome phone in the booth. Outside it was starting to rain and people were trying to make it to the car without getting wet with fists full of white plastic grocery bags, arms too heavy to close a jacket or straighten a collar. He focussed on the phone to keep his voice light and calm. “It’s been a while, right? I mean I’m almost twenty one now and I want to come down there like we talked about. Help you out with the club. I’ve been boxing over at Peter’s, keepin in shape, so like if you wanted some security or something?”

Silas waited. He leaned his arm against the glass and hung his head. He stared at his shoes. The white edges of his Converse were scuffed.

“Now Silas,” Ricky began, “Silas...now’s not a real good time, you know? We’re still just starting out, not booking anyone big, you know?” He heard Ricky flipping through the pages of his book. Ever since he’d watched that David Lynch interview he called himself an Ideas Man and carried his little black book with him everywhere. He’d tell you it was divine intervention that he was at Reno’s Grill playing Keno that afternoon when the new bartender put the interview on the CCTV, but it was nothing more than simple coincidence. “Midge still callin’ me all the time, little lady never got over Big Ricky leavin’, well I gotta send a bunch a money down there all the time. It’s the bladder cancer again. I think they fucked up the surgery - they won’t say it but they did - and now she has perforated bowel and it’s leaking and they need to do another surgery. But they won’t cause she’s not in real fine shape anymore, you know? That’s a fucking lawsuit payday waiting to happen, that’s for sure. Like, I’m still paying for that other surgery, you know? I’m sure the dame has a life insurance policy she hasn’t had time to cross my name off, that’s what I’m hopin’ on anyways.”

“Mom is all you’ve got,” Silas whispered. “It’s been a really long time and things aren’t right here. I miss you.”

“Hey Silas, you gotta man up here, buddy. You gotta grow some patience.” Silas heard him take a long pull off a smoke. “I don’t need a quitter. You hear that?” Ricky exhaled and his voice grew louder and clearer. “I’m telling you how it is and it’s not right now, OK?”

Silas stared out into the rain. “OK,” he swallowed hard. “But you promised,” he continued.

Click. Ricky hung up. Silas held the phone against his ear for a while longer listening to the monotone dial tone like a faraway foghorn that got stuck on. A busted warning system. His ear was hot against the plastic. Silas shoved the phone like it was a person, someone in there mocking him. He slammed the door open and left. He started to leave, but turned and charged the booth like it was Ricky. They both toppled into the street with a crash of broken glass. Shoppers started to slow and pay attention. Silas looked across the street through the big plexiglass restaurant windows at the Tim Horton’s and straight into the eyes of an officer watching him with his donut half way to his mouth. Silas started to run.

Two and a half months later, Ricky would stuff a plain envelope with twenty one-thousand-dollar money orders. Ricky would send it by certified mail though his brow furrowed at the extra cost. He would address it to Silas and include only a post-it note with his blue ballpoint printing “From the Cancer”.

It was hot in her room. Outside her window the peonies drooped and hung their heads, pinks and corals faded by the sun. Two lazy bumblebees laced the garden together with their flight. The caregivers had moved her bed in April so that she faced the window and now Midge sat propped up with pillows watching her garden.

Adelaide sat in the chair beside her. She had only really got to know Midge after the boys left though their houses were in sight of each other. She held a cold cloth up for Midge, who deftly took it and held it to her own brow.

“My auntie knows a healer from Dakota. We can pile in the car and go down there, make a fun trip of it even, and…” Adelaide began.

“Oh honey, I think He’s come for me this time. No sense in playing cat and mouse with the Lord.” Midge sat up taller and straightened her blankets across her lap. “Ricky has been sending money. He won’t tell me where he’s living or what he’s doing but he’s still providing.”

"Well, that’s his duty, honey. He said the whole ‘in sickness and in health’ bit and then off he scampered after the first little bunny tail he saw while you’re down here fixin’ to pass,” Adelaide said.

“Oh go easy on that man, he’s got his own deal to make with our Lord,” Midge smiled weakly. The breeze rattled the willow tree leaves and she watched the sun flash silver on the undersides like rainbow trout fry from Cowichan River. That breeze wandered up through her garden collecting pollen and perfume from every flower and swept the heady summer scents into her room like it was delivering a bouquet to her arms. Midge sighed in delight. “Sweet heavens, the only thing I want for in this life is a grandaughter,” she whispered. “However you want to provide, Lord, is fine by me.” The breeze whispered back as peony petals fluttered to the ground.