Francie's Got a Gun, page 18
“Dad, you broke your record, it’s on my watch,” Alice remembered. She tried to push the buttons to show him, but instead the numbers disappeared. Dad patted her head and said it didn’t matter.
It really didn’t, he said, don’t worry about it, honey, it’s not important.
“Oh, there you are, Kate, what on earth happened to you?”
“I told Max to tell you…”
“There are several people here who require baths immediately!” Mom said. “Starting with you.” And she wrinkled her nose and held Sam away from her body, like she’d just noticed his diaper was full.
Francie was last to come inside. Alice had been waiting for her, almost holding her breath, wondering if Francie would take this chance to run away, to escape from the real world into the pretend world where she would save her dad. But Francie did not do anything special or strange or scary or exciting. Alice found her sitting in the front hall, pushing off her sneakers without undoing the laces. “I want to go home,” she whispered to Alice, and Alice thought she’d never seen Francie look like this before: sad, or lost, or both.
Where’s home?
Francie was thinking it too, Alice was sure. It was too dangerous to say the words out loud, in the real world.
There was nothing to do, nothing to say. Alice crouched down in the pile of shoes and sandals in the front hall, and sat next to Francie, doing and saying nothing at all.
THIRTEEN
Gun Run
Francie had begun to climb. Alone. Patiently. Her feet bare and scratched. A good climbing tree had branches that weren’t too far apart, so you could step with ease from one to the next, but also not too close together, crowding you out, scratching and scraping.
Francie recognized a good climbing tree when she saw it.
This tree, standing alone at the edge of the field, right beside the woods, was a good climbing tree.
Francie liked going up. She climbed methodically, like she was working on a math problem at school. She didn’t have to think about anything else, here. If the wind rustled the branches, if the tree swayed, it didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t the tree talking to her or trying to hurt her or warn her, it was just things happening as they happened.
Francie heard her own heart, beating.
She heard wind in the branches. She heard insects humming like voices rising and falling, calling her name. Maybe the voices were just the cicadas. “Cicadas”— Francie said the word out loud, a soft-hard word, and she remembered when she and Alice had found a strange empty shell, orange and almost see-through, in Alice’s backyard. They’d run into the house carrying it carefully, they were so sure it was from the fairies, but Sally had said no. Sally said the shell had come from an insect, shed like old skin. Sally had stopped stirring a bubbling pot of strawberry rhubarb jam on the stove, and she’d looked up pictures of cicadas on the desktop computer in the living room, to show them. Sally found and played them recordings of the sounds of cicadas singing, different songs in different places.
“They’re speaking different languages,” Sally said. “Isn’t it WONDERFUL? Isn’t it AMAZING?”
Was it better to know the facts or to believe in fairies?
“Just because the shell belongs to a cicada doesn’t mean fairies aren’t real,” Sally had said, like she could read Francie’s mind.
Did this make Francie trust Sally more, or less?
Francie didn’t want to be thinking of Sally right now—what if she was thinking about Sally because Sally was thinking about her?
In Francie’s mind, she could hear Alice saying: Climb, higher! Higher! Right to the tip of the top.
The branches were sticky with sap and Francie’s palms and the bottoms of her feet were sticky and stained brown. Sap smelled sweet, but also golden and dark.
She was up in the sky now. Don’t look down!
* * *
—
Far away, were sirens.
There were different kinds of sirens. A siren from a police car. A siren from an ambulance.
An ambulance siren would come for Mikey, a police car siren would come for Dad.
What siren would come for Francie?
“Eee-oh-eet!”
Uh-oh.
Sally. Was Sally down there, looking for Francie, even though she knew—Sally knew!—that Francie did not want to be found?
“Eee-oh-eet!”
Francie rested, listening, her ear pressed against the tree’s trunk, but all she could hear was her own heart beating. A tree was alive, but the good thing about a tree was that it didn’t have a heart. A heart could stop beating, but Dad said a tree could grow forever. Even a tree that looked dead could send up suckers, and its roots could reach far away underground to start other trees, and find other ways to go on living.
It seemed a long time ago Francie was standing on the risers in the gym and her mind was empty, her face hot, and only a moment after that she was walking with Dad along a strange street, like both of them were asleep. Dad was always saying goodbye in her dreams. He was always taking her somewhere only to leave her there.
But in real life, Dad never said goodbye.
He just got into Mikey’s truck and turned the key—and Francie ran. She ran in the opposite direction.
“Eee-oh-eet!”
Sally couldn’t do anything. Sally didn’t know anything. Sally couldn’t help!
If Dad was here, Dad could—
Francie turned a corner sharply and at speed in her mind. She started climbing again, up, up, up, pulling herself as quickly as she could from branch to branch, not patient, not methodical, her breath rushing like the wind. She didn’t feel scared, she felt mad, and it helped, anger rushing through her arms and legs like fire. Her legs were so tired.
Now, Francie flew to an imaginary moment in time—maybe happening right now?—and she saw Mrs. G standing in the gym, her hair pulled high in a tight bun, stabbing her baton straight at Francie: Francie, this is not acceptable, don’t you dare miss our concert!
Francie was saying, Someone else can sing instead. It might as well be someone else.
It might as well be you. Mrs. G turned and looked directly at Francie inside Francie’s head—they locked eyes, and Francie closed hers tight. The gym smelled like wet sneakers and plastic mats, but as soon as she shut her eyes, all she could smell was pine gum, sharp and fresh.
FOURTEEN
Labyrinth
Marietta saw the labyrinth when she got off the elevator.
It was early Sunday morning, the lobby was almost empty, and the pattern on the floor stood out clearly, marked in cream-coloured tiles against the institutional grey, a series of loops that looked like the folds of a brain.
Labyrinth.
The word opened in her mind, like she’d been keeping it for a reason. She didn’t know how to spell it immediately—labrinth, labrynth?
She’d noticed it because she was in it, she thought. She, Marietta, was walking a long, looping path away from herself, and where exactly was the exit?
The psych nurse she’d spoken to said Luce would be released to police custody, first thing tomorrow morning.
“What then?”
“They’ve probably got some paperwork for him at the station, and then he can go home.”
What if I don’t want him to come home? “Is it safe for him to come home?” she asked instead.
“Do you have concerns?” The woman looked up from her clipboard. Her hair was braided into a neat, glossy circle that crowned her head. They were speaking through a glass barrier.
“Not exactly,” said Marietta, thinking of the gun. “Can I see him?” If only Marietta could see Luce, she would know—she would know! It was all going to be fine. She could see that he was himself, and she was herself, orbiting around him. She could see if that’s what she wanted after all.
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you in, you can come back during visiting hours.”
“I can’t,” said Marietta. “This is my only chance, I was hoping to talk to someone.”
“You’re talking to someone now.”
Marietta nodded. The armpits of her uniform reeked, her feet hurt, she’d spent the night sloshing through urine and hallucinations.
“A lot of families feel this way, they don’t want their person to come home, they’ll say, I’m not ready, he’s not ready—you know?” The nurse moved over to a section of countertop where there was no glass and leaned across. “But everyone has to go home sometime. Life goes on.”
“I know that,” said Marietta. Does it have to be so soon, is all?
A labyrinth was different from a maze. A maze was a puzzle, a place where a person could get lost, passageways with blind entries and dead ends. But a labyrinth was a path. There was only one route, in or out. Once on the path, you followed it to its conclusion. Of course, you could cheat, like here on the hospital floor—you could start walking the loops, then step over the tiles and out. You could quit. But not Marietta. That was not how she wanted to see herself, as a quitter. Once in, she was in.
Deeper and deeper.
Marietta came across the lobby floor to where the labyrinth began, and she entered at its opening. Her tennis shoes squeaked on the polished floor. Freshly polished. A volunteer sitting on a stool near the revolving doors, a young woman wearing a pretty blue-and-white hijab, rested her eyes on Marietta. Not much going on at this hour. The women in hairnets behind the counter of the small Tim Hortons outlet were watching too. Marietta stepped carefully, deliberately, around and around the circular path. Slower and slower and slower. As if she were alone.
She felt alone. She was alone.
She couldn’t see herself, couldn’t be herself, it was the worst feeling of all.
As she neared the centre, she thought: I need out.
In the centre, Marietta came to a stop, her arms wrapped around her body as if she were cold, hands clasping elbows, every muscle tight and tensed, teeth gritted, she collapsed into a crouch, closed her eyes. What did it feel like to be invited in, to be offered something small and strange and long-lost—access to your own body? What happened when a tree was planted? Sometimes, it died, but sometimes, it grew. Welcome! In Marietta’s memory, a plump, pink-cheeked woman wearing a white turban sat cross-legged on a blanket, her wrists encircled with strings of shiny wooden beads, painted turquoise and amber, clinking softly as she waved a greeting—to Marietta. It was Marietta she was welcoming. Marietta she was pulling into the room.
“Come in! Join us!” The woman had smiled at Marietta like she’d been expecting her.
Marietta had only ducked into the library because it was raining and she’d missed her connection; the next bus wouldn’t come for nearly half an hour. This branch was aging poorly, squat to the ground, built of chunky concrete blocks showing rusted veins of metal, the ceilings low for a public space. “Come in!” It was a boxy room with a row of windows overlooking a patch of bare concrete, dark with wet just now. The walls were made of what looked like couch cushions, textured woolly fabric that absorbed sound, like she was walking into a lunatic asylum.
Here I come, then.
“I don’t have a blanket,” Marietta heard herself say, her voice spoiling the spell for the other women seated on the floor, they blinked and turned, a few of them, with gazes that seemed not to take her in. Several wore turbans too, though most were dressed in ordinary exercise gear: yoga pants and t-shirts. Marietta became aware of soft chanting in a language she didn’t recognize, coming from a CD player plugged in beside the woman.
The turbans, the chanting, the blank eyes. Was this some sort of cult?
“Have mine.” The woman at the front stood and brought her blanket to Marietta. And Marietta knew she’d have to stay now. The gesture was too much for her, it took her down, as pure as an arrow to the heart. Her nose tingled and the backs of her eyes filled up with tears. If she missed the next bus, she’d be extra late to pick up Sam. But she dropped these thoughts along with the bag she’d been carrying, which was mostly empty: a line of bus tickets, a neatly folded ten-dollar bill she could give to the babysitter as a thank you, an extra cloth bag for groceries, and a discarded plastic water bottle—not hers. She’d seen it on the bus floor, rolling back and forth, and she’d picked it up to dispose of later. Marietta hated litter.
It spoiled—everything.
It spoiled spring, it spoiled the morning shadows, it spoiled the green things pushing through the cracks, everything beautiful that deserved to be untouched.
Marietta sat on the blanket and thought about litter, about the people who tossed their trash thoughtlessly, as if they weren’t responsible for what fell on the ground behind them. As if, once it fell from their hands, it didn’t belong to them anymore, had never belonged to them. You could confront them, yell at them, point at the thing they’d just been holding and ask them why they’d done it, and they’d look at you like you were the nutcase, the lunatic, the psycho, waving your arms and blasting them for what was nothing, after all—just a paper cup, a cigarette butt, a pop can, a plastic bag of dog shit. What’s your problem, lady?
“I invite you to take your hands to your knees, facing up or facing down, your choice. I invite you to close your eyes and go inward. Follow the sound of my voice. Trust the sound of my voice.”
Definitely a cult.
Marietta kept her eyes open.
She focused on the woman in white, sitting in seeming serenity on the gritty library carpet while the others in the group followed her directions, how to breathe, where to put their hands, how to move. The woman met Marietta’s eyes and the strange thing was that she offered no challenge to Marietta. She offered no fight, no apparent judgment. Marietta had to look away. She stared down at her hands, which lay loosely in her lap, facing up, one atop the other as if begging for something—a coin, a match—and tears spilled out and ran down her cheeks. She did not move to wipe them away.
Now Marietta closed her eyes—and what was she so afraid of, what was so hard for her to look at, behind her eyelids, here in the dark, here inside her own skull?
Her mind.
Her looping, splintering mind, racing off in a million directions, trying to hold it all together, keep it all together, all of them together, and so very, very tired.
Her tears dried up. She listened to the instructions, feeling cold all over and then hot, as she joined with the others and they rubbed their palms till the woman told them to stop. Now they stretched out their arms and rotated them backward, on an impossible angle. It was like an exercise class, Marietta thought, if the exercise targeted the tiniest muscles in the most unused parts of your body. She began to feel a quiver in the creases of her hips, a spasm and catch between her ribs, and her shoulder blades pinched together, forcing open her throat in a way that felt too exposed. She could not go there.
She let her arms lower and fall into her lap. She sat, feeling weak.
But she was not weak. She opened her eyes and the woman was watching over them. And some were sitting, like Marietta, like Marietta some had surrendered to their discomfort, while others continued the movement, their arms wide and high, thumbs out, fingers in.
“Whatever you’re bringing today, let it out,” said the woman.
Oh, you do not want me to do that, thought Marietta.
“Take breaks, and come back,” the woman said.
The hands of the clock seemed to spin faster than Marietta knew, and an hour was nearly past when she opened her eyes again to check, from this final position lying flat on her back on the floor, in repose. She’d been asleep, she thought. She’d been dreaming. Twitching. Her brain sending out irrational images not worth chasing and catching.
“Stay here as long as you’d like. This is corpse pose.”
Marietta sat straight up.
She was dizzy. The others looked so quiet, lying there like the dead, past sleep, past dream, past vulnerability. A thought came to Marietta then, clear and crisp, along with a memory: If you were dead, a corpse, nothing could hurt you. The only one who would be hurt would be the one who dared disturb or defile your rest. She thought of her father, what it felt like to see her father invulnerable at his end. Luce had not seen his father, at his end. Maybe that was what was missing from Luce. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know what was missing, only that something was. It was a hard thing to think.
Marietta stood.
The woman, overseeing them all from her cross-legged position, lifted her hands to her forehead, pressed together like she was praying. She was very solemn, like someone who took life too seriously—like me! Marietta thought—but then she smiled at Marietta, her face broke open, and Marietta saw her completely differently, this stranger, as if she were dancing after midnight at a club, as if she were the one in the centre of the circle drawing all eyes to her outlandishly free dance moves.
Marietta could see this woman spinning on her shoulders, leaping to her feet with a deep back bend. Beads flashing.
Like me?
“Here’s your blanket.” Marietta wished she hadn’t spoken. The others stirred from their deaths.
“May your path be your path,” the woman said. The words troubled Marietta even then. She couldn’t stop thinking about them, the cruelty of them, the hardness, running them through her hands. Through the wall of windows, she could see the bus approaching down the street and she picked up her bag and ran out the side exit, setting off a fire alarm, shouting at the driver, who was going to blow right past the stop.
“Stop!”
Thanks, she said breathlessly, and the driver accepted the transfer even though it had expired. Behind them, people were leaving the building, not as quickly as they would if they’d smelled smoke or seen fire, but with confusion, irritation. Looking for the source of their disruption.
