Red Girl Rat Boy Part 5

The sister, phoning her extant brother, scoffed. "That woman made Alan go to the States. And he crashed." Post hoc ergo propter hoc, for her, had sundered the link earlier corroded by dislike. "Void," she tested, "invalid."

He looked towards the mountains. Rain came across the water.

Also, Joyce noted, the couple hadn't been happy for some time before his death. Alan had mentioned divorce, to them though not to their mother, then still alive barely. So wasn't the sister-in-law only technically a widow?

"If there'd been children," she argued, "it'd be different. Children change everything."

Olivia's email proposed a get-together for lunch? drinks?? dinner??? Wherever you like, I don't know Vancouver any more!!! A smiling emoticon.

"Where'd she find my email address? Yours, for that matter?"

The brother shrugged. If Joyce would only shut up, he could brush Sadie and make his tea.

"Ronald, why can't you talk like a normal human? We'll discuss Olivia tonight." Snap.

Quiet.

Sadie gazed at him, her plumy tail just moving. As he reached to a drawer, she jumped onto the appointed stool. First he brushed her coa.r.s.e outer coat. Good-but soon impatience showed. Amused, he started on her silky under-fur. Sadie squirmed with pleasure. When she'd had enough she bounced down, drank, got into her crate, twirled round and went to sleep. The Sheltie-Pom is not available.

While the smoky leaves brewed, Ronald imagined Alan's death, as he'd done for months after the event. The fantasy had blurred. His brother's habit of speeding, though, was hard fact. He'd got tickets, made their mother cry.

Ronald himself didn't feel like a widower, but then he'd never felt much like a husband. Or had he? Louisa. A short marriage, ended decades ago by her death. Louisa.

The timer sounded. Ronald drank, looking out at the silver Pacific, at mountain peaks swathed in cloud. Soft weather, yet every year people drowned here, or they slid off cliffs and died. They never learn was said, illogically, for it couldn't be the same victims every time.

Olivia still sent a card every Christmas. Elves, glitter. Ronald supposed that the university's card he mailed to her was in comparison somewhat austere.

N.

"NO, I'LL CUT THE PIZZA," JOYCE SAID. "Cla.s.sic first-born, super-responsible. Help Mum. Calm down Dad. Take care of my little brother." She sawed through to the cardboard.

"When did you take care of me?"

"Alan. You could always cope, Ronnie. You had a childhood. I didn't. Then Stanley's father came along, and Stanley was born. Hah!"

The two were chewing before Joyce's silent TV, where one well-dressed man shook his fist at another. The text read Elder abuse rampant, no govt accountability.

Ronald pulled the hard rim off his slice, as inedible. "But you and Harris were together a long time before Stanley was born."

"Don't remind me. Thirteen years. Harris was as much trouble as any kid, too." She glanced at the TV. "G.o.d, who'd go into social work?"

"I didn't see a lot of Harris. University, grad school, I was busy."

"You didn't miss much."

The door to Stanley's room was closed. No light showed.

"Will he want some?"

"Stanley does like pepperoni. Uncle Ronnie's here!" shouted Joyce, pus.h.i.+ng aside much of the remaining pizza. Her voice cracked. "His father wouldn't have asked that. He'd just eat it all. Stanley!"

A plastic cuplet in the pizza box brimmed with a creamy substance. Hopeful, Ronald dipped his crust into it.

"They never send enough of that," Joyce said. "When our son clearly needed professional help, Harris wouldn't discuss it. Let alone budget for it. Or take him to his appointments."

Stanley peeped out at the food. "Is there some other uncle I don't know about, Mum?" Bearish, he shuffled forward.

Ronald, who'd not had a sighting in some time, noted his nephew's belly and drooped posture. At twenty-one, the kid looked forty. When did he shave last? Stanley's bedroom door stood ajar. On the Xbox, monstrous black-browed men all girt in white had at each other with swords.

Joyce got to her feet. The comfy chair, another channel, fresh coffee?

"No, Mum." He licked out the cuplet of dipping sauce. "I mean, Uncle Alan died, right?" His plate laden, her son disappeared.

Ronald fetched another beer for his sister. "Joyce, there has to be better pizza than this on Commercial Drive. Next month let's try somewhere else."

"You know, my benefits don't nearly cover his therapy. Where the h.e.l.l is our so-called union? Social workers never fight for themselves."

"Is therapy helping him, do you think?"

She slammed the bottle down. "You think Stanley's a loser! That he's lazy and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g me around to avoid school or work. You're wrong," Joyce croaked. "You don't know anything about depression. Stanley was devastated by Alan's death." She headed to the bathroom.

Ronald calculated. When Alan and the then sister-in-law left Vancouver for his job at an eastern university, Stanley had been four.

On the TV, a woman wept by a house with For Sale and Happy Day Daycare signs outside. The crawler read 2 Tots Shaken, In ICU.

A knock at the door. Joyce went, crossly. A vague female muttering sounded.

"Not again! You never learn, do you?"

Footsteps went down the hall.

Ronald watched a silent commercial for Febreze and one for Dove.

Joyce came back. "She can't figure out the dryer. Twenty times I've told her, shown her. Why haven't you finished your pizza?"

"What about Olivia?"

His sister frowned. "You still haven't decided?"

Fetching her laptop, she found the email, hit Reply, and typed so fast the words vanished almost before Ronald read them.

Unfortunately I'll be out of town at a convention. Enjoy your visit. Joyce.

"Easy peasy!"

Seconds later their sister-in-law, if she was that, responded.

Exciting! Where are you off to?

Sister and brother gasped.

"Creepy!"

"It's as if she were waiting for us."

Joyce snorted, deleted. "Do as you please, Ronald. No skin off my nose."

On leaving her apartment, he flung into the building's dumpster the leftovers she'd insisted on bagging up for "the dog."

Driving home calmed him.

So did taking Sadie out for her last pee. The lamplit walkway behind his building skirted the enormous park, and once past a towering laurel hedge the dog and man moved through damp green semi-darkness, rooty-smelling, wildish. They started across the heronry. Leafless trees held nests in their upper branches, at the ready for next month's great arrival. Even from sixty feet below, the bowls of sticks looked huge against the sky.

In long-ago childhood summers when his brother went away, Ronald could, though he didn't often, invite friends over. His parents weren't whispering behind doors. No one cried (he meant Mum). His sister, teaching squash and golf, wasn't often home to hector. The medicine cabinet held Aspirin, cough syrup. What kind of camp accepted teenagers on antidepressants?

Nor had he been sorry when Alan and Olivia moved away. His sister-in-law had pretty hair, was pleasant, but had read nothing. Nothing. A featherhead, whose voice rose at the ends of declarative sentences. She was nice to their mother, and to their father in his decay, but a family dinner with Alan at the table was just work, done for Mum. Thank heaven she'd died first.

Now a scuttle, a rush in bushes near the path. Dog and man alert, sniffing.

No, not skunk. Coyote? Too small. Racc.o.o.n, or big rat.

Ronald gripped Sadie's leash (her hybrid could be a.s.sertively protective) and pulled her along towards the tennis courts.

Olivia's email-the punctuation so characteristic, also the smiley-face. Always a tendency to cuteness, to paper napkins printed with kittens or ladybugs, yet this sister-in-law had endured years with Alan and successfully run a small mail-order business. Perhaps still did?

Sweet box scented the air by the front steps. Spring, soon. Reading week, thus some free time. Altogether there seemed no reason not to see the putative sister-in-law.

After Sadie went to sleep in her crate, Ronald considered. Lunch would be best, a commitment less dismissive than drinks but reliably shorter than dinner. He reserved at a not unfas.h.i.+onable Yaletown bistro that served a fish soup he liked, and emailed Olivia. As he was about to close his computer, her exclamations arrived.

Is she always online?

In the stillness of his study Ronald gazed at his books, erect with others on the tradition of courtly love. Many academics displayed their own t.i.tles separately, but his were in with the rest, alphabetical by author. His took up most of a shelf, though.

The engineering school at that New Mexico university had courted Alan. There, would his brother have been not depressed? To Ronald, a degree-granting inst.i.tution lacking medieval studies was incomplete.

Going down the hall to bed, he touched the frame of a j.a.panese print, a heron standing by water. For some years Louisa's photo had hung there. Where had he put it?

N.

RONALD TURNED OFF HIS CELLPHONE at lunch, to concentrate on the situation before him.

After the goodbyes he walked quietly in the clear winter suns.h.i.+ne, nearly home, before opening his phone. At once it rang.

"I've called you three times! What was it like?"

"They've taken that chowder off the menu."

"Ron-nie!"

"She looks very well," slowly.

"Did she stick you with the bill? What was she w-"

"Olivia was sorry not to see you."

"Yeah sure."

The sun on English Bay was bra.s.sy, almost hurtful. He ended the call.

Standing at his own front door, Ronald heard silence. His stomach clenched. Then came Sadie's bark. In relief he closed his eyes. The dog ran ecstatic spirals about the hall while he gathered her leash and a p.o.o.p bag. All the way down seventeen floors, she squealed with delight.

What to tell Joyce? The word husband wasn't used, yet clearly this Thomas, solid and prosperous, belonged to Olivia. He enjoyed the wine, savoured each fat mussel as if it were the best ever, and emptied his cone of frites except for two she accepted. He beamed at her.

"Isn't this delicious?" She ate a salad and drank San Pellegrino. Her hair was silver, still pretty, well-cut.

Thomas spooned up icky-sticky toffee pudding while he described their recent Hawaiian holiday and new bamboo floors.

A trade show had brought the pair to Vancouver. "Going great," affably. "Selling's what I do best. Used to be in toilets, before that window-coverings. I just switched up to Olivia!" He kissed her hand.

"He's made such a difference, Ronald."

"Honey, your company was doing great. I only nudged a bit."

To his surprise, Ronald would have welcomed details, but just then Olivia exclaimed about the yachts in the Creek. Her speech habits hadn't changed. Thomas responded to her enthusiasm, and over coffee he took up the bill with elan.

A h.e.l.l of a lot better, for her.

Thomas's handshake felt warm. "Great restaurants you've got here, Ron. We aim to try as many as we can."

Done.

Now the elevator door opened to a lobby full of light.

Ronald jogged towards the beach, Sadie trotting alongside so fast her legs twinkled.

Thomas must have found our addresses. Or his secretary did.

At the tideline lay shards of ice, strewn with sand and seaweed, glistening in the sun.

Would Olivia have brought her man along if Joyce had come to lunch? Ronald struggled to picture his sister facing Thomas.

The dog found a dead crab and attacked.

"Not now!"

She insisted on dealing with her prey, though the wind fanned her fur so that her pink skin was visible.

"Some dogs agree to wear jackets," Ronald pointed out. He himself felt chilly when they resumed walking.