“I think there are rats under there.”
“You sound like all the mothers on the street from years ago. They told us that just so we wouldn’t play down there. I’ve never seen a rat.”
“Just the same...”
“See you.”
Standing alone in the middle of the deserted street, Cathy looked down at the tar bubbles. It felt like a lifetime ago that she and Isabel had played there.
There was a ditch at the end of the road with a little dirt path worn into the grass at the water’s edge. Cathy left the pavement and headed through the little buffer of field and then down over the edge of the slope. Beneath her shoes, the coarse crunch of the gravel shoulder changed to the soft crackling of weeds and grass. Flowered walls rose up on either side of her. The slopes were covered in purple and white clover, brilliant yellow dandelions, pale pink and white bindweed blossoms, and tiny yellow hop flowers. In amongst the flower heads an army of insects bobbed and hovered, hunting for the things that sustained them. They brushed past her hair, intent upon their survival. On the opposite side of the water, a red-winged blackbird trilled from atop a stalk of last season’s thistle.
When she reached the path the sound of trickling water blotted out the rasping, rustling vegetation. She paused to watch the stream for a moment, wondering how much water had flowed past, day and night, in the years since she had played here. This was one of life’s mystery questions. There would be an exact number, but it would be unknowable.
The path threaded beneath the concrete underpass. As she stepped into the cool darkness of the cavern-like space, the sound of the moving water intensified. Her eyes adjusted to the dark and her skin rippled with goosebumps as she pressed close to the damp cement wall. It stank of mould and sulphur under there and was cool enough to chill meat. There probably could be rats.
Emerging into the sunlight again a moment later, the sound of running water dropped, replaced by more rustling and bird-song. She picked her way carefully across the water, stepping on protruding rocks and discarded half-broken cement blocks, refuse from past bridge-building exploits of excited little neigh-bourhood boys. Once on the other side, she followed another path for several more minutes until just before encountering another road crossing. Then she trudged up the angled slope, leaving the flowers and the sounds behind her, and set her foot upon the arbour-covered delight that was Whitehall Boulevard.
Janet St. Amand had been Cathy’s best friend ever since the day, eight years ago, that Sister Gertrude brought her by the hand to the door of the Grade 2 classroom in the middle of the morning and asked Sister Joseph to make room for a new pupil. Sister Joseph took the delicate little blonde girl by the hand and sat her down in the empty desk right across the aisle from Cathy.
The newcomer obviously didn’t own a school uniform yet. She was wearing a dress with bright coloured tulips all over it; Cathy remembered this because a tulip was one of the few flowers that she was able to identify at that age. When Sister Joseph turned her attention back to the examples of addition and subtraction on the blackboard, Cathy remained staring at the brilliant colours, unable to tear her eyes away.
Janet’s house was midway down the boulevard, a lovely old English manor with a dramatic sloping roof above the front door and lead-paned diamond-shaped windows that twinkled in the sunlight like bits of treasure hidden among the dark leafy ivy that covered the brown brick exterior.
Just as her hand was in the air, about to knock on the screen door, Eva, with her shiny blonde hair caught up in a ponytail and tied with a bright blue scarf, came around the side of the house with Whisky, a blonde cocker spaniel, at her heels. She had been gardening and her hands were caked with mud.
“Well, hi there, sweetie. Long time no see. How come you’ve been such a stranger? Your timing is perfect, though. Now you can get the door for me. How many times do I have to tell you not to knock?”
She slipped past Cathy, followed by the dog, and paused to kick off her moccasins on the landing inside, calling up the stairwell to Janet that her best friend in the world was here.
The three of them converged in the kitchen a moment later, Eva going immediately to the sink to wash up, Cathy choosing to lean on a cupboard near the door, and Janet making a speedy arrival from upstairs right into the middle of the room, courtesy of a long skid in her stockinged feet. She narrowed her eyes at Cathy immediately.
“What happened to your face?”
“I know. I know. Nice mess, huh?”
“What’s the problem, sweetie?”
Eva turned around to see what Janet was talking about.
“I’m so clumsy. My mother says I can’t stand on my feet for more than ten minutes at a time.”
Eva shook her wet hands in the sink and then took Cathy by the wrist and pulled her into the light in front of the window, sweeping Cathy’s dangling hair out of the way.
“Ew, honey, that looks really sore. I didn’t notice that at the door. How did you do that?”
“Oh, it’s a really dumb story. My father was washing the car in the garage yesterday and there were soapsuds and water all over the floor and I was in a hurry to get to the bathroom. I shouldn’t have been running, but I was desperate, and I slipped just when I got to the door. I hit the doorknob on the way down.”
“Oh, you poor thing. Did you put ice on it?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
“Well it sure looks like it could use some more. Here, sit down.”
Eva dried her hands on a tea towel and took a tray of ice cubes out of the freezer. A moment later she swept Cathy’s hair gently out of the way again and lightly pressed an ice bag to the swollen cheekbone.
“You should be more careful, sweetie. You could have put out an eye or something. It’s hard to tell if you’re gonna get a shiner or not. I don’t see any blood under the skin near your eye. There’s just a bit over the bump. It looks like there’s been a very little bit of bleeding there. That’s an awfully hard swelling though. You must have hit the bone. Did you hurt anything else?”
“No.”
“Did your mother watch you for a concussion? You’re not supposed to go to sleep right away after a bump on the head, you know. If it’s a really bad bump and you get sleepy right after, then it usually means that you’ve got a concussion.”
“Oh, it wasn’t really that hard. It just looks worse than it is. I don’t even know what a concussion is, really.”
“A bruised brain.”
“So why can’t you go to sleep if you have one?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but any drowsiness after a bump on the head can indicate that you’ve actually bruised the brain, and I think if it’s serious you can actually slip into a coma.”
“Well, I guess I don’t have one because I woke up same as usual this morning.”
“What did you do to this?”
Janet was pointing to the adhesive tape on one of Cathy’s fingers.
“Oh, that’s not related. I’m just trying to save a broken nail, that’s all.”
She thrust her hand out in front of her, turning it this way and that, examining the white taped finger, surreptitiously widening her eyes to the evaporating air.
Janet poked her nose into a brown paper grocery bag standing on the table. She pulled out a chunky blue box of tampons.
“Yea. More corks. Huge box! They on sale or something?”
“Well at the rate you use them I’m beginning to wonder if you’re smoking them or something.”
“Ew.