Two Tubs of Mom
Mom's inside. Mom's fine. Mom's got a lid.
“Medium double double.”
Jamie was leaning out the driver’s window to the ribs because she’d stopped too far from the speaker, her left hand in a deathgrip on the wheel and her right gesturing wildly.
“And a, David? What the frig did you want?”
“French vanilla latte.”
“And a French vanilla latte. For some reason.”
“It’s a good drink,” said David.
“It’s a hot milkshake.”
The speaker cracked back to life. “Anything else, hon?”
“A better brother.”
“That’ll be seven forty-one. Come on up to the window.”
The Tim’s at the Irving Big Stop in Enfield was 24/7, and the pumps were lit up like an operating room. David had just put seventy-three dollars into the tank. They’d divvied-up the driving and he’d be making the return trip solo. It’d rained off and on most of the drive and was likely to be the case the rest of the week.
Now his Civic sat at the window while a rough-looking grandma in a visor passed out two cups like she was handing over a hostage.
Jamie paid and pulled across the lot to park under a light at the far edge, nose-out, toward the Burger King, which was dark and had an orange cone in its drive-thru lane. She always parked nose out and always sat facing the door in restaurants, for roughly the same reason. She handed David his latte and wrinkled her nose at the sickening sweetness wafting off it.
The two containers sat precariously on the console between them. The ancient Sobeys bag they’d come out of sat between his feet, crinkling when he moved.
“You could have brought the good Tupperware,” Jamie said.
“This is the good Tupperware.”
“They’re yogourt containers. One’s got spaghetti on it. It’s orange, David.”
“It’s seasoning.”
“It’s a stain from God knows when. Spaghetti. On Mom.”
“On the container. Mom’s inside. Mom’s fine. Mom’s got a lid.”
“The lid doesn’t stay on.”
“It does if you press.”
“I said something with a lid that closes. That’s a bowl wearing a hat.” Her hand swept over the other container. “And that one has a melted spot that looks like Newfoundland. You had a whole cupboard.”
“I had ninety seconds. The kids were asleep.”
“Ninety seconds. For Mom. Dude…”
“She had a dozen of them in the fridge at all times, none of them matched.”
“She’s not here to like them, David.”
He rubbed his chin stubble, then grabbed his sweet abomination and took a careful slurp of the lava.
“You grabbed the first two things you saw,” she said.
“I grabbed the first two things I saw that weren’t full of leftovers.”
“One of them says CHILI on the lid.”
“That’s the good one. That one seals.”
“Because it’s a different brand. Because they don’t match. Because you couldn’t find two that match, in a house with kids, which is basically a Tupperware factory. Jesus.”
“The kids eat everything. The lids go missing.”
“Where do they go?”
“Where do socks go, Jamie?” David rubbed his eyes. “Look, you said split them. I split them. You didn’t say bring crystal.”
Her hands were out in front of her now, palms up. She was a woman weighing two small invisible hams. She always talked with both hands, more often than not, a coffee going in one like a baton. It was astonishing she could drive. She’d been conducting her orchestra since Sydney. Since the funeral home guy had handed them a cardboard box across the desk like it was Chinese takeout. She had said thanks, walked out to the car and put her forehead on the roof.
“You’re supposed to be on my side,” David said.
“There aren’t sides. There’s a plot. At Oakridge in Sackville. I called. There’s a spot by the maple. I’m in Calgary, David. I need her to be someplace I can talk to her.”
“A cemetery.”
“Somewhere I can go,” she said. “A stone. A frigging bench. I get back here twice a year, and I want to stand somewhere and it’s hers.”
“Ain’t a river better? It’s one job is to be a somewhere.” He took another slug and wiped the foam off the corner of his mouth. “Look, sis. She wanted the Mira.”
“Sure, she said the Mira. She said it with a rum and Coke in her hand. That’s not a will. It’s not anything.”
“Every Christmas. Every damn one. Rum and Coke, feet on the radiator, I want to go in the Mira, don’t you dare put me in the ground.”
“After the fourth rum,” she said.
David bit back. “So did you.”
Her hand came up, got halfway to a point, and stopped in the air between them.
“She also said she’d leave me the Buick,” Jamie said.
“She never had a Buick.”
“That’s my point!”
He kept busily nursing the latte. She barely dented hers.
“It was never written down,” Jamie said, quieter. “Nobody knows if she meant it.”
“I know.”
“You know because that’s what you want.”
“It’s in me,” he said.
“Well, great. I’ll tell the funeral home it’s in you.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“I’m the oldest. It’s my job.”
“And I’m here and you’re the other side of the country.”
Jamie put her cup on the dash and rubbed both eyes with the heels of her hands, hard, and when she took them away they were wet and she glared at him.
“I’m not doing this at four in the morning,” she said. “You’re going to drop me off at the airport and put me on a plane, and when I’m gone you can take your half and throw it off the goddamned bridge.”
“Not off a bridge. The river.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
“You’re talking right now.”
“Not to you.” She leaned the seat back one notch, folded her arms, and shut her eyes. Her hands went mercifully still in her armpits. She was out in about ninety seconds. Her mouth came open a little. A truck idled somewhere over by the diesel pumps, and the lights hummed.
He sat with the Sobeys bag under his feet and the mostly-gone cold latte. His hand found his cheek and picked.
The Civic ticked as it cooled. The transport pulled out. A kid in a Big Stop vest came out to wipe down a pump that was already clean.
He downed the latte. It tasted like a candle. Why’d he keep ordering these?
Mom rode the console in the two tubs like divorced parents who’d been seated together at their kid’s wedding. The bad one, his, already had its lid creeping open. Hers was the one with the clean seal.
She’d cried behind the funeral home in Sydney. Not loud. He’d stood there with his hands in his pockets and said nothing.
Marie, five-foot-nothing, one hand on the kitchen counter and the other holding a tumbler, singing along to Rita McNeil. A single mom who had sent two kids to university off a Walmart paycheck and a lot of Sunday casseroles. Who kept every card anybody ever sent her in a Quality Street tin. She’d mentioned the river a hundred times. She wasn’t going to see the river. She wasn’t going to see the bench.
The dead are gone. The dead were fine. Mom was fine and probably not rooting for the Mira River or a bench under a maple.
And if you put it to her? She’d have said fine, Jamie, have it your way. She always did. From the Halloween Jamie was nine and wanted a different costume an hour before trick-or-treat, right through to the co-signing on Jamie’s first condo. Jamie got the front seat on the drive to the Valley every summer, Jamie got the window bed, Jamie got the last of the good shortbread cookies. Mom would’ve handed her this too, with a tired look and a drink in hand. David never once held it against her.
Well, okay. He held it against her a little.
He looked at Jamie. She’d slid down in the seat. A strand of hair stuck to her lip and moved when she breathed. In her sleep she’d opened one hand, palm up on her knee. It twitched with whatever she was dreaming about.
Dampness seeped into the Civic as the mild rain fell. Out past the Burger King the sky went the colour of dishwater as dawn finally broke.
Two gulls came down on the asphalt in front of the car. One of them had a French fry. The other one wanted it. They went at it with their wings open, screaming, hopping, one tugging at either end like it was the last effing fry in Nova Scotia. A feather came loose and rode away on the wind. A third gull came in low from the left and took the prize from both of them.
David laughed. Once, out his nose. Jamie didn’t wake up.
“Jesus,” he said, very quietly.
“Shit,” he said, to nobody.
The rain eased and he grabbed the two containers and got out of the car quietly. Then he set them on the hood and stared at them, willing his mother to speak.
When he got back in the car, Jamie’s eyes were open. He handed her one of the tubs, considerably heavier.
“That’s the good one,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Where’s the other one.”
“Garbage.”
“David.”
“It was stained.”
She made a sound, one single breath through her nose, nearly a laugh. She put one of her hands flat on top of the lid.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Shut up. You’re not talking to me.”
“I’m not.”
She got out. They passed at the front bumper without touching, and he got in behind the wheel. She took the container on her lap, both hands around it. She rode the whole way to the airport like that, didn’t say another word, and her hands were still.