Bad Ideas Read online

  “TRUDY! I THINK IT’S MY MOM!” At this, Trudy sits bolt upright. Really? Come on. Mercy thunders up the stairs, Speckles in tow, and stands wild-eyed at the bedroom door. “Trudy, I’m worried.”

  Trudy pulls a T-shirt on over her undershirt, grabs a pair of jeans. “Just give me a second, hon, and we’ll go see who it is together. Stay right there.”

  Trudy fights her way into her jeans, trying to listen for the sound of a car door slamming or the front door opening. She heads for the stairs. Mercy can’t help it — she is following too close and she steps on the heel of Trudy’s moccasin.

  “Mercy!” Trudy catapults forward, saving herself just before the top of the stairs. “Jesus.”

  “Sorry!”

  Trudy pushes Speckles back behind her with her foot flat against the dog’s wrinkled brow and takes Mercy’s hand. The three of them bump and tussle down the stairs. Trudy pulls the front curtain back and, sure enough, sees her sister in the driver’s seat of an old beat-up turquoise truck. Making out with some guy. Classic.

  “Wait here, Mercy. I just need to check something.” And she heads for the door.

  “Wait, Trudy!” Mercy is standing on the couch again. Bouncing. Speckles is whining and squirming and wagging her tail.

  “I’ll just be a minute, hon.” Just long enough to stave her head in with a shovel, she thinks.

  “But, Trudy, wait! There’s another truck!”

  Because nobody invited you

  Trudy is not having a good week. As she looks through the screen door at her sister — her sister who is laughing, pushing her now-blond hair back from her beautiful face — Trudy wonders again how much she is expected to take in this life. Just how much exactly?

  Only a week ago, she had been lying in bed, curled around Jules’s back. His skin was warm, sweet-smelling. She had laid her cheek against his back and held him tight against her. The house was cold, and they had piled so many blankets on top of them, they could barely move. It was like a soft muffled cave-world under there. She wished she could stay there forever. For the thousandth time, she wondered what her life would be like if she could just work in the daylight and sleep at night. If she didn’t have to haul herself out of bed just as everybody else was settling in for the night.

  When she woke again, the house was dark and she could hear Jules talking in another room. The clock said 8:30. Trudy sat up and reached for her cigarettes, listening, trying to make out what he was saying, but she could only hear the odd mumbled syllable. Then it was just quiet. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and walked as quietly as she could down the hall to the kitchen. Jules was sitting in a chair, receiver to ear, forehead on the table. Listening. Trudy stood in the doorway and watched him and waited. When he finally spoke again, it was if he were using someone else’s voice. Or, at least, one she hadn’t heard before: he was speaking French. She couldn’t understand a word. Well, she did understand one word. Near the end of the conversation she thought she heard him say that something — or everything — was fucké.

  That seemed clear enough.

  She pulled the edges of the blanket up off the floor and crept back to the bedroom where she lay down and pretended to sleep. It felt cold without him there. She stretched her legs across to his side of the bed to see if there was any residual warmth where he had lain beside her all afternoon. Nothing. It was cold as stone.

  “I have to go away for a few days,” he said.

  “I’ll be back before you know it,” he said.

  Seven days ago, he had said this. And not a word since.

  Before he left, he had kissed her forehead and not her mouth. Not her ear or her neck or her shoulder. He had pulled her toward him and placed a dry little kiss on her forehead. Like a tired old man.

  And the day after he left, Mercy turned five. It had been a small party. The usual suspects, the constant three: Trudy, Claire, and Mercy. And Speckles, of course. No Jules. And certainly no Tammy. Claire had made a heart-shaped cake, and Trudy had picked up pizza. Pepperoni, as requested. Just two high, thin voices singing “Happy Birthday,” and a deep howl from the dog. Trudy found it so sad.

  But not Mercy. She was wriggling in her chair, ready to blow out her candles, full of bright, earnest wishes.

  Maybe a wish had come true. Maybe Mercy had brought Tammy back.

  They are not the guests Trudy would have chosen, but here they are anyway.

  Because time travels in both directions

  Oh, the roads are like ribbons. This was the thought that went through Darren’s mind as he drove hour after hour, all the way from Brownsville to Preston Mills. The roads are just like skeins of ribbon unwinding before me and behind me. Even though it had been twenty years, it was effortless, this long drive back. All day long, his heart fluttered like a little bird in his chest, and the truck glided along the roads like a bead on a string. Home, home. He would go back to the place where he had left her, and if his luck was very good, he would find her again.

  (And if his luck was bad, so what? He was used to it by now. If she was gone, if she didn’t want him, who would he have to blame but himself? He would just have to take it like a man and move on.)

  It is as though he has travelled both backward and forward through time when he pulls into that driveway and steps out of his truck. He steps out of the truck onto that same driveway where he had left them, his boots crunching across the gravel. In the bright sunlight before him are his two grown daughters: one in the distance, her back pressed against the front door; one standing just there, maybe twenty feet in front of him, her hair golden against the vivid turquoise of her truck. One hand on the roof, leaning. One hand on her hip. Darren pans sideways to see, between parted curtains in the front window, a small moon of a face looking out at him. Eyes dark and wide like his one true love. Possibly, this is his granddaughter.

  He is weak with it. His faint hope.

  Because family can get on your very last nerve

  Just one minute earlier, Trudy had been filled with heat and rage, ready to burst through the front door and storm over to that truck and what? What, Trudy? What were you going to do? Hit somebody? Scream and yell and cry like a big baby? And then what? They would all still be there. Her family. Every single fucking one of them.

  It didn’t matter what she did. She caught sight of him and her power was gone. It just drained away. Her father, standing there at the end of the driveway. She knows it is him. No question. He looks just like she remembers him, and he looks just like her sister. Her sister who has just jumped down from the truck, who is now swivelling around to take in this interloper. This scene-stealer whose identity is not yet known to her.

  Trudy feels her shoulders pulling forward and down toward the ground. She leans back against the door and her knees buckle and bend until she is almost kneeling. As if she is being crushed by an actual physical burden. And just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, here she is. Miss America. Trudy can see her mother’s spun sugar hair and pink lipstick floating above the wheel of her rusty Chevette as she pulls into the driveway.

  Behind Darren’s truck.

  Which is behind Tammy’s truck.

  Which is right on the very edge of Trudy’s last nerve.

  Because crying when you are happy makes no sense to children

  Mercy pushes against the screen door with her shoulder, putting all of her weight into it. She can see Trudy on the other side, crouching down.

  “Trudy! Move! ”

  Speckles is licking Mercy’s face. She lifts her chin and turns her head away from the dog’s kisses and pushes harder against the door. Finally, Trudy stands up and staggers out of the way as Mercy and Speckles come tumbling out the door. Mercy regains her composure and walks toward her mother. At least, she thinks it’s her mother. There is something about her that puts Mercy off, that doesn’t look quite right. She casts a glance at Fenton. She doesn’t like the way his lea
ther belt seems to go diagonally across his skinny body and the way he hunches over at the shoulders. And she doesn’t think she likes his twitchy face.

  Mercy almost can’t look at Tammy; she is so beautiful, so confusing. Her hair is so shiny and her eyes are pale and blue. Wolf eyes, she thinks. Is this really her mother? Tammy crouches down to Mercy’s level, but Mercy holds out a hand, keeping her at bay. She is afraid. Plus, there is something else she needs to do. “Just wait. I’ll be right back. I need to talk to Grandma Claire.”

  Mercy and Speckles continue down the long driveway toward Claire and the man. It looks as if there has been an accident: the driver doors of both vehicles stand open; Claire’s car is still running, and a bell sounds from inside. Ding, ding, ding. Darren and Claire stand there with their arms at their sides, looking each other up and down, as if checking for injuries. They are crying and laughing at the same time. This makes no sense to Mercy. She doesn’t understand why anyone would do this. She has only ever done one thing or the other: laugh or cry. She is never happy and sad at the same time.

  “Grandma Claire, what is it?” Speckles is weaving in and out of the feet of the adults, whining. “Are you happy or are you sad?”

  Claire thinks that, for once, everything looks beautiful through her tears. Everybody and everything is watery and shining. “Oh, I’m happy, hon. Just a little worn out.”

  “She cries all the time, you know.” Mercy directs this to Darren. “Here.” Mercy takes one of Darren’s hands and one of Claire’s and brings them together as though they are shaking hands. They hold on and squeeze.

  “There,” says Mercy. “Try that.”

  Because sometimes you lose the thread

  Fenton is pretty sure he knows what is happening here. This is the whole family. Claire, Trudy, and Mercy match Tammy’s descriptions precisely. And anyone could guess that this other man is Tammy’s father. He has her eyes, her smile, her strong chin.

  Here we all are, thinks Fenton, set out in a spray. It is like a constellation fanning out from the single figure at the doorway of the house (Trudy), connecting to a dot here (Tammy) and there (Fenton), and ending in a tight cluster of three (Darren, Claire, Mercy) at the end of the laneway. And just like a constellation, once you see all of the stars together, once you see that they make a shape, you can almost see a white line connecting them. Standing there in the driveway, Fenton can see a faint white shimmering thread travelling through the air from one person to the next. It disappears in the sunlight if he looks at it head-on, but if he turns his head just slightly away, it’s there.

  Fenton loses sight of the thread as a cloud slides across the sun.

  It is colder and darker and trouble is coming. He can feel it.

  He walks over to the grass by the driveway and lies down on his back and waits for the feeling to pass.

  Because sometimes you feel like a sheet on the clothesline

  Tammy was not prepared for what faced her when she arrived at her mother’s house. She had expected to come back and find Mercy changed, possibly distant, maybe angry with her for leaving. She thought that she could overcome all of that, given a chance. She thought that she could earn her daughter’s trust if she stuck around for a while and behaved herself. Tammy had expected Trudy to be angry with her and Claire to welcome her warmly, sloppily, sweetly. With relief and gratitude. She had hoped that Fenton would hold it together, would stand by her. At least for a minute.

  But here’s what is happening now.

  Fenton is lying on the ground on his back, his head turned to the side, his left foot twitching. Mercy is sitting on the ground beside him, smoothing his hair back from his forehead and whispering. The dog, the big fat ungainly dog, is tenderly licking Fenton’s hand.

  Claire is weeping and holding the hand of the man Tammy supposes is Darren Robertson, the love of Claire’s life, the missing link. According to folklore, Tammy’s own father.

  Trudy is standing at the doorway, stunned, looking like she has been hit in the head with a plank. Frankly, nobody is paying any attention to Tammy at all. She feels like a sheet on the clothesline, waiting for a breeze. Limp. Unmoved.

  My daughter looked right through me. She walked right past me.

  Mercy, who is five years old, and has no right to have any idea who she is, who has nothing to base an opinion on, saw her, recognized her, and walked right past her. Twice. Once to check on Claire and once to help Fenton. Who she has never even heard of before. Tammy’s mother and sister have not seen her in years and they seem not to have noticed her at all. My arms are empty, thinks Tammy. Maybe that’s how they are supposed to be.

  Mercy rests her hand on Fenton’s brow and looks over at her mother. Mercy is squinting into the sunlight, but Tammy knows she is looking straight at her. It seems as though she might say something, but then she stops. She changes her mind. Little Mercy stands up and turns toward the house. “Trudy! Something’s wrong with my mom’s friend!”

  Because you don’t want to hear it

  What is Trudy thinking, slumped there against the front door? She is thinking that she doesn’t want to hear a word from any of them.

  Not from her mother, not from her sister, and not from her so-called father.

  Whatever they say will hurt.

  None of it will be right and none of it will be enough.

  She is thinking that it is much better to be around people you don’t care about because they can’t hurt you. Not really. Only people you love can tear you apart by just saying the wrong thing. Or not saying the right thing. Or saying the right thing at the wrong time. They can just hurt you by being themselves.

  Ugh. Love.

  And speaking of love, where is Jules? What is the point of him? What is he for if he isn’t here with her right now? Why does she have to go through this alone?

  Speaking of love, who in God’s name is that guy with Tammy? He looks like he’s been taken apart and put back together wrong. He looks under-done.

  And, finally, speaking of love, can her mother’s years of stupidity really be rewarded so lavishly? Is a dream coming true at the end of the driveway? It is impossible for Trudy to know how to feel about this. Has her father even looked at her?

  Because she can’t help it, Trudy is also thinking about how everybody else might hurt everybody else. How Darren will hurt Claire and Tammy. How Tammy will hurt Mercy. And how Mercy will hurt Tammy right back.

  And because no one else will think about it, she can’t help thinking about dinner and sleeping arrangements and about how she will get her car out of the driveway to get to work.

  Trudy is thinking all of these things when Mercy calls to her and she looks up to see Tammy’s companion collapsed on the lawn like a crumpled up old tissue.

  Because it’s always just the beginning

  Trudy ducks into Claire’s car and turns off the ignition. Closes the door. She walks over to where Fenton is lying on the ground and stands there, hands on hips. “What’s his name, Tammy?”

  Mercy says, for no reason, “I think it’s Jonathon. He looks like he’s named Jonathon.”

  “Fenton,” says Tammy. “His name is Fenton.”

  “What?” Trudy can’t get it. Benson?

  Tammy casts her eyes skyward, takes a deep breath, and bellows: “FENTON. HIS NAME IS FENTON!”

  At this, Fenton stirs. He rolls onto his side and starts coughing.

  “OK, Fenton. Alright. Mercy, take your mom inside and see if you can find something for dinner. We’ll be there in a sec.” And Mercy walks over to her mother, Speckles in tow, takes her hand without looking up at her face, and pulls her toward the house. “Don’t worry. Trudy will take care of Fenton. She knows how.”

  Claire and Darren have climbed into his truck and are talking, laughing, crying. Lovestruck. Oblivious. Otherwise engaged.

  Trudy kneels on the grass beside Fenton. The breeze is cold an
d fresh. It smells like the river. She looks at this man curled up on the ground and tries to imagine how he fits into her sister’s life. As a match, it is implausible. There doesn’t seem to be enough of him there to withstand her. He can’t weigh more than a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds. She is surprised by the tenderness she feels for this stranger, lying there like that on the grass.

  “Fenton?” What the hell kind of name is Fenton? “Fenton? Do you think you can get up now?”

  “It’s almost over,” he says. “It’s almost over now.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” says Trudy. “Come on, pal.” She pulls him up by both hands. She puts her arm around his skinny waist and jams her shoulder into his armpit to steady him before guiding him toward the house.

  Because the years come charging in

  Time has travelled in a circle. Here they are once again. Kissing in a truck. Hiding from the world. Two decades of longing culminating in a deep, long, sigh. A tumbling swoon.

  There are wild horses in Claire’s chest when he kisses her. Thundering, galloping horses. His hands are in her hair, his cheek is against her cheek, and then he is kissing her and there are horses. He touches her waist, the small of her back, and she feels she will die of it. She will die of the sweetness of the relief of having him in her arms again.

  Claire knows what she should do. She knows she should bring him into the house to talk to the girls. She should introduce him to Mercy, his granddaughter. But she can’t. She knows she should go see her daughter who has been away for so very long, and even though she is yearning to hold her in her arms and to stroke her hair, she can’t do it. Even though she is starting to shiver in the cold cab of the truck, even though the sun is starting to fade in the sky, she can’t do it. Her cheek is on his chest and she can hear his heart beat. She can smell his shirt. Her hand is on his hand. His skin is rough and dry and warm. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. Thank God nothing has changed.