Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

We were already sitting at the table when Leo came in. He raised his hand in a flourish toward Parker and said, Hey there, Lady Madonna, looking beautiful!

Parker laughed in that practiced way women seem to develop, acknowledging a compliment without giving anything back.

You’re too kind, she said and snapped the elastic waist of an old pair of men’s track pants. If you can say that while I’m wearing these. You guys are going to be seeing a lot of these track pants until bébé comes.

They never looked better! And I like your hair like that.

Parker bugged her eyes out at Leo. Her hair was a tangled mess.

Hey, Leo turned his hands palm upward, I like the wild look.

As a man looking at another guy’s efforts at seduction, it’s always hard to see how women ever say yes. They must perceive something we don’t, like a dog whistle; there must be a frequency, undetectable to the male of the species, that we somehow nonetheless generate. Leo actually seemed to be making headway.

Griffin must have been thinking similar thoughts.

Could you get any cornier? he asked.

Parker looked at Griffin and he looked down at his cup and swirled his tea leaves into a whirlpool. His shoulders were hunched. He glanced up at her, ignoring his stepfather, then put his cup down and left.

I could almost see the calculations going on in the back of Parker’s mind for her baby, herself, the dangers over the next few years, what she was going to need, and I could see her body starting to respond.

That was one of the things I’d loved about Ruby. Our connection had nothing to do with survival, with numbers or calculation.

Last night Griffin went to the well for water and rushed back in. Three shooting stars. We ran out and saw four streak across the sky, two short ones, a long bright arc, and a faint one low on the horizon. It’s been a long time since I looked at a night sky with no clouds. The big dipper was there and the Milky Way, and it seemed strange that the sky hadn’t changed while everything down here on earth had.

Our necks got tired so we lay on the ground and called them out to each other, oohing and ahhing at the more spectacular ones. Parker said she felt the baby doing somersaults and flips. It was one of those rare occasions when four people feel more or less the same way — happy and lucky.

We got cold on the ground. Griffin had the idea to pull our mattresses and blankets outside. I suggested we lay a tarp underneath. Soon we lay side by side, our feet slightly slanted down the slope, getting warm and drowsy, chatting, dropping off one by one.

I woke several times during the night, my hand or shoulder cold, and saw a wisp of cloud passing in front of the stars or the maple tree in silhouette or another bright chip of white slide down the sky, vanishing, leaving behind millions and billions of stars whose current existence was unknown.

On one of the occasions that I woke I heard Leo roll over, and I whispered, Hey, bro, you awake?

Grunt.

Thanks, I said

What for?

Getting me up here.

Yeah.

I’m making a bow and arrow and leg snares. Griffin and I went fishing last night in the rowboat with a flashlight. I felt okay. We caught a rock cod. The only thing Leo is doing is cleaning out cupboards.

Of all of us, including the wreck that is me, Leo is by far the most restless.

The cougar has rolled me back to the animal world, where survival is not a moral issue. The smell of her fur, the weight of her paw, the warmth of my blood running down my face — some of the fight had already gone out of me. Before Griffin turned around I was getting ready to surrender my soul.

Last night we sat at the table after a feast of roasted rabbit in a shallow broth with onions, carrots, parsley seeds, and oregano cooked in Mom’s old turkey roasting pan that I found in the shed. The candlelight made everyone’s eyes look bright. We opened the door to the wood burning stove and basked in the heat and orange light.

Ahh, Leo said. Life on the big dick as we used to say, back in the day.

We’ve already got our regular places at the table. Parker sits beside Griffin near the door. Leo sits across from Parker with his back to the sink and I’m beside Leo across from Griffin. Parker eats with her elbows on the table, usually holding her head up with one hand. She keeps her chair back a few centimetres from the table and her feet on the floor. When she’s finished she pushes her chair back farther, lays one foot on the knee of her other leg, and leans back.

Griffin eats in a careful, measured way, like a young man who has been taught excellent table manners. I struggle with my injured lip — concentrating on keeping the food in my mouth and not looking gross. Leo is tucked in close to the table so he can reach whatever he wants — the water jug, salt dish, second helpings. You’d never believe we were from the same family, his table manners are so bad. He chews with his mouth open and rolls the food around from one side to the other, snorting and smacking and picking his teeth as he goes. He uses his fingers to eat whenever possible, then licks them clean one at a time, flourishing each one toward whoever cooked the meal, as though his gestures were a compliment. Food attaches itself to his beard and moustache and he leaves it there, it seems, out of spite. I’m tired of handing him a napkin he never uses. His eating style might explain why Parker pushes away from the table as soon as she can.

Don’t you wish you could eat a good old spicy Spanish sausage? Leo asked the table. He seemed uncharacteristically happy and relaxed. Or chocolate? Or coffee?

Bubblegum! said Parker.

We might get coffee again, said the ever-cup-half-full Griffin. The green line to Mexico is almost finished. It’ll cost a few days’ rations, of course — we’ll be able to drink like one cup a month, but eventually prices should come down.

The crowd in my head turned over in graves they never had. Coffee exports.

A good bottle of wine, said Leo.

Driving a motorcycle, said Griffin.

Hot tubs, Parker said.

Hockey, added Griffin.

I miss hopping on a plane and leaving everything behind. Walking out the door of a five-star into tropical heat and a smell like ripe mangos. Beaches full of women in bikinis.

I didn’t speak. What was I going to say? Beaches? Don’t you wish you could have your old life back? Your wife? Your family? I would have been a downer. I smiled at everyone else’s whimsy.

This OneWorld crap, Leo reared his chair on its hind legs. I guess it won’t be over in my lifetime.

I have to give him credit. He has a real instinct for keeping a pleasant conversation rolling along.

It’s working right now, he said, but it won’t last. It goes against our nature. We’re bean counters. We keep track of who gets what and who does what. We get severely pissed off at the assholes who don’t do their share. You watch. People are just biding their time. When the fear wanes, all this cooperation shit will morph back into competition. Socialism — nice idea, but it doesn’t work.

I was chewing on a rabbit leg, pinning every shred of meat between my incisors and tugging it off, watching Leo, who was speaking to the air above the table. Parker looked at her knife. Griffin was stabbing his fork into a crack in the table.

You know, Leo, Griffin said, capitalism, nice idea, but it doesn’t work either. Leads to socialism every time.

We have a taker, Leo held his hand out in welcome. And that works vice versa, I might add. Socialism, he turned his hands up. Capitalism.

Griffin kept digging at the table crack. Life is better now. Maybe for some people it’ll be hard having only one kid, but that’ll only last two, maybe three generations, and besides, it makes everyone family now.