Free Helpless by Barbara Gowdy Page A

mad. Maybe Rachel will tell her. Shepictures her at the motel, her spiky hair and nobody putting money in the vase, and she lets out a frustrated moan to feel her anger softening. She turns onto her side, facing the street.
    This next song is her favourite, “My Immortal.” She sings along: “And if you have to leave, I wish that you would just leave…” She switches the penlight off and on to the beat. In ten days she’s going to music camp. She wonders if Mika will let her take the iPod.
    “G O AHEAD and fire me,” Nancy says. She sinks onto the stool next to the chopping block and lights a cigarette.
    “Forget about it,” Frank says. “Nobody got splashed. Only one glass broke.”
    “By some miracle,” Nancy says.
    “You provided the entertainment.” He gives the grill a last swipe with the wire brush, then tosses the brush in the sink. “Did you see how Andria clapped?”
    Andria, his one-year-old daughter. He has four kids under the age of seven, and every Friday night his wife, Bianca, brings them to the restaurant for supper. Their tray of drinks was what Nancy dropped.
    “She’s so cute,” Nancy says about Andria. “You’re so lucky.”
    “I thank God every day.” He pulls off his chef’s hat and rubs his head. He’s a large, bald, pink-faced man with round blue eyes that widen when he’s listening to you, as if he’s never met anybody more interesting. Even with his wife he does this.
    “Are you okay to drive?” he asks.
    “Yeah, sure.” She rubs her knee. “Anyways, when I’m sitting it never—”
    “Never what?”
    She waves her cigarette. She’s crying.
    “Hey. What’s going on with you?” He comes over to her. “Is it Ron?”
    She shrugs.
    “You still think he’s fooling around on you?”
    “No.” She dabs her eyes with the hem of her apron. “I don’t know.”
    “He’s not hitting you, is he?”
    That makes her laugh. “Ron? Are you kidding? He’d have to see me to hit me.”
    “Okay, look. Take some time off. Go visit your sisters. Relax.”
    His eager pink face hangs in front of her like a party balloon, and she finds herself ashamed of her unhappiness, and of her bad leg, too. She comes to her feet. “I’m good now, Frank,” she says. She tells him to run on home and tuck in the kids, she’ll close up.
    When he’s gone, she starts lowering the blinds in the restaurant windows. The Korean variety store across the street is still open, and the old man, the grandfather, is out watering the flowers they have for sale on the sidewalk. Big crayon-coloured flowers in the shape of birds’ heads and scorpions and feather dusters. They sell black flowers, too: black tulips and lilies. Who buys those? Devil worshippers?
    Devil worshippers make her think of her psychic pouch, and she takes it out of her apron pocket (she’s glad she never got around to throwing it away), presses it against her heart, and goes through the rigamarole of chanting, “Red is your blood, red is my heart…” and so on, while trying to imagine Ron smiling at her lovingly. When was the last time he smiledat her lovingly? She can’t even remember. No, she can: it was the night he said he wanted to adopt. They were so happy, weren’t they? She was. But then he got all wrapped up in renovating the basement apartment, which she understood…sort of. Well, now the renovation is done, it’s perfect, there’s even baby shampoo and Ivory soap in the bathroom, and instead of taking the next step he’s drinking hard again, and every time she tries to talk to him about phoning adoption agencies, he puts her off. He’s says he’s too busy to think about it right now, he’s behind in the shop.
    If he has changed his mind about wanting to adopt, which she prays to God he hasn’t, why did he buy the soap and shampoo? A couple of nights ago he wanted the two of them to watch a National Geographic DVD about cheetahs, and when she suggested that they watch it on the new bigscreen TV, you should