I have none, I said.
Robert, he said.
Sorry, I have none.
Robert.
Sorry, I have none, Robert.
Mom came home late after rehearsal and said there were cop cars on either end of our street. What did you guys do now? she asked us.
The doorbell rang. Ball Game! It was Jay Gatsby. He had seen Mom coming home. She opened the door and said fifteen million dollars. Jay Gatsby said please, can we just—
Mom said thirty million dollars cash. She slammed the door.
The doorbell rang again. Ball Game! It was the two cops from the two ends of the street. They were all smiles. They had their hands on their guns. They asked Mom if they could ask her a few questions. She said no. They asked Mom if she had seen any suspicious activity around here lately. Yours, she said. Close the door, honey, said Grandma. Mom asked the cop if she could see his gun for a sec. Honey! said Grandma. She hobbled over to the front door and said out, out, thank you, Knight Rider, and then closed it.
I made conchigliettes with cheese. We ate it watching the game. Grandma drank red wine and Mom drank water because of Buzzkill. Don’t call Gord that, I said. Mom said she was kidding, but that was a lie. I just love it when Kyle Lowry gets mad, said Grandma. Mom was silent. I don’t know why McCaw always does those fly-bys in the corners, said Grandma. Does he think he’s performing The Nutcracker? It doesn’t seem as effective a defence as when they just stand their ground. I mean get your arms up, plant your feet, right Swiv? I nodded. All they have to do is wait a second for McCaw to do his leaping and then they make their threes, said Grandma. Ridiculous! Mom didn’t say anything. Tears were on her face.
Grandma got up and sat down beside Mom and patted her leg and asked her how her day had gone. She put Mom’s feet into her lap and rubbed them. Mom said she thinks she offended her stage manager. Her stage manager had told Mom that she had no time to read books and Mom said to the stage manager you have time to watch Netflix for three hours every evening but no time to read books? After that Mom said the stage manager was just being weird. She didn’t give Mom notes on time so Mom missed a bunch of cues and looked like an idiot. I think you’re just paranoid, Mom, I said. Because of Gord and everything. Mom said pregnancy doesn’t make you paranoid. I’d be paranoid if I had a whole other completely separate person growing inside of me, I said. Well, make sure you use birth control then, she said. She has to say disgusting things. She said she’d send the stage manager a text apologizing. After that she stopped crying. She took just one sip of Grandma’s wine. Then she said Serge Ibaka is inordinately handsome. She said oh fuck off with your happiness during the Keg commercials and threw popcorn at the TV which I picked up and threw into the air and caught in my mouth every time. Then she started getting worried again because the stage manager wasn’t texting back to say it was okay. Grandma said don’t worry, honey, she’s probably just busy watching her Netflix.
3.
Last night I slept with Mom. Gord was tucked right in between us. Mom slept with her hand on her chin like she was thinking all night long.
On her way to rehearsal this morning Mom told me not to forget to let the rat guy in.
Grandma is watching her shows on rotation. She watches the same episodes of Call the Midwife and Midsomer Murders and Miss Fisher two or three times because she always falls asleep during them, even with all the screaming and killing, and she thinks it’s unlikely that she would fall asleep at the same place in the show twice so every time she watches she’s picking up new clues and information. Poor Grandma. Today she has the Triple Scoop Sundae. Gout, trigeminal neuralgia, angina. With a topping of arthritis. I was clipping her toenails and trying to straighten out her toes. Her tree roots, she calls them. Ho! she said. Are you kidding me? It’s only pain. We don’t worry about pain. It’s not life-threatening. It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can suffer the most who will conquer, she said. If you say so, I said. That’s an Irish guy, a soldier of the republic who said that, she told me. Do you know his name? I asked. Is it Cipher? Terence MacSwiney, she said. Have you heard of the 1916 Easter Rising? Obviously not, I said. You mean Jesus? I was serious. She began to laugh but it turned into a cough. I had to stop clipping and she had to use her nitro spray three times which is the maximum number of times before you call 911 or basically die.
Ball Game! It was the rat guy. He said Mom had called him because she’d seen a rat. Grandma said she was the one who’d seen a rat. This big, she said. She held out her hands. Long tail. Black. It ran out of the foyer and then behind the piano and then went flying over there behind the china cabinet and then around into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Hmmm, said the rat guy. It wasn’t a mouse? Grandma said it was definitely not a mouse. She shuffled back to her bedroom with her walker and left me alone with the rat guy. He looked all over the house and said he didn’t see any rat signs. He threw some rat poison in the crawlspace in the basement. He wanted to show me what he was doing but I didn’t want to get anywhere near that crawlspace and I stayed upstairs. Then he sat down at the dining room table with me and started filling out his report and invoice. He spoke very quietly. He said animals, even rats, are just trying to take care of their babies and survive. He said divorce just breaks you down and then you have to re-invent yourself. I nodded. He said he communes with every animal. When he went to Mexico with his wife, pelicans landed on his head. Dogs protect him in strange houses when he’s fighting pests. Seagulls follow him around. He searches for inner peace and balance. He told me I had to get in touch with my inner being. I thought about Gord. I didn’t want to have an inner being. He told me he has affinity with all animals, even rats, even ants and moths. He left a bill for one hundred and sixty dollars and said to call him if Grandma sees the rat again. He winked.