New Year's Eve Read online

  MARINA ENDICOTT

  New Year’s

  Eve

  Grass Roots Press

  Copyright © 2011 Marina Endicott

  First published in 2011 by Grass Roots Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  The Good Reads series is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Office of Literacy and Essential Skills.

  Grass Roots Press also gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

  Grass Roots Press would also like to thank ABC Life Literacy Canada for their support. Good Reads® is used under licence from ABC Life Literacy Canada.

  (Good reads series)

  Print ISBN: 978-1-926583-33-4

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-926583-66-2

  Distributed to libraries and educational and community organizations by

  Grass Roots Press

  www.grassrootsbooks.net

  Distributed to retail outlets by

  HarperCollins Canada Ltd.

  www.harpercollins.ca

  To Peter— for twenty years, November 4th

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  The snow started before we left home.

  We were supposed to leave at nine that morning, but Grady had worked the night before. And for twelve nights before that. The other guys got time off, but Grady had worked right through Christmas. He was the newest RCMP constable in Drayton Valley, so he got all the rough shifts.

  He was supposed to be through at four in the morning, but he didn’t make it home till noon. Then he was so tired he had to sleep for a while. The baby was already in her snowsuit. I took her out of it again.

  We didn’t leave till three. The sun was already fading down the winter sky.

  And then when we stopped at Edmonton an hour later for gas, the bank card wouldn’t work. I went inside to pay, but it still got declined. I re-counted the days since payday with a shaky feeling in my knees. Then I went back to the car.

  “I made a big mistake,” I said, when Grady rolled down his window. “I thought today was payday, but it’s not till next Wednesday.”

  “Oh, Dixie,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” I stood there, sick.

  “Nothing left in the bank?”

  I shook my head. He undid his seat belt. He walked inside, reaching into his wallet for the credit card his dad gave him. “For emergencies,” his dad had said. Grady hates using it.

  I have to say that Grady did not blame me or say I spent too much money. We just didn’t make enough, we both knew that. But I was supposed to keep track.

  By the time we left Edmonton, it was getting dark. Five more hours to Saskatoon.

  Snow filled the air like feathers from a burst pillow. I never worried while Grady was driving. But with the baby sleeping in the back, the snow scared me.

  I looked back to check on her. Sweet flower face in a sea of bright paper. We had packed the Christmas presents for Grady’s family around the car seat.

  Her lips moved in and out as I watched, as if she was sucking.

  “She’s hungry even in her sleep,” I said.

  Grady didn’t answer. His eyes were nearly shut against the white glare of snow flying into the windshield.

  “We should have left sooner. I’m sorry,” I said.

  Then I wished I hadn’t apologized. We didn’t start late because of me.

  He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. “Not your fault. I couldn’t leave the office till I’d finished the paperwork.”

  That was all we said for a long time.

  The sky got darker. The snow fell. The black road ran ahead into the whiteness. At least there was no traffic. Everybody was at a party by this time on New Year’s Eve. Only us out on the road, driving and driving.

  We were doing okay until the baby started to cry. Sometimes Grady sings to her, but not that night. I turned in my seat to tickle her cheek. I gave her the soother, but she kept spitting it out again.

  “Can’t you make her shut up?” Grady finally said. He didn’t shout, but he was getting tense. The stress of driving in the dark through a cloud of flying white.

  “She’s hungry,” I said. “Sorry.” Some days all I ever said was sorry. “If I’d fed her just before we left, maybe she would have slept through.”

  He laughed. “Right. She hasn’t slept more than three hours in her whole life.”

  “Seven, last Sunday!”

  He shook his head like he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t answer.

  We were only going 60. At this rate, the trip was going to take forever. I hummed to make the baby stop fussing, giving her my best good-mama smile.

  She let the soother fall damply out of her mouth and grinned back at me. Drool ran down her chin. She looked pretty cute, actually. Never thought I’d think that about a drooling baby.

  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,” I sang to her. “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you...” My mom used to sing me that old song all the time.

  Daisy’s eyes were as dark blue as the night sky out the window. My back hurt, twisting around like that, but she started crying again if I turned away.

  Grady pulled off the highway at the next exit and turned the car in at a closed-down gas station. The wheels grated over a pile of hard snow at the edge of the road. Grady likes to be safe. He’s seen too many accidents.

  “Feed her,” he said. Leaving the car running, he made his seat lie back and closed his eyes. “If you weaned her, you know, we could keep going while she had a bottle.”

  I hate it when he gets impatient like that, when it’s about the baby. He’s allowed to be crabby with me, but not with her.

  I pulled her out of her car seat and lifted my top. She let out little whimpers, as if she was saying, A breast, thank God, I nearly starved to death.

  I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop nursing yet. It was too soon—she wasn’t going to be a year old till June. Then it would be summer, and maybe I would leave Grady and go to Regina with her. I could stay with my dad for a while, till I got a job. So she would still have a father figure. My eyes hurt. I guess I’d been staring into the snow, too. I would not let myself cry.

  The baby finished nursing and fell fast asleep. She didn’t even stir when I put her back in the car seat.

  “Okay,” I said to Grady. “She’s good. We can go now.”

  He opened his eyes. He looks so sad when he first wakes up. I think he has bad dreams all the time. After rolling his head right and left, he pulled the seat up straight again, but he didn’t start driving.

  At the edge of the road, a sign shining in the headlights said: “Two Hills 32 km.”

  “Two Hills,” Grady said. “That’s where Ron Cox is now.”

  Ron and Grady had trained together at Depot Division in Regina. Being in the same training troop is a big deal for Mounties. Six months of getting whipped into shape together makes a bond.

  Ron and Grady ended up near each other for their first postings, too, in small towns close to Edmonton. Ron at Westlock and Grady at Drayton Valley. When Ron got married to Sharla, Grady was hi
s best man. Ron had been moved to Two Hills last year.

  The storm was worse. We stared out the windshield at the snow. A million sparks of white hid the road.

  “I don’t think I can drive through this any more,” Grady said. “We could make it to Two Hills. It’s New Year’s Eve, let’s go have a party with Ronny.”

  Cheered up all of a sudden, Grady got out and ran through the snow to phone Ron from the gas station phone booth. That’s what men do for each other. Or maybe I mean, that’s what friends do for each other. They’re good friends. You’ve got to have friends.

  I put on some hand cream. My makeup was in my suitcase, somewhere under the Christmas presents. Sharla takes good care of herself. She’s always nicely dressed. I was in sweats, as usual.

  Grady came back, nodding. “They’re home. Ron says come on over.”

  “Great,” I said, trying to be nice. I reached over to touch his cheek.

  He pulled back, screwing up his nose. “What’s that stink on your hands?”

  He does have a very sensitive nose.

  You have to be patient.

  But you also have to figure out the difference between being patient and being a doormat. When you have a daughter watching you.

  Chapter Two

  You could see right away that Sharla was not happy to see us.

  Ron cried, “Grady! Grade-A! You bugger! Come on in!”

  Sharla just stood by the kitchen island, waiting.

  “Nice place,” Grady said, looking around. Smiling now, in the warmth. “You lucked out here!”

  The house was big. Open plan, lots of wood cabinets. A long island with a granite top between the kitchen and the living room. Velour recliners with drink holders, giant TV. Wheel of Fortune was on.

  “Built the house last year—before that we were in the barracks. Or what used to be the barracks, in the old days. It was bad, eh, Sharla?” He laughed, she didn’t. “But Sharla’s dad is a builder. He came for three months, and we put in some sweat, got ’er up in no time.”

  Linoleum in the kitchen, beige carpet everywhere else. I would have gone for hardwood if it had been our house. Except of course our house was old and rented, my dad not being a builder. Not one to hand out emergency credit cards, either. But he had stopped drinking. So if I decided to take Daisy to live in Regina, staying with my dad might be okay.

  I stood on the mat by the door, holding the baby in her car seat. I hadn’t taken off my boots, so I didn’t dare move. Sharla is a major bitch, if you ask me. Lucky nobody asked.

  “Wow, Dixie!” Ron said, catching sight of the car seat. “Who’s this?”

  Ron’s a nice guy. I pulled back the blanket so he could peek at the baby.

  Daisy’s hat had come undone. Under it her red hair was damp and curly. Little finger ringlets. My mom would have loved her hair.

  “Look at that! Would you look at that—look, Sharla! What a princess!” Ron glanced up quick, to check that it was a girl.

  I nodded and grinned at him.

  Ron was shorter than Grady. Short for a Mountie, but in good shape, with a thick cap of brown hair and a nice sense of humour. I liked Ron.

  At their wedding and every time we’d met since, Sharla had spoken to me exactly zero times.

  “What’s the baby’s name?” Ron asked.

  “Daisy,” I said. “She’s called Daisy.”

  Sharla laughed.

  I could see she thought naming a baby Daisy was stupid.

  We had meant to call her Ruth Anne, after Grady’s mom and mine. But after she was born, she opened her eyes, dark sky blue, and stared up at me. I knew right away her name was Daisy. Grady had been sitting beside my hospital bed in his uniform. People probably thought I was under arrest. He said, “Are you nuts? Daisy?” Then he got called out. So I filled out the forms by myself, and I named her Daisy.

  Now Grady sang to her, “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you...”

  He couldn’t be kind to me, but he could be soft to the baby. We did that a lot. Talked to each other through her.

  “Wait till she opens her eyes,” I told Ron. “You’ll see, it suits her.”

  Ron gave me a quick hug, around the car seat. He was in uniform, and the police radio sat on the counter. That meant he was on duty, even on New Year’s Eve.

  “Come on, sit, sit,” he said. He took the car seat while I got my coat and boots off.

  Sharla said, “I need another cooler! You, Grady?”

  Grady shrugged. She gave him a vodka cooler, but he didn’t open it. Ron was not drinking, so Grady wouldn’t, either. He was polite about keeping people company. He didn’t even like to eat a sandwich while I sat without one. Eating every time he did was making me fat. Or Daisy was doing it. Something was making me pretty huge.

  I said no thanks when Sharla finally shoved a cooler toward me. The doctor said it’s okay to have a drink once in a while. Even Grady’s mom said a beer at supper would help with nursing. But I didn’t like it any more. Couldn’t drink coffee, either, since I got pregnant. If someone cooked bacon, I had to leave the house.

  Even now, the chicken wing smell from the oven was making me a bit queasy.

  “To what do we owe the honour,” Sharla said, still leaning her hip against the island. Not asking a question, just making us feel stupid for coming by. She had on a purple velvet dress. Her bare legs were fake tanned, and she had little diamonds pasted on her toenails. Her blonde hair fell in soft curls like she’d had it done at a beauty salon. She must have used a ton of hairspray.

  “You’ve got a party going on here,” I said. There were chips and dip, M&M food boxes by the sink, platters all over the island. “We can’t crash the party, Grady. We ought to get back on the road pretty quick.”

  “No, no!” Ron popped open a beer and gave it to Grady. “A couple of people were coming over—but the snow’s stopped most of them. And I’m on duty, as you see. Tim Lamont’s gone to Vegas,” he told Grady.

  “Without Jade,” Sharla said.

  “He’s on a golf trip,” Ron said, to excuse Tim for going without his wife.

  “Yeah,” Sharla said. “Golfing in Vegas, I bet.”

  “You have a three-member detachment here?” Grady asked Ron.

  “Yeah, we still have three. Tim and me, and Marie Poirier is the other member. She’s out with a broken leg till February.”

  “Are you still trying to get a transfer?”

  “Not now we’ve built the house,” Sharla said. “Anyway, Ron lies down and lets Staffing walk all over him.” Her voice had a curling tail in it, a little sting on the end all the time.

  Ron laughed again. He laughed the way I said sorry, too often and in the wrong places.

  But no, that wasn’t fair. Grady didn’t act anything like Sharla.

  “Come see my new truck,” Ron said, still laughing. The men disappeared through a door into the heated garage. We could still hear their voices, but not what they said.

  “My dad carpeted the garage, around the edges,” Sharla said, staring after them. “Pits for three cars. You can change your own oil. It’s quite the showplace.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re lucky.”

  She looked back at me.

  “Want a drink?”

  “I can’t—I’m nursing,” I said. That word nursing sounds weird.

  “How old is the baby?”

  “Um, almost six months.”

  Sharla leaned over the island, as if she might lean far enough forward to see the baby.

  But then she straightened up again.

  “Well, I can have a drink,” she said. “How about a pop?”

  Being with her was hard. She was all jagged edges. Maybe she just didn’t like me for some reason. Maybe I reminded her of some girl in grade nine who stole her boyfriend.

  “I’m going to—” She stopped talking because Ron’s police radio began to squawk.

  “Ron!” she shouted, and he poked his head back into the kitchen in time to hear it.r />
  “Alpha 22, Alpha 22,” the radio voice said. “10-71... I have a caller reporting loose animals. Horses on the road north of town, before the gravel pit turnoff. Copy?”

  Ron hit the button and talked to the Control person. He said he’d head out and check. We knew a guy in Drayton Valley who had been killed when he hit a horse on the road. Moose are even worse. Their legs are so long that their bodies smash over the hood of the car, right through the windshield.

  As Ron was talking, Grady came in from the garage. He set his still-full beer in the sink and picked up his coat. “I’ll go, too,” he told Ron. “If there’s a few horses loose, you could use a hand.”

  Ron said sure, and they got their boots on.

  I was giving Grady the bug-eyed beg: Please please don’t leave me alone with Sharla! But he avoided my eyes. Laughing to himself, he bent over to do up his boots. I was mad at him, but it was kind of funny.

  They left.

  Cold air ran into the room, and a flurry of snow.

  “Jeez! Shut that door!” Sharla was used to telling people what to do, boy.

  I went to shut it.

  “Fuck, it’s cold,” she said.

  Around our house we had stopped swearing. You can’t tell what words the baby will pick up.

  “You need a shawl or something,” I told her. That sounded kind of rude. I added, “Nice dress, though, Sharla.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She laughed. Ron not being there to laugh for her. “My Christmas present to myself.”

  “Wow. Nice, a nice colour on you.”

  No blonde should ever wear purple, in my opinion.

  I looked at the TV instead. The Wheel of Fortune boxes read:

  __v__r s t a y y__u r w __ l c __m__

  “I’d like to buy an O!” shouted a giggly woman on the show.

  Vanna touched the first box, and two more. Now the letters spelled:

  o v __ r s t a y y o u r w __ l c o m __

  The woman cried, “Is there a K?”

  She’d kick herself for that later.

  Chapter Three