Three Little Words (16 page)

“So, Fariza,” Sid says, “there are two ways to eat corn. The right way—across the cob—and the wrong way—around the cob. Allow me to demonstrate.”

He slathers an ear of corn with butter, sprinkles it with salt and pepper and starts to eat, going from one side to the other, the cob moving like the carriage of an old typewriter. “Ding!” he says when he reaches the end of a row. “Now you try.”

Fariza dutifully butters and seasons her cob and sinks her teeth into the soft, sweet kernels. Her eyes widen as she chews, and before long she has made a narrow path across the cob. Butter drips off her hands and down her chin.

“Ding!” Fariza says when she reaches the end of her second row. Everyone stops eating to stare at her. She grins and declares, “Corn is good.” A kernel is stuck to her upper lip and the tip of her nose is shiny with butter.

Elizabeth clasps her hands together, Caleb drops his cob of corn on the floor and Sid does what he didn't do in the raspberry patch earlier: he grabs Fariza around the waist and waltzes her around the table.

Megan pulls Caleb and Elizabeth to their feet, where they form a circle around Sid and Fariza, chanting, “Corn is good! Corn is good!” Fariza giggles as they all aim kisses at her greasy cheeks. “That's the most beautiful sentence I've ever heard,” Megan says when they finally stop whirling, and Sid plops Fariza back in her place at the table. “This calls for a celebration. Sid, could you give me a hand?”

Sid follows Megan into the kitchen, where she gives him a rib-crushing hug before setting him to work whipping the cream. “You knew, didn't you?” she asks as she rummages in the junk drawer for some candles. “You knew she could speak.”

“Yeah,” Sid says. “She talked a bit when we were picking raspberries, but she swore me to secrecy. I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you, but, you know…I couldn't.” And I can't tell you about Wain and Chloe either, he thinks. He can't imagine that either of them is going to talk about what happened at the lake anytime soon. He's not sure he wants them to anyway. Maybe Chloe's right. Maybe it's no big deal.

“She trusted you,” Megan says. “And it made her feel safe. Safe enough to talk to us. You were right not to say anything.”

“And who knows,” Sid says. “Maybe ‘Corn is good' is all she has to say.”

Sid turns the speed up on the mixer, but he can still hear Megan say, “It's a start anyway. Now, how many candles should I put on the shortcake?”

“So. The dummy can talk now?” Wain is sitting at the kitchen table the next morning, shoveling cornflakes into his mouth. He and Sid are alone. Fariza and Elizabeth are still asleep and Megan and Caleb have taken their coffee onto the porch.

“Don't be an asshole,” Sid says wearily. He puts some bread in the toaster and gets out the peanut butter and honey.

“You fighting with your girlfriend?” Wain asks. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and belches loudly.

“She's not my girlfriend.”

“Oh, that's right. Girl like that needs a man, not some faggy artist. What's with all your notebooks anyway, you and what's-her-name?”

The toast pops up and Sid jumps at the sound. Wain laughs. It's a nasty noise, jagged as a broken bone.

“Her name's Fariza.” Sid picks up the toast, burning his fingers.

“I know,” Wain says agreeably. “You guys drawing today?”

“Probably.”

Wain pushes himself back from the table and saunters out of the room. “I might join you,” he says as he goes. “Devi taught me some stuff.”

Sid takes a bite of his toast and wills Fariza to sleep till noon. Perhaps by then Wain will have lost interest or Caleb will have taken him out on the boat. What Sid really wants to do, after he's finished illustrating the stories in Fariza's notebook, is start a fresh notebook of his own. He wants to draw what he sees around him, not what goes on inside his head. There must be a way of doing both, but he hasn't figured it out yet. He has completely lost interest in Billy, who is doomed to stay in Titan Arum with the giant smelly plant and the horrible people. He must have finished at least ten Billy books over the years. It might be time to burn them or shred them, although that seems a cruel end for his companion of so many years.

He finishes his toast and puts his dishes (and Wain's) in the dishwasher. He's sorting laundry when Fariza appears, one hand clutching Fred, the other holding her notebook.

“Can we draw?” she says. Her voice is a bit raspy, but no more so than Sid's when he first speaks in the morning.

“Sure,” Sid says. “Breakfast first though, okay?”

“Okay.” Fariza trots off to the kitchen where he can hear her ask Megan for some cereal. He wonders how long it will be before they all forget that she once had a vocabulary of only three words.

There are two more
Fred and Fariza
stories in Fariza's notebook:
Fred and Fariza Go Fishing
and
Fred and
Fariza at the Spa
. When he draws Chloe applying a seaweed wrap to Fred's skinny legs, he remembers the last thing Chloe said to him, and his face burns. He finishes a sketch of Fariza painting Chloe's toenails, and then he starts to close the book.

“There's more,” Fariza says.

He turns the page. It's blank. “No, there isn't.”

She takes the notebook from him, turns it over and opens it from the back. Her wobbly printing covers the first page.

“Read it,” she says.

I was coffing one day. I had a sore throte. I got sent
home from school. Mami tucked me into bed and brot
me a glass of juice. The red kind I like. She and my sister
Parveen were talking in the living room. I think Mami was
crying, but it could have been Parveen. She stays out late.
Papi and Amir—my brother—yell at her a lot and call her
bad names. Mami gets upset, but she never calls Parveen
bad names. I heard the front door slam. Everybody was
screaming: Mami, Papi, Amir and Parveen. I pulled the cuvvers over my head. There were two big booms. Then the
front door slammed again.

Sid stops reading at the end of the first page. A bitter taste fills his mouth—as if his saliva has curdled. He can't read any more. He doesn't want to know what happens next. He's a coward.

Make It Stop

F
ariza's hand quivers as she turns the page. Her small voice fills the quiet room.

“I stayed in my room under the covers a long time. Then I had to pee really bad. So I got up and opened my door. Mami and Parveen were lying on the living-room floor. I tried to wake them up but I couldn't. I started to scream. Mrs. Marshall, from next door, came and pulled me away from Mami and Parveen. I heard the sirens. Mrs. Marshall took me to her apartment and made me hot tea with a lot of sugar. The police came and talked to me. I told them about Papi and Amir yelling at Parveen and Mami. I told them about the two big booms.

“I slept on Mrs. Marshall's blue couch. In the morning, a woman came and told me that Mami and Parveen were dead. I wanted Papi, but she said he and Amir were in jail. I wanted to stay with Mrs. Marshall, but I couldn't. She has two jobs and three little kids already. So I went to stay with strangers. I always said please and thank you. I wanted Mami and Papi to be proud of me.” Fariza's voice wavers as she closes the book.

Sid doesn't know what to do or say. Vomit rises in his throat, but he chokes it back. Fariza is sitting very still, her hands resting on the notebook.

“Do you hate me now?” she asks when Sid doesn't speak.

“Hate you?”

“Because of what I did.” Fariza starts to cry. She rocks back and forth, making a noise like a hurt kitten. Sid wants to wrap his arms around her, but he is afraid it might frighten her. She crawls into his lap and buries her face in his chest as he grasps for words. He understands now why she has chosen not to speak. Words are so inadequate, so insubstantial in the face of such pain. Words can't protect you. They can't clean your wounds or quench your thirst. They can't stroke your hair or wipe the tears from your face. Words fly out of your mouth and evaporate. And still he has to try.

“No, no, no, no,” he manages to say. “You didn't do anything wrong.”

“But I didn't get out of bed,” she wails. “I didn't help Mami and Parveen. And I told the police about Papi and Amir.”

“You were right to stay in your room,” Sid says. “I don't think you could have helped Mami and Parveen. And it wasn't wrong to tell the police about your dad and brother. Not if they hurt your mother and sister.” There are so many things he wants to say:
Your
father and brother are evil; they would have killed you
too; you're better off here
. Maybe someday he'll be able to say those things to her, but for now he searches for something simple, something innocent that will comfort her.

All he can think of is a song Megan used to sing to him when he was cranky or upset, a song that always calmed him down. He still remembers all the words.

When you're down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, nothing is going right.

When he gets to the part about people trying to take your soul, he wishes he hadn't started, but he keeps singing until the end.

Ain't it good to know you've got a friend.
You've got a friend
.

By the time he stops singing, Fariza is asleep in his arms. He is about to stand up and carry her to her room, when he hears someone clapping.

“Trust you to know all the words to that dumb hippie song. What are you—sixty?” Wain says.

Sid brushes past him, taking care not to bump Fariza against the door frame. “Shut up, Wain,” he says. He climbs the stairs and tucks Fariza into her bed, nestling Fred next to her under the duvet. When he goes back downstairs, Wain has disappeared. Megan is in the kitchen, wiping the counters.

“Caleb says he can take you and Wain out on the
Caprice
today. Elizabeth and Fariza and I are having lunch with Irena and Chloe. Where is Fariza anyway?”

“She was tired, so I put her back to bed. You know how crabby she can be if she doesn't get enough sleep.”

Megan nods. “You look as if you could use a bit more shut-eye yourself, buddy. Everything okay?”

The weight of Fariza's story is suffocating him, but all he says is, “Yeah, I didn't sleep very well last night. I don't feel much like going out on the boat. Will Caleb mind?”

“You know how rare it is for Caleb to get a day off this time of year,” she says. “He really wants to do this. He thinks it might help.”

“Help what?”

“Help you and Wain figure out your relationship.”

“I already figured it out. We share some
DNA
. That's it.”

“You know there's more to it than that,” she says.

“Not if I don't want there to be. He's a jerk.”

“Yes, he is,” Megan says. “But not all the time.” She folds the dishrag and hangs it from the faucet. “So do this for Elizabeth.”

“For Elizabeth?”

“She thinks you're good for Wain.”

“You're kidding, right? Wain thinks I'm a loser. No, wait, he's upgraded me to a loser hippie. And I think he's a psycho. I can't wait for him to leave.”

“And Elizabeth?”

“I'll visit her. She can come back here.”

“Her life is in Victoria, Sid. Yours is here. Wain is the bridge. Think about it.”

“Yeah, a bridge I'd like to jump off.”

“Sid.” Megan's voice has a note of rebuke in it.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “But I'm going for a bike ride first. Tell Caleb I'll be back in an hour.”

Caleb honks the horn, and Sid lugs a cooler down the front steps to the van. No way is Wain riding shotgun this time. The front seat is covered in an old beach towel and the backseat is buried under a crab trap. The van smells as if someone has set up a brewery in a fish-packing plant. Orange float vests are piled on top of coolers filled with empty bottles. Tangled ropes snake around yellow deck boots stuffed with rolled-up charts.

It's always like this when Caleb gets back from a charter. He just throws everything in the back of the van and sorts it out after he takes the clients to the pub for one last beer.

Sid heaves the cooler into the back, moving aside a pail with a dead fish in it.

“Can I chuck this?” he says, holding up the pail.

Caleb turns around, peers into the bucket and grimaces. “Forgot about that one. Let's dump it at the wharf.”

Sid climbs into the front seat and slams the door as Wain comes down the front stairs. He glares at Sid and yanks the crab trap off the backseat.

“It reeks in here,” he says.

“Welcome to my world,” Caleb says with a smile.

When they get to the boat, Caleb hands them both orange flotation vests. Sid puts his on without argument. He knows the rules.

“Life jackets are for pussies,” Wain says.

Caleb slips his arms into a vest. “So I must be a pussy,” he says. “Better a pussy in a life jacket than a drowned pussy, I always say. You want to go or not?”

Wain zips up his vest as Sid and Caleb prepare to leave the dock.

“Spent much time around boats, Wain?” Caleb asks.

“A bit,” Wain says.

“Rowboats,” Sid mutters.

“First and only rule is this,” Caleb continues. “The captain is always right.”

Wain snickers and salutes. Caleb raises an eyebrow at him. “Cast off then, sailor. Let's get this party started.”

They pull away from the wharf, heading for the strait. As they pass the islet in the mouth of the cove, Sid says, “I'm gonna catch some zees. Wake me up for lunch.”

Caleb nods. “We're going to head up to the Narrows, take a look at Ripple Rock—Elizabeth wants some pictures, even though there's nothing much to see—and then duck in behind Maud Island.”