Neighbourhood Watch by Rhonda Mullins (best feel good books txt) 📗

in her skin, don’t go, don’t leave me …

A scream, FUCK OUTTA HERE!

A child who runs off, flying, feet trapped in a woman’s shoes, makeup drawing channels down her face. A broken mother who crumbles inside then crosses back over the fifty metres, crying; like a salmon to its spawning ground she is going back to her life.

* * *

The skirt is too tight, dammit. She can’t get her fat ass in it anymore.

Louise sits down.

The phone rings.

‘Hello?’

‘( … )’

‘Yes, I know, it’s okay, I was just leaving!’

‘( … )’

‘In front? Well, I’ll find it if you wrote reserved on it.’

‘( … )’

‘See you soon.’

Hangs up. Collapses on the bed in her underwear.

She has a reserved seat.

She puts on a sweatsuit. It’s ugly, but she just has to keep her coat on over it and it won’t show. She has to at least put her hair up. Hair up looks good. Roxane must have some elastics.

Her daughter’s bedroom door squeaks.

Louise goes in. She hardly ever sets foot in there. Sober, at any rate. It’s nice. There are pictures on the walls. Sorts of castles – where on earth is that? It’s like Wonderland, with Alice and everything. She looks around. There are pictures, everywhere.

It’s covered, floor to ceiling.

Louise sits on her daughter’s bed. There’s a river stuck right on the door.

It’s relaxing, like …

She pulls back the covers of the unmade bed. She should really wash the sheets.

Beside the bed, books, and a box of tampons.

A box of tampons.

Ah.

Louise feels small.

She won’t cry.

Slowly, Louise stretches out, face in her daughter’s pillow, breathes in her scent.

Pulls the sheets up over her.

* * *

Night falls suddenly on the apartment block. On the whole street. Kevin and Steve are side by side at the window. Steve still smells like bleach from his new job, and Kevin likes it. They are looking down at the street together. The car is waiting. Mélissa gets in. They’re just waiting for the third kid, the youngest. They’re taking him. He’s crying.

‘I hope they put them in the same home at least.’

In silence, Steve takes his son’s warm hand in his.

* * *

Mélissa is tired. She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t yell. She’s just tired. Mathieu hid in the closet, under Mom’s skirts. They found him anyway.

He’s crying. Shh. Shh.

Sitting between her two little brothers in the back seat, she gently strokes them with her fingertips. The car starts.

Along the street, birds.

Mélissa would have liked them to take flight. Here, now, all the girls taking flight at the same time.

The car drives past them. Meg isn’t there.

Mélissa’s gaze meets the stork’s. They look into each other’s eyes.

Something like a sigh in her eyes of a child. The stork watches as Mélissa escapes. The stork watches Mélissa taking flight.

* * *

The violins resonate throughout the room. They are warming up the instruments like little living bodies. From the stage, kids are waving as familiar faces start to come in.

The yellow lights illuminate the space, illuminate Roxane, give her strength. The two seats are still empty, but Roxane does like the others and waves – greets her parents who aren’t there yet.

The teacher dressed as a conductor clears his throat and proudly introduces the ensemble.

‘Grades 5 and 6 will play for you tonight.’

It’s starting.

Not there.

They’ll be here.

Can’t miss it.

Not both of them.

Lots of snow.

Don’t get out much, walk slowly.

They’ll be here.

Roxane sits up straight, violin set on her shoulder, eyes staring into the crowd.

Anastasia is there – it’s okay it’s okay. Roxane holds the bow in her frozen hand.

It’s Vivaldi’s Winter, the two chairs are so empty in the middle of a full row, Winter, which Roxane hangs on to like her last life preserver. They’re not there.

They didn’t come. Roxane, hanging on to her violin, plunges into the storm. She can’t play. She doesn’t know from where, she doesn’t know for whom, around her every note tells the story of snowflakes, slush, and Christmas that never comes, each stroke of the bow makes a winter of ice and lonely bodies rain down on her. Roxane grips her violin tight, too tight.

‘You’re not playing, Roxane?’

Her teacher in her ear. Roxane stares at the room full of faces cheering on violins other than hers.

‘No. I don’t play anymore, sir.’

At the end of Winter, a string breaks.

The concert loses steam, peters out. They didn’t come and Roxane didn’t play.

The room applauds. They liked it, shower bravos on the little violinists.

Two chairs that stayed empty.

Roxane cuts through the crowd, flustered. The musicians fall into their parents’ arms. A boy in a tie that’s too big for him takes a cold carnation from an outstretched loving hand. At the back of the room, a father bends down to tie his daughter’s shoelaces. Roxane sees him: he is hiding so he doesn’t cry. Because the concert was beautiful. Roxane is hot, everything is blurry; she grips her bow, looks for Anastasia’s black eyes – looks for someone.

Roxane opens the door onto winter and runs into it.

The violin, like an extension of her body, stays glued to her hand. Roxane doesn’t want to drown.

Red snowflakes fall over Montreal.

The city is bleeding.

* * *

The square in front of the pawnshop is empty. There’s a piece of cardboard like a tombstone, traces of bodies imprinted on it. Here lived Kathy and Kelly.

Passersby notice a void, but don’t know where it comes from.

By tomorrow they’ll be used to it.

* * *

Roxane heads straight into the cold. Dry squeak of her soles on the snow. The street is empty. As if it were a normal evening. A nothing evening. Only the prostitutes, like ink stains stretching toward the sky, are a small reminder of life. Roxane stops across the street from them. Matchstick women in their glass globe. Long and frail, their black silhouettes are like eyelashes on winter. Ladies of the night, meagre prey. Roxane looks at them. Would have liked to gently shake their glass orb and make thousands of snowflakes dance around them.

Slowly,