Kalila by Rosemary Nixon Page A

say.
    Don’t we all, sighs LaFlèche. We sit at the window of the Heartland Café, this winner and me. This redheaded stranger. This woman with the ten-stroke. With the trump card. This woman who defied them all and marched her baby home. Brodie has taken his parents to the mountains. The aroma of bean soup steams the room. Beneath it, the scent of soaps and candles from the adjoining shop. I stare at my face reflected in the steamed-up window. Now that I have the woman here, I can’t think what to say. I’d hoped to see the child, but she left her at her mom’s. Teething. Screeches bloody murder. She’s a pain in a restaurant too.
    I go to court Monday. LaFlèche snaps a fingernail. Mace wants time-sharing with the dog. Baxter’s my dog.
    A woman says earnestly at the adjoining table, Denial is a form of protection.
    I twist to peer at her. That’s what they say. They say that at the hospital. How did you do it? I ask LaFlèche.
    Mag, mind if I call you that? I’ll be frank. LaFlèche digs muffin from between her braces. It isn’t pretty. We’re not talking the Gerber baby dying.
    I squash a crumb. But you didn’t lose — I haven’t —
    LaFlèche flaps a hand and flops back in her chair. Dead easy. Two-step program. One. Say fuck off to the doctors, and Two. Cart your kid home.
    It’s as easy as that? And she’s doing all right?
    Eats like a lumberjack. Melissa’s fine. For Christ’s sake, hospitals carry disease. Once you’re in, you’re up shit creek. Events escalate, Mag, until you’re one, LaFlèche makes quotation marks in air, of those! Suddenly a woman blames any occurrence in the next thirty years on having lost that baby. I gained weight. You know it all started when I lost that baby. I lost interest in my job when I lost the baby. In the end we lost the house, you know. Spent all our money on the baby. Lost. Lost, LaFlèche waves a muffin, I turned lazy, fat, dull, I had no business sense. Maggie, I know you’re skinny. I’m just saying. Losers. You’re on that road. I need to clean my cupboards. Do you want your fortune told?
    People keep opening the door. I’m getting chilled.
    LaFlèche takes another bite, says, I swing open a cupboard door to grab a can of soup and everything spills out. The mess’ll kill me. It was me who named him Baxter. Melissa? Gained three pounds. She’s eating like a pig. LaFlèche tips her wrist. Got to skedaddle, honeybunch. Mom goes to work at three.
    I’m going back to the hospital this afternoon, I say.
    I tell you, Mag? My mom named me LaFlèche cuz I was conceived in the back seat of a Chevy II in the gravel pit outside LaFlèche, Saskatchewan. Mace used to call me Flesh. LaFlèche sucks cider up her straw. Did you know that dragonflies are promiscuous? Like totally.
    You had slight scoliosis as a child, a doctor said once, fingers climbing my eleven-year-old spine .
    Will it get worse?
    The curvature is very small. You’re lucky .
    He said, You’re lucky .
    So Melissa’s perfectly okay? She’s perfectly okay?
    She’s hunky-dory. Fat. She has three teeth. Forgets she ever saw a hospital. LaFlèche is heading back to the counter for a raspberry yogurt muffin to go. She holds up two redpimpled ones. I signal no.
    Right, whatever, LaFlèche calls.
    She bursts back to the table, undoes her coat, dabs butter, talks lawyers and dogs.
    â€¦ was drowning, Maggie, LaFlèche smudges pink crumbs. Both marriages. Suffocating. I was, she leans forward, palelipped, I was breathing water. LaFlèche crumples her napkin, rises.
    I say, My cupboards are in order. It’s my in-laws that need organizing.
    If I was on Prozac, LaFlèche throws her scarf over her shoulder, maybe I’d like my job. Did you see the fire on Brisbois? A laundromat. Hell, fire, Maggie. I need fire. She takes a long last drag of apple cider, head thrown