Karin knew she had already sounded and reacted suspiciously just by the mere act of providing her name to the investigator.
“Karin Hoffman…actually, Rasmussen, although I went back to using my maiden name, Hoffman, after the divorce. But I never formally changed my name so, legally, I guess I’m still Rasmussen. Even though I hate using that name…”
Shut up, shut the fuck up, she told herself.
She didn’t know how long she had sat there, alone. It seemed as though hours had passed since the investigator left the room, saying that another one of his colleagues would be in to ask her more questions. She looked around the dingy, grey room and knew that, likely in the corner of the ceiling tiles, a camera watched her every move. She had seen this sort of room hundreds, maybe even thousands of times on TV, on all the true crime and forensics documentaries she religiously watched every morning before breakfast, before her first shower of the day. She was surprised, though, that her chair and the chair sitting on the other side of the table, as well as the table itself, weren’t screwed to the floor.
That can’t be smart, she said to herself. Any irate suspect could grab something and crack it over the head of one of these cops, bust out of here in a blaze of glory. But who would be dumb enough to do that? she wondered. Talk about looking suspicious…
She heard a creak at the door and became paralyzed, waiting for the door handle to turn, and then realized that her knee had not stopped bouncing since the investigator left. Had she been involuntarily twitching the entire time? When the handle remained still, she took a deep breath in, leaned against the back of her chair, interlaced her fingers on her lap, closed her eyes, and did what she normally did when she went for her daily marathon runs on her treadmill: count her breathing. One inhale, two exhale, three inhale, four exhale…
She didn’t know how many times she had reached 100, but she would start over again at one, and kept herself in a meditative stance, until her mind wandered.
She wondered how three friends, so-called “normal” and “average” women—“housewives” she cringed, imagining how the newspapers and media would describe them—could commit an act of, what? Barbarity? Honour? What would they call it, she wondered.
And then, like all those documentaries about serial killers, wife killers, and thrill killers, she went back to her childhood to imagine what the TV shows would depict from her past, and in her friends’ pasts, to explain what had happened. Snapshots of class photos, images of the town they grew up in all those decades ago, as it appeared back then, and even of her own family in one of the many stilted family portraits taken during Christmas or someone’s birthday flooded her brain and flashed on the TV screen in her mind’s eye.
Trisha and Alaina, she thought. We were just kids once…little girls. She sighed. Little girls who probably knew better then than we do now.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Chapter Two
Alaina’s family had recently moved across the street from Karin’s childhood home. On the morning when Karin first saw Alaina, they were small girls, not even in school yet. Alaina, a tiny girl for her age, had long, straight black hair with bangs that dissected her face directly above her eyebrows in a perfect solid line. Her mother had taken as much care cutting Alaina’s hair as she had with bathing and dressing her every morning, ensuring that her daughter was never seen without coordinated or complementary tops and bottoms.
That morning, Alaina received her mother’s reluctant permission to play outside but she was forbidden to leave the boundary of the front driveway. Alaina pushed that allowance to its limits and sat at the edge of the driveway, scouring through the pebbles and mud at the base of the curb, through whatever remained in the street gutter from the previous days’ incessant rainfall.
That same sunny, spring morning, after Karin dressed herself in the jeans and sweater she had worn the day before, she let herself out for her usual after-breakfast routine: stroll around the house, examine the newly blossoming flowers, take note of the garden’s growth, spy on the neighbours and their yards, upright any overturned beetles, and put half-desiccated worms squirming on the concrete back in the garden. When Karin’s routine found her at the front of the house to conclude her morning with drawing pictures on the sidewalk using nothing but a stick and the puddles, there she espied Alaina, similarly engaged by things on the ground.
Alaina looked up and watched as Karin fearlessly walked off the curb of her front yard and right up to her.
Alaina looked around—had her mother seen? Would her mother see that it was this other girl—this strange looking girl with the white hair, the absence of eyebrows, and blue blue eyes—and not she, who had crossed the line?
“I’m five, almost six. How old are you?” Karin asked.
Alaina held three fingers up on one hand and one on the other. Alaina had just celebrated her fourth birthday the week prior, and almost forgot to add that extra one to the usual three.
“My name is Karin.”
“I’m Alaina.”
Karin was so amazed at Alaina’s dark eyes, her long and thick eyelashes, that she barely registered how much darker Alaina’s skin was compared to her own. Karin perceived this difference as proof that Alaina was special, unique, and, above all, intriguing.
“What’cha doin’?”
Alaina was pushing at a wriggling worm with a pebble, afraid to touch the worm directly but curious at how it recoiled when she grazed it and then how far it stretched itself when Alaina withdrew the stone.
“You’re not supposed to do that.” Karin picked the worm up and threw it in the grass. Alaina’s eyes widened. “It’ll die if it’s not in the soil.”
“Die?”
“Die.” Karin wondered if Alaina, who seemed much tinier than a four-year-old should be, might be slow. “Stop breathing.”
“Hold its breath?”
“No, no.” Karin looked around. She picked up an ant, put it on the ground in front of Alaina, and stomped on it.
“See. Now it’s dead. It’s not moving.”
Alaina looked back to where Karin threw the worm.
“Worms are good. They help the soil.” Her mother had told her this. She didn’t know how or why they were beneficial to her mother’s garden. “Ants are a nuisance.” Karin wasn’t sure what her mother meant by this last word either when her mother said it the day she spotted an ant on the kitchen counter. She only knew it was something negative, something irritating—and when her mother called her that, she knew it was time to steer clear.
A woman’s voice sounded behind Alaina from inside the house. “Alaina! Come inside this instant!”
Alaina ran inside, beaming.
“What did I tell you? You were supposed to stay in the yard.”
Alaina thought she had. “I made a friend,” she happily said.
“Yes, I saw. She looked filthy.” Even at 20 feet, Mrs. Holmes could see how dirty Karin’s fingernails were against her white skin, the grass stains on her knees, what looked to be a spaghetti sauce stain on the front of her sweater. Karin had also neglected to wash her face that morning after breakfast and still had a ring of purple at the corners of her mouth from the drink of grape Kool-Aid she had snuck out of the fridge when her mother wasn’t looking.
“She’s from across the street. Can I see her tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.” Mrs. Holmes tsk-tsked as she led Alaina back to the washroom for a thorough hand scrubbing.
~ ~ ~
Karin skipped back inside, passed her mother doing laundry, went to the front room, turned on “Mr. Dress-Up” on the CBC, and kept her eyes on the window, hoping to see Alaina, the tiny dark girl, again.
~ ~ ~
Their friendship formed quickly. Both were the youngest in their families. Karin’s siblings were already in high school while Alaina’s were entirely out of the house. Alaina explained that she was adopted.
“What does that mean?” Karin asked.
“It means my mom and dad picked me when I was a baby. They’re not really my mom and dad. That’s why I don’t look like them.”
This was patently true—Alaina was shorter than any four-year-old Karin had ever seen, whereas Alaina’s parents were tall, far taller than Karin’s parent. Alaina also had dark eyes and hair so black that it was almost blue, in strong contrast to the lighter brown colour of her parents. Her skin was also darker than any tan Karin ever had by the end of August—but apparently not dark enough for Karin’s parents to positively identify her ethnicity and to question Karin about it. In fact, any time Karin mentioned Alaina, they would debate her nationality (“Hindu?” “Indian?” “I think she looks Mexican.” “No. Maybe Arabian…”).
Karin had heard of orphans, like Cinderella, and that was, in fact, her greatest fear. “Are your real parents dead?”
Alaina’s mother walked by her bedroom just as Karin uttered this question.
“What are you two doing?”
They startled, bowed their heads, and struggled with the outfits on their Barbie dolls. “We’re playing,” Alaina whispered.
Alaina’s mother crossed her arms, and then shot a look at Karin. “So, Karin. Alaina tells me you’re Catholic.”
To Karin, Alaina’s mother looked like a type of fairy tale raptor with her big bony nose and elongated face. Her arms and fingers could easily have been covered in feathers or scales at one time and all that was left was thin, translucent skin. She was old, older even than her own mother who, compared to other parents, already seemed ancient.
“Yes, we go to St. Mary’s Church on Sundays. We’re Roman Catholic,” although Karin didn’t know what that distinction meant, why some people simply said “Catholic”, while her mother always said “Roman Catholic”.
“I would kindly ask that you not talk about Jesus to Alaina.”
Karin recalled their earlier conversation, her comparative religion discourse with Alaina. She had tried to figure out the differences between their respective churches after she saw Alaina leave for church on a Sunday morning at the same time as she and her family. She had looked for Alaina amongst the parishioners and only later learned that they went to a different church. A Christian one.
“We believe in Jesus, too,” Karin had said. “We believe Jesus is everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” Alaina asked. “Like on your head?”
Karin laughed. It had sounded silly. She guessed this was the offending conversation Alaina’s mother alluded to.
“Your mother doesn’t like me,” she whispered to Alaina when her mother walked out of the doorway and down the hall, back to the kitchen.
“She thinks you’re dirty.”
Karin looked at her hands. Yes, they were a bit dirty, she conceded to herself. Oh well, she thought, and kept on playing. Still, at dinner, she couldn’t help but tell her parents how Mrs. Holmes thought she was a dirty Catholic. From her parents’ reaction, she knew that her and Alaina’s parents would never be friends.
That morning, Alaina received her mother’s reluctant permission to play outside but she was forbidden to leave the boundary of the front driveway. Alaina pushed that allowance to its limits and sat at the edge of the driveway, scouring through the pebbles and mud at the base of the curb, through whatever remained in the street gutter from the previous days’ incessant rainfall.
That same sunny, spring morning, after Karin dressed herself in the jeans and sweater she had worn the day before, she let herself out for her usual after-breakfast routine: stroll around the house, examine the newly blossoming flowers, take note of the garden’s growth, spy on the neighbours and their yards, upright any overturned beetles, and put half-desiccated worms squirming on the concrete back in the garden. When Karin’s routine found her at the front of the house to conclude her morning with drawing pictures on the sidewalk using nothing but a stick and the puddles, there she espied Alaina, similarly engaged by things on the ground.
Alaina looked up and watched as Karin fearlessly walked off the curb of her front yard and right up to her.
Alaina looked around—had her mother seen? Would her mother see that it was this other girl—this strange looking girl with the white hair, the absence of eyebrows, and blue blue eyes—and not she, who had crossed the line?
“I’m five, almost six. How old are you?” Karin asked.
Alaina held three fingers up on one hand and one on the other. Alaina had just celebrated her fourth birthday the week prior, and almost forgot to add that extra one to the usual three.
“My name is Karin.”
“I’m Alaina.”
Karin was so amazed at Alaina’s dark eyes, her long and thick eyelashes, that she barely registered how much darker Alaina’s skin was compared to her own. Karin perceived this difference as proof that Alaina was special, unique, and, above all, intriguing.
“What’cha doin’?”
Alaina was pushing at a wriggling worm with a pebble, afraid to touch the worm directly but curious at how it recoiled when she grazed it and then how far it stretched itself when Alaina withdrew the stone.
“You’re not supposed to do that.” Karin picked the worm up and threw it in the grass. Alaina’s eyes widened. “It’ll die if it’s not in the soil.”
“Die?”
“Die.” Karin wondered if Alaina, who seemed much tinier than a four-year-old should be, might be slow. “Stop breathing.”
“Hold its breath?”
“No, no.” Karin looked around. She picked up an ant, put it on the ground in front of Alaina, and stomped on it.
“See. Now it’s dead. It’s not moving.”
Alaina looked back to where Karin threw the worm.
“Worms are good. They help the soil.” Her mother had told her this. She didn’t know how or why they were beneficial to her mother’s garden. “Ants are a nuisance.” Karin wasn’t sure what her mother meant by this last word either when her mother said it the day she spotted an ant on the kitchen counter. She only knew it was something negative, something irritating—and when her mother called her that, she knew it was time to steer clear.
A woman’s voice sounded behind Alaina from inside the house. “Alaina! Come inside this instant!”
Alaina ran inside, beaming.
“What did I tell you? You were supposed to stay in the yard.”
Alaina thought she had. “I made a friend,” she happily said.
“Yes, I saw. She looked filthy.” Even at 20 feet, Mrs. Holmes could see how dirty Karin’s fingernails were against her white skin, the grass stains on her knees, what looked to be a spaghetti sauce stain on the front of her sweater. Karin had also neglected to wash her face that morning after breakfast and still had a ring of purple at the corners of her mouth from the drink of grape Kool-Aid she had snuck out of the fridge when her mother wasn’t looking.
“She’s from across the street. Can I see her tomorrow?”
“We’ll see.” Mrs. Holmes tsk-tsked as she led Alaina back to the washroom for a thorough hand scrubbing.
~ ~ ~
Karin skipped back inside, passed her mother doing laundry, went to the front room, turned on “Mr. Dress-Up” on the CBC, and kept her eyes on the window, hoping to see Alaina, the tiny dark girl, again.
~ ~ ~
Their friendship formed quickly. Both were the youngest in their families. Karin’s siblings were already in high school while Alaina’s were entirely out of the house. Alaina explained that she was adopted.
“What does that mean?” Karin asked.
“It means my mom and dad picked me when I was a baby. They’re not really my mom and dad. That’s why I don’t look like them.”
This was patently true—Alaina was shorter than any four-year-old Karin had ever seen, whereas Alaina’s parents were tall, far taller than Karin’s parent. Alaina also had dark eyes and hair so black that it was almost blue, in strong contrast to the lighter brown colour of her parents. Her skin was also darker than any tan Karin ever had by the end of August—but apparently not dark enough for Karin’s parents to positively identify her ethnicity and to question Karin about it. In fact, any time Karin mentioned Alaina, they would debate her nationality (“Hindu?” “Indian?” “I think she looks Mexican.” “No. Maybe Arabian…”).
Karin had heard of orphans, like Cinderella, and that was, in fact, her greatest fear. “Are your real parents dead?”
Alaina’s mother walked by her bedroom just as Karin uttered this question.
“What are you two doing?”
They startled, bowed their heads, and struggled with the outfits on their Barbie dolls. “We’re playing,” Alaina whispered.
Alaina’s mother crossed her arms, and then shot a look at Karin. “So, Karin. Alaina tells me you’re Catholic.”
To Karin, Alaina’s mother looked like a type of fairy tale raptor with her big bony nose and elongated face. Her arms and fingers could easily have been covered in feathers or scales at one time and all that was left was thin, translucent skin. She was old, older even than her own mother who, compared to other parents, already seemed ancient.
“Yes, we go to St. Mary’s Church on Sundays. We’re Roman Catholic,” although Karin didn’t know what that distinction meant, why some people simply said “Catholic”, while her mother always said “Roman Catholic”.
“I would kindly ask that you not talk about Jesus to Alaina.”
Karin recalled their earlier conversation, her comparative religion discourse with Alaina. She had tried to figure out the differences between their respective churches after she saw Alaina leave for church on a Sunday morning at the same time as she and her family. She had looked for Alaina amongst the parishioners and only later learned that they went to a different church. A Christian one.
“We believe in Jesus, too,” Karin had said. “We believe Jesus is everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” Alaina asked. “Like on your head?”
Karin laughed. It had sounded silly. She guessed this was the offending conversation Alaina’s mother alluded to.
“Your mother doesn’t like me,” she whispered to Alaina when her mother walked out of the doorway and down the hall, back to the kitchen.
“She thinks you’re dirty.”
Karin looked at her hands. Yes, they were a bit dirty, she conceded to herself. Oh well, she thought, and kept on playing. Still, at dinner, she couldn’t help but tell her parents how Mrs. Holmes thought she was a dirty Catholic. From her parents’ reaction, she knew that her and Alaina’s parents would never be friends.
Chapter Three
If Mrs. Holmes frightened Karin to the core, Mr. Holmes positively froze her blood. He was a tall, balding man with a slicked down comb-over of what was left of his sandy brown hair, who stood more erect than Karin had ever seen anyone stand. It was as though a metal rod had been drilled through his head and down his spine—even when he ran. On Karin’s self-promoted role as neighbourhood sentinel positioned at her living room window, she would occasionally see Mr. Holmes leave Alaina’s house for his irregular and infrequent jog in his close-fitting red Adidas track suit. At those moments, his legs appeared to move independent of his body due to his knees erratically jerking unnecessarily high, while his back and head remained straight as a board.
“Look at that freak,” Karin’s teenaged brother Terry once said, after asking Karin what she was staring at. “He looks like John Cleese doing the goose step.”
“Who’s that?” Karin asked.
“Monty Python.”
“Huh?”
“Oh never mind. What a poofster…”
Karin shrugged as her brother left, and she continued to stare down the street, knowing that Mr. Holmes would be back soon. His jogs never lasted that long. When he came walking back home, it was as though he was still connected to a string that jerked him straight up and down, as though God Himself was his puppet master and had sucked all the breath out of him.
God was on Mr. Holmes’ side, Karin was sure of that. He was an elder in his church, almost like some sort of priest, it seemed—except the priests in their church weren’t called priests; they were other names that Karin wasn’t familiar with. Mr. Holmes played the organ and directed the choir so, regardless of what his formal title was, Karin imagined him to be at the centre of his church’s attention.
Karin knew Mr. Holmes was a music teacher, but she sensed that he had many other jobs and did other things with his music. She only knew for certain that, in addition to his church and choir duties, he taught piano in the basement of Alaina’s house.
The basement was Karin’s favourite place in Alaina’s house, second only to Alaina’s bedroom. Karin knew that Alaina wasn’t allowed to come over to her house—Alaina said it was because she wasn’t allowed to cross the street because of passing cars, but Karin believed it was more than that. Theirs was a quiet residential street in a small town of less than 30,000 residents, where one would only see the occasional vehicle idling home at a time when most households only had one vehicle, if that. Karin recognized that Mr. and Mrs. Holmes disliked her, but she also sensed how much Alaina’s parents simply didn’t trust Alaina to be free, to be out of their sight.
Karin didn’t mind. Compared to Alaina’s house, Karin’s was utterly devoid of kid-friendly items. Hers was a very utilitarian household run by earthy, practical, hard-working Germans. She had no benefit of hand-me-downs from her older siblings as any toys they had, which were few and far between in any event, were long gone, either destroyed or sold in one of the annual garage sales her parents held every April. Karin’s small bedroom was always tidy, with the only perceptible toy being one stuffed teddy bear—but even he was tucked away behind her pillow in his yearlong winter den, and kept out of sight.
Alaina’s room, on the other hand, was full of toys—fun toys, educational toys, all sorts of board games, puzzles, a chalkboard, music in the form of grooved, plastic disks whose spinning speed was controlled with a crank. “Edelweiss” could become a rollicking boat chase on the Danube or the saddest song known to man—or at least to two little girls.
But then there was the basement. Ah, the basement! Down the brocade-carpeted stairs, to a darkened corridor, and to the left, they’d open the door, and there it was—the music room.
One black grand piano sat in the middle of the room, in all its glory. Karin had never seen anything so beautiful the first time she laid her eyes and hands on it. It was shiny, smooth, and colossal. When Alaina played middle C, the room expanded around Karin as it breathed in the roundness of the tone.
“We can play with it, but don’t hit the keys too hard.”
Also in the room was an older, well-worn upright piano, a drum set, various other percussion instruments, a guitar and, behind a glass case, a violin.
But it was the grand piano that always drew Karin and Alaina in. Alternating between who played the high and low notes was who played the pedals underneath. Other times, the piano was a fort in the jungle and the drums sounded an approaching elephant, or a ship lost at sea in a booming thunderstorm.
In addition to the no-smashing of the keyboard rule, the most strictly enforced rule was that no one, not even Mrs. Holmes, was allowed in the music room, and not even in the basement at all, during Mr. Holmes’ private lessons.
Karin would see from her living room window an endless procession of boys and girls being dropped off and picked up by their parents, music books tucked under their arms. She knew that Alaina’s house—and Alaina herself—was off limits at these times. Karin had been accused of making too much noise, and even of getting Alaina too “wound up” and too “excited” while playing in Alaina’s room upstairs, far away from the music…
One day, while playing with Alaina in her room, Karin received one of the earliest shocks in her young life. Mr. Holmes invited her to stay for dinner.
“Uh, OK. I’ll go tell my mom.”
“Why don’t you just call?” he suggested, smiling down at her with an expression Karin did not entirely trust but dared not challenge.
So Karin did. It had been the first time Karin heard her mother’s voice in a phone receiver, and it sounded strange, hesitant. Karin was confused, and she felt sick to her stomach. She felt obliged to stay due to the extremely unusual welcoming extended by Alaina’s father, but also felt pulled to go home and remind her mother that she hadn’t abandoned her, that she would never allow herself to be adopted, like Alaina, by the Holmeses. She would later become familiar with this latter feeling. Guilt, it was called. And, although her mother gave her unenthusiastic permission, Karin wondered how she would have to pay for it later.
When Mrs. Holmes announced that dinner was ready, Karin, Alaina, and Mr. Holmes sat in the dining room while Mrs. Holmes brought in the dishes, one at a time. Karin wondered why they weren’t eating in the kitchen, as they did in her house, but realized that her house didn’t have an actual dining room to dine in. There was a definite foreignness about sitting in a room devoted solely to the act of eating. She looked at the small stained glass window, the only window of the room, and wondered what the point of it was—it was too high and too distorting to look through. Sitting with her back facing the living room, Karin felt a sense of claustrophobia, and she began to fidget. Mrs. Holmes’ frowns became more pronounced every time she’d deliver a dish.
Looking at the table, Karin was amazed at the number of forks and spoons and knives. She had no idea what the cylindrical cloth items were for. She picked hers up and then watched Alaina as she giggled, slid the ring off hers, and put the napkin on her lap.
In Karin’s house, she and her family ate at the small table in the kitchen, all five crammed around, rubbing elbows and bumping knees. It was, in all senses, a free-for-all as soon as the pots and bowls hit the table surface. At Alaina’s, she knew things would be different and didn’t know how to react as Mrs. Holmes brought the food in. She watched Alaina, nervously, for cues. After Mrs. Holmes sat down, the food dishes were passed around clockwise and methodically, one at a time. Karin was frightened to drop anything and, because she was so afraid, managed to drop a little bit of everything and seemed to hit the porcelain with the serving spoons louder than everyone else until Mrs. Holmes, scowling, took over the doling process for Karin’s plate.
With food on everyone’s plate, Karin dug in, since that’s what one did with food, but she immediately sensed that everyone stared at her—Mr. Holmes, in particular. With his chin resting on the knuckles of his interlaced fingers, he smiled at Karin.
“Didn’t we forget something?”
Karin sat there, with a mouthful of French fries. She looked at Alaina. Alaina also sat there with her fingers interlaced.
Karin put her fork down.
“You don’t say grace at your house?”
Karin swallowed and winced while the clot of half-chewed fried potato struggled to go down her throat.
Mrs. Holmes tsk-tsked loudly, then bowed her head.
Karin heard how blessed the food was and how thankful to God Mr. Holmes was for it. “And bless and forgive all those who do not recognize or acknowledge Thine Divinity. Amen.”
Karin knew the “amen” part—she said it plenty on Sundays in church. She wanted to say so, but remembered Mrs. Holmes’ previous chastisement of the mere mention of Jesus to Alaina.
Then she looked at the food, seemingly for the first time. She almost said, “What the hell is this?” as her father often did, jokingly, to tease her mother. But she knew this was no time for jokes and, with the exception of Alaina, this audience was not easily amused.
But there it was. Apart from the recognizable French fries, it was an alien assortment of what was passed off as nourishment. Next to a runny mound of green vomit sat what looked to Karin to be a fried piece of dough, much like the dessert her mother sometimes made—but her mother’s concoction would be coated with sugar and was much smaller than the large mystery fritter sitting before her.
How could this food be blessed? she wondered. And what was Mr. Holmes so thankful to God for? His God must also be of the punishing sort, as He was in her church, she intuited. Again, she wanted to point out the similarity, to convince them of a bond, that she and other Catholics were not so different from the Holmes clan after all, but her senses were overloaded by the strange taste and texture of the victuals.
Mrs. Holmes saw Karin’s pained expression.
“You don’t like mushy peas?”
“These are peas? Are they supposed to be mushy?”
Alaina giggled. Her parents shot her a simultaneous warning look. Karin stepped in to protect her young friend. Pointing with her fork at the fried mystery on her plate, she asked Mrs. Holmes to identify it.
“It’s fish and chips. You’ve never had it?”
Karin looked at her plate with increased confusion. She didn’t see any fish, the usual poached steak with the scaly skin that she had in her house, or chips for that matter—which, to Karin, were only those thin, crispy wafers she’d pull out of a plastic bag and couldn’t decide if she preferred the salt and vinegar variety better than the barbecue flavoured ones. “I’ve never had fish and chips like this before.”
Alaina giggled again.
“My mom always takes the bones out for me.”
Mr. Holmes smiled with half-closed eyes. “There are no bones in this fish.”
Karin’s eyes widened. “What kind of fish do these people eat?” she wondered. As she imagined what boneless fish looked like in the sea, she thought she should sample just a small amount of the mutant fish before committing herself to eating the whole thing. With her combined inexperience of handling a dinner knife and the hardened dough at the rounded edge that she hadn’t fully pierced with her fork before forcing the knife down into the plate, the fish jumped off her plate and plopped in front of Mrs. Holmes. Karin’s mouth dropped while Alaina couldn’t control her laughter.
Mrs. Holmes stabbed the piece of fish with her fork, shot up from her seat, leaned over the table and, with fierce alacrity, cut the crust and the entire fish into small, broken pieces. Karin watched in horror as the green vomit oozed all over her plate due to the violent shaking. Now everything was contaminated, and the toxicity of the so-called peas seeped into the one safe food—the chips that looked and tasted very much like French fries.
Mr. Holmes observed his wife with an unusual expression. It was the first time he had seen her remove her bottom from her chair in the middle of a meal without the intention of either getting more food or clearing the table. Her exasperation was clear, and climaxed when Karin asked for—and was abruptly denied—some ketchup.
Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, didn’t seem to Karin as though he wanted to banish her forever from Alaina’s life. No, his desire was more ominous. He wanted to convert her, to instil right thinking in the impressionable child.
“Karin, how would you like to join us at church on Sunday? Alaina keeps asking if you could come with us.”
“Oh yeah, can you, can you?” Alaina asked excitedly, clapping her hands.
Karin looked at her, then her father, her mother, and then at the runny green slop on her plate bleeding Martian blood into the alleged chips and freakish fish. She had the distinct impression that this was not a normal, run-of-the-mill invitation to a social outing but she could not formulate words in her brain to fully describe what that distinct impression was or why she felt so uneasy.
This became clearer to her when she later asked her parents for their permission.
When she tried to explain her parents’ lack of permission to a grinning Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, despite Alaina’s tears, she understood what her initial impression was trying to tell her: Mr. and Mrs. Holmes had set her up. They hadn’t really wanted her to join them at church—why, she was too dirty for their church. They only wanted to prove that point to Alaina.
Karin’s presence in the Holmes’ home decreased after that. Karin suddenly found that she had other things that she would rather do, like play with some of the other kids on the block, some of whom she also played with after catechism—in particular, her good friend Trisha whose parents were openly dysfunctional in the verbal abuse they unashamedly doled out on one another and, therefore, were far more appealing than the Holmeses—play time with Trisha meant play time was outside and as far away from over-bearing and ever-watchful parents as possible.
The last time Karin did play at Alaina’s, however, proved to be more eventful than Karin could have been prepared for—even if it took many years for her to fully understand what had taken place.
“Look at that freak,” Karin’s teenaged brother Terry once said, after asking Karin what she was staring at. “He looks like John Cleese doing the goose step.”
“Who’s that?” Karin asked.
“Monty Python.”
“Huh?”
“Oh never mind. What a poofster…”
Karin shrugged as her brother left, and she continued to stare down the street, knowing that Mr. Holmes would be back soon. His jogs never lasted that long. When he came walking back home, it was as though he was still connected to a string that jerked him straight up and down, as though God Himself was his puppet master and had sucked all the breath out of him.
God was on Mr. Holmes’ side, Karin was sure of that. He was an elder in his church, almost like some sort of priest, it seemed—except the priests in their church weren’t called priests; they were other names that Karin wasn’t familiar with. Mr. Holmes played the organ and directed the choir so, regardless of what his formal title was, Karin imagined him to be at the centre of his church’s attention.
Karin knew Mr. Holmes was a music teacher, but she sensed that he had many other jobs and did other things with his music. She only knew for certain that, in addition to his church and choir duties, he taught piano in the basement of Alaina’s house.
The basement was Karin’s favourite place in Alaina’s house, second only to Alaina’s bedroom. Karin knew that Alaina wasn’t allowed to come over to her house—Alaina said it was because she wasn’t allowed to cross the street because of passing cars, but Karin believed it was more than that. Theirs was a quiet residential street in a small town of less than 30,000 residents, where one would only see the occasional vehicle idling home at a time when most households only had one vehicle, if that. Karin recognized that Mr. and Mrs. Holmes disliked her, but she also sensed how much Alaina’s parents simply didn’t trust Alaina to be free, to be out of their sight.
Karin didn’t mind. Compared to Alaina’s house, Karin’s was utterly devoid of kid-friendly items. Hers was a very utilitarian household run by earthy, practical, hard-working Germans. She had no benefit of hand-me-downs from her older siblings as any toys they had, which were few and far between in any event, were long gone, either destroyed or sold in one of the annual garage sales her parents held every April. Karin’s small bedroom was always tidy, with the only perceptible toy being one stuffed teddy bear—but even he was tucked away behind her pillow in his yearlong winter den, and kept out of sight.
Alaina’s room, on the other hand, was full of toys—fun toys, educational toys, all sorts of board games, puzzles, a chalkboard, music in the form of grooved, plastic disks whose spinning speed was controlled with a crank. “Edelweiss” could become a rollicking boat chase on the Danube or the saddest song known to man—or at least to two little girls.
But then there was the basement. Ah, the basement! Down the brocade-carpeted stairs, to a darkened corridor, and to the left, they’d open the door, and there it was—the music room.
One black grand piano sat in the middle of the room, in all its glory. Karin had never seen anything so beautiful the first time she laid her eyes and hands on it. It was shiny, smooth, and colossal. When Alaina played middle C, the room expanded around Karin as it breathed in the roundness of the tone.
“We can play with it, but don’t hit the keys too hard.”
Also in the room was an older, well-worn upright piano, a drum set, various other percussion instruments, a guitar and, behind a glass case, a violin.
But it was the grand piano that always drew Karin and Alaina in. Alternating between who played the high and low notes was who played the pedals underneath. Other times, the piano was a fort in the jungle and the drums sounded an approaching elephant, or a ship lost at sea in a booming thunderstorm.
In addition to the no-smashing of the keyboard rule, the most strictly enforced rule was that no one, not even Mrs. Holmes, was allowed in the music room, and not even in the basement at all, during Mr. Holmes’ private lessons.
Karin would see from her living room window an endless procession of boys and girls being dropped off and picked up by their parents, music books tucked under their arms. She knew that Alaina’s house—and Alaina herself—was off limits at these times. Karin had been accused of making too much noise, and even of getting Alaina too “wound up” and too “excited” while playing in Alaina’s room upstairs, far away from the music…
One day, while playing with Alaina in her room, Karin received one of the earliest shocks in her young life. Mr. Holmes invited her to stay for dinner.
“Uh, OK. I’ll go tell my mom.”
“Why don’t you just call?” he suggested, smiling down at her with an expression Karin did not entirely trust but dared not challenge.
So Karin did. It had been the first time Karin heard her mother’s voice in a phone receiver, and it sounded strange, hesitant. Karin was confused, and she felt sick to her stomach. She felt obliged to stay due to the extremely unusual welcoming extended by Alaina’s father, but also felt pulled to go home and remind her mother that she hadn’t abandoned her, that she would never allow herself to be adopted, like Alaina, by the Holmeses. She would later become familiar with this latter feeling. Guilt, it was called. And, although her mother gave her unenthusiastic permission, Karin wondered how she would have to pay for it later.
When Mrs. Holmes announced that dinner was ready, Karin, Alaina, and Mr. Holmes sat in the dining room while Mrs. Holmes brought in the dishes, one at a time. Karin wondered why they weren’t eating in the kitchen, as they did in her house, but realized that her house didn’t have an actual dining room to dine in. There was a definite foreignness about sitting in a room devoted solely to the act of eating. She looked at the small stained glass window, the only window of the room, and wondered what the point of it was—it was too high and too distorting to look through. Sitting with her back facing the living room, Karin felt a sense of claustrophobia, and she began to fidget. Mrs. Holmes’ frowns became more pronounced every time she’d deliver a dish.
Looking at the table, Karin was amazed at the number of forks and spoons and knives. She had no idea what the cylindrical cloth items were for. She picked hers up and then watched Alaina as she giggled, slid the ring off hers, and put the napkin on her lap.
In Karin’s house, she and her family ate at the small table in the kitchen, all five crammed around, rubbing elbows and bumping knees. It was, in all senses, a free-for-all as soon as the pots and bowls hit the table surface. At Alaina’s, she knew things would be different and didn’t know how to react as Mrs. Holmes brought the food in. She watched Alaina, nervously, for cues. After Mrs. Holmes sat down, the food dishes were passed around clockwise and methodically, one at a time. Karin was frightened to drop anything and, because she was so afraid, managed to drop a little bit of everything and seemed to hit the porcelain with the serving spoons louder than everyone else until Mrs. Holmes, scowling, took over the doling process for Karin’s plate.
With food on everyone’s plate, Karin dug in, since that’s what one did with food, but she immediately sensed that everyone stared at her—Mr. Holmes, in particular. With his chin resting on the knuckles of his interlaced fingers, he smiled at Karin.
“Didn’t we forget something?”
Karin sat there, with a mouthful of French fries. She looked at Alaina. Alaina also sat there with her fingers interlaced.
Karin put her fork down.
“You don’t say grace at your house?”
Karin swallowed and winced while the clot of half-chewed fried potato struggled to go down her throat.
Mrs. Holmes tsk-tsked loudly, then bowed her head.
Karin heard how blessed the food was and how thankful to God Mr. Holmes was for it. “And bless and forgive all those who do not recognize or acknowledge Thine Divinity. Amen.”
Karin knew the “amen” part—she said it plenty on Sundays in church. She wanted to say so, but remembered Mrs. Holmes’ previous chastisement of the mere mention of Jesus to Alaina.
Then she looked at the food, seemingly for the first time. She almost said, “What the hell is this?” as her father often did, jokingly, to tease her mother. But she knew this was no time for jokes and, with the exception of Alaina, this audience was not easily amused.
But there it was. Apart from the recognizable French fries, it was an alien assortment of what was passed off as nourishment. Next to a runny mound of green vomit sat what looked to Karin to be a fried piece of dough, much like the dessert her mother sometimes made—but her mother’s concoction would be coated with sugar and was much smaller than the large mystery fritter sitting before her.
How could this food be blessed? she wondered. And what was Mr. Holmes so thankful to God for? His God must also be of the punishing sort, as He was in her church, she intuited. Again, she wanted to point out the similarity, to convince them of a bond, that she and other Catholics were not so different from the Holmes clan after all, but her senses were overloaded by the strange taste and texture of the victuals.
Mrs. Holmes saw Karin’s pained expression.
“You don’t like mushy peas?”
“These are peas? Are they supposed to be mushy?”
Alaina giggled. Her parents shot her a simultaneous warning look. Karin stepped in to protect her young friend. Pointing with her fork at the fried mystery on her plate, she asked Mrs. Holmes to identify it.
“It’s fish and chips. You’ve never had it?”
Karin looked at her plate with increased confusion. She didn’t see any fish, the usual poached steak with the scaly skin that she had in her house, or chips for that matter—which, to Karin, were only those thin, crispy wafers she’d pull out of a plastic bag and couldn’t decide if she preferred the salt and vinegar variety better than the barbecue flavoured ones. “I’ve never had fish and chips like this before.”
Alaina giggled again.
“My mom always takes the bones out for me.”
Mr. Holmes smiled with half-closed eyes. “There are no bones in this fish.”
Karin’s eyes widened. “What kind of fish do these people eat?” she wondered. As she imagined what boneless fish looked like in the sea, she thought she should sample just a small amount of the mutant fish before committing herself to eating the whole thing. With her combined inexperience of handling a dinner knife and the hardened dough at the rounded edge that she hadn’t fully pierced with her fork before forcing the knife down into the plate, the fish jumped off her plate and plopped in front of Mrs. Holmes. Karin’s mouth dropped while Alaina couldn’t control her laughter.
Mrs. Holmes stabbed the piece of fish with her fork, shot up from her seat, leaned over the table and, with fierce alacrity, cut the crust and the entire fish into small, broken pieces. Karin watched in horror as the green vomit oozed all over her plate due to the violent shaking. Now everything was contaminated, and the toxicity of the so-called peas seeped into the one safe food—the chips that looked and tasted very much like French fries.
Mr. Holmes observed his wife with an unusual expression. It was the first time he had seen her remove her bottom from her chair in the middle of a meal without the intention of either getting more food or clearing the table. Her exasperation was clear, and climaxed when Karin asked for—and was abruptly denied—some ketchup.
Mr. Holmes, on the other hand, didn’t seem to Karin as though he wanted to banish her forever from Alaina’s life. No, his desire was more ominous. He wanted to convert her, to instil right thinking in the impressionable child.
“Karin, how would you like to join us at church on Sunday? Alaina keeps asking if you could come with us.”
“Oh yeah, can you, can you?” Alaina asked excitedly, clapping her hands.
Karin looked at her, then her father, her mother, and then at the runny green slop on her plate bleeding Martian blood into the alleged chips and freakish fish. She had the distinct impression that this was not a normal, run-of-the-mill invitation to a social outing but she could not formulate words in her brain to fully describe what that distinct impression was or why she felt so uneasy.
This became clearer to her when she later asked her parents for their permission.
When she tried to explain her parents’ lack of permission to a grinning Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, despite Alaina’s tears, she understood what her initial impression was trying to tell her: Mr. and Mrs. Holmes had set her up. They hadn’t really wanted her to join them at church—why, she was too dirty for their church. They only wanted to prove that point to Alaina.
Karin’s presence in the Holmes’ home decreased after that. Karin suddenly found that she had other things that she would rather do, like play with some of the other kids on the block, some of whom she also played with after catechism—in particular, her good friend Trisha whose parents were openly dysfunctional in the verbal abuse they unashamedly doled out on one another and, therefore, were far more appealing than the Holmeses—play time with Trisha meant play time was outside and as far away from over-bearing and ever-watchful parents as possible.
The last time Karin did play at Alaina’s, however, proved to be more eventful than Karin could have been prepared for—even if it took many years for her to fully understand what had taken place.
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