The Willies | Page 6

his name before he saw her. His mother raised
her arms in their old "Give me a hug" gesture. He wrapped his arms
around her and squeezed tight, lifting her off the ground. "Oh, you were
great!" she said.
"Hello, Rosalynd," said Fleur, smiling, at Simon's side. She'd never felt
right calling this woman "Mom". Besides, she had a mother, a woman
who was nothing like this person -- loud, foul-mouthed, with badly
dyed burgundy-black hair piled high on her head, face painted like a
beauty contestant going to war.
"Hey there, how are you keeping?" asked Rosalynd.
Fleur wondered what she meant by that. She wasn't "keeping" her son.
"Is your little decorating business taking off yet?" asked Rosalynd.
"It's going really well," said Fleur.
"But you've still got the day job to take care of you, driving the
streetcar, right?"

She wanted to scream, but stifled herself. "Yes, I still work for the
transit commission, but I'll be able to give that up sometime this year if
things keep going the way they are."
"Oh, that's great!" said Rosalynd, genuinely pleased.
Now Fleur was confused. Maybe she was just making it all up, this
thing between her and Simon's mom.
"I'm going to go get the car," said Fleur, taking a ring of keys from her
pocket, mostly radio-chip tabs, hanging with a few old-fashioned metal
keys from her transit job. "Nice to see you, Rosalynd."
When Fleur was out of earshot, Simon smiled and squeezed his
mother's shoulder. "Thanks for making an effort there with Fleur. It
means a lot to me that you two get along."
"I know. But she doesn't make it easy. Every time I see her, the air fills
up with these nice-cicles." She made air-quotes around the word. "It's
hard to know what to say. I don't think she likes me. She's sweet, but
sweet like a Twinkie -- you know somehow it's going to wind up being
bad for you."
"Naw, she's just -- I dunno -- this is a difficult time for us."
"It's okay. Don't worry about it. You don't have to make excuses for her.
You love her. That's enough for me." She tipped her head and smiled,
then touched her son's cheek. "I'm really proud of you," she said, "you
turned out okay." Then her independent-single-mother reflexes jumped
in and she turned practical on him; he'd seen it a thousand times. "Gotta
go," she said. "How about dinner next Sunday. You don't have a game,
right?"
"Nope. I'll call you."
"Okay. But I'm out on Thursday night: poker game," she said, and
turned to walk to her car. Already somewhere else, she fished through
her overstuffed white leather bag for her key as she walked away.

Simon went to face his doom.
Fleur was angry, he already knew. He hoisted his big kit bag full of
dirty equipment into the back of Fleur's station wagon. The car was a
long, flat, cream-coloured box, shapeless except for a slightly
aerodynamic ridge along either side, tapering off where it met the
chrome harmonica bumpers. The tabletop roof sat over an expanse of
windows. It was the perfect car for the family they planned to have but
didn't. Couldn't, it seemed.
Fleur started the engine as soon as she heard Simon slam the back
hatch. He opened the passenger side door and sat without looking at
her.
They headed out from the downtown core toward the suburb where
they lived. Fleur flicked on the windshield wipers, which slicked away
the rain but did nothing about the fog inside. Simon sensed that the fog
bothered her, so he rolled down his window. He stuck his arm out and
leaned into the rain, letting it spray his face.
"Good game," said Fleur, speaking first into the dense air between them,
as she usually did in times like this.
"Yeah, it was a good match. They were a good team, but our guys
really came together."
"You helped," said Fleur.
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"Maybe you helped too much."
"I play on a team. That's how a good team member plays. I've got to be
fair." He stopped, and laughed at a thought. "I'd love it if people
thought of me as the Wayne Gretzky of lacrosse."
Fleur, already driving close to the car ahead, dodged around it. Simon
clutched his door-armrest. With the other car behind them, Fleur looked

at him square-on before looking back to the road. "Okay, two things,"
she said, counting with fingers on the steering wheel. "One, Gretzky
played hockey. Hockey -- you know, one of those sports that people
watch! Two, Gretzky's been retired longer than you've been alive. An
old man can't make money at sports. But that's okay because he's rich.
Which you, my love, are not.