Words By Whittall

“Well, if I had to hazard a guess…” Bobby let his sentence trail off without finishing. He’d heard his mom use that phrase and it sounded so smart. Hazzard a guess . Bobby wasn’t smart, but he was good at guessing. He figured that sooner or later he’d guess what it was these two men wanted him to say.   “Don’t guess, Bobby. Tell us what really happened,” Farbester said slowly. “Something relating to her head.” Bobby figured the question was important since the detective asked it so often and spoke so clearly and slowly. “Her head?” he asked. “Her head,” Farbester repeated while the other cop motioned to the back of his own head with his index finger cocked just behind the right ear. Bobby couldn’t remember the other cop’s name, but he stunk of aftershave. He looked at the clock. Five hours. Five hours he’d been in this room with these men, and it still reeked of shitty aftershave. “Bobby!”   Farbester shouted. “Focus! Her head. What happened to her head?” “I don’t kn...

  “It’s not the fall that kills you,” Tom Rafuse always used to say. “It’s the landing!” Millicent Dunbar – Millie – heard Tom tell the gag many, many times. He had an easygoing manner, a penchant for pocket protectors, and the meaty paunch and polyester wardrobe of a much-beloved high school shop teacher, which he was. Tom’s wife, Rose, was downright dim – always at his side, looking up adoringly. Millie watched their delightful backyard barbeques through her kitchen window. Tom’s monster hamburgers and stupid repetitive jokes; Rose’s exquisite potato salad and chilled cherry cheesecake.   Of course, the laughter stopped when Rose was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs, her blood pooling under shelves of raspberry jelly and pickled beets. It was, indeed, the landing and not the fall that killed her. The coroner ruled the cause of death a broken neck. The manner of death she left undetermined. A tall detective with an odd moustache came to question Tom daily fo...

  Mother summons me to her office on Monday morning to scold me and  I’m transported back in time. I’m five years old. Her red pinched lips are shouting and her red-tipped finger is wagging at me. You horrible bad girl, where is Mother’s sweater? What did you do with it?   I’d taken it to bed with me, to feel something soft that smelled like her mix of menthol cigarettes and Chanel Number Five.   While she and the rest of the family were skiing in Mount Tremblant, I’d explored our big empty house, including Mother’s walk-in closet. The sweater, cashmere, lay crumpled on the floor. I hid there, amongst her clothes, shoes, purses and scarves, missing my family – my father who was rarely home but smiled and sometimes told me stories; my boisterous teenage brothers, who were rarely home but sometimes played games with me; and my mother who was always home and whom I tried so very hard to emulate and please. I hid the sweater under a pillow in my frilly pink bedroom. Rosi...

  Post card # 1 Idyllic beach at sunset Dear Florence Picked this card up years ago in Aruba, back in days of travel and cursive writing. I’ve decided to return to those days. Not the travel but handwritten, thoughtful discourse. I’ve tried email, but my laptop is far too slow to keep up with my brain and I, apparently, am too slow to keep up with stupid updates, the last one included switching the locations of the ‘reply’ and ‘reply all’ options, with catastrophic results. Now everyone subscribing to the Button Collection News knows that I am unhappy with the latest edition. 247 of them emailed me personally to let me know that they are unhappy with me, not the least of which because …   Postcard #2 A cat with a smug expression   Dear Florence Well not enough space here to explain my problem with the Button Collection News nor its rude readers. I suppose it also explains why I never got the hang of tweeting or twatting or whatever it is that Bryson uses. He...

I can’t believe I’m related to her. I can’t believe she used to be my best friend. I can’t believe that Nana is still controlling us from the grave. Kathy – It’s Katherine now please! – is my cousin but Nana had to explain that to us. We believed and acted like twin sisters whenever we were in the same place, which was every summer at Nana’s cottage down the road from Sandbanks. Races to the end of the dock, melting sneakers on the bricks by the fire, singing along to Uncle Mike playing Mama’s Got a Squeeze Box on his guitar. “What’s a squeeze box? What’s a squeeze box?” we’d shout. Mike would say it was an accordion, but he’d laugh in a way that made us think he was lying, so we’d ask again every time he played the song.  We might have felt we were missing something about the squeeze box but never about each other.  We’d hunt and hide treasures: odd-coloured rocks, a robin’s feather, the perfect piece of driftwood. We told each other stories in our own language. We sta...

  I try not to cry. The funeral was moving, but quiet and scarcely attended. The sun is in my eyes. It reflects and refracts off the water in sparkling waves that seemed like a field of diamonds when I was a child. One spot catches my eye and I can make out the glistening black outline of dozens of old tires Gumpy had hurled into the lake. No sense paying good money to haul it to the recycling place! Saving my money to build a better world for you.   I sit on my favorite rock by, what used to be the edge of my grandfather’s property, wiping tears from my cheek with the back of my hand. I have happy memories of this farm – yet so much of what happened here was ugly under the surface, like submerged, leaching tires. Even murky water sparkles under the sun.   The smell of the house that I once thought was love, is mould from neglect and years of living by the water. The money Gumpy saved by refusing to maintain the house or recycle, is buried somewhere behind the barn...

  Darcy had never believed in love at first sight until that day in the bank when it hit like a freight train to the chest. The blond guy, two ahead of her in line, turned to look at the fly-speckled clock and: kaboom caboose! She was knocked off the tracks. She knew she was deeply in love with this man. She knew they were meant to be together forever, and even though she was starting university in September she knew their relationship was strong enough to withstand any distance. She also knew he’d think she was nuts if she ran up to him in the bank and declared any of this, so she waited, watched, and listened. Try as she might, she didn’t hear the teller refer to him by name, couldn’t see his signature or recognize his pay stub, and couldn’t determine how much money he withdrew. Instead, she watched silently as he sauntered past her, out the door and made a left onto Lynx Avenue. That’s ok, Darcy thought. Banff is a small town and I’m here all summer. I’m sure to run into him...

“It’s not the fall that kills you,” Tom Rafuse always used to say. “It’s the landing!” He’d lift his florid face toward the sun or the ceiling, depending on his location, and laugh and laugh at his own joke. Tom had an easygoing manner, a penchant for pocket protectors, and the meaty paunch and polyester wardrobe of a much-beloved high school shop teacher, which he was. Millicent Robar lived next door with her cats, Mister Mittens, Princess Poo and Sir Scratchalot. She had seen and heard Tom tell his fall gag many, many times, and those around Tom when he told it never failed to chuckle along. Even those who, like Millie, had heard it many, many times. Tom was that kind of guy. Jovial and a bit obtuse. You couldn’t help laughing at his stupid, repetitive jokes. Millie didn’t ponder long on her own feelings for Tom, but she often wished that she had a man like him in her life. His wife, Rose, was downright dim, Millie thought. She was always at his side, looking up adoringly at him ...

Moira fingered the fabric in her closet: a winter wool designer suit purchased at an outlet store. Her mother had been with her, the first spur-of-the-moment trip outside the house in years. The suit was fine, her mother said, but a little snug. Perhaps one size up. Moira complied. Two days later her mother said, “The eulogy was lovely, dear. But all I could think about was what a great job you’d done in hemming those pants.” Moira laughed bleakly at the memory of her father’s funeral. Her family wasn’t one for feeling their feelings. She’d been pleased to give her mother something else to think about that sad day. Now, more than a decade later, the hem still held.   Moira knew she’d been lucky. At 49 her dad was the first funeral for which she’d chosen her own outfit, her grandparents and other family friends having died when she was a child.   At 59, there were too many funerals. She’d worn these the original pants to mourn her business partner in January, then bought ...

  “Willa! Where the hell is my roast pan?” Kenny shouts.   “Keep your fucking shirt on!” I say, handing a clean pan to him across a passthrough from the white tiled room where I wash the dishes, to the kitchen where he dirties them.     The restaurant, Peaches, is open 24 hours and renowned for its potato “wedgies.” In the early morning hours, when the bars close, the place is packed with drunken assholes who line up out the door looking for starchy food to soak up the alcohol in their bellies.   That’s my shift. Overnights. Scrape. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.   The restaurant is always short on pots and pans.  I don’t know how Diego does it, but when his shift ends and mine begins, there are never any leftover pots to scrub or glasses to stack. Diego the Spanish Dish Washer. Capitalized because it might as well be his full name. He works the evening shift and is so popular and handsome that the regulars know him by name. He is a dishwashing l...