Read Online Maxine by Claire Wilkshire - Free Book Online

single Sunday? I don’t want to go there for dinner at all, ever. Arrgggh! Anyway. Enough about that. So, your phone. It was ringing for Christine.
    Oh yeah, says Karen. Well Christine gets plenty of calls. And she lives in one of those fancy condos across the road.
    You were getting her calls?
    Phone company switched the wires by mistake. Christine has a machine—but it’s at her place. So her phone—our phone—her number—just rings and rings and rings. And finally they hang up, and then they try all over again. You feel hunted. You feel like—
    I know. I know how you feel.
    The air feels cold and crunchy inside Maxine’s nose but cold’s good for running. It makes her body want to move forward. Why, she asks, didn’t you unplug?
    Well. I didn’t know what was going on. Thought it was wrong numbers. I got a bit huffy with some teenager who called a bunch of times, and then her mother came on and told me there was no need to be saucy and arrogant. Can you imagine? Phoning up some stranger in their living room and telling them not to be saucy, when you’ve made their phone ring for fifteen minutes? I mean, maybe after Call Number Twelve, maybe you figure out something’s not working. And some guy called Steve, too, kept trying. It was Steve or Dave. Bastard. Eleven-thirty at night the phone wakes Chloe up and it takes her an hour and a half to get back to sleep. One-thirty in the morning, phone’s ringing. I had a fantasy where the al-Qaeda came and hauled them all off.
    I hear you.
    A daydream, a little video. All the phoners, kneeling down with hoods over their heads. A guy in a ski mask.
    Jesus, Karen.
    I know. But they let them all go. In the dream. Disappointing. Anyway—Karen’s panting now—it’s...fixed. Let’s walk a minute. They’ve finished Long Pond now and crossed the road to the Confederation Building and they walk up the rise to the parking lot on the other side of which lies the second, smaller pond, just a mile around, and then they’ll be almost done.
    After Kent’s Pond they cross back over the road and trot down toward the playground. Now the sun’s out, mothers and kids swarm everywhere. A boy Kyle’s age wrestles with a younger one, and the smaller boy screams. Karen leans against a tree to stretch out her hamstrings but she’s watching the boys, and when the little one screams again, the heads of all the mothers swivel on their necks. For a moment, conversations are suspended as they wait to see if action is required. A woman starts walking toward the boys, and there is a collective slackening in the atmosphere. Here is the mother; she will do the necessary. But after a few steps the woman turns abruptly and makes for the parking lot. She strides past Karen and Maxine with an impassive face, set, as if whatever love and joy she’d once had were all used up, every last bit squeezed out, and all her energy was poured into keeping her limbs moving in sync and her body working well enough to get up in the morning and go to bed at night. The older boy lets go and the two run after her and open the back door and clamber in. Karen unlaces the car key from her running shoe as Maxine turns to watch the car pull away.
    Did you think she was about to become an X file? Karen asks.
    What?
    That woman. Didn’t she look as if she was about to keep walking away and never come back, and no one would ever know what happened?
    Yes. She looked...depleted.
    If they hadn’t followed her, maybe she’d have got in the car and driven until there was no more land.
    I wonder if it was something awful, the thing that made her feel that way, or if it was just normal. Maybe she didn’t sleep last night, and those boys.
    On Friday night there are eight women in Karen and Theresa’s living room for the Festive Swap. Theresa and Maxine stand in the middle. They’ve dragged swanky dresses and old fuzzy sweaters