Gooseberry Smile by TERRI MCCORMICK

There are two types of people in this world: those who feed their animals first before they themselves sit down to eat, and those who don’t. Elodie Carter’s brother, Amos, was the latter.

Amos always sat hunched at the kitchen table, scarfing down his breakfast while Buddy, his Black Labrador sat waiting outside in his pen. Elodie was the one who made sure to fill the dog’s bowl before she sat down at the making stale conversation with Amos; however, her exchanges with the dog were much more enlightening.

It was the summer of 1975, the hottest on record so far. The brutal weather combined with the sight of Amos shoveling forkfuls of scrambled egg into his mouth almost turned her stomach. When he spoke, partly chewed pebbles of yellow flew out onto the blue forget-me-nots of their late mother’s embroidered tablecloth.

Unbeknownst to Elodie at the time, she would soon be going on an expedition of sorts to find a little black notebook that her brother coveted, the one he kept the bank slips and receipts in. It would mean she would need to rifle through Amos’s things after he left for his 12-hour shift at the salt plant. The notebook was hidden in their old farmhouse somewhere. He had stopped taking it with him after it briefly went missing a few months back. Elodie had seen the relief on her brother’s face when he finally found it under the seat of his new Chevrolet Biscayne. Soon, she would be eager to look inside that book, but for now she sat and ate.

Elodie didn’t start out as a beauty, but now, at the age of 18, her long, straight hair was as yellow as the butter she spread on Amos’s toast and her lips were as pink as the gooseberry jam that was dolloped on his plate. As a kid, her spindly arms and legs were the butt of jokes at school; now they were considered attractive to anyone inclined to notice.

Her father had always said she looked sickly. Amos continued to echo that sentiment under the guise of brotherly teasing. Pa was a master of control who would gaslight their saint of a mother at every turn. When Ma finally died, or “got away” as the locals put it, 12-year-old Elodie was left living with one narcissist and another in training.

Pa died last year, and by that time Elodie was a nervous wreck. The doctor called it “bad nerves” and loaded her up with enough valium to sink a Bay boat. To Amos’s disappointment, though, she never popped one pill.

When it came to Amos, Elodie bounced between love, pity and resentment. Love because, after all, he was her brother; pity because no matter how you sliced it, he was a loser; and resentment because she wished she had been born with a penis. Men did what they wanted, and women did what MEN wanted. Regardless, Amos had grown into a surly lump of a man, with wiry black shoots escaping from his nose and ears. Elodie was not surprised that he remained single.

Then there was Roylene, the V.O.N. nurse who came daily to help care for their dying Pa, who could only be described as vibrantly voluptuous, her wide hips swiveling through the door, large breasts bubbling out of her peasant blouse and shiny black shag flouncing below her double chin when she laughed.

After Roylene quickly thwarted Amos’ early attempts at flirting, he forever referred to her as “the bitch.” And despite her being 10 years Elodie’s senior, the two forged a quick friendship. On her first day at the house, Roylene happened upon Elodie folding dish towels in the kitchen and—so as not to wake Buddy, who was sprawled snoring on the floor—singing quietly to herself.

“Roylene, Roylene, Roylene, Roy-leeeeen … I’m begging of you please don’t take my man.”

Well, Roylene overheard that little ditty, and the roar of her laughter caused Elodie to jump and Buddy to bolt upright and let out a howl.

“Stop taking my name in vain,” Roylene cackled. “You’re ruining Dolly’s song!”

Elodie had no choice but to sing louder.

Living east of nowhere along the coast of Nova Scotia could be lonely, but it wasn’t always bad. You were never ten minutes away from the ocean and the constant background of swooshing waves moving up and down the shore. Some say the hypnotic lull of that sound has the power to heal whatever ails the spirit. As soon as Amos left for work, Elodie would unlatch Buddy’s gate and walk the eager pup up to the cliffs. There they would sit, her stroking his frosting muzzle as his head rested on her lap. It was true, these moments did cure the anxiety that swelled in them both. And Elodie always made sure to have Buddy back in his pen by the time Amos got home.

After Pa passed, Roylene continued to stop in a few times a week to see Elodie between visits to her other clients’ houses.

On this day, while at the table making jokes about Amos, Roylene unwittingly dropped a bomb.

“He’s the slow one if you ask me,” she said, before swallowing a mouthful of Earl Grey.

Elodie frowned.

“Who are you talking about?” she asked.

“Amos.” Roylene replied. “When we first met, he told me he had a sister who was slow.”

Elodie took a gulp of tea.

“Sure, you were quiet when we met,” Roylene continued, “and a little awkward but, honey, not slow.”

She was a lot of things, she thought. Neurotic? Why not. Stifled? Since birth. Undermined and underestimated? Always. But not slow.

“There’s nothing wrong with me” Elodie whispered. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” her voice becoming louder. “There’s nothing wrong with me!” she boomed loudly enough to cause Buddy to let out a startled yip.

Roylene grabbed her arm. “Of course not! Take a breath.”

And then she posed the question that floored Elodie: “Why haven’t you taken your share of the money your father left you two and gotten away from this place?”

Elodie thought back to last year. “All he left us was the house,” Amos had snorted as they stood over the shallow grave he had dug to bury the silver urn housing Pa’s miserable remains.

“At least we got that,” she said, bowing her head.

Elodie recalled how Amos’s eyes had narrowed and a brief smirk crossed his face. It was the moment he sensed opportunity. After years under his father’s thumb, he finally had control.

“Your father confided to me a few weeks before he died that he was leaving you and Amos the house and the life insurance money for you to split,” Roylene told her. “He said forty thousand each, if I’m not mistaken.”

Elodie began to sweat and couldn’t even croak out a response.

She felt Roylene touch her hand. “Elodie, he got me to sign the will as his witness.”

Elodie ran upstairs with Buddy on her heels. There were five hours before Amos would be done his shift. She pushed open the door to his room. It smelled like feet. It was years since she’d dared to enter this cesspool. The faded plaid comforter he’d had since grade school was crumpled on the bed, which was pushed up against the outside wall. A dirty Venetian blind hung twisted and lopsided in the window. Discarded hunting magazines were strewn over the worn green carpet. She made a point of stomping on them to get to his dresser. She opened each drawer, digging through tangled, mismatched socks, threadbare underwear and balled up t-shirts. She looked under the bed. Gross. She rummaged through his closet. Disgusting.

“If I were a little black notebook filled with information that could determine someone’s destiny, where would I be?” She posed the question to Buddy, who was next to the bed, chewing on one of the magazines.

Just when Elodie had resigned herself to the fact that she would probably never find it, she noticed an object protruding from a clump of towels next to Amos’s overflowing clothes hamper. Moving closer, she saw something silver. Carefully, she picked up Pa’s urn, which had been lying on its side but evidently had not spilled any of its contents. It was a fair size and awkward to handle. She decided to take it downstairs where there was better light. Just as she started down, Buddy began barking like a fool. Elodie yelled for him to be quiet, but he flew by bumping the back of her right knee. She felt her leg collapsing and tried unsuccessfully to right herself by reaching for the bannister. As she did so, she lost her grasp on the urn and she started to tumble. The thought of sliding down the stairs on her arse was bad enough, but to flour herself in her father’s ashes at the same time was the icing on the proverbial shit cake.

As she hit the bottom, Elodie expected to be instantly covered in Pa’s dust. Instead, she was covered in wads of cash, hundred dollar bills to be exact. If there any doubt that Amos had been hiding money from her, the proof was now scattered all around and over her.

Buddy was still barking. Whatever had set him off was outside, so Elodie hopped up pushed open the door just slightly. She studied the yard and saw a piebald deer standing in the field adjacent to the house. Before she was able to take in its beauty, Buddy blasted the door open and was gone in hot pursuit.

“Nine hundred and ninety-eight, nine hundred ninety-nine, and that makes TWENTY thousand,” Elodie squealed.

“Holy shit!” Roylene shrieked, wildly eyeballing the stacks of cash on the kitchen table. “We better go,” she added, gesturing towards the door where the suitcase sat. “Amos will be home soon, so if you need to grab anything else, do it now.”

Elodie was frantically tossing the cash into an old duffle bag of Amos’s she had found at the back of the porch. She stopped and glanced over at her father’s empty urn sitting on the chipped yellow Formica countertop. She listened one last time to the annoying hum of the fridge. Nothing in this house mattered to her … with one exception.

“Buddy!” she called again, as Roylene laid on the car horn. After the umpteenth long honk, Elodie finally relented. Tears welled as she took one hopeful look back at the yard as Roylene eased the car out onto the road. Ten quiet minutes later, Roylene abruptly pulled over to the shoulder and told Elodie to get out. Before Elodie could react she heard yelps and howls coming from behind them. “Well,” Roylene said impatiently, “You gonna get your dog?”

Later that night, a few towns away in room 207 of the Golden Rim Motor Inn, Buddy lay sprawled and snoring on one bed as Elodie sat facing Roylene on the other. They were double-checking the cash count, stopping only to take swigs of Mateus Rose and to peek out at the parking lot below to make sure Amos hadn’t caught up to them.

“I suppose any physical evidence proving he took what was rightly mine is only listed in that black notebook,” Elodie said.

“Look at you, getting all Perry Mason-ish,” replied Roylene teasingly, stretching across to the other bed to give the Lab a playful scratch as Elodie reached deep into the duffle bag to check for any missed stacks of bills.

It was then that Elodie let out a maniacal laugh. Startled, Roylene turned to see what was so funny. Then she too began to cackle.

There sat “sickly” Elodie Carter, lips as pink as gooseberry jam, smiling from ear to ear while holding up Amos’s little black notebook.