Maxine by Claire Wilkshire

an entitlement, a civic duty, to go on and on and on about it. They had an expert on to talk about how it was important to meet the needs of the people who wanted to help but who lived too far away...what could we do to make those people feel better? Maybe, Maxine had said to Gail in the cold, quiet tone reserved for the fury of the just. Maybe if those people had no friends or relatives hurt, and no money to contribute, and they weren’t going to New York—maybe they could shut the fuck up.
    The eagerness of the utterly uninvolved to elbow their way into the spotlight. But it was more than that. You can feel sorry for a few odd socks with not enough to do clambering aboard the tragedy wagon. It was the self-righteous collective imperative to blab that gotMax glowering. If you weren’t talking about it, you didn’t care. Those who yapped the most cared the most.Maxine’s approach to someone else’s catastrophe is: see if you can help. If you can’t help, take one hard compassionate look and then turn away. There’s nothing to be gained by watching the same people jumping from windows over and over again. Mind your own.
    Freezing snow now smashes into the front window: the noise reminds her of visiting her mother’s Acadian family, a bunch of grownups playing cards in a trailer in the rain, the warm fug of rum and cigarettes, laughter, Maxine squeezed in next to her mother, rain hammering on the roof and she’d never felt so safe and dry. But now it looks almost dark outside. Suddenly the Larsen front door opens; an arm emerges and points at the black hatchback; its headlights flash. Moments later, Dave hurtles down the steps holding a newspaper over his head, flings a briefcase onto the back seat, throws himself in the car. Next, Kyle shoots down, drops something halfway, stops on the bottom step and turns; Barb has the door open and points at the whatever-it-is, Kyle runs back up and grabs it, jumps down the rest of the steps, staggers back to the car as Dave starts to honk the horn. Now Barb, jacketless— and, surely, in socks?—descends at speed on tiptoe, holding a lunch bag. She raps on the passenger window for a while until the door opens. Her torso disappears into the car for a few moments and then Barb pulls herself out, stands on the sidewalk, waving at the back of the car as it pulls away and the sleet hammers down on her; she waves until it has turned the corner. Then she’s back up the steps and in the house, the car gone, the door closes, show’s over, and Maxine heads for the kitchen to plug in the kettle, exhausted by it all.
    While she’s waiting for the water to boil,Maxine returns to the window and gazes at the empty street, wondering what it would be like if Kyle stayed with her for a few days, what unforeseen challenges might arise. How do you know what to put in those lunch bags? He could get sick. She might lose him. (Again.) He walks to school by himself when the weather is fine, it’s so close. What if a car hit him? A snowflake hits the glass and melts. It slides down with stops and starts and a sudden burst of speed, like a spider lowering itself on a thread.
    When Maxine was that age she’d sit at a table in the Arts and Culture Centre kids’ library writing in her notebook or poring over emergency handbooks. How to Survive After a Plane Crash .Maxine the Younger could have erected a sturdy bivouac. Knew, in theory at least, how to condense water out of a hole in the desert sand and onto a piece of plastic sheeting propped over it by a twig. Inside Maxine’s backpack, next to her math book, she carried her emergency kit: a Twinings tea tin containing waterproof matches, pencil and candle ends, a small plastic cup, beef jerky, yellow ribbon, pocket knife, string, a clear groundsheet folded into a tiny square, and a red foil emergency blanket ditto. Most of these were scavenged but she had to ask for the beef jerky and the