A suburban tragicomedy from the writer Maclean's called "one of the drollest, most cunning sensibilities in Canadian fiction."

On the quiet cul-de-sac of Blind Crescent, people go about the petty details of their daily lives and watch each other-very closely-do the same. Jill frets over property prices and the look on her husband's face when teenaged neighbour Grace walks by. Jackson Kern, caretaker of his crotchety old parents, disappears all night; no one knows where. Mr. Walcott, shut in by his obesity, thinks only of his next meal. And at the centre of it all, single mother Holly Wray tries to figure out if it's the big things that matter (such as her husband, Ivan, taking off and leaving her with two toddlers) or the little things (such as the postcards he sends her) that get you in the end. Meanwhile, a sniper picks off drivers on a nearby highway, and a strange man inhabits the one vacant house on the crescent.

Blind Crescent is a wickedly sharp novel from one of this country's most original and darkly funny writers.

Things to Do

Holly Wray is sitting in front of her TV on Saturday, at 8:30 in the morning, in the toy-strewn living room of her house on Blind Crescent. Her kids are clambering all over her, all around her, in front of her face, in front of the TV she's been trying to watch. Holly wants to hear what's being said on TV. Sixth shooting, perhaps? She wonders if there have been any more kids involved. The shooting last month was really bad, two kids asleep in the back of the car. The mother driving. Blood splatter stains on the road. The driver's side window cracked and lacy like a spider's web, or a snowflake, or some other frequently used metaphor.

"Get out of the way," Holly says. "I can't see the TV."

Ever since Ivan left her, the kids have been plain out of hand. But then, they have always been out of hand and horribly misbehaved. Haven't they? Especially Joe. Ivan played no part in changing them because he played no part in anything. Not their lives. Not her life. Not even his own life. Everything, with Ivan, always seemed out of control. And, of course, he'd blame it on her.

Standard Ivan Wray comment: "What'd you do this time?"

He looked so dopey saying it too. His hair was always standing up.

It amazes her, now that she thinks about it, how she ever fell in love with him.

Ivan only knew one of his kids. At least out of the womb. "Things to do," he had said. One moment there. Next moment gone. Just after the Rafferty Christmas party a year and a half ago. Has it been that long? The next week he moved out. Holly was pregnant. So he couldn't have screwed up both of the kids. Holly supposes that one of them is solely her fault. Her two little boys. The big one pushing the other down in front of the TV, the little one crying for help.

One and a half years. That's how old the baby is. The shock of Ivan leaving made her go into labour a week early.

Holly turns the volume up on the TV and says, "Oh, please shut up," for the hundredth time. Maybe if she'd named the younger one they would all be better off. Sweetpea. What kind of a name is Sweetpea for a little boy? Even she knows it's ridiculous. The newborn nickname stuck like glue. Before she knew it, before she thought of a better name, a real name, there was no way out. He became Sweetpea. Fully formed. She even put it on his birth certificate, thinking she would change it later when his real name came to her.

Once, about a month after Ivan left, she got a postcard from him. There was a hyena at the zoo on the front and "Hope the delivery went okay" scrawled on the back. A hyena? Was that supposed to be funny? Holly isn't sure.

Holly scratches under her armpits where the hair is long. No point shaving now. What's the use? Her legs are beginning to look like man's legs. Her armpits look European—Holly hopes even fashionably so. It is getting a bit uncomfortable now, though. It's getting hotter every day out there. Every part of her is sweating. Everything is itching.

Sweetpea has toddled over to the coffee table and fallen. He has knocked his tooth. "Oh, for God's sake," Holly murmurs. She picks him up to stop the tears.

"Oh, for God's sake," Joe echoes.

"Joe, don't swear."

"Joe, don't swear. Oh, for God's sake."

Holly rocks Sweetpea on her lap and gives Joe the eye. Sometimes she wishes she could raise her hand like Ivan did, threaten him, but she knows she'd never do that. Holly jiggles Sweetpea hard until he's bouncing. He forgets about his tooth, stops crying, and looks concerned and violated. Shocked. His tummy moves up and down and his hair whips forward and back in the enforced wind. He stares at his mother.

"Mommy's little Sweetpea," Holly says absently, keeping one eye on the TV. How many shootings is that now? She sees the wife of a previous victim place a plastic rose on the highway.

"Stop shaking him. Shake me." Joe picks up a plastic truck and threatens to smash his brother over the head. "Shake me now. Or else."

One more summer, Holly thinks. At the end of this summer Joe will be starting full-day kindergarten three days a week. Holly and Sweetpea will walk him down through the wooded area, to Edgerow Boulevard, where he will catch the school bus. He will be gone from nine in the morning until three-thirty in the afternoon. Six and one-half hours. A packed lunch and some snacks. And then he will come home for dinner and to fight with his brother. By the end of the summer, Holly reasons, she'll have a name for Sweetpea and she'll be able to get on with her life. Because sometimes Holly thinks that if she could just name the boy, everything would turn out fine, everything would fall into place.

She wishes Ivan had put a return address on the hyena postcard. Just so she could write to him and ask him to suggest a name.

It's just that nothing, not a single name she can think of, sounds right.

Last night there was another murder on the highway. Holly puts Sweetpea back on the floor and Joe scrambles for the toy Sweetpea is eyeing. The TV shows pictures of the truck, the driver's side window smashed in, clusters of broken glass. A bullet lodged in the man's brain. One bullet. "Good aim," the reporter says. The sniper has really good aim. Speeding truck, speeding murderer. One shot. The reporter sounds proud of the shooter, as if he couldn't have asked for a better outcome. Holly thinks of the truck driver's skull and what went through his mind—besides bullet, of course—for the few seconds before and during the shooting.

Holly stands and separates her children who are now on the floor wrestling. Sweetpea is crying again. Holly pulls them apart and sends them each to a corner of the room. "Time out," she pleads. "Joe, stay in your corner." Her finger raised. He is inching back toward the TV. Testing her.

Holly thinks about death a lot. She always has. But more this last little while, since Roger Smith's suicide, since the sniper started shooting. What do people actually think about the moment before they die? Talk of death is not a popular topic, though. She learned that the hard way. The last party she went to, the Blind Crescent neighbourhood Christmas party at the Raffertys', she found herself (her kid screaming, her bra popped open, swollen breasts ready to give milk) discussing this exact matter and all its implications with a colleague of Jill's. Since then she hasn't been to a single party.

Not that she's been invited to one.

A year and a half. No parties.

Now that she has this evening job taking calls at home for the local emergency health centre, finally using her diploma in social work from community college (she knew it would be good for something), Holly can't seem to get away from death. All the disturbed people talking about the sniper. Worried for their safety. As if at any minute any one of them couldn't just die from a heart attack. Holly often has to restrain herself from stating the obvious.

"Okay," Holly says, snapping out of it, looking at her two children. "Your time is up." She touches Sweetpea on the shoulder.

These nights she is getting no sleep. She's been working hard for six months, since the sniper started the attacks. She supposes she should be grateful for his rampage. Everyone is running scared. The call centre wouldn't have needed the extra help if it weren't for the killings. And they certainly wouldn't have let her take calls from home, they wouldn't have wanted to redirect the overload (there was some outcry at the office—"How will we monitor her?" one nosy woman asked). But how, she asked them, can I leave my kids with a sitter all night on the salary you're suggesting?

Holly tells the frightened, angry, often-crazed (although she's not allowed to use that word) people who call all night (often calling for no real reason at all) that if they just think positive thoughts, if they just look at the statistics (one shooting per month in a city of two million) and know that the chance of the sniper shooting them is below minimal, then they'll be fine, then they'll be able to fall asleep, to stop worrying about driving, to stop drinking, taking pills, or pulling their hair out. Organize your thoughts, she tells them. Control your mind. It's that simple.

Of course, she can't take her own advice.

She looks around at her living room. It looks like someone threw a grenade through the front door.

Holly begins to fold the wrinkled laundry she took out of the dryer last night, and Sweetpea comes over to help. Joe knocks him down. They begin to roll on the floor and then Sweetpea starts to scream. Holly raises a sock in her hand and smashes it down on the coffee table. Her hand smacks. Her old, dirty mugs jump. The newspaper on the table jumps. The fashion magazines with hairless women jump. Sweetpea and Joe jump.

"Just be quiet for a minute, will you? You'll get another time out if you don't just be quiet. Please."

When everyone is shocked into a second of silence Holly hears the reporter say again that the number of highway murders this year is six. Six people shot point-blank in the head while driving on six different highways during six different months. This does not include the two children in the back of the one car, or the number of people who were in the line of the cars when they spun out of control, or who were pedestrians run over by the careening vehicles, or in other cars that got knocked off the road. The reporter sounds amazed at this. The number six is emblazoned on the TV screen. Holly feels she can see it hovering just out of his mouth. Six, six, six. The reporter says the police are trying to put together a profile. Create a man out of his actions.

That's how many years Holly has been married to Ivan. Six damn years. One year and then Joe was born. Three and a half years married, and then Sweetpea. And a year and a half without Ivan. It's hard to believe. The minute she got huge and awkward again, Sweetpea kneeing her in the gut, the groin, the bladder, the ribs, the minute she couldn't bend to pick up Joe anymore, that's when he walked out. "Things to do," he said. And he left.

If Holly closes her eyes, she can remember a time when she was happy with Ivan, when he was happy with her, when they loved one another. But the last few years of their marriage was all about hurting one another, seeing which of them could make the other more miserable.

Strange how these things happen, Holly thinks. Strange, because she doesn't know how they happen. There is no logical explanation. No connect-the-dots answer.

Holly thinks about the questions she would ask if she were the police officer on the Highway Murderer Case. She can see herself, sitting in an office somewhere, dressed in uniform...

What does he wear when he swims, who are his parents, are they still alive, what kind of cereal does he eat in the morning, does he wear pyjamas to bed or sleep naked, is he sexually frustrated, does he brush his teeth up and down or back and forth, does he kill for fun or because he is angry, is he right wing, left wing, or politically inactive, vegetarian, a beer drinker, left-handed, flat-footed, is his back covered in moles, hair, spots, how old is he, is he prematurely balding, does he take Prozac or Viagra, does he listen to country-western music, does he Q-tip his ears, trim his nose hair, wear overalls, does he have a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a pet poodle, a goldfish in a bowl, did he ever serve in any war, is he black, red, white, yellow, has he travelled to a foreign country in the last year, does he have an accent, is he an immigrant, is he patriotic, is he schizophrenic, did he do well in high school, did he go to college, has he ever shot an abortionist, taken part in a political rally, does he go to church, and if not, why not, if so, why, does he have any friends at all, has he ever had a friend ever ever ever in his life...?

Holly looks at the sock still in her hand, blinks, and then rummages through the pile of laundry, trying to find its mate. No luck.

Holly thought Ivan meant errands. She thought that "things to do" meant he was running errands for himself (always for himself, never for her or the kids). Buying beer, checking out new cars, buying himself clothes. It didn't occur to her at the time that he wouldn't take his suitcase while running errands. She wasn't thinking. She forgives herself for this because she was almost nine months pregnant.

She matches a brown with a dark blue sock. Good enough.

"It's hard to believe," Holly whispers, and this is the signal that it's time to start yelling again. She looks around the room. The laundry is half folded at her feet. There are snack packs and juice boxes and toys everywhere. Newspapers. Magazines. Books. Holly stands to stretch. Her back cracks. She catches a whiff of her underarms and marvels at the smell. Human and animal mixed. The things she had to avoid when she was with Ivan. Smells and farts and burps. Loud conversations with yourself. Picking your crotch, masturbating. Joe catches Holly sniffing her armpits and gives her a sourpuss look.

"What?" she says.

Ivan drove down through the cul-de-sac, through the newly fallen snow, as if out for a Sunday drive, and turned right on Edgerow Boulevard and was gone. Just like that. "Things to do," he said.

“Berry's prose has an austere, bleached quality, as if all extraneous material has been sizzled away. What's left is deadpan and allusive and often pretty damned funny...”—The Globe and Mail

“In Berry's hands, ordinary circumstances are rendered as extraordinary, unsettling events and the reader must beware.”—Toronto Star

“Blind Crescent depicts dysfunctional suburbanites who are both disturbingly familiar and surreal, as fantastic as the inhabitants of the film Edward Scissorhands, as twisted as the neighbours we all live among.”—Antanas Sileika, author of Woman In Bronze