by L. R. Wright
She’d moved up the aisle a bit and was now looking at the hair stuff—brushes and combs and barrettes and stuff like that, the stock replenished that very day by Eddie himself. He saw her take something off one of the racks—he couldn’t see what it was—and he watched closely, imagining for a second that she was going to stuff it into her pocket and walk out without paying for it. He had a little fantasy about chasing after her, out the door and onto the sidewalk, and then he’d put a big hand on her shoulder and say, Hey, lady, all full of sternness, let me see what you’ve got in your pocket there. But she put it back, like he knew she would—she was a bitch, but she was probably no thief—and went on up the aisle. What is she doing here? Eddie muttered to himself.
And then it occurred to him that she might have come to the drugstore to make some trouble for him.
His fingers got suddenly big and clumsy, and several boxes of deodorant toppled over. It took him a few seconds to straighten that up, and when he peeked again into the next aisle, she was gone. He was partly relieved and partly disappointed.
He thought about her a lot during the rest of the day: while he was loading up the shelves, and unpacking boxes in the back room, and having his coffee break, and cleaning up after some kid whose mother let him tear open a bag of nuts and spill them all over the floor.
And he thought about her while he took off the blue drugstore jacket he wore over his own clothes, the one with Eddie sewn onto the lapel in red writing.
And he thought about her while he drove home too, until finally he heard Sylvia in his mind, admonishing him not to brood. So while he cooked his supper he turned on the hockey game, and then he forgot about her once and for all, because the play-offs were on.
And then two days later, what happened but she came into the store again.
This time he was stocking the magazine racks. It was a job he particularly enjoyed. In fact, he enjoyed it too much, really.
Harold, the manager, had had to speak to him a couple of times, about not letting himself get too absorbed in the covers. He didn’t get mad at him; Harold never got mad. He’d just give him a friendly word. “No reading on the job, Ed,” he’d say, giving Eddie a clap on the shoulder as he passed. So Eddie tried to be very conscientious now. He’d look quickly at the magazines and the paperback books, but he wouldn’t let himself read the words on the covers. Some, of course, he had no trouble ignoring: the crossword puzzle magazines, for instance. But he found most of the others very interesting, for one reason or another. He got to take some of the magazines home whenever the new ones came out.
On this Monday afternoon, he dug in the box he’d just opened and reached up to put a handful of copies in the Maclean’s rack—and there she was. Just like that. She just materialized, like from black magic or something.
Eddie felt like some kind of fool, squatting down there, squinting up at her, while she stared down her nose at him. His mouth opened. “Hi,” he said.
Right away he could have kicked himself for being the naturally polite kind of person he was. But what could he expect? Of course he was automatically going to say “Hi” to a person he knew—well, sort of knew—when she was looking straight into his damn face.
But she wasn’t a naturally polite person. Oh, no.
“Hi,” he said to her.
And she turned around and flounced away. That’s what she did. He didn’t get a damn word out of her. Not a “Hi,” not a “How do you do,” not a “Kiss my butt.” Nothing.
He watched her go, and he was steaming, just steaming. Of all the nerve, of all the damn nerve, that was all he could think of, that was the only thought in his head: Of all the damn nerve.
He finished the magazines and picked up the empty boxes, to return them to the storeroom. This required that he pass the prescription counter at the back of the store, and he saw the girl waiting to be served. Probably getting penicillin or something, he thought. Probably she’s got some sexually transmitted disease. He shivered at the thought and stared at the back of her head with distaste as he passed her, and he let the box he was carrying bump her, real gently, in the ass as he went by. “Oh, sorry,” he said, and she glared at him so hard that he could just barely hold in his laughter until he got into the storeroom, where it was okay to let it out.
6
ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON Emma was out in the backyard with a long-handled pruner, snipping branches from the cherry tree to bring them indoors. They were already in bloom, so they wouldn’t last long, but she only wanted them for today, for tonight.
Today was her sixth wedding anniversary, and her twenty-ninth birthday.
The neighborhood in which she and Charlie lived was west of town, south of the highway; half an hour’s drive from the Langdale ferry terminal and five minutes by car from what would have been called downtown Sechelt if Sechelt had been a bigger place. Their house, which faced north, was about a city block from the sea. Emma could see the ocean, and hear it, from the backyard when she was outside working in her garden. She could see it by standing on her tiptoes and hanging on to the fence and stretching her neck; it was downhill to the ocean from her backyard.
A breeze came tumbling in from the sea, and white petals filled the air for a moment, then fluttered down; some of them caught in Emma’s blond hair. The breeze made her shiver because it was a spring day—yes, she could see that, in the grass that suddenly needed another mowing and in the tulips growing next to the fence—but it was an unpleasant spring day, blustery and petulant and much colder than it ought to be. She shivered in the cold breeze from the ocean but took pleasure in its salty fragrance—and tucked that away in her head to pass on to Charlie: the rough, cold touch of the breeze on her face and the salty smell of it.
Indoors again, she plunged the cherry boughs in hot water and arranged them in the tall, heavy glass vase that she’d bought to replace a similar one that had been broken last year.
“What do you want for dinner?” she’d asked him.
He’d pretended to think about it. He was very polite; it was one of the things that pleased her about him. But she knew it wasn’t a question that interested him.
“How about if I surprise you?” she said, and he agreed to this, smiling. On past anniversaries he had suggested that they go out for dinner, but Emma always said no. The day was a gift she gave herself, and making dinner was its centerpiece.
Always, in Charlie’s absence, Emma conjured him up, moving through her day as if he were with her—or rather she ordered her motions and, as best she could, her thoughts so as to delight him should he be there. She looked upon this as preparation for his death. She could continue doing it after his death, she thought, and in that way keep him alive for her.
She liked observing the world for Charlie, those parts of it he was too busy to notice for himself. The palms of her hands recalled the texture of the bark of the cherry tree; she had memorized the limpid green of its new-springing leaves. She captured these things, interpreted them, and passed them on for his enlightenment.
When Emma was ten years old, she had had a dog that got killed by a car. She lived in a small town, and everybody knew which dog belonged to whom. A little boy came running into her yard, yelling at her that her dog, whose name was Pat, was hurt. She followed him, running, and when they approached the street that went past the park and the flower shop, she saw Pat, a golden cocker spaniel, lying by the side of the road. She got close enough to see that he was perfectly still. She’d never seen him motionless before; even when he slept, he twitched. Then she turned around and ran home, pelted home, her legs going very fast, and she was screaming for her mother when she was still half a block away.
Emma took the silver candlesticks into the dining room. She spread newspaper on the table, got polish and rags from the kitchen, and sat down to clean them. Through the window she saw a blue jay strutting the length of the front yard fence, looking in at her with sharp metallic eyes; a blue jay wearing a black hood, with pencil strokes for legs.
/> Emma at twelve had come home from school one day to find her mother sitting all by herself in the kitchen, without a coffee cup, without even her cigarettes and ashtray; just sitting there as if turned to stone, not hearing Emma when she spoke. It turned out that her mother’s sister had died. Emma remembered that there was an echo in the kitchen. Something had been sucked from the air, leaving a hollowness into which Emma’s voice plunged and then caromed around. Her mother looked at her, finally, and at first Emma thought she didn’t recognize her, and then she realized that her mother didn’t even see her standing there. Maybe she saw her sister, Emma’s aunt. Anyway, she began to cry.
Emma was going to cook a filet of beef, with asparagus and Yukon gold potatoes. And she had already made the meringue for a pavlova.
The sun suddenly wrenched clouds from its face and fell upon Emma’s carpet in a sullen sprawl. Emma stopped in her housewifely duties and moved across the living room to stand in the sunlight for a moment, letting it warm her face.
Her mother died when Emma was twenty-two and about to get married. One minute she was in Emma’s life, and the next—gone. Her father had died years earlier, when Emma was still a baby, so now she was an orphan. Emma in her wedding gown began to wonder if God had it in for her. She deeply mistrusted His having given her Charlie to care for.
***
It was six o’clock when Charlie pulled up in front of the house. He sat in the Honda for a moment, looking at the front door, but it didn’t open. Yeah, ground cover would be good under those azaleas, he thought.
He was very conscious that it was the third Friday in April, that a certain kind of time was running out. So he concentrated on the bare earth beneath the azaleas, imagining periwinkle there, or creeping Jennie. After a while he picked up the package lying on the passenger seat and collected his briefcase from the floor and got out of the car.
The house could use a coat of paint, he noticed, opening the gate in the fence. He’d mention it to Emma. “The house could use a coat of paint, hon,” he’d say to her, and that same afternoon the yard would be swarming with workmen.
“Emma,” he called out as he opened the door. “I’m home.” She arrived in the hall as he was hanging up his raincoat, and gave him a hug, and pretended not to see the package sitting on top of his briefcase. He didn’t want to drag things out, though. “Let’s have a drink,” he said. “I want to give you your present.”
In the living room he poured two glasses of Scotch, then had to take them into the kitchen to get ice. He returned to the living room and handed one of the glasses to Emma.
“To us,” said Emma, smiling, raising her glass.
“To us,” Charlie agreed. They drank. “Sit down, now, and open this.” He gave her the package from the car.
It was wrapped in paper that said Happy Anniversary! all over it, and it was tied with silver ribbon and topped with a silver bow that was bigger than the gift itself: the store had done this for him. Emma opened her present carefully, easing the invisible tape away from the paper without tearing it, revealing a blue Birks box inside. She looked at Charlie with raised eyebrows and parted lips.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think you’ve guessed it.”
Emma removed the lid and pushed aside a layer of cotton wool. She plucked from the box a wide silver bracelet, hinged. “Oh, Charlie,” she breathed. She slipped it on her wrist and closed it; held her slim arm up and moved it into the sunlight, so that the bracelet flashed. “It’s beautiful.” She got up to thank him with a hug and a kiss. “You just sit there and enjoy your drink,” she said, “while I finish up in the kitchen.”
Charlie downed his drink, poured another, and turned on the television news.
***
“This is wonderful,” said Charlie, at dinner.
Emma smiled upon him, content.
Over the pavlova she said, “I’m taking more lessons.” She’d just completed a course in gourmet cooking.
“Good,” said Charlie. “What is it this time?”
“Piano.”
He smiled at her. “Good.”
She refilled their coffee cups. She was so sharply aware of the difference between this anniversary and their last one that she knew he must be also. She got up and stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders, and gently kissed the side of his face.
She tried never to think about it. The only reason it had crept into her mind now was, obviously, because it had happened exactly one year ago. Six years ago she and Charlie had gotten married. One year ago she had woken in the night and found him standing over her, pointing a gun at her head.
Poor Charlie, she thought.
“I love you,” she said, squeezing his shoulders.
He patted her hand. “Thank you, Emma, for a terrifically good anniversary dinner.”
She sat down again and gazed at him across the table. The candlesticks gleamed. The cherry boughs cast a pale, fragrant glow in the corner of the room. “Isn’t this better,” she said softly, “than last year?”
Charlie nodded, slowly, his face tipping in and out of shadow.
7
EDDIE WORKED ONLY A four-hour shift on Friday, so when he got to his sister’s place it was early in the afternoon.
“Where are the kids?” he said, looking around.
“Play school,” said Sylvia, who was cleaning the big front room window.
“How come they’re there on your day off?”
She flicked him an exasperated glance. “I need to clean the house in peace once in a while,” she said, rubbing vigorously at the glass, “without them getting underfoot.”
“It sure looks clean, all right,” said Eddie, trying to get in her good books. He sat down on the sofa, keeping his back straight, his feet flat on the floor, his hands quiet in his lap.
After a few minutes Sylvia gathered up the paper towels she’d used on the window and took them and the spray bottle into the kitchen. “Want some coffee?” she called out to him, and Eddie said loudly that he did.
He got up and joined her in there and sat at the kitchen table, which was under a window that looked out into the backyard. Eddie had hung a tire from the big maple tree out there, for the kids to swing on.
Sylvia made coffee in her glass percolator. “Have you had any lunch?” she said, washing her hands at the kitchen sink while the coffeepot burped and bubbled.
Eddie shook his head. “I’m not hungry, though.”
Sylvia ignored this and fixed them both lettuce and tomato sandwiches and put out a plate of her homemade peanut butter cookies too. All this time she had the radio on, way down low. Sylvia almost always kept the radio on, just low enough so you couldn’t hear anybody’s words. This was okay when there was music playing, but when it was a talk show, like now, it was very irritating. Eddie wanted to ask her to turn up the sound or else turn off the radio altogether. Finally, as if she could read his mind, she reached over and switched it off. Eddie felt a lot more relaxed then. He ate his sandwich and drank his coffee and had three cookies, all the while listening to Sylvia talk about her job and the kids…and this was good, this felt good; it was family stuff, and family was very important.
After a while, though—well, it was like when you have to stop walking because wherever you’re going, you’ve all of a sudden gotten there. Eddie could feel Sylvia looking at him, and thinking, and wondering why he’d phoned her and asked if he could come over. So, “Sylvia,” he said, “there’s something worrying me.”
He knew he’d probably used those exact same words in the past. And this was good, because she sort of knew now what was coming. He looked up at her from the cookie crumbs he’d been moving around on the plate. She was looking straight back at him, her face calm and even. The day was soft and bright, with a thin gray veil of cloud over the sky, and the light was tender upon Sylvia: Eddie could see no worry lines, no roughness; and her brown hair, drawn back in a businesslike ponytail so it wouldn’t get in her eyes while she cleaned, was clean and shiny. Eddie
almost got tears in his eyes, gazing at Sylvia; he was so thankful she was in his life.
She nodded at him, and he went on.
“I didn’t do a thing to her,” he said. His hands were flat on his thighs, and he was leaning toward her earnestly. “There was a misunderstanding.” He looked down again. Sylvia waited. “I swore at her,” Eddie muttered.
Sylvia lifted her coffee mug, black, with an elaborate design of flowers all over it, and sipped. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved jersey with no collar. There was a short little opening at the throat, with four tiny buttons that she had left undone. She was sitting sideways on her chair, with one arm over the back, and her legs were crossed. Now she uncrossed them and put both hands on the table in front of her, pushing her coffee mug aside. “What was the misunderstanding?” she said. Her voice was calm too, just like her face.
Eddie told her about delivering the parcel. “I didn’t know it was her bedroom. It didn’t look like a bedroom. I was just looking in there, thinking about how it didn’t look like a bedroom. That’s all. That’s all, Sylvia.”
“How come you didn’t wait by the front door, though?”
Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think she said something to me. Called me. I didn’t think anything of it,” he protested. “I just went down there. I knew she was getting me a tip. I wanted to get going, get out of there.” He felt his blood moving faster and figured his face was probably getting red. “She got it all wrong, for godsake.”
“Eddie,” said Sylvia; a warning.
“Well, she did. ‘Don’t come in my room,’ she says.” He said it again: “ ‘Don’t come in my room,’ ” putting on a high, petulant voice. “As if I’d want to go in her damn room.”
“Eddie,” said Sylvia sharply.
“So, ‘Fuck you,’ I told her.”