Prized Possessions

by L. R. Wright

  “Over there.” She waved the cone toward the entrance to a women’s clothing store. “It’s not bad, but the hours stink.” She took a huge bite of ice cream. She didn’t look like the kind of person who ate a lot of ice cream, thought Emma. She was thin as a rake, with extremely round eyes and hair that she’d back-combed into a black halo.

  The bench on which they sat was back-to-back with another. Emma felt it when the people sitting there got up. She felt it a couple of minutes later when somebody new sat down. Looking straight ahead of her at the display window of a children’s clothing shop, listening to the chatter of the woman eating ice cream, Emma thought about the person who might have sat down behind her. Finally she looked back over her shoulder.

  A man was there, lying down on the bench. The woman with the cone turned to glance at him too. He was wearing a heavy tweed overcoat and leather boots with laces. He had gray hair and a beard and was apparently asleep.

  The woman next to Emma finished her cone. “I’ve seen him here before.” She took a Kleenex from her red plastic purse and wiped her mouth. “There are people like him, you know, they never go home.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, they don’t got a home, I guess. They live here. Sneak around from place to place in the mall, staying out of the security guys’ way. It’s easier’n it sounds.” She looked at her watch and slapped her knees. “Well. Back to the grindstone. Seeya around, honey.”

  ***

  “Something must have happened to him,” Emma told Staff Sergeant Alberg several hours later. “A person doesn’t just disappear.”

  “Mrs. O’Brea,” he said, “I think we have to consider the possibility that he’s…gone away.”

  She stared at him in exasperation. “I don’t know what it is with you people. Do you have to stumble over somebody’s dead body before you can be convinced there’s something wrong? I thought it was your job to prevent bad things from happening, as well as clean them up after they’ve happened.”

  He sighed. “There’s only so much we can do. Corporal Sanducci put out a bulletin on your husband’s vehicle; that’s still in effect. We know he hasn’t been involved in a motor vehicle accident or been admitted to a hospital for any other reason. He left his place of work voluntarily. He’s a grown man, no warrants out on him, he’s free to come and go as he pleases.”

  Emma raked her hair away from her temples. “He didn’t take his golf clubs. Or his chess set. Or any of his things. Don’t you see?”

  “Mrs. O’Brea,” said Alberg gently, “when people decide to disappear, they usually do leave everything behind. Even their most prized possessions.”

  She lived the moment of his leavetaking again then. She felt the edge of the door against her hand, the cold wind whiffing at her bare legs; she watched Charlie stride down the walk, carrying his briefcase; she saw him unlock the driver’s door and look up to pause, and wave, before climbing into his car. She ran this through her mind several times.

  “Yes,” she said, thunderstruck. “You’re right. He meant to go.”

  The staff sergeant was watching her sympathetically.

  “He took my photograph with him.”

  Though this might not be true, she thought. All she knew for sure was that he hadn’t left it in his office. Maybe he’d disposed of it in some way. Maybe he’d thrown it into the garbage. She imagined him placing it on the floor of an alley somewhere and stomping on it with the heel of his shoe, to break the glass, and then picking up the pieces and tossing them into a Dumpster.

  Emma stood up and thanked Alberg for his time. “I’ll have to find him myself, I guess.”

  She saw that this dismayed him.

  “Mrs. O’Brea—Emma—why don’t you wait for him to contact you, when he’s ready?”

  She was no longer fearful, or bewildered. That was good.

  But what was she feeling? she wondered, as she left the police station and went to her car. What was she feeling, for Charlie, who had left her?

  Alberg put on his jacket and left his office, closing the door behind him. He nodded to the duty officer and left the building through the back door, which led to the parking lot.

  Sid Sokolowski was just climbing out of his car.

  “Karl. What are you doing here?”

  “Oh…well… ”

  “You’re not supposed to be back for another week,” said the sergeant, locking the car door.

  “Yeah, I know.” Alberg rested his arms on the top of his Oldsmobile. “But my mother… I think I was more trouble to her than help. So I came home.”

  “You’re not coming back to work yet, though.”

  “Well, I thought I’d stop by,” said Alberg, “see what’s happening, see how you’re doing.”

  “We’re doing fine. I’m doing fine,” said Sokolowski pointedly.

  “Hey, I’m not horning in on you, Sid,” said Alberg. He pushed himself away from the car and unlocked the driver’s door. “I’ll stay out of your way. I promise.” He tried to smile. “See you next week,” he said, and he got into his car and drove home.

  18

  THEY PROCEEDED UP Broadway in Gardiner’s rickety Olds Delta 88. Eddie was finding it hard to get out the words he had to say.

  Maybe if he didn’t get them out, he thought, maybe if he kept them tight inside him, maybe then the thing wouldn’t ever have happened; it wouldn’t be real.

  But there were a couple of pieces of reality floating around that he absolutely couldn’t ignore; he was afraid they were going to screw up his life completely. So somehow he had to find the balls to talk to Gardiner.

  They drove in at a White Spot restaurant and parked in the back. Gardiner turned on the headlights for car service. Eddie was relieved when the guy came and took their order and Gardiner could turn off the lights and then the motor: it smelled like carbon monoxide in Gardiner’s Olds, even with all the windows open. Gardiner kept the radio on, though, and there was country and western music rattling out of it, sounding off-key and tinny.

  “I’m in some deep shit, Gardiner,” Eddie finally blurted.

  He told him all about it, while k.d. lang sang from the radio. Eddie was staring out the windshield the whole time he talked, staring at the menu written on the side of the White Spot building, looking at the words for hamburger, and chicken, and milkshake, and not seeing them. At first he heard some muffled squawks from Gardiner, but he ignored them and went right on talking.

  His voice sounded real close up—which of course it was, but he’d never noticed before just how close your voice was to you. It wasn’t loud—he was talking very quietly. But it felt real…close up; as if the words weren’t moving away from him after he’d said them; as if they were crowding around in the air outside his mouth, all confused, not knowing where to go—making a little crowd of themselves, and then a bigger one, and a real big one. Soon Eddie was afraid that they were going to start forcing their way back inside his mouth, so he clamped his teeth together and only opened his lips a little bit. He finished his speech to Gardiner like that and turned his head when he was done and saw Gardiner leaning toward him, staring at him like he’d gone crazy or something—which maybe he had, Eddie thought to himself, staring mournfully back.

  “Say what?” said Gardiner, sounding like he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Dead,” said Eddie.

  “I told you to scare her, you stupid weasel, not kill the bitch.” Gardiner flung himself back in his seat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “First thing you do, you gotta get rid of your car.”

  Eddie felt grief at this; real grief. “What, sell it? Sell my Camaro?”

  “No, not sell it. Hide it. You gotta keep it out of sight for a while.”

  “Where? Where’m I gonna hide it?”

  “How the fuck do I know where? Just hide it.”

  Gloomily, Eddie considered the possibilities.

  “Could anybody’ve seen you? Got the plate number?”

  Eddie shook his
head. “I thought about that. I put mud all over it before I left home.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eddie, surprised.

  “You knew you were gonna waste her, then!”

  “No,” Eddie protested. “I told you how it happened. It was an accidental-type thing.”

  “Then why the shit did you put mud all over your plate?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eddie, getting angry. “I saw it on TV.”

  The guy came with the food, and they paid him. Gardiner vigorously sprinkled vinegar over his chips. Eddie sat very still for a minute, concentrating on his stomach, until he was sure that the combined odors of vinegar and carbon monoxide weren’t going to make him puke. Then he emptied two packets of mustard into his hot dog and started to eat.

  “Looks like you’re gonna be in the clear, then,” said Gardiner, picking up his hamburger. He took a big bite and said, chewing, “You’re a lucky sonofabitch, Ed. She coulda sued your ass for aiming your fucking Camaro at her.” He broke into laughter, spewing food. “Whoops,” he said. “Fuck.” He brushed ineffectually at his shirtfront.

  “That’s not all, though,” said Eddie reluctantly.

  “You wasted somebody else too?” said Gardiner incredulously.

  “No no no,” said Eddie. “I mean, I’m not in the clear. I think I’m not, anyway.” And he told Gardiner the rest of it.

  ***

  He’d made it his business to find out some things about her. This wasn’t hard to do. It was a big city, yeah, but a small neighborhood. You could follow a person, you could ask questions, if you were friendly and casual like, and you could find out things. Like where she worked, part time. And what days. And what hours, usually.

  And he was thinking about the stuff he’d found out, and mulling over Gardiner’s idea for scaring the piss out of her, and still hoping a little bit that she’d do the right thing and answer his letter, or phone him—because, really, he didn’t want to scare the piss out of her. And the next thing that happened was seeing her on the street.

  She was with some other girl, maybe her roommate, who knows. He saw them from quite a way away, and they were walking straight toward him. He thought about stopping her to ask her if she’d got his letter, but then he decided no way, she was the one who should stop him… She’d stop and put her hand on his shoulder and, Thank you for your letter, she’d say, let’s let bygones be bygones, she’d say, something civil like that…but he’d forgotten one important thing.

  It was rush hour, and there were throngs of people on Broadway, and at first she didn’t see him. Eddie moved over as he walked along, so that she’d bump right into him if she continued not to see him—and then there it was: her eyes caught on his face, and he saw that she’d recognized him. They were about ten yards apart by now. She turned her head to one side and gently nudged her friend over to the edge of the sidewalk, and they passed him like that, way over on the edge of the sidewalk so the sleeve of her yellow dress wouldn’t touch him by accident, the side of her face looking at him smooth and blind and silent.

  The important thing he’d forgotten, of course, was that she wasn’t a naturally polite person, despite her airs and graces, despite her bright hair and the softness of her skin.

  So Eddie went home and wrote her another note. He didn’t have to do it over, because he got it right the very first time. “Bitch,” was how he started it. “You are not important,” was what he said next. “You are going to roast in hell.” And then he signed it, like he had the first one.

  ***

  “You signed it?” said Gardiner. He slapped his hands over his ears. “You got no more brains than a piece of snot! Who the fuck taught you what you know, anyhow?”

  Eddie sat there meek and unhappy, waiting for Gardiner to stop raging at him and start giving him some good, practical advice.

  19

  EMMA HAD GROWN up feeling her mother’s presence constantly behind her, feeling her mother’s breath on the back of her neck, feeling her mother’s hands pushing her forward, gently but firmly. It was inexorable and terrifying, this sensation. She protested a lot but felt helpless in the grip of her mother’s determination that she learn to ride a bike, ice skate, do gymnastics, handle a horse, and excel at mathematics, and history, and English, and science…

  No wonder Emma was worn out by the time she was seventeen.

  “I want you to be confident,” her mother had told her, a million times if she’d said it once. “Physically, mentally—in every way.”

  This ambition for her daughter was probably much to be admired. But Emma thought people ought to be left to develop their own ambitions. Unfortunately, whatever interest she might once have had in doing so had been thoroughly extinguished by her upbringing.

  Emma looked around, exhausted, at the end of Grade Twelve and decided, enough’s enough. She longed for the peace and comfort of a vicarious life.

  Now, rummaging through a drawer full of Charlie’s underwear, Emma heard her mother’s voice saying:

  “You’re a throwback, that’s what you are.” She’d been a brittle, pretty woman, relentlessly well groomed, who sold real estate: her name was Rosie Quinn. “A throwback. I can’t believe it. I wish I’d had a son.”

  This hadn’t bothered Emma, who had heard it before. She and her mother had never had much in common. She wondered if she would have had things in common with her father, had he lived, and if so, what these things would have been.

  “I just don’t see what’s so wrong about it,” she had said reasonably. Her mother didn’t like the idea that Emma was at university to find a husband.

  Rosie’s eyebrows sprang toward her forehead, and she planted her fists on her hips. “It’s dishonest, dishonorable, and lazy, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

  “It certainly isn’t dishonest,” said Emma indignantly. “I’ve always been very straightforward about my goals. Quite frankly, Mother, it seems to me you ought to admire me for that. I could be pretending I’m all mad keen on some kind of a career, but I’m not.”

  “Admire you!” said Rosie, aghast. She looked closely at her daughter. “Emma, where did you come from?”

  “As for dishonorable,” Emma went on, “I cannot see that it’s dishonorable for a person to assess her strengths and figure out how to make the best possible use of them.”

  “And what are these poor strengths,” said Rosie furiously, “that you can make the best use of them by putting yourself in servitude to some damn man?”

  “And finally,” said Emma, raising her voice a little, “I’m working hard, I’m getting good marks: how can you accuse me of being lazy?”

  “You’re being lazy about your life—your life, Emma!” Rosie’s face crinkled, deepening the lines upon it; she was genuinely worried, then, thought Emma, knowing that her mother struggled hard for smoothness of skin.

  Rosie sat down on the sofa next to Emma. She looked at her daughter with an expression, half curious and half compassionate, that made Emma feel impatient. “You mustn’t look to a man for money, Emma. You really mustn’t,” she pleaded.

  “Oh, Mother,” said Emma, moving slightly away from her. “I’m not. You’re putting entirely the wrong emphasis on this.”

  “Don’t depend on a man for shelter, or security, or protection, either,” said her mother, with a hand on Emma’s upper arm.

  Emma looked down at Rosie’s hand and touched it with carefully manicured fingers. She smelled perfume and wondered whether it was Rosie’s or her own.

  “Emma,” said her mother urgently. “You must be equipped to pay your own way.”

  “I have every intention of paying my own way,” Emma said staunchly. “I’m going to be the best wife there ever was.”

  “You’re so bright,” said her mother with sincerity, trying another tack. “You’ve got brains and taste, and you know how to work hard—you can be anything you want to be. Why settle for being somebody’s wife? Why not be a—I don’t know—an interi
or designer or something?”

  “My mind’s made up,” Emma had said. Wifehood was the ideal choice; she’d convinced herself of it: her career would be her husband and his career. Perhaps he would be a politician. Or a diplomat. She imagined herself standing beside him, at his right, and both of them were extremely well dressed. She would be his friend, his confidante, his supporter; she’d tend to his needs, nurture him, comfort him, nourish him. And in return, he would expect nothing more of her than this.

  Her husband-to-be had no face. He was tall and slim, but faceless. He didn’t acquire a face until she met Charlie.

  She hadn’t expected to pick someone twelve years older than she was. And although he was tall and reasonably slim, there wasn’t much likelihood that Charlie would move into the realm of politics. Or diplomacy. Charlie had very little ambition of any kind.

  But he was a man who, having been through what he’d been through, knew exactly what he wanted.

  Or so they had both believed.

  Emma shut the drawer and sat down on the chair in the corner of the bedroom. Those brave words she’d said to her mother echoed around her: “I’m going to be the best wife there ever was.” She’d met Charlie by then. But her mother didn’t know about him yet. And Charlie didn’t know yet that he and Emma were going to get married. A smile nudged at her mouth, but Emma sent it away.

  She got up and started going through the bottom drawer in Charlie’s bureau. Scarves, gloves, never-used handkerchiefs; and a small box that contained his UBC ring. Emma had given it to him when he got his master’s degree. But Charlie didn’t wear jewelry.

  Her mother, when she met him, hadn’t liked Charlie much.

  “Just look at the man,” she’d cried, exasperated. “Already divorced once. Already a failure at marriage. He’ll never amount to a hill of beans.” Which just showed how little Rosie Quinn knew.

  Besides, she wouldn’t have liked anybody Emma decided to marry. She was against marriage on principle; exactly what principle, Emma couldn’t guess.

  She tossed the ring box back into the drawer and sat on the floor, leaning against the end of the bed. It was strangely comforting, living side by side with Charlie’s belongings. Maybe that’s why he’d left them behind. She inhaled the smell of him when she brushed against his bathrobe, which hung from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. Sometimes she took out the bottle of aftershave lotion from the medicine cabinet and sniffed it: nothing summoned memory as potently as the sense of smell.