Prized Possessions

by L. R. Wright

  “Oh, shit,” said Eddie under his breath, but Edith heard him and made a big to-do about his bad language. He hustled them along, his head averted, and he didn’t sneak a glance back until they’d gotten to the corner. They were tying the luggage onto the roof rack and shoving more stuff into the backseat. “Oh, shit,” said Eddie again. He hurried the kids around the corner and along the adjacent street to Fourth Avenue, where they stopped at a store to get Chef Boyardee and a package of cake doughnuts.

  When they got back to Sylvia’s house he called Gardiner, who took a long time getting to the phone and then sounded sullen and unfriendly. But he agreed to come over.

  Eddie let the kids play out in the backyard, while he and Gardiner talked on the porch, keeping their voices low so the kids couldn’t hear them.

  “Okay, so gimme the story,” said Gardiner, whose spirits had improved. “Tell me the tale.”

  “So it says in the letter,” Eddie told him, while Willie played with his toy marines in the sandbox and Edith swung on the tire Eddie had hung last summer from the bottom branch of the big maple tree, “it says they’ve been offered these jobs, see, in Sechelt, and it says they gotta make up their minds by the end of the week if they’re gonna go or not. So today I see them loading up their car, see, and I damn know that’s what they’re doing, they’re going to damn Sechelt, and they’re taking her stuff with them in those cartons, and my notes are in there, they gotta be.”

  “What the fuck’s a Sechelt?” said Gardiner, digging at earwax with his little finger.

  “It’s a place,” said Eddie. “Up the coast. You gotta get a ferry.”

  “Oh, shit, ferries. I hate ferries.”

  “Watch your language, willya?” said Eddie, pointing with his thumb to the kids.

  Gardiner yawned and stretched, standing up. He leaned on the porch railing. “Hey, kid,” he called out. Willie, who was squatting in the sandbox with his back to them, looked at Gardiner over his shoulder. Edith, hanging upside down, peered at him through the hole in the tire.

  “What?” said Willie finally.

  Gardiner shrugged. “I forget.” He sat down again, next to Eddie on the top step.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” said Eddie.

  “If they were gonna give you trouble with those fucking notes, they woulda done it by now. Shit, they probably burned them. Tore them up. No way they’d keep them. Why the fuck would they keep them?”

  Eddie shook his head worriedly. “I don’t trust them. Maybe they’re waiting till they get outa town to give me trouble. Maybe they saw me watching the house and got scared. Whatever. Gardiner—I just don’t trust the bitches. You know?”

  “Okay. Okay. Lemme think,” said Gardiner, leaning on his knees, his hands loosely clasped between them.

  Edith had gotten off the tire and was now scratching letters in the dirt with a stick. Eddie, watching, remembered doing that himself when he was a kid. He wished there was some lawn back here for Sylvia’s kids to play on. But the maple tree was so big that the whole yard was in shadow most of the time, and what with that and kids playing on it, the ground just didn’t let grass grow there.

  “Well, the way I see it,” said Gardiner, “it’s gotta be easy pickings.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” said Eddie sarcastically. “Right. Easy pickings. Sure.”

  “Well, shit, there’s fucking cartons with her fucking name on them in red letters, right? You can’t hardly miss the fucking things.”

  Eddie stared at him, exasperated. “They’re on their damn way to Sechelt, Gardiner, didn’t you hear me?”

  Gardiner grinned at him. He grabbed Eddie’s cheeks in his hands. “So are we, weasel. So are we.”

  “Shit,” said Eddie, knocking his hands away. “Quit that.”

  Gardiner got to his feet. “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Fucking ferries. I hate ferries. Hey, kid,” he said, ambling down the steps toward the sandbox. “Can I play?”

  38

  ALBERG SET OUT FROM his house in Gibsons the next morning filled with expectation, focused and exhilarated.

  He drove up the highway from Gibsons on a day that was cool and sunny, with a good breeze off the ocean. His life had for the moment stepped back from him, and he was not intruded upon by thoughts of living with Cassandra, or trading in his car, or buying a boat, or renovating his small house, or caring better for his aging body. He drove north in a state of controlled excitement, thinking only about Charlie O’Brea.

  He wasn’t angry with Charlie. But he had decided that Charlie must explain himself to Emma. There was usually nothing at all judgmental in the way Alberg went about doing his work. Judgment was other people’s business, he always said; the court’s business. But of course he had opinions. And this time, since he wasn’t operating as a police officer, he was allowing his opinions to assume a greater importance in his decision-making.

  He drove the familiar road to Sechelt, through the town and out the other side, and then north to Halfmoon Bay and beyond. Eventually the road turned and descended, and below lay Ruby Lake. There was a motel and restaurant on the right side, next to a pond, and the lake proper was on the left. As Alberg drove toward it down the curving highway, he saw a float plane moored snugly against the shore. He slowed and pulled off the road. Parking in the empty lot in front of the restaurant, he walked across the highway and sat for a while on a large rock next to the water. He studied the float plane, white with red markings, and noticed that moorages were scattered along the shoreline as far as he could see.

  The rock on which he sat was shale, and it extended beneath the clear, green water. There was a small, round island out there, and a larger one, more oval in shape, beyond it. The breeze was soft and soundless.

  After a while Alberg got up, crossed the highway again, and went into the restaurant. He sat at the counter and ordered a coffee. The proprietor was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. He put the coffee in front of Alberg, placed his palms on the countertop, and stared into Alberg’s face. Alberg smiled at him.

  “I keep a suitcase packed,” said Charlie O’Brea, “and I know the ferry schedules by heart.”

  “You probably wouldn’t take a ferry, though,” said Alberg. “You’d probably fly out of here, in your float plane over there.”

  Charlie had been severely jolted by the sight of Alberg trudging across the gravel. He caught sight of him when Alberg was still several yards from the door. He thought about running. He could ease out the back way, tell Paula in the kitchen that he was feeling sick. Yeah, that was a perfectly good workable idea. But he didn’t do it. A powerful lethargy seized him, and he found himself watching almost calmly as Alberg got nearer and nearer, opened the screen door, and came inside. And when Charlie got a look at his expression, he knew it wouldn’t have done him any good to run. The guy wasn’t here on some kind of highway patrol coffee break. The guy wasn’t accidentally discovering Charlie here. The guy had known right where to look for him.

  Charlie asked Paula to keep an eye open for customers, and he and Alberg went outside.

  “Why didn’t you just divorce her?”

  Charlie almost laughed. “Well, I tried that, Officer,” he said. “But she wouldn’t let me.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Alberg—” Furious, Charlie rubbed at his hair with both hands.

  They were sitting outdoors on iron chairs from which the white paint was flecking. The cushions were stained and damp. Charlie loved the tired-looking chairs. He loved the rain-marked cushions. He loved the whole miserable, falling-down place. He was going to make it beautiful again. And profitable too. But he wondered if he’d be able to keep it now. He glanced at the off-duty cop who’d made it his business to find Emma’s errant husband.

  “I’m a simple man,” he told Alberg earnestly. “I like simple pleasures.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I’ve got simple dreams,” said Charlie, warmi
ng to his tale and to Alberg’s attentiveness. “Always have had. The insurance business? That was a deviation from the norm. All my life,” he said, crossing his arms, enjoying the tinge of grief in his voice, “I’ve been buffeted by the aims and ambitions of women.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Charlie winced. He looked out at the pond, and the highway that wound down toward them from the south. The two men sat in silence for a while. The willow trees by the edge of the water were green-gold with new leaves. “I almost killed her,” he said heavily. “That’s why I left her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I held a Smith and Wesson to her head and damn near pulled the trigger, that’s what I mean. And then I knew I had to get out of there—out of the house, the job, the marriage.” He leaned forward, hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees. “I was unfaithful to her. And she still wouldn’t let me go. I was her career. I was her damn life’s work.” He sat up. “She’s very sweet, Emma is. But she’s wrong about a lot of things.”

  “When did this happen, this incident with the firearm?”

  Charlie stared at him disbelievingly. “This ‘incident with the firearm’? Is that how you guys really talk?” He shook his head. “A year ago.”

  “Why didn’t you leave right away?”

  “I wanted to know where I was going, and what I was going to do when I got there,” Charlie snapped. “I had to have some kind of a plan.” He slumped back in his chair. “And then, about six months ago, my mother died. All of a sudden I had money. It sounds crass, I know… ”

  “How did you keep Emma from finding out your mother was dead?”

  “I just didn’t tell her. They never got along, anyway. So it’s not as though I had to worry about Emma writing to her or calling her up.”

  “What then?” said Alberg. “What did you do next?”

  “You know what I did. I took flying lessons. And then I bought that float plane. And I put a down payment on this place.” He looked at Alberg curiously. “How did you know to come here?”

  “You filed a flight plan.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie sighed, and laughed. “So I did.”

  “How come you didn’t get yourself new ID?”

  “I wouldn’t have known how to go about it,” said Charlie, gazing across the highway at the lake, sunlight sparking from its blue-green surface.

  “You could have found out, though.”

  “Yeah. Well, I didn’t want to be anybody else. I wanted to be me again. Finally.”

  “Were you you,” said Alberg dryly, “with your first wife?”

  Charlie laughed again. “I tried to be. But we were just too different to make things work. I wanted a home, and kids, but Joan—there was no way she was going to take a year out of her life to have a kid. To her, marriage was like—it was like something she kept in her purse, you know? Like a book you haul out to read when you’re stuck in traffic. Something to do when her career slowed down for a minute.”

  “But Emma wasn’t like that.”

  “No,” said Charlie softly. “No, Emma wasn’t like that.” He remembered the first time he’d seen her, on the stage at UBC, in a play. He couldn’t remember anything about the play except Emma, who was so beautiful he’d found himself unable to take deep breaths. “Emma really wanted to be married.” And she was sexy too, as well as beautiful and smart. No, more than sexy. She was wanton, she was seductive, she was insatiable. At least so it had seemed.

  Charlie stood up and went to the rickety pier that led out into the pond. “Someday all this is going to be landscaped,” he said, with a gesture that took in the weedy, scrabbly terrain that stretched between the pond and the motel units. “I’m going to do it all myself.”

  They’d made love under a blanket on the ferry, and on a gravel beach, and in the back of the car. They’d done it on the kitchen table, and in the shower, and on the floor in front of the fireplace. Emma said she loved sex. Emma couldn’t get enough sex.

  “She didn’t want to do anything else except be married,” he said dreamily to Alberg. “Just wanted to be married. Just wanted to take care of the house, and the garden, and the household finances, and me.” He looked up the hill to the south. There wasn’t much traffic, this time of year. Things would get busier in a few weeks, though. He had a lot to do to get ready for the tourist season. Cleaning. Repairs. Gardening.

  “And that was exactly what you wanted, right?” said Alberg irritably.

  “Yeah,” said Charlie.

  He knew the exact moment in which his marriage had started to die. It happened eighteen months after the wedding. He and Emma were coming out of a restaurant in Vancouver. He’d taken Emma’s hand and glanced at her, and he’d seen desire in her face, shimmering from her skin, which was pale, diaphanous. He was tremendously excited. Out on the street he’d taken her around the corner into an alley and pushed her against the wall. He pulled up her dress, she undid his fly. She bent her knees and thrust herself forward, and Charlie pinned her arms against the wall. Her mouth opened for his tongue as he entered her.

  When they were finished, Emma adjusted her clothing and combed her hair with her fingers and leaned down to brush at the toe of her shoe. Charlie, gazing unseeingly at Alberg, remembered that she had been wearing black patent-leather pumps. Light from the streetlamp at the corner caught her face. It was utterly blank. Dispassionate. And Charlie realized that it wasn’t desire he’d seen on her face. It was hot in the restaurant; she was just sweating a little.

  “Yeah, she was exactly what I thought I wanted.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. A car pulled off the highway onto the gravel and parked next to Alberg’s.

  She had been presenting herself to him, he’d realized in the coming days and months, like a series of portraits. Each one charming—delightful—but one-dimensional.

  Charlie shrugged. “Emma got too enthusiastic about being a wife, that’s all,” he said, watching a couple with two small children go through the screen door and into the restaurant.

  After the incident in the alley, Charlie had started talking to himself in the bathroom mirror. He’d wipe away the steam from his shower and stare at his reflection, make faces, and babble away to himself. This shook him up quite a lot.

  “What do you mean?” said Alberg.

  Charlie looked at him for a moment. “Why the hell am I talking to you, anyway?”

  Alberg grinned at him. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  Charlie studied him. He looked like an easygoing type of guy. A little wary, but that must go with the job.

  “You probably needed to talk,” said Alberg. “And I’m probably the first likely candidate that’s come along.”

  “How much is she paying you?”

  Alberg looked surprised. “Nothing.”

  “You’re doing this as a favor? For somebody you barely know?”

  Now the cop looked uncomfortable. “Not exactly. I’m on leave. It was…something to do. And then I got interested.”

  Charlie nodded, slowly. “Okay. I don’t think I’ve got anything more to say, though.”

  They sat quietly for a while, looking at the water, listening to the birds and the far-off sound of a power boat. Alberg thought there was probably a lot more to Charlie’s story.

  He got up and began walking toward the parking area, Charlie following. “The revolver,” he said. “Is it registered?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “I never got around to it.” He glanced at Alberg. “Hell, I’ve had it for years; it was my dad’s. It was just a keepsake, you know?”

  “You brought it to Ruby Lake with you?”

  “No. I left it behind.”

  They reached the car. Alberg unlocked the driver’s door and opened it.

  “Listen—are you going to tell her where I am?”

  “Not right away,” said Alberg. He looked at Charlie. “But I want you to get in touch with her. She deserves some kind of explanation.”

  “I planne
d to write her a letter. Every time I sit down to do it… ” He rubbed his hands together. “I will, though.”

  “You’ve got a week.” Alberg started to get into the car, then stopped and turned back to Charlie. “Is there ammunition too? For the Smith and Wesson?”

  “Yeah,” said Charlie, after a minute. “Why?”

  “I think I’ll drop in,” said Alberg, getting into his car, “and talk to her about permits.”

  39

  SUCH A SHORT TIME AGO, thought Emma, sitting in her kitchen, marveling; only two weeks ago, in fact, she would have been sitting here planning the evening meal, pondering momentous decisions like pasta versus pot roast, salad versus soup; shall we eat at the dining room table or in front of the TV? That would have depended on whether there was a hockey game or something important on the news. Charlie always got home in time for the six o’clock news. He was as regular as clockwork, as dependable as the sunrise.

  He hadn’t always been regular and dependable.

  He’d become so, though. After Helena.

  Emma hadn’t known the names of the others. And she didn’t think Helena was any more important to him than the others had been. But Emma had met Helena, who had been the last. So of course she had known her name.

  Emma had been much taken aback by the look of her. She was a skinny young woman with hair so short it made her head look the size of a marble. She wasn’t at all attractive.

  Emma had found her easily, by following Charlie. She was surprised at how easy it was to follow Charlie. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that she might do this. But she did.

  Helena worked in a chiropractor’s office, in the building that also housed Charlie’s consulting firm.

  Emma followed Helena then and learned all sorts of things about her. She went to church most Sundays—her hypocrisy, thought Emma, was limitless. She visited her parents in Surrey once or twice a month. She sang in one of the city’s major choirs.