Prized Possessions

by L. R. Wright

  “Karl’s a good man,” said Sid. “A good police officer too. I was pretty sure he could help you.”

  “Did he tell you how Charlie reacted?” said Emma. She laughed. “I was so excited, I didn’t think to ask him.”

  Sid leaned on the fence. “He was pretty calm, I guess. You heard from him yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Emma, with an effort. “He…maybe he needs more time.”

  “Yeah,” said Sid. “Well, I don’t hold with that myself.”

  Emma was staring at the fence, trying to calm herself. It had rained earlier in the day, and the cedar was still wet, a deep glowing red. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

  Sid shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You’re the one needs the time,” he said.

  “I do. I probably do,” said Emma.

  “I hope to hell the guy doesn’t take it into his head to just show up here.”

  She looked at him quickly. “Well,” she said cautiously, “it would take him a while, though—wouldn’t it? To get here?”

  “No, it’s not that far—about an hour and half by car, I guess,” said Sid Sokolowski. “Of course, he’s got that float plane. He could just drop it in over at Porpoise Bay. That’d be real quick.”

  ***

  Emma pored over the highway map of the Sunshine Coast. An hour and a half south—you couldn’t drive south for an hour and a half without ending up in the ocean. An hour and a half north, then, and near water, because of the float plane…

  ***

  Late that afternoon, Emma sat in her car on the gravel shoulder of Highway 1, looking down the hill at the Ruby Lake Motel and Restaurant, about half a mile away.

  It was a somewhat ramshackle place, a one-story building that had spread in apparent aimlessness from its original structure and now encompassed four or five small motel units as well as the café. The lake itself was on the other side of the highway, a narrow piece of water bearing several small, thickly treed islands upon its blue-green surface; it looked small and crowded, but Emma knew from the map that although narrow, Ruby Lake was long.

  Every so often she raised to her eyes a pair of opera glasses, given to her by her mother for her eighteenth birthday, and studied the large smudged window in the front of the restaurant. She wasn’t able to see much more than an occasional vague shadow.

  This had to be the place. It was the right distance from Sechelt. And she could see a float plane, moored next to the lakeshore.

  The opera glasses were very old; her mother had found them, she had told Emma, in an antiques shop. The leather case was worn, and so were the glasses themselves. But they worked well, and Emma liked the feel of them against her eyes.

  She put them on her lap and looked distractedly around her car’s interior. She was surprised to notice on the seat next to her an empty glass bottle that had once held a fruit juice and mineral water combination; on the floor, a couple of scrunched-up gum wrappers and what looked to be a used Kleenex; on the dashboard, a coating of dust. She looked over her shoulder into the backseat and saw a white sweater and several library books. These things were evidence of preoccupation; Emma kept her car, in normal times, as clean and tidy as she and Bernie kept the house. But never mind, she told herself, raising the glasses to her eyes: the end of the thing is in sight.

  The glasses were aimed at the door, and as she looked, it opened; a couple of tourists came through and made for the parking lot. The screen door slapped closed behind them—and then it opened again and a man wearing jeans emerged, striding toward the motel rooms.

  Charlie.

  Emma kept the glasses trained upon the back of his head and realized that she was half crouched over the steering wheel as if attempting to hide herself—but if he did stop, and turn, and look up the hill, he’d recognize the car, anyway, wouldn’t he?

  It seemed that she didn’t care. She watched him intently through the opera glasses and felt this to be her due, that she was able to watch him, unseen. Her mouth was dry, and her hands, clasping the glasses, were wet with sudden perspiration. She saw him reach with his right hand under his plaid shirt, to scratch the top of his shoulder. He was wearing hiking boots. She watched him go through a door, leaving it open, and emerge carrying a mop and a pail full of what Emma assumed were cleaning supplies. She lowered the glasses for a moment, blinking in disbelief, and raised them again to see him pull a ring of keys from his pocket. He unlocked a door with the number 1 upon it and disappeared inside with his mop and pail. Emma sank back in her seat.

  Did he have any idea how ludicrous he looked? Wearing jeans, and a loud-colored shirt, and carrying that mop, for heaven’s sake, and a pail full of Windex and Mr. Clean and Sani-Flush toilet bowl cleaner or whatever he had in there. Her eyes had filled with tears, and there was a great ache in her chest, as if something had her in a vise.

  Emma bent her head and put the opera glasses back in their case. Whatever had possessed her mother to give her such a thing? She thought there were probably people in the world—somewhere in the world, in the farthest reaches of someplace—who would have believed that the opera glasses, when presented to her, already contained all the images she would see through them. She brushed tears away, blew her nose, and sat upright again, her hands on the steering wheel.

  Who the hell knew why he’d done it?

  Who the hell cared?

  She turned on the motor and waited for a Winnebago with Ontario license plates to lumber past. Then she made a U-turn and headed south, back toward Sechelt.

  It occurred to her that there was no longer any reason for her to be living on the Sunshine Coast. She tried thinking of jobs she might like to do, of areas in Vancouver where she might like to live. She even wondered if she might not decide to live for a while in another part of the country—Calgary, maybe; or Winnipeg; or Halifax. And she named these cities, speaking aloud in the car, trying them out…but it was no use. It was too soon. Because it wasn’t over yet, the thing with Charlie.

  ***

  “I understand why you don’t believe me,” she said to him, on the night of their fifth wedding anniversary. “But it’s true. A person can do almost anything, if she’s resolute and reasonably intelligent. And I’m both. Plus I’m organized.”

  “And crazy,” said Charlie, who she could tell was having a hard time controlling his temper.

  “Not at all crazy. Determined not to let you make a fool of yourself, that’s all.”

  “You can’t change my mind, Emma. I don’t know why you want to hang on like this. Christ, where’s your pride? Where’s your dignity? Why are you telling me such stupid lies?”

  “Her living room is small,” said Emma. “There’s a window that overlooks the street. The floor is oak, with a rug in the middle. There’s a long sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table, two end tables.”

  “Jesus Christ, Emma, who do you think you’re kidding? You’ve just described half the living rooms in Vancouver.”

  “And there’s a rather amazing collection of objects—they’re from Mexico, she told me. She was there for a couple of weeks last winter.”

  Charlie’s expression had changed.

  “The most amazing of them all,” said Emma, “is a classroom of little devils, twenty little desks occupied by twenty little devils, with a great big devil up at the front, teaching them. Helena said it’s made of plaster of paris. Helena has very strange tastes, hasn’t she?” She cocked her head at Charlie. “Now truly, is that something I could have made up?”

  “Why the hell did you do it?” said Charlie hoarsely.

  “She’s completely unsuitable for you, Charlie. I know your mother would agree.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “Emma—I don’t know what to say to you. It’s over. And I’m moving on.”

  “I’m warning you, Charlie—”

  “It won’t work anymore, Emma.”

  He stood up, and Emma knew this was because he wanted to tower over her. She looked straig
ht ahead, into the leaves of the schefflera on the other side of the living room. She wasn’t going to crane her neck and peer up at him. Emma’s submissive days were over. Submissiveness didn’t work. None of it worked. Not flirtatiousness, not submissiveness, not seduction, not hanging on his every word; not making sure his suits were pressed and his shoes were cleaned, not stocking cupboards and freezer and refrigerator with things that were good for him and things he liked as well; not cleaning the damn toilet and sponging out the damn sink and doing the damn vacuuming; not taking damn courses and reading things she didn’t care about, just so she’d be interesting to Charlie—none of it worked, none of it, none of it…

  “So don’t threaten me,” he said, “because if you try to kill yourself again, I’ll let you do it. So help me God, this time I’ll let you die.”

  “I’ll do it there,” she said, jam-packed with grief and rage.

  “I won’t listen to this,” said Charlie, and he turned to head for the door.

  “I’ll do it right there,” Emma shouted, “in Helena’s living room, on Helena’s couch, in front of Helena’s devils.”

  Charlie spun around and moved swiftly toward her.

  “I’ll splash my red blood,” said Emma, “all over Helena’s steel-gray sofa.”

  Charlie almost hit her. She could see it in his eyes.

  “I will,” said Emma quietly. “I will.”

  43

  “MOVE MOVE move move move!”

  “Settle down, Gardiner.”

  “Get us the fuck offa here.” He was practically bug-eyed, and Eddie was pretty sure he was sweating.

  “You got two eyes in your head, Gardiner, you can see there’s no way I can move until the guy ahead of me moves, and no way he can move until—for God’s sake, Gardiner, we’re in a lineup here. Have a smoke. Relax. Shut your eyes.”

  He was surprised Gardiner was that scared, even though he knew Gardiner didn’t like ferries; well, it wasn’t ferries, actually, or even boats that he didn’t like—it was water, deep water like you find in oceans or lakes or rivers. He didn’t even like going over it on a bridge. And some bridges were worse than others. He’d go miles to avoid the new one south of Vancouver, the Alex Fraser Bridge. “It’s so fucking high,” he’d told Eddie, “you might as well be up in the fucking clouds.”

  Finally they were docked, and the ferry guys started directing the lines of cars and trucks off the boat, and then they were on the road to Sechelt.

  “Okay, so pull over,” said Gardiner.

  Reluctantly, Eddie pulled over, and they switched places.

  “I’d like to know what you think we’re gonna do when we get there,” said Eddie, feeling irritated. He wanted to be in his Camaro, not in Gardiner’s beat-up Olds Delta 88, and if he did have to sit in Gardiner’s beat-up Olds, he’d at least like to be able to drive it. But Gardiner would only let him drive onto the ferry and off of it. Eddie, looking out the window at the green trees, didn’t really blame him. It was hard for anybody who knew how to drive to be a passenger.

  “We find the bitches,” said Gardiner. “Where they live. And we break in and get your fucking letters.” He’d been driving with only the fingertips of his right hand on the steering wheel, his left elbow on the open window, but suddenly as he steered around a corner the road went practically straight up and then around in a hairpin curve. “Holy shit,” said Gardiner, concentrating on his driving for a while.

  Once they were on the straight and narrow again—and it was certainly narrow, all right, thought Eddie; this road was nothing that deserved the word Highway attached to it—Gardiner said, “How big is this fucking town we’re going to, anyway?”

  Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know. Not big, I think.”

  About half an hour later they got there, and Eddie had been right, it wasn’t big.

  “Jesus,” said Gardiner, cackling, striking the flat of his hand against the steering wheel. “I never seen a place this small before.”

  Eddie looked at him in disgust. It was nothing to brag about, never having been out of Vancouver in your entire life, not in Eddie’s opinion, anyway.

  “There sure aren’t gonna be a hell of a lot of people doing plays in this burg,” said Gardiner.

  “So what do we do—cruise around looking in windows until we find them?” said Eddie.

  “We stop and look in a phone book,” said Gardiner. “Theaters have phones like everything else.”

  But they didn’t even have to do that. They parked on the main street, in front of a fish and chips shop done up to look English, and went into the drugstore on the corner to buy Gardiner some smokes. The ferry fare had just about wiped out Eddie’s PROJECTS envelope, and he wouldn’t get to put any more money in there until the end of the month, almost three whole weeks away. So he watched enviously while Gardiner stuck the package of Craven A in his shirt pocket, and then he turned away so Gardiner wouldn’t see him eyeing the smokes—and there right in front of his eyes was a pink poster that said SUNSHINE COAST THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS… And then there was a bunch of information: dates, and times, and names of plays, and on and on.

  Eddie poked Gardiner with his elbow, and they both studied the poster intently.

  “Okay,” said Gardiner decisively. “Got it.”

  Back in the car, he revved the motor until Eddie winced. “Hey, let’s not call attention to ourselves, okay?”

  Gardiner was cackling his head off. “A tent. A tent. For fuck’s sake, a tent.”

  ***

  They sat around a big table on the platform that would be their stage, doing the first read-through of the play that was to open in two weeks’ time. People loved Agatha Christie. Kathy didn’t pretend to understand why.

  She glanced around frequently as the cast worked its collective way through Act One; her character didn’t make her appearance until shortly before the first curtain.

  They were in a huge red-and-white-striped tent that had been set up in a meadow three miles north of town. Through the open flaps at the other end Kathy could see the ocean, across the highway, beyond a grove of trees.

  “Ainswick!” cried Caroline, as Midge. “Lovely, lovely Ainswick!” She had the best part of any of them, at least in this play, The Hollow. They’d be doing two more, but the casting for these hadn’t been finalized.

  Kathy rested her chin on her hand, fingering the pages of her script, daydreaming.

  The side flaps were open too, and every so often kids peered in at them.

  She heard, “My dad says I ought to call myself a domestic help,” and realized they’d gotten to Sandy’s first scene. Sandy was playing Doris, the maid, who was supposed to be a little bit half-witted, and terrified of the butler.

  Kathy thumbed ahead in the script, looking for her entrance.

  A dog appeared in the opening at the far end of the tent. He observed them for a moment, tail wagging hesitantly, and then padded in their direction.

  “Muffy!” A boy of about eight stuck his head around the corner.

  Kathy caught Sandy’s eye. “‘Muffy’?” she mouthed, silently.

  “Muffy!” The boy emitted a piercing whistle, and the cast, as one, lifted their faces from their scripts in time to see the dog run toward the boy and vanish with him around the corner.

  Oh, God, and here was Gerda, thought Kathy, wincing, straightening in her chair.

  “Oh, John, you don’t mean that,” said Gerda, and Kathy didn’t dare look at Sandy or Caroline, because Gerda was the part Melanie was to have played. She tried not to listen, but that was neither fair nor wise, because after all they were going to be working with this woman the whole damn summer: they’d made their decision—here they were. She hissed at herself furiously, causing the guy playing John, who was sitting next to her, to glance at her uneasily.

  Every so often someone darted across one of the gaps created by the swung-back tent flaps, or sat down on the grass to listen for a while.

  Kathy heard somebody trip, sweari
ng, over one of the guy wires. She glanced over to see a big guy with reddish hair start picking himself up from the ground.

  “Veronica,” said the director.

  Those wires were damn dangerous, she thought indignantly, watching him limp quickly out of sight.

  “Veronica,” said the director, more sharply.

  Kathy’s heart lurched. “Oh, God, sorry,” she said, scanning the page. “Uh… ‘You must forgive me,’” she said, “ ‘for bursting in upon you this way…’ ”

  ***

  “Christ, Eddie, you stupid weasel.” Gardiner had grabbed him by the sleeve of his denim shirt and was literally dragging him across the grass to where the car was parked, by the side of the highway. But he was laughing as he said it. “Ass over teakettle—shit, you got the brains of a fat-ass toad.”

  They climbed into the car, and Eddie waited to catch his breath before shutting his door, but Gardiner didn’t wait, he started the motor and got the broken-down Oldsmobile heading down the road, and Eddie, grabbing at the door handle, almost fell on his face right out of the car, which just made Gardiner laugh harder.

  They found a place where they could get a hamburger and a beer, and they took the food to the car and drove back to nearby the tent, so they could watch people coming and going.

  “Did you hear any of that crap?” said Gardiner, munching.

  “Some of it.”

  “I never heard such boring shit in my life.”

  They finished eating, and they drank the beer, and they waited, and waited. After a while Eddie got out of the car and sat on the grass. Gardiner wandered across the highway and disappeared among the trees. “Fuck this,” he muttered, when he got back. “The fucking ocean’s over there.”

  They’d been waiting for more than two hours when people started dribbling out of the tent, heading for cars parked on a road that went off the highway along the side of the meadow. They climbed quickly back into Gardiner’s car and waited another few minutes. Eddie, just to be safe, slid down in the passenger seat so he couldn’t be seen. He stayed there on the floor, his head bumping against the bottom of the glove compartment, his legs cramping, while Gardiner watched for the girls; Eddie had told him what they looked like.