Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

  We all stood and drank and mumbled what he told us to, and I felt both diminished and like I wanted to punch him in the face. That was my speech to give, damn it, even though I hated giving speeches.

  “One more thing,” Tim continued. “I also want to say thank you to my brother, Jeff, who’s the reason you’re all drinking and eating so well this evening.” He turned towards me, his glass held out like a peace offering. “I haven’t been around, and you’ve been doing more than your share. Thank you.” He raised his glass again as the room chorused, “To Jeff!”

  Goddamn Tim. Right when you want to hate him forever, he goes and does something unexpected. Something that had me feeling way more emotional than I thought possible.

  Claire took my hand and leaned towards me.

  “You did a good thing. A really good thing.”

  “Thanks.”

  She took my face in her hands and kissed me. “I mean it. I love you.”

  “I love you too.” I kissed her back until there were a few whistles and catcalls telling us to “get a room.” We broke apart. Claire gave me her crooked smile and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

  “Good show tonight,” Tim said to me a few minutes later, catching up to me at the bar.

  “Right,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “You too.”

  “Sorry, did I steal your thunder?”

  “No. Forget it.”

  “Damn.”

  I turned towards him. His tie was askew and for some reason he looked younger than me. Or younger than I felt.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Stealing your thunder was kind of the whole point.”

  “Is that right?”

  He laughed. “Jeff, Jeff, when did you get so serious? I came over to apologize. I thought I was doing you a favour. I remember how much you hate public speaking, but when I saw your face I realized … anyway, sorry.”

  I sipped my drink, trying to figure out if he was being genuine. It made me feel empty that I couldn’t tell anymore.

  “Do you really mean that?” I asked lamely.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “And everyone always said you were the smart one.”

  “No one ever said that about me. You’re the one they said that about.”

  “Then why do you have all this?” He waved his hand around. “How’d you get so fucking lucky?”

  I turned back to the bar. “I ask myself that all the time.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I do.”

  “See you around, brother.”

  He turned to leave and I grabbed his arm. “Don’t do that.”

  He shrugged me off. “I can do what I want. Whatever I have, I have that.”

  “Why’d you come home, Tim? Just tell me.”

  “You know Claire’s not doing well, right? You at least know that?”

  My heart started to pump. “Don’t tell me about my wife.”

  “But you asked me to,” he said, and then he walked away.

  CHAPTER 19

  Swing Low

  It’s only when he’s sitting across from me in the den, holding the plastic bag full of Jeff’s effects, that I realize the police officer is Marc Duggard, a guy who was a few years ahead of me at Springfield Prep. The fact that I never realized who he was the day Jeff died underscores how out of it I was. At least now, it only takes me five minutes to recognize someone I spent twelve years in school with. A baby step of progress.

  “Sorry to have to do this, Claire,” he says. “But we have to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. You understand.”

  “Yes,” I say mechanically.

  “I’ll need you to sign this form,” he says, handing me a release form in triplicate.

  I sign the copies, and then he sits there, staring at me, as though I might hold the answers he’s presumably here to give me.

  “We’ve concluded our investigation,” he says eventually.

  “There was an investigation?”

  “Standard procedure with vehicular homicide.”

  “Yes, of course. I remember.”

  More echoes of my past life. They’d have to make sure the driver wasn’t drunk, or high, or reckless. But careless was okay. Careless was just a part of life.

  “We’ve concluded it was an accident,” he says. “With the sun in her eyes, and Jeff walking into the street suddenly like that, well, it could’ve happened to anybody.”

  I’ve always hated that expression. It didn’t happen to anybody. It happened to Jeff.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Pardon?”

  “The driver. Do I know her?”

  “She’s from out of town. Passing through. Terrible luck. Terrible luck for everyone. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you …”

  “What?”

  “She’s still here. In the hospital, actually.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “No … a mental hold. It’s common in these types of cases … well, you can imagine I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  He slaps his hands on his thighs. “I should be going.”

  “Okay.”

  I shift in my seat and the plastic bag slips around in my lap, tinkling. Is it Jeff’s keys? Loose change? Am I ever going to be able to open it?

  Marc stands and pauses. He seems to be expecting me to thank him, for Jeff’s effects, for the information about the woman who killed him, such as it is. Instead, I give him back the thousand-mile stare he’s been giving me.

  He holds it for a moment. “I’m real sorry about all this, Claire.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can see myself out.”

  I nod but rise anyway. Out in the hall, there’s a line waiting for the bathroom. Tish is at the head of it. She looks like she wants to say something to me but before I can ask her what it is, Tim’s at my side, leading me towards the back of the house.

  We come to an abrupt stop in the solarium that overlooks the backyard.

  “Wait here,” he says, as if I had anywhere else to go, then takes the plastic bag from my hands, and places it on the counter.

  He leaves the room and I’m alone. Seth’s yellow rain jacket is hanging by its hood over Jeff’s larger, red one. Their baseball gloves are resting on the bench, a mud-caked baseball half slipping out of Seth’s newer glove. When was the last time they played catch? Was it this year, during a thaw? Or have the gloves been sitting there all winter, waiting, waiting, waiting?

  “Come with me,” Tim says from behind me. He reaches over my shoulder and pushes open the creaky screen door. The sound of a million summers.

  We go outside. It’s late afternoon, the sun is low, and the air is heavy with the smell of impending rain. He leads me towards the rusting swing set tucked into the corner of the lot. Jeff spent hours assembling it, cursing, sweating, even slicing his hand open, resulting in a long wait in the emergency room. But when it was finished (slightly off-kilter, the swings always listing to the left) and he revealed it to six-year-old Seth, all the stress and toil were worth the expression of pure joy on his face. Jeff hoisted him into the seat, and Seth swung and swung, too high for my liking. Later, he and his friends scampered up the slide, dangled from the crossbeam. For a while I always knew where to find him, but then he grew, and the swing didn’t, and Seth moved on to other things.

  I used to find Jeff out here sometimes a few years ago, and again lately, stuffed into a swing, his arms wrapped around the metal chains, staring off into space.

  Tim sits in a swing and motions for me to sit in the other. The stiff rubber gives under my adult weight, cutting into the backs of my thighs, reminding me of the scratchy dress I’m still wearing. The itch of grief.

  Tim’s swing creaks back and forth, screaming for oil. Last year’s leaves are gathered under our feet, rotting into earth. A chore we never got to.

  “You want some?” Tim asks as the grainy smell of alcohol hits me. He’s holding out a fifth of something dark, wiping his mouth with the
back of his other hand.

  “I’ve been looking for that.”

  “How could you be? I brought it with me.”

  “No, I mean something like that. All the alcohol seems to be missing.”

  “I noticed.”

  “My mother,” I say, and he nods in agreement.

  He passes the container to me and I take a swig. Jim Beam, I realize as soon as it hits my throat. An old flavour, full of memories.

  “That’s awful.”

  “It was the only thing I could find at my parents’ house.”

  “You think they keep it to dissuade guests from drinking?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Sometimes I think it wouldn’t take much to turn this town into the one in Footloose.” I take another burning swallow. “Anyway. Thanks.”

  “Wasn’t that town called Bomont?”

  “It’s not about the name, doofus.”

  “Put a girl in a swing and suddenly she’s using terms like ‘doofus.’”

  “If the swing fits.”

  I twist the creaking, rusting chains, like I used to do as a child. I turn and turn and turn—and release! I’m twirling in the opposite direction. The world blurs, my brain goes dizzy and feels loose in my skull.

  “What did he want?” Tim asks when I come to rest.

  “Who? Marc Duggard?”

  “The one and only.”

  “To give me Jeff’s effects, and to tell me that they’ve closed their investigation. Accident. Unavoidable. ‘One of those things.’ Did you know the woman who did it is in the hospital?”

  “Was she injured?”

  “They’re worried she’s going to kill herself.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t try to stop her.”

  “Tim!”

  “What? You don’t think she should pay for what she did?”

  “What’s it going to change?”

  “That’s a weird thing for you to say. Whatever happened to ‘light ’em up’?”

  “Did I ever say that?”

  His feet push at the ground. He sways slowly. “Many times.”

  “That was a long time ago. Another lifetime.”

  “We only have one lifetime.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. Someone from out of town.”

  I look down at my own feet. I raise my toes up and try to dig them into the mud, but the ground won’t give.

  “Are you going to forgive her?” he says.

  “I can’t think about that right now. I’m still trying to forgive myself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I turn towards him. His face is flushed from the alcohol and the cold breeze. “Do I have to say it?”

  He holds my gaze for a minute, then takes another drink.

  “It’s not the same thing, Claire. It never was.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he gives a big push backwards, leaving the ground, arcing through the air, then jumps from the swing, landing gracefully on the ground, sticking the landing like a gymnast.

  He turns and stands in front of me, blocking the wind. And now, for the first time, the day feels warmer than it is.

  When I get back inside, I decide it’s time to finally get out of these clothes. And the thought of climbing into bed, pulling the covers over my head, over this day, is there too.

  And Seth. I want Seth.

  I pull Beth aside and let her know where I’m going, ask her if she can handle the people who don’t seem to want to leave. She agrees to see that the guests get out of here eventually, sooner rather than later.

  Upstairs, I go first to our room, my room, and change into an old pair of flannel pyjamas Jeff always used to make fun of me for wearing.

  “But they’re so comfortable,” I’d say.

  “You look five,” he’d reply, then nuzzle his face into my belly. “And you smell like the cottage. Like mothballs.”

  The pyjamas did date from our cottage days, a rickety old house thirty minutes away that wasn’t winterized and seemed to be slowly sinking into the ground. Everything in that house smelled like beach towels that had never quite dried, and the occasional mothball we found in the back of a closet, left over from its grander days when my grandmother kept fur coats there for special occasions.

  We played dress-up in those coats, Beth and I, wrinkling our noses against the mothball tang, ladying around in our mother’s high heels while our parents bickered downstairs. These pyjamas smell like memories, mostly good ones. Ones from before life became something too complicated to be fixed by a juice Popsicle pulled fresh from the freezer.

  Seth is in his room, lying on his car bed that was super cool when he was seven, and has now turned almost kitsch. Something a hipster might choose if he was discovering irony. Only Seth is twelve and his father’s just died and I doubt he’s thinking much about irony these days. Either way, he needs a new bed.

  His back is propped against the headboard, a pillow at a weird angle, and he’s reading a book. A slim volume I don’t recognize.

  “What you got there, buddy?” I ask as I sit down next to him, my feet in the same direction as his.

  “Dad’s book.”

  I lean my head against his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  “That book of Dad’s. You know, the one I got the poem from.”

  “Oh, right. Where’d you find that again?”

  “In his bag.”

  “His golf bag?”

  “Nah, his travel one. He never unpacked from that trip he took a couple of weeks before … Anyway, just like Dad, right?”

  I smile. Jeff’s the worst unpacker in the world.

  “What’s the book about?”

  “She seems to have a thing for trees. And snow. She likes snow.”

  I take the book from him. It’s called Just This Side of Childhood and contains about fifty poems. On the back is a black-and-white picture of a girl about Seth’s age—the National Spoken Word Champion of the previous year. She has long dark hair and a pale face, and something about her straight-on stare seems familiar. Only with more confidence, if that makes any sense.

  Zoey Underhill.

  What was Jeff doing with this book?

  Seth takes it from me and goes back to the page he was reading.

  “You enjoying that?”

  “Dunno. Makes me feel a bit better.”

  “Because it was Dad’s?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want me to leave you alone?”

  “No, you can stay.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll stay.”

  I pull up the covers from the bottom of the bed and tuck them around us. I close my eyes and listen to Seth slowly turning the pages, muttering a word or two out loud.

  The wind is rattling against the panes, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I can hear the creak of the unoiled swing.

  CHAPTER 20

  Hold the Phone

  Will you play a game with me? Jeff wrote to me about a month after we’d come back into contact.

  Since those first few email exchanges, that first phone call, I’d felt a fizzy excitement, carbonated, letting loose little bubbles of happiness. A crush, a work crush, I’d tell myself when I opened his profile to figure out the exact colour of his eyes, or when he’d race through my thoughts at odd moments. He was fun, and I needed that. And I was different with him, I felt different with him, and I needed that too. Friends, we were friends, and if our interactions had secretly become the best part of my workday, that was play, pretend, nothing to worry about.

  What kind of game? I wrote back.

  Word association.

  Like in Psych 101?

  Nah. Well, maybe. There’s this thing I read about on the Internet and I thought … I’m curious what you’ll say.

  You were reading a women’s magazine, weren’t you?

  I smiled as the email floated away from me, ima
gining his indignant snort.

  If you’re not going to play nice … he wrote.

  I’ll be a good girl, I promise. How does it work?

  I send you a word, you write back the first thing that comes to mind, and so on.

  Is there some kind of scoring mechanism?

  Sure, that comes at the end.

  I put my phone on do not disturb.

  All right. Hit me.

  Distil.

  Moonshine.

  Really?

  I shake my head as I type.

  Aren’t you just supposed to ask me the next word?

  Right. Okay. Sunshine.

  Day.

  Off.

  Crazy.

  Your current score is crazy.

  I thought you could only check the score at the end?

  Yeah, yeah.

  I glanced at his picture. It felt like he was smirking at me.

  This was your idea, remember? I typed.

  Motherfucker.

  Excuse me?

  Sorry, he wrote. That’s really the next word.

  Where did you find this thing?

  The Internet, I told you. Answer please.

  My answer is: Really.

  Totally.

  Seriously.

  Yeah.

  Wait, I wrote. Are we still playing?

  We are. Yeah is the next word. Promise.

  Okay. That’s my next word, for clarity.

  A long pause while I drummed my nails on the desk.

  Hello? You still there? I wrote.

  I’m still here.

  Is there no next word? Or does the computer say that I’m an axe murderer?

  No … there’s a next word.

  Well, what is it then?

  You sure you want to know?

  Of course.

  Another pause. Then: Sex.

  Sex? Really?

  Really.

  Huh. What?

  I never would’ve thought you could get from distil to sex in so few words.

  His answer felt instantaneous.

  I might’ve gotten there sooner.

  My heart was suddenly racing.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Just … God. Forget it.

  What were you going to write?

  The pause was so long I was about to type another prompt.

  Probably better left unwritten. Unsaid.

  Oh, right. Yes. Probably.

  Unsaid, but not unthought?