The Dells

by Michael Blair

  “I didn’t say you were drunk,” Maureen said with a sigh. Sometimes talking to Hal was like talking to a fiveyear-old. “I wish you’d tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing’s bothering me,” he growled.

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Hal, it’s obvious something is bothering you. What is it? Is it work? Is it me? Have I done something to piss you off?”

  “What were you and my brother talking about?”

  “He was telling me about Marvin Cartwright, the man who was killed in the woods.”

  “I know who Marvin Cartwright was, for Christ’s sake. What did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t get a chance to tell me very much at all before you came barging out and practically accused him of trying to fuck me. Frankly, it was bloody embarrassing.”

  “Not half as embarrassing as watching you fawn all over him like he was some kind of rock star or something.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t be ridiculous. I was not fawning all over him. I was just being polite. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me,” he barked. “What’s the matter with you? Look at you. You’re a forty-fiveyear-old woman dressed like a goddamned teenager. You’re practically falling out of that shirt. And it’s so thin I can see your nipples right through it, for god’s sake.”

  “If I was dressed like a teenager, Hal, you’d see a lot more than my nipples. I’d have jeans so low I’d have to shave my pubic hair, tattoos, and a stud through my tongue. Maybe one in my clitoris, too. How’s that, Hal? Maybe I should get a clitoral ring. I’m told it makes cunnilingus a lot more interesting.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “What’s disgusting, Hal, is that just because I’m forty-five you think I should dress like your mother.”

  “What’s wrong with the way my mother dresses?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Hal, it was just a figure of speech.”

  Hal lapsed into a sullen silence. Did he really think she was interested in Shoe? Maureen wondered, staring out the passenger side window. Or, if she was, that she’d do anything about it? If she was honest with herself, and she tended to be, she’d be the first to admit that she found Shoe attractive. What was not to be attracted to? Well, lots, actually. He wasn’t exactly handsome. His jaw was crooked, his nose was bent, and there was something oddly asymmetrical about his cheekbones. In fact, he looked as though someone had taken a baseball bat to his face. But he seemed to be in great shape, didn’t drink much, didn’t smoke, and, most refreshing, did not litter his speech with profanity, whereas she had a vocabulary that would make Tony Soprano blush. He wasn’t a prude. Swearing just wasn’t a habit he’d acquired. She wondered what his views were on cunnilingus.

  “What’s funny?” Hal asked tartly.

  “Eh?”

  “You laughed.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Sorry.”

  Poor Hal. He was as unlike his brother as a man could be. He was overweight, drank too much, smoked (although he didn’t know she knew), swore, albeit not as much as she did, and seemed to think that oral sex of any variety was disgusting. A man who doesn’t like fellatio, her friend Dinah had said to her once, was as rare as a duck that doesn’t like water. “Not that I’m especially keen on it,” she’d added, “but I don’t mind doing it if I know I can expect something in return. Fortunately, Clark is as happy to give as to receive.” Maureen’s experience with either was sadly limited.

  Nor was Hal the same man she’d married twentyfive years ago. Maybe what she found so attractive and exciting about Shoe was that he reminded her a little of Hal when he’d been younger. Or maybe she was just making excuses for herself. There was an element of danger about Shoe that Hal had never possessed. There was also an odd, almost contradictory vulnerability about him. Shoe brought out the protective side of her that Hal never had, but at the same time he brought out her submissive side as well. Although she had never been a fan of the adventure romance novels Dinah consumed like air, Maureen laughed at the sudden and completely ridiculous image of herself on the heaving deck of a stormtossed sailing ship, bodice of her gown ripped, clinging to Shoe’s sinewy arm as he steered the ship between treacherous shoals to the safety of a sheltered bay, where they made tender passionate love on a white sand beach.

  “What’s funny now?” Hal demanded as he turned the car into the driveway of their house in Oakville and shut down the engine.

  “You don’t want to know,” Maureen muttered, half under her breath.

  chapter nine

  The envelope fell from between the pages of a pink, vinyl-covered diary with a tiny clasp lock, which she’d had to break open with a nail file. It was a standard No. 10 business envelope, folded once. The crease was sharp and the paper crackled dryly as she unfolded it. There was no stamp, no return address, just her first name written large on the front. She lifted the flap of the envelope and extracted a single sheet of typewriter paper, folded three times. It was a letter, written in a neat, even hand.

  Dear Rachel,

  I’m sorry to have to say goodbye to you like this, rather than in person. Please forgive me. I hope you will not be too angry with me for too long. That would make me sad. Much sadder that I am already.

  I will miss all you kids — you, Marty, Bobby, Mickey, and the others — but I will miss you most of all. I will never have children of my own and getting to know you and the other kids — But mostly you! — made me realize how much I will be missing.

  Please tell the other kids goodbye for me. Especially Marty. She’s very lucky to have a friend like you.

  Say goodbye to your brothers, too. From what you told me about Joe, he sounds like a good boy. It’s a shame he was too shy to talk to me. I hope he and Joey can patch up their friendship. And don’t be too hard on Hal. He’s a good boy too. He just fell in with the wrong crowd for a while.

  Rachel, after I’m gone, you may hear people say bad things about me, some of which you may not understand until you are older. Please remember, though, that things are not always as they seem.

  Thank you for being my friend. I will remember you forever.

  The letter was signed, Marvin, your favourite Martian, and the signature was embellished with a simple cartoon of a little man with big feet and stubby antennae above pointy ears.

  The drawing blurred as tears filled her eyes. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. The sadness she felt was an almost physical thing, not quite pain, not quite emptiness, in the middle of her chest. She’d completely forgotten about the letter, just as she had all but forgotten him. I will remember you forever, he’d written. She touched the letter, running her fingertips along the words. Had he remembered her? She hoped so.

  She heard a noise behind her and turned. Joe was on the basement stairs, caught in the act of reversing direction to go back up again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You’re not,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes with the tips of her fingers.

  “Are you all right?” he said, descending again.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I found a letter Marvin Cartwright wrote me when he left.” She handed the letter to him. He read it quickly, then handed it back to her. “I don’t remember how I got it. I mean, I remember reading it, I think, but not getting it.” She looked at the letter again, scanning the text, then looked up. “I don’t remember people saying bad things about him,” she said.

  “You were pretty young. A lot of people were sure he was the Black Creek Rapist.”

  “Not Mum and Dad, though.”

  “No, I think they knew him a little better than most. Or tried to.”

  Rachel looked at the letter again. Please tell the other kids goodbye for me, Mr. Cartwright had written. Had she? She didn’t remember. She didn’t remember telling anyone about the letter, not her parents, not Joe or Hal, not even Marty. Some best friend, she thought sadl
y. But she hadn’t seen much of Marty after her attack; she’d stopped coming round the house, despite her gigantic crush on Joe. She could have tried harder to stay in touch, though, Rachel thought guiltily.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye to you for him,” she said to Shoe.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I hardly knew him.”

  “Were you too shy to talk to him?”

  “I suppose I was,” he said.

  She glanced at the letter again. “You never did patch things up with Joey, did you?”

  “No,” he said quietly.

  Joey Noseworthy had been Joe’s best friend from the first grade until their final year of junior high school. People had called them Joe and Little Joe; by fourteen, Joe was almost six feet tall, whereas Joey had barely made it past five feet. While their friendship lasted, they’d been virtually inseparable; Joey had spent as much time at their house as Marty, and Rachel had had as big a crush on Joey as Marty had had on Joe. In their final year of junior high school, however, Joey had stopped coming round and Joe had started spending more time with Janey Hallam. Rachel didn’t know what had happened between them, and had never asked. She thought it might have had something to do with Janey. Despite being two years younger than Joe and Joey, “Calamity Janey” had become the third “j” of the triangle a few years before. If it wasn’t a love triangle, it was the next best thing, and just as unstable.

  With a jolt, Rachel realized that Joe and Joey had fallen out in the spring of the same year that Marvin Cartwright had moved away, a month or so before the attacks in the Dells had begun.

  “What is it?” Joe asked.

  She folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. “I’m going to have a drink before going to bed. Join me?”

  “I’ll keep you company,” he said.

  They went upstairs, where Rachel took a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt whisky down from the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard. “I keep this around for emergencies.” She took a tumbler from the cupboard and poured herself a generous shot. The smoky aroma filled the room. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “A finger,” he said.

  She got down another glass and poured him a shot, to which he added a few drops of water from the filter jug in the refrigerator. She knew that that was supposed to be the proper way to drink single malt, a drop or two of water to bring out the flavours, but she preferred hers unadulterated. They went back down to the basement, to what had been the TV room when they were growing up. The television had long since been relocated upstairs and the old overstuffed sofa and matching chairs smelled of dust and disuse. Her nose twitched as she stifled a sneeze. She sipped her whisky. It helped.

  “A couple a years ago some wannabe gang bangers beat some poor bastard half to death in the main parking lot of the conservation area,” she said. “Just for the hell of it, apparently. Do you think that’s what happened to Marvin Cartwright?”

  “Possibly,” her brother replied. “He was a long way from the parking lot, though.”

  “Who do you think did it then?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You can’t help it. It’s the cop in you.”

  “I haven’t been a police officer for almost thirty years. There isn’t any cop left in me.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do, Joe.” She couldn’t bring herself to call him Shoe. “I remember when you graduated from the police college. You were so proud you almost actually smiled when your photograph was taken, and you never smiled when your photograph was taken. Being a cop was the perfect job for you. I’ll bet a day doesn’t go by that you don’t — ” Her mouth snapped shut, chopping off the words, but it was too late. She saw the brief flash of pain at the memory of Sara’s death, killed on duty by a drunk driver the day after he’d proposed, and she’d accepted. Christ, could she have been any more stupid and insensitive? “Joe, I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it,” he said. He sipped his whisky.

  Maybe if he hadn’t moved to Vancouver after Sara died, Rachel thought, if she’d seen more of him, she wouldn’t keep forgetting that he wasn’t the big, dumb lummox too many people seemed to think he was. Not by a long shot. He wasn’t always so easy to read, though; like that old Star Trek character, the half-alien Mr. Spock, Joe pretty much kept his feelings to himself. Which didn’t mean he didn’t have any. He’d simply learned early, maybe too early, not to let much, if anything, show. Why, how, or exactly when, Rachel wasn’t sure. One incident stood out in her mind.

  When Joe was thirteen, he’d fallen while playing capture the flag in the woods, landing on an old board and driving a rusty nail through the palm of his left hand. Rachel and Marty had been helping Rachel’s mother bake cookies when Joe had walked into the kitchen and calmly proclaimed, “I think I need to go to the doctor.” Rachel’s mother had almost fainted at the sight of the rusty four-inch spike through his hand, but Joe had been so cool and matter-of-fact about it Rachel had said incredulously, “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “Sure it hurts,” he replied. “Look, it goes right through.” He showed her and Marty the bloody inch of nail sticking out of the back of his hand.

  “Neat,” Marty said. “How come it isn’t bleeding much?”

  “The nail is plugging the hole, I guess.”

  Rachel’s mother had been so shaken she’d had to get Mrs. Levinson next door to drive them to the doctor’s office. Rachel and Marty went, too, and both watched, fascinated, as the doctor sprayed Joe’s hand with something that smelled harsh and cold, pulled the nail from his hand with a pair of funny-looking pliers, then cleaned out the wound with a fat orange toothpick. All while Joe sat absolutely still and expressionless. After the doctor bandaged his hand and gave him a tetanus shot, he complimented Joe on how brave he’d been. Rachel thought he was incredibly brave too, even though she’d seen the muscles in his jaw twitch and the single tear that had escaped from the corner of his eye. Marty had just stared at him with an expression of total adoration on her face.

  “Big deal,” Hal, then seventeen, had said when Rachel told him of Joe’s mishap. “What’s he want, a medal or a chest to pin it on?” But Rachel had known even then that if it had been Hal, he’d have run whimpering to their mother for comfort, then bellowed and thrashed and cried as the doctor had tried to treat him.

  “Rae?” Joe said.

  “What? Oh, sorry. I was someplace else.” She tossed back the remainder of her whisky and stood up. “I’m for bed. See you in the morning.” She paused, one foot on the bottom step of the stairs. “Or not, if you sleep late. We have to start setting up for the homecoming festival at eight.”

  “Let me know if you need another strong back,” he said.

  “We’ve plenty of those,” she said. “Most come with weak minds attached.”

  “So one more won’t hurt.”

  She smiled. “G’night,” she said, and climbed the stairs.

  chapter ten

  Saturday, August 5

  Shoe was awakened by a spike of sunlight through the high window facing the foot of the bed. The bed was in the basement bedroom his father had built when Hal had turned twelve and had needed a room of his own. Shoe had inherited the bedroom when Hal had gone away to McGill University in Montreal to study business. His wristwatch, propped against the base of the lamp on the bedside table, read a few minutes to six. Still slightly jetlagged, he thought about closing the curtain so he could catch another hour of sleep, but he could hear the creak of floorboards and the quiet mutter of morning radio from upstairs. He got up, showered, dressed, then followed the smell of coffee up to the kitchen. Rachel, dressed in loose drawstring pants and a body-hugging tank top that complemented her compact muscularity, stood barefoot at the stove. She was laying strips of bacon in an ancient and blackened cast iron frying pan.

  “I found your stash,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, I made a pot.” />
  “Not at all,” he said. He poured a mug of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Should I do you some bacon?”

  “No, thank you,” Shoe replied. He didn’t go out of his way to avoid fatty meats, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten bacon. It smelled good as it began to sizzle quietly in the pan. She put the package away in the fridge.

  “In his letter, Mr. Cartwright wrote that he hoped Joey and I would patch things up,” Shoe said. “I wasn’t aware that Joey knew him.” Even though Joey had been his best and closest friend, he added to himself.

  “Mr. Cartwright had a shelf full of chess trophies in his living room,” Rachel said, turning the bacon in the pan. “I remember Joey telling me that he gave demonstrations at the junior high school chess club. He’d play a dozen games at a time. When I asked Mr. Cartwright about it, he told me Joey was the only person who ever came close to beating him.”

  “Joey was a good chess player,” Shoe agreed.

  “You beat him, though, didn’t you?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “A lot, he said.”

  Shoe shook his head. “Not true at all,” he said.

  “Would you like to play a game or two while you’re here?” Rachel asked.

  “I haven’t played in years,” Shoe said.

  “Then maybe I’ll have a chance,” Rachel said.

  “Maybe.”

  When the bacon was crisp, Rachel put it into the toaster oven to keep warm, then broke two eggs into the pan. Hot grease popped and spit. Holding the pan at an angle, she basted the eggs with a spoon. The only cereal in the house was Cheerios, which to Shoe tasted like burnt cardboard. He got bread out of the fridge to make toast. Fortunately, it was whole wheat. And there was a jar of Robertson’s Scotch-style orange marmalade.

  “Do you want toast with your cholesterol?” he asked Rachel.

  She made a face. “Carbs? No, thanks.” She sat down and began to eat. When Shoe’s toast popped, he sat down facing her. “What do you think of the chances he’ll be at the homecoming?” Rachel asked.