Elizabeth and After

by Matt Cohen

  “That’s a ‘G’ there,” she said, pointing down at his list.

  “I know.”

  “Sorry. I thought it looked like a ‘6’.”

  “Luke hire you to check my spelling?”

  She backed off, blushing so fast and deep that Carl wanted to apologize but couldn’t find the words. “Hey,” he finally said. And when she looked up, still scarlet, he winked at her the way he had seen Moira wink at his father.

  When Nancy had gone he went back to the paper. He had bought it for the crossword but now he opened it to the help-wanted section. There was nothing except jobs like the one he already had and “business opportunities” for people to buy franchises. Maybe he and Lizzie should be opening some kind of Lonesome Dad Fried Chicken Palace. Lizzie would like that. She liked fried chicken, fries, anything with grease. They would have chicken-emblazoned aprons and chicken-feather hats to keep their hair out of the food. In thirty years they would be rich enough to go to Florida for a month every winter.

  Arnie Kincaid came in and somehow Carl didn’t look up until Arnie was close enough to see him circling the franchise offers with a red ballpoint pen.

  “Thinking of moving on?”

  “Not really,” Carl said.

  “Good. I like the way you keep this place.” Then Carl realized Arnie had only been talking about a change of job but that in truth he was—or some part of him was—getting ready to leave. It was as though whatever Ellie had dealt him had defeated his whole plan. She was right: the accident might have been bad luck but ever since he’d been compelled to try to destroy everything around him. Sooner or later he’d be taking it out on Lizzie. The truth was, they’d be better off without him.

  Kincaid moved over to the coffee machine. “Running a restaurant isn’t such a bad idea.”

  “Can’t cook,” Carl said.

  “Most can’t.” Then Arnie Kincaid laughed. Carl made himself smile. Every time Arnie came into the shop he made little jokes. By the time he had finished his two cups of coffee, told his funny stories and left, Carl was exhausted.

  At eleven Carl emptied out the coffee maker and started sweeping the floor with the big push broom. It was amazing how many candy wrappers and cigarette butts could accumulate during one boring shift. He took the heaped-up dustpan to the bathroom and emptied it into the garbage bag. Then he washed his hands and splashed some water on his face. When he came back into the store Fred Verghoers was standing at the counter, big arms folded across his chest.

  Carl hesitated for a moment, looked around the store. Just the sight of Fred made him feel as though he was just stepping out of his truck, his face still damp with Chrissy’s kisses.

  “I was driving by,” Fred said. “Thought I’d stop to say hello. I’m always missing you at the house.” He stuck out a big hand.

  Carl moved forward slowly. Everything had gone into slow motion, the way it used to before a fight. His eyes flicked around the room. Fred’s face had thickened in the three years since he’d last seen him. In another few years, just looking at Fred was going to be enough to make a man run. Fred’s mangy blue-brown eyes were squinting into an imaginary sun. Carl felt so tight he could hardly move. Fred was a bit taller and had about thirty pounds on him but whatever Fred did to him he could return in kind because, as he had once explained to Chrissy about his fighting, he was faster and mainly he was crazier.

  “Afraid to shake?” Fred asked.

  Carl took Fred’s hand. Fred squeezed hard. “Just thought I’d come and welcome you back in person,” Fred said, still squeezing. “Seems like you’ve seen just about everyone else.” Fred had his hand locked into place but there was something spongy about his palm, as though he was spending too many hours in his office. “Guess you look about the same,” Fred said. “Maybe a bit smaller.” His grip loosened and Carl could feel Fred’s body approaching the edge.

  “Hear they made you manager over at the yard,” Carl said. “Congratulations.”

  Fred let go of Carl’s hand and stepped back. “That’s right.”

  “Hear you’re going into politics, too.”

  “Trying to,” Fred said. “If your boss lets me.”

  They were a couple of feet apart now, still within reach. A set of headlights swept in towards the store. A car door slammed. Arnie Kincaid came back in the door, a video cassette in his hand. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. I forgot to leave this.”

  “We were just getting acquainted again,” Fred said. Carl wondered if he’d find the words to tell Ray just how strange a smile Fred then gave, a twisty little smile that showed bits of his teeth, like the big bad wolf’s when he was talking to Little Red Riding Hood.

  Arnie put the cassette down on the counter. “See you.”

  “Me too,” Fred said. “It’s getting late.” Carl waited. His chest was on fire with adrenaline, his arms half-cocked. But he wasn’t going to move unless Fred moved first. Fred’s face was smooth, unworried. He rubbed his hands together, pushed back his big ring. Then as Arnie went out the door, Fred stepped away from Carl. “Guess I should ask you if you’re going to behave yourself,” Fred said.

  “You a cop now?”

  “I asked you a question,” Fred said. “What’s your answer?”

  Driving east Carl had known this moment would arrive: he and Fred standing toe to toe, ready to start swinging, winner take all. What all? another part of him would ask. That’s ridiculous, you’re twenty-eight years old and what you want is to be a father to your daughter, not to play the teenage idiot. The idiot you were. When the time comes, just turn around and walk away.

  “I don’t have any answers,” Carl said. “I just rent movies.”

  “If that’s the way you want it,” Fred said. He gave his twisty smile again and left the store.

  Carl stood flexing his back and neck, trying to relax as he watched Fred get into his car. He made a couple of false starts backing up, trying to let Arnie go first, then drove off down the road towards town.

  Carl filed away Arnie’s cassette, marked it in the register. Then he picked up the broom and continued sweeping until exactly midnight when he turned off the lights and stepped outside. The clouds had mostly cleared but even as he stood on the step a pale fork of lightning glowed briefly in the sky. His truck was at the front of the gravel parking lot, the mirrors and windshield gave off glimmers of light from the moon. As he went down the steps he noticed there was a car still parked in the shadow of the supermarket. He heard a noise behind him. Then, just as the adrenaline began to surge, his head was hammered from behind. He felt himself falling, slowly, as though the air had turned liquid and was trying to support him, and all the while he was trying to curl up and move his arms to protect his face from the gravel. When he hit the ground a boot drove into his ribs once, twice, three times—then into his head where it had been hit. He blacked out until he heard Fred’s voice grating in his ear, “Next time it’s your nuts.” Then the sound of a car spitting gravel as it skidded out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  TWO

  WHEN CARL CAME TO HE WAS LYING face down in the gravel. His ribs were the first thing he noticed because it hurt to breathe. Then there was the back of his head which he finally gathered the courage to touch; his hand returned sticky with blood. When he tried to stand pain exploded along his side. He fell back to the ground, which sent something through his head like a crowbar clawing at his skull.

  He dug his fingers into the gravel. It was clammy and it stank of oil. He dragged himself towards the steps. His idea was to get the key in the lock, pull himself across the floor and to the telephone. He lifted his face onto the wooden steps. His skull was pounding and the back of his neck was warm with blood. He imagined himself in a Movie Barn summer-heat special, prostrate in the buzzing darkness while Lizzie, watching from wherever she was, cheered him on: “Don’t die, Daddy, don’t die.” But he wasn’t dying, he was just emptying out. Cars flashed back and forth but none seemed to notice him and he hadn’t the str
ength to shout or wave. He wondered what it would take to get himself to the door. If he could rise to his knees, he realized, he would be able to unlock the door then crawl across the floor and call Ray. But as he tried to lift himself that old movie buzzing darkness buzzed even louder and put him back to sleep.

  For the first time in years, Adam’s voices had come back. When he was a child they had possessed him, taken hold of his tongue, grabbed his body from the inside, thrown him to the floor in a frenzy of jabber and drool. When his love for Elizabeth broke open they shot through the gap and joined in, frisky young animals happy to tumble with their master. Now he was too old to be taken thrashing to the floor, far past rolling about on a motel bed or bracketing his head in a loved one’s thighs. Now the numbers were running out and all that remained was the stately march to his dignified and inevitable end, a pre-purchased funeral that foresaw the mourners’ needs in everything from vegetarian spring rolls to single malt Scotch, as well as his own destination in a modestly classic maple casket that would be lowered into its preordained slot in the West Gull Cemetery. On his occasional visits to Elizabeth’s grave he had experimented standing on the ground that would one day hold him. It was beside his mother, where else, and only a stone’s throw from Elizabeth. The idea that the three of them, along with everyone else in West Gull, would be snoozing through eternity together was both a consolation and its opposite. Nonetheless he was on his way and the voices had reassembled, like wolves was how he pictured them, darting in and out of sight, constantly testing his defences. Asleep he would dream he was being attacked by them at the office. That suddenly while talking to Luke or a customer he would be filled by a hot liquid chaos dissolving his bones and his will until he’d end up lying on his back, looking up at Luke’s grinning mug. One afternoon while visiting at the R&R, he had gone into the big hall to talk to Moira about McKelvey. She had been in the corner cleaning and as he waited at the hearth with his coffee, he had the memory of standing in that exact space at one of the New Year parties, as though his old body had invaded his present one, forcing two or maybe a dozen selves into the same electric configuration; then the wires crossed and he was leisurely chatting to Elizabeth as though they had all the time in the world. But suddenly Moira was in front of him and he didn’t know whether to apologize for talking to himself or if he was only imagining the echo of his own voice. “Daydreaming,” he’d muttered to cover all possibilities, and suddenly wondered what it would be like to tell Moira everything. There had been Elizabeth who knew her half—her more-than-half—of the story. There’d been Maureen who’d known her part but guessed more, though not about Carl who knew nothing at all. Finally there was himself and his voices, looking from the outside in like one man with one body and one life but with a whole crowd of imposters pushing and shoving and ordering each other to keep quiet.

  In books, secret sinners always go crazy in the end. For almost thirty years—it was that long since his first night with Elizabeth—he’d held everything in check, divided himself into as many people as necessary, each locked away from the other. Now the mind-control muscles were gone. He’d worn them out or forgotten how to use them.

  Nights he couldn’t sleep any more. He’d lie in bed until two or three in the morning, then get up and drive by the old Balfer place just to see how Carl was doing. Once or twice the lights were on and he’d wanted to stop and knock at his door. Back in West Gull he’d snake guiltily into his own driveway, feeling like a Dr. Jekyll who’d been out playing Mr. Hyde. Finally, afraid of where this might be leading, he bought a do-it-yourself book, ordered in a load of building supplies, and began putting new gyprock on the walls of the upstairs bedroom that he’d slept in as a child but used as storage ever since he’d moved back to town.

  It took him weeks to empty the room of its furniture, carefully remove the wooden mouldings and the window framing, put up the panels, tape, plaster, sand and paint. Although it had to be admitted he spent most of the time re-reading the instructions or admiring each tiny increment of his accomplishment. As he stood, paint-spattered in his childhood room, listening to the baseball game with paintbrush in hand, he convinced himself that once his bedroom was finished he’d remodel the entire house. The incredible prospect of becoming a virtuous handyman who actually increased the value of his residence rather than coaxing it from crisis to crisis became immensely comforting.

  But one night when he was standing on the stepladder, his knees began to tremble, his tongue to flutter, and the pure current of the voices shot through him with such force that he fell down in the newspapers that were covering the floor and began to beg for mercy. But who was he begging? he’d asked himself afterwards, although when it came to mercy he was prepared to accept it from whoever or Whoever wanted to give.

  In mid-August the junk he’d moved from the room was still piled, sheet-covered, in the hall and the ladder was still poised beneath the naked light bulb. To keep himself from driving around the township in the middle of the night, Adam now returned to an old remedy for sleeplessness—night walking. Maybe it was the low dollar or the exceptionally dry weather, but even late at night this summer there were always a few tourists roving and the Main Street convenience store was often open. What Adam most enjoyed was staking out the Movie Barn. From where he stood, which was under an old tree fronting the dress shop, he had a view of Carl through the window and could see customers coming and going. It was strange to think of Carl being observed without knowing—in fact it was strange to be always thinking about Carl but Adam couldn’t stop. Carl’s return to West Gull, his life with Lizzie, even his job at the Movie Barn, obsessed Adam day and night. When Luke brought up Carl’s name, it was all Adam could do to keep his face straight and murmur in agreement. Sometimes he would imagine Carl sitting in his kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, or Carl driving around in his truck, and he had to ask himself why whether Carl threw his coffee in the sink or turned his truck at this or that corner could be so important, while what he himself was doing had become so dull he could hardly stand to be in the same room with himself.

  Friday, to break the spell, he’d actually taken a step he’d fantasized about in his car: he’d walked into the Movie Barn and stood face to face with Carl, daring his voices to take him over and spill the secret. Then Ellie Dean had swept in, furious about Ned, she claimed, but that was just an excuse to start in about the accident as though it was something that had happened to her. “I could tell you something about the accident,” Adam had screamed. “What would you think if you knew this boy who killed his mother was my son, that when he killed his mother my own son was killing the only life I ever had? Was what she and I did so bad we had to be punished like that? Did you ever hear of the sins of the fathers being passed down to their children and then their grandchildren? You’re standing there with your hands on your hips like a bad joke blaming Carl and he doesn’t even know that he’s cursed, or why he’s cursed, or that his whole life and his children’s lives and who knows how many generations will be lived out under the shadow of this curse he can never be told about. …” But as always the scream had been silent, just something that boiled through Adam’s bones until it drove him back into the street.

  Sunday night he decided to return. It was well after midnight. The rain had started with a loud crack of thunder that split the sky like a celestial earthquake. Pellets of hail came pounding down, then a harsh downpour that overflowed the eavestroughs and covered his windows in thick sheets of rain that suddenly thinned, then disappeared, leaving him so agitated that he threw on his jaket and started searching for his mother’s umbrella, a heavy red monster forgotten in a cupboard for years.

  By the time he got outside the noise of the rain on his umbrella was only an intermittent tapping, even though his feet got soaked in the puddles. His plan was the only one left to him: like a retired general with a phantom army planning a war that would never happen, he would map out this final campaign in front of the empty store in order to better imagi
ne exactly what he would say to Carl if ever he summoned the courage to say anything at all.

  The lights were off, Main Street washed clean and silent. As his shoes crunched into the gravel of the parking lot, Adam felt a wave of confidence that everything would work out—the same feeling he’d had after asking Maureen if he could escort her home. He remembered he had come down the stairs from the dark bedroom where he had been with Elizabeth and Maureen had been standing beneath the chandelier waiting for him, her eyes turning to him as he nervously checked and straightened his clothes in the contrasting brightness. With the taste of Elizabeth still in his mouth he inquired if she was ready to leave. In return Maureen had offered her usual anxious smile, tinged with what might have been meant as encouragement. Outside, she hooked her hand into his arm and as soon as they were out of sight of the house, Adam, still dizzy with Elizabeth, dropped to one knee in the snow, closed his eyes to avoid seeing her face, and proposed. “I’ll think about it,” Maureen had replied. And he’d been so confused he’d left her there, halfway home, retreating to his own house and into his pyjamas, Elizabeth still caked to his skin, and drunk himself to sleep.

  As always, the Movie Barn’s windows had posters of the latest video releases. Avoiding the puddles Adam stepped closer to read them, and that was when he became aware of someone breathing—a tiny shallow breath that was hardly a breath at all—and his first thought was that the whispery sound must be running water. Then he caught the glow of a cigarette in the dark and came closer. A rain-drenched Carl was sitting in the gravel propped against the steps with his eyes raised to the sky and, as he told Adam later, “smoking my last cigarette.”

  As Adam realized Carl was hurt his throat filled with a thick choking pain. He knelt beside him and following Carl’s mumbled instructions, checked his ribs, his head, his neck. He took Carl’s keys and opened the store, called an ambulance, then Luke. “Now I’m going to help you up,” he said to Carl. “I’m not going to let them find you like this.” He bent over the boy, hooked his arms under Carl’s while Carl looped an arm around his neck. For a moment Adam strained and it seemed that he would drop him. But then his back straightened and he walked Carl up the steps into the store, eased him into the chair beside the counter. Fifteen minutes later the Movie Barn was swarming.