Elizabeth and After

by Matt Cohen

  “I never knew it would be like this,” Fred said. He took Arnie’s arm, led him towards his office at the side. “It must be costing them a fortune. Look at all these people, all this stuff.”

  Arnie closed the office door behind him. Fred was shaven clean as marble and he wore a fancy striped shirt beneath his vest.

  “Well?”

  “I have to tell you something,” Arnie Kincaid said. “Shoot.”

  “My daughter works at the KGH.”

  “I support the KGH, Arnie, you know that. There’s people all through the township depend on that hospital.”

  “She says Chrissy came in there a few weeks ago with three broken ribs.” Arnie hadn’t planned these exact words; they just popped out. Fred’s eyes stayed on Arnie’s as though they were engaged in a staring contest. His arms were folded across his chest.

  “She fell on the old outside stairs to the basement. The concrete must have caught her. It took me days to talk her into getting an X-ray.”

  The door opened. But it was too late to stop now. “I don’t believe you. Touch her again and I’m calling the police.”

  “You’re confused, old man.” Fred turned to the open doorway. Ned Richardson was standing there. He was carrying a plastic bag, as though he had brought his lunch.

  “They told me you were in here,” the boy stammered. “I was coming by to ask about that job.”

  A television crewman appeared beside Ned. “We’re ready if you are. Come over here and we’ll give you some make-up. Otherwise everyone’s going to think you’re a ghost.”

  Fred’s face cleared. He moved towards the door. “Just a bit of business to finish,” he said. He closed the door. The room was too small for the three of them. Fred folded his arms again and Arnie could feel his anger surging out, a tidal wave of rage. This must be how it was for Chrissy, helplessly waiting for Fred to explode. Fred stepped close to Arnie and Arnie’s heart felt like an old blood-filled sock, leaking and oozing into his chest. He reached into his pocket for one of the emergency pills the doctor had given him.

  Fred Verghoers turned to Ned. The boy was pale but strangely defiant. “You came at the wrong time,” Fred said putting his left hand on Ned’s shoulder.

  Fred’s move was too much for Ned, who clutched his bag to his belly, gave a little cry and looked as though he was about to evaporate from terror. “Don’t panic, boys,” Arnie said, in control again. “I guess we found out what we need to know.” He pushed past Fred and sat down in his chair. “Ned, you go out and get me a glass of water so I can swallow this pill. Fred, go powder your nose. We can continue this meeting later.”

  By the time Ned got back with the water, Fred was getting his instructions in front of the cameras. Arnie sat in the empty office awhile, reading the newspaper. After a time his heart felt normal again. The old sock might be oozing but it wasn’t quite ready to split. He walked out the back way and into the sunlight. Just like that. He leaned on the car and let the heat reflect into his face. Alive! Every now and then came a slight understanding of how temporary and unlikely that was.

  Ned was on the highway again, goosing the pedal to the floor, filling his head with the sound of the engine. At the Second Line Road he wheeled to the right, a skidding turn that sent out a fan of flying gravel behind him. Lu-Ann had called him the other night, half-drunk, sounded like she had a roadhouse behind her. Started crying about how much she missed him but she hung up without saying where she was, just when he was going to tell her how he had been dumped by Ellie. Left him standing there, holding the phone, all charged up. The last time he’d driven by Fred’s house he was afraid to slow down. Now he had what he had and he turned in, suddenly feeling calm.

  He honked the horn, then sat in the driveway for a moment. Chrissy was at the kitchen window looking at him. He walked across the lawn. Chrissy opened the door before he could knock.

  “Just driving by,” he said. “Thought I’d drop in.”

  She started towards the kitchen and he followed her. She was wearing tight faded jeans, a sweatshirt, old running shoes. After that video it was weird to see her in clothes and he wondered how she would react to knowing he had examined every detail of her body. Or that one night he had taken her two brassieres and three pairs of underpants out to the manure pile behind the pig barn and dug them in there with the rest of the compost. She seemed to Ned to be small and tight, a wound-up little package. Something electric in the way she moved. Nothing like Lu-Ann; Lu-Ann was a girl. But still. He’d figured out what he was doing. He sat down at the kitchen table.

  “So?”

  “I was over at Allnew. Fred has been telling me a job might open up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, it didn’t. Not yet. Anyway he was busy with the television. I was hoping you could put in a word for me.” She had a sharp little face. Probably a sharp tongue, too. Being with her this way—in the kitchen, Chrissy in her clothes—he was starting to forget what she looked like on the tape. Of course he’d heard what Arnie Kincaid said. So now everyone in town knew what was going on. He always left her face clear so you couldn’t easily tell. But you can’t go to hospital and keep things a secret.

  “Sure, I’ll tell him you came,” Chrissy said.

  “I did the swimming once at Point Gull. In the mornings. You used to bring Lizzie.”

  “I remember. Okay. I’ll tell him.”

  Ned wondered what his father would think if he knew he was here in Chrissy’s kitchen. “You remember Carl,” Ned said.

  “Yeah. What are you doing here anyway? I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you don’t, I’ll call the police.”

  “Don’t call the police,” Ned said and saw her face jump.

  “Yes, I will.” And suddenly she had one of those cordless phones in her hand and was punching in numbers.

  Ned moved back towards the door. “Wait. I just wanted to warn you—”

  When Ned jumped out of the truck he had stood there in the drive, bobbing and twitching like some kind of nut. Then, when he’d come in, she had noticed the streaks at the corners of his eyes from crying. She had thought at first that Fred must have hit him. A little surprise attack when it wasn’t expected, that was his specialty. Except that after the first one you were always expecting it, always afraid, always ready to believe he would go the next step, which in her case would mean Lizzie. When Marbles had disappeared she’d been sure Fred was responsible. Even after Carl called to say he’d found the body and buried it—which at least made Lizzie feel better—she thought Fred was behind the whole thing, just raising the stakes the way he liked to when he played poker. Poker was how she’d met him again. She’d just dropped in for something at Doreen and Ben’s, and while they were trading gossip over coffee she’d somehow ended up standing behind Fred. There was something so confident about the way he played his cards, so solid, that she fell back into being with him almost before they’d said hello.

  Ned Richardson was still a boy. Skin like boiled marrow, pale pebbled eyes. He was trying to scare her but he was just scaring himself.

  “It’s time for you to go,” Chrissy said. She held up the phone. Her father had given it to her after that night Fred had totally lost control, when she’d come back from being with Carl. Well, she’d brought that one on herself but at least she got something for it. She’d told her parents she’d fallen while feeding the chickens and her father had given her the phone so she could carry it around with her in case she did something incredibly stupid again, fell down the well or something. Then at least she could call. She’d wondered if he suspected. Not that it mattered. Whatever he knew he couldn’t know the whole thing. The way she’d made it part of her life.

  The Allnew number was coded in but she wanted to see what Ned would do. She was surprised how quickly he’d jumped, how fast he got to the door. Then he started again about what Fred was going to do to Carl.

  Carl’s number was also coded in. That was for Lizzie. When he answered, his voice ro
ugh with sleep, she said, “It’s Chrissy here, Ned Richardson is standing in my kitchen, telling me something you should know. I’m going to give him the phone.”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” Ned said.

  “Now he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Something going on?” Carl asked. “You want me to come over?” His voice had cleared. Suddenly Chrissy had a huge lump in her throat and was on the verge of bursting into tears.

  “I’ll come to you,” Chrissy said. And then, looking straight at Ned, “Ned Richardson’s in my kitchen. He’s bothering me. If I’m not there in twenty minutes I’d like you to find Ned.”

  “You can tell him I’m looking for him already. I’ll look a bit harder.”

  “I will. Twenty minutes. Set your watch.” She hung up.

  Ned was standing at the door, rigid, as though he was wrapped in some kind of invisible ice. Chrissy put the phone down. “Carl says he’s looking for you already. I think you’ve been pretty foolish, Ned. No matter who your father is, you shouldn’t come around threatening people. Now what you’d better do is go home, talk to your mom and dad, get things worked out and keep it quiet for a while. Do you understand me, Ned?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “I’m telling you the truth, Ned. Now why don’t you just get going?”

  He was still hesitating at the door. His lips were parted and he was starting to pant. The smell of sweat filled the room. For the first time it occurred to Chrissy that she might have pushed too hard.

  “I got something in the truck,” Ned said. Chrissy tapped her watch. “Go home, Ned.”

  “I know something,” Ned said, “but I’m going to leave. I never wanted to hurt or threaten you. I was just trying to warn you. Next time I won’t do you the favour.”

  He swung out the door and slammed it behind him, then started towards his truck.

  “You smoking again?”

  “I guess so,” Chrissy said. Except for when they were exchanging Lizzie, this was the first time she’d seen him since the dance. He looked good. Less hollow in the cheeks and under the eyes and more solid than when he’d arrived. Better without that moustache, though there was still a small ridged scar from Fred’s ring. “Things going well for you?”

  “Not so bad,” Carl said. “It’s good to be seeing Lizzie. Good for both of us.”

  “And living here, living here alone, is that good too?”

  “It’s better than what I had.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind. I was the one who threw you out, remember? We were like one of those hurting songs. That’s all we could do, hurt each other.”

  She wasn’t really looking at him but she caught that little flicker. So. Carl had heard about Fred, too. That’s how she thought about it—something about Freddy. She knew it was going to start getting around after she went to hospital. She truly hadn’t realized her ribs were broken. She just thought he’d given her some kind of heart attack. Fred had sure chosen his time to run for reeve. Even the way everyone hated Luke Richardson.

  “What about you and Fred?” They were sitting at Carl’s kitchen table, across from each other. They each had their mug and there was the coffee pot between them. The way they used to sit at home just after they married and before Lizzie was born. Carl had quit drinking to keep her company and they would spend the evenings across from each other like this, Carl smoking cigarettes and doing crosswords while she knitted all those crazy little pink clothes she’d started on when they were told it was going to be a girl.

  “We hurt each other, too,” she finally said. She was looking down at her hands. It was strange how small they still were. Carl’s hands, Fred’s hands, even Ned’s hands were big and meaty with nasty swollen knuckles. Men’s hands. Her own were just her old little girl’s hands, stubby and rough despite the dozens of tubs of skin cream they’d absorbed. “We do it in different ways. Same idea though. But he takes care of me, too. Pays the bills. Always comes home. Doesn’t screw around.”

  Pays the bills. Always comes home. Doesn’t screw around. Three points about which Carl couldn’t have boasted.

  “I’ve heard it’s pretty bad.”

  “Ned Richardson’s talking it up because Fred won’t give him a job at the lumber yard.”

  “Seems to me Fred’s getting a bit carried away.”

  “I heard what happened to you.” Now she was looking straight at him. He was so vulnerable still. “I’m really sorry. It was my fault.”

  Carl stood up and took the coffee pot to the stove. “All over now. We’re the best of friends. Luke is getting me to take them both hunting after the election, haven’t you heard?”

  “Yeah. It made me laugh. I figure you’ll be crawling around trying to shoot each other.” She liked the feeling of his kitchen. Warm and cozy. And it was important for Lizzie to live here part of the time. Not always. Lizzie needed her mother. You just had to know Carl to see what could happen without one.

  “So what are you going to do? You going to wait until he kills you?”

  “Maybe I still love him. It’s not so bad. He’s not going to kill me. It’s just that he’s always been crazy jealous of you. Because of Lizzie. We tried to have another baby but he can’t. So it’s like you got something he didn’t. Then you came back and you got what he has.”

  “You making excuses for him?”

  “Maybe for myself.” She was looking at her hands again and her throat was choking up. Couldn’t Carl figure out that if she phoned the police Fred would do something to Lizzie? Did he think she was some kind of saint or punching bag or that her father had pulled her pants down when she was a little girl?

  “I don’t like it,” Carl said.

  “Neither do I.”

  She folded up her cigarettes. “I better get going. I’m supposed to be throwing a tea party this afternoon for all of Fred’s lady canvassers. You wouldn’t believe what you have to go through to get elected reeve these days. And then there’s this television stuff—” She stopped. She couldn’t believe the sound of her own voice, how she was boasting about Fred like a mother boasting about her favourite son.

  “Probably going to win,” Carl said. “They’ll put you on a throne or something. You can slip me a fiver for a bowl of soup.” They were both standing up and now, Chrissy thought, it was as though they hardly knew each other. As though she had only been here canvassing for Fred, just another cup of coffee, another vote to mark down on the chart.

  She moved towards the door, Carl lagging at a good distance. “We’ll see you later,” he said. Then he winked.

  That stopped her. “I never saw you wink before.”

  He grinned. “Got a few new tricks.”

  They were standing outside now and the gold late-morning light was shining straight into Carl’s face, making the silver hairs in his stubble glitter like bits of foil from a Christmas tree. She stood on her tiptoes, the way she used to, and kissed him, just once, just quickly, just enough to touch the strong coffee taste of his lips.

  She saw him at the door watching as she drove away. Maybe she hadn’t told him what he hadn’t already heard but it was the first time she’d said anything at all to anyone. The weird thing was that even right now, even with the taste of Carl’s kiss on her mouth, she didn’t want to leave Fred. She had wanted to hurt him but she didn’t want to leave him. The night with Carl had been—well, it had to happen once.

  Driving home she found herself counting campaign signs, the way she always did these days. The truth was, things were changing fast. Fred was gaining; sometimes, if you took the right roads, you’d hardly see a Luke Richardson sign, it was Freddy all the way.

  TWO

  You got something he didn’t. Then you came back and you also got what he has. When she’d said this, Chrissy had been looking down at her fingers as they fooled around with a cigarette. But Carl had known what she meant; and he knew how having and not having Lizzie had eaten away at him for three years.
How there was nothing that being cut off from Lizzie couldn’t make hollow and worthless.

  It was three weeks since the signs had gone up. Meanwhile the rains had stopped and West Gull had settled into Indian summer. Carl, driving along, tried to imagine himself as Fred seeing a big blue VERGHOERS FOR REEVE sign floating across a field. Luke and Fred and their little games, tossing him back and forth between them like two dogs worrying a rabid fox, each hoping the other would get bitten.

  Carl looked at his watch. One-fifteen. At noon the air in town had been smoky with October heat. Now the sky was already emptying out, leaving a gold-blue bruise at the horizon. From behind the seat he pulled out the shotgun Luke Richardson had brought to the store. “I use it for deer,” he had said, pushing it across the counter.

  Carl had set it down on the floor, out of sight. He’d almost had to laugh, as if where Luke wanted him to aim it was supposed to be a big mystery. “The weather’s so good,” Luke had said, “I thought you might like the day off. You could run up to the conservation area. See if you could scare something up.”

  The campgrounds had been closed since Labour Day, the gate left open for the winter. Carl drove down the dirt road, then across the small field to the dam before he stopped the truck and got out.

  Now he leaned against the fender, popped open a can of diet cola. Across from the dam was a ridge he’d once climbed with Chrissy. It was this time of year, October, during another Indian summer, the fallen leaves thick in the hollows between the roots. He’d buried Chrissy in maple leaves, just her nose, her toes, her nipples sticking out, then burrowed under to be with her. A cold earthy smell on her skin and breath. Wanting him over and over until they were both exhausted and crawled down to the lake, covered in leaves and bits of grass and sticks, two grubby earth animals emerging after a hibernation of sex, cigarettes, grunts and groans, a new way her face turned up and away from his as though he was in so deep her brain was burning up from it. And swimming he had been surprised to find himself wishing he knew what it was like to be a woman and feel things so deeply his brain burned up from all that feeling.