Practical Jean

by Trevor Cole

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” she said, “we went out with that Jeff Birdy. Ash’s boy. He took us to a nice swimming pond out on some concession. I couldn’t tell you which one; we drove around so long I lost track.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “Andrew Jr., I’m not answering any more questions until you tell me what this is about.”

  “Dorothy Perks is a friend of yours, correct?”

  “You know that. She was at Mom’s funeral.”

  Andrew Jr.’s expression became very solemn. Almost brotherly, Jean thought. He coughed again into his fist. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Jean, but … Dorothy Perks has been murdered.”

  Jean knew that she was supposed to be shocked by this news. She had been anticipating it, of course, ever since Suzy’s face went so very flat and waxy. And it has to be said that she didn’t like hearing the word murdered. It was a grubby, commonplace word, making her think of gravel-voiced gangsters, or B-movies about conniving business partners, or slavering serial killers with pictures of their victims pinned to a dank basement wall. But she knew that something more than being grated by a word was expected of her in this moment, and if she didn’t provide that something, then even more questions would be asked, and life might become much more complicated. Again, she saw that practicalities had a way of dictating their own terms. And right here, right now, practicality demanded a display of emotion. The trouble was that Jean had never been a particularly good actress. School plays had been things she attended, not performed in. The only acting she’d ever done was smiling in the face of a friend’s terrible choice of hairstyle, or pretending that she wasn’t hurt when someone cancelled plans at the last minute. Masking she was good at. But big emotion on cue – it was out of her range.

  In front of Andrew Jr. she did the only thing she could think of … she covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God,” she said into her palms. It sounded wooden even to her.

  But apparently for Andrew Jr. it was enough. For once, Jean was able to enjoy a benefit from her brother being such a big lummox around feminine feelings. She saw through her fingers that Andrew Jr. was becoming flushed and agitated. He coughed twice into his fist and tried to look anywhere but at Jean. It seemed that, for him, watching his sister being affected by terrible news was an excruciatingly uncomfortable ordeal.

  “Oh my God,” Jean repeated, just to stick the knife in a bit further.

  After a second’s hesitation, Andrew Jr. got up from his chair and hovered near his office door with his hands in his pockets. “Look, uh, Jean,” he said, “I think we’re getting a handle on what happened, so … maybe Suzy has a tissue or something.”

  He grabbed the knob of his door and wrenched it open. Before he was able to call Suzy for help, Jean rose from her seat and rushed out, past the danger zone of Suzy’s desk (Suzy had always struck Jean as being one of those women with radar like a bat) and into the safety of the corridor beyond.

  The next day, the Kotemee Star-Lookout reported that police were questioning witnesses at Ted’s Big Catch about incidents leading up to Dorothy Perks’s murder. Jeff Birdy was declared a “person of interest” and brought in for interrogation, then released without charges. It wasn’t long after that that Roy “Big Boy” Lundquist was arrested for brutally slaying his wife in a fit of jealous rage. It was the first ever murder in Kotemee, so there were lots of reporters and TV cameras from the city as Roy was taken into custody. Jean felt a bit sorry for Roy, who looked sad and bewildered as he was led up the steps of Hern Regional Jail, but then, of course, as a violent man with a jumbled brain, he was probably much better off in an institution. Certainly Milt was keen to express his horror at these events and remind Jean repeatedly that she had left him alone “with that murderer” for what he now described as “half the night.” She dearly wished that he would take a summer teaching position somewhere so that he would have a reason to leave the house and give her time and quiet to think.

  Instead she had to escape to her shop, which meant exposing herself to the sympathies and commiserations of what felt like half the membership of the KBA.

  “Isn’t it horrible …” said Gail Greenhurst (The Lux Shoppe).

  “What happened to Dorothy …” said Cynthia Mingle (Mingle’s Hair Salon).

  “That brute of a husband …” said Margaret Gwyn (Kotemee Jewellers).

  “The man should be strung up and flayed …” said Jane Pettie-Wier (Jane’s Panes).

  When Natalie Skilbeck came in, she shut the door and stood wordlessly for a moment near the entrance, as the jangling from the overhead bell faded. From that distance she looked at Jean with an unreadable expression on her face, and the thought crossed Jean’s mind that perhaps Natalie suspected something. But no, it seemed to be just a dramatic pause, as if she meant to give both herself and Jean a moment to reflect on the sudden and profound new truth, that there was one less of their small circle in the world. Then she rushed forward and engulfed Jean in an enormous hug and held her, weeping, until her tears began to spill onto Jean’s shoulder and trickle down to the small of her back, and Jean cried a little more, too.

  After that storm had passed and Natalie had brought out the cupcakes, Jean said, “You know, I never thought you liked Dorothy all that much. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Well, I liked her as your friend,” said Natalie, peeling the paper cup off a lime-frosted angel cake. “As a person herself she was all right. Just not somebody I would have ever talked to. But as your friend, she was lovely.”

  “I see,” said Jean. She watched Natalie sink her teeth into the frosting. “So when you were crying just now, it was –”

  “Because I was sad for you.” Natalie’s eyes began to well up again, and the napkin she used at her mouth was put to work dabbing at her tears. “I guess I still am.”

  Natalie stayed to comfort Jean for about an hour, until Jean thought she might scream. When she finally left and the shop was quiet for a moment, when it looked to Jean as though there might be a vista of uninterrupted time in which to think about what, if anything, might come next – never mind resume her work on Kudzu Attack! which she hadn’t touched in days – she glanced up and saw, through the front window, Fran Knubel standing on the opposite sidewalk, in front of The Pita Plate. She was dressed in a pastel-blue linen jacket over cream slacks, and in her hand she held a small white paper bag.

  She appeared to be waiting for a car to pass, and when it did, Fran began to walk across the street toward Jean’s shop entrance with a straight-backed stride that announced rectitude and purpose. She might have been a wartime nurse, delivering hope and comfort to a legless Marine, a missionary bringing the Light of God to the residents of a straw hut, a prospector marching toward her California claim. Fran was coming. And Jean realized she could not get to the door and lock it without being seen. So she tore the lid off a bucket of clay in the corner, ripped through the plastic bag inside, and dug out a head-sized hunk of damp porcelain which she pounded onto her work table. And as Fran pushed open the door of the shop and jangled the bell, Jean sank the fingers of both hands into the clay until her knuckles disappeared.

  “You poor thing!” exclaimed Fran, shutting the door.

  “Fran, hi,” said Jean. “Gee, you’ve caught me at a really bad time, as you can see.” She blew a nonexistent strand of hair off her forehead.

  “I can’t believe you’re working.” Indeed, as Fran came forward, her face betrayed a mixture of horror and astonishment. Then suddenly it changed, as if she’d been struck by a great revelation. “Do you know what this is? This is the blessing of being an artist. Whatever material rewards you may lack, at least you have a way to channel your grief. I’m in awe of you.”

  “Oh.” Jean forced a chuckle. “Don’t be.”

  “So, tell me about what you’re doing.”

  Jean looked from Fran to the formless grey mass into which her hands were shoved. “Actually,” she said, “I’m just at that really crucial cr
eative time right now? When the idea is really fragile? So if I don’t just get on with it …” She left the thought unexpressed, in hopes that Fran would seize it as her own.

  Instead, Fran held up the little white bag in her hand. “Guess what I’ve brought you.”

  “Hmm,” said Jean. “Pita?”

  Fran scrunched up her features in confusion. “Pita. Why would I bring pita? No, no, no. This is from Lundy’s Chocolate Works in Hillmount. Look, see?” Fran turned the bag around and showed Jean the glossy black label sticker. “I wanted to bring you something special. I didn’t even get any for myself because that would have sullied the gesture. I said, ‘If anyone deserves a special treat it’s Jean Horemarsh, after all she’s been through. Her mother dies and right after that her close friend is murdered.’ I mean … my God. Jim said, ‘Just get her some cupcakes from Dilman’s.’ Can you believe it? Implying you couldn’t appreciate anything better. Men are awful. Well, we have proof of that now, don’t we? Not like we needed it.” As Fran ripped open the bag she shook her head, perhaps at the awfulness of men.

  Jean tried to disengage her hands from the clay, because the ruse was clearly not working. But she’d left them in too long and now they were gripped hard in the fine-grained porcelain and it was going to be difficult. Fran began to rhyme off the varieties of the truffles she’d brought, and before Jean had retrieved either hand Fran looked up.

  “So, name your poison.”

  “Oh, uh, I don’t know.” She tried to lever her forearm up and over to expand the finger holes.

  “Here, just open up and I’ll surprise you.” Fran reached into the bag and brought out a dusty chocolate ball and pushed it into Jean’s half-open mouth. Then she moved her own mouth rapidly as if instructing Jean on how to chew. “Isn’t that divine? That’s mocha-almond. I love all the coffee flavours. Here, hurry up, now try this.” She brought out a dark shiny cube. Jean hadn’t yet finished the first and now the second was being forced through her lips. When she’d pressed it home, Fran’s eyes went wide with vicarious delight. “Ginger-orange caramel! Isn’t it exquisite? You just can’t get anything like it here in this poopy little town.”

  In Jean’s purse, on the floor beyond her reach, her phone began to ring. Fran, who’d been surveying the contents of her bag for the next flavour to inflict, looked up. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.” She set the open bag on top of Jean’s mound of clay. “Just look in there and think about what you want next.” And she crouched down to the purse on the floor and began to root around. It took her three rings and a lot of rooting before she took out the phone and opened it. “Jean’s store – oh, pfffft – Expressions. Jean’s Expressions. Hello?” She stood and listened for a moment then looked at Jean. “It’s your husband … No, Milt, this is Fran Knubel. I’ve never been to your house but I’m sure we’ve met. I was at the funeral … That’s right, and it looks like I’ll be going to another one … No, Jean’s here, she’s just tied up. How can I help you? Well, as I say, she’s working hard and can’t come to the phone.”

  Jean was struggling fiercely to free a hand while with her tongue she tried to push the caramel clear of her teeth. It felt like a dream she’d once had in which she’d been bound and gagged and dragged naked through the condiments section at Costco. When finally she did wrench one hand loose and reached out with it, sloppy with clay, Fran shook her head with distaste.

  “Just tell me what you need and I’ll relay the message to Jean.” She winked at Jean. “Well, hold on, don’t anticipate a problem until there is one.” She held the phone against her breast. “Milt says he needs the car and hopes you don’t mind. He’s going to get a lift in to pick it up.”

  Jean shook her head and grasped at the air with her messy free hand. The caramel in her mouth held her teeth like some kind of epoxy cement, but she managed movement enough to say, “O!”

  “Why not?” said Fran. “I can drive you wherever you need to go.” She held the phone to her ear. “Milt? I don’t think it’s a problem … No. Jean seems worried but I think we can work it out.”

  Milt was a little mysterious, for Jean’s taste, about why he needed the car. He arrived at the shop in a Mazda driven by their neighbour, Rick Chaaraoui, who let him off at the curb out front before carrying on to a tennis game somewhere (at least if the short yellow shorts Rick was wearing were any indication). So not only did Milt need the car but he needed it in such a hurry that he couldn’t spare the time to walk the seven blocks from the house. On top of that, Jean noticed, he needed it while wearing his favourite sweater vest. And yet the only thing he could say as he opened the car door, when Jean quite reasonably mentioned the sudden suddenness of it all, was, “It’s not a problem. I’ll be back before dinner.” And then he was in the car and the car was starting and then he and the car were gone. And Jean was alone with Fran.

  “Well,” Fran said to Jean on the sidewalk, “I guess you’d better get back to work.”

  Inside the shop, it became clear that Fran had a particular notion as to how the rest of the day would proceed: that Jean would work on her “new art idea” while she, Fran, would wander around the shop, from shelf to shelf and display table to display table, shifting pieces, murmuring at prices, humming tunes from Les Misérables and intermittently asking Jean such questions as, “Why are none of your pieces ever glazed in purple? It’s such a popular colour.” And Jean, who’d been making a desultory attempt to appear engaged with her blob of clay in hopes that Fran would get bored and leave, finally gave up.

  “Fran,” she sighed, “I think I’m going to close up and go home.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Fran, sounding a little disappointed. She shifted the piece she’d been looking at into something like its original position. “I guess that happens sometimes, with art.” She hesitated in the middle of the shop, fiddling with the buttons of her linen jacket, not moving. “But, didn’t you need to drive somewhere? I was going to give you a lift.”

  There was something both wretched and hopeful about the expression on Fran’s face. It wasn’t quite the expression of the last child at the ticket counter of a sold-out matinee, or of the husband asking permission to try something new and odd in bed, but it was close, and worse in its own way, and it made Jean feel very mean all of a sudden.

  “I can just walk,” she said. But she didn’t say it with any conviction, and she didn’t back it up with any movement. In fact the two women stood in the middle of the shop, facing each other without a word, until Jean noticed again the bag of chocolates. Fran had neatly closed the bag and set it by Jean’s purse, so that she wouldn’t forget to take it with her. And Jean, regretting what she was about to do but not being able to stop herself, shrugged. “You could give me a lift to the bookstore, I guess.”

  At this, Fran’s face lit up like a traffic flare. “Let’s go!”

  Jean had only one reason to go to the bookstore in the mall out on Highway I8, and that was to get a detailed map of the Finger Lakes district. She’d planned to drive there after Dorothy’s funeral, but Dorothy’s sister in Halifax had made it known that the family was having the body cremated and that a church service would be held in that city for family members only, so there was no reason to wait. Part of Jean was very sad about that, and a little annoyed at the sister for being so selfish, but she knew that was only out of habit. She reminded herself that the ritual of saying goodbye to the bodies of dead friends and relatives didn’t mean anything to the dead bodies. All that mattered was what happened before the bodies became dead. Was the store of beauty filled to the brim? Were the reserves of wonderful experience topped up? Or had it all been allowed to drain dry?

  They drove to the mall in Fran’s Cadillac SUV with the air conditioning turned up high, Fran explaining that she knew Jean’s Hyundai wasn’t equipped and thought she’d enjoy the treat. As they went, Jean tried to find the quiet space in her head that would let her think. She needed to know whether the qualms she was feeling were temporary qualms. Whether th
ey were similar to the insecure feelings she might have before giving a presentation to the KBA about some new suggestion for Main Street, when it was inevitable that she would have to listen to Tina Dooley give her budgetary counter-arguments despite her not even being a vice-president. If so, those were qualms she knew she could handle, it was just a matter of staring hard at those qualms as if they were just little Tina Dooleys with nothing constructive to contribute. But if they were real qualms – if her fear of living without her remaining friends couldn’t be stared down – then she might have to give up the whole plan. And then what would she do with her convictions?

  That’s what Jean tried to think about during the drive to the mall. But Fran wanted to talk about whether air conditioning was unhealthy, so she couldn’t.

  The bookstore displayed its maps in a tall metal carousel at the back, and it took Jean no time to find a map of the Finger Lakes district. As she unfolded it to see if it was detailed enough, Fran skimmed the titles on alphabetical display and rhymed off the places she and Jim had been. Bali. Jamaica. Jerusalem. Monaco. Paris. Prague. The Pyrenees. Scotland. South Beach. Vietnam. It was too bad, said Fran, that this bookstore had such a terrible selection, because she and Jim had been to so many other wonderful places in their lives, which was one of the benefits of having a husband who’d made such a great deal of money in corporate law before his early retirement.

  “Fran,” exclaimed Jean, “why are you here?”

  “Because I’m giving you a lift,” said Fran. She looked confused, and a little bit worried, as if she thought Jean had forgotten how she had arrived at the bookstore, as if she thought perhaps Jean had a memory problem. “We drove here from your shop.” She touched Jean’s arm. “You came in my car.”

  “I know that. I’m asking you why you’re taking such an interest in me that you bring me chocolates and talk to my husband and then you drive me here.” Jean knew that her manner was bordering on harsh, and she tried to down-shift into a less aggrieved mode. “I mean, I’m sure you have other important things you’d rather be doing.”