by Ingrid Betz
“I started to sweep. Then I thought I better meet you downstairs. Warn you.”
Verena nodded. As superintendent, Mila Ivanovich felt responsible. Strangers didn’t get by her as a rule; it was the reason some of her tenants chose to live in the old building in spite of its slow-running drains and flaking paint. People like Mr. Aziz on the floor below, who was rumoured to be in Canada illegally, and a couple of single women who lived in fear of being tracked down by their former partners.
In the sink with its handle smashed off was the mug with a loon painted on the side, a gift from Borrowman and still coffee-stained from the morning she’d left for Algonquin. Elaine hadn’t touched anything edible, she noted—what little there was in the fridge and the cupboards. Frugal housewife, volunteer with Oxfam and diligent promoter of Eat Local campaigns, she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to waste food. A twinge of contempt broke through the blankness that gripped her and Verena moved into the living area of the apartment.
“How did she get in?”
“She had a key.”
The only other key in existence was Borrowman’s. How had Elaine gotten hold of it? He wouldn’t have given it to her, Verena told herself. Even if he were angry with her, John would never betray her in that way.
It took her a minute to recognize individual objects amid the jumble on the living room floor. Her glacier poster had been torn from the wall. Poking up like a mast from the shipwreck of bricks and planks was her lamp. She spun around to check the aquarium.
The stand had been knocked over. Lying on its side on the water-soaked shag was the tank. And the tiger barb? Verena dropped to her hands and knees and scrabbled amid the pebbles. She found him in death as so often in life, half-hidden by vallisneria grass. His eyes were dulled and his rainbow colours all but extinguished. For the first time a flame of pure anger licked through her.
She could have killed now. She could have picked up the Henry and sighted through the lens at Elaine’s smartly-coiffed head and without compunction pressed the trigger. Verena leaned back and forced herself to draw a deep breath. Perhaps Borrowman was right to be reluctant to let her loose with a gun.
Mila Ivanovich stood wringing her big work-roughened hands. “I got here too late. It was already dead.”
“What made you come up?”
“Mr. Aziz telephoned me to complain. He said there was a noise like a drunken party coming from the ceiling. I said, that was not possible. Verena Vitek does not drink, does not have parties.”
Verena stood up. “And when you got here?”
“Already from the stairs, I hear dishes breaking. When I open the door, this woman shouts and picks up a plate to throw at me. She thinks I am you. I ask who she is, and she will not say. ‘Ask Verena! Ask Verena! She knows!’ So I tell her to get out or I call the police.”
Their eyes met and held.
Mrs. Ivanovich shrugged. “I did not call. No good comes from calling the police. It only causes bigger troubles and makes lawyers rich. But she does not know that, so she leaves.”
Verena nodded, relieved about the police. She started picking things up at random. Her parents’ photograph with the glass shattered, her clock radio with the dial smashed, the blue skirt she’d worn to Francine’s that evening, torn from hem to waist. The door to the bathroom was closed, she noticed.
“Was she in there, too?”
Mrs. Ivanovich looked apologetic. “She wrote on the mirror. I did not clean it. In case…”
“It’s evidence.” Verena nodded, her hand on the doorknob. “Don’t think you have to stay. I can manage…”
“Nothing good on TV tonight. I will make some tea for you.” Unexpectedly, she chuckles. “If you have cup that is not broken.”
“There’s a tin mug in my backpack.”
“I will find it.” Mrs. Ivanovich was already heading for the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I will make sandwich, too,” she called over the sound of running water.
Verena, standing in front of the medicine cabinet, stared at the lipstick-red letters swirling across the mirror. BITCH. IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.
“I had supper at the airport,” she called back. A lie, but she remembered there was no bread.
What was all her fault, she wondered? The hatred vented seemed out of all proportion to anything that had passed between her and Asher. But what did she know about human relationships? Verena wet a sponge and wiped the mirror clean. Dumped in the old lion-footed bathtub were the contents of the cabinet: a tin of Nivea, a bottle of cough syrup past its expiry date, a container of Advil, and a box of Band-Aids. The lot had been doused with a sticky translucent substance that proved to be her shower gel. She transferred everything to the plastic bag that lined the waste basket and returned to the living area.
Whatever the cause of Elaine’s fury, she’d been thorough.
Not even the mementos Verena had saved in a tin cakebox were spared. She pulled them out from between the bricks and planks: a crumpled brown manila envelope containing her report cards from Salem and the shredded remnants of the corsage her father gave her on the day of her graduation. A few photographs, torn in half. Her birth certificate and her Canadian citizenship papers defaced by black marker. Picking and sorting, Verena became aware of a creeping sense of shame.
It was the same feeling she’d first experienced as a child, after the soldiers had gone and she was let out of the closet and found her parents weeping and the house ransacked. She herself had not cried. Not even when she found the stuffed bear she slept with during the night with his belly slashed open and the kapok spilling out. She was too young for sentimental attachment, but not too young to feel exposed and humiliated, although she could not have given those feelings a name. She hid the bear under her bed. Her mother had retrieved him and stitched him back together, wiping away tears as she did so, but Verena had never touched him again.
Movement by the fish tank made her look up. The door to the landing must have been open because there was the grey Tom, in the act of fastening his teeth around the tiger barb. Mrs. Ivanovich, emerging from the kitchen, swore in Ukrainian and made a grab for him. The cat growled in his throat and retreated behind the stand, yellow eyes gleaming.
“Let him,” said Verena. “He might as well have it.”
“You are sure?”
She shrugged. “He was a killer himself, the tiger barb.”
Mrs. Ivanovich placed her tin mug in front of her. “Tea. Strong, lots of sugar.” She stood over Verena and watched her drink.
Afterward they set the tank back on its stand, scooped up the pebbles and grasses with a dustpan and dumped them in. They rounded up the coat hangers, bundled the clothes back into the closet and the dresser drawers, and finished sweeping in the kitchen. Anything damaged or broken Verena stuffed into garbage bags. Violated goods—the sooner she was rid of them, the better. She’d been lax. She should never have accumulated so much in the first place. With possessions came attachment, and with attachment, inevitably, came loss and grief. That went for people, as well as objects. She’d become too attached to Borrowman, too dependent on him. Now she was being punished for it by his absence and the withdrawal of his support when she needed it most. It was an old lesson, but one she was having to learn all over again.
They set the garbage bags, bulging and tightly tied, out on the landing. Mrs. Ivanovich said she would take them down with her. She swept the cat out the door and gave Verena a penetrating look from her deep Slavic eyes that always seemed to be looking over great distances.
“If you want, I can stay.”
“Thank you. I’m fine now.”
“If you have trouble, call me.” Her gaze roamed a final time around the apartment. “Is this because of a man?”
“Yes.” One way and another.
Hoisting a bag in each hand, Mrs. Ivanovich nodded. “Men are the root of evil. Not mone
y—men. Wars, betrayal, beatings. All done by men. Even if women sometimes do bad things, they do them because of men. Is it not so?”
“Usually,” agreed Verena, conscious that she herself was proof.
“Better to live with cats.”
Verena shut the door as Mrs. Ivanovich’s heavy footsteps retreated down the stairs. She felt an overpowering tiredness, a desire to sink down and close her eyes.
She turned to her backpack and began to empty it. The day had been as long as two, and she was still missing sleep from last night. The act of killing Li Chen had played over and over in her head, festering like a scab to be picked at, during the hours she sat in the Toronto and Sarnia airports. She missed Borrowman. There was no one to debrief her, to tell her that she had performed well, that she had done the right thing for the best of causes, and that it would all turn out as it was meant to.
She shed her clothes, stiff with dirt and sweat, and fished the bottle of shower gel out of the mess in the wastebasket. Just enough remained for her to work into a lather. After her shower she spread her sleeping bag on a dry section of carpet in front of the sliding door, releasing a smell of woodsmoke and pine. She did not try calling Borrowman again, but she placed her cellphone within reach in case he might still try to call her.
The crowns of the poplars moved restlessly above the balcony railing, illuminated by the ghostly light of neighbouring apartments. Tomorrow, she thought as her eyes fell shut, tomorrow she would decide what to do.
25.
SHE AWOKE TO A FAMILIAR LITTLE three-note tune and thought it was Borrowman calling her. Groping in the dark, she brought the phone to her ear. “John?”
“So. You’re back.” The voice was female and sharp. “Did you get my message?”
“Elaine.” Verena struggled to sit up. “Where is your father? Why…”
“He’s here. In the hospital where you put him.”
“I … what?” The conversation wasn’t making sense. In the window the treetops had gone dark. There was no lamp for her to turn on and she couldn’t see the time on her watch. She wondered if she was dreaming. “Which hospital?”
“University. If you want to see Dad again, I suggest you get here ASAP.”
“What happened? Is it his stomach?” she said, suddenly fully awake.
“Don’t think I want you here. It’s just that he keeps asking.”
“Elaine, wait! Tell me, please…”
“Raymond will meet you in the lobby,” she said. Abruptly she disconnected.
Leather slacks, black turtleneck—Verena picked out her clothes hardly noticing what they were. She was trembling so much, she had trouble pulling them on. Her hair in its plait would do. The drawer in the hall stand where she normally kept her car keys lay overturned and empty on the floor. No sign of the keys; she didn’t have time to search. She remembered the spare key in her wallet and pried it out of its hidden pocket.
“If you want to see him again.”
Elaine’s words pulsed in her brain as she drove, like a cliché out of a bad movie. Borrowman, her Canadian father—it wasn’t possible that she could lose him. The dashboard clock read twenty past two but a surprising number of cars still lined the hospital parking lot. She pictured their owners slumped beside the beds of people they loved, alternately dozing and imploring God for a miracle. Verena recognized Elaine’s Toyota near the entrance and parked one aisle over.
Raymond was waiting by the reception desk. His uncombed hair fell over his eyeglasses and he looked more rumpled than ever. With a nod at the security guard on duty, he steered Verena toward the elevators.
“They operated on him yesterday. Elaine said we had to wait until we were sure of the results before we called you,” he added, with an awkward sideways glance from eyes that were disconcertingly like his father’s.
“Operated on him for what? Raymond, I don’t know anything. I’ve been away. Up north…”
“Stomach cancer. He never told us…” His voice cracked. “Maybe if we’d paid more attention….”
Had she, who’d seen a side of him the others didn’t, paid enough attention? Verena remembered all the times he’d been in pain. The floor numbers flashed above the doors. He never talked about his health; his concern was always for her. “When did he go in?”
“The night before. We had to call the ambulance. Elaine will tell you everything.”
Would she? Raymond would have been shocked to hear what his sister had done to her apartment, she thought. “Anton Webern – My Hero” it said across the front of his none-too-clean T-shirt. He had his father’s gentleness about him, and the same reluctance to engage in confrontation.
“They don’t hold out much hope.”
He motioned her out of the elevator ahead of him. The unexpected courtesy of the gesture moved her. He was only fifteen, and this was his father in the hospital. Verena touched his sleeve as they passed the nurses’ station, deserted under its single cone of light.
“I’m sorry.” The words came awkwardly to her tongue. She hadn’t said them very often in her life; maybe never?
Raymond gave her a stricken look. Halfway down the corridor, he stopped in front of an open door. “In there,” he said. “They gave him a private room. Elaine insisted.” He shifted on his feet, which looked too big for his skinny body in their worn trainers. “I’ll be down in Tim’s Horton’s. With Donny.”
She nodded and turned to enter the room.
Borrowman lay on his back on the hospital bed. Like a knight in effigy, Verena thought, remembering the marble tombs in the cathedral in Belgrade. The shape of him under the flannel blanket was skeletal; she hadn’t realized how thin he’d gotten. She’d expected him to have tubes and wires attached to him but he didn’t. He was lying there with his eyes closed in a face as bloodless as the pillow, looking almost peaceful – like someone who’d given up the fight. She hesitated in the doorway as the implication registered.
Elaine, perched on a chair beside the bed, jumped up and came forward, blocking her way.
“It’s a wonder you’ve got the nerve to show your face.”
“You said he asked for me.”
She gave her head a characteristic toss. “He’s always been a fool about you.”
“Elaine, please. What have the doctors told you? Raymond didn’t say much.”
“What did you want him to say? That his father is dying? He could go any time, according to the doctors. Listen.” Elaine gripped her arm with such force that she could feel the lacquered fingernails digging into her skin. “Before you talk to him.” She dropped her voice to a furious whisper. “You’re not going to tell him anything stupid, are you?”
“Like what you did to my apartment?” Anger bubbled up from wherever Verena had temporarily buried it. “Why, Elaine?”
“Which reason do you want? For helping to kill my father? Or for trying to steal my husband—oh, don’t deny it! You think I didn’t notice? Always playing the innocent and butter wouldn’t melt. Getting up to God knows what on your trips together.” The lenses of her spectacles glittered in the overhead light, magnifying the dark intensity of her pupils as they bored into Verena’s. “Promise you won’t say anything?” She gave her a shake. “Promise?”
“I care about your father, Elaine. Why would I tell him something that would hurt him to know?”
Elaine flushed and dropped her arm. “Good. In that case we understand each other.”
“Verena? Is that you?” Borrowman’s voice came feebly from the bed. “Could you give us five minutes alone please, Elaine.”
Elaine gave her a push forward. “Five minutes. Not a second more. I’ll be in the corridor,” she muttered.
Borrowman’s hand moved across the sheet to meet hers. “You got back safely.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry I wasn’t at the airport.”
&nbs
p; “It doesn’t matter.” The sensation of their hands touching was strange; neither of them were given to physical displays of affection. “Only, when you had your phone switched off I thought…”
Her voice trailed away and she glanced mutely around her. Hospital rooms were the same everywhere. The sterile walls, the table that could be swung out over the bed, the drab curtains the nurses would yank shut after they came hurrying in. The smell of antiseptic. It could have been her mother lying there. Not her father; he’d made sure he escaped the fate of dying in a hospital.
“You thought I’d abandoned you? Oh, Verena.” His fingers tightened around hers. “Everything happened so fast. I asked Elaine to call you. But I don’t suppose…”
“It’s all right. I was late getting back. My mobile was mostly out of range anyway.”
“She’s upset. She has all the responsibility…”
She waved his words away. “Please. It doesn’t matter. Are you in pain?”
“Not so much now. They’ve given me something.”
They stared at each other; he with his eyes of hurt dog, she with her inscrutable look of cat. She picked and chose what to say, not sure how much he wanted to hear. “It was a success. Algonquin. I don’t know if you…”
He nodded. “It was on the news. The last thing I heard before…” he gestured. “Verena, listen…” He struggled to hitch himself up on an elbow. “I may not have another chance. To tell you how sorry I am….”
“For what?”
“For leading you down the wrong path. Encouraging you to get involved in the Cell. Sending you out on those damned protests and rallies, when all the time you should have been building some kind of normal life for yourself.”
“No,” she said, taken aback. “No, no! It wasn’t wrong. It’s what I wanted. What I needed.”