The Pumpkin Murders

by Judith Alguire

  On the sixth day of my hospital stay, an orderly helped me to stand up. I was a little woozy, but the dizziness passed quickly. On the seventh day, the same orderly wheeled me to the physiotherapy department where I took a few steps with the help of parallel bars. Soon I graduated to crutches. I practised in the hall outside my room. Before long I was confident enough to enter other halls and travel to other floors.

  Pete accompanied me on these walks, taking in my height, which was tall for a girl—five feet, eight inches—and my slim shape beneath the thin hospital garb. I was a little self-conscious as I watched him looking at my breasts and long legs, but I figured it was important for him to do it, so I genuinely didn’t mind. My brother was seeing me for the first time. I really believed that.

  If Henry or Joanne or Myrna dropped by, Pete would fade into the background while we visited but his eyes never left me. Joanne thought it was creepy, Myrna thought it was sexy and Henry thought it was interesting.

  The nurses marvelled at Pete’s attention to me, telling me how lucky I was to have such a brother. They didn’t hesitate to allow me to leave the floor because they knew I was in such good hands. They didn’t have a clue.

  A couple of times I tried to get him to talk, just a hello or how are you doing, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. I thanked him once for being there and a look of puzzlement flashed on his face and was gone. No one was more puzzled than I was.

  Dougwell was excited about this breakthrough behaviour on Pete’s part. He thought we were all going to live happily ever after.

  I was grateful to him in a guarded sort of way. It was as though I was seeing him for the first time. He played Murray’s part; my dad would have been ecstatic by the new development.

  Nora remained cool. It would have taken a lot more than Pete seeing me to fire her up.

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn’t return to university in the autumn after the accident. Physically, I could have. The crutches were a snap—I could dance with the crutches. But I didn’t feel like it; I wanted a break, some time off—to get used to my new hip and, bigger than that, the fact that Pete could see me. And I needed time to listen to Abbey Road.

  My decision worried the hell out of Nora. She was concerned that if I took time away I’d never go back. That’s what had happened to Donna Wright from over on Birchdale Avenue. She had been so smart in school.

  “And look at her now,” Nora said. “She’s twenty-five years old and a cashier at the Dominion store.”

  It was a warm Saturday in September and we were in the backyard, in an area Nora referred to as the patio. It was a slab of cement with clover growing through the cracks. Nora and I sat on the wooden chairs that Dougwell had brought home; he sat on one of Nora’s nylon ones. He looked horribly uncomfortable.

  “There is something to be said for getting your schooling when you’re young,” Dougwell added. “It gets harder and harder to go back.”

  Nora must have talked him into taking part in this conversation. It wasn’t like him to offer me advice.

  “Remember how hard it was for your dad?” Nora said.

  When Pete and I were small, Murray had taken university courses at night to finish up his education degree.

  “And I’m paying for your education now,” Nora added. She lit a du Maurier with a gigantic table lighter shaped like a swan. “You might not be so lucky when you’re Donna Wright’s age. Anything could happen.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  Nora sighed and two streams of smoke escaped her nostrils.

  She looked like a dragon, a beautiful, worn-out dragon-lady. For the first time I noticed the vertical lines around her lips. She couldn’t like those.

  I looked at Dougwell, who was staring at her. Maybe he was noticing the same things as I was.

  “Like, we may decide we have better things to spend your father’s hard-earned money on,” Nora said.

  “It wasn’t hard-earned,” I said. “It’s a life insurance policy. What could be more easily earned?” I apologized to my dad in my head for being such a jerk. Tears welled up in my eyes.

  “He had to die for us to get that money,” Nora said. “I’d say that’s a pretty steep price to pay.”

  Dougwell stood up and walked over to the hose reel by the garage. The hose was uncoiled and he began the noisy job of winding it up. It was a homemade contraption that Murray had built and no one ever thought to give it a lube job.

  I was ashamed of both my mother and myself.

  Nora got up and went in the house. I sat and watched Dougwell struggle with the hose. He went inside the garage and came out with a can of oil which he squirted into the joints of Murray’s makeshift rack. It helped. By the time he was done a quiet creaking sound was all the noise it made.

  “Way to be, Dougwell!” I wanted him to know I didn’t blame him for anything.

  He smiled at me.

  I sailed down to the river on my crutches and found a bench to sit on. I wore long skirts that fall while getting used to my new hip. Joanne made two of them for me; she’s always been a good sewer, just like her mother.

  The smell of sugar beets was in the air. When I made my way home I saw Pete and Eileen getting into Nora’s car in front of our house. Eileen saw me and waved. She touched Pete’s arm and he turned around to look. I stopped mid-stride so I could wave at him without losing a crutch, but he didn’t wave back. I flushed with embarrassment as though I had been picked last for the baseball team.

  “Prick,” I said quietly.

  “Asshole!” I screamed after the car as they pulled slowly away. How could he not wave back after staring at me for weeks? He owed me way more than waves. How in the fuck could he not wave back?

  When I got to the house Dougwell made me a grilled cheese sandwich and sat with me in the backyard while I ate it. I think he knew I was upset and he wanted to help me without prying.

  We were alone. Nora had gone over to Norwood United Church to help with a rummage sale. Dougwell told me about his wife, Barbara. It was the first time I’d heard anyone talk about her.

  “We were planning a Central American holiday when Barbara’s illness began to get the better of her,” Dougwell said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  From the way he spoke, quietly and constantly glancing over his shoulder, I knew he was telling me something that Nora didn’t want me to know: Barbara wasn’t dead yet.

  Or as Dougwell put it, “She lives in one of the municipal hospitals in Riverview.”

  Everyone knew what that meant. You were never going to get out; you were a goner.

  He thought I should know.

  It wasn’t long after Barbara had been hospitalized that Dougwell bumped into Nora at the Safeway. He had met her before at school functions when she was with Murray. He had admired her, he told me, and blushed. So I knew he meant her appearance, maybe her full breasts and her sultry air.

  “Nora’s so different from Barbara,” he said. “She scares me a little.” He chuckled. “But that’s okay. It keeps me on my toes.” He ran his hand over the new paint job on the arm of his chair. “Barbara never frightened me at all.”

  I wondered afterwards if he felt he’d said too much. It was as close as Dougwell ever came to me in those years, but it was through no fault of his. And I know it would have been different if he hadn’t moved away.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cherry Ring needs work. I don’t mean a job. I mean that my being, my self, needs work done on it to make it right and sound, like a dilapidated house or a broken-down car.

  I’ll try to illustrate the type of person I became by telling you more about my job at the Free Press. One of the first interviews I did was with Dr. Bondurant, the psychiatrist Pete and I had seen when we were kids. He never stopped wanting to help me. We met in one of the snack bars at the Health Sciences Centre and this is how it went:

  C.R.: Dr. Bondurant, what led you to become a psychiatrist for children?

  Dr. B.: Well,
I’ve always gotten along with kids. I like ’em. And I figure if people are troubled at such an early age, there may be hope for them. It may be possible to help them turn something around.

  C.R. So are you saying that by the time people become adults it’s too late for psychiatry to be of any help to them? I snickered here. Some of your colleagues might take issue with that.

  Dr. B.: No, I’m not saying that. At least, I don’t think I am. I just mean that the earlier you tackle a problem, the more likely you are to solve it.

  C.R.: Uh-huh.

  Often I paused for long moments. That gave people a chance to dig little holes for themselves if they weren’t comfortable with the silence, or if they felt the ball was in their court like Dr. Bondurant did now.

  Dr. B.: I’m sure my able colleagues in the field of adult psychiatry accomplish a great deal of positive work.

  C.R.: Isn’t psychiatry mostly just about dispensing drugs?

  Dr. B.: It’s true, drugs often play a large part in treatment. There are some wonderful drugs available these days that help to make difficult lives much more bearable.

  I’m on one of those drugs myself, which Dr. Bondurant knew, but he wouldn’t have mentioned it under threat of death. He did, however, look at me as though I had bitten him hard on the nose.

  C.R.: Is it true that some psychiatrists use only drugs as treatment? They don’t spend any time talking to their patients, trying to get to the root of their problems?

  Dr. B.: Yes. That’s true.

  C.R.: Do you ever do that? Use the drugs-only method?

  Dr. B.: No. I generally try to talk to the kids, get them to open up to me.

  C.R.: So you’ve never done that? Not once?

  Dr. B.: Well, maybe once or twice. When it seemed the only way.

  C.R.: Drugs as the only way for kids. That doesn’t bode very well for the great long future ahead of them, does it?

  Dr. B.: No, it doesn’t.

  He patiently stuck it out as I went at him, Dr. Bondurant, who had been nothing but good and kind to me. I battered him terribly.

  My columns hurt people. I told the truth at the expense of feelings. But people want to be thought of as truthful so they seldom refused to be interviewed. They even invited me to do them.

  I still read history books; I can’t help myself. Sometimes I fill in the blanks or change things to the way I figure it would have been. I spend a lot of time on these projects—rewriting books—and again, certain of my friends think I’m wasting my time. But I enjoy it and that’s worth something.

  Who is the bigger failure, Nora or me? As I put this to paper I find I don’t know the answer to that.

  The more I read of her journal the less inclined I felt to work on my column. I had set up an interview for a Wednesday afternoon in mid-July with Mitch Podolak, the founder of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I’d met Mitch before and liked him. I wasn’t entirely sure if I would be up to my usual methods and even if I was, I could picture him flattening me instead of the other way around.

  So I phoned on the afternoon before the interview and cancelled. He laughed and tried to set up another time. I hemmed and hawed and he laughed some more.

  “Are you chickening out?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  We left it that I’d call him in the fall when “things had settled down.”

  “What things?” he asked. “What settled down?”

  “I’ll talk to you in the fall, Mitch,” I said and hung up.

  He may have still been talking when I put the phone down, but I was seriously unable to continue the conversation.

  I poured myself a gin and tonic and sat down with the journal.

  September, 1939

  The men were coming for cards. I hid in the barn so Luce couldn’t find me. Then I listened from under the porch to the talking that went on. Where’s the littlen? Darcy Root said. It was quiet for a minute before Luce said asleep.

  That littlen looks about ready for pluckin, you ask me Darcy said. Nobody asked you. That’s Mr. Dickson Trent talking now. He laughed, though, and that made him sound like he was on Miss Root’s side. You’ll just have to do with me. That’s Luce. I barely heard that last part. It was like she was talking into her sleeve.

  My mother, the littlen. I shivered in the heat.

  The ice cubes had melted in my drink and Spike was asleep upside down at my feet when I closed Nora’s journal for another day.

  CHAPTER 15

  Nora was cool toward Henry for a while after the car accident. I guess she figured she was supposed to be upset about him undoing a light bulb and kissing her daughter passionately. But it was just an act, like her flower garden and her church circle. And it didn’t last long. He was impossible not to like, with his polite ways and his ability to talk to parents. Once he showed up at the door with chocolate on his chin and Nora actually hugged him, something she never did to Pete or me. She’d had several rye and Cokes, but still.

  Henry and I fizzled out. We didn’t even make it till Christmas. It was my fault; I didn’t have any energy for him. And the university and the gigs where O Henry played were bursting with young women who did. We said goodbye in early December and wouldn’t see each other again for a couple of years. It was Henry’s idea to cut off all contact. He didn’t think he could be just friends, which was what I suggested. I could have slit my own throat for saying it; if a man ever said that to me I’d slit his for sure.

  I missed him for a long time, but I didn’t give in to the urge to get in touch. I didn’t even go to see O Henry play in the pub at the St. Vital Hotel. I missed some great nights from all accounts, but it wouldn’t have been fair to him, the state I was in. Henry deserved better. I felt chill and hard inside, like I imagined Nora to be. He needed someone soft and warm.

  The winter was cold. All winters are cold in Winnipeg but the year of my new hip seemed brutal. I felt drafts in the old house that I’d never noticed before and I wore socks to bed for the first time in my life. I had graduated to a cane before the snow fell and could walk with no support by the end of November. But sometimes I used my cane anyway, after new snow fell and the sidewalks were extra slippery or if I had to take a bus. It kept people from banging into me and was something solid to hang on to.

  Pete drank a lot that winter, eased up on the dope and got into rye whiskey like our mother. I heard him early on Sunday mornings, vomiting in the bathroom. And later in the day, he whispered into the phone.

  “What happened last night?” he would say, talking to one of his friends. He groaned. “Do you think I have to phone anyone to apologize for anything?”

  And sometimes he’d make more calls, full of excuses and apologies.

  “I’m sorry I pulled the chair out from under you.”

  “I feel terrible about making fun of your hair.”

  “I’m so sorry I left you at the social. I sure hope you managed to get a ride home. It was cold last night.”

  That time he was talking to Eileen. Her knee froze on her walk home from the Elks Hall that January night in 1970. She had worn only pantyhose under her short dress and coat, never dreaming she would be left to walk home. They split up after that frigid winter night. The knee that froze was vulnerable for her whole long life after that and she never stopped blaming Pete. Or loving him: he was her only love. She said as much to me, not so long ago.

  Pete was kicked off the basketball team for missing too many practices. Nora didn’t find out till the playoffs when she and Dougwell were all set to go and watch him do his stuff.

  My brother and I didn’t get any further. His staring at me stopped seeming like a positive thing. It got tiresome, then creepy, like Joanne thought it was from the start, and finally I had to start yelling, “Quit staring at me!”

  He listened to what I said, if someone else was around. I could tell. But if it was just the two of us, he paid my words no mind. So I stayed out of his way, backed way off. I had nothing left to offer him. Maybe my basket of off
erings wasn’t very full to begin with but I didn’t know how to change that. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. But I didn’t have it in me to push. I came to think of him as the mad woman in the attic, except he walked among us and was a boy.

  I spent a lot of time in my room over the winter, listening to Abbey Road and Cheap Thrills, smoking a lot of cigarettes and a little bit of hash. The dope helped me to be nice to Nora. She was oblivious to what I was doing, just noticed if I was grumpy or pleasant.

  “You’re awfully easy to get along with lately,” she said once when I had made my way, heavy-lidded and thirsty, downstairs to have a look in the fridge. She smiled at me.

  I felt confused and shuffled back upstairs with just a glass of water. Was it me and the way I was that kept her from smiling at me like that more often? Could she and I have something more if I changed? Was it more than just her fault?

  When I ran out of hash I didn’t buy any more for a long time. That little encounter with Nora freaked me out. I was more comfortable being crabby and unhelpful.

  In the spring I took a job in the office at the Dominion store. I filed and typed and dealt with complaints. My hip still ached. The manager’s idea was that when I improved physically I would head out onto the floor as a cashier. My idea was that I would quit in a year or so and go back to university with the help of Murray’s life insurance money.

  Dougwell was okay with this. He was an optimist, like Murray.

  He sang the Dominion’s theme song, that one about why more Canadians shop at Dominion than any other store. Apparently it was mainly because of the meat.

  I sang along with him and we laughed. Later, when he was puttering around in the yard, I heard him whistling the tune and I felt a huge fondness for him. I wondered again how he could stand my mum.

  Nora was sullen. She was tired of me. I think she thought I would never be gone. I would live with them forever, the pathetic daughter who never managed to break away.

  When she was my age she had been on her own for four years. She took the commercial course at school and landed a job as a secretary the Monday after she graduated. It was the first job she applied for, I remember her saying, more than once. Soon after that she moved away from the Kennaughs into her own apartment. She left them behind.