The 'Geisters

by David Nickle

  “Twenty-six,” she said.

  He nodded. “Michael’s ten years older. Practically an old man. That doesn’t bother you?”

  Michael met her eye and smiled a little, shook his head, and Ann said: “Horrifies me, actually,” and Rickhardt laughed.

  “She’s not in it for the money,” said Michael, and stage-whispered: “Don’t worry. She’s loaded.”

  They didn’t really talk about money after that, although Rickhardt did ask her about her job at Krenk & Partners. He knew more than a little about them; Alex Krenk himself had joined forces with him in the 1990s, on an office development in Vancouver that had gotten some attention. Rickhardt had hired Krenk on various projects off and on since. They’d been asked to bid on designs for the restaurant and retail structures at his vineyard but had fallen short.

  He told this story with clear expectation that Ann might jump in, but it was difficult. She was junior enough at the firm that she had no real knowledge about the Vancouver development; she’d helped out on some of the design for the vineyard, though, and she mentioned that. Rickhardt managed to say something nice about the bid, but facts were facts: the bid had fallen short. Ann attributed his words to a belated attempt at basic good manners.

  There had been no mistaking when he’d finished his interview with Ann. He asked her a question about the type of care Philip was getting, but he clearly wasn’t interested. Halfway through her answer, he was refilling his glass.

  She was in the middle of a sentence when he looked up, right past her, and asked Michael, “Hey, do you remember Villier?”

  Michael frowned, snapped his fingers, and said, “John Villier? From Montreal? Of course! What’s he up to?” And so they launched into a long, context-free reminiscence about a trip the three of them had taken somewhere, some time ago, involving a seaplane and a great deal of liquor.

  After Rickhardt left, they fought.

  “He’s a jerk,” Ann said. They were standing on the narrow balcony where it overlooked the reclaimed industrial lands of the city’s east end. Across the street, patrons from a café built from an old auto body shop sat under glowing orange lanterns and wide umbrellas outside the open garage door, getting happily buzzed before another work week.

  “That’s not fair,” said Michael, his voice taking a plaintive edge. “Ian’s just of a different generation.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “What’s your excuse?”

  They’d both had some wine by then, and Ann’s tone was sharper than she’d intended. Two glasses ago, she might have stopped herself from pressing the matter.

  “You left me out to dry,” she said. “Ian Rickhardt treated me like a piece of property, a new car you brought home. He came over to check it out. Check me out.”

  Michael tucked his chin down, put both hands on the balcony rail, and pretended to study the seventh-day revellers in the café. “That’s not what was happening,” he said.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “I told you he could be a little off-putting.”

  “Yes. You did. And it was off-putting. So off-putting you abandoned me.”

  Michael stepped back from the railing and held his hands in the air, a gesture of retreat. He stepped back through the doors and retreated further, to the kitchen. Ann looked away from him, down at the café. As she watched, one string of lanterns flickered, and went dark.

  Good, she thought, and was immediately ashamed.

  Now, at the vineyard, staring out at the stand of fiery golden maple trees, watching the van make its way up the drive, and wondering if there might be some more of that delicious Gewürzt inside, Ann winced at the memory. She swilled down the last dregs of the wine from her glass, and drew a deep breath of the smell of this place—woodsmoke and loam—and turned to go back inside Rickhardt’s winery. This was the place that Krenk & Partners didn’t design, and from the look of it, wouldn’t have if they’d been asked: all glass and oak around the tasting bar, faux-Bavarian beams demarking a first-storey ceiling below a dark loft above, railing hung with even-more-faux grapevine. Home Depot had won that bid, no question.

  Rickhardt is a jerk. Also no question.

  Ann swung around the tasting bar and pulled the half-empty bottle of Gewürzt out of the cooler. She poured herself half a glass.

  He was a jerk. But so was she. She realized it when later that August Sunday, she’d come inside and started drying the dishes Michael was washing, and Michael had told her: “He wants to pay for the wedding. That’s why he wanted to meet you. He thinks of me as a son. I’m sorry you didn’t hit it off.”

  Ann took a sip, and then another. She started to take a third, but stopped herself as the wine touched her lip and set the glass down on the bar. The place would fill up in just a few hours with the guests at her Ian-Rickhardt-Productions wedding. From the sound of things, it was already starting.

  Outside, she could hear the van pulling up. For a moment, she considered finishing the wine. But she resisted.

  There would be plenty of time for wine later.

  iv

  Ian Rickhardt’s list of guests was longest, at seventy-seven; Michael Voors’ list less so but still respectable at twenty-six. Ann LeSage invited just five people to her wedding and Ian and Michael both looked worried. But she insisted it wasn’t so sad as that. She loved four of them, and she was sure they loved her too, and that counted for a great deal.

  Jeanie Yang had been Ann’s roommate for two years at the University of Toronto, and together they had explored the delicate art of old-school pencil-and-paper role-playing games, the subtle art of Anime, and the numbing craft of single malt scotch. She was working across the border in a lab outside Chicago, but caught up with Ann in G-chat as soon as she got the invite and said she’d drive out.

  ANN: It’s a long drive.

  JEANIE: OMFG its not. im a midwestrn grl now. everywhere goods 5 hours drive.

  will lesley be there?

  ANN: ummmm

  JEANIE: :p

  It was not awkward in the least, Jeanie insisted, that also attending would be Lesley Chalmers—another member of their little circle, with whom Jeanie had shared a bed for a semester. Lesley was in the architecture program with Ann, which was how she had met Jeanie, and it had been a terrible drama that year, Ann mediating their courtship, affair, and breakup.

  Lesley was in Toronto, still; in school, still. She and her partner, Bec, would rent a car and make a weekend of it. Lesley was old-fashioned. She confirmed by telephone.

  “Who’s going to be your maid of honour?” she asked.

  “It’s awful, but I haven’t really picked one.”

  “Wow. And the wedding’s—when?”

  “October.”

  “This October.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know it’s already September, right?”

  “I suppose I should pick one.”

  “I suppose you should,” said Lesley. “It’s awfully last minute. It would have to be a very good friend.”

  Ann stifled a laugh. Sometimes, the time since graduation seemed like a lifetime. Sometimes, like no time at all.

  “Lesley,” she said, “would you do me the honour?”

  “Given it a lot of thought, have you?”

  “A lot.”

  “Do I have to buy a lime green dress with shoulder ruffles and a big fucking pink bow on my ass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Jeanie have to wear one?”

  “No.”

  Quiet on the line, then: “She’s invited, right?”

  Sometimes, it was like no time at all had passed. Ann reassured her friend that all was well with Jeanie, and fielded a few questions about how she was doing, and explained that yes, Lesley was maid of honour because Ann liked Lesley better and had secretly taken her side in every dispute—and agreed with her that Jeanie would not look as good in lime g
reen and pink as Lesley, and would be madly jealous when she saw her, teetering on those stripper heels through the Chicken Dance.

  Ann did not ask Lesley if she had asked about Jeanie because she was still hung up on her . . . if it would have really been better if one or the other of them hadn’t been invited. In return, Lesley did not ask Ann about the quickness of the marriage, and if she mightn’t have jumped into it less from the dictates of desperate soul-searing love, and more as a consequence of her general isolation from the world; if her minuscule guest list might not indicate a more dangerous isolation, for a young woman set to marry a wealthy lawyer she’d only known for a few months.

  Questions like those were best left to Eva Fenshaw.

  Eva booked into a bed and breakfast in the little village of Vanderville on the Bench almost a week before the wedding.

  What the hell? Ann wondered.

  But Eva said she could afford it, and she loved the fall colours, and she wanted to be well-rested for the celebrations. And she didn’t want to be any trouble for the Rickhardts at their fancy winemakers’ house, which was where Ann and Michael were staying.

  “I know I’m welcome,” said Eva before Ann could say it herself. “But I’m more comfortable here.”

  When she drove out to see her, Ann admitted she could see how. The bed and breakfast was a two-storey, red brick, pink-gabled Victorian, just off Vanderville’s miniscule downtown. A chestnut tree shaded a big garden, still lush in the early autumn with nasturtiums overflowing clay pots and poking between field stone and little concrete gargoyles, still-flowering stalks of zabrina mallow growing everywhere. Its owner was a woman who might have been Eva’s baby sister: a menopausal earth-mom in peasant skirt and T-shirt decorated with the Mayan alphabet.

  The ground floor was filled with crafty knickknacks that somewhat-less-than-casually suggested Christmas. Yes, Eva said when they settled down for lunch at Stacey’s, a diner on the town’s main strip—not five minutes from the B & B—her bedroom followed the festive theme.

  “It’s like sleeping in a Christmas window display,” she said. “Quite some fun, actually, if you’re open to it.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.” Eva smiled, and Ann smiled back. Although they spoke very regularly, they didn’t see each other in person much anymore, and that fact hit home with Ann as they sat there. Eva had aged visibly since they’d last had a meal together, a year or so ago; gained some weight, bent a bit here and there . . . her light brown bob was more grey. When Ann looked at her, she remembered her from a decade ago, taller, more tanned, not more than a wisp of grey in hair that went to her shoulders, telling Ann and her Nan about Tibet. The intervening years hung from her like debris.

  “Thank you for coming,” Ann said. “It means a lot to us.”

  “Oh, don’t say that.” Eva shook her head. “‘It means a lot.’ What’s ‘a lot’? A lot of what? A lot of hooey.”

  “It’s something people say,” said Ann, knowing even as she spoke the direction the discussion would take, and so was utterly unsurprised when Eva said, “People hide behind words like that. They don’t say what they mean and then it’s all lies. Not that I’m calling you a liar.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And yet . . .” Eva lifted up the menu and read from it: “Chinese and Canadian Food. Do you suppose they have poutine?” She scanned down with a fingertip. “Oh they do!”

  “That takes care of the Canadian part,” said Ann.

  “I think I’ll have poutine. Imagine, living here all my life—and I’ve never had it before.”

  “You’re on your own,” said Ann.

  Eva clucked her tongue. “I wonder if they have herbal tea here? All it says is tea.”

  “Should I ask?”

  “I can ask.” Eva shut her menu, and signalled the waitress she was ready.

  “Now tell me about this ceremony we’re having on Saturday,” said Eva after confirming that there was indeed herbal tea available, and that yes, the poutine was “any good.” “You’ve got your wedding dress. I bet you look lovely in it.”

  “I do,” said Ann. She took her phone out of her purse and showed Eva pictures on the tiny screen.

  “Wow,” said Eva as she flicked through the images. “You’re a beautiful girl. Your Nan would be so—”

  Ann put her hand on Eva’s and gave it a squeeze and Eva squeezed back. Eva and her Nan had come to be good friends before she died. Almost as good friends as Eva’d become with Ann in that time.

  “So proud,” said Eva. “You’re getting married.”

  “So I am.”

  “Are you sure?” Eva looked at Ann levelly. She had been smiling the whole time, but now it faded. “It’s very soon.”

  “Sometimes you know,” said Ann.

  “That’s true,” said Eva. And as the steaming plate of fries, cheese curds and gravy arrived: “Michael is a nice fellow.”

  “I’m glad you like him.”

  Eva stabbed a french fry with her fork. She sniffed it. “You think I don’t like him,” she said, watching with fascination as a string of melted cheese curd snapped off the bottom of the fry.

  “I—” began Ann, but Eva kept going.

  “You think I’m coming here to bust this up, don’t you?”

  Ann opened her mouth and closed it again. Yes, she had to admit, deep down she did think that. Eva didn’t like to travel. She didn’t like to sleep away from home. Ann had idly wondered if Eva wasn’t coming to town early to set up her B & B room as a kind of base camp for a more intensive campaign.

  Eva squinted, popped the fry in her mouth and nodded as she chewed it.

  “You know, we used to talk. A lot more. You’d tell me everything. And I’d tell you everything too. And when I said I thought somebody was a nice fellow, it was because I meant it. And I mean it now. Michael Voors is a nice man.”

  “For a lawyer?” asked Ann.

  Eva shrugged. “Can’t say I’ve known very many,” she said, and her smile broke out again, and they both laughed.

  “You’re taking a step in your life,” continued Eva. “You’re taking it more quickly than we would have, when I was your age. . . .

  My God—Creator—that’s an awful thing to hear yourself say. . . .

  But it’s a good step all the same. I’d be more worried if we were sitting here five years from now, and you hadn’t taken any kind of step—that’s an awful thing to say too, because there’s nothing wrong with being independent either.” She put her fork through a clot of gravy and starch and twisted it like it was spaghetti. “But you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t really have any idea,” said Ann.

  “Only this,” said Eva. “You’ve got my blessing. Michael . . . He is a nice man. I can tell, you know. And you . . . If you’ve got any doubts or second thoughts . . . Well, like you said, sometimes you know. I don’t think you really have doubts, now do you?”

  She raised her eyebrow, and Ann said, “I don’t. No.”

  Eva nodded, and leaned in forward, a little confidentially. “And he is a handsome young man. I assume he’s good . . . you know.”

  “Eva!”

  “Oh, I’m not a prude,” said Eva, laughing. “Don’t you be. Sex is important. It’s part of a marriage.”

  Ann didn’t know what to say. Sex was important. And it was . . .

  fine with Michael, she guessed. Not great . . . not as frequent as she’d have thought. Something, she’d supposed, they could work on, on the honeymoon.

  “Don’t worry, Eva,” she said. “Michael keeps me more than satisfied.” She made a show of winking. “If you know what I mean.”

  Eva nodded again, and this time had the good grace to blush—at least a little. “Well good,” she said, and they sat quietly.

  Ann had ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. The waitress came with it, finally.

 
“I had a dream about you last night,” said Eva when the waitress had gone. “Very vivid. I think it might have been the new place I was sleeping; all that Christmas stuff. It was a good dream.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was at the house by the lake,” she said. “Before . . . well, before it sold. We were all younger—your Nan was there. It was Easter I think, because I remember a basket of eggs on the dining room table. You weren’t actually in the room. . . .”

  “That’s not surprising,” said Ann. “I didn’t go back there once during the time you knew me.”

  “Oh, I know, believe me. That was the last place you should have been, then,” said Eva. “Your Nan and I sometimes went back there. Particularly as it was getting ready to go on the market.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “She didn’t want to be there alone. I didn’t want her to, either.” Eva paused for another bite of poutine. “We had good talks there.”

  “So it wasn’t really about me.”

  “We were talking about you. You were going off to a new school in the fall—a private school. Your Nan thought it would be good for you.”

  “I probably hadn’t studied for the exam,” said Ann. “That’s how my dreams about going off to school usually end up.”

  “This wasn’t going to be like that.”

  “You could tell that?”

  “She knew you could do it.”

  “Of course she—” Ann stopped and swallowed. Eva sat quiet, waiting. But Ann didn’t cry. Outside the window, a truck pulled by, gears grumbling as it crawled down the street.

  “The marriage is a good thing,” said Eva. “Michael—he’s lost his family too, really. They’ve driven him off, it’s the same thing. So it’s no surprise that you want to make a new one quickly, now that you’ve found each other. And you must be feeling pretty secure in each other. In everything.” She punctuated with a raised eyebrow.

  Ann raised both, to say: Go on, Eva.

  And Eva went on: “I mean to say, if you weren’t secure—if you didn’t feel really safe . . . you never would have invited him.”

  The van had pasted on its side a photograph of trees, blue sky—across its tail, hands joined together, pale as clouds. MARGARET HOLLINGSWORTH RESIDENTIAL CARE, written in fine script. If you passed it on the highway, you might mistake it for a minibus—something that would carry residents well enough for day outings to the nearby mall. Stuck in traffic, you might notice some other things about it—the reflective shades drawn down over the windows; the eighteen-inch caduceus stencilled above the license plates . . . the small blue light on the roof.