“So,” Karla says to Lee, “what have you been up to?” The sweaty horse stretches his nose toward her and she runs her hand down his face. He doesn’t object.
“Just out for a ride,” Lee says.
He thinks, I came across the road on this gray horse—what, sixteen, seventeen hours ago?—and just kept on going. He can’t say that.
George slaps his thigh. “‘Just out for a ride,’ that’s a good one. Some ride.”
Karla looks puzzled but she doesn’t ask any more questions.
Lee drains the beer and hands the empty bottle back to her. Then he takes off George’s old hat and holds it out to him. “Thanks for the loan,” he says. “Saved the day.”
George waves it away. “You keep it,” he says. “I’ve got this new one.”
Lee puts the hat back on and thinks he can feel sand embedded in his brow. “Best get on home, then,” he says.
“Not so fast,” says George. He pulls something out of his shirt pocket and Lee sees that it’s a disposable camera, still in the foil packaging. George gets it unwrapped and then steps around so that he’s not looking into the sun and snaps a couple of photos of Lee on the horse.
“You should get yourself one of those digital cameras, George,” Karla says. “You know, like a little computer.”
“Computers,” George says dismissively. “Don’t know nothing about them.” Then he takes a crisp new fifty-dollar bill out of his wallet and hands it up to Lee.
“I can’t take that,” Lee says.
“Why not? You earned it. Should probably be a couple of thousand by now, with inflation, but I’m not that generous.”
“No,” says Lee. “I can’t.”
“Take it,” says George, and Lee finally does, not having the energy to argue.
“Well, I’m curious, that’s for sure,” Karla says, popping the cap off another beer, “but none of my business.”
“Come on,” George says to Lee, putting the camera back in his pocket. “I’ll get the gate.” He tips his hat to Karla and says, “Happy birthday there, Karla. Don’t you drink too much and fall off that rock.”
“It’s your birthday?” Lee asks Karla.
“Yeah, but it’s not like anyone noticed. I’ve been stood up apparently. I should probably be thanking my stars for that.”
He sees now that she’s too dressed up for sitting out in a pasture. She’s wearing a lacy white shirt and a red beaded necklace. He wonders if it’s Dale she was expecting or someone else. Now that he’s actually looking at her, he realizes that she doesn’t seem especially happy.
“Well, happy birthday anyway,” he says. “Maybe someone decorated that rock just for you.” As soon as the words are out, he regrets them. They sound so lame.
But Karla knows what he means and looks down at the graffiti prints. “Thanks for the thought,” she says, “but no one I know would bother.” Then she says, “Oh crap. Now I’m feeling sorry for myself. Time to go home when that happens. Leave the gate open, will you? I’m going right after I finish this one.”
Lee guides the horse toward the gate and George walks along beside him. When they’re out of Karla’s hearing, George shakes his head and says, “I don’t understand these modern women. Out here by herself drinking beer. Should be home raising babies.”
It makes Lee thinks of Lester. He would have said pretty much the same thing.
They reach the gate and George opens it and stretches it out on the ground. Before he gets in his truck, he offers his hand for Lee to shake and says, “That’s quite the horse, there. Not built for dragging calves, but built for distance, sure as heck. Wait until I tell Anna. I’ll show her the picture, eh? Maybe put it in the book.”
After George is gone, Lee slips to the ground so he can walk the last quarter mile home and limber himself up. He can see the dust of a vehicle coming from the south, so he waits for it to pass, shaking out his legs and taking a few steps on the spot. As the truck approaches, he recognizes it as Dale Patterson’s.
It doesn’t pass. It slows and pulls onto the approach behind TNT’s Trans Am and Dale gets out. He’s got his arm in a sling.
“Torgeson,” Dale says, but he’s got no time to talk as he steps over the wire gate on his way to the buffalo stone. “Can’t keep the little woman waiting.”
So it’s on again, Lee thinks. The mystery man is Dale. Too bad for Karla.
Dale suddenly stops and turns back to Lee and says, “That horse.”
“What about him?” Lee asks, thinking maybe Dale knows where the horse came from.
“If you wanted a horse,” Dale says, “you should have called me. I could have sold you a real one. What the hell good is an Arab horse in this country?”
He doesn’t wait for Lee to respond and strides away through the pasture, cradling his bad arm with his good.
In fact, Lee has no response, other than he’s not going to complain about an animal that just carried him for a hundred miles. As he leads the horse home, he thinks about Karla in her lacy shirt waiting for Dale, and about her crazy family, the Normans, all the stories, old TNT, and Karla’s cousin who stabbed his mother. He wonders what someone like Karla thinks about him, the boy who was found in a laundry basket. Maybe nothing. But on the other hand, maybe she looks at him and sums up his life, as he did hers, by what she knows from talk. Not much chance that anyone will forget how he came to have the last name Torgeson.
He stops and loops the reins over the saddle horn and then walks the rest of the way home, letting the tired horse follow on his own. Everybody knows everything in Juliet, Lee thinks.
The Stars of Heaven
When Norval is stricken with chest pains, Lila is hell-bent on calling for the ambulance in Swift Current, but the pain subsides and Norval says he will go to the hospital only if Lila drives him. In fact, he says, why don’t they just try to get Dr. van Riebeeck on the phone, but Lila says he isn’t even certified in Canada yet, and anyway he’ll send Norval to Swift Current, so why waste precious time? Since it’s the only way Norval will agree to go, she loads him into the car. So as not to worry Rachelle, who’s in her room brooding over her breakup with Kyle, Lila calls upstairs and says she and Norval are going for a drive.
“Fine by me,” Rachelle’s voice snaps back. “I’m going out anyway. And don’t expect me home. I’m staying at Kristen’s.”
Not brooding, then.
On the way into town, Norval reports that the pain is gone. He doesn’t tell Lila about the tightness, the feeling that an elastic band is wrapped around his chest.
“Probably angina,” Lila says. “They’ll do an EKG. And a stress test.”
He doesn’t want a battery of tests. He suggests they turn around and go home. He’ll make an appointment for a physical, he promises, but Lila won’t hear of returning home.
“There’s no need for anyone to die of a heart attack these days, Norval,” Lila says. “So we’re going to get this checked and make sure. Otherwise, I won’t sleep. The surgeries for valve repair and blocked arteries and the like are very sophisticated now.”
Surgery? He certainly doesn’t want to be told he’s going under the knife. He wonders when Lila became such an expert on the treatment of heart disease and he’s tempted to say something sarcastic, but he doesn’t because he knows she’s concerned. He notices that she is driving fast.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “You’d better slow down or you’ll have us stopped for speeding, and that won’t get us there any faster, will it?” He rolls the window down and feels the breeze on his face. The sky, which had been the blue of early evening when they left Juliet, is now quite dark—dark enough that he can see the stars, millions of them.
“Look at that,” he says to Lila. “Such a clear night sky. No moon. The Milky Way in full force.”
�
��What are you talking about, Norval?” Lila asks. “It’s only eight o’clock. Of course there’s no moon. It’s still light.”
Eight o’clock. Lila must be wrong. Still, when Norval looks ahead he can clearly see the oncoming semi with its shiny red cab, the gold color of ripe crops on either side of the highway, the turquoise farmhouse that Lila always says reflects someone’s idea of unique when it’s really just a very bad decorating choice. So odd—the earth still bright with the colors of the day, and the night sky above, sprinkled with stars.
“The very lights of heaven,” he says. It’s a joke, he doesn’t believe in heaven, and he’s just thinking that he should explain himself to Lila lest she misunderstand, when the stars disappear and Swift Current lies spread out before them, a small city tucked into a creek valley, and Lila is off the highway and onto the service road, still driving over the speed limit and following the green H signs that indicate a hospital.
And they’re almost there, just a short distance from the brand-new facility on the edge of town, when Lila hears Norval say, “Tell Blaine Dolson it’s not his fault,” and she looks at Norval and in the evening light she can see that the pain is upon him again, the most agonizing, wrenching pain this time, and she steps on the gas and drives as fast as she can without losing control of the car, and up to the Emergency entrance, leaning on the horn and saying, “Norval, stay with me, we’re almost there.” There’s no one at the door, no one coming, and Lila pounds on the car horn until finally a nurse comes running, and another, and then it’s all out of Lila’s hands.
Things are happening in slow motion—Lila has time to notice that one of the young nurses has pink streaks in her hair—and warp speed at the same time. They get Norval on a gurney and whisk him inside and down a hall, through a door into Emergency, a pair of nurses calling out for a doctor and the tools of their trade, wheeling Norval away, just like they do on the Life Channel, too busy to pay any attention to Lila. Maybe she should follow, she thinks, but it’s too frightening. She holds back, and then when she thinks, I should be with him, it’s too late. The door that they’ve wheeled him through is locked. Why is this hospital so deserted? she wonders. Where are the nurses? Busy. Busy with Norval. So she waits. There are several armchairs in the waiting area and she sits on one of them, and it feels too soft, too obviously chosen for a person needing comfort. She stares at the television on the wall, one program turning into another, a sitcom, a nature show, nothing at all making sense, until a young Hutterite couple in their black clothing come through the doors leading from the ICU and sit across from her. The woman is crying and Lila can’t stand it, she can’t sit here and watch a woman cry a few feet away from her. She has to leave, do something. Move her car, that’s what she can do.
She goes outside and gets in the car, which is still nosed right up to the Emergency entrance and in the way of hospital traffic, forcing anyone who comes along to go around it. There’s a blinding, bright fluorescent light over the entrance doors even though it’s not yet dark, and it shines down on Lila as she sits, paralyzed, until a big truck carrying more Hutterites comes along and she finally starts her car and moves it so they can get by. As she parks properly in the visitors lot, she thinks, This is ridiculous, they’ll be looking for me, Norval will want me. She gets out of the car, locks it, and walks back to the Emergency door.
A nurse is there looking for her, and she takes her to the doctor, who explains what has happened. “Is there someone you can call?” the nurse, an older woman, asks as Lila sits, unbelieving, with Norval’s body—his body!—in the treatment room where he’d died, hardly more than a cubicle. And Lila thinks about saying my daughter but she shakes her head, no, there’s no one to call. The nurse wants information from her, the spelling of Norval’s name, his health card number, date of birth, what funeral home she would like them to call. How can she ask that? Lila thinks. But she has to, of course she does. The nurse is kindly. She tells Lila to take all the time she needs with Norval, and she even brings her a cup of tea, which goes cold on the stand beside the bed while Lila wonders, How will I tell Rachelle?
Eventually, the nurse suggests that Lila go home and get some rest. She offers to drive her when she gets off in half an hour—“I live out your way,” she says. “Juliet, isn’t it?”—but Lila says no. She turns down an over-the-counter sleeping pill, too.
She doesn’t want to go home. It will be true once she gets home, everything will change as soon as she drives the car into the driveway and has to face the house and the fact of Norval’s absence. When she does finally leave the hospital, she goes to the drugstore and buys some makeup and a bottle of bath salts. Her mind is numb as her hands select cosmetics off the store shelves. She almost buys a bridal magazine for Rachelle before she remembers that the wedding is off. After the drugstore, she stops at a gas station and buys a quick-pick lottery ticket and fills the car up, and watches the young attendant wash the dust off the windows.
Now she has to go home. There is no place else to go. There is no more avoiding the truth of what has happened—no avoiding Juliet and her house and Rachelle and the kitchen table with Norval’s dinner plate still on it—and she gets back in the car and drives toward the service road and the highway going west. All the way home, she thinks of Norval’s last words and what he said before the pain took his ability to talk: Tell Blaine Dolson it’s not his fault. He hadn’t said, Tell Rachelle I love her. He hadn’t said, You’re everything in the world to me, Lila. He’d had no dying words for his wife and daughter, just a few words for a feckless client with too many kids.
But Norval hadn’t known he was dying, Lila reasons. He’d just thought of something, some little detail having to do with Blaine Dolson’s accounts, and out it had popped. It had been an abbreviated sentence, the full intent being something like, They’ll probably keep me in the hospital overnight and you’ll have to take a few calls for me. If Blaine Dolson calls, tell him it’s not his fault. There was an incorrect payment date printed on one of his bank statements. Just assure him it’s our error and not his, and we’ll straighten it out next week.
But Norval had also said something about the lights of heaven. Lila can’t remember what, she hadn’t paid attention because Norval was always saying things like that, things that were too smart for her, or at least that’s how they made her feel, but the reference to heaven—did that not mean he was thinking about dying? And if he was thinking about dying, shouldn’t he also have been thinking about her and Rachelle, and not Blaine Dolson? It was selfish of Norval to waste his dying thoughts on a bank client, she thinks, and just as she pulls into Juliet she remembers what else he’d said that evening, about almost getting shot, and how he refused to explain himself and sat watching the weather channel, as though he knew. Oh my God, Lila thinks, he’d been having these chest pains all day and he hadn’t said anything, and that’s what he meant by “almost shot.” She’s furious, absolutely furious with him for not getting medical attention straightaway; look what he’s done by being careless, just look at how he’s left her alone, how could he, and the word alone repeats in her head until she gets the car stopped in the driveway, and she pounds on the steering wheel in anger, furious at Norval for being so irresponsible, furious with Rachelle for getting pregnant and causing Norval so much stress, furious with the bank for sending Norval to Juliet in the first place and making him work too hard. And finally sobbing because she’s lost him, the other half of herself, lost him for good.
When Lila eventually gets out of the car, the first thing she notices is that the grass is too long. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? It was unlike Norval to let the grass grow. He’s very fussy about the length of his lawn. She’s even seen him measure it, as though it were a green on a golf course. She walks around the side of the house to the back and the grass in the backyard is overgrown as well. Then she notices the new lawn mower, and remembers that the old one was not working, and that Norval had been g
oing on and on about needing a new mower.
She enters the house through the back door and the kitchen, and falters when she sees Norval’s plate and the pair of chopsticks on the table. She stands in the kitchen, not sure that she can face the rest of the house, not sure that she can get through this. Perhaps if Rachelle were here, they could get through it together. She should try to reach her, call her cell, or Kristen’s, ask her to come home without saying why. But Rachelle will argue, demand to know, and Lila will break down, and she can’t tell Rachelle over the phone. Your father died tonight. Not over the phone.
In the living room she stares at the couch, not believing that just hours ago Norval was lying there watching the weather channel. She can still see the outline of his body in the nap of the Ultrasuede fabric. Norval’s couch. She’d always thought of it as his because he’d driven all the way to Regina in a borrowed truck to pick it up, and then when he got it home, she discovered that the company had ordered the wrong couch, only she’d never told Norval because he seemed so happy with this one. It was the most interest he’d ever shown in a piece of furniture, and he complimented her several times on her choice. Because she was pretty sure it was an even more expensive couch than the one she’d ordered, she kept the company’s mistake to herself, even when she noticed that the fabric had a tendency to hold the outlines of people’s buttocks—a definite flaw, she’d thought, considering how much money she’d spent. She puts her hand down on Norval’s couch and imagines his warmth. She wants to lie on the couch and let herself sink into the outline of Norval’s body, feel the warmth that she will never—is it possible?—feel again. But the couch is a shrine that she can’t yet disturb.
Instead, she goes looking. For clues. Clues that Norval knew something was wrong—You know, Lila, I was almost shot today—a note perhaps, like a suicide note, a message for her or for Rachelle, a good-bye, last words like the ones people on doomed aircraft write on the backs of blank checks or the insides of cigarette boxes, and which are found floating amid the debris in the North Sea or the Indian Ocean.
Juliet in August Page 25