She watched as Alika searched his pockets, looking for his keys. He entered the house and turned on the kitchen light. Evelyn moved into the backyard, so she could see him through the window. She noted that Wendy’s garden was full of weeds. So, Wendy was truly gone. She was lying in the hospital, defeated, and Alika was alone, or almost alone. Evelyn’s things lay strewn throughout the house, unseen but surely emitting their scent, beckoning him.
She watched Alika’s silhouette pace from the table to the sink and back again. He seemed smaller, somehow, but Evelyn didn’t want to think about that. She thought instead about the curtains in the window, how sheer they were. Wendy had bought them. Evelyn would never choose curtains like that. She wouldn’t want anyone lurking around, spying on her. No. If Evelyn moved in with Alika, she’d buy thick curtains, dark ones, and she’d change the kitchen bulb to a lower wattage. Better yet, they’d dine by candlelight.
Alika sat at the table in his usual chair and looked across at Wendy’s empty place. He leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. For the past year, Evelyn had watched him through this window with a keen jealousy, adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream. It had been a painful year. But it was over now. Evelyn had won. So why didn’t she feel like celebrating?
Alika began to pace again. His shoulders, once so broad and upright, sagged. Evelyn felt a soft pang rush through her body. She didn’t recognize this feeling right away, but gradually, as she stood there among the mosquitoes, with the tall blades of the uncut lawn tickling her bare legs, she realized that it was pity.
Alice was in her study, conversing leisurely with her daemon lover. She would tap out a five- or six-letter word and then pause, as though waiting for him to answer. The closer she came to the end of the book, Felix thought, the more slowly she wrote. She was delaying, lingering, loitering sensuously. Unwilling to depart.
Felix put on his jacket and slipped quietly out the front door. He had taken to walking down to the hospital on those evenings when Alice was writing. He’d tell the nurses that he wanted to interview Wendy Li, and the nurses always told him she was still unconscious. But Felix would sit beside her bed and speak to her anyway, asking her questions and, lately, telling her things. About his cooking and Alice’s book, and the goings-on in the neighbourhood.
Tonight, he hesitated on the threshold of her room, uncertain whether to enter. Wendy’s husband was there, pacing the floor in front of the window. The hospital lights were dimmed at night, and the dark window revealed nothing except a reflection of the cold, white room, the sterile machinery, their own two bodies standing there, useless and bereft. Felix coughed and Alika looked up. The two men acknowledged each other without speaking.
Felix had spoken to the doctor. He knew it was foolish to hope for a recovery, that the machines Alika refused to turn off were only delaying, only prolonging, his loss. And yet at times it seemed to Felix that it might be possible to reach through and touch Wendy Li on the other side, the way he had once reached through the dark waters of the lake and retrieved that drowning boy. Pulled him by the hair up into the oxygen and returned him to his parents. Whole. A miracle, Alice had called it. Maybe it was.
“Any change?” Felix asked.
Alika shook his head. He turned away and faced the window, straining his eyes against the black glass, as though trying to penetrate the film that lay across the surface of things.
Alika was still unaware of me. I followed him as he forced himself to dress and eat and drive to and from the hospital. I worried that he hadn’t watered the garden. He hadn’t even entered it, and the weeds were taking over. A Canadian thistle had sprouted among the cabbages and was thriving — four feet tall, blooming bristly purple flowers full of bumblebees.
At night, Alika collapsed onto the living room couch without bothering to shower. I stayed close and listened to him breathe, longing to hold him, to feel the movement of his lungs, his heartbeat. I often used to suffer from insomnia over some trivial problem — the library budget cuts or one of Evelyn’s hairpins. I’d lie awake and press my ear to his chest and feel his beating heart reverberating through his body and through mine. I hadn’t even minded that he snored. I was glad to remember that. I’d have been ashamed, now that I was dead, to think I’d ever been so petty.
I left my sleeping husband and wandered out to the garden. It was dark now, and the bees had returned to their hive, but the mosquitoes were congregating. A new swarm had hatched in the bird bath, and they were hungry, looking for blood. Their high-pitched whining surrounded and enclosed me, and it was strangely comforting.
The night was muggy and dark under the new moon, and I longed for company. I rose with the mosquitoes into the air that was thick with the dusky smell of tomato plants — Alika should have been picking those tomatoes — over the lilac bushes and down the lane to the river bank, where they would feed on crows and sleeping sparrows. They didn’t feed on me. I floated in the swarm with impunity, as if I were one of them, free at last of their itches and stings.
It was bad luck to voice any negative thoughts about Wendy, Rosa scolded Noni. It was tempting the gods.
“You’ve got it backwards, Mum,” Noni said. “It’s hubris that tempts the gods, over-confidence.”
Rosa eyed her suspiciously. “Is that what they taught you in college?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Noni said. “But all I’m saying is that we should be prepared. The doctor says — ”
“The doctor!” Rosa said. “I suppose he went to college, too!”
“I certainly hope so.” Noni sighed. She was exhausted. She didn’t know anymore what caused good luck and what caused bad luck. It seemed to her that a wild undercurrent of total randomness snaked and bucked beneath their everyday lives. And what use was luck now? According to the doctor, the worst thing that could possibly happen had already happened.
Rosa insisted that she’d have some intimation if Wendy was going to die, and Noni had always trusted in her mother’s premonitions before. But now it seemed to Noni that if there was a veil between the present and the future, it raised and lowered itself at meaningless intervals, revealing the most inconsequential things, like the arrival of the garbage truck, and concealing the answers to crucial questions, as if it didn’t understand, or care anymore, about the difference between life and death.
The voices of the dead grew more persuasive. I didn’t try to make out the words. I wasn’t even sure if they were speaking English, but it didn’t matter. Their tone said everything. It was seductive, persistent, promising. I wondered sometimes if I was supposed to answer. But I’d never known anyone who’d died, and I didn’t know how to talk to them. What would I say?
Would I have to account for myself, the way Mrs. Keller always said I would? And what could I really say about my life, anyway? What had I accomplished? It occurred to me I’d barely skimmed the surface of the earth while I was there. I swept and the dust came back. I weeded and the weeds came back. I cooked dinners and people ate them. Even my marriage, which I’d thought meant an end to being alone, was done and undone in a twinkling. I’d loved Alika for one entire year and yet I scarcely knew him.
Gradually, Evelyn was starting to suspect that the freezer binding spell had failed. Even though Wendy was lying there as good as dead, none of the bad effects of her power were diminishing. If anything, Evelyn’s troubles had only increased. Alika still paid no attention to her. When she called, he barely mumbled into the receiver at her, two or three words at a time, before he hung up. He always said he wanted to keep the line free. And Evelyn was developing a guilty conscience. Her remorse — or some kind of restless presence — hounded her at night and drove her from her bed to see what she could see through Alika’s curtains. But instead of enjoying the fact that he was all alone at last, instead of revelling in her victory, Evelyn had begun to worry about him. She worried about herself, too. Why did she bother sneaking around like this? Alika didn’t even know she was alive. One afte
rnoon, on her way to work, she decided it was time to show herself in daylight.
There was Alika on the front steps, fiddling with some red cloth and sticks of wood.
“Hi,” Evelyn said.
He looked up briefly. “Hi, Evelyn.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m fixing Wendy’s kite,” he said.
“Oh. Wendy’s better, then?”
“She will be.” He kept his head low, eyes averted, concentrating on a thin stick of balsa wood.
No matter what Evelyn said, Alika answered only in short syllables. He kept his focus on the kite. Here she was, right in front of him, free and available, his for the taking, and he couldn’t even see her. Wendy was completely unavailable, thanks to Evelyn, but this had only made her more desirable. Alika was living inside a house chock full of Wendy’s things. Evelyn’s meagre offerings — a single stocking, a comb — didn’t stand a chance against the arsenal of Wendy’s worldly possessions, against her underwear, against that kite. Evelyn said goodbye as casually as she could and turned away, tears stinging her eyes.
The freezer binding spell had worked all right. It had worked too well. It had backfired, and now Alika was under Wendy’s power more than ever before. Evelyn should have seen the risks. The spell wasn’t specific enough. It prevented Wendy from doing Evelyn harm, but it also prevented her from doing anything else.
Now, Wendy would never nag Alika or neglect him or become unfaithful. She would never grow fat and boring, like the wives the firemen complained of. She wouldn’t ever age. Alika would always remember her the way she was the day that Evelyn had cast the spell on her — young and healthy, and in love, surrounded by morning glory in full bloom.
Wendy had become immortal.
It was many years since Rosa had worked in a garden. Since the car accident, her back had been weak, prone to slipped disks and bouts of sciatica. But if she didn’t do something soon, all of Wendy’s work would be in vain. Wendy would be appalled, when she came home, to see her garden like this. Rosa had finally watered it yesterday, but water wasn’t enough. Even if the rains came, the vegetation would rot. The lettuce and cabbage leaves would grow slimy and full of slugs. She fingered the tangle of yellow beans that had dried out and were now inedible. Yes, something needed to be done. She retrieved some tools from the shed and stood for a few minutes, trying to decide where to begin.
Rosa dragged a hoe across the weeds between the potatoes. The weeds were tall and growing strong. Hundreds of baby elm trees had sprouted since Wendy’s fall, and their little stems were already tough and woody. Rosa had to use the trowel to dig them out. Her back began to ache.
“Alika! Look!” Noni stood at the kitchen door, pointing. Alika looked up and saw his mother in the garden, working.
“Mum, you’ll hurt your back,” Noni called.
Rosa didn’t answer. She waded through the crabgrass into the spreading tomato plants, picking tomatoes as she went, until her pail was full. She pulled up three enormous onions and placed them on top, careful not to bruise the delicate skin of the tomatoes, which were overripe. Then she forged her way through a veritable hedge of thistles into the cabbage patch. What had Wendy done to these plants to make them grow so large? Rosa remembered her mother’s stock answer to any questions about where babies came from: “Je t’ai trouvée en-dessous d’un chou.” I found you under a cabbage. Well, Wendy’s cabbages were easily big enough to conceal a baby. Rosa stooped and lifted a leaf, inspecting the underside for slugs. The leaf was clean and dry. No slugs. And no babies. But she did find, snug up against the stem of the cabbage, a 35-millimetre automatic camera, one of Alika’s cameras. How did that get there? Rosa tucked it safely into her apron pocket. She wondered whether her son was losing his mind.
In the darkroom, Alika submerged a set of prints in a tray of developing fluid. Noni often liked to watch this process, and today she was curious about the results. When he’d opened the camera Rosa had found in the garden, he’d discovered a roll of film. He doubted it would be any good, but Rosa insisted he try to develop it. The work would be good for him, she said. It would keep him in practice for when he went back to the studio. She had lately decided that work would be good for all of them, especially work that they did together. She went to Noni's apartment and did laundry while Noni finished making the tangerine dress she'd neglected and caught up on the alterations. At Alika's house, Rosa assigned a number of tasks, washing and mending Wendy’s clothing, fixing her kite. Tomorrow, they were all supposed to start canning the pumpkins. But creative work, Rosa said, was best of all. It would ease Alika’s mind. As in most things these days, Rosa had been wrong about that. Alika was as gaunt and silent as ever.
Noni stood behind her brother and placed a hand on his shoulder as she watched the transformation in the developing tray. An image started to lift to the surface of the floating paper. At first, the patterns were arbitrary, stray threads of darkness gathering where the absence of light had brushed the surface of the film and disappeared. Then Noni could make out a set of teeth, a pair of eyes — a man’s face. And there was a woman beside him.
“Who are these people?” she asked.
Alika shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.”
I’d never watched Alika in his darkroom before. I’d never seen him measuring chemicals, shaking containers so carefully, timing things. I knew he went into the darkroom and emerged with photographs, but I’d never thought about how he made it happen.
Alika had always seemed to me so mysteriously dense that I hadn’t thought it possible to know him. Maybe I’d preferred not to know him. I’d been able to spend a lot of time imagining the murky depths of his being. When he stared blankly at the ceiling or the sky or the blades of grass, I’d thought of him as hopelessly impractical, sweetly lost without my guidance. But he wasn’t lost. He was looking at things.
I remembered the stack of pictures he’d taken of those autumn leaves, their fragile veins, the sunlight bleeding through their golden skins like fire. That was what he’d seen, what he’d brought to light here in the darkness.
On the rare occasions when Alice left her work to go out, Felix had taken to reading her manuscript compulsively. He felt guilty about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. Alice didn’t end the story with the solving of the crime, or even with a brief account of what happened to the principal characters. She went on and on, telling the story of Felix’s convalescence, her slow, deliberate courtship of him.
No wonder she couldn’t meet her deadline. Alice’s manuscript had long ago ceased to be a true-crime book and was becoming a romance novel. She recounted her visits to the hospital after Felix had been wounded, the meals she’d brought for him, the time she cut his hair, the day he first walked down the corridor, leaning on her arm. Felix couldn’t help grinning when he came across the account of their first night together. He’d forgotten that episode in the hospital bathroom, with the bubble bath.
He’d forgotten a lot, he realized, as he turned the pages. He read every detail of their wedding and reception, their breathless, laughing dash through the rain to the car and the ride back to this house. They were supposed to drive up to the lake for their honeymoon, but there had been a wild thunderstorm that night, and they’d come here instead, to their new home, even though they hadn’t finished moving in yet. When the storm took down the electric lines, and all the lights on the street went out, they discovered they had no candles. She’d been frightened, and he remembered how she’d clung to him in bed, tightening her grip each time the lightning flashed. To soothe her, Felix had told stories all night long. He was surprised to see that she remembered every story he’d told, for he himself had long forgotten them. She described the sound of Felix’s voice in the darkness, gentle and low, a sound she could sleep inside of. And now she was returning the favour, Felix thought. The pages she’d written were full of blooming tenderness, and lust. For Felix, or for this other Felix who was beginn
ing, he recognized with a shock, to resemble himself.
My sister- and mother-in-law embraced each other in the doorway of my house, and then they parted. Noni carried my library books to her car, and Rosa returned to the garden with a pair of scissors to cut the oregano for drying. They were taking care of things, erasing the signs of my absence, replacing me.
The oregano had flowered, and Rosa began by cutting the pale, amethyst blooms from the tops of the stalks, letting them fall to the ground in soft heaps. The poppy seeds had been scattered, the pumpkins harvested. The bird bath had been freshly filled, and a breeze rippled the surface of its water.
When Felix saw Alika standing on his front porch, he was frightened. Had Wendy passed away at last? He sent up a brief prayer as he opened the door.
“I have something to show you,” Alika said.
Felix had never seen him so animated before. He was agitated about something, but it wasn’t Wendy’s death. He was holding a large envelope under his arm.
“Come in.” Felix led the way to the kitchen, poured two cups of tea, and told Alika to sit.
“I found my camera,” Alika said. He opened the envelope and spilled photographs onto the kitchen table. “And these were in it. Look.”
Felix looked. He recognized the event — The Concerned Citizens’ protest against the new casino. The event that had never appeared in the newspaper. The citizens had marched through downtown and defiantly crossed the street at Portage and Main, where pedestrian traffic was forbidden. The photos had been taken at City Hall, at the rally after the march. People were jostling each other, trying to get closer to the camera. They carried hand-lettered signs. “Don’t gamble with our future.” “The wages of sin is death.” “Hospitals, not Casinos!”
In the First Early Days of My Death Page 10