Walt

by Russell Wangersky

  Her name is Elizabeth, and she has a particular way of talking to you, every word distinct and placed down sharply with a click like Scrabble tiles, her hair piled up grey and precise, and she always looks at your chest, high up toward your shoulder and slightly off to one side, the left side, as if she’d been told that this was exactly the spot where your heart was, and if she looked at it hard enough, she’d be able to divine your true intentions right through the wall of your chest, right inside that lub-dubbing lump of muscle in there. Eyes staring straight through flesh and bone and muscle. Or something like that.

  I had to think that there was some reason why she found it impossible to hold your eyes — as if there were some secret rule that, if she did, she might be caught cold in a way that she couldn’t ever tolerate being caught.

  I’ve spoken to her maybe nine or ten times in fifteen years — never about anything important, always something faux-neighbourly like “terrible weather this spring,” or a short discussion about the latest person on the street who’s decided to renovate their place and put it on the market. The price of lettuce — the fact that the green beans at the store are always in such bad shape that “they shouldn’t even be sold,” and the fact is that she says that right to me, as if it were somehow my fault. As if I were responsible, by simple association.

  We’ve talked appraisals, and where the city taxes are going to be when all the bills come out in March. She calls me “Walter,” and I bet she called Tom “Thomas,” although nobody else ever did.

  A conversation with her is like dancing, not like at the gym when you’re in grade school, each of you in your own space, but formal dancing. Your foot goes here, and mine goes there, and there are always conventions that have to be followed, lines drawn in helpful dashes that you’re not meant to ever cross over or step outside of.

  Always. It’s a kind of dancing that’s much more about the linear organization of math and geometry, and much less about the vibrating practicalities of touch.

  Her hair piled up there on the back of her head in that perfect dome, pinned in place or sprayed or something, and I have to tell you it’s like even the very captured order of that hair is telling me bluntly that there’s something else at her core — that there has to be.

  That’s the part I imagine, over and over again.

  I can’t shake it — I don’t remember when it started, just that it’s now an almost overwhelming physical urge.

  Disorder.

  It might not be all that unusual to say that sometimes you stare at someone and imagine what they’d be like, naked and curving up and under and against you. If you were just looking at Elizabeth for one passing moment, it might seem unlikely, maybe even impossible. She just doesn’t seem to vibrate at that frequency. But I’ve been imagining exactly that for years, and I imagine it almost every time I see her now.

  Not because I want it all that much, but more because the thought just constantly nudges into my head and won’t go away.

  And every time, I imagine she swears.

  I haven’t said that to anyone. Ever.

  I imagine she lies there still at first, not even willing to moan, resolutely formal, until it’s all just too much for her to take any more. That she’s still looking at my left shoulder, or off into the corner, or up at the ceiling. Her lips a perfectly tightly sealed straight line, neither happy nor unhappy. Neutral.

  Then she starts to swear. She starts quiet, but all at once, and the words come out in bunched little fistfuls of filthy language. Not a simple couple of words, either. She swears in full sentences, using a whole bunch of words that, normally, her mouth couldn’t even find the right shape to say. Words that are otherwise alien to her, like the sort of messy mildewed-clothing problem from the basement, the old clothes you bundle up in garbage bags and keep locked away in a shed way up at the end of your yard, away from the house, until you finally just make the necessary anonymous run to the dump.

  Then she pounds on my shoulders and my back with her fists and scratches the skin, and she coils there under me — completely, uncontrollable angry and involved, heaving up against me like a wild thing, because that’s exactly, precisely who she really is underneath all of it. Because that’s what she really is — just like everybody else. Like all of us are inside. And she hates it.

  Afterwards, I imagine she would straighten her hair where it has come loose and call me “Walter” all over again, two fat, full syllables like I’m someone who had come over to do something absolutely essentially to the plumbing, the kind of work that will later result in a cheque with perfectly balanced and even handwriting, not one single loop out of place or even marked by the slightest shake of her hand.

  I can’t help but think that’s what she’s really like.

  Even if she has the black and white cat with a red collar and a bell.

  Even if her cat has that always perfectly placed collar and bell.

  Even if there is not one single thing out of place in her house or in her yard or in her car. Even if she is absolutely as perfectly poised as anyone could be, every single thing thought out and deliberate. Believe me, there’s a subtle fire coming off her, if you know what fire feels like — and there’s plenty of fire there.

  So I’d like to catch her eye squarely just once, catch her eye in that shared visual equivalent of a whisper — just to be clear, just to let her know what I know and that, at the same time, her secret is completely safe with me.

  Or that it’s anything but safe with me.

  But she’s more skilled than that, smarter, and she never, ever makes eye contact.

  Deliberately.

  I like to think that she knows the game better than anyone, knows the value of the bets, knows the potential losses.

  I can feel the heat of her eyes on my chest like the skin is about to burn, and she never looks up, because if she were to, there’d be no way to even think of stopping.

  And Tom?

  Smart as a plank, he was. He could have shovelled her snow for fifteen hundred years and never had a single clue about her at all.

  Tom had no idea.

  He didn’t even know to look.

  Sometimes, a couple of beers in and reckless, I start thinking that I’ll just go over and knock on her door — just knock on her door, wait for her to open it, and look straight into her eyes, even if it means I have to reach out and hold her chin in my hand, the soft skin of her neck between my thumb and forefinger, and pull her face up so that she has no choice but to look back.

  Make her look straight at me, right there, where the hard truth can’t help but flicker back at her. Positive to negative, one great blue-white flashing spark.

  Then just wait to see what happens.

  I went to Alisha’s again right after I knew she’d come back from that vacation.

  I’d gotten to know the cat, or it had gotten to know me, and I’d found from her pictures that its name was Bo. I mean, there wasn’t really a reason to be there, no reason at all to go in and sit on the couch and pet Bo, but I’d did it anyway, more than once.

  I’d try to choose times when I was sure she wouldn’t be there. Stand on the other side of the street, in under the big trees, and try to work out from the patterns of the lights in the windows whether anyone was home or not. When I figured no one was there, I’d be up onto the veranda to ring the doorbell and see if anyone came before trying the door and slipping in the key.

  This city is still small enough that there’s a family grocery store that will deliver your groceries and put them away right there in your own cupboards — the delivery guy has a big fat ring of keys for all of the houses on his route, and he will just come in and leave the groceries on the counter, the meats and milk and ice cream in the fridge, or else he’ll put it all away if that’s what you want.

  I often wonder what that guy sees, what he walks into and walks around an
d looks at.

  Whether he ever takes a few extra steps away from his appointed rounds, whether he opens the odd cupboard or a drawer he isn’t supposed to, just too curious about what might be inside. The houses empty and waiting, all around him.

  There aren’t many feelings like that, not many feelings that are as charged sharp with risk as sliding open a drawer when you know that, if you’re ever caught, the whole world changes, and not in a good way, either.

  That’s the sharp line for sure: one moment trusted, the next a pariah. No more slipping packages of cream crackers or bags of egg noodles behind the knotty-pine varnished doors for you. No more job, no more cheque, and all for having a peek behind a half-opened door off the hall or something, having a door open behind you and the homeowner staring at your back, all nicely kitted out in your jacket from the store. Not the kind of thing you can turn around and just deny.

  I would have loved having all those keys. I’m also pretty sure it wouldn’t have been very long before I would have gotten caught being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.

  I have my own key ring, though. I suppose I might have three or four different keys now, like Alisha’s, that I’m not supposed to have. But I don’t make a big thing about it. That grocery guy, I can’t imagine how he could go around and never be accused of picking something up and walking off with it, something someone had actually misplaced. You know what people are like: if they found whatever it was they accused him of taking, would they ever come back and clear his name? The odds are probably less than fifty-fifty on that.

  The possibilities, though. I mean, just like at Alisha’s, up in her makeup stuff, for example, or looking through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The cabinet packed so full it was hard to imagine what everything was really for.

  The dresser? The smell of fabric, how it feels when it’s right pressed up against the little crease there under your nose: it’s like lust but without the sex, and I know that’s not an easy thing to understand.

  It made me wonder about him, about the guy Alisha had gone south with in the first place, because there was nothing of his in the place any more. I wondered if that meant that he had left, or whether he just didn’t warrant the space. Maybe she had just settled into the house and spread out gently, continuously, smothering the place with her clothes, her stuff, herself. Because she was in every room.

  Sometimes, I’d see her coming out or glimpse her through the window from the outside. There were a couple of places where I could get high enough to see in windows and stay out of sight from the neighbours. But I didn’t see him any more.

  Chapter 44

  Peanut Butter Bleach

  Coffee Cream Coffee Cream

  Milk Dish Soap

  Beans in Molasses Sausages

  Sausages Whole Wheat Bread

  Belgium Bread Coffee Beans

  Coffee Beans Dog Meat

  Dog Meat Ginger Ale

  Ginger Ale Potatoes

  Scalloped Potatoes Bananas

  Green Pepper Gravy Mix

  Two different lists — exactly the same person. Going through the same things, running out of the same things. Same handwriting, same black pen, same weight where the capital C in cream runs right into the lower case r. Always making the same lists, with some things different, but all of the anchors exactly the same. Coffee with cream, sausages, ginger ale, meat for the dog.

  You get addicted to the things you do really well. That’s just the way it is. Addicted to the things that have become second nature.

  Addicted to doing them in the same order, addicted to doing them right, especially if it just happens that you can do them easily, too. If you play pool well, and someone at the bar challenges you to a game, you don’t play worse just so the game will seem competitive once you see that they’re not as good as you.

  Sure, you might take a few of the lower-percentage shots — you might try things you wouldn’t if you were playing in a tighter, closer game, someplace where every shot really counts, but it’s not because you’re giving a really bad player a chance. Fact is, you almost start competing with yourself, but you’ll always fall back on your regular game eventually, and if they’re not as good as you, they’ll probably lose. The point is that once you have a skill, using it to the best of your ability is part of having it. Even if it’s wrong — you can’t just sell yourself short and feel good about it. That’s not charity — it’s just being condescending. Some people might like to do that — not me. Better to be fair and straight up about the whole thing. Put the balls in the pockets, clear the table, and you both walk away knowing something about each other that you didn’t know before, win or lose.

  I got good at the cold shoulder. It started a couple of years before she left, and it was completely deliberate. I just started shutting down, making myself look as if I just didn’t care. Calculated, meant to hurt — and it was absolutely the best defence in a fight with Mary, because there was no one like her for sinking her teeth into the big, noisy, “fuck you” kind of fighting. She was an expert at full tilt — and smart as a tack, able to remember every single word said by everyone, when it was said, and what it sounded like, the tone ascending, the tone descending. Pitch perfect every time.

  I’m not sure I could say that she liked fighting.

  What I can certainly say is that she liked winning, and she could always play better than I could. Harder than me.

  Until I learned to cheat.

  I’m not proud of it. But I don’t think anyone in my shoes would really blame me.

  I just got tired.

  More than that: tired of the fact that we always ended up fighting about the same old unsolvable things. There’s the little stuff, the markers, like leaving a glass in the living room when I went to bed, or leaving it next to the sink, the last of the ice cubes melting away so that, when you pick it up the morning, thinking that it’s empty, water ends up going everywhere. Water, perfumed with just enough scotch to really be a pain.

  The truth is that fighting about those things is really about the much bigger issues, the ones you are afraid to even get near. You worry the little ones half to death instead, batting them back and forth in a way that would make absolutely no sense to anyone outside your marriage, when you’re really talking in a special kind of hurtful code.

  Talk about who left the bath mat out on the clothesline in the rain overnight, because you can’t say something as blunt as “I feel abandoned. By you.”

  You argue about who’s fault it is that the bathroom garbage didn’t go out to the curb with everything else, but you’re really talking about something else entirely, about the fact that some things get your wife’s full, complete attention — and the things that matter to you don’t seem to matter to her at all.

  They matter so little that she can’t even keep them straight in her head, even though she knows the precise date of every single one of her volunteer hospital shifts until well into next November.

  Watch people on strike on the news, and the strikers and managers are always telling each other to be reasonable. The bosses are saying the union guys are unrealistic, the union says management’s a bunch of heartless, greedy bastards, and it often jumps up to pushing and shoving and blocked entrances and picket line violence.

  Ever notice how the violence is almost always caught on television, how it always seems to happen exactly when the cameras are on?

  Then there’s the deal, and everyone’s talking about being friends together, and “we’re so glad we were able to work this out,” and blah, blah, blah.

  Ever see anyone go back to work and have the union say, “We just signed this contract because our members are broke and tired and it’s too damned cold
to stay on the picket line against these stubborn assholes”?

  No. I didn’t think so.

  I think that the real unrest comes earlier. When the workers decide to stop doing anything extra and still get paid — when they’re working to rule, taking the paycheque but not really living up to their side of the bargain. That’s not theatre. That’s the real deal. And nobody sees it outside the company: the boss is wondering why no one’s filling the shelves, the customers are screaming blue murder, and the employees are just circling the place like zombies, their eyes dead, doing precisely what they’re told to do and nothing else. Used tissue scattered loose in the aisles, and no one picking it up.

  I started to work to rule with Mary.

  I decided not to fight.

  In the beginning, she was just lost with that — she was a small plane with no clear route to the airport, just circling and circling, looking down through gaps in the clouds for anything with the familiar look of a runway.

  The trick is not to let anything get away from you — this was especially important later, when she started looking at me with her eyes narrowed, trying to figure out just how much of what I was doing was deliberate.

  Keep your eyes open wide, surprised, maybe a trace of being offended that the suggestion is even being made, even if you feel almost like laughing inside.

  I saw a nature special that explains it really well — sharks have this extra eyelid, see, this thing they call the nictitating membrane. It flicks down when the shark is biting its prey, a clear membrane that protects the eyes. An invisible lid. That’s exactly what I’d do: when things seemed like they were about to start, I’d just blink and carefully cover up whatever I was really thinking. So that cover-up could protect me the same way the eyelid protected the shark. So it could short-circuit things before there was ever a chance of injury.

  Mary was the emotional one, the one who sensed things long before I figured out that they were real. She could always make the right guess, based simply on the way she felt. She was more intuitive than intelligent; I remember thinking that plenty of times, although it probably wasn’t fair.