Going Out With a Bang

by Joan Boswell

  “Hurry up!” he yelled. “Shovel that stuff faster, or it’s going to harden in the wheelbarrow.”

  Biting her lips against the pain, Evelyn guided the cement down the dark hole. “More, more,” Eliot called. “Move it!”

  She thought of the work to come. The rest of the support pillars. And then the gigantic deck. Endless piles of cedar waited under tarps to be cut, stained, and hammered. Eliot had insisted that they could do the work themselves, with a few neighbours to hoist the main beams. The labour would continue to the end of her summer vacation and Eliot’s happy departure for Europe. Her joints flamed up; her eyes brimmed with hot tears. As Eliot looked down the tube and sneezed, she smashed the heavy shovel quite decisively on his bald spot. He had always been so artistic in arranging his thinning hair.

  The rest wasn’t that difficult. Evelyn remembered how Eliot had told her to dress a doe he had shot on Manitoulin Island. From the rows of tools in the boathouse, she selected a coping saw for the finer work, then deposited some of Eliot into each of the seven sona tubes. Good thing they were twelve-inch, she thought, but her husband never stinted. “Build for strength,” he always said. Cleaning was a breeze with the hose handy.

  Evelyn returned to her cement, whistling “The Ghosts’ High Noon” from Ruddigore as she filled the tubes. Eliot never let her play her Gilbert and Sullivan on his elaborate compact disc system. “Lollipop music,” he labelled it, preferring Bach cantatas. Seven batches, seven pillars of wisdom. T. E. Lawrence seemed a good choice for bedside reading tonight. She finished as the sun dipped through the maple trees behind the house, shadowing it against the still lake. With a satisfied smile, she smoothed each grey concrete top and inserted a large screw and nut, carefully greased, as Eliot had decreed.

  Then she went inside, showered with kiwi body gel, and cooked a batch of chicken enchiladas with Five Alarm salsa. Eliot disdained Mexican food. “How anyone can cobble together a cuisine out of the ingredients of poverty, I’ll never know,” he once said with a sneer. “Tortillas and refried beans, my god!” She went to bed among cool and soothing sheets, sleeping for ten hours without the slightest twinge of pain.

  The next day she collected Monty and visited an auto wrecking business where Eliot had bought a hubcap for his Audi. The dog had been in the car, and the owner had been very impressed with the muscular ridgeback. The large property was the perfect place for him to exercise his nasty talents with abandon. “My husband is going to Europe on an extended trip, and I’ll be travelling myself. We were very sad about Monty, but then I thought of you,” Evelyn explained, smiling as she handed over his toys and a fifty-pound bag of premium chow. The dog was already roaming its new territory, lifting a leg at each post.

  As for the sabbatical, it would be easy to arrange a message from Rouen saying that Eliot would be staying on. With his well-known contempt for the shortcomings of a backwoods university and general unpopularity, no one would question his decision. And when she returned, the sale of the house, in her name thanks to a tax shuffle, would finance her move to British Columbia. Becky was now head of the English Department and had mentioned an opening due to retirement.

  Not long after, when the workmen had finished the deck, her neighbour strolled by to admire the job. Taking off his cap, he looked at the six hundred square feet of burnished gold. “Wow!” he said. “B.C. cedar. Must have cost an arm and a leg.”

  Evelyn blinked and smiled proudly as she looked across the glistening lake to admire the silken fog rising off the North River. So benign, so beautiful. And six months of winter on the doorstep.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It certainly did.”

  Lou Allin is the author of Northern Winters Are Murder, Blackflies Are Murder, Bush Poodles Are Murder, Murder, Eh? and Memories Are Murder. The Belle Palmer series is set in the Nickel Capital of the World. Retired from teaching Criminal Justice students, Lou lives in Sooke, B.C., on Vancouver Island, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Underway is a series starring RCMP corporal Holly Martin. The first title in the series is And On the Surface Die (2008). Visit her website www.louallin.com or contact her at louallin@shaw.ca.

  P(oisoned) M(y) S(pouse)

  Joy Hewitt Mann

  I know I threaten suicide

  When I get PMS

  And cry much too easily

  And I know I look a mess

  And I know that taking my own life

  Is not something that you dread,

  So I’ll stop being emotional

  And take your life instead.

  The Good Lie

  Sandy Conrad

  There’s nothing quite so awkward as a conversation with your lover at her husband’s funeral. As her parish priest, I was in constant attendance, hovering protectively, dispensing platitudes and shabby comfort to the mourners, seamlessly guiding the proceedings from formal, ritualized grief to less formal mingling and tea drinking. I tried to catch her eye from time to time, gauging her weariness, but the gleam of excitement she beamed back at me was disconcerting, and I flinched every time. Lydia was a better actor than that. We’d had plenty of practice, and today was not the day for honesty.

  I’d loved Lydia for eight years. She was my favourite secret, and I had no desire to make her a permanent part of my daily life. Every meeting with her was fraught with excitement and passion and a sense of stealing moments from ordinary days. We wasted no time discussing dull life details. I read her love poems, and she told me her dreams. We analyzed symphonies and prepared exquisite dinners together. We’d never eaten a meal without candles and soft jazz; never watched an entire film without pausing to make love. Few people got even a year of nerve-end passion, and we’d had eight.

  I watched her hugging her grown up children, her friends from work, her neighbours. None of them knew the Lydia I knew. They saw her beauty; they saw a former high school bombshell who married well, and lived happily ever after. They asked awkwardly when she planned to go back to work and she, marvellously, looked sincere when she said, “Soon—it will take my mind off Harold.” Her daughter Kelly had an arm around her shoulders. Her son Evan stood nearby. Lydia was a woman sated with creature comforts and love, but I knew that only I made her truly happy, and that without me, her easy life would be unbearable. That’s what she told me. I believed her.

  “She’s holding up well.”

  I recognized the voice before I looked at the face—Madeleine Parker, president of the WI. I liked most of the women in my church, but Madeleine was without assets in the personality department. She was nosy; she was bossy, and she behaved like a schoolyard bully with the women who called themselves her friends. I wouldn’t play with her, but I did fear her. She had power, and she sensed my disdain for her games. I had no intention of being nudged out of this parish. I was good at what I did, and even if my heart, or my faith, wasn’t as naïvely pure as it once had been, I could still write a mean sermon and still incite some measure of intellectual stimulation in my parishioners. Madeleine made life interesting, especially when I had such important secrets to keep.

  “She’s a strong woman,” I replied.

  “Must have been a shock, him dying like that. Apparently he’d just had a check-up too.”

  “Unexpected death is always shocking, Madeleine. She’ll need time to heal.” I said this for Lydia’s benefit. Madeleine’s idea of comforting the grief-stricken was to push them onto every committee and keep them so busy doing good works that they had no time to remember their losses.

  “I don’t know why she keeps telling people she’s going back to work. They’re well off, and his business was booming. Surely she’s not going to try running the dealership. I’m not sexist, but that would hardly be a job for a woman like Lydia.”

  I knew that Madeleine was trying to goad me. Even someone as thick as her knew that Lydia and I were friends, and that if she could get me irritated enough, I might blurt out some tidbit of new information that direct sympathy would never have drawn. “I guess we’ll
just have to see, won’t we,” I said, enjoying the pursed lips of my nemesis as she sensed my snub. “Won’t you excuse me? The women have done a lovely job, by the way. Doesn’t look like there will be much food left over.”

  Lydia was watching me disengage myself from Madeleine. I smiled to let her know that I’d won another round, and she winked. In a split second of unpriestly thought, I wanted to shout across the room—what the hell are you doing, Lydia? Behave yourself, my dearest. Grief was making her a little crazy, but it was her husband’s funeral. Who was I to judge? Maybe she was more upset than I’d given her credit for. Harold had been a kind man, and I’d always appreciated his no-nonsense approach to church matters. The fact that he’d been embarrassingly fundamentalist in his Christianity didn’t lessen his effectiveness as a deacon.

  “You aren’t really okay, are you?” I asked her later in my tiny kitchen.

  “Please give me a real drink. I will die if I have another cup of tea.”

  I glanced out the window. No cars pulling up. It was late, indecently late to be dropping in on the priest, but also bordering on inappropriately late to have a grieving widow in my home. As much as I loved her, she needed to go. “One drink, okay, then it’s time for you to be on your way”

  “My kids are here. What’s wrong with me taking comfort from the rector?” She grabbed my hand and leaned toward me. “You are so sexy in a cassock.”

  I pulled away and went to the fridge for wine. I loved furtiveness too, but not with her son sitting on the other side of a thin wall and shutter doors. Plus, my curtains were open.

  Lydia looked annoyed and gulped back the wine as soon as I set it in front of her. I stayed standing at the counter. “So, what did our favourite bitch have to say about me at my husband’s funeral?”

  “Lydia, please. Language.” I hated it when she swore. She did it rarely, thank goodness, but it didn’t suit her. I refilled her glass. “She wondered what you would do with the business, I think. Can’t believe you would go back to work if you don’t need to.”

  “Well, I have to admit, Madeleine is smarter than most of that gullible flock you shepherd. Why would a woman who just inherited over a million dollars in a business she loathes, do anything but sell out and put her feet up?”

  “It seems in character for you though, to go back. People think you’re dedicated and hard-working. You should be flattered.”

  “I’m tired actually, honey. It’s not flattering to fool all of the people all of the time.”

  “I’m not fooled.” I stared hard into her eyes. “I know who you are.”

  She stared back. “You don’t know everything.” She finished her wine. “I should go. You don’t want to touch me, do you? Because that’s what I really want right now.”

  “I will touch you everywhere, my sweet dear Lydia, when it’s time. I will cover you with kisses.”

  “When it’s time? Days, months?”

  “I was thinking maybe this weekend. I could get away Friday night and meet you in Owen Sound. I’m doing a wedding on Saturday and staying at George’s cottage.”

  “That’s the best you can do? Make me wait four days for my lover?”

  “Four days is nothing, hon. In our world that’s a second and a half of time.”

  “That’s right—‘our world’—that special, special place. Well, I’ll take what I can get for now, but let’s put our world on the table for discussion shall we—this weekend we’ll do kisses, then talk.” She stood up and called into the other room. “Kelly! Evan! Time to take mom home.”

  I woke up that night with two phrases piercing my restless sleep—“you don’t know everything” and “I’ll take what I can get for now.” There’s a terrible clarity that can crash through the muddle of the mind’s business at two a.m. The brain tucks the detritus of the day into files till it discovers the niggling viruses lying there. Full consciousness was now required. Lydia was not content with our delicate arrangement. Did she expect me to date her publicly? Then marry her? Was this what I wanted?

  I tried to tell myself that I was panicking unnecessarily. Maybe she wanted to move to Toronto, or Vancouver. Maybe we would be long-distance lovers. That would be acceptable. I could live with that. But I’d been married once, for only two years, and that had been one and three quarter years too long. My life was not meant for intimate, relentless closeness. So much of my time was spent talking to parishioners, giving advice, sitting in hospital rooms pretending there’s a better world ahead, and, worst of all, meetings. I’d chosen a profession where large blocks of my life were public property, so the blocks that were mine were mine absolutely. Silence, or sleep, or hours of reading, these were my private pleasures. I loved routine; I loved tidiness. Yes, I loved Lydia, but I loved even more the way she fit into my existence without spoiling one minute of it. I hoped she wouldn’t make me choose.

  I sat up in bed and reached for the lamp switch. I always had my laptop nearby. I flipped it open and pressed start. “Choice” would be a good topic for this Sunday’s sermon. The text was on the Transfiguration of Christ, and my question was whether epiphanies made choices easier or more difficult. When you’ve seen the light, so to speak, do you really have a choice any more? I sat contentedly typing ideas till the pink dawn broke the semi-darkness of the street. I put Lydia away for the time being and got up to make my first coffee of the day with a light heart.

  Lydia unpacked groceries while I arranged the roses in the only vase I could find in the tiny cottage kitchen. “So, tomorrow... Are you staying for the reception? Are we doing supper here?”

  “There’s no meal after the wedding. Finger foods. A glass of champagne. I should be back by five thirty.”

  “No meal? People want gifts that cost hundreds of dollars, and they don’t even give the guests a decent dinner.”

  “Weddings do seem to be getting more extravagant for the bride and groom and less generous toward the guests. I’m not sure why. I hate to join the general consensus that the young are more self-centred than we were, but sometimes I wonder.” I was happy to encourage Lydia’s disdain for weddings.

  “Not my kids.”

  “No, your kids are great. Is Evan going to finish this year?”

  “I had to talk him into it. He thought he should take a year off and stay with me, maybe run the business. I had to tell him the business is going. So is the house. I’m making some serious changes in my life.”

  This was it. I’d been ambushed by the discussion I dreaded, thinking I had till tomorrow evening to divert her. Lydia was pouring sherry into the crystal glasses that she’d brought with her. She passed one to me. “Are we going to sit down for this?” she asked.

  “You promised kisses first.”

  “Why don’t we save that for the celebration?”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Truth. Freedom. No more lies.”

  I sipped the sherry. I was prepared for this. “First of all, you have to know that I love you.”

  “Good. That will make it all easier.”

  “Second, Lydia, is that I also love my life just the way it is.”

  “Not good.”

  “What we have is perfect.”

  “No, it isn’t. It was okay while it was necessary. It was what we had to do. I hated it.”

  “You didn’t hate it, my love.”

  “Stop calling me ‘love’ and don’t tell me how I feel.”

  Escalation of intensity. Already I remembered what it felt like to be married, to have someone think they had a right to be contradictory, unpleasant. I was torn between asking Lydia to go home till she could be civilized or tearing off her silky outfit and making love to her divine body. “You are so beautiful. Let’s go skinny dipping and watch the sun set. Let’s sip wine on this quaint porch. I need your flesh on mine.” I reached for her.

  Lydia stepped back, not so easily distracted by lust as I. “For eight years you’ve enjoyed this affair. You cuckolded a man you knew and liked. You mad
e me an adulteress. Now you have a chance to declare your love for me to the world. I will accept no less.”

  Libido shrivelled. My hand froze, then began to shake. I’d just been given an ultimatum. This was no choice at all, because I was being offered something I didn’t want in exchange for something I valued more highly than gold. Did Lydia think for one second that I would choose her? Did she even know me at all?

  “You’ll have to say something eventually. Your silence is terribly revealing.” Lydia refilled her sherry glass and rinsed a thick bunch of green grapes in a brass colander to carry to the porch. She sat on the oversized Muskoka chair, pointedly not looking at me. I stood behind the screen door, unwilling to be any closer.

  “I don’t like ultimatums.”

  “Right. And that’s why you’re going to dump me. Because once in all these years, I’ve asked something of you.”

  “So this is over if I don’t marry you?”

  “You don’t have to marry me. Just publicly acknowledge me as your partner.”

  “That cannot happen.”

  “Isn’t love supposed to make you brave?”

  “Don’t be naïve, and don’t pretend that what we had wasn’t love.”

  “Apparently it was a very fragile bond we had.”

  “But I do love you as much as I have ever loved anyone.” I walked onto the porch and leaned into the railing looking over Georgian Bay.

  “Maybe I should sweeten the pot a bit then? I am going to be quite rich. I’ll never have to work again, and I can buy us a gorgeous house in any city you want to live in. I’ll keep you in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed—tea, crumpets, sherry and trips to the theatre. How’s that for happily ever after?”