The Night Bell

by Inger Ash Wolfe

  He checked the message, holding the phone not quite against his ear. “Sir, Mr. Givens, the airline representative is here with your missing luggage. I send him up.” Givens dialled the front desk. It was a woman’s voice.

  “Hello, Mr. Givens. How may I help you?”

  “Uh, did your co-worker send someone up? Can I speak to him?”

  “Who?”

  “Uh … Tic.”

  “He’s off now, Mr. Givens.”

  “But he just called me.”

  “He’s off now, sir.”

  “Did you see the person he sent up?”

  “Who?”

  “The man from the airline!”

  “I know no man from the airline.”

  He hung up and stared at the phone. It rang again, and he picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Givens?” A man’s voice now, but it wasn’t Tic’s. He couldn’t place it. “Mr. Givens? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have your luggage. Where would you like us to put it?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I can just leave it on your bed and you can sort it later.”

  He looked across the room, beyond the tiny, useless kitchen, into the hallway. He hadn’t noticed the door to the bedroom was closed. His heart came back up his throat.

  “Well, how would you like it?”

  “You can leave it on the bed. That’s fine.”

  “All right, then. It’s on the bed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re most welcome, Brendan Givens.” The man hung up.

  There were no sounds from anywhere in the suite. Givens stood frozen to the spot, gripping the receiver. “Hello?” he called out. He walked as quietly as he could to the bedroom door and put his ear against it. The door handle was cold in his palm, and he held his breath to a count of three and then threw the door open.

  There was no one in his room, but his suitcase was on his bed. He’d put it in the closet earlier in the day, but it was on the bed. He stood frozen in the doorway, his jaw set, breathing shallowly through his mouth. The phone rang again. “Oh Jesus … Jesus,” he muttered. “Just get me out of this.” It rang three times and then stopped.

  Givens heard footsteps behind him. A man came into the hallway holding the phone receiver in one hand and a knife in the other. “I think it’s for you,” he said.

  Givens leapt into the room and slammed the door shut. There was no lock. He backed up until he felt the mattress against his calves. The door opened.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Where are the files?”

  “They’re back in the office. I hid them. To keep ’em safe.”

  “And then you ran away?”

  “I don’t take my orders from you!” Givens spat.

  “And I don’t take mine from you,” the man replied. “Do you know who gives me my orders?”

  “Look, I don’t know anything – please –”

  “Please,” said the man. “That’s nice. When people scream, it makes it harder.” He clasped Givens by the upper arm and pressed the tip of the knife into his ribs. Brendan Givens stood still.

  “I’ll do anything,” he said.

  The man clamped his hand over Givens’s mouth and leaned against the knife. “The first inch isn’t too hard,” he said. “The second inch is where the trouble starts.”

  Givens doubled over, holding the man’s wrist with both hands. “Stop … stop …”

  “Stop what?” He leaned down to listen to the answer and the knife-edge turned, eliciting a groan of helpless agony. They both watched the pool of urine spreading out of his pant leg, and the man slid one of his shoes away. He pulled the knife out and Givens sank to the floor.

  “No,” Givens begged. “Don’t.” Blood poured out of his shirt.

  “Have you protected your investment, Brendan?” the man asked, not without tenderness. He shoved the knife in again.

  Givens said, “Oh,” very quietly. His sinuses cleared and the light started changing. It smelled like coffee. He thought of his mother.

  ] 13 [

  1957

  By the end of November, it had already snowed twice. Northern New York State got six feet in one day and people lost track of their cars under it. Port Dundas was farther north than both Toronto and Buffalo, and far enough from the Great Lakes that the town rarely had any accumulation of snow.

  Hazel was getting impatient for Christmas. Her father had been playing seasonal records since the first of December, trying to match his sweet tenor to Bing Crosby’s. She tried for the second year in a row to explain how Christmas was “coming” to Alan, for whom abstract concepts were difficult. She showed him the calendar on the kitchen wall. “Each row is a week, and one page is a month, and the whole thing – the whole calendar – is one year. Got it? Mom can get you one and you can cross off the days as they go by.”

  “What if you cross off the days that haven’t come yet?”

  “Then your calendar will be a mess.”

  He shrank from the word. “A mess?”

  “What’re you getting upset for?”

  “I’m not messy!”

  “It’s all right, Alan. We were only talking about the days of the week.”

  Sometimes she’d see her father looking distantly in Alan’s direction. He’d be staring over the table, watching Alan eat. Or he’d sit in his club chair, but instead of watching the television, he’d be looking at Alan.

  Alan said, “The Philco Miss America Television receiver has wrap-around sound from three speakers.” This kind of stuff Alan knew. He had thin seams of genius. He could build a Meccano bull and make its tail move with a crank, and he knew the specifications of almost every television and radio receiver, as well as the makes of cars and the changes that had come in their subsequent generations. “It’s better than ours.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that colour television, Alan.”

  “The Sylvania Andover only has a twenty-inch screen, and the speakers are rotten,” he said. His voice had taken on a tinge of insistence or anger. “The Miss America has three speakers and pop-up tuning so you can see what channel you’re watching from across the room!”

  They’d had a scare with Alan a few weeks earlier. He’d claimed to have found a necklace in the backyard with a silver heart-shaped pendant. There was a rabbit engraved into its surface. Hazel listened to her mother and father interrogating him in the kitchen well past both their bedtimes. She crept out of her bedroom to the top of the stairs. She heard her mother’s voice.

  “This is serious, Alan. Daddy and I are not angry at you.”

  “For now.”

  “Evan,” her mother said sharply. Then, softer: “Alan – you’re not in trouble. But you do have to tell us where you found this pendant.”

  Their father raised his voice. “We know you’re lying. And you know you’re lying. So let’s be done with the charade.”

  Alan was crying: a reedy, wet sound. “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’s time to tell the truth!” her father boomed.

  “I found it in the backyard! Right by the fence! It was on the ground! It was in the grass! And it’s mine!”

  Hazel heard the crack of her father’s hand on Alan’s skin. It shocked her. He’d never struck either of them before. Alan sobbed. There were footsteps and voices and then, without warning, her father began to ascend the stairs. He saw her right away and stopped. “Hazel Micallef,” he said. “Have you anything to add to this sad chapter in our family life? Seeing as you feel free to eavesdrop?”

  “Why did you hit him?”

  “Don’t question my –”

  “He’s just a kid! He doesn’t understand!”

  His face heated up, cheeks mottling red. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you understand why your brother is in possession of a missing girl’s penda
nt?”

  That stunned her to silence.

  “Carol Lim’s necklace. It had a rabbit on it exactly like this. We’ve shown it to Gord Drury, he showed it to the Lims. So where did Alan get it? How is he mixed up in this?”

  “This? Is Carol dead?”

  Her father looked away, chewing on the corner of his mouth. “No one knows where the girl is. But her parents haven’t heard from her in more than a month. What would you be thinking?” She didn’t have to answer that. “Go back to your bed immediately, Hazel.”

  Her mother’s love for Alan had never and would never falter, but her father was unhappy around him, and Hazel worried he would send Alan away. It roused an instinct in her to protect her adopted brother, even though he was vexing and dirty and seemed always to be stuffing something into his mouth. Her mother had said it was a reaction to being in the boys’ home for so much of his life. He’d never had enough to eat. It hurt Hazel like a punch in the stomach to think of him starving, and she couldn’t begrudge him his ways. But it was getting to her father.

  She closed her bedroom door and stood with her ear against it. Their voices were lower now and muffled. She could hear Alan’s footsteps on the stairs and then he went past her bedroom, snuffling. She wanted to talk to him, but she didn’t want to get him into any more trouble. His door clicked shut and she heard her parents’ voices again, rising up from underneath her floor. “I will leave you to it then,” her father said.

  “He doesn’t understand.”

  “All the worse then! If he doesn’t understand –”

  “I’ll keep him with me. He can be at the office sometimes.”

  “Take him to see Gord Drury. Let Gord talk to him.”

  On the Tuesday night, her father did inventory and her mother stayed late at the town hall. It was Hazel’s job, on nights when her parents weren’t home, to watch her brother. At almost fifteen, Hazel already knew how to make ten different things, including devilled eggs, fried baloney, and a billot log cake made out of chocolate wafer cookies and whipped cream. To her friends, Hazel referred to Alan as Spaceboy, but it was not the truth about how she felt. She was mystified by the instinct that arose in her when he came to her for help or asked her a question that involved revealing some part of the world to him, such as how calendars worked, or how voices came out of the radio.

  For dinner, he wanted dippy eggs and toast soldiers. Since she’d come home from school, Alan had already eaten an apple and an orange, two chicken legs, a serving of leftover scalloped potatoes, and there was a tablespoon-shaped divot in the butter. Although he ate constantly, Alan had the body of an Olympic wrestler: small and lithe, a tight bundle of energy. Nothing elegant about him.

  He sat at the kitchen table fidgeting with his fork. She sat down across from him with her own plate, and silently they began to eat. Alan’s focus stayed resolutely on what was on his plate, and he neither spoke nor seemed to hear anything when he was eating. Sometimes she imagined him as a rescued dog: frightened, but hungry for food and comfort. She said his name and he looked up at her quickly and then back down at his meal.

  “Alan? Do you like it here?” He didn’t answer. “Do you love Mom and Dad? Can you look at me and answer me? Sweetheart?”

  The affectionate moniker made him smile in a mysterious way. “Can I have another egg?”

  “Yes. But are you going to answer any of my questions?”

  “After my egg.”

  She got up and put the flame on again under the pan. The lard began to liquefy right away. Hazel cracked another egg and watched the whites spit fat. “What was it like at the Fort Leonard home, Alan?”

  “They didn’t have eggs for dinner.”

  “I bet. Were you scared there?” She flipped the egg.

  “Don’t break my yolk!”

  Like a starving animal, he watched her slide the egg onto his spotless plate. He burst the yolk and watched it flow. “There was mean laughing and sad crying and scared shouting. And it was cold.”

  “It sounds awful.”

  “There was two dogs tied up outside the door and I could see them from the top of the stairs on the second floor. They trained them to bite kids.” He paused to chew a flap of egg white. “I don’t like dogs.”

  “So you must be happy here,” she exclaimed. “To have a place where you’re safe and people love you.”

  “People don’t love me,” Alan said. “They want to chain me up.”

  “Now, why would you say that?” She reached to put her hand on top of his, but he twitched it away before she could touch him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “I know how to escape.”

  She gave him a bowl of butterscotch ice cream afterward and they sat down in front of the television to watch The Phil Silvers Show. Alan got the broad humour of Bilko and his hapless cohorts. Hazel preferred I Love Lucy. Her own mother was nothing like Lucy. She had none of Lucy’s joy, Lucy’s tears, Lucy’s crazy passions. And her father wouldn’t have known what to say to a man like Desi Arnaz. But when they watched together, they laughed together. Alan was doubled over on the floor, laughing at the ludicrous exploits of the denizens of the army camp.

  “You know real life is nothing like this,” she whispered into his ear.

  “It should be,” he said.

  Their parents came home earlier than expected, and Gord Drury was with them. The three adults patted a light rain off the fronts of their coats. “Bilko!” said Drury. “I love this show.”

  “Me too,” said Alan. He’d met Drury before and the two liked each other.

  “Come on,” said her mother, gesturing at Hazel. “Let’s put the kettle on and let Gord and Alan finish watching the show.” Hazel followed her mother through to the kitchen, looking once over her shoulder to see if her father was staying with the commander and her brother, or if he was coming in for tea. He stayed put.

  “Boil the kettle, Hazel.” Her mother leaned against the stove and lit a cigarette. Hazel started the flame for the kettle. “How was he tonight?”

  “Hungry.”

  Her mother laughed. “He’s more expensive to feed than a team of horses.”

  “What’s happening in there?”

  “Don’t worry about them. Gord knows how to talk to people.”

  “Does he know how to talk to Alan?” Hazel asked. “I don’t think Alan understands what’s going on.”

  “He will.”

  Her mother’s voice sounded wrong. “Do you think he had something to do with Carol’s disappearance?” Hazel asked.

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “You don’t believe him,” she said quietly. “You’re his mother. How can you not believe him?”

  “It doesn’t matter if I do or not. He’s still my child and I’ll stand behind him just as I would stand behind you.”

  “What kind of thing is that to say?” Hazel cried. “If you don’t believe him, why don’t you just send him back? Maybe he’d be better off in Fort Leonard. At least there no one pretends to care about him!”

  She stormed out of the kitchen before the kettle began to sing. The doors to the den were closed and hushed voices spoke beyond it. She wanted to go in and tell them what she thought of their suspicions. If anything, Alan finding the silver pendant was a sign that Carol was alive. Maybe Carol herself had planted it! She hadn’t been particularly nice to Hazel that afternoon at the Pit – why put it past her to complicate life for her and her family?

  Maybe the adults knew better; maybe both of her parents loved her new brother, their new son. It was going to take time to civilize him, but he was no monster. He was a sweet kid, only twelve; he knew nothing about the world.

  She changed into her nightgown in the bathroom. She tried not to look at herself in the mirror whenever she was changing, but she stole a glance when she was down to her underwear. Two years ago, the body in the mirror hadn’t existed. She lifted one arm and gazed upon the three black hairs that straggled out of the scoop of her
armpit. There was more below now and she was growing the beginning of some curves. She remembered Andrew Pedersen dancing with her at the Christmas Dance at school. He had danced with the body in the mirror. There’d been only three or four layers of fabric between them, and she’d felt him against her. She knew he’d been aware of her as well. He’d go into grade thirteen next year and then who knew where? He’d told her he was thinking of law school.

  The voices continued to filter up the stairs even after Hazel had closed her bedroom door and climbed into bed. She couldn’t make out the words, but her mother was in there with them now; Hazel recognized the song of her voice. She closed her eyes and listened to the murmuring. It changed into something else, and then finally into a colour and a feeling, and long before her parents and Commander Drury were finished with Alan, she’d fallen into a featureless sleep.

  Micallef’s department store had been run by a Micallef for five generations and almost everyone in the county shopped there sooner or later. It was the Eaton’s dealer north of Mayfair for central Ontario, which made it a hub for travellers. A steady stream of people stopped at Micallef’s to pick up a shipment. The big red Eaton’s name – printed right onto the kraft paper the packages came wrapped in – was one of the commonplace sights in her life. “We’ll see about you being the first lady Micallef to run the place,” her father sometimes said. But once, last summer, he’d put his hand on hers and said, “That’s not going to be the life for you, is it, Hazel?”

  The occasion for this comment was an early morning fishing trip. They’d gone out for walleye and bass and pickerel in Gannon Lake. By the age of twelve, Hazel was coming out in her father’s banged-up rowboat a few times each summer to drop worms and bits of liver on hooks into the underwater reeds. She didn’t like fishing with live frogs, but they’d compromised on how he treated them: he could only fish with them if he didn’t hook them through the mouth. If her dad could scoop one up on the end of the emergency paddle, he’d hook it through the foot and throw it in. “If no one wants him, all he’ll have is a hole in his foot.”