by L. R. Wright
She was glad of the small refrigerator in her bed-sitting room, and of the television, the telephone, the slim bookcases, the two armchairs, and the small coffee table. Framed photographs were displayed on top of one of the bookcases: one of her son Graham, his wife Millie, and their children; one of her dead husband; and the wedding picture of Cassandra and Karl.
Helen took most of her meals in the dining room with the other residents, having marshaled a small group of women to share her table. Sometimes, though, she ate in her room: today, Cassandra had brought a box of pastries from the bakery and coffee-to-go from Earl’s.
Helen brushed crumbs from her lap and observed fretfully through the bay window that it was still raining. “Sit down,” she said impatiently. “Stop prowling.”
But Cassandra ignored this, moving to the photograph of her father, whom she remembered only vaguely. He had been thirty-six when he died, which seemed to Cassandra at this moment inexpressibly sad. She touched his black and white likeness, gently, watching his eyes to see if his lashes might flutter. “He’s been gone for a long time,” she said—a murmur; she hadn’t really been addressing her mother.
“Don’t euphemize, Cassandra, he isn’t ‘gone,’ he’s dead.”
“Forty-five years,” mused Cassandra.
There was a slight pause. “I suppose you’re right,” said Helen. “Goodness. That is a long time.” She shook herself gently, like a bird lifting and shifting its resting wings.
Cassandra bent to sniff the daffodils that filled a large green glass vase sitting between her mother’s handbag and the photo of her brother and his family. “So, Mom—are you going to tell me why Uncle Barry left me this money or not?”
Helen slapped the arms of her chair, exasperated. “Just spend the damn money, Cassandra, and stop fussing about it. Make up your mind what you’re going to do with it—then do it.”
“I’m trying, Mom. It’s difficult. It’s hard to imagine myself doing anything else but what I’m doing.” She sat on the edge of Helen’s bed. “I mean, is it really credible, Mother? Me running a bookstore? Or operating a cafe?”
“Those aren’t your only options. If they don’t appeal to you, fine—do something else. For god’s sake, spend the damn stuff. Blow it on a trip around the world. Don’t—don’t just keep tripping over it.” She looked at her watch. “I’m going for a walk.” She pushed herself up and stood still for a moment, leaning heavily on the back of the armchair.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
“I’m seventy-nine years old. How okay can I be?”
Her tone was bleak, and Cassandra looked at her sharply. Helen gazed back...and Cassandra held her breath. Within her chest grew a conviction that something momentous and terrible was about to happen—some kind of dreadful accident, perhaps—and that there was nothing she would be able to do about it. She wondered if her mother was about to die, right there in front of her, and suddenly—quickly—she reached for her...just as Helen gave her head a little shake and moved away from the chair.
“Just around the block a couple of times,” she said, picking up her handbag.
Cassandra watched her make her way to the door, back straight, head erect, silver hair a sweet stunning contrast to her deep gold sweater, which as she passed the daffodils in their green glass container reflected their sunniness.
Her mother paused in the open doorway. “Well, come along then.”
“It’s raining, Mom.”
“I know it’s raining,” said Helen. She stepped out into the hall, looked left and right, then returned to her room to take an umbrella from a hook hanging on the wall near the door. “We’ll need this, I guess.” She threw Cassandra a glance over her shoulder and then turned to face her, umbrella in one hand, handbag in the other. Light from the hall bounced on the lenses of her eyeglasses. “You’re far too old, Cassandra, to be cultivating such an active imagination.”
Cassandra began to protest.
But her mother interrupted. “Who else was he going to leave it to? He was unmarried. He had no children of his own. Who else but to his brother’s child?”
“Graham,” said Cassandra. “Why didn’t he leave some of it to Graham, then?”
Helen’s gaze brushed the daffodils, and the side of Cassandra’s face, and settled on the view through the window. “He always preferred you to Graham,” she said.
“But why, Mom? That’s what I mean. He hardly knew either of us. Why would he prefer me?”
Helen looked directly at Cassandra now, and sighed. “I guess we’ll never know. Close the door behind you, please,” she said, and moved along the hall, out of sight.
***
Denise backed Ivan’s Cavalier along the lane and even though it was daylight this time, it was hard to see properly—brush obscured the rear window, making it almost impossible to tell whether she was on the existing track or forging a new one. Sometimes she felt the tires sink into the soft, sodden, muddy shoulder and expected them to get stuck, but they never did. She didn’t really care if she got stuck or not, didn’t care if she couldn’t get the car back to the house. She was only trying to get it there because it seemed the reasonable thing to do.
It was putting a dreadful strain on her neck and shoulder, though, as she craned her body backward. She needed both hands on the wheel because of the roughness of the terrain, and this increased the physical stress on her body. If she got stuck, she would just leave the damn car.
But she didn’t get stuck.
The car lurched spasmodically backward along the track, sometimes uphill, sometimes downhill, slurping mud, stumbling on rocks, until finally it shot out onto a proper road and Denise got it turned around. She drove it home and parked it in front of the house.
She sat in the car for several minutes before getting out—not thinking exactly. Absorbing, maybe. Or trying to.
At the front door, a chill that was unfamiliar and frightening enveloped her.
She opened the door slowly, cautiously, and peeked around it before entering the house.
“Ivan?” she called.
He could be here, she thought. He might be here.
But the silence was profound, and Denise knew the house was empty.
It was emptier, in fact, than when she had left it. The golf bag was the first thing she noticed. Not the bag itself, but its absence. She looked swiftly around the living room. His camera was gone from the top of the bookcase. In the bathroom, there was no shaving kit. His closet and drawers still held a few of his clothes, but most had been removed. She opened his bedside table drawer and laughed, then removed the drawer and emptied it over the wastepaper basket: paperback, notebook and pen, mints, condoms. Then she jammed the drawer back into the table.
Denise sat down on the edge of the bed. Now what? she thought.
Now what?
September 1985 Abbotsford, B.C.
MRS. O’HARA SAT at her kitchen table, waiting, holding one of her grandmother’s handkerchiefs, a small linen square surrounded by a wide lace border. It was pretty but impractical. Mrs. O’Hara had a dozen of them, and kept them in a zippered fabric bag that had also belonged to her grandmother.
Through the open window sunlight entered the kitchen and stroked her arm warmly. She listened, while she waited for the sound of an approaching car, to the chittering of birds, and she noticed that autumn was materializing, merging with the last days of summer: she saw this in the goldenness of early turning leaves, in the bright reds and yellows of the dahlias, in the row of sunflowers out by the fence, their shaggy heads dipping in a breeze from the west.
It had been full summer, still, two weeks ago, when Mrs. O’Hara had gone to visit Raylene, who lived in a small cramped house off the Mission Highway. She had gone there in the late afternoon, and Raylene had been cooking, making some kind of a stew for herself and Tom, who, Mrs. O’Hara knew, could soon be expected home from work. Mrs. O’Hara had been wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and an old flannel shirt that Tom had left behind. She did
n’t have a plan, but there was a concept in her head, and she was prepared to improvise.
Raylene looked horrified when she opened the door and saw Mrs. O’Hara standing there.
“Hello, Raylene,” Mrs. O’Hara had said politely. “I guess we have some arrangements to discuss.”
Raylene’s relief was obvious. Mrs. O’Hara was going to do the civilized, gracious thing. She was going to give up her husband without a struggle. Well, Raylene had been right, in a way. By this time Mrs. O’Hara wouldn’t have taken Tom back on a platter.
“Okay, sure,” said Raylene, her pale face aglow. “Come in, come in.”
The house was filthy, but Raylene herself glinted and sparkled, frail and white though she was, dancing around her kitchen with a big spoon in her hand as if she were in some kind of a commercial.
At least that was how Mrs. O’Hara remembered things now, as she waited.
She had been to Raylene’s house several times—Tom had frequently persuaded her to make up a foursome with Raylene and her husband Dean, who had now taken off for parts unknown—but never before had she seen it so dirty. She hadn’t realized what a salutary influence Dean had had on Raylene’s housekeeping.
Mrs. O’Hara had sat quietly on Raylene’s rickety kitchen chair with her hands folded in her lap. Raylene, meanwhile, stirred the stew and set the table, grateful, now, that Mrs. O’Hara had shown up on her doorstep.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said fervently. “I’m really glad you’re gonna let bygones be bygones. Because we really do want to have kids, Tom and me.” She frowned at the table, set for two. “Are you sure you won’t have supper with us? Because there’s plenty.” And then she giggled and pressed her pallid fingertips over her mouth, realizing the ludicrousness of the suggestion.
“Tom’ll be home pretty soon, won’t he?” said Mrs. O’Hara, and Raylene nodded, blushing. “I’ve got an idea,” said Mrs. O’Hara. “If I know Tom, he’ll be real happy that I’ve come to make peace.”
“Oh yes,” said Raylene eagerly, hands clasped over the wooden handle of the big spoon she was still holding. “He will be, he surely will.”
“Let’s surprise him,” said Mrs. O’Hara, standing up. “Where can I hide? What about the basement?”
And so Raylene had rushed to open the basement door, with Mrs. O’Hara right on her heels.
***
Mrs. O’Hara, sitting now at her kitchen window, couldn’t see around the corner into her front yard, but when the car arrived she heard its tires crunch slowly up the gravel driveway, the sound becoming louder before the vehicle came to a stop.
The car’s engine was turned off and Mrs. O’Hara heard the door open—only one door. She had thought there might be two of them. It was probably a good sign that there was only one—but then, what did she know about such things? She was about to tiptoe through a minefield here.
Suddenly an exhilaration that Mrs. O’Hara realized could be dangerous sprang through her nervousness. She tamped it down as she rose from the wooden chair and walked slowly to the door, the lace-edged handkerchief trailing through the fingers of her left hand.
She opened the door and watched the policeman approach, glance up at her, and start climbing the stairs. Neither of them spoke until he had reached the top. He was a tall, strong young man, slightly taller than Mrs. O’Hara. He nodded to her, touched his hat, and removed it.
“Morning, Ma’am.”
Mrs. O’Hara invited him inside and offered him coffee.
She and the policeman sat down in what she felt to be companionable silence—although a small, stern voice in her head warned against jumping to conclusions. And for a few minutes the officer made small talk. Mrs. O’Hara found this very interesting. She had assumed that policemen didn’t bother with idle conversation.
Eventually, he pushed his coffee cup slightly away from him and produced a long, narrow notebook from an inside pocket of his jacket and a ballpoint pen from another pocket. His hat sat on the table near his left elbow, rather like a small, cherished, well-trained pet. The police officer straightened, flexing his arms, and something creaked, as if he were wearing leather.
“This is just routine, Ma’am,” he said, in a tone of voice that was almost soothing.
Mrs. O’Hara imagined him on the road in his patrol car, wearing sunglasses in which other people could see their reflections, hiding behind his impenetrable lenses so that nobody would see his youth. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, deliberately relaxing her body, regarding him solemnly, attentively.
“Now,” he said. “You and your husband separated, when?”
“About three months ago,” she told him.
He wrote something in his notebook. “And that was because of his—relationship—with the deceased?”
Mrs. O’Hara nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
The officer wrote more words in his notebook. He examined her, a stare that brought coldness to the surface of Mrs. O’Hara’s skin. She looked back, calmly. He said, “What kind of a relationship did they have, the two of them?”
Mrs. O’Hara permitted her eyebrows to rise. “I assume it was a sexual one.”
The police officer shifted his feet under the table. “No, I mean—did they get along, do you know? Apart from the—apart from that? What I want to know is, did they ever fight?”
She shook her head wearily. “I don’t have any way of knowing, for sure. But my guess would be yes, they did fight.”
“And why would you guess that?”
“Because he used to fight with me.” Mrs. O’Hara rested her elbow in the palm of the opposite hand and winced, as if reflexively.
“I understand you had some kind of an accident recently?” The policeman flipped backward through his notebook. “In May?”
She looked at him steadily, but didn’t reply.
“Mrs. O’Hara? Is that right?”
“I—sustained some injuries. Yes.”
“Falling down the stairs, is what they told us at the hospital. Right?”
She hesitated, glancing out through the window at the sunflowers. “Down the stairs. Yes.”
“You were lucky,” the police officer told her grimly. “That’s what happened to Raylene. Right down the basement stairs, smashed her head on the concrete floor.”
“I know,” said Mrs. O’Hara softly. She cultivated sorrow, enough to fill her eyes with moisture but not to overflow.
“He said he found her there,” said the policeman. “Tom. But in the laundry room, in a pile of dirty clothes, was one of his shirts. With her blood all over it.”
“Yes, well—” Mrs. O’Hara manufactured a shiver, tilted her head into the sunshine and touched her grandmother’s handkerchief to her glinting tears. “He—he does have a—a temper.”
“Your fall. It wasn’t an accident, was it,” said the policeman sympathetically. He leaned slightly toward her. “Maybe you didn’t even fall at all.”
Mrs. O’Hara turned her head away and gave it an almost imperceptible shake.
“The charge is second degree murder,” he said. “It could get reduced to manslaughter. That depends on how good his lawyer is. Whatever it ends up being, though, we’ll want you to testify.”
Mrs. O’Hara took a shuddery breath. “Oh dear. About—about my fall, you mean?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. O’Hara sighed. “Of course,” she said reluctantly. “Of course I’ll testify. It’s my duty, isn’t it?”
And she had testified.
And Tom—bewildered, desperate, but utterly helpless—had gone to jail.
Chapter 17 Monday, April 1
SUNLIGHT WAS SQUEAKING into her bedroom between the slats in the new blinds when Eddie woke. She was lying on her back. She must have been dreaming about Alan, because her mind was full of him. She swept him out of there, though, and got up and dressed.
She had decided when she bought the house to have more meals at home, but she hadn’t started doing this yet
and couldn’t do it today, either—not breakfast, anyhow. She was afraid that Alan might call her again and wanted to be on her way quickly, before this could happen. But Eddie, as she brushed her hair and braided it, acknowledged that eventually she’d have to talk to him. She hadn’t decided what to do about this situation, but she had a couple of ideas. Meanwhile, she thought, leaving the house, she’d grab another breakfast at Earl’s.
She found a parking spot halfway down the block from the cafe, and as she locked up her car she noticed Andrew Maine across the street, opening up the menswear store.
Eddie knew that Janet Maine’s body hadn’t yet been released for burial. Should the grieving husband really be back at work so soon, even before the funeral? Yet what was he supposed to do, she asked herself, her hands clasped, leaning on the roof of her Mazda—sit around the house feeling sorry for himself? Andrew disappeared inside the store, closing the door behind him, and Eddie turned, tugged at her jacket to straighten it, and decided somebody had better have another talk with Andrew.
The cafe was crowded with people and was noisy, fragrant with breakfast. As Eddie entered, setting the bell ajangling, two people vacated a table by the window and she headed in that direction, picking up a few curious stares as she went. But Eddie was used to that. Her face might occasionally redden but at least her body never seized up on her: she moved easily across the room, aware of her height but comfortable with it, and took possession of the empty table, slipping into one of the chairs just as Naomi arrived to clear away the dishes.