by Nick Craine
“Chel, watch your step. I do care about you, honestly, I hope you know that.”
Right, the very emotional boost he needed: a tepid, watereddown version of the L-word. Spoken like a real sister.
Walking and thinking. Again. He and Aristotle, he and Thoreau, he and Werner Herzog. He all alone without the consolations of philosophy, nature, or a film in the making – or any of those smart, ambulatory guys to keep him company. He wandered around, up one street and down another, a smudge in the night, a stain on its purity. He passed house after house with windows aglow, lit with inner warmth and joy, inviting him to peer in, to be an honourable Peeping Tom who thrilled to the secret good revealed, rather than the naughty. Forget it. He was a terminal outsider to whom no secrets of familial solidarity would ever be revealed. Not only a misfit, but a maimed one. He didn’t stumble or drag one foot behind or bleed in an unseemly manner on the sidewalk, but was one of the walking wounded nonetheless. His faith in his half-sister had taken some serious hits. Feck. If what Elaine said was true, if Bethany was up to some monkey business, then he could have bedded her without the least compunction. Une liaison dangereuse, indeed. Maybe he was making a film after all, a snuff, in which he was slated to be the unwitting star.
Chellis took a deep breath and practically choked. He felt as though he’d internalized that damn button, swallowed it like a bitter pill and now it was stuck in his craw, undissolved. And yet, with apologies to Sherlock, one measly button proved dick-all. What about those other dicey details? His phone could have been left off the hook, easily, accidentally. He hadn’t searched very hard for the wallet. Rennie herself could have stolen the newspaper clipping from the Archives years ago (the sort of thing she would do). The gentleman caller Elaine spotted may only have been a vermin exterminator, seeing as Bethany had talked about getting someone in after she woke up one night to find a mouse gnawing on her hair – whereupon she broke his record for the bathroom dash – a physical accessory of hers he wouldn’t have minded gnawing on himself. He walked on. Wee sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie. It didn’t do to identify with a mouse, he supposed, especially if her preference was for rats.
He neared his own house, unable to resist the homeward tug on the old heartstrings, those strings playing a few throbbing riffs as he headed down the front walk. No light was spilling out of his windows to give him a cheery welcome. The place was completely dark. His car was still in the driveway, which only meant it hadn’t been worth ripping off. If that had been her plan, to take off, to vanish into the mysterious unknown from whence she had come, then she had done it without any earthly mechanical assistance. Unless someone had swept by to aid her flight. Unless the resident mice had been turned into footmen.
Soundlessly he approached the porch, easy enough as the encroaching crabgrass provided a cushiony outdoor carpet. He’d known all along that the stuff would eventually serve some worthwhile purpose. Instead of creeping up the steps, he walked around to the side of the house to see if there was any action in the living room. A faint light did show through that window, a pale bluish glow. The TV? Bethany rarely watched the tube, said it was a drug for cakeheads, a sentiment with which he had agreed heartily, and on account of it, to his sorrow, had missed two new episodes of The Simpsons.
He peeked in. The light wasn’t coming from the TV, but from Elaine’s cube. It sat dead centre on the coffee table, softly glowing (it was a lamp?), and lending an eerie, science fictiony ambience to a room that Chellis realized he didn’t like very much anymore. He wanted his old organically evolved one back. He hated glass coffee table, and swag drapes, and leather club chairs . . . not that he had one, but he might have, the setting was perfect. Laney had been right about the couch, it was crap with nubs. But, he had to admit, he still liked the woman who was occupying it, liked her all the more because she looked as bereft as he felt.
Bethany was sitting accordion-style, hugging her knees, chin resting on her kneecaps, staring at the cube. Her expression was one of sheer misery, and he wondered if the cube was responsible, wondered if it radiated some sort of hypnotic, downer vibes. But no, he also had to admit, he was the reason she was miserable. This was the effect that being a shithead had on people, people who loved you, who cared what you said and did. And didn’t do.
He thought, what if, what if, what if... Laney was as right about the fabric of his sister as she had been about that of the couch? Bethany’s moral upholstery. He stepped back into the darkness, letting the night enfold him like a voluminous Zorro cape. He didn’t want to do anything hasty, he needed to think this thing through.
Immediately he stepped forward again and tapped on the window.
She looked up, startled.
He tapped again, and her head jerked aside, a flicker of fear in her eyes as she peered at him, momentarily not recognizing who it was.
He waved, grinned, shrugged. She smiled tentatively with a childlike uncertainty, and he was undone.
Once in, she hugged herself rather than him, and said, abashed, “Chellis, will you ever forgive me? That was all my fault, what was I thinking, I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, hey, no. My fault entirely. Forgot myself, total lout, too many martinis.”
“That’s for sure. The drinks, I mean.”
“And because you’re . . . so dishy.”
“I am not.”
“You are, believe me.”
“I’ll leave. I’ll leave in the morning. I’ve ruined everything.”
“Nothing’s ruined. Let’s hit the delete button on this one, forget it happened.”
“Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
Little did he know that this hoary bit of optimism, this gung-ho despoiler of many lives, was soon to pan out.
“I felt so bad when you left, so stupid.”
“Me too. Talk about overreacting.”
“I didn’t think you could run that fast.”
“Yep. I hold the world record for the fastest chicken run.”
She gazed at him, tears imminent he feared.
“Look, Bethany. Let’s not keep beating ourselves up over this. Nothing happened, except for me getting some exercise. Not a bad thing, all in all, and now I’m starving. How about that dinner? Have you eaten?”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t.”
“How does an omelette sound? Wait, they don’t make a whole lot of noise, do they?”
She laughed. Yes!
After dinner they resumed their former places in the living room, and resumed drinking, but only a comforting and chaste tipple of single malt before hitting the sack – separately. Did he regret this? Yes and no, but of the two ways for them to continue to be together, he preferred sib over sex. How often is someone gifted a sister? As for all those unfounded suspicions, that’s exactly what they were.
“You didn’t try to call when you were out, did you?” she said. “I unplugged the phone earlier today, then wouldn’t you know, forgot all about it. This furnace cleaning company kept calling and calling, they wouldn’t give up, had this loopy sales guy.”
“Annoying, geez. I suppose I should get an answering machine.”
“You’re the only person in the Western Hemisphere who doesn’t have one. But I like that.”
“I’m a rebel.”
“You are.” She raised her glass. “Here’s to you Braveheart.”
“Speaking of rodents, did you happen to have an exterminator drop by this aft?”
“Exterminator? No.” She frowned. “Jerry came round, though. That guy from the Caledonia, remember?”
“Ah, our supplier.” Make that, Aha! “Buy anything?”
“Too expensive. His prices have gone up.”
“We’ll survive.”
“We will.”
Chellis wasn’t able to check out the button situation by doing a count on the sly. Since fingering the button that had set off the alarm, if only in his own head, she had donned a sweatshirt. Not that he was worrie
d about it. They had reconciled and restored their relationship to its former integrity, aided some by the whisky. Dreamily, he swirled the golden liquid in his glass, a substance so pure and powerful it might have been siphoned from a halo.
The front door opened abruptly and banged against the wall of the entranceway.
They glanced quickly at one another, startled.
“What was – ?”
“The wind?”
“There is no – ”
Someone was moving rapidly down the hall, footsteps hitting the floorboards hard enough to crack the wood.
If Chellis had time to think, he would have thought it was Elaine, come to drag him off to her place by force. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t.
A woman stood in the entranceway to the living room. She was sixtyish and a fright, with scream red hair, a sideshow sartorial style, much of it in lime green and hot pink, and skin that had obviously spent too many hours frying on a tanning bed. To top it off, she was giving him the once over.
She said, “So there you are. Long time no see, mister. Mind if I smoke.” It wasn’t a question. “Move over, eh.” She clacked toward them in her silver high heels. (If she was supposed to be his fairy godmother, he was appalled.)
This order was addressed to Bethany, who was staring at the woman with an ill-disguised mix of incredulity and offense. She scooted over to a distant end of the couch and directed a questioning gaze at Chellis, who was equally dismayed.
“Excuse me but, um, this is a private home,” he began. “You can’t just waltz in here and – ”
The woman shot him a stern look, “Don’t give me any lip.” She unsnapped her orange, pumpkin-sized vinyl purse, dug out a package of smokes, and lit up. “Who’s the broad?” she nodded at Bethany, smoke spiralling out of her nostrils.
Chellis had never believed that people actually dropped their jaws in response to a gobsmacking experience, but he felt his fall and swing loosely in the vicinity of his Adam’s apple. He hauled it back in place to speak, to set this multi-coloured crone straight.
“Listen lady, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave. You’ve made some sort of mistake, I’ve never met you before in my life. Unless . . . are you a friend of my mother’s, of Rennie’s?” That had to be it, some old acquaintance of hers. “Okay, I get it, you must be from out of town. I hate to have to tell you this but she’s no longer – ”
“I am your mother.”
“What did you say?”
The woman reached out and pulled Elaine’s cube toward her. She flicked some ash on top of it. “You deaf or something? Like your old man, heard what he wanted to hear, didn’t he.”
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Fiona Gordon, guess you don’t know that, eh. You coulda done a little looking yourself for your poor old ma.”
“I do not believe this. Why do these things happen to me? You are not Fiona Gordon. You can’t be. It’s impossible.” He was staring at her intently with an almost violent dismissiveness, trying to will her away, trying desperately to erase her. He closed his eyes, counted slowly one . . . two . . . three, opened them. Didn’t work.
“No? Last time I looked I was. What, I gotta prove who I am to my own kid?” She stubbed out her cigarette on the cube, which made a weirdly human groaning noise, and started rooting around in her purse. “Got my birth certificate right here. Got yours as a matter a fact.” She produced a folded sheet of paper and waved it around. “Goodie gum drops, she turned tail.” She let out a smoker’s phlegmy cackle. “Not your type, son. Besides, I don’t want no hanky-panky in my house. That’s what got me into trouble, eh.”
“What? Jesus, look what you’ve done!”
Bethany was gone. Gone.
20
Siblicide
ELAINE MET HIM at the door with a knife in hand, a long-bladed, evil-looking implement, the sort used for lopping off arms and heads in less politically sanguine countries.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“You were expecting your in-laws? Or possibly Jack the Ripper?”
“I was about to commit an act of baking. Come in.”
“You’re not going to stab me for arriving so late?” He already felt sufficiently lacerated by the evening’s events.
“Not as long as you tell me what you’ve been doing.”
He followed her into the kitchen and watched as she savaged a loaf of sourdough bread and stuffed the mangled slices into the toaster.
“I don’t think this qualifies as baking, Laney.”
“It does in this house. So what’s up?”
“S’up? As we cooler cats say.” He told her about his unexpected visitor.
“My God, Chellis, this could only happen to you. What did you do when she pulled the birth certificate stunt?”
“I said, ‘G’night Mummy, I’m off to play in the traffic. Help yourself to the Drāno.”
“You didn’t really?”
“I didn’t really. I did what I always do.”
“You fled.”
“I did. I turned tail, as that witch so lasciviously put it.”
“You looked at the certificate first, though? You did that, right?”
“No. She’s not my mother. She could only produce reptiles. Besides, how hard it is to make a fake one? I’ve done the research on this identity theft business.”
“Funny, you doubt this woman, who could in fact be your birth mother. Think, what’s in it for her?”
“Who’d want me for a son?”
“Exactly. And yet without question you believed everything Bethany told you. Hmm, I wonder why.”
“Don’t nag. Take pity, eh. Can’t you pretend I’m a broken robot?”
No pretense needed, he was a broken robot; he could feel his inner assembly shuddering and snapping as he shifted on the kitchen stool. The button-sized nugget of doubt about Bethany that had lodged in his chest earlier had expanded and had filled him, not with more doubt, but with despair.
“Poor Chel,” she said, taking in his forlorn expression. “One order of pity coming right up.” She fixed them both plates of buttery toast with crispy burnt extremities and cups of hot chocolate, minimarshmallows melting on top. They sat in silence for awhile, attending to the snack, Chellis drawing maximum comfort from every last fat molecule and sugar crystal.
“I suppose this is a secret recipe.”
“Been in the family for years. I’ll never divulge it.”
“Tell me this then. Why did Bethany run away?”
“You need to hear the obvious, don’t you? I can understand that, believe it or not. After all the emotion you’ve invested in her, it’s got to be rough finding out she’s a fake. You think you can’t let go, Chel, but you’ve got to. This Fiona Gordon’s arrival blew her whole story. Her whole improbable story.”
“Maybe.” He picked up a stray toast crumb with his finger.
“Not maybe. Admit it.”
“Mmm.”
“She’s not your sister.”
“Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Open your eyes, Chelly.”
“Will that help? I’d rather close them for a long, long time. Do you have any knockout pills?”
“I’d gladly knock you out myself, if I thought it would help.”
“I’m worried about her.”
Elaine dished out one of her higher-end, exasperated glares. “I’d worry more about what she was doing in your house.”
He evaded the glare, suddenly finding everything in the room, minus Elaine, diverting. He surveyed the kitchen, Vaughan’s kingdom, which was much messier than usual, dishes piled in the sink, newspapers scattered on the floor, Elaine’s toolbox open on the counter. “Where’s the master of this one, by the way?”
“Out. Working on a case.”
“Vaughan working? At this hour? I’d spend a little more time worrying about that if I were you.”
“You’re not. Damn, I just remembered.”
“I am you?”
/> “No, dummy. Hunt called, he’s been trying to get in touch with you. Is your phone still out?”
“Uh, it shouldn’t be . . . that is, I don’t know.” Bethany hadn’t plugged it back in? “I told him to let me know if he needed anything.”
“He said it was urgent.”
“Urgent? Must have something to do with that book pile at his bedside. He needs some masculine reader relief, something involving swimsuits. Either that, or he’s cottoned onto Moe’s grand plan.”
“What might that be? I almost hate to ask.”
“She’s pre-pregnant. It’s a girl. A case of wishful insemination.”
“Someone should lock that woman up.”
“She’s too happy.”
“By far.”
“I’d hate to wake him, can’t be that urgent.” He was too weary to work up the required degree of concern. Guilt for not calling would have to suffice. “I’ll go to the hospital first thing in the morning.”
“You want to borrow a pair of Vaughan’s pyjamas? I’m afraid he doesn’t have any Wallace and Grommet ones.”
“I’m prepared to suffer in silk.”
He did, too. The night and its medley of torments came to visit. Initially, sleep snubbed him, or simply failed to recognize him in Vaughan’s XL, posh, sapphire PJs, which also made him sweat copiously, behaviour more appropriate to a peasant – or a sprinkler – than a valued overnight guest. The creepily soft material clung to him like a layer of sodden blue skin, and with his restless tossing and turning he got all tangled up (in blue!), hog-tied in silk. Only his head was free, which was a laugh if there ever was one.
Eventually, thinking he’d get up to make himself some warm milk, or use Elaine’s Samurai sword to commit seppuku, sleep yanked him abruptly into nightmare. He refused to cooperate. His dream was so unsubtle, symbolism flashing in neon, that even though he was unconscious he was offended. Without fail, he skipped similar, tediously relevant dream passages when he came to them in his wakeful reading-life, so did likewise with his own midnight composition, which involved carrying some dead woman over the threshold of his house. He willed himself awake out of sheer annoyance, but then was carried rapidly back to dreamland by following the image of a school bus that was packed with swarthy, bearded men all wearing wedding dresses and yukking it up amongst themselves. He woke again shortly after, mouth flung open and snoring whacking great holes in the walls of the guest room.