Darren Effect

by Libby Creelman

  Heather made it as far as her car and got in. Her keys were in her hands. It was a busy day at the hospital, but even on a slow day, parking here was impossible. In her rear-view mirror she watched with detachment as cars went up and down the lot, hunting for a space. Many, seeing her sitting there, stopped and waited. Make up your mind, they seemed to suggest. She felt her heels digging in. Detachment gave way to an unwillingness to behave. She might sit there until nightfall, if she wanted. She might still be there when the lot began to empty and the heat of the day began to lift and a dark Volvo pulled in beside her. Isabella Martin would disembark, distraught but refreshed, in slacks and a white cardigan. Benny’s son Cooper would tumble out the other side.

  What would Heather do? Would she get out of her car? Would she make an appeal, apologize, beg?

  Heather imagined Benny’s wife walking through her as through a ghost — undetected, unseen — and on into the hospital to her husband. The Volvo would rock slightly, and in the back seat Inky would sit up. He would glance about with his ears perked until he found and recognized her, and their eyes would lock.

  “What is it?” Benny had asked, just before she left the hospital room.

  “Nothing,” she had said.

  Heather sat with her hands on the steering wheel of the silent car and considered rolling down a window. The heat was extraordinary and the only thing in the physical world making an impression on her. She started the car. Hearing the engine come to life nudged her like an unseen hand and she burst into tears.

  Chapter Two

  The Indian summer did not last. Heather’s impression of October was of darkness and cold. Eventually she learned from a teary client they were having a record-breaking streak of bad weather: thirty-two consecutive days of precipitation. Heather had nodded. Really? She had not known.

  Now it was November, coming up to a long weekend.

  She pulled her chair up close to her desk — she preferred this when clients entered her office these days — but it was a tight squeeze with her coat cradled in her arms. At a time like this she required something to hold on to.

  He had a right to be angry with her, if he wanted to be. That was the worst of it. She had been cold and unsympathetic. She couldn’t stop thinking this, even after seeing him in the hospital and knowing it was the furthest thing from his mind.

  She shivered. She seemed to be chilled all the time. And bonetired. She had turned the thermostat on bust the day before, just before going home, but now it was eight in the morning and the air in the building was parched and stifling.

  Was she really so bad? So cold, cruel and heartless? Most people did and said things they regretted once in a while. Heather was sure of it. Her mother, for instance. Her sister Mandy. Even Benny, goddamnit.

  She pushed herself away from her desk and went out into the hall where it was even warmer, past the empty reception cubicle and into the washroom where the poster of the bruised, dejectedlooking girl beneath the caption “Love Doesn’t Have to Hurt” caused her, as always, to look quickly elsewhere.

  She looked in the mirror.

  Her face was red and blotchy. Her nose was swollen and her eyes looked foreign and dark. It was time to pull herself together. You couldn’t change the past. She splashed cold water on her face, dried off, took a deep breath. She applied face cream, which helped. It gave her skin the springy feeling of regeneration and hope. And as she began to feel better, she began to resent the cause of her sadness. She was better off without him.

  But she was without him.

  She looked at herself in the mirror again and watched her eyes well up, her chin and then her mouth collapse.

  “Stop it!” she whispered to the mirror, ashamed of herself, then splashed on more cold water, dried her face, and applied another coat of face cream. She had ten minutes before her first appointment. She’d be fine. She had a solid capacity for recovery, her mother had always said so. In ten minutes, no one would know she’d been crying. She checked her teeth. Looked around for a comb, gave up and ran her fingers through her hair. She felt a surge of energy.

  She returned to her office, picked up the phone and called her mother, waking her.

  “Did you discover anything?” Heather asked.

  “You really want me poking around?”

  “Yes! I asked you to. I want to know anything. Where is he?

  He’s not at the hospital.”

  “He’s not?”

  Heather paused and took a moment to consume her exasperation. “No. I already told you that. Because I called. At least he’s not where he was. He may have been moved.”

  “I could ask around. You know this town is small. A person would be a fool to have an affair in this town, Heather.”

  “It’s too late for that advice.”

  “Don’t yell me at me, honey.”

  Heather was aware of her mother sitting up and reaching for her pack of cigarettes.

  “Mother! Please.”

  “Honey — ”

  It was lit. The first inhalation.

  “What?”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine. But I’m busy — ”

  “You’re busy? Right now? It’s not even nine o’clock.”

  “No. I’m just busy. I mean, I don’t have much time. I just feel so rushed.”

  “I wonder if you should see someone. You seem in such a panic. It’s awfully early in the morning to be in such a rush and panic. How many cups of coffee have you had?”

  “None. Do this. Just do this.”

  “On one condition.”

  “Absolutely no conditions.”

  “You stop — ”

  “No.”

  “ — driving by their house.”

  Heather paused. “How did you know that?”

  Exhalation. “It’s a small town.”

  Mandy was driving, which made everyone a little nervous. Bill sat in the front beside her, and Heather in the back, causing her to feel tolerated yet banished, like a child. When Mandy braked at the stop sign at the bottom of the street, Bill pitched forward in his seat like a rag doll, as though he had expected Mandy to sail through the intersection. Heather suspected he and Mandy had just had sex.

  Bill straightened, then glanced into the back seat, and Heather gave him a weak smile. She felt remotely embarrassed. She knew she looked wrecked and that Bill would have been told, at the very least, that it was the result of a disastrous love affair. Bringing her along on these outings had become a habit of theirs, but Heather knew it was Mandy’s crusade, not Bill’s.

  Mandy parked directly in front of the Legacy Café and Heather watched Bill glance up to see two women in conversation just outside the entrance. When he turned quickly back to study the dashboard, Heather took a better look at the women. One was staring into the car at Bill, nodding, chatting with her companion, even laughing, but she had clearly fixed her eye on Bill. Heather longed to escape the next few minutes.

  Mandy pulled her scarf in at her throat, then gathered up her purse and keys and gloves. Neither Heather nor Bill had moved.

  “Hold on a minute, Mandy,” Bill said. Heather thought it was a mistake to have said anything. Better to just walk on in.

  “How come?”

  “That woman.”

  “Oh, for the love of . . . ”

  Mandy leaned across Bill to look up at the café. Other than these two women, there was no one else out on this raw November morning. Remembrance Day. They were all sleeping in, Heather thought, respecting the holiday.

  “Which? The blond in the hat? Or the one in the blue jacket?”

  “Blue jacket.”

  “Let’s go. She’s too old to be a student.”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s too old to be a student,” Bill said crossly. “Theoretically, nobody’s ever too old to be a student.”

  But Mandy was out of the car. She shut her own door with some force, then opened Heather’s and said, “Come on, let’s go. It’s freez
ing.”

  Heather obeyed and Mandy flew up the steps and into the café, not awarding either woman standing there a single glance. Heather and Bill followed. Heather had never seen the woman before.

  They took a booth by the windows. Mandy opened Heather’s menu and then her own, as though there were some chance she would not order the vegetarian omelette and Earl Grey, and Heather, nothing at all, and said, “Now let’s see. What would you like, Heather? What do you feel like? Bill’s treat.” Then she leaned over the table and whispered harshly, “Who is she, Bill?”

  “Honestly, I don’t really know.”

  Heather was aware of Bill glancing at her. She liked Bill, but had never been entirely convinced he and her sister were right for each other. Bill was a good deal older than Mandy. They often bickered, Heather thought, because they didn’t really know each other. Normally she helped them through this. Changed the subject, made a joke. Got them back on track. But she couldn’t think of anything to say. She looked out the window and felt her eyes welling up.

  “Yet we all avoid her?” Mandy demanded.

  “Mandy, I don’t know who she is.”

  Heather sensed he was telling the truth. Outside it looked almost cold enough to snow.

  “I wish you would order something, Heather.”

  Heather glanced at her sister, whose face looked too tight and unhappy. Mandy wasn’t going to let this go.

  “Bill, if I discover — ”

  “She’s nobody. I promise you, love, I don’t even know her name.”

  “Well, it’s your last warning.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Before Mandy, Bill had had relationships with women that were casual, upbeat, short-lived. After Mandy, he had, he claimed, embraced monogamy, and Heather believed him. The woman in the blue jacket could be anyone from his past: as much as a weekend girlfriend, as little as a woman he had once exchanged glances with at a party — but someone, unfortunately, whose name and face he no longer remembered.

  Mandy turned to Heather and smiled, though her eyes were still glittering in a way that made Heather uneasy. “They were asking about you at the Writers’ Cooperative last month. Someone mentioned that epic poem you wrote about a horse named Joy. They miss you. You haven’t been to a workshop in years. Why don’t you come next week? It’ll be good for you.”

  “You mean I can work through my troubles by writing about them?”

  “Or you could come along and keep me company.”

  “Mandy, I attended a grand total of three writing workshops, the last one at Spruce Cove . . . ”

  The time she met Benny.

  “Bill really liked that poem, didn’t you, Bill?”

  Bill looked startled, as though he hadn’t realized he was still part of the conversation. Heather thought it wasn’t fair to put him on the spot like that. After all, he taught in the Anthropology Department, not Literature and Language. And her poem had been dreadful.

  “I think the horse was named Happy,” Bill said. “Not Joy.”

  Heather nodded. “It was meant for children. It was dreadful, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, I can barely remember it.”

  “Say no more,” Heather said, laughing for the first time that day. “It’s all over your face, Bill.” She realized they were staring at her, relieved by her sudden, though marginal, lightness. For a moment, she felt herself sharing in it.

  “I’d like to write a story about desire,” Mandy said a second time.

  “Could we have missed the turnoff?” Heather asked. “Desire?”

  They were en route to the Writers’ Cooperative meeting, and Heather was beginning to wonder if they were lost. It was night, and raining.

  “Yes, but not just any desire. Desire for a time that no longer exists,” Mandy said. “A lost opportunity.”

  Heather was watching the slick black road. She had to force herself to consider her sister’s idea.

  “You mean like an opportunity for a relationship? You just missed the turnoff, Mandy. Stop.”

  “I can’t believe you said that, because listen to this.” Mandy pulled over and stopped the car. Her look was inspired and familiar. The windshield wipers were on high. Zip, zip, zip. Heather had to stop looking at them. “This happened to me last week, and already I’ve been thinking, what a great story. Which way?”

  “The turnoff’s back there. Just go back — slowly — you can’t miss it. I’m listening.”

  “I was driving along Empire Avenue where they’re widening the road, right?”

  “Turn here, Mandy.”

  “And I got stuck behind this poky guy in a truck. You know how I’m always barrelling around town.” Mandy removed her hands from the wheel and Heather looked on as she pumped her arms up and down as though speedwalking. “There was something so familiar about him. I could see a bit of his face in his rear-view mirror and the way he was looking around, curious about the road construction. Who cares about road construction, Heather? I could feel his interest like it was my own, and suddenly I realized, I know this guy. Maybe I even said it out loud. I will in the story.”

  “This must be it. The first house past the Irving.”

  “Plus the shape of his head. I recognized that. He’s as mild as May, but he looks like a bulldog. Nothing like Bill.”

  “So who was he?”

  “Darren Foley. Biologist. Don’t you remember I used to live with him?”

  “No.”

  “He was into birds.”

  “Birds?”

  “Yeah. But Heather, it was uncanny. I’ve been feeling lonely, and I know you’re thinking I have Bill.”

  “No, no, I wasn’t thinking that. ”

  “When I saw Darren it was so weird. What I remembered of him seemed as intimate as though we had been intimate. He’d been interested in me, but I had just met Gary.”

  “I think you can park here. I don’t remember Gary.”

  “Darren and I were strictly domestically intimate. Shared the groceries, the bills, the bathroom. So I find myself tailgating this guy and it’s him. I can predict the movement of his head, even though I haven’t seen him in years. Even his thoughts.”

  “Sounds like you have the start to another great story,” Heather said, opening her car door.

  “It’s not enough,” Mandy said, not moving.

  Heather’s right leg was already out and getting rained on. She rested her head on the back of the seat and closed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I was thinking about calling him, asking him out for a drink. In the service of my craft.”

  “I see. This is your story about desire?”

  “Or maybe just follow him around town, on the q.t.”

  “What?” Heather slowly drew her leg back into the vehicle. “Like stalk him?”

  “It would be an adventure. I’m fed up with Bill. I think he’s got something for that woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “The one we saw last weekend, at the Legacy Café.”

  “I wouldn’t assume there was anything to that, Mandy.”

  The idea was bizarre, even alarming, and Heather knew she should seriously caution her sister against it. But then, most of the writers in the Cooperative wrote about themselves, and Mandy was only suggesting taking the process one step further. Heather couldn’t write about herself. Not surprisingly, she’d only written the one poem, for children, about a horse.

  Now that they were here, getting out of the car and attending the workshop was the last thing in the world Heather wanted to do. Do you feel hopeless, unreasonably sad, ever find yourself thinking there’s no reason to go on living? This was the litany she gave clients. Like a blood test, an X-ray. A lot depended on their answer. Of course, they had to be telling the truth. They had to be honest with themselves.

  The workshop had already started. There were a few shushes and severe looks. She and Mandy slumped down on the floor, their backs to the wall, hidden by the dining room table already se
t with refreshments. Mandy reached up and slipped two asparagus sandwiches out from under their plastic wrap. She handed one to Heather.

  If Heather wrote a story fuelled by the desire for a time that no longer existed, she would need to give her central character a name, and she would never be able to decide on one that fit, other than Benny, which, of course, had been his name.

  Someone was reading a poem about an island. Someone else likened it to Walt Whitman.

  Or she could begin: A woman and a man meet. She is a clinical social worker, single. He is an architect, married, with one son. Six years later, he becomes sick.

  She was in his home only once. It was in that time between winter and spring. He told her over the phone no more than the plain fact: he’d been diagnosed with cancer. She cancelled the rest of her appointments for the day and drove immediately to his house.

  He was there alone. His son was in school and his wife — a substitute teacher — had been called in that morning. It was afternoon, but there was still the smell of toast and coffee and something sweet — syrup? — in the kitchen, where they stood a while awkwardly. She could see that everyone had rushed away to their day: a bowl half-filled with milk and soggy cereal, dirty mugs and spoons, a plate with crumbs, the tub of margarine and jar of jam, all still on the kitchen table by the window overlooking the park. And beside the sink: a stack of gunkcovered plates and pots and pans from supper the night before. An opened bottle of white wine stood on the counter, someone’s plan to return it to the refrigerator unrealized.

  As Heather followed Benny upstairs, she felt a vague desire begin to surface. She paced herself as she ascended the staircase, passing the family photographs hung on the wall: babies with wizened faces, fresh from their births at the hospital; adults in crooked birthday hats; a delighted woman in her wedding dress, holding a champagne glass; a toddler with his hair in his eyes, hanging from the neck of a young Inky; the still-coiled body of a man golfing, his chin up as he scans the sky for the outcome of his shot.

  “Is that you Benny?”