“Riding it?”
He smiles.
Brown grass pokes up dead from snow that’s not quite melted along the highway’s edges. All the cars are chalky grey from months of salted roads, mud caked around the wheel wells. Plastic grocery bags blow torn and faded against rusted fences. McDonald’s drink cups, empty cigarette packs, things tossed from car windows scatter the side of the road.
Children in back seats don’t bother twisting their necks as they do in the summer to try to catch a glimpse of a coaster zipping through the trees or cresting an impossible height. They know enough to sense they too are nowhere now, and stare down instead at the devices in their hands that take them somewhere else.
The hawk’s feet grip the rail at the top of a hill between the trees where the roller coaster turns, where the track bends on a slight angle to maintain the force required to keep the people safe. Vectors on paper decades ago to show the direction of the force at that precise point. It is where the bravest of riders raise their arms in anticipation of the drop, where gravity and speed and momentum compete for the chance to turn your stomach inside out. Vectors on drafting paper, long ago, playing inconsequential games with symbols scratched in pencil. The hawk watches passing cars from the oldest ride. Wood and metal and rickety. And there is only a bar across your lap to keep you in.
Wide white expanses fringe the park. A colourless sky, skeletal trees, wooden fences to keep cows and horses from straying onto the highway in summer. Evergreens too close to the roadside, frail arms now bare, poisoned by the exhaust from constant traffic, their fallen needles somewhere beneath the melting snow.
There is a hum in their car, the wind whistling through the door cracks, the whir of the engine. He’s turned off the radio. Neither of them talks over the drone.
She turns as if to say something, stops, and looks back out the window.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing. I’m just glad we’re doing this.”
He reaches for her hand over the console. She holds on a moment before letting go with a squeeze. Even her gestures have always been honest. Even when it’s hurt him, he’s loved her for it.
He puts his hand back on the steering wheel, the quiet between them not to be crossed right now. Something he wishes he’d known from the start. The tires of their SUV rumble beneath them on the pitted concrete, potholes to be filled in spring.
A patch of hotels spring up beige just after an exit, not close to any town. White space rushing past, hotels, white space rushing past. The dependable rhythm of the guardrail posts. Black removable letters on one of the hotel signs spell out F R E E W I – F I.
They are heading north for skiing and wood fires and bottles of wine, a weekend away, to reconnect. But, for now, they are here.
IN THE DARK
What was that.
A sound. Outside, by the door.
Paul?
Wait. He’s in Ottawa. No. Miami.
Even farther.
I feel around for the phone I always keep in the bed when he travels, but nothing is there. Sheets and pillows, softness now stripped of comfort. A memory of plugging it in by the kitchen table last night, the battery dying in my purse before I got home. I rarely bother to charge it overnight like he does. Not until it’s dead. He’s good like that, preventative. On top of things. On top of someone else now, maybe.
A creak on the steps. Yes, that’s a foot. A foot is slowly pressing down into one of the steps outside the front door, the weight of a body, the wood below buckling enough to creak. They’re old steps. Should have been chopped up with an axe and replaced by a nice porch long ago. A couple of wicker chairs, a swing even. So many summers gone. If I’m alive tomorrow that’s what I’m doing—I’m taking an axe to the steps. Paul can build the porch when he gets back. I don’t care that it’s February. But now a man, definitely a heavyish man, is standing on the creaking step, hoping I didn’t hear.
I could run across the hall to the landline. I could sprint to the phone in the other room and dial 911. I could say—whisper—Operator? Yes, 15 Pheasant Drive. There was a sound outside, a creak. On a step beneath the door. The sort of sound made by a threatening sort of person. I can tell by the way he doesn’t want me to hear him. Please send Emergency Vehicles.
No, this isn’t an emergency yet. When she answers she will say: Nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency? I know that because it’s what she said the last time I called, when I thought Paul had fallen down the stairs but it had actually been the ironing board. Or maybe that’s the way the operator answers on TV and what I heard was some version of that question. There was the other time I called but I can’t remember how she answered then because I was screaming and banging on the wall. Help, help, please help. Sometimes emergencies are obvious.
What is the nature of my emergency? Operator, I heard a creak on the steps outside the door. Please send vehicles with loud sounds and flashing lights. There’s a good chance they could scare him away, so make sure the police are prepared for a foot chase over fences and through backyards to catch him if he runs.
I don’t think 911 operators are allowed to laugh because anything can be an emergency. It’s all relative. This one may not be an emergency yet, like calling 911 from the highway to report an accident just because a car ahead is swerving—but it could be very soon. Imminent is the word that comes to mind. This one could make the news tomorrow, after it changes state from Emergency to Crime to Crime Scene. When they put up the yellow tape to zone off the area and serious men in glasses wheel my covered body down the creaky front steps on a stretcher. A porch would look nicer, conjure more sympathy from viewers I think, what with the wicker chairs and such.
I could call Paul. Run on tiptoes to the phone in the other room to call Paul. He will answer his cell phone groggy in his trying-to-be-patient-with-you-Martha-but-I’m-really-getting-tired-of-this voice. 2:07 a.m. He’ll say if you’re really worried why would you call me in Miami. There is nothing I can do from Miami. I’m alone, Martha. He’ll say, There is no one here with me. Please, Martha. Please. Go back to bed. And I’ll have to quickly say that it has nothing to do with that and of course he’s alone and so am I and that’s the problem.
I’ll ask him when this situation becomes an emergency. He knows that sort of thing, where the threshold is. That’s why I have to call him. But then he’ll say something about the sounds I always hear in the dark now and how the wind bangs the gate—The wind? What the hell do you know about the wind in Toronto? You’re in Miami, Paul, you haven’t the faintest idea what the weather is like here. And then I’ll have to drop my voice back down to a whisper so the predator doesn’t hear me, doesn’t know I’m awake. There is no wind, Paul, I’ll hiss into the phone. At least, the branches that normally make moving shadows on the wall are still. I will be home on Thursday, he’ll say. Or whatever day he’s supposed to come home this time.
I should call Paul.
There! Is he trying to open the door? Definitely something scratching against the glass, tugging at the handle. A hook. No, only in movies. A hand is scary enough. Paul will ask if I’ve taken my pills today. He’ll say it with a sigh and look at his watch that he wears even in bed with nothing else on. When we had sex, sometimes my hair would get caught in its clasp, which hurt a bit and limited my range of motion. I never complained because I could tell it turned him on. Some kind of Tarzan-Jane control thing. Or whatever primitive man it was that used to drag his woman along the ground by her hair. Yes, Paul. Yes I did take my pills. I am fine. But someone is outside our door and I am alone. Please, just tell me when this becomes an emergency.
He’s after drugs. For sure. Predators usually are, especially in this neighbourhood. The drugstore down the street has three identical yellow signs in its windows each printed with the message: NARCOTICS SUCH AS OXYCONTIN ARE AVAILABLE BY SPECIAL ORDER ONLY. There is something about the font and the drugstore’s logo at the bottom of the signs that make them look polite, almost friendly. And Spec
ial Order sounds nice, like the sort of thing picked up by a practical woman in a wool coat, leather gloves and a fine hat.
Hullo, Mrs. Matthews! Your Special Order has arrived.
Oh! Thanks a bunch, Tommy. I’ll swing by in the morning.
A brown paper package tied up with string handed over the counter by a smiling pharmacist, like the one in the Norman Rockwell paintings. Toodle-oo, Mrs. Matthews says, the narcotics such as OxyContin tucked under her arm as she waves goodbye to Tommy and the pharmacist with the other gloved hand.
I’ve heard of this before. A lot, come to think of it. Drug addicts breaking into your house when they know you’ve got what they need.
Shit.
A bang.
I think he’s coming around the side. Narcotics are available in this house, no special order required. The predator must know that. Heard that the missus must be on something good to keep her steady. Damn the big yellow signs! If they weren’t taped to the windows he might just be prowling around the alley behind the drugstore, waiting for the right moment to jimmy open the back door with the crowbar hidden in his jacket. But he knows they’re available there by Special Order only. We all know, thanks to the signs. We all further assume they are locked away in a safe or simply Not On The Premises. Hence, the requirement for special orders.
I didn’t notice my heart until now. This makes it real. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my ears. If this wasn’t an emergency I wouldn’t be feeling this way. Maybe the nature of my emergency will be a heart attack. No matter what, we’re approaching the threshold.
Something dropped.
I heard it. Something metal, clanking on the deck. The crowbar. The one he was going to use to break into the drugstore before he saw the signs and resorted to Plan B. This is Plan B. I am Plan B. I’m getting the phone.
It’s always good to be prepared for the worst.
It makes you less afraid of life in general, I think.
I always said I’d never overprotect my kids. Or maybe I just thought that. It’s hard to remember now. I’d tell them the truth about things, even the sorts of things that are supposed to be beyond them, not meant for children. Like the things my mother would murmur into the phone, dropping her voice and pulling the cord taut around the wall. Where people go when they disappear. What cancer really is. Why grown-ups run away, why they slice into their arms with paring knives and let the blood run from under the bathroom door to soak into the hallway carpet. I wouldn’t necessarily bring up these topics, just answer questions as they arose.
That was the plan.
Maybe some weekends we’d walk through streets where sadness lurks. Just to see it, to know it in advance. I could introduce them to homeless people, to street kids especially. Talk about things. All of us, sitting on the sidewalk in a circle with a runaway kid and his mangy German shepherd and his sign that says Every Bit Helps. We’d listen to his story. I would definitely make sure they were not afraid of dogs. Or strangers. Or the dark.
It’s ringing.
Ringing. Voicemail, dammit. He must have it on silent. Try again. What hotel is he staying at? Palm Something. It’s on my damn cell phone downstairs. This is an emergency. An Emergency. Answer, dammit. Please, Paul. Please.
“Martha?”
“Paul—there’s a man. I can hear him—”
“Oh, Martha. I miss her so much tonight.”
I can’t breathe. Can’t form a word.
“Are you in her room, honey?” His voice warbles. I can see his tears, the tiny globes of water that fall straight from his lashes. “Is that where you’re calling from?”
“Yes.”
“God. Shit. Sometimes I can’t bear it.”
I lie down, cheek to the floor to feel the cold, staring at the place where her crib had been. Where her bed had been. Where the doll I sewed together from a pattern used to rest on her pillow.
“Martha—”
“Paul. You could have called me.”
“I didn’t want to upset you. Didn’t want to wake you.” He takes a deep, wet breath. A web of mucus thickens his throat. “Why are you up, hon?”
“I heard something. But it’s gone now.”
DREAMS
No one seems to notice the dirty white door when they walk along that stretch of Dundas Street West. Years ago, from the back seat of her mother’s car, Carly would have had her eye out for just that sort of thing. The kind of door from which a stormy and unkempt man would emerge, pausing on the step to light a smoke before limping out into the city, a woman tripping onto the sidewalk behind him in a mess of tattoos, bangles, sprayed hair and wild eyes. Carly would have watched them as long as she could, twisting her neck and straining her eyes as they receded from view. Rare to see people so raw, so exposed, reality stripped bare like that.
“Did I tell you,” her mother once said on one such ride to Carly’s ballet school downtown, “that Ms. Richard sent me a note? Wanted me to know that you’re one in a million.”
Carly didn’t respond. She scanned the passing faces and doors for some jagged shard of life. Her mother had amped up the “special” talk in the months since her father hadn’t returned from a business trip for a job he’d never held.
“You hear me back there?” Linda tapped the rear-view mirror with the hand that held her cigarette, smoke from her mouth obstructing her view of Carly. “She said a kid like you comes around once in a lifetime. Think anyone ever said that about me? You’re something special, kiddo. Gonna be something special.”
“I’m not, Mom,” Carly said to the window. “Ms. Richard is a freak.”
“Hey—that freak was one of the best dancers in the country,” her mother yell-talked over her shoulder. “She knows talent when she sees it, and she sees it in you. You think she sends letters to all the parents?”
Trash, the other long-necked girls called her, tittering from the corner of the studio in a shrill fuss of tightly pulled buns. Friends for years, most of them, not there on some poverty scholarship like she was. White trashhh, their whispers hissed along the barre to where Carly stood stretching. It felt closer to the truth than anything Ms. Richard said about her.
“You listen to what that lady says, you hear me? To what I say. You’re gonna be something special.”
Carly looks up through the slanting rain to see how close she is to the dirty white door. Home. Recessed between a dollar store pinned with flags and plastic toys, and a Portuguese sports bar flickering with TVs and gesticulating men, it’s the boot prints that make it dirty. Impossible to know how many times it’s been kicked open from its sticky frame. And the yellow prison-bathroom light overhead doesn’t add much to its appeal.
She dips her head down again, fishes her key out of her pocket. A procession of after-work traffic inches its way westward on the road beside her, destined, she imagines, for clean, well-lit homes with white cupboards, red wine, dinner with napkins. She hops up the step to the door, jiggles in her key. She thinks of how she might seem to a girl in a back seat. How thrilling. How real.
She slams her shoulder into the door like a battering ram. It swings open on the first try. A haze of marijuana smoke hovers as she climbs the stairs and slow, throbbing bass pulses from behind the apartment door. Portishead.
Luke and a friend are slouched on the worn couch in front of the television. A joint and a cigarette burn on a plate on the coffee table, bottles of Canadian scattered around.
“Delta One, Delta One. Fire.” Luke is in a tank top, his tattooed vine of thorns winding its way up his left arm and across his chest. A cast partially covers the storm-battered ship on his right wrist and hand, broken in a fight weeks ago. He’s found a way to play video games despite it—chipping off part of the plaster to fully liberate his thumb—and wears a headset now over his stringy black hair to communicate with his virtual soldiers.
Carly pulls off her wet sweatshirt and goes to the kitchen.
“Hel-lo?” he says without turning to her. It’s a wonder
he can even see the screen; his eyes are practically shut. “Not even gonna say ‘hey’ when you come in?”
Kian, his friend, juts his chin in her direction. “Hey Carly, lookin’ good.” He tries to stifle a giggle and descends into silent laughter.
“No gig tonight, I take it?” She twists her wet hair into a bun on the top of her head.
Luke takes a drag of his smoke. “Nah. Not tonight. Tomorrow. Maybe. You?”
Kian can’t hold it together and spits out his beer.
She opens the fridge instead of responding. “I thought you were going to pick up some food.”
“Did. Table.”
There’s one slice of pizza left in an open box on a mess of old newspapers, the cheese congealed. She closes the fridge and heads to the bedroom, Luke’s cigarette now pinched between his lips as he violently manoeuvres his controller.
“Can you not ash on the carpet?” she snaps.
He pauses the game. Rolls his eyes up at her from under their heavy lids and, in slow motion, ashes the cigarette on the plate. He returns it to his mouth, looks back at the TV and starts the game again.
Carly shuts the door behind her and doesn’t bother turning on the light. The glow from the street outside is enough to see the swirl of tie-dyed sheets and crocheted blankets on the bed, the pile of laundry on the floor, the oversized Taxi Driver poster taped to the wall. She wriggles out of her damp clothes, tosses them on the pile and slips into her robe. She shivers. She can’t call in sick tonight.
Luke’s gaze is fixed on the screen as she passes back in front of them, but Kian eyes her up and down without shame. She hurries into the bathroom, locks the door and turns on the shower hot and fast. She wraps her robe tight around her body and sits on the toilet seat, rocking back and forth to get warm. When the room fills with steam, she rolls her shoulders back, hangs her robe on the nail behind the door and bends over to stretch her hamstrings. She looks up just as her reflection disappears in the mirror.
“Travelling Riverside Blues.” Almost always starts her set with it now. She had fallen for the slide guitar long ago, and when the drums kicked in, her body still reacted without her brain doing much at all. Besides, she knew that any guy born after 1950 was a sucker for Led Zeppelin. Jimmy Page alone had him in his grip; all she had to do was surrender to the rhythm and play to the lyrics. Regulars had begun to request it, and guys who’d never been there before stopped talking, stopped joking, stopped darting their eyes between the stage and the game on the televisions.
The Dead Husband Project Page 13