Edwina shrugged. Smiles did not seem to attach to her. “He left his focus group tapes in the car sometimes. When I was a kid, we used to listen to them on the way home from the farm.”
“Ah.” Lorna nodded. Ian always said his best insights came to him while driving. “That’s an education.”
“They put me to sleep.”
“Yes, I imagine they would.”
“Have you been to our farm?”
“No,” Lorna said quickly. “I’m sure it’s a special place.” She leaned back into her chair and laced her fingers together with both elbows up on her desk; she wanted to project confidence and nonchalance. “So what do you think? Do you think you’d like to join us here?”
Edwina scratched her neck and left two pink lines. “Seems nice.”
“I’m just curious if there is an area that especially interests you? Anything you’d like to learn. We’re looking for someone to help with reception, focus groups, paperwork . . . ”
Edwina picked up a highlighter on the desk. “I don’t really like paperwork.”
Lorna’s first temp job at OpinioNation was all paperwork. At her own chair against the side of Ian’s desk, she spent the summer of 1987 coding survey responses on every topic from cough syrup to overfishing. Ian hummed Lionel Ritchie while he worked, taking frequent breaks at the window to watch the sailboat races on Lake Ontario. His eyes crinkled against the blaze of the four o’clock sun. She’d been thirty-one then; he was forty-five.
Lorna bobbed her head from side to side. “Well. Some paperwork is always part of the job.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Was Edwina like this all the time? Twitchy? Defensive? Maybe Marcus hadn’t actually met Edwina; if he had, how could he possibly think that hiring her was a good idea? She would make clients nervous. But maybe her prickliness wasn’t her fault. Ian was off the wagon through her early childhood, and it was common for the kids of alcoholics to lack confidence. Still, Ian himself had always been charming with strangers; it was important to him to be liked. It made Lorna sad that Ian, with his confident shoulders and facility with words, would not be proud of his daughter’s performance now.
“But anyway,” Lorna continued. “With the computers we have these days, paperwork isn’t what it used to be in this industry. So that’s a bonus. Do you have any computer experience?”
“Depends what you mean.” Edwina was looking around the office, seeming to conduct a mental inventory of Lorna’s things. She tapped the base of the highlighter on Lorna’s desk. It was unnerving.
“Well, walk me through this.” Lorna slid Edwina’s sparse resumé across the table. “Tell me what kind of experience you do have.”
Edwina looked down at the paper as though it confused her. She swatted the bangs off her forehead, revealing an angry constellation of acne. “What do you want to know?”
In a way, it was a good question. What did Lorna want to know about Edie? Did she look like Ian? No. Did she have his sense of humour? Seemingly not. Was she damaged?
“It looks like you have two years of university,” Lorna said. “What did you study?”
“Psych. Wasn’t really the right call though.”
“OK.”
“But I’m doing a college course at night now.” She paused for a moment and tilted her head to the side like this might help her remember the name of it. “Like business.”
“Great!” Lorna tilted her head to meet Edwina’s angle. Focus groups occurred at night. If Edwina was busy nights, it was a wonderful excuse not to hire her. Still, Lorna wanted to help Ian’s daughter, give her a little more experience with a basic job interview. “What would you say are some of your best skills?”
Edwina scrunched her lips: a show of thinking. In focus groups, Ian had referred to inexpressive people like this as potatoes. Either Edwina had turned out to be a potato, or she really didn’t care about the job. It occurred to Lorna that perhaps Edwina was also just enduring this interview as a favour to her mother. In all likelihood, Cara or Jed wouldn’t have any genuine interest in a job that Lorna encouraged. And yet, Lorna felt certain that even at fifteen, Cara would put on a better show than this: she would understand what not to wear, that it was a no-no to touch anything that wasn’t hers — wouldn’t she?
“Your resumé says you’ve worked at Pharmasave,” Lorna tried. “My son works at a drugstore as well. Did you work in checkout or . . . ?”
“Determination.”
“Pardon me?”
“My skill. You asked about my best skill.”
“Oh, right!” Lorna widened her eyes to display interest. “That’s a good one.”
“Because when I want to get something done, I usually do.”
“How about a specific example?”
Lorna wondered, worried — for Ian’s sake —what on earth Edwina would do out in the world, if not this job. It was hard enough for a grown-up, normal-seeming person with experience to get an interview and find a job in this economy. Alex, for example, was having a hell of a time getting back on his feet since returning from Black River three months ago.
Edwina pulled a strand of hair in front of her face. “I asked for a kitten every day for ten years, and I got one. My Dad’s allergic, I mean he was allergic, but he still bought one for me.”
“I didn’t know he was allergic.” Lorna said.
“But you were such good friends.” Edwina smiled with sarcasm. It was probably normal for the family of the deceased to resent the assertion that a stranger was a “good friend.” Lorna recalled feeling something similar at her father’s funeral nearly eighteen years ago.
“Well,” Lorna said in the most pleasant way she could muster. “No cats here, I suppose, so it never came up. But what I’m hearing from you is that you’re persistent.”
“Yeah.”
As a researcher, people said Ian Needham was relentless, like a dog with a bone. When it came to Lorna though, he’d waffled. In the end, there was really just the one kiss in the office over two years ago. It began with closed lips, non-committal, two goldfish bumping together. It was Lorna who’d been prepared to take risks. It was Lorna who finally touched his face, pulling him closer, meaning business. But then he more or less disappeared until last fall.
After returning from the trip to Black River and feeling that, like Alex, she too deserved to recreate some aspect of her life, Lorna responded to Ian’s invitation to visit his country house: the farm. Up in the stands at Cara’s last-ever tennis tournament, while other parents watched the courts, gripped their knees, and fretted, Lorna wrote to Ian that she wasn’t sorry about the kiss the year before and had been glad to get his letter. But she’d also written, in glowing terms — terms that embarrassed her now — about his steadiness, something she’d always admired and which made her reluctant to take lightly a trip out to see him. She asked for more clarity about that what he wanted. Boldly, she asked what the situation now was between him and Libby. She said she didn’t want any responsibility in wrecking his life or his family. Privately, though, she imagined Ian as part of her family – a positive weekend influence, taking Jed fly-fishing, helping Cara with an argument piece for the student newspaper. She never considered the role Edwina could play in these scenes. Ian’s daughter seemed to her to be older, irrelevant.
Edwina was talking now, finally, about her job at Pharmasave. She talked with her hands, large-knuckled hands that Lorna recognized. She said something about a thick skin. She said, “A lot of folks find the idea of dealing with everyday people too stressful. But you should see the stuff I’ve seen.”
Lorna leaned in. “What kind of stuff?”
“Just. Weird.”
“I believe you.”
“But I bet you want a specific example?”
“Why not?” Lorna said good-naturedly. She checked the small clock on her desk; fewer than ten minutes had gone by.
Ian responded to Lorna’s letter with a call from the Sutton Place Hotel a week or so later. He d
idn’t explain what he was doing back in town, or at a hotel. She bought a pink dress on markdown at Eaton’s and little beige kitten heels on the way over. In the mirrored elevator, she decided she looked like she was dressed for a First Communion.
A football game blared on TV from behind the door of Ian’s suite. It took four or five knocks for him to answer, and he greeted her with a heavy hug that left too much wetness on her cheek. He had aged in the last year: more jowly, watery-eyed, his hair thinner. He wore a white Ralph Lauren button-down and seersucker shorts — inappropriate for October — and it was the first and last time Lorna saw his bare, unexpectedly thin and hairy legs. A plate of melting ice sat next to half a lime and a plastic knife on the minibar. The room was dim and stuffy. She crossed to the window, pretending to stare with interest at the view: grey government buildings, the dark green circle of Queen’s Park. She watched a harried family in the hotel drop-off zone, a boy aiming his water gun at a passing stroller. Behind her, Ian lashed out at the TV, declaring his team — Lorna couldn’t recall which one now; she hadn’t known he liked football — “stunned cunts.” Lorna sat in a leather desk chair next to the bed, not sure what else to do with herself. When the game went to commercial, Ian gave her a spacey smile and patted the mattress. Lorna asked if he wanted to go get a bite to eat, thinking this might even him out. He responded that she should sit on his face. Lorna laughed uncertainly, said she’d get more ice from down the hall. When she returned, which she wasn’t sure she would, Ian was flat on his back and snoring, his shorts unzipped to white underwear. It was easy now to think of the decision to leave the hotel then as the right decision, but for days, Lorna wondered if she’d made a mistake. She thought of calling in the weeks that followed, but what was there to say?
The next news of Ian came just after Halloween. Marcus called Lorna at home on a Sunday night to tell her that Ian had hit his head in the swimming pool after drinking a bottle of Aquavit. (The latter detail was only disclosed when Lorna, as her first response, wondered out loud what the pool was doing open in late October.) Marcus asked that Lorna omit the cause of death in her note to clients and staff, as if she didn’t already know better. The funeral, a year ago now, was small and private. Only Marcus attended from the office, and Lorna arranged the bouquet: From Ian’s family at OpinioNation. A while after the funeral, she’d driven out to the address he’d given her for the Needham farm and parked five minutes away, by a field that stunk of sheep shit. She walked until she could see the modern grey house, which was nothing like she pictured, and then sobbed so hard she thought her ribs would crack.
“And one time,” Edwina was saying, “this woman at the drugstore didn’t have enough money to buy pads, but I couldn’t give them away for free, right? So she took her used maxi right out of her pants and slammed it on the counter.” Edwina slapped her fingertips hard on the edge of the desk.
“Geez,” Lorna said.
Edwina drummed her fingers on the table. “Anything crazy like that ever happen here?”
“No.” Lorna shook her head. “Not that I can think of.”
“But you get weirdoes in focus groups sometimes, right? The ‘great unwashed.’” It was Ian’s expression. It gave Lorna pause to hear it from Edwina.
“We screen our participants. That usually weeds out serious trouble.”
“That would be my job?”
“Does that interest you?”
“I don’t know.”
The phone rang then. Lorna looked at Edwina, “Do you mind?” She picked up, happy for a break. “Lorna Kedzie.”
“It’s me,” Cara said dully.
Lorna was disappointed that it wasn’t a business call. She had the feeling Edwina didn’t take her seriously. She glanced at Edwina and gestured with her finger: just a sec. “Can I call you back in a minute? I’m in the middle of something.”
“So why did you pick up then?” Lorna heard the crack and hiss of a pop can on the other end of the line. “I just want to know if I can stay at Dad’s tonight.”
“Tonight?”
Lorna had never asked for specifics, but she assumed Alex’s new apartment, located across from a women’s shelter downtown, was a gloomy place with a lava lamp to do your homework by and a beanbag chair to sleep on. She didn’t love the kids staying there, had no clue what Alex fed them.
“That’s what I just said. Tonight.”
“Was that his suggestion or your idea? ”
Lorna tread carefully. She was never entirely comfortable that Alex wouldn’t casually disappoint her kids again. Last month, Lorna overheard Cara telling her friend Ash that Alex had been brainwashed at Black River, as if the whole episode were some psychedelic trance, totally out of his hands. She wasn’t sure if Alex had fed Cara that explanation or if she’d made it up on her own. Lorna, on the other hand, knew that Alex might well still be living in Guru Neel’s nuthouse if the place hadn’t been raided for its marijuana farm and Neel himself hadn’t been charged with eight counts of sexual assault, but she hadn’t raised these details with the kids. For now they had their own versions of the truth that suited them better. Their capacity to excuse, even ignore, Alex’s absence over the last two years impressed her, but it also perplexed her.
On the other side of the desk, Edwina was looking at a framed photo of Lorna and the kids from a Halloween ten years ago. All three of them were dressed like cowboys with wide hats, ruffled shirts, and tall boots. Edwina’s fingers were all over the glass on the frame.
“Listen, I’ll think about it. Let me call you back, sweetie, OK?” Lorna put the phone back down, cutting Cara off. She looked at Edwina, at the photo in her hands. “Sorry about that.”
“These them? These your kids?” Edwina asked, not looking up. “The boy looks like you. But the girl just has the same eyelids. How do you call that?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Hooded, isn’t it?” Edwina brought the picture closer to her face and then glanced quickly back at Lorna. “Like, not really there.”
Lorna didn’t say anything. Was this what disappointing fathers produced? Girls like Edwina? Lorna felt the familiar shiver of guilt about Ian. She should have seen what was happening, her own role in it. But surely becoming this strange must have been a longer project for Edwina, not just the consequence of Ian’s ridiculous death.
“What are they going as for Halloween?” Edwina asked.
“Oh,” Lorna said. “They’re teenagers now. Seventeen and fifteen.”
“So what? I’m going as a butterfly.” Edwina batted her lashes.
Lorna let out an uneasy chuckle. “That’s a neat idea.”
“Do you have pictures of your husband?” Edwina asked.
Lorna looked at her. “I’m not married.”
“That’s what I thought. But I didn’t know for sure.” Edwina’s eyes rose up to meet Lorna’s. It no longer made her blush to say bold things.
Lorna felt the tendons tighten in her neck. She rolled her chair back on the rug. Edwina knew something. “Edwina,” Lorna said. “Do you have any questions about our work here?”
Edwina smirked. She put her fingertips on her resumé and clawed it messily to her chest. “You think I would actually work for you, Lorna?” She said the name in a mocking way. “My dad’s secretary. How cheap can you get?”
“I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying.” Lorna’s voice came out surprisingly calm — surprising because she was, in fact, sure what Edwina was saying. She wanted to correct Edwina on her title again but thought it was better to stay within the big picture.
“For your information, he was never seriously interested in you.”
Lorna swallowed. What was this girl’s information? That ridiculous letter from the tennis stands? Did all men keep such letters in cigar boxes at the top of their wardrobes? She would have expected more from Ian.
Edwina picked up the cowboy picture again. “You’re lucky you have kids, you know.” Her voice sped up. “Because
I know people who could really fuck with you. They aren’t afraid of shit.”
Lorna realized that she hadn’t checked who else was in the office before beginning the interview. What was Edwina threatening? Would she call a mobster to come break Lorna’s fingers? She scanned the room for possible articles of defense in case Edwina was seriously unstable: keys, an umbrella, a toothpick? She had scissors somewhere, a letter opener. But come on. “Edwina, honestly I — ”
“Please don’t lie to me,” Edwina said. She shut her eyes the way parents often did to show exasperation toward their children. “Just don’t even talk. It’s a question of respect.”
Lorna managed to nod through the stiffness in her neck and throat. When she took a breath, she was sure that the rattling sound in her lungs was audible. She steadied her hands, pressing them firmly under the table.
“I wanted to meet you,” Edwina said, standing now, “to see what you had to say for yourself.” She reached down to her purse and pulled out a small paper bag, the kind used in penny candy stores. “But now I find I don’t give a fuck.” Her eyes shone. She placed the paper bag on the desk like it was evidence in a TV courtroom drama. “You can have this back.”
Lorna eyed the bag, which obviously contained the letter. In a way, the request not to speak was a relief. She had nothing to say, nor did she want to prolong this meeting. The fact that she never actually slept with Ian seemed an unimportant technicality. Lorna wasn’t guiltless, and Edwina was clearly driven to prove it. Like so many women in these situations, Edwina wanted to show that she wasn’t a fool. Though Lorna couldn’t help but wonder for whose sake. Just her own? Her mother’s?
As Edwina swept her purse up off the floor, a cheap plastic hairbrush flew out onto the carpet. The moment was so inelegant that Lorna felt more pity for Edwina than anything else. She bent toward the brush but Edwina pounced, snapping it up first with her skinny, wily energy. One of her blouse sleeves was rolled way up and the other pulled down. Her face, when she glared at Lorna, had the patchy texture of raw ground beef. “We’re done,” she said.
Not wanting to set Edwina loose in the hallways, Lorna followed her nervously through the clean, empty lobby to the elevator bay, hoping to hell they wouldn’t run into anyone. How in the world would she summarize this meeting for Marcus?
Catch My Drift Page 19