by LR Wright
“He hung himself,” said Eliot flatly. He felt Alvin’s hand slip into his. Eliot stepped back, pulling Alvin with him, to watch the furore.
Chapter 15
ACHILL ON HER ARMS awakened Enid. For a moment she thought she had left the window open, and looked over there. But no. The curtains were open, but not the window.
Melancholy had attacked her in the night. She burrowed into the pillow and pulled the duvet up over her shoulders. Then turned over onto her back and looked up at the ceiling, which was high, because her house was an old-timer.
Like me, she thought. Like me.
Oh dear, she thought.
Mostly Enid managed to avoid acknowledgment of death. Usually when it presented itself she was able to push it firmly aside and get on with things. She would point to a corner— there, sit there, she would say to death—and turn her back on him. Never looked him straight in the face. She had a fanciful, almost flirtatious relationship with him, confident that until the last instant of her life he would continue to do as he was told, sit there in a shadowy corner, docile, humble, knowing his place. Obedient.
Sometimes, though, this image was unattainable, and what she encountered was a cold wind from someplace unknowable. She was helpless, then, until it had passed. This dread must descend upon other people, she thought, and decided to ask Bernie what she did about it.
Enid, trying to imagine Bernie in confrontation with her own mortality, acknowledged that theirs was an unlikely friendship. Enid had a strong sense of hierarchy—of class. People in her world could and did move from one class to another, up and down the social scale: she didn’t see anyone as imprisoned by birth at one level or another. But different classes did exist. And it wasn’t talent or ability or character that in Enid’s eyes distinguished one from another. It was the small things, like grammar, and dress, and whether one spoke with one’s mouth full.
Bernie’s grasp of grammar was inexact, her dress was peculiar, and she frequently talked with her mouth full.
Enid recognized her prejudices, some of them, and used her friendship with Bernie as evidence that she was capable of rising above them.
They had met on an October morning twenty years ago. Enid left her house that day wearing a suit and carrying a handbag in one hand and a Moorcroft vase in the other, a wedding present, which had just that morning been chipped. It was one of Enid’s favorite possessions and she was very upset when it happened—her ten-year-old daughter Gloria who ended up becoming a lawyer was responsible. Her wildly gesticulating arm had knocked it off the mantelpiece, and although she’d caught it before it could fall to the floor the base had struck the edge of the mantel and a piece had broken from it. Enid had the piece in her handbag. She was going to take the vase in to be repaired, as soon as she was finished at the doctor’s office, where she had an appointment for her biennial checkup.
Thirty-five minutes later, her clothes back on, she was in her doctor’s office and he was talking to her. She sat there with her handbag in her lap, slightly tilted toward him, with her head at an angle as if she couldn’t hear him, as if he wasn’t coming in properly, like a badly tuned radio station. Enid felt herself to be frowning in exasperation.
“It could be nothing at all,” she heard him saying.
She was suddenly drenched in terror. It enveloped her like a shroud. “I beg your pardon?” she said.
“But it requires immediate attention,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken.
Enid watched him write something on a piece of paper. She heard a couple more words, then watched his mouth as he uttered still more, but didn’t comprehend them.
He handed her the paper. “Tomorrow at eleven,” he said.
Enid looked at what he’d written, and coldness seeped through her, from something positioned in the exact center of her body. He was talking again. “What?” she said, incredulous. “What?”
Eventually she stood up, holding her purse, and left his office. She went along the corridor into the reception area and heard a chirruping sound from behind the counter, and realized that this was more speech.
“Do you need another appointment, Mrs. Hargreaves?”
Enid didn’t know what this person was: receptionist, or secretary, or nurse. She looked at her for a moment, thinking about this with a small part of her brain, wondering how the woman described her job to friends and family. “I work for a doctor.” That was probably what she told people, Enid decided.
She opened the door and went outside into the warm autumn sun, the piece of paper still clutched in her hand. She found her car parked half a block away, unlocked it, and got inside. Opened the window. Just sat there.
But she kept seeing people she knew, in cars that passed, on the opposite sidewalk, and soon she started the car and drove away, not far, just to where the village ended, and she parked by the side of the road.
She realized after a while that she was trying to assimilate information, to understand, to make decisions, and that these things were impossible because of the fear. Enid had never felt such fear. She recognized it—but had experienced it only for periods so brief that it was gone before her heart had settled down again: fear that she’d heard a prowler, gone when a breeze from an open window fluttered the curtains; fear of a car wreck, gone when the truck coming toward her in her lane swerved back into its own; fear for a missing child, transformed into anger when the child came home, late, unharmed. She had never known fear that clasped and clung, intent on its own presence— and it was the fear that was malevolent, not whatever might be growing in her breast.
Enid found herself staring at the dashboard with both hands over her mouth. This time tomorrow she would be giddy with relief, drunk and euphoric with it, or she would be an amputee. And that would be just the beginning.
“No,” she said. “No.”
She was crying now, and realized that this was going to help. She sat back and let herself do it. She wept and sobbed and blotted her face with tissues pulled from her handbag.
After a while she told herself to stop, and did.
Enid took a deep, shaky breath. She started the car. Did a U-turn and headed back into the village. She couldn’t go directly to the bank in search of Arch, couldn’t walk through the bank, couldn’t greet people. I look different now, I know it, she thought. She fumbled in her handbag for her sunglasses and put them on.
She wanted only to be home, where the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall would soothe her, and the purring of the cat.
I must make out my will, she thought. And then—Oh, god, she thought, how will he manage? How will Arch manage on his own, with the children?
She saw brake lights come on, saw this and understood that the car ahead was coming to a stop. She understood also that she should therefore bring her car to a stop, too. But didn’t.
They weren’t traveling very fast—in fact, very slowly—but all crashes are significant.
When it was over Enid was amazed to see that the vase, though it had bounced onto the floor, had not suffered further damage.
She thought her legs were too shaky to hold her upright so she remained behind the wheel of her car. She could see that the other driver wasn’t hurt. He was looking into his rearview mirror and yelling, so he had to be all right.
There were a lot of people on the sidewalk, having come out of the café and the hardware store and the real estate office, but for once Enid didn’t recognize anyone. A small woman of about Enid’s age—Bernie—had pushed through the crowd right up to the edge of the curb and was frowning intently into Enid’s car. Enid gave her a gracious smile.
Suddenly the door of the other vehicle flew open. A large man struggled out and strode back to inspect the damage, then lifted both fists and shook them in the air. He rushed to Enid’s window, which she obligingly opened.
“You stupid bitch!” He waved toward the mess created by the collision. “What the fuck is your problem?”
Enid studied his face, which was flushed with anger. She reache
d down, then opened her door, pushed it wide open—so briskly that the large man was forced to move hastily aside—and climbed out.
She looked at the man for a moment. “This,” she said to him, “has been a very bad day.” And she conked him on the head with the Moorcroft vase.
She had hardly any strength, though, so the vase didn’t break, and neither—Enid was disappointed to see, as she crumpled against her car door—did his head. He did clutch himself, however, moaning theatrically.
Then Bernie bustled up and took Enid firmly by the arm.
“Sit. Sit,” she said, and pushed Enid down so that she was sitting on the driver’s seat with her feet on the pavement. “Put your head between your knees,” she said, and Enid did. “You,” said Bernie to the man. “Get up. Drive away.”
The man started to complain.
“Your bumper’s scratched,” said Bernie, interrupting him, “and your brake light’s broken. Otherwise there’s nothing wrong with your car. And,” she went on, raising her voice over his protests, “there’s certainly nothing wrong with you. I work at the hospital and I can tell you that for absolute certain.”
Her job at the hospital, Enid learned later that day, was as a cleaner.
Enid had had the lump removed the following morning, and it was benign. She came to believe that the objective of the whole exercise had been to throw her and Bernie together. It was just possible sometimes to see patterns and purposes in life.
“I thought he was your man there for a minute,” Bernie had said, “the way he was hollering at you.”
Now Enid stretched, beneath the covers, and was aware of irritating aches in her joints.
Her melancholy persisted, and she wondered if she’d been dreaming, tried to think…yes, there it was, a dream about a letter. She saw her hands turning it over before her wakened self could look at the handwriting, saw herself open the envelope and take out a folded sheet of paper, typed. Enid knew at once that it was a letter from her son Reggie in California. But this was all she could remember. Distressed, her heart aching, she tried to find more dream fragments, snuffling around like a pig after truffles, but it was gone.
It bothered her that her gloom had been created, apparently, by a dream about Reggie, who had always been a sunny spot in her life.
I should get up, she thought. But of course there was no reason to do so, except that she always did. What if I were to stay in bed all morning? All day, even?
If she had a cat, she thought, it would be curled up on her bed now, and when she got up it would stretch and yawn and blink and follow her downstairs, silent on its silent cat feet, and wait for its breakfast patiently or impatiently, depending upon the kind of cat it was.
Even better would be a new person in her life. The Jaworski funeral was coming up, and Madeline Jaworski had had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Enid’s mood brightened somewhat as she thought about this. She rolled onto her side; curled herself up, and constructed a fantasy about a tall silver-haired man of her own age or slightly younger who would arrive at the funeral in a red sports car. She would watch him for a while, discreetly, then slide within his field of vision and his eyes would widen when he noticed her. Enid would be wearing something mauve—mauve was an excellent color for her—and she would look at him gravely when their eyes met; an expression befitting the circumstances…
Enid flopped over onto her back. He’d probably be married. If he wasn’t married, he’d be gay.
She knew what the morning would look like; could tell from the murmur of the rain that it was a gray, monotonous day. She did not for the moment possess the courage to gaze upon it. Enid closed her eyes in something dangerously close to despair.
Far away there was the muffled sound of a door, closing. Enid’s eyes opened. She had forgotten all about her lodger. She lay very still, concentrating, and heard his truck start up. It idled for a while; he was waiting for it to warm up, a sure sign that he’d come to Sechelt from a colder place, and then he drove away. The silence ticked around her again. A wave of it had rushed in to fill the space left by the departure of her lodger and his truck.
Enid, feeling considerably more cheerful, threw off the duvet and got out of bed, and before setting off down the hall to the bathroom she did a few stretching exercises to limber herself.
The day might turn out better than expected, she thought as she dressed. She resolved not to spend any time lying there thinking in the mornings. She’d hop out of bed immediately she awakened, and continue to do her exercises every morning, first thing. She stripped the bed and made it up with clean sheets, and dumped the used ones on the floor by the door to the basement.
Next she had breakfast, sitting at the dining room table, a placemat under her coffee cup and a plate holding two pieces of raisin bread, toasted and buttered. She allowed herself this treat every morning: it was the only butter she ever ate.
As she sat there Enid was suddenly keenly aware of the possessions that surrounded her, and filled the house. Furniture. Knickknacks. Sets of china. Silverware. Vases, and platters, and serving dishes. Books, umbrellas, pictures, clocks. Things she and Arch had accumulated. Things she had bought for herself since he died. Things that used to be his parents’. Things that had once belonged to hers. Enid began feeling unwell and put a questioning hand on her stomach, which was soft and jiggly. I have to do more exercises, she thought. And then heard a clear firm voice in her head remind her that no matter how many exercises she did she would never have a decent waist again, never have a flat belly again.
Enid was losing patience with herself. She was out of control today.
She cleared away her breakfast dishes and sat down in the living room with a pad of paper and a pencil to plan her day. She would phone Reggie, in the evening. And maybe Gloria. This morning she would do some grocery shopping. She would go for a long, brisk walk.
She looked out into the silvery rain that shrouded the world, and her garden. She would do her finances, too. With the rent money from the basement suite newly added to her budget, maybe she could afford to buy a greenhouse.
Chapter 16
ALBERG, DRIVING TO WORK through the cold gray slant of the rain, was remembering the summer morning when he had picked up his ringing phone, pronounced his name, and at first heard only silence. Then:
“This is Eliot.”
Alberg had removed his reading glasses and leaned back in his desk chair, blinking in the hot sunshine that poured in through the small window in his office wall. “Yeah. Hi. How’re you doing?”
“You said something about a job.”
“Yeah. What’re you interested in?”
“What’ve you got?” said the kid.
“Well this is what I know about offhand.” He began doodling on a pad of paper. “The vet needs somebody to help in the clinic. That appeal to you?”
There was more silence. “Maybe. I like animals, but—”
“Yeah?” said Alberg.
“But I don’t know about sick ones. Hurt ones.”
“Okay. Well, over at the paper, they always need delivery boys. And girls.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And, uh.” Alberg wished he’d known the kid was going to call. “I think they need guys to deliver over at the supermarket, too.”
“But you probably need a driver’s license for that.”
“Oh.” Shit, thought Alberg. “Right. You probably do.” He drew a little car on the pad of paper.
“Not for the papers, probably,” said Eliot. “Just a bike. I had one at home. But we couldn’t bring it. There wasn’t enough room in the trailer, you know?”
“Uh-huh.” Alberg drew a bicycle, and then added a stick man, riding it.
“This U-Haul thing.”
“Right. That’s tough.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s possible that Earl might need somebody. I don’t know—a busboy, is that what they call them?”
“You mean the restaurant?”
�
��Yeah.” He penciled in a bunch of trees behind the stick man on the bike. Earl really did work too hard. He could do with more help. “You know, clearing tables, doing dishes. Stuff like that.”
Another silence. “That’d be good,” said Eliot.
“Yeah?” said Alberg. “You’d like that?”
“Yeah,” said Eliot.
And so it had been arranged.
He was trying to comfort himself, he thought, as he pulled up in front of the detachment. Struggling to convince himself that in this particular case he had done everything possible to help the boy, to help avert disaster.
But as he locked the car and hurried through the rain he was not comforted, because even though this time, yes, he had tried, he still had not helped the boy, still had not been able to avert disaster.
She could get books on greenhouse gardening, thought Enid. She could make a full-time project of it. She would be able to grow so many tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers that she’d be able to give some away.
Enid hadn’t considered, when preparing the suite for occupancy, that the extra money might add something special to her life. She had known, of course, that she would be paid rent: but that was as far as she’d taken it. Mostly she had just wanted that bottom part of the house inhabited: she had begun getting nervous lately, just slightly nervous.
“You ought to get yourself a dog,” Bernie had told her.
But Enid had never liked dogs.
“Or one of them alarm systems.” And at this Bernie had sniggered, her face dissolving into hundreds of tiny creases. “Or better yet,” she went on, “save yourself the money and just put a sticker up. You know, it says ‘PROTECTED BY’ and then some company or other. What burglar you know’s gonna take a chance when he sees that?”
But Enid didn’t like alarm systems either, and she certainly wasn’t going to lie about whether she had one or not.
And then one day, driving back from the ferry after a trip to Vancouver, she’d glanced across the street at the Wheatons’ front yard and seen in a corner of their big picture window a sign that said ROOM TO LET. Their son Philip had been living with the Wheatons for the past year, ever since the pulp mill laid him off, and he’d gotten more and more discouraged, Enid had heard, and more and more depressed, until on a sunny day in October just a few days before Halloween he’d walked into the ocean and drowned himself in the frigid waters of the Strait of Georgia.