by LR Wright
“Yeah,” said Earl. He leaned on his broomhandle, watching, as Jack disappeared for a moment and returned with another one, a regular broom, a smaller one.
They swept in silence, and the job didn’t take long, because Earl had already cleared the floor by putting the chairs upside down on top of the tables.
By the time they’d finished, the coffee was brewed. Earl filled two mugs while Jack put the chairs back down on the floor. “Here,” said Earl, setting the mugs on one of the tables. “On the house.”
“Thanks.” Jack took off his jacket and arranged it on the back of a chair before he sat down.
“Where’re you off to?” said Earl.
“Kamloops. Home.” He sounded preoccupied.
“Oh, yeah?” said Earl politely, sitting across from him. “Too bad. Just when we’re getting some good weather.”
“I didn’t come here for the weather.” Jack rubbed at his face.
“I remember you said you’re in sales,” said Earl. “Here on business, then?” He leaned back in his chair, enjoying the Sunday morning quiet. He took a glance at the clock and saw that he had half an hour to visit with the guy, if he felt like it.
Jack was looking at him, but not really seeing him. He kept on looking at him, until Earl started to feel nervous. Uneasy. Then Jack said, “I was gonna kill somebody.”
Earl stiffened, and his skin prickled. He didn’t say anything, just watched Jack, who was now looking at his coffee.
“You know,” said Jack. “Revenge.”
Earl thought: First the busboy, now this…
“Yeah. Because of my daughter.”
Earl wondered if he was going to have to call the cops. But the guy sounded tired, not mad. The floor creaked as he moved wearily in his chair.
“Yeah. My daughter…”
Earl snatched a hopeful glance through the windows, but saw nobody.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Jack Coutts, rubbing his face again.
Earl watched him intently. Jack was slowly shaking his head. He looked as if he was going to cry. Which dismayed Earl. But it was better than if he shot somebody.
“I didn’t know how she’d change,” he said, and Earl had to lean forward, to hear him. His voice kept catching on itself. “I didn’t know her arms and legs would get so thin, would get to be…matchsticks. Pulled up against her body.”
Earl tried to imagine what the guy was seeing in his head, but then he stopped, because it was something he really didn’t want to behold. “Listen,” he said hesitantly. “Do you want something? Can I get you something? Something to eat?”
“I thought she’d be quiet and peaceful,” said Jack, “like she’d gone to sleep. I thought that was what a coma was. I didn’t know she’d make noises.”
Earl sank back in his chair and gave a little sigh.
“They said she didn’t feel any pain,” said Jack. “But she sounded like she was in pain.”
“She wasn’t, though,” Earl said earnestly. “I’m sure she wasn’t. Yeah.”
“One chance in a million,” said Jack. “That’s what they told me, at the beginning.” He leaned forward urgently. “That meant—to me, that meant that it wasn’t impossible.”
“Yeah. That gave you hope,” said Earl.
“But it was impossible. All along, it was impossible.” Jack raised his hands, palms down, fingers spread. “Look. See that? See that shaking? Shit.” He put them in his lap. “I read a bunch of books. The books said, talk to her. So I talked to her. I touched her. I brushed her hair.”
Earl shivered.
“She was there, do you understand? There. Year after year she changed, she got less and less like herself. But she was still there. ”
Tears had filled his eyes and spilled out. Earl tore paper napkins out of the dispenser and pushed them into his hand.
“As long as she was still there, and alive—” Jack wiped his face. He breathed in, hard, and out. “And then one day I’m sitting there, next to her bed, and the little TV’s on, and I think, ‘What am I doing here—going for the record?’ ” He looked at Earl. His face was wet, his eyes red and puffy. “There was a woman, she was in a coma from 1941 until 1978. She died then. After thirty-seven years.”
Earl was leaning on the table, his chin in his hand. He made an exclamation of disbelief.
“And another one,” Jack said, “she lasted from 1960 until 1977.”
Earl sat back, shaking his head.
“So I looked at her lying there, and I thought Jesus Christ, twelve years is long enough.”
He stopped talking then. He held up his hands, which were still shaking, and put them back in his lap.
Earl reached across the table and patted Jack’s shoulder several times.
A while later, Jack held up his hands again. “Huh,” he said. “Steady enough to drive.” He stood up and put on his jacket, took gloves from the pockets and pulled them on, too.
“You didn’t drink your coffee,” said Earl. “I’ll get you some to go,” and he did this, while Jack waited at the door, putting on his sunglasses.
“Thanks,” said Jack, taking the coffee from him.
Earl watched through the window as Jack climbed into his truck and drove away. Then he sat down at the table again and sipped cold coffee, staring out the window. Finally he wiped his eyes with a napkin, took the coffee mugs behind the counter, and put on his big white apron.
Who’d he want revenge from? Earl wondered.
“He’s gone?” said Cassandra doubtfully.
Alberg shrugged. “Yeah. I think so.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Cassandra looked out the passenger window as he drove: they were going back to have another look at the house, before making an offer. It was such a bright day that it made her eyes hurt.
“When you were yelling at each other,” she said, “out on the street the other day, in front of the library.” She turned to him, shading her eyes with her hand. “I was thinking, who will I call if they start hitting each other? See, a person usually calls the cops in a situation like that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Alberg uncomfortably. “Don’t rub it in. How’s your mother?”
“She got a little breathless at one point,” said Cassandra, gazing past Alberg at the ocean, which was visible through gaps in the forest. “But she assured me that she’ll live through Christmas and the wedding. Beyond that she’s not making any promises.”
Cassandra’s mother had been having spells of breathlessness, due to a mysteriously faulty heart, for two decades.
“The wedding,” said Alberg in disbelief. “Hmmm. What kind of an event is it going to be, the wedding?”
“It’ll be whatever we want it to be.”
“Hmmm.”
“Karl,” said Cassandra.
“Yeah?” He glanced at her. “What?”
“I think you’d better tell me what it was all about. That man in the truck.”
He signaled, turned off the highway onto the gravel road, and drove slowly down the hill. He pulled up next to the house and cut the motor. They sat without speaking, listening to the ticking of the cooling engine, and the soughing of the sea.
He hadn’t been completely sure that Maura wasn’t having an affair. This made discussion of their situation delicate. Difficult. There had to be more to it than her goddamn boutique, he thought, pulling up in front of the house. Had to be.
He couldn’t lose her. If he lost her he might lose his kids. If he lost her he’d flounder around in a purgatory of loneliness. If he lost her, he would have failed.
As he climbed out of the patrol car he was rehearsing the speech he’d come to deliver. “Look, please listen to me one more time,” that’s what he’d say. And he’d promise that it would be the last time. And he’d get her to promise that she wouldn’t react to what he said until she’d thought about it.
“I’ll leave the Force.” That was to be his offering to her. He wondered if he could say it. If the words might not st
ick in his throat, and gag him.
She had gone to her bedroom window to lower the blind against the sun when she saw him. Betty liked the sun best when it was filtered; found it less frightening when it was filtered. She was reaching for the little cord that hung from the bottom edge of the blind, and looking out the window, and she saw the police car stop in front of her neighbor’s house, Maura’s house, Maura’s clean clean house. He climbed out of the car, Maura’s husband did. Betty watched as he walked up to his house, but then she couldn’t see him anymore, couldn’t see the front of his house from her bedroom window.
She rushed downstairs and out the door, not stopping to think, oh no, she mustn’t stop to think: sometimes it was important to do things that felt reckless.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called, waving, hurrying up Maura’s walk. He was still standing on the front porch, and he seemed to be ringing the bell.
“Why are you doing that?” said Betty, breathless, one hand on her chest, where her heart was thumping. “Why are you ringing your own doorbell?”
He had a haughty look on his face. Betty wondered if it was possible for her to change it—because it was very important that he feel friendly toward her. She smiled at him, wanting him to think of her as shy.
“Have you lost your key?” she asked him. “Try the door, maybe she left it open; she does that sometimes,” said Betty, nodding. She climbed up onto the porch and tried the door, but this time it was locked. “Have you lost your key?” she said again.
“I don’t have a key,” he said. “I don’t live here anymore.” And Betty thought he sounded sullen, quite sullen.
It was cold outside, even though the sun was shining, and Betty began to shiver. “I forgot my coat,” she said.
The policeman started to go down the porch steps.
“Oh, dear oh dear, please,” said Betty, “please.”
He stopped and looked at her. She was holding on to the sleeve of his jacket.
“You have a very distant face,” she said. “Your expression is extremely distant.”
“What do you want, Mrs. Coutts?”
Betty felt the blistering cold, made blistering by the glinty sun, but I won’t die of it, she told herself, not of the cold.
“I need—I need—oh, dear.” She brought her hands together, clasped them together in front of her, and thought of when the rest of her body had matched her hands, which were small and dainty, and now her hands were embarrassed by the rest of her, by the size of the rest of her.
“You need what?” he said, and Betty could tell he was impatient.
“Well, I’m afraid, you see.”
“What are you afraid of?” he said, and he was impatient, all right, oh yes, Betty could hear it in his voice.
Suddenly everything was in slow motion. Betty was amazed. She was standing at an angle from the policeman. He was half-turned toward her and half-turned toward his car. She looked down as she spoke, at her feet, in pink slippers, at a sidewalk that had been shoveled clean of snow. But there was snow piled beside it and the sun made sparks fly from the snow straight into Betty’s eyes. “It is my child, you see. My child—” With snow-sparks blinding her, she reached out with her left hand and let her fingertips rest on the fabric of his sleeve. “I don’t understand what is happening. And I am afraid.”
He didn’t move at all for a minute. And then she felt him turn toward her.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said. “How do you want me to help you?”
“Oh, dear. Oh, no,” said Betty, and laughed, trilling her way down the scale. She clasped her hands together again and looked up into his face. At first it was all darkness there, because of the blinding sun, the blinding snow, and then she could make it out… yes. Good. It was a different look he was wearing now. “Of course you don’t understand,” she said. “Of course. Silly silly silly.” And there were tears, made for her by the sun, and an ache in her chest, made for her by herself.
She started walking back to her house, wiping her eyes, shaking her head, chuckling to herself.
“Mrs. Coutts,” he called after her. She could feel him thinking, behind her.
Betty sailed on, more quickly now, and felt him deciding, behind her. The ache in her chest got bigger. She gave it a thump.
“Mrs. Coutts,” Alberg called after her. He could see her shaking her head, and thought she was laughing.
He heard himself breathing.
He wondered what he was going to do.
He looked up and down the street, at the houses slumbering in the snow. Why me? he thought. Why me? Isn’t there enough goddamn shit happening in my life? I don’t need this goddamn woman in my life.
She heard his car start up. It drove slowly past her and she waved her hand, not looking at him, and it didn’t stop, oh no, it didn’t stop, he didn’t get out, he didn’t say, “I’ll help you, Mrs. Coutts.” Oh, no. Oh, no.
He had intended to tell Maura, though. To pass Betty Coutts and her problems over to Maura. He intended to do it the next time they met.
But the next time they met she wouldn’t let him talk, wouldn’t let him say anything, and the speech he had prepared, the offering he was going to make, it all went down the toilet because Maura held up both of her hands and shut her eyes and said, “I don’t love you anymore.”
In the silence that followed he knew the truth of that, and he knew that his marriage was, indeed, dead.
And in that silence, Betty Coutts was sacrificed. And Heather, too.
“Karl?”
He had been staring out at the ocean. Now he turned back to her. He did not wish to appear less, to her. Less good, than whatever she thought of him now. He was going to try to tell her this, and as he searched for the words he needed, he looked for a moment beyond her, at the house—where something caught his eye.
“For pete’s sake, Karl,” said Cassandra, exasperated, now.
“Wait a minute.” He got out of the car. “Stay there,” he said, and walked cautiously toward the house, toward the broken window. “I just have to check this out.”
Chapter 27
ELIOT HAD FALLEN ASLEEP while studying the big tree out by the rocks, and the way the dim starlight made its branches glow. And when he woke up it was dawn—too late to go to Earl’s, because Earl himself would have been there by then. And so he went to sleep again…
…in his dream Eliot fell from an apple tree and when he scrambled to his feet he found that he’d been hurt, and so he headed for home, which he knew to be a house with wooden floors and a blue door. He climbed over big scary rocks to get there and opened the blue door and went inside, where his mom and Rosie waited for him. “I’m hurt,” he said, and his mom got out the first aid kit, and told Rosie to get a basin of water and some clean rags. And she kneeled down next to him—he was sitting on the floor by now—and it turned out that it was his arm that was hurt, there was a big old scrape all down one arm. Rosie took a soft clean rag and dipped it in the basin of water and gently gently she cleaned the dirt away, and then his mom put some salve on it and wrapped a bandage around his arm, and she stood up and said, “What do you want to eat?” with a smile on her face…
When he woke, he was crying. He pulled the knapsack close to him and hugged it. What was he gonna do with himself? What was he gonna do? Through the window he saw the big tree he’d been looking at the night before and the sight of it filled him with misery. At first he couldn’t figure this out, and then he knew it was because the tree had no perception of Eliot. It stood there, swaying slightly when the wind blew hard enough, and it was just there, being, it didn’t care about Eliot because it didn’t know about Eliot, and neither did the scary rocks and neither did the ocean.
He told himself that these were stupid thoughts to be having.
He wiped his face, shakily, with his hands, and took some deep breaths. Nobody knows anything about anybody, he thought. Nobody knows a goddamn thing about anybody.
Eliot stood up, thinking that he should
go to the bathroom, or get himself something to eat. But the hopelessness he’d felt last night suddenly came again, in a big rush, like a tidal wave, and it was so strong that he couldn’t do anything except lean against the wall.
He was trying to struggle, because that’s what you were supposed to do. But part of him didn’t want to struggle any more. This part—he could feel it getting stronger and stronger, and Eliot was desperate, unable to tell which part he should be listening to. Where’s the wisdom, here? he thought. Where’s the wisdom in me? Because he knew he had some. And even if it was just a little bit, he treasured it, and wanted to hear it now, would listen to it now…
Calmness fell upon him, like a shaft of sunlight. He was made almost breathless by the clarity this calmness brought with it.
Eliot went into the bathroom and selected the biggest, sharpest piece of glass, then went back into the living room and sat down on the sleeping bag. He noticed some indentations in the floor, and wondered if maybe a piano had stood there; if it had, whoever had played it had been able to look out at the ocean, if they wanted, while they played.
The thing of it was, he thought, that a life was as long as it was, and that when it was over, that length became the true genuine length that it was meant to be.
Eliot sat crosslegged on the sleeping bag, with the shard of glass in his right hand. He took a deep breath, bent his left hand back, and closed his eyes.
An hour later, Alberg found him there.
Across town, Enid picked up her ringing phone.
“It’s me,” said Bernie. “Didja do it?”
“I didn’t have to,” said Enid. “He left.”
“Good.” Bernie sighed. “Good. Did he take his gun?”
“Of course he did.” I should go for a walk, thought Enid, before the rain comes back.
“Whatcha doin’?” said Bernie.
Enid looked at her gardening books, spread across the dining room table. “I’m planning a trip,” she said. And suddenly, she was.