Prized Possessions

by L. R. Wright

  She’d never had that dream before. Emma seldom dreamed at all—or at least she seldom remembered her dreams. She knew she must dream, because everybody did; it was necessary for healthy sleep, necessary to have the kind of dreams that made your eyeballs move back and forth behind your closed lids. So she supposed she did it, all right, but just never remembered what she dreamed. Well, seldom. She knew she’d never dreamed that dream before.

  It was no mystery to her, though, this nightmare she’d had. It was obviously a dream about when Charlie thought he’d wanted to shoot her. But it was upsetting to have that unfortunate event come slipping evilly back into her life. As if it weren’t terrible enough that the man had disappeared; now bad memories of him had to start popping up in her dreams. Emma felt she’d been ambushed; bushwhacked by a nightmare.

  She noticed that her hands trembled a little, holding the glass of orange juice. She was aware of the silence in the bedroom. She began taking small, jerky glances around the room. What’s going on? she thought, worried.

  Of course I’m nervous, she told herself, and of course I understand why: I just had a damn nightmare, and it’s taking me a while to readjust to the real world, that’s all.

  There was nothing on Charlie’s night table but dust. Nothing in the drawer but the gun. When had he moved it there? Before he left?

  Of course, before he left, she thought impatiently.

  His closet was still stuffed with his clothes. At least it was as far as Emma knew; they’d all been there, the last time she looked, all of his clothes, except of course the ones he was wearing when he left.

  But staring at the closet door, she became uncertain about this and visualized a lot of empty hangers.

  Oh, shit, she thought angrily. She got out of bed, crossed the room, slid open the mirrored door to Charlie’s closet, and yes, his clothes were still there.

  Of course they’re still there, thought Emma. Did she think he’d sneaked back in the night to collect them?

  She wondered: What are his plans for me?

  She pushed the closet door closed and went back to bed.

  He had worked everything out with the utmost care. Including her money supply. She hadn’t thought about money at first. She’d had plenty of cash in her wallet and was of course preoccupied with Charlie; with worry, and anguish…

  It wasn’t until she had to write a check, maybe it was for Bernie, or maybe for the phone bill—anyway, this focused her thinking upon money, and she was suddenly alarmed: what if he’d taken it all? So she hurried to the bank machine.

  She inserted her card, and the machine blinked WELCOME and BIENVENUE and asked which language she preferred. Emma chose English and requested a balance, and then another balance. In the checking account there was $2,372.87. In the savings account there was $13,944.16. Emma looked after the household finances. She knew there was nothing missing from either account.

  At first this had consoled her. She’d told herself that nobody goes off to start a new life without money. Charlie hadn’t taken any money; ergo, he hadn’t gone off to start a new life. He’d probably killed himself, she’d thought, feeling reckless with Charlie’s life, feeling impatient about Charlie’s life, wanting to put him somewhere in her mind—in her past, in her memories?—wanting to get him out of the way.

  He wasn’t dead, though, she thought now, drinking orange juice in tiny sips, holding the glass in both hands, with the quilt drawn up almost to her chin. She knew that, because of her dream.

  They’d had a crisis that night, there was no question about it. But everything had turned out fine. Better than fine. Well. In fact, very well indeed. They’d talked, and she’d comforted him, and he’d apologized, and she’d admitted her faults, too, and resolved to be an even better wife. And then they’d gotten on with things, with life, with their marriage. She’d tried to persuade Charlie to get some therapy, but he’d resisted—gently, and lovingly, but firmly. And Emma had to admit that as it turned out, he hadn’t needed it.

  She remembered the feel of his head pressed against her, the heat generated by his body; she felt it on her hands, and on her breasts; and the shudder; and the tears.

  And before that…

  Emma set the glass down hard and got out of bed. She whipped jeans and a sweater from her closet, socks and underwear from a drawer, and took her clothes into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She pulled off her nightgown and stepped out of her panties.

  And then, suddenly, she had no energy. There was no strength in her muscles; her bones had turned to rubber. Emma let herself sit down on the edge of the tub…

  She saw the gun barrel clearly, moving spasmodically through the air, as if Charlie’s arm were twitching. What if he misses? she’d thought. What’ll he do if he misses? What if it doesn’t kill me? What if it kills part of my brain and leaves part of it alive? It won’t hurt if it hits my brain, she’d thought, because the brain doesn’t feel pain…

  All these thoughts she’d had. It amazed her, remembering, that paralyzed with terror, she’d had any thoughts at all.

  “Charlie,” she’d said to him. “Charlie.” Soft and gentle. Saying his name. Saying—what? “Don’t”? “Goodbye”? “I love you”? Anyway. Saying his name.

  And he’d lowered the gun.

  And then she’d realized she was lying in a puddle of her own urine.

  Emma stood up and went over to the bathroom door and locked it. Today, she decided, she would have every single lock in the house changed.

  27

  CASSANDRA MITCHELL drove to work on Friday, the first day of May, through a brilliant morning, breezy and fragrant. The window was open, and her hair was blowing around her face. She felt recklessly happy, for no reason at all except that it was spring. And because she was happy she felt slim, and supple, and full of grace. Maybe even attractive. Oh, hell, she thought modestly, let’s face it, I am attractive.

  She slowed and stopped, to let a pair of elderly women cross the street; they waved a greeting and she smiled, waving back, feeling good, like a useful and even important part of the community. She’d miss that, if she left. But she’d find it again, she told herself, in another small town, or in a big-city neighborhood.

  She drove past a young man who was painting the exterior of a shop that professed to sell antiques. He wore cutoffs and sneakers and a bright orange eyeshade. His bare back was smooth and already becoming tanned. She admired his broad shoulders and observed the slimness of his hips. One leg supported all his weight; the other was bent, resting. Under his arms she saw tufts of dark hair. It would be a simple, natural thing for anybody, Cassandra thought, of either sex, to fall in love with such a body. She wheeled around the corner, indulging herself for a moment in a delicious sexual fantasy having to do with beautiful male bodies and seawater the color of emeralds and a hot deserted beach with a big swing suspended from the branch of an arbutus tree. She wondered about Karl’s sexual fantasies. If he had any, he sure didn’t share them with her.

  She parked the car, let herself into the library, and locked the door behind her. She had some paperwork to do in the two hours remaining before the library opened.

  The place had a lot of windows—one whole wall was made of glass—and Cassandra felt furtive in there with the CLOSED sign on the door. She tiptoed around like an intruder, watering the fig trees and the ferns, wishing she couldn’t be seen by people passing by.

  Suddenly there was a loud banging on the window. Cassandra whirled around to see a face crushed hard against the glass. His features were deformed by the pressure, but she recognized the spiky hair and the red-and-black-checked jacket. “No!” she said sternly, waving her hand in energetic dismissal. “Go away.”

  He pushed harder on the glass. His upper lip flattened to reveal his gums, his nose squashed itself almost flat.

  He beat his fists against the glass. She heard him weeping.

  “You can’t come in until ten o’clock,” she said sternly.

  He began to
moan and turned around, leaning against the window, and banged the back of his head, slowly, again and again, on the glass.

  “Peter, I’m going to call the police again,” she yelled at him. “Go away. Beat it. I don’t want you here.”

  Suddenly he slumped, his entire body sagged; she thought he might collapse in a boneless heap on the sidewalk. But he didn’t. He drooped off down the street without a backward glance.

  Cassandra took refuge in the windowless office behind the counter and put on a pot of coffee.

  She was used to people using the library as shelter. People who lived alone—maybe some of them didn’t live anywhere at all, although she didn’t like to consider that possibility. She told herself it was very unlikely that there were homeless people in Sechelt. But there certainly were people who for whatever reason sought out the library more for its warmth, sociability, and comfortable chairs than for the reading material it offered. Cassandra didn’t mind this. She considered it one of the services the library provided, no less useful because it was inadvertent.

  Peter had started out as one of these people: a middle-aged man on welfare whose brain didn’t work like other people’s, who had nothing to do with his days. He was lonely and wistful, and Cassandra had welcomed him at first—not making too much of it, asking him what he liked to read, and helping him find easy things he could manage, pleased to see him become absorbed.

  But then she’d noticed him watching her. He held an open book in two hands, but his eyes weren’t on the book, they were following Cassandra; he wasn’t even bothering to turn the page, now and then, just for show.

  She began to pay him less attention.

  One day he came in holding a piece of cardboard, and held it up for her to read the message printed there: “I love you.” And things had gone from bad to worse.

  She did call the police, from time to time, when his attentions became insistent, but there wasn’t much they could do. They escorted him home, but he often just came back again and took up residence on the sidewalk across the street for a while, in front of the real estate office, squatting there with his legs splayed apart, elbows on his knees, fists supporting his chin, staring over at the library until the manager of the real estate office came out and sent him packing.

  Cassandra sat at her desk and picked up a stack of filing folders. She looked at the wall and held the files close to her chest. She felt as though something ominous had occurred, and wondered if she was having a premonition—even though she didn’t believe in premonitions. At least she thought she didn’t. She lamented all her laziness, all the thoughtful things she’d left undone: the grit of insufficiency, she thought, is clogging up my motor. It was living in a small town that was doing it. Living in a city would be a lot better for her. Less is required of one’s neighbor in a big city, and anonymity is easily achieved.

  Peter hadn’t come back when she opened the library. If she was lucky, he’d forget about her for the rest of the day.

  Phyllis Dempter bustled in with an armful of books just before noon. By that time the volunteer had arrived, and Cassandra allowed herself to be dragged off for lunch at Earl’s Café. Afterward she and Phyllis walked along the beach for a while, and Phyllis tried to get Cassandra to talk about Alberg.

  “It’s because of me that you met him, after all,” she argued. “Therefore you owe me periodic updates.” Cassandra and Alberg had met through the “Companions” section of The Vancouver Sun, where Cassandra, at Phyllis’s urging, had placed an ad. “So? How’re things going? Are you two going to get married, or what?”

  Cassandra sat down on a log and scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. “Believe me, Phyllis, there is nothing to tell. Nothing.”

  She looked up at her friend, shading her eyes with her hand. Phyllis had let her blond hair grow and was wearing it in a chignon. She looked elegant and dissatisfied. Cassandra knew she was feeling even more restless than usual these days, since her youngest child had left home.

  “What makes you think I’d even want to get married?”

  Phyllis sat down next to her. “I don’t, particularly. But usually, when you’re seeing a guy for as long as you’ve been seeing Karl, usually something happens, something develops. You don’t just, you know, tread water, year after year.”

  Cassandra gazed out across Trail Bay. “You’re right,” she said, after a while. “Treading water. That’s what it is, all right.” Regret raced swiftly across her heart, catching her by surprise. She got up, wrapping her sunglasses across her eyes to hide her tears. “I think I have to take some action, Phyllis. Oh, dear.” She bowed her head, and Phyllis put her arms around her.

  “Oh, Cassandra, I didn’t mean to upset you. Don’t. Stop crying. Please. Oh, now look, I’m doing it too… ”

  28

  ONE DAY WHEN she and Charlie had been married for almost two years, Emma was loading the washing machine when she became aware of perfume. Startled, she turned swiftly around to see who had come into the laundry room so silently; but there was no one.

  Emma lifted Charlie’s white shirt to her face and sniffed.

  She was looking out the window in the top of the laundry room door, and she saw that there were flakes of snow in the air, drifting lazily down. If the snow started falling thickly, she thought, Charlie would call to say he wouldn’t be coming home; that he’d stay in a hotel somewhere. She watched the snowflakes, the white shirt pressed to her face, and as she watched, they stopped falling.

  ***

  “Emma? I’m home.”

  Emma waited for him in the kitchen. She heard the hall closet open and close. She heard him move down the hall and into the bedroom, then the living room. A few minutes later, he appeared with a glass of Scotch, looking for ice.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Charlie, are you having an affair?”

  He looked at her quickly, and Emma fancied she saw guilt oozing from his pores, along with a considerable amount of self-satisfaction. She waited for his denial. She imagined it would be forceful and in some way accusatory: she was prepared to deal with that.

  “How did you find out?” said Charlie.

  Emma blinked through her shock. “Who is it?”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “But who is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Emma, unsteady, wanted to sit down, but instead she pressed her left hand against the refrigerator for support. “Doesn’t matter?” She was incredulous. “Doesn’t matter?” She gazed into Charlie’s face. He was physically very close to her, yet the distance between them seemed vast. Emma struggled for words. “Of course it matters. It’s extremely important, in fact. It—who she is—that defines my problem.”

  “No,” said Charlie. “No, it doesn’t, Emma.” He was looking at her gently now, and politely; suffering patiently through her pain.

  “Do you love her?” said Emma, her voice sounding comically strangled.

  “Love her?” said Charlie. “No.”

  “Why do you sound surprised?”

  “I’m not—I don’t know. Did I sound surprised?”

  Emma couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. “I’m going out,” she said abruptly. She thought he might try to prevent her, but he didn’t.

  She drove aimlessly along the highway, and when she got to Gibsons she went into a café and sat there drinking coffee and measuring the length and breadth of her humiliation. She considered catching the last ferry from Langdale and spending the night with Lorraine, who could be counted on for sympathy and support because she’d never liked Charlie. But Emma didn’t want Lorraine to know about Charlie’s faithlessness.

  She drove home slowly, through the snow that had begun falling again, thinking about what to do, how to handle the situation. When she got there, Charlie was in bed, asleep. Pretending to be asleep, probably. Emma had a long, hot bath. By the time she climbed into bed, Charlie’s slumber was real.

  Before she an
d Charlie got married, Emma had bought and read just about every book there was about being a spouse. She was studying, preparing for her new life. Now she hauled the books out again and pored over them with grim concentration.

  She was particularly concerned with the sections that dealt with infidelity. She had skimmed these chapters two years ago, so certain of Charlie had she been. Her simplemindedness took her breath away.

  As Emma interpreted what she read, adultery was something for which she ought definitely to have been prepared. She concluded—not pleased to do so—that if she’d been properly alert to Charlie’s unconscious signalings, she could have prevented this awful thing from happening.

  But despite her stupidity, her marriage was apparently by no means a lost cause. There were, she read, things she could do that would effectively put the whole shabby episode behind her.

  She would throw herself more devotedly than ever into being Charlie’s wife, and would say no more about his affair.

  And that’s exactly what she’d done. She’d ignored it. Wiped it from her mind. Soldiered on as though adultery had never occurred. Never mentioned it again.

  ***

  “Charlie got the wrong idea about you,” said Lorraine on Sunday.

  Emma hadn’t discussed Charlie’s infidelity with Lorraine, but now, four years later, she could hardly conceal his disappearance.

  “Because of that damn play you were in,” said Lorraine.

  Emma had done all sorts of extracurricular things at college. Not in a helter-skelter fashion, but calculatedly. It was important, she’d decided, not to become involved in anything she’d have to merely pretend to enjoy. She could be trapped into doing it all her life, if it happened to be the thing that brought her together with her future husband. She avoided athletics, therefore. And the chess club. And the various activities having to do with computers.

  She ended up being stuck almost by default with the arts. She found it pleasant, though, to sit in the music department’s recital hall, listening to people sing or play instruments. It was diverting to attend exhibits of work done by art students. And she liked going to plays. When one day she saw a poster in the Student Union Building inviting people to audition for parts in the Players’ Club production of something called Crimes of the Heart, she thought, Why not? And was astonished when she ended up playing one of the three leading roles.