“So, paint me a picture,” said Verna. “You met her … how? When she got her parking ticket?”
J.R. shook his head. “No, that was automatic. The machine did that. It was when she paid. You paid the attendant. You know. Me.”
Damn you, Fern, Verna thought. Always so goddamned friendly. Always giving people the benefit of the doubt. She had never thought in terms of boundaries, limits; hers were open borders, in sharp contrast to Verna’s heavily fortified and guarded ones.
“She parked there pretty regular,” J.R. reminisced. “Liked to walk up and down Queen Street and look at the stores, then she’d stop in one of those cafés and have a fancy coffee. And she always had … you know … a good word to say. One day she asked my name, what the J.R. stands for. I had one of those tags, you know, with my name on it.”
“What does it stand for?”
“Don’t know. That was what was wrote on the birth certificate. Just the initials. My mother was long gone by the time I thought to ask.”
“So your family …”
“Don’t have one so far as I can tell. Foster homes growing up. Four of ’em. I didn’t get along too good with any of my foster parents. They were just in it for the money. Didn’t care about me or nothing.”
“That must have been rough.”
J.R. snorted. “Sucked is what it did. Big time. Those bastards. You’d better believe I gave as good as I got. Didn’t let nobody get away with nothing. I was tough.”
“I bet.”
He struggled to a slightly more upright position to slurp at his drink. “So, after she asked about my name, we’d talk whenever she parked in the garage. Sometimes she’d even bring me a cup of joe from one of those fancy places. But you couldn’t have a good conversation — not with cars waiting, so one day she asked me if I’d like to go for a cup of coffee with her when I got off and I said yes. And that was how it all started. The best year of my life.”
“You were together a year?”
“Or thereabouts. A little less. Ten months, maybe.”
“And you actually lived together?”
J.R. shook his head. “I didn’t want my parole officer to know I had a girlfriend.”
“Why?” Verna already knew the answer: the parole officer would have made sure Fern knew J.R. was HIV-positive.
But Eubanks was evasive. “They give you a rough time, that’s all. But we were planning to. Live together, that is. She was moving up north. She didn’t want to live in T.O. anymore. Too expensive and too much pollution. She told me about this place here — somewhere we could start over, together. We were just waiting for my parole to end, so I could come with her.” He fell silent.
After a moment, Verna prompted him. “We all need to start over.”
J.R. shrugged. “She didn’t tell me about the bugs,” he said despondently. “Fucking, cock-sucking bugs.” He stared ahead for a moment, his expression blank. Then his eyelids began to waver.
Reaching over, Verna poked him hard. “Hey! Are you falling asleep on me?”
J.R. jerked to attention. “What? No.”
“So what happened next?”
J.R. shook his head dolefully. “All I know is we had this fight and I went and got in trouble and, before I knew it, I was back in the slammer.” His upper lip started to wobble. “Never saw her again. She died while I was in. Beautiful Fern. The only woman who truly loved me.” He began to cry. It was a harsh, ugly sound.
Verna waited for a moment, listening to him wetly blubber, then, “How’s your drink?”
“Verna!” Lionel warned her. “Careful!”
“Sssshhh!” Verna hissed. “The bastard killed my sister!”
J.R. stopped crying. “Who are you talking to?” He glanced from side to side. Verna noticed that his speech was beginning to slur; he sounded punch drunk. “Are you talking to somebody? Is somebody else here?”
“Nah!” Verna joshed. “Nobody here but you and me and Fang.” Then, with icy solicitude, “How’s your drink doing there, J.R., old buddy, old pal?”
“It’s gone!” he sobbed.
“How about I get you another?”
Once again Verna careened to the kitchen where she ground up three more OxyContins and poured fresh rum and Diet Coke into J.R.’s glass. This time she did not pour herself another drink; she could tell that she was perilously close to that spinny, throwing-up state and her brain could not afford to go AWOL, not now. Returning to the porch, she found J.R. practically prone in the rocker, snoring.
“J.R.! Wake up!” Taking him by his bony shoulder, she rattled him.
“What? Oh, yeah. Must have dozed off,” he mumbled, struggling to sit up.
“Here you go,” Verna said, handing him the doctored rum and Coke. She pulled her rocker around so that she was facing him head on.
He eyed her apprehensively. “What are you doing that for?”
“Just want to look at you,” replied Verna. “My dead sister’s last lover. The last of her many, many lovers. I’m wondering what she saw in you. To tell you the truth, I’m having kind of a hard time seeing it.”
J.R. looked abashed. “I know I’m not much to look at now. But I was.”
Verna looked skeptical.
“I was!” he insisted. “You should have seen me then. Then you’d know. Do you know what Fern used to call me?”
“I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Her beautiful boy. That’s what.”
“Of course she did.”
“I was younger than her. A lot younger.”
“You were her boy toy.”
“That’s right.”
“Not so beautiful now, though. Are you?”
“Well, you’re nothin’ to write home about neither,” J.R. mumbled, shifting miserably in his chair. “Why do you have to be so mean?”
Verna sighed. She stood and dragged her rocker back to its former position. Sitting, she stared glumly out at the lake. After a moment she said, “Did you know we were twins, J.R.? Me and Fern. Not just sisters, but twins.”
“I knew that.”
“But did you know that twins have a special bond?”
J.R. turned nasty. “I know you hated her. That’s what she said. She loved you, but you hated her. Is that the special bond you’re talking about?”
“Drink your rum and Coke,” Verna told him. “And I didn’t hate her. I resented her. I was envious of her. There’s a difference.”
“She used to cry about you,” he said. “You made her cry.”
“Shut up!” Verna snapped. “Just shut up.” Her throat constricted; it was as though a hand were compressing her heart. Why had she let Bob come between her and Fern — Bob whom she had come (let’s be real about this) to loathe, Bob who ultimately turned out to be the disposable one and not Fern. She had a lot to answer for, but not to J.R. “We need to talk about this claim you’ve staked,” she said shortly.
“We do? What?” J.R. looked confused now, all turned around, as though he had lost his bearings. He gaped at her, slack-mouthed.
“The claim,” Verna repeated.
“Oh, yeah,” said J.R.vaguely. “That. Gotta get what’s coming to me. I give up everything for her. Need some compensation for my trouble. If I don’t stand up for myself, who’s gonna stand up for me? Eh? Tell me that.”
“And what did she get for her trouble, J.R.?” Verna asked. “What did Fern get?”
“She got love,” J.R. replied. “That’s all Fern ever wanted. She said so. ‘All I want is love.’ Her words.”
“I’ll tell you what you gave her. You gave her AIDS. Didn’t you? You gave my sister AIDS.”
J.R. blinked at her, muddled by the OxyContin. “But, what about me?” he blurted out at last. “Look at these fucking spots?” He lifted up his flannel shirt to reveal more purplish lesions on his stomach and chest. “I didn’t sign on for this. How is that fair? How did I deserve this? Why me? When I’ve had such a rotten life! And now I’m going to die!” He burst into ragged sobs.
“Oh, stop it, you big sissy,” Verna told him. “I’m getting you another drink.” She wrangled the glass out of his clammy hand and stood up.
“Slippery slope, Verna,” warned Lionel. “The Thunderbirds are coming from the south. Do you hear that?”
A distant boom sounded like a faraway bass drum.
“That there is bodreudang,” Lionel said. “What our people call ‘Approaching Thunderer.’”
Verna glanced out towards the lake. Grey clouds had swallowed up the Milky Way and the wind had picked up; it rattled the new leaves and troubled the water.
“Oh, hush,” she told Lionel.
Verna returned to find J.R. curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the porch beside the rocker.
“J.R.?”
She prodded him with her toe.
“Oh, J.R.!”
No response.
“J.R., stop fooling around. You’re scaring me.” She knelt down next to him, and, with some difficulty, managed to roll him over onto his back. He was breathing, but very shallowly. His skin felt cold, clammy to the touch. She pried open one eyelid — a pinpoint of a pupil stared unseeingly back at her. Verna’s heart bumped in her chest. “Oh, shit, Lionel! Don’t tell me I’ve killed him!”
“Okay,” Lionel said.
“What?” she demanded. “Do you think I have? Do you think I’ve … like … given him an overdose and now he’s in a coma?”
“How should I know?” Lionel asked. “Maybe he’s sleeping.”
“Are you kidding? I fed him six OxyContins!”
“Could be taking a nap.”
Verna stood. “Shit! What am I going to do? What?” She paced up and down the length of the porch. She wrung her hands. “What about an antidote? Is there an antidote? Milk, maybe? Oh, I know! Ipecac! But I don’t have any ipecac. Maybe I should feed him lots of bread …”
“That’s for when a dog, eh, eats a chicken bone,” Lionel pointed out.
“Oh, shit, you’re right,” said Verna. “I’ll have to call 911.”
“You could try and let him sleep it off,” Lionel called after her as she headed inside.
She was halfway across the living room on her way to the study, when a voice came from the depths of the sofa, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Call 911, I mean.” Verna whirled around to see Romy, curled up on the couch under Grandmother Frieda’s afghan.
Verna clutched her chest. She had been so focused on J.R. that she had completely forgotten her niece’s existence, much less her presence in the house. “Romy! For Christ’s sake! You scared the daylights out of me!”
“Think about it, Auntie Verna. What you did looks a whole heck of a lot like attempted murder. What? Did you honestly think I was going to stay upstairs while you talked to that white trash trailer park mulletino?”
Verna sighed. She put her hand to her forehead. Closed her eyes. “I suppose not. How long have you been here?”
“If you’re asking how much did I hear, I’d say pretty much everything?” the girl replied. “When the two of you went out on the porch, that’s when I snuck down the stairs and hid in the corner by the window.” She drew the throw closer around her. Shivered. “Is it true about Mom? That she had AIDS? You told me she died of cancer. No, come to think of it, you told me she died of putrefaction.”
“Yeah, well, technically, she did,” Verna replied. “Putrefy, that is. The sepsis was the result of the cancer and the cancer was the result of a weakened immune system. Look, nobody knew about this but me, Romy. I asked the doctor to keep it quiet. I didn’t tell my husband. Not even your grandfather knew. I wanted to spare him. I didn’t want people to know what she died of. It was … well, it was embarrassing.” She sank into a lumpy armchair and stared into the cold, sooty mouth of the riverstone fireplace.
“Yeah, well,” conceded Romy. “I guess I can see that. Still, it’s pretty shitty.”
“Yeah,” agreed Verna. “It is.”
“So you gave six Oxys to AIDS Boy?”
“Uh-huh,” said Verna mournfully.
“You did know they were eighties, didn’t you?”
Verna nodded. “Yup.”
“And you … what? Crushed them?”
“Ground them into a powder. With a mortar and pestle.”
“Whoa!” Romy was impressed. “Auntie Verna!”
“I’m glad you approve,” said Verna. “But that doesn’t solve the problem of what to do about an ex-con on the front porch whom I may have just killed.”
“Hey, Verna!” This from Lionel on the porch. “The cavalry has arrived. I can see headlights through the trees.”
“Tai and Paisley! They’re back from the movie. Oh, thank God. Tai’s a doctor. Surely he’ll know what to do!”
“Oops!” said Lionel. “Now there’s another car!”
“What the …?” Verna stood.
“What? Where are you going?” asked Romy, but Verna was already out the front door. Harrumphing, the girl stood, arranged the afghan so it draped her bony frame like a fusty toga, and followed her aunt outside, giving J.R.’s prone body a wide berth as she went.
It was not the Camry, but the bulky Carmen-mobile that was pulling up alongside the Volvo.
“Moby Rapper?” hissed Romy. “What’s she doing here?”
“She called me earlier to tell me that J.R. had a criminal record,” Verna told her. “She probably got worried and decided to check on us.”
“Or she’s a ginormous nosy-parker!”
“Give it a break, why don’t you? Carmen’s a friend.” She was a friend, Verna realized. How had that happened?
In the meantime, the realtor had decanted herself from the Buick and was flowing toward them like slow-moving lava in her purple jalaba and high-top shoes. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Is Eubanks still here?”
“Not really and yes,” said Verna.
“It’s very fraught,” Romy added breathlessly. Then, “Auntie Verna, look!” Winonah’s Impala, glimmering a ghostly white, appeared in the laneway. “Oh, please! Isn’t it bad enough that we have to spend all day with her?”
“Did you call Winonah?” Verna asked Carmen.
Carmen shook her head. “Not me.”
The Impala, wheezing, lurched itself into position next to the aubergine Buick. As its engine died in a series of hollow clanks, Winonah emerged from the driver’s side, and, exhibiting a high degree of dudgeon, crossed around to the passenger’s door, where she took Granny under the armpits, hauled her out of the car and onto her feet.
“Hey!” Verna greeted the women. “What are you guys doing here?”
Winonah was bitter. “Granny made me come.”
“I had a dream,” said Granny.
“What kind of dream?” asked Romy.
“An important one,” Granny replied.
By this time the wind had picked up, causing trees to twist and thrash and stippling the surface of the lake. Lightning lit up the clouds from within. The heavens crackled. In fact, there was so much ambient noise that no one heard the sound of the Camry smoothly negotiating the gravel laneway until it suddenly hove into view from between the trees.
Between the time that Verna had gone inside the cottage with the intention of calling 911 and the others had arrived at the cottage, J.R. Eubanks, aged thirty-six and lying all by himself on the porch floor, stopped breathing and quietly expired — his precise time of death was 9:58 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on May 20, 2005. What neither he nor Verna could have known was that the yeasty fungus causing that peculiar form of pneumonia to which people with surpressed autoimmune function are particularly susceptible — pneumocystis pneumonia, the same type of pneumonia that carried off the Fosbrink woman in Toronto — had been preying upon the interstitial, fibrous tissue of his lungs for some time now, thickening his alveoli, making it more difficult for oxygen to diffuse into his blood. The low-grade fever that had swaddled his cognitive processes in a miasmal fog over the past week or so, the night sweats that h
ad jacked him awake in the middle of interminable nights spent huddled in his makeshift camp, the stabbing shortness of breath whenever he exerted himself at all (claim-staking the glen had exhausted him; he had had to crawl back to his pup tent and rest for the remainder of that day), not to mention his chronic cough — all symptoms of pneumocystis pneumonia. The six tablets of eighty milligrams of OxyContin that Verna had fed him would not have killed a healthy man; a healthy man could have slept the overdose off. Eubanks, however, was not a healthy man. Conseqently the overdose became for him a kind of tipping point — that point at which life turns into death. Its effect had been simply this: to suppress an already suppressed respiratory system. That was all. It was, however, enough. J.R. — so-called because his mother had been a big fan of the hit TV series Dallas (although this, as all else about her, would have been news to him) — was dead. His last word, thickly spoken in a hoarse whisper, was, “Fern!” But there was only Lionel to hear.
Tai knelt beside J.R.’s body, rooting around for a pulse. Then he glanced up at the women anxiously gathered round and shook his head. “I think he’s dead.” He sounded amazed.
“What’d you mean, think?” demanded Romy. “You’re a doctor, for Pete’s sake. Can’t you tell when somebody is dead?”
“Hey!” Tai defended himself. “I’m a medical student, not a doctor. And cut me some slack here! I wasn’t exactly expecting to come back from a movie with my long-lost sister to find that my aunt, whom I haven’t seen since I was a kid, has murdered somebody at the family cottage.”
At the word murdered, Verna staggered backwards a step, then turned and crumpled into a chair. “How can that be? He was alive twenty minutes ago! Less! Wasn’t he, Romy? Wasn’t he alive?”
“In a dying sort of way,” she replied.
“See? He was alive,” said Verna. “How can somebody be dead when he was just alive?”
“News flash, Verna,” Winonah said. “It only takes a moment to die.”
“It took me five minutes,” said Lionel. He shook his head. “Those were some bad-ass five minutes.”
“And he wasn’t just anybody,” Romy told her brother and sister. “Oh, you are so not going to believe this!”
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