Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  “But Tim wasn’t free to move in.” But he was there, I added, to myself. Maybe in a way no one else ever had been. He couldn’t be anywhere else. His being in prison, ironically, had ensured he was always there. It had probably been quite easy to offer her unconditional love from prison.

  *

  A FIGURE STOOD BESIDE THE highway in the distance, at the end of the drive. He didn’t move, didn’t pace or fidget or look at his watch. But he watched the highway with an air of unease, as if he had no idea where he was or where he was going. He looked like he was hoping someone would come along and pick him up and take him home.

  She pulled the Suzuki over onto the shoulder. Their eyes met through the windshield. The fear in his eyes met the fear in hers. But then she saw relief shear through his fear. Someone had come for him after all.

  The first few drops of rain began to fall as they turned onto Highway 15. She stuck to the eighty-kilometre-per-hour limit, but even so sensed everything was going by too fast for her passenger.

  There was, she thought, too much space around him.

  She was overwhelmed by the anxiety filling the car. Her own, driving in the rain with a line of cars building behind her, bringing a newly released convict to live in her home. And his. She felt his almost more than her own: fear of the open space, the speed of the car, the unknown destination. Anxieties she knew all too well. The difference was: Tim would grow used to it all. He would become at home in the world again. But maybe, just maybe, as he overcame his terror of being out in the world, so would she.

  Two and a half hours later, she pulled into the driveway and pulled the key out of the ignition. She closed her eyes and with one long exhalation tried to release all the tension of the drive. Then she turned and smiled at her passenger. “Welcome home, baby.”

  But Tim wasn’t looking at her. He was letting himself out of the car. He seemed mesmerized by his surroundings, the neighbourhood, the house, even though he’d seen it all before when he’d been allowed to visit on his ETA. He stepped onto the porch as if in a daze.

  She reached into the back for his forgotten duffel bag. It was even lighter than she was expecting. What did it feel like to carry all your earthly goods in one small bag? For a moment—the moment between the car and the front door—it was her bag, her life. There was something incredibly freeing about the lightness of this bag. You could, she thought, go anywhere you wanted. No mortgage payments, no bills, no clients, no deadlines, no responsibilities, no “things” to worry about. For a split second she envied Tim his freedom. Until she remembered the invisible cord that still connected this bag, and its contents and its owner, to prison. He wasn’t free—not yet. There was a parole officer to report to, mandatory counselling to take, a job to find, or for her to create for him, adjustments to make to living in the “real” world. And when he had adjusted, what then? Then he would be bound by other bonds—work, car payments, financial responsibilities. All the trappings of “normal” life. Who, really, was ever free?

  She vowed, climbing the front steps to let Tim in the front door, that in the intervening time, in her house, in her care, she would give him a taste of real freedom.

  *

  “I COULD SEE SHE WAS stronger for having been on her own,” said Curtis. “She seemed more sure of herself. I was impressed. And I told her so. I also gave her a hard time for not seeing the light about Brennan. But she seemed to have grown up a lot.” He sighed. “There were so many times when I felt like a parent with a four-year-old.”

  “Yet you stayed with her.”

  He shrugged. “I was waiting for her to grow up.” He paused, then added, in that deliberate way of his, as if he were delivering a line on stage: “No one has ever loved Lucy the way I loved her.”

  His words hung in the air between us for a few silent minutes. I wanted to ask him if he believed in unconditional love. Instead I said, “It must have been a blow when she said Tim was getting out.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t accept her invitation to dinner thinking she was coming back to me. I just hoped for her own sake that she wasn’t continuing on with Brennan.”

  “And after he got out. Did you continue to see her?” I thought about what Anna had said. That Tim had been jealous. If Lucy had continued having contact with Curtis, that would have been a hotbed of conflict.

  “I ran into them on Bank Street the day after he was released.”

  “The day after? My God.”

  “Completely by accident. I was getting my morning coffee at the 7-11 on my way to work. When I lived with her, Lucy wasn’t even awake at that hour.”

  “Where do you work, anyway?”

  “At that time I was a mechanic in a garage.” He grinned. “Now I’m working part-time in a second-hand bookstore.”

  “Quite the renaissance man,” I smiled back. “It must have been a shock to run into them.” But what I was really wondering was how it had been for Lucy.

  “Well, at least I now knew what Brennan looked like.” He said it in a quiet but significant voice.

  I gave him a sharp look. “Were you worried? I mean for your own safety?”

  “The man had been in prison for murder.”

  Manslaughter, I corrected in my head. But I knew Curtis would tell me there was no difference. There were definitely some similarities between him and Marc. Maybe that was why I liked him.

  “I wouldn’t say I was worried,” Curtis was saying. “Just more aware.”

  “But you still kept in contact with Lucy.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I liked the woman. We were friends. But it wasn’t like we saw each other all the time. It was mostly phone calls, and not all that often.”

  “Did she … did she say anything about Tim and her? How things were going?”

  Curtis wiped a hand over his eyes as if remembering was an effort. “Yes and no. I remember the first thing she complained about was his grammar.”

  I gave a wry smile, remembering Tim’s letters. “But he wrote to her. She would have known he was no English major.”

  “I think she made excuses for him while he was in prison. You know, being surrounded by all those other bohunks—that was her term, by the way—he wouldn’t be able to help himself. But when he was living in her house, and she was introducing him to her friends and had to listen to him every day….”

  I was nodding. “It would be a whole other story.”

  “That and his redneck attitudes. She found herself with a country-music loving, gay-hating, sports-loving bohunk. There was no point in saying ‘I told you so.’”

  I was suddenly taken back to my second visit to Lucy’s after Tim had got out. The time I had cycled down. Early September. I had been elated that Marc and I seemed to have come to a place of acceptance about our differences. Lucy had tried to tell me we were on a journey to acceptance of “the other.” I had laughed at her. I was just trying to get along with my guy. But when Tim had joined us at dinner, she’d said, “Ellen and Marc are going through exactly what we are.” I remembered I’d had no idea what she was referring to; she had let me do all the talking that day. Had it been about their different interests? Their contradictory attitudes? It would make sense. But in prison he’d claimed to be a jazz lover and to be interested in all the metaphysical things she was. Had he lied?

  “Where are you?” asked Curtis.

  I started, and laughed. “Being haunted by a ghost.”

  “As are we all,” he said wryly. “Are you hungry? I’ve got the fixings for a Greek salad.”

  I was hungry. I had lost track of time. It must be going on eight. The sun was lighting up the pine tree in a golden green glow.

  The salad was good. It fortified us for another several hours of talking, this time in the cottage. It had been the family cottage, Curtis explained, but he’d moved in perm
anently after he and Lucy had broken up. The furniture was cottage furniture. Outdated but comfortable. We sat end to end on the lime-green couch.

  It was after eleven when I finally took my leave. We had been talking for almost seven hours. My head was full. I needed to go home and unload it.

  “You’re still tense,” Curtis said when we stood at my car saying good-bye. “I thought you said you were on holiday.”

  I made a gesture with my hand that reminded me of Marc. A gesture that said: Are you surprised?

  Before I could stop him, Curtis had turned me around and was massaging my shoulders. “This isn’t a come-on. You look like you’re carrying around a plank in your shoulders. Maybe you should see a massage therapist.”

  The only massages I’d ever had before had been a method of foreplay. But I believed him that this wasn’t a pass. We had spent an enjoyable evening together, but our common point of interest was Lucy, not each other. And his hands meant business. They weren’t caressing, they were digging, finding all my trigger points.

  “Ouch!”

  “You have to relax and go into the pain,” said Curtis.

  “I cannot pretend to enjoy pain.”

  “Okay.” I could feel him grinning behind me. “Really enjoy it then. You’ve got so many knots. It would be my pleasure to get at them.”

  “To torture me you mean.” I scrunched up my neck when he pressed on one particularly painful spot.

  “Okay, call me your torturer if you must. It’s for your own good.”

  “Would that make me a vic—ouch!” This time I pulled away, half grimacing, half laughing. Rubbing my shoulder. “Okay, okay, I need a massage. You’ve convinced me. But not from you. Is there a professional you recommend? Trish Cousins maybe?”

  “Kendra MacKenzie,” said Curtis, without hesitation. “She’s right in the market—didn’t you say you work in the market? I’ll give you her phone number. I’ve had a lot of massages in my life and she’s the best.”

  The phone was flashing when I got home. A Private Caller had phoned at four, just after I had left for Curtis’s. “Hello, Ellen,” said my private caller’s voice. “I’m sorry you’re not there. I’ll call you in the morning. At ten.”

  Don’t call me. He didn’t say it, but it was implicit in his tone. So was the order: Make sure you’re there.

  I couldn’t believe he had called the moment I’d left to see Curtis. He seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to men and me. But maybe he was going to come and see me at last. We could finally talk. I had a thousand questions. And only half of them were about Lucy.

  I slipped out the back door in my bare feet and felt my way in the dark to one of the Muskoka chairs on the lawn. Wispy clouds obscured the full impact of the starry night sky. I filtered Curtis’s stories through what I already knew—or thought I knew—about Lucy. Back in the house I continued with my notes late into the night.

  *

  SHE WOKE, WOOZY AND HEADACHEY, from a fitful sleep. Tim’s snoring had kept her awake, not to mention their sexual hunger for each other after all these months. She felt raw inside but satiated. It hadn’t exactly been romantic, tender love-making. But the urgency, she had to admit, had been on both sides. And at least they’d been in a bed, not in the corner or the bathroom of the prison visiting room. There would be plenty of time for tender romance. A life time.

  The other side of the bed was empty. It was only seven-thirty. She was tempted to try to sleep awhile longer, maybe even just to sit up and do her meditation right there in bed. But she could hear cupboards banging overhead.

  She rushed upstairs. A loud announcer on the radio was telling the Joke of the Day.

  “Morning, sunshine,” Tim said, turning to smile at her. He looked sleepy too, unshaven, puffy-eyed. “’Bout time you got up; I been up for hours. You got any coffee in the house?”

  “What on earth have you got on the radio? Where’s CBC?”

  “I don’t want to listen to that crap. I found a decent station.”

  “But it’s country. Since when do you listen to country?”

  Tim shrugged. “Just my whole life.”

  Her mouth gaped. Who was this man, standing in her kitchen? “But I thought you liked jazz and classical.”

  Tim shrugged again. “That’s okay too. What do I gotta do to get a coffee?”

  She clamped her mouth shut and turned to push the curtains back on the kitchen window. The sun was shining. It was going to be a beautiful day. Tim was allowed to have interests she didn’t share. Didn’t know about. “Let’s go over to Bank Street,” she said. “We can find coffee and a croissant.”

  She went back downstairs to dress. She would be patient. There was clearly going to be an adjustment period. Meditation and yoga could wait ’til later.

  Outside in the sunshine, Tim took her hand. Such a simple thing to bring her such pleasure—a man who liked to hold hands.

  At the corner of Bank Street, Tim paused and her hand was suddenly gripped hard. She was about to protest when it dawned on her: he was terrified. Of the traffic, the noise, the busyness. She understood this kind of terror. And she hadn’t spent the last fifteen years in a penal institution. She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

  They walked along the store-lined street. She pointed out the shops—the Fresh Fruit Company, the antique store, the outdoor store where she had bought the mountain bike she’d given to him last night.

  Tim was saying something in response, but she didn’t hear it. There was a rushing wind in her ears. Because there he was, coming out of the 7-11 with a styrofoam cup: Curtis.

  For a moment, she thought she was seeing things. She never ran into Curtis on Bank Street. The coincidence was astounding. And, by the startled look on his face, very real.

  For a second they met each other’s eyes, sharing the knowledge of knowing each other and knowing that Tim didn’t know they did. There was a moment of what seemed to Lucy a silent debate of whether they would let him in on that knowledge. For a second she was happy for Curtis just to see them walking together, holding hands, as he rarely had. She would have been satisfied with that silent gloat if she hadn’t seen the wariness in his eyes when she and Tim drew closer. He didn’t want to be introduced.

  That clinched it.

  Neither man offered his hand to the other. Tim looked startled, then equally wary.

  She wished she hadn’t said anything. What had been fun as knowledge between Curtis and herself was awkward and embarrassing among the three of them.

  Curtis raised his coffee, as if in a mocking toast, and got into his truck, parked at the curb right beside them.

  Tim stared down the street after the truck. Then he turned back to Lucy, dropped her hand. “I thought you said he didn’t live around here.” His voice was angry.

  “He doesn’t. I never see him around here. He must have stopped on his way to work.” It was ludicrous. She was being defensive—apologizing for Curtis.

  She took Tim into the Second Cup. She left him at a table and went to the counter to order two lattes.

  Tim made a face when he took a sip. “What is this yuppie crap? Alls I want is a coffee and doughnut.”

  “All,” she said automatically.

  The bewildered look on Tim’s face irritated her. He should know that one; she had corrected him enough times. But she knew it wasn’t just about his grammar, that bewilderment. It was about being in a yuppie coffee place on a city street. He looked like a biker in a tea room—an annoyed biker at that. Tim stood up—to go, Lucy thought, to the counter to order a plain coffee. He was at the door before she realized he was leaving.

  “Where are you going?”

  Half a dozen startled heads turned at her raised voice.

  Tim didn’t turn around. The next instant he was gone.

  Sh
e grabbed her bag and ran out the door. There was no sign of him in the direction of her house. She turned to scan the other way. And spotted him several doors down, frozen on the spot. He looked, she realized, like herself, having a panic attack. Except it was even worse for him: he wanted to go home but he had no idea where that was.

  She arrived at his side, out of breath. Took his arm. “Tim,” she said gently, “it’s the other way.”

  Tim came out of his daze. The look in his eyes shifted. He shrugged off her hand. “I know it’s the other way. I’m looking for an effing coffee.” (Lying to save his pride, she knew.) “And after I get some, I’m going to turn myself in to the police.”

  “What?”

  “I obviously don’t fit in here. And you don’t care. I’m goin’ back.”

  “You can’t do that.” It was Lucy’s turn to panic. Everything she had worked for, for so long … admitting to everyone she had failed. She wasn’t sure he even had the option of going back. She didn’t want him to go back.

  “Let’s go home. I’ll make coffee there. Then we’ll go to the Welfare office.”

  17.

  STEVE QUINN SEEMED TO FILL the house. He also seemed ill at ease. I was in my own place, on my own. And yet there was still a barrier. The barrier of the case. And Quinn didn’t step over that barrier. He didn’t hug me or kiss me. As usual, I was conflicted about that.

  It was four o’clock on a hot August afternoon. I was back at work now, but had come home early to meet him. He had an hour, he’d said on the phone. He couldn’t come any later. He had to be somewhere by five-thirty. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought by his tone that he meant home for dinner.

  He was in work clothes, but the sleeves of his white dress-shirt were rolled up to his elbows and the top button undone, revealing even more of that thick mat of chest hair. “Now this,” he said, looking up at the tongue-in-groove ceiling, “is exactly the kind of place I’m looking for.”

  I was pleased to hear it, but surprised. It seemed too small, too “quaint” for him. Belle and Beau came and nosed at him. Marc had dropped them off that morning, his truck already loaded for his trip down the Dumoine. For the first time, the sight of the canoe in the back of the truck didn’t fill me with dread. I told him to enjoy himself and realized I meant it. There was nothing at stake anymore. I could be generous. It felt good. On impulse I hugged him good-bye. And then wished I hadn’t. The physical memories were too fresh, too tender. And his response too warm. Now, in Quinn’s presence, I banished him from my head.