Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  Tim was nodding. She eased herself out of his clinging arms. She dialled Trish’s number.

  There was no answer. She left a message.

  She made Tim a cup of hot milk. They sat on the couch. She held him, rocked him.

  Half an hour later, Trish called back. Tim took the phone. She listened to him telling Trish how terrible he felt, how confused and upset. How afraid. Then, like a little boy, he handed her back the phone without saying good-bye.

  She could hear Trish’s voice saying “Hello? Hello?” clearly wondering where Tim had gone. “Hi, it’s me,” she said. “I know it’s short notice. But—do you think you could see us?”

  There was a pause. “I can see you, but I need my dinner first. And if you can get Tim to eat something that would be good too. Soup, or something soothing. Call me back after dinner.”

  She leaned against the wall when she’d hung up the phone. Could she become any more exhausted?

  “It’s good you’re going.”

  She turned around. Stared at Tim. He was nodding, talking almost to himself. “She’ll talk you out of it. You’ll listen to her.”

  “Talk me out of what?”

  “Going up there.”

  “Going up where?”

  “To Curtis’s.”

  “You were eavesdropping.”

  But Tim was talking as if he hadn’t heard her. “Promise me you won’t go.”

  She sighed. “I’m not going.”

  “Call him. Tell him you’re not coming.”

  “I’ll call him. But after dinner.” She sagged. “Let’s eat something. Then we’ll call Trish too.”

  The food seemed to revive Tim, turn him back into himself. He began to ramble on about his new place. He could handle being on his own, he said. He was looking forward to it. He understood she couldn’t be there for him anymore. He just wanted her to be happy, to feel better again.

  She forced herself to eat. It was a wonder the soup went down. There was a huge knot in her chest. Beyond the sternum injury. An obstruction in her digestive tract. The soup had to slide around it. She swallowed gingerly. She barely listened to Tim. She was relieved he was calm.

  “We should call Trish,” she said, when they were doing the dishes.

  Tim was giving her a blank look. “Trish?” he repeated.

  Did he not remember his anxiety attack? She bit back an impatient reply. She knew all too well how out of it a panic attack could make you. “Trish,” she repeated. “We called her earlier. She’s going to see us tonight.”

  Tim shrugged. “I don’t need to talk to her. I feel fine.”

  She was relieved. It wasn’t fair to subject Trish to his erratic behaviour. Every minute he was a different person. “We have to call her though. She’s expecting our call. You have to talk to her, tell her you’re feeling better.”

  “Sure, okay.” He shrugged again.

  She dialled the number. Handed the phone to Tim when it was ringing. Got on the phone after he’d spoken. At the sound of Trish’s calm, kind voice, she was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. Gratitude for all that Trish had done for her all these years. She opened her mouth and heard her gratitude come spilling out. Gratitude she had never taken the time to express before. “I appreciate your having been there. Not just today. But all the times you’ve been there for me, all your kindness. Thank you, Trish.”

  On the other end of the phone, Trish sounded mystified but touched. They said good-bye.

  She waited until Tim was ensconced in front of the TV, then went downstairs to call Curtis to tell him she wasn’t coming. She was bursting with gratitude for him too, but kept the conversation neutral. She had a feeling Tim was on the upstairs extension. It didn’t matter if he was. It didn’t matter at all.

  After she ended the call, she curled up under the covers. She was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. Weary. Sore. Beaten up. Beaten. No, not beaten. Never beaten.

  She lay listening. The house was silent. For once the TV was not blaring at full volume. Tim was up there. She could feel him up there. Maybe he was learning to enjoy the silence. Maybe he was finally accepting that it was over.

  The quiet was not just outside. Something inside, too, was now silent. Some voice, some agitated ticking or vibration that had been so pervasive throughout her life she had barely noticed it. It was only now that it was gone that she noticed its absence. Was it merely the fight gone out of her? No.

  It wasn’t defeat. It was admitting the truth: she had failed. They had failed—as a couple.

  It wasn’t her fault. Or his. The circumstances were too much for them. Had she really been so naive to think they could overcome the odds?

  She listened to her breathing—careful and shallow from the injuries. She let it lull her to sleep. Sleep was what she needed most. She would spend the summer restoring her health. She could already see herself in a small cottage on the Gatineau River. She could go for long walks. Maybe Ellen would lend her one of their canoes. God knows, they had enough of them. And she would sleep. Sleep in the silence of the country. Deep, restorative sleep….

  There is money in the bank—more than promised. There is enough to buy a house on the river. A log house almost identical to Ellen’s. She invites Ellen over and shows her all the rooms. “See, look, the layout is identical.” Ellen is as amazed as she is.

  The house is big, but she isn’t lonely by herself. She walks through the rooms, savouring their emptiness. Planning how she will furnish them. She walks out of the house and up to where the railway tracks intersect with the road. She looks up the tracks. Overhanging branches on either side wave in the breeze, welcoming her. There is no one in sight. The sun is shining. She could walk along the tracks and not be scared.

  She steps from tie to tie—small steps, like a little girl. She counts the ties. Something breathes behind her. The hairs of her neck stand on end—just before the hands reach out. The same hands, always the same hands, choking off her air….

  Gasping, sobbing, panting, she pulls at the hands. She tries to scream. Nothing comes out. She keeps pulling at them, and suddenly they give way. And the scream comes out. Ear piercing. Strong enough to wake the dead.

  And herself, out of sleep. She sat up in bed, gasping and panting, drenched in a cold sweat. Tim’s arms were around her. They were holding her too tight. She pulled at his hands, loosened their hold. They were the same hands.

  She screamed again, and freed herself from Tim’s grasp.

  She ran upstairs, blind in the blackness.

  She came up short against the kitchen counter. Through her panicked gasps for air, she could hear him on the stairs.

  Hide. She had to hide.

  She ran into the bathroom. Climbed into the bathtub, pulled the shower curtain across. Shaking. Wishing she was still dreaming. Not in the middle of this nightmare.

  The bathroom light was suddenly flicked on.

  She pressed herself against the cold tile, eyes wide in the too-bright light. Unseeing.

  Steps sounded on the linoleum. The curtain yanked back so hard it tore.

  She covered her head, the tap was digging into her ribs. She heard a voice talking, felt hands grip her shoulders.

  She couldn’t hear the words. But the tone penetrated. It was gentle. Not angry, not threatening.

  She let herself be pulled to her feet, pulled out of the tub. She let Tim take her into the sitting room. She let him hold her, rub her back.

  She tried to make her body register the message that the action was soothing, that it could relax. But her body stayed rigid. Shaking.

  There was only one message that registered, that kept repeating in her brain: it’s the same hands.

  Her brain would not register that those hands were comforting her. Even as they were.

&nb
sp; Her choking spasm gradually ebbed. Her breathing slowed. But her body stayed rigid. Her neck ached.

  Tim’s words finally filtered through. He sounded as if he were speaking more to himself than to her. “It’s alright. I’m here. I won’t let him kill you. I won’t let him kill you. You can sleep now.”

  She didn’t move. As long as they stayed frozen in this position, she would be okay.

  Hours seemed to pass.

  “Come on, baby,” Tim said finally. “Let’s go back to bed. You’re okay now.” She felt him pulling her up.

  “If you make me move, I’ll scream again.” She spoke quietly, but meant it. Her voice frightened even herself.

  Tim’s hands dropped. “Well, are you just going to sit there all night?”

  “Yes.”

  He yawned. “Well, I’m going back to bed.”

  She watched him disappear into the kitchen. Heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  She sat until dawn, not moving. Not thinking. Except for two thoughts: in the morning she would call Lakshmi upstairs to apologize for the screaming, to assure her there was nothing to worry about. And then she would call the bank. One last time.

  On the phone in the morning, Lakshmi sounded preoccupied. “Oh, I didn’t hear a thing. But I need to get my car out. I’m driving to Montreal for the weekend. Can you or Tim move your cars?”

  “Oh! Yes. Of course.”

  While Tim was moving the cars, she called the bank. There was no reason to be put on hold first thing on a Saturday morning.

  “Nothing has come in, Ms. Stockman,” Claire said for the thirtieth time in five days. How could she speak so patiently? “But it’s still early,” she continued. “You might try again in an hour.”

  The money was still not there at ten-thirty. Or eleven.

  Her agitation was increasing by the minute.

  She confronted Tim. “You have one more hour. Then I’m calling the police. So call your friend Mr. Torrence and find out what’s going on.”

  Terror in Tim’s eyes. “I can’t. He’s doing me a favour—he said it would be there. I can’t keep bugging him—”

  “Then I will.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Because if I call, I’ll find out there is no money? That there never was?”

  “No!”

  “Then why did you cross out his phone number in your address book?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Don’t lie to me! I’m sick of your lies!”

  She raced down the stairs, as fast as her bruises would let her. She had to get out before she exploded. She needed a break. Just for the day. One day to forget about her massive debt. To forget about the mess of her life. She would go to Curtis’s after all. To hell with Tim.

  She scribbled a list of chores for him. Something to keep him occupied.

  She found him on the couch, as usual, TV light flickering on his face. She held out the piece of paper and made her voice calm, relaxed. “I’m just going over to Bank Street to pick up a few things. A new shower curtain, some food. I made you a list of chores to do this morning.”

  Tim’s look at her was suspicious. “You’ll be back soon? You’re not going anywheres else?”

  She took a breath. “No. I’ll be back for lunch. I’ll bring us back something to eat.”

  Tim’s face seemed to relax. He nodded and glanced down at the list. “Okay. I’ll get this stuff done while you’re gone. I should stay here anyway. Marnie said she might drop off some information on hunting clubs this morning.”

  He got up to see her to the door.

  She made herself move calmly under his eye. Reached for her handbag in the closet. Said good-bye. Closed the front door behind her. Got in her car.

  At the corner, she didn’t hesitate. If Tim intended to follow her, if he thought she was going to Curtis’s, he would go up the canal, heading north.

  She turned south. The Saturday traffic on Bank Street swallowed her up. She would pick up a few things—food to take up to Curtis’s. She had a cheque to deposit—a cheque she’d kept hidden from Tim. She would deposit it and check on the mythical wire transfer.

  There was a metered parking spot on the other side of the street from the Fresh Fruit Company. She zipped into the spot before anyone else could claim it. She turned off the ignition and leaned back against the headrest. Exhausted. She didn’t know why she was keeping up the charade. It had become an automatic reflex: pick up the phone every two hours, speak to Claire at the bank. Something to distract her from facing the truth. The truth was: no money was coming, no money ever had been coming. She let that fact sink in. She looked squarely at her line of credit. At the twenty-two thousand she owed. She made herself breathe. It wasn’t the end of the world. She could re-mortgage the house if necessary. Sell, even. People went into debt every day. Much worse than she was. They survived. She would too.

  She closed her eyes and repeated the words like a new mantra. It’s only money. I will survive. It’s only money.

  Something unclenched. Some choke hold. She got calmly out of the car and locked the door behind her.

  A car suddenly jerked to a stop beside her. The passenger door opened, and Tim was in front of her.

  There was no time to react. She was grabbed, shoved into the back seat, Tim right behind her, his hand over her mouth. He yanked the door shut.

  “Thank God we found her so fast.” He was speaking to the driver. The driver’s head was craned around, her mouth open in surprise. “She shouldn’t be driving,” he added. “She’s having a panic attack. Drive us to your place, Marnie. She needs somewhere quiet to calm down. I’ll come back for her car. I can’t take her home. She’s been crazy at our house. She thinks someone’s going to hurt her. We need to take her someplace she’ll calm down.”

  Unbelievably, Marnie was driving on. From the back, she could see wide, concerned eyes in the rear-view mirror. She tried to yell through Tim’s hand. Tried to bite it.

  “I brought her pills,” Tim was saying. “She’ll calm down in a minute.”

  The next instant her mouth was being forced open, pills shoved in. Her jaw was clamped shut, as if she were a dog. Her nose pinched hard.

  “Swallow!”

  She couldn’t breathe. She was going to be smothered. She swallowed.Tim released her nose, but kept a hand over her mouth. She sucked in air through her nose. She could barely get enough.

  Tim was still talking to Marnie, his tone calm, relaxed. “She’s been talking crazy. Saying she’s leaving me. She’ll be better when she wakes up, she’ll….”

  The words faded out. Darkness crowded in at the edges….

  She came to. Bleary-eyed, dazed. Trying to figure out where she was. She was lying on a couch. Not her own. Someone was leaning over her. Tim.

  His mouth was moving. The words began to register. “You’re not going to leave me, are you Lu? You’re going to come home so we can have lunch? So we can be together?”

  She found her memory of the events. And her voice. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing! How dare you—”

  A hand was clamped over her mouth again. Something forced in. More of those goddamn pills. Her pills. Her nose was pinched shut. She tried to fake the swallow but Tim kept holding her nose. She was going to suffocate. She had to swallow.

  In the background she could hear a voice. Female. Agitated. Marnie’s. “What are you doing? You can’t give her more of those. She’ll O.D.”

  “She’s not going to O.D. I just want to calm her down, get her to see sense. To say she’s not leaving me.”

  But I am. She couldn’t get the words out.

  She lost track of the number of times she came to. The number of times she screamed her outrage at him. The number of times he forced more pills down her throat. Each time the scena
rio got hazier and hazier, her voice weaker and weaker. A videotaped scene replaying over and over, the quality getting worse with each repetition. It was the darkness that got more vivid. The darkness lulled her into a deep sleep.

  Not the one she wanted. Not the one she wanted at all.

  26.

  I FOUND IRWIN ROAD AND cruised in second gear, looking for the narrow dirt road. When I found it, I turned left and bumped my way down the lane to the large white pine in the middle of the circle. I rounded the loop to the side where the path was supposed to begin.

  The snow had stopped. I got out of the car. The relief from finally giving my testimony and the relaxation and peace Kendra had instilled into me changed to a sombreness that matched the late afternoon sky. But the sun was finding cracks in the clouds, putting a diffuse glow on the trees.

  I found myself staring at the path, surprised at how visible it was. The deciduous trees on either side of it arced toward each other, making and marking a natural entrance to the grove within. From there, on either side of the path, the trees were lined along the side of the road, obscuring the pine grove beyond them. It was a row of trees whose new leaves shimmered innocently in the warm spring sunlight.

  These were the trees you would see first if you came along this road looking for a woman whose body might have been pulled out of the river and discarded here. These were the trees that would invite you to go through their arch, into the hidden shrine beyond.

  They were poplar trees.

  I entered below their bowing branches into the soft silence of the grove.

  I had not had a chance to really see it before. It was serene, beautiful even, with thin streamers of light filtering through the canopy of pine branches. The police tape was still wrapped around the trunk of the pine. It would, I thought, be there forever.

  I sat down cross-legged, leaning back against the tree trunk. I closed my eyes and let my thoughts return to Lucy. She had come to me smiling in peace. It hadn’t seemed like the ethereal peace of the dead. She had found that peace—somehow, in the midst of the nightmare—before she had been killed. Despite the harrowing last days of her life. It was something deeper than accepting her failure and her debt. Trish had said that despite her physical energy being depleted, there was something calm inside her. Where had she found that calm? When?