by Jack Hodgins
“What’s going on in there?” Kit called. And laughed. “What are you doing?”
Throwing everything back into the purse. God damn this thing. How many people had noticed anyway? It was what happened when you had to make your own clothes, with an old machine. She’d never do it again, she’d steal first. The thought of those babes out there, noticing, laughing. She could spit.
And did. Straight into the toilet just as she pressed the lever.
“My bloody seam. Look,” she said to Kit when she came out. And waited while the girl went through her own purse and came up with two straight pins, enough to get her through the evening.
“You’re a doll, thanks,” she said. And touched the girl, lightly, on the bare arm.
“Not at all,” she laughed, and checked herself in the mirror, made a face. “You can’t let a thing like that spoil your night.”
“You can’t let anything spoil anything,” Gladdy said. “Not when you expect it will end. Some day.”
Kit O’Donnell coughed, turning away. Tucking things back into her purse. Snapping the catch.
“Well,” Gladdy said, and straightened everything, lifted her chin. “Let’s go see if my old man’s still pouting.”
He was. Beautifully. His face like a brooding cloud hung over those beers. His red eyes shifted to watch them approach, then scowled again at the sudden appearance of someone else.
Eli Wainamoinen. Walking like a young man, at his age. Flushed.
Gladdy and Kit slid into their seats just as he arrived, his fingers playing with his own enormous ring. He tilted, nearly bowed; Gladdy could’ve snorted easily. Who was he suddenly, the Finnish ambassador?
“Carl?” he said.
Carl sat back, looked up. He showed his snoose-stained teeth.
“Carl, a gentleman has just approached me, from Victoria. He says he wants to buy The Builder but I told him not until I’ve spoken with my friend Carl Roote. In case.”
“In case what?” Carl said.
“In case you want to buy it, stupid,” Gladdy said. And nudged him with her elbow. “In case you don’t want that someone else to own your picture.”
“He likes it very much,” the old man said. “He’s a wealthy man, owns a huge house-building business. He told me he wants to hang the painting in his office!”
“His office!” Gladdy cried. Because whoever heard of putting out that kind of money for an office picture? Carl’s office when he had one had two calendars for decoration, one of them several years old, both of them with pictures of hunters knee-deep in field-grass pointing shotguns at flying ducks.
“Well bully for him,” Carl said. And drained his glass.
“I wouldn’t say yes to him until I’d spoken to you. In case.”
Carl looked at Gladdy, held his eyes steady on hers. “Well, Mr. Wainamoinen,” he said, “you let that fellow have the bastard painting. It hasn’t got nothing to do with me. It don’t even look like me. And all that other shit you promised me . . .”
“Promised you?”
“All that crap. You laid out a hell of a lot of paint onto that canvas, Mr. Wainamoinen, but you never laid out no heaven. A camera could of done better.”
“Jesus,” Gladdy said. And shook her head. And waited.
Wainamoinen sat. He felt, suddenly, that his bones could easily have been two hundred years old. Carl Roote and Gladdy and Kit O’Donnell looked at him as if they expected him to shatter, fall apart, disintegrate.
You offered what you had to give and they did one of two things every time: didn’t recognize what it was or rejected it without even looking.
“When you moved into my house I’m afraid I thought of you as my children,” he said. To Gladdy. You couldn’t expect Carl to look up. “I’d just lost my son and then you came along. I would’ve done anything. I told Sylvi she’d have to watch me, I might do anything I was such a fool. Just watch, I told her, they’ll be up to complain about that tree, they’ll be hollering they can’t see the view just the same as Robert did, can’t see anything but all those trunks. And I was willing, it didn’t matter to me, we see right over the top. I would’ve chopped it down if you asked.”
Carl looked up. His face glistened with sweat. “All we wanted was a place to live.”
“Of course,” Wainamoinen said. “And that is the point. I’m always trying to give people more than they want. It is a fault of many old men.”
“I wouldn’t’ve called it a fault exactly,” Gladdy said.
“Oh but it is. When it intrudes. When it disappoints.”
“We all disappoint,” said the girl, and looked at the floor. “No one knows that better than a teacher.”
“And have our faults,” Gladdy said.
Though from the look on Carl’s face you wouldn’t think he was ready to agree.
“Still,” Wainamoinen said. “There is more in that painting. If you had only looked at it. I’ve given you . . . given you, what you want, what you said.”
But there was nothing in those faces to show they were listening. Or cared.
Then Gladdy Roote brought her hand up to her throat. “Look!” she said, and pointed out the window. “David Payne. He’s coming out of that place, out of that funeral place.”
Carl didn’t hear the first time she said it. He was thinking of the three beers and the painting. Wishing he could be at home tipping back a bottle from his own fridge. With Gladdy in the other chair drinking beer too with him, instead of that pale stinking gin in its silly glass.
Then: “David.”
David Payne, where? Where the hell did she see him?
He twisted, nearly swept the table with his elbow, strained his neck to see. Out in the almost-dark the bastard was coming down those steps, watching for traffic, running fingers of one hand back and forth across the back of his neck. He looked like he’d seen a goblin, or a ghost.
All at once, something inside Carl leapt.
“What?” Kit said. “What is it?”
“Look out, you’ll knock the bloody table over!” Gladdy threw her weight to counterbalance his threat.
“Aw,” he said.
He would’ve pushed them all.
But they jumped back, let him free. Gladdy screeching: “Watch out what you’re doing, can’t you. Look what you spilled on my dress!”
Wainamoinen gestured, his hands helpless, his stiff face crumbling.
“Excuse me,” he said as if he’d been the one to knock the table. “Pardon me.”
He stood in front of Kit. “Carl, Carl.”
Carl only grunted. And pushed past, bumping one shoulder against the wall. “Shit.”
If this was it! If this was the goddam thing, wouldn’t they just look? These other bastards with their show, all of them, wouldn’t they just sit up at the difference? What would a bunch of paintings add up to then?
In his hurry to get out into the foyer he nearly fell over someone. But he ducked aside and went across the red carpet (people turning, he couldn’t say who, and saying “What’s wrong?” and “Who’s that?”) and managed to straighten himself and slow down a little by the time he got to the oak door.
The smell of gasoline exhaust. And pulp mill. The shock of the light flashing violet neon from the sign: HOTEL ARBUTUS HOTEL. Down on the sidewalk he waited for a truck and camper to pass. “Yaw!” he yelled at the driver, a bulge-eyed American staring at him, slowing down. But the truck stopped right in front of him and the driver stuck his head out the window: “We just got off the ferry. Where’s your liquor store?” Carl yelled, “Yaw,” again and gestured for him to move on out of the way. “Bugger off, mister, go on out of here.”
When the truck had moved, David Payne was holding onto the lamp-post at the edge of the sidewalk, hunched over and staring down at the street as if he expected to be sick.
“What happened?” Carl said. “What happened there?” His chest hummed with the possibilities, his head throbbed.
But David Payne’s face was yellow, his ey
es ringed with dark smudges. “Hunh?” he said. And shook his head. His hand on the post was fat and short, like mottled raw sausage.
So Carl went right on past. Though the sight of any funeral home was enough to make his stomach knot, it was plain he was going to have to go inside this one.
He had to see whatever it was that had yellowed David’s face, sent him outside. He had to face that woman and her damn coffin.
Or whatever.
Behind him, the others had come out onto the street too. He could hear. Let them come, let them follow. Let them have something to talk about tomorrow.
He couldn’t help noticing someone had done a hurry-up job on the concrete steps, lousy trowel work, with ridges and hollows. It was his unthinking habit whenever he entered a new building to estimate the size of rooms by counting plywood panels or ceiling beams or imaginary paces down the length of floor, and to pass judgment on the quality of the finishing work (mitre joints of casings told the story, and cupboard doors). But when he left the foyer and walked across the second room of the Blessed Sleep Funeral Home, where a person would normally expect to find a body laid out, there was no time or inclination for estimating, there was only a vague impression of polished coffins sitting around on chrome legs. And in a third room beyond, there was only Anna Payne laid out on a small bed in the very centre, blankets pulled up to her chin like someone sleeping. And Carrie Payne, looking at him down the length of it.
“Carl,” she said. You’d think it was the name of a little boy who had run to her for comfort.
He’d never before seen such a face. Swollen. Those two eyes which must’ve gradually been getting bigger every minute since Monday morning were looking at him now as if he should have been able to walk right on inside and disappear.
“Oh God, Carl, I think she moved.”
His throat clamped. “What? Now? Just now?” Because if it was, he was running.
She shook her head. “Earlier. I was sure of it. I could’ve sworn she moved, just the smallest bit.”
She offered it like a shy gift, but he could have puked. He couldn’t even let himself look down at the girl, whose head was just inches below Carrie Payne’s chin. Her hands were down somewhere underneath as if she were ready to haul that body right up into a sitting position for him to face.
“Dammit, Carrie,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Of course she’s not sure.”
It was David’s voice, behind, in the doorway. “She only thinks she saw.”
“I was sure of it, David.” Now she was someone begging for favours. “I was sure I saw her move.”
Carl turned. If David Payne hadn’t been in the doorway he might have run. But the little man stood there as if he expected to fall, and lifted up his face just far enough to look out from under those eyebrows. “Don’t lie, Carrie,” he said. “It’s only because you were so sure. It’s only because you expected.”
Outside, a car braked, suddenly. The tires screeched, it seemed, down the full length of the block.
Wainamoinen on the steps of the Arbutus Hotel watched the car skid to a stop. Then he followed the others across the street as far as the door to the funeral home. Something heavy sat on his chest, however, and he turned to start back toward the hotel, moving slowly through the neon violet like a swimmer.
Gladdy said “Ah!” and bit her lip.
Everyone was going up those steps after Carl and David. Pushing against shoulders.
She put her hand on the pale flesh of Kit’s arm. “You don’t suppose?” she said. And swallowed.
“Don’t be silly.”
The girl had the kindness to soften the words with the quick touch of fingers.
Still, a person couldn’t just turn her back and pretend. “Maybe Carl needs me in there.”
The girl, though, was not convinced. Or raised an eyebrow at least to question. So Gladdy added: “Who knows what the bugger might do,” and stepped forward to follow the others.
If there had been a way of avoiding this she would take it, provided no one noticed. If she could have refused to put one foot inside that place, avoid getting the chilled skin called up by velvet and candles and polished wood. But she couldn’t leave Carl like that, when his mind was thrashing about, when he might not be able to stomach it. He didn’t know that you couldn’t conquer it by fearing it, any more than you could by daring it or by tempting it or by accepting it.
“Well, if it happens,” she reminded herself, “you won’t see me for dust.”
She was, too, spared the unpleasantness of witnessing. Whatever had been going on had reached an end. Someone rushed out past her, hand on his mouth, muttering, “Jesus Christ,” and nearly fell over his own feet to avoid bumping her. And a woman, following, touched Gladdy’s arm. “There’s no point going in,” she said. “Leave the poor things alone.”
Clutching her purse she stepped into the room, smelled the thick heavy scent of flowers and furniture polish, felt the breathing, the shifting of feet. Was there a decent way to enter such a place? All eyes seemed happy to turn her way, to avoid whatever else there was.
But looking straight at things was one demand Gladdy Roote had always made of herself. Directly ahead was Carrie Payne, standing over a bed as if it was something she needed to defend. She glanced up at Gladdy out of one eye from under a wing of hair which had fallen.
But it was David, not Gladdy, who attacked. “Can’t you see what fools we’ve become? Look, they’re crowding in to stare at us.”
At the same time, he put a hand on her arm as if to give her comfort too, or maybe just to keep from falling over. Carrie only strengthened her grip on whatever she had ahold of at the top end of the bed. A dark-suited man who must have been the brother hovering about, fluttering, looked ready to scream at the chaos which had broken out on his premises. He looked like a man who was considering a blow to the side of his sister’s head to bring her to her senses.
David: “Think of the number of people who die every day in this world. Out of all that tell me how you dare to expect one girl to be chosen for this special privilege? Do you think we are so different?”
And Carrie: “How do you know how He works? You don’t know Him. I saw her move.”
Gladdy’s knees gave under her, she could’ve dropped. Something gurgled in her stomach.
David was trying to pull her hands away, trying to loosen their grip on the bed. “It’s only because you refuse to admit,” he said.
And Carl too, now, was getting in on the act. He placed a big hand on David’s shoulder. “Leave her alone. She’s got a right to expect.”
But David flung him off.
Gladdy said, “Carl,” and bit her lip. He didn’t hear.
“She’s got a right,” he said. “You can’t blame a person for being on the side of life. There’s enough of the bastards ready to take the other side.”
Gladdy thought it was a laugh that lifted in her chest but it was a hiccup instead. She couldn’t be sure how many heard and anyway it didn’t matter because now David was trying to push Carl toward the door. “Go on away,” he said. “Leave us alone.” And to them all: “Leave us alone, can’t you? Leave us alone.”
But Carl wasn’t giving in. Not yet. “That picture too,” he said. “That bastard picture turned out to be nothing.”
David Payne might not have heard. Gladdy didn’t know whether to drag Carl out or leave by herself and let him find his own way out of the mess he was making. Now that he was getting louder.
“You’d think he’d painted the all-time masterpiece the way he carried on, the way he talked. But it was nothing. Nothing at all.” He clasped a hand around the thin arm of David Payne.” You would’ve expected it to be something more than that.”
“No,” David said. “Go away, Carl. Leave us be. Go on back where you were.”
So he pulled on the arm, nearly yanked the little man off balance. His voice softer now. “But there’s got to be something!” His eyes, bloodshot, toured the room un
til they found Gladdy. She could feel their two glances lock like the snap of a screen door closing. “Because if I lose her! Because if I goddam lose her!”
Then he bolted.
She could’ve cried, the way he looked at her. As if somebody had come up behind and hit him on the head with a great wooden mallet. Seeing something he hadn’t seen before, or hadn’t been there.
She snapped eyes at Carrie, at David, and said, “Well, if anybody’s risen this day it wasn’t in the flesh,” before hurrying out to the foyer. She could almost have added, “Nor was it one of the Paynes, either,” if there wasn’t this something in her throat. She thought of rummaging in her purse, in the junk again, for a hanky . . . anything. But she found, quite surprisingly, that there was no need after all for the hanky or for anything else to stall her. She snapped the purse closed and hurried outside.
The street, a little darker now, was nearly deserted. Only a few stragglers on the other side, around the hotel doorway. Carl was seated on the top step of the Funeral Home with his back against the door frame, watching his own hands out of eyes that had shrunk down to the dull stone hardness of late-season blackberries. Like a man, perhaps, who sits amongst the leaves and sawdust in the open bed of a pickup truck, just waiting to be taken somewhere.
“When I saw it wasn’t going to happen I was glad,” he said. “I would’ve been just as scared of it as you. Scareder.”
“Still, it’s only natural, I guess. To want some kind of sign.”
“Hell, Gladdy.” His hand clamped around one of her ankles. “That’s what I mean.” He ran the hand up her leg. “Any bugger who’s saddled with an old rip like you for a wife’s got no business looking for signs. It’s them other people that have to make them up. The ones that don’t trust something.” The hand moved away then, fanned lightly across the concrete step. “Lookit this mess, Gladdy. Too damned rushed to do a decent trowel job of it. They couldn’t wait for it to set right.”
