by L. R. Wright
Love,
Diana
P.S. Janey’s only taking two courses in intersession, and she sailed through her damn exams without a ripple of fear. She keeps trying to give me advice. She calls it sisterly love; I call it condescension.
P.P.S. Mom is fine. We saw her last month, on the long weekend.
He wished he could hug her, and smooth the hair away from her face, and study her face for signs of worry or weariness, and find none, and send her back to her books with a kiss on the cheek and words of faith and confidence—a “pep talk.” It was good to know she liked his pep talks, though he wouldn’t have described them that way. The phrase implied a stalwart self-confidence he had never felt when trying to help his daughters.
Her letter had been mailed the day of her exam; it was over, now. He would call her tonight, to see how she’d done.
He tried to remember what he’d been doing while she was writing it, hunched over her paper in the University of Calgary gym. She had probably marched in there wearing an old pair of sweats, he thought, smiling, no makeup, her hair tied back in a careless ponytail, nails bitten to the quick, head swimming, filled with irrelevancies. She would sit down, drop her huge denim bag on the floor, and clutch her forehead. It would take several seconds for her eyes to actually focus on the first question.
If she’d written it Friday morning—he got up and went to the kitchen to freshen his drink—that would have been, let’s see… He thought about it idly as he dropped ice cubes into his glass. He was at the office on Friday, going through the paperwork on the Burke homicide. There hadn’t been much there, just the autopsy report. Then he’d had lunch with Cassandra.
If Diana had written the exam in the afternoon, he thought, adding a small amount of scotch to the ice in his glass, then he had been at the funeral, or maybe in the library…
He went back into the living room and stood looking out the window. It was dark, now, except for the splash of light near his front gate, from the streetlamp.
Cassandra. She made him feel good. And she tasted wonderful. He smiled, thinking about her…
And after the library, he’d gone to George Wilcox’s house. That was late afternoon, but Diana could have been writing her exam then, too, while he was in Wilcox’s house…
Alberg stood very still.
He thought about going through the door and looking around the living room, automatically filing things away. He did it all the time, everywhere he went; it was instinct, by now; he imagined his brain filled with little slots, each crammed with observations, some useful, some not.
He fixed his concentration, his drink forgotten.
And he remembered.
He had stood in the doorway again just last night and had looked around, puzzled. And now he knew why. Now he knew what had been different about George Wilcox’s living room.
He put his glass down carefully on the table next to the wingback chair. He struggled hard against leaping to conclusions.
But he got his jacket from the hall closet, pulled the living room curtains closed, turned on the porch light, and left the house.
18
GEORGE WAS SPOOKED by the place.
He felt when he arrived at Carlyle’s beach as though he’d skulked his way there, although he hadn’t. He had walked upright—as upright as the weight over his shoulder would permit—and hadn’t tried to crunch quietly across the rocks, and hadn’t hastened crablike and stealthy when he’d had to walk past a lighted-up house. But now, arriving on Carlyle’s quiet silver beach, he felt furtive, all right. His heart thumped in his chest, irregular beats of alarm. He had to stop to rest.
He sat on Carlyle’s silver lawn with his back against a tree, the burlap bag beside him. He felt rough bark against his shoulders and the back of his head. In a circle beneath the tree a permanent layer of needles had killed the grass. It was a thin cushion for him to sit upon. From the branches above came the scent of pine.
He stayed there for several minutes, looking across the lawn at the high laurel hedge that grew all the way down to the beach, taking occasional uneasy peeks at the house. It was out of range of the moonlight but it had a slight glow anyway, it seemed to George, but he knew that was just the whiteness of its paint against the blackness which surrounded it.
He waited until he felt somewhat restored, then got up and carried the burlap bag over to the rowboat.
He dragged it off its four-inch wooden blocks without great difficulty. The oars which were stored beneath the seats clanked, and clanked again when he tipped the boat over.
The tide was high, but there were some sharp-looking rocks on the strip of sand between the lawn and the water’s edge. George cleared these away, put the burlap bag in the bottom of the boat, and set to work dragging it, bow first, down the gentle slope of lawn and into the water. He took it slowly, sometimes no more than a few inches at a time. He was making some noise, all right, but he didn’t think it was enough to be heard by anyone living in the houses above the beach. Of course, somebody could be standing at an upstairs window this very minute, gazing out at the moonlit sea before closing his bedroom curtains and climbing into bed. If it happens, it happens, thought George; but he couldn’t prevent himself from glancing up. And of course it was Carlyle’s house which looked back at him, still and curious; he tried not to imagine malevolence.
It was about ten feet long, Carlyle’s aluminum rowboat, and looked to be in good shape even though it must have been a couple of years since George had seen him use it. Carlyle used to go out fishing in it. Sometimes while George was in his garden he’d see him rowing away out there. Sometimes he’d plant himself in the sea right off George’s garden and sit there, puffing on his goddamn pipe, wearing a big straw hat, holding that stupid fishing line over the edge of his boat.
George stopped and leaned against the rowboat, mopping his forehead with his big handkerchief. He took off his pea jacket and tossed it into the boat and rested for a minute. Then he began again, pushing at the stern, then trudging around to pull for a while at the rope attached to the bow. Eventually he felt hard wet sand beneath his feet and looked over his shoulder to see the ocean reaching for his shoes. He went back around to the stern and pushed hard three times, stopping to rest between pushes, and felt the bow become suddenly weightless.
He got hold of the rope, threw it inside, and cautiously gave two more pushes. Then he clambered in from the stern and sat on one of the rowboat’s two seats. He fumbled for an oar, stood up and pushed himself off, then sat down quickly and got the other oar, fixed them both in the locks, and began to row.
Alberg sat at his desk with the Burke file in front of him, absorbed in the autopsy report. He wanted to be absolutely sure—and he couldn’t be, of course, until he got the shell casing and turned it over to the pathologist. “Well, what do you think, doc?” he’d say. “Is this it? Is this the thing came crashing down on old Carlyle’s skull and put out all his lights?”
He couldn’t understand why the old man hadn’t gotten rid of them earlier. Maybe, not so deep down, he wanted to be caught.
Alberg’s sense of exuberance was very strong. He was trying to dampen it—let’s have the Nordic caution, here, he told himself—but it was the other part of him that wanted to handle this. His Irish mother’s genes were screaming, “Get moving, you cold-headed bastard; prudence never got you anything but another night in the same room.” He marveled at it. He could actually hear her.
He put everything neatly back in the folder and put the folder neatly in the filing cabinet in exactly the right alphabetical slot. He read a cryptic note from Isabella: Vet says don’t worry, a parrot’s not a bat. He turned out his desk lamp, put on his jacket, and left his office. He even stopped to have a few words with the constable on night duty. He was absolutely under control. But as he unlocked his car he was hot in the cool of the evening, and felt light on his feet, as if he’d lost twenty pounds, and he did not for some reason dare to take a deep breath.
N
owhere in his mind was there room for George’s roses, or George’s unsteady old hands pouring three glasses of lemonade from a crystal pitcher.
19
GEORGE ROWED IN A SOUTHWESTERLY direction out into the bay, at an angle from Carlyle’s house, which had not been his intention. He had originally decided to paddle straight out from the beach almost due west, drop the bag when he’d gone about three hundred yards, then row straight back. But on second thought he hadn’t liked the idea of Carlyle’s house watching him as he carried out his task, as if some part of it—the drainpipes, for instance—might raise themselves from the ground and commence to point, accusingly. A man can’t always control his imagination, he thought, especially when he’s physically weary and somewhat distraught. He thought it not a good idea in this case to try. So he rowed southwest, and Carlyle’s house was soon out of sight behind the black mass of the laurel hedge.
It was extremely quiet out on the water. George could see no other boats. Every once in a while he raised the oars and drifted for a few seconds, listening. He was almost out of earshot of the sea’s insistent caressing of the shore, and the only other noises were those of an occasional bird and, from far away, a large vehicle gearing down for one of the highway hills. Soon even these sounds were so smudged as to be indecipherable, and all he heard was his oars dipping, pulling, rising through the black water, and, when he paused now and then to rest, the dreamy sensuous lapping of the sea at his little boat.
He was rowing straight out from shore, now. The land receded, slowly, and the light from the stars and the moon intensified. He looked left and saw that he’d gone only about half the distance he needed to go; he wanted to row out until he was even with the end of the spit which formed the northern edge of the bay. He figured that was about three hundred yards, and at that point the water ought to be deep enough to gulp down the shell casings and swallow them whole. He had to get out there as quickly as possible, before the tide turned; he wasn’t sure there was enough strength in his arms to try to row against it.
It was a relief not to be able to see Carlyle’s house. It had looked so vacant, even though it was still full of Carlyle’s possessions. He remembered that they were his possessions, now, and this came again as a terrible shock. He tried to imagine himself sitting on the white piano stool, his hands poised above the ivory keys of the white piano; it had candleholders, he suddenly remembered, sticking out from the front of it… He recalled one night when Carlyle had put candles in them and turned out all the lights and sat down and played. George couldn’t remember whether this had happened in Sechelt, before Myra died, when they sometimes went to see Carlyle, or in Vancouver, a long time ago. Carlyle’s hair had been pale in the candlelight, he remembered; but before it was white or gray it had been blond, so that didn’t help. He couldn’t remember Carlyle’s hands on the keyboard—his fingers had moved too quickly. But he remembered the music: Chopin, it was. And when he finished, Carlyle had quick put his hands in his lap and spun around on the stool, a big smile on his face. The candles made funny shadows. Carlyle had looked like he had no eyes.
George checked the shore far away on his left and tried to row harder. Clouds had begun to gather in the west.
It must have been in Vancouver, he thought, because Audrey was there. When Carlyle spun around, smiling, she went up to him and put her hand on his shoulder, tentatively; Carlyle had lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, and patted it, and then looked at George and winked.
What the hell did that mean? thought George furiously, rowing. What the hell was the meaning of that wink? He tried to sort this particular memory from the others that were crowding into his head, clamoring to be heard and seen, but it faded on that wink…
Next he remembered Carlyle sitting on a bar stool. George was sitting next to him. Carlyle was holding a glass of beer in both hands. He was slumped over. George was filled with distaste and alarm; he was afraid Carlyle was going to burst into tears and wondered if they’d be low, racking sobs or silent, just salt water pouring noiselessly down his face into his drink. It’ll ruin that beer, George remembered thinking. He had put his hand in his pocket, ready to haul out his handkerchief. But Carlyle hadn’t cried after all. He shook his head and gave a kind of a laugh and then he looked up sideways at George. “You don’t know what the shit I’m talking about, do you, fella, do you, George, old sock, old buddy, old pal.” George couldn’t remember what the hell either of them had been talking about.
Again he glanced to his left. He seemed to be making progress. He was sure the end of the spit wasn’t as far behind him as it had been the last time he looked…
One morning in autumn, during a spare period, he had left the staff room to go to the office. He’d walked down the middle of the wide hallway lined with lockers. Drones and murmurings issued from the classrooms as he passed them. The floor gleamed in the light from the big glass front doors at the end of the hall, and George had a secret inside him; he’d applied again to teach in Germany. (He was almost unbearably excited at the possibility of living in another country. He couldn’t talk about it much to Myra, couldn’t hope out loud that this time they’d get to go, because it meant too much to him. For Christmas she gave him a set of luggage. He was furious with her at first, because he thought she had tempted the gods. But she told him he didn’t have enough faith, and in January his application was accepted. He had felt a new and different kind of respect for Myra, from then on.) He was walking along the shiny waxed floors holding onto his secret and looking down the long hall at the sunshine coming through the glass at the end of it when a door burst open ten or fifteen feet in front of him and a student hurtled out, stumbled, and grabbed at the opposite wall. Before George could get himself together to go to the boy’s aid Carlyle strode out, banging the door behind him. He yanked the boy around; Carlyle was a tall man, and the boy only came up to his chin. “You little punk,” said Carlyle, in a raspy whisper that echoed down the hall. He seized the boy by the shoulders and banged his head against the wall. “You son-of-a-bitching little punk,” he said.
And then, gripping the student’s shirtfront with one hand, with the other Carlyle took the boy’s left wrist and twisted his arm back into an awkward, unnatural position. He kept pressing and pressing, his eyes on the boy’s face. George watched, stupefied, for several seconds before he managed to uproot himself and walk quickly toward them.
“What’s the trouble?” he called out in what he hoped was an authoritative tone.
It was as though they hadn’t heard him. They were looking directly into each other’s eyes. The boy’s face was creased with pain and fear and was very white; his freckles stood out like blood blisters. Carlyle’s stare was intent and curious as he pressed the arm back, and back—
“Hey!” said George loudly. He put a firm hand on Carlyle’s shoulder. He saw Carlyle’s pressure on the boy’s wrist relax, allowing the arm to fall forward. Still Carlyle held his wrist, and the front of his shirt. The boy’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. His lips were quivering.
“What’s going on?” said George.
Tears appeared at the corners of the boy’s eyes. Carlyle let go of his wrist. He did up a button on the boy’s white shirt, which had come undone during the one-sided fracas. He tugged indifferently at the shirt, smoothing it. Then he reached out and with no expression at all patted the boy’s cheek, his hand lingering there, smudging the tears.
He turned to George, his eyes bright. “No trouble,” he said. He pulled down his shirt cuffs and adjusted his tie. “A small difference of opinion. That’s all.” He turned and went back into the classroom without giving the boy another glance.
George turned to the student, who began shoving his shirt back inside the waistband of his cords. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
The boy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What the hell happened?” said George.
But the student refused to answer. After a moment he went quietly back insid
e the classroom…
George stopped rowing. He hung onto the oars and rested his face on the backs of his hands. The muscles in his shoulders were fluttering. He checked his coordinates: the end of the spit of land was almost directly opposite him, on his left.
He hoisted the burlap bag up onto the edge of the boat and pushed it over. It made hardly any noise as it hit the water. He leaned over and watched the ripples from its passage into darkness disappear. He waited, watched, but it didn’t return to the surface.
Wearily, he turned the boat around. The moon was to his left, now, halfway between the horizon and the top of the sky, and sometimes it disappeared briefly behind a veil of cloud stretching across the sky from the west. Ahead of him lay the ocean, a black carpet to nowhere; he could see it rippling.
He thought about turning around again and continuing to row out to sea, watching the shore as it retreated farther and farther and then disappeared. He would row on and on through the soft warm night until his arms collapsed and the weight of them pulled him into the bottom of the boat, where he would sleep until awakened by the day. Then he would sit up and look around and find himself approaching a small uninhabited island. He would let himself drift onto its beach and he would climb out and lie down on the sand, and on the softness of the sand with the sea kissing the soles of his feet he would sleep while the hot sun soothed him and he’d never wake up, just sleep there forever on the soft sand, in the hotness of the sunshine.
Except that there wouldn’t be any sunshine tomorrow. The clouds were coming.
The muscles in his shoulders burned. He glanced behind him, to see how far he had to go, and kept on rowing…
She ran up to him, her arms filled with lilac. He remembered thinking that she ought to be queen of that festival they had somewhere down in Washington, a lilac festival, the color of the flowers suited her so well. She thrust them into his hands and threw her arms around him. The lilacs were smothered against his chest. He felt her cheek against his, and smelled the lilacs, and ever since that day Audrey never came into his mind without bringing with her the softness of her cheek and the scent of lilac.
