A Case of You

by Rick Blechta

  Making a show of flipping pages in her notebook, she asked, “You worked with Olivia how long?”

  “A little under two months.” “You told my employer that she lived on the street. Surely that can’t be true.”

  “Olivia kept to herself. I don’t know much more about her than I told Ms O’Brien yesterday.”

  She pounced, but gently. “How did you get in touch with her then? Go down to the train station whenever you wanted to tell her something?”

  Curran flopped back into the chair and looked out the window over Jackie’s shoulder, his eyes far away. She waited silently for a good half minute.

  “I asked Olivia to move in here shortly after we asked her to sing with the trio. Before that, she was sharing a room somewhere in the west end.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly.“I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. I just want to find out if she’s okay.You see, I feel responsible.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s sort of hard to explain. Maggie, the friend Olivia shared a room with before she came here, was dead set against her performing. She tried really hard to talk Olivia out of it, really hard. I was pushing on the other side. She is an amazing talent.”

  “We’ll talk about this Maggie a little later. So you asked Olivia to, ah, move in?”

  He took a deep breath. “I have a lot of room. You see, my wife and I separated recently, and well, there are three bedrooms not being used. The trio also rehearses here, so Olivia only had to go down to the basement. It just seemed like a good idea.”

  Now Jackie waited a moment, but it was all for effect. “Did she sleep in her own room?”

  Curran coloured deeply. “She had her own room.”

  His response neatly dodged the question. Jackie decided to move past and circle back later.

  “Could I see her bedroom? There might be something there that would give us a clue as to why those men showed up or why she went so willingly.”

  “I don’t believe she did go with them willingly. To me it seemed as if she had no choice.”

  “That’s splitting hairs. What I meant was that she didn’t put up a fuss. If someone came after you, would you go so docilely?”

  He got up. “I’ll show you the room.”

  Upstairs, the house was even more devoid of furniture. The absent wife had obviously taken nearly everything. The room at the top of the stairs had nothing in it but dust and empty shelves and a laptop computer on a small table. The next (obviously Curran’s room) had just the bare bones: a double bed, dresser and small square of carpet.

  The daughter’s room at least had a couple of stuffed toys and pictures on the walls, mostly her artwork. But the bed and dresser were brand new.

  Olivia’s room was at the end of the hall next to the bathroom. Curran swung the door back and Jackie pushed past, but stopped, barely through the door.

  What was in front of her was like nothing she’d ever seen, unless it was under the influence of drugs. Every surface but the floor and the wall to her left had been painted by a hand that was childlike but at the same time masterful.“Standing in a clearing in the forest,” Jackie said out loud.

  On the wall opposite the window in the unpainted wall, the forest disappeared into darkness. On the wall in front of her, a clearing extended to a spot where a waterfall gushed over a high cliff. Overhead on the ceiling, a night sky glowed with stars and a crescent moon. Stepping farther into the room, she saw on the wall behind her more forest with the shadowy bulk of mountains rising in the distance. It would take hours of study to appreciate every detail that had been painstakingly painted. The whole effect was quite charming – until you noticed what was under the bushes and behind the trees. Everywhere eyes stared out, big eyes, small ones, and all of them filled with menace. Jackie found the effect profoundly disturbing.

  “Olivia did this?”

  “My daughter helped a bit when she visited, but this is almost all Olivia’s work.”

  “Did she ever sleep?”

  Andrew Curran actually laughed. “Very little. She was especially prone to staying up all night after gigs when she was really wired, but unless she was singing or listening to music, she was up here working. Sometimes she’d do all three at once.”

  The rest of the room was spartan: a mattress on the floor and a lamp on a low table nearby. Jackie went to the closet, where she found five dresses hanging from a rod and shelving stacked with neatly folded underwear, socks, jeans and a few blouses and sweaters.

  “Do you mind?” Jackie asked before starting to go through the clothing to see if anything had been hidden among it.

  “There’s nothing there,” Curran told her as she searched. “I was the one who kept all her clothes in order, otherwise they’d just be scattered around the room.”

  She continued anyway, then asked, “How about under the mattress?”

  “I already looked there. I’ve searched the entire house.”

  “When Olivia arrived here, what did she have with her?”

  “One clean set of clothes besides what she had on, her duffel coat, a toothbrush, and that’s about it.”

  “And all that’s still here?”

  “In the closet, except for the duffel coat. I threw that out because it was pretty ratty. Tuesday night she had on a dress, boots and a sheepskin coat I bought her about a month ago. The coat was thrown from the car as they drove off. I believe it might have been a signal.”

  “What kind of signal?”

  “That she wants me to come and find her.”

  Chapter 5

  The one big sticking point in my relationship with Olivia was her friend Maggie. For some reason, she seemed to hate me from the moment she walked into the Sal.

  A tough woman, you knew immediately that she’d been around the block a few times and trusted nothing and no one. She had blonde hair from a bottle done in a sort of mullet cut, and though around five-five in height, she might have weighed a hundred and ten pounds. Life can knock people around, and she gave every impression of having been knocked around a lot. She would have been considered pretty by some, but that edge was draining away quickly as the years passed. I never saw her in anything but tight jeans, high-heeled boots and a fringed leather jacket.

  Maggie tagged along to the first rehearsal, held in my basement studio. She plopped herself in a corner, sitting there with her arms folded and a scowl plastered on her face. Occasionally she let out a huge sigh and shook her head, until Ronald had enough and told her to wait upstairs. The stomping footsteps overhead as she paced proved even more annoying.

  During a break, Olivia went upstairs, and we could hear raised voices – mostly Maggie’s. Olivia soon came back down looking troubled, and for the rest of the afternoon her work could most kindly be described as distracted.

  When we packed it in (Ronald in deep disgust), my two bandmates split pretty quickly, but I kept Olivia back. “Is everything okay?”

  Her lip trembled as she shook her head. “Maggie is very, very angry with me.”

  “Why?”

  “She just is,” was the evasive answer.

  “You mean she’d rather see you out panhandling for chump change?”

  “I only do that because it’s better than hanging around our room while she’s...”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I shouldn’t be saying anything.”

  Maggie yelled from the top of the stairs, “O, are we going to get out of here sometime before midnight?”

  “I’ll be right along!” Olivia shouted back, then turned to me.“Look, I’ve gotta go.”

  “Will you come back tomorrow?”

  “Ronald said we’re not rehearsing until Sunday afternoon.”

  “I thought we could do some extra work. I play a bit of piano and have a huge CD collection. We can go through it and see if there are any songs that tickle your fancy. That way you’ll be better prepared for our nex
t rehearsal.”

  She looked troubled. “I don’t know if I should. Maggie will be even more upset.”

  “Hell with Maggie! You need a lot more rehearsing if you’re going to be ready for Tuesday night.”

  “I don’t know...”

  “Call me in the morning.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “Does Maggie?”

  “A cell. She knows I’d have no good reason to ask for it.”

  “Will you come tomorrow?” I pressed.

  “I’ll try. I could tell Maggie I’m going down to Union Station to work.”

  ***

  Next morning, when I staggered downstairs around eight to brew a pot of coffee, I found Olivia shivering on my front steps. Thanking my lucky stars that I’d bothered to put on my robe, I hustled her into the kitchen, where I wrapped her in two blankets.

  “How long were you out there?” I asked as I filled the coffee maker.

  She stared down at the table. “I don’t know. Awhile...”

  I ground some beans, and when the coffee was ready, I pressed a mug into her cold hands. “Drink this.”

  Olivia smiled. “Could I have sugar and milk in it?”

  “Right. I forgot about that.”

  She was one of those people who likes coffee with her sugar. I drink mine black and strong, as did Sandra, my ex.

  Without asking, I started cooking breakfast, my regular morning job when I still had a family. Olivia expressed no preference, so she got eggs scrambled the way I like them. Even though she’d claimed not to be hungry, she wolfed down the eggs, four slices of bacon and several pieces of toast. I took the opportunity to shower and dress while she finished.

  When I came back downstairs, I found her, sans blankets, in the living room looking over my shelves of CDs.

  “Does Maggie know you’re here?”

  “She was, um, busy when I left.”

  “Next time you get here early, please ring the bell. I don’t want to find your frozen body on my front steps.”

  I’d meant it jokingly, but Olivia’s expression clearly showed she’d taken me at my word. I’d find later that she often did that.

  We spent the morning listening to tunes I thought would be appropriate for her range and expertise. Her sponge-like memory astonished me. She had each song down note perfect after only a few listenings. The bottom of her range was a low F, and none of the songs seemed to strain her upper limits. In short, she could pretty well sing anything she wanted in almost any key.

  “Have you taken lessons?” I asked as we enjoyed more coffee and some toast towards the end of the morning.

  She shook her head. “I just like to sing.”

  We had to knock it off around noon so I could go out to Oakville to pick up Kate. We’d planned to buy some bedroom furniture for her at IKEA, a place I was beginning to know well since Sandra had torn our family to shreds.

  “You can come early tomorrow before rehearsal to go over these songs again if you’d like.”

  Olivia shrugged noncommittally.

  “It’s really no trouble if you’d like to come early,” I said as I helped her on with her coat, “but ring the doorbell, okay? It’s supposed to be absolutely frigid, and I don’t mind getting up.”

  Twenty-four hours later, I again found her on the steps – this time with Maggie, and it had obviously been her wearing out my doorbell, since her finger was still on it when I opened the door.

  She wasted little time getting in my face. “You have no right to badger Olivia the way you do,” she snarled. “You should just leave her alone!”

  “Look,” I said, trying to keep my own anger in check. “I’m simply offering her a way to get off the street. She likes to sing. She’s good, and don’t you think it’s up to her to decide what she wants to do?”

  So the argument raged back and forth, first on my porch, then in the front hall. Through the whole thing, Olivia just looked on blankly, never asking us to stop shouting, or more importantly, stop discussing her as if she wasn’t even there.

  Finally, I got a word in edgewise, one that Maggie didn’t try to talk over. “What is the big deal about singing in public?”

  The venom in Maggie’s voice was nearly overpowering. “Don’t play games with me! You know goddamn well what Olivia can do with her voice. You just want to use her so she can bring in plenty more customers and save your lazy-ass jobs. Her ability is not going to go unnoticed for long.”

  I hit her with my best shot. “And why is that so important?”

  “Maggie, please,” Olivia finally said.

  Her friend turned with blazing eyes. “I have a stake in this too, you know. I took as big a risk as you.”

  Olivia blanched and looked down at her feet like a scolded child.

  “What are you talking about?” I interjected.

  But the angry woman had made a decision and turned, her hand on the front door knob. “Do what you want, okay? But when the shit hits the fan, just make sure none of it gets on me!”

  With that, she stomped across the porch, down the steps, and hurried off towards Broadview.

  I gently closed the front door and turned. Olivia was still standing there, face blank, head lowered. Tears flowed down her cheeks.

  Putting my arm around her, I asked, “Hey, are you all right?”

  “No, I’m not!” came the answer as she shook off my arm.

  Walking into the living room, she sat on my brand new IKEA chair with her head turned away.

  I left her alone while I brewed a pot of coffee, hoping that the smell might bring her around. When I brought her a mug, she’d turned the chair around to face the wall and was rocking and humming softly.

  She wouldn’t acknowledge my presence, and while I went around the house doing various odds and ends, I continually checked on her. The hours ticked by with no change, and I was getting concerned when she appeared in the kitchen doorway as I was reading the paper.

  “Can I have some water?”

  “Sure,” I said springing to my feet.

  Olivia took the glass without a word and went back to the living room. I waited a moment, then followed.

  The sun had disappeared behind heavy clouds rolling in from the west, leaving the room in near darkness. She was back in the chair still facing the wall, but she wasn’t rocking or humming. I sat on the sofa and waited.

  “I guess I need a place to stay,” she said softly a few minutes later.

  “Why was your friend so angry?”

  “Because she’s right. I’m being foolish.”

  “What’s the ‘big risk’ Maggie was talking about?”

  Olivia turned, but I could barely see her face in the dim light. “I can’t answer that, and you must never ask me again.”

  From her tone, I knew she meant it. So I didn’t ask. I seldom asked her anything after that.

  I realized now that I should have.

  ***

  Word was now getting around town that Olivia wasn’t singing with us any more, but even so, we had a pretty good house at the Sal that evening, enthusiastic and relatively quiet. Dom had invited a sax playing friend from Montreal to sit in, and Simon had been very impressive on tenor, soprano and flute. We all stayed a bit later than normal, listening to old war stories about the ‘60s jazz scene as witnessed by Harry the owner and Franco the bartender.

  Ronald usually cut out as soon as the gig was over, but he stayed around, primarily to crow about his new computer – as if any of the rest of us cared.

  He lived alone, and while he would shack up with the occasional woman, the two passions in his life were the piano and computers. Ronald could make both sing. The few times I’d asked him for help looking up stuff online, I was amazed at how much he knew and how his fingers flew as fast over the computer’s keyboard as they did on the piano’s. I believed that he could find anything that existed in cyberspace with just the stroke of a few keys.

  That night he went on and on about his computer’s great
processing strength, its storage capacity, how he’d “ramped up his access speed” or some such garbage. Everybody else’s eyes glazed over. Didn’t he notice nobody cared about any of that except him?

  Pain-in-the-ass Ronald was the farthest thing from my mind as I drove home along the deserted streets not much before three a.m.

  I share a mutual driveway with my lawyer neighbour, and damned if there wasn’t a car parked between the houses. He probably had another sweet young thing over for the night. It would have been within my rights to pound on his door and make the car’s owner come down and move it, but I decided to just park behind and make her wait in the morning when she wanted to leave. That’s why I entered my house via the front door rather than the back as I usually do.

  There aren’t any street lights directly in front of my house, so the shrubs, a group of scraggly rhododendrons and other evergreens I’d let get the better of me, blocked off almost all light on the porch.

  Tired from the strain of the past three days, fuelled by two scotches I shouldn’t have had, I fumbled with the lock and dropped my keys. Bending to pick them up, I noticed the outline of someone sitting on one of the rattan chairs I hadn’t bothered to put away for the winter.

  “Hello?” I said. “Who’s there?”

  When I got no answer, I walked the eight or so feet to where the chairs were. Maybe it was Olivia, and she’d fallen asleep waiting for me to return.

  Why had I picked this night to come home so late?

  I touched the person’s shoulder gently and got no response.

  “Are you all right?”

  Able to see a little better because my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could tell the person had their head back, resting it against the house. When I shook the shoulder a little harder, the person slipped sideways and slowly toppled out of the chair.

  I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to back away and bend way over to keep from passing out. I didn’t have to be very smart to know that something was horribly wrong.