Use Your Imagination

by Kris Bertin

  She could drop the kids off, unannounced, and I wouldn’t say anything. She could steal from us. She could talk out of turn, or fail to listen when I addressed her. She could take my credit cards, return them later, and I wouldn’t think anything of the list of fifteen, twenty, or thirty purchases that showed up on my statements. She could put a hand on my husband’s leg at the dinner table and leave it there until he became uncomfortable and moved it away. All of it could be forgiven, and explained, and accepted. I absorbed all of it, and let go of any bad feelings that came over me.

  I was helping her.

  And I was good, because I was helping.

  ***

  The Pietres kept coming to me with accusations against Christy. Or the Belangers, as they called them. Things they had seen and heard and which they felt they needed an explanation for. At first, they were cautious with me. They came to us with mundane questions about her that had no answers. They wanted to know why they had installed a second outdoor tap, and then a third, but had no garden hoses. Wanted to know how many cats she had: they had seen at least ten different ones coming and going. Wanted to know about the blankets covering the upstairs windows. Wanted to know why, if they spent so much time indoors, they would leave their front and back doors open like that.

  “Is their house full of flies or what?” Wanda asked.

  If it had ended at that, I wouldn’t have felt anything stronger than annoyance. But it kept going. I heard more about the way she was driving lately, and something about the neighbourhood kids—the Grangers’ son and daughter—and how they were seen hanging out at her place. Probably giving them beer, Wanda guessed, or worse. And, she added, she didn’t like the way she was around the older boy, Ken.

  “Flirting,” she said. “Getting a little too close.”

  I never had an explanation for anything. When it was something insignificant, I would say Is that so or Oh yeah and move on. And when it was something damning, I would say Absolutely not, though I was never in possession of any kind of excuse. I found it offensive that they were prying into her life, and into my relationship with her.

  Finally, it stopped when Wanda and her husband, Teddy, both told me that they had seen Christy at one of the seasonal people’s houses at the end of Long Lake Road. They had been on one of their walks and saw her crouched under a willow tree in the middle of a front lawn that wasn’t hers.

  “She didn’t even try to hide from us,” Wanda said. “She was sitting there, plain as day.”

  “Waved to us,” said Teddy, “and we just kept on our way. God knows what she was up to, but we didn’t want to be accessory to none of it.”

  “For Christ’s sake, she was high, Teddy. She’s a drug abuser.”

  Then Wanda looked at me, as if I would back her up. Her statement was a question.

  By this point, I think, something about Christy’s previous life had been surmised by the neighbourhood, or by those two. I don’t know where it would have come from specifically—if it was a guess or an observation about the way she was—but the most I had ever said was something to the Grangers about bad luck and that was all. I think, maybe, if you were obsessing over her in the way they were, their combination of delusion and surveillance might produce something approaching the truth. Someone with access to criminal or medical records might be able to tell them something like this. Wanda had been a pharmacist, once. Maybe she’d leaned on someone at the grocery store to let her have a look at the computer. Or maybe Christy just reminded her enough of the real addicts she would have seen working there. That was possible, too.

  I didn’t think any of the things the two of them claimed she was doing were unbelievable. I think I accepted them as possible, but right away told myself that even if they were true, it was like the purse, or the way she borrowed my things. She was screwed up in some fundamental way and it wasn’t her fault. It was our fault for failing to support her and for not knowing that she wasn’t a bad person. But I didn’t know how to convey this to them, and the way they saw her made me sick.

  “Maybe she is a drug addict, you ever think of that?” I said. “You ever think that maybe she needed help, and you left her there?”

  “She was probably after their sound system,” Teddy said. “They have a good new stereo in their living room, there.”

  “Shut up,” I told him, and then turned to her, “get away from me. Please. Both of you are being very rude right now.”

  “Us?” Wanda said. “Think about her!”

  But Teddy already had Wanda by the arm and was leading her away. As if I had been contaminated by Christy, and was now contagious. Like I was all of a sudden dangerous, and might attack them. Like I might have a dirty needle with a drop of her blood in the tip that I might stick them with. He looked over his shoulder at me one final time, like I was lost to him.

  I didn’t mention any of their indictments to Christy. I felt like to do so would jeopardize our friendship, and give credence to their theories. I felt like I’d even be endorsing their view of things if I did. But I do remember, not long after my confrontation with the Pietres, sitting with Christy up at her house, in her cedar-chip yard, looking down the cliffside at the highway, drinking wine. Her house had changed by then, and there were a dozen cats milling about that had been born of a few strays, the place was a mess, still unfinished and always with something broken or in the middle of being fixed by Dan, when he happened to be there.

  I remember looking at her and feeling so sad at the idea that this woman had overcome so much, and was trying so hard to have an ordinary life, only to be reviled by people around her who made no effort to understand.

  When I started to weep, Christy noticed right away and reached over.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, then looked at her beautiful face.

  She hugged me from her lawn chair and I kissed her arm, trying not to cry.

  “You can tell me,” she said. “We’re sisters. You can tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you.”

  And I remember being unable to speak so I just nodded against her, and held her close, feeling like we really were sisters, and that I was willing to do anything to protect her.

  ***

  Later on, somehow, her family found some low-level acceptance within the community. I can’t take all the credit, but I know I deserve some.

  People said hello to her. Her husband was asked to help with male communal duties, like landscaping the shared beach, or taking turns scouring the inside of the community well with a high-pressure hose and a case of beer. When the Cambies gave out their yearly pickles and preserves, some of it went to them. The Pietres, perhaps sensing this shift, even fell silent and ceased their commentary of her activities, even to their neighbours. The Grangers even invited her and Dan, through me, to a weekend get-together at their “main house,” the biggest, oldest one on their plot, the one with columns like an old plantation home. It was a dressed-up event, so all the men wore ties or at least blazers, and the women wore dresses or skirts with modest blouses. I was dreading what Christy would show up looking like, and even came to understand that this might’ve been why she was invited. When Christy wasn’t there yet, Connie Granger said to me:

  “We’re all looking forward to seeing Christy at dinner.”

  Which was the worst thing about these people. It was a gesture that Christy had been asked to attend, but there was also an expectation of failure on her part. If things went well, then the Grangers would seem affable and welcoming for having brought someone like Christy into their world. If she acted as they expected her to—and was rude or unmannered—then they would be the victims of hers, and would get to act appropriately offended by the whole matter. Their cruelty had an escape hatch from which they could parachute into the clear blue sky of kindness. I found it reprehensible, but also knew that this wasn’t like talking to Wanda. Saying an
ything would make me seem completely crazy.

  But Christy, perhaps sensing that this was a chance to reorder things, performed successfully. She wore a dress and Dan wore a tie, and the two of them held conversation like I had never seen them do. Dan, who was only ever quiet and bumbling, seemed to have turned on some charm I didn’t know he possessed, and did his best to include Christy in his stories. I assumed I had never seen any of it because of the draining hours worked at the ER, but he was also drinking quite a lot. They brought a bottle of wine and a bottle of Scotch, and the Scotch was halfway gone before dessert, most of it portioned neatly into Dan’s glass. Of course, it didn’t matter how well they did, I spent the entire time worrying she’d slip up and the Grangers would get what they wanted. I couldn’t relax.

  I had expected worse, because I had begun to hear about marital problems between her and Dan. She told me he was staying out after his shifts at the hospital and not seeing her or the girls for days. That he was drinking and gambling and in with a raucous group of young residents. But it was during times like this, I decided, that people pull together and do each other favours, reach compromises, and try again. That Dan was clean shaven and well dressed and amicable seemed to confirm that he was at least trying to make amends.

  Gorman and I had nearly split up before, years ago, when we were in our early forties and we were reconsidering what we had before it was too late and we were locked in. When I think about it now, it seems so silly, but at the time we were staying up nights, fighting or not talking, and it really almost happened. When I last mentioned it to Gorman, a little while ago, he said We were just a couple of kids back then.

  So when she came to me saying they were having problems, I decided it must be the same sort of thing we had gone through. It seemed clear to me that Dan, who I didn’t really know at all, was likely the best thing that had ever happened to her. He provided for her and their children, including the one that wasn’t his, gave her a place to live, and allowed for her to stay at home. I encouraged her to seek out couples counselling, and I told her about our problems from when we were her age. I told her it was all going to be okay. I told her it was okay to be mad, and to fight, but that making a drastic decision was the worst thing that could be done.

  “This is your life,” I told her. “You have to be so, so careful with it.”

  And, for the first time, I saw that something I said had an effect on her.

  She nodded, touched my arm.

  “You’re right. God, are you right.”

  My advice was offered up without any real information about what was going on in their house. All I had to go on were the vague statements she’d made about him, the kinds of things that, if you overheard them from a stranger, you’d make sure to pretend that you hadn’t heard them at all. At different times, and with varying degrees of emphasis, she said things like:

  You don’t know what it’s like to be with him

  and

  He’s a sick person—sick in the head

  and

  He hurts us, every day.

  But when I’d ask her to elaborate on what any of this meant, she would cross her legs, take a drag of her cigarette, and say she didn’t want to talk about it. I told her that if we’re talking about abuse or neglect or something even worse, then of course staying with him wasn’t an option, but she was quick to say that it wasn’t anything like that. In truth, I was feeling frustrated by her again. I didn’t know what she wanted. Practical advice held no value to her, nor did telling her about any of my experiences. She wanted to complain, but also never wanted to go into detail about anything either.

  I wasn’t willing to admit it at the time, but I knew and my husband knew that these kinds of things are the clearest signs that someone is lying to you.

  ***

  Gorman tolerated her and me for as long as he could.

  When she said they were finally getting divorced and there was a period of high tension and constant drama, he was still on board with her story. Her newest revelation was that Dan was a gambling addict, and that he was in over his head, doing drugs to stay awake for his work in the emergency room, then staying out all night, driving hours to play cards at private games all over the place. That he was going crazy because he owed money all over and that in one of these manic episodes he had hit her, and came close to going after the kids too. I had told my husband about her past by then, and so he accepted this story too. When we saw police lights up on the hill one night, he even said, with a worried look on his face:

  “Who knows what he’d do to her.”

  And then, a minute later:

  “I thought something like this would happen. The minute I saw him.”

  The story about Dan somehow made everything else more believable. From the moment he heard her story, Gorman always wondered how a toothless, pregnant, crack-addicted ex-prostitute in rehab had snagged herself a doctor. And even though I’d wondered something like that myself, I chastised him for saying it out loud.

  “Don’t say that, she’s beautiful,” I said. “And she’s an amazing person.”

  “Well,” Gorman said, “you have to assume there’s something equally amazing about him.”

  Being right about this brought him over to her side, briefly and forcefully.

  Then, when Christy moved in with us for a short time, without really asking, and started sleeping in the guest room, Dan tried to come to our house to get her. But Gorman, all hundred and forty pounds of him, marched on bowed legs to the end of the driveway to meet the huge man and turn him away. I remember watching from the basement window and thinking that Christy’s husband was going to kill mine.

  “Do I need to call the police?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. Then she thought on it, and added:

  “He wouldn’t hit a man.”

  When Gorman came back in, he came back without his tolerance for her, or her problems, or my part in it. I felt like some lingering part of him left over from his youth had been depleted.

  When the next bit of drama happened, he was no longer interested. It was the time she left her kids with us—saying she was going to be back in a few hours—and didn’t come back, that he couldn’t take it anymore.

  At hour seven, in between coughing fits, he asked me:

  “Where can I go to find her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she have somewhere specific she had to go today?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “Don’t these kids have grandparents? On either side?”

  Then he’d go off somewhere to occupy himself for another hour, and come back to ask the same questions and add a few more to the list, telling me to try her cellphone, or to call Dan (though she said by then that she’d had a restraining order against him). It was when I was cooking the girls a very late spaghetti dinner that he exploded.

  “Does she think she can dump these kids here whenever she fucking wants?”

  “Gorman,” I said.

  The twins were in the kitchen, sitting on the floor. Folding and playing with tinfoil, making jewellery out of it. They had stopped, and were staring at us.

  “No, this is completely unacceptable. I’ve had enough of this.”

  “Enough of what?” I asked.

  “Enough of her treating you like shit. I’m done with it.”

  Gorman was healthy enough despite his lung problems, but he was seventy-one by then. This kind of excitement took a lot of energy from him, from what had seemed like an endless supply only a few years earlier. His face grew red and he trembled, holding the back of the chair. He wanted to call social services, or the cops. He wanted, if and when she ever came back, to have her thrown out. When he started complaining about her character, he was soon saying all the same things the Pietres had been saying. When I pointed this out to him, he grabbed my arm and roared at me,
right into my face, at a volume I hadn’t heard since he had hair and I was completely without wrinkles:

  “Don’t you dare compare me to those morons.”

  And, after taking a moment to pull away from him and recover, I managed to reply:

  “You agree with those morons, Gorman.”

  He came back at me immediately, quieter now, but with some force and a look of total disgust that hurt to see:

  “If all this is apparent to people as stupid as them, what does that say about you?”

  Later, after a great silence had come on, after he had fed the kids the meal I prepared for them with a clenched jaw and flaring nostrils, and after I had stopped crying and we were both in separate rooms, I got over it. I knew he himself had a difficult childhood in some hellish little town, and abhorred the mistreatment of children. This was his natural inclination. During our fight, whenever I had said anything in Christy’s defense, he had come back with Think about them instead and pointed at the girls.

  She eventually came home, at around six in the morning, wearing the same thing she left in, a jean jacket and skirt, looking exhausted or drunk herself, dust or dirt on her back, like she’d been rolling around on the ground. I didn’t yell or scream at her, didn’t say much of anything. I didn’t even ask where she’d been and she didn’t offer to explain it, though she did say, while looking past my own anguish:

  Sorry for putting you in a pinch.

  I told her how the kids spent their day, what we fed them, and when they went to bed. Our eyes couldn’t meet. What I wanted to say was You should apologize to them, not me. But in fact, only the twins needed an apology. They had asked me when she was coming back more than anyone, and had watched out the window for hours. Not Coady, though.

  For Coady, every one of these questions about her mother’s return had one response, which was Who cares? She would shake her head at the other two, trying her best to focus on whatever movie she was watching, or what VHS she was going to watch, running her fingers over the characters on the soft white plastic of the box cover. For Coady, when she looked up it was because she heard a noise, and the look on her face wasn’t anticipation but panic, like something was pawing at the window, trying to get in.