THEORY OF EVERYTHING
For a month after Charlene’s death, Johnny is stupid with grief. His doctor prescribes something strong but he doesn’t use it, he needs to suffer. So, his nights are spent keening, his days driving the country roads from customer to customer, stopping in small, unlikely towns, where he sits in the coffee shops and dully watches the pattering of the locals. He makes his rounds: Île des Chênes, St. Agathe, Landmark, St. Malo, Grunthal. He finds that he likes to watch the waitresses. They bring to their work a lilt that somehow lifts Johnny from the hell he is living.
He begins to find his regulars; like Holly, in Morris, a single mother of three, who is vicious with her gum and sits with Johnny at her breaks and sometimes touches his hands. He tells Holly about Charlene and Loraine and the baby. He does not want to sleep with Holly, though he finds her toughness attractive. It is his grief that has made him sexually immobile. He, of course, blames himself for Charlene’s death and he is also aware of those in and around Lesser who whisper that he or Loraine were involved in that awful fire.
He dreams of fire. It burns at the edges of his sleep and even awake he imagines Charlene’s clothes catching fire, her body a log that roasts slowly from the outside in, though he knows, having spoken with the fire inspector, that a house-fire is not hot enough to destroy a body. Charlene’s body was found, charred and unrecognizable, yes, but the shape was there; that is how the inspector put it. Johnny had pushed, wanting to know, and after some hesitation, the man, pink eyelids squeezed over pale eyes, said that a person who dies in a fire, their body remains intact; bones, inner organs, and such. Johnny winced. Swallowed. He recalled Charlene’s tic above her left eye, and again, with compassion this time, the movement of her throat as they made love. These days, at night, he goes to sleep in fear, knowing he will discover Charlene’s eyes following him, narrowing, opening, narrowing again.
It is stunning to remember her, especially the smell of her hair after a day at the bank, the scent of money-dust, similar to twine and bales. He liked Charlene’s smell. Every woman gives off a particular scent and Johnny knows which ones he likes. He shies from the hint of tin, is attracted to women who radiate a faint moisture, that of water sprinkled onto dust. And that is all he has left of Charlene. Perhaps that is where the pain comes from. Her death might not be so final if he had something left of her: pictures, shoes, make-up. Something to touch, to smell and remember, something to sort through and pack up, put away: Charlene in boxes, ready for the thrift shop. Johnny feels the absence of something to heave out the window. His grief, of course, is mostly for himself, for what he is now missing. He recalls wanting her dead sometimes, a sort of adolescent wish for a new life. But now, Johnny rues those old dreams. He finds solace nowhere.
And then, two days before Christmas, he visits Loraine. Loraine was not at the funeral, in fact, Johnny, who hasn’t worked much in the past month, has not seen her for six weeks. When he arrives on a Sunday morning, she is in her housecoat and slippers. She is bigger now, when she walks she seems to lean backwards. Johnny is amazed at her fleshiness. They hold each other just inside the door. They do not speak, just fold into each other’s bodies, and Johnny thinks that he needn’t ever say another word again; nor move, nor eat, nor drink.
Loraine’s size reminds him, eerily, of Charlene, especially her width. Loraine still has the light touch he remembers, her fingers press his back, skitter across the hairiness of his forearms. She is crying. Her body shakes. Johnny will not cry. He cried one night in his sister’s basement, early in the evening when he heard Carol and Roy talking upstairs. Actually, they were arguing intensely in whispers and this made Johnny cry.
He pats Loraine’s back and stares past her head out the window towards the road and the snow-covered fields and he sees that life out here is desolate, empty. God, floating above this land, must laugh at a house like this, flanked by two barns; three grey spots stubbed into the snow. The world could go on and on and then suddenly end.
There is nothing else, just Johnny and Loraine, and the mixing spoons sticking out of the jar, and the worn covers on the kitchen chairs, speckled green, and Chris moving upstairs, his footsteps heavy and restless, and the tap dripping and Loraine’s belly, the wet spot on his shirt, and the lust seeping to his crotch and the discomfort there. Nothing else. No one else.
Just this.
The Christmas tree is up. Loraine holds Johnny’s hand and guides him to the living room. She leaves him and circles the tree, her hand reaching out to brush baubles, angels. “It’s a blue spruce,” she says. “This new guy in town, Michael Barry, brought it by. He was with Avi Heath. She was friends with Charlene. They brought it last Saturday. I didn’t know what to say. I felt they were taunting me but they weren’t.”
Loraine pronounces the silent e in that last word, were-ent; it’s like that man who used to work at the Solo store in Lesser and counted out the change: sixtee-en, seventee-en. Johnny finds it endearing, as if Loraine were blending into this town.
He watches her slide around the tree. He wants to pull her close and yank the belt on her housecoat, see what’s underneath. Her arms are lifting and dropping, her fingers doodle the air. Weakness and passion enfold him. He gapes.
“Actually,” Loraine continues, still dealing with Michael and Avi, “it was nice to see someone. I’m lost out here. I get nothing except the little tidbits from Chris and he offers so little. He’s ugly again these days.” She stops and picks at some tangled tinsel. Her hair is pulled back and dirty. She’s still full of sleep. “You all right?” she asks.
Johnny pauses, fumbles for a cigarette, then thinks better of it. “It’s like I’m guilty. I can feel it. Everybody thinks I wanted Charlene dead. But, I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t,” Loraine says. She appears distracted, stooping to pluck a few dry needles from the rug, standing again and running her hands over her housecoat. “Do you want coffee?” she asks.
“Sure.”
They sit and find they have little to say. The movements of Chris reach them from upstairs and both of them take comfort in this.
“How is he?” Johnny asks.
“You see him, don’t you? He says he works at the centre.”
“Yeah, but how are you two doing?”
“We talk about the baby sometimes and then he gets a little excited. Mostly he’s raging.”
“You gonna have anybody with you, like at the birth?”
“My sister, maybe. But, she’s out on the other side of Winnipeg and it’d be tough to get to the Victoria on time. I labour fast. Chris was three hours.”
“How ’bout me?” Johnny says this and his tongue touches his lower lip.
“You’re serious.” Loraine may laugh. “You’d never do it.”
“Would so.”
“You don’t know anything about labour, birth, breathing.”
“I could learn.”
“But what would people think? Isn’t that why you haven’t been around? Appearances? Johnny, the rebel, gone careful. Funny. People’d think for sure then we killed Charlene. Torched her house so we could be together.”
Johnny is drawing a line across the table with a wet teaspoon. Loraine is lovely like this. She is the little round chestnut he used to hold in his hand as a boy. The kind of nut that squirted from between the jaws of the cracker. Split it though and it was great to taste. Meaty, a little dry. He wants to crack her now.
“Maybe you did,” he says. “Burn the house down.”
Loraine stares. Her knuckles are white.
“You were there that night,” Johnny whispers.
“Aw, screw you, Johnny. Right. I took gasoline, dumped it all over the house, and lit it. Poof. Wonderful to see Charlene burn.”
Johnny’s grinning. He can see that Loraine wants to hit him. The tendons in her forearms are jumping.
“You didn’t deserve her,” she says finally. “You don’t deserve me.” Her voice slows and then her anger drops away. “You tal
ked to her? That night? Jesus, Johnny, I’m sorry.”
Chris comes into the kitchen then, says hi to Johnny, and pokes his head in the fridge. From the back, Johnny thinks he could pass for Loraine before she was pregnant. His shoulders angle like his mother’s, his neck, when exposed, appears frail and ropy. The boy grunts something at no one and walks out of the room, cheese and bread in hand. Loraine is looking at her nails, nibbling a little finger. She’s calmer now, understanding Johnny’s need for provocation. Johnny, though, figures that he and Loraine are sinners, they have skidded into the slough together, and if what he says now is bad, the fact is Charlene in some way needs to be redeemed.
“Well, of course, you didn’t do it, Loraine,” he says. “It just probably crossed your mind. I mean, her death is such an easy way out. And then you being there, and me calling and hearing her drunk, fully drunk, all of it adds up to a good-sized push.”
“Oh, stop it, Johnny, stop trying to sound so intelligent.”
“The police came to see me,” Johnny says. “A Constable Boucler. You’ve met him. Him and this woman. Rose. That was it, Constable Rose. They sat in my office and talked.”
Loraine is alert now, her eyes wider. “Why?” she asks.
“A formality. Wanted to know where I was that night. Did Charlene drink. Was she depressed. Suicidal. I told them that only my father was suicidal. They didn’t find that humorous.”
“You answered them?”
“Why not? Charlene was dead. You see, everything I do these days is for her. I figure if it’ll help lift her up, then fine. They never asked about you. Don’t even know you were there.”
“So what. Go ahead, tell them.”
Johnny thinks that Charlene’s death was a devious last attempt to separate him and Loraine. It could work. They could lean into each other and slap away until there was nothing left. Johnny doesn’t want that. He says, “What’s going to happen to us? We gonna fight? Make love?”
Loraine’s eyes are red from too much sleep. She rubs them and says, “You think this is funny.”
“I don’t think it’s funny. I’m hurting. Everything’s crazy. Sometimes I’m driving down the highway, and it wouldn’t matter if I rolled the car or not.”
“Well, I’m not going to lay you back down in my bed just like that,” Loraine says. “Throw you a feast. Life’s too easy for you.”
Johnny lights a cigarette now. Loraine slides him an ashtray. He catches her fingers before she can pull away, holds on tight. “I was thinking about the baby, about how it’s mine too.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” Johnny sucks on his cigarette and pinches it between thumb and forefinger. He isn’t sure what he’s getting at, if he wants to scare Loraine or warn her, or just say he needs her. “You read about all these fights to abort babies, or give ’em up for adoption. One wants to, one doesn’t.”
“I’m doing neither,” Loraine says.
“Yes, I know.”
“So, what is it you want?”
“You,” Johnny says. “The baby. I want a life in a house, with someone I love. I want to wake up beside you, feel your heat, then get up and bring you the baby and listen to the baby feed. In a way, I loved Charlene. I see that now. I’ve done some bad things. I don’t want to do them any more. I want to love you.”
“And eventually kill me?”
Johnny can see that Loraine doesn’t plan to say this, because her chin quivers and she gropes at and strokes his wrists, fiercely, as if they were smudged and dirty and she were cleaning them. He knows, with a bone-deep knowledge, that he has one more chance, and Loraine Wallace is that chance. It’s like he’s been underwater this past month and now, seeing Loraine, he has finally surfaced and he’s taking big gulps of air.
“I’m having a Christmas dinner,” she says. “On Boxing Day. Chris and Melody, Avi and Michael. You. If you want.”
“Avi and Michael again? What, you rubbing shoulders with smart people all of a sudden? Weren’t they Charlene’s friends?”
“Avi’s in the book club, but I didn’t think they were great friends. It’s true, Michael seemed more willing. ‘Love to come,’ he said. Avi just nodded, but she didn’t say no.”
“I don’t know,” Johnny says. “He’s a professor of something and she’s a psychologist of something and what are they doing hanging around Lesser? They’ll just stare at me and call me names.”
“They’re too sophisticated,” Loraine says. She stands and leans across the table and kisses Johnny on the jaw. Her stomach touches the table-top and Johnny can smell her breath; coffee. Her gown slips open and he can see her breasts, not the nipple and everything but the tops, the smooth slant to the edge of the nipple. Everything’s a little bigger. Rounder. Full of promise. He wants to leap at Loraine but instead watches her settle back, pull her belt tighter and smirk at him. A tingling warmth creeps across his shoulders.
“A gift,” he says. “You’re a gift.”
And then he says, his mind flapping, his eyes centred on the oval of Loraine’s face, “I remember the day Charlene died, and it was strange and frightening, but good too. For some reason I thought of those little blonde hairs you have on the tops of your big toes. Fine and fair. You know what they do to me. Well, anyways, I thought of them and I wanted to fuck you, Loraine. Fuck you.”
The morning after the blizzard when all the kids who’d spent the night at the centre were safely picked up or delivered home, Johnny drove his Ninety-eight Olds down the 312 and followed the grader, driven by Hank Birton, along the three-mile road out to his farm. Hank’s job was to clear the mile roads around Lesser, and Johnny convinced him to do his road first. Johnny had tried to phone Charlene that morning but the line was dead. It had happened all over Southern Manitoba. People were locked in, power and telephone lines were down, snowmobiles whined down Main Street.
Out on the three-mile road, Hank kept a steady pace. Johnny followed and marvelled at the blank page all around. Without Hank chugging before him Johnny could have imagined a new world, a form of rapture even, where everyone else was taken and he was left. Johnny wondered about the rapture sometimes, when it would happen, and where he’d be. It would be best, he thought, if he were dressed for work, or at home, reading the Bible. He didn’t want to be caught napping, or worst of all, lying naked with Loraine Wallace. He knew Loraine wasn’t a Christian, not in the right sense, and it confused him sometimes to think about him being taken and her left. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, because really Loraine was a pretty good person. Charlene too. She’d be left. She had nothing but scorn for God. Johnny’s God, anyway.
Hank stopped the grader, dismounted, walked over to the car and climbed in. Together, Hank and Johnny smoked cigarettes, shared coffee from Hank’s thermos, and talked about the storm.
“I was in Winnipeg,” Hank said. “At a hockey game. Barely made it home and all hell broke loose. Lost my dog. Pearl. Couldn’t find her last night and she didn’t come in this morning.” He pointed at a rabbit flashing across the snow. “Saw a deer this morning. She was outside the door to my garage. I considered getting my gun, then thought better of it. In a flash, she lifted her head and was gone. White rear bouncing.” His hand waves across the cab and back to his thermos.
“Deer are everywhere,” Johnny said. “I’ve got one that feeds by the wooden granary. Like a drive-thru. Sometimes he brings his friends.”
“This new guy,” Hank said. “Michael Barry. Word has it he hunts. Fishes too.”
“Really?” Johnny said. “I thought he was a religion professor.”
“Physics. Anyway, you’re religious and you hunt.”
“Don’t like it much though, and it’s just that people into books and things, I mean, I didn’t imagine him ripping bullets into animal flesh.”
“All types,” Hank said. He belched softly and screwed the cap on his thermos. “A witch’s cunt out there,” he said, and heaved himself from the car.
Johnny watched him settle back into the
cab, relieved to be moving again. He was worried about Charlene, what state he’d find her in. She’d sounded too careful on the phone, for sure drunk, and beneath that false calm she was hazy and blubbering.
In the distance the wind-break of poplars lining Johnny’s yard appeared. Hank was picking up speed now, settling into a rhythm. The house couldn’t be seen from here, you had to turn onto the driveway.
Passing the driveway the grader’s blade caught something, faltered, and then continued, pulling from the drifts the rear end of Johnny’s half-ton. The grader chugged and groaned, ripping the box off the truck before Hank understood what was happening. Johnny climbed out of the car and walked over to his half-ton.
He was thinking about his truck but he was also trying to make sense of this. He looked over at the house and saw the big elm, which stood behind the house. This is the wrong yard, the wrong farm, Johnny thought. We’ve gone too far.
Then he said, “Where’s my house?” His eyes caught sight of the blackened skeleton of his home emerging from the snow and he said, “Charlene.” He said her name softly but insistently, as if calling her to come see something important. Shocked, he floundered to the house.
Hank, following, had to pull Johnny, hands blackened, his face ugly with confusion, from the mess.
“Where is she?” Johnny said. He pushed at Hank. He pushed again so that the man almost fell. Johnny moved away, circled the house, and waded to the machine shed. Called out to Charlene. Then the granaries. Nothing. No one.
He ran back to the remains of the house and pulled up some half-burned planks. “She’s dead,” he said as he scraped at the corner where the kitchen had been. “Look,” he cried, “a spoon,” and he held it up for Hank to see. He put it in his pocket and rummaged about some more. Hank was standing behind him, calling his name, kicking at the timbers, pleading with him to stop.
A Year of Lesser Page 11
