If Clara

by Martha Baillie

  Julia

  ‘Please, Maurice.’

  ‘She’s dead and it’s my fault.’

  ‘It is not your fault.’

  ‘Picture this carefully, Julia. The sky is blue and smooth. One field ends, next comes a width of woods, a second field slides slowly beneath us, and we pass above a country road, a row of houses, a restaurant, a gas station, the next field is bordered by maples that are brilliant yellow. I turned to look at Bruce but his head was bent. He was gazing at something below. The next field dipped, the water wasn’t wide, a ribbon of darkness gone, and more trees climbed the rising slope, and next came a fenced area with horses. No, there must have been more before the horses, more fields and a few more roads. But the horses were below us when the engine cut out. I aimed for the nearest field without animals, and large enough. What Bruce was thinking, I don’t know. I didn’t turn to look at his face. Through the muffle of my helmet I heard him shout something, but I didn’t answer. It was taking all my concentration to get us down. At the end of the field stood a bungalow, and to the left of that a barn, and because of the long, narrow shape of the field, woods on one side, a slope tumbling into marsh on the other, I had no choice but to aim for the bungalow, hoping we’d stop in time. I was quite sure we would. It was a long field. The bungalow had a picture window. Our wheels were maybe ten feet off the ground and the window was growing larger. We touched down with a jolt, not half so bad as I’d expected. I slowed us, braking as hard as I dared, while the bungalow window came closer and closer, and a woman inside got up from her chair. She walked stiffly toward us, using a cane to improve her balance. Tall and slender, she wore a pale green sweater over brown pants and her white hair hung to her shoulders. She was separated from us by the glass of the window. A black hairband held her white hair back from her bony face. As we rolled toward her, she advanced toward us. She now stood so close to the glass that she could have stuck out her tongue and licked it if she’d wanted to. Our wheels stopped moving, right at the edge of her flowerbed. She was staring at our winged machine, and the next minute she was gone. I unstrapped myself, clambered out, and ran. The front door was unlocked. She’d landed on her side on the broadloom, missing the coffee table and its sharp corner. She’d not bled, and was breathing with her eyes closed, the pale green wool of her sweater moving up, then down, then up again the smallest bit as I kneeled and spoke to her. I couldn’t find any pulse in her wrist but I was maybe not pressing in the right spot. By then Bruce was crouching beside me, talking into his cellphone. Yes, an older woman, likely in her eighties, yes, breathing but non-responsive, no, we hadn’t moved her. We sat on the floor, alongside her, waiting for the ambulance. She had a name, of course. In her purse there were cards that named her, but I didn’t go looking and neither did Bruce. We sat cross-legged on the floor. I kept expecting Bruce to say something revelatory, to make the perfect remark, not that I wanted him to, but in any case he failed to speak. He did not say, “Christ, what a fucking mess,” or “Oh God, look what we’ve done, she mustn’t die, she can’t, please don’t let her die, we didn’t mean any harm.” Nothing, not one word from Bruce’s mouth. We knew where we were. We were at number 3477, Concession Road Nine, Dilson. Thanks to the GPS in Bruce’s phone, we were not in a nameless house in a nameless field, and the ambulance would soon arrive, already it was racing along the highway, siren wailing. I glanced out the window at the ultralight, which was parked like a giant insect at the edge of her garden. Then I looked down at the soft sweater spread over her chest and her small belly. It was keeping her warm. But the sweater was no longer moving. I lowered my ear and I placed my hand on her chest. Not a whisper of air. I could detect no air entering or leaving her lungs. In the few seconds that my gaze had left her and wandered out the window, her heart had stopped beating and pumping. Tears were sliding down Bruce’s pale cheeks. Mute, he stared at me. “Oh, God, oh, God,” I kept repeating.’

  ‘Oh, Maurice,’ I murmured, and placed my hand on his. In all the years we’d been friends, I’d never touched his hand. Short hairs grew from his knuckles. His fingers had a fleshy density. His fingers were thicker than I expected and his skin very soft.

  ‘Tell me a bit more. The ambulance arrived? The police were called?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There will be a coroner’s report.’

  ‘You’re not – ? I mean, they’re not holding you responsible?’

  ‘No. We called the ambulance the moment we found her, we touched nothing in her house, her purse was right there, all her money and cards intact, and the ultralight wouldn’t start, had to be towed to the nearest airfield. No, no, in the eyes of the law I am innocent. That doesn’t make me innocent. I’ve led a frivolous life, Julia.’

  ‘Not entirely frivolous.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Maurice, you have to stop.’

  ‘This is going to take me a while to figure out – my involvement. She lived alone. Her name is Elsa Burns. She was eightythree. She has two daughters. One lives in Vancouver, the other in Toronto. I’ve spoken with the Toronto daughter.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I asked the police to tell any next of kin that I’d like to be in touch, and would they please offer my contact information. Fiona Burns called me. She visited her mother most weekends. She’s proposed we meet. She wants to know more. I’m the last person, or rather Bruce and I are the last two people, to have seen her mother alive. She sounded surprisingly calm, Fiona Burns did, not exactly severe, but very precise. We’re to meet tomorrow.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Absolutely. Will you go in my place? No, I don’t mean that.’

  ‘And Bruce?’

  ‘He may or may not come. He’s gone silent.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘I’m giving him a few more days, then he’s going to see a therapist.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘No discussion. I get that he doesn’t want to talk to me. But he has to talk.’

  ‘He won’t talk to you, but he’ll take your advice?’

  ‘How should I know? I know nothing.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Maurice.’

  ‘This is not what I expected, the way he’s reacting.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘You are.’

  Daisy

  Oliver Bodinar, Clara Hodgkins, and I have signed a contract in triplicate. A copy for Oliver, one for Clara, and I in my role as Homsi get to keep one. Three signed documents declare that a novel titled Don’t Get Me Wrong will be released ten months from now by Gimbal Books.

  ‘The time frame is crazy. But anyone publishing books these days is certifiably insane, so why not get F. H. Homsi’s masterpiece out there before one of us wakes up and tears the thing to pieces? It will win prizes, it will be translated into thirty languages, and Gimbal Books will get some longoverdue recognition for taking risks and delivering excellence. By some miracle, F. H. Homsi will be allowed to be F. H. Homsi, a reclusive writer who refuses to be interviewed or to attend award ceremonies. Don’t Get Me Wrong is going to blow people’s minds.’

  Oliver wants to start editing tomorrow.

  ‘She’s not about to break the contract, is she? Not showing any signs? We do all the fine-tuning, copy-editing, design, promotion, then she decides to block the book from coming out?’

  ‘No,’ I assured him. ‘She’s arrived at each of our meetings on time. She trusts F. H. Homsi, and, most importantly, she wants Kamar to be known, to be appreciated, which can’t happen unless the book comes out.’

  Oliver shook a few pieces of candy-coated chewing gum into the palm of his hand, popped them in his mouth, and moved his jaw up and down with such deliberate slowness that I glanced at my watch to see at what speed the hands were moving, but Oliver’s jaw had not taken control of time, not according to my watch. We were driving, or rather he was, while I watched him chew. We went over another speed bump and I tried to ident
ify which parts of the car were rattling the loudest. Back left door and something underneath us.

  ‘Do you ever chew gum when you’re not driving?’

  ‘No,’ he claimed. ‘Never.’

  I adjusted the position of my leg. I wriggled my toes to verify that they would still wriggle upon request. Will Clara wriggle out of sight or worse, right when the book comes out? My toes offered me no answer. I did not want to dwell on the many possible ways that Clara might undermine her book, or that Oliver and I might do so for her. I did not want to think about the rage that would be aimed at me, when F. H. Homsi and I were discovered, as we were sure to be. I pictured my small, hard-won career going up in flames and the silence that would follow, the air full of ash. Soon I would be F. H. Homsi, whose work would outlive their outrage. To distract myself, I glanced out the window. Fine grains of snow were riding currents of air. The moment each grain touched the ground, it melted.

  A hot bath relaxes the muscles. ‘Your progress is excellent,’ the physiotherapist tells me. I, however, am not convinced. I know how far there is to go, months and months of exercises, and still I won’t be able to walk half as well or as far as before. Fact. This is a fact. I’m not complaining. I am mourning. I am looking directly at the outcome. Every day my foot descends the wall with the same reluctance. This morning, I listened hard as my food slid down. But nothing came from next door, no sounds from Maurice or Bruce, nothing more about the woman whose death they believe they caused. I listened harder. The wall remained silent. I moved to the middle of the room. I am learning to march in place while balancing on a cushion. First you lift one leg, then the other, without toppling. I can now climb stairs, clutching the banister and alternating which leg leads: left, right, left, right. But when descending, only the right dares support me while the left foot drops through emptiness to the next stair below. Left, left, left is all I can do, coming down. Odd clicks. As the clicks are not painful, I attempt to ignore them. The calf feels wooden. The shape of a knee, my very own, has surfaced through the swelling. Also making itself known: the end of a metal bolt, a knob under skin, which my surgeon tells me I am to welcome into the family.

  Maurice

  I arrived early, found a table, and ordered a mint tea. A red wool coat, Fiona Burns had told me, I was to look for a short blond woman wearing a red wool coat. Still, as I surveyed the room, I hoped to locate a tall woman dressed in a pale green sweater, leaning on a cane, her white hair held back by a hairband, her eyes blue and staring at me – Elsa Burns alive and well.

  The moment Fiona Burns appeared, short, blond, and wearing the coat she’d described, I stood up. She unbuttoned her coat and smiled at me.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet.’

  ‘I am so, I can’t say how…’

  She sat and then I sat. She studied my face.

  ‘I’m not here to make you feel guilty. What I would appreciate knowing is what you remember of my mother during the last minutes of her life.’

  ‘She … she walked up to the window.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘As we were approaching in the ultralight. It’s not exactly a plane, but two seats suspended from wings, with an engine, a steering wheel, and other controls. Your mother got up from her chair and walked toward us. The cloud coverage, the flat light, the angle of the sun – in any case, I could see in and she could see out. We were headed straight for her picture window. She stood on the other side of the glass. Our wheels had touched ground and we were slowing. I knew we wouldn’t crash but I don’t think she knew. Her expression was… On her face there was fear but also delight. Delight makes no sense, but I’m sure I saw it in her eyes, and in the corners of her mouth. A look of delight and disbelief, as if we weren’t real, as if by pressing herself up to the glass she might discover if we actually existed or not. I could feel her examining my face. I wanted to gesture, to smile reassuringly. I wanted to tell her that our wheels would at most damage the outer edge of her garden, that she was safe. But I couldn’t smile. I was too frightened. I hardly dared believe that we’d made it down out of the air. Like your mother, I wasn’t yet sure we existed. Then she vanished. She fell out of sight. Her white, white hair, and her blue, blue eyes, and her pale green sweater, and her brown pants, and her cane – they were gone. As soon as I could unstrap myself I was out of the ultralight and running, and Bruce the same. We found her lying on her side on the broadloom. Luckily the front door was unlocked. The countryside, I thought, a place you needn’t lock your door, not during the day, not when you’re home. Her eyes were closed but she was breathing. She hadn’t hurt her head. She’d missed the corner of the coffee table and had no visible wounds. But her bones, we couldn’t tell about them, so we didn’t move her. She was breathing. We sat on the floor beside her, Bruce with his phone to his ear and the 911 responder on the other end, asking, every few minutes, if we saw any changes. The ambulance was on its way. Then she stopped breathing. A few minutes later the paramedics were there.’

  ‘Thank you. Your statement, the one you gave to the police, was quite complete, but hearing it from you is different. I know now that she wasn’t alone. The moment I came in here and saw you, it all made sense. You have his eyes, his mouth, even the cleft in your chin belongs to him, and the shape of your nose. It’s very unsettling. It wasn’t you she saw through the window, sweeping down in your plane.’

  Julia

  No response to my emails – I don’t see this as cause for panic. So many explanations are possible. Days go by without her leaving her apartment. A trip to the library to check for emails takes an effort of will, and the physical energy required to walk there and back, but mostly the strain of pushing her fears aside. ‘We are very lucky,’ I tell Alice, ‘lucky that Clara takes her medications, that she can live more or less successfully on her own, eating who knows what, and washing her clothes, or not, figuring out a form of waterless hygiene of her own invention.’

  Does she plug in the vacuum she asked me to buy for her, and make use of it? I warn her that her landlord might not be pleased, were he to drop by and discover how much dust she lets accumulate. What I consider a warning she calls a threat. ‘It could be so much worse,’ I tell Alice. ‘Clara’s frugal, and unlikely to be taken advantage of by some stranger posing as a friend. She trusts nobody. Still, she did visit you, and since her trip to St. Rita’s and her happy encounter with Caesar the parrot, she’s not sent me any messages asking us to back off. No such message. Which means she may visit you again.’ We are lucky.

  ‘Clara’s very determined and brave,’ I tell Alice. But all of this Alice knows already.

  Because she wasn’t answering my emails, I dropped by Clara’s apartment. Knock, knock. In the dimming glow and tranquility of the early evening, I perched on the top step of her front porch and fished for a pen and paper in my purse. ‘Clara,’ I wrote, ‘Dropped by to see how you’re doing. All well with Alice. You okay? Julia.’

  Behind me, her door opened.

  ‘Hi.’

  She stepped out onto the porch, arms wrapped around her chest, chilly or scared or both.

  ‘I was just going to tape this to your door.’

  I handed her my note. She read it. Standing there in front of me, just like that, she read it.

  ‘How am I? Not very well, in fact. I was hoping to see my psychiatrist, to ask for an extra session. Instead, she’s taking time off. So I won’t have even my regular session, and I’ve done something I wish I hadn’t done.’

  ‘Is there someone else you could see? Does your psychiatrist have someone to cover for her? How long will she be away? I’m asking you too many questions. Sorry.’

  ‘She did give me a number, but I don’t want to call a stranger. So long as I’m allowed to keep hiding, hiding helps.’

  ‘I won’t knock again. If you need to, call me?’

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  ‘Whatever it is you’re regretting having done, would it help to tell me?’

  ‘No. I
don’t think so. Thanks.’

  ‘Good luck. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I’ll check in again.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, so long as I stay away from people.’

  ‘Bye, Clara.’

  ‘Bye, Julia.’

  She turned and went back inside, closing and locking the door behind her. I stood in the still and luminous quiet on her top step, then descended to the sidewalk and went on my way.

  Maurice

  Yesterday, after two solid weeks of silence, of napping and non-action, Bruce pulled the Quran from his briefcase and remarked: ‘I’ve never read this. My parents insisted, I refused. I’ll read it now. I think I will.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘And after the Quran, I’ll read the Bible, then the Torah, also the Bhagavad Gita, and by then, who knows?’ He took his reading glasses from his breast pocket and began to read.

  I stood there grinning, dazed as a sunflower.

  ‘You’re speaking, Bruce! You can talk.’

  ‘Yes. And now I’ve got reading to do. See you at lunch?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come for a walk?’

  ‘Maurice.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Leave me alone. I’m reading.’

  ‘Bruce?’

  ‘Yes?’