The Glass Harmonica

by Russell Wangersky

  “We’ll put her in semi-private,” the white-coated man said, “get an MRI and some other diagnostics and see where we go from there.”

  They made her sit in a wheelchair and they took away her shoes, then another person she’d never seen before wheeled her to an elevator. The trip led to a room with three beds, two of them occupied. Edythe saw the room number, 437, and tried to save it up in her head where all the other numbers were. Too many numbers over seventy-five years: they jostled up there in awkward, overlapping quarters.

  “Arnold. You have to get Arnold,” the woman closest to the door said as the nurse wheeled Edythe into the hospital room.

  Edythe didn’t like the way the other woman stared at her, the way she kept her eyes wide open and big and staring straight at her.

  “Find Arnold,” the wizened woman said again, and Edythe could imagine the woman’s hands clawing at her sleeve. Those gnarled, veiny hands, held up high in front of the woman’s chest. Edythe didn’t like looking at them, but had a hard time looking away.

  Edythe didn’t like the smell either. It smelled like soiled babies and old milk, and there was lots of noise. Machines beeping. Loud radiators. Someone calling out from down the hallway, the words muffled, indistinct and clearly urgent.

  The nurse saw Edythe paying attention. “Don’t worry about him, we’ll close that door.” She stopped at the bed next to the window. “You’re here. You’re 437B, if anyone asks.”

  Facing Edythe, an older woman sat as still as a statue, a length of tubing tucked up under her nose like some sort of clear plastic moustache. The woman stared at Edythe, her face impassive.

  “Your roommates are Mrs. Tinden and Mrs. Walters,” the nurse said. “Mrs. Tinden shares the washroom with you, because she can still get around. Mrs. Walters stays put, and if she tries to get up, you can press your button and call the nurses’ station. We don’t want Mrs. Walters trying to get up.” We? Edythe thought.

  The nurse came around to the front of the wheelchair and helped Edythe up and onto the bed. I don’t need any help, Edythe thought as the nurse pressed gently on Edythe’s shoulders, turning her and then lifting her legs up onto the bed. Edythe was looking out the window at the parking lot, at the standing cast-iron radiator, the thick institutional paint. There were tall curtains on rails, curtains that could be pulled around her bed to offer some privacy.

  “I don’t want to be here,” she said to the nurse. “I want to be home.”

  The nurse was pulling thick sheets over Edythe’s legs and didn’t seem to be paying attention.

  I’d leave if I could, Edythe thought. But they had taken her purse, her keys, her shoes and her clothes. She had kept her socks, but they had made her change into a suit of loose blue hospital clothes, too large for her frame.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” the nurse said. “The doctor will be in later to tell you about the schedule for the tests.”

  Mrs. Tinden was the goggle-eyed woman.

  Mrs. Walters sat quietly, hoses hissing.

  Were they here against their will too? Edythe thought. Maybe one of them was there to keep an eye on her neighbours, Edythe thought. What was it they called it on television? A plant? Maybe she shouldn’t say anything at all—and for a little while, she didn’t. But Edythe had never been in a place that was so noisy and yet so empty, that so needed to be filled up with words. The other women stared, and the silence tugged at Edythe. Down the hall, there was the sound of someone crying quietly.

  “Men are all pigs,” Edythe said. “But you two don’t need me to tell you that. Get to be women of our age and you already know.”

  “Arnold?” Mrs. Tinden said quietly.

  The other woman, propped up in a sitting position, just stared, her oxygen whistling softly.

  “Len Menchinton?” Edythe said—and then the words were falling out of her in a rush, and she felt like she had to slow them down somehow to keep them from rolling right over each other. “He’s a pig. For certain. Disgusting.”

  The other women were silent—but they were paying careful attention, an audience open to whatever was coming next.

  “You should have seen what I saw, with his hands all over her underwear. Ronnie Collins? Just an animal. Keith O’Reilly? I hardly know where to start.”

  Mrs. Purchase looked at the women, one at a time. Looked straight at each one of them. Started talking again.

  “You know what they’re like. They preen and walk around like they’re the cocks of the walk. So full of themselves and talking down to you so you’d never guess they were up to anything at all. Never guess that they’ve each got their dirty little secrets, that they are so ready to just roll around like dogs if you let them.

  “I told Ingrid Menchinton about Len. I did. I had to. And I was right to, because you shouldn’t be made a fool of, shouldn’t be walking around with everybody quite able to see what is going on and you in the dark, everyone laughing at you. And it didn’t do any good, you know. She’s still with him—I see them in the big window in their kitchen, laughing, necking like teenagers, his hands right up there under her shirt. Some women just have no self-respect at all. I did right telling her, though, even if I was the one that got told off for it.”

  Edythe paused, caught her breath, looked out the window. Even if it was only the fourth floor, the room was pretty high up, she thought, the hospital up the way it was, cut into the side of the hill. You could see for miles. She turned back to the two women, giving each one a careful stare before starting again.

  “I should have told Evelyn too, whatever the consequences,” Edythe said. “I regret that still, for sure. To this day. But I tried to tell the police, and you know, you can’t even trust them, they’re in it for themselves. Like everyone.

  “My husband Frank trusted people, trusted anyone who came in the door, and look what that got him. Now, he was a good man. You might have heard of him—no one could ever say a bad word. He ran a restaurant on Water Street called the Doryman. Got in trouble with the wrong people, he did. Bought St. Pierre liquor, French liquor, no tax stamps or anything, they told him everyone was doing it and no one would ever get caught. And him so innocent. One stupid mistake and then they were into him, made him pay protection money. Blackmail.” Neither of the women moved. Both of them stared.

  Edythe, suddenly uncomfortable, found herself picking at the lint pills on the flannel sheet. The sheet said Property of Eastern Health on it in big blue lettering. There were scores of pilling lumps on the fabric. Every time she stopped talking, the room was quiet again. Only the hissing of the hoses.

  “He told me about it. Told me they were threatening him, that they beat up Mike, one of the cooks, and broke his arm. Frank said he had to pay more and more, every week some new demand, and that they wouldn’t listen to anything. I told him he should stand up to them. That it was a matter of principle. But he wouldn’t. Because of me. He just kept paying. We were almost bankrupt, but he wouldn’t go to the police. Told me they said they would hurt me if anyone said anything to the police.”

  Edythe looked at Mrs. Tinden out of the corner of her eye. The woman hadn’t moved, her hands still up tight in front of her chest. But she was staring at Edythe, wide-eyed.

  “One night, after closing, he just didn’t come home. Maybe they wanted more money than he had for them, maybe he finally decided he wouldn’t pay anymore. I don’t know. He never told me that he was going to do anything different, but he must have. I didn’t believe it at first. He was their gravy train, their easy money. But they took him. Maybe they were trying to make a point to other businessmen downtown. I don’t know. I never heard another word, and the police didn’t do a thing, just told me there were no signs of disturbance in the restaurant and that people sometimes just decide to disappear. But they were taking the case seriously—that’s what they told me every time I called. They were taking the case seriously.

  “Someone must have got to them too. They get people. Sometimes people are just gone. Ther
e are people you don’t cross. You don’t cross the mob, for sure, I can tell you that. And you don’t stand up to them either. Not if you want to walk away in one piece.”

  Edythe paused and lowered her voice. She could see that both of the women were following her with their eyes, no other reaction.

  “You don’t know how evil people can be. You don’t know until you see it with your own eyes. Ordinary people. Even people on your own street, people you run into every day.” Edythe smoothed the sheet across her lap, looked up again. “I knew it years ago,” she said primly. “I knew the truth of it.”

  This was it, she thought. The big secret, the one no one ever wanted to listen to—but neither Mrs. Walters nor Mrs. Tinden was moving. Maybe they wouldn’t leave, Edythe thought. Maybe they couldn’t. Edythe felt the truth in her chest like she had swallowed a whole egg, big and round and just wanting to come back out. In a movie, she thought, the music would swell up now, dramatic, so everyone would know it was an important moment.

  “I saw it all through the window. I saw Keith O’Reilly stop that truck, her just walking on the sidewalk, minding her own business, him calling out to her, ‘Get over here now, slut!’ nasty like that, and then he was getting out of the truck, coming around the side where she was.”

  Edythe felt flushed then, knew there was colour rising in her cheeks. It always did when she thought about Keith O’Reilly and that poor, innocent girl.

  “He practically stuffed that girl into the truck. Grabbed her arm. Wouldn’t let go. And a hand over her mouth so she couldn’t scream or anything. He must have had it fixed so she couldn’t get the door open again. The lock jammed so she couldn’t pull it up. Her fingers scratching away useless on the inside of the glass. When he got in the cab, he hit her too. And I recognized her from the television. I recognized her right away, the day they put her picture up and said she was missing. I’m good with faces, always have been. And I know about responsibility. About civic duty.

  “I didn’t even call them. I went straight to the police station, straight to Fort Townsend, and they treated me well, brought me into a room in the back and even offered me tea. And one of the officers was writing down what I was saying, about Keith and the girl, at least until the tea came, and the other policeman looked at me and said to the officer talking to me, ‘You know you’re interviewing the-lady-who-cried-wolf.’ He said it real quiet, but I heard it when he said it, as plain as that. And there was more, but I couldn’t hear everything he said.

  “And then the questions changed, went flat like he was going through the motions. They went away to, ‘How can you be so sure?’ and ‘How dark was it?’ and ‘Were you wearing your glasses?’ and ‘Thank you very much.’ And he wasn’t even writing anything down anymore.”

  Edythe stopped. Next to her, Mrs. Tinden was murmuring quietly, the felt sheets pulled right up over her mouth so that only her eyes were showing.

  “That hurt, I’ll tell you. That certainly hurt. A law-abiding person is supposed to do their duty, and when they do, they don’t expect to be treated like some kind of joke.” Edythe gathered herself up and, without even realizing she was doing it, sat up straight in the bed so that her back was a perfect vertical line. “I certainly have called the police before, I’ll admit that. I called them when there were teenagers chasing a girl down the street—it looked horrible. And when the drag racers were tearing up and down. But the police never got there fast enough. And when there was what looked like a man outside the O’Reillys’ looking in the windows one night after dark, doing I don’t know what. Casing the joint, isn’t that what they call it?”

  There was no response from her roommates.

  “It’s not my fault if they’re not fast enough, finishing their coffee and doughnuts, if everything is over and done with before they get around to getting there. But it all counts against you, I can tell you that from experience. Everything always counts against you, even when you’re the one trying to do good.”

  Out in the hall, an orderly pushing a woman in a wheelchair stopped. The woman looked in the door at Edythe hungrily, her mouth moving gummily, collapsed, clearly without teeth. Everyone stares here, Edythe thought. Everyone. Outside, the fog was coming in over the land, catching and spreading over the hilltops like a fungus. Edythe thought that it wouldn’t take long to reach the hospital, to cover everything right up in grey.

  “I tried to tell Evelyn about her husband, believe me I did. It’s one of my greatest regrets. I know it was the right thing to do, and I tried and tried. I must have gone across to her house a dozen times when I saw her out there in the yard. But every time I got across the street, no matter how hard I tried to steel myself for it first, her eyes just stopped me.” Edythe shuddered slightly at the memory. “Everyone thinks she’s so standoffish, but it’s not that. It’s that she can see right through your skin, like she knows everything already, like she’s choosing which things she knows and which ones she wants to ignore. You don’t know what she’s like, how she just stops you with those eyes. I tried. You can’t blame me for that.”

  There was noise in the hallway again. A small woman in scrubs came into the room with lunch trays, setting them on tables next to each bed and then turning quickly away. Edythe looked at her tray: a black-spotted banana, a cup of tea, devilled ham sandwiches and a plastic bowl that looked like it might contain soup. She felt the outside of the bowl: it was hot.

  Edythe was cautiously opening the lid when Mrs. Walters spoke for the first time, sitting up straight in her bed, her eyes bright and bead-black as she stared out over her oxygen hose. “Excuse me,” Mrs. Walters said loudly to the woman with the trays, who was already almost out the door. “I have to see your face. I won’t eat any of it if I can’t see who’s bringing it to me.”

  That’s a good idea, Edythe thought. That’s a very, very good idea.

  103

  McKay Street

  LEN MENCHINTON

  AUGUST 27, 2005

  THE YEAR before her daughter brought her to the hospital, Edythe was gardening and carefully watching Len Menchinton on his deck.

  He didn’t even see her. Instead, he was remembering how once, while he was under contract as security at a home supply store, he had used one single look to catch a shoplifter on the way out the door. One look to freeze him in his tracks, a guy who had so much merchandise stuffed into his trousers that he couldn’t even bend his knees to sit in the one folding chair in the holding room where they were waiting for the police.

  As Len watched, the man undid his belt and pulled a long carpenter’s level up out of each pant leg, and then started emptying fistfuls of drill bits and small power tool attachments out of his pants pockets and from somewhere inside his shirt. Len didn’t ask the man how he had gotten into the locked display cases for the small things, or how he expected to walk out of the store with his knees locked straight and a sharply defined rectangle behind each inseam. It was hundreds of dollars’worth of hardware and tools, so much that there was absolutely no way the guy would have been able to shuffle his way out the front door without getting caught. Len didn’t even begin to ask why, didn’t even care why. But the man started answering anyway.

  “My wife has problems, she’s sick, and . . .” It was a long story, including words like “congenital condition” and “difficult childbirth” and “expensive drug regimes.”

  But Len wasn’t in a mood for listening. “This isn’t about your wife,” he said. “This has goddamn nothing to do with your wife. Not now. She’s not the one stuffing tools down your pants. You are.”

  Then Len Menchinton did something he hadn’t ever done with a shoplifter before, the kind of thing that the rules say you’re never supposed to do, because suspects might try to kill themselves or eat the evidence or something, the kind of thing that “exposes the store to liability,” and God knows, you’re never supposed to do that. Len got up and went out into the hall outside the holding room and closed the door, cutting off the suspect in mid-sent
ence. And he stood there, suddenly wishing he could have that cigarette that he hadn’t wanted in years, wishing the cops would just show up and take the guy away so he wouldn’t have to listen to him for even one more minute.

  Outside the room, Len noticed for the first time how barren the walls looked in the back hall of the building supply store, all painted a creamy yellow with dents and scuff marks as high as his waist along both sides, but without a single picture or poster, without any decoration at all. And he thought about how desolate those bare walls made the place, even with the steady noise of the shoppers so close outside, a noise that migrated right through the thin walls.

  He remembered whole rows of shoplifters then, like a highlight reel on the sports channel. The woman with a purse full of cassette tapes who started crying the moment he spoke to her and, as far as he knew, never stopped. Even in court she cried. The guy who had just piled a cart full of kitchen cabinet doors and went right out through the front of the store like he had paid for everything already, nine hundred dollars of heavy new oak still in the plastic shop wrap.

  The regulars, like Bart Dolimont. He must have caught Dolimont ten times by now, and he was never any trouble at all. Dolimont would hold his arms out and say, “You got me, sheriff,” as soon as Len came around the corner and spotted him with something, and he would be all smiles and chatter waiting for the police, like he couldn’t wait to be arrested. Len knew that Dolimont would always have something big under his jacket, something worth at least $150, so that the charges were always for theft instead of shoplifting, the kind of things that always carried the promise of jail time.

  And Len would never have to testify when Bart was in court, because he would plead guilty at the first opportunity anyway, usually clearing off a whole raft of theft and burglary charges at the same time, a weary judge adding up the consecutive and concurrent sentences in a tangle of numbers and dates. Dolimont made no sense to Len at all, the man being led quietly, compliantly away in cuffs, calling back over his shoulder, “See you next time, sheriff,” like it didn’t matter whether he’d been caught with whatever he was stealing or whether he had gotten away with it.