by Alan Cumyn
Everyone! It was common knowledge. Bob and the slut had been carrying on for ages, Julia was the last to realize. And the Poe conference! Bob had pretended that he wanted Julia to go, but it was going to be so intense – his word, intense; now she knew what he meant.
The phone rang downstairs and Julia stiffened. She waited while Brenda answered. There was the smell of cooking from the kitchen, something garlicky. Something that Bob, if he were here, would wolf down between long gulps of red wine while carrying on three different conversations and laughing, lecturing, pausing to chat up the hostess, tell her what an extraordinary culinary gift she had and ask her, in front of everybody, if her juices were always this succulent … and get away with it. Why did people always forgive him?
Footsteps on the stairs. Julia glanced again in the mirror, saw how utterly plain and blown apart she looked, her eyes so small, hair limp, the life siphoned from her face. There was a knock at the door. She wiped her eyes, said, “Uh-huh,” and the door opened. It was Doug, short and bony, who had a thick beard and a quick laugh and eyes too penetrating for the moment. Julia didn’t want to be looked at that deeply.
Doug said, with gentleness, “Dinner’s ready. Come and have something to eat.”
“Did someone call?”
“Brenda took it,” he said, and he didn’t say more.
She hated herself for asking. But she asked anyway. “Was it Bob?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so,” he said.
Julia followed Doug down the stairs. Brenda had seated Matthew in a brand-new high chair in the kitchen. She’d bought it the year before when she was pregnant for the first time, and kept it despite the miscarriage. Then she’d gotten pregnant again in June but had lost that one as well. Julia had been a pillar during her disasters, and she realized ruefully that it was good in a way for Brenda to have this disaster of Julia’s to deal with. Brenda was being magnificent: cooking the pasta and sauce, stepping over joyfully to spoon some mushed broccoli into Matthew’s waiting mouth, singing along with the radio.
“Are you famished?” Brenda asked when she saw Julia. Then without waiting for a reply she said, “Food will help. It always does. Doug, could you pour the wine?”
“Oh,” Julia said. “I left my glass upstairs.” She’d been drinking all afternoon. Brenda said it didn’t matter. Julia accepted a new glass of wine, sipped a bit, and sat with Doug and Brenda in their cheerful little kitchen. Doug was being clumsily conscientious: getting up to retrieve missing pieces of cutlery, leaning over Brenda to get the breadboard, trying to be an attentive husband.
“I ran into someone from my high school the other day,” Julia heard herself blurt, apropos of nothing. “He’s a carpenter now. He used to -” She stopped. It was pointless. Why was she talking about this?
“What?” Brenda asked, too insistently.
“He had a major crush on me.” She stopped again. They were looking at her too closely. She felt as if she’d turned into her mother and everyone was analysing her speech.
Her poor mother.
“Oh well!” Brenda said. “A carpenter! Good hands?” and she laughed too brightly. She was feeding Matthew mushed banana now and Matthew was taking everything from her.
“Who was that … who was that who called?” Julia asked, fighting to stay on top of things, to not break down. “It wasn’t Bob, was it? You would tell me?” She hated the way her teeth clattered together, her fingers felt so drained of life, her centre so exposed.
“Of course,” Brenda said. “But it wasn’t him.” She picked up a piece of paper. “It was a Bruce McCutcheon -”
“Oh shit!” Julia said. “I forgot to call him. I was supposed to meet him again at the house. About the insurance.”
“You can call him tomorrow,” Brenda said.
“Yeah. God knows what’s going to go wrong tomorrow!” Julia said. She had a sense of water flooding over the dam, of cracks and fissures widening. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. She rose awkwardly, struggled with the seat straps, clutched Matthew against her, closed her eyes.
Brenda said, “Oh, I’m sorry!” and Julia said, “No, no, it’s all right.” Matthew’s little arms hugged her back and shoulders and he started patting her, saying, “Okay, Mommy. Okay.”
Julia peeled his arms off her, handed him over to Brenda, left the room to the sound of his wails.
Sitting in her borrowed room, Julia could hear the sounds of the bathwater from just a few feet – a single wall – away, of Brenda playing with Matthew, getting him to put soap on the washcloth and scrub out his ears. The breath was entering and leaving her body, and for a moment she didn’t know how it did that. She became acutely aware of how little she knew about herself, of how little control she exercised over the course of events. Somewhere buried inside her chest, her heart was beating away as if nothing had happened. She was conscious of not knowing the first thing about how or why it worked. It just did, sent blood scurrying around her body through channels she didn’t know. And her brain kept the thoughts ticking over, somehow, despite the utter ruin of the universe. She was still able to hear Matthew say, “Where’s the ducky?” and “Sometimes I poo-poo.”
Julia had the rescued photo album on her lap, was looking at a picture that her mother took during Bob’s first dinner with her parents. He wasn’t “Bob” then but “Professor Sterling,” her married American-literature professor, who was taking an unusual interest in her work. Her father had been stiff and furious during dinner, though outwardly coldly civil. When Bob made a big show of clearing the table for dessert, her father followed him into the kitchen then blasted him. Julia heard bursts from the other room like, “My God, man! What are you thinking?” and, “She is half your age!” They were lovers already, and Julia was appalled at her father’s paternalism but stayed riveted in her seat, unable to move. It was her mother who went in to break things up, not by confronting the men at all but by flapping about like a flustered bird. “Well, I really think it’s time for a picture!” she announced.
So there in the photo – amazingly intact, despite fire and flood – was her father, glowering, eyebrows furrowed, looking away, a cigarette in his hand, standing as far from Bob as he could and still fit in the narrow frame of her mother’s ten-dollar camera. Bob was in the middle, large, oblivious, slightly drunk, his arm around Julia in too familiar a way but not caring a whit for appearances, only for the moment. And Julia finally, staring up at him – how dewy-eyed she looked to herself now. Trying so hard to care just for the moment too, for what he seemed to promise.
37
Bob opened his eyes slowly. He shifted stiffly, looked around at nothing, at darkness … smelly darkness, heavy with the stench of … what? Of charcoal and ash, of not-so-ancient disaster. Where was he? What was he doing? He couldn’t remember. He felt the strongest pull to return to sleep, but he didn’t want to do that now. He’d been doing that off and on for what felt like ages. But it was so difficult to climb out. Just to raise his hand, he had to concentrate fiercely. But slowly, slowly, the feeling eased, and he came to realize that he was in the basement, that this was what was left of his home. He turned his head cautiously – oh, it hurt badly – and felt for his hands … but his neck was rusted solid and he couldn’t feel his hands at all, he seemed to have lost them. He rocked his body and the pain stabbed from his knee straight through the roots of his teeth, and he bit his tongue so badly he tasted blood. He tried to turn over and then a thousand pins inserted themselves up and down his arms, which had been asleep, the circulation had been cut off in his awkward position. He freed his arms and shook them, felt them vibrating like loose, hurting rubber. Though he couldn’t remember any of it, it occurred to him that he’d fallen somehow, may have suffered a spinal-cord injury, that he should stay motionless and wait to be rescued.
Instead he panicked. He was on a pile of spilled tools, a hammer had been clawing at his back. He tried to stand, but his right leg buckled and he eased back down.
What I am doing here? he wondered. He remembered the fire. He remembered meeting the insurance man in the morning, and then the shock awaiting him at the university. And then he knew: he had to find and get rid of the cut-up clothes to be finally free of this nightmare.
He moved on his hands and his left knee in the darkness, the right leg dragging behind him. He could feel his Phillips screwdriver, his adjustable wrench, his power drill, the edge of the upended workbench. He’d hurt himself coming down through the window, of course, that must have been what happened – though he couldn’t remember it at all, there was a blurry hole in his memory. He looked up slowly, trying not to strain his neck, but he couldn’t see the window, couldn’t see anything. It was black upon black.
He began to search about with his cold, painful, waking hands, tried to concentrate on his sense of touch. He fingered glass jars of nuts and bolts, a ball of twine, a dead windshield-wiper blade, an old metal tackle box. Eyes opened or closed, it didn’t make much difference. Scraps of wood, a chisel, the German scissors, there they were! The clothes should have been beside them but weren’t. An old fork, scattered drill bits, a cord and then his sander, a splinter that drove itself painfully into the side of his hand.
Something odd. A plastic bag split open, a ball of fluff … a wet ball, then more. It smelled disgusting, of sewage. A huge hairy ball of risen sewage. What was that doing there? He tried to brush it off his hands. He shook them and frantically pulled the sticking strands away from his fingers.
He felt some more with his hands in wider and wider circles, found another rag and then something else, and then his hand hit leather – unmistakable, soft, thousand-dollar leather – and he chortled and gasped in surprise and relief. There they were! The sliced bra and the stockings and the leather dress and panties and wig, the limp rag of a body slip – everything was there. He couldn’t see a bit of it but he could feel with extraordinary clarity, as if he’d been blind his whole life. Safe! He was safe! He hugged the soft garments to his wounded face and for the first time realized he had a gash on his forehead from his fall.
A tiny price to pay, he thought. Now to get out. He manoeuvred around, started to scramble back to what he thought must be the position of the window. He hit his good knee on the invisible edge of the upended workbench, then crawled over it more carefully. There was no great hurry, no fire from which to escape. What time was it? It was unnaturally dark, even for blackest night, he thought. He’d find Julia at Brenda’s, or Brenda would know where she was. And even if Julia had seen the Web site, he’d be able to explain everything. Just as soon as he got out and disposed of these ridiculous clothes.
What to say about Sienna? It was unfortunate, he’d explain, she’d become overwrought about, well, about being in love with him, a terrible crush. Julia would have gotten upset if Bob had told her, so he’d kept quiet. But of course he’d refused Sienna. Then the whole Internet nonsense had blown up – he would explain about the jealous boyfriend if she hadn’t heard already. And today he’d tried to call, but the number Julia had left in her message was wrong. Helen must have made a mistake transcribing it.
But why was he so late? Bob tried to formulate his story while he found the wall, inch by careful inch, and then felt up to where the window should have been. Where was it? He was clutching the clothes and wig now to his chest in a well-guarded ball. He would stay patient, would right the workbench and carefully climb up, crawl out the way he’d come.
He reached and he felt and at last, as he knew he would, he found the bottom of the window. He swung it open – it was hinged at the top – and stretched up just to feel if there was something he could grab on to, use to haul himself out without having to bother with righting the unwieldy workbench. But he didn’t find anything; he found instead a wall of wood where there should have been open air.
“Jesus!” he said and recoiled. The window swung shut with a bang. He reached up again, reopened the window, once more encountered solid wood. It felt three feet thick. He pounded it with his fist and hurt himself. He tried in vain to account for this new, disturbing fact. Someone has nailed me in here, he thought. They’ve nailed the lid on my coffin and I’m going to die here, there’s no other way out!
But of course there was another way out. He could go up the stairs the normal way. No one was in the house. The stairs might be in a fragile state – that’s probably why he came in through the window – but he could try them, and the back door was right there. Once he made it to the landing he’d be home free. But where were the stairs? They were somewhere in the black. He turned around slowly, shaking with cold and fear but still in nominal control. The stairs were on the other side of the furnace. He’d have to go around to the left then turn right and then the distance was only three normal steps: he’d be at the foot of the steps.
He held the bundle to his breast, felt again carefully to make sure he hadn’t dropped any little thing, a stocking or part of a bra. He took a tentative step to the left. For a moment he had to put weight on his right leg and he went over, crashed into tools again, felt the imprint of tiny screws and nuts on his right side before he came to rest.
He moaned in pain, then moved slowly, crawled over a chaos of skis and lawn chairs and again the corner of the downed workbench until he found the dead furnace and then manoeuvred around it. Here the crawling was easier, just the grit of the concrete grinding into points of contact. He rounded the corner, kept the furnace on his right. Now it was just the equivalent of a few steps … and he felt the base of the stairs. Thank God! He was just twelve feet from safety. He began to climb, but after a moment the stairs cracked like a rifle shot. Bob stopped and hung on, felt his whole aching body petrify trying to keep the stairs together. They seemed weaker, looser, precarious. He wondered if he should retreat, ease back down, try the window again. He could find that hammer that had clawed his back while he lay on the floor. It would be noisy but he could probably slam his way out. No, he could find his power saw, cut his way out … except the electricity was off, and a good thing, too, he thought, because he was such a shaking wretch he’d probably end up slicing off body parts. No, he’d have to race up the steps, one quick burst, grab the landing before the stairs collapsed. He stayed monumentally still, frozen in consideration, and then the wood moaned, a weak little gasp compared to the gunshot of a moment ago. He lunged up, pushed with his left leg once, then twice, and then a third time, made the landing just as the stairs began to fall away below him. He hung on desperately, pulled himself up. He stretched his arm for the handle of the back door, found it, but just then the landing gave way too and his grip failed. He was pitched in silent agony backwards into the depths of the cave. He felt himself bounce once and then again as something ripped in his leg.
38
It was past midnight. Julia was on the bed clutching Matthew, who was asleep now at her breast. Brenda and Doug’s house was cold and dark, the bed small and strange. She heard every creak. The first wintry winds were whipping through the branches, practising their howls. Everything had changed. Matthew’s milky breath, that was the only familiar thing.
Where was Bob? She’d heard nothing. Julia couldn’t help it, awful images were invading her brain. Bob and Sienna Chu were fucking in a sleazy, rat-trap motel just off the highway. There were sixty rooms and five guests and the baseboard heaters rattled, the bed squeaked with rust, when they turned on the light the cockroaches scattered with revolting little clicks. The wallpaper was mouldy beige, curling at the seams, the carpet was full of cigarette holes, the sheets smelled of traces of other people’s body fluids. He was humping her, they were sweating like pigs in the desperate, electric heat. Julia could picture her, this Sienna Chu, eighteen years old, a nearly prepubescent body, almost titless, tiny hips, a belly like a boy’s.
She opened her eyes. The wind toyed with the little house. Brenda and Doug couldn’t afford proper insulation, were still dealing with Brenda’s student loans. Julia got out of bed, left Matthew asleep unde
r the covers, walked to the window that was shivering in the breeze. It really was cold. Cold enough to snow. This early? It happened sometimes in Ottawa. October snow.
She looked out the window at the black-grey clouds – they looked like snow clouds – and even with her eyes wide open those ugly images were there still, haunting her thoughts. Damn him! Why was he so cock-driven, so impatient to throw away everything that they’d built? For what, younger flesh? How young does it have to be? How kinked-up and bizarre? How humiliating for them all?
For him too, she thought, despite herself. He was a proud man, would be mortified with this kind of exposure and attention. He might have simply fled on his own in disarray, in need of help.
Julia went to the bathroom down the hall and tried to not look at herself in the mirror. But she had to flick the switch to find the sink and the light was flat, awful, her face ghastly pale with black circles under her eyes.
Now that she’d found the sink she snapped off the light, splashed water over her face in the dark. She sat on the toilet and peed and mentally saw herself walking down the hallway, knocking gently on Brenda and Doug’s door, whispering, “Brenda, it’s me. I’m going out for a walk. I’m sorry. Matthew won’t wake up. He’s deeply asleep.”
Deeply asleep. Something she would never be able to manage, not this night, impossible. It might be months, years before she could sleep soundly again.
She wiped herself and didn’t flush, walked out of the bathroom. She meant to go down the hall to Brenda and Doug’s door. She took one step and then stopped. They were so quiet but she heard the rocking, the murmur of their breath, a little moan that sounded like Brenda far away, in some other state. They were trying to be silent. Julia turned around, her heart breaking.
