by L. R. Wright
Yet she agreed. They had let Rebecca get away with too much. And so on this mild February no-school morning, a day so sweet with spring and sun that it had made her giddy and given her courage, she said to her daughter, “I’m afraid you can’t have my car today. You’ll have to walk into town. Your father will give you a ride home.”
Paula braced herself...and as she did so, she felt a reassuring pang of empathy for the child, so thoroughly hostage to the seething of her emotions, and for the thousandth time reminded herself that Rebecca’s roiling passion was strictly hormonal.
This, too, shall pass, she told herself, as Rebecca exploded with rage, erupted from the breakfast table, and stalked out of the house.
Simon watched her go, then fell on the floor in a fit of laughter.
Timothy continued to eat his cereal and read his comic book, oblivious to the commotion.
It was the last time any of them ever saw her.
***
Half an hour of walking diminished Rebecca’s anger. It wasn’t entirely gone, but at least it wasn’t biting at her heart anymore. She began to enjoy the day, which was a lot warmer than she’d expected. And this was a good thing, since she had rushed out of the house without a jacket. It was lucky she had at least thought to grab her bum bag.
She strode along with the sun warm on her back, squinting a little—maybe she’d buy sunglasses at her lunch break; she couldn’t remember what she’d done with her old ones.
There was some traffic on the highway, but not a lot. Mostly she was able to walk on the pavement itself instead of on the gravel shoulder.
She figured it would take her about an hour to get to the village, to the stationery store where she had a part-time job as a clerk. She would probably arrive early enough to have a coffee and some toast at Earl’s before the shop opened. Her stomach was rumbling because her mother, the cow, had been so keen to deliver the bad news that she hadn’t had the decency to wait until after breakfast. She’d forgotten, as usual, that it took a while for Rebecca to get hungry in the morning.
But never mind, she told herself. The walk would be good for her, she had to admit it. She ought to walk more, get herself in shape. And once she had the exact body she wanted, she and her best friend Holly were going to take the ferry over to Vancouver and get themselves tattooed. Rebecca thought she’d have some native art—a huge raven, maybe—tattooed on her back.
A car whizzed by very fast, over the limit by a whole lot. It came so close to her that the slice it carved out of the air fell right on top of her. Rebecca felt a tiny nibble of repentance. That’s why she hadn’t been allowed to have her mother’s car today. She’d received three speeding tickets in the last month, and hadn’t had the money to pay them, so her mother had had to, since it was her car, plus her insurance was probably going to go up.
“Shit,” said Rebecca to the blue spring morning.
This particular acknowledgment of guilt caused her to remember that other thing, so much more important, so much more awful, for which she had also been responsible.
“Shit,” said Rebecca again, wrapping her arms around herself, struggling not to cry.
Her mother had told her to put it behind her. “It was a dreadful thing for which you were entirely responsible,” her mother had said. “This is true.” She had reached toward Rebecca then and Rebecca had flinched, for some reason. She hated to think of that now. Her mother had just wanted to brush some hair out of her eyes, that was all. “And the whole family has seen how much you’ve suffered,” her mother had said. “You mustn’t keep on torturing yourself, Rebecca. It’s time to put it behind you.”
And she was right, too. Rebecca would start life over again, once more. This very minute.
She stopped and stretched her arms heavenward, then shoved her bum bag to the side and bent over at the waist to touch her toes. And then she resumed walking, with a lighter heart.
Rebecca walked along the edge of the highway, heading southeast, toward Sechelt. Forest huddled at the edges of the road, and beyond the trees to Rebecca’s right was the ocean, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. She walked with long, confident strides, swinging her arms, her brown hair cascading down her back in soft shiny waves. She had broad shoulders, large firm breasts, and more flesh than she wanted on her thighs and buttocks. Today she wore sneakers, tight jeans, and wide red suspenders over a long-sleeved white shirt. And she’d tied a red ribbon in her hair, to keep it from falling in her face as she stocked the shelves at work.
In her bum bag were cigarettes and a throwaway lighter; a change purse containing a ten dollar bill, two loonies, three quarters, and four pennies; her nearly new driver’s license; a few crumpled tissues; a ballpoint pen; and a hairbrush.
She was about fifteen minutes from town when a familiar vehicle passed her, slowed, and pulled up on the shoulder about fifty yards ahead.
Rebecca stopped, hesitated, then walked toward it.
Chapter 3
WHEN CASSANDRA MITCHELL awakened, she felt that she really hadn’t slept at all. She knew she had, though, because that was daylight out there, squeezing itself into the bedroom through the cracks between the narrow slats of the vertical blind, and the last time she’d looked, it had been night.
She heard sounds from the kitchen, and smelled coffee.
At the end of the bed the senior cat stirred and swiveled her head to glance at Cassandra. She did a long, slow, painful stretch, sat up and looked toward the doorway, back at Cassandra, toward the doorway again, and then slid off the bed and walked stiffly out of sight. Cassandra looked at the clock on her bedside table and saw that Karl had switched off the alarm. She turned on her side, hands under her cheek.
But then she sat up, plumped the pillow and leaned against it, running her hands through her short wavy hair, which was dark, but generously streaked with gray. She was wearing a T-shirt. Should she put on something different, something special, when they went to bed tonight? “Hell’s bells,” she said out loud. She’d lived with the man for years. She was over fifty, for heaven’s sake. There was no call for black lace.
Still...
Alberg came in with a tray that held coffee and toast and a jar of strawberry jam. He handed it to her and climbed into bed next to her. He was wearing a bathrobe she’d given him for Christmas, made of wool, in a muted green tartan. He hardly ever put it on, preferring the white terry cloth one that was almost worn through at the elbows and in the back, where he’d been sitting on it for almost fifteen years.
“What’s the occasion?” she asked him, indicating the bathrobe.
“I thought I might get married today,” he said, helping himself to toast.
“I wish we’d managed to find a house first,” said Cassandra gloomily.
“We will,” he said.
“With closets,” said Cassandra. They were making do with two gigantic wardrobes that were too big to fit into the bedroom. One stood awkwardly against a wall in the living room. The other lived out on the sunporch, where the dampness had caused its doors to swell so that they no longer closed properly. “And a couple of extra rooms,” she added.
“We’ll find something. And if we don’t,” said Alberg, “we’ll find somebody to build us one. Something little. But big enough.”
“Huh,” said Cassandra thoughtfully. “Now there’s an idea.”
“So,” he said, “it’s happening at seven, right?”
“Right.”
“We should leave then at what, six-thirty?”
“I think maybe we should get there a bit early, Karl. Let’s leave at six.”
“Okay. And it’ll take me half an hour to shower, shave, and dress. So I’ll be back here at five-thirty.”
“Back here from where?”
“From work. Where do you think?”
She slammed her mug onto the tray, spilling coffee. “You’re going to work? On your wedding day?”
But he was laughing. He took the tray, put it down on the floor next to the bed, an
d grabbed her in a hug.
***
“I don’t mind telling you, it’s a big disappointment to me,” Sid Sokolowski said to Isabella. He was at his desk, which sat against the wall behind the reception counter, and he was looking gloomily down the hall toward Karl Alberg’s empty office. “He should be doing this thing properly. We should be doing the red serge, the whole number.”
“It’s not him, though, is it?” said Isabella, peering awkwardly through half-glasses at her computer screen. “It’s not his style. Subtle, that’s Karl.”
“Subtle. Huh.” Sokolowski lifted himself out of his chair and resettled in it, causing it to creak. He had recently appropriated this chair, which was made of wood. It had arms, and this was important for a person as large as Sokolowski. It also had wheels. He liked to use it to propel himself—lugubriously, as he did most things—across the room. He did this now, pushing himself backward with his heels, heading for the coffee machine.
“Besides,” said Isabella, “the dress uniform probably doesn’t fit him anymore.”
“There’re tailors,” said the sergeant stubbornly, “who could alter it. Or he could have got a new one.”
“Yeah. Well, dream on,” said Isabella, over the clacking of her computer keyboard.
The door opened and a stocky man of about sixty entered.
“Richard!” Isabella stood up. “No! Go away!”
“Oh jeez,” Sokolowski moaned into his hands.
Richard Harbud was Isabella’s recently retired husband. He had fallen into the habit of spending most of his time at the detachment, sitting on the bench in the reception area, reading the paper—not bothering anybody.
Or so he had thought. His presence bothered Sokolowski greatly. “Maybe that’ll be me out there, in a few months,” the sergeant had said to Alberg in dismay. “Haunting the place.” He had finally decided to leave the job at the end of the year.
“Not to worry,” Alberg had told him cheerfully. “If that happens, I’ll have you carted off. To a psychiatric wing. Over on the mainland somewhere.”
But Sokolowski knew he’d be more likely to haunt the place in Vancouver where his wife Elsie now lived. He was going to try not to do that, though.
Isabella leaned over the counter. “We had an agreement, Richard. Tuesdays and Thursdays, an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Today is Wednesday. You are not welcome here.” She touched her hair, as if still not quite used to her chic new cut, and the gold streaks that had replaced the gray.
“I was just passing by,” said Richard calmly. He was wearing good pants, a sports jacket, a white shirt, and a tie. “I thought you might like to know that I’ve got a job.”
Isabella examined him intently. “Is that a joke?” she asked finally.
“No joke,” said Richard.
Sokolowski looked out, hopefully, between his fingers.
“I’m going into real estate.”
Isabella sat down.
Sokolowski launched himself, one-handed, back to his desk, carefully, his eyes on the coffee mug he was carrying. He put down the coffee and stood up. “Now this is none of my business,” he said to Richard, “but outta curiosity, why don’t you just change your mind about retiring and go back to being a chiropractor?”
“I’m sick of being a chiropractor,” said Richard, shaking his head. “I’ve been sick of it for years.”
“Really?” said Isabella incredulously.
“Really,” said her husband, looking amused.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What could you have done about it?” Richard sat down on the bench, pinching the creases in his pant legs between thumb and forefinger. “I have to take a course,” he continued. “To get my license.”
“When do you start this course?” asked Sokolowski.
“On Monday morning.”
“Monday. So you’re kinda at loose ends ’til then,” said the sergeant, nodding. “Isabella, why don’t you put the guy to work?”
“That’s a distasteful idea,” said Isabella, giving her hair a shake and smiling slightly.
“No, really. He can get people organized. For tonight.” One enormous hand dropped to her desktop and picked up a notepad and a pen. “Make a list. Tin cans. Confetti. Whatever. And let Richard here take care of it.”
***
“You should have let me make you an appointment with my hairdresser,” said Helen Mitchell. “This is ridiculous.” She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, where Cassandra was washing her hair for the third time.
“Go iron the suit, Mom,” said Cassandra. “Make yourself useful.”
Alberg was on the sunporch peering at the sky, which had clouded over, and from which rain had begun to fall. Cassandra had said it was the rain that was causing her hair to go frizzy. He looked harder at the sky, although he didn’t care whether it rained or not, and couldn’t see that Cassandra’s hair looked any wavier today than on other days.
He was thinking, now and then, about his first wedding, a formal, glittering, red serge affair. They had been so young, he and Maura...
She and the accountant had sent a card, and a gift. That was nice. It was good that she was still fond of him. And he of her.
His daughters were here: this was also good. Diana, the younger one, was staying in a local bed and breakfast. Janey and the musician had taken a room in a seaside motel.
But listening to the companionable bickering between Cassandra and Helen, Alberg suddenly missed his mother desperately, remembering her at his first wedding, standing proudly in the receiving line next to his tall, lanky father.
But that was long ago. Now his parents lay in side-by-side graves thousands of miles away.
Would he and Cassandra be buried side by side? he wondered. And where would this happen? And when? And who would be there to mourn them?
Alberg gazed out at the rain, buffeted and melancholy.
Chapter 4
MRS. O’HARA, HANDS tight on the wheel, urged her van northward along the highway toward Pender Harbour. She realized that she shouldn’t be driving, not yet.
A spasm of shuddering shook her body. She was as helpless against it as against an assault by a tornado, or an earthquake. Mrs. O’Hara felt her bones knocking within their sheaths of muscle, gripped and shaken by something inexorable, implacable.
She was in shock. This was to be expected, she told herself. But oh god...
She should have been traveling in the opposite direction, toward Sechelt, and the Dyakowskis’ house, but she had to go home first, clean herself—there’d been no blood, but oh god! She needed to gather herself. She knew what it meant, now—to pull oneself together. For she had come apart. Bones were at odds with muscles, brain was alienated from body. She had to bring everything back together again, recreate the natural biological harmony that made her a functioning human being.
The weather had changed dramatically: Mrs. O’Hara was hurrying through a downpour. The wipers trembled and squealed against the windshield, the heater created racket in lieu of heat, and the van shuddered in protest as she pushed the speedometer up to eighty kilometers an hour.
...She had taken responsibility for just a tiny portion of the world: only a tiny portion. She had a recurrent image of herself flourishing a large broom, sweeping vigorously. Sometimes she saw herself in a barn. Light flooded through the expansive doorway and it was littered with the dust and hay that flew up from the floor as Mrs. O’Hara swept, with brisk, robust strokes. She swept hard and fast, coughing, her eyes watering, and she never stopped, never even slowed down. A presence that was probably the sunlight observed her activities with tranquillity and a certain amount of amusement; she detected no particular sympathy in this presence. Mrs. O’Hara swept and swept, sweating, coughing, resolute to the point of obsession, convinced that eventually the barn floor would be clean, the air in the barn pure, the sunlight immaculate...
Finally the Volkswagen van reached the turnoff. There wasn’t a
nother vehicle in sight, but Mrs. O’Hara put on the turn indicator anyway before propelling the van around the corner.
For several miles she followed a rough, narrow road that led through the bush to a small lake, then pulled off under a shelter constructed of four two-by-fours and turned off the motor. The rain sounded like gunfire as it struck the shelter’s tin roof.
Mrs. O’Hara climbed out of the van, leaning heavily for a moment on the door, taking a few deep breaths. She left the keys in the ignition. She wasn’t worried about thieves. This was a remote part of the coast, and besides, her van wasn’t much of a temptation—its body was falling apart. She kept it in excellent mechanical condition but didn’t concern herself with its appearance. The mechanic who tended it fretted a lot about this. He was always wanting her to do something about the body, or the interior, but Mrs. O’Hara ignored him.
...Sometimes in her fantasy she saw her broom-wielding self sweeping a green meadow that was surrounded by trees, sweeping up bugs and worms and bits and pieces of grass and ferns and weeds and wildflowers. It was a ridiculous sight, and she knew that it signified Mrs. O’Hara jeering at herself: she was well aware of her own doubts and misgivings. But she had to keep the faith. She had to maintain her trust in decisions made a decade ago...
She turned wearily to a path that wound steeply upward from the road, pushing through ferns and undergrowth and the lower branches of cedar trees, and she grabbed hold of this sturdy greenery, pulling on it for assistance as she made her way. Then a small structure appeared, quite suddenly, as if created by the imagination.
The exterior had been constructed of various kinds and colors of used timber. Here and there faint lettering was visible: “IM’S C” in one place, “SOLI” in another. In some places it was green, in others, orange, but most of it was brown, and all of it was faded by sun and wind and rain.
