“You can’t save everyone,” Benny told her. He glanced at the people and slowly pulled his leg out from under hers and created a few inches of space between them. Heather didn’t think it would make any difference. Anyone looking at them would know.
“What’s Rosemarie’s problem?” Benny asked. “What’s wrong with her?”
There was nothing wrong with her. But Heather didn’t say this. “She’s obsessive-compulsive.”
He nodded.
“She has an elaborate counting routine.”
“What does she count?”
“Benny.”
“Tell me. Come on, I want to know everything.”
“It’s not what she counts.”
Rosemarie did everything in threes, Heather explained, because she had three children. Three candy bars, three cups of tea, that sort of thing. If she had two children, she would do things in twos.
“But recently,” Heather said, “her behaviour patterns have become more elaborate. Her children are aged two, four and eight. So she selects the second box of cereal from the grocery shelf. Then the fourth bottle of ketchup. Then the eighth carton of eggs. It’s complicated and time-consuming.”
“Why does she do that?”
“She thinks something horrendous will happen to her children if she doesn’t.”
“That’s crazy.”
Benny’s expression was astonished and childlike. She wanted to touch him, reassure him, but there were those inches of space between them. Was he thinking of his son? Was he feeling guilty? Not knowing what was going through his head made her nervous.
Inky was barking at the people. He wanted them to throw his ball. One of the women looked over.
“Better call Inky,” Heather said.
Benny half rose and shouted for the dog, but immediately turned back to Heather. He was like that: he would not drop something that interested him. He would not allow interruptions. Heather thought it was admirable, but intimidating.
“What can you do for someone like that?” he asked.
“I treated her.” Heather tried to sound matter-of-fact, as though there had been some hope. But Heather had never believed she’d be able to help Rosemarie in any permanent way. She didn’t tell Benny about her sour smell, her shapeless cords, the sweatshirt with the yellow — possibly curry — stains below the collar.
“She sat in my office and I had her drink one glass of juice, eat one candy bar. The most important thing was for her to get some sleep. Her routines can delay her bedtime considerably.”
“What about her kids?”
His question made her feel tender towards him. “I believe they are quite safe.”
“Is there a husband?”
Heather had not met the husband, though she had suggested several times to Rosemarie that he come in.
“He has a heart problem. He can’t work.”
Inky was still barking. Heather rose to her knees and whistled. It was completely ineffective. “This can happen to people,” she said. “It starts out as normal life worry, disappointment, sadness, then mushrooms into debilitating anxiety.”
They began making their way back to their cabin. Inky saw them and rushed up and on ahead.
“She had been showing a lot of improvement,” Heather said, wishing she could put a happy ending on it for Rosemarie. “But her son fell off the roof on Wednesday. It was a minor accident, not what it sounds, but her relapse was severe.”
As they passed his car on their way back to the cabin, he reached over and wiped away her name where she had written it in the pollen on his windshield. He looked over at her, as though to apologize, but it was unnecessary. If he hadn’t done it, she would have.
There was more snow in the deeper woods. Heather could see it banked up around the trunks of trees. The path had widened, but Heather was only concerned with finding Mandy. The area was heavily criss-crossed with woods paths. There was no reason to be frightened.
At the top of a small rise where the trees were stunted and yellow, she became aware of scratching sounds. She froze. The sounds were faint, but getting closer. She felt a weakening across her shoulders and down her arms, and an inability to look to either side. Then the sound was on top of her: a harsh chattering rising in volume. She tipped her head back with great effort and saw dozens of birds crowding the top of a spruce tree. They were only metres away.
The relief made her insufferably warm.
Several minutes passed. Slowly she lifted Mandy’s binoculars to her eyes. Stout rust-red birds were crawling over the cones, grasping the branches with their feet and bills like parrots on the Discovery Channel. But surely these were not parrots. Parrots inhabited warm regions like South America. Their strangeness scared her. She wanted to dig out her new field guide, but it was buried in her backpack and she felt paralyzed.
Suddenly two of the birds dropped and swung side by side, cartoon-like, from a branch, holding on with their bills. Their legs dangled and their wings lay folded at their sides as though not involved with flight in any way.
There was a voice-clearing behind her. She lowered the binoculars and turned, but she already knew: here was Darren Foley, standing in the path in his orange cap, old canvas knapsack, massive binoculars, the boots with the deep cleats.
Where was Mandy?
“See anything interesting?”
“What?”
“Birds? See any interesting birds?”
“Oh no. Sorry. I mean, I don’t know what they are.” She pointed to the trees above her. “They remind me of parrots.”
He laughed. At her?
“Those are definitely not parrots. Red crossbills. I noticed them on my way through earlier. It’s exciting to see them.”
“Isn’t it? Yes, it is. What are they called again?”
“Red crossbills.”
“I’m going to look that up.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.” She slipped off her backpack and began rummaging through it. “No.”
“Actually, it’s a subspecies we have here on the island, the Newfoundland red crossbill. They were rare on the island for at least a decade, and now they’re everywhere. A buddy of mine at Wildlife has been studying them.”
“Oh, is that where you work?”
He nodded slowly.
“Red crossbills?” She was flipping through her field guide.
He had the tall person’s manner of hanging his head. He did not face her directly, but looked at her sideways out of the corners of his eyes. It made him seem shifty, submissive, forlorn. She hoped he hadn’t noticed her drenched legs.
“They’re very interesting little birds,” he said, watching her flip through her field guide. “Yes, that’s them. See the crossed mandibles? Hence the name. The bird sticks his bill into the cone and pries apart the scales. Then his tongue lifts out the seed.”
Heather concentrated on the page with the birds, then carefully lifted the binoculars to her eyes. Her hands were shaking. He was right. Red crossbills. Unmistakable. What a delight. She felt the space around her expanding.
She lowered the binoculars and glanced at Darren. She noticed he needed a shave. That was something she and Mandy would not have been able to see on previous occasions. Also, that he smelled of soap and might be condescending.
He laughed again. Was it at her? “You know, if you’re a begin- ning birdwatcher, I’d suggest you start with a backyard feeder and see what you can attract there. You could get frustrated coming out here, trying to get a good look.”
“Oh, I’m not discouraged.” Her voice had gone high and breezy.
He looked puzzled. “Of course not. No reason to be.” He glanced up at the trees and she tried to memorize his face. The cold had made his skin slack and raw, though the occasional snowflake landing there melted immediately. Mandy would want every detail. He looked nothing like a bulldog. He looked like the Marlboro Man. Mandy better be grateful for that tidbit.
“I saw some other birds a while ago.
Flying over the water. Huge white birds.”
“Gannets.”
She smiled, grateful for the information, but decided to look the birds up in her field guide later. Her fingers felt too cold now to turn the pages.
“Hear that?” he said. “They’re moving on. Sometimes I wish I’d gone into passerines.” He glanced sideways at her again and she realized how close they were. She wondered if she’d tried to get close to him for warmth instinctively, like a wild animal. Both took a step back.
“The weather is changing. I’d suggest cluing up for the day.” What were passerines? “Have you seen any other people?” she asked.
“Today?”
She nodded. Of course she meant today! She realized she was freezing from head to toe.
“It’s rare to see anyone out on this headland. The odd wood-cutter. Do you know your way out? You’re not lost, are you?”
“Of course not. I’ve been here a thousand times.”
As soon as he was out of sight, Heather put the binoculars and field guide away inside her backpack. A story about desire? And that man was involved?
Her shoes were squishy with water and her feet were beginning to cause her some shimmering, icy pain.
Was she insane? Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but stalking was illegal. It could amount to a criminal charge. Gradually she became aware of her cellphone ringing in her coat pocket. It may have been ringing for a while. A cold flash was followed by a hot one.
Her hands were shaking. “Hello?” she whispered.
“Heather?”
“Mandy?”
“Where are you?”
“Mandy, I tried to call — ”
“My batteries were dead. Sorry about that.
What? I’m borrowing a phone — ”
“Where are you?”
“Being rescued. Bill’s cousins from Calvert. They have ATVs. Roger and Vince. My feet were freezing. And I was lost. Here, they want to talk to you.”
After speaking with Roger — or Vince — Heather closed her phone and began pacing back and forth in front of the boulder split in two, each half topped with a thin layer of soil and moss and looping trunk, just as she had described it to Roger — or Vince — on the phone. He told her to continue east another ten metres, then turn left onto a narrow path terminating at a cabin, where she was to await their arrival. Instead, she paced back and forth, struggling with the temptation to dart off the path and run blindly into the woods, to slip into the spaces between the narrow trees and escape rescue.
It occurred to her that she was exhibiting displacement behaviour. Like a cat who wants both to flee its attacker and stand and fight, but instead sits and begins grooming vigorously. Like so many times seeing Benny after a period of separation and not, at first, wanting to get too close. The desire had always arisen in her to pace crazily through the restaurant, airport, hotel room or coffee shop.
She had grown accustomed to seeing Benny around town. To anticipate running into him when she left the house, particularly on weekends and at certain places: Shoppers Drug Mart, the symphony, the soccer field beside the school where he might be out with Inky and his son, or just crossing Church Avenue with his hands in his pockets and a DVD tucked under an arm, always a little underdressed for the weather. After the first year, she hardly thought about it. It was as though she bore antennae with a mind of their own, fixed yet slightly aloof, so that although they searched for him day and night, they did so without wrecking her in any way when he was not discovered.
The symphony was where she first saw Benny with his wife. She was slightly taller than Benny and strong looking, with dark hair cut helmet-like around her head. Heather had been surprised by her bold, expensive clothing.
She could hear the far-off grinding roar of ATVs.
But later, there was that day at Dominion. By then her antennae were tuned to the wife as well. Heather joined the speedy checkout behind Benny’s wife and son, who was five or six at the time and using a bandaged hand — a burn, Heather later learned — to repeatedly slap his mother’s leg. Heather had never been so close to Benny’s wife and was dismayed to find she was so attractive.
“Spank you, Mommy, spank you, Mommy,” Benny’s son was singing.
Benny’s wife had looked back at Heather with an aloof, almost aggressive glance, as though daring Heather to judge her. While Heather was certain this woman knew nothing about her, the encounter left her unsteady.
Heather stopped pacing and turned left onto the narrow path, though it took her a moment to see the cabin built up against a rock outcrop and hidden by trees and enormous yellow ferns. As she approached the gaping entrance, her feet sunk into another small bog cleverly disguised by moss. She pulled her feet free — they were remarkably insensitive to temperature now — and peered inside the cabin. It was constructed of pressboard, rotted and covered with green algal film. Two mugs hung from the ceiling and on the stove sat a white kettle. Bunks had been built into the back wall and broken pieces of Styrofoam lay scattered across the floor. A number of poles supported a sagging ceiling. Heather stared, confused. It took her a while to realize the poles were not part of the original construction and that on balance the cabin didn’t look safe at all.
Two rusted kitchen chairs with plastic orange seats were inside the cabin, a third outside. She took the one outside, though it was leaning dangerously to one side, and felt the water in its ripped seat instantly flood the seat of her pants. She rested her feet on a stack of roofing shingles half sunk into the ground. The only creatures living here now are the squirrels, she thought.
She waited for the ATVs to close the last distance. Then they were there and Heather found her legs wouldn’t move.
“Ah, look at you, girl. Where are your shoes to?” Roger or Vince said, coming to her and taking her elbow. But she was unable to rise. He had a kind face. One of his front teeth was gone. Benny had also had a kind face, in the mornings, she recalled.
“Wow, listen to her teeth chatter,” Mandy said.
“I feel fine. A little too warm, actually. I wouldn’t mind a bit of fresh air.”
There was a gentle tug again on her elbow, which was irritating, but Heather ignored it, wanting to be polite.
“I still have your binoculars, Mandy.”
“That’s okay, you can keep those if you want,” Mandy said in a funny voice. “Did you see anything interesting?”
Heather tried to shake her head, but her neck had become astonishingly stiff. She hugged herself and fell forward over her knees.
Another tug. She shook him off.
“Wait. I did see something interesting,” Heather said, popping back up. “I saw the Marlboro Man.”
“She’s pale, Roger.”
“Let’s get you back, girl.”
Chapter Five
“I’d like to write a story about desire,” Mandy told Bill.
He paused. She had asked him to massage her shoulders, which were hard as stone. “Is this a new idea?”
“No. I’ve had it a while.”
“What does Heather say?”
“She’s still getting over the frostbite.”
“True. But what does that involve? It’s been weeks.” He leaned into her neck and kissed her. “I don’t know about that sister of yours.”
“Bill!”
He returned his hands to her shoulders.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m not sure she likes me.”
“She’s probably jealous of you, Bill.”
He smiled at her behind her back. Mandy, Mandy, Mandy. The world revolved around her. He kissed her neck.
“Bill.”
Sometimes she looked so tiny, perched naked on the edge of their bed, complaining of neck and shoulder pain, that Bill would think, she really is not for me.
“You should have seen her feet when they finally got her shoes and socks off.”
She had told him already. She had been thinking a lot about those feet. An
d about the lost girl, Suse.
“Heather wouldn’t cooperate at all.”
At the end of the day, Mandy had a few sentences, several beginnings to a poem, an idea for a screenplay.
“They looked like frozen chicken. Honest to God.”
“Poor Heather.”
“You were so nice to her, Bill. You know that?”
They were not married, and she was fifteen years younger than he was, yet her airs of wifely expertise were not unconvincing. When she was twenty-one, he had lusted after her an entire term. He wrote her ludicrous, lovesick letters, which he later discovered she had not only saved — he had specifically asked her to destroy them — but had shared with her girlfriends — other students of his.
The result was that he didn’t entirely trust her. Before he told her anything, he asked himself, do I want this repeated?
Heather sat in an armchair lodged between her bed and window, her feet propped on a footstool. It was now late February and she was aware that six weeks was an alarming length of time not to have dressed or left her bedroom except for perfunctory visits to the bathroom and kitchen, although there were the two trips to the hospital to have the bandages changed and then removed.
And a couple of visits to her doctor.
And hanging the new bird feeder from a tree in her backyard.
Heather had not called her mother, and she had made Mandy promise not to pass on any information about the frostbite. Heather had been cool to her mother since Benny’s death, though now she could not quite understand why. She knew only that it had seemed necessary to erect a wall around herself.
Whenever she was angry at her mother, Heather thought of her first date. Grade eleven, Justin Tucker. He worked part-time stacking shelves in the corner store where she worked the cash. She at the front of the store with the customers, he at the back with the dry goods and dairy products and sour-smelling coolers that lined the back wall. Theirs were different but complementary roles, not just in the store but in the universe. These were the thoughts she had when she was in love with him. They embarrassed her later.
Darren Effect Page 5
