Divorce Is Murder

by Elka Ray

  “We know. Let’s go,” says Colin. He picks me up like I’m weightless and carries me down the spiral staircase.

  “We need the paramedics, now!” says Colin, to someone behind me. “Can you get some towels?” He bears me into the fancy salon and lays me gently on the sofa.

  Pressing a towel to my bloody shoulder, he holds my other hand. “You’re going to be fine,” he says. But there’s a tremor in his voice.

  I nod. His hand feels good—safe—but my mind is still whirring, full of images of my recent struggle. I know why Chantelle attacked Josh. Jealousy. Hatred. Greed. But is this the end of it? “Chantelle. Did . . . she kill Tonya?” I whisper.

  Gazing down at me, Colin looks exasperated. “You’ve been shot,” he says. “This can wait, Toby.”

  “Please,” I say. I lick my lips. They feel numb. “Tell me.”

  He presses his lips together, then sighs. “Chantelle has an airtight alibi for the night Tonya died. She was a chaperone on her kid’s school soccer trip to Kelowna.” He squeezes my hand. “But seriously, Toby, just forget about this for now and—”

  A paramedic rushes into the room, lugging a bag of equipment.

  “Thank God!” says Colin. “She’s lost a lot of blood! How’s the other vic?” I know he means Josh. I hold my breath. Where is Josh?

  “Critical. Looks like internal bleeding. Abdominal,” says the medic. She’s around my age, with short spiky red hair. She leans over me. “Hi. What’s your name?” She’s chewing gum. It smells like watermelon.

  “Toby.”

  “Hi Toby. Can you make a fist?” I grimace as she inserts an IV line. Colin is still clutching my other hand. My eyelids feel weighted.

  “Let’s get her onto the boat,” says the paramedic, and Colin nods. He scoops me up and carries me out of the salon. In his arms, I feel warm. Yet underneath that comfort, I’m terrified. Tonya’s killer is still out there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:

  SHATTERED

  The boat rolls beneath me. My whole body feels heavy. I try to focus on the medic’s face leaning over me, the sound of her soothing words, the beeps of some machines off to one side. The sounds seem to be moving away from me. I can’t stop my eyelids from sagging.

  I’m on a stretcher, hooked up to an IV, in a small space, brightly lit. Josh is lying across a narrow aisle from me. But wait, now the small space has gone dark. I’m alone. I see myself pounding on a locked door, small and terrified. I am back at Camp Wikwakee, in the Nature Hut.

  The smell. The old dead animals. The humiliation of knowing I’d been tricked. But by whom? It was all too much. I was sobbing hysterically.

  I crawled to the one small window and tugged at the shutters, the hook rusted in place. My fingers were raw by the time I’d freed it, the shutters creaking open to permit some weak moonlight to filter through the dirty glass. But the sash wouldn’t budge. It was painted shut. No amount of heaving could lift it.

  A fumbling walk deeper into the room, where no moonlight fell, fingers brushing against old fur and dried leaves that crackled away to dust, damp newsprint, something squishy. I jerked my hand away, my heart in my throat. Another step forward and something scurried away. Mice? Rats? I spun around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two small neon eyes, a devilish red-green glow. Something hissed. I screamed and lurched backward, my hip hitting a table before I collapsed to the hard floor, shaking.

  I wanted to curl up in a ball, to quiver and cry, to call out for my mother. But there was no one here to help. I had to get out of here. My hip hurt but I forced myself up, took a few tiny steps, scared to touch anything. And then I found it—a rock, the size of a running shoe, good and heavy. I picked it up with both hands.

  I crept back to the window and threw it as hard as I could, squeezed my eyes shut. The glass shattered.

  I was crawling out when the flashlight beam struck, right in my face. “Who’s there?” asked a loud angry man’s voice. “Stop right there!”

  I froze, blinded by the light—and panic. A piece of broken glass sliced my palm. “Ow,” I said, gripping it, both hands already hot and sticky with blood.

  The voice came again. “Hey! Girl! What are you doing here?”

  There was no way to answer that.

  Another voice now, smooth and assured. “Hey! Hey! I need you to take a deep slow breath. Yes.” I blink. A middle-aged man in blue scrubs is leaning over me. There’s a blue shower cap on his head. The room is very white and bright. I can see strange metallic machines. “Hey!” he says, when he sees my eyes are open. “That’s good. What’s your name?”

  I think he’s smiling behind his mask. “Toby,” I mumble.

  “Good, Toby, now take another deep breath for me.”

  I do as I’m told and the smile lines around his eyes deepen. He presses a stethoscope to my chest, listening intently.

  He straightens up. “That’s good, Toby. Very good.” He sounds relieved. “You’re in the OR,” he says. “I’m going to operate on your gunshot wound. I’ll administer a general anesthetic. Do you have any allergies, Toby?”

  I manage to mumble no and he looks pleased, again. He seems easy to please, and I like him for that.

  “When did you last eat?”

  I have no idea. Then it comes to me. “Breakfast. This morning.”

  He nods. “Perfect. Now relax.”

  I want to ask his name except my lips aren’t working the way they should. I feel a moment of frustration but realize it doesn’t matter. I’m too warm and relaxed to care. I am sinking and floating away.

  I’m cocooned in comfort.

  Someone is touching me, lifting me. “She’s going to Recovery,” says a woman’s voice. I’m too tired to figure out what she’s talking about. It has nothing to do with me.

  A jolt. I am on the move. Lights brighten and fade, brighten again. Rubber-soled shoes squeak softly below me. I can hear the sound of tires, rolling. A steel door swings open and shut. Another voice. Where is it coming from?

  Someone is talking, very far away.

  This new voice sounded furious.

  “We know you were meeting someone in there!” said this angry new voice. “Who was it? Answer me!”

  I blinked, but couldn’t identify who was speaking. It was hard to see. After so long in the dark, the light was blinding in here.

  “Were you meeting a boy?” It was Thelma, my old camp counsellor, her face scrunched up with fury. She leaned closer, menacing. Beneath a mop of frizzy orange hair she looked livid, her freckles merged into an angry red rash. She had a raincoat on over her cow-patterned pajamas, and Wellington boots on her feet.

  “No!” My voice shook. I was in the camp’s office, sitting on a metal folding chair. The camp’s owners, Maureen and Dick Larange, were there, sunken-eyed and irate, along with Thelma and the camp nurse, a tall skinny woman who was wrapping gauze around my injured hand.

  “Stop moving,” she snapped.

  I bit back a moan. “It hurts.”

  “You’d better tell us the boy’s name,” said Thelma through gritted teeth. “Or else!”

  “I was alone! I swear!”

  “Oh yeah. So why’d we find this?” She held it out on her palm, lips curled in disgust and chin raised in triumph. She thrust it under my nose, so close my vision blurred. Was that a candy? But no. My cheeks flushed. I’d seen one before, in Sex Ed. We’d had to unwrap one and roll it down onto a banana—an exercise of utter hilarity and embarrassment. My eyes watered.

  “Well?” snapped Maureen Larange, taking over from Thelma. Her hands were on her massive hips, now wrapped in a nubby pink dressing gown. She loomed closer. She had a mustache. “What do you have to say for yourself, missy?”

  Thelma slapped the wrapped condom down onto a large desk. “We’re calling your mother,” she said.

  I roll onto my side. I feel cold all of a sudden and slightly nauseous. “She’s coming to,” says a soft female voice. Someone pulls a blanket higher up to my chin.

/>   “I’m c . . . cold,” I mumble.

  The voice says, “Say that again.”

  “So cold.”

  “She’s cold.” She calls out, as if to someone else. “Hey Sally. Can you get her a blower? And an extra blanket?”

  A soft hum starts up in my ears, and hot air blows against the small of my back. Another blanket is laid on top of me. The warmth feels wonderful. The nausea subsides and I relax. I feel cozy and safe. But then the nausea comes back. I screw my eyes shut but it’s too bright and people keep passing by, making too much noise. I want to rest but someone’s coughing. There are too many voices.

  “What a slut! So who’d she do it with?”

  “She didn’t!”

  “Seriously! Can you believe that skank?!”

  High, excited girls’ voices floated from around the corner. Squeals of fake shock and mockery.

  I was sitting outside the camp’s office, where I’d been kept all night, in disgrace. My eyes ached with fatigue and my hand throbbed. There was a massive bruise on my hip. The camp’s owners were inside making arrangements for a car to take me home. They’d already called my mother.

  Another whisper, followed by more titters. I recognized Chantelle’s voice, loud and caustic: “I heard she was caught giving Danny Q a blow job.” Danny Q weighed at least three hundred pounds and smelled like old socks and Doritos.

  “Ewwww!” Squeals and derisive laughter. “No! Really? She didn’t!”

  I recognized Tonya’s dismissive snort, her stage whisper. “Naw. But she was caught butt-naked, doing it with both Barton brothers.” A moment of silence as this sinks in. Some surprised snickers. “Well, that would be better than Danny G.” Mumbles of assent.

  “It was obvious she’d do anything for Josh!”

  “Yeah, totally!” More laughter. “But his brother?”

  “Oh my gawd! Wait! She like slept with both of them? At the same time?” Nervous titters. “But like, how?”

  Tonya’s low murmur.

  “Seriously?”

  “That’s disgusting!”

  “What a whore!”

  And then, the chant started up, just Tonya’s voice at first, soon joined by the others: Me Chinese, me a slut. Me do sex in Nature Hut . . . Over and over, until they were all laughing too hard to sing it anymore.

  My cheeks were on fire and my eyes hot and heavy. I bowed my head and squeezed my hands into fists, even the one with the deep cut. It hurt but I was glad. At least I could focus on that.

  I was not going to cry. I would not give Tonya that satisfaction.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:

  IN RECOVERY

  “Pssst, Toby.”

  My eyelids flutter open. Josh is lying on a white bed, maybe two meters away from me. A pale blue curtain separates us. Josh has dragged it open and is peering at me through the gap. He looks like an injured soldier, recently shipped out of some war zone, his right eye a squashed plum, with a big white bandage around his head. The white bandage and the dark bruises intensify the color of his left eye, which is now blinking at me. “You awake?” he whispers.

  “Mmmm, yeah,” I mumble, through heavy lips. My eyes feel heavy too. I try to turn my neck, but it hurts.

  “We both had surgery,” says Josh.

  I take this in, and remember the boat. I see Chantelle swinging a rifle. This memory makes me flinch.

  Josh licks his chapped lips. “You okay?” he asks.

  I have stop to think about this. Physically, I feel fine. So long as I don’t move, nothing hurts. Mentally, I’m not so sure. Each time a thought starts, it seems to fade away. “I . . . I’m tired,” I say. “You?”

  “Same. It’s the anesthetic.”

  Again, I think about this. My thoughts are very slow. This must be how stupid people feel. Everything feels disconnected. Again, my thoughts turn back to camp. How vivid it all seems! My last morning at camp, sitting outside that decrepit camp office. It’s like it all happened yesterday. Tonya’s nasty chant starts up in my head. Me Chinese, me a slut. . . I dig my nails into my palms.

  My throat is dry. I swallow. “Josh, d’you remember how I left camp?”

  His answer comes slowly. “Yeah, what about it?”

  “That last night, when we were all down on the dock playing Spin the Bottle, and you left with Tonya, what happened after that?”

  His good eye blinks in slow motion. “Ummm, I don’t remember . . .” I see him staring at the blue-painted ceiling with a blank look on his battered face. He can’t even remember! I’m shocked to realize that this incident, which meant so much to me, left no traces for him. He turns back to me. “Wait, no. I do. I spun the bottle and it pointed at Tonya. We went down to the end of the dock and she kissed me. I remember a lot of guys were jealous ‘cause you know, Tonya was really hot, and she wanted us to go someplace private so I left with her . . .” He’s back to staring up at the ceiling. “We made out a little and I . . .” He frowns. “I told her I had to leave. I really liked you and . . .” He blinks. “I was a virgin and Tonya just seemed so . . .” His lips twitch into a half smile. “So experienced, like she expected us to, you know, have sex. It sort of freaked me out, so I just took off on her.”

  “And the note?”

  He turns to look at me. “What note?”

  “I found a note in my bunk, supposedly from you, asking me to meet you in the Nature Hut.”

  He frowns. His tongue flicks against his front teeth. “Wait, you thought I set you up?”

  I want to close my eyes now. I feel spent. I imagine Tonya’s face when he rejected her. Who better to vent her fury on? I always knew she’d locked me in. Now I know why she’d hated me so much. “Not really,” I say. “But I wasn’t . . .” I bite my lip. “I was never totally sure. I thought maybe you and Tonya did it together, like she put you up to it.”

  He’s still holding the curtain, which falls from his hands. He retrieves it and pulls it back again. His pale face looks stricken. “No! I’d never.”

  “Okay.”

  “God, I’m sorry,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “For leaving with her. And the next morning, when everyone was saying bad stuff about you.” His Adam’s apple bobs and his good eye slides away. “I never said goodbye.”

  I nod. Did he know what people were saying about me? And about him and Mike? About me and all those other boys? Had he denied it? Had he defended me? My head aches. “Did you believe any of it?”

  “No.”

  My heart falls. He’d looked down, just before he’d said it. I shut my eyes. “I’m so tired, Josh.”

  “Yeah, same. I . . . Rest.”

  “You too.” The curtain drops.

  I feel a tear slide out of my eye and down my left cheek. Am I feeling disappointment or relief? Or is this just fatigue? I’m not even sure why I’m crying.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

  CATFIGHT

  I slept for thirteen hours straight—no mean feat in a hospital, where the wards are always noisy with beeping machines, snoring patients, and prowling nurses. It was past 2:00 p.m. when a nurse finally woke me to check my vitals. Now, still clad in a wrap-around hospital robe, I’m in a wheelchair, bound for Imaging, pushed by a skinny volunteer who’s still in high school. With each step, the wheelchair creaks and the girl’s rubber-soled sneakers squeak. The hallway is long, white and—apart from the creaks and squeaks—utterly silent. I feel like I’m floating down a long, bright white tunnel. It’s so brightly lit I’m reminded of people’s descriptions of near death experiences. My forehead pulses. Yesterday’s boat trip feels like decades ago. All the painkillers have left me woozy.

  We turn a corner. I hear tapping and scuffling sounds. Another corner reveals two women, still far away but coming closer. I squint through my headache. The women get bigger, both figures somehow familiar, one slender and long-haired, the other tall and dumpy, with a crew cut. And then, I recognize them: Alana Mapplebee and Louise Dobson. I’m surprised to see them t
ogether. How do they know each other? But then, this is Victoria. Forget six degrees of separation. It’s more like point-six.

  They look equally surprised to see me. Or maybe they’re just stunned by my injuries.

  Their steps slow. “Oh my God!” says Alana. “Toby?” She gapes at my black eye, split lip, and bandaged arm. “What happened?” Louise looks scared, like my injuries might be contagious.

  I ask the young girl who’s pushing me to stop. “Chantelle Orker,” I say, through fat lips. “I mean Barton. Mike’s wife, she attacked me.”

  Alana gasps. “You were there? On Josh’s boat?” Despite my condition, she looks jealous, her glossed lips forming a little pout. “We heard about Josh,” she says, frowning. “Is he okay?”

  I nod, having just quizzed the nurse who changed my IV bag. “He needed surgery on his spleen but will recover.”

  Louise pushes her white Lanvin glasses back up her wide nose. “Right. That’s good news,” she says, curtly. She’s carrying a bouquet of calla lilies, which I think of as funeral flowers. “We’re on our way up to see him.” She taps a foot, clearly eager to get going.

  “Well, I hope you feel better soon,” says Alana, sliding her purse’s gold chain back onto her thin shoulder. She twirls a perfectly curled strand of hair around one manicured finger. “We were so worried about Josh. Weren’t we, Louise?” She looks sideways at Louise, then down the hall. Her eyes shine with excitement. I guess she’s thrilled to have this excuse to see Josh again. No doubt she’s hoping a brush with death has made him see the light and realize they’re soulmates.

  Looking down, I see that Alana is in turquoise high-heeled boots, while Louise is wearing those same nasty mustard vinyl loafers. I think of the stereotype of lesbian footwear. I hope they’re at least comfortable.

  “So how do you know each other?” I ask. It’s hard to picture these two being friends. They’re so different. There’s a pause. Is it my imagination or do they both look strained?

  “Oh, Louise has redecorated a bunch of rental properties I handle,” says Alana.

  Louise looks pointedly at her watch. “We’d better go,” she says. “I have another meeting at four.”