Elizabeth and After (29 page)

That night Moira dreamed she was with Adam Goldsmith in the Garden of Eden. They were dressed in big green plant leaves, hers was too stiff to be comfortable, and they were in a junglelike setting with thick entangling vines that needed constant brushing away. Adam was explaining that he truly loved Maureen and was still hoping she would forgive him. “I thought you might know her,” Adam said. “Your name is a bit the same.” He told her that Maureen had recently gone missing and he couldn’t find her despite the fact that he spent most of his time trying to track her through the jungle. “I thought it was Elizabeth you danced with,” Moira said and then Adam turned in the vine-mottled light and gave Moira a peculiar and intense look exactly like Carl’s the last time she had said Chrissy’s name. At that point in her dream Moira realized Carl and Adam had identical faces. But when she woke up, the dream still vivid, she remembered Adam’s face the way it really was: white hair carefully parted, steel-rimmed spectacles perched precariously on his nose, timid transparent eyes—and wondered how such a man could have so many rumours attached to him or be so transformed by her dream.

On the way to the bathroom in the morning, she saw the source of at least one dream element: the hall wallpaper was a tangled mass of vines and leaves. But the dream stayed with her and standing in the shower she found herself wondering what really had happened between Adam Goldsmith and Maureen
Knight. Would he have told her he loved her? Cried after she left? There was something so
reposed
about his face that made it impossible to imagine Adam in pain, Adam in despair, Adam on fire. But of course he must have been, once, like everyone else. Like Carl whose every cell twitched and quivered with every second of pain and passion he’d ever known.

That was what she should have said to Lucy: that Carl’s attractiveness to her was that he was so vulnerable and maybe that meant she was some kind of tourist, a high-nose upstate girl who had come to Canada and was inscribing herself on Carl like a sightseer leaving footprints on a freshly poured piece of sidewalk. But no, that wasn’t it; you don’t roll around on the floor making weird noises with a piece of sidewalk. And you don’t expect the sidewalk to tell you when it’s time to move on.

She woke up in Carl’s bed. At first she had to remind herself it was her day off and that Carl had told her he was going in to work the short shift at the Movie Barn. Just to get started back. As she dressed, Moira could hear Lizzie padding back and forth in the hall. Moira wondered what Lizzie would think of suddenly being taken care of by the person who was supposed to be taking care of her grandfather. Now Lizzie stood frowning in the doorway. Moira felt herself being inspected in light of her new location. Lizzie hesitated, then took a step inside. Moira stayed sitting on the bed. She was holding one of her sandals and as she waited for Lizzie to speak she fiddled with the straps. That was something else she could have mentioned to Lucy—that one of the reasons Carl had come back to sink into the past was his desire to be Lizzie’s father. Unlike her own, who had leaked in and out of her life until all that was left was the stain.

Lizzie came closer. She still had a child’s face, oval with dark eyes and long wavy hair, but you could see the bones were going to be strong and there’d be a time, after puberty, when she’d look almost mannish. Not the soft snub-nosed blonde look Moira had at that age. Lizzie would be harder for boys to imagine as a date. Less fresh sidewalk, more herself.

Lizzie sat beside her on the bed. At the R
&R
they sometimes played cards while talking to McKelvey. Now Moira, suddenly embarrassed to be seen in this new way, reached out for Lizzie’s hands. Lizzie didn’t resist, didn’t speak.

“You hungry?”

“I
guess.”

“We could have pancakes.”

“Pancakes,” Lizzie said, sounding disappointed.

Moira turned Lizzie’s hands over, took the right one and traced the lifeline with her fingernail. Lizzie giggled and tensed. “I used to read palms,” Moira said. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re going to live to be a hundred and eighty-four years old? And look at this line. It means you’re smart but that what you think and what you want aren’t always the same. This mark here is very rare. I bet you have dreams. I wouldn’t be surprised if you dreamed Carl was coming to see you. Am I right?” Lizzie’s hand had loosened and her face relaxed. “It says here you’re going to take a lot of trips. You’d better get a suitcase for your next birthday. And this means you know how to tell people what you really feel.”

She was holding Lizzie’s hand and talking and everything else had dropped away except the satiny feel of Lizzie’s skin and the beat of her pulse in her wrist, and as she kept going and felt Lizzie growing into her, she was thinking how strange it was women could come together this way, even if only for a second or a minute.

“I guess I would take some pancakes,” Lizzie said warily, sounding so like her father accepting tea that Moira laughed.

“I’ll break the eggs,” Lizzie ventured, “you do the dishes.”

When Carl returned he set out to drive Lizzie home. Moira had meant to leave at the same time but, still cleaning up after pancakes and—she had to admit to herself—curious to be there alone, she was standing at the kitchen window and humming a tune that had been doodling in her throat all morning when Luke Richardson’s Cadillac pulled into the driveway and parked beside her battered Tercel. He didn’t get out right away. Instead he sat and honked his horn as if Moira had the choice of pretending he wasn’t there.

Luke Richardson at the kitchen table. There was something about his head, about the way his black hair that came to a sharp triangle in front was combed straight back, making his eyes look wider apart, something about the way his whole head was balanced on his long neck and shoulders, swaying above his coffee cup, weaving and leaning in towards her, that made her think of a big old adder snake getting ready to strike. Even as he was saying how glad he was that she was “giving Carl a hand” and how everyone told him she was brightening the R&R, Moira was waiting for a chance to say she was on her way into town.

“I have to check the furnace,” Luke Richardson suddenly announced. Reluctant to leave him in the house, she trailed him down the old rough-sawn stairs into the cobwebby basement with its dirt floor and beams that were axe-squared timbers set into little puddles of cement. “A lot of people leave their thermostats on all year,” Luke said, as though she’d asked him for a course in furnace repair. “Then late August or early September, one night the temperature drops and the dang
thing switches on before you’ve had time to check it out.” While Luke Richardson sniffed around she stayed at the base of the stairs. Back in the kitchen he sat down again and said he was the kind of person people were either for or against, and he wasn’t talking about the fact that he wanted to follow Vernon Boyce as reeve, Fred was welcome to it, he meant “the real Luke Richardson everyone knows.” He looked at her across the table, talking slowly as though she were a moron, and explained that he’d taken a chance on Carl, done something for him because he’d hunted with his old man and knew how hard Carl had been hit by the accident. “Takes a lot of drink to break up a marriage,” Luke said, a sanctimonious tone in his voice. Then: “Look, Moira, I’ve known you for a long time and I’ve known your dad longer. If you ask me, you’re old enough to know you’re not Carl’s kind of girl. You slumming or what?”

Moira stood up. “I have to go to work. If you’ll excuse me.”

Richardson played with his coffee cup. “Don’t take me wrong. I just think Carl’s got a few problems. Look, Moira, everyone knows that he almost drank himself to death after that accident with his mother. And it wasn’t his first accident. Or the first time he almost drank someone into the grave. Did you know that?”

“Thanks for the warning, Mr. Richardson.”

“I just don’t want Carl getting mixed up in things. He can live here, work at the store. Stay as long as he likes, leave whenever he wants. A few more months, if Carl can straighten out, I want to get him involved in the business. Half the farmland in this township is for sale. I could use someone like Carl who knows his away around when he’s outside. You know what I mean?”

“Maybe,” Moira said. “And maybe he doesn’t want to be used.”

“My family and his go back,” Richardson said. “Way back. Carl’s ancestors came over with the Hudson’s Bay Company. The old fur traders who crossed the country in canoes. My grandfather used to go hunting with Carl’s grandfather. Used to say he must have got some Indian blood in him. Those traders often had second wives, out in the west, then they’d bring home their children and try to mix them in. People don’t talk that way these days, but they did. Carl’s grandfather used to be able to find his way around anywhere. And my uncle, you know he was made a senator, and Carl’s grandfather would take him and his government friends fishing up north, back when there were lakes no one had ever seen. They would fly bush planes in. That was just after the war. I’ve got pictures of them at the house. I’ll show them to you one day. And then my father used to get Carl’s father to do guiding for the Kingston Kiwanis, up north. You wouldn’t believe it to look at him now but old William, once he got on the trail of something, he was like a hound. I always said those McKelveys weren’t meant for farming; they’re hunter throwbacks to the days of cavemen and hairy elephants. So that’s a long time I’ve been worrying about Carl and his family. Think about it. Maybe you won’t look at me that way the next time I come around.”

His big fingers unwrapped themselves from the empty coffee cup, like a team of pythons unwinding from the neck of their prey.

“I don’t have to explain the rules of the game to you,” he said. “With Carl, you’re coming from the same place I am.” He got up and Moira thought she had never liked big men
who stood too close. They were making some kind of statement about being a man, being big, like their shadow was enough to swallow you up.

“Don’t take this the wrong way. You and I both know what Carl did was wrong. He just got what was coming to him. But I’m going to close my eyes this one last time because I know what Carl’s been through. With his mother and his father and Chrissy and Lizzie. You know, I admire Carl. That stunt with Ned—well, maybe the boy got what he deserved. Though I wish I didn’t have to say so. Peck his eyes out. The man’s got a sense of humour. He should be
making
movies, not renting them. But you know, a loose cannon like Carl, someone’s got to keep an eye on him, make sure where he points himself.”

In a movement so fast she didn’t even see him start, he was on his feet and his hands were on her shoulders. It was as though he’d somehow hypnotized her with his rich voice and those eyes that bored in on you, moving around as his head bobbed and roved in that snaky way. He was touching her, his jaw had dropped either to speak, or worse, in some sort of prelude to a kiss, his face close enough that she could smell his aftershave. Then he was out the door, waving from the yard as though he was just the big friendly shambling uncle he played when her father was around.

He knows I won’t tell Carl, was all Moira could think, and then she started wondering how long she’d been standing rigid in the same place Richardson had left her, her shoulders locked into position, paralysed by his poisonous concoction of fear and hate. Then she added doubt; because as his car swung out of the drive, his big hand flapping in a last avuncular wave, she had to admit to herself that she didn’t really understand why Carl had mixed in so thick with Luke Richardson. Maybe that was just the way the men around
here acted, needing to rub up against each other to remind themselves they were still alive, still men. Recreational violence, Kate Rawlins called it. Barnyard blow-offs. Better than just going out and having sex, she had said, and Moira hadn’t dared ask why.

Early evening and Ned Richardson is pulling into the Verghoers driveway on the Second Line Road. It is Labour Day Saturday. At the West Gull Boyce Memorial Park the annual softball tournament is well underway. Ned looks at the house, pats the red tape on the seat beside him—a habit he’s started lately to remind himself to think before he acts—then takes a plastic grocery bag from his glove compartment before getting out to stand on the grass.

It’s a perfect evening for a visit but Ned already knows Fred and Chrissy aren’t home. They’re over at the ball diamond under the lights with their swirling crowds of moths. Fred is suited up in his catcher’s outfit; in his heavy old-fashioned brown leather pads he looks like a huge bald bear daring the world to try to shoot him. In the stands, wearing her West Gull Merchants T-shirt, Chrissy is still finishing off the ice-cream cone Ned saw her buying as he left the parking lot.

“When are you going to learn there’s a time to ask for favours?” were Fred’s last words to him.
Why don’t you just fuck off and disappear
, he might as well have said—that’s what it sounded like to Ned Richardson who’d already tried to see him twice at the lumber yard and had spent two days working up the courage to confront him at the ball game.

“Favours” was the word Fred had used. He seemed to have forgotten that Ned had been buried up to his neck and had practically got his eyes eaten out on Fred’s behalf. And now Fred is talking about favours. Ned knocks at the door,
waits for a moment as though he is being watched, as though someone might answer, then walks in. Everyone in West Gull is always boasting about not needing to lock their doors.

He goes right upstairs and finds the room where Fred and Chrissy sleep. The plan is simple enough. He is going to steal some of Chrissy’s underwear, then plant it someplace to convince Fred she is sleeping around. That seems to be the only thing that gets under his skin, and that’s where, after what Fred has done to him, Ned wants to be.

They have matching dressers. Ned opens one, Chrissy’s right away. You would think she would keep her underwear in her top drawer—his mother does and so did Lu-Ann when she was with him—but Chrissy’s top drawer is full of jewellery on one side, T-shirts on the other. The next drawer is jeans, then come sweatshirts. He doesn’t find the underwear until the bottom drawer. She’s got mounds of it, stacks of underpants sorted by colour, two rows of brassieres neatly laid out on top of each other as though on display. Confronted with all this care, his resolve wavers. Meanwhile a car passes on the highway and his panic level, already at what he thought must be the maximum, shoots up. He grabs some panties and bras—one from each pile so they won’t be noticed—and stuffs them into his grocery bag. The car passes, Ned’s nerves subside. Looking around the room he sees the tripod with the video camera mounted on it. It’s pointed out the window and Ned tries to imagine Fred as an amateur bird watcher. He briefly considers stealing the camera, but decides it would only get him into trouble.