The Seary Line (37 page)

During that first night, she fought over the dog. Fought hard. But banging against him, she was nothing more than a bird striking a sunlit window. He never budged. Wouldn't listen. Her anger soon tempered into alarm when she looked in his eyes, something there, long fermenting, finally uncorked. Lips curling, teeth clenched, hand like a rake driving into her shoulder, he said slowly, as though to ensure proper communication, “I's the man of this house now. Don't. You. Ever. Cross. Me. You got no idea what I can do. No idea at all.” And with those few words, he had plucked that mask from her reddened cheeks, exposed the frailty that lay beneath.

One Sunday after church, she had hinted to old Mrs. Hickey about the dire circumstances of the marriage. The farce of it. The continual undertone of aggression. (She would never admit that she was frightened.) But Mrs. Hickey dismissed her concerns, said tritely, “Contrary to popular belief, no union is picture perfect. Everyone's got their faults. You make your bed, then you lie in it.” She stared down at the opal brooch pinned to her left lapel, ran her hands over her chest. “Besides, we all knows that poor man was under the thumb of his mother from the day he was born. A wife might expect a bit of belligerence, if you asks me. It'll die down.”

“Die down?” Stella replied.

“Or die out. Whatever you says nowadays.” Mrs. Hickey had unclipped the brooch, moved it to her right lapel, then hunched a little less, shook her gullet. “Now,” she had said, eyes on Stella. “Don't that look better? 'Twas bothering me all service.”

Stella stood in front of the stove, waited until a slice of fat pork sizzled, coating the pan in a thin layer of grease. Generous sprinkle of salt, and she laid the steak in the pan,
fried and flipped, fried and flipped, until the meat was as tough as hardtack. Onion strewn over top of the meat, a final turn for good luck, and she dumped the entire works on a plate. Large glass of crimson Purity syrup and water beside it.

As always, Fuller pinched himself in around the back side of the table, chair pressed against the wall. He said eating made him hot, and he liked the coolness from the draft that came in around the window. Table pulled in just underneath his breasts, and Stella had to move the armchair around to the front of the table so that she could serve him his meal.

In the meager times that had descended upon the whole community, a steak was a rarity. Stella thought he might savour it, but he sawed enormous morsels, jammed them in his mouth, his cheeks. Talked around the ball of meat, even while his tongue floated in syrup. “I minds my mother saying to me,
I loves to see you eat
. Was one of her pleasures, I believes. Watching me poke food into my face. When she used to feed me as a youngster, she'd nearly throttle me though. Did I ever tell you that?”

Flat, “No.”

“Well she did. Used to clap her hands together when I managed to swallow.”

“Oh.” Stella sat on the very edge of the daybed, hands folded on her lap. She had sewn her skirt from an old pair of Leander's tweed wool pants, and this gave her some sly pleasure, to know that Leander was covering her now.

“Fed me for years, she did. Years.”

She stared at Fuller as he plowed through the plate-sized slab of meat, then looked away. How could he talk so cordially like that? Sharing quaint stories about his life as though the two of them were friends. Instead of
corralled enemies. Stella never gave it much thought, only recognized that it was his unpredictability that made him dangerous. One moment, he was a lamb, next, a mammoth boar, trapped in an undersized pen. She did not care what pain was behind it all.

A sound from the table, a gasp of sorts, sudden suction, and she looked up at Fuller. His hands were coiled around his throat, temperature rising in his face. Eyes bulging, he reached for his drink, chugged a mouthful, but the candy red liquid shot out his nose, spattered on the cream-coloured tablecloth. He stomped his feet, shook his fists at her, then whacked the steak from its plate. Alistair Fuller was choking.

Up, he tried to rise. But he was squeezed in so tightly, he lifted two legs of the heavy table off the floor, and it knocked him backwards. He tried again, but in his panic, he was unable to free himself, and then he gripped the edges of the table, rolled his head, shook his head, banged his head against the window behind him. Threatened the glass.

Stella plugged her ears, sealed her eyes. In her mind, she tried to see and name every colour that she had ever seen. They flashed in rapid, vibrant succession. “Pink, rose, red, green grass, periwinkle, lavender, honey, honeycomb, white, white, pink, white, lilies, black, of course, can't forget black, pink, pink, blue, pink, pink. No more pink. Please, God, no more pink. I'll have to do it all over again.” She shook, bent over at the waist, nose trying to catch any of the long lost scent of Leander in the fabric of her skirt. Nothing but fried fat and onion. Any moment, she thought she would feel fists on her, his roar in her ears. “Just go,” she whispered. “Leave. Please, God. Make him leave.” And that was all she had to say. After eternity, the banging stopped. The marriage bond dissolved. Only dead quiet in the kitchen.

Stella opened her eyes. Mound slumped on the kitchen table, hair like tufts of grass trying to escape the earth. Shards of broken plate scattered everywhere. Strings of onion stuck to the wall and rocking chair. She stood, tiptoed a few feet forward, bent down on a single knee. Resting on the worn floor in front of the sink was the steak. Motionless. True, at that moment, she had expected it to move. She watched as her white hand, strangely calm, reached out and lifted it. Then, with her other hand, she ran her fingers over the mark where grease had blemished the wood. And she stared at the shiny stain, this reminder, and knew it would never lift. Knew her floor was changed forever. It would never be clean again.

“Mother?”

Stella couldn't avert her eyes from the tall trees outside the window, the wind blowing through them, lifting whole heavy branches, letting them drop. They swayed and shuddered, moving towards her, then drawing back. She was certain the wind was searching for a voice, using the leaves for vibration, creating a set of organic vocal chords.

She didn't want to hear what it had to say. She would not listen. There were no words. Of any consequence.

“Mother?”

“Yes, dear.”

“What were you doing, gone off into space like that? Looked like you was having a stroke or something.” Fists jabbing her hips. “Well, not on my watch you won't. You can save that for when you visit Robert.”

As she was driving her Rambler over the smooth pavement, Summer Fall Lane glanced at her watch. Mickey Mouse glanced back at her, his head cocked, skinny arms and fat white gloves locked in a five-after-one sideways cheer. Hurrah! The watch was a gift from her father, who now resided in Florida with his wife and her two daughters. His second wife. A woman he'd met at some sort of convention for the service industry. With little effort, she had stolen Summer's father away with the promise of fatter oranges, winters without dampness, a pancake breakfast any time of day or night. It didn't take much for him to transplant himself. A few words, some papers, a worn leather suitcase. A breath or two, and he was gone.

When Summer summoned an image of his face that last night, she could not recall the slightest hint of pain in his eyes or chin or forehead. She remembered the weather too, greedy winds, sheets of rain that distorted the headlights of his car as he backed down the drive. She thought the ferry might not leave port. Thought he might come back. But he never did, and she'd felt ashamed of herself for hoping, ashamed of waiting up just in case.

Out of habit, Summer shook her wrist, stared down at Mickey. The watch was broken, had been for a considerable while. But she never took it off. Even though she derived no pleasure from wearing it, she liked to believe she never dwelled on it either. That watch was just a habit. Nothing more.

Hand over hand, she turned her car (nicknamed Betty Blue) up a street, noticed a loose string hanging from the sleeve of her peasant blouse. Leaning forward, she caught the thread in her mouth, severed it with her teeth, spit it to the side. Her blouse was worn, practically falling apart, and this matched her brown corduroys, knees and backside about as strong as tissue paper. Her pants were held onto her skinny frame with a leather belt, so old and stretched that when it lay flat, it grinned. Though she wore these items frequently, her favourite article of clothes rested on the seat beside her: a crumpled navy pullover she had pilfered from a box at her grandmother's. It had once belonged to her Uncle Robert, she was told, and even though the elbows were nearing disintegration, she wouldn't think of giving it up. She sensed there was righteousness trapped inside the wool (righteousness being in short supply these days), and besides, wearing it made her feel invisible.

Though Summer was quite comfortable with her worn look, her mother never tired of complaining about it. “Couldn't you please, just this once, wear something decent?” “You look like a streel.” “Who do you belong to? Surely to God 'tis not me.” Whenever her mother's friends dropped by, Summer was shooed out the back door or down into her basement room. Occasionally Summer would sit on the top step, listen to the drivel, and close her eyes as she felt their superficiality drift past her. “Elise, darling, where is that curious daughter of yours?” “Oh,
Elise, darling, couldn't you coax her into trying on a little colour?” “So pale. My Jessie says she saw your Summer last week, and she was, well, looking more like winter thaw.” They spoke of her as though her clothes and her clean white face were all that she was. All that she'd ever be.

Summer took one hand off the wheel and held the end of her braid, felt the bound mass of split ends prick against her palm. How different they were, she and her mother. Difficult to believe they had once been joined together by a tough cord. While her mother struggled to isolate herself from any hint of blandness, Summer wanted nothing more than to twirl downwards, root herself, like a hardy tree. Her mother never seemed to crave attachment, while Summer lived with a nagging feeling that she was constantly soaring in someone's uncertain hands. And, at any given moment, that someone was going to let her go. Drop her. And she was going to fall, fall, fall, her life forever changed. She told her mother about feeling dizzy in the darkness, and her mother had curtly replied, “Nothing that fresh air won't cure. Why don't you try poking some of that into your lungs for a change?”

Summer pulled up in front of Sunray Towers, the apartment building where her grandmother lived. It was a brick structure, tall and sharp and boring, and her grandmother always called it Sardine Towers. “Because everyone lives on top of everyone else,” she said.

One afternoon, when Summer had been high, she'd replied, “More like Celibate Towers. They might live on top of one another, but they don't do nothing.”

And her grandmother had twittered, nudged her and replied, “You'd be surprised now. I sees all kinds of ladies coming and going to 316. A widower lives there.”

Summer had stepped back, fingers to her chin. “I'm surprised you even know what that means, Nan.”

“I haven't quite been around the block,” her grandmother had whispered, glancing sideways, “but maybe I ventured out for a stroll once or twice.”

Her grandmother shifted her feet in her thick-soled shoes, and that gave her away. She was embellishing, as she sometimes did for comic effect. And Summer loved her for it. Loved her more than any other person. “Christ, Nan. That would shock the ass off Mother. She'd have you whipped out of there, put in an all girls' old-age-home in jig time.”

Summer's grandmother was a woman who surprised her frequently – with her openness, her quirky humour, her soft cool hands. Summer had often heard her mother say how frigid her grandmother was. Distant. Detached. Perpetually distracted. But, from Summer's perspective, nothing could be further from the truth. Many times Summer imagined that instead of sliding forth from her mother's womb, she had budded off the side of her grandmother. A human hydra. Taken a neater route from dark oblivion into life.

Inside the building, Summer pressed the back of her hand against her nose. Every Sunday, the hallways smelled the same – cabbage and boiled salt meat. Perhaps this heavy stench was a daily occurrence, but she was mostly there on Sundays. She tapped lightly on door 310, and as she listened for the sound of slippers shuffling over linoleum, she chewed on the end of her braid, touched the damp hair against her neck.

Stella Edgecombe grunted as she pulled open the door. She was dressed in black polyester pants, crisp white blouse, a necklace of unreasonably large glossy orange beads. “I swears,” she whispered, “this door is getting heavier and heavier every day.”

“It's a conspiracy, Nan,” Summer whispered, leaning her bony backside against the door. “Every night they spray it with weighted paint. Just enough to make you question your own strength. Don't you be fooled now.”