Cool Water (33 page)

In the living room she stares at the couch, not believing that just hours ago Norval was lying there watching the Weather Channel. She can still see the outline of his body in the nap of the Ultrasuede fabric. Norval's couch. She'd always thought of it as his because he'd driven all the way to Regina in a borrowed truck to pick it up, and then when he got it home, she discovered that the company had ordered the wrong couch, only she'd never told Norval because he seemed so happy with this one. It was the most interest he'd ever shown in a piece of furniture and he complimented her several times on her choice. Because she was pretty sure it was an even more expensive couch than the one she'd ordered, she kept the company's mistake to herself, even when she noticed that the fabric had a tendency to hold the outlines of people's buttocks—a definite flaw, she'd thought, considering how much money she'd spent. She puts her hand down on Norval's couch and imagines his warmth. She wants to lie down on the couch and let herself sink into the outline of Norval's body, feel the warmth that she will never—is it possible?—feel again. But the couch is a shrine that she can't yet disturb.

Instead, she goes looking. For clues. Clues that Norval knew something was wrong—
You know, Lila, I was almost
shot today
—a note perhaps, like a suicide note, a message for her or for Rachelle, a goodbye, last words like the ones people on doomed aircraft write on the backs of blank cheques or the insides of cigarette boxes, and which are found floating amid the debris in the North Sea or the Indian Ocean.

She begins with his sports jacket, which is hanging over the back of a chair in the kitchen. She finds a miniature appointment book—no PalmPilot, even though she'd wanted to buy him one; a cell phone was enough portable technology, he'd said. In another pocket, his keys. And a list—her own list—of items that he was to discuss with Joe. How could it be that just hours ago Norval was at the church talking about something as ordinary as paint? She hangs the jacket back on the chair.

She moves from the kitchen to Norval's den, where he has a desk, an armchair and a set of bookshelves. The desk is so neat you'd swear he hadn't done any work at it in years, and perhaps he hadn't. When Lila thinks about it, she has no idea what Norval did in here. He has a small TV on one of the bookshelves. Maybe he just came in here and watched the Weather Channel while Lila and Rachelle were watching reality shows in the living room. She scans the books on the shelves: several on history and geography, a couple of decades-old university commerce texts, the poetry and devotional books Norval used for his lay services, a set of reference books of famous quotations, and a National Geographic atlas that had been a Christmas present from her, at Norval's request.

She remembers that when they first got notice they were moving to Juliet, Norval had special-ordered a number of Prairie history books from a bookstore in the city because he wanted to understand the place they were moving to. She'd tried to read one of them herself and hadn't got past the introduction. But Norval had devoured them all, read passages aloud to her that he found particularly interesting. He told her that apparently they were moving to a desert—
a
desert, Lila, and I'll bet you didn't even know there was
a desert in Canada.
Well, it wasn't much of a desert, but the first year they'd lived here Norval had taken her and baby Rachelle out into the dunes with a photographer for their yearly Christmas card picture. She'd objected, had wanted to use a studio photo, but Norval's heart was set on the dunes picture, so she relented. She wishes she had a copy of that photograph to look at right now, but she's not sure one even exists any more.

She checks the desk drawers. Nothing. They're empty except for a phone book, a pad of paper and a handful of pens, some of them with the bank's name printed in gold letters on the shaft. She holds the pad of paper up to the light to see if anything Norval had written was indented on the top page, but the pad looks brand new. The wastebasket contains just two spent scratch lotto tickets and a cellophane candy wrapper. The den is a perfect reflection of Norval, a perfect reflection of a man who kept everything to himself. She leaves the room, closing the door quietly as though she doesn't want to disturb a man at work.

Lila checks every surface in the house that might hold a last note from Norval—the dining room table, the telephone stand, the vanity counter in the bathroom—but she finds nothing. Norval's bedside table holds only his cell phone, a news magazine, his reading glasses and the clock radio. She gives up. On her way back downstairs, she opens Rachelle's bedroom door and is shocked to see her there, sound asleep on top of the covers, still dressed.

Now is the time. She
must
wake her and tell her. She says Rachelle's name, but when she gets no response, she quietly closes the door.
I'm a coward,
she thinks.
Without Norval, I'm
not equipped for life.

In the living room, she collapses into an armchair and looks once again at Norval's shape in the Ultrasuede, and once again she cries, but this time not in anger. She sits with a Kleenex box on her lap and a wastebasket at her feet, dreading the conversation with her daughter, dreading all that she will have to do in the next few days, all
the arrange
ments.
Tomorrow, she thinks, she will become a widow in the eyes of the world.

And there will be a funeral to plan, instead of a wedding.

Astrid's Secret

As Lee finally walks into his own yard, he studies the car parked by the house. He doesn't recognize it. Cracker comes to greet him, his tail wagging, looking back toward the house as though he's saying,
Look, another stranger
—the first one being the horse, all those hours ago. Now, he doesn't pay the horse any mind at all.

“Who's here, Cracker?” Lee says, reaching down to give the dog a pat.

As they approach the house, he sees Mrs. Bulin from the post office sitting on the step. He remembers her phone message, the one he'd ignored:
Give me a call, Lee. There's
something I need to discuss with you.
Mrs. Bulin stands and stretches, giving the impression that she's been waiting awhile. She's wearing purple knee-length shorts and her thin legs are blue-white, as though they haven't seen a minute of sun all summer.

She says, “That's a long time to sit for an old girl like me. I was about to leave but I could tell from the dog that it was you coming up the road. Did you get my message?”

Lee decides ignorance is the way to plead. “Sorry,” he says, “I haven't checked messages all day.” It's not exactly a lie. He wonders what could be so important that it brought her out here. Surely not just an overdue bill for his mailbox. That would be beyond the call of postal duty, even for Mrs. Bulin.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says. “In private, I mean. Not in the post office.”

Lee is tired and sore, and he can't think of anyone he'd rather
not
talk to more than Mrs. Bulin right now. He'd like to put the horse in a pen, thank him for the day's long ride with a cool bath and a good brush, then sit alone in one of Astrid's webbed plastic lawn chairs and drink another beer or two—cold this time—and watch the sunset. He would like to be rude and send Mrs. Bulin packing, but he doesn't because you have to be careful what you say to someone who daily sees and talks to the whole town. Anyway, Astrid didn't approve of rudeness and sent no one packing without a good reason. He hears her voice:
Use people well.

“You'd better come in, then,” Lee says. “Just let me put this horse away. Wait in the house if you want. The door's open.”

“I might do,” Mrs. Bulin says. “That step was getting a little hard on the behind.”

Not something he wants to think about, Mrs. Bulin's behind, and neither does he want to think about her in his house, collecting information, sniffing for mould in the fridge, running her finger over surfaces to check for dust. He'll have to hose the sweaty horse down later, he thinks, after Mrs. Bulin is gone, which won't be long if he can help it. He leads the horse into the pen, and the horse pulls toward the water bucket. Lee removes the saddle and bridle and turns him loose. The horse takes a long drink and then goes looking for a good spot to roll. He snorts and paws at the dust in a few different spots, then drops to the ground and stretches and rolls the full length of one side of his body, flips himself over and does the same on the other side. He stands and shakes, dirt now coated to his hide. Even his head is covered in black dirt. He looks like a chimney sweep, Lee thinks, tossing a substantial forkload of hay over the top rail. Then he takes the saddle and bridle and drops them just inside the barn door, saving the cleaning for later. The pad is wet with sweat and he hangs it over a stall divider to dry.

When Lee gets back to the house he finds Mrs. Bulin sitting on a kitchen chair. She's staring at the stack of mail on the sideboard, her stock-in-trade. She's distracted, uncomfortable. She fidgets in her chair. She doesn't look as though she's been snooping around, which surprises Lee. He thought for sure he'd find her with her nose in a cup-board. He takes old George's hat off and lays it on the counter.

“I'll make tea,” Lee says. “Unless you'd like something else.” Although he doesn't have much else. He's saving the beer in the fridge for himself.

“Tea would be fine,” she says. “Lovely.”

As Lee puts the kettle on, she says, “That's quite a sunburn you've got. You should use sunscreen. Robert Redford looks like an old leather boot now. He used to be so good-looking.”

Lee can feel the sunburn on his face and the back of his neck, he doesn't need Mrs. Bulin to point it out. He gets a couple of clean mugs out of the cupboard and puts them on the table.

“That cowboy movie,” Mrs. Bulin says. “I saw it at the drive-in, a long time ago. I guess he's still good-looking for his age, when you think about it.”

Lee has no idea what movie she's talking about. She looks down at her hands and grows silent—Mrs. Bulin, silent— and Lee wonders with a touch of alarm,
What could it be,
the reason she drove out here?

Then she says, “It's about Astrid. You know I see things, don't you. At the post office.”

Lee nods.

“I see people every day, I see what comes in the mail. I get blamed for spreading rumours, Lee, but I can keep secrets. I'm actually very good at keeping secrets.” She stops.

Lee doesn't prompt. He's standing by the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil.

“This has been bothering me,” she says, and takes a deep breath. “I believe Astrid thought of me as a friend. We shared a secret, just the two of us, although we never spoke about it, not once.”

And then Lee knows. He knows that whatever Mrs. Bulin has to say, it will be about his mother. Not Astrid, but his
real
mother.
He places one hand on the porcelain stovetop, but it's hot from the burner and so he removes it again. Sticks it casually in his back pocket.

“Go on,” he says.

“Near the end, I visited Astrid in the hospital, and she kept talking about work she had to do. Baking. Ironing. Laundry piled on the clothes dryer. I kept saying to her, ‘It's fine, Astrid. You don't need to worry about that. It's all taken care of.'” Mrs. Bulin looks at Lee. “Is it all right, me telling you this?”

Lee nods. He doesn't know if it's all right or not. His mind is all over the place with questions about what Mrs. Bulin might know. Mrs. Bulin, of all people.

“Even though Astrid was in a fog,” Mrs. Bulin continues, “she knew she wasn't going home again, and so she asked me if I would come here, to the farm, and at first I thought she wanted me to come and do chores. By this time, with the drugs and such, I didn't think it mattered who she was talking to—me, a nurse, a neighbour—but then I realized she wasn't talking about chores, and she knew it was me by her bed. There was something she wanted done, and it had to be me.” She looks at Lee, who is now watching her carefully, waiting, his heart skipping beats, or maybe it only seems to be. “She asked me to come out here and find a box in her closet. An old candy box.”

A candy box. Lee thinks about the closet, the one in Astrid's bedroom, the same closet that holds the blue velvet watch box. He can see the candy box, knows exactly where it is.

“I was supposed to find it and burn it,” Mrs. Bulin says, “and she was so insistent and upset that finally I told her I had already done as she asked. I said I'd found the box and burned it, and she relaxed then. Settled right down. Only I was lying, of course.”

She looks at Lee. “So that's it. And now it's been bothering me, the same way it bothered her. That I didn't do it when I said I did. I thought about coming out here when you weren't home and finding it, but I couldn't do that. So then I decided to just tell you. And when I got here tonight and you weren't home I thought again about what she'd asked me to do and how I could still make good on my promise, but that just didn't seem right. I suppose I decided the candy box was something you should know about.”

The kettle is boiling. Lee looks for the teapot but it's not on the counter where Astrid used to keep it. He doesn't usually make a pot of tea for himself, just puts a tea bag in a mug. His eye lands once again on the silver tea service and he hears Astrid's voice,
For company, use the silver tea service,
and so he does. He takes the pot out of the oak cabinet and rinses it out at the sink, and then drops a tea bag in. Even though the pot is tarnished. He carries it to the table and places it in the middle.

“Do you have any idea what's in this box?” Mrs. Bulin asks.

“No,” Lee says. He imagines things: photographs, adoption papers, mailing addresses and telephone numbers. “Do you?”