Crimes Against My Brother (15 page)

But when would Annette get married? This was the question at the Robb house. That is, there was a good deal of false concern, brought on by Mrs. Robb because of Sara having found Ian.

“Oh, men—I’ve given up on stupid whiny men,” Annette would often tell them. “No matter what the tea leaves say. I had my man, and Harold turned out to be such a disappointment. You know he follows me about. He threatens me—off and on.”

“Well then, you should get the police!”

“I will—if he does not watch out!”

Then she would smile, take a deep breath and trump a king of diamonds with her ace of hearts and laugh a wonderful provocative laugh. “Youse didn’t think I had that ace up my sleeve, did you? Well, there you go now—I did. So now you all have jam on your faces!”

That is what captures you, really—innocent charm. It is the great and glorious cloth of seduction. Ian tried not to be seduced—he forbade himself to allow it. That is, he tried not to look at her.

Ian now had the money he’d once said he needed in order to charm Annette. He really, if he was careful with it, had money enough to last two lifetimes. He had once said he would murder for her. Well, now perhaps he wouldn’t.

He did not know that Harold had planned a murder over Annette as well. He had planned to murder Ian.

All this time Ian thought he was secure and that his business was private. He did not speak too much about it but kept every cent in his head. He had about two hundred thousand dollars on hand and his house was paid for.

Yet for all his supposed wiles, Ian had no idea how the world really worked. Lonnie, however, knew how the world worked. He knew what Ian’s store brought in, knew what his house was worth—knew that he had been planning other investments. And why was Lonnie observing all this? Well, because he could, and because it might be an avenue to get money—he just didn’t quite know how yet. But he would know within a short time. One spring day his features would change; he would become buoyant and almost uncontainable—it was that day when he discovered how to make it all work. Lonnie Sullivan may have never heard of Machiavelli—but Machiavelli would certainly have heard of him.

At first, I believe, Ian did not catch on. Perhaps Annette did not either. But over time he realized that each conversation she had was directed at him and him alone.

This was his plight: to remember those long-ago days of warm summer breezes and Annette’s multicoloured dresses and the soft lilt of her white breasts in a swimsuit at the shore, and for her now to act completely differently toward him—that is, to be interested in every word he now said. And for him to catch her staring at him whenever he glanced her way.

But I have long maintained there was only one Sara Robb, and this is what poor Corky in all his humility tried to tell Ian. And this is why Corky got into such trouble with Annette, who was furious when anything about her true motives (motives she herself was uncertain about) was discovered.

“If you are going to be rude or unpleasant to me, Corky, I will take Ethel away on a trip and we will find some—well, we will just have fun. You know, I know boys in Nova Scotia who are rich and kind and who would love Ethel as much as I do. You see I have travelled a bit and
have a bit more experience with how to handle people like—well, people like you.”

And Corky would stare at the wall, his arms folded, his untied boots half off his feet, his cup of tea steaming. Annette would walk by him, the swaying motion of her dress enchanting—enchanting, it seemed, to everyone but him.

“Yes, and you always have Ethel make you tea. If you really cared for her, you would make it yourself, Corky—so don’t be so unpleasant.”

Corky would mutter and look away and say he did not want the tea at all. Ian would not interject in these squabbles, but somewhere in them, he knew, there was a hidden warning, some caution light he should recognize. But that feeling would pass.

Ian had promised Corky a job, and told him that once he was married to Sara and Corky was married to Ethel, they would live like a family. They would run the business and Corky would become a partner—and they would get into the siding business before anyone else in town.

Ian still really hoped to help both Molly and Evan too. So he planned to help Evan buy the old Jameson mill. And he thought that by hiring Corky, he would demonstrate that he intended only good. He was serious about it, but he did not know that Corky Thorn had placed his entire life into this dream.

This is what Ian often told Corky: Evan could run the mill, but if Ian was going to solve Evan’s problem, then Ian should actually own the place. “You will come to work here with me, Corky—just wait! Everything with me and Evan and Harold will be worked out. Harold will come around too—I am sure of it.”

And Corky would beam.

There was something else. Ian was no fool. During this time, aluminum siding was starting to replace wood, and he knew that someday he would involve himself in this. In fact, as ugly and as simple as poor Corky looked, he was indispensable to Ian’s plan, for he knew how to work both with siding and in a sawmill and he was far brighter than he seemed at first glance.

So Corky was devoted to Ian’s idea, was overcome by it, and could only see one danger. “There is only one great gift in a man’s life and you have found her. Do not throw her clumsy grace away for the smell of perfume on the inside of a thigh!” is what Corky would have liked to say if he’d had the ability to do so.

But how many hundreds of millions of men have thrown away their gifts? Or, as I have long maintained—and I once mentioned this to Sara, who refused to speak about it—perhaps Annette too had no choice. So one should have mercy.

“The virtue of Mercy is not strained,” I said, misquoting Shakespeare and liking the misquote.

“I have wrestled with that and found it true,” Sara told me, in her lilting Miramichi accent that seemed to cut the air with love.

As much as Corky was indispensable to Ian’s daydreams, Annette became indispensable to Sara’s in hers—in her planning the wedding that was to come. Soon every decision Sara made had to be approved by Annette. She liked this or did not like that. This bridesmaid’s dress was too plain, that one was too full, this one didn’t show the boob, that one had a too-narrow line. The wedding dress should not be radiant white but pearl coloured because of Sara’s pale skin. The aisle must not be too, too long so the procession should start closer to the altar (Annette whispered in discretion) because of Sara’s limp.

This gave Annette more authority in the young couple’s lives than any other person—and no one fussed more about protocol.

“A young priest to marry and old priest to bury,” she said when they went to visit the rectory one afternoon, and settled on Father MacIlvoy, who was their age, though Annette disapproved of him.

Sara was clumsy-brilliant—by that I mean she could neither be brilliant without being clumsy nor clumsy without being brilliant. And I wanted my students to understand that characteristic, although if they ever did I am unsure. The great defining forces in our lives are
not uniformly good or inglorious—that is, traits that would cripple us are present in all great men and women and are fought against every step of the way.

There were things Sara was not good at: friendships were hard for her to form because too many had inflicted pain. But the prettiest girl in the world seemed to like her, and this made up for much, and so she was completely devoted to her one friend, the prettiest girl in the world.

Nor did she mind that Annette did not see her brilliance. That is, from the first Annette wondered why she kept Sara as her friend. It was a challenge. Especially when Sara went up to Diane’s Cut and Curl to have her hair done, thinking Annette should welcome her, even though she was so out of place in that place of beauty. Her pale face was offset by a new hairdo that only showed her to be unaware of the world Annette knew.

Sara’s world seemed backward, going the other way—she studied the poetry of someone called T. S. Eliot and the war of some year, 1812. She had tried to speak of T. S. Eliot once at Cut and Curl, of his objection to knowledge without faith, and so much hooting and laughter followed that Annette became embarrassed.

Besides which, Annette was as good and comfortable in her world as any woman. And hers was not a little part of the world but a great part, a large part that those with small eyes and pale skin did not see—and therefore, as Annette knew, could not join.

They played a Ouija board game and Annette asked the board if Sara would find true love.

“I don’t need to ask.” Sara laughed. “I already know.”

The answer came back: yes, she would. And they all laughed harder.

Harold had lost everything and he blamed his two friends for it. He thought of killing himself, but though he held the knife to his jugular, in the end he tossed it aside. It was a grey and morbid night when he
decided not only to live but to exact revenge on those who did not care if he died. That was it: no one seemed to care if he died.

He wrote Sara a letter, saying he believed Annette was after Ian:

You had better watch her—she had me steal money for her. That was eighty dollars—imagine what she would do for Ian! And what is more to the point—imagine what Ian would do for her. Take one look at them when they are in any room together and you will see.

Your faithful friend from youth, Big Harold Dew.

But there is blindness in love and friendship is love. And Sara was determined to be as kind a friend as she could. And some part of the reason for this was to prove Harold Dew and his letter wrong.

Cold toward her all day, Annette would lighten and warm when they were alone—when, as far as Annette was concerned, they were out of sight of those whose opinion so counted. These were the best moments for Sara, who waited for the change to come—and often worried that it would not. But then, all of a sudden, Annette would say something or ask a question in such a particularly affectionate manner that Sara’s troubled little face would brighten. GOOD! Annette was back—the real Annette, who loved her again.

The young women walked down the back streets together, with mud still on the sidewalk and the pale evening spending itself like love over the great spring trees, and the buildings casting out evening shadows. Sara was concerned that she did not know what was important about being “feminine.” And now, for the first time, she had a man and needed to know. (Or at least, this was the idea Sara wanted to promote, in order to make Annette’s expertise valuable.) So she asked Annette’s advice about what to wear and how to dress—and in some way she did this only because Annette expected to be asked and would have been disappointed if Sara did not. So the advice had to be given, in the same way it had been for generations—not because it was needed but because it
was expected. Therefore they spoke only about things Annette assumed Sara did not understand, and Sara pretended for Annette’s sake she did not. And finally they came to this: “Are you a virgin?” Annette asked.

“Yes.”

“Is he?”

“I’m not sure—I think probably he is.”

“People say he is rich. Is he rich?” Annette asked. “Or probably he isn’t.” Then she lit a cigarette and tossed the match aside.

“I’m not sure,” Sara said, waiting for her. “But I think money will be no object for us—at any rate, he made a lot of money in the last three years because of the hospital, the school and nursing home—he supplied them all with their pipes and heating systems, had a contract for the windows in the hospital and still does. And then there was over three hundred appliances he sold—and besides that, he bought and sold two other properties and invested the money in his warehouse. He is smart like that. You know he is also sad—he is sad at times that his mom and dad never got to see him grow up or make all this money.”

“Really?” Annette said. And since it was the first time she had ever seemed impressed, Sara bragged about Ian’s yearly salary of over a hundred thousand dollars, which would be comparable in any large city to three times that. (In fact, over the next two to three years, because he supplied both the community college with all the gyprock and lumber for its new structure and all the wiring to replace the knob and tube, and did the same with the senior citizen homes, and bought and sold two warehouse properties, Ian would earn close to $150,000 a year. And that is one reason the townspeople simply took him to be a cheat.) The only thing Ian worried about was the two strip malls coming in and offsetting his business, for he had no control over them. And he knew that when those malls came in, he would lose contracts, and perhaps much more. He felt if businesses expanded outward, the centre of the town would die.