Elizabeth and After (34 page)

They climbed into the car. The three of them shoulder to shoulder in the front. “We should have a picture of this,” Elizabeth said, and sitting between her two men slid her hands beneath their arms. In the old days the drive to the Richardson New Year’s party had so often been through bad weather that Elizabeth couldn’t imagine a New Year’s Eve without thinking of gusts of snow beating against the windshield, the tension of driving while only half-seeing the road. But this night was warmer. The large melting flakes were mixed with rain and on the paved road strips of bare pavement emerged between long mounds of messy slush.

By the time they arrived at the Richardsons’, the sleet had thickened and the windshield wipers of William McKelvey’s ancient Pontiac were moaning under their burdens of half-frozen snow. But the giant house beckoned to them. Its roofs and gables were strung with rows of Christmas lights and overseeing everything was an illuminated Santa Claus standing on
the back of his gift-laden sled and whipping the dozen reindeer strung out on the long ridge that stretched between the chimneys at either end.

As always they parked on the street, the car faced towards home. McKelvey had even thought to bring a piece of cardboard to place on the windshield beneath the wipers so they wouldn’t emerge from the party to be confronted by a thick crust of ice.

Luke and Amy were at the door. Luke, big and patrician, leering happily at them as he grasped their hands, “Glad you could come for the last one, folks. Let’s make the last the best.” He leaned to make his annual attempt to kiss Elizabeth, which she ignored, hugging Amy instead. Tonight Amy had her hair dyed a flaming brassy blond that could have crowned an Amazon on a holy crusade.

“Ah, beautiful as always,” Amy sighed, looking at Elizabeth’s new outfit, which Elizabeth suddenly realized was more suited to the township library board than this party.

“You too,” said Elizabeth. “I can’t believe your dress.” Amy had on one of her customary shimmering white satin creations—a mass of unyielding polyester cloth that stuck out at all angles like a bow tied by a ten-thumbed giant. As Amy had once explained to Elizabeth: “When you’re with someone like Luke you’re always having to dress up. So I decided early on to choose my colours, white and gold, like my face and my hair.”

In the Great Hall the boys from the hockey team were doing their pre-midnight waiter stint, circulating in white linen jackets with trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Mid-season tourneys had supplied a fresh crop of stitches, and some smiles were already in need of post-season dental work. At one time or another most of the players had been Elizabeth’s
students at the elementary, so there was much “Would you have a glass of champagne, Mrs. McKelvey?” and “Oh my God, Robert, you look like you ran into a truck!” as she moved amidst the throng.

At the far end of the room in front of the huge stone fireplace, Adam had already taken up his position and was apparently deep in conversation with Albert Knight. It was two months since she’d last had lunch with Adam. He’d called her up saying he had something special to ask her. When he leaned towards her over the table at the Timberpost, Elizabeth had thought that for once he was going to break out of the mould he had assumed, the mouldy mould he’d climbed into the day she told him they had to stop sleeping together. But when he explained what he wanted, her heart had truly turned grey: was being together on the board of a retirement home supposed to be a substitute for making a new life? How could she have given herself to this man? Where
was
the man she had clutched at that long ago New Year’s Eve, those motel afternoons? She seemed to have a talent for turning men into idiots by sleeping with them.

She headed for the kitchen to refill her glass. McKelvey was sitting at the big table, his jacket off, one shirt-tail dangling. Since his ideal pre-party moment he had regressed to an overgrown and hairy eight-year-old, face scarlet with rye—and he was laughing at some foolish joke with an equally foolish grin on his face. On her way out she bumped into Amy.

“You look furious,” Amy said. “Who crossed you?”

“I crossed me,” Elizabeth said. “Me and all the stupid things I’ve done.”

“Join the crowd.” And as Amy spoke Elizabeth looked out at the room. Every single face was familiar to her. Not only did she know every person in the room but she also knew
their parents, their children if they had any, their secrets, their victories and humiliations, often even the comments their teachers had written on their Grade Three report cards. Drinking, dancing, chattering away in front of her was a massive interconnected tangle she had spent her whole adult life sinking into, and now more than anything else she wanted to shake herself free from it.

Adam was waiting for her. His poised transparent self. And perhaps because she had once hoped Adam would be her means of escape, she finally saw the Adam-in-the-Adam again: his disappearance, his transformation into the man who’d asked her to be on the retirement villa board was just something he had contrived for her; his invisibility was only a costume he’d taken on so that she needn’t know how much she’d hurt him.

Adam’s face was suddenly threatening to turn into that of George VI, his eyes fixed on her as though to confirm, “Yes, out of duty and devotion this is what I’ve done.”

“You’re looking very regal tonight,” Elizabeth said.

“Winter was always my time.”

Their very first motel afternoon together, after they had made love and she was in the bathroom, he had carefully piled the pillows behind his back so that she emerged to find him sitting up straight, his eyebrows drawn to a single line as he read the newspaper. She had said, “You’re looking very regal,” and he had replied, “Winter was always my time.”

Well, I’m drunk again, Elizabeth thought. Winter is my time for getting drunk and now I’m
so
drunk I’ve fallen into my running-away-with-Adam mood. And instead of worrying about it she decided to give in to the idea. Why not, speaking of drunk, which was McKelvey’s preferred state, and Carl would soon be leaving home, so why not run away with
Adam? Maybe he’d even let her call him King George—it was her destiny—after all. And as she drank and nestled into him and the band started to play it was like twenty years ago when she didn’t know any better and a dark burrow with Adam was the only place she could imagine wanting to be.

The music changed to suitably royal waltzes. She danced with Adam. He held her gently then gently and close, as they floated slowly around the room.

Elizabeth moved her lips to his ear. “I’ve got a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Tomorrow, New Year’s Day, I bring my car into town to pick something up at the milk store.”

“It’s a good one,” Adam said.

“Shut up. Then I come to your house and we leave.”

“Where for?”

“Far. We disappear. Like that. No one ever knows. Okay?”

“Okay,” Adam said.

“I’m serious.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth whispered, and then, so the accountant-in-the-Adam would wake up, “I’ve had my money in a Kingston trust account for two years, waiting for this.” She moved in so close that Adam would have to know, close enough to wake the Adam-in-the-Adam and feel him press against her. She had her eyes shut, she was already gone, they would be on an airplane or a ship or a dining room atop a skyscraper. When she looked up again William McKelvey, who had at least managed to tuck in his shirt before emerging from the kitchen, waved them over. “You know,” he said, “you two can really dance.” He gave Adam a look full of speculation. “I suppose everyone asks you why you never got married? Or are you in love with my wife like everyone else?”

The music started again and William swept her out onto the floor. Where Adam’s arm around her waist had been light and suggestive, William’s was heavy and possessing. He held her against his belly and she was aware of his belt buckle as it pressed through her dress. “Well, how’s this?”

“You’re pretty good,” Elizabeth said. “Amazing.” Which was true—William, who was emitting more fumes than a distillery,
was
amazing her by being able to stay on his feet, let alone dance. But then William stopped in the middle of the dance floor.

“If Adam wasn’t who he was, I’d say he was sweet on you.”

“You just did. And anyway, he
is
who he is. And so am I.” Now Elizabeth realized she really
was
going to go away with Adam. She was who she was. Why hadn’t she known that before? Because she’d wanted to be someone else. She’d wanted to be a romantic and carefree young girl who could survive running off with the first man who made her belly jump. Well, she’d done it and she’d survived, but she’d also wasted most of her life. Might as well make use of what was left. Adam might or might not make her belly jump, but they would go places and see things and he would look like a somewhat pearlike George VI and she would play the faded library-committee princess and when they went out they wouldn’t have to put cardboard on their windshield.

“Well, I am who I am,” William McKelvey said, “so I think I’ll go into the kitchen and have another few drinks while you and Mr. Goldsmith solve the problems of the world. When you’re done we can go home.”

“Why don’t we go now?”

“Now?”

“You’ve had enough to drink. And so have I.”

“Speak for yourself. I’ll see you in an hour.”

She was about to go back to Adam when Carl asked her to dance. She hadn’t danced with Carl since he was twelve years old and she was teaching him the box step. Now he fairly glided about the room, still gleaming as he had earlier in the evening but before she could tell him how handsome he was, how dangerous he looked, how well he danced, one of the boys from the hockey team had taken over and was swirling and twirling her as the music picked up.

“Your mother can really dance.” Carl turned. Chrissy had appeared beside him, her cheeks flushed, eyes sparking. “You?”

“Sure,” Carl said. She stepped towards him. Into him. Put her hands on the back of his neck, pressed her breasts into his shirt. They were dancing, turning, Carl had drunk too much, he felt like a merry-go-round that couldn’t stop. He closed his eyes but it didn’t help, his body was trying to get out of his skin and into Chrissy’s.

“You like this?”

He opened his eyes. “It’s crazy,” he said, his head bent down to her, his mouth so close to hers that their lips brushed as he talked. “What’s—” And then they were in the hall, still standing mouth to mouth, not talking or kissing or anything at all except feeling their bodies go wild. Until a hand fell on Carl’s shoulder and Carl turned to see Fred Verghoers, Chrissy’s boyfriend, squinting into his face as though Carl were a bucket of beans, a bucket of beans he was about to pour into the garbage.

They were surrounded, separated, pushed outside. Standing in the thick drifting snow, light clinging to the moist flakes. Drunk, he had been drunk and then his blood ran hot for Chrissy and now Fred’s fist was coming at him like a fat bulldozer and before he could move it ploughed through the
centre of his face. All he could feel were his nose and cheeks going numb and his arse banging into the snow so hard he bounced up again, arms and fists churning, until it was him looking down at Fred writhing in the snow while his own knuckles burned and burned. Chrissy kneeling over her man, others pulling Fred up, leading Fred and Chrissy away while he was taken to one of the stables, surrounded, fed brandy and cigarettes.

It was five in the morning when they came out to take the cardboard off the windshield. The sleet had stopped, the sky was clear, a brisk north wind was blowing in their faces. “You’re too drunk to drive,” Elizabeth told McKelvey. “Give me the keys.”

McKelvey, pale and exhausted, brought his keys out of his pocket, then looked searchingly at Elizabeth. “If I’m too drunk, so are you. Carl can drive.” As he handed the keys to Carl he slipped on the ice and Elizabeth and Carl had to catch him. They packed him into the back seat. Then Elizabeth got into the front.

“You can drive if you want to,” Carl said. “Dad’s asleep.”

“Go ahead.”

They started off, rolling slowly out of town towards their farm. The blacktop that had been partly clear on the way in now had a thin layer of ice but at least it had been sanded.

As Carl drove, Elizabeth hummed. She liked having Carl drive. She felt safe with him, the way she once had with McKelvey. When she closed her eyes and started dreaming, the afternoons in the motels came back—the starched smell of motel sheets, the way one time she and Adam had drunk a bottle of wine and watched soap operas—and as the car began to fishtail she dreamed they were on an ocean liner, she and Adam, he was holding her in his arms, and as the floor
tilted they were waltzing—she didn’t wake up until the car left the road. Carl’s face was twisted in fear and panic; she wanted to reach out to reassure him but there was no time, the car was already folding into the tree, her head smashing into the windshield. And as she began floating out of her body she promised herself that she would hover over Carl, stay with him always, keep him safe. But her whole body was still in motion; the car had stopped, she was hurtling through the windshield, her skull had broken open and the last thing she saw was the snow alive with starlight.

F
OR
T
HANKSGIVING
, A
RNIE WENT
down to visit Marilyn and the children in Kingston. The bypass had been postponed until February because hospital budget cuts had taken two nurses off the heart unit. “You’d think they wouldn’t want people dropping dead in the street just to save a few dollars,” Arnie Kincaid said. This was after the meal was finished and the children were out playing in the last of the sun. Following the sharp frosts and the rains, the warmth had suddenly returned and the smell of gold and scarlet leaves was enough to make you cry—if you were the kind to cry about the weather or to think this Thanksgiving might be your last.

“You’re not going to drop dead in the street or anywhere else,” Marilyn said. “You’re too important to too many people.”