Elizabeth and After (9 page)

Outside he stood on the sidewalk for a moment, waiting to see if Billy would come out after him. Of course he wouldn’t. Billy didn’t come after people which was why people went after him.

He found Billy’s car in the shadows of the laundromat parking lot. Ned had a small army knife attached to his key chain. He used it to take off the rear licence plate. When Billy discovered the plate missing, he wouldn’t call the police—he had so many tickets outstanding he might as well just go to jail. No. He would think for a while and he would realize where it was. He’d start to ask himself what he was going to have to do to get it back. Something unexpected, Ned decided. Something to be remembered.

On his way out of town Ned stopped at the convenience store again. This time he kept his eyes on Ellie’s china blues. “Forgot cigarettes,” he explained and smiled quickly at the smile she gave him. In high school she’d been four years ahead—until she dropped out in her final year because she was pregnant. But even in the fluorescent glare of the convenience store she didn’t look so bad. Even if she did have a kid somewhere. Lu-Ann’s likely reaction to who her successor might be didn’t hurt. Ned smoked a cigarette and told Ellie how he’d gone to the hotel for a beer and no one was there. So he’d decided to head down the highway to Frostie’s. She smiled when he said Frostie’s and he knew she’d go with him after work if he asked, but even if his gut was boiling he couldn’t yet face the idea of walking into Frostie’s with Ellie Dean, of all people, older than him
and
a mother.

“Gotta go,” he finally said and started out the door.

“See you,” she said back, her voice high and girlish, and Ned had to stop himself from screaming out his victory.

It was a flat lonely stretch of road around the Balfer place: mostly fields for the Forrest farm which was half a mile away, and a big shallow swamp that flooded every spring and grew saw-edged marsh grass for the rest of the summer. Harry Balfer had worked for the township for decades, driving the big snowplough. Then his wife inherited some money so he’d quit and they moved out west. Ned parked down the road from the house. There was a glow pulsing from one of the windows. He came up on it slowly. Carl was slouched back on the couch, a beer in his hand. A girl, just a little kid, was beside him. They had the slack-jawed look Alvin sometimes got, mesmerized by the television. Ned could even see the changing images of the movie getting flashed across their faces.

A hiss. Ned jerked around. A cat was crouched in a branch above him, ready to spring.

“Fuck off, cat,” Ned whispered.

The cat hissed again.

Ned reached out to swipe it but the cat was faster: one of its paws whipped across the back of his hand. He could feel the parallel tracks opening as they started to bleed. Moving to chase it he stepped on a branch, then froze against the sound before creeping back to the truck, his hand on fire. He put his tongue on the scratches and sucked at them. But what he needed now, he realized, wasn’t first aid but sympathy. He started the truck and began driving towards the store.

L
IZZIE WOKE TO THE FEEL OF SOME
thing heavy on her back. “Get off, Marbles,” she said. She pushed at the cat to dislodge it. A blanket shifted on her shoulder and she jerked up screaming.

Fred was standing above her in the shadows. He smelled of stale beer. A light went on in the hallway and her mother came in.

“She must have been dreaming,” Fred said. “I was just pulling up her covers and she woke up with the terrors.” The way Fred said it, his voice heavy and sour, he might have been announcing that she had just wet her bed. Not that she ever had. At least not since she was a baby and that had been before Fred.

Chrissy, in her nightgown, came to sit beside her, stroking her shoulder. “I was so tired. I didn’t remember to check on you until I was in bed.”

“You’d think I was a monster or something,” Fred muttered as he went into the hall, just loud enough to be sure they’d hear him.

Chrissy lay beside her, stroking her hair, her back, her shoulders, petting Lizzie the way Lizzie petted Marbles. In the afternoon Marbles had been lying on Lizzie’s desk and she had tried to hypnotize her by waving a piece of tinfoil in front of her eyes. The cat had finally batted it away.

“You hurt his feelings, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to. I was just scared.”

“I asked him to come and put the blanket over you. You know me. Once I get into bed, I can’t get out. Last winter it was almost always Fred who covered you up. You were asleep, you never even knew he was doing that for you.”

“I’m sorry.” She snuggled closer to her mother. What Chrissy said about not being able to get up after she lay down was true. Now she was lifting up the blanket, sliding in beside her. Lizzie moved over to make room. She loved the warm musty smell of her mother at night. There was always a sweetness around her neck and ears from her perfume. She put her hands on Chrissy’s neck, then moved her nose up to check for that sweetness.

“You always sniff me out, like a dog or something.”

Sometimes when Chrissy would come and lie on Lizzie’s bed, she would let Lizzie massage her arms and back where they were sore from working in the garden. But tonight she just hugged Lizzie, then turned her on her stomach, the way Lizzie liked to sleep.

The hall light went out and the whole house was dark. Lizzie heard Fred kick off his shoes, the sound of his belt buckle hitting the floor. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“I ought to go back. You’re getting too old to need to sleep with your mother.”

Lizzie didn’t say anything. She knew if she could stay quiet and keep her mother from talking until she counted slowly to
twenty, Chrissy would fall asleep and she’d have her there, warm and safe the whole night.

By the time Lizzie got to fifteen, her mother’s breathing had slipped into that other country, whatever place it was she went to when she slept. Probably somewhere far and wonderful since Lizzie had never heard of someone loving sleep the way her mother did. Every evening when Chrissy had finished the dinner dishes, she would smile, stretch and yawn, even in the summer when the sun was still in the sky. The next thing you knew she’d be in her nightgown, her hair tied in one of the special ribbons she wore for going to bed.

Lizzie turned over, backed into her mother’s body. As always, her mother’s arm rose, slid round her, so now Lizzie was almost entirely surrounded by the warm sweet cave of her mother. She closed her eyes. She heard the soft padding of Marbles’ paws, felt the sudden weight of her across her legs. She, her mother and Marbles were on a cloud, Marbles’ deep purr a motor pulling them across the sky.

“Y
OU GOT SOMETHING LIKE
Star Wars?
Not that, but you know, something like it.” Nancy Brookner: she came every day and when she rented a movie she printed her name in big letters. She had wavy brown hair with blonde highlights, a round face with a little too much flesh along the jaw.

Carl reached below the counter for the science fiction. She was standing near the hinge in the counter, waiting for him to come out. When he emerged he’d have to brush by her. Yesterday she’d pushed her breasts into his arm, causing a small unexpected explosion in his belly. Her neck was tanned, with narrow white creases where the flesh folded. “You watch these at home?”

“Sometimes,” Carl said.

She smiled again. Her teeth were square and so perfectly white they seemed to have been lasered clean. Carl wondered if she meant did he watch dirty movies at home. Or maybe
yesterday had just been an accident and he was mistaking her friendliness for his own adult movie.

“You could give me something with animals for the kids.” She was wearing too-tight jeans, a frilly-collared blouse under a loose men’s sweater that she sported like a trophy. She put her purse on the counter and opened it to search for her membership card.

He came out from behind but this time she let him pass. There were a few bear movies in the children’s section. He took them out and, careful to keep his distance, laid them on the counter in front of her. “My daughter liked these,” Carl said.

“You afraid of me or something?”

Carl couldn’t believe he’d actually heard these words.

“You’re tiptoeing around like I was going to goose you.”

Carl shook his head.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to make you blush.”

Now she was standing next to him, her hand on his bare arm. Her palm was burning. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had touched him with intent. Or maybe the last three years had activated some kind of repelling mechanism that wavered only when he was drunk.

“I was just kidding. I’m a friend of Ellie’s so I feel like I know you already. I mean, I know it’s not fair. My name is Nancy Brookner. I moved here three years ago, just after you left.”

“Carl McKelvey,” Carl said.

“Pleased to meet you.
Officially
, I mean.” It was her turn to blush; her face and neck were sunburned already but now they turned an amazing, impossible dark scarlet. He wondered what it would be like to be lying on top of her, all that heat spreading under him.

“Sorry,” she said. She took her hand away.

They were still standing beside the counter when Ned Richardson came in. He hesitated for a moment, stroking what might be the weedy beginnings of a goatee, then went to the rows of adult movies.

“You ever go to Frostie’s on Saturdays?” Nancy asked.

Ned’s snicker floated through the store. In the mirror, Carl saw him slide one of the cases under his shirt.

“You!”
Carl took two quick steps and intercepted Ned on his way to the door. He swung the boy around. There was a big rectangular lump under his T-shirt, half-covered by his arm. “Forget something?”

“Whattya mean?” Ned said. His eyes and nose and mouth were all squinched together.

“That movie.”

“What movie?” Ned asked, raising his arm and letting the plastic case drop from under his T-shirt to the floor. “I don’t have any movie. Oh, look at that.” He stepped back, out of Carl’s range, and pointed downward. The case lay face up on the stained carpet. The title,
Tastes Delicious
, was in fiery tomato red; the movie’s star had her mouth wide open.

Nancy bent down to pick it up. Ned looked over her bulging jeans and mouthed “pig” to Carl. Carl’s hand shot out but Ned had danced away and was halfway out the door by the time Nancy straightened up.

“I don’t know what Ellie sees in him,” she said. Ned had his truck going. He turned it around in the parking lot, then gave Carl the finger as he skidded out into the street. Carl stood on the step and watched Ned’s truck disappear around the corner: a black mud-spattered Chevrolet with oversized tires that must have come from his father’s lot.

That evening at home Carl was putting the new bathroom sink into place when the telephone rang. An image of Nancy Brookner’s scarlet face floated into his mind; as he hesitated he could feel her hand burning on his arm. Finally he went downstairs and picked up the receiver. A silence. Breathing. Carl said hello once, then hung up.

On Saturday night Lizzie went to sleep over at a friend’s. Carl dropped her off, complete with everything she’d need when Chrissy picked her up the next day, then looped around to drive back by the highway so he could stop for cigarettes.

He had the window open and could hear the music from Frostie’s half a mile away. Without thinking he pulled his truck into the parking lot. There was still a touch of light in the sky, enough to make out the traces of a few long submarine-shaped clouds cruising just above the horizon. The roadhouse lot was jammed: cars, trucks, vans of every description. Some seemed vaguely familiar but it was so long since he’d been a regular, he’d lost the ability to know who was inside just by surveying the vehicles in the lot. Stretching to loosen his back, Carl suddenly felt like the cast-out black sheep in some old western movie, the unjustly cast-out black sheep who is compelled to return to the place that will destroy him.

Nancy must have had a radar device trained at the door. As Carl came in, the first thing he saw was her hand waving frantically. With her was a stocky man wearing a cowboy hat and one of those western-style shirts with the pearl buttons; across the table, alone and looking at the band, was Chrissy. He could have, he realized, spent half the night in the parking lot pretending he was in a movie but he never would have thought Chrissy might be here. Wishing Nancy hadn’t spotted him, Carl went over to the bar. There he bought his
cigarettes and asked for what had once been his favourite foundation for a night of drinking: a double Scotch, plenty of ice cubes, no water. There was dancing at the front—the crowd was already thick and the band so loud he wouldn’t have to worry about conversation. He rinsed his Scotch down with a beer, then headed towards the table. Chrissy’s back was to him; she was clapping to the music. Nancy’s cowboy in the pearl buttons glowered as Carl approached: his face was like a dark puffy mushroom just a rainfall away from crumbling. As Carl sat down Nancy made the introductions and pushed a glass of beer towards him. Just then Chrissy turned to face him, her knees bumping against his, her eyes suddenly lowered. She was wearing a short-sleeved black sweater and on her wrists, almost matching the shade of her tanned arms, thin gold bracelets that looked elegant or out of place he couldn’t decide. Chrissy was drinking ginger ale. She had a tulip-shaped glass with a bent pink straw that could have belonged to a little girl.

It was the angle of the light. Her closed face. A sudden gap in the music. Her eyes in repose the way they used to be when she was sleeping. Right after they were married, when they lived in an apartment in town above the barber’s, he would wake up to see just that: Chrissy sleeping. Chrissy’s sleeping face in the street light from the window, all the daytime fierceness and want blanked out, leaving smoothness, vulnerability, absence. It was as though while she slept she put her body in his care—take this, hold it for me until I get back. So he would. Until he too fell into sleep. Though he knew that wherever she’d gone, he hadn’t followed; he was locked inside his skin, ready to light up at the first sound.