The Checkout Girl (21 page)

It's almost dawn when Kathy sends everyone home. She wants to clean the site alone. She wants to say a last goodbye to her old self, she tells them, the one that had anything to do with Doug. She stirs up the ashes. Dulled safety pins, bits of melted buttons and sequins are all that's left.

“That'll do,” Kathy says to the air. By the time she starts her car, the black sky is turning grey.

Pete never showed and Kathy's ashamed for wanting him so badly when he clearly didn't want her. Her eyes ache with unshed tears, from lack of sleep, from too much beer and dope, from the let-down after so much anticipation. Some of the unshed tears are relief at having time to rethink their plan to start an affair. Though she'd intended to, and she knows she'll have to live with her intention even if she doesn't ever sleep with Pete, she hadn't yet betrayed anyone.

She hopes Pete will at least tell her what happened. Cold feet, perhaps. Or maybe he and Lunch Box Man got stoned; she sees them shooting the shit at the kitchen table, and suddenly it's too late to go anywhere. Maybe Lunch Box Man refused to bring Pete to the park. She shrugs a no-matter shrug, and stops to check for traffic before turning onto the road. The sun slips above the horizon and separates the sky, a huge swath of pale grey above a thin line of molten magenta.

“Red sky in morning,” she says.

Kathy pulls into the driveway and parks close to the house. She notices the aluminum door moving ever so slightly and ever so slowly back and forth. When she gets out of the car she sees the inside door is open, too, about halfway.

She walks to the front of the car and leans her hand on the warm hood. She softly calls to Pete, but he doesn't answer. She isn't expecting him to. It's early and he should be asleep, but it's more than that. The morning breeze is gentle and fresh and the door is moving in and out.

She walks to it and waits. The sun slices the shadow between the houses, draws a line through the driveway, half light, half dark. She waits and watches the door move, an inch this way, an inch that way and back again.

Kathy's already sure there's nothing she wants to see on the other side of that door. She should get back in her car and go to her mother's. Instead she opens the outside door enough to slip inside. The house is quiet, an ordinary quiet. Pete's just waking, about to get up to shower before he puts the coffee on and makes some toast.

She takes the three steps up from the landing and there he is. He's facing her, lying on his side, left leg pulled up, right leg straight and turned out. His right arm rests on his chest; the left is thrown out upon the floor, the palm cupped toward the ceiling. His eyes are open, fixed. His mouth is slack, his tongue a swollen purple thing between his lips. Kathy's hockey stick lies near his feet, the broken blade still held to the shaft with hockey tape. Pete's face is recognizable, but what Kathy can see of the rest of his head is a non-shape, a pulpy mass of skin, bone and blood.

Kathy turns from him, takes the three steps down to the landing and the seven to the basement. She counts to keep from thinking, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven. She goes into the bathroom. There on the shelf is her deodorant and Barry's almost-empty bottle of aftershave, the green bath towel she used yesterday askew on the rack, the rubber bathmat over the side of the tub. Two toothbrushes, one pink and one yellow, sit in a juice glass on the rust-pitted metal shelf above the sink. An open tube of Crest, the cap upside-down beside it, rests near the glass. A curled green elastic with blonde hair sticking from it lies by the toothpaste. It's all as she left it.

She takes the green elastic and makes a rough ponytail and leans over the toilet and vomits. After she stops being sick, after she's sure there's nothing left inside her, she flushes the toilet and walks back up the stairs. She stands on the landing and breathes the fresh air coming in the door.

She contemplates leaving and pretending she never came home. But her car is there for all to see. People are waking now, taking their dogs for a walk, picking up newspapers from their front steps, standing on their porches in their pyjamas, yawning and scratching their bellies, checking to see what the weather's like, while Kathy's standing on a landing not ten feet from a dead man, and there's no pretending otherwise.

The aluminum door is still open. She pulls it shut as gently and as quietly as she can. Then she takes one step, and another, and another until she's stepping over Pete. The phone is on the counter near the stove, the receiver dangling from its cord onto the floor. First Kathy hangs up and then she lifts the receiver to her ear. There is a dial tone, so she calls the police. She steps over Pete again and goes outside where she sits in her car and waits for the shit to hit the fan. Which is, of course, exactly what happens.

It isn't just the body on the floor. It's the plates and bowls and cups and glasses smashed around it, the silverware stacked like pick-up-sticks beside an overturned drawer. It's the broken furniture, the emptied hall closet, the tipped-over bookcases. Toys strewn from the toy box, food dumped from the refrigerator, the freezer door left open. And though she doesn't want to talk to anyone, it's a relief when she hears the police siren, hears the sound of feet coming up the driveway, hears the voice asking her to get out of the car.

Kathy is told to go to her room and wait there. A young policeman is posted at her door. He glances at Freddy, but he doesn't say anything. In fact, until she is asked to come upstairs, after what seems like a very long time later and Pete's body is gone, no one speaks to her. Then it is all words, strings of them, with each sentence ending in a question mark.

There has to be a reason for the death and for the trashed house. Does Kathy know the reason? Is it drugs? Is it money? Is it a combination of the two? Does Pete have enemies? Who else lives here? Where are they? When are the wife and child expected home? Did he get along with his wife? Did she get along with him? Was he having any trouble at work? Is he having an affair? What can you tell us about Pete? Where does he work? Who are his friends? Are his parents alive? Can you tell us what his plans were for the evening before? Can you tell us where you were? Were you there with anyone? Can you give us their addresses and telephone numbers? Why were you out all night?

They write everything down.

Kathy tells them what she knows: She tells them about Al's party and the bonfire she and some friends had at Varnum Park afterwards. She tells them they had some beer and waited for the effects to wear off before driving, that's why she came home in the early morning. She tells them she doesn't know much about Pete's extended family, but that his wife and son are at her family's cottage. No, she tells them, Pete isn't having an affair, or not one she knows about.

She tells them, when pressed, that Pete dealt a little dope, just a bit now and then. But once, she says, that she knew of at least, there was a bigger deal. And she tells them about the airport and about the lunch box full of hashish and the lunch bag full of money. About the handsome muscleman with the acne scars, the one Rachel said she saw at the house the night before.

Kathy tells them what Pete told her at the barbeque, that he'd meet her and her friends at Varnum Park later in the evening. She tells them that Pete never showed up. That when Kathy got home, both the inside and outside doors were open. And when she came inside she found Pete dead.

She tells them how to get hold of Penny and Rhettbutler. Then she asks if she can call her mother. She doesn't want her to hear the news on the radio and worry. They tell her to go right ahead. She dials and Shelly picks up. Kathy can hear cartoons in the background. Shelly doesn't speak, but Kathy hears her breathing.

“Shelly, it's Kathy. Go get Mom.”

Shelly doesn't respond, but Kathy can still hear her breathing so she knows she's there.

“Come on, Shelly. Get Mom, please,” Kathy tells her.

The breathing stops, the phone clatters to the floor. Kathy can hear Elmer Fudd talking about the pesky wabbit. She can hear cartoon gunshots and Elmer Fudd's groans. That's when she hears Bugs Bunny say, “What's up, Doc?” Then the phone clatters again, but more gently this time.

“Hello? Who is it?” Connie asks. Her voice is sleepy, but anxious.

“It's me, Mom. It's Kathy. Mom, Pete's dead. He's been murdered,” Kathy says. And that's when she begins to cry.

Kathy's sitting at the back of the viewing room. Rhettbutler's sitting beside her, driving his orange Dinky Toy dump truck up and down the pleats of a fake French provincial sofa that's a shade Connie, when she came with Al earlier in the afternoon, described as baby-shit yellow. When Kathy asked her how she could remember after all these years, Connie said some things a mother never forgets.

At Kathy and Rhettbutler's feet, on the yellow and brown shag carpet, is an open metal Mickey Mouse lunch box with more Dinky Toys — three white and blue police cars with red plastic lights, a yellow road grader, a white ambulance, a red farm wagon without a tractor, two Mustangs, one a red convertible, the other a hardtop in black. There's an unopened package of waxed paper-wrapped cookies, maple creams, Rhettbutler's favourite, some carrot sticks in a plastic bag, half a drying-out peanut butter sandwich missing a bite and a small bottle of a juice so violently, artificially pink it hurts the eyes to look at it.

The sofa is flanked by fake French provincial end tables, dark and shiny, sprouting tall tri-light lamps (set on medium-low) with mushroom-cap shades the same off-white as the walls. Beneath the lamps, fanned out for easy picking, are prayer cards with Pete's demographics, 1946–1970, a short prayer beginning,
Let not your hearts be troubled
, and an invocation garnering the invoker time off their stay in purgatory. On the front, a long-haired and decidedly hippie-looking Jesus exposes his Sacred Heart. Beside the prayer cards sit boxes of tissues of a pinky-beige colour reserved for plastic doll's skin, and the same shade as the foundation on Pete's face, except where two rosy ovals have been dabbed on his cheeks.

Penny and Pete's mother — his father died of a heart attack when Pete was seventeen, Pete's mother told Kathy this afternoon — his brother, Ray, Penny's parents and her two sisters are up at the front of the room with the casket, which is open and surrounded by flowers. They cry and welcome visitors, who cry with them, dabbing at tears with available tissues, asking how Pete could have been murdered. Who could have done this to such a sweet and gentle man? They exclaim how lucky it is that Penny and Rhettbutler were away for they, too, might have been killed. They ask, who is the girl who found him? That's her there, Kathy Rausch, they're told, and they turn to look at Kathy sitting on the sofa at the back of the room with Rhettbutler. Kathy came home from a night out to find Pete's body lying on the kitchen floor.

After they say a few more words to Penny and give her a hug or shake her hand, they move to the casket and look in at Pete. Some of them reach in to touch his arm, or rub the cold rubbery flesh on his hands, which are crossed on his chest. No one touches his face, which actually looks pretty good considering the state of the back of his head when Kathy found him.

Tonight, while Penny's at the funeral home, Kathy's moving into the Deutsche Hotel. This morning, after she made toast and cocoa for Rhettbutler while Penny lay in bed crying, Kathy walked downtown and arranged to rent a room by the month. She's got the key in her pocket. The room overlooks Main Street and contains a double bed, a green chair, a sink, an electric kettle and a two-burner hot plate. The bathroom is down the hall and parking is free, as is the cigarette smoke, courtesy of the bar downstairs. She can get steamed rice or noodles at Tops Chinese around the corner, and newspapers and cigarettes across the street at the Eby Hotel. It will do.

Kathy will tell Connie after the funeral. Connie is beyond worry; she's pissed off. After Kathy stopped crying, the morning she told her mother Pete had been murdered, Connie told her she
had
to move home. When Kathy didn't respond, Connie shouted, “I'm losing patience.”

“I have to go, Mom,” Kathy told her. “The police need to talk to me.”

Connie cried then, loudly and without restraint.

“I'm sorry,” Kathy said, and very gently and very quietly placed the receiver in its cradle.

It would be smart to move in with Connie and Shelly, but smart's not the way Kathy feels these days. Being near her mother, even if she never said a word, would remind her how un-smart she's been. Connie wants to help Kathy, wants to give her love, which will come wrapped in kindly advice. Kathy doesn't want anything from her or from anyone, kindness least of all. Pete's dead. She didn't have sex with him, but she was going to. Because Pete was murdered doesn't change the fact they'd made a plan the morning of Al's barbeque.

When Kathy had come up to make breakfast that morning, Pete was at the table, the newspaper spread out in front of him. He looked up from the paper and as she poured her coffee, he held out his cup. He set his cup on the table and while she poured, ran his hand along the back of her thigh. Her arm weakened; the coffee pot dipped. Pete took the pot from her and set it on the table. He took her arm, and very gently pulled her to him, then down to sit on his lap. And he kissed her, pushing her hair away from her face.

When he finished he said, “Tonight.”

Not a question. Not a command. He said what she'd been hoping. And she nodded, and got up, put bread in the toaster, waited for it to pop, buttered it, put one piece on a plate for her, one on a plate for Pete. She sat down to eat and read the newspaper. Pete ate his toast, and when he left to run errands, Kathy's toast was still on her plate and she had not read one word in the paper.

He hadn't kissed her again; he'd walked past her, down three steps to the landing, opened the door and walked out. When the aluminum door closed, he was gone.

While he was gone Kathy changed the sheets on her bed; she had a shower and washed her hair. She put on new underwear she'd bought but never worn, silk, a blue like snow in shade. All day she she'd been aware of her underwear, as though it was all she had on. All day she'd thought about sleeping with Pete. And when she wasn't thinking about sleeping with him, she was trying not to think about sleeping with him.

It's funny, but her desire that day, mixed as it was with fear and anticipation, feels exactly like her sorrow and shame today, as if everything in her body is contracting and will never relax again. She isn't a suspect in the murder, but the police want her to be available to them, to answer questions as they arise, and to identify the man who gave Pete the lunch box. She hopes he has disappeared forever, because if he killed Pete, he could kill her.

There are police in plainclothes circulating at the funeral home. Kathy knows who they are because they want her to tell them if she recognizes anyone from other drug transactions. Kathy figures if the narcotics agents know as much as they say they know, they'll recognize everyone she knows without her help. She's not inclined to turn informant, except for Lunch Box Man, and she's sure the police will know him from her description if he showed up for the funeral.

But he doesn't show up for the funeral. Penny's there, standing beside the pew reserved for family. She's unable to settle, sits and rubs the tops of her legs, then gets up to move around. She's wearing a black peasant dress with a red crocheted shawl, black stockings even though it's hot, and red leather platform shoes. Kathy used to covet those shoes. Rhettbutler is attached to Penny's dress, a tail to her kite. When she sits, he's under her, squirming to the side.

Pete and Penny's families arrive to sit with Penny and Rhettbutler. Scattered through the church are school friends, neighbours — Mr. Vanderbergen and Helen and Willie Szasz among them. Teach, wifeless as usual, sits with Pete's many colleagues and clients from the university. Connie and Al and Margaret and Darlyn and Donny and Barry and Rachel — they're all there.

There are bikers who have arrived in their colours. Pete used to ride with them before he and Penny had Rhettbutler. There are cops in uniform, some in suits and others dressed like hippies, but they all look like cops. Patrolmen sit in cars across the road from the church and take pictures. There are people no one seems to know. And there are the reporters who have been asked respectfully by Pete's brother to remain outside during the service. They stand on the steps smoking cigarettes. Their smoke drifts into the church.

There are the people across the street, the gawkers and the curious, wearing shorts and old T-shirts, setting up lawn chairs on the boulevard. People drive by slowly, trying to figure out what's going on. A car stops and a man asks, “Whose funeral is this?” A gawker says, “The guy who got murdered.”

Kathy stands at the open door, neither in the church nor out, and as far away from Pete as she can be. His casket is closed now, a cascade of roses over the top, bouquets arranged on plinths around him, more on the steps to the altar. Incense smoulders, votives in red and white glass flicker, servers light the altar candles.

That morning at the final farewell for family and close friends, before the casket lid was closed and screwed down for good, Penny came to Kathy and said, “Pete didn't love you.”

“I know,” Kathy told her. “He was only a friend.”

At that moment, Kathy wanted to believe there had never been anything between them. There had only been that one kiss. She wanted to believe it with all her heart, so that Penny would feel better. Because someone had to feel better; it was crap feeling this terrible.

Penny really looked at Kathy then, hard and long, with the eyes Pete loved.

“He was my friend,” Kathy said, pleading, fighting back the whine in her voice, “that's all.”

“I'm glad you moved out before I had to ask,” Penny said.

She walked away, her glossy black hair swaying across her back. The hair Pete loved, the waist, the breasts. Penny took Rhettbutler's hand and they went up to see Pete one last time. Kathy watched as they stood on the kneeler in front of the casket, Rhettbutler teetering, holding onto her dress. Penny leaned in and kissed Pete. Then she lifted Rhettbutler and as he rose, Penny's dress rose too, her thick legs exposed. Like fat black sausages, Kathy thought.

Kathy was on her way to the washroom when Teach, who had been hovering through her conversation with Penny, caught up.

“Pete did love you, Kathy,” he said to her. “And I love you.”

Teach was crying, inching closer and closer to her. “He loved your strong body and your naiveté. He told me, Kathy. He told me everything.”

He reached out and took hold of her sleeve.

“Fuck off,” Kathy said, and she shook him loose. “Fuck right off.”

She walked away, along the corridor, past other reception rooms filled with mourners gathered around bodies in caskets whose lids would be screwed down so nothing could get in, and, God forbid, anything could get out. She walked to the door, she opened it. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe.