The Fearsome Particles (2 page)

Although Vicki had seemed resigned to the situation, Gerald had done what he could. He had taken steps. Because at the time his belief in himself, as someone who had a hand on everything handle-able and a way to steer clear of everything not, was still pure. And he was certain that this plan was not only lunatic but fully reversible. A boy could make his choice, a mother could accept it as such, but that didn’t mean a father should let it happen. Gerald was sure that someone with power, a decision-maker, would agree no child should be allowed, in the twenty-first century, to put himself in harm’s way. It wasn’t a war zone over there, not officially, but it was hostile. For what other reason were there troops? And so this action of going overseas to live and work in a place where men held guns and mines lay under the sand and the water was not fit to drink, this machine of consequences that chugged to life when Kyle signed a piece of paper, could be shut down, Gerald knew, if only he could locate the switch.

But before he could find and flip that switch, Kyle was on a plane. The machine had taken him. And now he was being returned, three months before the end of his contract, because something had gone wrong.

As he walked to the ensuite to re-hang his towel, Gerald checked the time (8:17, just enough leeway) and stabbed the radio button with a finger to get the
NEW
1020 traffic reports. While he listened through the reliable cycle of
NEW
news and
NEW
sports and
NEW
weather and
NEW
traffic that pinwheeled through the hour, he monitored his sense that the cat and its trouble were edging closer.

That Lorie Campeau had called yesterday from the west coast to tell Vicki she would be another two weeks, that her mother was recovering but needed time, and that Vicki had not told the woman that her cat was ruining their lives,
had very nearly cost Gerald his life
, was merely background irritation. More tormenting was his belief that by now he should already have dealt with this problem – called an exterminator, or whatever sort of company you could pay to remove unwanted semi-domesticated animals – because now Kyle was coming home and who knew what the presence of an all-but-feral cat might contribute to the distress of a young man who was mysteriously damaged? This was what happened when you didn’t take care of a problem crisply; another factor entered the picture and made the problem worse. It was a simple equation, A+B=C, in which A and B could be any separately manageable issues but C invariably stood for Catastrophe. He’d based his whole executive career on his grasp of that basic math and now here he was having to relearn it.

Five days ago, someone from
COF-AP
operations, a man named Oberly, had reached Gerald as he was driving home on the 407. All he’d said, after Gerald had pulled over to the side of the highway and turned off the radio, was that Kyle was “unable to complete his contract” after an “off-camp event.” When Gerald, being shaken rhythmically by the cars speeding past, asked what kind of event, Oberly had told him that couldn’t be “opened up,” as if the troubles of his son were a Christmas present Gerald had been angling to get a peek at.

What had been approved was the news that something that shouldn’t have happened had happened, and that Kyle was coming home, ahead of schedule, and needed a family member to meet him at the Canadian Forces airport in Trenton. What had been approved was the bare reassurance that he was “physically sound.” Nothing beyond that, despite Gerald’s protests, was allowed out of the box of facts.

In the flattering bio-pink light of the ensuite, Gerald hiked up a bare leg and placed his foot against the edge of the marble countertop. This was the new post-shower ritual, checking his shins and calves for gouges from his wife’s suddenly ragged toenails. For the past few months, the toenails had been a growing component of Gerald’s Vicki-related concerns. All the years they’d been married, Vicki had taken inordinate care of her toenails. It was an important professional matter; just about any day of the week, Vicki could count on having to walk barefoot, or in stocking feet, through the pristine home of some wealthy person. There was no telling what media or corporate celebrity might get a glimpse of her pink toes. Consequently they never went more than a day, two at the most, without being sanded, buffed, and lacquered at enormous expense.

But those days were over, apparently. For whatever reason – if not madness then certainly some kind of mental malaise, connected to the clock nonsense and the dripping inattention, that could hardly be less timely – Vicki now allowed her toenails to descend into anarchy. It was an armed rebellion down there. And who was paying the price? For weeks now Gerald had been waking up in the middle of the night to stabbing pains, and had to spend time every morning surveying the damage
and applying liquid bandages to the worst of it with a tiny brush. And whenever he raised the issue of her toenails, or, for that matter, the disturbed cat she had welcomed into the house, Vicki simply stared at him in the way of someone reconsidering her dinner plans. As if the toenails problem, the cat crisis, the discomfort each of these things caused him, deserved only that part of her attention devoted to finding him wanting. Gerald sighed and wondered if this was what twenty-one years of marriage had wrought, that you could now inflict injury on a spouse without care, except to wish that he wouldn’t complain.

As he reached with one hand for the liquid bandages bottle, he ran the other up the inside of his thigh and dealt with an itch in the scrotal region. He could imagine himself being happy, having a job that supplied endless opportunities for satisfaction, living in a house where all clocks showed the same time, with a wife who cared enough not to wound him repeatedly, and a son who had not gone to Afghanistan and was now, therefore, more than just “physically sound.” He could imagine himself coming home, opening the door, and not checking for surreptitious movement before stepping inside. But that was someone else’s life, obviously. It was his once, but it wasn’t any more. Which is why it didn’t surprise him when he felt another itch at his dangling testicles, sent a hand to quell it, and encountered something other than his own fragile self. Why it wasn’t shock he felt, but a mixture of horror and sweet vindication, when he looked down and saw between his legs the whitish reality of Rumsfeld, the cat, reaching up with a five-clawed paw.

V
icki still treasured moments like this, when out before her stretched the possibility of perfection, and she could already see it taking shape.

“Is that going to pose any challenges, do you think?” Avis trilled. They were on the second floor of the Lightenham Avenue house, standing at the top of a small mountain of polished stairs, and Avis Nye was slowly circling her manicured finger to indicate a vacant, apparently purposeless area south of the fifth bedroom, about a hundred square feet of iroko wood, gleaming as if it had just been stripped from the west African coast, bound on one side by a wall of closets and on the other by a burnished chestnut railing.

“Not at all,” said Vicki, smiling her reassurance, for Avis was a silent agonizer and would soon, if Vicki was not convincing, need to take a series of pills. “We’ll make that an ‘open den.’ I’ll use the Turkish prayer rug and the Georges Jacob set. You know, the one with the chairs in cross-hatch blue?”

“The Georges Jacob set, of course.” Avis adjusted the rose-petal scarf riding her shoulder and let her fingertips trail over the lapel of her blazer in a way that suggested profound relief. “You haven’t used the Georges Jacob in a very long while.”

“Not since Roxborough Drive,” said Vicki. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity.”

“It will be wonderful to see it again.”

Well, really, thank God for Avis. When she’d called last week, moments after Gerald had reported the unexpected but happy news that Kyle was coming home, she’d said the builders of 146 Lightenham were nearly finished and would love for her to begin staging on Tuesday. And Vicki had felt a noticeable and somewhat confusing spear of discomfort, just there, under her rib cage. It would have been difficult to name the sensation, but it was almost a feeling of dread, as if the assignment to bring to life the largest home on Lightenham Avenue – fifteen rooms on three levels, nearly eleven thousand square feet – were anything but a privilege. It had made her wonder, briefly, whether she should accept.

But what she loved about tiny Avis Nye, besides her patrician centredness and the sweet, flutelike music of her voice, was the way she, more than any other luxury realtor, made her feel appreciated. Avis understood and respected the service she offered – Avis never said
fluffing
, she always said
staging
, she accepted that even very wealthy buyers lacked a certain imagination when it came to looking at a collection of empty rooms, could not picture themselves or their things in a new, unadorned space, and needed a not-so-subtle nudge in the direction of fantasy – and this awareness was certainly a contributor to Avis’s
status as number one in dollar volume among luxury realtors in the city’s central core, to say nothing of Vicki’s own success.

Now that she was here in the Lightenham house, Vicki could tell she’d made the right decision. This was where she was meant to be today; here she felt completely sure of things. She gazed around at the cornice mouldings and wall details made of a pressed-fibre material that, having been painted, looked ceramic to the casual eye. Even the best builders engaged in small deceptions to save cost, or time. Vicki knew just how to work with such falsehoods, to aid the effect.

“So what are you planning in terms of price, Avis – about six three?”

“Six seven five, I think,” said Avis. “There was a quite plain Georgian resale several doors east that sold for six two in March.” When Avis said
six two
, her mouth moved exaggeratedly, from a kind of smile into a kind of pucker, as if to suggest the absurdity of such a figure. “The moment I heard that, I decided ours warranted the extra five hundred and fifty thousand. Or it will, once you’ve applied your particular spell.”

Oh, Vicki was feeling so much better! The new Lightenham house was a great big blank French Country canvas, and with her warehouse space full of collected antiques, draperies and linens, rugs and fixtures, mirrors, prints and porcelains, she was going to create a month-long vision that would be worth every bit of the $50,000 she would charge – $35,000 for an extra month if the vendors wished to extend.

“I can always count on you, Victoria,” Avis cooed. “Buyers can spin like maple keys in the wind, not knowing what to think, not knowing what to do. But then they come to a house you’ve
done, and they see.” She moved to the top of the staircase, which curved slightly and cascaded to the bottom like the gown of a Hamptons bride. “You have a way inside their heads I don’t fully understand. It’s not just exquisite taste. It’s something much more, I don’t know, sympathetic.” She smiled in the light flooding through the bevelled glass windows and set out two veined hands in front of her. “You’re like a sturdy marble cornerstone, propping up the wavering spirit.”

Avis touched her palms together, seemed content in the moment, then began to descend the stairs in her queenly way, setting one small stocking foot carefully on each glossy tread. “I hope,” she said, her voice escaping into the entrance hall’s bright-lit air, “those two fortunate men in your life are as appreciative of you as I am.”

Vicki caught the railing with a hand and held on as she watched Avis go, following her strawberry blond head as it moved down through space like an ever so slowly bouncing ball. When the agent got to the bottom, she turned and seemed surprised not to find Vicki immediately behind her. She looked up.

“Is there something else you wanted to see, Victoria?”

The question welled for a moment as Vicki thought, and shook her head.

“Did you want to check some measurements?”

“No.”

Avis continued to gaze up at her. Though her face betrayed nothing, was as smooth as a river stone, she was clearly puzzled as to why Vicki was not, like her, headed toward the front door of the house. Vicki was almost as mystified, although it was possibly connected to the sudden return of the discomfort under her
ribs, at about the spot where Vicki imagined an important organ should be. It was a very unpleasant feeling. And it made her not want to rush out the door just yet.

She resisted the urge to place a hand on the spot and wondered what to tell Avis. “I think I just need to visit the bathroom,” she said, wishing instantly that she had thought of something else, as the word
bathroom
seemed to travel over the unadorned surfaces of the upper and lower floors and grow until it became vibratory and immense.

“Oh,” said Avis, a surreptitious hand reaching down for her small black purse on the floor. “Is anything wrong?”

“Avis, it’s all right. I’m fine.” Vicki smiled as warmly as she could at the top of the stairs, though not warmly enough to prevent Avis from picking up her purse and rooting around for something. “I just need to … use the facilities.”

Of course, this was all very strange, and Vicki understood why Avis would be unsettled. Use of a client home’s facilities was usually considered an emergency-only matter. And this was not something that could be called an emergency. Although it was not
not
an emergency, either.

“You go,” said Avis, pulling a small silver case out of her purse. “I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

T
he master bedroom’s enormous ensuite featured the Carrara marble vanity and tub surround, the intricate basket-weave floor inlays and the Milanese fixtures that Avis, in consultation with Vicki, generally stipulated among the list of appointments that were necessary for her to agree to list a builder’s property
(luxury builders, or perhaps their architects, were not as attuned as one would naturally assume to the tastes and needs of the wealthy home buyer; thus their habit of placing compact laundry appliances on the second floor, for the “convenience” of the very people who did not do the laundry, a feature Avis and Vicki were constantly having to purge from their designs). In the comfort of this environment, Vicki sat on the lid of the toilet, smoothed her fine taupe skirt over her knees, and tried to clear her head.