The Glass Harmonica (27 page)

“Hi, Vernie,” he'd said quietly, almost shyly.

She had smiled back at him. “Hi, Len.”

“Having a barbecue?”

“Reg's having some of the guys over from work. Last-minute thing.”

And then she smiled at him again, and Len was absolutely sure every scrap of laundry would be taken in before Reg and his guests arrived to take up the whole deck with their loud voices and big attitudes. Laundry that she clearly had no problem hanging out there right in front of Len.

And after she had picked up the groceries and the glass door closed behind her, Len watched her walking away, watched her ass and wondered, “Which pair of underwear is she wearing today?” and he mentally tried out pairs of underwear he remembered from the line on her departing rear end. Then he felt a fleeting sheer of shame, like for a moment he'd been caught on a ladder outside her bedroom window, watching Vernie get changed in what she thought was privacy.

The clerk had to say “Sir?” three times before Len finally paid enough attention to get his change.

Sunday, and Reg's party had gone late. Ingrid and Len had been awake for hours in their darkened bedroom, listening to the steady grumble of voices from their neighbours' deck, the occasional burst of raucous laughter. Len hadn't heard Vernie's voice on the deck at all, not even once, but he was left with a strange feeling that she was lingering there just the same, that she probably kept coming out to check with the guys to see if anyone needed more beer, hovering like a wandering moth just outside the yellow pool of backyard light.

He lay on his back in his bed and stared at the ceiling, imagining Vernie moving around through the rooms in the house next door by herself, everyone else still out on the deck, thinking that if it were just the two of them, she'd never be left on the fringes of anything ever again. That she'd find a place just within his arms' reach, a comfortable place where she would always want to be. And then he reached for Ingrid, but that wouldn't work either. By then, beside him, Ingrid was sleeping, breathing evenly through her nose with a dry, regular and familiar rasp, and Len felt as if she were really tens of thousands of distant miles away.

In the morning, Len and Ingrid got up late, both exhausted from the night before. Len hadn't slept at first. Ingrid had woken up early, lying as still as she could beside him to keep from waking him. The fractured night left Ingrid cranky, and Len broke the carafe from the coffee machine on the edge of the stainless steel sink while he was trying to fill the coffee pot with cold water.

After it happened, he just walked away from the broken glass, which was piled in uneven shards all around the circle of the drain, and headed out onto the empty deck in his bathrobe and bare feet instead. Behind him, Len thought he heard Ingrid head up the stairs and back to bed. And even though he hadn't heard her, Len saw that Vernie had already been outside, and that her laundry line was full.

The wind, a steady breeze, was bringing the laundry close to his side of the fence, all of it fluttering like small, desperate flags. The largest pieces were big, fluffy chocolate-coloured towels, snapping and slapping in the brisk wind, trousers bending and straightening at the knees as if unable to make up their minds just where it was they wanted to go.

And underwear. Of course there was underwear, bras tangling and writhing around themselves in the wind, and panties rising and falling, rising and falling, as they first caught, and then slipped, the steady southerly wind.

Before he even really thought about it, Len was reaching out, standing tiptoed on the deck and stretching his body out over the fence so that he could feel the tops of the fence palings pressing hard into his stomach just above his waist. He was stretching so far that he could even feel the effort of it in the joints of his fingers, as if those fingers were reaching until their bones were beginning to separate from their hinge-and-socket seats.

Everything is possible, Len was thinking, every kind of need and every kind of behaviour.

Everything is explainable, given the right kind of circumstances.

It all made sense, no matter how impossible it might seem.

And it was like Vernie was right there on the other side of the fence, too, looking back at him, reaching over towards him, pulling him in.

Okay, he had to admit, that was only imagination. Just the same, he could already feel the fabric in his hands, and it occurred to him that he knew just exactly what it was like when your hand closed around something that you wanted, something that wasn't yours, but something that you were going to go ahead and take anyway.

“Hey.”

Len heard a small, distant voice, a voice as sharp and definite as a pinprick.

“Hey, Len, you heard me. I know you did.”

And down at the end of the yard, Len saw a face peering over the fence.

He walked to the edge of the yard, feeling the recently cut grass sharp on the skin underneath his toes, and looked across through the Taylors' and the Ryans' yards.

“I always knew you were a pervert,” Mrs. Purchase hissed, her face partially obscured by the shifting maple leaves. “I could always tell, just by looking at you.”

And her words sounded bright and sharp and alive, like she was relishing the very opportunity to say them out loud, just like she had been waiting for years to say exactly that. But that was before the rest.

“And what do you think Ingrid is going to say about this? Because she really should know, Len. Because it wouldn't really be right if she didn't.”

Len could hear the towels up above him still snapping in the wind, and he could imagine seeing the edges of them curling and darting back.

Mrs. Purchase was safely hunkered down behind the fence, her right hand with the trowel held up slightly, the small shovel's tip pointed towards him and then pointed towards the sky. “I couldn't live with myself if I didn't say anything about this,” Mrs. Purchase said, and Len heard something like triumph in her voice.

It was a triumph he recognized, the same tone he himself had used handing shoplifters over to the tired-looking police officers. “The good guys win. Got another one,” Len had gotten used to saying, like there was someone somewhere who was keeping score of every soul-destroying small tragedy.

Got another one.

Then another one.

Len didn't answer Mrs. Purchase. He didn't speak at all. Instead, he turned and started slowly up the much longer lawn, the deck out ahead of him like the ramparts of a huge and unassailable fort.

Next door, Vernie's panties flew like battle pennants.

Everyone thinks they can get away with stuff, Len thought resignedly, and then they go ahead and blurt it all out anyway. But he told himself he'd be different. He'd watch his mouth and even his thoughts.

And Mrs. Purchase didn't have anything on him anyway, nothing more than a bit of poison to drip into Ingrid's ear, and all he really had to do was to convince Ingrid that the old woman was confused or senile or bitter. Senile—that was the best bet, the most believable, he thought, and just keep it simple.

But then the truth was burbling up inside him like he was about to vomit words, and Len thought it was the most unexpected feeling he had ever had. It was as if a seam might open right down the front of his stomach, a confession spilling out all over the yard in coils like alphabet soup, and he realized he might truly burst with the effort of keeping it all in.

And then, with a sinking feeling, he knew. Whether Mrs. Purchase went ahead and told Ingrid about Vernie's laundry or not, Len suddenly realized with a clear sense of horror that he almost certainly would.

Her Majesty's
Penitentiary, St. John's

RON COLLINS

JULY 17, 2006

R
ON COLLINS
was still in prison, and it had already been five months since he had dropped the shovel in the snow and walked away. But for the first time, his lawyer talked like that was going to change.

His lawyer talked about the fact that Keith O'Reilly had died like he was talking about some kind of game—about how, with O'Reilly dead, there was really only Liz's testimony left. That “if we want to roll the dice, we can concentrate on her character, now that O'Reilly is out of the picture.” Red Rover, Red Rover, let Liz come over, Ron thought bitterly. And then he thought about what the lawyer was suggesting, thought about Liz on the stand and his lawyer calculating and savage and trying to take her story all apart like a cat with a mouse. And it just didn't seem right.

His lawyer, talking on about how there was a clear path out of it now that they could work towards discrediting just one witness, now that there was just one piece of real testimony. Testimony from someone who was little more than a girl, and about as believable as if they'd brought some shifty homeless kid in to testify. That's exactly what he'd said, “some shifty little homeless kid.” And even that was just plain wrong.

And he'd gone on to say that now, for the first time, there was a slim chance that Ron might walk after all. His lawyer was sure they could tear Liz down to nothing in the preliminary hearing, and it would all end right there.

And Ron said no.

He almost felt bad about it for a moment, because it was the first time his lawyer had seemed even the least bit hopeful. Ron knew he was supposed to be reassured by the lawyer's new-found excitement, but somehow it felt like the worst possible combination. Now it was just him and Liz and the solid, careful police testimony about physical evidence. Liz on one side with them, him on the other—and all he had were the things that, if he ever decided to go ahead and say them, wouldn't make sense to anyone else anyway. And the lawyer deflated right in front of him, looking like he'd lost all interest.

“You could just plead out, plead guilty and hope for a reduced sentence,” his lawyer said flatly. It was as if he was thinking about how it wouldn't be as much fun to sell that to the press out on the stone steps in front of the court, the camera lights bright on his face. “You haven't been in that much trouble before. They'd probably take that into account. And maybe we could get them to knock it down to manslaughter. Maybe.”

Surrounded by bare walls, Ron listened as the words just kept flowing out of his lawyer. He was wearing a different suit every single time Ron saw him, and sometimes the lawyer had to look at his notes to be absolutely certain he was getting Ron's name right. The lawyer, who was being paid by Legal Aid, was clearly frustrated.

His was the first name on the list that the police had handed Ron after they brought him in. He'd called the guy more because he thought he was supposed to than anything else. “Do you want a lawyer?” the cops kept asking him. “You can call a lawyer.” So eventually he did.

Ron thought the lawyer always had a look about him like he felt this might be the case that would shift him up into bigger things, a cannonball shot out of a cannon, blasted into the big time of criminal law, the kind of thing that might make him the first choice of anyone dragged to the lock-up, that he'd be running with the drug guys and the operators, called all the time by the newspapers for quotes. Ron also thought it was almost as if suddenly the lawyer had other reasons to be involved in the case, just like everyone else seemed to have.

It had taken him months in prison to figure it out, but once the answer came to him, it stuck—that everyone wanted something extra. All the time. It didn't matter what, as long as there was something out there for them to take. And sometimes it made Ron want to haul the drunk driver out of his bed in the middle of the night and start pounding on him too, just because there was no rhyme or reason to any of it.

“Your choice,” Ron's lawyer said. “Your funeral.” Finishing up, shutting his briefcase with a snap and closing the clasps. It was leather, Ron noticed, a smooth buff brown that looked expensive. Everything about his lawyer looked expensive—but everything looked a little worn as well, as if the lawyer had once lived much better times. Times he'd managed to misplace somewhere but could still remember particularly well.

And that night, back in the prison, Ron had the same old familiar dream: he felt the slick slide of the shovel handle slipping out of his hand, the prickle of the snowflakes on the backs on his hands and the nape of his neck, and in his dream he turned his face up, feeling the snowflakes all over his face like cold little stars until his skin was completely covered.

He woke up, as always, because he could hear Liz laughing, and even after he woke up, there was a hint of that laugh, thin like mist in the air, caught like familiar music in his ears. For a moment he thought about how it could have been, and for the first time ever Ron thought back and tried to figure out if there was some particular place he could have done something differently, if there was a place where he could have decided to make another choice, to go in a different direction. But he was still partially asleep, and later the only way he would have been able to explain it was that everything he remembered stretched back behind him like a single set of railway tracks, seamless, and there were no other tracks in sight.

That same night, three cells down the range from Ron, another inmate slipped a coffee mug inside a sock and swung it against the side of his cellmate's head. The mug broke on the first swing, its handle splintering out and through the fabric, but the beating continued for another ten minutes. When the guards found out, they locked down the whole prison and everyone spent twenty-three hours a day in their cells.