I walked up a driveway so steep as to feel dreamlike. From a real estate agent"s point of view, chez Cecilia was a tear-down, but so is most of North and West Vancouver. This kind of 1963 house was so familiar to me that I didn"t pause to acknowledge its ludicrous existence, at the top of a mountain where n.o.body should ever live, a yodel away from pristine wilderness, an existence made possible only through petroleum and some sort of human need for remaining remote while being relatively close to many others. Even in the dark, I could see that the house was stained a sun-drained blue, like bread mold, the same color as this Allison/Cecilia woman"s car.
So yes, I saw her car in the garage - one car only. There were a number of lights on, and I could hear the dull glugging sounds of a TV in the background. I went through the garage, around to the back of the house. Nothing had been mowed in years, and my clothes were a magnet for leaves and cedar droppings and cobwebs.
Why was I even here? I didn"t want to murder her, even though it would have been fairly easy to do so. I didn"t want to confront her, because I didn"t want to lose my connection to Jason.
Cecilia"s the only game in town.
I maneuvered closer to the back of the house and looked in the windows with impunity; there she was, rooting around in the freezer, removing a cardboard box containing a TV dinner. She put it on a butcher-block counter and removed the cardboard top. She read the French-language end of the carton, turned it around to the English end, then proceeded to timidly poke one, two, three holes in the dinner tray"s plastic film. She opened her microwave"s door, put the meal inside, punched some b.u.t.tons and then - and then she just stood there for maybe three minutes, her arms across her chest, contemplating her existence. This is when I felt the chill. This is when I once more realized that Allison/Cecilia is basically me - an older version of me, but a woman marooned, manless and geographically remote, contemplating a life of iffy labor, a few thousand more microwaveable meals and then a coffin. She had just removed her meal from the microwave when I heard a noise down in the carport, as did Allison. I could see headlights through the branches of various species of evergreen; Allison dropped (rather than put) her meal on the counter, reached into a drawer, found an amber-brown prescription container and removed one or more pills, which she swallowed without water. The headlights went out; I heard a door slam, and then watched as Allison stood in the center of her kitchen, the plastic membrane not yet removed from her meal"s surface.
A youngish woman entered. Twenty-five? I couldn"t make out what they were saying, but from my disastrous relationship with my own mother, the bingo zombie, I could tell that this young woman was Cecilia"s daughter and that hurtful words were being hurled back and forth. G.o.d, how nice to be on the sidelines for this, and to not be the one hurling.
For a moment, my sympathies were with Allison, until I remembered that she was out to hose- clean my bank account while pin balling my emotions to the max.
In any event, they went off into the living room, which was on the second floor, up front, not visible from anywhere I could position myself. I circled the house a few times, decided it was time to quit the stalking and skulked down the driveway to my car. I forgot to brush all of the dead leaves and insects and webs from my outfit first, and discovered a spider crawling across my chest. I had a freakout, madly swiped the thing away from me, and when I got back in the car I was breathing like a dying coal miner as the car door"s alarm went ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
From there I drove to Reg"s apartment. Reg was obviously surprised when I buzzed his intercom, but he said come on in. The building"s lobby smelled of disinfectant, cooking and dust. The elevator dropped me off on the eighteenth floor, into a muggy, airless little hallway. Jason had once told me how claustrophobic and killingly dark Reg"s place was, but it"s hard to imagine it being as bad as all that. He was standing at the opened door. "Heather?"
Of course I blubbered, and Reg motioned me into his apartment. Even through the tears and the emotional funk, I could see it was not at all the way Jason had described it. I guess it was Scandinavian modern, interior decor not being something I usually notice. Reg could see my surprise above and beyond what was already on my face: "Ruth made me sell everything years ago. Jason told you it was a mausoleum in here, didn"t he?"
I nodded.
"Well, it was. I think most of this stuff came from Dirndl or whatever those places are called. I kind of like it - the removal of excess things from our lives is always a blessing. Let me get you a drink."
"Water."
"Water then."
He brought back a gla.s.s of water, a bottle of white wine and some gla.s.ses. "Tell me what happened."
"It was her"
"I guessed as much. Go on."
"She"s robbing me blind."
"How?"
"She"s charging me five thousand bucks a message now."
Reg said nothing.
"And I"m paying it. She knows things that only ever went as far as our pillows. In tiny detail - things you couldn"t guess at even if you knew Jason and me our entire lives."
"Go on."
"So I went to her house."
Reg flinched: "You didn"t do anything rash, did you?"
"No. Nothing at all. She"s a North Van widow living in a junker of a house in Lynn Valley . . . and she owns me."
"Have some wine. Calm down a minute."
He was right: I needed to level out, return to my normal stenographical demeanor so I could at least find some detachment. He changed the subject and we talked about small things, but I must have resembled a troll doll, covered with yard lint, my mascara running. A few minutes later he brought me a hot washcloth and a clothes brush; I scrubbed clean my face and removed the spiderwebs from my sweater. Reg then started the train of thought that has me here at four in the morning typing away.
"Look, Heather," he asked, "have you considered all the angles on this?"
"Of course I have."
"No, really, have you?"
"Reg, you"re implying something, but I don"t know what."
"Heather, you"re the only person I can talk to anymore. Everyone else is either gone or they"ve crossed me off their list."
"That"s not true. Barb still talks to - "
"Yes, I know, Barb still talks to me, but only out of duty and, I"m guessing, loyalty to you."
"What are you telling me?"
"I"m telling you that I don"t believe in psychics. I"m telling you that I don"t think the dead can talk to us in any way. Once you"re there, you"re there. I doubt Jason"s been kidnapped and is being held hostage, but at the same time I can"t help but wonder what some other genuine reason for this might be."
"How could Allison have known such intimate - ?"
"The point is, Allison - or Cecilia or whatever her name is - doesn"t speak with the dead. There is a link between her and Jason."
I was speechless.
"I"m not saying they had an affair. Or anything like that."
"The daughter."
"What?"
"The daughter. That"s who I saw coming in the garage."
"How do you know it"s her daughter? Heather?"
It made perfect sense. Heather, you freaking idiot. "Allison has never had a signal in her life. It"s her daughter -Jason was using our characters with someone else. Her."
"That"s jumping to conclusions."
"Is it?"
"I think it is. Jason loved you. He"d never have . . ."
I jumped up and told Reg I had to go. He said, "Heather, don"t go. Not now. You"re crazy right now. Oh dear G.o.d, stop where you are."
But Reg couldn"t change my mind, and I went right out the door and drove, slightly drunk, to Allison"s house. And that"s where I am now, parked, typing into my laptop, waiting, waiting, waiting for the lights to go on inside, watching those two cars in the carport. I can wait here all night. I can wait here forever.
It"s getting so hard to remember who Jason was, that he had a voice, that he had his own way of speaking and of seeing the world. He"s like a character in a book, trying to make sense of the world as it played out for him. My own book is just one more tossed onto the heap. How did he speak? How did he smile? I have photos. I have videos of barbecues with him at Barb"s, and a few risque tapes of us together, which I had the wit not to throw away. But I"m too frightened to watch because they"re the end. After them there"s nothing. His smells are in the little bags, decaying. What am I to do? Jason was an accident. No - Jason was G.o.d coming down and tampering with the laws of nature to effect a miracle in my life. People are hung up on miracles, but miracles are called miracles because they pretty much never happen. So then, who put that dorky little giraffe wearing the suspiciously manly sheepskin jacket on the counter at Toys R Us that afternoon? I was his witness. I made him real, and he made me real. I remember being single for so very long - I remember making mental lists of compromises I was willing to make in order to get me to 76.5 years without snapping. If I only go to see two movies a week, one by myself, one with a friend, that"ll make two nights of the week pa.s.s without quaking. Don"t phone my friends in relationships too often or I"ll look too desperate. Don"t become G.o.dmother to too many of my friends" children or else I"ll become a maiden-aunt punch line. Don"t drink more than three drinks a night ever because I like drinking, and it could easily plaster over all of my cracks.
When I was eleven I broke my arm investigating a new house being built in our family"s subdivision. It spent the summer in a cast, like an itching, tormenting worm burning with pink fibergla.s.s strands, and I thought the weeks would never pa.s.s - but then they did, and I remember forgetting about that cast not even six hours after having it removed (Oh, the cool air!) And so it was with Jason.
Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsing at bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime shows and CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger together pressing on my stomach.
A few times my old single friends came over to eat with Jason and me at our dumpy but happy little place, and I could tell that they were planning to politely remove themselves from my life.
All those great women who went with me to Mel Gibson movies and two-for-one Caesar night at the Keg - I trashed them out of my life. And I could see the fear in their eyes as they realized that they were, each of them, just one more notch alone in the world. Sometimes my lonely single friends would wait until Jason was out and then they"d come visit me, sitting and ranting for hours about how brilliant they were, and yet the world was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them over, and the core of their being was hollowing as a result. I was prideful - I was glad I wasn"t lonely. I wanted to insulate myself from lonely people and, to be honest, so many other forms of human suffering.
Heather, you b.i.t.c.h, betraying your friends for some man.
Jason! You"re not just some man. You"re my only guy, but you"re fading on me, like a waning crescent moon going behind Bowen Island around sunset. The next day you may well be there, but I won"t be seeing you.
Monday (four days later)
And so here I am at work in court. I"ll be quitting this afternoon. I told Larry I"d fill in just this one shift and then I"m gone. G.o.d only knows who"ll ever read these words. Here"s what happened: I was in the car outside Allison"s, nodding off around 8:30 in the morning, when I saw the daughter pull out of the driveway in a red Ford Escort like every other car on earth. In a spasm of efficiency I got my car revved and I trailed her down Mountain Highway, then over the Second Narrows Bridge, where she pulled onto Commissioner Street, which follows the canning factories and docks as they approach downtown: wheat-choked CN trains covered in graffiti, with haloes of pigeons; plastic tubs full of fish offal, scuffed and b.l.o.o.d.y; forklifts; concrete mixers. Mount Baker was like the Paramount logo in the south toward the U.S., and the gulls and geese were seemingly dancing in the flawless blue sky for my enjoyment. It was a cold, clear October day. I don"t think I ever remember feeling quite so alert as I did following Allison"s daughter. The harbor was flat as a cookie sheet, and I had a deja vu that went on for almost half an hour.
Usually a deja vu, like happiness, vanishes the moment you recognize it, but not during that particular drive. And I didn"t feel alone. Someone was in my car with me - a ghost? Who knows?
Funny, but whoever it was, it wasn"t Jason. It was - oh, hooey. I don"t go in for that stuff anymore.
Not after what happened.
Okay then, what did happen?
I followed the daughter"s car into the small parking lot behind a company that sold marine equipment - a chandlery, to use the correct word - in a 1970s cinder-block structure. The store was in a minor industrial part of town, doomed to be gentrified in a few years; already the artists are starting to invade. Allison"s daughter turned off the ignition, got out, stood up, and looked at me from behind her car. I was in the alley, and I turned off my engine and sat there and looked back at her, making eye contact across the cars and asphalt. Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have - forget s.e.x - because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other"s eyes, it"s brain-to-brain.
Having said that: if I had had a gun - I don"t know -maybe I"d have popped her.
So the moment had arrived. She kept staring at me, and then she closed her car door and came over. "She"s been lying to you," she said.
I didn"t know what to reply.
"She"s been feeding you a line."
What could I say?
"My name is Jessica. I know what you"re here for. I can give it to you."
Her tone of voice told me that what she had to tell me was neither what I"d expected, nor what I wanted to hear. I was a defeated woman, and she knew it. She held out an arm to me, and I came to it as I might have come to that light you"re supposed to see once you die.
"Have a seat. Here. Beside the planter." She motioned me to sit down on a concrete planter that had been poured decades ago and was now crumbling like angry gray sugar. I sat, and she pulled some cigarettes out of her purse. "Do you want one?"
Part of the terror of being told something you know will shock you is that it takes you back to the time in your life when everything really was shocking; for me that was maybe age thirteen, when I was essentially friendless, and being told by my mother that I"d one day blossom. I remember wanting peers; I remember wanting people in my life who could help me make all the fun mistakes. Crime? Maybe that"s why I"m a stenographer. I hesitated and then said yes, I"d like a cigarette.
"You don"t smoke, do you?"
"This is the second time this week I"ve had something resembling this conversation. Yes, I want a cigarette. I suppose, yes, I do smoke now."
She gave me one and lit it with her lighter and then lit her own. She said, "Mom"s been telling you some pretty wild stuff, huh?"
"She has." I took a drag and I got dizzy, but I didn"t mind. I wanted this experience to have a biological component to intensify it.
"It"s not what you think it is."
"I started guessing as much last night."
"You think I slept with your boyfriend, don"t you?"
I put the cigarette down on the concrete. "I did."
"When did you stop thinking that?"
"A minute ago. When you got out of your car and looked at me across the alley over there. You have a clear conscience."
"I"m sorry I have to tell you what I"m going to tell you. I can shut up if you like." "No. Don"t. I deserve whatever you"re going to say."
Two crows landed on the pavement across the street and began cawing wildly at each other.
There were needles and condoms on the alley"s paving; late at night, this was the s.e.x trade part of town. Jessica put her hand on my forearm. "No one deserves this. Heather, here"s the deal: your boyfriend came to my mother about a year ago. He brought this sheet of paper with him. He gave my mom five hundred bucks and told her that if he ever went missing, then she should contact you and tell you these things as if he"d spoken to you from the dead - or from wherever it is he"s gone to. He wanted you to be happy."
I sucked in air as if punched. It"s the only way to describe it.
"And so my mom did that with you - she saw the story in the North Sh.o.r.e News that he had gone missing - "
"Jason. His name was Jason."
"Sorry. That Jason had gone missing. She called me at work yesterday and told me what she was up to, and I drove to her place and really lashed into her."
I"d seen the fight. I trusted this woman.
"My mom told me how she wasn"t answering your calls. She has call display and can count every time you phoned. She"s sneaky. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was milking you. And she was going to milk you dry. She has you pegged for another ten grand."
I stared at the ground. Jessica said, "Smoke your cigarette."
So we sat there and smoked. Her coworkers filed in, and she waved to them, and there was nothing really out of the ordinary about two women smoking together outside a workplace on a cold clear Canadian October day in the year 2002.
"What did Jason ever get into that"d make him think he might disappear some day?"
"I don"t know."