Darren Effect (21 page)

She didn't want him to die. Whatever he had done, whomever he loved, Isabella did not want him to die.

She found a house a few days after he went into palliative care. It was cold and the rain that fell was like ice. She had heard they were experiencing some kind of record: thirty-two consecutive days of bad weather. The agent seemed apologetic. He was wearing a red poppy in his lapel for Remembrance Day. But no house was going to be attractive right now, Isabella told herself, and she took the small bungalow. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac: Goodridge Place. It smelled of old woman. The next day she accepted the counter-offer on her cellphone, standing outside the hospital, shivering.

She immediately started to pack. She spent half her time at the hospital. The remaining time she spent packing, throwing
out things, occasionally sleeping. She would stand up from taping a box and Cooper would be beside her, tugging at her sleeve.

“What's going on, Mom? What are you doing?”

“Everything is going to be fine.”

“You're acting strange, Mom,” Cooper whined.

Later she found him under his bed, covered in dust bunnies.

“Cooper?”

“I don't want Daddy to die.”

“You're going to be fine, darling. Come here. Come out.”

“I don't want to come out. You're acting strange.”

She separated Benny's belongings from the rest of the contents of their home and put them in garbage bags to be picked up by the Salvation Army. After a while she realized she was keeping an eye out for something. What would it be? A snapshot, lock of hair, letter, receipt, article of clothing or jewellery? What kind of keepsake would Benny cling to? And more challenging, where would he hide it? She searched his pockets, desk and bureau drawers, tool box, glove compartment — she realized she would need to sell his car. How did one go about that?

There was nothing. The only evidence of betrayal had come via their own son, stored on DVDs. And Benny had destroyed those.

Then she found it: a white envelope with snapshots. The address on the outside was in Benny's handwriting but incomplete: Bridget Neal, 55 Baltimore Crescent, Toronto, ON. It was an address he had known almost by heart — except for the postal code — scrawled across an envelope he had once meant to send. Isabella had never heard of Bridget Neal. Was that an alias? The photos were old and stuck together. Perhaps they had been forgotten. Perhaps this was a woman Benny had known before their marriage. Isabella began to separate them, still expecting to find evidence of that
other
woman, the one she had known about.

Isabella still sometimes found it difficult to say her name, even inside her head.

But this other woman was a stranger to Isabella, and the photos were taken after their marriage because in many of them the woman — Bridget? — was wearing a scarf Isabella recognized. She had given it to Benny for his birthday.

Well, Cooper had given it to him. He had been only four, still round and sturdy with that low centre of gravity that seemed to give him a certain ruthlessness and power. She had taken him to the mall that afternoon and they'd selected the present. The scarf — grey and tan — had been delectably soft and irresistible to Cooper. The two of them had spent a long time wrapping it just so in those hours before Benny came home from work and Isabella still hadn't made the icing for his cake or marinated the lamb chops. She was standing in the kitchen chopping scallions, overheated from the day's busyness and the knowledge she was behind schedule, when Benny came into the house and Cooper, also flushed and revved, went flying towards his father, and Isabella heard him cry out, “We already wrapped your scarf, Daddy! We already wrapped your scarf.”

Isabella had put the knife down and gone out to the hall and stared at her son in disbelief. Both her son and husband looked full of happiness. Cooper was on his toes, jumping.

“You don't
tell
Daddy what you wrapped. It's a surprise,” Isabella blurted out. She hadn't meant to sound severe or speak to him as though he were an adult. She had just been so flabbergasted. She had thought that Cooper understood.

And then he did. Isabella saw it dawning on him: the purpose of shopping without Benny, then wrapping the scarf —
hiding it —
with the paper. A birthday present. Cooper got it, then burst into tears. Benny swooped him up and a lengthy session followed involving hugs and kisses and Benny's declaration that he'd not heard what Cooper had said anyway.

Isabella always felt awful thinking about that day.

Had this Bridget heard the story? Isabella bet she had. Benny
liked the story. He liked the way his son's face had been transformed by a sense of responsibility.

It's summer in the photos and Benny and Bridget are outdoors. It looks like Newfoundland: only a few deciduous trees, a low sky, cobble beach. A few cabins appear in the distance, but they are blurred in the photo, and there are no cars or identifiable landmarks. That they are having an affair is not debatable. There is a certain look on a woman's face in a photo that tells you she is in love, and that she in love with the man with the camera.

But who was she? Long dark hair, dark eyes. Isabella flipped over one of the photos and found the date, printed at the photo shop: June 25, six and a half years ago.

In the last photo the woman won't look at the camera — that is, at Benny. Instead, she is staring off into the distance, maybe the sea. She is talking. She is sitting on a ridge of turf with her hands in her lap and she is delighted with the moment.

Isabella thought the black smudge at the edge of the photo was probably Inky's tail.

Her feelings of being crushed and heartbroken left her. She was disgusted and humiliated. There was no telling if this was before or even
during
his relationship with Heather Welbourne — whose name she could now easily face — but either possibility left her cold. She didn't want to know.

Although perhaps Heather Welbourne should know.

She recalled a way of Benny's when they made love, when he seemed unable to endure another moment of foreplay. He would look stricken and his movements would become sluggish but deliberate. He would glance at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he could not bear to be distracted from his singlemindedness of purpose. The look on his face was the embodiment of passion: pure, but impersonal. It occurred to her now that in those last moments he had stopped recognizing her.

The envelope with the photos was inside a larger envelope containing old receipts and warranties. If Benny had wanted Isabella to discover the photos he could not have chosen a better
location. On the other hand, they were probably placed there so long ago they'd been forgotten. Certainly it was meant to be a temporary deposit. They were to have been sent. Isabella considered mailing them to the Toronto address. But mailing them to Heather Welbourne seemed a better option. She tucked them inside her purse and went off to the hospital.

When Isabella was twenty-eight, two friends invited her to a party at the River Valley Tennis Club. It was supposed to be a dance, but no one actually danced, unless they had too much to drink and then they just made fools of themselves. Isabella knew the crowd and said it would be boring.

“Won't they just be talking about tennis?”

Her friends laughed. “You need to get out more,” one of them said.

“What odds what they talk about?” the other friend said. “It's better than doing nothing.”

Isabella had known these friends from university. The three had graduated with teaching degrees and, except for Isabella, now held permanent positions. Isabella was substitute teaching. She had surprised everyone by her growing lack of interest in her career, and herself by discovering that she hated teaching. Some evenings she unplugged the phone so a vice-principal calling the next morning looking for a substitute couldn't reach her. She felt guilty and bored.

They arrived at ten thirty. There was hardly anyone around, though the music was so loud it prevented conversation anyway. They went back outside where there was the scattered crowd. The smell of weed wafted over once or twice. The dance was clearly not a success and Isabella wished she had not allowed herself to become associated with it.

One of her friends spotted someone she knew and they wandered over to another group. There was the awkward converging of two unfamiliar groups of people and half-hearted
introductions. After a while someone suggested they go downtown to hear some live music.

“Will there be cover?” a girl asked.

“Marjorie, you tightwad, I'll pay your cover if it's an issue,” a young man said.

Isabella felt too mature for all this and decided to go home. But she didn't want to draw attention to herself by announcing she was leaving and she didn't want to just wander off. She would wait until she was alone with one of her friends.

Everyone was strolling towards a couple of cars and Isabella allowed herself to go along. She got in the back seat between Marjorie and the loud guy who had boasted he'd pay her cover. One of Isabella's friends was in the front seat and the other friend was in another car. Isabella thought again that she should just go home.

The guy beside her was talking. She turned to look at him. He had a round, dumb-looking face, though, to be fair, she couldn't really see much in the car.

“Hi,” he said, grinning at her. His whole face was involved in the grin. He seemed delighted to see her, though she'd never met him before in her life. She thought maybe he was drunk or high and mistaking her for someone else.

“Hi,” she said.

“How are you?” he asked eagerly.

She turned to look at him again, to see what his expression was now. It was the same. He looked young and short. His grin wasn't really all that unpleasant.

“Do we know each other?” she asked.

“I don't think so. What's your name?”

“Izzie Parsons.”

“I'm Benny Martin.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah.”

They were downtown now. The driver was looking for a parking space and Isabella's friend was telling him to just park anywhere, it wouldn't kill them to walk.

Finally, Isabella asked, “Where did you grow up?” “Bonway Place.”

They had not grown up in the same part of town and had rarely crossed paths. There had also been the age difference. After a while Isabella had forgotten about him and about the guilt she felt for despising him. The incident between them seemed like something she'd read or seen on television.

“I babysat for you once,” she announced.

“I think I remember that.”

“You were awful.”

“Really? Come on.” He seemed genuinely surprised.

“You don't remember?”

He shook his head.

So she told him: the so-called sugar allergy, how he saturated his tea with sugar when she wasn't looking, then went into hiding for a full hour.

He laughed. “I was a sugar junkie when I was a kid. It's true. My mother kept all that stuff away from me because it made me wild.”

Isabella could not believe this easygoing young man had been that boy. “Are you still?”

“Wild?”

He thought she was flirting with him, but that hadn't been her intention.

“No. A sugar junkie?”

“Of course not. Don't kids grow out of that?”

“Where were you hiding?”

“I have no idea. I don't even remember that, though I do remember you. I liked you. I thought you were nice.”

“I don't think I was.”

“I used to beg my mother to ask you to babysit again, but it didn't happen.”

“I refused.”

“Go on. You're kidding.”

She nodded, grinning. “It's true.”

“I was that bad? Christ. My apologies.”

They had found a parking spot. She was aware of him as they walked to the pub and stood in line to pay the cover. He was talking to someone else now. The group spread over two tables. She sat with her drink among people she didn't know, but it didn't matter because the music was just as loud here as it had been at the tennis club, making it difficult to understand anything anyone said.

He was too young for her. He would be twenty-three, twenty-four. Though maybe that was okay, she wasn't sure.

When the band took a break, the guy sitting beside her got up and Benny came over and took his seat. She wasn't surprised. She was expecting that.

“Isabella. That's your real name, is it?”

She nodded.

“What do you do, Isabella? Do you work, Isabella?”

She was delighted with the way he spoke her name. “Apparently, I'm meant to be a substitute teacher.”

“Not your thing? What are you meant to be?”

“Not sure.”

“Isabella. Isabella.” He shook his head.

She felt an uncontrollable urge to grin.

“Rather a grand name.”

“I was named after my aunt. She died a few months before I was born.”

“How?”

“Hit a moose. She wasn't wearing a seatbelt.”

“They didn't then, did they, Isabella?”

“No. They didn't.” Suddenly it was becoming an insipid conversation. She was boring him.

“That's a heavy legacy for you to shoulder.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's like you're expected to have a safe and happy life. To make up for your aunt's tragedy.”

“Of course not.” She felt that whatever he was thinking about her was wrong. She felt he was assuming she was a woman who
played it safe and never took chances. The band started up again and he turned to listen to it.

She stayed another half hour, then gathered her things and stood. He reached out and touched her elbow. She wasn't expecting that.

“Maybe I'll phone you sometime,” he said. “Maybe we can get together and do something?”

She had to look down on him because he hadn't stood. It indicated laziness or slightly bad manners on his part, but she probably wasn't one to talk. She nodded. “Sure,” she said.