Darren Effect (30 page)

Isabella was unable to sleep because of the heat. In the evenings, just at that point when she would have acquiesced to the idea of sleeplessness and lain in the dark and listened to sounds of Cooper, Inky, cars on the street, she got up and took a walk.

She was growing accustomed to her new neighbourhood, particularly at night. Suddenly it was an extraordinary world of crescents, cul-de-sacs and connecting footpaths cluttered with hockey nets, skateboard ramps, candy wrappers, knobs of sidewalk chalk, escaped hair clips. At the beginning she had been a newcomer, a single mother, a stranger, but during these warm nights both she and the world were transformed.

She felt alert. She felt she was climbing back into her life.

She circled the same route over and over — one crescent that linked to another crescent and up a cul-de-sac with a paved footpath connecting to the first crescent — as though she could not get enough of it. Midnight, and the laburnum still smelled like grape jelly, their drooping branches discharging papery blossoms that fluttered past her like popcorn. The clicking watering of lawns, now restricted to night-time hours under a new water conservation order, resulted in forgotten sprinklers saturating lawns until the water flooded sidewalks and ran down the sides of streets. Isabella watched a man cross his lawn beneath his weeping trees, moving his sprinkler in the tepid dark: a pale figure in white shorts and polo shirt, long returned from tennis but not yet in bed either. A lot of people were still awake.

She heard a flute being practised in an unlit upstairs room, the zany buzz of an electric guitar from a basement, a child squealing — or was it a teenaged girl? A pair of cats emerged from an open garage and approached her, mewing their complaint. One sprawled in the middle of the street, its tail swishing saucily. There was the padded crunch of a car door as it slammed shut, repeated three times.

She paused before an old bungalow set back from the street
and looked through its open door down a hallway to a kitchen where a woman in a dress and apron was standing at the counter, sorting through a pile of papers.

Another woman, in another house, cried out, “Wow, honey,” and Isabella knew the woman really didn't care at all.

Near her home she stopped before a storm drain. It was quiet here, as she had hoped. She took the Super Soaker canister she'd been carrying in one arm and unscrewed its top. She bent and emptied the contents through the grated opening. The smell of gasoline rose up, but it was done. She thought of it making its way to Rennie's Mill River and mentally apologized to the ducks and fish that lived there.

She crossed her lawn and heard rustling in the hedge separating her yard from the neighbouring yard, then a single belllike chirp: a bird, also fitful. Inky was sprawled on the doorstep, too hot and arthritic to move when she tried to open the screen door. She gave up and went around to the back of the house.

He was still there on the doorstep the next morning when she tried to get out. It was a Saturday, but she found a number and telephoned, a part of her hoping no one would pick up. But someone did, the vet, in fact, a woman who told her it would cost an additional ninety dollars to dispose of the body.

She called for Cooper, but couldn't find him.

She held open the car door and whistled to Inky. Twice he rose and ambled towards her and twice he thought better of it and turned back to the house. Isabella stood and watched, as though she had all the time in the world, thinking it was a peculiar thing to have a creature's life in your hands like that.

When she got to the animal hospital she opened the back door of the car and Inky stumbled getting out. He had been panting and Isabella saw he'd covered the backseat with that clear syrupy saliva seemingly unique to dogs. She felt chilly and dispassionate watching him straighten and stand. Wanting him to suffer seemed to be a secret only just surfacing. He hobbled with her into the building, always wanting to do the right thing, but as soon as he was indoors he began to tremble violently.

The vet had short blond hair and wore a number of earrings. Together, they lifted Inky onto the metal table, but he immediately began to slide off, his legs rigid as tent poles. The vet got him to lie down and told Isabella to cradle his head. His terror began to subside. The vet explained how the injection would travel through his bloodstream until it reached his heart, stopping it. This would take only a minute and the dog would feel nothing. While the vet readied the needle, she asked Isabella if there were any questions.

“Does it matter that he's not my dog?”

“Whose dog is he?”

“My husband's.”

“Does he know you're here?”

“He's dead.”

The vet nodded. She was impossible to read.

Isabella looked back down at Inky. Heather Welbourne had recognized this dog right away. How many other women knew him by name?

When Heather had first entered Isabella's kitchen, Isabella felt the floor slip sideways. She had never felt such hostility towards anyone before.

The vet was back at the table with the needle. Already Inky's head was heavy as a log in Isabella's arms.

“Wait,” Isabella said.

The vet stepped back. Isabella could see that she took everything in stride.

“This dog is basically a hundred years old,” the vet pointed out.

Inky had relaxed and seemed to be sleeping. His bones prodded his hide from within, his grey-black fur was greasy and unclean, his muscles were astonishingly atrophied. He smelled wretched. Ashamed, Isabella realized she was going to cry. She was going to cry and needed to get home quickly. Home. She thought of Cooper, balancing a spoon on his nose instead of eating his cereal and asking her last week, “What month did Dad die?”

She had been halfway across the kitchen. She stopped and noticed red stains on the floor. His tone was serious, but matter-of-fact. He had grown several inches over the summer and she sensed his voice was about to change any day.

“It was in December,” she said. “You went to see him in the hospital just before. Do you remember?”

“No, I never. You told me I had to, but I hid under my bed.” He laughed, pleased with himself. “You tried to bribe me.”

Was he right about that?

“Christmas is in December, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did we still have Christmas?”

“Yes, but it was — strange.”

“I don't remember it.”

“I don't really either.”

“Did we already live here?”

“Yes.”

“I kind of remember. But Dad wasn't here, was he?”

“In this house? No.”

“So Dad doesn't know about this house.”

“No.”

Benny had loved Cooper. Though they had never discussed it, Isabella knew he never had any intention, before or after becoming sick, of leaving them.

But he had left them, in a sense. And he did leave them, in the end.

She hadn't told Cooper she was taking Inky to the vet. That wasn't fair. He deserved the opportunity to say goodbye.

“I've changed my mind,” Isabella said.

The vet nodded.

They roused Inky and got him off the table and carried him to the car. The vet withheld her opinion, which Isabella appreciated. Isabella thought perhaps that man Byron might know how to prolong Inky's life more comfortably. He seemed clever that way.

But once Isabella got into the car, she realized she was breathing
rapidly and her hands were shaking. She sensed she had narrowly escaped something dreadful, like a car accident or electrocution. Behind her, Inky groaned once, perhaps urging her to get the car started and them home again, out of this heat.

She did not entirely know the man Benny had been. Apparently, he had been a philanderer, but in a monogamous way. One mistress at a time. Isabella realized this came as no great surprise to her. When he met Heather Welbourne, he gave up Bridget Neal. Gave her up so completely he forgot to mail her photos of their last tryst — even forgot he had them. He had been as loyal to Heather as Heather imagined him to have been. No more, but no less.

Isabella opened her purse and removed the photos of Bridget Neal and tore them up.

The warm weather started early on the morning of July 18. Darren woke up to it. He couldn't get over how people complained. He wanted to shake them and say, it won't last, you'll wake up one morning and it will be winter again and you'll be cursing and complaining about that.

The bird flew onto the deck of a cargo ship forty-five nautical miles east of St. John's. The crew put it in a box and tossed in a slice of bread. Darren got the call at nine thirty in the morning but was too busy to get down to the harbour until late afternoon. From the crew's description he guessed American bittern. He took the box from the crew, put it in the back of the truck and headed over to Long Pond. He knew the bird was still alive because he heard it moving around inside the box.

Approaching the pond, he noticed several boys coming up the street towards him and he slowed the truck. They were carrying skateboards. One of the boys was dark-haired and Darren thought it might be Cooper, but the sun, already lower on the horizon at this time of year, was bright and blinding. Darren watched the boy lower the rear wheels of his skateboard to the pavement, then begin running beside it, leaning forward
as he held the nose of the board with one hand. Then he stepped onto the board with one foot, using the other to push himself along, gaining greater and greater speed. Just where there was a dip in the road, he bent his knees and both boy and board rose several feet into the air.

Darren was not quite sure how it happened — what it was that had given the boy the power to leave the ground. During those few seconds of being airborne, the skateboard remained attached to the soles of the boy's huge sneakers as though glued. Then both skateboard and boy had landed and were moving in Darren's direction.

Darren could not remember when he had last seen Cooper. He visited Goodridge Place only once or twice a week now, to check on Jeanette. If this was Cooper, he had grown considerably over the summer. He looked too old for a wading pool and certainly would no longer be easy to lift. Darren recalled the boy's lightness, dripping wet with fake blood. He had picked him up and carried him out of the kitchen without thinking.

He waved at the boys as they passed him, but the gesture was neither acknowledged nor returned.

He pulled up to Long Pond and parked. He glanced at his rear-view mirror, imagining, as he still frequently did, a red Echo pulling in behind him.

He paused, the window down, drinking in the warm end-of-day air. Along a strip of grass beside him a pair of adult crows strutted, jabbing at the ground for grubs. Another two were perched side by side on the arm of a streetlight. One held a wine cork in its bill and the other was trying to steal it. Young crows were everywhere now. They were black like their parents, but Darren could distinguish them by their nasally call and the fact adults had better things to do than squabble over wine corks.

The moment he got out of the truck, the crows on the streetlight flew off, cawing maniacally, to a nearby stand of fir. The adults on the grass lifted and cocked their heads, getting a better look at Darren, then went back to foraging.

He put on his leather gloves and dropped the tailgate. The
box had fallen over onto its side and the untouched slice of bread had slid out. Both box and bread were covered in guano. The bittern was silently opening and closing its long bill. The slender legs were of an unearthly green colour that reminded Darren of Martians, and he felt briefly boyish.

Slowly the bird stretched its bill up towards the roof of the truck, revealing black streaks on a pale throat and belly. Two bulging eyes peered around the base of the bill and regarded Darren coolly. There was a drop of blood on one of the wings. Darren reached for the bird, knowing it would be as light as a leaf.

He carried the bittern out onto the marsh grass where it collapsed around itself like a small broken umbrella, then he backed away from it several metres and waited. Eventually the bird picked itself up and began taking slow, stealthy steps away from Darren until it stopped and pointed its neck skywards, its reed-like body now parallel with the grasses surrounding it.

When Darren was back at the truck he turned and searched for the bittern. The camouflage was a success. He brought the binoculars to his eyes, but knew he would never find the bird again. He looked down at his feet, up at the sky, then searched one last time with his naked eye. No luck. While he was reassured that tens of thousands of years of natural selection had an unequivocal purpose, he also felt a peculiar loss. He almost took a step back out onto the marsh, but that would have been counterproductive.

That night Darren was working at the kitchen table on his laptop, reviewing data from several years of oiled bird surveys. Predictable patterns were emerging. When he heard the crying, he panicked slightly, assuming it was the baby. She was sleeping in her own room now and in a crib — a huge rig for such a creature — and if she were feeling lost and abandoned, it would be no surprise to him.

But when Darren opened the door to the baby's room he was met by silence. She was asleep, little pockets of air passing rhythmically in and out of her body in the manner of any living creature at rest. His concern took a new course.

He found Heather sitting upright in the bed, looking bewildered, self-conscious, just-awoken.

“Is she okay?” she whispered.

He nodded. “Asleep.” His voice felt gravelly.

“Are you all right, Darren? You look tired.” She raised herself to a kneeling position and gave him a look that was a little sheepish, a little sly. She opened her arms to him.

She was such a small thing, he thought, holding her, so much smaller than you would expect.

They stayed like that for a while, and he thought some embarrassing thoughts about being together forever and being perfect for each other. The more he thought them, the more he wanted to voice them. He closed his eyes, loving every place on his body that came in contact with hers. He felt like he was flying.