Darren Effect (7 page)

She had grown accustomed to seeing Benny around town. To anticipate running into him when she left the house, particularly on weekends and at certain places: Shoppers Drug Mart, the symphony, the soccer field beside the school where he might be out with Inky and his son, or just crossing Church Avenue with his hands in his pockets and a DVD tucked under
an arm, always a little underdressed for the weather. After the first year, she hardly thought about it. It was as though she bore antennae with a mind of their own, fixed yet slightly aloof, so that although they searched for him day and night, they did so without wrecking her in any way when he was not discovered.

The symphony was where she first saw Benny with his wife. She was slightly taller than Benny and strong looking, with dark hair cut helmet-like around her head. Heather had been surprised by her bold, expensive clothing.

She could hear the far-off grinding roar of ATVs.

But later, there was that day at Dominion. By then her antennae were tuned to the wife as well. Heather joined the speedy checkout behind Benny's wife and son, who was five or six at the time and using a bandaged hand — a burn, Heather later learned — to repeatedly slap his mother's leg. Heather had never been so close to Benny's wife and was dismayed to find she was so attractive.

“Spank you, Mommy, spank you, Mommy,” Benny's son was singing.

Benny's wife had looked back at Heather with an aloof, almost aggressive glance, as though daring Heather to judge her. While Heather was certain this woman knew nothing about her, the encounter left her unsteady.

Heather stopped pacing and turned left onto the narrow path, though it took her a moment to see the cabin built up against a rock outcrop and hidden by trees and enormous yellow ferns. As she approached the gaping entrance, her feet sunk into another small bog cleverly disguised by moss. She pulled her feet free — they were remarkably insensitive to temperature now — and peered inside the cabin. It was constructed of pressboard, rotted and covered with green algal film. Two mugs hung from the ceiling and on the stove sat a white kettle. Bunks had been built into the back wall and broken pieces of Styrofoam lay scattered across the floor. A number of poles supported a sagging ceiling. Heather stared, confused. It took her a while to
realize the poles were not part of the original construction and that on balance the cabin didn't look safe at all.

Two rusted kitchen chairs with plastic orange seats were inside the cabin, a third outside. She took the one outside, though it was leaning dangerously to one side, and felt the water in its ripped seat instantly flood the seat of her pants. She rested her feet on a stack of roofing shingles half sunk into the ground. The only creatures living here now are the squirrels, she thought.

She waited for the ATVs to close the last distance. Then they were there and Heather found her legs wouldn't move.

“Ah, look at you, girl. Where are your shoes to?” Roger or Vince said, coming to her and taking her elbow. But she was unable to rise. He had a kind face. One of his front teeth was gone. Benny had also had a kind face, in the mornings, she recalled.

“Wow, listen to her teeth chatter,” Mandy said.

“I feel fine. A little too warm, actually. I wouldn't mind a bit of fresh air.”

There was a gentle tug again on her elbow, which was irritating, but Heather ignored it, wanting to be polite.

“I still have your binoculars, Mandy.”

“That's okay, you can keep those if you want,” Mandy said in a funny voice. “Did you see anything interesting?”

Heather tried to shake her head, but her neck had become astonishingly stiff. She hugged herself and fell forward over her knees.

Another tug. She shook him off.

“Wait. I did see something interesting,” Heather said, popping back up. “I saw the Marlboro Man.”

“She's pale, Roger.”

“Let's get you back, girl.”

“I'd like to write a story about desire,” Mandy told Bill.

He paused. She had asked him to massage her shoulders, which were hard as stone. “Is this a new idea?”

“No. I've had it a while.”

“What does Heather say?”

“She's still getting over the frostbite.”

“True. But what does that involve? It's been weeks.” He leaned into her neck and kissed her. “I don't know about that sister of yours.”

“Bill!”

He returned his hands to her shoulders.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I'm not sure she likes me.”

“She's probably jealous of you, Bill.”

He smiled at her behind her back. Mandy, Mandy, Mandy. The world revolved around her. He kissed her neck.

“Bill.”

Sometimes she looked so tiny, perched naked on the edge of their bed, complaining of neck and shoulder pain, that Bill would think, she really is not for me.

“You should have seen her feet when they finally got her shoes and socks off.”

She had told him already. She had been thinking a lot about those feet. And about the lost girl, Suse.

“Heather wouldn't cooperate at all.”

At the end of the day, Mandy had a few sentences, several beginnings to a poem, an idea for a screenplay.

“They looked like frozen chicken. Honest to God.”

“Poor Heather.”

“You were so nice to her, Bill. You know that?”

They were not married, and she was fifteen years younger than he was, yet her airs of wifely expertise were not unconvincing. When she was twenty-one, he had lusted after her an entire term. He wrote her ludicrous, lovesick letters, which he later discovered she had not only saved — he had specifically asked her to destroy them — but had shared with her girlfriends — other students of his.

The result was that he didn't entirely trust her. Before he told her anything, he asked himself, do I want this repeated?

Heather sat in an armchair lodged between her bed and window, her feet propped on a footstool. It was now late February and she was aware that six weeks was an alarming length of time not to have dressed or left her bedroom except for perfunctory visits to the bathroom and kitchen, although there were the two trips to the hospital to have the bandages changed and then removed.

And a couple of visits to her doctor.

And hanging the new bird feeder from a tree in her backyard.

Heather had not called her mother, and she had made Mandy promise not to pass on any information about the frostbite. Heather had been cool to her mother since Benny's death, though now she could not quite understand why. She knew only that it had seemed necessary to erect a wall around herself.

Whenever she was angry at her mother, Heather thought of her first date. Grade eleven, Justin Tucker. He worked part-time
stacking shelves in the corner store where she worked the cash. She at the front of the store with the customers, he at the back with the dry goods and dairy products and sour-smelling coolers that lined the back wall. Theirs were different but complementary roles, not just in the store but in the universe. These were the thoughts she had when she was in love with him. They embarrassed her later.

When he rang at her house for their first date, Mandy and her mother had raced to the door, pretending to fight over who would answer it and have the first look. Heather was in her bedroom, fresh from the bath, and until that moment, delighted with herself. But she could hear their giggles and scuffling.

He wore the same blue trousers every day. They were short and disfigured where the hem had been reworked too often. He was standing there at her door, in those same trousers, when Heather came down the hallway. Her mother and sister were in control of themselves by then, but the awkwardness had already set in. At the store he was always confident and inscrutable, but now he stood clumsy, uncertain.

They told her later they weren't making fun of her, or him. Sure, it was only a bit of foolishness. But Heather had gone and stayed with her father, refusing to speak to either her mother or sister for weeks.

It was the type of incident to occur in the years immediately following her parents' divorce, as though the divorce had corrupted the family unit, not only by removing one parent from the household, but by triggering a fundamental transformation in the other. Heather did not want a mother who was approachable and silly. She wanted one who was distant and aloof. There was an essential
parent-ness
that her mother no longer exhibited, that she seemed to have cast away, but without which Heather did not feel as safe in the world. Later, when Heather was at university, she was able to step outside her own experience and see that her mother had been doing her best to cope. For a while, at least, her mother had not wanted daughters, she had wanted friends.

*

Heather wondered in what ways the woods had changed with the warmer, longer days. When she closed her eyes, she saw the red crossbills dangling upside down in the trees.

She had sent Mandy to the library for more field guides and sometimes fell asleep at night with them open — on her chest, her belly, the pillow beside her head — the way other people slept with pets. She began to dream of birds, species of her own imagination who were intimate and benevolent, with human voices.

She read about the red crossbill — a monumental example of specialization. The scissor-like bill allowed the birds the luxury of getting at the seeds before the cones fully ripened and unlocked. As a result, Heather read, red crossbills evolved a flexible reproductive physiology, nesting any time of year, in dry hot August or wet slushy February, in areas where — and as long as — there is adequate food. She imagined the fearless olive-green females sitting on their four eggs: pale blue spotted with light brown and lavender. It starts to snow, and gradually, through the night, the small birds are blanketed. Who decided this was flexible? Heather wondered. Wouldn't
accommodating
be more fitting? To be ready, at any time, for the business of a rushed courtship? Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to have a life like everyone else?

Heather froze. Half a dozen birds had arrived at her feeder. Though she knew what they were, she reached for her field guide and flipped through the pages, just for the pleasure of being certain.

Conspicuous white outer tail feathers. Slate-grey hood, like an executioner's. Juncos.

Heather heard someone enter the house. She put her book down and waited.

Her mother hesitated in the doorway, glancing around the bedroom, avoiding eye contact with Heather. In one hand she held an unlit cigarette. She crossed the room to peer out the
window at the feeder and several of the juncos flew off. “I don't remember any bird feeder.”

“You're not going to light that in this room, are you?”

“Of course not. I'd never dream of such a thing.” When she turned to examine her daughter, the outdoor light fell across her face, revealing foundation the colour of caramel. It nearly matched her hair. “How long have you been in that bathrobe?”

“I thought you were quitting.”

“I'm trying all the time. Why didn't you tell me you'd finally taken some time off?”

Heather shrugged.

“It was the Melvin man who informed me he'd been delivering groceries here for weeks, and when I called Mandy, what did she say? Basket case, I think.”

Heather laughed, perhaps a little too harshly. “Basket case? That's what she called me? Are you aware of the origins of that expression?”

“No, and if it's unsavoury, I don't want to either.”

“It's from World War One. It's how they referred to the quadruple amputees, because they were carried around in baskets.”

Her mother fiddled with her cigarette.

“It's understandable if they went out of their minds,” Heather continued. “Imagine, being lugged around in a basket? Were there lids for the baskets, I wonder, in case it rained?”

“I suppose you're trying to get rid of me?”

But Heather didn't really want her mother to leave. In fact, she was glad she was finally here.

“Mandy said you injured your feet. Hiking? What's this all about?”

“I'm sorry, Mom. Sorry.”

“You never called me. You're so stubborn.”

Until her father's death eight years ago, her parents had successfully avoided each other for decades. But Heather knew there would have been unavoidable encounters. It was unreasonable to hope they would never pass one another coming in and
out of Dominion, or be invited — unintentionally or otherwise — to a Christmas party, or find themselves bumper to bumper at a traffic light. Heather knew what it was like to discover one day that not only had you committed to memory the make and year and colour of another person's car but his licence plate number as well.

“Heather,” her mother said gently, “I bet you'd feel better if you washed your face and hair. And got dressed.”

The dictionary will also tell you, Heather knew, that the expression basket case evolved from soldiers to some-
thing
that is no longer functional, like a country unable to pay its debts or feed its people, and to some-
one
unable to cope, like a woman who couldn't dress or go to work.

Basket case? Heather looked down at her feet. Indeed, she had nearly lost them.

Once they had convinced Heather to board the ATV, she and Mandy were taken to Vince's home where a small, anxious crowd had gathered. Most agreed Heather's socks should be removed and her feet submerged in lukewarm water. She was placed in an armchair in the parlour, which was gloomy but warm. Family photographs, framed string art and a portrait of Pope John Paul hung over rosebud wallpaper. Linoleum in the most astonishing shades of red, orange and purple peeked out from beneath a square of carpet. Heather could see into the kitchen where a woman in knitted pink slippers stood talking on the phone, occasionally glancing in at Heather. After that, Vince wrapped a second blanket around her and someone brought her a cup of tea. They already had her socks off and were again discussing placing her feet in the tub of water, when she put her head against the wing of the chair.