All Saints (19 page)

 

*

 

Dear Simon,

 

It was most gratifying to receive your letter, despite its being a week late. When seven days went by with nothing from you, I was more disappointed than I would have imagined myself capable of being. I requested to review all your letters, in order to try to winkle out what may have caused you to give up on me as a correspondent. And though I can fully understand that it may have been, as you say, simply a matter of being overwhelmed with work, I cannot help wondering if the reason is otherwise.

Again, Simon, your handwriting is deteriorating. In fact, I'm afraid I would have to apply the word “scrawl” to what I see in your final paragraph. I only mention this because it worries me on your behalf. Are you eating and sleeping as well as you should? Do you see a doctor on a regular basis?

Not that I expect answers to those last questions. Nor do I take offense at your request that we avoid discussing your personal life, particularly your relationship with Kelly. That is entirely up to you, Simon, and I will respect your wishes. In all fairness to myself, however, I really should remind you that it was you yourself who brought her into the conversation.

But now to your question. Which gave me pause, I must admit. Once again, it didn't sound like you. Indeed, I'm not sure it was even worthy of you. However, I will keep my promise and attempt to answer it.

You want to know why, if I was so desirous of killing someone, I did not drink the lemonade myself. I assume you mean, before I gave it to the children to drink. Afterwards, of course, there was simply none left over. At least, not enough to kill an adult. I had measured very carefully, you see. The only reason there was any at all left was that there was one child absent that day—Peter Aspinall. I remember looking at his name on the list as I took attendance. Peter Aspinall. Not thinking, “He alone will live,” or “Why him and not some other,” or anything melodramatic like that. No, just looking at it. Thinking it, well, curious that by sheer accident—a sniffle or slight fever—he would survive.

Odd little boy, as I remember. Bright enough. But a touch of the fay, as we used to say. I would look at him and wonder if he might grow up to be like one of those secretly damaged young men who used to ask me to dance.

The Grade Twos had begun to notice him too. His difference. Not in a cruel or teasing way. No, that would come in Grade Three. I might have looked out my window the next year and seen Peter Aspinall trapped inside a screeching, taunting circle of his peers.

But I digress. Let me get back to what I know you are in fact asking. And let me address your question by turning it around and posing it to you: If you were given a choice between killing someone else and killing yourself, which would you do? I think I know you too well to assume that, even as a man of God, you would automatically reply, “I would kill myself.” Because it's not that easy, is it, Simon? We love our life, don't we? And though you might look at someone like me and ask yourself what I have to live for, let me assure you that I love my life as much as you do yours.

And in that vein, I am going to confess to you something that I have held back all these years from the clipboard-wielders. I know you will respect my confidence.

Once I was taken into custody, much weight was attached, by those who were to judge me, to what I did once I had finished singing The October Song. Once the last child had died, in other words. The official story is that I sat and waited for someone to discover what I had done, and to summon the authorities. This sitting and waiting was cause for much debate, as it seemed to some to indicate a sense of responsibility, hence sanity. To others, my doing nothing, when I still had every opportunity to run away and hide, indicated the opposite. And it was those others who won. As a result, I was sent to this kind of place instead of another kind of place. One where I very likely would not have survived.

But what was I really doing while I sat there, apparently waiting to have my crime discovered? For I was not at all concerned with others' assessments of my sanity or lack thereof. No, I was too busy revelling. Rejoicing. In the fact of my being. My sheer existence. You see, I WAS what I had just done. I still AM
what I did, all these years later. For the first time, I knew myself. I can still feel the sensation of my dry lips moving, saying, This is you, Alice. This is you
.

Everything that came later—the publicity, the notoriety—had nothing to do with what I was feeling then. I didn't need for the world to know who Alice Vipond was. I needed for Alice Vipond to know.

And with that, I'm going to sign off, Simon, since I feel I've left you with more than enough to think about. Looking forward to your next letter, as always.

 

Yours sincerely,

(Miss) Alice Vipond

 

*

 

Dear Simon,

 

I had an inkling, when I saw type-written sheets in place of that familiar (forgive me) scrawl, that your latest letter might be your last. And I am grateful to you for giving me permission to make one last reply.

For all my disappointment, I do appreciate your honesty in outlining your reasons for discontinuing our correspondence. It would have been so easy for you to blame overwork, or make vague references to family problems as an excuse. But if, as you say, you feel out of your depth, if the sight of one of my letters—waiting on your desk where your secretary Gail has left it—has started to make you feel something akin to panic, if your work and your relationships are being adversely affected by your corresponding with me, then it makes perfect sense for you to cease and desist.

Still, for all that, I would be less than honest and less than fair to both of us if I did not point out that, by allowing me this last missive, you are, so to speak, placing the ball in your own court. Another way of expressing it would be, you are placing yourself in my debt. For you will always owe me a letter, Simon. And I will never cease to wait for one. Again, you engaged with me. And as long as I live, you will not be able to fully disengage from me.

If I can do one thing for you, I would like to recommend that you forgive yourself. I suspect you're feeling as if you have let me down. Failed me, in some important way. Well, I think we both know that the only one you have let down is yourself. And not by being less of a clergyman than you might like to be—failing to guide me through the acts of confession and repentance. Bring me back into the fold, so to speak. No, that's not how you let yourself down.

Remember my suggesting that you ask yourself why you chose my name from the list of people to write to? I think you did ask yourself that question. And I think you answered yourself honestly. And I think that's why you want to end our correspondence.

Engaging with me meant crossing the line, didn't it, Simon? And we all know where our particular line is, don't we? We can see it. Very clearly. Just a little ahead of wherever our feet happen to be. We can measure the distance between our feet and that line. What it would take to cross it. What we would have to say. Or do. Sometimes we nudge one toe a little closer. But then we jerk it back, as if it's been singed.

And in the end, that is what you did. You couldn't cross the line because you were not willing to do it simply and purely. No, you wanted to carry suitcases with you, full of conditions: I will cross the line only if … I will cross the line in order to …

What would it have meant to you to get across with that baggage intact, Simon? To have made of me some kind of confessional trophy? Get me to spend the rest of my days as your penitent, with you as my spiritual advisor? What would success have done for you? More to the point, what has failure done to you?

The line is not without its terrors, Simon. And it is not for everyone to cross it. And that, I believe, is what is actually behind most peoples' reactions to my crime. To me. Nor do I blame them. It's a terrible thing, envy. It eats away at one.

So forgive yourself for wanting me dead, Simon. I know you do. To stop writing to me is to make me “die” in a way. And rest assured that in the not too distant future, you will see a notice in the paper of my death. Likely even a full-page article. I will not be allowed to die anonymously. Oh no. There will be reprints of the headlines that trumpeted my crime. And that photograph, which I'm told has become something of a news photography icon. The one in which, instead of trying to cover my face while I'm being taken into custody, I stare directly into the camera.

Oh yes, the whole story will be told again. The names of my victims listed. Family members interviewed. Perhaps even Peter Aspinall hunted down and asked what it was like to be the sole survivor.

But until then, Simon, I remain your willing correspondent, should you ever wish to pick up the threads of our conversation once again.

 

Yours sincerely,

(Miss) Alice Vipond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spare Change

 

 

 

 

 

Gail pushes her trowel blade
down into the crack where the caked earth has shrunk back from the side of the pot. She always repots on a Monday, just before she waters, so the plants will be at their driest. But they still manage to cling. She nudges the blade round in a circle, prying, separating, feeling the snap of breaking rootlets.

She started hours ago with the ficus benjamina. It's the biggest, so once she got it repotted, she could promote all the rest. The philodendron moved into the ficus's old pot. The jade plant inherited the philodendron's. The aloe got what the jade left behind. The weeping fig went where the aloe was. Now there's just the English ivy.

She takes hold of the tangle of stems and gives them a slow, steady pull, rocking the pot, easing the plant out of where it's lived for—

There. Always the way. Resist, resist, then something just gives and there it is, exposed and exhausted-looking on the newspaper. The English ivy's root ball is more root than earth, the white fingers having circled round and round, reaching for what wasn't there. Potbound. Gail's been seeing signs of it in all the plants for weeks. Pallor in the leaves. Water collecting too fast in the dish underneath. Overall droop.

I can relate to that.

And there's Bob. Early today.

Morning, Bob.

She upends the bag of soil and shakes a couple of inches into the weeping fig's old pot. With one hand she balances the English ivy on its root ball, troweling more soil into the gap all around. She likes this part, when she can imagine the roots starting to loosen and stretch and discover.

There. All done. She sits back on her heels to rest for a minute, surrounded by her plants in their new pots. In the next few weeks they'll start thanking her with streaks of darker green, and little celebrations all over of new growth. She gets up and walks stiff-kneed toward the kitchen, careful to shake her feet before stepping off the newspapers.

You should have put down that old bed sheet. The dirt just moves around on newspaper and gets in between the cracks. But cloth has some traction, so—

Bob, if I'd wanted to use the old sheet, I'd have used the old sheet.

She lifts her kitchen shears down from the hook on the wall and takes them back into the living room. That's one thing she's never missed in twenty years of widowhood. The advice.

Okay. Which one? Quick, before Bob can suggest anything, she decides on the philodendron. Yes. They make for hardy cuttings. She picks up each of the plant's stems and snips a bit off the end, just a leaf or two and a single node. That's all it takes. The philodendron will hang sulky for a while, used to trailing along the ground. But in time it will replace its snipped-off bits, uncurling one leaf after another.

Back in the kitchen, she arranges her cuttings like a green bouquet in a drinking glass, then fills the glass with water and sets it on the windowsill to get the sun. In two weeks or so, when white rootlets begin to poke out of the nodes, she'll fill the English ivy's old pot with soil and press each cutting down into it. And there it will be. A child of the philodendron. A daughter plant. Is that the right term, she wonders. Daughter plant?

Bob?

Never speaks up when she wants him to. Some things don't change.

She lingers in the kitchen, enjoying the sun coming through the freshly-washed windowpane. She did all the windows yesterday, getting a jump on her spring cleaning. Once she moves the plants back where they belong, waters them and vacuums the rug, she won't have much else to do. The apartment's cleaner than it's been in years. At her last book club meeting, she insisted on being next month's host, just so she would have to clean again. Shop for goodies. Maybe even bake.

Gail, get yourself a cleaning lady. Rent a suite in a resort and host your book club there. Have it catered, for God's sake.

Back again. Thanks, Bob. You and Mr. Bay Street would get along great. You're two of a kind.

She goes back into the living room and starts returning the plants to their usual spots. Taking her time. Trying to think of another task. She usually saves her chores and errands for Sunday and Monday, her days off, because she's too tired when she comes home from work to do much more than eat supper and read her library book before bed. These last few weeks, though, she's been practically running home from All Saints at the end of the day, looking for jobs to keep her busy. Closets to organize. Brass to polish. Bookshelves to dust. She can imagine Mr. Bay Street shaking his head over her.

His name isn't really Mr. Bay Street. Gail can't remember his name at the moment, but she could get it from the business card she tucked into her wallet. Her five-year-old wallet. Funny, she thinks, lifting the weeping fig onto the fake marble pedestal by the dining-room window. She's started looking at things that way. Her ten-year-old couch. The towels she bought on sale three years ago.

She must be such a disappointment to Mr. Bay Street. She sensed as much, though he was perfectly courteous and patient, both times she sat in his office. “Don't make any decisions right now,” he said the first time, handing her his card. All she saw was the thin gold cutline framing his name. “Take a few days to absorb what's happened. It can be a bit of a shock. Then come back and see me, and we'll talk about what's to be done.”

She did go back after a few days. He had been recommended to her, after all, as someone who has helped a number of people in her situation. And she did need help. Somebody to tell her what to do. How to live. She was as bewildered as she'd always thought those people must be who crawl out of the rubble after an earthquake.

She wore her best suit, just two years old. Shoes she got last Easter. She climbed the steps again to the art deco entrance off Bay Street. Rode the absolutely silent elevator to the seventh floor. Padded the thick carpet to Suite 707. Politely refused the coffee, tea, water or juice offered by Mr. Bay Street's executive assistant. And proceeded to disappoint Mr. Bay Street all over again.

“Most people come with a list,” he said, chuckling, but going a little pink in his carefully barbered cheeks. “Have you written a letter of resignation to the church yet?” When she shook her head no, he tried to explain again how much more manageable her taxes would be, if she simply stopped earning that not terribly large and now quite unnecessary salary. By manageable, Gail gathered that he meant avoidable. She wasn't sure she approved of avoiding taxes. She wasn't sure she approved of Mr. Bay Street, whose entire purpose seemed to be to help people in her situation avoid having to do things that most people—people in the situation she was in until a few weeks ago—had to do whether they liked it or not.

“If you're thinking in terms of a condo, real estate is always the best investment. And now is the time to buy outright. The recession has driven the prices down about as low as they're going to go. Not that you need to be too worried about that, of course.”

Gail said she would think about it. Sitting on the edge of the leather wing chair facing Mr. Bay Street's mahogany desk. Clutching her four-year-old beige purse on her lap. Picturing the tall white condominium complexes that soar on either side of All Saints. In the last fifteen years, the church has had to sell off bits of its land. The grassy stretch with the oak trees, where they used to hold the Sunday School picnic, was the first to go. There haven't been enough kids in the congregation to warrant a picnic in over a decade. Gail hated looking out the office window and seeing those big old trees being cut down and cut up and dragged away. The tennis court went next, because most of the parishioners are too old now to play. The same developer who built the condos on either side of the church has approached the diocese about the land All Saints is still squatting on. Gail doesn't like to think of it that way, but she can't help it. Squatting. Like a brown toad huddled between two cranes.

“You could invest in art if you prefer,” Mr. Bay Street was saying, his cheeks growing pinker. “Or set up scholarship funds. Look, why don't you just take a good long trip somewhere? That might help you come to grips with what's happened. Put things in perspective.”

Gail said she'd think about it.

The plants are all back in place, looking good in the April light. She gets the watering can from the storage closet and fills it from the bathtub tap. Goes from plant to plant, giving each one a bit less than it normally gets. There's moisture enough in the new soil.

Whatever you do, don't feed them. The roots—

“I know, Bob. The roots are torn, and plant food is acidic and it will burn.”

She stands still, watering can poised over the jade plant. Is that the first time she's answered him out loud? Or has she been doing it all along? She wets down the jade and moves on to the aloe.

The thing about going crazy, if that's what she's doing, is that you're not supposed to think you are. You're supposed to think everybody else is nuts, and you're the only sane person left. All right, she knows it isn't normal to suddenly start hearing your long-dead husband in your head as if he was beside you in the room. But at the same time, it all makes perfect sense to her. It feels completely natural. Not scary or spooky at all.
One morning, she clapped her hand down on the alarm, swung her feet out onto the floor and knew that Bob was there.

Not that she could see him or anything.
Less alone
was the phrase she settled on to describe it. She just felt less alone. And hearing his voice in her head was the same as imagining it, except she never knew what he was going to come out with.

Bob didn't explain himself, why he had waited twenty years to come back and haunt her, if that's what's happening, and she didn't demand an explanation. But it's been a few weeks now, and she can't help coming up with some theories. He showed up right after everything changed. So maybe she's experiencing—what did that shrink call it, the one she went to see a few weeks after Bob's funeral, because suddenly she couldn't make decisions, not even which shoes to put on? An adjustment reaction. Was that it? Or was it a reaction adjustment?

Bob?

No answer. Maybe he wants her to talk to him out loud all the time now. Or maybe he's sulking because she snapped at him.

She's done watering the plants. Gathering up the newspapers and vacuuming the rug will take fifteen minutes, tops. Then what? If most of her friends weren't at work, she could call somebody up, suggest lunch and a movie. That's the trouble with having Sundays and Mondays off, but that's what you get if you work in a church office.

She had always hated working Saturdays, right from the first. Beggars can't be choosers, though, and it wasn't as if they didn't need her. There used to be more drop-ins and calls to the office on Saturday than through the whole rest of the week.

She's not sure when things started to change. But the day came, late last year, when Simon had to break it to her that they might be cutting her Saturday hours. That night, instead of eating dinner she sat with a pencil and listed her expenses. Worked out how much of a pay cut it would be. Wondered how she would manage.

She picks up each sheet of newspaper in turn, shaking dirt onto the next one before folding it. She was so scared, just a few months ago, sitting right over there at the dining room table with her pencil and pad of foolscap. They haven't actually gotten around to cutting her hours. But it's just a matter of time. The church can hardly afford to pay her for four days a week, let alone five. And all they need her for now on Saturdays is to open up at eight to let the volunteer Lunch Ladies in, then again at nine-thirty for the guests.

She gathers up the last sheet of newspaper, the one with all the dirt, and carries it carefully into the kitchen, where she shakes it into the garbage. Guests. That's what everybody's supposed to call them. She bets the Lunch Ladies even think of them that way. And maybe if she was a nicer person, she would too. But if you're a guest somewhere, doesn't it mean that you want to be there, that you've chosen to come? Who wakes up in the morning and thinks,
Hey, what I'd really like is to be down and out and have to rely on a free lunch at a church.
She should feel sorry for them, at least. But on Saturdays she shuts the office door and works at the computer with her back turned. The smell of food and the clink of cutlery still come through from the room across the hall.

“It's our new congregation, Gail.” Simon drops in sometimes on Saturdays to help. “We might as well do this on a Sunday. We'd get a bigger turnout.”

But no more envelopes in the plates.
She would never actually come out with that, even though she knows he's thinking the same thing. It's academic anyway. The old guard parishioners—the ones with the money—would raise hell if All Saints moved the lunch to Sunday. Her final task every Saturday is to spray Febreze around once everybody's left. The room they do the lunch in is the same one they serve coffee in after the Sunday service. Some people have complained to her about the smells—cooking smells, as they always hasten to clarify.

Just quit. It's not your problem anymore. Let somebody else spray the Febreze.

“Bob, there's more to my job than air freshener.” She's glad they're talking again. But is she going to start answering him out loud on the bus? At work? And why is she just standing here? She folds the last sheet of newspaper and puts it in the recycle bin. All that's left is the vacuuming. But then what?

You don't have to be the best little girl in the world, Gail. You haven't done anything wrong.