A Beauty (32 page)

Elena woke up later than she’d intended and pulled on her clothes from the night before. She made instant coffee in her room and put on her makeup while she waited for it to cool. By the time she was done, a scum had formed across the cup; the coffee was tepid and bitter and she grimaced after downing it. She pulled the drapes and stood looking at the parking lot. It was completely irrational to think of going home.

She’d seen what happened to people who dwelt on the past. They stranded themselves between whatever had happened and whatever might have been. They tied themselves to people and places they should have long since left. She’d always refused to be one of them. Long ago, she’d stopped asking questions, pretending she didn’t want answers, and now she really didn’t want them. She wouldn’t have thought of the fretful night before if it hadn’t
been that a newspaper was flopping from car to car across the parking lot, pasting itself briefly against a wheel of one and then the bumper of another, and it reminded her that she’d walked barefoot, back and forth for half an hour, without a thought of how soiled the carpet must be.

She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, staring into her own mascaraed eyes. The person in those eyes agreed with her. It made no sense to go home. And when that person tilted her head and started to look pensive, she turned impatiently away, packed up briskly, and checked out.

She decided she would drive straight through from Charlesville to the farm. That way, she’d arrive in late afternoon. If someone else lived there now, which was entirely possible, it would be a good time to stop. She’d ask if she could look around, as if that was why she’d come, to walk on a bit of ground she’d walked on before, gaze on a few spots she supposedly remembered. And if her father was there, if he could be there – well, that would be that, wouldn’t it? And if the whole place was abandoned, the buildings gone, just some farmer’s fields or more likely pasture, because that land had never been arable, she’d go on into Trevna; and if there wasn’t a place to bed down in Trevna, she’d just keep driving. It wouldn’t matter to her, then.

That was the plan, and she drove through the morning and into the afternoon with it firm in her mind. She drove fast, since the roads were nearly empty, and kept her eyes on the view out the windshield. The landscape held no surprises for her now that she was used to the idea of better crops and lusher ditches. The wheels skittered on the gravel, the car nearly floated, the road took her effortlessly onward. But then she had to slow to a crawl for a farmer moving his machinery, and then she saw the sign for Addison, and then she thought about Bill. It wasn’t the first time he’d crossed her
mind lately; she’d thought of him as soon as she’d decided to come to Saskatchewan, but this time there was a difference. Because they’d spent their first night here, she decided, that’s why. But it was the morning she remembered, the morning they left here – setting out – the big roadster throbbing under them while they sat at the intersection, having no idea which way they would turn.

On the way into the little town she passed a car cemetery, half a dozen rusted-out shells abandoned beside the glittering pile of a nuisance ground. Her rented Ford was the only licensed, roadworthy vehicle in miles, but she angle-parked anyway in front of the Addison Hotel, one of the few buildings left standing on the main street. She turned the engine off and rolled her side window down and listened for any sound of life. She imagined a dog barking but didn’t hear one. The smell of dust wafted into the car. She got out, leaving the door open. Nothing to see, up or down the wide street. She’d forgotten how small the buildings were in a prairie town. Even the false fronts on the two that sat across from the hotel, wide apart like a mouth missing teeth, barely reached the height of a normal one-story. One of them advertised itself as The Modern Department Store; neither had been painted for decades and the boards had silvered with age. Weeds grew right up to their doors. The two grain elevators beside the railway tracks appeared to be in operation, however, and telephone poles – or power poles, she didn’t know which they were – marched down the street, stringing wires across the blue sky. Hadn’t she gone far enough for one day?

She knew at once it was the same couple. They were nothing if not distinctive, might have been the two skinniest old people she’d ever seen. Between them, they had barely enough flesh to cover one set
of bones. They came to the door together, and she knew it was because nobody had knocked for a long time. They leaned forward, sharp shoulder blades bent in permanent protection of their hollow chests, and peered at her. They said the hotel wasn’t open. The man said he was sorry. She didn’t have the heart to ask if they’d let her stay anyway, even though she suddenly felt she would be ill if she continued on. She forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply. It was only nerves; she knew that. The woman must have seen her distress; she asked if Elena wanted to use the bathroom.

“Oh, no,” she said. She remembered the state of the bathroom the night she’d stayed here, and backed down a step. The old woman was staring at her. She looked at the old man instead. “I’m sorry for disturbing you,” she went on quickly. “It was foolish of me. Obviously you’re not open.”

“We’re leaving soon,” the old woman said. She was staring, still, as if she would take something from her if she could. “End of the month,” the old woman said. “We’re packing up, moving out.”

“This town is history,” the old man said. The old woman squeezed his arm. Like a pair of skeletons, the two of them, pleased with themselves for breathing. They didn’t recognize her, of course; she was only one of many girls and women who’d spent a night in one of their rooms and moved on. They waited in the open doorway while she went down the last steps. She turned when she reached the street and said, “I stayed here years ago.” Blurted it out. They looked startled. They tipped their heads politely, but what was there to say? She shrugged her shoulders to acknowledge it and avoided looking at them before she drove away.

At the intersection she noted the time. It was just after three o’clock. She was right on schedule; if anything, she would arrive earlier than she’d intended.

You didn’t find the town
, Ruth said right into her ear when she turned the car in the direction of Trevna. She could see her standing in the middle of her kitchen, revelling in the moment.
Off the face of the earth
, she said, triumph in her voice.
Gone
.

“Odd kind of dress,” Pansy said while they watched the car turn onto the highway. “Must be the new style.”

It was possibly the first time Merv had heard the word “style” fall from Pansy’s lips. He thought it was a good sign, a forward-looking trend potentially developing late in her life. And then he had a Eureka moment. “Yes,” he drawled. “I’d say she’s very chicken fashionable.” He waited. “
Chic
’
n
fashionable?”

Pansy pretended to be ignoring him. She pretended to be examining the length of Main Street and at its end the foundation stones of the torn-down Lutheran church.

“What?” he asked, slipping his arm around her. “You think I’m repre-
hen
-sible?” He chucked her under the chin. “C’mon my little sugar plum, admit it, I re-
coop
-erated.”

“You slay me,” she said.

He jumped back and regarded her with admiration. “Hey good for you, love. S
-lay
? We’re back to the egg.
Egg
-squisite, isn’t it?” He let her deliver a disdainful look. “Give me a kiss, dear, and I’ll quit.”

She kissed him. They both went and had a nap after that.

Bill hadn’t planned to stop anywhere along the way, but when he saw the sign for Addison, he couldn’t resist turning in. He was pleased to see the hotel still there, slumped like an old cardboard
box at the far end of their main street. He pulled up right where he’d parked almost thirty years before, and sat with his engine idling. He still had the top down and although the day was warm, he could feel the cool air of night around him. He remembered Elena had waited for him in the car when he’d gone to knock on the door. And then she’d asked him something about the stars.

He was about to drive away when a face appeared in the grimy downstairs window, the nose almost pressed to the pane. He couldn’t believe it; he recognized her. It had to be the same cranky woman. Then the front door opened and there was Scrawny stepping out as cautiously as you might on a gangplank over a violent ocean.

“Merv,” Pansy called, but he’d already gone out the door. And then the fellow got out of his car. Big, fancy car, the colour of blue old ladies liked to knit into baby booties, a convertible, no less. And of course Merv wouldn’t have the sense to get rid of him. He was yakking away to him on the steps. Christ, now he was inviting him in.

“Two visitors in one day,” he was saying, ushering the man into the office.

He came right over to her with his hand out so she had to shake it. Said his name. It meant nothing to her.

“Bill here stayed with us one night,” Merv said.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say nobody ever stayed two, but she didn’t like to talk to strangers.

“Have a seat,” Merv said and the fellow took a chair.

“I was telling Bill not too many stop here in Addison, anymore,” Merv said.

Pansy snorted.

“So it’s quite the coincidence, having two in one day. I was telling him the lady who just come not an hour ago also said she stayed here one night. And then – see, I recognized him. I didn’t know from when, but I knew he looked familiar, and then I thought, Jeez, that woman looked familiar, too. And then he says he stayed here with a young woman.”

“It
was
a long time ago,” the fellow said.

He must have seen the look on her face. If he’d lived with Merv all these years, he’d be looking the same. Merv could spout six reasons off the bat for whatever he was wishing, and he wasn’t even trying to convince you it really happened so much as to make you wish along with him that the world really could unfold his way.

“I’m pretty sure it was her,” Merv said. “People don’t change that much you know, and I recall bringing the two of you breakfast in bed. We didn’t do that often, here. It’s hard to believe, though, isn’t it? Cripes, the two of you must be on the same wavelength.”

Pansy snorted again. All she could think about, and see in her mind’s eye, was the two Berger kids who’d tried to talk to one another with two empty tin cans and a big long string. It had worked best when they shouted.

“No, really,” Merv said, “I bet she started wondering about you, eh? And that’s why she’s here. I can tell you she doesn’t live around here because she was driving a rental. A two-tone brown Ford, Bill,” he added, looking significantly right at him.

“I guess that would be some fluke, eh?” the man said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Pansy said. “She wouldn’t think you’d be here. Nobody would think anybody would be
here
.”

The fellow only laughed as if she’d made a pretty good joke and looked on her like he’d just remembered she was his favourite aunt. He was making himself at home, sprawling back in his chair like he’d grown up here, watching the business along with them since
he was a freckle-faced kid. “Did she say where she was headed?” he asked.

“No,” Pansy said so sharply it was clear they both expected her to say more. But she didn’t.

“You didn’t see which way she turned when she left?”

“No.”

He sat back in his chair and smiled at her. “You don’t still have a cat?” he asked.

“Imagine you remembering that,” Merv said.

“Those Christly cats,” Pansy said. “We’re too old to look after anything but ourselves.”

Let them think it was a coincidence, Bill thought. The old fellow was having fun with it. He went on chatting with them about their health and their upcoming move to Pioneer Villa – which might as well have been called Heaven on Earth, they were so happy to be going there – and all the while the old woman sat up straight in her chair with her arms crossed in front of her, clutching her own old elbows, reminding herself not to tell him which way Elena had turned. It didn’t matter to him; he knew he’d find her. He had a map and now he knew the colour and make of her rented car. The old man was getting agitated, though, and finally after some hemming and hawing, he excused himself and pulled his wife out of the office, obviously to confer.

Bill leaned back in his chair and looked up to the ceiling and pictured the room upstairs, the way it was when they’d walked into it, the dim light, the cheap furniture, the small bed with the permanent gully down the middle. He remembered her beside him in the bed the next morning, how soft and weak she’d been. She hadn’t wanted him to know it, was afraid to show it, he figured. He’d puzzled over her behaviour, taking everything she did and said to be a comment on him. He wondered if she could have
been as beautiful as he remembered. His eyes had often followed women in the street, looking for her. Two or three years after she left him he was still doing it, and even once in a while after he was married he’d glimpse a slim figure like hers at the end of a block, turning the corner, maybe, walking out of sight, and he’d have the urge to go after the woman, just in case.