Crossings (39 page)

The police come but Mik gets away down the alley.

They don't seem to take it seriously at all.

I phone the babysitter. Her boyfriend has a rifle. He brings it over and shows me how. I lean it against the kitchen door, which is not broken down. Mik must have just been kicking it.

I write a letter to the city prosecutor. I explain, logically, why—in view of the lack of concern shown by the constabulary—I shall have to kill Mik O'Brien the next time he comes through the door. Yours truly, V.E. Ferris.

Aunt Carrington arrives.

Two detectives come and sit in the front room and speak politely to us.

‘He has a silver plate in his head,' Aunt Carrington says. ‘The war did dreadful things to men.'

The detectives say please get rid of the rifle. Accidents happen that way.

Aunt Carrington says, ‘There must be something else you can do. I myself don't like guns, but you can see my niece's difficulty. If you can just do something for the time being, we'll be out of here soon.' She gestures to the high-ceilinged rooms, the Salvation Army furniture, the pile of diapers on the desk. ‘I'm taking my niece to Europe,' says Aunt Carrington, ‘and when we get back, we're going to buy a house in a better section of the city. But in the meantime, I don't believe my niece can give up the rifle unless she is sure that Mr O'Brien is quite safe.' Aunt Carrington smiles at the detectives disingenuously.

Perhaps they think my aunt is mad. Perhaps they think I am mad. But what they say is, they think O'Brien is mad. O'Brien is well known to them. Has been in trouble before. They explain to us that with someone like O'Brien, you could possibly get in one shot, but that might not kill him, you see. And before you knew it, he could grab the rifle from you, and game over.

‘I've seen that happen,' says one detective.

The other detective nods, to confirm. And even goes to the kitchen, to pace out the requisite steps from the door to the place where I would be standing, firing the rifle. He looks at the mended hinges. ‘What happened here?'

‘That's where he broke down the door,' I say. ‘The first time.'

‘Someone like Mik O'Brien, you need an elephant gun,' says the first detective. Mik would have liked that.

And they say, for the meantime, until we leave the area, they can arrange to have Mik committed to Essondale.

I return the rifle to my babysitter's boyfriend. He is relieved that the detectives did not confiscate it. We go to Europe, and when we get back, I buy a house. Aunt Carrington wants to buy it with me, but I can't.

Paul offers to marry me, for the baby's sake. I give it a thought. For the baby's sake, I would do almost anything. Uncle Forbes says, ‘Oh Vicky, not another one.'

It seems incredible, but I actually do. I wonder if I should marry Paul, to make things respectable. But I don't want my daughter to have a coward for a mother. I tell him No, and Paul cries. Sits in my front room and cries. For hours.

Mik never did that.

 

IN MY DREAM last night. I am flying up north. There are two stops. I am going to see my grandfather. This will be the second visit. My grandmother has died and this time is for the funeral. He has said to me, last weekend: ‘It's a waste. I can do the embalming myself.' And I come now, knowing my grandmother to be dead. It is an empty bare little house, all on one floor, and the linoleum has maroon fleshy petals. The spare bedroom, where I expect her to be laid out, is bare. There is still a patch of wet on the linoleum though, beside her bed. Perhaps he has washed the floor, or perhaps that is wax. But it looks too wet for wax. Yes, it must have just been washed. He wouldn't use liquid wax that doesn't need buffing. But then I think, Maybe it is the fluid from her body. Has he done the embalming here? I imagine how terrible it must have been, taking out my grandmother's stomach. I sniff, expecting rotten meat, but no. There is only the stale mustard smell of old people. I go along to their bedroom and I see, on a cot beside the big bed, my grandmother's feet. They are twitching convulsively. I look up to her face. Her mouth is drawn wide in a soundless howl. She is alive then, in spite of the removal of her stomach. Her wrists are in restrainers. She jerks and twists and screams in silence.

He says, behind me, ‘Now she doesn't make any noise anyway.' He seems sad. ‘I had to cut the vocal cords.'

I wake up.

I come upstairs and plug in last night's coffee. Put on the kettle for instant porridge. Light a cigarette. Go stand at the front window. It is foggy. The rain beats maniacally against the pane. I go to the back window. The sun is coming up, red, behind the mountain. Up it comes, out of the fog and the rain. Now it is casting a strange clear light, like the amber of tea, over the city. The city is lit up, as if the light is coming through stained glass.

I get the heated-up coffee. The radio clock switches on.

I know it's today I finish. My lover, my enemy, my killer.

Anna comes upstairs. I stare out the window. I am crying.

The light is shining through water now. And suddenly, like a message, a rainbow. A rainbow in the clear holy light, and the rain falling through gold like a blessing. It arches through the sky, from mountain to sea. Perfect. A perfect terrible rainbow, like a promise.

What does it matter, says Jeff, if it's a lie? So long as it's a good, a beautiful lie? Oh yes, I remember that first one, after the flood, and everyone dead or drowned, and you said, It's all right, it's all right, it's all all right. Old arch-deceiver, with your rainbow full of promises, and everyone dead and drowned. For our sins.

There is a silly song on the radio. From four or five years ago. From a movie.

And I am dancing. An old fat fool. Dancing. Anna comes out, sleepy still, watching me, starting to move herself, but one eye on the radio clock.

‘It's seven forty-four.'

I have taught her that way, thinking ‘quarter to's' and ‘five past's' not logical.

Lolly yowls.

The water for the instant porridge is steaming up the windows.

And I dance.

‘Mom? It's seven forty-nine!'

‘Just a minute, for god's sake.'

For years I was guilty about Ben. About Paul. About my mother and my sisters. I shall probably come to feel guilty about Anna. But I never feel guilty about Mik. I think now, My god, they probably put him away for life. If there's anyone you really did destroy, it was Mik.

But I know that's not true. If I think of Mik, right now, lumbering down Broadway in crumpled khaki, I want to laugh.

I know I could say: Look, Vicky, you set this poor bastard up. You made him part of your own personal destruction epic. You provoked him into trying to kill you, then you got him sent to the madhouse for doing it.

Well, that's probably the truth. Only I don't feel guilty for it.

I can
see
Mik, cream and coffee over his tits, his head thrown back, hollering to the moon and bringing down the sun. And I know they never destroyed him. Not Mik. And I know I didn't destroy him. Not Mik. Because Mik had been destroyed by experts.

And now Anna is dancing too. Unable to help herself. And we dance, mother and daughter, in the underwater light.

We dance, and we say, Just a minute for god's sake. Just a minute. Just a minute. Just a brief and dancing minute for the sake of the dark and laughing god.

Betty Lambert
(1933–83) was a playwright and novelist; born in Calgary to a working-class family, she graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1957, and joined the English faculty at Simon Fraser University in 1965, where she eventually became professor. She was best known for her prodigious output of plays for stage, radio, and television.
Crossings
was her only novel.