Things Withered (14 page)

She picked the remote off the table and shut off the TV, leaning in close. “It’s okay, David. You didn’t
kill
them. They
died
. You
found
them. It happens all the time.” She sat down beside him. He could tell by her face that she wasn’t sure that was true.

All David heard was
kill, died, found.
He saw them each in his head, like old, dead friends.

“You know you’re spending the night at your mother’s, right? You remember that?”

He looked at her. Why was he spending the night at Mom’s? He nodded.

“Do you want me to pack your shit? You won’t need much.” She pinched a bit of fabric from his sleeve between her fingers with mild alarm, but sympathetically. “I guess you can wear what you have on to dinner, and then tomorrow, all you’ll need is the tux and stuff. Okay?” He nodded again. She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“Snap out of it, David. You’re freaking me out.”

He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Okay. I’m cool.” He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time in a long time. There were plates on the table from the night before. He should have cleaned those up. He got off the sofa and wandered over there. He stacked the plates up together and put them on the counter.

“I’m going to have a shower,” he said.

Myra perked up. “That’s a great idea. I’ll put some clean clothes out for you. This will be fun! It’s our last night together as singles!” She came over to him and grabbed him around the waist. She wrinkled her nose, “Maybe we should go to the pub and pick up other people. Our last chance—”

He tried a laugh and it came out sounding fairly real. “No, I don’t think so,” he said mechanically. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He felt like big bad luck.

“Get in the shower. I’ll lay out your clothes.”

“Lay?” he said, getting that one.

“No sex until after the wedding,” she grinned. “I know it will be hard to keep your hands off such a lovely bride as me, but just try.”

He laughed. He thought he did, anyway.

When David got out of the shower, the room was filled with steam. He swiped his hand across the mirror. It fogged back up quickly. He finished drying himself and tucked the towel into itself around his waist. He felt better. Period. He took a deep breath, but got the sickly, warm, foggy air, tasting vaguely of soap. David ran a comb through his hair and turned to leave.

The door was shut.

He put his hand out, brushed the knob. His heart started to pump hard, he felt like he couldn’t get a breath. Droplets of water trickled down the side of his face and gathered uncomfortably around his hairline, making him feel dirty, sweaty and greasy. He tried to take a deep breath. It caught in his throat.

“Myra?”

Beddy? Mr. Harris? Mr. Rabbinowitz?

David put his fingers on the knob, pressed his flesh into the smooth, warm surface of the glass, but couldn’t turn. His chest was tight. He thought he was having a heart attack.

There’s nothing on the other side.

He started to turn the knob, and then let go of it as if it were burning. He swallowed. Squeezed his eyes shut.

Just turn the bloody knob. There’s no one there dead—killed died kill found—on the floor, bed, dangling from the ceiling. Myra is putting clothes out. She’s probably waiting to put her make-up on. Just turn the knob.

Grasp and turn.

David swiped his fingers on the towel, his hand damp with either the mist in the room or fear. He put his fingers on the knob again. Swallowed.

He was trapped. Never getting out.

The knob turned within his fingers and Myra’s face appeared in the crack. “Are you done? I gotta get in here,” she said. Then she saw his face. “What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.” He kissed her forehead. David brushed past her through the open door, hardly noticing that his eyes did a quick once over of the room before stepping completely into it.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’m starving.” And as soon as she turned her back, he dropped onto the bed and sucked at the air, unable, it seemed, to fill his lungs, not hungry at all.

There were doors everywhere.

His buddy Shamus opened the one at the restaurant. David drank minimally at dinner and did not visit the bathroom after his first attempt, which left him standing, sweating, outside the men’s room, unable to even push it open. He spent the night in a semi-cold sweat that if noticed, he hoped would be passed off as wedding jitters. If Myra noticed, she didn’t let on, although twice he caught her looking at him, but thought it might just have been a kind of dreamy-eyed disbelief, the conclusion to their single days. She had a few glasses of wine, too.

When they left the restaurant to go back to Myra’s sister’s for a nightcap, David made sure to pull up the rear. Myra opened the door when they left. There were no problems at the house, someone else did all the opening, it wasn’t his house. No one stayed long, thankfully, but David held his water until they left. It seemed an interminable time was spent at the door saying good night and making wedding jokes, and finally Myra’s friend Gloria gave Myra and David some space and David knew Myra wanted him to say something romantic, it was right there on the surface of his brain, but unfortunately he seemed to be operating at a much more buried level in there—the best he could do was to mutter
I love you
a few times, hopefully with the right degree of warmth and sincerity. While he muttered, he thought to himself,
I will make this up to you, I have a lifetime to make this up to you—

When they got to Lorna’s—finally—David beelined for the can and left the door opened while he peed.

“David!” his mother shouted. “Close the door!”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha—

David slept poorly in his old room, after drinking most of a bottle of rum, going over the evening in his mind, over and over again.

Hey David, check it out: you find dead people
, followed by hysterical laughter for most of the night. Even Myra laughed.

He woke up with a headache and a dry mouth, but felt surprisingly refreshed. It was his wedding day. The mother of all days. He popped a couple of aspirins and drank a full pot of coffee before they even started getting ready.

Myra called just after ten to make sure he was up. “You should be there a little early,” she reminded him. “At least by 12:30, right?”

His mother plagued him with a constant stream of questions. Did he have everything? How were the shoes? Did he like them? When were his friends coming to get him?

A buddy from the old warehouse called to see if he wanted a car, a fake moustache and enough money to get him out of town. Ha ha.

It was all coming together. It would be okay.

Hey David, check it out: you find dead people.
Hilarious.

The atmosphere at the apartment was festive and swirling. Both Myra’s sisters and her mother were there, along with Gloria, who’d spent the night. They’d all drunk a bit more when they got back, but not very much, although they’d still both woken bleary-eyed and achy. It might well have been the hour. Myra had found herself awake just after seven—having not gone to sleep until after two—but couldn’t fall back to sleep. She was too excited.

Her dress was hanging under plastic in the hall closet where the winter coats were, guaranteeing that it would not be touched before that morning. She’d settled on a delicate off-pink number, cocktail length, with a fitted bodice and an a-line skirt. Worn with the crinoline Janis had talked her into, it was a real princessy thing once she got it all together, but without the crinoline, could be worn just as a dress. The colour set off her skin nicely, making her look like she had a bit of a tan. For jewellery she would wear pearl earrings and leave her neck bare. Her shoes were plain pumps, dyed to match the dress—just slightly off-colour, but not noticeable. Beige stockings. Unused to such fussy dressing, she was surprised to find herself excited about wearing everything put together, which she had only done once, the day she finally picked the dress (she’d had seven on hold at various shops in the city).

The sun was shining by the time she grew bold enough to start the coffee and it looked like the weather was going to be perfect. Gloria came stumbling off the couch once she smelled breakfast and they picked up where they left off.

“You really think he’s losing it?”

Myra shrugged. Then she said firmly, “He’ll get over it. It’ll be fine.”

Mostly she worried that her buds from the meat plant, unaware of David’s latest brush with death, would hear about it at the wedding and start bugging him. She had decided sometime after 7:30 that she would corner Tammy Faye and Vegas in the church and tell them everything, and tell them to get everyone else to keep their mouths shut.

A pre-emptive strike. It was good enough for some.

David sat around drinking coffee and eating toast and peanut butter until he’d gone through nearly the whole loaf.

He and Lorna played a hand of Hearts, and even had a last drink from the cupboard over the stove—so rarely opened that David’s mind was actually taken off the events of the day and the previous few days while he peered curiously inside.

At eleven-thirty, when Hugh called, he started getting dressed. In his old bedroom he put Aerosmith on the stereo and cranked it. When “Amazing” came on, he stopped what he was doing and sang it out, at the top of his lungs.

It was all good. David was getting married and that had nothing to do with anything.

Pumped and cheerful, buzzed by the drink and uncomfortable in his stiff, new clothes, he and his friends and Lorna too, got to the church about quarter to one. The wedding was at one o’clock. Cars were parked up and down the street and it took them a couple of minutes to find a place, but they did, on a block behind the church. They walked, feeling odd and obvious in their suits and ties (especially David who had tied his own bow tie, crooked and lopsided had been the best he could do, but figured he looked pretty natty).

The reality of the whole thing was just beginning to sink in when they got to the side door of the church.

David stopped, one foot on the first step, the other on the ground.

Hughie said, “What’s up, man? Cold feet?” he giggled. Then he burped. “Oops, breakfast coming back.”

“Wow,” David said. “Getting married, the whole deal. I feel like I’ve hardly thought about it.”

Hughie smacked him in the shoulder. “Well, I guess I should say something deep and wise. I will say only, ‘You’ll find a way to fuck it up,
Grasshopper
.’ Now let’s go.”

He nodded. Hughie held the door and the two of them went inside.

There was a buzz coming from the church. It sounded like hundreds of people, when David knew it could only be a couple of dozen. His throat was closing again. His mouth was dry. And his two beers were coming back on him, through his bladder.

He and Hughie peeked through the door separating the rectory from the pews. The carpet seemed redder, the pews shinier, than they had seemed when the four of them had been in for the brief rehearsal and to talk to the minister on Wednesday.

“Where are the girls?” David said.

Hughie stuck his hand through the crack in the door and pointed to the other side of the church. “I think they’re over there. We’re supposed to be out there.” Someone in the audience saw his arm and waved. He waved back.

David swallowed. He could smell perfume and it was overwhelming. He wondered if it was the flowers or someone sitting out there. Through the crack left between Hughie’s head and shoulders, he saw his mother, sitting in the front row with her hands folded in her lap. She was wearing a hat. He didn’t remember the hat. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her in a hat.

“Oh man,” he said.

Hughie looked at him and they started laughing. “I gotta take a piss,” David said. “Where’s the can do you think?”

The two of them wandered toward the back. There were three doors more or less the same. The last door had glue smears where a sign once must have been. “There, I bet,” Hughie said. He opened the door and jumped, shouting, “Aha!” The room was empty, except for a gleaming urinal and a single stall. “There you go. I’ll head out there. Meet ya.” They locked eyes.

“Good luck, buddy. And when she kicks you out, and you come to my place? Bring beer.”

David laughed. It was happening.
His life.

David checked his watch while he peed, holding himself awkwardly as far away from the urinal and stream as he possibly could, and stay upright. It was five minutes to.

He zipped up and washed his hands. Checked his tie. He pulled one side a little further until it looked more balanced. Fixed his hair.

Ready as I’ll ever be
—

He stopped.

The door was closed. His breathing came in shallow, weak gasps and he felt the first trickles of moisture down the insides of his arms, ruining his shirt.

From somewhere in the church he heard the music start.

When it stopped, because he knew it would, knew they couldn’t bring out the bride without the groom standing up at the front, waiting for her. It was in all the movies. He stands there and watches while she walks up the aisle.

And he wasn’t there.

He panicked.

“Myra!” he called, pressing his face close to the heavy wooden door. “Myra!” She was somewhere in the church. She would hear him. He called again, and then waited. His hand itched to go to the knob, itched to turn it, itched to yank the whole thing open, let the bodies fall where they might—

The idea that he might forever be trapped in a tiny room, while weddings and baptisms went on and on forever occurred to him. It occurred to him that there were doors everywhere, all over the world, and usually there were people behind them, and that people expired, got tired and keeled over, that this was going to be something that would ride with him forever and ever and as each of these thoughts ran through his mind, he panicked, he screamed, he shouted—