The Pumpkin Murders Page 11

  Eileen offered me tea and I declined. Just the thought of it sent waves of nausea through me. I had started to sweat, so I shrugged my jacket off onto a chair.

  “Are you on your way to work?” I asked.

  “No. I just finished my shift.” She smoothed the white skirt of her uniform over her plump thighs.

  “Pete’s dead,” I said. There was no better way to put it. I don’t believe in leading up to these things and thereby building the anxiety.

  Eileen sank into a kitchen chair and began to weep. Her teeth hadn’t grown any since the last time I had seen them.

  “I knew it,” she wailed. “I knew he would die out there.”

  The cloth of her nurse outfit felt damp to the touch when I put my hand on her shoulder. She wanted details and there was so much I couldn’t tell her. I softened Nora’s description and assured Eileen that Pete hadn’t wanted to die; it had been an accident. I had struggled with Nora’s version of events, but finally chose to believe it because it was easiest that way.

  I made my brother’s unlikely friend some tea: hot, strong and sweet. When I looked for the milk I recognized Pete’s scrawl on a frayed piece of notepaper attached to the fridge. He had written two haiku and given them to Eileen:

  the warbler

  hits the window

  soon to die

  Real cheerful.

  The other one read:

  Birdsong.

  Cat in shadow land

  Prepares to pounce

  When had Pete developed such an interest in the perils of being a bird?

  I couldn’t imagine anyone except Eileen wanting to fasten such horrible poems to her fridge.

  She slurped down the tea and pulled herself together. I found a paper towel and gave it to her.

  “If I’m able to find out anything more, I’ll let you know,” I said, as I picked up my jacket. I was too hot to put it on.

  “Thanks, Cherry. I’d appreciate it,” she said, “and thanks for making me some tea.”

  “Will you be all right?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She blew her nose into the paper towel.

  “I’ll let myself out.”

  I scurried past the old man without looking at him again, put on my boots without tying them up, let in another gust of fresh air and stepped out onto the porch. The yard was only about ten feet deep, so I was through the gate and on the front sidewalk in seconds. I didn’t stoop to tie my laces or slip into my jacket till I reached the end of the block.

  That was the only conversation Eileen and I had about Pete’s death. She didn’t pester me any further about details. I attributed that to her sensibleness. She trusted that I would give her the information if there was anything to give.

  CHAPTER 21

  I gave up on Nora completely after Pete’s death. At first I skimmed her few namby-pamby efforts at letter writing but when I saw that they were from that same phony simpleton that wrote to me before he died I just looked for Dougwell’s message at the bottom and then threw them away. I didn’t answer any of them.

  One evening in December, in the early days after Pete’s second death (I never stopped thinking of the first one as that time in Mr. Whittall’s yard), I had a long soak in the tub with jasmine-scented bubbles. Then I sat on my bed and smoothed lotion onto my feet, into the tiny scar on my right instep and the rougher skin of my heels.

  Then back to the scar. It was itchy, the kind of itch you get when a cut is healing. I scratched. My memory touched on something from so long ago that I wasn’t sure if it was real; I couldn’t catch it. My stomach flipped over and I thought for a moment I would vomit. The sensation was quick to leave and a familiar hollowness filled me up. I felt like certain tender parts of me were missing. I couldn’t even remember them, so finding them did not seem possible. What took their place was cool and flinty.

  I fastened the top on the bottle of lotion and pulled on a pair of cozy socks.

  In late April of 1974 I made an appointment with Dr. Bondurant. He was still practising psychiatry in the Manitoba Clinic. And he was still young, probably in his mid-forties by then. I realized with a shock that he must have been in his twenties when I first went to see him about my problems with Pete.

  Dr. Bondurant remembered me. He even had my file. He asked about Pete.

  I told him about my brother’s death and how I blamed myself for so much of what had gone wrong in our family. It was so good to talk to him again.

  He offered to take me on as a patient. He still specialized in troubled children, but would make an exception for me because of our history. If I wanted to, I could see him once a week for an hour. I came away from that session feeling positive for the first time in a long while. But I didn’t take Dr. Bondurant up on his offer of help. I know I should have; I had so much noise in my head that I needed to get rid of.

  We didn’t lose touch though. Dr. B. phoned me from time to time to see how I was getting along. He was worried about me; I know he was. He knew that I was wallowing in guilt and shame and anger and he wanted to help me find my way out of it. I called him sometimes too, just to chat. I don’t know if he charged the province for our talks or not.

  Henry went away again before I forgave him. For the longest time I didn’t even know where he had gone.

  I hung about with a lot of different guys: students, professors, musicians, nine to fivers, layabouts. Falling in love was never a problem for me. It happened all the time, sometimes with men who loved me back, but not enough, and sometimes with guys who didn’t love me at all. Or I loved them a little but not crazy love like I knew it had to be. The opposite happened too. Guys loved me so much they couldn’t sleep at night, but they were never the right ones.

  Now that I’m older, I know that much of that love wasn’t real. But whatever it wasn’t, it was what kept me from tumbling into a black pit of loneliness. And it felt real at the time.

  As the others came and went, Henry turned into a memory. I heard that he married, that his wife’s name was Dolores somebody, that he went east, then west, had a kid or two.

  Near the beginning of this story I mentioned that three things happened in the summer of 1995 that caused me to do a lot of reflecting on the past. The first thing was the arrival of Nora’s journal in the mail.

  The second thing was that on the last Monday in July, Henry Ferris slipped back into my life. I saw him downtown at Mary Scorer Books on Graham Avenue.

  He was in the history section, looking at a book about the Korean War. It could have been 1972. He looked the same, except for his hair. It was shorter, of course, and completely white, like Joanne’s. The colour increased his handsomeness. His glasses were different too, I realized. In the old days he had worn the round John Lennon type. The new ones had rims and enhanced his face far more. He looked unbelievably beautiful to me. If I could just stay in that moment, I thought—live out the rest of my life gazing upon Henry, not take it any further.

  His obvious excitement didn’t disappoint me; his face lit up. I had been scared he wouldn’t know who I was. That would have killed me.

  We went to the Paddle Wheel on the sixth floor of The Bay. I had coffee and Henry had a chocolate milkshake. We sat in the area that had been called the Crinoline Court in the old days. I think only ladies sat in that section when I was a kid. I could be wrong about that, but it seems right.

  Henry had moved back to Winnipeg from Edmonton with his two almost-grown kids. They had come back a year before, after his wife Dolores died of lung cancer. She hadn’t even smoked. Neither had Henry, so he couldn’t blame himself.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  He smiled and I saw the deeply etched lines in his face. They had been invisible to me in the bookstore.

  “I’ve thought of you so often,” he said. “You have an unlisted number?”

  “Yes. It’s because of my column at the paper,” I said. “I got a few crank calls.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’
ve read that column of yours.”

  “Oh no, not you too. Myrna thinks I’m out-and-out evil. And Joanne thinks I’m asking to be killed.”

  “You still see Joanne and Myrna?” Henry asked.

  “Yeah, quite a lot.”

  “That’s great,” said Henry. “I don’t really see anyone from the old days.”

  We discussed the rain barrel baby, as it had come to be known in Norwood—a horrible situation involving the dumping of a little baby. It had taken place earlier in the summer and involved people both of us used to know.

  Neither of us had a romantic relationship going on at the present time. We smiled shyly at each other as we got this information out of the way.

  Henry had a full professorship at the University of Winnipeg. I told him that my column was my only job and he didn’t suggest that I was wasting my education.

  He asked about Nora and I told him that she had died a long time ago. He asked about Dougwell and I told him that we were mostly out of touch but that I had been thinking about phoning him lately because of the journal that had come in the mail. I talked about the journal and how I’d been fussing over it. Henry was interested and asked if he would be allowed to see it.

  That surprised me, and it took me such a long time to answer that Henry changed the subject back to Dougwell.

  “I always liked him,” he said. “We named our boy Dougwell.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “No. I thought it was a good name and Dolores did too. Even Dougwell himself seems to like it.”

  “Wow!”

  “Most people call him Doug, but he calls himself Dougwell.”

  This seemed like momentous information to me. I couldn’t wait to phone Dougwell and tell him. It was a good reason to call him, a joyful reason.

  “That’s wonderful, Henry,” I said. “What’s your other kid’s name?”

  “Gina. After Dolores’ mother.”

  “That’s a good name too,” I said.

  “Would you like to do something coming up soon?” Henry asked. “Go to a movie or something?”

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  We exchanged phone numbers before we parted. Henry was only mildly surprised that I still lived in the old house on Monck. He went back to the university, where he was teaching a summer course. I went to The Forks, where I sat by the river and drank another cup of coffee.

  The next day Henry called.

  “May I come over?” he asked.

  “No.”

  In the cool of the morning I had taken every single item out of my kitchen cupboards. It had started out seeming like a good idea to do some cleaning. Now the day was growing hot and the air conditioning had conked out. Plus, Spike had one of those plastic cone-shaped devices around his neck that the vet had attached after surgery on a lump behind his ear. He kept walking backwards and bumping into things.

  I explained all this to Henry.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll help you with the cupboards. We’ll get it done in no time. And I’d love to meet Spike.”

  It still didn’t sit right with me.

  “I don’t think so, Henry.”

  “What is it, Cherry?”

  “My house seems very complicated at the moment. And there are remnants here of our last time together.”

  I could hear him thinking.

  “Let’s go to a hotel,” he said.

  “What, you mean for dinner?” I asked.

  “Well, we could have dinner. I was thinking about getting a room, say at the Fort Garry, and we could talk and maybe have sex.”

  “I don’t know, Henry. It sounds a bit sleazy to me.”

  He laughed. “It won’t be sleazy if it’s us.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to have sex,” I said.

  “Well, we can kiss,” he said. “I want to kiss you.”

  Henry stopped kissing me and began to undress, so I did too. I hadn’t pictured anything this way. In my imaginings, the man always undoes my buttons for me, kissing my neck and breasts as the material falls away.

  The room was dim, but not dim enough. I was suddenly alarmed at the thought of Henry seeing my body again after all these years. There was no way he was going to find my breasts tremendous at this stage, with the new way they had of disappearing when I lay down. He undressed with his back to me, so I hurried with my sundress, flinging it onto a chair and sliding between the cool sheets before he had a chance to see me.

  Henry smiled and crawled in next to me. He was hard already, which made me feel good, but scared.

  “Your feet are cold,” he said when he touched them with his own.

  “‘Sorry,” I said.

  “You have underpants on,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re nervous. I don’t want to make you nervous.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m always nervous.” I sat up, pulling the sheet with me and fixing a pillow behind my head.

  “You didn’t used to be.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Cherry?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m thinking this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Did you see my breasts?”

  “No.” Henry laughed. “Don’t be silly. You’re beautiful.”

  He moved to lift the covers from my body, but I stopped him.

  “It all seems kind of sudden.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cherry,” Henry said. “I got carried away, seeing you again. But it’s not like we’re continuing where we left off, is it? Too much time has gone by for that.”

  Plus, we left off in a pretty nightmarish way, I thought.

  “I’d feel better if it were darker and if I were a little bit drunk,” I said.

  “Well, we can have a drink, can’t we?” Henry leapt up and found the key for the mini-bar.

  He was so at ease with his nakedness. I envied him that. I had never been that way, even when I was young. He was tanned all over and smooth. Apparently he had a swimming pool in his backyard. He was a little pudgy in places, thank God; I couldn’t have stood it if he was perfect.

  “What’s your pleasure, ma’am?” he asked when he got the little fridge unlocked, something he never would have said twenty-two years ago.

  But these new words suited him. I wondered if it was something he said a lot and when the first time he had ever said it was. Would it take me twenty-two years to catch up with the new Henry? Would I get the chance? Did I want the chance?

  “Gin and tonic, please,” I said to Henry’s bum. Imagine his being so comfortable as to bend over that way!

  We drank a little and ordered dinner from room service and talked a lot and eventually it did become slightly darker in the room. We still didn’t do it, though. It was too soon—thirty years after we had first met. Maybe the taste of the last time was as fresh in Henry’s mind as it was in mine. We didn’t talk about that.

  We did talk about Diesel, the little beagle I had before Spike. Henry had been very fond of Diesel. And he said he was sorry, more than once; he just didn’t say what for.

  When we walked out of the Fort Garry Hotel onto the warm downtown pavement, the night was just as thick as the day had been. It was a shock after the cool hotel.

  “We didn’t talk about Pete,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Next time?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Henry hailed a cab for me and I eased into the back seat and rolled down the window.

  “He’s hard to talk about. Not that I ever try.”

  Henry crouched and put his hand on top of mine. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Nothing was your fault.”

  “One thing was. I shouldn’t have left you that way.”

  “Oh, Henry. We can’t talk about this now.”

  “No.”

  “Where to, ma’am?” asked the driver.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Norwood. Monck Avenue. ’Bye, Henry.”

&nbs
p; “See you soon?”

  “For sure.”

  Henry hailed his own cab. He hadn’t brought his car because he figured he’d be drinking. The old cautious Henry.

  On the drive home I tried to think about nothing. The driver didn’t speak. I’m not very good at thinking about nothing. Every human encounter I have leads to self-doubt, which is just a step or two away from self-hatred. Nothing happened during my hours with Henry that wasn’t good, but I didn’t feel good; I never feel good. I laugh sometimes. I think things are funny. But I don’t feel good.

  “Don’t pull into the driveway, please,” I said. “I’ll get out on the street.”

  I still have a thing about driveways.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next morning I decided to phone Dougwell. I sat at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and Nora’s journal in front of me. Spike was in the backyard on a long leash. I had taken his cone off to give him a break. From where I sat I could keep an eye on him.

  A memory came back to me: the phone rang on the night that Nora died nine years ago. I ran downstairs to the desk in the front hall to answer it. I was sure I knew who it was and what he was going to say.

  “May I please speak to Sister Mary of the Five Wounds?” a voice said.

  That wasn’t it.

  “What?” I asked.

  The caller repeated the question. I couldn’t tell if it was a man, woman, child or grownup; it was that strange a voice. The person must have used a distorter of some kind. It was a crank call. Like Myrna used to make.

  When I hung up I dialled Nora and Dougwell’s number. There was no answer. For no reason I could figure, I knew my mother was dying. She’d be at the hospital and, of course, Dougwell would be with her.

  First thing the next morning the phone rang again. That time it was Dougwell and he told me what I already knew. Nora had died the night before.

  Sitting at the dining room table now with the little book in front of me, I dialled his number on the coast.

  “Have you read the journal?” I asked after the opening pleasantries.