A Chill Rain in January Read online

  Horace said he guessed she’d be selling the house now, but Ramona was having none of that.

  “It could be just a temporary stay,” she said firmly, “it could be I’ll be back there in a jiffy; meanwhile I’m going to rent it out,” and she did.

  For a while, after she moved into the hospital, her friends thought Ramona had rallied.

  Isabella went often to visit her, and so did Rosie, and Cassandra stopped by before she left for England, and they all went away feeling relieved. Ramona seemed brighter, more confident, more like her old self.

  Several months passed.

  And then Ramona began complaining to Dr. Gillingham about the treatment she was getting. Nobody was ever available when she wanted to be taken someplace, she said. She hadn’t had a perm in six months, she looked terrible, and there wasn’t anybody to take her to the hairdresser.

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got all sorts of friends to take you places,” said the doctor.

  “I’ve got no right burdening my friends with things like that,” said Ramona angrily. “It’s one of the nurses ought to take me.” He tried to reason with her, but she waved her hands in his face, shooing away his words. “That’s what they’re here for,” she insisted.

  And she had other complaints, as well. Her room looked out over the roof of the adjoining wing; she didn’t have a view. It was too cold outside to garden, or walk, and besides, those stupid nurses wouldn’t let her out without they put her in a damn wheelchair, if you can believe that. “And on top of it all,” she concluded bitterly, “they won’t let me have my gin here.”

  This, it seemed, was the crux of it.

  The nurses remained obdurate. Ramona wasn’t to have her gin.

  It’s hard to know how much the one thing had to do with the other, but it is true that the nurse who came to summon her for breakfast on that Wednesday morning in January found Ramona’s bed empty, and Ramona gone.

  Chapter 7

  BENJAMIN had had the temerity only once before to appear uninvited at Zoe’s front door.

  The other time had been on a summer day more than seven years earlier. Zoe had just moved into her house. She hadn’t gotten to know the place yet; she hadn’t arranged the furniture or set up her workroom. She’d even been beset by doubts that she’d made the right decision, buying the property, having the house built. On the day that Benjamin came, she was unpacking boxes in the kitchen, scolding herself, telling herself to have the strength of her convictions; reminding herself that if for whatever reason it didn’t work out, she could always move.

  Oh, but she did not want to move. Not again.

  Both sets of French doors were open wide to the patio, and the front door was open, too, allowing the summer breezes to sweep through and make the whole house cool. Zoe was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and sneakers.

  She had driven into Sechelt, to the supermarket in the little mall, first thing in the morning to buy a pail, some Mr. Clean, several rolls of paper towels, a couple of sponges, plain white shelf paper, and two inexpensive tea towels, which she tore in half to use as rags.

  She had cleaned the countertops thoroughly, and the cupboards. They were already pretty clean, since the house was brand-new, but Zoe wiped them out and then laid the shelf paper. The fridge and stove and dishwasher were all new, too, and didn’t need cleaning, but she cleaned them anyway.

  Around noon she made herself a cup of tea and heated a can of soup. She sat at the kitchen table to eat lunch, and as she ate she could hear the sound of the sea coming in through the open doors and windows, and it was the only sound there was. Zoe began to feel confident again. She had her own fortress, so to speak. A solid, sturdy house out on a promontory, its face to the sea, its back to the rest of the world. It had precisely the amount of space she required: a bedroom with two closets, so she had plenty of room for what she thought of as her costumes; an office in which to do her accounts; a laundry room; and a living room; and in the basement, lots of space for a workroom and for the storage of food and supplies. In the workroom, she would refinish furniture. This was Zoe’s only avocation. Restoring good pieces to their original beauty was, she had discovered, conducive to achieving tranquillity. Oh, yes, Zoe thought with satisfaction, she was going to thoroughly enjoy this house, feel thoroughly safe here, in the first brand-new, unsullied house she had ever lived in.

  She finished the soup and washed out the bowl and put it away. The rest of the soup, in a small saucepan, went into the fridge. She poured the rest of the tea into her mug, washed the pot and put it away, and prepared to open another box.

  And then, seven years ago, the doorbell had rung, and she had heard Benjamin call out, “Can I come in?”

  Bent over a cardboard carton, Zoe became immobile.

  How had he driven over gravel up to her wide-open front door without her hearing him? She had lost her vigilance; just for a moment—but a moment was too long.

  She straightened, turned, and walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door.

  She looked at her brother. “How did you know where I was?”

  “The lawyer knows,” said Benjamin. “I guess you didn’t tell him it was supposed to be a secret.”

  “It’s not supposed to be a secret. But I don’t like uninvited guests. What do you want?”

  He held out a bottle of wine. “Housewarming present,” he said with a smile.

  “I don’t want you in here.” Zoe raised her hand and placed it on his chest and pushed, gently. “This is my house.”

  Benjamin bent to put the bottle of wine on the floor just inside the door. “Okay,” he said, and stood straight again. “Whatever you say.” He took a couple of steps backward, away from the house. “But I need to talk to you.”

  She shook her head. “No. No money. You know that, Benjamin. You know I won’t give you a cent. Go.”

  “Please, Zoe,” said Benjamin quietly. “Just listen to me. I want to talk to you about Great North Mines.”

  Zoe looked at him with slightly more interest. “Go around to the back,” she said after a minute. “There’s a patio there.”

  She shut the door, locked it, and made her way through the house to her bedroom. She closed the French doors there and went into her office, and stepped through another set of French doors onto the patio, closing the doors behind her.

  Benjamin was looking out over the rocky windbreak at the sea.

  “You want to talk about the company,” said Zoe, leaning against the side of the house.

  He turned to face her. “Things are beginning to go a little better for me,” he said. “I kind of went to pieces when Laura divorced me.”

  Zoe waited.

  “Lost my job, went through most of my money,” Benjamin continued. “Well, you know all that. But I never sold the Great North stock,” he said. “I hung on to that, no matter what.”

  “And now?” said Zoe dryly.

  “I’ve gotten married again,” said Benjamin.

  She looked at him more closely. He had more flesh on him than he’d had the last time she saw him. His clothes were clean and pressed—summer slacks, a short-sleeved shirt. His face looked rested.

  “Has she got any money?” said Zoe.

  Benjamin smiled a little. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, she has.”

  “Her own? Or family money?”

  “Both,” said Benjamin. “I was getting to this. I wish you wouldn’t be so damn blunt.” He sighed. “She inherited, but she’s made it grow. She has good instincts.”

  “What’s this got to do with Great North?”

  Zoe’s new patio furniture was stacked against the house. Benjamin glanced at it. “Do you mind if I get us a couple of chairs?”

  “Go ahead,” said Zoe.

  “I’ve got another job, too,” he said as he set up the chairs.

  “Good,” said Zoe.

  He sat down and stretched out his legs. “I’d like to be able to give Lorraine something to invest
for me,” he said. “I told you, her instincts are very good. Sit down, why don’t you?”

  Zoe watched him, and continued to wait.

  Benjamin rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, okay. How would you like to lend me some money?” he said finally.

  Zoe laughed.

  “I’ll give you the Great North shares as collateral.” He leaned forward, earnestness slathered all over his face. “And you know what that stock means to me. But I’ll be able to pay you back in no time. With interest.”

  “Great North’s in a slump,” said Zoe.

  “It’s just a matter of time,” said Benjamin. “It’s going to double in value over the next ten years.”

  “Then why are you willing to risk losing it?”

  “It’s no risk, I told you. I’ll be able to repay you within months. I’ve seen Lorraine work. She’s very shrewd, Zoe. You might want to talk to her yourself.”

  “I do all right on my own,” said Zoe.

  “So how about it?”

  Zoe shook her head.

  “Jesus, Zoe.”

  “Borrow on it from the bank.”

  “I can’t,” he said sullenly.

  “Don’t tell me. You’ve already used it as collateral.”

  “No I haven’t,” said Benjamin furiously. He got up and began pacing the patio, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  “You want to borrow from me,” said Zoe, “because nobody else will lend you anything no matter what collateral you come up with, because you’re already in debt up to your eyebrows.”

  Benjamin glared at her.

  “I won’t give you a loan,” said Zoe. “But I’ll buy you out.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” said Benjamin.

  “I know you don’t,” said Zoe. “But you will.”

  Chapter 8

  RAMONA had a theory that people got a lot of second chances.

  Once years and years ago she’d been driving her car, at night, when all of a sudden a great truck had roared out of a side street toward her from the left, its lights blaring. Ramona’s road just happened to curve away right then, and the truck missed her—but what if I’d been there just a fraction of a second earlier? she thought, and then somehow she knew she’d lived that moment twice; the first time, she had been there a fraction of a second earlier, and been killed as a result, and then had yelled and complained so loudly that God decided he’d made a mistake, and he’d let her live it again and do it right this time.

  Usually, though, you didn’t know about your second chances, so you didn’t know enough to be grateful.

  That was Ramona’s theory, anyway.

  Tuesday night, when Mrs. Wallsten, the night nurse, arrived with her sleeping pill, Ramona looked at it and had that same sense of having lived this moment before.

  Without even thinking about why, she only pretended to gulp it down.

  When Mrs. Wallsten left the room, Ramona fished the pill out from under her tongue and looked at it expectantly, as if it were now going to explain to her why it hadn’t been swallowed.

  She didn’t sleep well, of course. Her body had gotten used to being drugged every night. Along about five o’clock Wednesday morning her bones were aching and her head felt hot and heavy. She threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.

  And it was then she decided to skedaddle right on out of there.

  She didn’t sit around thinking about it; she just got busy and did it.

  Slowly, a little bit at a time, she opened the squeaky door of the metal locker that served as a closet. She got out her long-sleeved cotton housedress, a heavy cardigan, her sneakers, and her tweed coat.

  From bureau drawers she selected a pair of knee-highs, two pairs of long socks, and some underwear.

  Ramona dressed herself, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. She was hurrying now.

  She found a brown shopping bag in the locker and loaded into it extra underwear and socks, her toiletries; and several magazines. She kind of wished she’d planned this out in advance, so she could have laid in a stock of paperback books to take along. But she was pretty sure it was the kind of thing best done on impulse.

  She buttoned up her coat, put on the white woolen gloves that were stuffed in the pocket, and wrapped around her neck the red woolen scarf that was tucked into one of the sleeves. Then she opened the door a crack and peered out into the hall.

  Everything was very quiet. She couldn’t see Mrs. Wallsten, who ought to have been sitting at the nurses’ station in the middle of the corridor. Ramona picked up the shopping bag and eased herself out into the hall, closing the door softly behind her.

  Tiptoeing, she made her way toward the nurses’ station, and when she got there she saw a mug of coffee, steaming, and heard the muffled sound of a toilet flushing behind a door somewhere. She scurried past, toward the elevator, but decided when she got there to walk down.

  She met nobody in the stairwell, which was bright and echoey.

  When she reached the main floor, she opened the door to the lobby just a crack and saw at the switchboard a female form huddled over a book. Ramona waited there until the phone buzzed and the switchboard operator turned slightly away to answer it. Then Ramona gripped her shopping bag hard, slipped into the lobby, and scurried to the front doors, her face all screwed up in anticipation of a yell: “Hey! You! Where do you think you’re going!” But there wasn’t any yell, and then Ramona was out the door and into God’s gray winter rain; she’d had no idea rain could ever feel so good.

  It wasn’t yet light, as she made her way down the hill into town.

  She had a long walk ahead of her. It was about four miles, she figured, to the house.

  Four miles. That would at least give her plenty of time to try to remember where she’d left the spare key.

  She was exhausted, and already shivering with cold, but her spirits were so light she felt weightless.

  And her mind, she knew, was sharp as a tack.

  Chapter 9

  BENJAMIN was part of her earliest memories. He littered her reminiscence. She saw him everywhere, a pale face with a wrinkled forehead peeking at her from around a corner, over a table, sometimes from behind their mother, whose skirt he was probably clutching.

  Zoe resented him for being larger than she. And that never changed—he was always larger. He was already four when she was born, so he had a big head start, and he never lost it.

  He stopped paying attention to her when she got old enough to go to school, which was a relief. But in the first part of her life he seemed to have been constantly present, hanging around and staring. The things she did always appeared to surprise him; she hated having him gawk at her all the time.

  Once, when Zoe was about four and he eight, their family was visiting an aunt and uncle in Vancouver, and their mother took Zoe and Benjamin to a park across the street. They played on the swings for a while. There was nobody else around. The sun was shining, but it was a cool day.

  A man had raked fallen leaves into a pile, and after a while he set fire to them and went a little way away to rake up another bunch of leaves into another pile. Benjamin went over to watch the first pile of leaves burn, and Zoe and their mother followed him.

  Zoe was wearing a gray coat and a gray hat that tied under her chin, but winter rainboots weren’t necessary yet, nor the legging that matched the coat and hat. The backs of her bare legs were cool, almost cold, but the fronts of them were warm, almost hot, because of the fire. It was making a lot of crackling sounds, and she could smell the nice smell the leaves made as they burned. They floated upward in the flames, sometimes, and they were squirming or dancing, she couldn’t decide which.

  Her mother had her by the hand. Benjamin was apart from them, standing right next to the fire and kicking leaves into it.

  “Stop it, Benjamin,” said their mother. “You’ll set your shoe on fire.”

  Benjamin thought this was very funny, and he laughed and laughed, and flung himself around in the air li
ke a hoop going round and round, while Zoe watched him. Finally he fell down on the ground and put his hands under his head and stared up at the blue sky.

  Zoe wanted to pull loose from her mother’s hand, but she didn’t, because if she did she’d get a startled look and maybe a frown. Her mother was staring at the fire and not paying any attention to her, and that’s the way Zoe liked it.

  Then she heard her mother give a little sigh. She squeezed Zoe’s hand and let it go, so that she could rummage around in her handbag for a handkerchief. When she’d found it she snapped the bag shut and made little dabbing motions at her eyes, and then buried her nose in the crunched-up handkerchief and blew it. Zoe stepped away from her, just a bit, not wanting to get her germs.

  She bumped into her aunt’s cat, called Myrtle, which had followed them across the street and into the park. Zoe looked down at Myrtle disapprovingly and nudged it in the ribs with the side of her foot. Myrtle gave a little squawk and then rubbed her body against Zoe’s leg. “Quit that,” Zoe told the cat.

  “Leave Myrtle alone, Zoe,” said Benjamin.

  Myrtle stretched way up and dug her claws into Zoe’s new gray coat.

  “Quit that,” said Zoe again, pushing the cat away.

  “Mom,” said Benjamin, “she’s being mean to Myrtle.”

  The cat went right back to Zoe and sat at her feet, leaning against her patent-leather shoes. Zoe, exasperated, reached down and picked up the cat and tossed it into the fire.

  This created a huge commotion. Benjamin scrambled to his feet and ran around and around the fire, hollering. The cat screamed and dashed around among the burning leaves and finally rolled out of the flames: it looked as if it had smoke coming out of it. It got to its feet and fled drunkenly across the park, evading Benjamin’s outstretched arms, ignoring his cries of sympathy.