A Chill Rain in January Page 6

She took only what she needed, promising herself that she’d make things right with them later. She took one apple, one orange, and one banana. She took a can of apple juice. She took a four-roll package of toilet paper and a large box of Kleenex.

  And she took a bottle of gin.

  She loaded her booty into a brown paper bag and lugged it back to her house.

  In the afternoon, sitting in her chair, looking out the window at the sea, Ramona began wondering exactly how she was going to make things right with the Ferrises. She’d stolen from them, after all. She was horrified. However could she make it up to them? She began to feel panicky, just thinking about it…then she couldn’t remember what day it was… Thursday, she thought finally, relieved, and then—oh my goodness I have to get moving…

  Ramona got a little stiffly to her feet and looked around, bewildered. She spotted a heavy coat; but surely she wouldn’t need that. She carried it outside with her, though, and it was a good thing she did, too, it was nippy out there—nippy, nothing; it was positively cold. Aghast, Ramona looked up at the bleak sky—a winter sky. How had it gotten to be winter? She was on her way to meet Rosie, but it was winter… She stopped and pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead and squeezed her eyes tight shut for a few seconds. Then she continued making her way along the beach, the sand sucking at her shoes, past three houses—she knew them, recognized them…but where was Rosie? She reached the place where the shore curved inward to form a shallow bay and the bush came right down to the sand; this piece of land was owned by the government—or was it the Indians? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember very much of anything. There was a lot of clamoring going on in her brain. She tried to be calm and let her brain work things out on its own, but she was very very tired.

  Ramona tottered up the slight rise from the beach and slumped against the trunk of a colossal Douglas fir. She leaned there, panting, for a minute. Then she sat down on the ground, on a carpet of needles, her back against the treetrunk. The tree felt very…authentic, very substantial; she could almost feel its ancient heart beating, slow and steady. She was aware of the fragrance of the fir trees, and the sound of the ocean lapping at the sand below her, and the rain-moisture in the air… Then there was a swooshing inside her, and with a certainty that was dizzying, almost nauseating, she knew her world once more.

  She wept for a while. From relief, or from fear; she wasn’t sure which. But then she told herself that she had to be staunch. No matter what.

  She saw that she was on the Strachan woman’s property, at the beginning of the promontory, not far from the highway.

  Ramona wasn’t about to walk along that beach again. She’d return to her house via the road and take her chances on being spotted.

  A few minutes later she clambered to her feet and aimed herself down the Strachan woman’s driveway toward the highway, where she stopped again, to rest for a moment against another tree.

  She’d be grateful to be back in her own house, that was for sure.

  Even though it wasn’t really her own house at the moment, not with other people’s belongings scattered here and there.

  Just as Ramona pushed herself away from the tree, a person shot out of the driveway at a gallop. Ramona shrank back, both hands clutching at her chest. But it turned out not to be a gallop, exactly, more like a lope, and it was the Strachan woman herself doing it. Ramona didn’t think she’d even seen her. Dressed in blue denim and sneakers she ran, jogged, out of her driveway and made a sharp left, and off she went up the highway, her black hair bouncing on her shoulders, and before Ramona even came to her senses about it she was staring at the woman’s retreating back.

  Enough’s enough for one damn day, she thought firmly, and set off in a crablike scurry, because her thighs ached and her knees hurt, down the road toward her house.

  When she got there she was breathless and sore, and chilly despite the vigorous exercise she’d undergone. She decided to make herself some instant coffee.

  While she was waiting for the kettle to boil she noticed the spider plant hanging by the kitchen window.

  There were a couple of ferns in the bedroom, too, she remembered.

  And a cluster of African violets on a table in the living room. She started to wonder where the policeman had gotten the key to let himself in.

  Ramona sank into a chair at the kitchen table. Her knees were trembling, and there was a great echo inside her head. Her house wasn’t a haven at all. She was going to have to find another place to hide.

  Chapter 16

  ZOE ran almost every day.

  This Thursday afternoon, as she ran along the shoulder of the highway, she wondered for a moment about the stress of running, wondered how her joints were holding up. Sometimes her right knee gave her trouble.

  There was moisture in the air, although it wasn’t exactly raining, and it felt cool and refreshing against her face. She took off her earmuffs and gloves and stuffed them into the big pocket in the front of her sweatshirt.

  It was unlikely that she’d be able to find out where Benjamin had hidden her scribblers. Even if she got him thoroughly drunk, he’d probably manage to lie.

  It was good to be thinking about this while running, she thought. The frustration it produced got turned into physical energy that was immediately consumed.

  He was so stupid to have believed that she would let him get away with this.

  She had reached the place where the highway took a curve to accommodate an enormous Sitka spruce; this was the one-mile mark. She approached the tree and pressed the palm of her right hand against its trunk, then pressed the palm of her left hand there. Then she turned and headed back toward her house.

  She had planned and worked too hard for peace, seclusion—a life that was precisely the life she wanted. All put at risk, now, by this ineffectual, nonproductive man who wasn’t worth the powder it would cost to blow him up.

  She couldn’t see blowing him up. She didn’t know enough about explosives. And although she could learn, death by explosion was certain to alarm the authorities.

  She could poison him, she thought, and considered this for a while, as she ran.

  But she didn’t know anything about poisons, either, and unless she could manage to get hold of some that was absolutely undetectable, she oughtn’t to consider it. Death by poison, too, would cause a lot of consternation.

  At least he didn’t have a wife or a family to ask questions afterward.

  She swiped at her forehead with her sleeve. Too bad he doesn’t jog, she thought, panting. She could have challenged him to a race and tried to induce a heart attack.

  It will have to be an accident, she decided, turning off the highway. She slowed to a trot, then a walk, for the last quarter mile across the promontory to her house.

  If not a car accident, then something else.

  It would come to her.

  When she had showered and changed, she stood by the living room window, looking out at the rain. Killing Benjamin, it occurred to her, might be considerably more complicated and difficult than the only alternative, which was to kill herself.

  What if she killed him but got caught, and ended up going to jail for the rest of her life? Dying would be far preferable to that.

  She wasn’t fond of pain. But she knew she could find a way to do it without causing herself physical suffering.

  She would have to decide how to dispose of her money, though. She certainly wouldn’t want Benjamin, or the government, getting any of it. Perhaps she ought to convert everything she had to cash, transfer it to her checking account, and divide it among the listings in the Sechelt phone book.

  She roamed uneasily through her house, stroking her favorite pieces of furniture, turning television sets on and off. There were all these possessions, too. What would become of them? How on earth could she dispose of all her belongings—her car, her house, for heaven’s sake? Could she get rid of all these things without calling attention to herself?

  Her hou
se. Her fortress.

  She had chosen the Sunshine Coast as her home because it was made remote from metropolitan Vancouver by the need to get there by ferry.

  She chose Sechelt because it was in the middle of the Coast, halfway between the ferry at Langdale, which crossed Howe Sound to Horseshoe Bay, and the one at Powell River, which crossed Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island.

  She had looked for a long time, and then bought the waterfront property, and then she bought the lots on either side of it, and the lots on either side of them, too; she bought the whole promontory. It wasn’t a huge area—less than two acres. Manageable in size. The highway formed its eastern border, so she never had to worry about acquiring neighbors.

  She’d had a plain house built, with exactly the amount of room in it that she needed. And a garage.

  And halfway up the driveway, a small guest cottage. It wasn’t used often. Just once or twice a year.

  One of the things she’d had to check out before deciding to move here was whether there were enough bars. She found four up and down the Coast that would do, not counting whatever there might be in Sechelt; that would have been too close to home.

  Sex, to Zoe, was a hunger, the satisfaction of which depended not on appetite but on need. She felt it first when she was fourteen and a boy three years ahead of her in school began following her home. One day he caught up with her and took her into a park. What followed was not a particularly pleasant experience for Zoe, but it proved in the end an adequate introduction to the gratification of sexual desire.

  Every few months she dressed up in one of her costumes and went to a bar. She found someone, took him to her guest cottage, and they had sex. Zoe did it thoroughly, and with energy, the way she did everything. Afterward, she sent the person on his way.

  She told these men that her elderly parents lived in the house by the water.

  Everything had worked out extremely well. Each aspect of her life was precisely as she had planned it.

  She was damned if she was going to let Benjamin destroy it.

  Late that afternoon, the skies cleared. Zoe sat in her office, in an enormous round chair made of bamboo, which had a huge, sumptuous rust-colored cushion. She sat cross-legged, holding a glass of chardonnay. The sun was in the process of setting, preparing to sizzle itself out in the waters of the ocean. Zoe watched it burning in her wine.

  It was time to insist upon some single-minded exertion from her brain.

  Zoe had complete confidence in her brain, and treated it with respect. She tried to understand it and anticipate its needs. She kept her body healthy so as to spare her brain the distraction of worrying about disease or injury to its host. She kept herself as tranquil as possible, thereby providing a close to ideal environment in which her brain could work. It was like maintaining a greenhouse for an exotic plant, or a climate-controlled garage in which to house a fine automobile.

  The sun set; the wineglass warmed in her hand. She closed her eyes and rocked gently back and forth and thought about accidents. Car accidents, boating accidents, industrial accidents, skiing accidents; accidents with farm equipment, accidents with chain saws, accidents with sharp knives, or long-bladed scissors, or drugs; accidents that crushed, or pierced, or punctured, or impaled. She imagined him bleeding, suffocating, choking. She imagined him crumpling to the floor, collapsing into coma, fluttering into death. She saw him crumple…collapse… She saw him fall.

  She thought she knew just how it would feel to place the palms of her hands against his shoulderblades and push, strongly. She thought she knew just what he would look like, plummeting through the air, his scream a wisp, a thin stream of white breath that might even continue to hang in the air for a second or two after his body had struck the rocks, and she would bend over, carefully, to see if any part of him was still moving, down there on the rocks where he had crashed…

  Zoe opened her eyes and smiled.

  She would push him off the cliff right outside his own front door.

  They would meet at the house in West Vancouver. He would give her the scribblers, and she would turn over the stock certificates, ensuring that he put them somewhere other than in his pocket. They would have a drink, and she would make certain that he got thoroughly drunk, if he wasn’t drunk already, which he probably would be. After a while she would get up to leave. When she got to her car she would pretend that it wouldn’t start. She would ask Benjamin to look at it, and when he got out of the elevator in the parking area at the top of the cliff, she would push him over, retrieve the certificates, and head for Horseshoe Bay and the ferry.

  Zoe got out of the big round chair and went to the window. There was still a faint glow in the sky. The days, she thought, must be getting longer. Soon it would be spring again.

  Chapter 17

  HER BROTHER was already on the scene when she arrived, his place in the household comfortably staked out.

  They named her with the very last letter in the alphabet. He’d probably had something to do with that.

  None of the ordinary names had seemed right, they told her. So they’d had to go right to the end of the alphabet. The last name in the world, that was the name they’d given her. Zoe.

  Benjamin was four years older, and sometimes he made her so mad she hit him. Usually he’d just shrug his shoulders and go away then, but sometimes she hit him so hard that it hurt him, and he started to hit her back. Once be made her nose bleed. So she leaned over the sofa and shook her head bard so that the blood would go all over the sofa and he’d get into real trouble, which he did.

  Zoe didn’t like him, and she didn’t dislike him.

  She had private places indoors that he didn’t know about, and she wanted one outdoors, as well. A place from which she could survey the world without being seen, by Benjamin or anybody else.

  In her yard there was a pool to swim in, a gazebo to sit in, but nowhere to play. There were rose gardens and vegetable gardens and rhododendron plantings beneath the trees and a little brook that cut across the property at its lower end—spring bulbs bloomed here in great profusion. But there wasn’t a tree fit for climbing or a secret place fit for hiding herself in.

  So when she was eight, just after she’d gotten her first scribbler, she went poking around on the neighbors’ property, which was just as big as hers but a lot less tended. It rolled up and then down again at the very back, and on that little hill were several fruit trees. Zoe climbed the back fence and sneaked up through the brush to the top of the hill, where the orchard began. From there she could see the whole back part of the property, and over the fence at the side into her own yard, as well.

  This became her secret place. She would climb a tree and wedge herself in between a thick branch and the trunk, and if it was the right season she’d stuff herself with cherries or apples while she sat there, feeling like a big strong bird in its nest.

  Four years passed, and Zoe grew and grew, but she didn’t grow too big to nestle in the branches of a tree, and she didn’t grow too old to need a secret place.

  Two old people lived in the big old house at the front of the property. They never bothered picking the cherries or the apples, but sometimes their grown-up children came for a visit, and they’d take some of the fruit away with them.

  One day when she was twelve, Zoe was sitting in an apple tree. It was July, and the apples were pretty well ready to eat; they were larger than a tennis ball, not as big as a softball, still green but starting to look yellowish.

  Zoe was digging her fingernail into the treetrunk and scooping away little pieces of it, which she then flicked toward the ground. She’d been doing this for quite a while. She had dug through all of the tree’s layers of skin and was now picking away at what she figured must be muscle.

  From time to time she wrapped her arms around the tree and rubbed her cheek hard against its trunk. Her cheek had begun to sting, and when she put her fingers on it they came away with a small amount of blood on them, as well as dirt, so the next time she
hugged the tree she did it with the other side of her face against the trunk.

  It had always been very important to Zoe that things be even. Sometimes at the dinner table she might catch herself tapping her right toe against the floor, for instance, and then she had to try to figure out how many times she’d done it without noticing, so that she could tap her left toe the same number of times.

  After a while from her perch in the apple tree she noticed that the old woman, whose name was Mrs. Nelson, had come out of the house and was standing on her back porch, holding a straw hat in her band. She put the hat on and tied its brown ribbons under her chin—and then she looked up the hill into the orchard.

  Zoe became motionless.

  Mrs. Nelson went slowly down the steps, holding on to the railing, and walked through the wildness of her flower garden, which didn’t have any neat edges, toward the fruit trees. She stopped every so often to look at one of the flowers, but she always started to walk again, straight toward the apple tree where Zoe crouched.

  The old people never picked the fruit from these trees, never; what did she think she was going to do, anyway, that old woman: get herself a ladder and climb up here to get herself some apples, or what? Zoe tried to move behind the treetrunk but couldn’t find a branch in the right place to sit on. The leaves of the apple tree rustled when she moved, and she was afraid that Mrs. Nelson had heard them, even though she was still pretty far away.

  Mrs. Nelson was wearing a brown-and-white dress, and she had white sandals on her feet. She stopped at the bottom of the little hill and sat on a wooden bench that faced the house. After a while she reached down and over and picked up an apple that had fallen from a tree and rolled there. She rubbed it on the skirt of her dress and took a bite of it and sat there for several more minutes, eating the apple. Then she put the core on the ground and stood up.

  When she got too close, Zoe threw an apple at her.

  Even though it didn’t hit her, it made the old woman glance up into the trees. So Zoe threw another apple. This one struck Mrs. Nelson on the arm and surprised her a lot; Zoe watched it happen on her face when she had the idea that maybe the apples weren’t falling on their own, maybe somebody was actually throwing them.