Strangers Among Us Read online

  He knew this, of course, but found that it didn’t matter to him. He didn’t know how to participate in this conversation. He tried to invent an expression of interest, and wondered with what body language he might contrive to convince her that although he didn’t want to talk, he didn’t mind listening.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  Alberg pretended surprise.

  “Has that man shown up again?”

  Alberg realized that his right shoulder ached, and had been aching for some time. He looked down. Was his gut smaller, since he’d lost his appetite? He didn’t think so.

  “Karl. Talk to me.”

  He got up from his wingback chair and went to sit next to her on the sofa. He put his left arm around her and his right hand over both of her hands, which were clasped in her lap. “I’m sorry it’s sometimes hard for me to talk. But I don’t take you for granted. I love you, and I will never, ever, take you for granted.”

  Cassandra freed her hands and put them on either side of his face, studying its planes and angles. She kissed his chin, her tongue tip delicately probing the cleft there; turned his head and kissed his ear. Then she put her lips on his, drew his tongue into her mouth, and lowered herself onto the couch, pulling him down on top of her.

  Betty was very proud of herself, later, very very proud. She gave herself no time to think about it, oh no, oh no. Just scurried right up onto the porch and knocked on the door—knock knock knock on her neighbor’s door. And she opened it, the black-haired woman did, and Betty went inside. She looked down at the shiny wooden floor. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “I can see that I have certainly come to the right place.” Then a man appeared in the hallway, wearing a uniform, and Betty slapped her thigh, laughing. “Oh! someone told me you were married to a policeman. And there he is!” But he brushed right past her, rudely, very rudely, and went out the door. “I have come to ask for your help,” said Betty. “What is your name?”

  “Maura,” said the woman, in a hoarse voice, and she cleared her throat.

  “And I am Betty. Yes. My goodness. It is extremely clean in here. What a clean clean house.” She looked right into the woman’s eyes, then, and said, “I have come to ask for your advice.”

  “Advice about what?”

  “Cleaning. My house. I don’t know how to do it.”

  The woman shook her head. “I don’t understand you.”

  Betty laughed again. She liked the sound of her laughter: it rang through this tidy house like bell-noise. “I knew you would say that!” She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s such a silly thing, really, yet there it is. I can’t seem to clean my house, and Jack doesn’t like that—Jack’s my husband, you see—and of course Heather is too young to help much and—”

  “You mean you want me to clean your house for you?” She sounded amazed.

  “No, no, no, no of course not, my goodness whatever must you think of me,” said Betty, banging her feet upon the floor. “No, no, no I said I wanted your advice your advice not your actual help certainly not oh my goodness.” She started toward the door, shaking, now, she was so upset.

  “Hey,” said the woman, said Maura, and Betty turned around. “Wait,” said Maura. “Sure. Why not. I can’t do it now, but I’ll come over after dinner.”

  And they went outside together, because Maura was on her way to the bank. She was in such a hurry by now that she forgot to lock the door. She waved as Betty walked along the sidewalk to her own house, and then she got into her car, which was parked in the driveway.

  Inside, Betty waited behind the curtains until Maura drove away. She thought about Jack’s walls, clean and white again, because he had painted them.

  She had been behind him when he first saw the signs so she couldn’t see what he was thinking, she’d had to rush around in front of him and she’d grabbed hold of his face and peered straight into his eyes and she’d seen shock there, of course, and astonishment—but she was shocked herself at what else was there, at the fear that was there. She didn’t know what to make of it.

  Betty left her house and went back next door, through Maura’s unlocked door into the hall. Her heart was pounding, so she stood still and stroked her chest until it calmed itself. Then she drank in this house, this clean house that wasn’t hers. In the kitchen everything sparkled, and shone, and glittered. In the living room there were books on bookshelves, and lamps here and there, and a big leather chair. There was a huge bedroom with flowered curtains, bright flowers on a white background: Betty gasped, it was so beautiful. In two more bedrooms she saw teenage things like posters, and schoolbooks. Finally she looked in the dining room, where a big wooden box sat on a chest. Betty opened this cautiously, and saw that it was filled with silverware, each piece in its own little sleeve except for one, a funny little fork with three tines, a pickle fork, she thought. She took this fork, looked around a little bit more, and went home.

  Nobody had noticed, of course. She had known they wouldn’t.

  Betty hurried to her room and reached up into the closet for the shoe box in which she kept her special things, and she put the pickle fork in there, in there with her tools.

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday, November 29

  THE NEXT MORNING ALBERG had to drive Cassandra to work because her car was in the shop again. As they drove, she said, “Are we going to make an offer on that house?”

  “I think we ought to,” said Alberg. “Don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you want to take another look first?” he said, glancing over at her.

  “Maybe. Karl,” she said, turning to him, “my mother wants me to go to Edmonton with her for Christmas.”

  “And?”

  “Would you come, too?” she asked.

  “To your brother’s house? I’ve never even met the guy.”

  “How about if you go to Calgary, then? You could spend it with your kids.”

  “And the damn musician. Huh.” He maneuvered the Oldsmobile into the parking space closest to the door of the library. “I don’t know. They’ve probably got plans.”

  “Think about it.” She kissed his cheek and got out of the car.

  Alberg stayed there for a moment. He didn’t want to be without Cassandra at Christmastime. He liked Christmas, had learned to like it again, because of her. He enjoyed her delight in the giving and receiving of presents. He savored the smell of the turkey, roasting. And liked to watch the cats batting away at the ornaments on the tree. He even liked having Cassandra’s mother there for the day.

  True, it wasn’t the same as when he was married to Maura and his daughters were small. Christmas was different now. But not necessarily less splendid, he had learned. Cassandra had taught him this.

  But he did miss his kids.

  Maybe, if he and Cassandra bought a house, he could persuade his daughters to spend Christmas with him and Cassandra next year. And maybe, he thought, turning the ignition key, this would be easier to accomplish if he were to invite himself to Janey’s house this year. The damn musician, he thought, shaking his head. He’d have to find a way to tolerate the damn musician.

  As he drove off toward Sechelt he was trying to decide which Christmas had been worse, the last one in Kamloops or his first one in Sechelt.

  Even though he had moved out of the house in Kamloops by Christmas, he had still been hopeful that he and Maura could patch things up. Christmas ought to be a good time to patch things up, he’d thought, and arranged to have days off. But before he could talk to Maura about it, she announced that she and the kids were going to spend Christmas in Calgary with her parents.

  Alberg parked, went directly to his office and looked out the window, but Coutts and his truck weren’t there.

  The following year he’d been here, in Sechelt. A new arrival. Lonely. Work kept him busy during the days, but the evenings were bad. He recalled gazing unhappily from his sunporch through the rain at the Christmas lights that flickered from a forest of masts
in the harbor at the bottom of the hill.

  It occurred to Alberg that that second Christmas had been equally bad for Jack.

  No, he thought, turning from the window, seeking out the photograph of his daughters that hung on the wall. No. Jack’s had been worse. Much worse.

  Shortly after noon that day, Eliot was sitting at a table in the lunchroom, next to one of two windows. There was a bowl of soup in front of him. Pea soup, a sick-making green color. And there were little chunks of ham or something in it. Little pieces of flesh floating around in the damn soup. He also had a large glass of milk, and a bun. But the bun was soft, not the crusty kind Eliot liked. It might go down if he slathered butter all over it. He didn’t like the idea of being even skinnier than he already was.

  Maybe if he shut his eyes he could get some of the soup down. So he did this, he closed his eyes, fumbled on the tabletop for the spoon, swiped it through the soup and up to his mouth. Shit, he thought, it even tasted green. He swallowed, but just barely. Opened his eyes and shoved the soup bowl aside. He tore off a piece of the bun and put some butter on it and this he managed to chew up and swallow without much effort. It didn’t taste particularly good but it wasn’t offensive either.

  Eliot was at a table by himself. There were other kids at other tables, some of them alone, some huddled in groups. This was a cafeteria-type lunchroom, so he couldn’t blame anybody else for the food in front of him except that there was only one kind of soup available every day. He could have had macaroni and cheese, which used to be one of his favorite things. He’d stood there in the lineup, pushing his tray along ahead of him, and had stared at the macaroni and cheese steaming in one of those big bins. The lid was off, because the woman standing behind the food was serving a big dollop of the stuff to a kid in front of Eliot. The smell of it had made him suddenly ferociously homesick. So he’d gone right past the macaroni and cheese and asked for the soup, not knowing it was pea soup, not knowing it’d be green with lumps of flesh in it, looking like something that had rotted. He pushed the bowl farther away from him and tore off another piece of the bun.

  “Can I sit here?”

  It was the kid with the droopy drawers, the sagging sweatpants. His eyes were roaming wildly again, which Eliot found exasperating.

  Eliot shrugged, buttering, and shoved another piece of bun into his mouth.

  The kid sat down and unloaded his tray. He had a sandwich in one of those triangular paper things with plastic wrap around it, just like the ones you can get on the ferry…Jesus, thought Eliot, a little bit breathless because the unsummoned memory of the ferry was so strong.

  The kid also had a pastry thing with icing on it and a big splotch of jam in the middle. Plus a glass of some kind of pop— Coke, maybe, or Pepsi. He slid his empty tray under Eliot’s and started unwrapping the sandwich, which turned out to be peanut butter. This kid’s going to have zits from hell someday, thought Eliot. He buttered the rest of the roll and slouched back in his chair.

  The place was emptying now. It wasn’t a huge room, and Eliot wondered what they did when they had a whole lot of kids here. Probably they’d have meals in shifts.

  He reminded himself to eat the roll, and took a bite while looking out the window at the parking lot. But it felt like the damn thing had already been digested, the way it squirmed around in his mouth, greasy with butter, soft and obliging, not crusty like buns ought to be. His stomach was growling now. Jesus. Every damn part of him seemed to have its own fucking agenda. His mouth didn’t want him to eat. His stomach did. Jesus. He wished they’d get together on this.

  The kid was chewing like it was the last meal he was ever going to get to eat. One hand clutched the damn sandwich, made of white bread too for god’s sake, while the other hung on to the glass of Coke, and the kid’s eyes were rolling around the ceiling while he chewed. There was a bruise on the side of his face and one of his rolling-around eyes was swollen. His sweatshirt was light blue, frayed at the neck, and it had some stains on it.

  “What’s your name?” said Eliot, putting the rest of his roll on the tray, next to the bowl of soup. The kid watched this while he stuffed what was left of half his sandwich into his mouth. Then he picked up the glass and drank some pop. Eliot imagined this, white bread and peanut butter and Coke all mixed up in the kid’s mouth, all headed together for his stomach. Jesus.

  “Alvin,” said the kid.

  He darted a glance at Eliot, who was surprised to see that the kid’s eyes could actually focus; and surprised, too, by the comprehension he thought he saw in them.

  “Don’t you want this?” said the kid, picking up the remains of Eliot’s roll.

  Eliot shrugged. The kid shoved it into his mouth, his other hand still clutching the glass of pop. He drank, put down the glass, and wiped his hand on the front of his sweatshirt.

  He was a dumpy kid, short, and verging on squat. His forehead was perpetually furrowed. That is, his eyebrows were always way up there, as if he was surprised at something. Eliot wondered if he slept with that look on his face, with those horizontal ridges in his forehead.

  “What happened to you?” Eliot said.

  “Got beat up,” said Alvin promptly, working on the other half of the sandwich now.

  “Here?”

  “Nah.”

  Eliot watched him eat. “I gotta go,” he said a minute or two later.

  He got up, pushed the chair under the table, and headed across the cafeteria toward the door, where a couple of the guards were standing. They didn’t call them guards, but that’s what they were. When he reached the door he realized that Alvin was beside him. Food wasn’t allowed out of the eating area but the kid had wrapped his pastry in a napkin and thrust that hand under his sweatshirt.

  “I got an appointment,” said Eliot, walking along the hallway behind one of the guards.

  “Who with?” said Alvin.

  “A social worker.”

  “Okay,” said Alvin. “Sure.” He trudged after him, though.

  When they got to the room with the fireplace the guard unlocked the door and Eliot stopped and said, “Seeya.”

  “Seeya,” said the kid, a little smile trembling on his face.

  Eliot watched this face, this facsimile of a grin, as he backed into the room and closed the door.

  He went to the window and looked out, feeling docile; agreeable. For the moment he didn’t mind that there were rules, or even what they were.

  Eventually a woman came in. Her name was Ms. Tilley. Today she wore a black suit and a white blouse that had a lace frilly thing in front, foaming up between the lapels of her suit jacket. On her feet were shoes with little heels. Usually she wore pants and flat shoes. Her legs weren’t bad, what Eliot could see of them. Her skirt was relatively long, hanging way past her knees. It got shorter when she sat down, of course; but not short enough to be interesting…except that now of course he started to think about what he couldn’t see. Shit. Fuck. He had a boner now.

  “Sit down, Eliot,” said Ms. Tilley.

  But Eliot paid no attention. He turned back to the window and looked out again. And turned himself off, like usual. Heard her like a murmur, like a breeze in a tree, like the purring of a cat. He liked her voice. It made him feel good, warm and comforted, as long as he didn’t listen to the words, as long as he didn’t look at her.

  He’d been here long enough now that he recognized some of the people at the bus stop. But the little kid, the girl, the one with the familiar jacket, she hadn’t come back, and Eliot was glad of that.

  When were you born? they’d asked him, as if they didn’t already know all that stuff, and he’d said, November 11. Yesterday, he’d said. So now he was—what? Two weeks old, almost three. Good thing he could already read and write.

  He could do lots of things, he reminded himself, looking out the window, gazing at the people waiting for buses. There was a Chinese girl with long black hair and glasses, who was reading a newspaper. And a kid about his own age was slouched in a co
rner of the bus shelter—this kid looked like he was asleep, and Eliot wondered what he’d been up to. Yeah, he could read and write, and he knew how to use a computer, and he’d done a pretty good job as a busboy, too.

  She’d stopped talking, Ms. Tilley, and after a while he turned around to see what was what. She had some papers on her lap and a pen in her hand and she was looking at the papers and occasionally scrawling something. Eliot knew from the forceful way she wielded the pen that she was mad. Or maybe just frustrated. He watched her scratching away and wondered again, wearily, what was going to happen to him.

  Alberg went home at lunchtime on Tuesday. It was one of Bernie’s cleaning days. He parked the Oldsmobile in front of the house and before he got to the front door he heard Bernie whistling “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” She had a strong, brave whistle, with a vigorous vibrato. Alberg opened the door very quietly but she was in the living room, polishing the table in the dining area, and so she saw him immediately.

  She arched her eyebrows at him. “You’re early. You sick?”

  “Nope,” said Alberg. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  She looked down at the jar of paste wax in her left hand and the rag in her right. “You’ll have to wait till I’m done with this. I can’t talk and give a proper polish at the same time.”

  “Okay,” said Alberg. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were seated at the kitchen table.

  “So,” said Bernie. “I hear you’re getting hitched.”

  “It looks like it,” said Alberg.

  “I think it’s a good idea.” Bernie stirred milk into her tea.

  “I’m as tolerant as the next person, but it’s always better to make these things legal.”

  “That’s what we thought, too,” said Alberg gravely. He drank some tea. “I went to see Eliot yesterday.”

  Bernie was shaking her head before he’d finished the sentence. “You’re gonna have to put that boy from your mind,” she said severely.

  “I do,” said Alberg. “Regularly. He keeps coming back into it, though.”