Part 18 (1/2)
I walked up a driveway so steep as to feel dreamlike. From a real estate agent's point of view, chez Cecilia was a tear-down, but so is most of North and West Vancouver. This kind of 1963 house was so familiar to me that I didn't pause to acknowledge its ludicrous existence, at the top of a mountain where n.o.body should ever live, a yodel away from pristine wilderness, an existence made possible only through petroleum and some sort of human need for remaining remote while being relatively close to many others. Even in the dark, I could see that the house was stained a sun-drained blue, like bread mold, the same color as this Allison/Cecilia woman's car.
So yes, I saw her car in the garage - one car only. There were a number of lights on, and I could hear the dull glugging sounds of a TV in the background. I went through the garage, around to the back of the house. Nothing had been mowed in years, and my clothes were a magnet for leaves and cedar droppings and cobwebs.
Why was I even here? I didn't want to murder her, even though it would have been fairly easy to do so. I didn't want to confront her, because I didn't want to lose my connection to Jason.
Cecilia's the only game in town.
I maneuvered closer to the back of the house and looked in the windows with impunity; there she was, rooting around in the freezer, removing a cardboard box containing a TV dinner. She put it on a butcher-block counter and removed the cardboard top. She read the French-language end of the carton, turned it around to the English end, then proceeded to timidly poke one, two, three holes in the dinner tray's plastic film. She opened her microwave's door, put the meal inside, punched some b.u.t.tons and then - and then she just stood there for maybe three minutes, her arms across her chest, contemplating her existence. This is when I felt the chill. This is when I once more realized that Allison/Cecilia is basically me - an older version of me, but a woman marooned, manless and geographically remote, contemplating a life of iffy labor, a few thousand more microwaveable meals and then a coffin. She had just removed her meal from the microwave when I heard a noise down in the carport, as did Allison. I could see headlights through the branches of various species of evergreen; Allison dropped (rather than put) her meal on the counter, reached into a drawer, found an amber-brown prescription container and removed one or more pills, which she swallowed without water. The headlights went out; I heard a door slam, and then watched as Allison stood in the center of her kitchen, the plastic membrane not yet removed from her meal's surface.
A youngish woman entered. Twenty-five? I couldn't make out what they were saying, but from my disastrous relations.h.i.+p with my own mother, the bingo zombie, I could tell that this young woman was Cecilia's daughter and that hurtful words were being hurled back and forth. G.o.d, how nice to be on the sidelines for this, and to not be the one hurling.
For a moment, my sympathies were with Allison, until I remembered that she was out to hose- clean my bank account while pin balling my emotions to the max.
In any event, they went off into the living room, which was on the second floor, up front, not visible from anywhere I could position myself. I circled the house a few times, decided it was time to quit the stalking and skulked down the driveway to my car. I forgot to brush all of the dead leaves and insects and webs from my outfit first, and discovered a spider crawling across my chest. I had a freakout, madly swiped the thing away from me, and when I got back in the car I was breathing like a dying coal miner as the car door's alarm went ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
From there I drove to Reg's apartment. Reg was obviously surprised when I buzzed his intercom, but he said come on in. The building's lobby smelled of disinfectant, cooking and dust. The elevator dropped me off on the eighteenth floor, into a muggy, airless little hallway. Jason had once told me how claustrophobic and killingly dark Reg's place was, but it's hard to imagine it being as bad as all that. He was standing at the opened door. ”Heather?”
Of course I blubbered, and Reg motioned me into his apartment. Even through the tears and the emotional funk, I could see it was not at all the way Jason had described it. I guess it was Scandinavian modern, interior decor not being something I usually notice. Reg could see my surprise above and beyond what was already on my face: ”Ruth made me sell everything years ago. Jason told you it was a mausoleum in here, didn't he?”
I nodded.
”Well, it was. I think most of this stuff came from Dirndl or whatever those places are called. I kind of like it - the removal of excess things from our lives is always a blessing. Let me get you a drink.”
”Water.”
”Water then.”
He brought back a gla.s.s of water, a bottle of white wine and some gla.s.ses. ”Tell me what happened.”
”It was her”
”I guessed as much. Go on.”
”She's robbing me blind.”
”How?”
”She's charging me five thousand bucks a message now.”
Reg said nothing.
”And I'm paying it. She knows things that only ever went as far as our pillows. In tiny detail - things you couldn't guess at even if you knew Jason and me our entire lives.”
”Go on.”
”So I went to her house.”
Reg flinched: ”You didn't do anything rash, did you?”
”No. Nothing at all. She's a North Van widow living in a junker of a house in Lynn Valley . . . and she owns me.”
”Have some wine. Calm down a minute.”
He was right: I needed to level out, return to my normal stenographical demeanor so I could at least find some detachment. He changed the subject and we talked about small things, but I must have resembled a troll doll, covered with yard lint, my mascara running. A few minutes later he brought me a hot washcloth and a clothes brush; I scrubbed clean my face and removed the spiderwebs from my sweater. Reg then started the train of thought that has me here at four in the morning typing away.
”Look, Heather,” he asked, ”have you considered all the angles on this?”
”Of course I have.”
”No, really, have you?”
”Reg, you're implying something, but I don't know what.”
”Heather, you're the only person I can talk to anymore. Everyone else is either gone or they've crossed me off their list.”
”That's not true. Barb still talks to - ”
”Yes, I know, Barb still talks to me, but only out of duty and, I'm guessing, loyalty to you.”
”What are you telling me?”
”I'm telling you that I don't believe in psychics. I'm telling you that I don't think the dead can talk to us in any way. Once you're there, you're there. I doubt Jason's been kidnapped and is being held hostage, but at the same time I can't help but wonder what some other genuine reason for this might be.”
”How could Allison have known such intimate - ?”
”The point is, Allison - or Cecilia or whatever her name is - doesn't speak with the dead. There is a link between her and Jason.”
I was speechless.
”I'm not saying they had an affair. Or anything like that.”
”The daughter.”
”What?”
”The daughter. That's who I saw coming in the garage.”
”How do you know it's her daughter? Heather?”
It made perfect sense. Heather, you freaking idiot. ”Allison has never had a signal in her life. It's her daughter -Jason was using our characters with someone else. Her.”
”That's jumping to conclusions.”
”Is it?”
”I think it is. Jason loved you. He'd never have . . .”