screen her skirt was obscuring. The streak of a rubber puck. Clearly, he thought his answer explained everything — the weather, the economy, the ungodly noise next door.
Fay bustled around a bit, madder by the minute, then finally got her garden overshirt out of the closet and stepped outside. The evening was warm and pungent with the scents of greening lawns, spruce and pine, all the vegetation, roots, and leaves awakening.
She walked around the yard, checking the coiled yellow yard hoses, picking up the odd piece of litter. Traffic on the street was more aggressive than on an average night. Everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere, like a hockey game party. She gathered a couple of tools from the aluminum garden shed, then criss-crossed the lawn in a vengeful campaign against any and all weeds. From inside the apartments she could still hear the roar of the televisions, and raucous cheers from number 5.
Herbicides weren’t something Fay had much experience with. On that point she’d stood her ground against Juri, who had been inclined to spray with just about anything short of green paint to achieve a flawless lawn. But last summer he had done little at all in the yard. Now she could already see where the dandelions had seeded, and she imagined their lengthening white roots. Some were more than she could oust with her hand shovel.
Dusk crept up on the neighbourhood and Fay’s yard. Finally, there came a great roar from within unit 5, signalling the end of the hockey game. Soon after, young men appeared on the front steps, each with a beer in hand, laughing and yelling at one another in foul language. When she spotted Todd Nolin, Fay straightened and stared across the lawn until he noticed her. He avoided eye contact and made some remark to his buddies, which scored a great laugh. Not long after that they all piled into their vehicles and disappeared, much to Fay’s relief. She supposed young Marina was inside cleaning up after the louts.
Fay put her tools away and climbed the steps into her own apartment. There she found Juri asleep in his easy chair. Fay shut off the television. She roused him gently and supported him as he made his way to the bathroom to rinse his dentures and prepare for bed.
“Who won?” she asked, then regretted the question.
He mumbled irritably, and she guessed he didn’t know, that he’d fallen asleep before the game’s end. This would trouble Juri greatly, and Fay did her best to prevent such embarrassment for him.
After he was settled in, she returned to the kitchen, plugged in the kettle, prepared the coffee maker for the morning, and set out the box of wheat biscuits. Once the water boiled, she fixed her nightly cup of Ovaltine, a thirty-year habit. Fay took her drink into the living room and was seated in her chair just in time for the ten o’clock news. She trusted the anchorman, admired how his voice portrayed all the grief and disaster he was given to cover. Sometimes she wondered what he did when the program concluded, and if he ever had a problem sleeping. As for Fay, she made her way to the bathroom, where she changed and washed, applied facial cream, and then went to bed.
She awakened later with a start, fumbled for her glasses, saw that it was almost 3:00 a.m. A horrendous crash and roar was coming from the next apartment. She rolled out of bed, grabbed her housecoat, and hustled downstairs.
Something smashed against the wall, something fell and was dragged or kicked aside. For a moment the voices were muted by struggle, then a short, vicious oath, then a wail. Then words and fragments blasted through the wall.
“They’re laughing at me! Laughing, you slut! You want a good laugh, here —”
“Oh, dear God,” Fay whispered, pacing back and forth from her kitchen to the walk-in closet at the end of the hall, trying to track whatever was going on. The girl screamed.
“Fucking little bitch…”
“Todd! Pleeease!”
Another crash, and a scramble of feet and objects overturned. A prolonged wail, a series of cries, and pounding steps indicated that the girl was running upstairs. Fay turned and followed up her own stairwell, heard the man’s steps thunder upward past her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a man’s voice roared.
Fay tilted her ear to the wall at the top of the stairs, followed the girl’s voice along to the upstairs bathroom, heard the door slam, frantic hands on the lock.
“Open the door!”
“Please, Todd!”
“Open this door, you slut!”
Fay was breathless. She heard a great thud against their bathroom door, then the crack and splintering. The girl’s terrified sobs. It was less than two minutes since she awakened. Stricken with guilt for not acting sooner, she ran to the telephone and called 911.
Within five minutes there was a loud rapping at her own door, and Fay opened it to the alert concern of a young police officer. As she was explaining, she heard another officer knocking repeatedly at unit 5, and already a second patrol car was pulling in, its red and blue lights pulsing.
A window shattered. The young officer whirled away from Fay, one hand guiding her back into her apartment, the other unlatching his holster. The second officer backed away from the doorway of number 5, gun already in hand.
“Oh, dear God,” Fay whispered, this time in earnest prayer.
chapter five
Returning every evening to the empty house, Peter is never sure which mood will greet him, but it’s often on the darker end of the scale. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday evening. His mind idly plucks at subjects to divert attention from the self and ponders the origin of Wednesday. After seven months, he misses the day’s end conversations with Karen as much as anything, her presence in the kitchen, sitting at the island while he rinsed spinach in the sink, opening a bottle of wine, listening to the fluctuating tone of her voice, often a wry note. They talked about everything, so it seemed, including the creeping distance between them over the preceding year, without blame or much anger. But the leaving, when it happened, was still sudden and stark. The absence of her body, her face, her eyes, the understanding in her voice.
Fairly soon after she left he realized that almost all of his local friends were made through Karen, and along with her his connection to them was gone. He gravitated to isolation.
Only a couple of times since did he have any interest in other women, and he felt too awkward to act when the opportunities arose. Their few words shared were welcome, of course, and the invitation to call. One from a woman who once worked with Karen; they met briefly at some function. But even a visit is more than he feels prepared for yet.
Peter has got his newfound bad habits for company — cigarettes close to hand, drinking more than he ever has. A warm evening for May, Woden’s Day. He sits on the back step with a smoke, a vodka tonic, and a can of beer. He tries to read, but every book he picks up lately seems either alien to him or too close to heart. Sometimes to combat the silence he plays music loud, mostly older stuff that he’s had since before his marriage. Karen’s taste was somewhat more varied, and she took every CD she ever purchased with her to California. She wasn’t being mean-hearted, just a bit neurotic, he thought. Wasn’t she starting afresh?
Anyway, he plays “El Corazon” by Steve Earle, and it feeds his needy sense of rebellion. The man’s been married how many times, fearless heart and all? He went to jail on drug charges, for crying out loud, and wrote two albums behind bars.
Blame
