chapter six
Hal had not gone far. After storming away from the table, he’d walked to the small park behind the houses across the street, where the following day they would be setting up for the homecoming festival. He’d plopped himself down on a bench, out of breath, his anger dissipated, and with it his sense of self-righteousness. He tried to rekindle the feelings of resentment, but it was like trying to set a match to soggy paper, so he gave it up. God, he was tired. He felt as though there were a powerful vacuum in the middle of his chest, sucking the life out of him. He hadn’t got a wink of sleep the night before and felt that if he closed his eyes he might never be able to open them again. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Oblivion sounded like a pretty good deal at the moment, all things considered. Good luck repossessing his soul.
He fished around in his pockets for his cigarettes, a habit he’d only recently reacquired, after more than twenty years of abstinence. He didn’t find them; they were locked in the glove box of his car. What he found instead was a folded piece of notepaper. He unfolded it and peered at it in the dim light of the pseudo-Victorian lamppost a few feet from the bench. He couldn’t read it without his glasses, which were back at the house, but he knew what was written on it.
Despite what he’d told that sanctimonious blowhard Jerry Renfrew, all was not well in the Schumacher household. Hal was certain Maureen was having an affair and the note was a list of the men with whom he thought she might be having it: Davy, the twenty-something kid who worked at the garden centre where Maureen seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time; Bob Nobbs, who lived two doors down from them in Oakville and who claimed to be some kind of writer, but since his divorce spent all his time reading magazines and drinking beer on a chaise lounge in his backyard; Ivan, the musclebound Neanderthal who worked at the gym Maureen went to three times a week; and Clark Sheppard, husband of Maureen’s best friend, Dinah, and supercilious jerk of the first water. There were two other entries, men whose names Hal did not know: the man who jogged by the house every morning as Hal was leaving for work, whom Hal simply called the Sweater; and the Samaritan, a man Hal had never seen but who Maureen had told him had helped her when her car had broken down in the parking lot of Maple Grove mall.
Hal folded the notepaper and returned it to his pocket. He should go back to the house, he thought, face them, apologize for his behaviour. He could not move, immobilized by ennui.
If Joe hadn’t lived in Vancouver, Hal would have included his brother’s name on the list. The last time Joe had visited Toronto, two Christmases ago, he’d stayed with Hal and Maureen, because he hadn’t wanted to impose on their parents, he’d said. It was all right to impose on him and Maureen, though, Hal had grumbled to Maureen at the time.
“Oh, Hal,” she’d said, “don’t be such an old poop. He’s your brother, for heaven’s sake. And he’s no trouble, really.”
“If he’s no trouble, why doesn’t he stay with my mother and father then?” Hal had replied.
“Why don’t you want him to stay with us?” Maureen had asked.
Because I don’t want him around you, he’d almost said. Or you around him.
A bubble of gas rose painfully in his chest. He squirmed and belched. The pain eased, but his stomach burned, as though it were being slowly dissolved in acid. Just what he needed, he thought glumly. A goddamned ulcer. Christ, his life was turning to crap. Yeah, he chided himself, and whose fault was that? Face it, fat boy. You blew it. Now what’re you going to do to fix it?
Still, it wasn’t fair. He’d worked hard all his adult life to build a secure future for himself and Maureen, only to see it all come crashing down around him because of a couple of bad judgement calls. What really rankled, though, was that his brother, who professed not to care about such things, had lucked into more money than he’d ever need simply by being in the right place at the right time. Things had always come easily to Joe, the grades, the jobs, the girls, whereas Hal had had to struggle for everything he’d achieved, including his wife.
Only to watch it all slip through his fingers …
Hal’s head bobbed and he realized he had dozed off. Jesus, he could’ve been mugged, he thought, nervously looking about. The small park was deserted. His bladder finally coaxed him off the bench and back to his parents’ house. He went in the front door, hoping to use the bathroom before having to face the others, but Maureen and Harvey Wiseman were in the kitchen, finishing up the dishes.
Maureen draped the dishtowel through the fridge door handle. “Well, where did you get to?” she said, in that accusatory tone she was so good at.
“I went for a walk,” he said sullenly, continuing down the hall to the bathroom. The door to his parents’ bedroom was closed. It was only ever closed when they were in bed.
After using the bathroom, he returned to the kitchen. It was empty. He got a beer from the fridge, scoffing down a couple of leftover barbecued pork chops while he was at it, then went out into the backyard. Rachel and Wiseman stood at the base of the yard, on the edge of the dark woods, talking quietly. Maureen and Joe sat in lawn chairs placed close together at the top of the yard, facing the woods. They stopped talking when Hal let the screen door slam shut behind him.
chapter seven
Very little surprised Hannah Lewis anymore. She had learned early to take things in stride. But that afternoon, she’d been knocked for a loop when she’d realized that the tall, dark-haired man with the battered face and distant eyes was none other than Joe Shoe. She hadn’t let it show, of course, but it hadn’t been easy; she’d spent so much of her teens listening to her brother’s endless bitching about how Shoe had stolen his wife and destroyed his career that she’d almost come to believe it herself.
Shoe had done neither, of course. Shortly after Ron’s “accident,” and two months before her death, Sara had set Hannah straight, explaining that her marriage to Ron had ended long before she’d met Shoe because Ron had insisted that she choose between marriage and her career as a police officer. Likewise, it had been Ron who, in a jealous rage after discovering that Shoe and Sara were seeing each other, had gone after Shoe in the locker room with his nightstick. If Ron’s injury and resulting forced retirement was anyone’s fault, it was his own, not Shoe’s. Shoe had simply been defending himself. Moreover, had Shoe not told the division commander that he and Ron had been roughhousing and that Ron’s injury had been an accident, for which Shoe had nevertheless received a reprimand, Ron would not have qualified for a disability pension.
“Most of Ron’s troubles are of his own making,” Sara had told her. “Maybe one of these days he’ll realize it.”
Hannah lucked into a parking space immediately in front of her three-storey row house in the Danforth, across from the old, scaffolding-encased Greek Orthodox church that was in its fifth year of restoration. She’d got the house in the divorce, otherwise she might not have been able to afford to live in the area. As it was, the upkeep and the taxes were slowly bleeding her dry. She loved her house, though, and the neighbourhood, even if parking seriously sucked.
As she locked up her ten-year-old Pathfinder, her cellphone began to ring. She swore when she saw the number on the call display, and pressed the button that sent the call directly to her voice mail. Florence De Franco had called at least twice a day for the past three days. Obviously, she’d weaselled Hannah’s unlisted numbers out of her husband, who was a city councillor, as well as a member of the civilian Police Services Board. Dominic De Franco had denied giving Hannah’s numbers to his wife,
