A Chill Rain in January (15 page)

He stroked her ass. She was letting him do it. And he knew that if he turned her around, her eyes would be bright, there would be a smile there for him; her mouth would open for his tongue. He knew it. He had experienced it, in his dream; and he knew, in his dream, that he would experience it again, the lustful appetite of Zoe Strachan.

“Jesus Christ,” said Alberg in his bed; shaken.

A
POTTED
yellow chrysanthemum sat on the counter of the second-floor nurses' station; it sported a dusty red bow, and a small card with “Thanks!” scrawled on it was attached to a metal spike that had been stuck into the soil.

“That thing's dying,” said Cassandra to the nurse. It was lunchtime on Sunday.

Doris Moon looked at it hopefully. “Do you think so?”

“Is Mom still in her room?”

The nurse nodded. “Won't budge. Not for me, anyway.”

Cassandra's mother was the only occupant of a four-bed ward. She lay propped up on two pillows, and the bed was slightly raised, too, so that she could look out the window at the lawn sweeping down to a gazebo that in summer was covered with climbing roses. The pathways that swirled lazily across the landscape were empty, glistening in the rain. In fine weather wheelchairs perambulated, nurses pushed IV stands, the walking wounded tottered from flower bed to flower bed.

“I hear they're going to tear that thing down,” said Mrs. Mitchell, staring out the window at the gazebo, “and take the gardens out, and build an extended-care wing out there. Is that true?” She turned her head and saw that it was Cassandra standing there. Her face crumpled, and she began to cry.

Cassandra hurried to embrace her. “Mom. What's the matter?”

“Nobody told me you were coming,” said her mother. “You didn't tell me you were coming now.”

“I thought I'd see if they'd let me have lunch with you.”

Her mother pulled away and fumbled at the box of tissue on the table beside her bed. “You should have asked me first,” she said.

“Okay, Mom. May I have lunch with you?”

Her mother blew her nose into a handful of tissues.

“Maybe we could get them to give it to us in the solarium,” said Cassandra.

Mrs. Mitchell made a sound of derision. “You call that a solarium?” She dropped the tissues into a metal wastebasket.

Cassandra sat in the chair next to the bed. Her mother wasn't wearing her reading glasses, and her face looked exposed and vulnerable. But her skin, though wrinkled, glowed, and her gray hair was soft and shining. “You're looking pretty good,” said Cassandra. “When are they letting you out of here?”

“Alex is going to let me know today.”

Cassandra reached out to stroke some hair away from her mother's cheek. Mrs. Mitchell pulled back, lifting a hand as if in self-defense. They looked at each other. Mrs. Mitchell lowered her hand.

“When I was little,” said Cassandra, “you used to wash my hair in the sink, and then you'd rinse it, and then you'd fill the sink with cold water and add some vinegar and rinse it again in that.”

“I remember.”

“It got out all the leftover soap, you said. So that my hair could shine.”

“I remember.”

“But I always wondered—why did it have to be cold water?”

“It didn't have to be cold water.” Mrs. Mitchell pushed the bedcovers back. “But it didn't have to be hot water, either.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “And we were always counting our pennies. Come on, then. Hand me my robe. Let's go, if we're going.”

The solarium had many windows, grand and wide. But all that could be seen through them was rain, heavy and tangible. It looked capable of entangling anyone trying to walk through it, of packaging him up in its thick wet strands. Through the skylights came a dense gray leakage of something purporting to be light.

In one corner sat an old man, thin and knobbly. He was wearing brown trousers, baggy at the knees, and a white shirt with the top button undone, both too big for him, and brown socks and a pair of worn leather slippers. Wide red plaid suspenders held up his pants. He sat with his knees apart, holding a cane, tilted forward somewhat, leaning on the cane, and his gaze was aimed at the floor. He didn't move when Cassandra and her mother entered the room.

In another corner a slim young woman wearing a blue terry-cloth robe over her hospital gown sat on a sofa with a man Cassandra thought was probably her husband. He was holding her hands and talking to her quietly. She listened intently; every so often she nodded.

There was a console television set near the elderly man. It was tuned to a gardening program from Victoria, but the sound was off.

Mrs. Mitchell moved away from Cassandra and headed for a large schleffera that sat in a plastic pot near the windows. She reached down and stuck a finger in the soil. “Look at this,” she said, as Cassandra approached. She rubbed some of the soil between her fingers. “Completely dried out.” She looked around the room for support, but nobody was paying attention. “I didn't bring my glasses,” she said, peering at the leaves of the plant. “Can you see any dust?”

“Oh, yes,” said Cassandra.

“And they call it a damned solarium,” said Mrs. Mitchell violently. “No damn sun; one plant, nobody looks after it.” She shook her head. Her eyes glittered with tears.

“Who's for lunch?” said a voice from the doorway.

“We are,” said Cassandra gratefully. “That is, my mother is.”

“I've got coffee and sandwiches for the visitors,” said the nurse, wheeling in a cart. “Can't let you go home hungry.”

The elderly man raised his head. “When are they coming for me, then?”

“It's the doctor that's coming, Mr. Simpson,” said the nurse. “He'll be along soon.” She pulled a TV tray from a stack leaning against the wall and set it up in front of him. “Meanwhile you might as well have your lunch.”

“I can't stand this,” Mrs. Mitchell hissed in Cassandra's ear. “I want to go back to my room.”

“Let's eat first, Mom,” Cassandra whispered. “She's gone to all the trouble of bringing it here. Have lunch, then I'll take you back to your room.” She nudged her mother gently down onto the sofa and sat next to her.

Mr. Simpson regarded the food being arrayed before him with an expression of amazement, as though he couldn't imagine what its purpose might be.

“There you are,” said the nurse. “Dig in.”

“I'll wait for my brother,” said Mr. Simpson. “I told him to meet me here.”

Mrs. Mitchell stood up. “I'm going back to my room,” she said, and Cassandra hurried to follow her. “You can't get a moment's peace in this place,” said Mrs. Mitchell angrily, “unless you keep to your own room, your own bed.” She hurried along the hall, past the nurses' station and into her room.

“There you are!” Alex Gillingham beamed. “I thought you'd escaped!” He leaned toward them. “Did you hear about Ramona?”

Helen Mitchell looked at him and began to cry again.

“Mom,” said Cassandra, helpless and exasperated.

Dr. Gillingham put his arms around Cassandra's mother. “There, there,” he said, giving Cassandra a reassuring nod. “I'm sending you home tomorrow, Helen. It's too damn depressing around here.”

Cassandra felt suddenly exhausted. She slumped into the chair.

Mrs. Mitchell pressed her lips together, wrapped her robe tightly around her, and clambered back into bed.

“All you need now is rest,” said the doctor. “And you don't get a hell of a lot of that in a hospital.”

“What on earth's wrong with you now?” said Helen Mitchell accusingly. “You're limping.”

“Took a spill on a climb last weekend,” said Gillingham proudly. “Nothing serious.”

“I saw Marjorie the other day,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Crank this bed up a bit more, will you, Cassandra? She's looking well. Very well, as a matter of fact.”

“That's good,” said Gillingham indulgently. “I'm glad to hear it. I remain very fond of Marjorie.”

“Dyed her hair.”

He looked at her in astonishment. “Who, Marjorie?”

“Blond.”

“Marjorie?”

“Suits her very well.”

“Blond?”

“She's a pleasant woman, Marjorie. I always liked her.”

“How's that, Mom?” said Cassandra. “High enough?”

“Just fine, thank you, Cassandra.”

“I can't imagine Marjorie with blond hair,” said Gillingham, frowning. “I keep seeing Jean Harlow in my head.”

“She looks as she always looked,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Except that her hair is blond. And she's lost about thirty pounds.”

“You don't say.”

“She's got a boyfriend, too, or so I hear.”

“Good Christ.” Gillingham limped back toward the door. “That's enough. Don't tell me any more.”

“You're not going to find another woman the likes of Marjorie up on top of some mountain, you know, Alex.”

“I don't think that's what he goes up there looking for, Mom,” said Cassandra. She took a furtive peek at her watch.

“It's no way for a man your age to be spending his spare time. All you're going to do is find a way to maim yourself for life,” said Mrs. Mitchell with relish. “Or kill yourself entirely.”

“It can be more dangerous indoors than out, Helen,” said Gillingham. He leaned casually against the doorframe. “You know I do some work for the Mounties? Well, I was out on a call the other day. A chap fell down some basement stairs. Deader than a doornail.”

Helen Mitchell looked shocked. “Who? I haven't heard a word about it. Who was it?'

“You know that Strachan woman? Her brother. Visiting her from West Vancouver.” He made a plunging motion with one hand. “Down the stairs, right onto his head.”

“The poor woman,” said Mrs. Mitchell sympathetically. “How awful for her.”

“Actually,” said Gillingham, “it didn't seem to bother her a whit. Not one whit. Decidedly unsisterlike she is, that one.” He glanced at Cassandra. “I think Karl noticed it, too,” he said, and Cassandra's heart gave a gentle lurch.

Then they were both looking at her, her mother from the bed, Alex Gillingham from the doorway. Cassandra, sitting, felt overweight and frumpy. She was afraid she was going to blush.

“I forgot to tell you, Mom,” she blurted. “Karl said to say hello.”

“Karl who?” said her mother coldly.

“Karl Alberg, Helen,” said Gillingham, grinning.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Mitchell vaguely. “The policeman.”

“Now, I don't want you to be on your own just yet,” said the doctor. “Can you stay with Cassandra for a few days? Say, 'til the end of the week?”

“Oh I'm sure that won't be convenient, Alex,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “My daughter leads a very busy life.” She looked appraisingly at Cassandra. “Too busy for her own good. I worry about you, Cassandra, really I do. Here you've been back from England for—what, a week? Two weeks? And already you're off somewhere else. She's going to Victoria,” she said wearily to Gillingham, “for a few days. Oh I can't keep up with her, this one.”

Cassandra sighed, picked up her shoulder bag, and stood up. Shit, she thought.

A
LBERG
, tying his tie in his Calgary motel on Monday morning, studied his receding hairline with dismay. Blond hair was good, at least it didn't show the gray, but at this rate he soon wouldn't have hair of any color at all up there.

In July he would be fifty. His stomach did a kind of flip whenever he thought about that.

Still, he knew that a lot of women preferred men who'd reached a certain level of maturity.

He had to lose some weight. Fifteen pounds anyway. Maybe twenty. No muscle there anymore, he thought, distractedly hitting himself in the diaphragm—he'd always prided himself on his ability to take a blow to the stomach. He was pure fat now, pure damn fat. Of course that wasn't true, he thought, staring into the mirror. There was muscle there. Of course there was.

A guy like Sanducci, girlfriends strewn all over the peninsula…that was all well and good, fine, but what did a guy like that have to offer a real woman, an adult female, someone seductive, yes, and attractive, sure—but someone who was discriminating, as well.

He squirted something called European Styling Foam into his hand and rubbed it on his hair and combed it and patted it until it decided to stay down. Now he had a wet spot on the top of his head. It'll dry, he told himself, long before I get there. He realized that he wasn't looking forward much to the afternoon, and this dismayed him.

He had enjoyed spending the previous day with his daughters. But it had made him sad, too, and resentful. Who the hell knew when he'd see them again?

Why couldn't all of them have ended up in Central Canada, near his parents, instead of way the hell and gone out here in the West, near Maura's? It wasn't fair to Diana and Janey not to have the steadying influence of their other grandparents, who possessed a bit of damn dignity, who saw things clearly, as they really were, not as they damn wanted to see them. His kids had grown up thinking of themselves as Westerners, just because they were born here, and this despite the fact that they had a whole damn clutch of relatives in Ontario, despite the fact that their own damn father had been born out there.

He washed his hands and dried them and put on his jacket.

On a day like this everybody should be there, he thought. All four of their grandparents should be here, not just half of them. But Alberg's father wasn't well, and his mother wouldn't travel without her husband.

Alberg placed another call to Sechelt.

“She hasn't turned up yet,” said Sokolowski. “We've been checking the house. No sign of her.”