In the First Early Days of My Death (2 page)

“What if I'd quit my job?” I asked him once. “What if you'd gone back to the library and I wasn't there?”

“I'd have found you,” he said.

“You would have forgotten all about me.”

“I'd have found you,” he repeated, no more insistent than before, calmly convinced he was telling the truth.

“What if I'd moved away? Out of town?”

“You didn't,” he said. He was puzzled. What was the point of this conversation?

Even I wasn't sure what the point was. I'd never been like that before, insecure, asking dumb, unanswerable questions, demanding proof of a love that was plainly audible in his voice. It was Evelyn who made me like that. It was Evelyn's fault that I felt uneasy, watchful. That I began to lose faith.

The last morning of my life began normally enough. I was on holidays, so I came downstairs in my pyjamas and made blueberry pancakes and coffee. Then I called Alika into the kitchen for breakfast. I handed him his coffee and he raised the cup to his lips.

“Sugar,” I warned him.

“Thanks,” he said. He put the cup back on the table and added sugar.

“I'm going to get dressed,” I said. “I want to start on the garden early, before it gets too hot.”

Upstairs, I showered and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. I started to make the bed, but when I picked up the pillows, I discovered, on Alika's side, a single nylon stocking, hidden underneath. I picked it up and drew it slowly between my fingers. I smelled it. I knew whose it was.

When we were first married, I rarely thought about Evelyn. She never crossed my mind, except for those odd moments when I'd encounter one or another of her belongings in Alika's house. He had told me that she used to spend every weekend at his place, and it was no wonder, I thought, that she'd misplaced a few things, given the state of his housekeeping. Alika's house had appalled me, the first time he invited me over. I found myself washing dishes, wiping the counter, mopping the floor. Alika didn't understand the importance of these details. He grew impatient, wanting me to sit down, drink a glass of wine, listen to music, talk to him. But I couldn't relax when the kitchen floor was so dirty that the beer cartons were glued to the linoleum.

“Come on, Wendy,” he'd say. “Forget about the linoleum. There are more important things in life.”

“This
is
life,” I'd tell him.

In the fall, shortly after our wedding, I found a pair of Evelyn's earrings, a compact, and a silk scarf that still carried traces of her trademark scent — lavender, a strangely old-fashioned choice. It seemed as though Evelyn had slowly come unravelled, leaving a meandering trail of detritus in her wake. I pictured her as a slovenly, absent-minded girl, the kind with nubby sweaters, chewed fingernails, band-aids on her knee. I cleaned and tidied, claiming the house as my own. I removed every loose trace of Evelyn and forgot about her all winter.

But early in the spring, tucked behind a couch cushion, I found a signed photograph of my husband's former girlfriend. She looked about twenty-two, a few years younger than me. She was wearing a pink sundress and matching sandals. She didn't look like a convenience store clerk, at least not like any I'd ever seen. It wasn't that she was beautiful. She wasn't even very attractive, though her brushed hair emitted a faintly golden glow, reminiscent of honey, of peaches and butter. But she was focussed so intensely on the photographer that her image was rivetting. I studied her hopeful eyes, her hungry smile, and something tugged at me, deep within my belly. I didn't mention the photo to Alika. I kept it in a drawer for a couple of days before I threw it away. But that photograph was only the beginning. It seemed that the flotsam and jetsam of Evelyn had resurfaced. All summer long, I found more of her belongings scattered throughout the house — a jewelled comb, a little monogrammed notebook, blank inside — yes, I looked, I rifled the pages. By that point, I was worried. And then I found the stocking under Alika's pillow.

I sat on the bed for a while with the stocking in my hand, alarmed by its sheerness, its silky texture and unmistakable lavender scent. I considered the possibility that it had lain unnoticed in our laundry hamper for twelve months, found its way accidentally into a recent load of wash and, in the dryer, become stuck by static electricity to this pillow case. It didn't seem likely. Not in this humidity. When Alika finished his pancakes and came upstairs, I presented him with the stocking.

“What's this?” he asked.

“What do you think it is? It's a woman's stocking. Evelyn's stocking. Do you want to tell me how it got under your pillow?”

Alika looked at me. He picked up the pillow and looked underneath, then fluffed it and tossed it aside. “Under there?”

“Under there. And I changed the sheets yesterday morning, so how did it get there?”

“I don't know,” he said.

“Alika,” I said. “Has Evelyn been here? Was she here yesterday? Just tell me.”

“I don't know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I didn't see her,” he offered.

I sighed. “Did you forget to lock the door yesterday?”

“You know I always lock the door,” he said.

“How could she get in without you seeing her, then, if the door was locked?”

He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Maybe she unlocked it?”

“Alika! She has a key to the house?”

“Well, of course she has a key,” he said. “She practically lived here last summer.”

“For God's sake,” I said. But I knew there was no point explaining to him how foolish he was, so I just said, “I'm getting the locks changed. Today.”

Alika lay down on top of the bedspread and rested his cheek on the sheet where Evelyn's stocking had been lying less than ten minutes ago. I shuddered.

“It was in our
bed
,” I groaned.

Alika turned and looked at me studiously, as if he'd finally decided to take this issue seriously.

“But how did it get there?” he asked.

I scrutinized his expression. Nothing but the same blank density he offered to the water pipes. He seemed genuinely, maddeningly, nonplussed.

That was when Mrs. Kowalski called and invited me to the protest rally. I talked to her on the phone for a while, listening to her concerns about the city and giving her excuses why I couldn't go. When I hung up, I felt a little guilty about not helping her out. So I suggested to Alika that he go downtown and shoot some pictures of the event. Sometimes he made a little extra money by selling local photos to
Uptown Magazine
.

I also wanted him out of the way so I could phone his sister Noni. I needed to talk to someone who could think clearly.

Noni wore a pink plastic prosthesis which she strapped to her thigh with a complicated leather harness. It was uncomfortable, and she frequently removed it in the privacy of her own home, or in ours. That last afternoon, as she listened to my tale of Evelyn's stocking, Noni sat on my back porch, her chin in her hands, shaking her head in disbelief. I was pulling beets and swatting at mosquitoes. It was hot, and my bare legs were streaked with sweat and dirt. Noni lifted up her cotton skirt and untangled the harness. She leaned the leg, with its little pink foot in its pink running shoe, against the wooden steps.

“Are you all right?” I asked her. Noni's amputated leg still hurt her sometimes, even though it wasn't there. Her doctor claimed this was perfectly normal. The nerves were gone, but the receptors in the brain were still alive and waiting, like telephone receivers, for messages. Sometimes they became confused and thought they were hearing from that long-lost leg. The doctor called this “phantom pain.” It wasn't dangerous, he said. He recommended Aspirin, and Noni took two, extra-strength, when the invisible leg began to ache. But there was nothing else she could do about it. There was no known cure for phantom pain.

“I'm fine,” she said. “But you're going to get heatstroke.” She poured two glasses of lemonade and told me to sit down for a minute.

I laid the beets down on the porch in the shade and picked up the glass of lemonade, listening to the ice cubes clink and fizz. I held the glass against my damp neck. Then I drank it down and poured myself another.

We sat in silence, surveying the garden.

“Do you think she's dangerous?” Noni asked.

I looked at the flaming yellow poppies, the tall zinnias stuffed to bursting with surreal orange and russet petals, the cabbages fat as green planets, and the nicotiana flowers bending over them like white stars. Everything had grown too large, too quickly, that summer. The morning glory had topped the fence early in July, climbed across the rough shingles of the tool shed walls and up the telephone pole, where it bloomed a bright continuous blue against the sky. The yellow beans were plump and ready to be picked, their stalks out of control, strangling each other. Great bushes of crackerjack marigolds exploded among the tomato plants. It was only the twenty-first of August, but the pumpkins were already round and symmetrical as beach balls, and the zucchini were so numerous I had taken to leaving them on neighbours' doorsteps, like abandoned babies, in the middle of the night.

“I don't know,” I said. I got up and returned to the beet patch, thinking about Evelyn. Of course she was dangerous, in an obvious way. She was interfering with my marriage, disturbing my peace of mind, making me crazy. But that's not what Noni meant, and we both knew it. Noni meant, was she violent? Was she likely to throw rocks through the window, threatening notes attached? Would she show up at the library, a pipe bomb in her backpack? Slit her wrists in my bathtub one day, so that I'd come home to find bloody water trickling under the door, seeping into the hall carpet?

“What can I do, anyway, even if she is dangerous?” I asked. I braced myself in the mud, struggling to pull up a particularly fat beet.

“There has to be some way to get rid of her,” Noni said.

“How?”

“There has to be a way,” she said.

But before we could formulate any sort of plan, we were interrupted.

A fat little chow chow came streaking through my open back gate and tore right through the garden, with no regard for the vegetables and flowers.

Noni, who was afraid of dogs, grabbed for her leg and scrambled to tie the harness to her thigh.

“Hey!” I shouted. But the dog paid no attention. It trampled the romaine lettuce and raced straight through the oregano, trailing a red leash from its collar.

A moment later, the dog was followed by a burly red-faced man, who was a little more careful about the garden. He rushed down the path, then stopped when he saw me.

“Pardon us,” he said. He was panting slightly. “My dog seems to have taken a liking to your cat.” He gestured toward the elm tree, where the dog sat expectantly, waggling its rear end. Its ears were rigid, its nose pointing toward the sky.

I looked up and saw a yellow cat sitting calmly on a low branch. “That's not my cat,” I said.

He approached his dog from the side and slid his hand into the handle of the leash. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “Poppy is a little, ah, undisciplined.”

“I see that,” I said. I looked at the crushed, muddy leaves of the romaine. “What a mess.”

“Sorry,” he said again. He seemed mortified.

He was surprisingly timid for his size. He must have been six-foot-four, with thick, powerful arms, and a bit of a beer belly. He was in his early forties, I guessed, but his face was as freckled and sheepish as a little boy's. He was sweating profusely, and I wondered why he was wearing a suit jacket on such a humid day. Then I recognized him.

“Say, you're that cop, aren't you? I mean, aren't you the police officer? In that brick house with all the trees?”

“That's right. Felix Delano. I'm a police detective.”

“I'm Wendy,” I said. “Wendy Li. And this is my sister-in-law, Noni Li.”

Noni had recovered her composure, but she stayed on the porch, away from Poppy.

“Li?” Felix asked. He looked with interest at Noni. “That's a Chinese name, isn't it?” He peered through the shadows of the porch, trying to see her face more clearly.

Noni didn't answer. She had no patience for that particular question, which she'd heard too often.

I'd carried the name for a year, but nobody ever asked me if it was Chinese. They just misspelled it,
Lee
, and I constantly had to correct them. This didn't bother me one bit. I loved being a Li. I had belonged to a lot of different families in my life, but the Li family was the only one I'd had a say in choosing.

“Do you want some lemonade?” I asked Felix.

He coughed, a little embarrassed by Noni's silence. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.” Then he offered me his hand to shake, and I took it. His grip was strong, and he held on for a long moment, even though my fingers were caked with dirt.

After Felix left, with a bag of zucchini and broken romaine, I walked Noni out to her car, and we stood for a while, talking. We hadn't quite finished with the subject of Evelyn.

“She's probably harmless,” I said. I was in a better mood by then. Felix had cheered me up. It made me feel a little safer to know I was friends — well, friendly — with a detective.

“Do you think so?” Noni asked.

“Probably,” I said. “And anyway I'm getting the locks changed today.” I looked at my watch. Where was that locksmith?

“I don't know,” said Noni, as she got into her car. “I have a bad feeling about her.”

“A premonition?”

Noni blushed. “Not exactly.” Then she shivered suddenly, though it was still a sweltering day.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Don't pay any attention to me.” She waved as she drove away.

I couldn't dismiss Noni's bad feeling so easily. And I didn't like that shiver. But I tried to reassure myself by remembering that Noni wasn't the clairvoyant in the family.