Object of Your Love (11 page)

“Murder would be too kind.”

Loretto referred to the girl as “Wanda the Wallflower.” Dewey had not seen Wanda the Wallflower since the day Loretto dropped the liver off. Wanda the Wallflower was permanently out of the picture now. After she was discharged from the hospital, her parents took her back to Florida with them, to recuperate. In the spring, she would return to Canada and move to a nearby city, where she would enroll in a community college, intending to become an interior decorator.

“That'll get her into a lot of bedrooms,” mused Loretto.

*   *   *

Early in January, Dewey came home after work with an armload of textbooks.

“What are those for?” asked Loretto, looking up from the television set.

“I have to study for an exam,” Dewey told her. “I've decided to become a policeman.” He'd been so impressed with the policemen who'd picked him up that day at the factory and taken him over to the hospital to see Wanda: their professionalism, their sympathy for his awkward predicament, their quiet respect. It had made him stop and think. Now he knew he wanted to help people, as those officers had helped him. Loretto was not happy at being reminded of Wanda.

“You'll have to lose weight first,” she told Dewey. “They don't let fat men be cops.” He reddened but didn't answer her. He went to the kitchen table, sat down and opened a thick volume. “You could have consulted me first,” she said in a conciliatory tone, though she thought to herself that she'd seen some kind of dramatic change coming. Since the incident with Wanda, Dewey had been uncharacteristically quiet. No more jokes. No more clowning around. He'd stopped drinking. Now he started to cut back on meals. He shed pounds. On the weekends, he went jogging out on the highway, running clear to the next town and back.

Sometimes this new, reflective, philosophical Dewey made Loretto nervous. Other times she was content to think that this was all part of a general renovation, a self-improvement regimen Dewey had undertaken, having recognized his own folly. He'd seen the error of his ways, had set his course on the straight and narrow. Every evening after coming home from the factory, he opened his textbooks, made notes, memorized, tested himself. In February he passed the entrance exam to the police academy. Gradually Loretto grew used to the idea of Dewey in a policeman's uniform.
My husband is a law enforcement officer,
she imagined herself saying to people sometime in the future.

One evening, Dewey said, “Loretto, maybe we should think about moving into town.” He and Loretto had grown up on adjacent tobacco farms. At eighteen, they'd eloped without two cents between them and moved here, to the edge of town, because the rent was cheap and because Loretto had not been quite ready to relinquish the country. She was not sure she was city material. There were a lot of people she didn't like.

“We need to become part of a community,” Dewey told her.

“Don't you think you've done enough already to fit in?” Loretto asked sarcastically, thinking of Wanda the Wallflower. Dewey shook his head in frustration and went back to his reading. “Why would we want to fit into the town?” Loretto continued. “So we can be like them? Sleep around and not have any conscience? I don't want any part of it.”

Then Dewey told her she was too critical, she should try to accept people for what they were, stop expecting them to be perfect or make the kinds of choices she made. This was his new posture, this liberalism, now that he was studying to become a law enforcement officer.

“What are you training for, anyway?” Loretto asked him. “To be a cop, or a psychologist?”

“You're afraid of people, Loretto,” said Dewey.

“Fat chance.”

“You're afraid of yourself.”

*   *   *

One afternoon, Bev herded her kids down the snowy highway to Loretto's place. Loretto had reluctantly agreed to babysit them. Bev pushed the kids into the house. “I won't be long,” she said.

“Oh, I bet,” said Loretto knowingly.

Bev was wearing a low-cut black top with her boobs popping out of it, a black miniskirt, a big shiny red belt, red spike heels, a short raccoon jacket Gabriel gave her for Christmas. She ran out in the snow in her high heels. Just then a long black car came along. It stopped and she got in. It was four thirty before she returned.

“I don't know why Gabriel isn't good enough for you,” Loretto told Bev in the kitchen. “I think he's a peach.” Gabriel was Bev's husband, a cabdriver. He owned his own car, something Bev was always quick to point out. It helped Bev to accept that Gabriel was just a taxi driver and not some rich business executive. Owning his own car made him something like an entrepreneur.

“Peaches are boring,” answered Bev. “Peaches are bland. Peaches go soft and pulpy after a while.”

Loretto said she didn't know why Bev needed another man at all.

“
Man!
” said Bev ironically. “You mean
men!
”

“What are you smirking at?” said Loretto.

“You don't want to know.”

“No, I don't,” agreed Loretto, “but tell me anyway.”

Loretto had already heard about the salesman who came to Bev's house in a refrigerated truck selling fancy dinners, gourmet meals all made up and ready to pop into the oven after a strenuous day of bridge or shopping. He carried in boxes of these meals and stacked them on Bev's kitchen table. Bev couldn't stop him. Or wouldn't. Chicken Kiev. Beef Wellington. Tournedos Rossini. Lobster Thermidor. Coquilles St. Jacques. He was from Newfoundland, a young fellow with a rich, beautiful Newfie accent, the words rolling off his tongue thick as slices of bread. He had a friend with him. They stood in Bev's kitchen. The salesman told her he could win a trip to Florida if Bev placed a big order. All he needed was one more big order. She couldn't resist. She couldn't stop looking at his tanned face, his dimples, his dark shiny hair. She wrote a cheque for two hundred dollars worth of food. She told the young man she hoped she would see him again. The next day he came back without his friend. She put the kids in front of the television and went for a drive in the country.

“It was just a little ride. It was harmless,” she'd told Loretto.

“Sure it was.”

Then there was the company president. He was the kinkiest. He drove her into the country. It was always the country. What Bev and her lovers had put the countryside through was pretty shocking. He took a deserted road, then a cow path, made Bev lie down naked on the hood of his car, poured champagne all over her bare breasts, burned her breasts with the tip of his cigar, slapped her mouth so that it bled. This was what Bev lived for. She had to have it.

“But didn't Gabriel ask questions?” said Loretto. “Didn't he see the burns?”

“Gabriel sees what he wants to see.”

“What if Gabriel saw you with one of these men? He's driving around out there in his cab.”

“We did see him once when we were heading out of town. I ducked down in the car. We were parked right beside him at an intersection. I thought the light would never turn green.”

The businessman became violent and serious about Bev. He wanted to marry her but he couldn't.

“Why not?” asked Loretto.

“He's Catholic. The Catholic church frowns on divorce.”

“Well, how does it feel about adultery?” asked Loretto.

“You are so jaded,” Bev told Loretto sadly. “You judge people too harshly. You don't trust them. You don't give them a chance.” Anyway, Bev said, she didn't want to marry anyone else. She liked things this way: the layers of intrigue, the close calls, the double-edged conversations, the prospect of risk. Life wasn't worth living without this. She was smoking a cigarette and her hands, themselves the colour of cigarette ash, were shaking.

“You're sick,” Loretto told her. “Jesus God, you're sick!”

“I know,” Bev grinned.

When the weather turned cold, the Catholic businessman took Bev to motels. The more sordid the better. The possibility of mice in the corners of the room, of holes in the towels and sheets, of grime and turpitude and destruction drove both of them wild with lust. The businessman chased Bev around the motel room, roaring like a lion. When Bev locked herself in the bathroom, he broke the door down. He tore the shower curtain off its hooks, wrapped her in it and carried her back to the bed.

“That sounds like rape,” said Loretto.

“Rape can be fun.”

Loretto wasn't sure how much of this to believe. She thought Bev must be making some of it up.

“You bring out the worst in men,” she told Bev.

“Sometimes the worst is the best.”

“You like the idea of driving a man mad.”

“No, I don't.”

“Oh, yes you do.”

“I like to be desired.”

“You look like a sex-craved bitch.”

“I
am
a sex-craved bitch.”

“And you love every minute of it.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, nothing.”

Where did these men come from? How did they find Bev? Loretto thought it must be word of mouth. Loretto had to listen to all of this. Why did she listen to this smut? She didn't know. In one way she was ashamed of herself for listening and in another way it made her feel good. It made her feel she was the only sane person in the world.

*   *   *

One afternoon, deep in March, someone called Loretto and told her what she later supposed she should have been expecting to hear all along. The message was brief but Loretto tried to keep the person on the line as long as she could. She listened to the voice, which was throaty, soft, benevolent, tried to think of who it could be. Many possibilities flashed through her head. Wanda the Wallflower, calling to exact revenge. Wanda's mother, angry about the liver blood. The desiccated wallpaper lady, Florence Quickly, with her hair like pink candy-floss. The old clerk who had fainted in Booth's lingerie department.

It could have been any of these women but Loretto somehow knew it wasn't. It was a complete stranger calling with a gift and this was the peculiar thing: the news
was
like a gift, something offered free of charge, a piece of information Loretto needed to have and at the same time it was like poison, a poison offering, kind as mercy killing.

Loretto didn't know whether to feel angry or grateful. She did feel exposed, humiliated, foolish to realize that this stranger knew more about her life, about Dewey, than Loretto herself did. The voice cut through Loretto, like a sharp bitter wind sweeping through her body. “Who is this?” demanded Loretto several times. “Who is this?” But what difference did it make who it was? It was the message that was important and Loretto knew instantly that it was true—hadn't she noticed that the pieces of life always seem to fit together in this cruel way? The stranger hung up. Loretto had been upstairs folding the laundry. Outside there was a snowstorm. Large heavy flakes were falling, thick as white paint, coating everything, enveloping the house like a muffling shroud, shutting out air. Loretto hung up the phone and stood with her hand on the receiver. The house was silent as the storm. Within the whirling cone of white, Loretto felt her own insignificance.

All afternoon, working around the house, Loretto kept hearing the voice on the phone. Not the words especially, but the texture of it, a kind of remote yet ostentatious concern, possibly sympathy. Which was something Loretto didn't want. Not from a stranger. Not from anybody. But was it sympathy? If that person was so sympathetic, why would she even call Loretto? Guile. Phoniness. Mockery.

The next day, Saturday, Loretto and Dewey got up around ten o'clock. Dewey stood at the window and read the thermometer.

“Maybe I shouldn't go jogging today,” he said. “It's minus thirty and it looks like there's a wind.”

“You better go,” Loretto said. “You need the exercise. Just bundle up.”

She sat on the living-room couch, watching him put on his wind pants, runners, jacket and wool hat, a pair of thick mittens.

“Don't hurry back,” she said. Moving to the window, she watched him run up the hill, jogging on the ploughed highway shoulder. If he did the full run, he'd be gone at least an hour. As soon as he disappeared over the top of the hill, Loretto got to work. She went into the bedroom, opened up the clothes closet, gathered Dewey's shirts into her arms, carried them through the house, opened the front door and threw them out into the snow. Back in the bedroom, she collected his socks, underwear, slacks, jackets, ties and threw them outdoors too. She'd made several trips before the phone rang. It was Bev.

“What's going on over there, Loretto?” she asked. “What the heck are you doing?”

“Oh, I just thought I'd air out Dewey's clothes,” Loretto told her.

There was a pause. “What's the matter, Loretto? You sound angry.” Bev's voice was quiet, worried, scared.

“You tell me! You tell me why I'm angry! You seem to know more about what's going on in my life than I do!”

Another long pause. “It was only once, Loretto.”

“Once! That's not what I heard. Once what? Once a week? Once a day? I suppose I was babysitting your brats at the time!”

“They're not brats, Loretto. They're nice children. Loretto, don't do something rash.”

“Why not? Why do I have to always be the reasonable one?”

“You're not reasonable, Loretto. You're rigid. You drive people away with your perfectionism. People are human, Loretto.”

“Don't tell me what people are! I can see it for myself!”

“You're not an easy person to live with. Any man would have done what Dewey did.” Bev's tone was calm, reasonable, patronizing. Loretto couldn't stand it.

“Shut up!” she shouted. “Shut your cheap face!” She hung up the phone and returned to her task. She went around the house, opening cupboards, opening drawers, collecting everything she could find of Dewey's and throwing it outside. Toothbrush, shaving kit, shoe shine kit, hairbrush, deodorant, aftershave, soap-on-a-rope, throat lozenges, Swiss Army knife, brass shoehorn, cuff links, battery charger, alarm clock radio, stamp collection, baseball glove, baseball cap, baseball uniform, curling shoes, fishing rod and tackle, squash racket, ice skates, hockey stick, hockey puck, compass, walkman, textbooks and notepaper, pocketknife, pocket calculator, paperback novels, high school pennant, high school graduation photograph, framed photograph of his mother, coffee mug, favourite cereal, favourite cookies, auto and sports magazines, umbrella, wristwatch, camera, birth certificate, piggy bank, overcoat, galoshes, rubbers, rain slicker, records, sunglasses, jockstrap. By the end of the hour she'd torn apart every room in the house. The process left her feeling amplified, light-headed, dizzyingly objective, as though she were on some powerful drug, as though her body carried all this out automatically, without instructions from her brain.