Punishment (39 page)

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Not for my sake.”

She smiled. “I think Jack would have loved to see you have a sip of this. You two would have got along.”

“I’d like to have known Jack,” I managed to say.

“Yes. You’re alike, you two.” And she poured carefully into the small glasses, then stared deeply into my eyes. “Maybe that’s why I loved Jack.” She put the bottle down and slowly put the cork back in, never breaking eye contact.

And somehow I knew that the special bottle and the heartfelt disclosure were signals that broken strands of time were about to be rejoined, if only for a moment. She looked down at her glass.

“I read somewhere that you aren’t supposed to mix this with anything. Though Jack said once that out west they like to put Coke in it.” She swirled her glass, a forearm resting between us on the table. In the late afternoon sunshine, the soft fuzz on her arm seemed to shimmer golden. “Then he’d say, ‘Out west, they’ll drink anything.’ Did you know they put raw eggs in beer out west?”

I smiled at her and we sipped quietly until the drinks were but small puddles in the bottom of our glasses.

“That was another thing. The sense of humour. He was you to a T, my Jack was.” Then she stood.

“Help yourself to another. I have to go and get something.” She put her coat on and went outside, heading toward the garage and disappearing through a side door.

When she came back she removed her coat and sat where she had been. She was clutching something in her hand. “Do you remember that day in court when the lawyer asked me, ‘Have you or any member of your family ever used OxyContin for any medical reason?’ ”

She drained the little glass and studied it for a moment. Then looked up. “And I said, ‘I can only speak for myself … No.’ ”

I waited.

“It was the truth. But there was something nagging at me the moment after I said it.” She splashed a bit more whiskey in both our glasses. “After Jack passed, I was tidying his workshop and I found this in a drawer.” She held up an empty plastic pill vial.

“I thought nothing of it at the time. He was a construction worker. That work is hard on people, especially out west. Fort Mac, Fort Chip, always Fort something in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of their ferocious winters. And then, even when it’s warm, there’s the pollution and just the wear and tear on the body.” She smiled. “Jack was full of aches and pains, not that he ever complained.

“Anyway, after I came back from court that day I went back to the workshop to see what this was, hoping like crazy that it was Tylenol 3 or something.” She handed the vial to me. “Tell me what you see written there. I don’t have my glasses.”

I read: John T. Stewart, OXYCODONE x 80 @40mg, as required. May 28, 2000. And a doctor’s name.

I handed it back. “So Jack was using OxyContin, from a doctor’s prescription, for perfectly legitimate reasons. You didn’t know that. It was an honest mistake on your part.”

She was silent for what felt like a long time.

“Is it really that simple?” she said at last. “Wasn’t I under some obligation to correct my mistake? To tell them that I was wrong, that in fact someone in the house had used OxyContin?”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Tony—what if I told you that it was full of pills when I first found it, after Jack was in his grave. And it was empty when I went back to look, that day after court. And there was only one other person, ever, in that garage. After Jack died, she’d sit out there for hours, grieving. I thought.”

There was no sound but the sudden hum of the refrigerator, the whir of car tires on the road outside.

“So that’s what I meant, Tony. We’re all in this together.”

Where do I go with this? I asked myself. She’s right. We’re all in it, all part of this crime. She reached for my glass. “Let me freshen that,” she said.

I stood. “No thanks, Caddy.”

I wanted to say something reassuring, to seal the compact. And I might have if it were only about Caddy and Tony. I wanted to reach back through time and finally seize the hand she never offered when I was innocent and warm and recklessly in love and needed it. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t get past that other factor, the brute instinctive pragmatism that Neil, and now dear Caddy, represented.

Turning out of the last bend in the lane to my house I could see a car in front and I realized too late to stop that it was Neil’s.
Goddamn
. Adrenaline pumping and mind racing through a
dozen reasons for his visit, none pleasant, I pulled up alongside the car. But it wasn’t Neil behind the wheel. It was Hannah. I tried to see past her, to the passenger seat. Nobody there. I climbed out of the truck cautiously, surveying the surroundings. No sign of him. Then I heard the whir of the electric window lowering.

“I’m alone,” she said. “Will you get in?”

I nodded and walked over to the car, slid in on the passenger side. Waited. “He’s home,” she said.

“I see.”

“He’s been in his bedroom pretty well since your visit. He doesn’t always show things … like feelings.” She looked away, out through her side window. “It’s lovely here,” she said. “And what a lovely little old house.”

“You can come in …”

“No. We can talk here.” And then she went silent, struggling, I could see. At last she smiled. “He came off the wagon shortly after you left.”

“I’d forgotten about his wagon. It was a long fast this time.”

“Right after you left he came into the kitchen and saw me there, asked what I was doing. Just cleaning up, I said. I asked if he’d offered you tea or a drink and he just grunted. Then he took a bottle from the cupboard and went to his room.” She added, “We have separate rooms.”

She waited for a reaction from me, but I had none. I just nodded.

“It’s been a very long time,” she said, “since we’ve been what you’d consider … married.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There are worse things. I didn’t mind, I guess, until we moved here. But then he kind of disappeared into his own past—at least the pure, innocent part of his history that this place represents. And, of course, I’m not a part of that.”

She pulled off a glove and studied the rings on her left hand. “It’s very lonely,” she said. “And it’s worse when people look at your rings and they say to themselves, ‘She must be okay, she’s got so-and-so.’ Isn’t that the way it is around here?”

“Probably most places,” I said.

She put the glove back on and I thought she was about to leave. But she opened her purse, peered inside for a moment, then extracted a folded, yellow sheet of paper. She handed it over.

“I heard everything the other night. None of it surprised me. But I couldn’t stand the thought of him having this power over you, knowing how he’d drawn you into everything. He was just obsessed with that poor Strickland boy. You couldn’t talk about it. Strickland was worse than Saddam.” She laughed. “I bet if he could have got Cheney and the gang to come up here …” And she laughed again, then said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make a joke of it.”

I unfolded the paper, folded it again, handed it back. “You can’t do this,” I said. “He’ll know.”

“It won’t matter. I’m leaving for the States in the morning. He doesn’t know it but I’m not coming back. I couldn’t survive another week here.”

I put the paper in my pocket.

“I’m really sorry it didn’t work out,” she said. “I’m sure there are lots of nice people here. I liked his idea of getting close to another couple like you and—what was her name?”

“Caddy.”

“She sounds Jewish.”

“No.”

“A lovely person though, I’ll bet.”

“She is.”

“Anyway.”

I thought she was about to start the car engine and I was searching for the words, the words of sympathy, concern, regret, gratitude—something human. She sighed loudly.

“How much do you know about what happened in Boston?”

“He told me some.”

“He told you about his partner, Donnie?”

“Yes.”

“And about how he shot somebody … and the big inquiry.”

“Yes.”

“Everything was going well at the inquiry until the lawyer for the criminal who Neil shot made it public that the only drug at the crime scene was a bag of cocaine in Donnie’s coat pocket. And that the drug was from the evidence vault. You know what I really think …?”

She was shaking her head, tugging at the fingers of her gloves.

“No, Hannah,” I said. “You don’t have to …” I reached across and touched her hand.

“I never cared for Donnie,” she said. “It had nothing to do with his race. He was just one of those people who make you nervous.

“Then the media made a big to-do about the fact that Donnie and Neil were business partners who owned the crack
house where all the shooting happened. The reporters were saying Neil and Donnie wanted the dope dealers out of the house but it wasn’t enough just to evict them. They were going to plant drugs there and arrest them, which would get them all put back in prison. Later, Neil told the grand jury he knew nothing about the bag of cocaine that Donnie had with him. They believed him. But I didn’t. Not for a moment.”

“How much of this did you know before the inquiry and the media got hold of it?” I asked carefully.

“I made it a point never to ask about his work. He just came and went.”

I said, “He didn’t tell me the outcome—just that Donnie came out the bad guy.”

“Donnie, God rest him, had the cocaine on him. And they proved that the bullet that killed the drug dealer came from Donnie’s gun. But Donnie was dead—there was a third guy they never found who shot Donnie then escaped out a window. Climbing out the window he managed to shoot Neil just as Neil was firing his shotgun at the other one. The one who lost his arm. You can imagine the story they made of that when the details started coming out. We love our violence when it’s happening to other people.”

“Neil was never charged with anything.”

“No, thank God. He could never have handled that.”

“So he retired.”

“They went easy on him. He got a good package, generous retirement terms. After all, he’ll wear that bullet in his back for the rest of his days and it could cause serious problems at any time. The real problem though was that guy with the arm shot
off. He was a brother of the dead drug dealer. Intelligence kept picking up street talk that there was a contract out on Neil and just about everybody connected to him. It just got too hard on the nerves. So we moved here. Even if they thought of looking here, they wouldn’t bother.”

“Punishment enough, living here.” I laughed.

“Exactly.”

Down at the bottom of the field I could see the sad pile of stone but beyond it there was sunshine glinting on the endless blue. I realized she was watching me.

“I like you, Tony.” She smiled broadly. “You’re easy to talk to. Maybe
you’re
Jewish … you never know, being adopted.”

I laughed. “At one time I checked. I’m not.”

“Too bad. One of my favourite Jews in the whole world is a Tony. Tell me you’ve been watching him on all those terrible television shows about Iraq. Tony Judt? The historian. He’s the only one who ever made any sense, insisting that invading Iraq was a huge, huge mistake we’ll have to live with all our lives. You weren’t impressed by him?”

“Can’t say I recall.”

“Darn. If you’d said yes I think I’d have given you a blow job, right here in your driveway.”

She ignored the shocked look that I could not conceal.

“In all the hours of TV Neil put me through, with his own running stupid commentaries, the only person who made any sense to me was Tony Judt. But of course, off would go the television when he’d be halfway through his argument, Neil mumbling ‘fucking Jewish liberal.’ That did it for me as much as anything else.”

Suddenly I was laughing hysterically, face down on the leather dash, tears rolling, hands paddling the car seat in helpless spasms, Hannah looking worried.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped. Pulled the yellow sheet of paper from my pocket and passed it to her. “Take this back, Hannah. Please. Take it and put it back where you found it. Don’t go away. We’ll make things work. You, me, Caddy. Just don’t go.”

“What about Neil?”

“Fuck Neil,” I said.

She seemed to think it over seriously for a moment. “That could be a problem. What if it came to that?”

“You can just say no like you’ve obviously been doing for a while. Lock your bedroom door.”

“You don’t know Neil very well, do you?”

She eyed me sadly then looked straight ahead, past the steering wheel. “Years ago I tried that. Once. You don’t know how easily he’d come through that door. He could make kindling out of any locked door.” Handed back the yellow page.

I folded it yet again. “So tell me then, Hannah. What should I do?”

She leaned back and sighed, studied the ceiling of the car. “I don’t know, Tony. If you
were
Jewish, I’d tell you to go and talk to the rabbi.”

Then, after a long hesitation, she said, “Go to your Caddy. Make it work, you’re both from here.” She smiled. Removed the gloves again, examining her rings.

“Relationships are strange,” she said. “Especially a marriage. Each one, full of secrets, right? Some wise person once said to me—‘all intimate relationships are fed by underground streams.’ ”

She shook her head. “Neil was so insufferably smug analyzing your divorce … I felt like slapping him.”

Then she looked at me intently. “We both know your Caddy meant no harm. You have to believe that.”

“Meant no harm …?”

She pulled the gloves back on slowly. “Anything she told Neil, you can’t blame her. Neil just has a way of getting things out of people. I’m sure you understand that. Anything she told him, it was because she cares for you.”

“Caddy? I thought …”

“Just talk to her.” She was smiling, then she reached over and patted my hand.

“Gotta go now. Goodbye, Tony Whoever.”

It was the strangest feeling, entirely unfamiliar. I was neither surprised nor angry, just mildly frustrated that I hadn’t worked it out before. Simple deduction: Caddy knew because I told her. And I told her because I needed to. And she told Neil because … 
Neil just has a way of getting things out of people
. Poor Caddy, I thought. You’re human after all. But didn’t I learn all about that a century ago?