1987
The warmth of early
May glowed from the dusty hardwood floor that gleamed red and golden beneath
Barbara’s bare feet. She had lived here
in this house with her once again husband Randall for six months now, ever
since they remarried under the benign watch of a Catholic priest. Home again, in Victoria, where they lived
during their first time married to each other ten years ago, within walking
distance of their old apartment. They
liked this house better, they liked Victoria better, they enjoyed marriage
together more than the first time.
Barbara had returned to the church bringing with her Randall who happily
consented again to being her husband.
Not that Barbara was silly with love or any such romance. She felt that she knew better at her age, and
indeed she did know better this time, at forty-one, and now pregnant. She had just returned this morning from the
doctor, who confirmed what she these last five weeks had suspected. She couldn’t wait to tell Randall. She was humming absentmindedly Grieg’s “In
the Hall of the Mountain King.” She gulped
back what remained of her herbal tea and shoved the newspaper she’d been
pretending to read across the kitchen table.
Randall credited
Barbara with rescuing him. He was not in
good shape when she saw him early last summer in Stanley Park. He was still in traumatic shock from a murder
he had witnessed in the skid row hotel where he was staying. Outside his room, just as he was unlocking
his door, the tenant across the hall from him was shot. His door was open. Randall saw everything, the man lying on the
floor bleeding and twitching towards his rapid death, and the assailant, whose
face he hadn’t seen, running out and down the fire escape. For two days and two nights Randall wandered
the streets, grabbing a bit of sleep wherever he could, and then he saw Barbara
staring at him stupidly near Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park. From that time on he lived with her. He was back at university working on his
master’s in social work. Barbara had
returned to the antiquarian bookstore where they’d first met in the
seventies. She worked there again part
time. She was feeling well and strong
enough to work even if she didn’t need the money.
Her flush of joy
was giving way to boredom and restlessness.
She needed to move, to be active and busy. There was no immediate need to do housework. She was sick of reading. Beacon Hill Park wasn’t far, but first there
were a couple of details to attend to.
She brought out of the closet the neatly folded blue cotton fabric she
had worn as a chiton on the night of the party where she first had met
Rafael. In her hand were the two
faux-scarab brooches that had held the fabric together over her shoulders, the
art-nouveau serpent bracelet that had adorned her left upper arm. Long gone were the sandals she had worn. These she rolled together neatly and tucked
under her arm as she left for the park.
Rafael she still
tried to see whenever she visited Vancouver.
He had been released from hospital and now lived in a mental health
boarding home. He was always glad to see
her. She couldn’t imagine now that she
had ever been frightened of him, that he could ever have held any sort of threat
or menace over her. He was no longer
sinister, but had become very sweet and obliging. It was, she had mentioned to Randall, as if
he had been subjected to an exorcism.
All his strength had come from the diabolical energy that had enslaved
him. Now he was an empty shell, a
groveling remnant of what he once was.
She had also been to see Glen, Steven and Pierre many times, now all
ensconced in that wealthy widow’s grand house in Shaughnessy. She and Randall both had come to stay there
during their visits to Vancouver, though both confessed feeling ambivalent
about being surrounded by people suffering in the final stages of AIDS.
She made her way to
the bluffs, taking the wooden stairs down to the rocks below where she found a
sheltered ledge of rock where she could remain safely dry at high tide. Further
down, as the tide was already coming in, she set on a rock her folded fabric,
with the brooches and bracelet. As she
settled in on the sheltered ledge, she watched and waited dreamily, before
falling asleep. When she awoke, the
waters had risen, and this final remnant of Barbara’s troubled past had been
carried out to sea.
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