Eleanor Rigby (3 page)

“What?”

“Sad movies. Painkillers make them seem sadder than they really are.”

“I love crying at sad movies.”

“Oh. Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you.”

“Liam said he was sending a courier.”

“I thought it’d be better if I came instead.”

Not only is Donna a watcher, she’s also a minor tattle-tale, and she’s no cretin. She scanned my apartment like it was so many bar-coded groceries. Doubtless the lunchroom was due for a guided playback the next day:
It’s like a spinster’s cellblock—almost nothing on the walls, furniture chosen by a colour-blind nun and, weirdest of all, no cats.

Donna said, “Nice place.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“It’s adequate.”

“I think it’s nice.”

“Are those the files Liam asked me to pick away at?”

“These?” She’d forgotten about them while she was doing her sweep. “Yes, they are. Nothing too complex, I hope. You must be kind of wooey from the drugs.” She put the files on the dining table.

“Would you like some?”

She was shocked. “What—your drugs?”

“I was just kidding.”

“Oh.” She fished around for something to say, but my condo was almost entirely devoid of conversation fodder. On the TV screen she saw Thumper frozen on
PAUSE.
“You’re watching
Bambi
, huh?”

I tried to be chatty. “You know, I’m thirty-six and I’ve never seen it before.”

“It’s so depressing. You know—Mrs. Bambi being shot and all.”

This surprised me. “I didn’t know that.”

“You didn’t know? Everybody knows that Bambi’s mother gets shot. It’s like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer—part of the culture.”

I considered this. “You mean Rudolph the
Useful
Reindeer.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s be honest, if Rudolph hadn’t been able to help the other reindeer, they’d have left him to the wolves—and laughed while the fangs punctured his hide.”

“That’s a grim way of looking at it.”

I sighed and stared at the files Donna had brought me.

She changed the subject. She nodded at a Monet print of lilies at Giverny beside the kitchen. “Nice poster.”

“My sister gave it to me.”

“It suits you.”

“It was left over when she redecorated her office.”

Donna blew a fuse. “Liz, why do you have to be so negative? This is a great place. You ought to be happy with it. I live in a dump, and the rent’s half my salary.”

“Can I make you some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I have to head back to the office.”

“You sure?”

“I have to go.”

I saw her to the door and returned to the movie, and realized that knowing about Bambi’s mother didn’t spoil it. So I was happy.

At the end, I checked the year it was made:
MCMXLII
—
1942
. Even Bambi was long dead by now. He’s soil, as are Thumper and Flower. Deer have up to an eighteen-year lifespan; rabbits, twelve; skunks, at most thirteen. And being soil doesn’t sound like such a bad idea really, moist and granular like raspberry oatmeal muffins. Soil is alive—it has to be in order for it to nourish new life. So, in a way, it’s not remotely deathlike. Burial is nice that way.

*    *    *

William, my older brother and possibly my best friend, waited until the evening to check up on me, right after
On the Beach.
In the truest sense of the word, I was sitting there speechless as the credits rolled and I contemplated an entire radioactive planet populated with decomposed bodies sitting in their offices, kitchens, in cars and on front lawns. When he came in, I don’t even think I said hello—I merely sniffled, but the
verklempt
mood fled the moment I saw my two essentially evil nephews, Hunter and Chase, run in after him.

“Lizzie, Jesus, your eyes look like two piss holes in the snow. I can’t stay long. I have to fly to London on a red-eye.”

“Hello, William.”

The twins groaned in harmony, “We’re hu
nnnnnnn
gry,” followed by Chase saying to his father, making no attempt to masquerade his feelings, “Aunt Lizzie’s place blows. You said we could go to the arcade.”

I said, “Hello, Hunter. Hello, Chase,” who, as usual, ignored me.

William addressed his sons. “Well, if I’d told you we were going to Lizzie’s, then I’d never have gotten you into the car.”

“You lied!”

“I did not, and if—and only
if
—you behave, I might still take you to your arcade, so shut the crap up and leave us alone.” William then glanced at me: “I’m turning into Father,” he said.

“Turning? You’re already there.”

The twins had invaded the kitchen and spotted the remains. “Any more Jell-O left?”

“No.”

“I hate coming here.”

“Thank you, Chase. Have some pudding.”

“We can’t eat dairy.”

I looked at William. “Since when?”

“It’s from Nancy’s side of the family,” he said.

“Have some crackers, boys. They’re in the second drawer from the top.”

They looked, saw it was only saltines and slammed the drawer shut. “Hunter, let’s watch TV.” Chase was always the leader.

Within moments, they’d colonized my couch and barnacled themselves onto a pro wrestling event. The noise was cheap and booming, but at least it shut them up.

“You didn’t have to come visit, William. I’m fine. It’s just wisdom teeth.”

“Mother said you looked pretty bad. And pretty depressed, too.”

“She did?”

“It smells like an ashtray in here.”

“I smoke sometimes. And Leslie came for a visit.”

“That would explain it. Let’s open those godawful curtains. Where’d you find them—a Greek bingo hall?”

The curtains came with the place. They were mustard yellow, with orange-and-gold brocade, and I suspect the contractor’s wife chose them.

“William, stop. I know how dreary it is, okay?” Was my place really
that
depressing? On the carpet I saw two small, faint ovals from where I over-cleaned bits of the carpet—a slice of pizza that landed the wrong way, and a Sharpie pen I dropped while wrapping Christmas presents.

“Nancy couldn’t make it. She sends her wishes,” my brother said.

“Send her mine as well.” This was a joke, as William’s wife, Nancy, and I don’t tolerate each other. I told her once at Thanksgiving that she wore too much perfume. Her riposte was that my hair looked like a toupée, and our relationship never recovered. This kind of rift only ever widens.

A squawk came from the couch. Chase had pushed a button on the remote that somehow obliterated the TV’s ability to receive a cable signal, and white noise blared at full volume, setting my remaining teeth on edge. The boys argued over whose fault it was, and then screamed about how to fix it, finally deigning to ask me. I pretended not to know, in hopes it might speed their departure. William manually turned off the TV, and swatted each of the boys on the back of the head. “We’re in someone else’s house, you little jerks.” The boys began to sniffle, but then William said, “Nice try, you little crybabies. Tears may work on your mother, but don’t try that on me, okay?” He turned to me. “Jesus, Lizzie, do you have any Scotch or something?”

“Baileys. From Christmas.”

“Why not?”

Chase asked, “What’s Baileys?”

“Something you’re not getting,” his father replied.

The boys went quiet, too quiet. The room’s air felt warm and bloated, just waiting for a lightning bolt—which I then delivered. I said, “Did your father ever tell you that I once found a dead body?”

Their eyes bulged. “What?” They looked to William for confirmation.

“Yes, she did.”

“Where? When?”

“Lizzie, it was in, what, grade six?”

“Five. I was the same age as you two are now.”

“How?”

William said, “If you two would just shut up, maybe we’ll find out.”

I handed my brother his Baileys. “I was walking on the railway tracks.”

“Where?”

“Out by Horseshoe Bay.”

Hunter asked, “By yourself?”

Chase looked at me and said, “Aunt Lizzie, do you have
friends?”

I said, “Yes,
thank you
, Chase. In any event, it was summer, and I was picking blackberries—by myself. I rounded a corner and I saw a shirt in the fireweed on an embankment. People huck all sorts of things from trains—mostly juice boxes and pop cans—so I didn’t pay it too much attention. But as I walked closer, I saw some more colour there—a shirt and then shoes. And then I realized it was a man.”

*    *    *

That much was true. It was indeed a man, but I only gave the boys my PG-
13
version of the event. They were the same age I had been when it happened, but somehow Chase and Hunter seemed younger than their years. Look at me—here I am being biased against them in the same way people were against me throughout the dead body episode.

Here’s what happened: It was August and I’d been quite happy to be by myself for the entire afternoon, taking several buses out to Horseshoe Bay, having a quick cheeseburger at a concession stand near the ferry terminal, and then hiking up steep hills and piles of blasted rock to the PGE rail line. I was wearing a blue-and-white gingham dress, which I hated, but it kept me cool, and a day’s walk on the rails would kill it with oils and chemicals and dirt, so I could live with it for one more day. You might ask, what was a twelve-year-old girl doing alone in a semi-remote place near a big city? Simple answer: it was the seventies. Past a certain age, children just did their thing, with little concern shown by their parents for what, where, when or with whom. Chase and Hunter probably have chips embedded in their tailbones linked up to a Microsoft death-satellite that informs William and Nancy where they are at all times. But back then?

“Mom, is it okay if I hitchhike to the biker bar?”

“Sure, dear.”

It was a baking July day, all scents were amplified, and I smelled something quite awful. Actually, I immediately guessed that the odour was that of a partially decomposed body. Knowledge of this smell must be innate. As I approached it, I was almost happy; I liked to think a short lifetime of detective novels, TV shows and secret visions had prepared me for this moment. A crime to solve. Clues to locate.

I’d never seen a dead body before. Kids at school had seen car crashes, which made me jealous, but this? This was
murder
, and a grisly one at that. The man’s body had been severed at the waist, the two halves positioned at a right angle. The corpse’s lower half was wearing a floral print skirt and knee-high boots, and the top half was wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt. The face was untouched, a quite handsome man’s face, grey at this point, in spite of thick makeup: flaking foundation, mascara and one false eyelash, still attached. Flies buzzed all around. I wondered who this man had been, and why he’d been wearing a skirt.

The skirt. Here’s something shameful I’ve never told anybody before: I took a piece of alder branch, stripped it of leaves and then went over to the lower half of the body. I needed to lift up the skirt and see whether the—well, whether the bottom half went with the top—and it did—with no underwear, either.

Who could have done this to him? I looked around, and nary a weed or daisy stem nearby had been bent or bloodied. There was no evidence that the cutting and splattering had occurred on location. Even to a twelve-year-old, it was pretty obvious the body had been dumped. I stood there in the heat, suddenly thirsty. I remember that it was the corpse’s makeup that confused me more than the body, or even the skirt.

I am not a callous person, and have never been. I imagine most people might have vomited or looked away, but I simply didn’t. That’s how coroners must feel. I can only imagine that one is, or is not, born with squeamishness. Surgery scenes on TV? I’m in. To be blunt, finding the body seemed to affect me about as much as an uncooked roast.

And also—and this is something I didn’t pinpoint until years later—being that close to something so totally dead made me feel … infinite—immortal.

I was standing there immobile for maybe five minutes before I heard a train off in the distance, coming from the north, from Squamish. It was the Royal Hudson, an old-fashioned steam train refurbished and converted into a tourist attraction, chugging down the Howe Sound fjord. I stood beside the body amid the fireweed, chamomile and dandelions to await the train’s approach. I kept looking between the body and the bend in the track around which the train would come, as the steaming and chugging came closer and closer.

Finally, the Royal Hudson huffed around the bend. I stood in the middle of the tracks, the scent of creosote from the trestles burning my nostrils, and waved my arms. The conductor later said he almost popped a blood vessel seeing me there. He clamped on the brakes, and the squealing was unlike any noise I’d heard until then. It was so shrill it collapsed time and space. I think that was the moment I stopped being a child. Not the corpse, but the noise.

The engine stopped a few cars past the body and me. The conductor, whose name was Ben, and his partner jumped down, cursing me for pulling such a prank. I simply pointed at the severed body.

“What the—? Barry. Come over here.” Ben looked at me. “Kid, get away from this thing.”

“No.”

“Look, kiddo, I said—”

I just stared at him.

Barry came over, took a look and promptly vomited. Ben came closer, and he dealt with the corpse simply by not looking at it. Meanwhile, I couldn’t look at it enough. He said, “Jesus, kid—are you some sort of freak?”

“I found him. He’s mine.”

Barry radioed the authorities from the engine. Of course, the tourists were gawking from the train’s windows, snapping away. I suppose these days photos would be posted on the Internet within hours, but back then there was only the local papers, none of which were allowed to publish either news or photos of the body until the next of kin had been found and notified. And so, while the passengers tried to hop out of the cars to check out the action, Barry was able to feel useful screaming at them to get back in. By the time the authorities arrived, he had the cheese-grater voice of an aged starlet.