The Glass Harmonica (38 page)

If the idea was to make him fit the surroundings, she thought, then it's gone wrong. All wrong, and she was far too late to ever come close to fixing it. Because it would be over before she found the nerve to stand up and yell at them that they had to stop, that this wasn't Ronnie in front of them at all, that they should be looking at the pictures she had from when he was five years old.

“Look!” she wanted to yell. “Just look at the pictures from Bellevue Beach, when he looked like any other boy with a bucket in the sand.” The baseball picture where his pants were too big, where he was trying so hard to look like a professional ballplayer, the bat in his hands held up over his shoulder. She was almost ready to burst with it, wanting to tell them how little of Ronnie they were seeing in the prisoner's box, that they were getting ready to make a decision based on one little part of him, one instant of time that wasn't really Ronnie at all. That they were looking at one single frame of a much longer film, and that they hadn't even heard about her father yet, and how he poisoned everyone he came in contact with. That they couldn't possibly understand why it wasn't Ronnie's fault—they knew only one small inch of him, yet they were ready to judge him based on that.

And in front of her, the court was busy unfolding like any piece of judicial choreography ever does, everyone dancing forwards along a straight line that they seemed to understand and expect. Only she and Ronnie were strangers to it.

That wasn't right, because Ronnie was supposed to be the most important part, she thought—wasn't he?

“The Queen versus Ronald Michael Collins, in the murder of Dennis Conners, murder in the second degree.”

The judge was asking for something, and from below him a court clerk passed up a slim file with bright numbers on a tab, a whole line of them in a row, like Ronnie was just one case out of thousands.

“Can we deal with this now, then?” the judge said, pushing his reading glasses down his nose and staring over the top of them at the lawyers. “Or should we be looking at setting dates?”

Ronnie's lawyer up on his feet, clad in a black gown like a polyester crow, his hands tucked behind his back, elbows out like wings. “I think we can go ahead now, your Honour.”

Next to him, the lawyer for the prosecution simply nodded, his legs crossed, not even bothering to find his feet.

“All right, then. Ronald Collins—how do you plead?”

“Guilty,” Ronnie said.

Helen felt her breath catch, her ribs lock, all air stopping its movement.
Wait
, she thought. Thought it so clearly that it was as if the word should be right up there over her head in big square silver capital letters. Then,
Waitwaitwaitwait
and
Stop
. But she didn't say a word out loud, and nothing stopped.

188
A
McKay Street

RON COLLINS

OCTOBER 3, 2006

R
ONNIE
said the word “Guilty” and it felt far easier than he had thought it would. At the same time, he couldn't help but feel that the whole courtroom had changed, like the air pressure had changed, the way a room sometimes feels when the topic of conversation takes a sudden and unexpected turn. But for Ron himself, it felt like one more step along a straight line that stretched back to the very first things he could even remember.

And Ron was strangely concerned that Liz wasn't in the courtroom. He hadn't missed that, hadn't got that wrong, even though he had been steeling himself for weeks for the idea that she wouldn't be there. He had hoped to see her in the courtroom, wanted her to know that he was saving her from what his lawyer would have done to her, to know that he believed even if she didn't.

His eyes had swept the courtroom as they had taken the cuffs off, and he was certain she wasn't there. He'd expected her and he hadn't expected her, and it hit him hard. He wanted to look her in the eyes, just to see if there was still a way that messages could pass between them without words.

He saw his mother, though, front and centre—all alone in one of the front benches, looking like she had simply settled into place, dropped out of the heavens in absolutely perfect form.

“You will be remanded in custody until a sentencing hearing on the fifteenth of December,” the judge said, but Ronnie wasn't really listening to the judge anymore, and the fact was, he didn't really care. The guards would be sure to have him there on time, stuffed in the van in his court suit with the leg irons on, and he wouldn't so much as have to look at a clock or a calendar unless he decided that was something he wanted to do. That's the way Bart would think about it, Ron thought, and the idea of it made him smile.

Out in the hall, the guards put both the cuffs and the leg shackles on. “You're officially dangerous now,” one guard said.

Across the hall, Ron saw Len Menchinton sitting outside another courtroom. He was wearing a suit and looked uncomfortable too. “Witness or defendant?” Ron called over to him, smiling.

“Witness. It gets to Supreme Court when the thefts get real big,” Len said.

“Could be worse,” Ron said, holding up his wrists like he wanted to shake Len's hand, the chains noisy. “How's Ingrid?”

“Not bad, Ron. Not bad.” Then Len watched as Ron was led away, thinking there was something about Ron Collins all of a sudden that he couldn't quite put his finger on. And Len was used to being able to put his finger on things.

Back in his cell, Ronnie saw Bart Dolimont stretched out flat on the lower bunk, his leg in the cast with his foot up on the pillow, reading a book.

“What'cha get?” Dolimont asked.

“Don't know. Sentencing's postponed for two months. Don't care.”

“That's the spirit. At least you know who you are. In here, you're just another lifer.” Bart Dolimont smiled. “They'll send you to Dorchester after the sentencing, but that's okay. That's the rules. If any sentence is for anything more than two years, it's federal time, and that means the pen in Dorchester, New Brunswick. And whatever you get, you know it's gotta be federal time.”

Bart swung his legs down off the bed slowly, the one in the cast first, letting it settle to the floor before bringing his other foot down. “Some ways, maybe it's nicer here, closer to home. But the rules there are pretty much the same anywhere. And you know what they say—a change is as good as a rest.” Dolimont stopped for a moment, thoughtful. “Besides,” he continued, “maybe I could get sent up there too. I got me an ace in the hole, Ronnie, an ace in the hole. A little federal time, it might hit the spot for a guy like me, getting older.” He looked at the back of his hand as if he were trying to read the rings on a piece of wood. “They catch you stealing stuff, they always expect you to run, and I can't even be bothered to run anymore, Ronnie boy. If I stay here, I'll end up being the only thief trying to get out of the mall behind a walker.”

Dolimont started to stand, and Ron reached over and grabbed his hand, pulling the man up.

“You know the routine,” Dolimont said. “It's lunchtime. And Thursday's chips and gravy day anyway.”

Outside, there was shouting somewhere on the range, but it didn't have anything to do with him. And then it hit Ronnie right square between the eyes, as forcefully as if Bart had reached over and belted him one: None of it had anything to do with him anymore. For once, he'd have no history at all, except for whatever his sentence turned out to be—no past, no relatives, no neighbours shaking their heads. Ronnie realized it the way someone realizes that they're falling into a hole, understanding the fall before they hit bottom but long after there's anything they can do about it.

Then, for the first time since he'd dropped the shovel handle next to Dennis Conners's body, Ron Collins started to laugh—really laugh, his stomach lurching until the muscles hurt with the effort—and he laughed until tears ran down his face, until Bart Dolimont struggled over to him and started to pound him on the back, convinced that Ronnie either had started choking or else had lost his mind entirely.

32
McKay Street

GLENN COUGHLIN

AUGUST 14, 1980

K
EITH'S
not here, Glenn. He's got an extra shift tonight. I thought that if anyone knew that, you would have,” Evelyn said.

Glenn Coughlin had come boiling straight in through the door like he owned the place, like always. Glenn Coughlin, smelling like grease and welding rods. Smelling like Keith's smell. But different, too. Glenn Coughlin closing the door behind him, checking the lock. Thumb and forefinger turning the never-closed lock with a quiet snick. Glenn in his forties then, big and square and strong.

The windows were all open, the curtains touched now and then with the slight breeze darting in, but mostly they were hanging straight down.

The air still. Ten-thirty and airlessly hot, St. John's houses not designed for heat, flat black tar roofs, the people under them never really getting around to expecting the heat until it was piled all over them like extra blankets they couldn't shed.

Evelyn was standing in the doorway to the living room, the television lighting the room behind her with moving blues and greens. Hands up in front of her breasts, sheltering already. Wearing a skirt that hung just below her knees. Wishing now that she was wearing something else.

“I know, Ev,” Glenn said. “Keith's on the double, working on some Russian boat with hull damage. They hit something in the night in open ocean, no one on watch to see anything. They sank it, probably, and they don't even know what it was.”

He stopped talking. Smiled. Not a nice smile, Evelyn thought.

“I know all that,” he said. He looked at his fingernails for a moment, as if hunting down some particularly stubborn dirt under the hard rims. “I also know whatever they hit was painted red. And I know Keith's down welding in the bow tubes, that he's got another three hours of work down there if there's a minute of it, packed in tight enough that he can barely lift his arms up, the fans sucking the torch smoke out. But I wasn't looking for him, was I?”

Glenn's hand smelled of cigarette smoke when it was up next to the side of her face, and Evelyn turned her chin away in shock at the close familiarity of his touch. He had crossed the distance between them in a single motion, one long step. His other hand was set now in the curve in the small of her back.

“How'd you get stuck with Keith, anyway?” Glenn said, close enough to the side of her face that she could feel the heat of his exhaled breath. “He's just a little man, Ev, thinks he's somethin' special, bigger than he really is.”

“You shouldn't be here, Glenn,” Evelyn said.

She said the words even though she recognized that they sounded flat the moment they came out of her mouth, flat and resigned, as if they were really only the things she felt she was supposed to say and didn't have the strength or conviction to carry off properly.

The things you're supposed to say to keep up appearances. The things you say for form. She knew she was supposed to throw them out there, and she knew already that Glenn was going to ignore them.

She also knew that everything was going to unfold the way she realized it would the moment she saw him coming through the door. That he was bigger and stronger than her, and that everything she did now was a matter of hedging bets, of making the best out of the worst.