Web of Angels (12 page)

“So this is the famous dining room,” Debra said. The window faced south, an arm’s length from the house next door. The dining room was crammed from end to end, a mishmash of things. No pictures on the wall. Lyssa would have liked pictures. That was the problem with being out in the world. You started wanting to make it yours.

“Famous how?” she asked, scratching an itchy bump on her shoulder. She was standing barefoot on a chair, working her way through the oak cabinet from the top shelf down. Sharon might know where everything was, but she wasn’t close and Lyssa had no idea how to find the toad-sucking sweater. She wanted to go back inside, but nobody else was coming.

“Cathy’s always going on about your house. She’s fascinated by the mess in here.” Debra sat on the edge of a chair as if she’d catch some germs if she leaned back, one leg crossed over the other, elegant in dark stockings and ankle boots. Her skirt was short and it didn’t look dumb on her. How lucky was that? “My daughter thinks it’s wonderful to have a dining room that is never used for eating.” Debra was multi-tasking, replying to her e-mail and text messages.

“I’m sure if Cathy’s interested, Sharon could teach her to knit.” Eleanor bent to pick up another bag from the floor, looking for a place to put it, then plopped it on the table beside the sewing machine.

Debra glanced up from her e-mail. “I wish I had time for a hobby. It’s hard enough to keep up with medical journals.

I expect that it’ll be better when I’m on leave from the practice and I’m just a mom for a while. It must be nice having nothing to do. I only took a couple of months off with each of my daughters. I had to have a nanny …” Under her makeup, Debra’s forehead wrinkled. “I took Heather to a top psychiatrist. Last night I found her pills stuffed into a crack along her windowsill.” The storm of words suddenly stopped as she stared at Eleanor, an ordinary mom in velveteen sweats the colour of plums, straight dark hair cut to chin length, conscious of her double chin, uncomfortable with those eyes boring into her. “Where was I?”

“You’re looking forward to some time at home.” Eleanor pulled down her sweatshirt so that when she bent forward to pick up something, no skin would show, no rolls of fat.

“We were talking about renovating after our last tenant left. At least the kitchen. Then you can be picky about who rents from you.” Debra opened her leather bag, eyes lowered as she dug through its many compartments for her chequebook. She looked up again, gazing at Eleanor with incredulity. “How did you ever convince me?”

Lyssa looked harder for the sweater now. Inside a box, she found several skeins of sparkly yarn, a jar of peculiar buttons.

“It was just supposed to be temporary. Until Ingrid and Amy were able to buy.” Eleanor busied herself moving the sewing machine to clear a space on the table. It was a forty-year-old Kenmore, all metal and heavy enough to make a
thunk
on the sideboard as she put it down, covering up the clink of something that fell unremarked from Debra’s bag.

“Why do people feel they have to mind everyone else’s
business?” Debra asked. Her civility was fraying here in close quarters.

“Hey,” Lyssa said. “I found it.”

“Terrific.” Snapping her bag shut, Debra put her chequebook on the table, opened it, and filled out a cheque, writing with a swift efficient hand. “Here you are.” Her shoulder turned slightly to shut out Eleanor, the busybody mom and her hundred tasteless knick-knacks.

“Thanks.” Lyssa folded the cheque, stuck it in the money jar, shoved it out of sight.

“Not at all. I should be thanking you for taking care of my daughter. We’ll have to have you over soon. I’ll call.”

“Sure, okay,” Lyssa said.

“Brilliant.” Debra slung her bag over her shoulder, and turned on her heel.

After locking the door behind her, Lyssa returned to the dining room. She had a few choice words to say about Debra, but nothing came out, for the money jar stood empty on the table, the contents upended into the space her sister-in-law had cleared. The dollars sat there in a pile, quivering, wanting to be more than they were. Payment for some baby outfits. For a quilt. Bookkeeping cheques in a neat pile. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“If you cleaned up in here, you’d have a real dining room,” Eleanor said.

“Like I care.”

“It’s a pigsty.” Eleanor might be unsuccessful, she was certainly fat, but she was not messy and her mortgage was paid off and if she couldn’t say that to Debra, she could
make her sister-in-law feel as bad as she did. “This cheque is five months old.”

“Bite me.” But the words didn’t come out with the right kind of zip.

“Why didn’t you deposit these? There’s about two thousand dollars right here.”

“I don’t know. I’ll get around to it.” Now would be a good time for someone else to come forward, but she couldn’t feel anyone nearby. They were busy or they didn’t care, and she was shut out.

“When the cheques are stale-dated? Let’s see how much you’ve got in cash—don’t interrupt, I’ll lose my count.” Eleanor’s lips moved.
Forty-five, fifty-five, seventy-five, eighty
. When she was done she wrote something down on a piece of paper. “How much have you paid for yarn and fabric?”

“I don’t know,” Lyssa said. The pile of money was making her sick. It was too small a pile. That was the point. Too small because she was a dirty, lazy …

“You need someone to straighten you out.”

“And you think you’re the boss of everybody. You’re just like your mom.”

Eleanor glared. “I’m nothing like her. If I were, you know what I’d say?”

“What?” Lyssa asked though she knew, having found the words online in numerous languages.

Eleanor was peering at her as if she’d finally seen through her sister-in-law’s nice front to the trash behind it. She stood up quickly. “Oh, crap. You look awful. Are you sick?” She put out her hand to touch Lyssa’s forehead.

“No!” Lyssa jerked away. On the table there was a crumpled twenty and a ten sticking out, a five folded in half and some bills she couldn’t identify alongside the piece of paper with its figures that she couldn’t read because her eyes were blurring.

Eleanor shoved the money back into the jar, putting it away in the oak cabinet where it had been stashed. “You’ve got to lie down. Can you make it upstairs?”

Lyssa shook her head. “Couch.” She had to get herself together to pick up Emmie from school. She’d promised Emmie a piggyback on the way home. She could make it to the couch without puking if she just kept her mouth shut. It was a short hobble to the living room with Dan’s leather chair in a corner, the re-covered wing chair beside it, a vase on the coffee table, the flowery couch. Lyssa flopped down and stared at the ceiling while Eleanor disappeared into the kitchen. A whistle, the kettle boiling.

“Ginger tea. Sit up,” Eleanor said, handing a mug to Lyssa.

“Thanks.” Gingery steam curled up from the cup. She blew on it and drank. Her stomach settled, her palms no longer clammy.

Sitting beside her, Eleanor cupped her mug, eyes lowered, her voice contrite. “If I hadn’t stuck my nose in … Every time I see Debra or any of them, I think it’s my fault.”

“Shut up. Listen,” Lyssa paused, gathering information. “If it wasn’t a gun it would have been something else and the baby might have died, too. That’s what Debra said herself.”

“She did?”

“Yup. She was just being a pighead.” She tried to grin.

“I guess Debra’s entitled for a while.”

Above Hammond Street, a train whistled like an echo to the kettle. If Lyssa had a camera, she would walk along the train tracks looking for every lovely thing she could see through the viewfinder. Nesting birds, wildflowers in spring, geese returning north. And her feet would run across clouds to the northern lights where she’d dance with the solar wind. But she didn’t have a camera nor anything except a body that was, for the moment, hers.

“Hey, Ellie, we should go to Hammond House soon. How long has it been since you went dancing?”

“I’ll go dancing if you come shooting with me and Ingrid.” The light had come back into Eleanor’s eyes, dimples flashing in her plump cheeks.

“You’ve got to be kidding. After what happened?”

“Yes, because of that,” Eleanor said. “Ingrid’s a good friend. I want to show some faith in her.”

As Eleanor spoke, Lyssa could feel Alec move in behind her.
So now you show up
, she said inside.
It took a while
, he said;
I don’t know why, it just did. Oh sure
, she said, wanting to stay mad. But on the outside Eleanor was talking about taking her shopping for new clothes, and on the inside Alec stayed close even though he rolled his eyes.

In the dining room, a thin grey rectangle lay on the floor, unnoticed beneath the table.

T
he set-up of the Garrison Shooting Club hadn’t changed in sixty years. There were wooden dividers, gun rests, metal poles with paper targets—bull’s eyes only, no human figures. One of these days the club, down at heel, would have to close, much to the satisfaction of most of Seaton Grove. But that day hadn’t yet come. In the meantime the average age of membership was seventy-two, having come down from seventy-seven by the influx of some strays who had ended up in the vicinity, now indulged and cherished by the club, even women like Ingrid, whose sexual orientation was a matter of indifference to these odd old men who stubbornly clung to their club. The only compromise with modernity was a loudspeaker to amplify the whispery voice of the shooter in charge.

“Hello Ingrid,” he said. “Brought your friends?” Vernon was eighty-eight. When he was young, he’d been thin-shouldered and homely. Now he was an old man like other old men, only better, because he still drove his car to the shooting club every day. And it was a good car, reliable,
comfortable, without those plastic bits that always broke off in cheaper cars.

“Yes, Vernon. They’re my guests.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, checking that everyone had earplugs as Ingrid unpacked the duffle bag. The shooting club was named for Garrison Creek, which had run south, emptying into the lake near the fort on its shore. Two hundred years ago under the general’s orders, the soldiers had chopped down the forest to build the first road up over the ridge. The deforested land had been divided into estates, and the gentlemen of the estates had formed the club. “Nice gun you got there.”

“It’s accurate,” she shouted back. Vernon turned off his hearing aids when he was at the club.

“Yup, that Remington Nylon is a good rifle.” Happy to see new people, he handed them each a paper target, black background with white circles in the centre, a lighter background with dark circles on the outside.

Ingrid picked up three metal poles, each of them topped by a square of corrugated cardboard wedged into a notch. While she taped the targets to the cardboard, her friends looked around. Three of the stalls were occupied. There were two old men standing to shoot. One of them had a palsy that made his gun shake while he reloaded it, but not while he was shooting. The owner of the candy-coloured house sat on a stool, his rifle on the gun rest. He was a newcomer to the shooting range, apparently looking for another hobby, for the time being finished with decorating his house. Taking off sunglasses now that they were indoors, Eleanor’s
sister-in-law noted the exits on either side before casting a glance at the club members.

“You want to go first?” Eleanor asked.

“Naw. Your idea. You go ahead,” Alec said. There were eight stalls with gun rests and stools for those who wanted to sit while shooting. Twenty-five yards from each stall was a metal stand that held the target poles.

Vernon was picking up the phone receiver, his voice coming through the loudspeakers as he called, “Shooters, unlatch your guns and move back from the shooting area.”

The two old men and the owner of the candy-coloured house waited while Vernon walked up and down with a good firm step, being the man in charge as he checked the range and made sure that all the guns were disabled. Any shots in a wall or ceiling meant immediate dismissal from the club. When it was all clear, he told the men to fetch their targets and the women to put up theirs. Then Vernon walked through again, even though anyone could see that all the shooters were at their stalls. But there was a way to do things, and walking through was one of them.

“Commence shooting,” he announced.

Ingrid loaded the rifle for Eleanor, showing her how to keep her finger away from the trigger, look through the sight and pull when she was ready. Once she was set up, Ingrid moved to the next stall, holding her handgun with both hands, long fingers wrapped around it as she looked carefully at the target. Shoot. Kick. Pistol veering up. Shoot, kick. She had a Beretta M9. A good gun if you had big enough hands for it. Hers weren’t as steady as they ought to be while
she fired. Alec wondered if it was the same gun that Heather had used, and, if it was, whether he could hold it any steadier. At one time, he’d have been sure of that. Now he looked at the gun, picturing a girl with awkwardly small hands, a barrel pressed into her ear. Did the baby hear the shot? Heather had taken no chances with turning herself into a vegetable, using the wall and pillows to support her back, head and arm, making sure she had the gun angled right. That was what he’d heard.