Brian Panhuyzen
Night is a Shadow
Cast By the World
TORTOISESHELL & BLACK
Toronto
Copyright © Brian Panhuyzen 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Smashwords Edition
v.1.91
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA
CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Panhuyzen, Brian, 1966–
Night is a shadow cast by the
world [electronic resource] / Brian Panhuyzen.
Type of computer file: Electronic monograph.
ISBN 978-1-896901-30-5
I. Title.
PS8581.A638N53 2011 C813'.54 C2011-904989-9
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for Kathleen
“The best I can wish, my child,”
so said the Fairy Blackstick
in Thackeray’s
The Rose and the Ring,
“is a little
misfortune.”
~as quoted in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
Tender is the Night
Marla
Chapter 1
THE SUN HAS RISEN UPON INDIA, even as here, twelve thousand kilometres away in a town two hours north of Toronto, the Earth’s motion turns the vast, green field beyond the window towards night.
Marla watches the house’s shadow rise into the yard and pass through the chainlink fence, ready to begin its trek across the field.
It would be a perfect moment if Cordell were not so agitated. She glances up at him as he stares through the window, sees him wrench and twist the dish towel in his hands, wrestling with the moment, as if anticipating something. She sets a plate into the drying rack. He stands motionless, staring, then abruptly snatches up the dish, whisks the towel over its top and bottom, and sets it onto the stack in the cupboard.
She lifts another plate from the water and foams it with the brush, passes it through the stream from the faucet.
This plate lies neglected within the rack’s ribs as Cordell’s attention remains fixed on something beyond the window. Marla follows his gaze to the field, the green hills beyond it, but her survey retreats to the tall mast set inside the fence, on which flutters a sausage of orange fabric, the sleeve of a dismembered windbreaker mounted to serve as a windsock. Her gloved hands explore the sink’s depths, seeking cutlery. She clears her throat, interrupting Cordell’s reverie, and he snaps up the plate, tumbles it within the towel, and bangs it on the stack.
“How were things at the shop today?” she asks carefully.
“Oh,” he snaps. “Quiet.”
“Anything rare and exciting come in?”
“Nothing. We’re expecting a box from Thailand on Monday.”
“Ah,” she says. “That’s rather unusual.”
“Yes. A lot of rare books turn up there in English bookstores. Asia is an untapped market.”
He looks down at her from his great height, their eyes locked, but then he is gone, his gaze drawn away by the field, the windsock. Marla scrubs knives and forks, says, “I haven’t seen that out in awhile.”
“No. What?”
“The windsock.”
“Yes. I . . . I was hoping to fly one of my kites this evening. Before it gets dark.”
“Ah,” she says, feeling something like relief. “Well,” she adds. “We’re almost done.”
Working faster now she pulls a saucer from the foam, scrubbing, setting it in the rack, drawing out forks, scrubbing, rinsing, dropping them into the basket. When she looks up the bungalow’s shadow is halfway across the field, and the sky’s brassy hue is fading, tarnishing. Windsock stirring. The last spoon. Cordell picks it up, folds it into the towel.
She is reaching for the stopper when something tremendous thunders over the house, rattling the plates and glasses in the cupboard, launching Galina, their black and white Border collie, from her cushion on the living room windowsill into a frenzy of barking.
“What was that?” Marla cries, looking at the ceiling. But Cordell doesn’t reply; he is staring through the window, his expression incredulous. He throws down the towel and bolts from the kitchen. Marla, her gloved hands still submerged in dishwater, hears the back door open and close, and watches Cordell jog through the backyard and out the gate into the field. He is looking south, the direction in which the roar was travelling. Marla leans forward, trying to see what he sees, but her view is obstructed by the window’s frame. She turns her attention to Cordell, who is frozen just beyond the gate, fixated on the southern sky. Despite his lankiness he seems small against the field’s expanse, and his brown hair sticks out in all directions. The back of his shirt is untucked.
“Cordell!” she calls through the open window. He does not turn. She hears from far off a low drone, growing in strength. “Cordell!”
The noise descends in pitch, softens, and coughs before catching again. Then it ceases completely, is replaced by an increasing rumble. Something big approaching. Cordell stares southwards. Marla presses her belly to the counter’s rim, straining to see.
An aeroplane appears, a silver relic from another age, a craft of rare antiquity to those accustomed to jets that crisscross the skies of this late twentieth century. It blinks in the gaps of sunlight shining between the houses fringing the field. The plane is big, with a windmilling propeller on each wing, and it rides a pair of fat tires up front and a smaller wheel under the tail. She squints to spy the pilot through the windscreen but the glass is gilded with sunlight. Each of the seven windows along its flank appears vacant. The craft’s nose is blue and displays an illustration of a cartoon duck in a bomber jacket beside which a manic script reads: “Lucky Duck.”
The plane stops immediately behind the house. Cordell watches with his arms at his sides, and by his posture Marla knows that his mouth is agape. The propellers have stilled and he pivots and looks at her for two seconds before he turns and walks with a long, bobbing stride towards the aircraft. When he is adjacent to the wing he stops and looks down at his shoes, his hand rising; she cannot see but knows that he is pressing it to his breast in an expression of awe. He looks up at the craft. Then the door swings outwards to reveal steps set within its curve. A shape appears in the doorway and Marla squints to see but at that moment the sun dips beneath the horizon. Twilight begins and she cannot discern the figure’s features. Cordell steps forward and a wisp of smoke lifts from the doorway. He stands frozen, and then it seems he is speaking. Something compels him to stride forward, scramble up the step, and disappear inside.
Marla withdraws her hands from the water and begins to peel off the dish gloves. They are snug and it takes many seconds. When she looks up Cordell is crouching in the plane’s hatchway, hauling up the door. She hears it slam shut. A great bark sounds from one of the engines, then from the other engine, and white smoke ascends into the evening air. The propellers whirling.
Marla emerges from the back door and darts across the yard, dew soaking through her socks. She rams aside the gate as the plane lurches forward. Galina is beside her and together they race after it. She smells burned fuel and wet grass. The clamour of the engines is deafening, and the aeroplane accelerates, speeding away down the field. And suddenly it is airborne and climbing rapidly into the indigo sky. Marla stops, panting, and watches it go, while Galina continues her pursuit before giving up too, her black snout following the craft as it heads northwards. It clears the hilltops and is struck by sunlight, the aluminum skin erupting in an electrum glare. It banks towards the east and is soon little more than a speck of gold as it retreats behind the hills and is gone.
Marla stands between the imprints of tires on the dewsoaked grass. Galina trots to and fro some distance down the field, her gaze fixed on the spot where the craft vanished beyond the hills. A few stars emerge from the dark velvet of the sky.
Chapter 2
Marla lies in the blue envelope of night, listening to Galina. The dog trots from room to room, pausing in each to sniff floor and furniture, and then, as if disconsolate with the answers they provide, hunkering down on the floorboards, whimpering. After a minute she rises and walks to the next room where she replays the routine. The covers taut across Marla’s body. Cordell’s side is undisturbed, his pillow fat and undented. Her left arm is stretched out, palm pressing the spot where his bottom should be. Studying the ceiling’s patterned stucco, spirals and diamonds. She hears the click of Galina’s claws on the floorboards, the flustered snort of her nose, her plangent moans. Then the clicking again.
After the plane’s departure the neighbours who had come out to investigate the clamour returned to their homes, and Marla stood for a long time in the field staring at the point where the craft vanished, expecting it to reappear at any moment and land just long enough to disgorge her husband before returning to the blueblack sky. But as the light diminished so did the practicality of a safe landing, and when the crescent moon grew stark and white in the western sky she raced into the house with Galina at her heels, sped from room to room, turning on every light, igniting the house as a beacon for Cordell’s return. Then she and the dog hurried back into the field and sat in the damp grass, their necks growing stiff as they surveyed a sky engorged with stars.
She was shivering and wet when they returned to the house and she called the police. The dispatcher, a woman with a bored, drowsy voice wanted to know if anyone was in immediate danger.
“Yes!” Marla replied. “My husband! He’s been abducted in an aeroplane!”
But the dispatcher was having none of it. “Immediate danger” meant a gun at his head, a knife to his throat. Marla hung up flushed with frustration, and after an hour with no arrival of assistance she called back. The dispatcher explained that the police were understaffed that night and to expect a visit in the morning.
“But my husband is gone!” Marla had cried.
“You said he left in a plane?” the dispatcher replied. “That’s a new one. Sister, I feel your pain, but there’s nothing I can do. Someone will come in the morning to take your statement.”
Marla had gone then from room to room, and turned off each light, surrendering the house to darkness.
She lifts her head now, hears the dog whimpering in the hallway.
“Galina,” Marla calls, and the dog scampers in and rests her muzzle on the bed. Marla rolls onto her side and looks into Galina’s eyes, strokes her head.
“Sweet Galina, what’s happened to Cordell?” Galina lifts her snout and looks around the room, returns it to the mattress. “Galina, where’s Cordell?” Marla says, and with growing agitation Galina glances about again. “Oh, Galina, Galina, where’s dear Cordell?” Galina twitches her head from side to side, raises her muzzle, and emits a long, drawn-out bay like a wolf’s howl. Marla clamps her hands over her ears as the yowl continues, a rampant threnody that goes on and on, deafening within the bedroom’s confines. Marla begins to sob, her own lament joining the dog’s, two voices blending in a tremendous ululation of grief.
Chapter 3
At dawn’s threshold, when pink pierces the sky’s ultramarine dome and the chatter of birds begins anew, Marla and Galina, exhausted from their nighttime vigil, slip into thick slumber, Marla with her husband’s pillow and the trace of his scent clutched in her arms, Galina at the foot of the bed where his giant feet should be.
It’s still early when the doorbell chimes. Galina lifts a lazy head and it rings again. She jumps from the bed and trots to the front door where she fixes her gaze on the doorknob. A third ring followed by a brisk knock draws three barks from the dog. Marla leaps from the bed and sweeps a bathrobe around her brown body before rushing to the door. She opens it against the security chain and sees two police officers, a man and a woman, pressing their badges to the gap. All at once the previous night’s events crash down on her.
“Mrs. Bechard?” the man asks. “May we come in?”
Marla unlocks the door and steps back. The officers move warily inside, the man glancing about with overt curiosity until the woman, who has already removed her cap to reveal orange hair bound in a hard bun, nudges him with an elbow, and he too plucks off his cap, tucks it beneath an arm, smoothes his pale, cropped hair. The man introduces himself as Constable Bailey, his partner is Constable Pelham, and they endure sniffs from Galina before they each grant her a tenuous pat. Marla leads them into the kitchen where they sit at the table and decline offers of coffee and tea and orange juice. She sits too and Galina settles beneath the table.
“Ms. Bechard, you have a lovely house,” Pelham says.
“Yeah,” Bailey exclaims. “The wood. I love all this wood.”
“Thank you,” Marla replies, pressing her feet into Galina’s back.
Bailey consults his notepad. “About this airplane. Which got your husband?” He stretches his neck in a gesture of mild disbelief, and Marla glances at the woman who is sitting rigidly upright in the chair, hands in her lap.
“Listen,” he says, leaning across the table. “It’s illegal in Wannup Township to make a non-emergency landing on property not” – and here he reads from the pad – “‘designated as an aerodrome.’”
“Then I suggest you locate the pilot and arrest him,” Marla replies. “And perhaps you’ll find my husband.”
Bailey sits back and smiles uncertainly.
Marla feels within her bones a kind of rambling dread, as if her marrow were aquiver.
“I apologize, that was rude,” she says, recognizing that the police may be her only hope for recovering Cordell.
Pelham sits forward, opens her own notepad, says gently, “Ms. Bechard, can you describe the aircraft?”
Marla thinks a moment, says, “It was silver, rather large. It seemed old in a way. From another era. Like an Art Deco lamp or ashtray. Six or seven square windows along the side. Two propellers.”
“We spoke with a neighbour when we arrived,” Pelham says, flipping back a few pages. “He claimed it was a Douglas DC-3 Dakota.”
“Ah,” Marla replies. “That would’ve been old Mr. Rowat, formerly of the RAF. I’d believe him. But there was also a kind of cigar-smoking duck painted on the side of the nose. And the words ‘Lucky Duck.’ I don’t know if that helps.”
“Did you see other markings? Perhaps a registration number?”
“I don’t believe so. Only that mad duck.”
“How did your husband come to board the aircraft?” Pelham asks.
“Well,” Marla says, pushing the chair out, stepping to the sink. “We were here, washing dishes and talking.”
“About what?”
But Marla fails to reply, for she is staring at Cordell’s wristwatch on the windowsill where he placed it before taking up the dish towel. It seems an affront to her despair that its face should display the correct time, that the timepiece should continue to function, oblivious to its owner’s disappearance.
“Mrs. Bechard?” Pelham prompts.
“Kites,” Marla replies. “He was going to fly one of his kites.” Bailey is writing furiously. She continues, “We heard a tremendous roar. Cordell went out to investigate. I stood right here and watched the whole thing. The plane lands. He walks out. Door opens. He chats with someone inside. Gets in.” Marla grips the counter as if she is dangling from a precipice. “He gets in and it takes off.”
Pelham is beside her now, a hand on Marla’s forearm. “Which way?” she asks. “Ms. Bechard, do you know which way it went?”
Marla points east. She listens to the scratch of their pencils for some seconds before she asks, “What happens next?”
Pelham looks up from her notepad. “I’ll check the radar records at Lemmox; it’s the closest control tower. See if they know this Lucky Duck DC-3. In the meantime, you should file a missing person’s report.”
Bailey stops writing and taps the pencil against his nose. “Your husband a gambler, Mrs. Bechard?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Owe anyone money?”
“Mr. Bailey, Cordell loathes debt. He says credit cards have created a new age of peonage.”
“The what, huh?” Bailey asks.
“Peonage,” Pelham explains. “In which debtors are slaves to their creditors.”
Bailey’s eyes cross mildly, and then his attention shifts, flutters past Marla’s shoulder, and he asks, “Are those maple?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The cabinets.” Bailey stands, begins opening cupboards and drawers, examining the fittings, the dovetailing. “My wife and I are redoing our kitchen. This is good work.”
“They’re birch,” Marla replies impatiently.
“Really fine work. Who did them?”
“I did. Mr. Bailey, please!”
“You did? You do . . .” He looks around the room. “The table too?”
“Ted,” Pelham says, and his given name checks him to the spot. He delivers a galled expression and lifts his pad.
“Where does Mr. Bechard work?” he asks in a stolid voice.
“He owns a shop.”
“Oh,” he replies, looking up, inspecting her. “Oh, I see. Like a convenience store.”
Marla hears Pelham’s exasperated huff but replies temperately, “A bookshop.”
“It’s downtown. Near the station. Bechard’s Books,” Pelham says, and when Marla looks at her she sees the hint of a smile.
“I’m trying to picture it,” Bailey replies, his eyes panning left and right as he mentally scans the storefronts.
“It’s the one with the books,” Pelham snaps. Then she says to Marla, “A wonderful store, Ms. Bechard. I especially like the extensive collection of desert books.”
“Sounds yummy,” Bailey says.
“Sure, if you eat sand and iguanas,” Pelham retorts.
Bailey inhales to rejoin, but composes himself, asks Marla, “You from India or something?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she demands.
“Well, you look Indian. Or maybe Pakistan? What?” he says to Pelham’s glare. “I’m just curious. She hardly has an accent.”
Marla says, “I was born in India. Cordell was born here. He’s Caucasian.”
Bailey writes this or something like it down. When he looks up Pelham is proffering his cap. “You’d better call this in,” she says significantly, and Bailey looks at the hat as if at something hazardous. “Call it in, Bailey,” she says louder, and he takes the hat and puts it on his head and nods to Marla and goes out. Pelham waits for the sound of the front door closing before providing Marla with a look of exasperation. She withdraws from inside her jacket a folded form.
“This is a missing person’s report,” she says, unfolding it, looking it over. She puts it on the table. “If you fill it in now I can file it right away.”
Marla prints in heavy, black letters, Name: CORDELL BECHARD. Height: 6 FEET 5 INCHES. Weight: 190 POUNDS. Distinguishing marks: A SAD SMILE.
Pelham’s radio squawks and she reduces the volume, says, “Ms. Bechard, how are you?”
“Lost,” Marla replies without thinking. She immediately wants to take it back, to respond with confidence, or fury, or lightness. But she feels lost.
“In your opinion, did your husband climb aboard that plane willingly, or was he coerced?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Could the person inside have been pointing a weapon at him?” She raises her hands at Marla’s alarmed expression. “I don’t say this to scare you, it’s just a thought. It’s essential that we try to determine the circumstances of his departure.”
“Of course.”
Marla completes and signs the form. “I’ll have to hunt around for a recent photograph,” she says as she hands it over.
“Bring it by the station. Here’s my card. Look, he’ll probably turn up or telephone. Let us know if he does. When he does.”
They shake hands and Pelham exits. Marla stares at the tabletop, submerged in the house’s bleak silence, before shoving the chair out. Galina follows her out to the garden where Marla passes her gaze over English lavender, the jocular cosmos, the august sunflowers, before she and the dog slip through the gate. A hot sun beats down, the air is sweet, and a breeze sets the dandelion heads nodding. The windsock is twitching, swollen with wind. She examines the cloudless sky, looks north and south, straining her ears for the hum of aeroplane engines, but she hears nothing except the zephyr’s sibilance through the grass and the hot flux of blood through her body.
Did Cordell leave her?
Or was he forced?
Leave?
Forced?
She can think of nothing more important than the answer to this question.
Chapter 4
Marla clicks through television channels, local news, national news, talk shows, even cooking shows, watching each briefly before moving on, hoping, praying for some mention of last night’s events, for an acknowledgement of Cordell’s disappearance. But there is nothing, and as she mashes her thumb against the channel button, making the stations strobe past, she begins to realize that she can do nothing but wait and hope that Cordell is safe, hope that someone is out there searching for him.
She sets the remote down and bows her head, massaging her temples. She hasn’t had coffee yet, hurries to the kitchen, grinds the beans, scoops from a porcelain jar a mixture of cardamom, cinnamon, fennel, and nutmeg, crushing the blend in her palm before sprinkling it over the grounds. Chai coffee, her own recipe.
Caffeine chases the ache from her head and brings a provisional calm. Cordell is no doubt doing everything in his power to return home. Meanwhile, elite forces – the OPP, RCMP, Interpol – are engaged in a sweeping search for the rogue aircraft. Aeroplanes are large, highly-regulated vehicles; it won’t be long before the craft is located and its priceless cargo returned to her.
She considers phoning her friends Pippa or Rose or Lorraine to explain the situation, but why alarm them when Cordell could walk through the door at any moment?
What a story she’ll have to tell! She sits at the kitchen table, chin in palm, visualizing a homecoming party during which she holds her friends rapt, recounting the moment when Cordell boarded the aeroplane.
But while in her imagination the table is surrounded by friends, Cordell remains stubbornly absent. Each time she conjures him his image shudders and disperses, like a reflection in a pool rippled by wind.
She shuts her eyes, focuses on breathing. No. She will not be overcome. She goes to the living room, finds the Mangled Squirrel – Galina’s current favourite toy – and waves it around. Galina leaps from her pad and seizes it in her jaws, and they each tug furiously, spinning, growling at each other. Galina eventually relents and lies panting as Marla wriggles the toy at the dog’s snout.
What they both need, Marla thinks, is a walk, but she is concerned about abandoning the house while Cordell might telephone or reappear. But she can’t just wait.
The smell of sawdust fills the garage. Marla switches on the spotlights above the lathe where a one-inch dowel is mounted between the stocks. She dons her goggles and gloves, starts the lathe, and sets the skew chisel onto the rest. As the blade is about to bite the spinning wood, she jabs the cutoff switch with her knee and stares at the ceiling. Was that the buzz of an aeroplane? She listens. A neighbour’s lawnmower. She restarts the lathe but immediately shuts it off, listening. Then she tugs off the gloves and goggles and throws them onto the workbench.
It’s Saturday. Cordell always cuts the grass on Saturday. He claims that the grass learns to expect it on a particular day and that one must be consistent.
“Otherwise?” Marla once wondered.
“You’ll make the grass paranoid,” Cordell replied.
The garden shed is hot and smells of oil, and dry grass encrusts the lawnmower. She wheels it onto the lawn and listens to the harmonizing of other mowers up and down the street, a chorus she is about to join. She starts the machine and shuts it off. No. It will drown out the telephone.
“Hello, Marla.”
Marla whirls, startled from her thoughts. Her neighbour Mrs. Pardo, wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a dancing cow on it, stands at the fence. Gigantic sunglasses conceal most of her freckled face, and she clutches a martini glass.
“Problem?” Mrs. Pardo asks.
“I beg your pardon?”
“With the lawnmower. Is there a problem?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll do it later.”
“Doesn’t Cordell usually do that?”
“Cordell’s away.”
“I gathered. I hope he’s not planning to commute like that every day. That airplane made a racket! It startled me.”
“Hope you didn’t spill your martini.”
The phone rings and Marla scoots into the house.
“Hello? Hello?”
She hears a faint click followed by a shriek of feedback. Then silence. After a few seconds she says, “Cordell?”
Nothing. She’s panting, the earpiece pressed to her ear, listening to a distant white fizz. Another click, then dialtone. She hangs up, spots clouding her vision, head throbbing. Ring again, she thinks. Please, oh please ring again. But it doesn’t.
She’s failed. That was Cordell. It had to be Cordell, and she answered incorrectly. Of this she is convinced. She has no concept of how she should have replied, she knows only that she has bungled. She stares at the phone, begging it for another chance.
Then she lifts it and dials.
“Pippa.”
“Hello? Who is this? Marla?”
“Come over.”
“I hardly recognize your voice. What’s wrong?”
Marla pauses, says softly, “Pip. Just come.”
She hangs up and is deluged by weariness, rests her head on the table facing the sink, seeing the dish rack and the towel crumpled beside it. A tableau of their final moments together. She closes her eyes.
The doorbell’s chime awakens her. She bolts to the door.
Pippa sees Marla’s expression and cries, “Oh no! Worse than I thought!”
Galina leaps against Pippa, tail fluttering. Pippa squats and rubs the dog’s head.
“Cordell is gone,” Marla says.
“He left you?” Pippa cries, standing.
“Well, no. Yes.” A sob rises in Marla’s throat and she flees through the house and out to the backyard with Pippa in pursuit.
After soothing Marla’s tears, Pippa sits on the edge of a lawn chair while Marla paces the yard, telling her tale. Pippa listens, head tilted, twining fingers through her tight brown curls. Marla concludes with the police officers’ visit and then sits, stands, and sits, and just as her face is about to melt into tears Pippa leaps from her chair and kneels before Marla, gathering her in her arms and cooing a jabber of solace. As Pippa lets go and sits back in the grass she knuckles tears from her own eyesockets, then to hide her embarrassment she opens a pack of cigarillos and offers one to Marla, who declines. Pippa lights one, filling the air with cherryscented smoke. She gazes at the field for some moments before looking back at Marla.
“This is crazy. Mar, do you have any idea how strange this is? Cordell has been kidnapped by the occupants of a plane named the Lucky Duck.”
Marla asks, “Why do you believe he was kidnapped? Why don’t you think he climbed aboard willingly?”
“Mar, listen. Cordell is a smart, careful man. He’s got his doctorate. He runs a bookstore. And most importantly, he has you. He’s not going to hop into any strange plane that happens to land behind his house. But think for a moment: his parents are loaded, right? He had to have been threatened. Maybe someone inside with a gun?”
“That’s what the police speculated.”
“They also think he was abducted.”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what I think.”
“Do not doubt, Mar. Cordell loves you with all his heart. He would never willingly put you in this state.”
“Yes,” Marla replies without conviction.
“You gave up your degree in veterinary medicine to be here with him.”
“Well. I gave it up because it wasn’t my dream. It wasn’t what I wanted.”
“I know. This is what you wanted,” Pippa replies, taking in the yard and house with a gesture.
“Yes,” Marla answers softly.
“Isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Marla replies firmly. “What matters is finding Cordell. And you’re absolutely right. Cordell is a good man, a careful man, and there’s no way he would hop aboard a mysterious aircraft and take off, leaving me mad with worry.”
“It’s true. He was kidnapped. It’s the only explanation. But what do we do?”
“We wait. For a ransom demand.”
“And then? What do you think they’ll want for him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, I have some retirement funds and a little room on my MasterCard . . .”
“Oh Pip,” Marla replies. “You are wonderful. But if it’s his family’s money they want, then his family will have to pay.”
“His family. You sure you could do that? Talk to them?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for him. They’ll do it for him. They can’t detest him so much that they won’t stump up to save his life.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Chapter 5
The house casts a cool shadow and Marla and Pippa stand close to the barbecue’s warmth, watching the sizzling burgers, each silent, pensive. The phone rings and Marla glances into Pippa’s face until the second ring, at which she bolts into the house and snaps up the handset.
“Ms. Bechard? It’s Constable Pelham. I have information. I had Lemmox Airport check their logs. No DC-3 aircraft landed there for refuelling yesterday. Lemmox did report brief radar contact with an unidentified object on a southbound vector around the time of Mr. Bechard’s disappearance. The craft did not respond to radio inquiries, nor did it broadcast transponder replies.”
“Can you explain what that means?”
“As I understand it, a plane’s transponder answers radar beams with an identification beacon, unless the transponder is damaged or disabled. A pilot might turn off the transponder to evade detection.”
“As kidnappers might.”
“That’s my thought. Have you had any calls, any message in your mailbox? Anything unusual?”
“No. Wait, there was a phone call around two. Just some noise and then silence.”
“I see. Could be nothing, but I’ll look into it. Bring us a photo as soon as you can.”
“Okay. Thanks for keeping me informed.”
Shadows elongate into the field as the sun falls. Marla and Pippa eat their burgers and watch the windsock stirring in the breeze. Seagulls populate the grass in motionless clusters, breasts tinted gold by the setting sun. Pippa watches Marla raise her eyes to study a contrail, distinct where it issues from the silver delta of a jet, increasingly chaotic as it stretches towards the horizon.
The windsock falls against its post.
Marla sets her plate on the chair’s armrest and stands. Pippa watches her turn away from the field, her head panning across the rooftops as if tracking a fastmoving object. Then she pushes through the gate and stands on the field’s edge, facing south, watching the imagined craft come about, lining up with the field, descending. She is slowly pivoting, following until her back is to the house, the sun warm across her shoulderblades. She turns and looks at the kitchen window and imagines the sight of herself, of Marla, his wife, standing at the sink, hands submerged in dishwater. Turns back to watch it arrive. The door opens. Words exchanged. Now she stumbles forward, imagining the clatter of his shoes on the metal steps. Imagines fear-eagerness-terror-joy-desperation-relief. Dimness inside. Something happens then, something she cannot know. He is told or ordered or by his own volition grabs the chains, and without a glance at the window where his shocked wife watches, he pulls the door shut.
She rotates towards the north, then east, watching it go. This DC-3. The Lucky Duck. And Cordell.
The sun is gone. She clamps her arms around her body, trembling, and turns to see Pippa watching this dumb show, smoking, arms draped over the fencerail. The tortured squeal of Galina, her snout boring through the gate’s chainlink.
“Let her out,” Marla calls. Pippa opens the gate and Galina races into the field, galloping towards Marla then veering north, feet a blur beneath her black and white body. She stops and begins to howl, long, woeful wails which set other dogs in the neighbourhood yodelling.
“I know,” Marla whispers. “Me too.”
Chapter 6
Marla lies with her back to the vacant expanse of the bed, drunk, the bed tilting incessantly but never quite enough to dump her onto the floor. Pippa, who is slumbering in the guest room, convinced her to uncork a bottle of white wine, and they drank it fast. She stares at the curtains astir in a breeze through the open window. A flash of lightning, and she counts six until thunder.
A night in Delhi, fifteen years ago. Marla and Anita-Aunty sleeping on the verandah because of the heat. Symphony of insects outside the mosquito net, and Anita, snoring, her sable and white hair coiled around her head, sporadically illuminated by lightning. Marla lay propped on an elbow, watching Anita’s brow, which seemed never to unclench in daylight, unfamiliar now in its tranquil state. The storm was far off, its destination uncertain. Anita’s eyelids fluttered and opened, the brow seizing, a smile erupting.
“What is it, child?”
“A storm coming,” Marla whispered.
Anita listened. “Yes. You cannot sleep?”
“It’s too hot here.”
“Where would you like to be?”
“In Canada. With my friends.”
“Oh, but it’s always cold there. How dreadful!”
“Not always, Aunty. Only in winter. In summer it’s hot like here. But for many months it’s just right.”
“Like Goldilocks and the porridge?”
Marla nodded, whispered, “Yes.”
Anita rose and pressed the girl’s shoulders, said, “Then do not shun sleep. Sleep is where we find lost things. When we sleep our soul flies to where it longs to be. Welcome your dreams and they will carry you home.”
A great weariness swept over Marla and she pressed her head into the pillow and closed her eyes and for a moment lightning flickered through her lids. Then she was running down a hallway in yellow light, bare feet clapping on the floorboards as she passed bedroom doors and dashed down the staircase, hand on the smooth handrail, feet padding past carved banisters until she reached the foyer, smells of books and fabric, woodsmoke and candles, jasmine and curry. She cut right, pursued by Tara or Balaram, they would expect left but she went right, into the room they called the parlour, froze in her footsteps, for seated in a wingback her father, charcoal suit, a teacup at his lips and lifting his head from papers and regarding her through steelrimmed spectacles. She backed towards the door, fearing rage and truculence at the intrusion. But his face brightened at the sight of her, and, abandoning the work, he beckoned to her. She hesitated before complying, startled at the rug’s pile under her soles, and when she stood before him she tried not to flinch as he folded his arms around her and drew her into his lap.
He said, “I thought for a moment you were your sister.”
He set down his teacup, pulled her against him, and after some seconds she relented and gripped him with zeal, pressed her face into his hair, which smelled of pipesmoke and autumn leaves. When he released her to look at her face she was crying and he scooped away her tears with his fingertip and did not ask why.
Marla closes her eyes and again sees the flicker of lightning through her eyelids, and lets weariness and alcohol sweep her into slumber. And she does dream, but not of Cordell and not of the house in Ottawa and not of her father. She dreams of Delhi, of a crowded street of wallahs and autorickshaws and women in saris and men in kurtas, all of it spiced with a hundred scents, rotting fruit and fresh flowers and manure and coconut milk. The mob shifts and shuffles, a great tangle of bodies undulating like a single organism. She senses from each person a great despair, for none is where she or he is supposed to be, and all are lost or have lost a companion, a loved one, and though they glance desperately into the faces around them, each is a stranger’s, and no road leads homeward.
Chapter 7
Marla starts at the sound of the coffee grinder, leaps out of bed, and careers down the hall, tying her bathrobe’s sash. She stands trembling and bleary-eyed in the kitchen doorway, panting, and when Pippa sees her expression she sets down the grinder and strides forward, hugs Marla, calling, “What is it, what is it?”
“Cordell grinds the coffee,” she says. “I thought he . . .”
“Oh Jesus,” Pippa replies, stepping back, face flushing. “I should have thought. I wanted to make . . . I mean I thought you would need . . .”
“It’s all right, Pip.”
“I didn’t know it would be so loud. Galina and I just came back from a walk . . .”
“You walked Galina?”
The dog starts from beneath the table at the sound of her name, nuzzles Marla’s palm.
“And checked the mailbox. Nothing there, I’m afraid. I want so much for there to be something for you to hold onto, to steady yourself.”
“Coffee would help,” Marla replies, lifting the grinder from the counter, tipping the grounds into the filter, adding her spicy chai blend, sniffing her palm. Pippa watching, smiling.
As they sit and drink Pippa describes her walk with Galina, the quality of the morning, the landmarks that caught the dog’s attention, but Marla’s thoughts are far away, and at last she says in a dazed voice, “Pip, what if he wasn’t kidnapped?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Marla replies. “What if he was having an affair?”
“No,” Pippa replies instantly. “He has you. Why would he need anyone else?”
“I mean,” Marla continues, “What if she’s a pilot?”
“Who?”
“The woman with whom he’s having the affair.”
“What affair?”
“The hypothetical affair. I couldn’t see the person inside the plane. It could have been a woman.”
“It could have been an alien with a tremendous blue head and tentacles.”
“All right, all right,” Marla replies, managing a laugh. “It just seems like the most sensible explanation.”
“It’s not. Really, Mar. He loves you madly. Look, I need to go home to feed my cat. But I’m coming right back.”
“That’s not necessary, Pip. I think I need some solo time. I might attempt a little woodwork today. Distract myself.”
“You’re sure? I’d be gone twenty minutes.”
“Really. I do need some time to process.”
“If you say so. Promise you’ll call me if there’s anything.”
After Pippa is gone Marla showers and dresses, enters the garage. She props open the door to the house so she will hear the telephone, spends a moment unclamping the corner dovetails of a little walnut box she has been constructing for Cordell’s birthday, which is months away. She inspects the joints, sands away the ridges of glue. In her state she finds such delicate labour frustrating, would rather be sawing chunks of hardwood or beltsanding a tabletop, but power tools will drown out the phone. She sets the box down, retires to the living room sofa, considers locating her book but feels restless, needs fresh air. Galina is staring at her from her windowsill cushion, leash clutched in her jaws. How can Marla consider going out when Cordell – or his abductors – may telephone? She must stay home and wait.
But she will have to go out sooner or later, to replenish the refrigerator, to pay the bills, to continue with some kind of life. Dogs need exercise. She and Cordell and Galina always walk in the hills on Sunday. It looks like rain, but Marla has a yellow mackintosh and rubber boots, and Galina likes getting wet. She bends to the side table and presses the answering machine’s record button.
“Hello, if this is Cordell, I apologize love but I had to take Galina for a walk. I hope you are well. Please leave a message and let us know where you are and when you will be home or if there’s anything you want us to do.”
“Mercy,” she says to Galina. “What if it’s the kidnappers calling?”
She hits the button again and says, “Hello, if this is Cordell, Galina and I went for a walk. Please let us know where you are and if you need us to do something. We miss you. If this is not Cordell but in fact his kidnappers then we must talk. I’m sure you want a ransom, so if you would be so kind as to leave your demands on the machine and perhaps a number where we can reach you. Thanks.”
Perfect – unless it’s a regular call. She punches the button again, records a new message, plays it back.
“Cordell: we went for a walk. Kidnappers: ransom demands after the tone, please. Caller for Cordell: he’s been kidnapped. Leave him a message. He’ll get back to you later. For Marla: leave me a message. I’ll get back to you sooner. Thanks for calling.” Beep.
She draws her mackintosh and boots from the closet, sees Cordell’s own coat. She steps among the jackets and presses her face to the collar and sniffs, smells nothing but canvas and rubber.
They exit through the back door, cross the field. No rain yet and the jacket’s hood hangs loose, cradling the spill of her dark hair. She unhitches Galina’s leash and the dog tears towards the hills. Marla pivots and looks at the house, which crouches meek and small beneath ashen cloud.
She enters the brush which fringes the hills, locates the path, follows its incline. Raspberry bushes and blackeyed susans crowd the path’s margins. Galina appears in a clearing ahead, watching Marla’s approach before darting into the foliage. Aspen and birch rise around Marla as the path ascends, and hidden birds converse about the imminent rainfall. A mosquito hums past her ear and she waves it away.
A sudden train of wind charges through the trees; leaves hiss, branches creak, and a drop of rain strikes her forehead. The path bores deeper into the forest and continues to rise. Cordell always walks too fast, long legs bearing him quickly up the slope, and Marla has to hurry to keep up. But not today, she thinks with a sigh.
The light grows sombre and as the foliage thins Marla buckles her jacket and raises the hood, listens to the pelt of raindrops against the mackintosh. The path steepens until she must pitch forward (Cordell would offer a slender hand), and a railing appears where the path meets a walkway of dun wood. She steps onto the planks. The few boughs that overhang the boardwalk offer no protection and the rain streams down her coat while beads of water ornament her bangs.
She approaches the lookout where Galina is waiting, the dog’s drenched and woebegone appearance contradicted by her wagging tail. Marla rests her arms on the railing and gazes over the mist-shrouded town. Three church steeples stand among the houses and trees, and the courthouse’s clock tower is veiled in drizzle. Cars with shining headlights ride atop their own reflections on the slick streets. The field lies below the lookout, obscured by trees, and Marla spies their home, darksome amid the lucent windows of other houses. She studies the sky. Cloud stretches to the horizon, and Marla wonders if it extends as far as the sky above Cordell, scattering sweet rain upon him.
She’s about to set off when a familiar figure approaches, an elderly gentleman wearing a trenchcoat and rain hat and ambling with the aid of a cane. He nods at her, shuffles to the railing, and steadies himself against it, gazing at the town. Galina trots to him, startles him by nuzzling his hand.
“Oh, hello,” he says softly. “Lovely dog. What breed?” He pets her head.
“She’s a Border collie.”
“Ah, those are smart ones. Does she do any tricks?”
“Some,” Marla says. “Actually, she’s got a new one. Galina, come here.” Marla squats and the dog scampers over, leans against her. “Galina. Galina, where’s Cordell? Where’s Cordell?”
Galina’s head darts about; she tries to escape Marla’s clutch. “Where’s Cordell? Galina! Where’s Cordell?”
The dog’s snout shoots skyward and she howls with such power that the man drops his cane and clamps his hands over his ears. Galina’s voice booms across the town.
“Sorry!” Marla cries, collecting the man’s cane, standing.
“Heavens!” the man cries. “She sure misses Cordell!”
“We both do,” Marla sighs, handing him the cane.
He accepts it and looks into the sky from which fatter raindrops begin to fall. “I’d best get going. Nice to meet you. And your dog.” He shuffles away, prodding an ear with a finger.
Galina heels as they hurry down the boardwalk. They negotiate the muddy path and when they reach the field they run to the house and rush inside. Marla leans against the closed door, listening to the rain while Galina visits her food dish, shedding a puddle onto the tile floor.
Marla enters the living room and draws a sharp breath. The answering machine message light is blinking. She perches on the couch and touches the play button. The machine clicks and whirs and a voice issues from the speaker.
“Hi there,” a canned voice says. “Have you ever wanted to earn money in your own home? With little more skill than it takes to lick an envelope, you can –”
“Blast!” Marla cries, punching the erase button.
She hangs her mackintosh and goes into the bathroom where she fills the tub. She peels off her clothing, collar and cuffs moist from the rain, removes socks and bra and knickers, pulls on her bathrobe and carries the clothing into the laundry room and loads the dryer. While passing the living room she considers updating the answering machine’s outgoing message, but she hears the water running.
She spills rosemary bubblebath into the stream, watching as foam swells beneath the faucet, spicing the air. She steps out of her bathrobe and stands naked before the mirror, brushing her hair. She frowns and sucks in the bulge of her tummy, studies her features, her café au lait skin, chestnut eyes, salient nose, and what Cordell describes as her “sumptuous” lips, then looks at her eyebrows, her wretched eyebrows, which rise into high arches, granting her face a perpetually naïve expression. Cordell, aware of her sensitivity, teasing her, calling her his “little brown pixie.” Her five foot three to his six-five.
She longs for Cordell’s touch, for his huge hands, for his mouth. Before the thought can take effect, she pins her hair up, screws the faucets shut, steps into the hot water. Once submerged she lets out a long breath. Galina noses the door open, looks at her in the tub, exits. Waterdrops fall one by one from the faucet. Rain pounds the roof. She closes her eyes.
“Kabul? It’s in Afghanistan.”
“No.”
“Hong Kong.”
“Yes.”
“Taipei?”
“Yes.”
“Australia?”
“Yes. Just Perth.”
“Istanbul?”
“Yes. Or was it Constantinople?”
“Antarctica.”
“Yes. No wait, that was just winter in Ottawa.”
“Toronto?”
“Ah. That’s where I found my dream.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. That’s a yes for me, too. On both counts. Let’s see. Tel Aviv?”
“Yes.”
“Athens?”
“Yes. Crete too. Oh, and a great heap of Greek islands. I can’t remember which.”
“Poor you. Mmm, what else. Singapore?”
“I don’t know. Sounds familiar. I’d give a tentative yes. My parents would know.”
“Jakarta?”
“Yes.”
“Manila?”
“Of course. It’s where I purchase my envelopes.”
“Funny. Baghdad?”
“No.”
“Tokyo?”
“Several times. Ask me Osaka.”
“Osaka?”
“We lived there for a year.”
“A year? Why don’t I know that?”
“You do now.”
“Care to share details?”
“Mum.”
“The expected reply. Can you at least tell me if you learned any Japanese?”
“Ie. That means ‘no.’ So actually, hai.”
“Phnom Penh?”
“Where’s that, Vietnam?”
“Cambodia.”
“No.”
“Bangkok.”
“Hot and smelly.”
“Do you want to know the score so far?”
“Score? You’re keeping score?”
“Yes, do you want to know how we compare?”
“Okay.”
Cordell counts. She takes her eyes off the road to glance at the book; he’s been circling cities on a map in the almanac.
“All right, here’s the score at halftime. Marla, not including a heap of Greek islands: fourteen. Cordell: one. Well, I guess if we’re including birthplaces your score should include Delhi, so that gives you fifteen. All right, round two. Cairo?”
“Yes. Was that a whimper? Cordell, are you whimpering?”
“No. Tunis?”
“Yes. . . .”
The phone rings and Marla opens her eyes, the scene of that car trip evaporating. She begins to rise but hears her own voice from the answering machine, “Cordell: we went for a walk. Kidnappers: ransom demands after the tone. . . .”
She holds her breath. The beep.
“Hi there. Have you ever wanted to earn money in your own home? With little more skill than it takes to lick an envelope, you can make hundreds, even thousands of dollars . . .”
Marla sinks back into the foam, listening to the rest of the message, growling.
Chapter 8
While rain hammers the roof, Marla sits in the kitchen slurping chicken soup. She flips through the first of two photo albums. A picture of Marla on the beach wearing a white bikini, lifting her sunglasses and winking. Verdant trees hunch over the pale sand, and a black lake shimmers in the background. A month ago, at Daniel Crawley’s cottage. A confident smile. Below it Marla landing a fish. She turns the page. Marla and Daniel, his pallid face tight with concentration as he watches her barbecue it. A shot of Marla’s back, the cascade of her dark hair, taken from the stern of a canoe. She flips until she reaches the blank pages at the back of the album, wonders if they will ever be filled. Not one photo of Cordell because he was always the photographer. Why did it never occur to her to seize the camera, to turn the lens towards him?
The second album contains wedding pictures. Toronto City Hall. Her family far away, in Delhi; his a few dozen blocks northeast in their Rosedale home, cursing them both. Cordell had bought a disposable camera minutes before, while she was purchasing flowers from a street vendor. The first overexposed shot shows Marla in profile stating her vows, flowers clutched beneath her chin. She barely remembers the bouquet, leans closer to examine it . . . roses and carnations. She cringes, recalls Cordell slamming down the payphone after failing to convince his parents to join them. Seated in a café, she in a dress of copper silk decorated with brocade dragons and he in a grey suit. Cordell had cried a little, then grown furious with his parents, deciding to punish them with defiance.
“I’ll marry you and screw them!” he’d cried.
She was taken aback, and then surprised that he failed to notice her hurt expression. But she forgave him; she knew that parental disapproval could promote unusual – indeed, radical – behaviour.
“My parents are assholes!” he bellowed, drawing glares from the other tables.
You’re lucky that’s all they are, she wanted to tell him, but remained silent.
Another overexposed photo, snapped a moment later. The flash has obliterated her nose, leaving just a hint of nostril. She examines it and thinks: I look good without a nose. In the next image she stands beside the justice of the peace, a rotund man with a wide, flat face and woolly hair. In subsequent photos she poses alone or beside the justice, then with two older women, tourists from Boca Raton who had in the lobby asked Cordell for directions. He’d invited them upstairs to witness the ceremony and they had gleefully complied.
She suddenly remembers that the justice took a group photo, and she flips until she finds it.
Four people. Three heads. Cordell’s neck is severed by the picture’s top edge, and Marla imagines his gigantic smile. Because he was so desperately happy to be married to her. Wasn’t he?
She dabs her lips with a napkin. No pictures of Cordell. She resolves to arrange for studio portraits upon his return. He won’t like that. He feels awkward about his great height, his gawky build. But he has a beautiful face, with brilliant green eyes and a sharp, slender nose. His hair, which defies the most advanced hair products and remains in a constant state of dishevelment, is thick and brown. And he has a strong chin and sensuous lips.
The thought of his lips triggers a memory. She hurries into the bedroom and pulls a chair to the closet and steps up. Among the wrapping paper and shoeboxes she finds, precisely where she hid it, a picture of Cordell. His features are clear. It would make an ideal identification photo except that he is wearing lipstick and a sari, and a bindi is painted in the centre of his forehead. How she convinced him to dress up like that escapes her. The champagne helped. She studies the photo, remembering. He is frowning; she remembers his reluctance, but she had begged and begged, perhaps to test her new uxorial powers. It was the disposable camera’s final frame, taken in the Toronto Hilton’s honeymoon suite. Luckily she went alone to collect the prints from the developer.
She is placing the photo on the table beside the wedding album when she notes the corner of a picture peeking from the rear of the book.
An older man and woman she has never seen before – but they are obviously Cordell’s parents. His mother’s eyes are also green, her nose as sharp and slender as her son’s. Cordell’s father is chubby, balding, with a hard brow and a pinched mouth. The photograph is softly focussed, their expressions serene. Marla can’t believe that these are the tyrants who expelled Cordell from their lives for marrying her. His mother exudes a compassionate air. His father is gazing off to the right, smiling faintly. Marla stares and stares, the photo on the table between her elbows, her cheeks resting in her hands.
By the acerbity of his tone on the rare occasions that Cordell has mentioned them, she believes that there is more to his resentment than their disapproval of his selection of a bride. Are they simply bad parents? Or is there – as in her own case – a more specific reason for his acrimony?
And even if they’ve rejected him for marrying her, will they refuse to save his life?
A moment later she is dialling.
“For Toronto, please. Bechard, Gordon. Yes, B-E-C-H-A-R-D. Thank you.”
She scribbles the number, hangs up. Then she lifts the phone and begins to dial, but pauses successively longer after each digit until she stops and hangs up. What will she tell them? That he is gone, yes, but what else? That he was kidnapped? But she doesn’t know that, and even if he was, she is yet to receive a ransom demand. And if he left her willingly they will be pleased. Justified in whatever doubts they had about her.
She tears the page with the number from the pad and sticks it and the photograph to the fridge with a magnet.
Chapter 9
Cool dawn. Flocks of cloud soar past at high speed, lit from beneath by a sun that has risen but not yet cleared the hills. Marla eats a bowl of cereal. On the table rests Cordell’s keyring and an envelope containing his photo. She is groggy and agitated, short on sleep, and anxious about today’s chores. Her face is carefully made up and she wears a kneelength skirt and a white blouse with an embroidered vest. At the foyer mirror she wonders if she looks too composed, and unbinds her ponytail. She feels a twinge of guilt for contriving a look to reflect her downcast state.