Forty Words for Sorrow

43

ERIC FRASER FINISHED POLISHING the D-35 and hung it up on the rack behind the counter. It was one of his tasks to polish the guitars once a week, and he preferred it to working the cash or uncrating amplifiers. He liked cleaning things; it was pleasantly mindless, allowing his thoughts to drift wherever he cared to let them—to the island, to the abandoned house, to the boy in Edie’s basement.

“How much is the Martin?” a fat kid with a moustache of sweat wanted to know.

“Three-thousand, six.”

“And what about the Gibson you got there?”

“This one’s twelve hundred.”

Eric could tell the kid wanted to try it out, but he didn’t suggest it. Alan didn’t like people trying out the expensive guitars unless they were serious.

The kid shuffled over to the music books, and Eric started polishing the Gibson. He never played the guitars himself. Carl and Alan were real musicians, and Eric hated to display his lack of talent in front of them. Keith London’s guitar, an Ovation in excellent condition, lay at home beneath his bed. He’d tried it out, but he was so out of practice that the strings hurt his fingers.

A young girl came in and started studying some sheet music, trying to memorize a Whitney Houston song. She was about twelve, with long, straight hair. It was wonderful to be able to look at her without desire; having a prisoner made him impervious. Katie Pine had not been so lucky. Eric had actually been thinking about Billy LaBelle when Katie Pine happened along, looking at the band instruments but not buying. But the moment she came in, Eric had felt the grip of destiny: she would be his, and nothing anyone could do would stop it.

The LaBelle kid was a different matter. Billy LaBelle came in regularly for his lessons, and Eric had watched him over a period of weeks. Always came in by himself, always went home alone after a lesson, lugging his guitar. He’d had big plans for Billy, and then he’d gone and died on them. Well, he and Edie had learned their lesson; it wouldn’t happen again. No, no, he had big plans for this one.

He thought about his prisoner all the time now, imagining all sorts of things to do to him. Keith London’s picture was everywhere—it was up in the mall right outside Troy Music, on the streets, at the bus stops—but he’d only been in town about two hours before disappearing. No one was ever going to find him—certainly not the cops he’d seen on TV.

If only he could find exactly the right place. Somewhere secluded but easy to equip, somewhere he could really be free in. Somewhere he could set up camera and lights. It wasn’t easy. Abandoned houses don’t come along all that often.

“Finish that tomorrow, Eric. Look after the cash for a while, will you?”

“Okay, Alan. You said there was some inventory stuff too.”

“You can take care of that tomorrow. Look after the register now.”

The reason I have to look after the register, he thought, is because you have to play the old expert, don’t you. Have to show these suckers how to play a thing or two, right? Alan was tuning up a Dobro for some guy with hair down to his knees. In some ways, with his firmness and his gentleness, Alan reminded him of his last foster father.

The girl finally gave up trying to memorize the chords right there in the store, and decided to buy the Whitney Houston song after all.

“You play piano?” This bit of friendliness for Alan’s benefit, of course.

“Piano, yeah. A little bit.”

“That’s good. These chords will sound good on piano. They’re not great for guitar. Too many flats.” It was easy to talk when he was feeling so free. Having a prisoner available enabled him to chat with people just like Alan and Carl did. Eric tore off the receipt and taped it to the bag. “Good luck with this, now. Let us know if there’s any other music you’re looking for.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s great.” Sprinkling of acne, mouth full of braces. Amazing. Just a week ago I’d have been too upset to speak to her, too gripped. My heart would have been pure thunder, and terrible images would have blotted out the cash register.

Now Eric could watch her flick that long, straight hair without a trace of nerves. This was control.

Jane, his foster sister, had had long, straight hair like that, except Jane’s was blonde. It used to fascinate him. She was always playing with it, too, twirling a strand unconsciously while she watched TV, squinting at it cross-eyed looking for split ends. Sometimes Eric would touch it and she wouldn’t even know. If she was sitting in the front of the car, say, and he was sitting in the back, he could touch that golden, sweet-smelling stuff and she’d be none the wiser.

He daydreamed about Jane for a while. All the things he would have done to her if he’d had the chance. Eventually, Alan Troy told him it was looking pretty slow, he could take the rest of the night off.

“You sure, Alan? I can hang around for a while, if you want.”

“No, that’s okay. Carl’s here to close up.”

Eric had his coat on and was just about out the door when, on an impulse, he asked, “How much you figure an Ovation’s worth, second-hand?”

Alan didn’t look up from the register, where he was counting money. “Why, Eric? You have one to sell?”

“Some guy tried to sell me one the other day. Wanted three hundred for it.”

“Well, it depends on the model, of course. You can’t get an Ovation new for under eight hundred, though, so it sounds like a good deal—depending on the action and so forth.”

“Seemed pretty good. I’m not exactly an expert, though.”

“Why don’t you bring it in, if the guy’ll let you? I’ll check it out. Give you a mechanic’s report, so to speak.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. I think the guy left town, though. ’Night, Alan.”

“Goodnight, Eric.”

“Be careful driving home. It’s turning into slush city out there.”

Alan gave him an amused, assessing look. “You’re in a good mood these days.”

“Am I?” Eric thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I am. Had some good news from home. My sister just got her pharmacy degree.”

“Hey, that’s great. Good for her.”

“Yeah. Jane’s a good kid.”

Eric had not in fact heard from his foster sister for over fourteen years. He had always figured he would get tossed out of the foster home because of the fire he started next door, but they never caught him for that. Never caught him for the wretched series of parties he had with the dog and cat that went missing, either. In the end they got him for something completely stupid. In the end they got him for nothing at all.

Thirteen-year-old Jane had been the cause of it. If she had not been so stuck up, things would have gone smoother, he would have settled in better, he would have been able to relax. But she was always working him up, the way she flicked her hair at him, the way she ignored him. When he had kidnapped her dog, he had found himself strangely free of yearning for Jane. He could talk to her. He could even comfort her, when she cried for her lost pet.

But less than a week after the dog was dead, Eric was tormented again with a ferocious aching in his chest. Jane had gone back to ignoring him, treating him as if he were a clod of dirt under her heel. He swallowed his pain until he could stand it no more, until finally he determined that—for one night, at least—Jane would pay attention. Beyond this, he did not really know what he was going to do. He was going to play it by ear.

He stayed awake one night until his foster father’s grizzly-sized snores shook the walls of the house. Then he put on his jeans and a shirt—even his socks—and tiptoed down the hall to Jane’s door. The door had no lock, he knew; none of the bedrooms had locks.

Sometimes Jane stayed awake reading or listening to her pink plastic radio, but there was no light under her door now. Eric did not even pause. He turned the knob, stepped right into her room and closed the door. His eyes were already adapted to the dark, and he could clearly see the outline of Jane’s hip beneath the covers. She was curled up facing the wall, her features hidden behind a curtain of blond hair.

The room smelled of running shoes and baby oil. Eric stood perfectly still for a long time, watching the rise and fall of Jane’s rib cage, listening to the soft swell of her breath. She’s fast asleep, Eric thought, I can do anything I want.

He held his hands out just above the outline of her body, as if she were a radiator and he could absorb her heat. Then he touched her hair, hooking a yellow strand over his index finger and breathing in the smell of Halo shampoo.

There was a hitch in Jane’s breathing, and Eric froze. You’re just having a dream, he almost said out loud, it’s just a dream and there’s no need to wake up. But she did wake up. Her eyes opened, and before he could stop her, Jane sat up and screamed. Eric covered her mouth, and she bit his hand and cried out, “Mom! Dad! Eric’s in my room! Eric’s in my room!”

A long night followed, a night fraught with tears and raised voices, and in the end Eric’s claim that he had been sleepwalking was not believed.

And so, to his astonishment, Eric Fraser was banished from his fourth and final foster home, not for the abduction and torture of their pet dog, or for the abduction and torture of their cat, or for burning their neighbour’s field; he was exiled for the apparent felony of setting foot in their daughter’s bedroom.

That was it for foster homes. Instead, Eric was shipped to one group home after another, where his behaviour quickly deteriorated. More animals went missing, more fires were set. A smaller boy who made fun of Eric for wetting the bed was tied up and beaten with an electrical cord.

This last offence landed Eric in the Juvenile Court at 311 Jarvis, his third and last appearance. He was found to be a young offender under the meaning of the Act and consigned to Saint Bartholomew Training School in Deep River, where he remained under the care and guidance of the Christian Brothers until he was eighteen years old.

The only good thing that happened to him in Deep River was that a fellow inmate named Tony taught him how to play guitar. When they got out of St. Bart’s, they moved down to Toronto and formed a grunge band, but the rest of the members were more talented than Eric, and it was only a matter of weeks before they got rid of him. After a succession of progressively less interesting jobs, and a succession of smaller and smaller rooms, he began to feel that he was drowning in Toronto. Oh, that suffocating sensation, as if his lungs were closing down. He made no friends. He spent his evenings alone, with magazines that arrived in plain packaging, his fantasies turning darker and darker.

Toronto was killing him, he decided. He would move to some place with lots of fresh air, where you wouldn’t feel like you were choking all the time. In his methodical way he made lists of small cities and their various amenities, finally narrowing his choices down to Peterborough and Algonquin Bay. He decided to visit them both, but the day he arrived in Algonquin Bay, he saw the Help Wanted ad for Troy Music, and that had made up his mind. When he met Edie in the drugstore a week later, some inner part of him had suddenly felt stronger. Those first flickers of utter devotion in her eyes gave him the sense that this was someone he could share his destiny with. Whatever it might be.

But Eric Fraser did not like to think of the past. Those terrible, suffocating years in Toronto, the hostility of St. Bart’s—it was as if there had been a bureaucratic mix-up and he had been assigned a cramped little life that had been meant for someone else. His own life, his real life, had been stolen.

And all of it could have been prevented, he thought, as he drove past the old CN station on the way to Edie’s. The whole damn mess need never have happened, if only he’d been smart enough to tape Jane’s mouth shut.