Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
Liam feels many things I don’t, for example a sense of mission as well as indifference to the emotional lives of others, including me. This is possibly to be expected, as I’m plain, unsalvageably plain. When I was born, the doctor took one look as he held me, bloodied and squalling, and asked the nurse if there was anything good on TV that night. My parents looked at me, said, “Well, whatever,” and then discussed what colour to reupholster the living-room sofa. I’m only half joking.
People look at me and forget I’m here. To be honest, I don’t even have to try to make myself invisible, it just happens. But evidently I’m not invisible enough to Liam, especially if he thought I might like to “pick away at a few files” while I get over these teeth.
* * *
One of my big problems is time sickness. When I feel lonely, I assume that the mood will never pass—that I’ll feel lonely and bad for the rest of my life, which means that I’ve wrecked both the present and the future. And if I look back on my past, I wreck that too, by concentrating on all the things I did wrong. The brutal thing about time sickness is that naming it is no cure.
I look at the philodendron on the kitchen windowsill, the only thing in my condo that ever changes. I found it at a bus stop twelve years ago and I’ve kept it going ever since. I like it because up close its leaves are pretty, and also because it makes me think of time in a way that doesn’t totally depress me.
If I could go back in time two decades and give just one piece of advice to a younger me, it would be, “Don’t worry so damn much.” But because young people never believe old people, I’d most likely ignore my own advice.
If there’s a future Liz Dunn out there in, say, 2034, may I respectfully ask you to time travel back to right now and give me the advice I need? I promise you, I’ll listen, and I’ll give you a piece of my philodendron to take back with you so you can grow your own plant there.
* * *
I ended up sleeping until the next afternoon—surgery can really take a whack out of you. My verklempt-o-thon was well in progress when my older sister Leslie dropped by, intruding upon one of the most wrenching of my verklempt-o-thon’s moments, the end of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis when the family realizes they’re doomed to the gas chambers. I was slightly looped on Percocets, and my eyes were hound-dog red.
“You look like hell, Liz. Like you have mumps.”
“Thank you, Leslie, but I can’t say the same for you.”
“It’s this jacket—it’s new. What do you think?” Leslie twirled on the carpet. Leslie’s beauty truly makes me a genetic punchline. When we were young, no amount of documentation could convince us we were biological sisters.
“It’s very you.” Cripes. Leslie vomits and pieces of undigested Vanity Fair articles come up—but she’s never fooled me for a moment with her fashion slave persona. I see through it, which is why she relaxes around me.
“Look at this place, Liz. Open the curtains.”
“No.”
“Okay then, I think I’ll smoke.”
“Sure.” I like cigarette smoke in a room. At least then the room doesn’t look or feel dead.
We lit up, and Leslie surveyed the condo with her real estate agent’s eye for upsellability. Sparkling Norgate Park fixer-upper / 1bdr /1bth /character kitchen/one owner. “Did Mother torture you yesterday?”
I paused the video. “She had to cancel lunch with Sylvia.”
“Cancelling lunch with Sylvia? That’s a baddy. Did it inch up the guilt a notch or two?”
“I … Don’t get me started.”
“I’d have driven you if it weren’t for the kids’ recital.”
Leslie kept shrugging her shoulders in a hunched way I’d never before seen. “Leslie, you look fidgety, and what’s with the shoulders?”
“My tits are killing me.”
“Still?”
I thought she’d inhale the whole cigarette in one drag. “Good God, yes.” The exhaled smoke resembled the Challenger explosion. “Oh, to be flat like you, Liz. You’re so lucky.”
“Thank you. Can’t you just have the … bags or whatever they are removed?”
“Too late. Mike’s bonded with them.” She cast her eyes toward my kitchen. “Any food around here?”
“Chocolate pudding, some Jell-O—some chicken-with-rice soup.”
She snooped around my kitchen area: butcher block counters and steel appliances—the sole luxurious addition the contractor made to the place. “Liz, you eat like you’re on welfare. There’s not one fresh anything in your whole kitchen.” She opened and closed the fridge door. “And not even one magnet or photo on your fridge. Where’s the Valentine’s Day card Brianna made you? Are you trying to clinically depress your visitors?”
“I don’t have visitors. You. Mother. William.”
“Liz, everyone has visitors.”
“Not me.”
She changed tack and removed the Pyrex bowl filled with Jell-O. “I’m going to eat your Jell-O. It’s red. What flavour is it?”
“Red Jell-O is red Jell-O.”
Her gold wrist jewellery clattered as she spooned down the goo I’d been saving for Terms of Endearment. She asked me, “Have you seen my bus stop yet?”
“Your what?”
“I have my own bus stop bench ad now, with a big black-and-white photo of me on it. Just one bench, but it’s a start. It’s a flattering shot, but we took it before I had my work done, so it doesn’t seem like me any more.”
“Where is it?”
“At Capilano Road and Keith, Canada’s longest red light. A captive audience. I just know some little shit with a felt pen’s going to go draw a Hitler moustache on it.”
“Felt markers ought to be illegal.”
“I agree. Kids today are monsters.” She finished my Jell-O and somehow squeaked a drag from what remained of her cigarette. “Have to run.”
“I think there’s still one more spoonful left.”
She was almost out the door. “You look like hell, darling. Three more days at least. Wouldn’t you think?”
“Yes, Leslie. Thank you.”
“See you tomorrow, darling.”
I began to watch Bambi. I wasn’t really sure why the video store clerk had recommended it as a sad movie—and it seemed pretty tame. There was a knock on my door, and because there was no intercom buzz I assumed it would be Wallace, the caretaker. It was young Donna from Landover Communication Systems, coltish and seemingly undernourished, standing in my hallway with a stack of folders and envelopes pressed to her chest. Everyone in the office likes Donna because she’s always up, always on—but I’m on to her game. She’s like me. She’s a watcher.
“Donna?”
“Hello, Liz.”
I realized how awful I must look. I touched my cheeks. “Swelling’s pretty big.”
She kept the papers clamped to her chest. “Liz, your eyes are all red.”
“Sad movies.”
“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,
“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 hunnnnnnngry,” 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 ha
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.