Liam’s place is a small one-storey house with white clapboard and brown trim and rests at the end of the longest driveway in St. Felix’s. From the pavement, it has a cookie-cutter look about it, like a tiny chalet. But that’s from a distance. Imogene has never been inside or up close to it.
She trudges up the driveway with her hands in her pockets. The plastic bag around her wrist slaps at her hip. She feels like she’s making an entrance. Luh, here she comes, Imogene Tubbs. Not very lively, is she? Face on her like frozen bread. The third of January and there was little snow over Christmas, but now the sky is silvery and pregnant with weather. The ground is hard and gusts of wind stir up brief dustings of snow across rocks and dirt.
The driveway ends at the lawn. Overgrown tufts of frozen grass crunch underfoot. The white paint on the clapboard is chipped and flaking in patches. The door to the front porch is a flat wooden slab, the latch a piece of hairy twine over a nail. Imogene lifts it and steps inside, submerged in dim light and woodstove heat. She knocks on the inside door.
Liam’s mother answers. A tiny woman with twiggy arms, a blond with dark roots. She has tight acid-wash jeans, a long yellow T-shirt and a mouthful of gum.
“Come in,” she says. “I’m tryin’ to get this hole cleaned up. It never ends.” She seems to know Imogene, but doesn’t say her name. She slaps across the checkered linoleum in pink flip-flops and leans out into the hallway. “Liam! You gotta visitor.” She watches Imogene blandly while she steps out of her boots. “He’s in his room,” she says. “Go on in.”
Liam’s room is down the narrow hall from the kitchen. Imogene’s feet sink into thick, yellow carpet. She catches a glimpse of the bathroom: pink furry toilet seat cover with matching mat, seashell wallpaper. The Lundrigan Bathroom.
She raps on Liam’s door and it slides open. His room is a narrow rectangle with a window over the bed. There are more posters than she predicted: AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Nightmare on Elm Street. Liam lies propped up with his shoulders on pillows. His face is a sunset of colour. The right eye is purple and sealed shut, lip cut at the corner, jaw swollen and peppered with a line of yellowing blotches. The four fingers on his right hand are trapped in a bandage. When she sits on the edge of the bed, he shifts away.
“How are you doing?” She places the bag on his bed.
“This is it.”
“I brought you some stuff.”
Liam blinks. He stares straight ahead without looking at her.
“Magazines.” She pulls items from the bag. “Roast Chicken chips. Twizzlers. I know they’re your favourite. And the tapes you loaned me.”
“Why did you bring them?”
“I figured you’d want to listen to them.”
“I see.”
“Nan made some date squares too. I brought some of those.”
“I hates dates squares.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I told you that before.” It comes out of his mouth like slush. He has missing teeth. “How was your Christmas after?”
“It was good, you know.” She stares at her hands. There is a ridge of something dark under her thumbnail.
“Not really. How would I know?”
“It was the same old stuff. Have you had many visitors?”
“Nope.” He tries to sit up and winces. She moves to straighten his pillow, but he jerks his head in warning. “I can do it,” he says.
“Are you going to tell me who did this?”
“Like you don’t know.”
Her eyes travel to his posters. She stares at Angus Young’s bare knees. “I find it hard to believe Cec did it by himself.”
“He did my eye. And this.” He waves his bandaged hand. The edges of the gauze tinged yellow. “His work boots are steel-toed,” he says. “Murray lent a hand. Guess I’m not working for him next summer. And Bryce Benoit. He still thinks I broke into his cabin that time.”
How loud are they talking? She glances at the door. “Are you going to press charges?” she asks.
“She never hears anything,” he says. “There’s no sense pressing charges. It would mean more trouble.”
“How do they know it was you?”
“Bryce saw me in Mom’s car. They put two and two together.”
Liam picks up one of the tapes. Meatloaf ’s Bat Out of Hell. He stares at the cover for a second and drops it. “Good thing you brought these back. Now you can make sure you don’t owe me nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You leave for two weeks. I get the shit kicked out of me. Still takes you four days to come over.”
“I didn’t mean to take so long. I was nervous. Do you want me to put your tapes away?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Did they say—”
“They didn’t mention you.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I mean, I’ll probably get the shit kicked out of me semi-regularly, but hopefully I’ll bite my tongue.”
“What does that mean?”
Liam leans forward. He keeps his good eye on her. “They think I took a lot more than we did. Over two thousand dollars, Cec says. Missing from behind a picture.”
Imogene forces her face not to reveal itself. Liam reaches out with his good left hand and rubs the cuff of her new jacket between his fingers. “Nice coat,” he says. “Looks expensive.”
The back of her neck heats up. She should have hung up her coat when she came in. “Maggie’s boyfriend bought it for me.”
“Look at Imogene, getting whatever her heart desires.”
“Knock it off.”
“I knew it. I know that had to be a reason you were acting so cagey.”
“Yeah, I was fucking nervous. Don’t you think it makes sense to be nervous?”
“Because you did it. You took the money.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did. And you didn’t say anything.”
“You have no proof of that.”
“Is this why we started having sex? So I wouldn’t tell anyone?”
“Oh my God. You’re ridiculous.” She starts to move away, but he sinks his nails into the soft leather of her jacket sleeve. Everything in the room is too warm and sickly, her weight on the overly soft mattress, the quicksand plush of the carpet. Liam’s breath in her face is bitter, nicotine and fermentation.
“You never called me once while you were gone,” he says. “You don’t even want to be here now.”
“That’s not true.”
“All this time. Not saying anything.” He lets go of her sleeve like it’s contagious. “I’ve had nothing to do but lie here and go over it all in my head. How you never seemed that into me. How you don’t like holding my hand.”
“I just don’t like holding hands.”
“The way you squeeze your eyes closed.”
“You’re being an idiot.”
“Because I am one,” Liam says. He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “I must be. Fuck. I can’t believe I didn’t know better.”
“That’s a shitty thing to say.” She swallows. Don’t act guilty. “But you are being an idiot right now, though, going on with this.”
“Oh, but being an idiot is all I know, see? All you gotta do is look at Mom and Dad for that.”
“I don’t know anything about your mom and dad.”
“Like fuck you don’t. Everyone in this place knows everything about everybody.”
“They just think they do.”
“Well, Imogene, I thought I knew you pretty good. But now, when I think about it, screwing someone to get what you want might come naturally to you. Seeing what you come from and all.”
“Fuck you, Liam.”
“‘Fuck you,’ she says. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she says. Yeah, you really sound like a girl who likes me.”
She stands up. “Tell you what, Liam. Call me when you heal up and stop being an asshole.” The nervous sweat on her back bubbles in anger. The room swarms around her, the posters and their sharp-edged lettering, black and red and orange like old wounds. She could rip them down. Anything to make him shut up.
“I can’t believe I actually thought you were alright,” he says. His voice dips to a low hiss. “But I should have known.”
“Oh, Christ. Listen to you. You’re delirious.”
“You’re just like him, Immy. You’re a fucking creep.”
Her hand floats out and grips his left wrist. He brings up his right hand and she snatches his bandaged fingers. He yelps. There is something so satisfying about his yelp, like a puppy. She leans over the bed like she is going to kiss him.
“Why would I not take it?” she says. “What did you expect me to do? You thought I would be cool going into that bastard rapist’s house for two hundred dollars? Just follow you around like your dog?”
His leg twitches. She brings her knee up and lets it hover over his crotch. He glares up at her, his chin trembling slightly.
“Fuck Cec. That money is mine,” she says. “If he comes near me, my whole family will charge him with what he did to my mother. And you can tell him that. And if he doesn’t think it will happen, I’m fucking evidence. And Liam, if you’re too goddamn stunned to understand that, you deserve to have some sense beaten into you.”
She releases his fingers with a flick and steps back from the bed. He buckles over his hand, cursing and moaning. She walks out of the room, her socks swishing through the shag. Liam’s mother is rolling cigarettes on the kitchen table. “Take care,” she mutters. Imogene doesn’t look up as she shoves on her boots. The thin plank of the porch door clatters closed behind her.
Outside, the wind has picked up. It shoves into Imogene’s back and half carries her up the stretch of driveway. It gathers up other items along the way: cigarette butts, a paper bag, dead leaves. It rushes her and all of it up the length from Liam’s house, cheering them on, like they’re competing in a hundred-meter dash of trash.