The Carpenter

Then Eleanor told Stan about the man who’d come into Judy’s life. Around May or June, Judy started getting agitated. She was quick to put you off if you asked her anything. She would say, I’m fine, why do you want to know? It wasn’t any kind of agitation Eleanor had seen in her before. Eleanor was already guessing what it might be.

And why not? Judy wasn’t unattractive, and since the medication had taken the swings out of her mood, she was good company. She wasn’t forthright about whoever the man might be and Ellie didn’t press her, but then she happened to meet him at the bank one day in the summer. The Busy Beaver crew had started their work in the late afternoon. Eleanor had a dentist’s appointment and was given leave fifteen minutes early. She went down the rear corridor and said goodbye to her sister and went out through the back door. She was halfway across the parking lot behind the bank when a man got out of a car and said: Hey, Judy.

This man was kind of singing an old song, It’s Judy’s turn to cry, it’s Judy’s turn to cry. Judy’s smile was so mean, sang the man.

Eleanor guessed it took her coming closer, twenty feet or so, for the man to realize she wasn’t her sister. They looked enough alike until you got up close.

— You’ve got to be Ellie, said the man. I’m sorry to have mixed you up.

Eleanor said it was okay, it happened from time to time. She let on that she knew about this man in Judy’s life, that he wasn’t something she’d only guessed at. So that was probably why he didn’t tell her his name. Eleanor couldn’t exactly say what he looked like. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, she remembered. Good for the weather but not like he’d come from an office or anything. He had sunglasses on, the kind with mirrored lenses. The car he was leaning up against wasn’t anything special. He was older than Judy, maybe even ten years older, but otherwise he just looked like anybody.

He was nice enough. He seemed easy to talk to. He asked how Ellie liked working at National Trust and how she liked living in town. He smiled. Eleanor might have been late for her dentist appointment if Judy hadn’t come out the back door just then. She was surprised. She chewed at her bottom lip and spoke in singular phrases, and the three of them-Eleanor, Judy and the man-made the points of a triangle as they stood talking to each other. So Eleanor, laughing a little, pleased for her sister, took her leave. As she was going she heard him sing it again, Judy’s smile was sooo mean. And Eleanor heard her sister laugh.

That weekend they had a barbecue over at Tommy Spencer’s house. Judy didn’t bring the man and didn’t make any mention of him. But then Eleanor got Judy to herself for awhile in the lawn chairs at the back of the yard. They watched Tommy horsing around with his brother’s kids.

— So when were you going to tell me? said Eleanor.

— Tell you about what? said Judy, not meeting her sister’s eyes.

It took a bit of pressing but Judy eventually told her. Once she got talking about him, she had a hard time stopping. The last six weeks or so, since the weather got nice, Judy had started walking to work every day. This was a big thing for her, a twenty-five-minute walk, but it was good exercise that was managing the weight the Elavil wanted to put on her frame. The midpoint of the walk was a little joint called Donut Line, and she’d started stopping there for an early meal before work. And this is where she’d met him.

Eleanor told Stan she could imagine it. Her sister at a table by herself. Bowl of soup, sandwich, day-old tabloid. There’s this seasonal labourer who comes in around the same time every day for a coffee. This guy with the nice smile passes Judy at her table, the first time just saying hello, the next time asking how are you, and the day after that asking if this seat’s taken.

The man’s name was Colin.

It wasn’t clear how long it had taken Judy to go on a date with him. Judy told Eleanor they went to the A amp;W mostly. They just talked. Colin was a good listener. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, like how she was feeling that day, was it an up day or a down day. Judy would tell him all about how she liked riding on the train, like when she’d gone to and from the city, or how she’d loved it when her dad used to take them to the drive-in before he died. You couldn’t go to the drive-in any more, of course, since it had burned down.

Eleanor wanted to ask Judy about the other dimension to it, but was embarrassed. Even now, telling Stan, she blushed fiercely. What else might be going on, other than chats in the A amp;W parking lot? But she made herself ask, and Judy stood up and said: Oh my God, Ellie. I’m twenty-eight years old. I know what I’m doing.

Eleanor only saw Colin once or twice more. Both times he was dropping Judy off at the National Trust. It seemed like a sign that maybe their lives were moving forward.

But then, around the third week of August, something happened. At work one afternoon, Eleanor didn’t see her sister. Alda hadn’t seen her either. Eleanor hurried home, found her sister in her bedroom, pale, haggard, as bad as she’d been in a very long time. She was unwashed and the room was musky.

It was Colin. Eleanor couldn’t draw the particulars out of her sister but they didn’t really matter. He’d been around for awhile and then he’d broken it off. He’d been casual about it.

Judy stopped eating, quit showing up for work. She quit taking her pills. She spent entire days inside with the blinds drawn and the television on. Eleanor called the doctor but he said little of substance. Judy wasn’t aggressive or volatile. She was her own custodian as far as the law was concerned. Nobody could force her to medicate. They could only watch her. She’d been worse in the past, and she’d come out of that.

Eleanor told Stan that she didn’t really think she could hold Colin to hard judgment for what became of Judy. Her sister had no prior experience with men. If a man wanted to take advantage of her, or just tell her this and that to keep her around for sex, she wouldn’t know any better. And even if Colin didn’t intentionally misguide her, Judy had probably made it a certain way in her mind and her heart that wasn’t the same as reality. So Eleanor couldn’t judge him too harshly.

Eleanor spent as much time as she could with her sister. She and Tommy cancelled a camping trip they’d planned for Labour Day. Then, the Tuesday after the long weekend, Eleanor came home from work and saw a dent in the front bumper of their mother’s old car. Some bad scratches were raked into the paint. She found Judy on the back porch. Judy was different from how she’d been for the past ten days. She was smiling again. She looked half asleep. She looked like she’d resumed her medication.

Eleanor asked about the car. Judy told her sister a little bit about what she’d done, how she’d gone to a roadhouse where Colin liked to hang out. But this was the middle of the afternoon and he wasn’t there. So she went to another place, a place he’d taken her a few times. A nice quiet place out at Indian Lake, twenty-five minutes east of town, where he lived in a motorhome, the kind you wish you could drive across the country in. Judy told Eleanor that she’d parked the car and gotten out and walked up the driveway. It was a long driveway. She’d come in sight of the motorhome. Outside, there was some s-l-u-t suntanning in a chair. Asleep, Judy guessed, because then when she heard Colin’s voice calling this girl from inside the motorhome, calling her baby, calling, Hey, baby, come on inside, the girl in the chair didn’t even move.

— You could tell just by looking at her what a tart she was, said Judy.

Judy turned around and walked down the long driveway and got back in the car and drove back to town. She cried the whole way. She hit a mailbox at one point but didn’t care. She just wanted to go home.

Some real s-l-u-t, Judy told Eleanor. The flat way she said it, she might have been commenting on how the fall was right around the corner. She was feeling better now, she said. She had half a mind to get in the car and drive back out there and rain on the little party they were probably having.

— But you won’t go, Judy, will you.

— No, Ellie. I’m staying right here.

— I keep thinking about how I shouldn’t have left her for one minute, said Eleanor. But I’d made plans with Tommy that night to make up for the trip we’d cancelled. I thought Judy was okay because she was on her pills again, and would probably fall asleep early, and we’d be able to talk about it more in the morning …

Eleanor had been sitting at the table in the reading room with her cheek propped on her fist for quite awhile. No tears had been shed. She just looked tired.

— You couldn’t of known, said Stan.

He didn’t believe that. He could see Eleanor’s lapse in judgment for what it was and he knew she would carry that with her for a long time to come.

— Do you remember what time it was you found her?

— Oh, said Stan. Had to of been ten o’clock.

— Three hours after the last time I ever saw her.