She had given the same box to all of the boys in our class. You didn’t think I was the only recipient, did you?

BY VALERIE HICKEY

IMAGE BY CHESLEY DAVIS

Sitting intact in the second drawer of my bureau is the heart-shaped box that Maya gave me over thirty years ago. It was on Valentine’s Day in grade ten English class. Since then, I have transferred it time and again—five times exactly—from bureau to bureau along with other treasures—a cerulean silk tie, a Cartier watch, a Waterman pen, and select coins from my travels.

I was a newcomer to Whitebridge, having arrived only weeks earlier from a town several hours away. On the first day of school, I sat at the desk right behind Maya’s, chosen almost blindly. You know how nerve-wracking it is to be a new arrival at school at that age. Just before English class began, Maya spun around and said, “Hi, I’m Maya. You’re new. Do you like literature?” At that very moment, the teacher called us to attention, giving Maya only a second to smile at me before turning around. In that instant, I noted that Maya had a radiant smile, and though she was rather plain, I sensed that she was open-hearted and kind. My initial nervousness evaporated and I began to look forward to both English class and Maya’s impulsive quips, her amateur pen and ink drawings, and her bouncy exuberance. I suppose one could say we became friends, in so far as friendship is defined between a teenage boy and girl in a small town in the ’70s.

As time went by, I found myself glancing over at Maya in the cafeteria during the lunch hour to confirm that she was in good spirits, surrounded by her friends. They were the popular group, each secure in their place in the world, certain that tomorrow would bring more of the same as today, and yet happily seeking distractions to stimulate their excitable minds.

On afternoons when she wasn’t otherwise occupied, I would walk with Maya on her way home. Even after a day at school, Maya always looked well-turned-out. Walking shoulder to shoulder, I caught whiffs of detergent emanating from her clothing. My house was a stone’s throw from the school, while Maya’s was in the more affluent neighbourhood up the hill—affluent only in a relative sense since Whitebridge was dismally in need of a coat of paint. I can say it now that I’ve moved away, but even then, its small-town shabbiness was notable.

It was never awkward on those short walks. In fact, Maya would often continue chatting from the sidewalk, only twenty feet from my front door. I would have been mortified had my foster parents come out of the house, but it never happened, and so my self-conscious worries were all for naught. On one such occasion—my sixteenth birthday, as it happened—Maya and I left the school together and walked lazily toward the side street where I lived. As we stood on the pathway, Maya presented me with a birthday card: a small pen and ink drawing of a three-storey turn of the century brick house, which she’d copied from a book cover. Maya was shyly proud of her drawing, and I was both surprised and delighted to receive it from her. Touched, I placed it in the heart-shaped box that she’d given me the year before.

Having arrived in Whitebridge when cliques were already established, I never made friends there. Instead, I spent my time developing my drafting skills, which would lay the foundation for my later success as an architect. While my cohort was out on sunset road cruises, learning about sex, substances, and male camaraderie, I was drawing structures with secret rooms behind moving panels lined with library shelves, sitting at the very desk where I had placed Maya’s heart-shaped box. She had given the same box to all of the boys in our class. You didn’t think I was the only recipient, did you?

I left Whitebridge after high school and by the age of twenty, I was in my second year of university, studying the theory of structures and excelling at maths in the most cosmopolitan city, not only in Canada, but some would say the world. After graduation, I secured employment at an excellent architecture firm. I began winning design awards—the prestigious Architecture MasterPrize award was one among many—and having my work featured in architecture magazines. I began making enough money to purchase my first home in Rosedale, which I renovated and then flipped for over a million dollars. I repeated this cycle seven times and, by age forty, could afford to live comfortably and travel annually to fascinating places. Sri Lanka and Nepal remain most dear to me to this day.

Maya, however, had remained in Whitebridge and married Tony, an insurance salesman. Maya and I had stayed in touch, and although she invited me to the wedding, I declined due to previous commitments. I sent her postcards from my travels and would invite her to lunch at the Tartan when my schedule allowed me to visit. The bleak drive to Whitebridge never seemed to change, and I wondered how Maya maintained her cheerfulness. I reflected on how the tables had turned. Maya, who had peaked in high school with her shiny hair, trendy fashions, and popularity among the in-crowd, had clearly—I hope you don’t find it unkind of me to say so— stagnated, working in the purchasing office of the municipality, never leaving Whitebridge, and married to a local man. I, on the other hand, had gone on to achieve fortune and distinction in architectural design. It was ironic that Maya had given me a drawing of a Victorian house.

Maya was devastated when Tony died suddenly at age forty-one of pulmonary edema, having had no previous health issues and a fairly staid lifestyle. I attended his funeral and briefly spoke with Maya, expressing my condolences. Maya barely heard me, poor thing, but I felt certain that my presence must have provided her with some comfort.

Six months later, I made a point of meeting Maya for lunch at the Tartan, a microcosm of Whitebridge, with its green and chrome décor, a snapshot of days gone by and better left behind. The vinyl covering of the stools and booths had gaping slits, exposing yellowed foam dirtied with age. I observed the change in Maya’s demeanour—her sunken chest, the heaviness of her eyelids, the tremor in her hand as she held her water glass, and the dowdiness of her attire. I pondered just how vicious a force shock was, how callously it watched its target buckle, how pitilessly it left unrecognizable rubble in its wake. Tony’s death had shaken Maya’s belief system. The rug could’ve been pulled out from under her feet, and she couldn’t have possibly prepared for it. I secretly found Maya’s new worldview refreshing. The irritating rose-coloured glasses had been relinquished. A more apt survival mode had been adopted. Her eyes started each time the bell on the restaurant door dinged. She had little interest in attending the various social events frequented by the couples in her and Tony’s circle. Eventually, they stopped inviting her, which, while seemingly cruel, could also be attributed to Maya’s reclusiveness following Tony’s death.

Although my work and travels kept me away from Whitebridge for some time, Maya and I kept up fairly regular correspondence about our respective lives. Just over a year after Tony’s death, Maya wrote to say that she’d met a man she was going to marry and invited me to the wedding. Again, I declined due to previous commitments, but sent a silver and gold heirloom coffee set from Dubai, with my heartfelt congratulations that Maya had overcome her grief and found a loving companion with whom to spend the rest of her life. I added that, though cliché, I believed it was true that time healed even the deepest wounds. In truth, I was concerned that Maya’s neediness was clouding her judgement, and I regretted that my busy schedule prevented me from visiting my old friend more often.

I went to Whitebridge to meet Maya for lunch at the Tartan a few months after she married Edgar. Shamefully, I often struggled to recall his name, but Maya would breathily say, “It’s Edgar,” with a girlish smile. She seemed well. I noted in the photographs she proudly showed me that Edgar was slightly younger, dashingly attractive, and seemed suited to his work in advertising for a local business media company.

“Do you think you’ll ever marry?” she asked, in that guileless way she had that endeared her to me. I replied that, indeed, I fully intended to, though privately I felt marriage was best left to more courageous souls than mine. After a pause, her eyes scanning my face, and in a voice reminiscent of a particularly impudent counsellor from my youth, she said decisively, “You should. It would be good for you.” In response to this unsolicited advice, I afforded her a nod and a rather tight-lipped smile, which she could not have mistaken for anything but the mildest of acknowledgements. I asked for the bill.

Although my work in the city kept me busy, from time to time I ventured out on country roads in my Porsche, savouring its thrilling acceleration and speed. Midnight might find me slithering into Whitebridge when I felt the urge. On one such night, as I pulled up to the stop sign on a side street, I saw a police car cruising through the adjacent main intersection of town. With no agenda, I pulled into a laneway, lights off, until the officers had completed their duties, likely enjoying the quiet of the graveyard shift in downtown Whitebridge. Once I was assured that Whitebridge was fast asleep, I inevitably drove past the high school and turned down the little street where my former foster parents still lived, for all I knew—I had not stayed in touch. My Porsche purred through town, including the neighbourhood where Maya now lived. Maya had shared her exact address with me the last time we met for lunch—the same lunch at which she condescended to suggest she knew better than I what was good for me vis à vis marrying. As I passed her house, I imagined Maya sleeping next to a sweaty, snoring Edgar whose good looks and polish faded day by day, replaced by the contempt that familiarity spawns. Well before dawn broke, I drove back to the city, king of the road in those wee hours.

Not long after one such late-night expedition, Maya telephoned to say that she thought Edgar was cheating on her. It was unlike Maya to call me and discuss distressing personal matters. I was at a loss for words and mumbled platitudes about her perhaps imagining it. I promised to arrange a lunch soon, and I kept my promise by driving down to Whitebridge the following month on an overcast Wednesday. 

Seated in our usual spot at the Tartan, Maya was beside herself. We looked an unlikely pair. Maya wore a faded green blouse with a threadbare brown sweater and a long floral skirt, her hair unruly, while I, neatly coiffed, wore a crisp white t-shirt, a fitted grey wool jacket, and pressed jeans. Again, her shoulders slumped while I sat squarely against the back of the booth. By then I had moved into one of my own designs in the city, a splendidly renovated south-facing warehouse loft overlooking the lake and within walking distance of fine dining restaurants. My professional life was stimulating. I had everything, while Maya was desperately grasping at the only thing she had left.

Maya had found lipstick on Edgar’s collar, a bottle of aftershave in the car, and a long red hair on his jacket. She claimed he’d been taking unexplained absences. When I asked if she’d confronted Edgar, she replied, “He denies everything. He even accuses me of being crazy.” Her eyes were glassy and unblinking as she paused, awaiting my response to this. I conjectured that, short of catching him in the act itself, she had little choice but to believe him. At this, she shook her head and looked away.

Again, I pondered Maya’s circumstances. Distrust in a marriage is a destructive force. I could envision Maya watching vigilantly as Edgar held his coffee cup, imagining infinitesimal discrepancies between today’s and yesterday’s mundane actions. Gradually, she would begin to criticize Edgar’s slightest foible and wonder aloud if his taking an evening stroll to pick up milk at the convenience store was necessary. Her picayune pestering would eventually weave itself into the fabric of Edgar’s self-esteem and debilitate him. Or, if he had strength of character—how would I know?—it would raise his bile.

Edgar soon left Maya, but never admitted to having an affair, and Maya never found summary proof. I was concerned for her. Her friends had been Edgar’s friends, and so they not only disbelieved Maya’s accusations of his infidelity, but also spoke ill of her among Whitebridge social circles. Maya found herself isolated once again.

I called her to arrange to have lunch on the following Tuesday, but Maya didn’t pick up. I tried again several times to no avail, so I simply left her a message confirming that I’d meet her at noon at the Tartan on Tuesday. I drove out of the city on a glorious day, the sun shimmering off the lake, and headed southwest. Less than two hours later, exiting the highway onto the country road that led to Whitebridge, an armada of dark clouds settled over the familiar landscape, casting it in a toneless light.

At noon sharp, I enter the Tartan, sit at our usual booth, and order a coffee. I flip through the local paper left on the tabletop. The din is familiar now, as is the homogeneous clientele, and for a moment I feel locked in a film loop, sequestered from the world, as in an insane asylum. I glance out the window as an unfamiliar car passes by in slow motion. The man at the wheel and the woman passenger stare through the rain at the restaurant until they are out of view.

It is half past noon and still Maya has not appeared. I do not pretend that the car with its two inhabitants straining to peer inside the restaurant was not perplexing, disquieting even. However, Maya’s absence suggests to me that my plan may well be unfolding as devised. Haven’t I managed it all with customary stealth? Few people know that ricin poisoning causes pulmonary edema and death. It’s also untraceable. I read about it in my youth. There is a vile of ricin hidden in the back of Maya’s medicine cabinet, which the police will have found by now, I should think, casting doubt on the nature of Tony’s untimely death.

That is, if what’s-his-name—Edgar—is following the clues. Planting the evidence of his fictional affair was a rush on those midnight drives to and from Whitebridge. I pride myself on my understanding of human nature, having spent so much time observing it. Surely, Maya’s relentless accusations of infidelity have maddened Edgar beyond reason, inciting him to punish her for his pain. Her tearful avowal that he doubted her sanity was the coup de grâce that fuelled my next step, which you may think was a long shot, but let’s see. A well-timed article crossed Edgar’s desk. It cited a case pertaining to ricin causing fatal pulmonary edema. This would have prompted Edgar to develop a theory about Tony’s fatal disease, which he’d naturally share with the police. I’m not certain of this, but I have nothing to lose. I’ll always find a way.

 If you’re asking why I did it, it’s simple. Maya brought this on herself. She gave the heart-shaped box to all the boys in class and not just me.

Valerie Hickey’s bent for writing psychological drama is fueled by small town life, family dynamics, travel and the pull of nature. After a career in business, Valerie is in Humber’s Creative Writing program and is completing her debut novel.

Image: Colour Criminal (Chesley Davis, 2023)

Edited for publication by Lauren Ridgewell as part of the Creative Book Publishing program.

HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation and the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.