Authors: Katherine Leiner
On the other side of the guilt a certain freedom rises. Until yesterday there hadn’t been more than twenty-four hours since Marco’s death that I’d not thought of him. Today he slips a little farther away.
With the
Western Mail
under my arm, I move through a low stone archway into a corridor with shops on either side. A Welsh mall! I
find a table in the back of a nice, dark pub where the ceilings are so low I almost have to stoop.
“Special’s steak and kidney pie and a glass of red wine for four pound fifty pence,” a short redheaded waitress practically sings in her Welsh accent. For dessert I order my favorite, crème caramel, and when it comes I am overwhelmed with a sense memory of my fourteenth birthday, when Evan served the rich toffee-colored sweet to me and Parry.
I spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the wide streets, where red double-decker buses and square-backed taxis move bumper to bumper amid diverse crowds. Cardiff could be any sophisticated European city. In the distance is the sea. I pass an Indian takeaway, where the smells of cumin and cardamom immediately make me want to eat again, a fish-and-chip shop, a mosque, a Jamaican greengrocer, a Greek Orthodox church and a tattoo parlor. A left turn down Boulevard de Nantes and I am completely lost.
A queue of British Navy men walk toward me. Hearing Mam in my ear, I can’t decide if I should run or stare. For her, Cardiff would always be famous for its “grotty feeling round the edges. It’s the sailors. Don’t like the place a bit.”
Little by little, I feel my family beginning to take hold of me. I am not more than fifteen miles from where I grew up. Perhaps if I’d known a real city was so close, I might not have run so far as California. Hah! The truth is, back then, sometimes even California didn’t seem far enough away.
On the right, a huge rugby stadium called Cardiff Arms Park sits next to the Taff River, which I remember starts way up the valleys, beyond Aberfan. “Hey, little Taffy. D’you want to go catch a couple of two-eyes?” I remember Da asking Parry. “Taffy,” a nickname for a Welshman, and “two-eyes,” Da’s shorthand for fish. Occasionally I’ve used Taffy as a pet name for Dafydd.
After climbing a steep stairway to the top of a lookout tower, which a sign says was built by the Normans, I get a clear view of the hills and up the valley, where I will head tomorrow. I shiver. But today there is nothing but the sights and smells of Cathedral Road, Llandaff Cathedral, Howell’s Department Shop, Cathays Park and Butetown—along the sea with its sailors, small houseboats and tugboats stretching off in the view. I am on holiday.
In the evening I change my clothes and walk to a bookstore, where I buy Margaret Drabble’s latest as insurance against any possibility of a long, lonely night. Then I hail a taxi that drops me at a small, four-star cafe recommended in the guidebook, order a glass of French chardonnay and Dover sole meuniere with chocolate mousse for dessert. The fish is flaky and the mousse is perfect. Halfway through my second glass of wine, I remember tomorrow’s drive home and my stomach tightens. Will I even be able to find my way?
Back at the hotel, I call Hannah’s camp. “There was some homesickness for a few days,” the director says. “But it seems to have subsided,” he assures me. They are watching her closely. She is out on a horse ride and won’t return until it is early in the morning here.
Since I am traveling abroad, they agree I can check in periodically by phone. My fax has already been placed in Hannah’s mailbox. The director promises to give Hannah my love and kisses and tell her I will call again.
I pull back the curtains, open the windows and turn my lights out—leaving me with only the illumination from Cardiff Castle.
From bed, I watch HTV, the Welsh-owned station, fascinated that the program is in Welsh.
Sometime much later, I awaken and the television is still on but there is no sound, just a lineup of color bars. Following a homing instinct, I reach over the bedclothes, searching for Marc. The numbers on the digital clock read four twenty-three. It takes a moment to remember where I am.
My mind starts to tumble over all the terrible possibilities of what Gabriella might do in her frustration to get to me. I don’t know her well enough to know if she is vindictive. If she wants to sue the estate she can probably find a lawyer who will take her case. Marc’s music was popular in Brazil and I guess she could even sell the story to some sleazy writer at the Brazilian equivalent of the
Enquirer
or the
Sun
. It’s the kind of gossip that could ruin one’s privacy. No mother would expose her child to such filthy publicity, would she?
The last time I saw Gabriella was when the Brazilians were in town for the U.S. opening of
The Yellow Door
. I didn’t notice that she and Marc paid each other any particular attention. Hannah would have been about a year old. And their child—I run through the math quickly—my God, Gabriella was pregnant.
That night our friend Shata and I had put together an unbelievable Indian feast, unusual and spicy. Memories of the evening seem consumed by food and the weather, which I remember was also rather unusual for L.A.—a cold, rainy night. We built a fire in the living room fireplace and after dinner we gathered round it. It was a pleasant evening with lots of Portuguese and English mixed together, hysterical laughter. Late in the evening Gabriella sang, Marc playing the piano, the rest of us filling in with guitars and percussion. I sensed nothing. Not a thing. No stolen glances or quick caresses. But of course I wasn’t looking.
Shit. I shake the covers off, scream into the pillow, “You bastard!” After throwing the pillow on the floor, I pace around the room. What really was going on in our relationship those last eight years? Now nothing is as it seemed. He had another wife! It’s still so unbelievable. I continue to go back, rethink, remember everything.
The last time we made love was the night before I left for Colorado, the night before he died. Marc was tired, complaining of a migraine headache. He had gone up to bed before me. When I climbed in, he was already half asleep. I rubbed his back, his neck. He rolled over onto me and kissed me. We made love, both of us halfheartedly. After we were through, he said, “I love you, but my head still hurts. Sorry.” And then he was out.
Next door, I remember a radio came on, loud, blaring rap music. I was afraid it would wake Marc. I dressed quickly and in a rage ran downstairs. For the whole year, workmen had been building a tennis court next door. I yelled at them that morning for playing their music so loud and taking up every spare inch of space in the canyon with their trucks, their tools, their music. Though the crew had gone for the night, the radio was blaring at full volume on its own. Obviously, someone had decided to retaliate and had set the alarm. Fuck them. There was a padlock on the gate, so like a cat burglar, I scaled the chain-link fence that separated our properties, and when I was on the other side, I ran over to the black boom box and kicked it hard, kicked it again and again, smashed it until it was on its side, quiet, dead. Then I stood for a moment in the dark, completely out of breath, examining the view the Larkins had of our property—our swing set, our vegetable garden, our huge pepper trees. They could see right into our kitchen. And then I looked at the skeleton of their
tennis court as it hung out over our canyon, ruining our view. The Larkins had promised Marc when they finished, he could use the court anytime. Fuck them, too. I was glad I killed the radio. I had scaled the fence back to our property just as the neighborhood patrol car drove past.
At nine o’clock room service arrives with my breakfast: Welsh cakes, white coffee and half a grapefruit, along with my ancient but newly shined-up cowboy boots, which I’d left outside my door. There is also a copy of the morning’s
Western Mail
. Biting into the buttery Welsh cake I glance quickly at the headlines and read:
L
ONGTIME
A
BERFAN
R
ESIDENT
, G
AVIN
A
MES
,
L
OSES
F
INAL
B
ATTLE
A
GAINST
C
ANCER
Gavin Ames was Peter’s father. Mr. Ames was sixty-seven, the article says. Younger than Da. The funeral service is to be this afternoon at two o’clock.
Hallie is mad for Peter Ames. She sits next to him in school. She turns the color of pink tulips in spring when she sees him on the road.
We follow him down Moy Road and all the way to the overhang. He whirls around and sees us. He smiles back at Hallie. “I see you there, Hallie. I do. I’ll be tellin’ my da if you keep following me!” he laughs.
After the disaster Mrs. Ames comes round the house to show us a picture Peter drew. She is one of the only ones who comes round regularly to see Mam and Da. Mr. Ames, too. They don’t care that the rest of the village blame Da. Mrs. Ames is like a tiny sparrow with tightly curled hair. She cries at the kitchen table while Mam makes her a cup of tea.
“He didn’t want to go to school that day. He didn’t,” she says. “He’d been unwell all the day before, snivelly like, and I’d made him go off anyway. I pushed him, like. What kind of mother do you think I am, telling him to behave like a man when he was only a little boy, with a cold, snot even? Could he have known? Could Peter have had some kind of feeling or dream, a premonition, something?
“The night before he’d drawn this picture,” she says, holding out
a small drawing. The picture, done with black crayon, is of an airplane with the initials NCB written on it. Below the airplane is a row of terraced houses queued up just like the ones we all live in, and the school. The houses are crossed out and smudged over. The tip is in the picture and it clearly has run into the school. Above the picture Peter wrote the words “The End.”
“ ‘Twas a warning, it was,” Mrs. Ames sobs. “I only found it after. If he’d shown it to me then, I would have known, or at least I could have had the chance to know.”
“My Cod, Molly,” Mam says. “It’s not your fault, like. No way you could have known even if you had seen the picture. Don’t go blaming yourself!”
Poor Mrs. Ames died a few years after the disaster. Mam said she’d died of a broken heart.
During the seventy-six-day tribunal, Gavin Ames fought for truth and justice.
He was the one appointed chairmen of the Residents and Parents Committee to look after the three-million-pound memorial relief fund that was donated from the government and concerned people around the world.
Last year he saw his efforts rewarded with the return by the government of £150,000, which had been snatched from the disaster fund to pay for removal of the slag heap lying above the village.
Soon after the funeral, Hallie’s mam helped form a committee made up of all the mothers in the village who had lost a child. They decided the tip must be removed. Its presence was too ghastly a reminder, and everyone wanted it gone, fast. The village felt the cost to remove the tip should be the NCB’s responsibility. But the NCB wouldn’t pay. In the end, years later, the village was forced to take the money for the removal from the relief fund referred to in the obituary.
Da had said, “Gavin’ll see to it we get that money back. Don’t you worry ‘bout that. Gavin won’t let them beat us out of it.”
Da had been right.
I decide to try and make the funeral.
The concierge tells me my rental car is parked in the lot in back of the hotel, a small blue Ford. Pulling the seat forward and looking at the map, I chart my course. The A470 goes all the way up into the valleys. I move out of the small drive and maneuver the car onto Westgate Street, then right, past the castle, bearing left onto Kingsway, which runs into the A470.
Out the window I notice all the road signs are written twice, just like the W
ELCOME
TO W
ALES
sign—once in Welsh and again in English. The village names, of course, are only in Welsh, and each seems familiar and holds some memory. I crank on the radio to David Gray singing “My Oh My.”
I pass a sign for the village of Rhiwbina. I remember after the disaster, Gram said how Hallie’s mam went to see Alex Somner, who lived in Rhiwbina. It was said Dr. Somner had powers. He worked with spirits.
Years and years later Marco was working on a musical about the supernatural. He’d brought home a stack of books about hypnotherapy. It turned out Dr. Somner was world renowned for his work with dreams and hypnotism, specializing in past life regression. Experts, well-known psychologists and psychiatrists believed he had the ability to get in touch with “the other side.” Gram said Dr. Somner helped Mrs. Jones find some peace with Hallie’s passing. In fact, Mrs. Jones told Gram that Dr. Somner had made contact with Hal-lie. I wonder if he is still alive. I should scout him out, see if he can help me make face-to-face contact with Marc so I can let him know what a wretch he is and that he’d better find a way to get Gabriella off my back, quick.
Several miles up the road from Rhiwbina is Tongwynlais, where Gram had known the owner of a small antique shop who had a daughter my age with long, curly blond hair like Hallie’s. After the disaster Gram took me round to play with her several times, hoping, I suppose, we would make friends. But it didn’t work—she wasn’t Hallie. Finally, Gram gave up.
And then comes Caerphilly, known for its eponymous product: dry, brittle white cheese. I hated it when I was little. Now I love it and buy it whenever I come across it in specialty stores in Santa Monica.
I see the sign to Mount Pleasant and know I am close. My tongue goes dry, and I’m having a hard time swallowing.
“But I don’t want to go to school in Mount Pleasant, Mam. Please don’t make me.”
“Alys, it’s not up to me, like. That’s where they’re putting you all for now, so that’s where you’re going until they build a new school. The coach is waiting now, Alys. Get along.”
The kids are not friendly to us. Evan says it’s because they don’t know how to speak to children who have lost so much. It is too hard for them to sit next to us in the classroom and to play with us on the playground, to pretend we are all the same. They know we are different and so none of them can figure a way to make believe otherwise. Yesterday one of the other children told me he’d never known anybody who had died, especially never another child. He wanted to know if all my friends had died or just some of them.