“She liked him more than you think.”
“Go ‘way, she’d get disgusted with him. Everybody did, one time or another. He was too crabby to live.”
“He wasn’t always pissed off.”
“Good for him. What a eulogy.”
They went in to the kitchen table and sat talking. His brother had brushed up on gossip down at the store but he picked at Lauchlin for details, for anything new.
“I get a kind of hunger for this place,” he said, taking in the kitchen that had changed little since he went away. “Especially now.”
“Why now?”
Frank went quiet and stared out the window. Cumulus clouds, as
sculpted as white stone, eased brightly through a blue sky streaking to grey.
“I should have called home this morning. I just wasn’t in the mood. But that’s not right, is it? Moods aren’t for doctors.”
“You’re human. But I’d hate to have your hands in my chest cavity if you weren’t in the mood.”
“Don’t worry, Lauch. I’m competent, always, always when it matters. I won’t be excavating you, in any case. Unless you roll in with a bullet hole.”
“That’s a disappointment.” Lauchlin drank water from a tumbler. “I was hoping you could fix me up.”
“I’m not a head doctor. If I was, I might try an ambition transplant.”
“If I have any ambition to spare, this time of life, it’s all yours.”
Frank leaned forward on his elbows. “What are you going to do with yourself, Brother? Are they going to lay you out on that store counter some night like they did our Dad?”
“I’ll be all right. We have ambulances now, if you haven’t heard.”
“They’d better be parked damned handy.” He sighed and sat back, took a mouthful of scotch from his flask. “What’s with Morag these days? You still in touch?”
“You could say that. She was down for a bit.”
“I always liked Morag. A great girl. Pity she had to hitch up with J.J. Black. Why in God’s name, a fine-looking woman like her.”
“Women liked J.J., he charmed the pants off them. I liked him all right myself, old J.J., we went on a bat or two in our young days. Had a dry wit, and he could hold his liquor then. It ate him up later on, turned him into a pain in the arse. But I’d have been one too, if Morag had married me.”
“Drinking’s not your problem, is it?”
“There’s other ways to be a problem.”
“I know. I’ve tried a lot of them.”
“Poor J.J. would’ve been all right, he’d have made a life, even a decent husband to somebody, if alcohol had never once crossed his lips.”
“Oh Lord, lots that can be said about.”
“No, no, it was true love the first time J.J. kissed a glass. Booze was his beauty, not Morag, not any woman in reach. His heart was made for drink.”
“Daddy hid whisky in the root cellar and I saw him come up the ladder with it one night, cradling it like a bomb. I was about fourteen, I guess. I was down there in the dark next day, groping around like a blind man. Jesus, that first mouthful was awful, but I sure did like the effect.”
“You quit later, you put a career ahead of it. Wife, family.”
“It’s always there though. It’s a room I want to pop into alone and close the door. I can’t of course, not usually. Now, this trip to Scotland, ten days, do what I like. Drink, put some words on paper. I want to write.”
“But you’re coming back, you’ll pick up your life again.”
“I’ll put the mask back on. I’m good at it.” Frank drummed his fingers. “You seeing some woman in particular these days, or you still playing around?”
“I get by.”
“You always did, and from what I heard, you had some close calls.”
“I don’t know where you’d hear stuff like that.”
“Sure. You might have married Morag. That was my impression.”
“That was Ma’s impression, which I’m sure she passed on to you. I was licking my wounds at that time, way back. I wasn’t fit to marry anybody. But if I had…Well, she went off and did her own life. Better for her, that was. Waiting around for me was a dead end.”
“Is that what she thinks?”
“She does. She must.”
“Momma said you fancy a blind woman down the road, a married one yet.”
“She want you to talk to me about her, is that it?”
“Not exactly. You’re not a kid.”
“Thanks.”
“She thinks there’s trouble there, that’s all. You like to go to the edge sometimes.”
“Her old man, Clement MacTavish, he’s a friend of mine, and so is she.”
“Sex trumps friendship, I’ve often observed.”
“Who said anything about sex? Jesus.”
Frank raised his hands and smiled. “Not my brother! No worries, then, eh?”
“Who’s without worries? You?”
“I won’t get into that, not now. Damn it, why don’t you come to the Hebrides with me? We’ll ferret out the MacLeods together, stare into our dark, tribal past. Drink their whisky, eat their oats.”
“Not the time, not for me.”
“Time? Jesus, how much time do you think you’ve got? It wouldn’t be that blind woman, would it, by any chance?”
“There’s nothing to say about her.”
“Fine. You always liked the married ones.”
“Ma tell you that too?”
“She didn’t have to.”
“What about Elaine? Can’t she go to Scotland with you? She had a yen for travel.”
“I don’t want to get into her yens. What’s the big concern for Elaine anyway?”
“I’m just inquiring. She’s my sister-in-law, Frank.”
“Yes,” his brother said, drily. “She is.”
Lauchlin was not sure even now just what his brother knew, if he ever found out exactly what they had done. Elaine and Lauchlin
had wandered outdoors separately that summer night a long time ago, spirits high after a garrulous supper of lobster and sweet corn and wine. No plan or signal, not consciously, not that Lauchlin could recall. He had been on his way back from pissing in willows in the back field, taking his time, glad in the air, the kitchen too hot and full of Frank’s cigar smoke and the loud cheery stories he told when he was toasted, cutting loose that night since he didn’t have to slice into organs the next day or stitch anyone up, he was still a surgeon then and they had not been married long. This was what his brother loved, conviviality, affection, and plenty of alcohol, and Johanna loved listening to him despite misgivings about French wine bottles on the table, Frank was her beloved son, if he’d been God she couldn’t have been more proud of him. Reverence for doctors ran deep in her generation, where a country doctor was scarce and far away, a hero when he made it to your door. An MD was going to come out of this house if Johanna MacLean had anything to say about it. Frank, sharp in school and ambitious at an early age, had obliged her easily. But that night, Lauchlin was weary of his brother’s talk, the medical anecdotes and travel tales from expensive holidays, he felt smothered by him in the closeness of the kitchen, marginal, his boxing career behind him, limited by a faulty heart. In the moon-washed field he came upon Elaine under a canopy of trimmed-up spruce where she’d stooped to pee, moonlight on her pale behind, then on vibrant yellow panties as she tugged them up, he’d seen them faintly through her white jeans earlier. She froze when she heard him. Is that you, Lauchlin? He laughed, Did you think it was a bear? Maybe worse, she said. Well, he said, a bear would study you first probably and take his time. Really? That’s comforting. If I don’t get this fly zipped, there won’t be a next time, it’s caught. He said, Can I help? Yes, my fingers are thumbs, she said, and she raised her arms as he gently worked the zipper free, neither of them talking, hardly breathing, amused in their own ways. You prefer the outdoor plumbing? he said. And you? Aw, he said, it’s
an old habit, dear, a good piss under the moon. Incomparable, when there’s a warm breeze like this, many’s done it, men and women alike. She turned away and stared at the stark white moon. She wanted to be kissed, he knew that, and he stepped closer and gently turned her face toward his. They stood there kissing hard, lost in a perfect opportunity of stolen pleasure, no other circumstances could have joined them just this way, in the hushed space of a country night. This had been, at the time, an unexpected flare of passion, the two of them wordless in that pale blue light. And then his mother called out the back door, Lauchlin, are you there? They caught up their breath in whispers, and he moved away toward the light. Yes, Ma, I’m here! Off to bed, are you? Where’s Elaine? she said. I wouldn’t know, Ma, I’m not her chaperone, as he slid past her through the doorway. In the remaining, hot days of his brother’s visit, Lauchlin and Elaine regarded each other with disguised, ambiguous looks. She was his brother’s wife after all and Lauchlin knew little about her except that she had been a dancer and her limbs were taut and tanned by the summer, and when she walked he watched her naked calves flexing, a dancer’s walk. The following night, Lauchlin, after drinking alone in the kitchen and pondering the near horizon of his own life, had rolled up the stairs toward bed. Under the dim peach glow of the hall lamp, Elaine, in a nightie of a similar shade, was leaning against the landing rail, Frank snoring profoundly in the room behind her, sleeping full throttle, used as he was to snatched slumber. She didn’t say a word to Lauchlin when he stopped at the top stair, and he smiled at seeing her there, surprised, pleased: a woman waiting for you, like that, no gift quite like it. He knew his mother was still awake down the hall, he could see light under her door, that kept them quiet, not a word, but when Elaine stepped toward him he took her litheness into his arms and they left enough heat in each other to kindle another meeting, he was sure of that, relieved that they’d tasted each other again, felt muscle and skin. The next day she had begged off a trip
to Louisbourg to tour the fortress, pleaded a rest, and Frank went off with Johanna in the Cadillac he’d rented in Halifax. Lauchlin came up from the store for dinner, his heart already primed, and, after they had chatted foolishly at the kitchen table, eager and postponing at the same time, they went up to his room and undressed with comic swiftness, tangling clothing as they hopped and danced it to the floor. He thought later that her desire for him was mainly curiosity, as so much desire was, she had run her fingers over his body, traced the scars, the dark welt of a ruptured appendix—his first dip toward death, twelve years old, fighting peritonitis, delirious, unaware of the danger he was in—and the barbed wire tear across his heart, then above his eyes, and the bare-knuckle nick over his cheekbone, she pressed it, smiled, but she never made it clear whether he had satisfied that curiosity in any memorable way, fun though they did have on that old and loose-limbed bed, headboard slapping the wall. They threw themselves into each other, a joyful noise, and he hadn’t forgotten one detail of it, one taste, one sound. There had seemed no real harm in it then, that squall of passion, even the secret pleasure of stealing, for a little, the woman his brother loved. But he was not sure anymore what harmed and what didn’t, or in what ways. He had this impulse in himself: whenever there had been an intimate chance with a woman he wanted, to shed her clothing and his, he had seized it without thought or reflection—it was always now, take it, blindly. Had that not been much of the allure?
“Well, you’ll be your own man over there then,” Lauchlin said.
His brother gave him a sardonic look and got up from the table. “To hell with it for now anyway,” he said without explaining what he meant. He stretched his long arms and yawned at the ceiling. “You know what I have the urge to do? Stretch my hairy legs and hike to the Fairy Hole.”
Lauchlin could see his promise to Tena slipping away, the whole
scenario of taking her there: he could not tell Frank about it, could not turn him down again.
“Way the hell over there? When?” he said.
“Have to be tomorrow. Momma and the young fella can handle the store. How often do I get here? But maybe it’s a hard haul for you, eh, Lauch? All the way to the cave?”
“I’ve a hell of a lot less to haul than you do.”
Frank grinned, ducked into a mock boxing pose, peering between his fists, then backed away toward the stairs. “See you at supper, Brother.”
Lauchlin glanced at the clock but he didn’t get up. He listened to his brother move about upstairs. He knew that he was pausing at doorways, looking in, he always did before he entered his old room where the bedsprings protested as he sat and took in those things of his that remained—an anatomical poster of the human body, a wooden model of a Nova Scotia shallop he had left for his mother, a framed photograph of himself in a white medical school coat, a good head taller than three like-coated chums, stethoscopes dangling from their necks like Olympic medals. Johanna kept the room up for him, as if he might appear like he used to on holiday break. Lauchlin was sorry that Tena had been mentioned at all, she was being pulled into a field of gossip, like himself. Had he sullied her in some way? He would not go to her house while his brother was here, never say her name. Above him, water drummed in the bathtub.
LAUCHLIN’S BROTHER CAME TO A STOP
above a big-stoned streambed that cut through the surrounding woods and veered ruggedly out of sight toward the sea. A narrow path snaked down the side of the ravine, and the stream was dry enough to take them to the shore, close to the Fairy Hole, a sea cave at the foot of the cliff the ravine cut through. Lauchlin had let Frank set the pace, lead all the way along the woods path, its
ups and downs treacherous with old tree roots, swollen like veins. With Lauchlin behind him, he didn’t stop, he pushed on, but halfway in, short of breath, he’d quit talking. He’d wanted Lauchlin to yell, Hold up, take a breather, but he hadn’t and Frank was too stubborn to stop. Now he stood sweating and panting, fumbling for his flask.
“That was a walk, Lauchlin,” he said over his shoulder. “I forgot how goddamn far it is. Donkey’s years since I hiked Cape Dauphin.”
“Everything’s been years by now.”
Lauchlin had halted behind him, his shirt clinging with sweat. He leaned on a walking stick and breathed deeply as if he were just sucking up this good country air, balsam and salt. This was not the hike he had anticipated a couple weeks ago, a day trip with Tena, another step closer. But the path through the woods was rougher than he’d remembered, the streambed too rock-tossed for the uncertain steps of the blind.