Lily's Story (104 page)

She was finished. Her own words had taken
her breath away. She sat amazed, as a painter might when the
landscape he’s been labouring at suddenly quickens with symmetry.
Cap’s eyes were closed. For a second she felt like Schopenhauer’s
dog. Then they opened and took her in, and she knew he had
understood something he had already prepared himself to
believe.

“
I’d like that drink now,”
he said.

Most days now Cap did not get out of bed
until Cora arrived. Elmer came in early in the morning to help him
to the water-closet and to prop him up in his chair or help him
back to bed. Cora never entered before the designated hour, though
she often sneaked up to his door during her chores and listened to
the wheezing cough that had replaced his breathing – asleep or
awake.

“
You’re like an old trout
gulping air,” she teased.

“
A sturgeon, amusing the
caviar.”

He never dressed now. When Cora closed and
locked the wardrobe for good, he applauded like a seal behind her.
Instead, he wore a silk dressing-gown trimmed with ermine that Cora
had been ordered to retrieve from a musty trunk. “To remind me of
my past sins,” he explained.

One day in late September she arrived to
find him sitting by the window. A book lay open in his lap, several
more were scattered nearby.

“
I do love that goldenrod
along the River,” he said. “It seems so pleased with
itself.”

Cora pulled her chair close, and fussed at
his robe.

“
I read all of these
books,” he said, “long before I came to that German fella. I guess
what I found in them – though it was better than the mess I’d made
of the world – was not to my liking. Nonetheless, there’s both
truth and illusion in them – in their pure forms.”

Cora squeezed his hand and looked out across
the prospect they had marked out as their own: marsh, river, lake,
dune.

“
Terrifying. Positively
terrifying. Mr. Darwin got most of it right. There’s more order and
more chaos out there than we’ve yet dreamed of. What he didn’t know
– or didn’t care to say – was that man has already freed himself
from those laws, he has loosed the bonds of evolution, he has
exorcized the ghost of god; he’s inventing his own future. I’ve
seen some of it already, but it’s just begun. We’ve got the
steam-engine, the gatling gun, the screw-prop battleship, we’ve got
the power
up here
to unravel the laws that’ve governed our behavior and held it
in check for thousands of years. It’s wonderful and terrifying. A
part of me wants to live longer just to see the outcome. But I’m
afraid, Cora. I’m terribly afraid. I look into the blackness where
my heart used to be and I say: what will become of us when we have
invented everything? How much of our being human depends wholly
upon our need to be a part of the mystery itself?”

Cora entered the room as quietly as she
dare. The morning brightness of Indian summer suffused the air,
coming from no discernible direction, like altar-light in a sunny
cathedral. Cap was seated in his philosopher’s chair, the familiar
German tome, covers closed, on his knee. His gaze was aimed
outward, his white beard radiantly professional. His right forearm
was raised above the chair, its forefinger tenderly pointing out an
error or an omission. Cora moved soundlessly to his side. She
looked at him for a long, commemorative second, then reached over
and closed both of his eyes.

49

A cold uncalled-for wind with the bite of
December in it swept down from the Lake and over the dunes and
through the shanties along the Lane and around the cozy homes of
the townsite and past the little windbreak of firs at the north
edge of the village cemetery, rippling the late-summer grass at
Cora’s feet. She shivered. The sing-song intonations of the
Reverend Baddeley sailed past her, warped by the wind beyond reason
or faith. She kept her eyes on a tiny corner of the coffin – red
cedar, all she could afford – and the ridge of soil near it.
According to the worthies, she should have been grateful that the
good parson, placing Christian compassion above Anglican orthodoxy,
had offered to render the burial service to such an apostate –
conspicuously unrepentant to the end, cohabiting in squalid sin
with a woman who changed her name more often than her address. She
didn’t care, though it occurred to her, despite the rector’s
graveside drone, that Cap might well be savouring the ironies of
the situation. This ground won’t hold you long, she thought. You
need an audience.

Man that is born of woman hath but a short
time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down
like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth
in one stay…

A brief service had been held in the lobby
of The Queen’s. Duckface Malloney was there, Elmer, Gertie and Mrs.
Baddeley, who sang a sad hymn in a high sunny soprano. Only Elmer
accompanied the undertaker, the parson and Cora as they clopped up
Michigan Ave., barely noticed, though several workmen mechanically
doffed their caps. No church bells offered their petition to the
autumn air. The crunch of box-cars coupling echoed past them into
First Bush and beyond.

…
we therefore commit his
body to the ground,

earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to
dust…

Cora glanced around her, once, to see if
anyone else had come in behind them. With solemn gaze the
undertaker, Josiah Smiley from Sarnia, kindly remained beside the
minister as he intoned the familiar words of intercession and false
comfort. Elmer stood nearby, watching Cora. She half-expected the
two cousins from Toronto to show up, sooner or later, to claim what
was left of Cap’s fortune. When Cora had suggested that he make a
will, Cap scoffed at the notion: “I’ve never been able to will
anything while alive, how could I manage it when I’m dead? Besides,
what would the old German think?” But no one had followed them
in.

When she had asked Malloney if they could
use the lobby for the service, he said yes immediately though
without any enthusiasm, without any apparent feeling of any kind.
Cap was never discussed between them. That Malloney must have been
under some pressure from the community to purge it of this pariah
whose treacheries were even this instant being felt throughout the
village, Cora had little doubt. How or why he resisted it, she did
not know, though she suspected that he, like her, had chosen to
come to accept a life on the periphery. Were you right after all?
she wanted to shout out loud to Cap.

The minister’s orthodox lamentation was
suddenly challenged by a stifled sob, then several unstifled ones
more or less in unison. All eyes sidled right even as the Reverend
picked up the dropped stitch. Two elderly, arthritic ladies –
adorned in mourning clothes – had apparently slipped into the
quietude unremarked and had been observing the ceremony from a
short distance. Overwrought by the holy litany and the sadness of
the situation, they had given vent to their sorrow. The cousins
from Toronto, Cora thought, and fought against a strange feeling of
resentment. Their cries and lyric whimperings seemed heartfelt. She
tried to block them out. At least they’re weeping: you deserved
that, at least. I’m glad they’re here. Really, I am.

Reverend Baddeley carried on doggedly,
doubling both volume and tempo.

…
in sure and certain hope
of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ
who shall change our corruptible body…

The cross he had nervously essayed with the
sand through his fingers looked more like a crooked question-mark
waiting for someone to ‘dot’ it. Brushing past Cora, he strode
effusively over to the strangers and waited for them to receive his
outstretched hands. She heard the ritual exchange, the timbre of
inconsolability in the voices of the women.

“
We’re only second
cousins,” she heard one say, “but we grew up with him, we went to
school together and you never forget that sort of experience, being
so young and attached.”

“
Never, indeed,” said the
good parson, his relief both obvious and immense. He was back on
home-ground. “And you haven’t seen him in some time, I
assume?”

“
Years and years,” said a
thinner, more aggrieved voice. “But once you knew Emery, you never
forgot him. He was a sweet, sweet man.”

“
Emery?”

“
We always called him by
his middle name. He wanted us to call him Stan when he got older,
but we never would. We always were a bit of a tease with him.” She
interrupted her encomium with several more sobs that left even Mr.
Smiley discomfited. He began mumbling endearments to his
horse.

“
May the blessings of Our
Lord ease your sorrow in the days to come,” said the Reverend
Baddeley, searching for an exit-line.

“
We come all the way down
from Owen Sound and then up from London on the train. It was late.
The taxi brought us right here from the station.”

The taximan’s mare, obscured by the
cedar-hedge near the road, whinnied in the direction of the
undertaker’s gelding.

“
Emery was from Owen Sound,
you know,” said the stronger cousin. “The whole family, what’s left
of us.”

Her sister added a sniffle for emphasis.

“
But I understood Mr.
Dowling was born and raised in London.”

A silence deeper than death itself seized
the cemetery and its grieving occupants. The gelding’s tail
whiskered an imaginary fly. Cora turned to look. Mr. Smiley, as
shocked as if one of his cadavers had sat up and saluted him, came
over to the ladies, who were looking pathetically about them for
some explanation.

“
Your cab-driver’s gone an’
made a terrible mistake,” he said, hat in hand.

“
But we told him, didn’t we
sis, we was late, we’d missed the church service but would he
please take us as fast as he could to the interment of Stanfield E.
Dowler.”

“
And he brought us
here.”

“
Saints preserve us,” said
the minister.

They were all gone: even Elmer, reluctantly,
his great sad moon’s face turning away at last down Michigan Ave.;
the cousins, poor souls, to grieve all over again at another site;
the minister and undertaker to the call of their respective
professions. Later, under the cloak of darkness, the sexton would
come with his boy to lower the coffin and seal it off, with dirt
and grass-seed, from the morning sun. For the moment she and Cap
were alone once again. The chill wind sent some of the fallen
leaves chattering across the grass, the limbs of a maple stretched
and complained, but Cora was no longer cold. She thought of the
cousins jouncing and breathless in the taxi-cab, afraid they would
be too late to expend their grief so loyally husbanded all the way
down from Owen Sound and all the way up to Sarnia on the Grand
Trunk, which was, alas-as-usual, late again. And Reverend Baddeley
trying to retract his hasty, misdirected condolences, saving them
up for a more appropriate occasion. She felt a bubble of laughter
disrupt the numbness around her heart, then the tears intercepting
it.

As soon as she got back, Cora went to the
pantry to continue the cleaning she had started the day before.
Malloney came to the door and called her out into the hall.

“
You don’t have to work
today, Mrs. Burgher. Why don’t you go home, or just find a place to
rest around here. You been through a lot.”

“
I’d like to work,” she
said, “if it’s all right.”

He seemed very uncomfortable, the wrinkles
in his face tensed against some certain ambush. Suddenly they
relaxed, and his eyes doubled their size, gripping everything in
their ken. “Cora,” he said quietly, “you been hearin’ the same
rumours I’ve been, about the Grand Trunk packin’ up an’ desertin’
this place after thirty years. Well, even the rumours, which I
don’t for one second believe, are keepin’ people away. Business is
real slow right now. You can work if you like, but I suggest you
take a few weeks off. Go somewhere. See somebody. Get the hell
outta this place.”

“
I got no other place to
go,” she said evenly.

His face twisted in preparation for some
kind of speech or gambit, his eyes shrivelled in their casing, but
nothing came out. His drayman’s hands swung loosely at his side,
and finally he slouched towards the lobby.

“
Mr. Malloney.”

He looked back over his shoulder, then came
fully around. “Kevin,” he said.

“
You may be hearin’ from
some cousins Cap had in Toronto, once they read about his funeral
in the papers.”

He came close to her, alert.

“
His aunt left him some
money, not a lot, but all the same I expect they’ll be comin’ down
to find out.”

Malloney looked straight at her, hesitated,
then said: “Dowling’s got no money to leave to nobody.”

“
I thought –”

“
His aunt’s money run out.
He’s bust.”

Cora could barely get the next words out.
“How long?”

“
A year ago.”

She felt his eyes shiver on her back all the
way down the hall. They were as soft as a doe’s.

The wind blew harder and colder that night,
the last one of September, 1892 – the date some stranger’s hand had
chiseled on Cap Dowling’s tombstone. Doors were locked and shutters
tightened. There was talk of a tornado, of gales on the Lake wild
enough to send tremors through the sailors’ wives alone in their
beds, through the captain’s helpmate measuring the minutes along
her widow’s-walk. On nights like this the Point was all maritime.
Later on, foghorns would wail against the driving sleet,
proclaiming loneliness and fear in the cold tongue below the gut.
Cora made a pot of tea and sat by herself in the gloom. Hap was at
the factory helping his sons batten the hatches. Above the clatter
of rain on the windows, she heard the Grand Trunk express roaring
around the bend by the River and steaming towards the station. She
thought of the hoboes in their encampment beyond the Lane, rain
dancing on the tin of their lean-to’s and dripping into the hot,
flameless fires below. She thought of the outcasts, the exiles, the
forsaken, the unforgivable. She pulled the comforter off her bed
and sat down in Hap’s rocker. Let it rain, she thought. Let it not
rain. I am here.