“Are you looking for
anything?”
“Sure.”
“What?”
“Whatever’s there.”
“You mean, whatever you see.”
“Right.”
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I know.”
“You don’t make it easy.”
“I know.”
“That’s okay. Nobody’s perfect.”
A few days later, Saturday afternoon, I fall asleep on the chesterfield and have a dream about Tim Todd. We’re sitting under a weeping willow. There are things he wants to show me but he’s hesitating, afraid I’ll be dismissive. These things are in a brown paper bag, so they can’t be fish, at least not live ones. In any case I’d prefer not to know. Finally he says,“Well, do you want to take a look?” and there is such wistfulness and despair in his voice that I almost relent.
“Some other time,” I say.
I wake up on the verge of tears. “Tim Todd,” I think, wondering if I cared about him more than I ever realized. No, this is belated guilt, it’s regret over having hurt him. Which is not to say that, under similar circumstances, I wouldn’t hurt him again.
And then something else occurs to me—about why Abel drinks—and I get up and go to the window, uncertain whether I’ve had this thought before. I suspect I have but that I let it go. Probably I was still hoping that the reason lay outside of him, in the form of an awful memory, say, or an abstract philosophy, and that he could repudiate it if he really wanted to.
I guess I’ve used up all of my faith because suddenly it seems obvious that he drinks out of sheer helplessness. If life means doing harm, making decisions, choosing one
person over another, then he’s not cut out for it. And doing nothing isn’t the answer; that’s just making a decision by default. Better to
be
nothing than to do nothing.
Is that how he sees it? He knows how much his death will hurt us, so he must be under the impression that by staying alive he’ll eventually hurt us even more. Maybe we should pretend we’ve stopped caring what he does. Say,“We’ve given up on you, Abel. You don’t matter.” Well, that would gratify him, our falling in line with what he has been telling us for months. How do we get around that? How do we persuade him that he’s entitled to cause pain and, what’s more, that he has a responsibility to
bear
the pain he causes?
If only I could say, ‘You’re worthy of your own life,” and make him believe me. Too late. Too late. He seems completely enraptured now by the idea of no longer existing. I think he imagines the space he’ll vacate, the actual physical space, and there we’ll be, his parents and I, waving our hands around trying to find him, but at least we won’t come up against any resistance. There won’t be anything to collide with, only air.
On a Friday night in August of 1973, Mr. Fraser dies. I find out when I arrive for work on Monday. Debbie is sobbing into her hands, while Lorna, from the other side of the desk, tries to man the phones. It’s Lorna who tells me. Her sympathetic tone is almost as shocking as the news. She says that Mr. MacLellan wants me to go straight to his office.
Mr. MacLellan is the president. “Please,” he says, indicating a chair, then handing me a box of Kleenex, though my eyes are dry. He perches on the corner of his desk. “You’ve heard.”
“Just now.”
“If it’s any comfort, he went peacefully.”
“How do you know?” I don’t mean to be insolent, I just wonder how he can say that, if Mr. Fraser died alone.
He touches the knot of his tie. Maroon, with gold flecks. He is tall and suave, somewhere in his late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, the sort of man who could never be anything less than a president. “He was found in bed,” he says. “Saturday morning by the cleaning lady. It appears that he died in his sleep. Heart failure, most likely, but we don’t yet know.”
He says that the funeral will be held Wednesday afternoon. Until then, and afterwards for as long as I want, I can
take a leave of absence. In the meantime, Personnel will find me something suitable at the same salary. I hardly listen. I am still thinking of Mr. Fraser in bed, fighting for breath.
“I’m the executor of the will,” Mr. MacLellan goes on,“which was revised only last month. I can tell you that you are a beneficiary.”
I look up.
“Mr. Fraser thought very highly of you. He has left you fifteen thousand dollars and his twenty-four-volume set of the
Encyclopaedia britannica.”
I don’t cry until the funeral, and then I cry so much that the daughter-in-law keeps glancing around. It was meeting the grandsons for the first time, it was how much the oldest resembled Mr. Fraser, the same brown eyes, the same quick smile suggesting immediate comprehension, and the poignancy and mystery of that, as if Mr. Fraser were somehow conscious in the boy. At the reception, which is held in Mr. MacLellan’s mansion, Pat Penn of Personnel asks in her listless way when I’ll be coming back to the office, and the prospect of resurrecting myself as a secretary to some other vice-president is suddenly unthinkable.
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m not coming back.”
“Well,” she says, unfazed,“let me know your new phone number.”
Because, of course, she assumes, as do I, that because it’s August I’ll be moving soon. I haven’t found an apartment yet, or even given my notice, but I’ve started reconstructing the flattened boxes from my last move.
A few hours later, over at Troy’s place, I wonder if I
spoke too hastily. I say,“It’s not as if I need the money. But I need to work. I need to do something.”
“I could always use you in the store,” he says.
“You could?”
“Why not? You know music. You’re easy on the eye.”
“I’m charming. I’m friendly.”
“We can work on that.”
“Maybe I should break down and live with you, too,” I say, in a burst of infatuation. “Maybe we should spend every waking minute within shouting distance. I could have
both
spare rooms, right? My own private bedroom and living room?”
“Whatever you want,” he says carefully.
“Oh, well, I’ll think about it.”
“Will you?”
“I guess. I don’t know. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”
I feel worse. I wake up late and with a headache. “Mr. Fraser is dead,” I think. I can’t believe it. He was so old and weathered, like a tree or rock. He had earned his right to be here, more than I’ve earned mine. I think of the times I’ve felt sorry for myself and am ashamed. There he was, returning home every evening to an empty apartment, his days numbered, his dead wife and dead son waiting at the end of his thoughts. I imagine him eating supper alone, a linen napkin, good silverware. Rolling up his sleeves to wash the dishes. What did he do then? I suppose he read the newspaper or maybe a hardcover novel or a book about sailing ships. He must have gone to bed at a decent hour, considering what an early riser he was. I imagine him, in blue cotton pyjamas, setting his alarm clock, which would have been an
old-fashioned wind-up kind. Did he set it the night he died? He once told me that on Saturday mornings he visited somebody in a retirement home, an aunt or cousin on his wife’s side (I remember being struck by his loyalty to such a distant relation). Oh, it’s wrenching to think of him setting the alarm, allowing himself the modest assumption that he would need waking up.
I look at my own clock. A quarter to eleven. I decide I should probably go into the office to clean out my desk, get that over with. An hour later, just as I’m about to leave, the phone rings. It’s my father, calling from his office. He asks how I am, how the funeral went, and then says he’d like to drop by.
“Now?”
“If you’re not busy, not on your way out somewhere.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Just some news.”
“Bad news. I can tell by your voice.”
“Don’t worry. Listen, I’ll pick us up some lunch, a couple of egg-salad sandwiches, how’s that?”
His office isn’t far, he arrives within half an hour. “On the move again,” he says, noticing the boxes.
“Tell me.”
“Let’s go into the kitchen.”
He puts the bag of food on the table, then sits and takes a folded piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “This arrived yesterday,” he says, handing it to me.
It’s a handwritten letter. “Winnipeg,” I say, reading the return address. The rest I read to myself:
Dear Mr. Kirk:
As Helen Grace Kirk’s common-law husband, it is my sad duty to inform you that she passed away on July 19th of lung cancer. She went quickly and didn’t suffer unduly. The reason I didn’t notify you about the funeral is that it was a small affair, at Grace’s request.
We never had much in the way of possessions, but Grace said she wanted your daughter, Louise, to have the wedding rings you gave her so that Louise would have something to remember her by. She also wanted Louise to have the ashes to scatter where she sees fit. I’m sending these along by special delivery mail. I hope this isn’t too much of a shock. She said you were always good to her and that Louise had a fine sense of humour.
Yours truly,
Wendell Wells
“Lung cancer,” I say.
“Are you all right?”
“Well, it
is
a shock, isn’t it? Wendell Wells.” I rub my temples—the headache’s coming back.
“He’s a gardener.”
“How do you know that?”
“I tracked down his number and gave him a call.”
“When?”
“This morning. Just before I called you.” He retrieves the letter and returns it to his pocket.
“And you got hold of him?”
“Oh, yes.”
I only now notice that his eyes are red-rimmed. “That must have been hard.”
“It wasn’t too bad, easier than I expected. He was very civil, said he was glad to hear from me. He was in pretty rough shape, though. Broke down a couple of times. It seems he and your mother met five years ago at the place where they both worked. Some rich big-wig banker’s country estate. She was the housekeeper.”
“Housekeeper!”
“Apparently she ran the place. She’d have been good at it, making sure everything was ship-shape, spie and span. Before that, she moved around quite a bit, so she told him. Worked all over the Prairies.”
“As a housekeeper?”
“As a cocktail waitress.”
“Cocktail waitress! How could she have been a cocktail waitress? She hated hearing people slurp their drinks. She must have lost her mind.”
“Wendell—” he makes a helpless gesture, acknowledging the unlikelihood of the first-name basis,“he said her mind was as sharp as a tack, right up until the end. He had no idea that she’d been married or even what her real name was, but in the last few days she decided to make a clean breast of it. He had thought she was a spinster named Grace White.”
“White. After her teeth. After her skin.” I take the sandwiches out of the bag. “So. Dead at forty-six.”
“Forty-seven in November,” he says quietly.
I start eating one of the sandwiches. I wasn’t hungry before, but now I’m famished. “Does Grandma Hahn know?”
“Wendell says he tried to get hold of her but couldn’t find
her. It’s possible she died a few years back. No records turned up, though.”
“Boy, the women in that family sure know how to make themselves scarce.”
“You’re
a woman in that family, may I remind you.” He picks up a sandwich. “I’m glad about the rings. I’m happy about that.”
“‘To remember her by.’ Well, I remember the
rings.”
“It’s the right thing that they come to you.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“You could have them reset.”
“I don’t wear jewellery. And what about the rest of her things? I guess Wendell, the gardener of few possessions, is holding on to them.”
He sets the sandwich back down. ‘You’re still angry. Still hurt.”
“I’m not
still
angry and hurt. I’m
suddenly
angry and hurt. ‘Louise had a fine sense of humour.’ Is that all she told him? Is that all she remembered?”
“It may be all
he
remembered from the many things she said.”
“Scatter the ashes where I see fit. Where would that be? In the path of an Eaton’s delivery truck?”
“Well.” He looks crushed.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I reach across the table and put my hand over his. “It’s just all so crazy. I can’t believe it.”
“It’s hard to believe, all right. A bolt from the blue.”
The ashes and rings arrive in Greenwoods the following Wednesday afternoon. He offers to drop them by the
apartment but I say they can wait until Sunday when Troy and I come for dinner. After hanging up from that call, I phone Troy at the store and say,“I’m inquiring about the two rooms in the sunny downtown flat. Are they still available?”
“As far as I know, yes, they are.”
“I’m in a position to pay an exorbitant rent.”
“The rent is ridiculously low, as it happens.”
“Will the landlord paint one room canary yellow and the other amber?”
“Both yellow, you mean?”
“Different shades of yellow.”
“I believe that can be arranged.”
“Tell him he has a deal.”
A pause, while he rings up a sale, and then,“Have you changed your mind yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What made you decide?”
“I don’t know. My mother’s ashes arrived.”
“Louise …”
“I want to move in with you. I
do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I’m sure.”
We start clearing the rooms of boxes that evening. On Saturday morning we buy the paint. “Yellow for stimulation,” I say. “Yellow for cheerfulness.” That’s not why. Yellow for luck. Because I’m
not
sure.
We are driving home from Greenwoods. The rings are in an envelope in my purse, the ashes in a white china urn I hold on my lap. It is both smaller than I thought it would be—about the size of a rose vase—and heavier. It is appropriately slim and curvaceous. Handing it over to me, my father said,“I was thinking, when you feel ready to do the scattering, we might make a more formal ceremony of it. Invite Aunt Verna to visit for a few days …”
“Don’t drag Aunt Verna all the way here for that. Invite her when somebody gets married or has a baby.”