The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (15 page)

The cellar’s darkness calmed Samuel. Roots and moss thrived in the cracks where the caulking had aged loose, and soggy documents wilted from their piles to the floor, tricking the eye into seeing thatched tile. Had the air not been so musty Samuel might have felt at home. Instead, he sensed a broken pipe somewhere and made a mental note to call a professional in the morning. As he pried through the clutter, calling out Ama’s name, he was struck by the uselessness of man in the face of adversity. He granted that a person’s most-feared enemy, what stalks each life, is death, and that there isn’t a man yet who has managed to outwit it. For this reason, men pretended to be at the helm of their lives, but they weren’t, and could only feign navigation on a river predetermined for them.

Samuel wrestled these thoughts through the cellar, through the kitchen with its insistent flies, through the room where Jacob had strewn cane mats for his morning prayers, through the hall closet with its smell of smoke, through the living room with its spiteful fireplace that gasped ashes in Samuel’s face when he passed it. Man cannot master death, he thought. Not even Jacob Tyne. Jacob of the Harsh Mouth and Stern Fist. Our Saint of Clandestine Sorrow. Samuel felt a kind of remorse for the man he could not mourn. Jacob had been as severe and distant as he’d been anxious to give his nephew a better life. Samuel didn’t understand the man, and, as ever, was perplexed by what he was expected to feel for him. In a lot of ways Jacob wasn’t worth the brooding, had been a millstone on Samuel’s back, remembered only for the little cruelties, each drawn-out act of kindness more like a punishment. Jacob had cared for him with an undisguised sense of obligation. Samuel had never learned the true cause of his uncle’s debt, and how can you mourn a man you don’t know? What was left but to bury and forget him? Why hold the forty days’ ceremony—what was the point in pouring libation so far from the country in which that act meant something, and with a crowd of stragglers unknown to the dead? What was the point in being the only person who could keep the deceased alive by remembering him if that person had not given you a shred of himself to be remembered by? There was no point. Let the dead bury their dead.

Samuel completed his search of the main floor without success. He had that drenched feeling only tiredness of mind can provoke, and wanted to finish his search as soon as possible to sooner call the authorities. Thinking of Ama suffering somewhere made him nervous, so he thought of other things. As he trudged through the girls’ Iron Lung, a favourite obscurity occurred to him: all of life’s ambitions were mere diversions. Politicians sought refuge in conflicts, the immoral sought it in sex, and many men just worked until they dropped. You did everything to keep yourself from seeing the futility of it. But Samuel had joined that class of men who, having attained a major goal, suddenly see the vanity in wanting it.

Samuel sat on his bed. He feared the worst for Ama. He thought of what that would mean about the twins, and forced it from his mind. Maud found him staring at a blank wall, muttering proverbs to himself.

She sounded exasperated. “I’ve called the Franks. Yvette broke down and told me they abandoned the poor girl somewhere along the Athabasca—I guess they built a raft out of garbage and the whole thing sunk. Ama’s not the great swimmer the twins are. I can’t believe they’d just leave her there and try to keep it a secret. Even then, Chloe was about to tear Yvette’s eyes out for admitting anything.”

The pain in Maud’s voice gave Samuel a surge of pity. But he continued to sit on the bed. When he suggested they inform the authorities, Maud waved a dismissive hand. She seemed to fear that legal action would be taken against the twins despite their age.

“Ray Frank’s got a rowboat and Eudora’s got her nurse’s licence, that should be enough,” she said. “Besides, it’ll take the authorities an hour to get here.”

Samuel gave in. He rose to go down and wait on the stoop for Ray’s arrival, but Maud detained him by grabbing hold of his shirt.

“I’m
going with Ray,” she said, pressing her lips firmly together. “You stay here with the twins.”

Samuel was about to protest when he realized that Maud needed to get away from her daughters—to be left alone with them after that disturbing performance in their bedroom would be agony. He capitulated, leaving things in Ray’s capable hands, but resolved to call the police if the search party hadn’t returned within the half-hour. He watched Maud fuss through the drawers, pulling out blankets and muttering, and listened to her descend the stairs at the sound of the Franks’ horn in the street.

Maud climbed into the truck. Though worried for Ama, she was more concerned about her twins. When had they become so unpredictable, so resistant to discipline? Maud could only conclude that these were the delusions of puberty. She had been turbulent at that age. Samuel, too, admitted to a reckless and stormy youth. So it was not only hormonal, but hereditary. Clutching the blanket, she listened to the boat rattle in the back and tried to steady her nerves.

A cold front had broken the heat, and a sedate breeze set the leaves in motion. Without speaking, Maud and Eudora helped Ray lift the rowboat from the back and turn it upright. It felt cold and rough to the touch, scratched by a decade of outings. Ray slapped his glasses in place with an open palm, and hauled the boat by its sculls to the embankment.

The women trailed behind. Maud looked up through the trees at a sky pierced with calm stars. She hadn’t been to the riverside before, and from here the whole world seemed larger. She could hear the leaves rushing against each other with a sound like water, and then the actual water, more controlled. Earlier, the sun had opened the wild roses, and even now their cloying smell made her nauseous.

“You all right, Maud?” said Eudora, patting Maud’s back. Eudora’s skin gleamed in the weak light from the moon. “Ray! Ray … shoot, he’s already down there. Just put your head between your legs like this, just like … good, good.”

Maud’s stomach calmed down. Trying not to look at the sky, which she now associated with her nausea, she followed Eudora to the embankment. The path of stones bordering it looked luminous. Grabbing hold of cottontail and bristling grass on her way down, Maud was surprised at how the river seemed to lose its beauty the closer you got to it. It smelled of algae, and a huge concrete drain trapped piles of sewage in its grate.

“Ama,” called Eudora. Startled, as if in a dream, Maud repeated the call.

Ray had already gone off alone in the boat, and they listened to his calm path on the water, saw his remote, white form. Eudora led Maud through the trees, a copse of lean birches, and together they called out for Ama. The longer the silence went on, the more Maud began to feel the unreal quality of the night and things took on an artificial look. Eudora draped the blanket over Maud’s shoulders, and after walking around for another meaningless ten minutes, she led her back to the embankment.

They sat on Stone Road, not talking. Every few minutes Eudora would pitch a rock into the water and call out the girl’s name. Maud merely watched, unable to cope with the silence that followed her calls.

An hour passed. With each lost minute Maud felt the impossibility of ever finding Ama. And this idea—that an innocent life could be lost, and at the hands of her own daughters—paralyzed her. Another half-hour passed.

There was turbulence in the distance. Eudora rose to her feet and descended the embankment. Barely aware, Maud followed.

“She’s here, I got her,” yelled Ray, rowing with a single hand as he comforted the form beside him with the other.

Maud nearly collapsed with relief. She ran up to her ankles in the frigid water, holding out the white blanket as if to guide them in. She could hear herself laughing under her breath, low laughs that shook her entire chest and sounded like moans.

As soon as Ray docked, the women pulled the frightened girl from the boat.

Ama didn’t look at all like herself. Her face had blanched, her lips tinged violet with cold. Her hair had flattened against her narrow scalp, and the beginnings of a fever showed in her damp, bright eyes. She trembled terribly.

Ray, himself pale and drenched, held the girl against him. His glasses had fogged. “Poor thing was sitting on a barely floating raft of weeds. Hanging on for dear life. I had to jump from the boat to get her.”

“Oh, God,” said Maud. She felt dampened, as if all her stress had been alleviated too quickly. “Let’s get her in the car.”

Ray scooped the girl in his arms, putting her on Maud’s lap in the cab. The women fussed over her the whole drive, and when they reached the Tyne house, Samuel ran out to greet them.

“You found the child—is she all right?” he said. Seeing his anguish, Maud felt guilty.

“Don’t fuss, she’s fine,” Maud said. “How are the twins?”

“Silent.” Samuel touched Ama’s forehead with the back of his hand. He turned to Eudora. “She’s like an oven.”

“Well, let’s take her inside, for a start.”

Samuel was disturbed that Ama hadn’t acknowledged him. She had a monk’s composure, her eyes oddly calm. Yet it was obvious that breathing was painful to her, her body jerking up with each breath. She stank of smut from the river, sludge, the ferment of weeds. And those smells provoked a pity in Samuel, a feeling he would later elucidate as sadness, for without her usual nervous kind-heartedness, the girl seemed entirely strange to him.

They carried her to the kitchen and, clearing the table, placed her on it. Here, under Ama’s aloof gaze, they argued about how best to treat her.

“I haven’t used mustard plaster in years,” said Eudora, scoffing at Maud’s suggestion. “I brought my black bag. Let’s cup her.”

“Why complicate things?” said Ray. He removed his glasses to wipe off the fog that had collected when he’d entered the warm room. “Just give her whatever medicine her folks sent along with her, then back off and let her rest.”

Eudora looked at him as if to say,
What do you know?
Samuel slid away from the group and leaned against the gas stove. Taking his cue, Ray did the same, leaving things to the women. Maud gave the girl her usual medicine, while Eudora lit a candle to heat the glass cups that would suck the poison through Ama’s back.

As the women argued, Ray told Samuel how difficult it had been to save Ama, how he’d thought that at sixty-three he’d seen his last, having had to plunge into a fast current. Samuel studied Ray’s face, thinking of the slaughter of the calf, his savage opinions at dinner, his condescension.

Ray’s quizzical look made him turn away. And for the first time Samuel seemed to be brought to his senses. Raising his voice, he said, “Why do we not take her to the hospital?”

It was as though he’d suggested they dismantle the oven to build a flying machine. Eudora at least seemed to consider it, her thoughts plainly etched on her face: her feminist’s belief in progress fighting against her homemaker’s practicality, her love of taking offence fighting against her logic. She looked at Maud, who regarded Samuel with reproach. But Ama herself spoke.

“Don’t take me to the hospital. Please,” she said, barely audible. She turned her face away.

“Don’t bother her, Samuel, she doesn’t want to go,” said Maud, urging the girl onto her stomach and raising her shirt so they could cup her.

Samuel was disgusted with his wife. She worried about her daughters, didn’t want to call attention to their culpability in this mess. He gave her a dark look, but said no more. To be fair, he knew Maud felt affection for Ama and would never wish harm on her. And yet, for her, nothing could overcome blood ties.

“Why did the twins leave you there?” said Eudora.

Ama frowned, and the coughs she’d been holding back wracked her body.

After cupping her, the group carried Ama upstairs to the Iron Lung. Exhausted but unable to breathe, Ama only fell asleep at dawn. Ray dozed in a dusty corner. The others, so tired their conversation was senseless, rested against the furniture.

Eudora smiled. A sleepless night had sharpened her tongue.

“If I ever saw the devil’s work, it’s what I saw tonight.”

There was no reply.

chapter
FOURTEEN

I
t was one of those mornings when a premature frost seizes everything and yet the sun continues to shine. The older leaves bled on their stems, and people unfamiliar with Alberta’s moody weather might have thought it was autumn.

Samuel fastened the curtains in the Iron Lung to let the sun in. On the pockmarked dresser he set a simplistic arrangement of marigolds with a single, luscious wild rose rising from the centre.

“This one is you,” he told Ama, pointing at the wild rose. “A raving beauty rising like the siren’s song above the others.” Her giggle made him feel appreciated. He patted his hat with an air of pride. “Never mind this electronics business, I should be a poet. A black Homer for modern times.”

When Ama’s laugh receded into coughing, he sat beside her on the bed to pat her back. Two days of quarantine had cleared her chest, bringing back some of her old personality. Even so, she treated the Tynes like strangers, using the shy and rigid table talk of their earlier days. Crushing as this was for Samuel, he couldn’t lament progress. Ama had improved by strides; only a blind man would dispute the colour waking in her face.

“Mr. Tyne?” said Ama in a rusty voice, recovering from her cough. Samuel marvelled at the wonderful grades of colour in her hair, like burnished oak. He ran a hand down her head.

“What is it? Are you feeling sick again?”

Ama’s eyes were wet, her flushed face trembled. “I want to go home.”

“It is impossible. Your parents do not return until September, and you cannot live unsupervised.”

“To Grandma Geneviève’s. She lives just outside Morinville. If you call her, she’ll come for me for sure.”

Samuel looked at the floor. Part of him had suspected this was coming, what with Ama’s evasiveness lately, her kind but marked distance. Still, it pained him so deeply he feared being unable to keep the emotion from his face. Drawing his woollen socks across the beige carpet, he meditated on the way brushing the carpet’s grain could darken and lighten its colour.

“Well,” said Samuel, “you are not a captive here. If that is your wish, I will certainly fulfil it.” Trying to smile, he looked at her. “Your wish is my command.”

Ama flushed, but clasped her hands across the blanket, a formal gesture that seemed to close the matter. Patting her head, Samuel rose to his feet wheezing a little, and trod downstairs to tell his wife.

Maud behaved as though resigning herself to the loss, but her relief was obvious. Samuel went to his study and slammed the door. It was some time before he could bring himself to pick up the phone.

He called Geneviève Ouillet three times in quick succession, to no avail. After fiddling with a radio for an hour, he called three more times and still received no answer. It annoyed him. Where did old women go in the middle of the day, anyway? Two hours later, she finally answered.

But she didn’t speak. Samuel only realized she’d answered by the tinny song in the background, sung in a sentimental, foreign, tear-drenched voice.

“Mrs. Ouillet? This is Samuel Tyne. I—”

“Time? What, is this a census? I don’t have time, I don’t have it,” she said in her decrepit voice, aspirating her h’s.

“No, no, I am not a census, do not hang up. I’m Samuel
Tyne
. I’m your granddaughter Ama’s guardian for the summer.”

“Oh. Yes, what is it?” The woman seemed to be smoking, and she spat and coughed throughout Samuel’s entire explanation. “Mm, yes, all right, then,” she said when he’d finished, though Samuel wasn’t convinced she’d understood him.

He gave her the Tynes’ address, spelling out the street name. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer me to drop her off?”

She hung up loudly in his ear. Samuel looked at the receiver a few seconds before replacing it on the cradle. When he went upstairs, Ama looked impressed.

“I expected to be here at least another week,” she said. “Grandma doesn’t like to use the phone—she hates all technology. Even technology she grew up with. She thinks everyone’s wrong to believe in it.”

Early the next morning, Samuel and Maud set Ama’s carpet-bag by the front door and sat with her in the family room to await her grandmother. The twins had woken early and gone outside. Though annoyed, Samuel understood their fear of being rebuked by one of Ama’s relatives. Maud had spent the morning dusting, but by noon the ancient fireplace had gasped ash on everything. The room felt stifled, and their being dressed in their primmest, most respectable clothes didn’t ease things. At the bay window, the sky was white with the absence of any kind of weather. Everything smelled of mothballs.

“You might think of getting your grandmother a watch for Christmas this year,” said Maud. She laughed hesitantly. “What time did she say again, Samuel?”

Samuel waved the hat in his hands, then resumed picking lint off it.

Dwarfed in a rose-coloured chair, Ama gave them an apologetic smile. She’d tucked the wild rose behind her ear, reminding Samuel of a young, paler Lady Day. “Grandma really doesn’t like technology,” she said, “so she’s never on time.”

Maud raised her eyebrows and turned to the window.

They continued to sit in silence. And this grieved Samuel, for more than anything he wanted to speak to the girl, to change her mind, to silence the anxiety he felt over her departure. At first he’d tried to catch Ama’s eye, stealing glances at her and smiling, but after Maud reproached him with a look, he forced himself to stop. Now they barely looked at one another, only deepening the uneasiness.

When the doorbell sounded at a quarter past four, Maud forgot the customary pause—what would visitors think, after all, if they all ran around like chickens?—and strode out to answer it. Samuel glanced at Ama, who removed the flower from behind her ear with nervous fingers, a look of regret on her face. As if handling something breakable, she pressed the flower between the pages
of Alice In Wonderland
.

Some people carry a portrait of themselves in their voices; others have voices so incongruous that when we meet them we feel we’ve somehow been lied to. Samuel had expected, had
hoped
, that Mrs. Ouillet’s voice would prove deceitful. Instead, he found her so like the crass, underweight matron in his mind’s eye that his accuracy startled him.

When he held out his hand for her to shake, she looked past him. She had a ruddy face, with deep lines etched darkly under her eyes. Like Ama, her hair had different hues in it, from rust to the whitest grey, yet the older woman seemed to neglect hers, and it dropped in matte strands from her bun. Her lips were full and pink, their vibrancy almost vulgar on so worn-out a face. Her pale grey eyes refused to rest on anything, and she looked distractedly around her.

Nudging past Samuel, she began to fuss over Ama. She smelled of hot maple syrup and tobacco, a pleasant mixture.

“She is feeling much better,” he said. “Very much on the mend.”

Mrs. Ouillet didn’t acknowledge he’d spoken, scrutinizing Ama’s knees and cursing in French. The angularity of her body, her excess flesh, made Samuel guess she’d once been immense. Experience had taught him large women were a force to contend with.

Maud gave Samuel a look of dread.

“Won’t you stay to tea?” she said.

“Grandmère,
voulez
stay for
thé
?” said Ama.

Without acknowledging the Tynes, who stood quite foolishly behind her, Mrs. Ouillet spoke to Ama in rapid French.

Ama’s face coloured, and she looked hesitant.
“Je ne comprends pas.”

“‘Je ne comprends pas,’”
said Mrs. Ouillet, shaking her head.
“Ah, seigneur. Tu me tues
.”

Grabbing hold of Ama’s sleeve, Mrs. Ouillet shoved the girl onto the creaking porch. When Samuel attempted to help her with the carpet-bag, Mrs. Ouillet slapped his hand away, saying, “Tut tut tut tut,” in an ascending voice.
“Lâche-le.”

Samuel stepped out after them, watching Mrs. Ouillet force Ama into a rusted-out white van. When the van drove out of sight, he turned to see his wife behind him. He studied her thin face for signs of remorse and, seeing none, pushed past her without speaking. Grabbing his keys, he went for a drive to clear his mind.

Always at the back of Samuel’s mind these days was the burden of finding the twins a new school for September. Putting off the task had simply added to his misery. He’d been so distracted he’d selected a school that had burned down years ago for the twins to attend. Maud had rebuked him: “Guess again, Sherlock.” For cultural reasons, he’d then selected the Aster General School, which had stood in Aster since 1913 and was now in its geriatric phase, slowly losing students to the city the way an old man loses his wits. Maud hadn’t even answered that suggestion. He was now deliberating over a school in Edmonton, though in a perfect world they’d be able to attend the same school as Ama.

For all his distraction, it rarely occurred to Samuel that he was involved in illicit dealings with his neighbour. The phone call that put him in possession of a house, the providential ladder, the mown lawn, the discovery of the actual property lines and his wife’s recent lie about her visit all heightened his paranoia of what to expect next. What exactly did Porter want from him? Why did he not make good on whatever his subtle actions were trying to express? Samuel had waited a useless month for something to happen. But almost as soon as he allowed himself to forget it, he received two letters.

It was a cold day and the mailbox was still full when he returned from work. Setting his toolbox down, Samuel sifted through the flyers and found the first note. His name had been laboured over in huge handwriting, the envelope opaque in places with grease stains. Intuiting who it was from, he crushed it into his pocket. He almost missed the second note because it was stuck to a flyer. A telegram from Gold Coast. He felt a pang of anxiety: Why hadn’t he written back to Ajoa last month? Why was he so stingy with his money whenever his mother demanded it? Surely he could send her sums above the regular monthly cheque? He tore at the seal with bated breath. After reading, he raised his eyes to the yard, and its familiarity, its unchanged beauty, struck him as perverse. Dazed, he went inside, placing his hat and the telegram on the stand of false, dusty roses. He closed his eyes for a moment, exhaled and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. A crash stunned him from his stupor. At first he thought it had originated outside, but when he heard the commotion coming from the living room, he rose wearily to his feet.

In his decrepit years, imprisoned by arthritis and the knowledge that he’d soon die, Samuel would remember this scene. For a moment he’d stood in the doorway, unable to enter. He felt the terrible energy in the room, which set his nerves on edge and led him to expect the worst. The twins stood in the centre, with their backs to the entrance. Only when Chloe turned her head was Samuel propelled by his anxiety into the room. He’d been struck not so much by the distress on her face as by the feeling it was feigned. Overwhelmed, he pushed past her.

On the far edge of the carpet, beside the silver ladder, lay Maud. Her leg had buckled unnaturally under her, her face in awe of the pain. Her breathing was ragged. Samuel kneeled and raised her head onto his thigh. She seemed on the verge of fainting.

“My leg,” she said in a damp voice.

Samuel touched a thumb to her lips to keep her from exhausting herself talking. Her whole body was moist. He scowled in the direction of the ladder.
Porter will not rest until he has killed this family
. The twins approached and stood over them. And the pained looks on their faces softened Samuel’s anger a little.

“It’s not their fault,” said Maud in a strained voice. She was still able to give Samuel a look of rebuke. “They didn’t do this. I set the ladder wrong.”

Samuel set Maud’s head on the carpet. It hadn’t even entered his head to blame the twins, but hearing Maud’s pleas, he was filled with a dreadful certainty they had done something. Avoiding their eyes, he left the room.

Maud sensed his intention. “Don’t call the ambulance, Samuel, don’t! I’m fine. Let’s just drive there ourselves.”

Samuel hung up the phone and brought the car round. They made the hour-long drive to Edmonton (rather than go to the local hospital Maud insisted on the Edmonton General so the neighbours would not have to know) in silence. Samuel kept glancing at the twins in the rear-view mirror. Not a trace of emotion could be read on their faces.

At the hospital the girls stayed in the car. Maud was rushed into emergency, leaving Samuel to sit in the waiting room. The more he tried to suppress thoughts of his daughters, the worse they assailed him. He distracted himself by trying to guess what the other people in the waiting room were enduring. A fat man in a plaid shirt stared at an envelope in his hand, and Samuel realized that he had forgotten the letter he’d tucked in his pocket. Samuel went outside for privacy.

Though it was still sunny, a mean rain had started to fall, growing more violent by the minute. A devil’s rainstorm. Samuel crouched under the awning, contemplating a drop of water on the brim of his hat. As he read the stained letter, an orderly called his name.

Maud’s internal organs were just fine, but she had a hairline fracture in her tibia and the very tip of her toe bone had been crushed. “We just need a few hours to fit her with a cast, and then she’s all yours,” said the man.

Samuel grunted his consent.

“Now,” continued the orderly, “you can have fifteen minutes with her before we begin the resetting. Tell a few jokes. Lift her spirits a little.” He winked.

Samuel hated being the bearer of bad news. Shuffling into Maud’s room, he was pained by the smile she greeted him with.

And yet, as soon as Samuel smiled back, she seemed to see something in it and herself stopped smiling. Suddenly, she looked withered and vulnerable on the white bed, and when he took her hand he was surprised to see how wrinkled it looked. Maud looked incurably old and, to her credit, wary.