Authors: Linden MacIntyre
“Ahhh, Jeesus now,” Conor said, his large, soft hand gently covering hers. “Are ye all right, then?”
She stayed up too late and drank too much, and in the morning she tried to tell herself the creeping sadness was just a symptom
of a hangover, something to remember if she was to spend the summer here alone. Keep the liquor down to a dull roar. She realized that she was slamming things—cupboard drawers, the coffee urn, the coffee can, the refrigerator door—muttering vile obscenities at inanimate objects. She paused for a moment, then sat at the corner of the kitchen table, took a deep breath. There was an ashtray with a single crumpled butt.
Where did that come from?
She examined it, trying to summon specific details from the evening before. She remembered a senseless impulse to call Sextus. She was sure she hadn’t. It was at that point, she was now certain, that she’d staggered off to bed.
Pouring coffee, she noticed her cellphone where she’d left it. The message light was blinking. The battery was almost dead, but the message was brief: “Hey, I’m at the airport. I get to Halifax at—oops, they’re about to close the gate. Gotta run. I’ll call you when I get there.”
She was laughing as she fumbled for the charger in her purse, briefly flirting with the notion of a splash of whisky in her coffee.
She spent the morning cleaning. There was epidermal grime throughout the house, coating unexpected surfaces. She vacuumed dead fly clusters from the corners of the windows. There was a mouldy teabag fixed as if by glue to the inside of the teapot. She changed the bedding. After noon she napped. She woke up refreshed, showered and, shortly after three, began to watch the road. She wished she’d bought flowers when she was at the superstore in town.
By four o’clock she’d redressed. She’d been wearing shorts but imagined cellulite and selected a flimsy cotton skirt and sandals, a navy V-neck sweater. The sweater was flattering in a modest way.
She considered a quick trip to town to buy some flowers and, while she was there, to replenish the liquor supply, but she dismissed the impulse. There’d be lots of time for flowers. Maybe he’d
bring
flowers. There was a half a bottle of Balvenie. That would do. She alternated between dismay and pride as she surveyed the house, so burdened with her history and yet emerging gradually to become a statement of her taste, her future.
In some detail she imagined the reunion scene: where they’d sit, what they’d talk about. She’d walk with him around the property, summoning pristine memories of childhood, briefly mentioning where the barn had been, pointing out the Gillis place. For dinner, she’d suggest a restaurant across the causeway, on the mainland. She’d never been there but had heard reports that it was passable. Someone had told her Ethan Hawke was spotted there once, eating supper just like everybody else.
And later, after darkness fell, she’d light a fire to dispel the dampness, create a cozy atmosphere. And then … who knows? She hoped he’d be tender.
At five, she heard the sound of a car stopping. He was driving a black Mustang convertible. She met him in the yard, just inside the gate. She knew she was flying at him like a hen, awkwardly. She didn’t care. He caught her as if she were a child, and she clung to him, arms around his neck. He staggered but quickly found his balance and his strength. She felt the sudden sting of tears, but happily, they didn’t overflow.
When finally she spoke, she said, “My God. The car!”
He laughed. “It seemed to suit the mission.”
“Come in,” she said. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“Well, then, I’ve created an incomplete impression,” he said.
“You’re hungry,” she joked.
“That too.”
Later she asked him, “How was the trip?”
He was vague. Something about a man who had been sentenced to death years and years before, but because there were so many of them in that situation, he got lost in the population of the doomed. Until recently. He’d demanded action on his case. “Turn me loose or put me down,” was how he told it. Did she have any idea how many people were sitting around in the U.S. prison system waiting for the call to oblivion? Dead men sitting.
“We want to do his story. That’s why I went down there.”
“And he said …?”
“No way. He hates the media.”
“So it was a wasted trip?”
“Not really. He’s thinking about it.”
“How did you pull that off?”
JC sat up. The blankets fell away as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “It was brilliant,” he said. “Sam says to me … his name is Sam … he says, ‘Give me one good reason why I should talk to you.’ ”
“And you said?”
“I looked him in the eye and said, ‘Because they don’t want you to.’ ”
She was confused. “Don’t they listen in on your conversations?”
“Maybe.”
He slid into a pair of jeans. She thought,
From behind he looks like a teenager
. “Turn around,” she said.
He turned. “What?”
“That’s better. I need for you to look grown-up. You have a little belly.”
He sucked it in. “I do not. Why don’t we drive to town and get a bite to eat? I’m friggin’ starved.”
“There isn’t much in town,” she said.
“Okay. Why don’t we drive into town and get a couple of big fat T-bones and a couple of bottles of their best plonk. I’ll whip you up a piece of red meat, Texas-style.”
“Do that and anything could happen,” she said.
“I thought that anything that could just did. Do you have more surprises?”
“Maybe.”
She was walking out of the liquor store when she spotted JC talking to another man, who had his back to her, near the entrance to the Sobeys. There was familiarity before the recognition. Sextus. She felt a brief temptation to step back into the liquor store and wait. But JC saw her, waved, continued talking. Sextus turned, and now he, too, knew that she was there. She walked briskly to where they stood, slipped a proprietary arm around JC’s waist. Said nothing.
“I believe you two know each other,” JC said with an irritating smirk.
“We’ve met,” said Effie.
Sextus, by outward appearances, was in distress. His face was flushed, his smile tight. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you two were a number.” He forced a kind of laugh.
“Nah,” said JC. “Just a couple of old-timers catching up. Effie thought it was time for me to come home.”
“I didn’t realize this was home—for you.”
“You’ll have to drop by,” said JC.
She pinched the soft part of his waist, just below the ribs.
“How long are you around for?” Sextus asked.
“God knows,” said JC. “I’m reconnecting.”
“Well, that was awkward,” she said when they were in the car.
“How so?”
“Come on.”
“I wish I had a photograph of the look on his face when you walked up. It isn’t often you see him rattled.”
“You actually asked him to drop by.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It ain’t going to happen.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Trust me.”
“How long
are
you here for?”
“I could only get a week,” he said.
“Then back to Texas?”
“No, back to working on the Y2K piece. They want it for the fall launch. Then Texas, if he agrees.”
“I’m not sure why that convict would even consider talking to you,” she said.
“It boils down to one word. Autonomy. ”
“Autonomy?”
“He’ll agree to talk to me because the system doesn’t want him to. A rare act of autonomy, something he hasn’t felt for ages. Also, if he talks to me, at least he’ll be leaving his voice behind.”
“So what were you talking to the other criminal about?”
“Sextus? We were talking about this guy we used to know … you remember him, I’m sure. Danny MacKay.”
“I know Danny.”
“Sextus says he isn’t doing so well, says he’d probably appreciate a visit. What do you think?”
“I’m supposed to go to see him anyway,” she said. “To check on Duncan’s boat.”
“Duncan has a boat?”
“Yes. Danny MacKay looks after it. I think he used to own it. Duncan bought it from him a while back.”
They drove in silence. Then JC said, “When he heard I’d been to the States, he asked if I was doing anything on the Clinton-Lewinsky business.” He chuckled. “Sextus has a one-track mind.”
“So that was it? Danny Ban and Bill Clinton?”
“Well, there was a little bit of maaan stuff.”
“What kind of maaan stuff?”
There was another silence before he asked, “When was it that you found out about his affair with Stella?”
“You said it wasn’t an affair.”
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“It was in April, shortly before you showed up. Why?”
“Well, I was just trying to assure him that I did my best to set the record straight, back before Easter. I’d given you his side of things.”
“Yes. You were a big help.” She looked at him and smiled, but he was staring straight ahead and frowning.
“He said he was planning a trip to Toronto. He’s thinking of coming up for Christmas. Hasn’t seen your daughter for quite a while, I gather.”
“Great,” she said. “I suppose you invited him to stay at Walden?”
He laughed and patted her knee as he turned the Mustang onto the narrow road they called the Long Stretch.
T
hey would, in a yet unimaginable time, argue over small details of that summer week in 1998, he remembering rain, she uninterrupted sunshine; it was hot and dry, cold and wet, windy, calm. They would be able to agree that the feelings were exquisite, their compatibility astonishing for two exclusive personalities. The days were spent in exploration, in the awkward merging of divergent memories; long nights and mornings spent in bed, in deep talk and adolescent play, and always subtle curiosity, deft disclosure. There was one day they were mostly lost, hopelessly exploring rutted back roads, looking for a place he more imagined than remembered—that long-lost place called Bornish.
“Somewhere back of Glencoe,” was the most he could offer, and at the first bump of stone on the low belly of the Mustang, he surrendered. “I’m told there’s nothing out there anyway,” he said, backing carefully into a grove of juniper and pine to turn around.
“Just stop for a minute,” she said. “Let’s just sit and breathe.”
She sank back in the leather car seat, eyes shut. All around them, the whispering of trees; somewhere near, the specific gurgle of a brook.
“It felt like this,” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured. “This was what it felt like.”
On the way back, she remembered that she’d passed this way several years earlier, to visit an old relative in Hawthorne, Aunt Peggy Beaton.
“We could go that way,” she said. “Stop in and see Danny Ban, get that over with.”
“Danny Ban?”
“Danny MacKay,” she said. “We always called him Danny Ban. Fair-haired Danny.”
“Right. Danny. I think we used to call him Danny Bad.”
She laughed. “But Danny wasn’t the only bad one, I recall.”
“No,” he said, brow furrowed as he focused on the dusty, rocky road.
The MacKay place was set back, past a grove of poplars, on a slight rise. Soft hayfields fell away, ripe for cutting, rippling in the gentle summer breeze. Near the house, there was an old, tilted barn and a propped-up fishing boat partly swaddled in a tarp. A dog emerged from beneath the deck and trotted toward the car, barking. JC got out, squatted down before the dog, offering the back of his hand. The dog sniffed, licked, waved his bushy tail, then turned and dashed toward the house, announcing the arrival.
Jessie MacKay met them at the door. Effie made the introductions. JC Campbell, an old friend of Danny’s.
“I remember,” Jessie said, gripping JC’s hand. “He isn’t great,” she whispered. “But he’ll be thrilled. Come in.”
The last time she’d seen Danny was at Aunt Peggy’s funeral, eighteen months earlier. He’d been moving slowly then, with the help of a walker, his once-large frame ravaged by the multiple sclerosis.
“Well, Holy Jesus,” he said, instantly recognizing JC. “Will you get a load of who just walked in? My God Almighty. JC Campbell.”
“ ’Fraid so,” JC said, face flushed, his smile contorted by dismay.
Danny was in a wheelchair, pulled up tight to the kitchen table. There was a mug and a small plate, the remnants of a sandwich in front of him. “Jessie,” he shouted. “Do you remember this renegade?” She was standing back, smiling and rubbing her hands together.
“
De ghabhas sibh?
” he said to Effie. “
Deoch bhuat?
”
“
Chaneil
,” said Effie. “We’re okay. We’re driving.”
“Well, that never stopped this fellow before. Jessie, get that bottle of rum I’ve been saving.”
“I didn’t know you could talk Gaelic,” JC said.
“I can’t,” said Danny. “But a fella gets old and the goddamnedest things come back to you.”
The rum was poured. Jessie, Effie and JC took seats around the kitchen table, the reminiscence gathering velocity with every sip. The two men alternated anecdotes, the women tolerantly smiling, laughing, holding back whatever memories they had of all the wildness. Inevitably the interstitial silences grew longer. Then there was the sound of a car. The dog barked twice outside.
“That’ll be Stella,” Danny said.
Jessie stood. Effie felt a sudden tension in her stomach.
“And how is Father Duncan, anyway?” said Danny.
Effie wasn’t certain how to answer, wasn’t clear about the meaning of the question. “Duncan,” she said. “Ah, he’s great. Working with the homeless in the city.”
“God love him,” Jessie said, leaning toward the window. “That would be him for sure. The man’s a living saint.”
“He was awful good to us,” said Danny, “the time when we lost the young fellow. I suppose Effie’s told you about that.”
JC seemed confused. “I’m not sure.”
Jessie walked toward the kitchen door. Danny made a face behind her back and shook his head, a private warning, something not to be discussed aloud. “Ah well,” he said. “It’s a long story anyway.”
“Danny and Jessie lost their boy,” said Effie carefully.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said JC, the formality in his tone a reminder that the friendship that once bonded him and Danny had been hollowed out by time, drained of intimacy. There were slow footsteps on the wooden deck.