Authors: Linden MacIntyre
Then John called out from her kitchen. “Is anybody home?”
They hugged, and it was only afterwards that she found it strange, the hugging.
“I got a call last night, late. Sextus asked me to look in. I hope I didn’t …”
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s good to see you. Would you like a tea or coffee? I could make some.”
“No, no,” he said. “I was just passing.”
“I’m supposed to meet Duncan at his boat in a couple of hours,” she said. “I could use a lift to town, to the rental place.”
“Sure,” he said. “So Duncan’s still around?”
“So it seems.” She laughed and felt her face flush. John laughed too, but then he seemed uncertain.
“Let’s get going,” he said.
“You called the baby Jack,” she said, as they drove toward town.
“Ah. Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch.”
“Don’t worry—I know how it is. But Jack … not John?”
“Just Jack. Hoping he’ll be half the man that Uncle Jack turned into.” He studied the road. “You must see big changes since … back then.”
“Some things never change.”
“True,” he said. “But we both know why I always found it hard to get in touch.”
“It wasn’t only you,” she said.
“The one thing I worry about, since it turned out to be a boy, is passing on whatever it was …”
“Please, John. Don’t,” she said. “This is a time to be happy. You’re a lucky man.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry. Raking all that old stuff up.”
Then they were at the car rental office.
“Thanks for the lift,” she said.
“Where does he keep the boat?”
“Little Harbour,” she said.
“I was never much for the water,” he said. “Say hello for me.”
“I will.”
The boat was anchored in a little cove just off Henry Island. Duncan was slouched in a plastic deck chair, picking at the label on a half-empty beer bottle. The sun was stinging.
“The bishop—that must have come as a shock,” she said.
“He was getting up there.”
“You were close, though.”
“He ran my life for nearly thirty years. I suppose you could say that we were close.”
“What now?”
“There’ll be another bishop. It won’t be me.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
He sighed deeply, then turned away, staring off toward where Stella was a small disturbance on the still water, swimming away from them with long, slow strokes.
“I always thought that age would bring more clarity.”
“And it doesn’t?”
He laughed. “I’m learning that men are different in that regard. Women, it seems, mature, accept things. Men just age, grow anxious.”
“You learned that from her?” She waved at Stella, who was now floating in the distance.
“Maybe from you.”
“Hah,” she said.
“How did JC make out, by the way?”
“He seems fine,” she said. “Thanks for helping clear up that business with the police.”
He shrugged. “I told them he was with me, period. I presume that’s all they need.”
“We’ll see. But tell me about you.”
“I met with the archbishop in Halifax yesterday. We had a good talk.”
“Are you allowed to tell me what you talked about?”
He laughed. “Bottom line, they don’t want to lose me. He wants to know how long I plan to stay in Toronto. He’s being decent about it.”
“And did you talk about …” She nodded toward the swimmer, who was now moving in a wide circle around the boat.
“I didn’t feel the need.”
He stared at her for a while. Then he reached toward a cooler, rattled among ice cubes. “What about yourself?” he said.
“I think there’s vodka in there.”
He leaned and looked inside the cooler. “Damned if there isn’t.”
Stella looked almost matronly in the bathing suit, but her movements expressed a comfortable sensuality. From the moment Effie saw them standing together on the wharf in Little Harbour, she was conscious of an unfamiliar calm about her brother. He was no less serious, but his burdens, she believed, were now mostly from new certainties and all their consequences. There was correspondence in the way they moved together, in their communication. The word “symmetry” came to mind. She’d been apprehensive that Sextus, and the memory of infidelity, would have spoiled the day for all of them.
Now Stella sat with them, rivulets of water running from her hair into the hollows just above the prominence of collarbones. Her shoulders were muscular and brown.
“We’ve been talking,” Effie said.
Stella smiled, raised an eyebrow and looked from one to the other. “Don’t mind me.”
She lifted the lid of the cooler, produced a beer and handed it to Duncan. He swiftly twisted off the cap and handed it back to her. She held the bottle in both hands against her stomach, tilted back her head and closed her eyes.
“We haven’t seen each other since that day in the parking lot, outside the Walmart,” Effie said. “Last summer. It seems like such a long time ago.”
“It was a long time ago,” Stella said, dreamily, eyes shut.
For the first time Effie noticed the impact of the vodka. A tingling warmth, a return of confidence. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this … I don’t want to spoil the afternoon. But something happened … just before I came.”
Effie and Sextus were sitting on her doorstep, drinking tea, the cool of the evening, with its assorted fragrances, gathering around them. The settling sun seemed closer. They both seemed suddenly to notice it, and the silence, as if a threshold had been passed.
“The way the light gets mellower at this time of day,” he sighed. “I think it’s from the angle of the sun and the rays passing through all the pollution close to the earth. Television people call it magic hour.”
“You were always good with words,” she said. “I always thought words were your calling.”
“I wrote a real novel once. You must remember?”
“I remember. I thought it was good.”
“Do you remember what I called it?”
“The
Day They Killed Kennedy
.”
“Very good,” he said. “It was about Uncle Sandy and what he did.”
“And about the man who lived here,” she said. “And why Sandy did what he did—at least what you thought the reason was.”
“The missing manuscript is a little closer to reality. Being about us, I suppose. Why we are the way we are. I’m kind of relieved you didn’t read it,” he said. “It wouldn’t mean anything to a stranger. I’m sure of that.”
“About me and my father,” she said. Then she could say no more.
“It’s only based on what you told me.”
“It’s strange,” she said, “how after a while what happened and what you imagined or what you dreamed get all mixed up.”
“I guess that’s why they have shrinks,” he said. “Have you ever?”
“Nah.”
“You know that Stella is a kind of shrink,” he said.
She placed a hand on his forearm. “It’s behind us,” she said. “Like everything else. I was with her and Duncan yesterday. On the boat. It all became clear.”
His laugh was brief. “They’re lucky.” And he looked up toward the horizon. “And what’s ahead? For us. You and me. Individually, of course.”
“We still have that much in common,” she said. “Unpredictability.”
He stood then and smiled. “I hope so. I always get restless when things are predictable.”
“Can I get you something?” she said. “The tea’s gone cold. I could make us a drink.”
There was a momentary hesitation. “Probably not a good idea.”
“Whatever you think yourself,” she said. And they laughed together. “I haven’t heard anyone use that expression for ages,” she said. “Whatever you think yourself,” she said again, mimicking an accent from the past.
“It’s good to have you home,” he said.
As he left, she paid attention to the thump of the car door, the firing of ignition, the brief squeal of a power steering belt protesting a too-tight turn, the crunch of gravel as he drove away and the lingering of engine sound, a sudden whisper from a breeze.
Then her cellphone jumped, and rang.
T
he water was dark and flat, the day dull, overcast. They were drifting well offshore, safe from the lurking rocks that girdled the island, out of sight.
“I could try to go in closer, but you can get into a spot of trouble there. I don’t have a depth sounder. But I wanted you to see that,” Duncan said.
He and JC were standing on the high bow of the boat, and Duncan was pointing toward the land and a large rock fragment in the water, like a section of a wall left after an incomplete demolition. Effie and Stella were sitting on the washboard, legs dangling, bare toes almost touching the water.
“They call it the Door,” Duncan said, “because of that hole near the bottom. It’s been a marker for fishermen forever. You can spot it as far away as Cape Mabou.” He swung his arm leftward, taking in the looming coastline. JC was silent.
“Somebody I know wanted his ashes spread out here because he thought it would be a doorway to eternity or something. Father Mullins vetoed it. He said putting ashes in the sea is a denial of the final Resurrection, the Day of Judgment.”
Duncan laughed briefly. “I was thinking of Mullins and the poor fellow’s last wish a couple of weeks ago when they were scattering young Kennedy’s ashes from a battleship off Martha’s Vineyard, with the top brass of the Church officiating. I guess on Judgment Day it’ll still matter who you were, just like always. Business as usual.”
“Who was it wanted to be put here?” JC asked.
“Some guy who lived away most of his life. Came home when he got sick.”
“I’d like that,” JC said. “If anything ever happened, this would be the place for me.”
“For God’s sake,” Effie said. “Enough with the being morbid.”
The day he arrived, she’d decided to prepare a dinner in advance. In the morning she’d driven to the supermarket. As she passed by the bookstore, it occurred to her to buy a Toronto newspaper, but at the doorway to the shop she realized that she was walking in on something private. The woman she knew to be JC’s daughter was speaking loudly to someone Effie couldn’t see. “Don’t just walk away,” she said.
A teenage girl rushed by, her face furious.
“You come back here this minute!” Sylvia shouted from the doorway of the bookstore. Effie was, by now, in full retreat.
She heard a floorboard creak, and when she turned from the stove toward the refrigerator, he was in the kitchen.
“Oh,” she said, raising a defensive hand.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up.”
In their mutual surprise, they just stood there. Then he came toward her slowly and drew her head to his shoulder. She let her arms hang limply as he stroked her hair.
“It’s done,” he said. “It’s finished.”
“What is?” she murmured. “What’s finished?”
“So many things,” he said.
“I was just preparing supper,” she said. “A casserole. I didn’t expect you this early.”
“I’ll bring my stuff in,” he said. “I brought enough for a long stay.”
“Wonderful,” she said. “How long did you have in mind?”
“We can talk about that.”
“And what about my cat?”
Suddenly his face was grim.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “What happened?”
He put his arms around her. “He got out again.”
“He got out …”
“The same way as before, up on the roof. But he didn’t come back. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It wasn’t your—”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I wasn’t able to go after him this time. I couldn’t …”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t okay. I was afraid. That’s why I didn’t go.”
He stepped back, arms outstretched as if in supplication.
They talked late into the night, over dinner and a long walk on the darkened, empty road, beneath the glittering sky, about past and future, how time takes things away and, as we grow aware of loss, anxiety takes over.
“That’s why Sam was fascinating to me,” he said. “I had to see first-hand what happens when it’s all gone, when you become utterly vulnerable.”
“So what happens?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t think Sam was typical. He lost everything that we can put a name on, but he managed to hang on to something, and it kept him strong, right up to the end.”
“You said that he was religious.”
“It was more than that,” he said.
They were back at the house then, standing near the gate.
“I want to stay here,” he said. “If there’s a place that I might be able to figure it out, it’s here. What do you think?”
“I like that idea, you being here. How long will it take?”
“Till Christmas. All winter. The rest of my life. I don’t know. You don’t mind if I stay here?”
She shrugged. “I’d rather have you in Toronto. But I can live with this. I could visit for Thanksgiving, Christmas. Though the old place could be kind of frigid by, say, January.”
“I don’t mind cold,” he said.
“So it’ll be a book?”
“Maybe at some point.”
“About impotence?”
“About surviving impotence.”
“It’ll be a blockbuster, I predict,” she said.
“Speaking of blockbusters,” he said, “come on inside. I have something to show you.”
She knew what it would be. “The manuscript,” she said. “You didn’t.”
It was in a folded plastic bag from a No Frills grocery store.
“How did you manage …?”
“I went to his address. Actually, I had to go a couple of times before I found him home. Knocked on the door. Introduced myself and told him that I was there to pick it up. He gave it to me. Case closed.”
“Just like that.”
“Excused himself, turned on his heel, went somewhere inside his place and came back with it. Not a word out of him.”
“You just went and got it. And he handed it over to you, a stranger.”
“Exactly.”
She was studying his face, particularly the expression in his eyes.
“You don’t believe me?” he said, smiling. “Check in the bag. I just looked at the title page to make sure it was there. I didn’t read any of it, so maybe he fooled me. Maybe it’s just a pile of blank paper.”
She reached into the bag and brought out the thick wad of paper, now secured, she noted, by an elastic band. She fanned the pages briefly and saw that it was probably intact.