Tell

by Frances Itani

  “You gave me a start,” he said. “Where did you disappear to?”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. I move about pretty easily in the dark. When you came round again, I saw that it was you.”

  Kenan was wearing boots, not skates. Am saw that he was inspecting his territory, an extension of his backyard, really. Out walking on the bay on this balmy night, almost thaw conditions but not quite. Too early for that. An unusual December night, that was all.

  “I wondered if you’d be coming by the tower later,” said Am. “And then I decided to come out myself. I’ll skate around a few more times. Why don’t you come back with me? We’ll have a drink.” He looked away. “I have a flask from my brother. My Christmas present from your father-in-law.” He laughed.

  “I generally walk the other direction from here,” said Kenan. “You could come along. There’s a good trail.”

  “I reckon there is by now. All right, I’ll come. I’ll take the skates off first, in the shack.”

  “Leave them at our side door,” said Kenan. “Pick them up on your way home.”

  “Good enough.”

  Am went into the darkened shack and pulled off his skates. The stove still radiated warmth; the air was close, almost damp because of the temperature outside. Kenan stayed by the door and kept it ajar. He glanced out nervously several times while Am tied his skate laces together and got into his boots. Am hoisted himself up from the bench and followed, allowing Kenan—head down, sure-footed—to lead the way. The skates were dropped off beside the step of Kenan’s house and the two men carried on. Kenan turned right at the boardwalk. A man walking on the other side of the street gave a nod and raised his hand in greeting. He was headed in the opposite direction, toward the newspaper office. Kenan ignored him, but Am returned the wave. Calhoun, the editor of the Post. His wife was expecting a baby any day now. To be sure, Calhoun would make the announcement in the Post when he became a father for the first time.

  Kenan reached the end of the boardwalk, leading with quick strides. Without a pause, he stepped down into the frozen ruts of the road. Am was more cautious leaving the boardwalk. The shadowy changes in depth were the ones that tricked him the most. He’d be doing just fine on level board and then, without warning, he’d step down unexpectedly and hard, feeling the thump through his entire body because of the shallow drop.

  When they reached the eastern edge of town and moved onto the path in the woods, Am used the white of the snow on either side to guide him. He didn’t want to stray from the trail, though he was only five or six feet behind his nephew, whose moving figure he kept before him. The path followed the edge of the bay, the inlet, and then swerved away from the old pier. Am hadn’t walked here for a long time. Up a rise, then to the right, past a couple of small farms. Kenan didn’t look back, not once. He moved with ease and stealth through the night and turned up a low slope that led to the rotting barn on Zel’s property. Am was surprised. He glanced up at the sagging roof of the old barn. If he had misgivings, he said nothing. Kenan squeezed between a couple of loose boards and Am followed. He knew enough to duck to get through.

  “So this is where you come.” Am’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the blackened space and he inched forward, testing before he planted his weight, concerned that his feet might disappear down a hole. He could smell, however. He reeled from familiar scents and odours such as those he had known both on his parents’ farm when he was a boy and on his own farm after marrying Mags. A faint trace of kerosene. His mother had always been fussy about what she used in her lamps because bad oil had an unpleasant odour. The scent of hay and oats, of stored apples, of pig shit, of cow shit swept over him. He could have sunk to his knees and wept.

  But he couldn’t see. He stood still, knowing Kenan was beside him. He heard a sound, smelled whisky. Kenan reached and drank, then placed a bottle directly into Am’s right hand.

  “I don’t know who it belongs to,” said Kenan. “It was just here. Somebody stashed it; somebody must come here. Besides me. Old Mr. Leary, maybe. He and his wife board at Zel’s. Tress said they’re away for a few months. Or maybe the liquor belonged to the salesman and he forgot to take it with him. That’s a more likely possibility. Anyway, it’s here for the taking. Or the drinking.”

  His nephew was full of surprises. Not only could he see in the dark with one eye, he also drank another man’s whisky. Am liked the feel of the raw liquor against his throat. He liked the old barn. His eyes were adjusting to the shadows. He understood why Kenan would be comfortable here, even if it was to stand in the dark. The place would make sense to Kenan. He could be out of his house, but he also had a place where he could retreat.

  Kenan was looking through an opening in the boards. Smoke was coming from the chimney of the main house and from the smaller building next to it. The smaller building was in darkness. He cleared his throat, said he had something to ask.

  “What is it?” said Am.

  “I wondered—I’ll give you the money for it—if you would pick up Tress’s Christmas present for me. At the jeweller’s. I want to buy her one of those new bracelet watches.”

  “I will,” said Am. “I’ll go tomorrow at lunchtime and get one.”

  “The one that was described in the ad in the Post,” said Kenan. “That’s all.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll buy the watch tomorrow and drop it off at your house while she’s at work.”

  Am looked through the opening in the boards and saw a light come on in the small building next to Zel’s house. The door opened and a woman hurried out. She was not wearing a coat. She moved along the short path to the door of the main house and let herself into the boarding-house kitchen.

  Moments later, the light went out again in the small building. A man dressed in a dark jacket, his head bare, a scarf around his neck, left the workroom and shut the door behind him. He walked quickly toward the road and down the slope, passing close to the abandoned barn as he did so.

  Neither Kenan nor Am moved. From the crack between the loose boards where he stood, Am strained to see the man’s face as he passed.

  Lukas, the piano player, the music director.

  The woman who had hurried through the doorway and into Zel’s house—he would never mistake the lines of her body; he would never mistake the way she moved. The woman was Mags.

  DESERONTO POST, DECEMBER 1919

  Local Items

  In this year of “Peace at last,” your editor and his staff at the Post wish all of our loyal readers a very Merry Christmas!

  Have yourself a merry day

  With family, friend and child at play.

  Enjoy the peace of happy nests

  And all of those you love the best.

  The Women’s Patriotic League has been raising money to contribute to the War Memorial Fund. Dig into your hearts and your pocketbooks during this season of giving, and remember our fallen heroes who made the supreme sacrifice in the World’s Great Struggle, so recently brought to a close.

  The entire town awaits Naylor’s New Year’s Eve concert. What can be in store for us?

  Assuredly, we know that the singers and musicians have been working hard. Members of many of our town families are involved in this production, and they are certain to be rewarded by the appreciation of ticket holders. The concert is sold out!

  The successful businessman is the man who stays with his business and does his outside work by telephone.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  MAGGIE LAY AWAKE HALF THE NIGHT. ALL night. Part, all, she didn’t know how long she’d been awake and how long she’d slept. Do you remember how we used to have hope? she wanted to say to Am. He had returned to the apartment late, long after she had gone to bed, and had lain motionless beside her. She did not speak when he came to bed. There was whisky on his breath and the smell of whisky in the room.

  So much hope, she wanted to say. For anything, for everything. We were so young. We wouldn’t have known what to call it then. Our energie
s worked toward loving each other, even though we didn’t say that in so many words. We needed no confirmation of love; it was just there, moment by moment, day by day.

  How did we allow that part of us to drain away? she wanted to ask.

  But she could not and would not ask. Because what she was this morning, this moment, was a woman who loved another man so dangerously, so recklessly, there was no turning back. What was done could not be undone. Every action she took would be swallowed by the town. Everything would come to light. After that, regardless of the consequences, whatever happened would be covered over in darkness, the way things always were.

  She reached for the chain that hung around her neck, beneath her nightgown. Smoothed her fingers over the gold locket inscribed with the letter H. Luc had given it to her. It had belonged to his grandmother, he said, and after that, to his mother, Hanna, who had died in her thirties. He wanted Maggie to have it as a Christmas gift. He wanted her to have the locket because it had been in his family and it was precious to him. He’d fastened it around her neck while she was dressing in the dark, preparing to leave and go home.

  WHEN SHE HAD SLIPPED INTO THE WORKROOM, HE HAD turned the key in the lock after she closed the door behind her. She did not object, but had a fleeting thought that it was probably the first time the door had been locked since the former owner, the salesman, had kept his supplies in the building, long before Zel had purchased the place.

  Luc was glad to see her, happy that she’d returned, that she had come back to him. She had visited Zel first, stayed for a while, exchanged gifts, left her coat in Zel’s kitchen and then went on to the workroom to take Luc’s scarf to him. Luc was at the long table when she arrived. He returned to his chair after locking the door. They spoke for a while and then he turned out the light and led her to the back of the room, the part that was curtained off. She followed, to his bed. She had lain naked beside a man who was not her husband. She had allowed herself to love, to be made love to by a man who was not Am.

  She went over every detail in her mind. She had turned on her side, stretched the length of the mattress, scrunched her pillow. Luc’s fingertips had traced the prominences of her spine, one by one, soothingly, tenderly.

  “When we find caring, when we know there is love,” he told her, “we hold on. We hold on as long as we can.” The sadness in his voice, always the sadness. But even as she heard the words, Maggie knew that other words had been choked off, remained unspoken.

  Once again, she thought of what Nellie Melba had said to her in the diner. About men and women using love—the state of love, even the word “love”—to excuse the way they behaved. Melba had loved other men and her marriage had come to an end. The world knew all about that; Melba was a public figure.

  Maggie tried to push aside what others might think of her own behaviour. She was not ashamed of loving Luc. She did not want her friendship with him to be an excuse for anything. But she had known Am a long time, since childhood. It was impossible to sort out her feelings.

  “What are you thinking that makes you so serious?” Luc asked.

  “I once met Nellie Melba,” she said. “I was thinking of something she said to me during that meeting.”

  He pulled back in the bed, surprised by her answer. The two of them laughed together. How long? she thought, in the midst of releasing laughter. How long since I have laughed like this with a man?

  “It’s strange to think of her now, I know,” said Maggie. “She and I had breakfast together one morning during the war. An accidental meeting in Toronto. She said things to me then that I thought of now.”

  “What things?”

  “About how love can distort, how love can excuse our actions. I suppose she was saying that we can excuse anything.”

  “We need not excuse or distort anything,” said Luc. “We need no excuses to love each other. It is this moment that is important. For both of us.”

  There was nothing Maggie could say to explain herself. She had placed herself close to a fault line that was shifting.

  “I never met Melba,” Luc went on. “But I heard her sing. She is a passionate woman onstage. Passionate, controlled. I saw her in London. I heard Madame Albani, too. Her final performance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1911. Such a privilege to hear both Melba and Albani during my lifetime.”

  “Do you miss …?” Maggie wasn’t certain how to finish. “England? Europe? What those places offer to someone like you?”

  “What does Europe matter? Parts of Europe are destroyed. People have been destroyed. Vanished.” His arm swept out and his hand collided with the wall in the cramped space. “Someone like me is from anywhere, Magreet. From everywhere. I am like you, no different. I am here now. That matters. We are here together.”

  He said nothing about Am. Nor did she. And what she saw in that moment was that no matter how intimate she and Luc had been or would be, they were responsible for their actions. Each had made a decision. Alone and together, they had decided. To ward off longing, to seek what each could give the other, to find again what they had once had.

  WHEN MAGGIE WOKE AGAIN, SHE COULD TELL BY THE light coming in around the curtains that it was mid-morning. She hadn’t slept so late in years. She was startled for a moment, because she thought she felt movement at the end of the bed. There was no one in the room. Nor was Am in bed beside her. She had not heard him get up. She could hear no footsteps in the apartment. He must be working on one of the floors below. He must have boiled the water for his tea, poured too much milk into his cup, prepared his own breakfast. She looked at the wind-up clock. It was after ten. She was almost certain someone had been in the room with her. Who? What? Her heart was beating rapidly, but she lay still and forced herself to remain calm. Don’t allow the past, she warned herself. Don’t allow it in.

  She spoke aloud, into the room.

  “Get up, get washed, get dressed. It’s Monday. Knit from a pattern. Sew. Deal with ripped seams, loose buttons, elastic waists. Walk over to the hotel and visit Agnes. Find out what she wants you to contribute to the family meal on Christmas Day. Ask, even though you know she’ll have every detail in hand. Go out into the air and talk to someone about anything, about the overcast day, about decorations in store windows, about whether to buy potatoes by the bushel or the peck, or whether one family will cook goose for Christmas dinner and another will cook turkey … it doesn’t matter. Just go out.”

  She must start her day as if it were an ordinary day.

  But it was not. Her entire body knew there was nothing ordinary about this day.

  She stayed there, thinking about getting up and having tea with toasted bread and jelly, and she remembered the luscious wild grapes that had grown on the farm and probably still did. She’d loved the deep blue clusters as they ripened each year. One time, she had made her own raisins, but that had been too much bother. For three days, the grapes had to be spread out under the sun on framed wire—covered, to keep off the flies. There were flies aplenty on the farm. Every night she carried the frame into the house so the grapes would stay warm, and every morning she carried them out again, in and out for three days, until the tiny raisins were finally dry enough to bring inside for storage.

  Grape jelly was less trouble. She made this after the first frost, straining the juices from the fruit mash through cheesecloth slung between two chairbacks at one end of the kitchen. The juice dripped all night through the sagging cloth and into a bucket on the floor. All she needed were grapes, sugar, an orange if one was available. The results were worth every bit of effort when she saw the gleam of light that shone on the wine-coloured jars lined up in rows on her pantry shelf. Every December, she and Am opened the prize, the first jar of fall jelly for their breakfast Christmas morning.

  She stretched and made herself get up, sat on the side of the bed. She thought of Kenan and how he spent his days indoors. She was almost certain he would venture out in daylight sometime soon. He’d been coming to the tower to visit Am more and more freque
ntly, still after dark. He’d been out on his new skates several times—always after the rink closed at ten. Changes had taken place slowly since his return from the war, but now he seemed to be moving forward at a rapid pace. Not too rapid, Maggie hoped. A misstep could throw him into confusion again. She knew how fine a line both he and Tress were walking right now.

  During the last decades, it had been easy to love Dermot and Agnes’s four children: two boys, two girls. Red-haired Grania, finding her strengths, learning to embrace life. Tress, the beautiful older sister with the dark hair, longing to have a baby, forced to learn strengths she didn’t know she had. But as much as Maggie had always loved her nieces and nephews, loved them as children and now as adults, the love had been at a distance because they had never been hers.

  She thought of Luc again. She could not stop thinking of Luc. She knew Zel would be leaving early the next day for Belleville, which meant that Maggie could not go back to the rooming house after tonight, not until her friend returned. Her dear friend, who asked no questions, who neither judged nor interfered, who somehow seemed to understand.

  Luc had told her the night before that Andrew had invited him to spend Christmas afternoon and evening with his family. Maggie was glad that Luc would not be alone. She could hardly invite him to join the family dinner at Dermot’s hotel—not now. Though he would probably be welcomed by his former boarding house on Fourth Street. The owner and roomers there would want to have him join their Christmas celebrations, she was certain of that. With all the talk in the town about the upcoming concert, they would consider it an honour to include him.