by Karen Smythe
***
Tony called when he got back from his honeymoon, after he heard the message I left for him about James’s death. We didn’t stay on the phone long, because neither of us was capable of speaking. The next time he called, he said he’d like to organize a November service so James’s friends and colleagues from the school could pay their respects. But I saw no need. James and I hadn’t socialized very much over the years with the other teachers; many had already retired and spent winters in Florida, and everyone else had just attended James’s retirement party in the spring.
That evening had been hard enough for us both to get through. The principal was there, a man in his forties who hadn’t been supportive of James and who was not very comfortable as the MC, either. When Tony noticed James’s agitation, he took over. Tapping a spoon against one of the wine bottles until he could be heard, he suggested we all hold up our plastic glasses for a toast to James, wishing him much happiness in a life of ease and leisure — which he knew we were “eager to get back to as soon as possible.” James and I were grateful for the early, dignified departure that Tony set up for us.
So I thanked Tony for his offer but said he would have to do it without me, if he went ahead. I think he was relieved that he wouldn’t have to. The school staff had already sent me a bouquet with a sympathy card full of brief handwritten notes with the usual phrases. The single statement from Lauren, one of the newer teachers, read like a line of lament in a classic elegy, and I went back to it again and again: “May his memory be a blessing.”
***
It wasn’t until last Christmas that I started to think about what to do with all of James’s things. I couldn’t face his closet yet, so I decided I would open a few boxes he’d labelled “pre-Maslen” that were in the basement, untouched since we moved into the house. My boxes were there, too, but I didn’t have as many as James did.
***
Gina says Ben has packed up and moved in with his girlfriend. He lost his deposit on that house, since his lawyers advised him not to go through with the purchase. If he had, he’d have had to pay Gina at least half its value in a court settlement, in addition to giving her spousal support and the house they’d shared — the matrimonial home, they called it. She has given all of his clothes away; she stuffed them into garbage bags and dropped them at the back door of a Goodwill store, late at night, under a sign that says, “DO NOT DROP DONATIONS AFTER HOURS
***
Me: I was sorting through some boxes that I’d not opened for many a year, and I came across the bootleg Springsteen tapes you gave me after we went to the concert in Detroit.
Ted: Wow. I remember. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is on there, if memory serves. I think I have an old tape recorder kicking around somewhere…
Me: Hmm, sounds like an “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates, you’ve got a brand new key” kind of deal… Speaking of Santa, which list are you on this year? Naughty or Nice?
Ted: It’s nice to be naughty.
***
Among James’s things: cufflinks, sets of keys, matchbooks; glassware, mugs, a candelabra; a deck of cards, an old address book, a broken gold chain; a T-shirt from his high-school basketball team and school newspaper clippings with the scores; lots of woolen socks with moth-bitten holes in them; and cassette tapes of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Elmore James. He’d bought some of them and copied others from records. He’d written the names of each song on the cardboard sleeve in his distinctively cramped hand.
***
“To remember” in Latin is recordari, a word made up of two parts: re (again) + cor, cordis (heart). Again in the heart.
“Remind” = re (again) and mind, from the Old English gemynd (memory, thought). Again in the mind.
“Remember” = re (again) + member (members, limbs, body parts). Again made whole.
***
The police have ruled it an accident. There will be no criminal charges, no trial. The young man, just twenty years old, had a valid licence. He was out with his father to hunt that day. They were on wooded land beyond the legal boundary of our farm. The insurance company is still investigating, though, one year in. James made a sudden movement, they say. He might have done that. He was not wearing an orange vest, they say. No, he didn’t have one of those. So he might be considered partially at fault. They cited a clause about “Personal Injury Causing Death.”
“Jesus, are they serious?” Gina said when I called her with an update. “At least James didn’t leave you for another woman.” It was difficult to get Gina’s attention about anything apart from her own crisis, and when I did, she’d find a way to circle back to it. “I just found out that Ben had been seeing her before he moved out.” Ben now lives with his girlfriend in a rented house, where Gina rings the doorbell once a month. She has no choice if she wants her support cheque, because Ben says he doesn’t trust the mail. “She opens the door and calls to Ben, and then he shows up and hands me an envelope. I think he likes to see me beg.”
Gina has been crying so hard for so long now that the skin under her eyes is sagging again. “It was too little, too late,” she said of her surgery. “His girlfriend is twenty-five. I didn’t stand a chance.”
***
Anna is seventeen. She has large, green eyes, like her mom, but they are not alike in other ways.
Anna has come over to ask me for advice. Is it too soon to tell her boyfriend she loves him? Should she wait for him to tell her first? She can’t talk to her mother about any of it, not now. The boy is tender and kind, the complete opposite of her father, she says. He reminds her of Uncle James.
I tell Anna that there are so many varieties of love, it’s impossible to write or follow any rules. That for some people, love is a prison, and for others, it is freedom. And that people change their minds, too, even when their reasons don’t seem to make sense. I am sincere when I say these things to my niece, but I hope she doesn’t ask me to repeat them.
***
A few of Ted’s Facebook “Likes”:
– Toronto Maple Leafs
– Norwegian Cruise Line
– University of Toronto Medicine
– Parents Page, University of Western Ontario
– Oakland Athletics
– Riviera Maya
– BMW
– Picture of me holding a neighbour’s ten-month-old baby
***
Ted: Your baby is beautiful.
Me: Well, she is beautiful, but she’s not mine! I’m going on fifty, remember?
Ted: Oh right. You look just the same, so I forgot how old we are.
Me: Smooth. Very smooth. Still got it, Bear.
Ted: Trust me, whatever I had, I lost a long time ago.
fifteen
A few days after James was cremated, I sat on the edge of Lou’s bed, held his hand, and told him about the accident. I hoped he wouldn’t question my version of the story, and he didn’t, at least not out loud. He turned his head to the right, and I watched him take it in and silently process what I’d said. He blinked a few times, then said, still facing the wall, “He was smarter than that.” I waited, expecting him to say something more — about October being the season for deer hunting, maybe even blaming James for not paying attention when Lou had tried to teach him things. But what he said was this: “He was always such a smart boy. He could have been anything he wanted to be.”
I leaned down toward Lou’s face and wrapped my left hand around his potato-knob shoulder. “He was, Lou.” My voice rose with each word. “He was what he wanted to be.” My forehead was resting on the left side of Lou’s bare skull. With each sob that came out of me, my head nodded, making Lou’s bob on the pillow, like a buoy.
***
When James arrived at the hospital in Barrie, he would have been wearing his muddy jeans and a sweatshirt, bloodied and cut open by the paramedics. I gave the social worker who came to see me there the name of the first Toronto funeral home that came to mind,
the one that advertised on the radio. The director called me the next morning and asked if I’d bring over a set of clothes for James to be dressed in.
He must have assumed I’d want a visitation room arranged, I suppose that’s why he was asking, but instead of saying no I wondered out loud if fabric from pants and a shirt would bind to the body’s cells, slowing down cremation process, or would they speed up the combustion? “I’ve never heard that question before,” the man said. I have no idea if either of us spoke again before I hung up. I wandered into the kitchen, and forgot where I was going. The back door? The mud room? No, the basement. The batch of laundry I started this morning, that was what I’d been thinking of. It was very important that I do that.
Under the lid of the washing machine, twisted around the agitator, were two pairs of James’s jeans. I’d brought them home to wash the last time I came back from the farm. I put them on the low-heat cycle in the dryer, so they wouldn’t shrink. Later in the afternoon I must have placed one pair in the plastic bag that held a new navy T-shirt I’d picked up on sale at the end of the summer for James to wear next year. He looked so good in blue. The courier we used at the school would pick it up — Nancy told me that, so I must have phoned her to ask her what I should do.
I wrote the name of the funeral home on the bag with a marker. I must have touched the ink before it dried, because after I put the parcel on the table by the front door, I saw fragments of letters on my right palm. I stood there looking at the black marks on my hand, trying to remember how they got there, and wondering how long it would take for them to fade away.
I don’t know how much time I spent stuck in that position — the doorbell brought me to my senses when the driver arrived for the pickup, sometime later — but before that happened, I started to hallucinate. That’s the only way I can describe what my mind did. I stared at my palm, it was flayed. I’d done it with pumice, it seemed, and the raw flesh stung like a freshly burst blister. There were creases in my other hand, lines that a fortune teller would read, and I thought “legerdemain.” Had I heard that word from my mother? What did it mean? I used to know. Rob is wearing that silly hat at the CNE, I can hear the sound of the cards he shuffled in his hands while we looked into each other’s eyes. Zed looked in my eyes and I watched the veterinarian make a paw-print by pressing Zed’s limp forelimb into a mould. My hands on clay, the delicious slippery texture of it before my skin started to dry out. Moisture. James’s hands roaming my body. I was giving myself to him. Our desire is as strong as the need to breathe. We are walking along a sidewalk. How small my hand feels in his. We step aside to let two others by instead of letting go. High-fives in the living room after unpacking the last box. I try to tell him what “palmer’s kiss” means and he starts to fumble with the drawstring on the oversized sweat pants I have on. They’re not mine! James is underneath the covers and a faceless person in white is pressing my husband’s left hand into a soft clay body in a silver tray and I am screaming. Where is his ring? What happened to his ring?
After the courier left, I leaned against the closed door and cried until I was light-headed, throat-weary and thirsty, but I hadn’t the energy to get to the kitchen for a glass of water. I slept on the floor for a few minutes, maybe an hour, until Nancy arrived to monitor my intake of tranquilizers and stay with me for the night.
***
“We understand James saw his doctor a few times for anxiety,” a woman was saying on the phone. “According to his medical records, he was prescribed tranquilizers and antidepressants. Was your husband still taking them when he died?”
“No. Not recently. He did have anxiety, but that was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had breast cancer—”
“And?”
“It was difficult, that’s all. He was worried. And he was tired, he was a teacher and so—”
“So?”
“That’s why he retired. Because he was tired. And because of me. He wanted to take care of me.”
“Of course. That’s all there was to it?”
“Yes, and—”
“No?”
“No, not no. Just yes.”
***
I didn’t want to be there in October. Hunters owned the woods then. James understood.
When deer season started, he was at the farm alone.
***
Lou’s caseworker called me from his room at the home. He’d been hallucinating. He was seeing rain pouring down the walls of his room and dogs running around the bed; a boy was sitting inside the television, sneakered feet moving up and down as if he was on a swing. These visions weren’t upsetting to Lou — he seemed amused by the change of scenery, she said — but he was falling because of them, running after these visions. He had a fever, too. They’d called an ambulance. Lou thanked the chauffeur for picking him up in a limousine to take him to the airport. He said he was on his way to visit his son.
When I got to the hospital, Lou was sleeping. His forehead was warm and he’d kicked off the sheet that covered him. He’d lost twenty pounds since James died, about one per week. When he opened his eyes and saw me, he asked if that was James standing behind me.
***
The last time I’d been in that emergency department in Barrie, it was to identify my husband. I don’t remember many details from that night. How I got to the right room. Who took me there. How many people spoke to me.
“Yes!” I screamed. Two gloved hands had peeled back a crisp white sheet stamped “HOSPITAL PROPERTY.” Grey-flecked curls, a lined forehead, closed eyes, a still nose. I had to scream to stop the sheet from moving any farther down his face, so I said yes and I screamed and then closed my eyes and said thank god his eyes are shut and I dropped down to the cold floor of that cold room until someone pulled me up and a doctor I didn’t know came in and I was on a cot behind a curtain somewhere and nurses were calling out names and phones were ringing and I swallowed a pill and I slept until I heard the social worker’s voice asking me if there was anyone she could call to come for me, to take me home.
***
“I’d like to have my son back. Just for a while. I wouldn’t ask what on earth he was thinking that day. I wouldn’t say it was foolish to be out in the woods like that.”
After many minutes, Lou blew his nose and lifted his head and we looked at each other. “It would be good to see him, wouldn’t it?” he asked. I leaned forward and held him, placing my head against the curve of his neck. I burrowed my face into the blanket on his shoulder, and the cotton soaked up my sorrow. “A father should not outlive his son,” Lou said. “You have to go on,” he said softly. “I’ll be gone soon, but you — you’ll have to keep going. He’d want you to do that. So do I.”
***
Maslen: We chose not to have kids, but I enjoy being an aunt. I bet you are a good father.
Ted: Thanks. I find it challenging but rewarding, for the most part.
***
My sister can’t stand her son. Now that his voice has changed, David sounds exactly like his father did at his age, so I tell Gina that’s all it is: she’s projecting her anger at Ben onto David, when she hears him talk. Anna seems to take after me, Gina says. She doesn’t know what she’d do without her.
Gina’s feelings for David trouble me, and I think about calling him. I could invite him down for dinner or a movie, or ask him to drive out to the farm with me, when I go to straighten things up before it’s listed. But I go alone.
***
I heard the distressed neighing as we pulled in, one weekend in July. The horse, one of two that belonged to the couple who had the place next to ours, was wailing. It was howling, really. It didn’t stop. After fifteen minutes I couldn’t stand it, so I made the ten-minute trek through the high grass across our property to the neighbour’s red brick house and knocked. I turned and saw their dog, Lucky, standing inside the open barn door, his white fur easily visible against the dark interior; he barked in a friendly way and wagged his tail, but he didn’t run over a
s he usually did when he saw me or James outside. Belt-tracks in the dirt from some sort of heavy machinery led from the driveway to the front of the barn, then turned and went all the way back to a large mound of freshly turned earth in the field beyond.
The horse, Sterling, was grieving, said our neighbour, because his companion, Pablo, had to be put down on Thursday morning after breaking its leg. The wife had ridden him through a trail in the woods behind their property, and Pablo stumbled on a heap of stones that might have been a marker for a deer trail. Even if the bone healed, the veterinarian said, Pablo would be prone to further injury. “He’d be worthless, resale-wise,” our neighbor said. “Lucky is happy though, because he’s got a new best friend out there. He’s hardly left that barn for days.”
***
I tried to convince the funeral director to give me James’s remains without an urn. It wasn’t exactly against policy, he said, but in his experience, people who took temporary containers home always came back for a more secure option. He showed me pictures of the urns: a cherrywood hexagonal container with brass hinges and handles; a plain oak rectangular mini-casket; and a glossy dark-green ceramic cylinder with a stainless-steel latch that popped open and reminded me of a flour jar.
When we were kids, Gina and I were not allowed to attend funerals, but once, when they couldn’t get a sitter, our parents took us to the visitation for a great-uncle. When I saw the lineup at the coffin, I realized we were there to visit the body. The dead man, whom we’d never met, looked like a figure in a wax museum. I didn’t know at the time what I was feeling, but it wasn’t a fear of or aversion to death. Now I think it was humiliation. That embalmed man was laid out in his best suit, powerless to avoid the gaze of strangers, and I pitied him for that.
***
Before our mother’s service, a small affair held at the funeral home, Dad’s voice could be heard above the hushed mutterings of the visitors. Scores of Mom’s friends and acquaintances came to the visitation — women who were in her book club, others she’d gotten to know in cooking classes, or at the supermarket; gals with whom Mom was exceptionally cheerful and pleasant. They all adored her and many called her their best friend. A few of our neighbours came, too. I remember how uncomfortable Mrs. Green and Mrs. Fedder looked when they walked in — as uncomfortable as I’d felt at the shiva for my friend Susan’s grandmother, the day I stepped into the sunken, silent living room and had no idea what to do or say to those who were sitting for their dead.