The Madrigal

by Dian Day

Aileen figures she heard the whole song right through at least five or six times, sitting right next to my mother on the edge of the bed with her arms stretched out to catch her if she fell. She tried draping the sheet around my mother’s bare shoulders, but my mother tossed it off without once looking at her.

  And after a time—perhaps on the seventh round of the song—my mother died there, standing and looking towards the window, her last note falling from her lips like a leaf from a tree. And Aileen did catch her as she fell, and held that frail and naked body to her chest as the note fluttered to the floor. When it landed, so lightly, she told me, my mother’s heart had stopped beating.

  I don’t know where my mother is now. I sometimes try to think of her as an angel or a star or a mote of cosmic dust or a slip of energy that cannot be destroyed, to see if any of these visions feels more right and true than any other. The truth is I don’t know what I believe about what happens when we die. The truth is I can’t imagine my mother dead at all.

  Like Saint Cecilia, who is said by some to have died singing, my mother’s very existence is a kind of martyrdom to song. And while Cecilia, patron saint of musicians, was beatified, my mother will be almost entirely forgotten by the official record once the retention guidelines allow for the destruction of her medical and social assistance files. I don’t mean to suggest that I think my mother in any way saintly, only that she too had something of the spirit in her voice. As we all do.

  I CALLED SALVADOR FIRST, honeymooning in Sicily. We agreed that there was no rush for the funeral, and I assured him that I had no expectation that they would cut their holiday short. There would only be family, Ed and Sylvia, the Four Consonants, Louise—and perhaps a few of the other nursing home staff—in attendance; there were no friendships that had survived her twenty years of dementia.

  And then I called the rest of my brothers, Nick-Nat-Sam-Abe-Al, one by one, and told them that, at last, our mother had died.

  Jiro lent me his van. He offered to drive me, but I told him it wasn’t necessary. I went to pick up the urn and came home with it tucked carefully under my arm. I stood in my living room doorway for quite a while, imagining placing it on top of the piano or at the foot of the harp I’d traded my car for.

  In the end, I took it through to the kitchen, and cleared away the twin books from the shelf. It looks fine there, and it feels as if this is where my mother’s voice belongs.

  COMPARED TO MANY THINGS IN LIFE, delivering the mail is profoundly simple. You show up at the sorting station, put bits of folded paper in numerical and geographic order, and then walk around getting rid of it all—an envelope here, a package there. At the end of the day, it’s all gone. The load has been lifted. The mailbag is empty. There are no regrets hidden in the folds, nor any guilt trapped under the ever-lightening straps.

  I went back to work two days after my mother died and read those scribbled addresses like I was reading a holy book, full of reverence. I watched Dave put letter-mail into his slots at breakneck speed, and the artfulness of his precise movements impressed me as much as any music.

  “How’re those kittens?” I asked him. I was wrapping bundles in red and blue and yellow elastic bands, the jewelry of our storied profession.

  “Oh, they’re great,” he said. “Always up to something. Last night one of ’em ran up the living room curtains and got stuck behind the flat screen,” he said over his shoulder on his way out. “Had to unplug everything to get the little bugger out.”

  I followed pretty quickly on his heels. Outside, I walked my route like I was visiting the stations of the cross.

  AFTER WORK THAT FIRST DAY BACK, there was another kind of shrine to contemplate: Maya had decorated early for Easter. There was a big pink cardboard rabbit taped to her front door, and garish purple and yellow plastic garlands were woven in and out of the balustrade in a continuous stream from her house to mine.

  It wasn’t until I walked up my steps that I saw the basket. It had an exuberant sky-blue bow on the handle and a nest made out of crinkly paper. There was nothing in it except a note.

  Come right on over and eat, the note said. I’ve got a pot of baked beans in the oven, and I’ll tell you, I make the best dang finking beans.

  But I went home first, to change out of my uniform.

  EVER SINCE ED AND I GOT BACK from our weekend away, I’d catch myself thinking about that little restaurant in the middle of nowhere, overlooking a lake in the middle of nowhere. In particular, I’d been thinking a lot about those beans. Although I’ve never baked them myself, I understand it’s possible to use any of a wide variety of types of beans as a starting point—navy beans or black turtle beans or great northern beans—or even to mix two or more varieties together. Then, Ed tells me, there is the matter of onions or no onions, pork fat or no pork fat, mustard or no mustard, and decisions about whether to use molasses, brown sugar, maple syrup, tomato sauce, or ketchup, and in what quantities. There are a lot of choices to make with beans; more than you might think.

  One of the main decisions—perhaps the primary decision, although we may not even be conscious of it—has to do with why we are cooking in the first place. Is it merely that we’re hungry and sick of steak? Do we want to feed our families, our friends, our customers? Do we want them to enjoy their food, or are we only concerned with nutrients, fibre, or flatulence? Are we for some reason deeply concerned with perfecting our offering of beans? Are we motivated to bring a maximum of pleasure to others, in our own small bean-baking realm?

  Somehow I know all this has something important to do with me.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I walked over to Ed and Sylvia’s, meaning to get there at lunch time, though I set out pretty early. At the end of my short walkway, before I really got going, I turned and looked back to admire the shingle newly placed inside my front window: THE HALF NOTE, it read, in beautiful large block letters, and, on the line underneath, slightly smaller, Voice Lessons. And then my name and phone number. It was perfectly visible from the curb. I smiled, one of those bittersweet smiles that turns up the corner of only one side of the mouth.

  Then I took a bit of a long route, sightseeing, you might say, on the way. It was a fine day—that day in spring when you absolutely know that there’ll be no more snow; the day when miracles are commonplace: purple crocuses in bloom, buds swelling on branches, myriad tiny sparrows and chickadees collecting shreds of dried grass to build nests, the way they do every year, over and over as if there was no other point to life. It was that hallowed day that those of us who are atheist can almost concede that we might be wrong.

  I started out with my jacket on, but I took it off after only a few blocks and carried it under my arm, my hands in my pockets. I passed Ruth-Ann doing my route, and for a moment it was like being in a dream where everything is backwards. But I didn’t try to duck out of the way and hide or anything.

  “Hey Ruth-Ann,” I called out. “How’s it going?”

  “Frederick?” she said, one hand on a bundle of envelopes and a multi-coloured elastic bracelet around her wrist. “Thought you were supposed to be sick?”

  “Mental health day,” I explained.

  “Good for you,” she said, smiling. “Soon as I get on permanent, I’m going to take one of those every month!” I laughed and watched her go up the street with my mail, watched her go up the path to the Evans’ house, noticed that their front step still hadn’t been repaired. I should have put a warning card in their slot long ago, but I knew they didn’t have the money to fix it.

  “Watch your step!” I called. She waved the packet of mail in my direction by way of acknowledgment, and went blithely up to the Evans’ door.

  I went around the corner and stood for a while in front of the house of my childhood, transformed by one enterprising young couple and now inhabited by another. The elderberry bush had been gone for a long time, but there was a hole freshly dug in the narrow rectangle of dirt bes
ide the door, as if the new owners were about to plant something. As I stood there, the front door opened, and a young woman came out and peered intently down into the hole. If only she could see what was buried there, I thought. I moved on.

  I walked through downtown, going south an extra block so I could pass the shop window, The Whole Note sign taken down and the windows papered over with wax paper. I tried to peer through the translucent glass but could see little of the work taking place within. I suppose that is the way it should be. The change that happens inside unseen and secret until opening day, to emerge with a great fanfare, re-named and renovated.

  There was no ribbon cutting for me. I was being transformed, but I just kept walking.

  I MADE IT TO ED AND SYLVIA’S HOUSE. I stood on the front step and noticed how the paint was peeling off the front porch and falling into the dormant flower beds, like seeds with no hope of sprouting. I rang the bell.

  Sylvia came to the door. I could see her silhouette travel up the hallway, behind the etched glass. She moved the way she always had, precisely and with purpose. How curious, I thought then, how we can continue to answer doors as if nothing is different. And also, how we can continue to stand on doorsteps and ask to be let in. As if nothing is different.

  Sylvia opened the door wide and let me in, along with a rush of damp spring air.

  “Frederick,” she said. “How lovely to see you.” She was smiling, and the smile came from almost all of her.

  I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I thought I’d come see if Ed wanted to go out for lunch,” I told her, in case Ed was within earshot, though she herself knew very well that I was coming.

  “I’m sure he’d love to—wouldn’t you, Ed?” she called into the living room behind her. She looked back at me and winked.

  I had come over the day before while Ed was out getting his hair cut, and helped Luke load Ed’s spare keyboard and its stand into his wheelbarrow, wrapped in a blanket. We had wheeled it downtown slowly, with Luke driving, and me walking in front with my hand above the squealing axle in case the whole thing started to tip.

  Ed appeared in the doorway in his sock feet, with the day’s newspaper in his hand, folded over to the sudoku.

  “Come on, bro,” I said. “Let’s go out to eat.”

  I didn’t tell him that Luke and the recently-transported keyboard—and in fact the entire crowd of the town’s low-income diners—were already waiting for us at Lunch by George.

  MORE FANFARE, ANOTHER SEPARATION SURGERY. The twins were joined at the head. Craniopagus. The operation was expected to take over twenty-four hours, but everything went so well it only lasted a quarter of that time. The team of doctors is ebullient. A photographer has captured an image of the crowd in the operating room—the two babies on opposite sides of the frame—to emphasize the novel fact that now there can be such a thing as distance between them.

  “It’s a miracle,” the lead doctor is quoted as saying. “These two beautiful boys will now be able to lead normal lives.”

  I got the scissors from the drawer and the scrapbook from the shelf. I always do a review of the clippings first, start at the beginning, flip through the pages, affettuoso, until I get caught up to the present. The pages are stiff with dried glue, and the oldest clippings at the beginning of the book have begun to yellow. It is my libretto, and the story it describes is my separated life. The pages make music as they turn, crackling and sighing: a song about history, dust, longing, remorse, and, above all, solitude.

  Hassan and Hussein; Trishna and Krishna; Crystal and Cristina; Alex and Angel; Lianjia and Lianyi; Regina and Renata; Panwad and Pantawan; Sherrie and Sharise; Moni and Mukta; Deneth and Denuwan; Abigail and Isabelle; Ahmed and Mohamed; Catherine and Caroline; Iyad and Ziyad; Macy and Mackenzie; Zareen and Aafreen; Sita and Geeta; Hope and Faith.

  Frederick and Filander.

  Normal lives, I think to myself. I try to imagine what that could mean.

  The article suggested that not all conjoined twins are difficult to separate. It depends, of course, on how they are joined, and whether any major organs or parts of the brain are shared. I picked up the scissors and then put them down. I did that several times, as if I was split down the middle and couldn’t decide what to do.

  Frederick Madrigal and Alex Hughes.

  Finally, I threw the uncut newspaper into the recycling bin and got up from the table, forzando.

  MUSIC HAS CHARMED LOVERS and inspired mystics and led armies into battle. It is both wedding and funeral march, selling agent and propaganda tool, jealous cry and lullaby. Music may be Robert Burton’s “sovereign remedy,” but it is also Die Fahne Hoch and the wavering sound of the bagpipes dying out over Culloden Field. Extremes of musical expression are only a reflection of the extremes of human nature. These days it’s easy to forget that music is a force for both good and evil, the way we all are in our lives, the way our hearts and minds and spirits are swept up in a river of countless melodies, watching the banks rush by, grabbing at strings of notes as they serve our own purposes. Playing or not playing out the tunes of our destinies, before we drown.

  In my life, music has both saved me and destroyed me. Over and over, I am built up and torn down by singing, composing one day and standing naked on the walls of Jericho the next. It’s impossible to separate out parts of oneself. Asking myself who I would be without music is like asking who I would be without a voice to sing with or without my particular elusive mother. There are some tunes it is inconceivable to untangle, since their roots descend into the rich darkness of pre-history, among the humus and the worms. That first flute, that first drum. That first voice.

  I know that I’ve deliberately chosen to continue on in a smaller life than I might have had. I wonder sometimes, if there had been two of me—if I had had Filander for real—whether I would have had the courage for any number of lives that called me out of everything I knew. I didn’t go. How could I? There was my mother, and Ed, and my voice students, and the choristers, and, of course, the mail to deliver. What could be more important than that?

  SUNDAY. I WOKE SLOWLY, my brain emerging from its sleeping state with fragments of floating thoughts riding on a familiar melody. I listened in a detached kind of way, my eyes only half open, for a long time. The sun was playing through the branches outside, rippling the light in the room into a folk tune with an ancient history. After a while, Free-for-all and Fly-by-night began to tap on my window, adding a percussive element to the morning’s song.

  I got up and put a handful of peanuts out on the shelf, and then I had breakfast: a poached egg on toast, a banana, and a very small glass of orange juice. I had told Ed I’d walk over and meet him at his place for lunch, to help him get his gear ready for our gig at the care facility at two o’clock, so I only had the one thing on the agenda for the morning.

  I waited until a decent hour. To pass the time I got out a couple of rags and a bucket of water and the Murphy’s Oil Soap, and I dusted and mopped and oiled until it looked as if music had just been invented, right in my own living room. Finally, I took my new portable phone into the kitchen and pushed the dirty dishes aside with my elbows so I could lean on the counter underneath the back window. Behind me, my mother’s voice sat mutely on the shelf. In front of me, Maya’s tree, still leaning stoically, was getting ready to welcome spring. I’d gone through my phone’s call log and found the number for A HUGHES. I held the scrap of paper in the dancing light with a shaking hand, tremolando, and, with only the slightest hesitation, I dialled. As the phone began to ring at the other end, the year’s first robin landed on a branch directly in front of me, his tail feathers a little ruffled, but his chest the deepest and smoothest russet. I couldn’t hear anything at all from outside because the window was closed against the cool spring air, but still, even though I’d never sung it myself, I knew every note of that joyful tune.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

&nbs
p; FOR THIS BOOK:

  Heartfelt thanks to readers Ann Archer, Zella Baran, Frances Boyle, Peggy Campbell, Wynn Quon, Cheryl Sutherland, and Mary Thomson, who provided valuable feedback when this story was in its infancy. Thanks also to Gillian Rodgerson, Donna Truesdale, and Rita Wilson for reading at least one version of the completed manuscript and encouraging me to keep working.

  Thanks especially to Deb Harvey for reading and reading and reading, and never faltering. She is the kind of reader every writer wants, and the kind of friend everyone deserves.

  Thanks beyond words to my best and most favourite editor, Ceilidh Auger-Day, who spent many hours, days, and weeks helping me flesh out, cut, tighten, and rearrange, all for the love of me—and of Frederick. Without her all these words would not have made a book.

  Thanks to Katherine Knight and Carter Pryor for appearing from the heavens and making the cover of The Madrigal such a fine one.

  Thanks to the folks at the Silvania Lodge in McDonalds Corners for taking such care with their baked beans—and for all those who do their jobs with love, and who work to bring pleasure to others, however fleeting it may seem.

  I am deeply grateful to the City of Ottawa, and especially to Arts Nova Scotia for providing the subsistence funding that helped support the creation of this novel.

  I know a lot about music’s power, but less about its technicalities. If I have made errors, please forgive me; it is Frederick who is the musician. I did the best I could in telling his story.

  Some readers may notice that a few organizations and institutions that appear in these pages approximate actual places. Please know that any shadows cast by the buildings in this novel are entirely fictional.

  AND BEYOND:

  Thanks beyond measure to one of my most exuberant fans, my publisher, Luciana Ricciutelli, for having such absolute faith in me and my writing.

  Thanks to another of my most exuberant fans, Patrick Gibson, for sending my previous book, The Clock of Heaven, all over the world, and for making sure everybody he knows is waiting for this one