The Master of Happy Endings

by Jack Hodgins

  That it was necessary to add the postal code and box number where he could be reached was a compelling reason to make peace as fast as possible with Lisa Svetic, since she would have the power to sabotage his chances simply by tossing responses into the fire when they arrived. And naturally it would not be good enough to send only this one letter. He would have to send the same to every newspaper in the province, and so he must get their addresses. If he really hoped to be working again amongst the familiar and agreeable sounds of adolescent voices, he would have to convince Normie Fenton to remove, secretly, the giant directory from under Lisa’s counter.

  2

  Although she’d accepted his clumsy apology, he was not entirely convinced that Lisa Svetic would put his letters into the canvas bag rather than drop the whole lot down the tilted privy behind the Store. “What’s this?” she said, looking at the stack of envelopes he’d placed on her counter. “Ordering more firearms, are we? To scare off dangerous women?” She flipped through the pile, reading the occasional address. “Newspapers! Letters to the editor? Telling the world how little you think of us, I bet.”

  Apparently he was to be treated with suspicion. In her large flowered “tent dress” she reigned as the queen of her cinnamonscented old store, with its rain-warped ceiling, corner cobwebs, and broken window covered over with a large cigarette ad. Until now, she had treated him with respect, or at least civility.

  He had no intention of explaining the letters, but it was important to be sure she would send them. “They’re strictly personal.” He was a little breathless suddenly—anxious that he not be turned away as though he’d been planning something shameful.

  She sighed and gathered up the envelopes and tapped them repeatedly against her linoleum-covered counter as though considering whether to do her job despite other possibilities that occurred. This set her throat and the loose flesh of her arms into a shivering dance, and loosened a few more strands of hair from the knot on her head. Behind her, the gaping canvas mailbag waited indifferently for a verdict. “They don’t say nothing to scare away the summer people that come here, do they? Anything, I mean.”

  “They have nothing to do with the summer people.”

  She narrowed her eyes to study his face, presumably for clues to the truth. “You’re not advertising for a mail-order bride?”

  From uncertainty and guilt he’d gone to indignation in a moment. Did postal employees not sign an oath to mind their own business? Clearly she was confident he would not complain to Canada Post. His only immediate defence was to pretend not to hear the question—to frown fiercely at her No cheques notice as though there were something about the two words he didn’t understand.

  She eventually let him pay for the stamps and stood watching while he put them carefully in place, but by the time he’d left the Store he was convinced he ought to have taken the ferry and mailed them on the other side. Why would she turn down this chance to punish him? Living alone in this place was making him stupid.

  But he could hardly ask for them back. She would delight in quoting some federal law that made this illegal.

  He was in such a hurry to put Lisa Svetic behind him that he only nodded to Alvin White in his mechanics shed next door. Alvin looked up from beneath the hood of the ’53 Fargo flatbed he was bringing back to life—adding one more set of wheels to this retirement home for vehicles rescued from junkyards across the strait. As usual, Alvin wore one of the baby-blue smocks he’d smuggled out of a hospital and somehow managed to keep free of grease. He’d gathered up his long white beard into an inverted hairnet while he worked.

  Once Thorstad had walked the half-hour trail through the woods and along the coastline, he did not go immediately into his shack but went down onto the gravel beach where he shed his clothing and walked his long bones and ivory flesh into the chilling water—down over gravel and barnacle-crusted rocks and into patches of sand and orange starfish until the water had risen to his hips. Then he set off in an underwater glide before surfacing to strike out in earnest in the direction of the opposite shore. The Australian crawl. Those who knew of this daily 200-metre habit occasionally asked if he was practising for the “Geriatric Olympics” or merely out of his mind. But he was the son of an athletic stuntman for the movies and had been, himself, a competitive swimmer in his youth, and had always made the effort to keep fit with a daily swim. Keeping in shape had made it possible, last summer, to swim out beyond good sense in order to save the life of Normie Fenton, who’d fallen overboard from his skiff and had no knowledge of how to save himself.

  Aside from keeping him in shape, his energetic ploughing through the waves was also an opportunity to think, away from the distractions of the human world. That he’d been a medal-winning swimmer long ago was just one of the facts he knew these islanders were aware of, despite his attempts to protect his privacy. At six foot eight he was the object of natural curiosity, the subject of invention as well. Apparently someone not content with his medals had reported that a statue had been erected in the town where he’d spent his career, a vaguely human shape constructed from twisted rods of steel—though no one ever claimed to have seen it. Not everything said about him was true.

  Not all of it was invented either. He knew that everyone was aware—probably because of Elena’s boasts during their summers here—that amongst the swimming medals at the bottom of his trunk were several “teacher of the year” awards, describing Axel Thorstad as “imaginative, innovative, courageous, and fiercely loyal to his students”—words that caused Elena to roll her eyes, though she’d quoted them accurately to anyone she decided should hear.

  Because of Elena, people also knew that hardly a year had gone by without his being reprimanded for overstepping the boundaries of normal teaching practices in a conservative school district. Yet the student who’d fallen from the cafeteria roof while acting out his own example of Absurdist Drama had convinced her parents not to press charges once the scrapes and fractures had begun to mend. And the student who’d disappeared into a crowd on a Vancouver street while Thorstad was taking a class to interview a poet had not been murdered or captured into a life of crime, but had shown up just in time to catch the ferry home, having on his own initiative found and interviewed a former neighbour of Malcolm Lowry.

  He’d faced a brief ripple of civic outrage when he allowed his students to write and perform a play lampooning the jingoistic leading citizens of their pulp-mill town, though he’d known a number of dignitaries and councillors would be sitting in the audience. At the end of the performance the mayor had mounted the stage to announce that he would be having a word with the Board of School Trustees in the morning. And indeed, a warning had later been issued, though allowances were once again made for the student-chosen “teacher of the year.”

  It was on that same stage, in that gymnasium smelling of old running shoes and adolescent sweat, that Thorstad had directed the now-famous Oonagh Farrell in her first starring role. That no one on Estevan Island had mentioned this fact suggested that no one here believed it—though this occurrence was as true as the medals at the bottom of his trunk and as easily verified as the mayor’s indignant speech. He could imagine the disbelief if they were told of the offstage role that Oonagh Farrell had played, long ago, in his life.

  Walking up the stony beach with water streaming off his body was perhaps the only time he was conscious of his exceptional height, of the long limbs and broad shoulders that had once inspired astonishment in strangers, curiosity in students, admiration in some women, and envy in competing swimmers. Though his habit of swimming naked here was considered eccentric, he knew the islanders attributed this to his having married a Spaniard, since Europeans were known for immodesty. That he swam during even the year’s coldest months was not so easily explained.

  When a week had gone by since he’d mailed his letters, he began to walk up to Svetic’s Store once a day, though he behaved as though this was only for butter or salted peanuts or some other item from the s
helves. He’d begun to wonder whether he really wanted to see what his advertisement might bring. Often Lisa was sitting in her large red-leather chair to study the weekend coloured comics, and sometimes worried aloud about family members in “For Better or For Worse.” “I wish she hadn’t killed off the grandma. It’s getting too damn sad.” Eventually she made a great show of hauling herself up out of the chair to take his money. “No letters today. You’ve got me so curious I’m tempted to open the first one that comes, just to see what you’re up to.”

  It had never occurred to him that she might read his mail, but of course she was perfectly capable of it. He’d been a fool not to have crossed the strait with those letters!

  Rather than give her the opportunity to witness his impatience, he adopted the habit of arriving at the dock in time for the ferry that brought the mailbag across, but the ferry was so often late that he was sometimes forced to wait amongst the rusty pickups and mud-caked old sedans parked chaotically on the gravel, some with doors left open by last-minute drivers who’d been almost left behind. Sometimes he waited down on the floating pier, breathing the sharp smells of creosote and rotting seaweed. He knew enough to bring a book with him to reread. Heart of Darkness, As I Lay Dying, The Good Soldier.

  When the clouds opened up and sent down rain he moved inside to wait amongst the crowded rows of tools, dishes, machine parts, and cast-off clothing in the Free Exchange, a converted boathouse of faded cedar planks and patched-up shingles, resting at a tilt beside the government dock. Here the smells were of old gumboots, sweat-soaked mackinaws, and fishing nets, sometimes a kerosene lamp or a half-used can of paint. Framed pictures were stacked against a window coated with mud and salt spray. An entire shelf was devoted to discarded trophies—statuettes of human figures holding basketballs or showing off a large fish. Above the heap of old boots, a sign offered a bargain:

  TAKE A PAIR OF GUMBOOTS OFF OUR HANDS AND WE’LL

  THROW IN ONE OF MURIEL PARKER’S VELVET PAINTINGS!

  No money was ever exchanged here. If you found something you wanted or needed, you took it home. If you had something at home you didn’t want, you brought it with you and left it for someone who did. There was seldom anything Thorstad needed. He hadn’t broken a dish in seven years, and he was still wearing the three good shirts Elena had bought, the only man on the island who wore his shirts buttoned to the throat. But occasionally there was something he took away in case it came in handy one day, adding it to the pyramid beneath the blue tarpaulin behind his shack.

  Since retiring to the island, he no longer purchased something new if something old could be repaired. He rummaged amongst people’s tossed-out equipment and useless machine parts abandoned beside the road, and whatever he couldn’t use himself he brought here for a possible second life. He was aware of the figure he sometimes made—a lank Goliath wading through the underbrush in order to rescue a discarded basin, a long-backed Ichabod with a card table on his head, bringing it in to the Free Exchange.

  As a place to wait for the mail, this building was at least dry. It was sometimes interesting as well. He’d once witnessed the surprised laughter of a woman realizing the pink silk dress she’d just decided to take home was the one she’d deposited here herself. Another young woman recognized a turtleneck sweater she’d given as a present to a friend. “It’s the last gift she’ll ever get from me! I’ll just give it to myself.”

  The volunteers who supervised the place occasionally viewed him with suspicion. Since the concept of shoplifting was irrelevant here, this could only mean that Lisa Svetic had told them about his letters—perhaps even that he’d advertised for a mail-order bride. If so, they saved their laughter until he was no longer there to hear it.

  It was probably one of these volunteers who’d mentioned an “old-folks home” within the maestro’s hearing—possibly Gwendolyn Something. He’d been told this attractive mother of six young daughters took turns with another woman, living in a motel across the strait so their offspring could get the education they could not get here. Gwendolyn Something was, according to Lisa Svetic, a calming influence in that motel life. “As placid as Elsie the Cow. You couldn’t stir her into a panic if you set a hive of wasps loose under her skirt.”

  The easygoing nature of this woman in full skirts might explain the fact that all six of her daughters had different fathers. All were named after local flora: Ladyslipper, Rosy Pussytoes, Spring-gold, Fireweed, Solomon’s-seal (which of course should have been “False Solomon’s-seal”). The sixth was, Lisa Svetic had told him, Hooker’s Willow. What could the future hold for a girl named Hooker’s Willow? You had to hope the woman didn’t intend to exhaust the catalogue of local flowers. Skunk cabbage bloomed in swampy ditches every spring! And hairy arnica could be found beside his trail through the woods. Of course, if you had to be named for a flower there could be some pleasure in answering to Hairy Arnica.

  He was aware that she and her girls were in the habit of moving now and then into one or another of the island’s abandoned houses or trailers, a form of expropriation that was not uncommon here. Someone else’s roof could be sturdier than your own, a wallpaper pattern more attractive, a wood stove in better shape. He supposed that for Gwendolyn Something, changing houses was not too different from changing partners, allowing each of her girls to have both a roof and an unidentified father to call her own.

  One morning while he was examining a pair of cast-off gaucho boots with elaborate patterns tooled into the leather, Gwendolyn snapped out of her reverie when Bo Hammond came in carrying a heavy cardboard carton against his chest. He nodded and crouched to place the carton against the nearest wall.

  Then, noticing Thorstad amongst the second-hand boots, he sat on the box and rested his elbows on his knees. “So, Axelmy-man. You planning to donate your stubborn cello to this tidy pavilion of junk?”

  Startled, Thorstad was quick to reject the notion. “You think I’d give up so easily? I’ve a little patience left and even a bit of hope.”

  Hammond’s grin was a white gash in his dark whiskers. “I’ll take ’er off your hands if you want—haul ’er out in the strait and give ’er a proper burial. If I fill ’er with rocks she’ll sink to the bottom and stay there.” He opened his eyes too wide and rubbed a palm over his jaw as though seriously awaiting permission.

  “You’d probably do the same with annoying old men! My cello may be stubborn and forgetful but it isn’t dead.”

  Hammond laughed and stood up, and nodded to Gwendolyn Something. Then, before leaving, he cupped a hand beneath Axel Thorstad’s elbow. “Help yourself if there’s anything you want in that box.”

  The box, Thorstad saw, was filled with books. He put on his reading glasses and sat on his heels to examine Hammond’s titles. Year of the Goat. The Sorrow of Belgium. Prose and Poetry of the Eighteenth Century. He had taken his copy of Prose and Poetry of the Eighteenth Century to a second-hand shop before his move. Though perhaps . . . He picked it up and turned a few pages. Defoe. Bishop Berkeley. Swift. Addison and Steele. Alexander Pope. What dire offence from amorous causes springs, / What mighty contests rise from trivial things. He could continue without looking at the words. If Gwendolyn Something was frowning at him now it was probably because he was smiling. He missed the large library he’d left behind after choosing only his favourites to bring to Estevan. He was thinking, too, of the numerous students for whom he’d read this poem aloud.

  When he’d returned the book to its box and was about to reacquaint himself with the opening words of The Old Man and the Sea, Lisa Svetic put her head in the doorway and beckoned with a finger, half singing her words as though from a childhood taunt. “I’ve got something you been waiting for.” She held an envelope high and forced him to follow her through the mud to the post office and wait while she went behind the counter. “I can’t just go around handing out Her Majesty’s mail in the street!” She probably thought she was amusing, but Thorstad was long familiar with the playground bully’s notion of
humour.

  The return address was a street in Prince Rupert, hundreds of kilometres up the coast. At once he saw himself boarding a plane: Comox to Vancouver, Vancouver to Prince Rupert, stepping out into their ocean-scented rain. He tore open the envelope and turned away in order to read the tight handwritten script in the light from the window.

  Dear Sir,

  Though you gave only a post-office address in your advertisement and could be a cold-blooded murderer for all I know, I am sending my telephone number because I can tell from the way you described yourself that you could easily be my dear husband who disappeared while on a fishing trip with some friends fifteen years ago, and must be suffering, I think, from amnesia. I am sure there are people now who can help a person recover his memory. If you call me and tell me where you are I will come and identify you. Does the name “Sebastian” sound familiar? I have waited so long for this.

  “Well,” said Lisa Svetic, coming out from behind her counter. “Is she rich enough?” She used a broom to scoop a cobweb from the ceiling. “You have to watch out for gold diggers when you advertise for a wife.” This set off a low satisfied chuckle in her throat. “Let me see,” she said, leaning the broom against the canned-goods shelf. “Maybe I can tell if you’ve got yourself a crank.”

  But he left the Store without showing her. How could he expose this poor woman’s desperate hope to Lisa Svetic’s eyes? Was this what he had done—invited the world to seize on his ad as a solution to their lives? Now he would have to decide how to assure the woman that he was not her husband. I am sorry to tell you that I have never been to Prince Rupert, and my memory is still reliable enough to remember my wife, who passed away several years ago.

  A second letter arrived a few days later, along with his Harper’s, this one from a Nora Stockton (Mrs.) with a Vancouver address. He waited to open the square pink envelope until he was deep into the woods, passing through a swampy area where the trail was lined on either side with the rust-coloured skeletons of last year’s cow-parsnips, nearly as tall as he was. Inside the envelope was what appeared to be a homemade card, a watercolour of a fawn drinking from a shallow stream choked with water lilies.