Ragged Company

by Richard Wagamese

  “Me,” she said one day, pointing to herself. “Sylvan.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “Yes, yes. Sylvan.”

  After that, she seemed to progress. She became able to remember from day to day. She became able to recall the names of her caregivers, her address, the date, the times of her favourite television shows and why she enjoyed them, simple day-to-day things that gave the doctor great hope. But she never remembered me. When I read that, I felt the heartbreak I had felt so many years ago all over again, full and thick in my chest, an unbearable weight pulling me to depths I recollected clearly enough. I read on. He would point to me and say, “Jonas.” She would repeat it, touching my image, saying, “Jonas. Jonas. Jonas.” Over and over again like a spell. Then she would look at him with trembling lips and the deepest, saddest eyes he’d ever seen and slowly shake her head. Jonas was just a word, a push of air, a label on an empty package. I drank then. Drank deeply and deliberately, waiting for the burn in the belly to steel me for whatever came next in the doctor’s small, neatly formed words.

  I read on all through that afternoon. I read about the pulling together of my wife’s small world. I read about her growing ability to manage time. Present time. The past a shadow just beyond her optic range, a fleeting thing, tempting in its closeness but elusive, wild, unsnared, uncaptured, and roaming forever beyond her grasp. The doctor gave me her world and I immersed myself in it, grateful for the chance to see her live again, to be vital. And as I worked my sad way through those pages, I relearned love, felt it spill open within me, drenching me in its warmth, a fluid thick, viscous, essential as blood.

  Sometime that evening I walked into Granite’s room, where everyone had gathered to watch a movie. The journal was tucked beneath my arm. They looked at me warily, concerned, worried. I took a seat on the arm of the sofa.

  “Are you okay?” Amelia asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “Did that book give you anything you could use there, pal?” Digger asked.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, it did.”

  “Like what, Timber?” Granite asked.

  “Like an address,” I said. “Like an address.”

  One For The Dead

  SHE LIVED in a cottage in a city by the sea. She was an old woman. She had made a long journey through the darkness and memories had been like stones she bumped her foot against, shadowed, hard, unmoving, giving nothing back, not even light. There had been a man to help her travel. A man, gentle and wise, who tried to teach her to gather up the stones in the road, hold them up to the pale glow of the moon and make them known. But she was frail and tired, scared and alone, and the heft of stones became an awkward, uncomfortable act. So he let her be, walking behind her as she travelled that darkened road, always wondering if somehow the stars might lead her to the distant horizon where the light was born. They never did. She was destined to always be a nomad on that road. The stones about her feet, untouched and unclaimed, lay forever dormant and told no stories of their own, sang no histories. So she found her way to a cottage by the sea and there, washed in the sound of waves, the birds, the laughter of other peoples’ children in the surf, and wind keening across the sky, she learned to leave the darkened road behind and exist in a new light in a new world. There were no stones on the beaches of her mind. She was an old woman in a cottage by the sea.

  Digger

  LOVE STORIES should always be told like Cyrano de fucking Bergerac. We seen this flick, this French flick about this big-nosed motherfucker who is the country’s greatest swordsman. Tough son of a bitch who tells jokes while he’s fighting six or seven guys. My kind of guy. But he falls in love with his friggin’ cousin. Head over heels, puppy dog–eyed in love, and he’s fucked. Roxanne. Roxie. Great name. Kinda like a stripper’s name or maybe a big blond biker broad. But she’s his cousin. Anyways, he’s an ugly motherfucker and he knows that Roxanne would never have anything to do with him on accounta he’s so friggin’ ugly with a nose the size of a baked potato. So he gets a big strappin’ handsome lad to declare his love for her while Cyrano feeds him lines from the bushes. It all goes to hell. Roxie falls in love with the handsome lad and Cyrano dies after getting wounded in a sword fight. But not until he takes out about eighty guys. Love oughta be told like that. It hurts like a blade under the ribs, I’m told, so I figure if you’re gonna tell it, tell it like it is. Who knows? Mighta helped old Cyrano.

  I’m thinking this while we’re driving out to see Timber’s woman. He’s sitting there beside me having a good knock out of a bottle and I can tell he’s getting ready for anything. Good. Maybe he won’t get a chance to take out eighty guys before he falls but it’s good to be prepared. Not that I know he’s gonna go down on this, but if love hurts like they all say, don’t go in unprepared. If you know you’re gonna be shanked before the shanking happens, it helps to be a little pissed off first. Or a little pissed. Either ways, a good way to go.

  We swing out of the downtown and move into an area kind of like the one we were in when we found Timber’s old house. Nice. Kinda like Indian Road, so I figure good folks gotta live out here. Every now and then I see the ocean through the houses and trees and I feel good because I never saw an ocean before. Big mystery, oceans. Always been a big mystery to me because I never seen one. We start slowing down when we pull into a little curved road that runs along a cliff overlooking the big water. The houses are mostly small with a huge mansion-looking place thrown in now and again. Everyone is eyeballing them, wondering which one is the one we’re looking for. Turns out that it’s a little place with a wraparound veranda, all lit up in the night, warm-looking and cozy. A nice place. A home.

  There’s two people sitting out there in rocking chairs with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. I look over at Timber and he’s staring at them. Hard. Not moving. Not even blinking. I can tell they seen the car because they put their heads closer together, talking about it and obviously wondering what a big limo’s doing pulling up in front of their house. None of us know what to do. We’re waiting for Timber to make a move, and just when I’m wondering if he’s going to change his mind and tell the driver to take us back to the hotel, he heaves a big breath and turns his head to look at us.

  “Now or never,” he goes.

  “Guess so,” I go.

  “You ready for this?”

  “I’m not the one that’s gotta be ready, pal.”

  “Yeah.”

  We step out of the car and into the salty air. I can see the two people on the veranda gesturing toward us, and when Timber starts walking to their gate they both look at us with their heads cocked like pointer dogs. He stopped with his hand on the latch. I put a hand on his shoulder and can feel him shaking.

  “It’s okay, pal,” I go. “We’re here.”

  He breathes out loudly, pushes the gate, and steps through into the yard.

  “Good evening,” the guy calls out. “Can we help you?”

  Timber keeps on walking toward the veranda stairs. He’s stiff in the back like someone’s got a gun to his ribs, his hands dangling at his sides. The rest of us kinda wander after him like kids on a field trip. He climbs the three steps to the veranda and just kinda stands there looking at the two people, a man and a woman, still wrapped in their blankets and drinking coffee from steaming white mugs. The man looks at us evenly, not too worried about these five strangers stepping out of their fancy car to pay a late-night visit. The woman stares too, but she’s squinting hard. Even in the dim light of the veranda I can tell she’s a babe. An old babe, but still a babe. She stares at us hard but doesn’t say a word, nothing moves in her face.

  “Hello,” Timber goes.

  “Good evening,” the man goes.

  “Hello, Jonas,” the woman goes, and I have to catch Timber before he falls off the fucking steps.

  Timber

  SHE LIVED. She lived and she breathed and she walked and she talked and she spoke my name. She spoke my name. I felt my knees buckle
when I heard it and Digger pushed both hands into my back to keep me upright. “Hello, Jonas,” she said, like I’d come back from the store with milk or something. Casual. Light. Not cutting through a tangle of years or anything, just “Hello, Jonas,” and those two words were enough to tumble me. Two words I thought I would never hear again. Two words that still had the power they had the first time I ever heard them come from that lovely face. I straightened myself on the steps, grabbed ahold of the handrail and pulled myself square again, with Digger pressing from behind. When I stood, my knees were shaking and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They felt like paddles at the end of my arms. I stood there looking at the two of them in their rocking chairs with blankets about their shoulders like the old couple I used to imagine Sylvan and I would become.

  “You know who I am?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said lightly. “I have your picture in my house.”

  “You do?”

  “Oh, yes. Lyn told me to keep it out.”

  “You remember me?”

  “Yes. You’re Jonas.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. Jonas,” she said and smiled.

  The smile cut me. It was like the moment when the wick on a candle springs to life, peeling the darkness back to reveal the world to you again. Sylvan’s smile. My Sylvan’s smile. I grabbed the top of the handrail again because all she did was smile.

  “Mr. Hohnstein?” the man asked, standing and reaching out to shake my hand.

  I shook my head to stop myself from staring at my wife five feet away from me. “Yes?” I asked.

  “Mr. Hohnstein, I’m Phillip Greer. I’m Sylvan’s husband.” He held his hand out to me, waiting for a reaction. “Maybe you should come into the house and sit down. You and your friends. Sylvan, dear, let’s take these people into the living room and have a visit.”

  “Yes,” she said. “A visit. A visit would be nice. Coffee and some cake, maybe.”

  Greer held the door open and I watched as she rose slowly, small hands clutching the blanket around her. She smiled at my friends gathered behind me and as she passed she looked at me. I saw those incredible blue eyes and I felt something warm and pliant rip smoothly apart again inside my chest. She grinned. She grinned and passed wordlessly, following Greer into the house. Sylvan. It meant quiet. Peaceful, pastoral, tranquil as a forest glade, an idyll, a calm and undisturbed wood, rife with shadow, light, and mystery. All I felt as she passed was the mystery.

  I walked through the door watching her back. She didn’t move the same. I saw that right away. The Sylvan I knew moved with an assured step like she was in tune with everything around her. This woman walked carefully, as though she didn’t want to disturb anything, as though she needed it all to remain where it was, as if walking a planned route. Greer pointed us to chairs and a sofa and we all sat, my friends staring at me for clues as to how to move or what to say. Greer made Sylvan comfortable in a big easy chair, plumping pillows behind her back, setting her feet on a round cushioned ottoman and covering them with the blanket. He moved like he was used to watching over her, like he cared, like he loved her. I felt a spear of jealousy rack my insides.

  The room was lovely. Rustic and charming. There was a fireplace with silk flowers adorning the mantle and a Gainsboroughlike painting of countryside under huge billowed clouds. The furniture was all wood and cloth like an old country home, and there were pillows everywhere. Pillows on the sofa, pillows on the chairs, pillows in a pile on the floor, and pillows leaning on shelves.

  Greer watched as I looked at them.

  “She likes pillows,” he said. “I don’t know why. It’s just one of the things she latched on to right away and it’s like she can’t ever have enough of them. We have more pillows in this house than air.”

  “No books,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Greer asked.

  “There’s no books. She loved books. She was a librarian.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said. “There’s a lot I don’t know, really. Maybe you can help with that.”

  I looked at him. He was a soft man. Tall, stocky enough for the height, with a slight bulge of belly, glasses, balding, with wide hands and feet. But soft. He’d have never made it on the street.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Maybe I can clear up some things for you, Mr. Hohnstein. Sylvan functions with a memory that clicks on and off like a broken switch. Some days it works and other days it doesn’t. I never know when I wake up in the morning what I’m going to have to tell her, what I’m going to have to introduce her to again. It’s like trying to keep something on a slippery surface. You never know if it’s going to stick or slide.

  “She seems to hold on to activities better. Actions. She can remember how to do things, the repetitive things we all do, but she can’t remember why. I have to tell her to wash. I have to tell her to change her clothes. Some days I even have to tell her to dress. Things like that.”

  “But she remembers me?” I asked.

  He sighed. “You,” he said. “You are the face of hope. Dr. MacBeth told me when I started to take care of Sylvan to put your picture where she could see it every day. It was his hope that something would click for her. Something that would start all the tumblers rolling back into place. That’s why there’s a picture of you in every room. In the hope that she would one day remember.”

  “She doesn’t?”

  “No. She doesn’t. She just knows your face and she knows your name because we told her over and over again in the beginning.”

  “We?”

  “Dr. MacBeth and I. I was Sylvan’s physiotherapist after the accident and at the extended care home. When she moved here I came with her to be her live-in care. We were together for such a long time and I watched her fight to get her body back, watched her fight to get the world back in some kind of order she could handle. I fell in love with her. We were married three years ago.”

  “But I’m her husband,” I said dumbly.

  “Dr. MacBeth took power of attorney for Sylvan. When you disappeared and didn’t return, someone had to take care of her needs and the doctor wanted to do that. He loved her too. When it looked like you’d never resurface, he put the divorce papers through in absentia.”

  “In absentia?”

  “Yes. You were nowhere to be found. The court considered the fact that you hadn’t been heard from for seven years and made it official. I have the papers somewhere upstairs.”

  “No need. I understand. Does she understand?”

  “She doesn’t need to,” Greer said. “I’ve always been here, Mr. Hohnstein. Through everything. Through all that time. All those years. All that struggle. You weren’t. You weren’t there when she had night terrors and cried and needed to be held, to be told that she was safe, that she was going to be okay. You weren’t there for the bedpans, the walkers, the back braces, the massages, the ten-minutes-to-take-three-stairs ordeals, none of it. You weren’t there to teach her to wash herself, to potty train her, to teach her about knives and forks and spoons again, to teach her how to cross the street. But I was. I was. And I’m sorry if that sounds like anger and judgment, but I love her. I love her. I loved her through all of that and I didn’t disappear. That’s all she needs to understand; that I’ve always been here and that I always will be.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I knew there was a small chance you’d resurface someday. I don’t know why but I just knew. Maybe because I know what love is and I understand how much torture you went through when yours was wiped away. Maybe because I know that once it’s planted in your chest and sinks its roots right into your being, it never goes away, never stops trying to find the light again. Maybe because I know that you loved her. Perhaps as much as I do right now. Maybe more.”

  “What makes you so sure of that? I ran. How much love does that take?”

  “Look in the corner.”

  “What?”

  �
��Look in the corner,” he said again, and pointed to the far corner by the sliding glass doors that led to a back patio.

  Eudora. The jade plant. She was huge, almost unrecognizable from when I last saw her, but I knew it was her. She was more of a bush than a plant now, round and thick with a gnarled trunk that spoke of years and time. She sat in a large red clay pot, looking content in her spot by the sundeck. I walked over to her and let my fingers trail across the rich buds of leaves, remembering the nights alone on the cold hardwood floor of our home when I’d slept with my arms wrapped around her.

  “Eudora,” Sylvan said. “That’s Eudora.”

  “Yes,” I said, turning to face her. “Eudora. You gave her that name.”