“Careful.”
He blew out the candle. Slipped his arm under her shoulder, pulled her closer. The trumpet shivered. The music soft. Insistent.
Hodges’ solo was circling back one more time. They’d finished their wine. Tobe shifted until they were face to face. “Perfect fit,” he said, and he shifted again, as she did. “And will you store this moment, too?”
“I will,” she said. “And so will you. We’ll make it last.”
The record continued to its end. And then there was a single jarring noise, and a crackling. The needle stuck in the final groove, the whirr and whirr unheard, while the gramophone finally wound down to silence.
MARIAH’S 1903 DIARY
MAY 14, 1903
Thursday. One and a half months left until I am free for the summer. Free of my tormentor. And then?
Since Mrs. Banco moved away, I have felt desperation at the lack of good teaching. Mr. Comfort, and he is far from comforting, looks upon me as some sort of rebel, someone who refuses to align to his standards and never will.
“So, Bindle”—he never calls me by my first name—“it is the art world to which you aspire. And for my own edification and for the edification of the class, will you name any five great women painters in the world? For that matter, even two?”
My classmates put down their pens to listen. Not even the dabbing at edges of inkwells can be heard. My friends are sympathetic and give support later, when we are out of sight of Comfort. No one wants to cross him because he is capable of making lives miserable. He is the person of power in the room.
I do not reply.
I never let him see how I truly feel.
He addresses the class.
“Have you learned the Dobson poem assigned?”
“Yes, Mr. Comfort.”
“Stand, then—you, too, Bindle—and recite together.”
Fame is a food that dead men eat,—
I have no stomach for such meat.
In little light and narrow room,
They eat it in the silent tomb,
With no kind voice of comrade near
To bid the feaster be of cheer.
Today, he had us sit in our seats just as we were about to launch into the second verse. He wasn’t interested in the friendship half of the poem. His aim was to ensure that I would feast sourly on my own ambition.
But Comfort will not hold me back. Though I say nothing to his face in class, and complete my assignments so that I may sit the end-of-year exams, I resolve that he will not stand in my way. Not that I wish for fame. Far from it. I wish only to pursue what I believe I can do, become what I am capable of becoming. That is to paint and draw the world as I see it. And I plan to see the world. As much as I am able. The important people to convince are not teachers like Comfort, but my parents. Who have already begun to wonder how I will accomplish what I am setting out to do. They are in no position to help financially, and I will have to make my own way.
Here is my sketch of Comfort. I admit that I exaggerate the mean-spirited expression on his wretched face. He takes cool pleasure in baiting me. But I remind myself: the more he goads, the stronger I become.
As for his body, his stomach is so large it protrudes in front of him. As if a pendulous overripe plum has swelled out of proportion and leaped under his shirt and stayed there, creating a mass that hangs precipitously over the belt that holds up his trousers. It is this mass that leads the way when he stomps around the classroom in his self-important manner.
1998
INVITATION
HANORA IS SORTING IN EARNEST NOW. ITEMS are set on the living-room rug in rows so she can get down on her knees between them. She separates drawings that are dated from those that are not. The latter are put into an archival-safe folder for protection. She’ll place them in context later. This might not be complicated because Mariah, accustomed to keeping a diary, often provided a written commentary around the edges of drawings, or on the surfaces themselves.
One journal is entirely unlike the others, though there are different styles of notebooks and sketchpads within the body of work. Some have ragged edges and show wear; others are in reasonable condition. Presumably, Mariah had to rely on what she could find in the shops of the country she lived in at any particular time.
The one journal that stands apart from the others is also the thickest. Filled with cream-coloured paper, it contains her entries and drawings from the years in Coventry. Odd, Hanora thinks, because there was a severe shortage of paper during the war, and I had difficulties getting my hands on any for the writing I was doing in London.
Hanora’s first book was written during the Blitz, about the Blitz, the brutal bombardment that went on for fifty-seven consecutive nights. The day-to-day story of citizens who remained in the streets of London, inside houses, in the Underground at night or in shelters they’d built themselves, or who crawled under stairs or beneath tables or other large pieces of furniture—not that those kept bombing victims alive when their once-protective houses tumbled down around them. She focused on individuals, stories about how women and men and children managed and how they helped one another, and what kept them going and enabled them to endure the horror of death and destruction on their streets throughout the nightly and even daily bombings. She wrote about spirit and courage and determination. She wrote about the myriad ways Londoners dealt with fear and anguish and how they kept on with their lives. These were first-hand accounts. The book was published in North America one year after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Mortality figures were not included in her book, no information that could feed the Nazis. The figures were not given out, in any case. The book caught the interest of the public, and went into several reprints, which was enormously satisfying. The knowledge of the book being “out there” kept Hanora going during a long stretch between that and her second book.
MARIAH must have purchased her thick Coventry journal before the war and saved it for the last. For it does appear to be the last of the artist’s diaries. There are earlier periods of her life not accounted for in the papers laid out over Hanora’s rug. Some years spent in Europe have no documentation, which means that diaries were lost or discarded. A single diary from southern France does exist. And two thin sketchpads from Cornwall, mainly St. Ives. Hanora hopes that loose paintings and drawings will make up for any missing diary years.
She now has a good idea of what remains to be read and how long this will take. She does not want to be so methodical that she kills her own creativity, but she has begun to look inward, beyond the rows of paper laid out over the rug. She begins to imagine the contents in another sort of order, one that will become the structure of her book. She does not want to impose structure early, because she knows from experience that the book’s pattern will emerge in its own time. Still, she needs a place to start; she wants to write the first chapters, even as she continues to read the material at hand.
FILMORE is retrieving his mail when Hanora takes the elevator down to the main floor. He tips the imaginary hat, after which they stand and talk while she clears the mail from her box. She checks through the envelopes. Several bills: electric, water and sewage, heating—all forwarded from Billie’s house. So far, the upstairs of the red-and-white house is empty. Another week or two, and the main floor and basement will be cleared of the last furniture, much of which will go to resettlement programs for incoming refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sri Lanka. New residents to the city are in need of furniture, having left everything behind. What remains in Billie’s house will partially furnish two small apartments.
In a week or two, Hanora will hire a team of cleaners, including window cleaners. After that, the house will be listed and hopefully sold. The phone has been disconnected, the furnace turned off, the water temperature turned down. June will soon be here, and with it, summer.
Filmore is full of surprises. On the way up in the elevator, he stands tall and holds out a monthly photography magazine for cursory inspection of its cover. H
e confides that he’s been interested in photography since childhood, and writes a monthly column for the magazine he holds in his hands.
Hanora hears herself inviting him to look at Kenan’s photos.
“My late father—adoptive father, the only father I knew—put together a few albums, which I now own. His first camera cost a dollar. A 1937 Brownie I gave to him for Christmas. A cousin who lives in the States worked for Eastman Kodak and sent it directly.”
“I have a 1937 Brownie in my collection,” says Filmore. “I would be pleased to see your father’s albums. Delighted.” Ah, the old-school manners.
“I have no idea what to expect,” she says. “I leafed through one of them years ago while visiting my parents. My father was private about his discoveries. Or what I think of as his discoveries. Every photo was taken in Deseronto—do you know the place?”
“I’ve seen the sign from the main highway, but never pulled into the town,” he says.
“My father was a veteran of the Great War, and had his own way of doing things. He never left town after coming home wounded in 1918. That I’m certain of. I found out, late in my childhood—I was in my teens—that he didn’t leave the house for more than a year after coming home.”
Filmore nods as if he understands. His facial expression shows that he does, in some way, understand.
He tears a small strip from an envelope and writes his last name, which she already knows. He adds his phone number and email address. She’ll send an email and tell him when to come to her apartment.
As he leaves the elevator on the nineteenth floor, Hanora realizes that she doesn’t know his first name. It must begin with R because that’s part of the email address.
This is what happens with apartment living. She recognizes faces but doesn’t know full names or personal details—except when it comes to residents who live on her own floor. She meets the same people in the elevators, exchanges greetings, listens to reports on the weather. The place is a bit of a vertical village. She can tell who is eternally cheerful, who is mournful but kind, who wards off conversation, who fills every gap with babble, who stares at the floor when others talk, who is hard of hearing, who has an antenna up for gossip, who struggles with health or mobility issues, who gets by no matter how dire the situation, who strides through daily activities with vigour, and who wags a warning finger, threatening anyone within hearing distance that problems will be reported to management. She knows which families have children and where the children go to school. She could make a greater effort to socialize, but she always seems to be working, or solving Billie’s problems.
Filament is making an effort to socialize. And now, she supposes, she is, too. And realizes that she spoke of Kenan as her adoptive father. She has been silent so long, she is astonished that this fact has come out in casual conversation. Tell a stranger what is most important to you.
When she is back inside her apartment she turns toward her hall mirror. What she sees is the woman she has always been, for years now with short hair, still a bit of red, but deeper red, especially at the back. The rest is grey. She is paler now. She is lean and she is fit. She loves to walk. She has aged but doesn’t give age a great deal of thought. Instead, she thinks of the work she is doing, the work she has done. This is how she defines herself. She has no idea what other people see when they look at her; she hardly cares what others see when they look at her.
She hasn’t cooked for a week and would be grateful if someone were to cook for her. She’s been making sandwiches lately, or opening tins of soup. She is desperate to get back to the rhythm of writing every day. Once Billie’s house sells, she’ll be able to breathe freely. Her time will be her own.
If she is to write the book, she must gather peace around her. Otherwise, she will never fully concentrate. But she is determined. And she is, gradually, earning back her peace. As if peace is a reward for some kind of penance, she thinks, wryly. These days, if she works for an hour and a half without interruption or emergency phone calls, she is filled with optimism. Some days, if she writes well for ten minutes, she is happy. A full day’s work and she might tumble over in a state of ecstasy.
SHE sends Filmore an email and asks if he would like to stop by in the evening, around seven. She’ll work as much as she can today, see what she can find out about Mariah after the artist returned to Canada in 1946. How did it come to pass that she lived out her final days in the Eastern Hospital for the Insane? Hanora has to look for answers.
Later, she will go through the drawings, one by one. She may also put a note in several newspapers to see if she can track down any privately owned paintings. She’ll soon be told what her publisher’s budget will permit in terms of reproductions—colour and/or black and white. In her book, she will describe some of the sketches she has in her possession. Not that she owns those. She owns only the one she was given by the family, the one on her office wall: the child holding the shell, the mother looking on with love.
She has an urge to reach for her locket, rub it between her fingers. But the locket is in a drawer of her jewellery case. Someday, the province will open its adoption records; she knows this, and so does every other adopted person seeking or not seeking information. So does every birth parent who gave up a child. She thinks of the unknown adopted men and women out there as her brothers and sisters. They would know the feeling she has of having worked at her adoption her entire life. Every one of them, or almost every one, will have gone through a prolonged reluctance to upset the applecart by speaking frankly to the parents who adopted them. Every one horrified by the thought of hurting the people who gave them a home, and who loved them and brought them up as if they were their own offspring. But why, if everything was so loving and good, did the questions of identity have to be set aside?
Because the subject is so emotionally charged, it might as well be an exposed wire.
Because some issues will never, ever be resolved.
While writing her book about the trade in orphans, she interviewed twelve adults who were adopted. And listened, again and again, to identical stories, identical words. I don’t want to hurt my mother. I don’t want to upset my father. I don’t want my parents to think I’d have preferred a different kind of life. I had a great upbringing. I feel I should wait until they die before I investigate. I’ve been lucky. Yes, I’ve been lucky. I’m so fortunate.
And what of the adoptees who did not feel so fortunate? What if adoptive parents were not loving? That, too, happened. I was always on the outside. I never really felt that I belonged. I knew I was different. I felt different, looked different, wasn’t at all like my brothers and sisters. I suspected I was adopted even before I was told. When I was older, I saw photos of myself as a baby and thought, Oh, that tiny, lost child.
Well, she’d behaved as most had behaved. She did not go back to Tress and Kenan to insist on having more information. In 1938, they had made it patently clear that the discussion was closed. She’d respected their wishes, and maintained her silence. It seemed pointless to do otherwise. After decades of travelling down blind alleys, she’d long ago accepted the fact that she does not and probably will not own her history. Maybe that’s why she has been so interested in everyone else’s. She’s never had a history of her own.
Which can also be seen as nonsense, goes the old argument with herself. She has a very complete history, comprising work she has done, decisions made, people met, travels undertaken, stories written, books published, friendships near and dear—including one with a close friend, another writer, who was also adopted. And the world is full of orphans, displaced children, street children, missing children. All they want is a home. Any home.
Understanding all this, having made a commitment to be silent, why, then, does she continue to glance into mirrors in shop windows, in stores, in public washrooms, in airplanes, on trains, anywhere, on the chance that a detail she hasn’t noticed will be newly revealed?
Why, after all this time, does she stare into her bat
hroom mirror every night before bed?
Habit. Something she has done since she was eighteen. No one will ever know the ways she has scrutinized her features, tried out different expressions. Looking for . . . well, what she was looking for was never found. And what difference will it make now if adoption records are finally unsealed? Her birth parents won’t be around. Not a single person involved will be alive.
Still.
FILMORE
FILMORE ARRIVES PUNCTUALLY, HOLDS OUT HIS hand and shakes hers as if they are meeting for the first time. “Robin,” he says. “Robin Filmore. British parents, first-born, the name was favoured at the time. There was Robin Hood in the background, and that helped.” He laughs. A confident laugh. He’s lived with his name a long time.
She has not been expecting a Robin. And in he comes.
Once they have drinks in hand—he, too, drinks neat Scotch—he asks to see Kenan’s albums. These are on the living-room table, where she placed them weeks ago. Each one thick and full.
“My father learned darkroom skills after he was given his first camera,” Hanora says. “He used the cold cellar in our house in Deseronto. It had shelves, and he installed a sink. He was completely comfortable there. He was never afraid of the dark. When he began to develop film, everything was black and white. Especially the first few years. That remained his preference, even after colour film was commonly available. Everything about photography amazed him. He was entranced.”
She is thinking of the photo she carried in her wallet for decades. Invisible 1938. She framed it after she moved to her present apartment. She had to look several places before she found an appropriate frame: two layers of glass that allow the caption and notes on the back to be seen without removing the tiny photo. She has come to think of this in some complex way as her birthday-adoption photo, and she keeps it near. As familiar as it is, she still has to examine the face of it before she can locate the image of the plane. She goes to her office now, retrieves it and brings it to Robin. He turns it over and reads aloud, “‘Moving aeroplane, September 23, 1938, H’s birthday. September 23, 1835, HMS Beagle sails to Charles Island, Galapagos, Darwin aboard.’”
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