“It’s Maggie Dunne from next door,” she tells him. “Someone’s been writing graffiti on our side of the wall we share with you. We’re pretty sure it’s your daughter.”
There’s a long silence. She starts to think he’s hung up.
“Couldn’t have been Lydia,” he says. “She lives in Toronto with her mother now.”
“Oh,” says Maggie.
“I sent her there in September. Didn’t want her growing up beside a bunch of porno makers.” The spite in his voice tempts her to tell him a few things about his daughter, but already her thoughts are racing back to the graffiti. If it wasn’t Lydia, then who? Nobody she wishes to imagine.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I didn’t realize.” She says goodbye and puts down the phone, turns to George Ray and Brid. “I was wrong. The girl moved away.”
“So what now?” says Brid.
Maggie reopens the phone book, looks up the police, and dials the number.
9
The officer who turns up is skinny and freckled, with a dopey, self-satisfied expression. Maggie explains to him about the graffiti but finds herself unwilling to repeat the words, fearing he’ll ask her to speculate about what motivated them. When finally she speaks them aloud, the man seems unsurprised. Maybe everyone in Virgil has been talking about Maggie and George Ray and where they get the money for the farm.
The policeman’s interest in the case doesn’t pick up until Brid comes down in her nightie. Upon seeing him, she promptly heads back upstairs. Then, in the kitchen, as Maggie introduces him to George Ray, a crinkle of suspicion splits the man’s forehead. He asks if George Ray has a visa.
“George Ray has worked in this area for seven years,” Maggie protests.
“Never seen him, is all,” replies the officer. He has a nasally, hollow voice. Looking George Ray up and down, he says, “Kind of late in the fall still to be here.” George Ray stares back wearily and makes no comment.
By the wrecking yard wall, the policeman spends a long time frowning at his notepad.
“You could put in floodlights if you wanted,” he says, tugging at the skin on his neck. “That might scare them off.” After jotting a few words, he flips the notepad shut and starts back toward the house.
“That’s it?” she says. “Shouldn’t you dust for prints or something?”
He makes a face to show how naive she’s being.
“It could be the Klan,” she exclaims.
The policeman shakes his head. “This isn’t the States. Probably it’s just teenagers being stupid. In town we get this sort of thing all the time. But if it happens again, let us know.”
Over lunch, when she recounts this story, George Ray stays silent. Brid is livid. She wants the cop reported. She wants the story in the papers and on TV. She says they should blanket Virgil with pamphlets. All the anger that until now she’s inflicted on herself has a new target, and there’s a glimpse of the agitator she used to be.
“The cop’s probably right, it’s just some kids,” says Maggie. She doesn’t like the idea of publicity while the money remains hidden in the attic. But George Ray sighs, and she worries she’s letting him down. “What do you think we should do?” she asks him. “Stay in a motel for a while?” He looks affronted by the idea. “I want you to feel safe.”
“They’re just words,” he says gruffly. “People up here have said worse things to my face.” In horror, she imagines what those things could have been.
Then Brid announces she has a plan. Since the pigs won’t do their job, she’ll do it for them. Tonight she’ll stay up and patrol the orchard.
Maggie suggests it might not be the best idea. What would Brid do if the culprits showed up? There could be a whole gang. What Maggie doesn’t say is that she’ll have to join her out there, and that means there’ll be even less time with George Ray.
In the moment she has this thought, George Ray tells Brid he’ll patrol with her. Maggie emits a noise of protest before lapsing into silence.
The rest of the day, Brid spends no time in bed. Instead, she stalks the orchard. Near midnight, alone at the bedroom window, Maggie watches the beams from two flashlights bounce and sway down the lanes, sometimes in tandem, sometimes apart, dancing their pas de deux in the darkness. It’s one-thirty before George Ray comes to bed, his fingers and toes like ice.
“I do not approve of this climate,” he says. She makes a long game of warming him up. Then, as she’s drifting off, he remarks, “You know, she thinks it’s Wale hiding out there and writing those things.”
“She said that?”
Surely Brid can’t be so deluded as to believe such a thing. But before Maggie falls asleep, she entertains her own fantasy that it’s Fletcher, driving here in the night from Boston to harass her. She knows it couldn’t really be him. There’s only a small, persistent part of her looking for evidence that he still has feelings for her: if not ordinary love, then at least something wounded and a bit insane.
The diner in Virgil is sandwiched between the post office and a jewellery store, with a neon sign that’s never lit and a plate glass window looking in on a deep, narrow space. There are half a dozen stools at the lunch counter, seemingly always occupied by the same handful of men, and a few booths that have sat empty during each of Maggie’s meetings with Lenka over the course of the fall. This time Lenka is already ensconced in the one nearest the back when Maggie arrives.
“How was the time with grandmother?” Lenka asks as Maggie settles across from her. “She was horrible to you?” Before Maggie left for Syracuse, she told Lenka a lot about Gran.
“It could have been worse,” Maggie replies. “She was too distracted by the funeral to bother much with me.”
“You tell her of buying farm?” At their last meeting Lenka decided this was something Maggie needed to communicate.
Maggie confirms that she did, but her mind is elsewhere. She wants to tell Lenka about the money. On the drive over, her thoughts kept flitting between it and the graffiti until her head ached. She’s tired of keeping the secret. If she told George Ray, he’d wonder why she didn’t share the news with him sooner, and obviously she can’t tell Brid. But the last six weeks Lenka has been kind and solicitous, respectful of Maggie’s grief, sensitive enough to avoid subjects like miracles and faith. Maggie needs someone who’ll tell her the right thing to do.
She glances around the diner. The men perched on their stools present a row of hunched shoulders like vultures on a wire. The waitress approaches to pour their coffee, then retreats. No, it isn’t safe. But Lenka seems to sense Maggie’s thoughts slipping away and pursues them like a terrier down a foxhole.
“What is it? Tell me.”
“I was just thinking,” says Maggie. “About money.”
“Josef and I, we wonder if you have enough.”
Maggie doesn’t like the idea of them discussing her. “You encouraged me to buy the farm,” she reminds her.
“It is just that we worry about you—”
“You don’t need to,” declares Maggie. “I have a lot of money. My father sent it just before he died.” Lenka’s eyes grow wide. “Can you keep a secret? Even from Josef?”
Lenka hesitates, then nods.
Speaking in a low voice, Maggie explains about the clay saint and her father’s hinting letter. She tells of Wale’s return to Laos and her bewilderment regarding what to do. When she has finished, Lenka asks how much money there is. Reluctantly, as if this is the most private detail of all, Maggie divulges the number.
Lenka gives a low whistle. “What will you do with this sum?” she asks.
Maggie admits it’s still sitting where she found it, waiting for her to decide. An expression of understanding crosses Lenka’s face. “Ah, I see problem. You think it looks bad for father.”
Maggie feels herself bristle. “I don’t care about how the Church sees him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Still, until now you do not go to police.” Before Maggie can explain, Lenka says, “Of cour
se, you do not hand it away. It is last thing father sends you. He wants you to have it.”
“Maybe he’d rather I donated it to the mission. I did write people in Laos. I tried to find out what happened.” More than she’d like, she feels a need for Lenka to absolve her.
Lenka sits there looking ruminative. Finally she says, “I wonder, why you tell this thing to me?” Without waiting for Maggie’s reply, she says, “I think if I ask psychologist, he tell me you really want Josef to know. However, you wish not to ruin father’s reputation before man of God, so you confess to sister instead. This is right?”
“No, it’s not,” says Maggie indignantly.
“Maggie, in spiritual matters I must not serve as substitute.”
“For God’s sake,” she mutters. “I just wanted to hear what you thought.”
To change the subject, she asks what’s new for Josef in the parish. Lenka knows very well that Maggie has little interest in the matter, but obligingly she starts into a story about the church’s leaky roof. As she does, the fact of Maggie’s sitting there seems ever more preposterous. She doesn’t care about the church roof; she doesn’t care about anything in this place. It has been foolish of her to imagine taking over the farm for good. Was it only so she could plan George Ray’s return in the spring? If his presence is so necessary, she shouldn’t be here wasting time with Lenka.
Maggie glances at her watch, and Lenka asks if she’s keeping her from something.
“I need to get home,” she replies, reaching for her purse. Without much enthusiasm on either side, they exchange a promise to see each other soon.
As she drives back to the farm, it strikes her that there is less consolation to be found in other people than she keeps hoping there will be. Perhaps once George Ray’s gone and Brid has returned to Boston, solitude won’t be as terrible as Maggie has feared. It could be the making of her. She turns onto the gravel road almost wanting it already.
Upstairs, the door to Brid’s room is closed and the silence is unnerving. Steeling herself, Maggie knocks. When there’s no reply, she pushes open the door. The air inside is sour with bed smells and burnt toast. A pair of slippers lies askew on the floor, and there’s an arm sticking out from behind the bed. No, it’s a towel, twisted and flesh toned. Brid sits near the window looking at the orchard, still in her nightie though it’s after three, her legs hidden in a plaid sleeping bag she has taken to dragging around the house with her like some larval creature not yet fully free of its cocoon.
“If we cut down some trees, I could see right to the wrecker’s wall,” Brid says. “Then I could keep a lookout from here.”
“Don’t you want to come downstairs?” Maggie asks. “Have you had lunch?” Brid gestures to a plate on the windowsill littered with bread crumbs, but Maggie knows it’s been there since last night.
“I like it better up here,” says Brid. “It’s safer.”
Ten days ago Maggie would have asked what was so unsafe about downstairs. Since Brid’s arrival she sees things like the gas oven and bottles of bleach in a different light.
“You wouldn’t have to worry,” she says. “I’d stay with you.”
“Babysitting, huh?”
“Don’t be silly.” The truth is she’ll end up watching over Brid wherever she is, and there’s no pleasure in the idea of lurking by the bedroom door. “Hey, why don’t we watch the Super 8 film? I haven’t seen it since—well, since the party.”
Brid gives her a disdainful look. She’s right, it’s idiotic to suggest such a thing. Why would Brid want to revisit that time, with all those shots of Wale and Pauline? But then Brid changes her mind and says a screening would be a good idea. She starts out of the room trailing her sleeping bag while Maggie tries to guess what has fired her enthusiasm. Some spurt of masochism, perhaps. Following her into the playroom, Maggie finds her already sprawled across the floor and staring at the wall. Maggie sets up the projector, settles on a chair beside it, and starts it running.
The first image to greet them is one imprinted on her mind from dozens of viewings: the camper van passing down the highway. Then there’s a shot of Fletcher talking behind the wheel with the sunlight flashing in his glasses. After the encounter at the funeral, it’s a surprise to see him with his moustache and long hair restored, looking like a dime-store disguise. Maybe the clean-shaven version of him at the funeral was the real one all along. She imagines him flirting with a secretary in his office at Morgan Sugar, offering to take her for a spin in his Bentley. He always claimed to love the camper van, yet when he finally admitted he wasn’t coming back, he relinquished it to Maggie with a surprising indifference, as if she and the vehicle were to be discarded together.
Next begins the sequence of Pauline leading the tour of the farmhouse. During summer screenings of this reel, Maggie focused on taking in the rooms’ appearance, totting up the improvements made to them. This time her attention’s drawn to the girl, who cavorts through the frame with a painful innocence. Maggie glances at Brid.
“It’s okay,” Brid says, her gaze fixed on the screen. “I can handle it.” But her face is wretched.
From that point on, Maggie watches each scene imagining how Brid must see it. There’s Pauline playing with Fletcher in the barracks, then the breakfast after Wale’s arrival, with all Brid’s eagerness to please him on display. Until now, watching this sequence, Maggie has only ever thought of Brid as pestering, but there she is making everyone a meal with neither help nor gratitude.
Beside her, Brid is crying. “I was such a bitch,” she whispers. Maggie moves to turn off the projector, but Brid tells her not to stop it. “I can take it, really. Come here, will you?” She unzips the sleeping bag and opens the flap as if turning a page. Maggie sits down next to her, and Brid puts an arm around her waist.
With amazing precision, the film matches Maggie’s memories from the summer, not just in terms of what she remembers but in the way she recalls it. There are the same jump-cuts and freeze-frames, the same lack of depth and texture. It’s as if the contents of her brain have been assembled by her former self while she bent over the editing machine.
Before she’s conscious of what has happened, they’ve reached the crucial scene in the final reel. A second later, just as she expects the appearance of Fletcher naked in the bedroom, she’s plunged into a shot of the baseball game. It’s what he told her he’d done, yet it’s still astonishing.
Then she remembers the final, added clip about to greet them.
“We can stop it here,” she says, hurrying to turn off the projector.
“Yeah,” says Brid. “I don’t know if I could handle that bit with Pauline and the dead birds.”
Maggie can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You’ve watched it?”
“At Fletcher’s last month,” says Brid, seeming unperturbed. “He had some friends over to screen the whole thing. You know, for laughs.”
Immediately she can picture it: Fletcher in his parents’ recreation room with his fraternity pals and Brid, maybe a few Boston debutantes thrown in for good measure, all of them in hysterics from his stories about that crazy chick and her camera, nobody mentioning his own attempt at filmmaking. Maggie slumps across the sleeping bag and lies on her stomach with the floor hard against her cheek.
“He never really cared about this place, did he?” she says. “Or about me. He just wanted to get away from his dad.”
“He did care,” says Brid. “He was all broke up after the news about the baby.”
Maggie hears this and can’t suppress her irritation. “Why does everyone say it like that? There was no baby.”
“Oh.” Brid seems doubtful. “Well, Fletcher thinks there was.” Brid sees her confusion and adds, “He figured you had an abortion.”
Maggie lifts her head, then lets it fall, the veins in her temples throbbing. “How could he think that?” It seems impossible. “I explained to him what happened.”
“You were so sure you were pregnant, and then suddenly y
ou weren’t,” says Brid.
Maggie scrambles to reconfigure October in her memory. She only ever worried about him thinking she’d faked it.
“He wasn’t ever going to come back, was he?” she says. “Even if there was a baby.” It’s something she realized long ago, but still a gloom falls on her. She remembers the doctor’s consultation room, the news of the test result, and the man’s pity along with his disbelief. “At first the doctor thought I’d had an abortion too.” She winces at the recollection. “I stopped smoking, took vitamins …”
“Of course, honey. Nobody’s blaming you.”
“I never really wanted to be a mother,” Maggie finds herself saying. “Didn’t know the first thing about raising a child—” Abruptly she realizes how these words might be heard by Brid, and to change the subject she asks, “Did you think I got rid of it?”
“Oh sure,” Brid replies. “But I thought you did it because it was Wale’s.” She speaks in a breezy way, as if there’s nothing at stake in what she’s saying.
“How could you think that?” exclaims Maggie.
“Look at the movie.” Brid points to the blank wall. “The bastard’s always watching you. You seem pretty keen on him, too, the way the camera stays on his face.”
Maggie sits up and tries not to look away from Brid as she speaks. “Honestly, there was nothing.” There’s a temptation to say more, but they’ve reached dangerous territory and she needs to get them onto something else. Still, to her horror, she hears herself ask, “Have you heard from him?”
“Not once since he left.” Brid’s face grows suspicious.
“Why, have you?”
Maggie shakes her head and Brid’s attention drifts away. When it returns, there’s a plaintive note in her voice. “He liked this place, you know. He was always saying good things about it. About you, too.”
Maggie feels her face go red. “I never heard him say anything nice. He only ever made fun of the farm—and of me.”
“That’s Wale. He finds something he likes, he kicks the tires a lot.” Brid smirks in a way that seems to hurt her. “I tried not to be jealous. I was glad, really. Figured he might stay around longer because of you. So much for that, huh?”
Once We Had a Country Page 25