Once We Had a Country

by Robert Mcgill

  Maggie tries to transmit some sort of empathy through her eyes, but Brid appears uncomfortable being looked at in such a manner.

  “Sweetie, what are we going to do here?” she says. “You can’t just wait all winter for George Ray to come back. Is it a Catholic thing, this devotion to misery?”

  Maggie frowns and turns away.

  “Say something, would you?” implores Brid. “God, you drive me crazy, the way you just sit there.”

  Maggie can’t help herself. “I drive you crazy? The things you say to me—”

  “I only say them so you’ll respond.” Brid flops onto her back, then lies there with her chest rising and falling for so long Maggie wonders if she’s gone to sleep. “There were nights,” says Brid, breaking the illusion, “awful nights, the last couple of months, when I thought about calling you. A few times I almost did.”

  “You should have,” says Maggie. She reaches down to push Brid’s hair out of her eyes, but Brid seems not to notice.

  “No, that kind of phone call is like heroin. Do it once and you can’t stop. Soon nobody answers and you don’t have any friends left to call.” Her gaze starts on a wandering path around the room. “Weird being back without Pauline. In the summer I was terrified she’d drown in the creek. At first she cried for hours in that camper van, but I wouldn’t let her into the house because of the gas, remember? She thinks my name is Bread. Isn’t that funny?”

  Maggie wants to be supportive, to leave behind her own petty self and enter Brid’s sadness with her, but she can’t quite do it. Reeling through her is the thought that Fletcher thinks she got rid of their child. She needs to be alone to deal with it. Looking toward the door, she hopes for George Ray to appear, to save her and Brid from whatever is about to come.

  “Don’t worry,” says Brid. “I’m not going to freak out.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  “You were. You’re wondering where George Ray is.” She seems more resigned than offended. “I wish I could keep it inside like you, with the surface all shiny and perfect, but I can’t. I’m like that wall.”

  She gestures to the claw marks where Fletcher threw the reels. Maggie has always thought of the wall as purely white, but as she studies it now, imperfections reveal themselves: stains and cracks, and a long vertical line where a joist behind the drywall has swollen. She wonders why Brid, who knows her so well in certain respects, who sometimes appears to read her thoughts, should fail to recognize how Maggie might be a bit like that wall too.

  That night, Brid beats her fists against her mattress. The world is a rotten place. She wants to kill herself, and she says it’s because she watched that goddamned film. Maggie sits at her bedside and responds to every twitch and moan with a hand on her back. After a time Brid calls for Elliot. When he appears, she squeezes him until he struggles away and hops off the bed. Brid reaches after him and gives a hitched sob.

  It’s close to midnight before Maggie slides into her own bed next to George Ray. They fall into exhausted, muffled sex. A month ago she imagined that making love in these final days would gain an added tenderness, but she’s so tired that it feels as though the two of them are strangers.

  That night, she dreams she’s her father. Or rather, she’s in her father’s person, lost in the jungle with Yia Pao’s son, following the same muddy goat track she has imagined in waking life. Holding the child makes balancing treacherous. Then it comes to her that the baby isn’t Yia Pao’s; it’s hers. Her father took the child to Laos, and now it’s in her arms. She looks for chances to leave the trail and save them both, knowing what lies ahead, but her legs are compelled along the path. She starts watching for tripwires while the baby wriggles in her arms, growing smaller until it’s no bigger than a mouse and scampers from her grasp.

  The telephone wakes her, ringing and ringing with nobody to answer it. George Ray is no longer in the bed beside her. Even though she takes her time going downstairs, her mind still half tethered to the world of the dream, the ringing doesn’t stop, so that when she picks up the phone, she’s thinking there must be some technical malfunction. After she says hello, a woman speaks to her in George Ray’s accent.

  “Is this Miss Dunne? Miss Dunne, my name is Velma Ransom. I’m sorry for disturbing you. Please, may I talk to George Ray?”

  The voice is calm and civil, knowing no grievance, feeling no betrayal.

  “Yes, of course. Wait, I’ll find him.” Putting down the receiver, she leaves the house and meets George Ray halfway across the lawn. There’s a pair of buckets in his hands. “It’s your wife. On the phone. She sounds so lovely!”

  He frowns, sets down the buckets, and hurries past her toward the house. From the mud room door she hears him talking angrily, almost shouting, louder than she’s ever heard him speak, in sentences she doesn’t understand.

  “George Ray,” she says from the doorway, not daring to enter the room, and he looks up as if mystified by her presence.

  “What is it?” There’s no affection in his voice.

  “Call back.”

  “Why?” He seems bewildered by the idea.

  “It’s expensive for her to phone here. Hang up and call her back.”

  “Expensive. Yes,” he says, quieter now. “Thank you. That’s just what I was telling her.” He seems to say it partly for Maggie’s sake, partly for the woman at the other end of the line. Then he tells his wife he’ll ring her back in a moment. Once he has set down the phone, he calls Maggie’s name, but by that time she’s upstairs and doesn’t answer. Let him come and find her if he wants. She waits and waits, willing his arrival so hard she gets a headache, so hard it’s a surprise when an hour has passed and still he isn’t there.

  10

  Twenty-four hours before George Ray is due to depart, he enters the kitchen to tell them there’s more graffiti on the wall. This time it says YANKEES GO HOME. Hearing this, Maggie just laughs; the message seems safely impersonal, clichéd. Brid is less sanguine. She vows to resume her nighttime patrols, and she only grows more adamant when Maggie says she doesn’t want her in the orchard on her own. Then, after lunch, George Ray tells Maggie he’s going to spend the afternoon working. There are saplings that need attention if they’re to survive the winter, and he wants to earn his final day’s wages honestly. When Maggie suggests working alongside him, he points out that someone has to mind Brid, and reluctantly she agrees, so Brid and Maggie stay indoors playing cards. At one point Brid asks why they can’t just spend the afternoon helping him, and Maggie finds herself replying that he prefers to be on his own. It strikes her as a lie and the truth at the same time.

  At least he comes in for dinner. Then it’s Brid who’s reluctant to join them, saying she doesn’t want to get in the way of their final supper together. She has to be cajoled into sitting down. Even after she does, it’s a miserable meal, with Brid poking at her lasagna and George Ray idly swirling the wine in his glass.

  “Don’t drink this stuff in Newcross,” he says. “Could be the last till next summer.” He downs it in one long swallow. After dinner he insists on washing the dishes and Brid grabs the towel to dry, so Maggie’s left at the table blowing ripples across the surface of her tea.

  “Hey!” cries Brid angrily as Maggie’s in the middle of a sip. At first she thinks it’s something she’s done; then she sees Brid running into the mud room. “There’s somebody out there. Hey!” In her bare feet and nightie, Brid charges into the yard.

  By the time they get their shoes on to follow, she’s disappeared. Neither George Ray nor Maggie has thought to grab a flashlight, so once they enter the orchard, the way becomes treacherous. They’re crossing flat ground, yet it seems to rise like a mountain beneath them. The blinking lights of the radio towers on the horizon have the coldness of stars. Maggie keeps thinking they’ve found Brid and turns out to be wrong. The kneeling figure is just a propane tank; the person swinging from a rope is a rubber tire.

  Before Brid comes into sight, they hear her cu
rsing as she bumps into things. Once they reach her, Maggie hugs her with relief.

  “He’s out here,” says Brid.

  Maggie looks around and sees only the farmhouse lights along with a bright blue moon fending off clouds. When she asks who it is, Brid says she doesn’t know, and Maggie can’t help but feel doubtful. “Just one person? Are you sure—”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Could have been a deer,” says George Ray.

  “You think I don’t know the difference?”

  He gazes into the night. “No good being out here without lights. Best call the police.”

  Maggie agrees and suggests they go back to the house. Brid says she isn’t leaving when someone’s on the property.

  “You’re not even wearing shoes—” Maggie begins.

  “I’ll stay,” says George Ray. “You two go inside. If he’s here, I’ll find him.”

  Maggie shouldn’t be angry. George Ray’s just trying to help. But his willingness to sacrifice his last night with her is hurtful. When he starts off through the trees, she has the feeling that this is the true leaving. Eighteen hours from now, the farm will be nothing more than a speck below his plane. He’ll be free of Canada and on the way back to his wife.

  As soon as Maggie’s in the house, she wants to set out again and find him, but she dares not leave Brid alone, so they watch television and Maggie fidgets. After a few minutes Brid turns to her.

  “Go,” she says.

  Maggie’s unsure of what she means.

  “Go out to him,” says Brid. “I’m sorry, I should have said it sooner. I’ll be fine.”

  Maggie studies her face to see if it’s some kind of trick. Then she stands with a grateful smile, drapes an afghan over Brid’s shoulders, and heads back to the orchard, this time with a flashlight. She finds George Ray sitting on a stump near the wrecker’s wall, his hands shoved in his pockets and his collar turtled over his ears.

  “Come inside,” she says. “What are you doing out here? It’s our last night.” Her tone is more imploring than she’d like.

  “I’ve been praying,” he replies.

  Praying. He has never talked about doing such a thing. Why would he pray now? They still haven’t spoken about Velma’s phone call yesterday.

  “Pray later,” she says, tugging on his sleeve in a way she hopes is humorous. “You’ll always have God, you won’t always have me.”

  He only draws his chin further down and mumbles into his collar. “You don’t want me in there. You want the place to yourself. I’ve seen the way you’re getting it ready—tidying up, making it how you like it.”

  The words strike her like a slap. “That isn’t what I’m doing. I’m just trying to cope with you leaving.”

  He doesn’t seem to register what she has said. “What happens if you find some other fellow this winter?” he complains. “What if your man Fletcher turns up? Probably he’ll tell you not to hire Jamaicans anymore.”

  Is this what George Ray has been thinking? “I’m going to bring you back,” she insists.

  “You say that now.”

  “Why are you acting like this?” The pain of it is nearly physical. “We both understood how things were going to be. It’s what you wanted.”

  “How do you know that? Never asked me. You make all the decisions yourself.” His words have a growing unreality. “You haven’t even farmed before. By the time I’m back here, you could bankrupt the place.”

  Why is he talking about money? Could he know what’s in the statue? Maybe she should just give it to him. She’s had this thought before but figured he would never touch it if he knew its origins. That’s the kind of person she has understood him to be. Right now she isn’t so certain.

  “I’m the one being left,” she says. “You’ll go home and have someone in your bed.”

  “I know what will happen. In the spring you’ll pay the men too-high wages and think you’re doing them a favour. You’ll feel good about yourself for living off the land while they break their backs to grow your fruit. Then you’ll run out of money and have to send everyone home.”

  She doesn’t know how to respond. The shock isn’t just in his saying it but in the possibility that it could be true. She hasn’t asked him for advice, assuming she needs to work out for herself how to manage until he returns. And he hasn’t breathed a word of criticism; he’s just let her go on indulging her fantasies while he’s built up this resentment.

  “Canada, the land of plenty,” he mutters. “I got plenty of things from Canada, all right. Got tendinitis, got old, got a wife who sleeps with the neighbour.” He looks at Maggie grimly. “That’s why Velma telephoned last night. She didn’t want a scene at home.” Lowering his eyes, he adds, “Doesn’t want me coming back at all.”

  Oh, thinks Maggie. So that’s what’s going on.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Are you still going back to Newcross?” she asks, and George Ray nods.

  “What else can I do? Work permit’s finished. Government doesn’t care if Velma takes up with the fellow next door. Besides, I have children.” He looks at Maggie with cheerless eyes. “My daughter blames me, you know. On the phone she told me her mama needs a full-time man. How do you think it is to hear your own child tell you that?”

  Maggie says again that she’s sorry and draws him against her. “You could emigrate. Bring the children with you—”

  “Why would they want to come here? They already have a home.” He starts to pull away. “Let’s go back. We should get to sleep. I have an early flight, remember?”

  “Wait, not quite yet. Stay out with me a little more, please? Just for a while?”

  He lays his head against her shoulder, and they stand there holding each other, not speaking or moving, while Maggie hopes for some sign to show them a way forward.

  In bed beside him just before dawn, waiting for the alarm clock to go off, she realizes why the sick feeling in her gut is so familiar. Seven months ago, she took her father to the airport and said goodbye to him as well. She had returned to Syracuse from Boston in the middle of the week so she could see him off to Laos, hoping that if she made the trip, he’d be more likely to forgive her for not going with him and for planning a move to Canada instead.

  The evening before his departure, as they sat in the living room eating dinner from TV trays, it was almost like when she was a girl, except now he was the one who said grace. But the silence afterward was foreboding. When he finally spoke, she fixed her eyes on Bonanza and didn’t take them off.

  “You remember that time I lost you at the Veterans Day parade?” There was the clink of his fork settling on his plate. “You were only six.”

  “Five and a half,” she said, sensing what was ahead.

  “You remember what you said when I found you again?” There was a foolish braveness in his voice, an anticipatory regret, a resentment of her for making him say what he was saying.

  “I’d been scared out of my wits,” she said. “All those old men staring at me …”

  “You said from then on we should each wear one of your mittens, the ones with the string holding them together.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Father Jean says there are plenty of missionaries in Laos who go as families.”

  “Dad, I can’t—”

  “We used to be so close, you and I …”

  “We’re still close.” Her throat closed around the words.

  “Don’t tell lies. It makes it worse.”

  “Maybe I’ll be able to visit—”

  “It’s not a place for tourists, little girl.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “You’re sick of me,” he said. “You ran off to Boston.”

  “I went to college.”

  “As far away as you could.”

  “You don’t think there are farther places?”

 
“As far as you could go and still satisfy your conscience.”

  She had been expecting him to say these things for months, years, ever since she’d left Syracuse, but now she had no strategies to deal with them. Although she had thought of him as the one suppressing everything, suddenly it was her anger that came seething out.

  “Am I a bad daughter, then? You think just anybody would keep coming back to sit here and be preached at?” She stared at him until he flinched. “You don’t even need me, anyhow. You have the Church.”

  It sat between them for a time.

  “You say it like a dirty word.” He gave a wounded sigh. “Perhaps for you it is.”

  A dare, but she refused to accept it. Instead, she fled to her room. Whatever she’d hoped to preserve was gone. They both knew she was the one who’d always looked after him. Who would take care of him now? On top of her dresser sat the box for the Super 8 camera he’d given her at Christmas. It was a selfish present.

  When he knocked, her shame wouldn’t let her answer. The knocking grew louder. He called to her, his voice irate, then beseeching, while she lay paralyzed on her stomach with a pillow pulled around her head so tightly it was hard to breathe. She waited for him to barge into the room, but he stayed in the hall, begging her to reconsider, imploring her to let him in. She couldn’t, because if she saw his face with its desperation and its brokenness, she’d give in to him, she’d go to Laos, and then she’d never be able to forgive him for making her. Better to tell him in the morning that she didn’t want any part of the life he’d chosen. No phone calls, no letters. She needed to find her own way in the world. But she would wait until the airport, until she didn’t have to spend too long dealing with the look in his eyes.

  From the hall, his voice became almost unrecognizable. He was berating her, cursing her, hurling words she’d never heard him use.

  She didn’t answer, didn’t move.