The Winter Wives

by Linden MacIntyre

  I moved to the city, came home on weekends. I focused exclusively on my studies. I did well, and in my final year I was recruited by a well-connected city law firm.

  At some point Allan wrote that he’d been seeing quite a lot of Peggy Winter, and that she asked him about me all the time.

  They’d reconnected in Toronto. The chemistry was obviously clicking this time. He’d tried to persuade her to move down south with him. But she was stubborn. No way was she moving to Florida. Unlike him, she loved the cold. Well-named she was, he wrote. Peggy Winter. She liked Toronto. Didn’t like Americans all that much.

  She was working for a large real estate developer. Doing great. A crackerjack accountant. Qualifications up the ying-yang. Sharp. As. A. Tack.

  Occasionally she’d visit Allan in Fort Lauderdale. We three should arrange a get-together here, he said. For old times’ sake.

  I’d stopped reading his letter for a moment. I was trying to remember where she was when I’d last thought about her.

  At the end of one of his letters, he added a PS: Get laid. It’s fun. You’re overdue. It’s easy. Really.

  That stung. I put the letter down, then picked it up and reread the line.

  Me getting laid? Peggy getting laid? By Allan? By other men besides Allan?

  Why did it sting? Eventually I concluded my upset wasn’t about them at all. It was about me. I just didn’t understand the lives of other people.

  I began to pay more attention to the world around me. Even people I thought I knew now mystified me. People are inscrutable surfaces. They are social fabrications, concealing private lives that are unknowable to me.

  Perhaps it was just as well that my private life was equally unknowable to almost everyone. It was suddenly weird to me that, for one thing, I was a twenty-five-year-old virgin, living mostly with my mom. It seemed unimaginable and, looking back, I suppose it was. Not just the virginity. But my lack of awareness, before that moment, that I was really different—a difference that was only indirectly related to my limp.

  * * *

  —

  I had tried once to be normal, at least as I understood it to be “normal” from overheard high school conversations. I was probably about nineteen. The girl and I had parked somewhere private, a place where, according to the gossip, normalcy was always going on.

  A warm summer evening on a hillside from where you could see the glitter of the town, the dark nothingness of the sea beyond, perhaps a slash of moonlight in the distance. A hill on which virginity could die unnoticed.

  I was in the midst of trying, but when I seemed to be getting close, the girl whispered in a breathless way, Please. Don’t.

  I’d been told by someone with experience—maybe it was Allan—that most girls will say please don’t to satisfy their conscience, and that you had to push past that. But I didn’t.

  I put the brakes on right away.

  –Sorry, I said.

  –That’s okay.

  And then there was a roaring sound.

  –What’s that?

  She’d been fumbling in her purse for her pack of cigarettes, but she was suddenly very still, listening.

  The sound grew louder, came closer, seemingly from nowhere. A winter sound, but it was summer. I was confused, clammy with adrenalin.

  She straightened up, and moved away from me.

  –You don’t happen to have matches?

  –Aren’t you hearing that?

  –Yes, she said.

  –You can really hear that?

  –God yes.

  –It sounds like a snowmobile.

  –A snowmobile? No, for God’s sake, it’s—

  Bouncing headlights moved quickly, wildly, in our direction. Jesus, I said, and got out of the truck, hobbling toward the lights and the noise. I could see now there was more than one machine, coming straight at me. I stumbled and fell, deafened by the sound. And just before they were on top of me, they spun away. A volley of small stones rattled off the truck.

  She came to me where I was sitting on the ground and helped me to my feet.

  We stared into the darkness until the noise was gone and there was nothing left to look at but the twinkle in the sky, the distant glow of town. I had a pounding headache.

  –Guys on dirt bikes, she said. They come up here all the time. Just to see who’s here. I think I know them.

  I nodded.

  I drove her home. Hugged her in the porch. Interpreted her silence as gratitude. Later, someone told me she was telling people I was strange, that I was cold.

  It was the summer just before the summer Sundays on the boat with Peggy.

  * * *

  —

  Mom was surprised when I started coming home from work in Halifax on Friday evenings. Then she came to expect me. I felt normal in Malignant Cove. I felt safer here, in control. There were no social pressures on the farm. And, increasingly, I realized that I was needed here. Mom was getting older and I suppose she really started feeling old once we’d given up the farming and fishing. She had been in her late thirties when she married Dad, early forties when I came along. So, she was already well on in her sixties when I became a lawyer.

  She now had too much time for looking back. Until then she’d been mostly preoccupied with the here and now, and perhaps a future that still held pleasant possibilities. Now she had only the unalterable past to stew about. I now can see it’s where many of her future problems started.

  One Friday night, just after I got that letter from Allan, Mom mentioned Peggy for the first time in years.

  –I hear that the young one you used to hang around with, that Peggy Winter, she’s away in the city somewhere. Halifax, I imagine. You must see her there.

  –She’s in Toronto.

  –I suppose she writes.

  –Not to me.

  –I was just wondering, is all. I understand her sister came back from Boston some time ago.

  –Annie. That makes sense. I’ve heard she has a business here, in town.

  –What kind of business?

  –She’s an accountant.

  –Do tell.

  –I don’t know her very well, I said.

  –They say she and Peggy are complete opposites. You’d never know they were related.

  –That could be, I said.

  –I’m sure they’ve turned into lovely people, the both of them.

  * * *

  —

  The senior guys at the law firm kept the high-profile criminal and corporate stuff for themselves and steered the intellectual property and family law in my direction. I seemed to have a way of dealing with the anxieties of ordinary people who find themselves ensnared in legal matters, people pitted against each other, pitted against power. Conflict was my bread and butter.

  I think it was Hobbes who once said that conflict always boils down to domination and avoiding death, the two great driving forces in human nature. I could see it everywhere, every day. The way the office worked. The way the city worked. The posturing in courtrooms, bars, in grocery stores, in cars at the stoplights. Everybody gunning engines, positioning themselves to dominate.

  Managing conflict is a more than full-time job and I suspected the partners thought that going home for weekends was self-indulgent. But they didn’t have the balls to challenge me. Or maybe it was condescension: cut the lame guy a little extra slack. Like it or resent it, it worked for me.

  Most of the time I kept my head down, stuck to my own files, and came and went more or less the way I wanted to.

  And so I was startled when a senior partner grasped my arm one afternoon, just above the elbow, his way of saying he had something serious to discuss.

  –Got a minute?

  –Of course.

  He followed me into my small enclosure and sat down.

/>   –I have a client coming in half an hour, a fellow from down your way. I’d like for you to sit in.

  –Sure.

  He stood, smiled.

  –You have a way with people. We have high hopes for you.

  The client was a middle-aged lawyer, someone I remembered from home—a senior partner in a politically active firm that I had actually considered when I was looking for a place to article. He seemed relaxed, sitting at a long table in a meeting room.

  –Byron, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Jack, this is Byron. He’s from out your way. Jack and I were in law school together. Well before your time, of course.

  Jack stood, stuck out his hand. He was physically impressive, tall and lean-jawed, with engaging eyes that instantly invited familiarity.

  –Byron, yes. We’ve followed your career. I hope you’re being well treated here.

  –Couldn’t ask for better, I said.

  Jack smiled. I sat down opposite him.

  –Jack needs our help clearing up a misunderstanding. I thought this would be a chance for you to spread your wings a bit, Byron.

  –I’m always ready for a challenge, I said.

  The partner was still standing.

  –I’ll let you guys chat a bit. Jack, stick your head into my office before you go. Let me know how you want to proceed.

  Jack seemed curious about me, asking questions about my experience, what I had studied, who I knew back home, people prominent in business, politics, the law.

  I didn’t hesitate in telling him I really didn’t know anybody of importance, but I was well aware of anyone who mattered.

  –You’re from out Malignant Cove way, I gather. Your dad was a fisherman?

  I confirmed it.

  –He’s still with us?

  –No. Dad passed. More than ten years ago.

  –So sorry to hear that.

  –Thank you.

  –So, here’s the thing, Byron. I don’t know how much you’ve had to do with miscarriages of justice. I mean, the media is full of stories nowadays. I just never thought I’d ever be part of one of those stories. But here I am.

  I sympathized.

  He told me he was facing an array of charges arising from a casual relationship he’d been having with someone he believed to be a consenting female adult.

  –I was in a state of personal crisis. You follow?

  I followed.

  He thought that he was dealing with an adult. He found out she wasn’t when they became intimate. He should have stopped it then and there. But he didn’t.

  –She’d easily have passed for twenty-one at least. Maybe older.

  She was actually thirteen.

  –She has a couple of crackpot parents. They found out about us and bullied her to get evidence so they could come after me.

  –What kind of evidence?

  –Photographs.

  –You let her take pictures?

  –She set me up. She liked playing games. We took pictures of each other.

  –Let me guess—with her camera.

  He nodded.

  –What’s your status right now? I asked.

  –Charged. Statutory fucking rape.

  –How do you think we should proceed?

  –Aggressively, for sure. I don’t want anything to do with a jury.

  –Juries can be persuaded.

  –Not with this family. Dad’s a professor of sociology. Mom’s a pastor of some description.

  –We can probably work with the daughter’s physical appearance, I said.

  –Yes. Nowadays any female over ten years old seems to want to look like a tart.

  He shrugged, looked away. He seemed to drift for a moment, then said,

  –How old are you, anyway?

  –I’m twenty-eight.

  He stared at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. He exhaled.

  –Well, well. That would be about right.

  –What do you mean?

  –So, about twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, when I was starting out, I sat in on a trial. Some fisherman from the shore beat the shit out of his brother-in-law. But there was a lot more to it. Ring any bells?

  –I’d have been five or six at the time.

  I managed a smile, straightened my notepad.

  –It’s just such a bizarre coincidence, he said. You did have an uncle named Angus? Right?

  –Yes.

  He nodded.

  –I don’t want to seem indelicate, but did he not do away with himself, back twenty-some years ago?

  –Like I said, I was five or six.

  –We never know the whole story. But that never stops people from jumping to conclusions, he said.

  –I’ll be in touch.

  11.

  The coffee room at work was also the smoking room before the powers that be banished smoking to the sidewalks. Because of the relentless haze, I only went there when I was desperate for a caffeine hit. The coffee sucked. The smokers didn’t give a shit about the quality—a cup of coffee was only an excuse to have a cigarette. But, for me, drinking the office sludge was easier than hobbling outside to where the non-smoking coffee snobs were always going for their special brews. One morning, as I entered the wretched little room, the chatter dropped suddenly to an awkward silence, one word still hanging in mid-air.

  Pedophile.

  It stopped me in my tracks. When I realized that everybody was staring, I took a deep breath and smiled around. I filled my mug and left.

  Later, one of the morning’s smokers came by my cubicle. She kept a hard focus on my face, my eyes, as she made small talk. Just before she turned to leave, she said, Look, I hope you didn’t take that the wrong way, back there, in the coffee room.

  –Not at all, I said.

  –I mean, it was and it wasn’t about you. But it wasn’t what you think.

  –And what should I think?

  –We’re all feeling bad for you, having to defend that bugger. We all think the world of you.

  She said that with such enthusiasm it surprised me.

  * * *

  —

  That Saturday evening at home, I decided it was time to ask Mom a direct question.

  –What do you remember about when Dad was on trial?

  –What?

  –Nobody ever told me what it was all about.

  –Why are you bringing this up now?

  –It came up at work.

  –Came up how?

  –I can’t talk about that, except to say it involved a client. But did the trial have something to do with my uncle Angus?

  –For the love of God…

  –I got asked if I had an uncle Angus.

  She stared at me for a moment, her chin trembling.

  –Some things are best forgotten.

  She got up and left the room, slowly climbed the stairs.

  She didn’t come back down until it was suppertime, and she stayed silent as we ate, her mind a thousand miles away, it seemed. When we’d finished eating, I told her I’d clear and wash the dishes but that, afterwards, I had to go to town to see a client. A lie, of course.

  She made no reply, just headed for the stairs, moving slowly. She didn’t say good night.

  Driving to town, my thoughts drifted back to Allan’s letter three years earlier, and that I had yet to follow his advice. Get laid.

  I was indifferent to the challenge but speculated as I drove toward town: What would it be like to have a date? To be conscious that someone, somewhere, was waiting for me? Looking in a mirror maybe, determined to look her best. Or his best. I doubt if it’s much different one way or another.

  Maybe someday. For now, I just had to get out of the house.

  I headed for a quiet lounge that was p
art of a motel next to a strip mall and the town’s liquor store. I went in. Considered the menu briefly. Ordered a drink. And then another drink.

  After about three, I admitted: this place is dead. Stone. Cold. Dead. I asked myself: What were you expecting? Some kind of city scene? Young professionals draped over each other, chatter loaded with hot insinuation, faces shining in anticipation of late night hookups?

  Soft country music hung in the air. I could make out Patsy Cline. Or maybe k.d. lang, who sounded eerily like Patsy. There was one other table occupied by a silent couple, staring off in opposite directions. In the movies, there’s a bar where lonely women perch on stools and wait for interesting strangers. At this bar, there was a bartender, back to the room, arms folded, watching a hockey game on television.

  What a waste of time this is, I thought. It would probably even be a waste of time if the place was full of people, because they’d all be more or less like me. Kind of lonely. Kind of needy. Kind of bored. I drained my glass.

  And then, the door opened and who should arrive on a gust of merry voices but Peggy’s sister. Annie. Annie Winter.

  She noticed me and waved. I waved back. I paid my bill. I stopped by her table. She was with a young married couple I recognized and another couple I had never seen before. Annie introduced me, called me a hotshot lawyer from the city. Someone asked how we knew each other. Annie told them she and I went way, way back, all the way to high school. She was all smiles. She didn’t look at all like Peggy, I realized.

  I was suddenly feeling loose. I made a joke about how wild the town bar scene was. We joked about how we’d managed to become strangers in a little town like this. She told me later that this was a Byron she’d never seen before, never even knew existed.

  –We must have coffee sometime, I said as I got up to leave.

  –I’d love that, she said.

  Driving home, I wondered, Really? It’s that simple?

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t as if Annie was a substitute for Peggy. Not at all. They couldn’t be more different. But Allan was so right. It was fun.