The Winter Wives

by Linden MacIntyre

  –Smuggling drugs is against the law, Allan.

  He smiled.

  –I admire your subtlety, Byron.

  I opened the car door.

  –Wait a minute. You’d be nowhere near the so-called drugs. Anyway, that’s all going to change down the road.

  –You can’t change the past, my friend.

  –I don’t understand the problem, Byron. We’re talking pot here, for God’s sake. A herb. A remedy for whatever ails. It should be fuckin legal anyway. You didn’t give me an answer. What do you think?

  –I think I’m going to stay on the right side of the line.

  –But what about down the road? Look, booze was illegal for a long time. People want this. We could be tomorrow’s Bronfmans.

  –Or yesterday’s Capones.

  –Jee-zus Christ…

  He looked stricken. I noticed, for the first time, how weary he seemed.

  –Okay, Allan. I’ll think it over.

  –I think we could do great things together.

  –Like, for instance?

  –Well, after I’ve earned a ton of money, we do great things with all the money. I mean, what else is money for, man, if not for making your mark?

  –It’s the earning money part that worries me.

  –On that score, I might as well tell you, Peggy has already agreed to be my partner.

  –Your partner? How?

  –Taking care of the money end. Accounting. That’s her magic. But one of these days, we’ll tie the knot. So, come on. We’ll be kind of like a family. Me, Peggy. You, Annie.

  –I’ll think about it.

  –Talk to Annie.

  –Why would I do that?

  –Just talk to her. We’d be a killer team, the four of us.

  He laughed, punched my shoulder. Guys are always doing that for whatever reason. My arm was almost useless for the next half-hour.

  * * *

  —

  His suggestion was more intriguing than I wanted him to know. Not then. But I would spend many sleepless nights after that, struggling with questions that I’m sure have troubled lawyers since forever. About the fine line between protecting and enabling.

  And it wasn’t just an ethical dilemma. Peggy being in the mix made it also about chemistry.

  13.

  It was after that trip to Florida that I noticed the confusion Annie had been warning me about. Mom started getting mixed up about basic things. Even who I was, at times mistaking me for her dead brother.

  She also became argumentative, using expressions I hadn’t heard for years.

  –Your hole is out, she shouted once in the middle of an argument about how to make the tea. The fucking water has to be boiling when you pour it on the tea bag.

  –The what water?

  –You heard me. A rolling boil.

  And then there was her first fall. That might have been another clue. Actually, when you think about it, a clue only becomes a clue in retrospect. A clue only explains something that has already happened. In the moment, her fall told me nothing about what was coming down the pike.

  I heard a crash. And then I heard her swear.

  –FFFFFFU-KH.

  I chuckled. I went to see what happened. I found her on the floor beside a chair she took down with her. Not even trying to get up. You’re going to have to help me.

  Shocking, unprecedented words.

  –You’re going to have to help me. I think I broke something.

  I stood there, braced against the table.

  –My fuck-king hip.

  * * *

  —

  Now I spent my weekends cleaning up the house, preparing meals to last her for the coming week. Annie’s visits became frequent, then regular, pitching in. She’d spend whole weekends. On Monday morning she’d go back to her place in town and I’d return to my city obligations. Mom managed in our absence with the help of home care people.

  In the law office, increasingly I’d opt for routine assignments. Paperwork. Simple cases.

  Mom became my child, a childhood working in reverse, revealed in moments of unconscious transparency. Mental stumbles that drew even more attention to her growing physical unsteadiness. As she became more childlike, it was easy to forget that, like any child, she was destined to be gone one day in the not so distant future. Unlike the child, when she was gone, she wouldn’t be returning.

  The day the doctors sat us all down and told us the prognosis and what we should expect was one of Mom’s good days. When we were back home and settled in, Annie poured drinks. Mom declined, which was unusual.

  –I’ll be able to get away with anything now, she said. Say exactly what I think. All the people I’ve always considered arseholes, now I can just say. People will be just, “There she goes again…it’s only the dementia.”

  –Maybe the doctors are wrong. They can’t know for sure, I said.

  Annie gave me what I took to be a warning glance.

  –However it turns out, we’ll all be here together, looking out for one another, she said.

  Mom was quiet.

  –I don’t think a glass of wine would kill me, she said at last.

  –You’ve always preferred a dry red, I said.

  I poured a glass of Malbec.

  –Maybe.

  –You like Malbec. There was a while it was hard to find around here. We thought it was exotic.

  She nodded, but I could tell from her expression that she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. She sighed.

  –It’s the one thing we never had in our family. Senility, or whatever. I don’t think anybody ever lived long enough to get dementia.

  She laughed.

  –The first time I heard someone mention Alzheimer’s, I thought he said “old-timers.” Old-timers’ disease.

  She sipped. Shifted slightly. Stared at the ceiling.

  –Who knew that dying young was really a blessing in disguise?

  She had a second glass and then she went to bed. I don’t think she ever used that word again. Dementia.

  When the house was quiet, Annie said,

  –You need somebody here, Byron.

  –I’ve got the home care people coming in.

  –No. You need someone full-time. You need to keep working, so it can’t be you.

  –Work and worry, I said.

  –I know a woman. Someone she knows.

  She removed a piece of notepaper from her pocket, placed it on the table. I could see a name and a telephone number written on it.

  –I know she’d be glad to, for little or nothing. You guys are famous up the shore, you and your mom, from the fishing. They still talk about how you carried on after your dad died.

  –That would be the problem, the talking. The weird woman and her weird lame son who just happens to be a lawyer.

  –The one I have in mind is my aunt, Shirley. You wouldn’t have to worry about gossip. I can talk to her. Better still, you should call her.

  She pushed the little sheet of paper toward me.

  –So what about the nights?

  –I could come, she said.

  –I wouldn’t hear of it. Nor would herself.

  –I think she likes me. Or approves, at least. It would be no big deal. And, like you said, you’d be here on weekends.

  –It would be too much to ask.

  –It would actually be easier for me. I worry about her when I’m not here. And I can work from here.

  And so I made the phone call.

  * * *

  —

  Whole years, maybe even decades, can be summarized in special moments. I’m remembering a violent storm. It was on a Saturday night. Annie had taken a rare weekend off. It was just the two of us, Mom and me.

  I was standing at my bedroom w
indow. I love bad weather and was hoping it would last for days.

  The old house was alive with sounds. Outside, trees were thrashing and dark clouds were rioting around the moon.

  Then I heard an object landing on a floor. Not a heavy object. But the clatter was unmistakable, a small object striking hard tile. It was in the kitchen. I checked the clock: 3:20.

  I found her bent over, braced against the kitchen counter, reaching down, fumbling.

  –What’s wrong?

  –I dropped it.

  I put a light on. It was a hairbrush.

  –What do you want that for?

  –Just give it to me.

  –It’s late.

  –I know it’s late.

  –What do you need with a hairbrush at whatever time it is?

  –I’ll get it myself, then.

  She was on the brink of toppling.

  –Whoa.

  I stooped and grabbed it and handed it to her.

  –Put out the light, she said.

  She fumbled with a button near her throat, then another, loosened her dressing gown, shoved it off her shoulders. Then she stuck the hairbrush down her back, began to scratch.

  –My back is itchy, she said.

  –Come on. Put that thing away. I’ll scratch your back for you.

  And so she leaned her elbows on the counter, staring out the window above the sink as the storm raged. She was developing a hump, or maybe it was just her posture, leaning forward. I scratched gently.

  –A bad night on the water, she said.

  –A good night to be in the house, I said.

  And then we were both absorbed into the outside spectacle, the roaring wind, the furious trees and the galloping stars flashing on and off among stampeding shadows.

  * * *

  —

  On an otherwise unremarkable Friday afternoon in early summer, I was clearing off my desk before a two-week holiday. The routine at home had recently been much improved, thanks to Annie’s aunt Shirley, who, from day one, didn’t hesitate to take charge.

  She was younger than Mom, but they had been in school together. They knew all the same people. They could have passed for relatives to hear them talking.

  One annoying habit that Shirley had was to repeat herself—in particular telling me how much I reminded her of my mother’s long-dead brother. Angus. Over and over and over.

  Just before I left the office that Friday afternoon, one of the junior partners stuck his head around the corner of the cubicle.

  –You’re not joining us for drinks?

  –What are we celebrating?

  –We won a tricky case.

  –Which one?

  –The lawyer. The guy accused of statutory rape. Heard before a judge alone.

  –Really?

  –The Crown is threatening to appeal, but I think we nailed it. I think we laid down a marker for defending other sex-related cases. Important jurisprudence, man, challenging a so-called victim’s motivation.

  –I see. That actually worked.

  –The Crown put the poor girl on the stand. Big mistake. Our man made a mess of her. Made her look way older than her age, the way Jack saw her. She could have fooled anybody. And that was the point. She was trying to be grown-up and Jack got sucked in like anybody would.

  –Did Jack testify?

  –No fucking way.

  I returned to the pile of documents I’d been sorting, shuffling the papers until I could think of something else to say.

  –So are you coming?

  –I think I’ll pass.

  * * *

  —

  Somewhere on the long drive to the farm that Friday evening, I collided with reality: you really aren’t cut out for that kind of lawyering.

  But what kind of lawyering was I cut out for? Just thinking about legal aid and all its virtuous assumptions, the hard slogging for hardly any compensation, exhausted me. Specializing in corporate litigation, with all its compromises and double standards?

  I laughed out loud.

  Allan?

  Perhaps. He’d been trying to tell me that everything we do is compromised at some point. We survive by compromise, by moral flexibility. The ethical constraints I felt at getting involved with his enterprise were fraying rapidly.

  But if I went with Allan, there was Peggy. Always Peggy.

  14.

  When I look back in time, there are gaps when I seem to have disappeared from my own memory.

  I know that I eventually resigned my position with the law firm. I get depressed calculating just how long I spent there. Nine stagnant years, at least. The stagnation, of course, was my own doing. My work became tedious because it was always overshadowed by personal obligations on the farm.

  But late one afternoon it struck me that I’d been in a cubicle for nearly a decade. Other associates had joined the practice and before you knew it had their own offices, their own assistants. Two of them had become partners.

  More important, I realized I no longer had the stomach for the office culture, if I ever did.

  So, finally, I told the partners I was leaving to set out on my own. Hang out my shingle in a smaller place. They seemed pleased. I didn’t tell them that the smaller place would be a kitchen table in a farmhouse.

  I think there was a small send-off in a bar by people I’d never really known, a brief, conclusive encounter with a city landlord who seemed glad to terminate an undervalued lease.

  I remember I felt an almost instant sense of liberation.

  The early part of the new experience is clear enough, as is the ending of it. It’s the in-between part that feels lost, and, consequently, wasted. Life remembered in disconnected episodes lacks substance. But those days were misplaced, I think, because of Mom’s confusion and how it spread to everyone and everything around her.

  I would tell myself often: one day it will all make sense.

  I do remember that, somewhere in that gap, Peggy married Allan, and they disappeared together. I think that’s how it often happens. Unfinished lives, united, become complete, at least temporarily. Briefly, people don’t need other people because they’re so completely wrapped up in one another.

  For the longest time I didn’t hear a word from Allan. I think they lived in California for a while. Then Mexico. Then, maybe, New York. Annie heard from Peggy every now and then, and she mentioned something about a condo in Manhattan. I remember that because I thought, Condo in Manhattan? They’re doing okay, then.

  It feels like this middle period went on for years, even an entire lifetime, and perhaps it was a lifetime. A mostly memorable lifetime, even if I don’t remember most of it.

  And then one day Annie declared,

  –You know I’m doing work for Allan and Peggy now.

  –I didn’t know. Doing what?

  –Mostly bookkeeping. They pay me a retainer.

  –Where are they now?

  She seemed puzzled.

  –Toronto. You know that.

  –I had no idea.

  –Byron, we discussed it.

  –Last I heard, it was California. Or New York.

  –It’s been Toronto for the past four years.

  –Maybe dementia is contagious.

  I thought she’d laugh, but she just shook her head and sighed.

  –So, they’re still together?

  –They are. And on that subject, we should talk about the future. Where all this is going.

  –Where all what is going?

  –You know what I mean.

  –I know exactly what you mean.

  –Well then?

  –I guess we should get married, I said.

  –We definitely should.

  –Low-key.

  –There’s no other way.

&nbs
p; That’s the way it has always been with Annie. No drama. And that was how we did it, before a local judge, with his secretary and a paralegal for our witnesses.

  * * *

  —

  One day I got around to asking her how much she knew about Allan’s business.

  –Why the sudden interest?

  –Just wondering.

  –He makes a lot of money from a lot of sources. I look at numbers and make sure that everything adds up.

  –I see.

  –Byron, you know Allan better than anybody. You’ve known him for many years. If there’s something specific you want to know, just ask. I’ll decide whether or not I can answer. Better still, ask Allan.

  –Allan is my oldest friend. I’d trust him with my life. But Allan is a criminal. Or was.

  –And your point?

  –Are you okay with that? What does Peggy think about his businesses?

  –I’m not sure what you mean by criminal. To the best of my knowledge, he has never been in trouble with the law.

  –I wonder how he’s managed that. I suspect there are many Allans.

  –Let’s just say, there are many legal entities. I do the numbers for legal entities. Numbers don’t belong to moral categories. Numbers are pristine. That’s the beauty of them, Byron.

  –And Peggy?

  –Talk to her yourself. We’re all family.

  * * *

  —

  Then Mom fell down again, and that changed everything.

  She was on the tile floor in the kitchen when I got there. Annie was sitting beside her, cradling her head and shoulders. Mom’s face was white. She seemed to be unconscious. Annie was weeping quietly.

  –Call 911, she whispered.

  15.

  Allan and Peggy came for the funeral. It had been years since I’d laid eyes on either of them. Peggy hadn’t changed. Allan was even bigger, flabby padding added to what had once been an athletic frame.

  By then, Annie was working pretty well full-time for Allan. She still did taxes for a few university profs who lived locally, some old farmers and fishermen and service station operators in town. But basically, she worked with her sister, looking after Allan’s books. Her trips to Toronto had become frequent.