by André Alexis
She hadn’t realized how important it had been to have his sympathetic ear. And it was painful, now that her grandmother had begun to behave strangely, to be without his kindness and his ear. Painful? Was there, perhaps, more to her feelings for Franklin? No, no…he was not her type. They were friendly, nothing more, and yet she missed his company (his real attentiveness) more than she expected, and she felt the change in him as a rebuff, despite herself.
For entirely different reasons, for reasons other than politics or power, her grandmother, too, had changed. Eleanor was obviously waning, and it was distressing to watch the onset of frailty in a woman who had been so strong.
One day, some time before the election, she had handed Mary a note on which was written, in pencil:
You must see me on Monday.
Show no one.
Eleanor Stanley
(your grandmother)
and, odd though the note was, its delivery was stranger still.
It had been some time since Eleanor had come downstairs for supper, but on this particular evening she’d descended as the family sat at the table. She had smiled, or seemed to smile, and then slowly approached. When she was beside the table, she took the note from her brassiere and, with something like rehearsed indifference, pushed it into Mary’s hand.
Her father asked
– Everything okay, Mom? You want to eat with us?
and she answered in a strange accent:
– Is how long since yuh see de Kwayzay?
– The what?
– How yuh mean?
and, with that, Eleanor had sucked her teeth and retraced her steps, going up the stairs as slowly as she’d descended. To say that they’d all been mystified, well…To Mary’s knowledge, her grandmother had never spoken with any but a slight British accent. This was as if a strange woman had entered their home, spoken in code, and left before anyone could ask what she meant.
– The quay what? Mary had asked.
– Search me, her father answered. What’s the note say?
Mary had shown it to them.
– Gran’s definitely losing it, said Gil.
That had precipitated an argument: her father on one side, the rest of them on the other. It seemed clear to Mary that Eleanor was indeed coming unglued, but she loved her grandmother and, however mysterious the details, however unclear it was as to when or on what Monday Eleanor wished to see her, she tried to keep their appointment.
It was not an easy thing to do. For a month of Mondays she went up to Eleanor’s room, but although her grandmother was invariably happy to see her, and though they spoke of this and that, Eleanor simply could not recall requesting Mary’s attendance. Mary tried to prompt her grandmother by showing her the note, by explaining that, yes, she (Eleanor) had herself passed the note along. But Eleanor recognized neither the note nor her own handwriting. She could not think why she should want to see her granddaughter so urgently, unless of course it was simply to have her company. Yes, that must have been it. She very much enjoyed Mary’s society, you see?
Then, on the fifth Monday, she’d gone up, and Eleanor said
– You didn’t tell the others, did you, dear?
– Tell them what? Mary asked.
– Forgetful girl! About my little note.
– Oh, that…No.
– Are you sure?
Her grandmother sat up in the bed, looking at her closely, listening intently, speaking with her familiar, slightly clipped British accent, as if her old self had decided to revisit its confines.
– Yes, said Mary.
– Good, said Eleanor. Come sit here.
She indicated the place at the end of the bed.
– Would you mind, dear? she asked
and pushed her feet out from beneath the blanket so Mary could massage them.
– It’s doubtful that in all Canada you’ll find three pairs of shapely feminine feet, don’t you think?
It was their own little joke, a question asked by one or the other whenever Mary massaged her grandmother’s feet. Her feet must indeed have been beautiful when Eleanor was younger, though. They were still elegant and smooth, and it pleased Mary to hold them in her palms.
– Now, Mary…
Eleanor said as her granddaughter rubbed the sole of her right foot
– I know you think I am your poor grandmother, and you’ve been good to me all the same. You’ve been like a daughter to me. You have been a daughter to me. It’s no fault of yours if others haven’t been so loyal.
– Dad’s been just as loyal, Gran.
– Never mind, child. You’ve been good to me, but I must ask you a favour.
– What is it, Gran?
– I want you to keep a secret, but really keep it.
– Of course.
– Will you swear?
– Of course I will.
– Good, good. I trust you. Mary…I want you to know I am not without means…I am the opposite of penniless.
– Oh?
– Yes, my dear, it’s quite true.
It was a peculiar moment for both of them. Eleanor blushed. She had revealed a long-kept secret, a source of satisfaction in its secrecy, and though she did feel a kind of relief, she also felt humiliated, because it suddenly seemed mean not to have told Mary before now. For her part, Mary found the moment surreal. Though her grandmother was lucid, it was as if she were lucid in an obscure language. What was the opposite of penniless?
– After all, Eleanor continued, I don’t see why I should be ashamed of my money. I’ve worked all my life, and I would certainly have lost everything if I’d told your father. You won’t tell him, will you?
– I won’t if you don’t want me to.
– Good. I don’t mind if Stanley has means, once I’m gone. Once I’m gone, I don’t suppose it matters, but…Look, let’s go to the heart of it, Mary. I’d like you to take care of things for me.
– You’d like me to take care of things?
Her grandmother was, it seemed to Mary, in the midst of a vivid dream she was trying to recount: she was (she said) worth millions, she had once owned houses in cities all over the world, she had managed the wealth on her own for years and years. No, that’s not quite true. In the past, there had been two or three men, faithful employees. Now there was only one.
– Here is his card, Mary. Honestly, it gives me fits trying to remember names. It never used to.
She pressed a bone white card into Mary’s hand.
– Can you read it? she asked.
– Yes, Mary answered.
– Now go into the closet…Go ahead. There is a blue purse on the floor at the back.
Mary did as she was told, but it now felt as if she were dreaming. Yet, there it was: an oversized, baby blue purse, something she vaguely remembered having seen in her grandmother’s hand. As she picked the purse from the floor, she had a precise memory of the thing. She’d seen her grandmother carry it into her room. Now when was that?
– Bring it here, said Eleanor.
From the bag Eleanor drew countless envelopes, envelopes of varying size, colour, and age; some of them were ancient and brittle, some were cream-coloured, some yellow, some blue; most had strange stamps on them and these were as fascinating as the envelopes themselves.
– Don’t paw them, Mary.
From the envelopes, Eleanor drew more particular documents: copies of deeds from before the turn of the century, elaborately embossed contracts, a black bank book whose first entry was from 1915, maps of various cities in various times, receipts, business cards, and a photograph of “Robert Stanley.”
Really, it was all absurd. Her grandmother’s revelation and unveiling did not seem so much truthful as elaborate, and Mary’s first coherent thoughts were questions: Why would anyone go through such trou
ble trying to prove the fantastic? What must it have cost, in time and money, to gather so many strange documents? And then, as if the documents weren’t enough, Eleanor spoke of the one thing she had never, ever mentioned: her marriage to Robert Stanley.
An English aristocrat marrying a Trinidadian schoolgirl? Not likely, thought Mary, not even in Grimm’s, and the old photograph Eleanor showed her (pale man before chapel, his name – Robert Stanley – written on the back) did little to persuade. Detail on detail contributed not to a feeling of truth but to a sense of delusion. That is, when she heard about her “grandfather,” Mary was convinced her grandmother was lost in some orphan’s fantasy, where one is secretly related to Sir Such-and-Such who is wealthy and kind and, besides, a close friend to the king of Spain. On hearing about Robert Stanley’s estate, Mary couldn’t help smiling. Eleanor caught it immediately. Most perceptive when she was perceptive at all, Eleanor sensed Mary’s disbelief and, perhaps thinking disbelief would lead to betrayal, suddenly said
– That’s enough for today
and collected her envelopes and documents, put them back in the purse, and dismissed her granddaughter with the words:
– Now remember: you promised not to tell anyone, Mary. Not a word. You swore it. I hope you won’t make me regret what I’ve told you.
That was months ago now, and Mary had kept her word. She’d told nobody. But what did it mean to give your word to someone who was unstable? Eleanor’s delusions of wealth, her tale of marriage to an aristocrat, her collection of arcane documents, sepia photographs, brittle envelopes, and exotic postmarks were not dangerous in themselves, but they were proof of her mental decline. Though Mary had sworn to keep everything secret, she worried that, in keeping them secret, she was hiding information that, revealed, would benefit Eleanor herself because, if Eleanor needed the kind of care needed by the delusional, she should get it as soon as possible. Shouldn’t she?
On the other hand, she had given her word and one had to be faithful to that, at least. She couldn’t break her word simply because her grandmother was not who she seemed, or because she had changed. People always changed. They were themselves for such a short time, it was impossible to keep your word to the person to whom you’d given it. Your friendship, your love, your respect are given to loved ones but kept for the strangers they soon become. Take Franklin, for instance. He was no longer the man he had been before the election, but she would not think of turning her back on him, would she?
How she would have liked to talk to Franklin about all this, to see him nod sagely and smile, but two fidelities stood between them: his fidelity to Rundstedt (to his work) and hers to her own word. She would have to keep watch on Eleanor, alone, and keep her own counsel. There was nothing else for it.
{16}
ELEANOR GOES GENTLE, MORE OR LESS…
December 4 began early for Eleanor Stanley.
She woke at two in the morning from a peculiar dream in which her house in London was huge and ran for blocks. In fact, it ran through countries, because at the far end of it the Palestinians were street fighting. Her father was in it, trying to hurry his death along, because he hated the painful slowness of it. Her mother was living in a tiny cubbyhole, on a bed, a slat really, between walls that looked too small for the smallest child, and when Eleanor asked her why she hadn’t moved (there were many rooms), her mother said she didn’t want to. One of her uncles was writing a book about the house’s mazes and back stairways (numerous and tiny). And Eleanor herself was pleased to be there, moved by the sight of her parents, whom she hadn’t seen in years. They looked lovingly at her, and she was happy, until she remembered she was an old woman, that she couldn’t possibly climb so many stairs, and her heart began to race, and she grew short of breath, and woke from sleep with the sound of the ocean in her ears.
As it happens, she was lucid when she woke. That is, for the first time in a while, the place where she thought she was coincided with the place she actually was in: her son’s home in Ottawa. The time coincided as well, though she thought it closer to dawn than it was. None of this brought her comfort. Her bed was wet. She was worried her incontinence would be discovered. It took her some time to catch her breath, and though she eventually did, the sound of the ocean would not fade and she grew anxious.
Of course, she had no idea she was lucid, no idea she had ever been anything but lucid. It’s true that, at times, she could not quite place a face, and that was frustrating, but, for the most part, she either knew the people around her or she did not. It was embarrassing to have strangers looking down at you, but she was too proud to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her flustered.
There were also those peculiar moments when she recognized a face but could not place it in the place she found herself. It had happened, for instance, that Stanley had entered the Port of Spain of her youth. She knew that was impossible, so she had called him father (and felt, briefly, the thrill that it really was her father), but she’d known him for Stanley all along or, at least, some part of her had known him for Stanley. But, thankfully, the memories of her derangement were fleeting.
On December 4, she woke early from a dream and she was in Stanley’s house.
It seemed to take hours to return to sleep, once she realized it was too early to call out for Stanley, too early even for him, but, then, perhaps it was not too late for her sheets to dry before anyone came in to see her. She slept, and then she woke, and her sheets were clean and there was a tray of food on the chair beside her bed: oatmeal (cold), which she couldn’t abide, toast (cold), which Stanley knew she couldn’t abide cold, orange juice (warm), which she drank, resentful, because there was nothing to eat. She thought of calling out, because it wasn’t right to starve, and she did call out, but no one came, which agitated her, and she resigned herself to hunger, though what was the point of resignation if no one knew you were hungry?
This was the kind of indignity that had forced her to strike her family from her will, but then she remembered her granddaughter and wondered if she’d given Mary all she needed. She would have to talk to Mary. She would have to get out of bed. Perhaps, while she was up, she could make herself a proper meal. But she was tired and agitated and short of breath. She would have to calm down a little. Which she did not do. Instead, she sank into a troubled and breathless sleep. She returned to the house in London, but she could find neither of her parents and, frustrated and angry, she took a map of the house from a drawer beneath the kitchen table and spent hours, or perhaps it was days, following its obscure symbols, going up and down the endless stairs until she realized her map wasn’t a map at all, it was the coiled and flattened body of a Mapepire balsain, a viper, and it led nowhere.
When she awakened she was anxious. The food on the chair beside her was something like dinner: a cold veal cutlet (breading curled), a mound of corn, a scoop of mashed potatoes, a kaiser roll, and a glass of pink lemonade. Had they even tried to wake her? Was there a reason she should have her food cold? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because she suddenly remembered the morning’s oatmeal and she was not hungry. Though she hadn’t actually touched the oatmeal, she remembered it so vividly it was as if she’d just eaten.
She could afford to leave the cutlet and potatoes untouched: a reproach to her careless kin, none of whom, save Mary, knew how easily she could cut them off, how much they stood to lose. She could leave her estate to Mr. Bax, for instance. Dear Mr. Bax, her own lawyer. Now, there was a man who put her concerns squarely before his own. He was paid to do so, it’s true, but he was conscientious and indefatigable, and no amount of money could buy those qualities if they weren’t there to begin with.
No, of her family, Mary was the only one who had the kind of backbone that made money bearable, the only one with a sense of responsibility. Yes, she would certainly leave everything to Mary. Or had she already done so? Annoyed, she called out:
– Stanley!
She called her son’s name half a dozen times until, to her own surprise, she was too exhausted to call out any more, her voice sounding faint even to herself. There was no profit in getting old, no point, no saving grace.
And, again, she fell asleep. Or, rather, it was not sleep, though it was very like it. She was light-headed and she could hear the ocean, but she could also feel the coming of night, see the darkening shadows, mark the passage of light, and hear footsteps outside her door. At some point, her cutlets were taken away and macaroni was left behind. The curtains in her room were closed. The light in her room was turned on. But these things happened while she was talking to her father, and she couldn’t decide which was the real room, which the real night: the one in which she was an old woman or the one in which she was a child.
And then, for the last time in her life, she fell asleep. And it really was sleep this time. She returned to the house in London, walking up and down the stairs, looking for a manila envelope in which she’d left an old picture of the house, a marvellous photograph, so sharply in focus that although it had been taken from the exterior, you could see in it every inch of the house’s interior.
She found it in a kitchen cupboard, and the sight of it filled her, unexpectedly, with joy. It wasn’t simply the photograph or the miraculous expanse of the house. It was a thought or, rather, not a thought at all but a feeling of such depth it was a conviction, a conviction so bright and irresistible it was indistinguishable from truth. That is, she felt, for the first time in her life, as far as she could remember, the profound insignificance of the physical “where.” All places existed within her, as they existed within this house. It was only a trick of the light that separated Ireland, say, from Nigeria. They were cradled within her, every point on Earth was cradled, as memory or as possibility.