by André Alexis
Her mother looked at her with dismay. Her father looked at her with pride. Her brother refused to look at her. Mr. Bax looked at them all, somewhat quizzically.
– It’s quite a will, he said. Allow me to extend my congratulations.
But the only hand he shook was Mary’s.
– I have a few things to do before I leave the office. Why don’t you all stay here until you’ve collected yourselves. You can leave by this door, whenever you like. It’ll lock behind you. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. And, again, congratulations.
Once Mr. Bax had gone, Beatrice turned to Mary and said
– You knew about this?
– Gran told me, Mary answered, but I didn’t believe her.
– Why didn’t you tell us?
– She didn’t leave us a thing, said Gil. She left everything to Mary.
Mary’s first thought was to immediately divide the inheritance, but she had no idea how to dispose of the (approximately) $8 million her grandmother’s estate was now worth.
(What was the best way to dispose of foreign properties? How should they best divide the money? Should her parents receive the greater part? Should her mother be given less than her father? Should her brother be given any money at all, at his age?)
Her mother and father, daunted by the idea of so much money, thought this “inheritance business” a grand, inexplicable mistake. Neither believed the inheritance was real, so both believed any delay was likely to be disastrous: easy come, easy go. Because they could not believe this inheritance (if it existed) was truly theirs, they believed it belonged to someone else: lawyers, the government, the wealthy, whomever. If, by some miracle, the inheritance really, truly was theirs, then the best way to deal with it was to put it away where it couldn’t be taken from them.
Stanley said
– I don’t think anybody can think straight with all that money.
What he meant was: Mr. Bax, the government, whoever it was who had the money now was not to be trusted. The sooner they themselves had it, the better. There was, as always, kindness and concern in Stanley’s voice. He could no more mistrust his daughter (or any of his family) than he had his mother, God keep her soul, but he wanted everything settled as quickly as possible, whatever questions and doubts there might be.
– I’m going to meet with Mr. Bax, Mary said. We need some advice.
And that was that. Or, rather, it wasn’t. The four of them struggled to understand what had happened. What did it mean to be worth “millions of dollars” or to own property “overseas”? And why was it they could not touch what they owned until Mary met with her lawyer? For weeks they walked about, open to the kind of emotions it was difficult to express. They were stunned and excited, incomprehending and resentful. They were thrilled. At times, they were, even, reconciled to the old woman, to Eleanor.
Finally, after a sadly quiet and quietly tense Christmas, Mary had her interview with Mr. Bax. She felt relief at the sight of his black desk, his Turkish carpet, and his windows that looked out onto Elgin. She was comforted by his camel hair suit, blue shirt, and ox-blood brogues. She would have given anything to hear him say
– I think you should divide your grandmother’s inheritance in four, at once.
but he said nothing of the sort. After shaking her hand and then settling into his chair, he said
– I think you should wait, before you decide what to do with this inheritance. You have quite a bit of capital, it’s true, but you’ve also got some property abroad. You should decide what to do with that first.
– What about my family?
– What about them?
– This money is theirs too, isn’t it?
– Yes, of course, if that’s what you want. But even if you decide to sell off your properties and divide the money, it will take time and it’s much easier, for all concerned, if there is only one seller. You’re free to consult with them on the best course to take, but until you’ve decided on a course, I think it’s best if you hold the reins, yeah? For a while, anyway. It’s what your grandmother wanted, and I’m happy to help you any way I can.
For an hour and a half, they spoke of property, probates, and responsibility. After which, having taken notes, having agreed that caution was best, she shook his hand and walked out onto Elgin, saddened by the state of affairs. What would her parents do? What would they think?
Well…they listened to every word, nodding their heads at the mention of legal fees, taxes, property maintenance, and probates. Her mother shushed her brother whenever he tried to interrupt, and tried to accept that it would be some time before each was given their share of Eleanor’s legacy. Unfortunately, suspicious of Mr. Bax’s caution, it occurred to Beatrice that it would be best if, instead of waiting for a sum that would come after the properties sold, Mary arranged to give them each a deed to one of the properties. There were four buildings – one in London (U.K.), one near Dawlish (U.K.), one in Lans-en-Vercors, and one in Ottawa – and four Stanleys. Perfect. They would each, while waiting for the properties to be assessed and sold, have income from the rent their own property brought in. As well as the liquid assets, some $3 million they would share – equally.
It seemed a reasonable compromise, but Mr. Bax had already cautioned Mary against dispersing the deeds. First, Gil was too young to be given such responsibility. Second, it would take even more time for Mary to deed the buildings to her parents, and have the deeds probated, than it would for her to do it on her own and arrange the sales herself. Third…
Her mother frowned.
– Mr. Bax can’t tell us what to do, can he? she asked.
– Fine, said Mary. I’ll do whatever you want.
But it isn’t always easy to know what one wants, especially with things so “unreal” as property in Dawlish, Devon. Gilbert was outraged that he, being too young, would not be given a property for his own, but the real trouble came from an unexpected quarter: her father.
Not long after she had spoken to Mr. Bax a second time, Mary and her father were remembering “the old lady” together. Stanley, despite all, missed her. Mary missed her too, but there was something else: in the surprise and confusion Eleanor’s will had occasioned, Mary had forgotten the other face her grandmother had unveiled: Robert Stanley, Esq. Did she, sworn to secrecy as she’d been, have the right to mention these details now? She decided she did. Mary’s impulse was generous and loving, but…
As a boy, Stanley had often asked his mother about his father: who was he? What did he look like? Was he dark-skinned? He hadn’t pestered Eleanor, because she wasn’t the kind of woman one “pestered.” But when he was eight or nine, she discouraged his questions once and for all: she slapped his face and told him to mind his business. Though this was grossly unfair (whose business is the father, if it is not the son’s?), Stanley took his mother’s violence in the way he was used to taking it: he took it as justified. To the eight-year-old, it was suddenly obvious that his father, whoever the man had been, was monstrous, his memory a terrifying burden on his mother. When he was old enough to understand the word rape, he thought he finally understood the nature of his father’s monstrosity and he never asked after the man again.
So, on hearing that his father was an Englishman, he understood that Robert Stanley, Esq., had taken advantage of his mother, marrying her to obscure the trace of his violence. He smiled when Mary told him about his father and he thanked her, but from that moment, Stanley wanted nothing to do with the property in England. The money the old girl had made for herself, that was one thing, but London and Dawlish now seemed to him like blood-soaked ground and he refused to have anything to do with them. It was as if, by renouncing, he were cauterizing a wound.
Now, if he’d been able to express these things, if he had been able to say to his wife
– My mother was violated by this Englishman. I won’t have anything to do with hi
s buildings
there would have been an end to the whole issue. Beatrice was not heartless. She would have understood. But, in fact, he had never been able to admit this thing to anyone, ever. Eleanor’s violation was a dark, humiliating, but privately held conviction. He could not bring himself to say the first words (“My mother was…”). So, instead, without explanation, he shifted allegiance from his wife to his daughter. After he and Mary had spoken, he announced
– I don’t want to be a landlord.
– Why not? asked his wife.
– I just don’t, he answered. I’ll just wait for Mary to sell those buildings off.
– Well, I think it’s the right thing, said Beatrice.
And in the days that followed, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley grew cold to each other or, to be exact, Beatrice grew cold while Stanley made futile efforts to mollify her. He could not accept a deed to property in England, not without (to his mind) betraying the memory of his mother, while Beatrice would not accept a deed to property if she were the only one taking. She, too, felt uneasy, when she thought of the men and women who inhabited the houses they had inherited. She was wary of the responsibility, but she was determined to protect her family, to make certain they got their due before the government found ways to squeeze it out of them, as governments always do to the poor. It seemed not only perverse that Stanley wouldn’t help but hostile, and that was devastating.
There was more to this. Beatrice wasn’t all that avid for money or property. Rather, Eleanor had treated her daughter-in-law as little more than chattel, a servant, something her son had picked up and kept. She had cursed their marriage, refused to attend their wedding, and then, at the end, had moved in with them! If Beatrice had allowed the woman into her home it was because she understood Eleanor was her husband’s albatross. Now, however, the worst of it, the thing that rankled was that she could not convince herself this inheritance, property, and money was anything more than another turn Eleanor was playing on them. Above all, she wanted them to come out of all this with something. And as property was at least something, she was wounded when Stanley, of all people, stood in the way and would not move.
And so, though it seemed they were arguing about property, or money, or what have you, Mary’s parents were arguing about deeper things. Their marriage was shaken and, because it was the first time in her life she felt this tearing apart, the first time she had been compelled to imagine the destruction of her family, Mary was shattered, the moreso as she imagined the whole business was her fault.
– I’m sorry, said Walter.
These words conveyed little of what he actually felt. It was two o’clock in the morning of the day after he was to have finished with life. He and Mary had quit Les Quatre Jeudis at one. They had walked the streets of Hull. They now walked the streets of Ottawa. He’d spent hours with a stranger whose distress was not quite understandable to him. Still, there was something about the young woman, something that moved him.
They were walking south on Bank and it was the middle of the night, but Mary felt as if she’d stepped from the confessional into a quiet, late-evening church. Had she sinned? Yes. She had not spoken of her grandmother’s will. She had not believed her grandmother. She had not done the things she might have. And for this she would lose that which she had taken for granted: her home, her parents, the world from which she’d come.
– I don’t think you’ll lose anything, said Walter. You’ve had a shock, that’s all.
– My parents haven’t spoken to each other in weeks.
– Well, maybe it’s not as bad as you think, said Walter. My parents rarely spoke.
They had come to Bank and Gladstone. Mary said
– Thank you so much for listening.
They looked at each other, as if they had a history of concern, one for the other. But, of course, they hadn’t. And, not knowing what else to do, Mary put her arms around him, the side of her face rubbing against his coat, and held him, for a moment, before walking west. Walter stood at the corner watching the young woman walk away. For tonight, in any case, he had missed his chance at death. He was too tired. It wasn’t that he wanted to live, exactly. His mind was not to be changed by place or time. No, but for some reason he thought it awkward to die so late, or so early, and he was amazed that, on this night of all nights, he had spent hours listening to a young woman go on about lives that had nothing to do with his, about herself. It seemed to him the first time anyone had shared so much.
As he walked back to his house, along Bank, past Catherine, past Glebe, he found himself distracted from thoughts of death. Why had she told him so much about herself? What had he done to elicit such trust? Was it something she’d seen in him, or was it a matter of chance? Unanswerable. Perhaps, in the end, death did bring out the best in him. Perhaps it was his natural element.
Now, there was a thought with which to greet the blue-fingered dawn.
{20}
AN EVENING IN
I sometimes wonder if Franklin would have made a good politician. He believed too much in too few things (in one thing, actually) and politicians like that are almost always crushed. Ottawa was filled with them, wanderers after single ends (Senate reform, say, or flat-rate taxation, or proportional representation). They were like souls in the fourth circle of Dante’s Hell, buffeted by the winds of their passion.
When Franklin himself thought about it, when he thought about the course his life had taken, he was grateful to be something other than a politician. He was, as a civil servant, working for his country, or his idea of “country,” and this thought kept him in good spirits, despite the increased responsibility that was now his, and despite the anxiety he felt at the thought that Alba was such a tremendous project it was inevitable something should go wrong: he, or someone under him, would forget a crucial detail, a crucial contract, contact, meeting, greeting or…something.
Another source of anxiety (his occasional doubts that any prison, however magnificent, could improve the men who were forced to inhabit it) was dried up by two thoughts that came to him one night as he looked out on the park that was below his living-room window. The park was its mysterious, dark self, its eight streetlamps bearded by light. Just beyond the yellow light, a nocturnal life quietly carried on, with its mice, owls, raccoons, and bats. He could not look on the scene without feeling just what it was that made the park a holy place: the presence of a diligent and desperate struggle for survival. It never failed to move him and, on this night, feeling the power of this particular place, its influence, it occurred to him that all places (even the least memorable) had some effect or other. They led to worship or desecration, ease or discomfort. Why shouldn’t Alba, if she were truly Art, move men to better themselves? The only questions were: Why had it taken so long for Alba to occur to someone? Could it really be that, from the time men had first imprisoned other men, none had thought it would be good to hold them in places that ennobled? Prisons were inevitably horrifying. They inspired nothing but fear or pity. They were, as places, inimical to the very aims of imprisonment, if what one wanted was men who, having accomplished their punishment, returned to society whole. Alba could do no worse than the houses of horror we were accustomed to calling prisons. Or so Franklin thought and, with that thought, he felt even more grateful that he had been called (by whatever force it was that did the calling) to shepherd the prison into being.
The feeling that he had at last discovered his destiny put Franklin in excellent spirits and he became, for a time, convivial. He invited people to his home and cooked for them, something he hadn’t done since university. He was a limited cook, however. The only thing he ever made was boeuf stroganoff: braised beef, mushrooms, and sour cream on a bed of fried potatoes. In this, too, he had been guided by Alexandra Byeli. She had shown him how stroganoff was done and it was the only dish he ever mastered. So, his cuisine was irreproachable but specific.
(The most remarkabl
e thing about Franklin’s meals was not the food but, rather, the long dining-room table: rustic, at first glance, old, and in need of sanding. But what looked like bumps on the surface were in fact drawings in the wood, each drawing depicting a moment in Canadian history: John A. MacDonald in Parliament, the hanging of Louis Riel, the Turtle Mountain rockslide, and so on in a profusion of drawings that progressed in a spiral on the table’s surface and down along its thick legs. The table, a gift from Edward, had been bought at a flea market in Plantagenet and finessed into Franklin’s apartment by a handful of men. Of all the things I remember about Franklin’s apartment, that table is what I remember most fondly, because, no doubt, far from home as I am, I would love to have it for myself.)
The most frequent beneficiary of Franklin’s conviviality was Edward. Though he tired of boeuf stroganoff, he could not remember a time when Franklin’s company had been quite so warm, or when Franklin had been so open. It was as if MacKenzie Bowell Federal Penitentiary, the very idea of it, had turned Franklin into a more generous man.
One night, for instance, when the other guests had gone, Franklin actually spoke about his family. This was so unexpected, Edward tried to change the subject, certain that Franklin had, mentally, stumbled. But, no, it seemed simply that their friendship had crossed a threshold. Franklin spoke of Anse Bleu, the grey stillness of it. He then spoke of his father and, for the first time, his mother, a petite New Brunswicker. She was, he said, a vague presence to him. She had died when he was young and he had, unfortunately, few memories of her to share: she had bought him cowboy pants, when he’d asked for them, (together) they had made a kite in the shape of a whale, and she had once broken a fingernail while opening his bedroom door.
– Well, said Edward, I bet she would have been proud to see you these days.
– What do you mean? asked Franklin.
– I mean, with Bowell penitentiary and everything.