by André Alexis
Mary herself wasn’t sure what to think about her fortune. It had been overwhelming to sit in Mr. Bax’s office when, after selling off the last property in England, his secretary had brought in a wicker tray on which there’d been two crystal flutes for champagne. Mr. Bax himself had opened the bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil, and they had celebrated her family’s continuing good fortune: an intensely hopeful moment.
So much to look forward to, and yet something was not quite right.
To Mary’s mind, Prisons and Correction had set out on the right foot. There had been a Royal Commission on the status of prisons, and that had gone very well. She had been busy for months, helping to coordinate bodies, reports, and press releases. She had felt part of something grand and significant. She herself was Liberal and thought prisons a sign of collective failure. If there were prisons, it was because society was imperfect and could not (or did not) care for all of its citizens alike. But she was intrigued by Franklin’s idea of prison reform, and pleasantly puzzled by the idea of Art as the means to change.
After the commission’s report, after the lobbying for MacKenzie Bowell, after parliamentary approval of the project, there had been the plans for the new prison, further reports, feasibility studies, statistics, preparations for the selection committee. Paper, paper, paper. Paper is the lifeblood of a government department, proof of its vitality. So, she was a member of a department that was doing well.
But paper has its laws, cycles, and stages. It has to be copied, signed by the minister, sent to various places, returned, signed again, initialled, and filed (in various cabinets) before it comes to rest in the archives. Each stage must be properly completed and signed before the next begins. And it was just this that was troubling Mary. She had seen Rundstedt’s signature thousands of times. She knew it particularly well. So, she was more than a little surprised to see what appeared to be forgeries. From her first sighting of a suspicious Rundstedt signature, she’d been keeping an eye on all the documents that required his name, trying to figure out if there were, perhaps, a pattern, if the suspicious signatures came only when Rundstedt was away. So far, she’d been unable to detect a pattern. So, she kept quiet about the whole business.
As if all that weren’t enough, there was also the question of St. Pierre and Mickleson.
One Wednesday, she had taken a call:
– Mr. St. Pierre speaking. Can I talk to Franklin…Dupuis?
– He’s not in at the moment. May I take a message?
– You’re his secretary?
– Yes.
– Ahh. Listen, miss, what’d you say your name was?
– It’s Ms. Stanley.
– Okay, then, Miss Stanley, would you please tell Mr. Dupuis that Mr. St. Pierre called to confirm our appointment for Friday afternoon. My partner and I will be there Friday at three. Okay?
Before she could answer, he had put down the phone. Franklin seemed happy to hear the message and mentioned that they were land consultants and that Friday at three o’clock exactly the two men walked into the office without knocking. The first was tall, broad-shouldered, and well dressed: a full-length impermeable over a navy blue suit, a pale yellow shirt, and, incongruously, a black silk tie. Even his fingernails were immaculate though, oddly, his cheeks looked as though they had been imperfectly rouged.
This was Mr. St. Pierre.
– We’ve come to see Mr. Dupuis, he said.
The second was almost as tall, but he stooped, and he was more shabbily dressed. Where Mr. St. Pierre was dark-haired and recently coiffed, Mr. Mickleson was almost blond and his hair stood up as if windblown. Mr. Mickleson said nothing. He stood behind Mr. St. Pierre, his hands in his coat pockets, looking down at the carpet. When he walked into Franklin’s office, Mary saw that Mickleson had a slight limp.
She heard Mr. St. Pierre say
– Hey, how’re you?
before the door closed.
If it can be said that some men are accompanied by darkness, it should be said of St. Pierre and Mickleson. Without knowing why, Mary felt uneasy in their presence, uneasy when they were in Franklin’s office, uneasy knowing of their existence, even. They were not right, though one couldn’t have said how they were wrong.
Franklin did not speak to her directly about their visit, but a week later Edward filed a request for a short-term contract for something called “land consultants.” A week after that, their names (Robert St. Pierre, Robin Mickleson) were on a document awaiting Franklin’s initials and Rundstedt’s signature. It would have been irresponsible of her not to make her misgivings about the men known to Franklin, so she took the contract to him herself.
– Franklin?
– Yes, Mary?
– Here’s the contract for the land consultants.
– Oh! Thank you. I’ll initial it right away.
– Uhm, Franklin, I just wanted to mention, I saw those men, Mr. St. Pierre and Mr. Mickleson, and I think there’s something funny about them.
– What’s that?
– They don’t look like consultants, do they?
– They don’t? What does a consultant look like?
– You’re right, but there’s something about them…
Franklin smiled.
– I know what you mean, he said. They’re like Mutt and Jeff.
He signed the document and returned it to her so that she could leave it for Ms. Rees, who would leave it for Mr. Rundstedt.
Though it was Franklin the men had come to see, Mary so mistrusted Edward, she was inclined (perhaps even determined) to see Edward’s hand behind St. Pierre and Mickleson. She suspected, with no proof, Edward was trying to finagle funds for his friends. It seemed the only reasonable explanation. Those men, Mickleson and St. Pierre, were no more “land consultants” than she was a horse. They had to be Edward’s friends. So, from the moment she decided Edward was, somehow, behind St. Pierre and Mickleson, Mary tried to keep closer track of Edward’s doings in the department.
That is, while doing a job she was now less certain she wanted, Mary made more work for herself. She did not have time to think of the anxiety that comes with a change in fortune. When she thought of them at all, her grandmother’s money and property seemed mere facts of life, though it had been only two years since she (and her family) had inherited Eleanor’s wealth.
{38}
REINHART ABANDONS MACKENZIE BOWELL
Reinhart had completed the plans for the penitentiary in ecstasy, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar ecstasy. He had been overwhelmed, exhilarated, and sleeplessly impassioned by any number of his own works. There had been perhaps a dozen paintings that had taken his life over as completely as this design had, and the experience had been just as important for him, the artist.
The difference here was in the project’s origins. To begin with, he would not have guessed that a mere building would so capture his imagination. And then, the penitentiary was strange: not Canadian, not Québécois, though, to his mind, it belonged in the Gatineaus because the Gatineaus itself had prompted it, had called it out of him. He could not have imagined the penitentiary without seeing the land on which it would stand, yet it was a mystery to him that that tract of land had inspired these particular buildings. But, then, who knew the imperatives of a land, the deep reasons behind the things a land brought forth – its languages, painting, buildings, and song? No one. They were discovered in building, in imagining, in creating. Once the penitentiary was built, if it were built, the public would discover, as Reinhart had, its rootedness in the place; though, no doubt, some would think it strange or even foreign, until they were used to it.
In the days after he had given the plans to Franklin, Reinhart would have hurt anyone who suggested they be modified to serve monetary or political ends, so convinced was he that he had managed to put architecture to dignified use, perhaps for the first time since Leon Alberti. It did
not trouble him (it never had) that his design was not very like a prison, that his penitentiary was, in some ways, impractical. Its purpose did not concern him. So long as it was built as he’d imagined, it might have held cows or swine: no matter. The vision was all.
The first thing to make him reconsider the merit of his designs was, strangely enough, Franklin’s response. Franklin did not simply like the designs for MacKenzie Bowell, he was enraptured by them, and Reinhart felt oddly put off by Franklin’s enthusiasm. It was as if he had painted an extremely flattering portrait of Franklin himself, something he had not set out to do. Besides, approval is always a disturbing thing, isn’t it? Reinhart’s work had met with indifference for so long, he expected some form of rebuke. So, Franklin’s rapture prompted him to look at his designs from another angle. It was painful to discover this other angle, but as soon as he began to question the value of what he’d done, he found a number of things that displeased. The penitentiary was classically beautiful, it’s true, but its beauty robbed it of originality. It made use of classical material, but wasn’t there something vieux jeu about so much marble?
And wasn’t it, just a little, facile? Yes, it was. Franklin Dupuis would not have adored it otherwise. How could that have happened? He had spent months absorbed by the very idea of “prison.” He had despaired of finding inspiration, but when inspiration came, it was pure and he had surrendered to it because he’d had no choice. That is, he had surrendered to his deepest instincts and, in a fit of feeling, he had produced…designs that thrilled a civil servant. Now there was a thought that made you want to break your own fingers. No, he was being hard on himself. One is always vulnerable at the end of a work. MacKenzie Bowell had much to recommend it. It was boldly backward-looking, eccentric, practical, and…
The problem was, having become acquainted with the vision’s flaws, he could no longer look away from them and, as time passed, Reinhart found himself less and less interested in the penitentiary’s fate. This was, in fact, consistent with his attitude to his own work, with the way in which he pulled himself out of one work in order to throw himself into another. He was not interested in his paintings once they were finished, and he sometimes thought his finished work an impediment to the work he had yet to do. Looking at one of his old paintings was like meeting a slightly tiresome former lover. It was fascinating, up to a point, if a great deal of time had passed. It was sometimes interesting, if the piece had solved a puzzle or led him in a new direction. But, for the most part, looking at his own work was embarrassing. He didn’t do it often.
The one most affected by Reinhart’s alienation from his own work was Edward. Reinhart’s enthusiasm, his commitment had helped to eclipse Edward’s doubts about MacKenzie Bowell. Yes, he should have known Reinhart would abandon the prison. He abandoned everything he created, but Edward had hoped this work was different. Why? Because he needed the reassurance that came with Reinhart’s belief in the project. This belief had helped Edward deal with the uncertainty he felt about Franklin’s confidence. When Reinhart abandoned ship, Edward found it more difficult to ignore his misgivings and, worse, his original doubts came back, bringing new ones with them. Now, for instance, there was the matter of St. Pierre and Mickleson.
St. Pierre and Mickleson were, initially, his doing. Edward had heard of them a year before, had heard of them from a secretary to the minister of agriculture. The woman had been flirting with him for months and, after going out for drink with her, Edward had allowed himself to be seduced. She was slightly older than him, but the sex had been surprisingly good and, afterwards, he had not minded lying beside her to talk, a thing he almost never did after sex, usually preferring to leave as soon as was convenient. And she had been talkative. For hours, they’d spoken of everything: nail polish, nuclear weapons, single-malt Scotch, the perfect margarita, and life on the Hill. While talking about this minister and that, she (rather indiscreetly) mentioned having once had to use fixers. Fixers? Yes, you know, rat poison, men who solved problems in unusual ways. Not murderous, but responsible, well organized, quiet as nuns. Like, a certain minister, “you can guess who,” had been having trouble getting his neighbours to let him expand his swimming pool. He didn’t know what to do, but she got her brother, who “lives at the bad end of the block,” to recommend a couple of men and they were really good. When the minister expanded his swimming pool, his neighbours didn’t raise a squeak, not a squeak.
Edward had not seen the woman in some time, had avoided her even, but when Franklin mentioned, off the cuff, having explored any number of reasonable means to sway the McAllisters, Edward had thought of the “fixers” straight away. And, to help Franklin, he had gone out with the woman again and, après les ébats amoureux, which really were surprisingly wonderful, had asked how he could get in touch with her so-called fixers. And she had told him, because she found Edward appealing, though she had added, in a serious voice:
– They’re very thorough, if you know what I mean, okay, Eddy?
He’d had no idea what she meant. He was naive and would, too late, regret his naiveté. But after assuring her he would tell no one where he’d got their coordinates, he’d passed the information on to Franklin, who had met with the men himself. Edward had been in the office the afternoon St. Pierre and Mickleson had come to meet with Franklin, but he had not been invited to speak with them, so his first impression was fleeting but memorable: St. Pierre seemed amiable, though a little odd-looking; Mickleson was quiet. Their presence was intimidating but professional. And yet, as they were leaving the office, Mickleson let out a laugh that sounded like dogs choking, a laugh that abated as abruptly as it had begun.
Franklin had not said much about the men afterwards. So, on the surface, it had all seemed unremarkable, “business as usual,” and Edward might not have thought twice about the men were it not for the sound of Mickleson’s laughter and, later, the fact that Franklin hired the men as “land consultants.” Edward had no way of telling if they were land consultants, but they didn’t look like the kind of men who were up on land or geography or anything of the sort. So, it seemed to him an obvious and public untruth, given that the department would be paying for St. Pierre and Mickleson’s services. The subterfuge and the memory of Mickleson’s laughter unsettled him and provided yet another doubt he didn’t need.
After Reinhart’s change of heart about the penitentiary, when Reinhart abandoned MacKenzie Bowell, Edward was left to think for himself, to sort out his feelings about it, and this was not something he enjoyed doing at all.
{39}
MOVING DAY
Stanley Stanley and his daughter walked together in Notre Dame. Much time had passed since Eleanor’s death, but they were still the only ones to regularly visit her grave. Stanley could have forced Gilbert to accompany them, as he had, once or twice, in the months following Eleanor’s death, but it was not worth the trouble or the distraction. Gilbert was like a monkey let loose in the cemetery, wandering around the monuments, scratching himself, impatient, scarcely able to stand still at his grandmother’s headstone. Nor could his father hit him a good one, considering the place, and the respect due the dead. So, it was better to leave Gil at home.
As for Beatrice: she had come, in the beginning, but had felt hypocritical.
It was sad to think how resentment endured, but Stanley did not want remembrance to cause pain, so he and Mary went on their own.
They were not awkward together. If there was tension, it was only in Stanley’s awareness that Mary had, as she grew, become a woman of whom he was proud but with whom he did not, he felt, share intellectual ground. She had gone beyond him. She thought about the world in ways more subtle, it seemed to him, than he could. She would, for instance, happily speak of politics and ideology and, despite his best efforts to understand, he was inevitably left behind after a while. Still, he would smile as if he understood, to encourage her, because he was proud and because he loved the seriousness with
which she spoke.
For Mary, there had been tension. Younger, she’d been embarrassed by his difficulties with her words. At his instigation, she would recount the things she’d learned, going on about this or that until she saw he was not paying attention. She’d been insulted by his lack of attention and had stopped speaking to him about bookish things until, one evening, as they sat together on the sofa watching Tommy Hunter, he said to her, in a kind voice
– It’s too bad we don’t talk any more, isn’t it?
– What do you mean, Dad?
– I miss you talking.
– We talk all the time.
– Not about anything that matters.
– Like what, Dad?
– I don’t know, but we used to talk about all sorts of things. I don’t always know what you’re talking about, Mare, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it.
After that, she spoke to him about whatever was on her mind, finding a language they could share: a third language, somewhere between the one in which she’d been schooled and the one her father spoke. It was like building together, each from his or her own side, a bridge on which they could meet. In fact, one of the unexpected gifts of Eleanor’s death was that the two who missed her most, or the only two who missed her at all, grew closer as they visited her grave, their common ground. It was not that Stanley loved his daughter more after his mother’s death but, rather, that he met the adult his daughter had become and he liked her very much, would have liked her even were she not his daughter.
So, Stanley and Mary walked together in the cemetery that held Eleanor’s remains. There was no anniversary to mark, but it was a significant occasion nonetheless. It was the day they were to take possession of their new house in the Glebe. Beatrice, Stanley, and Gilbert were to take possession. Mary had, to her family’s surprise, moved into her grandmother’s house.