Asylum

by André Alexis

  The move had been quite a process. She’d had to give the tenants notice, and then have men turn the building back into the Victorian home it had once been. And, even so, she was still up to her neck in the many and mysterious shorings up her home required. As if that weren’t enough, there were the small but unignorable concerns she had about work: particularly the four or five irregularities around Rundstedt’s signature she’d seen since she’d decided to keep track. They were a real puzzle, as it was unclear who was forging the signatures or why. She was inclined to blame Edward, but what if behind Edward there were Franklin, or behind them both Rundstedt who, because he was often away, might have approved the false signatures. It was hard to think straight with such a conundrum in mind. And though she might have wished to let her father in on her concerns, she felt honour-bound to keep them to herself.

  As they walked through the cemetery, the sky was bright blue with slow-moving clouds moving slowly above. It was windless and warm and, as much to ease her own mind as to distract her father from his thoughts of moving, Mary asked

  – Dad, what do you think it means to be loyal?

  – You mean, answered Stanley, if your friend’s wrong, what are you going to do? I’m not sure I’m the one to ask, Mare. I’ve only ever been loyal to your mother.

  – No, you mean faithful, Dad. You’ve been faithful to Mom.

  – Well, it’s pretty easy being faithful to my wife, Mary. But I mean loyal. Whenever there’s something to do or when I’m thinking about buying something, let’s say, I think about your mother first. How’s it going to affect her. That’s what I mean. I’m not one of these guys who’re loyal to a hockey club or something. I just don’t care about anything as much as I care about your mother and you and your brother. So, if someone I knew was fouling up I’d say something about it. Right is right and I don’t care what anybody says. I’m not saying I’m perfect and maybe I haven’t always been as loyal as I should be, but that’s how I try to live.

  – Hmm…, said Mary.

  She was going to point out that, unfortunately, she did not have someone on whom to ground her life, when she saw her favourite headstone: a stone that had obviously been in the cemetery for centuries. It was of sandstone, worn down, wind-shaped, the name of the dead obliterated. All that was left was a wing, which had, perhaps, belonged to a graven angel and a hand, its finger pointing downward. Mary could never pass it without mentioning her amazement that a hand and a wing should be so mysteriously clear, while time, wind, and rain had wiped everything else from the face of the stone. It was as if the elements had contrived an obscure but intriguing message.

  – There’s your stone, her father said.

  And both of them stopped to admire it before moving on. Perhaps feeling he hadn’t properly answered her question and wishing to draw her out again, Stanley asked

  – What’s Mr. Rundstedt doing these days?

  – He’s in his riding, out promoting free trade.

  Mary paused. She reaffirmed her admiration for Rundstedt. He worked hard. He was a tireless campaigner and, in only a few years, he had managed to completely quell her doubts about his character and merit. Still, there had recently been a minor incident. Ruth Rees had been away, so Mary had been opening mail addressed to the minister when she came upon a package from overseas: a flat, brown envelope that smelled of soap. In the package was a stone carving of the Eiffel Tower: grey, unremarkable. That, in itself, was not at all strange. People sent the most peculiar things: bars of soap carved to look like penises (or was it grain silos?), nail files, cookie tins filled with cookies or dead mice (and, in one case, an elegant blue tin filled with shortbread cookies, beneath which there had been a dead robin), and so on. Security was supposed to catch these things, but they almost never did. The stone came with no explanation, just a piece of paper with two small letters stamped on it: “GL, from Paris.” A receipt?

  She had handed him the package when he was next in the office.

  – What’s this? Rundstedt asked.

  – I think it’s a souvenir.

  He had smiled, pushed the package away, and said

  – Keep it for the office

  when he noticed the square of paper with the initial on it. That was the interesting moment. He held the paper up between his thumb and forefinger, considered it for a second, and then turned briefly beet red.

  – I remember now, he’d said. It’s for my wife. I forgot.

  – That was nice of him, said Stanley, buying something for his wife.

  Mary was going to say Rundstedt should have had no cause for embarrassment, but they had come to Eleanor’s grave.

  – Dad? she asked. Don’t you think Gran should have a bigger headstone?

  Eleanor’s headstone was a rectangle of granite, rust coloured, three feet high, and her name was so deeply engraved it was legible from quite a distance.

  Stanley thought about it.

  – No, he said finally. She wasn’t fancy.

  He walked slowly around the stone.

  – I don’t think it matters anyway, he said. Do you think it matters?

  No, it didn’t matter. It was for their benefit, not hers, and it was good the way it was.

  – Did you love her, when you were a boy, Dad?

  This was the first time anyone had asked him that in quite that way. Stanley looked down at the name on the stone:

  ELEANOR STANLEY

  Yes, he had loved her when he was a boy, although…is it love at all, the feeling one has for one’s parents, or is it something else, an instinct say, a feeling like a pilot light that won’t go out? He loved his daughter. This he knew because the instant he had seen her small, perfect self, he had felt that love. There was a before and an after. Before there had been nothing and, then, at the sight of his daughter, love came to, within him. Where Eleanor was concerned, there had been no before. He had, as far as he could say, been born with this feeling for his mother and, over the years, he’d had to protect it…from her most of all, from the one person who seemed intent on snuffing it out. And what did he feel now she was dead? Well, relief, disappointment, sadness, and, despite all, the feeling (whether “love” or “instinct”) he’d always had: helpless pleasure at the thought of her and an equally helpless dread at the thought of what she might say or do. Did he love her, then, when he was a boy? Yes, he’d certainly thought so. So,

  – Yes, he answered.

  Mary sighed.

  – Isn’t it sad, she said, that you never knew your father?

  Taken aback, Stanley asked

  – Why would I want to know him?

  – Well, he was your father, wasn’t he? My grandfather?

  – By mistake, said Stanley. He wasn’t much of a man.

  – But Gran loved him. She kept his picture all those years.

  – I don’t think so, Mary.

  – What are you talking about, Dad? Didn’t you ever see it?

  – No, I never saw his picture.

  Now it was Mary taken aback. She had always supposed her father discouraged mention of Robert Stanley because the subject was painful, because he did not want to discuss the longing he felt. It had never occurred to her that he might be incurious or even troubled by his father’s memory. She hesitated to show him the photograph. A distant echo of the promise she’d made to her grandmother momentarily stopped her, but it seemed wrong to keep this from him.

  – Look, she said, here’s his picture.

  Ever since her grandmother’s death, she kept the photo of Lord Robert Stanley with her at all times, in the pages of whatever book she was reading. She kept it there along with a photograph of Eleanor as a young woman, but it was Lord Stanley she found most interesting. He stood before a chapel with a tall bell tower. He was squinting at the camera, the sun in his face, smiling nonetheless. He was dressed in a white linen suit, had on
a dark tie, and his right hand was in the pocket of his jacket. To Mary, his face was like a familiar and cherished thing seen from an unusual angle.

  The photograph did not, at first, have any effect on Stanley. He politely took it, glanced at the sepia face, felt a shudder of dislike at the sight of the man’s demeanour, then turned it over. There on the back of the photo was his father’s name written in what was unmistakably his mother’s hand, along with the words Mt. St. Benedict. That in itself was surprising. His mother had never, as far as he knew, been sentimental. She had been unsentimental on the subject of his father. To see her handwriting on the back of Robert Stanley’s photo was a strange revelation, an intimation that his mother had been more mysterious than he’d imagined, and he had imagined her mysterious indeed. Why had she kept this from him? The man, slight and dignified, did not seem capable of violence. So, what could she have been hiding? Her love for him? Why would she hide that? Was she the one who’d taken the picture, and was his smile for her? No, no, no. It was too late. His contempt for the man he assumed his father had been was too deep for this moment to be anything but unmanageable dissonance. He would never see Robert Stanley as his father, never accept him, and yet…when he gave the photograph back to his daughter he did feel a certain release, a certain lightness. Had his “father” been there before him, instead of this sepia image, Stanley might have felt, well, a little less hostile, perhaps even curious.

  After he had returned the photograph to his daughter, and when sufficient time had passed so Mary would not confuse his affection for gratitude at her mention of his “father,” Stanley put his arm in his daughter’s arm and they walked a little way, arm in arm, until it became uncomfortable because each had his or her own rhythm and because, as they returned to the world outside the cemetery, their worries and anxieties returned to them and, so, returned them to themselves.

  * * *

  —

  The house Beatrice had chosen was relatively modest. Its ceilings were tall enough (ten feet) but not impressive. Its backyard was of a decent size, but it was plain. Its basement was spacious, dry, and high-ceilinged, but the floor was concrete. The whole had recently been painted a flat white and the effect was of near Quakerish severity, but Beatrice had taken to it on first sight.

  The house’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Molnar, an older Hungarian couple, had had the For Sale placard put up only a day before the Stanleys offered to buy it. They had put the house on the market for more than it was worth, not because they were greedy but because they had been indecisive. They’d spent twenty years in the house, had cared for it as if it were their last home. And it might have been their final home, but age, the long staircase, and the sadness of having lost Otto, their beloved dachshund, had convinced them otherwise. Since Otto’s death, the house had begun to feel like a mausoleum. It was far too big for them. They needed something smaller, or so they thought and, in a brief fit of decisiveness, they had put the house on the market.

  Now, if you had to live in the Glebe, this was the very place to do it. The house was understated but dignified. For Stanley, however, this purchase was accompanied by the persistent feeling they had done wrong. It wasn’t displacing the Molnars that troubled him. Mrs. Molnar had said

  – We’re so happy the house is going to good people.

  No, it was rather that Stanley was troubled by the idea they had not earned the home, had not worked to make it theirs, did not deserve the good fortune that came with his mother’s legacy. He hid his feelings from Beatrice, because he did not want to dampen her pleasure, but on the day they took possession of the house he was ambivalent and quiet.

  From the cemetery, Stanley and Mary had driven to 3rd, where they met Beatrice and Gilbert.

  – How was Granny? asked Gilbert.

  It was all Stanley could do to keep from striking the boy. He glared at him, but then smiled bravely at Beatrice as she turned the key in the front door. The house opened up to them, and it was like seeing it for the first time: wooden floors, polished and gleaming, walls white and uncurved, tall windows in every room. And how quiet it was, until Beatrice opened a window in the living room and the sounds of the city made their way in.

  Gilbert, overjoyed but feigning boredom, went up to the third floor where he had three large rooms for himself, an apartment with which he could do as he liked. Beatrice and Mary went together to the kitchen to make tea in the kettle and cups Beatrice had brought from the house on Spadina. Stanley stood in the drawing room, which led to the dining room, which led to the kitchen. In an hour or so, men from the Bay would deliver furniture: sofas, a loveseat, armchairs, an enormous oak table, high-backed wooden chairs (that reminded him of medieval artifacts), floor lamps, side tables, brass beds (three), china, silverware, an aquamarine rug from Pakistan and another from Iran (chosen by Beatrice for their colours; she had never seemed so keen on colour before), a new stove, a new refrigerator…

  Well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?

  As he stood in the drawing room, he thought about work. He had retired from the post office. It would not have been right to take work from someone who needed it, but this was the first time Stanley would be without a job. What would he do exactly? What was home without work? Wasn’t it work that had made home home?

  – Here’s your tea, Dad.

  Mary handed him one of the cups from the old house, his favourite: a mug on which the words IF YOU’RE CLOSE ENOUGH TO READ THIS, BUGGER OFF! had faded to near invisibility. Beatrice stood beside him, her arm around his waist.

  – By tomorrow, it’ll look just like home, she said.

  – Looks like home already, Stanley answered.

  Which, perhaps, it did, if your version of home happened to include estrangement, loss, and the nagging sense you were in a museum.

  The house was home to neither of them, and would not be for a long time, if at all.

  Home was now, as it had been at the start of their life together, each other. The house would have to get used to them, which it would do as they did the small things: putting up drapes, dressing the beds, sweeping the floors, sitting out in the garden, making the place theirs, inhabiting its interiors, learning its drafts and warm currents.

  – Well, it isn’t rocket science, thought Stanley.

  Which was true, astrophysics being easier than homemaking.

  {40}

  ST. PIERRE AND MICKLESON

  St. Pierre and Mickleson were not land consultants. Their line of work had no name, though it had a long and obscure tradition. And although they had markedly different personalities, St. Pierre and Mickleson shared two qualities that suited them for each other and for their work: a sense of humour and an abiding respect for professionalism, for things done not just rightly but precisely. Also, they were both intellectually placid, untroubled by ideas or ideology. They felt no scorn for others nor any sense of their own superiority. They needed no justifications for their actions and could not be put off by pangs of conscience.

  They had been asked to persuade Mr. and Mrs. McAllister to sell their property in the Gatineaus. The McAllisters were the last of the cottagers to hold out. All the others (Fields, Thompsons, and Burrs) had sold their holdings and moved on, shortly after discovering their places would be near a penitentiary. The McAllisters, however, were hard-headed. They seemed genuine in their concern for the environment and, as they owned one of the only roads into the land on which the prison was to be built, it was, perhaps, their hope the government would reconsider the location of the penitentiary.

  St. Pierre and Mickleson had done all sorts of research on the McAllisters, charting their comings and goings, listening in on their telephone conversations, listening in on their most private exchanges, all in order to discover the kind of people they were: successful (yes), sophisticated (not really), cultured (not particularly), honest (not especially), faithful (not inevitably), brave (no, not at all). They were a couple
with a deeply held belief in their own moral superiority; they seemed to enjoy (or Mr. McAllister seemed to enjoy) exercising authority; they had worked hard for what they had and, as with a good many adults who have no children, they adored their pets: a poodle and a Havanese.

  In other words, they were almost statistically normal.

  On a Saturday night in spring, when Mr. and Mrs. McAllister were at home in Ottawa preparing for bed, St. Pierre and Mickleson knocked at their front door. It was Mrs. McAllister who answered.

  – Yes?

  she asked, holding the door open only enough to let her face out.

  Mickleson entered first, kicking the door open and knocking Mrs. McAllister backwards. The Havanese, Heraclitus, jumped up and down excitedly, barking at the intruders. So as he shut the door behind him, St. Pierre took a pistol from his coat pocket and shot the dog. The report was soft, there was the sudden sharp stink of gunfire, and the dog looked to have been pulverized: bits of fur clung to the walls and the floor, and there was blood everywhere.

  Mr. McAllister, in pyjamas and housecoat, was there on the staircase. This made Mickleson’s task much easier. He moved quickly to Mr. McAllister and hit him first in the solar plexus and then in the mouth, straightening him out, and knocking him backwards onto the steps. He then went up to the second floor and checked its rooms for guests.

  From the moment Mickleson forced his way in to the moment he struck Mr. McAllister, not one minute passed, but for Mrs. McAllister it was as if an eternity unfurled. She did not know where to look, what she was supposed to feel, what she was supposed to do. When she saw her husband lying on the stairs, she began a scream that was immediately cut short by St. Pierre.

  He put a hand over her mouth and said (resolutely, reassuringly, just loudly enough to be heard above the commotion)

  – If you make a sound, I’ll shoot the other dog. You understand?

  She understood exactly. The poodle, Lucy, had wandered in to observe the disturbance. Though usually an excitable dog, she sat up quietly, puzzled, looking from Mrs. McAllister to Mr. McAllister and back, before thoughtfully licking some of the blood from the floor. Mrs. McAllister, though she was on the verge of hysterics, bit her own tongue to keep herself quiet.