by Keith Weaver
“Can we have chicken tonight, Daddy?”
“Funny you should ask”, Sanford said. “I was thinking of some nice chicken in barbecue sauce”, and the response indicated that that would be more than adequate.
They prepared and cooked the meal together: chicken smeared in barbecue sauce and baked in the oven, some rainbow noodles, and fresh peas.
“Can I try some more wine tonight, Daddy?”
“Would a nice Chardonnay be all right?”
“Yes, that would be fine”, his budding taster announced in confident sophistication, even though as far as she was concerned “Chardonnay” could have been the name of a company that made trailer hitches.
Less than half an hour after finishing their companionable meal and doing the washing up, the small half glass of wine and the day’s excitement did their thing.
“I’m tired, Daddy”, and she was nodding off even before she finished pulling on her pyjamas.
Sanford sat by her bed for a few minutes, then rose quietly, went into Joe’s den, and closed the door. It was going to be a very long night.
Sixteen
Sanford was living through something unique in his experience: not having a provenance, not having a complete past, not knowing where he came from, not knowing just how he got here, or why, not knowing who he was. Or maybe the unease really came from a complementary negative: knowing for certain that he didn’t know any of these things.
Not only was it unique, it was unsettling. Dizzying. A visit to the edge of a personal abyss. Disorienting. And it brought out a previously unknown sensation: a powerful aversion to being rootless.
The initial shock was past now, but even as he sat there, he experienced aftershocks, as his mind travelled over the same ground again and again, following some urge for self-inflicted wounds, like the urge to pick the scab that had formed a few days after the previous scab-picking exercise. At an intellectual level, he was aware that an abrupt change had occurred in what he had considered an unquestioned and stable past, and that he had to come to terms with this. He was also aware of an overwhelming uncertainty that had invaded his existence like a tsunami.
It was pointless to deny or try to rationalize away the urge to know who he was. He had to know. But he couldn’t allow it to turn into an obsession. Dogs and cats have no idea where they come from, but you don’t find them frozen into a state of existential panic. No. They are generally happy, given loving owners. They play. They purr. They wag tails and bark in invitation. They roll on their backs. Their lots in life are good, and they just accept all this at face value.
But people aren’t dogs and cats. They can’t avoid thinking. They have a need to know things, especially things essential to a sense of who they are.
So. Sanford was raised by someone who turned out not to have borne him. It wasn’t possible for her to have been unaware she was not his mother, so she must have known how he came into her care. Why didn’t she tell him? These lines of thought raised other questions about the why, how, where, and when of Aileen. She had reasonable schooling for someone raised in her time, and she had used this to do secretarial and bookkeeping work for various people in Stanley Falls and nearby towns and villages. Her family came from this region, but she was an only daughter, and her parents had both died while they were still relatively young. Was there any good reason why she stayed in this area? She could have done better in Kingston or Peterborough, or even in Belleville, or Cobourg. Why stay in a deep rural hamlet? Did any of this have something to do with her silence?
Joe probably knew as much about Sanford’s background as anyone, and possibly quite a bit more given his acute analytical capabilities. He stayed in Stanley Falls for very definite reasons, one of which was that he had inherited his property, and it was indeed a gorgeous place for him to become rooted. Judging from the literary drafts Sanford had seen, his farm sat well with his artistic impulses, and gave them fuel and free rein as well. Joe had been a combination older brother, uncle, and close friend to Sanford. Had he done this out of other-than-normal interest, concern, and affection for a young boy who had no father figure in his life? Had Joe taken any other youth under his wing in the same way? Not as far as Sanford was aware. Apart from whatever he saw as his role with respect to Sanford, Joe must have had considerable knowledge of Sanford’s past, and probably knew that Aileen was not his biological mother. It was fair enough that he would say nothing if all he had were suspicions, but if he had definite knowledge, was there a good reason why he would not eventually tell Sanford?
Before drifting off into realms of nested speculation, Sanford needed to go through, once again and more carefully, all the “Personal” files Joe had left to his care. If Joe had not told him important things while Joe was still alive, it was entirely possible that he would have left an account, or at least hints, for Sanford to read after Joe’s death. But this seemed sneaky, underhanded, and completely unlike Joe.
Sanford began digging into the files. They formed a stack about eight inches deep. It would take at least five hours. He began making notes on a fresh pad of lined paper. The approach he decided on was to make two passes: the first to note down anything that seemed to him to be of particular importance, and the second to record in detail anything that would help fill in the picture of his life, formulate any questions that this material suggested, and try to find answers to these questions.
At 11 pm, Sanford had completed his first pass, and had already made five pages of jottings. He had uncovered few answers, and there were now many more questions. He rose from the desk, stretched, and went to check on Julia. She was out for the count, but it looked almost as though a little smile of amusement remained on her lips.
At 3 am, Sanford stopped again. He rose from the chair, stretched, and this time went outside. The cool night air was fresh, still, and silent. The rich, resinous odour of pines and other evergreens pervaded the night, and Sanford stepped down from the porch and walked to the back of Joe’s house. Reggie had emerged from his kennel and was standing to greet Sanford. Sanford fussed him for a good five minutes. Reggie occasionally cocked his ears at something Sanford was unable to hear, but it seemed clear that the local rabbits had learned, probably from the gruesome public failures of one or two of their number, that attempts to get past Reggie and into the fenced-off garden were simply not worth it. The low roar of the river at the dam in Stanley Falls was just audible, but the rest, the peace of Joe’s little demesne, and the quiet of the area it was set in, filled Sanford’s spirit. Just then, he felt very close indeed to Joe in one sense, but held apart from him by the disappointment, the frustration, and, indeed, the anger stirred up by all the unanswered questions that now swirled in Sanford’s head.
Back at Joe’s desk, Sanford applied himself once more to the files. He was in the home stretch now. By 4:30, he had completed a close reading of all the material. By 5:30, he had done all he could, but had found few new hard facts and had drawn few conclusions. The primary hard fact was what lay beneath Joe’s manure pile, and the moment he recognized this, images from that day returned, trailing their ominous wake. The significant conclusion was that there was just one person remaining he had to consult. There was no indication he would learn anything new from that person, but he had to try. Having read all Joe’s notes thoroughly, some of the questions he had were now clearer, some of Joe’s life, at least those parts that he felt sure he knew reasonably well, made a little more sense. There seemed to be more rationale for some of Joe’s actions. But still, too much of what he once thought he knew about Joe was now shrouded in uncertainty. And it had been that shift from past certainty to present doubt that had given him the most trouble. At least, however, the night’s work had made his next step clear.
Having completed a good deal of online searching, he decided when he would have a talk alone with Anne Ferguson. He emailed his boss and asked his agreement to a new schedule that Sanford proposed.
And, most significantly, he did one more thing. T
hat one thing would provide what he hoped would be a change of scene, a break, a means at the very least for he and Julia to get away from the trouble and angst that life had thrown at them both over the past few months, and, maybe, take the first steps in a new start. It would also allow him to check the last potential source of information, to take the only remaining step that could allow him to close the book on what his many years with his friend Joe had meant.
He booked flights for himself and Julia to Milan, and connecting flights to Genoa, and at 6:30, he switched off his computer.
Seventeen
Sanford was sitting pondering many unanswered questions, trying to decide which ones were “right now urgent” and which could be set aside for the time being.
“Daddy?”
“Hello Julia. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes.” A delay here while she appeared to be thinking about something. “Could we have breakfast outside?”
“Yes.”
“At the big stone table?”
“Yes.”
“With Reggie?”
“Yes. What would you like for breakfast?”
“Can we have pancakes?”
“Would you like plain pancakes, or blueberry pancakes …”
“Blueberry!”
Of course, Sanford had suspected that as soon as the blueberry option came up, everything else would take a back seat.
“Why don’t you go and wash and get dressed, and I’ll see you in the kitchen in a few minutes?”
“Okay.” But she remained where she was.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“I love you. I wish Mommy was here too, but I love you and that’s enough.” And she then turned decisively and left the room.
After the series of jolts Sanford had received during the past week, that was just about the best medicine he could hope for, and he felt weak and strong at the same time.
Sanford busied himself laying out the ingredients for pancakes. He was about to begin preparing the batter when Julia came back, dressed in a pair of her new blue shorts. The two of them had a nice smiling discussion about shorts and new clothes and then Sanford said they should give Reggie his breakfast before they had theirs, so they both trooped outside to where Reggie was waiting as though he had heard and understood everything they had said during the past few minutes. Julia hugged Reggie, and her eyes-closed smile said everything about carefree youth and being fully in the moment. Reggie put up with it all dogfully as part of the assumed cost of finding the shortest path to some grub. They watched Reggie eat for a while, then went back inside, washed their hands, whipped up the pancake batter, and then did the pancake road test.
For quite a few years, Sanford had mused, at odd and idle moments, about whether there was something fundamentally significant, some inherent primeval element of hilarity and magic that was triggered in young minds by the sight of a pancake turning end over end in the air and landing back in a skillet. Sanford had recognized Julia’s attraction to this culinary sideshow when she was not yet two, and he had acquired the skill of flipping a pancake so that it sailed straight upward to within a few inches of the ceiling, then fell reliably back into the pan. The road test complete, and the giggling having subsided, the serious task of frying thick spongy pancakes, heavily laden in blueberries, began. Carrying plates of pancakes, a jar of maple syrup, cutlery, napkins, and a damp cloth, they moved out toward the sylvan glade. A call to Reggie from Julia brought the dog bounding around the corner of the house, since Reggie had always been keen to join Joe and Sanford at the stone table.
They sat there, all three of them, since Reggie was allowed to sit on the stone bench next to Sanford. Julia had a cushion to raise her up enough so that she could lean over her plate and avoid dripping syrup on her clean white top and new shorts. They ate wordlessly, Sanford giving a small piece of pancake to Reggie every few minutes.
When they had finished, they both made good use of several napkins, and then Julia looked at Sanford and giggled.
“What?” he asked, through a half-smile. “Oh! I bet it’s my teeth.”
“Are mine black too, Daddy?”
“Black? Julia dear, your mouth looks like an oil well.”
“Can I show Anne?”
“No, we’ll go and brush our teeth when we take the dishes back to the house. If Anne saw you like this she’d probably faint.”
Having returned the dishes to the kitchen and washed them, they went to brush their teeth, but Julia broke into paroxysms of laughter when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror. After that had died down, they brushed together, then went back to the kitchen.
“What are we doing today, Daddy?”
“Well, there are quite a few things to do for the corn and sausage spectacular tomorrow. We can prepare the hamburg patties this morning. That will probably take about two hours. Then I think we should go talk to Anne. But right now we need to talk about a holiday.”
“Holiday?”
“Yes. In a little more than a week, we will go to Toronto, we’ll stay at my place, and we’ll spend some time visiting Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Why is that a holiday?”
“Oh, no. That’s not the holiday. The holiday comes right after that. I thought we would go away for about two weeks.”
“Go away? Where?”
“Someplace you’ve never been. To Italy. Do you think you’d like that?”
“Would I be with you, Daddy?”
“Yes, certainly. It would hardly be a holiday otherwise, would it?”
“Then I think I would like that. Will we eat some spaghetti?”
“We’ll eat lots of things you haven’t eaten before.”
“Oh! Yes, I will like that!”
“Well! You’re becoming a real foodie, aren’t you?”
“Foodie?”
“Yes. Somebody who goes crazy about food.”
“But isn’t that everyone, Daddy?”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
Sanford wiped down Joe’s large food preparation area.
“Okay. Let’s get out the hamburg meat, leave it to warm up, then we can make the patties. How many hamburgers do you think we’ll need?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, how many hamburgers would you be able to eat yourself?”
“Six.”
“Six! That’s a lot of food. And don’t forget, there’ll be corn and sausages and chicken and potato salad and then dessert.”
“Oh! Yes! Then maybe just two.”
“Okay. Fourteen people and two hamburgers each, that’s twenty-eight hamburgers, so let’s say thirty-five hamburgers altogether just to be safe.”
Sanford pulled two large plastic containers of hamburg meat from the fridge and set them on trivets to warm.
“While the meat is warming, what do you say we go over to Anne’s place and see what plans she has for today? I’m sure she’s going to need your help.”
Eighteen
Sanford accompanied Julia across to Anne’s place, she was given a generous motherly welcome, and Sanford explained that they had begun preparations for the big picnic. Anne clearly had vast plans of her own in that area. She whisked Julia away, and soon they were deep in cosmic culinary discussions that clearly excluded Sanford just by their nature. Sanford took that opportunity to duck out and deal with some loose ends. Back at Joe’s place, he began making his calls.
“Inspector Meloni please”, Sanford said, then waited for the clicking and buzzing to finish.
“Meloni.”
“Hello Inspector. This is James Sanford. I wanted to follow up on a few details on my ex-wife’s death.”
“Yes sir. There might be only a limited amount I can tell you.”
Sanford ignored this caution.
“I would like a copy of the post-mortem on Helen. Can you help with that?”
“Yes sir. That report has been issued and I can send you a copy.”
“Good. Thank you Inspector.
Now. Can you tell me where you are with the case?”
“No sir. I can’t discuss that with you.”
“So the case is still open?”
“The investigation is ongoing.”
“And my ex-wife’s belongings, have they been released yet?”
“They’re available to be picked up. It has to be her next of kin, either her father or mother.”
“They’ve both been hit very hard by this”, Sanford said, rather pointedly. “They’re also both elderly and not that mobile. I assume that one of them has to sign for Helen’s effects?”
Meloni indicated that yes, that was the case.
“I can bring my father-in-law in and help him through the process. Does it take long?”
“No. We need only some identification and a signature.”
“What’s the procedure, where should we turn up?”
Meloni gave Sanford the details and the location, and said that he could turn up any time between eight in the morning and six in the evening.
Sanford then called his in-laws, Gillian and Philip. Both of them had been close to Helen, and it was difficult to say which of them was having the greatest difficulty coming to terms with what had occurred. Sanford had only to substitute himself for Philip, and Julia for Helen, and he understood clearly the yawning chasm they had to face again every morning and endure all day every day.
“Hello?”
It was Philip. His voice was listless, drained of life.
“Hello Philip. This is Jim. I hope you are both doing well.”
There was a silence. “As well as can be expected, Jim. I guess. How is Julia?”
“Julia is fine, Philip.” It had occurred to Sanford to say something like “Young people roll with problems more easily than adults”, but there would be no purpose in that. Sanford actually did suspect that because Julia could not avoid seeing the way her mother had lived every day, could not avoid seeing the decline, she had to come to terms with the very large changes in Helen’s behaviour compared to what she had known just months earlier, and that she was in fact in a better position to handle the ultimate loss. But who knows how these things can affect children, and what impacts they might have later?