What Is Left the Daughter

by Howard Norman

  "Can I speak to him, please?"

  "It won't do any good, Mr. Hillyer. I've made inquiries around town, and Mr. Brockman suggests the Homestead Hotel at 6 Duke Street. Their rent is twelve per month more reasonable than ours, if you catch my meaning."

  "This isn't good news."

  "It could be worse," she said. "Mr. Brockman's not charging you this month's rent."

  "That's very decent of him," I said.

  "The Homestead has a room reserved under your name. Mr. Brockman took the liberty."

  "The fact of why he had to call them couldn't be much of a recommendation for me," I said.

  "It's not so undignified as all that, Mr. Hillyer," she said. "You're hardly the first we've made such an arrangement for. And hotels in Halifax try to accommodate each other. Whenever possible."

  I needed only two days to move. I was now in room 301 at the Homestead Hotel, which was a bit shabbier than the Waverly, but my room looked out through clean windows onto Duke Street, and there was a closet spacious enough to hold the radios. The bed had a good mattress, and my neighbors on either side, and above and below, were fairly quiet. I'd persuaded two bellmen from the Waverly to help me carry my possessions across town. I bought them each a beer at Rigolo's.

  A week later, I'd come back from a long, exhausting day of gaffing in rough weather. Still in my work clothes, I sat at my one table, eating halibut, green beans and carrot sticks off the hot plate and listening to Corelli, the gramophone turned low, when I had the idea to telephone Cornelia. It may be that I wanted to hear a familiar voice, even though there may not be much to say. Just to speak with an old friend. I tapped the receiver buttons half a dozen times and the switchboard operator said, "How may I help you, room 301?"

  "I'd like to call a Mrs. Cornelia Tell in Middle Economy," I said. "I have the number right here. Should I read it to you?"

  There was a long silence. Maybe the switchboard operator was new on the job, didn't know how to connect a long-distance call. But finally she said, "Wyatt Hillyer, I noticed your name in the hotel registry."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's your old neighbor Reese," she said. "Reese Mac Isaac."

  I can guarantee you, Marlais, that I almost fell off my chair. It wasn't so much that Reese was still living in Halifax. In fact, I thought I'd seen her a few times across some street I was walking on, and once through a restaurant window, but on those occasions I couldn't really be sure. More, it was the fact that she'd described herself as "your old neighbor." As if a whole world of incidents and experiences had been reduced to that.

  "You know, I saw you that day," she said. "How many years back? You were standing with two people quite a bit older than you, and I was boarding the Victoria, going to New York City. This wasn't long after Katherine and Joe had died and I was being hounded by newspaper reporters and had to get out for a while. I stayed in New York only a short time. Foolish me and all of my foolish ambitions, eh? I actually considered trying to find acting work, but when I consulted the trade papers, there were hundreds of people looking for the same kind of work. You can't imagine. I didn't know how to go about things there. I walked around a lot and sat in my hotel room and came back within a couple of weeks. Job to job to job—and I ended up here at the Homestead about two years ago."

  "You've traveled widely in Halifax," I said. "Same as me, hotel to hotel."

  "That's right."

  "It seems being a switchboard operator suits you," I said.

  "I need a job and I know this job," she said. "In that sense it suits me."

  "My parents and I saw you in Widow's Walk."

  "Were you surprised I wasn't nominated for an Academy Award?"

  "As it turned out, what surprised me was what you meant to my mother and my father," I said. "That's what surprised me."

  "It surprised us three as well," she said.

  "Yeah, it surprised them both off a bridge."

  There was a long silence.

  "I'll try and connect your call now, Wyatt," she said.

  In about ten minutes Reese Mac Isaac called back and said, "I let it ring thirty times or more, but your Cornelia Tell didn't pick up. Shall I try again later?"

  "Maybe tomorrow," I said.

  "I'm not supposed to use the switchboard for personal business," she said, "but I'm in my same house, 60 Robie. Just for your information."

  "Goodbye, switchboard operator," I said.

  "Did you ever know that old Paulson Lessard got a public notice and was fined for disturbing the peace?"

  "I'm not on speaking terms with Mr. Lessard," I said.

  "Nobody is, since he's dead and buried, Wyatt," she said.

  "He pawned off my mother's radios."

  "That was unkind."

  "It was out-and-out theft."

  "Him receiving a fine and citation, it's a small piece of news, I know. I mean, we've been through a war, haven't we? It's a small, small piece of news, but what happened was, when you moved out of town, you apparently had arranged for Paulson Lessard to look after your house. You gave him a key."

  "That's true."

  "Well, one Sunday night he had all of Katherine's radios blasting music at top volume. More noise than if a ghost walked through a zoo. You see, I'd only just come back from New York and was asleep when it happened. I woke up and looked through my kitchen window, but I didn't see anyone in your house. A neighbor from across the street called the police. I went out on my porch. The neighbor was standing on your front lawn. I wasn't on speaking terms with her. Nobody was on speaking terms with me, really. Except news paper reporters, and what they printed was unspeakable, all sorts of trash about me and Katherine, me and Joe. I was even offered tabloid money to tell my true story, so to speak."

  "The harlot's true story," I said.

  "Yes, harlot that I was," she said. "Anyway, a police car arrived and two officers knocked on your door. By this time, maybe ten or a dozen neighbors were on your lawn. I was looking out my kitchen window again. An officer stood on your porch and shined his flashlight in through your dining room window, and that's when I caught a glimpse of Mr. Lessard standing on your dining room table, naked as a jaybird. Not a lovely sight. And he was waving a spatula over his head like he was conducting an orchestra."

  "What happened then?"

  "They opened the front door and walked in and had a sit-down with Paulson Lessard," Reese said. "He'd wrapped the tablecloth around himself. In the end, he was charged only with disturbing the peace."

  "I guess that didn't improve the reputation of my house any," I said.

  "I'll say this for him, though," Reese said, "he watered the plants. He kept the lawn clipped and the snow off your driveway. He was old, but he got up on a ladder and washed windows."

  "He pawned my mother's radios," I said. "But I got them back."

  "From the pawnshop?" Reese said.

  "That's right."

  "Oh, my, you had to purchase your own heirlooms."

  "That's one way to look at it."

  "Wyatt, my shift is four to midnight, seven days a week, though Sundays I might shut down the switchboard at ten. Management allows me that. So if you want to avoid me, and why wouldn't you, don't ask me to connect a call during those hours, okay?"

  "I might have to move hotels," I said.

  "That would work, too," she said.

  I heard the switchboard's electric buzz-buzz-buzz in the background—Reese had to connect a call but didn't put me on hold. She just rang off.

  When I thought about it, it didn't seem all that big a coincidence, Reese Mac Isaac working in the same hotel where I rented a room. Being a switchboard operator had been Reese's one steady employment. Most of the hotels in Halifax had switchboards. If I could change hotels so often, why not Reese? That's how I saw it.

  But you know what, Marlais? Unless Lenore Teachout had been on the third-party line at the Homestead, pen and paper in hand, and later provided me with transcripts, it's otherwise impossible for me
to remember all of the conversations—dozens—that I had with Reese Mac Isaac over the next six or seven months.

  I can assure you, however, that for a long time we never spoke face-to-face. If we saw each other in the lobby, we allowed for only the slightest acknowledgment. Hello, a half-smile, sometimes not even that. A few days would go by, no conversation, then we might talk for upward of an hour, depending on whether other people in the hotel required Reese's services. But there was one conversation I definitely want to tell you about, and here goes.

  Simply put, I was sick and tired of not knowing—not knowing and not knowing—very much about the day my parents jumped from those bridges. So one night at about ten P.M. I said, "Reese, did you speak with my mother or my father on the morning before they died?"

  I suppose it's to her credit that Reese didn't hesitate to answer. I was grateful for that. "Not that morning, no," she said. "The night before, I did speak with Katherine, but not with Joe. I was going to spend time with Joe the next night, but there wasn't a next night."

  "No, there wasn't," I said.

  "Wyatt, do you want to know what Katherine and I spoke about?"

  "It would allow me to stop tormenting myself wondering."

  "Well, Katherine was in a philosophical way. We talked about the impossibility of life. No, that's not quite it. More to the point, we talked about the impossibility of us." Reese stopped, seeming to collect herself. Then: "I'm just going to say this, all right, Wyatt?"

  "Just say it."

  "The impossibility of us having a love. A love for each other. I mean physical, Wyatt. And I mean all other aspects, too. Oh, how we could talk with each other. Especially about theater and movies, I suppose. But about most anything, really. We spoke about—forgive me—her marriage. Your father seldom spoke about the marriage. Then again, he didn't cry wolf, either. If he did say something, he'd already given it some thought. About the thing itself, and if he should tell me. And he never once—not once—directed a harsh word toward Katherine. Joseph was discreet like that.

  "As I said, Katherine was in a philosophical mood that night. We spoke about the impossibility of a person fitting a secret life within the life they already have. Wanting desperately to hang on to that secret life, because it's the life that touches you the deepest. Believe me, Wyatt, she suffered real anguish, because her secret life touched her deepest. This can't be easy to hear, but you asked."

  "Of course, you had two secret lives, didn't you, Reese," I said.

  "Yes, and they had the same address, didn't they," Reese said. "Right next door."

  "Three times as lonely, I bet."

  "It wasn't mathematics, Wyatt."

  "Did you talk a long time with my mother that night?"

  "Through two pots of tea and some other things to drink," Reese said. "It was Joe's night to have his typewriter shop open late. So we talked and talked, Katherine and I. It's common wisdom, but a rare actual experience in life, that if you find someone you can truly talk with, you can love that person. We declared certain things to each other. No promises were made, but anguished declarations were stated. And what tears me apart every night of my life is that I'm convinced late that night Katherine confessed everything to Joseph. She was so much at wits' end. What's more, I'm equally convinced that Joseph then confessed everything to Katherine.

  "They were two good people in a terrible situation." Reese cried a little, then said, "Sorry."

  "No need to apologize," I said.

  "Well, there is a need," she said. "But I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know what they said to each other. And the truth is, I heard about the bridges the same way everyone else did. On the radio."

  I set down the telephone on its cradle. But Reese rang me right back.

  "You asked me a question, Wyatt," she said. "Now I have one to ask you. Am I correct in thinking you hold a poisonous grudge against me? That's my question. Do you hate me because you believe Katherine and Joe jumping off those bridges was somehow my fault?"

  "And what would it matter to you if I did hate you?"

  "I don't expect sympathy. I don't deserve it. But I've gotten a lot of nasty letters—unsigned, by the way, a lot of them. Good Christian judgments, but they don't sign their letters."

  "Sounds bad."

  "Just please answer my question."

  "I hated you and hated what my parents did. But no longer. Let's leave it at that."

  "All right. That's something at least. Thank you."

  "Ten thousand Haligonians reading about it. How was I supposed to get any peace about what happened? I still don't know how to find any peace about it."

  "In my own small way I was happy for you, Wyatt, that your aunt and uncle took you in. That you didn't get hounded."

  "It's not like life didn't have other things in store."

  "Yes, I know. I read the newspapers. The murder of that German student was on page two. And there was your uncle's name. There was your name. And I thought, My God, that's Katherine and Joe's boy."

  And that was the third-to-last time I spoke with Reese Mac Isaac.

  The second-to-last took place on the evening of November 9, 1962. Halifax had recently experienced one of the nastiest storms in memory. It lasted a good three days. Gale-force winds, hail, rain and sleet. There had even been bulletins warning of water spouts—water spouts were bad news, and I recall being told that in 1940, a member of the gaffing crew, Paul Syberg, was a victim of a water spout, which more or less ambushed a tugboat he'd been working on. It whirlpooled, flung him overboard and nearly capsized the tug.

  On one of the relatively calm days during the November storm, my crew took the opportunity to get some gaffing done—taking precautions, of course —and Hermione Rexroth and I had been assigned to the waters close by Pier 21. The Cascania was tied up at the pier. Hermione commented on just how high up on the Cascamos hull the waves had pasted slick ribbons of kelp.

  In her spare time —she wasn't married—Hermione was something of an historian of Pier 21 and of immigration in general. "The harshest thing, to my mind," she had once said to me, "the most shameful? It was a long time before Jewish displaced persons—refugees, orphans, all that—were welcomed to Canada. Here we fought the war, Canada did, but the government wouldn't take in the people who had it worst. Well, the War Orphans Project—what, 1947, thereabouts? That allowed Jews in—if I have my numbers right, between 1947 and 1949, about eleven hundred Jewish orphans and fifteen thousand Jewish refugees were allowed in."

  "That's all good deeds there," I said.

  "Finally—sure," she said. "But it was late. Very, very late, Wyatt. Besides, Halifax wasn't all saints in other ways, too. If you go up to the sporting club, corner of Gottingen and Gerrish? You'll find JEWS NOT ALLOWED stenciled by the front gate. Sure, they've since scrubbed it. But look closely—it's legible. Same for the public swimming pool, Northpark and Cornwallis."

  "Jesus, look right now at all those people on the gangway," I said.

  "All Hungarians, according to the newspaper," Hermione said.

  "And listen to the bagpipes," I said. "Rain or shine for how many years now? A piper's always there to greet every ship."

  "I'd bet that those Hungarians, for better or worse, have never heard bagpipes before."

  I couldn't figure out the reason, but all that day I'd battled a terrible headache, sometimes to the point of blurred vision. And late one afternoon, I threw up my hands to fend off what I thought was a seagull, but it wasn't anything. With that incident, I should've called it a day. Instead, I said, "Hermione, let's take an hour break, all right?" We rowed over and tied up to a tug that had escorted the Cascania, climbed the ladder on deck and had hot tea with the four-man crew, fellows we knew well, and it was a blessed reprieve from the biting cold. From the wheelhouse, all of us watched immigrants—suitcases in hand, children alongside, sleet sticking to hats and scarves—move slowly down the gangway. It must've been the headache having its strangest effect of all, plus the sleet
somewhat obscuring the view, the steam out of the tug's galley pipe, too—I don't know what all—but, Marlais, I thought I saw your mother moving slowly along the gangway, and a girl of about sixteen, which would've been your age at the time, was huddled against her.

  Of course, Marlais, it wasn't you and Tilda. Of course not. It was some kind of mirage, you might say. Hermione noticed my expression and said, "Wyatt, you don't look so well, my friend." I said I thought I'd better see a doctor. I lay down on a cot below deck, covered by a coarse blanket. Believe me, you have to be bone tired to be able to sleep on a tugboat next to an enormous ship, a hundred seagulls complaining by the minute, the tug's engine running. Yet I did sleep. I didn't even wake when the tug tied up at Purdy's Wharf. Hermione had to wake me. She climbed down, got into our boat and rowed it in, and I went directly ashore and walked home. I couldn't shake the mirage out of my head, though. I mean, Marlais, it was the strangest thing.

  I was still rooming at the Homestead Hotel, and when I stepped into the lobby, no doubt looking more like a rain-soaked dog than a human being, I didn't glance left or right but instead marched straight to the electric lift and took it up to my room, whereas normally I would've taken the stairs. I soaked in the bathtub, the water as hot as the hotel could possibly make it—tenants had recently complained—and then got dressed in trousers and a shirt that I'd ironed myself. When the telephone rang, it was Reese Mac Isaac. "Wyatt," she said with some alarm, "didn't you even notice? Your friend Cornelia Tell's in the lobby. She's been there at least five hours, Wyatt." I rang off and hurried down the stairs to the lobby. In the corner, on a sofa near an enormous potted plant, Cornelia was asleep under her coat. Her overnight bag was on the floor at her feet.

  I lightly shook Cornelia awake. "Oh, Wyatt, thank God you're here," she said. She sat up and took my hands in hers. "Our Tilda died in Denmark, Wyatt. It was sudden and I don't know from what."

  "Was she ill?"

  "All I know is what the wire said. Tilda passed two days ago and is buried in Copenhagen."

  "Wire sent from whom to whom?"

  "Sent from your daughter to the post office. Reverend Witt happened to be posting a letter. He signed for it."