“Once this becomes legal, it can become very ugly.”
“But we’ve done nothing. Nothing wrong.”
Sheila took a deep breath. She seemed nervous and concerned. “John Alex, you need to listen to me carefully. Travelling from town to town, I get access to all the gossip, as you know. And sometimes it’s just that, but I got this from Dewey’s wife. She tells all and doesn’t hold any secrets back. To her this was a gem. To you it is poison.”
“I remember Dewey from when he was a boy,” I said, my mind trying to stray from the crisis at hand. “Dalton’s son. He told everyone about Dickle, about the time …” but I didn’t finish the story about Dickle who was so scared he shit his pants, and then his friend Dewey telling everyone about it.
“Well, Dickle is in on this too. He drew up the documents for Social Services. Apparently he is not a great admirer of yours.”
“The bastards,” I said, looking at Em now with the lines of concern on her brow.
“I believe they will show up tomorrow morning, John Alex. Dewey and Sealy Hines. Do you see where this is going?”
“Sealy’s a Mountie. Why would he come here?”
“This has become official, I’m sorry to say. Emily’s parents have convinced Social Services to intervene. Emily is sixteen. She’s pregnant. She refuses to live at home and her parents have temporarily made her the responsibility of the province.”
“They’ve given up their daughter.”
“Something like that. Dewey is a social worker and he’s charged with coming to take her away. I think Dewey has his own hate on for you and he’s looking forward to this. At least that’s what his wife, Syb, seems to think.”
“I never did a thing to make Dewey dislike me.”
“John Alex, you are a good man. You’ve been outspoken and you’ve always lived your life without caring what anyone else thought of you. And that pisses the hell out of a lot of people.”
I looked at Em. She hadn’t missed any of the conversation. “What are we going to do?” she asked me.
“Sheila,” I said, “why are you telling me this?”
What she said next shocked me so bad I thought I must have imagined it.
“Because I love you.”
“What?”
“I wish I had a lot of time to explain. But there are a lot of different kinds of love in the world. When I was a teenager, I watched you and thought that you were the kind of man I wanted to marry someday. You would have never known this, of course. I kept it to myself. And I was watching you from a distance. But I saw how you carried yourself and understood who you were. I also listened to how people spoke about you. The good ones respected you and the bad ones despised you for your independence and your opinions. And that confirmed it. I kept expecting to find a man just like you — only younger and not married. But never did.
“So I kept you on a pedestal, John Alex. I know this sounds foolish, and I’ve had my share of men — boyfriends, and believe me, they were all boys despite their age. I kept waiting for some time in my life when I could do something really important for you. Nothing came up. This is as close as it’s going to get.”
“But I don’t understand how you could have loved me.” The word was too big, too powerful for this to be possible.
Sheila sighed heavily on the phone. “It wasn’t quite like that. It wasn’t like I pined away for you all my life. I knew who you were and what you were and knew I would talk to you once in a while as I kept looking for the right man. I just kept a feeling for you — I cared for you. Maybe that’s all. I cared for you and now I have this opportunity to help.”
“But how can you help? Maybe Emily and I can just go away for a bit. Maybe it will all …”
“What? Blow over? Like a midnight squall? No, I don’t think so. And you can’t run away. That would be worse. Then, they’ll charge you. God, they could accuse you of abduction. Anything. You can’t do that. These are small-minded people from a small-minded town who will incarcerate the girl if they have to and crucify you.”
I watched as Emily picked up the rosary beads that Father Welenga had left and held them in her hands.
“But I can’t just sit back and let them take her away. She wants to be here.”
“I know,” Sheila said. “And she’s a damn lucky girl to have someone like you caring about her. I know all that, John Alex.”
I wanted to somehow prove to both Sheila and Emily that I was strong and confident, that I could handle this on my own, but I betrayed myself. As the tears welled up in my eyes and I looked away from Em counting rosary beads, I saw my own reflection in the dark glass of the wet window and said, “But I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s why I made a couple of calls for you,” Sheila said briskly. “I’m sending someone to help, a woman I know and trust. If those two bastards arrive before her tomorrow, you don’t say anything or do anything. Just tell them they have to be patient and wait for Emily’s lawyer to arrive from Sydney. Don’t be aggressive and don’t say anything else.”
“Emily has a lawyer?”
Em looked at me, puzzled.
“She does now,” Sheila said. “One of the best. Cheryl Hollis. Let her handle it.”
TWENTY-TWO
EVA WAS SITTING AT the table in the morning when I got up to make breakfast. I usually got up before Emily and that was a good thing. Each time I awoke, it was taking longer and longer to sort out the dreams I had been dreaming and my memories of real life. It was becoming ever more difficult to divide my life back up into daytime-awake-consciousness and nighttime-sleep-dreamstate. I was worried that someday soon, I would not be able to distinguish the difference between the two at all. Of course, I did not speak of this directly to Emily.
There had been days, for example, when I would wake up and my bedroom would have morning glory vines growing up the walls on the inside. Or there would be birds — a dozen white doves flying about inside the room. Once, I was out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in a small boat and the floor of the boat was filled with fish pulled up from the depths.
Eva was in my dreams often and her voice was soft and loving and she spoke to me as she had done when we were married and she thanked me for our life together. And she said that she still loved me. That we were not really very far apart and that soon we would be together again. Certainly Eva had appeared in the kitchen many times before Emily arrived and sometimes after. I had gone so far as to say to Emily, “I feel the presence of Eva in the room,” and Em would understand. But when I had said those words out loud, Eva would look confused. So usually, if I found myself in the presence of both I said nothing about Eva at all. And then soon she would fade and disappear, leaving me with a sense of failure and betrayal.
But this morning, Emily was still sound asleep.
“You should let the girl go, John Alex,” Eva said.
“But she wants to stay here. What could be wrong with that?”
“John Alex, you’re not that strong. She may need you but you may not be in a position to help.”
“But I don’t want her to leave,” I said.
“Then maybe you are being selfish and you should reconsider.” Eva looked sternly at me. “You remember when I needed you? Do you remember that?”
Needed me for what? I wondered. Was memory failing me again? I turned away from her then because I heard footsteps. Emily was up, wearing her nightgown, her eyes puffy with sleep, her face like that of a sleepy confused child. “I heard you talking. I was afraid someone had come.”
“There’s no one else here,” I said. “I was just … well, talking to myself. You know I do that sometimes.”
“It’s okay. You were talking to Eva, right?”
I nodded yes. And then I remembered. I understood what Eva was asking me to remember. I leaned on the kitchen table and then crumpled into a chair, put my elbows on the tabl
e, pressed the palms of my hands to my eyes.
“We were going to have a child,” I told Emily as the memory returned. “It had been a difficult time, her pregnancy, and then the baby came too soon. We were at home. There was no doctor but there was a nurse there, a young woman from Inverary who had delivered dozens of babies around here. She came to help out. Eva had a fear of hospitals and had made me insist we do this in our own home. We were prepared for it. At least we thought we were.” I breathed deeply and looked up at Emily. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“You can tell me anything. I’m not afraid.”
“I’ve put this out of my memory for so long. I don’t know how I could do that.”
“What happened to the baby?”
“It was a boy. When he was born he was not breathing. And he never took a single breath.”
“A stillborn.”
“Yes. The nurse tried to bring him to life. She was very good. Afterwards, the doctors said it wouldn’t have mattered what we did. Or if we’d been in a hospital. The priest said it was God’s decision. That’s the way he put it. Sometimes a child is getting ready to come into this world and then God decides the time is not right and calls him back.”
“There are medical reasons, as well, John Alex. You’ve read the pregnancy books. There are any number of factors. There was nothing you could do.”
“Eva was crying when I left,” I said. “The baby was dead. The nurse had turned her attention to cutting the umbilical cord. There was some bleeding. And Eva was calling to me. And I left the room. I went outside. At that moment, I became afraid that Eva was going to die as well. And I just left her.”
“You were in pain and in shock.”
“I couldn’t bear to be around her in pain. So I walked away.”
“There was really nothing you could have done at that point.”
“I could have been there to comfort my wife.”
“You were human. Don’t punish yourself.”
“I felt less than human. I stood outside the house for — I don’t know how long. The nurse came out and insisted I go to my wife. And I finally did. I felt so guilty. I don’t know why I did that. I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”
“But she forgave you, right?”
“I think so. At least she said she did. We buried the child, the boy who we would have called Angus, in the field on the hill behind our house, this house. It all happened here. The spruce trees have grown in there now and I haven’t walked to that spot in years. I guess I had begun to pretend it didn’t happen.”
“Eva never got pregnant again?”
“For a very long while I was afraid to make love to her. Afraid she’d get pregnant and we’d go through this again, but she helped me get past my fears. Unfortunately, something about that pregnancy and stillbirth made it impossible for her to get pregnant again. In those days we didn’t exactly need to know the scientific name for it all. We just needed to know we would never have children. I recall the old priest suggesting to us that this too was somehow God’s decision. His intention. And, although I did not believe him, I was angry at God for a long while.”
“John Alex, I wasn’t even sure you believed in God.”
“When your life turns bitter and you feel the sort of anger I felt, you need something to hate. And so I hated God for a while. I put Him back in His heaven and I turned my rage against Him. When I couldn’t stand Him or myself much longer, when other things started to go wrong in our lives, I went to work in the mines. I thought that earning a higher income would make things better for us. When the mining work here gave out, I followed the work to Quebec. I listened to the other men, the boys I had grown up with. We would go there for a few years and earn enough to come home and settle back into our farms and our homes. But that too was a mistake.”
Emily had been watching me closely while I spoke. When I finished, she waited a moment, then said, “I’ll make tea.”
It was then that I realized how cold it was in the kitchen. I went to the wood room and came back with kindling and split logs. I bunched up newspapers and put them on the glowing coals, piled the sticks and the larger pieces of wood and soon the flame was bright. That’s when the first car pulled up into the yard.
DEWEY NEWTON HAD ARRIVED with Sealy Hines in Sealy’s RCMP cruiser. I looked out the window, but Emily did not turn her attention away from the electric kettle. “They can’t force me to leave you, can they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know we have to be very careful.”
It was Sealy who knocked on the door. When I opened it, he seemed uncomfortable, embarrassed even. Dewey hung back behind, a corpulent man now with a black briefcase and an air of arrogance about him. Some boys grow up and maintain a facial or body semblance of who they once were when they were young. Dewey had none of that. It was like he had gone away somewhere and been fitted with an adult body, one he carried without dignity or grace.
“John Alex,” Sealy said with a great deal of humility, “you probably know why we are here.”
“I was hoping it was a social call. How is your father, anyway?”
“My father is fine. And you know it’s not a social call. You remember Dewey Newton? He’s with the province.”
“I know who Dewey is,” I said. I nodded at Dewey and looked him in the eye. Dewey didn’t flinch. “Mr. MacNeil,” he said by way of official greeting. No one around here ever called me Mr. MacNeil.
“Can we come in?” Sealy asked. “Kind of chilly out here.”
Emily was behind me now. “No, you can’t come in,” she said with defiance. Sealy looked a little bewildered and gave me a sad sorrowful look that said, I don’t want to have to do this. Dewey opened his briefcase and held forth a document. “It’s a court order, Mr. MacNeil. The MacNaughtons have temporarily made their daughter a ward of the province — for her own well-being and for that of the child.”
I don’t know what I was thinking except that I wanted to take my time, move slowly, say very little and see this through. My fear of losing Emily was not as paramount as my concern for her. I thought that if I could only stretch this out, something might happen. I decided to take a chance.
“Come on in,” I said. “I can’t leave the two of you standing there shivering even if you are here doing the devil’s bidding.”
I left the door open and turned around. Emily looked at me wide-eyed and then fled for her room. I shuffled my feet as I moved, acting perhaps as young men expect old men to act. “Have a seat,” I said. “I’d like to make a phone call. And I need to find my glasses so I can read your paperwork. Just bear with me. Sealy, you want to see if that fire needs some more logs in it.”
I shuffled out of the room. I heard Sealy dutifully open the wood stove lid and then put another log into the firebox.
“Emily made some tea. Help yourself,” I called back from the living room. And then I dialled Sheila’s number at the library.
“They’re here,” I said. “Just as you said. I let them in. Was that the wrong thing to do?”
“Did they hand you the paper yet? Is it a court order?”
“Yes, that’s what Dewey called it. But I didn’t take it yet. I didn’t read it.”
“I talked to Cheryl on her cell phone this morning. She’s in Margaree. Had a little trouble with her car. But she’s on her way.”
“This is your lady lawyer friend, right?”
“This is Emily’s lawyer. That’s what you need to tell them. Say you can’t do a damn thing until Emily’s lawyer gets here. Don’t say anything else.”
“Sheila, are you sure about this? I feel plenty out of my league here.”
“Then you have to trust me. Just do it.”
“Okay.”
I dawdled some more, then grew fearful that maybe they’d just grab Emily and force her to leave. That triggered somet
hing planted deep inside me, the fire and rage of my father that I kept so effectively buried. I walked into my bedroom to find my glasses and Eva was there. “You have to let her go, John Alex. It will be for the best.”
I stared at her but said nothing. I didn’t want her to be here now. I didn’t want her to be involved. I picked up my glasses and walked down the hall, knocked on Emily’s room and then walked in. “Just stay in here. And whatever happens, trust me. I’m going to make everything turn out all right.”
But I was just bluffing. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I conjured up the sweet face of the librarian in my head — of Sheila. Why was I so fully trusting her to know what to do? But it was all I had to hang onto right then.
So I shuffled back into the kitchen, glasses in hand, and looked at the two men sitting there.
“You still get your wood from Vin McCallum?” Sealy asked.
“Yes, I do.”
Dewey cleared his throat. “Mr. MacNeil, I need to ask you to look at these documents. I need Emily to look at them too.”
Then it was my turn to clear my throat. “We’ve been advised to wait until Emily’s lawyer gets here. She should be here soon. You boys like some breakfast? Got some eggs from my hens that I keep in the barn.”
Neither of the lads piped up that they were hungry, though.
Sealy raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Dewey seemed flustered and tired of my stalling tactics. I didn’t know the law. He did. He started to lose his cool. “John Alex, you don’t have any fucking lawyer. What kind of horse shit is this?”
I just put my hands in the air. “No horse shit, Dewey. Just thought we should play this by the book.”
“Then what’s the name of your goddamn lawyer? Tell me that.”
“Hollis,” I said. “Cheryl Hollis.” Dewey’s colour rose. I admit I enjoyed adding, with a kind of indulgent patience, “And she’s Emily’s lawyer, not mine.”
Dewey pounded a fist on the table. “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ!”
TWENTY-THREE
The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil Page 14