by Joan Clark
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree.
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
Claudia steps aside and Matt, returning to the podium, says “On behalf of my family, I would like to thank you again for joining us today to honour the life of Lily Anne McNab. We appreciate you being here and wish you well.”
• • •
The older sister turns to the younger sister. “Is that all?”
“What do you mean, is that all?”
“I was expecting more.”
“More of what?”
“More about the deceased.”
“Like the son said, she was a private person.”
• • •
Leonard Goldie steps aside to allow the waitress to make her way past the lineup of those who have not yet spoken to the family huddled together in front of the podium. Tempting though it is to introduce himself to Claudia’s aunt, Leonard stands to one side listening to the words of comfort strung together like prayer beads.
A terrible shock for your family. Sudden death is hard because you don’t see it coming. A slow death is hard too but at least it’s expected … I will miss your mother coming into the store … Whenever I went to see Dr. O’Donnell, I hoped Lily would be the one to take my blood pressure and weigh me in. She had a calming way about her and never rushed me through like someone else I could mention … Poor Hal—he’ll will be lost without her … And what will Laverne do? She doted on Lily … They say she walked in front of the truck, why would she do such a thing …
Leonard waves away a plate of finger sandwiches and places the empty sherry glass on the table. He hears a voice at his elbow asking if he is a friend of the family and turning he sees the minister and beside him a thin, flat-chested woman Leonard assumes is his wife. “No, I was a friend of the deceased,” Leonard says and before the reverend can engage him in conversation, he excuses himself. It is essential that he slip away before the gathering thins out and the family heads for home.
On this quiet summer Sunday only one vehicle lags behind Leonard as he crosses the railway tracks and turns onto Church Avenue. Cruising past the driveway where he dropped off Claudia, he makes another right turn onto Oxford Street and another onto Lowell Avenue where he finds space to park in front of a white bungalow whose property backs onto the McNab’s house. The bungalow curtains are drawn, a sign that the occupants are not at home and Leonard slips through the back garden unobserved. Finding his way between the shrubbery and trees behind the garage, he comes face to face with a green Volkswagen. Directly opposite the car is a large window and beside it a door Leonard assumes is the entrance to the rooms Claudia described when they stood together in front of de Hooch’s masterpiece in the Rijksmuseum, the rooms Claudia has refused to help him see, which is why he has no choice but to take on the challenge of seeing them on his own. Leonard approaches the door on the chance that it is unlocked; unlocked doors are common in small towns and he rarely locks his own. He is in luck, the door is unlocked and he enters the aunt’s apartment. Closing the door behind him, he observes the dark ceiling beams and the tiled floors typical of a seventeenth-century Dutch house, but he is not yet impressed because apart from the ceiling beams and the tiled floors, there is little resemblance to de Hooch’s masterpiece. Nevertheless, now that he is here he will take a closer look.
To his left is a pedestrian bedroom with a bathroom attached; to his right beneath the side window is a plank table, two wooden chairs and a bench, none of which attract his interest. But the cornered wall directly ahead looks promising and the plain wooden doors on either side of the wall are in no way typical of doors of this day and age. Leonard opens the door to the left of the cornered wall and is rewarded by the sight of a low cubed window and a staved barrel, a ceramic drip dish below the spigot. Opening the door to the right of the cornered wall, he is again rewarded by the sight of a burgomeister, a seventeenth-century chair and an amber casement window he would have seen if he had approached the house from the front. Leonard hadn’t quite believed Claudia, but it appears she remembered the characteristics of the Dutch Masters well enough to compare de Hooch’s masterpiece to her aunt’s apartment. Who would have guessed that the ordinary seeming woman Leonard observed a half hour ago was capable of such careful planning and precision, not to mention attention to detail. An unmarried high school teacher, Claudia said. A lonely, private woman, Leonard thinks, whose secret pleasure is these rooms. How cleverly Claudia’s aunt has concealed the necessities of daily life so that when the pantry and kitchen doors are opened just so, they are out of sight and the light coming from the window behind him is unobstructed, allowing it to separate on either side of the cornered wall and vanish through the kitchen and pantry windows. Claudia missed the trompe l’oeil, as would anyone who has not adjusted the doors just so, or sat on the bench below the side window, where Leonard is sitting now. It is from this bench that he photographs the rooms that will be the basis of his next lecture on Art Appreciation.
Leonard will begin the lecture by projecting a reproduction of de Hooch’s painting on the screen and after directing the class to pay close attention to the painting, he will project the enlarged photograph of the aunt’s rooms on the screen. Allowing time for students to observe the photographs closely, he will tell them that the rooms are presently occupied, a disclosure that will provoke curiosity, possibly wonder. After pointing out the similarities between the painting and the photograph—the careful placement of doors and windows, the checkerboard floors—Leonard will state the obvious: that the photographed rooms are a case of life imitating art whereas de Hooch’s painting is a case of art imitating life, a reversal Leonard will use to woo his students into taking a serious interest in the Dutch Masters: their use of colour and space and most importantly, their use of light. He will encourage students to examine the sources of light in de Hooch’s painting: the careful placement of windows as well as the window behind the artist that serves as the entrance to the painting, drawing the eye into the large room toward the kitchen and pantry windows. “Vanishing points that trick the eye,” Leonard will say, “tricks of light that serve the artist’s way of seeing his world.”
Energized and excited, Leonard intends to outline the fall lectures as soon as he is back in his study. Although he prides himself on being a talented, some would say gifted teacher, Leonard is wary of repeating himself. One of the pitfalls of academe is falling into a rut, which is why he seizes every opportunity to keep himself youthful.
Leonard Goldie is a half hour from Sackville when the family arrives back at the Old Steadman House, exhausted and relieved. It has been a long week and now that the burial and reception are over, maybe for a little while they will be able to relax without sliding into the quicksand of sorrow. They are in no mood to contemplate what will happen after today. Or to discuss the accident. What’s done is done and they are a small family and must be pleasant and support one another, at least for tonight. “Be civil to your aunt,” Trish whispered this morning before Matt got out of bed. Determined not to upset his family, Matt will be more than civil, he will be accommodating.
Claudia opens the porch windows and a breeze sweeps through the apartment. What a relief to be home, to feel the dread ease away, the fear that she would break down at the gravesite, the dread that only a handful of people would show up at the reception, that she would stumble over the poem, that Leonard would somehow embarrass her, but
Leonard kept his distance and is now on his way to Sackville.
The dining-room table is already set with Grace McNab’s lace tablecloth, the Wedgwood china and sterling silver Lily rarely used. The silverware and the salt and pepper shakers have been polished by the energetic Trish who also ironed the napkins. Laverne follows Trish into the kitchen and asks if she can help. “Thank you, Laverne,” Trish says carefully. “Maybe you could pick a small bouquet of flowers for the dining-room table.”
“Very well. I will pick some pansies and bachelor buttons from my garden.” Watching Trish turn on the oven and remove the roast from the fridge, Laverne asks if she would like her to pick some herbs.
“Do you have rosemary and basil?”
“I do. How much do you want?”
“Quite a bit of both. And then could you make a salad layering the basil alternately with sliced tomatoes and bocconcini cheese?”
“I certainly could,” Laverne says. At last she has something useful to do. And how fortunate Matt is to have such a capable, pleasant wife, moreover, a wife who is a fine cook. Downstairs Laverne fetches the garden shears and is on her way outside when she chides herself for once again forgetting to lock the side door. After she has finished snipping the flowers and the herbs, she writes a note, Lock the Door, and tapes it to the door. Posting the note on the door is the first of many attempts Laverne will make to re-establish order in her life.
Hal lies on the porch sofa, forearm concealing his grief while he clings to the gratitude that overwhelmed him during the reception, the outpouring of friendship and support. So many people came to express their condolences and to honour Lily on a fine summer Sunday when they could have gone to the lake or the beach. When he said as much to Claudia as they were leaving the reception, she told him that people also came to pay their respects to him, which was comforting to hear. Lulled by the soothing breeze and the murmuring voices of his family, Hal sleeps but not for long. Too soon a hand on his shoulder is nudging him awake. “Dad,” Matt says. “It’s time for champagne.”
“Champagne,” Hal mumbles. He cannot remember the last time he drank champagne.
“Dom Pérignon,” Matt says. “I bought the last two bottles at the liquor store.”
The family gathers in the living room and Matt unstops the cork and after filling each glass, he lifts his own. “To Mom!” he says, and the others lift their glasses and toast Lily. Convinced that the worst is over, they finish the second bottle of champagne before moving to the dining room.
Trish sets a platter of roast pork crowned with apples and wreathed with rosemary on the table beside bowls of roasted potatoes, new carrots, a plate of asparagus and Hollandaise sauce, a platter of sliced tomatoes, basil and cheese. The family has eaten little today and devour the food like starving paupers. No one speaks, no one mentions the accident though it is present, an unwelcome guest. Lily is dead but no one believes she has been laid to rest; they know that as long as there are stories about her, she will never be laid to rest.
Claudia asks her aunt to tell a story about her sister when she was a little girl. Laverne’s mind is blank but with Claudia’s encouragement, she tells the story of her little sister falling asleep in a neighbour’s boat. It was suppertime, months before Dorothy, their mother, died and when it grew dark and still Lily had not come home, Laverne and her father went out to search and called and called while supper grew cold. It was the neighbour’s dog who found Lily. He made such a racket he woke her up.
“What was she doing inside the boat?”
“Reading. As you know, Lily often hid herself away so she could read.”
“Wasn’t it too dark to read?”
“It was summer. There was plenty of light.”
“How old was she?”
“Eight. In Grade three. I taught her to read when she was five.”
“You were a teacher even then.”
“Depending on how she was feeling, when our mother was ill, she liked to have Lily sit on the bed and read to her after school, and if our mother was well enough to come downstairs for supper, our father would lift Lily onto the kitchen stool and she would recite one of her poms.”
“Poms?”
“That is what Lily called poems. She was missing some teeth.”
While the salad is being passed from hand to hand, Hal tells a story about Dorothy. It is not his story, it is Lily’s story, but depending on which way a conversation is going, Hal has managed to tell the story a number of times. The story is about how Dorothy was doing the washing in the basement when her hair caught in the wringer washer, but she refused to call Lou for help. He was upstairs waiting for his dinner, but she refused to call him. “Apparently she and Lou had had a spat and Dorothy refused to speak to him until he apologized and so she waited until she heard Lily come in from playing outside before calling for help.”
Claudia asks, “Where were you, Laverne?”
“I was in school. Lily was too young to go to school,” Laverne says. “The fact is Dorothy had a temper and so did Lily.” Before Hal can interject, Laverne proceeds to tell the story about Lily losing a stripe during her second year in training when a private-room patient rang for the bed pan nine times in an hour. “When the woman rang the tenth time, Lily told her that if she rang once more she would shove the bed pan down her throat.”
“Mom said that?”
“She did.”
Hal looks at his daughter. “It was during a flu epidemic and the nurses were run off their feet. But it made no difference to the matron.”
“When I was in med school,” Welland says, “I always gave the matron a wide berth. I never met a matron who wasn’t scary.”
“She couldn’t have been scarier than our father,” Hal says.
“True enough,” Welland says amiably.
By now the dinner plates have been taken away and thick wedges of the Black Forest cake are passed around. Matt pours more wine and although he knows the story, he wants to hear it again and asks his father how he and his mother met.
“We met in Petite Riviere,” Hal says. “Laverne invited me to a foursome of bridge and I accepted though I wasn’t a good bridge player.”
“Lily was an excellent bridge player,” Laverne says.
“So is Lanie,” Welland says. “She says she and her nursing friends spent their off hours in the nurses’ residence playing bridge.”
While Hal tells Matt he lost the game because he couldn’t take his eyes off Lily, Laverne resists the urge to tell the family that Hal grabbed the flowers given to her by Lily and gave them to her sister.
“Lily beat me at golf,” Welland says. “She said it was the first time she had played and she beat me.”
Laverne turns to him and says, “When she was in the mood, Lily knew how to concentrate, she knew how to focus. She beat you at golf because she was in the mood.”
Welland looks at Claudia. “You were a teenager at that time.”
“Yes, and you gave me a spin in your convertible.”
Hal remembers Lily telling him about his brother turning up in town out of the blue and asks what brought him to town.
“Well, the medical conference in Halifax was over and my flight home wasn’t until the next day so I decided to drive to Sussex.”
The stories keep coming, funny stories, spunky stories. Lily making wine in Dartmouth, stomping grapes in the plastic wading pool with Mary, the next-door neighbour, both of them barefoot.
“Did they wash their feet?” Welland says.
Hal says, “I asked the same question.”
“Did you try the wine?”
Hal makes a face. “Lily and Mary ended up pouring most of it down the drain.”
“What else did Mom get up to?” Matt asks.
“Well, she skied on Summerville Beach.”
“How could she ski on the beach?”
“She was towed on winter skis.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Lily’s.”
“Who towed her?”
“I did. In Natasha.”
“Natasha?”
“Lily’s name for the Nash.”
“How long ago was this?”
“When you were little kids.”
“I don’t remember,” Claudia says.
“You weren’t there.”
“What else did you and Mom get up to?”
“Never you mind.”
The family moves to the living room, except for Hal and Welland who linger at the dining-room table. By now dusk has fallen and only the grey outlines of the brothers are visible and at first they speak in the anonymous way of strangers who are guarded and careful with one another. Welland tells Hal he appreciates being told about Lily’s death and Hal tells him he appreciates him coming all this way. “You have great kids,” his brother says. Hal asks about Welland’s kids.