“I meant to. It happened very quickly.” But then, she had also missed her father’s death, and hadn’t young Herbert carried out his move to Toronto when they all knew Arthur was in his final weeks? “Esther was with him, that’s his wife. And she has a girl from her first marriage, who was there as well.”
“So no cousins on your side.”
“No. It’s a good thing they’re not counting on the Pelleys of Cape St. Rose to keep Newfoundland populated. We’ve done poorly on that front.”
After a while she asked about the divorce, and he said it was finally done. No children, and no assets to speak of. A simple division. But Herbert didn’t sound relieved or renewed. He was still wounded, still enumerating his grievances.
“I hear she’s moving to North Bay. Trying to get back with the guy she had before me.”
“What she does is nothing to you anymore.”
“Just interesting that she’s showing her true colours. I heard there was another guy she’s been out with too.”
So nothing much had changed. A young woman was still held to account for her boyfriends, and it was treated like the only part of her story that mattered. But a man might be on a spree all over town, and people thought it hardly worth remarking on. Oh, by the way, he’s having it off with so-and-so now…
He asked about the funeral. She didn’t mention the incident on the overpass, or the shaking and how it had stayed with her. Joyce had no idea how long she might have been sitting there, the car sideways across both lanes, singing, before the tap on her window.
“Was it strange to be back there, after so many years away?” asked Herbert.
“It’s not half the size it used to be. Your grandfather’s old shop is long gone.” She had known the Cape at a glance. The pebbled shoreline. The landwash with its fringe of kelp and shining blobs of beached jellyfish. The salt-stained streets and houses retreating from the sea, backing right up to the crooked trees screwed into the face of Bald Hill.
“The weather was raw,” she said. “I almost forgot about that. How the wind comes in off the water. Everyone walks around with their faces scrunched up against it.”
//////
Two days later Herbert called again. “Have you given it any thought, Mom? What I said about maybe selling the house and moving in somewhere so you’re not alone all the time?”
They hadn’t talked about any such thing, and Joyce was about to tell him so. But she hesitated. It sounded familiar, as if she had been rehearsing thoughts for this very conversation. The shaking inside started. She lifted a hand to see if she was shaking on the outside as well, and yes, it trembled a bit.
Perhaps he had said something about moving, and she just forgot.
“Give me a few weeks to think about it,” she said.
“You’re lucky, with Dad’s pension. Dad did very well. I saw Gander on the news the other night.”
“What for?”
“It was a nice story about 9/11, and all the flights that had nowhere to go because the Americans closed the airports. And you guys put up thousands of people, fed them and looked after them. Most of them never even heard of Newfoundland before.”
“Oh. Well, I was away that week, I believe.” She had been home all week. Hadn’t gone out much, and hadn’t answered the phone either, for fear that someone would ask her to take in strangers. She wanted no part of it. When it was over and the stranded planes were sent on their way, she could feel the town empty out and the silence descend. She could feel it from inside the house, without even cracking the door.
“How’s Leah?” she asked.
“You and I were talking about my divorce already.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Her mind was misplacing things, so exhausted was she from the trip.
“Are you alright, Mom?”
“The drive down to the Cape, it was hard. Middle of winter.”
They finished the call, and Joyce ran a bath. She locked the bathroom door behind her, because you never know. The heat was almost too much, billowing steam around her. It would soon be time to get out of the house. The pipes were always banging behind the sink, like they used to in the old hotel at the airport. Shingles were blowing off the roof, and the fellow Anstey who ploughed the driveway every winter wasn’t as prompt as he used to be, not since his wife left him. She wouldn’t share any of this with Herbert. Not yet, or he’d be down here to rush her along.
It must have been Arthur who taught her what to do when the back end of a car starts waving about. Cut the wheels in the same direction. Or did the body have an instrument that automatically took control for such moments? A finely tuned bundle of nerves that could read and correct dangerous shifts in momentum.
The song came back to her as she rolled wrinkled toes over the faucet. Not the song, but just the one line. May this bliss never end. Over and over it had played in her head, for as long as it took her to stop the vehicle. May this bliss never end.
She couldn’t recall the title of the song, or any of the other words. But she remembered the day she got it right. The band was setting up in one of the usual rooms—likely the Airport Club—and a few of the men were passing the bottle around. Christmas, maybe? Joyce was testing her microphone with a few lines from that song, whatever it was, when she was jarred by the realization that she had been singing it wrong all along. It wasn’t just about heartbreak. It was about loving the heartbreak. She had to sing it as a woman abandoned and suicidal, but also more alive than she had ever been during the affair itself. In that moment, she knew exactly how to shape the words. It might have been a passing thing, long gone the next time she reached for it. But she had it in that moment. What a shame they were only rehearsing, with no crowd of dancers to share it with. But of course it would have been lost on them.
19
Sam’s appointment has been postponed a week. “Receptionist said Dr. Kim had a family issue. I believe last time we were there she mentioned an elderly mother.”
“Yes. I get it.” Carter doesn’t care shit for the doctor’s life and troubles.
“They worked really hard to fit us in. They moved things around for us.”
“So it’s urgent. If they squeezed us in for next week. They want to get him in as soon as possible.”
“Or they just want to be helpful, Carter.”
She passes the phone to Sam, who answers yes to three questions and asks if he can have macaroni and cheese again tonight. A long silence then, as he stops talking and lays the phone down. Carter waits for Isabelle to notice and pick up again.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “Interrupting your party. But when the guy called, he really wanted you to know. I think it was one of the first calls he made after she passed.”
“No, I’m glad you let me know.”
“Did you call him back?”
“Yeah. I haven’t been able to get him.”
“Who is he?”
“Old boyfriend.”
“Well, they’d be tied up with the arrangements now. You might not get him for a couple of days. It was just business about the music, he said. Things to wrap up.”
“He doesn’t get a say.”
//////
They ride silently in the elevator until a man pushing an empty wheelchair gets off at the third floor, leaving them alone. When the door closes, Joyce begins to sing: East of the sun, and west of the moon, we’ll build a dream house of love, dear.
Carter can make out every word, though the voice is barely above a whisper, and she falters on the high note. She inhales with a gentle wheeze. Her lips barely move. Up among the stars, we’ll find a harmony…
She stops, clears her throat and works her mouth, showing the tip of her red tongue. The line begs completion. The elevator opens to the ground floor. Joyce says, “Is this it?”
Howley Park still feels like winter, warm
and enclosed. But it’s the first truly fine day since Carter arrived. As they pass through the main door, a woman behind the front desk cries, “Some day out there, Joyce! Going up to twenty-four. No, twenty-six! I believe it’s twenty-six.”
“I don’t think it’s right,” she says, lowering to a bench in the shade. “Digging up old things like that. They ought to let it rest.”
“Archaeology is a way of studying history, I think.”
“People live as best they can. They want to be left in peace.”
He tells her about the aircraft wrecks still there after all these years, and the gin bottle at the Globe Theatre.
“Crowd from Air France drank all the gin,” she says.
They don’t talk for a few minutes, and Carter half-expects she might sing again. She doesn’t.
“I told them I’m not going to that place down by the lake.”
“Okay.”
“They can’t even feed themselves down there. Can’t even wipe.”
“I think you’re doing great where you are, Mom. Fantastic, really.”
//////
Melissa Ryan backs away as Carter takes a seat, choosing a chair at the head of the table. She introduces a nurse with pink and blue streaks in her black hair, an older nurse with a scowl and a pageboy cut, and a thin balding man who takes notes.
“And we’ve already met,” says Carter, reaching for and not quite touching Melissa’s sleeve. He turns to the thin man. “It’s the strangest coincidence, but years ago I used to play in a band, and Melissa here used to come to the clubs and see us!” It’s the sort of small-world camaraderie that Newfoundlanders always indulge in. But Carter’s attempt falls flat. They’re already seated at the table flipping through binders.
Joyce is strong, according to the older, scowling nurse. Sturdy as an ox, and not prone to aggressive behaviour. Doesn’t lash out like some do. She assures Carter that he wouldn’t believe how some of them lash out. The most mild-mannered, they can turn on a dime.
The one with the pink and blue streaks in her hair reports that Joyce was talking the other day about a little girl who died. Very upsetting for the other residents. Melissa Ryan asks if this was during Shanna’s narrative therapy. Maybe Joyce shouldn’t do the storytelling sessions anymore, not if it upsets her.
“Mom’s really done well with the narrative thing,” says Carter. “She’s really engaged.”
“She’s really come out of her shell, that’s true,” says Pink-and-Blue.
“What else do we have, Denise?” The roll of Melissa Ryan’s turtleneck lifts her head in a regal manner, and the hair is pinned into a tight helmet.
Scowling Nurse turns pages. Two high-anxiety incidents last week. No, month. Last month. Some dependence for ambulation. Partial dependence for bathing and dressing, also elimination. Increasing dependence in behaviour management, though not aggressive, as previously noted.
“Now those scores, we can see a trend,” says Melissa Ryan, scribbling. “She is approaching Level Three care, though it might be a ways off yet. You’re familiar with our New Horizons facility, just down off the highway?”
“She says she won’t go,” says Carter.
“Just something to think about. Transitioning is not a move, it’s a process, Mr. Carter. What’s the occupancy down there now, Judy?”
“One bed available, male,” says Pink-and-Blue. “As of this morning.”
“So nothing’s happening soon. We want to plan ahead. I’ll ask Natalie to flag Joyce for transition, possibly in the new year.”
They review directives, noting the Do Not Resuscitate order with approval. They review her whiskey protocol. Two drinks per day, before meals. Melissa Ryan wonders if this might be cut back to one, given Joyce’s confusion and anxiety of late.
“I don’t think that would be wise,” says Scowling Nurse.
“Now,” says Melissa Ryan, gathering the papers in front of her. “Joyce has a hospital appointment this week?”
“Yes,” says Pink-and-Blue, reading the file. “Friday morning at the eye clinic. Get her cataracts checked.”
“Would you like to accompany your mother to this appointment?”
“That’s when I fly back to Toronto. So I can’t. Sorry.”
“That’s fine. We’ll have a couple of staff take her. You’ll see a small charge for that.” Melissa stands. “Mr. Carter, could I ask you to stay behind a moment?”
“I understand that you had to stick with your protocol,” says Carter, after the boardroom clears. “With someone taking minutes.”
“Mr. Carter, if I can ask you.” She’s putting caps on pens and fixing them to her binder. “Please don’t mention that old music anymore, or…” She flaps a hand as if dispelling a bad odour. “…all that business from the past.”
“Of course,” says Carter. Her love of Infinite Yes is flirtatious, though innocent, and she wants to keep a professional front on the job.
She looks up to meet his eye. “I contacted my old roommate and told her we had met. She’s the only one who would appreciate the coincidence. She’s out in Corner Brook, with Western Health, and we got to talking. First time in many years.” She pauses while someone passes in the hall. Goes to the door and closes it. “Of course, we all had our wild oats to sow back in those days, and I knew that she went off with that fellow a few times. He was in your band.”
“Colin?”
“Yes. And the things that happened, what she went through, if only I had known.” Melissa hastily gathers up her binder and several folders, hugs them to her chest and returns to the door. “I don’t hold you responsible in any way, but she had no idea what to do, being so young.”
“I’m sorry, but what went on?”
“From now on, any communication must be solely about Mrs. Carter and her care.” She puts a hand to the doorknob. “I told her to go to the police, you know. Even after all these years. But she never will, she made that very clear. So if you’re still in touch with this man, you need not warn him.”
“We haven’t been in touch for years,” says Carter. But she’s out the door, closing it behind her.
//////
Carter walks the wrong way down the hall, finds a woman bent at a closet door where he expected the elevator to be. Shanna. She pulls out a canvas sack nearly as big as herself.
“Hello, Mr. Carter,” she says. “I heard you were on the Gander, as the locals say.”
“You’re not local?”
“I’m from Mount Pearl. A resident says to me the other day, ‘I know a joke from there, about a man with a wife named Pearl.’ But I didn’t let him finish.”
She’s diminutive, barely up to his chest, with a tattoo of thorny roses covering one arm. The sack is weightless, thrown over her shoulder with ease.
“I was just sitting with Mom a little earlier,” says Carter.
“What does she have to say for herself today?”
“The crowd from Air France drank all the gin.”
“I don’t doubt it. We could chat for a bit, if you have time?”
She leads him to a room, bright and sparse, its tiled floor big enough for a dance. Wooden tables are pushed against walls and plastic chairs stacked high. A piano occupies one corner.
“You bring in people to play?” asks Carter, gesturing at the piano.
“Occasionally, and we have sing-alongs as well. Haven’t gotten a note out of Joyce yet.”
Joyce’s elevator song is too private to mention.
Shanna tugs the lace on the canvas sack.
“We just reviewed her file,” says Carter.
“Always a good idea to review the file. Her meds and directives.” Shanna sounds tired, lacking the brash spirit of their long-distance conversations. Her white T-shirt is scuffed, as if she’s been moving furniture.
“They said she’s having tr
ouble with old memories,” says Carter.
“Is that how they put it?” She frowns at the tangled lace.
“They thought the storytelling sessions might have brought out bad memories.”
Shanna pulls the bag open and flips it. Colourful plastic objects tumble out, the pins and balls of a child’s bowling set, bouncing and clattering on the tiled floor.
“There was a girl who got killed or something?” says Carter. “She was talking about that?”
“Yes. Last week. More about the boy who did the killing, really. We didn’t let her finish that one. It was too upsetting for some of the others.”
“I gave you a vote of confidence in the meeting. I told them that the storytelling has been great for Mom.”
“I’m having second thoughts about it, to be honest. I’m not sure whether to keep going with it.”
“Oh.” Carter searches for a response while orange and yellow pins slip from her arms and spiral across the floor. “Would you like a hand?”
“You could get down eight or ten chairs and line them up about here. Thanks.”
Carter hoists a stack of chairs and begins separating them. Shanna stands the pins in a triangle. “The other week, Joyce starts talking about a man she knew once,” she says. “So we all listened, and she said how this man was carrying on with other women while his own wife went mad and lost her mind. She said their names, and there was another resident, a gentleman who knew the names. Because it’s a small town, you know.” Shanna steadies the last pin in the triangle and backs away. They’re so lightweight a mild breath of wind might topple them. “So the other gentleman got angry, and they had words. Come on in, Mrs. Hanlon.”
A stout woman enters, with waxy skin and hair so sparse Carter can follow the trail of brown spots on her scalp. She presses forward under her own steam, followed by several others leaning on walkers and canes, eased along by the gentle patter of two nurses, and settled into the row of chairs. Joyce enters last, on the arm of a nurse Carter has never seen before.
Keeping a distance from the bowlers, Carter and Shanna take chairs next to the doorway. The stout waxy woman is given first turn. She stands gripping the ball with two hands while the nurses say, “Come on, Miz Hanlon. Right at those pins.” Carter wills her to bowl a mighty strike, but the ball spins sideways from her hands and rolls under a table.
The End of Music Page 26