Uncharted

by Graeme Connell

  Brewster’s lawyer laughs at the story of his broken arm, shaved head where the stitches had been and the walking cane to support his ankle. “Sure glad the mail lady came by,” Horton says, “otherwise I might have been talking with Hannah today. You haven’t been in to see me for a few months, and now you waltz in with a broken arm and a cracked head.”

  “So this is the price I pay for keeping you in business for 16 years?” Brewster shoots back. A lively round of legal humour? He smiles at his friend. “I’ve left Hannah and a couple of helpers sorting through Mel’s belongings. She’ll get Harris online too. Best if I keep out of the way. I’m grumpy enough without all that.”

  “Relax, Brewster. Hannah is her mother’s daughter. Now, to business. I have all the papers drawn up for the transfer of The Blue Aster to Jo and Danny as you directed, and I’ve some other matters relating to your business interests that we need to go through.”

  Two hours later, Brewster grumps his way across the parking lot. He doesn’t do too well sitting around talking legal stuff. While driving into the southeast of the city, he realises that being out of circulation for several months brooding about his loss may not have been the best thing for business. Still, he has confidence in the people he’s relied on over many years.

  A carwash sign encourages him to do something he hasn’t done since the funeral: check out the true colour of his vehicle. It’s very dirty, and with a good half hour before any lunchtime crowd, the car wash may well be empty.

  There’s no answer when he tries Hannah on the hands-free as he drives his shiny red Jeep to his office. He’s talked with his accountant by phone, but he hasn’t been near his office for months. Is he up for this visit?

  Alone in the elevator as it whirrs its way to the third floor, Brewster is curious about what his accountant might have in store. He’s not sure how he’ll handle himself, and more out of habit than confidence, he whispers, “God help me now.”

  “Good to see you, man.” Ever the effusive greeting from the man who is not only his accountant but also his company business manager.

  “Hi, Joel,” he says. “Yes, good to be here—though I rather thought you might be saying something like it’s about time I got back here.”

  “Ha! Good one, but not quite true. Sure, I’ve missed your happy, smiling face, Brewster. You’ve had a lot to deal with, and I certainly haven’t anything of an urgent nature to bother you about. Need some signatures today, though.”

  Brewster looks at his tall, grey-haired friend. They’d grown up together and had reunited 20 years ago after being separated by school and careers. They’ve enjoyed a very successful and profitable partnership. “You mean to say we’ve got nothing to argue about today?” Brewster says. “Let’s get a coffee. I guess everyone knows I’m here?”

  “Not unless you told them,” Joel says.

  And with that, Brewster opens the door to the main office.

  “Hello, you’re a new face,” he says to the receptionist. “I’m Brewster.”

  “Hello, Mr. McWhirtle. I’m Jane,” she says. “This is my second week here.”

  “I’m just Brewster,” he says, shaking her hand with the fingers protruding from his arm cast. “None of this Mister stuff. Who’s all here?”

  “Eleanor’s in her office, Gavin’s out on an inspection with a contractor, Devi’s meeting with a possible new tenant and Brian is … well, he might be back. He had to go over to the printer’s.”

  “You have a good team here,” Brewster says as he and Joel settle in to the boardroom with their coffees.

  “It was sad to lose Wilf from the front,” Joel says. “I tried to call you to say he was going; an opportunity in his wife’s family business out in Medicine Hat. Jane is a good find, though. She’s also well-qualified to handle a lot of the financial accounting. Bright as a button and just amazing with people, especially the testy kind. You noticed she’s in a wheelchair?”

  “Yep.” Brewster says. “Glad you hired her. How did you find her?”

  “Just word of mouth, I suppose,” Joel says. “She came in because she’d heard we had an opening. I hired her on the spot. Gotta like that sort of initiative. I had Gavin handle the necessary changes to make it easy for Jane to move around and do her work.”

  “Okay,” Brewster says. “Let’s go through everything and see where we’re at. And thanks for always being here for me during the past few months. You’ve been a great help. I do apologize for the extra stress I must have caused. I see we have an empty suite on the ground floor, where the gift shop used to be.”

  “Mavis decided to retire and closed her business out when the lease expired two months ago. Devi has been shopping the space, but no takers as yet. Lots of interest, though.”

  “What about a coffee shop?”

  “Devi has a potential there,” Joel says. “Not sure of the progress on that one.”

  Brewster senses that Joel has something much bigger on his mind. “Let’s cut to the chase, Joel. What’s up?”

  “I’ve had a couple of offers for the building, and one of them is really interesting. You’ll do well financially if you consider it—maybe a couple of million over what you bought it for.”

  “So what’s the ‘but’?”

  “One’s a national with deep pockets. We have a number of leases up for renewal, and I can only see major increases for those tenants—people who have established businesses here over a long time. Any new owner would be jacking rates up, and I foresee some tenants on the upper floors having to move because the company wants to put its regional offices here. I think that’s their main interest.”

  There’s silence as Brewster looks at Joel. The plumber and the accountant; the Christian and the Jew. Joel reviews the letter of inquiry along with all the other business of tenant leases, maintenance and capital needs. The afternoon is busy. Staff come and go, some adding their contributions and concerns. He feels the weight of being in absentia for far too long. He’d taken a huge risk several years ago in buying the building and everything that went with it. Now there’s a new decision, and he didn’t have Melanie to throw around ideas.

  His cell phone dinged with a new text. “Terrific sorting day, Dad. All well. Heading out with a couple of old school friends. See you later.”

  “Hannah,” he says, and he explains the disagreement they’d had over Melanie’s belongings. “I hadn’t changed anything or moved anything. It was just as it was when she went to get her hair done. Hannah reckons it’s time to move on. Hard to do.”

  “I bet,” Joel says. “Let’s go find something to eat. Anna’s taking the kids for swimming down at the centre tonight. I told her you were in, and we’d look after ourselves. She’d like you to say hello. You know, you’ve been too long the stranger.”

  “Let’s head to the centre, then,” Brewster says, reluctant to be out in public, eager to get home and worried about the changes he will see in the house. By the time he reaches the first set of traffic lights, second thoughts float in like clouds on a sunny afternoon. Too late to bail, and anyway, Joel is on my tail.

  It’s all go at the Jewish centre. It is quite possibly the most people he’s been around for some time apart from the mall. Joel ushers him to the cafeteria, past the glass-walled mirrored gym full of fitness fiends. They find a spare table, and he sizes up the organized chaos. People are moving in all directions. Joel looks after coffee and a sandwich. Brewster shrinks as far as he can into the wall, intimidated by the couples and families and the low hum of mixed conversations.

  Anna bursts in, hugs him and offers cheerful banter. Then she’s gone back to the pool and the swimming lessons. A whirlwind of beauty, inside and out, Melanie used to say of her always-on-the-go friend. She exuded life. For Brewster, now there’s no life without Melanie. He sighs deeply, and Joel senses his slump. He brings their conversation back to the safe territory of the business topics
of the day: their shared success and outlook.

  Brewster drains his coffee, fiddles with some crumbs left on his plate and politely listens. He’s had enough, pushes back on his chair, stands and thanks Joel for his time and attention. He turns to go and realizes that perhaps there is still one outstanding issue of their day together. “Let’s not look any further into that offer for the building. I’m not ready to sell and have no need to sell.”

  Joel nods and suggests that maybe they sit on the offer for a while. They hug. As Brewster walks to the door, he sees his friend head off to be with his wife and children at the pool.

  Chapter Ten

  The woman in the large, floppy sun hat kneels on the grassy bank overlooking the river and slowly unpacks her red backpack. She flicks out a large blue and green tartan rug, sits, closes her eyes and breathes in the fresh, late-morning air. She unpacks a little plastic box of sandwiches, opens a thermos of coffee, smooths a fresh page in her sketch book and lays out her colour pencils. She enjoys the peace where she can sit out of the wind and be wrapped in sunshine. It is a place where she can lose herself and be absorbed in a very natural part of her tiny world. What’s extra nice is that it’s only a short walk from her home to this broad sweep of a park, which spans rather like a smile across what used to be the southern part of the city. Where life will take her now, a deaf woman and her dog moving from one day to the next. A few friends might drop by, but not many and only infrequently. They’re at work, and after the years she spent caring for her parents, she slowly became isolated. Communication has become difficult. There are days she hopes the hospital will call with a need for her nursing skills combined with her lip-reading and sign language abilities. Otherwise, the park is her escape, her art, her joy. She hopes that one day she’ll learn how to capture an online market to liberate her pictures from sketch pad and easel.

  “Okay, Bebo,” she says to her quiet, four-footed companion. “Today we have to find a bracted orchid.” She saw one a few years ago, before she had the idea of cataloguing the flowers of the park into a small handbook, though she isn’t sure the hand-drawn artwork is a seller anymore. At this stage, she simply gets a lot of pleasure creating the botanical drawings of immense detail and colour.

  They sit there, a woman and her dog. Clotilde is pleased she changed the spelling of his name from the French Bibeau to Bebo, the name given to a special part of her park. She watches the ripples on the river as it meanders across and around the rocks, shallow and clear now after the spring thaw. A couple of mallards paddle their way along the river’s edge, and mergansers bob in centre stream. It’s a tranquil spot, and there is no one else around. The first of the picnickers will not be through for at least another hour. By that time, she’ll be ready to go look for her flower, when the sun is at its best angle to beam through the aspen, poplar and spruce canopy.

  Mmm, these cucumber sandwiches are good. Next time, perhaps I’ll add some crumbs of blue cheese as an outdoor treat. Clotilde takes off her jacket and relaxes with the sun’s warmth on the olive skin of her arms and neck. She dares not look back these days on what her life might have been. She’s now on her own and knows she must look forward and make out of life what she’s been given. Her time now works around her artwork. If only she could build the words to go with the drawings. That is her weakness. With today’s emphasis on social media, she considers some continuing education classes in the fall. She watches kids arriving to play in the river, maybe to build a dam, and she hears the bygone laughter of her friends splashing around, moving dam-building rocks only to be washed out in the next freshet.

  Time to move. She packs up her things, slings her backpack over one shoulder and pushes her way off the trail through the raggedy tangle of the undergrowth, crouching and shuffle-stepping under the low branches spruce and aspen until she reaches a boggy depression where her orchid might be. She is now in the territory of her archenemy: mosquitoes. She walks slowly along the ditch, moving plants with the tip of her walking pole. She knows the mozzies will zero in on her as soon as she stoops to check a plant. She is wrapped neck to toe, with no flesh exposed. A net hangs from her floppy hat, and she hopes the surgical gloves will enable her to sketch with ease. First she’ll take photographs. Only then will she outline the plant in situ. She’ll use her lighted magnifying glass to begin to capture essential detail within the flower itself. She will only pick the flower if conditions are too wet or the mosquitoes too nasty. The orchid she seeks is beautiful, and with its shades of green, it’s no bigger than a fingernail. The flowers spread up a slender stem.

  Bebo follows quietly on the end of his leash. Clotilde loves her little friend, who is thoroughly trained to warn her of any noise or intrusion into her space. His white poodle paws will soil in the mud, and twigs will knot in his coat. His red uniform jacket protects his middle.

  “Well, Bebo, I don’t see any here,” she says. “Strange—I’m sure this is the spot I saw them last summer. Let’s try over by last year’s washout. Might be some there.”

  She enjoys the solitariness of the pathways today. She’s on a quest and likes to work while the sun is directly overhead. Too often she meets well-meaning park-goers who want to stop and check out the dog in his little red coat. Others stare as they walk by. Today’s bonus, the reason she comes midweek, might well be a lack of bicycles threatening her little friend with their speed. Bebo warns her when he hears a bike bell or just the thrum of tires on the pavement or gravel.

  She finds the plants in the soft ground under a spruce tree. No flowers yet, but when she’s on her hands and knees, she can see that in a week or two, she will have everything she wants. She pencils the location in her notepad.

  “C’mon, Bebo. Let’s call it a day.” She feels the slight shift of the gravel under her shoes as she moves along the path. A light wind ruffles the new leaves in the aspens, squirrels dart here and there and a chipmunk scurries for the shelter of a log. Around her she sees chickadees flitting back and forth and she breathes in the new earth smell of the forest.

  Once home, she washes the legs and feet of her young friend, pulls some twigs from the fur on his rear end and ears and takes off his coat. With that, Bebo jumps and runs around the lounge. As far as he’s concerned, he’s off work, finished for the day. He looks at Clotilde. Is that a smile? she thinks as she goes to her computer.

  Email—her lifeblood connection with a chattering world. Still, she longs for that human contact, to be able to look a person in the eyes, see their lips move and watch words form. Instead, she is comforted by Facebook and items of interest posted there by people she knows. It’s been more than half her life since that strange and sudden turn of events altered her forever.

  She scans her inbox, hoping for a contact that will elevate her spirits. She’s disappointed that the orchid was not ready for her to complete her outside plans for the day.

  Emails from the east, the Cape Breton homeland of her parents. Regular messages from relatives wanting her to fully discover her Acadian and Mi’kmaq roots. Aunts, uncles and cousins suggesting she pack up and move out there, where she can be cared for.

  The constant flow of kindly family jabber annoys her because somehow her deafness seems to make her less of a person. “I’m deaf, not stupid,” she tells people. There’s a note from a favourite cousin extolling the wonderful, quiet life she could have in Cheticamp. Clotilde is reminded of the property she inherited there from her grandmother. No mention of her dad, though; he came from the Eskasoni Nation of Cape Breton.

  “Oh, cousin,” Clotilde says in her reply. “I like it enough here in Calgary. My parents are here. Why would I move?”

  She works through her other emails: a bookstore, Air Miles, an art supplies newsletter, a gardening magazine, and the Spruce Meadows Equestrian Centre newsletter. By the time she’s done with that, a new email bounces back from her same-age cousin.

  “So we could look after you, silly. Now that
Aunty Helene has gone, you are all by yourself, and I’m sure having family around would be the best thing for you. And you’ve got your dad’s family over in Membertou. Your roots are here, in Cape Breton.”

  Cousin Ruth is a busy woman: wife of a fisherman, mother of four and a quilter who’s found a ready market for her creative designs at craft outlets along the Cabot Trail. Clotilde taps a reply.

  Dear Ruth,

  I know you mean well, but I’m comfortable here. Benny comes and visits me when he can during his school breaks. I have a lot of work these days with my flower drawings. I get called in to the hospital to help deaf patients. It’s good. Bebo is wonderful company. Thanks for your concern, but as I’ve said before, I’m only deaf, not incapacitated.

  Clotilde

  Clotilde can almost hear the tut-tuts from her relatives around their kitchen table. She’s typed this same message before and knows without a doubt she’ll be typing it again. Maybe she’ll have to take another trip out there. It’s been some time since that last disastrous trip, before Bebo brought new meaning to her life.

  She looks across the room where her little dog is busy gnawing on his furry, rubber plaything that, as a service dog, he’s only allowed to have during his non-working time. The western Canada violet draws her back to the drafting table.

  “This is such a lovely little flower,” she tells Bebo, who, tired of his toy, trots over to sit near her on the window seat. “It tells us spring is really here and summer is just round the corner.”

  She works on the detail of the charming white flower that’s easy to spot in the woods and along pathways. She’s already happy with the way she has depicted the heart-shaped, finely toothed leaves and the slender purple stalks of the flower. Today she continues her work on the petals, gently stroking in the purplish veins that emanate from the yellow throat on the lower three of the five petals.