Little Boy Blues

by Mary Jane Maffini

  Vince laid down the law. “And it will be good for Allie.”

  I hadn’t thought that things being good for Alvin would even interest Vince. “I wouldn’t be so sure. We’re not always on the same wavelength. But it would be good for him to have Mrs. Parnell here. She has a way with him.”

  Mrs. Parnell chose that moment to teeter into the kitchen. She flashed me a poisonous look. Perhaps because she was passing right under a prominent No Smoking sign. Alvin loped behind her.

  “Thank you very much, young man,” she said to Vince in tones reminiscent of McArthur in his finest hour. “But I wouldn’t think of being a burden.”

  “You would not be a burden,” Vince said.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Tracy. “We’d love to have you here.”

  “We won’t hear of you going elsewhere,” Frances Ann said.

  I thought smoke would pour out Mrs. Parnell’s ears, but Alvin spoke up. “Violet can’t handle the stairs here. She’d be better off next door with Loretta and Donald Donnie. You’ll like them, Violet. The three of you can sit up all night and smoke like forest fires.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Parnell. “That sounds most satisfactory.”

  “Loretta and Donald Donnie? Ma won’t like that.” Tracy said.

  “Have you lost your mind, Allie?” Frances Ann slapped a dish towel on the counter.

  “I told you so,” Vince said.

  I was proud of Alvin. He paid no attention. “And they have a spare bed on the main floor, so you won’t have stairs, Violet.”

  Mrs. Parnell smiled fondly at Alvin.

  “Plus, they keep the liquor cabinet full,” Alvin said.

  “You’re always so thoughtful, dear boy.”

  “Let’s go, Violet. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Wait a minute. They’re my relatives.” I wanted to scream “Don’t leave me here with these people.” But the door had already slammed behind them as they thumped down the front steps. At the bottom, Alvin paused briefly to flick Mrs. P.’s lighter for her.

  I watched them head next door, Mrs. Parnell lurching with her two canes and Alvin loping his lope. Only the set of Alvin’s shoulders gave a clue that things were not as they should be.

  “See what I mean?” Vince said to Frances Ann.

  “Typical,” she said.

  I’d had enough. “Well, that’s great. I’m glad Mrs. Parnell will be among like-minded people. I’ll head over too.”

  “No.” Mrs. Ferguson had a tightness around the mouth which I assumed resulted from the Donald Donnie and Loretta switcheroo. “You will stay here. No one can say Fergusons don’t do the right thing.”

  I tried one last tactic. “Do you have enough room?”

  “Seven kids grew up here. Only Vince and me now. And Jimmy, of course. You can take your choice of places to sleep.”

  I know when I’m beaten.

  Tracy chirped. “Take my old room. It has the best bed.”

  I caved. I needed a bath and a snooze so badly at that point, I would have stepped cheerfully into the grizzly section of the zoo, which was a pretty good comparison. But I couldn’t see myself relaxing until I had a few answers. Creature comforts would have to wait. I knew where the answers would be.

  Nine

  Somehow after the tensions at the Château Ferguson, a wall of second-hand smoke would be a small price to pay to relax. Loretta and Donald Donnie didn’t have a swarm of family photos on every wall. But then they’d never had children, or even pets, and they were no beauties themselves. They were somewhere in the gray zone between seventy-five and eighty. Loretta had a few too many teeth and red hair that would be startling on a twenty-year old. It had a surprising tendency to rise straight up. Donald Donnie didn’t have any hair but kept his scalp nicely polished. They seemed to favour TV Guide over the current Giller winners and things that came out of packages instead of out of ovens. They sure liked company. Gussie followed me over, wagged his or her tail, and managed to get stuck in the door.

  “Let Gussie in, though I have to tell you, that dog farts something awful,” Loretta said, slipping Gussie a few pretzels.

  “We’ve been having the most interesting conversations,” Mrs. Parnell said, lighting up.

  “I bet,” I said.

  “Took her long enough to get over here, didn’t it, Dad?” Loretta said, giving me an arched red eyebrow.

  “Indeed it did.”

  “I would have preferred to be here earlier, trust me. What have you done with Alvin?”

  “He’s tucked in upstairs, resting quietly,” Mrs. Parnell said. “We’ll let him be.”

  “I suppose they had you in a headlock. Filling you full of their opinions about poor Allie. If you’d any brains, you’d of jumped out of the window and run for it.”

  “She’s here now, Mum. So, girl. Feel like a slug of something before dinner?” Donald Donnie said.

  “I’m okay, thanks. I need to be able to think straight.”

  “All right, if you think that will help.” Loretta found this almost as hilarious as Donald Donnie did. Even Mrs. Parnell flashed an evil grin.

  “You doing all right next door?” Loretta deposited a large blue plastic bowl of salt and vinegar potato chips within easy reach.

  “They’re very kind,” I said, lying through my teeth. It didn’t seem right to trash the Fergusons when they were giving me a room, even though it came with a high psychological price.

  “I never knew them to be kind, did you, Dad?”

  “Indeed, I never did, Mum. Are you sure about that?”

  “Smart as whips, the lot of them. But kind? That’s a new one.”

  That’s where you get when you try a harmless social lie. Caught up in a web of deceit.

  “How are they being kind? Exactly?” Loretta said.

  “You know, offering food and everything.” I now needed to change the subject and fast.

  Donald Donnie was shaking his head. “Kind. Isn’t that amazing. Must be the shock of Jimmy being missing.”

  “You know, I think it is.” I helped myself to a hefty mouthful of chips so I wouldn’t have to invent details of the Fergusons’ alleged kindness.

  “Loretta and Donald Donnie have lived here for thirty-five years. Did you know that, Camilla?”

  I pointed at my mouth and raised my eyebrows to indicate interest. I wished I was home in Ottawa, where I could be rude to strangers without the worry that they could retaliate and squeal to my father.

  “They watched all those children grow up.” Mrs. Parnell looked from one to the other and raised her glass. Donald Donnie was splashing Harvey’s Bristol Cream into it.

  “Yes, we did,” Loretta said. “Didn’t we, Dad?”

  “Indeed, Mum.”

  I had managed to swallow by this time. “You know, Alvin is distraught over Jimmy. We are really worried about him.”

  “You should be. He’s the best of the whole lot. Isn’t he, Dad?”

  “You know he is.”

  This was good news. Here we had a double-barrelled source of information that wasn’t too crazy about the Fergusons and had a soft spot for Alvin. And they were related to me, however distantly, so they might cut me some slack.

  “You know I think I will have a splash of something after all,” I said. “Rum and coke if you have it.”

  Donald Donnie moved with lightning speed to fill that order. “You’ll not have had one of those next door. Dry as a Sunday sermon.”

  “Now, Dad, remember the time of it she had with the husband.”

  “Twenty years he’s been gone, Mum. Surely to God she could have a drink in the house.”

  “Alvin is really cut up about this. We can’t leave him without knowing what’s wrong. I bet the two of you could give me some helpful insights,” I said firmly.

  Mrs. Parnell interjected. “Loretta and Donald Donnie tell me that Alvin was deeply affected by Jimmy’s accident, as we suspected.”

  “Never had an easy life, that boy. Not since tha
t day,” Loretta said, squinting as she lit a cigarette. “Has he, Dad?”

  “Indeed he hasn’t.”

  “We haven’t felt comfortable asking him about what happened, because he gets emotional,” I said.

  “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

  “I didn’t want to ask Mrs. Ferguson, either because she’s quite distraught. Perhaps I should speak to Vince when he’s got a minute.”

  “You could, I suppose, dear. But Vince can be a bit of a, what would you say, Dad, about Vince?”

  “Indeed, I’d say a gold-plated pain in the arse, Mum. At his best.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” I gasped for air at the first sip. If he’d put any coke in that rum, I couldn’t taste it.

  “Dad likes to say what’s on his mind, don’t you, Dad?”

  “They remember the accident quite clearly,” Mrs. Parnell said meaningfully. “I think Loretta and Donald Donnie should tell you all about it. You’ll find it most interesting.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, when I’d caught my breath after the solid kick of the rum.

  “It was terrible,” Loretta said. “More than terrible.”

  “Must be what, fifteen years?”

  “Sixteen. And I remember it like it was yesterday. Well, poor little Allie, he was hysterical, wasn’t he, Dad? He came running up the hill screaming like a banshee and bawling his eyes out. He banged on the door for Vincent to come and help. But, of course, Vincent wasn’t home, was he?”

  “And neither was the mother. Out shopping. Leaving those kids alone.”

  “You mean, no one was looking after them?”

  “Well, they’d never admit it, that bunch with their noses in the air. But Vincent wasn’t where he was supposed to be, was he, Mum?”

  “No, he was not. I don’t give a Jesus what they say. And that Frances Ann was late getting home herself. The three little kids were on their own. But that didn’t stop them from blaming Allie. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. It wasn’t his fault. Boys will be boys, and anyone who has a brain in their head knows they need an adult.”

  “So Alvin and Jimmy were alone?”

  “And Tracy. She was playing in her room all along.”

  “And the boys went to the park.”

  “To feed the ducks.”

  “And something happened? Do you know what?”

  “We’ll never know, will we, Mum?”

  “You mean Alvin didn’t say how the accident happened?”

  “The poor little thing was screaming ‘Help my brother, he’s hurt, he’s hurt.’ Dad and I came out to see what was going on, then he led us to where Jimmy was with his darling little face right in that dirty water, and Dad pulled him right out and gave him mouth to mouth, and I took off like a shot back here and called for the ambulance. It saved his life, I guess, but he’d been in the water a bit too long, and we weren’t fast enough to save him from brain damage.”

  “No, we were not, Mum. Don’t you start crying over that, either. We did what we could.”

  “Your prompt action saved the day,” Mrs. Parnell said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Ms. MacPhee.”

  “Thank God you were here, or he would have died.”

  “Indeed, surrounded by ducks. Imagine that.”

  “And what did Alvin say happened?”

  “He didn’t, did he, Mum?”

  “No, he did not. He never said a blessed word.”

  Mrs. Parnell gave me an I-told-you-so look.

  “He didn’t talk about it?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “But people must have asked. His family must have wanted to know.”

  “Oh, they wanted to know all right,” Donald Donnie said.

  “Indeed. They blamed him. They said he shouldn’t have taken Jimmy to the pond. They even punished him, didn’t they, Dad.”

  “But he never said what happened?”

  “He couldn’t remember. Poor little thing was not himself. Not that anybody noticed because they were all for Jimmy. It was a long time before Jimmy got out of the hospital, and they all saying novenas and Stations of the Cross and lighting candles and all that, but the fact is they had this other child, and anyone could see he was hurting, couldn’t they, Dad?”

  “Indeed they could.”

  “Dad told her that too. Right to her face.”

  “Indeed I did. I told her not to blame that boy, because those three kids were home without proper supervision.”

  “I imagine she didn’t take it all that well.”

  “You’re right, girl. Things were never the same between our two houses after that. But it was the truth, and it had to be said. Of course, she couldn’t say anything about that to anyone. After all, Dad saved Jimmy’s life. But she kept Allie from seeing us, and that was punishment for us. And he used to be here all the time before that. It punished him too. I think he needed to talk, don’t you, Dad?”

  “Indeed, I do.”

  “We never had kids, and we were crazy for those little boys.”

  “Young Ferguson seems on good terms with you,” Mrs. Parnell said.

  “He is that. A regular here when he’s in town, which isn’t often enough. Once he was a teenager, he started to visit on his own. Of course, he’d come to the back door.”

  “Yes, he did. And we were right glad of it. But he never talked about the accident. Didn’t want us to talk about it either, did he, Mum?”

  “He did not. And we respected that.”

  Mrs. Parnell blew smoke rings and nodded. I took a spine-stiffening sip of my drink. I was thinking about what a hellish time Alvin had growing up.

  Somehow in the course of the next hour, the combination of the rum and coke, the twenty-hour drive, the lack of regular sleep and the worry about Jimmy and Alvin took its toll.

  Alvin was conked out upstairs. Mrs. Parnell and Donald Donnie had switched to recounting the glory days of the Canadian army’s march through Italy. For some reason, Loretta was encouraging them.

  Gussie and I stumbled back to the Fergusons.

  • • •

  Through the back door, I spotted Vince and Tracy busy in the kitchen doing something organizational. I headed around to the front. Frances Ann, more children than I remembered, and some people who had to be Fergusons I hadn’t met yet spilled out onto the front porch. Emotions were running high. I didn’t feel like running that particular gauntlet for the dubious pleasure of crashing in Tracy’s former bed before it was dark.

  “Walk time, Gussie,” I said.

  It was early enough to find plenty of people in the park, kids playing, old people sitting on benches, people strolling through swinging shopping bags. Ducks and feathers everywhere. I couldn’t imagine how anything bad could happen to Jimmy there. For one thing, the brackish water looked far too shallow. For another, the kids would never have been out of sight of the large old houses that bordered all sides of the park. I wondered if we’d ever get to the bottom of that old tragedy.

  It had been quite a while since I’d been in Sydney, but I remembered the way to the waterfront. Ten minutes later, Gussie and I had crossed the Esplanade, passed behind the fire station and were standing on the end of the boardwalk behind the small playground. My hair was whipped by the wind. I wasn’t sure if dogs were allowed, but I was prepared to argue the point with anyone who objected.

  Short, sharp waves lashed the stone breakwater that formed the underpinnings of the boardwalk. Gussie sniffed around and whined.

  We walked along the boardwalk the way Jimmy might have but didn’t find much company. Up the hill was a line of hotels, every goddam unit sold out. Someone must have seen something. Perhaps something they didn’t realize was important. Something to ask Ray Deveau about when I met him. Had the police talked to the people in the hotels?

  I gazed down into the harbour. How deep? Deep, I remembered that, but the rock base projected out a bit. Could Jimmy have found himself in that water, struggling, unseen, unheard until he died alone and sank into th
e depths of the harbour?

  I didn’t find any answers on the boardwalk. I knew one thing: the police,RCMP, media and hundreds of searchers hadn’t turned up Jimmy dead or alive. I was an exhausted, virtual stranger in this town without much to contribute. But I could make a difference for Alvin.

  • • •

  P. J. picked up his cell.

  “It’s about time,” he said. “I thought you’d become another tragic statistic on our highways.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Sydney.”

  “Hey, Tiger, if you get on the road now, you could be back for Blue Rodeo.”

  “Not a chance, P. J.”

  “Okay, start tomorrow. Saturday will be great. We can have the day on the site and catch John Hammond and George Thorogood.”

  “Nice. You’ve been studying. But listen, I need something from you. Can you get any information about an accident that happened in Sydney fifteen years ago?”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “Mrs. Parnell and I think it’s the key to what’s the matter with Alvin. Anything I can find out that would shed light on it would help. Even an intro to somebody here in the media.”

  “You already asked me. I came up empty.”

  “Try again, can you. Anything at all.”

  “But you’re in Sydney.”

  “Right. And you can’t imagine how useless that is. Work on it, okay, P. J.? In between the political thing, of course.”

  I found the number of the Cape Breton Regional police and started to track down Mombourquette’s cousin. Ray Deveau apparently didn’t feel he had to work nights. I didn’t leave a message. Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise value when I caught up with him.

  Gussie and I tramped the streets until I figured it was safe to take a bath and hit the sack without running into any more Fergusons.

  • • •

  Sunlight streamed through the pink Priscilla curtains in the window and struck the face of the yellow bunny on the dresser.

  I sat up and gasped. It took a minute to remember where I was. And to connect the pungent aroma with Gussie, smiling blissfully, asleep on the pink ruffled bedspread.