“I can’t be forgiven about this — but I had things to do.”
Mr. McNair nodded. The whole house was quiet and soundless, as if it were waiting for his boy, Lyle, to come home, to rush in from school. Laura’s passport photos were lying on top of a small envelope on the side table. She was to send away for her passport because they were to go to Spain.
“It’s just the women, you see,” Mr. McNair said again, his bright black suit-pants belt-high on his waist. And Michael, looking at these photos, trembled and nodded.
“Your son was very, very brave — really,” Michael said, his voice suddenly filled with emotion. “You must be very proud of him”
“Yes, proud,” Mr. McNair said, in a whisper. “He was good — that’s the difference. I wish he were here, because good people can always help. Yes sirree — things would be different if Lyle was here — “And he rose on his toes, as if to stretch, and then coughed into his hand.
Michael left. He did not wait for Laura, who had gone to LeClairs in Moncton to get her dress.
He did not know what to do. He smelled in the air the ash from a wood stove, and left to go back downriver once again, collecting his mail at his small apartment downtown before he did.
It did not matter that he himself did not know half of what went on that summer. That after the first loss of mescaline Silver and Madonna had been forced by Everette’s cousin Daryll to sell drugs, which made a dozen kids sick and sent three to hospital, one with severe epileptic seizures, which would put Michael himself in prison.
It did not matter that that very afternoon Michael had received the advance for his book, with a note of godspeed from the publisher.
It only mattered that he was now carrying a hunting knife, hoping to kill Everette Hutch.
FIVE
That afternoon, when Madonna got home from her final day, Silver was preparing to go out. He wore his heavy boots and a thick black belt, with a cowboy hat on the buckle, shiny and meaningless, since he had never been near a horse or even liked them very much. Madonna came in with a first-prize pen she had won for shorthand, and set it on the fridge. The pen had the emblem of the high school engraved on it, and the year 1974,
All life can change, this emblem seemed to say it is just that the farther down a road a person goes, the farther she has to come back. Like finding yourself on an unsafe street in an unfamiliar city, and turning in the dark to find a street that is lighted once again.
It was five o’clock. Silver looked up at her and smiled, as he had that morning,
“Madonna,” he said,
“Where are you going?” she asked,
He told her, without looking her way, that he knew how to make some money for them, a lot of it, and this is why he had to go out. But he would be back for her. Then they would go far, far away. He spoke of the house they would have, the rooms all their own, the new car he might get.
“Well have it made,” he said, “if I do it right.”
“Are you afraid, Silver?” she whispered. “Are you afraid of our poverty, of how we were treated? Are you afraid that night you went to the Island — it’s in the paper how those kids got sick — are you afraid it’s from the drugs you used to replace the drugs Michael threw away?”
“Never,” he said. He sniffed, looking at her and lifting a cup of scalding tea to his mouth. He then glanced at the floor to her right.
“Well, then, why can’t you look at me?” she said.
“I look at you all the time — “
She took a deep breath.
“Why can’t you look at me in my panties? You always used to.”
“Yer my sister,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
She took another breath.
“Why are you now revolted? You can’t even touch me.”
“I-I-I — yer talking stupid,” he said.
“Here,” she smiled, as if it was a joke. “Take your hand and touch me.”
She reached for his hand, took it, and brought it towards her lips. But suddenly, as if frightened of being burned, he hauled it away.
“Why are you in hell?” she said. “What have you done?”
“There is no hell,” he said. But he said this so eagerly she knew he had been thinking about it for months.
“Things are not the same as they were last summer, are they?” Madonna said.
She sat in the chair between the door and the old washing machine that looked like an enamel tub.
“They certainly are not,” he said. He sniffed as if he were very aware of this.
“But why aren’t they?” Madonna asked.
“Well, they are all quite different, aren’t they?” Silver said, and he lit a cigarette. “Just as you said — so don’t play the cunt.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I just want you to tell me.”
He sat down on the chair and looked at her, and shrugged.
“I never had a bicycle,” he said. “All my life — in the summer — and once Emmett brought Karrie home a new bicycle — do you remember? We were about eight or nine after her mom died. Her old bicycle was still there — a girl’s bike, pink — you remember — and we thought Emmett would give it to you — and that you and I would have one. We ran down to see them — ran all the way down. But Dora said no — do you remember? — that she could sell it — and then you and I ran about all night to try to find fifteen dollars — we asked everyone, we searched in the ditches for bottles. And then we went to the priest — the priest told us to go back home, that we were ungrateful for what God had given us.
“So we walked up the lane all by ourselves. That night we collected bottles, walked as far as Oak Point — and the next morning we ran to the store again, with fourteen dollars and twenty-six cents. But still Dora wouldn’t give it to us.”
“I remember,” Madonna said. “It hurt very bad — and I had hated Karrie for it — but no more — “
“Ya,” Silver said. “Well, I remember too.”
He shrugged and tucked his shirt under the large belt as if he were suddenly vindicated.
“That is nothing,” Madonna said. “The bike is gone forever — it went to the dump in 1965 — it was the little bike Nora Battersoil bought, so good for her. It was the only bike she had too. And she was Karrie’s cousin.”
He stared at her and said nothing but there were tears in his eyes.
“So then —” she said kindly, and somehow helplessly, “that is not worth murder — neither are the hits in the head you took from dad — remember how we used to fight back? We fought back all the time then — you and I — we were brave, we fought back — that’s what we have to remember. But we didn’t murder.”
“What are you talking — murder?” he said.
There was a pause. The wind blew down the flue of the stove, and the fridge started up with a crack and a hum so suddenly he jumped.
“Do you want to go to take the Eucharist?”
“The what?”
“Take the host at Communion?”
“No, no — “
“Everette has figured things out — the money — he'll use it to destroy you — so destroy yourself first, and become something new. Destroy what you were and become something brand new. Put on the new vestments. Not bad drugs and blood that you’ve been living with for four months, and I’ve been living with, but the new vestments. Before you are destroyed.”
“What do you mean? Nothing can destroy me,” Silver said.
She looked at him, and took the diamond slowly from her pocket and put it on the table. It was as if he had just been slapped. He turned his head sideways.
He stood and moved away from her, almost ran to the counter.
“I’m not blaming you,” she said. “Half of it was done because you wanted to protect Michael — but I want you to come to church — and then go see John Delano tomorrow morning. If you do, we might be able to begin again “
Here Silver laughed, shook his head, bent over and took a drag of her cig
arette, but he wouldn’t look at her. There was an ooze of broken dreams that seemed to collect on his skin, on his breath — she could tell there was the energy of deceit and malice trying to break away and fall down into the eons of history.
It was now 5:25.
“You would have to go to confession — there is still time — we could both go. I will stand beside you — if you do twenty-five years, you’ll still be in your forties. I promise I will wait for you — we will have our own place, and cause no one trouble. Just come with me to church.”
His body looked distant. His eyes glittered, and his fingers were sweating.
“It’s good theatre,” he said, because he had heard Michael say this one Sunday afternoon and he suddenly felt very sharp repeating this. He laughed at her.
“I don’t believe in the church,” she whispered. “I don’t believe in the cardinals with their red hats and pomposity, or the priests. But I do believe in the faith. I believe in our Virgin Mary — our immaculate conception, the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”
“But you burned a picture of her,” he said. And he gave a laugh. “You’ll burn in hell forever now — even if Everette made you do it.”
She lowered her eyes, and said nothing for a moment.
“He made us do nothing — we did it by ourselves,” she said finally, looking up, her eyes warm and forgiving and bright.
“He’ll pay,” Silver said, gritting his teeth. And then, remembering that this was the very last thing Karrie had said to him, gave a sob, and closed his eyes.
Madonna left the house shortly after, and made her way towards the farm.
SIX
By now, 5:40 on his watch, Michael saw himself as another person. Simple and filled with vanity. He couldn’t even protect his fiancée from Everette Hutch. And the one who might know this was a man he once thought he despised, John Delano,
He didn’t mind that John had been in love with Laura for that brief moment. It seemed that, in a small town, things could happen like that, so you could keep in contact with someone you once loved for years. It was that twice he had met Delano, and both times the man had exercised a simple moral pre-eminence over him. And Michael was twisting about trying to change their position. Now he would not be able to.
He came up to the verandah and hurried along to the door, thinking only of the tape, and frightened about what it contained and wondering how to get it back before it fell into John Delano’s hands.
Well this time next year it will all be over, he thought.
As he opened the door he saw Madonna. She was sitting in the chair in the corner and startled him with how she looked.
She was wearing a heavy coat over a pair of pants. A black purse was slung on a long strap over her shoulder and a plastic bag was resting on the floor beside her, as the wind blew outside and seemed to move the wall
The air was bone-dry, the sky cold, and night was upon her. She sat in dusky solitary at the far end of the main room, near those chimes of sailboats Karrie had bought the previous July
Her face looked drawn, though as beautiful as always.
She lit a cigarette and looked out the window, so he could see her face in relief and desire the fullness of her mouth.
“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said.
The wonder of Madonna’s eyes was that they were two different colours — one was slightly blue the other slightly green. It was like looking into a kaleidoscope. When she stared at anyone she startled them with her mystery. They held in them, those eyes, sunlight and a mirror of a glazed highway. Her voice echoed with them, and her body seemed translucent as rolling summer waves.
She answered him as the Brassaurds always did, quick and without posture.
“I don’t know what I’ll ever do if anyone ever says that to me again,” she said. “My eyes have been my curse — been my curse more than my cunt. I have drownded men in my eyes — like that poor businessman from Neguac — and have gone to the Virgin to pray Yet the same things happen. Everette Hutch is now in love with these eyes, and it is remarkable to me how I even met him —” She laughed. “And how I’ve been able to hold him off for a year.”
He suddenly realized that if she had had half a chance in life — like the chance Mr. Jessop asked Michael himself to give her — her eyes would never have been her curse.
She raised her head boldly and proudly.
The chimes moved, the radio station played, and the kitchen tap dripped solidly and at a regular interval.
“We put too much pressure on Silver — he was always running about for us — and he was just a kid” Here she paused, took a drag, and looked behind her at the bookshelf, as if the bookshelf were impeding her thought, and turned back to face him.
“He got off his medicine, started sniffing glue. In the end he thought you betrayed us, and he cannot bear to mention your name. We lived in such dirt-poverty you could not even begin to imagine. So he wouldn’t be able to step into your father’s house, even if he got the invitation he was sure you were going to send us — the invitation to your wedding.”
She smiled.
“Silver wanted to take a course somewhere. He got the application forms. Then we came down to see you and ask you about it. Remember? He had me dress up, he wore a sports jacket — he was going to get you to take him to Moncton to enroll. Then we were going to take you out to dinner as a treat. You told us to wait. And we waited. And then you went back to town. We waited. Silver phoned you every day And when you did finally come back, that’s when Everette was planning the robbery and wanted me to help him. I don’t know what became of his application form,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Ahh,” she said waving her hand, as if startled by her own vulnerability. “Every time I went to church I was told that Silver and I were made in the image of Christ. Our father beat the snot out of us but I was still told that. We were chased out of yards and houses and stores, and children were not allowed to play with us, but I was still told that. And do you know, I hated to be told that. Then, when I was fifteen, I started getting fucked, and people finally stopped telling me that. But now, since last month, I’ve been aching to hear it again. Just once more from someone.”
There was a long pause, and she looked away
“You are made in the image of Christ,” he said. “You are and always will be “
She picked up her purse and snapped it open, without taking her eyes off him for a second, and took out another cigarette and lit it. The window was open to the snow, the clear evening.
“I went after some rats that had got in behind the shed. They musta smelled something, and look what they were using as their nest.”
She tossed him the bag in the greyish darkness that always seemed to be a part of houses like this. It landed on the couch next to him. He gave a slight movement sideways when it landed. It was one of the secrets.
Michael opened it. There were a pair of pants, sneakers, and a scarf. He held the scarf in his hand. He could smell it and he could see the heavy splashes of blood everywhere upon it. There was a death imprint visible where she had clutched it. It was as if he could hear her last feeble cry.
“I always wondered where that scarf was,” Madonna said matter-of-factly. “I had to hunt all last fall without it.”
Michael looked over at her. His lips were thin, and his hair moved slightly in the breeze from the window.
Here her gaze shifted again as if she were embarrassed by him, with a deep unforgivable embarrassment of their time together.
Then she took the final drag of her cigarette and flicked it out the open window so that it twirled in the granite-coloured air, end over end into nothing.
“And now you’re getting married — and you don’t even know how much I loved you —” She turned, looked at him suddenly, smiled, almost timidly, and was gone.
He hadn’t anything to say. In fact, the bag of clothes said it all.
&nb
sp; Michael sat with his head in his hands.
“My God, Tom. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Yet he had to think. On the one side there was Tom, on the other Laura — both were haunting him. To protect one, he would have to give up the other. There were no other options. If he gave himself up, Laura and his own father would be seen involved in a coverup of drugs and murder to protect a fiance and a son. And Michael would face the one thing he was afraid of, and the one thing he had heaped upon others — ridicule. But if he remained calm — if Becker could keep quiet — if Everette got away, then Tom would remain in jail, and no doubt be murdered sooner or later.
Yet either way, Karrie was silent now. Now, when he wanted her to say something to him, there was only silence from her grave — a place he had not yet visited,
He could smell Karrie as he grabbed the bag of clothes.
He wondered about her body, remembered it, thought if it, and got sick.
He stood and looked about, wiped his mouth.
He shoved the scarf down into the bag, and turned to leave, snapping out the light.
In the darkness he stopped.
The dump, he thought.
And he made his way towards the shore. He walked along the shore — for he feared being followed if he went any other way
The shore was dark, a gale wind was up, and he moved with new resolve. Coming off the shore, towards the back path, he slipped and fell. He landed on his back and stared at the sky for a long time.
“Tommie,” he thought.
Just then, a voice said, “Are you okay?”
He tried to stand and see who it was. The voice spoke to him again.
“Here, you dropped your bag — let me help you — “
The man put the scarf back into the plastic bag, along with the pants and sneakers, and handed it over.
“Oh, it’s you,” the voice said. “I just come down here for a minute.”
It was Emmett Smith. He moved his false upper plate out, as he smiled slightly, which seemed to make his chin look as rigid as that of a store mannequin’s.
The Bay of Love and Sorrows Page 21