Nobody sat on one of the dining chairs. She tossed it into a nearby satchel of Pierre’s to-be-read collection when she noticed, with no small amount of distress, deep wrinkles crisscrossing her cotton skirt. The ups and downs and back and forth of the afternoon’s activities had distorted the beauty of the floral chintz fabric. Worse, splatters of gravy from the meat loaf warming in the oven had sullied the white background color. How careless that she’d selected this outfit, which she saw now was much too dressy for an ordinary day at home. Edna vigorously smoothed out the creases with her palms, making a mental note to donate all her floral clothing, which comprised a good fifty percent of her wardrobe, to Goodwill. The next day wouldn’t be too soon. These days, flowers depressed her.
She walked the length of the dining room, noting that the toile wallpaper had discolored at the ceiling and was due to be changed. And she had to laugh at herself, because she’d been observing the same condition every week for at least six months. Refreshing any decoration before it grew too worn was, she knew, a habit of the wealthy. Yet Edna didn’t feel especially privileged, nor was she immune to hardship. Pastoral wallpaper would never bring back Edgar, and she wondered why the grief she still felt after all these years hadn’t subsided to the bearable state so-called experts assured her it would. All the china in France hadn’t prevented her sixteen-year-old daughter from dying an hour after Luc’s birth. And now, even a mile of Irish linen couldn’t ensure that her grandson would be safe in the world after she herself died.
As much as people tried to hide their snickering, Edna knew Luc was seen by town folks as a simpleton who was very, very lucky to have a rich grandma. And with her wealth, he did have it better than almost everyone in Oslo. But Luc’s challenges, not particularly obvious, were significant and required a great deal of forethought. Because of this, Edna spent most of her days advocating from a state of hypervigilance, the dining-room table being just one example.
She’d positioned the two place settings at a corner. Necessary, because Luc was not comfortable sitting opposite anyone. General eye contact seemed to be almost unbearable, and in fact at some point during most conversations he’d turn his entire head. And then there were tremors, which the doctors assured her were not due to epilepsy. But they’d never been able to diagnose the origin, whether neurological or some psychological imprint. These were just two of several behavioral conditions Edna had described in detail when Luc was young and diagnoses were still being proffered. One by one, all were proven incorrect. In the end she was left with, “We just don’t know about Luc.” What was she supposed to do with that unhelpful string of words?
Edna slumped into a dining chair, nestled her head into her arms on the table, and closed her eyes. This early evening fatigue had become routine. Most birds were silent late in the day, but she heard a single loon calling every ten seconds or so from across the lake. Edna found herself waiting for each hoot, and in doing so, dropped into a shallow sleep. She dreamt lightly about her daughter standing on the porch waiting for Luc, just as she had less than an hour before. Then, oddly, Luc’s approaching truck broke through with a growing hum, and she roused herself.
Now Edna was behind schedule. She hurried into the kitchen to turn up the oven so the meat loaf could be served at the correct temperature. Then she worried that the roast had dried out, so she grabbed a baster from a drawer and sucked up the juices. A few splatters landed on her blouse. She swatted at the stains with a dishrag, which embedded the grease even more. She’d just destroyed a perfectly good silk top, her entire outfit now nothing less than shabby. To mask her carelessness, she donned Edgar’s old chef apron, still hanging on a hook in the pantry. Edgar had loomed a good foot and a half taller, so the apron reached Edna’s ankles. My God. With her mucksters sticking out below she not only felt a fool, but now looked the part too. After positioning the ketchup on the kitchen counter closest to the dining room, Edna ran out the front door. Luc had already backed his truck into the space next to her car.
“Wait, Gram. She’s almost done,” Luc said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
Patsy Cline. Edna never imagined country music within a fifty-mile radius of her house, but courtesy of Claude Roy, Luc was now fond of her. While she waited for Patsy to finish falling to pieces, Edna glanced at the back of the truck. Two legs with cloven hoofs pointed in the air in a vee formation, like a victory salute.
“Luc!” She reached in and switched off the radio.
“Yeah, Gram?” he answered, staring out the opposite window.
“Get out of this truck right now.”
Luc eased himself out of the cab and they walked to the rear of the truck.
“Explain this,” she demanded.
“It’s a moose. A baby.”
“I can see that.” She paused and forced herself to look more closely at the animal. “My God, Luc. It’s been torn to bits! Tell me you didn’t do this.”
“I found it,” he said, examining his boots.
“Where.”
“Up north.”
“North? What do you mean?
“On Claude’s land.”
She prompted him with her hands, like directing traffic. “Come on … more … explain.”
“I was cleaning. For Claude.”
“Oh Lord. That’s utter nonsense and you know it.”
She sighed heavily. There was no point in pursuing the extended Q&A needed to extract information while standing beside a dead animal. Anyway, her more pressing worry was Luc’s hunger.
“Come inside. Dinner’s waiting. And leave your boots outside. They’re filthy.”
“Right, Gram.”
They ate mostly in silence, which was their habit. Luc chewed his meat loaf with a steady rhythm. Having no appetite, not unusual of late, Edna picked at her salad and thought more about that poor animal. She felt angry, but not terribly. Confused, certainly. Mostly, Edna didn’t like surprises—and this one, so grisly. And there’d been other perplexing episodes. Like Luc accompanying Claude to unspecified places where he “warmed the truck seat.” For what purpose, instinct told her not to grill Luc or even ask Claude. Yes, murkiness lurked, but also surprising breakthroughs. Luc described, and in exhaustive detail, the ongoing renovations to Claude’s house, the most bewildering structure she’d ever laid eyes on. In fact, a true horror. Edna couldn’t understand the first thing about what Claude was trying to accomplish. How this layout would in any way be suitable for his family, or why Celine would even agree to it, Edna was at a loss. Regardless, after a work session at the Roys’, Luc would return home chattering on about every nail, every hammer, every paint color. All the progress they made. How Claude left him alone, trusted him to do the work. And that even when he messed up, which Luc admitted was a lot, Claude let him fix it. She’d never seen her grandson so deeply interested in something, other than the TV programs he was addicted to and had committed to memory. Edna glanced at Luc, now engrossed in his mashed potatoes. He stopped mid-forkful, looked up at her, and smiled. There it was: pure sweetness. He was her best boy who, when she so wanted to give him everything, asked for absolutely nothing. Edna had to trust Claude. She saw no other way.
Their plates sat, his wiped clean, hers full. As night came on and the houses across the lake began to flicker, Edna waited for Luc to explain about the baby moose.
“I messed up,” he finally confessed.
“I’ll say. My God, I can practically smell the thing from here.”
“Not like that.”
“How, then?”
“With Claude.”
“Keep going.”
“Claude told me about the baby moose last week. But I forgot. And then this morning he reminded me. He got mad.”
“But for pity’s sake, why’d you bring it here?”
“I was hungry. And I was driving. So …”
“In that case, you did just the right thing. You understand?”
“I know, Gram.”
Luc wiped hi
s hands on a cloth napkin and was about to drop it onto his plate. Then he quickly refolded it, setting it to the side. He dropped his head. She watched him work through his discomfort from failing Claude and disappointing her. But she was greatly relieved that at least he showed some level of self-awareness about hunger being connected to his tremors, and got off the road.
“Okay, honey. In the morning we’ll go to the March together and talk to Claude. We’ll settle it—the three of us.”
Luc nodded and appeared satisfied with her assurance. He picked up their plates to do the dishes, a chore he enjoyed.
“Gram, you didn’t finish.”
“I know. I had a big lunch,” she lied.
“Should I dump it?”
“Might as well.”
“Okay, Gram.”
“I’m going up to bed. You’ll remember to lock the doors?”
“Sure, Gram.”
Edna left her mucksters by the bottom step and climbed the stairs, tripping twice on Edgar’s apron. In her bedroom she pulled the apron off, folded it into a square, and stuffed it under Edgar’s shirts in the bottom drawer of his bureau. She let her skirt drop to the floor and toe-kicked it to the side of the room. The pearls at her neck felt hot to the touch. She undid the clasp and placed them into her everyday jewelry box. After she unbuttoned the stained blouse and draped it over the back of the chair by her vanity, she decided she’d throw out all her silks along with the florals. What had she been thinking all these years? She lived in Maine, not Beacon Hill.
She unclipped her bra. Two foam inserts bounced to the carpet and landed somewhere out of sight. She stood in front of the mirror in just her underpants and forced herself to look. The breast surgeon had worked to get the incisions lined up in a reasonable horizonal, but small flaps of excess skin had since marred his effort. The plastic surgeon had pressed her to have a reconstruction, but there was no point. The last person to touch them in any way that meant something was Edgar, the night before he died. They’d made love after their daughter, then only a few months old, fell asleep. Per her feeding schedule, Sammy’s cries woke Edna at three in the morning. As she nursed her downstairs in the kitchen so as to not disturb Edgar, whom she knew had a busy day ahead, Edna heard a thump on the floor above. Her daughter became enraged if taken from the breast before she was sated, so Edna waited a full fifteen minutes for Sammy to finish. She found Edgar lying at the threshold between the bedroom and the hallway, dead of a massive stroke. He’d tried to get to her. Edna’s milk mysteriously dried up within a week of Edgar’s death. Sammy struggled to get used to formula, and then later with food until the day she died. How could Edna explain to the plastic surgeon that her breasts had always reminded her of death? In truth, she was glad to be rid of them.
No one knew of her cancer. Oslo gossip had a life of its own and Edna couldn’t chance even Sandra, whom she felt close to. She’d shielded the entire episode by having the double mastectomy performed in Boston, with the excuse of needing ten days to attend to complex estate issues and various charity board meetings. No, her cancer, which she’d recently learned had metastasized, was gossip she’d not gift to the town of Oslo.
Edna’s sense of smell and taste had diminished somewhat due to the new chemo pill she was taking. But the odor of the dead animal wafted faintly into the room, or so she imagined. Though it was a warm evening, she closed the windows. She floated a lacey nightgown over her head and down her body. She pulled the covers back and lay on “her side” of the bed, farthest from the door and potential intruders. Edgar had been the best husband, always protective. She stretched one arm out to his side of the bed and stroked the empty pillow.
“Oh, my darling. Tell me what to do.”
THE CIRCUS COMETH
GRADUAL DOWNSIZING AT THE MARCH had all but eliminated proper offices for shift foremen like Claude. But he’d needed privacy for his business, so he hijacked a room at the end of a remote hallway and fashioned it to suit his purposes. His desk sat hidden behind several tall lockers, blocking the door but allowing enough space to squeeze by. Should anyone surprise him, he’d have time enough to throw all damning evidence in a drawer and present an innocent smile. And Claude was basic—no computer. He entered the numbers by hand into a bound ledger, and always with a 4B pencil, the softest lead available. Pink Pearl-type erasers ensured the cleanest changes. That he didn’t like sloppy or crossed-out payroll columns was just one thing Claude had learned about himself; on paper at least, Claude was a neat freak. Even more surprising, the high he felt running the trapping business was close to a perfect buzz—that headspace where you’d had a few shots and might go ahead and get snorting drunk, but then you thought better of it and ended up feeling fucking virtuous in the morning. Weighing pros and cons, reasoning things out, making calculated decisions, none of that could be explored as a company man at the March, whose routines hadn’t changed much in years. Claude thrived on the tension hidden inside of risk.
All he had been going for at first was a bit of mad money. Maybe surprise Celine with jewelry normally out of his reach. With that bling long since satisfied, they were now neck-deep in footwear. And who knew Celine had been binging Project Runway reruns and had a thing for Tim Gunn (or was it Zac Posen?) and any shoe with a minimum four-inch heel? For Pierre it was one thing only: a college education, which had somehow become a foregone conclusion. According to Celine, the very idea of “her” son following in Claude’s footsteps at the March was ludicrous, a word Claude thought overwrought but conceded to because he couldn’t handle another synonym battle. Though, even if the boy got accepted to some super-expensive hoity-toity school, which everyone in Oslo expected he would, Claude now had enough cash, literally under his mattress, to get Pierre through four years of college. Maybe. Probably not. Actually, Claude had no idea what college cost.
But nothing was easy. Annoyances popped up, mostly about keeping his small crew in line. Every few months they’d make noises about wanting more of the profits. And who could blame them—greed was almost as huge an urge as sex. But they also wanted to discuss things, be part of the process, have decision-making power. It took brains to both toss them bones and fend them off at the same time. And damned if he hadn’t developed actual sympathy for the owners of the March, who for years had successfully squashed unionizing. Claude now understood what they’d always known: if you gave people a voice, they developed opinions really fast. And that, almost without exception, mucked stuff up.
Claude was now at his desk and had just finished preparing for the weekly meeting. He ran his finger down several columns and checked them one more time with the calculator. The sums appeared to be correct. And impressive, because after paying his four-man crew double wages, plus a flat fee to the lobster guy from the coast who trucked the meat downstate (his industry had also hit the shitter), Claude’s personal profit was better than usual. He snapped the book closed, slid it to the back of a locker, took out a roll of bills, and clipped the bolt lock shut.
They filed into the tight space and circled around him, sipping coffee dregs before the next shift change. As Claude doled out money to each man, he recapped the week’s spoils.
“We brought in some nice stuff,” Claude said. “About a dozen rabbits and a good-sized doe. Four grey fox. And two badgers.”
“Badgers?” one of the men said, laughing.
“I know, but the meat can be used for somebody’s dog. Who wants ’em?” Claude asked.
“I’ll take it,” another man said. “My hounds go for that stuff.”
“Good. That’s about it for now. The traps all reset for this week?”
“We did it yesterday.”
“Okay. Moving forward, I wanna give you guys a heads-up. I’m thinking about winding down the operation. Maybe stretch it out through summer and then disband early fall.”
The men, while saying nothing, nodded noncommittally.
“What, no comments for a change?” Claude asked.
“Not really,
” the man with the hounds said after a few moments. “We figured it’s been coming.”
“Huh,” Claude grunted, not knowing exactly what he meant. “Well, that was easy,” he said, laughing.
“It’s been a good ride,” the hound man continued.
“Good enough?” Claude asked.
“More than we ever expected.”
“So, no one has a strong objection? Because whatever we do, we have to be in lockstep. I don’t want anybody going rogue.”
The men shook their heads, shrugged agreeably, and left just as the shift bell rang.
Oddly, he hadn’t planned on announcing that day. But it seemed his crew was ahead of him, and it left Claude feeling relieved. He’d always warned them that if the business shut down, it’d have to be like it never existed. And now with their unanimous agreement, he felt grateful that he wouldn’t have to babysit the one guy who was greedy and disgruntled and would surely cause problems down the line. He propped his feet on the desk edge, satisfied with his leading skills, or whatever that jargon was, and watched the shift transfer from the window. Then he jumped up out of his seat. What in hell? Claude was certainly surprised to see Edna with Luc, who’d pulled up just then. But he could never have predicted that moose calf in the back of the truck, its legs akimbo for all creation to see. Claude stared in disbelief. In the name of Lucifer, what was Luc doing showing up with that dead moose calf?
And what a sideshow, like the Keystone Cops. Luc rushed over to help Edna from the cab. She shooed him away with typical pride and jumped down, then stumbled a few feet before righting herself and dusting off. Despite her age, Claude considered Edna still beautiful, a faded cover girl. But the really great thing about Edna was that after she voiced outrage for about thirty seconds on any topic, she was pretty reasonable for a rich lady. And under normal circumstances, if Claude just waited her out, he could convince her of anything. But my God, how was he going to fix this?
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