Would I Lie to You

by Mary Lou Dickinson

  “You were a good friend, Jerry,” Martin said. “The best a man could ask for.”

  As she heard Martin’s voice, Sue thought of him and Jerry as boys at the quarry. Fearless. Voices echoing over water. Martin, saying, “Come on, buddy, your turn now.”

  And then the whack of a body hitting the surface. They were not divers who entered it as if from a high diving board. Rather, they were boys on an adventure, unaware of peril.

  “What would you like me to do?” Martin asked.

  Sue appeared to be in a trance.

  “Anything at all.” He would do what needed to be done without being asked if that was what she wanted.

  Sue’s eyes rested on Jerry as she spoke quietly to Martin. “Go ahead,” she said, unable to say more. Go ahead with whatever needs to be done. A doctor would have to come, but she did not feel ready. If everyone would leave, she could just sit with her husband.

  Martin went to the telephone, and she could hear his steady voice in the background. He would take care of things. No one came into the room. Gradually, her breath became even as she held Jerry’s cold hand and looked at his face. She wanted to sit there at his side as if she were guarding over him. She was not sure how long she remained like that, aware of nothing but the silence.

  “Goodbye, Jer,” she whispered, breaking into sobs again. Nothing had prepared her for this. Not even these last days. Everything seemed suddenly so different from only a few minutes before, as if she had been in a storm on a ship and only just managed to fall into a small raft on open, rough water.

  Finally, Sue put her husband’s hand carefully by his side and pulled a sheet up to a spot just below his chin.

  Martin appeared beside her. “I’ve called the doctor,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Jerry said there would be a list of people to call.”

  He had finally given her instructions and a simple funeral had already been arranged.

  “There is,” she said. “There’s a telephone tree somewhere near the phone.” Martin would only have to make four or five calls.

  “I’ll do them in Jerry’s study,” he said.

  “When you’re finished, I’ll call Angus,” Maggie said.

  Martin nodded.

  “Anyone else you want me to tell?” Maggie asked. She repeated her question when Sue appeared perplexed.

  “Florence, I guess.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A cousin of Jerry’s. I don’t know if she’ll be up to coming to Toronto for the funeral. I just know she’ll want to know. We’ll plan the memorial far enough ahead so she can make it.” Sue was not sure what else she wished to convey to Florence. It felt as if she were missing something important, something beyond the stark reality of Jerry’s death, of his lingering presence that she was afraid would dissipate too quickly. She wanted some sense that he was still watching. A spirit.

  “Where is she?” Maggie asked.

  “She lives in Blenheim. In southwestern Ontario. I’ve met her. Lovely older woman. Jerry’s kept in touch with her. Mostly by phone. She doesn’t like coming into the city so after his diagnosis, he went to see her. She’s going to be terribly upset.”

  “Maybe you’d like to make that call,” Maggie said.

  “I think you’re right,” Sue said. “I would.”

  *

  From the door at the front of the chapel, Sue could see blurred shapes filling the pews. Men and women in business suits. More people than she had anticipated. No one Jerry was related to would be at the service. As it turned out, Florence was too ill to make the journey. She had said she was grateful for Jerry’s last visit when he could still travel.

  “I would have come if I could, my dear,” she had said. “Please keep in touch with me.”

  Besides Martin, Florence was the only link she had with Jerry’s past and Sue scarcely knew her. It all felt so tenuous. She walked into the front pew with her eyes on the coffin, feeling herself move from numbness to tears then back again. Only the presence of Maggie and Angus, who had flown in the night before, and Martin and Emily on the other side, kept her anchored. She could have been floating on the ceiling, watching from there. When she began to quiver, Martin put his arm around her. She curled her fingers around a tissue. The thought of Jerry in the coffin scratching at his elbow and trying to raise the lid was almost her undoing. She wanted to go and snatch away the flowers she had bought for him and raise the lid before he suffocated.

  The minister entered and moved to the front of the chapel and her attention turned to him. A small goatee and thick glasses with narrow wire frames gave him a distant air, but she knew that was an illusion. He was the same minister who had married them and had come to the house to talk with Jerry when he was ill. Each time, his warmth and friendliness had soothed Jerry. On his most recent visit, the two of them had discussed the music for this service. Jerry had considered Mozart, but the gospel piece the pianist now started to play was one Sue had chosen. There will be peace in the valley for me.

  “What about Beethoven?” the minister had asked.

  Mostly, what they had settled on was music anyone who knew Jerry would expect. After the cremation, Martin would arrange for the ashes to be put in an urn and brought to the house. Sue would keep the small brass container on the mantel until she took it up north to scatter the ashes over water near their cabin. That was what Jerry had requested. Also she would plant a small spruce tree there in his memory. The celebration of his life was left in Martin’s hands. They would gather on the island in the spring or summer when the weather was warmer.

  Once they were seated, Sue’s eyes were drawn to the white cloth over the coffin again, then to its centre, where one spray of lilies rested, a white bow tied around the long green stems. Otherwise, Jerry had requested donations be made to Amnesty International.

  “No flowers,” he had said. “Except yours, Sue.”

  Sue could feel Maggie’s hand holding hers throughout the service and her sister’s eyes on her every so often. She also sensed Angus’s repeated glances. Martin and Emily, their eyes red, held each other. A textured wall hanging with bright yellow interwoven strands reminiscent of a Van Gogh palette reminded Sue of their father’s funeral held here years earlier, then, more recently, their mother’s. Her parents’ move to Toronto had not been anticipated, but in their more frail years they had chosen to live in a city. Maggie would think of their funerals, too. Around the corner were their plaques, their ashes in urns behind the carved letters of their names, birth and death dates inscribed in gold letters. The hesitation she had had about scattering Jerry’s ashes rather than have a cemetery plot or niche was prompted by the knowledge that there would be no outward mark of his existence anyone could visit. Even she might not continue to go to the cabin up north and see the tree she might plant eventually grow. No one would come into the mausoleum, as she did occasionally, to put some small token on the ledge just below her parents’ names. A small stone or an acorn. Once, a TTC transfer. She thought her parents would have appreciated those gifts, knowing that from her they were significant. Without children, there might be no way to trace a family that ended with Jerry’s passing.

  Her father had loved genealogy, showing her and Maggie and, eventually Wally, the charts he had inherited, which had been written at least a century earlier. These charts had traced back through layers of ancestors. He was happy when he could read the hallmarks on family silver and let them know these connections were what made them firmly rooted. The idea of roots had made little sense to Sue in a northern town carved out of the bush, a town that existed with rocks beside and underneath everything. What was solid was the rock. Sue had tolerated her father’s enthusiasm, but she had never shared it. Perhaps because he seemed, in that fervour, to look only to the past. The people on the gravel streets and wooden sidewalks of the mining town were the ones who had interested he
r. Although French was the language mainly spoken there, it was all the different languages the immigrants from Europe had spoken, that had intrigued her.

  As a child, there were so many things she had not understood about migration. Only as an adult, when she and Maggie had made homes so far apart and their parents were deceased, had it dawned on her that the way most people lived was in motion. Some, due to upheaval in their countries had been forced to flee; others had imagined a better life somewhere else; and others had simply ended up where they were by happenstance. Like her. She had never intended to live in Toronto. Only when she had met Jerry had she felt at home. Now, she would come in through the foyer of their house to an empty living room, looking for him. Then, she would head for the stairs against the far wall and go up to his study or to their bedroom with the skylight where the sun shone in on bright days, only to feel his absence.

  Tears fell onto her blouse and something heavy rose in her chest. Her face turned red. She could scarcely breathe.

  “Sue,” Maggie whispered. “Sue.”

  She let out a long breath as her head fell onto her sister’s shoulder. Maggie’s arm tightened around her. The strains of Oscar Peterson’s “Hymn to Freedom” surrounded them. As the service ended, Sue could hear noses blowing and muffled whispers. People started to get up.

  “They’ll wait for you to go out before they do,” Maggie whispered.

  Slowly, Sue rose and walked with Maggie and Angus to the steps at the front of the mausoleum. People followed, stopping at the door to offer their condolences. Sue did not hear much of what anyone said, although she pretended to.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Similar words echoed over and over.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for caring.”

  “Yes, he was a wonderful man.”

  “Yes.”

  There were quite a few people Sue had not previously met. She hoped everyone had signed the visitation book. Later, she would ponder over some of their names, wondering about their connection to Jerry. She recognized two women he had met in law school and introduced to her one evening on the crowded sidewalk on Bloor Street. A young man standing off to the side also had a slightly familiar look. Sue turned to ask Martin who he was, but Martin had moved away to the other side of the church entrance where he was speaking with people who were also strangers to her. She tucked away the question for later.

  “Jerry was such an extraordinary man. So competent, yet so gentle,” a woman said. She was dressed in a charcoal grey suit with a deep purple silk scarf.

  “I don’t know if you realize, Sue, but he was one of the bright lights of the profession,” said the man who spoke to her next. “We need more like him.”

  Sue nodded. And he had the nerve to die, she thought. Damn him. She caught herself. She must not be angry today. But with the only other option a flood of tears, she could only draw in a breath and bite her lip. As she looked around, people seeming part of a far-off tableau, she saw the young man again. Her gaze lingered on his reddish hair. Again, he seemed familiar. He stood somewhat apart from everyone else, and looked as if he were waiting for someone.

  “It isn’t fair,” another voice said. “He still had so much to live for.”

  Sue turned to look at the couple in front of her.

  “Yes,” she sighed.

  *

  Only by chance had he seen the obituary in The Globe and Mail at his dentist’s office in Stratford, Thomas thought. He didn’t even know the man in the coffin at the front of the chapel. Who would go to a funeral where he knew no one? The newspaper had been on the table in the dentist’s waiting room only two days earlier. He’d fished out the sports section and started leafing through it from the back. On the first page he came to, there were death notices.

  As he started to turn the pages, a name caught his eye. A familiar name. Gerald Foster Reid. It had startled him so much he had almost left without seeing the dentist. Could it be that this man was his father? The birth date had made it possible. He had read the full obituary then. Born in Stratford, Ontario. It had to be the same Jerry Reid he had been told about. It had not taken him too long after having his teeth cleaned and examined to decide to go to the funeral and be a spectator at the last rites of the father he had never met.

  From the dentist’s office, he had quickly driven home to the bungalow he had shared with his mother until she had died earlier that year. He had not gone through her papers and scrapbooks yet. Every time he started, he could not continue. It always upset him too much. But now he was looking for something. A photograph, maybe, of his father. There had to be at least one photograph. But he found nothing, that is until he had scoured her old high-school yearbooks.

  He observed the mourners carefully from his seat at the back of the chapel. The woman he had seen sit in the front pew with a couple on either side of her must be the widow. He had read her name, Susan, in the paper. If he had found his father earlier, would this woman have been an obstacle for him? He did not see Florence and wondered if she knew about the funeral. She must know. He was not sure what her relationship to Jerry Reid was. Maybe she was an older friend of his mother’s who had also known his father. It was clear she had somehow known both of them. Florence had come into his life again since his mother’s death. She had been at that funeral. He had wondered why she had never talked about his father. Even when he asked her, she was quiet, as if she had been asked not to say anything. It was so unlike the Florence he had known otherwise. A woman with an enormous hug and warm banter that belied her age. She seemed more like his mother’s age. He missed his mother’s hug more than he wanted to think about.

  After the service, people streamed out of the chapel. Thomas stood under a tall tree with spreading branches, the sun shining through to brighten the dull day. He watched a man speak with the widow and then turn to walk to a parked car. As he looked at her, Thomas saw her glance in his direction. He was not sure if she had noticed him. A lot of people were likely strangers to her. Business associates of his father’s? Friends from college? He did not see anyone from Stratford. At least, not anyone he knew.

  As people got into cars and gradually left, the young man lingered under the trees. He wanted to speak to the woman, but was afraid he would upset her. This did not seem to be the time or place for that. What would his mother have told him to do? He stood there for a long time, until almost the last car pulled away and two men closed the doors to the mausoleum. A breeze brushed gently through his hair and dark clouds began to form overhead. When he heard thunder, he returned to his car and sat behind the wheel. How strange it was to have been at his father’s funeral without ever having met the man about whom he had had so many fantasies. He had often wondered what his father looked like, especially when other children asked about him. When he had asked his mother, she had been evasive. He learned there was no sense in trying to find out very much from her. Most of the time, this had not preoccupied him. He did all the things other children did. Read books. Played hockey. Swam at the quarry. His mother always had treats for his friends, so they had been glad to come and exchange hockey cards or play some game. Over time, there were many other children also living with only one of their parents or with a new stepmother or stepfather who had moved in with them.

  He turned the key in the ignition and drove away slowly. It was only when he had looked in those high-school yearbooks that he had found anything concrete. In a class photograph, Thomas had found a Jerry Reid, one of the taller boys in the back row. He was also in photographs of the football and hockey teams. What had surprised Thomas most, and at first given him shivers, was how much he resembled this man.

  He passed by the mausoleum again before heading to the exit onto Yonge Street. He was hungry, but anxious to get back to Stratford where he now lived alone in the house left to him by his mother. He might sell it, but he was not sure if he was r
eady yet for the changes that would ensue from that. If his father were still alive, he might have had an entirely other life. As it was, his father would remain a stranger.

  *

  Rain streaked down the windowpanes where Sue sat looking out through bare branches at a bleak landscape. All she could see were sagging staircases on the backs of houses beyond the fence. She had cried so much in the days and weeks since Jerry died, it seemed impossible there could be any tears left. The ringing of the telephone interrupted the steady patter of freezing rain. For a few seconds, she considered not answering.

  “May I speak to Mrs. Jerry Reid?” a male voice asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Thomas,” the unfamiliar voice said. “Thomas Crossar.”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I think your husband was my father.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “You must have the wrong number.” She resisted the impulse to hang up.

  “Just before she died, my mother finally told me where to find him. And I have a birth certificate.”

  “Do you?” Sue was skeptical, still thinking it was likely a wrong number. On the other hand, she had heard there were people who read obituaries and contacted vulnerable widows. Such a scam was not going to succeed with her. “I really have no reason to believe you.”

  “I was at his funeral,” the voice said. “I wanted to give you a little time.” So it’s him, Sue thought. The young man with the reddish hair she had seen at the mausoleum in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. It was as if this vision had merely been waiting for an opportunity to reappear. Yes, he was the one who had seemed familiar. The one, she now realized, with a striking resemblance to Jerry whom she had not wanted to notice that day.

  She suddenly recalled what the psychic she had visited shortly before Jerry died had said about someone who was like a son. That, too, she had not wanted to register.

  “What are you looking for?” Sue asked, not at all sure she wanted to hear any more. If she had gone to visit on the West Coast as Maggie had suggested, she would not have been here to receive this call.