RICHARD FOUND DIANNA a position in Winnipeg’s most limestone law firm—what he called “the old firm,” which meant no Ukrainians or Jews. It made her an instant “spinster,” or what they’d soon call “a women’s libber.” She dressed the part, but you could see the heat build up in her, especially when Jack was around. Though she was only twenty-six, Dianna considered herself dry around the ears. She sustained a lonely life. She saw a lot of Richard.
Richard was the most static man. He absolutely would not let anything happen. Nervous people have a hard time with change.
Dianna was determined to remain lucid. Her mother had been a romantic. So Dianna was anti-romantic. She didn’t realize that Richard was a romantic too. A nervous romantic is a dangerous thing. Richard was especially nervous about Jack.
Among her many dads, Dianna’s real father, Bill of the butterfly garden was neither romantic nor entirely rational. Bill walked beneath the shattered sky as transitive as a new leaf. In his white pyjamas, he walked so much that he remained lithe and light. Somehow my dark daughter had given us this bright man full of grace.
With Helen gone, poor Dianna had no mother to kill. I did try to offer up myself; I criticized, drew inaccurate analogies from my own life, read her diary, felt hurt and anxious. I did what I could, but she didn’t take the bait. And she misunderstood her father’s scepticism. In her hungry mouth, his indifference tasted of bile. She might have avoided romanticism, but she sure got trapped by rage.
In the era of “mega-deaths,” of intercontinental ballistic missiles and all that bogus sanity, it was easy to mistake scepticism for cynicism. The poor kid started to believe in some kind of anxiety she liked to call Man’s Freedom. (At the time, I guess she was a man.) Despite her position at the old firm, Dianna began to talk about “taking action against American imperialism.”
“What are you staring at?” I asked her. She was transfixed by the blank television set.
“Things as they are,” said she.
“Darling,” I said, and handed her an old sketch pad from her girlhood, “if I fetch you a dead squirrel, won’t you draw us a nice picture?”
She kissed my withered cheek. “Peace, Gramma. I’m going to kick butt.” Then she rubbed her lip. I’d discovered the energy to deliver a small jolt.
She rode off to deface an American flag at the Legislative Building. She was, she said, politically involved. Dianna was mad. So was the Hungarian refugee who took the placard reading “PIGS GET OUT OF CUBA” out of Dianna’s hands and broke it over her head. When she came to, she was in the back seat of my car, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, bleeding all over my leather seats, being driven home by the same Hungarian (weeping) who had rifled through her wallet till he found her address, who drove her all the way to St. Norbert, who backed out of the car apologizing, I think, in Hungarian, I guess, who was last seen walking north back to Winnipeg in a most abject state, of whom we have not heard since.
RICHARD’S CADILLAC ROLLING PAST our house and down the drive. I assumed he’d be going to Bill and Dianna’s cabin by the butterfly field, and hobbled out after him. But he drove on, down to the cup of the oxbow, to Marie’s grotto, and parked. By the time I got there, he and Jack were talking at the screen door. In fact, the interview was over. Richard, about to get back into his car, pointed his finger at Jack. “He told you he was from Toronto,” he said to me.
“What does it matter?” I asked.
“I don’t like being lied to. I’ve had enough for one lifetime.”
“Helen never lied to you.”
He stopped. “I was talking about this fellow Jack.” Paused. “Besides, she lied to all of us.”
I marvelled at the black sickle in his blue eye, wanting to poke my finger into it.
Jack turned his back on us, the door squeezed shut behind him. Wasn’t like Jack not to call out one of his flirtatious insults.
Richard bristled. “I’ve spent a small fortune tracking him down. Listen, Blondie. Nobody knows who he is. Not my detective. Not the RCMP. Not even the tax department.”
“That’s a very wide net you’re throwing.” The sun darted through the branches of pine and the despondent shadow of spruce, and hit me on the head.
“He’s hiding something.”
“Yes. I like that about him.” Black splotches in my vision. Richard’s gold head seemed to consume all the light.
“He shouldn’t be allowed to stay here under false pretenses.”
“That’s not for you to say.”
“Actually, Blondie, I’ve got enough of a stake in this property to feel I do have a say.”
“If I weren’t ninety-two years of age, Richard, I would punch you in the nose.”
He stepped back. And smiled. “Falling behind in the taxes again. I don’t mind for myself. I can carry you. But this land—” he looked around; the black spruce sank deeper into the bog—“it could go for a song at auction, if the municipality decides to call your debt.”
“You always were a pain in the ass, Richard, but I never thought I’d consider you an enemy.”
“I’m not your enemy. I’m your benefactor.” He touched my elbow. Then he looked up sharply. Dianna crossed by the car, angling sideways. She had a black eye and her hair was still matted with blood. She smiled blandly at us and nodded hopefully, and then backed her way into Jack’s place, entered without knocking and closed the door firmly behind her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1964
JACK WAS A MAN WHO NEVER EXPLAINED or apologized, nor asked for permission. He knew, perhaps better than any person I’d ever met, the extent of himself, and he rode out into the wild blue yonder of his own frontier. Always pushing himself. He needed to be out of his element.
He began to fly again. And he cooked for us all, mung beans and sweet curries and God knows what but it was wonderful, the scent of peanut oil, the glow of saffron. We’d congregate at one house or the other, and eat from wooden bowls and drink warm wine and get drunk in such joyful sorrow I laughed with tears leaking from my eyes. Didn’t eat meat, didn’t even drink Scotch that winter.
Dianna grew brittle. She gave all her intensity to “our property,” as if it was a formula for the entire world. She quit the old firm. It seemed to be a minor decision; she barely acknowledged the change in her life. And began to draw botanical illustrations of rare and subtle honesty. At night, she lay on paisley pillows in the rafters with a book of Ginsberg’s poems to enjoy her space. She was elaborately cool, didn’t want to be crowded and didn’t believe in monogamous relationships. Jack, oh, Jack, he’s cool, right, but I don’t believe in… And oh, the erotic fraudulence of speech.
On such nights, Bill reconstructed his butterfly boxes, pine wood burning, candles lit, the multifarious wings and her drawings; the stained-glass pre-Raphaelite hues belied an ache, a melancholic tension increased by three feet of snow on the roof. I wondered how Bill could stand it. He was oiling wood. He smiled at me. There was something of the rogue in him, a bemused wayfarer on the side of the road. I opened the door and fled to the glitter of moon in snow, to the bland comfort of our post-flood drywall. Crawling into bed beside Eli, the old bear in our cave, I said, “Remind me, my love, we are mortal, please, yes?” He was asleep. In sleep, he raised his paw and touched my face.
TV made us too sceptical to go out. It was just too obvious. Now everybody knew what I’d always known: we are irrelevant. Ida found breath enough to inhale the spirit of irrelevance. It lifted her up as it set her down.
“Flying weather,” said Jack to Ida, and he snuggled up beside her on Bill’s horsehair couch. “Come up, you sexy mama. Lemme take you flying in my willow plane.”
Ida smiled at Jack and laid her head on his shoulder for just a fraction, till she caught herself and then tsked and complained of the cold wind, all the while dimpling at him and barely breathing, but not from her heart condition, or rather, from a condition of the heart. We never knew how old Jack was—he was ageless, rugged and handsome as a wh
isky barrel—but the illness made Ida look much older than her years. That’s how much she loved Jack; she let him make her silly.
“You’re a bad boy, Jack,” she said.
Jack and Ida were easy together. By now, he knew all about everybody. He was a gamekeeper, a hunter; he hooked his nets to the trees and we just flew in. Ida held up her face to him as if she were receiving a wafer. With most people, Jack kept up a tough laissez-faire front. He never talked about himself. But he was different with Ida. Whatever had led Jack to fly into “our property”—perhaps he had the heart of a hawk—whatever divisible, discontinuous, stray characteristics had brought him our way, it was clear and welcome to Ida, who understood words very well, very well, the way you get to know someone who has betrayed you.
“C’mon.” He hauled her up. “If you won’t fly, come out and sit in my teepee.”
Jack’s tent was an Indian-looking contraption made of deerskins he’d bought from a Native friend of his on a reserve to the northeast of “our property.” And Indians weren’t even trendy at the time. He sought out all kinds of people, had a habit of hitchhiking.
He hurried her outside, held the flap open and seated her on robes he’d gathered—new robes, maybe not buffalo, but muskrat—Ida touching the fresh fur with a whimper of delight, “Where did you find these?” while Jack grinned and scratched his nose. Ida curled her skinny legs under her old hams, leaning on one hand while she waited. Outside the tent, the grass scratched and blew. It smelled of tanned skin, the sweat on your lover’s sunburned shoulder. Ida’s skin was yellow. The pouches under her eyes were fruit sacs. She felt gorgeous even though she knew she wasn’t. At long last, Ida was willing to believe, in short bursts. Gradually, Jack was coaxing her into subjunctives. “What’s the story?” he’d ask, a question that once would have driven Ida to bed in Stalinist misery. Now she’d respond, “Today? You mean, like, today anyway?”
Jack never waited for “appropriate moments.” He wanted to smoke a marijuana cigarette, so that’s what he did. Ida knew he liked the stuff, and was familiar with the scent on his clothes, but she was surprised nonetheless. Lanky Jack leaned against a canvas duffle bag with his thin blue “reefer,” inhaling, offering it to Ida, who barely hesitated and voted yes. Was a matter of minutes before we heard them hooting. Then Ida’s cough. Out of control. “He’s going to kill her at last,” Eli said in consternation. Then he shrugged. “Oh, well.” Eli was close to a hundred. He was being freeze-dried without anaesthetic and wouldn’t wish longevity on anyone.
Dianna blew out of the house. She wore three skirts and earrings as big as muskie lures, beads and feathers dangling under her long, limp hair. In her hand, Ida’s recent issue of The New York Times. On her feet a pair of Eli’s old cowboy boots. She met Jack at the flap, backed off shyly as he elbowed Ida out as if he were escorting her to a state dinner. They were laughing crazily. Dianna smiled, wanting to be helpful but not too helpful. She gave Jack lots of “space.”
Dianna held out the newspaper. “Look! It’s them!” Ida’s eyes were squeezed nearly shut she was laughing so hard; she nodded, friendly, put her nose to Dianna’s and looked at her cross-eyed, wheezing, “Will you take us up?”
Dianna indicated the newspaper. “This came,” she said, “and there’s a picture.”
“Yeah?” asked Ida. “Maybe later. I’m going up in the plane now.”
We hitched the glider to my Chrysler. Dianna drove, and I went along for the ride. A bumpy ride over new alfalfa helped me to forget myself. Into a wind from the west we released the plane, and up she flew. Ida was crammed into a little spot behind Jack. She looked oddly passive, being carried away. The car rolled to a stop. The Times was between us, opened at the photograph Dianna had wanted to show her godmother. The glider climbed in broad circles. Creamy white, it looked like a cabbage butterfly, its shadow scrawled across the stubble. I looked at the picture: Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in the Caucasus. Sun lights upon Castro’s knee. He is in fatigues, his pants tucked into heavy boots, an army jacket, though it looks as if it’s about 70 degrees there in the Russian mountains; he wears a hat, and with his beard his flesh is hidden, like a woolly monk. Dianna gets out of the car and stumbles across the harrow trails, staring up. Khrushchev looks very happy. His pants ride over his belly, his white shirt glows in the sun; he has a nimbus. A shiny thug in the company of a poet. Dianna turns circles in the dry mud, looking up. Castro is happy and well, his big eyes young and hopeful. His hand is raised, a double gesture: the revolutionary fist and a wave, Salut! Okay! I love you! His forefinger points at heaven, the hand of Man seeks the hand of God. And behind—the sweep of treed mountain, ancient evergreens rise in the sun. Dianna spins, the face she raises to the sky is etched with dread. Jack’s glider climbs down the corkscrew in the air. The sky is full of such invisible thumbprints. He makes a beautiful landing, and the plane settles fifty feet away. Dianna runs towards it. I shuffle across the seat and lean on the steering wheel. Even from this distance, I can see that Ida’s head has fallen to one side. She is unnaturally still. Dianna slowly reaches to touch Ida’s shoulder. In death Ida was round. In a dark red dress with a brown collar. She had given over. At the end it was simple; she’d been delighted. Jack didn’t move. He looked from his hands to the field, from his hands and up to the long deer-coloured hedge, aspens still more grey than green.
CHAPTER NINE
WE BURIED IDA NEAR A STOCK DAM on the oxbow, not far from Bill’s meadow. The geese were passing through on their way north. But no whooping crane nested in the reeds. No swift fox, no bear or bison, no trillium, no orchid, no lady’s slipper. But Richard arrived, in a summer suit.
We tucked her into clay and marked her place with a big granite fieldstone engraved with her name and the words “Reality is not to be trusted any more than a dream.”
On both sides of us, the river glided by. There were clamshells in the mud they dug for her grave. We tucked her in and stood helpless in the alluvial field, and a big flock of seagulls tipped up past an abandoned harrow red with rust.
My granddaughter stared at mice stirring the grass, at whitefish snapping at water spiders. Dry, keen, stiff as brick, her mouth like a tiny aperture in stone. When we had covered Ida’s coffin, Dianna eyed it sceptically. It was a decoy. She refused to be sentimental.
Richard stood at the gravesite, hat in his hands before him. Dianna had surprised me by greeting him protectively, and she stood beside him now. She happened to look at Richard just as he bowed his head in private prayer. Richard liked funerals. In the background, moving like a gangly black harlequin, Jack, smoking a cigarette. Jack wandered restlessly through our casual service. He and Bill had dug her grave together, a gruelling task. It was Jack who had built her coffin. And laid her down. When he shovelled the clay over her casket, he had a cigarette in his mouth and tears on his face, though he didn’t appear to weep, and his attitude, strangely, did not lack respect.
Richard turned to Dianna, his bright blue eye scanning her for pain. He guided her away from the grave. In the background, Jack grunted under the weight of gumbo. Dianna kept looking his way.
“No class,” said Richard, nodding towards Jack. He smirked at Dianna. Then that old haunted look of fear skimming the youth from his face.
Dianna was going to stay loyal to Richard; she was going to prove that she was at least as strong as her mother. She’d already let Richard assume that the old firm was just too much for her. She knew to choose her battles, and she was learning the ancient art of feigned diminution. “Tough business, law,” Richard had said. And Dianna had grazed him once with her purple eyes and then agreed. “Oh, boy, really tough.”
Richard put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels. “Well, the old girl’s finally gone.”
Dianna blinked.
He considered. “She was—hard to say—but a real old-fashioned character. Out of the Old World. Communist.” He smiled fondly. Then, back to business: “How about you?” he asked Dianna.
“What are you going to do, if you don’t like law?”
“Draw,” Dianna said, surprised. She opened her hands. “I want to draw every plant, every blade of grass on this land. And in season too, see? Through all the changes. Some of it’s quite rare, you know, and it needs to be—what?—marked. Kept on paper. I might even try to draw the things that used to be here, that went extinct.” She looked down shyly. “It’s… I know it’s a big job, but I’m… well, obviously—as Ida would say—obviously, I’m pretty excited about it. I think it’s going to be… big.”
Richard’s small, distracted smile. “Well, that’s great. Great. But, Dianna”—and he faced her closely—“supposing, just supposing you don’t marry anybody and—how are you going to live?”
“Here,” she said.
“I didn’t ask where. I asked how. How.”
“I’ll get by. I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I am.”
“No, but—That doesn’t matter. What I’m getting at is, this place won’t be here forever. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there’s not enough money in this family to… to seed weeds. They’re losing the land, Dianna. That’s just a fact.”
She stood back to get a better view of Richard. Having delivered the obvious, he was as if without guile; he felt purged of a long-held deceit, and waited for the world to begin again. He stood expectantly, though even in his still posture she detected an innate tremor.
And a word came to mind, as if Ida had whispered from her grave. Fascist. It was a word from Dianna’s girlhood. She had come to know it as the word that took her mother. Now, here, with her godmother buried beside her, Dianna thought, It’s not out there, it’s standing right in front of me and it is completely banal. Maybe it’s not quite the right word, she was thinking, and Richard was studying her face, and Richard was thinking, Ahhh, I’ve struck something! and Dianna thought, Maybe it’s not right to call it Fascist, but what shall I call it? And then she jolted awake.
When Alice Lay Down With Peter Page 34
