This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  The tension is broken by the swish of a glass panel that separates the receptionist’s desk from us. I pray she will call me. “Adams?” she says. The room settles again after a man enters the inner sanctum of healing.

  The throbbing returns. Ed should do the acupressure again. But first I ought to say something to let him know he shouldn’t regret his confession. Alcoholism isn’t the big deal it used to be. Every day, the news is replete with stories of people going in and out of clinics. I won’t take it any more seriously than he does.

  “You know, when you were late for work that first day? I thought you took all my money and went on a bender on the beach.” I laugh. I want him to laugh, too, but his face flares, his lips struggle around a sentence that can’t quite find its form.

  Finally, he says, “But you don’t know how dreadful it is – wanting so badly the one thing you can never have.”

  Another wound opens – one I have been trying half a lifetime to heal. Longing for Graham spills out. Endless yearning like a summer drought. Loneliness that drags like a hot sun across a hazy sky. The passage of time. The way memories nurture you for only so long before they dry up and blow away like dust. I want to tell him I do know what it’s like. I know exactly what it’s like.

  Instead, this pain beyond bearing, I hold out my hand.

  He nods, and presses my flesh where he believes it might make a difference.

  *

  Less than a day on the job, and already I need sick leave. Ed tells me not to worry, and to take it easy while the wound heals. But I am at the house the next day. When I reach for a splinter of lumber, Andy and Ed jump. “It won’t get better if you don’t let it,” Ed says. “Give it time.”

  I stop then, and contemplate returning to Fee’s, but I cannot bring myself to leave. So I sit on the damp grass and watch. When Ed is outside, Andy’s in the house. When Andy leaves, Ed goes back in. It’s like a ballet. At noon, Ed tightens one of the tarps. “Going into Ganges for a bowl of soup. Wanna come?”

  “No thanks.” Ed eyes me suspiciously. “Don’t worry. I won’t touch a thing.” Hands up, I smile. I just don’t want company today.

  After the truck’s taillights disappear, I sit down where the watch last lay. Emptiness hangs, symmetrical garlands of loss. A void fills the space in my hands. I conjure up the watch, see the hands settled so comfortably at 4:18, the crack across the crystal and the way it distorts the numbers on the face. I feel the crack on my thumb, the edge I know like my own skin.

  A gust of wind stirs, then lifts the tarp. Light slivers into the room. The fabric flaps overhead, snaps crisply, and an instant later, I fall back into my darkness. There it is. My sign. If I once doubted it, now I know there is no need for denial. The watch is gone – thanks to my negligence. I’ve lost the only piece of Graham left in this world – and the only means of reconnecting with my daughter. In the empty shell of my house, the whole of the rest of my life rears its lonely head. Surinder, Luna and the Chowdhurys – everything I’ve touched is a mess. My sorrow is too deep for plain tears, the commonplace weeping of mortals.

  *

  Amma’s box is old, dusty, but still intact. It was stamped in black by the airline the night I left. I imagine I remember the thwack of the stamp as it hit the cardboard, though I was nowhere near it when the stamping took place. The imprint has faded, but I can still recognize the shape of Bangla letters. The date of my departure is scrawled on the mark: 25/03/71.

  I work by lamplight in a cool, shadowy corner of Fee’s basement. I slice open the jute twine and brittle tape with paint-stained box cutters, then turn down the flaps. I don’t remember the last time I opened it. Now, I need to see what is inside. I think it will help me figure out what I must do with it. I am certain of only one thing – it should not see out the remainder of its days with me. I do not need further reminders of my inability to fulfill promises.

  Everything is there, as though Amma packed it just last night. The posters are faded, naturally. The misshapen balloons are stuck together at the edges. The record sleeves have parts missing. Lacy layers remain. Earwigs? Silverfish? I really don’t know what creature eats cardboard.

  A corner of the box that contains the reel-to-reel tape jabs my wound. I pull back, use my other hand instead to open it. The spool is thick with recording tape, but delicate as pastry. I expect edges to flake off. I close it before anything can happen.

  I open the book. “To Motiur-bhai and Salma-bhabi, Long live good friends and our Bangla Desh, Affectionately, Mohammed Elias.” What had he been thinking when he signed this? Had he known about the ban on his works? Was this the gesture of an angry rebel? Or just the warm, innocent wishes of a good friend?

  The intimacy suddenly overwhelms. I feel it, an extra throb in my wound. I am going through someone’s underwear drawer, reading someone’s diary. Though I lack the clear answer I am seeking, I will close the box until another day when I am more prepared.

  Then I see the envelope.

  The colours on the snapshots are faded, the images, clothes and hair circa 1970, are blurry. Me in the saree. Luna and me. Hasan, Shaheed and another boy whose name I don’t remember. And Amma, two arms around me, leaning her heavy form into mine. God. I look happy.

  I close the box. The envelope I take upstairs.

  I lean the photos up against the wall and begin my draft. Dear Amma – no, she might not like that. Dear Mrs. Chowdhury – too formal. She might not like that either. Maybe I should address it to Mr. Chowdhury. He’s probably sorting Amma’s mail. Finally, I write, “Dear” and leave a space. I can decide later.

  It was very nice to be back in Dhaka. No. That’s silly. Evasive even. Sorry. No, too abrupt. I’m very sorry. That’s better, but they’re never going to read on. I was shocked and sad to find out about Luna from Beth. That’s true. But again, why should they read it? Please let me help you find Luna. But if they really believe she’s dead, I may only be torturing them. Besides, how am I ever going to follow through on such a wild promise?

  I throw down the pen.

  Though it would be the coldest course of action, perhaps I should mail the box without any letter at all. Let them make of it what they will.

  *

  Five days later, I have a hand well enough to return to work. The house, cleared of debris, is a stone shell cemented together and covered with blue tarp. Now we wait for the delivery of roofing materials. In the meantime, I remain a full-time employee, so Ed and I go off to build a deck.

  “Good opportunity,” he says. “Pretty basic, but you’ll see how a structure is put together and supported. It’s a not-too-distant cousin of the roof.”

  In their designer jeans and Birkenstocks, the older couple who have hired Ed are a recognized part of the island oligarchy, but seem nice enough. They move a coffee maker and supplies outside for us. I can’t help but scrutinize her face to determine just how much older she is than me, and why fate has allowed her husband to exist while spiriting mine away before his time. Where are her children? Do they speak to her, call on her birthday, send flowers for Mother’s Day? She smiles a lot, has good skin and colours her hair. She reminds me of Amma without the overwrought emotions. After a careful examination, I decide she is one of those women of indeterminate age, her preservation the product of a rare, uneventful family history.

  She smiles conspiratorially when I ask to use the bathroom, then ushers me to a room where not a single item is out of place. On the wall, there hangs a photo of a young couple with two babies – twins – from a photo studio. From the look of the young woman, I presume she is the daughter and this is her family. They look impossibly happy, as perhaps I once did, with Graham and Surinder. I am relieved when I see a small spider and cobweb by the toilet roll.

  Outside, we work with cedar. It smells good enough to eat. I learn to use the circular saw. Ed shows me how to ease it through the wood instead of pushing i
t. I experiment until I find the right amount of pressure to apply. I learn to listen for the change in tone, and feel for the shudder, which tell me the cut is almost complete. Before long, I stop fearing the machine.

  Then Ed and I assemble the pieces. I fetch and hold, he hammers, then I hammer and he fetches and holds. Ed measures and marks the next batch of lumber for cuts.

  There is no plan, no blueprint – just a tattered piece of paper that Ed pulls out of his shirt pocket and checks from time to time, those fingers scratching at a place on his temple where the hair is thin. But I understand. Ed was right about the need for common sense.

  On Surinder’s twenty-eighth birthday, I am faced with a platoon of two-by-sixes to cut. On one, I see two pencil marks, and I am not sure which one to cut. But I look at the others, lay the pieces out in my mind, and make a sound decision. I wish in matters of family, it was this easy to solve a problem.

  *

  A hydraulic truck crane, a huge, mythical beast whose engine roars, delivers roofing materials to my schoolhouse. On the laneway, it leaves deep tracks, which means cars might bottom out now. I imagine frustrated drivers leaving their corroded mufflers in the tall grass, orange fossils, tailpipes periscoping through the blades as though pleading for more air. I must remember to warn people. But then I remember I don’t really have anyone to warn.

  The truck stops before my schoolhouse. The engine idles. Diesel fumes fill the air. Andy climbs the back of the truck. He scoots across the lumber like a mountain goat, looks over the load and nods to Ed who, in turn, nods to the driver.

  Bundles of lumber and plywood are hooked to steel cables, winched off the bed of the truck and manoeuvred onto palettes in my yard. The crane operator handles every load with such delicacy and precision I am reminded of setting a table. Each pile is massive – thick and white and strapped together with tense metal bands that will spring open when we snip them. The lumber is stamped with meaningless words and codes. We will cut through these symbols in the coming weeks, reduce them to sawdust.

  Ed walks around each pile as it is released. He pokes at the knots and cut ends of lumber, taps along the length of each piece, checks to make sure everything he ordered has arrived. As a novice, I don’t know how he can tell one pile from another. It is a mysterious reckoning.

  Shingles and big black rolls of tar paper are next. Chemical smells waft by as each bundle flies through the air and is stacked near the lumber.

  Finally, it is time for the trusses. Earlier, on Fee’s kitchen table, Ed had sketched out a dozen options of rather confusing frames of 2x4s and 2x6s that looked like letters from a foreign alphabet.

  “But what’s the difference?” I said, comparing the ‘W’ with the ‘scissors.’

  “It depends on what you want,” Ed replied. “If you want the ceiling open as it used to be, you could choose this one.” He points. “Or this one.” He points again. “Actually, you could pretty much choose any of them, but the point is – ”

  “And if I want an attic?”

  “Then you could try this.” His finger snarled over to an ‘A.’ “That would be easy. But come to think of it, I could do something like this,” he said and started another sketch.

  Reeled back to the early days of my return from Dhaka when I found choice nauseating, I held up my hands to say stop.

  “I want the space. I don’t need an attic.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “There’ll be extra stress on the walls. They’ll actually get pushed out by the weight of the roof. We have to check if they can bear the load. And what are storms like at your place?”

  “Storms?”

  “When the wind is strong, it puts upward pressure on the roof.” He demonstrated with his hands. “We have to plan for the fact that under certain conditions, nature wants to lift the roof off your home.” He chuckled.

  “Isn’t this your job?”

  He nodded. “I just need to know what you want inside.”

  I examined the drawings as though some truth was going to emerge, as though the answer would speak itself. But clarity evaded me.

  Ed broke the silence. “Frank Lloyd Wright always put his living spaces right underneath the roof. It became a kind of signature. He had no time for flat ceilings or storage spaces, though most of his clients had more than a few words to say about that – but I suppose it made it easier to fix the leaks, which also became common with his designs. Do you know what he told Herbert Johnson when water started dripping on his head during one of his famous dinner parties?”

  I said, “I’ll take this one.” I closed my eyes and allowed my fingers to decide.

  So today ‘scissors trusses’ will be winched off the truck.

  Ed, Andy and the crane operator have a discussion. I walk over to listen.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “We’re going to stack the trusses on the walls,” Ed says. “Easier to install that way.”

  The trusses – all thirty-four of them – are mammoth. “Can the walls hold that much weight?”

  “Well, they’ll have to. I mean, they have to once they’re installed. And they’ll have to bear even more once the sheathing goes on. And the shingles – well, we may as well find out now if this is going to work.”

  “You don’t sound certain.”

  He laughs nervously, though he also smiles. “Well, we could knock a wall down – that’s not likely. If there’s a weak spot in the foundation, the weight could cause a crack to open up.” He counts on his fingers the number of possible catastrophes, but stops when he sees my face. “Those are worst case scenarios.”

  “I should have torn the whole thing down,” I grumble.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. Stone, even when it’s as old as this, tends to be pretty reliable.”

  Andy climbs a ladder propped against the house. The crane surges into action again. Ed hooks the first truss. The cable tightens, the load is lifted, the boom swings. Ed guides it until it is out of his hands. He then hollers and points, but Andy and the crane operator both know what they are doing. In a minute, it’s up. I wait, but nothing crumples or even shifts. Ed looks relieved. The hook swings up and away, and then back down to the truck.

  The second truss is cinched into place. It, too, goes up and is stacked atop the other with the same precision. Ed gives the crane operator a thumbs up. The stack grows. And grows. When we’re about halfway, I have a premonition the whole thing will collapse. But no one else appears the least bit nervous. So I force myself to stay quiet.

  Finally, we’re down to the last truss. I hold my breath, certain that this one will produce the final blow that destroys my home. The boom rises, then turns and the truss rotates slightly. When it finally slows and stops, the crane operator lowers it. Andy’s gloved hands reach for the truss as though he is trying to latch onto a piece of the sky. He gets a grip, guides it into place and unhooks it. Thirty-four trusses balance on the walls of my schoolhouse – and nothing has collapsed.

  The job done, the guys are all reassured smiles. The crane truck rumbles in the background. They stand around and talk, again. Ed finally calls me over.

  “He can haul out that stump, too,” he says, referring to my lightning-struck fir tree. “No charge.”

  But I shake my head. What might be precipitated by the stump’s removal? A shift in the ground that causes the house to collapse. A hole, impossible to fill. Ants, earthworms and termites which, brought to the surface and rendered homeless, will burrow beneath my house and terrorize me until the day I die.

  So the crane disappears in a cloud of exhaust. Andy pops into his mouth the crust of the smelly tuna sandwich he’s been eating since he came off the ladder, and pockets the plastic wrap. “Time for the humans to get to work,” he says. From him, that is the closest thing I have heard to a joke.

  We are blessed with yet another fine day. The wind blow
s in the direction of Crofton, so even though it’s still morning, and the pulp mill’s huge digestors are doubtless chugging away, the air smells fresh for a change. After a few minutes, we take off our jackets. The air’s cool but feels good on my bare arms. This spate of weather is unusual for this time of year, but I refuse to waste time wondering why. If it’s the result of climate change, okay. Today, I’ll take it.

  Ed consults the dirty paper in his pocket more often than he did with the deck. Again and again, he and Andy go into or behind the house, come back outside, point and nod, bow their heads and consult in a language I am just learning.

  Andy climbs the ladder yet again, this time standing on the narrow cap plate that tops the walls. Calmly, as though walking down the road, he goes to a corner of the roof, hammers in a nail, hooks a measuring tape on it, then pulls it to the next corner. He inches along the cap plate and marks it at regular intervals with a stubby pencil. The consummate acrobat, he surprises, never stumbles.

  Then it’s time to right the trusses. “I think Robin, it would be better if you sit this one out,” Ed says. Reduced to the role of observer, I am annoyed, but do as he says. The truth is that the ladder leaning against the house seems gargantuan, Andy’s acrobatics intimidating, and all I can think about is Graham’s tumbling body. I know eventually I will have to climb the ladder, but I have an unrealistic hope that my fear will be gone before I absolutely have to.

  Andy pries each truss from the stack, while Ed, inside the house, guides and supports it with a lumber brace. Andy pushes, pulls and adjusts without the least bit of hesitation. He calls out when the edge of the truss meets his pencil x-marks. It is a miracle when each cumbersome form reaches its resting place. He nails rafter ties into place. The heavy old hammer sounds good.

  It takes the rest of the day to raise the wooden structures. Ed climbs constantly up and down another ladder toting a level long as a baseball bat, to ensure the trusses are aligned from all angles. Well before the sun sets, an upside down ribcage juts into a darkening sky. It sits, fragile, awkward, much the same way an unbidden anticipation has perched itself on my shoulders, a large bird with sharp, clingy claws whose intentions are not patently clear.