by André Alexis
me what had happened to the family. Brigid Flynn had been a
respected novelist – more literary prizes than you could shake a
stick at, said the professor – when her agent advised her to write
about the abuse she’d suffered as a child.
Ms. Flynn was destitute despite her literary renown. She was
on the verge of abandoning writing. She was desperate. The prob-
lem was, she’d had a wonderful childhood and adored her parents,
a situation that put her at a disadvantage where childhood abuse
was concerned.
I thought the agent’s suggestion was unscrupulous. But Profes-
sor Bruno wasn’t so sure. He understood the agent’s position.
44
– Look, Alfie, he said, it’s what people wanted to read. In the
early 2000s, the public was obsessed with all sorts of abuse. The
worse the better. And they insisted it be real, too. Worse, they
were hurt when it wasn’t. Once Brigid agreed to write about the
abuse she’d suffered, she had to pretend it was true. I admit the
situation wasn’t ideal, but when life refuses to hand you lemons,
it’s hard to make lemonade, you know.
Rather than abandon her profession, Ms. Flynn wrote a
‘memoir’ called Take Me to the Water that depicted the author’s
brutal childhood, a childhood during which the author was –
beginning at age nine – physically and sexually abused by her
“dark-haired” and “endlessly grimacing” father, abetted by a drunk
and careless mother. It also depicted the author’s recovery from
her childhood. And it ended on a note of forgiveness and recon-
ciliation at the deathbed of the now toothless dad.
Ms. Flynn published the book anonymously, but it was such
a success that its fans obsessively sought the book’s real author.
And when they discovered that Brigid Flynn was the writer, many
of them were unpleasantly surprised to find that her father –
whose depravity had been so vividly described – was still alive,
still able to hurt his daughter.
After that, it was Mr. Flynn who was surprised. He hadn’t
read Take Me to the Water. His daughter hadn’t told him anything
about it. She’d assumed her anonymity would protect them both.
To make matters worse, Mr. Flynn’s life grew slowly unpleasant,
so that, after a while, he was sure he’d done something wrong
but he couldn’t decide when he’d done it, as when you pull a
muscle that, days later, begins to hurt and hurt until the pain
becomes difficult to bear. It seemed as if, without warning, people
he knew well – had known for decades – greeted him coldly.
Then churchgoers avoided him after mass. And the priest –
Father Alanko – persisted in asking him if there were “sins” he
wanted to confess. By the time a neighbour knocked him down
on Main Street, Mr. Flynn (now completely bewildered) was
45
convinced he deserved punishment, though he’d have liked to
know what it was for.
Mr. Flynn was such a loving father that, when he learned
what his daughter had done, he blamed himself for taking the
attacks on him too seriously. Above all, he was proud of Brigid,
proud of her talent as a writer, a talent made obvious by the
hatred some of his neighbours now felt for him. He would not
let her confess publicly to what she’d done. He would not have
his daughter face the humiliation.
Her father’s love for her did nothing to ease Brigid’s feelings
of guilt. If anything, it made them worse. But his love and admi-
ration did, at least, help Mr. Flynn deal with Nobleton. When
strangers were aggressive with him, he felt as much pride as if
he’d been the author of Take Me to the Water himself.
– Just think, he’d say, my daughter turned people against me
who’ve known me for years!
The most striking thing about Mr. Flynn – aside from the
fact that he himself told us his story with good humour – was
the affection he showed us on first meeting. He was a slightly
oversized man with bright red hair, though he was in his eighties,
and green eyes. One of his eyes looked as though it had been
recently punched, the area around it puffy and bruised. When
we met him, he was wearing a black kimono on which bright red
birds were sewn: a gift from his daughter, who’d recently returned
from Japan. The kimono was too big but it suited him.
The Flynns’ home had shag carpeting everywhere, bronze-
coloured and thick. On the walls were framed paintings and
sketches inspired by Irish legends. There were portraits of a
pooka in ruffs, a banshee in a hooded cape, and a dullahan in a
black tuxedo, his head held before him like a small wheel of
cheese on which a mouth had been drawn in lipstick. There were
also portraits of young red-haired women. In one, the young
woman stood at the edge of a cliff and looked down on a moonlit
valley of lakes, fields, and farmhouses. I assumed the painting
46
was set in Ireland, but it was a faithful depiction of the Niagara
Escarpment near Beamsville.
– People always forget how beautiful the land is, Ms. Flynn said.
– How beautiful and strange! said Professor Bruno.
Knowing what the Flynns had gone through with Take Me to
the Water, I thought they’d be wary of others. But they were both
lively and good-humoured to the point of being mysterious, the
way people are when they’ve shared a joke they won’t share with
you. Ms. Flynn was like a younger, female version of her father.
But she was more coarse than he was. When she greeted Professor
Bruno, she said
– How you doing, Doc?
And she referred to her neighbour as “the cunt from Belleville.”
As in
– I see the cunt from Belleville is finally mowing his lawn!
Which is what she said after greeting us, pointing to a meek-
seeming man in a checked shirt who was cutting the grass of the
property beside the Flynns.
Professor Bruno seemed not to notice Ms. Flynn’s language.
I assumed this was because he knew her. But I was taken aback.
I’d never heard a woman use the c-word so casually. And I found
it surreal to be greeted that way. Then, too, I’d always been taught
that it’s the inarticulate who resort to bad language. That was my
father’s view. He felt a kind of pity for those who swore. But it
would have been strange to call Ms. Flynn inarticulate. She was
esteemed for her use of language. So, Ms. Flynn was a living
contradiction to me. When I later mentioned my feelings to the
professor, he was amused.
– She’s been that way since she was eighteen, he said. I used
to think she had Tourette’s. But she doesn’t always use profanity,
you know. She just likes to shock people and this is the easiest
way. But you have to remember, Alfie, that writers are obsessed
with words, and there are some words whose roots bring earth
up from the ground with them. Like pulling weeds from a garden.
47
That’s someth
ing an American poet used to say about profanity.
And I suppose he’s right. Some words are satisfying to pull up.
This was an interesting explanation – maybe even true. Of
course, I’d never really thought about words. If I’d had to compare
them to anything, I suppose it would have been to cards played in
a game I don’t always understand. I prefer pictures and drawings
to words. Whenever Ms. Flynn swore, I was startled despite
myself, a reaction she seemed to find amusing. I’m sure she thought
I was a hopeless prude but, despite that, she was kind to me. She
was kind to both of us, generous with her time and considerate.
When Ms. Flynn and the professor had finished talking about
people they knew and recent scandals troubling the literary
community, they got on the subject of John Skennen. She hadn’t
known him well. They’d met at a Writers’ Union general meeting
– in Thunder Bay, was it? – both of them young. Well, John
could only have been young, she said, since, as far as she knew,
he never attended another agM. He’d been nice to her and he’d
been handsome. She hadn’t slept with him, though.
– In my experience, she said, the most attractive men are always
screwed up. Egos like ocean liners. And rampant Oedipal complexes.
Tongue in cheek, her father said
– That sounds like the last fellow you went out with.
– You mean the cunt from Belleville? she asked.
– I wish you wouldn’t call him that, Brigid. It’s vulgar.
– But, Daddy, that’s what he calls himself!
Mr. Flynn changed the subject.
– I’ll tell you one thing about John Skennen, he said. Every-
body and his dog has a story about him. I can’t count the number
of times someone’s told me they saw his ghost just after he died.
And they all tell you the exact time he died, too. One woman –
you remember Mrs. Lennon, Bridge – swore he died at seven-
forty in the morning and she knew that for sure because he came
to her while she was making sandwiches for her kids one Monday.
She says he pointed to a clock and she couldn’t tell if he was
48
telling her about the kids needing to catch the bus or what. Then
he started swinging around the kitchen like he was hanged, his
feet off the floor and all, and she got the message.
– I’ve heard that story, too, said Ms. Flynn. I’ve heard it a
hundred times from a hundred people, and it’s never the same
time of day when he shows up. Everyone who tells you about it
believes it, too.
– Oh, said Mr. Flynn, I’ve only ever heard one Skennen story
I believe. And I believe it because it happened to June and Jenny
Wilson. You couldn’t find two girls with their heads on straighter.
Neither of them talks much. And when they told me what
happened, it wasn’t like they were trying to be interesting. We
were talking about John Skennen and I asked if they’d heard any
stories. June said, no, they hadn’t heard anything. But they’d seen
something. It was when they’d just got married, both of them,
and they’d taken their honeymoon together in Sarnia, because
they got a good deal on the hotel and they could all go out to
some fancy restaurant across the river. So, the second afternoon
they were there, the husbands went to Port Huron to do some
gambling and the girls were taking an afternoon rest. June gets
up before Jen and goes into her sister’s room and what does she
see? Well, sir, John Skennen is on top of her sister and they’re
doing what married women are meant to do with their husbands.
And from the look of things, the two were awfully passionate.
Skennen hadn’t even had time to unbelt his pants. So, of course,
June screams. And when she does, Skennen disappears and Jen
wakes up. And that was that. For years, June thought she’d been
seeing things because that’s what Jen told her. But it’s years later
and Jen finally admits she’d been having a dream when June inter-
rupted her. And in the dream, she was having sex with John
Skennen. That’s not the kind of thing you’re going to tell anyone,
even your sister, even if it was the most vivid dream you’d ever
had. And the dream was so vivid she was sure she’d passed it on
to her sister somehow. Maybe telecommunication.
49
– Telecommunication? said Ms. Flynn. You mean telepathy?
– Yes. But the reason Jen told her sister about it was that,
after the things she’d experienced in her dream, she wasn’t satis-
fied with her husband. She loved him, sure, but she felt she’d
betrayed him. At the same time, she felt she was betraying herself
by staying with him. She told June all this, so her sister could
help her decide whether to stay with her husband or leave him
for someone who could get her to feel what she’d felt with her
dream version of John Skennen.
– That’s an interesting story, said Ms. Flynn.
– Isn’t it? her father answered. And Jen Wilson’s the most
no-nonsense woman you can imagine. Not the kind to leave her
husband for something in a dream, you’d have said.
– Oh, Dad, said Ms. Flynn. No one knows anything about
anyone else.
– So true, Professor Bruno said. But what did the woman
decide to do?
– Who? asked Mr. Flynn. Jen Wilson? She stayed with her
husband. She’s still with him.
– Even if he is one of the most disgusting fornicators around,
said Ms. Flynn. He’d cheat on her with a stoat, if you drugged it
for him.
– Your bitterness is showing, said her father.
– Anyway, said Ms. Flynn, I never heard that story before,
but it makes sense. No, not sense exactly. But I’ll bet the hotel
they stayed in was the old Venus Fly Trap on Christina.
– No, no, Mr. Flynn said. It was at Aphrodite’s Arms.
– Oh, Dad, no one ever called it that. It was the kind of place
you could rent a room for an hour, if you knew who to ask. It was
a place to trap meat. Get it? Besides that, it had a reputation I’ve
always wondered about. People used to say that if you rented a
certain room on the second floor, sexual things would happen,
whether you wanted them to or not. The hotel stopped renting
the room to families or people who didn’t know its reputation.
50
That only made the place more popular. I knew someone who
rented the room every weekend for years, so she could feel pleas-
ure. That’s why it was burned down. I don’t mean because of the
person I mentioned. I mean because of its reputation, the Society
for a Better Sarnia encouraged people to burn it down, for years,
until some yahoos finally did. But the point I wanted to make
was that the room on the second floor was supposed to be where
John lost his virginity. So, if you stayed in the room, you felt the
pleasure he felt, whoever you were. That’s why Jen’s story makes
sense to me. You see what I mean?
Professor Bruno and the Flynns stopped talking for a moment.
; Their silence was the kind that follows an understanding or an
appreciation of something complex. But I hadn’t understood a
number of things. I was baffled by the way we’d gone from talking
about Mr. Skennen’s biography to talking about places that were
haunted by his pleasures. Part of what baffled me was the fact
that I’d known so little about a man who seemed to have influ-
enced all of Southern Ontario. How had I missed him? John
Skennen was like an undertow that hadn’t caught me until this
trip with Professor Bruno.
Then again, I don’t suppose any place reveals itself to you all
at once. It comes at you in waves of associative detail. For instance,
as I listened to Mr. Flynn’s story, I happened to look out at the
“dog-strangling vine” – Cynanchum rossicum – at the edge of the
Flynns’ property, bordering the lawn of the man from Belleville.
“Dog strangling”: such a vicious name for a weed that’s made
lovely when its tiny crimson flowers open. And yet, the name is
right. Cynanchum rossicum is so invasive that, at its worst, it’s easy
to imagine its strands have a mind of their own, pulling dogs or
cats into some lightless interior. At any rate, it made its way into
my consciousness, so that it’s bound with the Flynns, with
Aphrodite’s Arms, with the longing for one who is not there.
Out of curiosity – and respect for the wisdom of my compan-
ions – I asked why there should be such a fascination with John
51
Skennen, a poet, not an actor or pop musician or billionaire.
And mentioned my surprise that the man’s sexual doings should
be commemorated.
– That’s a good question, Ms. Flynn said. I’ve wondered about
it myself.
– Well, said Professor Bruno, John was a fascinating man, by
all accounts. He was what you’d call a “local hero,” wasn’t he?
– Oh, I don’t think it’s that, Ms. Flynn answered. I know any
number of men and women who are just as fascinating as he was.
I think it’s more to do with poetry. We all know there’s a connec-
tion between words and death. And there’s a connection between
death and sex. So, there you go.
Mr. Flynn said
– I’d have had a drink if I’d known this is the conversation
we’re going to have.
– I’m not saying poets are good in bed, Dad! I can’t count the
