by Jack Hodgins
The girl smiled at Thorstad in a manner that suggested she was pleased to think a sly trick had been played on him. Or perhaps she thought he was admiring her mostly naked figure. In fact he was thinking how emaciated she appeared in that tiny green swimsuit. Perhaps she had chosen this look to distinguish herself not only from the curvaceous bodies of Hollywood but from the anorexic starlets as well, outdoing all of them to the point of giving herself the perverse appeal of a child prostitute on the streets of a war-torn city.
“It is probably a good sign, my darling, that you notice such things even now—but really, to find something even a little attractive in a starving refugee is almost embarrassing, though I suppose we should be glad you’re still alive enough to admire the female figure, but I think pity might be the more appropriate response in this case, a desire to send her away with money for a restaurant meal, except she would probably stuff herself full of the richest food on the menu and then throw it all up in the toilet, which is probably how your friend the photographer ought to be shooting her—so I think you should report the child to some agency that might investigate those bruises, or demand of that executive producer that he forbid his two young actors from seeing one another off the set, it will only lead to serious trouble for them both, and of course for you as well.”
Determined not to react to Elena’s voice this time, Thorstad chose a deck chair on the concrete pad between restaurant and sand, to keep a distanced eye on the photo shoot. Also, perhaps, to fight the temptation to indulge in self-pity. Was this sense of frustration and failure unique to him, he wondered, or was it something that came to everyone with retirement and age? Perhaps it occurred only to those who had tried to put themselves back into the world. Well, he couldn’t afford to give in. He had better pull himself together and make an effort—put up a fight, if necessary.
No driftwood lay on this sand, no seaweed that he could see, no plastic bottles or wooden crates washed in by the tide. Armies of city employees must have come out at dawn to gather everything up and dispose of it somewhere else. This tidy stretch of sand should be photographed for those on Estevan who’d mocked an old man for rescuing tennis balls and wicker doll carriages from the beach.
The ocean breeze was pleasant but not so warm that he was about to take off his lightweight Thrift Shop jacket. Since he had been rendered irrelevant here, he might as well make use of the time to construct a more convincing lesson on Hamlet. Wasn’t it widely believed that the young had little trouble identifying with the Dane? It seemed that Travis was not amongst them. But while digging around in his bag in search of the paperback Shakespeare, he came upon yet another of the letters that had arrived as they’d been leaving for the plane. Elena would have been appalled that he hadn’t opened it. Good manners dictated that at least you have a look. And you couldn’t know for sure that the solution to your life was not inside.
This time the return address was a street only a few kilometres from where he’d lived for most of his life. A former colleague, perhaps. Not, he hoped, a former student requesting a reference letter after all this time.
Dear Mr. Thorstad,
I got in touch with the postmistress on Estevan Island to make sure you were still living up there. She assumed I was responding to an advertisement in the newspaper and was reluctant to talk to me at all until I explained that I was a student of yours many years ago and wanted simply to say “hello.”
The name scribbled at the bottom was “Carter Stone.” Carter had been in one of his very first classes and worked on the school newspaper, an intelligent boy but shy. His romance with Rona Quimby had caused parents to worry and Miss Mavis Hinds to demand he do something to stop it.
I was in your English class the year you took us on a field trip to the Horne Lake Caves for something to write about and then got into trouble because you’d neglected to warn the School Board ahead of time—an uncharacteristic oversight for you. A friend of mine worked for a while on that little ferry that goes back and forth between Vancouver Island and Estevan every day, and he told me you were living over there now. Apparently you aren’t there any more, so I hope Canada Post still forwards things like they used to.
You may remember that you were the one who suggested I ask Rona Quimby to the school Christmas dance, assuring me you’d somehow found out she would not say No. While you and your wife were not able to attend our wedding, you may remember my approaching you long afterwards—in a department store I think it was—to tell you it was our fifteenth anniversary and to thank you again for giving me that little push. Ours was a very happy partnership, and she has left me with two wonderful children (both of them adults now, of course) who are a great consolation in my grief.
Why do I feel compelled to tell you this while I still hope for her return? Perhaps because I feel I’ve somehow let you down. Perhaps because I don’t have to look you in the eye to tell you this, or witness your disappointment.
In fact, amongst the high school friends we kept in contact with we were just about the only couple still together after more than twenty-five years. Marriages were failing all around us. Maybe we were inclined to be a bit smug about our own, I’m not sure. At any rate, I became too involved in my business and didn’t notice that something was wrong at home. Rona, meanwhile, had got quite involved with the local drama group and announced, one day, that she was leaving town with the leading man (brought over from Vancouver for the role). Though I’ve always been leery of drama types I didn’t see this coming.
I doubt that many teachers receive letters as intimate as this from former students, but I suspect you may receive more than you’d care to read, since there was always such an air of frankness, trust, and genuine affection in your every lesson. (Though not always in your exams, which were TOUGH!)
I might have lost the impulse to write you if the postmistress had not told me you were starting a new life elsewhere. If your travels bring you back to town (I’m just seven blocks from the house where I grew up!) I hope you’ll consider looking me up. The blow to my happiness and pride has made me doubly aware of my gratitude for your generosity, inside the classroom and out.
Affectionately,
Carter Stone
He waited for the sound of Elena’s voice reminding him again in one of her interminable sentences that he’d thrown his life away on a misguided faith in his ability to give people some sort of lasting happiness, or at least the tools to find it. A “servant of love,” she had called him, but not in praise. “The master of happy endings” had been pronounced with a sarcastic edge. He had loved her without the smallest reservation, while she had loved him despite his faults-in-need-of-attention.
But it seemed she had nothing to say about the letter. Perhaps, after her comments about the skeletal actress, she had abandoned the complex crannies in his skull and gone off somewhere to join the lost memory of his wounded cello. Was he to believe that this was what it meant to get old—a series of quiet desertions? Obviously he was not supposed to be a teacher any more, he was supposed to fade away in front of a television set or behind a newspaper and keep himself at a distance from the actual world. None of his old colleagues would be surprised by Carter Stone’s letter, though some might be surprised to learn of his ineffectiveness here in L.A.
What would the woman in North Carolina think of his situation? Would she suggest he abandon Travis in order to teach her friend how to read? By recording her telephone number she’d implied that a call would be welcome even if he had no intention of accepting her offer. Perhaps she’d simply hoped to hear news of her childhood home.
He became so absorbed in thinking of Mrs. Cleary that for a moment he believed the person he sensed settling into the deck chair next to his might be Mrs. Cleary herself, bringing with her the rustle of female clothing and the faint scent of a perfume that was familiar but until now forgotten. He was aware, as well, of a naked foot in a gold sandal, a slender ankle, the colourful corner of a long cotton skirt rippling from the breeze off the
ocean.
There were several other deck chairs on this slab of concrete but she had chosen the one so close as to be almost intrusive. If he were to open one of his books, she would be able to read the words of Shakespeare or the decisions made at the Geneva Convention. Because it would be impolite to turn for a direct look, he went only so far as to peer off into the blue ocean just a little to his right so that his peripheral vision might examine her without causing offence. It seemed that he’d been joined by a woman whose left hand was placed on the crown of a broad hat, presumably to keep it from flying off.
“I swear this chair was farther away when I chose it,” she said, “but the minute I sat, it practically threw me into your arms.”
The laughter that followed this was all he needed—Oonagh Farrell’s robust rumble. His entire body recognized it. He abandoned the horizon and turned in his chair to look.
“You can’t be all that surprised, since I understand you’ve been asking all over the city for me.”
For a moment he was without breath. He half rose from his seat, his heart hammering at his throat.
She stood and opened her arms and he walked into an embrace. The familiar scent was from some flower or mixture of flowers that no one had ever been able to identify. He recalled that if you guessed, she wouldn’t help. She would smile as though she’d made it up herself, or smelled that way from birth. Perhaps she had.
When he’d stepped back, aware that his hot face had probably coloured up, she took hold of his right hand and looked him over. “Axel Thorstad, large as life!” She was a woman whose crow’s feet, like her too-broad smile, had been essential to her beauty. The cheekbones, too, hadn’t changed. His instinct was to hold hard to both hands and gaze at that wonderful face indefinitely. Until, perhaps, she protested, or turned away.
“I mentioned your name to one lost courier, but changed my mind and asked him to forget it.”
“You should have known better. A refugee from Katrina will go to any length to win friends in this city.”
“And he told you what show—”
“He told me whose doorstep you were sitting on.” She obviously found this amusing. “So I called up Elliot Evans’s assistant, who called up Evans, who told me where his wife had parked you for the morning, a sitting duck with no visible means of escape. He told me not to interfere with his young actor’s work, but I could tell he wouldn’t mind if I interfered with yours. So far the only thing I’ve seen you do is shove a letter into your pocket and stare at that skeleton-girl by the pier.”
He laughed, delighted to see this woman—vivacious and loud and still beautiful. But he was nervous as well—a chill had shot up his back. In fact, he was alarmed. Confused. Perhaps he hadn’t believed this could happen, hadn’t properly imagined it. When she sat back in her deck chair without releasing his hand, he dragged his own chair closer by hooking a foot behind its nearest leg, hoping he didn’t look too obviously flustered.
This was not simply the Oonagh of his remembered past, grown older, but an Oonagh who’d acquired the special magic of the admired, the famous, the successful artist. He’d seen her described, in print, as one of the world’s “genuine originals.”
Yet, no assistants had arrived with her—none of the masseurs, private secretaries, or makeup artists he’d seen swarming around her in his imagination. For a moment she looked off towards the water like someone who didn’t know what to say or do next—like someone who had made a wrong turn. He knew the pose: Amanda Wingfield wondering where the gentleman callers had gone. It was all he could do to keep from running a finger along the line of her jaw.
She seemed smaller than he remembered, more slender than she sometimes appeared on the screen. She had played large women as often as not. Her raw-boned farm women and busty suffragettes were as convincing as her fragile Amanda Wingfield and youthful Joan. Which was, he supposed, successful acting. Today she was dressed in an ivory shirt, with something like an elaborately decorated tablecloth wrapped around her waist to become a long skirt you might see in the South Pacific. When she dropped the broad hat on the concrete, he saw that her dark hair had been pinned behind her ears.
She may have dressed to avoid recognition on the street but any stranger could see a surviving beauty. It was in the eyes, he supposed, and those bones she attributed to a grandmother from the roads of Connemara. If they’d met unexpectedly somewhere and she had looked at him without recognition he would not have introduced himself. As a teacher, he’d known and even occasionally welcomed invisibility. Guest speakers invited to his classroom—authors, journalists, songwriters—had seen him first as a genial chauffeur, then as a pleasant but innocuous host, a generous introducer, and finally as a facilitator who did not, thank goodness, insist on being Somebody himself. Most were grateful for this, if they thought of it at all. That Oonagh Farrell had sought him out suggested she would not have him remain anonymous today.
She showed no hint that anything about him surprised her. He might have had this unruly white hair fifty years ago, and the extended forehead. Of course he had always had these hollow cheeks, these too-long bony limbs, these heavy brows. “God, Thorstad! Look at you!” The smile did not remain a smile but rumbled into laughter, as though this moment, like all twists and turns in life, was a great surprising joke. “What happened? Are we really not twenty-two any more?”
Out beside the pier, Travis and Rosie were tossing the photographer’s volleyball at the water’s edge. From this distance and low angle it was impossible to know whether they were on the sand or ankle deep in water. He expected it was water, and that eventually the journalist would toss the ball out to where Travis would have to wade in to retrieve it, getting soaked to the skin in the process, his wet jeans clinging to his hips and legs. Wasn’t that how things were done in this place? The young man who leaned against a leg of the pier to watch could be the one who waited for Travis to fail.
He imagined taking Oonagh by the hand and leading her out to the water’s edge where they might forget their age and run together into the ocean as they had done on that secluded Vancouver Island beach. Of course she would roar at the very idea, would think he was cracked. Instead, he attempted to explain his presence. The hand she held was warming up. “Unlike famous actors, teachers are forced to retire. At least my generation was. As a retiree I’ve been trying to help that young fellow prepare for exams. But unfortunately he is an actor being packaged for teenage girls who read online gossip magazines.”
She squinted in the direction of the little group by the pier. “Has he decided how high a price he’s willing to pay?”
“Any price that’s asked, is my guess. He has two successful parents to outdo and, I suspect, a lust for fame and fortune.”
Oonagh raised her eyebrows. “And you are supposed to keep him focused on humbler things?”
“Between Evans and that journalist—and that girl too, I think, and the boy himself—the job has been nearly impossible since we set foot in this city.”
She let go of his hand in order to press her own together. “So! Is this your first time down here since that famous Christmas?” It seemed that she was not prepared to bestow any more of her attention on Travis.
“It is.”
“Lord!” She smiled at the nearest beach umbrella. “Remember the fuss Topolski’s sister made when she got home? She hadn’t given the bastard permission after all.” She took his nearer wrist in her hand as though to keep him anchored for this. “She had no idea we were living in her house and eating her food and using up the gas in her Cadillac. Of course we were far away by the time she returned, it was Topolski who had to take her phone calls.”
“And Topolski is . . . ?” Too late, he wondered if he should not have asked.
“Old!” Her tone suggested she was disappointed in Topolski for this.
“Of course.” Andrzej Topolski had been a few years older than Axel Thorstad. “I was told I’d find no old people in Los Angeles and so far it has appeared t
hey were right.”
Oonagh laughed. “We are the old people here! You and I and a handful of others.”
It seemed she’d misunderstood. “I don’t know if this is true for women, but it always seemed important that there be those who were going before us—sometimes as teachers or coaches or self-appointed uncles, but mostly just there, running things, providing examples, and causing us to feel we’re following in their footsteps.”
“And now they’ve disappeared.” Her voice was disappointed for him.
“Taking their footsteps with them.” This seemed to have happened while he was hiding out on his island. “Of course I should have known, but it has caught me by surprise.”
“I hate to be the one to break the news, my dear, but there’s a reason for it!” Her tone suggested he could supply the reason himself—which of course he could. Now she released his wrist and sat back as though something had been accomplished here. “And so we have all been orphaned! Look at it this way—it means there’s no one left to tell us how to behave. We can do anything we want.” In the brief silence she appeared to be considering what this might be. “You can come and have lunch with me without asking anyone’s permission.”
He could see that she was serious. His heart should not be racing like this—an adolescent flurry. “I can’t run off and leave Travis to those people out there. Evans would see it as giving up.”
She laid her hand against one side of his face. “I didn’t mean right now, my darling. That boy may need you any minute—he suspects he’s in deeper water than he imagined and will be glad of a convenient spoilsport. I meant tomorrow, when your Elliot Evans assures me the child will be busy earning his pay.” She stood up, and stomped sand from her sandals. “Meet me outside the studio gate. I’ll pick you up at—shall we say one o’clock?”
