The Master of Happy Endings

by Jack Hodgins

  Axel Thorstad had had no idea what she was talking about. Something he’d forgotten? Kicked out of his head by one of those brutes? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it says. Just say it! ‘I’ve had my trip.’ Carrie Watts at the end of The Trip to Bountiful—my favourite role.”

  “I read somewhere that Saint Joan was your favourite role.”

  “If you’ve kept tabs on me you should know that Antigone was my favourite for a while. And the Madwoman of Chaillot. And, most recently, Carrie Watts. Just say it. Say, ‘That’s all right, Ludie. I’ve had my trip!’”

  He’d said it then, because she had asked, and because he supposed it was true in some way she’d wanted it to be.

  “One more thing and then I have to run,” she’d said. “Before you bite off Travis’s head, ask him to show you what I found while you were lazing in that hospital bed.” She did not explain this. “I’m sorry I won’t be there to do it myself.”

  There were no birds outside at this time of day. The only sound through his open window was the muted roar of the surf far below. The air was filled with the rich scent off the desert flowers, though occasionally a light breeze carried the slightly medicinal scent from the eucalyptus trees inside. He might as well read Lisa Svetic’s letter.

  Dear Mr. Thorstad,

  I’m putting this letter in with my own in a bigger envelope because Gwendolyn S asked me to send this flower. In case you don’t recognize it, it’s hairy arnica. She’s pregnant again. Nobody knows whose this one is, any more than we know where any of the others came from. Anyway, she’s sure this one will be a boy and intends to name him Hairy Arnica (my fault, I told her what you told me once). She says this’ll probably be the last one because she suspects menopause is just around the corner. Too bad. I was hoping she’d eventually repopulate the island but I guess that’s going to be up to someone else. Not me.

  It’s a good thing they didn’t have a real funeral for Bo Hammond because he’s turned up alive in Haiti—they took him in for questioning the minute he walked up out of the water. No, he didn’t swim all that distance, he’s been living down there with the woman he calls his wife and just went in for a dip that day when the police showed up. He wrote all of this to someone at the commune—big joke, I guess. He expects to spend some time in jail. Just think, if you’d taken over his “books” you could be down there in the Caribbean yourself by now, maybe sharing his cell.

  So Hammond wasn’t lost in the waters of Georgia Strait after all! He’d simply engineered his own escape from Estevan. Thorstad felt a flush of joy at this. The commune people could dismantle their funeral pyre, though they probably shouldn’t expect Bo to return any time soon in order to continue trafficking in clandestine books.

  The way these letters keep coming in, it makes me wonder, What has taken them so long? And, who keeps a single copy of a stupid newspaper this long before noticing one ad on one page amongst five or six pages of ads? Have you been sending out more letters I don’t know about?

  You’re not likely to get a better offer than the one you took, is my guess. Hollywood! I’ll tell Normie not to expect to see you again, he’s wasting his time down there patching things up and digging around in your garden.

  I hope you’re impressed with my grammar. I got Alvin White to check it for me yesterday morning and then spent all of today copying it out again, word after painful word. My fingers ache! Yours truly (whatever that’s supposed to mean), Lisa S

  When Travis entered the guest house he did not look like someone who had as much right to be here as the old man with the fractured arm. To Thorstad he looked like someone intruding where he believed he wasn’t wanted. Also where he would rather not be. He went into his own bedroom alcove and came out again, went out onto the deck and came back in, his hands twisting about one another and then running back over his hair and then twisting about one another again. He had dressed in jeans and his chequered runners and a shirt Thorstad hadn’t seen before. Possibly sent down by his mother.

  “If it’s only what your father wants you to say he’s already said it for himself.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with him.” He sat in the chair his father had sat in earlier. “I feel like crap—okay? I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.”

  “You mean someone tied you up and forced something down your throat? Was it Rosie? Or her friend. I remember seeing him there.”

  “Reynolds Green was there?” He appeared to be genuinely surprised. Alarmed as well.

  “He seems to have been everywhere. Waiting.”

  “Damn!”

  There was silence between them for a while. Thorstad did not feel it was up to him to make conversation. He was the one in pain. Let the boy work at this a little.

  “Elliot hasn’t mentioned dumping me yet. Well, he wouldn’t fire me off this episode, but he could refuse to renew my contract for next year’s show.”

  And so Rosie and her friend may have got what they wanted. What was Axel Thorstad doing in a world where young people competed viciously for a place in the spotlight and a chance for astronomical wealth? He had spent his life amongst teens whose competitions were for a place on the basketball team, for acceptance into a university, for a job at a local hardware store. On Estevan, the pressures experienced by Travis and Rosie and her friend Reynolds would be met with blank stares or dismissive laughter.

  Travis got to his feet and pulled one foot up behind his thigh, then returned it to the floor and pulled up the other. Somewhere in the distance an electric lawn mower was at work. “Maybe Reynolds will get to replace me and maybe he won’t. I still got a couple of big scenes coming up.” He crossed to the door and put his hand on the knob but did not open it. “Maybe you could help me with them?”

  Thorstad allowed the silence to put some space between them.

  “Or are you going to make me beg?”

  Thorstad decided to ignore both questions. “You were right, of course. Or partly right. I’ve had the time to think about it now.”

  “About what?” Travis removed his hand from the door.

  “What you said about me at the party.” A second mower had started, somewhere higher up the hill. Perhaps a movie crew had moved into the neighbourhood and hadn’t yet offered bribes. “With all these obstacles and frustrations, I can see where you might have got the wrong impression. I’ve been remembering how I felt about teaching at the beginning—little older than you are now. I can see your dedication is as genuine and important to you as my own was to me.”

  Travis bit his bottom lip and kept his gaze on the floor. The world outside had become busy with the sound of countless mowers.

  By turning his head just a little, Thorstad could see a triangular portion of Pacific Ocean through the glass barrier on the deck. Lines on the surface converged towards something beyond his vision. “Of course we could both be wrong. Maybe that blow to my head was meant to wake me up to something. Maybe I tried too hard to live up to some idea I have of myself, or maybe my selfish drive to do my job made me as bullheaded as your Elliot Evans.” He’d had plenty of time to think about this. He was careful not to look at Travis now. “Or just possibly, possibly, I was the nagging determined pest simply because I believed your best interests coincided with my own.”

  Lawn mowers were, one after the other, turned off. Some movie company had come through with the hush money. Travis crossed the floor to drop into the chair and put his face down into his hands. When he looked up again, it was clear he was having a good deal of trouble with this conversation. “So are we still a team or not? Will you, like, stay and help out when you can?” He hauled in a shuddering breath. “If I can just get around to saying what I dragged my sorry ass in here to say?”

  “Well . . . maybe while you’re trying to find the words you could tell me what Oonagh meant when she said you have something to show me?”

  Apparently Camilla had already agreed to lend Travis her family-sized van for this. As soo
n as Axel Thorstad was able to get around with only a small amount of wincing and groaning, Travis drove him down onto what Thorstad had already begun to think of as the PCH and turned to the right, away from the city, to pass by several miles of gated estates and houses perched on cliffs and even beyond the entrance to the canyon of the burnt-down house until, eventually, he pulled in to the parking lot of a sprawling U-shaped strip mall. “Oonagh said she’d noticed this place before but didn’t know what it was.”

  “This place” was at the centre-back of the mall, three tall narrow brick storefronts, one of them four storeys high, looking strangely foreign amidst all these low-slung pink stucco shops. Travis parked directly in front of the wide black doorway into the tallest building—red clay bricks, three rows of tall narrow windows, a rusted fire escape. Centurion Restaurant and Museum.

  “Museum?” Thorstad said. Though Travis hadn’t explained what this was about, the brick building and the name of the place had planted an anxious expectation in his gut. Had he not already discovered more than anyone needed in this city?

  “She said she’d offered to look into it for you—right?”

  “Did she check out this place, or did she only find it?”

  “C’mon.” Travis pushed open his door. “She’s an old friend. You gotta, like, trust her.”

  The manager had obviously been informed they were coming. He met them inside the door and shook hands with them both, introducing himself as “Phil.” Then he led them to a corner table with a “Reserved” sign on it. “Bruno will bring you coffee and a basket of bread.” He pulled out a chair for himself.

  He was probably Axel Thorstad’s age, a slight man with a thin beak nose, and a cheap dark wig on his head—possibly a retiree who couldn’t stay away from the business, anxious to keep an eye on his employees. The small room contained fewer than a dozen tables, prepared for a lunch crowd that had not yet arrived.

  “Miss Farrell told me you have family connections to Centurion Pictures,” he said. His tongue explored a gap in his upper front teeth. “I worked for them as a set designer for a few years— long ago, just before they went out of business. When developers started to tear it all down I bought these building fronts and opened up this restaurant behind them.”

  “Mr. Thorstad has come thousands of miles to see this place,” Travis said, “even though he didn’t know it existed.”

  Mr. Thorstad had not yet decided whether he wanted to be here. He could walk out any moment. He could walk out on the father who had walked out, so to speak, on him. He could walk all the way back to the Evanses’ guest house if he had to.

  “Ah yes,” the proprietor said, his slightly Asiatic eyes examining the bandage above Thorstad’s eye. “I explained to Miss Farrell that I knew your father when he was, well, quite a bit older than I was. Middle-aged? Limping a little?” He paused, perhaps thinking this over, and lowered his gaze to his own bony hands on the tablecloth. “He’d worked for Centurion long before I did, and seemed pleased I’d bought these building fronts. In fact, he was the one who suggested I add the museum.” He spread his fingers and appeared to be studying his nails for a moment.

  Axel Thorstad realized he’d been holding his breath. He closed his eyes and breathed again, and waited for this man to finish his story. There was the smell of fresh bread in the air.

  “Well, it might not have been his idea, it just came out of our conversation.” He looked up at Thorstad again and shrugged. “He’d learned I’d bought up a lot of other Centurion stuff as well—equipment, sets I’d designed—without any idea what I would do with it.”

  He left the table briefly to investigate a muttered exchange at the doorway to the kitchen. Enough time for Thorstad and Travis to raise eyebrows at one another but not enough time to sort out an old man’s tangled thoughts. He was, he supposed, a little frightened of what he might hear. Yet told himself it didn’t matter. He had already heard what mattered. Anything this man could say would not alter that.

  When the proprietor returned, he brought a tray of coffees and a basket of bread for the table. Then he sat back in his chair and folded his arms while he examined his guests.

  “Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?” Thorstad said. His throat had gone tight and dry. “I would have thought he’d hate the sight of the place.” He sipped from the coffee and chose the smallest piece of bread—a courtesy, he supposed. Had this all been invented for Oonagh’s sake, or for Oonagh’s sad old wounded friend? “How did you even know who Miss Farrell was asking about?”

  “How many stuntmen named Thorstad have I known in my life?” He appeared to find this amusing. “He’d come in and order a glass of beer and a sandwich, but it was obvious this was just an excuse to have a look around. I remember one time he brought me that photograph over there. Pointed out himself.” He nodded in the direction of the end wall, overspread with framed black-and-white photos. “He’s with a group of young fellows. Hired as an assistant for a few years, he said—probably Centurion’s way of making sure he didn’t sue.”

  He led them over to the wall and pointed out the photograph. Yellowed, warped, and probably brittle—it had no doubt been clipped from a newspaper or a trade magazine. Thorstad put on his glasses and leaned in close. Six young men had been arranged around a Pony Express coach, two of them up on the driver’s seat, the others standing on the ground. All wore moustaches and cowboy hats. There could be little doubt which of them was the deserter Tomas Thorstad. Looking as though he wasn’t sure he belonged in the picture, the man farthest to the left was long-backed and slim and certainly over six feet tall. The prominent brow, too, was familiar. This was the man his mother had wanted him to believe was already dead before his son had been born.

  “Did he ever mention . . .” A catch in his throat required a pause. He was not a child! And he must not be a sentimental old man. He bought time by examining the photo more closely. His father wore a checkered shirt very much like his own left behind in the shack. “Did he ever say anything about a family?” He meant a second family. The man wasn’t likely to have mentioned a runaway wife and child he’d never bothered to pursue.

  The proprietor shook his head. “Not a word about his private life. It was as if he existed only once he’d come in through that door.”

  Thorstad placed a careful fingertip against the glass. Once he’d walked out that door and left this city he would be half a continent away from this photo. He’d have only the printed frame from a film, only the back of a mysterious man in a police uniform. “Is it possible to have a copy made?”

  He was fairly certain it would not be a daily invitation to renewed resentment, but rather a reminder of a question to be pondered at length. At any rate, he could not imagine going home without it.

  The proprietor nodded several times while thinking this over, then agreed to have a copy made. “And lunch on me when you come to get it, so long as you call ahead. Tomas Thorstad’s son!” He shook his head, as though not quite believing what had just transpired. “You can visit the museum then, if you like. Unless you want to see it now.”

  Through the open doorway Thorstad could see more photos on the wall, as well as a number of props on display: a human skeleton, a stuffed horse, a diorama depicting a brawl on the veranda of a Western saloon. An arrow pointing up a staircase promised a “Star Cinema.” Of course he was interested in visiting the museum, but he did not feel up to that today—too weak, or perhaps too confused by what he’d just been given.

  Outside, before returning to Camilla’s van, he laid the palm of his hand against the red clay bricks beside the door—sun-warmed and gritty. If he were capable of standing on someone’s shoulders and then climbing the fire escape, rust would no doubt flake off in his hands. The whole thing would likely pull away from the building. One more Thorstad would fall.

  A few bricks were missing, he noticed, others beginning to crumble. The glass in one of the upper windows was cracked, and part of the ledge along the roofline had bro
ken away. This old face was even more worn than his own.

  It was hardly Thomas á Becket’s shrine—not something to set pilgrims in motion. But it had set him in motion, in a way, though he hadn’t known it was here. Did he understand why? Did he understand, for that matter, what he had found? That his father had survived but hadn’t bothered to look up his family. That, even crippled, his father—who might have become an angry self-pitying charity case—had apparently found something to do with the rest of his life, something that must have required humility in a man who’d trained as an actor first and then as a stunt double: a stand-in for others who were doing what he had been trained to do himself. And then only an assistant to the able-bodied stand-ins. His fall not only hadn’t killed him, it hadn’t even stopped him.

  Of course there were more questions he wanted to ask, but they would have to wait until he returned for the photograph— which he would frame and hang, eventually, with Cliff Lyons and Susan Hayward on the back wall of his Estevan Island shack.

  20

  By the time he’d boarded the little passenger ferry it was already loaded with machine parts, crates of vegetables, and stacks of fragrant lumber, as well as a few strangers and a small group of returning shoppers, most of them already reading their books or folding back the pages of a newspaper. Estevan Island was a ragged dark green reef far out in the strait, sharply etched by the afternoon sun at his back. The smell of diesel, the throbbing of the engine beneath his feet, and the tremor at the pit of his stomach told him he was nearly home.

  Possibly. He wasn’t sure. Unfortunately, Maestro Eugen von Schiller-Holst was aboard as well, his broad face flushed with obvious satisfaction when he saw that Thorstad had joined them. “Just as I predicted—hah? I know music, you see. You had little choice in the matter.” He claimed that Axel Thorstad had had as little choice as the families of killer whales that returned every year for a reunion out in the strait. “K Pod is out there now, returned like yourself from California, or maybe Alaska, feasting with their aunts and cousins.” He thumped the wooden deck with his staff. “Let us hope they don’t bring crowds of tourists down upon us.”