“Of course it matters to me!” He could feel how unhappy he’d just made her, as if it were a type of weather crossing the room.
He sat back at his place and she lowered herself to the floor against the fridge. The mottling in her skin was picked up in her eyes. In some lights Bridget’s face looked as though gold dust had fallen onto it. “I suppose you must be memorizing all this for Howard. I hope he’ll send me tickets to opening night. I’d like to see how it ends.”
“Don’t be like this.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, like what?”
“Look, Bridget, it’s a boat. It’s probably a boat. They’ve stopped working where it is, so they know it’s important. But we think —”
“We.”
“You have no idea how much you sound like your mother sometimes.”
“Christ —”
“Listen to me. They’re going to try to get around reporting it. They want to start pouring the concrete as soon as they can.” She stared down at the floor. “There’s probably less than a week to find out if what your father was looking for is down there.”
“So go look.”
“We can’t get into the site. The minister of culture can put some kind of a stop-work order on the site, but someone has to write a letter.” He wanted her to figure it out for herself, but she was saying nothing. “A lawyer, Bridge.”
This brought her back and her eyes locked on his. “Oh my God! Is that the only reason I’m finding out about your day job now?”
“No. I knew I had to tell you.”
“Get your own lawyer, you ghoul. I’m not the only one in town.”
“You’re the only one who’s her daughter. You could do this for her. Then it would be for both of you.”
“You made me dinner to seduce me into producing some paperwork? You must be some kind of an idiot. I must be some kind of an idiot. Fucking hell! I’m not going to help her, or you, prolong this. And I’m not bringing it into my office. There’s nothing down there, and you’ve got no business mixing in the affairs of my family!”
“This is my family too.”
She levered herself up from the floor and drew her chair away from the wall, replacing it at the table. “And what if I was a doctor? Would I have ever heard about these assignations with my mother in a hotel room? Am I just lucky that I went to law school?”
“If you’d been a doctor, Bridget, I would’ve had to come right out and ask you to support your mother. But I thought maybe it’d be easier for you if you thought you could offer some kind of a service. Then you could show some compassion behind your own back.”
She pulled her face away and blinked rapidly as if someone had waved smelling salts under her nose. “Wow,” she said. “I’m marrying you.”
“You still have a choice with me. But you’re stuck with your mother.”
“I know that. My mad mother. And my mad sister. And my dead father. I know all that. But how am I supposed to apply all this great information you’re giving me?”
“You could use it to conclude that changing the way your father is remembered — even a little — is worth whatever loss of face it causes you.”
“I’m not losing face.” She stared at him, her eyes reddening. “Is the lake going to spit him out, John? Will he come back from the dead with fucking garlands on him? Think.” She made pyramids out of her fingertips and pointed them beseechingly at her own mouth. “If my mother finds out my father was persecuted for no reason, she’ll go berserk. She’ll jump in the lake herself. Maybe she’s not even aware of it, but the possibility that he was wrong and that he knew he was wrong is the only sliver of light there is for her in any of this!”
Bailey was pacing near the door to the apartment, as if aware from the tone of their voices that calling out her own need might earn her a slap. The suggestion that leaving David in error was the safest thing had never occurred to John. He was untutored enough in family dynamics that he still believed the truth was good for everyone. He got up and took the leash down from the coatrack and the dog stood on her hind legs. “I know everything I’ve done here is out of order,” he said. “But this is a second chance for everyone. Do you think between the two of us we have the sense to know what to do with that?”
“How much of this is about us?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
He went down the stairs with the dog. When he got to the front door, he heard her call his name, but he went out into the street to leave her alone with her thoughts.
FOUR
THE NEXT DAY was a Sunday, and John went to Howland Street. He had his shoulder bag with him, but there was nothing in it for Howard’s use; John’s library hours had lately been taken up with his other research. He let himself in and heard Elvis Costello on the stereo. I can’t change what’s written on your face tonight. He’d nursed the hope that Howard might be out running errands and that he could turn from his purpose, but his employer appeared at the top of the stairs. For the first time in many months, he was properly dressed.
“Oh,” Howard said. “Do we have something? Did I forget?”
“You didn’t forget anything.”
“So this is a surprise visit?” His hands flopped to his sides. “Oh . . . You’re quitting.”
“No,” said John. “Not exactly. Not that.”
“Well, don’t stand down there like a Jehovah’s Witness, come in.”
He climbed the stairs and followed Howard partway down the hall. “You’re in civilian clothes,” he said, and he looked at his watch. “It’s not even noon yet.”
“I’m working,” said Howard, vanishing into the bedroom. Things smelled better. “I’m getting up now, I’m showering, dressing, and then I’m sitting down at my desk.”
“You’re actually writing?” said John. “That’s incredible.”
“Incredible means not believable.”
“Well, it is incredible.” John went into the kitchen and plugged the kettle in, listening to Howard move around in the front room.
“One scene a day. That makes it manageable.”
John brought a tray into the front room, set it down on a clean surface, and marveled at what a little motivation had done. “It really looks good in here, Howard. Did you hire someone to clean?”
“No.” Howard poured for both of them and John leaned down to take his cup. “So, you need money?”
“You owe me money, yes,” said John. “But that isn’t why I’m here. I wanted to ask you —”
“How much do I owe you?”
“Three months, plus receipts.”
“Okay.” He wrote a figure down on a scrap of paper that John knew would disappear before long. “So what is it then?”
John reached into the shoulder bag and took out a sheaf of paper secured with an elastic band. He unsnapped the elastic and about a hundred handwritten pages unfurled in his hand. “I want you to look at this.”
Howard took the pile and hefted it in his hand. “More improvements to my play?” He laughed and John laughed, and then the both of them were laughing uncomfortably and staring at the mass of paper.
“It’s something I’m writing,” said John.
“You’re writing.”
“Yes.”
His employer lifted some of the pages up at a corner, raised his eyebrows. His hairline shifted back half an inch. “Wow. What is this? Is it a novel?”
“No. I mean, even if it is, I’m not writing it to publish it.”
“Then what?”
“It’s a gift. I think.” Howard was nodding, not understanding. “It’s something I want to say.”
“To . . . ? Who?”
“Can you read it? Tell me what you think?”
“What takes a hundred pages to say?” Howard sat down on the couch and laid the manuscript on his lap. He covered it with both hands and waited for John to sit across from him. “You really wrote all this? When, for God’s sake?”
“Over the last month or so. At night, when Bridget was sl
eeping. Sometimes in the library.”
Howard reached for his tea and brought the cup to his mouth, but abruptly put it back down on the side table. “I struggle for seven years to write a two-act play and you bang off a novel in a month in your spare time?”
“It isn’t a novel.”
“Right, it’s a message.”
“I need you to do this for me. I need your advice.”
“Get an agent.”
“Damn it, Howard.” He’d stood, and suddenly found himself trembling. “I’m friendless now, except for you. Do you understand? You are my friend, Howard. Say you’ll do this, or say you won’t, but spare me your angst.”
Howard remained on the couch, his hands up, warding off the surprise of John’s anger. “Okay, yes. I’ll read it. I’ll read it tonight.”
JOHN LEWIS HEADED back downtown, a line of deeds trailing behind him. He hoped to find Marianne still in her room. He was worried he’d have to walk the perimeter of the site calling her name as though searching for a lost cat.
The lobby was full of the same marooned-looking people, standing around with their bulky luggage or sitting in some tourist finery and eating dry snacks out of communal bowls. Hotels were purgatory — who would choose to be in one? He thought that if Marianne hadn’t already been crazy when she took her room two weeks ago, she might be dancing at the brink now.
To imagine there was a time before this, when he wasn’t strapped to so many outcomes. What a world that was. He could have refused, in that world, to accompany David Hollis to the docks. But David had not asked him for a favor, he’d asked him for company. And in giving his company, his attention, it felt to John that he was now permanently employed and endlessly failing to hold up his end of something. Was it to bear the truth? To bear a lie? He was a toy of the gods. Without his act at the docks he could imagine Marianne’s stay here aborted, because he would never have felt the obligation to be here with her. But maybe that, also, was not true. Possibly only a failure to be born would have saved him from being wrapped up in these lives, his nonexistence the only guarantee that there would be a rapprochement between mother and daughter, that these dazed, grief-stricken weeks would, without him, turn into something to laugh about. That to-be-wished-for harmless conclusion to what might forever after have been referred to as that adventure. Remember when? Oh, Mother. Now he dreaded the clashes that were coming Marianne’s — and therefore his — way: the inevitable appearance of Bridget, sniffing betrayal everywhere; encounters with officials and semi-officials; perhaps a phone call to a lower-mid-level paper-jockey with a sliver of power somewhere at Queen’s Park. He felt it couldn’t lead anywhere but to a loss, a collapse. But it was set in motion now: the bait was in the water and Marianne would close her jaws around it until something was wrenched into the light — the truth, no matter its punishing frankness, a hook in her eye.
He’d gone to the lobby café to collect a toasted club sandwich for Marianne and an appetizer order of calamari for himself, and when he got to the room, she was in a hotel robe — she’d finally sent her own to be laundered — and clearly she hadn’t slept. He hadn’t registered that there were curtains in room 3347 (of course there would have to be) but if he’d ever seen them, they’d faded off his mental scrim long ago. Now they were drawn, and Marianne was watching television, sitting on the corner of her bed.
He put the food containers down on the desk. A single line of late-afternoon light bisected the room where it pushed through a crack in the two west-facing curtains; it lay across Marianne’s lap like a flower stem. “I brought us a late lunch,” he said. “In case you hadn’t eaten.”
He held out the sandwich container to her and watched with some amazement as she took it without comment and began eating one of the toothpicked wedges with complete indifference. The Young and the Restless was on. He took the calamari to the same corner of the other bed and sat mirroring her there as he nibbled on the cooling pieces.
“I used to watch this when I came home at midday to meet the girls for lunch,” she said, her voice trailing in from somewhere. “They went to school just around the corner on Robert Street, and I’d walk back from the university and put this on while I waited for them. I worked in the same building as your father —”
“Sorry?”
“In the spring,” said Marianne, and she turned her wan features to him. “David and I would have a picnic with the girls and then walk them back to school. And the thing is, the plot hasn’t changed much at all. I’d be willing to bet this is the same story line.”
He looked from her to the television, imagining distantly that wherever her mind was, its confusion was coded there on the screen. Two men were scowling handsomely at each other. “When’s the last time you looked outside?” he asked her.
“Every ten minutes or so. Nothing is going on.”
“Why did you close the curtains?”
“I needed some time to myself.” There was a little smile on her face. “You can open them if you want.”
He did, and the orange afternoon light flooded in and soaked up some of the gloom. It was almost four o’clock, daylight fading. “I think you should turn that off. Something might be happening.”
She felt for the converter. “Really. Like what?”
“I’ve been doing some research.”
“What’s your hourly again?” He wondered for a moment if she could be drunk. She seemed dangerously becalmed, as if in proud possession of some terrible, confirming news.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ve been sitting alone here with the television and room service for” — she looked at her watch — “twenty-nine hours.”
“You’re mad at me?”
She got up and put her food down on the desk, wiped her hands on the robe. He saw now by the light of the desk that she’d been crying. Of all the many emotions he was not schooled in, women’s tears were the most difficult. They meant something he was rarely right about. She was standing in front of him now, red gooseflesh under her eyes. “Are you with me, John?”
“Am I with you?”
“Yes. Are you with me, or are you off making plans of your own? Where were you for the rest of yesterday? Where were you this morning?”
“I didn’t know I was on call.”
“You’re on call. You didn’t get when the getting was good: you’re on call.” She waited a moment, then dropped her hands. “I need a shower now.” She got up and went around him into the bathroom.
He followed and spoke to her through the door. “I went to the library and looked into the heritage laws. And I found a couple of things. For one, we’d need a minister. I mean, like a minister of culture.” He listened to the interrupted sounds of the water coming down. “Marianne?”
“That took a day?”
“I’ll wait until you’re done.”
The bathroom door floated open, curls of steam tufting its edge. “We’ll talk now,” she said. He pushed the door a little. There was pale steam on the mirror, and through it he noted that the shower curtain was an opaque yellow. He went in and looked around the tiny room, wondering where to put himself, and decided to sit on the toilet with his back to the shower. Her bathrobe was a shapeless pool of terry cloth at his feet. “Close the door. Go back to the minister.”
“There may be someone else to talk to first. I called city hall and found out who — there’s a man in charge of planning for the city.”
“You’re not talking about Jack Thomas, are you?”
“You know him?”
“I hope you have a suitcase of unmarked twenties to give him.”
“I think we should go talk to him. Maybe he’ll feel like being a hero. You know, good PR.”
Marianne laughed. “Sure. That’s the kind of fellow he is.” She turned the shower off. “Before you run for your life, pass me one of the towels above the toilet.” He brought one down and put it into Marianne’s extended hand. “So this is my decision? To play the grieving widow?
”
“Well . . .”
She pulled the curtain open. She was wrapped in the white towel, but before he could look away he saw, to his regret, that she had Bridget’s small, rounded shoulders. “What else is there, John?”
“If this doesn’t work, then we talk to the minister. To get what’s called a ‘transfer order.’ It means that, for a specified period of time, the province can lay a claim on private property in order to investigate something that might fall under its protection.”
“Like the Commodore Walker.”
“Like that. But you need someone to make an official submission. A lawyer, someone like that.”
“A lawyer.”
“Someone in a position to —”
“I have to consult a lawyer.”
“The submission has to come —”
“I’m sure you handled that brilliantly.”
He lowered his head and she stepped out of the tub and leaned down in front of him to retrieve her bathrobe. “I feel human again,” she said. “How do you feel?” He lifted his leg to free the half of the robe that was tangled behind it. The towel hit the tub and the air in the room shifted as Marianne pulled the bathrobe on. He felt as if he were drowning in vague transgressions. She went out and then reappeared with an armful of clothes and stood staring at him until he understood that he had to leave.
He crossed to the north window, leaning on his elbows and feeling light-headed from the bathroom steam. Once he’d confessed a wish in himself to give comfort and thought it something anyone who was capable of loving could do. Never had he thought himself incapable of love — not even now — but what if only the wish to console consoled? What if there was nothing else to be done?
He looked at the site for the first time in a day. No more of the wooden object had been exposed and there was no one around it. It was as if a giant inhalation had occurred down there two nights earlier and nothing since. Nearby, the excavation was continuing and the depth of the hole was beginning to vary in places. He imagined that certain structures would go into some of the deeper holes — support beams buried under the complex, or boiler rooms. It was clear, whatever their intent down below, that they were aware that the long brownish slat they’d exposed three nights ago was something unusual. Whether out of interest or fear, they had respected it. John wondered what was being said, who was being consulted.
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