by Michael Rowe
“Maybe it’ll be different this time,” Jeremy said. “Maybe things will have changed and it won’t be . . . well, the way it was.”
“What was that Faulkner quote from Requiem for a Nun that Jack loved so much?”
Jeremy closed his eyes. “‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’”
They drove in silence for half an hour, the car interred in the northern Ontario darkness as effectively as if it was a mine cart travelling a mile and a half beneath the earth. Then the road abruptly widened and Christina gasped.
“Look,” she said.
Jeremy looked. He drew in a sharp intake of breath.
It was as though the night sky had begun bleeding muddy orange light from a rip in the clouds, threaded now with skeletal fingers of luminous red and yellow. And the clouds now parted like stage curtains, revealed the low full moon, vast and sovereign, and seemingly large enough to touch the edge of the earth.
Beneath the moon, the town of Parr’s Landing rose out of the blackness, stretching to meet it. Beyond the town, the vast forests and the cliffs above Bradley Lake held Parr’s Landing in the same stony centuries-old embrace.
This was the same view the Indians had for a thousand years before the arrival of the French and English. It was the same view the French Jesuits first saw when they arrived on the shores of New France, travelling by canoe and overland to build the doomed mission of St. Barthélemy to the Ojibwa in the seventeenth century.
It was the same view Christina Parr had seen every night for the first seventeen years of her life, and the last vista of Parr’s Landing she’d seen when she turned her head, like Lot’s wife, that night almost sixteen years in the past when she’d fled the town with Jack Parr.
Unlike Lot’s wife, however, Christina hadn’t been turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for looking back. But for its part, Parr’s Landing might as well have been petrified by her backward glance for all it had changed.
Faulkner was right, she thought.
“Wake up, Morgan.” Christina called gently over her shoulder. And before she could stop herself: “We’re home.” Then she turned the Chevelle left on Main Street, onto Martin Street, and began the steep uphill climb towards Parr House.
PARR’S LANDING
CHAPTER SEVEN
Adeline Parr heard the sound of wheels on the gravel below her bedroom window and thought: Now it begins. She sighed. I hope it’s not all too awfully unpleasant.
She stared intently into the bevelled mirror of the nineteenth century Biedermeier burlwood dressing table at which she sat and took her own measure in the glass. The result was pleasing, if slightly severe, and it suited her purposes admirably. She adjusted her pearls, and then took a piece of tissue paper from the enamelled box and expertly blotted the lipstick on her bottom lip till it, too, was flawless. By habit, she glanced at the silver-framed photograph of her dead husband and smiled at it as though waiting for Augustus Parr to tell her how beautiful she still was.
Her gold Piaget watch read eleven-thirty. She sighed again. Adeline stood up and smoothed her dark grey skirt, crossed the floor of the bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Then she went downstairs to greet the adventuress who had stolen and murdered her favourite son; her bastard granddaughter; and her great mistake of a second son.
The smile Adeline had been practising froze on her face when she first laid eyes on Morgan, hanging shyly behind her common slut of a mother, in the doorway of Parr House.
Adeline barely registered Christina, but she felt her heart might stop when she saw Jack’s face staring back at her. Jack’s face, except it was the open and trusting face of a young girl, with none of the rage Jack had shown Adeline before he left. The girl’s hair was the same as Jack’s— thick and dark brown, with caramel highlights when the light hit it just so. Her eyes were the same as Jack’s, too: dark brown, almost-black irises with pupils like dark pools.
“Welcome, Morgan,” she said. “I’m your grandmother, Adeline Parr. It’s nice to meet you.”
Adeline extended her hand and Morgan shook it politely. Under other circumstances, she would have been delighted to see that the girl had been inculcated with some measure of good manners, but she was still privately reeling from the shock of meeting the ghost of her eldest son. The girl’s skin was lighter than Jack’s but more like Adeline’s own, which she knew would please her when she recovered.
“It’s nice to meet you, too . . . Grandmother.”
For Morgan, there was an edge of a question in the way she said it, as though she were uncertain—not about who Adeline was, but what to call her. Certainly nothing in Adeline’s severe elegance inspired cuddly appellatives like “granny” or “grandma,” nor had stories about Adeline been any significant part of Morgan’s childhood mythology, apart from the odd cryptic reference by one of her parents.
“Yes, you may call me Grandmother,” Adeline said, smiling graciously as though she were bestowing a great favour on Morgan. “I dislike diminutives, especially when addressing one’s elders.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes, Grandmother.”
Adeline smiled down at Morgan again, then looked past Christina, whom she still hadn’t greeted, to where Jeremy hung back behind them in the doorway.
“Hello, Mother.”
“Behold the prodigal son returns,” Adeline said. Her expression was neutral. “That’s Luke 15:11-32, son. I trust that, even given your lifestyle, you haven’t entirely forgotten the word of God?”
“Have you been rehearsing that for the last ten years, Mother? Or did it just spring to mind when you saw me?” Adeline’s eyes shifted quickly to Morgan, then back at her son. “I wouldn’t expect you to say something as simple as ‘welcome home,’ but still—The Bible? Luke? My ‘lifestyle’? Before I even cross the threshold?”
“Don’t be insolent, Jeremy. I won’t have it. You’re not back in Toronto.”
She spat out the word Toronto as though it were foulness—the way a religious fanatic might have said Babylon or Sodom. “You’re in my house, in the town founded by your ancestors on a site made holy with the blood of Catholic martyrs. You can behave and show me respect, otherwise you needn’t cross the threshold at all.”
“I’m not seventeen anymore, Mother,” Jeremy said. “I’m almost thirty. It’s been a while since I’ve been susceptible to that tone of voice, or those phrases.” He met his mother’s eyes evenly. “It’s been a very long drive and we’re very tired, especially Morgan. Shall I bring our bags in from the car, or should we drive down to the village and see if the Gold Nugget motel is open at this hour? I’d rather not start the talk in town about us being back by signing my name—the Parr name—in a motel register at this hour, especially not for three of us. But I will if that’s what you’d prefer we do. It’s your call, Mother.”
Thwarted fury passed across Adeline’s face like summer lightning, but too quickly for anyone but Jeremy to have seen it, and he only noticed because he’d seen it before and recognized it for what it was. Jeremy had played the one card he always had at his disposal—Adeline’s particular personal horror of scandal. The threat of exposing their clandestine return—the slut who’d gotten knocked up by Jack Parr, then married him; the faggot; the illegitimate daughter—to public discourse was a powerful one. Adeline’s face was very pale, and two spots of colour had appeared high on the ridge of her cheekbones. But the neutrality of her expression hadn’t changed.
“Quite,” Adeline said, calmly. “Welcome home. You’re most welcome, all of you.”
“Mrs. Parr—” Christina began.
“Morgan?” Adeline said, cutting Christina off in mid-sentence, turning instead to her granddaughter. “Why don’t you help your Uncle Jeremy with the suitcases? I have a nice room prepared for you upstairs. It’s very pretty. I think you’ll like it. And you must be tired. It has a canopy bed. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, Grandmother.” There was an unfamiliar impressed awe in Morgan’s voice th
at chilled Christina to the core. “I’ve seen pictures of one. They’re beautiful.”
Adeline laughed, a silvery hostess laugh. “Well, hurry up and get your bags out of your car and you can see your bed, darling. Uncle Jeremy can show you the way.” She turned to her son. “Morgan will be in the east wing. In the yellow room, Jeremy. You’ll have your old room, of course.
We’ll put dear Christina next to Morgan. Everything has been prepared.” When Jeremy and Morgan had gone out to the car, Christina turned to Adeline. “Mrs. Parr, thank you so much for taking us in. As you can imagine, it’s been a very difficult time for all of us, especially Morgan.”
“Christina, please listen carefully to what I am about to tell you,” Adeline said coldly. “I will only say it once, and then we will never have this conversation again. Let me be perfectly plain: taking you and Morgan into my home is an act of charity, one I’m very happy to extend. She is, after all, my granddaughter—my eldest son’s child, and very likely the end of our family line. What you and Jack did was unforgivable, and I do not—and will never—forgive either of you for it. You took my son away from me, and now he’s dead.” Adeline paused, composing herself.
“That said,” she continued implacably, “as my son is dead, I can only do one thing—the right thing. And that is to take you into my home and extend to you all the privileges of a daughter-in-law, if only for Morgan’s sake. You will live here at Parr House as long as you need to. Morgan has already been enrolled in the town high school, and instructions have been given to the administration that any harassment of her based on any . . . past questionable history involving her birth, Jack’s death, or Jeremy’s perversion, is to be dealt with immediately and harshly. When she has graduated, I shall see to it that her university tuition is paid for and that she is properly prepared for life in the way that you ensured my son, Jack, would never be when you got pregnant and ruined his life.”
“Mrs. Parr—”
Adeline raised her finger to silence her daughter-in-law. “I’m not finished. In return, you will conduct yourself respectfully and respectably in and out of this house. You will stay out of my sight except for mealtimes, at which time we will all be together. You will defer to my wishes at all times, especially with regard to Morgan’s upbringing while she is under my roof. Unlike you, she is a Parr by blood rather than by convenience.”
“By convenience?” Christina practically shouted the word. “I was pregnant! We were in love! You forced us to leave here! You threatened my family! I never saw my father again because of what you did to us. He died while I was in Toronto, and he’d been dead for six months before I even found out he was gone! And for what? Jack and I loved each other. We have a beautiful daughter—your granddaughter—and we were happy. We had everything before he died. And when he did, I had nowhere else to come except back to the Landing.”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, Christina. You and Jack made your own choices. If you find my conditions too arduous, Mrs. Parr,” Adeline added, putting a vicious accent on the marital title she clearly felt Christina was unworthy to bear, “you may leave my house and fend for yourself. You will be entirely on your own, as will your daughter.”
From outside, Christina heard the Chevelle’s doors slam shut, and the sound of Jeremy and Morgan’s feet on the gravel of the circular driveway in front of Parr House.
“Do we understand each other, Christina? Be quick. I hear Jeremy and Morgan coming back in from the car. I warn you—be very, very careful in case you’re thinking of making a scene in front of your daughter and my son. I can make life even more difficult and painful for you than it is right now. Believe me. You have no idea the scope of my influence.” Oh, but I do, Christina thought, feeling fresh hate and fresh desperation in equal measure. I do. I felt it fifteen years ago, and now I’m feeling it again tonight. Nothing has changed. Nothing. Her vision blurred.
Adeline’s pale, hard face swam. Christina brushed the tears away with the back of her hand, realizing suddenly that this particular die had been cast the moment she’d first heard that Jack had been killed on that highway back in February. The rest of this drama was a matter of everyone playing their assigned parts, particularly Christina, at least until she could figure a way out, back to the city. Any city. Anywhere but here.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Yes what, Christina?”
“Yes, Mrs. Parr. We understand each other.”
“Good. Oh, and Christina . . . ?”
“What?”
“You may call me Adeline. After all,” she added, the mockery in her voice both cruel and unmistakable, “we’re family now.”
When Morgan and Jeremy came through the door, laden with suitcases, the sight of Adeline smiling beatifically with her arm around Christina’s shoulders greeted them.
To Morgan it looked as though her mother had been crying. With the trusting innocence of her inexperience and tender age, she assumed that her mother and grandmother had been discussing her father. It was either that, or the reunion was an emotional one for her mother, given that it was her first time back home since Morgan had been born. She looked at her smiling grandmother and saw only sweetness and an implied offer of safety and security. In that moment, her heart overflowed with relief, and with gratitude towards Adeline.
Morgan put down the two suitcases she was carrying and walked over to where the two women stood and took her mother’s hand. She squeezed it gently, wordlessly assuring her that she was all right, that everything was going to be all right, that she loved her.
For his part, Jeremy merely stared, his mouth open. The tension in the air may have been beyond Morgan’s experience to understand, but Jeremy recognized it immediately and it carried the whiff of sulphur. Unlike his niece, he had an excellent idea of what had transpired while they had been fetching the suitcases and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed them to return to this awful place and willingly put themselves at the mercy of this horrendous woman. He was suddenly wracked with the guilt of not having been enough of a man, enough of a brother to Jack, to find some way to support his niece and his sister-in-law. He’d been an idiot to think Adeline might have changed in the ten years he’d been away, let alone the fifteen Christina had. And now they were trapped in this monstrous house, in this town that had always seemed to him to be a blight on the edge of nowhere. For now, he swore to himself. Just for now. I’m going to figure out how to get us the fuck out of here. I will. I have to.
Adeline stepped in between Christina and Morgan, edging Christina almost imperceptibly to the side with her elbow. She put her arms around Morgan’s shoulders and hugged her tight.
“My family is restored to me,” Adeline said. “Especially my long-lost granddaughter. How very, very wonderful.”
Jeremy shuddered. “Come on, ladies,” he said. “I’ll show you where your rooms are. I think I still know my way around this dump.”
Jeremy took them upstairs, then excused himself and continued up the staircase to his own room after bidding them goodnight.
“I’ll be on the next floor up, second door to the left of the corridor,” he said. He and Christina exchanged a long, meaningful look. “Wake me up if you need anything at all. Anything,” he repeated.
She smiled gratefully and squeezed his hand. “We’re fine. I’m just going to get Morgan to bed, and then hit the sack myself. I’m worn out. Are you going to be all right up there?”
“Right as rain,” Jeremy said wryly. “I’ll see you in the morning. Unless something has changed in the last ten years, breakfast is at seven in the dining room. Sleep well.”
Once Christina had settled Morgan in the opulent “yellow room” and put her to bed (with Morgan gushing all the while about how beautiful the room with its canopy bed was, and how great it was for Grandmother Adeline to let them stay there, and why didn’t she or Uncle Jeremy ever tell her how nice she was—until Christina felt she would surely scream), she unpacked her own suitcases in the room t
hat had been assigned to her across the hallway from Morgan’s.
Her room was a fraction of the size of Morgan’s and very simply furnished by comparison. She knew that Adeline was making yet another point about Christina’s dubious standing in the family, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t come back to Parr’s Landing in search of any status Adeline Parr might extend or withhold. She’d come back for exactly what she’d been given downstairs, however cruelly Adeline had presented the goods—some security for Morgan and a roof over their heads while she figured out what to do next. She hadn’t sold her soul to Adeline, though she may have put it in escrow for the short term.
So be it, she thought. Whatever it takes. It’s not forever.
She looked out the window and saw that the moon was going down. Her watch read three a.m. Christina suddenly felt more tired than she could ever remember feeling.
She undressed quickly, not even bothering to wash her face or brush her teeth, and pulled on the red flannel nightgown she’d brought with her. She climbed into bed and pulled the covers up around her neck. The room may have been spare, but the mattress was welcoming. As she closed her eyes, she thought briefly of Jack and wondered if she’d dream of him tonight, here in the house in which he’d grown up, and what shape the dreams would take, if and when they came. She hoped they would.
Christina was fast asleep within minutes of laying her head against the pillow, and for the first time in months, her dreams were entirely uneventful.
At the exact moment Christina was falling asleep and the moon was completing its descent, Richard Weal was butchering a sixty-year-old widower named Alan Carstairs in his bed, in a remote fishing cabin just outside the town of Gyles Point, twenty-five miles south of Parr’s Landing, on the shore of Lake Superior.
Weal had broken in soundlessly—the door had been unlocked, of course—and surprised Carstairs, who was dreaming of his late wife, Edith.
