The Last of the Stanfields

by Levy, Marc

  “There are only two types of men in this world,” Sally-Anne replied with a chiding smile. “Men with problems and men with solutions.”

  Sally-Anne had learned out of sheer necessity—and often when dealing with men—that she sometimes had to put her ethics on hold. The deed was done: Keith had walked straight into Sally-Anne’s trap. Watching the man leap back into his work with an extra dose of fervor and energy almost made May feel sorry for him. But it was for a good cause, after all.

  Keith certainly hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and his rugged upbringing had required him to be resourceful and make do with what he had. On the first Sunday he came to work, Keith tried to pull a cable from the main circuit breaker. It was after dark by the time he finally reconnected it, and the task had required a perilous climb to access the transformer on an electrical pole outside. It had taken him all day and a good part of the night. But in the end, they had electricity.

  In the days that followed, Keith spent all his free time at the warehouse. Within a week, he had begun to consider the project a personal challenge. Keith would cart in truckloads of wood scraps he had collected at work, to use on the window frames, and decided to completely redo the hardwood floor from scratch. While the scheme was hard to keep under wraps and did not go unnoticed by his employer, his talent as a carpenter kept him from getting fired. By the end of the first week, Keith at last came to his senses, realizing that the task was far too vast for him to tackle on his own. He pulled together a scrappy little work crew consisting of friends who came aboard after they were treated to a few meals prepared by May and Sally-Anne. Apprentice plumbers, masons, painters, and locksmiths came in turn, to take care of the boiler and the pipework, to remove the cast-iron radiators, repair the decrepit walls, and deal with every last inch of rust-covered metal in the space. Nor did May and Sally-Anne sit around twiddling their thumbs. When they weren’t busy bringing drinks and snacks to Keith’s ragtag crew, they would help drill, hammer, paint . . . whatever needed doing.

  There, in that lively, boisterous atmosphere, a subtle love triangle was unfolding. It was a bizarre game of seduction, with one player skilled, another sincere, and the third clueless.

  Keith was growing on May more and more every day, and she found herself quietly watching everything he did and listening carefully every time he spoke. She made sure to be in the right place at the right time to lend him a helping hand. Their short exchanges, between his hammering and her vigorous painting, made it clear to May that Keith’s mind was just as appealing as his body. Meanwhile, Keith’s eyes would always drift back toward Sally-Anne, who was intentionally keeping him at arm’s length. May eventually began to believe that Keith might be helping out just for the chance to get close to Sally-Anne again, but she kept her suspicions to herself.

  One month in, the game changed again when Keith started to pick up on Sally-Anne’s strategy. He decided to ask May out for dinner, taking her to an Indian restaurant on Cold Spring Lane. That he would choose such an exotic cuisine came as a surprise to his date. At the end of the meal, Keith suggested he accompany May back to the warehouse so he could put a second coat of varnish on the main door.

  “That way, I can let it dry overnight and jump right to the next step first thing tomorrow,” he explained.

  May once more thanked Keith for everything he had done for them. Did I do it for them . . . or for her? he thought to himself as he grabbed his car keys and led May out to his pickup.

  “Feel free to put on some music if you want,” Keith said as they cruised along.

  May reached out to turn on the radio, slyly hiking her skirt halfway up her thigh in the process. Her milky skin, impossibly smooth and peppered with freckles, came in and out of view with the light of every streetlamp they drove past, drawing Keith’s gaze every time without fail. It wasn’t long before his hand followed suit.

  May felt a rush of electricity from his touch, like heat was radiating straight from his palm. After they parked, Keith let May lead the way up the warehouse stairs, his desire growing with each step of the steep climb.

  May entered the warehouse and called out Sally-Anne’s name, secretly hoping she would be out. She could just picture Sally-Anne at some random bar on the other side of town, surrounded by young men undressing her with their eyes, or young women who either loved her or hated her, or both.

  As soon as they were sure the coast was clear, Keith made a move straight for May. She backed up coyly and pressed herself against the window with a come-hither smile. Keith pursued, running a hand through May’s hair and closing in for a passionate kiss. She had been envisioning this moment for weeks, yet it was more tender and less frenzied than she had imagined. The nape of Keith’s neck smelled of wood and turpentine. His hands sent chills down her spine. He explored every last inch of her face, and May nibbled softly at his pioneering fingertips. Keith pulled her to him by the waist and opened her blouse, kissing her breasts as she unbuttoned her jeans. She could feel him pressing against her, leaving no doubt in her mind: Keith was all hers.

  May knew she was cheating on Sally-Anne for the first time, but Sally-Anne’s grab-it-while-it’s-there approach to life seemed to allow room for Keith and others. In any case, she was helpless to resist. Meanwhile, at that very moment, Sally-Anne was sitting outside the warehouse on her motorcycle, calmly watching the window with May’s bare back pressed against it. Sally-Anne didn’t avert her eyes once, watching every movement, gazing at the small of May’s back as it curved each time Keith thrust. That particular dance was quite familiar to Sally-Anne, having experienced it firsthand herself. She could still recall how Keith felt inside her and the salty tang of his skin.

  “Go ahead and enjoy, darling. Don’t hold back, you’re not doing anything wrong. He’s my gift to you. I just hope you don’t mind if I borrow him back from time to time, when the mood strikes me.”

  With that, Sally-Anne started up the Triumph. She zoomed away with her helmet off, wind blasting through her hair, in search of some company somewhere out in that dark night.

  By mid-August, the lion’s share of the work was complete, and it was clear that Sally-Anne’s bet had paid off. The warehouse may not have been as good as new, like she had promised, but at the very least it had been given “one hell of a face-lift,” as Keith put it. The new look clearly pleased May and Sally-Anne, who leapt on Keith and showered him with kisses.

  The two had even taken advantage of the renovation to add a little bedroom nook for workers. Everything was in place, and they could now start putting what little money they had left into the paper itself. Although Keith and his crew had made the best of recycled and found materials, Sally-Anne and May had still had to invest most of their savings into the renovation.

  By the end of the month, they had skimmed and scraped together enough to acquire some cheap furniture and secondhand equipment. May found half a dozen typewriters thrown into a trash heap by an insurance company that had upgraded to IBM Selectrics. Sally-Anne went on a charm offensive of mythical proportions and got a great deal on a collection of secondhand equipment: an old mimeograph machine (a poor man’s printing press), a pair of tape recorders, a light box for the photo studio, six chairs, and a velvet sofa. She scored the entire package for next to nothing, which was important considering they had next to nothing when September rolled around.

  Early one Sunday morning, May decided to go to mass, as she did from time to time. Her faith was one of the only things from her past she hadn’t completely left behind, and yet she still felt guilty every time she set foot in a church. She hadn’t come to ask God for forgiveness; she had come to get away from it all, even if only for an hour. She refrained from prayer, as it would have been an insult to the others in attendance. May looked out over the congregation, wondering about the lives of the people gathered in the pews. She watched children yawning their way through litanies, and tried to imagine which couples truly loved each other and which were only sharing the same
bed. May was troubled. As exhilarating as it was for her to be living life with such freedom, it came with its own anxiety, and she feared loneliness above all.

  The night before, Sally-Anne had come home late from a charity gala that had bored her to tears. She had only attended to try and convince a young entrepreneur to invest in the Independent. Sally-Anne didn’t find the man quite attractive enough to venture outside the realm of the professional into less constrained territory.

  The young businessman had listened politely to her pitch, but raised a few concerns. The challenge arose from trying to generate profits from a newspaper lacking any kind of national scope. Since television had started sucking all the oxygen from advertising budgets, print was barely profitable these days. This trend only seemed to be on the rise, so the businessman had to wonder if print media’s days were numbered. Despite Sally-Anne’s intelligent and compelling counterarguments, she simply couldn’t get the man to budge, and he was ultimately unconvinced the project had enough profit potential to warrant investment. She stressed that there were other benefits beyond the bottom line. The country was in dire need of newspapers that were independent and not in the pockets of the rich and powerful. Out of sheer courtesy, the businessman committed to supporting the Independent in the second round of investment, so long as the paper had a successful first year. Sally-Anne ended up returning home late at night, still fuming, and her rage only intensified when she found May and Keith sleeping side by side in the bed. It was her bed, too. She toyed with the idea of slipping under the covers with them, but ultimately opted for the sofa.

  The next morning, Sally-Anne awoke to the sound of May leaving the loft and discovered that Keith was still sleeping soundly across the way. Hovering in the entrance to the loft, Sally-Anne watched Keith’s chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. Even when unmoving and sprawled out on the mattress, the man exuded pure strength. His skin was divine, enticing her to explore the hair on his chest. She pulled Keith’s discarded shirt off the ground and pressed it to her face, taking in his distinctive scent.

  If May had gone to church—and where else would she be headed this early on a Sunday morning?—she wouldn’t be back for another two hours, and Sally-Anne wouldn’t need nearly that long. She took off her T-shirt, slid down her panties, and climbed on top of Keith’s sleeping form. In one of nature’s great mysteries, the dawn transforms men into creatures of pure, uncontrollable desire. When he awoke to find Sally-Anne’s lips exploring his stomach, Keith didn’t put up much of a fight, and soon they were both enjoying the delights of an early-morning encounter. Afterwards, Sally-Anne rose, carrying her undergarments, and Keith climbed into the shower with her. While the two got dressed, they promptly agreed that none of it had ever even happened.

  Eight days later, a miracle occurred at the bank. Rhonda Clark, their friend who was the assistant accountant at Procter & Gamble, dreamt of one day becoming financial director. She also knew that a woman attaining such a post at a multinational corporation was akin to scaling Mount Olympus in flip-flops. Rhonda had already set up an operating account for the newspaper that covered all the bases. She created budgets so detailed they accounted for every last paper clip, with thorough two-year projections of advertising revenue versus cash flow, calculating just what was needed to keep the paper up and running. She bound the report with a nice plastic cover as the final touch. Then the big day arrived: a meeting with Rhonda’s husband, the manager of a Corporate Bank of Baltimore branch, who was set to review their application for a line of credit.

  Mr. Clark, who had been married to Rhonda for fifteen years, was a small man with a friendly sparkle in his eyes and a smile that was positively disarming. He possessed such charm and warmth that he seemed completely exempt from normal beauty standards. Cynics might have whispered that Mr. Clark already knew just how serious and thorough his wife’s projections were, since questioning their quality would have cost him more than a few nights’ sleeping on the couch.

  “Let me begin with a question, if I might,” he said, peering at Sally-Anne over his glasses. “If my establishment were to become your lender, would you ever write an article that runs counter to our interests?”

  As May began to answer, she was cut off by a sharp kick in the shin from Sally-Anne. “Actually, I have a question of my own, before we get to yours,” Sally-Anne asked. “This bank, insofar as being one possible source of financing for our paper, obviously wouldn’t have any current issues with integrity, correct?”

  “That goes without saying,” replied Mr. Clark. “And while we’re speaking so candidly, let me say that a project like this takes a lot of nerve. I really do admire your ambition. The fact is, a certain person, who shall remain nameless, has been talking my ear off about it every night. I can now see what all the fuss is about.”

  With that, Mr. Clark opened his desk drawer and took out a form, which he passed to Sally-Anne.

  “I’ve no doubt you’ll fill out this official loan request quickly. As soon as it’s complete, come back to see me. That way I can present your application personally at the credit committee meeting. This step is little more than a formality; I’m overseeing your application myself. We’ll open an initial line of credit of twenty-five thousand dollars with a repayment duration of two years. By that point, since the paper will have achieved, or hopefully surpassed, its financial goals spectacularly, I hope that you will consider choosing our establishment for all your banking needs.”

  Mr. Clark shook their hands and walked them out of the office. As they stepped out of the bank, Sally-Anne and May were so ecstatic that they practically leapt into each other’s arms even as they were thanking him. The two women were positively beside themselves as they made their way down the block.

  “We’re really gonna make this happen, aren’t we?” Sally-Anne said, still coming to grips with what had transpired.

  “Yeah, I think it’s for real, I really do. Twenty-five thousand dollars is no joke, you know! We’ll be able to hire two secretaries, a telex operator, maybe even a receptionist . . . Of course, down the line, we’ll have to hire all women to cover graphic design and editing, photography and political reporting, the culture beat, and one or two reporters at large.”

  “Just women? I thought we’d decided on equal treatment.”

  “True. You’re right, we should hire men, too. Just imagine how euphoric it would feel to say, ‘Frank, honey, go and fetch me that file I asked for, will you?’” May mimed hanging up a telephone. “‘John? Be a dear and fix me a cup of coffee,’” she continued, batting her eyelashes condescendingly at her imaginary assistant. “‘Boy oh boy, those sure are some very flattering slacks, Robert. They really make your ass look fantastic!’ That would be something else.”

  Cynics might have speculated that Mr. Clark would have never have approved the loan if he hadn’t been married to Rhonda. But they would have been dead wrong. The manager of the Corporate Bank of Baltimore branch was keenly aware of who Sally-Anne was, and more importantly, who her family was. The Stanfields were major stockholders at the bank. He knew they would never allow outstanding debts there, not in a thousand years. Regardless of the success or failure of the newspaper, the bank’s investment was safe.

  Cynics might have argued that Mr. Clark had been wrong to give the green light so quickly, and that it was far too early for the two women to be celebrating. Maybe on this front, the cynics would have been right. Just a few days later, a bank employee discovered the application prior to the credit committee meeting. He immediately picked up the phone and made a call to none other than Hanna Stanfield, Sally-Anne’s mother.

  12

  GEORGE-HARRISON

  October 2016, Eastern Townships, Quebec

  My name is George-Harrison Collins. Every time people start giving me a hard time about my first name, I tell them I heard enough taunting back in the schoolyard to last me a lifetime. The funny thing is, I didn’t even listen to the Beatles growing up. My mother was more of a Stones fa
n. She refused to give any explanation of her choice for my name. It was just one of her many mysteries that I never could quite unravel.

  I was born in Magog, and haven’t lived anywhere outside the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the thirty-five years since. The scenery here is breathtaking, and the winters long and brutal. Spring pops up like a light at the end of the tunnel as everything wakes up again, followed by scorching summers that light up the woods and make the lakes sparkle.

  Khalil Gibran wrote: But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more. While nearly all my most cherished memories revolve around my mother, her own memory was now languishing in the desolation of a permanent autumn.

  From the time I turned twenty, she pushed me to leave home and go out on my own. “This town is way too small for you!” she would say. “Go see the world.” But I defied her wishes. The truth is, there’s nowhere else I could think of living. My heart belongs to the Canadian forests, and there is nothing better than living out among the maple trees. After all, I am a carpenter.

  Back when her mind was still sharp and her sense of humor even sharper, my mother would always say I was like an old man, driving around in my silly old pickup. I had to admit I did spend the lion’s share of my time in the workshop, alone. Working with wood can be truly magical. It makes you feel like you can transform matter itself. I first wanted to be a carpenter after reading Pinocchio. That Geppetto really got me thinking: if he could create a son with his bare hands, maybe I could use wood to create the father I had never known. I stopped believing in fairy tales as I grew up, but I never stopped believing in the magic of my chosen trade. The things I make go on to become part of people’s lives. Tables for family dinners and unforgettable evenings, beds where couples make love, beds where children lie dreaming or staring up at the ceiling in wonder, bookshelves that house all the important books a person will ever read. I wouldn’t have it any other way.