The Winter Wives

by Linden MacIntyre

  He wasn’t up when Mom and I went out the next morning.

  * * *

  —

  The sun rose slowly. The sky turned magenta then pink, and the night retreated and the day took over all the land behind us, the sea around us. The other fishing boats materialized. Running lights, little dots of red or green, took on dark shapes and we were soon waving at people we knew bobbing in the near distance.

  Halfway through the haul, Mom poured coffees from our Thermoses. I was on the wheel as usual.

  –So. Today’s the big day, she said.

  –Feels like any other day.

  –He’d have enjoyed being here, your dad.

  –I imagine.

  –He had high hopes.

  –We never talked much about school or anything.

  –He did, though, just the same. He had high hopes.

  * * *

  —

  Allan was at the stove when we came in, the house full of the smell of bacon and toast and coffee.

  –I took the liberty, he said.

  –God bless you, said Mom.

  He poured hot coffee.

  –I figured you’d be hungry. I wanted to go with you. But I just couldn’t get my aging body out of the sack.

  He grinned and shrugged.

  –It’s how I feel every morning, but there you go, said Mom.

  –The will is strong, but the flesh is weak, he said.

  –You can say that again, said Mom.

  Later, when he was in the shower, she said, That’s a fine young man there, your friend.

  * * *

  —

  Spring is usually just a concept here. We can have snowstorms in May. It’s a bonus for the fishermen if May is gentle, and this one was. The mornings were cold and damp, but the winds were light and by noon the air was warm enough to permit a pleasant walk with a Thermos full of coffee through the fields, toward the shore.

  I wasn’t hearing much from the women in Toronto. They were creating a new accounting partnership, hunting for some office space. I got the sense that they were relieved to be on their own, free of Allan and our mysteries, free of spooky Russians and their intrigues. I assumed that Nick was back where he belonged. The Excited States, as I liked to think of it.

  Then Annie called.

  After some small talk, she said,

  –Listen, Byron, one day soon I’d like to discuss a business proposition.

  –Any time you’re ready, I said.

  –I think you have the right idea. It’s time to go home. This place is unaffordable and almost unlivable.

  –I hear you. How does Peggy feel about this?

  –It’s always been her plan. To go home. Eventually.

  –Yes. She mentioned something once. We were on the boat.

  –A summer day.

  –Yes. A perfect summer day. You mentioned business.

  –Just a thought. Maybe the three of us, in a little practice. Simple stuff. Wills, deeds, uncomplicated taxes.

  –You really think Peggy’s up for this?

  –I’ll find out. But you think about it.

  And I did, for days. I thought about it. And about how we remember and how, sometimes mercifully, we don’t remember.

  How we forget. How we forgive.

  * * *

  —

  I bumped into Shirley again, while on a grocery shopping trip in town. This time she seemed keen for tea and a little chat.

  –Do you ever hear from Annie?

  –Well, of course. We’re still married, you know.

  –Well, thank God, she said. I didn’t like to ask.

  –You can ask me anything, Shirley.

  Her eyes grew misty. She grabbed her teacup, met my eyes over the top of it, then dropped her eyes and sipped.

  –You know, when you were younger, you looked just like your uncle. He was very good-looking.

  –I don’t remember anything about him, I said.

  She put the cup down. I reached across and caught her hand.

  She wouldn’t look at me. Then,

  –He would never have harmed anybody. Certainly not you.

  I just nodded.

  –I think there was something in that old barn. Something evil. Something that got into everybody.

  –Maybe.

  –Your mom thought so. She said the devil lived out there. She even mentioned calling in the exorcist. The diocese had one then, you know.

  –But Dad did the job himself. The exorcism. Burned the devil out.

  –Maybe. But sometimes the devil isn’t so easy to get rid of.

  She seemed to drift away for a minute. Then she said,

  –I should have stopped poor Angus. Before he went to Halifax.

  –You couldn’t have known the future.

  –Yeah. But I did. I knew.

  The waiter came with the coffee pot. We shook our heads simultaneously. He walked away. She breathed deeply and sighed and then smiled.

  –He wanted to marry me, you know.

  I just stared.

  –He told me we’d get married when he came back from the city. He didn’t want me to be hurt by all the crazy talk. He said we should wait until everything blew over. But I knew it. I knew he wasn’t coming back.

  –I’m sorry about all this, Shirley.

  –And I just let him go.

  She caught my hand.

  –He was a little bit different, is all.

  –Yes.

  –Some things we just can’t do anything about.

  We finished our coffees, said our goodbyes, and I watched her walk away. I know she was significantly younger than my mother, but somehow she seemed so much older.

  * * *

  —

  I told the real estate guy that maybe it was time to list the farm. Leave all the devils in the past.

  –I suppose you’ll be looking for something in town. I can watch for a nice single-family place on one of the older streets. Something quiet.

  –As a complete hypothetical, what would be the chance of something a little bit more spacious than a single-family?

  –How spacious are you thinking?

  –Say, something that would accommodate three seniors with enough space to keep them out of each other’s hair. And maybe room to run a small business. And maybe, down the road, some live-in help.

  –Small business, eh.

  –Say a law office and a couple of accountants.

  He laughed.

  –You’d probably have to build something.

  I laughed too.

  –Keep your eyes open, I said.

  * * *

  —

  The next time she called, Annie seemed distressed.

  –Everything okay?

  –I talked to Peggy. I don’t think she’s ready. I was surprised.

  –Ready?

  –To go back home.

  She sighed.

  –I thought it just made sense, moving back. But Peggy is in her own space these days. The shock of what she went through, it’s a big adjustment. So she just wants to put everything on hold for now.

  –Of course.

  –She’s going to need me for a while. You know Peggy.

  –I do. I understand completely.

  –But I’ll be there when you need me.

  –I know you will, Annie. I know.

  –You stay in touch, now.

  –Goodbye, Peggy.

  –Byron? Are you sure you’re okay?

  –Why do you ask?

  –You just called me Peggy.

  –I didn’t.

  –You did.

  –Sorry.

  –By the way, what are you going to do with Allan’s ashes?

&nbs
p; –I’ll think of something.

  –You’ll let us know.

  –Yeah. I’ll let you know. Bye, Annie.

  –Bye for now, Byron.

  DUST

  TO

  DUST

  32.

  The guy at the pro shop asked if I needed golf clubs. I said I didn’t.

  –Just the cart.

  He rang it in, returned the credit card.

  –Just drop it where you found it when you’re finished.

  It was a warm, slightly hazy day in early September. The greens and fairways seemed deserted. I was sitting just behind the tenth tee when two carts whirred up and stopped.

  I had two little ones from the hotel mini-bar with me. I had just opened one of them. I waved, gestured. Told them in golfer sign language that they should play through.

  They clambered out, the four of them. Three seemed to be in their early forties. Good-looking, beefy, at that lovely point in life when the dream still feels totally realistic, just before the normal shit starts happening.

  The clothes were perfect. The shirts, the pants, the golf shoes. Ball caps tightly moulded to perfectly rounded skulls. Definitely golf gloves somewhere. They were friendly, nodded greetings as they walked past. One asked if I was waiting for someone. I said I was.

  –Couldn’t get a better day, he said.

  –I feel sorry for all the people who aren’t here, I said.

  –You got that right.

  One by one, the first three teed off and took their shots, and it was wonderful to behold the grace and precision. And how cool they were. Each of the three balls just vanished in the distance. And yet there were no high-fives, there was no triumphal teasing. Just guys doing what was expected and feeling good about it.

  Then the fourth guy took his position. He was very young, perhaps a student about to begin his first year at a university. I related to his hesitancy. You could almost smell the fear as he approached his tee and clumsily placed the ball.

  One of the three, obviously his dad, was muttering instructions. The kid shuffled his feet around. I noted he was wearing running shoes. He took a couple of practice swings. Then he swung hard, and missed.

  –Fuck, I heard him say.

  Now his dad came nearer, leaning slightly on his driver. The head on the driver was the size of a boot. He was obviously a perfect dad. You could tell by the calm restraint. Feet a bit more apart, son. Keep your arms straight. Don’t forget to follow through. No, don’t look at me, look at the ball. Breathe deep. And so on. I’d heard it all before.

  The kid swung. The ball hopped about five feet. He was not enjoying this. I knew everything that was going on inside him. I wanted to hear him say, Fuck this, toss the club aside and walk away.

  The dad was now behind him, reaching around his skinny torso, positioning the kid’s hands precisely on the shaft of the golf club, speaking softly. The other two members of the foursome had wandered off, were standing, chatting, with their backs to what was going on.

  The kid looked in my direction. I pretended to be reading something on my lap. Dad stepped away. The kid was rigid as he slowly raised the club. I’d bet money that he closed his eyes as he began the swing. He couldn’t not. I couldn’t not. To be able to do what everybody told you—keep your eyes on the ball and NOT where you want the ball to go—requires a special favour from nothing less than God almighty.

  The kid swung hard. There was a crack. He opened his eyes. The ball was gone, carried off on a swell of music from an angel choir, disappearing. Somewhere. Who cares where? The kid was shouting.

  –Yeaaaaaaah.

  The dad was pumping his fist. The other two were now ambling back, grinning happily.

  The kid looked in my direction. I gave him a thumbs-up. He just nodded, remembering to be cool, like Dad, like the other two fanatics. They climbed back in the carts, looking serious.

  I watched as they silently worked their way down the fairway. Three of them were at the distant green in about two strokes. It took the kid a little longer. But he got there in maybe five.

  * * *

  —

  There was a small grove of birch just across from where I was parked in my cart. I was trying to imagine the trajectory of the ball I’d nailed the last time I was here. The last golf ball I’d hit or would ever hit. Just after Allan had hit the last one that he would ever hit. It would never have crossed our minds as we climbed out of the golf carts, just about where I was sitting, that this would be the end of something.

  I sipped on the second little one.

  I couldn’t be bothered dragging myself out of the golf cart to take a closer look at those birch trees. Had Allan not fallen, what happened here that day would have been a hilarious story for afterwards, or on all subsequent golf outings. How Byron scored a hole-in-one in the golf cart cupholder.

  Even I thought it was funny. But it was a story that never would be told.

  It was right over there that I tried to pick him up. Until the doctor told me to put him down.

  I finished off the second little one. I was relieved it wasn’t bigger, and that I hadn’t brought another one.

  I drove down the fairway, slowly. There was a rotten sand trap about two-thirds of the way to the green, a second pit off a little farther to the right. I picked the larger of the two, and parked beside it.

  I removed Allan from the backpack. I looked around. It was like the whole world was suddenly deserted. I limped in the direction of the sand, then down into it.

  I pried the lid off the black plastic box.

  Here we are.

  I saw a rake on the far side of the pit. I put Allan down, fetched the rake. I moved some sand aside, made a small depression, and then I poured him out. The colours didn’t quite match. Allan was darker than the sand. So I raked it until I could hardly notice any difference. I told myself it wouldn’t matter. The last thing on a golfer’s mind in a sand trap is the colour of the sand.

  Sorry I don’t have anything left for a little toast.

  I swear he replied, Bad planning, Byron. You have to learn to look ahead.

  I could hear the wheels of a large truck howling past on the nearby highway. I’d never seen Allan drive a truck, but I believed that he was good at it. He had that Class A trucker’s licence for more than twenty years, according to what the investigators turned up.

  I gave the sand another little rake. Now he was completely blended in, one fundamental element indistinguishable from all the other minerals. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. They never mentioned sand. But Allan would have liked this. I knew him well enough to say that with considerable confidence, even though, if we added up all the time that we were actually together, it wouldn’t come to much.

  Maybe a single year in total. Maybe less.

  The very best of friends don’t necessarily live in each other’s pockets. Right?

  We were a strange pair. Two guys who didn’t have a thing in common. Except that we both thought that we were disappointments to almost everyone who mattered—everyone except each other, I think. We can never know for sure.

  There was a soft thump nearby and I saw a golf ball rolling down a slight incline into the sand pit. It rolled right in and stopped. I looked around. There were people far away. I walked toward the ball. I remembered to use the rake to erase my footsteps.

  It was a cheap golf ball—even I could tell. I remembered how Allan always had a supply of cheap balls in his bag for me to use because I was always losing them. And how he would make me crazy wasting time looking for lost balls in the bushes beside the fairway so I wouldn’t lose his fancy ones.

  –Gonna take a leak, he’d say.

  And then he’d vanish into the woods and gullies and be gone for maybe fifteen minutes. And come back, pockets bulging with other people’s golf balls.

  –Pissin
g golf balls, are you now, I’d say, and he’d give me his weary, patient look.

  –These are just for you. If I catch you using my good ones, I’ll break your hand.

  He was joking. I know he could scare you joking. Maybe some people were afraid of him. But I don’t think he really had it in him to hurt anybody. I know that if anything really bad had happened to the careless Newfoundlander, Mike, it wouldn’t have been Allan who did it, no matter how badly Mike had disappointed him.

  Time to go, I said.

  Don’t be a stranger, he replied.

  I picked up the stray golf ball. Brushed off the sand, put it in my pocket. The owner would never miss it, I told myself. He’d probably find half a dozen others while he was looking for it.

  Anyway, golfers always carry tons of golf balls with them, everywhere they go.

  I wheeled the golf cart toward the trail that winds between the greens, around the fairways, past the water features and the sand traps, past the groves of inconvenient trees. Heading home.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For my scant familiarity with the game of golf, I am grateful to the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre of Judique, N.S., and their annual fund-raising tournaments, in which I awkwardly participated for many years.

  Byron’s private search for information about Alzheimer’s is partly informed by a feature story published in the New York Times on September 15, 2018, called “23andMe Said He Would Lose his Mind. Ancestry Said the Opposite. Which Was Right?”

  I could not imagine having finished this manuscript without, once again, the steady editorial direction of Anne Collins, her patient discipline and penetrating eye. I’m grateful for the whole team at Random House Canada, from the book’s designer, Terri Nimmo, to my longtime collaborator, Scott Sellers. I’d also like to thank both Matthew Sibiga and Marion Garner for their long-time support.

  My agent, Shaun Bradley, raised important warning flags about narrative missteps in an original draft while my first reader, Carol Off, showed courage and persistence helping me recover from the early story-telling stumbles.