by Robert Levy
The kitchen was pure charm, small but open. The farmhouse sink, counters, and refrigerator all glowed a subtle shade of mint, which matched the forested wallpaper, its patterned green boughs an extension of the trees on the far side of the windows. The glass was beveled in a chalet style and skirted with pleated red tartan curtains; the effect bordered on country kitsch, but somehow it all worked.
Maureen showed them the quirks of the various appliances and where the garbage and recycling bins were, how the downstairs shower had to be run for a minute or two before the hot water kicked in. A black wood-burning stove squatted stoically at the edge of the living room, past it a farmhouse table, two couches, and an impressive library surrounded by windows that framed the front porch overlooking Kelly’s Mountain and the fog beyond. Up a short flight of solid oak stairs hand painted with fleurs-de-lis were three bedrooms: one bright and pink with a view of the cove, another done up in darker plaid tartans, the third narrow and yellow with a steepled ceiling. The frame of the last room, according to Maureen, was original to the dwelling, and was where they all dropped their bags beside an antique pine crib allegedly crafted by William MacLeod, the man who had built the house. The crib was the only fully intact remnant from the first fire.
“Please, make yourselves at home,” she said. “I’m just down the hill if you have any questions. And if you see an older gentleman wandering the lawn with a book and a pair of shears, don’t be alarmed—that’s my husband, Donald. Wave and he’ll wave back, but he’ll probably keep minding what he’s doing.”
Maureen told them about the hiking trails behind the house, the canoes at the dock down the hill, which way to go from the main road to get to the supermarkets, large and small. She was polite and thorough, though she often turned to look down the hill, as if she had somewhere else to be.
“By the way,” she added as she opened the front door to leave, “if you all aren’t too tired, we’re having a little shindig down the hill tonight if you feel like stopping by. Just some food and drink with a few friends, nothing special.”
The others got to unpacking, while Blue went out onto the side porch and sat at a picnic table to smoke a cigarette. He listened to the faint sounds of the others inside, the wind soughing through the trees, the chirrup of insects and birds. Along with the cigarette smoke, he breathed in great big lungfuls of air; it was clean and sweetly flavorful, as if it had only just been raining.
Before they started down the hill, it was already clear that their hostess’s idea of a little shindig was in fact a full-blown rager, the sound of live music an eerie thrum off the water long past the dusking of foggy Starling Cove. “Holy shit,” Elisa said over the skirl of a fiddle as she zagged across the gravel drive, camera in hand and tottering behind the others on stilettos she’d stubbornly insisted on wearing. “They don’t mess around here, do they?”
“I could tell Maureen partied,” Gabe said. “Something about her screams high spirits.”
A dozen revelers had spilled out onto the lawn, where an auxiliary troupe of musicians tuned their instruments as they waited their turn. A few dozen more were packed inside Maureen’s crowded living room, along with a band consisting of a fiddler and an accordionist flanked by two guitarists, as well as a drummer rocking out on a djembe. The candlelit room was loud with laughter and drink. Young children ran loose, and as they flitted about in a game of tag, Blue had a ragged flash of memory: a moonfaced little girl chasing after him as a fiddle played, the celebratory yet somehow menacing stomp of feet and clapping of hands all around . . . He closed his eyes and strained to hold tight to the thread, but the recollection was gone.
Maureen parted the crowd with a drink held high in her hand. “Glad you all could make it! What’s your poison?”
“What do you have?” Gabe asked.
“Not a whole lot. Only some beer, and some wine. And some lethal sangria my cousin made. I’d be wary of that. Oh, and some fine old whisky a friend brought. A jug of it. There’s some fustier options as well, like schnapps. And possibly sherry somewhere . . .”
Within an hour Blue was merrily drunk, having met what he imagined to be every resident of Starling Cove. Maureen herself was a potter who sold ceramics out of a nearby shop she shared with an abstract sculptor, while her friends included a woodworker specializing in driftwood art that featured in local galleries, as well as a glassblower who lived and peddled his pieces out of a converted century-old barn on the far side of the cove. Starling Cove seemed an ideal spot for artisans to sell their wares, situated as it was on a stray branch of the heavily touristed Cabot Trail. Blue wondered how many of them were castoffs from the former artists’ colony, and how many might have known his grandmother, or his mother, or even him. No one mentioned the old commune outright, only that the cove was known for its diversity, a place people gravitated toward from both near and far.
A diminutive and heavily bearded man named Fred Cronin, an ironsmith and publisher of a local newsletter, waited alongside Blue for the bathroom. Though standoffish at first, he soon warmed under the heat lamp of Blue’s attention, and spoke of how he had moved to Cape Breton from Detroit as a draft dodger in the early seventies, never to set foot in America again. By all appearances, this self-imposed exile was fine by him.
“This your first ceilidh?” Fred said in a career smoker’s rasp, stroking his silver-flecked beard as he leaned against the stone mantelpiece in the living room.
“My first what?” Blue was distracted by the objects scattered across the mantel: a framed watercolor of a white lotus-leafed hexagonal mandala, a pewter tray containing a half-burned bundle of sage, an exquisitely rendered praying mantis crafted from green Bakelite that stared back at him through compound eyes, dark brown bordering on black.
“Ceilidh,” Fred repeated. “It’s like a Gaelic hootenanny. Could be a barn dance, or even just a house party like this. Basically, a get-together to get drunk and dance around to some old-country-type Scottish music. Lots of old country culture here, even today. They don’t call this place Nova Scotia for nothing.”
“I was actually born here, so you’d think I’d know that.”
“Oh yeah?” The man produced an antique-looking camera from somewhere beneath his beard and took a lightning-fast shot of him, the flash blinding. This guy should meet Elisa, Blue thought. “Whereabouts are you from?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” Blue hedged, honoring his mother’s plea for discretion. “Sydney, I think? Anyway, I’ve been gone ever since, just about. It’s nice to be back.”
And it was. Who knew where this would take him? Maybe fortune was intervening, and he was destined to come across some long-lost relative. Hell, maybe this man Fred was actually his father, and Blue had unwittingly stumbled into an unlikely family reunion, right here in the Cape Breton Highlands.
This final thought a bit too close to home, Blue excused himself to refill his sangria, caution to the wind.
On the other side of the room, the informal circle of dancers spun with increasing zeal. Some paired off to execute elaborate steps, while others held hands and simply twirled one another, a few more with their arms linked around the perimeter in a kind of drunken hora. Elisa, her camera and heels long since cast aside, moved effortlessly from group to group. She clapped her hands, swung her hips, partner danced in remarkable approximation, using steps it would have taken anyone else days to learn. Her mimicry appeared effortless, the way someone with absolute pitch could reproduce tone. But Blue knew how hard it had really come, how much dance had consumed her before her body finally said no more. Two decades’ worth of self-sacrifice and perfectionism, countless failed auditions and the pain of recurring injuries . . . Inside and out, the sheer accumulation of setbacks had taken their toll.
He joined her and led her in a provisional country waltz—not too terribly, though Elisa was intent on correcting his form at every turn. They were a long way from their days as fixtures in the New York club scene. Day shifts working at Pat Field’s
and Liquid Sky and later in the clubs themselves, nights wrecked as all get-out, dressed like mental patients on the dance floors of USA and Palladium and Tunnel, their MDMA fog not worn off until sometime after their lunch break. A lost decade of tarnished glamour held together with duct tape, spirit gum, and daydreams. It was where he had met Elisa, and what he liked to remember of that most hazy time was pure rapture.
The ceilidh danced on, Blue and Elisa along with it. They tried and failed to coax Gabe out of the kitchen to dance, then Jason, who waved them off and sat on a patchwork leather couch next to a gaunt and elderly man in a burgundy cardigan and black square-framed glasses. Jason was drawn to strangers—in taxis he was fond of the front seat, where he could talk politics with the driver; in diners, the waitress-trafficked counter; he even chatted up token booth clerks. None of them minded either. And he’d successfully pursued Elisa, hadn’t he? Picked her up in a bar, no less, no mean feat considering she’d probably been hit on a thousand times in a thousand bars by better-looking men, with better game. None of them had Jason’s dogged determination, however, and certainly not his christlike patience. Blue often suspected there was something about him too good to be true.
As for Elisa, if you had told Blue that she would ever get married in the first place . . . And to a man who was stable and secure? A newly minted therapist, well versed in the everyday neuroses of the born-and-bred New Yorker such as herself? Not in the forecast. Yet there Blue found himself not one year ago at the Central Park Boathouse (his date an elfin redhead named Zoë he’d happened to take home the night before), as noted Jewish intellectual and Columbia Law professor Lawrence J. Weintraub walked his daughter down the aisle—handing her over to a man who not only was a gentile but was actually churchgoing! A black (or more specifically, black and Korean) man! Probably not in Professor Weintraub’s future projection. But even her father couldn’t question Jason’s particulars, himself awed in the face of that firm handshake, that quiet confidence, those teeth . . . Jason was everything Blue was not. He was, in a word, husbandly.
“This is Donald,” Jason said, already familiar, his arm around the older man’s shoulders. “He’s Maureen’s husband.”
“Nice to meet you,” Blue said. Donald’s handshake was too hard, Blue’s fingers mashed against one another so roughly he flinched, though he tried to mask it. “Thanks for having us.”
“It’s past my bedtime.” Donald turned to stare across the room, head weaving as if searching someone out. “But I haven’t gotten permission yet, so . . .” His cadence was melodic, with a storyteller’s inflection. Blue looked to Jason, who winked at him.
“I don’t think you could fall asleep if you tried,” Jason said. “The music’s pretty loud.”
“I can sleep through anything,” Donald said. “During the war they would call me Charlie, because I was the only one who didn’t get up for reveille. ‘Oh, Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed,’ ” he sang, straining to be heard above the din. “ ‘Oh! Charlie, Charlie, get out of bed!’ At least that’s what I’m told.”
The glassblower wandered over and launched into an extended monologue about a visit he and his wife had made to Ground Zero. But Donald only stared at Blue, until he leaned over and whispered, “I know you, don’t I?” in Blue’s ear.
“Oh. Uh, I don’t think so. Unless it’s from the past few minutes, that is.”
“Well, time is a most peculiar mistress,” Donald said. His eyes receded behind his thick plastic lenses, until his whole expression was a blur. “Especially amongst the fairies. There’s no such thing as time with the Other Kind. Though I suppose you know that already, being fey yourself.”
“Excuse me?” Blue let out a startled laugh. Did this dude just call me gay?
“Well, you’ll be going down, then, won’t you?” Donald said, leering and newly agitated. “Down and down and dowwwwwn . . .”
Their small circle fell silent. Jason, placid, patted the man on the knee, though he also tilted his head in a gesture for Blue to take off.
“Better keep an eye on that guy,” Jason said to Donald. “He’s nothing but trouble.”
“Hilarious,” Blue said, but he bristled. He gave a little salute, and negotiated his way across the crowded room. Time for some more booze.
After refreshing his drink he headed out onto the side porch to smoke. Maureen soon popped her head out, took a quick look back, then tiptoed conspiratorially to his side. “You have an extra one of those?”
“Of course.” Blue handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. “This is quite a ceilidh,” he said, faux authoritative.
“That’s what we do.” She exhaled a sigh of pleasure. “Hey, your friend is some dancer.”
“Isn’t she? She used to be serious about it, but she kept hurting herself. Recently she’s taken up photography. Less chance of injury, I suppose.”
“Good for her. You two looked so happy together dancing. You’re both glowing.”
“We’re just friends. Old friends. Elisa and Jason are married.”
“Oh, I know. I already cornered your boyfriend and got the lay of the land.”
“Boyfriend?” He winced. “I’m not . . . Gabe and me aren’t together.”
“No? I thought— Well, the way he was looking at you, I just assumed.”
“It’s okay.” Blue snorted, smoke escaping his nostrils. “I’m not offended. Believe me.”
Maureen and Donald must have figured they were two couples on holiday. And how far was it from the truth? There had been that one night, after all, a misguided attempt at providing Gabe a modicum of real tenderness. But that kind of justification had gotten Blue in trouble countless times; you’d think he would have learned.
“Gabe’s a puppy dog, you know?” he said by way of explanation, not to mention rationalization. “He’s had a hard life, not that he talks about it. I’m protective of him. Maybe too much.”
“You care about him.”
Blue nodded. “So, what did he tell you exactly?”
“He said that you’re very kind, and that you like to pretend otherwise. And that you make the best food he’s ever tasted.”
“That’s nice of him to say.”
“I believe it. You’re different. I can tell. Like I said, you got the glow.” She sipped her drink. “Elisa’s glowing too, of course. But her glow is common enough. Any idea where yours might come from?”
“Uh, couldn’t properly say, really.” He blushed and looked away. “Maybe it’s the sangria.”
She laughed. “You never know.”
They smoked in silence. Blue suppressed a yawn, faced the woods, and listened to the sounds of the party blare from the open windows: the creak and slam of the screen door, a cacophony of voices, music, clapping and stomping. He turned to find Maureen gazing intently inside, at Donald, who’d gotten up from the couch and was busy collecting bottles and glasses from the coffee table. “My husband,” she said, her tone neutral.
“He’s an interesting guy,” Blue said. “Very spirited.”
“He has Alzheimer’s.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the inside of a mussel shell set out on the porch railing. “He was diagnosed last year. But I could tell for a while already. I knew.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, that’s one of the perils of marrying someone twenty years older, I guess. Not that I was ever the marrying kind. But after a few decades of take-a-lover, leave-a-lover . . .”
“Is that what you were like?” Blue noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring, nor, he had noted, did Donald.
“That’s what a lot of us were like, up here. Our little lost land, back when we still pretended to have ideals.”
“There used to be a commune up here, right?”
“Something like that. Where did you hear about that old place?”
“Someone mentioned it before,” he said imprecisely. “Were you and Donald living here back then?”
“Sure we were. Donald was actually one of
the founders of the Colony. Not that he moved here for that purpose, exactly. He was an entomologist turned rubber-booter, came up from McGill to study ants, of all things.”
“Ants? Is there something special about the ants up here?”
“There’s something special about everything here,” she said with a wicked grin. “This has always been a singular place. Not just for the indigenous people, Mi’kmaqs like me, but for everyone who comes through. And that vibe fit the ‘live off the land’ era just perfect, you know? We had quite the good time. Many years’ worth. But if you would’ve told me then it would come to this . . .” Soundless laughter, a quick jerk of the head. “I’ve had better years, that’s for sure. I just hope they’re not all behind me.”
He offered her another cigarette, leaned in to light it against the swelling breeze. They separated slightly but stayed close, shoulder to shoulder. “Donald can’t read a clock anymore. He knows what the hands are, but not what they mean . . . I have to leave him little notes all around the house. ‘This is the oven. It gets hot. Don’t use it without Maureen.’ ” She exhaled through her teeth, smoke scattering in the dim shine from the porch light. “In the spring he found me in my studio and said, ‘I have to talk to Maureen about the oven.’ I said, ‘Okay, what do you need?’ and he said, ‘No, not you, I have to find Maureen.’ I said, ‘Darling, I am Maureen.’ He kind of grumbled and walked back to the house. I figured out what was going on a few days later, when we were going to bed and he said, ‘Good night, Barbara.’ That’s the name of his first wife. She died forty years ago.”
“What did you say?”
“ ‘Good night, Donald. Sweet dreams.’ ” She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette, then pocketed it. “Thanks for the smokes,” she said, and squeezed his arm.
“Anytime. You know where to find me.”
