Devotion

by Howard Norman

  David merely stared at William. He heard the swans marauding through the kitchen. Looking at David, Toby said, “I’m officially offering to help you clean up in there. Five dollars an hour sound all right?”

  “Don’t ask him,” William said, “ask me. You’re hired.”

  William walked back to the main house. David grasped the porch railing and tried hoisting himself up, but fell back. He was dizzy, his eyesight blurred. “The hospital in Truro’s just over half an hour. You get me driving at my best,” Toby said. “Anyway, you look like shit.”

  Toby offered his hand. David swept it away violently. Toby said, “Come on, David, don’t act like you haven’t just been knocked on your ass by an old man.”

  “He was an amateur boxer in Edinburgh,” David said, the word “Edinburgh” sounding like “Essdingburk” through his lacerated tongue and swollen jaw. He suddenly felt parched. Toby again offered a hand up; this time David accepted. Toby pulled him to his feet. “Need a minute,” David said, leaning against the house.

  It took about forty-five minutes to get the swans gathered on the porch. “They’re bigger than I thought, close up like that,” Toby said. Jaw pulsing the whole left side of his face, David went into the bathroom, opened the cabinet, took out a bottle of aspirin and swallowed three tablets, cupping water to his mouth from the spigot after each one. He examined his face in the mirror—a bit of a shock there. He dabbed Mercurochrome on the knuckle-gash near his mouth. When he returned to the porch, he saw that Toby had already herded the swans into their pen. Toby latched the gate and walked back, and when he stepped onto the porch, David said, “Hospital.”

  At nine o’clock the following morning, William visited David in room 311 of Truro General Hospital. Visiting hours hadn’t officially begun, but William presented himself as “family” at the information desk. David shared a room with a telephone worker who’d had an emergency appendectomy. There was a curtain drawn between their beds. David sat up straighter against the pillows when William entered. His jaw was wired shut, the left side of his face bruised predictably black-and-blue, plus his chin had summoned up a yellow splotch with a black outline, like a watercolor painting. First thing, William said, “I called Maggie and told her you’re in the hospital. She asked how bad it was, and I told her my opinion. She said she’s not going to visit, but that I should say get well soon. To my mind, that’s somewhere between nothing and something, which you might consider an improvement in your relations, I don’t know.”

  David nodded, smiling wanly, but remained silent.

  “My daughter doesn’t need me to fight her battles. This was my own battle, between me and you, for the taxi hitting me. Just so we get that straight. Margaret didn’t approve of my actions.”

  David touched the bruised side of his face, pressed the buzzer at the end of a white cord, hoping the nurse would release more morphine into the IV. In a moment a nurse poked her head around the curtain. “Nurses’ station said you had a visitor,” she said. “How nice.”

  “Painkiller,” David said, but it came out “fain kiffper.” The nurse had heard it pronounced any number of ways. She was in her early fifties. Her name was Kristin Fournier.

  “I understand you’re related,” she said to William.

  “Father-in-law,” William said.

  “Your son-in-law here’s asking for an anodyne.”

  David didn’t know what the word meant, but William said, “Who doesn’t need that, eh?”

  “There’s all sorts, of course,” nurse Fournier said. “I get mine from church. But Mr. Kozol needs one through the drip. I’ve been a nurse half my life. I can read his expression.”

  She studied the chart on a clipboard tied with string to the bed frame. She fluffed up David’s pillows, gently inspected his mouth and jaw, refilled the plastic water cup on the adjustable tray, replaced the straw. “Be brave, Mr. Kozol,” she said. “You have an hour’s wait. It’s a good hospital that keeps track of such things.”

  When the nurse left, David looked at William, and only then did he notice that William was somewhat formally dressed, herringbone sports jacket, corduroy trousers, dark shirt and tie, clothes far too heavy for summer, especially this one. David took up a pad of paper and wrote on it, tore off the sheet and handed it to William: Can you sneak a whiskey in here for me?

  “Oh, I don’t think that particular anodyne’s allowed.”

  David closed his eyes.

  “The estate’s back in good hands now,” William said. “Don’t fret over the swans, for example. Don’t concern yourself one bit.”

  David mumbled something incoherently.

  “Hard to understand you,” William said. “I know what that’s like, don’t I, having to speak through all that pain and pills. I’m scarcely just past it myself.”

  David—for the first time—said, “I’m sorry.”

  “By the way, feel free to stay on in the guest cottage. I’ve spoken with Izzy and Stefania. I’ll nurse you back to health. The doctor will no doubt recommend soups. I’m an expert at soups, don’t know if Maggie mentioned. I made soup for her every winter day, elementary school.” William pulled up a chair and sat. “I’ve got an idea. What if tomorrow I bring in the photograph albums from Maggie’s upbringing? Janice was absolutely devoted to those albums, my lord. I keep them in a fireproof safe. Anyway, it might be a useful education. You might get to know better who you’re married to.”

  “I’ll provide the commentary,” William said at ten the next morning. He’d brought three photograph albums. He was dressed in exactly the same clothes as the day before, no tie this time. He set the albums on the bed. He took off his sports jacket and put it on the back of the chair, which he pulled close to the bed. He opened the first album across David’s lap. “This one takes Margaret up to age twelve.”

  David wanted to say, “I’m going to take a lot of photographs of our daughter,” but held back. First, it was difficult for him to speak at all, though he could’ve written it out. Also, it wasn’t the right time to reveal that he knew Maggie was to give birth in November. William was keeping the news to himself; he’d brought the albums to bring David up to speed on Maggie’s childhood—things should go in the proper order.

  Each photograph was held to its page with black adhesive triangles at its corners. (My mother’s company manufactured these, David thought.) “Going left to right,” William said, “this is Maggie’s first bath. In the kitchen sink, believe it or not. This next one’s me holding her, then there’s Janice holding her.”

  David pointed to a photograph of another woman bathing Maggie and got a quizzical expression on his face. According to the date written underneath, Maggie was three. “Oh, boy,” William said, “that’s a much younger Dory Elliot. She was Janice’s dearest friend. For a while there. Back then the word ‘pretty’ wouldn’t’ve done her justice, believe me. A lot of men drove great distances just to order a scone at her bakery. You won’t find Dory in any history book, but she’s got a history. She’s done a lot more than make thousands of lemon tarts and her famous coffee cake in her sixty-one years. For instance, did you ever look at those framed newspaper articles behind her counter? I know you go into the bakery a lot. Next time, look at them. It’s Dory, late teenage years and early into her twenties. She entered a number of Canada-wide beauty pageants and sometimes won. I mean first place. What’s more, Dory was a gifted lifeguard. Saved a boy’s life in front of his family, that was near Peggy’s Cove. She was married and divorced twice, started the bakery and stayed that course. Her hair, you’ve noticed, is completely white, but that happened at around forty, not later. Happened almost overnight; she was in the hospital with a heart infection. As I mentioned, she was Janice’s dearest friend for many years. But that’s another story altogether.”

  After the nurse replenished the morphine, David ate a few bites of Jell-O, sipped some ice water, chewed on ice chips as William finished with the album, all black-and-whites: Maggie’s first day of school; Magg
ie putting on lipstick, Janice putting on lipstick beside her; Maggie and William in a rowboat on the pond; Maggie in pajamas, a thermometer in her mouth, Janice worriedly looking on, but so exaggeratedly that David could tell she wasn’t truly worried.

  On the next-to-last page was a photograph that showed Maggie sitting with Isador and Stefania on the porch steps. “Now, this was an unusual conversation they were having,” William said. “About as unusual as can be imagined. Maggie’s ten there. ‘Why do you have those numbers on your arms?’—that’s what she asked. She started crying before she heard the answer; must’ve felt bad news in advance. Stefania didn’t go into the details. Too painful to tell, too painful to hear told. But she did introduce the words ‘concentration camp,’ didn’t hold back there. Believe me, Maggie could be very direct, very curious. ‘There were people called Nazis. They tried to kill all the people of our religion, Jewish people, but we’re here, aren’t we?’ That was the history lesson that morning, except Maggie didn’t let it go, even when Izzy added, ‘That was over in Europe before you were born.’ I can’t put the full psychological whys and wherefores to it, but they sat there a good two hours. And if you think I’m being sentimental, guess again, because Maggie had nightmares, oh, I’d say six, seven nights running. Into Janice’s and my bed, hopped right in between us, pulled the blanket over her head. One night she said, ‘I looked in on Izzy and Stefania, and they’re fine. You check on them later.’”

  William put on his sports jacket and went to the hospital cafeteria for lunch; David slept an hour. When he woke, William was sitting in the chair, staring at a page of photographs in the second album. David chewed on some more ice chips. William set the open album on the bed, leaned close and said, “Now here’s 1968 to 1972—the Vietnam War raging, huh?”

  But David had written a note, which he handed to William: You really went on about Dory Elliot, I must say. I’ve been wondering why she hasn’t once been to visit you. Not once.

  William tightened his mouth, closed his eyes a moment, opened them, moved the chair back a little, absent-mindedly buttoned his sports jacket. “I did go on about her, didn’t I,” he said. “Look, David—now that you’re a captive audience. Now that things have come around like they have. We keep getting thrown together, eh?”

  David wrote another note: There’s no taxi in here. You aren’t going to punch me again. Just say it.

  “There’s nineteen swans on the estate now, correct?” William said. “Well, when Maggie was seventeen, there were twenty-eight. It was a regular lying-in hospital for swans that year. Anyway, and these lines are wide enough to read between, David. Very wide. For a short while I took up with Dory Elliot. Then it ended. And this was Janice’s dearest friend—though how could she have been, to partake of something like that? Maggie’d be in the bakery practically every day after school. I think she confided more in Dory than in Janice, for a stretch, but that’s the way it goes, mother-daughter, sometimes. Just normal. In any event, Maggie and Janice ended up very, very close. I was always grateful for that.

  “But Dory—it was a cruel thing to do, though she’s not cruel. Told Maggie the whole sordid thing. Maggie drove home and confronted me. Then she told Janice. Then she packed a suitcase for herself and one for Janice. They drove to Halifax and stayed for five nights. Janice continued on to visit her sister in Edinburgh for a month. When she came back it was the ice age in my house for a long time. Eventually things were workable. But once trust gets dropped—and I dropped Janice’s like an anvil from—what floor was your London hotel room on? From the fourth floor of a hotel. And I never entirely got it back. Mostly, but not completely.”

  They sat awhile; David fell asleep without meaning to, just nodded off despite the moment; William thought it was a reprieve. Finally William woke him up. “Lately I’ve given things a lot of thought. Take it or leave it. It’s not meant as advice, just observation. But it occurred to me, in reliving what I put Maggie through with my dallying, that it might just be one reason Maggie’s so—unforgiving. Mind you, I said one reason. I mean, connect the dots, David. Whatever you did or didn’t do in that hotel room wasn’t the same stupidity, but it had certain approximations.”

  David wrote another note: That couldn’t have been easy to say. But you’ve worn me out.

  Without another word, William took up the albums and left the room. But he telephoned David from the lobby. David managed, “William,” because who else would it be?

  “I don’t feel I’m wasting my loose change here,” William said. “The thing is, young couples, when they’re courting, they have to feel like they’re inventing happiness, eh? Inventing it. Because they’re supposed to feel that. They can’t help it. Nothing new in this.

  “As far as I could tell, you and Margaret had what I’d call a whirlwind courtship. All through she kept calling me, keeping me apprised, to the extent she chose to. I mean, how you flew back and forth, Halifax-London, London-Halifax. Maggie almost used up her savings, did you know that? ‘I’m spending the weekend in London, Pop,’ was not the prudent Margaret I knew. Prudent of heart and prudent of purse is a world of difference. Even a protective father understands that fact of life. I was following her the way that dotted line in the old wartime movies showed a ship or airplane crossing the Atlantic Ocean. I knew Margaret was head over heels. And how that boosted my spirits on her behalf.

  “I’m not going to predict the future. Whoever’s in the prediction business is a damned fool. But as for the past, I like to think of you and my daughter inventing happiness. But then along comes that London hotel room. What was I supposed to do, David, not tell my own daughter what I saw? Did you think it was a separate moral universe or something, a hotel room? Anyway, for your information, with Margaret I didn’t speculate past sheer description, just that I saw a woman standing in her bathrobe. Obviously that was enough to set things in motion. I knew it. No matter what the whole truth was. The day after your honeymoon, lord in heaven.”

  William listened a moment; with every possible effort, David managed, “I know our daughter’s due on November ninth.” They both hung up.

  In his hospital bed, David wondered if pain might sharpen his comprehension of what William had said. To that effect, he considered refusing the next round of morphine. Besides, if he felt competent at anything, it was sleepless nights. He was an expert, one might say.

  Wedding in Nova Scotia (1985)

  ON JULY 27, Maggie arrived at the estate at 7:30 in the morning. She sat with William at the kitchen table. He’d prepared hot cocoa. William wore his pajamas, robe, slippers. Maggie had on gym shorts, a sepia T-shirt under a white cotton blouse, no shoes. “You didn’t drive without shoes on, did you?” William said.

  “I often do, in the summer.”

  They spoke about things in general. Then Maggie said, “David’s proposed marriage.”

  “No fool, is he? Have you decided when’s the wedding?”

  “We were thinking in ten days.”

  “Ten days?”

  “I’ve already called everyone we want invited. They’re all available. That’s good luck from the get-go, I’d say. David has no family. I’ve told you, his mother and father are gone. Buried in Vancouver. He’s got no family but you and me.”

  “Who’s going to stand up for him?”

  “He is.”

  “And for you?”

  “Frannie Dunsmore.”

  “Your closest friend since when, sixth form or so? It’ll be good to see her again. In ten days.”

  “I know it’s short notice. But it’ll be an informal wedding. I asked Dory to make the wedding cake. Just so you know.”

  “Of course she’s not invited to the ceremony.”

  “Would I do that?”

  “All right, then, a lot can get done in ten days.”

  “Some of the ensemble’s agreed to play.”

  “How about that?”

  “Anne Stevenson at the Glooskap said she’d arrange for food.”

&nbs
p; “You can’t go wrong with Anne Stevenson and food. She’ll provide a feast. Possibly some surprises, too. Like the time she put cherry vodka in a summer soup. You might request that.”

  “Wait here, Pop. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Maggie went upstairs, and when she returned she was wearing a Victorian-era white dress with a lace collar and hem.

  “Your mother’s wedding dress seems to fit,” William said.

  “Dad, you forgot to take the dry-cleaning tag off. Maybe you forgot on purpose, huh? Interesting, after all this time you suddenly get it in your head to have this dress cleaned in Truro.”

  “I had an inkling.”

  “An inkling to you is absolute fact for anyone else.”

  “Who’s performing the ceremony?”

  “I thought Robert Teachout.”

  “Reverend Teachout? I thought he was long retired.”

  “He’s not retired. People just don’t give him work anymore. He moved to Advocate Harbor.”

  “You’ve done all your homework already. A bit skulking under the dark of night, though, don’t you think? Why couldn’t I know this big secret till now?”

  “David proposed to me night before last.”

  “Margaret, you’ve done things your own way since I can remember.” He took a sip of cocoa. “He didn’t get down on his knees, did he? He’s not a dramatic personage, is he?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. He asked like a gentleman, not copied out of a book or movie. It was a genuine marriage proposal carried out in a thoughtful manner.”

  “So I’m finally going to meet your David.”

  “He’s at the pond.”

  “I’ll go down there.”

  “Let him come here, Pop. I’ll get him.”

  “We’ll have ten days to get to know each other, then. That’s one hundred percent longer than no time at all.”

  “Did you hope he’d ask for my hand in marriage?”

  “Yes.”