Double Talk

by Patrick Warner

  In place of a formal church service there is to be a gathering at the house, with time set aside for readings and songs. There is a loose plan to keep vigil with the deceased through the night. Burial will take place the following morning.

  Brian meets them at the door of his uncle’s house when they arrive a little after six o’clock. He is resplendent in black suit, white shirt and Wallace’s alligator tie as he ushers them through into the rooms where they spent so many evenings together.

  Vases of flowers flare from every corner: white lilies, orange lilies, yellow lilies. The hardwood floors gleam. Every surface looks dusted, waxed or polished. Violet looks around for Geoff, but he is nowhere to be seen. Brian, reading her thoughts, whispers: “He’s upstairs getting ready. He takes a break every so often.”

  Where Wallace is laid out in the living room, there are masses of purple irises, the kind that grow abundantly in Newfoundland, often in abandoned settlements. Lucy buries her face in Violet’s shoulder when together they look in on him through the half-open casket: “It’s not him, Mommy; it’s not him.”

  Grief coasts through Violet again, as powerfully as it had the first time. She bursts into tears. Brian is at her side, gently leading her away. Far off now is Violet’s thought to ask him where he found the beautiful suit, so obviously expensive beyond anything they can afford.

  They walk out into the hall just as Geoff is making his way down the stairs. He looks scrubbed and pink, his eyes swollen. He is wearing a black Aran sweater and black Levis. Seeing Violet’s tears, he begins to weep. Lucy runs to him and puts her arms around his legs. Violet goes to him as well. He seems to Violet to have shrunk; his hands, when he presses them against her back, are freezing cold.

  “Uncle Geoff,” squeals Lucy, from where she resolutely maintains her place between them, “your tummy is rumbling. Maybe you need to go to the bathroom?”

  “Believe me, that’s not my problem.”

  Violet laughs. “Oh, Geoff, I’m so sad. And I’m so glad, so glad you are still here.”

  “And I’m so glad you all could be here with me. I’m sorry that I couldn’t see you yesterday when you came by. I just couldn’t see anyone.”

  Just then Fabian’s unmistakably low-pitched growl — a granite slab sliding over a granite slab — resounds from the kitchen. “Get in here, you sorry lot. I’m making drinks. We’re here to send Wally off in fine style.”

  Violet walks into the kitchen and hugs Fabian. Over his shoulder she takes in the impressive array of bottles lined up on the kitchen counter.

  “What ya havin’?” says Ian.

  “I’ll have what they’re having,” Violet says, gesturing to Darcy and Ian, both of whom are immaculately dressed and sporting miniature lilies in their breast pockets.

  “Whiskey it is, then! Sure, what else would you drink at an Irish wake?”

  “Just a soda water for me, please,” Brian says.

  Who is this new Brian, so beautifully dressed, so sober, so solicitous to every need? First there with the wine bottle to top up glasses; first there with the box of tissues when it is needed; popping back and forth from the kitchen with trays of samosas, vol-au-vent and sausage rolls. He is first to move things along when solemnity threatens to collapse the proceedings. Later, when masks begin to slip and talk about HIV research and the lack of government funding turns bitter, Brian sets the formal part of the evening in motion by asking Darcy to sing; Darcy, who produces from his bulk the sweetest voice, using it to deliver a jazz-inflected version of “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s.”

  Who is this Brian who steps in and finishes off the reading of Robert Frost’s “Out, Out —” when Ian can’t continue, and then finds a way to dissuade Fabian from performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” — not because it is in dreadfully poor taste but because half the keys on the old stand-up piano are flat and it just won’t do.

  Who is this Brian who encourages each one there to tell a favourite story about Wallace and whose own contribution sets the tone by focussing on his uncle’s slightly obsessive compulsive tendencies?

  “We were sitting in the car just outside Wallace and Geoff’s house, both of us watching Wallace in the side mirrors. It was about seven o’clock in the morning, and we were supposed to get on a flight at eight — we were heading to Toronto to see a Van Morrison concert. Wallace was going through his usual routine, only a little more manically than usual — as was always the case when he was stressed or over-tired. ‘Is that the second or third time, now?’ Violet asked me. We were keeping count of how many times Wallace had checked to see if he had locked the back door, before he unlocked it to make sure the dog was safely in the kitchen, before he double-checked to make sure that the screen door was properly latched and locked. We were both busting ourselves laughing as we watched him rattle the handle of the kitchen door one last time. At that moment a drop of rain hit the windshield. We just looked at each other. I don’t need to tell anyone here how much Wallace hated rain. Just a few drops on his clothes and he would change every stitch, right down to his bikini underwear. Anyway, satisfied at last that everything was secure, he came striding up the driveway towards the car. He was about two-thirds of the way towards us when there was a sudden squall. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see a single rhododendron leaf blow from the border. We watched as he watched it back-flip, pirouette, and then back-flip again before landing on the perfectly swept blacktop. Like a trout to a fly, it was. Wait now — like a fly to a trout, I mean. Wallace was standing about ten feet from the car and about ten feet from where the leaf lay on the ground. Just then the rain began to fall, big fat drops. You knew the sky was about to open. We watched as he listed, first towards the car, and then back towards the leaf, then back again towards the car. When he looked up at the sky it was with an expression of utter betrayal on his face. He was caught. He didn’t have time to both pick up the leaf and make it to the car before the downpour began. So he dithered, weighing which of the two outcomes — getting wet or leaving the driveway untidy — would cause him the least amount of pain. That was Wallace.”

  Violet watches the faces in the room as Brian delivers his anecdote: there are smiles and appreciative nods, and when he gets to the end there is genuine laughter. All the same, she can’t help but notice the steel and reserve in those faces; they are cordial despite themselves, she thinks. It is clear — to Violet at least — they have not forgiven Brian for deserting Wallace when the going got rough.

  As the evening wears on, Violet becomes more and more aware of the simmering hostility towards her husband. No one looks him directly in the eye. No one will engage him in conversation. She knows if it wasn’t for the deference and gratitude Geoff shows to him, there would have been a scene. Violet knows that under normal circumstances she would have come to her partner’s assistance. And perhaps had the wake been held a day earlier, when her grief was still raw, she would have found some way to side with him. But the wound of Wallace’s passing has already started to heal. Brian has not redeemed himself, in Violet’s eyes. He is a liar, she reminds herself, and this is just another performance. He has just upped his game.

  With Lucy dozing on her lap, Violet keeps thinking about that other piece of information Frank James passed along to her the night of the dinner party, something she had given Brian the opportunity to confess. Each time she looks at Brian’s black suit she hears Frank James hiss, “And tell your husband I want that fifteen hundred I lent him.”

  The colours the morning they bury Wallace are winter colours, and the light is a winter light. What stands out to Violet are black overcoats and jackets, black skirts and black pants, black shoes on grey slush. The moisture-blackened bark of bare trees shows starkly against the snow and sky. Save where the mourners walk in single file behind the casket, the snow is virgin and untouched, the shadows that fall across it purple. She notes where flat blades of wheat-coloured grass poke through, like something from a Japanese illustration. Her eyes rake the background for
colour: there, on a low dogberry branch, a flare of red berries the waxwings and jays have missed. The air is still, the sound crisp. Occasionally someone coughs; more frequently there are sniffs and sniffles, though these are mostly subsumed by the sound of feet shuffling through salted snow and slush as the procession winds its way towards the freshly dug grave and the blue and white striped canopy that stands off to one side.

  The mourners are silent as cattle, their breaths billowing out in white plumes as they follow the progress of the coffin down the steep incline. Joe, fat as a grub in his snowsuit, and strapped into his backpack, has fallen asleep on Violet’s shoulder. She can feel his hot breath on her neck as she walks. It smells of apple juice. Lucy sticks close to her side, her mittened hand in Violet’s hand, her fur hat bristling in the cold, her cheeks like spring blossoms. Violet knows the seriousness of the occasion has caught her daughter’s attention. Lucy, her brown eyes dancing, keeps whispering to herself something Violet can’t quite catch.

  Violet looks ahead to the pallbearers: Fabian, Darcy, Ian and Brian. When they turn to follow the path towards the open grave, she can see Brian in profile. How well he looks. He is the only one without an overcoat. He is wearing his new black suit, and the toecaps of his shoes gleam like the hard lacquered shell of a beetle. Where everyone else looks drawn and pale, Violet thinks, his face is flushed. Where Geoff’s massive frame seems to have collapsed on itself over the previous few days, Brian’s seems to have acquired bulk. With his recently barbered hair combed back and his strong nose in profile, Violet thinks he looks positively aristocratic. Back straight, bare hands grasping the coffin’s brass handle, he is the only one of the bearers who takes the load effortlessly and proceeds at an even pace, not stumbling once. He reminds Violet somehow of a soldier who at long last has been called to battle. She tells herself she is being sentimental. Then wonders if he is thinking what she is thinking: how years before, they made love in this graveyard, slipping away from a party to do it, Brian lying on his back while Violet straddled him, hanging on to a headstone on either side.

  For a moment Violet indulges the thought that she should forgive him, take him back into her bed, take him back inside her body. But she knows it is all too little too late. The Brian she sees before her, who gives the appearance of one who has been reborn, is still a ghost, a figment of her mind. He is as the living are to the dead and the dead are to the living: an illusion. Violet knows she is seeing before her not the man who is but the man who should have been.

  Baby Power

  We packed quietly and quickly. No one in the sleeping house stirred when a frozen roast of moose fell out of the fridge freezer, banging and skidding across the linoleum floor like a curling rock. I took the tent, the eight-by-ten piece of plastic that would function as a fly-sheet, a five-pound bag of potatoes, a rain coat, a box of Weetabix and a mostly full bottle of Lamb’s. Violet packed a pound of bacon, copies of Vogue and Mademoiselle, several slabs of Nancy’s frozen fish and whatever clothes she had decided to bring. We both carried our sleeping bags under our arms. The difference in loads was obvious — to me at least: no sooner had I lifted my army-issue rucksack then the leather straps began cutting into my shoulders. Violet’s aluminium-framed mountain climber’s backpack, on the other hand, seemed to float upright behind her on a cushion of foam padding. It looked less like a weight-bearing contraption than an aid to good posture.

  Ready to go, we stood in the living room doorway, surveying the carnage from the night before. Empty beer bottles and glasses cluttered every surface. Ashtrays spilled their cargo of butts and roaches onto the coffee table and the mantelpiece. The speaker tops were coated with wax where candles, heated at the base, were stuck and then left to gutter. Record albums, looking like Aubrey Beardsley puddles, lay all over the floor, one or two bearing the dusty imprint of a sneaker sole. Both couches were occupied: one by an expensive-looking sleeping bag, its draw-string pulled tight around a protruding scraw of dirty blond hair. On the other lay Frank James, purveyor of medicinal herbs and fungi. Sound asleep, with his eyes showing slits of white and his head angled against the arm of the couch, he looked oddly beatified, transfigured by ecstasy. In the living room, curled up like a tree frog on the green vinyl loveseat, was Peter from Perth. Neither one of us remembered him coming in the night before.

  “Should we tell someone we are going?” Violet wanted to know.

  “Maybe we should leave a note.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “Ya, let’s leave them guessing.”

  And then we looked at each other slightly wide-eyed, as if we were acting out the opening scene of some horror B-movie, in which the first two innocent victims make a spontaneous decision that will have shocking consequences.

  At the bottom of Hamilton Avenue — both of us feeling a little surreal — we stopped to stare in wonder at the life-sized galvanized tin-man that for years had been the sole ornament in the window of Puddicombe’s Sheet Metal Works, before walking the last hundred yards to where New Gower Street turns into the first mile of the Trans-Canada Highway. We made our way in single file along the narrow shoulder between the road and the overpass guard rail, a space littered with thick strips of tire rubber, plastic bags and cigarette boxes that weather had bleached a uniform white. To our right lay the CN rail yard and the Waterford Valley. To our left, the shipyard dry docks, the nearly empty harbour and the waterfront buildings. It was one of the few industrial cityscapes in St. John’s.

  “Look,” said Violet, pointing to a metal sign that marked the start of the Trans-Canada proper: Rough Road Ahead. We crossed the overpass, walking to where the shoulder widened. We wanted oncoming cars to have enough room to pull in; we also wanted to give them the chance to take in the splendour of Violet in her flared mini-skirt and purple Converse high-tops.

  The air smelled of exhaust fumes and tar. Now and then the scent of laburnum blossoms drifted up from the gardens of the old Southside Road mansions, built in the late nineteenth century so that merchants and their families could buffer themselves from the fires and diseases that were rampant in the crowded downtown. According to the history books, St. John’s was once a bustling capital city, its sheltered harbour so full of schooners that you could walk from one side to the other across their plank decks. A likely story. About as likely as the one told about the first fishermen to come to Newfoundland shores, who, it was claimed, could not drop a bucket in the water without hauling up a mass of squirming cod.

  We got two lifts that morning, the first from a Texaco tanker truck heading for the Argentia ferry. The driver, a twitchy, ferret-faced man with a walrus moustache and dark glittering eyes, was none too happy that I sat closest to him on the bench seat. He kept bawling out “Wha? Wha?” whenever I tried to engage him in conversation. At first I thought that he couldn’t understand my accent. Then I thought he was deaf. Eventually I copped on that he just wasn’t interested in listening to me. He was fatally distracted. He kept leaning over and leering at Violet, saying, “Wass your name, moy duck?”

  “Violet.”

  “Wha?”

  “Violet.”

  “Wha?

  “Vi-Let!”

  “You’re some little honey.”

  The truck’s cab shuddered seismically each time we hit a pothole, the motion causing Violet’s skirt to ride back up her thighs. Violet kept pulling at the fabric in a vain attempt to pull it down to her knees, all the while smiling nervously. The driver leered and grinned.

  “Vi-Let, that’s some pretty name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Wha?”

  “I said, thank you.”

  “Wha?

  “Thank you, I said.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wha?”

  “I have a boyfriend. He’s sitting right beside you.”

  “You’re some little honey. Yes sir.”

  And on it went, with the driver slavering and making inane attem
pts at conversation all the way to the Avondale exit. When he finally stopped to let us out, he almost put his head in my lap to get a better view of Violet climbing down from the cab. Annoyingly, though probably as much from embarrassment as anything else, she smiled and thanked him profusely. I slammed the door as hard as I could, half-hoping I might smash his face.

  We barely had time to laugh him off before we were picked up again, this time by an older couple who were going most of the way into Avondale and who knew the whereabouts of the old mill. We were relieved to find out that our destination really existed — we had been told about it by a couple of German backpackers we had met one night in The Ship Inn; they had drawn us a map on the back of a cigarette box.

  “It’s just up here a ways,” said the middle-aged woman, turning around in her seat. The crepe paper skin under her eyes had the purple-white hue of a new potato stalk. She was very nervous. The man did not speak at all. I took his cue and decided not to speak unless spoken to. The woman was impressed with everything Violet told her, impressed that we were going camping together — the woman didn’t like camping. She was impressed that we lived in St. John’s. She had lived there once but found herself always afraid. It was too noisy at night for her: “all them sireens” keeping her awake. She said that she was constantly fearful someone would break in through the window of her basement apartment. “There’s some lot of queer people in St. John’s,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later, they dropped us at the turn off to a crater-pocked road that showed evidence of once having been paved. The woman pointed towards the horizon: “You’re close to it when you sees the old church spire. Best if you …” But the car pulled away as she was still speaking, the tires skidding and spraying loose stones over our feet. The woman looked desolate, as though all her conversation with us had been a desperate attempt to communicate something that we had missed completely.