by Ann Birch
There is a long silence. Charlie pours maple syrup over his cornbread, but he doesn’t seem to notice that it’s about to flood over the edge of his plate. Roberta reaches out and touches his arm. Only then does he set the pitcher down.
“Ed’s mad, and I don’t blame him. I’m trying to understand why you won’t accept help,” he says. Long pause. He pushes his plate of cornbread away. “In fact, I’ve been wondering what’s up with you lately.” He clears his throat, and his face turns red. “I hope this doesn’t sound as if I’m spying on you, Mom, but what’s with that stuff you had hidden in your study? I went in there yesterday to use your computer and there they were, two magazines tucked under the edge of the rug. I noticed them as I was moving your chair back from the desk.”
Oh my God, I thought I’d put them all in the recycling bin. Time for another lie. Or evasion. She says aloud, “Research.”
“For what, Mom? What’s a classics professor got to do with that crap? If you’re depressed and that stuff is helping you at some basic level, tell me, please.”
“I can’t tell you more. I’m sorry.”
“I guess I’m with Ed now,” he says. “I don’t understand all this. It seems like this whole family is falling apart, and there doesn’t seem to be a bloody thing I can do about it.” He grabs the plates off the table and bangs them into the sink.
Roberta goes to her study and sits staring at her computer. She has worked without a break on Mira for over a month. It’s been sold to Mayhem, and now there is nothing to do except endure the fallout, which is already burying them all like volcanic ash. She hears Charlie slamming pots around in the kitchen. Later, she smells tomato sauce. If only I could deal with things in such a straightforward way, she thinks. No sounds from Ed’s room. She goes down the hall and knocks on his door.
“Not now,” he says. Then adds, “We can talk later.”
Back in her study, she ponders. Maybe she should tell her sons what’s what. It might make things better. Or worse. Could it be worse? She realizes she has to speak to someone she can trust, someone who won’t judge her. She remembers Carl’s words. “You’ve got my number. Give me a call if you need me.” She can’t tell him the whole story over the phone. But maybe they could have a drink somewhere, if he can find time with all his worries about Claire. She finds his number in her address book and calls him.
He recognizes her voice immediately. “Rob,” he says, “I was just going to call you. Claire died yesterday.” His voice stalls for a moment. “There won’t be a funeral or a memorial service or anything, she didn’t want it. At the end, she just wanted to die and be free….”
“Anything I can do, Carl? Please.”
“Yes,” he says. “I need some help. Can you give me an afternoon one day soon?”
15.
“DOWN HERE ON THE LEFT,” Roberta says to the taxi driver. “Where the tamaracks are.”
“Tamarinds? Here in Canada?” her East Indian driver says, smiling at her in his rearview mirror. “Wife uses in cooking. Very tasty.”
“Good with pork,” Roberta acknowledges. They’re at Carl’s house now. No time for a lesson on “Trees in Canada 101.” “Here we are. Don’t bother turning into the driveway. I can get out right here.”
Carl lives in a pretty fifties bungalow on a large lot in the west end of Toronto. Roberta remembers the spectacular beds of lilies, but now in December, the flowers are hilled up, the lawn is bare, and the tall yellow tamaracks provide the only semblance of life.
Carl has obviously been on the lookout for her because no sooner does the taxi stop in front of his driveway, than he’s down the flagstone walk to greet her. In a minute, they’re in the living room. “Sit here,” he says, pointing to a Mission oak chair made comfortable with large, dark-red leather cushions. He has lighted a log in his fireplace, and he sits opposite her, a low, polished oak coffee table separating them. The furniture is like Carl: solid and handsome.
“I hope you like gin and tonic,” he says, pointing to a large glass pitcher. “Let’s fortify ourselves.” He pours from the jug and pushes a square cut-glass tumbler over to her.
“I’m so glad you asked me over,” Roberta says. “Not sure why you wanted me though. But as you can see, I’ve worn my jeans and flat boots and I’ve got my rubber gloves, so if it’s housecleaning, I’m prepared. But if you just want to talk to me about Claire, that’s fine too.”
“I’m not ready to talk yet. Still have to process a few things in my own mind. But I do need you to help me sort out some of her stuff. But we’ll get down to the nuts and bolts soon enough.” He takes a few sips of his drink. “First, I want to hear how you’ve been doing. I know you had something on your mind when you phoned, and I cut you off with my own problems.”
She tells him the whole story in as few sentences as possible, gulping down the gin to give her courage.
Carl twists his hands together. “Poor, poor James.”
“I can’t help wondering what I might have done to help him. Why did he feel he couldn’t tell me what was going on? He told Ed. Why not me? I keep thinking I should have been more sympathetic, I could have maybe…. Oh hell, I’m in a dark place I can’t climb out of.” She pulls out a tissue and wipes her streaming eyes.
“It’s the guilt, isn’t it? The legacy all suicides give to those who are left behind.” A pause while Carl picks up his drink again. “And the anger.”
“Oh yes, that too: The pile of debts, the secrets I’ve had to keep from my sons, the shame of that book, that stupid book….”
Carl reaches across the table to pick up her glass and refill it. “Let me get some chips from the kitchen to go with that,” he says. “I think it’s a time for ingesting as much sodium and saturated fats as we can.”
“We.” That’s the word he used. It means he’s with me, whatever happens.
He brings a huge bowl of all the forbidden snacks in her low-cholesterol diet: potato chips, nachos, and Cheezies. “Dig in,” he says as he puts the bowl close to her reach.
“What should I do, Carl?”
“About telling your sons about the book?”
She nods.
“Let’s consider. You could continue not saying anything. Or you could tell Ed that you’ll take his cheque after all, then squirrel it away in a separate account and give it back to him later. Or…” He pauses. “Or tell them the truth now.”
She looks at his square jaw and direct blue-eyed gaze.
“You’re right. I’ll get on it soon.” She feels relief. For a moment, she just wants to lean over and remove the tiny bit of nacho that’s caught in the wire of Carl’s braces.
“Young people can sometimes be more censorious than our generation,” he is saying. “Especially if they’re dealing with what they perceive as the aberrations of people our age. What would be A-okay for them, they simply won’t tolerate from us. So be prepared. But you’re doing the right thing. We both know that.”
“And you, Carl, what do you think — what do you really think — about my dirty solution to a dirty problem?”
“You did what you had to do. Perhaps you might have acted differently if you’d had more time to sort things out. But it’s done now.” He stands up and stretches a hand across the table, helping her to her feet. “You know, Rob, I asked you here today because you’re someone I trust. Doesn’t that answer the question you just asked me?”
She smiles at him. “So, tell me, what do you want me to do?”
“I need you to help me go through Claire’s clothes.”
“Let’s get started then. Where do you want me to begin?”
“The closet in our bedroom, please. I’ve left out garbage bags. Just dump it all into those, and I’ll drive us to St. Vincent de Paul when we’re ready.” He picks up the bowl of chips and sighs. “We’ll take these with us. I’ll work in the bedroom with you if you don’t mind
. Claire kept all her personal correspondence, Visa bills, bank books, and tax info in the top drawer of the dresser. I haven’t been able to open that drawer and deal with it. But with you there, I hope to be braver.”
The bedroom door is closed. As Carl pushes it open, Roberta sees a large room with good oak floors and maple furniture. There’s a peculiar smell though. Vomit and antiseptic, that’s what is.
He must have seen her sniffing. “Would it help if I opened a window?”
“A minute or two of fresh air might be good.” How on earth could Carl have stood the stink of the place?
He seems to read her thoughts. “We didn’t sleep together,” he says, looking down at the bed. “Not at the end. She just wanted to be alone. So I moved across the hall.” He gestures to an open door across the hallway through which Roberta catches a glimpse of a narrow bed with a high slatted oak back and walls lined with books.
She opens the closet. It’s musty. Obviously, the row of neatly arranged shirts, skirts, and pants has not been touched for weeks.
“She lived in sweatpants and tops for the last months of her life,” Carl says. “Just too tired to bother putting together an outfit. I’d lay out a sweater, scarf, and matching skirt on the chair here, but she’d just leave it for me to put away again.”
Claire was a frail little person, even before the cancer, and her clothes are diminutive and cutesy, puffy sleeves and swishy skirts, things a fourteen-year-old girl might wear. Roberta sweeps it all into bags. Then she notices a big box on a shelf above the other clothes. She opens it up. Inside is Claire’s wedding dress in beautiful peau de soie — or “poo de soy,” as they used to say in Summerton — and a long veil. She closes the box, but not before Carl notices.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know what it is. Just put it with the other stuff.”
He’s been sorting through letters in that top drawer he was so afraid of. Finally, he yanks the drawer out from the dresser and empties its contents on the bed. He stirs the pile of papers with his right hand. “I can’t believe all the stuff she kept,” he says. “There’s a letter from her uncle telling her he’s sending a Wettums doll for her seventh birthday. There’s a report card from Grade Nine praising her progress in French. And all the love letters I wrote to her. Look at this, would you?”
He shows a card to Roberta. It’s a reproduction of the Renoir painting of a pretty, dark-haired woman holding an opera glass as she looks down from a theatre box. “The dumb things I said when I was twenty-five.” He reads the message inside. “‘Every aria was yours.’ I wrote that after I’d gone to see La Traviata with a buddy. It’s my favourite opera, and all through it, I imagined myself singing those wonderful arias to Claire. And later, I did. I memorized the Italian for ‘Libiamo ne’ lieti calici,’ and sang it to her one night in a bar in Rapallo, and everyone around us joined in with the chorus.”
“I’d forgotten what a good voice you have,” Roberta says. “Do you remember singing ‘Come into the Garden, Maud’ when you were our TA in the Victorian Lit course at Trinity?”
“I guess I liked to show off in those days,” Carl says, putting the card back into the drawer. “And the people I sang for then didn’t even mean that much to me. So why didn’t I sing to Claire when she was dying? Why couldn’t I at least have put Verdi’s CD on for her?”
“I know, I know, Carl. The guilt just piles up. I keep wondering myself why I didn’t talk to James, I mean really talk. I loved him, but I could have told him that oftener. Paid more attention to him instead of drivelling on day after day, nagging him about getting out and about, oblivious to what he must have been suffering.” They turn back to their tasks. Roberta fills eight large plastic bags with Claire’s clothing. She takes the shoes from the rack and puts them in another bag. At last, the closet is empty. Only the musty smell remains.
“Big favour to ask now,” Carl says. “Can you deal with the bathroom? She kept all her stuff in the cupboard to the left of the sink.”
Roberta is almost afraid of what she’ll find in the cupboard. Perhaps some squalid reminder of Claire’s dying body? Or a half-empty bottle of birth-control pills? But the bathroom is spotless and smells of Javex. Obviously, Carl has done a thorough initial cleanup here.
As she stashes bottles of expensive perfume and lotion, all unopened, into bags, she remembers the bars of soap James stored on the top shelves of her own bathroom and wonders what Claire was thinking about with all these bottles. Was she trying to disguise the stink of her disease?
Carl is putting some letters into the shredder near the open door of the bedroom, and he sees her with a bottle of Armani’s Emporio. “I’d tell you to take away whatever you want for yourself, but I don’t think you wear perfume, do you?” Carl says.
“When did you notice that?” Roberta asks.
Carl doesn’t reply, just turns back to the shredder.
“Claire had a lot of this stuff,” Roberta says.
“People kept giving it to her, thinking it would cheer her up. But she stopped using it after her first rounds of chemo. You know, at the end of her life, I think she actually preferred the stink of chemicals to the scent of heliotrope.” He bangs the lid of the shredder down and presses the start button. The whine of the motor spares her from coming up with a response.
On their way out to his car with the bags for St. Vincent de Paul, he stops for a moment in the living room and puts a bundle of papers down. “I’ll deal with that later,” he says, “when we come back.”
In the hot and crowded aisles of the drop-off centre, they eventually find the IN counter and hand Claire’s clothes and perfumes over to the elderly volunteer who’s vetting the contributions. She opens the big box first, pulls out the wedding dress, and holds it up. Several shoppers stop in their tracks to stare. “This is so gorgeous,” she says. “Someone will love it.” And then she looks at them and asks, “Are you sure now you don’t want to keep it? For a daughter? Or a niece?”
Roberta glances at Carl. He’s swiping a hand across his forehead as if he’s about to faint from the heat. So she answers for him. “Please, just let someone enjoy it.”
The drive home is mostly silent, punctuated only by Carl’s intake of breath as the car beside him runs through a red light. Back in the living room, Roberta watches as he removes the Renoir card from the bundle and throws the remaining papers into the fireplace. There’s a quick puff of flame and a burst of crackling.
“If I’d saved these for the shredder,” he says, “I might have been tempted to save a lot more. This way, there’s no time for second thoughts.”
She stands close to him and takes his hand in hers, as they stare at the fire. “In one afternoon, I’ve thrown away the record of her life,” he says.
“Except for the card.”
“Yeah, happy times,” he says, a sob choking in his throat.
“Oh Carl, it must be almost the worst part of what you’ve been through in these last days,” she says. “I still haven’t been able to get rid of James’s favourite sweater. It’s in my bottom drawer now.”
He turns and hugs her. For a moment, she feels secure, purged.
Back home, she goes straight to the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser and takes out James’s sweater. It’s a soft beige cashmere that brought out the gold highlights in his red hair. Got to get rid of it, she says to herself. She buries her nose in it, trying to remember his smell. It’s there, the ever-so-faint minty aura of his deodorant and the soap he liked. As she breathes it in, she notices the small moth holes in the right sleeve.
She folds the sweater carefully, smoothing its softness with her right hand, returns it to the tissue paper it was wrapped in and lays it back in the drawer.
16.
CHARLIE OPENS AND SHUTS kitchen cupboard doors while he yells in a perfect French-Canadian accent, “Pas du moutarde Dijon? Quelle catastrophe!”
“Pas DE,” Ed says, from the breakfast room where he’s reading The Gazette. Though his French accent is pure Anglo, his grammar is impeccable. Roberta wonders who would be more intelligible in a Québecois eatery.
She is cutting up apples and grating cheese, scraping the skin on her fingers in the process. She usually leaves the cooking to Charlie, and she’d really love to be sharing the newspaper with Ed, a glass of wine beside her. But since tonight is the night she is going to reveal all to her sons, she has decided to make an apple cheese crisp, hoping that everyone’s favourite dessert will sweeten the news.
“What’s up, Ma?” Ed asks, pushing a flap of his red hair out of his eyes.
“What do you mean, what’s up?” Roberta asks.
“You’re not usually in the kitchen with Charlie. That’s his territory.”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s weird, you cooking,” Charlie says. “And apple cheese crisp too. Totally out of character. So what’s up?”
“Okay, okay, you know I’m up to something. So I’ll tell you now.” She whacks the last bits of cheese from the grater. “Come on into the breakfast room, Charlie, and we’ll have it out.”
When they’re all seated around the table, she says, “I didn’t accept your cheque, Ed, because I’ve already made enough money to start paying off your father’s debts.”
“Come on, Ma,” Ed says. “You’re not about to have us believe that royalties for The Cretan Manuscripts are that good. We know it’s a niche market for that kind of literature.”
“There are other niche markets,” she says.
“Meaning?”
“I’ve got forty thousand dollars as an advance for writing a sleazy novel for a sleazy publishing house, Mayhem by name. I took an old story and adapted it to modern times.”
