He stood again, walked slowly to the stove. Studied it for a moment. “The wife and I have actually been talking about selling the place. That’s when we can talk about anything.”
I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t make any hasty—”
“The big discovery was how little else we ever talked about, over the years … outside of himself. Now we don’t dare talk about that. That’s pretty well off limits. Which means it’s kind of hard to find anything to talk about anymore … anything that matters to the both of us.”
“You need time,” I ventured.
“It’s always harder for the mother,” he said. He returned to the table then. “But what about yourself, Father? You didn’t come all the way out here for a rehash of all that.”
“Well …”
“Tell me all about your trip to Ontario. That whatever-it-was-called. Where you disappeared to.”
“Braecrest.”
At the Toronto airport there was a pale, fat seminarian holding up a sheet of paper with MAKASKEL in large crude letters. I assumed he meant me and walked over. He smiled.
“They told me to watch for red hair,” he said.
I nodded. How much does he know?
“You’re Father Duncan?”
“I am.” The red priest, Pelirrojo.
“I’m Ron. I’m to drive you to Guelph. They said you could give me directions once we get there.”
The directions were carefully typed on a sheet of paper in the brown envelope. There was a smaller white envelope that contained money. There was also a note.
There should be enough here to cover incidentals. You’ll need to buy a few things. This should be enough for everything.
These are the directions to the place once you’re off the 401. The driver won’t necessarily know the way. And he won’t know the purpose of your trip. God bless you. I will be praying for you. Before we know it you’ll be back here, good as new.
Y’rs in Christ.
+AE.
Underneath the typed initials he scrawled his name. Alex.
Braecrest. Once the private home of a wealthy businessman. The main building was of imposing red brick and had a green copper roof. Cornices and pillars and darkened windows. Vast lawns and sculpted bushes, discreet flat-roofed modern buildings of pale brown brick tucked away among groves of budding maples, birch and poplar. Towering basswoods, ripe with rusty buds. A monastic ambience. Quiet men wandering, singly or in pairs. Dead silence, but for the sound of a single-cycle engine somewhere in the distance. Perhaps a leaf blower, clearing up the evidence of winter’s ravages. I’m told I have to share a room. It’s policy.
I said that I could live with it.
The physical discomfort didn’t seem to last long. It was over by day four. The headaches and sweats, gone. No more grinding in the stomach. My clothing didn’t hurt anymore. And for a few days that was enough to sustain a feeling of improvement, almost optimism. I only noticed the deeper hangover as the days went by.
That, I also got accustomed to.
Each morning I would wake predictably, as if roused, at 4:45, deep, deep anxiety creeping slowly through my confusion. The profound uneasiness someone labelled angst. Was it Heidegger or Sartre? How they’ve grappled for the proper word, all those thinkers. Anguish. Dread. Despair projected on the wall, spindly moving shadows, etchings from some outside light I never did identify. And the unfamiliar sound of another living presence nearby, the quiet breathing, just below the threshold of a snore. Jude, the meek and ever-considerate roommate, managing to suppress even the unconscious evidence of his existence.
Each morning at 6:25 he’d touch my shoulder.
“Time for the gym-nauseam,” he’d say.
† † †
“The wife thinks I need something like that,” Danny said. “A spell drying out. Not Ontario. Closer to home. She thinks the old monastery probably, over on the mainland. She brought it up a couple of times.”
“It would have to be your decision.”
“That’s for sure. But the way I see it, there’s a few things I have to sort out for myself before anything like that.”
I just watched.
“There’s the big ‘why,’” he said. “Why why why why why. It’s all I keep asking myself.”
“Do you have any idea?” I asked carefully.
“I just know one thing for sure. I’m not buying that shit about them closing the harbour. There’s more to it than that. Mullins can preach all he likes. But I know the kid. He wasn’t going to go and do something like that over politics.”
A gust of rain spattered the window with a sound like sand.
The gym at Braecrest was a busy, unpleasant place, animal sounds mingling with metallic clangs and bangs, human smells and chemical cleaners intermingled. The odours of institutionalized aggression, weary-looking men busy on stationary bicycles and treadmills and mats, exercising in slow motion. Jude and I would walk around the perimeter, swinging our arms by our sides and in circles, over our heads in stretches. We were about the same age.
“Just look at the poor t’ings,” Jude said on our first morning. “You wonder what they t’ink they’re accomplishing at this stage.”
“So where are you from, Jude?”
“Originally … I’m from Newfoundland.”
We’d walk around the perimeter of the gymnasium and finally out and through the lush green footpaths of the vast Braecrest estate, each alone within his privacy, to watch the sunrise.
How hard it is to recover any sense of why I was in Honduras or Creignish or Braecrest or anywhere else during this long journey away from where I started. My sacred vocation. My vows of service. A blur of sacramental encounters, in retrospect like one-night stands. Have I ever really paid attention to the mumbled evasions on the other side of the confessional screen? Have I ever really spoken my true feelings about the ignorant, intoxicated bliss of the marriage ritual? Or the phony, infantile expectations of the sacraments? Did I ever really care about the right to birth? And what about the rights thereafter? After we impose life on the unborn, then what? If we have a right to the beginning of a life, what about the middle and the end? And do we have a right to risk or, finally, reject the life we never asked for? To just lie down and wait … for … what?
Danny Ban said: “For a while it was just the anger. Going around just pissed off all the time. Not sad, if you can believe it. Just … pissed right off. Then it hit me, standing by his grave one day. It was Christmas. I went there bitter as cat shit. How could he do that? Taking the easy way out. Then I realized. No, boy. What you did took courage. What you did took guts. Whatever your reasons were.”
I nodded.
“Of course, according to Mullins and the rest of you … if he wasn’t crazy when he did it, he’s probably in hell.” The eyes were damp and his large hand suddenly grasped my sleeve. “But what if you’re in hell already? What if your life turns into a little slice of hell? And it isn’t of your own making? What are you supposed to do then, eh?”
I think it was at that moment all my words dried up.
“It was after that I could feel the sadness. I think it was better to be mad. You get over being mad, eventually. But this damned sadness just won’t go away.”
“So, what do you do for a living?” Jude asked during our first walk.
“A bit of this and a bit of that,” I replied.
“I hear what you’re saying,” he said quietly. He stooped quickly and snatched at something on the ground, then he stood, turning a rusty object in his fingers. “This is a sign,” he said, smiling.
“A sign of what?”
He handed me a small pin, and when I turned it over, it was a yellow happy face.
“Kitsch. Some smart person threw that away,” I said, maliciously tossing it aside.
“Ah, no,” he said softly, moving to retrieve it.
“You have a sister living in Toronto,” the medical director said.
He was tall and young and pale, wi
th black hair slicked back. The sign on his door said Dr. Arrowsmith. You wonder where a name like that comes from. Maker of arrows, I suppose. A medieval occupation.
“I’ve never known an Arrowsmith before,” I said, to make conversation.
There was a trace of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t lift his eyes from the page in front of him. “Are you close?”
“Next of kin. I guess you can’t get much closer than that.”
“Yes, I suppose.” He turned the page. “There’s a note here. You’d prefer not to be singled out as … clergy.”
“If it isn’t a problem.”
He shrugged. “Any particular reason why?”
“Any particular reason why my profession should be conspicuous?”
“No. But I’d like to know if this means that you’re in … some kind of transitional phase.”
“I don’t have an answer for you.”
“You do realize you’re sharing a room with another priest?”
“So I gathered.”
“You don’t have a problem with that? We could move you.”
I shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter.”
“Good.”
Danny sighed heavily, stood with difficulty.
“Got to take a slash,” he said, then moved off slowly down the hall. But when he returned, I could smell the familiar fumes. Rum.
He isn’t even trying to be deceptive, I thought. You can hide the ambiguous reek of vodka. But not rum.
He sighed again. “It’s probably just the time of year. This is the first spring since I moved back here I haven’t had traps in the water. Matter of fact … it’s the first time in more than a hundred years one of us shore road MacKays don’t have traps in the water. It’s something when you think of it.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Some nights you wake up and it hits you,” he said, staring at the table. “You feel some desperate, I can tell you. Like you dropped the ball somehow.” He was shaking his head. “I suppose it’s everything coming together. Himself gone. Me stuck in the house with this goddamned disease. Maybe if I could be busy. If I was able to get out there, fishing like before.”
His dog came out of another room, paused by his knee for a moment, studied his face, then eased himself under the table and settled by our feet, curled up with his snout resting on a haunch.
“I can’t explain what it feels like, out there on the water with the sun coming up. Then you realize, it’s all over. I have to imagine it was something like that with the young fellow. All that talk about the future. A feeling of something being … destroyed. But that wouldn’t have been enough. There was something else. Something he couldn’t face. Not for another minute.”
And then there was just the sound of the wind and the clock.
Even though it was only April, it felt like May at Braecrest. The air was damp and cool and rich with the fragrances of new growth. Spring birds chirruped cheerfully. Chickadees dee-dee-deed somewhere near but unseen. We’d stop at a look-off where they’d installed a rustic bench, cut out of logs. We’d sit.
“That’s the escarpment,” Jude said once, pointing to a high ridge cutting across our line of vision from the southeast.
“Is that so?”
“It’s one of the defining topographical features of southern Ontario,” he said softly, almost as though talking to himself. “Actually, it’s one of the most interesting geological sites in the world.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Starts down near Niagara Falls and goes aaaaalll the way up to the end of the Bruce Peninsula.”
“No kidding.”
“Seven hundred and twenty-five klicks. Loaded with fossils. Hundreds of millions of years old. I taught high school geology in Ottawa.”
“Well, well.”
“The amazing thing is that there’s a system of hiking trails all along it. I often wanted to take a month off and walk the whole darn thing. That would be awesome. Hiking and camping all the way.”
“I don’t suppose there’s much stopping you,” I said.
“True.”
He fell silent then, obviously thinking about it.
“The wife thinks it has something to do with the girlfriend. That Sally. You knew she dropped him?”
“I figured.”
He shook his head. “It goes to show how much the wife knows about the MacKay men.”
“They were close, though,” I said.
“Ohhhhhh, yes. They’ve been going around together since they were kids. First time I set eyes on her I couldn’t believe it. Homely as a brush fence she was. Then she blossomed. Filled right out. Turned into one good-looking girl.”
The dog stirred. Danny reached down and scratched between his ears.
“But it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing there to explain something like that. No way.”
The wind and rain outside were getting louder. Or maybe it was the suffocating silence of the house whenever he stopped speaking.
“Of course, there was the thing in the hall in Creignish. But we talked about that. He was okay after that. Your reaction helped. Thank you for that. I understand there’s still talk, but, by Jesus, I better not hear any of it.”
“That had nothing to do with it.”
“I shouldn’t be bothering you with all this,” Danny said after a long pause. “The doctor in town was saying I should be talking to a therapist.”
I wanted to reach out, to reassure. But I couldn’t even do that.
“What could a therapist do, anyway? You can’t take the milk out of the tea, right?”
“You have to make up your own mind.”
“Every time I think of going to one of them shrinks, I keep thinking of what the old man would say if he could see me. A good swift boot in the arse is all I need. That’s what he’d say, and he wouldn’t be far off the mark.” He laughed. “I suppose you saw a few shrinks yourself, in that place … in Ontario.”
The psychiatrist was a thin, athletic man, probably a decade younger than me. His name was Dr. Shaw, but he looked South Asian. He had my file in front of him. Look upon this as an opportunity, he was saying. A gift. Everybody should get an opportunity to take stock of things at some point, crisis or not. We all have our demons. I thought: He thinks he knows what I will know when I am finished here, and he believes that I will feel a certain awe and gratitude. This foresight makes it possible for him to overlook my sullen silence now.
“Your name,” I said. “Isn’t it Scottish?”
“I invented it. I used to be S–h–a–h. I’m in the business of reinventing people.” He smiled.
“I want to make a couple of things clear,” I said.
“Of course.”
“I didn’t come here by choice. And I have no idea what this place can do for me.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” he said. Then he stood. “Let me introduce you to your group. Just first names. No details necessary.”
“Thank you.”
There were half a dozen men of different ages and backgrounds, yet somehow similar. I wrapped my arms around my rib cage.
“This is Duncan,” the group leader said. “He’ll be with us for a while.”
“HELLO, DUNCAN,” they said in chorus.
I sat down. The shrink left quietly.
The leader asked if I would like to talk a bit about myself.
“Some other time,” I said.
“I’m Scott and I’m an alcoholic,” he announced, unasked.
There was a supportive murmur from the others.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. “You’re among friends.”
They spoke about addiction as a common condition we all shared. A feature of some common culture we must try to come to terms with. Repeating with frequency that we are alcoholics, or addicts. I was reminded of how much I loathe the word “we” when used by strangers. It is coercion. But I sensed they got a certain feeling of comfort from the inclusiveness of “we.” And
in the constant assertions: I’m an alcoholic. I tried it once and there was a feeling of easy and unexpected progress. Like after you’ve said “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I confess to the almighty God and to you, Father.” The false righteousness that comes after you’ve said “I’m sorry” even when you aren’t.
The room was always too warm.
“What do you do for a living, Duncan?” somebody asked.
I was stumped for a moment. “Human resources,” I said eventually.
Off to one side, Jude eyed me, eyebrows raised.
Danny went to the bathroom again, apologizing.
“It’s worse at night,” he said. “I’m up at least once an hour, wringing the mitt. That’s what the old man used to call it when he’d be pissing over the side of the boat. ‘I’m just wringin’ out the ol’ fishin’ mitt.’ For me it’s the old prostrate. They say it swells up on you. I suppose that’ll be next thing. Prostrate cancer.”
“Prostate,” I corrected.
“Prostrate sounds more accurate,” he said.
He laughed and shuffled away.
† † †
One member of the group was obviously a journalist. I felt I’d seen him somewhere before, then realized it was probably on television. He would never stand when he talked. He’d lean back on the hard metal chair, ass forward, legs stretched out, arms folded, head cocked to one side. Journalism is fuelled by alcohol and other drugs plus vanity, he declared during one of the sessions. A lethal cocktail.
But he talked mostly about a harsh father, a prairie farmer. He spoke dramatically about the desperation of surviving on the land, and about feeling trapped and stunted, longing for the day he’d get away. But he never really arrived anywhere he felt he could belong. Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa. Always imagining that he’d find his purpose in some kind of critical mass of energy and talent when he arrived at the next, larger place. But he always remained the outsider. His voice trembled.
The room was silent as a grave.
Finally, he settled in Toronto and got drunk and stayed that way until certain vital organs started giving out.
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