Image Decay

by Mark Lisac

  He parked one street over from the old house, wanting to come up on it gradually. He walked down the block to the corner and stopped to look into a yard where he heard odd voices. Then he saw what had drawn his curiosity. One of the voices belonged to a whitish parrot with a pointed lemon-yellow crest sweeping back from the top of its head.

  A woman with a round face and glasses held the parrot on her hand. A man who was probably her husband walked over to join her. Rabani guessed they were well into their seventies.

  The woman saw him looking over the white picket fence at the fringe of a lilac bush and said hello. “This is Esmeralda,” she said, indicating the bird. “Can you say hello, Esmeralda?” The parrot shifted its feet, looked sidelong at Rabani without committing itself to a full gaze and said “Hello” in a cross between a croak and a screech.

  The man joined the woman and the bird. He had glasses too, and an indulgent, amused smile. “Esmeralda is enjoying her afternoon walk,” he said. “We take her out and trust her not to fly away. She did twice, but she came back in about fifteen minutes. You’re used to the good food here, aren’t you, Esmeralda?”

  The woman said, “Oh, she would come back anyway. She likes us. That’s why she stays. But we like to see her enjoying her food and happy.”

  “Yes,” the man said, looking at the woman. “That’s how to keep people around. Keep them well fed and they won’t stray very far.”

  “But not so well fed they become fat and just sit around all day,” the woman said.

  Rabani heard an accent from somewhere in Eastern Europe. He wondered if they had picked it up from their parents in Canada or if they had escaped the destruction of the war and made a new home here. He looked around the yard. A cherry tree stood in the middle, recognizable by the leaves still hanging onto the branches. The fences were lined with the dry autumn remains of what he thought were impatiens, columbines, delphiniums, and an occasional rose.

  “You have a beautiful yard,” he said.

  The woman smiled and replied, “Thank you. That’s what you get if you know how to feed the gardener not too much or too little. It’s easy when he is happy to have the same things most of the time.”

  The man smiled and raised his eyebrows. “You never know. Someday he might decide he wants goulash instead of sausage and sauerkraut. Maybe fried potatoes instead of boiled.”

  “You hear that, Esmeralda?” she said. “Maybe we should write a menu like in a restaurant. Would you like one too?”

  The bird cocked its head and shifted its feet. It apparently saw no reason to reply. They talked about the weather and how it had been fine until the last few days and would probably be fine again for a few weeks before the first snow arrived. Rabani liked the way the couple did not ask him what he was doing walking around the neighbourhood. For them, he was company. Maybe they had a lot of other people in their lives or maybe they did not. Maybe they had a normal working life in their background or maybe they had lived through horrors in the war. They seemed happy to have each other and the bird. He wished them a good day and walked up to the next corner. He realized they were company for him as well, but he wasn’t sure whether he had taken a few minutes to talk with them because he enjoyed it or more because it was a way to put off seeing the house.

  When he approached it, he saw the old Manitoba maple in the front yard had been taken down. He knew the tree had been getting unruly and frail but he still missed it. A small long-needled pine had been planted near the old tree’s spot. The frame around the front door and windows had been repainted blue instead of the green that he remembered. He looked down the side of the house and could see a sliver of the backyard. The smell of damp caragana leaves flooded into his senses. The sidewalk was developing cracks. It was still the old concrete laid down during the construction of the neighbourhood. He remembered small happinesses. He thought he could see Alex playing catch with a red and blue sponge rubber ball. Then he could see himself, three or maybe four years old, riding a tricycle up the sidewalk to greet Alex as he walked back from school. Red plastic streamers hung from the ends of the handlebars. Alex was grinning at the sight of his younger brother. His light brown hair stood up in tufts, slightly unruly even then. Rabani felt his chest tighten. He felt like he might cry, but didn’t. He looked up past the tops of the old elms growing in the boulevard between the sidewalk and the road and saw medium grey clouds sliding against the background of light haze. Maybe the sky will cry for me, he thought.

  He walked to the end of the block and doubled around to his car. He had changed his mind about clearing out Alex’s apartment, deciding to put it off until the next day. Back at the office he closed his door and telephoned the funeral home where his and Alex’s mother had been taken. He agreed to go there next morning to make the final arrangements. Then he looked up Adela’s number in his card file, suddenly not sure he could remember it accurately. It took three tries spaced ten minutes apart before she answered. He said he needed to have dinner with her and hoped she would be free. She did not ask him whether anything was wrong or comment on the short notice, but he told her his brother had died. She was silent a few seconds and said, “I’m very sorry. It was unexpected?”

  “A traffic accident,” he said.

  They met at a small Vietnamese place a few blocks from Adela’s apartment. Rabani chose it rather than his usual places. He did not want to have dinner in a restaurant he associated with happy times or that seemed celebratory. They ate beside a wall one table away from a window that soon became spotted with drops from a light drizzle. Adela occasionally prompted him with questions about his brother but mostly let him talk about whatever came to mind. He left long silences, comforted by her presence more than by her words.

  “He felt like he didn’t belong here after the accident that left him with a brain injury,” Rabani told her. “Not in this city and not in this province. He said he felt like a stranger here. He wondered whether people really accepted him, but he also wondered how much he could really want to belong to a place that did not feel like home. He seemed to have some idea of what home would feel like. His apartment felt a little like home for him but it wasn’t enough. When I asked him once to describe it, he couldn’t name a place or even say what would make him feel comfortable. All he said was that I would be there.”

  Over the occasional clack of plates being set down or removed, and through the quiet voices at other tables—much quieter than in bigger mainstream restaurants, Rabani noticed—Adela told him that losing relatives was difficult. “I worried constantly about Roberto when he was taken away. Now I worry about him because in some ways he has never really come back.”

  “How does he feel about living in Canada?” Rabani asked.

  “He gets along well in some ways. Certainly he is as happy as I am not to be caught in a guerrilla war. But he always appears restless. We left Nicaragua and the fighting he was forced into. I’m not sure he completely left it behind. Being a child soldier, a large part of his life involved fighting. Is it possible he can leave that behind? I don’t know.”

  “Are you seeing him do things that worry you?”

  “He is my little brother. I am the only person responsible for him. I worry. If anything happened to him I would ask what I could have done differently. Is that what you are thinking? Are you going to blame yourself that your brother was hit by a truck in the middle of a road on a dark night?”

  “No. It was an accident. The only way to prevent it would have been to keep him constantly under watch and virtually locked in his room at night. Guilt applies when you could reasonably have done something to prevent a tragedy. For his death I feel only sadness.”

  They talked desultorily through dinner and over iced coffee afterward. Rabani was comforted less by the conversation than by being with her. When they left the restaurant the light rain had stopped. They walked along a wet sidewalk, dappled with water pooled here and there in slight concave depressions in the concrete. Sometimes you don’t fully know
the reality of an object until something brings it into relief, creates perspective, Rabani thought. The first accident had done that with Alex, bringing out new ways for him to look at the world. He thought about what the accident and his response to it had revealed about himself too. But he did not say this.

  He felt the brush of Adela’s arm every few seconds through his jacket. He heard the click of her shoes on the concrete. He realized that he felt at peace walking beside her. He had already realized in the restaurant that she was far more reluctant than to talk about her life than he was to talk about his. She generally told him what she observed, not what she felt.

  Two blocks east, another meeting was going on in a small Chinese restaurant. It was more than a café. Vermilion screens and lanterns lent an air of formality. Jade green accents and two ink drawings of boats near a bamboo-laden shore highlighted the off-white walls. Other diners were busy with their meals. Becker and Radescu had chosen the table farthest away from them. They were talking about the strange project with the photos and about how it had got stranger. First Ostroski had apparently taken away some photographs. Then Frank Jeffries had shown unexpected and undue interest in the collection, or rather in a small and unknown part of the collection.

  “He wanted to know about pictures of Hesperia Tindall and whether Jack was showing interest in them or even taking some away. He also wanted to know which box numbers held any pictures of her. Here’s the weird part. He asked a few times whether any of the pictures showed the old bat touching anyone or with an arm around anyone or even seeming to stare intensely at anyone. But I was not supposed to tell you what he was asking about or doing. Not anything. And here’s the really weird part. He asked me whether you and Jack seemed to know each other and get along well. It was almost like he suspected the two of you were somehow in cahoots.”

  “Yes, well, Frank has a conspiratorial view of the world. I guess you get that way if you’re inclined to traffic in constant small conspiracies yourself. It’s Jack now, is it? I didn’t realize there was some charm under that crusty exterior.”

  She laughed. “Oh, he’s charming all right. Sort of the way the little cactus plant next to my window is. But he tells some interesting stories about Hollywood and the early days of television. He’s seen a lot. He talks about those things if you’re patient enough and don’t press him too hard.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  “John, there’s something else I have to tell you. Mr. Jeffries sounded angry the last time I talked with him on the phone. I got the impression he was sure that I’d see more pictures he was interested in and there weren’t any. Then he asked again about the ones Jack may have taken away.”

  “Ostroski may be too mischievous for his own good. We made an arrangement to get some photographs back from him. By we I mean the government. They could have been a bit embarrassing if they’d got out. He didn’t have any reason to keep them from us except maybe as a bargaining chip. He’s going to receive a decent quid pro quo for them. I’m still not convinced that was his only motive in keeping them. He strikes me as someone who likes to stir things up.”

  “A shit disturber.”

  “That’s him to a tee. I’m thinking it’s a hard habit to break.”

  He looked at the tranquil boat scenes on the far wall, and then at the fringed lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Then he squared his gaze on her, first on her full lips, then with an effort on her mascara-shadowed eyes.

  “Ginny. I have to tell you we can’t meet anymore.”

  Her head tilted just enough for him to see the slight change in angle. Her lips came open but she said nothing.

  “I really care for you. But after this blowout business my face is more recognizable. It’s probably going to become more recognizable still. There’s no place we’ll be able to go and not have people recognize me and start talking. That won’t be good for me or for you. You don’t want to be the woman with a reputation.”

  She sat silently, absorbing the shock. Then her eyes narrowed and her mouth flattened into a knowing smile as if he had shown himself to be what she’d half expected all along.

  “I get it,” she said. “You’re a TV star now. Onward and upward. No women on your arm except your ranch aristocracy wife. At least as long as you’re in cabinet.”

  “Please, keep your voice down.”

  She sighed. “Sure. I’ll keep it down. I know what’s good for me. A married man isn’t.”

  “It isn’t like that,” he said.

  “It’s always like that.”

  “If things were different ... I can’t tell you everything. I have to keep my job. It’s the only leverage I have to make a difference. There’s something I need to do.”

  “Come off it, Mr. Becker. I’ve seen ministers in office flings. The only thing any of them ever needed to do was get re-elected. The two I know of who let the folks back home learn they had left their wives for someone in their office didn’t even get to run for the party nomination in the next election. They knew better than to try.”

  “I won’t argue with you. Just know that I really do care for you. It isn’t wise now for you to stay on my staff. I’ll make sure you’re placed in another office, with someone I’m sure will be good to work for.”

  She kept staring at him. He could not tell whether the words were sinking in or bouncing off her. After about half a minute she said, “I suppose I should walk out of here in a huff, maybe even feeling hurt. I think I’m going to wake up next week and realize you’re not worth it. So buy me the most expensive cognac in this place. I saw some on the drinks menu. It’s time I learned to like cognac. I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know about men from you. I may as well see if I can figure out what the appeal is in high-class drinks.”

  22.

  THE DOGS HAD BEEN FED. THE BECKERS WERE HAVING breakfast together for a change. John had decided at the last minute to stay home an extra half-hour. Arlene had made no comment. Thick toast with Seville orange marmalade for her, ham and two fried eggs for him. Coffee from a French press for both, a recent upgrade in kitchen implements and taste.

  He began to tell her about his suspicions, almost surprised that he was blurting out the words while wondering if the chance to talk to her about this was really why he had chosen not to drive straight into the capital.

  “I think Frank Jeffries has an interest in the Ostroski photograph collection. I mean in a handful of photos he thinks were in there. I think also he planted the idea of sending me out to Broken Pines so that he could get his hands on them while I was out of town.”

  Arlene bit a piece of toast delicately, keeping the marmalade from spreading on her lips, looked into the brown depths of her coffee and said, “How do you know this?”

  “One of my admin assistants was assigned to sit with Ostroski as he reviewed the collection. It turns out she was also watching for Jeffries. She must have thought twice about it and told me after I got back.”

  “And she was really supposed to be watching for you?”

  “For the government. We didn’t trust Ostroski not to remove photos he might take an interest in.”

  “I see. This was Ginny?”

  “Yes.” He thought he had succeeded in not hesitating before answering in his most neutral tone of voice. Then he thought about gossip, how it spread like weeds under concrete and asphalt.

  “What could have interested him about a collection of old photographs?”

  “That’s what I don’t know. You knew Jeffries from university days. Can you think of anything from years ago that would be a reason for him to want pictures so badly? He went to the lengths of planting a spy to be on the lookout for them.”

  Now she turned her head up and to the side to face him, eyes narrowing slightly against the morning sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. “Frank liked to keep secrets. I suppose you’ve encountered that in your dealings with him. He also tended to be involved in things you would never suspect.”

>   “I’m given to understand that the particular photographs drawing his attention were of Hesperia Tindall.”

  “Ah.” She waited but he made no response. “You haven’t heard the rumours?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps gossip would be a better word. But gossip implies wide circulation. Rumour may fit better in this case.”

  He saw the morning light from the sun low on the horizon highlighting wrinkles around her eyes and a few strands of grey in her hair. He thought the new depth to her surface looks was attractive.

  “The rumour about Hesperia Tindall,” she said, “was that she was a lesbian.”

  It took him a few seconds to process that before he said, “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And why would that lead Frank Jeffries to be wondering what photographs of her were in Ostroski’s collection? It’s not as if he would have been posing the lieutenant-governor naked with a girlfriend.”

  “No. But one of the propellants behind the rumours was her tendency to display a little physical affection, even at public events. An arm around a waist. Holding hands a little too long. That sort of thing.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It could be enough for Frank. He can be obsessive about protecting reputation. He may want to destroy any kind of evidence of something he doesn’t want known.”

  John looked at her blankly. “I don’t get it. She’s been dead for years. And it’s not as if we’re living in the Fifties or in Oscar Wilde’s day. It’s generally known that Billington’s EA is lesbian. It’s generally accepted on the inside that one of our MLAs and one of our cabinet ministers is queer.”