“Sorry, Father, I’ve been missing Mass lately.”
“You’re forgiven,” he said. “For your penance, a good act of contrition and three fingers of Balvenie for your confessor.”
“You’re on,” she said.
“So is it anyone I know?” Duncan asked. He was sitting on her sofa now, studying his drink with a pastoral expression on his face.
“I think so,” she replied from the kitchen. “I think you’ll like him,” she said, and was instantly disappointed by the lack of originality.
He raised an eyebrow. “They’re all likeable at first, aren’t they?”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Tell me one good thing about him.”
“How about three: he’s intelligent; he’s worldly; he’s a grown-up.” Now she was standing in the archway between the kitchen and the larger space that served as dining room and den, hands concealed beneath the apron she was wearing. “And he’s very good-looking. That’s four.”
He made a grimace of approval.
“He says he remembers you from university.”
“That’s going back a bit,” he said. “So what’s his name?”
“JC Campbell. He was part of the gang, back in the seventies.”
“Hmmm. That rings a bell. JC. Yes, I remember. Serious, he was.”
Now he was engaged, studying her face with new intensity. “How much has he told you about himself that’s real?”
“Everything I need to know,” she said.
“I see,” he said, resuming his examination of the drink. “So what’s he been doing with himself all this time?”
“He went off to the States. Worked in television all over the world. Now he’s back.”
“Baggage?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wives, kids, war wounds—you know what I mean.”
“None of the above as far as I can tell. Well, almost none. A child he never knew, maybe.”
Duncan sighed. “So how did this come about?”
And she explained. The accidental meeting in the subway station; the peculiar visit on Good Friday, pleading Sextus’s case. Dinner on Easter Sunday (censored for her brother). She emphasized the cautious management of expectations.
But over dinner, perhaps enthused by wine, she released a torrent of previously unspoken thoughts and feelings: the renewal of her confidence; how time they spent together seemed to linger in her memory like the aftertaste of something special; the spontaneity of their laughter.
“I’d quite forgotten how great it feels to laugh. So much I’d forgotten about just getting up in the morning and imagining another person, and knowing that you’re in their thoughts and that there’s a place where you’re more than the sum of what you are in your own mind … even if it’s only in someone’s imagination.”
“Yes,” he said. He seemed distracted.
“I don’t know if I’m making any sense. I’m sorry to be going on like this.” She picked up her fork, then put it down again, realizing that the dinner had gone cold.
“You’re making sense,” he said.
“We’ve actually talked about a trip home together this summer. What are your plans?”
“I’ll be staying here,” he said. “You’d go to the old place?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, it must be serious,” he said and smiled. “Has he told you how we met, in university?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing specific.”
“Near the end of his first year. He came to my room, said he’d heard that I was seminary bound. Word of something like that would get around in those days. The old priests would single you out if they thought … Anyway. He asked me straight out. Then he told me that it was something he was thinking about.”
“Go away,” she said. “Get out.”
“I thought he was serious. But then early in year two, around October I think, he disappeared. There were rumours of a scandal. I never heard of him again, till now.”
He stood then, folded his napkin and walked into the kitchen. She leaned back to see what he was doing there.
“I’m going to mark your calendar,” he said. “Yes … on the last page. January 1999. I’m going to mark the date, January … sixth.”
“What’s January sixth?”
“The Epiphany,” he said.
“What’s special about the Epiphany?”
“My three favourite feast days. Easter. Pentecost. Epiphany.”
Then he was back at the table, and he had the bottle of Balvenie.
“We’ll toast this happy development in your life. And if he’s still around at the Epiphany …” He compressed his lips into what seemed to her to be a cautious smile. “Who knows?”
He poured for both of them. “So when does the big trip take place?”
“We’re hoping in July. But it’s still in the planning stage. His work is unpredictable.”
“Home,” he said. “My God, that’ll be the test for a relationship.”
It was summer. She was, maybe, twelve years old. They were swimming—Effie, Duncan, John and Sextus—in the little cove on the edge of the village. The water there was warmer than the strait that fed it, less saline on account of the forest streams that ran down into it from the hills behind it. She was huddling alone on shore, goose-pimpled, pale. She’d been feeling fluish since the night before. Sextus was just emerging from the water and suddenly was laughing hysterically. She thought he was pointing at the ground until she heard him shout, “Effie’s bleeding!”
And when she looked down, she saw the watery trickle on the inside of her thigh.
“Effie’s got the rag on,” Sextus crowed, leaping from one foot to the other as she stared down at herself, dumbfounded, as if looking at someone else’s body. “Effie’s got the rag on, hoo hoo.”
She was only partially aware that her brother, Duncan, was lunging through the water, shouting, “You shut your dirty mouth!” until he was upon him, lifting, heaving, and Sextus, long, bony limbs flailing, went sailing through the air and disappeared into the depths, leaving only foam and ripples on the surface of the water.
“You go home,” said Duncan quietly. “Just go.” And it was the breathless anger in his voice that cut her loose from them. Sextus resurfaced, gasping, choking in half-drowned indignation; John stood silent, tragic-faced. She backed off then, fighting the humiliating tears, isolated for the first time in her life.
“Go see Mrs. Gillis,” Duncan ordered. “Go now.”
Mary Gillis was their nearest neighbour, John’s mother. Mrs. Sandy Gillis was her public name, a fact that in her earliest remembering, Effie found disturbing. The submission, as she would later understand it, the submergence of the woman’s own identity. But even in their later life, when they were adults, family, Effie found it difficult, if not impossible, to call her Mary. She was always Mrs. Gillis, and always would be, an existential circumstance over which neither woman had control.
Mary’s husband, Sandy, had grown up with Effie’s father, and they’d gone away together, fought in the Second World War and come home damaged by something sinister that happened overseas. Both Sandy and her father seemed to have been permanently infected by the wickedness of war, inhabited by violence. When they were together, anything could happen. But she was afraid of Mrs. Gillis too, for the sorrow she carried in her, the traces of the misery that seemed, in Effie’s mind, to originate somewhere deep within the gender they shared.
“You’ll get used to it,” was all Mrs. Gillis had to say when Effie told her what had happened at the cove. Then she turned her face away. “You’ll have to be more careful now.”
“Careful of what?”
“They’re all animals, you know. Nothing but animals. Don’t you forget that.”
She would remember 1998, especially the summer and its golden autumn, as the beginning of a conversation she assumed would last forever. There was so much she had to know—about JC, about the world he’d tra
velled, where he started, where he wanted life to end.
Her simplest but most important insight was that he was different from all the men she’d known before him. And yet, somehow, he reminded her of all of them, embodied what was best and worst in all of them. She realized that the male traits that had once left her feeling bitter and abused were but distortions of the qualities she recognized and liked in JC Campbell. Men, she now cautiously considered, weren’t essentially perverse. The perversions were, for the most part, situational, and therefore fixable. This revision of her understanding was restorative, and therapeutic for the memory. Even inevitable disappointments folded easily into what she saw as fresh insight into JC Campbell and men in general.
He was comfortable with questions, and she realized it was because he had no fear of answers or of the dark places he sometimes revisited to find them. This was new in her experience.
“Where did you grow up, exactly?” she asked him once.
He seemed puzzled. “In Halifax. You knew that.”
“I heard you telling someone once, years and years ago, that you came from Bornish, in Cape Breton.”
“Well, that’s true, too.”
She laughed. “Nobody is from Bornish. Nobody’s lived there in a century. It’s another word for Nowhere.”
“Well,” he said, “that’s me, Nobody from Nowhere. Bornish happens to be the first place I remember.”
She listened closely as he gave her spare details that described a mother who once worked in a lumber camp in the middle of Nowhere and how he lived there with her as a toddler.
“Your dad?”
“What about him?”
“He was there?”
He laughed. “No. Just us.”
For him it was a place of sensory impressions now imprinted in the deepest part of memory, the mingled scents of spruce and pine and fresh sawdust, of machinery and gasoline and sweat; and the sounds of men laughing, the clatter of their eating, the menace and the reassurance of their presence.
She noted that he was blinking rapidly.
“What are you looking at?”
“I’m just listening,” she said.
On a Wednesday evening early in September her doorbell rang and it was Duncan. “I was in the neighbourhood,” he said.
She’d been calling him since she’d returned from her summer visit to Cape Breton, but he never seemed to be available.
“I signed up for an evening Gaelic class at the university.”
“You,” she said. “You’re as fluent as I am.”
“Bu choir dhuin a bhith bruidhinn Gaidhlig … See, I can’t remember how to say ‘more often.’ ”
“Nas trice,” she said. “I promise we’ll try to speak it more often. Now come in and have a drink. It’ll bring the Gaelic back in a flash.”
“I can only stay for a moment,” he said, walking past her. “You came back early this year. Was the house okay?”
“The house was perfect. A little lonely, though, which was why I came back.”
“I thought you had company.”
“Just for a week. It was a last-minute thing for him. He came late, after me.”
“And how did that work out?”
“Exquisitely,” she said. “You’re sure you don’t have time to visit?”
“I have a meeting,” he said. “But there’ll be another time. The Epiphany, if not before.”
“Ah yes, the Epiphany,” she said. “But I think I’ve had enough epiphanies to last a lifetime.” She knew that she was blushing as she said it.
“That’s good,” he said. “It isn’t always easy to distinguish between an epiphany and a catharsis.” He stood to leave.
“Get out of here,” she said, slapping him playfully.
But when she closed the door behind him she just stood there, hands clasped before her, trying to process what seemed to be a vague presentiment of sadness.
2
She knew that she was late, and her anxiety increased as she read the notice on the window of the pub: “Closing early. Christmas Eve. Have a wonderful holiday!” It was December 24, 1998, and that morning JC had called and asked her to meet him for a drink at Dora’s at five.
She knew Christmas Eve would be quiet at the university, so she’d gone to the office to confront a backlog of administrative paperwork, then lost track of time.
JC was waiting at the bar, the pint in front of him half finished. She placed a hand on the back of his neck, and when he turned, kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No urgency,” he said. Then he ordered each of them a double single malt.
“Doubles?”
“We’re celebrating. Isn’t it close to our first anniversary?”
“How so?”
“We missed it, actually. It was on the nineteenth, one whole year since our encounter on the subway platform.”
“I think more of the encounter Easter Sunday,” she said.
“Well, yes. But I still remember that first time. The innocence, maybe?” He grinned. “I’m probably more sentimental than you are. Something clicked on the subway platform.”
“True,” she said.
As they sipped their drinks, they turned to generalities. He asked her about Cassie. And she told him her daughter was up north with the new man in her life, meeting family. They planned to stay in Sudbury until after New Year’s.
“Sounds serious,” he said. “Who’s the guy?”
“His name is Ray.”
More than that she didn’t know. He frowned.
Her daughter was, like him, a journalist, and they had hit it off the moment Effie introduced them. In fact, Cassie was unsubtle in her hints that her mother and JC should live together. Maybe more. Effie would just smile and swat the notion down, suggesting that Cassie should focus more on her own love life. They were like that, mother and daughter, having grown up together, as Cassie liked to say.
“You’ll turn into an old maid soon enough yourself if you’re not careful,” she told her only child the last time they spoke about it.
“Use him or lose him,” Cassie answered. “One of these days I just might grab the yummy Mr. Campbell for myself.”
“Feel free,” her mother said. “But don’t you think he’s a little old for you?”
Cassie blushed.
Just a few days later, Cassie declared that they should have a chat. Mom and daughter, heart to heart. Not right away, but soon. Her face was solemn.
“Oh my,” said Effie.
“Just keep an open mind,” said Cassie.
At Dora’s JC was relaxed, a pleasant change, she thought. For weeks he’d been on edge whenever the subject of work came up, obviously troubled by the story he’d been working on since early summer, the case of a condemned man awaiting execution in a Texas prison.
“When will it be on?”
“Last week,” he said.
“Sorry. I haven’t been following the news,” Effie said.
“You aren’t missing much,” he said.
“Remind me. I know he got in the way of our summer and that he’s been haunting you all fall.”
“He writes to me, quite an intelligent guy. Sam Williams. From Alberta, originally. Was in on a gruesome murder in east Texas, years back.”
“But you don’t think he did it.”
He shrugged.
“It’s coming back to me,” she said. “But he writes to you?”
“We stay in touch.”
“Is that advisable?” she asked.
“He doesn’t have anybody,” he said. “He’s needy, but he’s hardly any burden where he is. Plus, I’m quite convinced that he got shafted by the system.”
“Aren’t you setting yourself up for grief?”
He laughed. “Me? Grief?”
“He’s going to die. We’re talking about Texas.”
“It isn’t quite that simple,” JC said. “But let’s not worry about Sam.”
She studied her drink. “What is
it about him, then?” she asked at last. “Why would you stay in touch?”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing, really.” He smiled at her. “What about tomorrow?”
“Ah yes,” she said, returning to the safety of her glass. “Tomorrow. Christmas Day.”
They left Dora’s just after seven and decided to walk to his place on Walden Avenue. The night was cold, with a penetrating dampness. Across the Don Valley to the west, the city loomed, glittering and silent as if abandoned for the holiday. They walked hand in hand, shoulders touching. The sky was dull with amber streaks.
“Christmas should be in the country,” she said. “I miss stars and snow.”
“Maybe someday.”
She was looking at him, waiting for elaboration, but he kept walking, staring at the ground. So they didn’t see the young man approaching, didn’t notice the aggressive, shambling gait. The blow caught her by surprise, the shoulder slamming into her shoulder as the stranger hurried by. She knew it was deliberate, or at least an act of boorish carelessness.
“Asshole!” she called out.
It was only when the stranger stopped and turned to face them, fury blazing from his hoodie, that she felt afraid. JC moved between them.
“Sorry, brother,” he said softly. And there was something in his tone, the way he’d turned and placed himself, both hands now raised, palms turned outward. “Let’s all just keep on having a nice Christmas.”
The young man wavered. “Fuck you, man,” he said, but he turned quickly and strutted away, shoulders lurching in his haste.
“Well done,” she said.
JC shrugged. “Who knows what’s going on in that poor bugger’s life.”
Just inside the door, the floor was littered with envelopes, mostly Christmas cards. He scooped them up and dropped them in a large bowl, which was already full of keys and change. Their cat trotted down the stairs, meowing urgently.
“You aren’t going to open them?” she asked.
“Another time,” he said. “They make me feel guilty. I never sent any.”
He squatted to receive his greeting from the cat.
“Who do you get them from?” she asked, poking through the envelopes. “Here’s one from the States.”
“That’ll be from Sam,” he said, and stood.
Why Men Lie Page 3
