“Don’t say a thing!” Bernard yelled again. He grabbed the cameraman, who shook him off.
Dec had never seen his father like this.
“Move!”
Dec ran across the lawn towards the house. He glanced back. The cameraman was filming him. Dec stopped. This was ridiculous. He felt like a criminal. Worse, he felt like some freak. What was he supposed to be running from?
“Just go!” shouted his father, waving his hands around as he stepped between Dec and the camera.
In the house, Dec locked the door but stood, catching his breath, looking out the tiny window. He could hear the television in the rec room — “Reading Rainbow.” Sunny was home and, by the sound of it, oblivious to the commotion upstairs. Dec’s eyes followed the trio on the lawn back towards the van.
It was only then that he noticed Birdie’s black Beetle parked beside the Rendezvous.
She was sitting in the living room with a drink in her hand.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I live here.”
Dec lowered his head and sighed. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know,” she said. “But you’re not around much lately, so I thought, hey, I’d better remind you.”
He tried again. “You’re home early.”
She nodded and peered towards the picture window. “The general was blowing a gasket. I figured I’d better call in Kerrie to hold the fort, and hustle my buns back here.” She took another, longer swig of her drink. There was a bottle of Canadian Club on the coffee table.
Outside, the TV truck’s horn sounded. Dec walked over to the picture window to watch. The cameraman was behind the wheel, ready to go. The reporter handed Bernard a business card. He accepted it with a stiff nod. He had calmed down, but his shoulders were slumped. Dec looked back at Birdie.
“Did he see the Citizen article?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. She patted the side of her hair, found a loose strand and had to put her drink down to pin it back in place. “He had his lawyer on it right away. It seems the photographer wasn’t actually on the property, or so he claims. He climbed a tree on the river road; used a telephoto lens. There’s some dispute about whether there’s still a public right of way on the old road. I don’t know the details and, frankly Scarlet, I don’t give a damn.”
“But where’d they get all that information?”
She took another drink. “There’s always someone in a small town with a big mouth.” She glanced at Dec and, as quickly as she looked away, he saw the question in her eyes.
“You think I talked to them?”
She frowned, and the make-up cracked around her mouth. “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “And you don’t need to look at me like that. If you say you didn’t, that’s good enough for me. It’s just that lately you’ve been kind of…”
“Kind of what?”
Her eyebrow arched. “Not exactly open, for starters.”
Dec pulled a hassock over to the coffee table and sat down. “I’m not very open?” he said. “I begged you guys to talk to me about the inquest and I got the cold shoulder.”
She topped up her drink and leaned back heavily in her chair. “You’re just spitting feathers,” she said. “Why are you so angry?”
Dec shook his head. “So now this is my fault.”
“Your father is beleaguered, Dec. That’s the word he used — beleaguered. He needs our support. Can’t you see that now is not the time for this?”
“This what?”
“This attitude, this moping around. This suspicion. You think we don’t see it? What’s it all about, anyway? Where did it come from?” She leaned forward and poked the glass table-top with her finger. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’ve been spending way too much time up the hill.”
Dec went cold. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She stirred her drink slowly with her finger. “You know what I’m saying: the House of God-damned Memories.” She shuddered. “That place gives me the creeps.” Then she looked up at Dec, looked him square in the eye. “You thinking of moving up there?”
It was as if she had drawn a battle line in the sand. He wanted to move, all right. He wanted to stomp right out of the room and right out of Camelot and slam a few doors on the way.
He noticed Birdie regarding him with an odd look in her eye — curious and anxious at the same time.
“You’ve been asking about Lindy,” she said.
He nodded slowly. “What about it?”
She looked down at the bottle of rye, her gaze wavering.
She didn’t drink very often. He wondered if she was drunk.
“It just seemed a little peculiar after so long,” she said.
Dec couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “She is my mother.”
“And she was my best friend, okay? So don’t get all high and mighty on me, Declan.”
“All I did was ask Dad if she’d been in contact.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I mean, why now?” She swigged her drink without taking her eyes off him. “You’ve been skulking around. I wondered if you’d been doing a little eavesdropping.”
Skulking? Eavesdropping? “What is it I’m supposed to have heard?”
She sighed and looked away, scratching distractedly at the skin above the top button of her blouse. She tanned at a parlour all winter, and her skin was orangey coloured.
“Birdie?”
She was staring at nothing, but he had the feeling she was thinking hard about something. Then she reached a decision. “I guess you might as well hear it from me as anyone. Your dad and I are talking about getting married.”
It took him a moment to figure out what she was saying. “But that’s impossible.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Dad’s still married — to Lindy.”
Birdie’s eyes grew wide. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You know what I mean.”
The mockery went out of her eyes. She looked down into her glass. It was empty. “Oh, I know what you mean, all right,” she said bitterly. She placed her glass on the coffee table. It clinked on the glass top. She reached for a coaster and placed the glass on it. Dec stared out the window. His father was walking past the house towards his shop, back to that other war — the one he could handle. Dec’s gaze returned to Birdie. Her eyes were bleary — from drink, or was she crying?
“You caught me off guard,” he said. “I just…”
“Just wondered why your dad would want to bother marrying little old me?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Not exactly a beauty queen, like your mom.”
“It isn’t that,” he said. “I just didn’t think you could get divorced if the other person didn’t know about it.” Then a new idea struck him like a lightning bolt. “Does she know?” he asked. “Has he talked to her?”
“No!” snapped Birdie. Then she rubbed her forehead. “No,” she repeated more quietly. “He has not talked to her and, as you can see, she is most certainly not around.”
She stood up, a little wobbly on her feet, and looked at him with barely concealed resentment. He had hurt her feelings and he wasn’t sure how.
“I’ll tell you something else for free,” she said. “She is not ever going to be around, Dec. Get used to it. So you don’t need to sound so all-fired hopeful.” Then she picked up her glass and headed towards the kitchen.
Through the sheer curtains of the bay window, Dec saw his father reappear with his red tool kit. He crossed the road and started to take down the House of Memory mailbox. The rain wasn’t hard but it was steady; he was soon drenched. Finally the job was done, and Bernard hoisted the thing up in one arm, his tool kit in the other.
He looked both ways before crossing the road, the way he had taught Dec when he was little. Then he marched across County Road 10 and around the side of the house to his workshop.
Why was it such a shock? They had been together pretty much since Lindy left. Birdie had been Lindy’s friend. He hadn’t really forgotten that. She had been the first to comfort Bernard in his loss — in their mutual loss. Comfort had turned to helping out with baby Sonya. And helping out had led eventually to moving in, which had led not much later to Camelot. She had never liked the big house.
Dec leaned his forehead on the window glass. Talking about getting married. So was that what all the whispering was about? Was that why his dad looked so guilty?
He looked back towards the road. The headless black post upon which the mailbox had stood looked like one of the mines on his father’s model beach. The beach code-named Love. Dec’s eyes wandered to the rough ground beyond the post. There was an old split-rail fence choked with wild grape. Through a gap in it, a path meandered down to a creek. A memory stirred in him.
It was after Sunny was born, a kinder, warmer day than this one. He had taken her in her Snugli down to the creek to look at the tadpoles. He was heading home again when he saw his mother coming down the long drive from Steeple Hall. There was no Camelot then, just an unassuming dirt driveway that might have looked to a passerby like a road to an orchard or a cottage. They were heading towards each other — Dec up from the creek, Lindy down from the house, with only the county road between them.
But she didn’t see him. She was kind of hurrying and looking back over her shoulder, wearing tight jeans and her suede jacket, the one with the eight-inch fringe along the arms and the Indian embroidery on the pockets.
He was going to shout to her, but Sunny was sleeping. So he just waited for her to notice them. She didn’t. She got to the road and threw out her thumb. He felt torn. She was right there not twenty metres away but she was hitching. Why? Was Daddy too busy to take her where she wanted to go? Then he thought, it doesn’t matter, and he was about to go to her anyway, when a car came from the west heading towards town.
Just like that.
Almost as if she had timed it.
Alarm
IT WASN’T UNTIL the next day that Dec could get his father alone. He arrived home from school to find the house empty and made his way to the shop. It was empty as well, apart from the miniature troops crowding the worktable: Brits, Yanks, Canucks. They were all lined up and ready, painted and waiting. On the beach, the Nazis were waiting, too, sandbagged and camouflaged, dressed in Feldgrau — field grey. His father had talked about it all through dinner. He’d talked about all sorts of things — anything he could think of that wasn’t anything at all.
Dec found him, at last, up at the House of Memory. The front door was wide open and he was in the vestibule with his tool kit and the packaging for a security system. He was attaching the alarm keypad to the wall and didn’t hear Dec arrive over the sound of the drill. He started when he saw him.
“Thought you might be the man from the phone company,” he said. “We’re going to have to get the line reconnected.”
Dec stood at the threshold. ‘Birdie says you’re getting married.”
His father carried on with his task. The drill whirred; another screw sank home. He spoke calmly but firmly. “She spoke out of turn,” he said.
“So you’re not getting married?”
The drill whirred again. Stopped. Bernard stepped back to inspect his work. “We’re looking into an annulment.”
“What’s that?”
“A judicial proceeding to nullify the marriage. That’s all.”
That’s all, thought Dec. Declare the marriage null, as if it had never happened. He leaned against the doorframe.
“Does Lindy know?”
His father looked cross. “Lindy was beyond caring about any of us a very long time ago.”
“You know that for a fact?” demanded Dec. “She told you that?”
“No,” said his father. “How many times do I have to tell you, Son? I have not heard from her. Period.” With a weary sigh he sat down on the pew. He bent over his drill, removing the Phillips head bit, putting it back in its case. Then he carefully placed the case back in the neatly appointed tool kit. He looked up at Dec, squinting a bit from the sun. “What’s all this about?”
Dec shifted his weight to the other leg. What was it about?
“Birdie has been good to you,” said his father patiently. “She’s been a mother for Sonya, who never really knew Lindy. And as for me, where am I likely to find another woman her equal?”
Not in your workshop, Dec thought. Not unless you send away to a model company. Maybe you could get someone in l:72-inch scale.
He wanted to say that, but he held his tongue.
“Dec, do you have a problem with this?”
Dec shook his head. But he did, he did have a problem. Lindy. Her memory, buried for so long, had burst out of him like a jack-in-the-box, demanding his attention. She was everywhere, especially up here.
“It’s just that Mom…never…”
But he wasn’t sure what Mom never did. Never said goodbye?
“I’m listening,” said his father.
But for some reason Dec didn’t want to share his thoughts with his father. Didn’t want to share Lindy with him.
“Is this about the estate?”
Dec’s head jerked back. “What?”
“Is that what’s on your mind?” said his father. “Because the estate is not an issue. It will be settled on you and Sunny. That’s the way it was always going to be. Birdie knows that.”
Dec’s face puckered with distaste. “I don’t care about the money,” he said. “And I sure as hell don’t care about this place.” It wasn’t what he meant to say, not really, but he couldn’t take it back.
His father replaced the portable drill in its case and snapped the lid shut. He looked up, his face a mask. “Well, that’s useful to know,” he said.
He looked past Dec down the hill. He frowned and glanced at his wrist, which was bare, though the skin was pale where his watch should have been.
“What happened to your watch?”
His father looked at him, still frowning and looking a little pained. “I broke it,” he said. Then he picked up his tool kit and squeezed past Dec out the door.
“How?”
His father stopped on the porch and turned slowly back.
“How what?”
“How’d you break your watch?”
His father’s hurt expression deepened. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a simple question, Dad. A guy wears a watch every day, then suddenly he’s not wearing it.”
His father glanced again at his wrist. “I broke it when I was building the wall in my shop, okay? Why do you want to know?”
Dec rubbed his face. “Forget it,” he said. But from the look in his father’s eyes, he didn’t look as if he was going to forget it any too soon.
With one last worried glance back at Dec, he left. Dec watched him until he had disappeared over the lip of the hill. Then he closed the door and leaned his forehead against it, his eyes closed. In the dark of his mind he saw his father, his hand grasping the neck of a bronze statuette. He saw him raise the thing high in the air and bring it down with such force on the back of Denny Runyon’s head that the watch on his father’s arm flew apart.
He opened his eyes with a start.
A rattling sound interrupted his thoughts. It came from inside. He listened, heard a low murmuring: Lindy talking to herself. Or so he thought. Then he wondered if she was talking to someone else, though no one answered her. He peered through the crack of the vestibule door.
She was in the front hall, standing on a stepladder in her flouncy wedding dress and a black cowboy hat. The ladder was near the bookcase. She must have been kneeling on the topmost step because the chiffon of the dress fell down around the ladder, making it look as if she had absurdly long, aluminium legs. He almost laughed but stopped himself. He was upset with her. Why hadn’t she come to
meet the bus? She always met him at the bottom of the hill. What was she doing up on a ladder talking to herself?
Then he realized she was talking to one of the busts that stood on the top of the book cabinets. She was eye to eye with it — the one with the broken nose and the scowling face. She had one hand on the shelf for balance; the other hand was stroking the statue’s bronze head. She was so close — whispering close — and it almost looked to Dec as if she was going to kiss it.
“Mom?”
She jerked her hands away and teetered on her perch.
“Mom!” he cried, afraid she was going to fall.
“Dec,” she said, when she had recovered her balance. “Jeez, you scared me!” She clambered down the steps and turned to him, brushing her hands together, rubbing them down the front of her dress. “Is it so late?”
“What were you doing?”
Her eyes grew large, as if she was holding back a joke. She looked up at the bust and then back at Dec.
“I was sharing a little secret with Mr. Know-it-all,” she said at last.
Dec looked up at the grim face. “What secret?” he asked.
She came and gave him a brisk hug and a smacking great kiss right on the top of his head.
“It wouldn’t be a secret if I told you,” she said brightly. She rubbed at the fingers of her right hand. They were grimy but the substance came off easily enough in rubbery strands.
“Tell me,” he said.
She put her hands on her hips as if she was angry. “So now I’ve got two men around the house I have to answer to,” she said, tapping her foot. “And all the time I thought you were on my side.”
“I am,” he said. “Tell me what the secret is.”
The cowboy hat was a child’s thing with a string under the chin to hold it in place. There was a black-and-white whistle attached to the end of the string. Lindy put the whistle between her lips and blew three times. Dec stepped back, covering his ears.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I thought you were deaf.”
“I’m not deaf.”
“Well, then don’t keep asking me what the secret is. It’s private. A girl’s got to have some privacy. Don’t you think?”
A Thief in the House of Memory Page 7
