Double Talk (24 page)

There it was, Violet knew, the old game with its tired dynamic. He was offering her a morsel of hope, like he had a hundred times before, only this time she wasn't going to believe him. “Is there anything else you would like to tell me — any other secrets you have been keeping?” she asked.

“None, Violet, I swear.”

And that was it, the last straw, the precise moment when Violet knew it was finally over between them. Frank James had not lied, even if he had not exactly told her the truth.

Violet stared at Brian — marvelling at how genuinely contrite he looked. She told him to pack his stuff and get out. She told him she didn't love him and hadn't for longer than she could remember. She told him that they were better off without him, that he was a leech on their family. But he wouldn't go. He literally would not leave the house. And not only did he refuse, but he found ways to come back in when, in the second week of their standoff, Violet began to take radical action. She changed the front door lock, and he came through the back door. She nailed shut the back door, and he came through the second floor window, much to Lucy's delight. Violet thought about dumping all his clothes out on the street, but that would have been too dramatic. And besides, she knew it wouldn't have worked. Six weeks and many arguments later, Brian was still with them. The divorce manual did not have a chapter about how to handle a partner who will not take the hint and leave.

And then, overnight, her resolve was called into question. Wallace's death transforms his nephew; it is as though Brian's heart has been paddled back to life by the shocking news. But who is this Brian phoning from Wallace and Geoff's house? He calls to insist that Lucy wear to the wake the blue chiffon dress he bought her in Ireland, that Joe wear his pin-stripe sleeper because it was a gift from Geoff. Who knew he kept an inventory? Who knew he had such a memory for detail?

She has barely seen him in the three days since Geoff's phone call from the hospital. He has been in constant motion, running around town making arrangements, buying flowers, taping music, going to the library to track down Wallace's favourite pieces of poetry, and calling everyone in Wallace's encyclopaedic address book.

In place of a formal church service there is to be a gathering at the house, with time set aside for readings and songs. There is a loose plan to keep vigil with the deceased through the night. Burial will take place the following morning.

Brian meets them at the door of his uncle's house when they arrive a little after six o'clock. He is resplendent in black suit, white shirt and Wallace's alligator tie as he ushers them through into the rooms where they spent so many evenings together.

Vases of flowers flare from every corner: white lilies, orange lilies, yellow lilies. The hardwood floors gleam. Every surface looks dusted, waxed or polished. Violet looks around for Geoff, but he is nowhere to be seen. Brian, reading her thoughts, whispers: “He's upstairs getting ready. He takes a break every so often.”

Where Wallace is laid out in the living room, there are masses of purple irises, the kind that grow abundantly in Newfoundland, often in abandoned settlements. Lucy buries her face in Violet's shoulder when together they look in on him through the half-open casket: “It's not him, Mommy; it's not him.”

Grief coasts through Violet again, as powerfully as it had the first time. She bursts into tears. Brian is at her side, gently leading her away. Far off now is Violet's thought to ask him where he found the beautiful suit, so obviously expensive beyond anything they can afford.

They walk out into the hall just as Geoff is making his way down the stairs. He looks scrubbed and pink, his eyes swollen. He is wearing a black Aran sweater and black Levis. Seeing Violet's tears, he begins to weep. Lucy runs to him and puts her arms around his legs. Violet goes to him as well. He seems to Violet to have shrunk; his hands, when he presses them against her back, are freezing cold.

“Uncle Geoff,” squeals Lucy, from where she resolutely maintains her place between them, “your tummy is rumbling. Maybe you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Believe me, that's not my problem.”

Violet laughs. “Oh, Geoff, I'm so sad. And I'm so glad, so glad you are still here.”

“And I'm so glad you all could be here with me. I'm sorry that I couldn't see you yesterday when you came by. I just couldn't see anyone.”

Just then Fabian's unmistakably low-pitched growl — a granite slab sliding over a granite slab — resounds from the kitchen. “Get in here, you sorry lot. I'm making drinks. We're here to send Wally off in fine style.”

Violet walks into the kitchen and hugs Fabian. Over his shoulder she takes in the impressive array of bottles lined up on the kitchen counter.

“What ya havin'?” says Ian.

“I'll have what they're having,” Violet says, gesturing to Darcy and Ian, both of whom are immaculately dressed and sporting miniature lilies in their breast pockets.

“Whiskey it is, then! Sure, what else would you drink at an Irish wake?”

“Just a soda water for me, please,” Brian says.

Who is this new Brian, so beautifully dressed, so sober, so solicitous to every need? First there with the wine bottle to top up glasses; first there with the box of tissues when it is needed; popping back and forth from the kitchen with trays of samosas, vol-au-vent and sausage rolls. He is first to move things along when solemnity threatens to collapse the proceedings. Later, when masks begin to slip and talk about HIV research and the lack of government funding turns bitter, Brian sets the formal part of the evening in motion by asking Darcy to sing; Darcy, who produces from his bulk the sweetest voice, using it to deliver a jazz-inflected version of “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary's.”

Who is this Brian who steps in and finishes off the reading of Robert Frost's “Out, Out —” when Ian can't continue, and then finds a way to dissuade Fabian from performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” — not because it is in dreadfully poor taste but because half the keys on the old stand-up piano are flat and it just won't do.

Who is this Brian who encourages each one there to tell a favourite story about Wallace and whose own contribution sets the tone by focussing on his uncle's slightly obsessive compulsive tendencies?

“We were sitting in the car just outside Wallace and Geoff's house, both of us watching Wallace in the side mirrors. It was about seven o'clock in the morning, and we were supposed to get on a flight at eight — we were heading to Toronto to see a Van Morrison concert. Wallace was going through his usual routine, only a little more manically than usual — as was always the case when he was stressed or over-tired. ‘Is that the second or third time, now?' Violet asked me. We were keeping count of how many times Wallace had checked to see if he had locked the back door, before he unlocked it to make sure the dog was safely in the kitchen, before he double-checked to make sure that the screen door was properly latched and locked. We were both busting ourselves laughing as we watched him rattle the handle of the kitchen door one last time. At that moment a drop of rain hit the windshield. We just looked at each other. I don't need to tell anyone here how much Wallace hated rain. Just a few drops on his clothes and he would change every stitch, right down to his bikini underwear. Anyway, satisfied at last that everything was secure, he came striding up the driveway towards the car. He was about two-thirds of the way towards us when there was a sudden squall. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see a single rhododendron leaf blow from the border. We watched as he watched it back-flip, pirouette, and then back-flip again before landing on the perfectly swept blacktop. Like a trout to a fly, it was. Wait now — like a fly to a trout, I mean. Wallace was standing about ten feet from the car and about ten feet from where the leaf lay on the ground. Just then the rain began to fall, big fat drops. You knew the sky was about to open. We watched as he listed, first towards the car, and then back towards the leaf, then back again towards the car. When he looked up at the sky it was with an expression of utter betrayal on his face. He was caught. He didn't have time to both pick up the leaf and make it to the car before the downpour began. So he dithered, weighing which of the two outcomes — getting wet or leaving the driveway untidy — would cause him the least amount of pain. That was Wallace.”

Violet watches the faces in the room as Brian delivers his anecdote: there are smiles and appreciative nods, and when he gets to the end there is genuine laughter. All the same, she can't help but notice the steel and reserve in those faces; they are cordial despite themselves, she thinks. It is clear — to Violet at least — they have not forgiven Brian for deserting Wallace when the going got rough.

As the evening wears on, Violet becomes more and more aware of the simmering hostility towards her husband. No one looks him directly in the eye. No one will engage him in conversation. She knows if it wasn't for the deference and gratitude Geoff shows to him, there would have been a scene. Violet knows that under normal circumstances she would have come to her partner's assistance. And perhaps had the wake been held a day earlier, when her grief was still raw, she would have found some way to side with him. But the wound of Wallace's passing has already started to heal. Brian has not redeemed himself, in Violet's eyes. He is a liar, she reminds herself, and this is just another performance. He has just upped his game.

With Lucy dozing on her lap, Violet keeps thinking about that other piece of information Frank James passed along to her the night of the dinner party, something she had given Brian the opportunity to confess. Each time she looks at Brian's black suit she hears Frank James hiss, “And tell your husband I want that fifteen hundred I lent him.”

The colours the morning they bury Wallace are winter colours, and the light is a winter light. What stands out to Violet are black overcoats and jackets, black skirts and black pants, black shoes on grey slush. The moisture-blackened bark of bare trees shows starkly against the snow and sky. Save where the mourners walk in single file behind the casket, the snow is virgin and untouched, the shadows that fall across it purple. She notes where flat blades of wheat-coloured grass poke through, like something from a Japanese illustration. Her eyes rake the background for colour: there, on a low dogberry branch, a flare of red berries the waxwings and jays have missed. The air is still, the sound crisp. Occasionally someone coughs; more frequently there are sniffs and sniffles, though these are mostly subsumed by the sound of feet shuffling through salted snow and slush as the procession winds its way towards the freshly dug grave and the blue and white striped canopy that stands off to one side.

The mourners are silent as cattle, their breaths billowing out in white plumes as they follow the progress of the coffin down the steep incline. Joe, fat as a grub in his snowsuit, and strapped into his backpack, has fallen asleep on Violet's shoulder. She can feel his hot breath on her neck as she walks. It smells of apple juice. Lucy sticks close to her side, her mittened hand in Violet's hand, her fur hat bristling in the cold, her cheeks like spring blossoms. Violet knows the seriousness of the occasion has caught her daughter's attention. Lucy, her brown eyes dancing, keeps whispering to herself something Violet can't quite catch.

Violet looks ahead to the pallbearers: Fabian, Darcy, Ian and Brian. When they turn to follow the path towards the open grave, she can see Brian in profile. How well he looks. He is the only one without an overcoat. He is wearing his new black suit, and the toecaps of his shoes gleam like the hard lacquered shell of a beetle. Where everyone else looks drawn and pale, Violet thinks, his face is flushed. Where Geoff's massive frame seems to have collapsed on itself over the previous few days, Brian's seems to have acquired bulk. With his recently barbered hair combed back and his strong nose in profile, Violet thinks he looks positively aristocratic. Back straight, bare hands grasping the coffin's brass handle, he is the only one of the bearers who takes the load effortlessly and proceeds at an even pace, not stumbling once. He reminds Violet somehow of a soldier who at long last has been called to battle. She tells herself she is being sentimental. Then wonders if he is thinking what she is thinking: how years before, they made love in this graveyard, slipping away from a party to do it, Brian lying on his back while Violet straddled him, hanging on to a headstone on either side.

For a moment Violet indulges the thought that she should forgive him, take him back into her bed, take him back inside her body. But she knows it is all too little too late. The Brian she sees before her, who gives the appearance of one who has been reborn, is still a ghost, a figment of her mind. He is as the living are to the dead and the dead are to the living: an illusion. Violet knows she is seeing before her not the man who is but the man who should have been.

Baby
Power

We packed quietly and quickly. No one in the sleeping house stirred when a frozen roast of moose fell out of the fridge freezer, banging and skidding across the linoleum floor like a curling rock. I took the tent, the eight-by-ten piece of plastic that would function as a fly-sheet, a five-pound bag of potatoes, a rain coat, a box of Weetabix and a mostly full bottle of Lamb's. Violet packed a pound of bacon, copies of
Vogue
and
Mademoiselle
, several slabs of Nancy's frozen fish and whatever clothes she had decided to bring. We both carried our sleeping bags under our arms. The difference in loads was obvious — to me at least: no sooner had I lifted my army-issue rucksack then the leather straps began cutting into my shoulders. Violet's aluminium-framed mountain climber's backpack, on the other hand, seemed to float upright behind her on a cushion of foam padding. It looked less like a weight-bearing contraption than an aid to good posture.