Barrington Street Blues (10 page)

“I'll get you for this, you little maggot,” he said to her, lightly pulling on one of her auburn curls. She grinned at him.

As it turned out, the meal was beef Stroganoff, which she brought off successfully enough to earn a compliment from her brother, Tom, before he left for a party of his own. Beef Stroganoff struck me as an unusual choice, but there was something familiar about it. She remained tight-lipped but sported a telltale blush.

Her mother spoke up: “I was cleaning out some old letters and photos. Normie came in and found a menu I had planned years ago. She thought it would be nice if —”

“It was the first dinner she cooked for you!” my daughter burst out. “When you were her boyfriend!”

Maura rolled her eyes as if the memory of us as boyfriend and girlfriend was too tedious to bear, but I said: “Let's have a look at it.”

“Okay.” Normie rose and stomped upstairs. She must have squirrelled it away somewhere. A minute later she was back. “Here it is!”

I unfolded the yellow paper and smoothed it out on the table. The menu was there with all the ingredients, and page references to the cookbook.

“Why beef Stroganoff?” I asked Maura.

“I didn't even know what it was, but the name ‘Stroganoff' sounded impressive.”

It was the other notes she wrote to herself, however, that were so arresting. I read them aloud:

“Use Fannie F. Read recipes all thru first in case surprise at end, e.g. soak overnight.

“Call landlord, fix stuck window. If burn anything, need air thru.

“Slice onions
BEFORE
shower and make-up!

“Use metal measuring spoons — plastic warped, may be inaccurate. Smooth off top with wide blade knife before dumping in.

“Dessert: bring into conversation somehow — if he makes face, don't let on I made them.”

“Awww,” Brennan was prompted to say. “That's sweet. She wanted to do everything right to impress you.”

“Young and delusional,” she replied.

“What did you mean about the dessert?” I asked. “You don't have the ingredients down.”

“How the hell am I supposed to remember that?”

“Come on.”

“I think it was cupcakes. With Smarties stuck in the icing.”

“Why did you think I'd make a face?”

She shrugged.

“She must have thought you came from a family of cordon bleu chefs,” Brennan suggested.

“I figured they probably had some kind of soufflé every night at his house. But I wasn't going to attempt that and have it fall flat.”

I read out the final note, which was marked by an asterisk at the bottom of the page: “‘If he brings wine/flowers/candy, bring out candles. If no, save for P. Unless!!!'” I looked up at her. “What was this? You were planning another dinner with P? Pierre, I suppose. And you were going to the highest bidder? Whoever showed up with the biggest box of chocolates?”

“No! It wasn't like that. Though leave it to you to draw that inference. It was just that if you arrived with flowers or candy, I would take that to mean — this is corny but — a romantic dinner. As opposed to you stopping by for a quick scoff and then going out with the boys, in which case candles would have been embarrassing.”

Brennan cut in. “So, did he bring wine or flowers or candy?”

“He brought all three.”

“A success then, was it?” he asked.

“Back to Pierre,” I interrupted. “I always wondered just how long he stayed in the picture after we got together.”

Burke cut me off. “She said ‘unless.' Unless what, MacNeil?”

“None of your business!”

Burke smiled at her over his wineglass.

We were all silent for a while. Normie, not hearing any more old tales, drifted off to her own amusements, but not before she took one last look at Father Burke and wrote something in a small notebook she carried in her pocket. Angel research, I assumed. Maura got up
and went behind my chair on her way into the kitchen. I caught her by the hand. “Since you went to all that trouble to win my heart, why don't we —”

“Buzz off!” She slapped my hand away and continued into the kitchen.

Maura, Burke and I sat in the living room afterwards and spoke of other things. But Burke, who had been playing the matchmaker ever since we met, brought the conversation back to the past.

“Ah, the poor wee child, slavin' over the hot stove to feed her da and her mam. Sure, didn't she think her efforts tonight would rekindle the —”

“Piss off,” I responded.

“Now there was obviously something about this fellow you liked at one time, MacNeil.”

“Sure. I liked him wailing on that harmonica till three in the morning. And then getting up next day and whipping everybody's arse in debates at the law school.”

“What was he like then? Tell me.”

“What was he like, or what did I think he was like?” Burke didn't answer, and, after a while, she deigned to speak of the old Monty she once knew. “He was in third-year law, while I was a lowly first-year student; he was nice-looking; and he played in a band. Therefore, I concluded he was one of the cool people, which, to me, meant he must be an arsehole. And I would hate him if I got to know him. But lo and behold, he wasn't one of the cool people. He tended to go his own way. He seemed to be sweet and funny and considerate. I dared hope — for years! — that he wasn't, indeed, an arsehole.”

“And you were right.”

“You may think so, Brennan, but that's because you were never married to him and never had to see him, in a public place, being pulled by another woman by the front of his pants —”

“That again!” I remonstrated.

“I know it's a minor everyday occurrence in your life, Collins. But I try to live my life on a higher plane than that, if I can. So such an event, to me, is emblematic of everything that went wrong, and remains wrong, between us.”

“No. It isn't. I never looked at another woman the whole time you
and I lived together. You're the one who decided I had to go, when I got stuck working nights and weekends and had to miss that vacation we planned when the kids were small. I was out working my tail off —”

“I didn't split up from you because of work. There were other problems.”

“— working, not picking up women. In fact, even now when guys like Al MacDonald head out to the Twa Corbies for ‘Scotch and Skirts Night,' as they put it, I don't go along because I
don't
want to be a middle-aged jerk cruising for girls in a bar. All I have to do is think of Normie being in bars a few short years from now. I really am tired of this posturing of yours, whereby you paint me as some kind of woman chaser like these other guys.”

“Oh, so when this broad came up to you at the Metro Centre and grabbed you by the belt, if indeed it was your belt and not something else, it was a case of mistaken identity, was it? Maybe she doesn't recognize any of her male acquaintances face to face. Maybe you guys all look alike to her from the waist up.”

“She was an occasional date. There have been very few women in my life, contrary to what you claim.”

“Date! Now there's a euphemism if I ever heard one. That's like calling Al Capone a tax evader.”

“He
was
a tax evader.”

“And you are trying to evade, or should I say weasel out of, the fact that you and this . . . this tawdry —”

I was about to counter with Maura's relationship, whatever it was, with a much younger male companion called Giacomo, but I remembered my earlier resolve: to be conciliatory. And forgiving. I veered on to another topic, without any of the finesse of a law school debater.

“How about that first trip to Cape Breton?”

“Are you brain-damaged, Collins? How could you leap to Cape Breton from where our conversation was going?”

“I don't blame him,” Burke interrupted. “Let's hear about Cape Breton.”

“It must have been after that dinner,” I said.

“Very soon after.”

“Right. The dinner went well so I was emboldened to offer her a
ride to Cape Breton to see her family. I figured if I could get on their good side it would give me an in with the daughter, who, despite her efforts on my behalf in the kitchen, was playing hard to get. I had told her I loved her but she would not so much as acknowledge that she found me tolerable. So I would go along, impress the family, and then she'd see what a great catch I was.”

“Went like clockwork, did it?”

“How did you know? I had just bought a car and I wanted to take it on a road trip. This was going to be ideal. I got it all tuned up the day before. I went for a haircut. Bought some treats for the drive. I was to pick her up at nine in the morning. I went home for an early night, to get lots of sleep so I'd be sharp next day. But then some guys called to say they were having a midnight hockey game; they'd rented ice time at the Forum. Did I want to play? Well . . . maybe just the first period. So I went to play hockey. There was alcohol involved. Near the end of the second period I got checked into the boards and broke my left tibia and thought I was going to lose one of my front teeth. I ended up in emergency at the Victoria General, and had to wait for hours to get my leg set. I was in agony and half-corked. The tooth was loose. The hours ticked away. I begged them to get it done, and to get somebody to save my tooth.

“I won't get into it all. It was nine-thirty in the morning before I got out of the hospital. I needed a shower and a shave. but if I went home for that, I'd be even later. I was nearly crying by the time I got into my car. Then I realized I couldn't use the clutch with my leg in the cast. I lurched along in the car and somehow made it to her place. Got out and hobbled to her door. She looked at me as if I were a bug that had just crawled out of her salad. I tried to smile at her but I kept my tongue over my loose tooth and, well, it just went downhill from there. She lit into me for being late, for being hungover, unreliable, and irresponsible. I told her I had to go home first to clean up, and she said we either got going right then or forget it. I insisted on shaving at her place, with her rusty razor, so I had cuts all over my face along with everything else. Then I had a shower with the cast on, and fell in the tub. I feel as if I'm living through it again. When we finally got going, she had to drive, but she wasn't used to a standard shift, so she kept stalling the car. I was afraid she'd strip the gears. I barked at her about
it, and she barked back. It took eight fucking hours to get to Cape Breton. Since I hadn't eaten, I was feeling increasingly sick and at one point had to ask her to pull over so I could throw up at the side of the road. At least I still had my tooth. Anyway that's how I presented myself to her family.”

“My relatives were damned impressed. ‘Oh, you've done well for yourself there, Maura. You went all the way to Halifax for the likes of that? You could have got something like that over in Reserve Mines, saved yourself the time and expense.'”

“And yet, you ended up at the altar.”

“Yeah,” she said, not without a spark of humour. “I wonder if we can sue the priest. Have you ever been named a defendant in a sacrament-gone-wrong lawsuit, Father Burke?”

“But, when you look at it,” I suggested, “if we made it through that day, surely we can —”

“Go home, Collins, I'm tired.”

“Oh. Uh, you don't happen to know where I can score a box of Ganong's dark chocolates at this time of night, do you, sweetheart?”

“
Go!
Do I have to scream it into the side of your head? Go home. Normie! Come down and say good-night to your dad. He's leaving.”

Burke and I stood in the front hall waiting for Normie to say goodbye.

“So, Brennan, the bachelor life must be looking pretty good tonight, eh?”

“It has its blessings. What's this?” He picked up a postcard of the Roman Colosseum from the little table in the hall. “Someone you know is visiting the Eternal City?”

“I don't know who it's from. It arrived in the mail at the office this morning. Take a look at the message — the sender says ‘Ask.' Took the trouble to use a calligraphy pen by the look of it, but just wrote the one word.”

“Ask what?”

“I can only assume it's from the plaintiffs in a lawsuit over the shoddy construction of their condominium. We're defending the contractor who built it. But why send it to me? Maybe they think their lawyer's pleadings weren't eloquent enough. They're either saying: ‘It should have been built to last two thousand years,' or: ‘It's a
ruin.' I don't know. ‘Ask'? I don't have to. I've seen the place. If we can't pin it on somebody else, we'd better cut our losses and settle. Anyway, I brought it over for Normie; she's studying Rome in school. I forgot to give it to her.”

Brennan stared at the postcard. “Next time I go to Rome you'll have to come with me. Ever been there?”

“I had a short visit there. Too short. You lived there for what, three or four years?”

“Four, when I was studying at the Greg and the Angelicum.”

“Those are the Pontifical something or other?”

“Pontifical Gregorian University, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas is called the Angelic Doctor; hence, the Angelicum.”

“Sounds lofty.”

“We'll go over some time, and I'll show you around.” He replaced the postcard on the hall table. “Is there a club called the Colosseum here in Halifax?”

“No.”

“Was there ever such a place?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Or a sports stadium?”

“No. Why?”

“I'm thinking of a fellow I know who sleeps rough. Have you ever run across the Gladiator in court circles?”

“The Gladiator?”

“This homeless fellow. He sleeps in the park across from the Hotel Nova Scotian. Comes to the rectory once in a while for a bite to eat. Calls himself the Gladiator.”