Once We Had a Country (31 page)

“Isn’t that—” she begins, and Maggie nods.

“Yeah, John-John. We call him Elliot now.” Then she adds, “Don’t tell the Centaurs.”

Brid smiles conspiratorially. It’s the first time since the coffee shop in Syracuse that Maggie has seen her smile, but she seems less pleased when the cat begins to rub itself against her shins.

“I’m not a cat person,” she says.

“Too bad. He likes you.”

“Men,” says Brid. “This is always how it starts.”

As if aware that he’s the subject of their conversation, Elliot amuses them by exploring every cranny of the room, taking fright at a splotch of light on the floor, then attacking
the armchair. Finally he perches on the sill above the radiator, sphinx-like, eyes closing by degrees. Maggie’s glad of his presence. Talk of cats is safe and harmless. It’s better than speaking of Brid’s troubles, of George Ray, of the words painted on the wrecking yard wall. It’s better than talking about pretty much anything in their lives.

All that morning, George Ray doesn’t appear in the house, as though he really does resent Brid’s arrival. If he does, Maggie can’t blame him for it. The week in Syracuse took her away from him with less than a month left together. Now the final days have been stolen from them too.

When he turns up for lunch, he smells of woodsmoke and seems congenial enough, even saying hello to Brid at the table like he’s missed her. More surprising still, Brid greets him with an equal warmth. Surely neither of them has forgotten the last night they saw each other. Nevertheless, as Maggie slices bread at the counter, they talk like old friends, Brid asking him about the orchard’s prospects, George Ray quizzing her on Nixon’s re-election. Gradually Maggie realizes they’re doing it for her benefit. They want to make things easier on her. But by the time they have finished the meal, her desire to check on the money is nearly overpowering.

“Why don’t you give Brid a tour of the orchard?” she tells George Ray. “I’ll handle the dishes. Show her what we’ve done since September.”

He gives her a baffled look. It’s true, there isn’t much to show.

“Fed up with me already?” says Brid. Maggie starts to protest, but Brid isn’t listening. “Come on, Georgie Porgie, let’s get out of here.” She starts for the mud room, and hesitantly he follows.

As soon as they’re out the door, Maggie hurries upstairs. At the end of the hall she unfolds a stepladder, climbs it, and pushes aside the trap door to the attic. Hoisting herself with a grunt, she wriggles forward on her belly.

The air is musty under the sloping roof, and there’s little light except what comes through a small window at the far end. Apart from the whistling of air through a crack, it’s still and quiet. No floor up here, just rafters with nothing between them but pink insulation and, beneath it, the plaster ceiling of the second-storey rooms. Standing, she curls her toes around the edge of the beam supporting her. The first time she came up here looking for somewhere to stow the statue, it was like that dream she has sometimes where she’s back in Syracuse and discovers whole new rooms in Gran’s house that she never realized were there. Now the rest of the farmhouse grows faint and distant as she takes in the things abandoned here over the years. A coat rack, a washtub, stacks of yellowed newspapers, jars full of an amber liquid that could be moonshine or maple syrup. There are fishing rods, broken hockey sticks and snow shovels, half-empty cans of motor oil. A tricycle has been propped against the wall with streamers on the handlebars and its front wheel missing. Affixed to a dartboard hanging from the roof is a photograph of Joe McCarthy, his face perforated many times over and barely recognizable. In the corner is one of Maggie’s few
additions to the place, the bassinet purchased at the yard sale. It’s been there a month, yet already it has the same dusty, abject countenance as everything else.

The shelf holding the clay statue is next to the window. Maggie makes her way toward it carefully with arms out to balance. One misstep and she’ll go crashing headlong through to the playroom. As she teeters across the rafters, the choice to hide the thing up here seems worse and worse. The little saint seems to taunt her. When she finally picks it up, the statue holds a low heat from sitting in the sunlight. By its weight she thinks the money’s still inside, but repeated shaking brings no confirmation. It was a mistake to have resealed the thing; now she’ll have to smash it again.

Before she can act on the thought, she hears the groan of the stepladder. She turns and sees George Ray’s head pop up through the trap door.

“What happened to the tour?” she asks, quickly setting the statue back in place.

“Brid was worried about you. I agreed to see how you’re doing.”

Heaving himself into the attic, he approaches across the beams, showing none of her fear or caution. When he reaches her, he picks up the statue from the shelf and turns it over, examining the squibs of dried glue that seeped from the cracks when she pressed the thing back together. She resists a desire to snatch it from him.

“When did it break?” he asks, and she says she can’t remember. “Tired of having it downstairs?”

“It—it was painful to see every day.” It’s not a lie, exactly. “We should go back down.”

“Wait. Will you tell me about the graffiti first?”

Maggie feels her face grow hot with blood. “You saw it?”

“Just before lunch.”

“But I painted it out.”

“It needs another coat.” His voice carries the hint of a reprimand, as if she should have told him.

“I didn’t want to bother you. It’s probably just Frank Dodd’s daughter getting up to no good.” She explains about the can of spray paint the girl had that night in the summer.

“But why would she write those words?” he asks.

Maggie shrugs, avoiding his eyes.

“Perhaps it was someone else,” he says. “You could call the police.”

“I don’t want to cause a fuss.” She finds her gaze returning to the statue in his hand.

“Oh, Maggie,” he says softly, “do you ever cause a fuss?”

The statement takes her aback. It’s something Brid would say; Maggie doesn’t want to hear it from him.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you lose your papa and you keep it in.” His tone is compassionate, but that only makes it worse. “Soon I’ll leave too, and—”

“You think I don’t care about my father? You think I don’t care about you going?”

“I know you do. But you keep in all those feelings.”

“We knew from the start that you had to leave.” Even to herself she sounds cold, and he doesn’t respond, only clutches the statue in a manner that seems possessive. Instinctively she reaches out to take it from him, and
instinctively he resists letting go of it. When he pulls the figure away from her, it slips from both their fingers.

Maggie has a vision of it crashing through the ceiling beneath them, tumbling to the floor far below, breaking into a hundred shards and a swarm of paper bills. George Ray reaches for it as it falls, loses his balance on the rafter, flails. Grabbing his arm to steady him, she’s dragged forward. They end up pressed together, frozen in place, one’s weight countering the other’s, arching over the empty space between the rafters.

He starts to laugh, at their good fortune perhaps, and the reverberations run through her. There’s nothing but his body to keep her from falling. Slowly, carefully, they ease their way back to their previous positions, her weight shifting from her toes to the balls of her feet again. When she’s standing safely once more, she looks down and sees the statue nestled into the pink foam insulation at his feet, perched comfortably above the void.

Brid’s still in bed the next day when Maggie rises, so she puts on her coat and rubber boots, thinking she’ll spend a bit of time with George Ray. As she steps into the backyard, she starts to imagine telling him about the money, but her thoughts are disrupted by the sound of a vehicle pulling into the drive. Going around the house to investigate, she sees a woman about her age exiting from the driver’s side of a cream-coloured car. She’s wearing a buckskin vest over her blouse and a paperboy cap atop long auburn hair. When Maggie calls out a hello, the woman
returns the greeting and says she’s looking for someone named Maggie Dunne.

Maggie wonders if she can get away with replying that Miss Dunne lives three roads over. She confesses to being herself, though, and the woman’s face lights up.

“I hope this isn’t an imposition,” she says, “but I was hoping to talk with you about your father.”

Maggie’s throat has suddenly gone dry. “I’m not talking to reporters. If you want, my grandmother’s in Syracuse—”

“Yes, I’ve met your family there,” the woman replies. “Your uncle gave me your address.”

Maggie can’t hide her irritation. Uncle Morley wouldn’t have had any compunction about doing it, either. Probably he took great delight in selling her out.

“I’m not a reporter,” says the woman. “I make documentaries.”

A woman filmmaker. It seems strange, after all Maggie’s work with the camera, for someone to turn up who does it for a living.

“You’re making a movie about my father?”

“I wasn’t planning it,” the woman says. “I was in Laos shooting another film when I heard stories about how he died.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a business card. It’s still warm from her thigh when Maggie takes it.

“I have a TV segment on him airing in a few days,” the woman continues, “but I’d like to do something longer. When I heard he had a daughter living on a commune …” She breaks off and peers at Maggie with dark brown eyes so large and penetrating it’s like they’re cameras already recording her.

“You were in Laos,” says Maggie. Other than Wale, she’s never met anyone who has been there. For almost two months she’s been desperate for information about her father, and here’s someone who has been investigating him. The thought makes her both eager and circumspect. “So you know what happened,” she says.

“I know what people said. An opium deal that went bad. Your father caught up in it by accident.” The woman speaks in such a neutral tone that it’s impossible to tell what she believes herself.

“You think it was by accident?” Maggie asks.

The woman squints at her. “What do you think happened?”

When Maggie doesn’t answer, the woman looks toward the house as if hoping for an invitation to enter. “You knew him better than anyone. It’s why I wanted to speak with you.” Her tone offers intimacy and understanding, but it sets Maggie on edge.

“Are you working for the Church? Trying to prove there was a miracle? Or are you out to debunk all that?”

The woman considers her answer. “I suppose I’m interested in symbols.” Seeing Maggie’s bemusement, she adds, “Your father’s a symbol of the war for people now. For some he’s a symbol of faith.” She says these last words too earnestly for Maggie’s liking.

“He was my father,” says Maggie, feeling almost petulant.

“He was never a symbol for you?”

“Is that how you see your own father?”

The woman laughs good-naturedly. “Why, yes. When I was a girl, he was a symbol of the life I swore never to lead.”

“And what was that?” says Maggie, although she doesn’t care to know the answer.

“You can probably guess,” the woman replies, but Maggie doesn’t bother and the woman doesn’t say.

“I’m sorry you drove all this way for nothing,” Maggie tells her.

The woman looks about to make some comment, then bites her lip. “I’ve gone about this poorly. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset. It’s just that I’ve lost my dad. You shouldn’t take it personally if I don’t feel like talking.”

“Don’t worry about me,” says the woman. “I knew how things stood when I came up here. I just liked the sound of a girl on a commune.” Maggie can’t tell whether she knows everyone is gone. “Hey, do you mind if I look around before I leave? No camera, just me.”

It would be easy enough to say yes, but Maggie doesn’t want the woman taking in the place with those big dark eyes. She doesn’t want her seeing the graffiti beneath its coat of paint.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Okay.” Still the woman waits, as if hoping Maggie will relent. “Listen, will you do me a favour? Will you watch the segment on TV? It airs the first of the month. At the very least, you’ll see what the mission looked like.” She names the time and channel, and Maggie nods noncommittally. Then, as the woman is about to get back into her car, she turns. “Is it true your father didn’t really serve in World War II?”

It’s the last question Maggie expected. “Of course he did.” Why would anyone ask something like that? “He was
wounded in the neck. Talk to people in Syracuse, they’ll tell you.”

The woman looks at Maggie with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Yes. Thank you, yes, I will.”

She’s behind the wheel again when Maggie calls for her to wait.

“Your father,” says Maggie. “You said he symbolized the life you didn’t want. What did he do for a living?”

The woman smiles, turns the key in the ignition, and pulls closed the door. Maggie assumes that’s the end of things, and it seems fair enough. A second later, though, the woman looks at her through the driver’s window, one eye closed tight, and with a hand she mimes shooting Maggie with a silent camera. Then she grins, waves, and steers the car up the drive.

That afternoon, Brid enters a bad place. She writhes on the bedroom floor and pounds the walls. She left her daughter, she says. She hates herself. When finally she agrees to come down for a meal, she hardly eats a thing. Attempting to distract her, Maggie suggests they try building a chicken coop together, but Brid’s eyes are dark hollows slick with tears and she doesn’t respond. In the morning Maggie can’t find her until she steps out from the mudroom and discovers her standing in her nightie just beyond the door, shivering in the chilly late November air, skin pale as porcelain, lips chapped and bloodless. No longer does Brid make any pretence of being here for Maggie. She scorns all reassurance, rejects Maggie’s suggestions that they go for a drive. By
the end of the day, Maggie’s exhausted. Only after saying good night to Brid does she realize she has gone more than twenty-four hours without reflecting on her father’s death. It feels like a betrayal needing atonement. She imagines phoning the documentarian and agreeing to meet, then sitting in front of the woman’s camera and telling her about the good memories, the ones from childhood. But when she tries to retrieve the business card, she discovers it has gone through the wash with her jeans and turned to illegible pulp.