Once We Had a Country (39 page)

“Never thought it would end up like this,” she says, and he offers his agreement, his face shaded by a certain wistfulness that surprises her. “Did you really think it might work out?” she asks. “I mean, back in June, did you really think we might live here forever?” It hurts her to see him nod, regretfully and without hesitation.

“Naive, huh?”

“What happened, then?” she asks. Maybe it’s the drugs that let her pose the question, or maybe it’s the fact that finally she can ask it face to face.

“You know what happened,” he says. The sorrowful expression that overtook him the night of the party returns exactly as it first appeared.

“I don’t mean in the summer. I mean after that, in Boston. Why didn’t you come back?”

He shakes his head in frustration. “I never got together with Cybil again, if that’s what you mean.” He speaks as though pained that she might think as much. He’s always so sensitive to others’ judgment, and at the same time he seems to accept it as inevitable.

Upon having this thought, Maggie says something that until now has only occurred to her in a vague, unformulated way. “Fletcher, you ever wonder if you did it on purpose? The film, I mean.”

His face darkens and he looks confused.

“You ever think,” she says, “maybe you wanted everyone to see it?”

He gives a harsh laugh. “Why the hell would I want that?” His voice is angry, but he waits to hear her answer.

“I don’t know. Maybe you were looking for an excuse to go home.”

He only laughs again, though in an excessive way. Then he regains a look of concern. “You should come back to Boston.”

The words jar her. It’s not the sentiment that’s surprising but the tone in which he utters it. During the fall, his counsel for her to return always seemed like a way to allay his conscience. Now he offers it with a kinder inflection.

Casting her a sidelong glance, he adds, “You could stay at my place.”

Now it’s her turn to laugh uneasily. “You’re just a pushover for a girl in a hospital gown.”

“No, I mean it.” He tries to say it in a lighthearted way, but it’s obvious he isn’t speaking idly. Then he utters something that seems a hallucinatory product of the drugs. “We could try again.”

The sentence seizes her. For a second it manages to blot out the pain, before passing through and taking her defences with it, so that her ankle begins to pulse more sharply than ever. For most of October, after the news of her father’s death, after Fletcher told her he wasn’t coming back, the words he has just spoken were what she most wanted to hear. Then there was George Ray, and her hopes changed.

“Fletcher—” She thinks of telling him about George Ray, except George Ray doesn’t really have a bearing on the matter. What she wants to say isn’t even clear to her, beyond a conviction that the time for what he’s just suggested has come and gone.

It turns out she doesn’t even have to say anything. The way she has spoken his name is enough.

“Never mind,” he says. “It was just a thought.”

He looks about the room as if searching for an exit, then settles his gaze on the blank television set against the wall.

“You watch the moon landing the other day?” he asks, and she says she didn’t. “Last one for a while. You know, in high school I was space crazy. Wanted to be an astronaut. Did I ever tell you that? At least until I found out they can’t wear these.” He taps his glasses with a rueful smile before sinking back to his hunched position in the chair.

He’s travelled a long way to be here; she should be grateful for that. It wasn’t a journey through outer space, only a trip to a foreign country, but still he’s made the effort, even though by now for him this place must be synonymous with disappointment. It’s a marvel, really, to think there was a time when he hoped settling here would be a worthy substitute for earlier dashed dreams, when he thought a life with her might be enough. She lies there sensing the presence of another Fletcher somewhere over them, unfulfilled. She imagines him orbiting Earth, his long body wrapped in a silver suit with a flag on the shoulder, suspended in darkness among pricks of light. His face is illuminated by blinking instruments, and he’s thousands of miles from home, from family, from obligation and disapproval. As she envisions him like that, there’s a pang, because she feels pretty certain the image is similar to one he once invented for himself, and it might come closer than anything else to his picture of happiness.

A certain amount of pleading is necessary before the doctor allows her to venture from the room. Then, as Fletcher helps a nurse move her into a wheelchair, Maggie muffles cries of pain. With her foot propped out front like a tender battering ram, Fletcher pushes her into the hall. The corridor feels ethereal with its abandoned gurneys and strings of Christmas lights. A few yards down, he wheels her into Brid’s room. It contains a single bed, the body on it obscured by a jungle gym of pulleys, straps, and struts. Brid’s face is scratched but free of burns, while her arms
are wrapped in gauze. On the windowsill is a bouquet of lilies that produces in Maggie a brief, ludicrous envy, because no one has brought any flowers for her.

Brid manages a smile of welcome. Once Fletcher has positioned Maggie’s chair next to the bed, he excuses himself from the room, as if it’s been arranged that he’s to give them some time alone.

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry,” says Brid when he’s gone. “I think it was all my fault.”

“It doesn’t matter, you shouldn’t beat yourself up—”

“But did Fletcher tell you? I lit a candle while you were out. Then I went into the orchard for a walk. When I came back, there was smoke coming from the house and the camper was in the drive, and that chickenshit from next door was just standing by the porch like a lump. Maggie, I feel so bad about it …”

“I’m the one who should feel bad.” She gestures to the apparatus around the bed. “You saved my life.”

“Guess I did, huh?” Brid manages another smile, then grows sombre. “Listen, I’ve been thinking.”

Maggie fears what’s about to follow, but Brid’s expression brightens as she starts to speak.

“Let’s stay here and start over with the farm,” she says. “We can build a brand new house.”

She must be kidding. Except it seems she isn’t, judging by the enthusiasm on her face. Maggie searches for a response.

“The old place was a dump anyway,” Brid says. “We can live in the barracks until the new one’s ready. And we’ll plant trees. Not just cherry trees, but peaches and grapes—”

“Grapes don’t grow on trees.”

“You know what I mean. Anyhow, George Ray will handle that stuff.”

George Ray? What kind of fantasy has Brid entered? There she lies in a hospital bed while Maggie sits helpless in a wheelchair, neither of them with any job or income, and she’s imagining a whole new farm.

“Brid, I can’t afford to buy the property, much less—”

“I’ll buy it, then. I’ll take care of everything.”

Maggie smiles in bewilderment. Not so many days ago, Brid was on the bathroom floor cursing and screaming. Before that, she was confessing her inability to pay for her keep. Now she looks calmer and more certain than at any time Maggie has known her.

“Where will you get the money?” Maggie asks.

“From Fletcher.” Brid says it as if the whole thing has already been agreed upon.

“He won’t go for that. It’s too much, even for him—”

“He’ll go for it,” Brid insists. “He’s already been offering me the moon, he feels so bad about everything. You think he’ll say no if I tell him we want to rebuild?” And as she says it, Maggie knows he won’t.

“Sweetie, don’t get worked up,” says Brid in a soothing voice. “Things will turn out fine, I swear. The farm in the summer was a disaster, but this time we’ll do it right.” She smiles and winks. “For one thing, we’ll put the women in charge.”

For a while they just keep each other company and Maggie tries to digest what has been proposed. Then she thinks of something else.

“Have you seen Pauline yet?”

Brid averts her eyes, and the contentment disappears from her face. “Fletcher’s going to bring her in a minute. I wanted to wait till you were here.” For Brid to say this is touching but disconcerting too. Brid seems to register Maggie’s worry, because she adds, “You don’t have to do anything. Just sit there. That’ll be enough.”

“Are you ready for her?” Maggie asks.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” Brid reaches over to the lilies and brushes one of the petals with a bandaged finger. “She hates me now.”

“No, she’ll be glad to see you.”

Brid gives a little grunt of disbelief.

A few minutes later, the door creaks and the girl peeks in, clutching her curly-haired doll. Its left arm remains attached to the shoulder by only a few threads; its button eyes have fallen off. Pauline glares at Maggie as though holding her responsible for her mother’s condition. Faced with that accusation on the girl’s face, Maggie looks away. Then Pauline rushes into the room, halting at the bedside. Probably someone has counselled her to be gentle around Mommy.

“Hello, Pollywog,” says Brid. She’s trying not to let Pauline see her cry. Pauline clambers up the side of the bed and gives her mother a fat kiss on the cheek. A second later she throws another suspicious glance at Maggie. It seems Maggie can’t stay without having an effect on the proceedings, so as quietly as she can manage, she wheels herself from the room.

The specialist who arrives later in the day to examine Maggie’s ankle removes the dressing and doesn’t like what he sees. Her foot is purple and scarlet, a worked-over bulbous piece of meat. She nearly faints when he touches it, and he orders an increased dose of the painkiller she’s on. A few minutes later, she’s asleep.

When she regains consciousness, the morning sun shines through the window. Lenka and Fletcher are standing beside the bed, whispering small talk to each other. Beyond them, someone is seated in a chair near the door.

It’s Josef, and in his lap is a baby, a boy about a year old with straight black hair over his ears, looking peaceably at the adults before him. Without anyone explaining it to her, Maggie understands that this is Yia Pao’s son.

The priest is singing to the child in Czech and smiling. When he sees Maggie’s awake, he grins at her with elation.

“Is Wale here too?” she asks. It’s as though she has awoken to a different reality, one without any distances, where everyone exists together.

“No,” says Josef. “But Yia Pao is.”

“You missed the momentous arrival,” says Fletcher. “How are you feeling?”

“Never mind that,” she says, even as she apprehends the throb in her foot. “Where’s Yia Pao? Where’s Wale?”

“Yia Pao should probably explain things,” Fletcher tells her. “He’s asleep in the waiting room. Let me go get him. He’s pretty jet-lagged, but he’s eager to talk with you.”

Once Fletcher leaves the room, Lenka tells her that last night Yia Pao and his son were brought to the rectory by Frank Dodd. Yia Pao had arrived at the farm and found
it in ruins. Then he had gone next door and asked Frank about Maggie.

“The boy’s name is Xang,” says the priest, jouncing the baby on his lap and staring into his eyes with a goofy, wide-mouthed smile.

“How did they end up at the farm?” Maggie asks, and Lenka says they hitchhiked from the Toronto airport. “But how did they get into the country?”

“I’ll tell you,” says a voice.

At the door stands a short, thin man, only a little like the one she remembers from the documentarian’s film. This version of him looks older than the Yia Pao on TV. No, not older, but more worn, rough-faced and ruddy-skinned, with deep scars across his cheeks. He wears rumpled pants along with a white shirt that looks too big for him, as if lent from Josef’s wardrobe.

“My God,” she says. “It’s you.”

Yia Pao draws closer and takes her hand. “I’m sorry about your father. Gordon was my good friend.”

From Josef’s lap, the little boy calls out. Yia Pao goes to him, then returns to Maggie’s bedside holding him against his chest, Xang burbling and pudgy-cheeked, showing no sign that he was ever close to death.

Lenka clears her throat and announces they’ll leave them for a bit. She offers to take the boy, but Yia Pao says he’ll be all right with him. Once she has departed with Josef and Fletcher, Maggie turns to regard Yia Pao.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “Have you eaten?” Her own stomach growls. He nods and says her friends have been very kind.

“They told me about the fire,” he continues. “If you need to rest—”

“Don’t go anywhere. I have so much to ask you.”

But the sober look on his face makes her fearful of what he has to tell her. If Wale isn’t here, what happened to him? The pain in her stomach grows worse than the one in her foot.

“Wale,” she begins, then is unable to say anything further.

“I don’t know what has happened,” says Yia Pao. “Did you not hear from him?” She replies that it’s been almost two weeks since he last called. “He was supposed to meet me at the airport in Vientiane,” Yia Pao tells her. He’s about to say more when the statue of Saint Clare on the bedside table catches his eye. His son has seen the figure too, and he reaches for it as though it’s a plaything, but Yia Pao doesn’t move to oblige him.