I read Ricky’s journal, impatient to find mentions of Etta beyond the Ink Spots song. Did she speak to him too? Could he hear her garbled, like Lucky hears her, or word for word, like I can? But Ricky remains a writer of lists and instructions.
What I guess is that, about six months before he killed himself, Ricky kept a detailed record of everything he ate and drank. I scold myself for my own death wishes. How did Ricky do it? Surely not by starving himself.
July 6, 1989—nearly a year ago—there’s a self-portrait of Ricky, scarecrow thin with a flame across his chest. In block letters, he’d written, “The smaller I am, the less heat she’ll need to set me on fire. I’ll become kindling thin.”
It’s happening again. Sickness swells in my stomach. I kissed her. I let her in my bed. Am I cursed now? I slam Ricky’s journal shut, but immediately regret it. I want to know, don’t I? Knowledge is power, isn’t it?
She reappears now as a scorch-marked silhouette on Ricky’s painting. A candle-flame-sized version of her. “I just want to start a flame in your heart.” Her calling card melody is deeper than an echo in my head this time. It stabs.
“Tell me what you want from me,” I shout. She buckles my knees and down I go to the floor.
“I never asked for nothin.’” Hal is roughly three steps behind me. I can hear him wiping his boots on the cabin’s doormat, but I can’t turn around to greet him. I’m paralyzed as he comes muttering up, “Whatcha mean ‘What do you want from me’? You work here, don’t ya?” He waves his swollen hand in front of my face to get my attention, then follows my fixed gaze to the painting. He sees her too. “Mother of God.” Hal drops to his knees beside me.
Hal confesses: “Virgin Mother. Blessed Lady in Heaven. I’m a humble a servant. Th’ dog under your holy feet. It’s Harvey Varin from Grey County. That’s written on my birth certificate. Born in the cinder block house at the mouth of Potawatomi River. Do you know me?
“I ain’t lived no good life, but, here ’n’ now, I vow ta serve ya best I can. Praise be for givin’ me another chance. I been prayin’ for another chance. I never thought you’da come. God sure play’d a joke, havin’ me born in the last damn dry city in all of Canada. Curse’d Evangelicals. They never drink, they never pray to Mary neither, pardon me sayin’ so. Owen Sound is rum-runners land. If you were watchin’ over me at all, then you saw I was runnin’ back ’n’ forth from Barrie or Toronto since I were pretty young and drinkin’ younger still. I s’pose god warned me when Paps got the drunk’s hepatitis. His eyes turned yellow and his stomach made him look like a pregnant gal.
“Fifteen, sixteen years old, and what did I have to say ‘cept he couldn’da died fast ’nough. Paps lungs got bad, and he’da choke when he lied down. I had’da make our armchair up like a bed, and that’s where he’d sleep, if he ever did sleep. Sometimes he’da piss in that chair, sometimes bleed out.
“It was me and only me that heard him cough his last. It was me and only me who had to burn the bloody bed linens out back. Worst smell—your own father’s blood burnin’. God coulda spared me that, but who am I to question? God coulda spared me all th’ old man’s beatin’s too.
“So I spit on my own father’s grave. Figured he was going ta hell, and I’da follow. Now I confess the evil in my heart. That’s why you’ve come, right—to hear my confession? Nothin’ more I’da like to tell you than I straight’n right out after Paps died, but we both knows that ain’t true. Took six years in a cage ta change me. Kingston Penitentiary. And lord knows, the place let me out worst than when I’da gone in. But you sends me them priests and their half-way house in Welland to bring me ’round to peace.
“God bless them hippie priests—Father Neil and Father Juan Carlos—with their guitars and their vegetable gardens and the chickens they’da named after the Saints.” Hal chuckles at himself. I exhale; it seems like the first breath I’ve taken since he began his monologue. “Eight months to the year, I stayed with them. Dry too. Ah, welp, mostly dry. Can’t lie to you anymore, can I?
“The steel foundry use’ta hire ex-convicts, so that’s where I went. Workin’ steel, same as ever’body else, ‘til the foundry closed in ’83. Manufacturers were handin’ out lay-off papers like advertisement flyers back then. Lotsa guys left Welland to go work the Artic Pipeline.
“I left too, ’cept I left for love. I ain’t a chaste man, but Bobby was the first gal I loved. I use’ta tell her that every single day. Didn’t matter we weren’t no spring chickens—still felt like young sweethearts do. She got knocked up, so I asked her ta marry me, no doubts ’bout it. What else is there besides love?”
Hal couldn’t have delivered a better redemption soliloquy if he’d pre-written it. I want to turn around, reach out to him, perhaps even hug him. But Etta had us both locked in place like inanimate scenery props.
“I figured it woulda been like a storybook. We’d buy this mobile home, live humble and happy. Raise our son right. Nothin’ like the childhood she or I had. I can’t say I know why, ’xactly, it turn backwards again. Maybe I should’a found another job? I for sure shouldn’t never have start to drink like I have.
“If I gonna be true, Blessed Virgin, real ’n’ true so I might earn your forgiveness, I say it’s Lucky. Since he got born, I got angry. It’s like all my anger at my own Paps is back again. I never knew it was lingerin’ so deep, but it’s back. It’s a curse that’sa been waitin’ all this time. It nags me. ‘You’re a bad father. You’re a bad father. Your son hates you. Your own son gonna hate you.’ Virgin Mary, this is my real ’n’ true confession. I confess there be anger in my heart that stops me from lovin’ my son.
“I swear I’ll trade all the anger for your blessin’. Thank you. Thank you for savin’ me Mother Mary. Thank you for showin’ your holy light. Tell me what ta do. Please, Mother, tell me what ta do.”
“The rotgut is a Catholic,” Etta’s voice worms in my ear. Her voice feels like it’s right in my scull, scratching, scratching.
You said only I could see you.
Listen to you, Etta exclaims sharply. How quickly you learned to speak with that pretty little head. Special girl. Don’t be jealous. He can’t see much of me, not like you. And he can’t hear me like you can. You can hear my every word still, can’t you?
“I can hear you,” I call out. If I yell aloud, maybe she’ll get out of my head.
“Oh blessed be. What do she say?” Hal latches on to my shoulder.
You know, I always thought I could play the role of Mary. Just like Dorothy Cumming in The King of Kings. My Mama took me to see that show when I was a sprout. I’ll never forget the eye-popper ending when the screen turned Technicolor. Technicolor in a silent film! I figured anything was possible when I saw heaven in colour that day.
Guess what? I thought anything was possible again last night when you asked me what I wished for. Remember that? Well, I do have a wish, thanks for asking. I want the Park back. The ballroom and the steamship and the roller coaster. I want them all back. Her voice is hot liquid in my ear. Tell the old man I want to ride the roller coaster again.
I try to speak and my jaw locks. I squeeze my hands against my head. “Hal, it’s not Mary,” I manage to say.
“She ain’t Mary?” Hal asks. “Who then? Not the devil comin’ for me? I need one more chance, is all. Tell her I need one more chance.”
Clip the man’s hope, why don’t ya? says Etta. My mind splits with her words. I lower my forehead to the floor. He’ll really hit the bottle, now. Better tell him I’m an angel. I’ve been called that enough times, it’s as good as true.
“She’s an angel.” I can’t believe I say it, but I do. “She’s an angel,” I exclaim again as if in ecstasy. I’m drooling onto the cabin floor. Maybe Etta is right. Hal needs this chance, and I need this searing pain in my head to stop. Already he thinks his kid’s stuffed animals are possessed, and I’m a witch. What’s the harm in adding an angel to the mix? “An angel that goes between Earth and Heaven,” I tell him. My jaw loosens a little. “To save our sorry souls. To give you the chance you asked for.”
“I can’t hear her. What she sayin’?”
“She says you’re on the right path, Hal. Stay sober.” Is this a step too far? Too manipulative? I’ll grapple with ethics later. “Now is the time to be a good father and husband.”
“Yes, Lucky will straighten me out. I promise. The boy’s one of your children, for sure. Lamb of god, not like me.”
Nice performance. Looks like we’ll be co-stars after all. So while he’s being so agreeable, tell him to build me a shrine. A huge shrine. More of a large gazebo or a dance pavilion, really. And tell him to build it with salvaged wood from the SS Canadiana. I miss that ferry boat. And from the wooden roller coaster. And the ballroom. Bring the Park back to me bit by bit.
I silently tell Etta, You hear his whole pitiful story and what do you come up with? He doesn’t need anything else put on him. How’s he going to build you a gazebo? Forming the words in my head is easy. It’s Etta’s answers that scrape through me.
You listen to me, this geezer needs a calling, I know men, and this one needs something bigger than his thirst and anger. He’ll stay dry, and I’ll get a shrine. Win-win, Dollface.
“Hal,” I say gravely. “She says there is something you must do as penance …”
Hal’s eyes grow wide and glassy. A broken blood vessel blooms around his left iris. Flash hemorrhage. He is already gesturing widely in eager agreement before I can tell him what he must do.