He rests, propped up on pillows, his favourite afghan around his knees, a Queen of Sheba dressed in purple and mint green striped pyjamas, an assembly of flowers displayed according to hue on his bedside table. The hospital room looks like a royal mausoleum crossed with an oriental antiques store: Persian rugs scattered on the floor, an Indian tapestry on the wall, his large gold-leaf Buddha poised on his stand in the corner, observing with an impassive eye. The only thing missing is Mi Tie. I hand him a bouquet. I have chosen irises, more magenta than purple. He gives them a cursory but approving sniff. I fan them in their vase and file them on the outskirts of the purple section. I know flowers after all my time with him.
It is hard to stop myself from gaping. He has lost at least thirty pounds. He is a smaller version of himself, a shrunken Archibald. Gone is the pink from his cheeks. His skin has a waxy undertone. He wears a beaded Moroccan cap on his head to conceal that he has lost most of his hair due to the chemo. But then the blue eyes turn to me, assessing, hot as a fired iron slicing through butter. They have not changed much.
“Archibald,” I say.
“Maggie, what a pleasant surprise,” he remarks, as though I have just turned up for tea.
“Mom called.” I had ignored the phone calls from the Deliahs and Eddie; even my mom had had to call twice. I had refused to believe that he was dying. It had only been seven months since the night of the portrait. I wasn’t ready to see him again. I was even less ready to see him like this. I still expected actors to jump out from behind the wings and reveal this as just another prank. But I could see now, clearly, that that would not happen. Although he had taken on monster-sized proportions in life, he was only a mortal man confined to a weak body and a wanting soul.
“Yes, I expected she would,” he laments with a sigh. Had he called her? “She always was nosy.”
I sit in a nearby chair, close but not too close, muscles in my back tense and ready.
“I suppose you haven’t forgiven me yet,” Archibald says with an even more pronounced sigh, fiddling with his afghan.
“Are you asking me to?” I counter.
“No, no. I always preferred you angry. It gives you some passion. Besides, it will make you remember me longer.” His blue eyes flash, and it is like the old days again. “On my headstone it should say, Archibald the Terrible.”
I suppress a chuckle, taken off guard. It would be fitting. “You said it.”
“Well, I did my best,” he says. “Some of the time, I misbehaved, and some of the time, I do regret it.”
I look down at my hands. I refuse to make this easy. But it would be a lie to say that I am not struck by his impending death, that death does not have a presence.
“Where is Penelope?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder, expecting to see her march through the door at any second, something between a snarl and a smile on her lips. I had last seen her flailing like a banshee at the award gala, trying to escape the mounds of her dress.
“I have no idea. Nor do I want to. She could be halfway to Hades for all I know or care.”
“What happened?” I ask. Did she find a bigger name to put on her resume? I wonder. “Did she quit?”
“No. She did not. I fired her bony ass, after … well … it was the final straw.” He breaks into a throaty cough and takes a sip from a flask on his bedside table, which makes him hack harder.
“She didn’t end up working for Michael?” I ask, too curious to contain myself.
“Of course not!” He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “If you must know, she spilled wine, red wine, on my best rug.” He points to where it graces part of the hospital-room floor. I peer down at the mosaic and quickly locate the familiar rose-coloured stain made by Carolina months before. “It was clear that it was made some time ago. And then she had the nerve to lie and to act offended on top of it. After everything.”
“How do you know it was her?” I ask, suppressing a giggle.
“Puh-lease. Red wine was all she drank after 4 p.m. She was a lush. And not a creative one at that. I could tell by the guilty look in her tiny, piggy eyes. It was a gift from a relative of the former Shah of Iran!” He raises what remains of his wispy eyebrows at me. “So I told her where she could go, to the depths of the river Styx with a very big stick stuck up her … She was a leech anyway. Her teeth were so white, you could read by them. She was addicted to vitamin C enemas. By the last month, her skin was turning orange. And Maria just hated her.”
“Maria hates everyone,” I interject.
“True,” he admits. “But then she had the nerve to say that my Buddha, the Tibetan Buddha, looked like a prude, and he just needed to get laid. By a woman of all things! I couldn’t bear to look at her. And then the rug, of course, was the final straw!”
I couldn’t help smiling to myself. Penelope fired for something I had helped conceal, now that was poetic justice.
“You don’t have to hide your amusement. I know she wasn’t exactly a favourite of yours.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Quite a view, eh?” He changes the subject, motioning to the window. Outside it is spring. I peer down at the open grassy park below, people walking dogs, kids playing, trees full of the bounty of their own fertility, blossoms that would fall, scatter on the paved sidewalks, get mashed underfoot, and perfume the soles of countless shoes.
“It’s not exactly the Ritz,” I quip.
“Touché. And let me tell you, they have a preposterous shortage of male nurses around here.” He glares when a matronly woman pokes her head in, making a note on a clipboard. “Everything is so … sterile. They wouldn’t even let me have the walls painted. Can you believe it?”
“The nerve of them,” I say.
“They got upset when I wanted to clear the negative chi with a little burnt sage. They thought it was pot. What is a little incense going to hurt? Or a little pot for that matter?”
“I vote for a little of one and a lot more of the other.”
He peers at me with approval, “You always could banter better than most, Magali.”
“Sam came to see me last week,” he whispers, on my next visit. The illness is doing its work, spurring him on, like an angry, whip-wielding rider on the back of a stubborn horse, to the finish line of his life.
“I know,” I say. I put his copy of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men he has asked for beside his bed. He shifts uncomfortably. Sam has forgiven him, but it has taken him time.
“These hideous beds … it’s like they’re trying to kill me with discomfort. I am dying for a pedicure. Oh bother, I asked you for Wordsworth, not Eliot.” He sighs.
“My mistake,” I answer even though his memory is the culprit.
He rolls his eyes, “You were always a pathetic liar and absolutely dreadful at diplomacy of any kind.”
“True. But I think I have improved over time under your instruction.”
“Maybe a very little,” he wheezes, a dark guttural noise, before continuing. “I am glad about you two, you know. He has a quality I always liked, a depth to go with those pretty hazel eyes.”
“Well, I will take that as your blessing. Not that I sought it.”
“Although I always liked the big boy with the Hemingway shoulders more. He gave the impression that he was the kind of man you could depend on, put your arm through, and just … lean on a little … if you ask me.”
“You mean Dan?” I ask.
“It’s too bad he turned tail. Toronto will wear him out. They work far too hard in that flat pancake of a province. Give me a prairie any day.”
Anger bubbles up inside me. How had he discovered that fact? Had that little troll been spying on me and mine again? “I hope that horrible little Zoltan rots.”
“Don’t blame him. He was just an eye for hire. A very good one. Sam told me about Dan anyway, not Zoltan.” I rise to go, not wanting to continue this conversation, but he interrupts.
“Sit,” he commands regally. “Please. It falls to me to give you some essential advice.”
“Advice? I don’t think so,” I counter.
“As you wish.” When I don’t leave, he clears his throat. “I am leaving most of my worldly possessions to you, as well as my estate.”
“Archibald, there really is no need—”
“Yes, there is. I wasn’t what I should have been to you. I know that. So.” He picks up The Hollow Men and flips through it.
“Are you feeling guilty?”
“Not really. It’s more like buyer’s remorse. I enjoyed the ride, even though I may have paid far too much for it. And made others pay, too. I have injured innocents on the way, sacrificed for the greater good. At least, that was my justification.” He puts the book down beside him.
“Is this your advice? If so, it sounds a bit bullshitty,” I say, hands on my hips.
“That’s just what she would have said,” he comments.
“Who?” I ask, surprised. “Mom?”
“No. Your grandmother. Magali could smell bullshit a mile away.”
“I didn’t know that about her. I thought—”
“That she was crazy?”
“Mentally ill,” I finish.
“No more or less than the rest of us, well, up until … her hospitalization.” He peers around the hospital room and shivers. “She was quick-witted, and she had a good sense of humour. Anyway, she visited me last night and she stood right where you are and said: A — that is what she used to call me, ‘A’ — she said, ‘You need to help our girl out. Point her in the right direction. She can’t sit around feeling sorry for herself. And neither should you. Tell it to her like it is but don’t be a self-centred old queen about it.’”
“Grandma said that?” I say, thinking his medication must have delusional side effects.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It was probably all in my head. But now that I’m on the subject: Take a trip. You need to see the world. You have talent as an artist, but you need more … context. I suggest Asia, because Italy, France, Spain, they will always be there, but you need more energy and stamina to do Asia. You should experience it while you are still young, and, believe me, youth is the first thing to go. One day you look in the mirror and it is just going-going-gone.”
“Asia?” I repeat, unconvinced. I had been to Thailand.
“Yes. Go to India. Take Sam with you. Don’t leave him to his own devices. Because he is from the prairies, and she is from the prairies. You know what I’m saying! Once from the prairies always from the prairies. It’s like a virus they cannot get out of their systems. They may drink martinis in the city, but they are most at home with a flavourless brewsky and a view of nothing but corn.” He makes a sour face.
“Archibald!”
“Maggie, I know a thing or two about a thing or two, so save me the vitriol. There will be plenty of time for your contempt later, after I am bird food.”
I remain silent, culled into obeisance.
“Listen,” he continues, eyes gleaming, “it is possible to love more than one person at the same time, even at the expense of another person. And idealists are not exempt. They are good at making messes, but they are never good at cleaning them up. Idealists are responsible for more suffering, more heartache, than they will ever know. Give me a cynic any day.”
“I’m no idealist,” I say.
“I wasn’t talking about you.” He looks at me. No, he looks through me. “So go to Asia, but take him with you.”
I surge from my seat and pace to the window, prickling at the burdensomeness of his advice, the tyranny of being forced to listen to him opine because he suddenly feels a degree of responsibility for my welfare, as if dying suddenly converts his opinions to the gospel and me to the congregation. I want to be anywhere but here, in this hospital room, enduring this old man on the margins of his existence, confronting me with bony fingers of truth, with shards of wisdom.
“I will think about it.”
“Don’t cut your hair again. Maria was right. It is your best asset. And don’t wear red, at least not tomato red. Although no one should wear tomato red now that I reflect on it. And never ever red lipstick. Your skin has too much red undertone. It is best left for acts of vandalism — on my door, for example.”
“Archibald!” I suppress a smile.
“But a little gloss now and then wouldn’t hurt.”
“Fine.” I thump my foot impatiently.
“Keep reading. I am going to leave you a reading list. Try to get through it. A good book is … nourishment for the inner marrow. If you get married, elope, preferably in Maui, not Mexico. The ocean is divine and it has a much more … salubrious energy. Do not wear white. Virginal went out with corsets, although, come to think of it, a corset is not a bad thing to have in one’s trousseau. And as far as wedding gowns are concerned: think décolletage, think modern, fun but not fussy, and no floral patterns of any kind.”
I roll my eyes.
“And do not, whatever you do, have children before you turn thirty-two, nor after thirty-eight. Old pregnant women should have their own island.”
“Archibald!”
He ignores me, continuing to mentally tick items off an unwritten list: “Always drink tea out of porcelain. You may have my china, whatever Maria doesn’t pilfer. She always had her eye on my rose china. Loose tea is always better. Buy a house with a view. You cannot underestimate a view for both resale value and aesthetic purposes.”
“That’s more than enough. I haven’t even considered buying—”
“You can have my real estate agent. He’s not bad, overall. He talks far too much, like a nervous straight man in the presence of a big scary queer! But he gets the job done and he’s trustworthy. Oh yes! This bit is useful. Here’s how you know you love someone. When you kiss, you do as follows: close your eyes and then open them. Opening them should always make the kiss better. If it does not, walk away, my girl. Cut your losses and walk away. If only I had followed my own advice. Giving advice is one thing; taking it is like falling out of an airplane without pissing up your sleeve. Often attempted, rarely accomplished.”
“Archibald, no more! You forget, I lived with you for close to two years. I know your opinions on everything. I could win the Archibald Weeks official Trivia Pursuit competition, hands down.”
He gives me a wry smile. “You have grown on me, Magali. Maggie.”
I do not respond, not ready for his sentimentalism. Not ready to profess feelings that I do not understand. I am definitely not ready for what comes next. “The book was a mistake. Revenge killed me, my dear, not cancer.”
“Revenge against who?” I ask.
“Whom,” he corrects before he closes his eyes.
“Archibald.” It is a few days later. He seems to be sleeping, but his eyes flicker, move beneath their lids, before opening.
“You look tense,” he observes. Then he is somewhere else. “I was just thinking about the time we were picnicking on the lawn of the legislature. You made cucumber sandwiches and tiny, perfectly round pink tea cakes I had told you about. You wore a ribbon in your hair and your mother wore the hat with lace around the edges. You were such a beauty, my girl.” Was it my mother he was talking about? A nurse smooths his bedsheets, her face careworn but not unkind.
“Archibald? It’s Maggie.”
“Magali. You took your time as usual.” His breathing is laborious. It is like a wet gale-force wind whistles inside him each time he speaks. He winces with each effort.
“Listen,” I begin. “I have something to tell you—”
“Maria was here. She made me a divine-smelling peach upside-down cake.” I notice an entire cake sitting on a tray nearby. “I am giving it to the nurses, not that they need the extra calories, unless you want some.”
“I’m good.”
“What? You? Turn down cake? I’m the one who’s sick,” he mocks.
“Very funny,” I say half-heartedly, pressing forward, breathless. “Archibald—”
“She cried like a baby, old cow. You would think I was her paramour and not her employer. She’s gone soft.”
I am about to explode: “Archibald, listen, Mom is here. She flew up from Oregon. She’s outside. She—”
“No. Absolutely not.” It is like an elastic band has snapped him back to reality.
“She wants to say goodbye,” I urge, silently wishing his conversion to compassion.
His eyes are open and sharpened. “Under no circumstances is she to set foot in this room. Not until my body is cold, do you understand? And she will not have the painting, do you hear?” The painting again. He had it moved here for safekeeping. It sits propped on a nearby chair, like it is a visitor all its own.
I nod to the nurse, Dawn, who I know will inform my mother that she is officially uninvited. No father and daughter reunions allowed. I feel a heaviness in my chest. I know it will be hard for her. That he chose to be unforgiving at the end.
He sleeps fitfully for the next hour. I watch the ebb and flow of his struggle. “I want the Deliahs to have Mi Tie. You always depressed her,” he rasps without opening his eyes.
“No problem,” I say.
“What is that smell? Are you wearing a new perfume?” he asks with a wrinkled brow.
“No,” I say, looking around. “Just hand cream.”
“It smells like dead flowers.”
I smell my hands but notice nothing offensive.
“We’ve increased his morphine dose,” Dawn whispers to me. “To help with the pain.”
“It’ll take a little more than morphine to knock him out,” I answer. “Maybe a heroin cocktail?”
The word “cocktail” stirs him. “Is there any place to get a decent drink around here?” he asks an imaginary friend or ghost. “Where’s Marcell these days? Ah yes, he hates the miasma of death.”
Marcell has been MIA as far as I know. I pick up my knapsack. I am tired. I have to see my mother, then Sam is meeting us for dinner. Who knows? He might have a change of heart and see her tomorrow.
“Maggie? Your mother?” He blindly reaches out for me. I lean towards him and he grabs me with a sudden strength, fingers pressing into my forearm, making me wince. “Tell her. There is never tomorrow.”
“What?” I ask.
“Tell her. There is never tomorrow. Just tell her,” he repeats.
He closes his eyes.
“Archibald?”
I wait for more, but I give up when he doesn’t open his eyes. In the hospital lobby, I am surprised to find my mother still waiting. She looks years younger, like she has been reverse-engineered to be a child again. Feet together, shoulders downcast, demure, a girl who wants to see her father, to know his approval one last time. But she never will. She looks up at me. I sit beside her, chest aching. I take her hand. I try to think of something comforting to say but come up empty. We remain like that for what seems like a long while.
“Did he … did he say anything?” she finally asks. I hesitate. Should I tell her what he said when it could have meant anything? When it could drive the nail in her heart even deeper?
“Yes,” I say finally. “He said to tell you, ‘There is never tomorrow.’”
“What?”
“There is never tomorrow. I don’t think he was making sense.”
“There is never tomorrow,” she repeats slowly. And then she smiles. “It was his way of saying he forgave me when I was a little girl. He would say, forgive today because there is never tomorrow.”
And then she cries.
He dies later that night. I am asleep in my own bed when it happens. I awake unknowing. The streets are wet with a recent rain. The smell of dead flowers fills my nose, and I inhale. But in that breath, I sense the world has changed. Archibald is gone, as is the force that bound all of us who knew him, and now we are released to make our own way in a less colourful world.
It is my first funeral. It is lavish and sombre, ostentatious and overwhelming. It is a funeral fit for a king, or in this case, a man who stretched the limits of decency to satisfy his own ego. It is held in a church that Archibald always admired for its vaulted ceilings and massive stained-glass windows. It is conducted by a member of his meditation circle, a balding man with a nasal voice and big, bushy eyebrows. The church is packed, filled with row after row of people who knew my grandfather or knew of him. They make an unusual menagerie, flamboyantly and flawlessly dressed young and old men, middle-aged women, all of his friends and acquaintances, even those unflatteringly depicted in his last book. Michael, not surprisingly, is nowhere to be seen.
Sam, my mom, and I sit together in a pew near the front. I get the odd glance, but mostly, I feel a sense of acceptance. My mom sits stoically, the odd tear escaping the corner of her eye, which she wipes with an air of irritation. I sit, not crying, not crying for Archibald. There are poems and anecdotes, stories about his outrageous performances and literary contributions. They go on and on. It is as he would have wanted it: filled with frenzied effusiveness, theatrical lamentations, and tearful recitations. The truth has taken a back seat to the cult of Archibald. But wherever he is, even if he has had to claw his way from the ground up, he has the best seat in the house: centre stage. And, I am certain, he is loving every second of it.
After the reading of the will, we sort through Archibald’s apartment. My mother is with me. She deserves to be here. We find the apartment dim and unusually orderly. I open the curtains. Maria has had her final wish granted and has scoured it from top to bottom. Mom looks around as if the whole place is filled with horror, and I remember that awful day when I found out who I was. She must be remembering, too.
We look though his office, and there, as mentioned in the will, is a letter for me on the desk. There is also an unfamiliar trunk in the room. My grandmother’s painting rests against it. My mother moves the painting gently, lovingly, and then turns to the case.
“Oh my God,” she says. “He kept this. All this time. It was mine.” It is a white wooden trunk, paint chipped, with an etched elephant on the outside. The key is in the lock. She turns it and begins to rifle through papers and pictures. She hands me a photo. I recognize her as a young woman, a beautiful Rita Hayworth in a forties-style bathing suit.
“Wow,” I say.
“From my modelling days,” she says.
“Your what?”
She hands me another picture of a young woman and a man in ’50s wedding clothes. The young man, smiling devilishly, is dapper in a suit and carries a cane I recognize. And the woman is in a white dress with a tiny veil and a crinoline skirt, her lips pursed together, upturned.
“It’s their wedding photo, Archibald and your grandmother’s. Oh and look…” She sorts through a stack of notebooks and pulls out a red one. “I thought this was destroyed in the fire.” She opens it up. It is a notebook, faded and yellow. “He must have rescued this stuff. I never knew. Jesus.” She puts the book down as if it is suddenly too heavy for her hands to manage. Are they shaking or is the dimness of the room playing tricks on me? “What will you do with her painting?” she asks finally.
“Give it to you, of course. What else?” I am still peering at the wedding photo wondering what it would have been like to be a fly on the wall of that wedding. Crazy town.
“Before you decide that, you should know the truth.” She hands me the battered notebook as though its touch scorches her skin. “You should know about the fire.”
June 26, 1970
It’s all so exciting! I’m beginning a new phase of my life and so I’m beginning a new journal. I found it in the ferry gift shop — it’s red, Archibald’s favourite. The colour of love, he says. I had my first modelling job today! It was just for the Hudson’s Bay catalogue, but I got paid pretty well, and the photographer said that I have great bone structure and a “classic” look, whatever that is. He said he might have me back next week for the swimsuit section. But I think he really just wanted my phone number, which is fine by me. I know next to no one in Vancouver.
When I arrived at Archibald’s house, he was in the middle of a get-together. Some things never change. He took my hand in his and announced, “Everyone, this is my darling, soon to be famous daughter. Susie, this is everyone.”
He paraded me around the house, introducing me to artists, writers, actors, even a movie director! I was still wearing the purple mini-dress with silver sandals and a matching headscarf from the photo shoot. He didn’t ask how long I’m staying, which is fine by me. I haven’t yet told him I am planning to take the next year off school to travel and work and just live it up.
He called over a man with chiselled features who was maybe only a few years older than me, no more than 25, and introduces me. “James, I want you to meet my fabulous daughter, Susan. Susan, this is my assistant, James.”
“Susan, I have heard so much about you.” His smile was sexier than any I have ever seen, and yet, there was something about him that niggled me. His eyes were calculating, like he was sizing me up, immediately measuring my value to him.
I have heard nothing about you, I wanted to say.
“James, show Susie to her room.” James gave me another charming smile and picked up my bag. I followed him up a winding staircase to my room.
My room overlooks a fantastic L-shaped pool. Dad must be doing well. I managed to get a good look at James as he placed my suitcase on the bed. He’s the most handsome boy I have ever seen. Gregory Peck meets Cary Grant. He makes me uncomfortable. I don’t seem to have the same effect on him, though.
“That is quite a purple number,” he said. I catch sight of myself in the mirror, long reddish hair, blue eyes like Dad’s. I thought I looked quite nice. “I know they say pretty in pink, but you are pretty in purple.”
“Thank you,” I say. He sat on the bed, testing it out.
“This house is beautiful,” I said, resisting the urge to chew my nails.
He lit up a cigarette and exhaled. “Archibald likes everything just so.” Then before I could respond, he stood up and left the room without another word.
I wonder if Dad bought the house with Mom’s money or from the earnings from his latest book. Probably a combination. They don’t see much of each other anymore. Mom says they love each other but aren’t able to live together. Archibald says they have a “modern marriage.” I have never been too sure what that means, except that perhaps he is happier apart.
People were scattered all over the place, laughing, dancing, drinking champagne, whisky, beer, you name it. Before that night, I had only been really drunk once. James appears, hands me a glass, and I taste it. It is pink and foamy, like cotton candy and ginger ale. Good but strong. After a few more of those, the room shimmered and glowed.
“There you are, Susie,” Archibald called. “Come and sit by your old man.” He patted a seat on the sofa beside him.
He was stylish in shorts and a checked shirt. His strawberry blond hair is just starting to thin. I always used to picture him as Errol Flynn swinging from the rafters.
“How’s Mom?” he asked. He hasn’t been home in a couple of months.
“Fine, painting mostly,” I said.
“And how did your exams go?”
“Great,” I said. “I got top honours.”
“That’s my girl. Well, you feel free to stay as long as you like. We’ll talk about your future later. Beauty is one thing, but a talented girl like you must explore her options.”
I nodded, trying not to see three of him at the same time.
“Sure.” It felt wonderful to be in his interest again. He always makes me feel invincible, like I could climb Mount Everest.
July 4
James picked me up from my modelling job in Archibald’s Sunbeam. At the agency, they said I have great commercial potential if I lose ten pounds. Archibald says celery juice helps with water retention. So now I’m pretty much sick of celery and hungry all the time. We cruised along the streets with the roof off, not talking.
“Archie is helping me with my first novel,” he said eventually, looking over at my legs in the car.
“That’s great,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that it was. I have never heard anyone that young call my father “Archie,” and I don’t think I like it.
When we were back at the house, he said to me, “Archie is napping. Help yourself to dinner. By the way, we’ll be out tonight, another party. I could probably get you invited.”
“No, thanks,” I said, for some reason, not wanting to be in his debt. “I’m really tired.”
“Get your beauty sleep,” he said.
July 14
It’s been so hot! I caught a bus down to the beach today and swam and lay around there feeling the salty breeze. When I got home, no one was there, so I took a nap up in my room. I made a sandwich, feeling dull and listless. Later that night as it cooled down, I decided to take a swim. I dove under the water and when I surfaced, he was there, watching me. I am never sure what he’s thinking. He’s my dad’s special pet. I can hardly get any time alone with Archibald these days, but he’s given James his own room in the guest house.
James sat on the pool’s edge, feet in the water. I swam towards him, and he offered me a hand. It was almost like being pulled by a magnet. I sat beside him, staring at the slivery crescent moon and a sky bursting with stars. One minute he was talking about something — I don’t remember what — and the next minute he was kissing me. I heard the water in the pool lapping against my legs and feel the warmth of his mouth on mine.
“Susan, come here, please.” It was Archibald, calling from his window. James pulled back.
“Fuck,” he muttered angrily. “He was supposed to be out.”
Dad met me at the top of the stairs, looking disgruntled. “Pack your bags; your mother wants you home tomorrow.”
“But—”
“No buts, my dear. You can always return for modelling jobs … occasionally.”
I guess Dad is trying to stop the romance between James and me, just another protective father after all. I packed my bags, but I hope I can talk him out of sending me home if I promise not to see James again. I wonder if James will be fired.
I walked down the hallway to Dad’s room a few hours later, unable to sleep and wanting to put things right between us. The door was partly open, and a sliver of light protrudes. I can hear voices.
“You have to learn to control yourself. My own daughter!” yelled Archibald.
“I just felt sorry for her. She’s been flirting with me for days. You know I could never love anyone else.”
“James, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. You want me for my money but mainly for my connections.”
“That’s not true. Archibald!”
He threw his arms around Archibald and put his head on his chest. Archibald relented and encircled him in his arms. He closed his eyes. And I could see. I could see that my father loves this boy.
“It will never happen again.”
“You bet your sweet ass it won’t.”
“You won’t abandon me, will you? Not with my book to finish.”
Archibald sighs. “Not as long as you can be faithful.”
I backed away slowly and went back to my room. I am sick to my stomach. I never knew this about my father. I imagined maybe he saw other women but never men! How can this be happening?
July 16
I found Mom in her studio as usual. She didn’t seem surprised to see me.
I told her everything about Archibald and James, everything I saw. I had to. It may break her heart, but I could not carry that burden alone. I cannot let her be shamed by him.
I remember my last conversation with Archibald.
“So this is it?” I said to Archibald at the ferry. “You’re sending me away for that boy?”
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It was a bad idea, your coming. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
I felt so rejected, completely deflated. “You’re disgusting. You’re a pervert. And a rotten father,” I said, trying not to cry.
“You may be right,” he said sadly.
Mom just sat there and listened. She didn’t even stop painting.
After I stopped talking, she put her brush down and she looked at me, grey eyes serious. “Are you finished?”
“Yes,” I said, waiting for her to cry and scream and rail, to share my pain and then comfort me, but she did nothing, just gave me a wistful smile.
“You haven’t told me anything I don’t know.”
“Mom, Archibald is having an affair … with a man! Fucking a man!”
“Sweetheart. I’ve kept you too sheltered. You would have found out eventually.”
I was unprepared for that reaction. My own father a queer and my mother doesn’t even give a shit?
“Don’t you care?” I asked.
“I used to. But now I think we have to carve out our own bits of happiness as best we can. It is hard to have everything you want. You can’t be too greedy.” She turned back to her painting, and just like that, I was alone.
Later that night, I sat up. She had taken three of her blue tranquilizers, washed down with vodka. She was out. But I was up and filled with rage. At her. How could she be so passive and accepting? How could she go on knowing what her husband is? That right then he lay in the arms of that horrible man? How could she let me believe in him? The only thing that means anything to her is her art. I drank from the vodka bottle. I found myself at her studio. They were all there. All of her latest portraits. So many of her, Archibald, and me together. She was painting a lie. A fantasy. I grabbed all the paintings I could and heaved them to the floor. I doused them in vodka, and I lit the match. I stood back and watched them burn. Flames consume her work, her art, her lies.
Then I ran outside and watched the fire, angry and alive. The studio was eaten alive by red, orange, yellow rage. When she was finally roused by the fire it was too late. I watched her face. I watched her try to run into the flames as firefighters restrained her. It was like watching a person die. It was terrible. She screamed and screamed. And her screams filled me with terror. But it was too late. I had done enough.
As I write this, she lies in the hospital, heavily sedated, with third-degree burns on her arms. I am filled with trepidation. At what he will do. What he will think. I want him to come back and beg forgiveness.
I find her leaning on the balcony, staring down as though the past is laid out below her in place of the tree-dotted street and the lip of seascape. She has kicked her shoes off and stands beside Archibald’s salmon pink geranium pot. I lean beside her, trying to still the deliration of my thoughts, attempting to grasp a single thread without causing an avalanche of human debris — betrayal, jealousy, despair — to rain on my head.
“You knew Michael?” is the entry point I choose.
“James, yes. His real name was James. He changed it.” So, Archibald had used James in the book as a way of letting Michael know that he was James, literally.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“When I found out about your relationship in Oregon, after the book, it was already far too late to be useful.” Always the pragmatist. She reaches into her purse for a cigarette and lights it, then she lights another for me. I lift my head and glance at the balcony above me, remembering. Michael had moved out quietly, apparently, before the funeral, and the condo had since been sold.
I smoke my cigarette. I look at the tip burning, feel its heat close to my fingers. I have never liked the taste, the tar-ish sizzle of cancer in my mouth. But it now seems appropriate, having something that could incinerate the world between my fingers.
“You set the fire,” I say.
“Yes. It was more terrible than I could ever describe.” She says it like she means it, still, after all these years.
“And my grandmother … after? What happened?” I ask.
“She existed in and out of hospitals. She had always had a problem, but the fire,” she exhales, “exacerbated it. He saw as little of me as possible. It was really over then. I became a nurse, maybe out of guilt, who knows? I met your father in the hospital I worked at; he was an attending then. He was a good listener, and the rest is what it is: history.”
“History,” I repeat lamely. It is a word that I have heard thrown about, mostly to explain, but often to excuse behaviour that defies comprehension.
“But the fire was the beginning of the end. It is the real reason Archibald hated me. Of course, he found many others after that, many other reasons. But he wasn’t cruel, not then.” She sucks on the cigarette, choosing her words. “I loved him so much. He had a gift, the ability to sweep you up in a wave of whatever he was feeling and make you feel … special. I set the fire to get even, but mostly out of desperation after being banished. It was a cry for attention. It had the opposite effect.”
“And the car accident? Did it happen like you said?”
“Yes, more or less. I let her drive. I shouldn’t have. But guilt is a terrible thing. It just saws you into bits. She always had it over me. She was quite ill by then, manic depressive. I had you, and your father was where he always was, at work. Archibald was off partying, who knows, maybe trying to absolve himself of his own strange mixture of guilt. But it wasn’t her fault. She just didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Or maybe she did,” I suggest.
We look at each other, and I know we will not discuss this possibility further. The truth is not always liberating.
“I should have told you everything years ago. I should have at least tried. But I couldn’t. I was so ashamed. I was a coward. I didn’t want my own daughter looking at me as if I were a criminal.”
She is crying. I put my arm around her, thinking about the fire and what it cost her. Living her life in the ruins of its aftermath was something I knew I could never really understand.
What had my grandmother been trying to tell me in my dreams, that she too was sorry? That she too was complicit? I thought about the triangle they had made: my mother, grandmother, and Archibald. They had loved each other, maybe too much, maybe not enough, and, in doing so, had caused incalculable harm. And Archibald? He had loved Michael. I was sure. He had sought to avenge himself. To hurt Michael. The novel had been his tool for revenge, and I had been a necessary means to an end. It was never personal. He had used me, and, in doing so, had grown fond of me. He had cast his peculiar light on me, and I had grown and changed in that illumination, and in the end, become a different species of person than I had been before. I had put down roots, and they held me in place, even as I rejected them, even as I rejected him.
But now, I wanted it finished. All of it. To understand any more was like trying to untangle an intricately knotted chain that grew more snarled with each attempt to free it. My fingers were not up to the task.
“The painting is yours,” I say.
I am alone in his apartment. Mom has flown home. Sam is at the university. Everything will be packed and sold or given to friends. But for now I am here, one last time in Archibald’s apartment. I am planning to sell it. One day I may understand Archibald. I may be able to file his memories away, organize them according to hue, but for now I am still anaesthetized. It is so quiet, so neat and circumspect in here. It is lacking its former flair, a silk scarf thrown here, a martini glass there, a book half-opened beside a Wedgwood china plate containing a quarter of an English muffin and a drizzle of marmalade. I catch a flash at the corner of my eye, a zigzag of light, but the room is empty. Only my imagination pretends there is still something of his presence here.
I slide open the balcony door. I lean against the railing. I lift both hands up high. I want to unleash it all. I want to scream, “WHAT THE FUUUUUCK!!!!” as loudly as I can manage, as he urged me to that Christmas a few years ago. But when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. I close it again. I am not ready. The truth is I do give a fuck. I still care. I care what people think and even, infuriatingly, what he thought. He could always see through a faker.
Instead, I carry his urn out to the garden, which is fragrant and blooming. I glance around to make sure no one is in the vicinity to witness me. I flip open the top and carefully scatter him on his most favourite sections, the lavender, the primroses, the oriental poppies. I stop when it is half-empty. It is only right for him to fertilize the garden he put so much time and energy into. I tuck the urn and the rest of his remains under my arm.
“May your garden grow,” I say.
My suitcase is packed. I put it by the door. He is behind me. I can feel him. He rests his head on my back, leaning in against me like he did that night not so long ago. The night our worlds collapsed and we made a new one.
“I’m going to really miss you,” he says.
“I don’t have to go,” I say. “It’s probably just a stupid idea.”
“It’s a great idea. You know it is.” I turn and he holds my face in his hands. I have an open ticket to Europe. I am planning to travel for a few months. I have money from Archibald and a craving for a change of place. I am taking the semester off school. I have to admit his idea for me to travel was a good one. “I’ve been to Europe and Asia. You’ll have a terrific experience.”
“I wish you could come,” I say for the millionth time.
“Me too. But I have to get my paper finished so I can get my grant money and there are my classes…”
“I know. I know.” I sigh. “The timing is wrong.”
“Otherwise, there is nothing I would like more than to be on an adventure with you.”
I press my cheek against his, feel the soft stubble so familiar to me now. I have made him promise not to come to the airport. I won’t let him. If he comes I won’t go.
I look at him. “But we’ve been on an adventure all this time, haven’t we?”
He opens the door, handsome with wavy hair, now completely grey, dark eyes, just a little more crinkled. He is just how I remember, except older. He looks nervous, but expectant.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“Maggie. It’s really good to see you.” He reaches out, hands extending into the air between us. I step into his arms. It is awkward at first. I am stiff and unyielding, unprepared for close contact. But he has learned from my mother. He still knows how to hug. He holds on to me until my muscles release, and his hug tells me that many things have lapsed in the years we spent apart, but not everything.
I spend three weeks with him and his new family: his wife, Joan, and five-year-old daughter, Marie. Joan is a normal version of pretty, as old as Mom, and nothing close to a trophy wife. Her eyes are kind, in the way of someone who is wise but not arrogant, and their little girl is precocious and scary-smart. They are accommodating and pull out all the stops. We see the sights: Oxford with its amazing architecture, cobbled streets, and green hills; the country town of Bath, with its limestone spires and healing waters; and, my favourite, the monolithic Stonehenge, just a strange bunch of rocks arranged on a hillside as though they were dropped from the sky. London’s crowded, shop-filled streets grow on me and so do my hosts.
I babysit Marie while they go to the theatre one night. We play chess, and I search her for traces of me. But I find nothing of me in the angle of her confident hand poised over the board, as though all of the next moves are laid out before her. I do not envy her, because I know life is rarely that predictable. But I find myself hoping that she succeeds.
“What do you think?” Sam asks on the phone.
I hesitate. I don’t mean to, but I do. My voice cracks: “Saskatchewan?”
“If you think it’s a bad idea. I won’t go. Really,” Sam says.
“No. It’s not that,” I say. It’s just I know Carolina is in Saskatchewan interning. I push Archibald’s warning from my mind. Once from the prairies, always from the prairies.
“You might really like it,” he says. “It would only be for a year or two. Until something else opens up.”
“You really want this, don’t you?” I ask.
“It is a full-time professorship,” he says.
“Then, of course, go for it,” I say.
In a travel store in Notting Hill, I search through volumes of guidebooks trying to decide where to go next. I look down and notice a girl sitting cross-legged, a book about Asia open on her lap. She peers up at me with pale blue eyes from above her glasses. Her name is Elspeth. She is Dutch and has been working in England as a barista to make extra money. Now she’s planning a trip. At a coffee shop, we sit outside and get to know each other.
“Where will you go?” she asks.
“Anywhere but Asia,” I say, mostly to irritate Archibald.
Dearest Sam,
I am writing this from our hotel room in Hat Yai. I think Vietnam with its rolling hills, green rice paddies, and beautiful beaches is my favourite place so far. Thailand was intense. We visited the southern islands again. They were pretty much unchanged: beautiful white sand and turquoise water. Elspeth is a fantastic scuba diver. I opted for snorkelling instead. Having all those tiny fishy bodies around me made me nervous! We also shared our hut with a family of bats! They didn’t bother us too much, but all of the high-pitched squeaking and flapping made me miss my comfortable bed at home, and you, of course.
Hat Yai is a busy city, not as crazy as Bangkok, but of course you already know that. It is an underbelly, full of prostitutes and illicit activities. The downstairs hotel restaurant doubles as a karaoke bar and brothel. Apparently, it is commonplace here! Don’t worry, I am safely tucked away in my hotel room as I write this. Anyway, I really, really miss you. We are heading to Burma next. Flying into Yangon with three-week visas. Elspeth talked me into it. She says Burma is the new India, whatever that means! I will try calling you as soon as I can. Hope life in Regina is going well.
Lots of love,
Maggie
I put the pen down with a sigh. It has been a great experience, but I miss Sam.
“Writing your guy again?” Elspeth asks from the bed as she twists open a Singha beer. I stand up from the desk and stretch my back. She passes me a beer. I take a long drink. I have to admit Thai beer is pretty delicious.
“Are you still carting him around?”
“Huh?”
“Your grandfather. His remains.”
“Oh, yeah,” I still have the ashes in a double ziplock in my bag. I take them out now. It has been a real pain to carry around during all of the crammed bus rides and cycle trips we have been doing. But I have yet to find a place to scatter him. I have studiously avoided all things Buddhist, even though Asia is absolutely burgeoning with monasteries. I am being passive aggressive, not willing to give him what he wanted but not willing to let him go either.
We lean over the balcony. I watch a few Thai girls in the alley outside, which is otherwise deserted. Dressed in bright skirts and high heels, they laugh amongst themselves as they wait for customers. I inhale musty open earth, dirty concrete, and something feral wafting from the open sewers. The sky is a muted black, and the humidity still clings to me. I hold Archibald’s bag in my hands, contemplating the gritty remains.
“We found a million beautiful places in Vietnam,” Elspeth says, leaning beside me. “Like the waterfall.”
“I know,” I say. We had hiked for hours up a winding dusty trail, over lush green-tiered rice paddies, past farmers with water buffalo, to a waterfall we had been promised was breathtaking. And it was. I had carried him with me, determined to deposit Archibald in the foaming Asian waters. And then I had changed my mind.
“It’s not right,” I had said. I had known the garden was a good idea. But a waterfall?
“It was just too … natural,” I say. “Archibald was really a city man at heart.”
“Well, then, how about here? We can find a Thai pagoda. It’s an obvious choice. He was Buddhist, yes?”
“Sort of,” I say to the Archibald ash. He is so heavy in my hands.
Just then, there is a scream of sirens from around the corner. I jump; the bag rips in my hands, worn from all this time, and Archibald, in a great paroxysm, spills forth. I cannot prevent the dusty wave from pouring out and cascading below. Some of the dust flies up and encircles us in a cloud. We avert our heads, coughing, and then lean down watching him disappear, fascinated. His final resting place is a dubious alley in a Thai city notorious for its prostitution trade, among other things. The girls on the street below pay us no attention. One is leaning into a car, the other yawns. They look no older than fifteen.
Elspeth shrugs. “Problem solved.”
In Mandalay, Burma, we rent a car. We drive past the lip of a winding river and expanses of brown grass. The sun is a ball of red in the sky, and the dust is red too. It reminds me of a strange, exotic Mars. We have come to see caves recommended to us by a couple of British tourists; apparently, they are covered in ancient pictures and writings, an underground maze connected to an old monastery. I smile to myself to think that now that he is gone, ashes scattered, I finally make it to a monastery. We wait at the opening gate of the caves with our guide. They are kept locked to prevent acts of vandalism, and the local monks are in charge of the keys. I glance around at the dusty earth, the bonsai and bamboo, the long grasses, the simple, low wooden buildings of the monastery, and notice a winding staircase set in a hillside. I ask our guide about it. He tells me it leads to a hillside pagoda. “Most beautiful,” he says.
“Coming?” I say to Elspeth, hoping to escape the stifling heat and catch a breeze at the top of the hill.
“No, I’ll rest,” she says from her position on the ground beside the gate. I wipe my forehead, glistening with sweat. The afternoon is sizzling. I begin up the narrow, winding path of stairs.
A gaping, open aperture for a door and equally open windows greet me. I wade into the cool dimness; a gold-leaf Buddha takes up the corner, softly shimmering. Beneath his feet sits a floral offering, wispy, wilting white flowers that smell like honeysuckle but look like orchids. I peer through the hollowed-out windows. Far below, I see the brown winding river, and beyond that farmers’ fields. The sky is a faded blue and the scarlet sun oozes before my eyes.
I pull his book from my bag. I had brought it with me all this way, as it contained the lives of so many people I knew and didn’t know. Now I place it at the foot of the Buddha, on the cracked stone floor of this old, weathered stupa, built with peasant labour, maintained by monks, with a view of the river of tears. It is the river where the English guidebook said slaughtered bodies were thrown during the most recent revolution, which turned Burma into a military dictatorship, into Myanmar, as it is now called. Even I feel the stark sombreness of this place. It is a place with a history, not mine, not Archibald’s, but I know he would approve. He might be mulch in West Van and simmering stew in the sewers of Hat Yai, but I can give him a proper farewell. And I do. I make a wish for an end to suffering, Archibald’s, my grandmother’s, my mother’s, mine, and the Burmese people. I look around at the countryside, stark and arid, and I know that my journey is over.
“It is time to go home,” I say to the river, to the Buddha, to Archibald’s last book, to the souls of the dead.