A Thief in the House of Memory (16 page)

A small house in a dark forest. He knocks on the door. It opens on the smiling face of Denny Runyon. There is an arrogance behind his smile that Dec hasn't noticed before
.

“You know who I am,” says Runyon. “Think back, amigo. Back. Remember?”

I
N THE OLD
days the Steeples had kept a boat or two down on the river. There were photographs in the drawing room of ancient relatives sailing around dressed in formal attire, a lady in a rowboat with a parasol, someone dressed up like a
coureur de bois
kneeling in a birchbark canoe. You could sail all the way to Ladybank in those days.

Now the river was not so high and Bernard had let the dock slip into decay. There was more of it below the water-line than above it. Dec tossed a stone and watched it sink until it lay on the slimy surface of the old dock. He looked at his watch. Four o'clock.

It had rained again Sunday night. All around him was the sound of dripping leaves. He picked up another stone. He hurled it, and when it sank, he watched the ripples spread out until they came back to him in ever-diminishing size, so that what finally reached him was little more than a memory of a splash.

His father had driven Sunny to her ear specialist's
appointment in Ottawa. Enticements were needed to get her to go: supper at a fast food place at the very least, perhaps a trip to Mrs. Tiggy Winkle's Toy Store. Monday was Birdie's day off and she had gone with them. Dec had taken the bus home. He had the place all to himself. But not for long. Through the thick bush along the riverbank, he heard the sound of someone approaching on the old road. He climbed to his feet, dusting the dirt from his hands. Ezra appeared.

“Come on,” said Dec, and Ezra followed without a word. They scrambled up the hill, crossed the lawn and entered the big house, where they sat on the pew in the vestibule to take off their sopping sneakers.

At the landing they turned towards Dec's old room. He closed the door behind them and went directly to his desk, opened the drawer and took out the postcards from his mother. He handed them to Ezra.

“Is this all there is?”

Dec shrugged. “That's all she wrote.”

Ezra examined the postcards minutely. “Not exactly chosen for their sentimental value,” he said, looking at the pictures. He glanced at Dec.

“Keep looking.”

Ezra returned his attention to the cards. “They look like maybe they got dropped in a puddle or something,” he said at last. He compared the cards. “Two puddles. One in Winnipeg and one in Edmonton.”

“You're getting warm,” said Dec drily.

The message on each card was legible, and so was the address, but the cards were both smeared in the upper right-hand corner, where the postmarks were. Ezra looked up at Dec again.

“They could have been mailed anywhere.”

“Bingo,” said Dec, but there was no elation in his voice. He took the cards from Ezra and stared at them. “Right here in Ladybank, for instance.”

Ezra adjusted his glasses. “Lead on,” he said. They left the room and headed down the corridor to his father's childhood room. Cowboys on the bedspread, cowboys on the curtains, model airplanes in the air. Battleships and destroyers, corvettes and minesweepers patrolling the shelves nearby. A book open on the bedside table:
Tom Swift and his Ultrasonic Cycloplane
. And, standing in the corner, the Super Excavator. It looked menacing to Dec now, as if it might spring to life of its own accord. And who knew what it might dig up.

From under the cowboy-covered bed, Dec wheeled out a wooden drawer. He took out a fat scrapbook, laid it on the carpet and, on his knees, opened it.

Ezra knelt beside him. “What's this?” he asked.

“When my father was little, he and his folks travelled across the country by train.” Dec turned the pages of the scrapbook. Little Bernard had kept everything: the kiddie menus from the dining car, the sightseeing pamphlets, snapshots with crinkly edges, and postcards. All kinds of postcards. Some of the postcards were pasted in. But there was a
small collection of them loose in the back. There were lots of cards, scenic sites: Halifax, Moncton, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton…

Dec watched Ezra shuffle through the cards once, then again. Waited to see the exact moment when the truth dawned on him. “These are the same vintage as your mother's postcards.”

Dec nodded. He closed the book and carefully replaced it in the drawer.

“Weird,” said Ezra, sticking his hands in his back pockets.

“One more stop,” said Dec.

They went to Lindy's room. He took one of the three remaining yearbooks and opened it to the front where Lindy had signed her name and scribbled out her address.

Ezra didn't need to be told what he was looking at. He shook his head. “The writing's nothing like on the postcards,” he said.

“Oh, a little bit,” said Dec. “Enough to fool a ten-year-old.”

***

They walked together down the earthen stairs back to the dock. Dec stopped.

“This is where I was building the raft that time when Lindy and I saw the deer.” He pointed to where the old road started into the woods. “Except it wasn't a deer.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was a man.”

Ezra stared at him. “A man dressed as a deer? Two men, perhaps?”

Dec smiled but it didn't last. “I'm not sure what it was. It was just a glimpse. What I remember most is how hard Lindy tried to convince me it was a deer. But when I try to remember it, I don't see any antlers.”

Ezra cocked an eyebrow. “Runyon?” Dec nodded. Then Ezra stared back towards the woods, as if waiting for the creature — man or beast — to appear again. “Are you sure?”

Dec shook his head. “Do I look like I'm sure? But he was around. That much I know.”

Ezra didn't look so certain.

“I finally realized what the look on his face was when he dropped me off that day. It wasn't that he was trying to tell me something. That's where I went wrong. His smile made a big impression on me because I had seen it before. The time I took Sunny to the creek to look at the tadpoles. I saw Lindy come down the hill from the big house and throw out her thumb to hitch a ride. When the guy stopped he reached over to open the passenger door. He was facing me, although he didn't see me. He was smiling at her.
That's
where I saw that smile before.”

***

They walked in silence along the old rutted road towards Ezra's car. The undergrowth pressed in on them. They had to walk in single file. More than once, Ezra looked back.

“I feel like we're being followed,” he whispered to Dec.

Dec stopped and looked back along the muddy path.

They waited, heard nothing.

“Maybe I just feel like somebody should be following us,” said Ezra.

They moved on. There were puddles to ford and fallen trees to clamber over. Every now and then there were glimpses of the river on their left. Every now and then there were shrieks and skitterings in the dense bush to their right where the hill climbed steeply to the grounds of the hall.

Ezra had backed Ran down over the culvert, then parked it out of view of County Road 10 behind a wall of greenery. It had been Dec's idea. He wasn't certain when his folks would get home, and he didn't want the car sitting in the driveway and the two boys not around.

Ezra climbed behind the wheel, closed his door and rolled down the window. He gazed at Dec's face as if he was inspecting it for cracks.

“At least there's one good thing,” he said. “Runyon must have already known about this back road. So you're off the hook there.”

“I guess I should feel relieved,” said Dec.

Ezra looked ahead, his hands curling and uncurling on the wheel. He looked up at Dec again. “You want to come home with me?”

Dec kicked at a hardened clump of earth with the muddy toe of his shoe. “No,” he said. “I can't run away from this.”

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Then Ezra put his key in the ignition. “Are you scared?”

Dec thought for a moment and nodded. “But I think what scares me most is that he might lie to me again. Every time I uncover a little bit more he feeds me just enough story to fit the facts. I want to get to the end if it.”

Ezra nodded. “There's another option,” he said. “Don't say anything.”

“You mean forget it?”

Ezra shrugged. “Maybe the truth is overrated?” he said. Dec snorted. “No, seriously,” said Ezra. “Your father treats you right. Before this happened, your biggest complaint about him was that he was uninspiring. That's not a capital offence.”

“Yeah, but what if there was a capital offence? That's what it looks like.”

“I know what it
looks
like, but — and don't get me wrong here — your mother sounds like a complete fruitcake.”

Dec bit his lip. “You don't need to tell me.”

“Maybe the past is better left where it is. You're going to blow this pop stand soon enough. Do you need to take him down? Is that what this is about?”

Dec thought about it, then slowly shook his head. “It's weird what you forget. She was so much fun. I guess that's what I wanted to remember.” He pounded lightly on the door with both his fists. “The thing is, now that I know this much, I can't
not
know the rest.”

Ezra nodded. “Toss me a pound,” he said, and their fists bumped together. Then Ezra rolled up the window. He turned on the ignition. He sat far back in his seat, like a racecar driver, his arms locked at the elbows, revving the motor a couple of times. Dec ran ahead, ducking under the low boughs until he came to the road. It was clear both ways. He waved the okay signal to Ezra, who put his foot down on the gas, and then came slipping and sliding through the wall of green, fishtailing in the mud.

He almost made it.

D
EC WAS IN
his room when the family arrived back at Camelot. He crossed the hall to the master bedroom and from the window watched his father carry Sunny, asleep on his shoulder, into the house, while Birdie collected shopping bags from the hatch of the Rendezvous. She noticed him at the window and waved, but she raised her eyebrows in a way that made him nervous. He was back at his desk when his father poked his head in at the door a few minutes later. With books all around him, it looked like he was hard at it.

“How goes the battle?” said his father.

Dec looked at the array of work before him. “I don't know,” he said. “I think it's Homework three, Dec no score.”

His father smiled. “Know the feeling.” He looked weary and a little worried.

“Is Sunny okay?”

“She may need a hearing aid,” his father said. “They're going to do some more tests.” He paused. “How about you, Dec? Are you okay?”

Dec shifted in his seat. “No,” he said.

His father stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Dec swivelled in his chair to face him. His father leaned against the wall. He cleared his throat.

“Just as we were coming through Cupar we passed a tow truck,” said his father. “It looked like he was hauling your friend's Toyota.”

“Right,” said Dec. “Ezra was over.”

His father waited, but Dec said no more. “There was quite a mess out on the highway,” said his father, “over by the old road. Looked like someone went in the ditch.” Dec nodded. “I got out to look. There were car tracks right down into the bush.” Dec nodded again. Maybe he wouldn't have to say much of anything. Maybe his father would just keep following the tracks all the way back to the House of Memory.

His father crossed his arms on his chest. “You want to tell me what's going on?”

Dec looked down at his desk. Where to start?

“There was no full moon the night Mom left.”

His father looked perplexed. “Excuse me?”

“The night Mom left,” said Dec, raising his voice. Then, remembering his little sister sleeping down the hall, he lowered it again. “I don't understand why you would lie to me about that. Then there's the postcards and —”

“Whoa,” said his father. “You're losing me.”

But Dec couldn't hold on any more. “Talk to me,” he said.

His father shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked old, suddenly, defeated. He gestured with his head towards the door. “Not here,” he said. “I don't want to wake up Sunny.”

Birdie passed them in the front hall. She was holding a cup of tea.

“Cheers,” she said. Neither of them responded. They clumped down to the rec room.

“Sit,” said Bernard, pointing at his favourite armchair.

“I'm not a dog,” said Dec.

“Please,” said his father wearily. “Have a seat.”

So here they were again. And Dec wondered if this was how it would be from now on, the two of them convening in the rec room to try to hammer out a past they could both live with.

“There was a full moon, Dec,” he said. And before Dec could raise his voice in complaint, he held up his hand. “Please, listen. I can explain. There was a full moon. But it wasn't really Lindy's birthday.”

Dec groaned.

“It's true. She didn't want a party on November first,” his father continued. “She didn't want to be turning twenty-nine. She said, ‘Twenty-nine, just means you're in your thirtieth year.' And she couldn't bear the thought that she was turning thirty. That her life was…well, the way it was.”

Bernard cracked his knuckles. “So I abided by her wishes,” he said, without looking up. “Her real birthday on November first came and went without a word.”

“So what about the cake and the candles and the night with the girls?”

“That was a couple of weeks later, November sixteenth, to be precise.”