Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (21 page)

He drops my hand as if it were a live snake and suddenly I’m left with the vision of one man. Barclay. Not the proud king, nor the delusional professor, but Barclay as he must have looked the second he heard his youngest daughter had been murdered. As I must have looked the second Mom told me that I had no father, only a history of violence and family scandal. The look of someone who has nothing—no hope, no love, no reason for living.

At least I have Mom, and as much as I hate to admit it, Jerry too. You’ve got to like a guy who loves your mom, without pressure, without ultimatums, without words, even though he’s not getting laid.

Love without words. I want to tell Barclay I’m sorry, but for the second time in my life I’m speechless. This is what all those misfit girls—Mom, Cordelia, Emma Barclay, that youngest salt-loving daughter in fairy tales—must’ve felt that fateful day they were banished from their home. A terrible helplessness, an inability to think of the words that’ll make everything all right again, the words that’ll make their fathers love them again.

A deflated shell of a man sits before me on his cardboard throne, weeping uncontrollably. “Emmy,” he says. He looks up at me and smiles sadly—one of those tragedy-defying
smilets
. There’s a little bit of Lear in his eyes, but I know that the king is gone.

Barclay’s delusions were no more real than my childhood. But they were real to him; hope was all he had left. And I took it away. Me and my big mouth. I take his wrinkled, sunburned hand in mine. Nothing happens—he’s still Barclay, still weeping, repeating Emma’s name over and over as if it’ll bring her back.

I sit with Barclay until I can’t watch his pain anymore—a mirror of my face half an hour ago—and then I retrace my steps back home in fierce, rapid strides.

So my happy childhood was a big fat lie, but it was real to me. Maybe Mom wasn’t as happy, but I can see now that it took guts to raise me. She could’ve abandoned me, or given me up for adoption, or she could’ve let herself become overwhelmed with resentment. But she didn’t. That took strength. And love. Like telling your royal prick of a dad that you love him more than salt.

Mom emerges from the kitchenette as I burst into the apartment.

“Honey,” she says, her smile faint but firm, “you’re just in time for cake. Happy birthday.”

Her eyes are as red as mine but neither of us mention it.

“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
I’m sorry and I love you,
I don’t say. I give her a hug that breaks the world record for length and ferocity. Some things are sweeter, more honest when left unsaid. And sweeter still when understood without words.

She pulls a white envelope from between the pages of one of her textbooks. At first I think it’s my eagerly anticipated birthday money, but then I see that the flap is torn and the front is addressed in a now-familiar, tear-stained, old-fashioned cursive.

“He sent me one too,” she says, and I know that even though Barclay will never have his Cordelia, Mom’s found her Lear. Exeunt all.

I adjust my grip on my duffel bag and pray that my good dress isn’t too wrinkled under a couple weeks’ worth of laundry. I hope my wedding gift surprises Mom; my roommate helped me strip the dye from my hair last night, revealing a natural brown.

The panhandler perched on the corner mumbles to himself, even though I’m fair game; a young student home from college for the weekend, sure to have change in her pockets. After all, she needs quarters to call her parents from the bus station. But the old man stares at the asphalt, knobbly knees pulled under his chin, his chapped lips opening and closing silently. He doesn’t even look up at the well-dressed woman who stands in front of him, speaking in low tones.

I draw closer and realize that the panhandler is Professor Barclay, and the woman looks like—

“Emma?” I say, unable to help myself.

The woman turns, her eyes widening with shock and trepidation, and I see that the resemblance is only faint. She’s a good ten years older. One of her sisters, then. “Regan,” she says.

To cover up my embarrassment, I point at Barclay and say, “I thought he was in rehab.”

She closes her eyes, briefly. “He was. Got him off alcohol, but they couldn’t do anything about his stubbornness.” Her smile is rueful. “He won’t talk to us.”

She bends over her father and tucks a twenty into the empty coffee cup at his feet. “See you next week, Dad,” she says, walking away. He continues to mumble without acknowledging her.

I drop my bag and squat beside him. I have to lean in to hear his voice above the traffic. “
Actus est fabula
,” he says. “
Actus est fabula
.”

But even though Mom and Jerry are getting married, the play’s far from over. Minor characters bleed off the stage and into the wings. Malvolio leaves town humiliated, swearing revenge. Demetrius never receives an antidote to the love potion. Barclay returns to the streets, and I’m the same misfit I always was, albeit with different coloured hair.

“Hi, Professor Barclay,” I say.

He tilts his white head, noticing me at last. “Do I know you?” he asks.

I settle back on my butt and sit cross-legged. Mom and Grandpa aren’t expecting me for another half hour. “My lord, dost thou not recognize me?”

He squints. “Cordelia?”

My smile wavers for a second. “No—’tis thy Fool, Nuncle.”

“Ah. Good Fool. Loyal Fool.” I can almost see the dignity seeping back into his bones. His back straightens. His chin lifts.

The baby rattle and shopping cart are long gone, so I pull my keys from my jacket pocket and dangle them from the key ring. The keys catch the light from the setting sun and make a thin, tinny jingling sound, like a handful of bells with stuck clappers. A passer-by drops a quarter into the coffee cup.

Originally published in the Shakespeare theme issue of

On Spec,
Winter 2002 Vol 14 No 4 #51

E.L. Chen’s
short fiction has been featured in anthologies such as
Masked Mosaic
and
Tesseracts Fifteen
, and magazines such as
Strange Horizons
. Her first novel,
The Good Brother
, will be published by ChiZine in 2015. She lives in Toronto with a very nice husband and their young son.

S.A. Bolich

“WHAT THE—”

It was the fourth time in five minutes Rayburn had dropped the pen while attempting to add up accounts, never his best activity, even when the pen cooperated. It rolled off the desk and struck the hardwood floor with a clatter. He spent several minutes scrabbling under the desk without success, scratching his hand in the process. Finally he gave up and straightened, sucking his hand. And there was his pen, lying quietly atop the day’s schedule. He stared.

“I know it hit the floor,” he muttered, somewhat spooked. He frowned and reached for it. It rolled away from his touch, skipping maddeningly out of reach. He snapped a word that would have shocked his clients, and slammed his palm down on it. Eyeing it suspiciously, he reached for the morning mail, at which point the pen slithered through his fingers like a greased eel and landed triumphantly atop the schedule again. Rayburn shook his hand, which felt queerly as if the thing had
moved
against his fingers, and glared, baffled. The rotten thing even seemed to have found the same resting spot, snuggling possessively over the last name on the list.

“All right! You win!” he snapped to the air, a habit he discovered himself indulging in more and more. But then Rayburn Senior’s spirit never seemed far, an oppressive nudge peering down at his son struggling dutifully to maintain the funeral home that had been the old man’s pride and joy. Ray looked at the last column of the list, which stated the cost of the service, and saw CC in each block in Liz’s neat hand. And
that
meant the fixed fee Clark County allowed for paupers.

He sighed, “Go polish your halo, Dad. Even you hated burying vagrants.”

Ah, well. Business was business, even if it meant the best parlour would go unused today, its charm hidden away for more prosperous clients. That parlour was the only nice thing in the whole place, trimmed just so, not gaudy, no, but not gloomy either, a place of light from clever arrangement of windows, the slanting rays all congregating on the dear departed, lending thoughts of heaven to those left behind. A masterpiece, if he said so himself, though of course he never did. The last thing people wanted in a funeral director was enthusiasm.

Or red hair, and a terminally boyish face. Liz was the only one who appreciated those. Rayburn the Younger sighed and wondered idly if he could persuade this nagging ghost to just step in and run the place for him while he and Liz skipped out to Tahiti.

He shook his head. “Listen to yourself, Ray,” he muttered. “Dad wouldn’t get caught dead believing in ghosts.”

Which struck him funny, and he started to chuckle, because certainly, his soberly proper parent had been too staid to accept supernatural phenomena. Or magic. Or fun, come to that. The pen was just a pen, and Ray’s fingers were cold with January chill, and
of course
that explained why the pen refused to leave the last name on the list when he tried still again to pick it up. This time, it flat wouldn’t budge, as if the ink had turned to glue and oozed out all over the barrel.

He stared, the hair lifting on the back of his neck. “All right. I’m looking now, okay?” he said, bending to the absurd.

Cautiously, he reached for the pen. Now he knew for sure it wasn’t his father leaning over his shoulder, because whatever was controlling the pen was listening to him. It came sweetly away in his hand. He eyed it, and then cautiously picked up the list and read the name the pen had seemed so eager to point out.

No devils there, just an ordinary name that sounded vaguely familiar. He frowned, trying to place it. This town wasn’t so big that he didn’t know all the people worth knowing. But it eluded him, and his frown deepened. “Eleanor Dancy,” he muttered, over and over. “Who the heck was Eleanor Dancy?”

“
The Tale of the Oak
,” Liz said behind him, and he jumped a foot.

“What?” He was so rattled he dropped the list. Liz bent to pick it up off the floor, brushing long dark hair out of her face as she handed it to him, smiling wisely. “
The Tale of the Oak
,” she repeated. “You said once it was one of your favourite books.”

“When I was about ten,” he answered reflexively, and then his eye dropped again to the list she handed him. “Eleanor Dancy! I didn’t know she lives here!”

“Used to live,” Liz reminded him gently. “Not many other people remembered her either, it looks like.” He remembered her then, the coroner’s report that had arrived with the body, of how and where she had been found, huddled alone in a freezing apartment.

“Oh damn,” Ray muttered, genuinely regretful. He had been enchanted for years by Eleanor Dancy’s gentle books, full of wonderful, glowing characters who rode unblinkingly into danger for the sake of friendship and honour, and sometimes didn’t come out unscathed. They had taught him a great deal about living one’s life in a fashion
worth
living, and he had kept a tattered copy of
The Tale of the Oak
well into college, when he had let his roommate tease him into getting rid of it. He had regretted it for years, and finally forgotten it—until now.

A deep and abiding sense of shame took him. How could he have forgotten people who had helped shape his life: dashing Alan, laconic Guy, shy William, who had proved the bravest of them all? Or pretty, spoiled Isobel, or brave Anne, or fiery Meg? Or Peter? Lord, he had cried himself to sleep once over Peter, the lonely free lance who had discovered friendship too late. It had been years before he found the courage to pick up
The Winter Knight
again. How on earth could he have forgotten Eleanor Dancy’s name, the incredibly gifted lady who had given them all life?