Tell (21 page)

“We went outside together. The sun shone that day; I’ll never forget how cold and bright it was. I laid the bundle that held them on the shelf I’d carved out of the snow.” He was sobbing hard. “And I sealed it up. I sealed the hole in the snowbank because Donal and Annie had to stay inside it until spring. I chose a snowbank we couldn’t see from any window of the house, but it made no difference because we never stopped seeing. We never will. Not until the day we are laid in the cold ground ourselves.

“Every time I emptied the ashes and went out to the shed for a bucket of coal. Every time I picked up the poker to shake down the coals. Every time I lit a spill and held it to a candle or a piece of kindling, every time I watched a log burn or a blue flame, or felt a glow of heat spread through the kitchen, I thought of the babies out there in the snow. How could I get something like that out of my head? Mags and I were sheltered in the house while their little bodies were outside, rolled up, frozen inside a wall of snow. In spring, I was able to dig a proper grave—Dermot came up from town to help. We put the babies in coffins I built myself, and we buried them side by side in the ground. A special place we chose in the woods, their graves sheltered by trees. They’re still there. No one has disturbed the site since.”

Silence hung over the two men. The lower edge of the web that had kept Am’s sorrow in place was flapping dangerously. In gale-force winds it had loosened.

“We stayed on the land for a while, but I’d had enough of the farm, and so had Mags. Eventually, we put out the word that our acreage was for sale. Dermot owned the hotel by then, and he was the one who heard about the job of caretaker in this building. I applied and got the job. The work kept me busy and still does. It may seem crazy to you but I get satisfaction from climbing up here, looking after the tower and the big clock. The clock is like an old friend now, ticking away up here. The hands could fall off and it would still go on ticking.

“After we moved to town, there were no more children for us. Mags did not become pregnant and we never spoke openly about our hopes of another child being born. Every family around us had riches, but ours were buried. We loved Dermot’s children, but they weren’t ours. Loving them was like watching over borrowed children from a careful distance. You, too. You were one of the children we loved and watched over because you grew up with our nieces and nephews and you were always together.”

We are all caught in thick webs, every one of us, Kenan was thinking. Tress, too, because she is so desperate to have a child. But what he said was, “I thought I was going crazy. I didn’t know who else could be bashing at the snow out there, breaking it up, spreading it over the ice.”

He saw Bill’s face again, laughing, chattering, and then, when the second explosion came, his mouth shaping the word
Help.
Bill reached for Kenan from the trench wall, his hand outstretched. If Kenan had been quicker, he could have dragged him out in time. But he hadn’t been quick enough. There was a sudden wound in Bill’s chest that Kenan could have put his
fist inside—he saw it. There was so much confusion; the trench was exploding around them. They had to pull back, retreat. No one knew what the hell was going on. The noise, always the obscene, profane noise. And flashes of light, he remembered those, and Bill’s face and the way, in an instant, it was covered with dirt and yellowish mud, his friend smothering, and Kenan couldn’t reach him because already he had leaped for safety and the entire part of the trench where Bill had been only moments before had disappeared. Kenan was knocked back, all sound gone, his bones vibrating, his chest vibrating. Hugh was on the ground, too, his arms over his head, but he was farther along and couldn’t see what was going on. And then, everyone was shouting, running—if they were alive, if they were able to run.

Kenan and Hugh remained safe that day. Their friend no longer existed. Wiped clean, the earth upon which humans had walked. The barren lands of war.

Am hadn’t heard Kenan’s remark about bashing the snow. “All this time,” he said, “all these years, we’ve never uttered a word. It was Mags who demanded the silence. She said it would break her apart if anyone ever mentioned the babies. But the past few months, that’s all I’ve wanted to speak about. I go to bed at night knowing that as soon as I pull up the covers, I’ll think of nothing else. The sorrow pounces. I can’t hold it in. When I see a snowbank, I can’t bear to look. I want to kick it, smash it in, break it down. And Mags is remembering, too. I know she is. She senses them near. I can tell.”

Kenan had seen arms and legs, body parts, hands and feet reaching through the walls of trenches, tunnels—entire bodies mired in mud. “I don’t blame Tress,” he said now, even though
Am wasn’t hearing. “She had nothing to do with the war. She wants nothing more than to have me re-enter her world, but it would be just that: a re-entry into
her
world, not mine. The world I knew doesn’t exist anymore. All I want now is to let out the dangerous words that are in my head. I can’t say them, in or out of the house. I can’t set things right. What happened over there. How could anything that comes from war ever be set right?”

Am looked over at Kenan. The two men stood. Awkwardly, the older man wrapped an arm around the shoulders of a lad who was half his age and who’d been a year old when Am’s son was born. Donal would be twenty-four if he had lived. Maybe he’d have gone off to war; he probably would have. He might or might not have come back. But he’d have had some chance at life.

The two climbed down out of the tower and pulled on their jackets. Am waited while Kenan struggled with his dead arm in the sleeve. He did not offer to help.

They left by the side door and turned onto Main and crossed the street and walked back out along one of the paths to the bay. They didn’t go near the rink. Instead, Kenan led Am out onto bay ice. Out and out, farther and farther, into the cutting wind. Neither spoke as they moved forward, hunched against the cold. Am followed blindly, walking into the wind, and they walked and walked, until nothing mattered anymore and they turned, finally, and headed back to shore.

S
HE WAS CERTAIN SHE WAS BEING PURSUED.
Through the darkness, she could hear chattering behind her. The wind, surely it was the wind. She tightened her scarf around her, increased her pace. Whoever was following was making no effort to be silent. Maggie turned several times as if to apprehend, but she saw no one. The chattering continued. When she reached the rooming house, she did not stop at Zel’s but went directly to the workroom. She was out of breath, near panic. As she pushed at the door, she caught the heel of her boot on the ledge. Her music dropped to the floor. She hadn’t knocked, and now she stood there, unable to move.

Luc, who had been at the piano, was beside her in an instant. He helped her with her coat, her boots. She attempted to hang her coat on a hook, but let it fall as she collapsed to the floor. She ended up in a seated position with her back propped against the wall. Luc was about to pull her up but, looking down at her, decided against. He sat on the floor next to her.

“What happened, Magreet? What has happened to you?”

“I thought … while I was walking … someone was behind me. It was not my imagination. I know it was not. But I couldn’t see them,” she said, and she began to weep.

“Come, sit with me at the table,” said Luc.

But Maggie could not move. She was cold, she was shivering. Luc went to the back room and brought a blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders. He checked the stove, turned out the light, returned to sit beside her again on the floor, and leaned into the wall, himself. The glow from the coals cast shadows into the room. He put both arms around her. She was trying to stop shivering.

“What could you not see?”

“The children,” she said. “It’s always the children. I used to see them everywhere. But now I’ve begun to hear them, too.”

“Whose children?”

“Mine,” she said. “My own.”

Luc waited.

She pulled the blanket more tightly about her and stayed like that. Finally, she began to speak. Slowly at first, stumbling, unrehearsed. Words that had been forbidden began to tumble forth. Locked-in words that now refused to be held in.

“T
HERE IS MORE,” SAID
L
UC
. “T
HERE IS ALWAYS MORE.
You have held in so much sorrow, Magreet. Too much sorrow. For too long.”

His arms tightened around her. She felt his strength. She was soothed, freed in some way she had not experienced before.
What had encircled her for a long time was loosening its hold. At the same time, she experienced a wave of emptiness, a fear that she had deserted some essential part of herself.

“When something so terrible happens,” she said. But there was a long moment when she added nothing. Tragedy had also happened to Luc, and she was aware of that. She tried again. “It is difficult to get through each day. Even to remember getting through each day. A part of you dies,” she said. “That is what happened to me.”

She waited again before continuing. She tried to take normal breaths, but what came out was a long, rattling sigh.

Luc kissed her temple, rubbed at her arm and shoulder, did not push her to speak, waited, waited.

“For weeks after our babies were laid in the snowbank, every night until the ground thawed, I lay in bed until Am was asleep—or feigning sleep—and then I went downstairs to the kitchen. On hands and knees, I began to scrub the stone floor by lantern light. I cleaned it section by section, moving backwards, sliding the lantern from one stone to the next so I could see. Lantern in front, bucket of water on my left. The stove burning low, the kitchen freezing, my hands and knees chapped and rough. They stayed that way the entire winter.

“Now,” she said, “after these many years, I’ve begun to dream of the farm again—not the farm where I grew up, but the one where Am and I lived after we married. This started after I’d begun to dream about performing at the concert. That was a panic dream.”

“And this?” said Luc.

“This begins in shadow,” said Maggie. “From the exterior, I
see a silhouette of our farmhouse. I walk through the door and into the kitchen. There is never a choice; I’m forced to enter. Once I’m inside, the rooms open up to create a large space. The space is filled with echoes, voices. There are no walls, no dividers.” She added, in a whisper, “But even inside the emptiness of the open space, a feeling of hope sometimes accompanies this dream. I hardly dare to feel it, but it lingers after I wake. I don’t know what that means. And the other dream, the panic dream about singing, has stopped.”

“Those are good things,” said Luc. “The feeling of hope is a good thing.”

Maggie continued. “About a month after our babies died, the priest came to visit. He came to comfort us, I know that. And when I say priest, I mean one of Am’s Irish uncles. Of the ones who are still living, half are Protestant, half are Catholic. One of his uncles still rides the white horse every twelfth of July in the Orange Parade here in town. You’ll see him doing that, next summer. Well, the priest who is Am’s uncle arrived late in the afternoon and stayed for supper. I’ve been to his church only for weddings or funerals. When I first moved to town, I decided I would attend the Anglican church—St. Mark’s—where you practised in the parish hall. It’s an easy walk from the apartment, just up the hill. I was asked to sing in the choir and I agreed.

“I’m getting sidetracked. That night at our farm, Am’s uncle, the priest, brought a bottle of whisky with him and pulled it out of his coat pocket and set it on the kitchen table. Am and I knew he was an awful drinker, so the bottle was no surprise. After the priest had eaten everything on his plate, and after dessert—I made up a quick gingerbread cake with hot sauce—he unscrewed
the cap of the bottle, raised the lid of the stove and threw the cap into the flames. He said to Am, not to me, ‘There now, we aren’t going to let this go bad, are we?’ And the two of them settled in to finish off the bottle. I wasn’t happy about Am—he’s never been much of a drinker—but I could tell that he wanted to join the priest. I said nothing, though I felt like drinking with them. Even though I don’t like the taste of whisky.

“I cleared the dishes and lit a lamp and took it up to bed. I left the two of them at the kitchen table. I could hear their voices speaking low, but at first I couldn’t make out the words. The more they drank, the louder they became. I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I listened to what they were saying. Am was telling the priest about a tree he used to climb when he was a boy, a thick branch that hung over the quarry on his father’s farm. The uncle knew the tree, of course. It had been on his brother’s land. Am told how cleverly he’d been able to hide himself, how no one below could ever find him when he shinnied up the trunk. A burst of laughter followed and their voices lowered again. I thought, Oh, they’re being foolish, the two of them. But I felt left out. I suppose I was jealous. I envied them their ability to laugh, even drunkenly. Our babies were out there in the snowbank, and the two men were loading up with liquor.

“The priest-uncle finally left for home—a miracle he got there. Lucky for him, his horse knew the way. Drunk as Am was, he must have led the horse out of the stable and helped his uncle climb up into the sleigh. His uncle should have stayed overnight. He could have slept downstairs in the parlour, though we didn’t heat that room in winter. He could have slept on the kitchen floor near the stove. Am could have made up a bed in
one of the empty rooms upstairs. I half expected to find the man frozen outside the next morning, but there was no trace of him. The following Sunday—so I was told—he stood at the front of his church conducting Mass, no sign of wear or tear.

“But that night, after his uncle left, Am stumbled to bed and began to snore and he filled the room with his whisky breath. That’s when the scrubbing started. I couldn’t lie there and listen to the drunken snoring, so I went downstairs and lit the lantern. It was after midnight. I filled the bucket with soap and water, and got down on my hands and knees on the stone floor, and dipped the rag into the bucket. I was trying to cleanse myself of something terrible and wasteful. With all the remedies I’d learned and known, compresses, poultices, infusions, I had not been able to save my own children. Am had been told that a mare’s breath on a sick child could heal, and we tried that, too, bringing the horse right up to the door of the house. I know it sounds preposterous now, but we’d have tried anything to keep them alive.

“So many times I’ve thought of those nights when I was downstairs, scrubbing the floor. It’s as if I’ve been peering in through the kitchen window from the darkness outside. Watching myself move from stone to stone on hands and knees, trying to scrub away despair, trying to scrub away my babies’ deaths.
Wash floor after dark, bring sorrow to your heart.
”

“Where did that come from?” said Luc.

“I heard it from my own mother. I don’t know what it meant to her, but I know what it meant to me. I was keeping the sorrow and trying to rid myself of it at the same time. The sorrow stayed in my heart. I scrubbed every night because the physical act was something my body could do.”

“What else?” said Luc.

“Am started to kill the house. The rest of the winter, until the ground thawed, he paced from room to room, looking to see what needed repairs: window sashes that stuck, floorboards that squeaked, marks on the walls that needed repainting, a cupboard door loose on its hinges. He banged and scraped and plastered. He knocked things around and scratched the surface of the hall settee. He took a hammer to the outside of the icebox on the pretext of straightening a dent, and ended up putting a hole through the hardwood. He pried wainscotting off a bedroom wall with a crowbar. He broke everything he touched and he drove me out of the house. I wasn’t able to listen to him hammer and bang at everything we owned. Most things he attempted to repair, I ended up having to nail together again. Sometimes I bundled up in a coat and scarf and went out to the drive shed and sat in the bobsleigh for hours. All I could think of was getting away. Straw was strewn across the bottom of the sleigh and I sat there and pulled the robe up over my feet and legs. We had an old buffalo robe that we kept year to year. I did nothing about my longing to escape except sit in that place. Until one day in late spring.

“The babies had been placed in proper graves by then, because the ground had thawed enough to dig. Each had a small coffin. The graves are in the woods, sheltered by trees. A sacred place, but there are no markers. Am wanted them buried on the land where they’d been born and died.

“I went from all of that. Being a mother, being their mother and having joy and happiness in my life. From that to a different kind of life. One that excluded the past, one that excluded my
own children. I asked Am never to say their names again. I could not bear to hear their names spoken aloud, or even whispered.”

“He respected that?” said Luc.

“Always. He knew how I felt. The two of us were undone by grief. I almost left him because of my own grief. In the spring, a few weeks after we’d given the babies a proper burial, I packed a small bag and came to town with a woman from a neighbouring farm. Clarice—she still lives in the area. She’s married to a man so tall, so excruciatingly thin, everyone thinks he’s consumptive. But he isn’t. He just looks consumptive, always has. He’s an auctioneer and in perfectly good health. Every bit of energy he has is coiled up inside him. From the side, his jaw looks as if it’s been squared with a chisel. He travels round the countryside auctioning off farm property and equipment. He’s still in the business, even yet.

“Clarice was often alone because of her husband being on the auction circuit, and she was in the habit of coming to our farm twice a year: once in spring to get a cut of fresh rhubarb, again in fall for a bushel of apples. We had crabapples, Snow apples, Spys. Well, when Clarice came by in her democrat to get her cut of rhubarb that day, she announced that she was continuing on to Deseronto. She always hitched up the democrat when she visited from farm to farm, and she had room for an extra passenger. I was alone at the farm and she asked if I’d like to come to town with her, so I agreed. When we reached Deseronto I asked her to drop me off at Dermot’s hotel and told her I’d be staying overnight with Am’s brother’s family. I didn’t have a plan, though I was trying to make one. I walked into the house beside the hotel, where the family lives, and had
a visit with Dermot’s mother-in-law. We all called her Mamo. I had a small bag with me and didn’t say where I was going except that I was on my way through to Belleville. Am’s sister-in-law, Agnes, was busy in the hotel kitchen. Agnes still does most of the cooking over there. She’s known for it. I think you’ve taken meals there occasionally, have you not?”

Luc nodded, and stretched his legs. They both stretched their legs. But stayed where they were on the floor. Maggie pulled the blanket off her shoulders and spread it over the two of them.

“I stayed in the parlour with Mamo. I drank one cup of tea and then another, all the while trying to decide what to do. I loved Mamo as if she were part of my own family. She was Agnes’s mother, came over on a ship from Ireland. She died in the terrible influenza epidemic, right at the end of the war—she’s buried up on the hill in the town cemetery. I always felt as if she and I were related. Everyone who knew her loved her. You’d have loved her, too, if you’d had the chance to know her. And she’d have loved you back.

“Mamo could tell right away how troubled I was. Of course, she knew about the babies dying in the winter. She said to me, ‘You’ve pulled away from what your heart can no longer withstand, Maggie. You are moving toward what you are able to bear. But you must believe me. As deep as you might bury your sorrow now, it will burst free when it’s least welcome and you’ll have to be strong enough to meet it when it does.’

“After spending a quiet hour with her in the middle of the afternoon, I left feeling stronger. She could create calm, Mamo could, no matter what anyone was going through.”

Maggie clasped her fingers around Luc’s wrist as if checking that he was still there. She settled against him once more.