The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (21 page)

That evening, at dinner, Maud attempted to speak to the children, who were so despondent she lost interest. Still, the twins’ very silence, their expert control over their gestures so as not to be noticed, drew everyone’s attention. Each twin seemed rigid and nervous, sharing little glances.

“What did you girls do today?” Maud said, upset, wanting to put them at ease.

The twins concentrated on their plates, chewing as though it strained them to do so. Ama raised her head and shrugged, for she’d spent the whole day cooking with Mrs. Tyne and didn’t find it necessary to answer.

Samuel kept his eyes averted. Not only did he know the twins’ silence was due to his having hit Yvette, but he suspected Maud doted on them now as a kind of apology. Glancing at his daughters, he felt a sense of awe. Without looking at each other, they brought their forks to their lips in perfect harmony. Their fingers trembling, they looked like a trick with mirrors. Samuel stared at them. Despite their spectacle, they seemed terrified of attention. Both Maud and Ama averted their eyes. Samuel stared, then did the same.

Something rattled against the linoleum. Samuel looked down and realized Chloe had dropped her fork. After a long silence, Maud hobbled down on her good knee to retrieve it. Just as Maud was setting the fork on the table, Yvette, with an anguished look on her face, then threw hers down. Sighing, Maud picked up that one, too.

Samuel, appalled, gave the twins an admonishing look and was about to speak when he found he didn’t know what to say. Not only was he mortified his wife was being punished on his behalf, but he disappointed himself by not making the apology that would put all this to rest. For some reason, apologizing to Yvette seemed like admitting the stupidity of his grand dreams. The link was illogical, but firm in his mind. And besides, one did not apologize to a child. He finished his meal in silence.

That night was a restive one for Samuel and Maud; the bed felt too small to hold both them and their resentments. Each faked sleep, the only device left to them. The room was noisy with drowsy little sniffles, with timid coughs. But what consumed Maud had nothing to do with Samuel; instead, she thought of the laundry, of the blood-dark rust that collared the kitchen tap, of the endless decay that weighed on their space, making the rooms unbreathable. Her nausea at the dirt felt, at times, like insanity.

Maud rose from bed, sighing at the wistful, unconvincing coughs Samuel made to console himself, and entered the hall. Fumbling for the light switch, she thought she heard a sound and stopped to listen. Again, there it was, a noise like objects falling in a distant room, and navigating by touch she discovered its source. The clothes hamper’s closet. Exasperated, she whipped off the latch, the automatic light blinking on to reveal Ama shrouded in white sheets, her eyes large with fear, breathing as if she’d run a race. Ama seemed both relieved at Mrs. Tyne’s presence and ashamed at having been caught. She had sheets draped over her head.

“Hibernating?” said Maud, somewhat surly. “What are you doing in here?”

Ama averted her eyes in embarrassment. “The room was too quiet.”

“‘Too quiet?’” Maud struggled not to hurt the girl’s feelings. “People in Toronto, in New York, in London, would pay ten dollars a minute for what you’ve got. When you grow up and move to a big city you’ll remember this and cry. Now, come on.”

Grasping Ama’s hand, she led her back to the room she shared with the twins. It smelled of mulch and wet clothes, with a hot, close atmosphere that felt unsettling. The water heater clucked in the corner, wind made the eaves outside creak, but for all these noises the room felt densely silent, a calm like the eye of a storm. Maud’s hackles rose. She searched for the light switch.

The twins had pushed their cots together, and lying side by side, they stared up at the ceiling. Maud approached them. Bodies rigid, their vague, glossy eyes stared up without judgment.

Maud’s fear gave way to confusion. “Is this a game? Stop it! You scared your friend half to death.”

They remained impassive. The white of the sheets set off the whites of their eyes.

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Come on, Ama.” As Maud led Ama away, she thought she saw a look on Yvette’s face. “Yvette?”

But Yvette recovered her composure. Turning off the lights, Maud led Ama to the Iron Lung and tucked her to sleep in there.

Alone in bed, hesitating at every noise, Samuel groaned in delicious misery. He felt himself to be at the root of every family problem, and yet his anxiety and guilt were oddly fleeting. Yes, he had risked the family savings on an uncertain business venture; yes, his roles as a decent husband and father were on tenuous ground, but he refused to feel remorse. He felt worst about—and for a prodigy of self-flogging, even this was not severe—actually hitting one of his daughters, about the look on Ama’s face. In fact, Ama’s fear hurt him more than anything. His children at least had a reason to hate him. But Ama? He knew he should apologize, that his wife couldn’t keep accounting for his actions, but he couldn’t. He was in turmoil, wishing he could ask Ray for advice, only to recall their fight, which had ended in spite so strong Samuel had sworn it would make a mandrake grow on his grave. Now he felt at a loss to locate the exact cause of their argument—Ray’s intent seemed less offensive now that Samuel could see how he might have misinterpreted him. He lay confounded by worry, soothing himself with the thought that all problems were mere theory, and made a half-hearted game out of waiting for his wife to come back.

chapter
NINETEEN

T
he Franks showed up on the Tynes’ doorstep, birthday cake in hand. Samuel started at the sight of them, not only pained because of recent enmity; their visit blighted the best hours of his day, the morning. Unlatching the storm door, he was haunted by the feeling of having performed this exact act weeks before. Again, Eudora, pale and hasty-looking, with a foil-covered dish in her withered hands, and, again, a satisfied (if less blithe) Ray behind her, holding a crow of an umbrella over his wife’s head.

“You may have been trying to forget us, but we haven’t forgotten you,” said Eudora, in a voice somewhat too blunt to be humorous. “You going to let us in, or you waiting for the hurricane to finish us off?”

With the docility Samuel despised in himself, he let them in, accepting their wet jackets with servitude. When he gestured the way to the kitchen, Eudora said, “It hasn’t been that long, Sam. We were older friends than that.” Samuel tried to show his confusion at their presence, so they’d know his friendship was not so easily re-earned. Eudora evaded his eyes. “You should see what we brought. Your girls won’t know this day from Christmas, right, Ray?”

Ray hesitated; he eyed his wife as though wondering at the appropriateness of going on without a formal apology. Still, he followed Eudora to the kitchen, where she pulled gold-wrapped gifts from a Hudson’s Bay Company bag and arranged them at the far end of the table.

Samuel didn’t know what to say. Maud came in behind him, despondent in an old bathrobe, running a pick-comb through her damp Afro and stopping blind upon seeing the company. She hadn’t spoken to Eudora since the night of Ama’s accident, when Eudora had made her comment about “devil’s work.” Without being seen, Maud backed out of the room.

Ama came into the kitchen, fidgeting in her pink dress, as though she longed to go to Samuel but didn’t trust him. Then the twins entered, stone-like. Fact was, the Tynes had planned their own small party for that afternoon, and though Maud had been its sole organizer, Samuel had so taken an interest in the overheard details that he felt like a willing accomplice. Now, not only was the original plan being undermined by tactless guests, but the twins didn’t show even remote excitement at having accidentally seen the preparation of festivities much more elaborate than those Maud had planned. Samuel kept an eye on his daughters, sad to have to acknowledge to himself that their silence had aged them. Not so much physically: they were awkward as ever. But there was a current in those cold eyes, a judgment that saw through human bustle and cheer. Perhaps that was it—they had the invalid’s contempt for false joy.

Eudora almost lost her composure. “Will you look at the two of you,” she said, her voice full of breath. “Only one year older and wearing it like it’s twenty. Ray, will you look at them?”

Ray smiled, blind to the change. “Finer girls Aster has not seen.” With his characteristic way of addressing the ghost above Samuel’s shoulder, he looked apologetic, and said, “Yes.” Though Samuel was uncertain how to read that gesture, he was happy to see in it an attempt to make amends, and reassured Ray with a smile. Ray nodded back. There was something endearing about that vulnerable nod, about the shaky, wire glasses that magnified Ray’s eyes, giving him the look of a learned turtle.

But only on Maud’s terms could wounds truly be mended. When she entered, in a black dress too funereal to be festive, the verdict of the party hung on her, and she knew it. She sat at the head of the table, making a spectacle of her annoyance, and Samuel thought he saw one of the twins roll her eyes.

Eudora ordered Samuel to find a good radio station as she unstacked the guestware from the high cupboard. Ama arranged the presents, hoping, perhaps, that the Franks had thought to bring a little something for her, and Maud lit the chessboard cake, its tiny black and white candles cast in the mould of game pieces.

“Where the devil did you get such a cake?” said Maud.

Ray nodded towards his wife. “Dora’s hands. I knew they had to have some purpose beyond dialling the phone.” He smiled, but looked preoccupied, touching his breast pocket.

“Oh, shush,” said Eudora. “At least mine are active. But then I guess by keeping yours down your shorts you always know where to find them in case of emergency.”

“Just the opposite—they’re lost in there and I like it that way.”

Eudora frowned. “Children, Ray.”

Maud seated the twins at the head opposite her, and placed Ama and Samuel to their left and their right, facing each other. To spare them Samuel’s conversation, Maud seated the Franks nearer her end.

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Maud, when Eudora started to lower herself into the seat beside Samuel. “You keep me company over here.”

This also kept them from the twins, who surely dreaded the attention. But the twins sat in such silent, strained rigidity that it became impossible to look elsewhere. Maud kept trying to attract the company with loud, witless remarks, and watching her fail at this led Samuel to see how much she blamed herself for her girls’ behaviour. That Maud would risk ridicule to save her children from their natural speech; that she would play the town ass to dissuade outsiders from seeing the very obvious truth; that her own self-respect meant less to her than the loss of her daughters’ good names in Aster: all of this gave Samuel a sort of detached shame.

His bad mood passed as talk turned to politics—if the Farmers League would ever regain its foot in Albertan politics, the delusion of the women’s movement, whether provincial-level reform of the penal system was needed to properly punish the arsonist once they caught the bastard. Lately, penal reform had been hotly debated in the Frank house, leading to three hoarse quarrels, a slapped face, constant name-calling and five painful nights on a couch no lusher than padding. The Franks had finally agreed never to mention their wretched views again. But Eudora broached it once more, aware all the while of her husband’s benevolent smile weighing on her. She’d recently interned at a facility in Edmonton.

“It’s where they send the in-betweens, meaning people who committed some crime but are given a break based on mental instability. And, you know, the longer I volunteer, the less convinced I am in the value of rehabilitation.” She began to cut the cake. “It’s true some can’t help it. This one woman, Mary—ha,
woman
—child, more like it. An epileptic. She took up with an older man who supposedly told her that”—Eudora dropped her voice—“laying down with men for money would cure her seizures. Simple as a cat, I tell you. Just as vicious, too, sometimes. Anyway, she’s more like a transient to the house—a travelling salesman, as Ray calls her.” Eudora winked at her husband, a gesture that gave more weight to his wit than it deserved.

“It would appear that prostitution has some hard penalties,” said Samuel.

Eudora admonished Samuel with her eyes for daring such a word in the company of young ears. He grew reticent, and stifled the nervous laugh he knew made him seem foolish.

“Day after day I go there, believing or trying to believe that these facilities are a good thing. We shall reform, I think. It can be done. But when I sit here, and really think about it, I just can’t
stand
the thought, can’t bear it, that someone like this Aster Arsonist, who might even be an Asterian—”

“An Asterisk,” said Samuel, with a hesitant laugh.

“An Asterian”—Eudora raised her voice—“going about his regular life in his regular clothes, has the power to take away our homes, to take away our businesses, maybe even to take away our lives, and that his only punishment might be to spend a few hours a week with me for a decade, and then get back all his privileges as though nothing’s happened. That’s not right.”

“I don’t know, Dora,” said Ray. “A few hours a week with
you
…”

“There was a saying in my house,” said Samuel, clearing his throat. “There was a saying, when this similar thing happened in my village: One who sets outward fires is burning within. Meaning that what that man likely needs is aid, though he should also be punished. And they found, when they caught that joker, that after a beating and some imprisonment, they could then begin his reformation. Now, I don’t believe he should necessarily be beaten, but there is greater room in a man’s heart for change than even he can be aware of.”

“There was a saying in my house in Ontario, too, Samuel. Real men don’t talk like jesters.” Ray smiled, but his eyes were cold. His comment subdued the room.

“Go smoke, Ray, if you have to,” said Eudora, flustered. “Going without makes you mean.”

Ray rose as though the reprieve was late in coming. He left without speaking, disappointing Samuel by giving no sign they should meet outside. Samuel refused, once again, to believe Ray meant offence. Ray’s era was less language-conscious, his learning unguided, his politics small-minded, even prejudiced. When more than common speech was required of him, he grew uneasy; and he had the autodidact’s lack of humility when giving advice. But despite these faults, Ray had more of the human good in him than all the best-tempered men of Samuel’s memory. Of this Samuel was convinced. The risking of his own life for Ama’s could not be forgotten, wanting no gratitude for the act, even masking it from the public eye for the sake of the Tynes’ reputation. This reason alone filled Samuel with tolerance; and besides, only a small man couldn’t laugh at his own cultural quirks. Moreover, Ray’s comments seemed more insecure than mean-spirited. As a backwater, Ray felt challenged by Samuel’s accomplishments—a sad position for anyone, so that Samuel resolved to set his pride aside.

He rose, motioning for the party to go on without him, as though such trifles weren’t worth his time. Leaving, he recognized fully for the first time that the confidence he’d sought these last months was finally his. He was certainly still timid, with an empathy that doubled his own suffering in the world, but he had overcome his terror of being judged. And success, he felt, was close, absolute and irrefutable.

From the crumbling patio in the backyard, Samuel squinted around, nearsighted from years of detailed work. A quick glance around the yard revealed nothing but Porter’s distant house, its brown shingles applauding in the wind. A few feet before it, a short, angular boy pushed a wheelbarrow, his baseball cap hesitating on his head like a bubble on water. He cut a sharp figure against the soft bulk of his house, and there was a funny sullenness in the way he jerked the empty barrow. Something in his black mood hinted at family anger, and, vaguely, Samuel began to walk towards him. It was a while before Porter’s son noticed Samuel, but he halted when he did, folding his fists into his pockets and turning uncertainly towards the eaves of his house.

Samuel stopped. There, in the shadow of a rafter, stood Ray, his back to Samuel as he animated some hasty point to a complacent Saul Porter.

Samuel felt confused. He recalled Ray’s wheat project, but the idea had seemed no more than a joke. Samuel was annoyed, uneasy, too, but beyond all, ashamed of his own possessiveness. Ray was entitled to befriend whom he liked, despite what could be said of his tastes. Samuel now worried he would be seen, and sidled away. The overturned wheelbarrow sat abandoned in the sun; the boy had disappeared. Samuel made his way back to the house.

The birthday party was listless, dying out despite Maud’s wishes. Cake sat in untouched, glossy lumps in front of the twins. Ray entered, full of colour and high spirits, but only as the Franks were leaving did Samuel get a moment alone with him. Affectionate as ever, Ray laid Samuel’s worries to rest.

With his usual smirk, Ray said, “You made a fool of me out there, Tyne. Seems you never told Porter a thing about my questions.” He chuckled. “He wouldn’t tell me a thing about what he puts in his crops. It’s looking like a two-man venture.”

“Did he tell you anything about the will?” said Samuel.

Ray laughed. “So eager! You’re going to have to give me a little more time with that. Besides, that’s not Porter stuff, that’s town stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.”

Samuel felt rather embarrassed after they’d left, and settling into his study, he glanced at the clock he’d set to Gold Coast time; it would be evening there. He recalled his sister’s last letter, a reprimand for more money. She’d told him that if he persisted in not returning, he should at least have the decency to double their monthly cheques. It was a common fallacy back home that all Westerners were wealthy; though Samuel supposed that comparatively he was. Every time Samuel received a letter from Ajoa—all of them livid and accusatory—Maud had to reassure him that they were entitled to their lifestyle, that it was long overdue and no great shucks by Western standards anyway. She explained that Ajoa wrote more because she missed him than to berate his lack of charity. And Samuel wondered at his inability to interpret people, often seeing in them the opposite of what they intended. But he wondered: When should a man anticipate others’ befuddling feelings, striving to please and meet their needs, and when should he put them aside to fulfil his own?

Samuel brooded into lunch, only abandoning his thoughts when they grew scattered with hunger. The halls were dark and silent, and for the first time in weeks he was aware of the pitiful, scissor-like complaint of the weathervane. Strangely, they had neglected to call him to lunch, and the silence was odder still. He could hear his loose hem on the hardwood and the sibilance of a radio in a distant room. No, not a radio: tinny voices coming from the twins’ room. Pinching up his pants to lighten the sound of his presence, he crept to the oak door and strained for clarity. He knew it was silly for a man to spy on his children, but they hadn’t spoken in days, and he was relieved to know they at least talked to each other.
What
they spoke about he could only guess at. He leaned against the jamb, astounded to hear them nattering with the high-pitched fluency of squirrels. The rapid-fire staccato words sounded like a tape run backwards, rushed and guttural. Perhaps, Samuel thought, in their cleverness they have gone and learned another language. But despite his polyglot repertoire, Samuel couldn’t discern it. Strangely inflected, whatever it was, they had both acquired enough to talk quite rigorously. Samuel placed his ear right to the cold wood, confounded. The talking seemed to halt mid-sentence, and he stood petrified, unable to leave in case they heard him step away. After a pause in which he was certain they heard him breathing, they turned on a radio and Samuel rushed away.