The Second Son (38 page)

“But Mike,” she interjected, “you didn’t fight it? You didn’t tell your father? That’s the part — ”

“Jean!” My brother didn’t like where this was going.

I ignored him. “She broke my heart. For some stupid reason I thought I could hurt her more by taking the blame.”

Half crying, my mother protested, “My God, Mike Landry! How can you even say these awful things? That I even thought for a second that Andrew was involved? You can’t possibly believe that. No mother could choose one child over the other. You never said a word — I couldn’t read your mind. How can I believe you now? All these years and you never — ”

That was too much. “You believed what you wanted to believe,” I yelled at her. “You saw the fucking scratch on his face. You knew he was crazy mad at Gail for dumping him. Besides, if you thought Andrew was so goddamn innocent, why were you so worried about him being fifteen? No, you just closed your eyes to reality and went along with his lies.”

And that was too much for Jean. “Mike, please, you can’t really believe that?”

I shook my head and dropped into the chair by the door. I finally looked up at her, speaking softly now. “Only on odd days, Jean. On even days I don’t believe it. That’s how I avoided going insane in that place, by never making up my mind. Some days I woke up thinking maybe I really was all alone up there, with Gail. Why else would all that bad stuff be happening to me?”

Andrew saw an opening. “See, I told you. He’s making this all up.”

Jean stayed with me. “Then why have you waited so long to tell anyone? You stopped thinking like a kid a long time ago, I hope.”

“Easy, now, I — ”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“Maybe for the same reason I didn’t squeal on him that first day.” I looked at my mother and added, “Maybe I thought she would start putting me first, if I loved Andrew enough to save his ass. Dumb, eh? She loves me so much she doesn’t want me living within thirty miles of her.”

That last accusation must have been too close to the truth, because my mother seemed to feel the need to prove me mistaken. “Oh, Mike,” she moaned, “how can you say that? I was only trying to protect you. If the police knew Andrew was there it would have been worse for you. He would have had to testify against you, his own brother. It would have broken his heart.”

The three of us stared at her, mouths open. Andrew was the first to react, sliding his chair back from the table, putting some space between them. I wasn’t sure if Jean noticed. My mother, meanwhile, was staring back at us, a quizzical look on her face. It was as though she had lived in this netherworld between lies and truth for so long that she couldn’t understand why anyone else perceived a distinction. It did not, however, move me to pity.

“Hah,” I half-shouted, “I forgot. That was her big argument. Andrew told her he was there that afternoon and I had attacked him — that’s how he got the scratch. But poor Andrew, he just dreaded having to tell the police about his violent little brother. Yeah,” I went on, “now I remember. That was the clincher on why I should leave Andrew out of it. It would only make it worse for me. Good motherly logic, wouldn’t you say?”

Jean seemed astonished. Palm to her forehead, she was struggling to take it in. “Oh, wow . . . this is . . . worse than I . . .” She finally focused on my mother, “Lorna, is this true? Is that what really happened?”

She seemed to come awake. “No, no. He’s twisting everything, Jean. I was only trying to protect him. It would have been worse if I hadn’t . . .”

Jean turned away from her, directing her anger at Andrew. “Why are you so suddenly silent? Is your mother lying, too?”

If I didn’t hate him so much I might have felt sorry for the poor bastard. He was on his feet again, back against the stove, whining like a school kid caught in a lie. “All right, all right, I was there. For a few minutes. Are you satisfied? I was only trying to protect her. You have no idea how she’s suffered over this whole thing. It’s easy for you to — ”

She shook her head in aggressive disbelief. “How in God’s name could you stay quiet? After they charged him? Surely you realized that he — ”

“Jesus, Jean,” he protested, “I was just a kid, too. I was scared shitless, especially after Mom and Dad came home that first night and started talking about him being only thirteen — that if he’d been fourteen he could have been sent to jail for life. I couldn’t admit to being anywhere near that dam, not after that. I was the oldest. They would have blamed me. Christ, look what they did to that Truscott kid. They tried to hang him, for God’s sake.”

“You didn’t know that, then.”

“I know, but I never dreamt they’d keep him in jail for so long. Then, when I was a couple of years older and realized how serious it was, the Truscott mess was all over the papers. The longer it went on, the harder it was to own up to it. I mean, it’s only natural.”

“Yeah, Jean,” I mocked, “it’s only natural.” They both ignored me. This was between them, now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Although I liked the way Jean kept pressing him. “But why were you so afraid of being blamed? What happened up there? Why is it nobody saw you?”

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes before he finally looked up at her and answered, “I took the back road and crossed the field to the old powerhouse. Nobody noticed the car parked back there, I guess. I told you, I wasn’t there long.” He was moving restlessly from foot to foot, half sheepish, half defensive, probably not sure if he was digging himself out, or digging himself in.

“Why did you go up there?” Jean prompted.

“Uh, she asked me to. Gail.”

“You’re a goddamn liar,” I yelled.

“I am not,” he yelled back. “That morning, when we were getting ready for the parade, we were talking. She told me about the picnic. She said I should meet them up there.”

“That’s bullshit.” I started to get up.

Jean put a hand out. “Leave it,” she insisted, still looking at Andrew. “What did you do when you got there?”

I sat back down. He was avoiding my eyes as he continued, “I drove up there, like he said. But I was too late. When I got there they were lying in the grass. He was on top of her.”

“Liar,” I yelled, getting more disgusted by the minute.

“Shaddap,” he snarled in my direction but kept focused on Jean. “I started yelling at him and pulled him off. He grabbed a branch that was lying there and hit me with it. I blacked out. When I came to he was sitting there crying. I had a big scratch on my face, my mother will tell you that. Gail wasn’t breathing. I don’t know why he did it. Maybe to stop her from screaming, I don’t know.”

That was already more than I could bear. “You don’t believe that bullshit, do you? He’s lied to you for the last half-hour. Hell, for the last thirty years. Now all of a sudden he’s telling the truth. It’s fucking bullshit!”

“Michel! Your language.” My mother was back in Neverland.

Jean looked desperate. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. I can’t understand how I ever got mixed up with any of you.”

I caught Andrew’s eye and gave him a vicious smile. “And she doesn’t even know the whole truth.”

“You bastard,” he growled.

Jean seemed to miss that exchange. She was back at Andrew. “What did you do, Andrew? Did you not go for help?”

“I panicked. I got out of there as fast as I could, before he came after me again.”

“Oh yeah,” I muttered, “his big bad brother.”

He ignored me. “I went home and waited for my parents to get back from the park. But Chief Kennedy showed up before I could tell them, and took him away.”

“And you never spoke up. I don’t understand that. I certainly don’t buy this story about protecting him. I’ve seen too much over the years to believe that.”

She was not nearly convinced and I loved it, especially when Andrew hesitated half a moment before he came up with a logical answer. “Look,” he said, “I couldn’t trust him, not to blame it all on me. Just like he always did. Christ, look at the tattoo he’s got on his chest, mocking the girl he killed.”

I smiled. “Or honouring the girl I lost. Which do you think it is? Jean?” She didn’t answer me, but I wasn’t deterred. “Better get used to it,” I added. “That’s who he is. A self-serving son of a bitch.”

Andrew never did like being called names. “That’s a goddamn lie!” he yelled as he stepped toward me. When I made like I was getting up to face him he moved sideways and slipped back into his chair. He wasn’t yelling when he finally spoke again. “The world was just as black and white for me as it was for him. Besides, the whole damn mess was his fault — right from the night he burned the store down — my crazy brother, always ruining things. Ruining our family, ruining my life, right from the time he knocked me out of the damn apple tree.”

“Aw,” I mocked, “
made
you eat the apple, did I?” I knew he had pushed it too far. I was watching Jean. She was shaking her head. The McEwans might have been pushy, but they weren’t stupid.

Andrew shook a fist at me. “You, I oughta — ”

Jean cut him off, “Andrew, do you think I didn’t know something was wrong, all these years? Do you think I didn’t wonder why you were so desperate to put yourself out in front like you always did? At the same time as you had to have three drinks in you, before you went out in public. How many years do you think your secretary and I have been watering down the bottle of gin you keep in your desk drawer? And all this time I thought it was the shame you felt for what your brother had done.”

“But it was,” he whined some more. “He burned the store down. He ruined our family. Everybody knows it.”

“Quit saying that. You admit you were there. And lied about it. How can you live with that?”

I answered for him, “He convinced himself that he didn’t do anything wrong — that it was all just an accident. That’s how he got through it. That and a little help from his mommy. If she believed him, then it must be true.”

That drew him back to the attack. “Tell me you didn’t set that fire.”

“All right. I burned the goddamn store down. I ruined the Landrys. Be grateful. Maybe that’s all that kept you out of jail, my guilt.”

The guilt was getting spread a little too far and too fast for my mother’s taste. “Boys, boys, stop it. You were good boys. You made foolish mistakes, but you weren’t bad boys. That fire was an accident. Your father knew that, Mike. He never blamed you.”

But I was on a roll. “Get over it, Mother. I started the fire and Andrew was a bad boy that afternoon up at the dam. And he wasn’t a child, not according to the law. If I hadn’t taken the blame he’d probably still be in jail.”

I think Jean was getting a little tired of the Landrys by that time. “Please, Mike. Gail MacDonald’s death was a tragedy, but nobody would still be in jail. It was manslaughter. Do you think I didn’t look into it before I married your brother and had his children? Maybe Andrew was more involved than he’ll admit. And maybe they both did you wrong, but you’re not a very convincing martyr. You enjoy it way too much.”

I laughed. “Like I always said, Prince Andrew lucked out when he got you. But how could he fool you, all these years?”

“There’s where you’re wrong. I realized a long time ago I was living with a cripple, and I was pretty sure who had crippled him. I just didn’t know how you did it.”

“Hah,” I blurted, “we’re back to that, are we? I didn’t lie for him. I didn’t protect him. I crippled him. Why am I not surprised?”

Jean just pressed on. Like she was used to doing with Andrew, I suppose. “Don’t play silly-ass games with me,” she scoffed. “Of course he was involved in it. I can see that. But it sounds like you were a pretty mixed-up kid — to do something that perverse. Obviously your mother handed you the weapon and you used it to hurt the both of them.”

My mother must have thought she’d found an ally. “That’s what it was, Jean. Such a perverse thing, to lie to me like that. His father and I could never understand him. The fire, that strange behaviour. Why would I think anything different? He told Chief Kennedy, right there in front of me, how he killed that poor girl.” Then she turned to me, “My God, Michel, you wrecked your own life that day, and ours too.”

I propelled myself out the chair and slammed it hard against the wall, shaking my head in disgust. I stepped to the front window and stared at the spot in the yard where the stump used to be. Did it mean nothing in this world, to be in the right? Nothing at all?

Jean must have sensed my despair. She spoke to my back, “I’m sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean to imply any of that. She just can’t take all this in, don’t you see?”

My mother moaned, expressing what, I wasn’t sure. Probably she was horrified at all these true confessions, calling up ghosts she thought had been banished. But there wasn’t enough tea in China to drown these sorrows, not after that last gear clicked into place and I realized the best I could hope for was that Jean McEwan might think better of me. It was a long moment before I responded, still staring out the window, “A mother’s love is a terrible thing, isn’t it, Jean? I wonder if there’s much you wouldn’t do for a mother’s love. To get it, to keep it?”

I turned on the spot and stared at Andrew. “Of course, we all know which one of us is easier to love. Gail fell for him fast enough. You’d think he’d have been satisfied, having my mother all to himself. No, he wanted Gail, too, especially when he saw how much I cared. Maybe it’s like they say. Maybe love is addictive. He sure went haywire when poor Gail cut him off. And then he found out it was me who had taken his place. Me, his sneaky little brother, lurking in his shadow. That was unforgivable, wasn’t it? That’s why I’ve often wondered, just how much of an accident was it? Really?”

Andrew sensed the danger immediately. He straightened in his chair. “We’ve all had quite enough out of you,” he spouted, like there was a microphone and a school assembly in front of him. “I think it’s time you left. Mother — ”

But Jean had picked it up, too. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

I stared at her for a long moment before I finally said, “Tell me, fair Jean, in all those years of sleeping with him, was there never a time, when he was making love to you — ”