A Thief in the House of Memory (6 page)

Dec whistled under his breath. “Ducks,” he said. “Scary.”

“Amphibious vehicles,” said his father, not catching the irony in Dec's voice. “I'm working at 1:72 scale. What you're seeing is less than a quarter mile of beach, the coast near Courseulles-sur-Mer. The code name for this particular landing spot was Love.”

“Get out,” said Dec. “That's perverted.”

His father didn't seem to have thought about it. “It's just what it was called. Everything had a code name. Operation Overlord was what they called the invasion itself. Twenty thousand Canadian troops would land right here,” he said, tapping the sand piled up outside the bunker window. “A very scary day.”

“Twenty thousand?” said Dec.

“Just in this one small area. There was sixty-five miles of beach invaded that day. The Yanks thataway.” He pointed to the left. “The Brits farther east. It boggles the mind.”

He returned to his workbench. Dec leaned his chin on the sill, imagining what it must have been like to sit there waiting for the invasion. Love, he thought. How weird was that?

“It's strange,” he said finally.

“Nobody's ever prepared to go into battle.”

“No, I mean, about Mom.”

His father said nothing.

“I've been thinking about her lately. I'd forgotten how moody she used to get. Fun one minute, blue the next.”

Still no response.

“Do you ever think about her?”

He glanced back at his father. Whatever pleasure he had seen in his eyes a moment earlier was gone.

“Not if I can help it,” said his father and leaned over a new white soldier. He was only a metre or two away but it was as if a gulf had opened up between them.

Dec shook his head and turned his attention to the beach. “We should go on a trip,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Get away somewhere. You know, a holiday.” He turned and leaned his back on the bunker wall.

His father regarded him oddly. “What's gotten into you?”

Dec shrugged.

“Did you hurt yourself?” his father asked.

“Huh?”

“You're rubbing your ribcage. Did you run into something?”

Dec dropped his hand to his side. “You could say.” He peered through the narrow window again, scanning the painted horizon. He could almost feel the invasion coming.

“We never go anywhere,” he said.

Again, silence. When he looked around, his father was gazing at him with a worried smile. “What's up, Declan?”

“It would just be good…you know, to go somewhere. Dad, you've got all the money in the world and you never travel farther than Ottawa or Kingston.”

“That's not true,” he said.

“Okay, Buffalo for a modellers convention.”

Bernard smiled. “When I was a boy, your grandparents and I travelled the whole country by train.”

“No way.”

“It's true. We flew out to Halifax and then chugged our way across the continent, from sea to shining sea. I've got a scrapbook to prove it.”

Dec turned back to the beach and an idea occurred to him.

“We could go here!” he said. His father looked bewildered. “Juno Beach,” said Dec. “We could go see the real place. How about that?”

His father's eyes seemed to entertain the idea but only for a heartbeat. Dec watched the lights go out.

“It's not there any more,” he said.

Dec threw up his hands. “Dad, it's France!”

“I realize that,” said his father. “No need to raise your voice.”

Dec shook his head in exasperation. “Think about it at least. We could run up the beach like in Saving Private Ryan. I bet there's a museum. You'd love it.”

His father shook his head. “No,” he said. “Right now, the only travel I'm interested in is time travel. I want to go back to Courseulles-sur-Mer on June 6, 1944.”

He laid his paintbrush carefully on its saucer of khaki-drill green. He got up from the worktable and returned to
the bunker, where he leaned on the sill and stared out over the booby-trapped beach.

“That was the only trip outside the country my dad ever took,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “He came back with a knee full of shrapnel and what would be called post-traumatic stress disorder nowadays, but was called battle fatigue then — something you were just expected to get over. He came home with a keen desire to settle down, run the family business and raise a family of his own. I was only eighteen when he and Mother died. You know about the car crash. The thing is, I share more or less the same aspirations he did. It's as if I'm carrying on where he left off.”

“Dad, I — ”

“Don't understand,” his father interrupted. “You think I'm an old stick-in-the-mud. Well, that's your prerogative, Declan. But I'd appreciate it if you would respect my right to live the life I want to lead.”

He was angry. Dec could see it in his eyes, but you'd never have guessed it to hear his voice.

You've got to watch out for the quiet ones
.

“Sorry,” said Dec, but there wasn't much life in the apology.

“No, I'm sorry,” said his father. He was leaning hard against the bunker wall, his fists gripping the edge so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I'm a little strung out. I guess we all are.” He looked solemnly at Dec. “I do know this much, Son. Going away won't help. You can't run away from your problems.”

Dec's jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean.” His father's eyebrows bunched together gravely. Then he returned to his work station, picked up his paintbrush and started in on another soldier.

“Actually, I don't know what you mean.”

His father glanced at him sharply. “Birdie and I really wish you'd reconsider about seeing a therapist.”

This was too much. “I suggest we go on a family vacation and suddenly I'm nuts?”

“Clearly you have been traumatized.”

“Dad, I'm fine.”

“So you say.”

“It's under control. Stop worrying. You've got enough on your mind as it is.”

His father regarded him carefully. “Meaning?”

“D-Day,” said Dec.

His father frowned and looked down at the mass of squaddies still needing to be painted into life. “I wish this was all I had to fret about.”

Dec made an attempt to cross the chasm. “Are you worried about the inquest?”

His father nodded. “I don't like all this attention.”

“I know,” said Dec. “But it might be kind of cool.”

His father looked at him incredulously. “You think so?”

“Sure. I'm looking forward to it.”

His father's frown deepened. “You don't really expect you're going to be attending it, do you?”

Dec was taken aback. “I found the body,” he said. “I knew who the guy was. Of course I'm going.”

“Forget it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I've spoken to the coroner, Declan. He is in total agreement.”

“But — ”

“No buts, Son. There is no reason for you to be put through such an experience. Besides which, you cannot afford to miss school right before final exams. This thing could drag on for days.”

Dec folded his arms tightly across his chest to keep from punching the wall. “Dad, I could write my exams with my eyes shut.”

His father was unmoved. “The coroner will send his constable out to the house to talk to you. That's all they need.”

“But, Dad — ”

“Enough! Do you understand? I don't want to hear another word.” His voice was calm, but his eyes behind the magnifying lenses were huge and blazing. There was a nerve throbbing in his jaw. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Dec shook his head in disbelief. He turned, picked up his backpack and headed for the door.

“Work,” he muttered scornfully.

“What's that?”

“Nothing.”

“Declan.”

Dec stopped and turned. His father folded his big hands before him on the bench. “I serve on the library board and the museum board. I contribute time and money to a number of charities and I am a director of Steeple Enterprises. None of that is very impressive to you, I'm sure, but it is my way of doing my part and it keeps me busy enough. It is my choice. In time you will make your own choices. You'll go off gallivanting all over the world. You'll go to the best university there is, all expenses paid. You are a very lucky boy, Declan Steeple, and I'd thank you not to forget it.”

Dec dropped his head and turned to leave. But his father was not finished.

“You came in here asking about your mother,” he said. “This little display of yours — this acting out — reminds me of her. It's just the way she was when she didn't get her way.”

Dec stared, not quite able to believe what he was hearing.

His father frowned. “I sincerely hope this is not a foretaste of things to come.”

V
IVIEN WORE
a robin's-egg-blue burka to school.

“How do you know it's her?” asked Ezra. She was walking down the hall looking like a little blue pup tent. “She doesn't have any legs, any arms, any head.”

Dec shrugged. “It's something in the way she moves.”

Ezra stared at him, then at Vivien and then back at Dec. “Suddenly you've got X-ray vision?”

Dec smiled. “I wish.”

She was at their usual table at lunch. There was a little rectangular screen where her eyes were. Dec could see them buzzing green.

“You look very spring-like,” he said.

“Thanks.”

He paused with a French fry halfway to his mouth. Vivien was not eating. “Does that eye-hole thing open up?” he asked. She shook her head. “Too bad. I could, you know, slip you a fry or something.”

“I'm good,” she said. “I can do without lunch for one day. I mean, all over the world people go without food.”

Dec's fry suddenly tasted cold and mealy. “So is that what this is all about?” he asked. “A protest?”

“Not so much,” she said. “I just wanted to see what it felt like. Experience it, you know?”

“And?”

“Well, it's pretty warm. But it's kind of nice in a way.

Private, I mean. Like wearing your own little house.”

“Oh. That's cool.”

“Like a hermit crab. Once you outgrow your house, you just slide on out of it and find a new one.”

Dec found himself thinking about a house you could abandon when it got too small. A disposable house. And that led him to consider how big a place could be and yet still be too small. His shoulders slumped.

Vivien leaned closer. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

What could he say? That he felt like a hermit crab that had grown too big too fast?

“There's this contest I want to enter,” he said after a bit. “It's called ‘The Shape of Things to Come.' You have to design a house of the future.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah, it's cool. Except my mind's been kind of occupied lately.”

Vivien laughed. “That's perfect.”

“Pardon me?”

“Well, I don't know. A person occupies a house, right? So if your mind is occupied then at least you're on the right track.” Her voice trailed off, as if the idea wasn't quite baked yet.

What surprised Dec was that he did almost understand what she was talking about. The mind as a house. He liked the idea. And then he thought how if his mind was a house, it was a haunted house these days.

When he looked at Vivien again he got the idea that something was going on under the burka.

“You've got your journal in there,” he said. “Is that allowed?”

Her eyes made contact with his and even through the netting he could see that she was smiling.

“I never leave home without it,” she said. She wrote for another moment and then paused again. “You know when you get an idea that you can't put into words?”

He nodded vaguely.

“Well, isn't it ironic that those are exactly the ideas you have to put into words?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That is ironic.”

She smiled and then her eyes dropped and he could tell by the movements under the burka that she was writing. The pale blue cloth bunched and stretched, bunched and stretched. Suddenly he found himself wondering what she was wearing under that thing.

She looked up and, as if she was reading his mind, she said, “About what you'd expect.”

D
EC AND
E
ZRA
sat on the curb across from the courthouse. The westering sun turned the sandstone façade blindingly white and glinted off the polished brass handles of the doors.

The boys wore matching looks of giddy admiration. They were staring at a muscle car parked at the foot of the courthouse steps. It was sprung high, with fat tires and magnesium hubcaps. A Plymouth Duster, something from the seventies as far as they could tell. There was a warning sticker on the bumper:
You toucha da car, I breaka yo face
. There was a vanity license plate, too:
The Hood
.

“They don't make 'em like that any more,” said Dec.

“Which is a good thing,” said Ezra. “What would you call that colour?”

“Crayon Sunset,” Dec said. He was thinking about Sunny mushing crayons into her colouring book until it was stiff with wax.

Ezra leaned against his backpack and crossed his arms thoughtfully. “I think I'd call it
Puke de Moutarde!”

Dec nodded. “And such a nice contrast to Dad's car,” he added, pointing at Bernard Steeple's brand-new Buick parked behind the yellow monstrosity. It was silver grey. No vanity plates. No bumper stickers.

“A Rendezvous,” said Ezra. “How many does that make now:”