Next Life Might Be Kinder (19 page)

“Of course, people are just people.”

“And people talk, and I'm sorry they talk about certain—”

“I'm not well known as a writer, not in the least. It's everything else that got me in the newspaper.”

“‘I'm not a household name except in my own household, and then only on occasion'—that's from Robertson Davies, a very fine Canadian novelist. Comical stuff, you probably know it.”

“I'll return the book on time. Thank you. It was nice talking with you.”

I drove to the little grocery in town and purchased some milk and eggs. On my return, going past the library, I noticed Bethany Dawson standing in the small cemetery out back of the library. She was jotting something in a notebook. I stopped my truck, got out, and walked over to her. “Ah, Sam Lattimore,” she said, “your book's not overdue yet.”

“Sorry to bother you. I saw you out here and I was just wondering what you were up to.”

“Well, I have a number of occupations. Besides my being the librarian, the Town of Port Medway has hired me to research every single grave in this cemetery. Who's who, family histories, all like that. I'm filling up notebook after notebook. Next I'll be doing research on the little cemetery by the wharf. All my employments are within a short distance of my very own house. Which suits me just fine. I've actually—this might seem odd—I've actually purchased a grave site. Right over there, top left, by the fence. Even if I don't for some reason stay on as Port Medway librarian, I choose to be buried here.”

“At least you know where you're heading in life.”

“That's precisely how I thought of it. But you're wondering what I'm copying out. It's the epitaph on this stone here.” She pointed to a very tall, narrow gravestone in front of us. “It's what scholars in the field call a retribution marker. There's half a dozen in Nova Scotia, the majority up in Cape Breton.”

“Retribution?”

“Yes, just read what it says.”

 

In France it was I saved

my brother Donald McMillian's life,

not vice versa.

It was I carried him

back to the trench.

God as my witness.

—Henry McMillian

 

“Beautiful language,” I said.

“Beautiful language revealing a big, nasty family secret. And as part of my research, I found out that Henry McMillian—may he rest in peace here—Henry and his older brother, Donald, both served in the same Canadian infantry unit in France during World War I. Their family was close to the Dewis family, who at one time lived in Port Medway but now live in Advocate Harbor, up along the Bay of Fundy. My research took me up to Advocate Harbor. Want to hear what I transcribed from Mrs. Annie Dewis, age eighty-one, up there?”

“Very much.”

We went back inside the library. Bethany Dawson opened a metal cabinet and took out a notebook. She sat at her desk and paged through it until she found the right entry. “Okay,” she said, “this is from Annie Dewis, transcribed from a tape recording. I can't do her voice justice, but here goes:

 

Donald McMillian simply couldn't live down the shame of it. It ate away at him that he'd lied. All those years about it being him who saved his brother Henry's life. It was Henry, by the way, who suffered the mustard-gas cough, whereas Donald breathed freely. In 1926 Henry McMillian drowned off a lobster boat, gone missing into perpetuity. His marker is down to Port Medway. So his grave is empty, having died at sea. He died angry at his brother, which is awfully sad, to my mind. Some say it was innocent drunken carelessness, the two brothers out in the lobster boat that morning. But those who say that are fools, too much faith in mankind. And you know, folks who have too much faith in mankind, they live everywhere, not just in Nova Scotia.

Rarely, but still now and then, a murder visits our province. My opinion? This was a brother murdering a brother, like in the Bible. Bible, with the exception of it occurring on a lobster boat. As for proof of it being a murder, all the proof I ever needed was the fact that shortly after Henry drowned, Donald married Henry's wife, Evie. They got married in Peggy's Cove, not at home. No, they eloped to Peggy's Cove! They just came back and announced, “Well, we're married now.” Their courtship was dishonest. How about those sour apples?

Now, they waited months to have the service, in case the body washed up, but it never did. So when Henry McMillian was laid to rest by sermon only—since the body's not in the grave—when his spirit was laid to rest in the ground, there was a fellow named Baron Wormser, a real artist with a chisel, he could chisel an epitaph in either vertical-horizontal traditional print or beautiful cursive, just like on a Hallmark greeting card. Anyway, Baron Wormser had been paid three years in advance by Henry McMillian himself, and since you've already copied out what it says on Henry's marker, you know the exact words Mr. Wormser was obligated to chisel. He was obligated to carry out Henry McMillian's wishes for retribution, those wishes being signed, sealed, and delivered in a legal contract. And Mr. Wormser being a dignified person with pride in his profession, properly did it, properly under the watchful eyes of God. I attended graveside, and let me tell you that when everyone went down to the cemetery and read those words you could have knocked every last person over with a feather. You'd just have to ask the Lord: how did Henry McMillian keep that to himself all those years? The discipline of the righteous sometimes knows no bounds. Kept his brotherly heroic act in France to himself all those years. And here's the icing on the cake. The very day that Henry's spirit was laid to rest, his brother Donald purchased a new pair of scissors. Then he secured those scissors in the attic window in his and Evie's house, which formerly was the house Evie and Henry lived in. You had better believe that Donald prayed every night that the scissors worked. Scissors in the window—you want to know what that's all about? Well, it has to do with ghosts. A scissors placed to keep an attic window shut keeps out unwanted ghosts. And it keeps wanted ghosts in. Wanted, unwanted. The scissors let the house enforce the distinction. Tell me: why would anyone not believe Henry McMillian? Come now, why would anyone lie on their own gravestone?

 

Bethany allowed this story to register a moment, then asked if I'd like a copy of the notebook pages. “For your reading pleasure,” she said, “on a rainy night.” I said yes, and she made one on the Xerox machine near her desk, then returned the notebook to the file cabinet. When she sat behind her desk again, she said, “And now I have a question for you, if you don't mind. When we first spoke on the telephone, you said you didn't think there'd be much worry about theft—of library books.”

“Yes, I remember saying something to that effect.”

“I only mention it because, in the whole time I've been librarian here, there's never been a book stolen. Oh, certainly there's been some absent-mindedness. People forget about a book for a week or two past the due date. That's to be expected. Two years ago Philip Slayton accidentally took a book to Africa for a month—well, maybe not accidentally, but not on purpose with ill intent. On his return, once he got over jet-lag, he settled the full fine. But theft of books? No, we hadn't had that until around a year ago, I think it was, give or take a month . . .”

“What happened then?”

“Eleven books suddenly gone missing. We were in the middle of an inventory. One of our volunteers brought the titles to my attention. You see, the first year I was librarian, a woman named Mary Evans—she's in the cemetery by the wharf—you may have noticed we have the Mary Evans Children's Reading Room. Port Medway paid for the plaque out of public funds. Well, Mary Evans donated her personal library. It was more personal than most, because it had so many of the books she herself read as a child. She even spoke to several elementary school classes here in the library. A very pleasant woman.”

“Maybe some kid's too embarrassed to return the books.”

“Still, it's just so selfish. I mean, a library's for everyone. I mentioned the incident to Pastor Eversall, and he got word out through church bulletins. Then there's the gossip route, comes useful for such purposes. No reward and no punishment, that was the best policy, I felt. Just leave the books on the front stoop. Who cares as long as they're returned. But so far they haven't been.”

“I go to yard sales all around the province,” I said. “I like to go to used-book stores. I'll keep an eye out.”

“You'd need the titles for that, wouldn't you.”

“Oh, yes, what was I thinking? The titles.”

She disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned she had the piece of paper on which she'd written the titles.

“I took up a lot of your time today,” I said.

“It's my job to have my time taken up. By library business.”

I put the list in my shirt pocket, and when I got back to the cottage, I tacked it to the corkboard above the telephone in the kitchen.

I
CONTINUE TO ORGANIZE
and file Elizabeth's notes; I want them all readily available should she request something. Just this morning I found notes marked “Test of Courage,” which included the following passage from
The Victorian Chaise-Longue:

 

Time may be going not in a straight line but in all directions and in no direction, and God may have changed the universe so that it is my body that lies here and no dream, or not my body and still a dream from which I shall be freed.

The test of courage is still valid, said her conscience, you must know, you must look. So she lifted her head and looked down at her body.

There, framed by the crumpled clothes, set on ribs barely covered with skin, rose two small breasts. My breasts? cried Melanie, or not my breasts? Dare I touch them, these breasts that may be mine and alive, or will they crumble, will they rot if I touch them with my living hands, my hands on long-dead breasts? These are whiter than mine, she said, smaller, sadder than mine, and in a convulsive movement she laid her hands beneath them and they did not rot, small hot living breasts, and, pulsing through them, the too-fast-beating heart.

 

One night in the Essex Hotel, Elizabeth came to bed quite late but I was still awake, reading, which book I can't recall. “What I love most deeply about Marghanita Laski's novel,” she said, “is how you discover the relationship between unforeseen psychological incidents and the memories they cause, and how Melanie finally realizes what is happening to her. It's all so upsetting and so exciting and so strange. Some days, it's like I live in this book and at night I visit us here in the hotel. Do I seem locatable to you, darling? Am I all present and accounted for? Because if I'm not, I'll toss this goddamn novel in the trash and do something else. I want to be here with you. With us. Am I?”

“You can't get through this dissertation, Elizabeth, without being preoccupied. You want to teach at university. How else can you go about things but the way you're already doing?”

“The part I've been most obsessed with recently”—she picked up the novel from her desk and read the above paragraphs—“it's like Melanie exists between being a woman and the ghost of a woman. It's something in between. I have to think it through.”

Elizabeth lifted her nightgown over her head. She drew my hands to her breasts. “Just touch, here.” She had her eyes closed. It was as if she was trying not only to banish the paragraphs, but to make herself be locatable.

“With your mouth now,” she said.

I
PRACTICED TO THE
Boswell Sisters album, usually when Elizabeth was at the library. I even purchased a used herringbone sports coat at Harold's Haberdashery (whose sign read,
A Touch of the Old Country
) on Sackville Street. “All first-time customers get a tie thrown in gratis,” Harold himself said. I was wearing the sports coat when Elizabeth came back from some errand or other. We moved the chaise longue aside and practiced the lindy. “I'd say we're somewhere between intermediate and advanced,” she said when we sat down for a late dinner. “Though I've never seen advanced.”

Then came the fifth lesson. It had been two weeks since the last one. Arnie Moran had, according to the note he left in our hotel mail slot, “suffered the grippe” and had had to postpone the previous week's lesson. This night, Elizabeth and I got all gussied up and had a glass of wine before going down to the ballroom.

On the bandstand Arnie Moran was facing away from the students. When he turned, we saw that his nose was heavily bandaged, and under the bandage was a metal clamp of some sort. Elizabeth said, “That doesn't look like the grippe to me.” He stepped up to the microphone and said, “Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! I'm risen up from my sickbed and raring to go! Let's cut a rug!”

Once the music started, it struck me that Arnie had become more aggressively exacting in his hands-on instructions. Twice he cut in on couples, exiling the man rather crudely and being very critical of the woman's steps. When he said to Elizabeth, “You look like you have a stomachache—happy thoughts now, happy heart,” Elizabeth said, “Back off!”

Arnie did back off, but he didn't like it one bit. When he got to the microphone he offered a comment: “A few lessons under their belt and some people think they're ready for a dance competition!
Tsk tsk tsk.
” Though it sounded only mildly petulant, his reprimand set a negative tone for the remainder of the lesson.