Sweeter Life (18 page)

THEY TOOK THEIR TIME
returning to Fenton, stopping on dark stretches of country road to look at the stars. When they reached the hotel it was past midnight, the lobby deserted. On the seventh floor she led him down the hall past his own room. His pulse was pounding. He imagined the two of them rolling on her bed and how he would trail kisses down the dizzying path of her tattoo. Instead she stopped at room 704 and knocked softly. Right away they were ushered into the smoke and babble, the press of many bodies.

“Tea?” Adrian asked.

Kerry handed him a joint. “He’ll need something stronger after a night on the town with D.C.”

Eura slapped Kerry playfully across the back of his head and found a square of floor space where she drew her knees up to her chin and waited for Adrian to serve her.

“Here you go, my dear,” he said, handing her one of his special cups, a delicate fluted Belleek that had belonged to his mother and travelled with him now in a special padded case. “Give up your cares and rest awhile.”

Ronnie, who was sitting atop the chest of drawers, lifted his tin of milk in greeting. “Let me take a moment, Cyrus, to tell you—and I’m sure I speak for all here—how glad we are that you have come by for a drop of Welsh hospitality. If anyone required proof that you have become one of us, to my mind your appearance here seals it. You are now, for sure and certain, a full-fledged member of the Jimmy Waters Revival.”

Cyrus found a spot beside Tony Two Poops, who was washing down vitamin C with mouthfuls of Southern Comfort. When offered the bottle, Cyrus took a swig, then a second. On the other side of him, in a rumpled heap, was Tommy Mac, who opened Cyrus a can of McEwan’s ale and, with a nod
toward Eura, said, “Tha’s a right cunt, tha’ one.”

Two Poops winked. “Our Tommy boy’s had a few too many, I think.”

“Aye,” Tom growled. “A few too menna, but not enough too menna.”

A joint the size of a Cuban cigar drifted by, and Cyrus took a hit and passed it on. Two Poops said, “I guess you’ll be wanting to put your name on the list.”

Cyrus furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“For Eura. You’ll have to get on the list. She giving you the flat rate?”

Cyrus took a sip of McEwan’s but found it a hard mouthful to swallow. A quick glance about the room offered no evidence that he was being teased. “The list,” he repeated.

“Yeah. My turn tomorrow. Got a disc problem that’s killer.”

Cyrus leaned against the wall, comprehension slowly dawning. “And you’ve got an appointment with Eura.”

“Wasn’t for her I’d never be able to stand up.”

“And she charges you a flat rate. For a massage.”

“Between you and me, it’s worth twice the price.”

Cyrus closed his eyes and smiled. He saw the Airstream, the bedroom window, Eura’s head and shoulders. He heard Jim groaning with pleasure. She was a masseuse.

When he looked across the room again, she had already slipped away; he had missed his chance to continue their night together. Even so, he was satisfied with the progress made. Questions had been answered, doubts allayed, doors opened.

He finished his beer, then another, and was one of the last to leave the party. That night he dreamed about his father, the same dream he’d been having for years. They’re running side by side along the Marsh Road, a beautiful night, the moon shining so brightly it casts shadows on the ground. In real life his father had been an effortless runner, and Cyrus normally struggled to keep up. In the dream, however, they both glide peacefully through the darkness, as if they have wings on their feet. Cyrus is talking calmly, his gaze focused straight ahead. Then, without explanation, his father stops running, and Cyrus sails down the road like a summer wind.

R
uby took Janice to the United Church and suggested they sit in the balcony where the organ sounded most ethereal and the light from the stained glass windows seemed most uplifting. Although she normally sat by herself, she was glad the girl had come. It made her feel needed again.

Janice followed along as best she could, but found it odd to be in a church, and to be there with a woman she hardly knew. They were surrounded by friends and neighbours, yet she felt as if she had dropped into a primitive culture. She couldn’t imagine anyone taking these rituals seriously, as bewildering to her as face paint, a bone in the nose, a communal bowl of phlegm. Even so, there was something pleasant about sitting in this church with Ruby. Partly it was the fact that Janice could sense a bit of Cyrus in the old woman—the same blue eyes, the same smell of Camay soap—partly it was the sense that Janice was doing something worthwhile, cheering up a sweet old lady. She was enough of a good girl to understand the beauty in that.

When the service ended, they stood outside and let their eyes adjust to the sunshine. Down the block a couple of leather-necked farmers sat in front of the town hall, eating sunflower seeds. A robin sang in a nearby tree. Ruby said, “It was a boring sermon. And they sang all the wrong songs. I should have taken you somewhere else.”

“You play the field?”

“Well, I guess technically I am United. But Reverend Jansen’s not my favourite. So I generally go where the spirit moves me. This was a mistake. I don’t know what I could have been thinking.”

The next week they tried the Baptists, and Janice knew right away it was more to her liking. The energetic hymns, all that vigorous dunking, the white robes afloat in the pool of water—here at least she could see why people might get excited about this Jesus business.

But it wasn’t until the third week that Janice saw the light. She and Ruby attended a mass at Saint Michael’s. It was a cold blustery day, the wind snatching the hem of her skirt as they climbed the steps to the church. They opened the door and there, just inside by the candles and the fountain, was a statue of the Virgin Mary bending over the body of Christ. Janice stood transfixed, the light coming from behind her, the wind swirling around her, the incense and the organ and the softly tinted light speaking to her in a voice she had never heard. She knew without a doubt that this was it, that she would come back again and again, that she had, in the most unlikely place, found a way forward.

CLARENCE CAME IN FROM THE ORCHARD
and hung his hat on the peg above his workbench. Although he normally rested on Sundays, he’d been out collecting leaf samples, which he spread on the bench. Everything was running early this year. The buds had already started to open, showing silver-green mouse ears. He pulled out his magnifying glass and adjusted his gooseneck lamp. After several minutes he’d seen all he needed. Red mites. This week he and Frank would have to use the oil spray.

He opened a cola and flopped on the old sofa. It was a cool, damp morning, but he was perspiring. And he was winded, which happened a lot when the humidity was high. Another result of his operation, he figured.

As he closed his eyes and waited for his breathing to return to normal, he thought about Cyrus—an ache like a phantom limb. The two of them had never talked much, and Clarence wasn’t the kind for horseplay and games, but he really missed their Saturdays in the orchard, the two of them establishing a physical rhythm, doing what was required. March was the last time they’d worked side by side, cutting out winter damage and pausing at the end
of each row to drink a cup of hot tea from a Thermos.

He had tried to pass on to Cyrus a love of pruning—that you cut something back to make it stronger, that you halted its fruitless yearning to increase its yield—and had tried to apply the same lessons to his own life. He believed in limits. He had always found strength in his losses. But some losses cut deeper than others. He’d be the first to admit he had never gotten over the death of Riley Owen. Those feelings were too complicated for a simple man to unravel, a crazy knot of grief and guilt and jealousy that had maybe left its mark on Cyrus, too, driving him away for good. But where to begin in puzzling it out? The glove? The girl? The grave?

He remembered clearly the day the Donahue sisters showed up at high school. Their father, Jim, a doctor from Waterford, had just moved to town to set up practice. He had an enormous handlebar moustache and round wire-rimmed glasses in the fashion of Teddy Roosevelt, and dressed always in a black suit. As Jim walked his daughters to the front door of Wilbury High that first day, a girl on each arm, he seemed ready to burst with pride. And rightly so. His daughters, Ruby and Catherine, were the most beautiful girls Clarence had ever seen.

Ruby was the first-born, and had she been an only child, she would have captured the heart of every boy in town. But Catherine, three years younger, was not only more beautiful but more spirited than Ruby, who had a serious and retiring nature. In the presence of Catherine Donahue, few could resist the chase. Certainly not Clarence.

He was handsome, strong and intelligent. His father was reeve of the county and one of the most successful farmers in the region. It seemed only natural that the two families, the Mitchells and the Donahues, would become friendly; and naturally enough, Clarence tried everything in his power to make Catherine love him. He fought battles for her, ran touchdowns for her, talked till he was blue in the face, and still he failed to produce a spark. She saw him as a friend and nothing more. Since she treated all the boys that way, Clarence wasn’t too concerned. He went off to college with the belief she would one day come to her senses and understand he was the right man for her. But then the war started, and Clarence enlisted in the air force right after graduation, despite the deferment offered farm boys. By the end of 1940, he
was stationed in Devon, where he worked in the ground crew of the air base, his knowledge of all things mechanical saving him from combat.

As it turned out, it was young Riley Owen who fired Catherine’s imagination, dirt-poor Riley with the lovable spirit of a dreamer but the laughable dream of playing for the Detroit Tigers. Halfway through his first year in Toledo, he came home with a busted knee. He was on crutches until Labour Day and talking about joining the war effort as soon as he was well enough. But then he met Catherine at a church picnic. In the weeks that followed, they were seen around town together or sitting on the Donahues’ wide front veranda, ignoring the disapproving looks of her parents. One month later, and a week before he was to report for basic training, they caught everyone by surprise and eloped. Clarence heard the news in letters from his folks: about the marriage, about Riley’s return to the farm and his deferment and, eight months later, about the birth of Hank.

Clarence loved them both, but when he returned from overseas, it killed him to see them together. It killed him to see Riley failing to measure up to all that Catherine deserved, farming not by choice but by default, falling deeper and deeper into debt and further and further behind, growing angry and sullen and unlovable. It also killed Clarence to see Catherine suffering, to watch her lose her bloom and her spirit. And this, too: it killed him these past few years to watch Cyrus, how there were moments the two faces, Riley’s and Catherine’s, would fade in and out of focus like those stupid 3-D pictures of Jesus on the cross. The whole thing, really, from start to finish, it just killed him. When he closed his eyes sometimes, he could feel it like a great big hole inside him where his heart used to be.

When Ruby returned from church, she walked over to the barn where he was still nursing his soda. She looked good, not exactly happy but content, all things considered. When she saw him, though, she sank a little, her mouth losing its upward curl. “Time to move on now,” she said. “There’s more to life than this.”

He knew she was right. He knew that Cy’s leaving was inevitable, that this boy and his dreams should not be seen as the symbol of a failed life. But then it wasn’t just Cyrus he was thinking about.

HANK KNEW BETTER
. Of course he did. You watch your back. You keep your nose clean. You don’t make waves. He knew that. He’d said as much to his little brother. And some other time he might have done things differently. But this wasn’t another time. The way it is, brother.

He walked away from his metal press where hundreds of licence plates waited to be stamped. He just walked like a free man out of the room and along the corridor to the laundry, walked with such purpose and determination that the guards didn’t think to ask what in hell he was doing. In the laundry he stepped up to Golden Reynolds and said, “Enough. No more fucking around. The batteries.”

Goldie looked away. “You talking about?”

“I want those batteries, and I want ’em now.”

Goldie checked the placement of his friends and stooges around the room. “Hoho,” he said, sidling closer, “you lookin’ a bit tense. Maybe could use some lovin’ is what I think. The Golden touch.”

Another time it wouldn’t have worked this way, but this time it did. Hank slammed Goldie onto the cement floor and was choking him with his bare hands. A moment later muscular forearms pried them apart. Two, three, then four men held Hank still as Goldie rose slowly from the floor and dusted himself off, all cool and casual. He studied the ceiling a moment, shifted his weight and balance, then moved in and landed a vicious kick between Hank’s legs.

“Lesson number one,” he said.

I
sabel got the call about Hank, and she and Ruby set out immediately for Portland. At the prison infirmary, they were told that he had been transferred to the main hospital downtown.

The man on the phone had told Isabel that Hank had been “worked over pretty good,” and she’d pictured him the way a prizefighter might look after a rough bout. She certainly hadn’t imagined the crumpled mess in the bed at Portland Memorial, or the cage of iron rods and clamps that had been built around him to keep his pelvis and upper body immobile.

He was sleeping soundly, and Isabel and Ruby stood a few moments staring at the wreck before them, the scabs and bruises, the initials carved into his face, the metal truss like some instrument of torture. For the next hour they tracked down nurses and, eventually, the doctor, who told them Hank’s spine had been fractured in several places, and that it was still too early to know how much nerve damage there’d been. He would most likely be a paraplegic the rest of his life.