Sweeter Life (47 page)

C
yrus took Ronnie’s advice and remained at Hidey-Hole, where he let work take hold and transport him. The arrival of the other band members helped, and for the first week they rehearsed in the studio every day. When Nigel decided they were ready to get down to serious business, Ronnie knew it was time to leave. He couldn’t stand to watch the recording process, he said. “Would I ask Houdini to show me his tricks?” Instead he drove down to London, where he would work out of the Gore Hotel.

Cyrus had done more recording than anyone else in the group, but he had never been in a studio that compared to Hidey-Hole, the bells and whistles of its technology like something from a spaceship. Nor had he or the others experienced anything as rigorous as Nigel’s process. They spent a full day fiddling with the drum sound, loosening the skins until there was no snap, then covering the heads with wads of paper towel and gaffer tape to remove frequency spikes. They followed much the same process with the other instruments, adjusting volumes, altering tones, with no thought of how the musicians might respond. When Pete complained at one point that they might not play as well under these circumstances, Nigel said, “It’s not about playing, mate. You go on the road to play. Making records is work.”

If Nigel’s search for sound was exhaustive, his demand for performance
was exhausting. He recorded up to twenty takes of each track and just as many overdubs. After each take he said, “Perfect. Let’s do another,” so that they began to hate the songs before the sessions were half finished. The worst, they realized, would be the final mix. At that point they would all be held hostage to Nigel’s quest for perfection.

They recorded eight hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks, time enough for two hundred cups of rancid coffee, three thousand games of pinball, the same ten songs playing over and over, sometimes on the big punishing speakers, sometimes on the little two-inchers that simulated a car stereo. They argued a lot, especially when the grooves didn’t groove, when the songs didn’t sing, but they laughed, too, and danced and got righteously stoned. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, if they had been to the pub for drinks, Cyrus would creep into the echoless space of the studio for a moment of privacy. He’d lie on the floor beside his amplifier and listen to the whispery silence, or puzzle over a phrase or bit of groove, or, in the mystical magic of predawn, get all philosophical and deep.

At times like that he often had mixed feelings about what they were achieving. The music sounded real but unlike anything he had expected, as different as he could imagine from those early tapes he’d made with Pete or those first demos. And while he was proud of many parts of the record—the long guitar solo over that droning I-beam, for instance—he hardly recognized it as his own. After months of writing and rewriting, always focused on the bridge and creek, the farm and marsh, his family and Janice, he had imagined one long anguished cry of an album, music that spoke of blood and tears and broken hearts. Instead he heard something hard and shiny and mechanical; he heard cities groaning, numbers crunching, the bright complicated structures of science.

After six weeks, Nigel told them to go home. “Don’t play,” he said. “Don’t listen to anything. Get lost. A month maybe. Then we’ll see what we have and start the final mix.”

Cyrus was tempted to stay in England, but with the recording on hold, his days were increasingly dominated by the great aching wound that was Eura. In the studio, he had put her out of his mind, which in many ways was music’s central grace: the ability to drain the world of everything but rhythm and
melody. Now she filled his empty head and heart like a spring. She filled his ears and his mouth and his eyes. She filled his empty arms and crowded his bed. Now that his work was finished, there would be no forgetting. He would have to go home and pick up the pieces.

FIVE DAYS LATER
he landed in Toronto, and it seemed as though he’d been gone an eternity. Familiar objects had taken on the quality of icons: the door to their apartment with its lacy curtain, grey with age; the long narrow flight of stairs to the second floor; the checkerboard tile of the hall landing where he liked to sit and play his guitar for the echo.

The apartment itself was much as Ronnie had described it, a scene of hurried departure. Dresser drawers had been left open and empty, though not perfectly empty, always some article left behind in the rush: a pyjama bottom, a single woolen sock darned and redarned at heel and toe, a single earring. A suitcase on the bed held a few small items—a scarf, a belt, two pairs of scuffed shoes, a purse—and he realized that he not only felt abandoned but robbed, as though in casting aside his love and their life together she had also decided to burgle the apartment. She hadn’t, of course; she took just what belonged to her. But he couldn’t help feeling he had a claim on her clothes, her face creams and toothpaste, the way she smelled and the way she sounded and the way she filled his life with emotions that were not always pleasant but were something.

Ronnie had emptied and wiped down the fridge. He’d thrown out all perishables and taken out the garbage. Everything else was just as she’d left it. And the closer Cyrus looked, the sadder he became. It was true, she took nothing of his. Worse, she took nothing of theirs, as though she wanted no reminder of their time together. The photo albums sat untouched on the shelves in the living room. The records and cassettes were just where they were supposed to be. Nothing had been removed from the bookshelf or even the mantel, where she liked to display the mementos they’d picked up in their travels together. Most hurtful, she’d taken from her wallet the photo-booth snaps he’d given her way back when, of a young boy making silly faces. That she would stop in her flight to toss them on the coffee table seemed an act of cruelty. Beside the pictures were the keys to the Impala.

He listened to the answering machine in hopes of hearing her voice, a few words of regret, a promise of return. What he heard instead were his own calls from England, the pathetic and disconsolate sound of a phone hanging up, over and over again. Aside from that, there was the wheedling voice of the landlord, wondering when he could expect the rent. The last message on the tape was from Isabel, sounding hushed and serious.

“Better get home,” she said. “It’s Clarence, and it doesn’t look good.”

He phoned her right away and got no answer. He phoned Ruby. Again no one home. He phoned Izzy’s office, then remembered it was a Sunday. That’s when he decided to head for Wilbury. Why bother to unpack? It wasn’t as if the apartment felt like home anymore. He grabbed the car keys and his suitcase and walked around back to the Chevy, which was more decrepit than he had remembered, a patchwork of rust and graffiti, all four tires slashed. Undaunted, he hiked down the street to a rental outlet and was soon behind the wheel of a brand new compact.

He forced himself to enjoy the drive. He paid attention as the sun set. He noticed the fog that rose out of the surrounding fields and began to creep across the highway. It was beautiful, in a bleak sort of way. And partly because of the fog, partly because of the cold and empty apartment he’d left behind, he found himself looking forward more keenly than he would have expected. He couldn’t help wondering what would loom out of that grey cloud.

He arrived in town at nine o’clock and went directly to the hospital. Clarence’s room was full of people—Ruby, Hank, Janice, Izzy, Reverend Jansen—and he noticed immediately the complicated way in which they were all connected: how Ruby sat beside her husband, clasping his large hand in both of hers; how the minister waited quietly for the opportunity to share his strength; how Janice stood beside Isabel’s bony shoulder while Hank, with a look of gritty determination, held on to Clarence’s foot, as though he could physically keep him from the other world.

As Cyrus entered the room, they turned—not at once, but by degrees, depending on their level of distraction, until all five were shaking his hand and touching his shoulder and whispering how wonderful it was he’d made it. Then they parted to give him access to his dying uncle; and facing the
unmediated horror of Clarence’s illness, he began to feel the full weight of his own life. He took Ruby’s seat and held his uncle’s hand. “Clarence,” he said, though there was absolutely no indication his words might be heard, “it’s me, Cyrus.”

He was relieved they had given him some space, some private time, and there was so much he could have mentioned, the gratitude, the admiration, the sadness and guilt. But in the end those sentiments were too difficult to express. Instead he gently squeezed the old man’s hand and said, “Everything’s going to be fine.” After a few more minutes of silent communion, he let Ruby return to her rightful position. An hour later his uncle struggled briefly, then stopped breathing forever.

After that the family was pushed to the periphery while the doctors made the death official. In the jittery vacuum created by the family’s loss, Isabel took control. “Ruby has to sign papers, then I’ll take her to Worrell’s to make arrangements.” She looked at her watch. “I doubt we’ll be out of there before eleven. No way is she going to the farm tonight. She can stay at my house. What I need is someone to go to Orchard Knoll to get a few things.” When Janice volunteered, Isabel nodded efficiently and said, “Maybe you could take Hank with you and when you’re done there, go back to my house and change the sheets in his room. He can sleep on the couch a few days till we make other plans.”

When Isabel looked at Cyrus, he moved forward and helped her lead Ruby down the hall and into the last empty years of her life.

BY DAYLIGHT
, Orchard Knoll was the kind of tidy setting you might find gracing a colourful calendar or children’s book—the bright red barns, the stately brick home, healthy trees in orderly rows that stretched across the land as far as the eye could see. But that night, with the orchard covered in a shifting blanket of fog, and with Clarence’s death fresh in her mind, Janice found it a far more meaningful place. Troubling, to be sure, but in the way that art can trouble. This is the Orchard Knoll a great painter would have captured, she realized, the farm that wasn’t visible to the untrained eye, that only showed its true face to those who were quiet enough and patient enough to wait for revelation, or in times of upheaval such as this, when people and
objects unwittingly revealed their secret natures. As she sat in the driveway with Hank and stared at the silent farmhouse, she felt bright and breathless, her senses on high alert, as though she were in the midst of a deeply creative act.

She was thankful when Hank handed her the keys to the house and suggested she go in alone rather than wrestle with his chair. How often were you given the opportunity, an hour after someone’s death, to stand perfectly still in their home and listen and watch and soak it all in without a single living soul to disturb the infinite currents that swirled through every room and tickled the hair on your arms and neck?

For a long while she stood motionless just inside the door, with the lights off. Instead of the profound silence she had expected, she heard the pert rhythm of a dripping tap, the soft purr of the refrigerator, the steady backbeat of the grandfather clock. Outside, she could hear Hank working his way along the dial of her car radio. Behind that, there was the hoot of a barn owl and, far away, the faint roar of the lake, still agitated from yesterday’s storm. These sounds, meaningless in themselves, seemed to gather weight and significance in the empty house. A complicated music, but as evocative of this time and place as anything she could imagine.

Finally she flipped on a light and put together a few necessities for Ruby. When she returned to the car, Hank was leaning out the window, his head resting on his arms. After she stowed the suitcase in the back seat, she nudged him with her hand and asked point-blank what was on his mind.

“Me? Nothing much. In prison, you think a lot about open space and weather and shit like that. I guess I’m trying to appreciate it while I can.”

She fingered the keys in the ignition. “Were you close to Clarence?”

“Not really. Guess I never gave him a chance. Guess I’ve never been that close to anyone, though I was always partial to Ruby. Makes me laugh just to look at her sometimes. Never could get over how she was the opposite of my mother—the two sisters, you know—and at the same time how they were exactly the same. Never could figure that out.”

At Izzy’s bungalow, Hank showed Janice where the clean sheets were kept and led her to his room, where she stripped his bed and made it again with the fresh linen. He was uncomfortable about the whole thing, especially
the wall of pin-ups behind her. When she finished, he said, “Don’t suppose you’d like to take those down.”

She looked behind her as if she hadn’t noticed the centrefolds at all. “You sure? Maybe Ruby’ll get a kick out of them.”

Hank had never been able to take teasing from anyone who wasn’t family, so he turned away from her and rolled himself into the kitchen. When she joined him again, she said, “I put them in your dresser. They’ll be safe there.” She looked at the clock, the counter, the cupboards, and down the hall to the front door. “Unless you can think of anything else,” she said, “I’ll be on my way.”

“You think I’m a jerk.”

She tried her hands in her pockets but that didn’t feel so good, so she tucked them into her armpits. “If you knew me better,” she said, “you’d know I’m not like that—judgmental, I mean. So, no, I don’t think you’re a jerk. I don’t really know what you are. An artist maybe.”

He laughed weakly, almost against his will. When she looked at her watch, he said, “I hate the idea of waiting on my own for them to show up. You feel like going somewhere?”

“Well,” she said, not exactly wild about the prospect. Something had been stirred in her back at Orchard Knoll, and she wanted to go to her studio space out by the farmers’ co-operative.

But there was a part of Hank that liked nothing better than backing people into a corner, and he sensed rightly that he had Janice in such a position. He moved his chair closer and said, “What about this truth I’ve heard about? I showed you mine, maybe you could show me yours.”