Sweeter Life (59 page)

“Yeah,” he said, “me too.”

She nodded again, satisfied they could agree on that much. She reached out and fooled a moment with the top button of his shirt, then let her arm drop to her side. Retreating a few steps, as if she needed to take a running jump, she said, “Maybe we could do something about that.”

NEXT MORNING, CYRUS
left Orchard Knoll before Janice was awake and drove over to Lake Isabel. Hank was sitting out by the pond with toast and coffee. The minute he saw Cyrus he called out to him. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

Cyrus walked over to the pond, took a bite of Hank’s toast and, while he was chewing, said, “Your lights were off when I got in, so I stayed with Janice last night. What’s the plan?”

Hank did something vaguely Elvis with his upper lip. “I thought we could have the party out here. Lots of room, that’s for sure. But nobody was too thrilled by the notion. We’re at the rec centre, instead.” Ruby and her church group were providing the food. Drinks were BYOB. Bobby Nash and the Ramblers would keep everyone hopping. Best of all, he said, Izzy didn’t have a clue.

“What do you want
me
to do?” Cyrus asked, feeling like an outsider.

“Stay out of sight,” Hank said. “And be on time. Other than that, I don’t know, stand around and look pretty or something.”

Cyrus followed Hank into the trailer and, while his brother showered, made sure everything was arranged just so. Ten minutes later Hank left the bathroom and wheeled himself toward the kitchen. Cyrus said, “Brought you a present.” He pointed to the corner where the hula dancer sat beside the chrome magnificence of the National.

“You’re joking, right?”

“I never use this one, anyway. You might as well have it.”

Hank rolled his chair across the room, lowered the right-hand armrest and picked up the instrument. After running his hands along the brilliant chrome contours, he tentatively strummed the strings.

Cyrus said, “Maybe you’ll be able to keep this one in tune.”

“Right. Like I’d know the difference.” Then, carefully, his head bowed, he picked out the theme to “The Bridge.” When Cyrus stiffened, Hank looked up, confused. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

“I do. I just—” He covered his face with both hands and waited until he was back under control. Looking straight at his brother, he said, “It’s great you figured that out. Play it again.”

Hank bent over the guitar one more time, his face taut with concentration.
When he’d played the figure a second time, he laughed and said, “That about right?”

“Perfect. Let me show you the next part.” He grabbed Hank’s old acoustic, sat at his brother’s feet and tuned the guitar as best he could. His first attempt to finger the strings sent a fiery pain from his knuckles to his shoulder. “Christ,” he said through gritted teeth, “you’d have to be Hercules to play this fucking thing.”

Hank grabbed the neck of the acoustic and held out the National with his other hand. “Let’s switch for now,” he said. “I’m used to that brute. And let’s face it, it’s not going to hurt my technique any.”

The National was only slightly less painful, but enough so that the two brothers could fool around a few minutes. Hank would never be considered a natural, but neither was he a quitter. He didn’t seem discouraged at how little he could do.

“One last lesson,” Cyrus said, when his hand could take no more punishment. “If you only know how to play a few notes, you’d better make them sound good.” To demonstrate, he played a note with and without vibrato. Then he showed his brother the position of the hand, the fulcrum points and how to “worry” the string back and forth to create a shiver. “You’ll sound like B. B. King in no time,” he said.

Hank tried it for a few minutes, then looked up and smiled. “Look at me,” he said, “getting private lessons from a rock star.”

Ruby arrived soon after that and made a fuss over Cyrus, noting his bloodshot eyes, the bags, the scarred hand, muttering all the while, “My Lord, my Lord.” She might have spent the whole day that way if Hank hadn’t reminded her it was time to go. When she invited Cyrus to help them decorate the hall, he begged off. “I told Janice I’d be back soon,” he lied.

After he watched the two of them drive off, he sat in his rental car and tried to place some of the old landmarks—the pond, for instance, and the willow trees where he and Blackie used to sit. It struck him how many changes this one piece of landscape had lived through: marshland, farm, oil field, trailer park. Did it make sense to ask which incarnation was the right one? Had the Owens used the land any more wisely than Benny Driscoll or
the natives who roamed these marshes centuries before the white man ever set foot in these parts?

When he drove back to Orchard Knoll, Janice was on the front porch with a book. “Hey there, lazybones,” he said. “I got tired of waiting for you to wake up.”

“That’s convenient. I was tired of pretending to sleep. How’s Hank?”

“All right, I guess. Seems pretty excited. You got plans today?”

She closed the book. “I’m under strict orders to keep you hidden.”

AS INSTRUCTED
, Izzy arrived at Hank’s trailer at about six o’clock. He’d told her that he was taking her to dinner somewhere, his treat. After she stowed his wheelchair in the trunk, she slid behind the wheel and asked for directions.

“A little surprise first,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I made you something in Janice’s art class I’d like to show you.”

As they drove downtown, Izzy bantered about the prestige of owning a Hank Owen original. She parked in the lot and helped wheel him up the wide ramp of the recreation centre. Stopping just shy of the front door, she said, “It’s probably locked, Hank.”

He held up a key ring, and when he unlocked the door, everyone jumped out of the shadows, blowing noisemakers and shouting. It took her a moment to gather her wits—she really was surprised. Then she laughed, a high girlish squeal that Hank was sure he’d never heard before. “Oh my God,” she said, pounding his shoulders. “I’ll get you for this.”

The stream of faces flowed toward her and enveloped her, people she saw at the office every day and those from town she hadn’t spoken to in years; her students, some of whom had careers of their own; clients who’d stuck with her through two or three home purchases and now were more friends than business; Ross Pettigrew and Janice Young; Ruby, of course, and the ladies from her church group; and lastly, standing off to the side and waiting until everyone else had given her a hug, her baby brother, Cyrus. She ran to him and hugged him tight and whispered so that no one else could hear, “You son of a bitch.” Tears were running down her cheeks and smudging her mascara, but she didn’t give a damn because it was her birthday, her fortieth,
and people could call her a sentimental old fool if they wanted. It was true.

The Ramblers chose that moment to kick into their first number of the night, “Let the Good Times Roll,” and people easily slid into the groove. The wine and beer began to flow. The food came out from under wraps. The volume and temperature and energy rose in equal measure, and the night moved inexorably into memory.

At the end of the party, Hank was so drunk it took both Cyrus and Izzy to get him back to the trailer and into bed. When they were sure he was safely tucked away, they walked to the pond and sat on the bench there. Cyrus clasped his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars. Izzy watched a pair of mallards cruising the water’s edge.

“How’s the job?” she asked without inflection.

“You know, shitty.”

“Did the doctors tell you when you’ll be able to play again?”

For the first time, he gave full voice to the dark knowledge that had been shifting around his head for months. “I’ll never play again, Iz. Not professionally. They’ve done all they can, I think. The guy in physio said I should get used to the idea that it’s downhill from here. Considering the damage done and the operations, he figures that arthritis could kick in any time.” He shook his head. “It already hurts like hell most days.”

Izzy thought a moment, then began to talk to him about money, about Ruby’s generosity with Hank and the likelihood she would help Cyrus. She mentioned the rental money from Orchard Knoll, how half was going to Hank and the other into a bank account for Cyrus. “I can give you a cheque tomorrow, if you like, or whatever you want to do.”

He nodded his head, feeling both embarrassed and appreciative. Desperate to change the mood, he said, “Now that you mention the orchard, I can’t believe you’d let the place go that way. You know how Clarence was. It’d kill him to see it.”

She looked down at her lap and tried her best to explain. Lack of time, she said. Lack of knowledge. In the end, thinking of the damage that could be done, she had felt it was better that no one work the place.

Cyrus knew his uncle had felt the same, and was sorry he’d darkened Izzy’s mood with his complaints. Hoping to make up for it, he told her he
would take on the responsibility of finding the right person to manage the farm. He had booked time off work, he said. He could spend the next few days talking to people. The longer they let it go wild, the harder it would be to get someone interested.

Izzy got to her feet and tossed her keys in the air. “Want me to drive you over there?”

He shook his head. “I told Janice I’d stay here tonight. I’ve got a feeling Hank might need a little help tomorrow.” Isabel laughed and touched his arm. Then he watched her drive away. But the moment she was gone, he wished he had asked her to stay longer. They hadn’t talked for ages.

The air was warm, and the heady smell of the lake was like a drug. Aside from the stars and moon, there were no lights anywhere that he could see, no sounds other than the tremulous shudder of a screech owl in the distance.

Full of nervous energy, he got to his feet and strolled out to the Marsh Road. There, he could hear things stirring in the ditch, a raccoon, maybe, or a skunk. And without thinking, putting one foot in front of the other, he moved smoothly into his recurring dream and began to run down the middle of the road. It took no effort at all to imagine his father there with him, the soundless strides as though his feet didn’t touch the ground, the way he seldom seemed out of breath or even really trying. And just the way it happened in all the dreams, Cyrus left his father behind, or rather, his father stopped running and let him disappear down the road on his own. He passed the Van Vessens’, the Wiebes’, and ran down to the bend where it joined the Lake Road. He cruised by the “Gold Coast,” ticky-tacky cottages on postage stamp lots, and across Roxy Beach where the sand was as fine and white as sugar. He ran without breaking his stride, even when he hit the water, the sand there so hard and rippled you could drive a car on it. He ran through the shallows, almost losing his balance but not quite, on and on into deeper water, sending up a fountain of spray until he was up to his waist. And without pausing to think, he leaned forward into a crawl and swam out beyond the breakwater to bob in the larger waves.

JANICE WOKE WITH A START
, knowing something had just happened but not knowing what it might be. She clutched the blankets under her
chin and tried to slow down her heart. Listening carefully, she could just make out the drip of water. Then one of the shadows in the room moved toward her and touched her with an ice-cold hand. “It’s me,” Cyrus said. “Rise and shine.”

The horizon had begun to colour. It would be an hour at least until sunrise. The room smelled of lake. “Come to bed,” she complained. “It’s too early.” But when he knelt beside her and hugged her, she pushed him angrily away. “Rotten thing to do,” she muttered, drying her face on the blankets.

“Just water,” he said. “It won’t kill you.” He hugged her again, and this time she didn’t recoil but relaxed into it, sought further contact with his cool wet skin. “It’s taken me a while to figure it out,” he said. “I’m slow. I’m stupid. But it’s finally starting to sink in that we should get married.”

Janice grew still, the silence deepening with each beat of her heart. She untangled herself and sat back. She looked out the window, then up into his eyes. “And then what?” she asked.

He folded his arms, suddenly on the defensive. “I don’t know. That’s the only part I’m clear about. I think we should get married.”

She pulled on her housecoat and dragged him to the front steps where they leaned together, the world around them gradually taking form. “This is what I know,” she said. “I’ve lived here and in Toronto, and maybe someday I’ll live somewhere else again. I’ve been single and I’ve had a relationship I thought would last my whole life. I’ve had periods when I’ve been surrounded by friends, and times when it seemed I had no friends at all. And you know what? When I think about what’s important to me, when I think of the line that runs through my life, it really comes down to one thing—my work. So when you come to me all of a sudden talking about marriage, and you’re dripping wet like you’ve just been baptized in some new religion, I get worried. I’ve seen you get carried away before.”

Cyrus nodded soberly. He knew he deserved as much, but that didn’t make it less hurtful. He also knew from bitter experience that few dreams last a lifetime. She was looking at heartache if she thought this career she loved so well would carry her to her final days. He had lessons to teach her on that score. Without looking up, he said, “Is that your answer?”

Janice thought about her time with Jonathan, about the few disastrous
affairs she’d had since then, about the many nights she had crawled into an empty bed and wished she had Cyrus in her arms. Then she looked at him and said, “My answer is this: I don’t want you to go back to Toronto. I want you to stay here in Wilbury. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe I want you to stay here with me. But I don’t want to marry you—not right now at least. I think we should take it one step at a time.”

She squeezed his hand. He sat in stony silence, looking at the horizon. Finally he said, “I’m cold,” and walked into the house. When she followed a few moments later, he was already in the shower. She tried the door, but it was locked.