The Custodian of Paradise (35 page)

I sit down on my bed. My first thought is that I will not spend this day wandering the streets. In spite of the contents of the letter, I feel relieved that, at last,
something
has happened. My stalled life has begun again. Relieved. Revived. He has been watching me. If he claimed to have been doing so since the day that I was born, I would be almost willing to believe it. He or someone acting on his behalf, perhaps his “delegate,” tracked me to Manhattan from St. John’s.

His delegate. My shadow. My guardian angel to whom, I suppose, I should be grateful, assuming that what my Provider writes is true.
Most are now persuaded of the folly of interfering with Miss Fielding
. He has been assigned to me. An endless assignation with a woman he must never meet or who, if they meet or have already met, must never know it. It sounds as though the man does nothing else, has no other task but me.

I am frightened for my children in spite of how solicitous he sounds. Reading his letters is like squinting through a bank of fog at sea. No matter how many hazards, on close inspection, prove to be mere apparitions, I cannot relax, cannot stop bracing for an impact that may never come.

What if I went to the police, showed them the letters? Or, so as to guard the secret whose revelation would destroy so many, simply told them I was being followed? They would doubt my sanity. A man I have never seen who refers to himself as my Provider has set me a riddle in the form of two letters. Another man whom he refers to as his “delegate” follows me about, for my protection, though I have never seen him either and have no idea what he looks like.

Never married. Never taken a lover since being jilted by my mother. Nor had he one before.
A virgin twice removed
. Twice he denies being what he seems to be, a jilted, stunted
man, mired in the past. He seems to be, at once, an apologist for my mother, and my mother’s nemesis. Perhaps he is mad, leading me towards a revelation that doesn’t exist.

But about one thing he is right. I
have
been stalling. Trying to work up the nerve to see my children. He thinks I should go home without doing so, act as though they don’t exist. Yet I, whom he thinks is his child, am the main obsession of his life.

It is time for me to find the house where I had my children. Though I will not, as he puts it, seek them out. Not my children, nor my mother, nor Dr. Breen. That is, I will not confront them. I will find the house whose location, I am certain, my Provider and his delegate already know. I will go there, followed by the delegate, who, even now that I am aware of him, will somehow conceal himself. I will do what he does. Spy on others. Follow
them
. But keep my distance, lest I be discovered. And while I am watching them, he will be watching me.

But I
must
see them. I will not leave New York until I do.

February 17, 1921

I chose today, Sunday, to go see the house. The day they were most likely to be home. I watched the house from one street over, stared between two pairs of houses, two pairs of bordering backyards separated by a laneway. It was as close as I dared go, and even then I knew that I could only walk up and down the street so often, could only pause so often to look down that laneway before the strangers on the neighbouring street noticed me and became suspicious.

A modest mansion surrounded by less-modest ones. Made of brown brick with a Tudor turret on one side. Three evenly spaced gabled windows on the second floor. A two-toned automobile in the driveway, green and white, a machine that somehow looked both sleek and massive and shone in the sunlight, as if it had never been driven.

There was such a “car” in every driveway on both streets, to my eye all the same except for colour, all as pristine-looking as if they were merely ornamental, the “car” the latest thing in outdoor decoration. I have never been in a car, never been a passenger, let alone a driver. To my children it will seem that there were always cars.

I saw them all today, though never all together. My mother and Dr. Breen left the house by the front door. They were not wearing coats, despite the cold. I thought they were headed for the car but, arms folded for warmth, they went around to the back of the house as though headed somewhere unreachable by the back door. They looked, at least from that distance, just the same as when I saw them last.

From time to time, I glimpsed Miss Long and the children in the backyard, Miss Long supervising while they played with each other in the snow. Five years old my children are. I saw Miss Long first, then David, then Sarah chasing him. Because of the snow, the children were so unsteady on their feet that Miss Long’s sole purpose seemed to be to pick them up when they fell and set them on their feet again, keeping her hands on their shoulders until she was sure they had their balance.

My mother joined Miss Long for a while. The two of them seemed oblivious to each other as they followed the children about, my mother not so much playing with David as seeming to have been assigned to him, as if she and Miss Long, who likewise looked assigned to Sarah, were fellow
nannies in the Breen household, affecting as much interest in other people’s children as they could.

How strange, that I should see the children for the first time from that distance. I could make out almost nothing but their sizes and shapes. They wore winter caps so I could not see the colour of their hair. Two children who might have been anyone’s. There were times, when the house obscured both my mother and Miss Long, when I almost called out to them, almost shouted out their names and waved. My children. It was more or less how I had always imagined seeing them, at a safe remove, the two of them unaware that they were being watched.

They have never been mere names to me, but what they were they will never be again. In my mind, if in no one else’s, they have been transformed. Confirmed. They have crossed over into memory. And in doing so have altered me forever. Perhaps my Provider was right. I should have gone home.

I could not resist the shadow of a thought of what might have been. Could not resist the idea that our being a family was somehow possible. An upsurge of hope that left me more desolate when it subsided than I have been in years.

They went inside when it was getting dark. For them, the end of an ordinary Sunday afternoon. Ahead of them an evening that would pass much as their neighbours’ would.

There was no telling which was the window of what had been my room. But I knew this was the house, not only because I had looked up Dr. Breen’s address in the phone book but because I “recognized” it in some way, “remembered” it. The children still live in the house where they were born. My mother and her husband still live in the house where they concealed me from their neighbours.

It feels as if I saw the children first and then imagined they were mine, saw that woman first and then dreamt she was my mother, saw that house first and then dreamt that in it I gave birth to twins who when I left remained behind.

I did not feel as though
I
were being watched, though I’m sure I was. I have been keeping a lookout for my Provider’s delegate, for some man I must have seen, surely, once or twice before. But no face looked familiar.

By now, he has reported back to my Provider, told him that I did what he urged me not to do, told him how I looked and acted.

I wonder if my Provider goaded me into seeking out my children. His warning may have been disingenuous. More of a temptation than a warning. Perhaps he wants me to be the instrument of his revenge on my mother. He may think that, now that I have seen the children, I will be unable to resist meeting them, or trying to. Approaching them. Touching them. Which I long to do, though I know I mustn’t.

Perhaps he wants me to somehow get them alone and tell them the truth. The mayhem I could cause if I wanted to. Or if I lost control.

When I saw my mother today, watching anxiously over my children, her grandchildren, I thought of the question he has challenged me to answer.
Why did your mother leave?

She loves them. I was both gladdened and resentful. More than resentful. Jealous of my own children, who have won her love as I could not.

I have no idea what will happen now. I know that I must not approach the children, yet my doing so, or doing
something
to make them aware of me seems inevitable.
Two heartbeats
. Not one but two children.

But I must not delude myself that this can be undone or remedied.

I should not have gone there today. I should leave for Newfoundland while I still can, before I start to spend the money I put aside for my return.

How will my Provider know when I have solved his riddle? Riddles. The riddle of why my mother abandoned me, the riddle of being twice fathered. I have no way of contacting him. But he seems to think that he
will
know, that it will somehow be apparent. As if the solution will have some visible effect on me that could be attributable to nothing else. “Can you really not conceive …”

I dread the answers, dread their consequences.

Four days now since I saw them. Four all but sleepless nights.

I feel that, if I leave New York, I will be leaving them to
him
. My Provider has never threatened them. Never been anything but kind to me. His delegate often may have saved my life. But still I am afraid for them.

I read and reread his letters. I can dismiss their contents as the writings of a madman, but I cannot dismiss the fact of them, the fact
of him
.

If I were to write to my mother, he would never know it. His delegate might see me posting a letter, but he wouldn’t know to whom it was addressed.
I need to meet you about a matter that does not concern the children. I do not wish to meet the children or make them aware of my existence, but there is a matter of great importance that possibly concerns their safety that I must speak to you about. A matter that possibly concerns your safety and your husband’s
.

She might take it as a threat. My Provider said that she would deny all knowledge of him. He wrote of her disavowal with complacent certainty, as if it was all the same to him if I believed him or not, approached her or not. And if she did agree to meet with me, I could not tell her anything that would make her any better able to protect
the children or herself. It wouldn’t matter whether she, truthfully or untruthfully, denied all knowledge of him or confirmed that everything he said was true. My intervention would accomplish nothing. If she refused to meet me, or agreed only for fear of what

I would do or divulge if she refused, I would only have made things worse for her and therefore for the children. If I contacted her, she would be forever fretful, even more so than she would otherwise have been, a woman with a secret that she must withhold from everyone, especially her children.

I have gone by the house three times now. Three Sunday afternoons in a row I have walked up and down the next street over, have lingered in that laneway as long as I dared, longer than I should have.

Today, a man passing by on foot asked me if I needed help. I was so caught up in watching the house I didn’t notice him approaching. He must have been using the laneway as a shortcut between the streets.

“You don’t look well,” he said, scrutinizing my face and then glancing at my cane.

I was clutching a latticework fence with my free hand. Probably looked as though, if not for the fence and my cane, I would have fallen down. Which I might have, for I have been running a fever for days and twice today came close to fainting.

“How long have you been out here in the cold?” he said.

“Not long,” I said. “Are you his delegate?”

“What?” Sincerely mystified.

“Never mind. My mistake.”

I told him I had merely stopped to rest and would soon be on my way. He asked how far I had to go. He seemed more concerned than suspicious.

I stifled a momentary urge to tell him everything. Fearful that he would offer to walk me home, I told him I did not live in the neighbourhood, had only been visiting friends and would hail a cab as soon as I had caught my breath. I tried without success to think of an explanation for my breathlessness.

“My dear, you will catch your death of cold,” he said. “Dressed like that this time of year.”

I assured him I felt fine and walked away with as much of a show of vigour and alacrity as I could manage.

For all I know, my mother or one of the others have seen me and they are trying to decide what to do. But surely, in that case, they would keep the children indoors.

Perhaps others in the neighbourhood have noticed me. I lose track of time while standing there, forget to vary my routine or no longer bother to, it is hard to say which.

I haven’t been clear-headed since I first went by the house. Since before that, perhaps. Can’t remember the last time the world seemed fixed and solid, the last time I was certain of my lucidity, that my apparent clear-headedness was not just some delusion.

My clothes still appear to be those of a woman of means who has fallen on hard times, but they will not look that way much longer. My once-blue cape is almost grey. My dresses, too, are faded, frayed at the hems. My button boots are missing several buttons. Soon I will look like I am wearing second-hand clothes, the discards of the sort of woman I want to be mistaken for.

Even though I force myself to eat something every day, I am losing weight faster than when I was eating nothing.

When I get back to my room, I am so exhausted that I fall asleep without having had a drink, something I have not done in years.

His “delegate.”
Come out, come out, wherever you are
, I feel
like shouting. Stopping on the sidewalk and shouting until he shows himself. As if that would flush him out, provoke him to panic. No doubt he briefs my Provider at the end of every day. Tells him exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Gives him an account of everything I do from the moment I leave my room to the moment I return to it. As well as an account of my appearance, my physical decline, my fever-flushed complexion, the look in my eyes, the state of my clothes.

I wonder how close to me this man has been without my knowing it. Even sensing it. My Provider said that
he
had many times been close enough to touch me.
When you were just an infant, I held you in my arms
. His delegate, when I almost fainted, may have been close enough to catch me. Not that he would risk me returning to consciousness while he held me in his arms.

I feel as though if I do not leave this city soon I never will.

I can’t stand to live any longer in such close proximity to the children. It seems that nothing but leaving the continent, nothing but putting an ocean between me and them will do.