The Second Son (41 page)

“And then what?” Jean surprised me with.

I shook my head at her dangerous understanding. “Ah, that’s the trouble, Jeannie dear. ‘And then, what?’ I’ve never found the answer to that question. Else I might have disappeared a long time ago.”

Andrew didn’t get it. “You’re so pathetic.”

I tried to smile. “I was hoping for tragic, but I’ll take pathetic. I’m sure that’s the best a saint could ever come up with.”

“This is insane,” my mother cried out. “Are you trying to drive me crazy? I just buried your poor father, the love of my life. Haven’t I lost enough in this lifetime? Why can’t you ever believe that I loved you both? Why can’t you accept that you were equal at the same time as you were different?”

I was ready to believe that she really did fear for her sanity. I knew she could never accept the extent to which she favoured Andrew. Who knew? Perhaps her heart shrank so much the day her mother died that there was only room for one. Or maybe Uncle Andy’s death was the last straw, the final insult to her capacity for love. I was probably wrong, though. She probably had defences I could never dream of. Just for fun, I ventured, “Fine, Mother, I believe you. You love me after all. So let’s start fresh. Now that we finally have the whole truth, what do you think he should do? To make things right?”

“You mean . . . Andrew?” I nodded and she hesitated. “But I don’t know how — ”

“C’mon, Mother, you must have some opinion.”

She shook her head. “Surely you know . . . you know I can’t accept . . . that he actually killed that girl?”

“What’s the matter,” I snapped, “can’t you even say her name?”

She shook her head in what I interpreted as despair. “Oh, Mike, I can’t see — ”

“Fine,” I said in disgust, “I won’t ask you to decide about that. But how about the cover-up you two engaged in? How about doing something about that?”

She seemed bewildered. “Oh, Mike, I wish I could, but — ”

“He’s right, Andrew.” Jean had her arms crossed again and was facing her husband. “You have to do something.”

“But Jean, I didn’t do it. I swear.” He was back to whining.

“You were there. You were involved.” Now the two women had spoken, sort of.

Andrew was looking at them a little strangely. “What the hell do you want me to do?”

I volunteered, “You could stand in the middle of the mill square and confess.”

“You’re crazy. No one would ever believe me — even if I did.”

“Except we have witnesses now, to your confession.” I waved an arm in the direction of Jean and my mother. “There would be a proper investigation. We could both tell our stories and see which one the jury believes.” I punctuated that idea with a big grin.

He stared at Jean and my mother for a moment, like they had become a jury, then reverted to a childish pout. “This is stupid.”

“Andrew,” Jean remonstrated, “surely you don’t expect life can go on as it has. Something must be — ”

“How can you be on his side? Don’t you see what he’s doing?”

“It’s not a matter of sides. It’s a matter of right and wrong.”

He threw another dirty look my way. “You bastard! I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to turn my own wife against me, just like you did Gail.” He smiled in sudden recollection, “But she’ll always come back to me, just like Gail.”

I would have jumped on that lie, except it had suddenly dawned on my mother where this was headed. “Jean, surely there’s nothing to be gained . . . it was a tragedy, I know, what happened to that poor girl. And maybe Andrew had more to do with it than he admitted to me, but you can’t — ”

“Mother!” Her son reacted.

She ignored him and focused on Jean. She knew where the power was. “He’s worked so hard all these years at being a good person. I mean, how much should a person pay for one mistake?”

I had this sudden image of ants repairing damage to their nest — little brown ants, heads down, scurrying about, oblivious to the world around them, indifferent to the source of destruction, intent only on rebuilding the structure. God, I thought, are we that predictable when it comes to our own little world? Maybe we are, because I lashed out at her one more time, “Mother, dear, haven’t you ever noticed that your darling boy piles all his good works underneath his own feet?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she came back with. “A man’s life is what he makes of it. You should have learned that from your father. He lost everything but he didn’t spend the rest of his life blaming you. He got back up on his own two feet and made the best of things, doing hard, dirty work, making a life for his family.”

“That’s right, Mother, throw that in my face again. I burned the store down and ruined the family, end of story.”

“Throw it in your face? My God, Mike Landry, do you not remember the litany of complaints you brought through that door to throw in my face? Andrew wasn’t being fair, the other kids weren’t being fair, the teachers weren’t being fair. You were always angry, always looking for a fight. Well, your father had some of that same darkness in him, but he kept it under control, for my sake. He knew I’d had enough sorrow in my life, enough squabbling and quarrelling to last a lifetime. Maybe I was wrong, but that’s who I am. And that’s how I’ve lived my life, trying to see the good in people. Even in you.”

All I could manage in the face of that was a feeble protest. “So I wasn’t soft and cuddly. It still wasn’t right to shut me out.”

“It wasn’t you I shut out, it was the never-ending carping and complaining. I could never satisfy this need you had for justice, at least your idea of justice. You demanded my attention at the same time as you rejected it. I’m sorry, but you wanted me to be something I could never be.”

I knew then that Jean was right. I would never make peace with this woman, not as long as she still drew breath. For her, the natural order of things was set, as God had intended. Just as sure as there were stars in the firmament, one of those stars would always burn brighter for her — and its name was Andrew. All these long years of wrangling and the weight of it was still on me, dragging
me
down, not them. If I wanted revenge I should have taken it that night in the courthouse, when I had my chance. I should have turned Andrew in and punished her for her choice, when my actions still had the power to touch them.

It was me carrying the pain, not them. They carried their own pain but it wasn’t the same pain. All these years I had struggled to decide how I really felt about them and I still didn’t know. I held my hands up in surrender. “Okay, Mom, I give up. I just wish I had inherited your convenient memory, because you keep leaving out one important fact. Andrew didn’t pay for Gail’s death, I did.”

“That’s right, Mother Landry,” Jean offered, keeping my fading cause alive. “I’m afraid that’s the real issue, here.”

“Jean,” Andrew protested, “for God’s sake don’t encourage him, he’s twisted. If he wasn’t sick when he went into that place, he was when he came out.”

I rejoiced in his blindness. “Yeah, could be I’m damaged goods. Only I’m not the one pouring booze down my throat every day. What are you up to, a twenty-sixer a day? Or a forty-ouncer?”

Jean followed up. “He’s right, Andrew. We can’t go on as though this never happened. You have to think about what this means for us.”

“You’re right, I know,” he answered, making a show of taking her seriously. “I’ll have to talk to Danny. I’m not sure how much I should — ”

“Talk to Danny?” she shouted. “Judas Priest, I’m the McEwan you should be worried about, not my bloody brother.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Danny and that damn election are the least of your problems. How do you expect us to go on, after this?”

He shook a fist at me, predictable to the end. “You won’t be happy till you ruin us, all of us, Jean, the kids — ” He stopped and looked at his wife. “The children, Jean? What about the children?”

I could see from her face she hadn’t thought that part through. And she felt guilty for it. “Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to work that out, but . . . they’ll have to be told
something
.” She paused then and cast a troubled look my way. “I suppose it will be up to Mike, after all, how far this goes.”

Mothers. No wonder they rule the earth. How many million times has that question been asked? “What about the children?” The children, Ed Landry’s hope for the future, the only innocents in this whole mess — what about them? I shook my head in wonderment. “You never could fight fair, could you, Andrew?”

He fought back a weak smile. “It’s clear you never gave them any thought.”

I stared at him for a moment before I finally responded, “Okay. Say I stay away? And keep my mouth shut? Say you get it all, Mayor of Alexandria, king of the hill. How can it be worth anything to you, knowing you owe it all to me?”

“Bullshit! I had to work twice as hard for everything I ever got, precisely because of you. All these years of being the model citizen. I wouldn’t owe it to you, just the opposite.”

“Oh? So you’d bear the burden of being first on your own. What if you lose the election? No one to blame your failures on — think you can handle that?”

“I won’t lose. I know where the votes are.”

“Okay, then. What if I stay away till you’ve won the job, then come back?”

“Quit dreaming.” It was amazing how fast his confidence was coming back, just from my musings about giving in to him. “Can’t you see what’s in front of your face?” he pronounced. “You’re not wanted here.”

I smiled, silently thanking him for being so easy to hate. So easy to hurt. “I see. Not only do you want to be first. You want to be first and only.” All that got me was the blank look of someone who thought his place in the world should be obvious to all. “You know,” I threw out, “if I’d had the advantage of being first I would have done a better job than you.”

Jean smiled. “And how many angels could you have put on the head of a pin, Mike Landry, if you had been first?”

“Aw, Jeannie, Jeannie McEwan, aren’t you the wicked one?” It was the contradiction that was killing me, that this fine, even-keeled woman had shared a bed with him all these years, had kids with him, worked with him, and by all appearances was still trying to love him. There had to be something to him, beyond what I saw, beyond the malice I bore him. I muttered aloud, “That son of a bitch of a brother of mine, he’d fall in a shithouse and come up smelling roses, wouldn’t he? Not like me. Not like the old man.”

Jean shrugged. “They are who they are, Mike. And they’re not going to change. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

Of course, I told myself, as I nodded dumbly and wondered why was I still drawn to these wrecks. Had we ever come together when the rancour didn’t spill out and the miseries pile up around us? My mother must have seen the despair in my face and sensed an opening. “Mike, dear, do you really want to do this? People just won’t understand. My God,” she moaned, “it took me so long the first time, just to hold my head up in public. I can’t go through that . . . I don’t see how I could stay here. Are you — ”

“Gee, Mom,” I mocked, “I thought for a moment back then, when you said I might come back as far as Lancaster, that you were on my side, just this once.”

“Oh, Mike, maybe you can come home, someday. If you could just give up this story about Andrew. Then maybe — ”

Jean finally got fed up and interrupted her, “Do what you want, Mike. Come home if you want. Tell the world if you want. We’ll just have to live with the results, the kids included. You have to do right by that girl.”

I was studying her, thinking kind thoughts about women again, when Andrew jumped in. “Jean, don’t be so hasty. The children — ”

“Goddammit, Andrew,” I yelled at him, “don’t you feel anything? Do you feel any guilt at all? Do you ever think of her? Of Gail?”

“That’s between me and my God. Besides, what the hell else do you expect me to say?”

“I want you to say what you think, what you feel. Jesus Christ, can’t you even give me that?”

“I tried to tell you, after it happened. You wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t even let Mom and me visit you.”

“I was thirteen years old and my mother had just turned me over to the mob. What the hell did you expect from me?”

“And I was only fifteen.”

I shook my head in disgust. “And Gail MacDonald is still fourteen. That’s all she ever was — almost grown, almost a woman, almost loved. Let’s go down to the graveyard and see what
almost
looks like. Maybe there you’ll be able to figure out what you feel.”

“I feel bad, I feel sorry, I feel guilty,” he spit out at me. “And I know it was our jealousy that got her killed. Is that what you want to hear? How many ways do you want me to say it, goddammit?”

I looked at him and shook my head. “I don’t understand you, never did. How can you work in a school like that? How can you see kids that look like her, walking down the hall every day, and not go crazy thinking about her? I just don’t get it.”

“My mind doesn’t work like yours. I don’t dwell on the past.” The look he got from Jean must have motivated him to add, “And what if it does happen, sometimes? I could never talk to anybody about it. How could I?”

“What about the MacDonalds? I’ve never once heard you mention them.” I swung a hand in the direction of the front window and added, “Christ, you pass their house every time you come here. Doesn’t it bother you? When was the last time you visited her grave? Did you ever notice her father is there, too? Did you even notice he died at fifty-nine? It was his heart, broken, probably. Is that why you buried the old man clear on the other side of the graveyard?”

“I loved that girl,” he cried, even as he looked to his wife like she might accuse of him of something.

“No you didn’t,” I threw at him. “You
wanted
that girl. I loved her. And her mother and father loved her. They’re the ones who lost everything, not the Landrys.” That’s when it struck me for the first time, so obvious it left me feeling stupid and ashamed. I said it out loud, as much to myself as to them, “It’s Gail’s mother we should be thinking about. She’s entitled to an opinion — why don’t we ask her? Is she still in Victoria?”