Rarely, but still now and then, a murder visits our province. My opinion? This was a brother murdering a brother, like in the Bible. Bible, with the exception of it occurring on a lobster boat. As for proof of it being a murder, all the proof I ever needed was the fact that shortly after Henry drowned, Donald married Henry’s wife, Evie. They got married in Peggy’s Cove, not at home. No, they eloped to Peggy’s Cove! They just came back and announced, “Well, we’re married now.” Their courtship was dishonest. How about those sour apples?
Now, they waited months to have the service, in case the body washed up, but it never did. So when Henry McMillian was laid to rest by sermon only — since the body’s not in the grave — when his spirit was laid to rest in the ground, there was a fellow named Baron Wormser, a real artist with a chisel, he could chisel an epitaph in either vertical-horizontal traditional print or beautiful cursive, just like on a Hallmark greeting card. Anyway, Baron Wormser had been paid three years in advance by Henry McMillian himself, and since you’ve already copied out what it says on Henry’s marker, you know the exact words Mr. Wormser was obligated to chisel. He was obligated to carry out Henry McMillian’s wishes for retribution, those wishes being signed, sealed, and delivered in a legal contract. And Mr. Wormser being a dignified person with pride in his profession, properly did it, properly under the watchful eyes of God. I attended graveside, and let me tell you that when everyone went down to the cemetery and read those words you could have knocked every last person over with a feather. You’d just have to ask the Lord: how did Henry McMillian keep that to himself all those years? The discipline of the righteous sometimes knows no bounds. Kept his brotherly heroic act in France to himself all those years. And here’s the icing on the cake. The very day that Henry’s spirit was laid to rest, his brother Donald purchased a new pair of scissors. Then he secured those scissors in the attic window in his and Evie’s house, which formerly was the house Evie and Henry lived in. You had better believe that Donald prayed every night that the scissors worked. Scissors in the window — you want to know what that’s all about? Well, it has to do with ghosts. A scissors placed to keep an attic window shut keeps out unwanted ghosts. And it keeps wanted ghosts in. Wanted, unwanted. The scissors let the house enforce the distinction. Tell me: why would anyone not believe Henry McMillian? Come now, why would anyone lie on their own gravestone?
Bethany allowed this story to register a moment, then asked if I’d like a copy of the notebook pages. “For your reading pleasure,” she said, “on a rainy night.” I said yes, and she made one on the Xerox machine near her desk, then returned the notebook to the file cabinet. When she sat behind her desk again, she said, “And now I have a question for you, if you don’t mind. When we first spoke on the telephone, you said you didn’t think there’d be much worry about theft — of library books.”
“Yes, I remember saying something to that effect.”
“I only mention it because, in the whole time I’ve been librarian here, there’s never been a book stolen. Oh, certainly there’s been some absent-mindedness. People forget about a book for a week or two past the due date. That’s to be expected. Two years ago Philip Slayton accidentally took a book to Africa for a month — well, maybe not accidentally, but not on purpose with ill intent. On his return, once he got over jet-lag, he settled the full fine. But theft of books? No, we hadn’t had that until around a year ago, I think it was, give or take a month…”
“What happened then?”
“Eleven books suddenly gone missing. We were in the middle of an inventory. One of our volunteers brought the titles to my attention. You see, the first year I was librarian, a woman named Mary Evans — she’s in the cemetery by the wharf — you may have noticed we have the Mary Evans Children’s Reading Room. Port Medway paid for the plaque out of public funds. Well, Mary Evans donated her personal library. It was more personal than most, because it had so many of the books she herself read as a child. She even spoke to several elementary school classes here in the library. A very pleasant woman.”
“Maybe some kid’s too embarrassed to return the books.”
“Still, it’s just so selfish. I mean, a library’s for everyone. I mentioned the incident to Pastor Eversall, and he got word out through church bulletins. Then there’s the gossip route, comes useful for such purposes. No reward and no punishment, that was the best policy, I felt. Just leave the books on the front stoop. Who cares as long as they’re returned. But so far they haven’t been.”
“I go to yard sales all around the province,” I said. “I like to go to used-book stores. I’ll keep an eye out.”
“You’d need the titles for that, wouldn’t you.”
“Oh, yes, what was I thinking? The titles.”
She disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned she had the piece of paper on which she’d written the titles.
“I took up a lot of your time today,” I said.
“It’s my job to have my time taken up. By library business.”
I put the list in my shirt pocket, and when I got back to the cottage, I tacked it to the corkboard above the telephone in the kitchen.
Time May Be Going Not in a Straight Line
I CONTINUE TO ORGANIZE and file Elizabeth’s notes; I want them all readily available should she request something. Just this morning I found notes marked “Test of Courage,” which included the following passage from The Victorian Chaise-Longue:
Time may be going not in a straight line but in all directions and in no direction, and God may have changed the universe so that it is my body that lies here and no dream, or not my body and still a dream from which I shall be freed.
The test of courage is still valid, said her conscience, you must know, you must look. So she lifted her head and looked down at her body.
There, framed by the crumpled clothes, set on ribs barely covered with skin, rose two small breasts. My breasts? cried Melanie, or not my breasts? Dare I touch them, these breasts that may be mine and alive, or will they crumble, will they rot if I touch them with my living hands, my hands on long-dead breasts? These are whiter than mine, she said, smaller, sadder than mine, and in a convulsive movement she laid her hands beneath them and they did not rot, small hot living breasts, and, pulsing through them, the too-fast-beating heart.
One night in the Essex Hotel, Elizabeth came to bed quite late but I was still awake, reading, which book I can’t recall. “What I love most deeply about Marghanita Laski’s novel,” she said, “is how you discover the relationship between unforeseen psychological incidents and the memories they cause, and how Melanie finally realizes what is happening to her. It’s all so upsetting and so exciting and so strange. Some days, it’s like I live in this book and at night I visit us here in the hotel. Do I seem locatable to you, darling? Am I all present and accounted for? Because if I’m not, I’ll toss this goddamn novel in the trash and do something else. I want to be here with you. With us. Am I?”
“You can’t get through this dissertation, Elizabeth, without being preoccupied. You want to teach at university. How else can you go about things but the way you’re already doing?”