“Yeah,” admitted Darrel. “You’re at a tough age. Big changes. Big decisions. In the Norse sagas a man’s soul is but a bird in a storm.” He sighed smoke and watched it drift.
Their existential reflection was broken by the sound of footsteps on the back porch. Paul appeared with Della, the woman Cyril had first seen in the café last summer. They were now engaged. Della had just finished nursing school and was already working at VGH. She’d been a swimmer and had broad shoulders and narrow hips and tonight she was wearing toreador pants and a matching jacket. She and her mother-in-law promptly disappeared into the kitchen.
“We’re sorting out number two son’s future here,” Darrel informed Paul. Darrel was upright now and had discovered that his rye on the rocks was empty. He jingled the ice in the glass as if ringing a bell. “Pardon me, miss. Any chance of a refill?”
Cyril and Paul watched their mother hurry in and take the glass and return a minute later with a fresh one.
“So what do you think, Paul? Pharmacy?”
Cyril braced himself for a two-on-one attack.
“I don’t know if that’s quite where Cyril’s strengths lie,” Paul said, suddenly judicious.
“Is that right?” Darrel was disappointed at not finding an instant ally, but intrigued as well.
Cyril was interested—and fearful—of learning where, in Paul’s opinion, his strengths lay. He could hear the laughter if he told them he was intending to go to art school. Both Darrel and Paul were looking at him. To his own surprise he stated: “Maybe I’ll join the navy.”
“The navy?” Cyril’s mother had been listening from the kitchen.
“Why not?” he asked, suddenly liking the sound of it. Maybe it would involve travel to tropical ports. Hadn’t Gauguin gone to Tahiti? If Connie could run off why not him?
“Well, you get seasick for one thing,” his mother said.
Paul was laughing. “He threw up on the ferry to Victoria.”
Cyril was scalded. They’d boarded the boat in the downtown harbour and halfway across the strait he was vomiting.
Darrel liked what he was hearing. The troops were back in order. “Maybe the army, eh bub. Keep your feet on the ground.”
“Ginger’s good for motion sickness,” offered Della.
They were on dessert when his mother asked if he’d heard from Connie, as if she was only off on a bit of a jaunt. He considered lying then just shook his head.
“No big movie contracts?” enquired Darrel.
His mother had blabbed. He felt invaded and betrayed, and for the rest of the meal stayed silent.
“She’s waiting for the right role,” said Paul. “The Queen of Kowloon.”
“Sounds like a ship,” said Darrel.
“Yeah, a laundry boat.”
“Maybe her ship will come in,” said the ever optimistic Della. They all looked at her, not sure if she was witty or naive. Cyril wondered why she’d married Paul.
Later that evening, when Darrel was gone, Paul directed Cyril downstairs into the basement for a few words. They leaned against the old workbench, arms crossed, under the bare bulb.
“I’ve been doing a little research on Mr Darrel Stavrik,” said Paul. “Looked through the Edmonton directory then made a few calls.” His smile would have terrified Cyril in any other circumstances, but now he leaned forward eager to hear what he’d dug up. “Bugger has a wife and five kids.”
“Five?”
“Five.”
Being married was bad enough, having a kid was bad enough, but five of them? “The bastard.”
“I’d love to see him get audited,” said Paul, who looked almost dreamy at the thought of Darrel sweating before an Inquisition of Accountants. Cyril could see Paul seated at a high bench in black robes and a ruffled collar glowering ominously as he aimed an accusing finer. “Could be time to dial a few numbers.”
At that moment Cyril admired his older brother. Rare were the times they were on the same side but this was one and he was proud.
“Still, mom likes him,” admitted Paul, sobering.
“She’s changing,” said Cyril. “It’s like she’s not even her anymore.”
“Maybe she’s glad not to be her anymore,” said Della, coming down the steps. She had a long face and long teeth, a thin nose between big eyes, and straight brown hair through which her ears poked, though for all this she was not unattractive. She looked to Cyril like some sort of doll fashioned from sticks and straw.
“Do you like him?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Your mother does and that’s what counts.”
Cyril genuinely liked Della, yet her relentless reasonableness was too much. “He’s pushy.”
Della leaned to look at Cyril’s sketch of Connie. She was gazing forthrightly out from the paper as if committing Cyril to memory, as if Connie was doing the portrait, not Cyril. “Forget the Navy,” said Della. “Go to art school.” Before this became a general topic of discussion—and inevitably ridicule—she turned to Paul and reminded him she had the early shift tomorrow.
When Paul and Della were gone Cyril’s mother asked him to sit down.
He knew what was coming.
“Darrel’s only trying to help.”
“I don’t want his help.”
“You’ll be moving out some day and I’ll be on my own. I’m thinking of the future. My future.”
His heart clenched and for the first time he saw her as she saw herself: a forty-four-year-old widow about to be abandoned. Widow. What a desolate word. Yet he could not accept Darrel living here in the house Cyril had lived all his life, where his memories resided. Darrel, King of the Manor. No. It was wrong.
The following Sunday, Cyril waited for Paul to drop the bomb and announce the news of Darrel’s other family. They went through the roast beef and the apple pie then the coffee and he still hadn’t raised the subject. Cyril caught Paul’s eye and saw that he was playing innocent. Cyril suspected that Della had put a gag order on him. Cyril dove in, “So, Darrel, how’s the family? In Edmonton.”
“They’re doing just fine,” he said. “Thank you for asking.”
“Your wife?” repeated Cyril.
“Fine as far as I know.”
Their mother was smiling, perfectly at ease dating a married man with five children.
“You don’t have to like him,” she said later.
“He’s always calling me bub.”
“Is just his way.”
“I don’t like his way.”
“He’s willing to put you through university.”
“Who said I’m going to university?”
“Then trade school.”
“Why him?”
“I should sit home alone?”
“He’s married.”
“She left him.”
“He’s got kids.”
“So do I.”
Why could he never win an argument with her? It was as if he was forever five years old. The row of Virgin Marys on the mantel seemed to be smirking. He risked the question he feared the most: “Are you going to marry him?”
He saw lament and anger and exhaustion on her face; worst of all he saw that he was boring her.
All that week Cyril practised aiming Gilbert’s pistol, one eye closed, right hand supported by his left, breath smooth and slow and even. “Firm the shoulder and exhale when you squeeze the trigger.” His dad had taught him these basics using Cyril’s six-shooter cap gun. He and his dad had often played guns in the basement, ducking in and around the furnace and the stacked boxes. His dad never lasted long in the game, saying that the snap-snap-snap of the caps gave him a headache, and it was only years later that Cyril realized it was more than the mere noise that caused him to shut his eyes and rub his temples and withdraw to the bedroom and shut the door.