“Dad?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?” Jack watches her carefully, gauging her expression. What will she do with what he has told her? She looks worried, but in her face is an appeal. It reassures him. It’s the same look she always gave him when she knew something was wrong but she also knew she had come to the right place with her problem. My little girl.
“Do you remember my teacher in Centralia?”
“… Mr. Marks.”
“Mr. March.”
“Sure, I remember him, why?”
She doesn’t reply right away. He reaches out his hand. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
Finally, she says, “… He died.”
He watches her face crumple, and she weeps. He opens his arms. She comes to him, kneels by his chair.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” he says, stroking her head. “That’s too bad.”
Her face is hidden in her hands on the armrest of his chair, her shoulders begin to shake. Should he call her mother? “When did he die?”
She doesn’t answer, she is crying too hard. He didn’t know she was so fond of her old teacher.
“Was he very old?”
She shakes her head but doesn’t look up. Keening softly, like a poor dog. “You know what, old buddy?” He thinks he hears her reply, “What?” so he continues, “I think maybe you’re taking it extra hard because of all the sad things that happened in Centralia.”
His throat tightens, helping lighten his voice to a tone that used to come naturally years ago, when she was a child — the once-upon-a-time voice. “But you know, it’s a funny thing, ’cause even though some sad things happened there….” He pauses, blinks and clears his throat. “We had some of the nicest remember-whens in Centralia.” He feels tears on his cheeks. So as not to take his arms from around her, he raises his shoulder to his face and wipes them away on his shirt.
“Remember how you used to come with me into Exeter to get my hair cut and you’d entertain the troops? Remember going to the market in London for crusty rolls and good German wurst? Remember Storybook Gardens?” He strokes her head — hair so soft, still shiny like a child’s. “Remember those mice in the Christmas window at Simpson’s, and that little pussycat jazz band?” He chuckles. “Remember the first day of school, when you had me walk you there and held my hand the whole way? That’s the last time you ever needed me to do that.”
He pauses for breath. There is all the time in the world…. You kids have your whole life ahead of you…. “That’s the funny thing about life, eh? Some of the nicest memories are mixed up with the saddest ones. And that just makes them nicer. You have to think of the good times. That’s how I think of your brother….” And if we spoiled you, it was because we loved you so much. Wanted you to have what we never had, you and your brother….
Jack doesn’t picture his son. He sees the blue dome over that place where it is always summer, where the white buildings bask in sunshine, the parade square shimmers and the little coloured houses wait for the men to come home at five. That’s where his son is. Jack is there too, with his family. His beautiful wife. All he ever wanted.
He strokes his daughter’s head and realizes that he is nodding in time to something. A vestige, perhaps, of an old impulse to rock his child. She seems calmer now. He was always the one she came to, and she always allowed herself to be consoled by him. Can a child know what a gift that is to a parent?
“It’s okay, sweetie,” he says, because she is still crying. “Hey, I meant to tell you. You know that dog in the stormpipe? Well, the fire truck came and got him out. Safe and sound, I saw him. It was a beagle.”
He told her a hard thing today. Perhaps she will hold it against him, but he believes she will understand one day. He told her because she is his best. And she should know what she’s made of. “You’re my best,” he says to her softly, “my best old buddy.”
Madeleine weeps, water leaving her like darkness draining. She yields to this blessed respite. To what remains. Glimpsing once more — from her old hiding place, across the distance of years — her father gently comforting her for what he doesn’t know hurts her.
After a while she feels his hand come to rest. She moves it carefully and stands up. He is asleep.
She wipes her face and blows her nose. Looks down at him. His head tilted, lips parted, hands lax on the arms of his chair; straggling fingers, ten spent soldiers. In his lap, the oxygen mask. Fighter pilots and invalids. Per ardua ad astra….
She bends to kiss him. His skin soft as suede, faint capillaries and tributaries visible, traces of an old torrent. His cheek is wet, whiskers less dense now. Old Spice.
“See you, Dad.”
Through adversity to the stars.
She is putting on her jacket in the front hall, but turns at the sound of her mother mounting the basement stairs.
“You’re younger than I am, Madeleine, you could come downstairs.” Mimi sees her reaching for her car keys. “Where are you going at this hour?” She arrives at the top of the steps a little out of breath. In her arms, a froth of yellowed satin and lace.
“What’s that?”
Mimi smiles shyly. “I thought you might like this.”
Madeleine stares. “Your wedding gown?”
Mimi nods, forehead crinkling bashfully.
It’s on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue to inquire pleasantly, “What for? Halloween?” But she has sunk below the comedy watermark, the calm of the almost-drowned is upon her. She sighs.
“Madeleine, qu’est-ce que tu as?”
“Nothing, I’m fine, I just … oh, I remember what I was going to ask you, pourquoi tu ne m’as pas dit que papa avait besoin d’oxygène?”
Mimi shrugs her shoulders, eyebrows rising in tandem — her old show of impatience. “Why would I tell you? You know anyway he has this pill, he has that pill”—counting on her fingers—“he has the glycerine, the beta blockers, he has the oxygen, it’s the same.”
Madeleine waits.
Finally Mimi drops her shoulders and her eyebrows. “We didn’t want you to worry.”
“I’m worried anyway, plus I’m the only one left, who are you going to worry if you don’t worry me?”
Mimi says, “You’re crying,” and moves to touch her daughter’s face.
Madeleine backs away reflexively and feels an immediate pang of guilt. “I’m okay, Maman, thanks, that was such a good fricot but I’ve got to get back, I’m working.” She reaches for her keys on the hall table but they fall from her hand — when did she pick them up? She stoops to recover them.
“What were you talking about with Papa?” asks Mimi. Maternal radar. She meets her mother’s eyes.
“He told me he waved,” she says matter-of-factly, and observes the air go flat around her. “You knew, eh?”
Her mother’s features tighten. “Of course I knew,” says Mimi. “I’m his wife.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“He’s my husband. He’s your father.”
“He’s a criminal.”
Madeleine hears the smack, feels her face burn with the slap she can see poised in the palm of her mother’s hand. But no one gets slapped.
“It’s okay,” she says, “I’m leaving.”
“Don’t be silly, Madeleine,” says Mimi, draping the wedding gown over the banister, turning toward the open kitchen. “Come,” she says, lighting a cigarette, “I’m making a poutine râpée for you, you’re too thin, then we’ll play Scrabble.”
Madeleine stares after her mother. No wonder I’m so fucked up. The smoke reaches her and she inhales the refreshing menthol difference, resisting its power to comfort her. “Mother, did you know oxygen is highly flammable? It is also highly inflammable.”