Thirteen Crucifixions 18

                                                            1986

            Pamela sat alone in the big house she had shared for more than forty years with her husband.  For five months now had she been a widow.  She was not lonely.  Her daughter Martha was here with her teenage son and daughter.  Stephen and Pierre had also come to live with her.  She was not alone.  In the solarium she sat alone sipping Earl Grey and nibbling on a scone.  Pamela literally had nothing to do now.  She had taken a leave of absence from the various boards and administrations she sat on.  She needed time to reassess her life, to gracefully move into widowhood.  She was still absorbing the shock of knowing now that Stephen was her natural child.  They had gone in for blood tests and DNA analysis.  To her surprise, she loved him like a son.  Martha was not pleased with the arrangement.  The house had thirty-two rooms.  Pamela never knew when she was alone here.  Stephen and Pierre occupied a bedroom in the garret.  It was one of eight possible rooms.  Why not each have your own room now that you’re able to? She asked Stephen one day.  He replied that they both liked that particular room with its view of the garden.  And besides, they enjoyed sleeping together.  Which she supposed made Pierre a sort of son-in-law?  Martha had made clear her resentment of both of them.  She commanded them to stay away from her children, especially from Matthew.  But Pamela’s seventeen-year old grandson couldn’t be separated from them.  Stephen was, after all in his own words, his uncle.  Why shouldn’t they spend time together?  Melanie, who was fifteen, didn’t appear to know they existed.  She was inseparable from her mother.  Pamela’s daughter had divorced her husband in the last month of Lawrence’s life.  Both her children had been sexually abused, she claimed, by their father.  She wanted to begin life anew with them, and so they abandoned Toronto.  It was all a very seamless arrangement.  Together they could be there with Pamela as all the loving and supportive family she would need while awaiting her husband’s demise.  The children could simultaneously enter therapy, and Martha would have all the time and opportunity in the world to pen her new novel.  Already twice published, she was making quite a name for herself in the whole Canalit scene.  Pamela was discreetly proud of her.  On the glass top of the round wicker table next to her lay the pages of her daughter’s current manuscript.  Martha had insisted that she read it, soon, and that together they might discuss its contents.  The first ten pages sat in an well-ordered pile atop Pamela’s knee.  She was still catching her breath, still striving to calm herself.  Not believing what she read the first time, she read it over, twice more, unable to tear her eyes from the horror, as though she were watching a bloody car crash and was still counting the maimed and bleeding bodies.

            She had been reading her daughter’s own personal memoir, and it centred around her relationship with her father.  Particularly in the holly maze in the very back, Lawrence had frequently sexually violated their daughter, from when she was four up until puberty.  The manuscript had been just accepted for publication.  Pamela could only count her breaths while intently beholding the raging scarlet of the hibiscus flower that dangled luridly in front of her.  This house had thirty-two rooms.  There were eight bedrooms in the garret, originally servants’ quarters.  There were an additional ten rooms on the second floor where slept Pamela, her daughter, and grandchildren.  Matthew had wanted to move up into the garret.  Martha told him she’d turn him out of the house if he did.  It wasn’t simply that she feared that her son might be gay, she had confided to her mother recently, since he already expressed quite a healthy and robust interest in girls.  It was more because of Matthew’s evident heterosexuality that she was appalled at his intense interest not just in his uncle Stephen, but in Stephen’s partner Pierre and the whole texture of their relationship.  Every waking minute that they were simultaneously at home they were together.  There were fourteen more rooms on the main floor: the solarium where Pamela now sat, trying to divert her attention from the red hibiscus to the rose garden outside; the sitting room, the billiard room, the library, the reading room, the music room, the TV room, the office, the informal room, the reception room, the drawing room, the living room and the dining room and the breakfast room.  Throughout the house were scattered nine bathrooms.  There was one in the garret, six on the second floor and two on the main floor.  There was a main kitchen adjacent to the dining room, and a small snack kitchen on the east wing of the house.  The basement was a warren of sealed off rooms and chambers filled with stuff that Pamela hadn’t troubled to look at in years.  The care and upkeep of such a house was at times daunting.  Pamela still employed two full-time gardeners, one full-time and two part-time maids.  The younger of the two gardeners, Earl, had become very friendly with Stephen and Pierre, as well as with Matthew.  Pamela felt uneasy about this, and Martha was horrified.

            She stared again at the last paragraph she had read: “…I have often wondered if my father had intentionally had that satyr fountain built right where it was as a kind of gateway to the holly maze.  It really seemed a fitting metaphor for the horrors I had to endure there.  For years after I was grown up and living on my own I would have nightmares about that fountain and my father.  My father would suddenly have the satyr’s head, or the satyr would have my father’s face, and sometimes both of them, bearing each other’s image would be chasing me throughout the maze as it darkened to a labyrinth.  Just as they were both closing in on me in the dark I would wake up screaming.  It took twelve years of therapy to mend the damage, and even now that I’m living here again in this house where the crimes occurred I sometimes think of taking a pick-axe to that hideous statue. My mother of course knew nothing, and even if she was aware of what was going on, I’m certain her capacity for denial would have protected her from really cottoning on to anything.  I am only now beginning to forgive her.”

            She was certain she had the house to herself.  Martha was out on a dinner date with some man she had met recently.  Melanie was having dinner at a friend’s house.  Matthew had gone off somewhere with Stephen and Pierre.  Pamela hardly ever thought now of Lawrence.  Martha was his female likeness.  Today was the opening day for Expo 86.  Martha said she would be going there with her dinner date.  Pamela, though her husband had played not a small role in organizing the event, had deferred from attending.  She hated crowds, and felt in no way to attend, even though she was his widow.  She actually felt now, for the first time, that she really did live in this house.  It was hers.  She could do with it as she liked.  She could stay or leave as she liked.  Pamela could do anything as she liked.  So, she had invited Stephen, her love-child and his partner Pierre to come live here with herself and her daughter, his half-sister, and her two grandchildren, his nephew and niece.  In forty years Pamela had never once been inside the holly maze.