1986
They sat around the mahogany reading
table in the library, Stephen, Pierre, Glen, Pamela, and Michael Bailley,
Stephen’s biological father. They drank
tea that Pamela had poured from an oversize pewter teapot that sat like a
reigning queen in the centre of the table.
It was part of a set that had been rescued from Versaille during the
French Revolution. Pamela still wasn’t
sure how it had ended up with Lawrence’s family, since he really never told her
anything. Michael, now fifty-two, had
recently been divorced from his wife of twenty years. He had a son by her, now eighteen. The picture he had shown her revealed a near
twin to Stephen, who he still didn’t know was his son. In time, she promised herself, in time he
would be told. She had ordered Stephen
to allow her the privilege of informing him.
By accident, Pamela had encountered her former paramour on the Expo
grounds, in front of the Ramses Pavilion.
He knew her before she knew him.
Now, two weeks later, the Reverend Michael Bailley was staying in
Pamela’s mansion. Everything was being
conducted decently and in good order. He
had his own room in the garret, across the corridor from Stephen and
Pierre. Especially since he was guest
celebrant at St. Jude’s there would be no whiff of scandal. He seemed particularly intrigued by Stephen,
to whom he kept directing questions and comments. Stephen began to fidget with his cup and
saucer, then looked up at Pamela.
“Well?” he said.
“What do you mean?” Pamela answered.
“You know what I mean.” He turned to Michael Bailley and said, “Dad,
the lady has something that she wants to tell you.”
“Stephen”, Pamela said.
“It’s quite all right, Pamela”, said
Michael. “I’ve already figured it out.”
“What?”
“I had only to look again at my
picture of Scott. They could be
doppelgangers. I’m surprised and disappointed
that this has been always hidden from me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me”, he said getting up, “I have a sermon to
prepare.”
Stephen got up and followed after
him. Pierre tried to restrain him but he
violently slapped his hand away and went out after his father.
Sheila sat alone in the darkened
café gorging on a clubhouse sandwich and potato salad. She no longer felt safe, anywhere. It wasn’t just her recent encounters with
Bill, nor the sudden change in living arrangements in her house, which now
included Michael and Glen. It was that
young bald headed gutter punk appearing as though out of the ether in her own
back yard. He could only have done it by
going in through the house. But the
house was always securely locked at night.
Maybe she ought to get an alarm system, but Sheila hated these
concessions to modernity. She didn’t
want to live in fear. She saw HIM
again. He only seemed to appear whenever
some kind of major change was about to happen.
She had last seen him just before Frank openly admitted to having
AIDS. Then, last week, he appeared
again. Always in the back yard. Always under the apple tree. Ever since Frank had made that white bench,
where she would sit, dozing in the sun.
Whoever this was, he was always young, a boy of fifteen or so. Neither tall nor short. Slender.
Wearing always a white shirt and blue jeans. A beautiful dark-haired boy with wide
luminous green eyes and what Sheila could only describe as a quiet radiance
encircling him. Usually he was
silent. This time alone did he
speak. This time alone did he approach
her, put his hand on her hand.
“Prepare”, was all that he said, when Sheila awoke, trembling. The house surely must be haunted. How else could she account for this?
She knew she must hurry up and paint
the apple tree again. Soon, while the
blossoms still held. She had been doing
this for more than ten years. Spring,
summer, and winter. Painting the apple
tree three times annually: in spring when it blossomed, at the end of summer,
when the golden fruit weighed down the old branches, and in the winter when the
tree stood stark and desolate against the dark green cedar hedge. Ten years, thirty paintings. She had never bothered to review her
work. One day she must take them all out
and look at them and see what kind of progress, if any, she had made in her
painting. Madge’s daughter, an
accomplished artist herself, had lately been after Sheila to start showing her
paintings. She balked about this. Sheila was sure that her work wasn’t good
enough to be shown. She painted only for
herself, and for herself alone. To which
Madge’s daughter, Cynthia, retorted bollucks.
Sheila was more than good enough, and no artist ever painted for herself
alone.
Yesterday she saw something very odd
under the apple tree. Tobias, her white
cat, lay dozing in the shade. Sheila was
picking red tulips for the living-room.
Less than a foot from Tobias a bird stood in the grass, directly in
front of him. A finch. A house finch, actually, with a bright red
head. She knew these birds well, which
sang so beautifully in the spring. The
white cat opened his eyes, beheld the bird, who betrayed no fear. He closed his eyes again for more sleep. She stood there, watching, not knowing
whether to intervene and rescue the house finch. Tobias made no move toward it, behaving as
though he cared not a damn about him one way or the other. This was a cat who seemed never at a loss for
something to kill. Tobias got up and
like a white blue eyed panther stretched and yawned, and trotted over to Sheila
meowing. The bird flew up into the apple
tree and Sheila nearly ran inside the house screaming.
She felt tired, and badly needed to
get home. She was putting it off. What was it that she was needing to
face? Her legs, her knees still
ached. Her feet were tired. She was not getting younger, and though her
doctor had assured Sheila that she did not have arthritis, she still did not
want to take her chances. She was
rapidly becoming an old woman, and she knew it.
People didn’t recognize her so easily now, especially since she’d cut
and stopped colouring her hair. Which
suited her fine, given how often she saw former clients of hers almost
everywhere she went. They didn’t appear
to know her. According to Madge it was
equally true that people were not likely to easily recognize either one of them
outside of their professional capacity.
Throughout the eight years they had spent operating that drop-in centre
they had become to many of the local marginalized professional friends and
surrogate mothers. Until the funding was
cut due to the governments’ renewed zeal to ‘reduce the deficit” by cutting
back on social services spending, giving persons on welfare, street people and
the psychologically disadvantaged one less haven to feel safe in. During this time Sheila had come to realize
that very few of their regulars, if any, really seemed to know or want to know
whom it was they were dealing with. They
seemed only to see or respond to the mask that she wore on the job of “Nurturer”,
or “Advisor” or “Wise Old Woman”. There
must be some truth to this, for she and Madge both could often walk around in
the neighbourhood when off duty, touching elbows with persons who had just told
them their life stories, had wept openly in their presence, without being known
or recognized.
This didn’t occur so much at the
West Wind. She was probably more relaxed
here. Not expected to perform. The café was really an extension of Sheila
and her kitchen table. Sheila had always
worked hard, ever since her youngest, Jason, was able to fend for himself. Before that she was in university, part-time,
finishing her degree in social work.
Before that, a house-wife and stay at home mom. She had always worked, always been needed,
always felt necessary. She had never
worked out of economic necessity alone. She had always had more than she needed, always having extra to share and to give. She had never conceived of a life
that she could regard as livable that didn’t somehow involve giving and sharing. Contrary to the claims of the
psychiatrist she had seen following Frank’s death Sheila could not accept that
she gave out of a neurotic compulsion.
To prove this, she opted to live for herself alone, during which time
she, pursuing her own happiness, became involved with Leon, that young cocaine
addict who cost her thousands of dollars and more. Even while trying to be selfish she ended up
giving. In the worst way. She got rid of him in Europe. Two days after sharing a hotel room in London
she slipped away. Leon, who was English,
young, and criminally manipulative, was a failed rock singer who hoped that
Sheila, temporarily rich with her widow’s inheritance, would bankroll his
attempt at a comeback. In the meantime,
he scammed from her hundreds upon hundreds of dollars—most of which went up his
nose. A whiny, temperamental
cry-baby. Almost as young as
Michael. What had she been thinking? Had she been thinking at all? She found another hotel, in Notting Hill,
near Holland Park, before which they had been staying in Hampstead, and left
him a note stating that if he tried to find her she would immediately call
the police. Now, more than six years
later, she still hadn’t seen or heard of him.
She had never known anyone so pathetic.
Sheila was no longer interested in
seeking her own happiness. Perhaps she
found it in giving. In the mornings she
would wake, naturally, at five, often earlier.
She would sit up in bed and meditate, passing through such chambers of
deep repose that she couldn’t even describe to herself, much less to anyone
else. This had been happening since
shortly after she divorced Bill. She no
longer sought her own happiness. She no
longer needed to.
Tomorrow she would begin painting
the apple tree.
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