Martin Sloane (31 page)

In the mornings, they saw that he sometimes pulled down both sides of the bed and then made both sides, even though her side was untouched.

The first week passed. Theresa did the laundry as best she could, and Martin swept the halls and the kitchen. But their father began to fade. He said to Martin, See what God will take away? and his eyes were a little unfamiliar, as if they were vigilant for something Martin could not see coming.

As the days went by, it became clearer that their father was not going to be able to keep up. The meals, which had at first been hearty, if flavourless, grew smaller, and then became alarming. One night, he put plates of raw rice in front of them, with lashings of hot tomato sauce across it. Let it sit a moment to soften, he told them. Theresa sneaked out next door after supper and wept in Mrs. Raleigh’s arms. The next day, large tubs of stew and hot breads and jars of pickles began appearing, and the Raleigh girls secretly told their friends that the Sloanes had become family members because they could not feed themselves and were being nourished on their mother’s cooking.

The nights were difficult. Martin woke up feeling a cold pall had enveloped the house, and for the first time since before he became ill, Theresa pulled back her covers for him and let him nestle against her. At night, alone in the house without their mother, sharing a bed was the only way of dealing with the anxiety of distances. Their grandmother (whom they had never met, in fact) was surely dying, but in a part of the world so far away that neither of them could conceive of the kind of love that would drive a person to go that far.

By August, their mother’s letters began arriving, and she described the city of Montreal as if it were more like Dublin than Dublin had been: the smell of fresh bread everywhere, the river full of ships, and horses in the streets. Of course, many of the people spoke French, but it was charming. It had been hot, in fact the summer there had been unbearable. She wrote to their father that he would love the city: it was surmounted by a hill with an iron cross atop it, and at night it was lit up like a beacon to the faithful. It was taller than Nelson’s pillar, she wrote.

Their father read and reread her letters, as if the sound of her voice could actually rise off the page, material. Each letter (and now they arrived with regular frequency, each about a month and a half old), told more of a life in a place it was becoming clear to him she would never return from. The letters became imploring in tone, saying that she missed them all dearly, and she signed some of them
je vous adore
. Finally, in September, she sent a telegram, as her own father had, and begged them to sell everything and come to Canada. Her mother had stabilized, but she could not leave. No, she did not want to leave. There was no argument from Martin or Theresa — they missed her too much to consider such a thing as a country or a home of any importance, but their father was grief-struck anew. Galway was the edge of the very known world to him, and although he had no relations but a brother in Belfast, his country was all of who he was. But he had foreseen having to leave, as he had said to Martin. God will find you and drive you out.

They began to divest themselves of unnecessary possessions, and before long, all possessions seemed unnecessary. The grandfather clock, which had paced Martin’s entire life with a stately tick and gong, went. Then the sofas and the beds. Their father sold his business to his felt cutter, who changed the shop’s name to Caprani. He’d come from Naples.

Passenger travel had been restricted out of Galway since the sinking of the
Athena
off the Hebrides earlier in the month. (Gabriel had told Martin that the cries of the dying were heard in Sligo.) They waited until late October for the shipping lanes to reopen, and the sea was buff and cold, the waves even near the shore tipped white. A hansom cab took them down to the docks to wait with the hundreds of others for whom this ship was their first chance to leave Ireland since the end of the summer. The massive form of the M.S.
St. Louis
stood against the black sky, taking on passengers who moved slowly up a gangway and through a dimly lit door to the insides.

Martin stood with his father, the smell of the damp thatch behind them in the Claddagh, the pong of salt all around. Theresa had pushed forward already into the throng of passengers, and he could see her by the new hat their father had made for her. A lady’s hat, he’d said, for a young lady. Above them, the passengers taken on in Dover, in Dublin, in Cork waved from the foredecks, the plumes of steam and grit chuffing out of the funnels, the horses quietly moored to their posts as the porters unloaded the carriages. This was the great ship’s last stop before it would sail over the Atlantic to Halifax and then Montreal.

He was nearly eleven now; there was a past behind him. He stood, waiting with all the others, his mind blank with trepidation and sadness, his pasteboard suitcase beside him with its keepsakes safely wrapped inside. He held his father’s hand, not wanting them to get separated in the crowd; he felt angry at his sister for getting ahead of them. She was more and more turning into a showoff. Their father should never have said lady’s hat; it had gone to her head in more ways than one.

The crowd pushed against them, moving them along whether they wanted to or not. Martin could see that the ship now blotted out most of the sky and sea; the gangway was less than twenty yards off. Theresa was nearly at the bottom of it. Martin’s father leaned forward over him and tugged his woollen topcoat up square on his body. He put his mouth beside Martin’s ear. You take care of your mother, he said.

We will all have to take care of her. Especially if Grandma is still unwell.

And your sister, Martin. You will be the man of the house. Martin looked at his father, and searched his face.

Where are your bags? he asked him.

I’m not going, Martin, his father said.

You have forgotten your bags, said Martin, his heart quickening. He put his suitcase down. Theresa was already on the gangplank. He called to her. Theresa! Come back! Daddy has forgotten his bags!

But his sister turned and looked through the crowd at them both, her eyes first to him, and then raised to their father in knowledge. Then she continued up the ramp. Martin fastened himself to his father’s arm, the swill of the air surrounding him pushing him down to his knees. His father lifted him and held him and Martin put his face against his father’s neck, his shouts muffled there, and he gasped in the scent of his father, of their house, of their houses — that scent had followed him his entire life. In that scent was the windows, the doors, all the rooms of their lives. All the lamps and spoons and flowerpots. The weathers, the skies, the streets and rivers, the voices of the people, the fragrance of their cooking. All the unnamed legions of birds, the swaybacked horses, all the fish in the lakes and the oceans. Uncontainable life! His father lowered him trembling to the ground, pushed his suitcase against him and forced Martin into the body of the crowd, and he was borne up, his small body as thin and hollow as a bird’s, the ship bearing down on him now, its metal bellowings, and his father, now on docks, watching without expression, his hands hidden in his pockets.

Night had fallen in Galway, and it was clear and dark above, the stars bright as ice. He’d walked back up from the bottom of town, his mind a mass of grief, and there had been people everywhere. They were sitting on benches with ice creams, carriage-horses walking past bearing their passengers behind white-curtained doors, children taking the night air with their parents, moving slowly through the leftover heat of the day. Maybe they would have come to love this ritual if circumstance hadn’t rent them. Maybe if he had waited and kept his children there, she would have returned eventually, she would have had no choice. A couple got out of the horse carriage in front of Eyre Square and paid the driver. Tourists recreating the past, as I was, picturing Martin’s father, his back rounded under his black coat, crossing the river to home.

I climbed Prospect Hill and knocked on the front door. Above, on the landing, a slice of greyish light appeared, and then a shape on the stairs, a shadow in the glass.

When he opened the door I said, “I’m sorry to be disturbing you so late. My name is Jolene Iolas.” He stood with a hand on the door-edge. “I was a friend of your son’s.”

“Come in,” he said.

He held the railing tightly as I followed him up the stairs. He had on the same clothes from earlier in the day. Grey slacks under the blue sweater. Beyond the landing, a door led to a long hall. The walls were draped with newspaper clippings and there were musty piles of magazines and books leaning against the walls on either side, making a passageway that was wide enough only for us to pass one after the other. The dust that caked everything hung in the air, disturbed by even the slightest of movements through the space. I walked down the hall toward the open room and passed an archway into a kitchen and eating area. The simple accoutrements of a light eater were arrayed on the stove; I could see a single plate and a single enamel coffee cup sitting in a drainer beside the sink. “Did you see Francine?” We’d come into the main room, the one with the plants in the window.

“I did.”

“Lenore told me she had to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

He was at least ninety-five. On level with him, I could take in his face: his eyes had gone to pearl, slivers of black iridescence in the middle of cloudy whites, and I saw now the flesh on his face was as thin as onionskin. His head quavered. His white hair, still copious, sat tight on top of his head, a bird’s nest. Standing there in front of me, he seemed a part of all the things in the room, just one more thing in a crowded room. “I couldn’t take care of her anymore,” he said. “It’s better this way. She has company.”

“The two of them mount your exhibitions.”

“It’s better to use the Dublin galleries.” He held a finger up for me to wait and he walked into the kitchen; there was a second entrance to it off the living room. He came back a moment later holding a bottle each of milk and whiskey and drinking glasses dangled from two fingers. I presumed I was to sit, and I took off my coat and slung it over the back of a chair opposite the couch. He lowered his offering to the table between us, which was ajumble with museum books, catalogues, photographs, illustrated collections. He sat and gestured for me to pour. “Milk for me,” he said. I picked up the milk bottle and poured us each a glass. He raised his slightly to me and drank. “Keeps my bones from turning to kindling,” he said.

I cast my eyes around the room. There were more yellowing piles of paper lining the baseboards. A glass-fronted bookcase was stuffed to nearly bursting with more. Behind me, over by an upright piano that was laden with old record albums and more books, a piece called The Swan was hanging on the wall. The sequins that came down in the guise of snow shone in the poor light of the room like eyes in a cave. A few feet away from us, what had once been a dining table was covered with junk. “Is that one of yours?” I asked. “The Swan?”

“No. He sent me that. More than twenty-five years ago now. No way of contacting him and no letter.”

“Were you surprised?”

“No.”

“And what is all that?” I said, nodding to the table.

“Go look if you want.”

I rose and went over. The junk was arranged in piles, incomplete collations of artworks that were in public galleries all over the world. Here was Crossing, the ship already complete, the woman’s face affixed along the topdecks, the moss dried and painted for the bottom of the box. But he hadn’t figured out how to create the effect of the face against the underside of the glass. Plus, it would have required a picture of himself. Other piles were less complete. A plastic ballerina from a jewel box, separated from her mechanism; a clay pipe; a tin train conductor holding a bell; an empty glass sphere. I picked up the ship and came back to sit beside him. I held it in front of us, the funnels turned in.

“The picture on the glass was a very time-consuming thing,” I said. “He used a screen of the photo, so it had dots like in a newspaper picture, and he transferred it to the topside of the glass. Then, wherever there was a dot, he glued the end of a black thread on the underside of the glass, more ends if there was a grouping of dots, and when he was finished, he twisted the threads into three pillars and inserted one into each of the funnels. Then he pulled the transfer of the photo off the glass, and there you were. Hovering in the night sky like a guardian angel.”

He took the boat and turned it around in his hands. “I thought it was something like that. I couldn’t tell from the pictures.”

“Also,” I said, “Pond has seven feathers in it. I don’t know what it looks like in the Carnegie catalogue, but it must have been taken flat on. You missed the one at the very lip of the bowl.”

“Why seven?”

“That’s the number of stars in Cygnus.”

Colin put the ship down and turned stiffly to me. The couch sent up little puffs of dust. “What was he like?”

I shook my head and looked away from him. “Whatever I tell you about him will just end up being about myself. He was talented and generous,” I said tentatively. “Interested in a lot of different things. And a good storyteller. And secretive.”

He leaned in toward me as I spoke, his eyes hooded, one ear pointed slightly toward me. He dipped his chin at each descriptive as if somehow this sparse picture of a man missing longer for him than for me confirmed his suspicions. His hopes. He covered my hand with one of his. His skin was smooth and dry. “It sounds like he grew into a good man. Was he a good man?”

“He didn’t know how to live, Colin. And he damaged the people who were closest to him. In the end, that’s all that mattered.”

His face reddened a little and he nodded curtly, almost to himself, and pushed forward on the couch. I stood and hooked a hand under his arm and lifted him up. “Come on,” he said. “If you want to see the rest.” We walked into a hallway that went down to the bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which was, impossibly, more densely packed with papers and objects than the rest of the flat. He brought me in, a hand lightly on my upper arm, and showed me where the order of the place began, and spiralled out. “These here,” he said, sweeping his hand over pillars of newsprint, “are the clippings from the Montreal and Toronto papers, sent over by packet ship from 1939 to 1975. After that, I was able to get some of the papers locally, you understand, they were bringing them right into Galway. So I always knew a little something about their lives over there. The daily events, the parades, what plays they might have been seeing. The weather. When the winters were very cold, I would worry. Adele had poor circulation.” He riffled the edges of a pile over by one of the walls. “She died in 1981. I found the announcement. But Theresa?”