My Temporary Life (18 page)

She pours another glass of whisky and shakily holds it to her lips. She’s angry now, and her face is smeared with tears.

“
I don’t know how long it was before I saw the light again. It was two weeks, maybe a month. I really don’t know how long.”

I stare at the water, the candle, anywhere, trying to let her tell her secret in the darkness between us. I wait for a while, before asking, “Why didn’t you go back, find her, find Michael?”

“
I was eighteen and scared shitless. They had taken me to some old musty hospital in Alberta. Alberta, I had never been a hundred miles away from home and now I was in Alberta. And this nurse terrified me, things became different, there were no smiles anymore. It just seemed easier, safer; to move on, try to forget.”

“
At the time, I did ask, I asked about Michael, where was he, where was my baby. Then the darkness would come again. When I awoke it was the same nurse, same room, but I felt different, lighter in my head, but still sad, really sad. I kept asking the questions, and each time the darkness would come, and each time I woke, the questions seemed to matter less and less, until finally I understood. I knew that if I stopped asking the questions she’d let me go. So, I stopped asking.”

“
She was drugging you.” I look over at her face, wet with tears.

“
Yes, I knew that at the time, but didn’t know. It’s hard to explain. The day they let me go, the old nurse followed me out, and told me that there had been another option. She told me her instructions had been to decide whether I walked out of there, or left on a slab. Those were her words; I still remember them. She told me that I was a good girl, and should get on with my life. She said that I should get on a bus to somewhere, anywhere, go find a new home, but to remember that she’d be watching me. On a slab, Malcolm. She said that I could have left there on a slab.”

The fire is almost out. The few red embers are glowing in the dark, and the last of the candle has extinguished itself. I pull my chair until it’s touching hers. I reach over and try to hold her. She feels cold underneath the blanket. My confident girl is shaking now, scared.

“
I used to think I could see her, that insane old bitch, in crowds or when I was alone. Sometimes, I thought I sensed eyes. One day I’m sure I did. I was in a park; it was busy and I was running. I passed this old woman, who was sitting on a bench, and she smiled at me. Her eyes had that knowing look about them. It was her, older, but still her, and she nodded as though she was still telling me to keep my mouth shut.”

“
Your parents, your father is still alive, I thought?”

She pauses again, trying to compose herself, her voice changing again, becoming frightened again. “We weren’t close. When my mother died he died too. He brought me up, and when I turned sixteen, he stopped caring what I did or didn’t do. When I became pregnant I never told him. I just said I was leaving. He didn’t care.”

“
Brothers, sisters, there was no one who would look for you?”

She seems frustrated now. “No, there’s no one else. I just disappeared, Malcolm. I just came out here. I saw the ocean and knew that I couldn’t get much farther away from them. I got a job, and then another one, and then started working for Terry. I just tried to disappear from all of them.”

It makes sense. It all makes sense. There’s always been something below the surface. There’s always been a secret. “This man, Michael, who is he? Is he capable of hurting you, of hurting Emily?” I think of Hardly’s father, Rab, and the bullies during my Kilmarnock school days.

She won’t answer though. She just keeps staring straight ahead, barely acknowledging that I’m holding her. “No one knows. No one knows, only you. I wasn’t going to tell you, but after what happened, after what you told me about your friend...”

By the time we make our way to the bed in the old motorhome it’s pitch dark and the only sound is the whistling of the night air. She lets me hold her, and we lie there, fully clothed, feeling each other’s warmth, until we fall asleep.

When the first lights of the morning squeeze through the blinds on the window, her breathing changes, and I know that she’s awake. Her words come out firmly and without hesitation. “I keep dreaming about her, Malcolm. I see her face, her little baby face. I can’t stop thinking about her face.” She pauses and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Now that it’s out, now that I’ve said it, I know what I have to do. I have to find her. I need to see her. I need to make sure that she’s okay. I’m going back there.”

CHAPTER 19

Things seem quieter, slower. It’s as though the weight of the night before is holding me down, weighing me down. I tinker with the motorhome, checking fluid levels, inspecting the tires, and spend long minutes staring at it, trying to keep my mind busy. Heather soaks her feet in the cold water of the lake, staring out at its greenness.

We eat, almost in silence, respecting each other’s thoughts. She touches my hand from time to time, and I try to smile, rubbing hers back, enjoying the comfort, the closeness.

I jump in the water, letting the coldness numb me, thinking about all the trips back to Scotland that I didn’t take, and all the phone calls from Hardly when he would ask me when I was coming home. I swim out and back, and when I surface she’s staring at me, waiting for me.

I pull myself up, and can feel the calmness coming from the still lake.

She’s sitting on a rock by the edge of the water, leaning forward, looking as beautiful and helpless as I’ve ever seen anyone look.

I think about the movie of my life that plays in my head. I think about my Dad, and, I think about Hardly. I think about his phone calls, his letters. The same Hardly, the same Hardly that climbed the tree with me, the same Hardly that had to go home to Rab, his father, every night.

As I watch Heather, and think of the journey ahead of her, I decide.

It has nothing to do with the blueness of her eyes, or the way her face tries to look strong yet pleading, at the same time. In fact, it really doesn’t even have anything to do with a little girl, who may or may not be called, Emily. It’s about chapping on the door and staring into a man’s face. It’s about taking in a young boy when there’s no one else to help him. It’s about doing what my Dad would do.

“
You’re staring at me, Malcolm. Say something to me. Say anything.” She’s crying again.

“
I don’t want to get old and have a list of things I haven’t done, Heather. I don’t want to have regrets.”

“
I don’t understand. What does that mean, Malcolm?” She’s speaking quickly now, wiping at her eyes.

“
I’m going to come with you. I’m going to come to Ontario with you. I’ll help you.”

She looks back at me, and shakes her head, telling me no, over and over again. It doesn’t matter of course. It almost feels good to me. I don’t feel like I’m the man who was pushed into the pool at his friend’s party. Instead, I feel like the boy who punched Stuart Douglas in the face to help my friend, and I haven’t felt like that boy in a very long time.

There’s an old song where the singer sings about his girlfriend moving in with him, and that he had to buy her a washing machine. Well, I already have a washing machine, but after our night at the Lake at the End of the World, it makes sense to be closer. In the song it happens quickly, but with us, it took from the beginning of my summer, that was supposed to be about maybes, and sex, but wasn’t, until early October.

The days after the trip we spend moving her belongings from her apartment to mine. She stops in front of my big windows, from time to time, looking out at the water, smiling. She’s glad to be here. I can tell. We unpack only the bare necessities, knowing that we’ll be leaving soon. We avoid talking about specific things, and in my mind I try to think of little beyond the obvious. I know that we’re going to Ontario, to find a ten year old girl, who may or may not be called Emily. I know that I have to ask some questions though.

“
You need to tell me about him, Heather; I need to know what I’m walking into.”

“
I know. I’ll tell you what I remember.” She sits on the edge of my bed, our bed, taking a break from arranging her figurines on top of a bookcase.

“
He had this presence. It’s hard to explain. He was a large man, but that wasn’t it. He just had this way of being that made you want to listen to what he was going to say next. He’d talk about the power that he had in the town. He frightened me once. We pulled into a parking lot and he ran from the car to a group of men. There were lots of them, but when they turned and saw that it was him, they backed off. They let him through. He grabbed one of them, and pulled him to the ground. I looked away and couldn’t see what happened, but I could hear the sounds of the man as he was beaten. When he came back to the car his hands were bleeding, but he was smiling, happy.

“
The other men didn’t step in?”

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That was the thing. They were afraid. There was always talk about him in town, talk that he was dirty, that he took the law into his own hands, but it’s a small town. People talk about each other all the time.”

“
He? You mean, Michael? That’s who you mean?”

She keeps looking at the walls, not facing me, avoiding my gaze. Her voice is almost automatic and it seems as though she’s reading from a book, when she answers. “Yes, yes, of course, Michael. Michael.”

It’s not fear, or maybe it is. Maybe it’s the uncertainty, the unknown, but I have to ask, have to see if there’s another way. “I wonder if there’s someone who specializes in this, a detective, an investigator. I wonder if there’s somebody that could work with us, research it, find out more. There must be somebody that can help us to find Emily, find out where she is.”

I know that she must have thought about it, considered it, and she doesn’t hesitate in answering me. “I can’t Malcolm. I just can’t. I can’t take the chance that he’ll take her away, hide her away, if he knows that I’m looking for her. I have to do this myself. It’s time. I left it too long as it is. She’s ten, ten years old, and she’s my girl Malcolm, she’s my little girl.”

I don’t know children. I don’t have brothers or sisters. I have an aunt, my father’s sister, in Scotland, who has boys, cousins of mine. They’re younger though, and I had left my Scottish school, by the time they attended it. I remember them as rambunctious, unruly, boys, who were always getting under my father’s skin. My early girlfriend, who had wanted children seems like a long ago adventure, a youthful romance. When I think of her now, and my long ago reluctance to want a child, it seems like it was someone else living my life.

We sit in silence for a while, neither looking at each other, and I wonder what it must have been like for her to carry this for so long. I know what it’s like to hate. I hated my mother for years. I hated that she left my father. She’d promised that she’d live in Scotland with him, promised us a normal life, and then just gave up. It wasn’t until my parents were older, and years had passed, that I forgave her for denying me a normal childhood. I came to the realization, that although they were my parents, they were really just kids trying to raise kids, and grow up themselves at the same time. That’s when I realized that with forgiveness comes freedom, and I somehow managed to let it go.

It was easy to get an invitation for Heather and I to have dinner at Terry and Jo’s house. And Jo didn’t sound surprised at all when I asked if we could do it quickly, even tonight possibly. We made a deal that she wouldn’t tell too many embarrassing stories about me and that I’d pretend to like her cooking.

“
You look different Malcolm, you’re happier than the last time I saw you, maybe even settled. No hold on, not settled, you’ll never look settled, just happy,” Jo is enjoying herself, trying to make me squirm, as she sits by her husbands’ side, across from Heather and I.

“
It’s the regular sex. It’ll do that. I’ve been telling him that for years.” Terry says it in his all-knowing, philosophical tone, forgetting that he’s been preaching casual sex to me all these years, not regular.

“
It must be the lasagne. It’s very, very good Jo.” I take Heather’s hand as I answer them, and wait for them to smile knowingly, as we interact.

“
You’ve got something on your mind Malcolm, I can tell. What is it your Dad says? What’s the thing about the fart? Come on. I know you remember.” He strains his face, trying to remember another of my Dad’s colloquialisms.