The Birthday Lunch (6 page)

His father. Ashamed that he has not thought of his father, Matt lowers his head. Trish is right. His father will need him and he will go home to his father. And to his sister. Claudia will need him too. “Yes. I need to go home,” Matt says. Contrite and humbled by grief, he allows Trish to lead him to the parking garage.

——

Strapped in his seat, Matt is blind to what is outside the window: the flawless blue sky; the jagged upthrust of ancient sea beds; the geometry of prairie crops.

A flight attendant appears with the drinks cart and Matt orders a double scotch. As usual he is flying business class, which is why Air Canada came through with a ticket on short notice. His seatmate orders water.

The flight attendant moves on and Matt hears a tremulous voice ask if something is wrong. For the first time he glances at the tiny bundle of cloth and bone beside him. Christ, the woman must be eighty at least. A frequent flyer, Matt habitually discourages conversation by occupying himself with a client’s file; but without a file on his tray table he is defenceless and he blurts out the naked truth that his mother is dead. There. Now that he has told her, maybe she will leave him alone. But the old woman persists and asks how his mother died.

“She was hit by a truck.”

“How old was she?”

“Fifty-eight.”

“She was young.”

“Yes.” Only now does Matt realize how young his mother was.
Was
, he thinks, already he is thinking
was
. He does not tell the old woman that today was his mother’s birthday. When Trish was driving him to the airport she told him that the accident happened around two-thirty, which means his mother was fifty-eight for about fourteen-and-a-half hours. Matt asked, but Trish did not know how the accident happened.

Matt tugs on eye shades. He cannot sleep but at least the eye shades shield his anguish and the old woman will not
expect him to talk. If only he could sleep. But he cannot sleep because as soon as he closes his eyes, regret moves in. Flowers, he did not send his mother flowers. Every year since moving West, Matt has sent his mother birthday flowers: a private joke between them,
Lilies for Lily
, written on the card, ordered by telephone as soon as he reaches the office. But not today because as soon as he got to work this morning he was caught up in a protracted conference call that ended when his assistant told him that his wife was waiting for him in his office.

But that is not the worst regret. The worst regret is that Lily never saw her grandson. Dougie is almost two years old and his grandmother never saw him and now it is too late. Matt could have sent his parents airplane tickets. He remembers thinking about it but then a new wrinkle at work would intervene. As chief counsel of Lingard Construction, Matt regularly flies to Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Denver, Spokane. Weeks, months go by when Matt sees Trish and the kids only on weekends. A demanding job that allows him five days in Sussex to bury his mother. Another regret to add to the pile.

Claudia lugs her suitcase to the top of the stairs. She hears a strange voice calling, “In here!” Following the voice to the living room she sees her father and her aunt sitting at opposite ends of the sofa like strangers forced to share the same rescue boat. Claudia has become a stranger herself: it is as if she has never seen her grandmother’s rosewood desk, the walnut
bookcase, the silent long-case clocks in opposite corners, the empty patchwork rocker, her mother’s crossword puzzle book tucked between cushion and arm.

At the sight of his daughter, Hal begins to weep. “At last,” he says. “You’re here.”

“Yes, Dad, I’m here.” Claudia sits beside him on the sofa.

“I knew you would come,” Hal says.

“Dad, oh Dad,” she says and locking her arms around him, she rocks him back and forth while the mantelpiece clock ticks relentlessly on. Claudia forgets her aunt is beside her until she hears Laverne announce, “Seven o’clock.” Claudia glances at her aunt sitting inches away, hands folded in her lap. Laverne does not return the glance and continues staring across the room. Following her stare, Claudia sees a pinkish blond-haired woman in a yellow sundress sitting opposite, her thighs spilling over the sides of the straightback chair. Now that Claudia has noticed her, the woman says, “I’m Corrie Spears, a friend of your father’s. I brought them home.”

“Them.”

“Yes. Hal and Miss Pritchard.”

“Brought them from where?”

“Main Street, in front of the Creamery, where your mother was killed.”

Killed. My mother was killed
. Claudia knows that being killed is different from dying but she cannot work out in what way it is different. Later, when she can concentrate, she will try to work out it out. But not now, because now she must comfort her father and her aunt.

Laverne does not want Claudia’s comfort, what she wants
is the comfort of being alone. Turning to her niece, she says, “Now that you are here, Claudia, I will go downstairs.”

“So soon, Auntie? I just got here.”

“Claudia, I’ve been sitting here a long time.”

“But you’ll be alone downstairs, Auntie. Why not stay upstairs with us?”

“I’m tired, Claudia, and I want to go to bed.”

“But you can go to bed in one of the spare rooms.”

“I prefer my own bed.”

Finally Claudia accepts the decision. She knows that once her aunt has made up her mind, she is not easily persuaded to change it. Claudia watches Laverne move like a sleepwalker through the dining room and kitchen and disappear behind the back-stairs door.

Downstairs Laverne wanders from room to room, barely recognizing the kitchen chair, the portrait of the burgomeister, the amber casement window, the checkerboard floors, the overhead beams, all of which were put in place with enthusiasm, effort and expense. But now that Lily is dead, the enthusiasm, effort and expense no longer matter.

Laverne was dozing in the Volkswagen, waiting for her sister to return with the ice cream when she was wakened by a blaring truck horn and screeching brakes. She looked over her shoulder and glimpsed her sister enter the crosswalk carrying two ice cream cones just as a red truck hurtled past. Laverne heard a thump, a screech, brakes squealing to a stop. Shattered by the deafening silence, Laverne sat upright and looked in the
rear-view mirror. She saw cars stopping and strangers getting out to look. Alarmed by the sight of strangers, Laverne stayed where she was, hands tightly fisted, scarlet fingernails digging into her flesh. Directly ahead, she saw a black tow truck approach on the opposite side of the road. The tow truck stopped and Laverne saw Hal jump onto the pavement and run toward the crosswalk, crying, “That’s my wife! That’s my wife!” The sound of his cries frightened her and she sat in a trance of fear, afraid to leave the safety of the car, afraid that if she got out of the car, she would see the body of her sister lying on the road.

After a while the fat woman in the yellow sundress knocked on the car window and obediently Laverne rolled it down. “You had better come with me,” the woman said. “There is a taxi waiting to take you and Hal home.” The fat woman sat up front, Hal and Laverne in the back. And so they came home, to the place where Lily will never return. After they got out of the taxi, the three of them entered the house and went upstairs where they waited for the day to end.

But the day has not yet ended. Peering through the window, Laverne sees her Volkswagen parked in front of the garage. She never parks her car in front of the garage. Someone else must have parked it there. The placement of the car upsets her because it is not where it should be, beside the garage. And Lily is not where she should be, which is upstairs. Laverne is convinced that if she had not left these rooms today, Lily would be upstairs, the Volkswagen would be beside the garage and everything would remain the same. Laverne despises today and wants it to be over. But the day is hours from being over
and she decides to bring it to a swift conclusion by swallowing one or two pills and disappearing into sleep. Laverne has a vial of sleeping pills set aside, but she cannot remember where it is. To help her remember, she gazes at the wall between the kitchen and pantry, which in the phantom twilight is an ugly, odious green and turning away, she searches the room and her gaze falls on the open bedroom closet door and she sees the suitcase and remembers: the sleeping pills are inside the suitcase. Laverne unzips the suitcase, shakes two sleeping pills from the vial she had been saving for her trip to Holland and washes them down with a glass of water. She does not undress but lies fully clothed on the bed.

Before she disappears into the oblivion of sleep, Laverne remembers that the fat woman said Matthew would be arriving tomorrow. Tomorrow, a new day and Matthew will take charge, he will see to it that the necessary arrangements are made. Reliable Matthew who drove the narrow winding roads of the Pyrenees to Niaux, where he guided Laverne deep into the mountain through the frigid dark. Laverne would never have taken this journey without his firm hand at her elbow, his other hand holding the tiny electric lantern lighting their passage along the slippery path through the maze of stalagmites while around them stalactites dripped onto the cave floor creating puddles of melted ice.

Following the wobbling line of tourist lanterns, she and Matthew walked more than a kilometre into the mountain when their guide instructed them to switch off their tiny lanterns and they waited in the shivering dark until he turned on a giant lantern. “
Voila! Le Salon Noir
,” he said, his voice
echoing around the chamber and then! There were the paleolithic paintings which seemed as vibrant as when they were painted twelve thousand years ago: a bison outlined in black with a fringed neck and a curled tail, an arrow behind its shoulders, its spine and rump following the natural curve of the cave wall. On a plateau below the bison were life-sized horses with fringed manes and flowing tails; farther down the slope was a delicately horned ibex balanced on tiny hooves, and at the bottom a tiny animal, a weasel perhaps, stood on hind legs.

Laverne had not been able to make out exactly what their guide had said about the weasel, but that didn’t matter because it was not so much the animals themselves that impressed her; what most impressed her was the hunger for beauty and story that had inspired the hunter-artists to paint the walls of these subterranean rooms. The guide spoke in French Laverne understood, but she no longer remembers what he said. What she remembers, so many years later, are the paintings themselves, and the reassuring warmth of Matthew’s hand beneath her elbow as he guided her safely through the freezing dark toward the fading afternoon light.

From her place on the sofa, Claudia watches Corrie Spears limp between kitchen table and countertop, but unwilling to leave her father alone, she does not offer help. Claudia asks Hal when her brother will arrive.

“Trish said he is catching the morning flight from Halifax and will telephone as soon as he arrives in Moncton.”

“So he’s in Halifax tonight.”

“That’s what she said.”

Corrie appears with a tray and setting it on the coffee table, she hands Hal a glass of water and a paddy-green capsule. Hal asks what it is.

“The sleeping pill Dr. O’Donnell prescribed when he was here a few hours ago. He told you to take a pill at eight o’clock. It’s now almost nine.”

Obediently Hal swallows the pill. Corrie offers him the plate of gingersnaps. He shakes his head No. Tea? No.

“Claudia?”

“Thanks.”

Corrie hands her a mug and taking one for herself, settles on the straightback chair. “The doctor said to tell you there are enough sleeping pills for you, your dad and your brother. He wanted me to tell you that he would come by again in a couple of days.”

Claudia feels the weight of her father’s head as he eases sideways against her shoulder. “Time we get you to bed, Dad.”

“Nobody gets me to bed. I will get myself to bed,” Hal says, but no sooner is he on his feet than a knee buckles. Catching him before he falls, Claudia guides him toward the hallway. She notices that someone, it must have been Corrie Spears, has closed the door to her parents’ bedroom. Hal hesitates in front of the closed door but his hesitation is momentary. “The purple spare room,” he says, and Claudia steers him to the bedroom her mother wallpapered with violets.

“Do you want help undressing?”

A gruff “No.” Even now, her father is prudish. The bedroom is stifling and Claudia opens the window. She kisses her father on the forehead, tells him she will be sleeping next door in the yellow spare room, and asks if he wants the door left open. Another gruff “No.”

Even though there are two closed doors between them and Hal, the women mute their voices. Claudia asks where her mother is.

“By now she would be at Alyward’s.”

Alyward’s Funeral Home. Claudia remembers bicycling past it on her way to the swimming hole at Sussex Corner.

“Not far from your father’s store,” Corrie says.

“Wasn’t she taken to the hospital?”

Corrie hesitates. It is too soon to go into the details. How much should she tell Hal’s daughter? “Well,” she says, “going by what happened to my husband, they wouldn’t have kept your mother long in the hospital.”

“What happened to your husband?”

“A backhoe ran over him.”

“That’s horrible,” Claudia says.

“I’m only telling you so you know I got some idea of what it’s like.”

“Who hit Mom?”

“Some reckless fellow driving a gravel truck way over the speed limit. The town is full of speeding young drivers. I didn’t get a look at him because as soon as the ambulance took your mother away, I brought your father and aunt home in a taxi.”

“Didn’t Mom see the truck?”

“I couldn’t say. I was on my veranda watching two girls through my binoculars, one of them Sophie Power’s granddaughter, and it wasn’t until I heard the truck horn and screeching brakes that I shifted the binoculars and saw your mother at the crosswalk with two ice cream cones she was carrying to her sister, who was parked in front of my house.”

“My aunt.”