The Guardians (15 page)

    "Really."

    "One
of my doctors said they sometimes help."

    "Help
what?"

    "People
with diseases like mine."

    "Yeah?
How's that work?"

    "It's
supposed to make you feel less alone or something."

    "I'm
just trying to picture you sitting here talking into that thing, counting up
how many beers you had last night and the crap you took this morning and how
many hairs you pulled out of the drain after your shower."

    "It's
not like that."

    "No?
What's it like?"

    "I'm
not keeping a diary of the present, but the past."

    This
loosens the teasing grin from Randy's face, so that he appears vaguely pained,
as though waiting for a stomach cramp to release its hold.

    "The
past," he says finally. "How far back you going?"

    "Guess."

    "The
winter when we were sixteen."

    "That's
not a bad title for it."

    Randy
sits on the end of the bed. Rests his hands on his knees in the way of a man
who thinks his body might be about to betray him in some unpredictable way.

    "You
think that's a good idea?" he says.

    "In
what sense?"

    "In
the sense of anyone reading or listening to this diary of yours?"

    "Nobody's
ever going to read it."

    "Because
we
promised.
You too. You
promised
never to tell."

    "I'm
not telling. It's just for me."

    "To
be forgiven."

    "That's
asking too much."

    "So
what's it about?"

    "I
just need to hear myself say what I've never let myself say."

    "Because
we never talked about it even then, did we?" Randy lowers his head to be
held in his cupped hands. "We never said a goddamn thing to each
other."

    "We
were trying to pretend it wasn't real."

    "But
it was," Randy says, his freckled face the same self- doubting oval that
looked out from his grade ten yearbook photo. "It
was.
Wasn't
it?"

    I step
out of the taxi in front of the McAuliffe place, pay the driver through the
window and make my herky-jerky way up the steps to the front door, all without
looking at the Thurman house across the street. Not as easy as it sounds. I can
feel it wanting me to turn my eyes its way, to take it in now in the full
noontime light. To deny it is as difficult as not surveying the damage of a car
accident as you roll past, the survivors huddled in blankets, the dead being
pulled from the wreck.

    And
this is how the house wins. Mrs. McAuliffe takes a few seconds too long to come
to the door after I ring the bell, so that, even as I see her shadow
approaching through the door's curtained glass and hear the frail crackle of
her "Coming! Coming!" I steal a glance. At the same instant, the sun
pokes out from a hole in the clouds. Sends dark winks back at me from the
second-floor windows, a dazzle of false welcome.

    "Trevor,"
Mrs. McAuliffe says, and though I can't see her at first when I turn back to
the door, my vision burned with the yellow outline of the Thurman house, I can
feel the old woman's arms stretched open for a hug, and my own arms reaching
out and pulling her close.

    "I'm
so sorry about Ben, Mrs. A.," I whisper into her moth-balled cardigan.

    "I'm
not a Mrs. anything anymore to you. I'm just Betty."

    "Not
sure I'll ever get used to that."

    "That's
what you learn when you get old," she says, pushing me back to hold my jaw
in the bone-nests of her hands. "There's so much you never get used to."

    The
house looks more or less as I remember it. The dark wood panelling in the
living room, the lace-covered dining table, the brooding landscapes of the
Scottish Highlands too small for the plaster walls they hang on. Even the smell
of the place is familiar. Apparently Ben and his mother carried on with their
deep-fried diets well into his adulthood, judging from the diner-like aroma of
hot oil and toast.

    "You
look well," Betty McAuliffe tells me as I shakily replace a Royal Doulton
figurine of a Pekingese to the side table where I stupidly picked it up.

    "I
do?"

    "Tired,
maybe," she says, ignoring my struggles. "But handsome as
always."

    "It's
just a little dark in here, that's all. Pull back the curtains and you'll see the
wrinkles and bloodshot eyes."

    "Don't
I know! It's why I keep them closed."

    In
the kitchen, Mrs. McAuliffe shows me the neat piles of papers that are Ben's
will, some of his receipts, bank statements. His death certificate.

    "It's
not much, is it?" she asks. "A whole life and you could fold it into
a single envelope and mail it to . . . well, where would you mail it?"

    "To
me."

    "Of
course. Mail it to you. Though there'd be no point in that because you're here
now, which I'm glad of. Very glad of indeed."

    I
turn back to find the old woman standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking
to the fridge, the sink, her shoes, me, then starting over again. Her hair
white and loose as dandelion fluff.

    "Mrs.
McAuliffe. Betty. Are you—?"

    "Would
you like a cup of tea?" she asks, and I can see that making a pot for a
guest might just be enough to save her life.

    "That
would be great. And a biscuit, if you have one."

    She
busies herself with these tasks, and I do my best to busy myself with mine. But
aside from confirming the filing of Ben's past few tax returns (he'd earned
next to no income), there seems little for me to do. Then I discover the
package on the chair next to mine. A brown bubble-wrapped envelope with my name
on the front.

    "What's
this?" I ask Mrs. McAuliffe as she places an empty mug and plate of butter
cookies in front of me.

    "Ben
didn't leave a note. Nothing aside from a white rose he left on my bedside
table. And that."

    "You
haven't opened it?"

    "Ben
was sick," she starts. "But he had . . .
interests.
And I
respected that. So no, I haven't opened it. Because whatever is in it, he felt
you would understand and I would not."

    There
is an edge to these last words, a buried grievance or accusation.

    She
fills my mug to the brim. Stands over me, the teapot wavering in her hand, as
though uncertain whether to carry it to the sink or let it drop to the floor.

    "Where
are you staying?" she asks.

    "The
Queen's."

    "Horrible
place."

    "In
the dark, it looks like any other room."

    "Perhaps
you'd like to stay here?"

    It
takes me a second to interpret what she's just said.
Stay here?
The idea
causes a shudder that has nothing to do with Parkinson's.

    "Just
for a night or two," she goes on. "Until you're finished looking
through Ben's things."

    "It's
very kind of you. But I wouldn't—"

    "Be
no trouble."

    "You
must be very—"

    "I'd
like
you to stay."

    Mrs.
McAuliffe puts the teapot down on the table. Uses her now free hand to wipe the
sleeve of her sweater under her chin.

    "Of
course," I say. "Thanks. I'll bring my things over this
evening."

    "Good.
Good."
She breathes, a clear in and out. "You can have Ben's
room."

    
That,
Betty, is never going to happen
.

    This
is my first thought as I push open the door to Ben's attic room and look up at
the splintery beam from which he'd tied the noose.

    
I
am never going to spend the night here
.

    At
the same time, even as I enter with the sound of my shoes sticking to the recently
waxed floorboards (was this done after Ben died? Perhaps to clean away the
blood? if there
was
blood?), I can already feel myself sliding between
the sheets of the freshly made bed against the wall and turning out the light.
A moment at once unthinkable and unstoppable.

    The
room is clean, but preserved. Even if I didn't know of Ben and the wasted years
he'd spent up here, I could discern the not-rightness of its former inhabitant
through the teenage boy things that hadn't been replaced or stored away. So
there was still the Specials poster over the dresser. Still the Batman stickers
on the mirror, the neat stacks of comics and Louis L'Amour novels against the
wall. Still the Ken Dryden lamp on the bedside table.

    I sit
on the edge of the bed, and the wood frame barks. A sound Ben would have been
so used to he'd long ago have stopped hearing it.

    The
package he left for me sits on my lap. His square letters spelling my name. So
carefully printed it suggests the final act in a long-planned operation. The
licking of the envelope's fold a taste of finality, of poison.

    I
tear it open in one pull.

    
So
it was you and me both, Ben
.
A thick, black leather journal slips
out
.
Diary keepers
.

    It's
heavy. A cover worn pale through repeated openings and closings, its inner
pages dense with ink.

    The
entries are mostly brief, all written in chicken-scratched print, as though the
paper he wrote on was the last in the world. The book opens with an
unintentionally comic record of non-event:

    
March
19, 1992

    
Nothing.

    
March
20, 1992

    
Nothing.

    
March
21, 1992

    
Nothing.

    
March
22, 1992

    
Same.

    Then,
after several more days of this:

    
March
29, 1992

    
The
front door handle.

    
Something
on the inside. Trying to get out.

    No
names, hardly any mention of the neighbours' comings or goings. Just the house.
And, at certain points, the apparent sightings of characters so familiar to Ben
he didn't waste the letters to name them, as in "He was at the downstairs
window" or "She shouted someone's name" or "They moved
together across the living room like ballroom dancers."

    
May
18, 1992

    
Kids
coming borne from school. Stop to stare at it.

    
I
shout down at them, "Save yourselves! Keep moving/" They tell me to
go fuck myself But they don't go in, don't go any closer
.

    I
flip ahead, scanning. Five hundred pages of lunatic surveillance and shouted
warnings. I close it after reading only the first dozen pages, my mind aswirl.
Why did Ben bother keeping such a record in the first place? How did he think
his observation was protecting anyone? Why kill himself now, leaving his post
vacant?

    And
the kicker: Why had he left this to me?

    I
attempt to read on. But a minute later, I'm struck with a rare headache. A pair
of marbles growing into golf balls at the temples.