The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (14 page)

“I don’t mean you,” said Ray. “I didn’t say that at all.” He took a sweating bottle from Eudora and thumbed off the cap.

“Hate to interrupt,” said Eudora, “but won’t you all move to the dining room? I’ve spread out a feast you wouldn’t believe.”

She hadn’t lied. The low-ceilinged dining room, with its winking chandelier, was set with a buffet that would have depressed a glutton by the impossibility of eating it all. The meal consisted of a side of glazed ham with pineapples, a wizened duck and a roast that so strained its ropes that Samuel looked instinctively at Eudora in her dress. Bowls of rice, steaming vegetables and casks of wine also graced the table. The room smelled of cloves.

But the company had barely tasted the first dish when Ray resumed his conversation.

“Look at the Depression,” he said. “Part of the reason North America fell off its feet was it was trying to support the new rush of people. Fact is, newcomers weigh hard on our social system. And I don’t mean you—you two are
model
. But look at someone like Porter. No steady job, a wife who doesn’t work, and look at his brood. She’s barely off the boat before she pops out ten kids. And mark me when I say that twenty per cent of people in Canada are foreigners—well, those that declare themselves anyway, but fifty per cent of our convicts are foreign-born, and no doubt others are the kids of foreigners.”

Maud lowered her fork. “Aren’t your ancestors foreigners, if you go way back? And what are these percentages you’ve thought up?” She gave Samuel a harassed look. Seeing that he continued to eat casually, she made an exasperated noise and attempted her food.

“Ray, please,” said Eudora, “is this dinner conversation?”

“That’s why the Farmers League is pushing to get a foot in politics,” said Ray, as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “They’re about women’s rights in the home and doctor-approved marriages and killing the influence of American morals on our country. They’re about preventing preventative medicine and—”

“You’re kidding,” said Maud. “You can’t not believe in preventative medicine.”

“Actually, I don’t believe in that either,” said Eudora.

“I don’t believe him when
he
says it. Don’t expect me to believe it of you, Eudora.”

Eudora furrowed her pale brow. “I don’t believe in trying to change what’s inevitable.”

“To keep alive people who would’ve died in an older society, out of some ridiculous sentimentality,” continued Ray, “is just bad government. Besides, what happened with this last
miraculous
heart transplant operation, the one done by this South African? They say the man won’t live another week. And the one before that, last year’s, they only managed to prolong that life an extra, what, eighteen days? It doesn’t work, and it’s a waste of money besides. These transplant surgeons are like vultures, just waiting for you to breathe your last so they can hack out your lungs and give them to some halfwit. No, ma’am, I don’t go for that. All lives have their natural endings.”

“But you
do
believe in trying to fight the inevitable growth of cities?” said Maud.

Ray smiled. “Urban planning and human unfitness are not the same thing.”

Samuel cleared his throat in such a bold way that Ray gave up the floor. Samuel, deep in thought, hadn’t meant to draw the group’s attention. Under their questioning eyes, he felt obligated to say something. A joke occurred to him, but he decided to speak his mind instead.

“Do you not understand it to be the other way around?” he said, his eyes wandering the room. “That perhaps it is bad social conditions that lead to this ‘low-mindedness’ you are speaking about?”

“No,” said Ray.

And with that answered, they resumed their conversation.

“But, Eudora,” said Maud, “you work with the handicapped.”

“Exactly,” said Eudora. “It’s
because
I work with them that I feel this way. Maud, I really think you’re misunderstanding us. I am—we
both are
—sympathetic to the mentally handicapped. They’re good-natured as children, just really
good
people who, with good training, have the possibility to be, well,
good
workers. I see it every week with my own eyes. What they need most are trained people who’ll help them know where they excel and where they don’t. If you shelter them and nurture them from babyhood, there’s the potential for them to keep that babyhood innocence. They need a kind of education, not mindless charity, which is like using a rag to stop a flood. But getting to the heart of the matter is a hard thing—in this way, you got to admit they can’t be treated like normal people. They’ve got to live in special homes with special staff that have the talent of helping them figure out their gifts, homes where they’re cut off from the temptations that lead to alcoholism, prostitution, hysteria, what have you. I think the government would save money running mandatory facilities, if you compare it with the cost of fixing these people’s mistakes. But Ray doesn’t agree.”

“The government just can’t afford it,” said Ray. “They should nip it in the bud before we’re overrun.” Maud challenged Ray on what he thought was a decent solution. He stared at her, chewing on a wine cork. “Enough of this,” he said. “It’s Samuel’s day. Let’s toast to him.”

Regarding each other distrustfully, they fumbled through a toast to Samuel’s success. When their glasses had been drained, and the afterward pause accomplished, they continued to eat without pleasure. It seemed the prelude to a hellish evening, with tense feelings and restrained conversation. But there is magic left in life even among adults. Whether they’d succumbed to the alcohol, or whether each had decided that life was too short to be self-righteous, they began to laugh with the ease of old friends. Maud proved surprisingly witty, and she made a series of brisk jokes. Ray, too, proved himself the family ham, entertaining them with astute animal calls during an after-dinner round of port.

“What’s this one?” he yelled, making staccato sounds from his throat.

“Rooster!” said Maud.

“I took that advice thirty-five years ago, and I still don’t have any chicks!”

Their laughter was halted when Eudora went red in the face. Maud poured her water, but Eudora waved it away, and instead a low, almost equine sound emerged from her. A laugh. Forgetting herself, Maud began to giggle.

“Three guesses who’s sleeping on the couch tonight, and the first two don’t count!” Eudora said, and the rest of them fell into laughter.

When Samuel thought he’d sobered enough to drive, the Tynes left the Frank house, feeling a little nostalgic. There had been such amity among the two couples, such a surge of kindness, that Maud had felt as natural in their company as if they’d been family. (Or, in Maud’s case, better than family.)

“What are you thinking about?” said Samuel.

He actually sounded interested, and Maud was bemused. “Why do you let Ray get away with saying such awful things?”

Confused by the humour in her voice, Samuel tried to answer with the same contradictions. “You don’t understand Ray; he’s from a different time. And largely uneducated, too. Give him time—we could be an example to him.”

Maud wasn’t listening. She watched the black trees moving by her window. “Why don’t we go for rides any more, Samuel, like we used to?” she said. When Samuel didn’t answer, Maud faced him.

His brow was furrowed. “His were strange theories. You know, it was as if he had, as if they
both
had, misunderstood a book that nevertheless made a great impression on them. It was as though …” He drifted into thought.

“Samuel,” Maud said tiredly.

“It was as though they did not believe that man also has in him the ability to change, to better himself. To adapt.”

Maud sighed and faced the window. Approaching their home, they noticed a light was still on in one of the upper rooms. Samuel remarked that the twins were still awake, and Maud grunted in response. The return of her coldness reminded Samuel of her betrayal in visiting the Porters. Still, he hesitated to ask her anything because he had betrayed her, too, by not mentioning Oliver Orange, and he didn’t feel like arguing about it. He admonished himself for not taking advantage of her good mood when he’d had the chance. But that was the nature of marriage, he thought solemnly, an argument that only ends with death.

The house was unconvincingly silent, as though the children, in the midst of some mischief, were holding their breath. Maud frowned at Samuel, then ascended the stairs to the twins’ door. Their light was off, but Maud could hear them shifting inside like mice in a wall. Turning the knob, she hoped they’d do a convincing enough impression of sleep so she could leave without punishing them. The hall light outlined their sleeping forms. But Maud didn’t see Ama anywhere. She opened the door all the way. Only two of four beds were filled.

“Girls?” said Maud. “Yvie, Chloe?” When they remained silent, Maud turned on the lights.

The twins rose with feigned drowsiness, blinking their eyes. “Mrs. Tyne,” Yvette said with false awe, “you woke us.”

“Where’s Ama?”

Chloe gave Yvette an indistinct message with her eyes.

“What are you doing with your eyes?” said Maud, and Chloe dropped back down in bed.

“Ama’s in the bathroom,” said Yvette. “I don’t know if her bladder’s weak, or if she does time travel through the toilet, but you never saw a girl who was better friends with plumbing.”

Maud was astonished. “How dare you be so rude?” She slapped off the lights and, turning to leave, heard:

“Call us Annalia.”

Maud felt a shadow pass over her. She flipped on the lights. “Which one of you said that?”

The twins looked at her with startled eyes, but Maud suspected they were holding back laughter. She stared them down a good minute, and when neither relented, she threatened them with what the morning would bring and slammed the door behind her. Agitated, Maud moved towards the bathroom in a kind of stupor. She was more mystified than angry, not only because they had (again?) called themselves Annalia, but because until now they had never dared defy her authority. More startling was the vicious energy behind what they’d said, as though they’d planned the slight earlier and had spent these last hours savouring the outcome.

In the bathroom, the plumbing made trickling noises in the wall. Maud turned on the light, a naked bulb blistered with dead flies that, heated, gave off a burnt cork smell. Maud’s search for Ama quickly became ridiculous. A perplexed onlooker might have thought she was looking for a cat, for no nook went unscoured. In truth, she was driven by her own need to believe her children, and only after she pulled from behind the radiator a pair of glasses blind with rust did she admit that the girl might not be there.

She grew uneasy. And yet, whether because the wine still clouded her thoughts or because fear was really very foreign to her, her unease, impossibly, vanished. With her usual stern poise, she walked to the landing and called Samuel’s name. He appeared at the bottom of the stairs looking sleepy.

“I hate to wake you,” she said, “but our third cadet’s gone AWOL, and the twins aren’t talking.”

Samuel dismissed Maud with his hand. “Children’s mischief.”

Maud adorned each hip with a fist. “That is the second time today you’ve abused me. You just stay there and stand your lifetime away, and when I have to call in the authorities to find her you’ll know what kind of man you are.”

Samuel began the stairs. “Have you spoken with the twins?”

“I tried, but for children of an unlistening father it makes sense they’re not talking.” Maud looked as if she blamed him. And he recognized then that he was tired in ways he’d always seen as weaknesses in other men; disappointed that even he could find himself out of love with his wife.

Together, they confronted the twins. Maud approached the nearest bed, where Yvette sat looking indifferent.

“Where’s Ama?”

“We don’t know,” said Chloe.

“I didn’t
ask you
. Yvette, where’s Ama?”

Chloe nodded to a pile of clothes in the corner.

“What, is she hiding under there?” said Maud with a pang of conscience. She hated to think she might have accused her children of mischief they were perhaps not responsible for. As she walked to the wall to sort through the colourful clothes, Yvette said:

“She only said she was going to the toilet.”

“Eh, eh, enough.” Samuel sucked his teeth. Sitting on Ama’s cot, he said, “No more tomfoolery. I want a report of your every action this evening.” He noticed the twins glancing at each other before either answered. Samuel almost couldn’t contain his temper in the face of this brazen behaviour, which gave him the feeling of being a peon in a ruthless childhood game. Neither seemed able to speak without the brief communion.

“What is wrong with your eyes?” he demanded.

Maud placed a hand on his arm, as if to say this was her jurisdiction. “So this is what we get for trusting you? We’d have done better to chain you to your beds.”

Neither twin spoke, but Yvette lowered her eyes.

Young Tragedy and Comedy
, thought Samuel, but he felt none of the warmth the nickname usually gave him. Crushing his bowler in his hands, he stood into a stretch. His voice was tired. “I will begin with the cellar and then ascend. If I discover nothing, then I will comb through every blade of grass. If I discover nothing, I will search all of Aster. And if I still discover nothing”—he pushed his wilted hat into place—“I will search the world.”

They all three looked at him curiously. Maud scoffed and shook her head. “Don’t get lost yourself.”

Samuel hadn’t intended to make such an august speech, or any speech at all for that matter, but he’d wanted to end the conversation. Besides, his agitation, and his inability to master it, left Samuel prone to absurd outbursts. He slunk to the cellar where, hanging his dinner coat on a rusty, white-tipped nail, he began what he already suspected would be a fruitless search. He wondered, not without guilt, why affection for Ama came so much more easily to him than it ever had for his twins, who displayed all the natural brilliance and mischief he’d so wanted in a child. He felt a sort of embittered pity towards them, and reproved himself for it.