It’s another morning at the Splendid Meadows retirement center. For now breakfast aromas hold the ever-present stench of cleanser and urine at bay. A big colourful banner on the corkboard in the television room reminds everyone that today is Saturday, March 16, 2019, a meaningless factoid when you’re adrift upon the sea of old age. The best thing about this place is how it brought Nora back to me. Those odds were beyond slim, yet here we are, together. Will wonders never cease.
Today we’re headed out for a three day stay at Chatenoa Lake just south of Red Deer. Nora and I work on a puzzle in the sitting room to kill time. It’s a beautiful picture of London along the Thames. I push a piece close to its intended location with my gloved right hand, which makes Nora smile.
The bus is here, so we put away the loose puzzle pieces and head to the foyer. Iris Shanigan, Rehab and Activities Manager, gets everyone who is going organized. She gets on the bus last, followed by a skinny specter in a black hoodie and Reeboks.
“Everyone,” she says, “this is Darcy Tannen. He’ll be joining us.” She volunteers at an outreach program for troubled youth and occasionally brings a young person to the center for a visit. Lord knows how she snagged this one.
She comes down the aisle with Darcy in tow and stops beside us.
“Ladies, do you mind?”
I start to answer, but Nora cuts me off: “No problem, Iris, we’ll take good care of him.” Darcy plops down across the aisle. He can’t be more than sixteen.
The bus lumbers slowly out of the parking lot and the first half hour is quiet save for the muted rumble of the engine. Nora knits while I read. It’s Darcy who eventually breaks the silence.
“What are you reading?”
“A western about a group of men who get together to rob a stagecoach.”
“Any good?”
“Not bad. Not good. Better than staring out a window.”
“One of the old guys back at the home told me you two were lesbians. Are you lesbians?”
Without dropping a stitch Nora says, “Don’t start any bullshit. I don’t mind calling Iris.”
“I’m not starting anything. Jesus.”
“So why are you here?” I ask.
“I’m on probation. Assaulted a guy where I live. Just a few punches, nothing serious. The judge gave me community service, so I need to interview one of you and write an essay for the judge.”
I smile. Nora snorts.
“Can I interview you?” he asks me.
“Sure.”
He pulls his phone out, sets it to record. “Where were you born?”
“A small town called Nagg Creek, close to Drumheller.”
“And who were your parents?”
“Bernard and Patricia Smith.”
His eyes widen then narrow. He shakes his head.
“Naw, not… What year were you born?”
“Nineteen thirty-one.”
He digs for something in his pocket. “So, was your dad… was he the Bernie Smith? Like, burned six people to death in a church in the forties Bernie Smith?”
I freeze. I had assumed my father’s misdeeds had been lost to time. I think to myself: Seven. There were seven in that church. But nobody besides me and Nora would know that.
“Yes,” I say, “but let’s talk about something else.”
Darcy pulls out a handful of cards, riffles through them, finds one, hands it to me. I’m looking at what I think is a baseball card, only the man in the picture has flossy white hair and is far too old to be a baseball player. Maybe a coach? I squint, and that’s when I realize I’m looking at my father.
Darcy says, “They’re Murder One cards, a collection of the most notorious murderers in North America. Your father’s card is a collector’s item. Pretty rare.”
I hand it back to him. “I’m not doing this if you’re going to hound me about my father.”
“Come on! I’m not trying to be a prick, I’m a huge fan.”
“Okay, devil boy,” Nora says. “Leave her alone.”
“I’ll only do your interview on my terms,” I say. “You can ask me questions, but not about my father. Got it?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Okay. Continue.”
“Why are you wearing a white glove on your right hand? Is that hand gimped or something?”
I look down at my shrouded hand.
“How much charge do you have on that phone of yours?”
“Nearly full.”
“Good. Because this is a long story.”
I think we all have a favourite parent, whether we want to admit it or not. Mother was mine. She was not a typical pastor’s wife. She followed politics, something women of her time were not encouraged to do. She stood up for women’s equality at a time when wives were still expected to serve their husbands. She spoke the truth at dinner parties without offending. I think she would have made a brilliant politician in another time.
When she died, just before my fourteenth birthday, I could see no way past the pain. My father was pastor of Faith Gospel, Nagg Creek’s Pentecostal church, and spent most of his time on community work away from home, so we were essentially strangers. I had a few friends, but none who had lost a parent. So for three months my life hung in hiatus. My father fed me and sent me off to school and I only spoke when spoken to. Father was dealing with his own grief at first, so I’m sure he barely noticed my predicament, but by mid-November he was clearly worried about me.
“Why don’t you help with the laying on of hands this Sunday?” he said one evening.
“Really?” My father had never asked me to do anything with him before. “What if I do something wrong?”
“You can’t do anything wrong. It’s easy, you’ll see.”
The laying on of hands differs in importance and practice among congregations. In our little church it was a weekly ritual that occurred following the sermon as a part of the Eucharist; my father would read a few passages of scripture while those who wanted a healing touch made their way to the front and kneeled at the first riser. Father would come forward and briefly lay his hand on their head.
At first I read scripture while Father laid hands. Eventually I laid hands. I enjoyed the ritual of it, and my participation seemed to amuse the congregation.
One Sunday morning Clayton Grieve came forward. He was a slender boy with wispy blonde hair, and that Sunday he looked particularly frail. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor two months before and wasn’t expected to make it to Christmas.
I dropped to one knee and laid my right hand on his head and prayed while Father read the scripture. As I knelt there, my eyes closed and my head bowed, a strange heat began to build in my shoulder. I thought it was a random hot flash at first and tried to ignore it, but it grew in intensity until it hurt. I was straightening up and backing away when it happened.
A rolling ball of electricity shot down my arm and struck Clayton in the scalp. I saw it, a frenetic yellow ball of sparks. From the congregation’s gasps I assume they saw it as well.
Clayton fell back and his eyes rolled up in his head. People rushed forward, grabbed him, laid him on a pew. His parents fought their way to his side. His mother was crying, frantic. Father pushed his way through the crowd, checked Clayton, and announced to the congregation: “He’s fine, everyone! Back to your seats, please, he’s fine!”
I rushed out of the sanctum to my father’s office in the back of the church. I felt humiliated for some reason, exposed. I cried and was still crying when my father arrived a half hour later.
“What was that? What in God’s name was that?”
“I don’t know, Father”.
“Well, I’ll tell you what it looked like.” He was smiling. “It looked like a true-to-life healing to me. I imagine it might get a few more souls in our pews, and if it helps Clayton Grieve, all the better.”
He hugged me. Stunned and confused, I hugged him back.
It did help Clayton, quite a bit. His sudden recovery astounded his doctors. His parents came to our house to thank me for saving their son’s life. I accepted their gratitude before hiding in my room while they had tea with my father. At least they hadn’t brought Clayton.
Everyone wanted to talk to me. They wanted to thank me for being God’s blessed gift on Earth, as if it were intentional. Some of them wanted me to heal them.
“Just a quick brush,” Mr. Brown, the school principal, said to me one day in the school hallway. He was bent down with his bald scalp aimed at my face. “Maybe I’ll grow some hair back.”
I could tell he was just trying to be funny, but it wasn’t funny to me. I ran away.
I refused to attend church for the next two months. Eventually the fervor over Clayton Grieve died down and I did return, both to the congregation and to the laying on of hands. For a while everything was fine. I slowly convinced myself that what had happened with Clayton had been an isolated incident. God, in his infinite wisdom, had used me and moved on.
It turned out I was very wrong on that account.
One Sunday Simon Minton knelt at the riser. He was a mean kid, never hurt me but pushed my friend Gladys into the thorny rose bushes on the outskirts of the school grounds once or twice, and there were rumours he tortured animals. Kids said he dissected his own dog. I don’t know about that, but I knew a boy who said he’d personally seen Simon spend an afternoon peeling the skin off live frogs.
Why did he come up? I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. His parents probably sent him up, maybe as a punishment for fidgeting. I knew many parents who did that. It didn’t matter, he was there, and I had a duty to perform. I put my hand on his thick black hair and bowed my head. My shoulder began to heat up. No. Please no.
There was nothing I could do. The lightning shot down my arm and threw Simon to the floor. Once again, the congregation surged forward.
This time my father didn’t panic. Instead, with a frenetic light in his eyes, he said: “Folks, it’s another miracle! Martha has performed another miracle for God!”
This time I rushed out of the church and ran the two miles home.
When Father arrived he said: “I thought I’d find you here.”
“I don’t want to heal people anymore.”
“Why not? You’re doing God’s work.”
“But why Simon Minton? He’s a bully. Why would God use me to cure him?”
Father didn’t seem to have an answer. He promised I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, but his eyes told me something else.
I decided I was never going to lay hands on anyone again. I refused to let God use me like a dumb tool.
It turned out it wasn’t God I needed to worry about.
A few weeks later father got a call from the Grieve family. Clayton’s cancer had returned and the boy was on death’s door. They needed Father to pray for him. He was gone longer than usual, and when he returned he looked dead himself, his skin ashen and his eyes buried in dark sockets.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,”
“Did Clayton pass?’
“Yes, now go to bed.”
Clayton’s funeral was three days later. They had a closed casket.
“Let’s go through the trees,” Gladys said, her chubby face unusually drawn and her eyes darting past me.
“What is it? Simon?” Of course it was. Gladys was a larger girl and maybe that was why Simon picked on her. I suspect he ignored me at his parents’ request; beating up the pastor’s daughter was likely to bring bad luck.
“He’s hiding behind that truck,” she said, pointing, and I saw Simon’s brown leather boots under the vehicle’s front end. He hadn’t caused any trouble at school since the Sunday I’d sent lightning into his head.
“He’ll just follow us into the woods,” I said.
“No he won’t. He doesn’t like the woods.”
“Then he’ll get us when we come out.” Nagg Creek Middle School stood on the edge of town at the intersection of George Street and Walnut Avenue. Opposite those two roads it was bordered by a thick forest all the kids called the Never-Ending Woods. No matter where we exited, we would be a good hundred yards from the school. All Simon had to do was stand by the entrance and wait. “Besides, I’m wearing a new top, and I don’t want to catch it on branches.”
Now Simon had stepped around the truck and was jogging toward us.
“See you at school,” Gladys said hastily. She hugged her books to her chest with one hand, lifted her skirt with the other, and loped into the woods. For a large girl she could be very spry.
I walked toward Simon. I had nothing to fear; he had never hurt me before.
“Why don’t you just leave her alone?” I said when he was close enough to hear me.
“I’m not here for Gladys,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“What could we have to talk about?”
“What did you do to me?” It came out more as a plea than an accusation. His eyes shone with desperation. “I haven’t been… myself… since then.”
Panic fluttered in me like a startled animal.
“What do you mean not yourself?”
“I mean I don’t like things I used to like. And I feel different about people now. I need to be myself again. Help me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I did to you. I want to forget it even happened.”
He grabbed me and for a moment I was scared. He shook me hard enough that I bit my tongue. As abruptly as his anger surged it ebbed, and he let me go.
“Please,” he said. “You need to fix me.”
Fix him? I didn’t know how.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and began trudging through the crusty snow toward school. He didn’t follow.
Simon Minton died a week later. I would eventually learn that he hanged himself in his family’s barn.
A month after Simon Minton’s funeral I arrived home from school and smelled alcohol. Other than communion wine, alcohol was forbidden in our house. My father’s voice rose in the sitting room. It was followed by the voice of Clayton Grieve’s father. I didn’t think I’d been noticed, so I snuck to my room. I left the door open a crack so I could hear.
“’Something needs to be done,” Mr. Grieve said. He was usually a calm man, but today his voice was urgent and strained. “Randall is in shock now, but soon he’ll be angry, just as I am. Whatever Martha did to our children is unnatural. They might as well be condemned to Hell. Maybe Hell would be a preferable fate.”
“What am I to do?” Father asked. “I can’t condemn my own daughter…”
“Bernard, we’re not going to hide our children from the world forever.”
“Charles, you need to understand we’re not responsible for what’s happened. Be reasonable…”
“Reasonable?” Mr. Grieve’s voice made me jump. “Are you listening to yourself? Clayton can’t even speak, and he has no heartbeat! How am I and Rosie not supposed to go mad? What about Clayton? Randall and Pauline Minton? Simon carrying on with that rope burn around his GODDAMN NECK?”
I went numb. Clayton and Simon were still alive. Well, not alive exactly, from the sounds of it. And it was my doing. What would happen to me and Father? Perhaps the town would stone us like a couple of medieval witches.
Father sighed. “Okay, I’ll prepare for an exorcism. Give me a week. But understand, Charles, that your children might fall dead once they’ve been cleansed of whatever holds them on their feet. Tell Randall too. Make sure everyone understands.”
“’Jesus wept,” Mr. Grieve said. “Whether this works or not we aren’t hiding any longer.”
“Agreed.”
Mr. Grieve left, and father came down the hallway, stopping at my door. I pretended to sleep.
“Did you hear any of that?”
I kept my eyes closed.
“Doesn’t matter.” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. I smelled alcohol on his breath.
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
I lay awake that night thinking about Clayton Grieve and Simon Minton. I recalled Simon’s haunted eyes when he’d asked me to fix him, and I concluded that immortality was merely a side-effect of my ability. I didn’t give, I took away. I had taken Clayton’s brain tumour away, only it had grown back. And I had ripped something away from Simon that had made him quintessentially Simon. He had killed himself because he couldn’t imagine living life without it. I thought he must have felt the way I had those first few weeks after Mother’s death, when I thought I couldn’t possibly carry on without her. Once again I vowed never to use my power on another person.
As if it were my choice.
Father told me an hour before leaving for the church that I would be staying home. I wasn’t surprised. The day after Mr. Grieve had visited, Father had explained that he had no intention of holding an exorcism. He declared the situation a case of group hysteria triggered by grief and said he wanted to help the families achieve closure. At no time did he acknowledge that Clayton and Simon might still be at home with their parents. He had kept me out of school for the week and forbade me from leaving the house.
“Finish up the dishes before I return,” he said from the foyer. He had come in from readying the horse and carriage, had swapped his mucky clothes for a suit, and was headed out the door.
“I will.” I watched from the kitchen window as he disappeared into the dark. I waited five minutes before tossing my jacket and boots on and going after him.
The church was three miles away. There was no moon to guide me, but I knew the trail by heart. Pulled by our two aging mares, Father wouldn’t arrive much before me.
Once at the church I snuck around back and peeked in a window.
The Grieves sat on diminutive chairs used for Sunday school. I’d known Clayton would be there after what Mr. Grieve had said, but I was still shocked to see him. He looked like any kid might, given the situation – fidgety, glancing about nervously. His skin was white as chalk.
Sitting across from the Grieves were the Mintons — Mr. And Mrs. Minton, Simon, and little sister. Simon looked as pale and waxen as Clayton. When he turned his head I saw a brown discoloration around his neck — the fatal rope burn.
What was I doing here? I had no plan, but I couldn’t let Father handle this on my behalf, no matter how upset he might be with me for disobeying him.
I snuck to the front of the building and hid behind the bushes beside the front entrance. The front doors banged open and Father trundled out carrying a metal container. He waddled backward down the stairs, splashing what I could tell from the smell was gasoline. At the bottom he struck a match and dropped it, and a fire trail zipped back the way he’d come. The windows framing the door blew out with a WHOOMP. Flames danced in their place.
He saw me.
“Martha, I told you to stay home!”
“There are people downstairs!”
He marched over and looked down at me with empty eyes.
“I have to do this,” he said. “What you’ve done, it’s an abomination.”
I fled into the woods. He chased me but I was too fast for him. I eventually broke free of the trees and ran back to the church, which was now ablaze. The acrid smell burned my nostrils, and in the radiant heat my face felt like it was shrinking to my skull.
A dark figure hung from a broken window, arms and torso splayed. The face was covered in blood and lost to the dark, but I could tell from the build and the pigtails that it was Simon’s sister. She had done a poor job of clearing the glass from the frame, so she’d torn herself open from sternum to belly. Flesh and clothing hung in ribbons. Blood pooled on the ground. She turned her eyes to me and blinked lethargically.
I pulled her out, knowing I was doing more damage but not willing to let her burn. I got her out, onto her back, and her eyes, molten orange in the glow of the fire, were wide, fixed on the sky, unmoving.
“I can help,” I whispered to her, and placed my right hand over her bloody mid-section. “I’ll take your pain away.” I closed my eyes and made a sacrilegious demand of God.
He obliged. My shoulder flared, and a ring of electricity, pale against the church flames, encircled my arm and flew like a shooting star into the young girl’s torso. She bounced as if the earth itself had tossed her, and when she hit the ground she took in a whooping breath. Her eyes came back to life and she sat up.
Father grabbed me from behind and dragged me to his horse. I think he took the girl for dead, but I saw her stumble to her feet and disappear into the woods. Father slapped me across the face when I wouldn’t stop fighting him and threw me into the back of the buggy amongst the straw bales.
I stared back at the church. It burned out of control. Six people were dead because of me, but I had saved one.
I fall silent. Nora looks up at me, smiles, and falls back to her knitting.
“Come on!” Darcy says. “You want me to believe you can turn people into zombies? I can’t tell that bullshit to the judge!”
“Not my problem.”
The bus takes an exit off the highway toward a row of colourfully painted businesses. One is called Gifts of the Earth and sports a huge dream catcher in the window. Another, Gramma’s Attic, has Christmas lights framing the door and porcelain dolls, antique-looking teapots, and colorful stitchery on display in the window. There’s a pedicure/manicure place with senior discount rates posted in big letters on the door. Iris has a knack for finding these little oases for the elderly tourist. I imagine she has a map of the country at home covered in pushpins.
The bus pulls into a gas station to the side of the shopping strip. Beside the station sits a restaurant called The Jam Palace which is shaped like a medieval castle.
Once we’re stopped, Iris says: “Welcome to The Jam Palace, everyone! I found this little gem last summer when I went with my friend Julia to Drumheller. They have the best scones I’ve ever tasted, and they sell homemade jam, which is just marvelous! If any of you want to buy some I can store it for you under the bus! I hope you enjoy yourselves!”
I ease myself out of my seat. My butt has gone to sleep and my back is aching. Nora packs her knitting accoutrement into her big cloth bag.
Darcy stands, stretches his lanky frame, and says, “You haven’t answered my question yet. The glove.”
“I told you, it’s a long story. To be continued after lunch.”
The inside of the restaurant feels less childish than the exterior — off-white stucco, thick dark wood beams running along the ceiling, copper lighting fixtures on the walls. Our waitress, a waif who is surely no older than nineteen, smiles as she takes the orders. By the time she gets to us her smile looks strained. She speaks to us very slowly and loudly, a patronizing affectation too many young people mistake for courtesy.
“What can I get you ladies?”
Nora orders pancakes. I order a chicken burrito with a side salad.
“Can you spice that up for me, dear?” I ask.
The waitress’s smile falters. “Do you mean, like, salt and pepper?”
“I was thinking jalapenos.”
“I don’t think we have,” she says. “Not a lot of call for that here.”
“Salt and pepper is fine, then.”
“Look at you!” Iris shouts. “Ordering hot peppers — that’s brave! Julia talked me into trying some Tabasco sauce once, but it wasn’t for me! Whoo! I can’t figure out how people eat that stuff!”
Nora and I wander the shops after lunch. She picks up a handbag at the place with the giant dreamcatcher and I buy a scented candle at Gramma’s Attic. We hold hands on the way back to the bus, something we’ve always done.
“You sure you guys aren’t gay?” Darcy says. He’s leaning against the bus having a smoke.
“I’m sure about us,” Nora says. “Not sure about you.”
“Ouch!” he says. Once we’re back in the bus he wastes no time. “The glove. Let’s hear it.”
I steady myself and continue.
My father was no criminal mastermind. No sooner had the firefighters finished their sifting of the remains of the church than some police officers from Calgary arrived at our doorstep and arrested him. He was dragged off and I never saw him again.
I was now an orphan of the province. My last name was changed to Daniels and I was sent to a mental hospital in Edmonton. There I underwent treatments consisting mostly of sitting with a psychologist and talking about my father. I never spoke about the healings as if they were real because I knew that would afford me a longer stay. Eventually the doctors declared me fit and I was transferred to an orphanage in Calgary and sent back to school.
In high school I met Norman Colter, a gentle introvert one year my senior. We got married a month after graduation. He told me he was as much an orphan as I was — his father had died in the war and he wouldn’t say anything about his mother. I know he was an only child and that’s about all I know. He never asked me about my past, so I never bothered him about his. We were young and the future was our destination, not the past.
We moved to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where Norman accepted a teaching position at Peacock High School. A year later I gave birth to our son Ben.
We like to think we mold our children, but I don’t think I made much of an impression on Ben; he wasn’t the moldable type. He was a colicky infant. As a toddler he frequently threw screaming fits. As a teenager he drove Norman and I to distraction with his recklessness, throwing himself at the world as if he were immune to its dangers.
We all have our favourite parent and Ben’s was his father. Ben caught the debate bug in college and engaged Norman whenever he could on discussions of politics, religion, history. Norman loved to debate even if his son outstripped him in the higher education department. Their discussions were always lengthy and good-natured. Passions ran high – I broke up my fair share of screaming rants that threatened to beckon angry neighbours — but father and son never turned on one another.
Ben was popular with his peers, particularly with the opposite sex. He brought girls home, introduced them briefly to me, then shuttled them off to meet his father. It was Norman’s approval he craved. If a girl engaged Norman in conversation she would be Ben’s obsession for weeks. If she could make him laugh it was months.
Ben was good to me as well. He never left the house without kissing me goodbye, and he always brought me a bouquet of flowers on my birthday. But while he loved me, he worshipped his father, which was fine. More than fine, I think it was healthy for him. Norman was level-headed where Ben was wild, and I think they balanced one another out.
I don’t think Ben ever saw the bad times coming. Maybe he didn’t think life could get as bad as it did. I mean, I wasn’t there for him; I never witnessed him pumping that poison into his veins. But if I had been, would it have made a difference? I used to debate this with myself. Now, I don’t think so. Ben was too much his own man to be swayed.
Norman’s heart attack shocked and confused everyone. He didn’t fit the stereotype. He was in his mid-forties, perpetually thin, active – when President Carter pushed recreational running as the ultimate fitness regime down in the States, Norman picked it up with a vigor. Every morning he rose before the sun, slipped on his track suit and sneakers, and ran three laps through the neighbourhood. He collapsed one morning jogging up the drive.
We spent hours in the hospital waiting room without word. We got an initial report that he was stable, then it seemed the doctors forgot about us. I remember Dinah Shore playing on the small television set bolted to the ceiling. A few times a young nurse’s aide came to the waiting room and asked if we wanted anything to drink. Families came and went; we were constant.
Ben called his girlfriend Isla, who drove down from Regina. Norman and I liked Isla. She was a smart girl, polite, beautiful. Studying to be a journalist. Things between her and Ben appeared to be getting serious.
Isla hugged me when she arrived and tried to assure me everything was going to be okay. She sat with Ben, her head resting on his shoulder, her black hair hanging nearly to his waist.
A doctor finally came and took us to see Norman. He was covered in wires and surrounded by electronic devices; he seemed buried in the technology, diminished. He looked at us and smiled.
“Come here,” he said. He was pale, his voice thin. He patted the bed. “All of you, come sit.” I hugged him. Ben and Isla held his hand. We surrounded him like a shield.
“I’m going to be okay,” he said. “The doctor wants…” He trailed off in a weak cough.
“You should lay a hand on his forehead.” Ben said to me.
I stared at my son.
He stared back at me expectantly, as did Isla.
The hospital kept Norman overnight. They told us he was going to be fine, he just needed to rest. A nurse would talk to me in the morning about his diet and exercise regime moving forward.
People from the high school came by the house in a steady trickle that day to give their best wishes and see how I was coping. The last person left near dusk. Once the front door was closed I joined Ben and Isla in the living room. They were in Norman’s recliner, Isla perched on Ben’s lap with her arm around his neck. Ben was nursing the last beer from the fridge.
“Ben, why did you ask me to lay my hand on your father’s forehead at the hospital today?”
Isla looked slightly embarrassed. Ben didn’t.
“Come on, Mom,” he said in his self-righteous tone, an affectation I had never liked. “You know why I said it. Isla knows too.”
“Knows what?”
“I’ve been to see my grandfather in Calgary.”
I was too stunned to speak.
“I’ve always wanted to know my family history,” he said. “You would never talk about your parents, so I decided to do some research. I know what school you and Dad went to, so I called them up. They told me when you registered and gave me the name on the registration. I followed that name to an orphanage in Calgary. The lady at the orphanage didn’t want to give me specifics, but she did tell me when you came to them and from which city.” Ben shrugged. “The rest took a little digging, but not much. I imagine I would have encountered more resistance thirty years ago.”
I should have known he could follow my past. He had probably had to tell some lies and stroke some egos, but not many. Nobody cared about protecting my identity anymore. And when Ben turned on the charm he got what he wanted.
“When did you go?”
“Last spring break. Isla and I went together.”
“Maybe I should give you two some privacy,” Isla said. She stood up.
“Nonsense,” Ben said. “You’re part of this family now.”
“He’s right,” I said, and she sat back down.
“Your grandfather is a sick man,” I said. “What did he tell you? That I can heal people?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you believed him?”
“No,” he said. He stroked Isla’s hair. She looked like she wanted to disappear. “I don’t believe in the supernatural, you know that. But today I thought we might lose Dad, so what was the worst that could have come from you laying a hand on his forehead?”
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
“You had no right to go see my father.”
“My grandfather,” Ben said.
“He’s not your grandfather!” I shouted. “You have no grandfather! You met a man in prison who killed people a long time ago over some twisted delusion!”
The more upset I got the calmer Ben’s expression became, which enraged me. He was like his father, putting up a wall of indifference when faced with ugly realities.
“For what it’s worth,” Ben said, “he says he thinks about you constantly and hopes you’re happy.”
“Get out,” I said. “You two aren’t staying here tonight.”
They left. Once they were gone, the silence of the house pushed in on me. I had a glass of wine, something I hadn’t done for years, then went to bed, something I suddenly realized I had never done without Norman beside me.
I had trouble getting to sleep. I kept thinking about Norman, even though the doctor had said he would be fine. As I pictured him alone in his hospital bed my right shoulder first began to ache, then tingle, then burn, as if there were an ember at its center about to burst into flame. It eventually settled and I lost consciousness.
I dreamt, for the first time in a long time, of a burning church, and of my father’s hard expression as he slapped me across the face.
The doctors were wrong. Norman had another heart attack in the middle of the night, and by the time they attended to him he was already gone.
Ben and Isla didn’t call or come to see me, but many of Norman’s co-workers and students did. The day felt like a dream, time flying by in uneven stretches. I had never known just how many lives my husband had touched.
A few days later I called Ben at his dorm. I assumed he’d gotten the news of his father’s death and gone back to the college with Isla. I figured he was sulking. I understood if he needed time before talking to me; I needed time as well.
“Hello?” A man answered, not Ben.
“Hello, this is Ben’s mom. Is he there?”
“Ben’s gone.”
For a horrible second my heart dropped. “What?”
The man must have heard the strain in my voice. “No. Shit, no, you thought… He’s not gone gone. He left with his girlfriend this morning. I think he pulled out of school. My name’s Brad, by the way, I live across the hall. His door was open, and the place is emptied out. I heard the phone ringing and thought it might be Ben calling to say he’d forgotten something.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. I understand. Thanks Brad.”
“No worries. Goodbye, Mrs. Colter.”
“Goodbye.”
I put the phone in its cradle. I was not surprised he’d skipped out. He was looking for answers, a quest that had begun with him finding his grandfather.
Life went on. I didn’t hear from Ben for a week, then a month. One day I realized it had been a year.
You don’t have to chase after your children once they’ve left, you only need to wait until they need your help. Ben wouldn’t need my help for a long time, but when he finally did he was in more trouble than I could have imagined.
One day the doorbell woke me from a nap. I had no idea who it might be; people didn’t visit me as a rule. This was close to a decade after Norman’s passing and I was living the life of a hermit, leaving the house to get groceries and work my shifts at the grocery store and that was about it.
It was Ben. I didn’t recognize him at first. The last time I’d seen him his hair had been trimmed and tidy; now it was shoulder length and greasy. He’d grown a beard. The deep wrinkles on his face made him look like an old man.
“Mom, Isla is dying.”
I hesitated. As much as I wanted to protect him he looked unhinged.
“Where is she?”
“She’s at her place, I guess,” he said, rubbing his face. “We broke up two years ago. She’s married to another man.”
I let him into the house, directed him to the living room.
“She has cancer,” he said once he was seated. “I’ve been following her, watching her go to her chemo sessions.” He rubbed his face again and when he dropped his hands they drummed nervously on his thighs. “I know how pathetic that is, but I still love her. I can’t help it.”
“Have you been doing drugs?”
He laughed, and I saw his teeth were black at the roots.
“You bet.” He said, holding one arm out so I could see the tracks. “Are you going to lecture me now?”
“No,” I said. “Why did you come here? Why now?”
“Because I need you to help her.”
“I can’t. Not the way you’re thinking.”
“Prove it. Come with me. Lay your hand on her and show me it doesn’t work.”
“How could I do that, Ben? Just knock on her door and…”
He lunged before I could finish, dragging me off the sofa, down the hall, out the front door. He would have gotten me into his car if I hadn’t kicked him in the shin. I scrambled inside and made it to the kitchen before he hip-checked me into the counter.
“Sorry…” he said. “Sorry, Mom, but I can’t… I have to help Isla…” He went to a knife block beside the stove and got a medium-sized cleaver. “You have to understand…”
As I got to my feet he grabbed my wrist and forced my hand palm-down on the table.
“No! Ben, you can’t do this!”
“I have no choice.” He brought the cleaver down.
At first the pain was like hitting a wall; it stunned me. Then it bloomed, and I screamed. I slipped toward the ground, but Ben scooped me up and sat me in a chair. He grabbed a dishtowel from the fridge door and wrapped it around my profusely bleeding hand.
I was in a daze. He scooped the three fingers he’d amputated off the table and shoved them in his pocket. My blood had drawn crazy patterns on everything. I looked at my makeshift bandage — red pulsed through the fabric and ran down my wrist.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, his voice high and trembling. “I’ll call 911.”
He did, and then he left.
As I waited for the ambulance I thought of how useless I’d been to Norman and to Ben. I knew that if my son ever came back I would let him in despite the horror that had just happened. This is the frailty of parenthood. I wished I could have the strength of indifference that strangers possessed. I wished I could see him at my door and tell him to leave, even call the cops.
I lifted my mutilated hand. Despite the pain I pushed it against my forehead. I felt the heat gather in my shoulder, and I let it shoot down on me like a bullet.
The paramedics found me passed out on the floor.
We’re at another stop. Iris finally has the decency to look wilted.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “we’re about thirty minutes out. Feel free to use the washroom or pick up some snacks while we fuel up. If you need help stay in your seat, I will be coming around.”
Darcy is gawking at me.
“You made yourself immortal to heal your fingers?”
I pat his arm. “I’m not a healer, Darcy, I’m a thief. I stole Clayton’s tumor; I stole the darkness in Simon that made him want to hurt things; and I stole the emotional chains I carried around for my son and my dead husband.”
The bus stops. Iris appears beside us.
“How are things here, ladies?” Nora says, “Iris, Darcy has been a perfect gentleman this whole time.”
It’s the last day of our trip, and I’m walking back from dinner at the lodge. The evening carries a warm breeze. Beside me, the lake slaps against the shore. I’m walking along the wooden plank sidewalk that cuts through the shrubs leading to our cabin, focusing on my feet. These wooden slats were a stupid choice for a place frequented by the elderly.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” someone says, and I don’t see the speaker at first, but then I see it’s Darcy up ahead.
“Nora’s not feeling well,” I say. “What brings you out here?”
He’s holding a knife.
“I’ve been thinking about the story you told me,” he says. He laughs, a sound devoid of joy. “In fact, I can’t stop thinking about it. I need to know if you’re telling the truth.”
He lunges and catches me with the knife in my left side. The blade slides in and out, cold then hot. Shocked, I step forward and slip in my own blood, going down hard.
“Are you immortal, Martha?” he asks, bending down and looking me in the eye.
I slam my gloved hand against his face, and I immediately feel his darkness, so like what I realize I had felt in Simon Minton. The ball of electricity shoots down my arm and strikes him in the face, and he screams and falls back. He scrambles to his feet.
“What did you do to me?” he screams. “Bitch, what did you do to me?”
He runs into the darkness, and that’s the last I’ll see of Darcy Tannen. His new life will bring him challenges, which I hope he’ll be able to overcome.
I get up very slowly, my mid-section on fire. I think I might have cracked some ribs. The bleeding is bad, but it will slow soon enough. I manage to get upright and walking again. Not far to go. I take my time.
Nora is on the couch watching television. Presumably sweaty from her walk, she’s removed her top. Her stomach, from sternum to waist, is a tangle of old scars like choppy waves on the sea. She smiles, then sees I’m hurt.
“What happened?”
“It’s okay, it was just Darcy. It’s over now.”
“You’re bleeding!”
“That doesn’t matter.”
On the table in front of her lays the items she went to the nearby gas station down the road to get — a jerry can of gasoline, a stack of newspapers, some matches, and a bottle of sleeping pills. We’ve planned this carefully. Iris might lose her job, and that’s too bad, but sometime soon our tired hearts are going to stop but we’ll keep walking and talking, and what then? We’ve decided we don’t want to find out.
Nora helps me into bed. She wipes at my knife wound with a wet cloth. There’s not much to wipe, it’s already healing. She leaves me and busies herself getting things prepared. She shreds the newspaper into the garbage cans in various rooms and douses them with gas. She comes back to bed. We take our pills because we aren’t keen to find out what burning to death feels like. She goes and lights the cans and then we both settle in. We hold hands. The fire alarms begin to wail just as unconsciousness settles over me. The alarms are useless, because this cabin’s occupants have no interest in escape.
Iris sees the flames first, and frantically calls 911. She watches helplessly as the cabin burns, her mascara dribbling off the end of her chin. Once she’s calmed down, she calls the home and tells them what has happened. Then, like a traumatized mother hen, she checks on the others.
Firefighters arrive. They fight the flames, but in the end the little cabin burns to the ground, leaving nothing but a black crater. It’s midnight when the last truck backs out onto the service road and rolls into the night.
Early in the morning, before the sun rises, the wind picks up. Free at last, Nora and I spin among the rustling elms. We skim the surface of the lake before gliding into the endless sky.