Cadillac Cathedral (20 page)

Once Iris had sung the next verse alone, several members of the audience clapped hands in time with the repeated chorus.

How were the white- and blonde-haired women responding to this? Apparently they were pleased. This time — his second glance in their direction — it seemed the one at the far end had a familiar look about her. The nose perhaps, or the cheekbones.

Well. Of course it would be too much of a coincidence. He found it hard to imagine Myrtle Birdsong as a fan of country music.

Iris’s second song was “Will You Miss Me,” sung just as it had been sung on the veranda, though with more gusto — Iris singing the title phrase, splitting the “Will” into two distinct syllables, and the men singing the phrase: “
Miss me when I’m gone!
” The desire to be not-missed had taken on considerable energy and determination. It sounded to Arvo like some sort of challenge, possibly even a dare.

Amongst the women friends, the one with the cheekbones could have been Myrtle Birdsong. Why shouldn’t this be her? She’d liked music. She’d taken piano lessons from the woman next door. She might not be exactly a fan but she wouldn’t be a snob. No doubt she
went out with friends occasionally, to concerts of this nature. She tilted her head towards the woman on her right and said something brief — then both women tilted back their heads and laughed.

Of course he could not hear her laughter, since Iris was now into her third song. “Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears / While we all sup sorrow with the poor.”

After the fourth “Hard times, come again no more!” the applause was loud enough and long enough to keep Carmichael grinning for a month, wherever he was hiding. Was he in the room? By the time the clapping had died down completely, Iris Carmichael and her band had bowed and bowed again and left the stage to disappear beyond a side door in the wood-panelled wall.

If that was Myrtle Birdsong, would she recognize him if she looked this way? She had probably not even thought of him since they’d spoken briefly at that funeral years ago. She would think it preposterous if he went over and told her he would be driving up to her door tomorrow morning. Behind the wheel of a hearse.

“Thank you!” said the emcee, himself clapping. Then he announced a brief intermission. “Food and drink can be found in the back room. And when you return, our own home-grown version of ‘Wilf Carter and the Rhythm Pals.’ After that, the Forty Voices Choir will join all our fiddlers for the treat of a lifetime!”

Arvo was glad to stand up and relieve his cramped legs. These old pews had been built when people had shorter limbs. If their behinds were as bony as his they must have brought their own cushions.

“She aint Emmylou Harris,” Peterson said, “but she sure knows how to give it all she’s got. I was scared her throat might burst right open, she was working so hard.”

Cynthia said, “She was lovely! Lovely! And they were having so much fun! I remember that girl when she was just learning to walk.
Her mother carried her around in her arms for so long I thought the child’s legs would never have a chance to get strong. And it turns out she was developing a good strong pair of lungs!”

The row directly in front of them seemed to have been chosen by people as their route for filing out towards the aisle and a corner staircase — for the food or the washroom, he supposed, or a cigarette in the fresh air. Laughing, some of them. Chatting happily. Plenty of them were white-haired, his age or older. Two women coming this way were particularly animated, laughing, the taller one shaking her head. She was the one who looked, he thought, a little like Myrtle, or at least how he’d imagined Myrtle might look, based on memory and that blurred newspaper photo he’d once seen. In fact, he was almost certain this could be her.

When she was about to pass by in front of him he said her name, though softly, so that only someone named Myrtle would hear.

Well, she did look up to him and smiled mildly, but gave her head the smallest shake, and walked on by. Of course it wasn’t her.

What a fool he would have felt if she’d stopped and he’d had to explain his mistake while a line of impatient people waited behind her! It was enough to make him wonder once again if he was an idiot to think of driving up to her house tomorrow morning. Why would she be anything but confused or annoyed to see him?

She would claim not to remember him. He would have to make several attempts to remind her of who he was, who he had been, and she would apologize for having no memory of him whatsoever.

Of course he could not drive the hearse up to her door in the morning. He would not contact her at all. Far too much time had gone by and since that wedding reception he had never made any effort to get in touch.

“I don’t think I need to come back for their ‘treat of a lifetime,’” he
said to the others. “This day has already worn me out. My whole body is straining for bed.”

Peterson raised his eyebrows to question Cynthia, who shrugged. “Fine by me. Though I did have a bit of a crush on one of the Rhythm Pals once, for a while. The original ones. Mike, Mark, or Jack — I’m not sure which!”

They did not leave until after Arvo had found Carmichael chatting with someone down near the stage and had given him a silent thumbs-up. Carmichael had dipped a bow to show he’d noticed. He knew, now, that they had come, had seen and heard his granddaughter putting on a show. He wasn’t likely to notice whether they returned after the intermission.

Once they’d returned to the motel, Cynthia went immediately to the second room where, she promised, she would tell Lucy that Peterson had already dropped off to sleep. Peterson stretched out on the bed farthest from the door. “Lucy will be pissed I didn’t suggest we share that other room, but you didn’t give me any signals about wanting to share this one with Cynthia. It’s hard to believe how crazy I was for that woman once. I liked how she was different but I didn’t think much beyond that.”

“Well,” Arvo said. “I guess there needs to be a few Lucys in the world, but we wouldn’t want to have too many of them at the same time. I can easily imagine your Lucy pestering a person’s sore spot until she’s finished him off, like one of her hens. You spend enough time with chickens you’re bound to end up behaving like them.”

“Says you,” Peterson said to the ceiling. “You never had a woman you were crazy about.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Arvo said.

“Not that woman from Thunder Bay! Good lord, man! I thought when you pushed her onto the bus it was because …”

“Because I wanted her gone.”

“Some other mystery woman then.” Peterson sat up in bed to have a good look at the man who’d admitted to something he’d never even hinted at before. “Where’ve you kept her all these years?”

“Up here,” Arvo said, tapping his forehead.

Of course he knew he could not back out of his plan for the morning. It had probably been something like this anxiety in his gut that had prevented Martin from visiting his son in Saskatchewan, losing the opportunity to confront whatever problem there had been between them. He had thought: “Not now, but maybe next summer” year after year. And of course now there was no “next summer” for Martin, and a visit was no longer possible.

Arvo was half undressed when the door rattled from someone’s knocking. “Yes?” he said, without opening it. “Some of us are nearly naked in here.”

“I’m the manager,” the voice said. “I’d like a word.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well. Okay. I realize this is unconventional, but I have someone downstairs who says he wants to make you an offer for that hearse you got tied up downstairs. An
improved
offer, he called it. A fellow in a loud plaid jacket, drives a Lexus? He says his lawyers claim he may have a case for challenging your ownership. I refused to give him your room number.”

“Thank you,” Arvo said. “Tell him if his lawyers keep on digging they may get a big surprise.”

“Yes sir,” said the voice of the manager. “But I doubt he will give up that easy.”

“Good night then,” Arvo said.

“But since I have your attention,” the manager’s voice said, “I would be happy to make you an offer myself. I can imagine mounting
that vehicle up on the roof, something to catch attention and bring people in off the road for the night. This motel’s so ordinary it’s hardly noticed by traffic racing by. I could rename the motel.
The Vintage
, maybe. ”

Had the manager thought this through? Curiosity might cause people to pull in for a closer look but it wasn’t likely to make them want to sleep in a bed with a hearse sitting above their heads.

“No thank you,” Arvo said. “But you can tell the other fellow I may call the police if he doesn’t leave us alone.”

Of course he had no intention of calling the cops. A policeman would be required to ask any number of awkward questions, and no doubt expect to see ownership papers that did not exist.

Naturally, now he would not be able to sleep. If the realtor had followed him all this distance, he was capable of hiring a tow truck to haul the hearse away, even if he had to take the staircase with it. The motel manager, too, could be planning to hide it somewhere — pretend in the morning that it had been stolen. This close to looking up Myrtle Birdsong, this close to taking Martin home, he could not afford to take the chance of losing the Cadillac Cathedral now — even if it meant staying awake all night.

And yet — though he hated to admit this — if he did fall asleep there would be some relief in waking up to find this whole business had been taken out of his hands. If the realtor managed to steal the hearse, he might be spared a painful disappointment. He would have tried. Life would continue. He could still remember the golden-haired girl he’d adored from the start. And he would have someone else to blame whenever he was tempted to kick himself for not going through with his plan.

Well, dammit, this was what he had allowed to happen at the vocational school. His pals had joined the group of girls that included
Myrtle Birdsong as they were about to leave the cafeteria, but he had stayed back and watched from a distance as they walked away in a cluster, all chatting. What had he expected? That she would turn and call him over?

She hadn’t noticed him, or if she had she’d thought it was his job to haul his lanky frame over to join her and her friends. Instead, he’d gone back to his dormitory room to finish reading
Lord Jim
or something, hating himself for the cowardice. Hating his friends for not forcing him to join them. Hating her for not calling him over.

He wasn’t eighteen any more. He was a man with most of his life behind him. How many chances could a man afford to ignore?

“Too bad Herbie’s not here to use my bed,” he said, now, to Peterson. He laid his dress pants and shirt neatly over the back of a chair, then, in his underwear, gathered up a couple of blankets and dragged a second chair over to the window. “Even if I nod off and slobber with my face against the glass I want them to think there’s someone up here keeping watch.”

CHAPTER 12

HE MAY HAVE DOZED
off briefly now and then, but he was awake when his watch hands made a perfect right angle. Three o’clock. The Cathedral hearse was still anchored at the foot of the stairs. He ought to be able to relax, but recalling his plan for the morning stirred up such turmoil that he did not fall asleep again until some time after four, and only after deciding to pick Martin up after breakfast and immediately head for home. He’d been a fool to imagine anything else.

When he wakened again, this time to full daylight, it took a moment to recognize where he was, and to recall why he was sitting in a chair with his chin on the windowsill and his slimy face against the glass, looking out upon a dull morning parking lot: a few cars, several
empty parking spaces. The hearse was still where he’d left it.

There might almost have been some relief if it had disappeared.

When he’d wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and gone down to make sure that all was well, he could see that nothing had been tampered with. No one had removed the casket. Cynthia’s flowers hadn’t bloomed, but neither had they wilted.

Peterson appeared above at the veranda railing, buttoning his shirt. “They probably arrest people who drive in their underwear,” he said. “Or were you planning to wear that blanket to a pow-wow somewhere?”

It was too late to back out. To give up now would make him ashamed for the rest of his life. “Go have some breakfast,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the dining room. “I’ve a small errand to do first.”

Peterson laughed, and leaned over the railing to drop spit to the pavement.

“No sign of the women?” Arvo said, once he’d reached the top of the stairs.

“Probably killed each other by now,” Peterson said. “You go do what you have to do. I’ll see what sort of grub this outfit’s got on offer.”

The women had still not appeared by the time Arvo had showered and shaved and dressed, and then gone down to drive the Cathedral hearse off the lot. He followed the street that would lead him down towards the area of town where Myrtle Birdsong lived and where he’d once lived himself: winding streets, older homes on large lots, with a good deal of overgrown and overlapping greenery.