Enter, Night (9 page)

“How much do you think she”—Jeremy indicated Morgan with a
nod of his head, not wanting to say her name in case it woke her—“has
figured out about what happened back here before she was born?”

“I don’t know. We’ve always been very careful when we spoke about
the family, as neutral as we could possibly be. We didn’t want to plant
monsters in her head.”

“Maybe it’ll be different this time,” Jeremy said. “Maybe things will
have changed and it won’t be . . . well, the way it was.”

“What was that Faulkner quote from
Requiem for a Nun
that Jack
loved so much?”

Jeremy closed his eyes. “‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’”

They drove in silence for half an hour, the car interred in the
northern Ontario darkness as effectively as if it was a mine cart travelling
a mile and a half beneath the earth. Then the road abruptly widened and
Christina gasped.

“Look,” she said.

Jeremy looked. He drew in a sharp intake of breath.

It was as though the night sky had begun bleeding muddy orange
light from a rip in the clouds, threaded now with skeletal fingers of
luminous red and yellow. And the clouds now parted like stage curtains,
revealed the low full moon, vast and sovereign, and seemingly large
enough to touch the edge of the earth.

Beneath the moon, the town of Parr’s Landing rose out of the
blackness, stretching to meet it. Beyond the town, the vast forests and
the cliffs above Bradley Lake held Parr’s Landing in the same stony
centuries-old embrace.

This was the same view the Indians had for a thousand years before
the arrival of the French and English. It was the same view the French
Jesuits first saw when they arrived on the shores of New France, travelling
by canoe and overland to build the doomed mission of St. Barthélemy to
the Ojibwa in the seventeenth century.

It was the same view Christina Parr had seen every night for the first
seventeen years of her life, and the last vista of Parr’s Landing she’d seen
when she turned her head, like Lot’s wife, that night almost sixteen years
in the past when she’d fled the town with Jack Parr.

Unlike Lot’s wife, however, Christina hadn’t been turned into a pillar
of salt as punishment for looking back. But for its part, Parr’s Landing
might as well have been petrified by her backward glance for all it had
changed.

Faulkner was right,
she thought.

“Wake up, Morgan.” Christina called gently over her shoulder. And
before she could stop herself: “We’re home.” Then she turned the Chevelle
left on Main Street, onto Martin Street, and began the steep uphill climb
towards Parr House.

Adeline Parr heard
the sound of wheels on the gravel below her
bedroom window and thought:
Now it begins
. She sighed.
I hope it’s not
all too awfully unpleasant
.

She stared intently into the bevelled mirror of the nineteenth century Biedermeier burlwood dressing table at which she sat and took
her own measure in the glass. The result was pleasing, if slightly severe,
and it suited her purposes admirably. She adjusted her pearls, and then
took a piece of tissue paper from the enamelled box and expertly blotted
the lipstick on her bottom lip till it, too, was flawless. By habit, she
glanced at the silver-framed photograph of her dead husband and smiled
at it as though waiting for Augustus Parr to tell her how beautiful she
still was.

Her gold Piaget watch read eleven-thirty. She sighed again.
Adeline stood up and smoothed her dark grey skirt, crossed the
floor of the bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Then she went
downstairs to greet the adventuress who had stolen and murdered her
favourite son; her bastard granddaughter; and her great mistake of a
second son.

The smile Adeline had been practising
froze on her face when she
first laid eyes on Morgan, hanging shyly behind her common slut of a
mother, in the doorway of Parr House.

Adeline barely registered Christina, but she felt her heart might
stop when she saw Jack’s face staring back at her. Jack’s face, except it
was the open and trusting face of a young girl, with none of the rage Jack
had shown Adeline before he left. The girl’s hair was the same as Jack’s—
thick and dark brown, with caramel highlights when the light hit it just
so. Her eyes were the same as Jack’s, too: dark brown, almost-black irises
with pupils like dark pools.

“Welcome, Morgan,” she said. “I’m your grandmother, Adeline Parr.
It’s nice to meet you.”

Adeline extended her hand and Morgan shook it politely. Under
other circumstances, she would have been delighted to see that the girl
had been inculcated with some measure of good manners, but she was
still privately reeling from the shock of meeting the ghost of her eldest
son. The girl’s skin was lighter than Jack’s but more like Adeline’s own,
which she knew would please her when she recovered.

“It’s nice to meet you, too . . . Grandmother.”

For Morgan, there was an edge of a question in the way she said it,
as though she were uncertain—not about who Adeline was, but what to
call her. Certainly nothing in Adeline’s severe elegance inspired cuddly
appellatives like “granny” or “grandma,” nor had stories about Adeline
been any significant part of Morgan’s childhood mythology, apart from
the odd cryptic reference by one of her parents.

“Yes, you may call me Grandmother,” Adeline said, smiling graciously
as though she were bestowing a great favour on Morgan. “I dislike
diminutives, especially when addressing one’s elders.”

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, yes, Grandmother.”

Adeline smiled down at Morgan again, then looked past Christina,
whom she still hadn’t greeted, to where Jeremy hung back behind them
in the doorway.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Behold the prodigal son returns,” Adeline said. Her expression was
neutral. “That’s Luke 15:11-32, son. I trust that, even given your lifestyle,
you haven’t entirely forgotten the word of God?”

“Have you been rehearsing that for the last ten years, Mother? Or
did it just spring to mind when you saw me?” Adeline’s eyes shifted
quickly to Morgan, then back at her son. “I wouldn’t expect you to say
something as simple as ‘welcome home,’ but still—The Bible? Luke? My
‘lifestyle’? Before I even cross the threshold?”

“Don’t be insolent, Jeremy. I won’t have it. You’re not back in
Toronto
.”

She spat out the word Toronto as though it were foulness—the way a
religious fanatic might have said
Babylon
or
Sodom
. “You’re in my house,
in the town founded by your ancestors on a site made holy with the blood
of Catholic martyrs. You can behave and show me respect, otherwise you
needn’t cross the threshold at all.”

“I’m not seventeen anymore, Mother,” Jeremy said. “I’m almost
thirty. It’s been a while since I’ve been susceptible to that tone of voice,
or those phrases.” He met his mother’s eyes evenly. “It’s been a very long
drive and we’re very tired, especially Morgan. Shall I bring our bags in
from the car, or should we drive down to the village and see if the Gold
Nugget motel is open at this hour? I’d rather not start the talk in town
about us being back by signing my name—the Parr name—in a motel
register at this hour, especially not for three of us. But I will if that’s what
you’d prefer we do. It’s your call, Mother.”

Thwarted fury passed across Adeline’s face like summer lightning,
but too quickly for anyone but Jeremy to have seen it, and he only noticed
because he’d seen it before and recognized it for what it was. Jeremy had
played the one card he always had at his disposal—Adeline’s particular
personal horror of scandal. The threat of exposing their clandestine
return—the slut who’d gotten knocked up by Jack Parr, then married
him; the faggot; the illegitimate daughter—to public discourse was a
powerful one. Adeline’s face was very pale, and two spots of colour had
appeared high on the ridge of her cheekbones. But the neutrality of her
expression hadn’t changed.

“Quite,” Adeline said, calmly. “Welcome home. You’re most welcome,
all of you.”

“Mrs. Parr—” Christina began.

“Morgan?” Adeline said, cutting Christina off in mid-sentence,
turning instead to her granddaughter. “Why don’t you help your Uncle
Jeremy with the suitcases? I have a nice room prepared for you upstairs.
It’s very pretty. I think you’ll like it. And you must be tired. It has a canopy
bed. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, Grandmother.” There was an unfamiliar impressed awe in
Morgan’s voice that chilled Christina to the core. “I’ve seen pictures of
one. They’re beautiful.”

Adeline laughed, a silvery hostess laugh. “Well, hurry up and get
your bags out of your car and you can see your bed, darling. Uncle Jeremy
can show you the way.” She turned to her son. “Morgan will be in the east
wing. In the yellow room, Jeremy. You’ll have your old room, of course.

We’ll put dear Christina next to Morgan. Everything has been prepared.”
When Jeremy and Morgan had gone out to the car, Christina turned to Adeline. “Mrs. Parr, thank you so much for taking us in. As you can imagine, it’s been a very difficult time for all of us, especially Morgan.”

“Christina, please listen carefully to what I am about to tell you,” Adeline said coldly. “I will only say it once, and then we will never have this conversation again. Let me be perfectly plain: taking you and Morgan into my home is an act of charity, one I’m very happy to extend. She is, after all, my granddaughter—my eldest son’s child, and very likely the end of our family line. What you and Jack did was unforgivable, and I do not—and will never—forgive either of you for it. You took my son away from me, and now he’s dead.” Adeline paused, composing herself.

“That said,” she continued implacably, “as my son
is
dead, I can only do one thing—the right thing. And that is to take you into my home and extend to you all the privileges of a daughter-in-law, if only for Morgan’s sake. You will live here at Parr House as long as you need to. Morgan has already been enrolled in the town high school, and instructions have been given to the administration that any harassment of her based on any . . . past questionable history involving her birth, Jack’s death, or Jeremy’s perversion, is to be dealt with immediately and harshly. When she has graduated, I shall see to it that her university tuition is paid for and that she is properly prepared for life in the way that you ensured my son, Jack, would never be when you got pregnant and ruined his life.”

“Mrs. Parr—”

Adeline raised her finger to silence her daughter-in-law. “I’m not finished. In return, you will conduct yourself respectfully and respectably in and out of this house. You will stay out of my sight except for mealtimes, at which time we will all be together. You will defer to my wishes at all times, especially with regard to Morgan’s upbringing while she is under my roof. Unlike you, she is a Parr by blood rather than by convenience.”

“By
convenience
?” Christina practically shouted the word. “I was
pregnant! We were in love! You forced us to leave here! You threatened my family! I never saw my father again because of what you did to us. He died while I was in Toronto, and he’d been dead for six months before I even found out he was gone! And for what? Jack and I loved each other. We have a beautiful daughter—your granddaughter—and we were happy. We had everything before he died. And when he did, I had nowhere else to come except back to the Landing.”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Christina. You and Jack made your own choices. If you find my conditions too arduous,
Mrs. Parr,
” Adeline added, putting a vicious accent on the marital title she clearly felt Christina was unworthy to bear, “you may leave my house and fend for yourself. You will be entirely on your own, as will your daughter.”

From outside, Christina heard the Chevelle’s doors slam shut, and the sound of Jeremy and Morgan’s feet on the gravel of the circular driveway in front of Parr House.

“Do we understand each other, Christina? Be quick. I hear Jeremy and Morgan coming back in from the car. I warn you—be very, very careful in case you’re thinking of making a scene in front of your daughter and my son. I can make life even more difficult and painful for you than it is right now. Believe me. You have no idea the scope of my influence.”
Oh, but I do,
Christina thought, feeling fresh hate and fresh desperation in equal measure.
I do. I felt it fifteen years ago, and now I’m feeling it again tonight. Nothing has changed. Nothing.
Her vision blurred.

Adeline’s pale, hard face swam. Christina brushed the tears away with the back of her hand, realizing suddenly that this particular die had been cast the moment she’d first heard that Jack had been killed on that highway back in February. The rest of this drama was a matter of everyone playing their assigned parts, particularly Christina, at least until she could figure a way out, back to the city. Any city. Anywhere but here.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Yes
what,
Christina?”

“Yes, Mrs. Parr. We understand each other.”

“Good. Oh, and Christina . . . ?”

“What?”

“You may call me Adeline. After all,” she added, the mockery in her voice both cruel and unmistakable, “we’re
family
now.”

When Morgan and Jeremy came through the door, laden with suitcases, the sight of Adeline smiling beatifically with her arm around Christina’s shoulders greeted them.

To Morgan it looked as though her mother had been crying. With the trusting innocence of her inexperience and tender age, she assumed that her mother and grandmother had been discussing her father. It was either that, or the reunion was an emotional one for her mother, given that it was her first time back home since Morgan had been born. She looked at her smiling grandmother and saw only sweetness and an implied offer
of safety and security. In that moment, her heart overflowed with relief, and with gratitude towards Adeline.