Famished Lover (35 page)

“Uncle Rufus forgot these!” he squealed. “And the birdies. Will you play with me?
Please!
”

“All right.”

I glanced through the window and saw Lillian, not in the kitchen, not rolling out loaves of dough or stitching up someone's torn trousers, but sitting alone in the front room, her spine quite straight, not resting against the back of the
chesterfield, not even close. She was staring at nothing, with a face that looked spiritless and bleak.

“Come on!” Michael said, and pulled at my hand.

“You go ahead and practice. I'll be there in a minute.”

“
I can't practice by myself!
”

“Just . . . just a few minutes,” I said quietly. “You go down to the meadow.”

He caught my tone then, and the stricken expression that must have been on my face registered on his own. One of the rackets dropped from his hand, and he didn't pick it up. “Go down to the meadow, Michael,” I said more firmly.

Off he ran. If Lillian heard the exchange her face didn't betray it. She seemed to be braced and waiting for me to come in and do the unspeakable.

I looked at the door but my feet didn't move. I imagined myself taking first one step, then another. I saw my hand on the screen door — the door I'd cut and planed and sanded and hammered together, painted and fit into that space, twice — I saw some ghost of myself walking into the gloom and standing before the sad, sad lady sitting so all alone.

Lillian
, the ghost called — suddenly the voice seemed to surround me. And then my mind was filled with all manner of things that might be said — little, innocent words that could be stitched together in so many ways. Soft and tiny strings of sound to set the world to war.

I don't know how long I stood looking at the future, so full of certain pain and fog before there could be any hope of getting past it. Yet finally, without a conscious command, my feet
were
moving, my hand was on the door, the door fell open, and it seemed impossible to keep from striding through.

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council in the preparation of this manuscript. Thanks too to Elizabeth Hay, Laura Brandon, Susan Whitney, Kathy Bergquist, Dave Murray, Kate Preston, Helena Spector, Frances Dawson, Michael Dawson, and Reinhard Pummer for their help with early drafts, and to the many other friends and family who likewise offered advice, support and encouragement; to the staffs of Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian War Museum, the Imperial War Museum, and the McCord Museum for their help on research matters; to Laurel Boone and Bethany Gibson for their inspired editorial guidance; to my agent Ellen Levine for never faltering; and to my wife, muse, partner and first reader, Suzanne Evans, for everything.

Like
The Sojourn
, this story draws on a few threads of family history and mythology. I am indebted to Philip Cumyn's memoir and family history
The Sun Always Shines
, and to various family papers and remembrances shared by Joan Matthews and my mother, Suzanne Cumyn, among others. But
The Famished Lover
is entirely a work of fiction, and, except
for references to public figures, the names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination; their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.