Once We Had a Country (36 page)

“Shit, I can’t come back.” He sounds desolate. “I couldn’t look her in the eyes. You, neither.”

Before she can respond, there’s a noise from nearby. It’s Brid, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, glaring at her.

“Is that him?” Rushing forward, she snatches the receiver from Maggie’s hand and shouts into it. “You asshole! Leave us alone!” She slams it onto its cradle, hard enough to set off the bell.

“It’s all right,” says Maggie, though it isn’t, anyone can see that. “He was just—”

“I don’t care,” says Brid. “I don’t care, I don’t care.”

Brid slides down with her back against the cupboard until she’s sitting on the floor, her knees drawn against her chest. Elliot appears and nuzzles her side, prowling around her, looking for his chance to climb into her lap. It’s going to be a disaster. But when Maggie kneels beside her, Brid looks at her with an expression of confusion, not despair, as though wanting reassurance, as if she might be able to accept the giving of comfort. Maggie hopes for the phone to ring, for Wale to call back, but it stays silent. With a deep breath, she puts an arm around Brid and begins to explain.

T
he house is immaculate. The baseboards have been dusted and the magazines gathered into tidy stacks, while the refrigerator is barren of lists and magnets. Out in the orchard, Maggie puts away a wheelbarrow and picks litter from the creek bed, then returns to the house and sweeps the hall until Brid comes downstairs with her purse and says she’s ready to go. After a few minutes, the real estate agent arrives. Brid sits on the bottom stair morosely as Maggie shows the woman around the rooms. The agent voices her appreciation, saying she could tell stories about how some tenants leave things, but Maggie offers her no encouragement. She only puts on her shoes and wishes the woman luck with the open house.

At the diner in Virgil, Brid and Maggie occupy a booth facing one another, each with a book in hand, neither of them turning pages very often.

“You understand it’s because I’m out of money, right?” Maggie says after a time.

“Yeah.”

“When we’re both in Boston again, we’ll find a place together.”

“Maggie, you already told me this.”

“I can drive you there—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

Maggie frowns into her book and doesn’t say anything more.

A few vehicles are still parked in the drive when Maggie and Brid return to the farmhouse, so they wait in the camper until only the real estate agent’s car is left. At last they go inside, Brid heading upstairs while Maggie meanders around the ground floor. The lights in all the rooms are on, and there’s music from the record player. She finds the agent in the mud room, mopping up footprints from a prospective buyer who ventured into the backyard. The agent says it was a promising afternoon.

On either side of the rectory’s front door are potted conifers strung with coloured bulbs. As Maggie makes her way toward them from the camper van, she counts the days until Christmas. Fifteen to go. This time last year she was trying to choose a gift for her father. She settled on a pair of woollen gloves. If she had known it was her last present to him, she would have bought him something better.

From within the house comes Lenka’s voice yelling
in Czech. Maggie hesitates prior to knocking. There are more shouts, followed by footsteps, before the door is flung open to reveal Lenka with cheeks left glossy by tears.

“I’ll come back,” says Maggie.

“No, please, is excellent time. Come, help me murder him.”

Josef sits at the dining table pressing at his shirt with a napkin, the wineglass beside him upended, another napkin stained red and lying across the table. When Maggie enters, he hurries to rise, then manages an apology before retreating from the room.

“Do not run from guest, Josef!” cries Lenka. To Maggie she says, “He does not let me go to New York for visit. Is expensive in city, he says. Really he is afraid I will not make return. He prefers me to cook the dinners for him. To him I am not sister, I am servant.” Calling after him, she shouts, “Father, you can go to hell!”

“I’ll come back later,” says Maggie.

“No, stay. I am tired of being alone with him.” Roughly she grabs Maggie’s hand and draws her toward the sitting room, where Maggie claims the rocking chair and Lenka throws herself on the loveseat. “So, why do you come?”

“To tell you I’m going to Laos.”

Lenka’s jaw drops. “Josef!” she calls. “You must hear this!”

It takes him a minute to enter, looking skeptical and wearing a new shirt that hasn’t been tucked in. Lenka repeats what Maggie has said.

“Ah!” He looks puzzled as he joins his sister on the loveseat. “This is fascinating news. Please, tell us more.”

Maggie considers how to begin. “You remember Wale? The guy at the grocery store in September?” The priest nods. “He’s in Laos now. He’s found Yia Pao, the man who was kidnapped with my father. He’s found Yia Pao’s son too.”

“Maggie, this is wonderful!” says Lenka. Josef still looks perplexed; perhaps he’s wondering how Wale ended up in Laos.

“I’ve spoken with the mission office over there,” Maggie continues. “They say that if Wale can get Yia Pao and the baby to them, they’ll see about flying them to America.”

“So why must you go to Laos?” asks the priest.

“Because I haven’t heard from Wale since he called last week, and nobody in Vientiane seems to care where he’s gone. The State Department isn’t interested, and the mission office doesn’t have anyone who’ll investigate. So I’m flying over on Friday.”

“So soon!” says Lenka. “Is safe?”

“There isn’t any fighting in the city,” Maggie replies. It’s a half answer, but it’s what she has been telling herself.

“What will happen to man and his son once they are here?” asks Lenka.

Maggie hesitates. “I’m not bringing them here. I’ve told Fletcher I’m leaving the farm. The place is up for sale.”

Lenka gasps, and the priest leans forward. Maggie explains that she has decided to try teaching in Boston again, that she’ll handle it better this time. As she speaks the words, she almost believes them.

“What of plans for orchard?” asks Lenka. “What of George Ray in the spring?”

The mention of George Ray brings Maggie up short. “I haven’t told him yet,” she admits. “But I don’t have enough money to rehire him. I spent the rest of what I had on the ticket to Laos. You were right, I can’t afford the place, and Fletcher wasn’t going to let me stay there forever.”

“What of the ten thousand dollars?” says the priest.

“It’s going to the baby. If I can, I’ll set up a trust fund. I have to make sure I can do it without the money getting confiscated.”

The priest looks disapproving. “So much money for one child.”

“It’s not just a child,” says Maggie. “It’s the one whose life my father saved.”

The priest clasps his hands in front of him and kneads one with the other, while Lenka peers at her as if mystified.

“What does your grandmother think of your plans?” asks the priest.

Maggie frowns. “Gran has nothing to do with it.”

She isn’t quite telling the truth, though, because yesterday she called Gran to inform her of the coming trip.

“Actually, I found out something from her yesterday,” Maggie says, remembering. “Did you notice how, in the TV programme about my father, he had a scar on his neck?” The priest nods. “I always thought he got it fighting in Normandy. But the documentary showed a photo of him after the war, and the scar wasn’t there yet. I asked Gran, and it turns out he never went overseas. The war ended just after he enlisted. She says he spent a couple of years in college after that, dropped out, then met my mother and got her pregnant inside a month. Gran claims she
still doesn’t understand it, but the whole thing’s pretty obvious, right? He was trying to get away from her. War, college, a wedding—whatever it took. Then my mother died giving birth to me.”

“You never tell me this,” says Lenka.

Maggie lifts a hand to signal that it’s all in the past and doesn’t matter now. But then why is she telling it?

“Gran said he hated me, those first years. She thinks I reminded him of my mother. More likely he figured I was going to keep him living next to Gran. Anyhow, he had a nervous breakdown. Tried to kill himself. She was looking after me next door when it happened. I don’t remember any of it.”

“Maggie, it is horrible,” says Lenka.

“She’s the one who found him. The way she described things—it must have been awful.” Gran had tripped over her words, leaving long pauses, not finishing her sentences. Gran, whose descriptions of the world were usually so pat and neatly put together. “After that, she never set foot in his house again. I always thought it was because he didn’t want her there, but she says it was her decision.” Maggie squints up at the ceiling lamp. “It’s funny—I used to think I could remember the day of my birth. I remembered what it felt like being held in my mother’s arms. This week on the phone, though, when Gran described taking me to visit him in the hospital, I realized that’s what I’ve been remembering all this time. It wasn’t my mother, it was Dad.”

“You must not blame yourself,” says Lenka.

“Do I blame myself?” The idea comes as a surprise. “I don’t think I do. Actually, Gran says there was a happy
ending, because he changed after that. She says in the hospital he burst into tears when he realized how glad I was to see him. That’s a happy ending, isn’t it?” She leans forward in the rocking chair with her fingers clutching the arms, then lets herself rock back. “I’m sorry for going on. I don’t know why I told you all that.”

“Because you do not wish to repeat father’s mistakes,” says Lenka. “You want to make your own way in the world.”

“She makes her way already,” Josef says, sounding annoyed. Turning to Maggie, he says, “Do not run to throw away everything you do since you come here.”

“You must not listen to Josef,” says Lenka. “My brother wants you to be like him, unhappy in this place forever.”

They seem on the brink of falling back into the argument they were having when Maggie arrived. She doesn’t have the energy to referee. But before she can make an excuse to leave, Josef’s expression grows pacific.

“Come, we talk no more of this now. Let us pray to God for guidance.” He closes his eyes and bows his head. After a moment, Lenka joins him. Maggie waits for them to finish before she bids them good night.

The next day, she works in the front yard by the mailbox, pruning the lilac bush more than it needs, trying to avoid the house and Brid’s unbearable kindness. Maggie expected Brid to punish her somehow for giving up the farm, but it’s been the opposite. Brid has taken up the cooking and the laundry, she has sat for long stretches listening to Maggie talk of Laos, and she hasn’t expressed
any interest in travelling with her or hunting down Wale. It’s as though she’s doing everything she can to prove that she’ll be all right in Boston by herself and Maggie shouldn’t feel bad about leaving her. The result is that Maggie spends more time worrying over Brid’s future than her own.

Her thoughts are broken by the sound of steps approaching along the gravel road. She looks up and sees it’s Lydia Dodd.

The girl doesn’t seem unfriendly. Instead, she looks woebegone, and despite her bulky jacket she hugs herself as if for warmth, seeming even thinner than she was three months ago.

“I saw your sign,” she says, gesturing to the placard by the road that reads
FOR SALE
. “Thought I’d say hello before you take off.”

“Your father said you were living in Toronto,” says Maggie warily.

“I was, but not now.” The girl peers across the lawn toward the porch. “I missed your open house. Would you let me take a look around?”

“You mean inside?” Maggie asks, and Lydia nods. “Why?”

“Because my parents and I used to live here.”

“Oh,” says Maggie. How could no one have mentioned this until now?

“We moved out when I was a little kid,” explains Lydia, as though sensing Maggie’s disbelief. “If you don’t want me in there—”

“No, no. It’s just a surprise.” Maggie sets down her shears and waves for the girl to come along. As they cross
the yard, it seems surreal for the two of them to be walking side by side.

In the house, Lydia doesn’t say a word. Passing through the hallway, then the kitchen, she gazes at the walls, the floors, the furniture as sedulously as a patron at an exhibition. Maggie tries not to feel embarrassed when the girl takes a moment to study the broken cupboard door Maggie hasn’t gotten around to fixing. She’s tempted to ask if it was Lydia’s family who bequeathed to her the layers of grease in the oven, the bottle cap glued over a hole in the counter. But they couldn’t have; they moved out years ago.

In the living room, the girl runs her fingers along the old side table Fletcher brought up from the cellar in July. Then for a long time she takes in a series of horizontal notches on the door frame, the highest of them just above her waist.

“Anything look the same?” asks Maggie.

“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“You moved next door from here?” It seems a strange thing to have done.

“My father did. Mom and I went to Toronto.” From the silence that follows, Maggie guesses there are things the girl remembers well enough.

Upstairs, as they near Brid’s bedroom, Maggie puts a finger to her lips and motions Lydia past. “My housemate’s sleeping,” she whispers. It may not be true, but she doesn’t want to spring the girl on Brid, or Brid on her. They carry on to Maggie’s room.

Lydia doesn’t enter, only remains at the doorway and looks in. The bed has been made, thank goodness. The
rolltop desk in the corner is covered in files, and the bulletin board above it has been pinned with sheets of notepaper. Atop the bureau sits a line of books, some puffed out with yellowed pages from being dropped in the bath. The box Maggie brought back from Syracuse with her father’s things in it is tucked in a corner, still sealed with packing tape. She doesn’t suppose she’ll ever open it in this place.

Lydia stares at the room a little longer before turning away. “I remember them yelling a lot. They couldn’t make money out of cherries, but it was his family’s farm and he didn’t want to leave.” Speaking more to herself than to Maggie, she adds, “He wouldn’t have if I’d been a boy.”