The Delusionist (22 page)

The crowd parted long enough for Cyril to spot Richard accepting a business card from one of the elderly matrons who had been touring the room. A kid in a Mohawk passed Cyril's picture, belching as he entered the washroom; when he came back out he made a great performance of yawning. Cyril went to the washroom himself and splashed cold water on his face. Leaning on the sink he stared at himself: five hundred and one dollars. Was he mad?

When he emerged he stood to one side watching the crowd. Half recognized faces spun past, but one snagged his attention like a burr.
Was it? It was.
Cyril couldn't remember the man's name but knew his face, older, greyer, fatter, but definitely the nasty one from his art school interview all those years ago. The guy carried his head high and kept his mouth shut as though holding his breath against a rising stench. Hands clasped behind his back and chin out like the prow of a royal yacht, he sailed through the crowd and hove to before Cyril's work. His eyebrows jumped in what appeared to be alarm, went down in what appeared to be disapproval, then his lips pooched out as he exercised patience, stretched wide in skepticism, and finally he flinched as though grit had been spat into his eyes. He looked around in horror. Had he recognized the Stalins? Was he searching for the scurrilous Cyril who had managed to sneak past him? Was he about to complain? Wheeling to his right he launched himself toward the toilet as though to be sick. As far as Cyril could tell he never emerged.

Novak was singing in a surprisingly melodious baritone while Richard was on his knees before Pamela as if proposing marriage. Pamela's head dropped back and her laughter gushed like a bouquet of yellow flowers. Cyril drank more wine. Now one of the matrons who had given Richard her card was writing him a cheque and Pamela was putting a red sticker beside one of the crabs. There was a sparkling fountain of laughter and congratulations. Novak joined in, clapping Richard on the back and clinking his glass.

Cyril looked at the door. How clear and cool the air would be outside. He discovered that his glass was empty yet again and that his head hurt. As he moved toward the bar Pamela caught his elbow and turned him back in the other direction. They stopped before his drawings.

“I don't know about those Stalins,” she said, “but I do like the others.” She compressed her lips and nodded once, as if reconfirming this strange but undeniable fact. Her white clip-on earrings were ivory—Cyril could see the grain—and they were carved in the shape of tiny ears. “I especially like this one.” She pointed to the woman with the braid down her naked back. Cyril tried seeing it through Pamela's eyes. Her eyes, he noted, were heavily veined, as if with incandescent filaments. “Yes,” she said again, “I like it.”

Cyril heard himself ask, “Why?”

She turned and regarded him with a bewildered and yet bemused smile. She sucked her teeth. She turned back to the picture. For a full minute they stood side-by-side staring at the woman's naked back and long braid. Finally she shrugged. “Like I said, I don't know. I just do.”

“Thank you,” said Cyril.

“No, no. Thank
you.
” She placed her hand on his forearm. “Wait here.”

Cyril watched her go off through the crowd and then return a moment later holding something between her thumb and forefinger. She held it up as though it was a gem. “I want it—you will sell it to me?”

“Of course!”

“Good.” She put a red sticker by the picture. “Congratulations,” she said. “To both of us.”

Cyril felt as if he'd just lost his virginity.

“Breathe,” she reminded him, then smiled again, one corner of her mouth curling upward. “Oh.” She opened her bag and found her chequebook. “I suppose I owe you money.” She wrote his name and five hundred “and one dollars,” she said aloud, and slipped it into his shirt pocket and gave it a tap. “Keep the commission.”

Seeing what was under way, Novak and Richard joined them along with others.

“I've just bought a work of art,” announced Pamela.

There were murmurs of approval and renewed interest in Cyril's pictures. Novak gripped him by the back of the neck and gave it a hearty squeeze. Richard slipped away. The gallery was now packed, the air simultaneously sour and fragrant with perfume and bodies. Cheque in his pocket, red sticker by his drawing—by his
work
—an elated Cyril floated toward the bar to treat himself to another glass of wine and tried not to smile too widely.

SIX

CYRIL SLEPT LATE
and when he went onto the porch with his coffee, discovered that the saucer was empty. He scanned the cemetery with the opera glasses but there was no cat. It was Monday morning and the city was at work. He felt no guilt. As he trained the opera glasses on his mother's grave he only wished she could have been at the show last night. In the end he'd sold three pictures: two gravestones, one Stalin. Three sales; fifteen hundred and three dollars. He could have danced. In fact he had danced when he got home last night. That Richard had also sold three in no way diminished his sense of triumph.

Gilbert hadn't shown, which was curious because it was just the sort of event he thrived upon, a combination of new people, new contacts, and free liquor. He'd have been all over Pamela, having long been an admirer of her father's business smarts.

Cyril refilled the saucer then returned to the gallery to take down his pictures. Empty wine glasses sat on ledges and in corners. There was a bow tie and, bizarrely, a pair of grey slacks. Pamela was there with Novak and a few others. Pamela wore embroidered kung fu slippers, baggy black pants with ties at the ankles and waist, an Oriental jacket with gold stitching. When she saw Cyril she left Novak and caught Cyril's face in her hands and air-kissed him once, twice, and the third time square on the mouth. Her hands were cold but her eyes radiant. She gripped his elbow and they proceeded to perambulate the gallery apart from the others.

“You have arrived,” she said. “You must consider your future, your career, and have a show of your own.”

Cyril nodded bravely. “Right.”

She tightened her hold on him.

“Get a room,” called Novak.

Pamela said in a voice loud enough for Novak to hear: “A disgusting creature. We should get him deported.” As they continued their perambulation she became reflective. “You're at a good age for an artist.” Her voice rose another notch, “unlike some people. Old enough to be mature but not so old as to be old.”

Cyril nodded as if he'd been thinking the same thing. Was she offering him his own show? Before he could ask her, Richard arrived looking severely hungover in ragged jeans and torn t-shirt. Pamela gave Cyril's elbow one last squeeze, reminded him to breathe, and sailed off to capture Richard. Gripping one of Richard's biceps, she growled. “Nice arms, kiddo.”

When Cyril got home the saucer was empty and the cat crouched in the corner of the yard, regarding him from the safety of the thorny yellow roses. He got his pad and did a few sketches.

He spent the next morning in Steve's office going over the psychologist's report. According to Borgland, Cyril was a man capable of caring and reflection and sensitivity, with a deep sense of justice and injustice. He was also angry and conflicted and prone to violent, impulsive behaviour that could result in harm to himself and to others, as well as lead to financial ruin. Thirteen pages of single-spaced text was summarized under a subtitle: Conclusions and Recommendations.
It is best for all concerned that control of the estate be given over to Steven George Andrachuk.

“All that from one session?”

“You bailed,” said Steve. “I mean in some ways I can't blame you. Not exactly fun getting grilled like that.”

Cyril considered his nephew, trying to gauge his level of sincerity. Ever since the conditions of the will had been revealed, Cyril had been thinking about what the house meant to him, trying to measure his degree of attachment to it, the way someone might attribute significance to an heirloom or a piece of land. His father had not built the house, but he had done extensive repairs, and Cyril had spent his childhood there, it was the site of memories, such as his parents dancing one New Year's, not Ukrainian New Year but December thirty-first, the shouts and horns blaring up and down the street, Cyril banging a wooden spoon on a pan, Paul lighting firecrackers on the porch. That would have been about 1950, the only time Cyril could ever recall his parents dancing. Still, it was just a house, one of dozens of identical boxes on the same street, a heap of aging wood.

“The only thing to do is carry on,” Steve continued, “and the best way to carry on—for all of us—is by placing a reverse mortgage on the house.” He began explaining the details but Cyril interrupted saying that he knew what a reverse mortgage was.

“So there are no questions?”

“Seems clear enough,” said Cyril.

“Right.” Steve became brisk. There were documents to sign. He reassured Cyril that there was nothing to worry about, that it would be business as usual. “You're the
de facto
if not legal owner of the house.”

Cyril nodded.
De facto
meant
de fucto
all.

“It's your home.”

Again Cyril nodded. Steve had got what he wanted; he wouldn't get Cyril's blessing too.

Steve stapled papers together, folded them, slid them into an envelope, slid the envelope across the desk then mustered the courage to look directly at Cyril, compressing his lips and shrugging in a show of innocence. Cyril maintained a neutral expression. Steve stood and extended his hand, the final formality. Cyril stood and shook Steve's hand and accepted the manila envelope, at which Steve risked a smile and made a move to come around the desk and escort Cyril out. But Cyril sat back down. Steve halted. His eyebrows jumped. Uncle Cyril, it seemed, was about to fuck things up. He exhaled long and made a show of glancing at his watch, meaning he was a busy man. “Something else?”

Cyril settled back into the chair, the padding sighing beneath him, crossed his legs and folded his hands on top of the envelope in his lap. He gazed past Steve out the window at the apartment building across the alley. It needed paint. “I won't stay long. Don't worry.”

“Oh. No. Hey.” Steve returned to his seat and prepared to be a good listener.

Cyril said, “Your grandmother and I had a tense relationship. We had issues. We blamed each other for things. But one thing I'm not to blame for is your dad's death.”

“Cyril.”

“Your dad and I did not get along.”

“I know.”

“I'm sure you do. But I can't help having been born in 1945 instead of 1937. I offered my kidney. I was willing to give him one. I signed the papers.”

Steve's face tightened. “He sensed reluctance.” He spoke as if his jaw was wired shut.

“Of course he did. Because I was reluctant. I signed the papers, though. I made the decision. I took the step. But here's the question: did you offer one of yours?”

Steve's head jerked back as if Cyril had swung at him.

“I don't recall you or your brother offering any help.”

“He already told us not to. He said don't even think about it.”

“But it was alright for me?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? You knew enough to blame me.”

Steve slammed both of his palms down on the desk. “What do you want me to say?”

Cyril spoke quietly, almost reflectively, because the realization had been so slow in surfacing. “Steve, it doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what I think. And I'm not to blame. I thought I was. For years I accepted that I was. But that's wrong. I. Am. Not. To. Blame. And if you and your grandmother wanted to think otherwise, if you still want to keep punishing me then do your worst. I mean, you already have.” He held up the envelope, then sailed it into Steve's chest. At the door he turned and asked, “Oh. One more thing. And be honest for once. Was Gilbert in on this?”

Steve looked at Cyril from under the brow of his lowered head and nodded. Then he recovered. He sat back and set his palms flat on the desk because now it was his turn. “They didn't exclude you. It had nothing to do with you. They just wanted to put it all behind them. It was the only way they could cope. She told me.”

“She seems to have told you a lot of things.”

Steve looked genuinely helpless. “Maybe because by then it didn't matter.”

The words reverberated through Cyril's mind as he drove home. His parents had been given interior lives with complex pasts that stretched into earliest childhoods that were unique to them and them alone. He'd always known this—only now he knew it better.

When he got home, he found the saucer empty and the cat in the roses. Cyril opened a tin of salmon and forked some into the saucer, and that evening as the sky was turning a dusty pink and crows were racketing in the cemetery, he sat in the kitchen nook watching the cat creep up onto the porch. He sketched the cat as it ate the salmon. When it was done it spent a full ten minutes grooming, going over its paws, its stomach, its tail, curling around and doing its back. Cyril did a dozen sketches, working fast though sure to turn the pages slowly so as not to startle it.