The Ruby Slippers (35 page)

‘What will happen to me?’ she asks humbly. He imagines her in a courtroom, where her impassive manner would be portrayed as the face of evil. He imagines her in a prison, where there will be sinners eager to make martyrs of saints.

‘Go home,’ he tells her. ‘Go home and wait there. I don’t know yet what will happen to you.’

She leaves, her head bowed, slowly walking towards the elevator. He drains his cup and takes the stairs down.

■ ♦ ■

James stares at his old man lying there, withdrawn again to nothing. If he never woke up it would perhaps be to the good. James leans over and quietly speaks, in as kind and reasonable a voice as he can muster. ‘Look, I know I have no right to say any of this, and I know you will be angry and hurt for the things I said to you, but please, you cannot let this woman, Inez, who you have made suffer, go down for this. She will go to jail, her life will be destroyed and her family too.’ He reaches out and takes hold of a clammy paw. ‘I do not wish you dead. If it was in my power to stop this, I would, I promise you. But I cannot, and you have to face it in your own way – send for the priest or whatever it takes. Make peace with yourself, but know that there are still things that you can change.’

He crouches down and whispers urgently into his father’s ear. ‘Tell them, Dad; tell them it was you: you took the tablets, you stored them up, you kept them by and you poisoned yourself. This is in your power to do. Tell them, and spare her and her family.’ James stands up straight again and waits to see if he was heard, waits until at last the old man’s spirit stirs, climbs up out of its dark lair, the lizard eyes glinting behind the lashes.

‘Murder – is – murder.’ The sound of his voice dry, ancient, portentous, but James does not fall back in awe. ‘Well, you’ll just have to live with it,’ he says softly and walks out of the room. He makes straight for the desk and tells the nurse to call Dr Benedetti – his father has something to say.

For the longest of all hours, James sits in the waiting area. He has no idea which way it will go. He cannot, and does not really want to, bring to order the shreds of thought spilling inside him. He wants only for release: to be free to close his eyes and dream everything away to nothing.

■ ♦ ■

Benedetti wakes James from a doze so deep he almost falls off his chair. The doctor leads him into the side room again and informs him that he just heard from his father’s lips a full account of how he had for some time planned and carried out his own extinction. Through all this, James can see from the way one of Benedetti’s eyebrows stays stubbornly raised that he does not quite buy into it, that there are questions remaining unanswered, such as why would a man kill himself over weeks instead of minutes? But he does not linger on any one of these things, he just tells James that he has noted down everything that Mr McBride has said and will pass it to administration, who may wish to take it up with the relevant authorities. Then off goes Benedetti’s bleeper, whisking him away into his pressing day.

Outside the hospital, the wind is blowing in gusts through the trees in the Park. James rings Inez. He hears her scared voice lilting and fading among the wind and the traffic. He tells her that he thinks it is going to be all right. But by now it has all caught up with her and she starts to go to pieces: ‘But what shall I do? I have killed somebody.’

‘As far as the hospital is concerned, he did it himself. The doctor heard it from his own mouth.’

‘You do not understand. That does not take it from my shoulders. I should confess.’

‘In church? God no. They will give you absolution and tell you to go to the police. And then you would go to prison. Your children need you more than the American justice system, Inez. If you need someone to confess to, try me. He was my father. I am the one who should forgive.’

■ ♦ ■

When it comes to it, Malachi McBride does not call for priests; he does not call for anyone. The nurses and the doctors decide between them that his time is near and send for his son. And not too long afterwards, the son comes and stands at the bedside and is quiet and respectful. The man in the bed is only just possessed of breath, and the son reaches out and takes the hand of his father. And soon after, the hand of the father curls and tugs a little in the hand of the son, and the hard lines of his face melt away to make the face of a man remembering better things and knowing better things again and sinking willingly into better dreams. And then it falls away to nothing, the breathing and the spirit with it. The last unseen part of the organism that was Malachi McBride crosses the final fragile span of time and is gone.

James goes home. He sits in a chair facing the window, his eyes half closed in the sun. There is no place inside him for any thought or feeling or care. He will sit, just sit . . .

And in the state which he now falls into – something between a dream and a meditation – Paolo comes to him, wearing a white shirt over blue jeans, sits on the arm of his chair, gazing at him with his dark bright eyes, and says:

‘Really, James, this can’t go on – punishing yourself like this, suffering for nothing. Your father was foolish, but you are ten times more so. To honour me, you searched so desperately for a beautiful thing. But already you had found it. The red shoes would have been out of this world, but there were simpler things you passed by without noticing. When you walked in the Park, that was a beautiful thing. When you looked at trees and looked out at the shining city, that too was beautiful. But the most beautiful thing you did was to look into the eyes of the daughter you had not seen for seven years. And even then you did not properly understand. So now, having found her father and put herself in his hands, she is in pain. Of course it is complicated, but how was an uncomplicated mind to understand this? To her, it seemed only like punishment, and she did not deserve to be punished
.

‘Look again at your world; look at what is there and what is not. Make room for what is right. Take away her pain. That in itself is sufficient to remember me by.’

James sits up in the chair, awake and aware that this was no ghost, but astonished that such wisdom could be latent in him, so complete and eloquent. He stands up, certain of purpose, goes to the mantelpiece, to the porcelain incense holder there, and takes from it a key. He walks to the study door and undoes it from the closed-shut state in which it has lain since Siobhan’s last visit. He stands at the centre of the room and slowly turns on the spot, taking in the world between its four walls. He muses for a moment, hand to chin, then goes and leans across the desk, reaches out to the most beautiful of the Japanese prints and removes it from the wall.

Time to get her room ready.

■ ♦ ■

‘Look, Michael, take it easy for five minutes. Sit down and read the paper for God’s sake and slow down. I dunno what, but all this week you been going like the Pacific Express. You gonna have a heart attack; you gonna drop down dead you’re not careful.’

He takes her up on it, drags himself to the window seats and picks up the paper. He feels tired after all, dog-tired, although he has worked no harder than usual and Grace has been nothing but kind and considerate and determined never to put a foot wrong again. It makes things worse in a way, that she is so resigned now to his will, no longer so much as mentioning the shoes or the money; no longer complaining about her aching joints and her ringing ears and her throbbing head; no longer holding out for her time in the sun, but soldiering on, getting from one day to another in the old accustomed way.

Yet he, too, has been reluctant to talk about it, for in his heart he has been slow to forgive. Oh yes, he has allowed her to believe the worst was behind them, that they had a scrape from which they were lucky to get out in one piece, and that all is patched up between them. But in his heart, he has not once been able to say he can let go of the resentment that burned so hard inside him it made him leap on a man’s back and try to strangle the life out of him. They say that God forgives whatever – well, that may be, but
he
sure isn’t up to following that act.

Around seven, just as they are bringing in the stands, Jenny walks in and hangs there drawn-faced in the doorway, looking so dreadful that Grace instantly runs to her. Michael knows from Jenny’s manner at least that there is no cunning in her sudden appearance. When at last they are all three in the same room upstairs – he in his comfy chair and the smell of cooking wafting from the tiny kitchen – Jenny pours out how hard a time she has had of it, what with Karl firmly in the doghouse, she lonely in her anger and the coldness in their bed. ‘It was horrible what happened over the slippers, and the guys behaved abominably. And if you must know, I regret some of the things I said. But that’s not to say I think you were right at the end of the day. Nobody was totally right in this. Nobody comes out smelling of roses. Nobody.’

■ ♦ ■

James goes there because these things must be done. He goes half thinking that she might have upped and gone, fled while the going was good. Inez opens the door to him, looking frailer and older – only a day gone by and she has aged ten years. She knows, without him saying a word and despite his dignified manner, that McBride is gone. She invites him in, but she is shaking: he is the master now and she the shameful one. She offers him a seat and apologizes – for still being there, for not giving herself up and cheating justice of its right. ‘So you see, they didn’t come to arrest me. And I did not go to the priest. I thought of my children, as you told me, and I have waited to give you my confession, which you also said to do.’

‘I didn’t mean it so literally. Besides, you made your confession in the hospital.’

‘Yes, but nobody has said if I am forgiven.’

‘Well, of course. If I hadn’t forgiven you, I would have gone to the police, and if I hadn’t—’

‘If you don’t mind, Mr McBride, I would prefer to hear it with my own ears.’

‘OK then. Mrs Garcia – Inez – I forgive you. You are forgiven.’ Even as he pronounces these words, James is uneasy with himself. There is something flabby about it – to play the liberal do-gooder, when in fact there are within him more primitive emotions crying out for a harder kind of judgement. Strangely, it is she who comes out with the more unforgiving viewpoint. ‘I cannot be allowed to get away totally free,’ she declares in all conviction. ‘I give you power over me. If one day you become angry and decide I am to pay, that I must to be punished, then so be it. I bow my head.’ She stands there, her head actually bowed. After all the recent shocks and high emotions he has somehow withstood, this seems in its own way the most disturbing thing of all and he is keen to get back to safer territory. Ordinary things. ‘Now, listen hard to me,’ he says and takes out of his pocket an envelope. ‘In here is money for your ticket home. That and enough to live on for a month or so.’ She looks at him, astonished, as he holds it out to her and lays it on the line. ‘You take it and you go – today, tomorrow. Don’t leave it any longer.’

‘I can’t possibly,’ she protests, falling silent when she sees he will not give way.

‘That is all I have to say. The next time I come back, you won’t be here. Now, I have to go.’

As he is on his way to the door, she rushes over and opens up a writing desk, bringing back a foolscap document to hand to him. He studies the title printed in heavy black gothic on a faded grey-green cover: ‘The Last Will and Testament of Malachi, Thomas, James, McBride’.

‘Oh my goodness,’ he says, turning the cover.

‘Take it with you,’ she says. ‘There are other things, but not so important. You will find them once I am gone.’

He walks briskly down Fifth now that he is in a more lucid frame of mind. The light is kind and golden, and the air a blessing on his face. He runs through it again. All proper and legally stamped; his name as the beneficiary of his father’s will. He puts the brakes on his own thoughts, actually slowing his step. Of course, it’s entirely possible that another, subsequent will might have been made, but then why would this one have stayed in the drawer? He had always assumed that he was cut out of his father’s will to the very last dime, possibly even long before he ever came out, and yet this will, made twenty-five years ago, has remained in place. How could it be that the late, great Malachi McBride did not change his will as categorically as he had changed his heart? Surely the Republican Party or the Gun Club would have been far more deserving?

He crosses the road, goes into the Park to claim the nearest bench and sits down to study the small print. Fishing in his inside pocket he finds a solitary cigarette in a crushed pack and lights it, his first in a year, and allows his half-formed thoughts to float with the smoke. Had the old man always kept alive a hope that he would make good with his son? Perhaps he even truly imagined that being gay was just a phase, that he’d be saved by some true-blue McBride genes lurking somewhere in his puny frame. Maybe because the old man was so competitive, he always saw the actions of others only in terms of their opposition to him. Like a ghastly game of trumps: I call you a chicken-shit, idle no-good, and you go one further to be the screaming, limp-wristed queen. As if such things were a matter of choice and could be made simply to spite another person. He stubs out the cigarette only half smoked, the taste and sensation of it sour and invasive. The facts are the facts: his father died and he has inherited a considerable fortune.

S
IX
guests only are at the funeral: Michael, Grace, Jenny, Suzy, June and her husband, Maurice. They fill up two rows; the rest remain glaringly empty behind them. Between them they cannot raise a single god to preside over Rosa’s consignment to the flames. Michael can still remember how his mother had taken him to church when he was little, but then when they starved and his father Janis was dragged away, there was little to thank God for. In the end Magda had taken God to the grave with her. As for Grace, she was always too down-to-earth ever to make space for the Almighty in her life; the three girls left God and all his dominions behind with their school books, and Maurice, though he was brought up Jewish, at least nominally, is none too fussed on the matter.