Had Gail’s house been there? The Egans’ shingled home, with its white shutters, right next to Kirk on the Hill, the Presbyterian church of Petit-Métis; it was a true curiosity with its steeple built beside the church itself, right on the ground. No, I couldn’t see a thing. The fog was too dense, reflecting my headlights back at me — a fog to split your soul in two.
My thoughts wandered to yesterday morning with Ann, as we inched forward through Laurel Canyon, where you couldn’t see past your nose because of the smog. It was as if an eternity had passed since, but fast-forwarded — Jack’s phone call, Gail gone, and I, the father of a thirty-two-year-old.
What would Ann say to all this?
In the past two or three years, her hints had become more and more insistent: “A child, Romain. Why not?” And each time, I had to remind her of the promise we’d made before moving in together. “It isn’t for me, Ann. Not at my age.” I was forty-three then, and she was only twenty-eight, a very young woman who didn’t yet think about these things seriously. Jokingly yet with underlying seriousness, her dark braids framing her pretty face, she’d said, “I don’t have that narcissistic ambition to reproduce, if that’s what you want to know.” And I asked her whether she was sincere or making fun of me. “I’m serious, Romain. Too many people have babies for the wrong reasons. And what about the child? He becomes a chain that ties them together for life, and they end up hating each other.”
I shuddered when she said that, then understood that her parents’ divorce had affected her far more than she let on. But she was thirty-five now, almost thirty-six; she knew that it would soon no longer be a choice, but an actual impossibility, and that impossibility gave her the feeling that she’d be losing something she’d regret forever, something essential. Sometimes I feared that her desire for children would break us apart. I tried not to think about it too much.
As the Jeep cut through the thick fog, the absurdity of the situation became clearer. What was I doing here? What was I looking for, exactly? Unrecognizable places, as full of life as a cemetery, with villas readied for winter, windows shuttered.
There, on the right, wasn’t that the house of that old madman, Clifford Wiggs?
In my memories, it was the most impressive mansion in Métis Beach, despite the fact that Clifford Wiggs wasn’t the richest among them. William Tees, Art and Geoff’s father, was that man, with his Phantom V, the same car as the Queen of England, as shiny as church silver, a car we salivated over, enthralled when its driver had it washed and waxed at Jeff Loiseau’s. The Tees’ home was on the cliff, immense with its smaller cottages for guests, but far more discreet than Clifford Wiggs’ place with its costly artificial pond, home to two swans, and flowerbeds that extended as far as you could see, filled with annuals. That alone cost him a fortune, hundreds of dollars is what was said, and all torn out at the end of the summer, what a waste! And that one summer when, with his gardener — rumours swirled about the two men — he brought over fifty pink flamingos from the Quebec City zoo to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. The news had burned through town within minutes it seemed, and my parents and I, like most everyone else, had driven past his property to look at the strange creatures. There they were, cackling, shitting on the lawn in front of some twenty guests, and my scandalized mother had said from our Chevrolet with its windows down, “That sodomite will burn in hell.”
I smiled thinly, my first smile in forty-eight hours.
I’d lost my bearings. No sign of the pretentious wrought iron sentry box that Clifford Wiggs had ordered from an Italian ironworker in Montreal, which the other vacationers had viewed with disgust. The English of Métis Beach considered ostentation a sin, doubly so if you had a lot of money to spare.
On my left, the Riddingtons’ home? The Babcocks’? Everything was black, deserted. This place wasn’t speaking to me, for Christ’s sake! This place wouldn’t speak to me. So what was I hoping to find?
At the hospital, Gail hadn’t had time to explain. Jack, his face ashen, had made me understand that I shouldn’t tire her out with my questions, “It’s hard enough as it is for her.” As if I couldn’t see death going about its sinister business, slipping into her like water into a car fallen off a bridge.
He’s your son, Romain. Len Albiston is your son.
Why hadn’t she mentioned it to me in San Francisco, when we lived together? Was this why she’d been so depressed at the time? It was that — she had a child and had abandoned him. In secrecy and in shame. A girl-mother, irresponsible. A slut.
When we’d sharply debated abortion at my place with the It’s All Comedy! gang, Matt’s wife, a small brunette with a strident laugh, had asked me, all aflutter at the idea of digging up my secrets, “For a man to speak as you do about women, their rights, their bodies, you must have seen it up close and personal, no? An abortion, I mean.” My answer had disappointed her, no, it had never happened to me; none of the girls I’d been with had found herself in that situation, and I was proud of that. I was a responsible man. She snickered, as if she didn’t believe me, “Are you certain? I had one once, and the guy never knew.”
Matt was suddenly worried, “Are you talking about me?”
“No, honey, of course not. It was a long time ago.” I made an effort to search through my memory, trying to find a woman who might have done that, to me. Women who got pregnant and said nothing?
I had been so sure of myself. What an idiot.
Had Gail considered getting an abortion? Had she been forced to keep the child? Why, for heaven’s sake, hadn’t she told me?
Then, suddenly, at the near edge of Beach Street, a sight as comforting as a familiar face in a room filled with strangers: THE FELDMAN-MCPHAIL WELCOME. My heart in my throat, I turned left and entered the driveway. The crackling of gravel under the Jeep’s tires sounded like a small happy chortle. All my childhood I’d associated that sound with Métis Beach. It wasn’t like in the village, where we were proud of our asphalted driveways, something you never saw among the English.
And there it was, behind the hundred-year-old cedars, enveloped in the milky fog, one of the most beautiful houses in Métis Beach — my home.
7
Cold wind whipped in from the sea. I stepped out of the Jeep with my buckskin vest on my back and no gloves. I was staggering with exhaustion on my stiff legs, and my whole body shook. I turned the rusty key John Kinnear’s son kept hidden under the veranda, fearing it might break and I’d be stuck outside.
The house was cold and dark thanks to its covered windows. I immediately felt that mix of apprehension and excitement I used to feel as a boy, when my father left me in the dusty dark of these grand mansions for the time it took him to go outside and stand in front of the windows so that I could push out the protective planks, now freed from their hooks. Light would flow through the rooms, like magic. I so enjoyed accompanying him to Métis Beach in late spring! Visiting the homes of Egan, Bradley, Hayes, Newell, Pounden, Curran, and Riddington — all properties in his care. I followed him, proud and excited, as if we owned the houses ourselves. We had to prepare the homes by St. Jean Baptist Day, inspecting them for winter damage. The sheer number of dead flies! Piles of them on the windowsills, which I was tasked with cleaning up, sometimes