I had seen the faces of dying people before. The faces of my mother and father, even the face of the man I had been afraid to love. I was not surprised.
"She is sleeping now," said the nurse. "She was so hoping you would come."
"She"s not unconscious?"
"No. But she sleeps."
Yes, I saw it now, there was a sign of Charlene. What was it? Maybe a twitch, that confident playful tucking away of a corner of her mouth.
The nurse was speaking to me in her soft happy voice. "I don"t know if she would recognize you," she said. "But she hoped you would come. There is something for you."
"Will she wake up?"
A shrug. "We have to give her injections often for the pain."
She was opening the bedside table.
"Here. This. She told me to give it to you if it was too late for her. She did not want her husband to give it. Now you are here, she would be glad."
A sealed envelope with my name on it, printed in shaky capital letters.
"Not her husband," the nurse said, with a twinkle, then a broadening smile. Did she scent something illicit, a women"s secret, an old love?
"Come back tomorrow," she said. "Who knows? I will tell her if it is possible."
I read the note as soon as I got down to the lobby. Charlene had managed to write in an almost normal script, not wildly as in the sprawling letters on the envelope. Of course she might have written the note first and put it in the envelope, then sealed the envelope and put it by, thinking she would get to hand it to me herself. Only later would she see a need to put my name on it.
Marlene. I am writing this in case I get too far gone to speak. Please do what I ask you. Please go to Guelph and go to the cathedral and ask for Father Hofstrader. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral. It is so big you don"t need the name. Father Hofstrader. He will know what to do. This I cannot ask C. and do not want him ever to know. Father H. knows and I have asked him and he says it is possible to help me. Marlene please do this bless you. Nothing about you.
C. That must be her husband. He doesn"t know. Of course he doesn"t.
Father Hofstrader.
Nothing about me.
I was free to crumple this up and throw it away once I got out into the street. And so I did, I threw the envelope away and let the wind sweep it into the gutter on University Avenue. Then I realized the note was not in the envelope; it was still in my pocket.
I would never go to the hospital again. And I would never go to Guelph.
Kit was her husband"s name. Now I remembered. They went sailing. Christopher. Kit. Christopher. C.
When I got back to my apartment building I found myself taking the elevator down to the garage, not up to my apartment. Dressed just as I was I got into my car and drove out onto the street, and began to head towards the Gardiner Expressway.
The Gardiner Expressway, Highway 427, Highway 401. It was rush hour now, a bad time to get out of the city. I hate this sort of driving, I don"t do it often enough to be confident. There was under half a tank of gas, and what was more, I had to go to the bathroom. Around Milton, I thought, I could pull off the highway and fill up on gas and use the toilet and reconsider. At present I could do nothing but what I was doing, heading north, then heading west.
I didn"t get off. I pa.s.sed the Mississauga exit, and the Milton exit. I saw a highway sign telling me how many kilometers to Guelph, and I translated that roughly into miles in my head, as I always have to do, and I figured the gas would hold out. The excuse I made to myself for not stopping was that the sun would be getting lower and more troublesome, now that we were leaving the haze that lies over the city even on the finest day.
At the first stop after I took the Guelph turnoff I got out and walked to the ladies" washroom with stiff trembling legs. Afterwards I filled the tank with gas and asked, when I paid, for directions to the cathedral. The directions were not very clear but I was told that it was on a big hill and I could find it from anywhere in the heart of town.
Of course that was not true, though I could see it from almost anywhere. A collection of delicate spires rising from four fine towers. A beautiful building where I had expected only a grand one. It was grand too, of course, a grand dominating cathedral for such a relatively small city (though someone told me later it was not actually a cathedral).
Could that have been where Charlene was married?
No. Of course not. She had been sent to a United Church camp, and there were no Catholic girls at that camp, though there was quite a variety of Protestants. And then there was the business about C. not knowing.
She might have converted secretly. Since.
I found my way in time to the cathedral parking lot, and sat there wondering what I should do. I was wearing slacks and a jacket. My idea of what was required in a Catholic church-a Catholic cathedral-was so antiquated that I was not even sure if my outfit would be all right. I tried to recall visits to great churches in Europe. Something about the arms being covered? Headscarves, skirts?
What a bright high silence there was up on this hill. April, not a leaf out yet on the trees, but the sun after all was still well up in the sky. There was one low bank of snow gray as the paving in the church lot.
The jacket I had on was too light for evening wear, or maybe it was colder here, the wind stronger, than in Toronto.
The building might well be locked at this time, locked and empty.
The grand front doors appeared to be so. I did not even bother to climb the steps to try them, because I decided to follow a couple of old women-old like me-who had just come up the long flight from the street and who bypa.s.sed those steps entirely, heading around to an easier entrance at the side of the building.
There were more people inside, maybe two or three dozen people, but there wasn"t a sense that they were gathered for a service. They were scattered here and there in the pews, some kneeling and some chatting. The women ahead of me dipped their hands in a marble font without looking at what they were doing and said h.e.l.lo-hardly lowering their voices-to a man who was setting out baskets on a table.
"It looks a lot warmer out than it is," said one of them, and the man said the wind would bite your nose off.
I recognized the confessionals. Like separate small cottages or large playhouses in a Gothic style, with a lot of dark wooden carving, dark brown curtains. Elsewhere all was glowing, dazzling. The high curved ceiling most celestially blue, the lower curves of the ceiling-those that joined the upright walls-decorated with holy images on gold-painted medallions. Stained-gla.s.s windows. .h.i.t by the sun at this time of day were turned into columns of jewels. I made my way discreetly down one aisle, trying to get a look at the altar, but the chancel being in the western wall was too bright for me to look into. Above the windows, though, I saw that there were painted angels. Flocks of angels, all fresh and gauzy and pure as light.
It was a most insistent place but n.o.body seemed to be overwhelmed by all the insistence. The chatting ladies kept chatting softly but not in whispers. And other people after some businesslike nodding and crossing knelt down and went about their routines.
As I ought to be going about mine. I looked around for a priest but there was not one in sight. Priests as well as other people must have a working day. They must drive home and go into their living rooms or offices or dens and turn on the television and loosen their collars. Fetch a drink and wonder if they were going to get anything decent for supper. When they did come into the church they would come officially. In their vestments, ready to perform some ceremony. Ma.s.s?
Or to hear confessions. But then you would never know when they were there. Didn"t they enter and leave their grilled stalls by a private door?
I would have to ask somebody. The man who had distributed the baskets seemed to be here for reasons that were not purely private, though he was apparently not an usher. n.o.body needed an usher. People chose where they wanted to sit-or kneel-and sometimes decided to get up and choose another spot, perhaps being bothered by the glare of the jewel-inflaming sun. When I spoke to him I whispered, out of old habit in a church-and he had to ask me to speak again. Puzzled or embarra.s.sed, he nodded in a wobbly way towards one of the confessionals. I had to become very specific and convincing.
"No, no. I just want to talk to a priest. I"ve been sent to talk to a priest. A priest called Father Hofstrader."
The basket man disappeared down the more distant side aisle and came back in a little while with a briskly moving stout young priest in ordinary black costume.
He motioned me into a room I had not noticed-not a room, actually, we went through an archway, not a doorway-at the back of the church.
"Give us a chance to talk, in here," he said, and pulled out a chair for me.
"Father Hofstrader-"
"Oh no, I must tell you, I am not Father Hofstrader. Father Hofstrader is not here. He is on vacation."
For a moment I did not know how to proceed.
"I will do my best to help you."
"There is a woman," I said, "a woman who is dying in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto-"
"Yes, yes. We know of Princess Margaret Hospital."
"She asks me-I have a note from her here-she wants to see Father Hofstrader."
"Is she a member of this parish?"
"I don"t know. I don"t know if she is a Catholic or not. She is from here. From Guelph. She is a friend I have not seen for a long time."
"When did you talk with her?"
I had to explain that I hadn"t talked with her, she had been asleep, but she had left the note for me.
"But you don"t know if she is a Catholic?"
He had a cracked sore at the corner of his mouth. It must have been painful for him to talk.
"I think she is, but her husband isn"t and he doesn"t know she is. She doesn"t want him to know."
I said this in the hope of making things clearer, even though I didn"t know for sure if it was true. I had an idea that this priest might shortly lose interest altogether. "Father Hofstrader must have known all this," I said.
"You didn"t speak with her?"
I said that she had been under medication but that this was not the case all the time and I was sure she would have periods of lucidity. This too I stressed because I thought it necessary.
"If she wishes to make a confession, you know, there are priests available at Princess Margaret"s."
I could not think of what else to say. I got out the note, smoothed the paper, and handed it to him. I saw that the handwriting was not as good as I had thought. It was legible only in comparison with the letters on the envelope.
He made a troubled face.
"Who is this C.?"
"Her husband." I was worried that he might ask for the husband"s name, to get in touch with him, but instead he asked for Charlene"s. This woman"s name, he said.
"Charlene Sullivan." It was a wonder that I even remembered the surname. And I was rea.s.sured for a moment, because it was a name that sounded Catholic. Of course that meant that it was the husband who could be Catholic. But the priest might conclude that the husband had lapsed, and that would surely make Charlene"s secrecy more understandable, her message more urgent.
"Why does she need Father Hofstrader?"
"I think perhaps it"s something special."
"All confessions are special."
He made a move to get up, but I stayed where I was. He sat down again.
"Father Hofstrader is on vacation but he is not out of town. I could phone and ask him about this. If you insist."
"Yes. Please."
"I do not like to bother him. He has not been well."
I said that if he was not well enough to drive himself to Toronto I could drive him.
"We can take care of his transportation if necessary."
He looked around and did not see what he wanted, unclipped a pen from his pocket, and then decided that the blank side of the note would do to write on.
"If you"ll just make sure I"ve got the name. Charlotte-"
"Charlene."
Was I not tempted, during all this palaver? Not once? You"d think that I might break open, be wise to break open, glimpsing that vast though tricky forgiveness. But no. It"s not for me. What"s done is done. Flocks of angels, tears of blood, not withstanding.
I sat in the car without thinking to turn the motor on, though it was freezing cold by now. I didn"t know what to do next. That is, I knew what I could do. Find my way to the highway and join the bright everlasting flow of cars towards Toronto. Or find a place to stay overnight, if I did not think I had the strength to drive. Most places would provide you with a toothbrush, or direct you to a machine where you could get one. I knew what was necessary and possible but it was beyond my strength, for the moment, to do it.
The motorboats on the lake were supposed to stay a good distance out from the sh.o.r.e. And especially from our camping area, so that the waves they raised would not disturb our swimming. But on that last morning, that Sunday morning, a couple of them started a race and circled close in-not as close as the raft, of course, but close enough to raise waves. The raft was tossed around and Pauline"s voice was lifted in a cry of reproach and dismay. The boats made far too much noise for their drivers to hear her, and anyway they had set a big wave rolling towards the sh.o.r.e, causing most of us in the shallows either to jump with it or be tumbled off our feet.
Charlene and I both lost our footing. We had our backs to the raft, because we were watching Verna come towards us. We were standing in water about up to our armpits, and we seemed to be lifted and tossed at the same moment that we heard Pauline"s cry. We may have cried out as many others did, first in fear and then in delight as we regained our footing and that wave washed on ahead of us. The waves that followed proved to be not as strong, so that we could hold ourselves against them.
At the moment we tumbled, Verna had pitched towards us. When we came up, with our faces streaming, arms flailing, she was spread out under the surface of the water. There was a tumult of screaming and shouting all around, and this increased as the lesser waves arrived and people who had somehow missed the first attack pretended to be knocked over by the second. Verna"s head did not break the surface, though now she was not inert, but turning in a leisurely way, light as a jellyfish in the water. Charlene and I had our hands on her, on her rubber cap.
This could have been an accident. As if we, in trying to get our balance, grabbed on to this nearby large rubbery object, hardly realizing what it was or what we were doing. I have thought it all out. I think we would have been forgiven. Young children. Terrified.
Yes, yes. Hardly knew what they were doing.
Is this in any way true? It is true in the sense that we did not decide anything, in the beginning. We did not look at each other and decide to do what we subsequently and consciously did. Consciously, because our eyes did meet as the head of Verna tried to rise up to the surface of the water. Her head was determined to rise, like a dumpling in a stew. The rest of her was making misguided feeble movements down in the water, but the head knew what it should do.
We might have lost our grip on the rubber head, the rubber cap, were it not for the raised pattern that made it less slippery. I can recall the color perfectly, the pale insipid blue, but I never deciphered the pattern-a fish, a mermaid, a flower-whose ridges pushed into my palms.
Charlene and I kept our eyes on each other, rather than looking down at what our hands were doing. Her eyes were wide and gleeful, as I suppose mine were too. I don"t think we felt wicked, triumphing in our wickedness. More as if we were doing just what was-amazingly-demanded of us, as if this was the absolute high point, the culmination, in our lives, of our being ourselves.
We had gone too far to turn back, you might say. We had no choice. But I swear that choice had not occurred, did not occur, to us.
The whole business probably took no more than two minutes. Three? Or a minute and a half?
It seems too much to say that the discouraging clouds cleared up just at that time, but at some point-perhaps at the trespa.s.s of the motorboats, or when Pauline screamed, or when the first wave hit, or when the rubber object under our palms ceased to have a will of its own-the sun burst out, and more parents popped up on the beach, and there were calls to all of us to stop horsing around and come out of the water. Swimming was over. Over for the summer, for those who lived out of reach of the lake or munic.i.p.al swimming pools. Private pools were only in the movie magazines.
As I"ve said, my memory fails when it comes to parting from Charlene, getting into my parents" car. Because it didn"t matter. At that age, things ended. You expected things to end.
I am sure we never said anything as ba.n.a.l, as insulting or unnecessary, as Don"t tell Don"t tell.
I can imagine the unease starting, but not spreading quite so fast as it might have if there had not been competing dramas. A child has lost a sandal, one of the youngest children is screaming that she got sand in her eye from the waves. Almost certainly a child is throwing up, because of the excitement in the water or the excitement of families arriving or the too-swift consumption of contraband candy.
And soon but not right away the anxiety running through this, that someone is missing.
"Who?"
"One of the Specials."
"Oh drat. Wouldn"t you know."