There was some correspondence between Richard and the director that was particularly damaging.
Once in a while Richard appears to me, in the mind's eye or in a dream. He's grey, but with an iridescent sheen to him, like oil on a puddle. He gives me a fishy look. Another reproachful ghost.
Shortly before the newspapers announced his retirement from official politics, I received a telephone call from him, the first since my departure. He was enraged, and also frantic. He'd been told that due to the scandal he could no longer be considered as a leadership candidate, and now the men that mattered were not returning his calls. He'd been cold-shouldered. He'd been stiffed. I'd done this on purpose, he said, to ruin him.
"Done what?" I said. "You're not ruined. You're still very rich."
"That book!" he said. "You sabotaged me! How much did you have to pay them, to get it published? I can't believe Laura wrote that filthy - that piece of garbage!"
"You don't want to believe it," I said, "because you were besotted with her. You can't face the possibility that all the time you were having your squalid little fling with her, she must have been in and out of bed with another man - one she loved, unlike you. Or I assume that's what the book means - doesn't it?"
"It was that pinko, wasn't it? That fucking bastard - at the picnic!" Richard must have been very upset: as a rule, he seldom swore.
"How would I know?" I said. "I didn't spy on her. But I agree with you, it would have started at the picnic." I didn't tell him there had been two picnics involving Alex: one with Laura, and a second one, a year later, without her, after I'd run into Alex that day on Queen Street. The one with the hard-boiled eggs.
"She was doing it out of spite," said Richard. "She was just getting back at me."
"That wouldn't surprise me," I said. "She must have hated you. Why wouldn't she? You as good as raped her."
"That's untrue! I did nothing without her consent!"
"Consent? Is that what you'd call it? I'd call it blackmail."
He hung up on me. It was a family trait. When she'd called earlier to rail at me, Winifred had done that too.
Then Richard went missing, and then he was found in the Water Nixie - well, you know all that. He must have crept into the town, crept onto the grounds of Avilion, crept onto the boat, which was in the boathouse, by the way, not tied up at the jetty as it erroneously said in the papers. That was a cover-up: a corpse in a boat on the water is normal enough, but one in a boathouse is peculiar. Winifred wouldn't have wanted it thought that Richard had gone round the bend.
What really happened then? I'm not sure. Once he was located, Winifred took charge of events, and put the best face on things. A stroke was her story. He was found with the book at his elbow, however. That much I know, because Winifred phoned in a state of hysteria and told me so. "How could you have done this to him?" she said. "You destroyed his political career, and then you destroyed his memories of Laura. He loved her! He adored her! He couldn't bear it when she died!"
"I'm glad to hear he felt some remorse," I said coldly. "I can't say I noticed any at the time."
Winifred blamed me, of course. After that, it was open war. She did the worst thing to me that she could think of. She took Aimee.
I suppose you were taught the gospel according to Winifred. In her version, I would have been a lush, a tramp, a slut,a bad mother. As time went by I no doubt became, in her mouth, a slovenly harridan, a crazy old bat, a peddler of ratty old junk. I doubt she ever said to you that I murdered Richard, however. If she'd told you that, she would also have had to say where she got the idea.
Junk would have been a slur. It's true I bought cheap and sold dear - who doesn't, in the antiques racket? - but I had a good eye and I never twisted anyone's arm. There was a period of excessive drinking - I admit it - though not until after Aimee was gone. As for the men, there were some of those as well. It was never a question of love, it was more like a sort of periodic bandaging. I was cut off from everything around me, unable to reach, to touch; at the same time I felt scraped raw. I needed the comfort of another body.
I avoided any man from my own former social circles, though some of these appeared, like fruit flies, as soon as they got wind of my solitary and possibly rotten state. Men like that could have been egged on by Winifred, and no doubt were. I stuck to strangers, picked up on my forays to nearby towns and cities in search of what they now call collectibles. I never gave my real name. But Winifred was too persistent for me, in the end. All she'd needed was one man, and that's what she'd got. The pictures of the motel room door, going in, coming out; the fake signatures in the register; the testimony of the owner, who'd welcomed the cash. You could fight it in court, said my lawyer, but I'd advise against it. We'll try for visiting rights, that's all you can expect. You handed them the ammunition and they've used it. Even he took a dim view of me, not for my moral turpitude but for my clumsiness.
Richard had appointed Winifred as Aimee's guardian in his will, and also as sole trustee of Aimee's not inconsiderable trust fund. So she had that in her favour, as well.
As for the book, Laura didn't write a word of it. But you must have known that for some time. I wrote it myself, during my long evenings alone, when I was waiting for Alex to come back, and then afterwards, once I knew he wouldn't. I didn't think of what I was doing as writing - just writing down. What I remembered, and also what I imagined, which is also the truth. I thought of myself as recording. A bodiless hand, scrawling across a wall.
I wanted a memorial. That was how it began. For Alex, but also for myself.
It was no great leap from that to naming Laura as the author. You might decide it was cowardice that inspired me, or a failure of nerve - I've never been fond of spotlights. Or simple prudence: my own name would have guaranteed the loss of Aimee, whom I lost in any case. But on second thought it was merely doing justice, because I can't say Laura didn't write a word. Technically that's accurate, but in another sense - what Laura would have called the spiritual sense - you could say she was my collaborator. The real author was neither one of us: a fist is more than the sum of its fingers.
I remember Laura, when she was ten or eleven, sitting at Grandfather's desk, in the library at Avilion. She had a sheet of paper in front of her, and was busying herself with the seating arrangements in Heaven. "Jesus sits at the right hand of God," she said, "so who sits at God's left hand?"
"Maybe God doesn't have a left hand," I said, to tease her. "Left hands are supposed to be bad, so maybe he wouldn't have one. Or maybe he got his left hand cut off in a war."
"We're made in God's image," Laura said, "and we have left hands, so God must have one as well." She consulted her diagram, chewing on the end of her pencil. "I know!" she said. "The table must be circular! So everyone sits at everyone else's right hand, all the way round."
"And vice versa," I said.
Laura was my left hand, and I was hers. We wrote the book together. It's a left-handed book. That's why one of us is always out of sight, whichever way you look at it.
When I began this account of Laura's life - of my own life - I had no idea why I was writing it, or who I expected might read it once I'd done. But it's clear to me now. I was writing it for you, dearest Sabrina, because you're the one - the only one - who needs it now.
Since Laura is no longer who you thought she was, you're no longer who you think you are, either. That can be a shock, but it can also be a relief. For instance, you're no relation at all to Winifred, and none to Richard. There's not a speck of Griffen in you at all: your hands are clean on that score. Your real grandfather was Alex Thomas, and as to who his own father was, well, the sky's the limit. Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, saint, a score of countries of origin, a dozen cancelled maps, a hundred levelled villages - take your pick. Your legacy from him is the realm of infinite speculation. You're free to reinvent yourself at will.
XV
The Blind Assassin Epilogue: The other hand
She has a single photog
raph of him, a black-and-white print. She preserves it carefully, because it's almost all she has left of him. The photo is of the two of them together, her and this man, on a picnic. Picnic is written on the back - not his name or hers, just picnic. She knows the names, she doesn't need to write them down.
They're sitting under a tree; it must have been an apple tree. She has a wide skirt tucked around her knees. It was a hot day. Holding her hand over the picture, she can still feel the heat coming up from it.
He's wearing a light-coloured hat, partially shading his face. She's turned half towards him, smiling in a way she can't remember smiling at anyone since. She seems very young in the picture. He's smiling too, but he's holding up his hand between himself and the camera, as if to fend it off. As if to fend her off, in the future, looking back at them. As if to protect her. Between his fingers is the stub of a cigarette.
She retrieves the photograph when she's alone, and lies it flat on the table and stares down into it. She examines every detail: his smoky fingers, the bleached folds of their clothing, the unripe apples hanging in the tree, the dying grass in the foreground. Her smiling face.
The photo has been cut; a third of it has been cut off. In the lower left corner there's a hand, scissored off at the wrist, resting on the grass. It's the hand of the other one, the one who is always in the picture whether seen or not. The hand that will set things down.
How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next - if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions - you'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.
Drowned now - the tree as well, the sky, the wind, the clouds. All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it.
The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.
The Port Ticonderoga Herald and Banner, May 29, 1999
IRIS CHASE GRIFFEN,
A MEMORABLE LADY
BY MYRA STURGESS
Mrs. Iris Chase Griffen passed away suddenly last Wednesday at the age of 83, at her home here in Port Ticonderoga. "She left us very peacefully, while sitting in her back garden," stated long-time family friend Mrs. Myra Sturgess. "It was not unexpected as she was suffering from a heart condition. She was quite the personality and a landmark of history, and wonderful for her age. We will all miss her and she will certainly be long remembered."
Mrs. Griffen was the sister of noted local authoress Laura Chase. In addition she was the daughter of Captain Norval Chase who will be long remembered by this town, and granddaughter of Benjamin Chase, founder of Chase Industries which put up the Button Factory and others. As well, she was the wife of the late Richard E. Griffen, the prominent industrialist and political figure, and the sister-in-law of Winifred Griffen Prior, the Toronto philanthropist who died last year leaving a generous legacy to our high school. She is survived by her granddaughter Sabrina Griffen, who has just returned from abroad and is expected to visit this town shortly to see to her grandmother's affairs. I am sure she will be given a warm greeting and any help or aid we all can proffer.
By Mrs. Griffen's wish the funeral service will be private, with interment of the ashes at the Chase family monument in Mount Hope Cemetery. However a Memorial Service will be held in the chapel of the Jordan Funeral Home this coming Tuesday at 3.00 p.m., in acknowledgment of the many contributions made by the Chase family over the years, with refreshments served afterwards at the home of Myra and Walter Sturgess, all welcome.
The threshold
Today it's raining, a warm spring rain. The air is opalescent with it. The sound of the rapids pours up and over the cliff - pours like a wind, but unmoving, like wave marks left on sand.
I'm sitting at the wooden table on my back porch, in the shelter of the overhang, gazing out over the long straggling garden. It's almost dusk. The wild phlox is in bloom, or I believe it must be phlox; I can't see it clearly. Something blue, that glimmers down there at the end of the garden, the phosphorescence of snow in shadow. In the flower beds the shoots jostle upwards, crayon-shaped, purple, aqua, red. The scent of moist dirt and fresh growth washes in over me, watery, slippery, with an acid taste to it like the bark of a tree. It smells like youth; it smells like heartbreak.
I've swathed myself in a shawl: the evening is warm for the season, but I don't feel it as warmth, only as an absence of cold. I view the world clearly from here - here being the landscape glimpsed from the top of a wave, just before the next one drives you under: how blue the sky, how green the sea, how final the prospect.
Beside my elbow is the stack of paper I've been adding to so laboriously, month after month. When I'm done - when I've written the final page - I'll pull myself up out of this chair and make my way to the kitchen, and scrabble around for an elastic band or a piece of string or an old ribbon. I'll tie the papers up, then lift the lid of my steamer trunk and slide this bundle in on top of everything else. There it will stay until you come back from your travels, if you ever do come back. The lawyer has the key, and his orders.
I must admit I have a daydream about you.
One evening there will be a knock at the door and it will be you. You'll be dressed in black, you'll be toting one of those little rucksacks they all have now instead of handbags. It will be raining, as it is this evening, but you won't have an umbrella, you'd scorn umbrellas; the young like their heads to be whipped about by the elements, they find it bracing. You'll stand on the porch, in a haze of damp light; your glossy dark hair will be sodden, your black outfit will be soaked, the drops of rain will glitter on your face and clothes like sequins.
You'll knock. I'll hear you, I'll shuffle down the hallway, I'll open the door. My heart will jump and flutter; I'll peer at you, then recognize you: my cherished, my last remaining wish. I'll think to myself that I've never seen anyone so beautiful, but I won't say so; I wouldn't want you to think I've gone scatty. Then I'll welcome you, I'll hold out my arms to you, I'll kiss you on the cheek, sparsely, because it would be unseemly to let myself go. I'll cry a few tears, but only a few, because the eyes of the elderly are arid.
I'll invite you in. You'll enter. I wouldn't recommend it to a young girl, crossing the threshold of a place like mine, with a person like me inside it - an old woman, an older woman, living alone in a fossilized cottage, with hair like burning spiderwebs and a weedy garden full of God knows what. There's a whiff of brimstone about such creatures: you may even be a little frightened of me. But you'll also be a little reckless, like all the women in our family, and so you will come in anyway. Grandmother , you will say; and through that one word I will no longer be disowned.
I'll sit you down at my table, among the wooden spoons and the twig wreaths, and the candle which is never lit. You'll be shivering, I'll give you a towel, I'll wrap you in a blanket, I'll make you some cocoa.
Then I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you this story: the story of how you came to be here, sitting in my kitchen, listening to the story I've been telling you. If by some miracle that were to happen, there would be no need for this jumbled mound of paper.
What is it that I'll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn't yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don't prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull.
But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that - if anywhere - is the only place I will be.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my grat
itude to the following: my invaluable assistant, Sarah Cooper; my other researchers, A. S. Hall and Sarah Webster; Professor Tim Stanley; Sharon Maxwell, archivist, Cunard Line Ltd., St. James Library, London; Dorothy Duncan, executive director, Ontario Historical Society; Hudson's Bay/Simpsons Archives, Winnipeg; Fiona Lucas, Spadina House, Heritage Toronto; Fred Kerner; Terrance Cox; Katherine Ashenburg; Jonathan F. Vance; Mary Sims; Joan Gale; Don Hutchison; Ron Bernstein; Lorna Toolis and her staff at the Toronto Public Library's Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, and to Janet Inksetter of Annex Books. Also to early readers Eleanor Cook, Ramsay Cook, Xandra Bingley, Jess A. Gibson, and Rosalie Abella. Also to my agents, Phoebe Larmore, Vivienne Schuster, and Diana Mackay; and to my editors, Ellen Seligman, Heather Sangster, Nan A. Talese, and Liz Calder. Also to Arthur Gelgoot, Michael Bradley, Bob Clark, Gene Goldberg, and Rose Tornato. And to Graeme Gibson and my family, as always.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint already published material:
Epigraphs:
Ryszard Kapuciski, Shah of Shahs: (c) 1982, Ryszard Kapuciski, translated by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczowska-Brand. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The Carthaginian urn inscription attributed to Zashtar, a minor noble-woman (c. 210-185 B.C.E.), is cited by Dr. Emil F. Swardsward in "Carthaginian Shard Epitaphs," Cryptic: The Journal of Ancient Inscriptions, vol. VII, no. 9, 1963.