Archibald Full Frontal, page 30
Dan explains all of this, somehow understanding that I need the facts. I listen to his voice on the phone. I listen to his words, the details. And then, he stops, and there is nothing but the pulse-y whisper of static on the line that connects us. And the silence of our grief. There is nothing else to say. I put the receiver down.
Something in me twists and snaps, like an old tree branch splintering in a gust of wind. I fall into a dark place, a new, unperceived hollow. Perhaps, it is a place that my grandmother and I share, a genetic link. Perhaps, it is a place everyone discovers in a time of terrible grief, except for some, it is just a hole, and for others it is an underground labyrinth that sucks them deeper and deeper. It engulfs me. I had forced myself to move forward without Sam, and it had taken all my strength. But a world without Sam was too much to contemplate.
I spend days in bed, in a darkened room. I unplug the phone. I ignore the doorbell. I eat occasionally, but mostly I sleep. I get up to walk the dog and then I crawl into bed as quickly as I can. I lie in the darkness that is like the nighttime ocean, full of black, glassy waves, and I am drifting. And then a light turns on, too bright, too penetrating, and I throw my arm across my eyes.
“Maggie. Maggie, wake up.”
I look up at Dan, sitting beside the bed. “Dan — Dan? How did you get in here?”
He holds up my spare key. “Under the doormat, not very original.”
“How did you know I was here?”
He looks at me then as if I am a moron. He pulls the covers down. I yank them back up.
“I wish you had come to the funeral,” he says towering over me.
“I couldn’t.”
“Carolina would have understood. You had a right to be there.”
I take in his comforting presence, the same as always. “I just couldn’t,” I say.
He sinks beside me and rubs my shoulder, and I let him. My hair is greasy. I haven’t showered for days. I look at him and a tear streaks down his face. I watch it slide and puddle on his shirt.
“I can’t cry anymore,” I say. “I am an evaporated lake.”
“A dried-up well,” he adds.
“A crater,” I agree, and another tear slips off his face. And we hold each other.
After he releases me, he rests against my headboard and looks over at the dog sitting on the foot of my bed, ears piqued, attentive. He has never seen anyone in my bedroom except him.
“I see I’m not your only friend.”
“You smell better,” I say.
Dan has taken three weeks off. We make dinner, watch TV, talk, and take walks. We slide back into our friendship. It feels good to have him here, like he never left.
And then one day, I am coming out of the kitchen. I have made popcorn, and I see Dan sitting on the couch alone and I am catapulted back in time. I look around expectantly for Sam. When I realize my mistake, I collapse in a heap, sobbing uncontrollably.
“He’s not here,” I keep saying to a bewildered Dan. “He’s not here.”
Next morning, after I have gotten myself together, I tell Dan the hard news.
“You have to go,” I say. “I am so sorry, Dan. You just … you remind me too much of him.”
Dan looks hurt but seems to understand. After he has packed, he places his suitcase by the door. “Are you sure?”
I nod yes and swallow.
“Well, okay. But I will be back to check on you.”
I put both my hands on his shoulders firmly. “No, Dan. No. I am so sorry. You don’t need to take care of me anymore.”
“But ... you’re my — I can’t just—”
“Listen to me,” I say sharply. “You need to promise. Go back to Toronto, live your life. Live your life well. Find a girl who loves you … as much as I loved him. And don’t come back here.”
He looks away from me, and when I see his face, his eyes are grave. “Pedal? Maggie? Is this what you really want?”
I nod stoically and turn my back on him. I wait for what seems like an eternity until I hear the door close.
Things get much worse. I let gloom swallow me. Grief and self-pity are my constant companions. Months go by. I drop out of school. I rarely leave the house. A package arrives from Saskatchewan, and I tuck it in the closet without looking at it. I save up sleeping pills; each night I take them out and look at them, so tiny and purple inside the bottle. I play a game. How many will I take tonight? Will I take one or will I be brave enough to swallow the bottle? But each night, I just take two. I am still too cowardly to step off the edge.
“Come on in,” Sam yells from the lake below. I hear the waterfall crashing. He beckons me, smiling and waving. I strain my eyes, peering down through the glint of the sun, and I see Archibald is there too, bouncing in the water, like a buoy, looking younger and happier than I remember.
“Jump, Magali!” he shouts. I begin to tremble as fear seizes my innards. I wake up to dog breath and the smell of my sweat in the darkened room. It seemed so real.
Goodbye
I am standing in the kitchen, eating cereal from a box and feeding bits to the dog when there is a soft tap-tap on the kitchen door. I stand very still, holding my breath. It comes again, the faintest tap-tap. It is very late.
“It is probably the wind,” I whisper to the dog.
But it persists. Normally, I would ignore someone at the door, defiantly. For some reason, I cannot this time. A sharp push from behind my shoulder blades needles me forwards. I turn the lock and open the door. I peer down at a familiar little person.
“Marcell?” I ask.
He looks up at me, beaming, and swaying. “Maggie! Maggie! It is so good to see you, at last.”
I take a step back reflexively, and he launches himself inside, wrapped in a trench coat, dripping with rain.
“Do you mind terribly if I come in and dry off?”
“Well — I — I mean, now isn’t the best time…” I stammer.
“I am so sorry to impose, just a towel and a quick cup of tea, mon cherie?” He pulls off his coat and collapses in a nearby kitchen chair. The dog is at his shin, pleased to see a new face. “Bonjour, mon petite puppy.” Marcell scratches him under the chin and he flops onto his back, belly up, in seventh heaven.
“He’s no puppy. I’ll get you a towel.” I sigh. The smell of lemons has returned. It has been at least two years since I last saw Marcell, but aside from massive bags under his eyes and a scruffy beard, he is pretty much as I remember.
I make him the best tea I can find. He does not seem to notice the dark house, the chaotic stack of dishes, the clothes everywhere. He sits back and sips it thoughtfully, then pulls a flask out of his pocket and takes a pronounced gulp.
“I am so very sorry about Sam,” he says. “Leo told me of his death. You were very hard to find. Apparently, you have not kept in touch.”
I swallow, surprised to hear that he had kept in touch himself and was up to date on Sam’s death. He who had been MIA for Archibald’s funeral.
“Last night, it was the strangest thing, I was watching television. I was flipping the channels, just merde on as usual and, then, holy Christ! Archibald appeared, staring at me out of the TV, and I knew he was saying, ‘Go and see Maggie.’ Isn’t that crazy?”
“Very,” I agree.
“So, then I get the idea … you still own Archibald’s apartment … maybe you have left a forwarding address for the mail? Yes … so I call Maria. And the sweet old girl has it. Simple as a cheese and onion sandwich,” he says with a satisfied grin. “She could never resist me. It’s my sex appeal.”
That damn Maria! I had made her promise not to give out my address.
“But I know that I need to see you. And here I am!” He raises his flask. “To Sam.”
I cannot lift my eyes to his big, pulsing, bedraggled globes. If I do, I will cry. I have not cried in so long, not since Dan was here months before. I swallow. “He married someone else in the end.”
“Yes? Well, marriage does not stop us from loving. And neither does death.”
I do not reply.
He continues:
“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost, loves shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”
I roll my eyes, not poetry. Not again. “I always found that to be an irritating habit, Marcell,” I say. But I think, I would give anything to see him again. One more time. Suddenly, I am on the floor. It is as if a gust of wind has blown me over. I lie on my back, the wind knocked out of me, gasping.
“Maggie? Where did you go?” Marcell calls out.
“Down here,” I whisper from the kitchen floor.
Marcell peers down at me. “How did you get down there?”
The dog licks my face. I close my eyes against the pain.
He lowers me the flask. I sit up slightly, take a sip. It burns through me. I hear his voice for just a second, but so familiar: Maggie, Maggie.
I flail my arms as Marcell crouches beside me.
“Blah! What did you just give me?” Water runs from my eyes. I sneeze.
“It’s a special blend of tequila, among other things. The shamans use it.”
“Use it for what?” I ask, sputtering.
“A good deal.”
And Marcell stays. He doesn’t ask me, and I don’t invite him. But he is a good houseguest, always polite, often drunk in that subdued, melancholic Marcell-ish way. He shops and brings home cheese and sausage, bagels, and strange pickles, and we eat. He regales me with stories from his last adventure in South America, which is apparently where he took off to the last time he went missing. The dog worships him and sleeps in his room. And I grow used to him, to his presence. He disappears for a few days here and there, but always surfaces when I begin to wonder.
I am in the kitchen cooking. I have gone shopping and bought French red wine Marcell likes, although there is no brand he won’t drink. I am attempting to make chicken paprika, a recipe of Maria’s. Marcell arrives, holding a bunch of flowers, white daisies, slightly brown at the edges, roots intact. I wonder what garden he has scavenged them from. The dog shimmies forward, bum wiggling in an enthusiastic greeting.
“Ah … it smells wonderful,” he says. I open the wine and offer him a glass. He finishes it in two swallows.
“Maggie, you look beautiful,” he says. I am wearing a faded dress from years before. I think he is noticing the fact I have showered.
“Thank you,” I say.
He sits at the table and rubs a temple, as if distracted. He ignores the second glass of wine I have poured him. “Now it is time to say goodbye.”
“Are you leaving?” I ask. Surprised at how disappointed I am to be losing him.
“Yes, mon cherie. You are ready. You did a favour for me once, a great kindness. I have not forgotten.” He taps his temple with his finger.
“It was Archibald who rescued you from the … hospital. I just drove,” I remind him.
“No, you did more than that. You did not pity me. That was the favour. And now I am returning it.”
“Goodbye is so sad,” I say to Marcell. My voice sounds husky.
He stands and walks around the table to me. “Yes. It is. That is the motherfucking truth.”
“Can we agree not to say it then?”
“Not this time. You must say goodbye to him.”
“To him?”
“To Sam.”
I gasp. “What?”
“He has been here all this time waiting. Can’t you feel him?”
“No,” I say, “I can’t.” But that wasn’t entirely true. Hadn’t I felt him all around me? Even now, I feel a strange pulling, shifting, whispering in the room.
“I am no teacher. No role model.”
“No kidding,” I shoot back, trembling all over, skin tingling.
He ignores me. “You helped me once when I was very low, and now I am helping you, in the only way I can. In the way you most need. Archibald loved a man who rejected him, and it killed him inside and turned him into someone else. Yes, I know about Michael. But he kept on living. I admired that. He was a survivor. And I think you are like him, yes?”
I shake my head. “No.” Not like Archibald. “Never.”
“Say it. You know it’s time.”
“No.”
He shrugs. “You either say goodbye to him or to yourself. I chose to hold on to those I love. Look at me. Look long and hard. Do you want to be like me?”
I turn to him, already prepared for what I see. “I don’t know. Why not?” But the truth is I don’t. No one could. I know where he has been. I know the darkness that chases him. He is a member of the walking dead, haunted.
I take a breath. “Goodbye,” I whisper into the chilly nothingness, into the kitchen cast in twilight, into the spectre of our loneliness, mine and Marcell’s, an unbearable communion.
I close my eyes, and I am no longer in the kitchen. He is with me. We are laid out on the grass, on the lawn outside his apartment. It is a beautiful sunny winter’s day, one last warm day before the coldness settles in. We are on our backs. My head rests against his, hair fanned out beneath the warmth of the sun. It is just after the crazy night of Archibald’s gala, after we had presented the painting and pandemonium had erupted, and Archibald had been carried away. He asks me as if on cue, “Maggie, I told you, but you never told me: when did you first know that you loved me?”
I feel myself considering, as I did then. It is as if I have travelled through time. I reach out to touch him. I grab his warm, long fingers and feel them curl in mine. When I answer, it is exactly the same as all those months before. “Well, I think I have always loved you. Is that strange? Even when I didn’t. I did. I just didn’t know it. When you found me on the laundry room floor. But even before that. Before I knew you, I loved you. ”
He laughs and I soak up the sound. “You make me believe the impossible, Maggie Underwood. You make me believe that love never ends.”
And he takes my hand and places it over his heart. I feel the pulse of his heart and my own heart matches his. He reaches for me and his kiss submerges me in the memory. I twist and turn leisurely against him, our bodies travelling together on this day that fell between so many others, on a day that in no way heralded an end. I inhale him but as I do his smell grows and changes. Now, he smells of earth and clouds, of wind, of the fire of the sun and the wood of the tree behind us, of all of the elements and something more.
A sublime warmth eases through me. The memory of sharing this with him, my love for him, exquisitely piercing. And when I blink again, he is gone. I open my mouth in a scream but no noise escapes me.
Marcell is before me, merciless: “Say it again.”
“Goodbye, Sam,” I say.
I am truly alone. It is just me, Marcell, and the dog. I breathe into Marcell’s shoulder, stooped over, the sensation of being with Sam again an agony, an overwhelming gift. He props me up with surprising strength.
I wipe my face across my arm, marvelling at this broken man’s wisdom. “What happens now?”
“If I could tell you that, then I would be God,” he says with a little smirk. “But your story isn’t over. This is not the end for you.”
I grip his hands, and I believe him. He turns his head away from my sympathy, his eyes already on the wine bottle.
Later that night, I know what to do. I search through drawers until I find my set of keys.
I knock on his door. He is dozing, sloshed. He opens his eyes and grins. It is the joyless grin of a man who has not found his way back from the maze of his own sorrow.
“Marcell, these are for you,” I say. “Archibald’s keys. I want you to have his apartment.”
“Me? Mon Dieu, no. I do not like this … responsibility. I am a traveller, a vagabond.”
“Please, Marcell. Even a vagabond needs a bed. Just take the keys. Stay there … whenever you are in town or need a place to sleep. It’s what he would have wanted.”
And Marcell nods off, eyes closed.
Will he remember our conversation the next day? I am not sure. But by the time I am awake, he is gone, along with all of his things. He has cleared out. And I am left, finally after all these years, a convert to the cult of Marcell. I will always welcome him into my home, and I will always greet him like a cherished friend.
A few weeks after he has left, I come across a box tucked away in the back of closet, sent to me from Saskatchewan. I had pushed its existence from my mind. I seat myself at the table and take a breath. Inside is his leather jacket. I run my hands over its rough, worn surface. I hold it to my nose, inhaling him. He was wearing it the last day I saw him. I drape it over my shoulders.
I pull out a large manila envelope from the bottom of the box. On it there is a note:
“Maggie, He would have wanted you to have these. There was one he liked, in particular. With Love, Carolina.”
It is a stack of photos. Black and whites. Old shots. Me in the cosmos, and with Dan. I had expected those. I flip through them. But she had included two I had never seen before. One was of Archibald and me at a party. I’m not sure which one, but it must have been towards the end, because Archibald is leaning heavily on his cane. I stand beside him a few feet away, dressed in a black skirt and sweater. We are surrounded by people, but everyone is slightly out of focus, except us. I am looking away, maybe at someone, off camera. And Archibald is in profile staring at me, a faint smile on his face. It conjures up strange feelings, seeing the two of us together, side by side.
I quickly tuck it in behind the other photos, and what I see next causes a sharp pang. It is as though my heart has ripped free from the cavity of my chest, where it had been so tentatively bolted all this time. It is a close-up of his face. I whisper his name, soundlessly, “Sam.”
