The Last of the Stanfields(109)

“Sally-Anne may have had her faults, but she wasn’t going to stand by and let May take that. She lunged at her brother, screaming at him out there on the landing, and hit him over and over again with all her might. Edward was stunned. He lost his balance . . . and fell straight down those steps, all one hundred and twenty of them. Sally-Anne always called those stairs a death trap. Her brother snapped his neck on the way down . . . He was dead before he hit the bottom.”

Saddened and concerned, Pierre at last looked to George-Harrison, with nothing but kindness in his eyes. George-Harrison couldn’t get a single word out. Pierre reached out and touched his hand.

“I can understand if you’re angry at me, kid,” he asked.

George-Harrison finally met his eyes. “I may never have had a father, and maybe that’s for the best. But I’ve got one hell of a mother. And I have you, Pierre. That’s already a lot, right there. Far too much for me to be anything but grateful.”

After Pierre paid the bill, the three of us walked back to his shop and gathered in front of George-Harrison’s truck. We were just starting to say our goodbyes when Pierre beckoned us to follow him into his office, where he drew out an old spiral notepad from a desk drawer. It was little more than a common school notebook.

“I’ve never read a single word, I swear. It was your mother who gave it to me,” he told George-Harrison. “But I believe . . . it belonged to yours,” Pierre said, turning and handing the notebook to me.

“Take it,” he said. “I’ve had enough secrets for one lifetime.”



George-Harrison drove his pickup through the pitch-dark of a moonless night, headed for home. I sat watching the headlights stream down the highway, holding my mother’s diary tightly on my lap. I didn’t have the heart to crack it open. Not yet.





38

ELEANOR-RIGBY

October 2016, Magog

I spent the night snuggled up to George-Harrison while he slept, or at least pretended to sleep. I thought that might be the case, that he had his eyes closed to give me my privacy while still staying close by my side, should I need him.

I read my mother’s diary start to finish, rediscovering the whole story in her own words: the terrible suffering she endured at the boarding school in England; the tortured, sleepless nights she spent at the dormitory; and the onslaught of loneliness and abandonment she felt day after day. There was also joy in those pages. I read about her meeting my father in a pub with the Beatles singing “All You Need Is Love” as the perfect soundtrack. The first chapter of their relationship seemed like a three-year stretch where she came close to finding true happiness. I could understand why she had to return to Baltimore, driven by hope and a need to reconnect with her family. I discovered her life as a journalist, full of adventure and freedom, the two things she lived for above all else. I was amazed at how similar we were at the same period of our lives, both seekers venturing to the far ends of the earth while never even truly knowing our own parents. I revisited all that I had learned of my mother from the beginning of this journey: her total commitment to journalism, the harsh struggles she had faced, and the madness that she got caught up in.

I read all through the night. Around the break of dawn, I reached the end of the diary and discovered, to my surprise, a worn envelope between the last few pages. I turned to George-Harrison—knowing full well I might be in love with him already—and woke him up. I had decided to read him the last few pages. After all, my mother’s final entry was addressed in part to May herself.

October 27, 1980

This will be my final entry.

I think back to that fateful day when we went rushing down those stairs, all but certain we would find my brother dead at the bottom. But May saw he was still breathing, however faintly. It wasn’t too late; there was still hope. We jumped into my mother’s car and drove Edward to the hospital. Mere moments after they came to take him away on a stretcher, we ran for the hills like the thieves we were. In the middle of the night, I called to find out how he was, and the doctors told us there wasn’t much hope. He had a broken neck and it was a miracle that he was still breathing, with machines the only things keeping him alive. In the blink of an eye, we went from idealistic thieves to hardened, violent criminals, even if it all was by accident.

We went down to the waterfront at dawn and drove my mother’s car straight off the docks. We stood together, watching it sink down and disappear into the frigid waters. No one knew that he had come to see us, and the car was the only evidence that could link us to the crime. Later on, around midday, I got the call from my mother. She ordered me to come to her side immediately, so I climbed onto the old Triumph for one last ride.

My mother was there at the hospital waiting for me. She had watched over my brother through the night. I wanted to see him, but she wouldn’t allow it. I planned to confess right then and there, no matter the consequences, and return the painting that she loved so dearly, which would only come as a small consolation, of course. But my mother never gave me the chance.

She ordered me to stay quiet and listen.

“Go. Leave the country and never come back. Leave now, before it’s too late. I lost my son last night. I don’t want to lose my daughter to a life in prison. Don’t look so surprised. I know everything; I’m your mother. When the nurses told me that two women had brought Edward to the hospital, I feared the worst. All it took was one look at you, and now I see everything. Remember, on the phone: I told you to come to my side, but I didn’t say where I was. And yet, here you are. You’ll have to get rid of my car, if you haven’t already.”