Here So Far Away(70)

“Why?”

“The Elevens would have kicked my ass a long time ago if you weren’t around. Well, next year you won’t be around.”

I pushed the bowl toward him. “So you decided that it would be better if she thinks you’re a psycho. And she believed you.”

He drank the puddle of melted ice cream, wiped the chocolate moustache off his cupid’s-bow mouth, and tried not to smile. “Getting better at bullshitting, I guess.”

I got to the end of the week without any more public retching, but it had been clear almost from the moment I went through the school doors that I couldn’t go back to leading my double life. My stupid body was trying to rat on me. The only reason Mum hadn’t been able to force me to the doctor yet was because he was on holiday. When he got back and couldn’t find something physically wrong, how long before people started connecting the dots? It’d be so much better if you could be sad part-time. Go into a chamber, get zapped with a thousand volts, scream into the void, come out and go for a nice run.

Lying curled on my bed that Friday afternoon, the panic started rising again. Should I tell Bill, just to get it over with? We hadn’t said a word to each other since our fight, and he’d been out all week with a stomach bug. I didn’t know if we weren’t talking or hadn’t had a chance. If not Bill, who? If not telling, what? What do I do? What do I DO?

I’d always felt like there was a point I was moving toward, small, vague, and distant, but there. For a long time the plan had been all about leaving with my friends (I mean, I’d chosen Aurora for them, not me), then I’d hung my future on Francis. Now what? Did I even want to feel better? This burning in my chest was all I had left of him. If it went away, it might be like he never was. I had nothing else to hold on to.

I didn’t, but maybe someone else did.

When I got to the farm, I half expected the house to be dirty and neglected and moldering back to its former state, and of course it wasn’t. Rupert’s daughter, Sarah, was staying there when she came to visit Rupert from the city, and seemed to be keeping things up for the time being. A small suitcase was parked by the staircase. But the house felt hollow. Rupert’s yellow rocker had been moved out, and his TV and VCR, his stereo and music, his afghans and Wilfred’s birdcage. The fridge and cupboards were nearly empty. The composition of the air itself had changed. It was lighter and stale.

I’d tried calling Rupert when my suspension ended, and was told he wasn’t seeing anyone but family. A nurse explained that the combination of an infection and “upset” had left him confused. “He was probably putting on a good front before. Sometimes at this age, when dementia is starting to creep in, the body gets sick and the mind goes too. He’ll be more like himself again when the infection clears up, and then you can have a nice visit.”

I knew someone might have already shipped Francis’s belongings to his mother in Calgary, and had prepared myself for the sight of his empty drawers and closets. It was seeing Shaggy’s old mattress on Rupert’s bedroom floor that nearly set me off again. So I began my search for a keepsake to replace the lake stone in the other upstairs rooms. They couldn’t have gotten every single thing, I reckoned. Something would turn up—a shaving brush, a cassette tape, a shoe, or maybe—oh, please—a photograph. I went through all the closets and cupboards, the desk, the hutch, and medicine cabinet. I got on my knees and looked under the beds and chesterfields, and did a forensic search of the barn. I even checked the garbage pails and the tub and sinks for a sliver of Francis’s herb-mint soap. After three hours, I’d found only two pairs of black socks that were probably-but-not-for-sure Rupert’s.

Swallowing tears, I went back up to Rupert’s bedroom, the one room I hadn’t thoroughly scoured, stepped over Shaggy’s mattress, and started again. It just wasn’t possible that I was leaving with only an old man’s socks.

I was elbow-deep in Rupert’s underwear drawer when someone said: “Are you George?”

A woman in her late forties was standing in the doorway gripping a fire poker. She dropped it to her side. “You are. I recognize you from Dad’s description,” she said.

Sarah.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “Funny, I didn’t hear you coming up the stairs.”

“I got lots of practice sneaking into the house when I was your age.”

Sarah wasn’t at all what I’d expected. There was a black-and-white photograph of her as a blond-haired girl on Rupert’s fridge, and this woman had the same narrow nose, same deep-set eyes, but I’d always imagined she’d grown up to be a skinny, hard-edged, urban business lady. The reality was pink-cheeked and plump, with intensely chestnut-colored hair. She wore no makeup and was dressed in a brightly patterned sweater and large, dangly earrings.

I eased my hands out of the drawer, no easy lie at the ready about what I was doing. “I bet I know what you’re looking for,” she said. “Found it when I was turning the house upside down for his magnifying glass. Hang on a sec.”

She returned with a small package wrapped in brown paper. “I’ve been carrying it around in my purse,” she said, handing it to me. “Been meaning to drop it off.”

My name was written on the outside with a fountain pen: Ms. Frances George Warren. Francis’s handwriting.