Chapter Two (Harold Edison)
Harold took the long way home, along Shelbourne with its canopy of green that softened and shaded the serious business of vehicular traffic, dictating as he went. Polly would find the time to listen to his account of the visit with Michael before she handed it on to one of the sons-in-law to copy on disk. A hard copy would find its way into wooden filing cabinets in Harold’s cottage.
“It’ll be a book someday,” she had told him over the years. He had to admit that he seemed to turn his client reports into stories. This one was particularly interesting as far as the situation went and time would tell if it had given Michael any useful handle on his life: maybe a shock was good for contrast. He’d have to think on this. Harold kept to facts but his observations were dramatic and at times amusing. Often his humor was unintentional. Polly said he had the knack of committing malafunnyisms.
He turned right on Lansdowne – it had been Hillside until it met Shelbourne: Victoria was most confusing with its sudden change of street names – and then turned left on Richmond, past the splendid Camosun College. It was bare of students. Then he turned onto Mayfair and drove up Mt. Tolmie from its western access, parked, climbed out over the door because he thought no one was looking and was slightly embarrassed to suddenly see another man leaning against a van. Harold nodded his convertible cap at him and stood and stared across a vista of city, ocean, islands, mountains. He’d turned to Polly many years ago and, in all seriousness, from a view in Tuscany, had commented, “It’s almost as nice as Mt. Tolmie.” She had laughed and replied, “And there you can sleep in your own bed.” Harold loved traveling but he never slept very well away from home.
He thought of this now and chuckled at himself.
The man had peeled himself away from the van and moved closer to Harold.
“Nice car.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but, aren’t you that psychic detective?”
Harold turned and looked at him. A fair-haired man, in his forties, camera dangling from one hand, a touristy-type camera. Harold glanced at the license plate but it was in province.
“I think I saw your picture in the paper? A few months back?” the man continued.
“Oh, I know what you mean. The article on the mind-body connection.”
“No – I think it was to do with an attempted murder; something like that.”
“Oh. That one.” Harold was a visible, if reluctant, Personality about town, with a reputation that sometime bordered on the sensational, likely from the amount of journalistic coverage over the years. “I’m more a psychologist with an open mind who seems to have had more than my share of involvement with – um, crime,” he explained.
The man looked a bit disappointed. Harold, with the need of most therapists to please, answered the look, “But detection of the psyche, exploring new frontiers of the mind, is certainly part of it.”
“That’s what I thought,” the man said, appeased, his first impression now validated. His attention was caught by two women standing over to the east on top of a rock. “My wife and her mother, she’s visiting from Calgary.” He dutifully raised the camera and took a picture, then waved.
Harold would have stayed longer, communing with the pleasures of altitude and vista but he was likely risking an introduction and likely a conversation, possibly interesting, with this man’s relatives and he didn’t feel like it just then. Instead he turned slowly in a complete circle and swept his vision over the Olympic Mountains, the Juan de Fuca Strait, the Gulf Islands, Mount Douglas and then the Sooke Hills. And he didn’t long for Tuscany at all.
He opened the door and got into the car conventionally this time, waved to the man and had a feeling he would present better in the “guess who that was….?”, to the wife and mother-in-law than if he had remained in person. Sometimes he was blessed, sometime plagued, by the expectation to ‘perform’.
Going down the narrow northern exit from the mountain he passed two young people somehow managing to ride bicycles up the incline.
“Cool car,” one of them said, hardly breathless, as he passed within a foot of Harold.
“I envy you your lungs and leg muscles,” Harold called back and they all laughed.
There was a house demolition on Cedar Hill X Road – how did people know to say “Cross” for “X” Harold had more than once wondered; was it universal knowledge? – and he would have stopped to investigate, collect some history in the passing,- it looked like an old house,- and possibly come away with some memento to grace his own house or garden. Their home was filled with such finds. Polly called these forays, “doing a William Morris,” gathering things beautiful and collecting some background to make it meaningful. But he would not stop today, he was nearing or beyond the half hour he’d told Polly he’d be home by.
Down Blenkinsop to Maplewood – another sudden name change – and into the part of Victoria he loved best where he’d lived for nearly forty years. There was a timelessness about the area. He found it endlessly peaceful. There were no sidewalks and it felt like country.
He turned along the lane with its untrimmed bushes and nearly got a trail of blackberry in the eye. Now, that was dangerous. He’d break it off when he went to see Mrs. Jenkins that afternoon.
As he was putting the car in the garage – tape recorder, bagels, keys, all accounted for – he paused as he urged the padlock into the clasp on the garage doors and wondered how many times he had done this. Forty years, this being the original garage that went with the original house, say three hundred days out of the year, that was – holy smoke, twelve thousand times! Surely a straw-breaking-camel number. And when he realized that it would be DOUBLE that number, because he had to close those doors coming and going, (Sera not usually a doorman), he then really did cross the index and middle fingers of his right hand and hold it up with elbow bent gripping bagels and tape recorder against his chest.
The mint along the north side of the garage had spread so thickly over the years that it had become a carpet on the path. He loved the fragrance released by his feet and he realized he was hungry. If lunch wasn’t ready he’d eat another bagel.
Harold passed his cottage without going in and continued up to the main house under the line of Douglas fir, their needles scenting the air with resin. It reminded him of a summer spent at a cottage in the Muskokas in Ontario for some reason although he didn’t think they had Douglas fir there. Pine, more likely.
He went in the house by the screened porch stepping automatically and unconsciously over the now non-existent form on the mat where one of their dogs had slept out her final years. The screened veranda was large, extending the depth of the house, with an assortment of chairs and day beds. During the rare heat spells in Victoria it became a summer bedroom.
Sera was asleep now, curled up on one of the sofas. Her cheeks looked bright red. Harold wondered if she was in attendance because she was sick. Cass, her mother, his daughter, was a stay-at-home with a newish baby so maybe Sera had been farmed out if an illness was threatening. Harold would have felt her forehead but the gripped bagels and recorder and crossed fingers prevented him acting on this thought.
He entered the kitchen where Polly was putting out plates onto the big old cedar table. They’d gotten it many years ago from friends who had built themselves a log cabin off in the wilderness, furniture included, the table being part of it. It weighed a ton and had cost the price of a number of tables to have it shipped from Northern BC to Victoria. But it had survived many style changes in the house. Polly called it A Keeper.
She looked up as he came in, noticed the bag of bagels and crossed fingers, relieved him of his parcel as he leaned and kissed her on the forehead .
“Oh, good, bagels,” she said. “We’ll have them toasted for dessert with the goat’s cheese Cass brought.” She raised her eyebrows in a question at the crossed digits as Harold was mirroring her query, his directed at the baby sling she had hanging from her front. She opened it slightly so he could see the heap of kittens.
“Sam’s, Alison’s Bob’s brother, cat has an ear infection so she’s off to the vet but Sam didn’t want to leave the kittens so I agreed to kittysit for an hour or so.”
“Ah,” he said, working out the pronouns. He untwisted his fingers now as he began to outline the reason for them. “Polly, it’s time we got automatic doors for the garage. Do you know how many times I must have opened and closed them over the years?”
“Thousands, I expect.” She put the bagels on the counter and went back to setting the table. There were only three places. It looked odd and a bit empty, just three.
“Twelve thousand. At least. Not to mention how many brain cells I’ve had to use remembering the combination lock.”
She laughed, as he knew she would. Her laughter never failed to move him in some way, today it was with delight. And he had never known anyone else with so many dimensions to their laughter. At times it made him fearful, at times humbled, at times, yes, admit it, it angered him. I could do a treatise on laughter with my wife as the source, he suddenly thought, pausing in the consideration.
Polly patted his silence with a gesture toward the side verandah. “Go get Sera, please. You look into a garage door, I’ve got enough to do.”
He took the tape from the recorder and put it in the hanging basket by the back stairwell. He put the recorder by the back door so he would, hopefully, remember to take it with him back to his cottage.
“I’ll listen to that this afternoon,” Polly said as she cut the sandwiches into soldiers, a treat for Sera. Harold secretly preferred them that way as well.
“You’re in for an absorbing experience.”
“How is Michael?”
“Surviving, somewhat surfacing. Life threw him a bit of a curve ball this morning and he did well. The shock of being able to handle a stressful situation was beneficial, I think. Unless he rebounds. I don’t think he will. Makes me want to experiment with manufacturing crises. The oddity or unique aspects seem an important factor. You’ll hear all about it on the tape.”
He had paused by the doorway into the screened porch and was about to lean into a thoughtful discourse.
Polly nodded him into getting Sera.
When they were seated at the table Sera looked along the length and commented, “This is weird. Where is everybody?”
“Everybody who?” Harold wanted to know how she would describe it.
Sera shrugged, an impressive Gallic gesture learned from her French father. “I don’t know. All the other people.”
“It does look rather empty, doesn’t it?” Polly said. “But it could fill up to its usual quota. Sam could come by for the kittens and your mom will be by once Newfie’s had her nap and – “
“She’ll be mad if she hears you call her that,” Sera giggled, peering between the bread of a soldier at the filling.
“Well, don’t tell her I said it, then, mucoshula.” Cass and Raoul had not been able to decide on a name for their second daughter so she had remained The Newfie for a month or so and her new, given, name of Benita had not yet taken hold. Harold had carefully inquired the spelling when he heard the name, to spare himself another irksome happening.
“Why do you call it a quarter?”
“Call what a quarter?”
“People at the table.”
Polly turned a puzzled expression on her granddaughter.
“You said ‘the usual quarter’”, Sera explained patiently.
“Oh, – quota, that means – “ and Polly went on to explain.
The corner of windows by the table, facing south and east, were all open and Harold sat, eating, staring contentedly out into the sun and breeze and trees and baskets of hanging flowers, listening to the conversation. He reached out a hand to Sera, seated at the head of the table, and felt her forehead. It didn’t seem hot but her cheeks were still bright crimson.
“Could be her teeth,” Polly said.
“Hasn’t she got them all?”
“Maybe back ones. Let me see, honey.” Polly stuck a finger into Sera’s obediently opened mouth and felt along the gums but when she drew out her finger and there was chewed sandwich on it Sera said, “Oh, Gram, that’s gross.”
“Sure is,” agreed Polly, wiping it on her napkin. “Next time swallow before I go exploring.”
“Oh, Grams!” shouted Sera, lacing her fingers across her mouth as she laughed. Harold wished he could hold that image of her forever.
Harold marveled at how people changed. Polly had grown up in a household where such an action would have never been played out: his upbringing had been nonchalantly casual but he could never have done as Polly had done today.
“Can’t feel anything, could be too much sun, yesterday was cloudy so I bet she didn’t wear a hat, did you, poppet?”
Harold had a degree in medicine but Polly was in practice. Suddenly she hunched forward as the kittens moved, then rocked gently back and forth in some instinctive motherly rhythm. One of the cats tried to get onto her lap to investigate but she shooed him away.
“We’re going to feed them with doll’s bottles if the mother cat doesn’t come home soon, aren’t we Gram?”
“That’s the plan. Eat your crusts.” She may have cut the sandwiches into soldiers but they were untrimmed.
“I hate crusts.” She suddenly looked toward the ceiling and said, “Oh, wow, look what’s up there.” Harold and Polly both obediently raised their eyes and stared at nothing until Sera had picked up the two hateful crusts and thrown them out the open window.
“I don’t see anything,” Harold commented. Sera kept tight lips on her laughter. They had played the same game with Sera’s mother and her sisters across the years. Once, a visiting cousin, taking advantage of the ruse, had attempted to toss a glass of milk out the window, not successfully from anyone’s point of view, except perhaps the cats’.
“Go find the milk bottles, chickadee,” Polly said to Sera when lunch was over. Sera had made a face at goat’s cheese on a bagel so got honey instead. The kittens were now starting to mew. Polly got up to put some milk on to heat.
“Mrs. Jenkins at two.” Harold said as he cleared the table, ran hot water into the sink, swished the soap container, put the dishes in.
“Is she coming to you or are you going there?”
“I’m going there. Not pleasant, not positive. An alarming diagnosis for her husband.”
Polly and Harold looked at each other. She reached and took hold of his predominant earlobes and gently pulled. “Buck up Budh,” she told him, softly, but she didn’t really have to say anything. Their mutual support had remained constant across the years, survived the upheavals, the rough spots.
Harold went back out through the screened porch, remembered the tape recorder, stepped over the no-longer existent dog, and picked his convertible cap from the head of a found-object sculpture under a Douglas fir. Not burdened now by crossed fingers and bagels he ran his hands along tree trunks, caressed a branchful or two of leaves, made some chucking noises back to an unseen finch. One of the cats shadowed him but when he took a closer look he thought it wasn’t perhaps one of theirs, at least not officially. Hobo marks, Polly said as explanation of why strays seemed to always be stopping by.
He used the washroom in his own cottage, the only one where he could relax and not feel tense that some daughter or granddaughter was going to knock and inquire if he was going to be much longer, this in spite of the fact that there were now three bathrooms in the main house. “They seek me out on purpose,” he had once told Polly, gloomily.
There was still time before Mrs. Jenkins appointment so he took a book and sat out in the garden in the naturally curved piece of driftwood they’d found on the beach at Tofino, carted home sticking illegally out the back of the wagon, had installed at just the right angle under the laburnum tree. He’d knotted the arms on an old flannel shirt and hung this over the top as a pillow.
One chapter was all he had time for….