Lauchlin of the Bad Heart Read online

  “Why didn’t you tell me Nell died?” he said, when the small talk got smaller.

  “It’s not like we were still in touch,” she said.

  “Jesus, you were home for the funeral, weren’t you? What does that really mean anyway, in touch?”

  “I think you know. I was here for three days, Lauchlin, that’s all I could get at the time. I’m back to settle her estate.”

  “Estate. She’d get a laugh out of that. She buried at St. Margaret’s?”

  “They took her up there, yes.” They listened to each other’s breathing. Morag sighed. “Lauchlin. I didn’t want to start it again. It was an emotional time for me.”

  “Of course. Bound to be.”

  “Do you want to come up?”

  “It’s nearly dark. It’s late and I’m feeling a little unsteady. Tomorrow I have to go into town. But I’ll come up before long.”

  “Strange to be here alone,” she said. “Auntie was everything here.”

  “I was fond of her too, you know.”

  “And she of you. I’m sorry. I should have let you know. But Lauchlin, there’s…”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter for now. Come up when you can. I’m not home for long.”

  ON HIS WAY TO TOWN Lauchlin detoured up the backland road where he knew Clement was working. He passed the Philips’ old farm, the house long burned down, then a partially logged field with stumps and slash where he stopped at the ditch. Clement was rooting in the bed of his pickup, parked on a crude logging road not far in. Cooper’s truck, almost spotless, was down at the road. The portable bandsaw mill sat in the field with a timber run halfway through it, the band blade broken. A small pile of freshly milled boards was stacked beside it, and beyond a rough pile of spruce logs. Further back, his partner Cooper was limbing a felled spruce with a chainsaw. Clement waved and came down to Lauchlin’s truck.

  “How’s the business?” Lauchlin said.

  “Nothing but problems, Lauch.” He leaned into the passenger window, his sweating face twisted with exasperation, sawdust blonding his eyelashes, giving him a startled look. “The blade just busted. More lost time.”

  “Who you milling for?”

  “Harvey Philip’s young fella, he wants wood for a house.” Clement looked back at Cooper who had left off limbing to light a cigarette, gazing toward the thick woods as if he were expecting something to appear there. “Sometimes I think I’m milling for that man, or for nothing.”

  “He was in the store the other day. I couldn’t say I like him much.”

  “He’s okay when it suits him, but he turns like a rabbit. Talks a good game over a few drinks, another thing to get a whole day’s work out of him now. Sometimes he doesn’t show.”

  “Get yourself another man, can’t you?”

  “Can’t. We’re partners. He’s into me deep, as far as the money goes, and if I break it off I’ll never see a cent of it.” Cooper was too far off to hear them, but he had shifted his gaze in their direction, his eyes lost in dirty goggles. He and Lauchlin and Clement seemed stilled in mutual appraisal. Lauchlin lowered his sunglasses. Cooper flicked his cigarette into a whirl of sawdust the wind had lifted. Then he yanked the cord of his chainsaw and revved it loud, turning back to his work.

  “How’s the missus?” Lauchlin said.

  “Fine, good,” Clement said vaguely. “Look, since you’re here, Tena’s been wanting to try out those books they have on tape. The ones you can listen to off a cassette player?”

  “Audiobooks. Sure.”

  “I don’t know where to get them, and I don’t have the time, not lately.”

  “I could find her some. I used a few when I was teaching. What does she like?”

  “Don’t ask me, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Suppose I stop by and ask her, see what she might want?”

  “You do that, boy. She’s alone too much anyway.”

  “Good luck with your woodcutter up there.”

  “I’m past luck with him. Let’s have a drink sometime, eh?”

  “Just that. Talk to you later.”

  This mission seemed to Lauchlin exactly right, a legitimate errand, he could do something for her, he could see her. As he drove the Southside road heading east for the highway, he mulled over what she might like in books. He’d bring her a tape or two, a gift to start her off. He didn’t know her, after all, she might want escape, detective stories, mysteries, even romances. He guessed not, there was more to her than that, and she was blind—that might call for a different journey into a book.

  But his attention swerved when two red marker posts approached at the roadside, the invitation of a certain driveway, of a cottage he knew. He slowed down, trying to resist its pull, there were errands to run. He had no idea if Maddy were there now, this day of the week, he hadn’t seen her since last fall, and he had things to do. But still, she might be there, down on the shore of St. Andrews Channel, a prospect too sweet to pass up, and always had been.

  It was chancy, unless they had planned it ahead of time, taking this long, twisting driveway down through young hemlocks and old spruce. A getaway cottage, it had no phone, but he had liked that risk, tossing the dice for Maddy, they both had. The small clearing was hidden close to the shore and he couldn’t know if her husband were there or not, he might even meet him on this narrow roadway with no ready excuse for showing up, but a blustery exchange of ironic platitudes—Making house calls now, are you, Lauch? Only when you’re not here, buddy—would get him through that. The truck rocked through mudholes lazily.

  When she’d been a younger colleague at a high school years ago, almost from the first they had traded stories and jokes, some mildly off-colour. Then it seemed that she was turning any topic in a sexual direction, whether it was the food in the cafeteria or a newspaper item or whatever Lauchlin mentioned about himself, and he liked to let it go where it might, teasing it here or there. I’d ask you out, Mad, he said at one point, if you weren’t married. Well, she said, I guess we can’t go out together, but we might find a way to stay in together. Ah, Maddy, I don’t know what you’re getting at, too subtle for me. I think you do, she said. She enjoyed discussing anything sensual with him, and her candidness grew. She asked him straight out at lunch one day if he liked oral sex, I mean its sophisticated varieties, she added, not what these kids are up to. Students were milling around the grounds and Lauchlin glanced at them. Don’t worry, Maddy said, they’re too absorbed in each other to listen to us, they think teachers never do such things, let alone talk about it, so why would they eavesdrop? Our lives are dull fare, eh? Leaning across the table, she took a bite out of an apple and narrowed her eyes at him. I’m thinking about you right now, she said, about a certain part of your anatomy. A good student from one of Lauchlin’s classes walked past and he smiled pleasantly at her. If they only knew how your mind works, Maddy, he said. If they did, she said, I’d never get a speck of algebra past them, would I? Lauchlin said, Just what part of my anatomy did you have in mind, Mad? She picked up her leftovers with finger and thumb, pinching them with exaggerated fastidiousness, and dropped them in a paper sack. She slipped on her big sunglasses and regarded him. If you’d like to find out, I’ll see you tomorrow night. It’s Friday. And Ralph? he said. She whispered, Out of town. I’ll leave a note in your mailbox. And she did just that, though he hadn’t dared open it until he was home and could stare at the address of her house. Morag was long gone to Boston by then, he had yet to accept that his heart had limits beyond the ring, though he had stayed away from women for a while, more out of depression than any medical fear. But with Maddy he’d got past that—she loved having sex with him, and all its pleasures.

  One car, hers. He stopped in the grassy clearing. The shore was no more than fifty feet behind the cottage and two slack lounge chairs lay opened out back. The swimming was poor here but she liked to lie out in the sun. A strip of sand gave out into shingle at the waterline, the stony beach dropping quickly int
o rocky depths. A grease-blackened barbecue on legs had seen recent use, but like all run-down cottages, the place looked forlorn in sunless weather like this, drained of mirth. The wide channel was grey and choppy in an east wind, the hills of Boisdale low in the distance. A door latch turned behind him.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I thought you were the milkman.” She leaned in the doorway, her head tilted against the jamb, her dark brown hair mussed on one side as if she’d just woken. She was chubbier than he remembered but it didn’t change her much, and she still looked good barefoot in a long, loose blouse and that little sideways smile that could say a lot of things.

  “Hello, Maddy. You were expecting Ralph, were you?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t expecting you either. You didn’t happen to drop from that helicopter buzzing all around here, did you?”

  “I never heard it.”

  Maddy yawned, shaded her eyes at the sky. “You wouldn’t know what’s going on by any chance?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know. I was hoping we could change that.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her toes, wiggled them, their chipped red polish. She’d been wading in those stony shallows. She was smiling but some issue lingered behind it. “I’m going to put a big word on you, Lauchlin. Presumptuous. Eh?” She looked at him, not angry, but skeptical, puzzled.

  “I was never good at big words, Mad.”

  “Haven’t heard a word from you, have I, big or little. I’m still at the same location, you know. Same phone number.”

  “I’m getting old, Mad. I don’t get around like I used to.”

  “I bet.”

  “I never liked phones anyway. I like it face to face.” He nodded at the Christmas-tree lights still strung along the eaves of the cottage. “Do you light those up?”

  “Not often,” she said. “Not wise to advertise, as we used to say.”

  They stared at each other, neither moving, Lauchlin with a slight smile, teetering at that moment when pride might make him leave as gracefully as possible. But he didn’t want to leave, not now that he’d seen her.

  “You look chipper,” Maddy said.

  “Do I? Must be you.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “I’m here to see you. That’s all. I was driving by.”

  “Oh.” She took a crushed packet of cigarettes and a lighter from her breast pocket, pulled a crooked one out and lit it. “It’s a mess inside. We had a party last Saturday.”

  “You always had good parties, you and Ralph.”

  She blew smoke above her head. “They were better when you were here.” She stared at her cigarette, then at him before tossing it away: he’d never liked tobacco in a kiss.

  In the kitchen sink there was a heap of dishes to which she added a few more from the table and swiped a sponge over the oilcloth.

  “Don’t bother about that,” Lauchlin said, pulling out a chair.

  “It’s dreary in here, though, isn’t it? I was about ready to leave, you know. It’s funny, I had a feeling. I don’t mean it was about you, but something slowed me down, made me hang around here a while. Now don’t think I was waiting for you, mister. You’ve been awful scarce. I was just reading a book, and you weren’t in it.” Lauchlin glanced at the romance novel splayed on the counter.

  “Pity. You ought to write these, Mad, you’ve read enough of them.”

  “I couldn’t be that silly, not on a page. They’re just soft drinks. I pop one now and then, take a few gulps.” She rinsed two glasses and poured into one of them red wine from a near-empty bottle. “Some Chilean red?” she said.

  “A little whisky or rum for me, please.”

  She sighed and found a bottle of rye in the cupboard, measured him two fingers’ worth, and sat across from him.

  “Like old times, sort of.”

  “They’re not that old, Mad.”

  “You’re a devil, you know that? Jesus, when was it you came by? When Ralph was out west? A year ago.”

  “Less, I think.”

  “Oh, God, and the two of us. Me on the downhill to fifty, and you racing ahead of me. What’s going to become of us, Lauchie?”

  Her green eyes shone in the windowlight. Her face had softened some, a fondness for wine had taken its measure.

  “You mean now, or down the road?”

  “I don’t want to think of down the road. I never had to. Okay?”

  They touched glasses. Lauchlin finished his rye, set the glass down. “Any more of that?”

  “I haven’t been to town. As I said, I was just going.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you, Mad.” He smiled.

  “Oh you wouldn’t do that, Mr. MacLean. Lauchlin Interruptus? How’s your health, by the way? You’re looking all right.”

  “And I feel all right. Champion.”

  “Goodness.”

  MADDY HAD STRIPPED THE COVERS OFF and Lauchlin, just in his jeans, lay back on the dishevelled sheet watching her place a short, waxencrusted candle on the bed table. She winced toward the flame, a stubby joint in her lips. She took a hit, then held it out for him.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “Don’t need it.”

  “I hope you’re right, dear.”

  She took the smoke in tiny sips and pressed the roach into a saucer.

  “It’s good for my chi,” she said. She started to pull at his belt buckle. She’d always liked to undress him.

  “Wait, Mad. Do something for me.”

  “I’ve done enough for you, I think, mister.”

  “Close your eyes, tight. Then unbutton your blouse, but real slow.”

  “I don’t want any scary stuff.”

  “Have I ever done anything scary? Shut your eyes, I’m only watching you, that’s all. Button by button, slow. Slowly. Eyes shut!”

  “What have you been reading?”

  “Imagine you can’t see at all, you’re blind. Keep your eyes closed. That’s it.”

  “Lordy, he used to do this for me.”

  “And I will again, just not on this particular day. Let’s do it all by touch. Don’t peek. You’re blind.”

  “And you?”

  “Same. My eyes are like yours.”

  Maddy let her blouse slip to the floor. Smiling uncertainly, she gave a little shiver and felt for him along the bed, her nipples hard. “Different,” she said. “Definitely.” She worked at his buckle until it loosed, then tugged off his jeans.

  He kept his hands behind his head, eyes shut, concentrating, his expression serious, focused, feeling her warm hands slide along his hips, over his belly, his chest. He tensed, sucking in his breath, she touched his lips and pushed a finger gently between them, he took it with his tongue until she withdrew it, tasted it with a kissing sound and then her hands slowly shaped his torso, down his legs, up, a soft current along his skin. He was hard and she stroked him lightly everywhere but there, Aha, she whispered, as she closed her fingers around his cock and slid her mouth softly over it. He pushed his hands through her hair, and when he pulled her up to him she said, Can I open my eyes now? and he said no, brushing her eyelids with his tongue, they kissed, a long play of lips and tongues they’d always enjoyed, and then he moved over her and into an intense, whispering rhythm, everything receding but themselves.

  Returning from town that afternoon, up a long grade on the Trans-Canada, Lauchlin passed a cyclist, pedalling hard but at crawling speed, head down against a west wind, totally focused on his own effort, his bicycle loaded with touring packs. A hundred yards behind him his partner, a young woman in matching helmet, was in pursuit, making less headway. Nothing wrong with those hearts, and there were far worse grades than this ahead of them. Lauchlin glanced at himself in the rearview mirror: nothing wrong with yours either, laddybuck.

  IT WAS LATE THE NEXT DAY before Lauchlin found time to turn up the MacTavishes’ driveway, the spindly poplars, insistent flashes of leaf, this field is ours, they said. Bella MacKenzie, its last holder and tenant, the
rest gone or died, Lauchlin had visited now and then in her final years, not bad years for her because like many country people of her generation, if you made it past seventy chances were good your body could carry you a long way further, further yet if your mind was sharp. Great silver poplars conducted you nobly toward the house, there was a peace to them, in their size a warm sense of time, but they shot out runners through the fields, their silvery-leafed saplings advancing high at the house, filling a windy full-moon night with scrawny shadows, a startling grove to witness out your window. Past the slight turn, the old grey-shingled barn, in daylight a bit broken, long in need of a new roof. And the house before it, steeppitched roof, severe gables, a long old-fashioned porch, not sat on since Bella rocked there, a coat of white paint over its shingles, so hasty you could see brushstrokes as you passed, and at the rear of the house a room once used as the summer kitchen but now the only kitchen, and then the wide yard, unkempt but for the small garden under the kitchen sink window, great buds of hollyhock yet to bloom, a greasy engine listing in the grass. A gutted truck cab, pitted blue, sat barely hidden in the western trees, and near the barn heavy truck parts lay rusting in weeds, an obvious axle, wheel hubs, an engine block. The fish van, as always when Clement was off milling, was parked just behind the kitchen, adorned with the curving silver codfish. As Lauchlin stepped out of his truck, he caught a faint smell of fish. Like many of the old properties no longer farmed, bits of its past persisted, the little pig barn, a slumping wagon shed that still held one wagon and, one wheel skewed by rotted spokes, a buggy. Clement had not had the time to alter the place much, he had moved in and set his things down among what was here and lived in it, and when Tena arrived, beginning to go blind by then, he cared even less about sprucing it up. Pretty soon only what she can touch will matter, he had told Lauchlin, I’ll be sure whatever she reaches for is okay, the paint can wait. Clement’s pickup was gone. A few plastic bins that had held fish in ice were stacked or scattered.

  Tena had been on her knees, bent over a small garden not far from the back steps. The tall poplars beyond her were blustery with wind. Big clouds, the colour of the gypsum cliffs at Little Harbour, ferried patches of blue eastward. She’d stood up when he climbed out of the truck, her hair in wisps about her face, a streak of soil on her cheek where she’d brushed at flies. She didn’t smile until he spoke. “Good day, Tena.”