A Thief in the House of Memory (14 page)

“What is that?” his father asked, straining to see the disappearing screen. And Dec slowly pushed the lid open again and slumped back in his chair so his father had a clear view of where Dec had been travelling.

He had scanned two images into the computer. They were both of Lindy. One was a wedding picture. She was all in white with yellow flowers woven into her red hair. Her cheeks were flushed, as if maybe she had drunk a fair bit of Champagne. In the other picture, her face was in profile, her hair pulled back. She was playing her guitar, bending over it, sitting on the edge of the loveseat.

“I posted them in a missing person's cyber-centre,” said Dec.

“Missing persons?” His father looked at him incredulously.

“Yeah, well…”

His father wiped his face with his large hand. He looked around kind of numbly, then made his way in the semi-dark to Dec's bed, where he sat. Dec switched on his desk lamp, logged off and closed down the computer.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. “She's been on my mind lately.”

“So I gather. And this is, presumably, because of Birdie and me.”

Dec cleared his throat, or tried to. “That's part of it,” he said. “But other stuff, too.” He rubbed his eyes, pressed hard on the lids. “The dead guy, for instance,” he said, without looking at his father.

“Dennis Runyon.”

Dec glanced up at his dad, made eye contact, nodded. “Weird how I didn't know who he was.”

His father regarded him steadily. “And what is it you think you do know?”

Dec swallowed hard but could not dislodge the lump in his throat. “They went out together. Mom and Denny.”

“So? Your mother went out with a lot of boys.”

“Okay,” said Dec, “but as far as I know, only one of them ended up dead in our house.”

Bernard stared at him, his large hands on his knees, his whole body as still as a sphinx. “What exactly is that supposed to mean, Declan?”

Dec turned back to his desk, unable to take the sphinx's gaze and unable to answer the riddle it posed him.

“I don't know,” he said. “That's what I really wish someone would tell me.”

He glanced at his father. Bernard was looking down at the rug. “It doesn't mean anything.” Then he looked up. “They were
all
friends, Son. Your mother and Birdie, Denny and Clare Mahood.”

Dec folded his hands on his laptop. “Then why is everything so hush-hush?”

His father sighed. “You're making too much of things.”

“I'm
not the one making too much of things. You lie to me about not knowing who Runyon was, you stop me from going to the inquest, you even remove the yearbook with Mom and Runyon in it so that I won't see it.”

“What?” He saw his father's eyes narrow. “What are you talking about?”

“Her senior yearbook. It's gone.”

“I don't know anything about that,” said his father. “Maybe Sunny —”

“Sunny was the one who noticed it was gone.”

His father looked thoughtful. “I can't explain it,” he said. “I imagine it will show up eventually. Surely that's not why you're acting this way.”

“Acting what way?”

“So hot under the collar. Yes, Lindy dated Runyon. For a month or two. That was all. He got himself involved in some shady business and took off out of town with the law on his tail. End of story. What happened — him coming back, meeting you, deciding to rob the big house — that's all coincidence. Nothing but coincidence.”

His voice was unruffled, a father's voice. The kind of voice he would have used to talk Dec down from a nightmare. Dec fidgeted in his seat. He could feel Lindy prodding him, moving inside him, as if his eyes were knot holes
in a fence and she wanted a peek — wanted to gauge Bernard's reaction for herself.

Dec could almost hear her whispering. “Bernard Steeple doesn't like this one bit.”

“Yeah, but it is pretty weird,” said Dec.

Bernard Steeple, meanwhile, held Dec in a steady gaze. Maybe he caught a glimpse of Lindy in Dec's eyes.

“I don't know what's got into you,” he said. “But since you want to know, I'll tell you.” He paused. “One way or another, your mother knew just about every low-life in the county.” He gave Dec a there-are-you-happy look. “When she married me, it was a big step up the ladder, one she was happy to make, at first. Then, to make a long story short, it soured. These things happen.” He rested his elbows on his knees. His fingers pressed together, intertwining, then coming apart. “You know what she was like,” he said, and his voice quaked. It was the first sign of any emotion and he immediately squelched it. He got up. If he had expected a reply, he didn't wait for it. He closed the door softly behind him.

Dec found him sitting in his favourite chair in the den. Birdie's sitcom was long since over. Bernard was alone, nursing a cup of tea.

“I'm sorry,” said Dec.

His father looked at him squarely. “So am I.” “I didn't mean to be stupid,” said Dec. “I'm just trying to figure out about her — about Mom. About what happened.”

His father reached out and touched him lightly on the chest. “I'm sorry I barked at you. You stirred up old feelings, I guess. Your mother left me, Dec. It's not something a man feels proud of. You can understand that, can't you? It's not something I want to be reminded of.”

Dec sat on the edge of Birdie's chair, identical to his father's with just the side table between them for their cups of tea at night.

“I can understand that,” he said. “What I don't understand is why you'd hide everything from me.”

His father looked at him as if seeing him differently. “No,” he said. “You're not exactly a baby any more.” He pinched his nose, rubbed his eyes. Blinked. “So. What is it you want to know?”

Dec shrugged. What
did
he want to know? Where was he supposed to start?

“I found this boat,” he said. “I made it for Mom. It was a birthday present, I guess. But I found it in the scrap bin down in Granddad's shop. I remember all kinds of things about her, about Mom. Especially lately. But I can't figure out about this boat. Why it's there.”

His father looked puzzled. “This is about a boat?”

“I know it sounds dumb,” said Dec. “The thing is, there is this kind of black hole when I try to remember her leaving.”

His father nodded as if he understood all too well. He took a sip of his tea. “Is that the thing I saw on your dresser?”
Dec nodded. “I wondered where it came from. I never saw it before.” He paused, looked away a moment. “You must have made that boat for her birthday,” his father said. “She left on her birthday. You don't remember that?”

Dec shook his head very slowly.

His father looked like a man about to dive into deep water. He took a deep breath. “We had a birthday party. Her twenty-ninth. I baked a cake with twenty-nine candles on it.” He looked up inquisitively, as if wanting to see if Dec remembered the cake. Dec shook his head. “I remember you holding Sunny up to see it,” said his father, managing a sad smile. “She would have been five or six months old.”

November the first, thought Dec, remembering his mother's birthday. But why had he never given her the present? Or if he had, why had it ended up in the bin? The expression on his father's face fell a little.

“Later on, after supper, your mother decided to go out with some of her friends. I didn't want to go.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Not that I was invited. I went to bed around eleven, I guess. But I stayed up reading.” He smiled, a pale smile. He was inside the memory now, seeing it. “I can even tell you the title of the book,” he said with a glimmer of pride in his eye.
“At the Edge of History
, it was called. By William Irwin Thompson. What do you think of that? A man's wife leaves him and years later he can remember what book he was reading on the fateful night.”

Dec nodded, not wanting to breathe, just wanting his
father to go on. “Anyway, around two A.M. I turned out my bedside lamp. But before 1 got to sleep I saw headlights on the bedroom wall. A car was coming up the hill. I got up and went to the window. You know how the master bedroom windows look out over the front entrance? Well, by then the car was in the roundabout. It was a full-moon night and I could see it clear as day. A Crown Royal. Bernice Woolsey's old Crown Royal. Now there was a firetrap of a car, if I ever saw one. Anyway, Bernice was one of your mother's gang, although I could never figure it out, since she wasn't exactly the partying type. I used to think it was because she didn't drink. She was always the designated driver.”

Dec looked at his father but didn't say anything, not wanting to break the spell. His father was warming to his story now, looking more alive somehow, as if he was happier when he was back in some other time, even a terrible one.

“I saw your mother get out of the car and come around towards the entrance. Then Bernice got out all of a sudden and gave her a big hug. When I thought about it later, I understood what that hug was about. But at the time, it just seemed…well, you know, women…I didn't understand that she was saying goodbye.” He looked up to see if Dec understood.

“Go on,” said Dec.

His father took another deep breath, dived again. “I went back to bed. But after a while, I wondered where Lindy was. I gave her a few more minutes, figured maybe she'd gone to
the kitchen to get a bite to eat. Then I began to wonder if she had fallen or something. Sometimes when she got back from a night on the town, she would be a little unsteady on her pins.”

“Unsteady on her what?”

“Inebriated,” said his father. “I got up and went downstairs. I was still on the stairs when I heard a car. I went to the front door, thinking Bernice had come back. And that's when Lindy came around from the back, from the garage. She was driving the Wildcat. I ran out onto the porch, down onto the roundabout, but she was already heading down the hill.”

He paused, his eyes on that long-ago scene. “I was frantic, Dec. She knew how to drive. But she was drunk, as far as I knew. And she didn't have a licence. She'd lost it — too many speeding tickets. I thought about taking off after her, but what good would that do? Besides, I couldn't leave you two alone. So I thought about calling the cops. And I was just about to do it — was already dialling the number — when I realized something and put the receiver down.”

“Why?”

His father looked at him. “She was in jeans and a jacket,” he said.

Dec shook his head. “I don't understand.”

“No, of course you don't. I haven't explained this very well. When she left to go out earlier that night, she was dressed to the nines. This tight-fitting, slinky yellow number
with a slit up one leg, high heels, her hair all done up, as if maybe she and the girls were heading to Vegas or something. But when she climbed out of Bernice Woolsey's Crown Royal, she was in jeans and a jacket.”

He waited, let Dec figure it out.

“Her getaway clothes,” said Dec. “So the whole thing was planned?” His father nodded, his face a muddle of expressions.

Bernard shrugged, and, despite the years that had passed, Dec could see the shadow of betrayal in his eyes. He didn't speak for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “I stood out under that cold, full moon shivering a bit. I thought about it. About the way she'd been driving. Not like a lunatic, not like a drunk. She must have sobered up since she had left the house at eight or so.” He shook his head, but there was almost a look of admiration in his eyes.

“I went to her room,” he said. “We still shared the master bedroom, but she had the other room — her sitting room. She hadn't taken much. Her guitar was gone. I noticed that right away. So was her backpack. I don't know what else. But it suddenly seemed pretty clear. It hadn't been an impulsive act.

Dec nodded slowly, letting it sink in. As he did, the black hole dissolved. He could see it all clearly now. He could remember the slinky yellow dress. He could remember Lindy trying to kiss him goodnight, all dolled up and stinking so much of perfume that he had to hide his head under his pillow.

Dec stood at his window in the dark. It was well into the night now. He looked out at the ragged moonscape. He was thinking about his father's story. And he was remembering his ten-year-old self, wandering in his pyjamas down the wide hallway of the big house, wandering in the dark to the upstairs hall window, the same window at which she had waited for him as Wonder Woman.

He had gone to the window to stand lookout. He had gone to the window because he wanted to be the first one to greet Lindy Polk when she came home from her holiday. That's what his father had told him, that his mother was taking a little holiday. What else could he say? Dec remembered wanting to be the one to see her coming up the hill. He wanted to be the one who raced down the stairs to the door and flung it open for her, took her backpack and her guitar and welcomed her home. He wanted to give her the present he had made for her.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but a tear burrowed its way out, escaping the web of his eyelashes, to slide down his cheek. He remembered being frightened. Frightened that his mother might not find her way back to the house even if she wanted to. Because it was so very, very dark.

T
HE CALL CAME
after eleven. Dec was already in bed when Birdie appeared at his door with the portable in hand. She frowned as she handed it to him. He returned her frown and waited with the receiver pressed to his chest until she retreated, closing the door behind her.

“Hello?”

“Guess who.”

He went cold all over. It was her. Lindy. He sat up, collecting what was left of his tattered nerves, regaining his wits.

“Are you there, Dec?”