Lord was never allowed to have friends come to his home for sleepovers or visits when he was a kid, nor was he allowed to play with classmates after school. A lonely upbringing. No colour, no magic, no memories like Wren’s. No one but family was allowed to cross the threshold of the front door. Lord can still hear his mother’s decree: “Strangers carry sickness. It’s what killed your granddad. It’s what killed your father.” Lord has no memory of living life without fear of the unknown. It has become so thoroughly ingrained, it’s more like a bad habit than anything logical.
But now he has Wren. And soon, her sister will arrive. Lord decides the time has come to tear down these old and imaginary walls and start building something that is real. He decides it’s time to stop living two lives: one where he pretends everything is alright, and the other where his heart silently screams in pain.
Lord’s familial roots come from old England. His grandparents were first generation Canadians. They brought with them hope and Victorian virtues, ways of doing things that were adopted, ingested and followed as rules to live by. The Magras clan moved to Canada in the late 1800s, settling in the Maritime provinces, an area where many families came from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. They settled in eastern Canada and called the powerful Atlantic shoreline their new home, bringing with them fresh dreams and old ideas, architecture being one of them.
There were no grand castles in this new land like there were in the British Isles, so new residents started building grand homes from stone. The statues of promise they built, old stone houses, could still be seen in Maritime provinces centuries later.
That is the kind of home in which Lord spent his childhood. It was a spacious two-storey dwelling complete with an oversized stone fireplace that caught the eye upon entering. That stone house, built by Lord’s granddad, was tucked deep within the silence of a woodlot in rural New Brunswick. Lord’s fondest memory of his childhood was launching origami boats in a stream nearby the home.
How did he know origami? It was some after-school class in which his mom had enrolled him. Didn’t matter to him that all the other students were girls. It’s there he found his love for design. Lord constructed the paper boats with care. Later, at home, he kept up construction and practice. It was a solitary way of life for a young boy who was not allowed to play team sports. “This origami, it is a practice of precision,” he remembers his mother telling him when he was a boy. “Good for learning discipline and paying attention to detail.”
As a boy, Lord would spend hours measuring and folding heavy paper until it resembled what, in his mind, was a miniature tugboat. That’s when his imagination would take over. He’d sail across the Atlantic back to his grandparents’ homeland, landing at a port and unloading the multitude of fish he’d caught.
When he was young, Lord returned to England often, but only in his imagination. His made-up life included many relatives that he hadn’t met at all. In reality he’d had a lonely childhood, as an only child with a single mom and no relatives his age. His mother’s aversion to visitors only compounded his isolation. She would routinely remind Lord of the death curse that followed them: his grandfather had caught cholera from the neighbour who had helped build their house, and Lord’s own father, a paramedic, had contracted HIV after attending to a bleeding woman in a car crash. The HIV worsened a condition he’d already been unknowingly living with, and a year later he officially died of bone cancer.
Lord’s mother and father had hoped to raise a dozen children, but the family curse was like a creeping, dark plan from the universe, attaching itself to yet another generation. Because of his father’s disease and death, the couple would have no other children except for Lord. Two generations had succumbed to illness brought in from the outside.
Lord clearly remembers the day his father died. He’d made his way upstairs and found his mother dressing his father’s corpse. She’d dressed him in his Sunday best: a three-piece beige suit and his favourite striped tie. “What are you doing, Mother?” the boy asked as his mom propped up the dead body in a rust-coloured wingback next to the window.
“My love is gone,” she sobbed, and she gently ran her fingers over the whiskered jaw of Lord’s father. “We need to take a photo of this moment,” she insisted, reaching for an old camera tucked away in a dresser drawer.
“A photo?” he asked. “Why?”
“Because that is what our family has always done,” she said, explaining that taking photos of the dead began in Victorian England in the era when photography was first invented. “Memento mori. Remember, you must die,” Lord’s mother quoted. “Our family believes it will capture a part of the soul so that he’s with us forever. A photo to remember those we love.”
To Lord, it sounded like lunacy. The grieving woman asked her son to point the camera as she settled in beside the body of her husband. She had combed her hair and put on a frilly dress. She wore the pearl necklace Lord’s father gave her on their wedding day. She set a kiss on the cheek of her husband as the young boy snapped a photo.
*
Moving to Saskatchewan was an easy decision—nothing was holding him to the Maritimes. His mother had died the year before, and any other family that he was aware of lived abroad. After his mother’s death, that big home became a lonely place for him. Lured to the prairies by a fat salary and an opportunity to start something new, he happily left. The architecture firm that hired him in Regina wanted new ideas with a twist of heritage, and his specialty was incorporating works of stone into new designs. His love of design led him to a new home, a new life and now, a new love.
THE KILN
“It is almost ready, my love,” Lord announces as he enters the farmhouse, just as Wren is getting ready to take her pie out of the oven. Lord has been working on a new project, creating an outdoor kiln for Wren when she works on her pottery during the summer months. The structure resembles a spacious igloo, with an electric kiln tucked inside.
Several months earlier, Lord had converted the garage into a pottery studio, including an area for display. He didn’t like the idea of Wren driving to town to fire her work at the art centre, especially during the winter months when road conditions were often miserable. The renovation was a first anniversary gift. He had held Wren’s hand and put a bandana over her eyes as he guided her to the new kiln. He’d made sure to install an oversized picture window in the studio with a view of the creek and the meadow protected by surrounding hills.
“Everything all set for Raven’s visit?” Lord asks.
“Almost, though when you’re done out there I wouldn’t mind taking a walk. We need to find some proper sticks we can carve for a wiener roast. Raven and I have been roasting meat on a stick ever since I can remember.” Wren has been smiling non-stop the past few days.
“Happy to,” he replies.
Lord goes to the kitchen sink to wash his dirt-caked hands, a result of the physical work he’s been doing outside. As always, he uses the nail brush to scrub the grime that’s collected under his fingernails. Wren has always been struck by her husband’s fervent hygiene habits. After wiping his hands dry on a tea towel, Lord hugs his wife and tells her he loves her. “Kisakihitin, you beautiful woman.” He’s learning words in Cree and uses them whenever the moment presents itself. He returns to discussion about Wren’s new kiln, explaining the cement has almost dried—he’s now just waiting for a delivery of wood.