Right there on the sidewalk my parents fell apart laughing. My mother said, "Darling, I hate to point out the obvious, but Reese Mac Isaac's cameo took place in the switchboard cubby she actually works in, six A.M. to three P.M. every day but Sunday."
"Hardly a big stretch," my father said.
"I don't care," I said. "She did well with what she was given."
A week after the funerals, as I lay on the sofa drinking whiskey to try and help me sleep, I realized that I didn't begrudge my father that he loved Reese Mac Isaac. The same went for my mother, all received morality notwithstanding, for which I didn't give a good goddamn, not in the least. I knew that my parents no longer loved each other. Since I was eight or nine I knew it, even earlier. Civility had become their mainstay. Civility bowed and curtsied—"Good night, dear" — as they went to separate bedrooms.
I suppose that I was happy enough that we all still lived under the same roof. Besides, in high school I was captain of the fencing team, and fencing, in 1941, had most of my attention. I'd placed well in tournaments as far-flung as St. John's, Newfoundland. (I quit fencing after my parents died, just somehow lost the connection to it.) And though I'd been quite friendly with Reese Mac Isaac, had even paid the price of a ticket to see her play a handmaiden in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, I can't say that I knew much about her. However, one summer night when I was fifteen, I caught sight of Reese dressed in a nightgown — it looked silky — with a pattern of outsized lilies, exotic nightwear for Halifax, I thought. She was watering the three plants on her kitchen sill with an eyedropper. My thought was, That's being frugal, though it might be stinginess.
Truth be told, after my parents' suicides, for days on end my emotions roughed me up, and I went from seething anger to stupefying bewilderment to sadness that put me to bed at odd hours. What's certain is that it was during this period my sleepless nights began. My parents are buried in Camp Hill Cemetery. Their funerals were an hour apart, each officiated by Reverend Carmichael, then at Harbor Methodist, the church with which my parents had a hit-or-miss affiliation.
Chapter and verse, Reverend Carmichael's services were standard. The fencing team attended. My mother had been an accountant at HMC Dockyard, and many of her colleagues paid their respects. My father owned a stationery and typewriter repair shop on Grafton Street, and I can recall his business partner, Mr. Amoury, at the graveside, along with Mrs. Amoury and their two daughters. When he and I shook hands, I noticed that Mr. Amoury had typewriter ribbon smudges on his fingers.
When all was said and done, I handed Reverend Carmichael fifty dollars in an envelope. He looked inside and shook his head and said, "You know, I usually charge fifty dollars each, but this was" — and he couldn't find the next word. Then he left. During both services it had been drizzling, but afterward people held their umbrellas closed. As they milled about, I didn't have a single direct conversation. Instead, I walked around half in a daze, mostly eavesdropping, I think. For instance, there was Oliver Tapper, who wrote the "Canadians at the Front" column for the Sunday Mail. Oliver, who had published a collection of patriotic poems, was a regular customer at my father's shop, often in a panic, claiming some emergency deadline. On the wet grass of the cemetery he said, "Look, there's poor Katherine not ten feet away, and there's, right in front of us, poor Joseph. All this good air to breathe and guess who gets to breathe it, none other than that — harlot! That wretched failed actress!"
"What are you saying, Oliver?" Mrs. Tapper said. "You want fairness? You want her punished for sordid immoralities? Well, those were shared, don't forget. And besides, we're at a funeral. Please mind your language."
Oh, I almost forgot, the most peculiar newspaper headline was accompanied by a photograph of me, the one taken for the high school yearbook: LOCAL BOY ORPHANED BY BRIDGES. As if I weren't already seventeen, hardly a boy. As if it were the bridges' fault, not human nature's.
You only live the life right in front of you. All day at school on August 27, which was just the fifth day of classes in the autumn 1941 term, I had no idea how my parents' fates were being determined. We'd all had breakfast together. My father had been chatty; my mother wasn't sullen. Later, though, I pieced a few things together from the newspaper accounts and from conversations — call them that — I had with the police officers who'd been sent out to the bridges.
Officer Dhomnaill, who was born in Ireland and still retained the accent, told me about my mother. "I tried talking her down," he said. "You try and make the person in distress confide what makes them happy in life. You try and work with that if at all possible. See what I mean? And I'm sorry I failed. Very sorry in the end I failed." I could see that Officer Dhomnaill was honestly shaken.
"Didn't she at least say goodbye to me?" I asked. "Because she didn't leave a note."
"Being so fraught as your mother was," he said, "and what with the wind high on that bridge making it so difficult to catch every last word. But I think she said, 'I suppose this will be all over the radio. No matter. I have nothing to be ashamed about.'"
"Okay. All right, then. Thank you."
"My job's hardly all peaches and cream," Dhomnaill said. "Your mother was my first jumper. Some police never get one. Don't please let that word offend you. It's just a police word."
"I understand."
"I'm sorry for what happened."
I'm afraid I shut the door in his face.
When it came to my father, an Officer Padgett delivered the report. He knocked, and I stepped out on the porch again. We shook hands and he said, "I know Officer Dhomnaill stopped by earlier."
"Yes, he did."
"So I am speaking to Mr. Wyatt Hillyer, then. Correct?"
"Correct."
"Wyatt, just let me say my piece. Officially say it. So I can get back to the station house, and say I said it, and do my paperwork. Leave you with your private thoughts, eh?"
"Fine."
He consulted his notebook. "I arrived to the bridge at six-fifteen P.M.," he said. "I climbed up close as possible to your father. He looked tired. To me he looked tired. He said, 'For a long time I've had this private joke. So private I never told my wife. It's what I want on my gravestone. What I want on my gravestone is: I just knew this would happen!" He checked his notes again. "And your father said, 'Both women were damn interesting, each in their own way. There it is. Tell my son, Wyatt, to forgive me, please. Ask him to at least try.' I asked him what's his name, and he said Joseph Hillyer. So I said, 'Joseph, do you like the steaks at Halloran's?' Since in our training we're taught to try and persuade a person back into normal daily life. You mention a popular restaurant. Or you ask which church they attend. But your father let go of the bridge."
I stepped back inside and shut the door and watched through the window as Officer Padgett got into his car. There seemed no apparent reason, but he kept his siren on the whole way down the block.