A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [128]
“The mistake,” Sylvia said. Malcolm had taught her that one need not always use the interrogative. Sometimes a repetition was enough encouragement, and she found herself wanting to know.
Jerome pointed to a man on the fourth card. “You see that miner?” he said. “That was the miner who died, fifth level down, one level too far. His name was Thorvaldson.” He turned the card over to check the list of names on the back. “Yes, from Iceland. The men came from all over northern Europe, you know, and from Cornwall and Wales. There was a rock burst. Everyone else—my father included—got out.”
“I’m sorry, but I know nothing about mines … your father was a miner?”
“No, he was the engineer, so he should have known, probably did know. The veins … the veins of gold became larger at deeper levels, but everything would be less stable. The mine closed after that, the community disintegrated.”
“Because of the miner who died?”
“Because the company bosses finally became aware—as a result of the burst—that they weren’t going to be able to get any more gold out of that ground.”
Jerome stood and began to walk back and forth across the concrete floor. “My father smashed the glass of the frame that held his diploma. He tore up the diploma itself and tossed it into the fire. I remember this. He was drunk, of course, enraged. My mother and I were terrified. He never went near a mine again—no one would have hired him anyway. We moved to the city, or at least to the edge of the city. He worked for a while making geological maps for a metallurgical company, then, when his hands began to shake too much, as a janitor for the same company, and, finally, he didn’t work at all.”
The term alcoholism slid into Sylvia’s mind. It occurred to her that like so many things that can go wrong, the word started with the letter a.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Jerome.
“What’s to be sorry about,” he replied. “He was the one who made the mistake.” Jerome’s anger was so visible that Sylvia, who had rarely experienced anger, could feel it hissing in her own blood. Her fear of the fluorescent lights began to return. She wondered about the lighting in the mine, and remembered a photo she had seen of men with lights, or was it candles, in their hats. “People do what they have to do,” she said, something she remembered Branwell saying in Andrew’s writing. “And,” she said, recalling the story of the timber, the barley, the sand, “and they almost always go too far.”
Jerome bent down and snatched the cards from the table, as if he were a gambler sweeping up a suit of cards. “Did he have to drink so much that you could smell it coming from his pores day and night?” he said. “Did he have to take us down with him?”
“Yes,” said Sylvia. “He probably had to do all of that.”
“Did he have to kill my mother? The whole thing, the drinking, the humiliation, the crummy apartments, his sordid death, all of it killed her … and not quickly either … it killed her by degrees. She didn’t last two years after he was gone.”
“No,” said Sylvia uncertainly. “He didn’t have to do that. But she, she likely had to die for him.”
Jerome stood, postcards in hand, looking directly at Sylvia, and she willed herself to look back. The air was thick with anticipation, as if anything at all might happen and she was momentarily aware of the risks two people took simply by being alone together in a room. Murder, love, collision, caress, were they not all part of the same family?
Jerome turned away. “I’ll take these back now,” he said, looking at the postcards in his hand. “I’ll put these away.”
When Jerome returned to the room, his expression was neutral, removed. He sat on the couch and folded his arms over his chest. “My childhood,” he said. “I don’t know why I brought it up. It’s all over anyway. It’s finished. I shouldn’t have bothered you with any of it.”
“Please,” Sylvia said, leaning forward.