Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [41]
“I guess you know I went twenty years without seeing Elsie,” Cary finally said.
“I had no idea it was such a long time.”
He slumped forward, clasped his hands together, and sighed. Then he suddenly corrected his posture and sat up straight on the bench. He was looking at the river as he spoke.
“We weren’t the happiest family, you know,” he said. “Elias, my dad—he liked drink and he liked women besides my mother. He’d disappear for days at a time. I didn’t mind so much, really, because there was a lot less tension in the house when he was away. And I loved having Elsie to myself. I always felt guilty about that. Still do.”
“You were her only child,” I said. “It seems kind of normal to feel that way.”
“You’re probably right, but still . . . When he’d come back after one of his tears, there was always a terrible row. They’d holler at each other for hours on end. I hated hearing them yell at each other. He was a piece of work, my dad. Worked as a pants presser. Didn’t aspire to anything grander, but that didn’t keep him from feeling like he’d gotten shortchanged.”
A foghorn boomed and the sound reverberated along the river. I shivered. Cary jammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and cocked his ear toward the sound. He seemed to be in his own world now, revisiting the haunts of his youth for the first time in many years and revisiting the history he’d spent those years trying to shut out. As he’d gone along, I got the feeling he wasn’t telling the story to me anymore as much as he was telling it to himself.
“It’s getting colder,” he said. “Do you fancy a drink? As I recall, there’s a cozy little pub a few blocks ahead.”
We started walking again, arm in arm. “I completely adored her,” he said. “Maybe because she adored me. I mean, she was tough. She’d fine me tuppence for spilling my milk on the table. But I would’ve jumped through flaming hoops for those occasions when for no particular reason, she’d smile at me and take me in her arms. To me, it was like watching the sun rise.”
I wanted to press him for more of the story, but my instincts were to hold back. He would begin again when he felt like it. Every strand of the story he shared seemed to come at the expense of a pint of his own blood.
The pub was where Cary remembered it. There was a nook in the rear, out of view from the main bar area, and we managed to slip into it without being noticed. I went to the bar and got a pint of ale for Cary and a cup of tea for myself. When I sat back down with him, I didn’t say anything, hoping he’d resume.
“Anyway, I came home one day and Elsie was gone. We had some of her cousins living with us by then—my father was working in Southampton—and they told me she’d gone to the sea for a rest. That seemed very strange to me. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t have taken me with her. I lay awake at night wondering if I’d done something wrong.” Cary squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them.
“Dear God,” I said.
“I was only ten years old. I thought she went away because she didn’t love me anymore.”
I took Cary’s hand and our eyes locked. Then he took my hand in both of his and went on. “The story about the seaside was too flimsy to hold up for very long. Finally, many weeks later, one of my cousins took me aside and said, ‘Archie, I have to give you some unhappy news. Your mother is dead.’ ”
He lowered his head again, closed his eyes, and masked them with his fingers. “That’s what I thought for twenty years. That my mother was dead.”
“Why would they tell you she was dead?”
Cary leaned back just as a shadow fell over our table. A ruddy-faced man stood grinning at us, holding two pints of ale. He set them down on the table.
“Just wanted to be able to tell me mates I’d bought Cary Grant a pint! You are a local