Galore - Michael Crummey [90]
Even to Newman, the country he spoke of in Connecticut or Boston or New York felt impossibly remote. Newfoundland seemed too severe and formidable, too provocative, too extravagant and singular and harrowing to be real. He half expected never to lay eyes on the place again, as if it didn’t exist outside the stories in his head. A riptide of relief running through him each time he sailed back into Paradise Deep to find Barnaby Shambler with Ann Hope and Absalom Sellers on the dock, Azariah and Obediah Trim, and a choir of Sunday school children singing a welcoming hymn. Judah and Mary Tryphena and the rest of the Devines further up the landwash. Bride with her close-mouthed smile and the curious little one hanging off her dress. No regrets in that moment at least. And the crowd followed him up to the clinic where they presented the afflictions that had befallen them while he was away.
——
By the time Tryphie was six years old Absalom was blind and too crippled to leave Selina’s House. Virtue Gallery passed in her sleep two winters before and Absalom lost the heart to fight his own slow decline with her gone. He retreated to his bedroom where he received the few visitors he was willing to see, his legs too weak to chance the stairs. He resigned his position as justice of the peace and gave up the business to Levi’s oversee, though he still vetted and approved all decisions. There was a weekly meeting in the sickroom where Levi provided updates on quintals and hogsheads and gallons. It was the only real conversation the two men had managed for years past. And even then there were disagreements, subtle insults, the most innocuous discussion dragged into their long-drawn-out struggle. Absalom could feel his son bristling across the room. —Will that be all, Mr. Sellers? he asked before leaving. Levi had his mother’s perfectly English accent, which felt willful to Absalom, one more way their son chose sides between them. He’d thought Levi would forgive him one day or simply grow tired of carrying such a single-minded hatred. But they were running out of time.
Ann Hope tried to talk her husband into relinquishing the work altogether. —The meetings are too hard on you, she said.
—It’s bad enough to have Levi trying to rush me out.
—Levi isn’t rushing you.
—He can’t wait for me to die, Absalom said.
His wife insisted on a weekly appointment with the doctor, hovering in the background while Newman listened to his heart and lungs and inquired about the regularity of his bowel movements, about his appetite and how well he was sleeping. The questions seemed pointless to Absalom and he fired off inquiries of his own in response, as if he and the physician were involved in a wrestling match.
—Why aren’t you married yet, Doctor?
—Only death is inevitable, Mr. Sellers.
—An insensitive remark to make to a man in my position, Absalom said. —And a falsehood besides.
—I apologize on both counts.
—A man will marry, Absalom said. —It’s in his nature. If not a woman, he’ll marry his work. Or the bottle.
—Quite the philosopher you’re becoming, Mr. Sellers.
—My mind wanders, Absalom said. —It’s all the legs I have left.
—Deep breath. And exhale.
—Have you had a drink already this morning, Doctor?
—I’ll do the examining if you don’t mind.
—Let me save you the trouble. I’m dying. And you’ve been drinking. I can smell it.
—One more deep breath, Newman said.
After the doctor let himself out, Ann Hope scolded her husband. —You shouldn’t provoke him so. He’ll refuse to see you if you carry on like this.
—I’d be no worse off for that.
—Don’t talk that way.
Absalom sighed heavily by way of apology. —I married well, he said. —That’s as much as a man can ask of the world.
Ann Hope straightened and took a step away from the bed, not willing to indulge him. —Reverend Dodge has asked to come by this afternoon.
Absalom sighed again and turned his face toward the window, as if he might actually see something