in six months to reclaim it. Mark’s uncle insists on limousine service to Pearson International because he likes plenty of leg room before the arduous flight to Southeast Asia. Of course, he was too cheap to pitch in for food or wine when he stayed here en route.
Lucy feels a faint spasm of guilt on thinking these thoughts, for it was Uncle Philip, music lover extraordinaire, who quite unexpectedly mailed her a cheque last year with the note: “If you’re going to enter this competition, you’ll need an excellent teacher. I hope this will help.”
Thanks to him she’s been working with the divine Goran.
Lucy watches the driver fit suitcase into trunk, then hold the passenger door open for Uncle Philip who, once settled, rolls down the window and calls out in his sunny voice, “Back in the spring, dear.”
As if she’ll be counting the days.
She shuts the front door, twists the lock, and breathes clove-scented aftershave mixed with breakfast bacon, a now-familiar brew. With luck there will be no interruptions until four o’clock when the twins amble home from high school. Her husband, Mark, works as a security guard at the Art Gallery of Ontario and doesn’t get off shift until suppertime. It’s his dream job, or so he claims. He loves standing in the eighteenth-century room surrounded by lacquered paintings by little-known artists, making sure school kids don’t jostle or touch anything, or some jackass doesn’t take a knife to the brittle canvases. He claims to thrive on the long stretches of nothing, punctuated by bursts of activity. It gives him time to think — about what, Lucy has no idea. She pictures him standing guard in front of the portrait of some long-forgotten Cornish merchant whose manicured hand rests on a globe.
Uncle Philip is on his way to Thailand. He flies first to Toronto from his home in Halifax to break up the trip, and he’ll stay here again during his return, only then he will be tanned and relaxed rather than snippy with excitement as he was during this visit. It’s Lucy who gets roped into preparing hot breakfast and lunches because she is the one with a flexible schedule. Uncle Philip sits at the kitchen table and reads her copy of Harper’s, dripping sugary coffee over its pages, making early-morning throat-clearing noises. He combs his hair over the butter dish, and after eating, holes up in the bathroom for a marathon flossing session. She hears pops of loosened string and later finds herself sponging dislodged food particles from the mirror.
Yet Uncle Philip was the one who slipped an arm over her shoulder last night and said, “I have great faith in you, my dear.”
But now he’s gone, they are all gone, and Lucy has the house to herself. Beginning at noon she will practise her guitar. No point in trying to do this once the boys come home. They play their own music: Megadeth and Slayer at a deafening volume, and bound around the kitchen shoving drawers in and out and snapping open the fridge door.
The competition starts in four days, and she figures she’s as ready as she’ll ever be. The idea of it sends a thrill of anticipation through her body, so intense she can hardly stay upright. Twenty-five years of playing weddings and bar mitzvahs, reaching an age when most women accept “their limitations,” as her own mother puts it, and she is charging into the centre of the cyclone.
Goran told her, “Just play your best.”
“But is that good enough?”
Bemused, he looked at her and said, “Good enough for what? You make music, people listen. Why make it more complicated?”
First task is to collapse the fold-out bed where Philip parked his slim and limber self for the past four nights, get rid of all signs of the guest who will soon disappear into the steamy coastal villages of Thailand. He’ll return, chipper as always, sporting a grizzled beard and tanned hands, the creases of his palms a dental white: seventy-six years old and going strong.
It infuriates Lucy that Philip refuses to make up his own bed, which means putting the couch back to rights so it won’t stick halfway across the living-room floor. She’d asked him to do it several times, as had Mark, and they’d even demonstrated how. Uncle Philip professed great interest in the task, marvelled at the ingenuity of the sofa’s mechanism, and never tried it on his own, not once.
Lucy tosses his pillows and blankets onto a chair, then begins to yank off the sheets. She feels something trapped in there, tangled in the bedding. A brisk shake tosses up a manila envelope, and Lucy curses, thinking he’s left behind his passport and soon she’ll receive a panicked call from the airport and have to drive up there in morning rush hour to perform the rescue. So much for running through her program. So much for dipping into the series of right-hand rasqueado exercises, crucial for the first compulsory piece. She dangles the envelope over the exposed mattress and watches its contents slide out.
A series of black-and-white snapshots tumbles onto the bed, images of boys half-dressed or almost entirely without clothes. Boys — she holds the photographs by their edges — about the same age as the twins, approximately fifteen, with developed bodies, yet still lean and innocent-looking. Slick dark hair — undoubtedly Asian.
She carries the photos over to the window and tilts them toward the morning light. Are they professionally posed shots, something one might pick up in a shop, or — and here she feels her mouth pucker — are they Philip’s own handiwork, using his vintage Leica?
The top picture is at first ambiguous. A teenage boy stands by a market stall, wearing a decorated robe, one hand cradling a melon. His face is expressionless, although he appears to be gazing at something, or someone, to his left. It’s his face that draws Lucy’s attention, for he is extraordinarily beautiful, high cheekbones and large eyes possibly outlined by kohl. He holds himself upright, shoulders thrown back and chin tilted.
Oh.
Now she gets it.
The robe has swept open just a little, enough to let an erect penis peek out, sly yet knowing. Suddenly, that castaway glance and jutting chin assume new meaning. Uncle Philip’s whorled fingerprints are all over the emulsion, and now, so are hers. She thinks of Philip lying on the hide-a-bed while the rest of them sleep, staring at this picture and — well, yes.
She doesn’t drop the photograph. If anything, she holds on to it more tightly. The image looks posed and at the same time carelessly set up, with rudimentary lighting. The exposure is grainy, very fast film that pixilates the subject’s skin and robe. The photos are saturated with the same clove aftershave that lingers in her hallway — spritz of the marketplace. She thinks of Uncle Philip’s tapered nails and visualizes his earnest unblinking attention when someone speaks. He’d been, until he retired, chief inspector of restaurants and food-serving sites for Halifax and liked to say, “If you’ve dreamed it, it exists, and I’ve seen it.”
She always thought this referred to rodent hairs floating in the bouillabaisse.
Has he dreamed these boys, or is he on the way to meet them now, the Airbus ripping across continents of sky while his pale hands tap his trousered knees? He refuses to eat airplane food and packed his own bag of fruit and nuts, mindful of his bowels. He won’t bother watching the movie. He has his own theatre playing behind those clear blue eyes.
Lucy lets her dressing gown slide to the floor. Under it she wears an old T-shirt and a pair of Mark’s boxers. A man walking a dog on the sidewalk below glances up at her, and looks quickly away.
Then the phone rings. It’s Mr. Hyke, vice-principal at the twins’ high school.
“Am I speaking to Mrs. Dickie, Charles’s mother?”
“Lucy Shaker,” she corrects
