Rosie O'Dell Page 4

  Chapter 2

  “WHAT DO I SAY when I see her first?” I asked my mother from the back seat. We were driving to the O’Dell house from the drugstore where she’d picked up some things for Nina. Mom was a nurse at the General Hospital and, as I’d heard her say to someone at St. John’s airport last night when she and Dad had come out to pick me up, she was well acquainted with sudden death, but this one had really knocked her for a loop. She didn’t look it though. Her big hazel eyes were a bit red but seemed as calm and unperturbed as usual and her short brown hair still gave her face a poised, no-nonsense alertness. I always felt more comfortable driving with Mom than Dad. The only difference I noticed in her today was a tendency to go off into a trance. Like now. “Mom, when I see—”

  “Pardon? Oh. You can say, ‘My condolences or my sympathy, Auntie Nina.’ Something simple is best.”

  “No, I mean to Rosie.”

  Mom looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “You can say the same thing to Rosie, and to Pagan.”

  “Can I go to the funeral home when the time comes?”

  “Sure. You can come and go with your father when he makes his visit.”

  “But you said you’re going to stay there the whole time with the family. Can I stay there with you? I don’t mean with you, I mean while you’re there.”

  My mother looked back at me again. For the first time since I’d arrived home from Twillingate last night, the longest period I’d ever seen her face without a smile, a tiny smile now played about her moist eyes. “If you want to. That won’t start till the day after tomorrow, though.”

  “How come it’s taking so long for the funeral home part to start? When Grandma died, her coffin was in there the next day.”

  “If someone doesn’t die from natural causes, if they die violently, say, or you can’t tell the reasons right off the bat, there’s usually an autopsy. A doctor examines the body to try to figure out what caused the death. That’s why it’s taking a while here.”

  “I thought he got drowned.”

  “Yes, but they want to know why he drowned, what caused it.”

  “What do you think, Mom?”

  She didn’t answer for a long moment. But I could tell she wasn’t in one of her trances this time. Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and her eyes became suddenly red-rimmed and enraged. I thought she must be mad at me for digging and poking into something that was none of my business again. She pulled the car over to the curb and turned to reach back for my hands in my lap. “Oh, my sweet love,” she whispered, “I don’t know what to think. I’m just so angry at him for all the pain and hurt…” She removed her hand from mine to fish a tissue out of her pocket and dry her eyes. Then she blew her nose and looked at me again. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, my man. That’s between you and me only.”

  “I won’t, Mom, don’t worry.”

  “That’s good, Tom.” She pulled the car out into the lane and drove on. “This delay is hard on the family, but in a way, it’s all right. Remember on the radio this morning they mentioned that Mr. O’Dell won the Governor General’s award for poetry a couple of years ago? Well, he was quite a well-known writer and lots of people from across Canada want to come down here for the funeral, and many of his friends at the university who went away for the summer want to get back for it too.” We pulled into the O’Dell driveway where their car was still half full of trip provisions and gear. Mom had told me that Nina and Pagan were just preparing to drive out to meet up with Joyce and Rosie when they got the word.

  Walking to the house, Mom said, “Okay. We have to keep in mind that everyone in here is very upset.” She tapped on the front door and went in. An old woman met us in the hall. I recognized her as Joyce O’Dell’s mother. I hadn’t seen her since I stopped coming over a couple of years ago. I recalled having the feeling that any politeness between Nina O’Dell and Gram O’Dell was in the nature of an uneasy truce. Mom said in a formal tone, “Mrs. O’Dell, you may remember my son, Tom.”

  “I do remember him, not may,” said Gram O’Dell. “I’m not brain-dead yet.”

  Mom continued with the same formal tone, “And Tom, you will remember Mrs. O’Dell, Rosie and Pagan’s grandmother.”

  “My sympathy,” I said.

  “Likewise I am sure,” said Gram O’Dell, drawing back haughtily, leaving me wondering if I’d said it right.

  I followed my mother into the living room, glimpsing in the kitchen the back of a woman who had the same tilt to her head over the sink that Rosie’s mother had. That must be the aunt who had brought her in from Deer Lake. Nina O’Dell was sitting on the sofa, her cheeks shiny with tears. Pagan was pressed into her mother’s side, her beautiful little face wooden with shock. Rosie was not there.

  Her hand on her friend’s, Mom murmured, “Where’s Rosie, Nine?”

  “Upstairs in the bathroom, Glad,” came the hoarse whisper. “She’ll be back down in a minute.”

  “Why don’t you wait for her out in the hall by the stairs, Tom?” Mom said, and I went out. I heard her before I saw her. She was talking to herself, reciting something, as she walked down the steps to the upper landing. Her navy blue loafers and white stockings appeared between the railings, and I heard as she turned to come down, “… tonight’s forgotten gush of love…” She saw me and stopped. Her face had its usual fresh and open look, but her eyes were full of pain. A sad little smile came to her lips. “Hi,” she said in a voice so small I would not have known it.

  I struggled to say, “My sympathy.” It came out as “My symphony,” but Rosie didn’t laugh sarcastically at me as she would normally have done.

  She descended the stairs towards me and I realized as she reached the hall that I had not stood close enough to her recently to notice she was two inches taller than me. “Thank you for coming back, Tom,” she said, giving me a brief hug. “Auntie Gladys said you told them you were returning all the way from Twillingate when you heard. That was very kind of you.”

  I meant to say something like, “I wanted to stay with you and help you get through your grief as a friend.” What came out was, “That’s okay.”

  Rosie took me by the hand as I’d often seen her do with one of her girlfriends, and spoke at the living room door: “Tom and I are going up to my room, Mom. Let me know if you need me.”

  The last time she had told her mother, a couple of years before, that we were going up to her room to play, Auntie Nina had said, “All right, but no fighting please,” and Pagan had squealed, “It’s my room too, Mommy, and don’t let them touch any of my stuff,” both entreaties proving futile when Pagan’s teddy bear, employed as a bludgeon, had a leg torn off during the ensuing brawl. This time, though, Nina only mewled something unintelligible and Pagan said nothing.

  Upstairs in the shared room, Rosie lay on one of the twin beds and I sat on a chair at one of the two desks. She turned over on her side to face me. “The police asked me what happened,” she said, “and I told them as much as I knew, and they were like, ‘How much by way of spirits, wine, or beer would you estimate the men drank during the evening preceding the alleged accident?’ or, ‘Did you observe any hostility among the men? You know, arguing or fighting?’ I told them I know what ‘hostility’ means, thank you very much. I shouldn’t have been like that because they had their job to do. I told them the facts but I couldn’t tell them the really awful part. I wouldn’t even be able to tell Mom that. Oh God. Is it all right if I tell you, Tom?” She looked straight at me, her eyes unwavering as usual, but moist and sad, and a novel sensation flowed down my neck and shoulders into my arms and hands that made me desire to enfold her and protect her against the whole world.

  “Yes, if you want to, Rosie.”

  “I really do, Tom.” She rolled over on her back and looked up at the ceiling. “It was our third night camping on the river. We were around the campfire for a while after supper. Daddy and Steve and Derek, that’s his two friends from the canoeing club, were drinking whisky and tel
ling yarns— it was really interesting—but then at dusk the blackflies got too bad, so we went in our tents, Daddy and me in ours and the other two in theirs. I was in my sleeping bag reading and Daddy was in his, writing in his notebook—‘old foul sheets, ’ he called his notebook. Then he closed it up and said, ‘Just listen to that torrent.’ Our tents were pitched pretty close to the edge of the bank so that we could hear the river all night long. Then he asked me if I was ready to go to sleep. We were going to get up at dawn the next morning. I said yes and he reached for the lamp. Just before he turned it out he looked down at me and said, ‘All the awards I’ve received for my poetry are but piffling baubles given out for mediocrity, Rosie. For I know in my soul that I have only reached the foothills yet of my true poetic summit and in the years ahead before I die I will scale the crest of that glorious far-off bardic peak.’ In the lamplight, Tom, I could see my father’s total genius shining in his eyes. Then he kissed me here on the forehead and turned out the lamp. ‘Good night, my muse, the inspiration of my life, ’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’” Rosie turned over on her side away from me with a groan, “Oh God,” and brought her knees up to her chest.

  She stayed silent and I was about to ask her if she had a pain somewhere when she rolled over on her back again and went on: “In the middle of the night, something woke me up in the dark. I said, ‘Dad?’ and he said, ‘Sorry I disturbed you, Rosie. I’ve got to go out and use the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute. Go back to sleep.’ I woke up at dawn and his sleeping bag was empty. I thought he was out with Steve and Derek getting the fire going but when I went outside, Steve said, ‘How’s the skipper this morning? Hope he hasn’t got a big head. Don’t want your canoe to be too top-heavy.’ When I told them I didn’t think he came back from using the bathroom hours ago, they couldn’t believe it. We ran over to the edge of the bank. It dropped twenty or thirty feet right into the river. Derek spotted a place where the ground juniper was trampled on right to the edge. There was poo there. I asked if that was bear droppings. Derek said, ‘No, my love.’ Then I heard him whispering to Steve, ‘Jesus Christ, he fell in the river taking a crap.’ Back in our tent, we saw his big flashlight. One of the men said, ‘He went out in the dark next to the river without his light? With black bears, and bull moose, and lynx and God knows what prowling around all night.’ I was frightened to death and started to cry and they said, ‘Don’t worry, your father is a very powerful swimmer. Remember how he swam across the tickle from Portugal Cove to Bell Island a few summers ago? That was three miles of frigid ocean with icebergs still dotting Conception Bay. We’ll find him downriver sitting on a rock waiting for us in a few minutes.’ We toted a canoe down to a launching place. On the way, I heard one of the men whisper to the other, ‘Did you hear him bawl out or anything?’ And the other said, ‘No, he must have been too embarrassed at being so effing stupid as he went over.’ We put on our life jackets, pushed off and shot the rapids. It only took us a few minutes to spot him. He was partly on a beach in a little cove in the river lying on his back, and my hopes went up sky high because someone who is drowned lies face down, I thought, and he looked like he was just peacefully sleeping.” Rosie paused and turned her eyes to me. They were welling tears, as, I realized, mine were too. Then she returned her gaze to the ceiling and said with a terrible sigh, “But he was dead, Tommy. Icy cold and dead and gone.”

  I disguised my shivering with some shifting in my chair. Rosie then said, “I can’t believe it. Not that he’s dead. I believe that. But that one minute, he has big brilliant plans for years ahead and the next minute he falls into the river in the middle of doing his poo and he’s found dead with his underwear down around his ankles. No matter how great you are, or everyone thinks you are, you can be snuffed out like a disgusting insect any second in the most ridiculous way possible. We are the same as stupid insects. That’s all we are—silly meaningless ridiculous insects.”

  I had no answers. I sat and waited. When she didn’t begin again, I asked, “Would you like me to stay with you at the funeral home when it starts? Mom told me she was going to be there the whole while with your mother.”

  “I’d like you to stay there with me very much, Tommy. I don’t know how I’m going to get through all this without somebody nice’s help.”

  AT CARNELL’S FUNERAL HOME the room containing Joyce O’Dell’s body swelled full of his colleagues and friends. I stood next to Rosie and watched them. Nearly all went over and looked down on the corpse in its open coffin and wept. Then drying their tears they talked in close camaraderie with other mourners and laughed. I saw only two exceptions to this weep-and-laugh routine. One was a stranger, tall and elegant, who came in without a word to any of the other mourners, skirted the coffin, and went directly to Nina O’Dell.

  “Who’s he, I wonder?” Rosie said to me.

  “Maybe someone your mother knows from the library.”

  “She must know him really well from somewhere, the way she’s letting him hog her like that and cause that big lineup.”

  After what did seem like an unusual length of time talking to the widow, the man turned and surprised us by coming straight over to Rosie as if he knew exactly where she was without even looking. He bowed slightly and held out his hand. “How do you do, Miss O’Dell,” he said in an English accent. “My name is Dr. Heathcliff Rothesay. You don’t know me—in fact, none of your family does—but I have been a great admirer of your father and his magnificent work ever since I arrived in Newfoundland and I’ve come to offer you and your mother and your sister my deepest sympathy in your time of grief.”

  “Thank you very much, Dr. Rothesay. This is my friend, Tom.”

  “How do you do, Tom.” He shook my hand firmly with a smooth palm and strong fingers, looking me directly in the eye. “Friends are an exceedingly important comfort in times of bereavement.” I was very impressed by the man, having no inkling then of his nature. “Miss O’Dell, I had the honour of meeting your great father—Rosie—May I presume so far on your kindness as to call you Rosie?”

  “Please do,” said Rosie with a smile, bending a little at the knees.

  “Thank you, Rosie, and my enormous regret is that I did not have the opportunity to become good friends with him. I had hoped to, but I had not been here long enough before… alas.”

  “Are you originally from England, Dr. Rothesay?”

  “You identified my accent.” His face took on a look of frank astonishment. “How extraordinarily observant and knowledgeable of you, Rosie.”

  I looked at Rosie sidelong for her reaction. I half-expected her to turn to me and say, “How stupid does this guy think we are over here! What does he figure, we’ve never seen a J. Arthur Rank movie or something?”

  But Rosie didn’t glance my way. “Thank you, Dr. Rothesay,” she was saying. “How long have you been here in Newfoundland?”

  “Oh, please call me Heathcliff, if you would be so generous, Rosie. Just over two years. And I have been preoccupied during most of that time establishing my medical practice here in St. John’s. Fortunately, soon after I arrived someone brought me to the poetry reading at the university commemorating your father’s winning of the Governor General’s award for poetry. That’s where I met him and where I had the pleasure of seeing you and your mother and sister all together having your picture taken with him. I remember thinking at the time, ‘What an intellectually stimulating, aesthetically pleasing family!’ I am most honoured that we have finally had occasion to meet, Rosie, albeit under circumstances I should have wished less tragic. I trust I shall have the opportunity to meet you and your family again.”

  Rosie’s eyes were glistening. “Thank you, Heathcliff. I hope so too.”

  “Now I must tear myself away and offer your sister my condolences and leave without intruding on your grieving any further. It was a pleasure to have met you, Tom. Goodbye for now, Rosie. I do hope I shall have occasion to become better acquainted with Joyce O’Dell’s wonderful famil
y.”

  I was wrong. Rosie’s eyes were not glistening. They were sparkling. “Yes, goodbye for now, Heathcliff,” she said. “I hope so too.”

  We watched him walk directly to where Pagan was standing next to my mother, speak to them both for a few minutes and go right out the door. For someone who held the dead poet in such high esteem, he didn’t spend much time contemplating over his mortal remains. I hadn’t seen him go near the coffin once. I felt undefined dislike, which I quickly pushed out of my mind as unfitting.

  The only other exception to the weep-and-laugh sequence of emotions I observed among the grievers was my own father. Dad had come in solemn-faced, remained so as he observed the corpse and extended his hand to Nina and to old Gram O’Dell, and stood solemn-faced now near the door with Gram O’Dell chatting at him as he waited for his chance to slip out without giving the appearance of indecent haste. But instead of the “ten minutes only” he’d told Mom and me he’d be staying, he stood rooted there for over half an hour, constrained by utter disbelief, he would say during supper that evening, at the competition of bizarre eulogies that started up around the coffin.

  I was coming back from a quick Pepsi downstairs with Rosie to stand by her side again when a man with a wispy beard, his head-hair long in some places and entirely absent from his skull in others, began the phenomenon. Leaning with his elbow on the gleaming casket wood, he declaimed, “In ascending order of peril, Joyce O’Dell was a wild-river canoeist—a relatively safe pastime—and a university professor—somewhat more dangerous—and finally and most hazardous of all, a love poet. Hence I never expected him to snuff it like this.” He chuckled between sniffs and reached out to touch the cosmetically peaceful face of the cadaver: “Drowned! Good God, the only question I ever had about how our beloved comrade and poet Joyce O’Dell would shuffle off this mortal coil was whether he’d be hanged or shot. Hegh-hegh-hegh-hegh.” Others made their own peculiar sounds of amusement.