Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Ray’s quizzical look made him turn away. And for the first time Samuel seemed to be brought to his senses. Raising his voice, he said, “Why do we not take her to the hospital?”

It was as though he’d suggested they dismantle the oven to build a flying machine. Eudora at least seemed to consider it, her thoughts plainly etched on her face: her feminist’s belief in progress fighting against her homemaker’s practicality, her love of taking offence fighting against her logic. She looked at Maud, who regarded Samuel with reproach. But Ama herself spoke.

“Don’t take me to the hospital. Please,” she said, barely audible. She turned her face away.

“Don’t bother her, Samuel, she doesn’t want to go,” said Maud, urging the girl onto her stomach and raising her shirt so they could cup her.

Samuel was disgusted with his wife. She worried about her daughters, didn’t want to call attention to their culpability in this mess. He gave her a dark look, but said no more. To be fair, he knew Maud felt affection for Ama and would never wish harm on her. And yet, for her, nothing could overcome blood ties.

“Why did the twins leave you there?” said Eudora.

Ama frowned, and the coughs she’d been holding back wracked her body.

After cupping her, the group carried Ama upstairs to the Iron Lung. Exhausted but unable to breathe, Ama only fell asleep at dawn. Ray dozed in a dusty corner. The others, so tired their conversation was senseless, rested against the furniture.

Eudora smiled. A sleepless night had sharpened her tongue.

“If I ever saw the devil’s work, it’s what I saw tonight.”

There was no reply.

It was one of those mornings when a premature frost seizes everything and yet the sun continues to shine. The older leaves bled on their stems, and people unfamiliar with Alberta’s moody weather might have thought it was autumn.

Samuel fastened the curtains in the Iron Lung to let the sun in. On the pockmarked dresser he set a simplistic arrangement of marigolds with a single, luscious wild rose rising from the centre.

“This one is you,” he told Ama, pointing at the wild rose. “A raving beauty rising like the siren’s song above the others.” Her giggle made him feel appreciated. He patted his hat with an air of pride. “Never mind this electronics business, I should be a poet. A black Homer for modern times.”

When Ama’s laugh receded into coughing, he sat beside her on the bed to pat her back. Two days of quarantine had cleared her chest, bringing back some of her old personality. Even so, she treated the Tynes like strangers, using the shy and rigid table talk of their earlier days. Crushing as this was for Samuel, he couldn’t lament progress. Ama had improved by strides; only a blind man would dispute the colour waking in her face.

“Mr. Tyne?” said Ama in a rusty voice, recovering from her cough. Samuel marvelled at the wonderful grades of colour in her hair, like burnished oak. He ran a hand down her head.

“What is it? Are you feeling sick again?”

Ama’s eyes were wet, her flushed face trembled. “I want to go home.”

“It is impossible. Your parents do not return until September, and you cannot live unsupervised.”

“To Grandma Geneviève’s. She lives just outside Morinville. If you call her, she’ll come for me for sure.”

Samuel looked at the floor. Part of him had suspected this was coming, what with Ama’s evasiveness lately, her kind but marked distance. Still, it pained him so deeply he feared being unable to keep the emotion from his face. Drawing his woollen socks across the beige carpet, he meditated on the way brushing the carpet’s grain could darken and lighten its colour.

“Well,” said Samuel, “you are not a captive here. If that is your wish, I will certainly fulfil it.” Trying to smile, he looked at her. “Your wish is my command.”

Ama flushed, but clasped her hands across the blanket, a formal gesture that seemed to close the matter. Patting her head, Samuel rose to his feet wheezing a little, and trod downstairs to tell his wife.

Maud behaved as though resigning herself to the loss, but her relief was obvious. Samuel went to his study and slammed the door. It was some time before he could bring himself to pick up the phone.

He called Geneviève Ouillet three times in quick succession, to no avail. After fiddling with a radio for an hour, he called three more times and still received no answer. It annoyed him. Where did old women go in the middle of the day, anyway? Two hours later, she finally answered.

But she didn’t speak. Samuel only realized she’d answered by the tinny song in the background, sung in a sentimental, foreign, tear-drenched voice.

“Mrs. Ouillet? This is Samuel Tyne. I—”

“Time? What, is this a census? I don’t have time, I don’t have it,” she said in her decrepit voice, aspirating her h’s.

“No, no, I am not a census, do not hang up. I’m Samuel Tyne . I’m your granddaughter Ama’s guardian for the summer.”

“Oh. Yes, what is it?” The woman seemed to be smoking, and she spat and coughed throughout Samuel’s entire explanation. “Mm, yes, all right, then,” she said when he’d finished, though Samuel wasn’t convinced she’d understood him.

He gave her the Tynes’ address, spelling out the street name. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer me to drop her off?”

She hung up loudly in his ear. Samuel looked at the receiver a few seconds before replacing it on the cradle. When he went upstairs, Ama looked impressed.

“I expected to be here at least another week,” she said. “Grandma doesn’t like to use the phone — she hates all technology. Even technology she grew up with. She thinks everyone’s wrong to believe in it.”

Early the next morning, Samuel and Maud set Ama’s carpet-bag by the front door and sat with her in the family room to await her grandmother. The twins had woken early and gone outside. Though annoyed, Samuel understood their fear of being rebuked by one of Ama’s relatives. Maud had spent the morning dusting, but by noon the ancient fireplace had gasped ash on everything. The room felt stifled, and their being dressed in their primmest, most respectable clothes didn’t ease things. At the bay window, the sky was white with the absence of any kind of weather. Everything smelled of mothballs.

“You might think of getting your grandmother a watch for Christmas this year,” said Maud. She laughed hesitantly. “What time did she say again, Samuel?”

Samuel waved the hat in his hands, then resumed picking lint off it.

Dwarfed in a rose-coloured chair, Ama gave them an apologetic smile. She’d tucked the wild rose behind her ear, reminding Samuel of a young, paler Lady Day. “Grandma really doesn’t like technology,” she said, “so she’s never on time.”

Maud raised her eyebrows and turned to the window.

They continued to sit in silence. And this grieved Samuel, for more than anything he wanted to speak to the girl, to change her mind, to silence the anxiety he felt over her departure. At first he’d tried to catch Ama’s eye, stealing glances at her and smiling, but after Maud reproached him with a look, he forced himself to stop. Now they barely looked at one another, only deepening the uneasiness.

When the doorbell sounded at a quarter past four, Maud forgot the customary pause — what would visitors think, after all, if they all ran around like chickens? — and strode out to answer it. Samuel glanced at Ama, who removed the flower from behind her ear with nervous fingers, a look of regret on her face. As if handling something breakable, she pressed the flower between the pages of Alice In Wonderland .