Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

“What did you girls do today?” Maud said, upset, wanting to put them at ease.

The twins concentrated on their plates, chewing as though it strained them to do so. Ama raised her head and shrugged, for she’d spent the whole day cooking with Mrs. Tyne and didn’t find it necessary to answer.

Samuel kept his eyes averted. Not only did he know the twins’ silence was due to his having hit Yvette, but he suspected Maud doted on them now as a kind of apology. Glancing at his daughters, he felt a sense of awe. Without looking at each other, they brought their forks to their lips in perfect harmony. Their fingers trembling, they looked like a trick with mirrors. Samuel stared at them. Despite their spectacle, they seemed terrified of attention. Both Maud and Ama averted their eyes. Samuel stared, then did the same.

Something rattled against the linoleum. Samuel looked down and realized Chloe had dropped her fork. After a long silence, Maud hobbled down on her good knee to retrieve it. Just as Maud was setting the fork on the table, Yvette, with an anguished look on her face, then threw hers down. Sighing, Maud picked up that one, too.

Samuel, appalled, gave the twins an admonishing look and was about to speak when he found he didn’t know what to say. Not only was he mortified his wife was being punished on his behalf, but he disappointed himself by not making the apology that would put all this to rest. For some reason, apologizing to Yvette seemed like admitting the stupidity of his grand dreams. The link was illogical, but firm in his mind. And besides, one did not apologize to a child. He finished his meal in silence.

That night was a restive one for Samuel and Maud; the bed felt too small to hold both them and their resentments. Each faked sleep, the only device left to them. The room was noisy with drowsy little sniffles, with timid coughs. But what consumed Maud had nothing to do with Samuel; instead, she thought of the laundry, of the blood-dark rust that collared the kitchen tap, of the endless decay that weighed on their space, making the rooms unbreathable. Her nausea at the dirt felt, at times, like insanity.

Maud rose from bed, sighing at the wistful, unconvincing coughs Samuel made to console himself, and entered the hall. Fumbling for the light switch, she thought she heard a sound and stopped to listen. Again, there it was, a noise like objects falling in a distant room, and navigating by touch she discovered its source. The clothes hamper’s closet. Exasperated, she whipped off the latch, the automatic light blinking on to reveal Ama shrouded in white sheets, her eyes large with fear, breathing as if she’d run a race. Ama seemed both relieved at Mrs. Tyne’s presence and ashamed at having been caught. She had sheets draped over her head.

“Hibernating?” said Maud, somewhat surly. “What are you doing in here?”

Ama averted her eyes in embarrassment. “The room was too quiet.”

“‘Too quiet?’” Maud struggled not to hurt the girl’s feelings. “People in Toronto, in New York, in London, would pay ten dollars a minute for what you’ve got. When you grow up and move to a big city you’ll remember this and cry. Now, come on.”

Grasping Ama’s hand, she led her back to the room she shared with the twins. It smelled of mulch and wet clothes, with a hot, close atmosphere that felt unsettling. The water heater clucked in the corner, wind made the eaves outside creak, but for all these noises the room felt densely silent, a calm like the eye of a storm. Maud’s hackles rose. She searched for the light switch.

The twins had pushed their cots together, and lying side by side, they stared up at the ceiling. Maud approached them. Bodies rigid, their vague, glossy eyes stared up without judgment.

Maud’s fear gave way to confusion. “Is this a game? Stop it! You scared your friend half to death.”

They remained impassive. The white of the sheets set off the whites of their eyes.

“We’ll talk about this tomorrow. Come on, Ama.” As Maud led Ama away, she thought she saw a look on Yvette’s face. “Yvette?”

But Yvette recovered her composure. Turning off the lights, Maud led Ama to the Iron Lung and tucked her to sleep in there.

Alone in bed, hesitating at every noise, Samuel groaned in delicious misery. He felt himself to be at the root of every family problem, and yet his anxiety and guilt were oddly fleeting. Yes, he had risked the family savings on an uncertain business venture; yes, his roles as a decent husband and father were on tenuous ground, but he refused to feel remorse. He felt worst about — and for a prodigy of self-flogging, even this was not severe — actually hitting one of his daughters, about the look on Ama’s face. In fact, Ama’s fear hurt him more than anything. His children at least had a reason to hate him. But Ama? He knew he should apologize, that his wife couldn’t keep accounting for his actions, but he couldn’t. He was in turmoil, wishing he could ask Ray for advice, only to recall their fight, which had ended in spite so strong Samuel had sworn it would make a mandrake grow on his grave. Now he felt at a loss to locate the exact cause of their argument — Ray’s intent seemed less offensive now that Samuel could see how he might have misinterpreted him. He lay confounded by worry, soothing himself with the thought that all problems were mere theory, and made a half-hearted game out of waiting for his wife to come back.

The Franks showed up on the Tynes’ doorstep, birthday cake in hand. Samuel started at the sight of them, not only pained because of recent enmity; their visit blighted the best hours of his day, the morning. Unlatching the storm door, he was haunted by the feeling of having performed this exact act weeks before. Again, Eudora, pale and hasty-looking, with a foil-covered dish in her withered hands, and, again, a satisfied (if less blithe) Ray behind her, holding a crow of an umbrella over his wife’s head.

“You may have been trying to forget us, but we haven’t forgotten you,” said Eudora, in a voice somewhat too blunt to be humorous. “You going to let us in, or you waiting for the hurricane to finish us off?”

With the docility Samuel despised in himself, he let them in, accepting their wet jackets with servitude. When he gestured the way to the kitchen, Eudora said, “It hasn’t been that long, Sam. We were older friends than that.” Samuel tried to show his confusion at their presence, so they’d know his friendship was not so easily re-earned. Eudora evaded his eyes. “You should see what we brought. Your girls won’t know this day from Christmas, right, Ray?”

Ray hesitated; he eyed his wife as though wondering at the appropriateness of going on without a formal apology. Still, he followed Eudora to the kitchen, where she pulled gold-wrapped gifts from a Hudson’s Bay Company bag and arranged them at the far end of the table.

Samuel didn’t know what to say. Maud came in behind him, despondent in an old bathrobe, running a pick-comb through her damp Afro and stopping blind upon seeing the company. She hadn’t spoken to Eudora since the night of Ama’s accident, when Eudora had made her comment about “devil’s work.” Without being seen, Maud backed out of the room.

Ama came into the kitchen, fidgeting in her pink dress, as though she longed to go to Samuel but didn’t trust him. Then the twins entered, stone-like. Fact was, the Tynes had planned their own small party for that afternoon, and though Maud had been its sole organizer, Samuel had so taken an interest in the overheard details that he felt like a willing accomplice. Now, not only was the original plan being undermined by tactless guests, but the twins didn’t show even remote excitement at having accidentally seen the preparation of festivities much more elaborate than those Maud had planned. Samuel kept an eye on his daughters, sad to have to acknowledge to himself that their silence had aged them. Not so much physically: they were awkward as ever. But there was a current in those cold eyes, a judgment that saw through human bustle and cheer. Perhaps that was it — they had the invalid’s contempt for false joy.