Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Samuel was sitting at the table when she entered. He was putting on a ragged pair of socks, lowering his foot when he noticed her, as though caught in some small but private ritual. He wore a singlet and black pants loose at the waist, and Maud was surprised by how much he resembled those jobless drifters of the Peahorn district. Sitting beside him, she gripped his rough, callused hands and began to cry. His hands sat unanimated in hers, and glancing at him she was struck by how resigned his eyes looked. In defacing his property, the vandals had beaten the will from his body. He looked dispassionately around him. His skin was toneless, gone ashen, and the new lack of direction in his voice made his words sound weighty and insignificant at the same time.

“You have seen a sight there was no excuse to witness,” he said. “An indecency beyond anything.” His voice was metallic, undemanding. “Men do anything to keep other men mediocre, they find any reason. God’s inequalities … this is how they’re overcome.”

Maud snapped. “Samuel, this is about the twins, not some assault to your, your genius.”

“We are giving them up,” he said. “We are giving them up.”

Maud took her hands from his. “Ego! How dare you? How dare you. This is not about you — you’re no genius! You are a small, simple, black man — you’re no inventor. How dare you?”

He took her hand out of instinct. “Do you not see that they are already lost? They are not even eating. They beat each other. Do you not see it? I have been sitting here hours, hours , trying to figure out at what point they were lost. And you know it is impossible. Impossible. They have been lost so long it is beyond remembering.”

Maud stood up, trying to regain her composure, but letting out a sob every time she looked at Samuel. Samuel gazed at her, as though her grief had no meaning for him. He knew she recognized the truth in what he said. He knew it.

“On Monday I will drive the girls to the facility for distressed children. You will come along, or stay home — it doesn’t matter. They are too sick for us to be of any use to them.”

Maud began to nod, shaking a little. “We neglected them terribly. Who are we to give them up now?”

“We do not have the means to cure them.”

Maud continued to nod, turning her face to the wall. “And take Ray’s money and move back to the city, just like that. Move back and start again as though we’d never had children at all.”

“We are not moving back.” He sounded passive, but irrefutable. “We are staying right here. We are staying here, and the Porters will move in with us.”

Maud looked horrified.

“We will live side by side. Friend, enemy, they are no different in this life. Let them come — we will starve together.”

“You’re mad,” said Maud.

“Perhaps I passed it to our daughters. I know you think I did. Whether it is the case or not, I will spend the rest of my life answering for it. It is on this day I finally come to understand Jacob. For what you cannot change, you make amends. You make amends.”

Maud lowered her voice. “You won’t do this.”

“Will you have your daughters sick for the rest of their lives? Would you deny them normality, normal husbands, normal children, because of your selfishness? Let them go. They will remember the kindness at our age.”

Samuel knew he’d touched a nerve. There was a long silence.

Finally, Maud said, “Why should they move in? They lost their home, but …”

“At our daughters’ hands, which is as good as if we ourselves had done it. They lost their home, and we must account for that. We cannot go back to Calgary even if we wanted to. We are bankrupt, absolutely bankrupt. I will use Ray’s money to begin paying back my investors. I owe great sums to two men, and will work out of the study. The Porters can help us with the upkeep. And it will stop all their tomfoolery — they will be indebted.”

“You won’t do it.”

“We will,” he said. “We will.” And he left the house and wouldn’t say where he’d been when he returned at nightfall. Maud had calmed down, but she gave Samuel indignant glances as if this would change his mind. He didn’t notice.

Neither spoke nor saw the other until bedtime, when at their routine hour they met in the room, sensitive to each other’s presence but silent. They lay apart, awake and listening to the darkness for hours. Samuel fell asleep only to be woken by his wife’s crying.

“You won’t do it,” she said. “You won’t do it, you won’t, you won’t.” Her voice was full of breath, but there was a note of resignation in it that told Samuel this was the last of her resistance. Tired, he pulled Maud to his chest, an empty gesture she accepted as genuine. Her face was moist. He held her until she exhausted herself, slackening as she fell asleep. As he held her, he meditated on how pointless it was that sunrise was so beautiful when so few men actually saw it anyway.

As Monday approached, Maud worried herself sick trying to tell the twins. She continued to bring them trays of food three times a day, and each time found them playing dead when she entered, their dim eyes fixed on the ceiling. It had been five days since they’d eaten more than bread, and trying to force-feed them left Maud exhausted. Instead of leaving after collecting Saturday’s supper tray, Maud sat on the bed vacated by Ama.

“It’s been a long time since you girls have been well. Your dad and I, we, we don’t know what to do.” Tears entered her voice, and she was unable to regain her composure. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” She picked up the dinner tray and rushed out.

On Sunday, Maud packed the twins’ clothes under the scrutiny of their dim eyes. She was careful to pack both cases at once, folding the identical outfits in beside each other, a tight pain in her throat. Neither girl acknowledged her, and finishing she snapped the cases shut, placing them near the door. Before leaving, Maud walked between the beds and leaned over both girls. The girl on the left kept her head averted, her brown eyes vacant, the girl on the right’s lip trembled. And for the first time in days, Maud addressed one separately. “Yvie,” she said, “what happened?” After yet more silence, she stroked her head, then left the room.

On Monday morning, Maud repacked the twins’ clothes into garbage bags, for during the night they had destroyed the cases. Maud hid the remnants under the bed (they were Samuel’s cases from his scholar years), and ran a comb through the girls’ hair while Samuel loaded the trunk outside.

There were still no tears as the car neared the facility’s gates. Leaning out his window to punch in the passcode he’d been given, Samuel’s mind wandered as the wrought iron gates parted.

He was remembering a conversation he’d once overheard in the government office. Through the foam partition dividing their desks, Sally Mather, his co-worker, had been crying softly into the phone. Samuel didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but her stage whisper left him no choice. She spoke of not being able to pinpoint the exact moment her life had changed. As if things had simply shifted overnight — the marriage over, the ambition gone, everything lost. When she thought about it, the signs leading to it were clear. But she hadn’t seen them until all was over.

Samuel hadn’t made much of this at the time. But he wondered now, what about those times when the exact moment of impact is sharply felt, yet seems to have absolutely no meaning?

What about when the clues leading up to it lack all sense, and amount to something inconceivable?

Samuel’s hands trembled on the steering wheel; beside him Maud coughed weakly. In the back seat the twins sat dry-eyed, clutching hands. Gulls flew overhead, their dark shadows darting across the hood.