Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“I’m sorry you drove all this way for nothing,” Maggie tells her.

The woman looks about to make some comment, then bites her lip. “I’ve gone about this poorly. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset. It’s just that I’ve lost my dad. You shouldn’t take it personally if I don’t feel like talking.”

“Don’t worry about me,” says the woman. “I knew how things stood when I came up here. I just liked the sound of a girl on a commune.” Maggie can’t tell whether she knows everyone is gone. “Hey, do you mind if I look around before I leave? No camera, just me.”

It would be easy enough to say yes, but Maggie doesn’t want the woman taking in the place with those big dark eyes. She doesn’t want her seeing the graffiti beneath its coat of paint.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Okay.” Still the woman waits, as if hoping Maggie will relent. “Listen, will you do me a favour? Will you watch the segment on TV? It airs the first of the month. At the very least, you’ll see what the mission looked like.” She names the time and channel, and Maggie nods noncommittally. Then, as the woman is about to get back into her car, she turns. “Is it true your father didn’t really serve in World War II?”

It’s the last question Maggie expected. “Of course he did.” Why would anyone ask something like that? “He was wounded in the neck. Talk to people in Syracuse, they’ll tell you.”

The woman looks at Maggie with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Yes. Thank you, yes, I will.”

She’s behind the wheel again when Maggie calls for her to wait.

“Your father,” says Maggie. “You said he symbolized the life you didn’t want. What did he do for a living?”

The woman smiles, turns the key in the ignition, and pulls closed the door. Maggie assumes that’s the end of things, and it seems fair enough. A second later, though, the woman looks at her through the driver’s window, one eye closed tight, and with a hand she mimes shooting Maggie with a silent camera. Then she grins, waves, and steers the car up the drive.

That afternoon, Brid enters a bad place. She writhes on the bedroom floor and pounds the walls. She left her daughter, she says. She hates herself. When finally she agrees to come down for a meal, she hardly eats a thing. Attempting to distract her, Maggie suggests they try building a chicken coop together, but Brid’s eyes are dark hollows slick with tears and she doesn’t respond. In the morning Maggie can’t find her until she steps out from the mudroom and discovers her standing in her nightie just beyond the door, shivering in the chilly late November air, skin pale as porcelain, lips chapped and bloodless. No longer does Brid make any pretence of being here for Maggie. She scorns all reassurance, rejects Maggie’s suggestions that they go for a drive. By the end of the day, Maggie’s exhausted. Only after saying good night to Brid does she realize she has gone more than twenty-four hours without reflecting on her father’s death. It feels like a betrayal needing atonement. She imagines phoning the documentarian and agreeing to meet, then sitting in front of the woman’s camera and telling her about the good memories, the ones from childhood. But when she tries to retrieve the business card, she discovers it has gone through the wash with her jeans and turned to illegible pulp.

She brings Brid breakfast in bed, watches it go uneaten. She doesn’t know what else to do except stay close by. They play blackjack. They play Scrabble. In desperation, Maggie suggests that Brid call Pauline. It’s a mistake. Brid rends her nightgown and howls, runs to the bathroom and locks herself inside. Maggie pleads for an hour before Brid comes out. Then Brid apologizes and says they should have her committed. Maggie says they’ll do nothing of the sort, but later she asks George Ray to remove the lock.

They spend two more days in the same fashion. On the second, George Ray comes in for lunch with trouble on his face. More graffiti, he announces, but he won’t tell them what it says, and Maggie feels a deepening dread. As she and Brid cross the property to see it, Brid seems strangely energized, almost cheerful. She asks when they had problems with graffiti before. Maggie says it was a while ago and claims not to remember what was written.

When they draw close to the wrecking yard wall, through the trees she makes out the presence of two newly written words. The trees reveal the second word before the first.

LOVER .

Maggie can guess the first word without seeing it, but still it’s a shock when it comes into view.

“Christ,” breathes Brid. “You think they have the Klan up here?”

“It’s not the Klan,” says Maggie. Her thoughts of the girl are nearly homicidal.

In the kitchen, with Brid and George Ray looking on from the table, Maggie pulls out the phone book and calls Frank Dodd’s house. Even before the man picks up, she’s shaking with anger.

“It’s Maggie Dunne from next door,” she tells him. “Someone’s been writing graffiti on our side of the wall we share with you. We’re pretty sure it’s your daughter.”

There’s a long silence. She starts to think he’s hung up.

“Couldn’t have been Lydia,” he says. “She lives in Toronto with her mother now.”

“Oh,” says Maggie.

“I sent her there in September. Didn’t want her growing up beside a bunch of porno makers.” The spite in his voice tempts her to tell him a few things about his daughter, but already her thoughts are racing back to the graffiti. If it wasn’t Lydia, then who? Nobody she wishes to imagine.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I didn’t realize.” She says goodbye and puts down the phone, turns to George Ray and Brid. “I was wrong. The girl moved away.”

“So what now?” says Brid.

Maggie reopens the phone book, looks up the police, and dials the number.

The officer who turns up is skinny and freckled, with a dopey, self-satisfied expression. Maggie explains to him about the graffiti but finds herself unwilling to repeat the words, fearing he’ll ask her to speculate about what motivated them. When finally she speaks them aloud, the man seems unsurprised. Maybe everyone in Virgil has been talking about Maggie and George Ray and where they get the money for the farm.

The policeman’s interest in the case doesn’t pick up until Brid comes down in her nightie. Upon seeing him, she promptly heads back upstairs. Then, in the kitchen, as Maggie introduces him to George Ray, a crinkle of suspicion splits the man’s forehead. He asks if George Ray has a visa.

“George Ray has worked in this area for seven years,” Maggie protests.

“Never seen him, is all,” replies the officer. He has a nasally, hollow voice. Looking George Ray up and down, he says, “Kind of late in the fall still to be here.” George Ray stares back wearily and makes no comment.

By the wrecking yard wall, the policeman spends a long time frowning at his notepad.

“You could put in floodlights if you wanted,” he says, tugging at the skin on his neck. “That might scare them off.” After jotting a few words, he flips the notepad shut and starts back toward the house.

“That’s it?” she says. “Shouldn’t you dust for prints or something?”

He makes a face to show how naive she’s being.

“It could be the Klan,” she exclaims.

The policeman shakes his head. “This isn’t the States. Probably it’s just teenagers being stupid. In town we get this sort of thing all the time. But if it happens again, let us know.”

Over lunch, when she recounts this story, George Ray stays silent. Brid is livid. She wants the cop reported. She wants the story in the papers and on TV. She says they should blanket Virgil with pamphlets. All the anger that until now she’s inflicted on herself has a new target, and there’s a glimpse of the agitator she used to be.