Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

The house is immaculate. The baseboards have been dusted and the magazines gathered into tidy stacks, while the refrigerator is barren of lists and magnets. Out in the orchard, Maggie puts away a wheelbarrow and picks litter from the creek bed, then returns to the house and sweeps the hall until Brid comes downstairs with her purse and says she’s ready to go. After a few minutes, the real estate agent arrives. Brid sits on the bottom stair morosely as Maggie shows the woman around the rooms. The agent voices her appreciation, saying she could tell stories about how some tenants leave things, but Maggie offers her no encouragement. She only puts on her shoes and wishes the woman luck with the open house.

At the diner in Virgil, Brid and Maggie occupy a booth facing one another, each with a book in hand, neither of them turning pages very often.

“You understand it’s because I’m out of money, right?” Maggie says after a time.

“Yeah.”

“When we’re both in Boston again, we’ll find a place together.”

“Maggie, you already told me this.”

“I can drive you there—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

Maggie frowns into her book and doesn’t say anything more.

A few vehicles are still parked in the drive when Maggie and Brid return to the farmhouse, so they wait in the camper until only the real estate agent’s car is left. At last they go inside, Brid heading upstairs while Maggie meanders around the ground floor. The lights in all the rooms are on, and there’s music from the record player. She finds the agent in the mud room, mopping up footprints from a prospective buyer who ventured into the backyard. The agent says it was a promising afternoon.

On either side of the rectory’s front door are potted conifers strung with coloured bulbs. As Maggie makes her way toward them from the camper van, she counts the days until Christmas. Fifteen to go. This time last year she was trying to choose a gift for her father. She settled on a pair of woollen gloves. If she had known it was her last present to him, she would have bought him something better.

From within the house comes Lenka’s voice yelling in Czech. Maggie hesitates prior to knocking. There are more shouts, followed by footsteps, before the door is flung open to reveal Lenka with cheeks left glossy by tears.

“I’ll come back,” says Maggie.

“No, please, is excellent time. Come, help me murder him.”

Josef sits at the dining table pressing at his shirt with a napkin, the wineglass beside him upended, another napkin stained red and lying across the table. When Maggie enters, he hurries to rise, then manages an apology before retreating from the room.

“Do not run from guest, Josef!” cries Lenka. To Maggie she says, “He does not let me go to New York for visit. Is expensive in city, he says. Really he is afraid I will not make return. He prefers me to cook the dinners for him. To him I am not sister, I am servant.” Calling after him, she shouts, “Father, you can go to hell!”

“I’ll come back later,” says Maggie.

“No, stay. I am tired of being alone with him.” Roughly she grabs Maggie’s hand and draws her toward the sitting room, where Maggie claims the rocking chair and Lenka throws herself on the loveseat. “So, why do you come?”

“To tell you I’m going to Laos.”

Lenka’s jaw drops. “Josef!” she calls. “You must hear this!”

It takes him a minute to enter, looking skeptical and wearing a new shirt that hasn’t been tucked in. Lenka repeats what Maggie has said.

“Ah!” He looks puzzled as he joins his sister on the loveseat. “This is fascinating news. Please, tell us more.”

Maggie considers how to begin. “You remember Wale? The guy at the grocery store in September?” The priest nods. “He’s in Laos now. He’s found Yia Pao, the man who was kidnapped with my father. He’s found Yia Pao’s son too.”

“Maggie, this is wonderful!” says Lenka. Josef still looks perplexed; perhaps he’s wondering how Wale ended up in Laos.

“I’ve spoken with the mission office over there,” Maggie continues. “They say that if Wale can get Yia Pao and the baby to them, they’ll see about flying them to America.”

“So why must you go to Laos?” asks the priest.

“Because I haven’t heard from Wale since he called last week, and nobody in Vientiane seems to care where he’s gone. The State Department isn’t interested, and the mission office doesn’t have anyone who’ll investigate. So I’m flying over on Friday.”

“So soon!” says Lenka. “Is safe?”

“There isn’t any fighting in the city,” Maggie replies. It’s a half answer, but it’s what she has been telling herself.

“What will happen to man and his son once they are here?” asks Lenka.

Maggie hesitates. “I’m not bringing them here. I’ve told Fletcher I’m leaving the farm. The place is up for sale.”

Lenka gasps, and the priest leans forward. Maggie explains that she has decided to try teaching in Boston again, that she’ll handle it better this time. As she speaks the words, she almost believes them.

“What of plans for orchard?” asks Lenka. “What of George Ray in the spring?”

The mention of George Ray brings Maggie up short. “I haven’t told him yet,” she admits. “But I don’t have enough money to rehire him. I spent the rest of what I had on the ticket to Laos. You were right, I can’t afford the place, and Fletcher wasn’t going to let me stay there forever.”

“What of the ten thousand dollars?” says the priest.

“It’s going to the baby. If I can, I’ll set up a trust fund. I have to make sure I can do it without the money getting confiscated.”

The priest looks disapproving. “So much money for one child.”

“It’s not just a child,” says Maggie. “It’s the one whose life my father saved.”

The priest clasps his hands in front of him and kneads one with the other, while Lenka peers at her as if mystified.

“What does your grandmother think of your plans?” asks the priest.

Maggie frowns. “Gran has nothing to do with it.”

She isn’t quite telling the truth, though, because yesterday she called Gran to inform her of the coming trip.

“Actually, I found out something from her yesterday,” Maggie says, remembering. “Did you notice how, in the TV programme about my father, he had a scar on his neck?” The priest nods. “I always thought he got it fighting in Normandy. But the documentary showed a photo of him after the war, and the scar wasn’t there yet. I asked Gran, and it turns out he never went overseas. The war ended just after he enlisted. She says he spent a couple of years in college after that, dropped out, then met my mother and got her pregnant inside a month. Gran claims she still doesn’t understand it, but the whole thing’s pretty obvious, right? He was trying to get away from her. War, college, a wedding—whatever it took. Then my mother died giving birth to me.”

“You never tell me this,” says Lenka.

Maggie lifts a hand to signal that it’s all in the past and doesn’t matter now. But then why is she telling it?

“Gran said he hated me, those first years. She thinks I reminded him of my mother. More likely he figured I was going to keep him living next to Gran. Anyhow, he had a nervous breakdown. Tried to kill himself. She was looking after me next door when it happened. I don’t remember any of it.”

“Maggie, it is horrible,” says Lenka.

“She’s the one who found him. The way she described things—it must have been awful.” Gran had tripped over her words, leaving long pauses, not finishing her sentences. Gran, whose descriptions of the world were usually so pat and neatly put together. “After that, she never set foot in his house again. I always thought it was because he didn’t want her there, but she says it was her decision.” Maggie squints up at the ceiling lamp. “It’s funny—I used to think I could remember the day of my birth. I remembered what it felt like being held in my mother’s arms. This week on the phone, though, when Gran described taking me to visit him in the hospital, I realized that’s what I’ve been remembering all this time. It wasn’t my mother, it was Dad.”