Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

"People with diseases like mine."

"Yeah? How's that work?"

"It's supposed to make you feel less alone or something."

"I'm just trying to picture you sitting here talking into that thing, counting up how many beers you had last night and the crap you took this morning and how many hairs you puled out of the drain after your shower."

"It's not like that."

"No? What's it like?"

"I'm not keeping a diary of the present, but the past."

This loosens the teasing grin from Randy's face, so that he appears vaguely pained, as though waiting for a stomach cramp to release its hold.

"The past," he says finaly. "How far back you going?"

"Guess."

"The winter when we were sixteen."

"That's not a bad title for it."

Randy sits on the end of the bed. Rests his hands on his knees in the way of a man who thinks his body might be about to betray him in some unpredictable way.

"You think that's a good idea?" he says.

"In what sense?"

"In the sense of anyone reading or listening to this diary of yours?"

"Nobody's ever going to read it."

"Because we promised. You too. You promised never to tel."

"I'm not teling. It's just for me."

"To be forgiven."

"That's asking too much."

"So what's it about?"

"I just need to hear myself say what I've never let myself say."

"Because we never talked about it even then, did we?" Randy lowers his head to be held in his cupped hands. "We never said a goddamn thing to each other."

"We were trying to pretend it wasn't real."

"But it was," Randy says, his freckled face the same self- doubting oval that looked out from his grade ten yearbook photo. "It was. Wasn't it?"

I step out of the taxi in front of the McAuliffe place, pay the driver through the window and make my herky-jerky way up the steps to the front door, al without looking at the Thurman house across the street. Not as easy as it sounds. I can feel it wanting me to turn my eyes its way, to take it in now in the ful noontime light. To deny it is as difficult as not surveying the damage of a car accident as you rol past, the survivors huddled in blankets, the dead being puled from the wreck.

And this is how the house wins. Mrs. McAuliffe takes a few seconds too long to come to the door after I ring the bel, so that, even as I see her shadow approaching through the door's curtained glass and hear the frail crackle of her "Coming! Coming!" I steal a glance. At the same instant, the sun pokes out from a hole in the clouds. Sends dark winks back at me from the second-floor windows, a dazzle of false welcome.

"Trevor," Mrs. McAuliffe says, and though I can't see her at first when I turn back to the door, my vision burned with the yelow outline of the Thurman house, I can feel the old woman's arms stretched open for a hug, and my own arms reaching out and puling her close.

"I'm so sorry about Ben, Mrs. A.," I whisper into her moth-baled cardigan.

"I'm not a Mrs. anything anymore to you. I'm just Betty."

"Not sure I'l ever get used to that."

"That's what you learn when you get old," she says, pushing me back to hold my jaw in the bone-nests of her hands. "There's so much you never get used to."

The house looks more or less as I remember it. The dark wood paneling in the living room, the lace-covered dining table, the brooding landscapes of the Scottish Highlands too smal for the plaster wals they hang on. Even the smel of the place is familiar. Apparently Ben and his mother carried on with their deep-fried diets wel into his adulthood, judging from the diner-like aroma of hot oil and toast.

"You look wel," Betty McAuliffe tels me as I shakily replace a Royal Doulton figurine of a Pekingese to the side table where I stupidly picked it up.

"I do?"

"Tired, maybe," she says, ignoring my struggles. "But handsome as always."

"It's just a little dark in here, that's al. Pul back the curtains and you'l see the wrinkles and bloodshot eyes."

"Don't I know! It's why I keep them closed."

In the kitchen, Mrs. McAuliffe shows me the neat piles of papers that are Ben's wil, some of his receipts, bank statements. His death certificate.

"It's not much, is it?" she asks. "A whole life and you could fold it into a single envelope and mail it to . . . wel, where would you mail it?"

"To me."

"Of course. Mail it to you. Though there'd be no point in that because you're here now, which I'm glad of. Very glad of indeed."

I turn back to find the old woman standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking to the fridge, the sink, her shoes, me, then starting over again. Her hair white and loose as dandelion fluff.

"Mrs. McAuliffe. Betty. Are you—?"

"Would you like a cup of tea?" she asks, and I can see that making a pot for a guest might just be enough to save her life.

"That would be great. And a biscuit, if you have one."

She busies herself with these tasks, and I do my best to busy myself with mine. But aside from confirming the filing of Ben's past few tax returns (he'd earned next to no income), there seems little for me to do. Then I discover the package on the chair next to mine. A brown bubble-wrapped envelope with my name on the front.

"What's this?" I ask Mrs. McAuliffe as she places an empty mug and plate of butter cookies in front of me.

"Ben didn't leave a note. Nothing aside from a white rose he left on my bedside table. And that."

"You haven't opened it?"

"Ben was sick," she starts. "But he had . . . interests. And I respected that. So no, I haven't opened it. Because whatever is in it, he felt you would understand and I would not."

There is an edge to these last words, a buried grievance or accusation.

She fils my mug to the brim. Stands over me, the teapot wavering in her hand, as though uncertain whether to carry it to the sink or let it drop to the floor.

"Where are you staying?" she asks.

"The Queen's."

"Horrible place."

"In the dark, it looks like any other room."

"Perhaps you'd like to stay here?"

It takes me a second to interpret what she's just said. Stay here? The idea causes a shudder that has nothing to do with Parkinson's.

"Just for a night or two," she goes on. "Until you're finished looking through Ben's things."

"It's very kind of you. But I wouldn't—"

"Be no trouble."

"You must be very—"

"I'd like you to stay."

Mrs. McAuliffe puts the teapot down on the table. Uses her now free hand to wipe the sleeve of her sweater under her chin.

"Of course," I say. "Thanks. I'l bring my things over this evening."

"Good. Good." She breathes, a clear in and out. "You can have Ben's room."

That, Betty, is never going to happen .

This is my first thought as I push open the door to Ben's attic room and look up at the splintery beam from which he'd tied the noose.

I am never going to spend the night here .

At the same time, even as I enter with the sound of my shoes sticking to the recently waxed floorboards (was this done after Ben died? Perhaps to clean away the blood? if there was blood?), I can already feel myself sliding between the sheets of the freshly made bed against the wal and turning out the light. A moment at once unthinkable and unstoppable.

The room is clean, but preserved. Even if I didn't know of Ben and the wasted years he'd spent up here, I could discern the not-rightness of its former inhabitant through the teenage boy things that hadn't been replaced or stored away. So there was stil the Specials poster over the dresser. Stil the Batman stickers on the mirror, the neat stacks of comics and Louis L'Amour novels against the wal. Stil the Ken Dryden lamp on the bedside table.