“Our child will be beautiful… Love, Buddy.”
It had taken some time for him to actually compose his fond farewell, driving west from Duncan along Highway 18. But now that he’d tapped it in, he hesitated sending. First, he had to be sure. That would take some emotional doing. Not the ‘beautiful child’ part. Herim would be beautiful… if she actually existed. Of that, he had to be certain.
“Beautiful in every sense of the word!”
Even if they’d only conceived her in their imaginations. She’s still beautiful, he affirmed.
But could she ever be ‘our child’? Real or imagined? That didn’t make sense.
“My daughter.” He tested the declaration out loud. True, he judged. But meaningless.
“She’ll never know me.” Will Andrea even reveal my identity? “She won’t be ‘mine’ at all,” if you figured things that way.
He’d stopped to thumb in the message and think things through at a little cafe in Lake Cowichan. One last latte, he allowed himself, taking in the scene, a sloping riverside park. One last text. A few more kilometres, and he’d be out of cell range.
He resisted, but couldn’t help imagining Andrea as a baby—not in a conjured, sentimental photograph or video, but as pure, unadulterated spirit. What would she have been like? He found himself smiling. Prone to tantrums, he guessed. Probably gazed at her mom—and dad?—for long, excruciatingly loving moments. He couldn’t see her any other way. Wriggly, a huge hugger, curious, demanding…
Will Herim be like that?
“That’s not the point,is it?” he muttered, sadly. “She’ll be beautiful in her own ways, and Andrea will make her even more so.” The determined, almost fierce aspect of Andrea’s love blossomed inside him, as if one of those instant-heat gel packs had been triggered in his chest. The power of it took his breath away.
You could have saved me if I’d only let you, he lamented.
But it was too late for that.
Not too late! Hong Hing protested. You not only old guy have kid with young lady. You be proud!
Buddy smiled, remembering the legend of Hong Hing’s return to China to marry ‘a woman 40 years his junior, who eventually presented him with an heir.’
“Did you love her?”
She had baby. Inherited my money… Of course I love. Hong parried, offended.
“That’s not what I’m asking. Did you love her?”
Hong Hing faded, his spirit dissipating like mist but still hovering in Buddy’s background.
Who are we to judge? Barnstrum chimed in. And what is ‘love’, anyway? It’s certainly not that romantic ideal spelled with a capital ‘L’, is it? The fantasy poets rhapsodize over…
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies… Pah! Lord Byron! he groused, cutting his recital short. What nonsense!
“Did you love Eleanor?” Buddy asked.
He sensed Barnstrum’s consternation and wondered if it had been a fair question.
In my own cowardly way, yes. Barnstrum concluded after a while. Unreservedly, if you can believe it.
Buddy waited.
Love isn’t only a matter of the heart, and it’s certainly not a purely logical or legal term. It’s a conflagration of unknowns in all sorts of differing mixtures, and there’s usually sinews of resentment, even anger, in the mix… at least for some of us. Because it constrains us, doesn’t it? Makes us do things we know we’ll regret in some way or another—things to be ashamed of. And turns us from other things we should be doing.
Buddy waited.
I loved my wife, Florence, too, Barnstrum filled in the silence, then paused thoughtfully. Perhaps I’m not being quite honest, sir. The truth is, I loved and honoured her… and admired her. But in the end, I had to make a choice. I hadn’t anticipated the almost instinctive love I would have for my daughter Catherine and the consuming love I would always have for Eleanor. I couldn’t not go and see them, at least once, to be sure they were well and safe and better off without me.
“Did you ever see them again?”
Barnstrum laughed ruefully. Eleanor and I came to an agreement, he said. Periodically, I would write and ask if I could visit Chemainus. She would reply, indicating she and our daughter would be walking through the town at a specific time of day so I could watch them pass. It was torture in a way, seeing the two of them walking by, holding hands or arm in arm, but I was a deeply grateful penitent.
“Do you think Franklin was aware of this arrangement?”
He must have been, I’m sure. A kinder, more decent man I have never met.
“And your wife?”
Silence! A pervasive, heavy silence submerged them, the air become almost liquid with the weight of Barnstrum’s remorse. She died, not long after Eleanor left, and our unborn child with her, he confessed at last. I never remarried. He wept, his mournful sobs absorbed in the echoless void.
It was then Buddy signed off with love and sent his message to Andrea. One, brief line. Anything more will implicate her, he thought once the message had flown from his out box. That he loved her and their child was all she needed to hear.
“It’s enough!” he said.
Then for Barnstrum, he recited…
What Sense Reveals For you I’d write a sonnet love… But alas, my heart’s not in it. My thoughts don’t soar to up above This here, this now’s my limit. Your feet leave tracks upon the strand, Your scent, it lingers in the air. Your words, my true heart understands… Beauty? I see you standing there. What eyes perceive, and fingers touch, That synthesis of smiles and sighs, Compose the you I love so much, A symphony immortalized. For you, I give up rapt ideals; Entranced by what true sense reveals.
Who wrote that? Barnstrum sniffed.
Buddy shrugged. “Some dead poet,” he said.
Next: Black Hole