Bishop's Man by Linden Macintyre Read Free Book Online

My secret garden, the place where understanding blooms.

{3}

    E arly in July, Effie called to say that she’d be coming home for a visit. I was briefly tempted to comment on this odd coincidence, she and Sextus, after such long absences, returning. She claimed the purpose of her mission was to celebrate my special birthday. My turning fifty.

    “This I’ve gotta see,” she said.

    I laughed and said that age is just a number, a convenience for administrators, bureaucrats and bookkeepers.

    “Then we’ll celebrate your health, wealth and common sense.”

    I offered her the bishop’s room, but she told me she’d be staying at the old place. Home. “If that’s okay.”

    “It isn’t really very comfortable,” I said. “Still pretty primitive.”

    “I plan to do something about that.”

    So I told her where the key was. Under a stone on the doorstep.

    “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

    “You haven’t even seen the place for years. I haven’t done much since.”

    She ignored me. “The place seemed solid then, no sign of damage. Nothing that a little TLC won’t fix.”

    “Go crazy,” I said.

    She’d been back once before that, briefly in 1987, her first repatriation since the cruel abandonment of John, the unseemly flight with Sextus after his father’s death seventeen years earlier. She didn’t explain her long absence or the unexpected end of it, just said she wanted to visit the old place on the Long Stretch. Our old home.

    “Do you really—”

    “Will you come with me?”

    It was the last thing I desired. “Of course,” I said.

    The tension grew as we neared the old place that time in 1987. She sat silent, arms crossed. I stole glances at her face, but it was closed. And then we were there, stopped on the roadside, studying the low-slung structure that had once been our home.

    “It looks good,” she said. “The vinyl siding makes it almost new. When did you do that?”

    “A few years back. Just after Honduras. I considered shingles, but—”

    “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said. “I like the siding … It makes it … I don’t know.”

    “Like plastic?”

    She shrugged and frowned.

    Outside the car, she hesitated. “Home. This was home.” She sighed deeply.

    She stood back as I unlocked the door. She was chewing on her lower lip, arms still folded.

    “Maybe it’s too much to absorb all at once. Why don’t we wait?” I said.

    She shook her head. “This just feels really weird.”

    She remained standing there beside the car for a paralyzing minute longer. Then she started walking, slowly, thoughtfully.

    Immediately inside the door, she drifted away from me, face drawn. I let her go, imagining her thoughts. Then I could hear her careful footsteps and knew she was wandering in the direction of her childhood bedroom, high, hard heels rapping slowly across the bare floorboards. Then there was silence. I sat at our old kitchen table, watching.

    “It’s a strange thing,” she said, “to not remember a mother. It’s like a big hole in your life.”

    “Maybe it’s just as well,” I said. “You’d mostly remember sickness and sorrow.”

    “Maybe. But I think it’s always best to have a memory … of something. Good or bad.”

    “Perhaps.”

    She was standing in the doorway to the tiny bedroom. “I remember it being bigger,” she said, walking into the empty space. She stopped and turned. “You got rid of my bed.”

    “The mattress springs were rusted out. And it was an odd size. You couldn’t replace the old mattress. So I sent it to the dump.”

    She was smiling at me. “You don’t have to explain.”

    “I thought maybe …”

    “No.” She paused by the window for a moment, then stood in the corner farthest from where her bed used to be. “He’d be here. I can still see the cigarette glowing.”

    “Let’s go.”

    “It’s okay. It’s years since I even thought of it.”

    I studied her closely. My sister. So