Days by moonlight Read online

  me what had happened to the family. Brigid Flynn had been a

  respected novelist – more literary prizes than you could shake a

  stick at, said the professor – when her agent advised her to write

  about the abuse she’d suffered as a child.

  Ms. Flynn was destitute despite her literary renown. She was

  on the verge of abandoning writing. She was desperate. The prob-

  lem was, she’d had a wonderful childhood and adored her parents,

  a situation that put her at a disadvantage where childhood abuse

  was concerned.

  I thought the agent’s suggestion was unscrupulous. But Profes-

  sor Bruno wasn’t so sure. He understood the agent’s position.

  44

  – Look, Alfie, he said, it’s what people wanted to read. In the

  early 2000s, the public was obsessed with all sorts of abuse. The

  worse the better. And they insisted it be real, too. Worse, they

  were hurt when it wasn’t. Once Brigid agreed to write about the

  abuse she’d suffered, she had to pretend it was true. I admit the

  situation wasn’t ideal, but when life refuses to hand you lemons,

  it’s hard to make lemonade, you know.

  Rather than abandon her profession, Ms. Flynn wrote a

  ‘memoir’ called Take Me to the Water that depicted the author’s

  brutal childhood, a childhood during which the author was –

  beginning at age nine – physically and sexually abused by her

  “dark-haired” and “endlessly grimacing” father, abetted by a drunk

  and careless mother. It also depicted the author’s recovery from

  her childhood. And it ended on a note of forgiveness and recon-

  ciliation at the deathbed of the now toothless dad.

  Ms. Flynn published the book anonymously, but it was such

  a success that its fans obsessively sought the book’s real author.

  And when they discovered that Brigid Flynn was the writer, many

  of them were unpleasantly surprised to find that her father –

  whose depravity had been so vividly described – was still alive,

  still able to hurt his daughter.

  After that, it was Mr. Flynn who was surprised. He hadn’t

  read Take Me to the Water. His daughter hadn’t told him anything

  about it. She’d assumed her anonymity would protect them both.

  To make matters worse, Mr. Flynn’s life grew slowly unpleasant,

  so that, after a while, he was sure he’d done something wrong

  but he couldn’t decide when he’d done it, as when you pull a

  muscle that, days later, begins to hurt and hurt until the pain

  becomes difficult to bear. It seemed as if, without warning, people

  he knew well – had known for decades – greeted him coldly.

  Then churchgoers avoided him after mass. And the priest –

  Father Alanko – persisted in asking him if there were “sins” he

  wanted to confess. By the time a neighbour knocked him down

  on Main Street, Mr. Flynn (now completely bewildered) was

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  convinced he deserved punishment, though he’d have liked to

  know what it was for.

  Mr. Flynn was such a loving father that, when he learned

  what his daughter had done, he blamed himself for taking the

  attacks on him too seriously. Above all, he was proud of Brigid,

  proud of her talent as a writer, a talent made obvious by the

  hatred some of his neighbours now felt for him. He would not

  let her confess publicly to what she’d done. He would not have

  his daughter face the humiliation.

  Her father’s love for her did nothing to ease Brigid’s feelings

  of guilt. If anything, it made them worse. But his love and admi-

  ration did, at least, help Mr. Flynn deal with Nobleton. When

  strangers were aggressive with him, he felt as much pride as if

  he’d been the author of Take Me to the Water himself.

  – Just think, he’d say, my daughter turned people against me

  who’ve known me for years!

  The most striking thing about Mr. Flynn – aside from the

  fact that he himself told us his story with good humour – was

  the affection he showed us on first meeting. He was a slightly

  oversized man with bright red hair, though he was in his eighties,

  and green eyes. One of his eyes looked as though it had been

  recently punched, the area around it puffy and bruised. When

  we met him, he was wearing a black kimono on which bright red

  birds were sewn: a gift from his daughter, who’d recently returned

  from Japan. The kimono was too big but it suited him.

  The Flynns’ home had shag carpeting everywhere, bronze-

  coloured and thick. On the walls were framed paintings and

  sketches inspired by Irish legends. There were portraits of a

  pooka in ruffs, a banshee in a hooded cape, and a dullahan in a

  black tuxedo, his head held before him like a small wheel of

  cheese on which a mouth had been drawn in lipstick. There were

  also portraits of young red-haired women. In one, the young

  woman stood at the edge of a cliff and looked down on a moonlit

  valley of lakes, fields, and farmhouses. I assumed the painting

  46

  was set in Ireland, but it was a faithful depiction of the Niagara

  Escarpment near Beamsville.

  – People always forget how beautiful the land is, Ms. Flynn said.

  – How beautiful and strange! said Professor Bruno.

  Knowing what the Flynns had gone through with Take Me to

  the Water, I thought they’d be wary of others. But they were both

  lively and good-humoured to the point of being mysterious, the

  way people are when they’ve shared a joke they won’t share with

  you. Ms. Flynn was like a younger, female version of her father.

  But she was more coarse than he was. When she greeted Professor

  Bruno, she said

  – How you doing, Doc?

  And she referred to her neighbour as “the cunt from Belleville.”

  As in

  – I see the cunt from Belleville is finally mowing his lawn!

  Which is what she said after greeting us, pointing to a meek-

  seeming man in a checked shirt who was cutting the grass of the

  property beside the Flynns.

  Professor Bruno seemed not to notice Ms. Flynn’s language.

  I assumed this was because he knew her. But I was taken aback.

  I’d never heard a woman use the c-word so casually. And I found

  it surreal to be greeted that way. Then, too, I’d always been taught

  that it’s the inarticulate who resort to bad language. That was my

  father’s view. He felt a kind of pity for those who swore. But it

  would have been strange to call Ms. Flynn inarticulate. She was

  esteemed for her use of language. So, Ms. Flynn was a living

  contradiction to me. When I later mentioned my feelings to the

  professor, he was amused.

  – She’s been that way since she was eighteen, he said. I used

  to think she had Tourette’s. But she doesn’t always use profanity,

  you know. She just likes to shock people and this is the easiest

  way. But you have to remember, Alfie, that writers are obsessed

  with words, and there are some words whose roots bring earth

  up from the ground with them. Like pulling weeds from a garden.

  47

  That’s someth
ing an American poet used to say about profanity.

  And I suppose he’s right. Some words are satisfying to pull up.

  This was an interesting explanation – maybe even true. Of

  course, I’d never really thought about words. If I’d had to compare

  them to anything, I suppose it would have been to cards played in

  a game I don’t always understand. I prefer pictures and drawings

  to words. Whenever Ms. Flynn swore, I was startled despite

  myself, a reaction she seemed to find amusing. I’m sure she thought

  I was a hopeless prude but, despite that, she was kind to me. She

  was kind to both of us, generous with her time and considerate.

  When Ms. Flynn and the professor had finished talking about

  people they knew and recent scandals troubling the literary

  community, they got on the subject of John Skennen. She hadn’t

  known him well. They’d met at a Writers’ Union general meeting

  – in Thunder Bay, was it? – both of them young. Well, John

  could only have been young, she said, since, as far as she knew,

  he never attended another agM. He’d been nice to her and he’d

  been handsome. She hadn’t slept with him, though.

  – In my experience, she said, the most attractive men are always

  screwed up. Egos like ocean liners. And rampant Oedipal complexes.

  Tongue in cheek, her father said

  – That sounds like the last fellow you went out with.

  – You mean the cunt from Belleville? she asked.

  – I wish you wouldn’t call him that, Brigid. It’s vulgar.

  – But, Daddy, that’s what he calls himself!

  Mr. Flynn changed the subject.

  – I’ll tell you one thing about John Skennen, he said. Every-

  body and his dog has a story about him. I can’t count the number

  of times someone’s told me they saw his ghost just after he died.

  And they all tell you the exact time he died, too. One woman –

  you remember Mrs. Lennon, Bridge – swore he died at seven-

  forty in the morning and she knew that for sure because he came

  to her while she was making sandwiches for her kids one Monday.

  She says he pointed to a clock and she couldn’t tell if he was

  48

  telling her about the kids needing to catch the bus or what. Then

  he started swinging around the kitchen like he was hanged, his

  feet off the floor and all, and she got the message.

  – I’ve heard that story, too, said Ms. Flynn. I’ve heard it a

  hundred times from a hundred people, and it’s never the same

  time of day when he shows up. Everyone who tells you about it

  believes it, too.

  – Oh, said Mr. Flynn, I’ve only ever heard one Skennen story

  I believe. And I believe it because it happened to June and Jenny

  Wilson. You couldn’t find two girls with their heads on straighter.

  Neither of them talks much. And when they told me what

  happened, it wasn’t like they were trying to be interesting. We

  were talking about John Skennen and I asked if they’d heard any

  stories. June said, no, they hadn’t heard anything. But they’d seen

  something. It was when they’d just got married, both of them,

  and they’d taken their honeymoon together in Sarnia, because

  they got a good deal on the hotel and they could all go out to

  some fancy restaurant across the river. So, the second afternoon

  they were there, the husbands went to Port Huron to do some

  gambling and the girls were taking an afternoon rest. June gets

  up before Jen and goes into her sister’s room and what does she

  see? Well, sir, John Skennen is on top of her sister and they’re

  doing what married women are meant to do with their husbands.

  And from the look of things, the two were awfully passionate.

  Skennen hadn’t even had time to unbelt his pants. So, of course,

  June screams. And when she does, Skennen disappears and Jen

  wakes up. And that was that. For years, June thought she’d been

  seeing things because that’s what Jen told her. But it’s years later

  and Jen finally admits she’d been having a dream when June inter-

  rupted her. And in the dream, she was having sex with John

  Skennen. That’s not the kind of thing you’re going to tell anyone,

  even your sister, even if it was the most vivid dream you’d ever

  had. And the dream was so vivid she was sure she’d passed it on

  to her sister somehow. Maybe telecommunication.

  49

  – Telecommunication? said Ms. Flynn. You mean telepathy?

  – Yes. But the reason Jen told her sister about it was that,

  after the things she’d experienced in her dream, she wasn’t satis-

  fied with her husband. She loved him, sure, but she felt she’d

  betrayed him. At the same time, she felt she was betraying herself

  by staying with him. She told June all this, so her sister could

  help her decide whether to stay with her husband or leave him

  for someone who could get her to feel what she’d felt with her

  dream version of John Skennen.

  – That’s an interesting story, said Ms. Flynn.

  – Isn’t it? her father answered. And Jen Wilson’s the most

  no-nonsense woman you can imagine. Not the kind to leave her

  husband for something in a dream, you’d have said.

  – Oh, Dad, said Ms. Flynn. No one knows anything about

  anyone else.

  – So true, Professor Bruno said. But what did the woman

  decide to do?

  – Who? asked Mr. Flynn. Jen Wilson? She stayed with her

  husband. She’s still with him.

  – Even if he is one of the most disgusting fornicators around,

  said Ms. Flynn. He’d cheat on her with a stoat, if you drugged it

  for him.

  – Your bitterness is showing, said her father.

  – Anyway, said Ms. Flynn, I never heard that story before,

  but it makes sense. No, not sense exactly. But I’ll bet the hotel

  they stayed in was the old Venus Fly Trap on Christina.

  – No, no, Mr. Flynn said. It was at Aphrodite’s Arms.

  – Oh, Dad, no one ever called it that. It was the kind of place

  you could rent a room for an hour, if you knew who to ask. It was

  a place to trap meat. Get it? Besides that, it had a reputation I’ve

  always wondered about. People used to say that if you rented a

  certain room on the second floor, sexual things would happen,

  whether you wanted them to or not. The hotel stopped renting

  the room to families or people who didn’t know its reputation.

  50

  That only made the place more popular. I knew someone who

  rented the room every weekend for years, so she could feel pleas-

  ure. That’s why it was burned down. I don’t mean because of the

  person I mentioned. I mean because of its reputation, the Society

  for a Better Sarnia encouraged people to burn it down, for years,

  until some yahoos finally did. But the point I wanted to make

  was that the room on the second floor was supposed to be where

  John lost his virginity. So, if you stayed in the room, you felt the

  pleasure he felt, whoever you were. That’s why Jen’s story makes

  sense to me. You see what I mean?

  Professor Bruno and the Flynns stopped talking for a moment.

 
; Their silence was the kind that follows an understanding or an

  appreciation of something complex. But I hadn’t understood a

  number of things. I was baffled by the way we’d gone from talking

  about Mr. Skennen’s biography to talking about places that were

  haunted by his pleasures. Part of what baffled me was the fact

  that I’d known so little about a man who seemed to have influ-

  enced all of Southern Ontario. How had I missed him? John

  Skennen was like an undertow that hadn’t caught me until this

  trip with Professor Bruno.

  Then again, I don’t suppose any place reveals itself to you all

  at once. It comes at you in waves of associative detail. For instance,

  as I listened to Mr. Flynn’s story, I happened to look out at the

  “dog-strangling vine” – Cynanchum rossicum – at the edge of the

  Flynns’ property, bordering the lawn of the man from Belleville.

  “Dog strangling”: such a vicious name for a weed that’s made

  lovely when its tiny crimson flowers open. And yet, the name is

  right. Cynanchum rossicum is so invasive that, at its worst, it’s easy

  to imagine its strands have a mind of their own, pulling dogs or

  cats into some lightless interior. At any rate, it made its way into

  my consciousness, so that it’s bound with the Flynns, with

  Aphrodite’s Arms, with the longing for one who is not there.

  Out of curiosity – and respect for the wisdom of my compan-

  ions – I asked why there should be such a fascination with John

  51

  Skennen, a poet, not an actor or pop musician or billionaire.

  And mentioned my surprise that the man’s sexual doings should

  be commemorated.

  – That’s a good question, Ms. Flynn said. I’ve wondered about

  it myself.

  – Well, said Professor Bruno, John was a fascinating man, by

  all accounts. He was what you’d call a “local hero,” wasn’t he?

  – Oh, I don’t think it’s that, Ms. Flynn answered. I know any

  number of men and women who are just as fascinating as he was.

  I think it’s more to do with poetry. We all know there’s a connec-

  tion between words and death. And there’s a connection between

  death and sex. So, there you go.

  Mr. Flynn said

  – I’d have had a drink if I’d known this is the conversation

  we’re going to have.

  – I’m not saying poets are good in bed, Dad! I can’t count the