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Authors: Camilla Gibb
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ghosts.
Seasons in Hell
Elaine had wanted to scream when Oliver left, one endless, bloodcurdling wail that would put every banshee in history to shame. Sheâd hoped for months, sheâd even prayed to a god she didnât believe in, that Oliver would emerge from the garage an even partially reformed man, one whoâd seen enough of a light to renounce the descent into madness in favour of a more reasonable existence.
She had wanted to scream, but instead, she did the middle-class thing sheâd inherited from her parents and swallowed it down with a litre of toxins, keeping it inside where it could fester and poison everyone around her in ways much more insidious and enduring than a single howl.
She wouldnât have had children if it werenât for himâshe shouldnât have had children period. She should have moved to France and become a poet with a pension and eaten baguettes for dinner and had a string of exotic lovers half her age. Instead, here she was in a lonely town full of strangers with a mortgage to manage single-handedly and two children too many. Emma and Blue were heading into the crushing horror of adolescence, she could see it all too plainlyâEmmawho would always struggle to find a place of acceptance, Llewellyn who didnât have the smarts to do well at school. She could see they both had their father in themâBlue more physically, Emma more emotionally. In neither case was the prognosis good.
But nor was hers at the moment. A few too many fantasies of driving the car over the Niagara Escarpment had forced her to seek out help. The doctor she saw was an octogenarian with a hearing problem who had handed her a prescription for Valium like she was a 1950s housewife. The drinking made her drunk, but the Valium made her stop caring. Her children had no idea just how thick the wall that separated their mother from them had become. Their tears, their moroseness, their pleading, their sulking, none of it could put a dent in this lead-filled barricade.
She had, of course, heard what Blue said. Heâd seen his father at the schoolyard that day. It was possible, she supposed, but unlikely. She decided not to attach any meaning to it, and took the bottle upstairs with her to her bedroom to say a quiet hello to the face of misery in the mirror. But Oliver was everywhere in that room. He was in their wedding photos, in the paint on the walls, in a framed antique map of Scotland above the bed. She pulled a book from the shelf: Rimbaudâs
A Season in Hell
. Oliver had underlined passages, passages she hadnât read since those early days in a Montreal café. They were only poetry then, but now they seemed like prophecy.
âThere are countless hallucinations. In truth it is what I have always had: no faith in history and the forgetting of principles. I will not speak of this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest a thousand times over, let me be as avaricious as the ocean.â
Had Oliver been speaking of himself? Had he always been haunted? A few stanzas later heâd underlined: âThen trust in me. Faithrelieves and guides and cures. Come all, even the little childrenâand I will comfort you, and pour out my heart for youâmy marvellous heart!â So there it was: Oliver asking Elaine to put her faith in a madman. Elaine accepting, and now, a season, several seasons in hell later, here she was.
She flipped to the last page of the book. On the inside of the back cover sheâd long ago taped her favourite photograph of Oliver. She pried the yellow tape off with her fingernail, liberating a wild-haired man in a poncho, and laid it on her pillow for a single drugged night before putting it in an envelope the next awful morning and addressing it to Llewellyn. For one day, although which day, she didnât know.
Greetings
A couple of weeks later a postcard came flying through the letter slot and landed belly up on the hall
Seasons in Hell
Elaine had wanted to scream when Oliver left, one endless, bloodcurdling wail that would put every banshee in history to shame. Sheâd hoped for months, sheâd even prayed to a god she didnât believe in, that Oliver would emerge from the garage an even partially reformed man, one whoâd seen enough of a light to renounce the descent into madness in favour of a more reasonable existence.
She had wanted to scream, but instead, she did the middle-class thing sheâd inherited from her parents and swallowed it down with a litre of toxins, keeping it inside where it could fester and poison everyone around her in ways much more insidious and enduring than a single howl.
She wouldnât have had children if it werenât for himâshe shouldnât have had children period. She should have moved to France and become a poet with a pension and eaten baguettes for dinner and had a string of exotic lovers half her age. Instead, here she was in a lonely town full of strangers with a mortgage to manage single-handedly and two children too many. Emma and Blue were heading into the crushing horror of adolescence, she could see it all too plainlyâEmmawho would always struggle to find a place of acceptance, Llewellyn who didnât have the smarts to do well at school. She could see they both had their father in themâBlue more physically, Emma more emotionally. In neither case was the prognosis good.
But nor was hers at the moment. A few too many fantasies of driving the car over the Niagara Escarpment had forced her to seek out help. The doctor she saw was an octogenarian with a hearing problem who had handed her a prescription for Valium like she was a 1950s housewife. The drinking made her drunk, but the Valium made her stop caring. Her children had no idea just how thick the wall that separated their mother from them had become. Their tears, their moroseness, their pleading, their sulking, none of it could put a dent in this lead-filled barricade.
She had, of course, heard what Blue said. Heâd seen his father at the schoolyard that day. It was possible, she supposed, but unlikely. She decided not to attach any meaning to it, and took the bottle upstairs with her to her bedroom to say a quiet hello to the face of misery in the mirror. But Oliver was everywhere in that room. He was in their wedding photos, in the paint on the walls, in a framed antique map of Scotland above the bed. She pulled a book from the shelf: Rimbaudâs
A Season in Hell
. Oliver had underlined passages, passages she hadnât read since those early days in a Montreal café. They were only poetry then, but now they seemed like prophecy.
âThere are countless hallucinations. In truth it is what I have always had: no faith in history and the forgetting of principles. I will not speak of this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest a thousand times over, let me be as avaricious as the ocean.â
Had Oliver been speaking of himself? Had he always been haunted? A few stanzas later heâd underlined: âThen trust in me. Faithrelieves and guides and cures. Come all, even the little childrenâand I will comfort you, and pour out my heart for youâmy marvellous heart!â So there it was: Oliver asking Elaine to put her faith in a madman. Elaine accepting, and now, a season, several seasons in hell later, here she was.
She flipped to the last page of the book. On the inside of the back cover sheâd long ago taped her favourite photograph of Oliver. She pried the yellow tape off with her fingernail, liberating a wild-haired man in a poncho, and laid it on her pillow for a single drugged night before putting it in an envelope the next awful morning and addressing it to Llewellyn. For one day, although which day, she didnât know.
Greetings
A couple of weeks later a postcard came flying through the letter slot and landed belly up on the hall
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