“Is there someone else? Have you met someone else? Just tell me.”
“Why would you care? You sent me a letter saying you wanted no further contact with me.”
“Not true! Show me the letter.”
“I threw it in the river Clyde.” Domenica walked across the field to the kitchen door of the convent, with McVicars in pursuit.
“Wait. No. Listen to me. I didn’t write the letter you threw in the river. You stopped writing to me.”
“I sent you letters every week.”
“I didn’t receive them,” McVicars insisted.
“I sent them to your home.”
“Please. Write to me again.”
“I won’t.”
“One more letter to Tulloch Street. Please. If I don’t hear from you, I will understand that to mean you have no further interest in me.”
Domenica entered the convent kitchen and closed the door behind her. She left the pizza on the kitchen worktable and called out to the cook, before going to her room. She parted the curtains, flipped the latch, and opened the window. She saw McVicars walk to the station as the rain began to fall.
CHAPTER 28
Each day, McVicars met the postman on the corner to sort through the mail before it was delivered to 28 Tulloch Street. The captain used the excuse that he was looking for his orders to ship out and wanted to intercept the letter before it arrived home and upset his mother. At the end of the week, a blue envelope with the return address of Dumbarton arrived addressed to him from Domenica. He was delighted. Instead of opening it, he instructed the postman to deliver the mail as usual, the letter from Domenica included. McVicars waited until he was certain his mother had gone through the mail to return home. He slipped through the front door and walked back to the kitchen. The mail was on the table. He sifted through it quickly. Domenica’s letter was missing.
McVicars heard a strange sound coming from the garden behind the house. He peered out the kitchen window and observed his mother tapping a brick in the garden wall into place with a stone, until it was even with the others. McVicars left the house unannounced and walked the streets of Glasgow until tea.
The hours between tea and supper were the longest of McVicars’s life. He felt cheated out of his own happiness, which was difficult to accept because it was his mother who had robbed him of it. He returned home with a heavy heart as night fell. He waited in his upstairs room until he heard her climb the steps to her bedroom. It was easy to avoid his mother because she did not seek his company, make his meals, or do his laundry. His childhood home was a place to lodge until his orders came through. He lit a cigarette and waited for his mother to fall asleep.
McVicars opened his bedroom door and peered out. He had done enough sneaking around in his youth; he knew how to pass the threshold of his parents’ bedroom without making a sound or leaving a shadow. He tiptoed down the stairs and went through the kitchen to the garden. He lit another cigarette, and using the match for light, he found the stone his mother had left on the ground. He tapped the bricks with the stone until he found the loose one. The process took long enough that the ash from his cigarette, dangling from his mouth, burned close to his lips. He stomped out the cigarette before lifting the brick away. He found a stack of letters in a paper bag stuffed into the small tomb.
Once he returned to his room, McVicars placed the letters from Domenica on his desk. He lay down on the bed and began to read. He began with the last letter Domenica had sent to him from Marseille. It was dated 9 July 1939.
Dear Captain McVicars,
There is really little left to write. My thoughts are in the unanswered letters. I understand, or think I might, why you have not responded. I have written something that offended you. For that, I ask your forgiveness. It is possible another woman has crossed your path that is far more suitable for you than me. I hope this is the case and you have made a good friend of her.
With best wishes,
Domenica Cabrelli
His mother had sliced open the envelopes neatly with her hairpin. He stacked the sheets of stationery neatly, like pages of a book, before sitting down at the table by the window. He pulled the lamp close to the paper and read Domenica’s letters slowly. The captain did not read them once, or even twice, but three times, to make sure he understood her intent. As he set aside the pages one by one for the last time, a lake of blue pooled on the table.
McVicars sat back, balancing on the back legs of the chair. He put his hands behind his head, looked out at the moon, and thought about the Italian girl. He understood Domenica now, having read the letters. He was ashamed that his mother had read them, not because of the content, but because he would have to explain this transgression to Domenica. What young woman, with a promising future, would want any part of such a family? If he knew one thing about Domenica, it was that family was the center of her life. Here he was, a man of nearly forty whose mother had managed to run one son off to New Zealand, the other to the sea. John McVicars was an itinerant sailor who managed to stay away more months of the year than he was home. His father, who perished at sea, was a disappointment to his wife, who complained that he died just to spite her. Grizelle felt cheated, which turned her bitter. She made it a point to make her family as miserable as she was. Grizelle’s lack of respect for her son’s privacy did not come from a place of concern; instead, it was her last attempt to keep her son John tethered to her after the other men in her life abandoned her.