CALUM, June 2016

Calum McDonnell hadn’t been in his attic for years.

Some memories up here, like the toys from his dead son, he couldn’t let go.  But couldn’t bear to have any of them out of the boxes for too long either. 

Some, like an old painting of his ex-wife’s, he should probably throw out. But each time he thought about it he was overcome by a great numbness inside. 

It wasn’t pain as such, not like he had felt it in the Falklands when that Argie sniper’s bullet crashed through his knee. 

It was more like a void that opened up inside, and he couldn’t get past it.

So when his daughter told him over Skype that she’d like him to look for her old sketchbook, he at first tried to talk around it. Eventually, he had relented, though. 

It was his daughter, after all

Caroline said she wanted to begin drawing again. Regularly. After almost 20 years, she had said …

Depending on your reckoning of time, he supposed. Hadn’t she briefly done something—a historical album, was it? Before she met Jonathan? What had become of that?

Being tied down 24/7 with chores and Calum’s autistic grandson were obstacles to her plans, obviously, but Caroline said she had to find a way. She was afraid she was “going crazy” again.

Calum knew what that meant, so that was what had made him give in.

Caroline wanted him to plow through the attic to find her old sketchbook from when she was in school and mail it to her, in the United States. 

Okay. Fine.

When they had finished talking he had made all the motions to get the ladder, but his mind was still resisting.

Of course, he would do this for his daughter. And it was a tiny thing, wasn’t it? 

But he felt that numbness again. Or was it something else? 

Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, because he didn’t know how he would react when he finally found the damn thing and held it in his hand.

His daughter’s sketchbook. 

One of the only personal belongings of hers she had left on Skye after the divorce when she had gone with her mother back to the States in 1995.

Would it, if it was even there, be something he’d felt a great need to keep like Timothy’s bicycle and his first shinty stick?

Or would it be like Deborah’s painting of the Blà Bheinn mountain illuminated by early spring sunrise?  Something he should throw out, yet kept. Even though he couldn’t make himself look at it?

Which would it be? 

And where the hell was it?

It had been so long since he had last been here that the single lamp in the ceiling didn’t work. So Calum went back down and found a flashlight.

He let the pale beam of the light glide over the various boxes. It wasn’t a complete mess. But still … 

There were no markings. He seemed to remember some kind of order. He knew where Timothy’s things were. But Caroline’s?

Why had she left the book here, anyway? 

He couldn’t remember but Caroline had enlightened him when they talked about it on Skype. That memory was sharp and clear with her. 

She had left it as a gift for her best friend, Siné Munroe. Told Siné that she could come over and pick it up after Caroline and her mother had left the island. 

Why hadn’t Siné ever come by? Why hadn’t Caroline just given the sketchbook to her in person?

Caroline must have known she never picked it up. So what happened? The two women would be in their late thirties now, like he was when …

Siné Munroe still lived on Skye, if he remembered correctly. Married to some fisherman in Uig, wasn’t it? Four kids. Or only three?

And there it was.

Pretty battered, but intact.

Calum weighed the old sketchbook in his hands and noticed the feel of the cover.

Both the cover and his hands had scratches and cracks, but the cover seemed more smooth, all things considered.

The sketchbook had been a birthday present, from Caroline’s mother, wasn’t it?

Caroline had brought it to school and he suddenly remembered more than one occasion when Mr. Jackman or Mrs. Peterson had mentioned it to him.

“Your daughter should concentrate on class. Or we will have to take steps … ” 

They had never taken it from her, though.

Calum opened the book slowly.

On the first page was an image of a horse, very life-like.

Caroline had been, what, 10 years old? It was the first of her drawings he had seen.

He remembered praising her highly. The only time he remembered doing so.

He froze. 

What he was doing felt like an intrusive act. Like snooping in a personal diary … 

But he had never really cared much for what his daughter did at this time, had he?

Once Caroline had become a teenager Calum had already been deep in the bottle and Deborah had pretty much taken care of Caroline by herself. 

Tim went back and forth between Aberdeen and his mother, whenever she was well enough to take care of him.

Everything was … 

There.

Numbness.

And a stab.

Like a bullet through sinew and flesh. 

Bone. 

Splintered. Forever.

There were probably at least a hundred drawings in this book. He had never looked at them.

Calum shook his head, willing himself to close the book slowly.

Not before the divorce. Not after.

He had been so angry with Caroline, for going with her mother. Although it was the only good choice.

Calum put the book on a nearby box, and let himself slide down to sit on the floor. Back against a box with some splinters in it. Dust and cobwebs on his new trousers, but he didn’t care.

He shuddered to think of how she would have been if he had gained custody. Some days … too many days, weeks, months in the years that followed—he couldn’t even remember them!

Should he look at the drawings before he shipped the book off to Arizona?

No.

The book was a monument.

To everything he had never been for his daughter, and could never be. 

Looking at it now, even commenting on it … it would change nothing.

Carrie had done drugs. Cocaine, Calum believed. And other things. 

He knew from Jon she was still drinking from time to time.

He knew about the anxiety attacks.

Being alone with two kids, one of them with a diagnosis … while Jon struggled to earn so they could pay off the mortgage … it wasn’t exactly the kind of life you wanted to be sober in. 

Calum McDonnell knew that all too well.

And he was helpless, an ocean away.

Just getting older … 

Caroline’s abuse had different reasons, sure. So had her temptations to go back. 

But Caroline wanted to make other choices than he had. To deal with life.

He would help her. 

That he could still give.

Calum picked up the book and went back down the ladder into the light-filled hallway.

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End of Renaissance – part II

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Cover photo by Henk Mul on Unsplash

Old man by Jonathan Cosens Photography on Unsplash

Sketchbook photo by pure julia on Unsplash

Horses photo by Fabian Burghardt on Unsplash

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49-230324

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Song: Röyksopp – Monuments

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