A Strange Kind of Comfort

by Gaylene Dutchyshen

  “I thought I told you I didn’t want to know anything about her. I could care less what she might have told you.” He looks at her sharply and the truck swerves in a ridge of loose gravel. “And I don’t know why you’d care either.”

  “Oh, Jack. She’s just so lonely. She hasn’t been lucky enough to have the sort of life that we’ve had. Can’t you remember all the crazy noise, the girls in the morning, the three of them in the bathroom at once? Or the way they used to feed off one another once they started giggling about some silly little thing. She’s never had any of that, though she must have been happy enough in the years Becca was growing up.”

  “Caroline made her own life, locking herself up in that old house, cutting herself off.” There’s a stubborn tilt to his head. “Look what she did when Eldon died. Put him in the ground without anyone, not even the Cornforths, knowing about it.”

  It was true. The people of Ross Prairie were used to flocking to the homes of grieving townsfolk in their time of need, bearing casseroles and cakes, and the secretive way Caroline acted when Eldon died rubbed at the core of them. Calvin Potts, the gravedigger, said there’d been a graveside service under the light of a harvest moon, with only the minister, a funeral director, and Caroline herself in attendance. She hadn’t shed a single tear, Calvin said, but he heard her say “fill it in” before she drew her black scarf from her head and walked away.

  “She told me Becca’s never come home. Not even once. They seem to have lost track of her after Elvina died. Can you imagine how hard it would be if one of our girls decided they were so angry with us they walked out of our lives and we never saw them again? It would be almost as bad as watching them die. At least that way you’d have a grave to visit and wouldn’t be forever imagining them somewhere, living a life without you in it.”

  “I have a pretty good idea of that, don’t I, Sarah? Or have you forgotten?” He’s hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands. “I lost a child. Never got to even know him. The Webbs just gave him away.” He takes his hand off the wheel and rubs at the moisture under his nose with his thumb. “Don’t ask me to forget about that.”

  Jack always refers to the given-away baby as him. Sarah supposes that in his mind he’s created an image of the son he might have had in much the same way she’s imagined her own lost babies. They don’t often mention the baby; long ago they promised each other they’d put that painful episode in their lives behind them.

  At home, when he stops, Jack keeps his hand on the key in the ignition and stares straight ahead. They sit like that for a minute before Sarah says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t expect you to forgive her.”

  “It would be easier if I just knew what happened to him. If he grew up okay. Had a good life.”

  Sarah wonders, too. She’s heard of such reunions. Adoption records are easier to access than ever before, with websites where information can be shared so adoptive children and parents can reconnect. DNA databases to provide valuable clues. She needs to try harder to find Becca. If she does there might be a chance she can find Jack’s child.

  CAROLINE

  There is an atmosphere of chaos in the common room. Simon Tuttle has done something to his electric wheelchair and it’s spinning in circles while Cara chases after him, trying to grab the control. In the corner, the card table they keep with a scenic jigsaw puzzle is turned upside down and Martha Gudz is scolding Addie and pointing at Sarah’s father.

  Through the commotion, Caroline spots Sarah in the foyer.

  “This place is a circus,” she says crossly when Sarah comes over. “Would you unlock this chair so I can go back to my room? I’ve had enough of this.”

  When they’re in Caroline’s room, the first thing she asks is, “Did you have any luck finding Rebecca?”

  Sarah tells Caroline about her futile search. “None of them were Becca,” she concludes. “It isn’t easy finding information with all the privacy laws they have these days. Have you asked your lawyer about it?”

  “He told me I could hire someone, but he says it may not be easy, especially if Becca doesn’t want to be found. After all, she knows where I am and could contact me if she wanted to. He said he knows of many similar cases where estranged children materialize after the parents are dead with their hands out for what’s been left to them in the will. She may show up yet.”

  Caroline wheels to her bedside table and pours a glass of water. “When we drew up our wills, Eldon insisted there wasn’t to be a cent left for her,” she continues. “He wanted it all to go to the United Church and the Community Foundation, divided equally between them. I suppose he thought that would be his legacy, leaving a huge endowment to the community and perhaps having his name engraved on a plaque somewhere. But after he died, I thought about all that money collecting dust in the bank. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to have some fun with it?” She gives a self-satisfied smile. “I was still young, only in my sixties, so I joined up with tour and travel groups, and started to see the world. I went to all the places I’d once dreamed about. I watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, strolled along the Champs Élysées, climbed the steps at the Colosseum. I even went on an African safari.”

  “I had no idea,” Sarah says. “How wonderful for you!”

  “There was a pile of money, much of it left to Eldon by his mother, and I spent it, which gave me some satisfaction. There’s still some land I own and a fair-sized nest egg sitting in a bank account. I’ve been thinking about that lately. So I’ve changed my will, going against his wishes — after all, it’s my money now — and writing the whole works over to Rebecca, or any of her children, if they can be found.” She pulls a tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and balls it in her hand. “A lot of good that will do me if she shows up after I’m dead, though, won’t it?”

  “All I’ve run into are dead ends,” Sarah says helplessly. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Any hints at all about where Becca might have gone?”

  “She was staying with Irene, Eldon’s aunt, in Victoria. Have I told you about that? A woman as miserable as her sister, and that’s the truth. I had this nagging feeling that maybe Becca hadn’t given up the baby at all and I was driven by a burning desire to see my daughter and grandchild. Once I’d skimmed enough money from my grocery allowance to buy myself a bus ticket, I went looking for them.” She notices Sarah’s reaction and says, “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I never had more than two nickels to rub together when Eldon was alive. I didn’t even have a chequing account of my own until after he died. He doled out every penny I ever spent, watched it like a hawk.” She doesn’t tell Sarah about the way she was punished when she returned from B.C., Eldon taking away her car keys and going to town by himself for six months while he made her stay home. “It wasn’t an easy life.” She rolls her chair to the window and looks out. The backyard is empty, as it usually is, although she once noticed two children hopping over the low rails of the gazebo, playing some sort of game. If only this place would plant a few flower beds in that vast brown lawn to give her something to look at.

  Sarah clears her throat and Caroline realizes she’s waiting for her to continue.

  “I arrived in Victoria with an envelope I’d found at Elvina’s, with Irene’s return address in the corner, tucked inside my purse. Irene’s was quite a stately place, I remember thinking when the taxi pulled up — brick, with a wrought iron gate, much too large for a spinster living on her own. I sat for a moment, collecting my thoughts and my courage, clinging to a faint hope Becca might answer the door, surprised at first when she saw me then crying and laughing all at the same time and inviting me in.

  “Irene was cruel, full of hate and spite even though she’d never met me,” Caroline continues, her voice wavering. “I can only imagine the stories Elvina must have told her about me. She said Becca was long gone, moved out on her own, but I didn’t believe her. I wedged my foot in the door when she tried to close it and I shoved my way in. There was a staircase near the fron
t door and I took it up, two stairs at a time, calling for Becca. The bedrooms were as dark as the ones I’d first moved in to at Elvina’s house, with heavy drapes, no light shining in at all. Irene was on my heels, threatening to call the police as I tore open every door. None of Becca’s clothes hung in the closets; there were certainly no signs of toys or a small child. ‘Where is she?’ I screamed again and again but Irene kept telling me to get out. I grabbed her by her scrawny arm and, I swear to God, I could have heaved her right down those stairs.”

  Caroline is breathing hard, replaying the scene in her mind, her chest pumping up and down as though she is still in Victoria, dashing from room to room, frantically searching for her child.

  “I told her I would go to the police myself if she didn’t tell me where Becca was, but she laughed in my face. She knew as well as I did the police wouldn’t do a thing. By then Becca was twenty-three years old and there was nothing I could do if she didn’t want to see me.”

  “Oh, Caroline. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about her the last few nights, you know.” Caroline turns away from the window. “Becca, I mean. Not that bitch Irene.” She pushes down on one wheel, swivelling the chair to face Sarah. “Now it’s not only my mother coming to me during the night, it’s Becca, too. The two of them together, both wanting something from me. In the dream they have their arms around each other the way young friends do and it makes my jealous heart rear up, feeling like I’m the third wheel, being left out of something.” She dabs at her nose with the tissue. “I can’t think straight these days after going all night without sleep. Yet, try as I might, as soon as my eyes are closed and I drift off, there they are, as real to me as if they’re standing right here in my room. I’m forgetting things. Just last night I accused that Bishop woman of moving my reading glass when there it was, right on the side table where I’d left it. And I’m beginning to wonder what the point is of reading anyway, when I come back to my book and can’t remember a word I’ve read the next day. It makes me wonder if I’m losing my mind.”

  “No, you’re not,” Sarah reassures her. “Things like that happen if you’re not getting enough sleep. Maybe you should see if Dr. Boutreau will prescribe something to help.”

  “I won’t have it,” Caroline snaps. “I don’t want the good sense I have left addled by any sleeping pill.” She looks Sarah in the eye. “It’s peace I need before I die and there’s no way I can get it, besides finding my girl.” She turns back to the window, gazing out again at the yard. In the gazebo, there’s a withered pink petunia, neglected, watered only by the rain, in a single hanging basket. A breeze has come up and the forlorn basket sways, a barely perceptible motion, like a child’s empty swing.

  SARAH

  On her way home from Sunny Haven, Sarah thinks about Caroline’s trip to Victoria and wonders if Jack’s search for Becca might have been more successful if he’d known at the time about Great-Aunt Irene. It brings to mind their own futile search; the time she and Jack set out to find her mother.

  Baba’s people had settled farther west, not far from Yorkton, just across the border, and Sarah believed her mother might have gone to Saskatchewan when she left. Baba told Sarah she still had some cousins farming there and Sarah thought it would be a good idea to look them up.

  It was October, right after harvest, when they told Anton and Anna they were taking a honeymoon for a week or so. Anton said he’d never heard of anyone going to Saskatchewan for a honeymoon. Besides, why go now when there was still so much work to do? But there were always chores, so Jack threw their suitcase in the truck and they drove off while Anton stood in the yard, still talking and shaking his head.

  Starting at the border, Sarah and Jack stopped in the smaller towns and villages along the way, asking in coffee shops and municipal offices if anyone knew of a woman named Olivia Coyle, but no one had ever heard of her. They found some of Baba’s relatives near Wroxton, and, while they might have been her distant cousins, they didn’t know her daughter. Sarah scoured the phone books at motels in Yorkton and Regina, writing down numbers for both Coyles and Petrenkos and calling from lobby pay phones. A man in Moose Jaw, when he answered, told Sarah to hang on for a minute. A fissure of hope cracked open for the first time while she cradled the receiver next to her ear but when the woman came on the line she said her name was Olive, not Olivia, and she sounded too old to be her mother. They headed home after that, Jack complaining for the first fifty miles about the loss of time and good money but, when Sarah’s disappointment spilled over and she started to cry, he pulled into a park — a roadside spot for campers and tents with stunted trees and a small, empty pool — and rented a cabin. She lay in his arms for two days and he soothed her the only way he knew how.

  It won’t be any easier to find Becca, Sarah thinks as she nears the boundary between their farm and Caroline’s. Perhaps she should tell Caroline to take the lawyer up on his suggestion and hire a private investigator, someone used to tracking people down. There’s a limit to the internet and how much Sarah can do.

  Anton’s in the field on the swather, making the outside round on the wheat, the golden swath falling on the stubble in a nearly perfect line like the stitching on the edge of a pocket. The reels spin, catching the sun, as he turns the far corner of the field by the stone pile.

  The aroma of fresh tomatoes, garlic, and basil wafts through the kitchen when Sarah walks in. Connor’s with Toni on the floor in the living room, backing a tractor into a large cardboard box, making the beeping sound all new equipment makes these days. Boo is sitting in a trailer, a bright red ribbon tied around his neck.

  “Jason phoned,” Toni says, getting up off the floor. “Emma’s still a bit jaundiced and the doctor wants them to stay. He said he’ll swing by about four to pick up Connor. You’re good to watch him now? I have to get to work.”

  Sarah nods. “Go ahead. Thanks for starting lunch.”

  “No problem,” Toni says. Before she leaves, she motions to a small tin box on the coffee table. “Oh, I found that inside the box I used for Connor’s shed. He wanted me to make Boo a bow tie from the ribbon. I couldn’t figure out if the stuff belonged to your mother or your baba, or both. I thought maybe you’d like to look through it.”

  Connor is building a fence for the toy cows and he’s clucking softly to them, promising to feed them as soon as he’s made a few bales of hay.

  Since he’s preoccupied, Sarah sits on the couch and opens the box, thinking it odd it should resurface just weeks after she brought it home from her father’s and stored it away. She didn’t know what else to do with it at the time, and she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out. The birthday cards still smell faintly of roses and there’s a postcard from Wasagaming — fin-tailed cars parked along the lake — she hadn’t noticed when she first found the box. She picks up the red notebook with Baba’s drawings. Broadleaf burdock, shiny purslane shaped like a fingernail, a milkweed’s moppish head; Sarah recognizes all the plants from her walks through the woods with Baba.

  They lost her two years after she and Jack were married. By then, she had battled cancer, her breast removed and then rounds of chemotherapy. Sarah had convinced her to take the treatments, although Baba thought she could cure herself with her cache of bark and roots and flowers. She’d been so sick from the cocktail of drugs they gave her, grown haggard and hairless and gaunt. Within a year, the cancer had spread to her lungs. No more chemo, she said, and waited to die.

  Sarah flips to the back of the notebook and reads what her mother wrote. Save for Sarah.

  If Baba were to explain it, she would say it is God’s will that Sarah discovered the tin box in the cranny. Baba believed everything happened for a reason, and Sarah wonders if it is mere coincidence that she should come into possession of the little red book. It seems a natural fit with the holy icon and other things Baba wanted her to have after she died. The basket, blessed candles, vials of holy water, and her rosary are all stored in Sarah’s china cabinet
with the Easter cloth Baba once cross-stitched for her.

  Sarah goes to the dining room and finds Baba’s things in the cabinet. She opens the well-worn leather pouch with the rosary inside and fingers the beads. A lump of golden beeswax is also inside and she lifts it out. Baba was a woman of great faith with a resolute and unwavering acceptance of God’s will. Sarah would like to be more like her but she’s always had so many questions. After Baba died, she made a point of attending Mass at Christmas and Easter, and she had the girls baptized like Baba would have wanted, but she lacks the same blind faith. Baba believed so completely in the chants and prayers of the healing ritual, for instance, that she fully believed that all who came to her would be cured.

  Sarah is closing the cabinet drawer when she is suddenly aware of the silence; she can no longer hear Connor talking to the cows or his equipment beep-beeping.

  In the living room the plastic animals are lined up inside the fence but there’s no sign of him.

  “Connor!” Sarah runs into Allison’s room, looks in the closet where the toys are stored and under the bed. He’s not there. She looks in the other bedrooms, flinging open closet doors. “Connor, we’re not playing hide-and-seek. Come out and I’ll give you a treat.” Bribery usually works with him, but not this time. She runs down to the basement, checks the storage room, her mouth dry as a sense of dread bubbles up. Where could he be? Back upstairs and out into the garage. Misty’s whining, pawing at the door. Connor’s shut her in, run off, and left her behind.

  Sarah tears outside. The gate’s open, the green speckled cord like a coiled snake on the ground. Thunder rumbles from slate-grey clouds stacked high in the sky. “Connor! Jack!” But there’s no one around to hear her. She races through the yard, checking in the shop and in the cab of the MX parked next to the bins. There are a hundred places he could be, most of them unsafe for a three-year-old, but the only thing she can think of is the vicious intent of that cunning wolf, as likely to attack a small boy as it did a defenceless pup. She notices something, a flash of red, lying in the grass at the back of the yard. It’s Boo, lying face down near the grass trail leading to the river. She runs back to the house, phones Jack’s cell, but it goes straight to voicemail. Damn him for never answering his phone! She is drawn to the gun cabinet, some thought circling in her head, and she unlocks it, grabs Jack’s rifle then flips open a box of shells. Pocketing a handful, she heads back outside.