“Her knee’s all swollen too,” John added.
“She’s been whining all week.” Mabel shook her head.
“It was a nasty fall she took, Will,” John said, getting up from the table. “We’re lucky that she didn’t break her neck.”
“Well, well, well. This is a fine mess.” Will shook his head. “What are we supposed to do with you now? Might as well take you behind the barn and shoot you.” He grinned at Ann and slapped her on the knee.
“That hurts!”
“My apologies, madam.” Will, still grinning, stood up and tipped his hat to her.
“We should sue the bastards,” he repeated. “Get something out of this.”
“Who are you going to sue?” Mabel asked him. “The Archbishop of Canterbury? That church has no money; they barely have a building let alone being able to pay you a settlement. Forget it. And that Mary’s been no help whatsoever,” she added. “Daydreaming like always. And sullen!”
“Aw, that’s not right, Mabel, and you know it.” John slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. “Why don’t you let up on Mary once in a while?”
“Mary has been very good,” Ann protested, raising herself up from her mound of pillows. “She’s been at my beck and call all week, getting me things and helping me dress. She’s kept the two little ones out of your mother’s way and even made bread this morning. I told her how to do it.”
“She’s way past the time to learn to make bread. She’s been spoiled all these years,” Mabel scoffed.
“I’ll see to Mary, Ma,” Will said. “I know she tends to be slow but she’s a good girl over all.”
John had gone out to the porch but now he opened the kitchen door again. “She’s out right now, getting the cows.” He slammed the door behind him.
“How was work this week?” Ann asked Will.
“Good, good. For once they all left me alone to work in peace. Hey, here’s my babies.”
Little Helen and Harry had been playing on the kitchen floor and trying to get their father’s attention since he came into the house. Now they both jumped into his arms.
“How’s about a whisker rub for the pair of you?”
The children giggled and squirmed as he rubbed his five-day beard along their soft cheeks.
They’re the only things worth coming home for, he thought as the two children sat on his back and he circled around on his hands and knees in the kitchen. They take me as I am, no complaining, no demands. Like Pa used to. Will tried not to think of his father. He let out a growl that caused more happy squealing.
“All right, such as it is, supper’s ready.” Mabel carried the steaming pot to the table.
“Stay out of the way or you’ll get scalded.” She motioned with her chin towards the children and plopped the pot down.
“What about Mary and John?” Ann asked.
“Little Helen, go out as far as the porch door and yell for Mary and John to come for supper,” Mabel said.
“You get up to the table.” Will nodded at his daughter. “They can get theirs when the chores are done. Now let’s eat, I’m starved.”
Ann folded her arms. “I’m not eating until Mary and John come in,” she said.
“That’s right, you’re not,” Mabel snorted. “I’ve got my hands full feeding these two. You’ll just have to wait your turn. You can’t be all that hungry anyways, all you’ve done is sit around and read all day.”
Ann lay back and turned her face to the wall.
Rockley
Nova Scotia
September 1876
Mary was walking home from school when she stopped to listen to a squawking blue jay.
“You’re funny,” Mary told him. “And fat and sassy. What have you got to go on about?”
As if insulted, the bird turned and flew away into the forest. Mary decided to follow and took the path through the woods that would eventually lead to the hill in back of her uncle’s house. She heard the thud of axes in the distance. Fifteen minutes later she walked out into a clearing, and there was Fred LeFurgey and Smith Reid, both stripped to the waist, chopping down a large tree. Smith saw her first.
“Mary, walk away to the other side of us,” he said, pointing towards the hill. “This thing is going to come down in a minute and fall your way.”
Mary didn’t want to do as Smith said even if it was for her own good. Ann and Grandma Harney had both been frightened when Will got beat up last spring. But Fred turned and smiled at her, and he too pointed in the direction she was to go, so she reasoned it was him she was obeying. She had never seen a big tree falling to the ground so when she got a safe ways off, she turned back to watch. In a minute the tree began to sway, and both Smith and Fred stood on the opposite side from the cut and pushed it forward. Then they too got back out of its way. The tree fell, crashing down over the spot where Mary had stood minutes before. When the needles and dust finally settled, Fred called to her.
Mary walked over to them. Both men retrieved their shirts and were buttoning them up. Smith gave her a huge grin and nodded in acknowledgement. He really was quite handsome, she couldn’t help but notice. She frowned at him, nodding her head, then turned to Fred and smiled.
“Why are you walking through here, Mary, and almost getting hit with falling trees?” Fred asked.
“I’m on my way home from school. I saw a blue jay and followed him in here.”
“It isn’t a good idea for a girl to be walking in the woods by herself,” Smith said. She turned to look at him and shrugged her shoulders dismissively.
Smith blushed and Fred laughed out loud. “Mary doesn’t seem to care much for your advice,” he said and turned back to the girl.
“What did you learn in school today?”
“All about Henry the Eighth and his wives.”
“Old Henry didn’t bother cutting down trees like a normal person,” Smith observed. “He was more interested in cutting the heads off his wives.”
“Is that right?” Fred asked.
“Yes, he wasn’t a very nice man,” Mary said, surprised that Smith would know anything about it.
“Well, that’s one way to get rid of ’em.” Fred laughed again. Then he looked at Mary and was suddenly serious. “How’s Ann—your mother these days? I heard she took a bad fall a while back.”
“She’s getting better. Thank you for asking.”
“Well, we better get back to work here.” Smith nodded to Fred.
“Yes, we’d better. It was nice to see you again, Mary. Tell your mother I was asking about her. Don’t forget.” Fred turned back to the fallen tree.
“I will. Goodbye, Mr. LeFurgey.” She hurried away along the path.
“A sweet girl, that Mary,” Fred observed to Smith as they cut the branches from the fallen tree. “Just like her mother. And she’s almost old enough to be courted, give another year or so.”
Smith grinned. “That father of hers wouldn’t let me come within ten feet of her.”
***
Mary didn’t get home until almost suppertime.
“And where have you been, young lady?” Mabel was taking a pie out of the oven as Mary walked through the door. Little Helen and Harry were lying on the daybed with their mother. Ann’s attempts to soothe the bawling infant seemed only to make him yell the louder.
“We could use some help around here once in a while.”
“I’m sorry, Grandma. I was walking through the woods and it was so pretty that I didn’t want to come home.” She dropped her book and slate on the bottom of the daybed and took the baby from Ann’s arms.
“I think he just needs another burp,” Ann said, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’ll take a nap now that you’re home.”
Mary didn’t tell them that for the last hour she had been on t
he hill above the house pretending to be Anne Boleyn in the hours leading up to her death. Mabel had no patience with such foolishness. Lollygagging is what she called it.
“You shouldn’t be parading through the woods. It’s not safe,” her grandmother said, putting the pie on the windowsill to cool off.
“Yes, I know that’s what he—” Mary started, then remembered herself.
“That’s what he what?” Mabel asked.
“That’s what Mr. LeFurgey said. I met him just after I reached the road. He saw me come out of the woods. He told me I shouldn’t be in there by myself. Oh, and he also told me to say hello to you, Mumma.”
“He would,” her grandmother retorted, and turned to look at Ann in time to witness the blush spreading up her neck.
“Mary, take Harry upstairs and put a clean diaper on him, please,” Ann said, hastening to change the subject.
As Mary mounted the stairs, she heard her mother say, “He was just being neighbourly.”
“Will better not catch him being neighbourly, as you call it, or there’ll be hell to pay,” was the reply.
***
Ann was sitting in the rocking chair, covered in a crazy quilt. Her right leg was stretched out in front of her, her foot resting on a wooden chair. Someone knocked on the porch door.
“Now what?” Mabel asked, looking up from the potatoes she was peeling. “Who the hell knocks around here?”
She disappeared into the porch. Ann could hear her speaking to someone and then Mabel returned to the kitchen with a telegram in her hand.
“It’s for you,” she said.
“Oh God, what does it say? Read it to me, please.”
“Wait now till I find my spectacles,” Mabel responded, retrieving them from the top of the warming oven. “It can’t be good news,” she said, putting her glasses on slowly. “It never is.”
Ann clutched the quilt around her while Mabel broke the seal and cleared her throat.
“The writing’s so damn small, it’s hard to make out. It’s from your sister.” Mabel looked up from the message. “Your mother’s dead.” She stretched out her hand holding the paper.
Ann felt a ball of cold in the pit of her stomach and the surging noise in her ears was growing louder by the second and drowning out all other sounds. She saw someone standing, staring at her, moving slowly.
I can’t focus my eyes, she thought.
The person seemed to be standing behind a wall of water.
“What?”
“Your mother’s gone,” said the person, kneeling down beside the rocking chair and placing something in her hand.
Instead of lowering her head, Ann lifted the piece of paper into her line of vision. Black marks seemed burned into the paper.
Heart attack this morning. Mother’s gone. Complete surprise. Come home.
She burst into tears. “We’ll write and tell them that you’re in no shape to travel,” the someone said, not unkindly.
Ann’s mind whirled. Now, where everything had stood still, it burst into motion.
I have to go, she thought. She opened her mouth but the words couldn’t come out.
“I have to go,” she tried again, shouting. “Have got to get out of here.”
She needed air, needed to get outdoors. Away from this person who kept talking to her. She waved her arms around and then braced them against the rocking chair, willing herself to move, to stand up.
The person put a hand on her shoulder.
“Just calm down, calm down. All this commotion doesn’t help anything.”
“I need to go home.” Ann flinched at the hand and tried to bat it away. “Leave me alone.”
The person grabbed her face and turned it towards theirs.
“Listen to me.”
Ann shook her head and tried to rise once more from the chair.
“God forgive me,” someone said and Ann felt a sharp slap across her face.
“You’ve had a shock. Just be quiet for a minute. Just sit there and be quiet.”
Ann felt arms tighten around her shoulders.
“You can’t go anywhere with that leg of yours,” Mabel said softly after some time went by. “You can’t even walk across the room, for God’s sake.”
“But I have to see Mother, I have to go, I have to—”
“Just wait. It’s Friday. When Will comes home tonight we’ll talk about it. Just rest now. Your sister can take care of everything in the meantime. Here, let me get you over to the daybed.”
Ann cried herself to sleep. She woke up at suppertime still in shock and refused to eat. Will got home at ten o’clock that evening.
“No, you’re not going and that’s that,” he declared to Ann after hearing the news.
“But Mother’s dead.”
“Yes, Ann, I know, and I’m sorry about that, I really am. Your mother was always pretty decent to me. And I wish you could go but it would be just too hard for you. And you couldn’t go alone and you couldn’t bring the kids with you like you did last time. You couldn’t look after them. Wait ’til you’re better and then we’ll think about it. Now come here.”
Will sat on the edge of the daybed, took Ann in his arms, and rocked her back and forth.
“I could go with Mumma,” Mary offered, sitting in the rocking chair in her nightgown. “I could look out for her on the way there and back.”
Will looked at her over Ann’s bowed head. “Nobody’s goin’ anywhere,” he said barely above a whisper. “Now never mind.”
Early the next morning Will rode to Pugwash to telegraph Beatrice that Ann could not travel at the moment. In the afternoon Ann called Mary to her side.
“We need to write a letter to Grandpa and Aunt Beatrice to let them know why I can’t be there with them. Theirs will be a very sad household for a long time. Just as ours will. Now get a pen and paper and I’ll tell you what to write.”
A week later Ann received a long missive from Beatrice describing Helen Hennessey’s last days, the well-attended funeral, and how she and their father were holding up. “Mother’s death has left him unable to concentrate on work and he’s totally reliant upon me at the moment,” she wrote.
After receiving Beatrice’s letter Ann lay on the daybed, staring into space and making no attempt to walk.
What’s the use? she thought over and over and repeated it to any family member within earshot, even Little Helen and Harry.
One afternoon a week later, Rita LeFurgey called carrying an apple pie. Ann was alone in the house. Mary was outside on the veranda reading to the children. John had driven Mabel to Pugwash on a midwife’s call.
“Ann, my dear, how are you holding up?” Rita asked as she sat on the edge of the daybed. “I’m so sorry about your mother.”
She had never seen Ann look so pale and drawn.
“Oh, Rita, my life’s over, there’s nothing left now that Mother’s gone.” Ann let out a ragged sigh.
“My land, dear, you’re still a young woman. You have a husband and three children. You have to live for your children, no matter how upset you are.”
“What’s the use of any of it?” Ann responded, her eyes filling with tears. “No matter what we do, how we worry, how we work, we all end up the same in the end…dead.” She turned away and faced the wall.
“See here, Ann, look at me,” Rita insisted, reaching forward and touching her on the shoulder.
“Turn around right now and look at me.”
She waited for Ann to face her again before she spoke.
“You’re right, we all die. We have no choice in the matter. But we do have the choice of how we live. Would your mother want you to give up like this? No, she wouldn’t. She would want you to live, especially for those grandchildren of hers I just saw outdoors. You have no choice, Ann, you need to live for them. After my parents died, I had to
go on for my own family.”
“It’s so unfair.” Ann gulped and wiped her eyes.
“Yes, it seems unfair but it’s God’s way. It’s not for us to question.”
Ann sat up. “Why would any God that loved us let this happen, let us lose the ones we love? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Everyone and everything that lives dies. That’s how the world works. None of us can live forever, dear. God wants us with him.”
“So why bother giving us feelings, making us capable of love while we’re here? Why let us suffer? Life would be easier if we didn’t have feelings. I’m tired of feeling.”
She started to cry all the harder.
“Yes, life would be easier, I guess, but not as rewarding or as fulfilling. Feelings and love ensure, while we’re here, that we’re really alive.”
“Rita, sometimes I don’t even know if I even believe there is a God anymore. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.” Ann wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown.
“No need to apologize, to either me or God. He understands and he will give you the strength to get through this. Count your blessings, Ann. Don’t forget to count your blessings,” Rita counselled, “and with time you’ll feel better.”
Over the next several weeks Ann received messages from friends and relatives in Merigomish, Halifax, Boston, and San Francisco extending their condolences and sharing memories of her mother. She kept them in a birchbark container by the daybed.
“All she does all day is fawn over those letters,” Mabel said to John one evening. “They should all be thrown out. She’s just making herself sicker looking at them all the time.”
“Leave her be for a while. The poor thing has had two shocks close together. She just needs time. She’ll come around.”
“I hope so, for all our sakes,” his sister replied.
***
“Mary, I really don’t need anything to eat,” Ann argued weakly when she saw her daughter coming towards her carrying a tray.
Mary placed it on her mother’s knees. It held a large glass of milk and a tea biscuit covered with strawberry jam. Ann sighed and pointed towards the rocking chair. Mary sat down and her mother began to talk, picking at the food.
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