Found Drowned

by Norris, Laurie Glenn;

  He lowered her nightgown to her knees and pressed on the top of the right ankle, using his forefinger.

  “Does this hurt when I apply pressure here?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You did have a bad sprain but the swelling is gone now, and the bruising around the toes and on the bottom of the foot is as well. So what’s the problem?”

  “I just don’t feel like I’d be steady on my feet. I’m not sure I can ever walk again.”

  Creed sighed, placed the nightgown over Ann’s feet, and stepped back while she drew the bedclothes up around herself. He walked over to the table, rummaged around in his bag, and withdrew a stethoscope.

  “Sit up for me. I’m going to listen to your heart and lungs.”

  Ann removed the shawl, unbuttoned the collar of her nightgown, and bent forward. Doctor Creed stood behind her, slipped the stethoscope down the neck of her nightgown, and placed the instrument on her back. She gasped from its coldness against her skin.

  “Well, your lungs sound strong and clear. Now for your heart.”

  He moved around to face her and got down on one knee beside the couch. Ann held her collar open. Creed placed the stethoscope high on her left breast. The room was quiet except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

  “All right then.”

  Creed removed the stethoscope from around his neck. He sat down and looked at his patient.

  “Could you bring the doctor some tea?” Ann asked Mabel.

  After Mabel left the room, Dr. Creed shut the door behind her and sat back down.

  “So, Ann, how are you feeling in general?”

  Ann liked Doctor Creed but she didn’t want him to know the truth. She had a difficult time admitting it even to herself: that she didn’t care anymore, about anything. And what kind of a wife and mother didn’t care? She didn’t want to be a wife to Will. She didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want to clean the house or cook. She didn’t want to look after the children. There was so much to do and she was just so tired.

  “I feel sluggish and run down but at the same time I’m jumpy, nervous.”

  “Have you been up and dressed since your fall?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got to start getting dressed each day. It will make you feel like your old self.”

  “It might.”

  “And you haven’t been out of the house since your accident?”

  “Oh my, no, I’m much too crippled for that.”

  “You’re not crippled, Ann. You’ve just had a bad fall. Have you used the crutches that I gave you? I don’t see them. Where are they?”

  “Oh, they’re out in the kitchen somewhere. I just haven’t felt strong enough to use them. Will and John carried me in here last week. And everyone has been so good helping us out. Rita LeFurgey is looking after the two little ones this afternoon. She takes them a couple of times a week so I can get some proper rest. And Mary’s a big help to me.”

  “Ann, your muscles will weaken with no exercise. Starting tomorrow, I want you to walk around the house, using your crutches or not, every day for ten minutes. And start going outdoors every day too. It’s getting cooler now but the fresh air will do you good. You’ve got to get back on your feet, Ann. You’ll feel better when you’re looking after your own home once again.”

  Ann didn’t know how she could possibly look after anything. She had no idea where to begin. And it didn’t matter. Everyone had been getting along without her for weeks now. And this house was not her home. She had never had a home of her own.

  Suddenly there was a kick at the bottom of the door. Dr. Creed opened it and Mabel came in carrying a large tray bearing a Blue Willow teapot, three matching cups, a sugar bowl, cream pitcher, and spoons. She placed the tray on the table beside the doctor’s bag.

  “Be right back with the biscuits. They’re just about ready,” she said.

  “As you can see my mother-in-law is very good to me,” Ann said, stone-faced.

  “As she should be,” Creed replied.

  After tea, as he rose to leave, the doctor withdrew a small bottle from his bag and handed it to Ann.

  “Your heart sounds like it has a bit of a flutter,” he said, “so I’m going to leave this with you. It’s powdered laudanum. Put a small amount of it in a glass of water or some spirits and it will help you sleep and calm those nerves of yours. It’s bitter, so be sure to add sugar to it as well. Mabel, make sure that she takes this each evening before she goes to bed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mabel said, clearing away the tray.

  ***

  “The doctor’s call made no difference whatsoever,” Mabel told Fannie Burbine in the yard of St. Peter’s Catholic Church the following Sunday.

  “Beyond limping around the house a couple of times, that one doesn’t try to walk at all. She’s determined to be sick.”

  Fannie shook her head. “I don’t see how you can put up with it, Mabel, I really don’t.”

  “Clear, sheer laziness is what it is. And it’s beyond me how my Will let himself get mixed up with that bunch in the first place. To top it all off, as you know, they’re Protestants.”

  “You warned him and warned him, it’s his own fault if he didn’t listen to you,” Fannie told her friend.

  “Yes, he burnt his arse now he has to sit on the blisters.”

  “Will is a bright boy, he could have gone places.” Fannie put her arm through Mabel’s and the two women walked towards home.

  Rockley

  Nova Scotia

  December 1876

  “I can’t accept it,” Mary told Smith.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not proper taking Christmas gifts from young men. We’re not promised.”

  “No, we’re not promised to each other and I don’t expect a thing in return. I’d just like you to have something pretty. I was at Bailey’s last month when he unpacked it from a shipment just in from Halifax and it reminded me of you. I asked him to keep it for me until I could buy it.”

  “It is very nice.”

  “Open it up.”

  Mary slid her fingernail into the slit between the two sections of the silver locket. It opened up like a clam shell. There was a tiny photograph of Smith in one section of the locket, looking solemn with his hair combed down close to his head, not blowing around in curls like it was now as she gazed up at him. On the opposite side there was a space for another photograph.

  “Thank you, Smith. I’ll treasure it. But I don’t have anything for you.”

  “There’s nothing I need, Mary, as long as you’ll wear this. Do you like it?”

  “Yes, very much. But I can’t let anyone see it. Daddy will be mad and take it away from me. But I’ll always have it with me.”

  Mary stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. When she got home she pinned the locket to her chemise and hid it under her clothing.

  On Christmas Eve afternoon Mary and Uncle John trudged through the woods beyond the back pasture looking for a tree.

  “Some nice white spruces here, Mary,” John said. “And this is the real straight one that I thought would do. What do you think?”

  “I think that one’s better,” she said, pointing to a tall tree just at the edge of the grove.

  They walked over to where it stood and Uncle John waded around it through the knee-deep snow.

  “It has a couple bald spots,” he observed, wrinkling his brow.

  “I think it’s sad because it’s skinnier that the other ones,” Mary told him. “I think it needs a home.”

  Uncle John grinned and chopped down her pick. He lifted it onto the sled and Mary walked along behind him and their tree. When they got home Uncle John nailed the tree to two boards and then nailed the boards to the floor in the parlour, while Little Helen and Harry danced around
with excitement. Mary decorated it with candles and helped the little ones make bows out of red tissue paper.

  “Oh, go ahead, but it’s going to be a big mess and you’re cleaning it up,” Mabel grumbled as she allowed the children to place pine boughs on the whatnot and on top of the photograph of her Uncle Oliver and on the mirror above the sink in the kitchen.

  For Christmas morning they would receive the colourful mittens that Mabel had knitted and the gifts sent by Grandpa Hennessey and Aunt Beatrice.

  “I’m just too tired to make anything for anybody this year,” Ann declared.

  “The way your hands shake now,” Mabel huffed, “you’re not able to thread a needle or knit a stitch anyway.”

  “Fetch me my purse, Mary,” Ann directed.

  Digging out some money, she handed it to her daughter.

  “Here, that should be enough. Go to Bailey’s and get some ribbon and penny candy, and a few apples and oranges. We’ll put them in the little ones’ stockings on Christmas Eve.”

  By nine o’clock that night, the house was quiet. Little Helen and Harry had been so excited about Father Christmas that it was difficult to get them settled down. Harry was frightened about the prospect of a strange man coming into the house, magically, as Uncle John had described, by way of the stovepipe, but Mary finally got him to sleep with a few more Mother Goose stories.

  “Father Christmas would be the last person in the world to hurt you,” she whispered in answer to the child’s worry. She placed the covers over him more snugly and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Harry and Little Helen had had their baths before bed and now it was Mary’s turn.

  The water in the galvanized tub was still warm but she wanted to heat up another kettleful. Mary primed the pump and filled the kettle with cold water. Then she lifted one of the lids off the stove and stirred the smouldering ashes. They burst back into flame and she put in a piece of wood. She’d make sure the fire was banked again before she went to bed. While she was waiting for the water to heat, she sat at the kitchen table and, by the lantern light, read the Chignecto Post that Uncle John had brought home from Bailey’s store that day. Looking at the Amherst and Pugwash stores’ advertisements for fruits, candy, Christmas geese, and the latest fabrics for holiday dresses and coats, Mary wondered what Aunt Beatrice had sewed herself for tomorrow. Then she remembered that whatever Beatrice wore, it would be black. Grandma Hennessey had been dead only three months and Aunt Beatrice, like the rest of the family, was still in mourning. The paper’s front page featured a Christmas serial about a lost puppy. As she read she moved her fingers along the rope-like design on the locket’s smooth surface. It was now round her neck, hanging from an old chain she had found in her mother’s jewellery case.

  Mary had read halfway through the story when she heard the water starting to boil in the kettle. She took the chain off and laid it on the table by the paper. She walked to the stove, picked up the kettle, tipped it over, and let all the lovely hot water spill out into the tub. As she swirled it around with her hands to distribute its heat, the lamp light cast a glow over both the room and the water. After placing the kettle on the seat of the chair beside the tub, she removed her clothes. Letting them fall to the floor, she eased herself down into the tub. The water rose to her neck. She closed her eyes and lay back.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to do this every day, she thought and then giggled to herself over the extravagance. That was something rich people could do maybe, but even they probably never took a bath every day.

  Mary leisurely washed herself all over with a washcloth and the last of the Pear’s soap that Aunt Beatrice had given her in August. Then she stood up in the tub and reached over for the kettle to wet her hair. She was facing the kitchen window that looked out over the barnyard. She glanced towards the window and froze. There was someone looking in, watching. Her father. She felt an involuntary chill deep in her body. For a moment they stared at each other, motionless, then Mary let out a sob and slid back down into the tub. When she looked up again, he was gone.

  It won’t take long, he reassures me. I’ve heard it can be pleasant, like going to sleep in a warm bath.

  Rockley

  Nova Scotia

  January 1877

  “Mumma, may I talk to you about something?”

  All the way home from school Mary had practiced what she was going to say to her mother about Will. Since Christmastime he had stayed away from her. But just before he went back to Wallace on Sunday, he...Mary tried not to think about it. She was half tempted to tell Smith about him bothering her, but shame and fear of what might happen stopped her.

  Every Saturday evening, now, she took a pan of hot water up to her bedroom and, with the top of a chair fitted securely under the doorknob and the curtains closed, gave herself a sponge bath.

  Ann was alone when Mary came into the parlour.

  “Of course, dear. Come and sit beside me. Grandma Harney took the little ones over to call on Fannie Burbine.”

  “You look tired, Mumma.”

  “Yes, I’ve just woken up. Now first, can you mix me up sugar and some of Uncle John’s rum in a glass? You know where it is in the kitchen.”

  Mary hesitated. “Do you need it right now?”

  “Yes, Mary, I do. Go and do as I say and then we’ll have a nice chat all by ourselves. And don’t forget to bring a spoon.”

  Mary’s hands shook as she poured the rum into the tumbler. Maybe I’ll wait and tell Mumma another time. What could Mumma do anyway? It would only lead to a big fight with everybody yelling at me. But it’s not fair, it’s just not fair.

  When Mary returned to the parlour, Ann bent over the side of the sofa and felt around beneath it. She retrieved a small bottle, undid the cork, tipped the bottle over, and shook some yellowish-white powder into the tumbler, then stirred it around with a spoon.

  “Here, put this back under there for me.” Nobody needs to know about it. It’s my spare.”

  Ann was going through more medicine than her doctor could keep up with, and often sent Mary to fetch it from Bailey’s store.

  “Dr. McGee’s tonic is the best. Get that if he has it,” she always instructed. “Along with what Dr. Creed gives me it helps so much, you’ll never know.”

  There was a half bottle of Dr. McGee’s tucked away behind the pillows Ann rested against.

  Mary looked at her mother’s brown teeth and watery eyes and didn’t think that she was being helped at all.

  “Now, what is it you wanted to talk about?”

  Ann nudged over closer to the back of the sofa and patted the cushion. But Mary knelt on the floor.

  “Oh nothing, I just wanted to sit with you for a while.”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing, dear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, your father was just saying the other day that he was worried about you. Said you seemed moody lately and out of sorts. Is that what’s wrong?”

  Mary felt her temper rise.

  “If I’m moody, it’s Pa’s fault not mine.”

  “Your father only wants the best for you, dear.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean?

  Mary shrugged and hesitated before speaking.

  “It’s hard to talk about. I don’t know how to say it. I don’t want you to be mad at me.” She felt a spot of cold in the pit of her stomach. She had never spoken out loud about what her father did before.

  “Why would I be mad? Is it about your monthly visitor? We talked about that, it must be two years ago now?”

  “No, not that.” Mary shook her head.

  “Then what?”

  Mary bit her lip. Tears smarted her eyes.

  “It’s Daddy,” she blurted out. “He’s always trying to touch me. It scares me.”

  “What do you mean,” Ann asked, taking the last gu
lp of her drink.

  “He tries to touch me and kiss me when nobody’s around. And last week he tried to get me to…to….”

  “To what?” Ann was sitting bolt upright now.

  “To touch…his pants.” Mary was crying now.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mary.” Ann folded her arms across her chest, still holding the empty glass.

  “And at Christmas I was taking a bath and he was looking in at me through the window and after that he tried to get into my room.”

  “How can you say such things?” Her mother was fully awake now. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying.” She turned her head away from the girl.

  Mary was pleading now, her heart pounding.

  “No, I’m not, Mumma, I’m really not. He’s my father, why is he doing things like that? Is it something I’m doing? Let me know, please.”

  “You’re lying to hurt me.” Ann slapped Mary across the face. “I don’t ever want to hear you talk that way again. I’m ashamed of you.”

  Ann folded her arms.

  Mary was crying and holding her cheek as she rose from the floor.

  “Get out.” Ann pointed towards the doorway.

  Mary ran from the room. Mumma doesn’t believe me, just doesn’t believe me at all. Now she’ll tell Pa and he’ll tell Grandma and I’ll really be in trouble. I should have known better.

  Mary made her way up the stairs to the hallway, her heart pounding.

  “Maybe I should just run away,” she yelled before slamming her bedroom door.

  Ann sat and looked at the wall for a long time. She had heard Will at Mary’s door, sometimes in the night. She had been awakened by the noise of her daughter running up the stairs on Christmas Eve. She had often seen the look in Will’s eyes as they followed Mary around the house.

  He wouldn’t do something like that, she reasoned.

  She reached back behind the pillows and grasped the bottle of tonic. She released the cork and took a long drink.