Notes Towards Recovery

by Louise Ells

  “We can’t throw anything out,” Laurent has warned me, many times, even though he himself, if he had no siblings, would pay a firm to come in and empty the house so he could get it on the market and sold. We both know agreeing to terms for the sale will take another eighteen months, but it’s this sale which will pay the bill for the care home, with its suite of rooms big enough for three shelves of books Mémère will never again read.

  By ‘we’ he means ‘you’ - he means me. A few weeks after I had weaned our second son and was able to enjoy a drink again, we celebrated with an impromptu party that involved our best friends, cocktails, bowls of pasta, and more bottles of red wine than planned. I hadn’t seen him so endearingly drunk since our courting days and despite a moment of panic (I must be a bad mother; what if one of us needs to drive the toddler or the baby to the hospital in the middle of the night?) it was a good evening. When our friends finally tumbled into taxis or stumbled off down the street Laurent turned to me and gestured around the living room. “Darling Jessie.” Jezzie. “I’m too drunk to list you all the reasons I love.” I responded to this sweet garbled message by taking him to the kitchen, filling a pint glass with water, and passing it to him. Drink this now, I suggested, for a better morning. But he was determined to finish his speech. “No clutter,” he said. “You keep no clutter. I adore that, you, and I don’t know if I’ve ever said.”

  He hadn’t, but now, when I’m culling the coffee table of magazines and he sneaks an unfinished one from the pile, or I’m boxing up a forgotten yet suddenly favourite item for Goodwill and he protests, I tease him. No clutter. You adore me because we live in a house with no clutter.

  My mother-in-law wasn’t a hoarder, but she kept herself busy by making things. She tatted doilies for armrests and knitted teapot covers and decorated lacy containers for boxes of tissues, and plastic stick dolls with frou-frou skirts to hide extra rolls of toilet paper. Does anyone make that sort of doll anymore, or is it lost, that 1970s craft? Laurent’s childhood home was very different from mine and I loved visiting; it was like a trip to a foreign place. Only after my father-in-law was put into care did I fully appreciate how much he had done to contain his wife’s chaos. Over the next five years, side tables, window sills and finally the kitchen countertops disappeared under piles of stuff. Junk. Amassed and accumulated and unearthed from the attic when she could still pull down the ladder in the hallway and get up there to root around.

  “We can’t throw anything out,” my husband says again as they arrive. “Not before Claudine gets here.”

  “Understood.” And I do understand. My sister-in-law, only barely recovered from her father’s long slide into dementia and death, fought the move of her mother into a home until, finally, Mémère got the curtains caught in the toaster oven, left on while she sat down to ‘read’ in an easy chair and, of course, fell asleep. If the window hadn’t been open a crack, if the wind hadn’t blown the smoke in the neighbour’s direction… No suggestion it was anything other than old age and memory loss, but social services were called and Claudine, as eldest, was offered choices. Move someone in full time, or move Mémère out.

  I give the boys the energetic outside chores: raking the leaves then mowing the lawn. Getting up on a ladder to clear maple shoots and moss from the gutters. Sweeping the paths and driveway. Tackling the garden. We’ve bribed them with promises of a double junk food day - pizza for lunch and Chinese for supper. But Gabriel and Mathis would have come without the incentive. They understand the importance to me of helping family. Pépère lived in the care home, a different one than his wife has been moved in to, for over five years. All those Sundays of their childhood we got the boys up early, drove here to collect Mémère, and took them both to Mass then out to lunch. Even when Pépère had no idea who we were, was no longer able to string words together, French or English, that made any sense, we got up every Sunday and repeated the process. More than one dark winter morning Laurent groaned as the alarm went off and suggested we skip it, no one would notice. I’d notice, I said. It wasn’t for his parents by then, it was for me; I was safeguarding my own old age, setting this example and counting on my sons to bring their wives, their children, to visit me should I grow feeble and deranged.

  Claudine arrives three hours later than the agreed time then sits in the car for about ten minutes after she’s parked. “Watch out Tante Claudine,” the boys yell from the roof as they sweep leaves to the driveway, and that seems to break her trance. She gets out, waves at the boys and then sighs - I see her whole torso rise and fall, imagine I can hear her through the window - and comes inside.

  I thought about bringing decent coffee and a perk, but didn’t want to add to the pile we’d have to take home, so have instead a jar of fancy instant coffee, the leftovers of which needn’t be kept. I’ve boiled the kettle, and put cookies on a plate (my white chocolate and raspberry ones she once claimed to like - I had thought about making one of Mémère’s recipes but that seemed too risky).

  I greet my sister-in-law at the door with a hug and say nothing about the time, or her red eyes, then call Laurent up from the basement, suggesting we all sit and relax for a moment. “Laurent is starting with the workshop and the boys are doing some outside work,” I tell Claudine. “I’ve cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen.”

  “What have you done with all the food? The jams and all the tins?” There is a note of panic in her voice, she doesn’t even say hello to her brother.

  Kept them all, I reassure her, then ask if maybe she knows of a food bank. Though I’m aware a food bank would have to throw them all away, not a single tin is even within a year of its best-before date and there’s a date loaf that is older than both my children. She nods, agreeing, and Laurent gently kicks me under the table. We both know they won’t be dropped off at a food bank, that Claudine will give them space in her basement cold room and never eat them, perhaps occasionally holding one of them as some sort of talisman. A picture of her with the ancient date loaf is so vivid that I blink back a tear and maybe that’s what allows her to relax her shoulders, though she still doesn’t sit, or touch the mug of coffee.

  “I wrote a list,” she says, patting her pockets but not reaching inside any of them. “I don’t know what I’ve done with it.” She inspects the kitchen, running her hand across the cracked laminate counter as if it’s Italian marble, then stands at the window untying and re-tying the faded gingham curtains.

  “We thought it would be best if you pack up your mum’s room,” I say. “I’ll box up the books downstairs.” The basement is lined with built-in shelving, half of it filled with books, the rest a mess of junk which should all go into garbage bags and recycle bins, but I know Claudine will need to examine each item before deciding its fate. A job for the evening perhaps, helped along with several glasses of wine.

  Her back stiffens. “Not the books. You can’t do the books. I need to sort them first.”

  “We don’t have enough time for that,” says Laurent.

  “What do you mean?” says Claudine, turning towards her brother. “We can take as long as we need.”

  Laurent shakes his head. “We agreed. One weekend, get it done.”

  “No.” His sister shakes her head. “If I need longer… I will need longer. I never agreed.”

  My husband says nothing.

  I want to reach out and touch her arm, remind her that when the tip of his nose goes white like this it’s a sign to back off. “It’ll be fine,” my voice sounds artificial even to my own ears. “We’ll get it all done. And Yvette said she might come by tomorrow to help if she’s having a good day.” All those years of church-going did not make me a better person - I am aware that a poorly day for the eldest sister will make our lives easier.

  “I’m going to sort the books,” Claudine says, moving towards the stairs.

  Laurent stands. “No.” It is his cold voice, the one he rarely uses. Enough, it says. No more discussion. “You were meant to be here at eight. It’s after elev
en. You’ve forfeited the choice to do the books. Lisa will pack them up and you can sort them out at home.”

  “That means I’ll get first pick. You’ll miss out on any you want.” Clearly a threat.

  “We don’t want any of these books,” says Laurent. “You can take them all or we can go and dump them at Goodwill right now.”

  Deliver, I think. Deliver would have been a better verb choice than dump. But it’s too late. The conversation escalates to an argument, about- About Laurent putting his foot down, insisting that Mémère’s house be emptied of all her possessions and sold. Though that’s never said, I hear it in every terse sentence. Claudine stumbles over an idiom and reverts to Québécois for a tirade, and I am thankful that Laurent says nothing in reply. She ends by spitting something I don’t understand, clumping upstairs and slamming a hallway door behind her with such force the whole house shakes.

  Laurent looks at me. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t-” He sighs. “I thought I could make it through the first morning at least.”

  “Everyone’s stressed,” I say, rubbing his shoulders, willing him to relax. I was worried I’d be the one to lose my temper, it never occurred to me that my good-natured, even-keeled husband would blow. “And we’ve got lots of time, two full days - we’ll get this done.” If I have to pull an all-nighter I will.

  We kiss, reaffirming the lack of animosity between us. Then he takes three cookies and goes back down to the workshop. I pour the cold coffee down the sink and stand at the window looking at the view which is framed by the yellow and white gingham. This is what my mother-in-law looked at for fifty-eight years. A sloping lawn, a steep tree-covered hill, and then the river. Over the time she lived here those trees, a mixture of birch and poplar, must have grown into the forest they are now. And the river, of course, is different every moment. I imagine her standing here on the day they moved in, amazed at her luck, and as the seasons turned, grateful for all her blessings.

  Her view now, through a discreetly barred window, is a window box the boys gave her, beyond that a busy road and a strip mall. I blink and turn away, surprised at my sentimentality. Basement. Boxes. Books. But first I make a fresh cup of coffee and take it upstairs. Claudine is pulling everything from the closet, dumping it in a pile on her mother’s bed. I put the coffee and two cookies down on the lace-topped bedside table and reach to pat her back in what I hope will be perceived as a gesture of support.

  “Don’t be nice to me or I’ll start to cry,” she says in French. “I don’t know how you put up with my brother, that stubborn mule. You must be a saint. Or an idiot.” She turns away and keeps pulling clothes from the closet as I leave the room.

  She was always going to take it the hardest of the siblings - well, the three siblings I know. I wonder what Annick, if asked, would say about her mother, the house and all its possessions. I take care with the books, as if that might somehow help to ease Claudine’s pain. I blow off the dust, and semi-sort the books that will sit in these boxes in her house for months, perhaps longer. Books should be read. There are charity stores in the city that would put them out on shelves, sell them for almost nothing, so they could be taken home by strangers who would open them, perhaps enjoy them.

  As if to compensate for their years of neglect, I say their titles out loud. An eclectic mix, in no order at all. Birds of Northeastern Quebec. A Pierre Berton novel. Essays. A glossy photo book of Maritime lighthouses. Narrowboaters’ Guide to Yorkshire’s Churches. I can’t remember a story of my parents-in-law visiting Yorkshire, much less by narrowboat, and I make a mental note to ask over lunch - surely this is a safe topic.

  I’d allotted twelve boxes and an hour to this chore, but hadn’t planned to sort as I packed. Now I do. Non-fiction, fiction, hardbacks, one box for French language, another for sun-bleached, dog-eared novels which I label ‘cottage.’ The shelves are three-books deep, and I start to feel like an archeologist going back through layers of history. Valley of the Dolls. Mad magazine anthologies. Children’s picture books. I label a new box: Children/ YA, and wonder if they should go to the cottage as well. How long before we are the oldest generation?

  I need a chair to reach the piles on the higher shelves, sneeze several times as I bring them down and years’ worth of dust clouds the air. These ones need a damp washcloth and still there is a layer of sticky grime. But I’ve realized I can do all the basement shelves; I box all the knickknacks for Claudine to take home and sort at her leisure, when she’s ready. Until there’s only the very top shelf left. I glance at my watch. Time before lunch to finish and wash down the shelves.

  The last book down is a photo album, maroon cover with illegible gold writing on the front. Our Family perhaps? I look at a few pages of faded snapshots with rounded corners. Picnics and birthday parties and a canoe trip. Good. Another safe lunchtime activity - it must have been years since either Laurent or Claudine has seen any of these pictures.

  As I let hot water fill a bucket in the laundry room, I text Gabe, asking him to please order pizza for delivery. Ask your Tante what she’d like.

  A reply comes instantly. If we could drive it’d be faster and cheaper.

  Yes, I say, but illegal, adding a smiley emoticon. There are probably push bikes in the garage you can use. May need to pump up the tires. I add bright yellow cleanser to the bucket, breathing in the smell of fake lemon that says to me, clean. I’m surprised at the message that comes back: yeah okay we’ll bike. Take my wallet, I text, in my handbag in the entryway. The sound of footsteps clattering up the stairs and moments later the sound of the front door. This time next year Gabe will be driving, and applying to universities, and two years later Matt. I’m not ready to be an empty-nester and I attack the bookshelves with excessive force.

  It takes three buckets to get the worst of the dirt from the shelves and I wonder if the new owners will fill the space with their own books or tear them down in order to install a big screen TV. When I’ve emptied the last bucket of dark grey water, I go to the workshop, so barren I barely recognize the room. Laurent looks up from behind a wall of boxes, most of which he’s marked with an X in blue Sharpie, and holds a single finger across his lips, then winks. Eighteen years of marriage - we understand each other’s codes. All of this then, is not going to his own workshop but to The Mall - a covered section of our local dump where people recycle useable but unwanted items.

  I leave the photo album on the kitchen counter and go up to Claudine. She’s finished emptying her mother’s closet onto the bed and is sitting on the floor; it’s difficult to tell what else, if anything she’s done since I left. “What can I do to help? Shall I fold some of these?”

  When she doesn’t reply I look down at her, but it still takes me a moment to realize that tears are coursing down her face. I sit next to her and pass her a tissue.

  “Look,” she says, opening a shoe box on her lap. “Look.” The box is full of crocheted hexagons in dull colours, each about the size of a child’s palm. I recoil at the smell: must and mildew and every cigarette ever smoked in this house for more than four decades.

  But I have to say something. “Goodness. What are they?”

  “Granny squares. Eight boxes full,” says Claudine. “She made them the year I was thirteen.”

  Forty-five years ago. “Goodness.” I’m not sure what else I can say. “That’s a lot of crocheting. What could they be used for, I wonder?”

  “Anything. Coasters, if you back them. Or you can join them up for afghans or handbags… Mémère had a coat. For that in between fall-winter season, all reds and russets with big patch pockets.”

  I fix a smile on my face, make myself hold up a few of the wool hexagons as if admiring them. Do not, my inside voice is screaming, do not make me something from these things. Not a coat. Not even a single coaster. I will not give these space in my house. I will not. I unclench my teeth, reminding myself that I don’t get to make all the choices. If Laurent has fond memories of these things, then of course we’ll h
ouse some. A few.

  I stand up, and help Claudine stand as well. The boys will be back with lunch soon, I say, and as if on cue, I hear the front door open. From the top of the stairs I watch Gabriel and Mathis walking towards the kitchen with a tower of boxes and two bags, and I point at them, smiling. “Looks like they’ve bought enough for a dozen people.”

  Chicken wings, it turns out, and cheese sticks to compliment the cheese-stuffed crust super supreme, and a dessert pizza too, sickly sweet cookie dough covered in mini marshmallows, tiny candies and stripes of chocolate sauce. Seemingly oblivious to any stress between their father and their Tante, they chat about their plans for the winter, a new video game they know we won’t buy them but figure they should mention, what with Christmas coming and all, how much faster it would have been to drive to the pizza place than cycle. When they’ve scarfed down as much as they want (“for now,” Matt clarifies) they ask what job they should do next.

  I want to grin at Laurent: look how well we’ve done raising these good, kind kids, but I know enough to say nothing that could be misconstrued as bragging, or worse, a dig at Claudine’s children, one of whom moved out west and sends only occasional cards, the other of whom was not only fired from her firm but stripped of her accountancy qualifications after a series of fraudulent practices came to light. Last we heard she was working ‘in catering’ in Ottawa, which Laurent translated as making coffee at Tim’s or perhaps serving ribs and beer to students.

  I send our boys off to haul the boxes from the basement. Workshop boxes into the back of the van, books and knickknacks into Claudine’s car.

  “Surely you don’t want all that junk from the basement shelves,” Laurent says to his sister. If I could reach his ankle under the table from where I’m sitting, I’d kick him. I know he’s trying to be helpful, and his tone is playful, but can’t he see how vulnerable a state she’s in?