And then we went to your house, and you know the rest.
Well, not all of the rest. Before we left the parking lot at the pancake house I told Dad that he ought to know Mom had a boyfriend. I wanted him to know. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t. He wouldn’t believe me, so I had to tell him how I knew, which was because we conveniently ran into him and his two boring kids when we were out with Mom for a bike ride a few weeks ago, just before Paris’s birthday. We were on the bike path and Mom was, like, Oh look, someone from work, and Oh, what a coincidence, he’s got a picnic with him too, so why don’t we eat our picnics together? And we had to sit on the grass in the park with this stranger while he introduced us to his kids as though that were somehow important, and she had a blanket and fancy napkins and everything else stuffed into that stupid basket on her bike. “How was that not planned?” I said to Dad. She’d brought the bagels and cream cheese, and he’d brought the olives and the cookies.
So that is all. That is what our family has come to, and Dad is in Calgary and I’m in Winnipeg. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. At least there’s a pool. It will be okay for the summer. Dad says he will find a way for us all to be happy again, but I don’t know how that can happen.
Thank you again for the beads. I will take good care of them and make sure they do not end up in a lake. I’m very sorry that I took them in the first place. I don’t normally steal things, but my life right now is not normal, as you can see from what I’ve told you.
Yours truly,
Hannah Diamond
So, Hannah had taken the beads, which at least meant that Estella had not given them to her and then forgotten. And even though Hannah had taken them, she couldn’t think of what she had done as stealing, and she did not regret that she’d sent the beads to her, because of the letter she’d received in return.
She thought about Hannah’s question: Did you ever see your father cry?
Never. Not when her mother died, not when they thought Jack was dead during the war, not even in his final year when his mind had failed him. He’d raged in anger, but he’d never cried, at least not in front of her. She didn’t think she could have stood it, seeing Oliver Diamond cry.
She thought also about what Hannah had said about a normal life. She didn’t know what a normal life was. She knew only that most of her life, normal or not, had passed.
From the deck, she watched Peter on the ladder trimming the tree. She didn’t dare leave him alone up there. Who’s looking out for whom now? she thought. He had an old transistor radio that he’d found in the garage, and he’d set it in the grass. Music was playing, something classical. He told her he never again wanted to hear Roy Orbison so he was avoiding the oldies stations.
Estella folded Hannah’s letter and slipped it and the drawing back into the envelope, and then into her pocket.
From the kitchen came the scent of Emyflor’s cooking.
Epilogue
The Diamond House
Estella Diamond died in her sleep. She simply didn’t wake up one day. Her papers were in order thanks to the steady advice of her lawyer, and her will revealed that all she had left to Lydia was her Ford Taurus. For Lonny, she’d set up a trust fund to make sure he received the care he needed when he became an adult. At one time it would have been unfathomable that the Diamond estate should go anywhere other than to a Diamond, but Estella did not see one who deserved it more than those she had chosen as her main beneficiaries. She had taken great pleasure in writing her last will and testament. She knew Lydia would think she was entitled to everything, but so be it. Estella’s lawyer, who had been her counsel since she’d sued her brothers half a lifetime ago, was certain the will was iron-clad.
Still, before she died, Estella said to Emyflor, “No matter what happens, Lydia is never to get her hands on this house.”
“Okay,” Emyflor said, confused about what this had to do with her.
Then Estella made Emyflor hold onto the cross she wore around her neck and repeat, She’ll get this house over my dead body.
“Lydia will get this house over my dead body,” Emyflor said. What she was doing felt vaguely profane but she did it anyway, because she was making Estella happy.
Predictably, Lydia challenged the will, asserting that Estella had been completely demented, and that Peter Boone and Emyflor Santos had conspired to influence her. Estella’s lawyer knew about Lydia’s failed attempt to coerce Estella out of her house with an ad on Kijiji, and Lydia’s own legal counsel told her how much it was going to cost her to lose her case, which he assured her was what would happen. She wanted to know if she could at least challenge the charities Estella had left money to—selected according to what had killed her brothers: depression, lung cancer, and a pair of heart attacks—but the answer was no, and she was forced to accept the will as incontestable.
It was during Estella’s last days, when she slept on the sofa most of the time, that Emyflor broke the white teapot. She’d been waving the vacuum cleaner nozzle around the ceiling corners, sucking up cobwebs, when it got away on her and, bang, there was no question this time that the pot was going to break into pieces. Shards flew all over the dining room. Several large chunks ended up under the table. The spout landed across the room, where it was deflected off the wall and bounced around the corner. The lid somehow hit the window and cracked a pane. Estella heard the crash in her sleep and woke up long enough to say, “What was that?” Emyflor was about to explain when she noticed Estella’s eyes had closed again, so she swept up the pieces and carried them out to the bin in the alley.
On her way back inside, Emyflor stopped and admired Peter Boone’s repairs to the old house: the new asphalt shingles, the gutters coaxed back into their proper place, the trim painted a shiny white. Now she had another job for him: repairing the cracked window in the dining room. Such a big house for an old lady to live in on her own, she thought. She was thankful Peter Boone was there. She didn’t understand his unlikely friendship with Estella, but she could see they enjoyed each other’s company. One could brighten the other just by walking into the room.
When Estella died a few weeks after the teapot broke, Emyflor was told the house was hers. She almost tried to give it back to the estate, thinking it was not right for Estella to have left it to her, but then she remembered that promise she’d made—over my dead body—and she decided she had to accept the gift. Otherwise, Lydia might end up with it.
When the estate was finally settled, she sold the property because she didn’t want the bother of such an old house, or the cost of heating it. Her husband was no Peter Boone with his tools and handyman know-how. When she put it up for sale, she worried that Lydia might try to purchase it, and what would she do then? But a young family bought it, two doctors and their new baby. It wasn’t worth as much as some other houses in the neighbourhood because it needed updating—a new kitchen, bigger closets, a double garage—but the doctors said they loved old houses, and they could imagine what Estella’s house had looked like when it was new. With the doctors’ money, Emyflor bought a practical bungalow in the suburbs, in a neighbourhood where she had friends, and where the taxes were lower and the schools were close by.
After Estella died, Peter Boone returned to Lake Claire because he didn’t much like the city. He went back to working for the Caiges, who were still in business for the time being. The Travellers had been torn down during the year he was away, and the Caiges let him rent one of the smallest cottages to live in. It had been winterized several years before when cross-country skiing had become popular, so he was able to stay in it year round. Estella had convinced him to apply for his old age pension, which he had not previously done, and once the cheques started arriving he figured he was a rich man. She’d wanted to leave him some money in her will but he’d asked her not to. He wouldn’t know what to do with it, he’d said.
During his year in the city with Estella, Peter had visited the scene of his accident. He’d been surprised to see the boxing club
was still there and he’d gone inside and found that the owner of the club was the same man, now a grizzled old-timer. He remembered Peter and the day of the accident, and Peter appreciated hearing the story from someone other than Estella. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her version, but she had been a friend, while the boxing club owner was simply a bystander. Talking to him was like finding old film footage of the accident. Morning coffee at the club became a regular thing. The owner was the only person with whom Peter had talked about boxing since the day his career was ended by a Cadillac.
After Peter left and the house was sold, Emyflor began to clean it out so the doctors could take possession and start their renovations. Cleaning was a long, slow process. There were Diamond possessions in every room and in every cupboard and drawer. When she got to Estella’s bedroom, she found Hannah’s letter in an envelope on the dresser, and she read it with curiosity because she remembered Hannah and her family. After she finished reading, she looked up and saw in the dresser mirror that she’d placed her hand over her heart. That poor girl, she thought. Her life was so much more complicated than it ought to be. Emyflor had a daughter not much older than Hannah and they had lived apart for so long, but always they’d had the knowledge that they would be together again. From the letter, she did not think there was much hope for Hannah’s family. She put it back in its envelope and carried it downstairs, where the clutter in the dining room awaited her.
Her mind was on many things at once that day. Her husband’s immigration papers had finally come through and she was going home in a month—the first time in ten years—to see her parents and grandparents and fetch her family before the school year started. A friend with a pickup truck was coming by later to take some of the furniture Emyflor didn’t have room for in the new house, and after that she had several girlfriends dropping by to collect the linens and towels and curtains she herself didn’t need. There was so much, some of it worn but with plenty of life left, a reminder of the large family that had once filled the house.
She stood staring at the china laid out on the dining table, ten place settings with a red-and-black daisy pattern, too old-fashioned and formal for any table she was likely to set. She knew that it had come from Ontario with Estella’s mother, and she had been trying to figure how to properly pack it so nothing would get broken. If Estella hadn’t told her the china had been a wedding present to her parents, she might have given it away, but now she felt she ought to keep it. She decided she needed better boxes for the china, which meant another trip to the liquor store for the heavy ones. She worried that she was getting mixed up: what to take with her, what to give away, what to throw in the garbage bin in the alley. She had the contents of the house set out everywhere, in the bedrooms, the garage, the basement. She stood in the dining room, Hannah’s letter in her hand, and she was no longer thinking of the letter at all, and in fact she had almost forgotten she had it. She was thinking there were so many things to take care of. Would her children like the new neighbourhood? Would they make friends? Was their English good enough for school?
A red-and-black teapot almost the size of a samovar was right in the centre of the table, with the matching plates and bowls and cups and saucers set around it. One cup was on its side, resting on its delicate handle. Emyflor lifted the lid on the teapot and was surprised to see envelopes stuffed inside, yellowed with age, folded to fit the shape of the teapot. She peered inside and thought it was peculiar, letters in a teapot, but she didn’t have time to read them. She popped Hannah’s letter inside, on top of them, and then put the lid back on and absently set the teacup upright. She thought she might send Hannah a note once she had moved into the new house, and ask her if she wanted her letter back.
At that moment her phone buzzed. It was her daughter on FaceTime, and Emyflor used the camera to show her the china. Her daughter, not surprisingly, wasn’t interested in the china. She was calling to ask if the new school had a basketball team. She was in love with basketball. Could they go to Toronto, she asked, to see a Raptors game?
Emyflor assured her that the school had a team, even though she didn’t know that for certain, and that Canadians loved basketball, especially since the Raptors had won the championship. Maybe they could visit Toronto sometime. “We’ll see,” she said.
They talked for a few minutes more and then her daughter said she had to go, she had friends waiting.
“Love you, my girl, see you soon,” said Emyflor, and then she hung up and went to get more boxes.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the many people who provided comments and answered what must have sometimes seemed like curious questions. I sent one friend into a panic when I asked about induced comas without explaining that I was fact-checking for fiction. Thanks especially to Mac Aldred, Cody Anderson, Travis Anderson, Melanie Daluong, Zach Dietrich, Connie Gault, Marlis Wesseler, the Saskatchewan Military Museum, the Stoke-on-Trent Potteries Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Mistakes or fabrications post-research are mine. Should anyone be interested in source material on the history of women in the British potteries, I recommend Potters and Paintresses by Cheryl Buckley. A 1902 novel called Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett brings to life the early ceramics industry in Stoke-on-Trent, and A Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles by Edward Dobson (1850) is a bit of a brickmaker’s bible. Thanks to the Claybank Brick Plant National Historic Site in Saskatchewan, a place well worth a visit, for both its history and the surrounding landscape; and to the public funders for their support of this novel: the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Canada Council for the Arts. Thanks also to the Access Copyright Foundation, and to Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg for their sponsorship of the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. Finally, thanks to my husband, Bruce, who knows a thing or two about clay, and to my editor, Jennifer Lambert, and my agent, Dean Cooke, who love novels and work tirelessly to keep them coming.
About the Author
DIANNE WARREN is the author of multiple works of fiction and drama, including the Governor General’s Award-winning novel Cool Water, as well as the novel Liberty Street, which was a finalist for a Saskatchewan Book Award, a High Plains Book Award, and the City of Regina Book Award, and was a Winnipeg Free Press read of the year. Warren’s play Serpent in the Night Sky was a finalist for a Governor General’s Award for Drama. She is the recipient of the Marian Engel Award from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. Warren lives with her husband, a visual artist, in Regina, Saskatchewan.
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Also by Dianne Warren
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Cool Water
A Reckless Moon and Other Stories
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Copyright
The Diamond House
Copyright © 2020 by Dianne Warren.
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FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition JUNE 2020 EPub ISBN: 978-1-44-344512-2
Version 04272020
Print ISBN: 978-1-44-344510-8
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The diamond house : a novel / Dianne Warren.
Names: Warren, Dianne, 1950- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200185616 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200185624 ISBN 9781443445108 (softcover) | ISBN 9781443445122 (ebook)
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