“But honey, Mrs. B. and I only want you here to keep you safe. Right? Because Mommy wasn’t doing her job keeping you safe. That’s a Mommy and Daddy’s job, to keep their little kids safe.”
“I don’t have a Daddy.”
“Well we don’t know where he is. He’s not doing his job, neither. Jenny, your mom shouldn’t let Ian in the house, when she knows that Ian is bad to you. Your mom made a big mistake doing that. Okay? She has no business having anything to do with a man that’s bad to our Jenny. I’m mad at her for making such a big mistake as that.”
Jenny took the puzzle piece that I was holding and turned it around. She snapped it into place.
“You’re good!” I says.
She smiles but then the trouble is right back. “Mommy says I’m bad.”
I says, calm as I could, “Well, see, I’m mad at her for that too. The way I see it, she’s wrong there. You’re doing fine on being a little girl. She’s screwing up on being a mother. She shouldn’t put the blame on you!”
“Is Mommy bad?” Jenny can hardly breathe. She’s looking at me with her blonde question marks jumping out of her head.
“Now, Jenny, I never said your mommy was a bad person. What I said was she made some bad mistakes.”
God, it’s hard work trying to say the right thing to an abused kid, eh. I was thinking about what Meredith said, that it’s way too scary for a child to think the mom and dad are bad. But what can she think if she don’t think that?
“I miss Ian.” Jenny tells that to her rabbit, Timothy, in a low voice.
I pick up the rabbit and talk for him. “Life’s pretty mixed up, ain’t it?” says the rabbit.
“Ann Toes doesn’t like Ian,” Jenny tells rabbit, “but Ian likes me. Mommy doesn’t like me, but Ian does.”
I wiggle the rabbit’s ear for him. “I hear everything with my big ears here, and alls I ever heard Auntie say about Ian was she don’t like what he done to our Jenny.”
I found out that talking in the rabbit voice kind of suited me. So I kept it up.
“Auntie don’t really know Ian,” the rabbit says. “Maybe he’s got a lot of good in him.” I made the rabbit point up to the sky with his paw and say, “Maybe God, up in heaven, knows what’s inside of Ian.” The rabbit, he waves his paw around the room. “Alls we know, here on the ground, is we can’t let nobody do wrong things to our Jenny.”
She just took my hand and brought me over to the rocking chair. “You smell good,” was all she says to me. She put her warm head against my shoulder and snuggled in, with her thumb in her mouth and her rabbit in the crook of her arm.
Sitting rocking her, alls I could feel was boiling mad at my sister. I wanted Jenny to be mad at her too. It was Sandra’s frigging selfish stupid needy wanting this Ian idiot so bad she can’t even see straight. Still says she’s going to frigging marry him. Blaming his child abuse on the kid….
I guess I got that old rocking chair going pretty good.
Jenny says to me, she says, “You’re speeding!”
I reined in, rocked slower.
I’m thinking, Jenny, Jenny, who are you mad at? You’ve got to be mad at somebody for what’s going on here. You’re not mad at Ian and you’re not mad at your mom.
“Are you mad at Mrs. B.?”
Jenny shakes her head, and then she takes her thumb out of her mouth to say, “Mrs. B.’s nice.”
“Are you mad at the people here?”
Jenny shakes her head.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“You don’t think,” I says to the rabbit, “that Jenny’s mad at Jenny?”
Rabbit, he got his head nodded for him.
I says, “Oh, Timothy Rabbit! Why would our dear girl be mad at herself?”
And the rabbit, he says, “For liking Ian to touch.”
“Well, you tell Jenny that she’s good as gold.”
I rocked her, talking into her soft hair. “You’re a good, good, good girl. None of this is your fault.”
It come to me, walking home, what the answer was to Meredith’s Question of the Week for me. Where was my anger directed? Who have I been mad at all my life? Duh. Me.
16.
THE MAY LONG WEEKEND, we went back north for Dave to hunt turkey with his dad and the cousins. I was looking forwards to seeing them people again. We were going to tell them about our plans for getting married.
Dave says, “Only maybe don’t say nothing about getting across the kitchen floor with your papers there.” He don’t think the folks at home are ready for the stepping stones. My sister, Sandra, wouldn’t know what to make of that neither, so I hear what he’s saying.
The country looked beautiful, driving up. We took what Dave called the scenic tour. First we went through farm hills. It was all that green like what you knit a baby sweater out of. I was thinking that mother nature was knitting a soft green blanket for her spring babies. Birdies hatching in the woods. Bunnies in their burrows under the trees, nursing from their soft mothers. I’d tell Jenny about the babies born in the spring. We should bring her out here for a drive. She’d love to see the clean little big-eyed calves and colts in the fields.
Later in the morning, I noticed that the little ones had played themselves out. They were mostly sleeping now, curled in the grass with their big mothers standing over them.
In the past, I would’ve called myself stupid if I ever cried over a bunch of cows. But I know now I’m crying because that calf we just went by has a mother that stands guard. It has a mother that would moo her lungs out and fight and kick before she’d let harm come to that red calf. It’s pretty sad, you’ve got to admit, when you look at the fact that a Hereford cow makes a better mother than what your sister Sandra does. Or your own mom ever done.
Now there was starting to be rocks sticking out of the fields.
Dave, he smiled when he seen that. He loves it back north. We passed the top edge of the farm country in a few minutes. And then the world was all different. Pine trees, little green lakes sparkling, white birch just coming out in leaf. That must have been rough country for to make a road through. They’d blasted it through walls of rock and laid it across swamps. It had to twist and turn to go around the lakes.
I says, “You’d wonder what they ever went to the trouble of building roads up here for.”
“For getting to Dad’s!” Dave was just a-grinning. Hugging the corners.
“No, but serious. What is there up here? What brought anybody in the first place?”
“Well, of course the first folks was up here, getting around in canoes, hunting. It’s good for all that.”
“Yeah, but our people. What did they come up here for?”
“Oh, there was timber. Bit of mining. Some thought they were going to find a lot of gold. Some of them tried to farm. Poor buggers. Irish. Scottish. Some give up. Lots of them probably died trying. And then there’s a few,” he says, “that wouldn’t live noplace else.”
I asked him, “Why did you ever leave?”
He’s smiling at everything in sight, but then I see like a shadow go over his face. “Well, my mom was sick, eh. And I wanted…. Rosie, I should tell you. I thought if I could make enough…. Never mind. Tell you later.”
I couldn’t drag nothing more out of him.
He’s smiling again. He smiles at the tires on the front lawns with daffodils sprouting out of them. He smiles at the trees and at the rocks.
He says, “Are you hungry? We can stop at the Lucky Duck.”
We soon come to a Chinese restaurant at the edge of a town. It’s got a clump of pine trees in the front, with an old sign nailed to one of them. Good Luck Restaurant.
That struck me hilarious, like “good luck with eating here.” But Dave, he’s been used to it all his life. Says it’s great. Pulls into the bumpy parking lot. J
umps out of the truck. Takes off up the old wooden stairs, two at a time.
They had the chicken balls in that glow-in-the-dark sauce and all that kind of Chinese stuff. But they served Canadian food too, which tasted real good. We had the turkey soup. Turkey was shot across the road from here, according to Jinping. She’s one of the sisters that runs the place. Her and Hong. Their grandma sits at the till and don’t miss nothing, by the looks of her. Jinping tells Dave that their older brother is coming soon from China. A half brother, I gather, that she’s never seen. She’s all excited about it.
I like to watch Dave with anybody. He’s got such a way with him. He calls to grandma there, “You got your boy coming from over home, eh? Your grandson?”
Jinping, she tells grandma what he’s talking about, and her old face lights up like morning. She’s nodding, smiling, talking away to Dave in Chinese. The gist would be plain enough to anyone. She’s happy. Ready to love her grandson.
Good grandmas and good grandpas. Yous might think that yous’ve pretty well did what yous can do in this world, eh. But maybe your best is still to be gave. Your love to the younger folks.
That’s what’s going to carry on down the mountain like what Sally calls “a stream of living water.”
Better than a frigging rockslide.
At the Good Luck Restaurant, it was noon. The people that come in, they mostly said hello to grandma. And called out to each other.
“Look what gets in when you haven’t got a gun!” one old guy in the corner hollers to another who’s coming in with the paper.
“What’s new and exciting in Strone?”
“Rained yesterday.”
“How’s Frank making out with the well?” That was awful funny. There was a roar went up on all sides of the room over that.
I said to Dave, “Who’s Frank?”
“Oh, this lawyer fellow, has a summer place up here. There’s always some Frank joke every spring. Him trying to fix something.”
A woman in her forties come in, and the old guy, Elmer, he calls to her, “I’m looking for a woman that can chop wood.”
“You could hire every stick of your wood chopped,” she says, “and you still wouldn’t find nobody to put up with you.”
They all laugh, eh. Kidding back and forth.
They talked to us too. Most of them knew Dave. A youngish guy come in for a coffee. Him and Dave talked over where people was getting turkey this year. The guy sat down with us. Dave asked him if he was still making the log furniture.
I look up from the soup.
I have to say, “Like garden swings and that?”
Yeah, outdoor furniture.
“With logs, you say?”
Yeah, he said, it was mostly pine log, cottage style.
Then I could hear Dave, like as if he was far away, telling John that we might want to look at some furniture.
John, he starts moving stuff on the table to show us a map of where he lives.
“You know the white church,” he says to Dave, and he sets the vinegar bottle out to be the church, “you go past that.”
I’m froze with my soup spoon halfways to my mouth.
I’m trying to think that there’s lots of white churches and people that make log furniture. But a feeling’s come over me so strong I can hardly manage to croak out, “What’s behind the church?”
Dave and this John, they look at me. I put the spoon back in the bowl.
“Behind the church? Nothing,” John says and I feel like I’ve made an ass of myself. But then it’s a jolt because he adds on, “Nothing but water.”
“There is water?”
It seemed like the biggest deal—whether, behind that church, there was or there wasn’t water. I think I clutched on to the edge of the table and leaned forwards, like a maniac.
“There’s a bay there, off of Lost Gold Lake. Good for ducks in the fall.”
Lost Gold Lake. Oh my God! Oh, Josie. I slumped back.
I said, in like a whisper, “How come they call it that?”
“What? The lake? Beats me. Uncle Elmer?” he says to the old guy that wants a woman who chops wood, he says, “What was the story about Lost Gold Lake, why they call it that? This young lady wants to hear you tell it.”
Uncle Elmer’s happy. Brings his chair and his friend, with his chair and his paper. He takes his time and adds in a few things of his own, but he tells it pretty much the way Josie told it. The girl who drowned and the canoe and the storm is all there. The gold that was lost.
“They say it’s down there yet,” he says.
There was more. John, he takes the metal napkin holder and he says, “There’s a Shell station here on the corner. I’m right acrost from that. You’ll see my stuff in the yard, lawn swings and chairs.”
I can hardly get air, and Dave’s starting to look at me with his face one big question, like the way Jenny will.
I ask John, I say, “The sign on the gas station, does it hang crooked?”
“No,” he says.
So I can breathe.
“They finally fixed her up. You must have been through here a few years back.”
Dave says his girlfriend never come up this way before. “We come straight up 19 last time. We’re taking the long way today,” he says, “seeing it’s so nice out.”
Dave peters out and sits there looking at me. I can see John thinks I’m a few sticks shy of a load. And Dave’s starting to wonder.
John’s done his coffee. He stands up.
“Well, nice meeting you,” he says to me. “Don’t leave without a piece of Sue’s pie.”
Sue’s pie. I don’t even want to know this. But I can hear Dave asking Jinping, “Who’s Sue?”
“Lady in the town makes very good pie for serving here.”
A lady in the town makes the pie.
“What kind you got today?”
“Is her house yellow?” That’s what I bust in with.
Now everybody in the place knows I’m a mental patient that Dave’s kind enough to take out for a drive.
Jinping looks at me and she says, “House of Sue is green.”
Elmer says, “Used to be yella.” He sits there looking at me. He says, “I thought you never been here before.”
“I seen a picture.” I said that to the vinegar and the napkin thing, that were the church and the gas station.
Dave said he didn’t have room for pie, which will show yous how embarrassed I was making him.
“Are you sure?” I says. “It’s blueberry.” Because that’s his favourite.
Jinping, she took a step back away from me, and it wasn’t till I seen her do that, with this spooked look coming over her, that I realized nobody’d said it was blueberry.
“Is it?” That was all Dave could say, looking back and forth between her and I.
It was blueberry.
Everybody was turned around looking at me.
Dave, he didn’t say nothing after we left that place. Waiting for me to tell him what the hell just happened.
I’m hanging out the truck window. “There’s the church!” was alls I could say.
There it was. Sun on the pure white steeple. Water behind it shining like a field full of diamonds.
I’m yelling, “There’s the gas station! There’s John’s! That must be the pie woman’s! It’s green now. Oh look, Davey! She’s still got her pie sign on the fence. There’s the plumbing and heating place! Oh! There’s a chicken running loose! There’s the hardware store! That’s the man Sally is going to marry.”
After we come out the other side, I told Dave, the best I could, what was up. It sounded lame to just say, “Josie’s got a picture of this place.” I couldn’t think how to really tell him. Wanted to let him know the whole year’s worth, how she started, way last fall, seeing this place in like her cry
stal ball.
“This is the town!” I kept on saying. “This is the town!”
Dave, he was trying. There was wrinkles in his forehead from concentrating, looking at the road and listening to me. But he couldn’t make out what was the matter.
“You been weird ever since we went in for lunch.”
I talked all the way to his dad’s. By the time we were bumping up the driveway, past the three cars that were rusting in the yard, Dave had some kind of an idea what it meant to me to find that town.
“I knew we were close last Christmas,” I says. It seemed to make sense to say so, anyways.
Dave’s old dad come out on the stoop in his undershirt, it was that warm. He was waving, happy. Dave threw her in park and jumped out, grinning at his father.
You get to be going on thirty years old and you’ve got a happy face like that when you see your father, that tells me a whole book’s worth.
I was awful emotional at that time. Yous will find that, once you’re started. You once take the lid off your feelings, and out they all comes. You’re mad and you’re crying and all the rest of it.
I’m here to say it’s all right. Let it all come. Go ahead and cry. Go ahead and pound something. It won’t kill yous. And yous will find, too, that the other thing yous can feel is happy.
Don’t want to shut yourself down so yous can’t feel nothing, the way Darlene’s always asking for! Do that and you’ll miss out on happy. Which, in view of the fact that it’s why we’re here, living on the earth, yous wouldn’t want to miss.
Dave and his father give each other a hug. I watched the old man’s hand patting Dave’s shoulder.
This flood come. Tears and tears. Just to see that good father and his son.
The old man put the pot on, that he boils water in. He don’t buy tea, though. Uses peppermint out of the garden. He don’t use the indoor bathroom neither, except for letting guests use it in the winter. That saves him on the getting the septic tank pumped. But he offers, polite, for me to use it.
When we’re all sitting down, Dave’s dad says, “I got one for yous.” He says, “What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but not once in a thousand years?”
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