Rush Home Road

by Lori Lansens

  A few more women flowed out from the kitchen fussing with pastry trays and pies and crocks of beans and pans of scalloped potatoes. It took three of them to carry a huge covered roasting pan and the look and smell of the food reminded Addy she’d eaten only a few apples since her chicken-leg supper the night before. She was perspiring from hunger and heat but she dared not doff her coat or boots before she was invited to do so by her host, and as yet she didn’t know which one of the women was Mary Alice. She pressed herself against the wall, watching, waiting, and wondering what to do next.

  The women, whatever they were saying to Olivia, seemed to be making the girl more miserable. Addy’s heart thumped as Olivia’s sobs grew louder. She could only imagine the horror that must have befallen the young bride. Oh Lord, Addy thought, the groom has fled town. Or worse, it’s been discovered he was already married. Or maybe his parents forbade the union at the last moment, reckoning a restaurant owner’s son could do better than to wed a farmhand’s daughter. Poor Olivia’s wails had reached a crescendo and finally she blurted, “They don’t match. They don’t match!”

  Addy stood on her tiptoes to see into the crowd of women. What didn’t match, she wondered, that would make Olivia sound so desperate? And then she saw, in Olivia’s hands, a pair of beautiful silky white slippers. It was Willow who’d pointed out, and caused a fresh flood of tears, “Only time folks is gonna see your shoes is when you’re dancing, Livvy. If you really care so much, why, just slip them off and go barefoot!”

  “They’re white!” Olivia wailed. “They’re white and they’re wrong and they spoil this gown! They do!” She held the slippers against the bodice of her dress and cried in horror, “Look!”

  Olivia was right. The slippers were too sharp and too white and didn’t favour the less dazzling, soft, creamy tone of the dress. Addy knew right away what to do, for she remembered Laisa fretting over her new white curtains for the bedrooms, which she very much wanted to match with her old faded curtains in the front room “so it looks just right from the street.” It wasn’t until the whole room went silent and one by one they turned to look at her that Addy realized she’d spoken her thoughts out loud.

  A stern older woman wearing a blue dress and smart hat stepped forward and eyed her coolly. “The wedding starts in exactly six minutes and Darryl’s already at the church. How exactly do you think you can take the white out these slippers in six minutes, Young Lady?”

  Olivia watched Addy in her too-big coat and boots and didn’t think to wonder who she was or why she was there. She brushed back her veil and wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, “Can you do it? Can you? It ruins everything if they don’t match.”

  Addy moved through the crowd, taking the slippers and turning back to the woman in the blue dress to ask, “Is there tea? And an old handkerchief?”

  There were murmurs all around, especially among the older women, for it was common to use tea as stain. The woman in blue returned at once with a cup of tea and a torn handkerchief, which Addy quickly dipped and wiped over the silky surface of the slippers. In less than seconds the tea soaked the satin and the white disappeared, and though the tone was not so soft and creamy as the gown, it was better and closer, and Olivia started to cry all over again. “Thank you. Oh thank you,” she said. She eased her feet into the tea-damp slippers and sailed out the door with the rest of the crowd in tow.

  Addy stood alone in the room, which seemed much larger now, though the energy of the women and the smell of the food on its way to the church basement still clung to the air. She’d been forgotten and was severely relieved, for she didn’t see how she could go into a church, any church, and she’d feel foolish pretending to celebrate the wedding of a spoiled young woman whose acquaintance she’d just made. Besides, she was still feeling sorry enough for herself over her soured love with Riley Rippey and the too-recent tragedy of her baby’s death.

  Though she felt a little strange, Addy slipped out of her coat and boots, settled into one of the high-back chairs by the window, and closed her eyes. It was almost dark when she awoke but she didn’t feel afraid and remembered right off she was at the Ferguson house in Chatham. On the table in front of her was a plate of wedding food, which she smelled before she saw, that someone fixed and brought over and went to the trouble of covering with a pot lid to keep warm. There was also a glass of milk and a slice of butter pie and three different kinds of fruit squares. Addy smiled when she saw the food, and looked around, even as she knew she was alone and there was no one to thank but the Lord. She reckoned it must have been Willow who remembered her and she felt ashamed once more at how she’d hated the old woman when first they met. She ate every last morsel much too quickly, then closed her eyes and fell instantly back to sleep.

  When Addy woke again, it was morning, and this time she was confused and felt like she might be dreaming. She was not upright in the chair by the window but supine on the sofa, a soft pillow beneath her head and a warm blanket covering her body. She could smell coffee, and after her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see a woman sitting across from her. The woman was tall and sat queenly in her chair. Her head was perched on a neck so long and slight it seemed in the process of being swallowed by her collar. She was in silhouette against the window and her details were lost in shadow, but Addy guessed the woman young rather than old, and pretty, if not outright beautiful. The woman turned to look out the window and Addy glimpsed her feline eyes.

  Addy sat up, feeling caught and guilty. “Ma’am,” she said.

  The woman turned, took a slow deliberate sip of coffee, and gestured at the cup she’d set on the table for Addy. “Mary Alice. You call me Mary Alice.”

  Addy rubbed her eyes and thought it strange she couldn’t remember the woman’s face from the crowded room yesterday. “Thank you for your hospitality, Ma’am. I know it musta been a surprise to have Willow bringing me here on your daughter’s day and I just hope I wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “No trouble, Child. In fact, we was all talking later about how surprising it was none of us thought to take them slippers down with tea. Suppose it needs a person looking in from the outside to see things clear sometimes.”

  “Your daughter looked very beautiful. Was it a lovely wedding, Mary Alice, Ma’am?”

  “Yes it was. And she did look beautiful, didn’t she?” Mary Alice coughed so she would not cry. “Can’t believe she’s gone. Can’t believe how fast the years passed. I look at my hands and I see them wiping carrot mash off my baby girl’s face. I can’t believe she’s married now. Can’t believe it won’t be long before she has a child of her own and she looks down at her hands, and sees mine. Wish she was small for just one more day, so I could hold her like I used to, so she’d need me like she used to.”

  Addy sipped some of the steaming coffee and said nothing, for all she wanted herself was to hold her own baby and to be held by her own Mama. She wondered if Willow had told her daughter-in-law her story, or at least what Willow knew of her story, but dared not ask.

  “You can’t stay here, Child,” Mary Alice said evenly.

  Addy looked at her, thinking she had not heard right. “Ma’am?”

  “Not even for one night.”

  Addy nodded and did not know what to do except rise and look for her coat.

  “Sit down, Adelaide. That’s your name, Adelaide?”

  She nodded. “Addy.”

  “Sit down, Addy. I want to explain it, because I’m surely grateful for what you did yesterday. No telling where Olivia’s drama might have ended. I believe you changed the course of the whole wedding.”

  “I only took the white out her slippers.”

  Mary Alice took another sip of coffee and did not look at Addy directly. “Willow told me about your recent troubles. I feel sorry for you. I really do. I came to see you yesterday but you were fast asleep.”

  Addy could see now that Mary Alice was older than she first appeared. Closer to her own mother’s age than hers, but still much y
ounger-looking than Hamond. It suddenly occurred to Addy. “You brought the food?”

  “My mother-in-law is a good person but she does get to telling folks how it is. In the meantime she misplaces how it really is and what she ought to be doing about it. I asked her who you were and she told me about the man on the train, and I asked her where you were and she said she thought she’d seen you helping some of the ladies in the church kitchen. I knew by watching you yesterday you wouldn’t be comfortable just coming along to the church and I guessed you were still back here. I guessed right you hadn’t had much to eat.”

  Addy shook her head. “Thank you, Ma’am. It was one of the best suppers I ever took in my life.”

  Mary Alice nodded and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you, but let me just say it plain. See, Addy, my husband, Hamond, is a good man. But he walks in his Daddy’s shoes and Willow knows all about that. It’s in his nature and I knew it when we wed. I don’t mind so much, long as he tells me who she was and who else knows, so I don’t seem a fool if it ever comes up outside the home.”

  The coffee was strong and Addy was awake, but she still could not believe she was hearing right. Was Mary Alice saying that Hamond was unfaithful? Addy looked away. “I’m sorry to know, Ma’am.”

  “Like I say, I really don’t mind so much. Not a blessed thing I could do if I did. It’s just that Hamond’s father went away with one of his women and never was seen again. I still got two small boys to grow here and I’m not about to have my man run off with a girl younger than my daughter.”

  “No, Ma’am.” Addy couldn’t believe what she was hearing and had no idea how to respond.

  “I overheard my Hamond last night, talking with some of his men friends, saying how you was gonna be staying with us all and about how you was giving him eyes all the way back from the train station.”

  “Ma’am?” Addy was too stunned to protest.

  “I didn’t believe him. Fact is though, if Hamond thinks you like to be with him, he’ll just work you till you do. And he has a way about him that ain’t so evident on first glance.”

  Addy shook her head and felt nauseated by the thought of Hamond and the way he’d looked at her when he helped her off the train.

  Mary Alice looked out the window again. “Hamond knew your father.”

  Addy shuddered. “My father?”

  “Wallace Shadd?”

  Addy nodded slowly.

  “Hamond used to talk with him at the factory when he brung the harvest in on the truck. He said he knew who you were the very second he laid eyes because you happen to be the image of your Daddy.”

  Addy swallowed the bile in her throat and waited. She sensed there was more and worse to come.

  “You don’t have to look at me like that. I got a good idea about what happened to you in Rusholme. Same thing happened to me when I was a girl, only it was my own father’s brother. I never told a soul. I knew I wouldn’t be believed. And even then, I remembered thinking, if this happened to me, how many other girls have the same secret?”

  Tears appeared at the corners of Mary Alice’s cat eyes. She blinked them back and sighed. “I know Hamond. Hamond thinks if you done it before you must be ripe for it again. Don’t matter what the truth is; just matters what he thinks is true. That’s why I can’t have you here. Not even for one night. I got to protect my own, and that means Hamond too. From himself, though it is.”

  Addy nodded and rose again to leave.

  “Sit down, Adelaide.”

  This time Addy did not want to sit or to hear any more. She was ashamed, even though she knew Mary Alice didn’t hold her responsible. She watched her reflection in the black coffee on the table and asked quietly, “He gonna tell my Daddy about seeing me?”

  Mary Alice stared at her blankly.

  Addy looked up. “Will you ask Hamond to tell my Daddy he seen me, and to say I’m fine? My Mama must worry so.”

  Mary Alice rose herself now, crossed the room, and sat down beside Addy on the sofa. She took Addy’s hand and furrowed her brow and said, “I thought you knew. Your father passed. Just before Christmas. It was talked about some at Libby’s, as you can imagine, after what all happened with his children.”

  Addy nodded and wondered why she was neither shocked nor grieved. She didn’t ask for any more details and it occurred to her that she knew all along her father would not last, could not live after what happened, or what he believed happened. “What about my Mama? Do you know?”

  Mary Alice shook her head. “Heard she went south. Has a sister in Georgia was it?”

  “South Carolina.” Addy drew her hand away from Mary Alice, set to rise once more.

  Mary Alice pulled her back and smiled tenderly. “I got one more thing to tell you and this time it ain’t bad news. See, I talked things over with my mother last night. She don’t know nothing about you except you come from Detroit and had that trouble on the train and need to stay a few days before you start back up to Toronto. She lives just a few streets over on Murray Avenue. She says you can stay as long as you like. She keeps a nice home and has an extra room, too. You met her yesterday. She was wearing the blue dress. Her name’s Nora, but you best call her Mrs. Lemoine.”

  Mary Alice handed Addy a slip of paper with her mother’s address. Addy read it and asked, “Should I go now?”

  “Yes, yes. Go on now and my mother’s sure to feed you a nice breakfast.”

  “You’ll tell Willow thanks, and goodbye?”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Mary Alice?”

  “Yes, Addy?”

  Addy wanted to tell the woman how relieved she was to be believed about what happened in Rusholme, and how grateful she was Mrs. Lemoine had a room, and how she knew that even as Mary Alice said she was protecting her own, she was protecting Addy too. Instead she said, “Olivia still needs you.”

  Mary Alice nodded. Addy found her coat and Verilynn’s big boots and without another word she opened the door and stepped out into the wintry air. Addy didn’t need to avoid the canning factory after all, and she’d ask Mrs. Lemoine about a jeweller before night fell. She reckoned she’d only be a few days in Chatham. She reckoned she could endure a few days.

  Cream Cake

  IT WAS NOT A few days but five years Addy Shadd endured in Chatham. Addy had saved the train fare and more by the end of her first month there but had not even considered heading for Toronto. Mrs. Lemoine had given her a room of her own and three meals a day and paid her well for the work she did: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and gardening. For the first time in some time, Addy felt safe and believed if she stayed put, she could pretend her life was what it ought to be. Afraid as she’d been when she first set down, Chatham felt enough like home now not to bother looking someplace else. She never again thought of selling Poppa’s ring.

  Addy had a good friend in Mary Alice and was like a second mother to the two little Ferguson boys, Simon and Samuel. As long as she avoided being alone with Hamond there was harmony to the collusion of their lives. Mrs. Lemoine was not a gentle woman, but she was fair and rarely cross. The only conflict between the older and younger woman was over Addy’s baking. Mrs. Lemoine had grown fat on Addy’s pies and cakes and butter tarts and cursed Addy for her temptations. Even so, she fussed like a child when there was nothing to satisfy her sweet tooth after a roast supper and demanded to know if it was because she was too fat. Addy could easily convince her though that her girth was likely caused by her headache medicine and not those second and third helpings of cream cake.

  It was Mary Alice’s belief that it was time Addy settled down with a husband, an idea she shared with her mother but not Addy herself. If Mary Alice had said what she thought, Addy’d have told her kindly but forcefully that she was not interested in a love affair. The fact was that Addy was interested, very interested, in a young man named Gabriel Green who lived on Degge Street, three doors down from Mary Alice.

  Gabriel was, at twenty, a year younger
than Addy. There was something in the young man’s face: maybe it was the line of his jaw or the fluttery lashes over his black eyes, but whatever it was it reminded her of that someone from Rusholme whose name was too painful to say. When he came into her thoughts, she told herself she’d imagined the whole romance, that no matter his size he was just a boy, and she just a girl. He couldn’t have loved her the way she thought, or she him, for in the end she could write down all the words they’d exchanged on a single piece of paper and still have room left for the Lord’s Prayer.

  Addy admitted to herself, but never to anyone else, that at least some of her visits to the Ferguson house were an attempt to cross paths with Gabriel Green and to feel her heart race when his eyes roamed her body in the bold way they did.

  It was summer in Chatham, a steaming, stinking hot July day, when Addy first laid eyes on Gabriel Green. She’d been in town five months and, while living at Mrs. Lemoine’s, was fixed in the Fergusons’ life on Degge Street. Addy was sixteen years old and Gabriel Green was fifteen, but he looked and acted like a man. He’d come to the back door at Mary Alice’s house, head bowed and handsome, professing to see if Mrs. Ferguson needed any yard work done. When Mary Alice expressed surprise at his thoughtfulness, he’d shrugged and said, “Well, I know Mr. Ferguson into his long days at the farm. Your boys still too young to be much good with heavy work. I just thought to offer my services.”

  He’d acted surprised to see Addy there and his act was a good one. He made a show of not wanting to intrude and it took some convincing to get the boy to sit down at the kitchen table and enjoy a cool glass of lemonade. Addy had shivered watching his big hands stroke the slippery glass, and when his lips met the rim and his tongue lifted a lemon slice into his mouth, she’d had to turn away. Mary Alice acted flustered and chatty and apologized later, saying she didn’t know what got into her.