by Susan White
I would like to meet you and my two aunts sometime. I am glad Dad I am glad Donald liked my picture you gave my picture to your son. He can write to me if he wants to.
Rachel took another sheet of paper from her binder and recopied the parts of the letter she wanted sent to her grandmother. She thought carefully about how she would sign it, and then finally decided on:
Yours Truly,
Rachel
The sun was very warm for the first day in May. Rachel had slipped off her socks and sneakers and was dangling her feet off the side of the dock. The water was cold, but after a few minutes her legs had gotten used to it. The lake was still and the mid-afternoon sun was glistening on its surface. Rachel had already been here longer than her hour, but supper was going to be later tonight because Amelia had gone to Sussex with Zac to buy seeds for the garden. Amelia had been several places since the day she left to go to Raymond’s classroom. She had gone to get groceries with Zac twice and had even gone to the Chinese restaurant in Quispamsis for supper with Jodie last week.
Rachel had given Amelia another letter to mail for her today. She had started talking to Amelia about her grandmother, her father, and Golden, BC. Her plan was to wait until the next letter arrived from Audrey Anderson and then tell Amelia that her grandmother really wanted her to go out and see them. She would seem uninterested at first and then begin to talk more and more about her family wanting her to visit them. Once she’d let that information percolate with Amelia for a while, she’d start mentioning that she’d like to go see them, too.
Jason had called Amelia the other night and even though Rachel hadn’t heard his side of the conversation, she could tell he’d told her that he and Megan wouldn’t be able to come east this fall. He had just started a new job and the new baby was due to be born in a few days. Jason’s little boy, Logan, had talked to Amelia for a couple of minutes. Afterwards Jodie had really laid it on thick about how wonderful it would be for Amelia to see Jason and his family. She’d mentioned several times how thrilled Jason would be if Amelia was ever able to come out to see him. She also added that a vacation would be a well-deserved break after all the years she had devoted to caring for kids and running the farm.
Amelia was exhausted. She had dozed off a bit on the drive home, but she’d woken as Zac pulled onto their road. Her head was aching and she could feel the tension in the back of her neck. The feed store had been very busy, and she’d felt very self-conscious today, for some reason more than she had the other times she’d been out. It was if she could feel every bump and lump magnified on her face. Each time a person had looked in her direction her body had tightened and she’d turned away. She had gotten so self-conscious that she’d ended up going back to the truck before they had chosen all of the seeds, leaving Zac to finish the shopping.
“You should try driving the truck, Amelia,” Zac said now as he pulled over to the side of the road. “You still remember how to drive, don’t you?”
Amelia looked over at Zac as he turned the truck off and removed his seatbelt and considered what he was asking of her. “I suppose I could give it a try,” she finally said. “I still have a license, you know. I’ve kept it renewed all these years because Social Services felt it looked better on the records that I had a valid driver’s license in case of an emergency. They always overlooked the fact that there was no vehicle on the premises for me to drive.”
Amelia opened her door and stepped out. The fresh air felt good and she let herself relax a bit as she climbed up into the driver’s seat. She had not driven since the last time she drove the old Oliver tractor, but hopefully it was something one didn’t forget. She fastened her seatbelt, stepped down on the clutch, and started the engine. And then she drove home.
Rachel was just reaching the top of the path from the lake when she saw Zac’s truck coming up the driveway. She did a double take when she saw that Amelia was driving. Rachel ran up to the truck as Amelia came to a stop and opened the driver’s side door with a smile, clearly showing her excitement at seeing Amelia behind the wheel.
Neither Amelia’s expression nor her demeanour showed any signs of excitement or acknowledgement of what Rachel felt was a huge breakthrough in her progress. In Rachel’s mind, she could clearly imagine Amelia driving the Jimmy out Walton Lake Road and onto the network of highways that would get them to Golden, BC. And more and more she was letting herself get a picture of her father greeting her with a look on his face that could change everything she now believed about herself.
“The Sears Tower in Chicago contains enough steel to build 50,000 automobiles,” Amelia called out as she leaned into the back seat of the cab to get out the bag of seeds.
It was two weeks later when Rachel received a letter from Donald Anderson. He had enclosed a picture of himself holding a newborn baby, and by the date on the back of the picture Rachel knew that the baby was her. She was tightly wrapped in a striped pink hospital blanket and a small pink hat sat slightly sideways on her head. Her father looked scared to death, as if was afraid he would drop the little bundle he was holding. He was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap, an Alpine beer T-shirt, and blue jeans. His face looked dirty with the stubble of a growing beard. She could see what she assumed were her mother’s legs in a part of the hospital bed shown in the foreground of the shiny square picture. The photo itself looked wrinkled, as if it had been in a pocket or jammed into a wallet.
Rachel sat the picture down on her bed and started reading the letter. It was handwritten on a piece of looseleaf paper. Her father wrote about how beautiful her mother had been. He said he had been very happy when both she and Caleb were born. He had told her five times that he loved her. He had used the word “sorry” eight times and used the word “shitty” when he’d talked about what kind of a father he had been. The last line of the letter was underlined. It said:
I thank God every single day that you did not die in that accident.
It was not a long letter, but by the end of it she was crying. After reading it over five times, Rachel carefully folded it back up and placed it under her pillow. Then she picked up the photo of her and her father and propped it up on her night table.
All four kids and Amelia were down at the lake, but only Rachel was determined to take the plunge into the still-cold water. Last week she’d read a news story about a woman who had the tradition of taking her first swim on the May long weekend, and for the past few days she’d been telling herself that no matter what the weather was on Saturday, she was going to start that tradition for herself. She had announced it at breakfast today and the others had made a big celebration of it. Amelia had made a picnic lunch for them and they had spread everything out on the shore. Rachel had waded in up to her knees, and everyone was cheering her on. Sam had run past her after his stick and splashed her as he went by, but getting in the water was still proving harder than she had imagined it would be. After all, she had been looking forward to this day since her last swim in September. Just get it over with, she kept telling herself.
Before Rachel took another step deeper, Bud barked and took off up the path. She looked up to see that he was running toward Jodie and Zac, who were both wearing their bathing suits. Rachel called out that she would wait for them.
“Charles Zibbleman swam for 168 consecutive hours in a pool in Honolulu in 1942,” Amelia piped in as Zac and Jodie got closer. “Three years earlier, he swam the Hudson River from Albany to New York, a distance of 147 miles. Charles Zibbleman had no legs.”
“I feel like I have no legs!” laughed Zac as he rushed into the water. “This water is freezing them numb. But if Rachel wants to start a tradition today, we aren’t being left out. Last one under is a dirty rotten egg!” he said.
Rachel dropped the pea seeds into the shallow ditch Raymond was making with the end of the hoe. After the time at the lake, everyone had gone straight to work, and now the garden was about three-quarters planted. Chelsea
was coming along behind Rachel covering the pea seeds. A few rows over Amelia and Crystal were planting corn. Jodie and Zac were sitting together on the veranda, cutting up seed potatoes. Every once in a while Rachel could hear their laughter.
Rachel could feel her wet hair sticking to the back of her neck. The swim had been fantastic. Once she had taken the plunge and got over the initial shock, the water had been beautiful. Zac had beaten her and Jodie in, but they were just seconds behind him. It had felt so good to have them swimming with her. And she had not forgotten how to swim. All winter she had worried a bit about that, thinking she might not remember how or that her fear of the water might return. But she had done just fine and had swum quite a ways out with Zac and Jodie at her side. The others had cheered as if she had accomplished a world record just like Charles Zibbleman.
Amelia dropped the last corn seed. She stood up and looked over at the others. Another garden being planted, she thought, the beginning of another growing season. She felt so content. She had everything she wanted right here. It had been a good life and she could feel a certain pride for having kept this farm running and taken care of all of those kids over the years. Sometimes she felt like the progress the twins had made was too good to be true. They were a lot more talkative and open now, and she could see them coming out of their shells a little more every day. Seeing the smile that constantly covered Raymond’s face as he worked around outside always made her heart swell. Rachel was doing all right, too, she thought. There had been no more issues at school and even though Rachel remained quiet and guarded, she seemed settled and less anxious. And every day Amelia grew prouder of the adults Zac and Jodie had become. Jason, too. It had been wonderful to talk to him the other day when he’d called to tell them about the baby being born. He had been over the moon with excitement about his new daughter, proudly telling her that they had named her Amelia. He had come a long way from the traumatized teenager who had come to her ten years ago.
Over the last few days she had thought a lot about how she felt the last time she had gone out, about the fear and self-consciousness that had almost paralyzed her at the seed store. She had told herself a few times since then that she had been right to stay here all those years and not expose herself to the judging looks of others. But standing here today, it occurred to her that the joy and privilege of being here was not hinged on the exile she had imposed on herself. In fact, her love of her home had become even clearer to her when she had finally let herself leave. She knew now that she had the choice. She could come and go and this place and this feeling would still be here for her when she got home. And no matter how it might seem, she knew that the feeling had nothing to do with how other people saw her.
“My grandmother wants me to go visit her this summer,” Rachel said as she cut carrot coins into a pot of boiling water. Amelia stood next to her, peeling the potatoes. Rachel had been waiting for days to find the right opportunity to make that statement, and now that she’d put it out there she was dying to hear Amelia’s response.
“Do you want to go?” Amelia asked, not taking her eyes off the potato she was peeling.
“Well, she really wants me to,” Rachel answered nervously. “But she lives in British Columbia. It is not like it’s just down the road. She really wants to meet me. My two aunts want to meet me, too. And my father wants to meet me. Well, he has already met me, of course, but he doesn’t really know me. He would like to get to know me. I have cousins, too. And my grandmother says they want to meet me. I don’t have a grandfather. He died before I was born. He has a sister in Revelstoke, though, and she also wants to meet me.”
“Wow, that is a lot of people that want to meet you,” Amelia said. “Do you want to go?” she asked again.
Rachel started to cry. She certainly hadn’t planned on that. She had just planned on indifferently dropping the fact that her grandmother and other family members really wanted her to go. She wasn’t ready to give any indication that she actually wanted to go. She wasn’t even positive that she did. But when Amelia asked her if she wanted to go, the emotion had flooded through her and completely caught her off-guard.
Amelia put the paring knife on the side of the sink and turned toward Rachel. For the first time since her arrival nine months ago, Rachel reached out to Amelia and allowed herself to seek comfort in the woman’s arms.
Supper was over, the dishes were done, and the table was set up for a game of dominoes. Everyone had just sat down to start playing when Amelia made the announcement to the others.
“We need to come up with a plan to get Rachel to British Columbia this summer. I’m going to go with her, and I am going to Calgary to see Jason and Megan on the way. I won’t fly, but taking a train or a bus might be a possibility. Or I suppose I could drive, if I had a car.”
There was a moment of stunned silence as the others at the table processed what Amelia had just said.
“Zac has the Jimmy he bought from Brad Campbell ready for the road again,” Raymond finally offered as he looked up from his dominoes. “Maybe you could drive that.”
“And maybe Jodie could stay with us while you’re gone,” Chelsea piped in.
“You could go have tea at the Empress Hotel, Amelia!” Chrystal chimed.
“Wow, those are great ideas!” said Amelia. “And you guys came up with them so quickly—almost as if you’d been thinking about them already! It seems like maybe there has been a bit of a secret mission going on here. Do you know where the saying ‘Mum’s the word’ comes from, you secret keepers? It comes from the sound you make when you speak with your mouth shut tight. Mmmm. If you want to keep a secret, mummmm is the word to say. Apparently mum’s been the word around here for a while.”
Chapter 7
Going Down the Road
The month of June was busy with the preparations and work that needed to be done to get ready for Amelia and Rachel’s trip. It hadn’t taken long after Amelia’s May long weekend announcement to get the ball rolling. Zac had driven the Jimmy into the yard the next day and assured Amelia that it was in good working order. Jodie had bought her seat covers for the two front seats. For two weeks Amelia had practised using the four-speed shift by driving in and out the road and up and down Zac’s steep driveway. Then she and Zac had gone to Hampton and registered the truck in her name. The next day she’d driven the kids to school and she’d been driving it every day since.
Amelia was keen about the trip and realized it wouldn’t be a short one if they were to drive all the way across the country. It had been difficult to convince her that she could leave the kids and the farm for a whole month, even though everything was running smoothly on that front. The garden was all planted and everything was up and growing. The new meat king chickens and turkeys had been picked up and the cow had birthed her calf.
Raymond and the twins had repeatedly told Amelia that they would be fine if she went. Jodie had somehow managed to get the whole month of July off work and was planning to stay at the farm for the entire time. Zac had assured Amelia that he would keep everything under control and that she deserved a vacation.
Amelia had called Sarah Thompson and asked her if there was any problem with her taking Rachel out of the province. She told Amelia that all it required was written permission from her as Rachel’s social worker. She also said that she would be able to give them the July support cheque in advance so that it could be used to help with the trip’s expenses.
Rachel was a bit overwhelmed with the way things were coming together so quickly, and as the time to leave got closer she found herself wondering why she had ever thought going to meet her family was a good idea. Even as she listened to the others reassuring Amelia that going was a great idea, she came up with a ton of reasons why it was the stupidest idea she’d ever had. But she kept those thoughts to herself. It wasn’t until the day before they were planning to leave that it caught up to her and she finally told Jodie what she wa
s really feeling.
“I wish the letter had never come from my grandmother,” Rachel said as she and Jodie sat together by the lake late one Saturday afternoon at the end of June.
“Why do you say that?” Jodie asked.
“If I had never gotten her letter I still wouldn’t know anything about her or my father and I never would have thought of leaving here. How can I do my part if I’m driving across Canada? And what about my hour at the lake? And I’m going to miss a whole month of swimming. What about the haying? What about the cooking and other chores? How are you guys going to handle things without having Amelia here? What if one of the twins falls out of the hayloft and breaks her arm? And what if I end up wanting to stay in BC.? What if I want to stay and nobody there wants me to?”
“You have thought of lots of things to worry about, haven’t you?” Jodie said. “But think for a minute about what you have done by putting together this plan. Amelia is taking a trip across Canada when this time three months ago she hadn’t left home for thirty years.”
“But I’m taking her away from you guys.”
“Raymond and the twins are showing more independence and courage than we ever would have thought possible. You have given Zac and me an opportunity to do something for Amelia for a change. We can hold down the fort and give her a chance to get away for a few weeks.”
“But what about Amelia?” Rachel asked. “Do you think she is just doing this for me, or do you think she really wants to go?”
“I think she wants to go,” Jodie answered. “She’s going to get to visit Jason and his family. She’s going to get to live her dream of having tea at the Empress Hotel. Of course she’s going for you, but she must want to do this for herself, too, or she wouldn’t be doing it.”
“What about my grandmother and my father?” Rachel said, fidgeting with a string hanging off of her T-shirt. “Am I just fooling myself to think I am going to find this perfect family waiting for me? I’m sure my dad isn’t instantly going to become Father of the Year as soon as he sees me.”