That's My Baby

by Frances Itani

  The next day, or rather the next night, Flor vanished. She was asleep when Hanora retired to her own bed; in the morning, she was gone. Perhaps she really did have friends or relatives who could hide her away until the group, under Anya’s tight control, returned to Leningrad and boarded the waiting Baltika to sail back to Britain.

  Hanora wrote about the tight control, even while chafing under the restraints. The guiding hand was one of steel. When she returned to England, she was aware of that country’s astonishing recovery two decades after the end of the war, especially compared with the slower pace of recovery in Russia. Her article was well received, and earned her a prestigious award and several new commissions. But she wondered about Flor. Wondered if the woman with the iron-grey hair and the gnawed lower lip had been discovered without papers, or if she’d been welcomed, as she’d hoped. Flor was not seen again, certainly not by Hanora.

  The Soviet Union during the spring of 1965 was a lifetime ago.

  NOW Hanora longs to move her plants outside to the balcony to expose them to sun. Spring will come, as will other May Days. Dictators will install themselves and be overthrown. Buffoons and thugs will seize power in different parts of the world. Walls will fall. New walls will be erected. Warmer days will arrive because they must, because one season has always followed another.

  She turns away from the window and glances at Mariah’s drawing of the child with the seashell, the mother looking on with love. She wraps her hands around her coffee mug to feel the heat. Outside, along the horizon, crows continue to fly past. On and on, they fill the raw city sky.

  IN the afternoon, she drives to Billie’s house. Snow has begun to fall, the snowflakes so large, so distinct, the scene might have been created for the cover of a children’s book. Hanora lowers the car window and stretches out her palm.

  At the end of the week, Billie will be given the MoCA test. According to Billie’s doctor, this quick screening method is designed to aid in the assessment of cognitive dysfunction and is fairly new—having arrived on the scene a couple of years ago. Hopefully, the results will provide insight into what’s going on inside Billie’s brain. The doctor has invited Hanora to be present; the test will take ten or fifteen minutes to administer. Afterward, he will send the results, along with Billie’s medical file, to the residence Hanora has chosen. First, however, Billie must be convinced to move.

  Hanora has tried several times to discuss with Billie the need for more care. Her cousin cannot afford to have someone move into her house, not full time, not over the long term. Even if she could, the workload is too much for one person; the coordination alone is an all-consuming job. Hanora has done the managing up to now, but—she steels herself—she already has a job.

  Billie is evasive, crafty. She dismisses the care issue as soon as it is raised. She changes the subject, stubbornly stares out the window, has a sudden pain or declares herself too tired to concentrate. “Oh,” she wails, “I feel sick to my stomach.” And that ends the discussion. But her personal hygiene continues to go downhill; she refuses to let the caregivers wash her hair, and she doesn’t care if she has a bath. She is content to sit in her chair without changing her clothes. She stares at the TV screen until she falls asleep.

  After Billie’s doctor administers the test, the home-care supervisor will visit and reinforce the reasons for the move. Hanora has phoned a real estate agent, but she does not want to think about how she will dispose of an entire household of goods. The enormous task of emptying the place will be set aside for another day. The agent assured Hanora that a house in the area would sell for about $170,000. A large leap forward from the $12,000 Billie and Whit paid in 1953. Billie will need every penny from the sale to pay for an assisted-living suite in a residence. She has a small government pension, along with a pension from the city classes she taught to refugees. Her income isn’t huge, but it will cover moving expenses until the house is sold. Hanora and Billie’s bank manager have worked out a plan together.

  HANORA lets herself in through the side door, removes her boots and shakes her coat. The snow has stopped as quickly as it started. An odour of new paint permeates the kitchen. Billie must have asked the student painter to develop the photos of her kitchen and put them in the overnight mail. The framed 1939 photo taken in Le Havre with Duke Ellington is hanging on the newly white wall.

  The furnace thermostat is turned up high. Condensation fogs the windows; surely moisture can’t be good for new paint. Through the doorway, she sees Billie slumped in her TV armchair, a blanket over her legs.

  Hanora scoops up Monday and Tuesday’s unopened mail from the kitchen table and slips it into her purse. Billie has no interest in the paperwork that moves in and out of the house. She stopped paying bills months ago, cannot manage a chequebook or a bank account. Every detail of household management has been turned over to Hanora: banking, phone, hydro, heating, water and sewage bills, taxes, insurance premiums, health premiums, investment updates, pension information, payment of supplementary caregivers, responses to government organizations asking for information. Next to come will be changes of address. Billie’s will was drawn up at the time of Whit’s death, and Hanora is thankful for that.

  Billie’s request to be medicated turns out to have been prophetic. To keep her anxiety and depression in check, her physician recently prescribed a mild dose of medication. Hanora has devised a straightforward chart, a sheet of paper with squares. Billie is to make a check mark each time she takes a pill from her daily dispenser. She keeps the medication sheet on a small table beside her armchair, insisting that she can do this by herself. But the task is proving to be a challenge. Pills have been scrambled, taken at incorrect times, refills ordered improperly. Now Hanora is the one who orders refills.

  Billie has heard the door open, and Hanora sees her scramble to pick up a pen and scratch something onto her medication sheet.

  This isn’t working. Because Billie’s caregivers do not administer medications, Hanora will have to take over that job, too.

  The TV screen in the living room is alive with images of a Vegas circus show, the sound muted. The bed, which takes up most of the room, has been made. Music is blaring from the CD player across the room: Artie Shaw playing “Nightmare.” Billie still has vinyl and a turntable, but over the years she has replaced some of the records with tapes and, now, CDs. She has all the equipment, old and new—even a VCR. She still watches movies using videocassettes.

  “Is that you, Whit?”

  “It’s Hanora.”

  “Oh,” she says, and looks up. “I heard the car and thought Whitby had come home.”

  “Whitby is gone, Billie. He died eight years ago.”

  “I know that,” she says, irritated. “The car sounded like the one we used to have, that’s all.” She does not hide her disappointment. “Why didn’t you walk? Whit went out for a walk. He wandered away and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “I drove because it’s cold outside.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “The music,” she says. “It’s Artie Shaw playing ‘Nightmare.’ Did you know he played saxophone before he took up clarinet? He composed this piece himself. There’s something deathly about the sound. It wasn’t deathly when we danced to it, was it? More of a shuffle around the floor. Seems deathly now. I’d never have thought that in the thirties.”

  Billie knows her music. Nothing has interfered with those memories. The piece comes to an end and switches to “Copenhagen”—as fast as “Nightmare” is slow.

  “We could dance to anything, fast or slow,” says Billie, intuiting. “We could keep up. We had energy. Vigour. We were good.”

  “We were.”

  “I was thinking of the ship,” she says. “That man.”

  “Duke Ellington.”

  “Not Duke. Did you get the photos of my kitchen? The stranger developed them. The pianist was playing ‘Solitude’ when Duke wandered into the salon one evening. You were on your w
ay up from the cabin. I had gone on ahead. Duke laughed, and waved his hand at the pianist. He was pleased. He sat for a while with Ivie. Hodges and Carney were at Ivie’s table, too. No,” she adds, “I was thinking of the other man, the older one.”

  “Were you thinking of Foxy? Narrow face. Long, thin nose, but huge body. He had the most even teeth of anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “I didn’t like Foxy’s eyes. They were small and set close together. I couldn’t see the colour, only darkness between slits. He looked as if he’d wiggled inside layers of thick coats. He paraded around deck as briskly as a large man could. How many coats did he wear, one on top of another?” Billie laughs, recalling.

  “You and I sat in deck chairs on those brisk days,” Hanora says, thinking how good it is to see Billie laugh. “Twice. The weather permitted that bit of insanity. We paid two dollars for rugs the steward wrapped around us, an extra over our feet. What luxury! Duke was out there one day, too, even more wrapped up than we were. I loved talking to him. He listened as if every word spoken to him mattered.”

  “Musicians know how to listen,” says Billie. “They’re born that way. Or maybe train themselves to hear. And I do remember how cold it was before we were wrapped up.”

  “It was late March on the North Atlantic, Billie. It’s March now. I came by because I want to talk to you.”

  “March,” she says. “How can it be March? How did the time whiz by? Today feels like Sunday. What day is it?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “It feels like Sunday. I can’t think what that man’s name was. The older one. Older then. Not as old as you and I are now.”

  “I’m not sure who you mean. The ship wasn’t full, but there were plenty of people around. And I haven’t forgotten Foxy. He was on the make. Especially with younger women.”

  “We were young,” says Billie. “But he didn’t get far with us. Given a full passenger list, he would have made a conquest. But not many people were heading in the direction of war. The effort those days was to get people out of Europe. Still, Foxy was a great dancer. We both danced with him. His tactic was to ask someone to dance and then invite the woman out to the promenade deck. Wasn’t my name Hanora?”

  All of this has come out in one breath. The music switches again. This time it’s Ella, another voice that compels Hanora to stop and listen. Billy Strayhorn called Ella “the boss lady.” She’s singing “Please Be Kind.”

  THE TEST

  THEY SIT AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE. AN extra chair has been dragged in from the unused dining room. Billie is calm at the outset. Relaxed, assured.

  “Are you checking to see if I have all my marbles?” she asks. She and the doctor laugh.

  She opens the top drawer of a kitchen cabinet and reaches into a jumble of paper, loose pages filled with scribbles and columns of words, writing pads. She sees Hanora looking, tries to hide the contents, shuts the drawer quickly.

  Ah, Billie. You should have taken up acting, not teaching.

  She places a pristine notepad on her table, along with several pens and a pencil. She picks up a pencil and doodles aimlessly on the blank page while the doctor explains what he wants her to do.

  “No problem,” she says with confidence. Her smile is benign.

  She watches the doctor’s face, pays close attention now. She is in a rush to draw the cube, and leaves out two lines. Becomes hopelessly confused when asked to join lines and follow a sequence. Recognizes animals correctly. Draws the clock.

  She is given five words that she’ll be asked to recall later. She repeats them to the doctor and commits them to memory. She begins to doodle again, frantically now, on the paper in front of her, which is filling up with squiggles and marks, dots and numbers. Hanora can see, from across the table, that she has written, in the tiniest script, three of the five words she is supposed to remember. She covers them with one hand. The doctor does not seem to notice. Or maybe he does.

  She’s cheating.

  She’s afraid.

  Now Hanora is afraid. She wants to leave the room. She wants to leave the house. The responsibility is overwhelming. This is more than she bargained for. Someone she loves is sitting at this table, desperate to fool her and the doctor. But Billie doesn’t realize how easy it is to see through her attempts to distract. This is the part that is heartbreaking.

  Several questions later, she is asked to repeat to the doctor the five words she has committed to memory. She panics, moves her hand away, bends over the paper, looks down to see what she has written. Even with three of the words mixed into her page of doodles, she can find only one. She invents the other four and seems satisfied.

  The doctor does not show surprise. He provides clues. Billie cannot recall the other four, not after hearing the clues, not even with prompting.

  The final result, which Hanora is able to see, is totalled at the bottom of the sheet: a score of sixteen of a possible thirty.

  “How did I do?” Billie says, beaming. She sits up straight and adds, “You may go home now. Both of you.”

  THERE ONCE WAS A CHILD

  BILLIE’S BASEMENT HAS TO BE TACKLED. A JOB of clearing out. Billie never goes downstairs, hasn’t been down there for more than a year. Because the basement is underground, out of sight, that’s where Hanora will begin. But before going to her cousin’s house, she’ll clear her head, walk to a nearby park that borders a wooded area. She’ll take the winding trail that leads to a bit of a hill. The trail circles the hill and descends to rejoin the main path at the bottom.

  The temperature is kind this day, and as Hanora walks she imagines spring turning to summer. She’s glad she has made the effort to stay fit and active. She walks almost every day. She goes cross-country skiing at the Mer Bleue Bog, a ten-minute drive from her apartment. She is thankful for sturdy hiking boots, given the somewhat slippery ground today. Three women ahead, all using hiking poles, turn and greet her with energy. It’s that kind of day. Sun shines through the clouds and anything is possible. The women are her age or slightly younger; they set a good pace and she is content to follow behind. She passes a bike frame emerging from the snow, half-rusted, the other parts missing. Stolen and abandoned, probably. Last fall’s debris working its way through the dregs of winter. She hikes past a garbage bin with a slanted lid, latched to keep out raccoons and other small animals that live along the river. Despite the latch, food wrappers are strewn around the base of the bin, as if humans couldn’t figure out how to use the mechanism. Soon, a city crew will come along and clear the trail completely.

  As she ascends the hill, she allows memories of Deseronto, her childhood town. The bay out back of the narrow house, seen through veranda windows in all weathers. Coal shed on the left, climbing maple on the right, the shinny to the almost-tip worth the scraping of knees and palms. One time, high in the tree, she had a glimpse into the neighbour’s bedroom, spotted old Mr. Fielding undressing, pulling off his pants. She saw his bare white bum and slid down the trunk, worried she’d get into trouble. She stopped worrying when she realized he couldn’t have seen her; his vision was so poor he often steered his bicycle into the ditch on the way to and from the funerals he attended around the countryside, as a pastime.

  Tobe, who grew up two houses away, came to the yard to keep Hanora company. He, too, was an only child. She told him about Fielding’s white bum, and he climbed the maple but had no sightings. Tobe was attractive from the time he was a boy. Large, wide-set eyes, intelligent face, lean body, hands with long fingers, a thick mop of brown hair. He was extraordinarily calm; she learned to rely on that. He was a year older, but they got on from the beginning. Tobe also had a sense of justice. As did Hanora. Play was fair play. And the two loved absurdities. They invented games, laughed uproariously, shouted and sang, trekked around the backyard, always under the watchful eye of one set of parents or the other. Beyond the flat stones, the yard tipped into dark waters that groped at the shore. The shore was danger, off limits unless an adult was present. Hanora and Tobe c
limbed the maple together and sat on the thickest branch, side by side, partially hidden by leaves, hoping that if they were still, birds would settle around them.

  “Life is treacherous,” Kenan had taught Hanora. He’d heard the words often enough from his uncle Oak, who’d raised him. Hanora wondered, as she grew older, if Kenan truly believed those words. Perhaps so, after his war. But she refused to believe in the treachery of life. For her, life was a wonder, an adventure, a story, one story after another. For Tobe, life inspired awe. He wanted to find out, learn, see, understand what was around him. The difference between them, Hanora thinks, was that Tobe was decisive, immediate. He didn’t falter, even if a decision turned out not to be a good one. Whereas Hanora weighed everything, delayed decisions, was bound by some unswayable inner dictate to consider all sides.

  Outside the house, wind whipped up a spray at the edge of the bay on the blackest nights. She heard and stored the sounds of lashing waves. In summer, in fall, the water stilled. From her bedroom window she could see small inlet, large inlet, curve of shore, jut of land, the wide stretch of Long Reach. So much water, Lake Ontario’s opposite shore could not be imagined. Another country, she was told, another country is far off in the distance, where the large boats and steamers head after they leave the wharf. Where your cousin Billie lives with her mother and father and her older brother, Ned. Hanora tried to believe but didn’t really, because the other country did not allow itself to be seen.

  In winter, the frozen bay beyond her yard became the town rink. Ankles collapsed inside skates. She was two when she learned to pursue Kenan, who carved figure eights on the ice while she turned this way and that, laughing, chasing, trying to follow. No one could catch him; her father could outrace any father, brother, uncle or grandfather she knew. His cap was pulled over his left eye, the sealed eye. A half face of scars. She’d known no other face, though she’d seen an early photo in her aunt Grania’s black-covered album and decided that the younger man in the picture, the one with the plain face, could not be her own loving father, the one who could pick her up with one arm and solemnly waltz her around the parlour. In all seasons, before stepping outside, he reached one-handed for the cap that hung on a nail beside the door. The act of lifting, the flipping of cap to head, so much a part of his fluid movement that he had no need to pause. Only inside the house did anyone get to see the entire face, the curls in his dark hair.