That's My Baby

by Frances Itani

  SWITCHED IDENTITY

  HER OWN NEW CAMERA, FOR WHICH SHE HAD paid $1.25, was tucked inside the purse slung over her shoulder. Tobe’s hickory-brown suitcase had been sent ahead to her cabin. At the time she borrowed it, she’d told him, “You see? I’m not going away forever. I’ll have to come back just to return your suitcase.”

  She was three steps ahead of Billie on the gangplank. The two were ready for anything. Hallman had not visited Billie to say goodbye. Miffed at her willingness to leave him, even for a short time, he had ended their affair a week earlier. At Grand Central, Billie told Hanora she was glad to be getting out of the country. She did not want to be reminded of the controlling Hallman every time she passed doorways of city restaurants and clubs. Hanora understood this to mean that Billie was devastated and looking for new adventure.

  They were led to their cabin, and there discovered the wash basin full of flowers from Tobe. The card with them said, simply, “Hurry back, I’ll be here.” Propped on the bureau were “Bon Voyage” telegrams from Tress and Kenan, and from Aunt Zel. A quick look around was enough for Billie to realize that Hallman had sent neither flowers nor message. Billie’s parents, too, had been silent about her departure, though she’d phoned to say goodbye the day before. All three had withheld affection as if affection were a weapon to be strategically concealed. Billie turned and went straight back up to the main deck to watch the activities below. Hanora followed.

  People had been gathering along the pier while passengers continued to board. Friends and relatives below were shouting up to their loved ones, who crowded along the railing. While Hanora and Billie watched, a large group began to board, and cheers erupted from the crowd. A bottle of whisky crashed and glass scattered. More cheers. “Bon Voyage” signs were held aloft; music started up from somewhere below. Hanora and Billie could hardly believe their eyes when they saw a man who appeared to be Duke Ellington boarding with his entourage. The musicians waved to their fans as they hustled on board, laughing and joking.

  “I must be the only New Yorker who didn’t know Duke Ellington would be sailing on the Champlain,” Billie said. “Shows how wrapped up I’ve been in my own sorrows.” Certainly, it seemed as if every fan in the city had turned out to see Duke off on his voyage to Europe.

  WHEN the Champlain finally pulled away almost noiselessly from the dock, or so it seemed to Hanora, the cousins leaned into the railing in a kind of reverie. Others around them were silent, too, as if everyone had drifted inside a soundless interval the moment land was left behind. The Statue of Liberty could be seen through the mist. The magnificent superliner beneath their feet headed in the direction of open sea.

  But Billie was brooding. Hurt and ignored by her family and by Hallman. So Hanora was not entirely surprised when she whispered in her ear as they stood by the ship’s railing.

  “Why don’t we change identities while we’re on board, Hanora? I need to be free of myself, just for a while. We’re almost the same height, same colour hair, same colour eyes. Who would know? We can be anonymous. We could do it for a lark. For one week while we’re at sea. That will cure me of Hallman, I know it will. We can swap passports if we have to. And I can pretend I have a new life.”

  Hanora jumped in after only a moment’s delay. “Yes!” she said. “Let’s do it.” And to herself she thought, My new life is also about to begin. The idea—the fact—of her adoption was still raw after six months, and she would wonder ever after if that was the reason she so quickly agreed to Billie’s mad idea. Her cousin, as usual, was charging into adventure, and would not be looking back.

  The two laughed quietly. In that moment and for the next week, Hanora became Billie Read and her cousin became Hanora Oak. Until they disembarked in Le Havre, they told each other. Only until then. They knew no one on the ship and no one knew them. How could they possibly be tripped up—except by themselves?

  1998

  THE MOVE

  DETAILS HAVE BEEN LOOKED AFTER. HANORA expects complications but cannot predict what these will be.

  The previous day, Billie phoned the apartment twenty-eight times and threatened to bar the door if strangers attempted to enter her house. She ranted into the answering machine. She ranted when Hanora picked up the phone. Hanora stopped answering when the evening caregiver arrived at Billie’s home to help her prepare for bed. Billie did not bar the door for that stranger, who agreed to stay until the client—as she referred to Billie—was sleeping soundly and Hanora arrived to relieve her.

  Hanora spent the night in a spare room upstairs. Because Billie lived so close, it was the first time Hanora had actually stayed overnight. She didn’t like being away from her own bed. She wriggled under the covers, turned side to side, slept only a few minutes at a time. She kept waking, having two-sided conversations in her head. “Why?” Billie pleaded through chaotic dreams. “Why must I leave my house?” The monotones of reason rang hollow all night long. In the morning, Hanora had no idea how many hours she’d slept or if she’d been awake the entire night. Perhaps the pleas and replies had been part of the dreams. Her brain refused to rest; the voices would not shut down.

  NOW it is the dreaded day of the move. For a fleeting moment, Hanora wonders if she should call everything off. Create some other solution with doctor, caregivers, nurses, coordinators, strangers. She briefly considers her own health. Has she had one peaceful night of sleep the past six months?

  Billie might live a very long life. She cannot stay in her house alone.

  The argument in Hanora’s head goes on and on.

  The residence into which Billie is moving is called Respiro. For the first few weeks, until Hanora is able to organize furniture and hire a moving van, Billie will use furnishings temporarily provided in her suite, which is on the ground floor of the two-storey building. She has two attractive and comfortable rooms, and a private bathroom. After a trial period, her own furniture will be moved in. This affords time to decide what to take and what to donate or put up for sale. Hanora is hopeful that Billie will become involved in those decisions. She hopes she will choose specific furniture, paintings and decor after seeing the suite. There are books to move, too, but Billie stopped reading a long time ago. She can no longer focus, or follow the written word. She cannot concentrate long enough to get through a page of a novel or even a short article in a magazine. She stares blankly at the covers of books and magazines as if these are mildly interesting objects that have nothing whatever to do with her.

  As for clothing, Billie filled the upstairs closets with seasonal coats, dresses, jackets, blouses, slacks, sweaters and footwear after Whit died. When she had her bed moved down to the living room, she stopped going upstairs and soon forgot what she’d placed in the bedroom closets. But with the upcoming move to Respiro, decisions had to be made. Hanora spent several days of the previous week parading clothes past her cousin for approval. Billie sat upright in her bed, pointed, exclaimed, made decisions. About some items, she declared, “I have never seen that before in my entire life.” The clothing to be kept was packed into two large suitcases and taken to Respiro in advance of her arrival. This, Billie accepted as a natural unfolding of events.

  At the appointed time, the doctor arrives at the house and Hanora braces herself for conflict. Braces herself for anger. But Billie suddenly withers, capitulates. The doctor reminds her of the reasons she requires more care. Billie listens attentively. She looks to Hanora and asks, as if an entirely new topic has been introduced: “Do you think there’s anything wrong, Hanora? Do you think I need more care?”

  Hanora wants to weep, but does not. She explains that Billie will be moving to a place where she will have help round the clock.

  They carry on.

  Passively, heartbreakingly, her beloved cousin walks out of the house, supported by the doctor’s arm. She climbs into his car. He hands the cane in after her, and drives her away. He carries the bag containing her medications and the medication sheets, which he will turn over to the medic
al staff at Respiro.

  Hanora follows in her own car. Heaped onto the back seat are toiletries, pillows, Billie’s blankets, writing paper and pens, jewellery, two purses, coats for various seasons, her CD player, a box of CDs and videocassettes—“I want to bring all of the movies. I want all of my music with me.” Hanora also has the framed Duke Ellington photo and two of Whit’s paintings in her car. One painting is a watercolour of Billie’s childhood home in Rochester, New York, where she spent the first two decades of her life. The other is a likeness of the red-and-white house Billie and Whit shared from 1953 to 1990, and in which she has remained until this day.

  The actual red-and-white house fades from Hanora’s rear-view mirror as she turns the corner.

  HANORA stays with Billie at Respiro all afternoon and into the evening. The first thing Billie does in her new place is turn on the television, which is hooked up and ready to go. While she stares blankly at the screen, Hanora arranges her cousin’s belongings in the bedroom, checks dresser drawers, sets up the CD player, puts discs within reach and waits while Billie has dinner. This first evening, a tray is brought to her room. Starting the next day, she will be taken to a large dining room at the end of the hall. Staff members come to her unit to meet her. Everyone is kind. She asks a nurse if the year is 1964 and looks around in genuine surprise when told it is 1998.

  At the end of a long day, close to ten o’clock, Hanora takes her leave. Nurses have been in and out. A worker helps Billie into nightgown and bathrobe. Billie again asks if the year is 1964.

  Hanora hugs her cousin and promises to be back the next day. Billie looks her over and shrugs. “There are strangers in this hotel,” she says. “But don’t worry about me. I probably won’t stay more than a few days. You should look after yourself more,” she adds. “And wear your clothes right side out.”

  Hanora looks down and sees that her red pullover is inside out. The inner seams display a thick red ridge across both shoulders. In the morning, in Billie’s house, she’d grabbed up the clothes she removed the night before, and put them on before going downstairs to make coffee and to start getting Billie ready.

  She is so beyond weariness, she doesn’t care and has nothing to reply. She hardly knows her own name. She drives home and parks the car in the underground lot. Filament is getting out of his car at the same time. He tips his imaginary hat and says, “Evening, Hanora.” She is surprised, because she is certain he has never spoken her name before. They’ve often greeted each other on the elevator or in front of the mailboxes, but that’s been the extent of their interactions. Filament has a cherry-red spot in each cheek; perhaps he’s had wine with his dinner.

  His heavy wool overcoat is open. He is formally dressed and wears medals across his chest; he must have been at an official function. Hanora didn’t know about the medals; they’re probably from the Second World War. Or perhaps the Korean War. She realizes how little she knows about Mr. Filmore. She almost asks where he’s been. Almost invites him to join her to share a bottle of wine. She wants to spill out everything that’s been going on these past weeks and months. The past year. To anyone. A stranger would be best. If Filament would rather talk, she would listen. To stories about his life or anyone else’s. Anyone’s life but Billie’s. She’d say, “Look, I’ve been so upset, I wore my clothes inside out today.”

  Filament ushers her into the elevator and they stand in silence, side by side, facing forward.

  He looks over sympathetically before he gets off on nineteen, and asks if she is all right.

  She is so moved by this gesture of kindness she can scarcely respond. Her fatigue must be visible. The most she can muster is a nod, a quick thanks.

  She lets herself into her apartment and pours a neat Scotch. She wonders how Kenan and Tress would have behaved if either had suffered from dementia. Thankfully, both had long lives and were spared the indignity. She wonders how one would have coped if responsible for the other. In ways that Hanora is now responsible for Billie. How can anyone, for that matter, understand how a primary caregiver copes? Well, no one. Except those who have done the work. And they know how high the cost: the emotional cost of watching a loved one slowly robbed of intellect.

  Hanora is grateful that she never had to become parent to either of her parents. That must be the most difficult situation of all. She tried to visit her parents as often as she could during their final years. She still grieves their deaths. She is glad that Kenan kept up his photography until the year he died. She hasn’t looked at his albums since they came into her possession following Tress’s death in 1987. Until recently, the albums were stowed in the basement storage room of her apartment. But the shelves in the storage room are being replaced by the owners of the building, so she has carried the albums upstairs while the work is being done.

  By the time Kenan died, he had filled three albums with Deseronto photos, all of which he developed himself. She remembers leafing through the pages during a visit to her parents’ home, and realizing that Kenan had not lost his obsession with the lives of adventurers and explorers.

  The albums are now arranged on a prominent shelf in Hanora’s living room. Some evening, she promises herself, I’ll take them down and examine them carefully. See if I can understand how he worked at unravelling the complications of his own life.

  God knows, he dealt with enough complications after his experience in the Great War. Until she left home in 1939 to sail on the SS Champlain, she had been a daily witness to the way he worked at erecting secure boundaries around himself. He functioned within circumscribed but manageable routines. The routines were of his own invention and offered safety, protection and, presumably, comfort.

  But isn’t it strange, she thinks, how traces of ourselves, the ones we leave behind, are so often by way of the written word. It was never enough for Kenan to allow his photos to stand alone. He felt the need to assign words. Not that anyone would ever comprehend what those words meant. Nor would this have mattered to Kenan. What was important was that the words had meaning for him. Maybe, she thinks, maybe he never felt whole after returning home wounded in 1918. Perhaps he could have taught me a thing or two about feeling complete. Or perhaps that should be incomplete. For wasn’t it incompleteness that reverberated like an echo, again and again, throughout one’s life?

  She allows herself the memory of staring up at those third-storey adoption agency windows in Toronto, searching long ago for her own sense of wholeness.

  Everything long ago.

  And now she follows her impulse to examine Kenan’s albums, and goes to the shelf and pulls them down. She places them on the living-room table and opens the cover of the one on top. The black pages are laced together, the laces threaded through punched holes at the edge of each page.

  She is too fatigued. She cannot enter Kenan’s world right now. All she can manage at the end of this day is to stare out her twentieth-floor window into distant city lights.

  WHAT SHE FINDS

  SHE ENTERS THE RED-AND-WHITE HOUSE AND realizes it’s one of the rare times she’s been here alone. The house has always welcomed her: Billie and Whit, or Billie alone over the past eight years. There has been no reason for Hanora to be here by herself except when Billie and Whit vacationed and asked her to stop in to check the mail and water plants.

  The space feels empty despite the furniture still in place. The bed has been stripped of linens; the living room is bleak without Billie in her TV-watching chair. Two of Whit’s watercolours hang on the walls. The air is stale, though it’s been only a week since Billie moved. The thermostat has been turned down. Hanora opens windows in the kitchen, bathroom and dining room. She opens front and back inside doors to let in natural light. The temperature is warm today, the sun shining. A blessing, she tells herself, and thinks of Zel. Hold close the blessings. Value each and every one.

  She plans to do a cursory inventory of the contents of the house. Prepare and sort for the movers. Make a plan. Make several plans. Set aside the items menti
oned for Ned and his daughter in Billie’s will and take them to Billie’s storage locker at Respiro, which is in the basement of the residence.

  The space under the stairs in Billie’s house also has to be cleared. Hanora will set aside the seaman’s chest Billie purchased in Portobello Road and deal with it later. Billie asked her to take it away after her kitchen was painted.

  “I don’t want the thing,” Billie told her. “It’s yours. I don’t know what’s in it anymore. Old things I haven’t looked at in a thousand years. Papers, old greeting cards Whit and I saved, though I don’t know why. Photos you probably took with your camera when we sailed to Europe in the Dark Ages. I’m not sure exactly what’s there, and I don’t care. If it’s out of sight, it doesn’t exist. But I knew the frame with Duke’s photo was at the top, and I have that now. That’s the only thing I want. The chest has always been meant for you, and I want you to have it now.” All of this said with lucidity. Genuine affection. Warmth.

  Hanora will move the chest to her apartment after she has made decisions about the rest of Billie’s belongings. For now she plans to fill garbage bags and boxes. Grapple with the task at hand, shelf by shelf, cupboard by cupboard, closet by closet. If necessary, she will bring in a helper to assist. Once the house is completely cleared, she’ll hire a cleaning crew to go through the entire place.

  She enters the kitchen and starts by opening the top drawer of the kitchen cabinet. A shock of memory. Billie shutting the drawer hurriedly on the day of the MoCA test. The mass, the mess of pages she tried to hide. Here they are, scrunched and battered, folded and refolded. Writing pads crammed with scrawled entries, loose pages, notebooks, lists on the backs of empty envelopes. Paper three inches deep.

  Hanora digs to the bottom of the drawer. More of the same. Every sheet covered with dates and times. The earliest go back two years. The writing is sometimes slanted from the upper corner, sometimes from the lower. Most writing is horizontal but with cramped additions around the edges. There is no order to any of this. There are hundreds upon hundreds of entries.