Motherish

by Laura Rock

  “Todd Jennings.”

  Of course. He prides himself on answering his own phone.

  “Hey there, it’s your bank calling. We’re smack in the middle of RRSP season and wanted to reach out. Looks like you have a substantial nest egg, a nice surplus to invest. Doing okay, but we can make that money work a lot harder for you.”

  “I—gee.”

  Such pleasure in hearing him fumble. He’s never been good at voices, and she’s out of context.

  “Markets are rising. It’s a good time to make a move.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about—”

  A screech penetrates the office. Jamie whips her chair around to face the lobby, where Sadie is storming around with raised fists, an opera singer howling at fate.

  “That pig! You can’t trust men!”

  “Todd, can you hold please? Just a sec.” She hits the red button, in control for once. She hasn’t felt this good in a long time.

  Sadie grabs brochures and throws them skyward. They litter the carpet. Customers step backwards but hold their place in line. And there’s Mr. Ludder, patting his pockets obsessively, turning circles looking for her.

  “I’m back. Where were we? Right: you hadn’t really thought. About the money? Let’s be real, it’s your one true love. Oh, no doubt you have more than one love. A guy with your appetites. Why limit yourself?”

  “Jame.” A whisper.

  Maureen hurries into the lobby and takes Sadie by the arm, leading her down the hall, followed by a security guard Jamie has never seen before. Has he always been lurking around, waiting for his moment to shine? Shrunken and spent, Sadie makes eye contact as they pass, and Jamie arranges her face in concerned solidarity, but Sadie’s anguish is too much, too loud, and not, in the end, hers to accept. A clear and exhilarating vision overrides residual sorrow for her friend. Sadie made her choices, and she’ll do the same.

  She listens to silence on the line, patient, until Todd’s breathing grows ragged. For a moment it moves her, but the feeling passes. This is how he wanted her: hard-edged, relentless. She knows how to close a deal too.

  “I’ve got excellent suggestions for where to stick those funds! But here’s what you do for starters: open two accounts and name one of them New Place to Live—”

  “Are you going to let me explain?”

  “The other, call it Hire A Lawyer. You need one.”

  She hangs up, satisfied to hear the disconnecting buzz. There’s one more thing to do. She goes into the account and places an ironclad, fraud-alert hold on the funds. Brava. Afterwards, she drops head to desk, but she’s dry-eyed, merely resting.

  A knock on the door jolts her upright. Maureen appears, hair dishevelled and collar askew, pushing a young woman forward.

  “Jamie, meet Susan. Remember, I told you she was starting today.” Of all days, Maureen’s widened eyes say. Help.

  Crossing her arms, Jamie inspects the woman: bleached hair, piercings, manicure, but she could be anyone properly scared. “Well,” she says finally, extending her hand, “you must be the new kitten.”

  Leaping Clear

  She lay dozing in her sickbed when the boy came to rumple her thoughts. Not the one she shotgun-married in her petrified youth. It was the summer boy from the city. Jackson, who left in a cloud of dust, the doomsaying of his people and hers blowing hot at his back. It was his voice calling her name. Kathleen—first a whisper and then louder, waking her.

  Afternoon light sliced through the blinds, gilding her bedroom, and seeing familiar objects mystically glowing made her love them anew: the worn cotton coverlet, white with a band of light blue stripes, pulled tight across John’s side of the bed as it had been for the last two decades; her walker propped next to the bed, with its quilted hanging pockets holding eyeglasses and magazines; the knotty pine floorboards, sloping downward from the window toward the centre of the old house; the maple dresser lined with prescription bottles alongside the statue of the Virgin Mary strung with rosary beads and the brass crucifix her parents had given them for a wedding gift; the rocking chair where she used to sing her babies to sleep. And now Jackson, somehow here, what on earth?

  He stood next to her bed with hands in his pockets, looking reproachful but also amused, because he already knew her story and was free of it. That’s what she believed, anyway. He hadn’t changed. He could have stepped out of the black and white photograph, the one of the group sitting thigh to thigh on the wagon at John’s family’s place, squinting into the late afternoon sun that glared down on them in godforsaken 1928, as in every year since.

  Nights, she pulled it out of the album and turned it this way and that, the scalloped white border still sharp under her fingers. She smoothed the image, studying shades of grey for evidence. Her mind filled in the missing colours: blonde wisps of hair escaping from the red triangle of her scarf, tanned hands clasped primly while her whole body angled for him. His smart-aleck curved lips and deep brown eyes; the indigo dungarees, too new for him to be local. Seventeen and nineteen, glorious ignorance. You couldn’t tell them a thing. He held an unlit cigarette in the air just above her shoulder, aimed at the road to town, and later she thought he’d been pointing toward the O&W line, the train that brought him and took him away again. He’d been sent upstate because his uncle needed farm help that season. His parents, having escaped the land themselves, thought it would be wholesome for young Jackson to touch dirt before taking up a position in the family firm. The picture was her prayer, her search for signs. Signs were as hard to catch hold of as lightning—flashing while her eyes strained to see patterns of meaning; burning when they hit ground.

  “Why didn’t you come?” he said.

  He squatted against the wall, bouncing lightly on his heels. She took in his yellow chambray shirt, the dungarees. The shock of him. How she had longed to see his face, day upon day. But she could not have predicted that someday he’d appear unaltered, undimmed in any aspect, to gaze on a decrepit version of herself. A flicker of shame passed through her, although there was nothing to be done about old age. It had happened to her and not to him, simple as that.

  “Were you there?” The fear of that time returned as a feeling of iciness, crystals growing in the region of her lungs. She had to remind herself that breathing was required to continue this conversation. Breathe, it was so long ago.

  “I waited at the station in Weehawken. I brought a ring.” His tone was flat. She interpreted this to mean that any anger or sorrow he had once harboured had long since leeched away, an enviable state of mind she had not achieved. “You didn’t trust me.”

  “It wasn’t—I—” Her voice failed.

  What had happened after Jackson left? She’d told and retold the tale to herself, but the true story wouldn’t find purchase in her memory. She was always changing this or that, little details that never shifted the ending.

  He left in a hurry. Her family’s grip tightened. They held her in place; that much was true.

  Jackson’s father had received reports of his son and the neighbour girl meeting in the woods and acted quickly. Jackson was summoned home.

  The reports were accurate. Shortly after meeting Jackson at a social, Kathleen offered to show him the trail that led to Busfield’s pond, and the cool, wet caves beyond, and, even farther, following a narrow path up the hillside, the lookout over the Delaware River. The trail passed behind her house and Jackson’s uncle’s property before veering across the railroad tracks, through a dense spruce grove, to the pond. Their secret places, their disappearances.

  If she were to rise from her bed, walk to the window, and lift the blinds, she’d see the trail in the distance, although it, like everything else, had changed in the intervening years. Instead of a rough path beaten into the land by the feet of children running beyond earshot of adults, it was now a proper trail, graded and covered in fine stone screenings, maintained by the t
own, marked by benches and interpretive signs. The old rail bed, long abandoned, had been groomed into another intersecting trail. And the people had changed. Today’s walkers wanted fitness; they took big strides in expensive footwear, swinging ridiculous ski poles, which, her son informed her, increased the heart rate. Working themselves up on purpose. They didn’t know any better, she supposed, never having experienced either physical labour or natural, seasonal rhythms of rest. They wouldn’t understand the concept of meandering past cedars and ferns, the shadows and the clearings, being at home there. The freedom of stepping into the woods, alone or with a companion, with no clear purpose. As she had done many times, before and after Jackson.

  He had been forced to leave. Her parents were so thankful to be rescued that they chose not to brood about the insult. Catholic farmers and Protestant bankers were agreed on the subject of oil and water, if nothing else.

  But before any of that happened, rumblings. Mealtimes larded with lessons. Even in her hazy lovestruck state, Kathleen understood. Dad would pause, holding his spoonful of soup mid-air for a moment of reverence before saying what it symbolized.

  “We mayn’t have much, but loyalty to your own is a thing beyond price.” He’d look around his table, from little Marie blowing bubbles in her bowl, to the boys nodding earnestly, to Kathleen, the eldest, with her head bowed, to their mother, sharp-eyed.

  “You children keep that in mind.”

  Kathleen’s mind couldn’t help wandering to the clearing, well off the trail, where Jackson pulled her down with him into the tall tickling grass, laughing and warm, stroking the length of her hair with one hand while the other roamed freely over her skin.

  “We never took the Prot soup back then,” Dad would say, slurping his. “Even when we were over there starving for it. We kept the faith.”

  “That we did.” Mom knew her lines. There was no need to elaborate further on the ancient, yet always fresh, outrage of the soup offered to famine-scourged Irish Catholics in exchange for their conversion. The potato famine an inherited grievance. Lost to living memory, but they kept it alive through recitation.

  Then she’d see her chance to mention a scrap of news from the radio, an outbreak of food poisoning at a restaurant, or a confidence game the police had put a stop to. The city was full of people ready to prey on the virtuous. Their life close to nature couldn’t be beat for love or money.

  “What can you expect but food poisoning, eating caviar and such?” She’d wrinkle her nose and take a bite of boiled potato.

  Kathleen heard the warnings against uppityness, vanity, the deadly sin of pride—above all, against outsiders. But they were distant church bells muted by a fog of love and something else, a newfound rebellion that shook her. She never replied. She’d hurry to clear the table, turning away so they couldn’t see her face and guess. Protestant or Catholic, what did it matter? She meant to leap clear of all that dead history. She began to see her parents as shrunken seedpods holding the beliefs of a century ago, a country ago. She wished for a strong wind to scatter their contents on the rocky ridges that plagued their land, where they would shrivel and die.

  And then the morning Jackson called in. That last day, just before his hot and dry walk into town to catch the return train. He stood for a moment in the doorway, not invited to come in and sit down, but still somehow pushing himself forward in that polished manner that got him what he wanted.

  Dad, hesitating, gave way while Jackson walked in, but he stood with his hand on the door.

  “Yes?” he said. Kathleen stood behind him, sneaking glances at Jackson. His face solemn, a mask of respect holding his features in check. Sweat dripped between her breasts.

  “I’m going home today,” Jackson said, and then greeted Mom, hovering in the background. “Mrs. O’Donnell.”

  Kathleen felt frozen in place, seeing Dad’s hand drop off the door, hearing her mother’s quick intake of breath, but unable to move or speak herself. It couldn’t be true.

  “It’s for the best, surely,” said Dad.

  “Goodbye, Kathleen. Maybe you could write me some time,” he said, attempting a smile while Dad recovered himself and frowned at her, shaking his head ever so slightly.

  She nodded anyway, tears forming but not yet coursing down her cheeks.

  They wouldn’t have another second alone. No private goodbye or figuring what would come next. But he must have expected that. He was smart about things.

  He stepped forward with his hand outstretched and they shook like strangers saying pleased to meet you, while he pressed a folded square of paper into her hand.

  Dad didn’t extend his hand to Jackson and slammed the door after him, victorious. She stood there weeping, hands clenched, waiting for her chance to bolt. The full story was still to be read. But Dad believed, innocent as a child, that the closed door meant an ending of his choosing. And so, she wept for him too.

  “Thank heaven that’s finished,” Mom had said, shooting her with a look that said carry on, girl; mind your dignity.

  Jackson stood and approached her bedside. He touched her white hair and tucked a strand behind her ear. She remembered that he had once said her hair was as fine as corn silk. People said things like that back then; now it would be a bad joke, if anyone even understood it as a compliment. He leaned closer.

  “Our folks would’ve come around,” he said. “It could’ve been a grand time.”

  “You’re forgetting the baby,” she said and then wanted to claw her argument from the air. She pressed back into the pillow, turning her head fitfully. Perhaps death would come now to rescue her from her guilt. She was too tired to justify herself anymore.

  “Yes, the baby changed everything, didn’t it?” Jackson fixed her eyes with his, a small smile playing on his face as Kathleen moaned faintly. “Ivy, you see.”

  Kathleen closed her eyes to call to mind a picture of his pinch-mouthed cousin, dead now, like almost everyone she knew, which was the logical outcome of surviving ninety-three years. All the old neighbours, her parents, of course, and all but one of her siblings. She resisted feeling sorry for herself. It was a blessing she still had her son, who lived close enough to look in on her a few times a week, and this house that she grew up in, the O’Donnell homestead, or what was left to her after selling off fields and pastures over the years to people moving in from the city. The view from her front yard clotted with new houses, but the back was still open, grass and then garden and then the trail. She mostly looked out back now.

  After Jackson left, Ivy mentioned him sparingly, as if ladling out the last of the well water. Kathleen recalled seeing her with a basket over her arm at Marino’s Five and Dime, her darting eyes examining the child, her boy, while they chit-chatted about everything but the reason Kathleen spoke to her at all. They’d always been neighbours, in that sprawling country sense, and schoolmates. Never friends.

  Chance meetings with Ivy yielded precious little: Jackson thriving in High Finance; Jackson the whirling beau of the ballroom; Jackson linked to a girl from a prominent New York family. Drops from the kettle poured into cupped hands, enough to scald, no more.

  And two years later, Ivy stood on Kathleen’s verandah and spat at the tattered screened door, as though Kathleen were to blame for his jumping out the ninth-floor window of the Newsom Merchant Bank in faraway Manhattan. As though she had any connection to him at all.

  Kathleen moaned again, feeling fresh pain that couldn’t be tied to bodily function or geography. Just aching. The hopelessness of her position had seemed so clear then, but now it was hard to credit. Nowadays there’d be no risk, leaving all she knew to go after him in a blind rush, baby or no baby. His son.

  The family danced around each other in the days after Jackson left. It was as if they had risen from their beds one day to find strangers eating at their table, without fathoming a meaning. Inside she was a mash of worry and trouble, ferme
nting with plans. But she was careful about her outside. She went around doing her chores, the dutiful daughter. She carried on.

  “I—gee.”

  Such pleasure in hearing him fumble. He’s never been good at voices, and she’s out of context.

  “Markets are rising. It’s a good time to make a move.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about—”

  A screech penetrates the office. Jamie whips her chair around to face the lobby, where Sadie is storming around with raised fists, an opera singer howling at fate.

  “That pig! You can’t trust men!”

  “Todd, can you hold please? Just a sec.” She hits the red button, in control for once. She hasn’t felt this good in a long time.

  Sadie grabs brochures and throws them skyward. They litter the carpet. Customers step backwards but hold their place in line. And there’s Mr. Ludder, patting his pockets obsessively, turning circles looking for her.

  “I’m back. Where were we? Right: you hadn’t really thought. About the money? Let’s be real, it’s your one true love. Oh, no doubt you have more than one love. A guy with your appetites. Why limit yourself?”

  “Jame.” A whisper.

  Maureen hurries into the lobby and takes Sadie by the arm, leading her down the hall, followed by a security guard Jamie has never seen before. Has he always been lurking around, waiting for his moment to shine? Shrunken and spent, Sadie makes eye contact as they pass, and Jamie arranges her face in concerned solidarity, but Sadie’s anguish is too much, too loud, and not, in the end, hers to accept. A clear and exhilarating vision overrides residual sorrow for her friend. Sadie made her choices, and she’ll do the same.

  She listens to silence on the line, patient, until Todd’s breathing grows ragged. For a moment it moves her, but the feeling passes. This is how he wanted her: hard-edged, relentless. She knows how to close a deal too.