by Vicki Delany
“Yup. Good dog you got there. Smart.”
“She gets it from me.”
“Eh?”
“Never mind.”
“Really muddy out there. Lots of rain this past week. Warm. Must be this global warming I been hearing about. If it gives us summer sooner, I say bring it on.”
“Do you want something for lunch?”
“No thanks. Ate lunch at the big house. Aileen says she and Jimmy’ll be happy to come for supper tomorrow.”
“Was Jimmy there?”
“Nope. Just Aileen. Jimmy was off at work.”
“That must make a change.”
For once he picked up on my tone and looked at me sharply. “Jimmy’s doing well these days, Becky. He made a few mistakes when he was young but he’s had a hard life.”
I turned my attention to my dog and gave the thick fur under her chin an extra deep rubbing. “And maybe he’s just plain lazy.”
“Now Becky, that’s no way to talk about your brother.” He changed the subject; my dad was always good at changing the subject. “Aileen phoned Shirley about dinner tomorrow. They’re going to come, and she’ll ask the girls. It would be nice if we could all get together.”
Yeah, swell.
“I’m going to the Legion now. Play a bit of snooker, hang out with the boys. I’ll take the car. Too far to walk into town on these old bones.” He stretched up on tiptoe and kissed me on the cheek. “It’s nice having you here, Rebecca. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
My dad was shorter than Mom, something they were always embarrassed about, although they pretended not to be. My grandpa had been even shorter than his son and when feeling particularly mean he usually had something to say about Mom’s height. And then he would throw in a dig at my dad, something along the lines of not looking like he wore the pants in his family. Which was sort of funny, as the old man made sure that my dad didn’t wear the proverbial pants. Shirley and Jimmy took after Dad, short and scrawny. I’m a tall woman, like my mother. Tall and thin. Thin but filled out in all the right places. Lucky in the gene pool, me. Just another reason for my sister to resent me.
I remembered when I was twelve years old, sprouting like one of the beans in my mother’s garden in springtime, and deeply embarrassed about it. Already taller than my older sister and gaining on my brother, eight years my senior. I towered over my grandparents. And to make matters worse, my chest had been swelling with matching speed. I tried to hide it with baggy sweaters and stooped posture, hard in a mid-summer heat spell. My brother (twenty years old!) had taken to hiding behind doorways and leaping out to grab a handful whenever Mom wasn’t looking.
My mother didn’t often leave me alone at my grandparents’. Practically never. In her own quiet way she tried to protect me from the venom from which she couldn’t protect herself. I don’t know why I was there that day, with her not around to deflect the verbal blows onto her own shoulders.
My grandmother had smiled vacantly and bustled off into the kitchen for lemonade and cookies. Grandma always bustled. She also spent a lot of time in the kitchen.
I made to follow, but my brother Jimmy blocked my way. And then he grabbed my shirt and pulled it up, twirling me around at the same time so I faced the hated old man. Grandpa chuckled. I still dream about that chuckle.
I swallowed hard and hugged Sampson. She whimpered and I rubbed her ruff. “Wish I had you then, dog. No one would have messed with me if you’d been around.” She licked my face, at the tears that I refused to shed. I had cried the day I left home, and I vowed that I would never cry again. And I hadn’t. Not until I stood over Ray’s coffin, when it seemed that the tears would never stop. On that day I gave myself permission to cry for Ray and all that we had lost.
“You and me and Ray, eh?” I smiled at Sampson. “What a team we were. God, I miss him. I need him to get me through this.”
She barked once in agreement.
Dad had said that he would be back for dinner. Presumably that meant he didn’t plan on preparing the meal himself. Thus the only one left appeared to be me. Ray always said that the best thing I made in the kitchen was reservations. But he was a great cook, and I’m pretty smart, if I do say so myself. I must have learned something by watching him.
I opened the door of the avocado-colored fridge. The only food in sight was milk, eggs, and bacon, along with a scrap end of butter and a shelf full of jars of preserves. That seemed odd; I would have expected that all the ladies of the town had descended on Dad bearing fragrant casseroles and homemade pies. Nothing for it but I’d have to go shopping.
“Car ride.” I said the magic words and Sampson leapt up to bounce eagerly at the back door.
I hadn’t been taught to drive as a girl. If Dad or Grandpa weren’t using it, the family car was reserved for Jimmy. Jimmy would take me, they told me, wherever I had to go. Which meant that I went nowhere, except to school and back on the big yellow bus that picked me up at the end of the road.
I revved the engine of the SUV to feel its power throbbing under my feet.
At the top of the driveway, I impulsively swung the car right, instead of turning left to the public road. A lead weight settled into my stomach as we drove down the private road that ran parallel to the lake and up a small hill. In my youth it was always pitted badly in the spring, the effect of ice and snow. Dad and Jimmy were always filling it in and trying to level it off. Since then it had been paved. A more comfortable drive, but the butterflies fluttered in my stomach as if there was a hurricane going on in there.
There it sat. The old farmhouse. Solid gray stone, thick, sturdy and unyielding. Like the people who had lived in it. The house we always called the big house. (My parents’ house was, of course, the little house.) Built for huge families with farm hands to feed and work to do around the clock and through the seasons. In this country of rock and dense bush it was one of the few farmhouses around. It had once sat on one of the few decent patches of farmland for miles in any direction. My family sold the property after World War One, keeping only enough land on which to build a smaller house. And it was there that my grandparents lived when their only son came home from the war with his English wife and baby. But they made some money, somehow, shortly after I was born. Enough to buy the big farmhouse back, and my grandparents moved into it. They didn’t buy the farmland, though, and now most of the surrounding land was owned by the government.
I pulled to a stop near the top of the hill. On this perfect spring day the yellow sun hung in the sky full of the promise of summer soon to come. The house was perfectly located, high over the lake with its blue waters sparkling in the sunshine. A modern deck of good wood and glass wrapped around the front, looking as out of place as if Mrs. Rochester were to descend from the attic dressed in low-rise jeans and a crop top.
I stared at the house. To me, hell was this house. It had loomed in my imagination as such for more than thirty years. But I sensed no whiff of brimstone in the air. No cauldrons boiling in the kitchen, no thunder or lightning overhead, no screams emanating from the dungeon—only the sparkle of the spring sunshine and the heady scent of good lake water and freshly turned garden earth.
A woman came around the corner of the house just as I was about to put the car into reverse and back down the hill. She carried a basket of gardening tools and waved cheerfully at me. I could do nothing but wait while she walked along the driveway and up to the car.
She was middle aged, dressed in a lovely flowing dress containing all the colors of the rainbow. She wore thick Birkenstocks on her feet, and strands of gray streaked through her abundant black hair. Wild curls were pulled, without much success, into a casual knot at the back of her head. She rounded the front of the SUV and approached the driver’s door, hand held out in greeting.
“You can only be Rebecca. Welcome. What a lovely dog. Can I pat him?”
“Her. She won’t bite.” Of all the types of people I expected to encounter at this house of bad memories, she was just about
the last.
Of course in the old stories, horrid monsters can, and often do, disguise themselves as lovely maidens. But in the same old stories, dogs always see beneath the pretence, yet Sampson appeared to be experiencing something like love at first sight.
“I’m Aileen. Aileen O’Connor. I was going around back to pick a few of the early flowers to take down to the house to welcome you. But you’re ahead of me.” She smiled. A lovely, warm smile full of good teeth and welcome. Her brown eyes reflected the smile.
Aileen. My mother told me that Jimmy had married for the fourth time. I paid as much attention as I had on the other three occasions.
“I must apologize for not being here last night to go to the funeral home with you and Bob. But my mother is in a nursing home and they called to say that she was having a bad spell. Jim and I thought we should be there. We knew we’d see you today. Heavens, where are my manners! Please don’t sit there in the car. Come on in. I have tea, or something a bit stronger if you would prefer. I do believe the sun is over the yardarm.”
I turned into the driveway, switched off the engine and clambered out. Sampson sniffed once at Aileen in order to be polite, and then dashed off to explore.
“I’ve never really known what a yardarm is,” Jimmy’s wife said. “But I’d just as soon not find out. Ignorance is sometimes bliss. That way the sun is always over it, right?”
“Uh. Right.”
I hesitated at the bottom of the steps leading to the deck, but Aileen scurried on ahead, still talking. The deck didn’t suit the age or the dignity of the house, but I, who knew that beneath its façade this house didn’t have a shred of dignity, thought the effect was perfect. Wide and open to the elements of water and wood and sky, this deck would conceal no secrets.
Aileen looked back. “Why don’t we have our drinks out here? It’s a lovely day. I’ll pull the seat covers out of storage. Would you like a glass of wine? White or red?”
“White, please.” I sank onto an uncushioned lounge chair. Someday I might venture into this house. But not today.
Since Ray’s death, I’d grown accustomed to Sampson being in tune with me. If I was unhappy, she was unhappy. If I was euphoric, which was exceedingly rare, she was euphoric. But today she didn’t match my mood in the slightest. She charged back from the woods, burrs clinging to her tail and belly, and danced about the deck, ears up and tail swishing, sniffing at the empty flowerpots, and chasing a renegade squirrel that dared to venture too close to the stairs.
Aileen reappeared carrying a tray on which sat two acrylic glasses and a bottle of white wine along with a selection of cheeses and crackers. Two padded chair-cushions were tucked under one arm in a neat balancing act.
“You shouldn’t have gone to this trouble.” The standard phrase sat dry in my throat.
“No trouble at all. I’m happy to take a bit of a break.”
“You’re Jimmy’s wife?” I said, sounding even to my own ears like the village idiot.
She laughed and poured the wine. “I’ve heard so much about you. From your mother. The dear woman. She was so proud of you, you know. Talked about you all the time.”
“Nice wine,” I said. And surprisingly it was.
“I know that Jim was a bit of a wild one in his youth. But I hope I’ve tamed him a bit. You’ll find him changed. At least I hope so.” She laughed again and popped a slice of Brie into her generous mouth.
I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t remember a thing my mother had told me about her, like where she came from and how long she’d been with my brother. Which left precious little for me to say. Fortunately Aileen seemed to be able to fill any uncomfortable silence.
“Thank you for the wine. It was lovely,” I said when I could actually get a word in. “But I have to go into town. Dad expects dinner. Are the stores open, do you know?”
“The supermarket in Hope River is open on Sunday afternoons, yes. That’s closer than driving to North Ridge. Even this town has finally joined the twentieth century. Just in time for the twenty-first. Can I bring anything tomorrow?”
“No, please don’t.”
Sampson and I managed to make our escape, backing along the drive with much tooting of the horn and waving. I liked Aileen and looked forward to spending more time with her. Was it possible that she was actually married to my degenerate of a brother?
Chapter 6
The town of Hope River hadn’t changed much. The supermarket was bigger and a restaurant stood on the site of the old lumberyard, where my dad had found work, on and off, when he was temporarily off the bottle. There was a tiny antique shop, a gas station and a hamburger stand, a T-shirt emporium, and a craft shop, all of which, except for the gas station, were closed. A sign in the window of the hamburger stand announced that they were closed for the season. A new two-story professional building appeared to house only a real estate office and the government-owned liquor store, which was a great deal larger than it had been in my youth and was much spruced up. Sign of the times, that. The Royal Canadian Legion, of course, looked exactly as I remembered it. As if it had stood there since time immemorial. Which for me, it had.
I parked in front of the professional building and told Sampson to stay. She curled up in the back seat and promptly fell asleep. Neat skill, I’ve always thought.
I walked up the street, heading out of town, letting the memories wash over me. Past the end of the business district—an extreme exaggeration—a tiny bridge crossed a tiny river. This was the Hope River, a tributary of one of the many larger rivers that criss-cross this area that is almost as much water as land. Hope for whom, I never knew. “Hopeless” we called it when I was a kid, as probably every child who ever grew up here called it. Every one of us certain that we were being terribly witty and original.
Hope River has always been nothing but a working class town in an area without much in the way of work at the best of times. And no work at all in the worst of times. Past the bridge, one street curved along the lazy bend of the river. A handful of Victorian era stone houses with double stories, crisp gingerbread trim, substantial lots, and huge gnarled old trees lined the gentle slopes leading down to the riverbank. It was a nice day. The sun felt warm on my back.
Today, in the early part of the twenty-first century, the town’s hopes for economic salvation are pinned on waiting for the urban creep of cottage country. Hoping to be the next Bala or Port Carling. Waiting for big cottages, big wallets stuffed with big bucks to spend. Still waiting.
The trees lining the street were deciduous, bare at this time of year, but showing off their first hint of buds, like proud prospective mothers with barely bulging bellies. In autumn the street would be a glorious display of northern color.
But I didn’t intend to be here to see it.
I went to the supermarket.
Today’s copy of the Gazette was prominently displayed. A different picture of Jennifer. The headline screamed: Search continues. Police: Arrest imminent.
I ignored the paper and went in search of something to cook for dinner. I would pick up something to serve the family tomorrow as well as for Dad and me tonight. You can always fake it with chicken. Dessert would be a bit tricky: you can’t disguise packaged desserts as homemade. I settled for an angel food cake wrapped in plastic, strawberries, and whipped cream. Add real whipped cream to anything and people will think you spent all day working on it. Tonight we’d have spaghetti, which was one of the few things my mom taught me to make that I could still remember.
I unloaded my groceries and tossed in a chocolate bar and a copy of the Globe and Mail, which calls itself Canada’s national newspaper.
“Becky McKenzie.” The clerk placed her hands on her ample hips and stared at me. She was considerably overweight, verging on obese but not quite there yet, and hawk-beaked with far too much makeup and a bad perm. One of Shirley’s friends?
“Yes. That’s me.” I forced a smile. “Back home again.”
“Don’t you remember me? K
im Wright, I was then.”
“Oh, my god. Kimmy. Of course I remember you.” This was cute little Kimmy? The envy of every girl and the desire of every boy at Wilfred Laurier High? The Kimmy Wright who reduced even my brother to a slobbering fool? How I had wanted to be allowed access to her sacred circle, but I had been rebuffed at every pathetic attempt.
She smiled, showing stained teeth. Several were missing from the back of the bottom row. “Been a long time, Becky.”
“It has. But I’m called Rebecca now.”
She started checking through the groceries. “Rebecca. I’m sorry about your mom.”
“Thank you.”
“Heard you live in Vancouver. You’re an executive with a bank, your mom said. I’ve heard it’s nice in Vancouver.”
“It is. Uh, what are you doing these days?” Stupid question. The pride of W.L. High was checking groceries.
She smiled and told me what I owed. “I have two kids. Samantha and Clint. All grown up now.”
“That’s nice.”
“Are you staying for long? Maybe we could get together one night. Go for a beer or something?”
“I don’t think I’ll have the time. I’m busy with my family, you know? Lots to do.”
“I know. Well, nice seeing you, Becky. You look real nice.”
I loaded the bags of groceries in my cart. Kimmy Wright wanted to go out for a beer with me. And I had said no. Hot diggidy dog.
But somehow the moment wasn’t quite as satisfying as I would have imagined it back in high school.
Two men had come into the store as I was packing my groceries back into the cart. They checked out the girlie magazines placed discreetly behind high shelves on the top of the rack, but our conversation caught their attention and they moved to stand blocking the end of the checkout aisle.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Becky McKenzie, is it?”
“Rebecca actually, but yes. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.” The one who spoke was a big man, heavily muscled through the arms and shoulders but flabby around the belly. His worn jeans were slung low beneath his pot and he hadn’t bothered to shave in several days. His hair needed a good wash.