Mother Love

by L. R. Wright

  ***

  Maria arrived back home on Friday.

  Ten days later she drove across the Lions Gate Bridge to West Vancouver.

  She drove south from Marine Drive, crossed the railroad tracks, and eventually turned into a narrow, curving street. She found the house number she was looking for on the side of a small gray garage and parked her car and got out. She was trying not to think about what she was doing, for if she did, she probably wouldn’t do it.

  The fences and garages she saw were almost obscured by greenery, trees and hedges and bushes. It wasn’t a manicured kind of look. What made this street special was not what had been constructed here, but the land upon which those structures stood. On the south side, the large lots extended to the ocean and had their own private beaches. Some of these properties, now worth millions of dollars, had been occupied by the same families for fifty years or more.

  Maria walked across the street to the small gray garage. A low gray picket fence stretched across the width of the property: Maria went through the gate.

  She was on a narrow walk that extended a considerable distance, crossing an enormous lawn and disappearing among a stand of rhododendrons. Curving flower beds had been established along the fences on both sides of the property, and behind the garage, and beneath the lilacs. To Maria’s left as she walked was the wider part of the lawn and a gazebo covered with climbing roses.

  When she reached the rhododendrons she saw behind them a rock garden sloping down toward a small gray house, and over the rooftop of the house the beach was visible and Burrard Inlet. The forests of Stanley Park rose to her left, and the Lions Gate Bridge, which linked the park with the North Shore. Straight ahead was Vancouver, with Point Grey extending westward—she could see some of the buildings of the University of B.C. From the house, the land dropped abruptly: there must be a path down to the beach, she thought, but she couldn’t see it from where she was standing.

  She followed the stone walk around the rhododendrons and through the rock garden and down to the patio that surrounded the house. Here she stopped and listened, and heard a medley of sounds: the water washing up on the beach, which was part sand and part rocks; birds; children shrieking and laughing; powerboats passing; a seaplane heading for Vancouver harbor; a lawnmower. But nothing from the little gray house, constructed of timber and stone, nestled comfortably into its domain with its face to the panorama and its back to the rest of the world.

  Maria had given a lot of thought to what she was going to wear today. She should have given equal time to what she was going to say. But this had been impossible, knowing what she did about the man, which was next to nothing.

  Lying sleepless in the night, she had felt suddenly much younger, as if finding herself in possession of a parent again had ripped years from her age.

  She was exhilarated at the thought of confronting him. She was in a tumult—this was the phrase that had swept regularly through her mind.

  She had no idea what he would look like, or sound like. And in the time she had spent searching for him she had selected a multiplicity of characteristics, physical and otherwise, and had fitted them together in a variety of ways. It was mental doodling. Now, looking at this small house, she wondered if he might be an elfin man, a trickster, a droll little fellow with bushy white eyebrows that stuck out from his face and gave him an expression of perennial surprise.

  This is pointless, she told herself, gazing down upon his house.

  Then she thought: Which of the qualities that make up the person I have turned out to be, did I inherit from him? This reflection filled her with wonder. It was an exquisite moment. Standing in the sun, with the fragrance of roses in the air, occupying territory belonging to her kin, Maria felt suddenly rooted and secure. It was a sensation that was false and treacherous, and she knew this, but in the instant that it possessed her, she was exultant.

  She was wearing a dress, a yellow dress with short sleeves, a full skirt, and a matching belt, a dress that buttoned up the front with big round buttons and had no collar. She was carrying a small white handbag. Her shoes were white, too, and flat, and she had put on panty hose even though she hated them.

  She started moving again, down the now sloping path to the patio, which she saw would soon be in shade. The rock garden tumbled all the way down to the patio on one side of the path, to Maria’s right, but came to an end on the other side, where there was a six-foot drop in the hillside, and here there was a short flight of wide wooden stairs, weather-stained and weather-battered. Maria stepped down them carefully, touching the banister.

  The house sat on a plateau. It was encircled by a patio. More flower beds spilled between the patio and the hillside, to the right, and against the fence at the edge of the plateau. A second flight of stairs led down a fifteen-foot slope to the beach.

  Maria looked in the small windows at the back of the house and saw a kitchen and a laundry room. Dishes cluttered the kitchen sink, and a basket of clothes sat on the floor of the laundry room. These signs of occupancy gave Maria a jolt. She felt a rush of immediacy and said to herself: No. I’m not ready.

  She backed away from the windows and looked up, and started for the stairs leading up to the rock garden, thinking about her car sitting in the lane, waiting for her. She thought of Richard and Belinda, who didn’t know where she was. Nobody knows where I am, she thought, and was for a moment absurdly frightened.

  In the corner of the patio there was a toolshed, the door standing open. Inside, Maria saw a wheelbarrow sitting under a worktable on which garden tools and equipment were carelessly scattered. A garden hose hung on the side of the house, and a large green watering can sat beside it. It was an untidy, untended part of the property, this bit of patio workspace tucked in behind the house, and its privateness comforted Maria. A large overhang extended from the roofline, creating shade and shelter, and from it was suspended an enormous Christmas cactus.

  Maria realized that she would never be ready to do this thing. That’s why we need courage, she thought, from time to time: to do the things we aren’t ready to do.

  She moved to the side of the house and looked out at the water, imagining herself on Jericho Beach, looking straight across the same water in the other direction, toward West Vancouver. Maybe through binoculars she was watching herself, the yellow dress a tiny splotch of synthetic sunlight against the gray of her father’s small house.

  She knew from the city directory that he lived here alone.

  She pushed herself forward, around the house to the front, which was all glass; she couldn’t see inside because of the reflecting sunlight. To one side was a door, with a knocker in the middle, a brass lion’s head, and this Maria lifted and struck against the brass plate beneath it. She heard it resound within the house, a strangely flat noise but a clamorous one. Then she waited, with her head bowed, looking at the “Welcome” mat beneath her feet, aware of summer and the sickening pounding of her heart.

  She heard footsteps, and the door opening. It seemed to take her a long time to lift her eyes.

  “Yes?” he said.

  And then she was looking at him. Alan Stewart. A big man. Not fat, but flabby. She thought he was a disorganized person—there was something about the way he was dressed that suggested this.

  Maria was locked on to him, like a searchlight or a laser beam, staring straight into his eyes.

  He didn’t speak again, just looked back at her. Maria had no idea what to say. She opened her mouth in the hope that words would involuntarily say themselves but they didn’t. They continued to stare at one another. Maybe, she thought, maybe he thinks I’m some kind of accident victim, somebody who had a car accident in his lane or fell on his beach.

  “I think you’re my father,” Maria heard herself say. She watched him intently.

  He took a deep, reflexive breath, like a sigh, and bowed his head. He looked down, at the floor, or at his feet, or hers. He clung to the edge of the door as he slowly pushed it closed, extracting hi
s fingers at the last moment.

  Maria watched the brass lion’s head for a long time. She imagined him on the other side of the door, leaning against it, braced to keep her out, not daring to breathe.

  She backed away. Clutching her white summer pocketbook in one hand and hanging on to the worn banister with the other, she climbed the stairs to the rock garden. She stumbled through the rhododendrons. What now? What now? Her legs were trembling. She crossed the lawn to the gazebo and collapsed on a bench, and was enveloped by the fragrance of roses.

  Chapter 27

  “YOU’VE BEEN HOME for days and days, Mom,” said Belinda, “and you’ve hardly told us anything.”

  They were at the dinner table. Dinner was the only time they had real conversations, Maria realized. And it didn’t happen every day, either: when Richard had meetings, she and Belinda ate in front of the television set.

  “I told you about the photograph,” said Maria. There were flowers on the table, roses, floating in a shallow glass dish. “The photograph of—of Nadine and Ira. I told you all about that, how young they looked, how graceful. How loving.” Richard cleared his throat. He had nothing to say but wanted his presence to remain significant.

  “Yeah, but I mean, what did you find out about them?” said Belinda.

  Richard wouldn’t ask, of course. But Maria could see from the pricking of his ears that he, too, wanted to know.

  “Not much, I’m afraid,” said Maria. She had made another chicken dish. Chicken today, salmon tomorrow—no, maybe not salmon. It wasn’t in season. Only the fish farm salmon was available, and there was something about fish farming that Maria didn’t like.

  “You went all that way for nothing, then,” said Belinda. “Shoot.” She pulled her hair to one side and divided it deftly into three strands. “You can’t tell me one single thing about my grandparents?” she asked, beginning to make a braid.

  (...Belinda is restless, sitting on the edge of the chair, swinging her legs while Maria brushes, Maria, late for work, brushing that long, dark hair. Belinda squirms and writhes; Belinda whines and yelps: “Mommy, it hurts—ow!” Maria clobbers her with the back of the brush, whacks it against her head. Belinda cries out, and Maria hits her again. “Sit still—sit still!” shouts Maria, trying to drown out Belinda’s wails. “Sit still!”—whack. She experienced the sound of it and the feeling of it as the same thing, as a whipcrack, a deep, satisfying whipcrack...) Oh bad memories, slipping into her mind like knives into butter...

  “Don’t do your hair at the table,” said Maria sharply, and pushed her plate away. “Of course I learned something. Of course I did. But it’s nothing of interest to you.”

  She felt the violence of then seeping through the years toward her, like a black stain, like the ink stain in the hotel’s desk drawer.

  She stared at the roses, stolen from Alan Stewart’s gazebo. Then she stood and began clearing the table.

  ***

  Maria went back the next day, and the next. Finally Alan Stewart opened the door. He held it open, standing behind it, until she had stepped inside. “I’m sorry,” he said. Maria didn’t respond.

  He led her into a large bright room that opened through sliding doors onto the patio that overlooked the beach. “Please sit down,” he said, and she did, in the middle of the sofa. He lowered himself onto an easy chair. Newspaper sections were scattered on the floor next to it, and a mug sat on the end table. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  Maria shook her head. “Are you healthy?”

  “A bit of high blood pressure,” he said after a moment. “Otherwise—yes.”

  “I have not known my genetic background, you see,” said Maria.

  “I think—they decided that would be the best thing to do. Have you start fresh. With a new family.”

  “Who decided?”

  “I don’t know. Your relatives. Ira’s people.” He had gray hair, thick and rumpled, and hazel eyes. His flesh was sagging, but his cheekbones were prominent and his jawline pronounced, and his back was straight.

  “But ‘Ira’s people’ weren’t my relatives,” she reminded him.

  “Well,” he said softly. “They thought they were.”

  In this large, sunny, skylighted room, Maria noticed small sculptures sitting on a cluster of stands in one corner; an Oriental carpet lay in another, beneath elegant black-lacquered chairs and tables.

  “How did you, uh, find out about me?”

  “I found out about my mother. My mother told me about you.”

  “You’ve been to see her?”

  Maria could only nod. There was an obstruction in her throat that was preventing speech.

  “How is she?”

  Maria shrugged, and the man who was her father averted his gaze, reaching to pick up the newspaper and fold it neatly. “Did you ever go to see her?” she asked him.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, dropping the paper onto the coffee table. Maria saw that it was Saturday’s Globe and Mail. He got up and crossed to the wall of glass and pulled open the sliding door, letting in the sound of the sea and the various clamorings of a summer afternoon. He stood there for a moment, looking out, and then returned to his chair, moving slowly, heavily.

  Maria imagined him working in his garden, filling the big green can and watering the Christmas cactus. He obviously liked indoor plants, too. An enormous Boston fern cascaded from a hook in the ceiling. A jade plant and a couple of geraniums were clustered at the base of a weeping fig tree. On one of the lacquered tables sat a group of cactus plants and on another table near the sculpture collection, away from direct sunlight, several African violets.

  She would never know much about him, Maria realized.

  “She didn’t seem crazy to me,” she said.

  “No. Well...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Crazy. Not a good word. People are more complicated than that.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She—life became intolerable for her.” He looked at Maria apologetically. “When she did it, she didn’t know what she was doing. Literally.”

  “What was so intolerable?” The lump was back in her throat, making speech painful.

  He studied her and sighed. “I’ll tell you what I know. But I’ve got to have more coffee first.” He picked up his mug. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “I will change my mind, yes. Black, please. No sugar.”

  While he was gone she made a mental list of questions to ask once he’d told her what he wanted her to hear. But really, she had only two.

  He came back and handed her a cup of coffee and sat down, holding the refilled mug in both hands, sitting forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. He was dressed in baggy corduroy pants, navy, a blue polo shirt, and navy socks and leather sandals. There was an obviously expensive watch on his left wrist and a ring on his right hand, probably a university ring, Maria decided.

  He began telling Maria how he’d met her mother—he was the family’s doctor. He had treated her for depression after each child was born and after the second bout realized that he had fallen in love with her. Maria watched him dispassionately and discovered that she wasn’t really very interested. He droned on, talking mostly to the floor, and Maria decided that most of what he was telling her was true, that he had in fact felt guilty and still did, because he wasn’t supposed to fall in love with his patients...

  “Particularly if they were emotionally fragile,” he explained with a solemnity that rang false, “and particularly, of course, if they were married. But it was something I simply couldn’t help,” he said, “and neither could she.”

  Maria asked, “Was she the love of your life, then?” noticing the dry tone in which she delivered the question.

  He thought about this for a while, probably trying to decide just how frank he ought to be, and then slowly shook his head. She listened for a while to his silence, large and ponderous among the noises that drifted in through the open window: somewhere nearby, people were apparentl
y attempting to launch themselves out to sea in a rowboat.

  “When did she tell you about me?” Maria asked.

  “When she was pregnant with you.” It was a part of his personal history that he was obviously reluctant to discuss. He sat back and drank coffee and frowned, gazing into the past. And Maria gazed back there with him. She saw him as a young man, dismayed and apprehensive, and saw her young mother dismayed, too: Nadine not wanting another child, no matter who its father was, just not wanting to have it—afraid of having it—afraid of what would happen if she had it. Maria felt that she and her mother were looking into one another’s eyes, past and future meeting in Maria’s present.

  Nadine had been right, of course, to be afraid.

  This man—Nadine’s doctor—Maria’s father—was talking again, explaining, relating, reporting. Maria watched him and listened, without much interest.

  “I visited her there three times,” he was telling her.

  Maria stood, abruptly, startling him. “I’d like to see you again,” she said. “There are more things I need to know. But I can’t listen to you any more today.”

  He got up to see her out.

  When they reached the front door, Maria stopped. “Do I look like her? Do I remind you of her?”

  He shook his head. “You remind me of my sister.”

  Chapter 28

  THE ANTICIPATION DIDN’T keep him awake—he fell asleep quickly and easily, as usual—but it was there the instant he awoke in the morning: Hamilton Gleitman was fully alert as soon as he opened his eyes.

  He postponed it for a while, teasing himself. He put on the coffee, he even had a quick shower. Then he browsed in the fridge for breakfast but saw nothing that held his attention. Finally he filled his coffee mug and took it and the portable phone into the living room, where he surveyed the view, his million-dollar view, all one hundred and eighty degrees of it. The world was gray today, everything gray, sea and sky and bridge, all gray...