Well, and what if they did? It was nobody’s business. Audrey only hoped that Nelson’s wife didn’t find out, because she didn’t want to be the cause of that kind of unhappiness for another woman. Nor did she want Nelson’s wife to chuck him out and him to come running to Audrey. And she hoped her parents didn’t find out, because it would break their hearts.
“At least the others are all right,” Audrey sometimes told Ellen, half-teasing, when Ellen shook her head and clicked her tongue about how Audrey just needed to find a good man. “You’ve got all the rest of us decently married off, you must be pleased.”
“But up on the mainland!” Ellen almost wailed. Except for Audrey here in the house, and Alf and Treese across town, all her children were settled in Ontario now. June had met a fellow up there whose grandmother came from Candle Cove, the same little outport Ellen was born in. Frank had gotten married up there two years ago, to a girl called Sophie Bernini. At least Marilyn and June were married to Newfoundlanders, men whose families Ellen knew. Frank’s wife was a stranger with a foreign-sounding name, someone they had never clapped eyes on. “And you know she won’t want to come back here to live,” Ellen complained. “Marilyn and George mean to come back when they retire, and I wouldn’t be surprised if June and Norm do too. But I might never have Frank home again. I’ve got grandchildren I’ve never laid eyes on, Audrey.”
“Well, I’ve got a grandchild I never gets clear of, so take your pick,” said Audrey. She loved Rachel, of course, but she wasn’t reconciled to the fact that she had been forced back into mothering a small child again.
Audrey punched the radio button till she hit on a song she liked on CJON—“Help Me Make it Through the Night”—and sang along with it on the short drive from the motel to the shop, where she let herself in through the quiet, darkened store. The shop had been shut for a week now as Wes, Alf, and Alf’s crew of men worked on the renovations. Audrey had been nearly two years now convincing Ellen they had to make changes to the shop, move the counter and rearrange the floor space to make it all more convenient. The new, lit-up Pepsi sign outside cast a pool of ghostly light on the floor of the silent shop. Audrey ran her hand over the new countertop. It was all going to be so much better, everything up to date and no more smelly old barrels of salt beef or crates of potatoes and turnips going bad. Most of what they’d carry now would be tinned goods and items that could be kept in the fridge. People got all their meat and vegetables at the supermarket now and much as Ellen might dig in her heels, you had to move with the times.
The one concession they had made for Ellen was to take down the old wooden sign that had been over the door and mount it on the wall behind the counter. Holloway’s Grocery and Confectionary. Alf’s daughter Nancy, the artistic one, had even painted a little “Established 1936” down under the name. When the shop re-opened it would all be new and modern, but the old sign would hang there as a reminder.
She was surprised to find the upstairs silent too, only one lamp left on. When she went out after supper, her father was still working down in the shop, laying the new tile floor, though Alf and the boys had gone home. Ellen had been washing dishes and Rachel was playing in front of the TV. Now the place was empty, even Rachel’s room. Audrey went back into the kitchen and saw what she hadn’t noticed before: a hastily written note in the messiest version of Ellen’s handwriting she had ever seen.
Gone to the Grace—meet us there. And a word crossed out. Audrey looked closer and saw the word was “Dad.” Ellen had been going to write something more, something about Dad, but decided there wasn’t—time, perhaps?
In the waiting room of the Grace Hospital’s emergency department she found Treese, who told her that her mother and Alf were in with Wes. “Your mother brought Rachel with her, but I sent her home with the girls—Judy’ll look after her at our place. My Lord, Audrey, the shock I got when your mother called me! I can’t get over it. I’m not over it yet.”
It was a job, getting any kind of a story out of Treese without going down all the side-alleys of her conversation. “Mom said she heard a noise, like a thump downstairs, and of course she thought he knocked something over in the shop. But you know Alf wasn’t one bit surprised when I told him, he was shocked of course, but not really surprised, because he’s been saying for ages now that Dad shouldn’t be working alone, he’s not a young man anymore, only he never liked to admit it, did he? Mom said she came downstairs and there he was, keeled over, so of course she called the ambulance right away—Alf blames himself, he should have gone back in this evening, knowing your dad would want to get in a few more hours work, but I’m always telling Alf he got to take some time for himself or he’ll end up just like his father in a few years—”
“Was it a heart attack? Is he—will he be all right?”
Treese laid a hand over her own heart, like she was about to sing “God Save the Queen.” “Alf came out half an hour ago—we’ve been here since seven-thirty, your mother was frantic because she didn’t know where you were or have a number to call you at or anything—and said it was a heart attack, a massive heart attack, but they couldn’t say—I don’t know, Audrey my love, Alf said the doctors couldn’t tell them nothing.”
“Would they let me go back there, I wonder?”
“I don’t know, I suppose you could ask that nurse. She’s not very nice to talk to—look at the face on her! But maybe she’ll tell you more than she told me, you being his daughter and all. Oh, what a sin, what a sin.”
Just at that moment a door opened and Audrey watched her brother Alf walk toward her. She didn’t need Alf to say anything: she read the news on his face. He looked not at his wife but at Audrey, shaking his head, and then he came and put his arms around her, something she couldn’t remember Alf ever doing in his life.
What a sin, Audrey thought, rocking in her brother’s unfamiliar embrace, trying to block out his meaningless words. She couldn’t erase that picture of herself, going at it in a dingy motel room with a man whose face she could barely remember, at the very moment her father was laid out on the new tile floor of the shop. The one bit of fun she had allowed herself in all these years, and it had to end like this. If that wasn’t a sign from on high she didn’t know what was.
ELLEN
They all came home for the funeral—Marilyn, June, even Frank, whose wife was due to have the baby any day now. All five of Ellen’s children were beside her as they lowered Wes into his grave. And a good few grandchildren too—all Alf and Treese’s crowd except Randy. Marilyn’s oldest, Sharon, a solemn round-faced twelve year old, had come home with her mother. And Henry had flown in last night and now stood looking uneasy in a dark suit. Death brought them all together.
Ellen felt queer. That was the best way she could put it, a queer feeling. The reality of what had happened came and went. Sometimes it hit her full-force that Wes was dead, and she sank under a wave of hard sobs; at other times she forgot, and turned, expecting to see him come into the room. Still other times it seemed like his death happened a long time ago; she could hardly believe he was here with her just a couple of days before.
At the funeral home, and later after the service at church, people flowed past. They took her hand and said, “Sorry for your trouble,” or “What a shame.” Someone told her, “They don’t make them like him anymore.” An odd sentiment, as if she were planning to drop into the Arcade Stores tomorrow and see if they had any replacement husbands. But Ellen thought there was some truth to it. Alf, maybe, was a man in his father’s mold, but he lacked Wes’s gentleness. Frank was not that kind of man; she loved her younger son, but he wasn’t half the man his father was. Alf’s boys were both hard workers but she didn’t see their grandfather’s steadiness in them. And as for Henry—well. Best not to even talk about Henry.
She and Audrey talked about him, of course, once the funeral was over and they were back home. Rachel was in bed and Henry gone out somewhere. June, who was
staying with Ellen and Audrey, made tea for the three women and put out a plate of date squares that one of the neighbours had brought over. “I can’t get over how grown up your Henry is,” she told Audrey.
“Well, he’s twenty-two.” Audrey hadn’t seen her son for four years, which seemed like a long time until Ellen stopped to think that she herself hadn’t seen June in eight years. June had two children, and Marilyn two younger ones, who Ellen had never laid eyes on, except for pictures. It was expensive to bring a whole family home for a holiday. Marilyn and June and Frank were always after her to come up there for a visit, but Ellen always said she couldn’t leave the store. Would Wes have liked that? she wondered now. A trip up to the mainland to see his children and grandchildren?
“What’s Henry been doing, all this time? All the time down in the States with his father’s people?” June wanted to know.
Audrey shook her head. “No, no—he was down there for— what was it, Mom? Six months, maybe eight. Then Harry called me one day and told me they’d had a big fight and Henry was after taking off out of it. Harry and Carol were always after him, you know, to get a steady job, settle down, and you know Henry wasn’t much for that at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times.”
Ellen remembered that phone call; Audrey’s angry voice raised in the kitchen. She was contrary, Audrey was: how many times, when Henry was at home, had she told him to give up this foolishness about trying to be a musician and get himself a sensible job? But when it was his father and his father’s wife telling him, Audrey jumped to her son’s defense. “That’s shocking, after what he’s been through—you should have been more encouraging to him.”
Then Harry’s wife had come on the line, and Audrey had exchanged hard words with her and ended by slamming the phone down. “She said I was too soft on him,” Audrey told Ellen afterwards, her hands still shaking with anger or something like it. “Me? After I raised that boy on my own, no help from Harry, Carol got the nerve to tell me I’m too soft on him?”
“So where did he go after that?”
“Oh, it was Nashville then—I think the idea was to hit the big time, end upon the Grand Ole Opry or something. Then after another year or two at that, he went on to New York, and he haven’t hit the big time yet.”
Henry phoned home—collect calls, of course—every few months to let his mother and grandparents know he was all right, and tell them about some bar he’d played in or some musician he was playing backup for. Ellen never knew who any of them were, but Audrey said it was usually somebody who had played in a band with someone who played with someone else who was famous. Ellen worried about him night and day, and she knew Audrey did too although Audrey would never admit to it. “That one will always land on his feet,” she said, when Ellen raised the subject of Henry. “Nothing no good ever comes to know harm. I’m not saying Henry’s no good, now, but he’s a foolish know-nothing and he’s the kind will always find someone to look after him.” Maybe she was right; here he was home now, safe and sound.
“Is he only home for a visit, or going to stay for a while?” June asked.
Audrey shook her head. “No idea. He told me he bought a one-way ticket, but it might be that’s all he could afford. He needs to spend some time here if he wants his daughter to know anything about who her father is.”
“Shh. I don’t know if she’s asleep yet,” Ellen warned.
June, Frank, Marilyn, and Sharon all went home before the week was out, but Henry stayed. “I want to be some help around the house, Nan,” he told her. “And I could help out in the shop, too. I could take over Judy’s shifts when she starts trade school.” Alf’s Judy was going in to be a hairdresser; her sister Nancy was at MUN and her brother Doug was talking about moving up to Toronto with Randy.
The renovations had been suspended for a few days after Wes’s death, but Alf’s men were working down there again now and the shop would soon be ready to re-open. Ellen felt bone-tired when she thought of getting up to do that early morning shift. Not that she could sleep if she stayed in bed—it was more that she wasn’t ready to face people. The neighbours, the customers with their sorry faces, all still offering condolences on her loss. But it was hard to imagine Henry, who had stayed out till all hours every night since he had been home, getting up to open the shop at eight in the morning.
“It’d be good for Rachel, having you here.”
Henry shrugged. That shrug—it was his most common gesture. Hands in pockets, head down, lifting one shoulder in a gesture that said not just, “I don’t know,” but “How could you expect someone like me to know anything about that?” It made Ellen’s eyes fill with tears. They don’t make them like Wes anymore, she reminded herself.
The one person in the family who was like Henry was Rachel. She looked like him, although he was a handsome young man while she was a plain child. Rachel was long and stringy and brown-haired, nothing in her of the pretty Stella. She was a quiet child, most of the time, kept to herself when there was a crowd of youngsters around. And she did the same as Henry—put her head down and shrugged—when her father made awkward attempts to talk to her. Henry asked her did she like Kindergarten and Rachel shrugged. He asked her what games did she like to play; Rachel shrugged. Did she have a best friend? Still looking at the floor, Rachel shook her head.
When Henry tried to talk to Rachel she would burrow into Ellen’s arms or press herself against Audrey’s side. Ellen tried to explain to her that Poppy had gone to heaven to be with Jesus and the angels, though Audrey said, “Don’t be at that, Mom, all that’s going to do is make her scared of Jesus. She’s already scared of angels from when you took her to Sunday School and they told her angels were always watching her, but she couldn’t see them.”
Too much change too fast for a little one like that, Ellen thought. Overnight, her great-grampa was gone, and this new man who everyone told her was her father had moved in. She and Henry were equally wary of each other.
One night, about two weeks after Wes’s death, the four of them sat in the living room on a Sunday night watching Rachel’s favourite show, The Wonderful World of Disney. Wes used to enjoy these Sunday evenings; for years he and Ellen went to the Sunday evening service at church, but these last few years he preferred to stay home, relaxing in the living room after supper, watching his great-granddaughter laugh at the television.
Henry was fidgety; Ellen thought it wouldn’t be long before he got up and went out somewhere. The boy was restless, always tapping a foot or drumming with his fingers, never able to sit for long. Finally he got up, but instead of heading downstairs and out the door, he went to his room—what used to be the boys’ room when the youngsters were all small—and came back with the guitar he brought home with him.
He took the guitar out with him most evenings, but this was the first time he had played it since coming home; the first time anyone had played a note of music in the house since Wes took out the accordion the Sunday before he died. Henry tuned the guitar quietly, in the background behind the noise of the Disney movie. But when he began to strum during one of the commercial breaks, Rachel’s head swivelled away from the TV like Mickey Mouse had just popped up behind her. She stared at the guitar, then went to sit beside Henry on the couch.
“What’s that?”
“My guitar.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Bought it from a second-hand shop in Harlem.”
Another child—Ellen remembered Frank at that age, his endless strings of questions— might be diverted onto, “Where’s Harlem?” but Rachel’s attention didn’t leave the guitar. “How did you learn to play it?”
“Um. Years ago—not when I was as small as you, but a little bit bigger—I got a friend of mine to show me a few chords, and then I sort of taught myself.”
“Could I learn?”
“Sure. Someday. Right now your arms and hands aren’t big enough.”
“Can you get little ones?”
“Not little enough for someone your size, nope.”
“Can I try, though? I might be big enough. Miss Sheppard says I’m big for my age. I’m the second-tallest girl in my class.”
Another father might have commented on what a grand big girl she was, or asked more questions about school. But Henry, as focused on the guitar as his daughter was, passed it over to her and settled it on her lap.
“See?” he said as she tried to wrap her arms around it. “You got to wait till your arms get long enough to go around the body, and your hands got to be big enough to wrap around the neck of the guitar. Your fingers press down on the strings, see, to make the chords.”
“It hurts.”
“Yeah, it will for a while. When you’re big enough I’ll get you your own guitar and teach you to play.”
Rachel looked up as Henry took the guitar back. She tucked up her feet on the couch. While he showed her the guitar, The Wonderful World of Disney ended and now The Tommy Hunter Show was on. Henry strummed along with the theme song.
“Will you still be here when I’m that big?”
Henry didn’t answer right away. He kept on strumming along with the music on the TV, and his eyes slid over to Audrey.
“I will,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, I’ll still be here then.”
AUDREY
“I called the lawyer today,” Ellen said when Audrey came upstairs after looking over the day’s renovation work down in the shop. “I made an appointment for Thursday afternoon. You, me and Alf got to go down there.”
“It won’t take very long, will it? I’m sure Dad’s will was pretty straightforward.”
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