By the Rivers of Brooklyn

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  But one day, even he’ll run out of tricks up his sleeve. “Brother Gavin, I need to ask you. If the time comes…if I should pass on, I want to leave something in your care. A little box, a few belongings. Can you send them on to…well, I’ll leave you the address. My daughter. She lives far away from here, and I don’t want to trouble her now, but I want to leave her a few small things. Will you take care of that for me? If need be.”

  Some time later – after complications, after surgery, after prayer and anointing, after the lights in the room grow dim and flicker out for the last time – certain items do pass into the hands of Reverend Gavin Bennett of the Praise Tabernacle Cathedral of Miracles. The untidy note accompanying the small suitcase instructs him to send it to Miss Claire Evans, St. John’s, Newfoundland. Gavin has lived all his life in Brooklyn and cannot conceive of a place so small that this address will find the person intended. He will have to do some digging, he tells his wife, to try to find out if there’s a proper address for this person Claire Evans, if such a person even still lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, wherever that might be.

  But the Reverend Gavin Bennett, who works eight hours a day cleaning a department store and ascends the platform at night to preach the word of the Lord, is a busy man. This complicated task gets pushed to the back of his mind as the suitcase with the note gets pushed to the back of one closet after another. His business is with the living, not with the dead, and no-one can really blame him.

  ANNE

  ST. JOHN’S, MARCH 1983

  “SHE THINKS…WELL THEY both think…this is just going to be the ideal set-up, but you mark my words. This is going to end in absolute disaster.”

  Anne tries to nod noncommittally. Claire turns on her with an impatient sigh. “You think it’s going to work out just fine, don’t you?”

  “Mom, I don’t think anything, I just hope everything works out.” Anne and her mother are having coffee at Intermission in the Avalon Mall after a shopping trip to find some new sheets and blankets for the fold-out bed in Aunt Annie’s back bedroom.

  “It’s going to take more than hope, it’s going to take a miracle,” Claire says. She checks her watch. “I’ve got to get in to work for a couple of hours. Can I drop you at Aunt Annie’s with this stuff?”

  “Sure. I need to go into the university library and work on a paper, but I’ll walk in from there.”

  “The thing is,” Claire says, gathering up shopping bags, “just because two people were best friends fifty years ago does not mean they’re going to be able to live together when they’re nearly eighty years old. Ethel thinks she wants to come back to Newfoundland, but it’s going to be a different story once she gets here, let me tell you. And your Aunt Annie’s got very set in her ways since Bill died. She thinks it’s going to be wonderful having someone in the house again, but it’s not as simple as she’d like to believe.”

  “I guess not,” Anne says. She realizes she has been caught up in Aunt Annie’s version of how nice it will be to have Ethel home again.

  “Are you coming?” Claire says in the voice she used to use when Anne was five years old, standing in a puddle outside the front door.

  Aunt Ethel arrives a week later, with the whole family out to Torbay airport to meet her. They strain to see over the heads of the disembarking passengers. Happy reunions bubble all around them. Anne, on tiptoes, is the tallest of her family, now that Stephen’s gone, and she’s the first to see a little old lady – she really looks exactly like a Little Old Lady – coming off the plane clinging to the arm of a flight attendant.

  Her hair is very white, almost blue-white, and her face, though wrinkled, is carefully made up. She wears a light blue raglan over a darker dress, and leans on a walking stick. The flight attendant holds Aunt Ethel’s carry-on bag, part of a matched set with three much larger pieces, which, in their own good time, tumble down the carousel.

  “My, my,” Aunt Ethel keeps saying, looking around at the crowds. “So this is St. John’s. My, I wouldn’t know but I was still in New York. Nothing like this here in my day, nothing at all.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly LaGuardia, now, Aunt Ethel,” Doug says, straining as he lifts one of the gigantic suitcases off the carousel and onto the cart. “But at least we’ve got the walkway now. You don’t have to walk down the steps straight onto the tarmac anymore.”

  “No, it was a lovely flight, lovely,” Aunt Ethel says vaguely. Anne can’t tell yet if she’s just disoriented from travel or actually a bit senile. “My word, Annie, hard to believe, isn’t it, how the world has changed. Flying around on airplanes… I never thought I’d see the day, did you?”

  “No, never,” says Aunt Annie, who has never been on a plane and never intends to be.

  In the car Ethel still seems disoriented. “Now, where are we now, Claire?” she keeps asking, twisting around in her seat to pose questions to Claire, although she is riding in the front seat next to Doug. “Are we out in Torbay? You said this was Torbay airport. Now I remember Torbay was only a little fishing village.”

  Claire leans forward from the back seat where she’s squashed with Anne and Annie and Aunt Ethel’s carry-on. “No, the airport is on the road out to Torbay, but we’re headed back into town now. See here, at the lights, now this is Allandale Road. That’s the university, where Anne goes.”

  “Oh, very good, very good,” Aunt Ethel says, according the sprawl of university buildings a cursory glance. “Diane’s youngest, Laurie, is studying marine biology. Did I tell you that? In graduate school. She’s already got the one degree and she’s gone back for another. She won some kind of award, there last year, for research. Such a smart girl.”

  “This is Empire Avenue,” Doug offers as they turn onto it. “I guess it’s changed quite a bit since you were here last, hasn’t it?”

  “Oh my, yes, look at how it’s all built up. I think this was what we used to call the old railroad track if I’m not mistaken. This was all open fields when I was a girl. And even when we came back in ‘32, it was nothing like this. My, if poor Jim could see this now. He used to say, ‘Ethel girl, I’d rather be back in Newfoundland on one meal a day than living here, even with all we got.’ My, how he would have liked to come back home.”

  “Well, we’re glad you were able to get home anyway,” Claire says firmly into the little silence that follows. Doug turns the car onto Freshwater Road. “And when is Diane coming to visit?”

  “She says she’s going to try to get down for two weeks in June. Come in June, I told her, the lilacs in Annie’s garden will be blooming. You still have the lilac tree, Annie?”

  “Better tell her to wait till July, or pack some heavy sweaters,” Claire says. “June’s not the best month for the weather.”

  “Oh, I always remember it being lovely in June,” Aunt Ethel says, staring out at the brick sprawl of the taxation building. “Diane’s going to try to get the girls to come up with her. None of them have ever been back here, and she wants to give them a sense of their heritage. Chrissie – that’s her oldest – she’s very interested in history, you know. Old buildings, architecture. She and her husband Barry designed their own house. Amazing, it’s like a mansion.”

  The drive home sets the tone for Aunt Ethel’s visit. She has three topics of conversation, Anne discovers: How Things Have Changed; Poor Jim; and My Wonderful Grandchildren. After about three weeks have passed and Aunt Ethel has exhausted much of the subject matter in the Big Three topics – not that she ever lets them go entirely – she finds a fourth area of conversation: Complaints.

  How Everything Has Changed slips easily into Complaint: it was never this cold, people used to be more friendly, you can’t find your way around St. John’s anymore. As well as deviating from its former self, St. John’s also errs by not being New York: not enough buses and taxis (although Ethel approves of the fact that all the taxi drivers are white and speak English); the stores aren’t the ones she’s used to; it rains so much.

  Anne hears these
complaints when she sits down at Aunt Annie’s kitchen table for a couple of hours after her classes finish at university. She’s in the habit of waiting there for one of her parents to pick her up after work. (“Your mother is still a secretary, is she?” Aunt Ethel says. “Jimmy’s wife, Joyce, she’s never gone out to work. Wonderful housekeeper. You could eat off her floor. Diane, now, she’s with a big firm in Manhattan. Very big office. She’ll retire in a few years with a grand pension plan.”) Aunt Ethel always smiles pleasantly at Anne when she comes in, but once, when Anne was curled up on the chesterfield reading a book, she heard Ethel in the kitchen saying to Annie, “Is that all she does? Hang around here and read? Fine big girl like that, you’d think she’d be more help to you.” Which makes Anne feel guilty, but also makes her think that Aunt Ethel is a venomous old woman.

  She learns, after awhile, to tune out Ethel’s personal attacks, the ways in which Anne does not measure up to Ethel’s own grandchildren. She can also ignore the general complaints about Newfoundland. What she can’t ignore are the digs at Aunt Annie’s home and hospitality. Fiercely loyal to Aunt Annie, Anne bites her tongue – hard – when Aunt Ethel gets up slowly from her chair. “I find I’m awful stiff these mornings, in my back and down into my hips. That mattress is not very firm. Of course it’s only a sofa-bed.”

  So it begins. Within a month the hints have gotten broader. Well, they really can’t be called hints anymore. “Oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do, my back is so bad,” Ethel says. “Annie, when Harold and Frances were home a few years ago, they said they had a lovely room, nice comfortable bed. What bed was that? Where did you put them to?”

  Aunt Annie looks up from the cake batter she’s stirring. “That was my bed. When Harold and Frances came down I moved out of my room. For two weeks.”

  Aunt Ethel looks away, out the window. “Oh. That was nice.” She draws a long, deep sigh. “I can’t get used to looking out the window and seeing all these other houses around. Seems so crowded here. Remember how open it used to be, Annie?”

  Anne corners Aunt Annie the next day, when Aunt Ethel’s own sister Ruby has taken her out to supper. “How can you put up with it, Aunt Annie? Making little digs like that? It’s like she’s suggesting you should have moved out and given her your room!”

  “Well, and I would have, Anne, if it was only for a couple of weeks like when Harold and Frances came. But she’s talking like she’s moving back here forever, or at least for as long as she pleases, and I’m not…I’m just not willing to be put out like that, not knowing how long it’ll be.”

  Spring arrives. Anne’s first year of university ends and she has a job with Parks Canada for the summer. To get the job working at Signal Hill she had to go through an interview where they asked her all about the history of St. John’s and Signal Hill, and she performed admirably, but the job actually involves painting the steps and railings on the scenic walking trails, which doesn’t seem to require much knowledge of history.

  In the last week of June, Aunt Diane arrives for a visit, accompanied by her daughter Laurie and Uncle Jimmy’s daughter Katie. Anne finds, as she stands in the Arrivals area of the airport, that she’s actually scared of meeting Laurie and Katie. Both are older than she is, but more importantly both are more beautiful, brilliant and sophisticated than she is – at least, if Aunt Ethel is to be believed. When she sees the three women coming out of the gate Anne is inclined to believe Aunt Ethel, for once.

  Aunt Diane – not really an aunt, of course, a first cousin once removed – has dark hair and very bold, striking make-up. She’s wearing a long leather coat and high leather boots. Behind her are the two girls, one a couple of years older than Anne, wearing a college sweatshirt, tight jeans and a denim jacket. Her ash-blond hair hangs straight to just below her shoulders, with bangs feathered back around her face. The other girl is older – that must be Laurie, the marine biologist – also a blond, who looks so much like Princess Diana, ruffled blouse and all, that Anne feels her heart drop.

  A flurry of hugs and kisses is followed by an interminable wait for luggage. They get most of it in the end: a large suitcase of Diane’s and a bag belonging to Katie are missing, which involves trips to the office to report the bags missing. “Oh my gawd, I don’t have, like, my toothbrush or anything,” Katie says. Her accent is like a TV-sitcom-New Yorker:Anne didn’t think anyone in real life actually talked like that. “Underwear, everything. Can you even buy underwear here?”

  “No, we mostly go without it. It’s sexy and it feels so…so natural,” Anne says, wide-eyed and hating her new cousin already. “But for times when we absolutely have to have it, we mail-order it in from the States. I can loan you my back-up pair if you want.”

  For a horrified moment Katie stares at Anne, then Laurie bursts out laughing. “Way to go, Anne. That’s telling her. Don’t be an idiot, Katie. Give me a hand with this freakin’ bag, wouldya?”

  Anne likes Laurie.

  Anne and her parents drive the three guests to Aunt Annie’s house, where the two aunts have cooked a turkey, but decided, since it’s so warm, to serve it cold, with salads, instead of doing dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy. While Aunt Annie explains this decision, Diane peels off her leather jacket and shivers. “Oooh, you think this is warm? I’m really finding it chilly.”

  Doug laughs as he hangs up her coat. “No, this is what we call a heat wave, Diane.”

  “Oh gawd,” Katie says again, refusing to relinquish her denim jacket. “I could never, never live here.”

  Several responses spring to mind, but Anne bites her tongue.

  Katie’s attitude does not improve, but the visit in general gets better after its awkward start. Claire takes Diane, Laurie and Katie up to Signal Hill one day when Anne is working. Anne gets off early and they all stay up on the hill to watch the Tattoo, which is pretty impressive – although Laurie points out that she’s been to a Civil War re-enactment with her sister and brother-in-law “because they’re into that kind of thing,” and that the Tattoo is pretty small by comparison. “But it’s really nice, for what it is,” she adds kindly.

  “Mike would love this. He was really sorry he couldn’t come,” Diane says. “I gotta bring him back here sometime.” Aunt Diane’s second husband is a New York City police officer named Mike Malone, and he’s the reason she moved back to New York. Laurie, who grew up in California, describes herself as “bicoastal” : she attends grad school in California near her father, but spends vacations with Diane in New York.

  Katie has lived all her life on Long Island. Except for a trip to Florida with some girlfriends last spring, this is the farthest she’s ever been from home. “Edge of the freakin’ world,” she says. “My dad is always going on about wanting to come up here again. I’m going to tell him: Newfoundland? Been there, done that.”

  “Oh shut up, Katie,” says Laurie. “You’ve done nothing but bitch since you came here.”

  “Give it a rest, you two,” Aunt Diane says from the bleacher seats behind them.

  “I’m going inside to find a bathroom,” Katie says, wandering off towards the interpretation centre.

  Anne doesn’t look at her, but she can tell from the sound of Diane’s voice that she’s rolling her eyes. “Honest to God, she’s a little pain in the ass, isn’t she? I mean, I had the best of intentions, bringing her along. Jimmy and Joyce thought it wouldn’t hurt her to see a little bit of the world, discover her roots. But she just doesn’t travel well.”

  “She’s immature,” Laurie says. Anne, two years younger than Katie, although better travelled, stays quiet.

  “Yeah, well if she doesn’t grow up a bit soon, Jimmy and Joyce are going to have their hands full. They’ve already got enough trouble with Dennis.”

  Laurie laughs. “We shoulda brought Dennis,” she says. “Dennis with his green hair. Rebel without a clue.”

  Aunt Diane changes topics in midstream without warning. “I phoned Air Canada this morning, Claire, and I got reservations
for Mom to come home the first week of September. I told Joyce to start looking for another place for her. She can’t go back in her apartment – she’s not able to manage on her own – but she doesn’t want a nursing home either. A place with some care, but a little independence too.”

  “Oh. She’s not…I mean, she’s not still thinking of staying longer?” Claire’s voice is light, but Anne, who knows its every nuance, can hear several things in her mother’s tone.

  “No, well, you can’t go home again, can you? I think Mom finally has that figured out. She called me the end of her second week here and told me, ‘Diane, I can’t stay here with Annie.’ It only makes sense, two women their age. They’re set in their ways, aren’t they? And nothing home is the way she remembers it. Except for Aunt Annie and Aunt Ruby, she’s got no-one here. All her old friends are dead. She’s been thinking for fifty years she wants to get back to Newfoundland, but the fact is, her home is in New York, you know?”

  “Oh, I agree completely,” Claire says.

  “I told her as soon as I called, I said, ‘Mom, come back with me and the girls when we come up to visit.’ And she thought she might, but now she says she’d like to see out the summer. It’s like part of her wants to go and part wants to stay, you know?”

  “But you made the reservations?” Claire says. There’s a hint of concern in her voice now, no doubt wondering which of Aunt Ethel’s divided halves is going to carry the day.

  “Oh yes, reservations made and paid for. Tuesday after Labour Day. I told her this morning, and I think she was satisfied.”

  “Well,” says Claire in a voice that betrays nothing, “that’s all you can do, isn’t it?”