After River

by Donna Milner

  When I awoke it was still dark. Unable to find my way back to sleep I laid awake wrestling with the past, and with the present. My body and my mind felt cramped, sluggish from yesterday’s journey on the bus, and through memory’s corridors. I got out of bed and pulled on my running clothes.

  When I was seventeen, after I moved to Vancouver, I started running every day. At first it was an excuse to escape from the house, to have a few hours of solitude. It started as a way to numb my mind. It became a way of life. I’ve been running ever since-running from guilt and shame, from memories and secrets, from relationships. And from myself.

  But this morning I’m running towards something. Unlike last night’s dream, I know exactly where my feet are taking me. I know what I must do, what I must face.

  I hasten down the deserted street, past the familiar old buildings that now house unfamiliar businesses. Ski and snowboard shops have replaced the small bakery and butcher shops. Quaint coffeehouses and antique stores that cater to the influx of tourists who flock to the nearby ski hills each winter, now fill the storefronts.

  As I approach the edge of town, headlights cut through the lifting fog. I remain resolute and continue running, my shoulders squared, as the car passes and the sound of its motor disappears behind me. At the highway intersection I resist the instinct to turn north, away from Atwood, as I usually do. Not this time. I take a breath and turn south, towards the border.

  It’s called Eaglewood now. The name, carved into a massive cedar log at the entrance, heralds its existence. The old gravel road has been paved. Overhead streetlamps light up sidewalks and driveways. I turn off the highway and run into the empty streets of the subdivision.

  Through the trees I see shadowed outlines of timber-frame houses and Swiss-style chalets. This development, of one-and two-acre lots, was carved out of the farm by Boyer and his partner Stanley Atwood. According to Jenny, the seasonal owners of most of these homesites are Americans who have discovered our little piece of heaven here in the Cascade Mountains. I wonder briefly if any of the homes belong to the young men who, after being pardoned at the end of the Vietnam War, returned to the United States to become bankers and stockbrokers. I’m certain they don’t belong to any of the leftover hippies who stayed to become farmers, shopkeepers and artists.

  My heart pounds in my ears. I push forward, past driveways, courtyards, decorative ponds and the dark houses set back in the trees. I turn a corner and suddenly I am there.

  Even though everything is changed now, I know this place. I slow to a walk at the entry to a wide cul-de-sac. Across the way, in the middle of the other side of the street circle, a tree-lined driveway leads to a new post-and-beam home. I stop and stand panting while I stare across the invisible barrier.

  Somewhere a single crow calls out. The raucous voice echoes through the silence of the morning. A sudden gust of wind carries a flurry of dry autumn leaves through the trees. They flutter to the ground and skitter across the cobblestones and into the driveway of what was once the old gravel pit.

  I take a deep breath and start walking. I resist the urge to look back over my shoulder, to flee. I am determined to erase this fear, to face it head on. I focus on the glowing porch light on the house at the end of the driveway and let it pull me forward.

  I am no longer running but my heart races as I make my way across the vast expanse of the cul-de-sac and up the driveway. And then I am there. I have made it through. I stand at the bottom of the steps and look up at the house.

  I don’t know what I expected to find after all these years, what demons I thought I would confront. There is nothing here, no evil lurking in the shadows. No phantoms of the past wait for me. This is just a place. The gravel pit, which has haunted me all these years, no longer exists. It has been replaced by this beautiful home.

  The cedar and stone house appears warm and inviting. It looks like a home in the country should look, as if it had grown there. Light spills from the kitchen bay window as I climb the granite porch steps.

  As my hand reaches up to knock, I have to force back the thoughts that still try to push through. The gravel pit may be gone, but not the memory, and the dark secret buried with that memory. Now all the years of protecting that ugly secret are wasted. In a few hours I will be forced to face the results of the horrors of that night. And eventually the young man, too, will have to know the truth of his existence. How can I tell them? How can I tell him, that he – ‘my son’ – is the child of rape?

  I let my gloved hand rap on the wooden door. I hear footsteps inside. The door flies open. And Jenny reaches out for me.

  ‘What time did you say they were coming?’ I ask.

  It’s time to start filling in the blanks.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  THE HOSPITAL CORRIDORS are decorated in the colours of autumn. Picture cut-outs of turkeys, pumpkins, and scarecrows, cover the walls of the third floor of St Helena’s. This could be the hallway of any grade school. Except for the odours. No scent of waxy crayons or sweaty running shoes here. Only the institutional smell of Lysol, urine, and boiled turnips, and decaying bodies.

  In front of the stairway door a silver-haired woman, hunched over a metal walker, lifts her slippered feet and slides them slowly one behind the other. On the other side of the hall a man, shrunken into a wheelchair as if he’s a part of it, pulls himself backwards along the railing with his one good hand while, with a determined independence, he pushes with his foot.

  Still in my running clothes, I wait patiently for this camphor and talcum-smelling traffic jam to clear. An unexpected calmness has overcome me since my uncensored disclosures to Jenny earlier. I am still surprised at the relief I felt at letting go of the secrets I had guarded for so long. Even my footsteps feel lighter as I make my way to my mother’s room.

  The hospital-green drapes are open, her room flooded with morning light. Mom lies back in her raised bed, her eyes closed, her mouth half open. Even though Jenny told me that Mom is now down to seventy-nine pounds, I am surprised by the frailty of her body evident under the white sheet. Her thin arms are nothing more than skin over bone. ‘There isn’t much left, but spirit,’ Jenny had told me. ‘But that counts for a lot.’

  I stand at the door and stare at Mom’s birdlike chest until I am certain she is breathing.

  Her eyes snap open and dart around the room the moment I enter. ‘Is he here?’ she asks as soon as she sees me.

  I thought she had been waiting for me, but it is him that she has put off dying for. I can hear the urgency in her voice.

  ‘Soon, Mom,’ I tell her as I lean in to kiss her, ‘he’ll be here soon.’

  My lips touch the delicate skin on my mother’s cheek and she lifts her hand to my face. ‘I heard him cry,’ she whispers. ‘The night he was born I heard—’

  ‘It’s okay, Mom,’ I say and take her hand in mine and press it to my lips. ‘It’s okay.’

  Her eyes focus on me. ‘I’m sorry, Natalie,’ her voice gurgles and she clears her throat. ‘I heard him …’ she continues, somehow her voice gaining strength. ‘I should have … should have insisted that I see him. I walked away . I should have known.’ Her eyes fight to hold mine, pleading as she struggles to get it all out. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive. We all believed – wanted to believe-what Dr Mumford told us.’ The steady pump of the oxygen tank fills the empty space between our words. I feel the feather touch of her fingers on my cheek before her hand falls away and her translucent lids close. I sit beside the bed and stroke her forehead, while I breathe with the rise and fall of her chest.

  As I gently push a strand of grey-streaked hair behind her ear, her lids flutter open again. Her thin lips part, then lift, in a weak smile.

  ‘He’ll come back to us,’ she manages to whisper. ‘Everything will be all right now.’

  A saviour. That’s how she sees her grandson. She sees him as someone who will bring this family back together. Someone to wash away the guilt that has
kept us apart. She imagines he is the silver lining to the cloud that has hung over our family. She sees him as the proverbial good that comes after an ill wind: River reincarnated.

  And I can’t – I won’t – take that away from her. The speech I rehearsed on the way back from Jenny’s, disappears. The imagined conversations and confessions will not take place. I search her milky eyes, so full of hope, so close to death, and realize it’s too late to burden her with my dark memories and secrets. I will let my mother leave this world believing her grandson is River’s child.

  ‘I should never – sent – away,’ she murmurs.

  ‘We all sent River away, Mom,’ I say, believing she has once again read my mind.

  ‘No, not River.’ Her breathing is laboured. Every word has its cost. ‘You. I should never have let you go away.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mom,’ I say trying to soothe her. ‘I couldn’t have stayed in Atwood.’ It’s not just words. It’s true. Still, I remember the depth of the sadness I felt on that windy March day when I drove away with my father for the last time.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do with your grief,’ she says now. ‘It was too deep.’

  I had come to her, prepared to unburden myself, but it is she who gives voice to her regrets. Her hand closes around mine. ‘You and Boyer were both suffering so deeply. His pain was more obvious. But yours,’ she sighs, ‘I just didn’t know how else to help you heal.’

  A feeling harboured in some deep part of me suddenly surfaces. As it rises I momentarily remember the resentment I felt the morning I walked out the door while my mother stood with her back to me at the kitchen table. I thought she knew! I expected her to know. She knew everything else. Why didn’t she know about my pain? I had done such a good job at keeping my silence, of hiding the horror, and the guilt. I had made it look like anger but it had turned into resentment. Now that resentment surfaces, it surfaces and dissipates with her words.

  I reach up and brush away the tear making its way down the side of her face into her hair. ‘It was the right thing, Mom. The right choice. I would never have survived here.’

  For many reasons. Reasons she need never know.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother,’ she says now.

  And my heart aches.

  ‘You were always a good mother. The best. To all of us.’

  Her hand relaxes in mine. Her eyes close. I think she has fallen into sleep until, without opening her eyes, she asks, ‘Have you seen Boyer?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  Her breathing quiets as sleep claims her, but suddenly she whispers, ‘Are you ever going to forgive your brother, Natalie?’

  Boyer? Forgive Boyer? I am startled by her question. ‘Forgive him for what?’ I say, but she cannot hear. I lean closer and listen to her breathing. My mother is asleep.

  I sit by her bed and wonder at the sense of relief that flooded through me at the thought of blurting out the answer to her question. Was I really about to tell her that it is me, Natalie, who needs to be forgiven? That I cannot look into my brother’s face without remembering that I’m responsible for his scars.

  While she sleeps I lay my head on the bed beside my mother’s hand. Her fingers instinctively stroke my hair.

  The sounds of hospital life grow familiar. I begin to recognize the distinctive footsteps of different residents who pass the door on their slow relays up and down the hall. From somewhere the repetitive clanging of winning bells on a TV game show ring out, followed by the rush of canned applause.

  I don’t know how much time has passed when I look up to see Jenny sitting on the other side of Mom’s bed. She smiles across at me. A smile full of understanding.

  Our conversation earlier this morning has gone a long way to bridge that gap of understanding.

  ‘Uncle Boyer was just here,’ she whispers to me. ‘He didn’t want to disturb you. He’s on his way to the airport now. They should be back in about two hours. While Grammie sleeps do you want to go to your room to shower and change before everyone gets here?’

  I nod, then sit for a few more moments studying Mom’s face while she sleeps.

  This is the face of death, I admit to myself. The skin stretched across her high cheekbones reveals the skeleton structure of her skull. Still there is a calmness in her breathing and a flush on her cheeks. Something is holding her back, giving her strength. She has something left to do. And so do I.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  ‘ARE YOU SURE about this?’ Jenny asks as the Edsel turns onto Colbur Street.

  ‘No,’ I answer, my voice unsteady. ‘But everything I’ve read, about victims of rape, says healing starts when you confront your abuser.’ Victim?

  ‘You know,’ I tell her as she pulls up in front of Gerald Ryan’s house, ‘I spent so many years denying, refusing to be his victim, that I’ve become just that – by not allowing myself to talk about it. Today was the first time I’ve ever spoken it out loud.’

  In her kitchen, early this morning, I told Jenny everything about that night in the gravel pit. Our tears flowed unchecked as I cleared the cobwebs from the memories and exposed them to the light of day. Jenny listened without comment, but obviously feeling my anguish, as I relived the nightmare. Afterwards we held onto each other until our tears were exhausted.

  When we had gained control, Jenny asked quietly, ‘Mom, why are you so certain that the baby was Gerald Ryan’s? If you were with River a few nights before isn’t it just as likely that he could be the father?’

  And there it was, the crack in the rock solid belief I had clung to all these years. Could I allow it to open and let hope seep in?

  ‘I’ve always been so certain,’ I sighed. ‘Perhaps that was my way of coping. Maybe it was just less painful to accept that a stillborn baby was a result of rape, than to consider he may have been River’s son.’ I blew my nose. ‘No,’ I said as I shook my head. ‘No matter how many times I imagine that night with River, I can’t believe he could be the father. It only lasted minutes.’

  ‘Still,’ Jenny insisted, ‘it’s not impossible.’

  ‘Perhaps. But not likely.’

  Jenny turns off the motor and I force myself to look up at the old Ryan house. The once immaculate yard is overgrown with weeds. Railings are missing on the sagging porch; the paint is cracked and peeling. This morning Jenny confirmed that as far as she knew an ailing Gerald Ryan still lived in this neglected house.

  Jenny reaches out and touches my shoulder. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, I have to do this myself.’

  ‘All right. But remember he suffers from alcohol-induced dementia. He may not know you.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, I will know him.’

  Before I turn to open the car door, Jenny says, ‘There’s something else, Mom.’

  She hesitates, opens, then closes her mouth, as if she is uncertain over what she is about to reveal. ‘You must not have been the only one,’ she finally says. ‘He’s been mutilated. It looks as if at one time, years ago, someone went after his penis with a butcher knife.’

  I take a moment to recover from this information. Then I push the car door open and get out in one quick movement.

  I square my shoulders and feel myself drawing on my mother’s strength. As I walk towards the porch I refuse to let my eyes stray to the darkened basement window. Yet I can’t help imagining him standing there in the shadows. My feet feel heavy as I trudge up the creaking steps. It takes everything I have to make my way over to the door and lift my shaking hand. I hammer on the door before I can change my mind.

  The house is dark, silent. I hear no movement inside. I knock again, this time more insistent. Minutes pass before I hear a faint shuffle. I move back as the door begins to open and an eye appears in the narrow crack. It looks me up and down, blinks heavily, and then the door opens fully, revealing a bloated, heavy-set woman. A threadbare pink velour pantsuit stretches across sagging breasts and stomach rolls. Stringy grey hair hangs, limp and unkempt, aroun
d a swollen face. Suddenly I recognize something behind the blank stare.

  ‘Elizabeth-Ann?’

  Her eyes narrow. ‘Natalie Ward,’ she says finally, pulling her top around her and hugging it to her body. ‘I didn’t expect …’ I stammer.

  From somewhere inside a man’s feeble voice calls out, ‘ElizabethAnn?’

  Unable to stop myself, I head into the house. Elizabeth-Ann steps back into the hall as I move past her toward the sickeningly familiar voice.

  ‘Elizabeth-Ann?’ The voice’s repeated query has a whining urgency to it. And then I see the hunched form sitting in front of the silent television set in the living room. Like a frightened animal I stop, frozen, trapped, unable to move, hypnotized by the red-rimmed eyes – rodent eyes – that are looking, not at his daughter, but at me. A palsied hand lifts into the air and reaches out towards me.

  Beside me Elizabeth-Ann slouches against the door to the living room. ‘He thinks everyone is Elizabeth-Ann,’ she says in a monotone voice. ‘Everyone, except me.’

  I can’t pull my eyes from the withered remains of what was once my tormentor. A plaid, food-stained dressing gown does not hide the cloth restraints that lash him to a pink vinyl chair. Yellow parchment-like skin and tufts of transparent hair cover a splotched skull. Catheter tubing coils down from beneath his dressing gown to a full bag of urine hanging off the side of the chair.

  ‘Elizabeth-Ann?’ he pleads. Bulging eyes stare back at me. They look at me, through me, but do not see. There is no one behind those eyes, no one to connect with; no one left to hate. He is reduced to DNA.