by Lesley Crewe
“I love you, Eileen.”
“I know.”
He ended up taking Mavis to Halifax for a week of shopping in the new year. While they were away, I was able to cement the relationship between the girls by letting them both sleep in my bed with me. We shared late-night snacks and read stories and they stayed up later than they should have, but sometimes breaking the rules is a potent tool.
Without George and Mavis around, the girls relaxed, and we spent a lot of time baking cookies. Patty didn’t have to worry about getting her clothes dirty, and she was in her glory. Sometimes we just had cake for supper. I made a big deal about how they had to keep it a secret and they giggled in excitement about pulling one over on the adults.
When George and Mavis came home, I could tell instantly that the trip had done both of them a lot of good. They were more pleasant to each other, and Mavis had let down her guard. I hoped it would last, but I was realistic. We were in a honeymoon stage, and I’d go along for the ride as long as I could.
By the time Patty was fifteen and Bridie was ten, they were as different as chalk and cheese. Patty loved movie magazines about her favourite stars: Rock Hudson, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and Doris Day. She spent most of her weekends with a transistor radio stuck to her ear, dancing to “The Twist” or crooning to “Let It Be Me” by the Everly Brothers.
Bridie would stomp into the kitchen in her dirty T-shirt and cut-offs, her hair in messy braids.
“Mama! How come Cake won’t help me build the treehouse? I’ve been out there for two hours and all she does is lie there on the chaise lounge. Why does she want a tan? What’s so great about that?”
My hands were full of biscuit dough, so I ran them under the tap and wiped them on a dishtowel. “Want a drink?”
Bridie wiped her nose on her arm. “Kool-Aid, please.”
I went to the fridge and took out a pitcher of her favourite liquid, even though George said it wasn’t good for her. “When something stains a countertop, what’s it doing to her stomach?” he’d gripe.
Pouring a glass, I brought it over to the table where she sat. “First of all, stop calling her Cake. You know she hates it.”
“That’s why I do it. She’s so easy to annoy.”
Takes after her mother, I thought. I sat opposite her. “When some girls get to be a certain age, they like to be pretty, and getting a tan makes you pretty, I guess. That’s what my sister Betty always said, though I never saw the sense in it.”
“I can’t figure it out either. It’s so boring. You’d think she’d want a treehouse. That way she could spy on Ray across the street. She likes him. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah. She waits around until he comes out of his house to go to school. Then she just happens to come out and they walk together. It’s sickening.”
“There’s nothing wrong with liking a boy.”
“Ugh. Cake wants to be his main squeeze.”
“Main squeeze? Where did you hear that?”
“Kids at school. I keep my ears open, ya know.”
Bridie also kept her mouth open at school. There wasn’t a parent-teacher conference I went to that one of the teachers didn’t comment on Bridie’s talkative nature. I got annoyed with her grade-five teacher.
“It seems to me you’d want a child to be inquisitive. It shows she’s thinking.”
“She’s thinking about everything under the sun but her schoolwork. It’s hard to teach a chatterbox.”
George never met Bridie’s teachers because he knew Mavis would have a fit, so I’d report back to him and he agreed with me. “How’s a child to learn if she doesn’t ask questions? That’s the trouble with school. They want to make every kid fit the mold, and not the other way around.”
But I did understand how difficult it would be to keep Bridie from being bored. She was like a firefly, flitting from one thing to another, always searching for the meaning of things. As much as she seemed like a confident child, I know she felt insecure, especially if her father wasn’t around. Sometimes George would have to go to a medical conference, and while she never cried in front of him when he left, I’d hear her in her bed at night, sniffling, before she would crawl in with me. I never asked her what was wrong. I knew the feeling. When George was gone, we both felt a bit lonely.
I’m afraid as hard as we tried over the years, the chasm between the two factions in our house became well established. It was Mavis and Patty versus George, Bridie, and me. Mavis worked in secret over the years to get Patty to prey on George’s guilty conscience about Bridie. Whatever she wanted, Patty got. George didn’t really notice anymore; he was a very busy man, and the less grief he got from Mavis and Patty, the better.
I could hardly say anything. I wasn’t George’s wife, as much as I fantasized I was. I lived in my own little world and was fine with that. The only time it ever got awkward was when I was with family.
In 1961 my father died, and George and I went up to River Bourgeois for his funeral. Mavis said she refused to take Patty because Patty didn’t know him from a hole in the ground. As ever, her sensitivity knew no bounds. George didn’t want to take Bridie, as much as Bridie begged, because he thought she was too young to attend a funeral. There was no way on God’s green earth that I was going to let Mavis look after Bridie alone, so I rang up the mother of Bridie’s best friend, Judith, and asked if Bridie could stay with them for the weekend. She was happy to help and Bridie was over the moon that she was going to have her first sleepover.
There was a good crowd at the church, the cemetery, and the church hall afterward. Betty made an ass of herself boo-hooing. A fifty-three-year-old woman with three hulking sons in their twenties, none of them married, going on like she was six, about how her life was over now that “Daddy” was dead.
Betty didn’t even like our dad. He always told her to take the muck off her face and stop being so boy crazy.
At the end of the day, we went back to the house. As the male relatives gathered in the living room, we women sat at the kitchen table, drinking yet more tea and hoeing into the crust-less sandwiches the church ladies had packed up, all of us with our shoes and girdles off.
My mother looked done in, with big circles under her eyes. I patted her hand and she gave me a grateful look.
My aunt Jean took a sip of her tea. “How are things in Sydney, Eileen? It’s not like I can call Mavis and chat, or, God forbid, drop in for a visit to see Patty. She barely knows who I am. What a cold fish her mother is. I can’t for the life of me understand why George puts up with it.”
“He doesn’t notice.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” Betty sneered. “You’re there to make things all better. If you left, maybe he’d take a look around and give her the boot. It’s like he’s not a member of the family anymore. We never see him. Did you know that people talk about your ‘arrangement’? Not that anyone seriously believes that George loves you in that way. I mean, look at you. You’re as big as a house.”
My mother banged down her teacup. “Honestly, Betty. Do you ever have anything nice to say? And while we’re on the subject, you should talk!”
Betty looked horrified. “Mother! Daddy just died.”
“You haven’t seen him in eight months!” Mom said. “Just keep your trap shut. You’re wearing me out.”
I’d never heard my mother say anything critical to Betty, so she really was distraught. Betty turned a lovely shade of puce.
My mother turned to me. “How’s Bridie? You never bring her to visit. You know I can’t be traipsing down to the city, with my heart condition.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I had a car.”
“George could take you up here when he comes on his fishing trips,” Aunt Jean said. “There’s no reason we can’t see that child more often. It’s like she’s a secret or something.”
Betty folded her arms across her chest. “The whole story smacks of deceit. I can’t figure it out. Suddenly a child just falls into your lap and everyone is okay with you looking after it? I think Mavis needs her head examined, putting up with you two.”
“You’re just jealous, Betty. I have a beautiful daughter and you don’t.”
Our mother put her hands over her face. “Please. Stop it.”
Aunt Jean jumped up and put her arms around her sister’s shoulders. “You two should be ashamed of yourselves. Your poor mother has just had the worst day of her life and you’re squabbling like children. Pull yourselves together.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I left the table and went out on the porch swing. I knew Betty wouldn’t come outside. The woman never took a breath of fresh air if she could help it. It was a good thing her sons spent their leisure time with their dad growing up, hunting and fishing, or they’d never have seen the light of day.
When someone else called attention to my life and asked nosy questions, my unease grew. It probably did look fishy to others, all of us living under the same roof. But really, did anyone give it much thought, other than Mom and Aunt Jean? They certainly didn’t have the kind of relationship a grandmother would like with her grandchildren, but I’d always assumed it was Mavis they blamed for the distance between the generations. Not George or me.
But something under my skin always made itself felt when I thought about George. He was the one who never wanted Bridie to come to St. Peter’s or River Bourgeois. He always had a hundred excuses to not take us with him, when he did come. Bridie would beg to go fishing in his old childhood river and streams, but he stuck close to Sydney or Mira when he took her with him.
I watched the sun go down across the field of my childhood home. I’d never again see my dad walk out of the barn and come across the yard for supper. Tears sprang to my eyes. I’d spent too many years in Sydney and not enough time coming home to visit my parents like a good daughter should have. The time I wasted only thinking of myself and George and Bridie.
Bridie was my child, but she wasn’t. As much as I pushed the thought away, I knew that George was Bridie’s father. He had to be. He loved her with a passion that defied all logic.
But if that was true, then George wasn’t who I thought he was. I just loved him too much to accuse him of such a beastly thing. So I kept my mouth shut.
My father would have been ashamed of me.
8
Two years later, when Bridie turned thirteen, the real fireworks between the girls started. With four women in the house, two on the upside of puberty and two on the downhill slide, the atmosphere crackled with angst and hostility.
Patty shouted down the stairs, “Eileen! Tell that brat of yours that if she goes in my underwear drawer one more time, I’m going to knock her block off!”
Before I even had a chance to answer her, Bridie yelled from the dining room, where she was setting up her science project. Naturally, it was a volcano. Why not have everything erupt?
“I wasn’t in your stinkin’ drawers!”
Mavis was on the phone in the living room, smoking her cigarettes and having her second martini of the afternoon. “Why can’t I have some peace and quiet in this house!”
When one of these episodes happened, I was the one who would station myself in the hallway, where I had a good view of all the warring factions. Patty raced down the stairs and held a bra in my face. “I know she had her grubby little hands on this! There’s sawdust on it!”
“Maybe from you rolling in the hay with Sting Ray!” Bridie chirped.
“Eileen, will you shut these girls up?”
I whispered to Patty, “I’ll talk to her.” Then I reached into my apron pocket and took out a ten-dollar bill. I’d learned years ago to defuse hostility with money. “Go buy yourself another one. My treat.”
Patty took the money—without a thank you, I might add—and stormed back up the stairs. I shut the French doors to the living room so Mavis could have some privacy and went into the dining room. My hands were on my hips and I scowled. It didn’t bother Bridie in the least.
“Will you please stay out of her room? What do you want to go in there for, anyway?”
“It’s my mission in life to find her diary.”
I kept a straight face. “A person’s diary is special, and it’s none of your business. I forbid you to go into Patty’s room. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m not fooling around. I’ll tell your father, and he’ll be very disappointed.”
That’s all I ever had to say. For Bridie, that was the worst thing that could happen, having her father disappointed in her. But she was getting braver as she grew older, and two months later on a hot June day, Patty found Bridie coming into her room through the upstairs window.
Patty let out such a screech that her mother and father and I came running up the stairs and hurried into her room, just in time to see her push Bridie back out the window. I thought George was going to faint.
Bridie stuck her tongue out at Patty before the trellis she was hanging off of broke and Bridie went crashing into the cedar hedge below. We were all screaming, as we raced down the stairs and rushed outside.
“Oh, great!” Patty wailed. “Now she’s dead and Daddy will blame me!”
George got to her first. I could tell right away her arm was broken. She had blood running out of her nose and mouth. Even Mavis looked horrified.
“Mavis! Call an ambulance,” George shouted. Mavis took off like a shot. I was ever so grateful. I knelt by Bridie’s side and tried to comfort her. “Sweetheart, you’re going to be all right.”
“It’s important to keep still,” George told her. “We have to be careful of your neck.”
“Am I a pain in the neck, Pops?” Bridie whispered.
“You sure are,” Patty snivelled. “But don’t you dare die. Prom’s coming up.”
“I won’t die. But just in case, can I have your Shirley Temple doll?”
“Why do you want her? You hate dolls.”
“Her eyes close.”
George touched Bridie’s cheeks and forehead. “Stop talking, little one. Patty, run inside and get me a blanket.”
Bridie spent the next week in the hospital. They operated on her arm, which was badly broken, and as I sat with her, I told her of my adventure with my broken leg, minus some details I’d never tell anyone.
“And that’s why I limp.”
“Will my arm work when I get the cast off?”
“It will be fine. Your uncle Donny did the surgery and he’s very good.”
“I don’t like him.”
“No one likes him,” I confided, “but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good surgeon.”
“I don’t think Patty hates me anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“She gave me her movie magazines to read. They’re boring, but it was a nice gesture.”
I agreed. It was a nice gesture.
Patty almost didn’t make it to the prom. Her father was so angry at her for shoving her sister out the window, he said she was grounded for twelve years. Even I thought that was a bit much. Mavis went on the rampage and told George he was being an ass. It wasn’t Patty’s fault the trellis broke, and she hadn’t forced Bridie to climb the thing.
In the end, Patty did go to the prom. Ray arrived at the door with a corsage in a box. Bridie sat on the stairs watching the proceedings, weighed down by her heavy cast. George and Mavis took pictures, and Patty even asked to have a picture taken with me. She waved Bridie over too.
“Nah,” Bridie said. “I look a fright.”
George and I grinned at each other. Mavis said that at least ten times a day, and our little parrot had picked it up.
It was a long and hot summer for a girl who loved to climb trees, play baseball
, and build forts. She could do none of those things well with the cast on her arm, and slowly, I saw some of Bridie’s spunk leave her. I was worried about her and said as much to George one night in his study.
“She didn’t even want Kool-Aid today.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“You know what I mean. I’ve never seen her sad, and it breaks my heart.”
“What do you suggest we do?”
“Take her on a fishing trip to Grand River. Show her the places you loved as a kid. My mom would love to see Bridie, and so would your mother. There’s no reason to keep her cooped up here for the summer. Even if you only come for a day or two, I could stay up there with her until the end of August, and then her cast comes off and she’ll be ready for school.”
George instantly got that vaguely worried expression he wore whenever I mentioned home. “Do you really think that’s necessary?”
I finally blew my top. “What is wrong with you? Why do you keep Bridie from her family, the people who would love her the most? She lives with constant stress. She knows Mavis and Patty think of her as an outsider. Is that fair? You asked me to help you raise this child. Well, I’m telling you, it’s time to stop being so selfish and let me do what I think is right. I’m her mother, goddammit.”
George stared at me for a few moments while my heart pounded in my chest.
“I’m sorry, Eileen. You’re right. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and more. I’ll arrange for a few days off and we’ll have a jolly adventure.”
When I told Bridie we were going to stay with her grandmother Jessie, she hopped around like a bunny rabbit, even with her enormous cast. She couldn’t wait to tell Mavis and Patty at dinner.
“And we’re going fishing and everything! Oh, this is so great! Do you have a dog at your farm, Mama?”
“I think there’s a couple,” I said. “And best of all, there are chickens at my house. You can collect the eggs for your grandmother.”
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Bridie sighed, before stuffing her face with mashed potatoes.