by Darren Greer
But that morning, not a peep, which was why Jeanette thought she was playing tricks, trying to make it difficult for us to get ready in time to meet my uncle’s train.
My grandmother’s mood was not improved by the fact her bridge game that afternoon was cancelled. Hazel McLeod from down the street had an attack of gout, and called my grandmother to tell her to find another fourth. But there was no other fourth. It was too short notice.
She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea when my mother and I came in for breakfast. Aunt Jeanette was still in the shower.
“That’s great,” said my mother. “Now you can come to the train station with us.”
“It’s not ‘great,’” said my grandmother sourly. “And I’m still not going. I have things to do around here.”
My mother poured me a bowl of cereal with milk. Usually on Saturday my grandmother would have breakfast prepared for us — fried eggs and bacon or ham, cooked tomatoes, sometimes even sliced and fried potatoes. But this morning there was nothing.
For once, though, she did not complain about Jeanette being in the shower too long.
My mother did. It was almost ten o’clock and she and I had yet to clean up.
“What’s the point?” said my grandmother. “You’re only going to the train station. It’s not like the Pope is coming.”
“It’s an occasion,” said my mother. “We should all look nice for him. And smell nice too.”
“I smell fine,” said my grandmother. She sat, drinking her tea, with a bitter look on her face. She resented the fuss. She resented the bother. I’m sure if she could she would have closed up the house and put a “You’re Not Welcome” sign on the door.
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jeanette climbed out of the shower at ten fifteen, and my mother was cross with her.
“There’s hardly time for me to get ready, let alone Jacob,” she said.
Jeanette wore a yellow sundress. My grandmother reminded her it was a train station, and not a cotillion, they were going to. “I know,” Jeanette said. “I still want to dress up.”
My mother went to the bathroom, and I asked for another bowl of Corn Flakes. Jeanette started working on my grandmother to come to the station. They argued. I took my cereal into the tv room. I was not allowed to eat in any part of the house but the kitchen because my grandmother was afraid I’d drop something and spoil the rugs. But she was too busy arguing with Jeanette to notice. I could hear them from the tv room, so I turned on the television.
Spider-Man was on.
I loved Spider-Man.
I sat on the sofa and watched the show and finished my cereal. I tried to ignore Aunt Jeanette and my grandmother bickering in the kitchen.
In the end my grandmother decided to go to the station. I’m not sure how Aunt Jeanette convinced her. She could be tenacious; my grandmother said she could argue the boots off a stone statue. Or maybe, her bridge game cancelled, my grandmother decided to go for some obscure reason of her own. Whatever the cause, when I came downstairs changed out of my pyjamas, having time only to comb my hair and wash my face, the three of them were waiting for me in the foyer.
My grandmother wore the same floral print housedress she had on earlier, and she was putting on grandfather’s threadbare black greatcoat she sported around the yard in the fall. On a normal day, she would not be caught dead downtown in such an outfit. It was as if she was deliberately dressing down for my uncle. I might be meeting you, that ensemble said, but you aren’t anything special.
My mother and Jeanette were smart enough not to mention her getup. Later Jeanette said she looked like a cross between Diefen-baker and an old charwoman. They dressed up, Jeanette in the yellow sundress with a ladies’ summer coat that met up perfectly with the hem of her dress and left her legs bare, and my mother in a pair of tight jeans and a white cable-knit sweater. Jeanette looked like a debutante, my mother a sorority girl.
“All ready?” my mother asked.
“Let’s get this over with,” my grandmother said. “I might not have bridge today, but I do have the auxiliary meeting tonight. And I’ve got a busy day. Did you start the car, at least?”
Jeanette had, and we all went out and fit ourselves into it. It was a fine day; sun and blue sky, hardly a cloud. My grandmother fastened a clear plastic kerchief over her head to keep her hair in place, though there was no wind. She also called shotgun, though not in those words.
My grandmother disliked Jeanette’s car, a Pinto that rode close to the ground and always had something wrong with it. This time it had a loose fan belt that screamed like a child being axe-murdered and gave my grandmother the creeps. “Why don’t you get that fixed?” she asked Jeanette. “The whole vehicle is likely to fly apart at any minute.”
“It’s fine,” said Jeanette. “The belt just needs to be tightened.”
My mother and I got in the back seat. I was fine because I was short for my age, but my mother, who was reasonably tall for a woman, struggled for legroom. My grandmother thoughtlessly shifted her seat all the way back so my mother’s knees were pressed up against it, but my mother never complained.
No one had given a thought to how we were going to fit Uncle David in the car. My grandmother realized, at the same time I did, there was not going to be enough room. “Just you should have went, for heaven’s sake. The rest of us could have seen him when you got home ten minutes later.”
“It’s a homecoming,” argued Jeanette. “We all have to be there when he steps down from the train.”
Despite Aunt Jeanette’s long shower, we arrived at the train station early. Everything I knew about homecomings I had learned from tv. In those shows there are always dozens or hundreds of people waiting anxiously on the platform for the train to arrive. There are shouts and kisses and exclamations. I was not prepared for the desolation of the station, the single ticket agent behind the counter who gave my mother the arrival information, the funereal wasteland of the wooden platform outside as we stood, the only ones there, and waited for my uncle. My grandmother wanted to stay inside. Nobody argued with her. But when we all opted to stand on the platform she stayed with us and sat on a bench.
Aunt Jeanette and my mother talked excitedly. “I wonder what he’ll look like,” said my Aunt Jeanette.
My grandmother, with less vinegar than usual, had an answer for every question. “He’ll look just like he did the last time you saw him,” she said. “Only older.”
“Maybe he lost his hair,” said my mother. “Like Dad did.”
“You went up to visit him three years ago,” said my grandmother. “Had he lost his hair then?”
“No,” admitted my mother.
“Then he’s unlikely to have lost it now.”
I went over and sat beside my grandmother.
“I fail to see,” she said to me, “what the big mystery is. They talk to the boy almost every week on the phone. They know as much about his life as they do about mine.”
It was true my mother and Jeanette talked to my uncle a lot. When they put him on the phone with me I had nothing to say to him. To his credit, he didn’t baby talk me, as some people do when they are talking to children they’ve never met. He usually asked me in an adult voice if I was doing well in school and looking after my mother and what were the names of my friends.
I had not seen a picture of my uncle.
I had no idea what he looked like.
My grandmother and I were aligned, she because she resented my uncle for whatever reason, and I because I was jealous.
The wait for the train seemed to take hours.
At quarter after eleven Jeanette stamped her foot once on the platform and cried out, “What is taking so long?”
My mother agreed to go in and ask the ticket taker. She came out five minutes later and said she had been told the train was usually a few minutes late.
“Blueberry Special,” said Jeanette. That was the Advocate County nickname for the route from Halifax all the way down to Yarmouth.
It was a joke. The train rumbled along so slowly, it was said, you could hop off and pick blueberries and then hop back on again when you were done.
At just that moment we heard a sound from the north, and though we couldn’t see the train beyond the bend in the tracks, we could hear it. I stood up, more to see the train than in any anticipation of my uncle’s arrival. My grandmother stayed seated. Jeanette and my mother began to jump up and down like schoolgirls.
I was disgusted with them.
So was my grandmother. “I’ve raised a pair of infants,” she said.
The train rounded the corner, crawling slowly but evenly along the tracks. It was silver, long, and sleek. I was expecting, I realize now, a steam train, with billowing smoke and pistons and a horn. The train pulled into the station and rolled to a halt. There was no lifting of fog, no immediate disembarkation of passengers. It just sat there. No one wearing six shooters and a gallon hat got off. I was disappointed. I had watched too many westerns, too many old movies with my grandmother.
In the end the doors slid open and three people got off. One was a young girl with a single small suitcase. She didn’t look much older than me, though she must have been, for there was no one there to greet her. Another was a middle-aged, portly man with a satchel and a suit bag slung over his shoulder. He looked like a travelling salesman. The third got out of the last car. He was a tall, thin man with a stoop and more suitcases than he could carry. The porter on the train passed them down to him. He just stood there, helpless.
Jeanette and my mother scanned the faces.
The train did not dally. Apparently there were no passengers to board, for it immediately pulled away.
Jeanette was devastated.
The girl — she reminded me of Anne of Green Gables, though she did not have red hair and a wincey dress — and the salesman walked by us into the station. The tall thin man stayed down at the far end of the platform amidst his bags.
“He didn’t come,” Jeanette said.
“It must be an error,” said my mother. “Maybe he’ll be on a later train.”
“There is no other train today. This was the only one.”
My mother asked my grandmother if this was right, but she was staring intently down the platform at the man on the other end of it. Mother asked what she was looking at.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “but I think you better go down and help your brother.”
Jeanette slowly shook her head. “It’s too thin for David. Isn’t it?”
Before Jeanette could argue further, the man left his bags and started walking up the platform towards us. He lifted his arm in a wave, and Jeanette screamed. She and my mother began to run down the platform. Jeanette had worn high heels for the occasion, and they fired on the wooden planks of the platform like shots.
My grandmother and I stayed put. She was studying my uncle carefully from her place on the bench. She was the oldest of us, but there was nothing wrong with her eyesight, or her inner sense. She knew, she said later, there was something wrong with my uncle the minute he stepped down from the train.
3
the kissing and the hugging that took place between my uncle and my mother and Jeanette seemed to go on for hours. My grandmother stayed on her bench. I stood beside her and watched my mother and aunt fawn over my prodigal uncle. I didn’t leave my grandmother’s side in case I got pulled into this love fest.
My grandmother eyed, suspiciously, the four suitcases still sitting at the far end of the platform. “That’s an awful lot of baggage for a short visit,” she said. “I hope he doesn’t plan on staying the month.”
Eventually the three of them returned up the platform, my uncle in the middle and Aunt Jeanette and my mother on either side of him with an arm around his waist.
“Oh brother,” said my grandmother. “It’s like Old Home Week.”
My grandmother could be extremely caustic. Jeanette said once that the woman did not have an ounce of sentimentality in her.
I watched my uncle warily, and scanned my mother’s face for signs she had completely forgotten who I was. When they reached us, they stopped, separated, and my uncle looked at my grandmother.
“Hello, Mother,” he said.
“Hello, David,” she said. “That’s a lot of luggage you’ve brought. You planning on a long stay?”
David shrugged, and Aunt Jeanette shot her a look. My grandmother still had not risen from her bench, and when my mother suggested she get up and greet my uncle properly, she claimed her thrombosis was acting up and she didn’t dare stand.
“Does that mean we have to carry you to the car?” asked Jeanette.
“I’ll manage,” said my grandmother wryly.
I watched my uncle’s face for his reaction to my grandmother’s coolness. There was none. He only wore a tight little grin. He was a handsome man, if a little anemic. I stared at him until my mother remembered I was there and introduced me.
“So this is Jacob,” he said, bending down and reaching out a hand.
I shook it. I was not used to shaking hands and my uncle’s was damp. I fought the urge to wipe my own off on my pants. Unlike my grandmother, I was taught by my mother and the town to hide my displeasure.
“You’ve lost weight,” my grandmother said to him. “Are you not eating well up there in Toronto? And you’re pale too. Seems like you’re not looking after yourself.”
Everyone ignored her, and my mother suggested she and Aunt Jeanette go down and retrieve the bags.
“I can help,” said David
“No,” my mother said. “You stay here and keep Mom company. We can manage.”
I went with them, and as we were walking away I heard my grandmother nattering at her only son. No doubt he’d have to go through the third degree with her. She didn’t like him. That was clear. But that still wouldn’t exempt him from a thorough interrogation of his life.
On the way down the platform my mother asked what I thought of him.
“He’s okay,” I said. “He’s tall.”
“You’ll like him,” Aunt Jeanette said. “Once you get to know him.”
“Then why doesn’t Grandnan like him?”
Jeanette grunted, almost like a pig, and said “Grandnan doesn’t like much of anybody.”
My mother told her to be quiet. “You just have to give it time,” she said. “They haven’t seen each other in a long while.”
This was not an answer. It was another way of saying it was none of my business.
I was given the lightest bag to carry. My mother and Jeanette struggled with the other three. I resented that. The least my uncle could have done was relieve us of one of them. We eventually got them all into the hatchback of the Pinto, and I had to crawl in back in between my mother and David. I was angered even further. I did not want to be close to him, our legs touching. He offered to sit me on his lap if it would make me more comfortable.
“Gee, can I?” I said, with as much sarcasm as I could muster. I’d been good at that from an early age, inadvertently instructed by my grandmother. My mother pinched my thigh, and I stayed quiet.
My grandmother was annoyed because Jeanette could no longer see out the rearview mirror. The bags were piled too high in the hatchback, and she had long ago lost her driver’s side mirror when she scraped it off on a building backing into a parking space. “This is a recipe for an accident,” my grandmother said. “David’s visit will be over before it starts.”
We got home without incident and climbed out of the car. My uncle stood in the driveway and looked up at the house.
“Not a thing has changed,” he said.
“Nonsense,” said my grandmother. “The shutters are green, not blue. The roof’s been reshingled. We’ve kept it perfectly since …”
My grandmother was about to say, “since your father died” but for some reason stopped herself. Instead she marched, tight-lipped, into the house, leaving us to carry the bags. This time my uncle did help. We then went through the ordeal of m
y grandmother designating him a room. She could have done this before; in fact she probably had. But she wanted to go through the show of it to illustrate what an inconvenience David’s visit was.
Eventually she settled on the guest room next to Jeanette’s room. This was the first time I became aware that this was David’s old room. There were no mementos. There was no trace of occupancy in the last fifteen years. It was as featureless and sterile as a hotel room. I wondered if there ever had been mementos. I knew my room screamed me: Star Wars posters and model robots and a red ribbon from a science fair in school. Maybe David had taken all this stuff when he left, or maybe he’d never had any.
He told my grandmother it would do fine. After his bags were stored and he had showered and changed, dirty as he was from such a long train trip, he came down to the pancake brunch being prepared for him. My grandmother opted out. She said she was going over to Hazel’s to see how she was feeling. Jeanette offered to drive her, but my grandmother said she would walk. No one mentioned that just a half hour ago she was stricken with thrombosis.
After she left my uncle said, “She hasn’t changed much.”
“No,” said my mother. “Still the same as ever.”
“It nearly killed her to give up a spare room,” Jeanette said. “She might have to do a little extra laundry. Even though Caroline and I do it all.”
My uncle smiled over his pancakes. “I’m sure,” he said, “there’s more to it than that.”
I paid attention, but no more was said. Eventually I left them and went upstairs to my room and played video games, shutting the door behind me because I didn’t want to hear the voices drifting up from below.