Phoebe's Way
Page 5
Mrs. Frailic can still sing even though she cannot speak. The words come from a place that flows around the pad into her mouth. Myother stands and clasps her hands together at her middle. Mrs. Frailic sees Myother in a yellow dress, braids on either side of the small pink mouth that opens and sings.
The ash grove, how graceful, how plainly ’tis speaking.
The harp wind through its playing has language for me.
And Mrs. Frailic fills her lungs with memory and sings:
Whenever the light through its branches is breaking,
A host of kind faces is gazing on me.
The friends of my childhood again are before me
Each step wakes a memory as freely I roam.
With soft whispers laden its leaves rustle o’er me
The ash grove, the ash grove alone is my home.
RESURRECTION
DECEMBER
We move together, Myother and me, ten steps from the car to the door. Memory makes me pause; I stop and sniff the crisp air deep.
“You’ve been here before,” Myother says. “This is where I found you.”
We walk inside where a woman sits behind a desk. I count the whines and barks. I smell bleach, urine, medicine, and poop. I count the males and females. The woman stands and opens a door for us.
“There’s a German Shepherd mix in cage one and a greyhound in cage two. Three Shih Tzus in cage three and puppies in the last four cages.”
The black and tan dog in the first cage flattens his ears and comes to the cage door. His hindquarters slope down. He bares his teeth. Myother pulls me close to her and we walk to the next cage.
She looks at a paper on the cage door. “Fiona. Female, Greyhound, age four,” she says. She lays her hand flat on the cage and the dog walks forward. Her tail is tucked tight between her legs. She nuzzles Myother’s fingers. I wag my tail and press my nose to the metal. The dog turns her back to me and walks to the rear of the cage.
Myother rubs my head and looks again at the paper.
“Reason for surrender: food aggression issues. We can’t have that,” she says. “Biting in the dining room is not allowed.” We walk to the next cage.
Three small dogs dash to the cage door. They have small round heads and fluffy black and white fur. Myother reads from the paper. “Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Females, Shih Tzu, age six. Reason for surrender: owner passed away. Must be adopted together.”
Myother kneels and touches the cage. The dogs whine and spin. One puts her paws on the bars to get closer to me. The other two leap on her.
Myother turns her face to mine. “No,” she says. And I lick her hand that holds my leash, happy that we understand one another.
The next three cages hold litters of puppies, whimpering, scratching, peeing, needy balls of fur. Myother opens the door of each cage and brings out one from each litter for me to appraise. Myother’s hand bleeds from the sharp milk teeth. I wander to the end of the hall to get away from them.
In the last cage sits a big black puppy, a patch of white on his chest. His head is large, his ears small. He is as close to the cage door as he can get. His tail swishes across the stone floor. I walk to the cage and he loosens his ears. He presses his nose to the bars and I touch mine to his. I smell loneliness. His tongue darts out, licking my muzzle.
Myother reads the paper: “Willy. Male, Lab/Mastiff mix, six months old. Reason for surrender: apartment too small.”
Myother places her hand on the cage. Willy gives her one lick then returns to my muzzle, to respecting me. Myother opens the cage door and fastens a leash to his collar. He does not bolt away; he stays close.
Myother takes us outside to a fenced place with snow and grass and mud. She closes the gate and removes our leashes. I trot in a circle, and the puppy follows. He does not jump on me. I bow my chest low, rear raised in play invitation. The puppy does the same and dashes at me. I sit and remain still. The puppy lies down at my feet exposing his belly. I lick his face and taste hope and joy.
ASCENSION
JUNE
Saturday morning I lie in my bed in a beam of light on the sunroom floor. Outside the windows, waves roll in like white horses. The windows are open; I hear hummingbirds at the feeder. A cat dashes from the old barn across the road. I am content and I sleep.
Myother’s car crunches gravel and I lift my head. She opens the car door and Willy jumps out. He wears his work bandana. He runs to the porch and scratches the door. My tail wags in anticipation.
Myother opens the door and Willy comes beside me. He licks my head, then stands quiet for me to smell the scents he has brought home.
Julia’s scent was the first to disappear. Willy brought home her final memories last winter. They were red, red in her lungs and red in her heart where the man at last took up all the space there. Archie’s scent has grown smaller since then — a single rub to Willy’s ear.
Father MacLeod faded, week after week, until his scent on Willy was gone one day in the spring. He was listening to voices singing, moving his hands in arcs on Willy’s head when the beads dropped to the floor.
Walter’s scent was layered with his daughter’s but grew weaker as hers grew stronger. When his left, a week after Father MacLeod’s, his daughter’s scent remained, layered with the scent of the man who took Walter’s space.
Rose sent a treat home for me with Myother each week. Her residue on Willy’s fur became so sweet I would sneeze, and then she was gone, too. Willy still brings home Pansy’s scent, loamy, dirt embedded in her fingertip swirls.
Of the three women at the end of the hall, only Meg’s scent comes home with Willy. She does not know she lives at Mersey House. She lives in a home amidst fog, wood smoke, pine, and salt. Her touch on Willy’s fur is from Paradise.
Through Grace’s scent, I knew Simone had gone. Simone never touched Willy. Grace loves Willy, his fat tongue, his big head, his small ears — her scent is all over him. Simone loved Grace; she touched her face and hands often. One Saturday not long ago, Simone was no longer mixed into Grace’s scent.
Willy likes Coral best, her hot knobby hands running over his ribs. He likes her constant chatter and the jingle of rings as she rests her head on his broad back.
Myother holds the door open for us to go outside. I rise up slow from my bed, stretch to pull out the pain in my hips.
Willy waits for me on the porch. Now we move as one, four steps down the stairs, twelve more to the open space where I lie down in the grass and roll. Willy sits near me and scans the horizon. I roll to make my mark known; to mark my joy, to mark the hands of Mersey House that crossed Willy’s fur with pain turned softer, with memories turned sharper, with grey turned as green as the grass on this earth that is mine.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Expressing my gratitude to the Saint John Ambulance Therapy Dog Program of Nova Scotia, an organization that has brought hundreds of dogs together with hundreds of people who need them.
Thanks to Queens Manor in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, for supporting the therapy dog program, for the kindness I have received there, for the residents who have shared their stories, and for the staff who have shared dog biscuits.
Thanks to Jack David, Crissy Calhoun, Jen Hale, Erin Creasey, and Rachel Ironstone at ECW Press, the most professional press I have worked with in my career: experienced, expert editors, available when needed and prompt with responses, suggestions, and support.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pamela Ditchoff is the author of five novels, two teaching texts, and poetry in literary magazines and anthologies. She has taught creative writing at university level and to primary and secondary students through Writers in Schools Program. Pamela lives in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
Copyright © Pamela Ditchoff, 2014
Published by ECW Press
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Cover design: Tania Craan
Cover images: Greyhound: © George Jones/Getty Images International; coastal home: © shaunl/Getty Images International; vintage pictures: © subjug/iStockPhoto.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ditchoff, Pamela, 1950–, author
Phoebe’s way / Pamela Ditchoff.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77090-605-1 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-77090-606-8 (pdf)
ISBN 978-1-77041-195-1 (bound)
I. Title.
PS8557.I73P46 2014 C813’.54 C2014-902589-0 C2014-902590-4
The publication of Phoebe’s Way has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,793 individual artists and 1,076 organizations in 232 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.