by Lesley Crewe
Copyright
Copyright © 2016, Lesley Crewe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3731 Mackintosh St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A5
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Printed and bound in Canada
Design: Heather Bryan
Front cover art: Shutterstock; Shelagh Duffett, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Interior illustrations: Heidi Hallett
NB1275
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Crewe, Lesley, 1955-, author
Mary, Mary / Lesley Crewe.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77108-453-6 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77108-454-3 (html)
I. Title.
PS8605.R48M37 2016 C813’.6 C2016-903749-5
C2016-903750-9
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
Dedication
For my cousin Barbara, who, once upon a time, planned her wedding from a bed in our living room.
CHAPTER ONE
It was a Saturday night and Mary Ryan had a hot date with Mrs. Aucoin.
At the age of ninety, Mrs. Aucoin still made her own cookies and was always inviting Mary up to share them in the apartment she rented from Mary’s mother.
Despite being twenty-three, Mary had a surprising amount in common with Mrs. Aucoin. There was their shared admiration for a big tomcat named Roscoe, who had to be the ugliest cat on the street but had the loudest purr either of them had ever heard. He was a stray, and Mary tried long and hard to get her mother and grandmother to take him in, but they would not be swayed—so Mrs. Aucoin stepped in and took the chewed-up beast into her home. For that, Mary would love her forever.
Roscoe was purring in Mary’s lap as Mrs. Aucoin poured the tea at her kitchen table, a big plate of sugar cookies between them. When she added the milk, Mary noticed it had gone off, but she didn’t want to embarrass her hostess so she kept quiet and drank it anyway.
They were two cookies in when Mrs. Aucoin suddenly said, “Did you know my middle name is Mary?”
“Is it? What’s your first name? I’ve only ever known you as Mrs. Aucoin.”
“It’s Beatrice, but my parents always called me Bea…their bumblebee, they said.”
“That’s so sweet. I’ve always had a bit of a grudge against my mom. She should have known better than to call me Mary. She condemned me to a lifetime of ridicule in school.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“In elementary, I was always asked where my lamb was, and if I was quite contrary. When my boobs got bigger in the middle grades, the boys called me Mary Poppins, but the real fun started in high school, where I was known as the Virgin Mary.”
“Oh dear.” Mrs. Aucoin laughed. “I never thought of that.”
“Whenever Mom yells my name, it feels like a commandment: Marry! For some strange reason she wants me to get married, even though she never did.”
“And do you want to get married?”
“I’m never getting hitched. Why bother? My grandfather walked out on my Gran; my mother didn’t know my father’s last name; my Aunt Peggy’s husband is never home because he’s a heart doctor. And then there’s my cousin, Sheena. When we were little girls, we played Barbies together and Sheena always turned Barbie into a bride and made me play with the Ken doll. Ken was boring, but at least I had enough self-respect to pretend otherwise. I had Ken climbing up bureaus and bungee-jumping off bedside lamps, while Barbie cried and pouted at the altar.”
“Dear me.”
“Our friendship was almost destroyed the day I took a pair of scissors and hacked off Barbie’s hair and veil. Sheena ran screaming to her mother and Aunt Peggy told me in a very stern voice that it wasn’t a very nice thing to do and I should apologize. So I did. I thought I’d get in trouble, but later that day Mom took me out for ice cream. She’d never done that before. I can count on one hand the number of times Mom has taken me anywhere. But really, these days I don’t even want to go with her.”
Mrs. Aucoin reached out and patted Mary’s hand. “Love your mother. You may not always like her, but remember to love her. She’s the only one you will ever have. And you’ll miss her when she’s gone.”
Mary trudged home from work in the dark. She was freezing. She’d been cold for eight hours; her cash register was nearest to the sliding doors of the Prince Street Sobeys entrance, and since tomorrow was Christmas Eve, customers had flocked in every few seconds, frantic to pick up last-minute groceries for the holiday season. Everyone tried to get in her line-up with too many items, but Mary didn’t say anything. People were stressed out enough. In this season of love, let them fight amongst themselves.
It was a miserable night out, and she had hoped her mom would be outside in their old Dodge Spirit, ready to drive her home, but no. She wrapped a scarf around her head a couple of times. If Sheena had worked on her feet all day and there was a blizzard outside, Aunt Peggy would be idling by the store entrance with her brand new Lexus all warm and toasty for the darling girl to jump right in.
Not for the first time did Mary think how great it would’ve been if she and Sheena had been switched at birth and Mary was sent home with Aunt Peggy. She always felt a pang of guilt and shut the thought down before it gathered momentum. There was no point in what ifs. Life was what it was.
Unfair.
The cold north wind blew wet snow all over Mary’s glasses. She couldn’t see a thing, so she took them off and put them in her pocket, looking down at her feet to keep her face from being pelted with hail. The route was easy: up to George Street, left, and then straight down George Street, where the large two- and three-storey houses were now apartments with two or more front doors across the wide wooden porches. Crooked mailboxes were nailed beside doorbells, and gravel driveways marked off the properties. The one thing Mary did like about her street was the trees. If you cocked your head at a certain angle, they looked like huge wooden slingshots lined up in an orderly row, thanks to the power company cutting away branches growing near the lines over the years.
The snow kept accumulating and made walking treacherous. Mary slipped on the ice underneath. Thank goodness she was almost up to Dotty’s Dairy. Their house was next to the old store, which was both a blessing and a curse. Great if you needed milk, but rotten because the rosebushes on their front lawn gathered litter thrown away by people the minute they left the store—cigarette packs, chocolate bar wrappers, and pop bottles.
Mary mentioned to her gran that perhaps they should cut the scraggly roses down, but Gran said the thorny bushes kept dogs from shitting in the yard.
Thankfully the upstairs apartment windows were glowing through the snow; Mrs. Aucoin didn’t like the dark. Mary was grateful to her, because her mother and grandmother never left any lights on at all. It was like walking into a morgue whenever she came home. Only the
glare from the television in the living room illuminated a dim pathway as Mary hurried up the back steps and into the porch. She immediately flicked on the light switch.
There were no greetings over the blaring television.
Mary left her sodden outer gear hanging on a hook in the porch and went to throw her purse on the kitchen table, but it was full of dirty dishes. She dropped her purse by the door instead. The sink was also piled high with plates and cutlery, but that didn’t stop her from turning on the hot water to thaw out her hands.
While it was understandable that her mother didn’t feel like doing housework after standing on her feet all day in her hair salon—a.k.a. their dining room—she often wondered why Gran didn’t pitch in a little more often. Sewing hems and the occasional waistband for the neighbours didn’t take up a lot of her time, most of which was spent snoring on the couch in front of the TV, a cup of ginny tea in danger of falling to the floor.
The kitchen was a dreary place anyway, whether it was clean or dirty. It was in desperate need of an overhaul. The old cupboards, wallpaper, and chipped lino floor all screamed sixties, with varying shades of orange, lemon, and faded green. You’d think with running a business her mom would make more of an effort, since clients had to walk through the kitchen to get to the “salon,” but most of her clientele had been coming for years and they clearly couldn’t care less. Carole’s Styling Salon was cheap.
“That you?” her mother shouted from the living room.
“Yeah.”
Carole appeared in the kitchen with purple jogging pants hanging off her rear and a Winnie-the-Pooh pyjama top stretched across her ample chest. Her salt-and-pepper hair was done up in bobby-pin curls, a change from her usual Velcro rollers. When she did smile, she was attractive enough, but most of the time she scowled. “What’s it like out?”
“Didn’t you notice the snowstorm? I could’ve used a drive home.”
Carole yawned and reached for her cigarettes. “You’re young. You survived.” She lit one up and inhaled deeply.
“I can’t believe I have so far, breathing in your smoke my whole life.”
Carole sat at the kitchen table and pulled a dirty saucer towards her. She flicked her ash in it. “I’ve got one pleasure in life and this is it.”
“You told me you’d quit when you were forty. That was six years ago.”
“Jesus. When did that happen? My life is over.”
Mary’s grandmother, Ethel, shuffled into the kitchen wearing a worn-out pink bathrobe and hairnet. She was only sixty-eight but looked ten years older, thanks to her years of downing booze. She also had a dowager’s hump that made her look like she was charging towards you. Arthritis had set up shop in her knees years before, but it seemed to come and go depending on the task at hand. If there was housework to be done, her knees went on strike. If she ran out of gin they’d happily take her to the liquor store, lickety-split.
“Did you pick up my peppermints?”
“Yes, Gran.” Mary dried off her hands and opened her purse. She took out a package of large pink peppermints and handed them to her grandmother.
“You’ll rot your gut sucking on those things,” Carole said.
“Better than sucking on cigarettes.”
Mary busied herself getting milk for the bowl of cereal that would be her supper, but there were no clean bowls in the cupboard, so she poured herself a glass of milk and had a piece of bread and peanut butter instead. Then she sat at the table and cracked open the kitchen window in a vain attempt to get rid of the smoke, but the blast of frigid air made her mother screech, so she shut it again with a bang.
Ethel made a racket with the bag of candy. “How the hell do you open these peppermints?”
No one answered her.
“I saw Sheena today,” said Mary.
Carole raised her eyebrows. “What’s new with her?”
“She’s engaged.”
Her mother’s face registered shock. “Peggy never said anything! How long has she been going out with this bozo? A week?”
“Since the summer.”
Gran grunted. “She’s a tramp.”
“She’s a hopeless romantic, Gran.”
“Same thing.” Ethel growled low in her throat and gave the candy package a giant yank, resulting in peppermints flying all over the kitchen.
“For Jesus’s sake, Ma!”
“Five-second rule.” Ethel gathered up the peppermints that had landed on the counter and table. Mary bent down to scoop up the ones near her feet.
“Don’t let her eat those,” said Carole. “This floor is filthy.”
Ethel popped a mint in her mouth. “You’re supposed to eat a pound of dirt before you die. I read that somewhere.”
“You’ll be dead in the morning.” Carole stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another. “Great, Peggy planning a wedding. We’ll never hear the bloody end of it. And Sheena! She’ll be intolerable.”
“She was beyond excited,” said Mary. “She bought a pack of gum so she could come through the checkout and show me her ring.”
“Why can’t we be the centre of attention for once? Hurry up and get engaged, will ya?” said Carole.
“You hate men. Why would you want me to marry one?”
“To have a wedding! Peggy had one with a gown and flowers and a honeymoon. What did I get? A life sentence with a souse.”
“Living with you is why I drink,” Ethel said.
“I’ve spent my whole life without a man,” Carole scofffed. “You made sure you chased Dad away.”
Ethel made a face. “My heart bleeds.”
Mary looked up. “And you chased mine away, apparently,” she said to Carole. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
Carole got up from the table. “Ditto what she said,” nodding to Ethel. “I’m going to bed.”
Mary pointed. “Put your cigarette out before you do.”
Her mother waved her hand vaguely and left the kitchen. Ethel joined Mary at the table and they inspected the peppermints before putting them in a plastic storage bag.
“She’s still dripping with jealousy,” Mary observed.
“Yep. Always unhappy.”
“Why don’t I make her happy?”
“You do.” Ethel popped two peppermints in her mouth.
Mary took her empty glass over to the sink and decided to do the dishes after all. Her grandmother began rooting through her purse, which caught Mary’s attention. “Are those scratch tickets? What did Mom say about that?”
Ethel scratched away like an old hen. “What your ma doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Besides, it’s my money.”
“What if you win?”
“I’ll be but a fond memory.”
Mary grinned. “You’d leave me here all alone with her?”
Ethel pursed her lips. “No one deserves that. I’ll give you enough money for a bus ticket outta here.”
“Thanks, Gran.”
“Oh, before I forget, Mrs. Aucoin wanted to know if you could pick up a few groceries for her tomorrow. That no-good son of hers says he’s on back shift and can’t take her. You should get her list now. She sleeps late in the morning.”
With only a sweater and slippers on, Mary went out into the stormy night and rang Mrs. Aucoin’s doorbell. Mary wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer; Mrs. Aucoin couldn’t hear very well. She couldn’t see very well either, so you practically had to be on top of her before she recognized you. Her son had given her a pair of binoculars, but Mrs. Aucoin kept looking through the wrong end and declared them useless. Her son finally installed a can of mace on the wall near the door, but she used it on him one night during a power outage when he came to see if she was okay. He finally told his wife that if they killed her, they killed her. She was going to outlive him anyway.
Mary opened the door and h
ollered, “Mrs. Aucoin?”
No answer.
She trudged up the steps. “It’s Mary. I’ve come to get your grocery list.”
There was a television on in the kitchen, so she walked down the hall but froze in the doorway. Mrs. Aucoin was at the table, face-first in a plate of creamed peas on toast. Roscoe was licking her cheek.
Mary thought she was going to be sick. “Oh no! Mrs. Aucoin!” She hurried over to the woman and moved Roscoe to a chair. Then she gently lifted her neighbour’s head and wiped the sauce off her face with a napkin. She pushed the plate away and carefully laid her head back down on the place mat. “I’m sorry. This is awful. Why did you have to be alone?”
Tears fell as Mary patted Mrs. Aucoin’s grey hair. She looked around and saw the teapot on the warmer, so she turned it off and noticed the two sugar cookies laid out for Mrs. Aucoin’s dessert. That made her cry harder. She didn’t want to leave her old friend, so she sat beside her for a while. Mary had never seen a dead body, but it wasn’t as scary as she’d imagined. The cat got back up on the table and looked at his mistress quizzically.
“I suppose she wasn’t completely alone, Roscoe. Thank goodness you were here.”
Mary realized she had better tell someone. She ran downstairs and out onto the front porch, only to find she’d locked herself out of the house. “Shit!”
She banged on the door. “Mom! Gran! Open up! Open this door!”
A light finally came on in the front porch. Her mother screwed up her face trying to see who was outside. “What do you want?”
“Mom! It’s me. Let me in!”
Carole opened the door. “What in the name of Jesus…?”
Ethel was behind her with a baseball bat in her hand. Mary tumbled in and tried to catch her breath. “It’s Mrs. Aucoin! She’s dead!”
“Dead?”
“Yes!” Mary rubbed her cold fingers. “Call the police. Or should we call her son?”
“Don’t call him!” Ethel hollered. “That idiot probably murdered her. He’ll get us next!”