by Sheree Fitch
“Stupid! That’s what it was! A stupid, stupid stunt! Foolhardy! A rapscallion! That’s what you are. A rapscallion! Good word for you! You might think I’m some old obstreperous curmudgeon, but that is nothing compared to you!”
“My head hurts, Nana!” I protested, hoping that would shut her up.
“Good, I hope it aches for a good while yet! Every time it does, may you reflect on what you’ve done! If you weren’t lying there I’d take a hickory switch to your behind, that’s what I’d be doing if you were my child! Harv risked his life for you. Imagine!”
Harv had been the brave one to figure out where I’d headed and go out in the middle of the night to Elbow Island. My hero. With the way the wind had kicked up, the coast guard had advised against it. And he got to me anyhow. And that other man—this camper who prefers to remain anonymous, the papers said—had already found me after I fell through the rotting floorboards of the Clancy cabin.
“He and Harv got you to the hospital in record time.” Nana repeated her version of events every time she came to visit. There I was, alone in the room with the Vinegar Witch, at her mercy. Oh yeah, the witch wasn’t long resurfacing! The whole room turned sour with every breath she took. Vapours of oatmeal and Lux soap mixed up together. Nana Vinegar was on a roll.
I was relieved when visiting hours were over. But that didn’t put a stop to visitations.
Thomas—Max—crept sideways into my room. He looked at me as though I’d spring from my bed and attack him at any moment. I would have if I could have!
“How are you?”
“Tickety-boo. What’s it look like?”
“I am sorry, Minn, I am. I never meant …”
I turned my face to the wall.
“You had to do it alone but you couldn’t be completely alone … so I was there for moral support …”
He showed me a headline in a provincial newspaper:
13-YEAR-OLD GIRL A GRAVESAVER!
“That’s you—a gravesaver!” There was my face below a map of Elbow Island and a picture of the SS Atlantic.
I began to read.
Due to the persistence and daring of a 13-year-old from Fairvale, the gravesite of the SS Atlantic will be restored. Intending to plant a decoy on Elbow Island to draw attention to the eroding grave, Cinnamon Elizabeth Hotchkiss was stranded for a few harrowing hours—
I tossed it aside.
“Whatever,” I said. And I’m almost thirteen! And you … used me! You needed me to get to John, right?”
“Is that so bad? I’ve missed him for the longest time. He wouldn’t come any closer than Elbow Island because he blamed himself for … well, for living. We wasted a lot of time. I brought you something.”
“Just go, okay?”
But he didn’t. “Take this first.” He opened his hand. In his palm was a rock. “It’s yours,” he said. “It belongs to you, I think.”
A heart-shaped rock. A white one.
“I found it yesterday,” he said. “It’s still a little crooked.”
“It’s perfect,” I managed to croak out as he put it into my hand. But his hand did not touch mine. Still, he got close enough so I could smell that fresh-air smell about him.
“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “If I were a young lad now, I want you to know …”
Then he leaned down and, yes, kissed me. On the lips.
“Gotta go. But this isn’t farewell. Not yet.”
He kissed me again.
He tasted like oranges.
NO HAPPY EVER AFTER
The longer I lived, the more I wanted my family back. The more I missed having an older brother. I guess the truth is I drank and I fought.
I once dreamed of being an engineer and designing a bridge, something that carried people safely across the water. Instead, I quit school and went to work on the Brooklyn Bridge. Wasn’t afraid one bit of falling. Those suspension cables were just like the rigging. I was still scared of water, though. So I held on tight and did a fine job.
I never fell in love or married or had children.
At times I’d think of finding my way back to Nova Scotia and living a simple life.
Sometimes I scribbled poems. The night I died, I wrote this one.
Where is the boy from Ashton gone, the laughing boy with his heart still young?
Where is the boy who loved to live? Well he died the night his brother drowned.
Where is the hope that sorrow ends? When did pain become my friend?
Where has the sun decided to hide? Deep down in the sea where my brother died.
And the tide comes in and the tide goes out
And I get up every morn
And my brother died when just a lad
And I wish I’d never been born. And I wish I’d never been born.
So you see, I’m no shining example of how you overcome disaster. Is that what you thought? I survived the best I could for as long as I could.
I watch now from this place and I like to think I’ve learned a lot. I’ve seen how some folks go through things, and they not only survive, they go forward and thrive.
I am no hero. Heroes are people who never give up hope. No matter what. Giving up is never an answer. I didn’t that night on the mizzen. But I did eventually, and drowned in my own sorrow.
I was twenty-two years old the day they opened the Brooklyn Bridge. I celebrated a bit too much. For the record—so you’ll know—I stumbled. I didn’t jump.
But when I heard the train, I didn’t move, either. The railroad ties underneath me looked like a ladder. I hung on like it was the mizzen.
It was instant.
Decapitation.
— UNEXPECTED KINDNESSES —
Next morning, after the bedpans and sponge bath, I was told I had more visitors. The chauffeur ambled into my room. He twisted the brim of his hat nervously in his hands. His hair was so silver I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. He wasn’t wearing sunglasses.
I have a thing for eyes, I guess. His were kind and sea glass green. He wasn’t as old as I thought. His smile was charming. To think I thought he was a drug smuggler. You have to get close to people to know them. There is so much you can’t tell from a distance.
“Minn, I’m Paul Dubbins.”
The shock must have registered on my face. Paul Dubbins was a famous artist.
“We met briefly. I rent the Fullerton place. I’m an artist.”
“You are?” I said. “I mean, I know.”
“Let me guess.” He smiled. “You were thinking I was Hardly Whynot’s driver, right?”
I nodded. “You said you wanted my picture for an album.”
He laughed and slapped his thigh. “A photo album! I sometimes paint from photos. And I’d still like yours.”
“Bad hair day,” I said.
“So it was you!” he exclaimed.
“Me?”
“The informer. The other day these four women came to my house asking for my boss’s autograph. They were most disappointed to discover I was not the chauffeur for the famous singer of the Ladybugs. They told me some young girl had told them I was his driver.”
I know I turned red as my hot water bottle. “Well, there’s always been this rumour, and I was hoping to get his autograph. For my mother.”
“Gave me a good enough laugh. How about you take my autograph on this?”
He handed me a cheque. There were a lot of zeros. It was made out to The SS Atlantic Heritage Project.
“Oh. My,” I managed to mumble. “Thank you,” I said. And then into the room burst the Cackleberry Women with huge bouquets of flowers.
“Ladies, good day,” Paul Dubbins said and winked at me as he was leaving.
“Sooo cute,” one whispered to the other. “Rich and famous. Your Nana was right,” sighed another.
The Cackleberry Women turned out to be nice as anything. They fussed. One kissed me. They said they’d donate some money too. Then they were gone. Their perfume lingered.
&nbs
p; Nana bristled back into the room and immediately sneezed. “Uppity Canadians! Hospitals are supposed to be scent-free zones!” No doubt she was going to continue her lecture on my harbour of stupidity.
I handed her the cheque signed by Mr. Dubbins.
She looked at it. Her eyes were wide as pie plates.
“But,” I said, taking the cheque away, “you might not want it—seeing as he’s a CFA.”
Then she leaned over me, sour old witch, so close I could have bitten off those three chin hairs.
“I have never, ever known a child to harbour such hope and determination in her heart,” she said.
Then she kissed my cheek. And smiled. She didn’t smell sour at all.
— HOME AGAIN, JIGGETY JIG! —
“You idiot! You total idiot!” Carolina had a new haircut and was brown as a berry. “I could have lost my best friend ever in the world!” She burst into tears.
“Now who’s being melodramatic?” But I hugged her tight and started blatting too. My father mumbled something about hormones and left the room with my mother.
Getting home meant telling everything to her. Well, almost everything.
“Whatever happened to that cutie you met?”
“Oh yeah. He was a real dream,” I said.
“What happened?” she squealed. “Did you kiss? Mouth open?”
“Ew. Carolina! No! We did not kiss. Not like that.”
“Oh you! Only Minn! You’re still such a tomboy!”
No, I wanted to say, I’m Tom’s girl.
“Once you’ve had a real kiss, you’ll know! I do, I do!” And she started to tell me the details. Like something out of one of her bodice-ripper romances. She calls me a snob when I tell her those books are so much garboon. She says she’s sure I’ll grow into them!
Even to Carolina, I couldn’t tell the deepest secret of my heart.
At least she was interested in what happened. She pored over the old articles about the shipwreck from the Boulder Basin Bulletin. Nana had given me photocopies the day I left.
It was good to get back home and see her and the neighbourhood and all things familiar. Familiar but changed.
The baby’s room was gone, for one thing. It was a cedar-lined storage closet instead. But my room was different as well. They’d placed a cradle in a corner of my room. It was filled with my old stuffed animals and a few dolls. “If you want it?” my mother said.
“Where did you guys find this, anyway?” I asked her.
“A friend of your grandmother’s attic. It’s really old.”
When she was gone, I crawled underneath it. Sure enough. Scratched out and faded were the initials P. H.
Patrick Hindley? I wanted to scream and cry and laugh. Everything and nothing made sense.
Mr. Forest, who was still taking it easy because of his angina, came to visit me with books galore. One was a science book on clouds. I searched that book page by page. Nowhere did the book suggest that clouds we’re spirits. So I had no scientific proof for anything—no rational explanation. So then I read all the Harry Potters. They made more sense. We rented the DVD of Titanic.
Coach Rigby brought me chocolates. And some more Rigbyisms to try to cheer me up because I wasn’t allowed to run. I pleaded and screamed with my parents. I cursed many benedictuses. All to no good. I begged Coach Rigby. He handed me another Rigbyism.
There is no such thing as failure as long as you answer this question: Because of what you’ve learned, what next?
“Where do you get these from, fortune cookies?” I snarled. He looked hurt. “Sorry,” I said. I still had harbours of mean thoughts and actions.
He shook his head and left. I felt like a snivelling brat. I was. I looked at his Rigbyism again. What comes next? As a runner, I was washed up. I am a failure, I decided.
Then one day, when I was feeling real sorry for myself, I looked up minikin. It was a real word. It made me feel a whole lot better.
School started, and life almost seemed normal. But how, really, would it ever be normal?
— PROPER BURIALS —
We picked out a tombstone for Pippa. It was a statue of a little girl I found at a flea market.
“It’s a lawn ornament, honey,” said Corporal Ray. Delicate as could be.
“No, Ray, it’s perfect,” said my mother. She hugged me.
So we brought it home and made a new flower bed in the backyard. We dug deep, with our hands, and placed the vase of ashes ever so gently down into the earth.
We cried a little.
Corporal Ray carved a wooden plaque for her. “Pippa” is all it says.
Maybe a lot of people would think it morbid to bury the ashes of an unborn child in your own backyard. I personally think Pippa loves it there, especially when the sunflowers bloom among the pink and purple cosmos.
Besides, in Boulder Basin there was a woman who buried her miniature schnauzer in her front yard. She put a white wrought-iron fence all around it. The tombstone read: “Fergus—loyal dog and friend.”
There are no limits to how important it is to mark the passing of the dead from one world to the next, no matter where you might believe they end up. Or even if you believe.
We have a bench by Pippa’s burial spot, too. We can visit her whenever we want. I still remember John telling me that sometimes it takes the living to reunite the dead.
Sometimes, it takes the dead to reunite the living, too.
— ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART —
A lot more than the Isthmus of Chignecto—say that fast three times—separates the province of Nova Scotia from the province of New Brunswick. Fairvale was home sweet home but I missed the sound of gulls, the salty air, the lap of waves.
My mother kept telling me I had to find the time to write Nana a nice little thank you note. Thank her for what exactly?
Then one Saturday afternoon, Mum and Corporal Ray were cutting up cucumbers and making mustard pickles. The kitchen was filled with a vinegar smell so strong it made my eyes water. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d picked up my pen.
DEAR NANA,
Well, it’s been a month since I’ve been home and I thought I should catch you up with the news. I know how you hate to talk on the phone and so I am writing. Hope you can read this letter okay. My hand is still wobbly!
I am bursting to know what is happening with the restoration plan. How is Harv doing? Have you had many clients?
The doctor and Corporal Ray and Mum, even Coach Rigby, would not let me compete in the provincials. I felt just fine! Raring to go, in fact. So I went to the track and watched from the sidelines. The winner of the 100 metres had a slower time than my last best! That first-place ribbon should have been mine! Oh well. Like Coach Rigby said, there’s a reason for everything and there’s always next year. Still, all that work and all that training.
Mum and Dad are fine. Finer than fine, actually. Things seem normal around here again. No more Kraft Dinner! Mum has gone back to work at the paint store. This fall, she’s really on an orange craze. How many ways could you describe orange, you must be thinking. Least I know I did. Well, how about Orange Sparkle, Organic Orange, Orange Tequila! That’s Mexican orange, she told me. Then there’s Sunburst Orange, Ember Orange and Mandarin Orange. I knew she was really feeling better when she came up with Ya-Ya-Yam! Between you and me, I can’t tell much difference between any of them, but with all her mixing and matching, I guess there must be something the trained eye can pick up.
Anyhow, she’s humming happy Ladybugs songs again. Between her shrieks and Corporal Ray’s yodels, I feel like I’m living in an audition hall. I’d say she’s put last winter far from her mind. Anyhow, hope all is well and write when you can. Yours truly, Minn
DEAR MINN,
Orange! I’d feel like I was living inside a piece of Canadian cheddar if I painted a room orange.
I am sorry to hear about your track meet. No one knows more than I do how hard you worked, although half the time I figured you were just running away f
rom me. Still, with a stunt like you pulled you needed some sort of consequence to teach you not to go doing anything so foolish ever again in your life!
Some days I still get in a wicked rage thinking about what you did! You are one stubborn young lady! Then again, I suppose it runs in the family. (Harv told me I had to write that in.)
The exciting news is how fast things are coming together. Thanks to that generous contribution Mr. Dubbins made, I guess other folks were almost ashamed and started putting in their two cents’ worth. Even though you scared the Kapoopsie out of all of us, your plan worked, Minn. We are aiming for an official opening next July. Imagine! We are even going to invite the premier.
Well, I might as well not be coy about my own big news. Hang on to your hat—I said yes to Harv’s most recent proposal of marriage! You should have seen his face. He went white as a ghost. I had a great chuckle. Then I was worried. Thinking maybe I’d turned him down so long he never meant what he was asking, you know what I mean? See, what I never wanted to tell him was that the main reason I always said no was I did not want to be married to that store. It ran his whole life! I’m not a real sociable kind of person and the thought that I might have to go help out and pump gas and smile at those come from aways—not on your life! Well, he’s been thinking about selling that store and now there’s someone who’s made him a pretty good offer. I figured it would be nice to spend our life more together than apart. The truth is, Minn, this summer I thought I was going to lose the two people I loved most in the world in one night. Besides your father, I mean. So better make hay while the sun shines. We’re going to Nunavut for our honeymoon. I’ve always wanted to see the North and the aurora borealis.
We thought we’d get hitched as they say around here about the same time as the official opening of the SS Atlantic Heritage Site. You folks will be here, and so will Harv’s children. So it will be a good party, eh? I’m going to start cooking soon! I haven’t told your parents yet. I have a request. Could you read this letter out loud to them for me. Thank you.