Surface Rights

by Melissa Hardy

  “Are you that young that you haven’t heard of a skeleton key?” Verna asked. “God, I must be old.”

  Winonah organized the search. “Let’s divide up. Verna, you look in your dad’s room. Look in the dresser drawers, eh? If you don’t find it there, look in his study. In the desk. Stick Girl, you look in all the keyholes. If it was a skeleton key, it would have fit all the doors, not just this one. Then check the kitchen drawers. I’ll check the shed and the boathouse.”

  “Slow down. Hold on,” Verna was desperate for a reason to call off the search. “Have you ever thought that the door might be locked for a reason and that maybe, just maybe, we should respect that reason and not try and find the key?”

  “What?” Romy was incredulous. “Are you crazy? How can you stand not knowing?”

  “Not too many white people buy cottages with locked bedrooms, eh? Not that other white people have gone and died in,” Winonah pointed out.

  “What?” Verna turned to Winonah. “How did you know I was thinking of selling the cottage? Did Carmen tell you that?”

  “Wait a minute,” Romy interjected. “Hold on! You’re selling the cottage?”

  Verna was flustered. “Probably. Maybe. I haven’t decided.”

  “Hey!” Romy objected. “Don’t I get a say in this? Isn’t it my cottage, too? And what about my brother and sister? Wherever they are!”

  Verna winced. She leaned against the doorframe. In her head she could hear her father’s querulous voice. If Parsley or … any of the others surface, you’ll help them out, won’t you? “Yes, well, I didn’t exactly know where you were,” she told Romy. “Now I know. Okay?”

  “So, you’re not selling the cottage.”

  “I didn’t say that. Look. We’ll talk about it. Maybe I’ll sell it and give you a share of the money. We’ll make an arrangement.”

  Winonah crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head dolefully.

  “What?” Verna demanded.

  “Bad idea,” said Winonah.

  “Why?”

  “You have your own lake.”

  “Yes. And? What am I going to do with a lake?”

  “You got to think outside the box,” Winonah told her. “Besides, the Manitous … they would be some pissed if you sold this lake.”

  “Who is she talking about?” Romy tugged at Verna’s sleeve. “Are they any relation to Barry Manilow? Isn’t he some old guy?”

  “Manitous,” Verna corrected her. “Not Manilows. Manitous. They’re like gods.”

  “Gods?” wondered Romy.

  “Spirits,” clarified Winonah.

  “And, anyway, what do the Manitous have to do with anything?” Verna turned back to Winonah.

  “They have everything to do with everything,” said Winonah. “That’s why they’re Manitous. And they gave this land to your grandfather and his descendents. That would be you.” She looked at Romy and her eyes narrowed. “And her.”

  “Right!” said Romy. “And I say let’s find the key.” Off she wobbled on her stick legs.

  Verna looked hard at Winonah. “What’s going on? First Carmen — a real-estate agent for crissakes — tells me not to sell and now you? I mean, this would probably be your land if my ancestors hadn’t cheated you out of it. Doesn’t that make you angry?”

  “It was our land,” said Winonah. “Still is.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, why should you worry about what white person thinks they own it — me or the guy I sell the cottage to? I don’t understand. Am I missing something? Are you being cryptic or are you just acting all inscrutable like an Indian or something? Because if you are, it’s working. I’m just not getting it.”

  Winonah met her gaze steadily, inscrutably. “We prefer the term ‘First Nations,’” was all she said.

  Half an hour later, the women reconvened in the kitchen. No one had found The Key. Or anything remotely resembling The Key. They had found all sorts of other keys mixed into the chaotic landfill of the house’s various drawers: skate keys, luggage keys, tiny keys that had once locked diaries and unlocked jewellry boxes, extra keys to the Indian Crescent house, keys to a car long since discarded, an Allen key, the keys to a file cabinet, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and what appeared to be the key to some safety deposit box somewhere. They found nothing, however, of such a shape and size that it could be inserted into the keyhole of Fern’s door and turned to unlock it.

  “There’s only one thing we can do,” Winonah said.

  “What?” asked Verna.

  “Climb up onto the roof of the back porch and go in through the window.”

  “Won’t it be locked?”

  Winonah brandished a hammer.

  “You’re going to break the glass?” Verna asked.

  “You got a better idea?”

  Verna trawled for a reason why not and came up empty. “No.”

  “Come on, then,” said Winonah.

  They went out back. Verna and Romy helped Winonah position the ladder against the back shed. “Can I go up?” Romy asked. “Please?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Verna replied.

  “What about the hammer?” Romy asked.

  “Get up there first and see if you can get the window open just by lifting,” Winonah told her. “If you can’t, we’ll pass you the hammer.”

  The girl clambered up the ladder and crawled up the roof pitch to the window.

  “Go on. Try it,” Verna called.

  “I don’t need to,” Romy called back. “It’s open.”

  “What do you mean, it’s open?”

  “It’s open,” the girl repeated. “Like a whole inch or so. Open.”

  Verna turned to Winonah. “That’s strange,” she said. “Dad wouldn’t have left the window open all winter.”

  “He wouldn’t have locked the door, either,” Winonah pointed out.

  “I’m going to try opening it all the way!” Romy called.

  “Be careful!” Verna cautioned.

  “There,” Romy called. “Wow!”

  “Wow, what?” Verna cried in some alarm.

  “I’m going in!” Romy advised.

  “Romy! Romy, be careful!” Verna cried as the anorexic disappeared through the window.

  A moment later, she poked her head out of the window and triumphantly brandished something. “I found the key!” She looked like an emaciated elf, all ears and transparent skin under which the blue veins bulged.

  Romy unlocked the door from the inside. Verna hung back in the hall for a moment, filled with … what was that she was filled with? Dread?

  Romy was impatient. “Are you coming?”

  “I’m working my way up to it!”

  Steady, now, Verna told herself. One. Two. Three. Lifting her right foot so high that her knee was cocked at nearly a right angle, she dangled it in the air for a moment before executing a Mother-may-I-size lunge over the door sill and into the room. There, she congratulated herself as foot met floor. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?

  No.

  Wait a minute.

  Hold on.

  Winonah and Romy seemed to be talking, but Verna could barely hear them through the plush, absorbent silence that was pouring into her head through her ears. Her stomach flopped inside of her like a fish on a dock. The room started to tilt and then — even worse — to rotate slowly. Glub, she thought, slumping back against the wall, her throat constricted and her vision edged with ragged black.

  Then Romy was kneeling beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “No. I mean, yes. Give me a moment.”

  “Put your head between your legs,” Winonah advised.

  Doubling over, Verna rested her elbows on her thighs and let her head dangle.

  Romy turned to Winonah. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She feels guilty,” Winonah replied.

  “I do not!” Verna objected.

  “She feels guilty, but she won’t admit it.”

  “I don’t feel guilty!”

  �
��See?”

  Verna slid her butt carefully down the wall until she was sitting, back pressed against the tongue and groove. She wrapped her arms around her knees and peered about her, shivery and blinking. Her old bedroom had looked pretty much as she remembered — just smaller and shabbier and sad somehow. Like the room of a child — any child — who disappeared one day, decades earlier, whose milk-carton photo had long since been replaced by that of another such child, and another, then another. The room’s rag-tag collection of castoffs from more proper houses elsewhere had pre-existed her — the old spool bed, the wobbly rocker, the tilting bookcase. They had a permanency she lacked.

  Not the case with her sister’s room. Much of its original furnishings had been replaced with trophies of Fern’s various failed unions. Or loot, depending on how you looked at it.

  For example, that bedside table crafted from the root ball of a burr oak — that was courtesy of Ben, Paisley’s father, the one who salvaged waste wood to make tables and chairs and beds. Ben and Fern had stood up for Verna and Bob at their City Hall wedding, which took place at high noon on a sultry day in mid-July. Bob’s side of the wedding party had consisted of his aggrieved mother, who complained throughout of heat rash and the fact that Ben was wearing paint-stained jean shorts and Jesus sandals.

  Then there was that Indian bedspread patched together from antique wedding saris … well, technically it was a tapestry, but Fern used it as a bedspread. That had come from Tai’s father, the brown one. Jag something. Jagadeesh? A sweet boy, quite clueless, very young. How momentarily elated Donald had been to see his daughter putting into action the Canadian principle of multiculturalism. Then the boy’s uncle arrived at the Indian Crescent house to reclaim the tapestry, a family heirloom as it transpired and not Jag’s to bequeath to some white trollop. Fern, however, forewarned, whisked the treasure away, and, all these years later, here it was, its mirrored disks randomly bouncing light from the window off the ceiling, scintillating and chaotic. Had Fern ever felt guilty about it? Probably not. She had been drawn to shiny things.

  And finally Romy’s father, Paul, a painter. His portrait of a young woman meant to be Fern hung over the bed in which she had died. Rendered in awkward dabs, it was perhaps best viewed at a distance. Seen up close, it portrayed its subject as deficient in edge, lacking in boundaries or margins, as something gaudily coloured in the process of melting.

  Romy followed her gaze. “That’s one of Dad’s.”

  Verna nodded.

  “Of Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He totally sucks.”

  “Yeah.” Verna agreed. “Does he still paint?”

  “Yeah,” said Romy. “Stupid Canada Council!”

  In the corner was a rattan peacock chair piled high with clothing. The door to the closet was ajar; more clothes huddled behind it, jammed onto hangers. Clothes littered the floor in bright disarray. Fern could not resist buying clothes or be persuaded to give them up once acquired. As she had made her way through life, moving from man to man, size to size, she had dragged behind her an ever increasing supply of clothing as though it were a swollen tail.

  “How are you feeling now?” Romy asked.

  “Better,” replied Verna. “I felt faint, that’s all.”

  “It must run in the family,” said Romy. “I faint at the drop of a hat. Like one of those fainting goats.”

  “You faint because you’re hungry.” Taking the icy hand Romy extended to her, Verna allowed herself to be hauled to her feet.

  Downstairs, Jude barked to be let in.

  “I’ll do it,” Winonah said. “Might as well trough the eaves seeing as the ladder’s out.” She left.

  “Mom wasn’t very tidy,” Romy observed, taking in the dusty jumble of crystals, geods, incense burners filled with ash, fibre lights, wads of Kleenex, and bottles of pills that littered every available surface — the bedside table, the chest of drawers. Under the ornate Indian spread the bedclothes were rumpled. Pillows lay here and there. Waste baskets and ashtrays overflowed.

  “She was a pig,” Verna agreed.

  Romy turned on her. “Why are you so hard on her? She’s dead, you know.”

  “I’m not being hard on her,” Verna defended herself. “I’m just … making an observation. I’ve known parrots that were neater than Fern and they shit everywhere whenever they feel like it. It’s not like I’m judging her.”

  “Oh, sure!” Romy retorted. “First you said she was a pig. Then you said she was a parrot.”

  “She was like a tornado passing through a trailer park. There! Is that better?” Verna demanded. “A force of nature. That about sums her up.” She paused. “Do you even remember her?”

  Romy sighed. “No,” she admitted. “Not really. A little.” She walked over to the dresser and picked up a dusty green bong half filled with murky fluid and sniffed it. “Oooh,” she said. “Mould.” She began rummaging around in the clutter, picking up objects, looking at them, then setting them down: a pack of dog-eared tarot cards; a Tibetan meditation bowl; a battered dream catcher with a frayed, purple feather; an origami crane; a rhinestone tiara. Romy picked up the tiara, examined it, then perched it on her head. She surveyed herself in the mirror and adjusted its position.

  “Oh, that.” Verna remembered. “Fern used to go traipsing around the house in it whenever she felt an excess of duka.”

  “What’s duka?” Romy asked.

  “The human condition,” replied Verna. “Suffering.”

  “I’m keeping this,” Romy decided. “I’ve got lots of duka.”

  “You and me both,” said Verna. She crossed over to the chair, scooped up its contents, and dumped them onto the floor. She sat down.

  But Romy was busy rooting around in the clutter. “Hey!” she exclaimed. Reaching deep into a pile of discarded tissue, she extracted an amber plastic bottle of prescription pills. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “What?” asked Verna.

  Romy read the label. “It is! It’s OxyContin!”

  “Oxy-what?”

  “OxyContin, hillbilly heroin, poor man’s heroin, oxy, OC, otherwise known as ‘kicker’ … You know!” Romy was plainly excited. “It’s pain medication. For people with cancer.”

  “Pain medication? You’re kidding me. Fern?”

  Romy handed her the bottle. “See for yourself.”

  “Willis Pharmacy in Beverley,” Verna read aloud. “Dr. Lefevre … Fern Macoun.” She sank down onto the platform bed. “It’s dated to the week before her death. Jeeze.” She shook her head. “The last thing I heard she was taking some powder made up of crushed bloodroot and wild yam and that was somehow going to cure her. She was so afraid of muddying her aura, of messing with her chakras …” She returned the bottle to Romy.

  “How cool is this?” Romy raved. “OxyContin!”

  “I don’t know. What’s the big deal?”

  “You can get really stoned on this stuff.”

  Verna eased herself down onto her back. “So, let me get this straight. Not only are you an anorexic, you’re also a drug addict.” Placing her hands on her belly, she stared at a mobile dangling from the overhead light fixture: more origami cranes. The certainty that Fern had been in terrible pain toward her lonely end closed around her like a fist, making it hard to breathe.

  “My friend’s grandmother died of cancer a few years ago,” Romy told her, “and, when no one was looking, she snuck into her room and took the rest of her OxyContin. All the grownups were drinking in the kitchen. They never noticed it was gone.”

  “That’s awful!”

  Romy shrugged. “Why? Her grandmother didn’t need it. None of the grownups wanted it. They would have flushed it down the toilet when they got around to cleaning up her grandmother’s room. They would have wasted it. As it turned out, Becca and I were stoned for a week.”

  Verna considered her options: come down hard on the girl or let go? She decided to let it go. Romy was a grown woman, sort of, and it was har
d for an alcoholic, however functional, to take the high road in cases involving substance abuse. “What’s it like?” she asked.

  “Peaceful,” Romy replied. “You feel peaceful.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

  “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” Romy slid the bottle of pills presumably into a pocket located somewhere amidst the folds of her voluminous drapery.

  “So Fern took painkillers!” Verna marvelled. “Mind you, she smoked like a chimney and that didn’t seem to mess with her chakras too much. ‘Oh, I’m going to stop,’ she would say and then wouldn’t. Or would, but only for a while. She was very inconstant, your mother.” Reaching out, Verna plucked a half-empty pack of cigarettes from the slice of tree that topped Ben’s bedside table and stared at them. “This is weird.”

  “What?”

  “These cigarettes. They’re Camels.”

  “So?”

  “Fern didn’t smoke Camels.”

  “That’s right.” Romy remembered. “She smoked Virginia Slims.”

  “How can you remember what cigarette she smoked when you can’t remember what she looked like?”

  “I always associate the jingle — that ‘You’ve come a long way, baby’ jingle — with her,” Romy replied.

  Verna shook her head. “Camels? I just can’t see her smoking these. She was so particular and these are so … nasty.”

  “And bad-tempered, I hear,” replied Romy. “She probably ran out and somebody gave her a pack of theirs. It happens. Smoking is an addiction, after all. You’re not going to turn down a cigarette if you’re desperate, even if you don’t like the brand. Trust me. I know.”

  “And how would you know?”

  Romy plucked the pack of cigarettes from her and slipped them into her invisible pocket along with the OxyContin. “I figured out long ago that smoking keeps you thin,” she replied. At Verna’s disgusted expression, “What?” she defended herself. “So I smoke. Big Deal! You’re an alcoholic!”

  “Oh, please!” Verna moaned. She clambered to her feet. Why did I tell her that? she chided herself. What was I thinking?

  “And a bed-wetter!”

  “Enough!” cried Verna, fleeing.