Would I Lie to You

by Mary Lou Dickinson

  A car honked, jolting her back into the moment. Astride her bicycle, riding in heavy traffic on Bloor Street, her bright helmet and jacket offering some protection, she knew such lack of attention was still dangerous. She signalled a right turn and went north on a side street. She knew the area well. Before moving in with Jerry, she had lived in a house that looked out onto a park across the street and from her back bedroom she had seen trees. Sometimes, from a nest in the branches, a racoon had jumped onto the roof and scurried across it. One year, there was a family of them in a hole near the eaves that had to be evicted, the opening plugged. At the time, she had thought there were more racoons in Toronto than people.

  In spite of this familiarity with her city, in her dreams her geography was still the northern rocks and bush of her childhood. The wide sky and the head frames of mines rising upward to greet the cloudless sea of blue or grey overhead were her signposts. It was there she had stood on the highway waiting for a shift bus to take her out to one of the mines a few miles from town. There she had worked in summers testing samples from underground for mineral content. How remote that place was now, not only in distance but also in time. She felt like an impostor. She loved a man who was no longer alive and another who still had a wife. And she was a mother, who had never known her daughter till now. A daughter who might choose never to see her again.

  Giving birth must count for something, she thought. Surely. Another fleeting thought came as she realized she would soon be at work marking all those papers and that simply aggravated her loneliness. That Hans had known her meeting with her daughter would go badly at the beginning, but not to worry, was only slightly reassuring.

  Ahead of her was a light that she pedalled toward. She then turned right onto Bathurst to ride the few blocks to a small grocery store. After she picked up milk, home was her destination. When she arrived, she parked her bicycle beside the step in the backyard.

  “Hello, Sue,” Hans said on her machine. “I didn’t mean to leave you thinking Heather was here to stay. She is here, but she’ll leave soon. She intends to move in with her parents and look after them. And she’s found work in London. I guess I’ll have to find a lawyer. She doesn’t want the marriage. Nor do I anymore. Please call me and let me know you’re all right.”

  Sue felt confused, hearing that Heather was only back in the picture temporarily. Had she felt safe in knowing Hans’s wife would return or was this new development even more than she could have wished for? Whatever she felt, she was going to have to get used to the shifting environment of her life now.

  Hans added, “And don’t worry about your daughter.”

  Sue sank down into the nearest chair. After all he had told her that had subsequently happened, she wanted to believe him now

  *

  In the space between waking and sleeping, Sue had travelled the distance to a child’s world, to potholes in gravel roads and leaves burning in autumn bonfires. She could still hear the blasting under the earth and see the jack pine and poplar becoming denser the farther back she walked. Beyond that were more bush, occasional clear shining lakes, a few silver birches, and more rock. It was there, far from the edge of town, on a layer of pine needles under the trees, that her daughter had been conceived. Laying on the jacket of the boy with almost no name now, no face. The boy with dark hair and eyes who had likely been handsome in the way young boys just beginning to be men can be.

  “I love you,” he had said.

  She had felt herself get wet as he held her, wanting something as yet incomprehensible. She had wondered what the hot, hard thing was pressed so insistently against her body. When her mother had tried to tell her about such things, she’d acted as if she knew already. Embarrassed, her mother had not persisted. Always pretending that she knew more, how complicated could it be after all, she’d had no idea how baffled she would be by sex when it happened. For a while, she had not even made the connection when her period did not come.

  It was the nausea that had aroused her mother’s suspicions.

  “We’re going to the doctor,” she had said.

  Sue had thought her father might offer her reassurance, but he never mentioned it. A woman’s secret. He died without ever acknowledging that she had given birth. It was like his absence after she was born. Maggie once said she had not understood why their father packed his suitcases then. There were two words for what he was doing: “war” and “overseas.” Frightening words Maggie said she’d tried to fathom as she lay alone in her bed looking at the photograph on her wall of him as a small boy in a white sailor suit. Praying each night that he would come back, Maggie had not known if she was praying for the vulnerable child or the man in uniform who waved from the rear of the train.

  After he left, Maggie crept into their mother’s room whenever she was frightened. Their mother would ask if she had had another nightmare and she would hug her while Maggie looked at the picture of Dad, wondering what war was like. All she knew was how alone she felt. Sue could imagine it, sleeping in the empty bed she had once shared with Jerry. The pain and numbing fear that came with losing someone. After their father left, Maggie said their mother started to have headaches that made her frown and disappear into her darkened room, sometimes holding onto her stomach and retching. Nanny came north then on the train from Toronto to comfort her daughter and to see her grandchildren. Sue imagined her sitting in the kitchen, rocking the baby, the baby who was her, Sue, while Mum’s face whitened at her own mother’s questions, her hands so shaky her coffee spilled into her saucer.

  Sue’s mother would have glanced at a photograph of Dad in uniform. “He felt it was his duty,” she probably said softly, head lowered.

  “I still don’t understand,” Nanny would have persisted. “Leaving you alone with small children when he had a choice.”

  Nanny had never been without an opinion, no matter how much it might hurt. Maggie had told Sue their mother pushed back her chair and ran from the room then. It had not been long before she had another headache.

  The loud ring of the telephone on the night table startled Sue.

  “Hello,” a male voice said. “It’s Thomas.”

  “Thomas?”

  “Did I wake you up?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Looking down, she saw she was wearing jeans and a sweater. “What time is it?”

  “Nine.”

  She tried to figure out what that implied. “Is it morning or night?”

  “Night,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “I wanted to let you know Florence is doing much better. She’s going to come and stay with Kate and me for a few weeks.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Will you come and visit?” he asked.

  “I’ll try.”

  “I know Florence would like to see you.”

  “Something has come up,” she said. “It may have to wait a little longer. Tell her I’ll come when I can. Tell her I’ve found what I was looking for, but that it’s not easy. I know I’m talking in riddles, but she’ll understand.”

  “All right.” He sounded bemused.

  “How is Kate?”

  “We’re expecting a baby. I really called to tell you that.” His voice rippled with excitement.

  “That’s wonderful,” Sue said. “I’m so happy for you.” The thought of a lined bassinet with a new baby in it suddenly made her smile. “What great news.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s Kate feeling?”

  “A bit sick sometimes, but excited.”

  “When’s the due date?”

  “Not for seven months. It’s really early, but we wanted you to know.”

  “Thanks,” she said again.

  “I wonder sometimes about raising a child,” he said. “This happened almost too fast.”

  “I think you’ll both b
e fine, you know. You and Kate.”

  “You sound more awake now,” he said. “As if you know what day it is anyway.”

  As she hung up, Sue knew this would not be an unwanted baby. She recalled how much pain there had been when she pushed her baby out into the world. She had yelled in agony. The nurses came. She was scarcely able to sleep and had looked around for someone to console her. Afterwards, she went back to her grandparents’ house on a quiet, tree-lined street in Toronto where the window of her room looked out onto the swing set in the yard next door. For a long time, this window’s vista had remained her picture of Toronto, that and the mirror over her in the delivery room in the hospital.

  In the middle of many nights, the sound of footsteps overhead had made a hollow sound on the floors as her grandfather limped around, checking the thermostat and turning the heat up. Afraid to go back to the north, she had nonetheless, desperately wanted to sleep in the warmth of her own bed in the house near the mine. She had wanted to be there with her parents and Maggie, even with her little brother, Wally. Even if he had always been a pest.

  Instead she lived for the duration of her pregnancy with her grandparents where it was the unusual silence that had most bothered her. They were kind enough and saw that Sue was comfortable. Attempting to reassure her, they had told her she would take the train back to the north soon. Although Nanny wasn’t a woman who could usually refrain from comment, they’d lived mostly in this unnatural quiet.

  The Northland had travelled through North Bay, Temagami, New Liskeard, and Swastika to Noranda. It was the same train that her grandmother had taken north to visit when her father was overseas. It was to Noranda that her parents came to meet Sue when she returned after the birth. As they drove over the washboard gravel highway toward home, her father had said she could learn to drive the car as soon as the weather was better. And later that year, Sue drove around the block endless times, using a yellow flap that shot up from either the right or left side of the car to signal each turn, pulling up carefully at the stop signs. She had passed the test for her driver’s license and her father had congratulated her, told her how grown up she was, but they had never once talked about the baby.

  The telephone rang again. “Can I come and stay the night?” Hans asked.

  “What about the animals?” she asked. “What about Heather?”

  “Do you have to make comments like that?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Can I come and…”

  “When?”

  “I’m not very far away,” he said. “I’m on my cell.”

  She should have known. Maybe some day she would get used to his spontaneity. She used to want life to be predictable, but that profound need had long ago dissipated. Hans’s ways, which left her feeling unsettled, also delighted her.

  “I miss you,” he said. “You know I’m crazy about you.”

  “I didn’t,” she said lightly. “But I’m glad you’re telling me because I’m kind of crazy about you, too.” She could not use his words easily, words that for someone who was cautious about love, seemed far too effusive. And although she was not even sure she believed him, no matter how often he repeated himself, she was beginning to think there might be something to whatever was growing between them.

  “Do you miss me a little when I’m not there?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Terribly.” She thought they sounded like teenagers. And it was that long since she had had similar feelings of being tugged between wanting someone at the same time as she felt somewhat crowded. The feelings had been there around the boy who had fathered her daughter. Then not until she was nineteen or twenty, when life seemed to go on without any crises, were there boys again, who, when they approached, set her hormones raging. She was far more careful then than she would have been had she not been through what she had experienced after that one brief interlude in the bush.

  And now there was nothing to tell her why Hans’s marriage had crumbled, even if it had, and she wondered if she ought to wear protective armour.

  “Do I have time to get to the front door before you do?” she asked.

  “Probably,” he said. “But you’d better hurry.”

  *

  Images of her daughter’s dark curly hair and hazel eyes danced through Sue’s waking and sleeping dreams. She recalled the sight of Gwen walking away along the Danforth. Without a telephone number or address, crumbs were all she had to piece together an existence for this woman. Sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night to lie staring into the darkness. Why would Gwen want to see her only to then disappear again?

  When the telephone finally rang and she heard the almost familiar voice again, Sue was as surprised as when the social worker had called a few weeks earlier.

  “Would you like to come to my home?” Gwen asked. “The children will be at their cousins’ place.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Sue said warily, surprised by an invitation that implied a closeness she did not yet feel.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you,” Gwen said. “I had to prepare my children. They’ve known vaguely about you, but I had to be more specific. Also, I had to go and visit with my mother.”

  “Yes.” All the things a thoughtful person would do, yet Sue had not imagined them. She felt as if she ought to have done so and was quiet, afraid she might say something that would precipitate another withdrawal, relieved as she listened to the sound of the voice continuing with the invitation. A date three days away. So soon, she could only hold her breath. A Friday.

  “Will you be able to come then?” Gwen asked. “Late afternoon.”

  Sue looked at the calendar on the wall beside the phone for anything she might have planned for after class that day, determined to change it if necessary. She listened to directions about getting off at the Chester subway stop and going north on the street she exited onto to an old red brick house “with a porch my husband built recently.”

  “Yes,” Sue said. “North. A new porch. Amazing, so close to where I live. Both of us on the same subway line.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Gwen replied. “See you Friday.”

  A new porch. What she would recognize as she approached the top of the street. Then she would meet Gwen’s children. They were her grandchildren. Would they ever think of her as another grandmother? It hardly seemed likely.

  “I look forward to it,” she said. And she did, but she was apprehensive.

  When Friday came, Sue closed the classroom door behind her and headed toward the street. She mulled over what Hans had said. This occasion would go well, not to worry. How she could keep from worrying about something so unprecedented, something so momentous, was a mystery to her. She was startled when a voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “Hi, Mrs. Reid.”

  A tall youth flung his leg over his bicycle as she nodded at him. “Todd,” she murmured. “Hi.”

  He said something about the weekend and she smiled as she turned away. There was no time to spare, she thought as she turned to hurry along the pavement. She would drop off books at the house before she set out for the subway. When she arrived, there was a motorcycle on the grass next door. Her fleeting thought was that the man who lived in a room on the third floor must be there. It was unusual for him to be around at that time of day as he usually sculpted in a garage a few blocks away. Once, she had gone there to watch him do the form for a bronze of a woman with her head in her arms. It now sat in front of a building on Bloor Street. Before she and Jerry had gone to Mexico, the man had loaned them a record to help with their Spanish. Jerry had come to watch the bronze in progress also. Later, when Jerry was dying, the man had listened to music with him for an hour one afternoon.

  Since then, Sue had rarely seen him, but when she did he was always cheerful. Not like some of the vagab
onds who had lived in the house a few years earlier. When they had left, the street had once again assumed its quiet character even with the constant ebb and flow of people only a short block away on Bloor Street.

  At the corner, she stopped at a small gift shop. Inside, there were special teas and coffees, incense, boxes of chocolates. She did not know what Gwen’s tastes were, but decided that even if she did not drink herbal tea herself she would likely find a use for it.

  Arriving at the porch that had been described to her, Sue saw a brass knocker on cedar that had aged and darkened. As she raised her hand to knock, the door opened.

  “Hi,” Gwen said. “Come on in.” She stood back, leaving room for Sue to enter. “Thank you for coming.”

  She took Sue’s jacket and hung it on a metal coat stand. Standing in the foyer, Sue could see a fireplace with a marble mantel in the room beyond them. The tiles were painted in bright colours of blue, green, yellow, and red. On the floor was a basket filled with logs. Sue handed the parcel to Gwen, who proceeded to open it.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That I like herbal tea?”

  “I hoped you would.”

  Gwen brought in a tray and they settled into chairs near the fireplace. “My mother would like to meet you,” Gwen said. “How would you feel about that?”

  Sue tried to smile. It felt almost too sudden to have to confront the woman who had raised her child. In her own mind, she had not yet made this step. “I hope we’ll have a chance to talk a bit more beforehand.”

  “Yes, of course. And I’d like you to meet my children before that, too.”