Martin headed to the kitchen behind Sue. Emily followed more slowly. She heard the murmur of their voices as Sue pulled out a drawer and handed the corkscrew, in the shape of an anchor, to Martin. She watched him open the bottle and was unsurprised when he began to talk about Prime Time.
“I wasn’t going to sail without Jerry.” He had been adamant, as if the presence of the boat would haunt him. He was relieved when finally Sue had agreed with him a few weeks after Jerry died.
“No, I know that,” Sue said, her long skirt rustling as she moved. “We made the right decision.”
After Sue checked the oven, they went into the living room. Emily picked up a photograph of Thomas. “Such a delight,” she said.
“Yes,” Sue agreed. “The only reason I might have kept Prime Time, but how were we to know that?”
Martin looked distracted, then sipped his wine. He surveyed the scene as if looking for what was familiar. Emily thought he probably did this whenever he’d come to the house since Jerry died, looking for Jerry in that exploration. Emily leaned against the back of her chair and slipped her shoes off.
“There’s something I want to tell you both,” Sue said.
Ah, thought Emily. The man.
“This is good news,” Sue said. “Although not easy to talk about. But it’s something I want to share with you.”
Emily could see a puzzled frown on Martin’s face as Sue told them about Gwen. What she felt was recognition of what might have been underneath Sue’s cool exterior that she had never been able to fathom.
“I’m so glad you’ve been able to meet with her,” Emily said. She caught Sue’s surprised look. It would take time, but Sue was now someone she wanted to know. Would it be possible? When she heard Martin comment on the surprise of an election outcome, Emily knew she had lost the thread of the conversation.
“I have to check the oven again,” Sue said, putting her glass on the table and rising from her chair. “And soon we can all come to the table.” She had set the big one in the dining room with three place mats at the end nearest to the kitchen.
“Smells good,” Martin said.
Emily followed Sue and picked up the plates for the table. “Anything else?” she asked.
“Soon.”
“Thanks for sharing with us,” Emily said. “I imagine you’ve been living on a roller coaster.”
“Yes,” Sue sighed. “But it’s all worth it.”
“I’m sure it is,” Emily agreed. “When things settle I hope you and I will be able to get together.”
Sue turned as if she had heard an unexpected and sudden sound. “Thank you, Emily,” she said. “And sooner or later, I hope you and Martin will meet my daughter. Actually, Martin already has, but I did not say who she was when he saw us at a café on the Danforth.”
Walking home after they had had a last cup of coffee, Emily put her arm through Martin’s. “You never know,” she said.
“What?”
“Secrets.”
They did not talk for awhile.
“I think Sue and I could be friends,” Emily said.
“I thought you already were,” Martin said.
Emily almost laughed aloud, but managed not to.
“Not really,” she said.
*
Sue twisted her hair nervously as she waited for Gwen to arrive for lunch. Over forty years after the birth, this young woman’s existence meant something quite unexpected to her. She did not know what it was like to have raised a child, but she still felt a strong connection that was different from her bond with Thomas. But he did not need to know that this bond with her daughter was closer in a way she did not yet understand. Maybe it was not a good idea to make comparisons. This was her daughter and she hoped to find common ground that would matter to Gwen also. And Thomas did seem to know that she was fond of him. She had bought some gifts for his first child, due the following spring. Jerry’s grandchild. Even though she was glad Thomas and Kate were not waiting to start their family, it still struck her that no one would have offspring if they focused on the on-going crises that occurred around the world. Even during her own childhood when the fear was of Russian planes sneaking in from the north. Her mother had counted planes for the Distant Early Warning Line then and ten or twenty years later there were people who had started to build bomb shelters in their yards.
Outside her window, the trees had shed almost all their leaves, with only the occasional one clinging to a bare branch. In early November, the branches looked grey. Sue could paint them that way, but preferred to paint a tree in sunlight when the trunk and branches were flecked with traces of orange, mauve, blue, and yellow. Soon, it would be the second anniversary of Jerry’s death.
A knock at the door brought Sue quickly back into the moment and she moved quickly toward it.
“What a lovely house,” Gwen said as she came over the threshold. “Have you lived here for a long time?”
“Jerry and I lived here for ten years. So you could say it’s been a long time.”
“It’s strange to realize how close our homes are, just a few subway stops from each other,” Gwen said. “We might have passed on the street often for all we know. If one of us had glanced at the other, we would have thought she was a stranger.”
“So much to fill in, isn’t there? Do you want to see some pictures?”
“Of course.”
Sue had spread albums out on the dining-room table. There were pictures of Maggie, Sue, and Wally as children. Of the town where they grew up. Of the mine shaft. Pictures of Maggie’s three children at various ages. Gwen pored over these.
“Cousins?” she murmured.
“Yes. They’re your cousins.”
“I think I look a little like you did when you were a teenager.”
“How does that feel?”
“Oh, I’m glad,” she said. “I love my Mom, but it’s odd to be part of a family and to look very different from the others. Sometimes, I saw strangers looking at us. I could almost tell they were perplexed. You know, why do the others all look similar and then there’s this girl with dark hair who doesn’t seem to belong?”
“I’ve found an address for your father. Angus knows him.”
“Angus?”
“Maggie’s husband. That would make him your uncle. He’s not in touch with him now, but he saw him a few years back on an airplane. I looked up a telephone number and I’ve written it down for you.”
“Did you call him?”
“I didn’t want to do anything until I knew what you wanted.”
“It might be a good idea if you spoke to him so my call won’t come as a total surprise.”
“You’re probably right.” Sue could imagine an entire panoply of reactions that included outright denial. Anger. Maybe curiosity. She was the one who needed to hear whatever they were.
“Do you mind?”
Sue fiddled with her fingers. She would do almost anything this woman asked. Gwen deserved that, but that did not mean it was easy.
“What would you like me to say to him?” she asked.
Now it was Gwen who was pensive. She must have already thought about it, but Sue could not tell anything from watching her face before she answered.
“No,” she said finally. “You feel the way. All I want for now is that he knows I exist. Let him know I’d like to call him. Ask him what a good time would be.”
Sue absorbed this information at only the most superficial level. It was too frightening to go deeper. She was suddenly furious this man had lived a lifetime with no idea of what she had gone through. The birth of a baby and the attitude of the times had been the defining moments of her life. Because of them, she had never had another child. Because of them she had become an activist. She had worked for a woman’s right to decide on whether to continue with a pregnancy, although she might wel
l have chosen to proceed even if she had had another choice, even with all the odds stacked against her. Would she be able to talk to this man who was the father of her daughter without her anger seeping in? And yet, it was those defining moments that had brought this woman here, sitting almost comfortably with her now.
Sue, she told herself, there’s nothing to be gained from anger now. Maybe there never was.
“Did you say your name was Walters before you married?” Gwen asked.
“I did. And my mother’s maiden name was Desjardins.”
“Then I must have some French heritage.”
“Right back to the early settlers in Canada.”
She could see Gwen was pleased, as if it explained something, perhaps the colour of her hair or her love of a language.
“What about my father? Do you know where his ancestors came from?”
Sue shook her head. “I know nothing. Peter was in my life for no more than a fleeting moment. A couple years at most as a schoolmate and then what led to your birth. Anyway, I don’t imagine many teenagers have much interest in their ancestors.”
“I thought that in a small, isolated town you might know these things.”
“I didn’t pay much attention then. Instead, there’s all the angst. The changes in your body. The fears that come with knowing you’re not a child and that even so you don’t know how to look after yourself, that you’re dependent on adults. And I was dependent on parents who loved me, but wouldn’t talk about anything problematic. What do you make of that as a teenager? You think you’re not all right and never will be. It appears that you didn’t have that kind of childhood and I’m glad.”
“No, you’re right, I didn’t.”
Sue wondered about changing her name to Walters again. It was not anything she could have foreseen she would want in the aftermath of Jerry’s death. Maybe she would phone Martin some time and make the arrangements to do whatever was required. She would have to find a way to explain it to him. Now that he and Emily knew about Hans, it might be easier. And everything had shifted slightly since she had told Emily about Gwen. Emily had already called Sue herself, not leaving it up to Martin. No longer did Sue feel judged, as if something like this, a secret long-lost child, was what Emily had suspected all along. She thought now Emily might even understand if Sue wanted to change her name, now that Sue no longer felt the name Walters implied secrecy. Instead it implied authenticity. She suspected Jerry would have understood why she wanted that now more than ever.
As Sue sat with Gwen in silence, instead of feeling it was uncomfortable and awkward, it felt natural. Then, they talked about Gwen at various stages of her life. The bedroom in the house in Kincardine. The younger children, her sisters and brothers. The family picnics.
“It’s almost time for me to go,” Gwen said when she had finished her tea. “I hate to leave, but I like to be there when the children arrive home from school. Even though they’re quite able to manage, we check in with each other then. Sometimes I think they merely tolerate this little ritual, but I suspect they’d miss it if it didn’t happen.”
“That sounds very nice,” Sue said, a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“Will you call me and tell me what happens when you contact my father?” Gwen asked.
“Oh yes, of course,” Sue said. “I’ll do that soon. As soon as I figure out what to say.” She would have to think about a lifetime of what the birth had meant for her, not wanting to open up something she could not manage. She was not sure what it would feel like to open Pandora’s box. Would she go over the edge? as she and Maggie had often referred to it. All she knew was that she did not want to. She had been in that uncomfortable state when she discovered she was pregnant. And again when they took her baby away without letting her so much as hold her. Beyond the baby’s cry at birth and her immediate disappearance, Sue had, ever since, managed to erect rock-solid walls.
“I’ll be interested,” Gwen said.
Sue hoped to go on with her life as best she could. She hoped that she and this young woman would find paths to share and explore together. She would not go over the edge. Not with Hans, Thomas and Kate, Maggie and Angus, and Martin and Emily in her life. And of course, Florence, who had, in ways she could not fathom, given her the courage to move toward this reunion. She might begin to lose her grip, but if she shouted out, she was confident they would be there.
After she and Gwen hugged and Sue watched her daughter walk down the street toward Bloor, she sat quietly in the large armchair in the living room. After twenty or so minutes of breathing in and out deeply, she felt that some time in the next few days she would be able to handle a call to Peter Marshall. She would not belabour what to say. With information from Angus, she was fairly certain he would be the man who had the Nova Scotia telephone number. It ought to be easy to ask if he were the Peter Marshall who had lived in Ile d’Or in the early 1950s. She would say her name was Sue Walters and that they had known each other as teenagers. She would remind him that her sister was married to Angus Milroy.
“Yes, of course, Sue,” Peter Marshall’s voice replied two evenings later. “I remember you. Flaming red highlights in your dark hair. A free spirit. We used to compete in algebra.”
Sue sat at the counter in the kitchen, her palms sweating. She could almost hear her heart beat and thought he must surely also hear it, or at the very least, the tremor in her voice.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s me. So you are the Peter Marshall I’ve been looking for.”
“What a surprise,” he said. “After all these years. I don’t remember you being around when my family left Ile d’Or. We moved to a town in northern Ontario. We kept on moving.”
“Um,” she said. “So you never knew I was pregnant.”
There was silence on the other end of the telephone.
“No one knew,” she said. “No one talked about it. I was shipped to relatives in Toronto to have the baby.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re her father.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You’re her father.”
Once again there was silence, but he had not hung up on her. Not yet anyway.
“She was adopted, Peter,” she said evenly. “I never saw her. Until recently, that is. She asked me to let you know about her and to tell you that she wants to contact you.”
“I, I, I,” he stammered. “This is…”
“Yes, I know. It’s a lot to deal with out of left field, but it’s the truth.”
“I know it could be,” he acknowledged. “I have a family,” he said. “A wife. I simply don’t know how to handle it.”
“Well, maybe you need some time to think about it, but Gwen is persistent.”
“Is that her name?” he asked. “Gwen?”
“Yes, that’s the name her family gave her.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t see what good it can do for her to call me or for me to meet her.”
“I think you owe it to her.” Sue was angry, but she tried to stay neutral. It would not help Gwen if she alienated him. If she still had unfinished business herself, it could wait until after Gwen did what she needed to do. She did not say “Coward,” which was what she wanted to say.
“What’s your number?” he asked. “I’ll get back to you.”
She gave him the number. “My name is Sue Reid now,” she said.
“Do you have other children, Sue?”
“No,” she said. “Other than a stepson who arrived on the scene late.”
He did not pursue that avenue. If he were looking for sympathy, it must have dawned on him that he was not about to find it.
“I … I’ll get back to you soon,” he said.
“All right.”
When she hung up, Sue sat staring out the back window into the night sk
y. It was cold and the wind was blowing. She could hear branches on trees moaning. She did not know if she would ever hear from this man, but was prepared to give him a few days before letting Gwen know the outcome of the call.
*
Much to her surprise, Sue had scarcely noticed that Hans had not rung. Now, she began to wonder what might be going on, if perhaps he and Heather were in the midst of a reconciliation. The thought sent shivers up her spine and made her gulp for air. Sooner or later, she would know. It seemed beyond her and what could she do about it? It was his life and he had to deal with it. Although she would like to let him know she loved him. Maybe she would later, but for now, she dialled Gwen’s number and waited for someone to pick up the telephone at the other end.
She did not want to disappoint her daughter with the story of Peter’s hesitation, but there was nothing to be gained from calling him again. He had to come to terms in his own way with what had likely felt like a bomb to him. She could hear Hans saying that.
“But that’s just common sense,” she heard herself reply, disappointed that Hans would not have more to offer.
“Hello.” It was Gwen’s now familiar voice.
“It’s Sue.”
“I was just beginning to wonder when I’d hear from you. I was about to call.”
“It’s taken this long because Peter Marshall was thoroughly stunned when I told him about you. He lives in Nova Scotia with his wife and family. That’s about all I know, except he teaches math at some college. He wanted to get back to me.”
“So he hasn’t called back?”
“Not yet.”
“Would you give me his number?”
“Yes, of course.”
Sue started with the area code for the Nova Scotia region.
“I promised myself that before the turn of the year I’d find out about both my birth parents,” Gwen said. “Whether they were alive or not. And if they were, to try to see them. It’s been such a long time to wonder. All these years something was missing even though they were also happy years. I’ve seen my Mom and she’s excited for me. She looks forward to meeting you.”
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