Extensions

by Myrna Dey

  “Where did Sara sleep?” I asked.

  She pointed to a room off the kitchen, probably added on to the original house by Uncle Thomas — was that also where his mother ended her days? The door was open and I could see a faded yellow chenille bedspread. “In there. I slept there too. Still do.”

  The old lady seemed remarkably unfazed by a stranger twice her size firing questions at her. In my head was Sara’s voice: “Be gracious, use your manners. She’s frail.” Laura Owens might be stooped and shrunken, but from what I could see, she was not delicate. Through her tremors she stared unblinkingly, almost like a war criminal who had been expecting me. Not surprised, not sorry.

  “Thank you for letting me visit, Laura — or do you prefer Miss Owens?”

  “Laura.”

  I complimented her on her independence and asked about her health. She said she had no complaints for a woman of almost ninety. Some stiff joints and failing eyesight, but with the grace of God, Meals on Wheels, and home care for cleaning and cutting the back grass, she still had the strength to look after herself.

  “Would you mind if I looked in the bedroom? To imagine Sara in it.” She nodded and tried to pull herself from the chair. “Don’t bother to get up.”

  “Used to be two cots for us,” she called in her helium voice, as I surveyed the double bed where she now slept. “When I had a bad dream, Sara would push them together, then back again in the morning before Mommy saw.”

  I spotted Mommy in a sepia photo on the wall. A large woman with a no-nonsense face looking out of place in a wedding dress. Next to her stood a shy-looking man even more out of place as a bridegroom. Jane’s big brother Thomas. “Why did your mother not want you and Sara to be close?”

  “She thought Daddy had to give too much to his family. His mother lived with them, and then they were forced to take in Sara, another mouth to feed.”

  From a second picture of Lizzie as an older woman, perhaps dressed for church in a colourful shawl, I guessed that if an extra mouth were to be added to their household she would want it transplanted in her own face.

  Laura added, “Things were hard. Money was scarce.” She identified the two other pictures in her room as Edna and Myrtle and their families, both older sisters long gone.

  “Do you see much of your nieces and nephews?” I asked, rejoining her at the kitchen table. “No. They live their own lives.”

  “Did you know Sara sent money to your mother for a few years after your father died?”

  “Yes, Mommy told me.”

  “But she never answered her.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  The war criminal expression intensified. This was not a one-way conversation like the one I’d had with Mona Mingus. Laura Owens seemed ready to explode.

  “Mommy felt bad.”

  “Why?”

  “About Janet.” Laura’s movements had become so spastic I was afraid she might fall off her chair.

  “Janet?”

  “Sara’s twin sister.”

  “What about her?”

  “Mommy knew she wasn’t dead and didn’t tell Daddy or Sara.”

  The breath rushed out of me. “Why not?”

  “Mommy went to Victoria to visit her sick brother and met Aunt Thelma. Aunt Thelma told Mommy she was fed up with Uncle Gomer. He didn’t bring in any living, only more relatives to feed and clothe. Mommy feared Aunt Thelma might get so fed up she’d send Janet to us, because she knew Daddy and Sara would welcome her.”

  “So she told your father and Sara that Janet was dead.”

  Laura nodded.

  “And Thelma must have told Janet the same thing. Maybe the two aunts made a pact.”

  Laura shrugged — I think. Her twitching was too random to be sure. “Mommy said she had the best intentions to tell Daddy but never got around to it. And then Daddy died and Mommy had a breakdown.”

  “How about telling Sara?”

  She ignored my question, determined not to have her version of the story sidetracked. “Mommy took to her bed when Daddy died and couldn’t move. Until Jesus pulled her up and saved her life. Praise be to God.”

  “So that’s when she joined the church?”

  “She was baptized and cleansed of all her sins. May her soul rest in peace.”

  “How old were you?’

  “Seventeen. I missed Daddy something bad until Mommy explained I had to forget him. The church was our new family and God was my father. Daddy wanted me to take a stenographer’s course, but Mommy needed me at home. Learning too much can take us away from the church, if we’re not careful.”

  My heart was pounding with the power of three — mine, Sara’s, and Janet’s. “Did you understand what your mother’s secret meant to those twin girls?”

  “I felt sad when I heard it later because I remembered Sara telling me how much she missed her twin. Even though I liked being her new little sister.”

  “If your mother found forgiveness, why didn’t she want to repair what she had done years earlier? Why didn’t she write to Sara then, later in life, and tell her Janet wasn’t dead?”

  Laura bent her head as if in prayer, and for a moment I feared she was on the verge of a seizure. But when she looked up again, her head was steady. Like the hands she splayed firmly on the table in front of her. She spoke quietly. “Shame. Mommy carried the bitterroot of shame for what she did. Constant prayer and service to the church gave her strength to live each day. And God’s grace would one day bring her strength to act without fear of retribution from Sara and Janet and their families.”

  “Do I look as if I’m about to strike anyone dead?”

  The last words got caught in my dry, constricted throat. I asked for a glass to help myself to some water and she pointed to a cupboard. While the faucet ran, I thought of Sara washing dishes in this same spot, a pump likely installed by Uncle Thomas at the sink. Did she look upon this grassed-in yard, or was there a garden filled with vegetables she had to tend? I walked twice around the table before sitting down again to make sure my legs hadn’t turned to mush.

  “Then the letters came from Aunt Catherine in Wales,” Laura continued. “She wanted her niece Sara to have their mother’s letters, and the only address she had was Daddy’s, here in Ladysmith. Like everyone else, she thought Janet was dead. Mommy said this was her sign from God to tell Sara and Janet the whole story. She divided the letters into two packets and wrote a letter to Aunt Thelma in Victoria to see if she had an address for Janet. Uncle Gomer had died and Aunt Thelma sent an old one in Saskatchewan.”

  “Did you or your mother read the letters?”

  Laura shook her head. “Mommy and I weren’t much for reading. Or writing. She had a time trying to compose the letters to Sara and Janet. Tried so hard she got fever doing it.”

  “And?”

  “She died. Jesus called her home before she could write the letters. I had to put addresses on the packets myself and mail them to Sara and Janet. Along with Mommy’s death notice. And they were never returned, so I have to think they reached them.”

  I needed more water. Now my legs and arms had begun to jerk. To all appearances, an energy transfer had taken place between this distant cousin and me. Were unscrubbable atoms of Sara’s DNA still in the house making mischief with us? “They received them,” I said, “but why didn’t you write the letters to Sara and Janet?” I caught myself sounding harsh, realizing her writing skills might have been even less polished than her mother’s. But she didn’t flinch.

  “When Jesus took Mommy home so sudden, I knew it was a sign to send the letters from Wales just like that, without explanations. Otherwise, He would have spared her long enough to write her own notes. The Lord’s messages are clear through intimacy with Him.” She paused and gave me a cunning smile. “But I did one naughty thing. I decided to send them all to Sara because she was good to me. At the last minute I realized my disobedience to Mommy and put one — the thickest — into the envelope for Janet along
with the letter from Wales.”

  I stared at Laura Owens sitting unapologetic and resolute across the table from me. She was not slow or backward or however we had tried to describe what we knew of her. She was brainwashed. Indoctrinated. Programmed. Conditioned by classic cult tools. Deprived of a kind father, already isolated from other children by a domineering mother, she was ripe for a fundamentalist religion that provided simple answers for everything. No shifts in perspective, no fresh new views drifting in with the spring breezes. Laura took on the same beliefs without having to undergo the conversion of her mother. Certainty was the most dangerous weapon of all. I’d seen a teenage girl stabbed by a mini-cult of her peers, and the one who used the knife was the most decent of them; in a fragile stage because her parents were separating, she had drifted into this group where everyone agreed. Forgotten words from Sara passed through my head: Doubt should be the cornerstone of faith.

  “Then the better question would be: Why are you telling me now?”

  “Praise God, another sign. God speaks to us in deep sleep and I knew you would be coming. And because all prophecies say the end of the world is near, I was certain He wouldn’t waste any time. He didn’t tell me who or when, but when you stood at the door, I knew. I did not expect you to be as young and comely as you are. Years ago, Sara’s daughter paid me a visit, but I had no sign then. Just before Christmas, I had a dream about Mommy and Daddy holding hands with twin girls and they were all smiling. I awoke knowing Jesus wanted me to receive you and tell the story.”

  If I was sitting across the table from a lunatic, I felt an odd kinship with her. The hermetically sealed spirit of the little girl who made life bearable for Sara had really not matured since then, and in a weird way, I now became the other end of that chain. Her old face was remarkably unlined by experience, doubts, curiosity, or hard-won wisdom. Stunted yet preserved by her mother’s convictions, she retained her innocence. No breakdown needed for her salvation, it was hers by extension.

  And what was I but an extension, through Dad, of Sara? Just as this elderly cousin coasted on what her mother had gone through and passed on, so were our comfortable lives determined by what Sara had borne, distilled, and set in motion for us. But forget the go-betweens — Laura and I both sat together at this table because of Jane. The Owens line got her here; the Hughes merger brought me along a different path to this juncture.

  Just then, a synapse in my brain sparked an unplanned question. “Did you happen to know Roland Hughes?”

  Laura had to think who I meant before her breaths began pumping out words — her reprieve had not lasted long. “Uncle Roland? Yes, I met him when Daddy died. After the funeral, he came to the house. Mommy had taken to her bed from the strain of Daddy’s death, so I sat with him there in the parlour.”

  I glanced backward to make sure the doily-encrusted room was the parlour she was talking about. My jitters continued.

  “Uncle Roland wanted me to know that Daddy had been his best friend when he was young. Even before he became his brother-in-law. Funny, how I never forget anything about Daddy. I still miss him so. I can picture Uncle Roland sitting on the chesterfield telling how he went to work in the mines as a boy of thirteen because his mother was dead and his father was mean and drunk. He said that Daddy, being a few years older, looked out for him underground, and the Owens house was the only place he felt any kindness. Uncle Roland’s parents came from the same part of Wales as Daddy did.”

  I swallowed, wishing I had a notebook to record this rap sheet on my great-grandfather for Monty. “Tell me more about him.”

  Despite her shaking body, the flush of revelation had taken years off Laura’s face. Basking in her unique authority, she might have drawn energy from my own hot cheeks. It’s possible she had never felt this powerful before in her long, cloistered life. “He was small and stooped and looked old. Lucky he had a strong wife with him.”

  “Wife?”

  “Kay. They took the ferry over from Vancouver just for the day. He said he had to pay his respects to Daddy if it was the last thing he did. And then he touched Kay’s shoulder and said if she hadn’t saved him from the bottle, he wouldn’t have lasted long enough to do it.”

  “What was she like, this Kay?”

  “Seemed a nice lady. Younger than him. Bigger too. They didn’t stay long because Mommy was moaning in the bedroom and Edna and Myrtle and their families were in and out. He apologized that they weren’t close family, but it was important for him to talk about Daddy. I remember his soft voice.”

  “Did he ask about Sara?”

  Laura’s flush was fading and her words more laboured. She almost whispered: “He wondered where she was. I didn’t know because Mommy never talked about her and was in no condition to be questioned then. The next day we received a card from Sara with money in it and I could have given him her address. But it was too late.”

  Suddenly I’d had enough of missed opportunities. I stood up. Our family situation was no less absurd than many domestics I’d attended: a reminder that we are never as far removed from one another as we like to think. I walked around the table and bent down to kiss Laura’s cheek. “Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.”

  Her eyes looked past me to a clock on the wall above the refrigerator. A film of indifference told me I was quickly becoming invisible. “Meals on Wheels will be here right away.” She started to lift herself from the chair; I took her arm gently to help her to a standing position where she could ease the stiffness out of her old joints. “I can’t miss them,” she said, urgency growing in her voice.

  Routine sustained her as much as the food — I knew that from Dad. I walked ahead of her through the front room and cold verandah, turning back at the door to say, “You’ve given life to my ancestors and you’re the only one who could have done it.”

  Her bobbing head scanned the street, oblivious to me now, though she did look my way one last time to say: “Praise the Lord. May all their souls rest in peace.”

  “Amen.”

  When a car stopped, she became more agitated, but I had to disappoint her. “It’s my ride, Laura,” I said, waving as I walked to Uncle Lawrence’s car. “I’m sure yours will be along soon.” As we pulled away, I was thankful to see a minivan take our spot.

  Janetta’s eyes were bright. “Perfect timing. You must have something to tell, if you’re still here.”

  I began my account, allowing my own flush and pulse to decrease as I did. Janetta’s eagerness for details matched mine, from the tragedy of the twins’ deliberate separation to news of a step-grandmother no one had known of. One of the stories I asked Mom to read to me over and over as a kid was “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” The darker elements of someone picking up first rats and then children and leading them through the streets into a mountain fascinated me. Looking at my aunt’s rapt expression turned back from the front seat, and even Lawrence’s ear half-cocked in my direction in spite of himself, I felt like the Pied Piper. The unravelling story had drawn in Gail and Monty, Dad, Janetta, Wendell Mingus, and now Laura Owens. Mona Mingus hardly qualified as being under the spell, but she was still part of it. Then as now, I wondered what was in the mountain.

  “That’s Mount Benson,” said Lawrence, now back in Chase River. “You got time for a quick tour of Extension? That’s where Mrs. Dryvynsydes was born, after all.”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about Sara. Most men did not refer to their mothers-in-law so formally. “By all means.”

  Turning north in Chase River onto Extension Road, I tried to picture Jane walking this distance when she left her mother to marry Roland Hughes and live at Extension. What would the area have looked like then? We soon dipped into the legendary mine site — the remains of it, that is.

  A large slag heap, almost overgrown with brush and trees, was only noticeable if you were looking for it. The winding cinder roads through the little valley were thick with trees which Lawrence identified as arbutus, maple, alder
, cedar, and often intermingled with rock walls that had split into crevasses or boulders. Miners’ cabins still stood along the streets; some cedar shingle sidings were so discoloured they might have been relics from the Great Strike, but the old trucks and piles of firewood outside suggested they were still occupied. A few had been improved with newer vehicles in the yards, and even modern houses with landscaped lawns surprised us once or twice. There was no central core with services, though we did discover a boarded-up school and general store where a main corner must once have flourished. I was seeking a clear lookout from which we could see the whole little valley, but despite Lawrence’s patience, we kept circling through the same few streets with no vantage point. A derelict wildness had taken over the craggy, wooded lots that my cop’s instincts said could provide a convenient cover for criminals and drug dealers.

  “I do remember spectacular dogwood and delphiniums one spring, years ago, when we took a drive out here,” Janetta said brightly.

  Maybe I should come back again in April.

  Lawrence remarked that the bluffs seemed higher than before, maybe because the fir trees at the top had grown so tall. I thought of the Louis Strong case. Were those the same bluffs where his body was found?

  In the midst of my father’s history, territory, and relatives, a bittersweet flash of my mother caught me off-guard. She would have been as delighted as Sara to think a love of learning had finally rubbed off — from the Pied Piper of Hamelin to college textbooks. The stubborn daughter, whose curiosity she had tried so hard to inspire, was beginning to understand why she — and her mother-in-law — had driven herself to know more. And more.