by Anne Simpson
Anything at all, Ingrid prompted. I spy, with my little eye, something that is –
I’ve been thinking of my grandmother’s house, said Jasmine. My Ukrainian grandmother, my mother’s mother.
Strange.
What?
Strange that I might not be anyone’s mother’s mother. What was her name, your mother’s mother?
Aleksandra, but people called her Sandra.
Ingrid put her hands up in the air as if to study them. She dropped them. Aleksandra. And you were thinking of her.
She’s dead.
So’s mine. My grandparents, my parents – Tell me about your grandmother’s house. Describe the kitchen.
The kitchen?
Yes.
It was a big kitchen, a farm kitchen. It had green tiles on the floor with splatters of red on them. And rag rugs my grandmother had made. There was a small tin shelf above the sink, said Jasmine. On the shelf was a miniature Virgin Mary.
She stopped. Do you really want to hear about this?
Yes, about everything in that kitchen. Tell me everything.
Jasmine considered. Well, at Easter, my grandmother put two decorated eggs, ones that her friend Mrs. Kolowsky made, on either side of the Virgin Mary. They were red and yellow and black. Inside the egg on the Virgin’s left I used to imagine an entire world, with waving grass and horses and a farm in the distance. The sun was always coming up there, and the sky was always pale blue, and the horses whinnied and cantered in circles. I thought of this as the Eastern Egg. And inside the other egg, the one on the Virgin’s right –
The Western Egg.
Yes, inside the Western Egg I imagined the sun going down over some European city, a city with an onion dome rising up in the middle. But that egg broke. Mrs. Kolowsky waxed and painted another, but it couldn’t replace the one that broke. That’s what I remember best. The Easter eggs.
And your grandmother, what did she look like?
It was best to humour Ingrid, thought Jasmine. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on her grandmother.
My grandmother had long, white hair. She braided and coiled her hair into a bun at the back of her head. My grandfather said that she’d been the sort of woman who made heads turn, but I didn’t know what he meant. I was little, and he had to tell me that heads didn’t really turn; it was in a manner of speaking, and then he had to explain what in a manner of speaking meant. After that, I imagined people’s heads turning the way sunflowers do, as if my grandmother was the sun.
Ingrid had shifted her head to look at Jasmine, a hint of a smile on her lips. Sunflowers.
Yes.
My grandmother was tall, said Ingrid. She carried herself as if she had a book on her head, and when she sat, she sat like a lady, gracefully, always with one hand under her to keep her dress from wrinkling. She had a dry sense of humour. And she knew about things; she knew about the quality of crystal, or whether a sherry was good or not so good. She also knew four languages, Spanish and Portuguese and Italian and French. And she painted miniature watercolours – the smallest things. Elizabeth Victoria. I’m not the least bit like her.
But you carry yourself that same way, as if you had a book on your head.
No, she was queen of her own small kingdom. I used to be terrified of her.
Ingrid laughed.
I was terrified of you, said Jasmine.
You were? Well, Roger says I drive people away.
But you made that cake for me. You were the only one who remembered my birthday.
That was a fiasco. I’m sorry.
I did come here – to the house. I came for some cake. I guess you knew that.
That was the night all hell broke loose. Oh, God, she said. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. She covered her face with the pillow.
Jasmine waited, but there was no sound under the pillow. Ingrid, she said. Ingrid.
Ingrid removed the pillow.
Jasmine held herself so tightly that her fingernails dug into the skin of her arms.
It’s not your fault, Ingrid said bleakly. Oh, she cried. We can talk about grandmothers and Ukrainian eggs – but it’s horrible. Isn’t it horrible?
Yes.
But you’re cool as a cucumber.
No, said Jasmine. I’m not. I can’t tell whether I’m awake or dreaming. I keep thinking of – I keep seeing Damian. He’s standing by the fridge. Or he’s sitting in front of me, drawing. I don’t know how people keep their balance through something like this.
They don’t, said Ingrid. No one knows how to do it.
But you’ve been through this.
No, I haven’t been through this. I went through something else. I went through something that was clear from the beginning, but there’s nothing clear about this.
There’s no way of knowing, is there?
No. And the gods are hungry. They want more and more and more – they want our days and nights.
Jasmine could see the gods as if they were in the room. They leered out from the corners.
I’ve had such nightmares –
So have I, murmured Jasmine.
And I’ve been taking pills that Roger gives to me. But he won’t give me the whole bottle. No doubt he thinks I’ll do something.
The blinds made a sound as if a deck of cards were being shuffled.
You can raise those blinds, if you like, said Ingrid.
Jasmine got up and raised them. Afternoon light poured into the room.
Ingrid blinked. Oh, it’s too much.
Do you want them down again?
Yes, I think so.
Jasmine lowered the blinds.
What did you say before? asked Ingrid. Did you say Damian made some drawings of you?
Yes.
He’s very good. My grandmother was an artist, but I told you that. That’s where Damian gets it from, but he hadn’t drawn anything in almost a year.
He did a few drawings of me, said Jasmine, but nothing he was happy with.
Ingrid was quiet for a while, until Jasmine thought she’d gone to sleep. But then she spoke.
When you first heard about him disappearing like that – what did you do?
I don’t know. I can’t remember all of that day, just bits of it. I called my mother. I didn’t tell her about Damian, but she asked me if something was wrong. She asked if I was pregnant.
Are you pregnant?
No.
I don’t know if that’s good or not good, said Ingrid. I just don’t know. Do you want to be pregnant?
No. It wouldn’t be good for me. It wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Jasmine looked at the things on the floor. A pink towel. A thin white sweater with a missing button. A flower-printed sheet that had fallen off the bed.
You’re wise, said Ingrid. For being nineteen.
Jasmine didn’t want to be pregnant, but she was thinking that there was nothing inside her. Nothing the size of an Easter egg. Nothing that would grow until it was the size of a fisted hand, until it was as large as an outstretched hand, until it was the size of two hands.
I wouldn’t say I’m wise, Jasmine said.
Do you love him?
Damian?
Yes.
I don’t know if I do.
Ingrid sat up and rubbed her face with her hands. It was an unfair question, she said.
Jasmine listened to the blinds making their soft clatter.
Jesus, Ingrid moaned. Jesus. She rocked back and forth on the bed.
Ingrid, said Jasmine gently. She went over to the bed and sat down beside her, afraid to touch her, even though Ingrid was crying hard now.
I’ll go, said Jasmine.
No. No, don’t go. Not for a while.
Okay, I’ll be right here.
Jasmine slipped down to the floor and rested her back against the bed. She closed her eyes. She smelled mint; it must have been because she’d crushed the leaf between her fingers out in the garden. The sharp, wild scent comforted her.
What Sandra had liked best about staying at her grandmother’s house was getting up early and eating breakfast at the old pine table. Once, in spring, she had stayed there, and in the morning her grandmother made her golden pancakes with thick, sweet syrup. She had also made sausages and put six of them on her granddaughter’s plate, but Sandra had put three of them back in the frying pan.
Aren’t you eating anything? Sandra asked.
Her grandmother didn’t answer. Her face looked older than Sandra had ever seen it, perhaps because her hair was down, and her skin had the transparency of paper held to the light. She leaned across the table and stroked Sandra’s cheek. So young, she murmured.
Not so young, said Sandra. Sixteen.
Sixteen, repeated her grandmother. I lost a baby when I was sixteen.
You did?
It died.
Did you miscarry?
No. She was four months old. She died in her sleep. And I – I was very unhappy. She pointed out the window to the garden. That rose bush – do you see it?
Yes.
When we came here and I started a garden, I planted that rose bush. For her, for that baby.
The room was still and warm. Jasmine opened her eyes drowsily and got up. Ingrid was sleeping, one hand under her face. She had drawn up her knees, and lay curled on the bed.
Jasmine went out of the room and closed the door behind her.
RAYMOND HAD WAKENED EARLY and walked with Max as far as he could along the beach before coming back to stand on the rocks and look out at the water. How much this morning was like the others during the past week, each one flaring like the tip of a match, but now he could feel a kind of glory passing out of his reach.
He poured Damian a cup of coffee and set it down.
The boy’s long blond hair, taken out of its braid, fell over his shoulders. It was a wealth of hair, streaked through with light and dark so it was honey-coloured in shadow, and radiant, especially now, with the sunlight coming through the glass door and falling on it. But there was something about him that wouldn’t be disclosed, even if he’d wanted to disclose himself. It was apart from his looks.
Raymond recalled his first sight of Cecily when she’d been running down the steps near the fountain at the university. Her hair had been flying behind her, that fine hair. She’d smiled at him briefly and raised her tennis racket, going past. She’d been wearing white, and her legs had been tanned. Her socks had yellow cotton bobbles on them. It surprised him now that he knew her young self and her aging self, and all the different selves she had been in between. Her particular beauty had caught him, over and over, and it had become more ethereal to him as she’d grown older, as if veils were being lifted.
Damian sipped from his full mug. Raymond thought this was what it might have been like if Peter hadn’t been ill, that he might have sat together with Peter, here in this house, drinking coffee and talking. They could stay and watch the leaves changing outside, now that it was early September, and tell each other they didn’t have to go back to Halifax just then. They could wait another day, another couple of days.
I’ve been thinking about my sister, said Damian.
Must be hard to think of her, said Raymond. His words sounded flat, even to his own ears. Hard to imagine that someone’s gone, he added. Really gone, I mean. It’s not as if the dead can answer a question you have about a place in the Florida Keys, for instance.
What?
Oh, it’s not important. It’s just that I couldn’t remember the name of a place we went once. I remember standing next to my wife and looking out across the ocean. I was fifty-three years old, eating an ice cream cone and thinking how happy I was. I didn’t want to forget anything about that moment.
Yes, I know. It’s strange – I can’t see Lisa’s face any more.
That’s the first thing to go.
And the way she moved her hands. Her laugh. I hear it sometimes, but only if someone laughs the way she did.
That time in the Florida Keys, Raymond said, I wanted to keep everything close. The breeze lifting the hairs on my arms, gulls circling, a plane’s contrail, the salt smell, the sound of a jeep. The way Cecily’s hair fell over her forehead.
He took the milk from the table and put it back in the fridge.
Sometimes I don’t think I should be alive when Lisa is dead, said Damian.
Raymond came back and sat down, trying not to look alarmed. He rubbed the place on his right knee where he’d once been hit by a baseball bat, taking his time as he thought of the right words to say.
You have to think of what you can accomplish by living. And it’s true that two wrongs don’t make a right.
Platitudes, Raymond thought. All he could offer was a dusty shelf of platitudes.
Damian spilled the contents of his mug as he set it down. Shit. A pool of dark liquid was spreading across the table, and he wiped it up with the dishcloth. I could have been a better brother.
It’s not who we could be – who cares about who we could be? We’re loved for who we are. Raymond spoke quickly. I went through all of this when my wife died.
But how could you allow yourself to indulge in, well, to indulge in –
In being happy?
Yes.
Better to indulge in being happy than to indulge in suicide, don’t you think? And, you know, your sister would have wanted you to be happy.
Well, anyway – it’s over.
Over?
I met someone this summer.
Raymond studied him.
I thought – I don’t know what I thought, but I messed up, Damian said. I didn’t treat her very well, and then I left because she –
You left?
I just got on a bus and left. I couldn’t think straight, what with my uncle –
Does she know where you are? Does your uncle?
No.
Does anyone know?
No.
Damian, they’ll be frantic with worry. You have to let them know where you are.
Damian went and stood by the glass door and put his hand against it. He looked out at the light flecking the water, glittering on it. It was the beginning of fall, but it was still warm. If he went barefoot on the beach, the sand on the surface would be warm, though the sand under it would be cooler. A boat skimmed by, a white motorboat, and it made him think of July and lemonade and picnics. Once there had been a time of July and lemonade and picnics.
I could have done something, he said. But I didn’t get there in time.
Cecily’s last day was in spring. A chilly day with a wind from the north. The pear tree was in bloom, but because the wind had started up, there was a wedding of white, faintly pink blossoms outside the kitchen window. Some of the petals scattered in the light wind, and lay, delicate and pale, on the grass, which seemed vividly green after the rain they’d had in the night.
Raymond had made grilled cheese sandwiches that day. He’d chopped wood and piled some in the mud room, in neat stacks, the way he always did. He’d put kindling there too. He was thinking of how much Cecily liked fires, though she hadn’t been out of their room in more than a week. It was possible she’d let him carry her down to the chair by the fire.
The home-care nurse paid a visit just before ten o’clock in the morning; she checked Cecily and then came down to the kitchen. He offered her coffee, but she refused politely. She’d covered the grey in her hair with an auburn dye, though it was plain that her hair had lost its colour underneath. She was getting over a bit of a cough. Her name was Mary Lynn, and she was at least fifty pounds overweight, and getting bigger, even though she went to Weight Watchers religiously and lived on iceberg lettuce and celery and cherry tomatoes, and never ate a thing after six at night. For the love of God, she’d said. Iceberg lettuce and celery and cherry tomatoes. How could a person not lose weight?
She filled out a form on the kitchen counter. You’ll want to watch her closely today.
She’s worse, isn’t she?
Mary Lynn didn’t
lift her eyes to meet his gaze. It’ll be soon.
How soon?
It might be hours, or a day – it might be longer. Sometimes people hang on for a few days. Do you want me to stay for a bit?
No. It’ll be all right.
She collected her things and put on her winter boots, which she wore even though it was spring. The door closed behind her with a decisive sound. He watched her through the window in the mud room; she lit a cigarette and stood in the driveway by her car, smoking. He went back into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, fatigue coming over him in a wave. He’d spent too many nights without a decent sleep, thinking Cecily would die, especially now that she was not being hydrated, now that they weren’t doing anything for her constipation. They were just keeping her comfortable. That’s how they put it. But Raymond still tried to give her water with a sponge. He couldn’t bear to think of Cecily dying of thirst.
Finally he heard Mary Lynn’s car – she had some problem with the starter – and waited until he couldn’t hear it any more. He switched off the kettle. He didn’t want tea. No, he’d make a fire instead, and then he’d bring Cecily down and warm her in front of it. He made the fire, washed his hands, and went upstairs, slowly, dreading what he’d find, though surely not much could change in a half-hour. Sometime he would climb these stairs and he would find her dead.
He unhooked the tube that fed morphine into a butterfly on her arm and took her out of her bed, though she wasn’t aware of it, and, cradling her in his arms, went downstairs to the fire he’d made. He sat in the armchair with her body in his lap, and he cried. She had no idea he was crying. Some of his tears fell on her neck and he wiped them away. She was light as a cat against him. If she slept, perhaps she didn’t feel pain, or maybe pain went through the transparency of sleep so that it was always there. He didn’t know. He could smell the burning wood in the fireplace; it crackled occasionally, and once it snapped quite loudly, but nothing bothered her. She breathed noisily. Though he’d put balm on her lips, they were cracked and dry. He held her body close to him and her pale feet, swollen, hung down as if they didn’t belong to her. He studied her arches, the curved line of each instep. There was a smell of wood burning. There was a smell of dying, though it was probably something he imagined. He knew it was something he imagined.
