Ten Thousand Truths

by Susan White

  “I’ll run up and get our skates,” Jodie said.

  Rachel went back to work, scooping up shovelfuls of snow, waiting for Jodie to get back.

  Rachel pulled up a chair beside the woodstove and propped her nearly frozen feet on the oven door. She stirred the marshmallows into her hot chocolate and sipped the steaming liquid. Jodie stood beside her, flipping grilled cheese sandwiches in the cast iron frying pan.

  “Do you guys want to come to my house tonight and help me trim my tree?” Zac asked as he dipped his grilled cheese in a dollop of ketchup on his plate. “I wasn’t going to bother but there was a perfect little tree on the edge of the back field and I thought I may as well cut it and put it up. I even bought a few ornaments at the drug store yesterday.”

  “I have some ornaments that we didn’t use,” said Amelia. “You can have them. And I have extra lights, too. I’m glad you decided to put up your own tree. There is nothing like the smell of a tree in the house for the Christmas season. I can’t imagine not having a real Christmas tree in the house. Did you know that Germany made the first artificial trees out of goose feathers that were painted green?”

  Rachel added one more ladle of lobster chowder to each of the last two bowls and carried them into the dining room. Snow was lightly falling outside and it was a perfect Christmas Eve. The twins had set the table with a Christmas tablecloth and napkins, and Jodie had lit some candles and turned off the overhead lights.

  “In Mexico wearing red underwear on New Year’s Eve is said to bring new love in the upcoming year,” Amelia said as Rachel set the steaming bowls of chowder in front of Zac and Jodie.

  “Well, I’ve got red long johns,” Zac replied. “Now I just have to wear them on New Year’s Eve and wait for love to find me. I hope whoever she is she can make lobster chowder as delicious as you do, Amelia.”

  Rachel looked at the faces around the table in the glow of the candlelight. She thought back to a point earlier in the day, when she had started crying for no reason. Raymond had come around the corner of the chicken shed and ambushed Zac with snowballs. His laughter as Zac ran after him had sounded like Caleb’s and she’d found herself standing there, watching them with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She and Caleb had built a snow fort in the backyard of their house on Regent Street. The next day Caleb had hid in it, waited until Rachel came out of the house, and surprised her with a volley of snowballs. He had laughed so hard and run toward the house, trying to get his snow pants off quickly so he didn’t pee his pants. Their mom had met them at the door, holding the angel that they always put on the top of their tree. Rachel remembered her mom hollering at Caleb as he ran by her with his snow pants down around his knees, his snowy boots dripping puddles down the hall as he stomped toward the bathroom. It had been Christmas Eve, their last Christmas Eve, and the last Christmas Eve that she’d had a family. Until now, she thought.

  Rachel’s favourite gift had been the snowshoes. Now, as she trudged through the snow, lifting each snowshoed foot carefully as she tried to keep up with Zac and Jodie, she thought back to three mornings ago when she had opened her presents. It had been a chaotic morning, with wrapping paper strewn everywhere and the twins and Raymond announcing everything they got with excitement as they’d opened their presents. Amelia had passed out the presents, trying to keep it so that everyone always had something to open. She hardly opened any of hers until everyone else was finished. When she had opened her gift from Rachel, Amelia had gone right to the bathroom mirror and put the pansy earrings on, saying how beautiful they were.

  Rachel had opened her gifts quietly, enjoying the anticipation as she slowly pulled the wrapping off of each one. She was completely awed by the pile of things in front of her when she was done. When she’d opened the gift from Zac, the box was empty. She was confused, especially since he had made such a big deal about hiding it so she wouldn’t shake it. She found a note taped on the inside of the box that said her real gift was in the barn behind a bale of hay. Everyone had put their coats and boots on to follow her to the hay loft to find her present. The snowshoes had been wrapped in bright snowman paper with a big red bow, and Zac had taken the time to draw snowshoes on the bottom of each of the snowmen.

  Rachel had been embarrassed that she didn’t have a clue how to put the snowshoes on. At first she’d been really self-conscious of the clumsy way she’d walked with them once she got them strapped to her boots. But she was finally getting the hang of it now and she hadn’t fallen over for at least ten minutes. She came into a clearing, where she could see Zac and Jodie sitting on a pile of logs. Jodie was unpacking the lunch Amelia had made for them and Rachel could only imagine what delicious stuff she had crammed into the backpack. She sat down on the log pile and Jodie passed her a turkey sandwich.

  “I hope we weren’t going too fast for you,” Jodie said as Zac passed Rachel a mug of hot chocolate.

  “No, I’m okay,” Rachel answered between bites of her sandwich.

  “If we keep taking this road we’ll come out behind the lake,” Zac said, pointing to a clearing through the thick stand of trees. “I haven’t had the tractor down there since our last big snowfall, so it should be good snowshoeing. It is quite a ways, but we could come out and end up at Amelia’s instead of backtracking and finishing up at my house.”

  Jodie passed out cinnamon-sugared donuts. “I think I’ll head back to your place to get my car. I told the twins that I would take them for pizza and bowling tonight. My vacation is going so fast and I want to get everything I planned done. Rachel and I are going for a spa day tomorrow, aren’t we?”

  “Yup,” Rachel said with a smile.

  Zac finished his donut and bent down to put his snowshoes back on. “Ah, a spa day. I’m taking Raymond to his first guitar lesson tomorrow, or I might ask to come with you. I could sure use a pedicure,” he laughed. “Too bad we couldn’t get Amelia to go. Wouldn’t it be nice to see her pampered after all the work she did getting ready for Christmas?”

  “I know,” Jodie replied. “I would ask her but I know she wouldn’t come. I’ll bring her back that shampoo she really likes. It amazes me how she can keep so content when she never leaves home. She’s harder on herself than anyone else would ever be.”

  Rachel drank the last bit of hot chocolate from her cup and set it in Jodie’s backpack. As she strapped on her snowshoes she thought about Jodie’s words: She’s harder on herself than anyone else would ever be.

  “The thing about my Macaroni Delight is that it’s never exactly the same two times in a row. I throw whatever I can find in it,” Zac explained as he shook a spice bottle over the ground beef he was cooking. Zac had met the kids at the bus and brought them to his house for supper because Amelia wasn’t feeling well.

  Rachel was chopping red and green peppers and onions. Raymond and the twins had gone out to the sheep pen hoping to find a ewe giving birth, even though Zac had told them it would be a month or so before the ewes began lambing.

  “What if Amelia has to go to the doctor?” Rachel asked. She had noticed Amelia’s cold getting worse and had heard her coughing a lot last night.

  “Doctor Hollway will come to the house if we need him to,” Zac answered. “A couple of years ago she had pneumonia and he came and wrote her a prescription. She doesn’t get sick very often but I told her today that if she wasn’t better by tomorrow I would call him to come again. She wasn’t too keen on that.”

  “Amelia doesn’t like anyone making a fuss over her, does she? But she’s always thinking of other people. When Mrs. Fullerton was sick last week, Amelia sent her meals for four days. She is probably the most unselfish person I have ever met.”

  “I certainly agree with that. I had to force her to stop what she was doing this afternoon and go to bed. It made me think of the first few weeks after I came to live with her. She had to change the dressings on my burns and I would scream and fight h
er.”

  “Your burns?” Rachel asked as she put the paring knife down and turned toward where Zac was standing. All Zac had ever told her about coming to Amelia’s was that he was eleven when he came. She didn’t know anything about why he was put in foster care.

  Zac kept cooking. He didn’t look at Rachel as he reached over for the pile of chopped peppers and onions and added them to the frying pan.

  “I was burned on my back and left arm. I had been in the hospital for a few weeks and when I was to be released I had nowhere to go so they brought me to Amelia. There had just been my dad and me. Put that macaroni in the pot would you, please? My dad died in the fire.”

  Rachel didn’t know what to say. She was well aware of the awkward silence that always hangs in the air after you tell someone your parent is dead. She just stood there, silently waiting for Zac to continue or change the subject.

  After a minute or so of silence, Zac spoke again. “It took me too long to jump. I was afraid and I stood there crying. Dad kept telling me I could do it and he forced me through the window. The roof collapsed just as I jumped from the windowsill and I got burned on my back and shoulder. My dad was knocked down and didn’t make it. Amelia got me through those first few weeks and months.”

  Rachel stood stirring the macaroni, knowing there was nothing she could say to Zac that would take away his pain.

  Two days later Rachel set Amelia’s supper tray down and sat on the chair beside her bed. “Finally I’m getting some real food,” Amelia laughed, stabbing a piece of chicken with her fork. “I hope I don’t see tomato soup again for a good long time. And that disgusting medicine Dr. Hollway gave me, I’ll be glad when I’ve taken the last of that. You kids have been great, though. The way you’ve been taking care of me, you’d think I was royalty.”

  “You would’ve done the same for any one of us,” Rachel said. “Zac did most of the work.”

  “Zac’s been amazing. He has waited on me hand and foot during the day. He brought me tea this afternoon, and he decorated the tray like he was serving tea at the Empress Hotel. I could almost picture myself sitting in the dining room of the Empress, having tea and scones.”

  “Where is the Empress Hotel?” Rachel asked.

  “It’s in Victoria, BC. It was built in 1908 and at the time it was the grandest of all the hotels. For many years it didn’t even have a sign above the front entrance and, as a worker erected a sign years later, he was quoted as saying, ‘Anyone who doesn’t know this is the Empress shouldn’t be staying here.’ In 1965 there was a debate about tearing it down but in 1966 they did a $4 million renovation that they dubbed ‘Operation Teacup’ and in 1989 they did an additional $45 million restoration.”

  “It sounds amazing,” Rachel said. “I’d love to see it someday. But in the meantime, why don’t I go perform my own Operation Teacup? The twins made your tea. I’ll go get it and bring it up to you.”

  “Thanks,” said Amelia, “but I think I’ll get my lazy self out of bed and come downstairs to have my tea. This old house might not be as elegant as the Empress Hotel, but I’ll be happy to see the rest of it. I’ve had enough of these four walls in the last few days.”

  The second letter came in mid-January. As soon as Rachel saw it in the mailbox she knew it was from Audrey Anderson. The beginning of it read like a tourist brochure for the town of Golden. Obviously Audrey Anderson had needed to really stretch to think of anything to write to a granddaughter she didn’t even know. Apparently Golden had a population of 4,100. One of those 4,100 was Rachel’s father. The town was 262 kilometres west of Calgary. So what! Rachel thought to herself. Walton Lake road is about a million kilometres east of Calgary. Who cares?

  The letter went on to tell Rachel about all the exciting things there were to do in Golden: white water rafting, Heli skiing, snowmobiling, and hiking. Golden was nestled between two mountain ranges, the Purcell Mountains and the Rocky Mountains, in a place called Kicking Horse Country. What is she, a travel agent or something? Rachel wondered. Is she trying to sell me a trip to Golden? She read on to learn that Audrey Anderson lived next door to a place called “A Quiet Corner Bed and Breakfast” which was run by her friends Owen and Winnie Johnston. She sometimes made cinnamon buns for them. The whole first page of the letter was trivial information like this.

  The second page was mostly about her father. Apparently he lived in a facility called “Top of the World Ranch Treatment Centre.” He was a drug addict and was trying to deal with his addiction. Audrey said that he was holding on to the dream of someday seeing his daughter and being someone she could be proud of.

  Rachel read that line several times. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing about Donald Anderson that she was proud of and for sure she was nothing for him to be proud of either.

  In the last paragraph Audrey Anderson asked again if Rachel would please write back to her and send her a picture. She also said that more than anything she prayed every day that she would get to meet Rachel. She hoped that someday Rachel could come to Golden and see her father and meet the rest of her family.

  Rachel balled up the pages of the letter in her fist. How does Audrey Anderson think I’m going to get all the way to British Columbia? she wondered. And what good is having a family all the way across the country? What good is having a family anyway when one wrong choice can take them away from you forever?

  It was Saturday morning, and Rachel and Jodie were heading to the city to do some shopping. Rachel had finally admitted that she needed to buy some new clothes. Even her orange sneakers were too small to wear. Before leaving, Rachel had put one of her school pictures in an envelope, wrote Audrey Anderson’s name and address on the front, and licked the flap shut.

  “Can we stop and get a stamp so that I can mail a picture to my grandmother?” Rachel asked.

  She had told Jodie over Christmas that she had gotten a letter from her father’s mother and told her about the second letter when it came. She hadn’t told her much about what the letters had said except where they lived and what their names were. She definitely hadn’t mentioned that her father was a drug addict or that her grandmother had invited her to come to Golden.

  “Of course,” Jodie said. Rachel had expected Jodie to start asking all kinds of questions about her grandmother, but she didn’t. Rachel was relieved for the silence, and sat staring out the car window as they drove on.

  “Do you remember Amelia ever leaving home?” Rachel broke the silence while she and Jodie were waiting in line for the ferry. “Have you ever asked her to go anywhere?”

  “Nope,” Jodie said. “I really wanted her to go to my graduation when I graduated from Business College, but I knew she wouldn’t go, so I didn’t even ask her.”

  “Was she born with those tumours on her face?”

  “No, they started coming out when she was in her early twenties. She was actually quite beautiful when she was young. Did you know that she was Miss Saint John in 1975? I found her sash one time when I was getting something from her room, and when I asked her about it she showed me a newspaper clipping.”

  “I hardly even notice her face anymore. I don’t understand why she’s so hard on herself. Why do you think she cares so much what other people think?”

  “That’s a good question. She has helped so many kids find their confidence and make the best out of the crappy situations they found themselves in. She certainly helped me to reshape the image I had of myself. I don’t know why she hasn’t been able to do that herself.”

  “Maybe she’s been so busy worrying about everyone else’s problems that she hasn’t had a chance to think about her own,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “Or maybe she’s afraid to, and no one has tried to help her the way that she’s helped us.”

  The third letter arrived on Groundhog Day. Rachel carried it straight from the mailbox to her room, and sat on her bed to read it.

  Dear Rachel
,

  Your picture is beautiful. Thank you very much for sending it. You look a lot like your Aunt Victoria, your father’s youngest sister. You have another aunt named Patricia. We would all love to meet you. I gave a copy of the picture to your father and he was thrilled to get it. He has it framed in his room. He is doing quite well in recovery and we are very hopeful that he’ll continue making progress. He would like to write a letter to you but he wanted me to ask you first if it was all right. You can let me know if you would like to hear from him. I know it is very difficult after all these years. I hope you are doing well in your foster home. I would love to know more about your foster family, your school, and friends.

  The letter had three more paragraphs. Rachel finished it, and then reread the first paragraph over and over. She looked like someone. People had always said how much Caleb looked like their mom, but no one had ever compared Rachel to her mom or Caleb. Her colouring and facial features were very different. She looked like her Aunt Victoria. She didn’t even know until now that she had an Aunt Victoria.

  After spending a long time poring over the letter, Rachel went to the bathroom and closed the door. She stood in front of the rectangular mirror and brushed the long brown hair away from her brownish-green eyes. The picture ID card that her first social worker had made for her said her eyes were hazel. She remembered holding that card, wondering why she needed something saying who she was when there was no one in the world who cared, no one that she belonged to. Hazel eyes. Aunt Victoria’s eyes, maybe. And maybe Aunt Victoria had the same thin top lip, too.

  Audrey, Donald, Victoria, Patricia. A family she was part of. Golden, BC. A place where she might belong.

  Chapter 6

  The Start of a Plan

  March break was a wet, cold week, but Rachel was glad for the holiday. Jodie took two days off from work and came up to stay on Wednesday night.

  “I got another letter from my grandmother,” Rachel said as she and Jodie watered a line of seed pots on a table in the parlour.