Family Portraits

by JoAnn Aitken

  Lorne was startled but didn’t respond. “Nicky, darling,” Helen said. “You’re exhausted and at the end of your rope. You can’t drive to Edmonton. It’s out of the question.” She turned furiously on Lorne.

  “Lorne, for once in your fucking life be a man. Call Bill Russell and see if he can fly Nicky out there today. He’ll make more of an impact on Nicholas than you will, you useless coward. There’s a landing strip on Nicholas’ ranch so the trip is straightforward.”

  Lorne had never heard his wife speak to him like that. However, he could see that the situation was desperate. Bill was a section manager at the store with a pilot’s license and his own small plane. Lorne didn’t want to involve him in his family business.

  “For God’s sake, you idiot, everybody from here to Crystal Beach and back knows what is going on. If you won’t call him, I will!” Helen was shouting. “And if Bill can’t help, I will take Nicky to the airport myself. I’m also calling the Sheriff and Dr. Merrill to get them involved.”

  Lorne’s humiliation at being spoken to like that by his usually mild-manner wife actually stiffened his spine. “I’ll call him right now,” he said.

  “Good. I’m going to the stables to get that gun so it will be at the ready.”

  Bill Russell came through, and little more than half a dozen hours later they landed on Nicholas’ ranch. Nicholas wasn’t really surprised to see them, but he hadn’t expected an arrival in that fashion.

  In the house, young Nicholas minced no words when he told his uncle and his wife in precise detail what had been happening since they had dumped their daughter at Maple Lane after Michael Campbell’s funeral.

  Nicholas knew it was all his fault and stared at the kitchen floor. His wife, who had never supported the idea of leaving Shyla at Maple Lane, told him angrily, “You have to go there now. You are to blame, and you must make it right!” She said to her nephew, “Nicky, I’ve never felt such shame. I beg your forgiveness. Please stay here with me while your uncle handles this situation.”

  Nicky collapsed in a chair and burst into tears.

  It was very late when Bill Russell landed at the airstrip outside town. Nicholas had phoned Lorne from Edmonton before they left and told him to be there when they arrived. They headed for Maple Lane which was quiet and in darkness.

  The brothers crept upstairs and found Shyla passed out on her bed. Nicholas shook her awake and demanded to know where Barbara was. Shyla was so groggy and amazed at seeing her father that she told them. Nicholas furiously told her to get her things together because he was coming back for her.

  Before they left the house, Nicholas called the doctor to alert him that they would be at his office soon and Neil, the sheriff, their lifelong friend, was to arrange where to meet them. At a sleazy motel on the highway, admitted to one of the rooms by the night manager, they rescued their sister from a scene of such degradation that Nicholas was never able to burn it from his memory.

  They took her to Dr. Merrill who checked her over, deeming her condition to be very serious, and then they took her in Lorne’s van to a rehabilitation facility about fifty miles away.

  After she was admitted, they returned to the farm. Another day was dawning, and Shyla had flown, taking one of the cars.

  Nicholas sternly told his younger brother to see to the damage to the house and grounds. He advised that he put an electric fence across the front and a locked gate on the entrance to the long lane. He said to get a couple of trained guard dogs. Lorne finally recognized the seriousness of the situation he had allowed to fester for so long. His wife never looked him in the same way again.

  The two girls stayed with Lorne and Helen. David and Kathy were away at school. Nicholas remained on his uncle’s ranch. He didn’t return to Maple Lane for more than thirty years. Shyla was gone, just plain gone, no one knew where.

  Satan had lived at Maple Lane since Michael Campbell’s death in November 1973 until September 1974. No one in the family would ever be the same.

  Barbara came home after nine months. She was like a stranger. David unenthusiastically returned to stay in the house until school began in the fall. Kathy had taken a summer job at Mount Mary and only came back for a couple of days to see her sisters. She could scarcely bring herself to look at Barbara. She blamed her mother for everything.

  Caroline had bonded with Helen, who called her “my baby,” and she clung to her obsessively. Emma returned to the big house. She was seeing the same psychiatrist that Barbara visited every two weeks.

  She did not reveal her secrets. The doctor knew she was holding back but persisted in trying to get her to open up. He prescribed her an antidepressant which didn’t help. She seemed to be caught in an endless loop in her head. Sometimes she didn’t know where she was or how she had come to be there. When she walked, she felt like there were giant springs attached to her feet. Unlike Caroline, she never cried.

  At the beginning of September, David went back to university. His girlfriend drove, and Barbara went too. Her doctor had advised her to get out of the house if she had a chance.

  It was a blazing hot afternoon. Emma was in the kitchen and turned on the cold water in the large, deep utility sink. She was wearing a long, flowing skirt and a tank top. Dreamily, she removed her top and began to sponge herself. She could feel the water. It felt good.

  Suddenly, she became aware of someone else in the room. It was Jimmy Sheehan, a not-really friend of David’s. He was a rough young man from a trashy family, but he and Dave liked to work on cars together sometimes.

  Jimmy was staring at Emma in awe. “My God, Em,” he said, “I never realized you were so beautiful.” He approached her and gently dried her with a towel. “You’re like one of the foreign statues in books,” he said inarticulately, and he kissed her. She did not resist; she didn’t make a sound. In fact, she put her arms up around his neck.

  After he was gone, she thought that she had dreamt it.

  Months passed, and Barbara seemed a little stronger although she was sleep-deprived. She couldn’t sleep at night because she would see Michael, just a short distance away. No matter how she ran to catch up, she could never reach him. She always woke up in tears.

  She mourned her father and grieved endlessly about the misery she had brought to her children. She had constant flashes of things that had happened, horrible things that she had done. The shame she suffered made her suicidal much of the time.

  She loved all her children, but Emma Lise had always been her favorite, the first baby she and Michael had conceived. To see the human wreckage she was now was a bitter pill.

  One day she was looking at Emma standing in the kitchen and she realized that the girl was pregnant. She seemed to be totally unaware. With the psychiatrist’s help, Emma vaguely remembered her encounter with Jimmy Sheehan.

  Barbara knew that Jimmy wasn’t a great choice for a mate, but, in her muddled mind, she thought it might help Emma to have a husband and child. She was projecting her sorrow over what she had lost onto the badly damaged girl.

  Jimmy Sheehan’s family was delighted to have their son marry into the Murray/Campbell fortune. Jimmy didn’t want to get married, but his formidable mother was in charge.

  When Kathy heard what had happened, she was outraged. David, who knew Jimmy well, was horrified. Their distress was warranted. Emma and Jimmy lived with his large family, and it was hell on earth for the poor broken girl. She was a helpless prisoner.

  Their first child, Billy, was born two months later. Ten months afterwards, Jimmy Jr. was born. In another month or so, Emma was pregnant again. Jimmy was unhappy and drank and beat her. His mother worked her like Cinderella. They kept her from her family, which wasn’t difficult, Barbara being extremely reclusive and the children having fled Maple Lane.

  On a very unusual day, Barbara ventured out and decided to stop by the Sheehans’ to see Emma and her babies. Fortunately, Mother Sheehan had gone shopping, and Emma was alone. She was far along in her third pregnancy and had a b
lack eye from that morning’s beating. She looked at her mother as if she didn’t know her.

  Barbara got her daughter and the babies into her car and hurried home. She activated the electric gate and called the family lawyer. It seemed that she still had the ability to pull it together when her back was to the wall. She mustered the strength to get through this crisis, but not without more damage to her own self-esteem and to Emma. Everywhere she looked, she saw accusing eyes.

  David was graduated with a Bachelor of Finance. He took over the Canadian Tire Store and married his long-time girlfriend.

  Lorne retired to Victoria, and his wife left him. His oldest son, Todd, who was a vet, took over Lorne’s half of Maple Lane Farms. He was a nice guy who knew something, but nowhere close to all, about what had happened. Finally, a good, normal person was introduced to the family mix.

  Kathy graduated from Mount Mary Immaculate with the highest honors and earned a scholarship to the University of Toronto. She swore she would never return to Maple Lane.

  Young Nicholas stayed on his uncle’s ranch and graduated from a program in agricultural equipment maintenance and repair at a local community college. His relationship with his uncle was strained, but his aunt became the mother he had lost. Ultimately, he married a local girl and they set up a home on the ranch. He was a valuable asset to his uncle’s operation.

  He did not communicate with anyone at Maple Lane although his heart ached for Emma. His distance was sort of a pact he had made with God.

  Caroline grew up troubled and deeply depressed, particularly after her Aunt Helen moved away. When she was sixteen, she ran away to Toronto. At the bus station, on arrival, she met a young man who was playing guitar on the street

  He too was a runaway from Kingston and Queen’s University. He was positive he could be a success making music, a long and hungry road pursued by many other displaced young people.

  He loved Caroline at first sight. He had been attracted to her sad eyes, and he wanted to save her. Instead, after they wandered like nomads through the lanes and alleyways and the crash pads of what had been hippy Yorkville, he made her pregnant. No miracle presented itself in the first few months, and the young couple had no choice but to go to Maple Lane.

  Barbara was happier than she was able to express to see her daughter. Marc was a fine young man from a good family, and she was glad to have them at home. Extremely glad, in fact. Caroline was her baby, not Helen’s, and Barbara was anxious to help.

  On December 28, 1978, the child was born. Her name was Theresa Katharine.

  After much discussion, in early 1979, Marc resolved to travel to Kingston and reconcile with his parents. He was prepared to return to Queen’s in the fall if they would take him and Caroline and their baby into their lives. He left on the bus, full of optimism. He promised to phone as soon as he reached Kingston, but the call never came.

  Caroline was frantic. Barbara called the Toronto police, wondering if, on his stopover in that city, he had gotten into trouble. The police didn’t laugh, but they might as well have. At that time, hundreds of parents from all over Canada were trying to find their runaway progeny in the big city.

  Soon Caroline couldn’t wait anymore. She set out to look for Marc herself. She found him, but nobody ever knew the details. One night in fall, she was picked up by the police, wandering barefoot in the street. She was pregnant, but unable to say where she’d been or where Marc might be.

  She was returned to Maple Lane and bore her child in December. She wrote Marc’s name on the birth certificate, but she never spoke of him again or what had happened between them. He was never found, and Caroline never came back to the real world.

  Katherine Campbell, December 28, 1959

  Edward Claude Gascoyne, December 2, 1952

  February 1984

  Eddie hadn’t come home until 5 a.m. He had an important meeting at 10, and Katherine was even more worried than usual.

  He had been devolving at an increasingly rapid rate, even faster than the pace he had been keeping for the last two years.

  She tried to shake him awake, but he was out cold. She picked out a suit and shirt and tie for him to wear, and she paced nervously. At eight-thirty, she put an icy-cold face cloth on the back of his neck, and he came around, fighting.

  “What the fuck, you bitch,” he bellowed.

  “Baby,” she said in a quiet, reasonable voice, “you have to get ready for the Kinoshita meeting at ten. I’ve got your clothes laid out, but you’d better get cleaned up now.”

  “Mon dieu,” he yelled, “how could I possibly manage without a nagging, fucking cunt on my back?” But he did get up and headed to the shower. She heard the water running and him swearing in two languages. She was trembling.

  When he emerged, he looked terrible. He got partially dressed and went to the dining room table. He laid out a line and snorted it. Katherine knew better than to say anything, but he saw the expression on her face.

  “Is there something you’d like to say to me, mon amour?” and he grabbed her tightly by her shoulders.

  “Of course not, Eddie,” she said evenly. “You know what you’re doing.”

  In spite of her effort to placate him, he didn’t like her tone and backhanded an unfortunate lamp, which happened to be nearby.

  “I have to go,” she backed away and headed quickly for the foyer. She grabbed her purse and got out of the apartment. She was so frightened that she didn’t wait for the elevator and ran to the stairs. She could still hear him crashing about, cursing loudly.

  It was time to put her plan into action. She would return to the apartment after he was gone – she knew full well that he would go to the meeting – and get the suitcases she had been secretly packing. It was time to leave.

  She would not bring her child into this world. “Oh, Eddie,” she whispered as she choked back a sob.

  Katherine had nowhere to go but the farm. She had never taken Eddie there and had always been vague whenever she spoke of it. She called it “The House of the Living Dead.” She hoped that at such time as he ever got straight he wouldn’t remember anything she had said.

  It took her two days to get there. She flew from Vancouver to Chicago, took the Amtrak to Buffalo, flew to Toronto, and got a limo to the farm. Fortunately, she had plenty of money from freelance interior design work she had done, and Eddie had always been generous.

  Her mother was unexpectedly welcoming and even expressed sympathy on hearing what had happened. Delicate Emma hugged her and looked dismayed at seeing her strong sister in such a dreadful state.

  The first while was awful. Katherine cried endlessly. Her mother listened outside her bedroom door at night, but it had been so long since she had made an effort for anyone she didn’t know what to do. Emma crept downstairs from her third floor hideaway and came in to hold her sister in her arms. She worried for the baby, Katherine being so overwrought. “Eddie, oh, Eddie,” she sobbed.

  Her little niece Theresa would curl up on her lap, cuddling against the baby. Somehow, this brought the most comfort of all.

  In the summer, her child arrived, a healthy boy with his father’s powerful lungs, black, black eyes and long dark lashes. Katherine said he batted his eyes at her from the time he was born. She named him Edward Claude Gascoyne.

  August 1985

  Time passed, as it must, and Eddie grew into a beautiful, charming little boy. “Charming” described him to a tee. He knew exactly how to play his audience. With a couple of bats of his father’s eyes and his perfect face upturned for a kiss, he won the hearts of all who met him. His mother was helpless before him.

  As his first birthday approached, she taught him a game: “Quel age as-tu, Eddie?” she would ask. Coyly, he would raise one finger, bat his eyes, and lift his face for kisses, in the French style, one on each check. Then Katharine would clap her hands and the baby would do the same.

  This game was so adorable that his relatives played it endlessly with him, even his rugged Sheehan boy co
usins, ages nine, eight, and seven. When his mother would relinquish him from her arms, some other enchanted fool would pick him up. His grandmother wondered if the child would ever walk or would be carried through life. Although captivated herself, she worried about him to the best of her limited ability.

  The day before his birthday, Katherine knelt beside him as he splashed cheerfully in a small plastic pool in front of the house. He and she kept up a steady dialog while his cousins Theresa and Sharon played with kittens on the veranda. It was a beautiful day with a flawless sky, and Katherine regarded her son with love so profound that she could think of nothing else.

  “Someone’s coming,” Sharon observed. Sure enough, a car was making its way through the maple tunnel toward the house. Visitors were not usual, and Katherine stood up and gathered her baby into a big towel. The little girls, their arms full of kittens, joined her.

  The car pulled into the parking area, the door opened, and the driver emerged. It was Eddie.

  He looked fit and tanned as he moved with his trademark laid-back stroll toward the group. About five yards away, he removed his sunglasses. “Bonjour,” he said in his familiar Eddie voice, “I am Gascoyne.”

  Katherine thought she would certainly faint dead away. That was the first thing he had said to her when he approached her in Winnipeg. “Moi aussi,” she responded, and he smiled.

  He moved closer. “Girls, this is my husband, Eddie. Eddie, these are my nieces Theresa and Sharon and their kittens.”

  Eddie bowed slightly and said, “Ladies, kittens, it is my pleasure.” The girls’ eyes were big as saucers.

  “You’re gorgeous,” blurted out Theresa. Kathy laughed, and Eddie smiled, his aw-shucks-Eddie-smile.

  “You warm my heart, Theresa.”

  “Why don’t you go out back and make sure no one is killing anyone,” Katherine suggested. “And leave the kittens on the porch with their mother in case the boys want to use them for lacrosse balls again.” They did as they were told, with a number of backward glances.