by Anne Degrace
When I was in chemo, I met a woman, Allison, in the waiting room. Enough of our appointments coincided that we became friends. It’s such an intimate thing, sitting together in that vulnerable state. It was Allison who got me tracing my roots, herself in the process of digging up her own.
One day when I arrived she was sitting in the corner chair by the lamp with a folder open on her lap. She looked up and raised the area where her eyebrows used to be.
“Mary!” she said, “Look at this. I just got my grandfather’s military records. I knew he was in the air force, but I didn’t know he was a navigator. He never talked about the war.”
Allison had recently subscribed to an online genealogy service, and had quickly become immersed in her family history. I sat down beside her. “A lot of men didn’t. My father was the same.” I looked closer. “Your grandfather was in 160 squadron in Vancouver. That sounds familiar . . . ”
Allison looked up. “Really?”
“Well, who knows? This course of treatment is messing up my memory, I think — that, or I’m just getting old.” Allison grinned, nodding, but she’s thirty years younger than I am — far too young for this.
“Look at this.” She handed me a photocopied page. Under the name Robert Handley the citation read:
THIS OFFICER’S SKILL, courage and devotion to duty as a navigator have contributed much to the success achieved by the squadron. As navigation leader he has done exceptionally good work and has set a splendid example of efficiency both in the air and on the ground. His repeated development of new ideas, modifications, and training schemes have been of exceptional value in bringing the navigation in his squadron to its present high standard.
“HE MUST HAVE felt proud when he read this. I’m proud of him, reading it now. I wish he were still alive, so I could tell him,” she said.
The receptionist called Allison’s name, and she packed up her folder and left. That evening, flattened as I was from the chemo session, I lay on the couch looking through my own folder of family records, passed down to me. Lucien was reading the paper, but he looked up when I made a noise of surprise.
“Same squadron!” I said. I explained about Allison. “Not only that, here’s a postcard Dad sent home; Mum kept everything. He mentions his friend Bob. What are the chances . . . ?”
“Common name,” remarked Lucien from behind the Globe and Mail.
But it wasn’t. Over the weeks of our treatment, Allison and I grew closer, and started digging further. My father and her grandfather were friends, although it appears they lost touch after the war.
“It’s that six degrees of separation thing,” Allison said. We were having lunch, our friendship having moved beyond the waiting room. I hadn’t heard the term. “It’s based on the idea that everyone is, on average, six steps away from any other person on Earth. Everyone’s a friend of a friend — if you follow the chain, six steps like that should connect any two people. I don’t know if it’s really true, but how many times have you caught yourself saying: small world?”
“A lot,” I admitted.
ALLISON DIDN’T MAKE it. Her cancer returned, aggressively. At her funeral, a childhood friend of hers approached me and asked if Allison and I were related, assuming, I guess, that I was an aunt or something.
“Yes,” I told her, after a pause.
Day 9
IT’S HARD TO hold the scope and breadth of a family tree in your head when you really start to think about it. There are the matrilineal and the patrilineal aspects. There are second and even third marriages. There are adoptions. But I like the idea of having this web of branches and roots, supporting me. With all of this, how is it possible to fall?
With all of the space and time on this voyage — which will take less than a third as long as Mary’s was — there is time for all of us to think. Josslyne has been thinking about her upcoming marriage to her young man, Adam. She loves him, but she saw her parents’ marriage break up, and I can see why she might be wary.
“Have you ever talked to your dad about it?” She shook her head. “He might have a bit of advice. You might be surprised.”
She shook her head again, but this evening I see them talking earnestly, leaning on the guardrail against a technicolour sunset. Marcel is on his way to join them, but I head him off.
“Crib?” I ask. “I think you owe me a game. It was best two out of three, remember? We haven’t played the third.”
We sit in the day room, the board between us. Marcel draws high card and shuffles the deck the way I taught him: shuffle, riffle, tap down, repeat.
“Thanks for taking us on this trip, Gran,” he says, dealing. “Joss and I haven’t spent this much time together since before high school. And even though we saw Dad most weekends and summers, it’s different as adults.”
I toss two cards in the crib. “Huh. What about your grandfather and me? Isn’t it good to see us, too?”
“Well, yeah — of course. It’s great to spend time with you. I guess all we’re missing is Aunt Elizabeth.” He lays down a seven of clubs.
My smart, serious girl — okay, middle-aged woman — is a full professor now, teaching in Paris. It would not be possible to get away, she told me, even in June.
“Well, we could never have brought everyone — there are your aunts and uncles and cousins. Great-uncles. Second cousins.” Marcel rolls his eyes. They’re all a little tired of the subject, I think. “Besides, a lot of them will be there, at your sister’s wedding; it will be a bit of a reunion.” I put a seven of hearts on top of his. “A pair for two,” I announce, moving my peg forward. “My mother always said there should be more reasons to get together than weddings and funerals. This is good.”
“And seven makes twenty-one, for six,” he says, grinning. “The more, the merrier.”
Day 12
SOMETIME IN THE night I’m awakened by a change in the motion of the ship. A ship this big isn’t at the mercy of the waves like Mary’s was, so the swells out there must be pretty big. Without waking Lucien, I put my warm jacket on over my pajamas and slip out to go above and see.
It’s beautiful: the stars are out, although far on the horizon I can see a black presence where the stars stop. The pitch and roll must be from a storm far away from us, I think. The roll seems diminished, now that I have the sky and deck as reference points, and I lean on the rail, enjoying the space. I can hear movements of the crew somewhere on the deck, but I’ve found an out-of-the-way place. It’s good to be alone. My family doesn’t say as much, but I feel them watching me carefully, as if I’m still fragile. As if I could be snatched away from them at any moment.
We’ll be in port sometime late tomorrow. It was such a journey to get this far. There was the journey of my own recovery, of course, but I prefer to think about the journey of discovery that began in earnest when I found Mary’s diary in the provincial archives in St. John’s. It felt as if a familiar hand had reached out to grasp my own. It was then that I decided that, when I was strong enough, I would make this trip.
My mother gave her first baby up for adoption, and then found her much later — giving me a half-sister I never knew I had. We have the same laugh; it’s our mother’s laugh. Lucien’s mother raised her children by herself, kids who learned to look out for one another, who raised their own kids to do the same. We don’t all behave the way we should all of the time, but these basic things are rooted deep. What came to me, as I pored over ship’s lists, and birth, marriage, death, and military records, is that people, circumstance, place and time vary through generations, but the themes do not. Our stories are all about desperation and courage, hardship and hope. They’re about keeping the people you love safe, and sometimes, leaving them behind.
I’m so busy thinking about this that I don’t feel the wind come up, sheltered where I am behind the lifeboats, and I don’t see that the stars have gone out. The rain,
when it comes, is hard and cold, as if the heavens are hurling down pebbles. I turn to head back to the cabin, but as soon as I step away from my shelter I’m met with a horizontal wind so fierce it pulls me off my feet. I’m sliding across the wet deck with the tilt of the boat, grasping for something to hold onto, finding nothing. I cry out, but the wind takes my words away.
And then Daniel is here. He grips my arms, the rain pelting down around us. I can barely hear, over the roar of the wind, Lucien’s shout: Mary! — a wail of fear. In a scrambling moment they have me back into the shelter of the narrow stairwell where I sit on the top step, shivering as I gasp for breath.
“Gran, what were you thinking?” says Marcel, while Josslyne puts her sweater around my shoulders. I look up to see them around me, faces shifting in emotions of fear and relief. Lucien is crying.
Later, warm and safe in my narrow bed, I hear him whisper into the dark.
“If anything happens to you, my heart will break.”
Day 13
THE INCIDENT WAS not reported to the crew. I’ve had about enough attention, I told them, and I’ve learned my lesson. The day dawned fine, and we all agreed to let it go. But I woke thinking of the McGraths and the Murphys, pitching about in the hold of that ship. They must have wondered, more than once, if the choice they had made might be their last. Sometimes you see death coming, and sometimes you don’t.
And now we can see Liverpool, the Royal Liver Building with its beautiful towers dominating the waterfront. Land. There are ships on all sides as we approach, the air full of engine noise, clangs and clatters, and above that, the scream of gulls. They fill the air with sound and motion.
Now there’s another sound, one that seems out of place. It’s Daniel’s cell phone.
I peer over his shoulder to read the text message on the screen. Who would be calling him here? Now?
“Meet you dockside,” the words on the screen say. “Don’t tell Mum.”
“Who — ?”
“Elizabeth!” Daniel says, grinning. “I didn’t know, either. I guess you’d better pretend to be surprised.”
I lean on the rail, letting the sun wash over me, the wind now a gentle presence. A seagull lands nearby and cocks its head, considers me with a black and beady eye. Then it spreads its wings to join its family, circling above in the cloudless sky.
AFTERWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IT WAS AN ambitious project to try to capture a century of a country’s history through a selection of moments in this novel. I wanted to illustrate Canada’s geographical scope, to offer a sense of her social and cultural diversity, and to suggest that — young country though we may be — there’s a rich history here. I tried to choose both the familiar and the unfamiliar from among the almost overwhelming possibilities of historical topic.
For every event that makes the history books there exist people for whom those events form an unavoidable backdrop to a personal story. It is my hope that this narrative embodies an emotional universality, revealing similarities that compress time, geography, and cultural difference.
More than anything, I wanted to tell a good story, and I hope that I did.
Each chapter in this book owes something to somebody, a cast of real-life characters to whom I am deeply grateful.
My writing group is an insightful bunch full of goodwill and humour, and they saw me through every one of these stories. They are: Antonia Banyard, Vangie Bergum, Sarah Butler, Jennifer Craig, Kristene Perron, Rita Moir, and Verna Relkoff. A million thanks to all of you.
Deryn Collier offered another set of eyes for the majority of the stories, setting me straight on Montreal geography for Angel and asking all the right questions for everything else. Katya Maloff weighed in on a sensitive topic for To Be Like You, and found additional readers for whom forced residential school was a reality. Tom Wayman, author of Woodstock Rising, weighed in on the times for A Different Country.
For The Language of Bones, retired Yukon wolf biologist Bob Hayes was a great help, as was Yukon College biology instructor Dave Mossop; Jacqueline Cameron was worth her weight in gold as usual when it came to critiquing, particularly on the subtleties of Northern culture. Kirsten Smith at the Yukon Archives really went the extra mile for me. Thanks to Pat Rogers for her suggestion on how to marry past and present in that story, and for keeping me on the historical straight-and-narrow generally.
Static owes a chunk of its authenticity to Mary Audia, who wrote out her mother’s jigs dinner recipe and told me all about Deadman’s Pond. Steve Thornton offered insights for All of the Colours, Michael Chapman and Francyne Laliberté corrected my French in River Rising, Stephanie Fischer checked my German, and children’s author Cyndi Sand-Eveland advised on the youthful voice of my protagonists in Static and Home Girl.
To my agent Morty Mint, one of the more colourful characters in my life, thanks for holding me up and watching my back. Thanks to Kim McArthur for the extra push towards a narrative link, and to the talented team at McArthur & Company who continue to have faith in me.
Finally, thanks to my kids, Alex, Tam, and Annika, who are my constant inspiration, and my partner Phillip, who is unfailingly there for me, and who gives a great foot rub.
