Scare the Light Away

by Vicki Delany

  I spent the morning tidying the house before indulging in the luxury of making myself a cup of tea. A real cup of tea, leaves steeped in the brown betty and poured through a silver strainer. I drank my tea out on the deck, standing up because the chairs hadn’t been put out yet, watching Sampson dash about the lawn and under the trees as she followed one fascinating scent to another. The sun caressed my face with the soft, polite warmth it only shows in spring. Sampson dashed around the side of the house, probably heading for the woods.

  Since Ray’s death, I had tried to learn to whistle. Two fingers at the edge of my mouth, the way he did when calling the dog home. What came out usually managed to be no better than a feeble squeak, but this time I managed a full blast. I felt rather pleased with myself, particularly when the big dog rounded the house and climbed up the steps to stand at my feet.

  “What a good girl.” I scratched behind her ears. I had no worries that she would get lost in the woods. She wouldn’t go far. We lived in a condo in Vancouver, a high-rise like so many others, in a very good part of town. Most of her days Sampson lived the life of a city dog, kept inside, walked by a professional dog walking service because my working hours were so long. But we—now just me, me and my dog—owned a vacation home near Whistler. To which, when my husband was alive, we had escaped as often as we could.

  In summers past Ray golfed, and I sat out on the big wooden deck overlooking the rainforest with either a good book or papers from the office. In the winter we skied. Ray on the slopes of Whistler and Blackcomb, me—too afraid of heights to ride the ski lifts—cross-country, often with Sampson somewhere off to one side following tiny animal tracks and sniffing at patches of yellow snow.

  Only once since Ray’s death had we driven back into the mountains. It rained constantly and I spent most of the time staring out the big bay window watching the trees drip water. The place went up for sale the day I arrived back in the city.

  I looked at Sampson’s mud-encrusted feet, legs and belly. At her wagging tail and smiling face. I plucked a dead twig out of her bushy tail. As soon as it reached a reasonable time in Vancouver, I’d call the agent and tell her to take the property off the market. Sampson needed it.

  And so, I now realized, did I.

  Energized a fraction, I reluctantly entered into the simple, emotional, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking task of sorting through my mother’s clothes, as Dad had asked me to do. He’d made the bed, or at least he’d tried. The quilt was so lumpy it obviously had been dragged up over a tumble of sheets. It was a beautiful quilt, lovingly constructed of tiny squares of fabric in myriad shades of blue ranging from almost-white to near-black but blending so slowly from shade to shade that it was almost impossible to determine where one color ended and the next began.

  I opened the cupboard and went through the drawers, making three piles. Things too old, too stained, or too horribly out of,fashion for anyone to want headed for the garbage. Mom had few nice things—a couple of good dresses, a new pair of shoes, two old but serviceable handbags. These would go into a box for the church. And then there were the things to be kept. Of which there was precious little. Shirley might like a few pieces of Mom’s jewelry. None of it was good—she never spent money on herself, and Dad never had a nickel to his name. But some of it had sentimental value. It was nice to see that she still used the wooden jewelry box that I bought her for her birthday a long, long time ago. I picked up a brooch. It was large and perfectly ugly, but she liked it. When I was young, she wore it on her best coat, the one that she wore to church every Sunday in winter. It was silver plate pounded into a hollow circle, rimmed with rhinestones and with a rhinestone tail dangling down. The tail had become partially detached and waved from side to side as I shook it.

  I remembered sitting in church. On the hard wooden seat, the heat in the building turned up way too high. The minister—I forget his name—droning on and relentlessly on. The poor man had not the slightest inflection or emotion in his voice; he might have been reading the yellow pages for all he seemed to care. I was the youngest in my family, so I was always plunked between Mother and Grandmother. Jimmy and Shirley sat on Grandmother’s other side and wriggled as far away as they dared get. On occasion, Shirley tucked a Nancy Drew inside her Bible and read all through the service. I wanted to tell Mom, but the look my sister gave me when she caught me watching was enough to chill my blood. Father and Grandfather didn’t normally come with us to church. There were never many men in church, except at Christmas and Easter or something special like the baptisms. And even then nothing approaching the numbers of the women. Usually it was only the oldest of the men, the ones who drooled and fell asleep during the service and woke up shouting “Who? What?” The ones who came in their wheelchairs or walkers, and had to be helped up the ramp and down the aisle by wives as old as they or a succession of daughters or daughters-in-law. About once a month my father would come, leading his family down the aisle, nodding at all the neighbors. But never Grandpa. Church was for children and women. I don’t remember the actual occasion when he said that, but the memory of the words is there, spoken in his deep voice, the one that would accept no argument. But he could be quick to quote the Bible, and I assumed that he had also spent his childhood Sundays confined to the stiff wooden pews.

  When he turned sixteen, Jimmy simply stopped coming with us. Nothing was said, at least not in my hearing, but I knew that my grandfather had decided that Jimmy was now a “man.”

  I’d promised myself that I also would escape, one day.

  The silver circle lay in my palm, the too-red rhinestones watching me. One finger caressed the floppy tail lightly. I would take this one piece only home with me. It would be enough.

  As I worked through a lifetime of belongings, the edges of my mind kept returning to the three tea chests nestled in the cellar, in the same way that a tongue seems instinctively driven to seek and probe a sore tooth or a raw cold sore.

  This room, my parents’ bedroom, was nice. The cream paint was fresh, the curtains thrown back and the windows wide and full of soft, gentle sunbeams, the blue quilt glowing on the bed. The room had long ago banished the ghost of its childhood resident.

  Banished, but not defeated, Jimmy now having ownership of the big house.

  The walls were hung with a multitude of photographs of us three children in every stage of our lives. At first I paid them no attention, concentrating on the task at hand, wanting only to get through it. But my self-control had broken and I’d spooked myself by thinking thoughts long forbidden, of that hard church pew and my hated brother and grandfather. And of my father. I hadn’t hated him, but simply loved with a clear childish emotion that was more often than not met with a wall of indifference and the whiff of alcoholic fumes.

  Sampson nudged my thigh as the tears threatened to flow. I gratefully scratched behind her ears, and my eyes wandered down the rows of photographs. My brother, Jimmy, in the uniform of the high school baseball team. Cock-of-the-walk as always. Two of his teammates flanked him, taller and heavier than he, but almost insignificant, props to the main event.

  How easy life would be if one could judge a book by its cover, a person by their looks. If, like the angels and devils they had taught us children, good people had pure white wings and flowing golden locks, and bad people hooked noses, long fingernails, and foul breath.

  Sampson nudged me once again. I swear she’s equipped with a tear-o-meter, ready to jump in and protect me from my own emotions. My husband was—had been—a professor of medieval history, of all obscure topics. But he looked like a prizefighter. Six foot two, a heavily muscled two hundred and twenty pounds that came from a genetic gift, not from any desire on his part to be formidable. His nose had been broken more times than he could remember, the first when as a seven-year-old he fell off his bike, his attention having been distracted by a library sign advertising a reading by a visiting author of whom he was fond. And there he hung, beside my brother Jimmy. Jimmy is eight years older than I am
—and eight years was a good many when we were children. But no matter how young I was I had always known why the older girls at school wanted to be friends with me.

  Girls would wander by our house and pretend to be lost. Oh, dear, Mrs. McKenzie. I seem to have taken the wrong road home from school. If I can come in for a moment I’ll call my mother to come and fetch me.

  Mom would sigh and stand back to let them in. And the poor girl’s eyes would dart around the kitchen seeking some memoir of the object of her desire. And if Jimmy did condescend to appear, he would stroll into the kitchen, help himself to the contents of the fridge, and then walk away munching on a cookie or a piece of fruit cake without giving the poor lost girl a single glance. For Jimmy—Little Jim, as everyone except my mother called him because my grandfather was Big Jim—was even to this day the most handsome man I have ever known. I hadn’t seen him for thirty years, and still didn’t particularly want to, but the pictures on my parents’ bedroom wall told me that he had scarcely changed. Shouldn’t one’s evil deeds be reflected in the eyes or in the skin?

  Well, they aren’t.

  My brother had the darkest of dark hair, always worn slightly long to show off a mass of tousled curls, eyes so black they offered only hints at the mysteries that lay beneath, a smile around straight white teeth that would charm the angels right out of heaven. Taken one at a time each pristine feature might amount to a face too feminine, but on Jimmy everything coalesced perfectly into a deeply masculine whole.

  He was the image of my grandfather. So much so that one might be forgiven for thinking that my great-grandparents had had one of a pair of twins cryogenically frozen to be thawed out years later. As if my grandmother and my mother’s contributions had been ignored by the genetic pool.

  As a child I thought of Little Jim as an exact replica of Big Jim, although a bit smaller. For, unlike the adoring girls who collected flowers along our driveway in the spring, and in the winter decided that our stretch of the lake was the only one suitable for skating in the entire county, I knew that my brother was just as mean, just as vicious, and just as emotionally dead as his adored grandfather. Today we would call them sociopaths. Back then we stayed out of the way.

  If we could.

  Is it genetic, did the vicious streak come with the curly hair and the innocent smile? Or did Grandpa’s complete adoration of his only grandson fertilize and water a seed that would otherwise have remained dormant?

  Chapter 9

  The Diary of Mrs. Robert McKenzie. July 8, 1944. Two am.

  It is very late. I have lit a candle to break the darkness. These nights are so terribly dark. The blackout curtains are pulled tight. I peeked out before lighting the candle and couldn’t see a thing. There is not a light anywhere. I might be the only person left in the world and I would not know it. I had a dream, a horrid dream. I woke up with my heart pounding. Bob has gone, of course I don’t know where. The radio is talking about the invasion of France. I hope he isn’t there. Maybe they sent him up to Scotland, for work with the radio or something. He is very talented with electronics, he told me. Too valuable, I am sure, to be sent to the beaches of France.

  Before he left, Bob asked me if I wanted to go to Canada. Now that we were married, he said, I could get a ship to Canada, and stay with his family until he got home. It would be safer for me there, he said, in Canada. But how could I? Can I take the chance of his getting leave and coming here to find me gone? Can I leave Dad and Aunt Betty? There is no one else to help in the shop now. All the village girls have gone to war work. And can I abandon the hope that my mother might come looking for me? If she hears that I’m married, she’ll want to wish me well.

  I am afraid. My monthlies did not come. They are now three weeks overdue. That is not much, but I have always been so regular. The girls at school said that they could be delayed by worry. I do not think that I am ready.

  Chapter 10

  I pulled my thoughts back to the present: Sampson sniffing at Mom’s jewelry box, welcome spring sunlight spreading in through the big, new windows, the sound of a heavily loaded truck bouncing down the country road at the bottom of the hill. Jimmy would be here for dinner in a few short hours. My heart pounded and my palms gathered sweat. I was eight years younger than my brother, but even as a child that hadn’t been enough to protect me from his vicious tongue and his sadistic streak.

  On this wall of family memories, there was only one picture, an extremely old one, of my paternal grandmother. She looked quite splendid in a fancy hat with a moth-eaten bird perched in one corner that almost, but not quite, disguised the shadow of fear in her tiny dark eyes. There was not one single picture, I was glad to notice, of my father’s father.

  Too many sad and difficult thoughts; it was time to abandon Mom’s possessions. Only by concentrating on the task at hand and ignoring the photos dotting the walls had I managed to accomplish anything at all. But once I stood up to look at them, the memories brought to the surface by that simple collection of family photographs amounted to more than my stomach could handle for one day.

  Dad came down the hall as I emerged from the bedroom.

  “Everything sorted out?” he asked in his typically detached way.

  I wanted to slap him; instead I said, “Not yet. It’ll take a couple of days.”

  “Okay.”

  “By the way, Dad.” I aimed to wound. “I was wondering when Jimmy got out of prison the last time. Can’t have been too long ago. I assume he didn’t get time off for good behavior.” Or maybe he did. Man or woman, it didn’t matter. If they had something he wanted, Jimmy could charm their pants off.

  “That’s over and done with. We don’t talk about it any more. It was all a misunderstanding and he and Aileen are very happy together.”

  “A misunderstanding,” I said. “Like all the other bloody misunderstandings?”

  My father looked at me. The skin on his face was as thin as Japanese rice paper, the bones so prominent they threatened to burst through any moment. God, he was getting so old. A wave of red shame washed over me like a tsunami. I tried to choke the words back.

  Too late.

  “That sort of language isn’t appropriate, Becky. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”

  I was ten years old once again. The topic avoided, the guilt assigned.

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “I’ll be out in the shed for a bit.”

  “Do you want lunch?”

  “No thanks. I had a sandwich at Tim Horton’s. Have to eat something to digest the claptrap that bunch of old buggers keep putting out. Everyone and their dog has an opinion on what has happened to young Jennifer. Norm Berg’s granddaughter thinks she’s been kidnapped by aliens.” He pulled a soft drink bottle from the fridge door and walked out of the kitchen.

  When I thought of my childhood I always picture a bottle in my father’s hand. And certainly not a bottle of Coke. When I first got here there was only a six pack of beer in the fridge, which was now down to four. I’d searched the kitchen looking for a bottle of vodka or rye. Nothing.

  I dialed into the office and printed a position paper off on my portable printer. My eyes remained fixed on the little letters, but my thoughts wandered like fairies caught in an unexpected updraft of summer wind. I found myself constantly glancing at my watch, wondering if it was time yet to start dinner. We would eat incredibly early, by my standards scarcely past lunchtime.

  I read about global oil revenues and thought about tea chests in the basement. Judging by the number of notebooks in the one box I’d opened, my mother must have been writing for most of her life.

  Was it up to me to consign to the rubbish bin what she had kept for—what, sixty, seventy years? And if not me, then who?

  As I sorted through these thoughts and wondered what to do, I finished my tea, disconnected from the Internet, shut down the computer, packed it away, and walked like a zombie to the top of the rickety, dark, dank stairs.

  I started at the end of the top-most book
, reading once again that she thought I should have borne children. Well, duh. Whose mother doesn’t think that? I read about the touches of headache. That wasn’t what killed her—she’d had a heart attack while standing outside the supermarket with her bags of groceries waiting for her husband to pick her up because she’d never learned how to drive. But if she had gone to the doctor about the headache, who knows what else might have been found. And if found, perhaps her death could have been prevented.

  I flipped to the front of the book.

  The entry was from the beginning of the winter before last.

  Jim and Aileen came to shovel the driveway and stayed for supper. I won’t let Bob shovel any more. They say that it’s too dangerous for a man of his age. Of course we could hire one of the boys from town, but Jim volunteered. So thoughtful of him. I made ham and scalloped potatoes for supper. That always was Jim’s favorite meal. And I served a peach pie that I had put up in the summer. The last of the pies for this year. Aileen brought a squash soup for starters. It was lovely, very thick and creamy. She’s a good cook, although her meals are sometimes a bit unusual for Dad and my tastes.

  I tossed the book back into its box.

  As I suspected.

  A litany of recipes.

  Time to start a dinner of my own.

  ***

  Jimmy and Aileen walked the short distance down the hill from the big house to arrive right on time. Aileen wore a fantastic dress, reminiscent of the best of the hippie era, swirling in layers of flowing blue. She had tied her lovely black-and-gray hair into a wild spray at the back of her head, and a long string of clear blue beads hung around her thin neck. Rows of silver bangles running up both arms clanged in greeting as she held out a huge wooden salad bowl.

  “You told me not to bring anything. But I can’t resist. And I have found with this family you really can’t have too much food.”