“A few weeks ago, yes.”
“And did he see Jessie and Jan? Did he even ask about them?”
She fixed her eyes on her sandwich. “It was just a short visit—”
“Okay, so no. Does he ever see his other kids? Has he ever tried to help them?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Not that you know of—so that means no too.” I cradled my head in my hands. Not for the first time, I wondered what my grandfather’s true motivation had been for moving his family to the wilderness. Had he really believed he was doing something helpful for his kids, or did he do it just because that’s what he wanted to do, and his children were a burden he was forced to bring along?
“Mom. Do you think he’s ever stopped to think that he might be responsible for some of his children’s problems?”
“Cea, don’t be so hard on him,” Mom said. “He loves them, he just can’t—”
“—be bothered with them,” I finished for her. I gazed up at the ceiling, feeling agitated. “You know, Mom, I’ve been working through a lot of stuff since I started writing, and remembering a lot of stuff. About Karl, for example. He was pretty nutty, but he was a good guy. He tried to be there for me. And then there was Barry.” I watched her face carefully.
“Yeah. Crazy Barry.” She shook her head and fell silent.
I thought of my eight-year-old hand landing on her boyfriend’s penis, only to meet her fingers as they rested at the same place. Was she really never going to admit to me that she’d known, that she should have stopped it? Was it possible that she’d even forgotten—that it had been such a non-event to her that it had faded from her memory?
“Mom,” I said, folding my hands in front of me and locking my eyes on hers. “I’m really trying to come to terms with a few things here. You and me—we’ve never been better, and I’m grateful for that. But it doesn’t change what happened in the past. So much went on, and I have questions. I mean, why do you think all your siblings are so messed up? And do you think Papa Dick ever thought about the consequences of raising a child—me, I mean—outside of society? And—”
“Cea,” she said urgently. “Why do you have to dwell so much on the negative? Your childhood was beautiful. You were raised in the wilderness and given every freedom you could ever have wanted. You had a mother who loved you, and that’s so much more than a lot of children had. Be grateful for that. So many kids had it so much worse than you did.”
“Yes. And so many kids had it so much better.”
My sentence hung in the air, suspended over a background of mall chatter. It was the first time I’d said such a thing out loud, and I was instantly filled with guilt.
“Listen,” I continued calmly. “I’m not trying to judge here, I’m trying to understand. All I know is that I feel depressed and disconnected and like I can’t make sense of anything, and I think I’ve felt like this my entire life. I don’t know what anything means. I don’t understand why I went through so much as a child, and why now I’m going through a completely different kind of hell.” I could hear my voice rising again. “Because that’s what it was sometimes when I was a kid, Mom, it was hell! I get that you don’t want to accept that, but it was!” She was looking at me with big, sad eyes, but they just fuelled my rage. “And you know what? It’s still hell between us, because you’re still with him, and it reminds me every single day that the men in your life have always been more important to you than me! And now here we are, sitting in a goddamn food court, of all places, and now that you have a grandson and we’re finally getting close again, you’re freaking dying, and you refuse to do anything about it! None of it makes any sense, and I just don’t know what the fuck to do!”
Avery was staring at me, and I could feel the scornful eyes of passing shoppers.
“Cea. Stop it,” Mom said softly.
She’s right, I thought. This is not the place. But I didn’t care. My mother could be dead within weeks. If there was anything left unsaid, I had to say it now.
I leaned forward in my seat and lowered my voice. “Mom, you don’t even know everything I went through. I couldn’t tell you, because you were so caught up in your freedom, and I didn’t fit your image of it. How many times did you dismiss me as being uptight just because I wanted you to protect me from things a kid shouldn’t experience?”
She stared at me, and for a moment I thought I’d gotten through to her. Then she picked up her sandwich again.
“I did the best I could, Cea,” she said quietly, and she went back to eating.
I shook my head angrily. So this was it, I thought. My mother would die, and with her any answers to my burning questions or any hope that she would take responsibility for her mistakes. Because apparently, my family’s ways were a burden only to me.
1981
Calgary
My youngest aunt looked exactly as I remembered her. Seven years had passed since I last saw her, a span of time that had brought me to the threshold of my teen years and Jessie into womanhood. Her face looked the same—long and thin, teeth thick with yellow plaque—but she was chunkier now, which wasn’t surprising considering the current circumstances. I stood awkwardly beside Mom in Jessie’s doorway, wondering if she was going to invite us in. I could see her husband behind her, smoking a pipe as he sat in a worn armchair. He hadn’t even glanced our way yet.
“Jessie,” Mom said with a smile. “It’s wonderful to see you. Are you going to let us in?”
“Oh. Sorry, I forgot,” she said, stepping aside. Her voice—loud, slow, each word enunciated with great effort—had not changed either. My aunt had been born mentally handicapped, but she managed, just barely, to look after herself and her like-challenged husband.
We made our way into her tiny living room. Her husband finally looked up at us, gave us a stiff salute and went back to his pipe. The place was a shambles. Dust bunnies resided in every corner, the carpet looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in weeks, and dishes were piled on every surface of the tiny galley kitchen.
“Jessie. Do you have some dish soap? Let’s just do up these dishes here,” Mom said, moving toward the kitchen.
I followed, and Jessie trailed after me.
“But . . . don’t you want to see the baby?” she asked disappointedly. “I named her Grace, you know. After Dad’s sister. The one that died.”
Mom nodded. Jessie had called us just a few days ago to deliver the news about her baby, and I could still hardly believe that I finally had a real cousin.
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, grabbing her hand and tugging on it. “Let’s go see her now.”
Jessie led the way into her bedroom. The blinds were drawn, and the room was lit only by a dim night light. Beside the double bed, a crib had been set up with a Winnie-the-Pooh mobile dangling above it. I saw a lump on the mattress, but I was distracted by the sight of poster boards taped around the room. Each had a single sentence written on it in large black block letters. GRACE NEEDS A NEW DIAPER AFTER EACH MEAL, read one. DON’T FORGET TO FEED GRACE EVERY THREE HOURS. GRACE NEEDS TO BE PICKED UP AND HELD EVERY DAY. IF GRACE CRIES, REMEMBER NOT TO GET ANGRY WITH HER.
“Who made these?” Mom asked, waving at the signs.
“Carol. At the health place.”
Of course. Given Jessie’s and her husband’s mental states, a provincial health facility would be monitoring Grace closely. The thought gave me some comfort. If there was a system in place for situations like this, they couldn’t be all that uncommon, and that meant that everything might be okay. I’d already been babysitting for a few years. I pictured myself coming over to Jessie’s apartment on a Saturday night, playing patty-cake with my baby cousin while my aunt and her husband went out to catch a movie. I would even tidy up the apartment for them as a surprise. It could happen, I thought. It could really happen, and not too long from now.
Jessie walked over to the dresser, picked up a bottle and shook it vigorously at Mom and me, as if she were teaching us a lesson. “This is formula. I h
ave to warm it up, you know, so it’s not too cold for Grace’s tummy.”
Mom nodded encouragingly, and I smiled. Jessie moved to her baby’s side with the bottle. Finally I crossed the room and looked inside the crib.
I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to babies, but this one looked like none I’d ever seen. It wasn’t much bigger than a doll, its eyes were wide and unfocused, and it was lying much too still. Even when Jessie pushed the bottle into its mouth, it barely moved. She, I reminded myself. She. It’s a girl, just like me. Slowly Grace began to suck at the bottle.
When the baby had finished feeding, Jessie walked over to the dresser again and held something out to me.
“Here. A picture for you,” she said, and I took it. It was a hospital photo of Grace. Her face was red and wrinkly, and she had a green plastic bracelet around her wrist.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, stuffing the photo into my back pocket.
After we left, Mom and I walked to the bus stop in silence.
“Mom,” I said after we took a seat on the bench. “What—what was wrong with Grace? What do you think she has?”
“Has? I don’t know, sweetie. I think she’s just inherited a lot of problems from Jessie and John. Their mental state, you know.” She sounded tired.
I gazed up the street, pretending to search for the bus. I felt pissed off. I was eleven years old, and I didn’t want a cousin with huge mental problems. I wanted a normal baby who would coo at me and grab my nose and scream when she was hungry. I wanted aunts and uncles who had engagement parties and weddings and baby showers, and birthday parties for their kids that they invited me to, just like my school friends who complained about all the stupid family gatherings they had to go to. What I didn’t want was one severely mentally challenged aunt, one drug-addled bipolar aunt and one paranoid schizophrenic uncle who’d ended up in a mental institution because he’d tried to kidnap me as a baby and hide me in a cellar.
But then I thought about Grace, lying helplessly in that crib with no idea of what life had in store for her. I wondered if she would ever have any friends. I knew what it felt like to be the outsider, the weirdo. Maybe Grace and I weren’t so different after all. I pulled her photo out of my back pocket and stared at it for a minute, and I held it in my hand all the way home.
A few weeks after we visited Grace, I was reading in my bedroom when Mom came in and sat next to me on the bed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked when I saw her face.
“It’s Jessie, she just called. They . . . they took Grace away.”
“They—what? What do you mean?”
“I mean the authorities. The—I don’t know, whoever was in charge of Grace’s case. They were monitoring Jessie carefully, and they decided the baby had to be taken away.”
“But . . . why?”
Mom shrugged. “A baby is a lot of work. Jessie tried, but . . . I think she just wasn’t able to look after it.”
“Her,” I responded dully. “Look after her.” I met my mother’s eyes, already knowing the answer to the question I was about to ask. “Mom. Did Grandma Jeanne ever meet Grace? Did Papa Dick?”
“No. I mean . . . not that I know of.”
“So, no. Their first grandchild since I was born. And Jessie named her after Papa Dick’s sister. And how old is Grace now? About eight months?”
“Cea, you know how it is. Mom is—”
“Busy with her new boyfriend, yes. And Papa Dick is too busy living his wilderness dream to be bothered. Yes, I know how it is.” I snapped my book closed and brought my fingertips to my forehead. “You know what, Mom? They make me sick.”
Mom rose from the bed. “I don’t like hearing you talk like that, Cea. My parents are wonderful. They gave us everything we needed when we were growing up—love, acceptance—”
“Yes!” I said, jumping up beside her. “They gave that to you, but they can’t even be bothered to meet their own grandchild? There’s something not right about this family, Mom, but I guess I’m the only one who cares!”
Mom pursed her lips and shook her head, and then she left. I closed the door forcefully behind her and paced the room a few times. After I’d collected myself, I went to my bookshelf and took down the photo of Grace. I hadn’t really looked at it since Jessie gave it to me, which made me feel deeply ashamed. Really, was I any different from the rest of them? I tucked the picture into the corner of my mirror and stared at it. No. I was crying, and that alone was proof I was different. I knew what happened to kids who went into the foster system. I pictured her landing at someone’s home, someone who didn’t really care about her, and then getting slowly sucked into a black hole of misery. I cried because Grace would never know that she had a cousin somewhere in the world, a cousin who loved her. And I cried because I knew, without a doubt, that I would never see her again.
Chapter 11
2007
Santa Fe
Two weeks after my showdown with Mom at the food court, James and Avery and I flew from Vancouver to Santa Fe to visit my father. It wasn’t the best time to travel—after all, I might get the call about my mother practically any day—but Dad had bought us tickets as a surprise for my birthday. “I bet you could really use the break,” he’d said, and I knew he understood what I was going through.
Though we’d grown close in recent years, we still engaged in a dance of ambiguity when it came to his role in my life. As a father who’d been mostly absent from my childhood, he didn’t feel he had the right to offer me his opinions or advice, so often his help came through other sources—books or online articles he sent to me, carefully told stories of his friend’s daughter’s divorce or move to another city.
At the airport, we piled into Dad’s car for the one-hour drive to his house. I took the back seat beside Avery, while Dad and James made small talk, and then I fell silent. As he drove, Dad’s eyes flicked toward me in the rear-view mirror, but I gazed resolutely out the window at the flat-topped hills. It was pointless for James and me to try to mask the tension between us—we hardly said a word to each other anymore—but in small spaces, it was almost unbearable.
Finally, Dad cleared his throat. “Cea, I have a surprise for you!” he said enthusiastically. “I’ve booked a chart reading for you tomorrow with Guthrie.”
“Chart reading?” I repeated blankly, not because I didn’t know what he meant, but because I hadn’t realized he was into astrology.
My mother had lived her entire life by it for as long as I could remember, and for that reason alone I’d rejected it. I remembered sitting beside her with my legs splayed out to the sides, listening to her predictions. “The moon’s in Gemini next week, which means money will flow freely. Maybe Karl should sell his pot plants.” “Saturn’s in my second house, so it’s a bad time to make decisions. Let’s hold off on looking for a new camp till next week.” And then, much worse, the explanations: “The moon’s in Capricorn, Cea—no wonder you’re out of sorts.” I’d glare at her, knowing it was pointless to make her see that I was upset not because of the position of the planets, but because I was sick of her having sex in front of me or being made fun of at school for my pot-smelling clothes or trying to convince her that her married lover would never leave his wife. The last thing I wanted was someone telling me that everything that was happening to me right now was the result of something I had absolutely no control over. Besides, I was pretty sure that unless Guthrie the astrologer told me that my pot of gold was waiting at the end of the next rainbow, I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it.
That night Dad and Lara offered to take Avery for a sleepover with them. I returned to our suite with James at my side and dread in my heart. I realized how much I’d been using Avery as a shield, a perfectly legitimate excuse to avoid being alone with my husband.
It was too early for bed, but I brushed my teeth and got into my pyjamas anyway. I lay on my side facing the wall, and a few minutes later, I felt James lie down beside me. This must be what purgatory feels like, I thou
ght. It was so clear that James and I were finished, but my mother was dying, and it occurred to me that James was probably putting off the inevitable out of consideration for my situation, just as I was putting it off for my mental state. I needed to be grateful. I reached behind me and gave his arm a little rub, and he placed his hand over mine for a second before dropping it again. It would be the last time we touched in any purposeful way.
The next morning, I sat in Guthrie’s office waiting for him to arrive. A gift was a gift, after all, and I had to admit to being a tad curious. The door opened, and I watched him enter. I had pictured a long-haired hippie wearing a tie-dyed Legalize Today, Get High Tomorrow T-shirt, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Elderly, handsome and clean-cut, this man could have been a tax accountant or a family doctor. He shook my hand and sat down across the desk from me, then produced a large piece of paper covered in lines criss-crossing over a large circle. He studied it for a few moments and then let out a low whistle.
“My, my. How are you doing?” he asked, meeting my eyes.
“Well, I, uh . . .” I didn’t know what to say. His voice had sounded almost grave, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t making small talk. “Not so good,” I answered honestly.
“I’ll say. You see this?” He traced a line with his finger. “You’ve been under the heavy influence of Neptune for the past six years. And all the while, Uranus here has been tripping up your every effort at turning things around. This is a very powerful combination of dark forces. These have been some trying years for you, I imagine? About six of them?”
“Yes. Very trying.” My cynicism evaporated, and to my embarrassment, tears filled my eyes.
He smiled gently at me. “I assure you, there is good news ahead. But I’m afraid your hard times are not over yet. I see a time of great turbulence and loss. The coming eighteen months will be very difficult for you. You will survive it, of course, but it will take all of your strength.”
“Mm. Well, I can’t say that surprises me much,” I said, pushing down the knot of fear in my stomach. I took a deep breath. “My mother. She’s very ill. I assume . . . she will die?”
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