Now for the hard part. I had to outfit an emergency first-aid kit. While I imagined all the various ways we might become ill or injured, I selected iodine, aspirin, and antibiotic ointment.
Reluctantly I picked up a roll of bandages, then shuddered and closed my eyes, hastily setting them down again. I couldn’t touch them without picturing blood. And unfortunately, I had a full-blown phobia about blood. I couldn’t even watch a television program if it showed quantities of red liquid, which ruled out shows about violent crime, vampires, even surgery.
I had never cut myself, other than the odd nick, and neither had Bridget, thanks to my obsessive vigilance, but there was always a first time. Bracing myself, I snatched up a box of Band-Aids and a roll of bandages and thrust them into my basket.
The pharmacist, a pleasant-faced older man with horn-rimmed spectacles, popped his head out from behind the counter. “Don’t forget a thermometer!” he said. Another person who seemed to know what I was doing. I busied myself looking for a thermometer and tried to overcome the bloody images in my head.
I had just enough cash left to fill the truck with gasoline, which sucked an alarming $150 out of my wallet. All that remained of my cash was $30 plus change. That was our financial safety net until the first of September. Then we would drive into town, pick up our $400 from the lawyer’s office, and replenish our supplies. Mr. Jones had explained that it would be simpler to pay me in cash since I didn’t have a Canadian bank account.
When we pulled into the yard, I had to resist the urge to turn around and drive away again. I gripped the wheel, trying not to burst into tears. Although I had been here twice before, things didn’t look any better — in fact, they looked worse, if that were possible. The farmhouse with its peeling paint and overhanging branches looked like a haunted house in a horror movie. And like the characters in a horror movie, we were completely cut off from the outside world.
At least Old Joe had been as good as his word. As I drove around to the back of the house, I saw that he had patched the hole on the roof with new shingles. That should keep the rain out. And the snow, of course. I smiled grimly. I had almost forgotten about the snow.
Old Joe had brought the screens out of the barn and covered the windows so we could open them without fear of bugs. He had even brought along his riding mower and cut the tall grass and weeds between the former garden on one side of the yard and the log barn on the other, so now we had a clearing of sorts around the house.
I reversed Silver to the three back steps, worn down in the middle by decades of footsteps, the depression that Old Joe referred to as a saddle. They led into a generous room called a back kitchen, a one-storey addition tacked onto the rear of the house.
Inside the back kitchen were a zinc-lined icebox on one side of the door and a huge woodbox on the other. Three round galvanized tin tubs sat on a wooden bench in the corner, and hanging over them were shelves bearing an assortment of ancient cleaning supplies. A row of hooks along the opposite wall held old cloth coats and knitted caps, even a buckskin jacket with fringed sleeves.
The back kitchen had the added advantage, Old Joe told me, of protecting the main kitchen from winter’s worst. It formed an added layer of protection between the inner house and the frozen outdoors. “When it gets really cold, you stick your nose outside and ping, it’s frozen solid, just like that,” he said. I was pretty sure he was joking.
Bridget announced that she was going to show Fizzy the rainbow window. I was happy she had something to take her mind off the dirt. I stood in the kitchen, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task before me. But there wasn’t any point putting things away until the kitchen was clean, so I thought I might as well start here.
I changed into my new overalls and a long-sleeved cotton shirt while standing on the back steps. The great outdoors was cleaner than the inside of our house. I couldn’t find a scarf, so I tucked my hair inside a plastic shower cap from the hotel.
Bridget came to the doorway, carrying the patient Fizzy around by his armpits. His tail dragged on the floor, leaving a trail in the dust. “Why are you wearing a shower crap?”
“Shower cap.” I turned away to hide my smile. “I don’t want to get dirt and cobwebs in my hair. It’s going to be really hard to wash ourselves here because we don’t have a bathtub.”
Her expression changed to one of horror. “But I hate being dirty!”
“Oh, well,” I said gaily, contradicting every single message I had given her since the day she was born, “a little dirt never hurt anybody!”
She looked at me doubtfully, frowning.
“We’re going to play a new game while we’re here. It’s called the pioneer game. Pioneers didn’t mind the dirt. At least, they got used to it. And do you know where pioneers went to the bathroom?”
“Where?”
“They had their own special place outside. Come on, I’ll show you.”
I led Bridget down the path and around the corner of the barn where the toilet was hidden from view. While she waited behind me, I pushed open the door and peeked inside to see a wooden bench with one round hole. Warily, I inhaled. There was no smell.
With trepidation, I switched on my flashlight and shone it into the hole. I don’t know what horrors I expected to find, but I saw nothing but dust and cobwebs, and a few shreds of paper. On the whitewashed wall was a list of notations in masculine printing: May 31, 1942: First crocus. July 7, 1954: Three inches rain.
“Come on, Bridget!” After much coaxing, she allowed me to pull down her pants and lift her over the hole. To my dismay I realized that it was much too big for a child. I had a sudden vision of her disappearing into the black void below.
“Put your arms around my neck.” She was getting heavy now and my back felt the strain of her desperate clinging.
“Don’t let me touch the dirty seat!” she squealed. I would have to find a way to make the hole smaller. Perhaps I could nail a board across it.
As we walked back to the house, Bridget was quite pleased with herself.
“I went pioneer potty, didn’t I?”
“You sure did. Let’s wash our hands, and then I’m going to start cleaning the kitchen while you play with Fizzy.”
Bridget sat on the back steps, where I could see her through the open door, and she could see me. Trying to remember Old Joe’s instructions, I carefully lit a fire in the stove using copious amounts of kindling and newspaper taken from a ceiling-high stack in the back kitchen.
I needed to make friends with this metal monster, since it was the only thing that would keep us from freezing to death. It seemed like a very complicated invention. On the left side was the firebox, where the wood burned. Underneath this was the drawer for the ashes. At the far right, a rectangular reservoir with a lid, where water could be heated. Then there was the oven, and below it a drawer for pots and pans. The eye-level bin across the top was the warming oven, where hot dishes were kept.
Suddenly smoke started to billow out of every crack on the surface of the stove. I leaped for the lever at the back, which controlled the flow of air into the firebox, and shoved it to the right. I had forgotten that the draft had to be open when I started the fire, but closed after the wood began to burn.
The smoke stopped abruptly, but by now the room was filled with a thick haze and my eyes were smarting. I ran to the back door and flapped a towel to clear the room. Bridget stuck Fizzy’s head under her shirt so that smoke wouldn’t get in his eyes. Tears ran down my cheeks, too — and not only from the smoke.
After a few minutes, the air cleared and the wood started to crackle nicely, so I pumped icy well water into several large pots and placed them on the stovetop. As I thrust another stick of firewood into the stove, a fragment of memory rose before my eyes. It was so powerful that I caught my breath.
My father’s hands. At first that’s all I saw in my mind’s eye — his strong hands stacking chunks of mesquite in a pyramid shape, his brown wrists sticking out of his red plaid shirtslee
ves. Then the circle of memory expanded. He was showing me how to build a fire. We were camping on the desert, just the two of us. The night was warm and dark, and we wanted to roast marshmallows.
It had been so long since I remembered anything about my parents, let alone such a happy memory, that it was like discovering a golden loonie glittering on the floor of the ocean. My knees felt weak and I sat down heavily in the rocking chair next to the stove. Closing my eyes, I tried to conjure up his face or the sound of his voice.
There was nothing else. Yet the image of his hands was so vivid that I could see the shape of his fingernails. I tried to freeze it in my mind so that it wouldn’t melt away. “Daddy,” I whispered.
The memory faded and the picture dissolved. But I felt warmed by the afterglow, as if my father had reached out from beyond the curtain and patted me on the shoulder with one of his strong, brown hands.
6
August
Six hours later the sun was sinking, and so was I. The groceries were safely stored in the icebox and the pantry. Before scouring the kitchen, I wrapped a towel around my broom and swept the ceiling and walls. Dirt fell onto every surface including my head and shoulders. Obviously I had never fully appreciated owning a vacuum cleaner before.
After changing my clothes once again, I spread a clean tablecloth over the table, and Bridget picked a handful of yellow wildflowers from the edge of the yard — Old Joe had called them “buffalo beans” — and arranged them in a cream pitcher.
A green painted washstand stood in the corner. Above it was a small wall cabinet with a mirror, where I found a tin of something called tooth powder, a shaving mug lined with hardened soap, and a straight razor. My great-aunt must have been a hoarder, since she apparently never threw anything away. Sitting on the washstand was a bowl and pitcher set, white porcelain with a green stripe.
This was a far cry from our gleaming marble bathroom. I poured warm water from the kettle into the bowl and Bridget and I scrubbed our hands and arms as thoroughly as if we were doctors preparing for surgery.
“I like washing in this bowl, Mama, but there’s no hole in the bottom. How do we make the dirty water go away?”
“Carry it over to the back door and pour it onto the grass.”
Carefully balancing the heavy bowl, she went through the back kitchen and poured the water onto the shrub beside the back steps. “I’m giving this bush a drink of water. I hope it likes the taste of soap.”
“I’m sure it won’t mind. Plants get thirsty, too.” It was the first time in her life, and probably mine as well, that we had recycled our dirty water.
Bridget set the table with her usual precision, selecting two china plates from the glass-fronted cabinet and rotating them so the flower patterns faced in the same direction. They were pretty things decorated with floral bouquets, edged with a blue stripe. I flipped over a plate to find the pattern: “Old English,” by Johnson Brothers.
While Bridget washed two knives and two forks, I scrambled eggs in a cast-iron frying pan and toasted rye bread over the surface of the stove with an old toasting iron — two pieces of screened mesh held together by a pair of wire handles.
For once, she ate everything.
“Boy, I was hungry!” she said as she wiped her plate with a crust of toast.
I poured boiling water into the teapot, reflecting that it was handy to keep a kettle simmering on the stove. The strong tea was delicious with a dash of evaporated milk.
As the sun fell lower on the horizon, we searched the dining room sideboard and found an assortment of candlesticks made from wood, tarnished silver, and porcelain. Bridget carefully stuck white tapers into two of them, and I lit them with a wooden safety match. The room looked friendlier in the candlelight, and somehow cleaner, although I knew that was just an illusion.
I carried both candles carefully as we trooped up the dark staircase. Might as well save my flashlight batteries. Our shadows followed us as we climbed.
When we entered the bedroom, I realized my mistake. I shouldn’t have spent all afternoon cleaning the kitchen. Even in the candlelight it was obvious that everything was coated with a thick layer of dust. A wave of revulsion swept over me, and I briefly thought about trying to sleep in the truck.
Fortunately, there was a sheet covering the bed, so I delicately folded the four corners together and lifted it off. The striped mattress underneath looked clean. Bridget sat in the centre with Fizzy while I went downstairs and fetched a pail of soapy water.
When I climbed back up the stairs, I noticed two sets of footprints on the stair treads, one large and one small. Grimly, I remembered the hours I had spent picking tiny specks of lint from the white carpet back in Phoenix.
Upstairs I wiped the rails of the brass bed so dust wouldn’t fall into our faces while we slept. The water was muddy by the time I finished. Bridget changed into her pajamas while I explored the linen closet in the hall. Thankfully the heavy fir door fit tightly in its frame, and the feather pillows and bedding inside were spotless. I pulled out a set of beautiful thick cotton sheets and pillowcases, monogrammed MMB in dark-green embroidery thread, and made the bed with two patchwork quilts and a blue satin duvet.
I pulled a pair of clean socks over Bridget’s dirty feet. She crawled between the sheets, and Fizzy went with her. I wasn’t fond of the idea of sleeping with an animal, but I squashed my distaste and allowed him to snuggle into her arms, where he started to purr. Johnny Wrinkle had been carefully laid to rest in a dresser drawer, put aside in favour of this fascinating new toy.
It was still light in the room. The sky was a deep shade of salmon, scattered with early stars like a field of white daisies. I didn’t dare touch the curtains, fearing a shower of dirt, but I opened the window slightly, dislodging a tangle of spider webs dotted with dead flies. The sweet-smelling evening air flowed into the room, along with a musical chorus of croaking frogs from the creek.
“Mama, I’m glad you don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”
“Me, too.”
“You won’t go away again?”
“No, my darling. It will be just the two of us for a long time.”
“You forgot Fizzy. That makes three of us.”
I spread another clean sheet over the black Windsor chair before sitting down beside the bed, and I sang the same song I had been singing all her life, one of the remnants of my own childhood. “‘Toora, loora, loora,’ that’s an Irish lullaby.”
“Mama.” Bridget’s voice was drowsy.
“Yes, honey?”
“I feel like somebody is watching us. Do you think this house is haunted?”
“If there are any ghosts around here, they’re friendly ghosts, watching over you and keeping you safe.” Somehow it felt like the truth. I kissed her cheek, then we rubbed noses — our trademark goodnight.
I sat there until she fell asleep. It occurred to me that I hadn’t done this for a long time, not since she was a tiny baby, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the miracle of her existence.
It didn’t surprise me that mothers were overprotective. People hired bodyguards and security systems to protect their treasures, yet they allowed their children, the most valuable treasure of all, to leave their control, vulnerable and defenceless.
In fact, it surprised me that mothers let their children out of their sight. But that was the real victory of motherhood: allowing children to ride in vehicles, to sit in classrooms with strangers, to cross streets and play games and contract illnesses from other children, and to put themselves in harm’s way repeatedly. And yet their mothers, with enormous effort, made the supreme sacrifice and allowed them to do it.
And those were “normal” children.
I gazed lovingly at my daughter’s flawless skin, the dark eyelashes on her pale cheeks, the perfectly cut lips. Four years and five months ago this precious creature hadn’t even been born. I deeply regretted having missed so much of her short life already. No matter what happened next, at least we would
be together.
Finally, I rose and went to the window. It was three minutes past nine. The sun still glowed from behind the horizon, as if reluctant to leave. I could see the lazy curve of the creek, the water reflecting the fading light like liquid gold.
My candle cast shadows into the corners as I went down the magnificent staircase and into the living room. The house was dead silent now, as if even the birds outside were asleep. I reflected that this must be what it felt like to be deaf. I had never contemplated how much sound was generated by the humming of refrigerators and computers and furnaces and air conditioners, not to mention telephones.
The Oriental carpet muffled my footsteps. The brown velvet couch, still covered with a sheet, faced the stone fireplace while two Morris chairs with slatted backs sat on either side. A pipe rack hung on the wall, still bearing my great-uncle’s pipes and giving off the faint fragrance of tobacco. The smell reminded me of my father.
I squatted before the low bookcase on the left side of the fireplace, opened the glass door, and held my candle close to the rows of hardcover books. There were no brightly coloured jackets here. The covers were dark blue and green, brown and black, with the titles printed on their spines.
These shelves were filled with books of a masculine nature. There were dozens of books by Zane Grey. White Fang, by Jack London. Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott. Songs of a Sourdough, by Robert W. Service. I pulled out the last one, opened the flyleaf and read the inscription: “To George, 1934. Merry Christmas With Deepest Affection From Mary Margaret.” I recognized the same stylish handwriting, with curly capital Ms that I had seen on the codicil to her will.
Moving to the bookcase on the right side of the fireplace, I found books more to a woman’s taste: The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinan Rawlings. The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Here was a row of books with matching pale-green spines, a series called Whiteoaks of Jalna, by Mazo de la Roche.
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