Every Time We Say Goodbye

by Jamie Zeppa

  Ruth Ellis told Grace about a place for rent. A coach house, it was called, with two small bedrooms, a decent kitchen, a sitting room and a bathroom, in the backyard of a house belonging to Mrs. Waverly, a widow whose son had just moved to Detroit. Mrs. Waverly’s eyesight was going, and if Grace would be willing to go in once or twice a day and make sure the bed had clean linens and the dishes were washed, Mrs. Waverly would let her have the coach house for a very reasonable rent. There was no washing machine, but Ruth could help her with that. She had been meaning to buy a new one anyway, and Grace could have the old one. Grace said, “It’s happening so fast,” but Ruth said that Grace had brought her plan to fruition and it was time to start thinking about going to get her son.

  “I still don’t have anyone to look after him,” Grace said.

  “I think you should leave your job at Clockworks,” Ruth said. “Do the laundry business full-time.”

  “I wouldn’t make enough,” Grace said.

  “You’ll make the same as if you stayed at the factory and had to pay someone to look after Danny.”

  “But what if people start doing their own laundry?”

  “Then you’ll have to figure out what else you can offer them.”

  Grace said, “I don’t like this plan.”

  “Well, come and see the coach house first,” Ruth said.

  The walls were grimy, but Ruth said Grace could paint them. Watery light came in through the front windows. Two large oak trees stood between the coach house and the main house, bare now but “they’ll create a nice screen in the summer,” Ruth said. They went in to meet Mrs. Waverly, who was the oldest person Grace had ever seen. Beneath a waxy layer of age, though, her blue eyes were bright, and she gripped Grace’s hand firmly. “I won’t be any trouble,” Grace said, and Mrs. Waverly said, “Nor will I.” Grace liked the coach house, but Theresa loved it. “I’ll move in with you, Grace,” Theresa said. “That way, your rent will be even lower. I mean, if that’s fine with you.” She stopped and looked stricken. “And you, Ruth.”

  Ruth gave her a long look. “You think you can take up again with your Mr. V and I won’t know because you’re over here,” she said.

  “I will never take up with him again,” Theresa declared.

  “That’s what you said last time,” Ruth said.

  “He didn’t fire me last time.”

  Grace had planned to go back to Sault Ste. Marie in the spring, but Theresa and Ruth both said she should do it now. “You can borrow my car,” Ruth said, but she wouldn’t come with them. “Please come. She’ll listen to you,” Grace said.

  “I’m not the one she has to hear.”

  Grace and Theresa left before dawn on Saturday morning and drove north, passing through the same frozen forests and fields Grace remembered from a year ago, only this time she didn’t feel dead. She felt sick. When they got to Sault Ste. Marie at dusk, it began to snow, and Grace told Theresa to stop the car so she could throw up. They sat at the end of the road until Grace’s stomach settled. Theresa squeezed her arm. “It’s going to be fine, Gracie. You’re just going home to get your baby.”

  The house was exactly the same: the leafless apple trees, the wooden trellis in front of the house, bare now, the rose bushes covered snugly in burlap. Warm yellow light filled all the downstairs windows. Grace was out of the car before Theresa had turned it off. Her legs had a mind of their own, propelling her to the back door so quickly she could hardly keep up with them. She knocked and then knocked again. Vera opened the door. She was holding Danny on her hip.

  “Danny,” Grace whispered, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Grace!” Vera said. “What on earth?”

  Behind her, Theresa said, “Evening, Mrs. Turner. I’m Theresa. A friend of Grace’s.”

  “Is everything all right? Are you sick? Did something happen at the factory?”

  Grace could not take her eyes off Danny. He was gnawing on a wooden block. His blond curls had darkened, and he was longer and bigger. He had changed, but not so that she wouldn’t recognize him. He had only become more himself, more Danny. He was not a baby anymore; he was a boy.

  “Everything’s fine, isn’t it, Grace?” Theresa nudged her from behind.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. We came … we came …” She looked at Theresa for help.

  “For a visit,” Theresa said.

  Vera took them into the living room. “Make yourselves comfortable,” she said, “while I make you tea. Heavens, Grace, you should have let us know.” She was still carrying Danny.

  “Danny,” Grace said. He looked at her and smiled shyly. “Danny. What do you have there?”

  “This,” he said and held out the block.

  “I’ll be right back,” Vera said, and she carried Danny out.

  But Danny came back on his own. “This,” he said to Grace, and she took the block from him. “This?”

  “This.”

  “Frank went over to the Cherniak place,” Vera called from the kitchen. “They’re selling it, you know. John just went back overseas. Frank went to look at their gardening things.”

  Grace slid off the chair onto the floor beside Danny. She picked up another block from the table. “This?” she said, holding it out, and he took it from her.

  “Put this and this,” he said, and showed her. She did what he said, and he nodded in approval. He scampered over to a wooden toy box in the corner and opened the lid. Grace followed him. Inside were more blocks, and the little brown puppy in the shoe. “Oh, you still have it!” Grace pulled out the toy. Danny took it out of her hands. “This,” he said, showing her how to move the shoe until the dog popped out.

  Grace looked up at Theresa, who smiled. “Clever,” she said. “Like his mom.”

  Vera appeared in the doorway with a tray. “Danny, come over here so I can give them their tea. Grace, don’t sit on the floor like that. You’ll get a draught.” Vera’s face was flushed, and she kept pushing a strand of honey-coloured hair off her forehead.

  “Can I trouble you for some sugar?” Theresa asked, and Vera said, “Oh! Of course! I’ll be right back.”

  “Danny,” Grace whispered. “Do you know who I am?” He squatted beside her and picked up another block. She wanted to kiss his chubby little hands, but she didn’t want to scare him. “Do you remember me, Danny?”

  Vera was back. “Now, Grace, don’t be upsetting him. He’s not good with strangers. Here’s the sugar.”

  Theresa said, “She’s not a stranger,” and took the bowl from Vera.

  “Well, you two enjoy your tea. I’ve got to feed Danny and then Frank should be back and we can all have a nice talk.”

  She scooped Danny up and hurried out of the room.

  All of Grace’s resolve drained out of her. She was not Grace who had her own place, Grace who had a job and her own business, Grace who had friends, Grace who lived in Peterborough and had saved her money to bring her son to live with her. She was Grace No One, Grace Nothing, Grace with Her Head in the Clouds.

  “She won’t give him to me,” she whispered.

  “You didn’t come to ask her,” Theresa said.

  Grace shook her head rapidly. Theresa didn’t know Vera. She didn’t know what they were up against.

  “Grace. Look at me.” Theresa’s face looked unbreakable, like a stone carving on Ruth Ellis’s bookshelf. “He’s your child.”

  Vera came back. “I was thinking you might like to walk over to the Cherniak place and fetch your brother, Grace.”

  From the kitchen, Danny called out, “Mommy?”

  “Just a minute, Danny,” Vera called back.

  Grace stood abruptly. “I’ve come to take Danny back with me. I’ve got a place of my own and I have a business. I’ve saved enough money and I can look after him now.”

  Vera’s eyes went round. Grace could see the panic in them.

  “I—I’m very glad you could look after him while I got set up,” Grace said. “You were a big help to me.�
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  Vera’s face turned pale and then very quickly red. “Your tea is getting cold.” She left the room.

  Grace took in a long breath. Theresa put an arm around her shoulders. “That was great, Gracie. Here, sit down for a minute.”

  Grace sank into the armchair under the lamp. “I used to sit with my mother right here,” she told Theresa. And when she got sick, she thought, I lost her and I turned into a little bird and tried to fly out of the world.

  “I think you should go upstairs and start to pack Danny’s things,” Theresa said. “I have a feeling this is going to get difficult.”

  Going to get difficult? Grace thought. She wanted to laugh or cry, she couldn’t tell which.

  Upstairs in Danny’s room, she rolled his clothes up and put them in a pillowcase. Downstairs, she could hear Vera questioning Theresa. Did Theresa work as well, and how did she know Grace, and where was she from, and who were her people. “Where did Grace get to?” she heard Vera ask, and then the door opened downstairs and Frank called out, “Who’s here, Vera?”

  When she came downstairs, Vera was whispering to Frank in the kitchen and Theresa was sitting with Danny in the living room. Grace handed the pillowcase to Theresa, who put it under the chair. Vera called out, “I’ve got to put Danny to bed. Grace, your brother’s home now.”

  Frank kissed her cheek and held her hands and said she looked different, completely grown up. It was good for her, the move down south. “I’ve come to take Danny back,” Grace said, and he looked away. “I know,” he said. “But let’s have some dinner first.”

  At the table, Theresa and Frank did most of the talking. Theresa told them about Peterborough, Grace’s little coach house with oak trees in the yard, Grace’s successful laundry business. This made Frank smile proudly. “So you started your own business, Gracie. Well, well.” He told her that people were moving closer to town, but also, town was moving closer to them. They were building houses for when the men came back. Some of the men who signed up were coming back in bad shape. John Cherniak from across the road, Grace might remember him, had come home on leave and Frank didn’t even recognize him. Oh, he looked fine, physically, but there was something different in his face now. The things the men saw over there …

  Grace cut her meat into small pieces, but swallowing was painful, and Vera kept getting up to get something from the kitchen. By the end of the meal, there were two plates of bread and a collection of salt shakers on the table. “How long can you stay?” Frank wanted to know. Grace said, “We both have to get back,” and Theresa said, “We can come for a longer visit in the summer.” Frank said that would be ideal.

  Vera went to make up the bed in the attic room for them.

  In her old room, Grace sat on the edge of the bed while Theresa opened and closed drawers. “Do you have anything you want to take back?”

  Grace shook her head. She wanted to creep downstairs to where Danny was asleep and lift him out of the bedclothes and carry him out to the car, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was like stealing. Worse than stealing. She was afraid Vera was having the same thoughts. She might try to take Danny away, hide him somewhere, maybe at Mrs. McCabe’s. She would not sleep the whole night.

  “What’s in here?” Theresa asked, her voice muffled inside a cupboard. She brought out a red tin box and shook it. Something inside clattered.

  “My mother’s button box!” Grace took it from Theresa and opened it. “The bride and groom buttons.”

  Theresa put the box in Grace’s bag. “Give it to Danny when he’s older. He can keep his toy soldiers in it.”

  After Theresa went to bed, Grace sat by the window and listened. She heard the sound of the creek, and she remembered the feeling of the bliss hovering over her. She had told Ruth Ellis about the bliss once, and Ruth had shown Grace a photo of the whirling dervishes and another of a man sitting cross-legged under an enormous tree. “They want to escape the world,” Grace said, but Ruth said no. “They want to know it directly, without the filter of thought.”

  Grace stared into the darkness. She could still feel the mark of the bliss, in the quietness behind her eyes and in her hands, but she no longer yearned to dissipate into it. She didn’t want to escape the world. She was bound to it now that Danny was in it.

  In the morning, Vera smiled at them, and her face was milky smooth again. Frank was still upstairs. Danny was in his high chair in the kitchen, and when he saw Grace, he waved his bottle at her and said, “This! Where my this?”

  “Would you like tea or coffee, girls?”

  Theresa said, “Coffee, please,” and Grace said, “We have to leave, Vera. It’s a very long drive.”

  “Of course. I’ll pack you up some sandwiches. How’s that?”

  “We’ll need Danny’s bottles as well,” Grace said. “I’ve already packed his clothes and toys and things.”

  “Yes, I know. I found them and put them back. You know very well you are not taking that child anywhere,” Vera said. Her voice was mild.

  Theresa leapt up from the table. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but Danny is her child and—”

  “I beg your pardon,” Vera said, “but you don’t know the first thing about it. She gave him to us. She—”

  “I didn’t!” Grace said. “I left him here so I could get set up.”

  “You left him here because you couldn’t look after him. You wanted to start fresh down south!”

  “I wanted a fresh start with Danny.”

  “You don’t know how to look after him! You don’t know the first thing about raising a child.”

  “I’m his mother.”

  In the high chair, Danny’s face creased and he started to cry. “Look how you’re upsetting him,” Vera said, whirling around and picking him up. His foot caught under the tray, and he cried harder.

  “Give him to me, Vera.”

  “Leave him alone.”

  “Give him to me!” Grace tried to pull him out of Vera’s arms.

  Danny sobbed and hid his face in Vera’s neck.

  “Over my dead body,” Vera said.

  The kitchen door swung open, and Frank said hoarsely, “Let him go.”

  “Listen to your brother, Grace!” Vera said triumphantly.

  “Let him go, Vera.”

  Vera turned to stare at him.

  “She’s his mother,” Frank said. He looked sick.

  Vera’s eyes overflowed and the tears splashed onto Danny’s head. “Grace,” she croaked. “You can have another baby. Please don’t take him away from me. Please.”

  Grace knew the size of that grief, how it obliterated the world and left you a blind, naked, howling creature. “I’m sorry,” she said and opened her arms for her child.

  Theresa said everything for her. She said that they were doing the right thing, that Grace talked about nothing but her little boy and how much she wanted him back. She said that Grace was doing very well on her own and that she had good friends who would help if she needed help. She said Frank and Vera should come down to Peterborough to see them, and she would drive Grace and Danny back up in the summer for a visit. She said this to Frank. Vera had gone upstairs. They could hear her crying.

  Frank went up and came down with a bag of Danny’s clothes and added some of his toys. They looked, but they couldn’t find the dog in the shoe, and finally Theresa said they’d better start back. Frank carried Danny out to the car. Danny had his arms around Frank’s neck and was playing with his collar. When Grace reached for him, he hung on to Frank. Frank kissed him and unhooked his hands from his neck and handed him to Grace. “You go with your mommy now,” he said.

  “Mommy!” Danny cried out, reaching for Frank. “Mommy.”

  “Take good care of him, Gracie,” Frank said, his voice quivering. He turned his face away as they climbed into the car.

  Danny cried in her arms and would not stop. “It’s all right, Danny, it’s all right,” she kept saying. He flailed and wailed and choked on his tears.
She held him and tried to kiss him, but he writhed and twisted and pulled away. “Mommy, mommy, mommy,” he cried.

  “He’ll be all right,” Theresa said. “It’s going to take some time.”

  They turned onto the highway, passing through Garden River and Bruce Mines, and still Danny cried. Grace cried, and even Theresa had to stop driving to blow her nose.

  “Stop, Theresa,” Grace said finally. “Stop.”

  Theresa manoeuvred the car onto the side of the road. Danny had stopped flailing and screaming, but he was still crying in Grace’s arms. “Mommy,” he said. His voice was broken into pieces by hiccups and sobs. “Mommy, mommy.” Grace stared ahead, blinded by tears. This was worse than when she had left. It was worse than all the nights without him. It was worse than anything she had ever felt.

  “Grace?” Theresa asked softly. “Grace, what do you want to do?”

  YELLOW BRICK ROAD

  While the beginning was still ending, before the real ending began and everything fell to pieces and went to hell in a handbasket, there was a brief period when it seemed their luck had changed and things were going to work out after all. Dawn came downstairs one morning to find Geraldine and Jimmy murmuring over a jar of grape jelly. Geraldine smiled at her over Jimmy’s tousled blond head and said, “The day has Dawned.” She hadn’t said that in a long time.

  Jimmy said, “Look, Dawn. A secret message.” Inside the jar, a small patch of white gleamed. They tried to dig it out with a knife and then a fork, and finally they emptied the thick purple mass into a bowl and Geraldine plucked out the paper and opened it. She burst into laughter.

  “What is it?” Dawn and Jimmy yelled.

  She showed them. It said, Boo. Geraldine was still laughing. “Your father,” she said. She kissed them both on the top of the head and made them jam sandwiches for lunch, singing, “ ‘When you’re near, there’s such an air of spring about it. I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.’ ”