by Donna Milner
Then I tell him what I have always wanted to tell Boyer. What I wanted to tell Mom today. ‘I’m the one who should beg his forgiveness.’ My shoulders sag in resignation. Stanley shifts over from his chair and sits down beside me.
‘I stay away because I can’t face him. I don’t deserve him. I don’t deserve to be around him. It was my carelessness that ruined his life,’ I tell him, and as simply as that it all comes out. My guilt, my shame, my betrayal – all are given voice in the quiet of Boyer’s old bedroom.
I tell him how my thoughtless words started the evil avalanche of gossip, which would shatter Boyer’s, and our family’s image, in the community.
‘And River,’ I whisper. ‘If I hadn’t run away that night, River would never have become lost, never have been killed.’
Finally, as unchecked tears slide down my cheeks, I tell him about the marijuana butts thrown carelessly under the sink in Boyer’s cabin. I confess it all to this virtual stranger. ‘I can’t look at him without knowing I caused the fire, his scars.’
Stanley gently puts both of his arms around me. Nothing about having this man, who I have just met today, hold me, feels strange. I understand now some of what my mother must have felt in all those years of sharing her burdens in a confessional.
He pulls a cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket. ‘You were sixteen years old,’ he says as I wipe my eyes. ‘A child. Such a burden to carry alone all these years, Natalie. It’s you who needs to find a way to forgive that sixteen-year-old girl.’
‘The fire—’ I start.
He takes my face in his hands and forces me to look into his eyes. ‘The fire was arson.’
‘I know the police suspected that, but—’
‘No, they knew it, but couldn’t – or didn’t want to – prove it. There were anonymous calls claiming a group of boys had doused the logs at the front door with gasoline and set the fire. Your father found a gas can washed up at the lake shore the following spring.’
‘Who—?
‘We’ll never know. Kids playing a stupid prank or someone with an ignorant vendetta.’
‘All because of my foolish words.’
‘No, all because of prejudice,’ Stanley says quietly, and I wonder what he and Boyer have had to endure over the years just to be who they are. ‘But does it really matter now?’ he asks. ‘After all these years, does it matter how, or why, any of it happened? Is it worth not having your brother in your life to hang onto your guilt?’
When I don’t answer he continues. ‘What a waste,’ he slowly shakes his head. ‘This family never fights, never uses words as weapons. They use silence. And it hurts just as much. All of you let what is haunting you, what you are not saying to each other, come between you. Both you and Boyer harbour guilt over River’s death. But you never speak to each other about it.’
Momentarily numbed by the enormity of what he is saying I nod silently, then stand up.
‘Talk to him Natalie,’ he says before I leave. ‘Don’t underestimate his capacity to love. And to forgive.’
Later, alone in my room, I think about Stanley’s words as I search for something to give my granddaughter when she arrives.
I look at the jar of pennies by the window. It won’t be long before she’s old enough to start playing the penny game. A penny isn’t much these days, I know, but then it’s not about the pennies. It was never about the pennies.
I lean down and push open the door to the crawl space under the eaves. My joints protest slightly when I get down on my hands and knees. Perhaps there are some old toys in here. I was never much for dolls, but maybe Jenny has left something.
Cobwebs brush my fingers as I reach into a wooden box to pull out a lumpy purple Seagram’s bag. I wonder if kids still play with marbles these days.
Behind the box of marbles I feel another box full of books. I drag it out and pick up the small book on the top. I flip through the pages of A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young. Perfect.
I close the book at the sound of cars coming up the road.
I push myself up and hurry over to the window. My fingers grip the windowsill as I watch Boyer’s Jeep pull up in front of the house. A parade of vehicles, Morgan’s pick-up truck, the ambulance and Jenny’s Edsel, follow slowly behind.
Gavin climbs out of the passenger side of the Jeep. A smile forms on his lips as he takes in his surroundings. The back door opens and a young woman climbs out. She leans back in and lifts a small blonde child into her arms. A black-and-white border collie, astonishingly similar to our old cow dog, Buddy, bolts out from under the porch. He clears the fence and joins the group. The girl leans from her mother’s arms and tries to reach down to pet the dog, who, with tail wagging, leads them up the path to the porch.
It’s hard to imagine River, frozen in time and in my mind still age twenty-three, as a grandfather. But the three-year-old girl, whose aquablue eyes I recognize all the way from the window, the child who looks up and shyly returns my wave, can only be his granddaughter.
Chapter Fifty-Four
IN THE SUNROOM Jenny hooks up the intravenous while Nick takes care of the oxygen. I can see the trip has taken its toll on Mom. After she is comfortable I adjust her blanket as I stroke her forehead.
‘It’s good to be home,’ Mom sighs and attempts a smile.
I sit down by her bed and take her hand in mine.
‘Go visit with everyone, Natalie,’ she says, her voice fading, ‘I’m going to sleep for a bit.’
On the other side of the bed Jenny nods at me and adjusts the morphine feed. I can feel Mom relax as the morphine begins to work.
Before dinner Ruth and I go over to the dairy together to get the room upstairs ready for Carl.
I switch the gas heat on in the chilled room and we turn the mattress on the iron bed. I reach up and pull linen from the closet shelf then stare down at the quilt in my hands. My grandmother’s quilt. And it strikes me that this was where Gavin was conceived.
I walk over to the window and think about the night of the storm. Mom is right again. There are no ill winds. And there’s no need to wonder what good she thinks the ill winds of that summer blew into our lives. Gavin. But somewhere, somewhere between those winds, and the good that came from them, a lot of time has disappeared, wasted in keeping useless secrets.
I turn to look at Ruth. As she takes a load of towels into the bathroom I wonder how all this was affecting her, how she felt to find out it was her baby who had not lived.
Determined not to let silence be part of this family’s communication any longer, I turn to her. ‘Ruth, your baby – I’m sorry,’ I say quietly as she brings extra hand towels and flannels to put in the nightstand.
‘It’s all right.’ She speaks deliberately. ‘I grieved for him a long time ago. He stopped moving inside me days before he was born,’ she tells me. ‘When I woke up after the birth I couldn’t feel anything. I signed the papers Dr Mumford gave me, but I knew my son’s spirit was not in this world.’
I cross the room and wrap my arms around her. We stand holding each other for a few moments.
‘But Gavin is,’ she says warmly. ‘And he, and his family, have returned to us.’ She turns to place the towels inside the nightstand. She bends down, looks inside, then tugs at something wedged at the back of the cabinet. ‘Natalie, look at this,’ she says as she straightens up.
An involuntary gasp escapes my lips as I realize what she is holding. She lets the black hard-covered notebook fall open then hands it to me. I sit down on the bed, unable to believe what I hold in my hands: one of River’s journals. I thought all of them had burned in the fire.
I read the date at the top of the first page. Monday June 10, 1968. The day he left.
I feel as if I have re-entered the past. Even after all these years I recognize the neat rounded handwriting. Once again I read the remorse in his words for his failure of judgment in allowing himself to be carried away by curiosity, by grief, and in denying the truth of who he was the nig
ht I came to him.
Nothing excuses what I’ve done, I thought I knew who I was, what I stood for, and now I see I don’t know anything.
I’m leaving this morning, before Gus gets back from the milk route. Before Natalie comes home from school. Before Nettie comes to the dairy. And before Boyer returns from work. Can I leave without seeing him? Without facing the truth? Without finding out if my truth is also his?
And then I see my mother’s name.
Nettie came in without knocking and closed the door. She held her hand up to silence me before I spoke. She walked over and sat at the table across from me. She told me not to say anything, that she just wanted to sit there until Natalie was settled in the house.
But it was Nettie who broke the silence. ‘I don’t want to know what happened here tonight,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I just want to remind you she’s only sixteen years old.’ Once again she held up her palm to silence any reply from me.
She replaced her hands in her lap and stared down at them. Without raising her eyes she resumed speaking, her voice barely audible. ‘You young people have it all wrong,’ she said more to herself than to me. ‘There’s no such thing as free love. There’s always a cost.’
We sat for what felt like hours in the silence after that. At the sound of morning birds outside the window, she looked up and said, ‘You know you have to leave, don’t you.’
I nodded.
She stood and walked over to the door. With her hand on the knob she stopped, waited, then turned to look back at me. In a voice so low that I almost didn’t hear her, she said, ‘Take Boyer with you.’
I let the journal fall open in my lap. And there, lodged in the centre pages is another part of the past. I pick up the old photograph. One I thought was lost long ago. River must have found it. I study the folded black-and-white snapshot. River’s face smiles out through time. I carefully unfold the photograph to search for the face I know is on the other side. And there he is: a young Boyer, sitting leaned up against the trunk of the old apple tree, gazing over the top of his book. He is looking at River. And in that look I see so clearly now the love I had failed to recognize then.
Chapter Fifty-Five
FOR THE FIRST time in over thirty-four years our family eats dinner together in the parlour. Before we all sat down we went into the sunroom and stood around Mom’s bed and prayed with her. I held her hand and felt the strength return as, with her eyes closed, she began to repeat the rosary.
When we were finished Mom opened her eyes and pulled Boyer closer. ‘Now don’t let them get all maudlin and morbid,’ I heard her whisper. ‘I want to hear my family’s laughter fill this house.’
At Mom’s request the sunroom door is left open. I hope that even in her drug-induced sleep she will feel the comfort in hearing the noisy chatter of her children at the dining room table once again.
My brothers hold nothing back. They all sit in their same old places. The smell of the ocean radiates from Morgan and Carl’s clothes, and mingles with the aroma of the farm that clings to Boyer and Stanley. I wonder what odours I bring to the table.
Gavin’s wife, Cathy, sits next to me. It was so easy to like this self assured young woman. When Gavin introduced us earlier, she held out her arms and hugged me with no hesitation. I hugged her back and told her how grateful I was that she had encouraged Gavin to search for his birth parents. And that she had brought Molly to us.
‘More people to love Molly can only be a good thing,’ she replied with a smile.
I can sense Cathy looking around the table now and appreciating just how many people that is.
As I sit and watch this family, old and new, interact, I notice a new glow on Jenny’s face as she chatters uncharacteristically across the table to Gavin. There is an obviously eager, almost childlike, acceptance of this older brother. For a brief moment I feel a pang of regret that she was denied this gift for so long.
Jenny catches herself and takes a breath from her hurried words. She laughs, ‘Oh, just listen to me. I am a Chatty Cathy aren’t I?’ A look of confusion crosses her face as Gavin glances at his wife and they both burst into laughter. Jenny blushes beet-red as it dawns on her what she has just said.
‘Chatty Cathy, Chatty Cathy,’ Molly repeats.
‘I’ll probably never hear the end of that one,’ Cathy laughs. And the laughter of a family ripples around the table joining Molly’s giggles. Any awkward moments in the last few hours seem to have been smoothed over by this child’s presence.
Molly sits between her father and Boyer. Earlier Carl watched as Boyer set up a makeshift highchair for her. He eyed the thick encyclopaedia under the cushion. ‘Uh-oh, better watch out,’ he warned Gavin. ‘Boyer can get a little ambitious when it comes to words.’
Over the dinner conversation I hear the constant hum of the oxygen tank in the sunroom. My eyes stray every now and then to the open sunroom door. Even though she sleeps, our mother’s presence fills the room. And my brothers oblige her every request.
As if no time has passed, Morgan and Carl hassle Boyer about the automated barn and the contractors who now run the farm. ‘Hands-off milking for gentlemen farmers,’ Morgan teases.
‘Wish there was automated fishing,’ Carl snorts.
The good-natured bantering goes back and forth throughout dinner, but it’s obvious that Morgan and Carl are glad that the farm, although a scaled-down version now, is still intact.
I know they have accepted Gavin when they begin to tease him about his career.
‘Must be pretty nice, flying all over the world. Tough job, eh?’ Carl grins as Ruth passes him another helping of chicken.
‘Yeah, but someone’s got to do it,’ Gavin accepts their teasing as easily as they deliver it.
‘Must pay pretty well too, owning your own plane,’ Morgan adds.
‘Well, I don’t exactly own the Cessna we flew up on,’ Gavin replies, as he wipes up the milk Molly has just spilled. ‘I own a one-tenth share. So we get to use it a few times a month.’
‘A busman’s holiday,’ Cathy interjects playfully.
‘You love it, too,’ Gavin says and Cathy smirks back at him.
I see satisfied smiles pass between Boyer and Stanley as they watch the exchange.
Suddenly, Molly tilts her head and studies Boyer’s profile. I hold my breath as her chubby fingers reach towards his face. ‘That an owie?’ she asks.
Gavin opens his mouth to speak, then decides against it, as Boyer leans closer to Molly.
When he is at eye level, Molly reaches up and strokes the mottled skin on the left side of his face.
‘What’s zat?’ she asks with a frown.
‘It’s a scar,’ Boyer tells her. ‘A long time ago someone wasn’t careful with fire and my skin got burned.’
‘Oh.’ Molly thinks for a moment then asks, ‘Hurt?’ ‘Not any more.’
‘Good,’ Molly smiles and satisfied turns her attention to the bowl of ice cream Ruth has placed in front of her.
‘Hey, where’s mine?’ Morgan asks, and once again Carl and Morgan fill the empty space with their kibitzing.
As I look around the table, I’m suddenly anxious for Vern to get here and be part of this. If he leaves tonight, he should be here sometime before tomorrow afternoon. Gavin and his family are planning to fly out at two o’clock. They will have to leave for the airport with Stanley before one. I am hoping Vern will arrive in time to meet them before they go.
Boyer pushes his chair back and gets up from the table. He goes into the kitchen and returns with the coffeepot. As he leans over to fill mugs he asks, ‘How long can you stay?’
I’m not sure who he’s asking, but I answer without hesitating, ‘As long as she needs me.’
Across the table, my brothers and Ruth nod in agreement.
‘Good,’ Boyer says.
Chapter Fifty-Six
SOMEONE IS PLAYING the piano. The familiar melody floats up through the hallway grates. It seeps under the door and into my
slumber. I lie in darkness and wonder if I am still sleeping, if this music is part of a dream I’ve forgotten. Even though this is my second night here, it takes a few moments to remember where I am, to believe I am lying in the double bed of my childhood bedroom. My eyes focus on the illuminated hands of the alarm clock on the night table: fifteen minutes before five in the morning.
I got little sleep the first night Mom was home. I didn’t care. Since she came back to the farm Mom has slipped deeper and deeper into that in-between place between living and dying. I wanted to be near her, and so spent most of the first night in her room. I only went up to my room when I had to relinquish my chair to Ruth. And even with Vern here last night I was reluctant to go to bed.
So much has happened in the last seventy-two hours. A lifetime caught up to us all. It will take time to sort it out.
Although Gavin appears to be taking it all with a quiet acceptance, I am sure it is a bit overwhelming. Boyer has given him the information about his paternal grandmother who is still alive. ‘Guess we’ll be flying to Montana,’ was Gavin’s simple response to the news.
I am not surprised to learn that Boyer has kept in contact with River’s mother all these years. I can only imagine how her life too will change with this unexpected gift.
Yesterday morning Gavin and I sat with Mom until Morgan came to be with her. Then we went for a walk together before Vern arrived. Aspen leaves fluttered around us as we stopped at the end of the log snake fence behind the back field. I waved at the house in case Mom was awake and watching us.
‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Gavin said as we strolled into the clearing by the lake.
I smiled as his gaze took in the mountains and the forests, still clinging to the last of autumn’s colours. I looked around, trying to see through his eyes, to see this place without the lens of memory. A thin skiff of ice covers the surface of the lake. The forest has crept closer to the grassy place where Boyer’s home once stood.
There’s no trace of the old cabin now. A new apple tree stands in the same spot where the tree that had burned like a torch, signalling to my mother on that long-ago night, once stood. Planted there by some unknown hand, or raised from the ashes, it too has grown gnarled and twisted with age. A few stubborn apples cling to the unpruned branches; dried leaves click in the wind. Windfalls and decaying leaves litter the ground below; the dank sweet odour of fermenting fruit fill the crisp fall air.
