by Dee Willson
Grams holds up a pair of baggy jeans that read hip to be across the butt. “How old is this stuff?” she says. “Christ, child, set foot in a mall once in a while.”
I snatch the jeans, laughing, grateful for the distraction. “I shop . . . sometimes.”
That’s a lie. I’d rather walk on fire than go to a mall. My mother always had nice clothes when I was little, when we lived in Ottawa, in the attic apartment of a three story brownstone she dubbed “the Ritz.” By the time I was six, I resented the silk pantsuit with gold belt, the red dress with the plunging neckline, the rhinestone stilettos. Friend’s gave her these things, of course, we didn’t have the money to buy shit with logos, but I never understood why they couldn’t just buy us something we really needed. Like heat.
Grams laughs then shakes her head, sighing. She stands and pulls me into a hug.
“I know you think you have to go it alone,” she says. “And there was a time I thought the same, when I thought I’d lost Tom. I felt nothing but despair and had no doubt I’d live out the remainder of my life alone.”
When Meyer was nine, Gramps fell from a ninth-story balcony rescuing a woman from a burning apartment building. His fire chief gave the family his condolences. The doctors didn’t think Gramps would make it past sunrise.
“I know better now. Tom survived—thank our lucky stars—but had he died in that hospital, I’d have gone on. I’d have found love, or a companion to share my life with. Because that’s what people do, that’s how we survive. We give love and thrive when it’s returned. This is what life is all about, my love.”
I hold Grams tight. She’s warm, soft, and smells like grapes.
“Grams, I married an amazing man.”
She stands back, holding me at arm’s length. “Yep, you did. And yes, he was a good boy, a wonderful husband and father. Now what? Meyer is no longer here and you are.”
I fiddle with my wedding ring.
“You are young. You have needs, to be held and loved and touched.”
“Grams, Katherine.”
“Well, it’s natural to—”
“Seriously, Grams—”
“Fine, but answer one question. Have you had a date with BOB?”
“Grams!” I’m mortified.
Grams shrugs, waiting for an answer. I throw the jeans at her and we double over laughing, tears streaming from our eyes.
The doorbell rings, saving me from hell.
“Who could it be on this dreary afternoon?” says Grams, following me down the stairs toward the front door. “Maybe it’s a gentleman caller.” She dances behind me with a Cheshire grin.
I roll my eyes. The woman is relentless.
The front door opens to reveal a huge umbrella sheltering black jeans, a thick dark-gray wool coat, and the finest scarf I’ve ever seen on a man. The scarf is all my favorite shades of fall: burnt orange, red, gold, and deep mustard yellow entwined in three-dimensional thick cotton. My fingers tingle, wanting to touch.
“Bryce,” I say, tearing my eyes from the scarf.
Grams looks like she was expecting someone else. Thomas maybe?
Bryce’s smile is somewhat strained. “I came to apologize,” he says.
“What did you do that you need to apologize for?” Grams says, giving Bryce the evil eye.
I move past Grams and open the door wider, welcoming Bryce inside. “Come in out of the rain.” I say, only slightly embarrassed by my pit bull.
Grams lets it go. For now.
“I don’t want to intrude on your family—”
“Intrude away,” I say, laughing. “You have good timing.”
Bryce looks confused but steps in anyway, shaking his umbrella free of rain then leaning it into the hall corner before shrugging off his heavy coat.
“Ma’am,” he says, taking Grams’s hand. He nods then bows. “My name is Bryce Waters.”
Grams looks at me, not quite sure what to make of Bryce Waters. I shrug. Her guess is as good as mine.
“This is Katherine, my Grams-in-law.” I say, taking Bryce’s coat and hanging it on a hook. “My daughter Abby is playing in her room and the old guy in the kitchen . . .” I motion for Bryce to follow us down the hall, and Grams’s feeble attempt at hiding her appreciation for Bryce’s rear-end doesn’t go unnoticed. She clicks her tongue at me. I point to the back window, “He’s Gramps.”
Gramps waves, secures the Game Boy in his lap, and wheels away. He’s been trying to top Abby’s Tetris score all afternoon. Meyer found the hand-held relic at a garage sale last year and gave it to Abby for her fifth birthday, claiming she should learn to respect the classics.
“You two have a seat,” Grams says. “I’ll put the kettle on for tea.”
Bryce pulls a chair at the kitchen table, studying my face. His cashmere sweater attempts to hide his physique without success, and my dream scarf sits casually around his neck, pulling my gaze into its awe-inspiring colors. I sit across from him as Grams putters around the kitchen, clanging plates and mugs.
“I’m sorry to come unannounced and on a Sunday,” says Bryce. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.” He eyes me with a serious expression. “And apologize for my party guest.”
Grams knows nothing about the Halloween party, but having heard Bryce isn’t guilty of harming me directly, she saunters off, mumbling something about checking on Abby, and I slide my hand under the table, hiding the Band-Aid. Somewhere between Bryce’s living room and home I broke a heel and sliced a finger. It wasn’t the only scar of the evening. Events of the Halloween party sway through my internal vision, ending with the drunken lady and crying in my driveway.
“I’ve survived worse,” I say, trying to make light of it.
I touch the raised contours of the tiny scar on the peak of my left cheek. When I was fifteen, my mother caught me sneaking out with cigarettes and tequila. She’d crashed the week before, when depression’s darkness swallowed her whole, and hadn’t left her room until she heard me in the liquor cabinet at two a.m. She set the pack of cigarettes on fire and smashed the tequila on the kitchen counter, the broken bottle slicing my face.
“You have,” Bryce says, glancing at my wedding ring. “I am sorry Angitia upset you. She tries to keep herself contained, but I’m afraid alcohol got the better of her.”
“Angitia was the—”
“Witch.” He attempts a smile. “She hasn’t been the same since the witch hunt.”
I stifle a chuckle. Then notice he’s not kidding.
“Weren’t witch hunts in the sixteen-hundreds, in Salem?”
Bryce shakes his head, deadpan. “Salem is known for their witch trials, not witch hunts,” he says. “The hunting of witches, or those suspected of having magical powers, goes back thousands of years. Ancient texts from Egypt and Babylonia speak of sorcerers capable of influencing the mind and prophesying. The Japanese fox witch, for example, could change shape and create powerful illusions. Most were slaughtered across central and southern Europe in the fourteen and fifteenth century. Hundreds of thousands of people, the majority women, were imprisoned, tortured, and executed.”
A shiver runs through me.
“Sadly, witch hunts still take place. Saudi Arabia continues to use the death penalty for sorcery, even executing a man in 2007. In 2008, more than fifty people accused of practicing witchcraft were killed in New Guinea. Every year, hundreds of people in the Central African Republic are convicted of sorcery. Angitia hasn’t been back to India since 2003, when her sisters were lynched in a witch hunt that killed over seven-hundred and fifty people.”
I had no idea. “So the inebriated woman with the shrill voice is seriously a witch? In real life?”
“Witch is an ugly word, riddled with fear. Angitia is a registered Reiki master and a shaman.”
“A shaman.” I try to process this.
“Um hmm,” he replies. “She is open to her inborn ability to connect with the natural world in ancient ways. And she has a knack for communing with the dea
d.” He smiles. “She’s been on Oprah.”
The kettle whistles, and I leap from my chair, almost knocking it over. Bryce doesn’t comment. His eyes follow me as I move to the counter where Grams has laid out all the necessities on a tray. She’s taken my candy apple and sliced it for dessert.
Mrs. Maples comes to mind. I’m not sure if it’s the conversation or the candy apple that makes me think of her.
Chair legs rumble across the floor. “I’ve upset you more by coming,” says Bryce.
“I’m fine. Sit down, please.” I should be the one apologizing. I’m not upset by anything Bryce has or hasn’t done. It wasn’t his job to save me from every intoxicated jerk at the party, no matter their vocation, and I’ve encountered enough drunks in my life to know to walk away. “Please, sit” I repeat, and ask him how he drinks his tea.
Bryce sits but the air between us is thick and consuming.
Upstairs, Barbie and Ken’s Volkswagen Beetle hums across the hardwood floor followed by the muffled sounds of laughter.
“Abby loves her dolls,” I say, sighing. “To be five again.”
“Yes. I should’ve enjoyed my childhood longer than I did.”
“If only we had that choice.”
“Oh, yes, if only.” A half-hearted grin inches the right side of his face. “You shouldn’t be so bitter, so young.”
I shrug. He isn’t insulting me, just stating a fact. “I suppose I’m a little lost lately.”
“There is no need to feel lost,” he says, radiating sincerity. “I have found you.”
I fidget in the chair, no clue how to respond. I appreciate his efforts, I think, but I’m not ready for this. Not in my kitchen, our kitchen, mine and Meyer’s.
Bryce leans forward resting an elbow on the arm of the chair. “Is this Abby?” he says, pointing at a framed black and white of a woman and toddler plastered in ice cream and gummy worms. I was three and we’d just returned from the Royal Ontario Museum, one of the few places my mother was truly happy.
I put down the half eaten slice of apple. “My mother was a photographer.”
My mother, Celeste Reit, had her fifteen minutes of fame. She was known for her photos of swingers: the subtle touch of a woman’s hand accepting an offer to get closer, a sexual expression, clubs for the wealthy and open-minded, classy depictions of an alternative lifestyle. For a time, her art was sold in private circles for good money and garnered the attention of celebrities worldwide.
“It’s the only photo she ever took of the two of us together.”
“She was stunning,” he says, studying the picture.
“She was, always, even when sick.”
Heartache, she used to tell me, I have a heartache that will one day swallow me whole.
“Another artist.”
“You know what they say about apples . . . I held a crayon before a spoon. As a toddler I had a compulsive fascination with colors and textures. After a day at the museum my fingers were blistered from running my hands over every object I was allowed to touch. I loved nature and could spend entire days at the park. I’d follow the geese, the water in the stream, the bugs as they climbed the trees.”
I tell Bryce about my childhood, skipping the shitty stuff. My youth wasn’t all bad. My mother did the best she could with what she had. She never abandoned me or gave me away like she did my brother Stephen, and she never physically hurt me, not on purpose anyway.
“I got a scholarship to the University of Toronto and spent five years earning an Art and Art History degree,” I say. Bryce nods toward my book collection: history, art, parenting books by the dozens. They line an entire wall of the living room. “I was obsessed with art, especially renaissance and late twentieth century post-impressionism. I fell in love with sculpture, photography, drawing, and painting. I love painting.” I swipe the last slice of candy apple.
“Where have you been all my life?” Bryce mumbles.
I close my eyes, hoping Grams hasn’t heard his quiet comment. She’s wandered into the kitchen to make herself a tea.
“Your grandson was very lucky,” he says, raising his voice so Grams doesn’t need to eavesdrop. “You must’ve been proud.”
“Uh huh,” she says, grabbing her mug and pacing out of the kitchen.
Bryce and I burst into laughter. It feels good to laugh with him.
“Where do you work now?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder, probably in search of art paraphernalia.
“I paint in my greenhouse.” I rise from the table, instructing Bryce to follow my line of sight out the window. Spread before us are acres of old evergreens.
He comes to stand beside me, one hand encompassing the entire mug. “Peaceful,” he says.
I point to the cobblestone path. “My studio is hidden in that mass of trees.” A hint of glass peeks through branches of blue spruce. “It’s beautiful, my sanctuary. There is no place I prefer to be. When I’m not with Abby, that’s where I am.”
We stand in silence, taking in the vista. With some people silence is awkward. With Bryce it feels calming, like I’m weightless, floating.
“You hum when you think about your art,” he says, and I chuckle.
“I know. I’ve been called out before.”
“You glow as well. Your aura shimmers. You’ve found your calling.” He smiles.
“My aura? Ah, okay. Calling is the right word though. I’ve never considered any other career. I was born an artist.”
“A creator,” he corrects, still smiling. I don’t understand but he doesn’t seem to be mocking me. “Every soul has a purpose. Yours is to create,” he says matter-of-factly. “In another life you created peace, justice, love.”
“You’re being an ass if you’re teasing me.”
“I’m not. Most souls spend entire lifetimes searching for their purpose. To have found yours is true evidence of your strength. I’m impressed and honored to be a witness.”
I purse my lips. I’ve always considered myself an atheist. As such, I avoid topics that smell even slightly spiritual, and this smells iffy.
Bryce doesn’t push for commentary. Instead, we spend the better part of an hour talking about school, art, and showings coming to a local gallery. Bryce’s knowledge of Shang dynasty jade carvings makes me giggle like a silly schoolgirl, and I bombard him with question after question. He answers them each in turn, but eventually raises his hands in surrender.
“I’ll elaborate another time,” he says, avoiding my last question. “I better head home.” He chuckles. “It’s a school night.”
He’s right. I got carried away.
I lead Bryce to the front door, and he puts his coat on then steps toward me, shoving his hands in his pockets. We mumble goodbyes. I can smell him, a mix of man and rain. My heart skips a beat.
He turns for the door, pausing mid-step. “Almost forgot,” he says, “Karen brought your coat home from the party.”
I nod. “She called this morning.”
“Good.” Bryce steps out onto the porch and opens the umbrella before turning back to me, a frown stealing the spark from his eyes. “Are you concerned about anything Angitia said to you? Anything at all?”
Death, lots of death.
“My mother died when I was seventeen, and my husband passed away in April. I guess I’m just a little sensitive regarding the whole death thing.”
Bryce doesn’t look to be breathing. “And . . .?”
“And what?” Isn’t that enough?
“Well then,” he says. “I’m sorry the party ended the way it did and that your night was ruined. I hope you let me make it up to you someday.”
“You have nothing to make up for.”
Grams peers around the corner, demanding an explanation with her eyes. I haven’t told her about last night. There is nothing to say. I didn’t even register everything the witch said. The general theme of death was enough for me.
“Goodnight, Tess. Ma’am.” Bryce waves and Grams steps out from behind the wall.
/> “Goodnight,” I reply.
Bryce turns to leave and I close the door, spinning to find Grams in my path, arms crossed.
“Spill it,” she says.
I smile. Times like these I’m happy I’m a liar.
Do Tell
Mid-November
The clock ticks, but I have no idea what time means as I float in my fantasy world with my colors, brush, and canvas. The sun’s light has just started to seep life into the woods around me. I stare into the wilderness watching a black squirrel run from tree to tree gathering debris and food for the cold winter ahead. Blue jays, cardinals, and a medley of bright winged finch fly in and out of view. Most of the foliage has fallen from the trees.
I spent most of the night mixing paints, trying to match the vivid colors of nature. Anything to keep from sleeping. Or not sleeping, as it were. My nightmares have a new flare for the dramatics, killing me in places I could scarcely imagine in daylight, in centuries I’ve never known. I’ve watched the sun come up for days.
Today is the fall fair. I’m thankful the day has finally arrived. For weeks I’ve been inundated with the details: so-and-so’s mother is running the rubber duck game, and so-and-so’s father is cooking hot dogs. I’ve heard all about who’s bringing the cotton candy machine and which family donated hay bales for the maze. Originally, I’d told Abby we weren’t going, but I’ve watched her enthusiasm grow with the little things that entertain a five year old, the fair currently topping her list, and in the end, I couldn’t refuse.
Now I’m anxious for her to wake.
It’s mid-November and brisk enough to require a winter coat—that is what I told Abby. I layered her for forty below, just in case.
We surrender our shortbread cookies to the lady in charge of the bake sale then set off in search of friends. Abby spots Sofia and runs ahead, her scarf hanging from her coat pocket. I trail behind, attempting to keep the morning sun from my eyes.
Thomas sees me coming and smiles. “Perfect day or what?” he says. He’s not wearing a coat at all, just jeans and a long sleeve shirt.
