Cheat the Hangman

by Gloria Ferris

“Let me fix you a cup of tea.” I placed two miniature teapots and two metal tea balls on the counter. Standing in front of my tea cupboard, I considered if Caroline needed something calming or energizing. Ah, ginseng was just the thing to help protect the body against stress and give it a little boost.

  I explained this to her. “For myself, I think I need some burdock root this morning. It’s a powerful purifier and cleanser. Maybe I’ll put a little in with your ginseng as well, since burdock also aids in skin healing.” I filled the tea balls with the loose herbs and placed them in the teapots. The loose pieces were more potent than the processed herbs you buy in bags.

  Caroline looked at me a little strangely, but I was used to it. Many people are inexperienced in herbal remedies and doubtful of their healing properties. Mother Earth has given us a wealth of natural cures and restorative plants, but we are so trusting of anything that comes out of a prescription bottle, we no longer even think to consult Her.

  At that moment Conklin came in from the employees’ wing, dressed for another day of polishing things and harassing the Madam.

  “Good morning, Conklin. I’m going to make you a nice cup of cascara sagrada tea. It’s good for—”

  “I know what it’s for, Madam, and I don’t need it. Thank you anyway.”

  “Oh. Are you sure? Okay then, how about ginseng for—” Once again I was not destined to finish a sentence.

  “Ginseng will be excellent, Madam. I’ll get a cup for myself.”

  Caroline had been staring at the open cupboard where my tins of tea were stacked. She moved over to look at them. I had labelled each tin carefully and was proud of my collection.

  “Lyris, do you have a tea for everything here?”

  “Not everything. Most of these herbs are to calm, energize, detoxify, regulate body functions, that sort of thing. I steer clear of anything potentially harmful or dangerous. There are people who are trained to mix herbs for treatments of specific ailments, but that requires specialized training and I’m afraid I’m just an interested amateur. However, if you have an occasional headache, cramp, indigestion, or if you just want to cleanse your system, I have the herb that might help. I get my supplies from a Chinese herbalist in town. Well, she’s not Chinese. She has a degree in Chinese medicine.”

  Caroline still looked dubious. “Well, okay, thanks Lyris.”

  I took a sip of my burdock root and managed not to shudder at the bitter taste. “Now, I’m going to make the three of us a tasty omelette. Nothing like a good breakfast to start off the day.”

  The omelette turned out well, to the surprise of all three of us. Even Conklin lost his horrified look at the prospect of eating something I cooked and cleaned his plate. And I made sure they drank up every drop of their tea before leaving the kitchen. I even cleaned up the dishes, and that alone proved how well rested and take-charge I felt.

  An hour later, my enthusiasm faltered as I laboured in the claustrophobic telephone room. Quite a few check marks decorated my reunion list, but there were many more to go. First I had called Wooter Sanitation to arrange for six porta-potties to be delivered on Friday morning. The Neanderthal I spoke to argued that since past Pembrooke reunions required four porta-potties, then four porta-potties I was going to get. “Six,” I insisted. We settled on five.

  Then I phoned the town offices to arrange for periodic inspection of the recreation vehicles, which would park in the field beside Hammersleigh. I remembered a few reunions ago there was talk about several out-of-towners dumping their sewage in the field. They insisted it was an accident, but Uncle Patrick had to pay for the cleanup and no way was I going to. The health inspector promised to drop around twice on Saturday and again on Sunday morning before the campers pulled out. I wrote a note to myself to post a sign to that effect on one of the few trees in the field. The wrinkle was that the inspector couldn’t remember which bylaw forbade dumping raw sewage, so I would have to make one up to quote on the sign.

  I staggered out of the telephone room, dizzy and dehydrated. A cup of ginger tea and a tomato sandwich restored my stamina enough to allow the short drive to my mother’s house. Mom was alarmed at my appearance and made me sit in her cool living room and put my feet up. She brought me a glass of icy lemonade and a plate with two cinnamon buns.

  I drained the glass at one go and then turned my attention to the buns. Mom had left the room again, and when she came back, she was carrying a battered shoebox. She glanced at the empty plate and glass and put the box on the coffee table in front of me.

  “There should be a picture of the 1943 reunion somewhere in here.” She upturned the box on the table and dozens of photos spilled out, all sizes from tiny pictures a couple of inches square to eight by tens. All were labelled on the backs by year and subject matter.

  “I know it’s here somewhere.” While she was shuffling through the pictures, I pulled a notebook and pen out of my purse and wrote “Call photographer, make arrangements to come Sunday morning for official photograph.” Forgetting that little item would seriously annoy the people who loved to have their picture taken with their arms around each other or holding up a beer while pinching their fourth cousin on the butt.

  “Here it is.” Mom handed me one of the eight by tens, then came around to sit beside me.

  She pointed to a tiny girl sitting cross-legged in the front row with other tots. “That’s me.”

  I dug into my purse again and found the magnifying glass I carried to read the small print on labels in the grocery store. One of these days I was going to have to buy a pair of glasses.

  The sepia-toned photo was surprisingly clear, and with the magnifying glass, I could see every face in detail, including the blonde pigtails on the toddler who became my mother.

  “Pretty cute.” At least a hundred people had gathered for the photographer that summer day so long ago, happy and carefree. A couple of the men were wearing uniform caps, and by scanning the rows with my magnifier, I could make out many more in the telltale wool khaki pants and ties which they had pulled loose. Those clothes must have been murder in the heat.

  At least one of the women should be in uniform too, I figured. “Which one is Aunt Clem?” I asked.

  Mom took the glass from my hand. “This one.” She indicated a young woman in the back row. She was shorter than the men on either side of her and I couldn’t make out if she was wearing a uniform or not. Her face was tilted toward the man beside her, her hair dark and glossy, her lips red and inviting. The man’s arm was encircling her waist and she leaned into him. He was suggesting they slip away after the photographer was finished, to the pine wood where it was cool and private. She laughed and whispered to him that her mother would notice, they didn’t dare. Maybe tonight…

  “Lyris. What’s the matter?” Mom put her hand on my arm and I shook my head to clear it.

  “Nothing. Just one of those flights of imagination I’m so fond of.” I laughed, but my heart was thumping and the magnifying glass was shaking in my hand. I put it down. “Which ones are Aunt Wisty, Uncle Patrick and what’s his name, Bruce Wingate?”

  She gave me a look of concern, but didn’t mention my lapse again. “In the back there is Patrick, then Clematis. I don’t know the next man. I guess he could be this Bruce Wingate, then Wisteria. She’s holding little Tommy.”

  I peered at the grouping and saw the young, unlined faces. Aunt Clem was looking straight ahead and not leaning against either man. She was smiling gaily.

  Patrick’s short dark hair framed a face unmarked by time, unrecognizable as the shrunken, elderly man I had known. Bruce Wingate, if indeed it was he, was gazing down at Tommy, who reached up with his little hand to pull on his mother’s necklace. Wisty seemed not to notice, just looked back at the camera like her sister. Unlike her sister, she did not smile.

  Just a few short hours later, their world would change in such a terrible way. Tommy would be dead, his grief-stricken mother well on her way to the madness that would force her imprisonment in a me
ntal hospital for the rest of her life.

  Uncle Patrick? He went back to war and returned a changed and reclusive man. He died of natural causes at an advanced age, so you could say he lived his allotted span. But was it a full and satisfying life? Did what happen at this reunion shape his future in any way?

  Aunt Clem returned to her secret war work, loved, lost, and then rallied to pursue a teaching career and her psychic gift. I wondered if the summer of 1943 had anything to do with her decision not to marry. There was no reason to think so, but I felt she was not as forthcoming about the reunion as she might have been. Could she truly have felt no psychic twinge about Tommy’s fate?

  Bruce Wingate was an unknown factor. I would like to think it was his hand that caused Tommy’s death rather than a family member—Tommy’s mother, aunt or uncle. That was too awful to contemplate.

  “I wonder who Bruce Wingate was? And what happened to him after the war, if he survived it?” I looked at my mother, but she had no answers.

  “I never heard much talk about any of this over the years. Until Tommy was found, I had forgotten all about it.”

  “What are people saying now? The women in your book club and lawn bowling group must be talking.”

  “Everybody is talking, although nobody knows anything. Of course they are all too young.” She picked up the picture. “All the older people are long dead. The younger ones, the ones who survived the war, are almost all gone as well. Even the children are past middle age now.”

  “And children who weren’t born yet are middle-aged.” I was thinking of myself because, let’s face it, thirty-eight was crowding middle age. “If Tommy was still alive, he would be almost seventy. Yet, because he died as a little child, we can’t think of him as grown up.”

  Mom started gathering up the pictures that were scattered on the table and put them back in the box. “Come now, Lyris, we’re getting too introspective and morbid. Forget about what happened that summer. Let’s talk about something else.”

  That suited me. I had started to identify too much with these people and had given myself a headache to boot. I grabbed the reunion picture before she could put it away. “Can I borrow this for a while?”

  She released it into my hand. I dropped it into my purse before she could change her mind.

  While she was in the kitchen getting us more lemonade, I called to her, “When are David and Denise and the kids arriving?”

  “Thursday, I think. They’re going to stop here first for the key to your house, so if you want to leave it with me today, it might save you a trip. And I could get a few staples into the fridge to save them having to shop right away.”

  I removed the key from my ring. “It’s here on the table. The house is ready for them. I even put clean sheets on the bed and dragged Mitch’s crib out of storage and set it up.”

  “Thanks, dear.” She handed me a glass and another plate of buns. For some reason, my mother thought of me as a hearty eater. “I admit I’m happy that David is moving back to Blackshore with his family. I’ve missed them and I know John is looking forward to David joining the firm and taking over some of his workload.”

  She looked at me over her glass. “John would like to do some traveling.” She pushed the plate under my nose and I took another bun, just to be polite. “And he wants me to go with him.” Anxiety filled her blue eyes.

  I chewed my bun while thinking of a response. I had no problem with people traveling together in an unmarried state, but Blackshore was a conservative town. The gossip network, captained by my Aunt Bertilla, Jody’s mother, would eat my mother alive.

  “…and we thought we’d get married in the New Year, which would give David enough time to…”

  “What? What did you say?”

  I wished I would stop spacing out. Maybe I had a neurological problem, like a brain lesion or something.

  “I said, John has asked me to marry him and I said yes.”

  I put the remnants of the bun down and threw my arms around my mother. I was so happy for her, I felt tears run down my face. Her reputation was intact. “That’s wonderful, Mom. I can’t tell you how pleased I am.”

  She looked pleased too. “I’m glad you’re not upset, Lyris. I was afraid you might be. I know it’s sudden, but when you’re over seventy, you don’t have time for long courtships.”

  “If you’re sure, Mom. That’s all that matters.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. I just wish I had met John a long time ago.” She stopped speaking and looked nervous again.

  “What do you mean? Dad’s been gone only seven years and I know how devastated you were when he died.”

  “Of course I was, Lyris. I loved your father very much. You know that.” She gathered up glasses and plate.

  “No, wait, Mom. Do you mean you wish you had married John Brixton instead of Dad?”

  She didn’t answer, so I continued. “Because now that I look back, I have the sense that you weren’t as happy as you should have been.” I didn’t know why I was saying these things. My father had been a wonderful man.

  “I thought I was happy. I know I was well looked after by your father, and he was faithful to me always.”

  “But?”

  She sat back down and looked at me. “Lyris, I want you to remember that there is a reason I’m telling you these things. My marriage and yours had many similarities.”

  I jumped up and walked to the window to stare out at the shimmering heat rising from the pavement in front of the house. “Mom, you just said that Dad was a faithful husband. And that’s something that Dennis never was. How can our marriages be the same?”

  “I said there were some similarities, Lyris. Here’s one―your father never hit me, and Dennis never hit you, but there are other types of abuse. And we were both victims of it.”

  What was she saying? My mother never suffered from abuse, and I know I didn’t.

  “Sit down, Lyris, and let me explain. I’m sorry to bring this up now when you have so many other things on your mind, but I only just figured it out for myself, and I’ve been watching for the right time to talk to you about it. Your father did everything for me. He picked my clothes, he made out a weekly menu, decided when we could take a vacation, how many children we could have.”

  She paused for a moment. “He handled all our finances—I didn’t know anything, didn’t even have a chequebook and if it wasn’t for John helping me after your father died, I don’t know how I would have managed. John made me learn all those things for myself and showed me that I was capable of looking after my own affairs. He convinced me I was a worthwhile person, who could do anything on my own. I was terrified when I moved to Victoria to be near David. It was the first time in my life I did anything alone, but John kept in touch and encouraged me one step at a time.”

  I was stunned. “Why didn’t I know this? I must have been blind.”

  She took my hand between both of hers and squeezed. “You can’t blame yourself. You were going through a bad time with Dennis when your father died. I’m sure he didn’t mean to, but your father chipped away at my self-confidence all the years we were married until I was incapable of functioning without him.”

  She looked away for a moment. “I don’t know whether it was a control or power ploy, or whether he truly believed I was helpless. I have thought a lot about it, and I still don’t know the answer. Sometimes I blame myself. Maybe I somehow brought it on myself by being helpless. All I know is, I have to fight every day of my life not to take the easy way out and look for someone else to take care of me.”

  “Are you sure John isn’t that person?”

  She smiled. “I’m sure. He’s my friend and my lover, and he wants me to be an independent person. We have so much fun together, but I also enjoy my time alone or with my other friends.”

  I thought about Mom and John Brixton for a minute. I couldn’t think of any downside.

  “Okay, but what makes your situation the same as mine? Are you saying that Dennis treated me the
way Dad treated you?”

  “I’m afraid your Dad set the stage for you to allow Dennis to control the important aspects of your life.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Lyris, looking back, this is the one thing I feel the most guilt about—that I allowed your father to undermine your and David’s self-confidence. I told you both how much I loved you and how proud I was of your accomplishments, but I don’t know if it was enough.”

  I felt I should defend him. “Dad always wanted us to do better. He just wanted the best for us, and I know he was disappointed that I didn’t go to university, but he was proud of David.”

  “He loved both of you—and me—very much. He had no idea the damage he was inflicting by not acknowledging your successes and achievements, ever. He thought that to do so would make you content with less. Do you ever remember him telling you he loved you, or that you had done a good job of anything?”

  I shook my head. I had never thought about it before. If I got an A at school, he wanted to know why it wasn’t an A plus. And anything other than an A wasn’t even mentioned. The report card was just signed in tight-lipped silence, while I squirmed in humiliation. When I informed him I was pregnant and had to marry Dennis instead of going to university, well, my mind refused to even retrieve that memory. It turned out he was right, though.

  Mom touched my arm. “You and David are both strong people, and that is why David is a successful lawyer and you managed to survive an abusive marriage and find the strength to finally end it. But if you had valued yourself more, you wouldn’t have stayed with Dennis and put up with his infidelity for so many years. I’m glad you seem to have found a man who respects your qualities and doesn’t want to change you.”

  I didn’t want to discuss Marc. “Yes, well, I understand what you’re saying. And I don’t disagree about Dad, though I know he meant well. But how can you refer to my marriage as abusive? We had some pretty loud fights, but I did as much yelling as Dennis did.”

  “There is such a thing as emotional abuse, Lyris, and you were a victim of it. Dennis was unfaithful many times and somehow made you believe you were at fault. He made you feel inadequate, that you were unlovable and deserved to be treated so shabbily.”