Road to Thunder Hill

by Connie Barnes Rose

  I watch the musicians down in the kitchen while I lie here on my elbows with my hands over my ears to drown out the sound. Finally there’s a lull, but that quickly ends when the twins start pestering Bear and he starts tickling them until they start up with their ear-piercing shrieks. Over the noise Olive is shouting something about playing charades again. Rena seems to have picked up on the fact that one way to divert Olive is to distract her. “Hey, Olive, why is that dog shaking its head so much?”

  “Oh, no!” Olive says, making a grab for one of the pups. “I hope it’s not another ear infection. Rumi, hold still and let me look at your ear.”

  Now I hear Bear say to Alana, “I thought you said you were going to go check on Trish.”

  I can tell by the way Alana’s curled up at her end of the couch that there’s no way in hell she’s about to give up her spot. Sure enough, she says to Bear, “Maybe you’re the one who should go check on her. Now that you’ve become so close….”

  “Right. Like anyone would dare get that close to Trish these days,” Bear snickers, and suddenly shouts, “Hey, what happened to the music?”

  I back away from the register like it’s suddenly on fire. I have to get out of here now.

  There was a time when Suzie monitored my every move. It got to be annoying even, having her right at my heels no matter what I was doing. But now as I leave the bedroom she is so busy snoring under the bed that she doesn’t even notice. Maybe she assumes I’m heading for the bathroom. When I reach the bottom of the stairs leading to the front door, I notice a flickering light in the parlour to my left. Now, who the hell left that candle there to burn the house down in our sleep? I turn into the room and walk toward the candle on the mantelpiece but stop in my tracks when I see my father’s face clearly reflected in the mirror that hangs where it has always hung, over the mantelpiece. A chill rips through me as I take in his profile, complete with that silly cowboy hat he once brought back from a trip to Calgary. In that second I decide there are two possibilities. One is that I’m seeing my father’s actual ghost, or, two, I’m still upstairs dreaming. Maybe that whole music scene in the kitchen was a dream. In fact, I bet that if I look away from the mirror and over by the window, I’ll see my father standing there. Maybe I can talk to him like I have in other dreams. I often feel like we’re trying to apologize for something, except neither of us seems to know what we’re sorry for. So, yeah, why not turn now and face your father, Trish? Maybe this time you’ll know what to say to him.

  This all happens in a second, of course, so when I turn my head, slowly, because even in a dream it can be startling to see one’s dead father, my mouth drops open. This is no freaking dream. There’s Biz, standing behind one of the armchairs. And now I do feel like screaming because what hits me worse than a nightmare is the instant proof that Olive is my half sister. None of those DNA tests are needed here, no private detectives. A reversed Biz’s face reflected in the mirror shows my father’s sloped forehead, his same strong chin. A smaller nose, maybe, but the resemblance is there, all the same. He is approaching the mirror now, his fingers adjusting the brim of the hat, his face turning this way and that. He hasn’t noticed me standing there. It’s going to stay that way too, because now I’m rushing out the front door of Kyle House.

  27. Heading for the Nearest Cliff

  THE AIR HAD BEEN as still as an ice pond all evening, but the tide must have just turned because the wind is picking up. I clutch at the shawl I had the good sense to grab from the porch. And after what I just saw there in the parlour, it’s a wonder I thought to slip on Olive’s rubber boots before making my escape. With my hair flying every which way, I probably look freaky tearing out of the house like this. Except for a scattering of clouds scuttling in front of the moon, the sky is clear and bright. At least I’m not feeling sick any more, I mean, not the stomach kind of sick.

  The path to Kyle Point runs through the cemetery and that’s where I’m passing now. I can hear bits of melting snow drip from the aspen branches onto the headstones. Most of the stones sit over the bones of the first settlers to the area and are more than a century and a half old. My father has no business being buried here. All of our ancestors came from the bay side of Thunder Hill and the cemeteries there are packed with Kyles. But as far as Bernie was concerned, he was important enough to be planted anywhere he chose, provided, of course, my mother would let him have his way. I keep my head down against the wind and I realize my thoughts must be passing by his plot as surely as my feet are. The creaking branches of the aspens sway high above me, their shadows flitting across the gravestones. Bare rosebushes clutch at my shawl. I have to keep yanking it free from what feels like sharp little claws, and so I’m almost surprised when I reach the edge of the cliff.

  The cliff doesn’t seem quite as high as it did when I was a kid. I’m not sure if this is because I was so small then, or if the sandstone face could have eroded that much over the years. I suppose the stone stairway my father made down to the beach is long gone. As a kid, I’d burst out of bed in the mornings just to race to the cliff and down those stone steps to my own private wonderland of red ledges of rock and clear tide pools. All of this could have, should have, been mine.

  Now as I stand here on the brink, I look down at where I think the steps used to be and I’m wondering if I can still make my way down. It would be less windy down there. I could climb down to watch the tide come in under a full moon. I can’t remember when I stopped doing this sort of thing, this roaming about by myself. Had it ended when I met Ray? Ray, who made my world make sense. Ray, who relied on me to make good decisions, even if he didn’t agree with them. He seemed to have this blind faith in me. When had all that changed? Had he just decided one day that maybe I wasn’t so right? Had he just one day fallen out of love with me?

  Ray doesn’t love me anymore.

  I feel a fresh wave of panic. Over the years, there’ve been times when I was convinced that I no longer loved him, but the thought of him not loving me? Even when he moved to Newville I felt he had left me out of frustration or possibly even anger, but until Olive suggested there might be someone else I really believed there could never be anyone else for Ray but me. A coldness like I’ve never felt before enters my body, and I feel as though I must be falling. Falling even as I stand straight against the wind.

  The water below is tossing about pretty good tonight. I can see the swells rising and falling against the cluster of rocks just down the beach. I try to match my breathing to its rhythm. In and out, up, and then down. It’s calming to breathe at the ocean’s pace. Damp salt air rushes in and out of my lungs and best of all, the clutter in my head starts to fade. I haven’t felt this clear since the last time I had a soak in Bear’s mountain tub. Bear. My breath catches with the thought of him, and it takes every bit of effort to push it away. Again, I focus on the swelling tide only to find that breathing and meditating have become a struggle to harness. I work and work at it, and just when I’m feeling calm again, thoughts of Ray come barging into my brain like they have some right to be there. I’m trying to force them away when something cold and wet slides into the palm of my hand. I almost jump out of my skin, but a stronger instinct reminds me that the edge of a cliff is not the best place to make any sudden moves.

  Suzie’s wet snout is in my hand.

  I look around, wondering how the hell she got here but I don’t see a soul. I pull at a burr stuck on her ear and that gets me thinking about instinct and how it just saved my skin. So when did I stop trusting my instincts? How can I trust a feeling that one minute screams at me to hold on to my mate, but in the next heartbeat makes me want to fuck his best friend? Maybe I don’t need Bear or Ray at all. What if it’s true that men are only necessary for a certain time in a woman’s life?

  That gets me thinking of my mother and how she’s slowly drowning in rum. After my father died, I bugged her to start dating other men and she tried for
a bit. First, there was Darby Hargraves, who owns the biggest farm machinery outfit in the county. Then, there was Keith Sparks, who I thought she might take to because he sings in the church choir and she has always loved the sound of a man singing. I’d just assumed things didn’t work out with either man was because they could never compare to my father. But, one night, she told me she had no interest in taking care of another man, because at her age, that’s all she’d end up doing. At the time I found that such a depressing thought, but maybe it makes sense. Ray just seems to hurt my heart. And Bear? Turns out that our friendship is more important than our lonesome body parts.

  I look over the edge of the cliff. Now, where are those old stone steps ? I’m feeling such a strong urge to go down to the rocks below. But then I hear someone hurrying up the path from the cemetery. Whoever it is, they’re wearing a dark cape. Now, I can tell by the way the arms reach out for balance that it is Olive. She lifts her face so she must have spotted me because she picks up speed and stumbles so much coming up the path that I reach out to grab her before she knocks us both off the cliff. By the way she pulls at me with all her might I can see she thinks she’s saving me from jumping. Her face is full of fear.

  To calm her down I say, “Isn’t it beautiful out here at night?”

  She screams, “Have you been standing out here this whole time?”

  I admit I’m a little shocked when she tells that I’ve been out here for almost an hour. It has felt more like five minutes. She tells me how she first went into my room and spoke my name, but since Suzie was thumping her tail under the bed, she went back downstairs thinking I was asleep under all those covers. Then awhile later she heard another thumping sound and went back upstairs. Suzie was scratching at the bedroom door. Suzie must have finally figured out I wasn’t in the room. So while the rest of them were caught up playing charades, she and Suzie had slipped out to find me.

  I feel her tighten her grip on my arm. The path here narrows to where it runs through the wild rose bushes and we walk along in single file until she stops all of a sudden. She wheels around and stands so close to my face I can feel the warmth of her breath. I take a step back and make a move as if to continue along the path. She blocks me, saying, “Look. If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Anything.” She takes a deep breath. “Like you and Ray.”

  I keep on walking. We’ve reached the cemetery now so the path weaves through the time-blackened headstones of the earliest settlers. We’re far enough back from the cliff that the sound of surf has fallen away and all we can hear is the melting snow dripping from the trees. The moonlight pours down on us when we reach a small clearing not far from my father’s grave.

  She says, “Sometimes it helps to talk to someone to put things into perspective.”

  She stops beside a child’s headstone and trails her finger over a granite lamb. It’s too dark to make out the words on the stone, but I remember them well. Here lies little Bella. She was only two years old when she died in 1895. When I was a kid I felt sorry for this little girl, for not having a chance in life. Now I’m thinking this little girl was lucky to have been spared life’s awful truths.

  “Marriage is a funny thing.” Olive is gazing into the distance. “Just when you think it’s solid and secure, something comes along to shake it up.”

  I feel my lips tighten at this. Next she’ll be saying that this is what makes it all worthwhile. Meanwhile, we’ve reached my father’s grave with its little granite stone next to Olive’s big red monstrosity.

  “Ray and I have our problems but we’re going to be just fine,” I say, just to head her off at the pass.

  “I know you’re going to be just fine,” she says. “Everybody thinks you’ll be fine.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Well it’s not exactly a secret that things between you and Ray haven’t been normal in a while.”

  “Normal?” Maybe it’s because of where my head is at here in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of the night that makes me feel brave enough to suddenly shout, “Who made you the authority on what’s a normal marriage?” I can tell by the shocked look that I’ve got her attention here. I bet my face looks just as shocked as hers, but off I go anyway, saying, “How can you talk about normal when your own husband spends more time in Toronto than he does with you!”

  When she slaps her hand over her mouth like she’s holding back vomit, you’d think some compassion might kick in here on my part, but no, I’ve got some vomiting of my own to do. Because if I’ve learned some big lesson these past three days it’s that I’m running out of things to lose. And standing in front of me is the one person in the world I don’t mind losing one bit. I shout again, “You say you want to be my sister? Then let me tell you something, sister. Your man goes around looking like a kicked dog half the time. And your son does too!”

  God that felt good to say. I feel like something has been pried loose inside of me. I feel like screaming at her for making me feel so … so … fucking inferior every chance she gets in that way she has of fooling everyone into thinking that she loves me when secretly she hates, hates, hates me.

  Olive has dropped to her knees in front of my father’s headstone and she’s weeping onto the stone. Well, the sound of Olive crying is a lot like a rabbit when it’s caught, and the sudden sight of her draped over the headstone causes something to hurt in my heart so much that now we sound like two caught rabbits. I find myself rubbing her shoulders, pushing my thumbs into her back like I used to do for Gayl when she couldn’t sleep.

  I hear myself blubbering, “I’m sorry, Olive. And here you came looking for me….” And it’s not like this is the first time she has come to my rescue. There was that night at Hog Holler and, come to think of it, ever since Ray left she has been poking her face into my life every two seconds. She is saying something to me now; something about Toronto.

  “I’m sorry,” I say looking for something to blow my nose into. “What did you say?”

  Olive says, “He’s moving back to Toronto.”

  “Who? Arthur?”

  “You’re right. Things aren’t working out for us. “ She looks up at me with tears and snot glistening in the moonlight. “Arthur’s giving up the country life.”

  “What?” I shake my head like I haven’t heard right. “Are you sure? I mean, why?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. When he phoned to say he couldn’t make it home because of the storm, he…” She chokes here, a cough really, and I speed up my thumb action. “We’ve been talking about it for a while now, that maybe he and Byron should move back up there and that I’ll stay here with the girls!”

  “But, what will you do?”

  “I’ve decided to get a job.” She sniffs, and draws in a deep breath, as if this is the first time she’s ever considered employment in her life. She starts going on about how she’ll never abandon her art, but that she’d reached the conclusion that her art will never support her.

  “Here?” I say. “There aren’t too many jobs around here. Except the pewter factory, I suppose.”

  There’s a thought — Olive working next to me every day.

  “I thought of that, and I’ve even talked to your boss, and he said the job you turned down might still be up for grabs. So I thought maybe I’d…”

  I abandon the back rub and move around to look her right in the face. “Wasn’t it you who said Kelly wasn’t offering me nearly enough money?”

  “Well, after you turned it down,” she says, stressing the “turned down” part, “I had a talk with him and I pretty much convinced him it would be in his best interest to pay someone well to do a good job.”

  “And that person would be you?”

  She sniffs. “Well, I have to start thinking about my future, now that Arthur’s leaving.”

 
“But what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll need more money with Ray gone.”

  “Is he gone?”

  I lean against Olive’s red monstrosity to think about her question. Ray said he was coming home, but who’s fooling who? During this past year his visits have added up to what has felt like a bunch of Band-Aids trying to close a gash the size of a canyon.

  “Yeah, I’d say he’s gone. Or going. Pretty much gone.” I can’t believe I just choked that out.

  “Then I guess we’re in the same boat, now, aren’t we?”

  “Kind of looks that way.”

  Now I’m crying for letting my own marriage slip through my fingers. I wonder if Alana was right when she said sometimes women reach a point when they turn on their men, forcing them to run away.

  I go back to standing behind Olive, again rubbing her shoulders. I’m doing it because I have to think about us running our men off and in order to think I need some quiet. And it is some quiet here in this cemetery, except for the snow dripping from the trees, and our sniffling, and Suzie’s rustling around in the underbrush. Maybe there’s something I need a whole lot more than a man in my life right now. Maybe it’s time to move forward and allow the past to fall away.