“No, my love. None in here, you needn’t worry. The lot of them lives out in the barn. Can’t have a barn without a few mice now, could you? Wouldn’t be right somehow.”
“We can check your traps for you, ma’am. We’ll be real careful.”
“If you minds your fingers. And your toes.”
“That’s enough, Jason,” Jane cautioned. To Anita, “Did you ever hear of some place called Devil’s Rock?”
Anita Hilliard caught the tone. “Yes. Devil’s Rock. ’Tis a peculiar sight. Not far. Down on the beach.” She peeled the lid off her bread container, punched her fist deep into the bubbly bread dough.
“Look,” Jason squealed, pointing at the two white mounds that billowed up, encased Anita’s hand. “There’s Granny Stella’s backside.”
“Christ Almighty,” Elise groaned, eyes rolled upwards. “What don’t come out of their mouths.”
“Never you mind now, about someone’s backside. Go on out. Get some fresh air before it starts to rain again.”
“Sure, he said the same thing when he saw some rhino pissing on tv,” Andrew said, batting his mile-long eyelashes.
“Said what?”
“Said, look, there’s Gran’s arse.”
“Arse?”
“No, he said ‘ass.’ Ass. That’s a swear word.”
Elise groaned again.
“Great-Gran was right there too. Heard him say it and all.”
“You little rat fink.” Jason locked his brother’s head in his elbow, squeezed. “Tattle-tail. I’m gonna stick your tongue in one of those traps.”
Jane stood up from the table. “Young men!” They disentangled themselves, stared at her as she spoke. “I’m sure Mrs. Hilliard’s got a decent bar of soap for your mouths if you keep it up. Believe you me,” pushing up her silk sleeves, “I’m up for the task.”
The boys tumbled into the porch, jammed feet into sneakers, arms and heads into hooded sweatshirts, slammed the screen door, and pounded down the path in the grass.
“Finally,” Jane said, settling in again. “A moment of beloved peace.”
“It’s apt to be a quiet day. They’re having a funeral this afternoon for Alec Parsons.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. What took him?” Jane asked.
Elise thought Jane’s highbrow accent seemed entirely out of place there in the small kitchen. She always spoke with heightened tone, surplus urgency. While Elise’s and Anita’s chatting tangled together, looping and weaving, Jane’s sentences just sunk to the bottom, her words like a bag of mewing kittens tossed in a pond.
“The cancer. Lung, I believe. But he was an old feller. Took beautiful photographs.” She sliced through the dough with a long thin blade, quickly shaped a pan of neat supper buns, three loaves. “Going through his stuff, they come across a boxload of photos of his late wife. Had over a thousand of them.”
“Must’ve been true love.”
“True love is right. Shouldn’t we all be so lucky. She hadn’t a stitch on in most of them.”
“Oh my Lord.” Elise put her hand to her throat.
“And last going off, she was near her age.” Anita nodded her head towards Stella, who was seated in a rocker, cup of untouched tea on the pedestal table beside her.
Everyone turned to look at Stella. Smiled at her, and she smiled back. Neat white teeth, gums not quite the right shade of pink.
Ah, yes. Stella. They had quite forgotten she was there at all.
The deterioration was gradual. This point was not lost on Stella. Over the years, she was vaguely aware that the power was shifting, but these shifts were all so understated, there was hardly room to complain. Until the realization of the deep loss struck her in the face. She had forecasted this with some squeamishness decades ago, and now it was reality. She, Stella Edgecombe, had grown old.
In one sense, she knew she was blessed, never having had a serious illness, just a plodding decline of her senses, her body. Bunions, achy knees, temperamental bladder, loss of taste, thinning hair, loose spotted skin. A mildly erratic heart. But whose wasn’t? There was a continual off flavour in her mouth that bothered her though. A fetid taste. She might have suspected a tooth, if that had been a feasible guess. But since the only teeth in her mouth were porcelain, she surmised, with some trepidation, that the taste originated from somewhere further within.
Oh, and if she wanted to continue to compile the list of minor ailments, she could not forget the arthritis in her knuckles. She glanced down at her hand as it rested on the pillow near her cheek. Her knuckles reminded her of tubers on thick stubby roots, and she could barely hold a pen to write. But who wanted to write anyway? Didn’t she find it difficult to draft a letter to Annette? Robert’s granddaughter. Her great granddaughter. Those letters she received from the girl were composed in pink ink, splattered with exclamation marks, dotted with hearts. Brimming with exuberance, this correspondence, while Stella had come to rely mostly on the comma. In fact, in recent years, she required the pause mid-sentence whether one was grammatically correct or not.
Stella closed her eyes, drifted for a moment, opened them again, glanced about the dimly lit room. She tried to make out the design on the ornate wallpaper, thought it looked like a dull repeated pattern of fat cherubs holding up twisted bouquets of roses. Might well be trucks and cars that surrounded her, she couldn’t be certain, though she sensed this tiny room on the first floor of the farmhouse had been a woman’s room. Perhaps a mother’s room.
She allowed her lids to lower slowly, her mind to wander. If she had to choose a single moment when she realized she was truly an old woman, it would have involved a picnic near Elise’s home. Bowring Park, maybe. Or perhaps somewhere entirely different. Stella was uncertain of how long ago it was, or who exactly was present. Elise, she knew. Stella did remember that, her daughter using an ice cream scoop (of all things) to serve potato salad on paper plates, handing out bottles of unnaturally coloured drinks. After the lunch, Elise had cracked open a watermelon with the twist of a long knife. Sounded like a head hitting solid rock. And when the fruit lay open before Stella, its flesh was so brilliant, it had startled her.
Everyone began eating and spitting black seeds and swiping their chins. As Stella watched on, she considered that her attendance there no longer affected the level of etiquette. Once, people seemed to mind themselves, but the effect of her presence had obviously faded. The lot of them consumed the watermelon like animals now, eyes and face pressed into enormous green smiles, rapid breathing, chins and cheeks slathered with wet pinkish tissue.
“Go on, Mother,” Elise had urged. “Don’t be so stiff.”
“I’m just fine, thank you.” Stella folded her hands in her lap, wanted to pull her legs underneath the chair, but was fearful that the metal and cloth contraption upon which she was perched might topple over.
Elise swabbed her face with a crumpled napkin. “Too late for you to learn how to have a bit of fun, I suppose.”
Stella pursed her thin lips and turned slightly to watch a group of boys in the field, a football drilling the air between them. She watched as one of the boys, some relation to her, or about to become a relation, jumped higher than he needed to in order to catch the ball. Throwing and jogging in the spot, he made exaggerated moves that emulated exercise, but Stella could tell by his shape, his dumpy torso, that he was not well acquainted with physical activity. Then, as she looked on, his hand dove down the back of his tracksuit, slid around the front. And he had groped himself. Handled himself, without the least hint of modesty, as Stella had stared. He had the cheek to shift the whole works around.
In the tiny bedroom, Stella closed her eyes again. Voices from the kitchen drifted in through the thin walls, sounds muted, as though arriving through icy cold water. Likely Jane and Elise were complaining about the costs of caring for Stella. Sharing personal business with that other woman. Asking her opinion on whether or not Stella should be placed in a home? Suggesting it might be better, safer. Stella had heard i
t all before.
She sighed, ran her fingers over the soft pillowcase. Line-dried freshness. What a simple pleasure, Stella thought. She held the odour high in her nose, in the place particularly sensitive to remembering. No one she knew dried their clothes on a line anymore. Not one single person. She had mentioned this to Miss Parsons, the nurse who came to tend to her, but the nurse took that as a request to use a double dose of fabric softener, causing Stella’s bedding to have a smattering of sky blue stains, a strong fake floral scent that nearly gagged her. She inhaled again. Part of her childhood was tucked inside that smell. Salt air and sunshine, winds sharp enough to clip the hide from a bear.
What was she thinking about? Oh, yes. He had returned to the backyard. That boy who was playing football. What was his name? It escaped her completely. She could see his scalp through his thinning hair, his sweaty head glistening in the sun, and he put his hands on her, on the dry, clean shoulders of her ironed blouse. “How you doing, Nanny E?” he had said, leaning down, pressing a hard kiss into her hollow cheek, everyone else smiling on. “Oh, Nanny E,” he’d sung, patting her back, “my best old girl.”
And there it was. The very instant she had realized how much she had lost. Control over her body. She, an old girl. Stroked on the back as though she were an ancient cow that no longer gave milk. Now, unfamiliar people, dirty people, conceived it well within their rights to touch her. An old girl. To kiss her. An old girl. And this touching and kissing and patting caused others to gaze on with brightened expressions of wonderment. How kind to give the poor elderly soul a flicker of attention.
While this shift of bodily control was taking place, there was movement elsewhere as well. As her only recourse, she had begun to move inwards, spending much more of her time inside her own consciousness. If she considered how often she was fully present, in these papered rooms, beside these chatty people, it would be comfortably limited. The occasion was a rarity. Though she felt slightly snobby to admit it, she no longer enjoyed their company. Preferred the placidness of her memories. They were readily available to her, arrived inside her skull with uncompromised clarity. With minimal effort, she could smell the salt of the snails when she and her brother Amos crushed them for bait. Hear her mother’s song as she sat on the daybed, drawing a stretch of thread through a quilt. Taste Nettie’s molasses drop cookies, heavier and harder than they should have been. Feel Leander’s hand interwoven with hers, that hint of webbing between their fingers touching.
Yet, Stella hadn’t shut herself off, bricked herself in. Just this morning, before leaving on the drive to Bended Knee, she and Robert had a lively discussion about the challenges of life on the water. He had been reading the paper at her kitchen table, snorted, and Stella thought it sociable to ask about the latest news.
“There isn’t any place they can’t reach nowadays.”
Robert’s voice was strong and clear, words never tangled or dampened in his throat. This was one of the many things Stella adored about her son. He spoke with conviction whether he was describing the weather or a war.
“Mmmhmmm.” She nodded. “A lot more trouble back in the day.”
“No place is sacred anymore. All the drugs.”
“Not like it were.”
“Brought an enormous amount of it in, using skiffs,” he said. “That’s what it says here. If you can believe that.” He held up the paper in her direction.
“I can’t make it out at all now. I can’t make it out, dear.”
He folded the paper, dropped it onto the table. “Well, seems a crowd of them was running it. Using boats as a system. Busted by the police. Found an enormous amount of it. Looks like jail time. For a good many years, I’m hoping.”
“Ye– right, right,” she replied. As opposed to her son’s voice, Stella’s dentures made her speak with an annoying and embarrassing whistle. So, she spoke slowly, choosing her words as best as she could in order to avoid it. “I can believe it. When I wasss real young, I knowed the big boat would come in ssso far, trap ssskiff bring the flour and what not the ressst of the way.”
“Was drugs, Mother. Hash or some such. Selling it to the teenagers.”
“Oh. Oh. Didn’t have much of that in my day. Hardly even a pill for a headache.” She had touched the large pocket on her day dress, felt the hardness of the plastic cylinder containing her heart medication. A light dose. Very light. Hardly even necessary at all. “Had to wait for the good doctor to come round. And that didn’t happen but every blue moon.”
“Riles me, it does. To no end. I see those boys, Jason and Andrew, rambunctious and all, and it worries me. What’s available. What’s being pushed. Only another couple of years, and all that garbage will be waiting on their front steps. All they need to do is open the door.”
Stella jiggled the medication just enough to confirm the presence of the pills inside. She had wondered if she could stop taking them, her heart felt strong and steady. No more bouts of arrhythmia. But she kept forgetting to mention it to Dr. Simpson. Kept forgetting.
“These young men,” he said, peeling off his glasses, jamming them into a leather case, “all they’re doing is setting out to destroy. Pad their own pockets off the ruination of others.”
Stella nodded again, attempted to portray more sincerity, though she guessed she had missed some crucial aspect of the conversation. “Young men today idn’t what they were in my day.”
He stopped, smiled at her. “Oh, Mother,” he said. Then he crossed the room towards her, touched her face. The kind of touch that Stella appreciated. Honest. Loving. “Yes, those were kinder times, Mom. You’ve had a lucky life.”
She smiled back, looking up at him from her seat. They held each other’s gaze longer than usual, and at once, she was girlishly, amusingly aware of her appearance. She desperately hoped her make-up wasn’t overly clownish, as it sometimes looked when she caught her reflection. A little too much blush on her gaunt cheeks, too bright lipstick on her mostly hidden lips. Those compounds crept into the wrinkles on her face, created a map of stained lines. Touching the palm of his hand with her dry fingertips, she suddenly wanted to look pretty. To have her only son remember her as a pretty woman. And have that memory, whenever he paused to reflect on her, make him happy.
He broke away first, after another smile. Pacifying, this time, though she didn’t like to admit it.
“Miss Parsons?” he called down the hallway of her apartment. “Can you help mother get ready for her overnight outing?”
“Of course, Mr. Edgecombe.”
Miss Parsons appeared almost instantly. Stella suspected her nurse was hiding around the corner, listening in on that private conversation with her son. After all, the woman did work for Elise, was paid to know what transpired in Stella’s life. Stella glared at Miss Parsons, glared at her starched white cap, white button-up dress, white sweater, white hose, white sneakers without a single scuff. Those sneakers annoyed Stella. She found it rude that someone would walk over her soft carpet wearing sneakers. Clean or not, it was irrelevant. But not wanting to seem focused on petty trivialities, she never mentioned her issue with Miss Parsons to another soul.
“She won’t be but a moment now, will you, Mrs. Edgecombe?”
Stella had not wanted to return to Bended Knee. She did not want to see the old buildings torn down, the wild grass shorn with electric mowers, dirt roads paved, and teenagers with painted on clothes loitering underneath electric streetlights. Instead, she preferred the Bended Knee that existed inside her mind. One where Leander still made furniture, where Amos yearned for Nettie, where her father hobbled down the laneway towards a hot Sunday dinner. But her preference was disregarded, and she was packed up like a piece of antique luggage, helped into a van, secured in place with a belt. Flanked by two hot-bodied children, they began to glide down the circular drive in front of Stella’s building.
“Stop,” Jane had said. And Robert jammed his foot on the break, everyone lunging forward. “Jason. Andrew. Did you empty your bladders?
”
“Yes, Grandmother,” they chimed, eyes rolling.
“And Mother?”
“What do you want?”
“Did you. . .you know?”
“You know?”
“Go to the toilet,” Elise chimed in. “Tea goes right through you. And I seen you on your second cup.”
Stella noticed Robert glancing down at his hands, his fingers curled around the plastic steering wheel. Was it plastic? Or rubber? She had never learned to drive, never gripped a steering wheel, controlled the movement of a car.
“Well, Mother?”
Stella sneezed lightly, a fake sneeze. Something of a habit she had developed when she couldn’t say something polite.
“Let’s just get going,” Robert said. “Not as though we’re going to the moon. We’re allowed to stop.”
Thank you, my son.
After arriving, a cup of tea, two cherry squares later, Elise took Stella by the arm, led her down the long hallway along the back of the house. Elise paused outside the second dark-wooden door on the right, said, “I wonders if this is the one she said. I don’t want to go poking around.”
As Elise darted back to the kitchen to double-check the room, Stella waited in the hallway, hand on the doorframe. At the end of the hall was a long window that looked on a stretch of closely shorn grass, two burgundy coloured picnic tables. Stella could imagine how it once looked, rows of hearty cabbages and potato plants, a man standing along a row, head bent, hoe in hand, summer sun beating down on his neck. She could picture it clearly.
With the toe of her slipper, she adjusted the hooked rug that was bunched on the floor, heard the sigh escape from her lips. She moved her hand, touched the door, paint somehow sticky even though it was dry. In all her years in Bended Knee, she had never been in this house, but now, something about it felt entirely familiar. She smelled the air, detected the faint scent of onions, even though she was fairly certain there were no onions chopped and waiting on the kitchen counter. How peculiar, Stella thought. She knew the hallway would smell of onions even before she walked through the door.
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