Lucy Cloud

by Anne Lévesque

  Perhaps sensing a presence, John A turned his tobacco-tinged white head toward the doorway. As soon as he saw Lucy, the bemused expression that was now a permanent feature of his face – that seemed, in fact, to be the only thing holding up the tired muscles and slack skin – changed to one of surprise and joy. An ageless, intact smile dissolved the mask to reveal the real, the true, the one and only John A. Had anyone ever looked so happy to see her? Lucy doubted it. Her throat tightened as she bent to give him an awkward hug. Awkward because she stood and he sat, but also because it had never been easy to hug John A. His big soft body would become stiff, all jutting bone and tense muscle, and his arms frozen by his sides. Was it because, having never married and had children, he had lived much of his life without the touch of another? Or because his family, like many of that generation, had not been demonstrative? (Annabel had told her that her father had hugged her only once, on the day of her brother Blaise’s funeral.)

  After the unsuccessful embrace, John A’s eyes clouded again. Who is this woman and what does she want? It happened every time. His heart knew her until his mind took over.

  ‘It’s Lucy!’ she said in his left ear. The better one. ‘Lucy MacLeod.’ He looked at her blankly.

  ‘Lucy!’ she said. ‘Annabel’s granddaughter. Annabel Jane.’ (His mother’s sister had also been named Annabel.) And, more softly, ‘Blaise’s daughter.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to my watch?’

  ‘Did you lose your watch, Uncle?’

  ‘Someone stole it. It was one of those kids. I don’t know why they let them run around in here.’

  ‘What kids?’

  ‘How the hell are you supposed to – ’ He swivelled his head towards the clock above the door. ‘Aaarch! I’ll do it later. I don’t want to miss my lunch.’ Lucy looked at the clock. It was five past ten. He shifted in his chair and Lucy noticed that the fly of his pants was open.

  ‘I hope it’s fish,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s cod.’ A look of contentment spread over his features. He looked around him. ‘They sure are good to me here.’

  Another glimpse of the real John A. A man who counted his blessings. Who saw the positive in everything.

  ‘Funny John A never got married,’ she had once said to Annabel. (She never wondered this of the dour Alec.)

  ‘Not everyone gets married,’ Annabel said. But the way she said it, and the way she would change the subject whenever it came up, made Lucy suspect a story. A story and a half, as Curly used to say. Had John A been jilted? Loved a brother’s girlfriend? A neighbour’s wife? Was he gay?

  ‘Why are you staring at me?’ John A said.

  ‘Just thinking how well you look, Uncle. Do you want to go for a walk?’ She repeated the question. He turned down the corners of his mouth and shook his head: ‘I don’t want to miss my lunch. I think it’s fish.’

  When Lucy waved goodbye from the door a half- hour later John A did not wave back. He was looking at Albert’s family on the wall.

  This was his life now. A prison life, Lucy thought, the long idle days punctuated only by the fleeting pleasure of food and the appearance of bossy strangers. Would John A care, or even notice, if she never showed up again? She didn’t think so. But the real question was: would she care?

  She thought of a happier visit. In Blue River, the first time she came for Thanksgiving.

  Santana had met her bus in Whycocomagh. She was home for the weekend, too. A sad visit for her. Jenny had been diagnosed with an aggressive type of aphasia two years earlier. Her condition was rapidly getting worse.

  ‘She can’t read at all now,’ Santana said. ‘Not even what’s on a can at the Co-op. She took out one of her recipe books yesterday (she knows it’s Thanksgiving) but when she sat down with the book’ Santana’s voice breaking ‘she just stared at the cover. She didn’t know what to do with it.’

  Lucy sighed.

  ‘She can’t drive. And she forgets stuff. Like how to tie her shoelaces.’

  ‘I’ll go see her tomorrow.’

  ‘She’d like that. And Eric, too.’

  ‘How is he taking it?’

  ‘Pretty hard.’

  ‘—’

  When they arrived at Annabel’s Santana gave Lucy her car keys. ‘Take the car for the weekend. I won’t need it. You can take Annabel out, she’ll like that.’

  As soon as Annabel found out that they had a vehicle at their disposal, she asked if she could go ‘up home’ to Blue River. She called the twins the next day to tell them she was coming over but getting no answer she decided to go anyway.

  It would be the last time Lucy would see the three siblings together. Alec would die eighteen months later. Without fuss, as he had lived, and ‘with his boots on,’ as he had hoped. His heart had stopped on the way back from the mailbox one afternoon. (Alec and John A made a contest of everything, and the one who got to the mail first was the victor.) A neighbour saw him from the road, face down in the mud and slush, clutching the power bill. John A had always counted on the fact that he would be the first to die. He was the one who was fat and diabetic and short of breath, not Alec. His twin’s passing left him sad and bewildered. This was judged to be normal at first until it became evident that John A was suffering from dementia. Thinking back, Annabel realized that she had noticed symptoms but not recognized them for what they were.

  ‘He wouldn’t come to the phone anymore – remember how he used to love talking on the phone? I should have twigged then,’ she said to Lucy. ‘And then there was the time he couldn’t remember your father. I just thought it was old age.’

  They had not known how helpless John A was without his brother. How much Alec had protected him. After Alec died he could no longer live alone.

  Lucy and Annabel set out after lunch. It was a fine day, the air so clear it made the mountains seem closer, the oranges and yellows of the turning leaves more intense. Lucy slowed down when they turned onto the gravel road, opened her window to the fragrance of leaf mould and overripe apples. Behind them a radiant dust.

  ‘Nana. Remember those stories you used to tell me? About Rory?’

  ‘Rory,’ Annabel said thoughtfully. They were going by a church and she was making the sign of the cross.

  ‘Was he a real person?’

  ‘No-o-o.’

  ‘I thought he might have been.’

  ‘No he wasn’t. I don’t know why I called him Rory. It just popped out once when I was telling Blaise a story. After that all the stories were about Rory.’

  ‘Those stories weren’t about you?’

  ‘No-no, Rory was a boy.’

  ‘Were they about Grampie?’

  ‘Some of them might have been. And about my brothers for sure.’

  ‘You didn’t make them up?’

  ‘No-o, I’m not that smart. They were stories I heard that stuck in my mind.’

  ‘Tell me a story about you.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yeah. Something that happened to you when you were young.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Goodness, let me see.’ She thought for a while. ‘Oh. I know. Did I ever tell you about the time I got a boy’s haircut?’

  * * *

  ‘You know the house at the forks going up to Mount Young, the one with all the big trucks in front?’

  ‘With the quonset?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The metal garage.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the one. Bill and Noeline MacKinnon’s place. When I was young it was Bill’s grandparents who lived there, Hugh John and Kennena. They were related to us, actually. Kennena and my father were second cousins. They had a big family, eighteen, I think, but they were never poor: Kennena had the post office in the parlour and Hugh John worked on the roads. He was a big Liberal and when they lost the ele
ction everyone thought he’d lose his job but he didn’t. Must have known they were gonna lose and he voted Tory. The other thing about Hugh John he was cheap. He was so cheap he wouldn’t let his wife buy toilet paper. Everyone had to work in that house. They all left home young, got pushed out of the nest to make room for the ones coming up behind. So I only got to know the five or six youngest.

  ‘The oldest of that bunch was called Cameron. (Oh, and another thing about those MacKinnons: they were every single one of them tone deaf.) Cameron must have been fifteen or sixteen that year and he’d decided to become a barber – or maybe Hugh John decided for him because he didn’t stick to it, ended up selling insurance in Boston. His sister Irma was living in New Brunswick (‘New Brumswick’) so that’s where he went to take the course. It was the Easter vacation, there was still snow melting and the road was full of runoff. I had a stick and I was having a great old time making little brooks and lakes and dams when all of a sudden I see Colin Kennedy coming up the road. Running. “Where’s Jimmy and the twins?” he says, all out of breath. I told him I had just seen them go behind the barn and he took off again. And me right behind him: I wanted to know what he was so excited about.

  ‘ “Cameron MacKinnon’s home from barbering school,” he says, huffing and puffing, “and he’ll pay five cents to anyone who’ll let him cut his hair.”

  ‘Five cents! That was a big deal for us kids. The whole crew of us took off for the MacKinnon place. Alec didn’t want me to go with them – he and John A never wanted me along, they said I was a tattletale and a nuisance – but I went anyway. There was a lineup beside the barn at the MacKinnons. Cameron had set up a stool against the south wall, where there was no wind. Jimmy pushed me when I tried to get in line but I pushed him right back: I wanted that nickel. When it was my turn Cameron says, ‘I don’t know any girls’ haircuts.’ (Not that he knew many boys’ haircuts. Everyone was getting the same one: the short back and sides.) ‘Well then, give me a boys’ haircut,’ I said. So that’s what he did.

  ‘On the way home Alec says to me, ‘Papa’s gonna spank you for getting your hair cut like a boy.’ I hadn’t thought of that! Papa was strict about things like that – I told you he wouldn’t even let me wear pants, even in the winter. So now I was worried. Then Jimmy had this great idea: “Just wear a hat,” he said. So that’s what I did. I managed to stay out of Papa’s way until suppertime. I waited until he was in his chair – we weren’t allowed to sit down before him – and took my place. At that time Jimmy and Alec and I sat on the bench against the wall. The only way to get there was to crawl under the table. Well. As soon as Papa saw the hat pop up across the table he said, “What’s this? You don’t wear a hat at the table,” and he made me take it off. When he saw my hair he started to laugh. “Well, well, well,” he said. “I guess we didn’t have enough boys in the family.” So I didn’t get a spanking. But he made me give the nickel to Mama. To teach me a lesson.’

  They reached the twins’ lane. Annabel said, ‘Must have been expensive getting all that gravel.’ Then she pointed to the row of alders marching into the meadow. ‘Tsk. They’ll take over the whole field. Papa would have never stood for that.’

  The twins were brown-and-plaid figures in the far garden, one stout, squatting beside a white plastic bucket, one slight, slicing the browned potato hills with a hoe. Next to the barn potatoes were turning from dark mud to beige on some old blankets. Annabel was wearing her going-out shoes so she stayed close to the house. Lucy went out to meet the brothers.

  ‘Oh good!’ John A said. ‘This slave driver doesn’t believe in tea time.’

  ‘Don’t let us stop you working, Uncle. Nana just wanted to have a look around and get a few crabapples.’

  ‘Got a big bag of ’em with her name on it in the porch.’

  ‘And she can have all the potatoes she can carry!’ Alec said. They laughed. Annabel was reputed to have eaten little else as a child and she still had potatoes with most meals.

  They stood together beside the remains of the garden, the yellowing fields and falling-down fences, the grey barn and the old manure pile, all grown over with quack grass. Had there been a year in their lives that potatoes were not birthed from the earth on a day like this? That the crabapple tree did not flower pink and produce at least a dozen rock-sour fruits? That fat cucumbers did not lay slug-like under the prickly green leaves, ready for pickles and relish?

  ‘You should get rid of that buckwheat,’ Annabel said. A patch of Japanese knotweed, struck orange and brown by frost, engulfed the old pigpen. The brothers exchanged looks.

  ‘Bossy, isn’t she?’ John A said. ‘And how would you do that, Missy?’

  ‘You put some plastic on it or an old carpet before it starts to grow in the spring. Leave it there for a couple of years and the buckwheat will die.’

  ‘Well, you come over with a carpet anytime, Annabel. Will it get rid of the pigpen, too?’

  ‘Tsk … Whatshisname in Brook Village – ’ John A said. He looked at his brother.

  ‘Vance,’ Alec said to him. And to Annabel, ‘The American bought D.D.’s place.’

  Annabel nodded. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Ah, he’s all right,’ Alec said. ‘Handy fellow. Helped me fix the pump last week.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Thirty, thirty-five, I suppose.’

  ‘He says you can –’ John A said.

  ‘Married?’ Annabel said.

  ‘Nope,’ Alec said.

  ‘ – says you can eat the durned things,’ John A said. ‘The buckwheat. Cut it off when it comes out of the ground in the spring and eat it. Just like asparagus.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Lucy said. (John A didn’t like vegetables much. She doubted he had ever eaten asparagus.)

  ‘He says it tastes like rhubarb.’

  ‘Maybe you can plant some in front of Annabel’s house!’ Alec said.

  They stepped inside the house, still laughing, the three old people and the young. Sat at the pale-blue arborite-and-chrome table in the kitchen. Drank strong tea with milk and ate the biscuits that Annabel had baked that morning, smeared with buttercup-yellow margarine and the black, viscous blueberry jam that Alec had been making since his mother died. The talk turned to storm windows.

  ‘That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about,’ Annabel said. Curly, God Bless Him, had had all the wooden windows replaced with double-glazed vinyl.

  ‘You could buy one or two every year, that’s what Curly did. You could have bought two of them with the money you spent on that gravel.’

  ‘Gotta good deal on that gravel,’ Alec said, straightening up in his chair. ‘And I like the old windows.’

  ‘So do I,’ Lucy said. ‘They’re beautiful.’

  Alec looked pleased. ‘And besides,’ he said. ‘It’s John A’s turn to put them up.’

  ‘Cac! I did them last year,’ John A said.

  ‘No it was me; I wrote it on the calendar,’ Alec said. He got up and began to rummage in the pile of news-papers, flyers and envelopes on the counter.

  ‘What did you do with that calendar?’ he said. ‘I wrote how many bags of potatoes we got last year. And how many jars of chow I made.’

  ‘Sit down! Sit down! I’ll do the gall-darned windows! This happens every year. I’ll bet he hasn’t put up a window since I came back from Ontario!’

  ‘You were drunk for two years after you came back from Ontario. I didn’t let you climb no ladders.’

  ‘Don’t be telling the girl stories, now,’ John A said. He winked at Lucy. But Alec’s words hung in the air. ‘Remember the time we broke the windows? Remember that, Alec?’ He winked at Lucy. ‘Annabel doesn’t, she was still in diapers!’

  ‘Listen to him! How do you know what I remember?’

  ‘Mama and Papa had to go to a funeral up in Inverness. They were making a day of it, going t
o the stores and visiting Uncle Henry. We called him Uncle even though he was Mama’s first cousin. His mother went to work in Boston after her husband died and Mama’s family raised him like he was their own. He was a character that Henry! Lots of stories about that fella! Mama had put Mary Catherine in charge of us while they were gone. She was only a few years older than us, she must have been around twelve, and she was feeling pretty good about being able to boss us around for a whole day. She didn’t know what she had coming! As soon as we saw the tail end of that buggy in the driveway the whole bunch of us went clear crazy. It had been raining steady for two days and we’d been cooped up inside, five boys between her and Annabel. How old would you have been, Annabel?’

  ‘If Mary Catherine was twelve then I was three.’

  ‘We started running up and down the stairs and swinging off the railing and what have you and yelling at the top of our lungs. We didn’t always have that railing, did you know that, Annabel?’

  ‘I think I might have heard about it …,’ Annabel said, winking.

  ‘Papa had built the stairs but he had never gotten around to making a railing upstairs. We used to run around the opening and it made Mama crazy; she was worried one of us would fall and break his neck or something. When she was about to have Annabel she asked Aunt Mary Assumpta if she would stay with us. Usually it was Aunt Dorie who came but she had gotten married and was about to have a baby herself. Which was too bad: we loved Aunt Dorie. Mary Assumpta was the nervous kind; she was a spinster and she wasn’t used to kids. So she says to Papa – but Mama must have put her up to it – she says to Papa, ‘I’m coming on one condition, Albert. You have to put a railing upstairs.’ So Papa had to finally get her built. Everyone was right pleased about the new railing. But not for long. Because the day after Annabel was born didn’t Blaise climb over the railing and fall on top of the hutch and break his arm?’