After River (25 page)

T
HE CITY SWALLOWED
me whole. It was easy to disappear, to become invisible, swept away in the throng of students who streamed through the hallways of the high school whose population was as big as the entire town of Atwood. It was not so easy in the Beckett home.

The Beckett family lived in a two-storey wartime house in East Vancouver. It was one of the many look-alike houses built by the Canadian government in the fifties for the growing number of families of World War Two veterans. Her brother's home was not quite as large as Widow Beckett believed it to be, but it did have four bedrooms. Four bedrooms and one tiny bathroom, hardly big enough to turn around in, for six children and two adults. And then me. I slept on a cot in the girls' upstairs room.

The two sisters, Judy and Jane, bickered every waking moment. Their bedroom was divided into territories by an invisible line, which ran down the middle of my cot. I was either the object of a tug of war, or ignored.

The four boys ran amok. Unlike my brothers, they had no chores, no routine to guide them. Like frenzied ferrets, night and day they chased each other up and down stairs, in and out of slamming doors.

The house was a constant riot of noise. Doors, cupboards and
drawers were never closed quietly in that home, but banged shut, often double slammed as if in defiance of the surrounding mayhem.

Whenever both Mr and Mrs Beckett were home at the same time, swirling cigarette smoke and angry sounding words filled the air. The normal mode of conversation was top-of-the-lungs yelling, the hurried words lost in the rush to be heard.

Meals were an eat-where-you-are affair, most often gobbled down in front of the constantly blaring black-and-white television set in the tiny living room. Whenever two or more people occupied the same room, which was most always, everyone spoke at the same time, each unable to hear the other in the frantic attempt at getting in a say.

I didn't dislike the Beckett children, they were just different. They felt it too. Like animals, we sniffed at each other to find that we were different species. They found the farm odours, which they told me permeated everything I owned, offensive. I didn't mention that they all smelled of the mildew of their perpetually damp city.

I neither avoided them nor sought them out. It was impossible to feel a part of a family who were constantly bumping into each other in the narrow hallways, yet all living completely separate lives. And even though there were no empty corners to get lost in, it was easy to be lonely in that house.

I tried not to compare their lives with those of my own family. Because I knew, for me, that way of life no longer existed. At night I would lie in my small cot and try to choke back the homesickness that threatened to overwhelm me. In time I would stop hearing the noise of the house, the city, the constant hum of traffic. I would stop looking up at the sky at night hoping to glimpse the same brilliance of the star-filled sky of home. And I would stop waking to the imagined sounds of piano music.

Every week a letter from my mother slid through the mail slot in the front door with chatty news of people and a town I would rather forget. I smiled when she told me Morgan was corresponding with Ruth, who had returned to Queen Charlotte Island. ‘I think he writes more now than he ever did in school,' Mom said.

I cringed when I read:

Dad won the fight to keep his licence to deliver unpasteurized milk, but eventually he gave in and sold to the large dairies. I'm glad I wasn't there to see my father the first time the stainless-steel tanker trucks arrived.

‘Perhaps it's for the best,' Mom wrote. ‘I think the boys might even be relieved. With the automated barn and direct bulk sales now, there certainly won't be enough work to tie them all down here. Maybe Boyer can go to university after all,' she added cheerily. But I knew she saw it as just another event in the chain of tragedies that was tearing her family apart.

It wasn't Boyer who left in the end. Not long after Dad died, Morgan went on a fishing trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands. And to visit Ruth. When he returned, he announced he was moving there.

‘Morgan's going to work on a fishing boat for Ruth's father. It seems more than fish were hooked on his trip. Morgan has fallen in love with the West Coast, the ocean, and most of all with Ruth. I'm happy for them. I adore Ruth. But it's such a long way away.' Mom added that she was sure it would be just a matter of time before Carl moved there too.

And, sure enough, shortly after Morgan left, Carl followed. They've all lived there since. Morgan and Ruth are married, but ironically, considering how they met, childless.

‘Ruth got two husbands for the price of one,' Mom wrote. ‘Although Carl doesn't live with them, his home is a pebble's throw away. Close enough to share most meals with his brother and his wife.'

Ruth doesn't seem to mind though. The few times I've seen them over the years, her shy, oval face portrays only love and acceptance; although I once caught a look of longing cross her eyes as she watched Morgan and Carl playing with their young niece, Jenny, when they visited us.

I often wondered whether Ruth ever tried to find the child she had given up at birth. Not wanting to dredge up unwanted memories or embarrass her, I once asked Morgan if they had ever searched for her baby. He told me that he'd wanted to but she had refused. Maybe, as Mom always says, it's for the best. You can't go back and repair the shattered parts of your life.

In Vancouver, I threw myself into school. And every afternoon I dropped a dime into a clinking glass box on the Hastings Street bus and rode downtown to the public library. I did my homework there, appreciating every moment of the hushed silence, the familiar smell
of books. Then I would sit and read until closing time. After a few months, somebody must have either taken pity on me, or thought that if I was going to spend so much time there I might as well be working. I was offered an after-school job. I accepted. For the rest of the school year, I slept at the Beckett house, but the library was home. When summer came, I told myself, and my parents, that I would rather be cataloguing books than delivering milk.

After I graduated from high school I went to work for a small community newspaper, then moved on to
The Vancouver Sun
.

I married the first man who asked me, before I realized I didn't need to be rescued.

T
HE OXYGEN TANK
drones on in the stillness of my mother's room. I sit by her bed and watch her breathe.

‘Mom,' Jenny's hushed voice breaks into my trance. ‘The morphine has taken hold,' she whispers. ‘Gram's probably asleep for the night now. Why don't we go and get you checked in next door.'

Now that I'm here I'm afraid to leave. But I nod and let my daughter lead me away like a reluctant child.

 

In my room at the Alpine Inn I sit down and take a sip from the glass of sherry in my hand. In the matching blue paisley wingback chair across from me, Jenny waits while I settle. I lean back and close my eyes.

‘Do you remember much about your father?' Jenny's father, my first husband, died before she was eight.

She considers the question. ‘Yes and no,' she finally answers. ‘Sometimes I think everything I remember about him is what you've told me over the years, and from our old pictures. I do remember his hands were always ink-stained when he came home from work. And I remember him reading to me at night. But I have trouble picturing his face.' She is quiet for a moment, then asks. ‘Did you love him?'

I open my eyes and smile at her. ‘You know I once asked your grandmother the same thing about my father. Yes, I think I did, as much as I was able to at the time. I was so young, looking for a saviour. I probably half fell in love with the illusion of who he was. He was older, the editor of a newspaper. And very handsome.'

‘He looked like Uncle Boyer,' Jenny says.

He did
? Yes, I suppose in a way he did. Funny I never thought about that before.

‘So did Ken,' she says, ‘and Bert.'

I am startled by her words. With a jolt that is physical I realize the truth of the observation. All of them, all the men in my life, except Vern, have had some resemblance to Boyer. And to River, although she can't possibly know that. The implication of what she is saying is not lost on me. Is that what I do? Leave them, run away, when I realize they're not Boyer–or River?

And Vern? What does this say of him? Vern with his brown eyes and thick dark hair. He is nothing like the others, in any way. He's not a teacher, an editor, or a writer. Like my father, Vern wears the dirt of the earth under his fingernails. And I have been with him the longest.

I'm too weary to think about this now. I drain the last sip of sherry, set the glass on the night table and push myself up.

‘I know about the baby,' Jenny says quietly.

So this is it. This is what she couldn't talk about on the phone. I sink back into my chair. ‘How long have you known?'

‘I heard the rumours years ago,' she says. ‘It's a small town, Mom.'

‘Why didn't you say anything?'

‘I thought that if you had wanted me to know, you would have told me.'

‘There was no reason to, the baby didn't live.' No reason not to
either. Why hadn't I? As a doctor I'm sure Jenny has heard far more shocking confessions. But not from her mother.

‘I didn't even know I was pregnant,' I tell her now. ‘And when the baby was stillborn it was as if it was nothing more than a miscarriage.'

‘Really?'

I open my mouth, close it, then say, ‘No.'

‘It was that baby Gram was talking about tonight, wasn't it?' Jenny asks.

‘I don't know what she was talking about,' I sigh.

Mom had become incoherent while I tried to soothe her. She mumbled something about Father Mac and Dr Mumford before the morphine took hold. It makes me sad to know my mother is still haunted by my mistakes. ‘Your grandmother and I have never talked about it, about the baby. But she couldn't have heard him cry. The baby was born too early, never took a single breath. It was stillborn.'

‘No,' Jenny's voice is soft, almost a whisper. ‘No, he wasn't.'

I feel as if a hot boulder has thudded into my chest.

‘What? What are you saying? Of course the child was stillborn. Dr Mumford, the nuns, they said—' I shake my head. ‘No, the baby didn't live.'

Jenny leans over, takes both my hands in hers, forcing me to look into her eyes. ‘Mom, listen. You know there were two babies born that night. The other baby, Ruth's baby, was the one that didn't live.' Even though her voice is gentle, I can hear the urgency, the plea for understanding, for belief. ‘I don't know how else to tell you, but it's true,' she says.

Confused, my mind races to make sense of her words, and to find denial as I pull my hands away. ‘No! That's not right,' I stand up quickly, then sit down again. ‘That's impossible–how can–after all these years? How?'

‘There was a request for the medical records of the mother of a baby boy born on February 12, 1969,' she says. ‘But when the records were searched, something wasn't right. There were two births recorded for the date, both to the same mother. Both to Ruth, hours apart. The clerk brought the records to Nick and me. Nick confronted his grandfather. At first old Dr Mumford said it was a mistake. He insisted there was only one baby born that night. He refused to acknowledge the discrepancy. But he finally broke down and confessed. The baby who lived, your baby, was given to the adoptive parents who were waiting for Ruth's child.'

There's not enough air in the room. I cannot fill my lungs. I don't want to hear any more. I stand again and turn to push open the window and gulp the cool air. ‘No,' I insist with my back to her, ‘that can't be right. The nuns! The nuns told me! They wouldn't lie.'

‘Did the nuns actually tell you your baby had died?' she asks gently.

Born too soon
. I have never forgotten the nun's no-nonsense tone as she said those words the next morning. ‘
A baby boy, born too soon
.' And suddenly I relate them to Boyer's childhood lesson about discretion, about using carefully chosen words to avoid the truth, the hurt.

I spin around and face her. ‘That's enough!' I say, fighting the hysteria that rises with my voice. ‘I don't want to know any more. This conversation is over.'

‘But you need—'

‘No! No, I don't. That child was dead to me thirty-four years ago and he's dead to me now. Why drag up the past? Why would you tell me this now?'

But I know the answer before the words are out of her mouth.

‘Because he's coming, Mom,' she says. ‘He'll be here tomorrow afternoon.'

Nettie

T
HEY CAME TOGETHER
.

Nettie heard the hesitancy in their steps. Their shoes shuffled, scratched, barely lifted from the tiled hospital floor. They came into her room so close together they could have been one dark messenger with two heads.

They have come to mourn me, Nettie thought. She had been back in the hospital for over a week now. The stays are getting longer. This will be the last.

But this was a good day.

Boyer stood at the head of her bed, which he had just adjusted for her comfort. Nettie lay with her head cushioned in pillows, watching as the two visitors approached the end of the bed. For a moment she imagined them as two old crows, both garbed in raven black, hovering over the foot rails.

Age had not cowered Dr Mumford. At eighty-five, his posture was still determinedly straight, but she noticed the slight tremor of his hands before he wrapped them around the metal bars.

She looked from him to Father Mac. The years had not been so kind to the priest. His shrunken frame was lost in the bulk of his great wool overcoat. His neck disappeared into his clerical collar.

The greetings were brief. Nettie was relieved her visitors did not ask how she was doing. They knew. Neither of her two old friends was about to waste time on polite lies and reassuring words. The priest spoke first. The timbre in his voice belied his diminishing body. Father Mac placed an arm on Dr Mumford's shoulder. ‘Allen has something to say to you, Nettie.'

She saw the doctor bristle as the priest urged him forward, but he made his way to the side of the bed, next to Boyer.

He took Nettie's hand, then asked Boyer. ‘Could we have a moment please?'

‘It's all right, Allen,' Nettie said. She paused for a moment, concentrated on breathing from the oxygen tubing in her nose, then went on. ‘There's nothing you have to say to me, that my son can't hear.'

‘Nettie,' Dr Mumford began, but his voice cracked. Something inside him seemed to crumble. His shoulders sagged. Boyer pulled up a chair and the doctor slumped into it. ‘I don't know how to tell you,' he said. ‘Years ago…Natalie's baby…'

Nettie's heartbeat quickened as the stream of words came tumbling out of the doctor's mouth. She listened in silence as he confessed to how he played God the night she brought Natalie to him. How he had lied about the child not surviving.

‘There was a family waiting for the baby–Ruth's baby–it was so easy,' he said when he was finished. ‘So easy. I thought it was the right thing.' He lowered his head and wept onto Nettie's hand. ‘I'm so sorry, so sorry.'

‘I heard the baby,' she whispered.

And she recalled the sound coming from behind the delivery room doors. The tiny cry she convinced herself later was Ruth's child. But as the doctor sobbed his remorse at her side, she remembered. She
remembered feeling the strong pull at the core of her being at that cry. It was the same overwhelming tug she had experience at the birth of each of her own children. The memory rose to the surface, a memory buried so deep, she'd never had to face the truth.

She searched the priest's eyes. Although she'd never confessed this one sin, she had lived her life doing penance for her part in Natalie's baby being condemned to purgatory. ‘The baby,' she asked between strained breaths. ‘Did Ruth's baby receive Last Rites?'

As the priest nodded, Nettie closed her eyes and felt relief wash through her.

She opened her eyes as Boyer asked, ‘And Natalie's child? Where did Natalie's baby go?'

‘The hospital didn't keep the adoption records,' Dr Mumford said. ‘Our Lady of Compassion and the Church handled that.'

Nettie's eyes shifted to Father Mac.

‘I'm sorry,' the priest said, ‘I can't give you that information. Adoption records are confidential. But,' he went on, his words slow and measured, ‘we had a written request from an agency searching on his behalf. I've spoken with a representative from the agency. The young man, she told me, is not looking for his birth mother. He doesn't want to intrude on her privacy. But because he has a family of his own now he would like access to family medical history.'

His frail hand reached into the deep pocket of his overcoat. ‘What I can give you,' he said, ‘is this.' He held up a folded paper. ‘It's the contact number of the agency that was inquiring on his behalf.'

Nettie watched as Boyer reached out and took the paper from the priest's hand.