By the Rivers of Brooklyn (44 page)

“Oh, I always remember it being lovely in June,” Aunt Ethel says, staring out at the brick sprawl of the taxation building. “Diane's going to try to get the girls to come up with her. None of them have ever been back here, and she wants to give them a sense of their heritage. Chrissie – that's her oldest – she's very interested in history, you know. Old buildings, architecture. She and her husband Barry designed their own house. Amazing, it's like a mansion.”

The drive home sets the tone for Aunt Ethel's visit. She has three topics of conversation, Anne discovers: How Things Have Changed; Poor Jim; and My Wonderful Grandchildren. After about three weeks have passed and Aunt Ethel has exhausted much of the subject matter in the Big Three topics – not that she ever lets them go entirely – she finds a fourth area of conversation: Complaints.

How Everything Has Changed slips easily into Complaint: it was never this cold, people used to be more friendly, you can't find your way around St. John's anymore. As well as deviating from its former self, St. John's also errs by not being New York: not enough buses and taxis (although Ethel approves of the fact that all the taxi drivers are white and speak English); the stores aren't the ones she's used to; it rains so much.

Anne hears these complaints when she sits down at Aunt Annie's kitchen table for a couple of hours after her classes finish at university. She's in the habit of waiting there for one of her parents to pick her up after work. (“Your mother is still a secretary, is she?” Aunt Ethel says. “Jimmy's wife, Joyce, she's never gone out to work. Wonderful housekeeper. You could eat off her floor. Diane, now, she's with a big firm in Manhattan. Very big office. She'll retire in a few years with a grand pension plan.”) Aunt Ethel always smiles pleasantly at Anne when she comes in, but once, when Anne was curled up on the chesterfield reading a book, she heard Ethel in the kitchen saying to Annie, “Is that all she does? Hang around here and read? Fine big girl like that, you'd think she'd be more help to you.” Which makes Anne feel guilty, but also makes her think that Aunt Ethel is a venomous old woman.

She learns, after awhile, to tune out Ethel's personal attacks, the ways in which Anne does not measure up to Ethel's own grandchildren. She can also ignore the general complaints about Newfoundland. What she can't ignore are the digs at Aunt Annie's home and hospitality. Fiercely loyal to Aunt Annie, Anne bites her tongue – hard – when Aunt Ethel gets up slowly from her chair. “I find I'm awful stiff these mornings, in my back and down into my hips. That mattress is not very firm. Of course it's only a sofa-bed.”

So it begins. Within a month the hints have gotten broader. Well, they really can't be called hints anymore. “Oh, I don't know what I'm going to do, my back is so bad,” Ethel says. “Annie, when Harold and Frances were home a few years ago, they said they had a lovely room, nice comfortable bed. What bed was that? Where did you put them to?”

Aunt Annie looks up from the cake batter she's stirring. “That was my bed. When Harold and Frances came down I moved out of my room. For two weeks.”

Aunt Ethel looks away, out the window. “Oh. That was nice.” She draws a long, deep sigh. “I can't get used to looking out the window and seeing all these other houses around. Seems so crowded here. Remember how open it used to be, Annie?”

Anne corners Aunt Annie the next day, when Aunt Ethel's own sister Ruby has taken her out to supper. “How can you put up with it, Aunt Annie? Making little digs like that? It's like she's suggesting you should have moved out and given
her
your room!”

“Well, and I would have, Anne, if it was only for a couple of weeks like when Harold and Frances came. But she's talking like she's moving back here forever, or at least for as long as she pleases, and I'm not…I'm just not willing to be put out like that, not knowing how long it'll be.”

Spring arrives. Anne's first year of university ends and she has a job with Parks Canada for the summer. To get the job working at Signal Hill she had to go through an interview where they asked her all about the history of St. John's and Signal Hill, and she performed admirably, but the job actually involves painting the steps and railings on the scenic walking trails, which doesn't seem to require much knowledge of history.

In the last week of June, Aunt Diane arrives for a visit, accompanied by her daughter Laurie and Uncle Jimmy's daughter Katie. Anne finds, as she stands in the Arrivals area of the airport, that she's actually scared of meeting Laurie and Katie. Both are older than she is, but more importantly both are more beautiful, brilliant and sophisticated than she is – at least, if Aunt Ethel is to be believed. When she sees the three women coming out of the gate Anne is inclined to believe Aunt Ethel, for once.

Aunt Diane – not really an aunt, of course, a first cousin once removed – has dark hair and very bold, striking make-up. She's wearing a long leather coat and high leather boots. Behind her are the two girls, one a couple of years older than Anne, wearing a college sweatshirt, tight jeans and a denim jacket. Her ash-blond hair hangs straight to just below her shoulders, with bangs feathered back around her face. The other girl is older – that must be Laurie, the marine biologist – also a blond, who looks so much like Princess Diana, ruffled blouse and all, that Anne feels her heart drop.

A flurry of hugs and kisses is followed by an interminable wait for luggage. They get most of it in the end: a large suitcase of Diane's and a bag belonging to Katie are missing, which involves trips to the office to report the bags missing. “Oh my gawd, I don't have, like, my toothbrush or
anything
,” Katie says. Her accent is like a TV-sitcom-New Yorker:Anne didn't think anyone in real life actually talked like that. “Underwear, everything. Can you even buy underwear here?”

“No, we mostly go without it. It's sexy and it feels so…so
natural
,” Anne says, wide-eyed and hating her new cousin already. “But for times when we absolutely
have
to have it, we mail-order it in from the States. I can loan you my back-up pair if you want.”

For a horrified moment Katie stares at Anne, then Laurie bursts out laughing. “Way to go, Anne. That's telling her. Don't be an idiot, Katie. Give me a hand with this freakin' bag, wouldya?”

Anne likes Laurie.

Anne and her parents drive the three guests to Aunt Annie's house, where the two aunts have cooked a turkey, but decided, since it's so warm, to serve it cold, with salads, instead of doing dressing and mashed potatoes and gravy. While Aunt Annie explains this decision, Diane peels off her leather jacket and shivers. “Oooh, you think this is
warm
? I'm really finding it chilly.”

Doug laughs as he hangs up her coat. “No, this is what we call a heat wave, Diane.”

“Oh gawd,” Katie says again, refusing to relinquish her denim jacket. “I could never, never live here.”

Several responses spring to mind, but Anne bites her tongue.

Katie's attitude does not improve, but the visit in general gets better after its awkward start. Claire takes Diane, Laurie and Katie up to Signal Hill one day when Anne is working. Anne gets off early and they all stay up on the hill to watch the Tattoo, which is pretty impressive – although Laurie points out that she's been to a Civil War re-enactment with her sister and brother-in-law “because they're into that kind of thing,” and that the Tattoo is pretty small by comparison. “But it's really nice, for what it is,” she adds kindly.

“Mike would love this. He was really sorry he couldn't come,” Diane says. “I gotta bring him back here sometime.” Aunt Diane's second husband is a New York City police officer named Mike Malone, and he's the reason she moved back to New York. Laurie, who grew up in California, describes herself as “bicoastal” : she attends grad school in California near her father, but spends vacations with Diane in New York.

Katie has lived all her life on Long Island. Except for a trip to Florida with some girlfriends last spring, this is the farthest she's ever been from home. “Edge of the freakin' world,” she says. “My dad is
always
going on about wanting to come up here again. I'm going to tell him: Newfoundland? Been there, done that.”

“Oh shut up, Katie,” says Laurie. “You've done nothing but bitch since you came here.”

“Give it a rest, you two,” Aunt Diane says from the bleacher seats behind them.

“I'm going inside to find a bathroom,” Katie says, wandering off towards the interpretation centre.

Anne doesn't look at her, but she can tell from the sound of Diane's voice that she's rolling her eyes. “Honest to God, she's a little pain in the ass, isn't she? I mean, I had the best of intentions, bringing her along. Jimmy and Joyce thought it wouldn't hurt her to see a little bit of the world, discover her roots. But she just doesn't travel well.”

“She's immature,” Laurie says. Anne, two years younger than Katie, although better travelled, stays quiet.

“Yeah, well if she doesn't grow up a bit soon, Jimmy and Joyce are going to have their hands full. They've already got enough trouble with Dennis.”

Laurie laughs. “We shoulda brought
Dennis
,” she says. “Dennis with his green hair. Rebel without a clue.”

Aunt Diane changes topics in midstream without warning. “I phoned Air Canada this morning, Claire, and I got reservations for Mom to come home the first week of September. I told Joyce to start looking for another place for her. She can't go back in her apartment – she's not able to manage on her own – but she doesn't want a nursing home either. A place with some care, but a little independence too.”

“Oh. She's not…I mean, she's not still thinking of staying longer?” Claire's voice is light, but Anne, who knows its every nuance, can hear several things in her mother's tone.

“No, well, you can't go home again, can you? I think Mom finally has that figured out. She called me the end of her second week here and told me, ‘Diane, I can't stay here with Annie.' It only makes sense, two women their age. They're set in their ways, aren't they? And nothing home is the way she remembers it. Except for Aunt Annie and Aunt Ruby, she's got no-one here. All her old friends are dead. She's been thinking for fifty years she wants to get back to Newfoundland, but the fact is, her home is in New York, you know?”

“Oh, I agree completely,” Claire says.

“I told her as soon as I called, I said, ‘Mom, come back with me and the girls when we come up to visit.' And she thought she might, but now she says she'd like to see out the summer. It's like part of her wants to go and part wants to stay, you know?”

“But you made the reservations?” Claire says. There's a hint of concern in her voice now, no doubt wondering which of Aunt Ethel's divided halves is going to carry the day.

“Oh yes, reservations made and paid for. Tuesday after Labour Day. I told her this morning, and I think she was satisfied.”

“Well,” says Claire in a voice that betrays nothing, “that's all you can do, isn't it?”

CLAIRE
 
TORONTO, MAY 1984

T
HE DAY
T
HOU GAVEST
, Lord, is ended
The darkness falls at Thy behest

Claire stood with head bowed in the spare funeral chapel where artificial light glowed through artificial stained-glass windows. Uncle Harold, at the front of the room, looked artificial too, with his hands folded over his chest. “My but he looks lovely, doesn't he,” the women around the casket at the wake had crooned. Lovely, except of course, dead.

All the women in the family were weeping: the daughters-in-law discreetly, dabbing Kleenex around their eyes. Aunt Frances fought it, screwing up her face. Only Valerie gave way to grief, tears pouring down her face, her great shoulders heaving. Valerie had become a big woman who looked ten years older than Claire. Valerie had let her hair go grey but didn't have a short sensible cut or a perm. Long grey hair draggled down her back, or was pinned in haphazard loops and coils atop her head. She wore a flowing black dress like a tent, accented by silver bangle bracelets and a jangly silver necklace. Claire shook her head. Valerie wasn't stupid. She knew she was outlandish and didn't even care; she did it by choice.

“I wasn't prepared for it, not a bit,” Aunt Frances said as the coffin was lowered. “I always thought Harold would live to be ninety, he was so healthy, so spry for his age. Seventy-five years old…sure, he had years and years ahead of him. I was never prepared for him to go so sudden.”

A massive heart attack had killed Uncle Harold instantly. “Better to go sudden than like poor Uncle Jim,” Claire reminded Frances, who was immediately cheered by the comparison. Uncle Jim had lasted seven years after his stroke.