By the Rivers of Brooklyn (46 page)

“So why didn't you go to his place for Sunday dinner, if he asked you?” says Aunt Diane, swishing water over the dinner plates.

“It's a big thing with them. They're rich…sort of, I guess. They have this apartment a few blocks from Central Park.”

“Oh yeah, they're rich.”

“Right. And the whole family comes for Sunday dinner.”

“And you're scared to go?” Diane asks.

Anne turns her coffee cup round and round on the tabletop. “No, it's not really…I mean, I wouldn't say I'm scared, exactly.”

“Not scared? Geez, I'd be
shitbaked
,” Aunt Diane says. Anne laughs so hard it's a minute before she can stand up. She picks up the dishtowel, which is a souvenir of the Cayman Islands.

“So, you coming out with us to see Mom, or do you want us to drop you back to your place?” Aunt Diane wants to know as they finish the dishes.

“I'll come with you. I guess.”

Three quiet steps, and Mike's in the kitchen. “We better get going if we're driving out to Jimmy's,” he says. He comes up behind Aunt Diane, puts his arms around her from behind, and kisses the back of her neck.

For a moment the kitchen is so still Anne almost forgets to breathe. Then Diane says, “I'll finish up here, you go get the car.”

A Sunday afternoon trip to see Aunt Ethel involves first driving to Jimmy and Joyce's, then all setting off together on pilgrimage. Jimmy and Joyce's older two, Junior and the infamous Katie, don't live at home, but Jimmy's youngest boy, Dennis, is still there. He's Anne's age and this Sunday afternoon he decides to come along to visit his grandmother. “Do something with your hair, Dennis,” Joyce says in despair as she scurries about the house collecting magazines and fruit to bring to her mother-in-law. Dennis makes a face at Anne.

“I could shave you bald,” Anne whispers as he pulls on his jacket. Dennis' hair is a dead-white mohawk, leaving the tattoos on either side of his skull visible. For a punk, he's mild-mannered and funny. He hangs drywall for a living.

“So, d'you go home for Christmas?” he asks Anne as they squeeze together in the back of the station wagon.

“Yeah,” Anne says.

“I'd like to go home sometime. For a visit, you know. Guess I'd scare them all up there, though.”

“No, we've got punks in St. John's too. They wouldn't look twice at you,” Anne assures him. It's important to her to keep updating Dennis' ideas about “home” – the place his grandparents came from, a place he's never been.

Aunt Ethel lives at a place called Shady Acres, a long one-storey complex of seniors' apartments and nursing-home rooms. The trees are narrow and spindly, recently planted, so Anne assumes the name is more an act of faith than description. Aunt Ethel has a roommate, Mrs. Clarke, who glares suspiciously at Ethel's family as they gather around her armchair. When Anne walks past, Mrs. Clarke beckons her over. Anne goes to the woman's bedside and stoops to listen.

“That woman…she's watching me,” Mrs. Clarke says, pointing at Aunt Ethel. “Last night…I saw her. I was lying in my bed, and she had…a
flashlight.
Pointed right at me. She watches me while I sleep.”

Anne joins the family group to find that Aunt Ethel is complaining, fairly loudly, about Mrs. Clarke. “That one there, I don't know why they got me in here with her. Can't you speak to them, Joyce? Don't you think they'd put people in with others of…of like interests? I don't think she should be on this wing at all. There's a wing, you know, for people who are bed-rid and mental.”

“Look, Mom, Anne came with us again today. You remember…Claire's girl, Anne?” Diane's voice is a little hesitant at the end, prompting.

Aunt Ethel leans forward, peers at Anne through old-fashioned cat's-eyes glasses. “I know who Anne is, Diane, I'm not senile yet. How are your mother and father, dear?”

“They're fine. I saw them when I was home Christmas.”

“Oh, I'd like to get home again,” Aunt Ethel says. “I often have a mind to write to Annie, say to her, Annie girl, can you fix up a little room for me? Off in a corner anywhere, it doesn't have to be anything special, but I'd like to die in my own place among my own people. Is that too much to ask?” Anne wonders if Aunt Ethel remembers the four months she spent in Newfoundland, four years ago. Aunt Annie certainly remembers.

Joyce pats Ethel's hand. “You are among your own people, Mother. Look, we're all here.”

Ethel shakes her head; Anne has noticed that no matter what Joyce says Ethel is never sharp with her, whereas Diane can't make even the most innocent comment without earning a reprimand. Ethel's voice now is sad rather than angry: “You'll never understand, Joyce girl. Newfoundlanders, you know what they say, you can take the girl out of Newfoundland but you can't take Newfoundland out of the girl. Poor Jim understood that. To his dying day he wanted to go back home. He would have been so happy, just to sit on the back step of Annie's house again, just to see all his old friends. No, Joyce, you don't know what it is to be uprooted from the place you were born, and live out your life among strangers.”

A small silence follows this melancholy speech. Dennis breaks it, saying, “I'm buying a motorcycle, Nan.” This change of subject does nothing to lighten the mood.

“He was a wonderful man, was Jim,” Aunt Ethel says, fumbling for the box of Kleenex on the nightstand. Joyce hands them to her. “A perfect gentleman, right to the end, that's what I always said.”

“Do you want to go for a little walk, Ma?” Jimmy says. “Down the hall, as far as the lounge?”

Ethel looks up through misty eyes. “My, yes, Jimmy, I think that'd be nice. Get me up out of this chair. Take my mind off things. Just bring me over my walker now, that's a good boy, Dennis. What a shame about your hair, can you have anything done for it? I don't suppose it'll be long growing out, will it?”

“Everyone in my family is obsessed with
home
,” Anne tells Brian a few weeks later, walking in Central Park in a drizzling rain. “My Aunt Ethel wants to die at home. I have this cousin, Dennis, who's never been in Newfoundland in his life, and he says he'd like to go
home
sometime. Home is a place he's never been. Isn't that weird?”

“It is weird,” Brian says. “I can't imagine that. It's like they're immigrants or something.”

“Well, they were, I guess. Maybe I'm an immigrant too.”

“And are you obsessed with going home?”

“Um…I don't know. Not right now. But on the other hand, I knew all these people in high school, and in university at home, who were like,
I can't wait till I
can get off this godforsaken Rock.
I never felt that way. But here I am.”

“Do you think you'll go back there sometime?”

“I…yeah, maybe. I want to travel, do the whole see-the-world thing, work overseas. But yeah, I guess I do have that sense of roots. Like I know where I belong.”

Brian frowns, but says, “That's nice. In a way.”

“What about you? Do you have any feeling of roots? I mean, is New York home for you, in that way?”

He shrugs. “Not really. I was born here, but my dad is from Chicago, and my mom comes from Virginia. Neither of them has that kind of feeling about
home
like your people do. I think the only Americans I've ever met that feel that way were some Southerners…not my mom's family but, you know, people who can't wait to get back to the grits and gravy. I grew up thinking
grits
was plural. When I finally went to visit my grandma in Virginia and she asked if I wanted grits, I said maybe just the one grit.”

Brian laughs, then looks quickly at Anne who is smiling, but uncertainly. “You thought it was plural too, didn't you?” he says.

“Grits.” She pictures three long fried things on a plate. “Well, you could see how I might. If I offered you fish and brewis, how many would you have?”

He takes her hand. “Just one. A fish and brew. You take me home sometime and I'll try that.”

ETHEL
 
LONG ISLAND, JULY 1989

O
NE NIGHT, IN HER
bed in Shady Acres, Ethel has a dream.

She dreams about heaven – not surprising, perhaps, given that it's Sunday night and the church crowd have been holding services in the chapel. Ethel always goes, even when she's not feeling well. She likes when they sing the old hymns, not the young crowd with the guitars and jangly new music, but the crowd that sings “When All My Labours and Trials Are O'er” and “We Are Nearing Home” and all the old favourites. Ethel likes to think about heaven. She imagines it in the usual way: mansions, streets of gold, angel choirs. Promoted to Glory.

In her dream, when she finds herself in heaven, it's nothing like that. Heaven, it turns out, is Annie's backyard in Freshwater Valley in St. John's. Except a little bigger than Ethel remembers it. But she knows right away it's heaven. She's sitting on the back step, wearing a blue dress with white sprigs that comes just below the knee, a dress she owned in 1928 and particularly liked. She has a white cardigan over it, because there's just a bit of a breeze, but not too much. Heaven is a July day in St. John's, warm but not sultry. Annie has a line of wash out: the wind fills the white shirts and they dance on the line like angels.

Bert sits on the step beside her, looking just like he did the last time she saw him, twenty-two years old, one arm laid on her shoulder. On her other side, sitting just as close, is Harold, about the same age, smiling like he's just told a joke. Annie is somewhere inside the house making supper. In the yard below, Ethel can hear the children playing: Jimmy and Diane, five or six years old, their voices ringing with laughter.

She looks at Bert, and then back at Harold, thinking she should feel uneasy though she doesn't. “It's all right, girl,” Harold says.

“Is it?” Ethel asks.

“Yes, it's really all right.”

“Everything,” Bert echoes. “Everything's all right.” And hearing them both say it, she knows it's true.

Some people are not in the yard but she knows they are somewhere around; their absence does not feel like a loss. Frances must be in the house with Annie, and Ethel's own family, her parents and her sister, are probably in there too. The younger ones, the grandchildren – she can hear them laughing from somewhere in the distance, even though their parents are only children themselves. All children, playing together, and everything is all right.

And Jesus. She almost asks Harold where he is, because Harold would know if anyone would. As it's heaven, she expects to see him. But then she doesn't need to ask, because she's sure he's around. She can feel him. Probably sitting down in the kitchen with Annie, having a cup of tea. Ethel thinks she should go in and find him. She owes him an apology for something, some misunderstanding years ago. But he'll probably come out and sit in the yard in a few minutes, it's so nice out, and whatever misunderstandings there were between them she's sure he won't hold it against her. He's bound to be in a good mood. Sitting at Annie's table having a cup of tea and a slice of homemade bread with molasses is enough to put anyone in a good mood.

Then she remembers she hasn't seen Jim. A flutter catches her heart, her first moment of discomfort since waking here; she feels as if she's misplaced something important. Harold lays a hand on her arm. “Everything's all right,” he reminds her.

That's when she sees them, over by the lilac tree. Jim is standing there, young and strong, spinning around in the grass. In his arms, high above his head, he holds Ralphie, who is about eight years old. Ralphie is silhouetted against the blue sky high above Jim's head, arms outstretched, spinning in the air making airplane noises. Both their faces are alive with laughter, echoing each other's smiles, no eyes for anyone but each other. Ethel watches them till the picture is seared into her eyelids, then closes her eyes.

The morning nurse finds Ethel when she makes her rounds. As she says later to Joyce, in thirty years of nursing she has cause to know that not many deathbeds are like in the movies or in books. People don't usually die with a smile on their face; it tends to be messier than that. “But your mother-in-law, Mrs. Evans, was one of the few. One of the few I can honestly say died with a smile on her face.”

EPILOGUE: ANNE
 
BROOKLYN, MAY 2004