Tell (18 page)

He decided that he would go and visit Dermot later in the week. Have a drink with him at the hotel. Dermot always had a supply of liquor and Am never asked about its source. Dermot would want to talk about his touring car. How he’d been lucky to buy the winter version, which he drove when the roads were hard enough. Am thought the winter version was a waste. Sometimes it was all anyone could do to get a horse and sleigh out of town. Admittedly, Dermot had driven his car on local roads after snow had fallen. The car was sleek and black, all steel, with a solid winter top, a solid wood steering wheel. One day the past summer, Dermot had driven north to the Ninth Concession, where he and Am had grown up, to show their father. He’d asked Am to accompany him. The two brothers had taken their father out for a little tour, the car bouncing along the roads. Their father, now in his eighties, had put on his only tie for the occasion.

Am thought he heard music, but his mind deceived him. How many times had he and Mags skated to the music of a clockwork-driven Victrola, on small rinks, on large rinks, the muffled, tinny sound drifting into cold air while accompanying bundled-up, gliding bodies? How many times had he and Mags skated into the night along country cricks and ponds with no music at all, the only light being whatever the moon and stars had to offer, or the lantern’s glow?

He glanced at the stretch of ice before him and thought he saw two children skating hand in hand. When he looked again the rink was empty. What had he just seen? Mags was the
one who reported seeing wisps, or spirits. His vision might be shrinking, but now his imagination was expanding in the opposite direction. He wondered if he was experiencing some sort of madness.

He thought of music again. This time, he
did
want to remember. Mags had always loved music. She had sung since early childhood. At home, at weddings, at school concerts, at parties, with her legs dangling over the edge of the haymow when they climbed up there together and threw open the big wooden doors. When they were first married, she sang while she went about her daily work on the farm. She was hardly aware that she was humming or singing, inside the house or out—while preparing meals, while heating the sad-irons, while helping to pick apples or sewing or knitting, canning, preserving. And then the singing stopped.

But not now. He realized with surprise and sudden clarity that she had begun to sing again. Or was this another way his mind was playing tricks?

He tried to recall. Early this morning he had been in the bedroom while she was in the kitchen. He had looked over to her side of the bed, the imprint of her still on the pillow, which was scrunched the way she liked it. She’d always pushed and pulled at her pillow until it supported her neck and shoulders exactly the way she wanted it to. Mags was up before he was every day, even though he started work at seven. And this morning, he had heard her humming. Not one of the concert solos, not one of the hymns she sang in church on Sunday mornings. She’d been humming in the kitchen the way she used to when they were younger. She had been doing this so naturally, he
wondered if she was even aware. It was as if some moment of happiness had brought her back from a place that for a long time had kept her silent.

What was happening to Mags?

What was happening to him? Was he getting old? And cranky, too? There were things he wanted to say. He had tried. He had climbed down out of the tower and stood face to face with Mags, but she had retreated. She had stopped him.

He looked down at the ice under his feet. From a standstill, he pushed off in his boots and, with a gliding motion, slid sideways across the width of the rink. Not at all satisfying without skates. He looked at the wall of snow on the bay side of the rink and wondered why on earth it had been thrown up there in the first place. What was the point? Snow had to be cleared, yes, but did it have to be put in one place? Snow acted as insulation. After a time, it could weaken the ice. If people wanted to wander out farther, even on thin ice, they would. The wall shouldn’t be there; it was cold, barren, an impediment. Hostile, even. In part, it blocked the view of the bay from the rink. No wonder someone had tried to knock it down. He felt the pain starting up in his gut. He had a mind to reach for a shovel himself.

They’re at it again—the hooligans who are putting a damper on the enjoyment of the rest of the citizenry. Are we so derelict in this town that we have to consider posting a night sentry at the rink during the wee hours? Once again, without reason—for why would anyone with reason act in such a way?—snow has been scattered over the cleared portion of the ice. Let the scoundrels cease and desist!

Your local Butcher Shop intends to make the finest display of Beef, Pork, Lamb, Mutton, Veal, Game, Poultry, Vegetables, and every variety of Fresh and Salted Meats this Christmas that has ever been seen in Deseronto, or in fact in Ontario.

We are already booking orders for Turkeys. Now is your time to do likewise, and thus be sure of your Christmas dinner before the Turkeys see this ad and strike. Come along and have a look, and if it does not make you hungry to see so many nice things ready for the oven, it won’t be our fault.

Come to Ford Jewellers to buy your lady the new and popular bracelet watch. Assorted fancy dials, gilt finish, reliable timekeeper. A Christmas gift that is sure to win her favour. Only a few days left to complete your shopping.

Get your Butter Paper, printed or plain, at the
Post
Printers.

T
ELL,” HE SAID
. H
E WAS STRETCHED OUT ON HIS
back. Tress was lying next to his dead arm, the dark shadow of its crease. His good arm was free. He left the small lamp on beside their bed.

He stared at the ceiling, aware of her face close to his cheek.

“What shall I tell?”

“Anything. What you did at work.”

“I can tell you who was in the dining room, whether they ordered hot pot or chicken pie, whether they had room for dessert, what they left behind. And Mother sends her love. She’d like us to be there Christmas Day, but she understands. She truly does. She already knows that Uncle Oak has been invited here for Christmas dinner.”

Kenan knew that Tress passed along abbreviated versions of what was going on, the way she’d learned to do while growing up with a younger sister who was deaf. She used to tell Grania, “This is what Father said.” “This is what Mother wants.” But
what was told was Tress’s shorthand version of events. She had been the interpreter, the go-between, from the time the sisters were small. They still had a private language, one they’d made up between them before Grania left to go away to residential school. Kenan had been excluded from that, though he’d been a friend to both.

Kenan knew, too, that Tress continued to supply her own version of events. She altered stories in any way that suited her. Well, he thought, what I pass on is never the whole story, either. It’s the way things have been since I’ve come back. I haven’t told her about Hugh’s letters, have I? Jack Conlin delivered both to the front door, but someday Tress will reach her hand into the mailbox at the post office and pull one out for herself.

Tonight, Kenan didn’t wait for Tress to launch into an account of the hotel dining room. He had something of his own to tell. Tress stilled to listen. What had happened while she was out?

Uncle Oak had visited, that’s what had happened. A short visit, as always, but he’d also brought an offering: a photo. A postage stamp of a photo, maybe two inches by an inch and a half. Small, but one that neither Kenan nor Tress had seen before.

Kenan produced it now, sliding it out from beneath a book on the bedside table. He wanted to show her, tell her, in a certain way. He held it in the air, in the space above them. Tress raised herself on one elbow and took the photo from his hand.

Two women. The older grey-haired woman was seated on a high-backed kitchen chair that had been set outside in the snow. The younger woman, perhaps a daughter, was standing behind.

The older woman was spilling over the seat of the chair, which seemed entirely too small for her body. The word
ample
came to Tress’s mind. A bibbed apron with a guinea-hen pattern was looped crookedly over the woman’s dress, as if she’d put it on hastily or half pulled it off. In the background were a snow-covered roof, bare trees, a stoneboat propped against the side of a milk house. It could have been Tress’s grandfather’s farm, or anyone else’s farm north of town and for miles and miles as far as Maynooth, for all she knew.

Despite the snow, neither woman in the photo was dressed for the outdoors. Both were coatless. The older woman’s legs—thick and swollen—were stuffed into splayed galoshes. She was balancing a cake on her lap, her thick fingers tucked under the edges of a rectangular platter. But who would have, or could have, owned a platter so large? The cake must have been resting on a covered cookie sheet or a piece of strong cardboard.

Someone had gone to the trouble of decorating the cake. Tress could make out a single word across the top
—MOTHER—
with scrolls of icing on either side.

She held the photo closer to the light. The second woman, the one who stood behind the chair, was tall and thin and she was grinning. Her hair was long and thick and dark, the colour difficult to discern. Possibly red. Red hair would be dark in the photo.

“Maybe the young woman baked the cake for her mother,” said Tress. “Maybe the two women are members of the same family. Is this Uncle Oak’s family? Is this your family?”

“Partly,” said Kenan, as if he were unclear about details. “Oak gave me the photo. He said it’s the only one he had. It was
taken at the older woman’s farm. The younger woman had just baked a cake for her mother’s birthday. Oak said he’d been given the photo, which could have been one of several taken that day. He was not present at the birthday celebration.”

“But how are these women related to you?”

Tress studied the faces in the photo: hairlines, cheekbones, eyebrows. She searched for signs of pleasure in the women’s lives, jokes in the kitchen, that sort of thing. But the older face was tight-lipped; jokes had not been captured by the camera. Still, both women must have enjoyed the moment, displaying the cake outside in the snow. The photographer would have needed the outdoor light and would have persuaded the two to go out.

“So,” she mused, “there was a quick dash out to the snow, a pose, a quick run back. No, the older woman—whoever she was—wouldn’t have been able to run on those swollen legs and feet.”

Kenan listened while Tress invented background. She turned over the photo. No names, no date. She looked at the younger woman, looked at Kenan, looked at the photo again. She wanted likeness and found it, in the smiling eyes, the grin, the curls around the forehead, the undisguised waves in the long hair, though most of the woman’s hair was fastened behind her neck. Still, the waves, the curls were there to be seen. Kenan’s hair had always been thick and curly. It still flopped over his forehead—on the side of the obliterated eye, which Tress was glad of.

“Did Uncle Oak give a name?” said Tress. “More importantly, what did he say? I know he doesn’t talk much, but he must have given some clue.”

Kenan could hold in the information no longer. “Roberta.
The young woman’s name is Roberta. My mother. With my grandmother. Taken several years before I was born, Oak said. Only that, and that the photo rightfully belongs to me and he’s been meaning to give it to me for some time.”

“Your mother, before she married? And your grandmother? Why now, all of a sudden? He must know more than that. Has he always known? Why didn’t he show you this when you were a child? Or when we were first married? You’re older now than your mother was in the photo—she doesn’t look more than seventeen or eighteen. If this
is
your mother, did she marry Oak’s brother? After all, it’s Oak’s surname we both carry now. Or is Oak your adoptive name only? No blood relation.”

“Oak obviously has more to tell, but knowing him, he won’t be in a hurry. Last week, I asked him if he knew anything about my birth. He mumbled around but then showed up today with the photo. If it took him this long to bring one photo, it might take another twenty-five years before he adds in another detail.”

“That isn’t good enough,” said Tress. “We’ll ply him with questions. He’ll be here Christmas Day and we can demand answers. Well, not demand, but ask.”

Kenan, who was hearing “
life is treacherous
” in his uncle’s tone of voice, was not convinced by the suggestion and could see that Tress understood this from his expression. He knew Uncle Oak and his ways better than she did. But he was also recalling the unfamiliar sense of belonging he’d felt when Oak had handed him the photo earlier in the day.

Tress examined the faces again. “Let me make up the story, then,” she said. “But we have to find out more. Maybe not right away, but soon.”

She rolled onto her back. “An unseen young man took the picture. After the photo was taken, the photographer—your future father, maybe? someone who was in love with your mother?—carried the camera, and probably the chair, back inside. The chair was carved and ladder-backed, like Aunt Maggie’s beautiful kitchen chairs, the ones Uncle Am made after they were married.”

“We don’t know that. We can’t see the back of the chair.” Kenan smiled to himself, listening to her voice, waiting for more.

She carried on. “Your mother carried the cake back to the kitchen, being careful not to slip in the snow. She had a grin so wide you’d remember it one entire day and into the next. She had a mischievous sense of fun. When she was a child, she ran the circle of snow in Fox and Geese, yipping like a mother fox when it was her turn to chase. And long legs. She could catch up and overtake everyone, even the older girls. Her face was beautiful,” she added, and thought to herself, Like yours, which is still beautiful, no matter what you believe.

“As soon as the women—and the unseen photographer—were back inside the house, they set down the cake and dug in because they were hungry for dessert. No, wait. There was a fourth person inside, an older man, your grandfather. He was a man who pronounced the word ‘bury’ as
burry
instead of
berry
when he paid his respects at the graveyard. He had been watching the photo session from a kitchen window that was either patterned with frost or dripping with condensation, and now he was impatient for his tea. What a fuss! To take a cake out into the snow. Your grandfather had a habit of pouring his tea
into his saucer to cool. Your grandmother had learned long ago to ignore the slurping. Neither of the men complimented the women on the cake. Spice cake? Marble cake? If they did, no matter who had done the baking, the men would find themselves eating the same kind of cake for the next six months.”

She checked the photo again.

“I’ve changed my mind. The size of the cake indicates a larger celebration. There are more than four people present. Fiddle strings are at the ready and the room has been cleared for dancing. The younger generations will have pushed the kitchen furniture back against the walls. The food is ready, laid out under clean linen cloths on a long sideboard: scalloped potatoes with a sprinkling of flour between each layer and melted cheese overtop; an extra-large ham, glazed to perfection; a bowl of mashed turnips; a dish of mustard-bean pickles and another of gherkins; a plate heaped with slices of buttered bread; a container of applesauce. All of this will be served before the dancing begins. There are too many people to sit at one table, so they’ll carry their plates here and there, or find a chair, or lean against a wall. The non-dancers will move to the living room or the parlour after they eat. They’ll sit there and gossip and play cards until the young people finish dancing in the kitchen.”

“Which kitchen?” said Kenan. “Which farm? Do you recognize anything?” He took the photo from Tress and said, “Roberta. My mother. Her name was Roberta.” He stared into the face of the young woman who had a grin like his own.

“Bobbie,” said Tress. “She would have been called Bobbie if her name was Roberta. We do know the date of your birthday—or we think we do. We’ve never asked if we could try to look up
birth records from twenty-five years ago. Isn’t that something that could be done? Your birth has to be registered somewhere. And we have your mother’s first name. That’s something.”

“On my Attestation Paper, when I signed up, I was told to write ‘Deseronto (Adopted)’ on the line for my place of birth. You were listed as my next of kin.”

He placed the photo on the bedside table and reached for the lamp switch. The light flickered and went out, and he understood within the space of that flicker, within the quick ripple between light and darkness, that he and Tress had, in those few moments, crossed into new territory. A thin path with barely trackable footprints, a new-old territory that offered an elusive shimmer of light that burrowed back and cast a glow over what they had once had. A past together. One that allowed imagination, sharing, spontaneous eruptions of humour and wit that could be exchanged between them.

Roberta,
he said to himself in the dark.
Bobbie.

Was this what was to be important in his life? Did everything distill to a moment of peering into a photograph the size of a postage stamp and seeking his place inside a family? Well, he had a family. He had Tress. He knew she loved him. He had Aunt Maggie and Uncle Am, and Tress’s parents, and her brothers, and Grania and her husband, Jim. He had Uncle Oak, and maybe Oak didn’t want to be pushed into telling what he did not want to tell. He had his friend Hugh, whom he hoped to see the following year. He could tear this photo to bits and he would still have a family.

But he had thought of Hugh and now the cloud of war was in the room. It had drifted in without announcement, and shadows
were circling. War was about defending and protecting. About allegiance, alliance, seizing and grasping territory. War was about death. A mass of lives, a tangle of human lives, young lives, had been clumped together to form exactly that, a mass. Millions of empty chairs. But couldn’t the mass be disentangled, looked at as one life, and another, and another? Each with a story, a photograph, a history, a family to love and who loved?

No one person ever stood alone.

And then, as he felt himself hovering on one side or the other, belonging or not belonging, Tress moved to stretch her legs. She slid over against him, the heat of her bringing him back. She wiggled her feet, settled in for sleep. And at that moment, a thought flitted through his mind and he wondered, crazily, if the young woman in the photo, Roberta, his mother, had ever eaten an egg.