After River (27 page)

‘A
RE YOU SURE
about this?' Jenny asks as the Edsel turns onto Colbur Street.

‘No,' I answer, my voice unsteady. ‘But everything I've read, about victims of rape, says healing starts when you confront your abuser.'

Victim
?

‘You know,' I tell her as she pulls up in front of Gerald Ryan's house, ‘I spent so many years denying, refusing to be his victim, that I've become just that–by not allowing myself to talk about it. Today was the first time I've ever spoken it out loud.'

In her kitchen, early this morning, I told Jenny everything about that night in the gravel pit. Our tears flowed unchecked as I cleared the cobwebs from the memories and exposed them to the light of day. Jenny listened without comment, but obviously feeling my anguish, as I relived the nightmare. Afterwards we held onto each other until our tears were exhausted.

When we had gained control, Jenny asked quietly, ‘Mom, why are you so certain that the baby was Gerald Ryan's? If you were with River a few nights before isn't it just as likely that he could be the father?'

And there it was, the crack in the rock solid belief I had clung to all these years. Could I allow it to open and let hope seep in?

‘I've always been so certain,' I sighed. ‘Perhaps that was my way of coping. Maybe it was just less painful to accept that a stillborn baby was a result of rape, than to consider he may have been River's son.' I blew my nose. ‘No,' I said as I shook my head. ‘No matter how many times I imagine that night with River, I can't believe he could be the father. It only lasted minutes.'

‘Still,' Jenny insisted, ‘it's not impossible.'

‘Perhaps. But not likely.'

 

Jenny turns off the motor and I force myself to look up at the old Ryan house. The once immaculate yard is overgrown with weeds. Railings are missing on the sagging porch; the paint is cracked and peeling. This morning Jenny confirmed that as far as she knew an ailing Gerald Ryan still lived in this neglected house.

Jenny reaches out and touches my shoulder. ‘Do you want me to come with you?'

‘No, I have to do this myself.'

‘All right. But remember he suffers from alcohol-induced dementia. He may not know you.'

‘It doesn't matter, I will know him.'

Before I turn to open the car door, Jenny says, ‘There's something else, Mom.'

She hesitates, opens, then closes her mouth, as if she is uncertain over what she is about to reveal. ‘You must not have been the only one,' she finally says. ‘He's been mutilated. It looks as if at one time, years ago, someone went after his penis with a butcher knife.'

I take a moment to recover from this information. Then I push the car door open and get out in one quick movement.

I square my shoulders and feel myself drawing on my mother's strength. As I walk towards the porch I refuse to let my eyes stray to
the darkened basement window. Yet I can't help imagining him standing there in the shadows. My feet feel heavy as I trudge up the creaking steps. It takes everything I have to make my way over to the door and lift my shaking hand. I hammer on the door before I can change my mind.

The house is dark, silent. I hear no movement inside. I knock again, this time more insistent. Minutes pass before I hear a faint shuffle. I move back as the door begins to open and an eye appears in the narrow crack. It looks me up and down, blinks heavily, and then the door opens fully, revealing a bloated, heavy-set woman. A threadbare pink velour pantsuit stretches across sagging breasts and stomach rolls. Stringy grey hair hangs, limp and unkempt, around a swollen face. Suddenly I recognize something behind the blank stare.

‘Elizabeth-Ann?'

Her eyes narrow. ‘Natalie Ward,' she says finally, pulling her top around her and hugging it to her body.

‘I didn't expect…' I stammer.

From somewhere inside a man's feeble voice calls out, ‘Elizabeth-Ann?'

Unable to stop myself, I head into the house. Elizabeth-Ann steps back into the hall as I move past her toward the sickeningly familiar voice.

‘Elizabeth-Ann?' The voice's repeated query has a whining urgency to it. And then I see the hunched form sitting in front of the silent television set in the living room. Like a frightened animal I stop, frozen, trapped, unable to move, hypnotized by the red-rimmed eyes–rodent eyes–that are looking, not at his daughter, but at me. A palsied hand lifts into the air and reaches out towards me.

Beside me Elizabeth-Ann slouches against the door to the living room. ‘He thinks everyone is Elizabeth-Ann,' she says in a monotone voice. ‘Everyone, except me.'

I can't pull my eyes from the withered remains of what was once my tormentor. A plaid, food-stained dressing gown does not hide the cloth restraints that lash him to a pink vinyl chair. Yellow parchment-like skin and tufts of transparent hair cover a splotched skull. Catheter tubing coils down from beneath his dressing gown to a full bag of urine hanging off the side of the chair.

‘Elizabeth-Ann?' he pleads. Bulging eyes stare back at me. They look at me, through me, but do not see. There is no one behind those eyes, no one to connect with; no one left to hate. He is reduced to DNA.

How do I tell the son that I will meet in a few short hours that this is his legacy
?

I turn away. The plaintive call follows me as I retreat. At the front door, I stop abruptly. I whirl around and cross the foyer once again. In the living room I stare down at the apparition that is now nothing more than an empty husk with eyes.

‘I am not Elizabeth-Ann,' I say in a voice that is surprisingly calm.

‘I am Natalie Ward. Remember me Mr Ryan? Mr Mayor? I am the milkman's daughter. I am the girl you raped in the gravel pit thirty-five years ago.'

Behind me I hear Elizabeth-Ann's sudden intake of breath, but I can't stop now. All the black poison I have kept inside boils to the surface. It spills out like vomit with my words. There is not a flicker of understanding in the milky eyes below me, but I don't care. These are words I need to say. ‘You think you took something from me? You think you got away with it? Well, you took nothing.'

I don't tell him what I thought I had come to tell him. That I have
something to show for that night of terror. That I am about to meet the son who he will never, ever, know. A son he will never see, never even understand exists. Because he no longer exists himself. I lean down and whisper directly into his ear. ‘You're nothing.'

I turn away, shaken, weak, but somehow purged. Like the old gravel pit, the fear I have lived with, run from for so long, begins to disappear.

Elizabeth-Ann follows me to the front door. ‘You too?' she says, her voice flat. ‘I should have known. I'm sorry.'

‘Yeah, we're all sorry,' I say walking out.

Out on the porch I turn back to her and search her face. ‘After all he did to you,' I ask, ‘why? Why are you here? Why are you looking after him?'

Her face is blank. She shrugs. ‘He's my father.'

J
ENNY AND
I rush down the narrow hallway of the Alpine Inn. ‘I can't believe I fell asleep,' I say as we hurry down the stairs.

‘You needed it,' Jenny pushes through the front door and out into the autumn sunshine.

I feel like the world is spinning again. Everything is happening so fast. I was completely drained when I returned to my room after confronting Mr Ryan. Drained, but already beginning to feel the healing balm of letting go. I showered and changed, then lay down on the bed for just a moment. It was three o'clock when I woke to Jenny's knocking.

‘They're here,' she said breathlessly when I answered the door.

‘Boyer called from the Gold Mountain Motel. He's bringing Gavin over to the hospital now while his daughter has a nap.'

After the hospital doors close behind us, Jenny asks, ‘Do you want to wait in my office or up in Gram's room?'

I follow her across the foyer toward the stairs. The main floor of St Helena's is quiet, mostly reception and offices now. It still has the chapel. I stop before the wide oak doors. ‘I want to wait in here.'

Jenny turns with a questioning look. ‘Oh, okay,' realizing I mean the chapel. ‘Do you want me to wait with you?'

‘No, I need a few moments to myself. Will you bring him here? I'd like to meet him alone first.'

‘Of course,' she smiles. ‘I understand.'

She reaches out to take me in her arms. ‘Are you all right?' she asks.

‘Yes,' I reply as she hugs me. And just like her grandmother, Jenny hangs onto the hug far longer than expected. And I melt into it.

The inside of the hospital chapel is narrow and dark. It smells of wood, musty with time, and aged linseed oil. The heavy door closes slowly behind me. I stand for a moment and let my eyes adjust to the light. At the front of the room votive candles illuminate a crucifix above the altar. I sit down in one of the two wooden pews. While I wait I let my eyes wander up to the cross, to the blue alabaster statue of Mary, to the candle flames dancing at her feet. Once again I feel a surge of envy for my mother's faith; for the strength she has found in her religion, her church. The church I turned my back on years ago. Still, I pray to whatever no-name God, whatever power in the universe, will listen.

Please, please, don't let him look like Gerald Ryan
.

The flickering candles cast shadows on the wall while I beg a God I do not believe in for this favour.

I feel, rather than hear, the sound of the oak door moving behind me. My heart begins to race. I turn around, in slow motion it seems, as light spills into the room.

And he is there. His darkened form silhouetted in the doorway.

I stand up on trembling legs as he begins to move towards me. Neither of us speaks while he approaches. I don't know what to say–hello seems so inadequate. The door silently closes behind him, and he is lost in darkness for a moment. Then suddenly he stands before me. I search his face as the candlelight exposes his features.

And my prayers are answered.

The dark eyes reflecting back at me, Ward eyes, smile with a familiarity that only family can recognize. In those eyes I see my father and Morgan. The fair skin, the brown hair, widow's peak, even the flash of perfect teeth as he attempts a nervous smile, all have passed down from his grandfather.

An ember of radiant warmth begins to grow in my chest. It spills through my body, filling an empty space, a space I did not know existed until now. And nothing else matters. Nothing except that this is my child, my son, and the longing for him that I had denied is now filled with love. Where, or who, he came from means nothing compared to this.

He lifts his right hand and offers it to me. ‘Hello,' he says. ‘I'm Gavin.'

And I hear that voice!

My legs turn to liquid and my knees buckle. He reaches out to catch me. With his arm under my elbow he helps guide me back to the pew.

‘Are you okay?' he asks as I slump down.

The voice
! There's no mistaking the voice. The memory of a sun-filled summer day floods through me. The familiar voice fills the musty air of the room with the same music, the same magic that River's voice had on that long-ago day.

I nod, not trusting my own voice for the moment. He takes my shaking hands in his while he waits patiently for me to recover. I search his face for any signs of resentment directed at a mother who would give him up at birth. There is nothing but a gentle concern there. With a bitter-sweet acceptance, I feel the full impact of sadness for the circumstances that kept us apart all this time. ‘They told me you were dead, stillborn,' I finally say.

‘Yes I know.'

I can't drink in enough of him as he quietly answers my flood of queries about his life. I listen in wonder at the magic of his voice as he talks about growing up in West Vancouver. I am relieved to hear about his childhood, about the parents who raised him, who were responsible for this beautiful young man in front of me.

‘I'm not looking to replace them,' he says with candid sincerity. ‘They've been wonderful to me and I love them both very much. They always encouraged me to find my birth family. But I never really felt the need to. And I always believed that my birth mother must have given me up for a good reason. I didn't want to impose on her–on your–life. But when Molly was born, my wife, Cathy, and I began to wonder about my genetic background. Cathy encouraged me to search for my birth parents. That led to my conversation with Boyer a few days ago. He explained the circumstances of my birth. When he told me about your mother, my grandmother, being so ill, I began to feel an urgency to come. Fortunately, I have access to a small plane. And the weather forecast was good for the next few days. So, well, here I am.'

‘Yes,' I say in wonder. ‘Here you are.'

The guttering candles burn down as we talk on. I hear the pride in his voice when he talks about his daughter, Molly. Then my heart fills with warmth as he refers to her as, ‘your granddaughter'.

Before we get up to leave he says, ‘I don't know exactly what to call you.'

‘Natalie would do just fine for now,' I tell him as he helps me to my feet. ‘Can you do that?'

His right eyebrow lifts with the same lopsided grin as his grandfather, a grin that once entranced so many Atwood housewives.

‘All right,' he says. ‘Natalie.'

And it comes off his lips like a forgotten melody.

Nettie

G
US STANDS BESIDE
her bed. She strains to see his handsome face. It's the face of the young Gus Ward she had fallen in love with on a snowy winter day of her youth. The one in whose eyes she had seen her future, her family.

‘Have you come to take me home?' she asks.

But her daughter's voice answers, ‘Mom, are you awake?'

Nettie remembers that Natalie was sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, before she fell asleep. Now her daughter stands next to this apparition, this phantom of her dead husband. Nettie expects him to disappear with her sleep, but he stays. His ghost is as stubborn as he was.

‘This is Gavin, Mom,' Natalie is saying. ‘My son. Your grandson.'

‘Gavin,' Nettie repeats. She smiles. She wants to touch him, to make sure he is real. She reaches towards him. He takes her hand in his. She pulls him closer to search his face. Such a beautiful face. The face of his grandfather. And yet, and yet, behind those dark eyes she sees the gentleness of his father, and the determination of his mother. This is Natalie's son. Nettie would have known him anywhere. His familiar voice erases the sound she denied the night of his birth. The tiny haunting cry fades, and dies.

She caresses his cheek. ‘I've been waiting for you,' she says.

Boyer and his partner Stanley appear on the other side of her bed. Jenny and Nick stand nearby. Behind them, Carl and Morgan and Ruth enter the room. Nettie's prayers have been answered. Her family, everyone, is here.

She holds tight to her grandson's hand. She will not let go, even while he is meeting the rest of his family. She has missed his entire life, and now will only have time for goodbye.

‘I want to go home now,' she tells Boyer as he leans to kiss her. ‘It's time for my family to all come home.'

Boyer looks across the bed to Natalie.

Nettie sees the unspoken question in his eyes. She turns to her daughter.

‘Yes,' Natalie smiles back at her brother. ‘Let's go home.'