Kin (35 page)

Lila eventually walked over and asked if she'd like a cup of tea and something to eat. Colleen declined, but Lila insisted.

“You'd be doing me a favour. It's fun to talk to a woman instead of a man or a critter.”

So Colleen followed her into the house. Lila had cucumber and tomato sandwiches on the table along with a pot of tea and a plate of chocolate brownies for dessert.

Lila told her about their farm, how over the years it had turned into this special place, and how the petting zoo earned them enough money to keep everything in operation. Then she spoke about her craft store, which fascinated Colleen.

“I'd love to be able to hook or knit or quilt. I've just never had anyone who could teach me.”

“I'd be glad to.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Of course.”

So that became part of Colleen's routine as well. She spent a few hours with Lila every day, learning how to sew, braid rugs, hook rugs, and quilt a pillow cover to start with. She practised at night in the cottage while the ladies watched
The Rockford Files
.

Once the cottage became too cold for the old dolls, Colleen took them back to town, their summer adventure over. She was sorry to see them go but also relieved, because that meant she and Lucky could spend even more time at the farm. Lila had her help with canning, making jams and pickles and chow-chow. Ewan would come in for lunch and they'd sit around the kitchen table and feast on salmon sandwiches and hot tea with Apple Betty.

Ewan told her about his Uncle Gaya from Mira who taught music many years before. He was a marvellous violinist and in the evening when he'd sit on his porch and play the Minuet in G, a big buck with enormous antlers would walk out of the woods and come up to the house to listen to him play. It was only when Gaya stopped that the buck would disappear.

“And people say animals are dumb beasts?” Ewan shook his head. “We could all learn a lesson about living on this planet from the species we share it with.”

When Ewan went back outside Colleen said, “Ewan is a wise soul, isn't he?”

Lila smiled. “Yes.”

It was while Lila was showing her how to cast off a pair of mitts that Colleen blurted, “I lost a baby, you know.”

“I heard. I'm so sorry, Colleen.”

“And I can't have any more.”

Lila put down the ball of wool. “I lost a baby and I was told not to have any more because of my heart.”

Colleen couldn't believe it. “Is that true?”

Lila nodded.

“How old was your baby?”

“Three. Her name was Caroline.”

“That's so sad. Was she sick?”

“She drowned in a well.”

Colleen burst into tears. Lila reached over and held her while she wept. “I want you to cry your heart out, sweetheart. It will feel better.”

* * *

Lila was at the window the next morning when Colleen arrived with her dog. Ewan waved and she ran over to him. He handed her one of his baskets and they walked together through the grass to collect the morning eggs, Lucky wagging his tail behind them.

David's little girl was back in her life.

* * *

It seems everything happens in threes. Colleen's mom was getting married to Derek; Frankie was having another baby; and Grandmother Hanover died.

Not that Colleen was ever close to her, but the way she died was horrible. She was drinking late at night on their yacht. Grandfather was in the cabin below. For some reason she decided to leave the boat and tried to get up the ladder to the wharf, but slipped back into the water and got mired in the ropes. They found her the next morning.

After the funeral, Colleen's dad went back to Cape Breton. Colleen stayed on in Halifax, because her mother's wedding was supposed to take place two weeks later, but now the girls weren't sure if it was going to happen because their mother had gone to pieces. She couldn't get out of bed, she didn't want to see anyone, and she cried all the time.

Her daughters were at a loss. They'd always thought she hated her mother.

Colleen went over to Frankie's house, a new one large enough for a growing family, and spent her evenings there. She was ashamed of herself for having resented Frankie's children in the past. The boys were adorable, and she realized that she could love her sister's children too. Everyone did need a wacky aunt around the house.

“I'm not sure what's going on,” Frankie said. “Mom bitched about her constantly. You'd think she'd be happy now that she's gone. She didn't even want Grandmother to come to the wedding.”

“But she was her mother, and the way she died was awful.”

“They say mother and daughter relationships are difficult anyway. I sure hope I get to find out.”

“And when this baby's a boy?”

“I'm not stopping until I get a girl.”

Her sister always did want her own way. “Does your husband know this?”

“He'll be informed when the time comes.”

“Oh, brother.”

When she got back to her mom's apartment, Derek was in the hallway wringing his hands. “I don't know what to do! I keep telling her it's all right and we don't have to get married if she doesn't want to, but it's like she's not listening. I feel helpless. What should I do? How can I make her feel better?”

It was amazing how the passage of time had changed Colleen's perspective. Derek, his gold chain notwithstanding, was actually a nice guy. He really was only concerned with her mother. She thought it must be nice to be loved like that.

“I'll try and talk to her. Why don't you make her some cocoa?”

“How do I do that?”

“Why don't you run to Tim Horton's and get her a hot chocolate. And one for me, too.”

His face brightened. He had a task. “I'll get us some Timbits, too, shall I?”

Colleen knocked on her mother's bedroom door and walked in. Mom looked sad and worn out. She sat on the side of the bed and took her mom's hand.

“I know what's wrong, but what's wrong?”

“I never had a relationship with my mother the way I have with you girls, and now I never will.”

Colleen loved her mother dearly, but there were times when she wanted to wring her neck. Her mother was capable of hurting her without even noticing, which made Colleen resent her intensely sometimes. But it seemed Kay's view of their relationship was a tad rosier.

“What was
her
mother like?”

“Awful, apparently. She never kissed her, not once in her life.”

“Now, that's lousy parenting. Your mother did better than that, and you did better than your mother, and Frankie is at this very moment doing a much better job than you ever did.”

Her mother burst out laughing. “Oh, Colleen, I love you. You always were the funniest little thing. You were Aunt Annie's favourite, you know.”

Colleen sat up a little straighter. “Did she tell you that?”

“Not in so many words, but I could tell. Frankie was standoffish, but you were only happy when you were in someone's arms. Annie used to carry you all day when we'd come up for the summer.”

“If Aunt Annie were sitting here today, what do you think she'd say to you?”

“Stop your bellyaching, get off your ass, and marry the guy.”

“You heard the woman.”

The wedding went ahead.

* * *

Frankie's daughter Hilary was born on July 13, 1981, at 5:20 a.m., just as the sun was coming up. They put her in Frankie's arms and Hilary looked at her mother with big, brown eyes.

“Hello, sweetheart. I've been waiting for you.

* * *

When her Aunt Colleen and Grampy Macdonald came down to Halifax to meet the first granddaughter in the family, Hilary was asleep in her crib. Frankie wanted them to wait until she woke up, but Grampy asked for just one little peek. When he bent over the crib, Hilary had her thumb in her mouth.

David's heart stopped.

She looked like Caroline.

Hilary's breath was hot against her hands as she covered her face and kept her eyes tightly shut. She leaned against the garage door at the back of the house while counting to one hundred. It wasn't easy. A housefly kept buzzing around her head and the back of her checkered shirt was sticky with sweat, she'd been standing so long in the noonday sun.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

Adam was always hard to find. When Mark used to play with them, before he got all cool and everything, he was even harder.

There were lots of great places in their backyard for hiding. There was the multi-level deck, the gazebo, Dad's baby barn, the pool's dressing rooms, the mega-bushes their gardener had brought in fully grown. There was even a bicycle shed at the very back of the property. Mom wanted a bush planted in front of that as well, to hide the unsightly thing. Dad wouldn't take it down because there were about forty-two bikes of every size in it. Mom said she was going to plant lots of ivy beside it and hopefully it would grow up the side of the wall. Dad didn't care if she did that. It saved him from painting it.

Hilary's mother opened the sliding door. “Come in for lunch, please.”

Hilary took off. “Can't…gotta find Adam.”

Her mother stepped out even further. “Get back here now, Hilary Anne!”

When her mother said her middle name, you couldn't argue with her. Hilary turned around and stomped up the stairs. “Lunch is stupid.”

“Stupid seems to be your favourite word, but looking for someone who isn't here isn't very bright either.”

“What do you mean, not here?”

“I sent him to the store.”

Hilary sulked. “Thanks a lot, Mom. He finally plays with me and you mess it up.”

Mom reached over and took her daughter's baseball hat off. “Wash your hands.”

Washing her hands was also stupid. Her mother had an obsession with cleanliness.

Once at the table, she realized she was pretty hungry. Her usual, a bowl of canned ravioli, was on the glass table. Their tiny dog, Precious, lay down under the table and stared at her. It was like being watched by a hairy rat. Precious was her mother's dog. Hilary wanted a real one, but so far the answer was no.

Her mother emptied the dishwasher while watching
The Price Is Right
on the small TV sitting on the kitchen counter. Her fifteen-year-old brother, Mark, was practicing in the family room on his drums with his so-called band. Her father was on his computer in the study.

Hilary hated the weekends. They were lonely.

She didn't have a lot of friends. Girls were stupid. The only things they cared about were dolls and boys and clothes. The day before Hilary had asked some of the girls on the street to come over and play volleyball and they did, for about ten minutes, and then complained it was too hot and asked if they could go in her pool. They chased each other around screaming at the top of their lungs, and acted as if a splash of water was acid burning their skin. All of them went into hysterics when Mark and his buddies came in through the back way to go practice.

Hilary sat at the top of the stairs, watching the mayhem. Her father had come outside to supervise and sat with her.

“Don't feel like going in?”

“Would you?

“Can't say I would.”

“As Grampy says, I rest my case.”

Shopping with her mom was also stupid.

“Please, Hilary! This is gorgeous.” She'd hold up stupid dresses again and again and then get mad when Hilary didn't want to try them on. Mom also got annoyed when she told the hairdresser she wanted her hair cut short.

“Don't cut it too short, honey. You'll look like a boy.”

“Exactly.”

Sometimes her mom watched her as if she'd done something wrong.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

Hilary knew she was looking at something. Or for something.

The only thing she looked forward to was her summer with her Aunt Colleen and Grampy. The boys didn't care for Round Island, saying there was nobody around, but of course they didn't see anyone. They just sat inside playing video games all day.

At last the big day arrived and her mother helped her pack, sneaking in a few girly t-shirts when she thought Hilary wasn't looking. Some of them were okay so Hilary let it pass.

Then it was goodbye to her brothers, who grabbed her around the neck and gave her a noogie each.

“Have fun, squirt,” Adam said.

Mark gave her a ten-dollar bill. “Don't spend it all in one place.”

She did love her brothers…sometimes.

Then it was off to the airport because Mom and Dad were super busy and couldn't spare the two days it would take to drive her up to Cape Breton and drive back home. Hilary didn't mind. She had a nice flight attendant who let her sit near the front. It was a small Dash 8 and it only took about fifty minutes to get to Sydney.

Aunt Colleen and Grampy were at the airport window, waving like crazy. She waved back and ran into the terminal. They had a race to see who could grab her first. Grampy won.

Back in Glace Bay the three of them sat at the kitchen table and ate their chicken casserole with homemade scones, coleslaw, crispy sweet pickles, and candied carrots. They feasted on chocolate cake that Aunt Colleen made from her Grammie's recipe book. They listened to every word Hilary said and wanted to know all about what she did, and how she felt.

Grampy smiled at her. “What would you like to do while you're here?”

“This.”

* * *

Colleen missed her grandmother very much. Abigail died in 1985 after a series of small strokes, her sister Muriel soon afterward. Grammie's last year she was in the old folks' home just down the street, because Colleen and her dad couldn't cope. As small as her grandmother was, she was a dead weight when Colleen tried to get her in the tub. She was incontinent as well. It broke Colleen's heart to have her Grammie look up at her from her hospital bed and say, “Where am I? I want to go home.”

Her dad would go visit during the day, as he had retired by then, and he'd read to his mother from the books he inherited from his father. The sound of his voice soothed her. Colleen would go for an hour or so in the evenings, after she came home from the farm. She worked there full-time, managing Lila's craft store and helping Ewan with the animals. She'd stay at the cottage with Lucky the Second, a black mutt, naturally, from May until October, and then come back home with her dad in the winter months. The original Lucky was buried near the cottage. Ewan had helped her dig the hole. It was a terrible day.

As a way of remembering her grandmother, Colleen typed out her recipes. They were in black hard-covered scribblers and most were written in pencil, and after years of use, the writing was disappearing. Splatters, drops of vanilla, and even the feel of dusty flour covered a lot of the pages, and Colleen could always use these signs to tell which ones were the family favourites. The hardest part was interpreting the directions. Grammie knew what she was doing. She often wrote down, for example, “1 baking soda,” knowing it wouldn't be a tablespoon. Instructions were just as vague.
Place in a warm oven
means what?
Until done
. How done?

She made copies for her sister and all her cousins so they could pass it down to their children. Uncle Henry was thrilled when she gave him a copy. He said Annie would've loved that, because no one enjoyed her mother's food more than she had. Leelee kept it in her room. Then Colleen gave one to her cousin John, who was a sales rep in Cape Breton with two boys and one girl. His wife was a bit of a scatterbrain, but harmless. Colleen loved their kids and they loved her, probably because she saw them more often than the others and took them to McDonald's to let them eat crap.

She went up to Baddeck to hand one over to John's twin brother, Daniel. He was a fisheries officer and his wife was a teacher who was always as busy as a blue-ass fly. They had three sons, all of them full of piss and vinegar.

Then she mailed a copy to George, who was a banker living in Ottawa. His wife was a nurse at the Heart Institute and they had two daughters who were sophisticated city girls.

When Colleen went down to Halifax to visit her mom, she gave one to her cousin Robbie, a great machinist like his grandfather. He had a daughter from his first marriage and three girls and a boy from the second. Colleen always thought of the old woman who lived in a shoe when she pulled into his yard.

Lastly she handed one to Frankie. She wouldn't use it, since she made dinner with food that came from frozen food containers, jars and cans, but maybe Hilary would someday.

The three musketeers, as they called themselves, settled into the bungalow for a long and glorious summer. Dad would swing on the hammock, his straw hat over his face. Colleen and Hilary would go for a swim with Lucky before heading to the farm.

“This is what heaven looks like,” Hilary told Ewan.

“You are absolutely right,” he smiled.

Colleen and Lila got a kick out of Hilary because she wanted to do everything at once. She was almost hopping. They watched her climb over the fence into the pigpen. “You'd think she was your daughter, Colleen.”

Colleen nodded. “She might as well be. I love her with all my heart.”

“She reminds me of another little girl.”

“Who?”

Lila smiled. “Just a child I knew a long time ago.”

A truck came up into the yard with a load of hay in the back. It was Duncan, the son of the man who bought Ewan's property. He worked almost full-time on the farm, as well as helping his dad with his place.

He was always joking around with Colleen, in a good friend sort of way. He certainly knew about animals and running the operation, so he was a great source of information when Ewan wasn't around.

After a long day she and Hilary crossed the field and smelled Dad's barbecue going. He had pork chops for supper with boiled new potatoes and steamed spinach with butter. Hilary hoed into her food. “I don't know why, but when I come here everything tastes delicious.”

“There's nothing like hunger to make food taste good,” Dad said. “I hear you put in a full day's work up at Ewan's.”

“I love it there. When I grow up I'm going to work there.”

Dad pointed at her. “You're going to university first, young lady.”

“Yes, sir.”

They had fresh raspberries and cream for dessert. Out of nowhere, Hilary said, “That man likes you, Aunt Colleen.”

“What man?”

“The hay guy.”

Colleen made a face. “Duncan? He's a friend.”

“He likes you.”

Colleen felt herself blushing. “Eat your dessert, you saucy brat.”

* * *

One day when Aunt Colleen had to go to town to get groceries, Hilary's Grampy said they should go for a walk. They started up the beach, with Lucky leading the way, his nose to the ground, sniffing everything in sight. Once they got to Long Beach he took her up through the woods and onto a long path that snaked through the trees. She saw glimpses of Mira Bay every so often and then they came to a clearing, where there was the biggest tree she'd ever seen in her life.

“Wow! How old is this tree?”

“I'm guessing pretty old. Someone once told me that it looked like a ballerina. What do you think?”

Hilary considered it. “Yes, it does, but it also looks like mommy when she tries to put me in a dress.”

Her grandfather laughed. “That's true. That's how she used to look when I told her she couldn't go out on a school night.”

They sat together on the edge of the bluff and looked out at Mira Bay, Lucky beside them.

“This is a special place. I used to come here when I was a kid.”

“Does anyone else know about this place?”

“My sister, Annie, who you would've loved. You remind me of her.”

That made Hilary feel good for some reason. “Was she nice?”

Grampy looked out over the water. “She was the best.”

Grampy looked sad, so she put her arm through his and leaned her head against him. He patted her cheek.

“I have it on good authority that a tree fairy comes here.”

Hilary wasn't easily fooled. “You're making that up.”

“Cross my heart, it's true. There's also a very special cricket that hides here.”

“A cricket?”

“If you listen for it you'll hear it.”

Hilary listened but she only heard the water below.

“I hope you remember this place, Hilary.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Then spit in your hand and we'll shake on it.”

It was a done deal.

“We should head home,” he said. She helped him up. “Thank you, dear. Now, do you think you could handle a secret mission?”

“A secret mission? Oh boy!”

“I'll tell you about it as we walk back.”

He wanted her to find out more about Duncan. Was he nice? Was he a hard worker? What was he like around the farm? He said that Aunt Colleen never told him anything. He knew he was being nosy, but he was interested. Hilary asked him why he didn't go up to the farm himself and check Duncan out. He said it was more fun this way.

Hilary took a notebook with her the next day and snuck around when no one was looking, peeking at Duncan from behind the barn. She followed him as he and Ewan unloaded bags of feed from the truck. At one point he turned around quickly and she had to run and hide ramrod straight behind a rather skinny tree. She worried that he saw her but he didn't seem to notice, though he did wink at Ewan for some reason.

She gathered her observations in the notebook and put it in her pocket, before heading out to find Aunt Colleen. There was only one place to look, the little store in the screened-in porch. She was forever fiddling and placing things so that it looked nice. Hilary loved to go in there because it was so chock full of neat things, like knitted throws and quilts, Lila's paintings, jars of pickles and preserves, bowls of sea glass, old bottles, and tin signs.