Rush Home Road (28 page)

“No, Ma'am.” Addy couldn't believe what she was hearing and had no idea how to respond.

“I overheard my Hamond last night, talking with some of his men friends, saying how you was gonna be staying with us all and about how you was giving him eyes all the way back from the train station.”

“Ma'am?” Addy was too stunned to protest.

“I didn't believe him. Fact is though, if Hamond thinks you like to be with him, he'll just work you till you do. And he has a way about him that ain't so evident on first glance.”

Addy shook her head and felt nauseated by the thought of Hamond and the way he'd looked at her when he helped her off the train.

Mary Alice looked out the window again. “Hamond knew your father.”

Addy shuddered. “My father?”

“Wallace Shadd?”

Addy nodded slowly.

“Hamond used to talk with him at the factory when he brung the harvest in on the truck. He said he knew who you
were the very second he laid eyes because you happen to be the image of your Daddy.”

Addy swallowed the bile in her throat and waited. She sensed there was more and worse to come.

“You don't have to look at me like that. I got a good idea about what happened to you in Rusholme. Same thing happened to me when I was a girl, only it was my own father's brother. I never told a soul. I knew I wouldn't be believed. And even then, I remembered thinking, if this happened to me, how many other girls have the same secret?”

Tears appeared at the corners of Mary Alice's cat eyes. She blinked them back and sighed. “I know Hamond. Hamond thinks if you done it before you must be ripe for it again. Don't matter what the truth
is
; just matters what he
thinks
is true. That's why I can't have you here. Not even for one night. I got to protect my own, and that means Hamond too. From himself, though it is.”

Addy nodded and rose again to leave.

“Sit down, Adelaide.”

This time Addy did not want to sit or to hear any more. She was ashamed, even though she knew Mary Alice didn't hold her responsible. She watched her reflection in the black coffee on the table and asked quietly, “He gonna tell my Daddy about seeing me?”

Mary Alice stared at her blankly.

Addy looked up. “Will you ask Hamond to tell my Daddy he seen me, and to say I'm fine? My Mama must worry so.”

Mary Alice rose herself now, crossed the room, and sat down beside Addy on the sofa. She took Addy's hand and furrowed her brow and said, “I thought you knew. Your father passed. Just before Christmas. It was talked about some at Libby's, as you can imagine, after what all happened with his children.”

Addy nodded and wondered why she was neither shocked nor grieved. She didn't ask for any more details and it occurred to her that she knew all along her father would not last, could not live after what happened, or what he believed happened. “What about my Mama? Do you know?”

Mary Alice shook her head. “Heard she went south. Has a sister in Georgia was it?”

“South Carolina.” Addy drew her hand away from Mary Alice, set to rise once more.

Mary Alice pulled her back and smiled tenderly. “I got one more thing to tell you and this time it ain't bad news. See, I talked things over with my mother last night. She don't know nothing about you except you come from Detroit and had that trouble on the train and need to stay a few days before you start back up to Toronto. She lives just a few streets over on Murray Avenue. She says you can stay as long as you like. She keeps a nice home and has an extra room, too. You met her yesterday. She was wearing the blue dress. Her name's Nora, but you best call her Mrs. Lemoine.”

Mary Alice handed Addy a slip of paper with her
mother's address. Addy read it and asked, “Should I go now?”

“Yes, yes. Go on now and my mother's sure to feed you a nice breakfast.”

“You'll tell Willow thanks, and goodbye?”

“I'll tell her.”

“Mary Alice?”

“Yes, Addy?”

Addy wanted to tell the woman how relieved she was to be believed about what happened in Rusholme, and how grateful she was Mrs. Lemoine had a room, and how she knew that even as Mary Alice said she was protecting her own, she was protecting Addy too. Instead she said, “Olivia still needs you.”

Mary Alice nodded. Addy found her coat and Verilynn's big boots and without another word she opened the door and stepped out into the wintry air. Addy didn't need to avoid the canning factory after all, and she'd ask Mrs. Lemoine about a jeweller before night fell. She reckoned she'd only be a few days in Chatham. She reckoned she could endure a few days.

 

Cream Cake

IT WAS NOT A
few days but five years Addy Shadd endured in Chatham. Addy had saved the train fare and more by the end of her first month there but had not even considered heading for Toronto. Mrs. Lemoine had given her a room of her own and three meals a day and paid her well for the work she did: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and gardening. For the first time in some time, Addy felt safe and believed if she stayed put, she could pretend her life was what it ought to be. Afraid as she'd been when she first set down, Chatham felt enough like home now not to bother looking someplace else. She never again thought of selling Poppa's ring.

Addy had a good friend in Mary Alice and was like a second mother to the two little Ferguson boys, Simon and Samuel. As long as she avoided being alone with Hamond there was harmony to the collusion of their lives. Mrs. Lemoine was not a gentle woman, but she was fair and rarely cross. The only conflict between the older and younger woman was over Addy's baking. Mrs. Lemoine had grown fat on Addy's pies and cakes and butter tarts and
cursed Addy for her temptations. Even so, she fussed like a child when there was nothing to satisfy her sweet tooth after a roast supper and demanded to know if it was because she was too fat. Addy could easily convince her though that her girth was likely caused by her headache medicine and not those second and third helpings of cream cake.

It was Mary Alice's belief that it was time Addy settled down with a husband, an idea she shared with her mother but not Addy herself. If Mary Alice had said what she thought, Addy'd have told her kindly but forcefully that she was not interested in a love affair. The fact was that Addy
was
interested, very interested, in a young man named Gabriel Green who lived on Degge Street, three doors down from Mary Alice.

Gabriel was, at twenty, a year younger than Addy. There was something in the young man's face: maybe it was the line of his jaw or the fluttery lashes over his black eyes, but whatever it was it reminded her of that someone from Rusholme whose name was too painful to say. When he came into her thoughts, she told herself she'd imagined the whole romance, that no matter his size he was just a boy, and she just a girl. He couldn't have loved her the way she thought, or she him, for in the end she could write down all the words they'd exchanged on a single piece of paper and still have room left for the Lord's Prayer.

Addy admitted to herself, but never to anyone else, that at least some of her visits to the Ferguson house were an
attempt to cross paths with Gabriel Green and to feel her heart race when his eyes roamed her body in the bold way they did.

It was summer in Chatham, a steaming, stinking hot July day, when Addy first laid eyes on Gabriel Green. She'd been in town five months and, while living at Mrs. Lemoine's, was fixed in the Fergusons' life on Degge Street. Addy was sixteen years old and Gabriel Green was fifteen, but he looked and acted like a man. He'd come to the back door at Mary Alice's house, head bowed and handsome, professing to see if Mrs. Ferguson needed any yard work done. When Mary Alice expressed surprise at his thoughtfulness, he'd shrugged and said, “Well, I know Mr. Ferguson into his long days at the farm. Your boys still too young to be much good with heavy work. I just thought to offer my services.”

He'd acted surprised to see Addy there and his act was a good one. He made a show of not wanting to intrude and it took some convincing to get the boy to sit down at the kitchen table and enjoy a cool glass of lemonade. Addy had shivered watching his big hands stroke the slippery glass, and when his lips met the rim and his tongue lifted a lemon slice into his mouth, she'd had to turn away. Mary Alice acted flustered and chatty and apologized later, saying she didn't know what got into her.

Addy looked serious. “Don't be thinking about hitching me up with that boy, Mary Alice.”

“Why? But why? He's an angel. He's an outright angel. He never lets his Mama lift a finger in the yard and
you saw yourself he has the nicest manners. And he's more than a boy, Addy. He may only be fifteen but his Granddaddy's getting him a place at the jute factory come September. He's got plans to buy a house out on the river road and he will, too. You just don't know him.”

“Sounds like you know him well enough for both of us.”

Mary Alice looked away. “Well, I done a little inquiring.”

“You tell him to come by and say that about wanting to help you in the yard?”

“No I did not.” Mary Alice was indignant.

“He done that before? Come over to offer his help?”

“No.”

“Just happened he came by today?”

“Well.” Mary Alice swallowed and held her breath in a way Addy'd seen her do before when she got skitty. “I guess he must have seen you here and wanted to make your acquaintance.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Addy had no doubt Mary Alice was lying. “Well, I think you told him come by and I think you're trying to hitch us up.”

“I won't if you don't want me to.”

Addy sighed and rose to leave. “I got to get on home and start supper for your Mama.”

Mary Alice shrugged and scratched at a mosquito bite under her sleeve. It was then Addy saw the four purple bruises on her soft upper arm. The bruises were distinct and made by a man's strong hand. “Hamond do that?” Addy asked, already knowing the answer.

Mary Alice looked at the bruises like she'd never seen them before. “No,” was all she said before she changed the subject. “You could do worse than Gabriel, Addy. He's got a strong back and good looks and a good heart too.”

Addy wondered how her friend seemed so sure about the boy's good heart but didn't ask. “He's not for me, Mary Alice. No girl wants a boy prettier than she is. And that boy'll just grow bigger and prettier and his shoulders wider and his jaw squarer. I won't give him a second thought. And I bet he won't give me one neither. Seemed interested in the cold drink was about all.”

The women were lying to each other and both knew it. Mary Alice
had
asked the boy to come by that day. And Addy
would
give Gabriel Green a second thought and a third and a fourth and over the next five years she would look for him on Degge Street and scan the crowds at the market and make it to all the Ferguson boys' baseball games just because Gabriel Green helped coach. But Addy didn't believe she deserved romance and simply dreaded the inevitable. For how could she love a man and be loved by a man who didn't know her story? How could she be touched by a man who didn't know she'd been touched before? And how could she bear a child and not say there was a baby brother who was loved, but never lived? Addy often imagined Gabriel in her bed, but never in her life.

In the afternoons Mary Alice and Addy went to the Farmer's Market in the centre of town. Afterward, if the
weather was fine and their food sacks not too heavy, they'd take a stroll by the Thames River to watch the children swim and the men fish and the boats sail off to points unknown.

It was early in June and the kind of perfect day Addy thought of as a God day. She'd long ago stopped thinking of Sunday as a day of the Lord and found just any day and any time the right time to give thanks and praise. Mary Alice brought a pint of strawberries to her face and let her nose do the tasting. She set the berries down and picked them up again, fretting. “Hamond's fussy about his berries. Have to put these in a jam or a pie I suppose. They ain't quite right to eat just simple yet.”

Addy nodded absently and moved away, for while the berries smelled sweet and delicious, she felt her stomach roil at the memory of the church supper and Zach Heron and in fact hadn't tasted a strawberry since that day six years ago. She selected a bunch of rhubarb and a basket of sweet green peas, thinking how Mrs. Lemoine would complain if she forgot to buy butter again. She was hardly listening to Mary Alice say how hurt she was Olivia wouldn't return to Chatham to celebrate her birthday again this year. Mary Alice's question surprised Addy, as much as anything because she couldn't remember the last time she'd been asked. “When's your birthday, Addy?”

Mary Alice made parties for her sons and her husband, though she ignored her own birthday, and it had just suddenly occurred to her that she didn't know the date of Adelaide's birth. “When, Addy?”

Addy nibbled a stalk of tart rhubarb and shrugged. “Winter.”

“When in winter?”

“January.”

“When in January?”

“Twenty-fifth.”

“Why didn't I know that?”

Addy shrugged again and moved along to another stall. The old farmer behind the counter glanced up. Addy's heart began to thud. She knew the farmer, a man from Rusholme, the father of one of the older boys who used to work the fields at Mr. Kenny's. She could not take her eyes from his. In his face she saw Rusholme and in the reflection of his pupils she saw her father. For it was true she was the image of her father, and it was only when she wore her hat and hid her ears that she could convince herself otherwise. Addy was mildly shocked when the man didn't look at her sideways. How strange, she thought, not to be recognized.

Mary Alice startled her, coming up from behind. “Addy. Don't ignore me. Why didn't you never tell me when was your birthday?”

“I don't know, Mary Alice. I haven't made a celebration out of it since, well, since a long time.”

“Since Rusholme?” Mary Alice inquired, louder than she meant to.

Addy steered away from the market stalls and started for home, begging herself not to look back at the Rusholme farmer but doing so anyway.

“Well,” Mary Alice began, “see, a woman's only supposed to stop celebrating her birthday when she has a husband and children of her own. I think you're still fine to have a celebration. It's been all that long?”

Addy nodded and wished Mary Alice had never asked the question, for now her mind was flooded with pictures and even the happy ones made her sad. She remembered the year she was with Riley and Poppa in Detroit. She remembered waking on her birthday and feeling sorry for herself and ashamed of her sorrow. She remembered being heavy with her baby and walking down the hallway with a glass of water and a bowl of corn she'd cooked in milk. She remembered how Poppa had not opened his mouth to let the spoon pass and how she'd convinced herself he couldn't, not wouldn't. She'd used her fingers to pry his jaw open and dragged the spoon against his loose teeth, trying not to be angry when he pushed the yellow mush back out with his tongue. Addy'd said, “Please take it. Please swallow. It's my sixteenth birthday today and that's the best present my good Poppa could give me.” Poppa had found her eyes and been held by her gaze and he did open his mouth then and take in and swallow the creamed corn. Addy smiled at the memory of Poppa.

She walked beside Mary Alice, feeling the beat of their feet on the road and thinking of her mother and her childhood and her birthdays in Rusholme. January twenty-fifth meant berry preserves for breakfast, whether it was the last of the jars or not, and special suppers and walnut
squares or apple snow, as much as she cared to eat, no matter what her father's face said. There would be walks through the snowy woods or skating on the crick or if it was cold enough, down at the lake. Addy's face would go numb and L'il Leam's too and they would laugh with their eyes because their jaws were frozen shut. Later, by the fire, they'd sing songs with Laisa, breathing the steam from a scalding cup of tea, feeling the prickly sensation of life returning to their flesh. And at night, Laisa would come to her bedroom and tell her the same story, year after year. “You was covered in blood and wailing like you been done wrong, but I was so happy to see you, Addy. I never told another soul case the Lord overheard, and I certainly never told your Daddy 'cause he would've been angry with my wish. But I did wish my second child was a baby girl. And all the time I carried you I dreamed how you'd be and never even cared when you looked more like your Daddy than a girl should. I thought of all the things I'd teach you and all the talks we'd have. And I knew, and I was right, that you'd be a good and loyal sister.”

Addy would close her eyes in the darkness and listen to the sound of her mother's voice and fall asleep feeling loved and cherished. As she walked beside Mary Alice, she thought about how she would never see Laisa again. And never tend the grave or even know when her mother died or where she was buried. When she heard a voice, she forgot where she was a moment and asked, “I beg your pardon, Mama?”

“Mama?” Mary Alice said. “You just called me Mama.”

Addy blinked. “I'm sorry, Mary Alice. I was thinking of my mother. Wondering about her health. She never was too fond of her sister. I suppose she doesn't do much but work the house and make herself scarce. Least she don't have to live a hard winter any more. She used to complain about the snow.”