What We Hold In Our Hands (8 page)

She touched his face. “Marry me,” she said.

A white boat approaches from the west. The driver waves to Luke, who slides down in his seat, slowing the engine.
POLICE,
the side of the boat reads. Shit and damn, as Lucy would say. He considers racing away. He'd keep going, out of the harbour, past the breakers, out to the open ocean, until he ran out of gas. And then what? He'd be fish food, that's what. Like his father always said, “Respect the ocean, sport, or you might end up food for the fishes.”

Liv sees the infant arms and legs of her children. Lucy's are pudgy and pink. She learned to walk early, making a point of running away whenever she could. Liv watched her toddle down the garden path, yellow curls bobbing, hurling herself at the trunk of the white cedar, arms stretched around it, face looking up into its long limbs, where Larry stood balanced on one fat branch, hammering nails into a board. Luke was there too—four years old, playing on the gravel path, sifting pebbles through his fingers. When he saw Liv, he ran to her and grabbed at her cotton skirt, wiping his constantly running nose on the hem. Liv could not lift him because her arms were full of ripe lemons. She called to Laina, jumping rope with a friend, “Bring me a basket for these lemons, sweetie.” Laina dropped the rope and skipped to the house without a word to fetch the basket.

Laina puts away the vacuum cleaner, the dusting rags, the Lemon Pledge, the Windex. The house looks clean and neat. Windows gleam. She has even cleaned the piano keys. In ten days, her grandparents will be here, returned for the holidays from their house in North Carolina, where they'd retired a few years ago, claiming they'd had enough of the island. But Dad had said admiringly, “They made a pretty penny selling that big property of theirs. Now they can buy a nice place Stateside for a third of the price and live on the proceeds. The cost of living is a hell of a lot cheaper over there.” Is that why Dad's gone Stateside? The cost of living? Laina's other grandmother had retired to Florida when Laina was a baby, but she'd been American to start with, which made Dad American too, even though he'd been born here. Since he'd never lived in the States, he'd been unable to get
U.S.
citizenship for his kids. If Laina were American, would he have taken her with him?

She slumps onto the couch, staring at the shiny surface of the coffee table she's just polished. At first she'd dreaded her grandparents' impending arrival, what they'd say when they saw her mother, that they'd take them all away to North Carolina, and Laina would lose her friends. But now that everything is too much, she longs for them to take over. She thinks of phoning to ask them to come sooner, but doesn't know how to say what's the matter with her mother, doesn't know the word to use.

If you look closely at Liv, the only movement you'll notice is her top lip twitching. She's running through the garden with her sister, Carol. Her father lifts them up, one in each arm, so they can pick oranges from the big tree. Her small palm cups an orange, its bulk dropping instantly into her hand, as if it has been waiting for an excuse to fall, or a safe landing place.

Lucy has eaten two lemons. The tart sweet juice has dried on her fingers, leaving them a little sticky. She's picked nasturtiums, roses, and oleander to decorate her tree house. Their colours brighten the shade of the white cedar. She's fetched a blanket, some books, and her stuffed rabbit from the room she shares with Laina. She sits on the blanket,
Alice in Wonderland
in hand, and reads a few pages, looking ahead for the pictures. The Cheshire cat is her favourite, how he disappears around his smile. She also likes the caterpillar's raised eyebrows as he asks, “Whoo Are Yoou?” Lucy is perhaps the least affected by her father's unexplained departure and her mother's depression. Licking her fingers, she turns the page—all those little oysters following the Walrus and the Carpenter. She doesn't feel a bit sorry for them—well, maybe just a bit. She drops the book to pick up her stuffed rabbit. Rubbing his fuzzy belly across her face, she lies down on the blanket. The tree is dry after its late morning shower. The sun peeks in through the thick shiny leaves as it begins to sink behind the oleanders.

Liv lies in her playpen. A yellow bear stares at her. Its eyes are blue buttons. She reaches towards it, noticing her own pink fingers, her small starfish hand. She's caught up in staring at it, until she feels a gnawing, yawning emptiness in her belly, and opens her mouth to cry for food.

Laina, stirring a pot of chicken noodle soup, hears the click of the driveway gate. The spoon falls into the soup. Dad's home! She bolts out the door and up the path to the driveway, but instead of her dad, she sees her brother with a policeman. Luke waves, giving her a sheepish smile.

“Good afternoon, young lady,” says the policeman. “Are your parents home?”

Laina feels something small and brittle snap under her stocking feet. She cannot answer the policeman, whose warm, bright smile makes her want to cry. She runs back inside to get her mother.

Lucy hears a man's deep voice in her dreams. “Daddy.” She wakes, and rolls over in bed. But the bed slips and splinters, falling out from under her, as she drops past shadowy leaves like feathers stroking the orange sky, until she meets the rain-softened earth with a thump.

Liv steps outside, blinks into the last rays of sunlight, jumps at the sound of the screen door clicking shut. She and Laina are both in time to see the policeman's jacket billow behind him as he and Luke run down the path to the lemon grove. A sour lump of fear rises in Liv's chest. Wrapping her ratty wool cardigan more closely around her, she stumbles after them.

Laina follows her mother. Great warm tears drip down her face as she runs. She feels a rush of emotions that will inundate her dreams for years, but what rises to the top, loosening her arms and legs, is relief.

The policeman reaches Lucy first. Luke crouches beside them, watches him check her pulse with trembling fingers and bend his face close to hers to feel her breath. Luke can hear the rustle of the policeman's jacket and the sigh he makes as he rests back on his heels.

Liv stands under the white cedar, twisting and tugging at one of the leather buttons on her cardigan. She steps forward as the policeman lifts Lucy from the ground, holding her so that Liv can see her face. A round patch of Lucy's cheek is bright yellow. At first Liv feels queasy, thinking a yellow hole has opened into her daughter's face. Then she touches the yellow, discovers she can peel it from Lucy's warm skin. She stares at it, feels its smooth oily surface, presses it to her nose.

What We Hold in Our Hands

“THE MOON'S HOLDING WATER TONIGHT,” SAID MY GRAND
mother
,
Esty. She was gazing out my mother's bay window at the half moon, which lay on its side like a white bowl suspended in the dark. Its light softened the yellow lawns of the Boston suburb, and smoothed the dirty traces of snow.

“I've never heard that expression before,” I said, thinking it made the moon into a sponge or a woman's body retaining water.

Esty was starting to be frail. Her shoulders leaned forward to protect a sinking chest. Her pale knuckles trembled as she gripped the arms of her chair, and lowered herself back onto the cushioned seat.

We had just finished eating. My husband Len was in the kitchen helping my mother with the dishes. She always had to wipe away the remains of dinner before we could have dessert. Esty had wanted to dry, but Len had insisted, pressing his palms together in what he thought was a whimsical imitation of prayer, and begging, “Please, Esty. Drying dishes is one of the great pleasures in my life.”

Esty had given a dry laugh like a cough. “Well, I wouldn't want to deprive you.”

Len liked to make Esty and my mother laugh. Lately his antics never earned more than a grudging smile from me. His need for approval was wearing me out, and I didn't like the way he sought it everywhere, joking with shop clerks and waitresses, wooing his patients into thinking he was wonderful.

“Here's dessert,” he said, bearing one of Esty's homemade pumpkin pies into the dining room. My mother followed with teapot and mugs. Len poured the tea while I served the pie.

Looking up from her plate with half a smile, Esty said, “Last night I dreamed I killed a man.”

My mother raised her eyebrows and sent me a side-sweeping, I-told-you-so look. She wanted to convince me that Esty was slipping into senility, but although Esty's body was weakening, her mind seemed as sharp and tough as ever. I suspected that my mother's worries were fueled by equal parts dread and desire, like the whiskey and soda she used to pour herself each evening after my father left.

“How did you kill him?” I asked, squeezing lemon into my tea and thinking about the gun Esty kept under her pillow.

“I just beat him with my fists until he fell over dead. He died so easily, he must have been in pretty bad shape.”

At my grandfather Gus's funeral, Esty had thrown herself onto his body during the viewing, kissing him and crying like a little girl. I'd never seen her show him such affection when he was alive, not so much as a peck or a hug. They were always arguing or teasing each other. Sometimes he'd kiss her cheek, causing her to squirm and hiss an exasperated
Oh, Gus!

At the funeral, I'd felt as though I was spying through the window of my grandparents' bedroom as they lay in their queen-size bed, Esty peeling the blanket from Gus's pyjama-clad body while she snuggled close, her fingers wandering down his white buttons.

“Did you know the man in your dream?” I asked.

“He was just some man. I don't know where he came from.”

“Are you sure there was nothing familiar about him?”

Esty shook her head.

“Karyl,” Len said in his don't-go-there voice, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“Len.” I mimicked his tone, pushed his hand away.

Len and I had laboured through the fall, dealing with an outbreak of flu and pre-Christmas neuroses. Our office handled people's physical and emotional ailments, Len as homeopath, me as social worker. But the same clients who couldn't get enough of his little white pills and hearty advice eyed me with suspicion when I encouraged them to talk about their troubles, or recommended books for them to read.

“The man in your dream wasn't Dad, was he?” my mother asked Esty.

“Of course not. I could never hurt your father, not even in a dream.”

“Maybe you were trying to shut him up.” My mother sliced another piece of pie for herself. “You always said he talked too much.”

Esty had been secretary and receptionist for Gus's small-town medical practice. He'd collected stories about everyone in town, sharing them with her, but she'd never let him repeat them to others. If patients had thought their secrets unsafe, they'd have visited the doctor in the next town, or the young man who'd moved into the old florist's shop.

“Mom's right,” I said to Esty. “Whenever Grandpa started to tell me a story, even stories about his childhood, you'd always ask me to help with some chore.”

“Like hanging laundry,” my mother said.

“Or filling Grandpa's birdfeeders.”

“I don't remember that.” Esty smoothed her paper napkin with both hands and folded it in two.

“Do you remember the story of the schoolteacher with the dreadful secret?” I asked. “I never did find out what happened to her.”

Esty shrugged.

My mother scraped the filling out of her pastry, which lay wan and limp on her plate.

When I was small, Gus used to lift me off the floor and twirl me around while Esty yelled, “Watch out for the furniture!” He'd make a quarter disappear, then reemerge behind my ear or under my chin. Rolling her eyes, Esty would say, “I'd like to see you make my shingles disappear. Some doctor.”

My mother stuck her fork into the empty crust, poked a series of holes across its surface. “I could always rely on Dad to take my side, to let me go out and enjoy myself,” she said to Esty. “You seemed to think that life was just about work and school.”

“We were brought up to work hard.”

“More tea?” Len filled my mug before I had a chance to say yes.

When he topped up my mother's tea, she leaned her cheek against his hand.

By the time I was ten or eleven, I squirmed away from Gus whenever he tried to pick me up or pull a quarter from my ear. Since my father no longer showed me such attentions, I chose to think myself too old, to regard hugs and playfulness as insults to my autonomy. Rejecting their inadequate consolation, I'd ignore Gus the way Esty did, while she and I logged hand after hand of Gin Rummy, or dashed outside with a handful of carrots to feed the neighbour's horses.

Back then, my parents often went out to dinner parties, or had people over to play bridge or dance on our scuffed living room floor. Even when the party took place in our own home, I was sometimes sent to sleep at Esty and Gus's. But during my early teens, the parties had ended, and my mother had ordered moss-green wall-to-wall carpeting to be laid down over the living room parquet. Later I learned that my father had been sleeping with one of the women in their group of friends.

“Does anyone want to go for a walk?” Len asked.

“It's too cold.” I pressed the warm mug to my cheek.

“We could play cards,” my mother said.

“My father used to play the piano after dinner.” Esty sighed. “Those were good times.”

“I thought you hated those old days,” I said. “Your mother working herself to death, your father unable to hold a job. It doesn't sound like much fun.”

“Oh, but my sisters and I made our own fun, naming the chickens, making dolls out of rags and corn cobs, singing around the piano. When my father was in a good mood, he sang the most comical songs.”

I tried to catch my mother's eye, to confirm what I remembered her saying about Esty's father—that he used to beat them. But she rose from her chair without looking at me and disappeared into the kitchen.

“What happened when your father was in a bad mood?” I asked.

“Oh, he used to storm and shout and go off for the day, sometimes longer.”

“Where did he work?” asked Len.

“He worked on the railroad or cutting timber, but mostly he was between jobs. He couldn't get along with his bosses. There was always a fight. He wasn't a bad man, just unhappy.”

Esty seemed to have forgotten her old feelings about her childhood, whatever had led her, for most of her life, to avoid mentioning those days, and to stop Gus from talking about them too. Now the past was wiped clean, allowed into the ether of her fresh consciousness, as if she'd gotten religion. Maybe her mind really wasn't as sharp and tough as it used to be.

My mother returned from the kitchen with a bottle of peach schnapps and some glasses.

“Now that was a good idea,” Len said, taking a glass.

“I thought we could use a little something.”

“Tell us more about your dream, Grandma.” Convinced that the man in Esty's dream had been her father, I wanted her to see it too.

“There's nothing more to tell. All I remember is beating at this strange man until he fell over as if he'd been struck by lightning. Struck down dead. And he never fought back, didn't even try to get away.”

“I've had that dream myself,” my mother said. “But I know who the man was.”

We all knew who the man was—
my
father, Derek, who had remarried years ago and died of cancer early this spring.

I allowed Len to grip my fingers under the table. He'd wanted to spend the holidays in the Dominican Republic where we could have lingered in bed over champagne and sliced pineapple, catching up on our lovemaking.

Yesterday, driving here from our home in Toronto, we'd found ourselves on the wrong road and stopped for coffee at the next exit. Dusk had begun to set in, the sky spitting snowflakes.

“I don't like the look of this weather.” Len had tugged on my scarf. “Let's get our coffee to go.”

“Can't we just sit here for ten minutes?”

“We have at least an hour ahead of us, and I don't want to drive it in a snowstorm.”

“There's not going to be a snowstorm,” I said, choosing a booth beside the window, trying to ignore the rhythmic tapping of Len's fingers against the Formica tabletop, trying to pretend that I was enjoying my bitter coffee and cold apple pie.

He stirred two sugars into his mug. “Isn't it interesting how you're doing your best to put off arriving at your mother's house? Especially since the whole trip was your idea.”

“Stop it, Len.”

“All I'm saying is we should have gone south for a real holiday.”

“Mom says Esty's not well. It might be her last Christmas.”

“I thought you didn't believe your mother's doom and gloom.”

“What if it's true?” I'd pressed the hot mug to my face. “I never got to see my father before he died, didn't even know he was sick.”

“It's natural for you to feel angry.” Len lowered his eyebrows, assuming the compassionate tone he used with his patients.

“I'm not angry. I'm grieving.”

Without Len, I would never have completed my Social Work degree. Disabled by depression, deserted by the boyfriend I'd followed to Canada, I'd been ready to quit school when a friend had recommended a homeopath, who'd turned out to be Len. He'd lent me a light visor and prescribed a regimen of herbs and vitamins, but it had been his attention and care that had pulled me through.

My mother poured herself more of the awful peach schnapps.

“It sounds like you're still angry at Karyl's father,” Len said.

“It doesn't keep me up nights.”

“Do we have to talk about this?” I pulled my fingers away from Len's grip.

“Talking is good,” he said.

“I hate talking. No wonder I'm such a lousy therapist.”

“You have to stop saying that.” His warning tone again.

In the morning, we'd picked up Esty, who'd been waiting in the kitchen with her overnight bag. The neighbouring meadow where we used to feed the horses had been sold long ago, and now bore a brick bungalow with a red door, but Gus's birdfeeders still hung from the apple tree in the backyard, and inside, the place still smelled of pot roast and soap. When I was a child, I used to burst through the door after a few weeks' absence, delighted to find the same brown leather couch, the same board games in the cupboard, the same violets growing in their painted pots, and Esty and Gus in their usual places, bent over a puzzle at the kitchen table. But this morning, all the familiar objects and smells had made me squeeze my face tight to stop the tears that threatened to undo me.

“It's too bad you don't enjoy your work, Karyl,” Esty said.

“That's rich coming from you,” my mother said. “You never thought that work was something to enjoy.”

“Oh, I liked my work well enough, but most aren't so lucky. Remember how much Derek hated his law practice? I bet that was what made him go off the rails.”

“You always said it was my fault. That he got bored with me.” My mother looked down at her empty glass.

“He was a restless one,” Esty said. “Trying to ‘find himself.' Trying to forget himself more likely.”

Ever since my father left us, I'd been trying to forget him, forget how remote he'd become when he was still at home, forget the way he used to tuck me into bed when I was small, answering the stream of questions I invented to make him linger by my side. Forget the way I used to help him in the garden, digging holes for the tomato and cucumber seedlings. He'd shown me how to tamp down the soil around them, how to stake the plants when they grew bigger, how to pinch off the new growth between the established branches and the stalk. He was always giving me some vegetable nickname.