After River (28 page)

T
HE TELEPHONE ON
the other end of the line rings four times. I prepare to leave a message on the answering machine when I hear Vern's voice.

‘Natalie?' he says out of breath, as if he has run to grab the phone.

‘Yes, it's me.' I sink down in the paisley chair by the bed. My packed suitcase waits beside me.

Next door at the hospital, Boyer, along with Jenny and Nick, are making arrangements to bring Mom home in the ambulance. Boyer's partner, Stanley, has taken Gavin back to the motel and is now waiting downstairs to drive me out to the farm. Later this afternoon, after Molly finishes her nap, Boyer will bring Gavin and his family out for dinner.

Gavin's daughter! My granddaughter! I still can't believe I have a granddaughter.

I am still reeling from the emotional reunion in my mother's hospital room. The awkwardness of the hushed introductions were overshadowed by Mom's request to be taken home. We all knew what that meant.

‘How's your mother?' Vern asks.

So much has happened since I last heard my husband's voice, since I watched him disappear into the morning fog at the Prince
George bus station. Was that really only yesterday morning? So much has changed. There are so many things to tell him, so many things I want to say. It's hard to know where to start.

‘Can you come?' I ask. ‘I want you to meet her, to meet my family.'

‘Of course,' he says. The relief in his voice carries over the static.

‘Are you all right?' he asks.

‘Yes, yes, I am,' I tell him. ‘I just need you.'

‘I'll wrap things up here and leave tonight.'

I give him directions to the farm. ‘South Valley Road is not hard to find once you've found Atwood,' I tell him. ‘Just follow it until you come to the end of the road.'

‘I'll be there,' he says.

‘Hurry.'

W
E PULL INTO
the farmyard and park by the yard gate in front of the house. ‘I thought you and Boyer might build yourselves a new home like the ones in your subdivision,' I say to Stanley perhaps a little too heartily.

He glances at me quickly from the corner of his eye, but my question is sincere. He smiles. ‘No. None of those new houses have the charm of this old place.'

We stroll together up the path to the front porch and I notice the changes have kept that charm. The siding, windows, and trim are all new. The house looks straighter, stronger.

Inside the enclosed porch a gleaming new front-load washer and dryer have been built into designer cabinets. Wide windows stretch across the back wall, looking into the modernized kitchen.

Before I go upstairs Stanley proudly shows me the rest of the renovations. An addition–a new master bedroom with bathroom–now stands where the rose garden once grew. The sunroom at the back of the house has been turned into a suite for Mom. A hospital bed, placed to overlook the back field, is ready and waiting for her.

Upstairs my bedroom looks the same, only smaller. In my memory, the room I grew up in was much larger. The linoleum floor and the floral wallpaper are unchanged. But even though I
have grown no taller since the last time I was here, I feel like a giant invading the space of a child.

I set my suitcase down by the dresser and stand gazing out the window. Yellow poplar leaves drift onto the paved road. The barn has been updated too and painted, but otherwise the view is unchanged. I have a sudden urge to lift the window and climb out on to the roof. Only time stops me. Time and a few stiff joints.

Soon they will all come up this familiar road. The first time our entire family has been together in this house–together anywhere–since my dad died.

Downstairs everything is quiet. Stanley is the only other person in the house for the moment. And even though this is the first time I have spent any time with Boyer's life partner, I know that he is as much a part of our family as Ruth is. During the drive to the farm in his pick-up truck, I wondered aloud why I had never met him when we were kids.

‘Well,' he told me, his green eyes crinkling into a smile, ‘I was in university by the time you recited your poem about my father and grandfather.'

‘Boyer's poem,' I laughed. ‘You heard about that?'

‘I was there.'

I remember the auburn-haired boy talking to Boyer in the gymnasium that night. That hair has faded to a strawberry blond but there is still a boyish look to the rounded face.

‘I was home for Christmas and went to the school that night with Dad. He loved Christmas concerts. I wasn't much of a fan then, but I do remember the poem. My father loved it.'

And I like this man
, I thought as we shared a memory.

‘I did come out here a few years later,' he added tentatively, ‘during the search for River.'

‘Yes, I heard that you and your father came to help. I didn't see you. I didn't see much during that time.'

 

I turn from my bedroom window at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Stanley pokes his head in my door.

‘Can I show you something?' he asks as he beckons me to follow him. We make our way up the new hardwood stairs to the attic.

As unchanged as my room is, this one, Boyer's old nest, is unrecognizable. The narrow space has been converted into a study. The bottom half of the sloped walls are still lined with books, but now they are all neatly organized on maple bookshelves. A bay window with a cushioned window seat has replaced the tiny Pearson window that once looked out at the familiar view of fields and mountains.

The fading sunlight comes down through the slanted skylight. It shines down on the wall at the end of the room. The only flat wall in the attic. The framed arrangement hanging above the desk gets my attention. I look closer. Each picture frame holds a magazine or newspaper clipping. The entire wall is covered with clippings of my articles, stories and book reviews.

Someone–Boyer–has carefully mounted and displayed a history of my career. Even my very first article, published by the newspaper where I worked selling advertising, is there.

Stanley sits himself down on the chair in front of the desk. He watches while I study the display. After a few moments he slides open a drawer and pulls out a file-folder thick with papers. Without a word he hands it to me. Inside, I find reams of handwritten poetry. Boyer's poetry. I sit down on the daybed and read through some of them while he waits.

‘These are beautiful,' I say as I take them in. ‘Beautiful. I'm so glad he kept writing.'

‘He misses you, Natalie,' Stanley says quietly.

I look up at him, ‘And I miss him too.' I force a reply, trying to keep my voice from breaking. Oh, if he only knew how much I miss my brother. I feel his absence from my life every day, as if a part of me is missing. I carry on constant imaginary conversations with him, but each time I see his face the words I want to say die on my lips. I swallow. ‘I can't believe he saved all these old pieces,' I wave at the wall display.

‘He's so proud of you,' Stanley says.

I search his face with my eyes. It's the face of a kind man. The creases of time etched around his eyes show only concern.

‘It was because of Boyer that I became a journalist, you know,' I tell him. ‘He was the first one to pay me by the word.' I picture the jar of pennies on the windowsill in my bedroom. ‘I get a bit more than a penny a word now.' I laugh. ‘Not much though!' Even to me my laugh sounds forced.

‘Are you ever going to forgive him?' Stanley asks. His words startle me. This is the same question that Mom asked me only a few hours ago.
Boyer? Me forgive Boyer
?

‘Forgive him for what?' I ask.

Stanley's gentle eyes hold mine, but he says nothing.

Then I tell him what I have always wanted to tell Boyer. What I wanted to tell Mom today. ‘I'm the one who should beg his forgiveness.' My shoulders sag in resignation. Stanley shifts over from his chair and sits down beside me.

‘I stay away because I can't face him. I don't deserve him. I don't deserve to be around him. It was my carelessness that ruined his life,' I tell him, and as simply as that it all comes out. My guilt, my shame, my betrayal–all are given voice in the quiet of Boyer's old bedroom.

I tell him how my thoughtless words started the evil avalanche of gossip, which would shatter Boyer's, and our family's image, in the community.

‘And River,' I whisper. ‘If I hadn't run away that night, River would never have become lost, never have been killed.'

Finally, as unchecked tears slide down my cheeks, I tell him about the marijuana butts thrown carelessly under the sink in Boyer's cabin. I confess it all to this virtual stranger. ‘I can't look at him without knowing I caused the fire, his scars.'

Stanley gently puts both of his arms around me. Nothing about having this man, who I have just met today, hold me, feels strange. I understand now some of what my mother must have felt in all those years of sharing her burdens in a confessional.

He pulls a cotton handkerchief from his shirt pocket. ‘You were sixteen years old,' he says as I wipe my eyes. ‘A child. Such a burden to carry alone all these years, Natalie. It's you who needs to find a way to forgive that sixteen-year-old girl.'

‘The fire—' I start.

He takes my face in his hands and forces me to look into his eyes. ‘The fire was arson.'

‘I know the police suspected that, but—'

‘No, they knew it, but couldn't–or didn't want to–prove it. There were anonymous calls claiming a group of boys had doused the logs at the front door with gasoline and set the fire. Your father found a gas can washed up at the lake shore the following spring.'

‘Who—?

‘We'll never know. Kids playing a stupid prank or someone with an ignorant vendetta.'

‘All because of my foolish words.'

‘No, all because of prejudice,' Stanley says quietly, and I wonder
what he and Boyer have had to endure over the years just to be who they are. ‘But does it really matter now?' he asks. ‘After all these years, does it matter how, or why, any of it happened? Is it worth not having your brother in your life to hang onto your guilt?'

When I don't answer he continues. ‘What a waste,' he slowly shakes his head. ‘This family never fights, never uses words as weapons. They use silence. And it hurts just as much. All of you let what is haunting you, what you are not saying to each other, come between you. Both you and Boyer harbour guilt over River's death. But you never speak to each other about it.'

Momentarily numbed by the enormity of what he is saying I nod silently, then stand up.

‘Talk to him Natalie,' he says before I leave. ‘Don't underestimate his capacity to love. And to forgive.'

 

Later, alone in my room, I think about Stanley's words as I search for something to give my granddaughter when she arrives.

I look at the jar of pennies by the window. It won't be long before she's old enough to start playing the penny game. A penny isn't much these days, I know, but then it's not about the pennies. It was never about the pennies.

I lean down and push open the door to the crawl space under the eaves. My joints protest slightly when I get down on my hands and knees. Perhaps there are some old toys in here. I was never much for dolls, but maybe Jenny has left something.

Cobwebs brush my fingers as I reach into a wooden box to pull out a lumpy purple Seagram's bag. I wonder if kids still play with marbles these days.

Behind the box of marbles I feel another box full of books. I drag
it out and pick up the small book on the top. I flip through the pages of A. A. Milne's
When We Were Very Young
.

Perfect.

I close the book at the sound of cars coming up the road.

I push myself up and hurry over to the window. My fingers grip the windowsill as I watch Boyer's Jeep pull up in front of the house. A parade of vehicles, Morgan's pick-up truck, the ambulance and Jenny's Edsel, follow slowly behind.

Gavin climbs out of the passenger side of the Jeep. A smile forms on his lips as he takes in his surroundings. The back door opens and a young woman climbs out. She leans back in and lifts a small blonde child into her arms. A black-and-white border collie, astonishingly similar to our old cow dog, Buddy, bolts out from under the porch. He clears the fence and joins the group. The girl leans from her mother's arms and tries to reach down to pet the dog, who, with tail wagging, leads them up the path to the porch.

It's hard to imagine River, frozen in time and in my mind still age twenty-three, as a grandfather. But the three-year-old girl, whose aquablue eyes I recognize all the way from the window, the child who looks up and shyly returns my wave, can only be his granddaughter.

I
N THE SUNROOM
Jenny hooks up the intravenous while Nick takes care of the oxygen. I can see the trip has taken its toll on Mom. After she is comfortable I adjust her blanket as I stroke her forehead.

‘It's good to be home,' Mom sighs and attempts a smile.

I sit down by her bed and take her hand in mine.

‘Go visit with everyone, Natalie,' she says, her voice fading, ‘I'm going to sleep for a bit.'

On the other side of the bed Jenny nods at me and adjusts the morphine feed. I can feel Mom relax as the morphine begins to work.

Before dinner Ruth and I go over to the dairy together to get the room upstairs ready for Carl.

I switch the gas heat on in the chilled room and we turn the mattress on the iron bed. I reach up and pull linen from the closet shelf then stare down at the quilt in my hands. My grandmother's quilt. And it strikes me that this was where Gavin was conceived.

I walk over to the window and think about the night of the storm. Mom is right again. There are no ill winds. And there's no need to wonder what good she thinks the ill winds of that summer blew into our lives. Gavin. But somewhere, somewhere between those winds, and the good that came from them, a lot of time has disappeared, wasted in keeping useless secrets.

I turn to look at Ruth. As she takes a load of towels into the bathroom I wonder how all this was affecting her, how she felt to find out it was her baby who had not lived.

Determined not to let silence be part of this family's communication any longer, I turn to her. ‘Ruth, your baby–I'm sorry,' I say quietly as she brings extra hand towels and flannels to put in the nightstand.

‘It's all right.' She speaks deliberately. ‘I grieved for him a long time ago. He stopped moving inside me days before he was born,' she tells me. ‘When I woke up after the birth I couldn't feel anything. I signed the papers Dr Mumford gave me, but I knew my son's spirit was not in this world.'

I cross the room and wrap my arms around her. We stand holding each other for a few moments.

‘But Gavin is,' she says warmly. ‘And he, and his family, have returned to us.' She turns to place the towels inside the nightstand. She bends down, looks inside, then tugs at something wedged at the back of the cabinet. ‘Natalie, look at this,' she says as she straightens up.

An involuntary gasp escapes my lips as I realize what she is holding. She lets the black hard-covered notebook fall open then hands it to me. I sit down on the bed, unable to believe what I hold in my hands: one of River's journals. I thought all of them had burned in the fire.

I read the date at the top of the first page.
Monday June 10, 1968
. The day he left.

I feel as if I have re-entered the past. Even after all these years I recognize the neat rounded handwriting. Once again I read the remorse in his words for his failure of judgment in allowing himself to be carried away by curiosity, by grief, and in denying the truth of who he was the night I came to him.

 

Nothing excuses what I've done, I thought I knew who I was, what I stood for, and now I see I don't know anything.

I'm leaving this morning, before Gus gets back from the milk route. Before Natalie comes home from school. Before Nettie comes to the dairy. And before Boyer returns from work. Can I leave without seeing him? Without facing the truth? Without finding out if my truth is also his?

 

And then I see my mother's name.

 

Nettie came in without knocking and closed the door. She held her hand up to silence me before I spoke. She walked over and sat at the table across from me. She told me not to say anything, that she just wanted to sit there until Natalie was settled in the house.

But it was Nettie who broke the silence. ‘I don't want to know what happened here tonight,' she said after a few moments. ‘I just want to remind you she's only sixteen years old.' Once again she held up her palm to silence any reply from me.

She replaced her hands in her lap and stared down at them. Without raising her eyes she resumed speaking, her voice barely audible. ‘You young people have it all wrong,' she said more to herself than to me. ‘There's no such thing as free love. There's always a cost.'

We sat for what felt like hours in the silence after that. At the sound of morning birds outside the window, she looked up and said, ‘You know you have to leave, don't you.'

I nodded.

She stood and walked over to the door. With her hand on the knob she stopped, waited, then turned to look back at me. In a voice so low that I almost didn't hear her, she said, ‘Take Boyer with you.'

I let the journal fall open in my lap. And there, lodged in the centre pages is another part of the past. I pick up the old photograph. One I thought was lost long ago. River must have found it. I study the folded black-and-white snapshot. River's face smiles out through time. I carefully unfold the photograph to search for the face I know is on the other side. And there he is: a young Boyer, sitting leaned up against the trunk of the old apple tree, gazing over the top of his book. He is looking at River. And in that look I see so clearly now the love I had failed to recognize then.