Road Ends (10 page)

Her descriptions of the accommodation they had to endure en route are similarly low on fact—again not a single place name—and high on impressions. The first night was dominated by bedbugs; nothing else gets a mention. The second was spent in a barn with a leaky roof during what was clearly, from my mother’s description, the worst thunderstorm since the dawn of time. On the third night they slept on the floor of a railway station.

The final train they took must have been the lumber train to the southern end of Lake Temiskaming. It was literally the end of the line as far as either rail or road went back then. In winter, when the lake froze over, the ice acted as a road but in summer you could proceed farther north only by boat, so the two families and their long-suffering livestock would have had to unload themselves from the train yet again and then reload everything onto a steamer for the trip up the lake.

Mother’s entry for that day is embellished with a drawing of herself and her family on the boat. Artistically it would win no prizes but she clearly took time over it and was at pains not to leave anyone or anything out. Animals and people are all mixed together: four adults, eleven children, one dog, six cows, four horses, an ox and a large box presumably containing the chickens. All but the chickens are standing at the rail and looking out over the lake. In reality I’m sure this couldn’t have been the case—the livestock would have been down in the hold—but in my mother’s mind they were all together. It reminds me of Noah’s Ark.

That first diary of hers, chronicling the family’s journey and most of their first year in the North, is one of only four from her childhood that survived the fire unscathed. The only reason any of them did is because Mother had hidden them under the floorboards in the kitchen. I found them when I went back to the blackened ruins of our home a couple of weeks after the fire, to see if anything of value remained. The floorboards, which had been mostly burned away, had rested on rows of joists, which in turn rested directly on the rock and hard-packed earth beneath, and the gap between the joists was just large enough to contain her precious bundles. There must have been quite a few of them—there were four stacks and from the charred remains I reckon each stack was eight to ten inches high. The fire destroyed all but the bottom inch or so and some of those were badly singed at the edges. Her first diary was at the very bottom of a stack. It must have been particularly precious to her because it was wrapped in several layers of newspaper and then a piece of burlap sacking. When I unearthed it from the rubble my hands came out grey with ash. I remember thinking they looked like the hands of the dead.

As I said, I got out the diaries in the hope that they would exorcise my father’s ghost, but in fact they had the opposite
effect. They merely reminded me of how that brief, perfect interlude with my mother ended, my father slamming into the house unexpectedly early, purple-faced and stinking of drink, having no doubt been fired from or walked out of yet another job. When he saw my mother and me sitting there, he began shouting at her, calling her a whore, a slut, an ugly, lazy bitch, right there in front of me. Afterwards, when he had gone and it was safe to speak, she said quietly, looking down into her lap, “You mustn’t think he means those things, Edward. It’s just the liquor talking.”

That wasn’t so. I knew that even then. She was trying to protect me from the truth. It wasn’t the liquor talking, it was my father’s true self. The liquor merely loosened his tongue.

Anyway, I put the diaries away again, back in their box files. Since then I’ve been trying to concentrate on Rome, with mixed success.

A better night. But the here and now keeps demanding attention in the most irritating way. I had no clean shirts this morning. When I spoke to Emily about it she looked baffled, then said she would be doing laundry today. All very well, but I was reduced to wearing a dirty shirt to work.

And that is by no means the most serious thing she has forgotten lately. Last week, we ran out of food. Incredible but true. We live virtually in the centre of town. Not only is the grocery store nearby, but it will deliver groceries to your door; all you have to do is pick up the phone.

I didn’t realize we were running low. It is not my job to oversee the day-to-day running of the house and in any case, for several years now—since Megan left, in fact—I have been having my meals at the bank during the week. Harper’s restaurant is less than a hundred yards from the bank and Susan Harper is a
significantly better cook than Emily, so I pick up coffee and a bran muffin on my way to work and then Jean, my secretary, gets me a sandwich at lunchtime and one of their hot beef (or pork or chicken) dinners, neatly double-wrapped in foil, at five o’clock. I eat in solitary splendour in my office when everyone else has gone. It means I get half an hour’s peace at the end of the day, which is a bonus, but it also means that I don’t know what the rest of the family is eating except on weekends.

Last Saturday—day one of our most recent blizzard—I noticed at lunchtime that amongst other things we had run out of bread, but I assumed Emily had arranged for Marshall’s to deliver groceries that afternoon. It turned out she had not. She had no idea the fridge was empty. I didn’t realize this until six in the evening, by which time it was too late to do anything about it.

I went up to her room—Emily and I do not share a room, Emily and the newest arrival share a room; I have my own room at the far end of the hall—and found her in bed, cradling the baby and looking as if she were posing for a painting of the Madonna and Child. Emily always becomes distinctly strange in the aftermath of childbirth. It’s as if her universe shrinks right down until it contains nothing but herself and the baby. She makes a little nest in the bed and settles down in it as if she were hatching an egg and simply stays there. The rest of us might as well not exist. Formerly it didn’t matter much because Megan was here to pick up the pieces, but it matters now. The other children, especially Adam, being so young, are not toys to be discarded on the arrival of a new model.

I asked if she was feeling all right—obviously if she was sick it was a different story—and she said yes. I confess I was relieved; I would not relish calling in John Christopherson, given what he said when Adam was born about Emily not being strong enough to have more children. I found it hard to meet his eye when he came to deliver this one.

I asked what she expected us to have for supper and she looked up at me with that blank expression of hers as if the question had never crossed her mind. I have wondered before now if Emily’s vagueness is deliberate—an excuse for not taking her duties seriously. It’s impossible to tell. I noticed there was an open packet of biscuits beside her bed, which helped explain why she wasn’t hungry herself. (Curiously, they were the same as the ones I keep in my desk. I would have sworn Emily and I had absolutely nothing in common, but it turns out I would have been wrong: we both like digestives.)

I pointed out that it was half past six, that we were hungry and there was nothing in the fridge but two eggs and a carrot. I don’t think my tone was particularly sharp, but she abruptly started to cry, silently, looking down at the baby, the tears running down her face and dripping onto his head.

I said tiredly, “Emily, for heaven’s sake.” I hadn’t meant to upset her.

There was a box of Kleenex on the bedside table. I offered her one and she took it and wiped the baby’s face and then her own. When she had pulled herself together I tried again. I asked as patiently as I could why she hadn’t arranged for Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is to come in every day and help until she felt stronger. At that she seemed to gather her wits and said that Mrs. Whatever had phoned to say that she was sick but hoped to be back soon.

Clearly there was nothing to be done until after the weekend. I suggested carefully, gently, that on Monday morning she should make a few phone calls, first to arrange for Marshall’s to deliver some food and second to find someone to come in each day and deal with the housework until Mrs. Whatever gets back. I asked if she thought she could manage to do those two things and she said yes.

I said, “As for the rest of the weekend, we will manage somehow, so don’t worry about that.” As if there were any question of her worrying about it.

Sometimes I cannot help comparing Emily with my mother, who had ten children, virtually no money and an abusive fool for a husband, but who nevertheless managed to have a proper meal on the table every day of our lives.

I suppose that isn’t fair. My mother was a remarkable woman.

On my way downstairs I met Tom coming up, carrying a large cardboard box and closely followed by Adam. The stairs are narrow and we all stood aside for each other in that awkward way people do in doorways.

“Come on, then,” I said. They came up past me—cautiously, it seemed to me, though there’s an outside chance they were being polite. Tom had obviously been out—his face was mottled with cold and there was snow in his hair.

“Cold out, I guess,” I said, trying to be pleasant. Following the business with Peter and Corey earlier in the afternoon I had resolved to be more pleasant with the boys. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing,” Tom said. “Yeah, it’s freezing.” He carried on up, Adam almost literally clinging to his heels. It occurred to me that we don’t know how to talk to each other in this family.

I went down to the kitchen and got out the eggs, the can of peas (I say “the” can because there was only one), the can of condensed mushroom soup (ditto) and the rice. There were no clean saucepans, so I used a dirty one. I read the instructions on the packet of rice and cooked it—it made a surprisingly large amount, but that was all to the good. I added everything else to the saucepan and cooked it a little more for the sake of the eggs. The result was rather glutinous—possibly I should have strained the water off the can of peas before adding them—but it didn’t taste too bad.

I ate my share of it straight from the saucepan, there being no clean plates, and then went upstairs and knocked on the door
of the room shared by Peter and Corey. Peter opened the door a crack and peered out as if I might be Jack the Ripper. I said, “If you’re hungry, there’s a saucepan of food on the stove. It needs to feed all of us for two days, so don’t take more than your share.” I turned to knock on Tom’s door but he was already standing in the doorway. I said, “Did you hear that?” and he nodded. Adam was in there—I heard the whizzing noise his cars make—so at least I don’t need to worry about him. I went back down to my study.

I had just settled into my chair when I realized that I had forgotten to tell Emily there was now something to eat. Fortunately Peter and Corey chose that moment to come thundering down the stairs, so I got up quickly and opened the study door. Both of them froze, mid-step, teetering on a stair apiece. I said, “Take some supper up to your mother,” and they nodded mutely like some sort of comedy double act.

So that looked after Saturday’s supper. On Sunday we ate the remains of the rice mixture and by the time I got home on Monday evening Emily was up and drifting around the house with the baby strapped to her front the way she always carries them when they’re new. I assumed she had things back under control. Now, given the absence of clean shirts, it seems she has not.

Sometimes it is hard not to regret that Megan has left home. I didn’t realize the extent to which she covered for her mother all those years.