Road to Thunder Hill (14 page)

PART III

14. Kyle House

I
T'S SUNDAY MORNING AND
here I am lying in this old clawfoot tub, remembering when I was ten and how the tips of my toes barely reached the other end. Now, adult knees rise out of the water like scaly sea monsters.

It's true what my mother says about long-term memory growing sharper with age. I can barely recall what happened last night at Hog Holler, yet I remember how my child body looked in this tub. Sharp little pelvic bones stuck up from the sides of a belly that sunk so low I'd have to arch my back to see the bead of water sparkling in my navel.

Now I open my eyes, fully expecting to see the stretch marks and dimpled fleshiness of my forty-plus body, but somehow, today, in this old tub, my body doesn't look so changed. Maybe it's the light through the stained glass window over the head of the tub. I'm glad Olive decided to leave that window when she renovated this old house. I'd always liked how the small squares of colour danced over the bathwater.

“We are so fortunate to have this great stove at a time like this!” Olive had said, when we walked through the back door into the warmth of Kyle kitchen. For once I had to agree with her as my body dove for the kitchen couch and my head sought the relief of a real cushion, and not some rolled-up coat. Just like the tub and stained glass window, at least Olive had the good sense to keep a couch in her kitchen.

I watched her lift the lid of the water reservoir. Steam billowed up to the ceiling.

“We have plenty of hot water for a bath. Who needs a nice hot bath?”

The twins shouted, “I do! I do!”

“Girls, girls, remember we said we would be storm rescuers today? And since we rescued your Aunt Patricia, we'll do everything possible to make her feel at home. So, who would like to carry buckets of water to the bathtub?”

“I will! I will!”

“Great. You'll take turns, okay? And Patricia, we want you to let us take care of you. After your bath, we'll have some nice hot curry, and then later you can rest in your old bedroom. How does that sound?”

“Sounds great, but don't bother,” I said, wondering how the hell she manages to get those girls to do chores.

“Oh, let us, just for today. The girls and I want to, don't we girls? And besides,” she lowered her voice. “You look like you could use a bath, Patricia.”

“I do?” I said, knowing full well that I did. Hung-over and unwashed, I likely stunk of rum and smoke. A hot bath, good meal, and a night in my old room above the kitchen sounded good.

I've been at Kyle House many times since Olive and Arthur moved in, but I haven't felt as connected to it as I do in this tub at this moment. In the past, whenever Olive had led her guests on a tour of the house, she insisted I come along as well. She'd march her guests through the great upstairs hall like we were in some museum and then through the passage to the back of the house and we'd stop in front of what used to be my old bedroom. As if it had some historical significance, she'd say, “This is where Patricia slept as a child. We even kept some of her old books and things! And don't you love the dormer window? If you've ever been to the
Anne of Green Gables
house over in
PEI
, you'll notice we've decorated this room in much the same fashion. Muslin curtains were very fashionable then, as were quilts, of course.”

I commented once that all that was missing was the rope barrier in front of the door to keep the tourists out. Olive didn't find that so funny, but her Toronto friends did.

She always ended the tour in the kitchen. If the bathroom off the kitchen and my bedroom have stayed pretty much the same as when I lived here, the kitchen sure hasn't. Olive had the ceiling exposed to the beams and boards and she replaced the old linoleum with battered looking softwood floors. Choosing the right look had seemed important to her, and before renovating she asked me over to look through countless magazines. My input was critical, she'd said, as no one had a stronger feeling for the place than I did. A Kyle kitchen called for a Kyle opinion. I said I liked natural wood. But instead she ended up finishing the cupboards in what she called distressed paint.

I couldn't care less about what Olive did with the kitchen. My feelings haven't changed from the day my family turned the key and our backs on Kyle House. As far as I was concerned, all we were leaving behind were ghosts. Friendly ghosts, my father would say and he'd tease me about the noises I heard at night, the pencils and things that fell off my bureau, and the cold drafts that seemed to follow me from room to room.

“You must get that from your mother,” he'd say about Bette, who often complained about another kind of ghost, the spirit of Bernie's first wife. Once she actually shivered after crossing the threshold into the front parlour. She put her hand to her chest and said, “I feel like Phyllis Kyle just walked over my grave.”

My father laughed and reminded my mother that his first wife was still alive and enjoying his hard-earned alimony money up in Toronto.

On my last visit to the palliative care unit, I fluffed my father's pillows and got him to sip at peach juice. Twice he tried to get his cracked lips to close around the straw. I wet his lips with with little drops of juice at the end of the straw. When he'd had enough, he said, “Ahh. Now that was to die for.” He opened one eye. “I hope you'll tell everybody I was still making jokes on my deathbed.” He said his back was sore. I offered to rub it, but he wanted to wait until Bette returned from smoking in the visitor's lounge.

“Do you want the nurse to give you something for the pain?”

He looked worse than the week before. I hated seeing his spindly arms that used to be so strong. When I was little he'd toss me up so high in the sky that my breath would catch before falling back to the safety of his arms.

Now my father struggled say, “I used to worry about all the drugs you were taking. Funny, huh? Now I'm the one who is as high as a kite. Help me to the window, would you?”

We shuffled from the bed over to the window where he had his cigarettes hidden behind the blind. While he blew smoke out through the screen, he told me to watch the door in case a nurse came by.

“Sometimes they forget who helped pay for this wing,” he said, slipping into a coughing fit that lasted until Bette returned to the room.

“I still don't understand,” Bette said, picking up the same conversation that had sent her out of the room in the first place. “Why you would want to be buried in a place that your first wife
loved so much?”

“Who says
I
didn't love Kyle House?”

“You never said you loved it. You didn't, Bernie, not once.”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe it was because I loved
you
that much more?” he said, with a voice so tender I turned to see who was speaking.

Bette wasn't buying the tone, because she cried out, “Ha! So now you're saying you're prepared to love me
less
.”

“You see? I can't win.” My father winked at me, his laugh shifting to a choking cough that sent Bette to the window to stare at the parking lot below. “You watch,” he whispered. “She won't let up, even after I'm dead and gone.”

The next day, just before he died, he patted Bette's hand and told her to do whatever she wanted with his mortal remains, that he was heading for a whole new beginning somewhere new.

She let him have his way, though, and had him buried in Thunder Hill Cemetery, right next to Kyle House. It was a breezy summer day filled with the sound of quaking aspens and scolding crows. Dappled sunlight lit our faces and behind us the ocean sparkled. There was something about all that sun and sea that made my father's burial seem less final than I expected. But I still feel sad that my father died believing my mother wouldn't bury him in Thunder Hill Cemetery.

“When you're ready we'll have some nice hot curry!” Olive says from the other side of the bathroom door. “And I even have that home-made bread you like so much.”

I'm still soaking in the tub at Kyle House. Feeling a whole lot cleaner than when Olive rescued me this morning from Hog Holler.

I'd been in such a deep sleep there on the pool table that I might not have heard that soft knock on the door if Suzie hadn't woofed. Before she had time to break into a full bark though, I had my hand around her muzzle.

“Shh. Listen,” I'd said, waiting for another knock. I was laying there trying to put together the pieces of last night. Card games. Too much rum. The foot rub. That hashish nightcap! Bear was still asleep behind me, his arm draped over my shoulder, and a glance over at the couch told me Clayton was still there. I had no idea what time it was, or what I was supposed to do now. I knew I shouldn't be found curled up in Bear James' arms on Hog Holler's pool table.

I relaxed my grip on Suzie's muzzle, which made her sneeze. Behind me, Bear breathed in deeply, and already I wondered what I'd say if he opened his eyes right then. Something like, hi, old friend, fancy meeting you here. His breathing went back to normal though and I relaxed against his warmth. Maybe I imagined a knock at the door? Maybe it was only something banging around in the yard. Besides, who would be knocking on Hog Holler's door at … at … shit! There it was again.

It was louder this time and I held Suzie's snout whispering, “Shush,” into her ear. This was just fucking great. I lifted Bear's arm high enough to pull myself away. My head was pounding and my legs felt stiff when I swung them off the pool table. When my feet touched the cold cement floor, I remembered my sore ankle. Sunlight poked through the grimy window.

I gave a hand signal to Suzie that she should stay on the pool table, but then my heart jumped when a dark outline filled the window. I didn't recognize who it was until I spotted a tassel bobbing on the top of the head. Only Olive had a hat like that. Suzie whined then and I lifted her off the table but when I set her down my knees cracked so loud I wondered if Olive might have heard. She wasn't at the window when I looked up so I was hoping she'd gone away. Even so, as I crouched there beside the pool table, I wondered what I'd do next. I couldn't walk all the way home with this foot. And I wasn't sure I was up to facing Bear today.

As I lie here in the cooling water of Olive's tub there's a knock on the bathroom door and Olive says, “Patricia, are you alright in there?”

“I'll be out in a minute.”

“The curry's ready whenever you are.”

The woman does not let up, just like this morning when I realized she wasn't about to leave Hog Holler without me. When after a few minutes it had gotten too uncomfortable to stay crouched by the pool table, I went over to the door and opened it a crack. A crack was the most I could open it anyway, since snow and ice had drifted up against the door. When I looked out, the sun hit my eyes and that just about killed my head. Through my squinting I could see how the ice covered everything in sight. Even the old pieces of metal in Perry's yard looked like ice sculptures at the winter carnival. Then there was the silence. I had to listen real hard to catch the rumble of surf way out in the strait, or the whispering sound the wind makes as it rushes through the spruce trees up on Thunder Hill. Then I heard the crunch of footsteps as Olive rounded the corner carrying the shovel she keeps in Billy's trunk. It was too late to duck back. She'd spotted me.

“Hi Olive,” I croaked.

“Patricia! What happened to you?”

“Just help me get out of here, okay?”

“Bear James must be in there too, is he?” Olive tried to peer around me.

“What makes you think that?” I answered, and then remembered that Bear's Rover was parked right outside.

Olive didn't seem to hear me. She was already hacking away at the drift as if her life depended upon it.

Olive does everything as if her life depended on it. Like the time she and Arthur came to a dance at the Thunder Hill Community Hall, and her eyes popped open at the sight of the older farmers clogging away. She screamed, “Why, this is a form of Gaelic step dancing! And of course it makes perfect sense since practically everyone around here has their roots in the British Isles.” Then she went on about how traditional dances were her passion. It seemed she gathered them in her travels like some people collect thimbles. It didn't matter if she was in Argentina, Egypt, or Iceland, she said that when she dances she flies free of earthly restraints. So that's what she did that night at the hall. Got right up there and started stomping her heart out. She clogged and clogged, adding spins and twirls and didn't notice when people stopped dancing out of fear of being knocked over. I could feel their eyes on me as the one who'd brought Olive along.

Then there was the video show a week later. She invited some of the “farmers” over to Kyle House to see footage of her favourite traditional dance, that of the Chewa people of Central Malawi. As the video played, she also stretched her arms wide, thrust her pelvis forward and leapt and spun to the drums.

Later, she said she'd assumed people would be curious to know about cultures in places they'd never travelled to. But she'd been disappointed by the comments after the video.