Ten Thousand Truths (11 page)

Amelia poured herself a cup of coffee and sat back down. She knew that the person she would hurt the most today if she stayed home would be Raymond. She knew deep down that she had to do this for him. She resolved that she would be ready when Zac came at 12:30. She would step out the door, get into Zac's truck, drive out Walton Lake Road with him to the school, and walk right into Raymond's classroom.

Rachel spent most of the first class after lunch in a nervous distraction. She sharpened her pencil about ten times, each time trying to linger long enough at the window to see if Zac's truck was in the parking lot. Somehow she had missed the couple of minutes it would have taken him to park it and walk across to the main door, so when she finally did see his truck she wasn't sure whether Amelia had come with him. All morning she'd had a feeling that Amelia would change her mind. She had seemed so quiet at breakfast time and her eyes had looked heavy and sad.

Rachel didn't think Raymond had noticed that in all his excitement this morning. All he'd talked about on the way down the driveway was Amelia coming to his presentation. Rachel had known all along how incredibly disappointed Raymond would be if Amelia didn't come today, but she hadn't realized until now how upset she would be, too. If Amelia could actually leave today, the chances of her being able to go out again would be good, and the idea of her taking a trip across the country would not be absolutely unthinkable.

“I'm making supper tonight,” Rachel announced as she walked through the front door after school. She had known as soon as she saw Raymond get on the bus that Amelia had been there. Raymond had sat in the front seat right behind Roger and talked cheerfully almost all the way home. He had still been talking as they'd walked all the way up the driveway.

“What are you going to make? Amelia asked.

“That chicken casserole with Stove Top dressing,” Rachel answered. “I'll use the leftover chicken from last night. I'll make an apple crisp, too. We should call Zac to come for supper. Did you just get home? You should go have a nap. I'll do everything for supper. Raymond, fill the wood box, would you?”

Rachel could hear herself talking a mile a minute. For the first time in at least thirty years, Amelia Walton had left her farm. She wanted to hug Amelia, to ask her how it felt, to blurt out all she had been planning and ask her right now about the drive across the country. She wanted to say what a special occasion this was. She wanted to take Amelia's hands and dance her around the kitchen. This was a major breakthrough and Rachel was overwhelmed with the thought of it.

“Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit will damage it,” Amelia said as she headed upstairs. “You wouldn't catch me getting in a spaceship, or even an airplane for that matter. This old lady passes wind with her feet firmly on the ground.”

Amelia's random fact quickly brought Rachel back to the reality around her. Rachel laughed out loud and thought to herself that it was a good thing she was trying to convince Amelia to drive across the country, because by the sound of what she had just said, getting her to fly
would
be impossible.

Rachel looked down at the paper in front of her. She had been working on the letter to her grandmother for at least an hour. She kept writing things and crossing them out. She wanted to tell Audrey Anderson some things about herself but some of it sounded so stupid when she wrote it.

Dear
Mrs. Anderson
Audrey
Grandmother,

My name is Rachel Joy Garnham.
Garnham was my mother's name
.
My mother and Donald were never married, but you must already know that.
My birthday is July 15th and I will be 14 this year. I am in Grade 8. I go to Macdonald Consolidated School. It is an old building. It says 1904 over the front door. I have several different teachers and my favourite one is Mrs. White, my math teacher. I
have a lot of trouble with Math but I am getting better.
I came to live at this foster home in August. Amelia Walton is the woman who looks after us.
When I first came here I called her Warty. That was not very nice of me but she has a really bumpy face and I was really angry when I got here.
She has a farm and we all have to help with the chores. We live beside a lake.
The lake is called Walton Lake after Amelia's family.
There are three other kids here, twins named Chelsea and Chrystal and a boy named Raymond.
It took me awhile to get used to them but now I

A man named Zac lives down the road and he helps us a lot on the farm. He gets the groceries and stuff like that.
Amelia has not left home for a long time
He used to live here when he was a kid. Jodie lived here too. Jodie is our friend. She visits us a lot.

I would like to meet you and my two aunts sometime.
I am glad Dad
I am glad
Donald liked my picture
you gave my picture to your son. He can write to me if he wants to.

Rachel took another sheet of paper from her binder and recopied the parts of the letter she wanted sent to her grandmother. She thought carefully about how she would sign it, and then finally decided on:

Yours Truly,

Rachel

The sun was very warm for the first day in May. Rachel had slipped off her socks and sneakers and was dangling her feet off the side of the dock. The water was cold, but after a few minutes her legs had gotten used to it. The lake was still and the mid-afternoon sun was glistening on its surface. Rachel had already been here longer than her hour, but supper was going to be later tonight because Amelia had gone to Sussex with Zac to buy seeds for the garden. Amelia had been several places since the day she left to go to Raymond's classroom. She had gone to get groceries with Zac twice and had even gone to the Chinese restaurant in Quispamsis for supper with Jodie last week.

Rachel had given Amelia another letter to mail for her today. She had started talking to Amelia about her grandmother, her father, and Golden, BC. Her plan was to wait until the next letter arrived from Audrey Anderson and then tell Amelia that her grandmother really wanted her to go out and see them. She would seem uninterested at first and then begin to talk more and more about her family wanting her to visit them. Once she'd let that information percolate with Amelia for a while, she'd start mentioning that she'd like to go see them, too.

Jason had called Amelia the other night and even though Rachel hadn't heard his side of the conversation, she could tell he'd told her that he and Megan wouldn't be able to come east this fall. He had just started a new job and the new baby was due to be born in a few days. Jason's little boy, Logan, had talked to Amelia for a couple of minutes. Afterwards Jodie had really laid it on thick about how wonderful it would be for Amelia to see Jason and his family. She'd mentioned several times how thrilled Jason would be if Amelia was ever able to come out to see him. She also added that a vacation would be a well-deserved break after all the years she had devoted to caring for kids and running the farm.

Amelia was exhausted. She had dozed off a bit on the drive home, but she'd woken as Zac pulled onto their road. Her head was aching and she could feel the tension in the back of her neck. The feed store had been very busy, and she'd felt very self-conscious today, for some reason more than she had the other times she'd been out. It was if she could feel every bump and lump magnified on her face. Each time a person had looked in her direction her body had tightened and she'd turned away. She had gotten so self-conscious that she'd ended up going back to the truck before they had chosen all of the seeds, leaving Zac to finish the shopping.

“You should try driving the truck, Amelia,” Zac said now as he pulled over to the side of the road. “You still remember how to drive, don't you?”

Amelia looked over at Zac as he turned the truck off and removed his seatbelt and considered what he was asking of her. “I suppose I could give it a try,” she finally said. “I still have a license, you know. I've kept it renewed all these years because Social Services felt it looked better on the records that I had a valid driver's license in case of an emergency. They always overlooked the fact that there was no vehicle on the premises for me to drive.”

Amelia opened her door and stepped out. The fresh air felt good and she let herself relax a bit as she climbed up into the driver's seat. She had not driven since the last time she drove the old Oliver tractor, but hopefully it was something one didn't forget. She fastened her seatbelt, stepped down on the clutch, and started the engine. And then she drove home.

Rachel was just reaching the top of the path from the lake when she saw Zac's truck coming up the driveway. She did a double take when she saw that Amelia was driving. Rachel ran up to the truck as Amelia came to a stop and opened the driver's side door with a smile, clearly showing her excitement at seeing Amelia behind the wheel.

Neither Amelia's expression nor her demeanour showed any signs of excitement or acknowledgement of what Rachel felt was a huge breakthrough in her progress. In Rachel's mind, she could clearly imagine Amelia driving the Jimmy out Walton Lake Road and onto the network of highways that would get them to Golden, BC. And more and more she was letting herself get a picture of her father greeting her with a look on his face that could change everything she now believed about herself.

“The Sears Tower in Chicago contains enough steel to build 50,000 automobiles,” Amelia called out as she leaned into the back seat of the cab to get out the bag of seeds.

It was two weeks later when Rachel received a letter from Donald Anderson. He had enclosed a picture of himself holding a newborn baby, and by the date on the back of the picture Rachel knew that the baby was her. She was tightly wrapped in a striped pink hospital blanket and a small pink hat sat slightly sideways on her head. Her father looked scared to death, as if was afraid he would drop the little bundle he was holding. He was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap, an Alpine beer T-shirt, and blue jeans. His face looked dirty with the stubble of a growing beard. She could see what she assumed were her mother's legs in a part of the hospital bed shown in the foreground of the shiny square picture. The photo itself looked wrinkled, as if it had been in a pocket or jammed into a wallet.

Rachel sat the picture down on her bed and started reading the letter. It was handwritten on a piece of looseleaf paper. Her father wrote about how beautiful her mother had been. He said he had been very happy when both she and Caleb were born. He had told her five times that he loved her. He had used the word “sorry” eight times and used the word “shitty” when he'd talked about what kind of a father he had been. The last line of the letter was underlined. It said:

I thank God every single day that you did not die in that accident.

It was not a long letter, but by the end of it she was crying. After reading it over five times, Rachel carefully folded it back up and placed it under her pillow. Then she picked up the photo of her and her father and propped it up on her night table.

All four kids and Amelia were down at the lake, but only Rachel was determined to take the plunge into the still-cold water. Last week she'd read a news story about a woman who had the tradition of taking her first swim on the May long weekend, and for the past few days she'd been telling herself that no matter what the weather was on Saturday, she was going to start that tradition for herself. She had announced it at breakfast today and the others had made a big celebration of it. Amelia had made a picnic lunch for them and they had spread everything out on the shore. Rachel had waded in up to her knees, and everyone was cheering her on. Sam had run past her after his stick and splashed her as he went by, but getting in the water was still proving harder than she had imagined it would be. After all, she had been looking forward to this day since her last swim in September.
Just get it over with
, she kept telling herself.

Before Rachel took another step deeper, Bud barked and took off up the path. She looked up to see that he was running toward Jodie and Zac, who were both wearing their bathing suits. Rachel called out that she would wait for them.

“Charles Zibbleman swam for 168 consecutive hours in a pool in Honolulu in 1942,” Amelia piped in as Zac and Jodie got closer. “Three years earlier, he swam the Hudson River from Albany to New York, a distance of 147 miles. Charles Zibbleman had no legs.”

“I feel like I have no legs!” laughed Zac as he rushed into the water. “This water is freezing them numb. But if Rachel wants to start a tradition today, we aren't being left out. Last one under is a dirty rotten egg!” he said.

Rachel dropped the pea seeds into the shallow ditch Raymond was making with the end of the hoe. After the time at the lake, everyone had gone straight to work, and now the garden was about three-quarters planted. Chelsea was coming along behind Rachel covering the pea seeds. A few rows over Amelia and Crystal were planting corn. Jodie and Zac were sitting together on the veranda, cutting up seed potatoes. Every once in a while Rachel could hear their laughter.

Rachel could feel her wet hair sticking to the back of her neck. The swim had been fantastic. Once she had taken the plunge and got over the initial shock, the water had been beautiful. Zac had beaten her and Jodie in, but they were just seconds behind him. It had felt so good to have them swimming with her. And she had not forgotten how to swim. All winter she had worried a bit about that, thinking she might not remember how or that her fear of the water might return. But she had done just fine and had swum quite a ways out with Zac and Jodie at her side. The others had cheered as if she had accomplished a world record just like Charles Zibbleman.