After Alice (29 page)

It is a long winter of recovery.
A pall of smoke hangs in this low part of valley, and at night the hillsides are dotted with fires, an uncanny, unsettling sight. The smoke is not only from the burning of the winter's orchard prunings, but the beetle-damaged pine is being burned as well.

The smell — apple wood and pine — is not unpleasant, but the smoke catches in the throat, and the night fires raise, again, those atavistic fears.

Cynthia takes to dropping by, asking if she can help with the boxes.

“No,” Sidonie says. “I must do it myself.”

There is a coldness to Cynthia, now, a hardness. She seems older. She withholds news, does not chat about Justin's doings. Obviously Cynthia is still angry with her. And Justin, also. Though she sees that Justin has grown surly toward Cynthia as well, so perhaps it is not personal. (A late bloomer, Justin, finding his adolescent rebellion at nineteen.)

“Have I done something wrong?” Sidonie asks. “I've apologized for the boxes. I'm really giving time to them now. Is it something else?”

But Cynthia will not say.

Has Cynthia discovered something in the boxes that she has taken away, the ones she is sorting through herself?

“Is there something I might discover?” Cynthia asks, coolly.

She has not found Cynthia so intractable before. Has she? Cynthia has always been pliant, even to the point of being too dependent. Or nearly always.

Cynthia has taken, lately, to saying
my mother, my father
. As if she knew them. As if she knew anything at all.

She herself has lost or repressed the first weeks or months after Alice's funeral at the end of 1974, the decisions and arrangements, the flight back, as a patient loses time under anesthesia, and sometimes the days following.

Her first memory of the Cynthia of that time: they are having coffee — hot chocolate, for Cynthia — at the Café Vienne on des Pins, and Cynthia. . . .

No, a little further back. It is Adam who is with Cynthia. He has met her after school, his classes — he was teaching architecture at McGill, then — having ended sooner than Sidonie's day at the Institute; they are all to meet at the café. It's one of those dark rainy November days that she likes best — perhaps Cynthia's birthday? She strides down the street toward the café, not hurried. Her favourite time of year and of day: a softened, muted time, less harsh to her overly-sensitive head. There is red ivy on the buildings; the streetlights reflect, a gentle blur, on the wet sidewalk.

She pushes open the café door and sees them before they see her: Adam leaning toward the child, across a little table. Cynthia looking at him, talking, her lips and hands and eyes alive. Sidonie had stopped still at that moment; something like happiness had come to a gentle simmer in the region of her thorax.

That she remembers. Then, after, the doubt that had kept her awake at night. Should they have had a child of their own? Clearly, Adam is a model father-figure: patient, respectful, engaged. All of the right things. She had thought. . . . But no; he has taken to Cynthia living with them as if it were just what he had been waiting for. Now he leaves the campus by three, walks the short distance to the school for the deaf to meet Cynthia, and the two of them go home together, sometimes stopping at Café Vienne, sometimes at the park to feed the ducks, to kick through the leaves, to ride the swings. They do the marketing together, Adam and Cynthia, on these afternoons. After a time, Cynthia makes friends among the other day-children; it is Adam who then orchestrates visits, who joins the parents' advisory association, who serves tea and sandwiches to Cynthia and her friends. Adam who indulges the passions for the latest Barbie, who finds and funds the drawing and horseback and swimming lessons.

What this means for Sidonie is something complex, something it takes her a few years to work out. First there is the guilt, as always: at not being the one to parent her sister's child, that she has somehow profited at Alice's expense; then, forced to admit that the arrangement works, that she is happy, coming home to the apartment to an evening of reading journals only temporarily punctured by decorous games of Monopoly or gin rummy. No use telling herself that she has done Alice a good turn, taking Cynthia in, that Cynthia has bloomed in Montreal in a way that would have provided Alice with great satisfaction. She feels Alice's angry ghost breathing down her neck, even when she is happiest. Especially when she is happiest.
Mine, mine
, the ghost says.
You have no right
.
My daughter
.

And there is some humiliation in this quick adaptation too. Sidonie is capable of recognizing that. There's an argument that Adam has required this emotional contact, this companionship, for years, and she has been able neither to recognize nor to fulfill this need. Or: Adam prefers to interact with the child rather than with his wife; she has more to offer than Sidonie does. But even if those interpretations are possible, there is no reason to accept them, to take the situation personally. No need to respond with fear or jealousy. It simply is the state of things. It is good for the child and for her husband.

Nevertheless, an austerity falls over her, a stiff and threadbare cloak.

She writes a paper on emotional ataxia in children with autism. Then a book. She is invited to conferences as guest speaker. She is offered a distinguished research chair at the largest and most prestigious Canadian university, which she does consider, but turns down.

She retreats into herself, so slowly that she doesn't notice at first. When she does notice, she feels a sadness, but acceptance: the unfolding that happened in her early months with Adam has naturally reversed itself.

It is easy to step away, to let those live connections crust over, calcify.

Cynthia does bloom. When she is fourteen, the principal of her school calls a conference with Adam and Cynthia and recommends that Cynthia be enrolled in regular high school in the September term.

“That's been tried,” Sidonie says, flatly. “Cynthia was in regular school before she came here. She was in the special education class with the mentally handicapped children. She didn't learn anything, and she was taunted and shunned by the other children. I don't see how returning her to that environment is a good option.”

But no, the principal argues. Cynthia is ready to move through normal classes. She will, of course, have an aide who will sign for her. But there is hope that she'll be able to function on her very own, soon. Her lip-reading is improving rapidly, and the new hearing aids work remarkably well.

The principal is a woman in her fifties with improbably uniform auburn hair and a jacket with immense shoulder pads. Sidonie thinks that she has more theory than experience.

“We'll consider it,” she says, discouragingly.

Adam is perplexed, a little angry even. “Isn't this what we want for Cynthia? Integration into mainstream society? The freedom and acceptance that comes with that?”

Sidonie could tell him something about mainstream society and acceptance. She says, “You don't know what it's like, being different. Having a noticeable handicap. You don't know how cruel adolescents can be.”

“This isn't Marshall's Landing,” Adam says.

There's a wound there, Sidonie perceives, but she will not acknowledge it. She closes her mouth.

“If I didn't know you better,” Adam says, “I'd think you were sulking.”

“I don't sulk,” Sidonie says.

“I know,” Adam says. “But you've withdrawn. Have I offended you?”

She is lucky, lucky to be married to Adam, who will reason things out, and not respond emotionally, she reminds herself.

“I don't know what to do,” Sidonie says. “I can only make decisions for Cynthia based on my own experience and knowledge, and you've called those into question. I'm lost.”

Adam says, “You don't, you know, have to make decisions that way. You can trust me sometimes.”

So they had argued, and she had given in, against her better judgment.

In 1985,
Sidonie and Cynthia fly west for the first time since leaving Marshall's Landing. Since Alice's funeral. Cynthia is excited; after they leave the airport, driving north the few kilometres to Marshall's Landing, Cynthia presses her nose against the car window. “But I remember this,” she exclaims, over and over. “The orchards and that old boat on the side of the highway. I remember that! And here's the turn — oh, and my old school!”

“Mine too,” Sidonie says, and Cynthia is surprised.

They are back in the valley for Stephen's wedding. Stephen is marrying Debbie, a local girl. She is not prepossessing, Sidonie thinks; she's pretty enough, beneath the teased-out bob of hair, the bangs, the black-rimmed eyes that all of the young women seem to affect these days. But she is not — not educated or cultured or graceful. Not exceptional. Then again, Stephen himself is not exactly impressive. He has a bad haircut, bad skin. He slouches, wears cheap clothes. Is loud when he ought to be circumspect, and sullen when he ought to be gracious.

In the days before the wedding, she drives Cynthia around, and they visit their old haunts, and drop in on friends. Cynthia is seventeen, in her last year of high school. The apple trees are in blossom; the hillsides awash in pale green and white. She is enchanted.

Stephen and Debbie are going to move to Edmonton after the wedding. It's hard to get work anywhere, with the recession, but Debbie's uncle has a construction business, and Stephen with his recently earned electrical ticket will be apprenticing with his company.

Debbie's father says that Steve is a good worker. “There's nothing that boy won't turn a hand to,” he says. Debbie's mother says, “I hope they won't start a family too soon. Things are so uncertain.” She wants Debbie to get some training as a practical nurse or physiotherapist. Sidonie has the feeling that something is required of her,
in loco parentis
, by way of response, but she can't decide what it is. She is not sure how celebratory she ought to be acting. Stephen and Debbie have lived together for over a year, and she understands that the wedding has been promoted by Debbie's parents, as a prerequisite for Debbie moving with Stephen to Edmonton. Well, that's fair enough; they are looking out for their daughter's interests, and don't want her to be abandoned in a strange city, after investing a portion of her youth in the relationship.

“And you are completely responsible for Steve's sister?” Debbie's father asks. “You don't expect Steve to contribute?”

Completely responsible, yes. And then she understands what is expected.

She says privately to Stephen, “I'd like to give you a little cash to get started in Edmonton.”

Stephen is embarrassed, to his credit. “You've done so much for us already,” he says. “Taking on Cynthia too. I never would have thought she could have come so far. You've already been so generous.”

Generous, no. How much less could she have done?

Two days before Steve's wedding, she and Alice's offspring meet at a chain restaurant in a strip plaza along the highway. The downtown area appears evacuated, but a few new franchises have sprung up along Highway 97 north of the city. At this dinner, Debbie is not present — she is working — so it's just the five of them: Stephen, Kevin, Paul, Cynthia, and Sidonie herself, who is paying for it, and feels a little like the unwelcome fairy godmother. The boys, adults now, are all deferential towards her, though, she feels, they are less comfortable in her presence than they would be if she were not there. Stephen is deferential and grateful, Kevin deferential and obsequious, Paul deferential and wary. Cynthia, who hasn't seen her brothers in ten years, is, naturally, fascinated by them. Her head goes back and forth as they talk, as if she's watching a three-way table tennis match. She takes a lot of trouble over her articulation as well: none of the lazy slushy consonants and gargled vowels that she gets away with at home. And the boys — Sidonie watches them closely — show no signs of their former torment of Cynthia. Stephen draws her out almost avuncularly with questions about school and hobbies; Paul falls into a conversation with her about popular music and bands (they both, it seems, have formed tastes for the same groups, independently); even Kevin sets out to entertain Cynthia, with self-deprecating stories of his work. She watches them closely. She doesn't trust any of them, these wild boys. Who are half Buck. Half Buck and half Alice.

They do not discuss or even mention their parents.

But when Kevin and Paul offer to take Cynthia with them for the evening, and Cynthia's eager face is turned to her, she assents.

“No bars,” she says. “Your sister is only seventeen.”

Where do they go? She hears later from Cynthia: to a stag party for Steve. Yes, at a bar. Cynthia an honourary brother for the occasion. “Were there strippers?” she asks, when Cynthia bubbles out the account of the evening.

“Just one,” Cynthia says, laughing. “She taught me some moves — wanna see?”

Cynthia goes shopping at the mall with Debbie and her bridesmaids (really lame, Cynthia says; stuff that was old hat in Montreal two years ago), and hiking in the hills with Steve and Paul, out in a boat with Paul and his friends. To a beach party, with a fire, but no swimming; it's April. Cynthia stays overnight at Stephen and Debbie's, and another night (without Sidonie's prior knowledge) at Paul's shared basement suite, where, it seems, a multitude of unemployed or semi-employed young men live.

Nobody seems to be really employed, though Paul has a job as a night cashier in a twenty-four-hour convenience store, and Kevin, Sid-onie understands, works as a fry cook in a greasy spoon at the coast.

Cynthia comes back from Paul's reeking of cannabis and glowing. “I didn't smoke,” she says. But that's not what Sidonie is worried about.

It is convenient that Cynthia is occupying herself happily; Sid-onie has time to do things she needs to do. She tends her parents' and Alice's graves, in the little cemetery near the airport. She stops by the church. There is a new vicar, who tells her that Mr. Erskine has retired, but doesn't know where he's living. The church looks shabby, its roof shingles curling up, its stucco peeling. Its window frames need paint.