Blasted (21 page)

They fell silent. “Ninety-nine people died in that fire,” Grandpa said at last.

“He took me home that night,” Queenie said. “It was the first time I let him into the house. I didn't want him to meet Mother, you could never tell how she'd be.” Grandpa looked up, eyes narrowed, and Queenie went on hastily, as if trying to make up for something. “And also – this sounds silly – we had nothing but a cold water tap in the house. No hot water at all, no bathtub. We'd just fill the washtub with kettles heated on the stove, that's how we washed. I didn't want him to see that. But of course that night he brought me home, and luckily Mom was… She was some glad to see me, and though she'd never met Sam before, she just threw her arms around him and hugged him.”

Grandpa poured himself another drink. The radio had switched to news; the little boy had, it seemed, been found.
Missing a shoe, that's all!
a woman, his mother I thought, said triumphantly.
He's some hungry.
I turned the radio off.

“He asked me to marry him after that,” Queenie said softly.

“He
what
?” Grandpa squawked.

“Said he didn't want to gamble on losing me twice.” She lit another cigarette. “But,” she went on, squinting at us through the smoke, “I'd already found the photo in his wallet. He had a girl back home. A wife.”

“What?!”

“I don't know. I think he wanted to marry me too, maybe he just wasn't thinking of the future. That could happen in times like that, during the War.”

“I never knew that!” Grandpa was getting red in the face.

“He wasn't a bad person,” Queenie insisted. “He just wanted me. I was lucky I didn't get pregnant.”

Surprised, I blurted, “You…”

“Well, of course we did!” Queenie said. “People did it back then too, you know. Where do you think you came from?”

“Oh. OH, I don't want to hear this!” Grandpa put his big hands over his ears.

Queenie ignored her brother. “I loved him. I was in love with him.”

“You weren't.” Grandpa took his hands down and stared at her.

“I wasn't the same after he left. It broke my heart.”

“You were in love with that Yank?”

“And then Mom died two years later, in 1945. Dad had died just after the War started, in 1940.” She inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in her lungs, then sent out a blue cloud. “It was a hard time.”

Grandpa's face softened. “It was a hard time,” he echoed. “It was, sure.”

“I didn't lose anyone close overseas – Dad was too old to go, and John here was too young, thank God. But the War took my people. The War took them anyway.” She stubbed out her smoke and straightened her shoulders. “I met Bruce after all that. He survived the War; he was in the Merchant Marines. A nice man. I knew I could count on him.”

Three-quarters of the way into the whiskey, Grandpa announced he'd go to bed.

“But we haven't even touched my meat pie,” Queenie cried, but he went off, singing to himself.

“Pie?” she said, cutting two generous slices.

“Aunt Queenie,” I said, my mouth full, “I got lost the other day.” I hadn't known I was going to say this; I choked on my pie and Queenie had to slap me on the back and get me some water.

When my choking subsided I hoped she'd forgotten what I'd begun, but, “You got lost, you were saying?”

“Oh, it was nothing. Just up on the Hill there. I've not been up there for a long time, that's all.”

“What happened?” Her eyes bored into mine.

I swallowed. “I was just up there, and well, I saw these strange trees, and I hadn't ever seen anything like that before, you know, and I sort of panicked and ran and got to where Shanawdithit used to be and it was okay. I don't know why I'm telling you this,” my voice shook. “It really wasn't anything.”

“Holy ground,” she said.

“What?”

“Where that monument used to be. St. Mary's Church. They can't come onto holy ground.”

“Who, Aunt Queenie?” I glared at her. “Who's this
they
you keep talking about?”

She took another drink and methodically finished her pie. Finally she put down her fork and looked at me, like she'd made a decision. “I was led astray once.” She lit a cigarette. “Up on the Hill, just up there, like you said. I was picking blueberries, a place I'd been dozens, hundreds of times before. Years ago this was, before I was married, after our parents were dead. John and I were still living at this house together. I went into this little thicket of trees, laburnums, you know, and when I got there, once I got inside, I got all turned around and couldn't find my way out.” She circled in the air with the lit end of her cigarette. “Over and over it I went, around and around, and then I realized, I must be in the fairies. I turned my sweater inside out, I was wearing an old red cardigan of Father's and I turned it inside out, and then I got out of the thicket. But the land looked different, it was a sort of place like the Barrens, rocks, you know. Nothing in sight, the city, nothing. I sat down on a rock and tried to get my bearings – I was feeling sort of panicky by this time. As I sat there I saw a person off away, and I knew that this was not a person, but a fairy that looked like a human being. But I went up to this gentleman, bold as you please, and I asked him, ‘Do you know the way down to the Southside Road?' I didn't let him know I was astray, see. And he said, ‘Yes, it's just over that way, just up over that hill and down again and you'll find the road,' and he pointed. So I thanks him and off I goes. And as I went up over the hill I heard a voice calling me, and it was Mother's voice. But that was just my imagination, I just kept going. And after about ten minutes I came to myself, whatever did happen. I still had the bucket half full of blueberries in my hand, and Father's red sweater, inside out on me.”

I stared at her. “It… it could have been the same grove that I got into,” I said.

“Turn your clothes inside out, that helps,” she said. “And keep your wits about you.”

Something rose up in me, a sort of fearful outrage. “There aren't… there don't need to be any
fairies
involved,” I said. “I mean, come on.”

She blew smoke up in the air, and her mouth tightened. “Of course, dear. I'm sure you're right.”

“I mean, that's crazy.”

“H'm. I always say I was led astray.”

“By who? Or what? Or whatever?” I cried.

“That's what happened,” she said, and clammed up.

“Look, I'm sorry,” I said at last. “I guess, there are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, and all that. But still.”

“That's how your grandmother felt about things,” Queenie remarked.

We fell silent again; and the alcohol settled into my body, a deep sadness it felt like, and suddenly I burst out, “Oh, God, why did Gramma hate everyone?”

“What?” Queenie was startled.

“Why did she… well, me. She hated me. And my mother, and you.”

“Maddie didn't… I don't…”

“I saw the photos. Of you and her. On a picnic years ago, you looked the best of friends.”

“Picnic.” She paused; her face lit up with a rich smile, and suddenly she looked very like Grandpa. “Oh, my, I remember. Yes, we were close back then. We got married on the same day, you know. A double wedding. My, we looked fine.”

“So what the hell happened?”

She drained her glass. It occurred to me that I wasn't exactly being tactful, and I mumbled something apologetic. “No, I'd wonder too, if I were you,” she said. “We had… a falling-out.”

“When?”

“After your father was born. My, that was a happy time. They'd told Maddie she was barren. Barren! And then she goes and has this perfect baby boy.” She turned the bottle upside down, regretfully shaking the last drops into her glass. I opened another bottle and replenished both our drinks.

“Was my dad born, you know, funny?” She looked questioningly. “I mean, he had that lame leg, and I just wondered… I just wondered, that's all.”

“Oh, that. No, that was from an accident he had when he was sixteen, that was. You know teenagers. Always getting into something.” She drank. “When Neil was sixteen John took him caribou hunting. It was late October. They got an animal, a young buck. And while they were out there Neil went off, out in the woods, and never came back. Not for weeks. It was just like what happened to Mother.” She caught her breath, glanced at me. “Anyway. He found his way home, Neil did. I was here, a crowd of us were keeping vigil with Maddie. There were search parties and everything; they wrote about it in the paper. Anyway, Neil shows up at the door. His leg is injured, twisted up, sort of. Looked like it had been slashed, only his trousers weren't marked, weren't cut up in any way. Otherwise, he was fine. It was raining that night, just pouring out of the sky, and there wasn't a drop on him. And he wasn't starved, or frozen to death. He said…” She looked out the window, the panes so dark they reflected only themselves. “He said,” she continued, “that some people had taken care of him. But he couldn't say who they were or where they lived, and this was near what's Terra Nova Park now and there weren't any people living there, not for miles and miles.”

“Who could they be, then?” I asked.

“His leg never got better. He said a man slashed him, whipped him with a piece of rope. The wound got infected. He went to the hospital and they gave him antibiotics, but it never did a bit of good. And when it gathered and broke, you should have seen the things that came out of there.”

She waved her hands, sketching a picture in the air for me. “Pieces of rope, like what he said the fella whipped his leg with. And twigs, feathers, ribbons of grass, other things that didn't belong. His leg was never the same. Got a bit twisted. You remember that. He had that twisted leg the rest of his life. A bit of a limp.”

I cleared my throat and tried to think of something to say, but my throat was dry. It was a joke, Aunt Queenie was telling stories to frighten me, I thought, but she wasn't smiling; she was looking into her glass and swirling the drink around and around. “Maddie barred me from the house after… I don't blame her. But I got her son back for her. That was the main thing.” Slow tears slipped down her cheeks. “She almost left John over it all. But Neil stayed. He stayed. Until he married. Something happened then, I don't know why. Something about weddings, I think. They do love things like that, all that energy: weddings, christenings, funerals.

Maybe that wedding did something. Brought the other one back. But the ring should have held him here… metal can bind them. He wore a wedding ring?” I nodded mutely. “I wasn't at the wedding, of course; Maddie wouldn't have stood for it. She'd cut me off.”

Weddings and suppurating wounds, lost boys like on the radio.

Queenie wiped tears from her cheeks. I couldn't take it in. She was just an old woman making up a story to explain why her sister-in-law hated her. That was it. That had to be it.

She looked at me, then away. “There's an… illness runs in this family.

Came out in Mother, and Neil. John and I cured him, though. We cured him.

That time.”

“What
was
it?” Fear rose in my chest.

“It came back after he married, but by then I couldn't…” Queenie trailed off. The silence stretched between us. At last she sighed, and pushed her chair away from the table. “I'd better be off home!” she said, with a pained effort at cheerfulness.

Just as before I tried to get her to stay over, but she patted my hand, gathered her purse and straightened her scarf. She wobbled down the stairs and into her car, with the promise that she'd phone when she got home.

CHAPTER 14

The next day Grandpa put the finishing touches on his dry-stone wall while I nursed another hangover and went through the kitchen cupboards, uselessly arranging and re-arranging them. Partway through the china cupboard I gave it up and sat at the table, head in my hands. I was like that when Juanita showed up at the back door.

Neither of us spoke. Then we both started at once.

“God, I'm glad you're here…” I babbled, while she said, “You don't deserve it, but… ” We stopped again, and I looked at her helplessly. “Do you want to come in?” I said.

She sat at the kitchen table and lit up a smoke. “What the hell happened to your
skin
?”

“Penance for my sins.” She narrowed her eyes through the smoke and waited. A memory surfaced, us at seventeen. I'd left home, and Juanita had immediately fallen in love with – what was his name? – the guy who ended up being Dennis's father. A year later she was pregnant and he was gone. I remembered visiting her on a trip back from Ontario, callously drinking beer while she sipped pop. Something dark started spreading across her shirt and I crowed about dribbling her Orange Crush. But her tits had started leaking milk. She didn't know what was going on at first; it had never happened before. She'd cried, I'd left. Now I felt the numbness rise up again. What was I supposed to say? What would a normal person say? “I'm really sorry, Juanita,” I managed. “I was drunk, but I know that's not… I don't know what happened.” She nodded once, a short, sharp movement.