Extensions (4 page)

“Best to go to the hospital about 12:15,” Lawrence said. “She'll have had her lunch and they'll be done their procedures. We can get something to eat at the cafeteria partway through the visit. She can rest that way.”

We declined Lawrence's offer of coffee, but accepted his tour of the garden. A retired electrician, he kept busy in winter making Christmas candles out of fluorescent light bulbs for friends and in summer and fall, experimenting with prize-winning pumpkins. Janetta's pansies, gladioli, roses, and marigolds rimmed his rows of corn, peas, beans, carrots, and potatoes, and he walked us around the whole plot. “I killed a hundred and twenty-seven potato bugs this morning. Three hundred and fourteen yesterday.”

Back in the house, I looked at the photos on the dining room wall. A close-up of me in a brown Stetson and red serge hung among duplicates we had of weddings — Sara and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Janetta and Lawrence, Lennie and Doug and wives. Sara's antique tea wagon and silver tea service had ended up here as well as some framed petit points and Royal Doulton figurines that were once part of her apartment. Besides these pieces, the order and organization of this household were familiar to me. Filling my nostrils was a special aroma I had not inhaled since Sara died — a clean, yeasty mixture of freshly-baked bread and Sunlight bar soap. My head insisted I did not have the connection with this house my senses were transmitting. For one thing, the large puffy sofa and recliner in patterned velvet were completely alien to the contemporary furniture I had grown up with or the period style Sara liked. And the absence of original paintings on the walls got rid of any further notion of déjà vu. Uncle Lawrence broke into my thoughts, reminding me among other things that my dizziness was gone.

“Might as well get going. They eat early in the hospital. We'll take our car.” He led us through the kitchen to the garage. Dad sat in the front seat with him and I sprawled in the back, a luxury for me. As he backed out, I waited for the usual joke from someone new. “I'd better watch my speed, eh? I hope you won't give me a ticket.” I managed a laugh for the ten thousandth time.

We reached the hospital in less than ten minutes so I did not get much of an impression of Nanaimo. Vancouverites have to fight the urge not to feel superior to their island cousins — or to anybody anywhere — and I had opened my mind to a task that never presented itself.

Dad and I marched through the polished corridors behind Lawrence to Aunt Janetta's doorway; we entered slowly, passing a nurse carrying a lunch tray on her way out. Aunt Janetta was sitting up, a smile on her pale face.

We each gave her a careful hug, then pulled up chairs and sat at the side of her bed. Lawrence perched on the edge of the vacant bed in the room, cap in hand, feet barely grazing the floor.

“How nice of you to come, Lew. And for you to take time from your busy job, Bella.”

She recounted the story of her heart attack. How she finished the supper dishes, how she felt tired, how she pushed herself to water her posies because it had been so dry lately instead of sitting down to watch the news as she normally did. “She could have asked me, but oh no,” said Lawrence on cue. Then she described her indigestion, thinking it was because she had met a friend for lunch and ordered her first Thai salad, which was spicier than she liked. Then the heartburn got worse, so she went and sat in the kitchen. “He was putting the lawnmower away when the pain really started. I could barely get to the door to call him.”

“Fortunately, the ambulance came right away or the damage could have been a lot worse.”

The two of them had relived these details so many times they were now in slow motion and perfect unison. Ordinary events that would not bear repeating except for their consequences. Something like my dream where those underground tunnels were collapsing while everyday life went on above. I sat captivated by the story, mainly because Janetta became Sara in the telling. They had always looked alike, though Sara was considered pretty, feminine, and vivacious, and her daughter, neat and pleasant-looking. Today Janetta's grey hair, not yet fastened into a roll, fell around her thin face and shoulders and transported me back to the Vancouver General and my final visits to Sara. Maybe it was because I had so recently lost my mother that I suddenly saw Janetta as a necessary member of my world. A woman I hardly knew became my mother and grandmother. “You have to get better,” I blurted out. At the same time my nose started dripping and it probably looked as if I were crying.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, surprised. “Don't worry. I'll be fine. They want to do more tests and then I'll be released.”

Dad appeared oblivious to this blurring of identities going on in my head.
He
knew this was his sister and not his wife or mother and continued talking to her about Lenny and Doug and how he had been doing on his own for the last six months. “Don't know how I would have managed without her,” I heard him say before realizing he was talking about me.

“We're both starting courses in the fall,” I said. “He's taking cartoon drawing and I'm taking history.”

“We'll see,” said Dad, embarrassed. “She wants me to start a course so I don't drive her crazy.”

“That's perfect, Lew. You know, Bella, I used to love it when we were kids and your dad had to look after me if Mother and Dad were out. He'd draw fantasy figures the whole time. Better than the funnies, by far. What did you name your comic strip again?
The Ratchet Family
, that's it. They all looked like tools. Mrs. Ratchet had curlers in her hair, so her head looked like a ratchet wheel. Her husband was Hatchet Ratchet and he had a hatchet jaw. The son was Hammerhead and the daughter was Naillie, thin as a nail. The town they lived in was called Latchtown, and all the doors and windows of all the houses had huge latches. The province was Patchton, so everything anybody owned was covered with patches.”

“How come you didn't draw the Ratchets for me?” I demanded. “But I was pretty happy with Cedric the Cockroach and Thump the Butterfly.”

Janetta began to shake with laughter, more relaxed and merry than I had ever seen her.

Dad too laughed in spite of himself, then pointed out the absurdity of thinking he should attempt cartoons when there were so many young talented artists and animators in this digital age. He said he was going to work on a children's book instead, using cartoon-type illustrations; he already had a rhyming text in mind. The courage to make this announcement to me when I had other plans for his grief therapy obviously came from having his sister and her husband in the room with us. Mob mentality — I saw it all the time on the streets. To make his point, he got up and started toward the door. “We're tiring Janetta. We'll go to the cafeteria and let her rest.”

Janetta looked wistful as Lawrence, Dad, and I filed out, but when we returned later, she was asleep. Her eyes opened at our approach, her face drained of the liveliness it had held earlier. Lawrence rolled up her bed so she would not have to lift her head from the pillow.

“We'd better go,” Dad said, reaching over to take his sister's hand by way of goodbye.

“You just got here,” she murmured.

“We don't want to undo all your treatment in one visit.”

“I wish you lived closer. It's so good to see you both.”

“When you're feeling better, we'll come back again.”

The resemblance to Sara continued to amaze me and I told her so. She smiled and said Lenny had said the same thing yesterday.

“Do you have any pictures of Sara as a child?”

“The only one I've seen is of the two sisters with bows in their hair. Don't you have it?”

“Somewhere. I have to search.” I decided not to bring up the look-alike photo.

“She wanted it handed down through the girls in the family and I didn't have daughters.”

“I don't suppose there are any photos of her mother.”

“Not that I remember. I have some of Jane's letters — Mother gave them to me before she died. They were written to Jane's sisters in Wales, so I don't know how Mother ended up with them.” Janetta put her hand to her mouth and shook her head the way Sara did. “Isn't that the limit? They're in a trunk downstairs and I haven't even looked at them. There was so much to sort I forgot about them.”

I could feel Dad pacing around the room behind me, a signal to get going. “I'd like to read them some day. I'd like to learn more about my great-grandmother.”

“Jane Hughes had a short, sad, hard life, that's all I know about her. Why don't you come back and we can go through them together.”

I kissed Janetta on the forehead and followed Dad into the corridor. Uncle Lawrence lingered a moment to inform his wife of the potato bug count and the Sears bill amount. He wanted us to stay for an early supper. He had steaks to barbecue and new carrots, peas, and the potatoes he had rescued. I was agreeable because I could see the empty house was torture for him. Dad, however, did not hesitate.

“Next time,” he said as Lawrence pulled into his garage and he headed straight for my car. “Bella has to be up by five tomorrow. Morning shift, you know.”

“I'd like to hear more about your job sometime,” Lawrence said.

Instead of looking at my uncle's disappointed face, I stared at my lying father. I had just come off my block and he knew that. I was to be the fall guy. When I saw him take a cigar from his shirt pocket for the ferry ride home, I remembered where those cigars were most enjoyed. Douglas Park. Dad was planning to watch a recreational baseball game this evening while sitting with his pocket radio tuned into the major leagues. I gave Uncle Lawrence an extra sympathetic hug because I did not want him to know his brother-in-law's real motive in getting away so quickly. It brought no laugh this time.

And as we pulled away, my mind too was on the mainland: wondering which box of photos in Dad's closet would hold the two little girls.

FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS I was too busy at work to go through the boxes. After hours there were barbecues. Our watch was pretty tight despite some squabbling that went on behind backs. Being non-confrontational myself, I had come to the conclusion that this method was as good as any to deal with a grievance. Eventually it disappears, and you haven't left two parties with words in their heads they won't forget.

When I was free and not too tired, I'd meet Dad for a quick meal at Wendy's. Keeping my distance from the kitchen where Mom ruled was becoming selfish and impractical. Sometimes I would go back to the house with him and watch
Jeopardy!
until the emptiness was too much to bear. How could Dad sit and watch
TV
in the basement room surrounded by Mom's exercise equipment?

“I'm going to put a sign up at work to sell this stuff,” I announced suddenly after we realized we were watching a rerun of a show we had seen with Mom when she guessed the final answer none of the contestants knew. “You'll never use it.”

“You don't want it?”

“It wouldn't fit in my place.”

“You could use it here.”

“It's too much Mom. As soon as it's gone, I'll probably buy myself a set.”

“Do what you want.” Dad shrugged, rightly confused by my logic.

By the weekend, I had sold Jake on the deal, and he swapped his precious Volvo for a friend's truck for an hour to pick up the works — treadmill, trampoline, bicycle, Ab Master. After he left, I stayed to watch a baseball game with Dad, but now I couldn't stand being there because the equipment was
gone.
What kind of daughter was that? I reminded myself Dad was faced with this empty house all the time; at least he was in it when I was there.

For me, it was more than missing Mom. In fact, I was often so aware of unspoken standards in her presence that I couldn't deny a certain freedom, much as I hated to admit it. What I had lost was a sense of what to do next. She always knew, even when I didn't want to follow. She provided distractions for me when pieces of the future I had planned with Ray Kelsey kept coming back like demonic homing pigeons. A brisk walk — make that a brutal march — around Stanley Park, a movie, lunch in Kitsilano. She was always upbeat, and as annoying as that could be when I wanted to feel sorry for myself, her mood eventually dominated mine. She even died on Valentine's Day to make sure I was surrounded by flowers when there would be no more from Ray. This house was hollow without her.