Extensions (54 page)

“Not a bad idea.”

On Dad's note of bravery giving me even that much advice, I took my leave. Halfway to my apartment, I stopped for gas. The pumps were all occupied and I pulled up behind a minivan where a tall young man was just finishing.

Crane Reese. As he replaced the nozzle, a woman got out of the driver's seat and walked with him into the gas bar. It was Marla, our classmate, who had jumped on my barstool next to him when I vacated it at Squires after our last class. She had her arm around his waist, pushing open the door. The cashier was close to the window, and I watched Marla open her wallet to pay. Crane brought some snacks and drinks to the counter, and Marla paid again. His contribution to the transaction was a neon smile both to Marla and the cashier.

Crane exited behind Marla and got into the passenger seat with the drinks and snacks. I kept my head down as they pulled away. Would it be me ferrying Crane everywhere he wanted to go if I had stayed on that barstool? Stools and chairs he so gallantly pulled out for you. Marla was welcome to the job.

Back in my apartment, I flopped on the bed without undressing. I had a bad habit of waking up fully clothed, as if I were in a homeless shelter, afraid someone would steal my jeans.
Flat
described my mood best. Was this what those cards meant when they went on about the journey being more important than the destination? Or what painters and writers referred to as process? Were my thumbs actually twiddling when I wondered “What next?” Business as usual could hardly apply after a week where nothing could be considered usual again.

My great-grandmother had taken up residence inside me. I was not on her shoulders as that image of ancestors goes, rather her life was steeping into all my cells like tea leaves. I could never presume to steal the strength she gained from all she went through when I had faced no such challenges — a shot in the foot didn't come close. Nor could I claim Sara's early trials or her knowledge and wisdom as my own. Or Mom's drive for perfection. How then could I qualify? I felt like the painted wooden Russian doll housing the smaller ones inside her — I was the biggest but also the most hollow.

My self-pity was ambushed by a crazy dream of the image I had denied. A wobbly totem pole of Jane, Sara, Retha, and me trying to balance on one another's shoulders.

I jerked awake, laughing, and sat up on my bed.

I didn't
have
to compete. As the living representative, I held all the power. They now existed only through me, so how could I feel unworthy, when I had full responsibility? If Sara was right — that ignorance is the only sin — was awareness then enough of a mission? Of my lineage, of lost babies, of the misguided and the inspirational? Or even of the sound of willows swishing in the breeze, or the smell of plum blossoms in the air? If so, I wouldn't need to take over a soup kitchen just yet to insure a sense of purpose. And if nothing was permanent — as Sara also claimed — my co-ordinates just might be on track until further review.

I changed into my sleep shirt, brushed my teeth, got into bed and picked up
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
It fell open at:
So the baby was carried
in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that
night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to
the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles
grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and
others of the conjecturally damned are laid.

AS PREDICTED, Selena Kubik was granted bail on a surety of $100,000. Her trial date was set for October, eight months away. I did not attend the hearing, and if there were a plea bargain in the meantime, I would not be required to testify at a trial. My association with the Kubiks could well be over, unless I decided to buy new furniture from Vlasta O'Brien. Of course, I'd follow Selena's case — and life — with interest, but I believed she would survive whatever sentence she was given, and in her own way, grow from it.

Tessa was back, looking relaxed and more exotic than ever after a visit to her homeland. Heritage will do that for you. She said her father didn't produce an eligible Guyanese man for her, but she had soaked up the heat and soft, lilting accents, eaten her fill of tropical fruit, and drunk coconut water from the husk every day at the outside markets. That her new guy in polygraph had texted her constantly made the homecoming to rainy Vancouver easy.

Wayne handed me the phone number of Jennifer Ward, the mother of the young offender who had shot me. She had called to say her son wanted to see me before the trial next month. Should she bring him in? I phoned to say I would meet them downstairs.

Tyson Ward lived in one of the mansions on Government Road. When he and his mother arrived at the front door of the detachment, I took them into the same room where I had spoken with Jan Kubik. In her crisp white shirt and blonde ponytail, Jennifer Ward looked as if she had come from a home with vaulted ceilings, decorated in pale yellow, cream, and seafoam. After the introductions, she left me with Tyson, dressed in oversized designer garb. He mumbled something I couldn't hear, and I asked him to speak up.

“I'm sorry I shot you.” He looked down, and I couldn't tell from his expression if he expected me to say “That's okay.”

“That makes two of us. My ankle will never be the same, but it's functional again. Your consequences are just coming up.”

What sounded like a fit of sneezing turned out to be staccato sobs. I had already seen his face crumpled in tears from the ground, but I had been summoned for this performance and let him carry on. Every crying style was known to me, both the physical technique and degree of sincerity. Yet a polygraph for tears — a lachrygraph? — would be useless, because even the remorseless ones can be genuine at the time; certainly they regret the situation they're in.

The gun used had been taken from his scruffier friend Billy's uncle — well-known to us for drugs and theft — but it was good-looking Tyson who pulled the trigger. The rich kid needing diversion. Life was too boring and easy: why not try a break-in? Just to see how it felt. Tyson's house possessed two of everything that was in the house they targeted, but what a mega rush to force entry into a perilous situation. And Billy's family could have used the loot. The gun was no more than a prop that Tyson took charge of. Neither of them planned to pull the trigger, especially on a cop.

Would that reckless decision scar him permanently, or would the thrill of violence become a habit? Too soon to say. Tyson Ward was distinguished from Terry Dean only by cleanliness, affluence, and lack of excuses for his behaviour. How closely we're all connected. I hated the phrase “I hope you've learned your lesson” and when the crying stopped, out popped: “May the force be with you.” Once again, I spoke before thinking, and this time I chuckled at the double meaning.

Jennifer Ward reappeared and thanked me for coming. She did not try to comfort Tyson or lecture him, nor did she apologize for him by saying he got in with the wrong crowd. When they left, I felt he might have a chance.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on paperwork. Back in my apartment after supper, I sat down with my phone. I dialled T Shybunka first. An older voice said hello twice, as if he were hard of hearing. I stated my name, then in a non-telemarketing tone, tried to keep him on the line long enough to ask if he were related to Katherine Hughes.

“Who's calling?”

I repeated my name and explained that I was doing a family history; I believed Katherine Hughes might have been married to my great-grandfather. I hoped this would be a Wendell and not a Mona Mingus conversation.

“Kay Hughes was my grandmother.”

“And I am the great-granddaughter of Roland Hughes and his first wife Jane.”

“Is that a fact? Granddad thought his family was lost. Wait till I tell the kids. Too bad Rilla's gone — she would've loved this.” I sighed in relief that it would be a Wendell encounter. “Who did you say you are again?”

I asked if I might come to visit on the weekend. Did he have any pictures?

“My daughter keeps them. I'll get her over here. When did you say you're coming?”

I set a time for Saturday afternoon and told him my father would be with me. I didn't need to check with Dad about meeting the interloper who had robbed him of his Grandpa.

As with Wendell, the two old men proved compatible. Tim Shybunka lived in a seniors' apartment in North Van, two blocks from his daughter Dorothy, where he could show up unannounced any time he felt like it. His son Daryl and his family also lived in North Van, farther away in Deep Cove. Dorothy was with her dad, waiting to receive us with homemade muffins and coffee. I took an immediate liking to the woman — plump, energetic, fiftyish — because she dispelled my doubts about being too attached to a parent at the expense of a life of your own. Seeing her kiss her dad's bald head or pat his shoulder when she passed his recliner shamed me for thinking otherwise. She had two careers: music therapist in a hospital and bookkeeper for her husband's plumbing business. Their two kids, one a deep sea pilot, the other a teacher, also lived within walking distance with their spouses — this was a family that wanted to be close.

Dorothy picked up the box of photos and began dealing them like a deck of cards, setting aside the few that might interest us. “I keep telling Pops we should put these pictures in order. We never knew much about Granddad before he married
GG
.”

She handed me the wedding photo. “
GG
tinted that herself. She made extra money colouring for a photo studio when she was on her own raising Grandma.”

A strange wash of emotion came over me as I stared at the tinted black and white studio photo, my first glimpse of Roland Hughes. There was no such record of him with my
GG
. Roland was the same height as Kay and half her size, his thin neck almost lost in the stiff collar of his dress shirt and suit jacket. A full dark moustache partially made up for the missing hair on his head, and he had a jaunty stance that showed his small frame to advantage. On his lined face was an apologetic smile, but a craftiness in his eyes kept him from seeming pathetic. Was Sara right in saying she had a lot of her father in her?

Kay looked anything but apologetic, grinning at the camera with warmth and confidence in a pink wedding suit and a matching cloche hat. Her corsage was the same red as their lips and cheeks, the tincture tubes probably limited. Like the wedding picture of Thomas and Lizzie, Kay clearly came across as the spouse in control. But the similarity ended there, because Kay's face and posture held an ease and merriment that were completely absent in Lizzie. To have bred such an affectionate line, she must have been that way herself. A contrast to Mona Mingus, Laura Owens, even Dad, certainly no less dutiful or caring but physically undemonstrative. And was I the final link in that chain of inhibitions?

I passed the picture to Dad as Dorothy handed me another picture of Roland bathing a baby in a tub. “That's Pops,” she said proudly.

When Tim didn't hear, she repeated cheerfully, and he chuckled. “Granddad told me later I was the first baby he ever bathed.”

Seeing Dad's and my faces might have caused him to add: “He felt guilty about his drunken ways with his first family. Grandma told us when she came to live with my mother — Maria was her name — that she rescued him from drinking himself to death. Saw something worth saving, I guess. Never took another drink after he met her. Smoked a pack a day, though.”

Dad asked it first. “Did he ever mention the twin daughters he left behind?”

“Not to me. I was fourteen when he died. But Grandma said it ate away at him all his life. Being sober made it worse.”

Tim Shybunka's memory only held so many highlights of a step-grandfather who died seven decades ago, so Dorothy took over. She had spent a lot of time with her great-grandmother when she lived with her grandmother, again nearby.

“
GG
loved to talk about the early years.”

I thought wistfully of what I might have learned, having Jane as well as Sara.

Kay Hughes had said it was painful for Roland to speak of Sara and Janet. How they were taken from him by his wife's brothers, and he was declared unwelcome to visit in his derelict state. Even the brother-in-law who had been his friend got in touch only once to inform him one of the twins had died of influenza. He moved to a rooming house in Nanaimo and started gambling after that. Kay Odgers met him at a dance. Said her first impression of him hooked her because he was such a good dancer. Light on his feet and too busy with all the women in the hall to drink too much that night. He wanted to see her again. She told him he'd have to quit drinking and gambling first. When he appeared two months later, shaky but sober with some money saved, she didn't turn him away.