Chapter 23 Rachel
RACHEL
As was often the case in the summer, Mary was back, and without much explanation beyond “I felt like a visit.”
She had a new boyfriend, some guy named Roger who owned his own contracting business in Kitchener, where she was now living in a brand-new townhouse with trendy white-tile countertops in the kitchen, black appliances and even a microwave.
“None of this old wood,” she’d told Dora and Rachel with a dismissive wave around their beloved kitchen.
Dora had asked how she afforded the rent on a place like that, working an hourly wage at Tim Hortons, but, fast as a whip, Mary had already moved on to talking about Back to the Future, which she and Rachel had just gone to see at the Starlite Drive-In.
She also seemed able to continue to pay the rent on that house even though she was taking the summer off work to be in Bayfield.
That hadn’t even occurred to Rachel until she overheard her grandmother pressing her mother about it later.
Since Rachel’s graduation from high school, she’d spent most of her time slinging ice cream at Two Scoops on Main Street, as she always did, and—uncharacteristically—spending time with her mother.
Mary hadn’t been to visit in a year and a half, not since the two months she’d spent wintering on the couch and in her childhood bed, depressed and unhinged.
There was, Rachel had to admit, a marked improvement in her since then.
She had more weight on her frame, and the dark circles that had entrenched themselves beneath her eyes had faded in the toasty tan she spent her days accruing, lounging on the chaise in the backyard with a cigarette in one hand and a lukewarm Coke in the other.
But mentally she seemed better, too. She was less scattered and erratic, didn’t drive as though she had a death wish for herself and everyone else on the road.
She slept a normal number of hours, and at night instead of in the day.
Dora thought she might be on, as she put it, “proper medication,” and Rachel wondered what might be possible in their relationship if only she would fucking stay on it.
Rachel was going to study science at the University of Windsor in the fall.
She’d done well in science in school, liking the cut-and-dry nature of science and math: that something was right or it was wrong.
It was or it wasn’t. She couldn’t stand her mandatory English and History classes, where she had to argue for something on one side or another.
It was exhausting. Rachel wanted facts, not opinions.
There was always an answer to something, you just had to dig deep enough until you found it.
“The first person in the family to go to university,” Dora had said, beaming, when Rachel ran into the kitchen back in February, dancing on the spot holding the acceptance letter aloft. “I’m so proud of you. This is a tremendous accomplishment, my not-so-little one.”
When Mary had heard the news upon her sudden reappearance in June, she’d given Rachel a look that Rachel still couldn’t quite decipher—some mix of anger and pleasure, perhaps a latent sense of motherly pride attempting to scratch its way to the surface of her bitterness.
But she hadn’t congratulated her daughter.
“You’ll like Windsor,” was all she said, reaching into the fridge for another Coke.
“Good party town, if you know where to go. I can tell you the best places.”
It was a Tuesday afternoon now, and Dora was out at her weekly quilting circle. It was a group of twelve women who had met at the community centre with their needles and thread and gossip every Tuesday since 1971. It was one of the few routine things Dora did solely for herself.
Mary and Rachel had just returned from Grand Bend, where Mary liked to go to the beach.
It was only a twenty-minute drive south, but more populated than the Bayfield beaches, and Mary said she liked the mood better, didn’t have to run into as many people she knew from high school.
Rachel could relate to that. She didn’t want to run into anyone she knew from high school, either, when she was with Mary.
There was still just too much to explain, and she had few answers, no defence for her mother’s choices.
Rachel took some chicken out of the freezer in preparation for dinner that night while her mother pulled two glasses out of the dishwasher, leaving the rest in there without unloading it.
Rachel glanced at her. It felt strange to admonish her own mother, tell her to contribute, but she was always cutting corners and avoiding doing her share of the housework.
It was starting to irritate Rachel, who had been taught to clean up after herself from the time she could manage a dustpan and reach the knobs on the washing machine.
Dora had been on Mary about getting a local job, but she hadn’t yet.
Mary stepped in behind Rachel and opened the freezer again, releasing another cloud of fog that cooled Rachel’s legs rather pleasantly. Her mother twisted the ice cube tray with a satisfying crack and plucked a few out, dropping them into the glasses and filling them to the brim with pop.
“Backyard?” her mother asked, handing her one.
“Sure.”
Rachel followed her through the screen door, which slammed with a clap behind them as they made their way down the porch stairs. Rachel loved just sitting back here, reading a thriller as she listened to the leaves sigh overhead, her nostrils filled with the scent of Dora’s lavender and mint.
She made her way toward her favourite Muskoka chair, but her mother beckoned her, walking toward the cliff edge.
“Come sit with me.”
She sat down and patted the ground beside her, right there on the edge of the bluffs where Rachel had seen her sit so often before—including that time when she was out swimming in the lake—dangling her legs off the side.
Rachel’s stomach swooped. “Gran doesn’t let me—”
“Oh Jesus Christ, Rachel,” her mother said with an aggravated sigh. “She doesn’t own you. Come sit. Live a little.”
Rachel hesitated, glanced back at the house, at the deep covered porch and butter-yellow screen-door frame, the bedroom windows along the back, their heavy curtains pulled shut to ward off the summer heat that accumulated like thick fog as soon as the sun crossed over its midpoint to the west. The house always had such an empty air about it when Dora was out, as though it shut down in the absence of its mistress.
Rachel turned away from it, guilt tingling in her extremities, then settled near her mother on the rough carpet of dry grass and weeds.
It itched the backs of her thighs, uncomfortable and nagging.
She slowly extended her legs out and let her ankles and calves rest over the edge, planting her hands firmly on either side of her for stability.
She was a good foot back from where her mother was, though, perched with her thin butt flirting six inches from the face of death.
Rachel adjusted her sunglasses in the glare of the afternoon.
The breeze blew in from the water, fluttering her hair.
She watched her mother from her vantage point a little behind.
At the roots, her mom’s natural brown hair had more streaks of red in it than Rachel’s dark locks did, but the rest was growing out a brassy shade of gold highlights.
She often had some sort of lightening in her hair, depending on which mood had struck when she walked into the drugstore and reached for the box.
Sometimes the dye came with a side of bleach.
She was always fighting against the dark parts of herself.
Sometimes more successfully than others.
“You’re an adult, you’re allowed to do what you want, Rachel,” she said. “You don’t have to stay here with her anymore, or play by her rules.”
“Well, I’m not staying here, I’m going to school in Windsor.
You know that. But also—” Rachel looked back at the wooden arbour, the green rose leaves beginning to climb their way up.
They’d been in full yellow bloom a week ago.
She’d planted them herself, the previous year.
Their roots had taken hold. “I don’t really want to leave.
Not permanently. I like it here, well enough, until I find somewhere I like better.
I don’t know yet. Windsor is three hours away, though.
I can drive home on weekends and stuff.”
“Well, what if we lived together? I could get a job there.”
Rachel was silent for a moment, shocked at the suggestion. “What about your boyfriend?” she finally managed, perplexed.
Her mother shifted where she sat, raked her fingers through the grass beside her.
“He’s nothing. I can break it off with him. You’re more important.”
She bit down on the inside of her cheek, the one Rachel could see. Her mother wasn’t making eye contact with her. She was lying, Rachel realized. There was no boyfriend. She exhaled deeply, sighing out her frustration, her anger at being lied to by Mary—yet again.
“Since when?”
Silence.
“What about your house?” Rachel pressed.
Mary shrugged.
Rachel waited, searching for the real reason why her mother was proposing this.
“I’m really trying here, Rachel,” Mary said finally. “Things have kept us apart for so long, and I’d like to be more a part of your life.”
Rachel was savvy enough to note how her mother externalized the blame, as she always did. Everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Things have kept us apart.
“Things haven’t kept us apart, Mom,” Rachel said. “You have.”
“Your grandmother isn’t the saint you think she is,” Mary spat back.
“What do you mean?”
“She poisoned me to end a pregnancy. Did you know that?”
Rachel’s breath suspended.
“That time in the shower,” Mary said, her voice a gleaming dagger, intent on harm. “You must remember that. I told her I was pregnant and she gave me some shit in a tea she said would calm me down and I miscarried the next day. I know she did it.”
Rachel swallowed hard. “She may not be a saint,” she said, angry at herself when her voice cracked, tripping on the sudden understanding of her grandmother’s complexities.
“But at least she’s taken care of me, been there for me, which is more than you can say for yourself.
” Her blood felt like it was on fire. In the face of all of Mary’s many misdeeds and broken promises, her addictions and madness, Rachel had never accused her mother of anything before.
She was frightened, but proud of her own courage, like she’d just jumped off a high diving board.
“She didn’t pull me into a bloody shower with her and call you a witch,” she continued.
“She didn’t drag me out to live in Etobicoke.
I slept on a couch and didn’t go to school.
You were drunk or high or off fucking Simon half the time.
I ate Twinkies for breakfast, if I had one at all.
Child Services took me away from you for good reason.
So don’t criticize Gran for giving me a home and doing what you wouldn’t.
My relationship with her is clearly very different than her relationship with you, and I won’t apologize for that. ”
She already knew that later she would need to sit with the knowledge that she might have had a sibling.
That, if what Mary claimed was true, Dora had intervened to abort the pregnancy.
She knew by then that there were indeed things her grandmother hadn’t told her, but surely everyone was entitled to a couple of secrets.
And perhaps her grandmother had a good reason for keeping that one from her.
“Right,” Mary said, scowling, “because she’s the perfect parent.
She’s just never wanted me to have any happiness since…
” She dragged on the forgotten cigarette in her hand, burned mostly down to the filter.
Rachel looked at Mary’s nails, painted the same abalone blue as Rachel’s.
They’d sat out on the back porch three nights ago, flipping through magazines and drinking Dora’s iced tea as they painted each other’s nails.
“This is nice,” Mary had said, wiggling her fingers in the air and smiling, which she rarely did unless she wanted something from someone. “We match. Like sisters or something.”
Rachel had smiled then, but with a mixture of pleasure and hesitancy. She was drawn to her mother’s attention—she’d had more of it this summer than she’d ever experienced in her entire life—but she also didn’t want to be anything like her, even if it was just a matching manicure.
Now, in the heat of their argument, she knew she’d been a fool to think she and Mary had truly gotten anywhere with their relationship that summer, that two months of trips to the drive-in and painting each other’s nails the same colour could possibly make up for eighteen years of abandonment.
She looked at her mother’s back, a little sunburned above the line of her black spaghetti-strap tank top. Then a thought flashed through her mind, unbidden and intrusive as a lightning bolt.
Just one push, and she’d be gone.
And she saw herself do it in her mind’s eye, heard the quick rustle of the grass and weeds as Mary’s body disappeared over the cliff edge.
Rachel’s breath came hard and fast with fearful shame. She shook her head to dispel the image in her mind, recoiled farther away from Mary.
“Anyway,” Mary said, finishing the cigarette and flicking the butt into Dora’s herb garden to land among the lavender.
Rachel jolted her mind back to the moment.
“I don’t want to talk about the past, Rachel.
I just won’t. I’ve gotten my shit together and I want to move forward with you and have a future. ”
Mary really didn’t get it, and Rachel didn’t know whether it was deliberate ignorance, or that whatever was wrong with Mary made it impossible for her to see the damage she inflicted on others.
“Except all we have is the past,” Rachel said icily. “If you won’t talk about that, won’t explain why you’ve—”
“You know what?” Mary barked. “Never mind. I’m done here.
I’m done.” She threw up her hands, swung her legs around and stood, leaving Rachel alone facing the lake, the serenity of it taunting her as her insides boiled with bitterness.
After so many years, with countless disappointments and devastations added to her quiver of life experience, she was still unable to believe how quickly and easily her mother was willing to give up on her.