Chapter 26 Rachel #2
Rachel took in their straight teeth, polo shirts, and expensive sunglasses.
Mary always had friends, though not in the way Rachel would have defined them.
From the bits and pieces she’d learned over the years, they never stuck around long.
Just like Mary. They were all fair-weather and usually connected to some temporary job Mary was working, or they were pals of the dealer who supplied her pot.
They provided a couch, or cigarettes, or served as a bank when she needed a place to crash or a spot of cash to make it to payday.
They weren’t the kind of friends that would drive you to chemo and let you barf in their car, or tend to your paranoid delusions and mop up your tears when your depression was so bad you couldn’t be bothered to feed yourself.
Rachel didn’t know whether Mary was even capable of identifying that sort of friend—not that she could be one herself, either, so maybe it was a fair transaction.
Some relationships were just surface-level, after all.
The junk-food version of human connection.
Colourful and exciting and fun in the moment, but quickly digested and offering no real nourishment.
“So where is Kevin while you’re here?” Dora had asked her after Mary returned the photos to her wallet.
“He takes a golf trip down to South Carolina with three of his friends every summer,” Mary said, “so I thought I’d come up here for a bit while he’s away.
I had a fight with my roommate and my rent went up, so I got him to let me move in with him.
He’s got a nice house just outside the city.
He works down on Bay Street. Some finance thing,” she said, eyebrows raised conspiratorially. “I’ll move in when he gets back.”
Rachel and Dora exchanged a look of knowing surprise. Mary had learned the art of gold-digging, and was sharpening her pick.
Two weeks later, Mary still hadn’t shown any signs of looking for a job, and Dora was beginning to lose patience.
“Kevin’ll be back in a week anyway, Mama, and then I’ll head out. No point getting a job here when I’ll be leaving soon,” Mary said one morning over a breakfast of Dora’s signature omelettes: heavy on the ham and peppered with a secret herb blend of Dora’s own creation.
“That’s what you always say, and then you end up staying for weeks, or months. And you could at least cover the cost of some groceries and the damn phone bill,” Dora fired back. “You’ve spent at least two hours on it long distance to the States, and you will pay for it, Mary.”
But Mary shrugged, not meeting her mother’s eyes. “I’ll send you a cheque once I’m back at Kevin’s. Relax, Mama.”
Dora pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheek and glanced at Rachel, who shrugged with a There’s no point arguing her about this look.
She was sometimes keenly aware of the topsy-turvy dynamic of the house, that she and her grandmother were essentially parenting Mary alongside one another, both rolling their eyes and sighing at the irresponsibility of their charge.
The mothers of Rachel’s friends acted their age.
They contributed to their retirement funds through hard-earned work.
They gardened, cleaned, and worried for their daughters, pleaded that they not walk alone at night and call when they got somewhere.
As a child, Rachel pined for a mother who would actually parent her.
But now that she was grown, she just yearned for a mother who didn’t need to be parented by her own child.
“And how do you know Kevin will pay for your phone bill?” Dora pressed, pouring some coffee into her own and Rachel’s mugs with precision, though her eyes were still on Mary.
“Because he will. He loves me. He takes care of me.”
Dora slammed the coffee pot down on the table with a tremulous crash.
Rachel stopped chewing, eyes darting between Dora at the head of the table and Mary across from her.
Rachel set her fork down carefully, silently composing the tirade she longed to throw at her mother.
But Dora got there first, let her have enough vitriol for both of them.
“And we do not take care of you?” Dora snarled. “Has Kevin yet witnessed one of your mental breakdowns? Fielded midnight crisis phone calls? Has he spoon-fed you applesauce when you couldn’t feed yourself? Does he actually know anything at all about who you are? Does he know about—”
“Mother, stop it!” Mary shouted, with a fear-stricken glance at Rachel. It was somehow imploring, as though she wanted or expected Rachel to take her side.
“Don’t look at me for help!” Rachel scoffed.
“How dare you, Mary? How dare you?!” Dora snapped, her rage surging like a geyser.
“And besides—” Her mouth contorted suddenly into a sneer, the same one Mary made when she wanted to wound, and for a moment Rachel was both reminded that they were related, and baffled that Dora had produced a woman like her mother.
“What would you know about proper care?”
“Oh don’t start, Mama! No!” Mary shot Rachel a look again, then pushed her chair back from the table with a trumpeting scrape, like an angry elephant.
She made for the staircase near the front hall, then stopped and turned, a strange look on her face.
The anger was gone. This was curious, calculating, which somehow frightened Rachel more than the anger.
“He’ll take care of me because I’m having his baby.”
Rachel’s mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious.”
Mary didn’t look at her, didn’t answer.
Dora let out a little hiss. “You’re forty-one years old. You can’t be pregnant,” she said, her voice low, like a threat.
“I am, Mama,” Mary said.
Rachel was in a dizzying state of internal conflict. Her mother was a compulsive liar. But Kevin had turned out to be real. She was clearly on her meds. It was possible this wasn’t a lie.
“Besides, celebrities are having babies at my age. It’s not a big deal.”
“Having a child is always a big deal, Mary,” Dora said, clearly fighting against the anger building again in her chest. She looked at Rachel, who was watching with dismay, like she always did when Dora and Mary descended into this gladiatorial pit together.
“Well, I don’t need to care what you think, Mama, because this has nothing to do with you,” Mary spat. “Just leave me alone. I’ll be gone in a week, and then you and Rachel can both get back to your perfect little life together without me.”
“Sounds good to me,” Rachel growled.
Tears filled Mary’s eyes now, and Rachel didn’t think they were forced. Mary turned and pounded upstairs to her bedroom, where the walls were still stubbornly papered with the posters of her teen years, unchanging and immature.
Dora and Rachel both remained seated, staring at their plates, at the half-eaten omelettes that had grown cold during the argument. Finally, Dora spoke.
“I’m so sorry you have to go through this every time, Rachel,” she said, sounding defeated and resentful.
Like ugly debris swept up onto the beach after a crashing wave, the drama of the fight had receded, leaving weariness in its place.
“So often I wish she would just stay away. I feel awful saying it, but I do. She’s exhausting. ”
Rachel watched her grandmother. She always looked older in these moments, her shoulders more stooped, eyes dull with fatigue. “I get it, Gran. I do.” She paused. “Do you think she’s really pregnant?”
“Well…if she actually is, she’ll probably have gone off the medication. But I doubt she is.”
Rachel saw the lines around her mouth deepen as she bit her lips.
She was holding something back, and a chill crept up Rachel’s arms despite the warmth of the kitchen, knowing both she and her grandmother were thinking of the miscarriage in the bathroom all those years ago.
The one Rachel wasn’t supposed to know about. The one Dora might have induced.
Dora shook her head then, not meeting Rachel’s eyes. “I suppose it’s possible. Though she could just be saying it to spite us.” She glanced toward the staircase. “That girl never seems to run out of ways to self-destruct.”
It was seven-thirty in the morning, two days after the argument, and Rachel was standing in the dim scullery off the kitchen in her tank top and pyjama bottoms as the kettle rumbled on the stovetop to her left.
She’d slept poorly the past couple of nights, her dreams full of darkness, and she needed one of Dora’s energizing tisanes, a blend of ginseng, ginger, holy basil, and spearmint.
She’d woken to Dora already in the scullery, grinding up her own morning blend.
She was now out in the yard, harvesting some herb she’d run out of.
“Something calming for Mary,” she’d said. Chamomile or valerian, maybe.
Rachel reached for the jars one at a time, measuring them out with the set of silver spoons Dora kept on the counter.
Rachel placed the herbs in the marble mortar and began to grind, pressing and twisting the pestle as her grandmother had taught her years ago.
Dora had ground up nearly a year’s supply of this particular blend for Rachel to take to school with her.
It had come in handy during exam periods and the mornings after inexperienced and regrettable nights at the bar.
“What are you doing?”
Rachel jumped, the pestle knocking against the rim of the bowl with a clunk. Mary was standing in the little pocket doorway, one hand on each side of the frame. She scrutinized her daughter.
“Making tea,” Rachel said, as the adrenaline drained from her hands. “I’ve been tired, and I have to work today. It helps with my energy.”
“You shouldn’t trust her with any of this shit,” Mary said, scowling at the shelves of jars, the bouquets of dried lemon balm and lavender that hung upside down from the ceiling with brown twine.
“It’s just tea,” Rachel said, looking away from Mary and back to her hands. She finished grinding, the grumble of stone on stone unnaturally loud as Mary stood there silently, watching, like a bird of prey on a wire.
The past two days had been uncomfortable, but Mary had seemed surprisingly upbeat despite having been in tears at the end of the argument.
But when Dora asked, she still maintained that she was pregnant, and Rachel had even caught her running her hand over her flat abdomen once or twice while she was watching TV.
Rachel didn’t really know what to do with this news.
Either Mary was pregnant or she wasn’t, she was lying or she wasn’t, and only time would tell.
Rachel was sick of trying to figure her out.
She transferred the herb blend to a small lidded Mason jar and stood awkwardly in front of Mary until she finally stepped aside to let Rachel through. A bubble of tension pressed between them. She wondered how many other girls she knew felt their mother’s presence like an existential threat.
She stood at the nearby stove with the tea leaves in her favourite ceramic mug; a handmade, expensive splurge she’d picked up at one of the local summer craft sales a few years ago.
It was a little chipped now, but the size and shape were perfect, and she’d bought it with her own money, which always made something feel more valuable. Rachel liked to earn her keep.
Mary was in the scullery now, looking at all the rows of jars, eyes squinted the way Rachel’s got when she was working out a math problem.
“What’s this?” Mary demanded a moment later, lifting a small open glass jar off the counter.
“Oh, uh, probably Gran’s,” Rachel said. “She was…” She trailed off, losing her voice as the penny dropped.
“Making me tea?” Mary snarled, her eyes burning, unblinking.
“Did she think I wouldn’t recognize this shit from last time?
” She shook her head in disgust. “Always trying to ‘cure’ me. And the joke’s on her because I’m not even pregnant!
I knew she would try this. I knew it. I wanted to hope she wouldn’t, but…
” Her eyes were shining now, and she looked at Rachel intently.
“Mom—” Rachel was frozen in a state of wretched realization.
“She’s my own mother, and I can’t even trust her,” Mary whispered, her eyes imploring Rachel to understand, utterly ignorant to the spectacular irony.
“That fucking witch!” she screamed, and threw the jar to the floor where it shattered, leaves and shards flying in all directions, narrowly missing Rachel’s legs.
“Mom!” Rachel shouted. “That could have cut me!”
But Mary never cared who got caught in her crossfire, didn’t concern herself with who might get hurt, or who would clean up the mess afterward. That the shards of her own malevolence could lacerate someone else’s skin, settling in for a lifetime of pain.
“Where is she?!” Mary screeched. She looked crazy.
“Don’t, just don’t!”
But Mary’s eyes homed in on Dora’s yellow sunhat in the gardens out back.
“Leave her alone!” Rachel begged, but Mary stormed across the kitchen and out the porch door, letting it slam behind her as the metallic rumbling in the glossy red kettle grew louder, steam issuing from the spout in a steady stream of heat that looked harmless enough, but would burn if she got too close.
Inside, the water was boiling, bubbling faster and more urgently.
Before she bolted after Mary, Rachel quickly lifted it off the element.
She’d done this enough times to know exactly when the kettle was about to scream.