6. Sylvia
SYLVIA
“ S o?” Sierra says, hopping onto the kitchen counter as nimbly as a cat. Her manner is expectant and her gaze unswerving. She isn’t visibly tired after her shift at the café and I was impressed by how well she did her first time out.
Even Merrie complimented her.
We’re home again, late afternoon, for a break before I head back for the dinner shift.
Merrie has taken Una’s chemo belly as a personal challenge and is cooking for my grandmother every day.
Today, she gave me a clear chicken soup with wheat hearts, (there’s optional asparagus in a separate container and also diced chicken), chanterelles sautéed in butter (to be served on optional multi-grain toast) and six individual crème br?lées without the sugar glaze on top.
I guess that makes them vanilla custard but it sounds better in French.
It’s the final day of Una’s first round of chemo. Now she gets three weeks to recover, sprinkled with more appointments. Her oldest and best friend, Muriel Jackson, has been driving her into Havelock and back each day, sitting with her through the treatments.
I know exactly what Sierra means but am too surprised to have a good answer. “So?” I echo.
“Is my dad hotter now or was he hotter then?”
I didn’t expect her to be so blunt, but then, she does know Merrie.
I stir the soup, deciding what to admit.
It wasn’t supposed to matter to see Mike again.
I wasn’t supposed to feel like a lovesick teenager to see him, much less be terrified at the same time that he might insist on a paternity test, or even take Sierra away from me.
She’s at the age that she loves all the things, and Mike can afford them – just the way I can’t.
I put the soup on low, then turn to consider my daughter.
This amazing child. The light of my life and the reason for everything.
She’s amazing, a fireball of energy with a generous heart.
I see bits of myself in her, even glimpses of Una, but there’s a big part of Sierra that reminds me of Mike.
It’s more than her appearance or her height.
Her dexterity with math is mark of his contribution, for example.
Why did I come back to Empire? Because Una is a force of nature and Sierra’s grandmother, and time might be running out for Sierra to know her. It’s a simple choice when you put it like that. Una is tough and keeps her secrets but she’s been my rock for as long as I can remember.
I don’t even want to think about losing her.
Sierra is far too smart for her own good – or maybe mine – and she knows it.
She has that impish grin tugging at the corner of her mouth now, the one that always undermines my ability to be angry with her.
She takes a bunch of green grapes from the fruit bowl, kicking her feet all the while, and tosses one into her mouth.
“He’s pretty hot now,” she notes with a glint in her eyes.
She does have Merrie’s tenacity when it comes to any subject she wants to discuss.
“Not that he’s my type or anything.” She sticks out her tongue, making a face. “I mean, eww. He’s ancient.”
“As ancient as me,” I note and she looks surprised.
“No!”
“We’re the same age. Same grade in school. How else did you think I knew him?” I’m trying to be cool but she’s studying me intently. I change the subject. “What is your type?” I ask, stalling for time.
She rolls her eyes because the answer should be obvious. “Brendan Singh.” She licks the tip of her finger then points it at me, hissing as if she’s touched a spark. I know Brendan’s name well. He’s the object of many of her conversations with her BFF Lila.
He’s also (safely) in Toronto.
“Why?”
“Smart, funny, a great basketball player.” She nods at another grape. “Good in science. And just a nice guy.” I catch the glance she slants at me. “Mike Cavendish seems like a nice guy.”
“I used to think so.”
She waits, but I can out-wait her, at least thus far.
“Didn’t you tell him?” she asks finally.
“Tell him what?”
“Mom! I don’t think he knows about me. You should have told him.”
I’m not going to lie to Sierra about this.
She’s never asked who her dad was or where he was and the discussion feels past due.
“You’re right. It was him.” Her eyes light with triumph that she’s worked this confession out of me.
“And I told him. Right away. I wrote then and I wrote when you were born. I still write every year on your birthday and he has never ever answered me. Today, he acted like he never got those letters, but I know he did.” I can’t tell her about the phone conversations with Patrick Cavendish.
He was so awful but he admitted that Mike got the letters.
“I can’t explain his attitude but there it is. ”
She chews a grape slowly. “Maybe he didn’t want to be a dad.”
“Very few eighteen-year-olds do, I suspect, but that doesn’t keep them from…” I bite my tongue, remembering a bit late who I’m talking to.
That’s the thing. We’re often more like friends than parent and child, especially in the last few years.
Sierra grins. “I know where babies come from, Mom.”
“I hope that’s theoretical knowledge, Ms. Kincaid.”
I get an eye roll for that, then she lifts her hands. “Hello, Health Ed. is mandatory, Mom,” she says. “Of course, I had to have a dad and you never said he was dead. We’ve never been able to afford any of the cool stuff and I know that’s because you left Empire with me in your belly.”
Guilt stabs through me. “I did the best I…”
She halts me with a gesture. “I know. And you rock.” She surveys the kitchen. “I always wondered why we didn’t just stay with Una.”
“That would have been complicated.” Last I heard, Mike was getting married. I didn’t want to come to Empire and have front row seats to that show.
“We could have come back here after Aunt Eileen died.”
“I thought school would be better for you in the city.”
She studies me, guessing that’s only part of the truth, then nods. “What happens next?”
“All the usual stuff. I work with Merrie at the café. We probably never see Mike. We live here, except for you going to Lila’s each week until school is done.”
“And then? ”
“And then you’ll be here for the summer, and Lila can come and stay for a bit…”
Sierra shakes her head. “Lila can’t stay here with us. The house is full .” I get an intent look. “I can’t get ready in the morning without Una banging on the bathroom door and telling me to hurry up. Do you know how many times I re-did my eyeliner this morning?”
This is clearly an indignity beyond expectation, though I can’t help smiling. Una is not subtle. “Only one bathroom here. Maybe Una needed to use it.”
“Maybe we need to move .”
“I know. I’m just not sure where yet.” I stir the soup. “She might not be as strong as she thinks she is. She might need us close by.”
“Did she ask?”
I laugh. “Not Una. She’ll never ask for help.”
“Then she’s like you.” She holds up a finger before I can reply. “One bathroom, Mom. One .”
I turn to her again. “People get sicker as their chemo treatment continues. Everyone’s different but that bit seems to stay the same.”
“But she finished this cycle.”
“Three more to go.” At least I hope that’s it.
Sierra finishes her grapes and I start to gently reheat the chanterelles. Her voice is quiet when she speaks. “Will Una die?”
“I hope not.”
“Me, too.” Sierra considers this, kicking her feet again. “So, we should live close.”
“I think so.”
“Do I get to have an opinion about where we move?”
“Of course. When I figure out some options, we’ll talk about them.”
She nods, then studies me. “Tell me about Mike.”
“You shouldn’t call him that.”
“What should I call him? Dad?”
“No!”
“But he is.”
“Sierra, I don’t want to get into a custody battle. I want you to stay with me.”
“And that means you aren’t going to tell him the truth.”
“I’ve told him the truth!”
“But he didn’t want to hear it. Okay, then he’s Mike.” This is delivered with defiance and lacking a better suggestion – Mr. Cavendish is Mike’s father, after all – I let it go. “What made you like him, back in the dawn of time?’
“A lifetime ago.”
“ My lifetime ago.”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Sierra.”
“But I do. I want to know why you made me with him. What did he have that the other guys didn’t?”
Does she want to know that she was conceived in love?
In her place, I sure would. I made my choice, believing it would be the better one for her, but it hasn’t been easy for either of us.
I turn off the burner, then go to stand in front of her.
She loops her arms over my shoulders and I step between her knees in a kind of a hug.
“I thought he was everything. He was kind and strong and patient, responsible. Protective. Not a bully.” Sierra purses her lips at that but doesn’t say anything.
“A hard-worker. He listened to people and he fixed things when he could.”
“Kind?”
I nod. “Practical. Kinda sweet. Smart but never showed off. Math whiz.”
“Got to love that,” she says with a nod.
“His family had so much money that he and his brothers were like the crown princes of Empire. I didn’t care. I just liked Mike.” I meet her gaze and smile. “And yes, I thought he was really hot.”
She’s studying me. “And now?”
I sigh and cede the point with a nod.
She smiles slowly, the expression lighting her features. “Was it love?”
“I thought so. It sure felt like it.”
“Have you fallen in love since? You know, to compare.”
I shake my head and tease her a little. “You keep nicking my date bra. I might never know.”
Her smile flashes. “One and done,” she says with satisfaction, like we’re living in some kind of fairy tale. Well, if she finds romance in the story, I guess that can’t hurt. “Time for a happily-ever-after, Mom,” she says and I’m startled.
“Some people fall in love more than once, you know.”
She looks skeptical, then tightens her grip around my neck, mostly so she can look me in the eye and I can’t evade her. “What did Una say about you two?”
“She thought we were too young to be serious. She told me to wait until he came home from university.” I widen my eyes. “You can probably understand that four years sounded like an eternity.”
Sierra is visibly horrified. “Four years! What were you going to do for all that time?”
“Wait tables at the diner in town.” I can’t tell her I had any hopes of going to art school. She’d assume I didn’t go because of her. In reality, we had no money for tuition. A scholarship was the only chance, and with Sierra on the way, I made a choice.
“Where?” Sierra straightens. “Not the same place where The Carpe Diem Café is? ”
“The same place. My first job. I scooped ice cream my first summer, then in the fall, I got promoted to waiting tables.”
“Crummy job?”
“Kind of a fun job. Everyone came there in those days, so I saw everyone and heard all the gossip. Leon and Dottie were good to all us kids. We worked hard but we had a good time, too.” I smile in recollection.
“They always had a staff dinner the week before Labour Day. They’d close up for the night and we’d all have a meal together before the older kids went back to university.
Spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread. It was kind of like a second family.”
She’s studying me. “Did you see them again after you left?”
I shake my head, sobering. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I left and haven’t come back.” I touch my fingertip to her nose and her gaze darkens.
“No regrets,” I whisper then pull her into a hug.
She wraps her arms and legs around me, just the way she did as a little girl, and I’m struck suddenly by the prospect of her departure from my daily life.
In a couple of years, she’ll be gone, as she should be, off to follow her own dreams and build her own life.
I already miss her.
“You should get back together with Mike,” she says then and I laugh at the very idea.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You should date Rafe then. I’ll even give you back your bra.”
“Why Rafe?”
“He’s rich and he likes Merrie’s cooking.”
There is an entire lecture series here on the strategies of choosing a suitable mate, but I hear a car’s tires on the gravel drive. “I’ll keep your suggestion in mind. Now, hop out there and see if Una needs a hand. She might be really tired tonight. ”
And Sierra, like the good kid she is, jumps off the counter to do just that while I set the table.
Get back with Mike. Honestly, could there be a crazier idea? (Okay, dating Rafe is a crazier idea.) I’ll probably never see Mike again. He’ll likely avoid me and the café like the plague.
Relief is what I should be feeling. The worst-case scenario has happened and it’s over. Time to move on.
My memory, though, slides back to summer evenings at the pier, parked in Mike’s car, the moon rising high, its reflection shimmering on the surface of the lake. I’m not going to think about his heat pressed against me, his arms around me, his mouth…
No, not me.
The truth is that Mike still takes my breath away and that’ll be a problem if I’m going to survive in Empire. But Una needs us, whether she admits it or not. That means I’m not going to run away from Empire again.
And that means I have to be cool and indifferent to Mike, so he’s not encouraged to believe that we could start again – so there is no temptation.
Easy peasy. I’ve been unreceptive to men for fifteen years.
I’ve got this.