Ten October 21, 2023 #2
“Tea,” Elsie says, sitting on a stool at the large granite-top island.
“Orange pekoe, decaffeinated, if you have it. Nothing if you don’t.
Skim milk if you have it, nothing if you don’t.
And just enough milk to make it milky, but not enough to make it cold.
And the skim milk can’t be shaken in the container at all—”
Her mother turns to her. “Or there are bubbles in the tea. That ruins the cup. That’s how I drink my tea.”
“I know.”
“Really, who are you?”
“I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”
Her mother pours milk into a small white jug, the same one Elsie uses for her tea in her basement kitchenette. “Try me,” she says.
“I’m your daughter, Ellie. Well, I go by Elsie now.”
“My daughter?” Elsie can see the pity in her mother’s face. She must think she’s just another lost woman in need of her care. (True enough.)
Elsie scans the kitchen as she thinks of a way to convince her mother that she’s telling the truth.
She’d forgotten just how kitsch this kitchen was, or more likely she didn’t recognize it at the time, as a kid.
Her mother had gone all in with the whole faux-Tuscany kitchen thing.
Fake stucco walls, terra cotta tiles, a big-ass range hood, farmhouse table and, damn, roosters.
“That rooster behind you, on top of that cupboard,” Elsie says.
“I was with you when you bought that at a yard sale in Nanaimo. And that’s your junk drawer, right there.
” That junk drawer was a cache, in its way.
The contents were junk, yes, but priceless when you needed the stuff: a twist-tie for a plastic bag, a stick of plant food for a dying plant, a pen, a sticky note, tape.
“And that bottom cupboard door has been coming off its hinges for years, but you guys never replace it.” Elsie stands and opens the cupboard, to prove it. The door dangles there.
Her mother’s eyes narrow. “How did you know that?”
“You hate shoes about as much as I do,” Elsie says, looking down at her mom’s bare feet.
“You’re sensitive, like me. You cut the tags off all your clothes so they don’t irritate your skin.
You can’t stand loud noises, so you wear earplugs to movie theatres.
You love chocolate but you don’t eat it because the caffeine makes you anxious.
” Elsie points at the living room, Ellie tossing toys and candy from her stocking onto the floor.
“I know all this because I’m that little girl.
” Who is way cuter than she ever thought she was.
“I’m her, in the future. I’m twenty-seven now, about to turn twenty-eight. In my time. In 2023.”
“That’s not possible.” Her mother looks with her at Ellie and Bailey sitting on the living room floor, both of them gnawing on the chocolate coins her mom put at the bottom of their stockings.
“Then how do you explain this?” Elsie asks, turning to show her mother the back of her neck, the port-wine stain in the shape of a sloppily drawn heart, right at the base of her hairline. Elsie would never have known it was there if her mother hadn’t pointed it out when she was a child.
Her mom peers at the birthmark, then calls out, “Ellie, come here, Sweetheart!”
“Is Daddy here?” The girl races into the kitchen, her face and fingers smudged with chocolate.
“No. We talked about this, remember? You’re spending Christmas morning here and the afternoon at Daddy’s place.”
“Why can’t he come here?” she whines. “He’s always here Christmas morning.”
“You’ll see him later. And you’ll have more presents to open with him.”
The girl beams up at Elsie. “Can you disappear?” she asks.
“Ellie, that’s rude,” their mother says.
The girl bounces up and down as if she hasn’t heard her mother. “Bailey doesn’t believe that you’re an angel,” she says to Elsie. “Can you show her?”
“Not right now, Honey,” her mother says. “May I look at your birthmark?”
“I have a birthmark?”
Her mother rolls back the girl’s pajama collar, comparing the birthmark to Elsie’s.
“See?” Elsie says, turning around.
Her mom puts a hand to her throat, and in her voice there’s a tremor. “You can go back into the living room,” she tells Ellie.
“But I emptied my stocking.”
“You and your sister can open one present.”
Ellie runs off again.
“But just one!” her mom calls out. Then she starts pacing that terra cotta floor, chewing a fingernail.
It’s a habit Elsie had forgotten. She does the same thing when upset or working through a problem.
“This doesn’t make sense,” her mother says.
She sits at the counter, pushing up her sleeves.
“Tell me something only my daughter and I would know.”
Elsie turns to look at Ellie, who’s ripping the wrapping off the largest present under the tree, a telescope.
“Every morning, I hide your wallet and keys so when you wake, you have to go on a treasure hunt to find them.” She turns back to her mother.
“Before I went to kindergarten, you and I would lie on the floor of the staff room at work at naptime. You’d tell me that the dust motes floating in the sunshine were fairies. ”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“I really am time-travelling.” Elsie holds up The Pocket Atlas of Nostalgia and Longing, open to the fourth house page. “The atlas takes me to different events in my life. I don’t know why. I don’t know where it came from.”
Her mother takes the atlas from her. “Let me see that thing.”
“Careful,” Elsie says. “You’ve got to keep it open to that page, or I disappear, back to my time.”
“This is an astrological chart.” Her mother lays the atlas out on the counter. “I guess I’ll have to look into it more myself.”
“You believe me?” Elsie asks.
Her mother tucks a strand of Elsie’s hair behind her ear.
“I can see my Ellie in you,” she says. “But come here.” She pulls Elsie into a hug, and after a moment Elsie feels her mom shaking as she sobs.
Then her mother sits back down across from her, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“When I first held Ellie, I knew she was mine, a part of me. When I hold you, I feel that same connection.” Her mother’s eyes are moist. “It’s so strange,” she says, clapping her hands together.
“You’re all grown up, but I can feel you’re my daughter, as much as that little girl is. ”
Elsie and her mother both turn to watch the young Ellie rip open another present.
Ellie is so small, so vulnerable, and there’s so much pain ahead.
The bullying at school, her mother’s death, the friends and the boyfriend who leave and leave.
She wants to run over there and hug the girl, protect her.
“Let me show you something,” Elsie says to her mother. She holds out her phone, the photos of herself and her sister together, wearing the eclipse glasses, with the eclipse, a tiny donut, in the sky behind them.
“This is Bailey?” her mother asks.
“She’s just about to get married.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Do either of you have kids?”
“Not yet. Bailey wants a family. Lately, I’ve been thinking about having a baby too.” Wanting a baby. A craving she can’t satisfy. “But I don’t think I’m ready.”
Her mother laughs. “No one is ever ready to have a kid, even when you plan it. You figure it out as you go.”
But how could she possibly care for a kid? She can barely care for herself.
“It’s not for everyone,” her mother says. “But having kids was the best decision I ever made. Being a mother changed everything for me. How I saw myself. How I saw the world. And the depth of love I feel for my daughters, that I feel from them—I’ve never felt that anywhere else.”
Elsie launches from her stool and hugs her mother desperately. “I’ve missed you so much!”
Her mother pats her back, laughing. “You missed me? Where did I go?”
Before Elsie can answer, Ellie runs into the kitchen in a pink tutu, another present she found under the tree. “Look at me!” she says.
“Look at you!” Elsie takes the girl’s sticky little hand, her own, and twirls her.
Ellie giggles. “Can I wear this to Daddy’s?” she asks.
“Sure,” her mother says.
Elsie lets go and the girl twirls back into the living room.
“You know, you were that girl once,” her mom says.
“I know. It’s so weird.”
“I mean, you were the kid who did an interpretive dance for show and tell, who sang the loudest at the school concerts, who wore colour. When did you start wearing black?”
“I don’t know,” Elsie says. But she does. She crossed that event horizon at her mother’s funeral. She unravels a thread from the sleeve of her hoodie before saying what she came here to say. “You die, Mom.”
Her mother turns and turns her teacup as she stares off into the middle distance. Then she jumps up as if she hasn’t heard Elsie. “I have an idea,” she says. “Come with me.”
Elsie leaves the atlas face down on the counter. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” On entering the living room, she waves at the girls, telling them to follow.
“But there are more presents under the tree,” Ellie says.
“You can open them in a few minutes.”
Together they climb the narrow stairs to the attic.
Elsie catches a fluttering memory of following her mother into this room to see the winter light illuminating the sparkling dust motes, which, of course, were clearly fairies.
And then, just as she did in that memory, her mom now yanks a sheet off a large storage box.
She keeps her party dresses from the 80s in there, along with her wedding dress and other forgotten memories.
In 2023, this same box sleeps, dust-covered, in Bailey’s attic.
“This young woman needs a pretty dress,” her mother tells the girls. “In fact, we all do.”