“She turned and flashed me a look so cold and dead that I stepped back. Then she smiled and came forward and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’ When she shook my hand, her palm was wet, maybe from all the moisture she’d extracted from the air. I felt like my hand could almost go through hers, it was so transparent, ethereal — did you know that word is derived from ether?”
I hugged my knees to my chest.
“Like in science? The one that disappears?”
“It means lighter than air, something supernatural, not from our earth. Maybe she wasn’t even there. What do you think of that?”
In the dark, Vi was grinning. Her false teeth gave off a solid white glow.
Maybe my mother was a ghost. Maybe Sylvia had transformed herself and she wasn’t really in the crazy hospital where she was supposed to be. This thought tormented me. If she wasn’t in the hospital, where was she? I had difficulty getting back into the story, but I forced myself. That’s where the clues were.
Vi proceeded, barely pausing to draw on her cigarette.
“She asked me if I would excuse Sam so she could take him to the movies, something unheard of at that time. Back then, in our part of the world, girls never asked boys out. But I said yes, feeling how lucky Sam was that she chose him. Sam felt it too. I was under a spell. After she left and the vapours descended, resting on my skin and in every nook and cranny of my body, I stood, my hands pulling the laundry out of the press and hanging it by rote, my eyes safe behind two misty lenses, and the lucky feeling left me. It left me abruptly, and I was filled with a tiredness and a sadness so profound, I had to leave that place, lock up for the night and go out to the hotel. From that moment on, Sam and Sylvia have been together.”
Vi made the turn into Apple Ford.
“Until now, that is.”
I pressed my back against the seat. That outpouring of words had sharpened my senses. I could hear the crickets, the tires rolling on the asphalt, a ticking in the engine. I could smell the roses in their gardens and someone’s fresh-cut lawn. I could even tell who’d had barbecue for dinner.
Vi stared at me, one eye on the road. I looked out the window. Could Vi feel the change in the air as we pulled closer to my house?
Seeing the house made my stomach churn. If Sylvia was a ghost, maybe she was still at home, watching unseen, hanging around in the ceiling corners waiting for signs that her children didn’t love her enough, the perfect way to get under their skin.
“Two more things,” Vi said. “Sylvia is someone you can’t understand, can’t ever hope to know. But I do think it’s important that you see for yourself and I’ll tell that to your father.”
She cut the engine and listened to the car’s shakes and shudders. She reached across the seat and patted me on the knee.
“Well, Mercy. It’s time to meet your maker.”
“What’s the second thing?”
“Oh, that. It’s supposed to be a surprise, but you’re better off being prepared. Your father is sending you to camp.”
“Camp? What about Nicky?” I held my breath.
“Never mind that. You’ll have to get your stuff out of the trunk. My veins are throbbing enough as it is.”
I scrambled after her, home again.
5 Your Wooded Grace
On my way back from the Trout Club Saturday evening, I coast past our house to the arena to check on Larry’s rig and it is gone. I park my bike and come in the back door. The sun on the pink insulation stuffed between the studs and the roof rafters gives the addition a rosy glow.
I find Sam lying on the couch watching the Jays. Vi sits in an armchair knitting the off-the-shoulder orange and turquoise batwing sweater-dress she’s promised me will be all the rage when I go back to school. Vi has never been the sort of expert knitter who fashions delicate pastel baby outfits or large intricate ski sweaters. Instead she prefers to make up patterns as she goes along, using a cheap nylon wool that squeaks when she rubs it between her fingers. After she cut down her smoking earlier this year at her doctor’s insistence, her knitting output surged. She started the sweater-dress when she moved in this spring, reminding me of the time I stayed with her after Sylvia left five years ago. Then Vi had knit me a floor-length poncho of white pompons centred on alternating mint green and black blobs.
Vi hoists herself up and beckons me into the kitchen.
“The barbecue’s lit if you want to help me get some burgers ready.”
Nicky joins us and we eat from paper plates set in green baskets and drink cola from Styrofoam cups. When Vi moved in, she brought boxes of disposable dishes pilfered from Effie’s. The last time she stayed with us, just before Sylvia returned, she brought only a single suitcase.
“The addition looks good. Warm,” I tell Sam.
“Thanks. Vapour barrier’s next, then drywall. Looks like Nicky’s wild vacation is over.”
Nicky smiles, his cheeks lumpy. He swallows, takes a swig of pop, and says, “Too bad Uncle Larry isn’t here for the dry-wall. You said it’s difficult. It’s probably better with three of us then, right?”
“If Larry didn’t get home today, Nadette would have been on him.”
“It’s not like she likes him very much,” I say.
“True, but she doesn’t want him anywhere but home.”
“She doesn’t trust him,” Vi says. “And who can blame her?”
Sam shoots her a look and the tip of her tongue appears between her front teeth. Her current wig is a shingled auburn, her horn-rims replaced by purple tortoiseshell frames that reach from halfway down her cheeks to above her eyebrows.
“Why doesn’t Mercy just help us? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” Nicky says with a big smile.
I roll my eyes. “Hardly. I know I’m muscular, but I’m not strong like you are, Nicky. And I have to work tomorrow.”
“Wouldn’t hurt you, Mercy. It’s getting the pieces propped in place that’s hard about drywall — and the dust, of course — but there’s nothing your brother can lift that you can’t. And we do wear masks.”
“Maybe when I’m done the boards.”
“Maybe we’ll have to help you with the boards when we’re finished the drywall.”
Vi tops up our cola. Sam adds rum to his from a bottle on the counter.
“Any money Larry didn’t ask about me. He likely doesn’t know about the operation. Four feet of intestine. If you tacked that length of gut against the wall it would be almost as tall as I am.” Her Dr. Snow had talked Vi into having it out and now she feels released.
“I told Larry,” Sam says into his drink.
Vi continues as if she hasn’t heard. “Bet Larry doesn’t know his own mother was eviscerated.”
“What’s that?” Nicky asks.
“It’s a disembowelment,” Vi says, easing her chair back from the table. “Where they slice you open and pull out your bowels. Remove your essential parts. Your viscera are your internal organs. Your innards. From the Latin.”
Five years ago, Vi defined hysteria for me with a similar relish, pointing out the connection between the Greek word for womb and what was thought to be a woman’s frenzy while I sipped a chocolate milkshake at her counter.
Sam gets up and stands under the horseshoe Sylvia had nailed over the doorway — with the round part