Excerpt: Not Alone

I found the papers in the spare bedroom of my mother’s apartment. When I pulled the box out of the closet and began to flip through the contents of the large manila envelope, the headline on the first page caught my eye. I set the package aside in a plastic bin labelled “Things to Keep - Maybe” and went on with my work.

The apartment was in a big old house that belonged to my mother, so there was no rush to finish cleaning it out. I forgot about the papers until after the memorial service.

“I didn’t expect so many people from Eagle Falls.” Alex emptied a bottle of red wine into a glass, handed it to me and sat beside me on the couch.

I sipped the smooth liquid before I replied. “I haven’t seen most of them since I was a kid. Some are really just names to me.”

“They seemed to think a lot of April.”

“She never cut her ties with her home town,” I said. “And they all went through some tough times there, before Mom moved to Thunder Bay.”

That reminded me of the papers. I lifted the arm Alex had placed across my shoulder and went over to the box. I found them near the top. “Looks like she kept a record of all that,” I said. I slipped them into my canvas bag. “I think I’ll bring these along and look at them on the way home.”

Luke came into the room then, holding his floppy bunny against the top of his giraffe pyjamas.

“I thought you were asleep, honey,” I said.

“I’m thirsty.”

Alex went to the kitchen for a glass of water.

“I wish Grandma was here.” Luke climbed into my lap and looked at me with a trembling lip.

When Alex and I told him, we’d wondered how much he would understand, but he seemed to have formed a pretty clear concept of death and its finality. Poor little guy.

“We all miss her,” I replied, giving him a hug that helped fill that void a little for me.

Mom wasn’t the easiest person to live with, but she was going to be a lot harder to live without.

* * * * * * * *
“Most of your mom’s old flames showed up too,” Alex said as we were tucking ourselves into the bed she had shared with at least three of them.

“Yes.”

“It’s kind of strange. She kept in touch with all her exes except...”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you think that was?” Alex was persistent tonight.

He’d never asked that right out before. It seemed that Mom’s passing opened up new fields of discussion - for Alex anyway. For me it wasn’t so easy.

“I guess she didn’t want to share me,” I replied, trying to be flippant.

“I can understand that.”

I gave him a forlorn smile and felt sorry for myself. “So now I have no parents at all.”

“My poor Jessie.” Alex pulled me toward him and stroked my arm while I buried my head in his neck. “It’s not like you don’t know who he is.”

I didn’t reply.

“You could call him. Nothing’s stopping you. Especially not now.”

How wrong he was. A little thing like dying didn’t affect the strength of my Mom’s taboo.

* * * * * * *

She never outright forbade me, but after the first few tries I stopped asking about him. She had a way of letting me know, without saying a word, when she wasn’t happy with me. Her attention wandered. Her smile disappeared and a hard mask replaced the indulgent look my requests usually elicited.

She didn’t use the technique often. “Pick your battles,” Mom always advised her friends when they had trouble with their teenagers. References to my paternal parentage constituted the major front between the two of us.

Even my grandparents - not only my easy-going grandma, but my strong-willed and opinionated grandpa - fielded my questions with nervous responses like “We’ll see,” or “That’s up to your mother,” or “I don’t really know, honey”. I found out more from their neighbours, on my lengthy summer visits to Eagle Falls, than from my own family. But gossip is unreliable and a lot of it was contradictory because no one knew for sure except Mom. They were almost positive. The circumstantial evidence seemed to confirm it. But Mom never did.

* * * * * **

The papers rode with me in my back pack on our five-hour trip home to our small community of Arrow Bay, but I had no opportunity to look at them. I shared the driving with Alex and when I wasn’t doing that I was playing “I Spy” with Luke, or preparing for re-entry to daily life in a world without my mother.

Though the closer we got to home, the more unreal her absence seemed. Someone who’s always loomed large in your life doesn’t leave it in a hurry. My life could be measured in each small steps I’d taken to achieve increased independence. A sign of success was my move to Arrow Bay, when I graduated as a dental technician, to take a job in a clinic there.

“It sure will be good to get home,” I said to Alex, who was looting through Luke’s travel bag for goldfish crackers.

“You bet.”

“Mom never did understand how I could be happy in Arrow Bay.”

“Hey, I thought she liked me!”

“You know what I mean.” I had always sensed her restlessness, even in the home she made for us in Thunder Bay. Maybe that’s why she changed partners so often. To compensate for never having got any farther than the only city in our part of the north. Thunder Bay had a lot more going for it than Eagle Falls, at least in Mom’s view, but she had hopes to go further than that, right up until the her illness dashed them. “She never understood how I could be happy in a little place like the one she escaped from.”

“She accepted it though.”

“You’re right.” Unlike many strong-willed people I knew, after her initial knee-jerk outburst, Mom could reflect and accept. Especially if it meant peace between us.

* * * * * *

We pulled into the driveway of our seventies vintage split level house in time for a late lunch. Alex brought in our bags and I unpacked my stuff and Luke’s. I gave my back pack the usual quick once-over, removing perishables and anything I might need soon, then stuffed it in the back closet. I didn’t have a good place to put Mom’s papers so I left them there for the moment.

“There’s a message for you from Annie.” Alex had been checking the answering machine. “She called to remind you it’s your turn to do the Fox Narrows run next week. She says let her know if it’s a problem and she can find a sub.”

The clinic where I work supplies staff for an office in Fox Narrows, a little place sixty kilometres up a side road off the highway. They also run a van that makes the rounds of other more isolated communities. Once a month someone from our team of two dentists, three techs and two more on-calls puts in a day in Fox Narrows. It means staying overnight at the town’s one-star motel. Great food, crummy accommodations.

“I hate to take off again when we just got back. Maybe I will ask her to find someone else to fill in.” After a moment I added, “I did that last time though, when you had to go to Winnipeg.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll be around, but I’m sure they’ll understand if you don’t want to go, with your mom and all.”

* * * * *

Monday came and I figured it was late to ask for a schedule change. Besides, that four hour drive held some appeal for me. It would give me a chance to digest the events of the past week. To deal with the emotions my mother’s death stirred, before I had to move on to the endless tasks involved in tying up her estate that I, as her executor and only child, would have to handle.

* * * **

I cleaned a lot of teeth in Fox Narrows, the norm at their busy clinic. Young, old, healthy, rotting and in between. Then I enjoyed a hot sandwich with generous chunks of turkey and smooth thick gravy in the restaurant of the Sunshine Motel. I chatted with the owner while she prepared the door card, then took my overnight bag and back pack to my room. Stretched out on the quilted spread atop the double bed, I made a quick call to Alex to tell him I was checked in, and say goodnight to Luke.

Unable to calm my restless mind, I brewed a cup of tea with the room’s coffee maker and flicked on the television. Nothing on the various 2000 available satellite channels held my attention .

The drive up had not been as useful as I’d hoped. Memories, thoughts and emotions flooded out but only to swirl around, not settle into a coherent story that I could file away for future reference and development.

Although I had not looked at the papers in my back pack since I had put them there that day at Mom’s, I had not forgotten them. Perhaps this was the time.

Rather than begin reading, I flicked through the pages. As I did I felt my forehead tighten in a frown.

The package contained a mixture of items, mainly newspaper clippings and hand-written notes. Every piece of paper had one thing in common: a date, sometimes in print, sometimes handwritten, always highlighted in yellow.

I decided to read the first item: a short newspaper article article pasted to a sheet of paper and dated May 1979.

Graduate Student Reports Disturbing Findings

Jack Kruppa, a student in Graduate Studies at Lakehead University, has conducted tests of the water in the Okogi River. He claims to have found not only high levels of organochlorines, but has detected the presence of mercury in amounts far in excess of those considered safe. Mr. Kruppa has passed his findings on to the provincial Environment Ministry. Officials there assure the public that they will review the information and decide what action to take.

The next item was handwritten, and appeared to be a journal entry on a page torn from a coil-bound notebook.

May 22

So, Jack’s done it. I thought he’d wait to see what the ministry people said, but he got impatient. And they were taking a long time. I’m surprised the paper printed it. After all, he is just a student and his thesis is only getting underway. Not that I doubt him. He double- and triple-checked because he doubted it himself.

I see the paper didn’t make any reference to the mill . I guess that could get them in trouble, if the mill isn’t really responsible. Though Jack is sure they are, and I guess he’s right. His dad won’t be happy about this either, but like Jack said to me, What am I supposed to do? Let Ashton keep poisoning people so we can stay in business?

It sounds pretty bad.

When she wrote that, Mom had been younger than I was now. It hurt to read the words of a twenty-three-year-old I never knew who became the mother I had just lost. I could picture her because of course I’d seen photographs, and she wasn't that different than she had looked this year, at fifty-eight. She wore her hair shorter in later years, and her face got a little harder but I don’t think she’d gained an ounce and she always looked lovely to me, even at the end. I wondered what I would learn about her and Jack in these pages, but I wasn’t ready to find out, so I replaced them in my back pack.

In the morning I stopped by the office on my way out of town to pick up some paperwork and see one more patient. By ten a.m. I was on the road under a sparkling blue sky, with plenty of time to meet Luke’s school bus at three-thirty. My back pack lay on the seat next to me with a cheese sandwich and an apple I’d picked up at a corner store.

Last time I’d done the run, the spring melt had been in full swing. I’d noticed a pretty waterfall in the distance, tumbling over rocky steps to fill the stream that disappeared in the forest of spruce and balsam fir, then emerged to flow under the highway bridge. I’d spotted it again the previous day, on my way up. Now I decided to watch for that spot, stop the car and see if I could make my way to the falls. I figured a walk in the woods and a half hour spent at that peaceful natural spot might help to sort out my head.

At about a quarter to twelve I approached the bridge. Perfect timing. A patch of gravel by the road provided just enough space for two cars. I parked in the shade of a stand of birch trees.