Burden of Memory (18 page)
The sun itself wasn’t up before Elaine. She opened one eye and peeked at her bedside clock. Five a.m. With a groan she rolled over and pulled the covers into a tight ball under her chin.
It was no use; she’d gone to bed so early that her body refused to settle back to sleep. She lay awake thinking about everything that had occurred since Thanksgiving. When a weak sun finally rose high enough to lighten the sky outside her window, she gave in to the inevitable and crawled out of bed and into the en-suite shower.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, she could hear the dogs in the kitchen and the sound of pots and pans rattling. She left the house through the front doors.
Phoebe sat on the blond wood rail that enclosed the deck, dressed in her usual colors, a dark sweater over black, skin-tight jeans. She was abnormally thin, in the fashion of the day, but her breasts were surprisingly full, the sweater straining at the seams. This morning she was without her bride-of-Dracula makeup.
“Off for a run?” she asked, rhetorically.
“Want to join me?” Elaine glanced at the girl’s thin sandals. “I’ll wait if you want to put on running shoes.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Not quite the running type.”
“You’re up early.”
“Actually, I haven’t been to bed. I keep thinking about the fire. So horrible. And how horrible it must be to get old. The way Auntie Moira looked when Brad carried her out to the fire truck. So without dignity. She must hate losing her dignity.”
“I get the impression that sort of thing doesn’t matter to her much. Think of the things she saw and did in the war, and then again in Africa. Not much dignity in holding half a man’s head in your arms while he pukes out the last meal he’ll ever eat. But to be helpless, yes, she probably minds that, a great deal.”
The sun was rising in a clear sky behind the cottage, and the lake in front of them resembled a sheet of clear blue glass, laid out neatly, waiting to be placed into a gigantic stained-glass window.
Elaine walked down the steps and Phoebe followed. The two women strolled down the flagstone path to the water’s edge. A family of ducks sailed majestically off the dock. The young ones were almost full grown, anxious to test out their independence. Two broke away from the family and waddled up onto the shore looking for handouts.
“I would sit down here on a summer’s day when I was a child,” Phoebe said watching them, her voice distant. “Feeding the ducks bread and crackers. Grandpa would get mad at me. He says that feeding them encourages them to come around. That was rather the point, Auntie Moira told him. She always came to my defense. She particularly loved the babies when they were all fluffy and tiny.”
Elaine laughed. Getting nothing, despite looking cute and deserving, the ducks trundled back to the water in a rush to catch up to their family.
“I think you love your great-aunt Moira very much,” Elaine said, not looking at the girl.
“I do indeed. I hate to see her getting so old, so frail. She was terrified the other night, with the fire. She yelled at everyone that she didn’t want to be packed off to the hospital.” A large tear leaked out of the corner of one eye and Phoebe wiped at it angrily. “Why do we have to get old?”
If Elaine could answer that she could tell Phoebe the meaning of life as well. She kicked at pebbles under her feet.
“She told me some of her adventures. It was me who suggested that she should write it all down. I was so pleased when she said that she would. She’s a remarkable woman. I’m glad she’s part of my family.”
“She’s not dead yet, Phoebe. You talk almost as if she is. She has a few more strong years left in her.”
“Oh, I know. I guess this is all just so much, all happening at once. Do you know that Grandpa wasn’t released from the hospital yesterday?”
“No, I didn’t. I went to bed as soon as I got home and slept right through. I hadn’t had any sleep the night before. Come to think of it, neither did you. But what’s the problem with Charles?”
“They found something funny with his heart. Said he had to stay in until the cardiologist could check him over today. Christ, they’ll be giving us a family suite at the hospital soon enough.”
“People get old, Phoebe. Death is a part of life. My parents are both gone. And I miss them all the time. Like they must have missed their parents, and they missed theirs and so on down the line.”
“I know. But, Elaine, we’re the
Madisons
. We’re rich. We’re important. So why on earth, in the end, are we the same as everyone else?”
Elaine took Phoebe’s arm. “That’s life, kid. But look at it this way: Moira will live long after her body is gone, if we do a good job on her memoirs.”
Phoebe grinned with all the intensity of the sun coming out of nowhere on a dark, storm-threatened day. “You are so right, Elaine. I’m getting dreadfully morbid. Look at those silly ducks, they’re following us again.”
“A lesson in optimism.”
“I hope that you’ll let me stay on and help more with the memoirs.”
“I’d love it.” Elaine meant it. But even if she didn’t, she was hardly in the position to tell a member of the family to go away. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? School, a job?”
Phoebe shrugged. “School is okay. But I’m getting awfully bored with it. Maybe I could finish out the term and then come back. I love reading Aunt Moira’s letters, don’t you? I’ve always loved her the best of all the family, and the letters make me appreciate her more. She’s such a contrast to my own mother. And my grandmother. What a loser she is. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say anything intelligent in my entire life. The way she defers to my grandfather is sick.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Elaine said. The sun rising behind them warmed their backs with the promise of a precious Indian-summer day. A motorboat sped past, far out in the middle of the lake. Not many boats at this time of year. The water would be full of them, come summer. The boat rounded the peninsula, the dull roar still hanging in the clear air. “Your grandmother is a woman of her times. Moira managed to break out of the mould. But it would have been an exceedingly difficult thing to do, and probably only possible for the eldest daughter. Once they saw that Moira was developing a mind of her own, your great-grandparents would have clamped down on the younger ones with a vengeance.”
“I guess,” Phoebe mumbled. “But my mom. She doesn’t have to be such a wimp. She’s never done a day’s real work in her life. She flits about from one charitable cause to another like Lady Bountiful. And then you should hear how she talks behind their backs. Like it’s people’s own fault that they’re poor, or sick or disabled or something. Makes me so mad.”
Elaine skirted that topic neatly. She had never met Phoebe’s mother, and had no desire to get into a discussion of her faults. “What’s your father like?”
“Non-existent.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean he’s still alive, and still married to my mom. Not that anyone would notice, and certainly not her. But he’s never there, physically, emotionally, or mentally. Never really was. He’s an Executive Vice President, la di da, with First Bank. Hope you’re impressed. He certainly is.”
Over on the island, a shape emerged from the thick cluster of tree trunks and brush and walked down to the water, carrying a large cooking pot. It was a woman, dressed in a long, colorful skirt and heavy knitted sweater. She stepped delicately out onto the rocks, trying to keep her feet dry. Rachel lifted her head and caught sight of them. She waved enthusiastically, her face breaking into a huge smile. Phoebe and Elaine waved back, and Rachel bent to fill the pot with water. Her thick red hair fell forward over her face.
“They won’t be here for long,” Phoebe said. “Now that they’ve gotten up Grandpa’s nose they’ll be given their marching orders.”
“That’s probably not entirely bad. Winter’s coming fast. They couldn’t stay for much longer anyway.”
“I guess.”
Elaine and Phoebe walked along the path that ended at the woods. The woods where no one ever ventured. Without thinking, Phoebe stepped off the path and continued. Elaine hesitated. With someone ahead of her, the sun rising in the sky, and the birds greeting it with enthusiasm, the dark path didn’t appear the least threatening. She took a deep breath and stepped off the path.
Nothing happened.
So she walked on.
Boarded up, overrun by weeds and moss and dappled by sunlight, the cabin in the woods looked nothing but simple, harmless. Elaine couldn’t remember why, on her last visit, she had found this pleasant copse so terrifying.
“Why does your family stay away from this place? If someone fixed it up, it would make a wonderful guest house. You kids would have loved to have your own private quarters when you were younger, wouldn’t you?”
Phoebe’s dark eyebrows were creased in thought, and she stroked her chin absent-mindedly. “No one talks about it. I guess my parents were afraid of what we’d get up to out here. Suspicious bunch. This was one of the servants’ cottages, a long time ago. In the days when the family had so many servants in the summers that they couldn’t all be housed in the main building. Can you imagine?”
Elaine couldn’t imagine having any servants at all.
Phoebe stepped over the crumbling old steps and stretched on tippie-toes in an attempt to peer through one of the wooden slats that separated from the door in a hairline fracture. The cabin might have been falling apart at the seams but the boards nailed to doors and windows held firm.
“We were absolutely forbidden to come here. No reasons given, but the order stood firm. Auntie Moira was adamant, but she would never say why. My cousin Arthur, officious prick, Aunt Alison’s oldest son, ventured in here on a bet once. He’s a lot older than the rest of the cousins. I must have been about twelve at the time. I watched while he pulled the boards off the windows and climbed over the ledge. He had to stay inside all night, that was the bet. Our parents had gone to a party. Aunt Moira wasn’t here; I remember that, although I don’t remember why. Probably the only reason we dared even think about trying it. As children we were terrified of Aunt Moira. We would try all sorts of nonsense on our parents, most children do. But not Aunt Moira.”
“Why?”
“Hard to say. My mom would yell and scream if we did anything wrong; my dad, if he was around, would take his belt to us. But Aunt Moira, she had this way of sighing. And she’d get this look, like she was so terribly disappointed in me. I couldn’t stand it. Still can’t.”
“What happened to Arthur?”
“As soon as he disappeared inside, the rest of us ran back to the cottage as fast as we could. He didn’t last an hour, came running though the library, where we were watching TV, as white as a sheet, and shaking all over. He never said a word to anyone about what happened. I always thought Brad and some of his friends scared him on purpose; they were gone for rather a long time, making popcorn in the kitchen. Arthur’s never been back to the cottage since. Not even once. Always some excuse or another. He’s a big shot corporate lawyer now, for the store.”
From what Elaine had learned, from a brief glance at the newspapers, about the dwindling profitability of the family’s retail business and the dense black cloud of lawsuits brought by suppliers and employees that hung over the company, she guessed that these days Arthur was too busy to be investigating spooky old buildings.
“Something must have happened here, to keep everyone away,” Elaine said.
“Can’t see a blasted thing,” Phoebe said. “Too dark.”
A seaplane flew low above the treetops, beginning its landing.
“If they don’t want it any more, why not sell it? This piece of land is far enough away from the main building to stand on its own. It would fetch a nice price.”
Phoebe shrugged. “No matter. A lovely mystery, that’s all.”
“Have you ever been inside?” The girl’s casual air emboldened Elaine, who had been scared out of her wits the only other time she came here.
“No.” Phoebe held her hand in front of her face, trying to peer though the tiny cracks in the wooden planks. “How about we come down one night and break in? That would be fun. I’ll get Brad; he’ll join us for sure.”
Elaine was tempted. She found something truly fascinating about the old shack. There was a story here, waiting to be told. A family like the Madisons didn’t leave a building on valuable property to collapse into rubble. The family’s ban on the children’s exploration was probably based on nothing more than a desire to protect them from rusty nails and rotting timber. But it wouldn’t be terribly wise to incur Moira’s wrath over a matter so trivial. It seemed to be important to her, that family and staff stayed well away. And Moira was, after all, Elaine’s employer. “Count me out. But I promise I won’t rat on you if you try it.”
Phoebe clambered down from the front step and they turned their backs on the dark clearing.
A finger ran down the length of Elaine’s spine, soft, languorous, lingering, like a lover’s caress or the final stroke of a good masseuse. But unlike that of the lover, or the masseuse, the touch was as cold as ice.
On May 16th the Canadians were committed to the battle for the road to Rome. Moira was seconded to a Field Surgical Unit. A duty highly prized among the nurses who knew that it was there that their skills and nerves would be stretched to the limit. There were four Canadian FSUs in Italy, moving as the front moved, sometimes only shouting distance from enemy guns. So close that at night they could see the flashes of artillery, and both day and night the noise echoed through their heads. They were highly mobile, compact units, able to move at the shortest of notice. It was to the Field Surgical Units that the most seriously wounded soldiers were first sent. Two units operated in “leapfrog” formation, jumping each other as the army moved. The forward unit would hang back to evacuate their patients to a Casualty Clearing Station, while its partner moved forward, prepared to receive the next batch of wounded. Each FSU consisted of a surgeon, an anesthetist, two nursing sisters, and five or six orderlies, as well as service staff.
Moira and her companions worked constantly, stopping only to sleep when their exhausted bodies demanded it. Many long years later, when she had the time, and the courage, to remember, she would think of May and June 1944 as the hardest months of her life.
The hardest, the saddest, certainly the dirtiest, but in many ways the best. The months when Moira Madison, privileged daughter of a privileged family, had been tested and not been found wanting.
August 1944. The battle for Rome itself was over, the Allied armies moving steadily north. Moira was stationed at the Number 4 Casualty Clearing Station, where the highest priority casualties were sent. The heat of the Italian August was relentless. The doctors and nurses lived in clothes soaked with sweat. Thick layers of dust covered everything: doctors, nurses, patients, equipment. They were constantly on the move, and when not moving, surgical teams could be operating for thirty-six hours straight, at night by the shifting light of flashlights and lanterns. Moira came to think of a good day as a mere twenty-four hours in theatre, leaving her with a precious twelve hours to clean up, prepare supplies for the next shift, eat, and, hopefully, sleep.