Every Happy Family (3 page)

It's as though Nancy can't hear her.

“John can take over your room and Lyle can have Kenneth's.”

“Kenneth no longer has a room.”

“I mean the den.”

“This is happening way too fast, Mom.”

“What's too fast about it?”

“Well, where do I stay when I come over?” As soon as Jill says it she's ashamed. She's there maybe ten days a year, nine, some of those a mere sleepover convenience after a conference.

“You can sleep in with me.”

She hears a quack, sees the ducks flutter then waddle off under the rhododendron. A squirrel, tail twitching, is perched on the compost bin.

“We'll pool our money,” her mother continues.

“Money?”

“For groceries, the maid and a nurse when we need one. We will need help some day. Three oldies are better than one. Though if we had a fourth we could have our own bridge club.”

“You're turning the house into an old folks' home.”

“I am?” She sounds happily defiant. Jill's not used to her mother sounding defiant.

She'll ask Les what he thinks. Though he was all for John being there. What's wrong, he said, with two old lonelies shacking up? Said it would take the pressure off her.

“I'm coming over. Next weekend. No, wait, Beau has a tournament.”

“You're busy.”

“I want to meet these new men in your life.”

“Men in my life,” says Nancy with a giggle. “I should go, Jillian. John wants me.”

“Okay, bye then,” says Jill, and Nancy just hangs up.

Jill turns off the phone, stares at the squirrel digging in her neglected garden. It can't be sexual, can it?

She pulls out a bowl to make pancakes for the gaggle of girls when they wake. Two frying pans or one? Her Tibetan daughter will put away three big ones easily. Her friend Bess at least four.

•••

It's Sunday morning and Jill calls her mother's number, scans the backyard without thinking and then remembers that the ducks are gone. Thursday morning was the last sighting, and she misses their effortless company. Four rings. Six. Where the hell could she be? Jill hangs up and tries again. Nancy answers on the fourth ring.

“Hi Mom, what took you so long?”

“Oh, Jillian, I was in the bathroom and didn't hear the phone.”

“And your housemate? A little deaf?”

“I think they still think of it as my house.”

“They?”

“Yes. John and Kyle, dear.”

“You mean Lyle?”

“Yes, Lyle's here. With John. How's everything where you are?”

“Fine. We're fine.” Jill's given up on trying to talk to her mom about the letter from Nepal or telling her the story of Quinn's flaming cheese incident. “What did they do with their belongings? John owns a house, right?”

“He put it on the market and it sold in a day.”

“And his furniture.”

“Auction. I told him ‘Everything you need is right here.'”

“Tell me honestly, Mom. You're happy with this arrangement?”

“It's just grand. And Mary Ketchum is thinking of moving in.”

Jill's surprised at her loud, “Ha!”

“We need a fourth for bridge. It would be lovely to have another woman around.”

“Mom. I know it's your life, but I just don't think you should be making these kinds of decisions on your own. I'd like to –”

“She's very mobile.”

“Meaning?”

“She can manage the fetching.”

“Are you waiting on those men, Mom?” Jill glances at the coffee table's dirty glasses, opened chip bag and bowl of salsa dregs. The beer glass on the table beside Les's chair.

“John's been very good, I must say. Very helpful. Kyle's another story –”

“Isn't it Lyle?”

“He's a little lazy, I'm afraid, but a good conversationalist. Is up on all the latest in politics. Worried sick what Harper's going to do with our pensions.”

“Like you.”

“You do remember Mary, my bridge partner?”

“Yes, but where would Mary sleep? In with you?”

“No, I'll have John in with me because I've got the electric bed and he has back trouble.”

“In with you?” She thought Lyle had the back trouble.

“The beds are pushed together to look like one, but they're actually two three-quarter sized –”

“You don't have to tell
me
that. But isn't that a little intimate?”

“What?”

“John and you sharing a room?”

“After my thyroid operation, there were three other women in the room. One snored, dear, but you make do. One had flatulence.”

“Okay, but I'm beginning to have a hard time believing you and John aren't more than just roommates.”

Nancy starts to laugh, and laughs some more until she's snorting and then gagging and Jill's worried she's having some sort of attack.

“Mom?”

There's muffled coughing, as if Nancy's holding her hand over the phone. A minute later, she's back, breathing hard into the receiver. “Sorry, Jillian dear. John's dancing out on the deck. It's very humourful.”

Is that a word, humourful? “Would you like to go, then?” she says, not bothering to hide her frustration.

“No, no. Stop that, John,” she calls out. “Okay, Jillian, you go ahead.”

“I'd like to come over next weekend.” Jill can't deal with not knowing just what's going on over there. “I'll have to check my schedule. And Les's.”

“It's the Masters' tourney next weekend. We plan to wear green and place bets. I'll make my mini-quiches.”

The old have a small repertoire, she thinks, recalling her parents' Masters' parties, her father's green corduroy jacket, Nancy's olive-green sweater with the white seersucker patches on the elbows, circular to resemble golf balls, the same mini-quiche appetizers Nancy made for every event. “I'll let you know if I'm coming. I should go empty the dishwasher,” says Jill, feeling dismissed.

“That's fine. We'll talk soon.”

This time Jill hangs up first and for no good reason wants to have sex. She takes a swig of coffee, dismisses the thought that her desire came out of anything to do with the conversation with her mother and heads upstairs knowing that Les, no matter how sleepy, can be counted on to rise to the occasion, so to speak.

•••

Jill crosses the Second Narrows Bridge into North Vancouver. Beside her on the passenger seat is a boxed coconut créme pie – easy on the dentures – and a half-decent bottle of Chardonnay. She doesn't like the palpable distance that's grown between her mother and her these last few weeks and has made a decision to be positive and supportive. Even put on a green shirt to get into the golfing spirit. She meant to bring exams to mark on the ferry but, in her eagerness to see the underside of this new leaf her mother has turned over, forgot them on the hall table. Will have to mark like a madwoman tomorrow. Maybe she marks too hard and should be more chummy with students. Hiring committees put a lot of stock in student evaluations.

She takes the exit ramp onto the low road into Deep Cove. What to expect, she wonders, besides the golf tourney on TV, party hats maybe. They'll probably insist she make a wager. She hears their quiet boisterousness, the mumbles from the men, the well-meaning laughter from the women as they pass the mini-quiches. She just hopes the house doesn't smell.

She didn't tell Nancy she's coming, didn't want anyone to go to any fuss, and brought a pillow and a sleeping bag in case she stays the night. Which will have to be on the couch by the sounds of it. All she really wants is to know that her mother's not being overrun in her own house. Or overworked or made anxious. She's nearly eighty for god sakes. Jill would also like to know just how much rent people are paying, if any, and how they're handling the expenses. Nancy may not have a mortgage, but there's still the property tax, house insurance, utility bills.

Passing through the reserve with its waterfront property, Jill finds it oddly comforting how, unlike the explosion of monster homes around her mom's place, here each house and yard looks the same as it did thirty years ago, as does the old Shell refinery across the inlet – the one whose sign dropped its S and was made famous in writings by Lowry.

She passes by Cates Park, the site of too many firsts, she thinks, her head growing light with nostalgia. She
was
a bit wild, but then it was the era too. Her kids would never believe it, and she wouldn't want to encourage them with stories of her own stoned, drunken teenage exploits. By its very profundity, having children changes you, sobers you. You're dropped into this chasm of dire love, willing to sacrifice anything for their safety and comfort. If she'd been willing to uproot Quinn from school and move the family, she'd have a tenure-track job by now. But she couldn't imagine him starting over at another school with unfamiliar faces.

The other day, putting laundry away in Quinn's room, she discovered a box of condoms right there in his sock drawer. Was tempted to check if any had been used but controlled herself. Shy kid that he is, she thought such a milestone might have taken longer to reach. Probably his girl's idea, Lauren clearly calling the shots in that relationship. On her trendy whims, she gets him out of the house at least, and away from the computer. Wasn't a bit surprised to hear that she was the booze connection.

Jill can't imagine, won't imagine, anything sexual going on between her mother and John. She can assume them holding hands, snuggling even, but tries not to picture them spooning under the sheets in their apnea-riddled sleep. She pulls up to the stop sign. No – it's good Mom has people around her. To spoon with. Les thinks it's great. “Why the hell not?” he said. “How much more time has Nance got? Might as well go out with a bang.” He got her laughing, anyway.

She pulls up to an intersection where she waits for two young mothers with strollers to cross the street. One baby cries at a violent pitch, its mother doing her best to talk over the piercing note. The most primal unit of sound, Jill thinks, hearing the terror in it, and remembering her nursing days and how her milk would come in whenever she heard an infant, any infant, cry. Soon dribbling down her shirt like Pavlov's ridiculous fountain. Pick up your child, she silently begs, listen to that pure need. How she wished she could have nursed Pema, soothed her in that most intimate of ways,
filled her with my own blood
. Nursing, no doubt, was something Pema shared with her birth mother. All Jill could do when they arrived home with Pema, who was three and some, was to try and distract her, entertain her. Inject the milk of happiness through her pores. What romantic nonsense. Besides, Les was better than she was at that kind of feeding. And Beau was better than both of them. He had his sister laughing and starry-eyed from day one. Jill made it her job to ensure Pema would be able to succeed in this culture and fulfill that unspoken promise of a better life.

“Adoption is about loss,” the woman at the agency had said, which Jill, in her naive excitement, had glossed over at the time. She had been embarrassed at how badly she'd wanted a daughter. There was no logic to her feelings. A third child didn't make financial sense. But when Annie came to them with pictures of this undernourished child living in abject squalor, her logic had been seriously depleted. She had, only days before, aced her doctoral defense. Her exhausted left brain on holiday, it was all right brain that registered that eager little face and set her hormones firing. And she'd failed to take the agency woman's statement as a warning, if indeed it was one, that the loss could come years later.

A right, then left onto Beachview. Les had been adopted. He was fine and he never got a letter from
his
birth mother. Part of Pema's arrangement was that there wasn't supposed to be contact, she thinks angrily. Legally she had every right to rip up the letter, pretend it never arrived.

The family home is up ahead, the driveway obscured by the laurel hedge that's in eternal need of clipping. Shame on her for stereotyping, but she had expected the downstairs tenants to be more fastidious. She drives down her mother's short, steep driveway to park beside the tenants' car. Wonders how they feel about all the
geriaction
upstairs. She should probably ask if the TV is being played at too obnoxious a volume.

“Reserve judgment,” she tells herself, checking her face in the visor mirror. As long as her mother's happy and the house is functioning all right, that's what matters. “A trendsetter,” Les called Nancy, and said it was sensible to pool resources when living on a pension. Suggested they might start thinking of their own future roomies.

She gets out of the car, centres the belt buckle of her skirt and grabs her gifts. She wore a skirt and nylons, earrings, because her mother would expect her to dress for company.

She'll have to check out the new greenhouse covers this John fellow rigged up on the deck planters. Les might want to make some for their patio, get a head start on his basil and tomatoes. She rings the doorbell and waits.

Through the smoked glass window alongside the door, she sees her mother's blurred figure grow bigger, bluer as she shuffles down the hall. Is she in her robe? At one o'clock?

“Who is it?” she calls.

“It's me, Jill.”

“Jill?”

“Surprise.”

“Coming,” Nancy calls again, yet it's apparent she's standing still.

Oh, shit, thinks Jill. What has she interrupted? Not going to think about it. We're both adults here. “You going to let me in?” she tries with humour.

The fumble with the deadbolt followed by the chain sounds like effort. The door opens slowly and there's Nancy in her robe, pearl button earrings and lipstick the colour of pink peonies. It's been years since Jill's seen her wear lipstick. Nancy's hair, which is usually a soft helmet of grey curls, is squashed flat on the right side, making her head appear lopsided.