Ten Thousand Truths (9 page)

“I wasn't paying attention,” Rachel started. “If I had been, I would have just copied the diagram off the board and none of this would have happened. I'm sorry I caused you all this trouble, Amelia. I didn't know what to do. Mr. Williston was so mad and all I could do was sit there while he got angrier. How could I go up to the board and in front of everyone admit that I didn't have a family? That my mom and brother are dead? That I don't have a father? I know his name and I could have put it down, but I don't even remember him. I know his mother's name is Audrey, but I don't know his father's name or if he even has brothers and sisters. I tried to wait it out and just sit there, hoping Mr. Williston would give up, but he just got madder and madder. There was no way I was going to cry in front of everyone and all I could think to do was get out of there.”

“He should have known better than to put you on the spot like that,” Amelia said, putting her hand on Rachel's shoulder. “You did nothing wrong. Although I suppose like you said if you hadn't been reading you wouldn't have been caught off-guard. But I'm sure that whatever you were reading was probably a whole lot more interesting than Mr. Williston's class is at the best of times.”

“I didn't know what to do. I'll go back after Christmas and apologize. Maybe I could do the project about your family or maybe he could give me something else to do instead.”

“You will apologize for not paying attention. That is all you have to apologize for. I expect an apology from Mr. Williston as well. He has a responsibility to know about his students and to be sensitive to their circumstances. When you came in September all the teachers were told about your background so that something like this wouldn't happen. I know your past is your business, but some things are necessary to share in confidence. This could have been prevented if just a bit of sensitivity and respect had been shown to you. I'll call Mr. Harrison tomorrow morning and discuss this with him. We will accept the suspension and you can enjoy a longer holiday. You can help me get all the Christmas cooking done and do the rest of my wrapping for me. You can help Zac get the Christmas groceries and stocking stuffers, except your own, of course. I'll just have to trust Zac to do that. Don't be surprised if you get several boxes of peanut brittle. That is Zac's favourite so he always buys an abundance of peanut brittle. Now finish up your sandwich and go to the root cellar for some apples. And put a stick or two in the furnace while you are down there, please.”

When Rachel got into bed later that night, she took the pink writing paper from the envelope that she had put under her mattress and read her grandmother's entire letter.

Dear Rachel,

My name is Audrey Anderson and I am your grandmother. Your father Donald is my son. I never met your mom. I have only one picture of you and your brother that your mom sent me when you were three and Caleb was one. I only found out about a year ago that your mom and brother had passed away. I am very sorry for your loss.

Your father has had a very hard time of it for a lot of years. I don't know what your mother told you about him but one thing I can tell you is that he loved your mother and you and your brother very much. He was very upset when he heard about the accident. He heard about it from a man that he worked with in Fredericton. He took a really bad turn after that.

I know it must be a surprise to hear from me. I am sorry that I did not try to contact you sooner. For a long time I have wanted to talk to you and tell you that I think of you all the time. I always told myself that you had your other grandmother and that you didn't need me. When Donald's friend told him he thought that you were in foster care, I started trying to get in touch with you.

I would love it if you would write back to me. Maybe you could send me a picture of yourself.

Love,

Your Grandmother

Rachel tucked the letter back in the envelope, slipped it under the mattress, got into bed, and pulled up the covers, thinking about her grandmother's words.
Maybe there are some branches on my family tree, after all
, Rachel thought before falling asleep.

Chapter 5

Long Johns and Goose Feathers

Rachel and Amelia worked side by side all week, and the
Christmas cookies, cakes, pies, and treats they had already produced seemed like enough for a small bakery. They had also trimmed every room in the house, made up Christmas baskets for several neighbours, and strung lights on the large spruce tree in the front yard.

Rachel could hardly contain her excitement about Christmas. After wrapping all the presents she had for everyone she had found a book of Christmas facts in the book room and read the whole thing trying to distract herself. The way she felt seemed too good to be true and a part of her worried that something would happen to ruin things or take away this feeling. She didn't care how many gifts were under the tree. Just the fact that presents with her name on the tags were mixed up with everyone else's under that beautiful bushy tree, and people who cared about her had put them there, was amazing to her. Zac had made her promise she wouldn't shake one of the boxes he had stuck in behind the others last night. He didn't want her to guess what it was. She thought of her Christmas last year, when some church group had dropped off a box of junk people had donated. Margaret had just pulled things out of the box, wrapped them in cheap ugly paper, and stuck their names on them. The first present Rachel had opened Christmas morning was a Toronto Maple Leaf travel mug without the top. Whatever the presents under the tree were this year, she was pretty sure she wouldn't be receiving somebody's cast-off “Life Begins at Fifty” T-shirt like she had last year.

Jodie was coming the day before Christmas Eve to stay for a week. Zac was coming for Christmas Eve supper and Amelia was going to make his favourite lobster chowder. He was going to come for breakfast and stockings and the opening of the presents on Christmas morning, too, and Roger and his girlfriend Leslie were coming for Christmas dinner.

When Jodie arrived, the twins carried her suitcase and a huge box of gifts into the house. Raymond and Rachel emptied the box and placed the packages under the tree.

“There's about ten presents for each of us,” Raymond exclaimed as he came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Amelia and Jodie were already seated there, decorating gingerbread cookies.

“If you received all of the gifts sung about in the song Twelve Days of Christmas you would receive 364 gifts,” Rachel said as she joined them.

“Oh no!” Jodie shuddered jokingly. “You've caught the trivia bug from Amelia!”

“That would be a lot of gifts, Rachel,” said Amelia. “I don't think we would have room under the tree for that many gifts for each of us, not to mention the mess calling birds and French hens might make. Speaking of hens, Raymond, can you please go out to the chicken shed and collect the eggs before they all freeze on us? I'll need quite a few eggs for the rest of the baking we still have to do.”

The wind was cold as Jodie and Rachel walked down the hill toward the lake. Zac and Raymond had cleared a spot with the tractor for a skating rink and there was just a skim of light snow over the ice. For her hour, Rachel was going to clean off the rink and she was happy to have Jodie along to help her.

“Isn't it amazing how the lake seems different in some way every time you see it?” Jodie asked. “I used to try to come down at the same time every day for a few days in a row and take notice of how the lake was different each time. It might be the direction of the wind, the slant of the shadows, or the sounds I heard. I used to pretend that the lake changed each day just for me. I still find myself waking up some days and feeling a powerful urge to stand on this shore.”

“I know,” Rachel said as she slid the flat shovel along the edge of the plowed space. “In November I watched it start to freeze over and felt so sad about not having the water to watch, but every time I come down I see something new about the ice. We had a fire on the shore last Saturday night and, sitting around it, watching the sparks shoot into the air, I swear I could hear the water below. I pretended it was telling me it was waiting for me.”

“We are pretty sappy about this lake aren't we?” Jodie
laughed. “I think Amelia was brilliant to know that what we needed was time alone and a place to love. I think she also knows that this lake is the kind of place that is pretty hard not to fall in love with.”

“Why did you have to come here?” Rachel asked. As soon as she'd said it, she quickly added, “You don't have to tell me. It is none of my business.” She couldn't believe she was talking so freely with Jodie.

“That's all right,” Jodie replied with a smile. “You can ask me anything you want to.”

“Are your parents alive?”

“My dad is. My mom died a few years ago. For the longest time I wouldn't even call them my mom and dad because mothers and fathers are supposed to look after their kids. That was something my parents did not know how to do. God knows they knew what to do to have kids and had eight of them. My mom was pregnant with the last one when Social Services finally took us away. They took the baby as soon as she had him so he didn't have to live with—or should I say without?—what the rest of us did. He was adopted right away and he lives on Prince Edward Island with his family.”

“What about the other kids?”

“The rest of us got put in foster homes all over the province. I'm not even sure where they are now. You'd think that having parents like we had would have made us closer, but it did just the opposite. We were like a litter of wild kittens, each one desperate to get what we needed to survive. I have not seen any of my brothers or sisters since the day Social Services took us.”

“Was this your first foster home?”

“No, I had to mess up really badly to get sent here. Amelia gets the kids nobody else wants. Sorry, I guess I probably shouldn't say that to you.”

“That's OK,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “I know it's true. Nobody has wanted me all along, but I got worse with each home I went to. My social worker made it perfectly clear this was the last resort she had for me.”

“Well, I'm really glad that you are here,” Jodie said. “This is a good place for you and you are doing fine. Amelia told me about that thing at school and that was not your fault. Believe me, I could tell you some horror stories of some of the stuff I did at school when I first got here.”

Rachel started shoveling a path to reach the dock, which she could barely see beneath the snow. A few minutes later she looked up and saw Zac and Raymond heading toward the lake, carrying their skates.

“I'll run up and get our skates,” Jodie said.

Rachel went back to work, scooping up shovelfuls of snow, waiting for Jodie to get back.

Rachel pulled up a chair beside the woodstove and propped her nearly frozen feet on the oven door. She stirred the marshmallows into her hot chocolate and sipped the steaming liquid. Jodie stood beside her, flipping grilled cheese sandwiches in the cast iron frying pan.

“Do you guys want to come to my house tonight and help me trim my tree?” Zac asked as he dipped his grilled cheese in a dollop of ketchup on his plate. “I wasn't going to bother but there was a perfect little tree on the edge of the back field and I thought I may as well cut it and put it up. I even bought a few ornaments at the drug store yesterday.”

“I have some ornaments that we didn't use,” said Amelia. “You can have them. And I have extra lights, too. I'm glad you decided to put up your own tree. There is nothing like the smell of a tree in the house for the Christmas season. I can't imagine not having a real Christmas tree in the house. Did you know that Germany made the first artificial trees out of goose feathers that were painted green?”

Rachel added one more ladle of lobster chowder to each of the last two bowls and carried them into the dining room. Snow was lightly falling outside and it was a perfect Christmas Eve. The twins had set the table with a Christmas tablecloth and napkins, and Jodie had lit some candles and turned off the overhead lights.

“In Mexico wearing red underwear on New Year's Eve is said to bring new love in the upcoming year,” Amelia said as Rachel set the steaming bowls of chowder in front of Zac and Jodie.

“Well, I've got red long johns,” Zac replied. “Now I just have to wear them on New Year's Eve and wait for love to find me. I hope whoever she is she can make lobster chowder as delicious as you do, Amelia.”

Rachel looked at the faces around the table in the glow of the candlelight. She thought back to a point earlier in the day, when she had started crying for no reason. Raymond had come around the corner of the chicken shed and ambushed Zac with snowballs. His laughter as Zac ran after him had sounded like Caleb's and she'd found herself standing there, watching them with tears streaming down her cheeks.

She and Caleb had built a snow fort in the backyard of their house on Regent Street. The next day Caleb had hid in it, waited until Rachel came out of the house, and surprised her with a volley of snowballs. He had laughed so hard and run toward the house, trying to get his snow pants off quickly so he didn't pee his pants. Their mom had met them at the door, holding the angel that they always put on the top of their tree. Rachel remembered her mom hollering at Caleb as he ran by her with his snow pants down around his knees, his snowy boots dripping puddles down the hall as he stomped toward the bathroom. It had been Christmas Eve, their last Christmas Eve, and the last Christmas Eve that she'd had a family.
Until now,
she thought.

Rachel's favourite gift had been the snowshoes. Now, as she trudged through the snow, lifting each snowshoed foot carefully as she tried to keep up with Zac and Jodie, she thought back to three mornings ago when she had opened her presents. It had been a chaotic morning, with wrapping paper strewn everywhere and the twins and Raymond announcing everything they got with excitement as they'd opened their presents. Amelia had passed out the presents, trying to keep it so that everyone always had something to open. She hardly opened any of hers until everyone else was finished. When she had opened her gift from Rachel, Amelia had gone right to the bathroom mirror and put the pansy earrings on, saying how beautiful they were.

Rachel had opened her gifts quietly, enjoying the anticipation as she slowly pulled the wrapping off of each one. She was completely awed by the pile of things in front of her when she was done. When she'd opened the gift from Zac, the box was empty. She was confused, especially since he had made such a big deal about hiding it so she wouldn't shake it. She found a note taped on the inside of the box that said her real gift was in the barn behind a bale of hay. Everyone had put their coats and boots on to follow her to the hay loft to find her present. The snowshoes had been wrapped in bright snowman paper with a big red bow, and Zac had taken the time to draw snowshoes on the bottom of each of the snowmen.

Rachel had been embarrassed that she didn't have a clue how to put the snowshoes on. At first she'd been really self-conscious of the clumsy way she'd walked with them once she got them strapped to her boots. But she was finally getting the hang of it now and she hadn't fallen over for at least ten minutes. She came into a clearing, where she could see Zac and Jodie sitting on a pile of logs. Jodie was unpacking the lunch Amelia had made for them and Rachel could only imagine what delicious stuff she had crammed into the backpack. She sat down on the log pile and Jodie passed her a turkey sandwich.

“I hope we weren't going too fast for you,” Jodie said as Zac passed Rachel a mug of hot chocolate.

“No, I'm okay,” Rachel answered between bites of her sandwich.

“If we keep taking this road we'll come out behind the lake,” Zac said, pointing to a clearing through the thick stand of trees. “I haven't had the tractor down there since our last big snowfall, so it should be good snowshoeing. It is quite a ways, but we could come out and end up at Amelia's instead of backtracking and finishing up at my house.”

Jodie passed out cinnamon-sugared donuts. “I think I'll head back to your place to get my car. I told the twins that I would take them for pizza and bowling tonight. My vacation is going so fast and I want to get everything I planned done. Rachel and I are going for a spa day tomorrow, aren't we?”

“Yup,” Rachel said with a smile.

Zac finished his donut and bent down to put his snowshoes back on. “Ah, a spa day. I'm taking Raymond to his first guitar lesson tomorrow, or I might ask to come with you. I could sure use a pedicure,” he laughed. “Too bad we couldn't get Amelia to go. Wouldn't it be nice to see her pampered after all the work she did getting ready for Christmas?”

“I know,” Jodie replied. “I would ask her but I know she wouldn't come. I'll bring her back that shampoo she really likes. It amazes me how she can keep so content when she never leaves home. She's harder on herself than anyone else would ever be.”

Rachel drank the last bit of hot chocolate from her cup and set it in Jodie's backpack. As she strapped on her snowshoes she thought about Jodie's words:
She's harder on herself than anyone else would ever be.

“The thing about my Macaroni Delight is that it's never exactly the same two times in a row. I throw whatever I can find in it,” Zac explained as he shook a spice bottle over the ground beef he was cooking. Zac had met the kids at the bus and brought them to his house for supper because Amelia wasn't feeling well.