Immediately recognizing their matching Roman noses and wide hips, Barbara and Rose breeze into a cheek kiss. Until this moment, I’ve only seen Barbara perform this ritual greeting as a way to flirt with men. The two women pause in their embrace, their right hands patting each other’s left shoulder, until a sad tremor ripples up Rose’s back. She pulls away as she starts to cry. Barbara, always ready to escalate emotions, says, “Ora faccia a faccia con dio.”
“Christ, Mom,” I hiss, “Rose isn’t religious.” Not to mention Ricky killed himself.
Rose tosses her hand skyward, either in exasperation or devotion, I can’t tell. “Face to face with God,” she repeats, practically spitting the words. Jeez, this meeting is off to a great start.
Bobby, Lucky, and Hal wait in an awkward receiving line. Bobby reluctantly receives Barbara’s double cheek kiss, then quickly releases herself from Barbara’s embrace and turns to pet the dog. Lucky gets Barbara’s baby voice and hair tousle. Hal receives a handshake.
Barbara guides us to her dining room table, which is only a four-piece set, so she’s brought in a few pollen-speckled lawn chairs from the back patio. The anise and almond cookies, however, Barbara made herself. And there’s coffee in her purple enamel Moka Pot. Lucky scrambles into Bobby’s lap. He swipes two cookies, fast, as if the plate is about to be taken away.
“Hal’s the man who’ll build the gazebo,” I tell Barbara. I notice a flash of skepticism as she eyes Hal. I doubt Hal notices, though. He has one and only one thing on his mind.
“Did you find my boat?” he asks.
Barbara puts on her reading glasses, which I’m still not used to seeing her wear. “So, the SS Canadiana, ‘travelled between Buffalo and Crystal Beach. In its heyday, it featured a live band and swing dancing.’ I wish I was around to have seen it. I came later, when all the college kids rented out the cottages to party. We partied like it was the last summer of our lives. I met Starla’s father at a cottage party. Crystal Beach in the ’60s was magical. Anyway, the SS Canadiana stopped running in 1956.”
“Same year I was born. I’ve been celebrating my thirty-fifth birthday for years now,” chuckles Bobby. Hal elbows her in the side. Maybe Barbara is making her self-conscious. They’re not too far apart in age, but Bobby is holding a three-year old in her lap.
Barbara continues with cumbersome facts and dates. Her voice speeds up as she gets to the good part: “In the late sixties, the SS Canadiana was moved from Buffalo to Cleveland for restoration. Sadly, instead of restoring her, Cleveland sank her.”
“Fuckin’ Cleveland!” Hal pounds my mother’s kitchen table. The cookie tray bounces under his fist.
“But she was saved,” Barbara exclaims. She’s enjoying her story time. I bet it’s like reading to kids at the library. I begin to regret involving her and think about how I used to come to her for help with my homework or when I was sick or upset or scared. I either got dismissive Barbara or domineering Barbara.
She speaks in her extra-loud voice, her speech meandering. Hal looks as if the top of his head is going to blow off. The search for the SS Canadiana has brought out domineering Barbara. “In 1983,” she reads to us, “she was rescued by a local non-profit preservation society who got her home with the intention of turning her into a historical site. But!…” Barbara pauses on the “but” and Hal readies his fist for another table pounding. “After years of fundraising and red tape, the society wasn’t able to reach its goal and she was lost again.”
“Lost?” asks Bobby. “Like at the bottom of the lake?”
“Lost,” Lucky parrots her.
“Oh no,” says Barbara. “Now she’s dry docked in Port Colborne where they’ve already started cutting her up for scrap.”
“Fuckin’ Port Colborne.”
“So we’re too late?”
“Do you really think I’d make almond cookies if we were too late?” Barbara squeezes my hand under the table. “We’re right on time. I took the liberty of calling the dockyard manager myself.” She happily waves a flip notepad before my eyes, then reads a list of ship-breaking salvage for sale. Wooden passenger benches, forty dollars each. Interior floorboards, ten dollars per four-by-four. Beams from the hull, two dollars per inch. Wooden hatch covers, twenty dollars. Mahogany doors with brass fittings, one hundred dollars. The wheelhouse is intact and for sale, too. “The guy said if we bought a lot of wood he’d give us a deal. Nice guy. O’Regan I think he said his name was. He had a bit of a Newfie accent. He kept saying ‘wah’ instead of ‘what’—”
“Ma!” I interrupt. “Focus.”
“Let’s go get the damn boat,” growls Hal. He pours the coffee down his throat like a shot of whiskey. “What are we waiting for?”
Rose looks to be a few seconds away from tearing up again. I wonder if I could slip some Amaretto into her mug without Hal and Bobby noticing. “I may as well spend some of Ricky’s college savings. He can’t study forestry—or whatever it was he said he was going to school for—from the grave.” She riffles through her brown leather purse for her chequebook. “How about I just give Starla a cheque, and you bring home as much of that boat as you can get?”
I watch Rose write out a cheque for $1,464. I recognize this number. It’s the same amount as a year’s tuition fees. Etta, I call. Looks like you’re going to get your shrine. No reply. Or a fuzzy reply, more static. I am dizzy again. No more fainting, I warn myself. I press my fingers into the goose egg on the back of my skull.
“No, no.” Barbara waves her hands. “Don’t make the cheque out to Starla. I’ll take it.”
“Ma!”
“Honey, you may not believe me, but I’m doing this for you.” Barbara makes meaningful eye contact with each of her guests. “Starla’s got money trouble. Whole reason she moved home was to get her debts and spending under control. It’s a real problem. Like an addiction, you know? Let’s not tempt her by putting such a large cheque in her hands.”
“Fuck. Ma!”
Bobby shushes me for cussing in front of Lucky. Hal shakes his head, but I can’t tell if he’s judging me or Barbara for being such a blabbermouth. Rose points her pen at Barbara. “I write her a paycheque every other week,” she says. “What’s the difference?”
My legs feel numb as I rise from the table. My hearing gaps and rings. I can’t listen to Barbara tell them that she now oversees my bank account, credit card bills, overdrawn line of credit, and defaulted student loans. I can’t watch Rose’s shifting facial expressions or Hal’s frustrated body language. Under my shirt, the Park flag pendant twitches. You are here, Etta.
Let’s best this disagreeable scene, she says.
The lamp overhead flickers on and off again. Then the bulb over the nearby kitchen stove burns out with a loud pop. Songbird turns on her doggie barking alarm. Barbara yips in shock, then yells at Songbird for barking. Lucky claps his hands. Bobby wraps her arm around him tightly. Hal makes the sign of the cross. Rose calls out Ricky’s name three times.
I say, “We will gather wood from the Park and build a shrine. The end.”