Three days before Christmas. My last year of university. In the middle of evergreen and decorations, wrapping paper and shortbread cookies, cinnamon sticks and nutmeg. We both came home for Christmas to be with Daddy. Aunt Joan, her face on the other side of the door, knocking and knocking. The wind pulled the latch from my fingers. The door hit her in the chest, nearly knocking her off our front stoop. Her hair was messy, her face pulled down into a puckered frown.
“They haven’t come in. They’re overdue,” she said. “They should have come in by now.” She was shivering, the rain beating down on her. Her blue wool shortie coat was flapping in the wind. “And I can’t raise them on the radio. They’re gone, Jewel. I feel it in my bones. They’re gone.” Before I had time to say anything, Jacob had invited her inside. Taking the plastic rain bonnet from her head, she shook the water off and folded it up before stepping inside. He told her to sit by the stove and made her a cup of tea. Her lips trembled.
“We’ll have but the one service,” she said, twisting at the ties on her rain bonnet. “They were always together. I think that’s best. What Dylan and Cliff would want.” She emptied the pot of tea. The shortbread cookies burned black in the oven. She wouldn’t shut up. I didn’t have to open my mouth. All the talking in the house came from her. Her words lived on after she left, making it impossible for Jacob or me to say a thing.
Later, after the hymns and flowers, after the eulogy that she was adamant about doing herself, she invited everyone to come to her house. She clattered away about “the old times,” opening her albums, showing pictures of Daddy and Uncle Dylan when they were growing up; pictures I’d never seen before.
“Maggie never realized what wonderful boys she was raising,” she said, squeezing a white handkerchief in her hands. “And now, they’re both gone.” Looking out toward the water, she whinged like a lost pup in a snowbank.
Later, someone said they thought they’d seen Mumma at the service.
“I very much doubt that,” said Aunt Joan, reaching for a cup of tea.
“Whoever it was, she was sitting at the very back, in the corner of the church, wearing some kind of orangish scarf on her head, wiping her eyes whenever one of the hymns played. She left before I could get a good look at her,” said a woman I didn’t know.
“But I’m sure it was Elizabeth,” someone else said. “Where do you suppose she’s been all this time?”
Speculations continued to circulate. “Elizabeth was always thin. I saw that same woman. No way was it Elizabeth MacKay. Not on your life. Besides, she wouldn’t dare show her face. Not after all this time. Not at a time like this, she wouldn’t.”
I knew that whoever it was, it couldn’t have been Mumma. If she had been there I would have felt her presence. Somehow, I would have known.
When someone said, “Never say never,” Aunt Joan turned deathly white. Her hands fumbled for the teacup and it scattered into bits on the floor. I bent down to help her pick up the pieces of broken china. We were inches apart, staring at one another, frozen until she put her hand on mine.
“It’s okay, Jewel. It wasn’t Elizabeth. It wasn’t your mother. She didn’t come back,” she whispered. “She didn’t come back. No one will know. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
There’s a place you can slip into with very little effort, a place so dark and heavy you can scarcely draw a breath without feeling pressure in your ribcage. It’s there in the morning as soon as you open your eyes, a dull ache at your fingernails and in the roots of your hair, the enamel on your teeth. It pulses, reminding you of its presence the second you think it’s gone. Sometimes you catch yourself smiling during the day, but then it pulls you back, asking what you’ve got to be happy about. You answer, “Nothing…there’s nothing at all,” and you know those words have become your truth. There are days when the darkness lifts a bit, but then another day comes and you realize it didn’t go anywhere.
For months after Daddy drowned, I’d wake from a dream that I couldn’t remember with the sounds of running ponies in the background. I’d sit up in bed, and the darkness would push me back down. In the morning, David would tell me to get up, reminding me it was time to get dressed and go to class. I didn’t need reminding. I was fully aware of where I was and where I wasn’t, and what I needed to do.
“You’re not even trying,” he’d say.
Jacob checked in on me, phoning in the evening, dropping by with pizza that had too many toppings. I used to wonder why Mumma stopped living after Poppy died. I’d watch her, curled up on the couch, and wonder why she just didn’t make herself get up and do something. But then she was gone and I should have told Daddy to bring her home instead of telling him not to, because that’s what families do. They stay together no matter what.
I asked Jacob one night, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to disappear?” And then he wouldn’t stop calling.
This time it isn’t the dream that wakes me, the galloping of ponies in the distance. It’s a loud banging at my door that won’t stop. I wait, hoping whoever’s there will get tired and go away. No one ever comes to my door. Pulling the ends of a cushion around my ears, I attempt to block out the noise. Still it continues. Groaning, I concentrate on willing it to stop and turn my back toward the door. My head is throbbing; the result of too much wine, even though I was convinced last night that another glass (or two) was in order. The wine was already chilled, and David’s leaving was something that needed to be celebrated again.
“Jewel! Jewel!” I’m startled by the sound of desperation on the other side of the door. Jacob. He’s supposed to be down at the shore visiting Aunt Joan this weekend. I gather up my raw edges and pull them around me like a cold cotton sheet in winter. The jingling of keys, the door opens, but before I can get up, Jacob’s standing over me.
“How did you get in?” I say, looking up at him from the sofa. Soft dark curls frame his face. His brown eyes. The expression on his face. He reminds me so much of Daddy I can scarcely breathe.
Smiling, he says, “You gave me a key once, remember?”
BD—Before David. My first apartment and I was trying to be responsible. “In case of emergency,” I’d said when I handed the key to Jacob.
I sit up and Jacob jumps on the sofa beside me. “What time is it?” I say, surveying the amount of light in the apartment. I look at the Pot of Gold box he’s holding. “I don’t want a chocolate, if that’s what you’re here for.” I haven’t been up this early on a Sunday since Aunt Joan used to hustle us off to a nine o’clock church service. Sitting at the kitchen table eating soggy cornflakes at eight in the morning, I’d complain to Daddy. “It’s not the end of the world,” he’d say. “Can’t you just go along with it, Jewel? It makes Joan happy.”
“Forget about the time. This is important,” Jacob says, like he’s about to burst wide open. “I found her, Jewel. I found Mum!”
I’m sure I didn’t hear him properly. Found her? I didn’t even know he was looking. The sound of galloping ponies echoes in my ears, but there are no ponies, there never were. It’s only my heart racing.
“You found her? How? Why didn’t you say?”
“She ran away. It was on the news. Didn’t you see it?” His words come out in bursts as if a dam has suddenly let go. Jacob never speaks this quickly.
“Mumma was on the news?” None of what Jacob’s saying makes sense. He went to see Aunt Joan; now suddenly he’s telling me he’s found Mumma. Fifteen years—it can’t be this easy. It just can’t be.
“Okay, look,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “Her disappearance was on TV. They were looking for her. Where have you been the past few days? I saw this woman, the picture of her, I mean. And they said it was Elizabeth MacKay. But I was only five when she went away so I wasn’t sure if it was her. I asked Aunt Joan and she said it was probably Mum.”
“Probably? That sounds a little vague. A lot of people have the same name. There might be another Elizabeth MacKay. What if it’s not her at all?” Jacob looks at me as if I’ve said a dirty word. I tilt my head, allowing a smile to camouflage my feelings. I walk over to the cupboard, place the dirty dishes in the sink, and wipe the crumbs from the counter.
“She could have come home. Her staying away, that was her own doing and had nothing to do with you and me. Now just let it go, Jewel. Whatever we did, it was the right thing.”
“Aunt Joan didn’t see the news, but she said it would probably make sense—that Mum would be living in a transition house, I mean.”
“So now what?” The question comes out warped, bent like light refracted through murky water, pulling with it more meaning than I intend. I clear my throat.
“What’s wrong, Jewel? I thought you’d be happy. We can find Mum. It’s what we’ve always wanted.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Filling the sink with water, I watch the suds build. It’s all so simple for him. He was five when Mumma left and cried more the day his pony was sold than when Mumma went away. He always thought she’d come back. As if he’d wait forever for her if he had to, that she was no farther away than the next room and could show up at any moment. A part of me had always envied that faith. He was always the good one, Mumma’s favourite.
“Don’t you want to find her?” His question is stark with accusations, pointing directly at me, as if he can see things I don’t want him to see.
“I didn’t even know we were looking, is all. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m not upset. Would you just stop saying that?”
“She had a breakdown, Jewel. Aunt Joan said she went crazy after Poppy died, that’s why she went away.”
“So why didn’t she come back? Have you ever thought of that? She could have come back. Fifteen years, Jakey. Where the hell has she been?” There is more emotion in me than I realized, fuelled by a series of unanswered questions that still haunt me—and then the part I played in it all.
“If she cared at all, she knew where to find you. Her staying away just proves she was happy to be gone. Mothers don’t abandon their children, Jewel, not good mothers at least. Have you asked yourself how good a mother Elizabeth really was? Giving birth, that’s one thing; raising a child is something else.”
“We can ask all that after we find her,” says Jacob. “Look what I’ve got, Jewel.” He quickly removes the elastic from the chocolate box and, reaching inside, takes out a handful of envelopes. “Aunt Joan wrote these.”
Figures. Aunt Joan saved everything in chocolate boxes.
“Here, read one. She wrote letters to Mum—for a lot of years she did. Not so much these past few years. But when we were small. She wanted Mum to know.”
“Mumma, Jacob. We always called her Mumma!”
“Calm down, Jewel. It’s just a name.”
The hurt in Jacob’s eyes causes me to quickly pull in my anger. This time I speak softly. “Don’t you remember, Jacob? It was Mumma, always Mumma.”
“I was only five, so I guess not. And then everyone stopped talking about her. You know what Daddy was like—all of them, really. It was a taboo subject.”
I look into the box and see Aunt Joan’s handwriting on one of the envelopes. For: Elizabeth MacKay.
Why the letters, Aunt Joan, when you said we were all better off without her?
“This doesn’t even make sense, Jakey. Aunt Joan hated Mumma. Why would she write letters to her?” Jacob isn’t going to let this drop. The conviction in his voice, the determined look in his eye. He saw Mumma. She was on the news. He’ll get to the bottom of it—that’s Jacob.
But there’s so much he doesn’t know.
Can’t know.
Must never know—that’s me.
He pulls a letter out from one of the envelopes, scanning it.
“Look, this one was about our first Christmas in Chester….She mostly wrote things about us. I read them all,” he says, shoving the letter in front of me.
I push it away.
“I thought you’d be happy. I wanted you to know…before I call Harmony House. That’s where she is. Harmony House.” The letter dangles from his fingers. I look at him, wrestling the past in a single moment in time, juggling all the broken pieces, the ones that never quite fit.
Jacob wouldn’t take the letters with him when he left. I couldn’t change his mind. I didn’t understand why they seemed to please him so. “You need to read them, Jewel. When you’re ready. They’re really something.”
“They’re just letters, Jacob, written to a ghost; to someone who wasn’t here to know these things.”
“Don’t you get it, Jewel? All the things Mumma missed, they’re in the letters, little details we wouldn’t even remember.”
I leave the letters on the coffee table, unread. Pulling in a deep breath, I settle myself back into the past, not knowing what I’ll do with the flood of memories suddenly pushing their way to the top. Jacob is bound to find out the truth, that I’m the one responsible for our moving on without her.