27
Sienna
“Two days?” I repeat, staring across the counter that separates me from the tall blond woman who looks more like a cocktail waitress than a clerk for Service Ontario, the branch of the Canadian government that handles legal documents. I flew into Toronto last night, didn’t sleep well, and Ubered here so that I was at the door when it opened. Despite that, it took forty-five minutes before I had my turn at the window and now I’m told that I have to wait two days to get the documents?
She doesn’t look up from her computer as she speaks. “It takes that long for us to process the request, love.” She finishes tapping on her keys and looks up at me.
“I didn’t think it would take so long if I came in person,” I say. “I came up from Wyoming.”
She frowns prettily, yet sincerely too, I think. “I can mail your long form to an address in the States if you prefer.” My short-form birth certificate is lying on the counter between us—proof enough for me to have ordered the long form.
“Doesn’t that take longer?”
The woman frowns and nods. “And you pay for the shipping.”
“Is there any way to get it rushed through this office so I can pick it up from you sooner? I can pay an express fee.” I’ve already spent over a thousand dollars from our joint account on gas, plane ticket, food, and hotel. The dollar signs adds to the nausea churning in my stomach. Tyson was right about me having no way to pay it back.
The woman smiles the way you would right before you pat a child on the head. “You already paid for express service, love.”
“Oh.” I was so fired up about doing something and now I have two days to wait, which will cost hundreds of additional dollars. “So, Wednesday is the very soonest it will be ready?”
“Wednesday at nine a.m.,” the clerk confirmed. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I shake my head, pick up my short form, and start to stand, but then lower myself back into the chair. “Actually, you handle all records here? Can I order my mother’s birth certificate even though I don’t have my long form yet?”
“Sure.”
She says it so quick and easy that I pause an extra second to make sure I heard her right. “I can?”
“Sure thing. Any legal document. If you give me your mother’s name and birth date, I can cross-check it with your records for verification of your authorization to order the document.”
“Mable Gerrard Chadwick, Gerrard is her maiden name.” I scoot forward in my chair and feel a trill in my chest. The computer this woman is typing into holds the answer to so many of my questions. What I wouldn’t give for ten minutes to plumb the depths without having to go through this woman, helpful as she is.
“Spell her maiden name for me, love.”
“G-E-R-R-A-R-D.”
She types. Pauses. Reads. Turns to look at me. “Date of birth?”
“Um, February 23, 1969, I think.”
I worry the woman will find it odd that I’m not certain, but she doesn’t say anything. Blondie goes back to the typing and pausing and reading. Then types and pauses again. And again. She looks back at me. “Are you certain you have the right information?”
No, I’m not sure, I say in my mind. “My mom died when I was very young, I don’t have any documentation. That’s why I came all the way up here.”
“Let me try a back door—we’ll go through the info on your birth certificate instead.”
Type. Pause. Read. Type. Pause.
“Ah, I see,” the woman said, nodding with satisfaction.
I scoot forward, barely perched on the plastic chair now.
“Her surname is Gérard—G-E-R-A-R-D. The French spelling, with an accent over the E.” The G sound is soft and blends with the slight rolling of the Rs.
“Did you know your mother was French Canadian?” She smiles sweetly at me.
“No, I didn’t know that.” I hadn’t questioned that the spelling was Gerrard because that was how Dad had always spelled it. Why spell it wrong? Was he trying to hide the fact that she was French Canadian?
“And then Mable is actually Maebelle.” The name rolled off the woman’s tongue like jelly—May-a-bell-a.
“May-a-bell-a?” I repeat, feeling the awkward cadence of a name I’ve never heard before. The names Mable and Maebelle are so similar and yet entirely different. One is old and sturdy, like a solid piece of furniture. The other is round and swirly, like a butterfly or a song.
“Maebelle Antonia Gérard, the birthday’s right except for the year—she was born in 1976.”
I slide back in my chair and let the lyrical name move slowly around my head, seeping in and casting out the sturdy name of Mable Gerrard. Dad lied about Mom’s name? And her age. If she was born in 1976, she would have been only twenty years old when she died . . . and eighteen when I was born—by a month. The acknowledgment of these truths makes my chest feel shaky. She’d have gotten pregnant at the age of seventeen. Is that the reason behind all the missing information? Wait, how were they married if Mom was underage? Or is seventeen considered old enough to marry here in Ontario?
“She was born in Québec, so there’s an additional fee to get a birth certificate since it’s a different province. Is that okay?”
“Yeah,” I say with a nod toward her computer. “Can you find my parents’ marriage certificate?”
Blondie scans the screen in front of her, eyebrows pulled together in consternation. She turns to me with an apologetic look. “No marriage certificate under your mother’s name.”
“Are you sure?”
Her eyes narrow just enough for me to notice, and I backpedal. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to doubt you. I just . . . I thought my parents were married.” Thought. Believed. Never doubted.
“They may have married in another province,” Blondie says, her tone back to helpful. “Or gone over the border to Niagara. People love getting married with the falls in the background even though the preacher has to shout to be heard.” She smiles, and I try to smile back for the sake of manners, but I know it can’t look natural on my face right now. She adds, “There’s a vital statistics office there that you could visit; it’s only an hour or so away from here. If you want a fuller search here in Canada, it’s fifteen dollars for each five-year period in each province and can take up to six weeks to complete. Would you like me to help you with that?”
“I think I’ll wait to get these other documents first.” They weren’t married, were they? It’s the third lie that’s now proven—Mom didn’t write me letters, my mother didn’t die at the age of twenty-three, and my parents weren’t married. Four, my mom’s name was Maebelle Gérard. None of them were necessary lies, and they don’t even support one another. I can see that maybe the age and marital status wouldn’t be something Dad wanted to tell his young and impressionable daughter, but I’m twenty-five years old and my mother is dead—why not fess up? Maybe Grandma Dee didn’t know and Dad was hiding this from his mother, who was conservative and hard to please. And then she coincidentally had her friend write letters to me? Hiding details from Grandma also didn’t explain why there wasn’t anything else about my mom in Dad’s files.
I remember Blondie on the other side of the counter and meet her eyes—she’s getting impatient. “S-sorry, this is a lot for me to take in.” I can feel the prickle of sweat on my forehead but try to think through anything else this woman could help me with. She’s the gatekeeper of public records; what else do I need? Beck’s exclamation that night I told her everything: “Maybe she’s not dead.” We talked ourselves out of that because of the cancer but . . . did my mom even have cancer?
“Could I also order my mom’s death certificate?” I say it fast, as if I might forget if I don’t get the words out. Dad had said Mom died in October and he’d left Canada quickly because he was trying to outrun winter. Something knocks in my chest like a gong. Boom. Boom. Boom. Lies. Lies. Lies. I watch Blondie closely, imagining her eyebrows coming together as she tells me that there’s no death certificate. The fantasy alone is enough to make it impossible for me to breathe.
Blondie nods and turns back to her computer. “Just one copy?”
The air rushes from my lungs. “So, there is a death certificate?”
Blondie looks a little concerned, but mostly sympathetic as she nods.
I swallow. I hadn’t thought Mom was alive for more than a few seconds, but it still feels like a new loss. “One copy will be enough, thank you.” I focus on my breathing and the temperature of the room—a little cool, but my chest is on fire and my mind is spinning. “Can you tell me the date of her death?”
“I can tell you it was in 1996.”
That lines up with what I’ve been told. It’s one of the only things that does.
It’s another ten minutes before I insert the credit card into the little machine exactly like the one at McDonald’s in Lusk. The total cost is nearly two hundred Canadian dollars, and Blondie frowns. “Sorry about the dent this makes in your wallet, love.”
“It’s fine,” I say. The information is priceless. I only wish I could get the documents right now. “Thank you for all your help.” The woman was an absolute angel. If she’d been a crank, I’m not sure I’d have managed to think of everything I needed.
She hands me my receipt and I stand, surprised that my legs don’t wobble. Blondie’s eyes rise with me. “When you come back on Wednesday, go to that desk over there and they’ll have everything we ordered today.”
I follow her arm pointing to a desk on the far side, with its own line.
“You won’t need to wait in line like today. Just walk right up to the desk and show your ID and your receipt.” She nods toward the paper in my hand, and I put it in the cash part of my wallet so I’m sure not to lose it.
Outside, I stop at a bench that flanks the sidewalk and look at the parking lot as though it’s a beautiful vista that begs contemplation.
May-a-bell-a Gérard.
Twenty-three years ago the Internet wasn’t what it is now and Facebook didn’t exist. Dad could tell me anything he wanted because I had no way of knowing better.
I roll my bad shoulder, stiff and throbbing, and adjust it in the sling. The improvement is miniscule. The actual pain feels deep, as though something with its own heartbeat is burrowed inside. I’ve seen medical shows where sponges or even a clamp have been left inside surgical patients. Maybe the doctor left something behind, accounting for the pull I feel. Or maybe I’m not as healed as I want to believe. Then again, maybe this is what it feels like to everyone who has this procedure and I should stop being so dang sensitive. I consider going back to the hotel and taking a nap—my body relaxes just thinking about it, but my mind is still spinning. I’ve come all the way to Canada. Truths about my mother live in this town even if she doesn’t.
I take ten deep breaths to settle what I’ve learned, then I pull my phone from my purse with my left hand. I Google libraries in Hamilton, Ontario. There’s one not far from my hotel, but I continue sitting. Breathing. Trying to come to terms with what I’ve learned. In an envelope, in my purse, are the sixteen photos of my mother. I’m going to find her. I order an Uber—it’s four minutes away. I stand up, adjust the strap of the sling that’s starting to cut into my left shoulder, and head toward the entrance to the parking lot where I’ll meet the car. I am both hoping and fearing that the library will give me the answers no one else will.