Rose’s mother was ninety-four, so it was expected—but still. Your only mother, poof, gone. Eric called from Philadelphia and sent flowers. Her stepson, Ryan, was on holiday in Thailand, and her daughter had just started a new job in Hong Kong. Ceri offered to fly home for the funeral, but Rose forbade her.
“It’ll just be the caregivers and me anyway,” she said, holding her phone flat on her hand like a canapé and talking into it, to avoid the keyboard. “Nobody else is left.”
This came at the end of a year of dogged self-improvement for Rose—Spanish lessons, Zumba at the gym, the meditation app. She’d cut back on the wine, lost a little weight. And every day she did some research for her next novel, even though her publisher had declared bankruptcy. The Flo-Q copy-writing contracts she could do handily on the side and was grateful for. It felt good to finish something and get paid.
Her mother’s death should have been another ending, and in certain ways it was, of course. But it also felt like the beginning of a new unmothered self, someone she didn’t yet recognize.
It was September. The air felt cooler, like a silk lining, and the traffic had a new self-important urgency as everyone retreated indoors to school and jobs. Two days after her mother died she took her laptop to Starbucks, dropping into the safety of the screen. The pale guy with the thin head and his devices spread widely around him was there as usual. A number of her friends had sent condolences on Facebook. Should one “like” a death, though? In the afternoon, she drove down to Cherry Beach, a miraculously condo-free stretch of the waterfront that still resembled the shoreline of a lake. She felt a little truant doing this, but the funeral wasn’t for another four days and all the arrangements had been made. The visitation room at Oak Ridges Manor, her mother’s last home, was booked. The casket had been chosen.
The man at the funeral home who dealt with her was the owner’s son. As he sat across from her in his ill-fitting suit, she had had an urge to shock him. To kiss him on the mouth. In the lee of her mother’s death she kept being ambushed by strange impulses like this.
The parking lot at Cherry Beach was empty except for the usual chip truck, and something new, a Mr. Softee. On the side of the white van was a cartoon of a waffle-patterned man with a curl of soft ice cream on his head, like a plump white turd. And instead of the usual clown-calliope tunes, this Mr. Softee was broadcasting slow, lugubrious music. Something classical. Behind the counter was an older man with close-cropped silvery hair, wearing a black apron and a gray fedora. Familiar-looking.
As Rose walked past the truck on her way to the water’s edge, Mr. Softee caught her eye, smiled, and gave a little ceremonial bow. She pretended not to have seen.
A few die-hard sunbathers lay on the beach. Cyclists rode along the already leaf-strewn bike path. Across the channel, where the sailboats slipped in and out of the harbor, were the islands, Toronto’s peaceful archipelago. Cherry Beach reminded Rose of her childhood home, a brick house on a cul-de-sac with a view of the billowing and sometimes fiery smokestacks of the steel plants across the bay. Going down to the lake still made her curious about the world on the opposite shore, and whatever she was missing.
In the parking lot stood a Plexiglas-enclosed sign describing the city’s plans for developing Cherry Beach. She wanted to vandalize the sign, because the place worked perfectly as it was. On weekends families came down to Cherry Beach with their coolers and lit fires in the rusted BBQ grills set back under the trees. This well-used place, tattooed with footpaths, would soon be ruined by streetlights, chain-link fences, and a glass Visitor Centre.
The sun had a low glare so Rose went back to the car to fetch her hat.
“Miss,” a deep voice came as she crossed the lot. “Can I interest you in a complimentary cone? I’m trying something new.”
It was Mr. Softee. Rose went up to the counter, where a ukulele with mother-of-pearl details hung beside the wooden menu board. The specialty of the day was something called the Cone of Perpetual Longing, made with “fresh Mission figs, coconut ice cream, spearmint leaves, and Okanagan black cherries.” Kind of upscale for an ice cream truck, Rose thought. But she was hungry, she realized. She kept forgetting to eat lunch.
“Sure, thanks.”
Mr. Softee bowed over the freezer, carving away at a well of ice cream with his comma-shaped scoop. He packed two balls into a waffle cone lined with thin white discs.
“What are those?”
“Communion wafers. If that’s acceptable.”
He piled the fruit on top, wrapped the cone in brown paper, and handed it down to Rose. He was old but handsome, with two deep furrows beside his nose.
She tasted it. Intense—more tart than sweet. And those quickly dissolving, tongue-friendly wafers. The ice cream began to melt and run down into the crevices of her fingers as she ate. “This is incredible.”
“But I’m still not sure about the name,” Mr. Softee said. His voice was a bass rumble. “Finding the right name can take years.”
“What other flavors do you have?”
Mr. Softee tapped the board behind him.
“I’m partial to the Twist of Fate myself. Butterscotch ripple coated in bitter dark chocolate with a misting of Jack Daniel’s, and a shard of broken glass on top, to keep you on your toes.”
“Really? Broken glass?”
“Not for the young ones, obviously.”
She saw that he wore a pendant around his neck made from two fused hearts, like overlapping Stars of David. A cool wind was coming off the lake now. Rose pulled a fleece jacket out of her pack.
“September,” said Mr. Softee, casting an appreciative eye over the lingering sunbathers. “And a full moon tomorrow.” Using a pair of tongs he adjusted a row of leathery-looking wieners as they revolved in their metal trenches.
“What brings you to Cherry Beach?” he asked. “Day off?”
“Sort of.” She shaded her eyes to watch the lone windsurfer in a wet suit. He was fighting to stay upright on the choppy little waves close to shore.
“My mother died last week, so…” Rose hurried on. “I mean, it’s basically okay, she was old. Ninety-four. But there’s still stuff to do.”
Mr. Softee doffed his fedora and placed it over his aproned heart. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Please accept my condolences. I hope it was a peaceful passage for her.”
“I think it was. I hope so.” Rose zipped up her jacket and felt the tears beginning. “No one was there, actually.”
“I’m going to make a little fennel tea,” Mr. Softee said. “Please have some with me.” He swung open the back door of the truck and invited Rose to perch on the top step as he plugged in the kettle.
“A month ago she had minor surgery for a skin thing, and never quite bounced back,” Rose said. “Then she developed some fluid in the lungs.” She wasn’t sure how detailed she ought to get with Mr. Softee. “Which tends to happen with the elderly, especially when they’re bed-ridden. So, some edema’s normal.” Why am I sounding like a paramedic? Rose thought. I’m talking about my mother. The brainy woman with a math degree and old-fashioned lavender sachets in her underwear drawer.
“Did you have a chance to speak with her before she left?” Mr. Softee asked gently. “Did you say what you wanted to say?”
“Yeah, pretty well. I visited her every day. We had a sort of code between us.”
“But did you make your feelings clear?”
Rose thought about that for a moment. “I did, when she went in for her operation. I said ‘I love you,’ right into her ear so I knew she heard. But I waited until she was almost under.”
“And was she able to express herself to you?”
“Well, sort of. But she was the farthest thing from sentimental. A prairie woman.”
“I still miss my mother,” mused Mr. Softee. “When the light changes like this in September, I always think about her. She died on the fourteenth.”
“What was she like?”
He brandished a hand, as if conducting.
“Oh, very dramatic. Lots of weeping, lots of laughter. What they would probably call bipolar today.”
“And your father?”
He sighed and adjusted the wieners in their troughs. “A dim figure. He died when I was nine. He had beautiful suits though. We’re a family of tailors. Sitting in the darkness of a closet with his shoes all around and the drapery of his pants beside my ears was the closest I ever came to him, I think.”
The windsurfer was now standing up on his board, leaning back, pulling and tugging on the transparent sail as it bellied in the breeze and sent him skimming across the waves, like a plane on a runway.
“Why don’t we move further down the beach where it’s still sunny?” said Mr. Softee. “Hold on.”
He shut the door. There was an old-fashioned school desk in one corner, with a notebook open on it beside a chubby fountain pen.
Mr. Softee got into the cab of the truck and switched on the PA system. The almost-inaudible opening bars of something somber began. A few moments later Rose recognized it—Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3. The saddest song in the world.
Through the back window she could see a woman under one of the big oak trees, bending over to lift a cooler out of her car trunk. As the volume of the music grew, the woman turned her head toward its turgid swell, put the cooler down, and buried her face in her hands, weeping.
“Occasionally I will play my own little Casio tunes over the PA,” Mr. Softee said, “but I like the power of this Gorecki. It’s so tidal, so inevitable. It feels like an infection moving up through the body, towards the heart.” He smiled.
As they made their way across the wind-scribbled beach, she studied Mr. Softee’s shelf of toppings: the classic multicolored sprinkles, a bowl of waxy-looking chocolate chips, some broken walnuts. There was also a jar of black tea leaves with curls of dried orange rind.
Tea and oranges.
Rose looked at Mr. Softee again. Yes, it was him. The man who sang “Suzanne,” about the woman who gets you on her wavelength, and serves you tea and oranges. But Rose said nothing. If the famous and globally revered Leonard Cohen wanted to run a soft-ice-cream truck at Cherry Beach in Toronto, in the off-season, that was his business.
On a lower shelf were the sundae toppings. They included “The Phil Spector” (bourbon, gunpowder, and Manischewitz wine) and something called “Holy Smoke.”
“That one costs extra, but it’s worth it,” said Leonard. “It’s a shot of liquid nitrogen. When you pour a little on the ice cream it freezes the surface so hard you can’t bite into it. So you just have to look at it and worship it without devouring it.” He busied himself at the counter, then handed a dish to Rose. “Tell me what you think of this.”
The cardboard boat held three scoops of peach ice cream inside two parentheses of sliced mango. At one end, where the mango slices met, was the pale glistening knob of a peeled lychee nut.
“It’s called the Delta,” murmured Leonard. “It’s best if you simply bury your face in it without reservation.”
The lychee nut was slippery as a pebble under water. Rose popped it in her mouth.
“I never tire of it myself,” he said.
“It’s delicious. Thank you, Leonard.”
“Ah. Yes.” He looked a bit saddened at this outing. “And you are?”
“Rose. Rose McEwan.” They shook hands.
“You were performing until recently, right?” Rose said.
“Yes, yes I was.” He changed the music to some more upbeat tunes. “Until this opportunity involving ice cream came up.”
“I saw your last show, in Toronto. I loved it. And Sharon Robinson was so amazing.”
“Yes, I’ve been blessed with the support of many wonderful musicians and technicians.”
“That must feel so great,” Rose said foolishly.
“It does,” he said. “It’s very humbling. But to offer an audience a performance that isn’t false or indifferent, to do it again and again? That I haven’t mastered. If I repeat my performance exactly, night after night, I find it works very well for the audiences. If not always for me. Whereas ice cream.…” He shrugged. “Ice cream never disappoints. The expression of people receiving their cones is still deeply gratifying to me.”
In the distance Rose could see a young woman walking barefoot across the beach, almost marching, her one long braid flipping about like a slim fish. She wore black capris, a yolk-yellow sweatshirt with the words “Camp Sunshine” stenciled across the front, and carried a pair of blue Crocs in one hand.
“Shell’s back.” He watched her approach with a soft expression in his eyes.
The woman, perhaps twenty or twenty-two, eyed Rose warily as she climbed into the truck.
“Shell, this is Rose. She has just enjoyed the Delta.”
“Yeah, it’s a big seller,” said Shell, a no-nonsense girl with sturdy calves and pale, evaluating blue eyes.
“Shell was a counselor at the same summer camp where I once worked, long ago. I knew her grandmother as well. And now she works with me,” said Mr. Softee, placing her Crocs on a rubber mat.
“Our whole family more or less ran the place,” said Shell, warming just a shade now that Mr. Softee had alluded to their history. She pointed to her T-shirt. “Camp Sunshine.”
Leonard took an oven-mitt tea cozy off a small iron teapot and poured cups of fennel tea for the two women.
“The fact is, my adult life was set in motion by Shell’s grandmother when she taught me three chords on the ukulele,” he said. “And a finger-picking pattern for ‘Blue Moon.’ I still use it onstage.”
“Did,” Shell corrected him.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Here, I’ll show you,” he said. He took down the ukulele and plucked the strings.
“A’s flat,” Shell said.
He twisted a peg and strummed a chord.
“Yes?”
“Good.”
Mr. Softee bent over it and cocked his head. The instrument looked childlike against his body. His left hand found the chords as they sang “Blue Moon” together, sweetly.
“I used to play the ukulele at camp too,” Rose piped up. “Songs like ‘Deep Purple’ and ‘Sloop John B.’”
“My guitar playing is really an example of a ukulele player working on a slightly bigger scale,” Mr. Softee said with a chuckle.
“I like instruments that sound like toys,” said feisty Shell.
“We’re all instruments,” said Mr. Softee with a rabbinical hand to his chest. “But more kazoo than grand piano.”
A thump came on the side of the truck.
“Hey, is anybody there?”
Leonard leaned out the window. He saw a boy, a lad about six or seven years old with a buzz cut.
“I want a cone,” the boy said.
“Sure thing. What’ll it be?”
“One Blood of Our Savior please.”
Shell poured a stream of dark-red Ribena syrup over full-fat vanilla and handed it down to the boy.
“Good choice.”
“It’s not for me, it’s for my dad. He’s trying to make the barbecue go.”
“Nothing for you?”
“I already had a whole tube of Pringles. Dad said that was enough.”
Leonard put a curl of chocolate ice cream in a cup.
“Who’s to say what’s enough?” he said. “Take both.”
“Hey, thanks Mr. Softee.”
“That’s why we can’t afford snow tires for the truck,” Shell said, with an eye-roll to Rose. “He’s always giving it away.”
“You sell ice cream in the winter too?”
“No, but he likes to drive around different neighborhoods with the PA on, playing music. It’s how he works on new stuff.”
“I find it’s helpful to hear a song several thousand times or so—especially distorted through a bad system,” said Mr. Softee.
“You should drive by the nursing homes,” Rose said, thinking about her dead mother. “They could use some tunes.”
“Not great for sales, though,” Shell pointed out. “A lot of them can’t leave their facilities.”
“So, your mother’s memorial service,” Mr. Softee asked, wetting his index finger to pick up some sprinkles on the counter. “What are the plans?”
“Probably just me and a few of the staff at the nursing home. And the casket. For some reason my mother wanted her body in the room.”
“No other family?”
“No. All dead, or scattered around. My brother died three years ago, of colon cancer. My children are thousands of miles away. Their father lives in Philadelphia now.”
Shell and Mr. Softee were quiet.
“It’s good you’re close by then,” he said.
* * *
Oak Ridges Manor is a pink brick building, walled with windows and harsh with sunlight, on the suburban fringes north of Oakville where the roads still end in creeks. “So much natural light,” visitors remark when they tour the place, hoping to install their frail parents in a place that is not technically depressing. Rose’s mother lasted there for three years, most of that time in a wheelchair after surgery for a broken hip had failed. Her mother in her last years, well-medicated, became somewhat ribald and outspoken, bonding with one of the male nurses on the night staff named Edward.
“Edward’s gentler than some of the women,” she always said when Rose visited. She spoke in a low voice so as not to offend the other caregivers. “And we like to kid each other.”
On the day of her mother’s memorial, Rose arrived fifteen minutes early. The Bistro Room was empty, with folding chairs set up in four neat rows. Furtively she felt the petals of a flower arrangement on the piano. The lilies were real, from Rose’s aged cousin in Ottawa. “We’re thinking of you,” the card said in the shaky handwriting of Margaret, who was ninety-two and had MS. Rose promised herself she would drive to Ottawa to see Margaret. Whatever tattered family remained, she now wanted to embrace. There was something cheering about laying eyes on your kin, some baseline DNA recognition, regardless of how different or unknown their lives.
The receptionist doubled as the pianist for functions like these. She was already seated at the piano paging through the American Songbook. Then Edward came in and solemnly shook Rose’s hand. He was small, moist-eyed, and muscular.
“Your mother was a wonderful woman,” Edward said. “I’m going to miss her, for sure.”
“You took good care of her, Edward. She really enjoyed your company. And I appreciate you coming on your day off.”
“Olive told me her own mother used to play piano for weddings and funerals. So this would please her.” He tilted his head toward the receptionist.
The facility manager bustled in wearing a floaty print scarf.
“I think we can start then,” she said to Rose with an unwarm smile. “Unless you’re waiting for someone. Do you have family coming from out of town?”
“Not really,” Rose said. There was a smaller arrangement on the piano beside the lilies. “The flowers are lovely, by the way.”
“Yes, they’re from Fresh and Fast. We use them all the time.”
The manager pulled the curtains across glass patio doors that overlooked a space where the children at the daycare next door played in the afternoons, making happy noise. The staff believed that the proximity of the children was a good thing for their charges, but Rose had noticed that the residents were mostly indifferent to the patio with its view of the young and undiminished. The old were busy withdrawing to another place altogether.
The buzzer opening the front door sounded. In came Mr. Softee and Shell, carrying a large blue cooler and two ukuleles.
Leonard came over to Rose and took her hand.
“I’ve been playing the Gorecki since we left Mississauga,” he said. “Someone honked and gave us a thumbs-up.” Shell was carrying some yellow flowers in a funnel of paper.
“Freesia. Smell them,” she ordered. Rose put her nose into the cone. In fact, her mother had loved freesias. “I brought a vase too, just in case.”
Shell arranged the flowers on the piano and looked at the page of music the receptionist had turned to.
“‘Scarborough Fair’?” She snorted. “You must be kidding.”
“You have any better ideas?” the receptionist said, eyeing Shell. She was wearing flip-flops and a halter top that showed off her tattoos.
“What about ‘Hallelujah’?” said Shell, looking over at Mr. Softee.
He made a slicing gesture across his throat. “Overused.”
“Well,” Shell persisted, “I always think ‘Let It Be’ is a safe bet.”
Leonard went over to the manager and introduced himself.
“You have a lovely building,” he said. “So much light.”
“Did you know Mrs. McEwan well?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I’ve come to support Rose.” He flipped open the cooler. “Would you care for some ice cream?”
“Thank you, but I’ll be speaking in a minute—”
“I find a little lemon sorbet clears the throat beautifully,” said Mr. Softee. He turned to Rose. “What can I offer you?” She read the handwritten list on the lid of the cooler.
“I’ll have the Sword of Damascus, with chocolate-almond bark.”
“Good choice.”
Edward rolled in a casket. Where had he been keeping it? There was a piece of fabric draped over it, a hideous magenta shawl. Rose yanked it off and handed it to Edward.
“Was it heavy to push?”
“Not too,” he said. “She was pretty light towards the end.”
“Edward, what did you talk about with my mother—do you mind saying?”
“We talked about her family, and her father. How he was away during the week and only came home on the weekends, and how her mother always had to bake a lot of pies for him. I think he traveled a lot.”
“Yes, he sold farm equipment on the prairies.” Rose had an image of a Model T negotiating rutted roads, a flat horizon spreading out on either side. “I don’t think she was close to him.”
“But mostly we’d joke with each other, gossip about the other staff. She had her opinions, as you know.”
“Oh yes.” They laughed. She felt her mother drifting through the room just then, eager to disagree with them.
“I think we can start now,” said Rose, sitting down in the first row of chairs. Shell went over to the piano with her ukulele.
“Give me an A.”
“I’m not sure the ukulele is suitable for this,” the receptionist said with a protective hand on the sheet music. Rose stood up and held her cone aloft, like a torch.
“This is my mother’s memorial, who enjoyed ice cream, and loved music, all kinds of music,” said Rose. “Let’s have both ukuleles with the piano, and everyone singing. Also, I would like the patio doors open.” Mr. Softee slid the doors apart and the children could be heard, but in a welcome way.
The receptionist started in on “Let It Be,” not smoothly but with a determined bounce. Edward kept one hand on the casket. He winked at Rose. Shell and Leonard stood beside the piano, playing the ukuleles and singing. “When I find myself in times of trouble…” Leonard’s voice rumbled along an octave below the others.
Then the security buzzer rang again. The manager frowned and bustled out of the room. Shell and Mr. Softee stalled for time, repeating the first verse as the receptionist got friskier on the keyboard, adding arpeggios. Rose was watching the children on the playground as they swarmed up and down a red plastic slide, so she didn’t even see Ryan and Ceri enter the room. They came over to her and the three of them held on to one another.
“Did Dad call you?” Rose asked.
“No, it was someone else. A ‘Mr. Softee,’” Ryan said with a laugh. He was growing a beard, like every other male his age, but he looked quite handsome with it.
Leonard came up to Rose. “I took the liberty of contacting your children,” he said. “The Oak Ridges staff were helpful in that regard. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Ceri’s hand rubbed her back. “What were you thinking, Mom? Are you nuts? This is Nana!”
“But it’s so far to come,” she said.
“Mr. Softee let me fly on his points.”
“I’ve accumulated quite a few,” said Leonard, shrugging.
He turned back to Shell and the receptionist and counted them in. “Let It Be,” now quite polished, began again. Ryan and Ceri sang along on either side of Rose. “There will be an answer/Let it be.”
Afterward, the director spoke about how Oak Ridges would miss this spirited and delightful member of their community. Her eyes flicked down to the paper she was holding to make sure she had the name right: Olive McEwan.
Then lemon sorbet was enjoyed.