Izabella

Verra easy game. I ask a question, you answer, then you ask your own question. For example: Jeremy: ice cream or cake Me: ice cream! Checkers or Chess? Random Person: Chess okok, here we go ppl KITTENS OR PUPPIES?

Is this a hint? Am I THAT loud? -sob- All kidding aside, it was really beuatiful. You should really collect all these and submit for publication, Bean.

Meep. I have been internetless for a long time, and this is my first foray back into the world of electronica. Sorry for my prolonged absenteeism. I'm not sure that I posted this correctly, but I'm hoping a kind elder will guide me down the right track if I messed up. I meant to start a new topic, but I may have mangled it. Sorry in advance! A cultural note about the text: Newfoundland, before Resettlement, was primarily composed of extremely small settlements scattered around the Island. These were called outports. Mmany of the outports were on small islands just off the mainland. A very popular leader in Newfoundland, Joseph R. Smallwood, Confederated Newfoundland with Canada in a rigged election in the 1940s. In the 1960s, the same man cut off government aid in the form of doctors, electricity, etc. to the tiny outports in Newfoundland, which resulted in a Exodus to the mainland of the province. This period has become known as Resettlement. My family was one of those Resettled in 1969. Joey Smallwood is loved and hated by many in Newfoundland. Julia and Mock Gaulton were fraternal twins who had been together since birth, with the exception of a few months in 1944 when Mock, proper name Maurice Alfonsis Gaulton, had joined up with the regiment and went to Europe to fight alongside the Allies for life, liberty, and whatever else needed fighting for. Mock had wanted to see the world, experience something outside of the islands. He wanted to get the gun and the knife and the sharp uniform that all the girls loved and stick it to Johnny Germany. What he got instead was a whole lot of shrapnel and a few less fingers. When he finished his tour early and came back to Isle Valen, there were pitying glances and shy, clumsy greetings for the disfigured fellow who returned from France, looking like someone they used to know. Julia was waiting for him when he limped off the Petit Forte, blinking in the light, one eye bandaged and his arm in a sling. Julia was crippled, had been since birth. The doctor who delivered her said the problem had been caused by a combination of underdevelopment in the womb and pressure from her brother, the larger of the two babies, who had likely pinned his sister against the supposed-to-be protective walls of their mother’s insides. The Islanders didn’t believe this. Sheila simply didn’t know how to carry a baby, they said. She pushes and pushes all day long, never a rest even though we offers to help. Foolish bird, that one, out at the flakes all day when Aloysius or Eugene could do hers as corn as they gets ours done. That kind of pride is no good to anyone. That kind of pride is the dangerous kind. She better watch out for them babies. With her husband gone on the schooner for weeks at a time, Sheila learned to get by on her own and pushed her body to the limits of its ability. She was only 17 and everyday she cursed the babies growing inside her. 17 was no age to be slaving away all day on the flakes, in the kitchen, on the mash, in the cellar. 17 was no age to be married or to be saddled with a baby (or two, says the Carbonear doctor who thinks he knows everything!). 17 was precious and it had been taken away from her. And so every day while she turned the stinking, salted codfish on the flake, flies buzzing around her like blue static, everyday when she crouched for hours on end in the bogs and mashes, picking berries for jams and cakes, for summer in winter, everyday when she baked bread and boiled jam in the heat, she poured all her anger down her throat, all her malice, her hate, and her disappointment, down into the babies below her stomach, and they ate their mothers badness along with her salt fish, her partridgeberry jam, and her yeasty white bread. Is it any wonder, then, that Julia emerged disfigured? Or that Mock broke free of his mother, waling and screaming in a diminishing sea of blood and amniotic fluid, at the precise moment that Sheila closed her eyes and left, went to be 17 forever in some other place, either free of disappointment or, more likely, filled to bursting with it. Having such a distinguishing appendage as Julia’s lame right leg led to typical schoolyard abuse, but no more than Susan Smith got for her nose (the Smith curse, the Smith blessing, the Smith snoggin that they all wore proudly, down to a man), or Jose Pomroy got for his great pork belly, or Shamus Ryan got for the overbite that would later earn him the nickname “Bugs.” Miraculously, Julia, dragging her right leg behind her, was no more a target than anybody else. There was a fog around her, though, which dirtied and browned as she got older. It wafted from the Island houses, came out through the doors and windows as she walked past, evaporated up the chimney with the wood smoke and sought her out, setting over her in the quiet night, the dark night of an outport that knew no street lights, no midnight lamps, and often no stars. When Julia lay alone in her second floor bedroom, she could feel the smog of the Island, the pollutants of their pity, come and settle on her as she tried to sleep, settle and choke her, until she sprang up in the dark, threw open the old windows in her bedroom, and sucked in great hulking gasps of sea air, shivering and trembling in her white flannel nightgown and shooing the poison of their behind-closed-door whispers, their filthy air, back into the night. Their emissions increased as she grew, as she reached puberty and marrying age. She stayed in school for a long time, longer than most girls on Isle Valen did. At 17, she reached the unlikely achievement of a high school diploma and the unwelcome requirement of attending the small prom held Patty Rowe’s barn. At this point, her nightly battles with the stinking, atmospheric assaults of her neighbours grew and intensified until she almost became sick with it. The smog got thicker, denser, and somehow louder. Who will she go with? Who would take her? Some fella’ll offer, for pity if nothing else. Sure her father won’t allow that! The poor thing’s likely to get carried away, she don’t know what she’s doing, she don’t know how to deal with some Sonny Jim, I doubt she ever learned, poor child, what with Sheila being passed. Perhaps I should get our Gary to take her. She choked on it every night, tried to keep it out, but sometimes she swallowed it, felt it enter her, diffuse her body, settle in her just as her mothers disappointment, anger, and bile had settled in her 17 years ago and warped her leg, disfigured and almost destroyed her. And every night she sat with it all around her, every night she felt it trying to enter her, sometimes successful, sometimes not, and every night she would get up, drag her useless leg to the window, and stand in the dark or glowing or brilliant night and let it flow out of her room, watch the brown-black poison of it flow past her. On the nights it got into her, she would open her mouth, breathe deeply of the salt air, of the damp ocean wind, and let it empty her, wash her clean like a purifying fire burning in her lungs. A few months after Mock got back from the War, he settled into a queer habit that would define him for the rest of his life on the Island. He got his father to make him a little mesh bag fromleftover bits of twine from the net mending. His father topped the bag off with a drawstring and made a loop in one end of the string just big enough to fit over Mock’s left hand, the one on which only a thumb remained. This Mock took, along with a knife, to the stretch of coastline that the Islanders called the Bad Place. On a few rocks just above high water mark, Mock stripped down to his long johns. He waded out into the water, drawstring sack looped over one mutilated hand, army knife in the other, and dived. This he did for two hours, down and up, down and up, pausing at the surface only long enough to draw a ragged breath. When he emerged for the last time, staggering onto the rocky shore, his twine sack dragged heavily behind him, full to the brim with plump mussels and the scattered brown disc of a scallop. He sat for a little while on the beach and warmed slowly in the sun.. Eventually, he shrugged and shimmied his way back into his clothes, a dance he had learned after the war. He gave the mussels to Julia when he got home, and she shelled and bottled them without complaint or question. The response from the Islanders was immediate, and when Julia walked along the paths that criss-crossed the town, she felt her brother’s disease as keenly as she felt her own, and it reminded her of the few months after his return from Europe. When they had seen him, young Mock Gaulton, diminished and desecrated, their pity for him had briefly dwarfed their pity for Julia. As he learned to take care of himself in this altered state, they watched with tilted heads and impossible frowning smiles, and they talked about how awful it was and how Frank Gaulton now had two cripples to support. When it got late and there were just the adults left around the kitchen table holding cups of sweet milky tea with slabs of home-made bread toasting over home-made fires, the conversation turned. When Julia came into the night to collect the clothes from the line, she would see their darkness issue from their chimneys and whisper through the cracks in Mock’s window casings. If my son was half so foolish, I doubt I’d let him back in my house, no matter how much he begged. What in the name of our blessed Jesus was the point of going all the way to France or Germany or wherever to get all beat up like that? Now his father is one man short on the schooner and all the b’ys are gonna suffer for it when crab time comes. Selfishness, that’s all it is. He believes all that stuff he hears on the radio. Well Mock Gaulton, that’s what being so headstrong gets you- a crippled arm and a blind eye. The fool is lucky he got back at all. When Julia saw her brother’s darkness creeping toward his room that evening in May, her first instinct was to go and tell him the magic of the salt air, how it purged and cleansed the bitterness away. But if she explained her magic to him, would it still work? Would explaining the trick destroy it? She stood for a long time, holding the cloth sack full of clothespins and staring up at Mock’s window. When her father came out to see what was keeping her, she took the laundry inside and went quietly to bed. For three days she watched him, debating whether or not she should tell him the magic of the air. Mock had become distant since he returned; he was compacted, he had been sucked or pushed inward on himself, and nothing that happened within that small space ever made itself visible to the Islanders or to Julia again. And so she subsided, quieted herself with artificial reassurance and kept her magic for herself. The whispers eventually lost strength, but they didn’t disappear altogether. Two months later, when Mock began cutting shellfish off the rocks at the Bad Place, the commotion began again and remained at a moderate pulse for the rest of Mock Gaulton’s life. When their father died, Mock and Julia sold the fishing license and the schooner to Mike Bennet, which left them a small allowance on which to survive. Most of their supplies came from the Petit Forte or Collins’ General Store; they were given fish by the Islanders, they kept their own sheep, chickens, ducks, and pigs, and Mock continued to go to the Bad Place on fine days and bring home bags full of mussels. Julia was 34 with no prospects. The women of the Island encouraged their children to visit Julia, poor soul. After school, some of them would show up at her door with small pails of berries. In return, she would bake them cakes and pies, make jams and tarts and muffins and pour all her lonely love into the bakeapples and frost-sweetened partridgeberries simmering on the stove. The soft buzz of midnight chatter never left the Island, but it dissipated and shrank until she was able to bear it more easily. Eventually, it flared again when Leo Mulrooney began to make the slow pilgrimage by rowboat every evening, across from St. Kyrans and up to Julia Gaulton’s door. Julia had known Leo for a long time, as Isle Valen and St. Kyrans were so close together. There was only one priest for both islands, which meant that churchgoers often rowed to one island or another for mass. Many families were connected by marriage and St. Kyrans- IsleValen weddings were a common event. It was at one such union that Julia Gaulton, spinster, attracted the attention of Leo Mulrooney, aged bachelor. Julia was known on both islands as a bit of a queer stick, but her cakes and pies had also gained a reputation. Julia was often commissioned to bake the wedding cake for most of the inter-island nuptials, and she and Mock were sometimes obliged to attend. A few months after her 37th birthday, Julia baked a two-tiered marble cake, filled with wild strawberry preserve, for the wedding of Fred Flynn and Darlene Mulrooney. When Leo bit into the cake, when he tasted its sweetness and that other, that unnamed ingredient, he knew he had found the source of Julia’s unrivalled skill. He talked with her for some time, sitting with her and Mock, far removed from the band. Mock remained characteristically silent while the other two discussed the cod quotas, the cake, the wedding, and the foolishness Joey Smallwood was getting on with in St. John’s. They talked about how warm the weather was getting and how beautiful the bride was. At 11:30, Leo volunteered to bring Julia and Mock home, and at 12:30 he bade her goodnight on the doorstep of her fathers house. As Julia climbed the stairs to her bedroom, she felt lighter than she ever had before, unburdened, unsmothered. In her flannel nightdress, lying under faded quilts, she watched the blackness collect outside her windows, dirty the glass, and block out the moon and stars. She watched it pool and pulse and coax and beg and, unrequited, die. And then Julia Gaulton fell asleep, darkness and salt air both locked outside. Leo ran Mulrooney’s General Store in St. Kyrans. When he was younger he had fished with his cousins, despite the staggering luxury of not having to. Fishing, Leo said, was in his bones; nancing about in the store was not. When his parents died, though, Leo put away his jiggers his nets and his pots and settled down to take care of Mulrooney’s. He had never married and had no children, so there was wild, if private, speculation about who he would leave the store to. When he started rowing across to Isle Valen every evening, more than one St. Kyrans widow watched from her parlour. The Islanders across the water watched him, too. Walking by, they could peer into the gaps between the gauzy white curtains at three people sitting in the parlour. Mock rarely spoke, had been as good as mute since returning from the war. He hunched over a card table near the woodstove and played an endless game of Solitaire. Occasionally, Julia and Leo would join him for 45s, but mostly they sat in quiet conversation, a respectful distance apart, on the burgundy chesterfield. Julia would ply her caller with cakes and pastries, of which she always had plenty. Leo ate like a starving man, plate after plate until he thought he would burst. And there was always more. Leo’s fingers grew thick, his waist a little wider, his face a little fuller. This continued from spring to fall, and even in the winter there were enough summer berries for Julia to bake into pies. Eventually, the Islanders began to notice a decline in Julia’s sweets; her pastries were no longer so light, her cobblers no longer syrupy, her jams no longer so perfect in consistency and taste. When she accidentally scorched the underside of Carm Casey’s wedding cake, the Islanders realized that the magic had gone out of Julia’s kitchen. Then, one day the following June, a young man named Rowe came to the islands on a government boat, where he landed at the Government Wharf and read a proclamation from the lovedhated hand of the Honourable Joseph R. Smallwood. The young Mr. Rowe was surrounded by police officers, and on more than one island they were forced to beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the open water. After each visit, after every reading of the magic words, after every abra cadabra, the islands began to disappear. It was slow at first; bits of Isle Valen and St. Kyrans began to fall into the water and drift towards Placentia, debris dragging behind, floating or sinking by the will of the tide. And then the avalanche began, because no lump of rock and trees can stand up to the erosion of Progress. Red Island was the first to disappear completely. By the time November rolled around, Julia and Mock were in the cabin of Joe Casey’s boat on the way to St. Mary’s. The sea had swallowed Isle Valen, and St. Kyrans was smothering in her wake. The Islanders, in their struggle to survive, had scattered. Julia and Mock went where they had family. The Allowance they had received from the government could only go so far, and their Aunt Agnes had volunteered to provide what the government had not. Their house was left on the island; there was no one to drag it in for them yet, there was too much to be done. They packed their suitcases and locked the door behind them, leaving the house ready for their return. When Mock managed to get back with Joe Casey the following spring, the Gaulton home had been stripped of anything of value, right down to the floorboards. No one had remained on Isle Valen that winter; those who hadn’t dragged their houses in through the bay were left with nothing. Julia and Mock settled in the cottage beside their Aunt Agnes’s home. Mock spent much of his time with the cousins, trying to scrape the moss from the roof, seal the gaps in the window casings, replace the rotting floorboards. Some of the Islanders had come to St. Mary’s, as well. Julia talked with them as much as possible, visited on Sundays, scrounged for information. Leo had seen her to the wharf on the day she climbed aboard Joe Casey’s boat. He had been determined to stay in St. Kyrans, and she hadn’t heard from him since. “What would I go to Placentia for, Julia? If I wanted to sit around on my arse and rot, I could do it here just as easy. No b’y, Julia. What is there for me in Placentia that isn’t in St. Kyrans?” In March she found out where he had gone. The winter had been too rough for one man living alone on St. Kyrans. Some of the Mulrooney crowd had gone out to get him and, defeated, Leo relented. He boarded up the house and the store and moved to Long Harbour. Julia, sitting in Bernie Power’s living room, smiled and placed one trembling hand atop the other. The darkness of St. Mary’s was not like the darkness of the Islands. There were streetlights, scattered neon signs, security lights in the few small stores. There was no true darkness and no reliance on the stars. Julia had chosen a bedroom that faced the water, so when she looked out over the pasture at night she could see the ocean, and when she woke in the morning she could make out the hazy blue outlines of the Islands. She sat by her window for a long time after returning from Bernie’s. The sky darkened slowly and the water disappeared, sunk into shadow. She could hear the ocean through the cracks in the window casings, barely make out the roar, the crash, the white noise she had known all her life. It had been louder on Isle Valen. She had been closer. She sat in darkness, surrounded by the waves and waited for it. It came for the first time since its defeat. It collected on the mottled window pane and slid between the glass. It whispered to her, wreathed her, and entered with her breath. That poor thing. I hated to do it, you know, but someone had to tell her. No good to get her hopes up, to be sure. Everyone knew Leo Mulrooney had no intentions of coming to St. Mary’s. It was all fine and good out on the Island, but you can’t go getting on with that kind of thing in here. Next thing you know, he’d probably have the Mounties at his door. Can’t go fooling around with one like her. The poor thing, she’s not right in the head. School smart, sure, but no common sense. No, even Leo couldn’t take one like that. It was good of him to give her a bit of attention, of course, but he haven’t got the store now, and he got to live on a little for the rest of it, just like everyone else. No, I doubt he got enough put by to take care of Mock and Julia both, and you know as well as I that you can’t have one without t’other. It’s better she knows now so she can stop mooning around St. Mary’s and making a fool of herself. Mock found her the next morning when he went to give her the telegram. She was sitting in the chair beside her closed window, eyes open, staring toward the blue islands as they rose and stretched in the sun. When the exiled Islanders found out, they nodded with damp eyes and brave, sad smiles; homesickness was, indeed, a powerful pain.

I wonder if Dumbledore's reason for believing Snape is an Unbreakable Vow that they made together. It's possible, but there has to be a third party, and I can't think on who would facilitate the arrangment. I'm too sleepy to write more, but you get the drift.

I don't think Harry is a horcrux, because as far as I can tell, all the horcruxes must be destroyed for Voldemort to die, and that implies that Harry would have to die as well. I also don't think that Snape killed Dumbledore our of maliciousness or anger, but because Dumbledore ordered him to. It is uncharacterisitic for Dumbldore to beg for his life, or to have made such a big error in judging Snape's character. That would also explain why he gets so angry when Harry calls him a coward later on, and his covert instructions to Harry regarding the necessity for him to master non-verbal spells. Finally, I think the evidence for RAB thus far points to Regulus. As already mentioned, he did have a change of heart and try to escape the Death Eaters. He comes off to me as sort of a pansy, so I dunno if he was a good enough wizard to get to the locket. However, in OotP when Harry et al are helping Sirius clean out Girmmauld Place, they do find a golden locket that cannot be opened. I imagine it's still in the house, and that it mught be Slytherin's locket. Also, I'm not sure that Harry actually does own Grimmauld place. Kreacher may be acting on Bellatrix' orders to obey Harry no matter what, until they can trap him in the house.

*snuggles* Yay! Happy Birthday, Jon. I hope it's a really good one, doll. Be sure to take lots of pictures with that schnazzy new camera. *tacklesnugs once more for the road* Bella

*snuggles* Happy birthday, Pered. I hope you had a good one.

Hum. I'm skeptical, but I suppose it's possible. I'm tired and it's late... er... early, so I got a little confused. Is he referring to Ron as only the King in the chess game, or as the king in the next book? Becaue I'm pretty sure Rowling said that the king wasn't going to be one of the main characters. I sort of assumed it was Neville, actually.

If I wanted to write on the old pic of the bowl, could I? I had a really good idea for that one, but the rest are a little to fantasy-ish for me. I scuk at fantasy.

How well do you know Bell? If any of you actually know Bell to begin with... ^^;;;

But Canid, who would you rather see running Canada? Stephen Harper is little more than a religious zealot with a "vision." His vision of Canada is nowhere close to the current state of the country. I like having the right to choose, I like the fact that my best friend can marry his boyfriend, I like healthcare, and I especially like our educational systems. Kiss any socially progressive policies goodbye if Stephen Harper gets elected. Like I said, I'm not really a Liberal supporter, but if given the choice between this Canada and the one the Conservatives will bring, I choose the one I have now. In a perfect world, the NDP would smarten up about their fiscal policies and we'd have a left wing government that most people would be happy with. But the world is not perfect, the Canadian Alliance is masquerading as the Conservative Party, and the only people who can conceivably stop them are the Liberals. Like it or not, this election is a battle between the two big parties, between the left and the right. Please, please, please don't waste your vote.

The Liberal Sponsorships Scandal was basically the funneling of money, for not really good reason, into corporations cozy with the Liberal party. I voted in an advance poll on Saturday. I usually vote NDP, but a vote for the NDP this time around is a wasted ballot. So I voted for the Liberals. I can't imagine Canada with Stephen Harper at the helm. We'd be America Lite; even moreso than we already are.

Yay, awesome! Y'know, you never see most of those things when you read your own stuff. Maybe it's because it all makes sense in your head. So, I'm taking out the last number, changing the "$20.00" and calling 'er finished. Oh, and the names I put in for my own amusement. ^^ I pictured a Uni prof telling his students who those guys were (in case they didn't already know) and having a healthy harr harr at my political leanings. Mebbe I'll change the names for now, seeing as they're pretty noticible. But I'll put 'em back in ten year's time, if I remember this story exists by then. Love you guys; thanks for the help. Bella

I love the mice stories. It's very groovy of you to be so sweet to them. ^^ The one about your dad touched me most, though. You're good at articulating feelings that most people can't express. Very neat.

I need a little help with this 'un. I like the ending, I just don't like how I wrote it. I mean, the events should be the same, but can you guys suggest something to make it a little more... a little better? 896-7053 May I speak to Mr. Harper please?Hi, my name is Erin and I’m calling from Epilepsy Newfoundland and Labrador. We’re running our Calendar Campaign again this year, and we were just wondering if you’d be interested in making a contribution to aid epilepsy programs in our province? Ok. Yes. Ok. No, I understand completely. Have a great evening, Mr, Harper. 896-7083 May I speak to Mr. Martin please? Oh, ok. Is this his wife? Hi Mrs. Martin, my name is Erin and I’m calling from Epilepsy Newfoundland and Labrador. We’re running our Calendar Campaign again this year, and we were just wondering if you’d be interested in making a contrib- Dial. Get rejected. Thank you. Day after day, call after call. Please? No thank you. Ok then. She turns the sheet. This is an old one, covered in pen marks and doodles, and short, triumphant ribbons of pink hi-liter. One name left, one name not hi-lited. David Constable. She picks up the receiver; calls him again. 896-3345 Hello, you’ve reached David. I’m sorry that I can’t be here to take your call. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Thanks, and have a great day. She smiles and hangs up. The machine catches one soft sound, an indrawn breath, the sigh of a ghost. She calls again. 896-3345 Hello, you’ve reached David. I’m sorry that I can’t be here to take your call. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Thanks, and have a great day. His voice is wonderful. Scottish. Lovely. He knows what chivalry is. She can hear it in every word, in every syllable. He has an old grace. He knows; she’s sure he does. And he’s beautiful. The kind of person she could love from the very beginning, from the first moment she hears his voice and sees his face. He’ll be an English prof, of course. He’ll know about everything she loves and he’ll teach her things she cannot now understand. He’ll open her eyes and show her a beautiful world. He’ll make everything perfect; he’ll take away the grey. He won’t rescue her. Smart girls nowadays don’t need to be rescued. But he’ll help her. She’ll lean on him when she needs to and, when it comes time, return the favour. She’ll be there when he needs her, and even when he doesn’t. But then again, maybe he’ll always need her. That would be nice. 896-5127 Hi, may I speak with Mr. Layton please?Hi, Mr. Layton, my name is Erin and I’m calling from Epilepsy Newfoundland and Labrador. He’ll have grey hair because he’ll be wise. He’ll have blue eyes because he’ll be honest. He’ll have a tanned face and his skin will be just slightly hardened, like her grandfather’s. He’ll know what an honest day’s work feels like, and it will show on his face. We’re running our Calendar Campaign again this year, and we were just wondering if you’d be interested in making a contribution to aid epilepsy programs in our province? He’ll be generous. He’ll be rich. They’ll both be professors. She’ll finally own a Jag. He’ll bring her roses on her birthday and they’ll fill their house with books and music and they’ll teach their children to love those things. They’ll look like him, and they’ll talk with a hint of their father’s accent. $20.00? That’d be great, thank you so much. Would you like to do that by mail? Ok. And is your address the same? Ok, great. I’ll pop that in the mail tomorrow, and you can send back a cheque at your earliest convenience. Thanks so much, Mr. Layton. Another slash of pink hi-liter. Another form to fill out. Almost time to go. She shuffles through the sheets. What could it hurt? She calls him again and waits for the peremptory three rings to end, for the sound of his recorded voice. One. Two. Hello? She is still. She is shocked. Hello, may I speak with Mr. David Constable please? Hi Mr. Constable, my name is Erin and I’m calling from Epilepsy Newfoundland and Labrador. It feels wrong, but she can’t stop. There’s a bitter taste in her mouth. We’re running our Calendar Campaign again this year, and we were just wondering if you’d be interested in making a contribution to aid epilepsy programs in our province? Shut up. Stop talking. Hang up. $20.00? That’d be great, thank you so much. Would you like to do that by mail? Ok. And is your address the same? Ok, great. I’ll pop that in the mail tomorrow, and you can send back a cheque at your earliest convenience. Thanks so much, Mr. Constable. Click. She hangs up. He’s gone, but his $20.00 is heading her way. She knew he’d be generous. A final slash of a pink hi-liter. On to another call. 896-4199

The seasons of my childhood were precious, golden things that seem quite far away now, preserved in delicate gossamer nets of imagination and childish embellishment. When I look back on those days, they are surrounded by a kind of haze, like the summer fogs in Newfoundland. Images are blurred along the edges, faces are distorted, and my memories seem to run together like wet ink. But spaced throughout the chaos are moments of crystal clarity that stand out like beacons. Some of my memories are so perfect, so real, that I can close my eyes and be there again, living in a moment that has come and gone. For the most part the ones that stand out aren’t always the most special, the most life altering of all the things that I have experienced. Some are so simple that I wonder how they could be important enough to deserve such thorough preservation. One of my earliest memories is a walk up the Back Way with my Uncle Wish when I was little more than a toddler. I remember the smoky, honeyed flavour of the sun and the tart sweetness of a raspberry bursting in my mouth. I remember throwing rocks at the water tank and being astounded by the sound, the reverberation of metal against a thousand litres of water. It was like making thunder with my own two hands. But of all these memories, of all the pin-pricks of light and blasts of sound that stand out in my mind, the most important is the first trip I took with my grandfather on the Honda. My grandfather was the single most important person in my life when I was a child. My father was gone and Pop was the closest thing I had to a replacement once Uncle Wish married and moved away. All of Raymond’s grandchildren loved him more than anything else in the world, sometimes more than we loved our own parents, and we would battle with each other over who got to ride shotgun in the car, or who got to share his big, rickety armchair at night as he watched The Raccoons with us. My first cousin, Jonathan, usually came out the best in these bouts. He was the oldest, but more importantly, he was the only grandson Pop had and thus immediately owned a special place in his heart. I remember evenings in the winter with the woodstove crackling, and heavy thuds startling us as the junks burned and settled. We sat in the little bungalow, Pop and Johnny in one chair, Nan rocking away by the window, with Mom, Ashley and I on the couch. We watched the CBC News, The Golden Girls, Babar, and then, finally, The Raccoons. We waited for Burt and Cedric all week, not just because we loved them, but because they always heralded a trip into the woods the next day. After Pop retired from the boats he settled into a routine around the house that we grew to know quite well. Everything had its day, and he and Nan were adamant that their schedule not be interrupted, come hell or high water. Every Saturday, Nan scoured the house from top to bottom while Pop made pea soup and salt beef for supper. On Sunday, they put their heads together and concocted the most sinful, most life-threatening, most amazing Jigs Dinner Newfoundland has ever seen. On Monday, which was usually pension day, they disappeared in the car and came back with a trunk-full of groceries. And on Tuesday, Pop went for wood. It was Tuesday that we all waited for with baited breath, wondering, hoping, praying that this week would be our week to go. I was still young, just making the jump from seven to eight, and I had never been on a trip into the woods on the Honda. I envied my older cousins, but I knew that Pop would take me along when he thought I was old enough. Still, it couldn’t help but gall us all to see a lucky cousin being carried off on the huge slide behind the Honda. The slide itself was a big, sturdy contraption made from rough-hewn timber. Coarse bark still covered the wood in places, and the long green lashings of twine rope, lying haphazardly across the planks, made us all a little apprehensive. Many of us had gotten slivers of that rough twine embedded in our fingers or under our nails; the experience was no picnic, and so we all learned to be careful of where we sat and what we held onto. However, nothing could impact our desperate desire to be the one chosen to sit behind Pop on the huge leather seat, or to ride on top of the load of fresh-cut spruce on the way back. My first ride on The Honda was the highlight of my Christmas. It was the day after Boxing Day and I had gotten a toy stove and a snowsuit from Santa Claus. I still remember the excitement of hearing my grandfather dragging that monstrous plastic oven in from the backroom, and placing it under the Christmas tree. I had huddled in my bed, trying desperately not to swallow my tongue from the terror and exhilaration of encountering Santa Claus. Two days later I was playing with Ashley, filling the sink and washing our imaginary cabbage (we were Newfies, after all) when the rumour started in the shed and came whistling in through the house, causing a torrent of activity. “Pop’s going for wood. He just hitched the slide to the Honda.” We stumbled through the house in a ball of anarchy, grabbing hats and mittens, gloves and boots. I made it to the porch first, dragging my snow pants on over my jeans, hauling on my coat and hat as I stumbled outside, past the bright red storm door and into the yard, heading like a shot towards the shed. Sure enough, he was sitting on the trike in the front yard, dressed in his oil clothes and windbreaker, waiting to see which of us would make it there first. In my mind I thanked God that mom had gone for groceries earlier and would not be there to hamper my efforts. She had definite views on the safety of the Honda, and was often my biggest obstacle on the road to the wood clearing. I stood for a moment in front of my grandfather, feeling suddenly embarrassed. I wasn’t a forward child, neither with action nor affection, and I felt a sort of shame. My nervousness increased as my cousins poured out of doorways on either side of the yard, but I held my ground, even when Johnny came and stood beside me. He was like the cat sizing up the canary, but finding it a lot bolder in its new pink snowsuit. After a while, Pop nodded. “Well, seeing as you got all your new winter clothes, and seeing as you’re almost eight in any case, I s’pose it’d be fine if you came along.” I was up on the Honda in the blink of an eye, my excitement barely contained as I settled in behind my grandfather. He reached down and pulled the cord that started the engine, and I turned to wave goodbye to my cousins. We rode down the path that led from our house and onto the street, and from there it was just a few feet to where the dirt roads began. I looked at the scenery as if seeing it for the first time, even though I was familiar with every shrub and tree. I can still remember the way the breeze felt. The smell of gasoline from the Honda was strong and filled my nostrils; the wind was cold and crisp, full of the bite of winter, and the sky was pale and yellow. The snow crunched under the Honda, barely heard under the chainsaw roar of the engine. And surrounding everything was the scent of my grandfather, a mixture of Old Spice and Redman Chewing tobacco, orange pekoe and wood smoke. He was a product of Joey Smallwood’s Resettlement, and felt all the bitterness that most of the bay men experienced after being thrown out of the islands their families had inhabited for generations. He had left Isle Valen with his wife and three young children, leaving behind a brand new house, only to rent a bungalow from a Yankee landlord in Placentia. There was a regret in many of those who made the trek from the tiny out ports, a feeling of defeat that my grandfather carried with him all his life. When I was older, I would learn to recognize the sadness in his eyes, the searching look they sometimes got as he sat in the living room and stared out across the Atlantic, towards his home. At seven years old I knew little about my grandparent’s lives before they came to Placentia. There were nights of reminiscence, of course, when all the grandchildren fought to stay awake, to listen to the details of a life we would never experience. To us, a world without electricity was inconceivable, and we certainly had no idea of how difficult, and alternately, how wonderful, life on Isle Valen had been. The only time Pop told us about “out home” was at Christmas, when Uncle Mike and Ronald came mummering and everyone was sharing Lambs and Coke to bring fortune to the New Year. On those nights, surrounded by family and friends who shared his nostalgia, Pop told us endless stories of the way things used to be, and all the grandchildren clambered to hear more. These were magical nights, filled with the mystery and intrigue of a world that we knew nothing about, and all the light-hearted joy of a child’s Christmas. We all wanted to be part of our grandfather’s memories, but none of us really knew just how important we were to him. That day in 1987, my first Honda ride, was the day I began to understand my Pop. He didn’t take me straight to the wood clearing on the Honda, but instead we rode around in the hills until we came to the highest summit, overlooking the ocean and the beach. He turned off the Honda and I dismounted to stretch my legs while he sat there for a moment, looking out at the dark blue of the Atlantic in winter, at the white caps of the waves and the spray that rose as they ran ashore. When he spoke, his voice sounded distant, not at all the jolly, light-hearted tone that I knew to be his. “Do you see that darker blue patch out there?” He asked, pointing across the water towards Red Island. I nodded my head, feeling puzzled and a little anxious, wondering why we weren’t at the wood clearing; I wanted to prove to Johnny that I was just as useful as him when it came to loading the slide. “Behind that island is where I grew up. Your mom and your uncles were all born there, and you would have been too.” I opened my mouth to say something, but when he looked at me I closed my lips without a sound. “I told Johnny, and I told Ashley, and now I’m telling you, because you’re Pop’s girl and I know you got it in you to go far. There’s nothing left on them islands anymore because we let everything be took from us. There’s no future out there, and there’s damn well no future in the fishery. There’s just everything that we left behind. I don’t want to see you working in no fish plant in ten years time, nor your cousins neither. You’re going to get the best education this bloody place can give you, and maybe if they comes to uproot you, well, you’ll know better how to stop them than we did.” I remember nodding in mute incomprehension, not understanding a single word of what he said, but knowing that it was important. He must have seen my astonishment, because he smiled his familiar smile and helped me back onto the Honda. “Just try and remember.” He said as I settled onto the seat. “And don’t worry if you can’t; me and Nan will remind you as often as we needs to.” He was true to his word. From that day on, every report card, every agonizing school play and Christmas concert was dutifully reviewed or attended. And always, always the same mantra from both of my grandparents: “You need a good education these days. There’s nothing you can’t do with a good education.” They believed it, and they made us believe it too. Pop died a year before I graduated from high school, and he didn’t get to see me go off to University. But sometimes when I go home for a weekend, or for Christmas, I sit in his shed on what’s left of the Honda and think about that day in the hills. Sometimes I listen to The Government Game and remember all the times I heard it drifting from the shed and into our living room. But mostly I just watch the water, like he did. I think of what my life would have been like on Isle Valen, and feel all the stomach-twisting guilt of no regrets.

When I was a child he seemed like the most wonderful person in the world. Even when I was only five, and useless by everyone else’s standards. Dave made time for me. I would go to Julie’s house and play, and he would be there, sitting in his bedroom with Bruce Springstein moping in the background. I remember how blue the entire room was, how the nubbly carpet felt under my feet, and how the posters stretched themselves out in a vain attempt to cover the walls. At that age, I didn’t know why Dave was so good to me. The other boys didn’t like him. They included him because Roger made them. Just as wolves always single out and devour the weakest member of a herd, Joey Griffin and his friends seemed to single out and devour Dave. They tore him to pieces in little ways, until there was nothing left of him to resent. And even then, they weren’t satisfied. The younger kids all watched, and though they loved Dave, they idolized Joey. So when Joey graduated and left town, they took up where he left off. Perhaps it would have happened as they got older, anyway. Childish charm is no longer endearing in an eighteen year old man. Schizophrenia. It’s an ugly word. Some words taste delicious when you roll them around in your mouth. “Gossamer.” “Corinthian.” Not “schizophrenia.” It tastes harsh and dirty, like gravel. I never understood it when I was growing up. I knew that Dave wasn’t like the rest of us, but no one in my town was able to explain why. My mother always shushed me when I asked, saying “There’s nothing wrong with him; it’s just his nerves.” I had no idea what that meant, either. Even if someone had been able to explain it, we still wouldn’t have understood, not really. And so we tormented him because he was different, because he was older but still, somehow, weaker. Innocence isn’t always beautiful. My mother seemed to think that Dave was happy as he was, and maybe that was true. But only for a little while. As he grew, as the taunts became worse and even his friends, even I, turned against him, he withdrew into himself. It was noticeable, the way he changed. Once, he had walked tall, shoulder-to-shoulder with Roger. When his friends graduated and Rog went to University in Ottawa, Dave began to shrink before our eyes. He loped down the road every evening at exactly 3:15, going to Healey’s General Store for a Half Moon and an RC Cola. It seemed that every time he passed my window, he looked just a little smaller. His shoulders seemed to hunch over his ears, his back becoming bent, almost convex, as though he carried a great weight. He reminded me of all the grass-clad women I had seen in National Geographic, carting babies on their backs. Dave was nursing something entirely different. His little sister, Julie, was my best friend. She was blonde and blue-eyed, smart as a whip and the apple of her father’s eye. Dave, in comparison, was like a wraith. Dark hair, pale skin, dim eyes. Though he was the eldest, he was not entitled to the love and preference that such a distinction usually deserves. Leo, his father, had been a biology teacher for most of his life, and much of his hope had rested in his eldest and only son. Leo farmed a small plot of land in the summer, and encouraged young minds to grow for the rest of his year. His son’s was the only mind he could not reach, the only soil in which he could not cultivate growth. On the outside, they looked like a perfect family. Leo did not acknowledge his son’s deficiency, and because everyone respected Leo, no one else acknowledged it either. Well, not to his face, anyway. But there were rumours, if you cared to listen. On Sundays, when the family congregated in my grandmother’s kitchen, I would linger at the table after dinner and listen discreetly, nudging my pie with an idle fork as I tried to look uninterested. “Well, did you hear what Mr. Tom said to Leo the other day?” My cousin Shirley, her voice conspiratorial, looked at my mother over her teacup. Everyone at the table seemed to lean forward, waiting to hear the news. Mr. Tom and Leo were brothers, and everyone knew that Tom didn’t care much for the way Leo treated “poor ol’ Dave.” We had been waiting for this to come to a head for almost three months. I prayed that no one noticed I was still there. Satisfied that she had grabbed everyone’s attention (saving mine) Shirley continued, eyes alight, the centre of attention. “Well it seems that Mr. Tom came up to Leo’s the other day, and the two of them went to work in the garden to get the rhubarb in before the frost. Anyway, Jason and Jeff were working down there too, and they heard the whole thing. Seems that Dave walked by while they were working, on his way to Healey’s again, to be sure. Leo calls out to him and says ‘David, wouldn’t you rather be down here helping your father bring in the vegetables?’ Well, you knows Dave now, he wanted no part of it. So he didn’t even look up, just shook his head and said no, like he always do. Anyway, when he was out of earshot, Leo started complaining to Mr. Tom about Dave never wanting to do anything and about him getting bad grades in school. I suppose Mr. Tom had enough because he lost his temper and let Leo have it.” Here, Shirley stopped to take a dainty sip of tea, eyeing her audience once more, teasing them with the wait. “’Leo,’ Tom says, ‘there’s something not right about that boy, and you knows it as well as I do. There’s no use in you raising him like he was exactly the same as Julie, because he isn’t. He gets bad grades because he can’t understand what they’re teaching him; he doesn’t want to work in the garden because he doesn’t know what to make of you. He’s your child just as much as Julie is, and if he’s not perfect, well, who is? You’re going to have to get that boy the help he needs, Leo, or you’ll have a right mess on your hands. There’s no use in pretending everything’s fine when any fool with eyes in his head can see that it ain’t. You’re on a dangerous path with that young fella, and you better start treating him better and trying to help him out. Lectures and yelling aren’t going to do Dave no good. Take him to a doctor Leo, and find out what’s wrong with the poor child. I’m his uncle and his godfather, and I got just as much right to worry as you do.” I felt as though someone had just thrown a bucket of ice water over me. I sat stock still in my chair, no longer pretending to eat my pie, staring openly at Shirley. My mother rose with alacrity and started clearing the table. She gave Shirley a stern, angry look before she spoke to me. “Bobbie, go clear the plates and the rest of the roast and bring it out to the cats on the meadow. And then go out and play. And I don’t want to hear peep out of you about anything you heard, do you understand? Not a peep. If I finds out you’ve been telling tales, I’ll redden your arse. Now go.” I grabbed the plate of leftover roast and thick, congealed gravy and ran through the big red porch door. As I climbed the small hill to the meadow, cats running around beneath my feet and butting me in the shins, I mulled over the news in my mind. Shirley had said that Mr. Tom thought Dave needed to see a doctor, that there was something wrong with him. Maybe he had a brain tumour. My uncle Ron had died of one, and, come to think of it, he’d acted quite a bit like Dave, mopey and confused. But that didn’t sound right. Uncle Ron had only been like that for a little while, whereas Dave had been that way his whole life. Maybe he was mental. That would explain a lot. He was too quiet, he never looked you in the eye, he always seemed afraid or ashamed. But Noel O’Reilley was mental, and Dave was nothing like him. Noel was thirty-six and the terror of our town. I wasn’t allowed to walk past his house or go in the woods when he was outside. He had beaten up some of the boys, the ones who taunted him, and he had raped a girl on the old railway track next to my elementary school, during a pre-teen dance. We were terrified of him. No one was afraid of Dave. Dave wasn’t like that. He couldn’t be mental. Then what? I had no idea. I reached the large, flat rock where we fed the cats and pushed the meat off the plate with a spoon. It made wet, splatting sounds as it hit, and the cats crowded around, eager for the Sunday meal. After a few moments of watching them, I turned and wandered back to the house. Several days later, I was on my way down the hill, heading to Healey’s with a note from my mother: “Mary, please give Bobbie a package of split peas, a pack of Du Maurier, and a cream soda. Christine.” In my pocket was fifteen dollars, with the promise that I could keep the change and buy something sweet. I could already taste the snowball. I could hear screaming not too far ahead of me, high-pitched and angry, and I thought I recognized at least one of the voices. As I rounded the corner, I saw Julie standing in front of the small, man-made pond beside her father’s garden. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, more obscenities than I had ever heard, especially from her. Julie was supposed to be the perfect one. Joey Griffin’s little brothers had circled themselves around her, and for every insult she threw out, they flung five back. The argument, as far as I could tell, was about Dave. Julie’s eyes lit up when she saw me, and she began waving her arms and calling my name. “Bobbie! Bobbie, come here and tell these fuckers that there’s nothing wrong with Dave! Bobbie, come here and tell them!” I stared straight ahead, not daring to look at her, pretending I didn’t hear. She kept calling to me, waving her arms, while Joey’s brothers laughed. Eventually, her voice trailed off, and when she began screaming again, the obscenities were aimed at me. I quickened my pace until I was practically running and I didn’t slow until I’d reached Healey’s. The bell above the door rang as I slipped inside, and I quickly made my way to the back of the store, where the shelves of non-perishables stood. I took my time choosing the right brand of peas, not wanting to run into Julie on the way back. As I waited in line at the counter, I heard someone say my name, and I turned to see Dave standing behind me with an RC Cola and a Half Moon in his hand. My stomach knotted even as I smiled, unable to meet his eyes. “Hey Dave.” I said quickly, moving up in line and handing my note to Mary Healey. She and I made polite conversation as she handed me the items on the list. I forgot to ask for a snowball in my hurry to escape the store. When the door finally closed behind me, cutting off the jangling of the bell and the buzz of conversation, I breathed deeply of the fresh air. Clutching my bag, I hurried along the street toward the hill; I wanted to get home before he could catch up with me. Unfortunately, I was young and my stride short, whereas Dave’s loping gait seemed to span miles. He was upon in no time, slowing his stride to walk beside me. “Ah… Bobbie. I got another album. The Boss. Next time you’re down with Julie you can listen to it.” His voice was deep and gruff, his speech as uncertain as ever. He didn’t look at me as he spoke, but rather loped along beside me, his eyes shadowed by shaggy hair. He rarely, if ever, approached anyone so boldly. “Sure Dave, sounds fun.” I murmured, my voice tripping over itself as I quickened my pace once more. We were silent for a long time, the only sound the crunching of gravel and sand beneath our sneakers. Dave’s hands were in his pockets, the bag from Healey’s hanging off his wrist. His face was slowly turning red, his hands fidgeting within his pockets. After a few more minutes of awkward silence, he spoke. “There’s nothing wrong with me you know Bobbie.” His words came out in a rush and almost stopped me in my tracks. “I know what everyone says about me. But that don’t mean they’re right.” Before I could answer he had quickened his pace. In just a few moments, he was a dim figure receding into the distance. I didn’t speak to either Julie or Dave very often after that. We grew up, and in the process grew further and further apart, like a tree split by lightning. Leo had retired from teaching by the time I reached high school, and for that I was infinitely thankful. When he saw me on the street, he would smile and ask why I never hung out with Julie anymore. I always shrugged, told him I didn’t know, which was not far from the truth. Dave didn’t change at all in those years. Every day at 3:15 he would walk past my house in his navy blue sweats, his pocket jingling with change, on his way to Healey’s for an RC Cola and a Half Moon. As the boys on the hill grew, however, they also got bolder. Dave was now twenty-six and stranger than ever to their eyes. No longer content to torture Julie, they began to concentrate their efforts on Dave, just as Joey had done before them. When the taunting began, most people shook their heads, muttered about “Poor ol’ Dave.” But everyone, even Leo, pretended not to see. No one would defend him. The winter of my senior year in highschool was quite a bad one. It seemed as though the snow would never end. Each morning I would look out the living room window, into the open expanse of the bay. The horizon was usually cloudy, obscured by the snowstorm that was inching its way over the water, towards land. School was cancelled every other day, either because of snow or because the ancient furnace in the damp basement of Laval High was simply too tired to perform, leaving the school cold and lonely. On one such day a group of us had gathered in the lightly falling snow, clad in heavy parkas, mittens and skates. The pond across from Leo’s garden was a popular spot in the winter, the only decent ice for miles. The boys took three quarters of the surface for a game of hockey, the girls claimed the rest to practice rudimentary figure skating. I was in the middle of a shaky figure eight when Dave walked past. It was 3:15; time for Healey’s. He went every single day, no matter what the weather. The first snowball hit him in the shin, the next in the back of the head, the next in the shoulder. The boys had dropped their hockey sticks and had crowded around the edge of the ice, gathering lumps of hard packed snow as they shouted. “Hey Schizo, what the fuck are you doing out?” Dave walked on, loping quietly in the falling snow. The barrage of snowballs continued as the boys followed him along the ice, Jerry Griffin in the lead. “Hey you fucking mental case, you fucking fudge-packer!” The next snowball was filled with sharp bits of ice and rocks. When it hit him in the mouth, his lip split open and drops of red blood fell to earth, mingling with the fresh snow, tainting it. Dave’s hand rose to his jaw and came away covered in blood. He straightened slowly, his perpetual hunch disappearing. For as long as I could remember, Dave had been shy and unassuming, coiled in on himself like mouse in a burrow. Now, that shyness was unfolding, and instead of a mouse I saw a snake. He stumbled down over the bank, going to his knees in the snow. The boys scattered, laughing with mirth, delighted that they had finally provoked a reaction. Blood dripped from Dave’s mouth, freezing almost instantly as it hit the ice. He left a trail behind him as he skidded and slipped over the surface, snatching and flailing at Jerry and his friends. I stood at the edge of the ice with the rest of the girls, gaping in horror. He looked like something wild, terrifying, and for a moment I actually could believe that he was mad. The boys circled around him, too fast to catch on their hockey skates. Sticks darted in and out, striking him in the legs and ribs, knocking him down as he fought to stay balanced in his Reeboks. Blood frothed from his mouth, and I thought that either he or one of the boys would surely die before this ended. A roar split the air, drowning out the screams and the cheering on the ice. My head jerked around and I saw Leo running across his snow-covered lawn in his shirt-sleeves, his features set in a fiery rage. The boys scattered to the edges of the pond, unable to escape into the woods on their skates. They scowled at Leo as he slid down the embankment that led to the pond. Dave stood in the very centre, surrounded by the skid marks of a dozen skates, blood frothing from his mouth, his breath harsh and ragged. Leo walked over the ice calmly, his unlaced work boots threatening to knock him over at any moment. He didn’t bother to glare at the boys standing around the pond, and didn’t even spare the girls a glance. “Dave.” He said, his voice not stern like it was wont to be when he addressed his son. “Now Dave, never you mind this bunch. They’re as ignorant as you’re bound to get in this place. Come on home and let your mother look at that lip.” Dave didn’t say anything, just nodded. He didn’t look at any of us, either. They made their way slowly across the ice and up the bank, helping each other over the rough spots.

*lol* Hilarious! I loved it. Published? *snugs* Congrats, duck. Who needs all that fancy science stuff?

Thanks a lot for the input, you guys. I really appreciate it. This was actually a piece I did for Creative Writing 3900; it was my mid-term. The comments I got there were pretty much the same as the ones I got here, so now I know what I need to alter, which is fabulous. I think the "he looks like he's dead part" is staying, though. The class liked it and, more importantly, I like it. I wanted to make Ally seem a little cynical, and also show a little of how she feels. I wasn't really trying to describe her father in that sentence; I was trying to describe her. Thanks a lot, guys. Take it easy.

I’m holding my mother’s hand. My uncles and aunts are arrayed behind me, but Jamie is nowhere to be seen. We’re standing outside Coombs’ Funeral Home on the Beach Road, next to the breakwater. The wind smells like salt and fish and life. Uncle Eddie steps sombrely in front of us and opens the door, then steps back to allow my mother and I first entry into the nightmare inside. The second I enter, I know there is no going back, and for a moment I’m frantic, wishing I’d stayed away from this rabbit hole, this trap. The lights inside are dim and the décor is dark; no signs of life are permitted within these walls, except, of course, for the carnations. I smell them the instant the door opens, and the scent turns my stomach. I have attended many funerals in my life, and this odour, hanging heavy in the air, is the smell of death. I think of what my cousin Peter told me at Grand Auntie’s funeral when I was ten, that the flowers are placed around the casket to drown the stink of a rotting corpse. My throat closes up and I take deep breaths, afraid I’ll vomit right there on the floor. My mother squeezes my hand and guides me towards the archway and into the main sitting area. At the front of the room, my father is laying on a velvet cushion, his hands folded over his chest, surrounded by wreaths of carnations. ~*~ My sister came to live with us when I was 16 and she was 13. Up until six days before she arrived, I had no idea that she even existed. The whole town was buzzing about a new scandal, something wonderfully tragic. Jamie’s mother had gone through a profusion of boyfriends after my father left her, and Jamie, of course, had hated them all. They were lounge lizards, walking clichés with cigarettes hanging from their lower lips and hair heavy with brill crème. The last one, Brendon, had gotten drunk and beaten Jamie’s mother until she was unconscious, until she choked on her own blood and died on the kitchen floor. Even now I try to imagine what it was like for her, a 13-year-old girl returning home to find her mother bloody and lifeless. It’s really no wonder that Jamie hated our father as much as she did. ~*~ We’re standing over the coffin, looking down at him. Everyone, at every funeral home, always says that the corpse “looks just like himself.” This thing looks nothing like my father. His five o’clock shadow is gone; his skin is cold and pale, almost hidden under layers of fragrant make-up; his jeans are replaced with what he called his “weddings-and-funerals suit.” He does not look like he’s sleeping, he looks like he’s dead. I wonder why we insist on this parody of life; perhaps it would be better simply to bury him instead of embarrassing him like this. My mother is perched on the kneeler before the coffin, crying quietly. My own eyes leak salty tears, but I don’t offer a prayer begging for comfort, or for the deliverance of his soul. What is done is done, and I can’t change the way he lived his life. Instead, I pray for what he has left behind. I pray for my mother, and Jamie, and for myself. I pray for this absurd trinity; I pray that he hasn’t ruined us. ~*~ My mother and I spent the entire week preparing the spare room for my new little sister. As it turns out, Mom had known about Jamie since her birth, and she and my father had been funnelling court-appointed money to her every month. No one in our town knew that Lloyd Coffee was Jamie’s father; I’m not sure that Jamie even knew until her mother died. As soon as he showed up on her uncle’s doorstep, however, the entire town knew my father’s shame and my mother’s misfortune. But we never saw her that way. I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on her, walking through the door behind my dad, clutching an Adidas backpack that contained most of her belongings. She was thin and pale, almost wraithlike. She looked as though she belonged to another world, one of famine, disappointment, desperation. Any animosity I had towards this usurper of my father’s affection disappeared in that moment. I pitied her. She was alone. She didn’t say a word to any of us for almost a week. My father insisted that she was in shock, but I could tell my mother thought differently. In Jamie’s mind, she was living with enemies, with the man who was responsible for her life and her mother’s death. My father had not wanted to take her on in the first place. He was content to let her live with her uncle. My mother shamed him into accepting responsibility. “You’d do this to your own little girl?” I heard her shouting the night after Jamie’s mother died. “Thank God I married you before Ally came along, that’s all I can say. You’d have left her high and dry just as fast, would you?” “Ah, Pearly. Y’ know I wouldn’t.” I recognized this tone; the one he used when he felt guilty about something. It was the same one I had heard the day he refused to buy me the guitar he had promised me; the time he hadn’t shown up to the school play that I starred in; the time he had forgotten my birthday. Guilty, but not repentant. “By Jesus, Lloyd. That little girl got nowhere else to go. She’s not going living with that uncle of hers in his little shack; God knows what a bachelor fella like that would do to her. You march yourself over there tomorrow and you collect that child, or so help me God Lloyd, I’ll do it myself, you just see if I don’t.” “Ah Pearl. The whole town’ll know. Do you want dem oul’ bitches mutterin about you behind your back?” “Hah. We still got to pay that child support, don’t we? Just wait until her uncle figures that out. There won’t be a man, woman, or child in this town who don’t know you’re that girl’s father. And he’ll drink every penny we gives her, you knows that as well as I do. Don’t have me to do this myself, Lloyd. Spare me that much, at least. Now, no more talk. You’ll get that girl as soon as the wake is over.” And that’s exactly what he did. ~*~ The visiting hours for the wake have begun, and I’m surrounded by family and friends, well-wishers and mourners, and those who have come for the free coffee and biscuits. My mother is sitting in the high-backed chair by the casket, the one reserved for widows. She looks very old and thin, as though she is being stretched too far. Like his daughters, my mother has put up with a lot from my father; perhaps his dying was the last straw for her. Jamie is still nowhere to be seen. People have been asking after her since this morning, exchanging knowing looks when I say, “She’s not here yet. She’ll be along shortly.” They’re all wondering if she’ll come. These are the same people who delighted in her misery ten years ago; this is the same town with the same small minds. They would love to see her fall, if only to distract them from their own disappointments, if only to have someone to look down on, someone worse-off than them. I reach over to pat my mother’s hands, which are gnarled with arthritis. “I’m going upstairs to have a cigarette, mom. Do you want a cup of tea?” She shakes her head and smiles, her eyes darting past my shoulder to the door. “Do you think she got held up on the highway? Maybe the roads are bad.” Her voice is shaky, and for a moment I’m irritated at Jamie for making mom worry this way. “I’ll call her cell phone and see where she is. She was probably just late getting out of class. You know how she is about that. Never misses a lecture, that one.” Mom smiles and I squeeze her hand once more before leaving the wake room and climbing the stairs to the kitchen. ~*~ Jamie did not adjust well, or so our school counsellor said. She was an object of gossip for most of her high school career. Those years are hard enough without the distinction of being the illegitimate daughter of a butchered woman and a married man. Everyone knew her story, and they all pitied her. She hated it. A year or so after she came to live with us, I began my senior year of high school. By April, prom madness had swallowed me whole. The thought of leaving that little town with all its little people was enough to make me jump for joy. I would be something great; I would be successful, and I would give that success, that luck to my little sister. Things are so much easier when someone else has gone before. The fear of getting lost evaporates when you have a path to follow through the woods. One evening in May Jamie and I sat at the dinner table looking over University brochures. My father, irritated with our excited chatter, looked up from his meal with a foul look on his face. “Make all the plans you wants to, Ally, but I ain’t got the money for that and you knows it.” “It’s ok, dad. I can get a job and government loans. You won’t have to pay a cent.” He snorted and went back to his pea soup. But Jamie wasn’t satisfied. “You know,” she said, staring straight at him, “when I was little my mom always used to tell me that she wanted to be a teacher. She said that she was really smart in high school and all her teachers said that she should go to University. But then she had me and she couldn’t afford to go. She said it was too expensive to live in town with a little girl. She said she wouldn’t have been able to afford daycare, so she had to stay home and get her cousin Ginny to look after me when she had to work. Isn’t that sad, Lloyd?” Both my mother and I were as tense as cats ready to spring. Jamie had been doing this since she arrived, baiting him constantly. I still don’t know exactly what she wanted from him, perhaps some sort of emotion, some sort of reaction. Perhaps she wanted to know that he really was sorry for what he had done to her, to her mother. Perhaps she just wanted to hurt him. He looked up at her again, his face grim. His hand clutched his spoon tightly so that his knuckles turned white and his arm shook. They stared at each other, father at daughter, the same angry eyes, the same stubborn will. Finally, my father dropped his gaze back to his soup, to the dough ball that had gone soggy in his bowl. Jamie made a sound in her throat, a noise that reeked of derision, of frustration, and pushed her chair out from the table. As she disappeared up the stairs, I knew with a sickening finality that she would never get what she wanted from our father; he would never feel remorse. ~*~ I’m standing in the smoking room, staring out over the water as it laps against the shore. I reach into my purse, fumbling for my cell phone, but a voice behind me halts my search. When I turn, Jamie is standing in the doorway dressed in a black pinstripe business suit, her weddings-and-funerals suit. She looks tired, but she is smiling. I don’t say anything because I have no idea what to say. Instead, I just hug her. No matter what, no matter what she says or does, she is always my sister. She is thinner than I remember, and she smells of coffee and the orange-scented air freshener she keeps in her car. “It’s about time, James. Have you seen mom.” She nods. “I got stuck on the highway.” She says quietly. “The roads are nastier than they look today.” I can hear the lie in her voice, but I don’t say anything. Neither one of us has inherited our father’s gift for falsehoods. Our reunion is interrupted by Aunt Rita scrambling up the stairs. “Girls, the prayer service is about to start. Hurry, hurry!” I take Jamie’s hand and lead her down the stairs, leaving her with no opportunity of escape. When we enter the wake room, however, I am drawn to my mother’s side, losing my sister in the crowd around the coffin. My mother is shaking, and as soon as Father Roache begins to sing “Amazing Grace” she lapses into deep sobs that make her entire body tremble. I’ve never seen her like this before. I’m afraid she’ll have a heart attack and I’ll have to bury both parents instead of one. I stare at my father, lying cold in the coffin, and I wonder if God really does exist. If He does, is my father with Him, or with some other? I shiver and close my eyes and hug my mother and wish my life were different. When it is all over, when the Priest has gone upstairs for tea and cookies, when my mother is surrounded by a cluster of Aunts wielding Kleenex and cold cloths, I go in search of my sister. She is in the family room, a small cubbyhole designated for immediate family who don’t wish their grief to be a public affair. She is sitting in a plush chair, her back to me. I hurry into the room and close the door behind me. I rush to sit with her on the ataman before her chair, to provide comfort, to ease her tears, to finally see her cry. She is shaking. Shaking and holding her stomach, laughing hysterically, silently, until the salty tears run down her cheeks and splash on her pinstripe suit.