Cemeteries gave Rachel the creeps; all those dead and rotting bodies beneath their feet.And the fact that there was a children’s section…she didn’t even know what to make of that.She’d only ever heard about old people dying.Her grandmother had told her to stay away from the children’s area, and Rachel didn’t need telling twice.
Rachel’s stomach grumbled its protest now as she fantasized about the turkey sandwiches and lemonade that awaited them at home.She fanned herself, shading her eyes from the sun as her grandmother said a silent prayer beside her.Mary hung back ten feet from the headstone as though worried the ground might cave right in beneath her.Her eyes stayed on her feet as sweat beaded above her lips, which were painted with a slick of Revlon—the Cherries in the Snow shade of raspberry pink she’d swiped from Harper’s Drugstore when she thought Rachel wasn’t looking.She seemed even less interested in her father’s grave than Rachel was, which wasn’t new.Aside from rage and contempt, Rachel had rarely seen her mother express any sort of emotion.Certainly not grief, or true sadness.
“Superstitious,” Dora had once called Mary with a curt shake of the head, which led Rachel to understand that superstition must be some foolish thing, because Dora said Mary was always doing and thinking foolish things, always looking for explanations in wild and unlikely places.
One time, a couple of years before, Mary had come home at the Civic Holiday long weekend and taken Rachel to a fair up in Goderich.They’d had one ride on the Ferris wheel before Mary pressed a paper cone of cotton candy into Rachel’s surprised and delighted hand and told her to wait outside a lamp-lit tent while she ducked behind a curtain to speak to a lady who could predict her future.She’d emerged ten minutes later in a state of euphoria, shoved the last bit of Rachel’s cotton candy into her own mouth and knelt to face her daughter.
Everything’s going to be okay now, she’d said, her tongue stained pink as a rose petal.And I’m going to stick around this time, I promise.
Two days later, she was gone again.
But now she was back.Maybe to stay this time, she said, and Rachel couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not.
“Amen,” Dora said now after finishing her prayer.
“Amen,” Rachel parroted, not having thought two words about the man buried there.She’d never met her grandfather, who died before Rachel was born.To her, he existed only in the aging photographs in brass frames on the living room walls and the fireplace mantel, and in the occasional story her grandmother spun over Sunday dinner or a game of cards on the back porch.He’d drunk himself to death, Mary had told her, but Dora always maintained he’d had some sort of cardiovascular defect.
“It was his heart that killed him,” she said.
Rachel looked up from his headstone to see the minister, Reverend Holland, striding toward them down the nearest path.He raised a slim hand in greeting.He was built like a grasshopper, all long limbs and big eyes in a narrow skull.His black pulpit robe must have cooked him like a Dutch oven in this heat.A white stole embroidered with gold crosses fluttered in the welcome midday breeze.
“I thought I saw you, Miss Mackenzie,” he said, voice projecting to Mary over the headstones, just as it did over the heads of his parishioners in the tiny church.“It has been a while since you’ve joined us.”
CHAPTER 9
EMILY
Early June, 1961
Needing more time to think about Doris’s approval of the Mercer scoop, Emily decided to walk home from work again instead of taking the streetcar.The gears of her mind were turning in a way she’d never experienced.A fuse had been lit in her gut, and she didn’t know what to do other than let the flame burn to its natural combustion.
Because she knew her parents well, she’d decided she would try speaking to her father first, to see whether he’d agree to help her get declared “incorrigible” without Bess’s influence or immediate rejection of Emily’s proposal.If he said yes, then they could talk to her mother, which Emily knew would be a deeply unpleasant conversation.
When dinner was finished, Bess declined Emily’s offer to help with the dishes, which brought a wave of relief as Emily seized her chance and stepped out onto the back porch to sit with her dad.He always nursed a cigarillo and glass of Scotch out there in the evening; rain or shine or the frigid depths of January.
Emily took the rocking chair across from him and let out a sigh just as he exhaled a plume of smoke.They both chuckled.
“You were quiet at dinner.Something’s got your tail,” William said.“What’s it look like?”
Emily scuffed her foot absent-mindedly on the patio.“You know me well, Dad.”
“I do, my girl.”
She considered how to open the conversation.They had never before discussed what Emily might call therealcontent ofChatelaine.She would need to begin there, in order to explain the rest.
“Do you ever readChatelaine?”she asked him.
A smile twitched around his lips as he drew again on the cigarillo.“Mhm.”
“So you’ve seen—”
“Mhm.”
Emily snorted out a laugh as her dad’s dimply smile widened.
“Why do you think I tried so hard to get you a jobthereinstead of one of the papers?”he asked.“Doris Anderson knows what she’s about.She knows why the magazine appeals, including the weightier topics that impact women’s day-to-day lives as much as their need for decorating tips.No disrespect meant to your recent piece,” he said, mouth twitching again.“But I don’t think you will always have to write articles about recipes and the like.The ladies’ stuff.”
Emily’s shoulders relaxed.This might go all right after all.
