Rachel followed her through the screen door, which slammed with a clap behind them as they made their way down the porch stairs.Rachel loved just sitting back here, reading a thriller as she listened to the leaves sigh overhead, her nostrils filled with the scent of Dora’s lavender and mint.
She made her way toward her favourite Muskoka chair, but her mother beckoned her, walking toward the cliff edge.
“Come sit with me.”
She sat down and patted the ground beside her, right there on the edge of the bluffs where Rachel had seen her sit so often before—including that time when she was out swimming in the lake—dangling her legs off the side.
Rachel’s stomach swooped.“Gran doesn’t let me—”
“Oh Jesus Christ, Rachel,” her mother said with an aggravated sigh.“She doesn’townyou.Come sit.Live a little.”
Rachel hesitated, glanced back at the house, at the deep covered porch and butter-yellow screen-door frame, the bedroom windows along the back, their heavy curtains pulled shut to ward off the summer heat that accumulated like thick fog as soon as the sun crossed over its midpoint to the west.The house always had such an empty air about it when Dora was out, as though it shut down in the absence of its mistress.
Rachel turned away from it, guilt tingling in her extremities, then settled near her mother on the rough carpet of dry grass and weeds.It itched the backs of her thighs, uncomfortable and nagging.She slowly extended her legs out and let her ankles and calves rest over the edge, planting her hands firmly on either side of her for stability.She was a good foot back from where her mother was, though, perched with her thin butt flirting six inches from the face of death.
Rachel adjusted her sunglasses in the glare of the afternoon.The breeze blew in from the water, fluttering her hair.She watched her mother from her vantage point a little behind.At the roots, her mom’s natural brown hair had more streaks of red in it than Rachel’s dark locks did, but the rest was growing out a brassy shade of gold highlights.She often had some sort of lightening in her hair, depending on which mood had struck when she walked into the drugstore and reached for the box.Sometimes the dye came with a side of bleach.She was always fighting against the dark parts of herself.Sometimes more successfully than others.
“You’re an adult, you’re allowed to do what you want, Rachel,” she said.“You don’t have to stay here with her anymore, or play by her rules.”
“Well, I’m not staying here, I’m going to school in Windsor.You know that.But also—” Rachel looked back at the wooden arbour, the green rose leaves beginning to climb their way up.They’d been in full yellow bloom a week ago.She’d planted them herself, the previous year.Their roots had taken hold.“I don’t really want to leave.Not permanently.I like it here, well enough, until I find somewhere I like better.I don’tknow yet.Windsor is three hours away, though.I can drive home on weekends and stuff.”
“Well, what if we lived together?I could get a job there.”
Rachel was silent for a moment, shocked at the suggestion.“What about your boyfriend?”she finally managed, perplexed.
Her mother shifted where she sat, raked her fingers through the grass beside her.
“He’s nothing.I can break it off with him.You’re more important.”
She bit down on the inside of her cheek, the one Rachel could see.Her mother wasn’t making eye contact with her.She was lying, Rachel realized.There was no boyfriend.She exhaled deeply, sighing out her frustration, her anger at being lied to by Mary—yet again.
“Since when?”
Silence.
“What about your house?”Rachel pressed.
Mary shrugged.
Rachel waited, searching for the real reason why her mother was proposing this.
“I’m really trying here, Rachel,” Mary said finally.“Things have kept us apart for so long, and I’d like to be more a part of your life.”
Rachel was savvy enough to note how her mother externalized the blame, as she always did.Everything that went wrong was someone else’s fault.
Things have kept us apart.
“Thingshaven’t kept us apart, Mom,” Rachel said.“Youhave.”
“Your grandmother isn’t the saint you think she is,” Mary spat back.
“What do you mean?”
“She poisoned me to end a pregnancy.Did you know that?”
Rachel’s breath suspended.
“That time in the shower,” Mary said, her voice a gleaming dagger, intent on harm.“You must remember that.I told her I was pregnant and she gave me some shit in a tea she said would calm me down and I miscarried the next day.I know she did it.”
