“Inmates!”Matron Smith barked from the doorway.“To your posts,now!”Her red face was a fury.
“Come on,” Eliza muttered, scratching at her groin as she heaved up the bucket.“We gotta get going, or we’ll be stuck mucking rat shit out of the boiler room for a week straight.”
CHAPTER 26
RACHEL
July, 1986
“Ugh, I think my ass is numb,” Kimberly groaned from the driver’s seat of her mom’s ’78 Omni.Rachel laughed, shifting her own butt and stretching her legs as the breeze whipped her hair from the open window.
Both girls were home from university for the summer, and were just returning from a long-weekend trip to Toronto.They’d seen Gowan perform at the Forum and eaten their own weight in Korean food—which was difficult to come by in Bayfield.They’d stayed in a cheap twelve-room hotel in Corktown, sharing a double bed with the dresser pushed up against the door, which didn’t lock properly.But the price was right.
They headed home on Monday morning, nursing bloated stomachs and mild hangovers but high on that delicious youthful sense of irresponsibility and self-focus.Rachel was once again working at Two Scoops, which wasn’t glamorous, but bestowed as many hours as she wanted during the four months she had to save for tuition.She could have stayed in Windsor for the summer, maybe gotten a waitressing job with better tips and cute guys at the bar, but she’d have felt guilty not coming home to Dora.And besides, her grandmother didn’t charge her rent, so she could save more than she would have been able to in the city.But the ice cream shop was starting to feel a little juvenile, and she thought next summer she might try for a job at one of the restaurants here.They were flush withtourism cash from June to September when travellers and locals descended on the beaches and the shops along the treed, picturesque Main Street.
They were just outside of town now, and Rachel’s bladder was about to burst from the two large takeout coffees they’d each had to sustain them for the drive.Kim finally turned off the highway onto Main, then drove down to Rachel’s street, which was lined with tall pines that mostly blocked the view of the houses and cottages.
Rachel’s heart sank when she saw the car parked in her driveway, close to the small front porch no one ever used.It was a grey sedan with a rusted back-left wheel well and one door handle that didn’t work.Mary’s old Falcon was long gone, but she’d had this grey sedan for a few years now.
“Whose car?”Kim asked conversationally.
Rachel exhaled.“I have an idea.”
Kim’s head snapped over.“Is she back again?”
“I guess,” Rachel muttered.She’d still not shared much with her friends about her mother’s volatile lifestyle, or her illness, whatever it was.But they knew Mary came home from time to time, saw her in town.And they knew Rachel was always more on edge when Mary was around.
Mary had never shared an actual diagnosis, if she had one, though Rachel didn’t know if a label would make things easier or harder.On the one hand, it might help to put a name to the condition, to read up and try to understand it better (something Dora certainly did not exhibit enough patience or interest to do).On the other, she wondered if someone like Mary might just use a diagnosis as an excuse.It was nearly impossible, as Dora had always said, to sort out what Marycouldn’tdo, and what she simplywouldn’t.How much was genuine illness and how much was just shitty personality?Rachel wanted to have more empathy for her, but it was a struggle.
She hauled her bag out of Kim’s back seat and shut the door, then leaned down and said goodbye.
“Let me know if you need anything, eh?”Kim said, eyes narrowed.
“I will,” Rachel answered.She knew she wouldn’t tell Kim any of what was about to transpire during her mother’s visit, but appreciated the support all the same.
“Movies next week?”
“Sure.Sounds good.”
Kim drove off, leaving Rachel alone with her resentment, her canvas overnight bag resting against the knee of the acid-wash jeans she’d scored on a clearance rack at Honest Ed’s for three bucks after someone sloshed beer on her other ones at the concert.She stood in the laneway for a good five minutes, reluctant to go inside.
It had been a year since Mary’s last visit, when they’d had their faceoff near the cliff and Rachel had implored her to explain herself.Mary had left a week later, after giving Rachel the cold shoulder for days, and Rachel concluded that she was only desirable to her mother when she didn’t ask anything of her.As soon as she touched on anything meaningful or real, Mary threw up that wall of bricks she was so adept at constructing.
Rachel continued to stand in the front yard until there was no point delaying it any further.She trudged toward the house, shaking her head and wishing, for the thousandth time, that things could be different, her family life more stable.And it was, really, when it was just her and Dora.But then Mary would drop into their peace like a transient grenade and blow it all to shit, leaving Rachel and Dora to clean up the pieces.As she pulled open the screen door into the dim, cool front hall, Rachel understood why Dora sometimes shoved the metaphorical broom back at Mary with a bitter sneer, telling her she could damn well clean it up herself.
As the summer wore on, the three Mackenzie women once again navigated the choppy waters of cohabitation.Although she was reluctant to admit it, given the treatment she’d received from Mary during her last stay, Rachel noticed that her mother had in fact retained the more even-keeled nature she’d demonstrated before, when she’d told Rachel she “had her shit together.”Rachel assumed that must translate to being medicated, and she was grateful, at least, that this visit didn’t require her and Dora to play therole of unqualified psychiatric nurses ill-equipped to handle Mary’s extreme depression, her erratic and destructive behaviours.
This time, though, Mary went to church with them every Sunday and stayed afterward to talk to Reverend Holland, who still seemed to express interest in her well-being.Rachel continued to attend every week for Dora’s benefit, but she hadn’t trusted the reverend since he’d tried to pray Mary’s illness away years before.Had she told him she was on medication?What did he make of that?Rachel was sure he thought his prayers were what had finally done the trick.How often religion took the credit for what science had actually accomplished.
As for Mary, Rachel did have to admit that her mother at least mildly contributed to the household now.She’d taken to doing the dishes every night after dinner, standing at the steaming sink in her bare feet, long legs extending down from the cuffs of her tennis shorts.She had a perm now.The bleached curls were piled on top of her head, strangled by a neon-green scrunchie.She’d lost some weight since the last time Rachel had seen her, and her skin was tan and clear.She was into her forties now and looked good, really.Healthy.She’d put on the radio and sing to Def Leppard, Elton John, UB40 as she scrubbed the pots and pans—upbeat, fun stuff she’d never listened to before.And it was all because of her new boyfriend, she said.Kevin, who was (according to Mary) bright and straight-edged and sanguine, had allegedly wrought more improvement in Mary than her own family had been able to in decades of strife and struggle.
“Sometimes it just takes the right person,” Mary told Rachel, smiling so genuinely that it almost made Rachel angry.She resented the implication that she and Dora were “wrong” for Mary, despite being the only two people on earth who were willing to give her one more chance again and again and again.They were the place Mary always came back to when everything was falling apart.
Rachel had been skeptical, given Mary’s lies last time about a non-existent boyfriend, that “Kevin” was real.But Mary had photographic evidence this time, which she pulled out of her beaten-up brown-leather wallet to show Dora and Rachel on the very first night of her visit.
“A friend of ours took this one when we were all down at the CNE last August,” she said.“That wasn’t long after we met, while I was waitressing downtown.”
“Toronto?”
