A Brother's Duty

Lucy hauled herself out of the Excel, grateful that it was only a short drive back to the trailer. She should have gone to the washroom before she left work but it had been a long day and she just wanted to be home.

  Bruno came to greet her and sniffed hopefully at the large paper bag Mrs. Samuels had pressed on her as she left. “That’s my supper, greedy guts. You’ll get some yummy kibble as soon as I get my shoes off.” She scratched the dog’s head, marched quickly to the door and rushed to the washroom.

  Bruno sat patiently in front of the built in sofa, staring at the dog food barrel. His tail thumped hopefully on the floor.

  “Yes, Bruno, I didn’t forget you.” Lucy slipped off her sensible waitress shoes and wriggled her toes as she allowed herself to feel the painful pleasure of her feet swelling with relief. “Ah, that feels better.” She slipped on a pair of garden shoes and started to measure dog food into Bruno’s dish. Bruno waited for Lucy to put the dish down on the floor next to the shower and move out of his way. He paused briefly to give her hand a lick as he squeezed past her and settled down to eat.

  Lucy turned on the radio then opened the bag to see what she’d been given. There was a roll, two containers that might be soup and a covered takeout tray and maybe another layer. She smiled at Mrs. Samuels’ generosity. “Maybe if I practice I’ll be able to call her Jessica.”

  Bruno’s tail thumped on the floor and he looked back to see if Lucy was talking to him. She pointedly ignored him as she took a plate and two bowls from the cupboard.

  The first covered bowl was the leek and potato soup she’d been craving all evening. She tested it with a spoon and decided it needed reheating and a pat of butter or two. She spooned half into a microwave safe bowl and set the container aside.

  The second covered bowl was fruit salad with extra strawberries. She set it on the tiny counter for later. The first takeout tray contained roast chicken slices and rice with shredded carrots. Under the first tray was a second that contained a Greek salad and in the corner of the bag were the individual serving packs of butter she’d hoped to find.

  “Thank you, Jessica.” She put two pats of butter onto the soup and put it into the microwave to heat while she put half of the salad onto her plate and dug in. After about the tenth bite her hunger began to subside and she looked around the trailer. It was the right size for her and Bruno but she again wondered when she’d have to move out. At some point she’d have a hard time managing to sit at the dinette with a big round belly and the shower might not be large enough either. She promised herself she would start looking for an apartment in September.

  Bruno heard her sigh and stood up. His bowl was empty, almost, and he scattered the few remaining pieces of kibble when he picked up his bowl in his mouth. When his hopeful look didn’t produce any more food, he dropped the bowl by the bin next to the sofa and settled down in front of the kitchen sink so he could watch her eat the good stuff with mournful eyes.

  “Fat chance, dog.” Lucy finished the salad and turned to stand up. With Bruno finished his supper, she could close the bathroom door and put the leftovers into the refrigerator.

  She retrieved her soup and set the chicken and rice to reheat. The soup tasted as good as it smelled. She didn’t usually go for rich soups but this was exactly what she needed. Good comfort food with a high dairy content. She pondered Jessica’s words from break about needing to learn how to accept help and how she might be helping others by accepting.

  “Am I keeping people away on purpose, Bruno?”

  Bruno rose and put his head on her lap. “Mrs. Samuels, I mean Jessica, says that I need to learn to accept help. Do you agree?”

  Bruno nudged her hand, asking to be scratched. She stroked his big bony head idly while she thought about the last fight she’d had with her mother before she moved back to eastern Ontario.

  “Well, you can’t live with me.” Her mother had stared her in the eye. “I’d lose credibility if you did.”

  Her mother was a semi-retired obstetrician who worked at an abortion clinic in Edmonton. She’d ordered Lucy to terminate the pregnancy and went on to quote boatloads of statistics about how deprived children of single mothers are; completely unfazed by the fact that Lucy was such a child.

  Lucy had been tempted to terminate the pregnancy, especially after she’d gotten Nick’s letter. But it felt wrong. There was a rhythm to life, to the cycle of birth and death and renewal. Babies weren’t possessions to be tossed away if they weren’t perfect or unplanned or inconvenient. Terminating a pregnancy was just plain wrong.

  She snorted. From everything she’d read and from the pregnancy so far babies were anything but convenient. But that it was her mother who was coldly telling her that she should terminate her possibly only grandchild that was the last straw. The years of nannies and broken promises because of her mother’s patients and lame day camps over Christmas holidays had been almost forgiven up until then.

  Her mother was an obstetrician. Lucy had witnessed babies being born several times when her mother’s pager went off in the middle of a shopping trip and she couldn’t be dropped off at home first. The duty nurses at the maternity unit were like a group of extra aunts for most of her growing up. Babies were precious miracles to be treasured.

  Tears started to fill her eyes. She’d never been her mother’s first priority. Patients always came first. While there was some logic to it, there were other obstetricians who could have covered for her for special occasions like she did for them. The last birthday party she’d planned was the worst. It still rankled that her mother would have the nanny turn her friends away because a patient was having a difficult birth and she couldn’t be home to play hostess. So after a very lonely twelfth birthday, with only a dour faced older woman for company, she decided that she wouldn’t ask her mother for anything anymore.

  The tears came faster as she finally realized that her mother had never noticed. That when she’d gone home seeking her mother’s support after being let go from the doctoral program the old fights about her piercings and quitting pre-med resurfaced to the point she couldn’t stay at her mother’s because of all of the snide comments. Then when she told her mother six months later that she was pregnant she’d been treated like any other single mother she counselled. Worse, even, because when Lucy announced she was keeping the baby her mother’s total disappointment was evident. And it wasn’t because Lucy would be a single mother or need the financial support that she could easily afford. It was because her mother was worried about her precious reputation. Then she told Lucy she could stay with her for a few weeks while she found another apartment if she had to get away from her druggie roommate but she’d have to be out of the house by the time she was showing. So she’d packed her meager belongings and Bruno and came back east.

  “Well, I don’t need her, either.” Lucy dried her tears before putting her empty bowl in the sink and taking the entrée out of the microwave. As she methodically ate she continued to think about her mother and her lack of support. An image of John MacLeish’s earnest, if disapproving, face came to mind. A quiet voice that sounded like Jessica’s said, But you need someone. Don’t try to do this all on your own.

  She looked out the big window over the sofa to see a small flock of skittish goldfinches gathered at the feeders in the late evening sunshine. She smiled as the sight of the bright yellow males brought back memories of her late grandfather. He’d known how driven and self-centered his obstetrician daughter had been and had taken care of Lucy every summer after her father had died until she hit high school when stayed with him year round.

  He’d loved this piece of land and taught her how to love it too. This was her special place, her retreat from the world, because of him. Her mother had sold the Alta Vista bungalow as soon as it was hers, but Lucy had been given the greater treasure, the old family farmstead.

  The 300 acres were all hers but she didn’t really want to rebuild the old house near the main road. The Eldritch homestead had burnt to the ground in
1943, leaving only two stone chimneys standing on a rise. The barns had long since collapsed or been salvaged. Until 1955, her great-grandfather had rented the arable fields to a neighbour, but when her great-grandfather passed away there was a fight over the farm which her grandfather settled by buying out his siblings.

  Her grandfather had gradually turned the clearing near the swimming hole into his weekend retreat eventually bringing in a used trailer to replace a rustic cabin the year before he passed away, but his scientific habits and curiosity wouldn’t let him actually rest while he was here. Beginning in 1957, he filled two or more notebooks per year with observations of plants and animals, documenting the change from marginally productive farm fields to its current second growth forest characteristics along with swampy meadows and incipient bogs. Those notebooks, augmented with Lucy’s own observations from the past ten years, had provided the foundational data for her thesis.

  But that dream was gone. And despite the long hours she spent at the job at the diner, this still felt more like summer vacation than anything else. But come September, she would need to make some changes.

  She finished her supper and cleaned up. There was usually something decent on TV on a Sunday night. She flipped the channel around the five choices, stopping at Masterpiece Theatre on PBS from upstate New York rather than the concert special on Global.

  She settled onto the sofa and felt something different. Something wasn’t right. She wiggled but it still didn’t make sense. The she realized that her feet were too high. “That’s strange, Bruno. It feels like the trailer is actually level.”

  Bruno raised an eyebrow at her from his position in front of the dinette and gave two desultory thumps of his tail on the bathroom floor.

  She put her head on the other end of the sofa. It felt the same as the other way around but it was a much better angle for the TV. “It is level.” Suddenly suspicious, she got up, slipped on her garden shoes and trotted around to the other side of the trailer with Bruno ranging around to mark his favourite trees.

  In the waning light she noticed that the jack screw was shining with oil. She frowned. She asked, “Bruno, was the maintenance fairy here while I was gone?”

  Bruno lifted his head to listen but continued his patrol, marking his territory as he went.

  She looked again and realized that someone had stowed her ladder under the trailer. The corner of the tarp was lifted again. Wearily, she looked at the ladder and decided that she didn’t have the energy to investigate.

  She walked back to the porch and saw the flash of yellow note paper tucked into the lawn chair. Her suspicions were confirmed as she read the note. A flare of anger came up. “I said I didn’t want his help.”

  Her conscience intervened. That wasn’t what she’d told him. She said she didn’t want to be an obligation. She’d had enough begrudged help with strings attached from her mother. But Jessica’s words about accepting help came back to her.

  Sighing she fished her cell phone out of her bag and called the number on his business card. It rang eight times before the answering machine kicked in. She briefly wondered what he was doing out so late on a Sunday evening. She left a message telling him she would call back tomorrow.

  Wondering what they’d talk about, she shrugged and began to get ready for bed.

  The red light was blinking on his work cell phone when he got back to the truck. He’d taken advantage of Lucinda’s proximity to Perth to have supper at one of his favourite restaurants. He’d restored an old stone farmhouse near Merrickville for the owner’s son two years earlier. The owner and his wife sat with him after he’d finished his supper, talking in general terms about a facelift and expansion of the restaurant now that the main floor tenant in the other half of the heritage stone block was moving to larger premises. He somehow knew that he’d be picked for the job if they got the financing.

  He used the hands free controller on the steering wheel to retrieve his voice mail as he drove home. There were eight messages: two from current clients, one from a telemarketing robot, three from potential new customers, and a long-winded rambling message from Pastor Jack letting him know that his volunteers would be at the church at nine tomorrow morning. The last message was from a weary and brittle sounding Lucinda Wilkinson.

  “Thank you for your help today. I’ll give you a call tomorrow around five.” The words sounded like they’d taken a lot of effort for her to say. But she had called and she’d thanked him. But she hadn’t left him a number. He pulled over to the side of the road and hit the 5 key to get the information about the call and copied down her telephone number. “265 exchange. Must be a cell phone,” he muttered as he hung up the phone.

  Smudge came running as he entered by the kitchen door, meowing loudly. John crouched down to pet her and she leaped into his arms and began purring and marking his nose with her chin.

  “So you smell the dog and want to reclaim me? Or did I spill some turkey gravy?” John stood up with the tiny tortoiseshell cat held in one arm. He looked around the kitchen and almost laughed when he saw the dead mouse on his place mat at the kitchen table. “Still trying to change my diet, Smudge?”

  Smudge responded by settling into the crook of his arm and purring more loudly. John took a can of cat food from the cupboard. Smudge took great interest in the can but remained content to be cuddled.

  “You’re going to make me do this the hard way, aren’t you, Miss Cat?”

  Smudge chattered in response but started to knead his arm.

  “No claws on my bare arm.” He found one of the ancient garage sale bowls he used to feed Smudge and put it onto the counter next to the cat food.

  Smudge purred and continued kneading his forearm.

  John popped the lid with his free hand and Smudge jumped onto the counter, meowing her impatience.

  “I thought that would get your attention.” He dumped the food into the bowl and put it down in her corner then filled the water bowl.

  While she was occupied, John got out a rubber glove, paper towels and disinfectant to dispose of the mouse and wash the table.

  After he put everything away, he passed his big scheduling calendar near the pantry cupboards on his way to gather his laundry to put away. He wouldn’t have had supper with Reenie next Saturday in any case. The Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra would be performing selections from Vivaldi at First Baptist in Ottawa. Recently, he’d been to see the National Arts Centre Orchestra perform a concert of primarily baroque music, including Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but a full orchestra was somehow too lush, too loud. The chamber orchestra was just the right size for baroque music and First Baptist was an incredibly live space.

  What was he going to tell Reenie about finding a date? He’d taken a few women to the Chamber Festival with him but most of them didn’t find it that entertaining. Or if they did, they didn’t approve of how he made his living. His last date actually said that if he was an architect rather than a general contractor and mason she’d be happy to see where things went. He shook his head because he made far more money as a general contractor than any architect he worked with.

  He thought about the various single women he knew that Irene might consider as real dates. There were three divorced single moms at church but he wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of dealing with ex-husbands and the kind of recurring hurt that the children could experience as they were caught in between their parents, although Mindy was a very nice, kind woman with a very absentee ex-husband.

  There were two single professional women who’d expressed an interest in him, but he knew from talking with them that they weren’t ready to start a family in the short term and he was. He gathered his laundry from the dryer and took it upstairs to fold.

  There was also the new real estate agent who’d been tiptoeing around her interest in him. She was new to the area, the youngest daughter of an older couple from church who’d recently retired to the area. She was very pretty and, according to her parents, a regular atte
ndee at a megachurch in Ottawa but she seemed, well, unfinished. And she was in her early twenties, so there would be enough of a difference in age to make him uncomfortable.

  He thought of taking Lucinda and discarded the notion. He still couldn’t see his way past her lip ring but immediately felt guilty that he couldn’t.

  Smudge chattered at his feet before jumping into the middle of the pile of towels. John immediately picked up the pile and gently encouraged his chatty cat to climb onto his shoulder. She purred in his ear as he walked across the hall to put the towels in the linen closet.

  “Have you got any suggestions for a date, Smudge?”

  Smudge marked his ear with her chin, a fang catching on his earlobe.

  “I see. You don’t have any ideas either. Too bad.”

  He folded the white tee shirts and balled his work socks before putting everything away. “Well, that’s the whites load done.”

  Smudge jumped off his shoulder onto the bed and circled around trying to find the perfect resting place. He looked at the laundry basket and almost laughed. He’d always been the neatest one of the three of them. Rob used to laugh at him for waiting until he had a full load of towels and whites before running a load.

  He sat wearily on the end of the bed. He’d give his right arm for Rob to walk through the door and tease him about his orderly ways and his old fashioned religious values.

  But he’d seen the battered remnants of Rob’s body at the morgue in Toronto before the cremation despite the insistence of the unit chaplain that it would be too gruesome. At the memorial service he’d listened via Skype to too many of Rob’s buddies tell stories about what a fine soldier he was, what a loyal friend he was, what a good man he was.

  John was tempted to take the walk down the hall and around the corner to Rob’s bedroom and make another attempt at packing up his older brother’s relics. He knew he’d have to deal with it soon. There was a big weight, a spiritual weight, to having the room set up as though he’d be returning home at any moment.

  He put his head down and began to pray. “Dear Lord, I know that you are the beginning and the end and that you are outside of time. For me, Rob is gone but for you he is still here. Please send your Holy Spirit to Rob to convict him and have him find faith in you before his time is done.”

  “As for me, Lord, I know I’m prone to perfectionism and being too critical of my neighbours. Help me to know when I should judge and when I shouldn’t – who I should judge and who I shouldn’t. Help me to accept the imperfect as you have done and to see beyond the surface, as you do.”

  “Finally, Lord, grant me the strength to deal with Lucinda Wilkinson with respect so I can fulfill my brother’s last request. Help me to look at her as you do, as your child made in your perfect image. Amen.”

  Gathering his sleep shorts and the one clean towel he didn’t fold, he headed for the shower to wash away the grime and sweat of the day.

  Chapter 6