Chapter 21

The next two years were hard, but they were better too. The garden centre flourished. We were doing extremely well. Tanya married her boyfriend and they moved to the interior after jobs. We replaced her with another university student by the name of Selma. A law student this time. She was very serious and very organized but seemed, for whatever reason, very good at dealing with my and Sheila's quirks and eccentricities.

Evan, true to his word, came by the Friday evening following his return, leaning in the door frame looking pretty devastating in jeans, a blazer and a pair of good brown leather casual shoes. Nice shoes, not too stuffy, but not at all punk now. “So, rumour has it my mum is willing to babysit. There's a Ridley Scott double feature at the Rio tonight. Blade Runner and Legend. What do you say? Will you go with me?”

And I went. Even though I was nervous about leaving Sulamith for a whole four hours. Even though I thought that Legend, with all its unicorns, fairies, and swords, might hit a little too close to home. I went. I knew that it would hurt but I had to try, and I'd come to realize that some things were painful because it meant I was moving past them. Growing, so to speak. I cried walking home from the theatre with Evan that night, hoping that I wasn't weirding him out too much by refusing to explain what had gotten me going, but knowing that if he could handle the fallout from Legend, that he could probably handle a lot.

And he did. He arrived on the doorstep the following Saturday just before lunch. He ate with Sulamith and I, then we walked to the park for a good play. Sulamith adored him and he was wonderful with her. I couldn't help but notice that I didn't get dirty looks from the other mums at the park when Evan was with us. When she was tired we took her home and I put her down for her nap then headed downstairs. Sheila had just returned from the garden centre and Evan appeared to be saying goodbye but then he looked at me and said, “Coming?”

“Yes she's going,” Sheila called down the hall as she bustled to the kitchen. “Sulamith's down for a nap that gives me more than enough time to shower and put my feet up, then I get her to myself for an hour or two. It's fine go,” Sheila encouraged.

But I still wasn't exactly sure where I was going as I slipped my feet into sandals and followed Evan down the front stairs.

“I figure that it would be good if we stayed away from unicorns and swords,” Evan said, opening the passenger door of his car for me then coming around to sit in the driver’s seat. “It's only two-thirty in the afternoon. I figure we can catch a matinee.”

He took me to see Harold and Maude at a little second run in a weird part of town. Despite the grim humour, and bitter sweet ending, I almost died laughing. It had been so long since I had felt like that. Years. Not since Evan had left. We walked along the seawall after the movie and Evan said to me, “It's so good to hear you laugh again.”

We fell into a pattern that wasn't unlike our friendship before, and yet, it was completely unlike those days. No one mistook me for Evan's little sister anymore. I guess I'd grown an inch or two, but it was more than that. Having a baby changed my body and I have contours now where I used to be straight and a little childish, and the grief changed me too. That and simply being older. I still look young but not like I did before. I could see the grief in Evan's face too and sometimes that was hard, but at the same time I knew it meant that on some level he understood me. He was always a gentleman though. He never touched me, like the old days. Which must have seemed strange to onlookers who generally assumed I was his girlfriend, especially if Sulamith was with us. I gradually came to understand why Evan would have held his feelings back from me when I was younger. Many a seventeen year old girl can make herself look twenty-one, but at seventeen the best I could do was not look twelve, otherwise I risked looking like a child prostitute. Evan was more relaxed around me now and I knew that a big part of it was that I looked older, and that I was older. He didn't have to worry anymore that someone would think he was a creep for hanging out with me. I was getting to know him better than I had before as a result. He was a steady person. Quiet and deep. Teaching suited him and he was enjoying the work he was doing. He'd shed the forced social gregariousness that had been left over from his popular days in high school. We didn't talk about the in between years. Not to say that it didn't come up occasionally.

I remember one Sunday afternoon late in September just over a year after Evan had come home. We'd driven out to Crescent Beach in Sheila's car, the four of us. Sulamith had run around like a little hurricane over the sand, her bare little feet prancing, giant smile plastered to her face. I'll never forget her at two. She wasn't terrible. She didn't have tantrums, but she was a force all her own. Keeping up with her was exhausting but the saving grace was that she was so busy that she would wear herself out and then sleep, good, long, and hard. That day she had crashed on the blanket and fallen asleep at around two-thirty in the afternoon. Not too late for a nap. Good timing on the whole. It meant she wouldn't fall asleep in the car on the way home, and I'd have her to bed on time (she was in the process of giving up her naps). I sat next to her on the blanket, smoothing her hair back from her brow and taking in the changes. Her face was looking less and less baby and more like mine each day, with the exception of her eyes, which were getting darker and more fiery, and her hair, which had grown almost to her shoulders in silky molasses curls. I shifted, letting her head down gently off of my lap and onto my bunched up sweater. “I need a walk,” I turned to Sheila knowing that Evan would just as happily stay on the blanket with Sulamith. “Want to come?”

Sheila looked up from her book blankly at me, “What, come where?”

“For a walk.”

“Oh no, this is the first book I've had a chance to pick up since mid-April.” She looked at Evan, “Evan go walk with her, I'm staying right here with my book.”

We walked on wet sand that stretched forever, jean cuffs rolled, feet bare. I remember borrowing Evan's old Commonwealth Games swim team hoodie and rolling the cuffs. It was huge on me. Evan looked back at the blanket that was shrinking in the distance. “Where do you suppose she gets all that energy?” he asked.

I sighed, “I wish I could ask Fionnuala what I was like at that age. It wouldn't surprise me if she got it from Rowan though. He was pretty energetic.”

“I don't know,” Evan said. “I remember you at sixteen. You could be downright hyper. I remember you climbing the cherry tree in the front yard like you had electricity running through you. I still have the picture.”

“Maybe all two-year-olds are like that,” I said.

“Not a chance. By the time I split from Elise the only thing I liked about her was her family. She came from a big French Canadian family, eight older brothers and sisters. She had sixteen nieces and nephews and at the time five of them were two. They were all different. One threw tantrums but was placid the rest of the time. Another was hyper but easy to get along with.”

“It's weird to picture you in that situation, so far away from here,” I said squinting into the sun at him, “married to a lawyer, of all things.”

“Mm . . . It was a part of a different life. I was trying to hide from things that I shouldn't have been hiding from. It was just another distraction in a long stream of distractions,” he looked down and kicked at the sand. “It was difficult for me to adjust to the idea of all that you've been through too,” he said to me.

“A different life,” I mulled the words over knowing that I had expressed the same thought more than once. “Is this a different life now then? Or is it a continuation from before?”

“This?” he looked around for a moment. There was a strange expression in his eyes. Almost happiness. “This is different. Neither of us is the same as we were, whether we're better for it or worse I can't say, but we've both changed in fundamental ways. And now, here we are, both of us, alive. So I suppose this is life. We're certainly not dead.”

I watched his face as he focused on some point out in the distance.

“No. We aren't dead are we,” I said.

He smiled then pointed, “See that abandoned beach ball way out there.”

I nodded.

“I'll race you?”

I smiled. “I bet I can beat you,” I said, then took off.

I heard Evan laugh as his feet pounded the sand behind me.

*

Winter was quiet. Wet, brown and green. The still hours passed and I found myself restless sometimes. Restlessness was alien, a shadow of a memory. It took me a long time to recognize the feeling and realize that it was boredom. I started raiding the book shelf in Evan's old room, picking up stories that I'd read years before. Or I would sit in the living room listening to Sheila's records. Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, The Cockatoo Twins, old Sarah McLachlan. I listened to music again and read stories and felt the strange feelings that came along with them. Other people's feelings. Maybe I would start thinking about my own feelings again someday. For the most part I still had a habit of pushing feelings away like unwanted shadows, but that was getting harder. Sometimes in the evening when the restlessness struck while I was worn out from the day, but not yet ready to sleep, I wouldn't quite know what to do with myself. I would pace as Sheila poured over seed catalogues. Often Evan would have come to the house after he finished teaching for the day and had dinner with us, but on one particular evening he hadn't. Sulamith was fast asleep and I couldn't settle. I found myself walking to the phone, dialling, holding the receiver to my ear thinking, Please pick up, Please . . . It rang once, then a second time. “Hello?”

“Evan?” I didn't usually call Evan.

“Krista? Is everything alright?”

“Um, yeah I just, well I wanted to . . . see you. I mean, are you free? Do you have an hour?”

“Yeah. I'm just leaving the pool.” He was on his cell. “I can swing by and get you if you want. I need some dinner. I guess you've eaten, but do you want to have a coffee or desert with me?”

“That would be great,” I told him feeling a relief that I tried not to let myself register.

*

Somewhere between two and three Sulamith changed from a chubby baby to a trim little pixy. A proper little girl speaking full sentences and driving me crazy with her constant chatter. Sometimes she reminded me of Nimue and sometimes she looked at me with her father's eyes. I don't know exactly what it was she saw back then, but she would put her arms around my neck and say, “Is okay Mummy, is okay,” and I'd hold her like I'd never let her go. She made me smile every day with the pictures she'd paint and all of her little pressed flower projects. And she liked to collect treasures. Pretty stones, snail shells, beach glass, feathers. She had covered every windowsill in the house with them and we could always hear her happy little voice chattering away, forever traipsing after someone, whether it be me Sheila, Evan, Brittany or Selma, asking, “Why?” Sheila gloried in it and it made me glad that it brought her so much happiness.

January days fell by, bringing a miserable February in their wake. Rain and sleet every day. The temperature oscillating from minus one to plus one, so that there was always a layer of melting ice on everything and it was as if life was trying to imitate the weather. My ladies were dying. I know that out of context that doesn't make any sense. What I mean by it is, my ladies at the garden centre. It was Evan who had started calling them that, one day years ago when Mrs. Wong had come in looking for heritage sweet peas.

Tanya, who had been new at the time, was trying to help her, but Evan had said to Tanya, “Oh, that's one of Krista's ladies. Go find her and tell her Mrs. Wong is here.”

Tanya had come in search of me and had announced in her dry dubious tone, “Uh, Evan says one of your 'Ladies' is here, a Mrs. Wong. He said I should find you.”

“I'll be right there,” I'd said, chuckling inwardly as I brushed dirt off my legs and rose from in front of the planter garden I was building.

Later when I'd sent Mrs. Wong happily on her way with six packages of sweet peas, I'd asked Evan, “So they're my ladies are they?”

“Yes. They are,” he'd said smiling, his tone definite. “I've counted seven of them since I got home in May. They're all the same in that they have an old world romantic sensibility, and I think that you appeal to that sensibility. They've been coming to buy plants here as long as I can remember, but ever since you started working here, they wander in looking for you so that they can tell you about their peonies and how lovely they look when it's 'Just a little cloudy.' And you get this dreamy look on your face and sigh happily then say, 'I do love peonies, they're such gentle flowers.'” he imitated, almost but not quite making fun of me. “And then your lady will say, 'Yes! I've always thought that about Peonies.' and smile at you as if they've found a kindred spirit.”

I'd looked at Evan and squinted, “Are you teasing me?” I'd asked him self-consciously.

“No,” He'd smiled gently. “It amuses me, but on the whole I think that it's really sweet.”

But from that day forward, everybody at the garden centre called them 'Kristabell's Ladies' and I'll admit that I always thought they were kind of special. They had all lived through at least one of the world wars and remembered a time that was simpler in its way. They weren't shocked by the fact that I hadn't finished high school, as many of them hadn't either. It wasn't the done thing in their day. I felt quite comfortable around them and rarely felt judged. They would come in and we would talk flowers or vegetables, whatever their preference, (Mrs. Jones liked peonies but the staunch and practical Ms. Ashcroft was a vegetable fanatic.) If I admitted to them that I thought that my garden was the best on a hot afternoon after a hard rain when I could walk the soil barefoot and feel how warm and alive it was they always agreed. For these ladies life was winding down, and gardening was one of the few pleasures they had left as friends and husbands were passing away. Their grandchildren lived busy fast-paced lives, and they liked it that I would slow down and listen.

It was hard when, after a year and a half away, I had come back to find that Mrs. Wong had passed away, (she'd been ninety-five), Mrs. McLeod was in a home for Alzheimer's patients, and Ms. Ashcroft had moved back east to care for her ailing older sister. But my favourite of the ladies, Mrs. Larson, or Audrey as she insisted I call her, was still around. My first day back Sheila had told me, “I hope you don't mind but I called Audrey and let her know that you've come back and that you're starting work today. She told me that she would ask her daughter to bring her in.”

And sure enough at two o'clock that afternoon, as I was dusting shelves and sweeping, with a then only eight month old Sulamith on my back in a carrier, Audrey had arrived. Her arthritis had put her in a wheelchair and her youngest daughter Caroline, who was about Sheila's age, was pushing her along. Even though she was physically diminished, I could see it in her face that she was still the same. Still the sharp, elegant, wistful Audrey I'd known before.

I smiled and walked to meet them and lead them over to a portion of the retail space where there were garden benches and statues. I sat, easing Sulamith off my back and around to my hip then finally settling her on my lap and said to Audrey, once her daughter had her safely parked, “It's so good to see you, how have you been?”

“Stiff, and bored. My hips have decided to revolt. My body has betrayed me,” she smiled ruefully. “My eyes, ears, and mind seem to be staying afloat though.” Audrey had married a Canadian soldier shortly after WWII and come back to Canada with him. She always had an elegant way of speaking even though her English accent was faded. She smiled again. “I suppose I shouldn't complain at my age. I do miss my garden though. But enough about me. Tell me about you and about this charming little creature.” She smiled at Sulamith who had been doing her coy flirty thing; smiling and then burying her face against me. “We all thought you were dead. How did this come to be?”

I sighed. I didn't like telling people what had happened. It had a strange and improbable ring to it and I didn't like the way people looked at me once they knew, even though I left out the parts about Fairies and other worlds. “I wasn't in the house the night of the fire,” I said softly. “I, had to leave. It was to do with my biological parents and it's . . . complicated. The city wasn't safe for me. Someone with some connections in the police faked my death so that it looked like I had died in the fire too. I went someplace far away, and I met someone there.” I was silent as I collected the oomph I would need to say the next part. “He was a soldier . . .”

I didn't get any further. Audrey stopped me, taking my free hand in her soft frail one, “No, I think I know. You needn't say more. It can wait for a quiet afternoon and a cup of tea.” She looked at the smiling bundle in my arms glancing at the tangled botanical design etched into the skin of my right hand as she looked Sulamith over. “Sometimes the best things come from the worst situations.”

The next Sunday afternoon, taking Sulamith with me, I went to the care home that Audrey's daughter had moved her to for tea. It became a regular thing. Once or twice a month I would go, usually bringing some little potted plant with me. Violets, an Elephant Ear Begonia, or some exotic lacy ferns, and Audrey and I would talk. She would tell me about her girlhood in England, her married years in Canada, her children. She had lived a long life, and a good life, full of ups and downs and I found it comforting to hear about those ups and downs and the resiliency of her spirit. She told me about her first child and the tears she'd shed. The baby was stillborn. “I had waited so long to meet him, to look into his eyes and know him, see him grow and become,” she said, and even though I could see that old loss in her eyes there was light there too. “My husband was so kind to me during that time. It was just a year after we'd married. I never would have seen that kindness or the depth of his love for me if I hadn't lost that baby. He was a very reserved man in some ways, but those months that we mourned together are full of precious memories, and I had four healthy babies after that.”

Visits with Audrey were a part of the landscape of my life. Sulamith was used to our trips to the rest home where Audrey lived. She loved all of the attention she got there and I felt good that she had a wide variety of people in her life. Mrs. Jones, Agnes, had moved into the same home. I would drink tea with them, and we often talked flowers or I listened to them reminisce about the past and before I left I would always take their hands in mine and use what magic I could to ease their aches and pains. I did it as I said goodbye, trying to mask it as normal human warmth, but Audrey always squinted at me as if she suspected there was something I wasn't telling her. For two years I did this, but she never questioned me.

Agnes faded first. I brought her Peonies at the end of January. Imported from a hot house of course, but they were her favourites, and the next week when I went in she was gone. “She died in her sleep. Just drifted off,” Audrey told me. “I hope I go like that, no fuss, no waiting around.”

But the damp, cold weather in the middle of cold and flu season was a bad combination. Pneumonia. It was slow and there wasn't anything I could do but make her comfortable. No magic in the world could let her live forever and I could see that she didn't want to. I visited her every day, often seeing her children or grandchildren in passing. Sometimes she was so sleepy that she didn't seem to notice that anyone was there, but one afternoon she was clear and lucid. She looked at me and smiled. “Krista. I was dreaming about you.”

“What did you dream?” I asked.

“That's the irritating part. I can't remember,” she scowled petulantly, but looked me over thoughtfully and sighed. “I'm going to tell you something that I've never told my children, not even my husband knew the whole story, not that there was much to it, but I find myself thinking about it every time I see you lately.”

I nodded. “I'm listening,” I said, and rested my hand on hers.

“Alright,” she said as firmly as an invalid could muster. “When I was seventeen I lived in London with my family in a nice middle class neighbourhood. We had lived on that street for generations. My father was a solicitor. Nice tidy little life. On that street lived another family, and they had a son three years older than me. We grew up together and I think that I was about eleven when I realized that I loved him. It was all very innocent of course, but we knew that it was inevitable. One day we would grow up, fall in love properly, and get married,” she paused. “It never happened. The war came. I stood in front of our house by the wrought iron gate and said goodbye to him. His name was Tom. He was in his R.A.F uniform and he looked very handsome. He took my hand and told me that when the war was over he was going to buy me a ring that glittered, and ask me to marry him. He gave me a little nosegay of violets. His words still ring in my ears, 'Will you wait for me?' I told him 'yes'.” She stopped and looked out into an imaginary distance or the invisible past. “My sister and I were sent out to family in the country during The Blitz. I received a few letters from him but after a time I had no word. The war ended and I went back to London. All that remained of our house was the wrought iron gate. It had been bombed. I stood next to my mother and sister and stared and stared. I could hear crying and I looked down the street to Tom's house. His mother was standing in front of their gate holding an envelope.” Audrey shook her head. “His plane was shot down. The world we had known as children was gone. I had to figure out what to do with my life. All because some lunatic wanted a war.” Audrey was struck by a feeble coughing fit. “There. I've said it. Now someone will remember that I loved him, after I'm gone.”

She stopped speaking and her eyes closed.

*

The next day I was in the greenhouse with Brittany and Sulamith, cleaning. It was a job that took about a week. Cleaning under trays, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, scraping hardened-on dirt off of display shelves and tables. Exhausting, but in a good way. “Krista?” I heard Sheila's voice call from the doorway. I looked up and she motioned to me. I walked down to the end of the greenhouse towards her. “Caroline Larson is here. She's in the office waiting.” Sheila looked at me with concern because we both knew that there was only one reason why Caroline would come mid-afternoon like that and ask to see me in private. I opened the office door and she looked up. Her eyes were red but she gave me a wan smile, “I guess you know why I'm here.”

I nodded.

“She passed away late last night. I was with her.” Caroline looked down at a small box in her lap, “She wanted you to have these things. I'm not sure what's in it, she tied it up a few weeks ago and asked me to set it aside for you, and last night in a moment of lucidity she asked me to write something down and give it to you. It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm sure she meant something by it.”

Caroline gave me the box and the envelope and said goodbye, leaving me to my thoughts.

*

That night I sat alone in the living room with the box and the envelope still unopened, puzzling over why Audrey had left her story with me. Or maybe not so much puzzling—I knew why—as trying to push it away, and puzzling over how to do that. But I couldn't. Try as I might, I couldn't push it away. I reached out and opened the envelope. On the botanically themed stationary was written;

Krista,

Don't forget the love you've had. Just because it's gone doesn't mean it's not precious. But don't ignore the love that looks you in the face every day. I know you're a smart girl. Stop fooling yourself.

Your Everlasting Friend,

Audrey

P.S. I always knew there were fairies at the bottom of the garden.”

I opened the box and carefully emptied the contents onto the coffee table. Letters. Very old. Hand written. Four of them. A photograph of a young girl and an older boy on a garden swing, and an old gardening manual from the late nineteen forties. Some old-fashioned handkerchiefs with A.L. embroidered on them, and her watch. I ignored the watch and flipped through the gardening manual, being gentle with the old paper. I couldn't help but imagine her flipping through it on a rainy Vancouver winter day, dreaming about gladiolas. On the inside of the front cover was written, “Flowers for your birthday, Love Paul, Dec. 4 1948.”

Paul was her husband. I fingered the neat masculine writing then closed the book and picked up the letters. I slid the first one out of its envelope.

Audrey,

I don't have much time to write but wanted to send you a note to let you know I'm doing well while I had the chance. When I think of you it's like I'm home. I keep your picture with me always. Will write longer next time.

Love, Tom

I opened the next one.

Audrey,

Wish I were with you. Your memory is like a light in my dark heart. I hate thinking of home being bombed when I'm high in the sky dropping bombs on other people's homes. Every time I think of Dresden I choke on my tears. I don't want to write to you like this, but you're the only person I know who understands me.

I love you, Tom

That last one must have escaped the sensors. I thought, as I slipped it into its envelope. And picked up the third of the four letters.

Audrey,

I bought a ring today and I wanted to surprise you but I'm just too happy to wait. It has a ruby at its centre and two little diamonds on either side and every time I picture it on your pretty hand I feel like I'm going to burst into song which would be extremely unfortunate for those within hearing range. Will keep it next to my heart until I can put it on your hand myself.

Love you always, Tom

I brushed angrily at the tears on my cheeks and reached for the last envelope. It was different and had no post mark but instead across the envelope, in a different hand, was written:

To the girl with the sad eyes,

I see you from my hospital bed every day. I'm lucky to have a bed by the window. There are all kinds of things to see. The chap I share a room with is blind now, so I suppose I'm lucky about that too. But that's beside the point. I know how irregular this is, and I know that were I up and able, I probably wouldn't have the courage to run after you and ask you what's wrong. I'm shy that way, but seen as this is the second week in a row that I've watched you pass each morning, and seen as how I'm going to have to ask the nurse to run after you with this letter, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I wish that I knew how to make you smile because you look like your heart is broken and it makes me wish I could fix it. I wish I could leave flowers on the side walk for you so that I could look out my window and see you smile, because I bet you've got the prettiest smile in the world.

Paul Larson, Room 401.

I was sitting on the floor with my back against the chesterfield and my knees pulled up. I slid the letter back into the envelope and put it back in the box with the book and the other letters, then my fingers hovered hesitantly over the watch. I sighed and then picked it up. It was Audrey's watch. That was all. It was a ladies watch. The kind you pin to your shirt. It wasn't fancy, maybe an inch across, sterling silver with some minimal scroll work. The portion with the pin was likewise simple and no fuss with just a little scroll work. It was quite old. Wind up, no battery. I'd seen Audrey wear it so many times. I ran my fingers over the case, finding the little notch to flip it open and gently lifted the cover. There was the ivory watch face. Small but practical. Simple and easy to read. And then there on the inside of the lid, was a little glass piece, and underneath that was a violet. It was old and faded, but unmistakably a violet. I summoned up a little magic and watched as the colour bloomed in the old petals under the glass. I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was late but not that late. I wound the watch and set it.

I knew what Audrey was telling me and I won't pretend that her death didn't send me into a tailspin of confusion, because how could I live with Rowan's memory every day? And if I admitted to myself that Evan was much more than a friend to me, what did I do then? What if it didn't work out? She'd been through as much hardship as me and yet, she had been whole, and at peace at the end, but maybe I wasn't that brave? Maybe I wasn't as strong? Memories and feelings pushed and shoved at me and I covered my face in a vain attempt to hide from them. I got up off the floor, went to the phone and dialled Evan's number, scolding myself for needing him even as I kicked myself for not talking about this with Audrey while she was still alive. Then Evan picked up.

“Evan? Are you sleeping?”

“No I'm up. What's going on?”

“Audrey died last night.”

“Oh, Krista. Why didn't you tell me at dinner?”

“I haven't told Sulamith yet,” I started sniffling as my voice grew thick. “I'm not sure what to tell her. I'll tell her tomorrow I guess . . . I just . . . I don't know.”

“Look, I'm grabbing my keys right now. I'll be over in five. We'll go out. It's Friday night. I don't need to be coherent tomorrow. We can just drive around all night or whatever.”

“Okay . . . Evan?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”