Kin (34 page)

“I'm an investor. That's why I was interested in your grandfather's business. I'd like to get in on the ground floor of one of his companies. It's always smart to learn from the best.”

“I'll have to introduce you to him.”

He reached out to touch her hand. “Tomorrow?”

She was taken aback. “I don't think tomorrow, but I can ask him.”

“Oh yes, babe. You're the best.” He kissed her palm and then put her pinky finger in his mouth and sucked on it.

She pulled her hand back. “Not here!”

“Speaking of family, when am I going to meet your parents?”

“My father lives away and my mother is out a lot.”

“That's too bad. I was hoping to meet your father. There's something I might want to ask him.”

Colleen felt her cheeks get hot. If she didn't know any better, Artie was going to propose to her! She'd be like her sister, properly married with a home of her own. Artie was smart and ambitious and it was obvious he adored her. He never took his hands off her. She felt sexy for the first time in her life. He always said he loved her when they were doing it.

“Do you have any family?”

“My parents are dead and I'm an only child.”

“That must be terrible.”

“It's lonely, which is why I want to spend every minute with you.”

Colleen called her grandfather and asked him if he'd meet Artie. He agreed and set a date for him to come to his office in a week.

“Not sooner?” Artie looked disappointed.

They were at the mall in the food court, eating fries. “There are people who have to wait months to see my grandfather, and they own companies. He's doing me a big favour.”

“I suppose.”

“Geez, don't thank me or anything.”

The day of Artie's meeting with her grandfather came and went. She didn't hear from him, even though she waited all day. That wasn't like him and she got worried. She called but he didn't answer, and since she didn't know where he lived, she was stuck. It was ridiculous that she didn't know where Artie lived after all this time, and she intended to remedy that as soon as possible.

That night her mother asked to speak to her in the living room.

“Why am I being summoned in my own house?” She plunked down on the sofa and put her feet up.

“Your grandfather called me.”

Colleen sat back up. “He did?”

“Apparently he met a friend of yours today, an Arthur Brown. I believe he's the one you met at Frankie's wedding. I didn't realize you were so close.”

“We're dating, that's all. What did Grandfather say?” Her mother hesitated, which made Colleen nervous. “Artie hasn't called me. Did Grandfather say something to him?”

“I don't think he was very impressed with him.”

Colleen stood up. “I don't care if he's not impressed with him. I am. So I guess that means he's not going to help him get ahead. All he wanted was a chance to try and learn from him, which I think is admirable.”

“I'm just telling you what your grandfather said. He's worried that Artie is a little too fascinated with money.”

Colleen couldn't stay still. She walked around the living room like it was a boxing ring. “Who's more fascinated with money than Grandfather? Since when is liking money a bad thing? That should be the Hanover family motto…
Your money or your life
!”

Her mother was surprisingly quiet. She looked almost uncomfortable.

That's when it hit Colleen. “You think he likes me for my family's money? Is that it? That there's no way on earth anyone would love me?”

Mom stood up and shouted at her. “That's not true, Colleen. Stop putting words in my mouth. Of course someone is going to love you someday, but Dad is a bit worried that it seemed to be the only thing on Artie's mind. Your grandfather wanted to hear him say something about you, but he didn't, and he found that odd. He phoned because he was concerned. He loves you, Colleen, and he doesn't want anyone hurting you.”

“I've got to get out of here.” Colleen went into her room and got a poncho before she left the apartment. She stared at the ground as she walked down the sidewalk. Everything smelled musty and rotten, with the decay of leaves accumulating in the gutters. It was wet and dreary out. It matched her mood. Before she realized it, she was in front of Frankie and Edward's apartment. Her hands were cold, so she pressed the buzzer. The speaker crackled.

“Yes?”

“It's me. The loser in the family.”

Frankie buzzed her up. They lived on the third floor, and there was no elevator. Talk about dumb. Frankie had left the door open slightly, so Colleen walked in, kicked off her shoes, and headed for the kitchen, but Frankie said, “I'm in the living room.”

Colleen followed her voice. Her sister was curled up on the couch with a blanket over her. She didn't look that great.

“Where's Edward?”

“I've sent him for supplies.”

“You look like shit.”

“That's what happens when you're going to be a mother.”

Colleen jumped right out of her chair. “Get out! Already?”

“These things can happen on your honeymoon.”

“Am I the first to know?”

“Yep.”

That made Colleen feel important. “I'm going to be an aunt!”

“You can be my kid's crazy Aunt Annie.”

“I'll do my best. Wow. I'm really happy for you both.” She sat back down next to her sister and gave her a hug.

Frankie said, “I hope it's a girl. I can't wait to dress her up!”

“What if it's a boy?”

“Boys are great, but I'd like a daughter.”

“Good luck with that. When are you going to tell Mom?”

“Edward's parents are out of the country at the moment. We'll let everyone know when they get back. Why are you out and about?”

“Everyone is shitting on my boyfriend.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Why is everyone so surprised to hear that? Am I that hideous?”

Frankie rolled her eyes. “Knock it off. I'm surprised because you never said anything. Most people talk about their boyfriends.”

That was true. Why didn't she talk about Artie?

When Colleen got home her mother was gone, no doubt with Derek. She had a boyfriend that Colleen didn't like very much. Talk about a double standard.

Just as she was getting ready for bed, the phone rang, and it was Artie. He sounded drunk and asked her to come and get him, which she did. She even got to see where he lived, which was pretty run down. She helped him onto his sofa and he pulled her down too. He was maudlin.

“I don't think your grandfather liked me.”

“Never mind about him.”

“All I wanted was an in.”

He got one. A week later Colleen found out she was pregnant.

There was really only one thing that Colleen remembered from before she walked down the aisle. Her mother took her aside as they were leaving for the church. “The photographer said if you lost thirty pounds, you could be a model.”

Her wedding had a different atmosphere, as it was a hurried affair and much smaller because of Artie's lack of relatives. Dad did all the things he'd done with Frankie, even if his face wore an anxious expression, and he seemed to hug her a lot. Her mother cried and so did her sister.

The only thing she remembered about her wedding night was that Arthur got so drunk he passed out.

Her mother rented them an apartment in her building, which Colleen didn't agree with, but Artie was thrilled. He made a list of what they needed and gave it to her. “That's for your mother.”

Colleen looked at it. “You expect my mother to pay for all this stuff? Isn't that what the husband usually does?”

“I have to find a job first. Does she expect us to live on air? Your paycheque won't even keep us in groceries.”

“What about your investments?”

“You should ask your grandfather again if he can get me a job. Louis Hanover's great-grandson needs to be looked after.”

He got the job and he got the furnishings, because every time her mother came down to the apartment she looked distressed about what they didn't have, and more would show up a few days later. Her dad would come to town and ask her for lunch, quizzing her on married life and how she was feeling and how she was doing and if she needed anything.

The only thing she needed was to be loved, but Artie wasn't as affectionate as he used to be. Now the sex was over in five minutes. He said he was fast for her sake, because they had to be careful about the baby. Then he said it was because she was getting too fat.

As time went by, Colleen occupied herself with making the nursery as nice as possible. She and her sister would go shopping and they both said how much fun it would be to have the babies grow up together. They were expecting within a month of each other, and Colleen felt very close to her sister. It was the first time they'd had anything in common.

When Colleen was fourteen weeks along, she fell down the stairwell on her way to her mother's apartment, and Kay found her an hour later, unconscious and bleeding. At the hospital they told her the baby was dead and she'd have to have a D and C. She didn't know what that was. All she remembered before she went under were the masked nurses putting her legs in big slings that were hanging from the ceiling.

When she finally crawled up to the surface of her conscious mind, she cried for her baby. The doctor told her that something had gone wrong during the procedure and she was bleeding so badly they had had to take her uterus. She couldn't have any more children. She cried even harder.

Once she got home, the first thing Artie did was give her a black eye.

“You stupid bitch. Any idiot can push out a kid and you go and fuck it up. That's it for my bloodline joining the Hanovers. You're useless. I want a divorce and I expect to be well compensated.”

When Frankie and Edward's son Mark was born that winter, Colleen was in Aunt Annie's old room in Glace Bay. Her grandmother made her nice things to eat and her dad said they were thrilled that she wanted to live with them.

Artie was long gone, his cheque in hand, with a warning to stay away from Colleen.

His parting shot: “My pleasure.”

David was very worried about Colleen. It had been more than a year since she'd moved in with him and his mother, and unfortunately the news that Frankie was pregnant again had worsened her mood. At the ripe old age of twenty-four, Colleen didn't have a job, the thirty pounds she'd lost had come back, and she spent most of her time watching television in her room.

At first David did mollycoddle her; he felt terrible about what had happened. But with no one expecting anything from her, she wasn't trying to move on at all. He wasn't sure how to proceed. Kay thought he should talk to Henry.

Henry's advice was just common sense: get her outside and active. Get her interested in something else. And if none of that worked, then maybe it was time to see a doctor about depression. This time of year was difficult anyway, since Cape Breton winters always seemed to last forever. A few times David made her come downstairs to help him shovel, but her efforts were half-hearted at best. She'd fall dramatically into a fresh expanse of snow and stay there. She didn't even bother to make an angel. Then he tried to get her to go skating, remembering how much fun it was when he and Annie were kids. She said she didn't want to break her ankle as well as her heart.

And then, just by chance, he met Lila at the post office one day. She looked happy and content and he was glad for her, though his heart always paused for a moment when he saw her face. They were kind to each other in the months following Annie's death, but David didn't come out to the house now out of respect for Ewan. A little too late, but better than never.

On a whim he asked if she'd like a coffee, and to his surprise, she said yes. They ended up at Tim Horton's, sitting opposite each other at a small table with two coffees between them. He spilled his guts about Colleen. It felt good to be able to talk to someone about it other than Kay. She'd get too emotional, or when she'd come to visit Colleen, Derek would have to take her home a day early because she'd be so upset about the whole mess.

“I have a suggestion that might help,” Lila said.

“I'll take anything.”

“Get her a dog, a mutt from the pound; another soul that's been through a hard time.”

He sat back in his seat. “You're brilliant.”

“No. I just know it helped me.”

David smiled sadly.

“And didn't you tell me that she loves to be out in Round Island? When she's there this summer, perhaps she'll walk over and I can show her the animals. She could even help. We're always looking for extra hands. An animal makes no demands of you; they don't ask you to talk about your feelings.”

“Thank you, Lila. I'm grateful.”

David could hardly wait to get home. He told his mother what Lila had suggested and her face lit up. “Of course! That'll do the trick.”

He bounded up the stairs and knocked on the closed door. “May I come in?”

“At your peril.”

Colleen was where she usually was, on the bed eating peanuts. The television was loud.

“May I?” Her father shut the TV off.

“Hey! I was watching
Laverne and Shirley
.”

“How about we get a dog?”

“No. Turn the television back on.”

He couldn't believe it. “Why not?”

“I know what you're trying to do and it's not going to work. The TV, please.”

David turned on the television and left. He went down to the kitchen where his mother was stirring lemon curd with a wooden spoon. “Was she excited?”

“No. She doesn't want one.”

Mom knocked the spoon against the pot and turned off the heat. “Get one anyway.”

David went to the SPCA the next morning and looked through the cages of barking dogs. There were so many. For a minute he thought about taking them all home. One of the employees came with him and pointed out some of the obvious favourites, the younger and cuter dogs who jumped and tried to lick his hands. He almost didn't see the last cage, where a quiet black dog sat at the back of his kennel and didn't join in with the ruckus.

“Can you tell me about this dog?”

“He's been here for a while. His time is almost up. It's a known fact that most people don't like black dogs, that's why he hasn't been chosen.”

“I thought black labs were popular.”

“That's the exception. But when you get the mutts like him, most people don't want them. And he's older, too. The vet said maybe three years.”

“Do I want to know his story?”

“No, you don't.”

“Could you open the cage?”

The young man unlocked the door and opened it, but the dog didn't move. David squatted down and held out his hand. “Here, boy.”

The dog looked at him with sad brown eyes. David was patient. He knelt there for quite some time and talked softly. Eventually, the dog took a hesitant step forward, but when David stood up to meet him halfway he backed up, so David got down on his haunches again. David told the young man, “You can go. This might take awhile.”

The more he looked at the dog's face, the more he wanted him. He was there for a good twenty minutes before the dog slowly came to sniff his hand. He cowered when David put out his hand to pat him, so David did it very slowly and was soon rubbing his head.

“I have someone I want you to meet.”

* * *

When Frankie's second son, Adam, was born, Colleen and Lucky were at the bungalow in Round Island. Her mother called with the news. There was just the teensiest part of Colleen that was glad it was another boy, and not the daughter Frankie so desperately wanted. Sometimes you don't get what you want.

She and Lucky were out earlier than most of the summer residents, and she liked it that way—fewer people to nose around in her business. Lucky's favourite thing to do was fetch sticks from the water. Every time she picked up a piece of driftwood on the beach, he'd be on alert. He'd crouch on his front paws, tail in the air, and wait for the smallest move to tell him it was going to happen. One time she pretended to throw it, but he bounded out into the waves and looked so earnest that she couldn't do it to him again.

The flies were bad in the evening, so the two of them would snuggle on the couch. She'd eat popcorn and he'd have his rawhide treat.

“We're like an old married couple, Lucky,” she said. “Actually, I wish I'd married you instead of…” She never said his name anymore. She didn't want any part of him to contaminate her life.

The phone rang again. It was her father. “I have a job for you.”

Colleen knew she couldn't live like this forever, but inside, she knew she wasn't quite ready to move on. People hurrying her only made her more anxious and she felt like she was doing something wrong all the time. If only people would leave her alone.

“What kind of job?”

“I want you to look after your grandmother and Aunt Muriel. They've decided they'd like to be at the cottage for the whole summer, just for kicks. You'll be there to drive them around and stay with them overnight. I won't let them go otherwise. They're standing here waiting for your answer.”

“Pack 'em up, move 'em out, rawhide.” Lucky barked. “No, not your rawhide.”

Colleen wasn't stupid—not as stupid as she used to be. She knew that her father was trying everything he could to make her part of the world again. But two months with her Grammie and Aunt Muriel would either make her or break her. They'd soon see.

Dad delivered the girls the next day. Colleen heard Aunt Muriel's voice through the car door. Aunt Muriel was a big woman with a large laugh, the type who drowned out anyone around her. She opened the door with her usual enthusiasm and never heard a word Colleen said because she was too busy shouting at Dad that she couldn't find her small overnight case and don't forget the bag of shoes in the trunk and who owned the mangy mutt.

Grammie got out of the back seat and kissed Colleen on the cheek. “I wonder if we'll survive.”

They soon had a routine.

Every morning, Grammie would get up at the crack of dawn and turn on the valve of the oil stove. She'd wander off, mumbling about how cold it was, to get a piece of newspaper to light. By the time she found a match, lit the thing, and threw it in, the oil pooled at the bottom of the stove resulted in a fireball roaring up the chimney. Colleen would shout that she was going to burn the place down while Aunt Muriel snored away in blissful ignorance. She never got out of bed until the place was toasty.

Meals were an ordeal. Aunt Muriel liked steak every night. Grammie didn't.

“How about a chicken leg?”

“A chicken leg? How's that supposed to feed a body?”

“What about haddock?”

“I know. Let's have steak.”

Colleen would take them grocery shopping and they'd each buy their own items. They insisted everything be put in different bags so they wouldn't get them mixed up.

“They're going to the same kitchen,” Colleen pleaded. “It doesn't matter what bags they're in.”

Apparently it did.

They wanted their hair washed once a week and said Colleen could do it. First she washed their hair in the kitchen sink, and then the two of them sat on either side of the old table with their identical bags of small grey metal rollers, and their pink plastic hairpins that were held in old Sucrets tins. Colleen would roll up their hair as best she could and they always said she did a great job, but the well water was soft and an hour after taking the rollers out, the tops of their heads would be flat.

But the biggest challenge Colleen had was trying to convince them that she could take their wash into town and do it there. No, no, no. They didn't want to inconvenience her. They'd go to a laundromat. So Colleen would take them to the one in Louisbourg and she'd have to sit there with them on the hottest days of the summer. They insisted on using separate machines in case they got their underwear mixed up. The fact that Aunt Muriel's were large and Grammie's were small was irrelevant. She begged them to let her take the laundry back to the cottage and hang it up on the line, but they said that was a lot of work. They'd dry it here. Another hour in the sweltering heat would go by.

The other thing they did that drove Colleen up the wall was watch television. They loved detective series.
Hawaii Five-O
was a big favourite. But just as the plot twist was about to be revealed, a car's headlights would drive by and the two of them would pop out of their chairs like gophers and wonder who it could be. While they wondered, they talked right over the best bit of the show. Finally Colleen had enough.

“It's either the Spencers or the Scotts or the Morrisons or the O'Neills, or the Caldwells or the Kerrs or the Fergusons or the Bruckswaigers or the Dillons. That's it! There's nobody else who comes down this road. Geez!”

The other thing that Grammie did was push out her top dentures a little. Then she'd chatter them while she tsked about the kissing part in the show. She also ate copious amounts of candy, which she kept in her apron pocket. Colleen went to put her clean nightgown away one day and in her top bureau drawers was a stash of pink peppermints, scotch mints, liquorice all-sorts, hum-bugs, chicken bones, and gumdrops.

“Why don't you weigh three hundred pounds?” Colleen griped.

But as much as they drove her crazy that summer, she had never laughed so hard in her life. Like the night the bat got in. Aunt Muriel sat in bed hollering with the covers over her head.

“Oh shut up, Muriel!” Grammie chased the bat with a broom to shoo it outside while Colleen kept the door open. Lucky ran back and forth on the furniture in a frenzy trying to jump up and get it as it flew by.

And the two old birds constantly traded stories back and forth. Aunt Muriel told her about a friend who ran a boarding house. She walked in the bathroom and found her husband naked, bent over with his back to her, one leg up on the bathtub as he dried himself. She couldn't resist. She put her hand between his legs, grabbed his willy, and said, “Ding-dong! Avon calling.” When the boarder turned around, she screamed, and in her panic, slipped on the floor and broke her leg.

The funniest part was watching Aunt Muriel act it out. She laughed so hard, you couldn't make out what she was saying. She clapped her hands and then slapped the table in delight, Grammie snickering the whole time. The thought that her Grammie and Aunt Muriel even knew what a penis was startled Colleen, but eventually she stopped seeing them as elderly relatives and saw them as women. They certainly were her best friends that summer.

But there were still times when she felt lost. She'd take Lucky and stop to see some of the regulars on the lane and get their news, or go visit the fudge lady.

While her roommates read their Harlequin romances, Colleen took a walk up to Lila and Ewan's farm one sunny day in mid-August. It felt a little awkward, but her mother and Lila did speak to each other now.

There was something about Lila that felt familiar, and Ewan was a sweetheart. She couldn't imagine anyone not liking him.

Their dogs barked at Lucky and came running over. Lucky was a little defensive at first, but the happy creatures soon put him at ease as they chased each other around the yard. Ewan poked his head around one of the sheds.

“Hi, Colleen.”

“Hi, Ewan. Everyone's told me about how this place has grown. I thought maybe I could look around.”

“I'll give you a tour.”

“I'd like that.”

Colleen was fascinated with how each animal had its own routine and its own home. The pens, sheds, coops, and barn were all clean and well organized. Everything was painted in bright primary colours. All the different animals were delightful, and because they were used to people, they'd let you come right up to them. Ewan handed her a bucket with oats in it and asked her if she'd feed the miniature horses for him. She was so enthralled with their soft muzzles munching away she forgot everything else.