The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma (16 page)

“Remember what you were telling me at the café? About being in Taplow?”

“Yes, all that talk has got me thinking more this afternoon. That's what I've been doing. I wasn't reading much at all, just thinking. I've been in my head a lot today. More than usual for me.”

“Did you stay there long? In Taplow, I mean?”

“Well, the day our routine finally changed I think it was a grey, rainy day. I don't know why I think that. After breakfast all the nurses were brought together and told we would begin marching drills, rain or shine. We weren't told why, or for how long. We were generally told little. That morning, what I felt was closest to excitement. I knew what it likely meant, to be drilling. I'd been anticipating a change in our activities. It would mean another move.”

“Did you know where?”

“No, dear. But luckily, I'd always been a walker, even back while studying. I didn't mind the marching drills. It was written in my high school yearbook that I was the fastest walker in the school. On our morning marches, if the mist wasn't too thick, we could see Windsor Castle.

“The morning drills weren't the only change. We started participating in mandatory gas training. Nothing had been confirmed but nothing had been denied. All we knew was something was imminent. They even had us going to lectures on tropical medicine. A couple of weeks later, the oldest nurses and any in poor health were sent back to Canada. No. 5 had been picked. As we all figured, we were moving.”

“And you were fine with that, just having everything change without warning?” It's a stupid question considering the context, and I realize this as I ask it.

Grandma laughs it off. “Oh, sure. That's what we'd signed up for.”

I decide I should ask fewer questions and just listen.

“Since leaving Canada I'd been sleeping less. Not
because I couldn't sleep — I can always sleep — but sleeping seemed out of place, almost like I thought it should be rationed, too. There was too much work and activity. London had been fun.”

She tells me the story again, the one she told me at the café, about the bombing when she was at the movie (she does repeat herself, like any ninety-two-year-old would). She'd enjoyed her time but still considered it good news they were moving again. They were closer to the action than they'd been in Winnipeg, but she wanted to be closer still, to be part of it.

“My biggest regret was that I never did get to see Donald while in England.”

It seems so irrational to me, unlikely, that this would have ever happened. But she tells me this twice, that she'd really believed she might see him. London would have been her best chance. She'd had a feeling on the boat that she was going to see him. It was a mightily implausible hope. It was confirmed, three weeks after arriving in England, just how unlikely.

“I received word Donald had been shot down. Again. This time somewhere in northern Africa.”

She was glad she was busy and that she had people to care for, depending on her.

“There were so many rumours during our last days at Taplow. Everyone had their own ideas. Our destination was a closely guarded secret, and of course I was curious but knew it was outside my control. No one knew for sure, not even the soldiers or officers.

“Even after boarding the ship we didn't know. I spent even less time in my cabin on this voyage. I knew even more people now than on the trip over. I still liked the decks at night. We would chat in groups, about lots of things, some theorizing about where we were going.”

“You still weren't sure?”

“No. Some of the officers tried to use the stars as a map. We all started to detect a very slight warming in temperature, or thought we did, and figured we must be going south. When we passed through Gibraltar, things became clearer, and then finally we knew when we anchored at our final destination.”

“Where?”

“We were in Sicily. We'd landed at Augusta as part of the Allied convoy. The morning we landed we were immediately sent down below. You see, we were landing with the invading troops and were under heavy fire. There were some serious injuries, but it was actually our supply ship that took the brunt of the shelling. We lost our medical supplies and even our uniforms. To disembark we had to climb down rope ladders fastened to the side of the ship. I can still see us. I was wearing my silk stockings, a nurse's cap, and a knee-length skirt, and over the side we went.”

“That's unbelievable.”

“The British officers were aghast. They couldn't believe these Canadian nursing sisters, these women, had landed with an invading force in an active war zone. It was unheard of.”

“I guess you must have felt part of it all after that.”

“We certainly did. Everything, the mood, our duties, it all changed after that. No. 5's new home was an abandoned generic two-storey building we converted into a makeshift hospital. It had been booby-trapped by the Nazis before they fled. We were told to be very careful with everything; toilet seats could explode when lifted, even a single pen could be hazardous. We had no supplies and very little equipment.

“Our clothes had also sunk with the supply ship. The nurses were given men's army uniforms to wear. They didn't fit any of us. We would laugh and tease one another about who looked the worst in the baggy pants. But the hospital became active and hectic right away. There was no time for further training or practice. It was time to work. We cared for patients all day or all night or both. On one occasion, while changing the dressings of a badly wounded American soldier, I found a nest of maggots underneath the old bandages. I didn't say anything to the patient, but I left them. They would all fall off eventually, when their helpful work was done.”

“Was the hospital full?”

“It was. It was well over capacity. We had to line up any extra cots in hallways, anywhere there was space. Lots of dysentery and malaria. The badly wounded who weren't sent back to England were contained on the top floor. The first floor was reserved for the sick, infirm, and less seriously injured. More sick, wounded, and maimed arrived daily. Amputations became ordinary. So did surgeries of all kinds. I always thought it was the night that was hardest on the boys.

“The bombings that had sunk the supply ship continued. You could hear the planes flying overhead. The shelling was focused on the harbour, but the blasts were felt and heard throughout the hospital. At their peak I would just walk up and down the aisles, in between the beds and cots. I wouldn't talk. I just felt like I had to do something, that maybe even my presence might be a help. I hoped it offered some comfort, a sense of composure.”

“Yeah,” I say, “it would have.”

There's no music playing now, no radio or TV on. My room is very quiet.

“And then again it was time for No. 5. to move. We proceeded to Catania, a larger city at the base of Mount Etna. It wasn't until our third day at Catania that I was off duty for an entire afternoon, and I was recruited to play in a rugby match organized by a group of British soldiers. I'd met them the day before. It was my first time playing rugby. I tried not to let on. I'd missed playing sports. I enjoyed it. It was fun to get out and play something again. Now why do I remember that?”

I'm finding that these tangents in her stories are some of my favourite parts. There's much she's forgotten, so there must be some reason these moments have lodged themselves in her consciousness. They seem to come out of nowhere, as if she's surprising herself with them.

Grandma saw what you see when you're part of war, when you're living it every day, when an earlier reality is overhauled and rebuilt as something unfamiliar. Sights that were previously unimaginable were made reliably probable.

“I'd been tending to a patient who arrived with a badly broken leg when there was a ruckus outside. I went out with the other nurses on duty. Not far down the road, a procession was coming toward the hospital. There was lots of commotion. They were loud, emotional. It wasn't obvious if they were angry or distressed.

“As they got closer I could see they were very upset. There were men and women. There were children. They were all weeping, calling out toward the hospital. They had a wooden wagon. Inside the wagon was a middle-aged Sicilian man. A farmer. He'd been out working, plowing his fields or planting. It was uncertain what he'd been doing, but while he was doing it, he'd hit a mine.

“The group was asked to wait outside. The farmer was removed from the wagon and brought in. Once in the operating room, I knew from the number and severity of the injuries that nothing could be done. It wasn't long after arriving that he died.”

“I guess in a weird way it would have been worse when it was something like that,” I say. “When it was just a family and a farmer.”

“I was lucky I didn't see more of that type of thing. That one sticks out in my mind because of the family being there, I think . . .”

For a while we don't talk. Then I ask Grandma if she's hungry. She wonders if we should go back and try the restaurant that was closed yesterday. As I get my jacket on, Grandma remembers her initial reason for coming to my room. She'd almost forgotten the flowers. She suggests I put them on top of my bookshelf.

That way, she thinks, I can see them from anywhere in the room.

8:11 p.m.

“I HAVEN'T THOUGHT
about this in years. I really haven't.”

We've just had our first sips of Chianti. It was Grandma's idea when we sat down in this booth. We didn't have to wait to be seated. We dashed in from the car (Grandma was our pacer, so
dash
might not be the most accurate verbiage). It was her idea to leave the umbrella, despite the rain.

It's a different type of grape, but the wine is having the same effect as last night. It's rendered her into a talkative, nostalgic Grandma. Or maybe it's all the talking we've done today already. I'm still thrown by this. I often go days without use of my vocal cords, and Grandma's default position is firmly set in listening mode. She's usually asking about others but rarely is the one to talk about herself, to tell her own stories. To be honest, I didn't know she had many.

Combined with her tenacious sense of humour and ability to tease, Grandma's default setting, when I was growing up, was to sit and ask questions about what each of us was up to. She wanted to know what was keeping us busy. She wanted to hear what was happening at school or how my basketball team was doing. She wanted to look over any recent photographs, asking about faces she didn't recognize. She always remembered the names of any of my friends she'd met, and she would ask about them.

The terrain of adolescence shapes an inadvertently one-sided relationship. The proper footing of reciprocation was too tricky and developed. I would share all of the trivialities of my day but never ask about hers. The only kid who would sit and ask their elderly grandparents about the details of their lives in an attempt to better understand them would be a character from a Wes Anderson film. We understood Grandma through her reaction to our stories. It was her receptivity to our existence that formed her identity. We, the young unintentional solipsists, would talk; Grandma would listen and react. That was her way.

“Well, that's good, I'm happy to chat about these things,” I say. “Have a bit more.”

I top up her glass, even though there's no room for topping. It's more a symbolic gesture, I suppose.

The atmosphere in here is a blend of pub and family restaurant. Probably 60/40 in favour of pub. But the patrons are probably 60/40 in favour of families. There is a large bar on one side of the room and booths along the walls. Tables of varying sizes fill in the rest. You wouldn't call it fancy, but the expectation is for large portions of comfort food. It's mostly full tonight. The music, laughter, talking has created an auditory fog of white noise around us.

“Did you know I love sports?”

“Well, I know you like watching hockey, Grandma.”

“But I mean I love
playing
sports.”

“Yeah, I knew you played tennis and curled. And that rugby game you played overseas. And you still play golf, right?”

“Yup. But it just wasn't as easy back in my day.”

“Really?”

“I can remember being in Winnipeg in the twenties. In the winter there were outdoor rinks all over. The girls were supposed to just skate around while the boys played hockey. That's just the way it was. Can you imagine? I hated that.”

“You wanted to play hockey?”

“Of course. It's silly for you to think about it today, but I found it ridiculous to think about it then, too. They didn't want me to play, because I was a girl. So obviously I played.”

“With other girls?”

“No, I couldn't find any other girls to play, or boys, either. It wasn't really done, I don't think. But I got Donald to play with me. He agreed to be my goalie. We'd have to go to the rink early in the morning, before school, when no one else was there, and I would just skate up and down and shoot pucks at him. We were always alone out there, and it was very quiet at that time of day. You could hear the skates cutting through the ice, but that was about it. When I think about it, he never complained. He knew I loved playing. He was very good to me.”

“Yeah, you guys got on pretty well, didn't you?”

“We did. But everyone got on well with Donald. He was just . . . that way. He was so easygoing, very accepting of every­one. When we were young, we'd agreed that if either of us ever had any kids, we'd name them after each other.”

“Do you think he enjoyed playing?”

“Oh, sure, I think so. I'd score on him more often than not, though. I don't think he liked that. And he wasn't letting me, either,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “I had a pretty good shot.” Remembering her trash-bin shot this morning, I believe her.