He waved his paddle at her, tentatively, wondering what had happened to bring her down here. She didn’t venture outside all that often. Hardly went to town anymore, had a friend or two she seldom saw. She didn’t look agitated, as far as he could tell.
Cramer’s eyes scanned the hill for a white panel truck. Nothing. Thank God.
She stood as he neared his docking place. She was in a white T-shirt and her torn-up work jeans, stained with paint. Her hair was tied back in a red ribbon. She was wearing the emerald necklace. She looked beautiful. Happy.
“Isn’t this some kind of day?” she said, bending to catch the nose of his canoe.
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you good?”
She reached out her hand to him, and when he took it, she pulled him and the canoe toward the shore as if he hadn’t done this a thousand times by himself. Still, it was a nice thing for her to do.
“Is Bunny behaving?” she asked, patting the curvy side of the canoe, the tumblehome, as if it was the neck of a faithful horse.
Cramer climbed out onto the grassy bank, nodding.
“Remember that old canoe you found in the barn?” she said. “I was scared shitless of you going out in that thing, but there was no stopping you. No, sir.”
“It’s still around,” said Cramer, pointing toward the drive shed. “Still seaworthy.”
“Yeah, right!” she said. “Seaworthy. That’s a good one. Hey, maybe I should haul her down here? Get out on the creek myself?”
Cramer smiled encouragingly, but he couldn’t quite imagine his mother doing anything like that. They had canoed together in Bunny, when it was new, and she’d been good at it, as if maybe there had been canoes in her life, when she was young. Her arms were strong enough, but still. He couldn’t see it.
He hauled the canoe out of the water.
“We love Bunny, don’t we, Cramer? Remember when I got you Bunny?” she asked, her voice as excited as a kid’s.
“I do,” he said.
“And it was the best birthday present ever, wasn’t it?”
He balled his fists on his hips, arching his back to stretch after the upstream voyage. “It sure was, Mom,” he said. In truth, it was the only birthday present he could remember receiving. The last few years there would be a card-handmade. He kept them all. They were works of art. But Bunny was the only actual present. She was every birthday present rolled into one.
He gave his mother a smile. She had been right about the emerald. It was exactly the color of her eyes, and those eyes were gleaming now, with sharp glints of yellow sunshine in them. He knew what was going to happen. She was going to tell him the story about when Bunny arrived in their lives, how surprised he was.
“You were just bowled right over,” she said.
How she had led him, blindfolded, out to the drive shed “Made you open that big old door yourself to show me how strong you were getting.”
And there was the canoe sitting on two sawhorses, brand-new and glistening red. Red as -
“Scarlet lake,” she said.
I was only ten -
“You were only ten,” said his mother, shaking her head back and forth at the bright happiness of this memory.
And it was a good memory. She’d been painting well-painting up a storm! And somehow she’d attracted the interest of a gallery in Ottawa.
“I hightailed it down there in the Taurus one day, when the Taurus was new, and damned if Simon Whiteside didn’t offer me a show.”
A one-woman show -
“A one-woman show.”
And every piece sold -
“Every damn piece sold, Cramer. Can you believe it?”
He looked at her, her face shining, as if the show had happened that very week instead of half his lifetime ago. She never knew-he’d never told her-how terrified he had been arriving home on the school bus that day to find the house empty, no note-no nothing.
But it was all water under the bridge now. He didn’t mind. She could tell him this story every day, if it made her happy. Her contentment helped to ease his mind, distract him from the other things he was thinking, feeling.
She reached out for him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and held him tight. She only came up to his chest. He rested his chin on her head.
She sniffed. Sniffed again. “What’s that pretty smell?” she asked.
Cramer gently pushed her away. “Must be some new flower come up,” he said, looking all around, hiding his face from her scrutiny.
She grinned at him, one eyebrow raised. “Smells like a girl to me,” she said, in a teasing kind of voice. “What are you getting up to on these jaunts of yours?”
Cramer dug his hand deep into his pocket, trying to keep what was there out of sight. He looked down at his bare feet. He never wore shoes in the canoe.
“I do believe you’re blushing,” said his mother.
“I am not blushing,” he said.
“Yes, you are. Why, maybe I should get that old canoe down from the shed and follow you one of these days. See what kind of trouble you’re getting into.” He looked out toward the creek. Saw a kingfisher skim the surface. Mavis poked him in the ribs. “I hope whoever she is, you won’t be bashful about bringing her home.”
“Mom.”
“Or too proud,” she said, her voice teetering a bit now. It didn’t take much to deflate her.
Cramer wished there was something he could do to drive her demons away. “I promise when there’s a girl, you’ll be the first to know.”
She gave him a hug. “‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,’” she started to sing, her voice muffled in his shirt. She swayed back and forth, trying to lug him around with her on a dance on the uneven shore. He held on to her lest she slip off the bank into the water. Something was up.
She must have sensed what he was thinking, because she pulled away and held him at arm’s length. She was still smiling to beat the band.
“You think your mother’s gone cuckoo on you?” she said.
“No, Mom-”
“It’s okay, Cramer, honey,” she said, and then she tipped her head back and laughed out loud. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay!” She looked into his face, her own suddenly composed and sober. “I know how difficult I can be,” she said. “I’m not famous for being levelheaded.”
“Mom-”
“And I know that if it weren’t for you, I’d’ve been toast a long time ago.”
“Ah, Mom, it’s not like-”
“Shhh! Yes, it is!” she said, gently pounding his chest with her fists. “You really are my knight in shining armor.”
He swallowed hard, proud and self-conscious.
Then she smirked and said, “Come on. I want to show you something.”
The painting stood on the easel, still wet in patches but remarkable in its energy. His mother didn’t speak. She just let him gaze upon her work.
It was an abstract piece, all in lavenders and ochers and blue-veined greens, so that it looked like a garden seen in a cracked but bright mirror. Cramer didn’t know much about art, but he knew this: the painting before him contained all of the excitement and enthusiasm and sparkly-eyed optimism that his mother had revealed to him down by the stream.
“It’s so good,” he said.
“Do you think?”
