‘Hello!’ she said to us when Billy opened the door to get in. She looked both Fern and me in the eye. ‘I’m Trish, Billy’s mum. You must be the twins! Let me guess – you’re Fern and you’re Rose?’
Fern and I stared at her as if she was an alien. We had never met a woman like Trish before. She was different from Mum – fatter and frecklier, with a round face and a gummy smile. Another difference was her obvious adoration of Billy – before he got into the car, she planted several kisses on his cheek, which he wiped off as Fern leaned over and touched her bracelet against mine. I frowned at her. What is it?
But she kept her gaze on Billy.
‘Be good for your dad,’ Billy’s mum said, as he slid into the back seat, taking his place beside me.
Billy had a round face, green eyes, and hair that was swept over his face. He grinned at me. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ I replied.
‘What kind of tent are we going to get, kids?’ Daniel said, as we began driving.
‘I’ve taken the liberty of doing some research,’ Fern said. She had her camping book in her lap, as well as a handful of flyers from camping stores. ‘For a family of five, hands down the best option is the Montana 12. It features near-vertical sides and a very spacious three-room interior with zippered dividers and a third removable wall so you can further divide one of the end rooms into two smaller compartments. It also features a large front awning with built-in sidewalls that allows you to create a big verandah at the front of your tent. Or, if we want separate tents, I have recommendations for those too.’
‘Someone has done her research,’ Daniel said.
‘Glad someone around here does,’ Billy said. Daniel laughed good-naturedly. It was hard not to be buoyed by the sense of camaraderie in the car. It looked like Billy and Daniel were going to stick around, at least for a little while. That had to be a good thing. Still, as I heard Mum’s tinkling laugh I felt that familiar sense of dread. Something is going to ruin this, I thought. If there’s one thing I knew about Mum, it was that she had a gift for destroying everything good.
FERN
For the next week, Rose is around constantly. She shows up in the morning to offer me a ride to work. She appears in the evening with a homemade meal. She drops off flyers about prenatal yoga and hypnobirthing. She phones and texts on an hourly basis simply ‘to check in’. In the past, Rose always respected my desire for forewarning – always having a scheduled plan, never showing up without announcing it first. Not anymore. But, as it turns out, her visits are fortuitous because just about every time Rose shows up, she averts a crisis – confiscating soft cheese and deli meat from the fridge (which apparently was liable to give me listeria and kill the baby) or dropping in when I was at work and finding I had left my oil burner on (which was strange as I rarely used my oil burner anymore). ‘It’s a good thing I was here,’ she always says. The one time I can count on Rose to leave me alone is when I go to visit Mum. So I feel a strange sense of relief that Thursday as I stride through the automatic doors of Sun Meadows.
I take the stairs up to Mum’s room. Teresa, Mum’s speech therapist, is there again, and Mum is in her usual chair, her tray table beside her, a chocolate iced donut sitting on it alongside a cup of water. I watch from the door for a minute.
Teresa is holding open what looks like a children’s picture storybook.
‘The . . . cow . . . jumps . . . over . . . the . . . moon,’ Mum says.
‘Very good!’ Teresa says.
‘Thank . . . you.’
‘Very, very good,’ I say, from the door.
Mum looks at me and beams. ‘Pop-pet.’
‘Great timing, as usual,’ Teresa says. ‘We’re finishing up. She’s doing a great job. Just before you arrived, she told me she was thirsty! I brought her a drink of water, and she asked for ice! By next week, she’ll be reading novels aloud!’
‘That seems a stretch,’ I say.
Teresa chuckles as I sit down on a chair beside Mum. Mum has a bit of chocolate on her lip and I lean forward to wipe it off. ‘It’s . . . good . . . to see . . . you,’ Mum says.
Teresa gives me the thumbs-up gesture. She waits for a moment, as if expecting something in response, so I mimic her gesture. She grins, and I focus my attention back on Mum.
‘It’s good to see you too,’ I say.
It’s true, it is good to see her – especially today when I’m feeling all twisted up inside. When you feel like that, there really is nothing quite like seeing your mum.
Mum has always been a good listener, even before the accident. On the odd occasion, she could even be wise. I have a memory of talking to her once after being excluded from a birthday party in Grade Three. I didn’t want to go, obviously. Parties were always loud with music and bright colours and squealing. Worst of all, there were almost always balloons (balloons ranked high in my list of terrors, given their tendency to pop at unpredictable times and elicit a loud bang). But every other girl in the class had been invited, including Rose, so I was upset.
‘I understand why you’re upset,’ Mum had
