The Innocent. Lynne Golding

the condition that we would immediately leave for Toronto, Ina agreed with the proposed arrangement. Father cabled his sister, Lillian, the only member of our family who resided outside of Brampton, and a few hours later walked Ina and me to the train station. As we walked, he reviewed the arrangements he had made. If Lulu—or Aunt Lillian, he corrected himself—was not at Union Station to meet us when our train arrived in Toronto, we were to walk to Spadina Avenue and take the horseless streetcar to her home just south of Bloor Street. He handed Ina some money just in case his sister forgot to feed us and promised to see us in a week, by which time he was confident Mother would be restored to good health.

      My worry for Mother’s health was profound, and my disappointment regarding the contents of Dr. Heggie’s black bag great, but as the train neared Toronto, thoughts of those matters were replaced by the prospect of spending a week with our beloved Aunt Lillian. This was an adventure that Ina, Jim, and my cousins had each enjoyed every summer since they turned eight years of age. The annual excursion was particularly enjoyable for Ina, who, for one week a year, was able to live like an only daughter again. I am sure my presence on this sojourn would have resulted in her defection from it but for her great relief at being removed from our infected house.

      Aunt Lillian was the eldest of my father’s three sisters. She was without a doubt the least conforming member of our family. As a child she chose pants instead of skirts, sports instead of dolls, the company of her father and brother over that of her mother and sisters. As an adult, she rejected religion, politics and, eventually, the epitome of the two—in our family at least—Brampton itself. At twenty-four years of age, she moved to Toronto and purchased a house in a heavily leveraged transaction funded in small part by her savings of the previous five years but completed largely on the guarantee of payment made by her brother and by the promise of the income to be generated from the use of her house by boarders. She lived a happy life as a single woman running a boarding house for male university students and teaching history at the nearby Toronto Central Technical Institute. Her high school students routinely judged her their favourite teacher for the way in which she brought historical figures to life.

      Aunt Lil’s looks were, naturally, unconventional. Her lips were slightly fuller than the fashion. Her flawless cream-coloured complexion accentuated her eyes, which sparkled beneath lids slightly too heavy. In an era when a woman’s hair was always pinned back to her scalp, she wore a red, curly mane down her back. When it was covered, which was infrequent, it was rather adorned, generally by an ostentatious, oversized, brightly coloured headpiece. Her favourite colour, green, was almost the only colour she wore. Father said she looked like an upside down carrot. Tall and thin, he remarked that if someone picked her up by the toes of her green-coloured stockings and let her loose red hair fall below her head, she would be a perfect imitation of that root vegetable. Green was the colour of her eyes, the colour of the ink with which she wrote, the colour of the walls in her home. Her choice of the colour whenever an opportunity for a choice presented itself marked almost the only predictable element of Aunt Lil’s life.

      Our extended family visited Aunt Lil twice a year, once in late August, when we went to Toronto to attend the Canadian National Exhibition and to buy clothes for school at the Eaton’s department store, and once in the spring at Easter, when most of her borders were with their own families for the holidays. We children took bets as we rode the train from Brampton as to whether on this occasion Aunt Lil’s house would be so cluttered as to prevent any of us from finding a place to sit or so bare as to lead us to wonder whether anyone at all lived in the home; or whether it would be so hot so as to have each of us shedding our clothes, although it was cold outside, or so cold that each of us would seek blankets from the boarders’ beds.

      One Easter Sunday, fourteen of us appeared on her doorstep. The table had not been set; there was no food on the sideboards; the kitchen was cool and the cupboards bare. No one had the heart to ask where dinner was, and we all left ravenous three hours later. The next year we went laden with hams, potatoes, pies, and peas, but detecting the aromas of beef, fish, and yams wafting out her front screen door, we quickly hid our provisions under the front porch and carried them all back home at the end of the day. Our parents reprimanded us children for engaging in wagers regarding Aunt Lil’s likely conduct, a practice they deemed unchristian on multiple accounts, but I could tell that Father at least was placing his own silent bets.

      Aunt Lil had no regard for conventional rules. She had her own rules. She was habitually late and incredibly disorganized. Though a single woman, she saw no impropriety in operating a male boarding house or any arrangement that involved her inviting multiple men into her home for cards or a discussion of an important matter. In the rules according to Aunt Lil, only the invitation of a lone man to her home was taboo. “Bedtime” was not in her lexicon. When at Aunt Lil’s, children went to bed when they were tired. Given how entertaining she was, children were rarely tired before midnight. She did not require children to eat the entirety of their main course before they were served dessert; some meals were comprised only of dessert.

      But the thing we children loved the best about Aunt Lil was that she never lied to us. She was incapable of it. She treated children like adults—never sugar-coating or avoiding a subject that others might consider inappropriate for young ears; she never spared feelings to avoid telling exactly what she thought of our dress, actions, or temperament.

      Some people would have been put out at having two nieces arrive on their doorstep with less than six hours’ notice, but those would have been ordinary people displaying an ordinary reaction. Aunt Lil, being anything but ordinary, had no such reaction. As Father feared, she did not meet us at the train station, but thanks to some directions provided by good-natured Torontonians and Ina’s vague recollections, Ina and I were, within a few hours of leaving our home, in that of Aunt Lil. Our bags were thrown to the side of the door as she quickly had us in a circle, holding hands and singing as we skipped around an imaginary maypole. The evening proceeded in a similar spirit as we sang, danced, ate cake, reviewed magazines, and gazed at late-night stars. At last we all retired, me into a little second-floor room beside Aunt Lil’s and Ina quite far away on the third floor.

      Sleep did not come easily to me that night. As I lay in the little bed in the little room, listening to Aunt Lil pad about between her room and the bathroom, I reflected on the merry things we had done since arriving at Aunt Lil’s. Eventually, when I ran through our activities three or four times, and when I no longer heard Aunt Lil moving about, my thoughts cast further back. I thought of my ill mother back home and of my brother, grandfather, and father. As I did so, imperceptibly, melancholy replaced elation, trepidation superseded anticipation, and ultimately, guilt ran rampant. For as I contemplated the past days, it came to me that the whole time Ina had shut herself in our room, I had only half-heartedly begged her to come out. The most earnest of all my pleas was for my belongings, but once they were provided, I found myself somewhat indifferent to her situation.

      Since I had no access to my own quarters, I was happily ensconced in Jim’s room while he was relegated to sleeping with Grandpa. I confess I delighted in having a bed to myself. I found it an absolute delight to take a meal with my parents, my grandfather, and my brother without receiving a single snide look from my sister.

      But it was not my attitude toward Ina’s confinement that particularly struck me. It was my conduct towards my dear mother. Just as I heard Mrs. Hudson’s sneeze, I also heard Mother’s first sneeze. I admit it did not cause me concern. It gave me hope. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” Father often said. As I lay in the border’s bed at Aunt Lil’s house, I became ashamed of how I had tried to help myself—at Mother’s expense. We had two apples in the house when Mother first sneezed. I confess that in order to deprive Mother of their preventative powers, I ate them both.

      Over the next two days, I never once suggested she consume chicken soup. I never once mixed honey and lemon for her cough. I never brought her a blanket to avoid a chill. I never suggested a mustard plaster for her chest. While I did not pray for her condition to deteriorate, I did not pray for it to improve. I had brought on Mother’s ill health, and my only contribution to her improvement was in running to get Dr. Heggie when I was finally permitted to do so. While I did that with alacrity, it was not for Mother’s sake but for my own. I was willing to jeopardize Mother’s health in order that I could obtain