The Innocent. Lynne Golding

wearing her fancy dress. “Ina,” I ventured, “do you know why we can’t go into that church?”

      “Of course I know,” she replied confidently. “I am not a child.”

      Father’s bellowing voice interrupted our exchange. “Ina, have you changed yet? Why aren’t you attending to your piano practice? Jessie, get down here! Why are you not helping your mother?”

      Jumping off the bed, Ina shouted that she was just about ready and quickly began to change. I asked her another question. “How old were you when you found out?”

      “I was three … or … four … or five,” she spewed, quite unconvincingly. I noticed as she said this that the colour in her face rose. Then, attempting to regain the upper hand, she added defiantly, “But I was much more mature than you are.”

      “Which?” I asked. “Three, four, or five?”

      “I don’t remember!” she shouted as she pulled on her day dress.

      “I don’t think you know, either,” I said quietly. “Maybe you are too young to know too.”

      “They might think I am too young,” she sneered. “But I do know! I do know. It has to do with Grandpa. It has to do with his work. ‘Self-made. Others-destroyed.’ I’ve heard them talk about it. It’s all about him.” With that she ran out of the room, the buttons on the back of her day dress mostly unfastened.

      All about Grandpa. In that case, I was sure to find out. I just had to be patient.

Chapter 2

      Jesse Brady Arrives in Brampton

      Mother always said that Ina was a scientist at heart, a meteorologist from her earliest days. As a mere babe in arms, she was fascinated with the sun as it caused green and red beams to shine through stained glass windows. Mirror in hand, Ina as a young infant eschewed her rag doll and bright building blocks in favour of further refracting the sun’s beams. As a toddler, she ran through the room attempting to grasp hold of each intangible colourful prism.

      As a young schoolgirl, she devoted any opportunity to paint to the portrayal of clouds—a practice Ina’s teachers believed displayed an extreme lack of imagination. Lost to them were the intricate details Ina brought to the pictures, painstakingly evoking the light grey fog-like stratus or the big cauliflower-shaped cumulus.

      As a teenager, Ina regularly transformed our verandah into a laboratory. Oversized thermometers and barometers accompanied hand-made contrivances designed to measure wind direction and speed and snow and rain accumulation. Once the instruments had amassed to a certain point, Father would banish them from our outdoor living area, but over time, one by one, they would return.

      Like many children in those days, Ina kept a journal. But hers recorded none of life’s pleasures or disappointments. From the age at which she could read and write, Ina recorded the day’s weather. By the time she was ten years of age, she was analyzing past records and identifying weekly, monthly, and annual trends. As a teenager, she was forecasting the weather, although she did not do so every day. Ina was judicious in her predictions, preferring to make them less often but with greater accuracy.

      As it happened, it was Ina’s fascination with the weather that allowed me to begin to unravel the secret as to why we Stephenses were not permitted to enter the Presbyterian Church. Certainly my own carefully considered and determined efforts had met with no real success.

      Thinking that the best time to engage my grandfather on the subject was while he was in his gardens, I once offered to help him weed his beloved rose and blackberry bushes. Grandpa loved best those plants with thorns. An hour after extending the offer, Grandpa’s gardens were banished of stubborn weeds both at the front of the beds, where he could easily clear them himself, and under and behind the bushes, where he gratefully acknowledged the contribution of my smaller hands, legs, and torso. For my part, I received two bruised kneecaps, one red and swollen palm, thoroughly scratched fingers, arms, and cheeks, and the meagre insight that he did indeed know why we were forbidden to go into that church.

      Focusing next on Grandpa’s healthy appetite, on another occasion, I convinced Mother that we should bake an array of his favourite cookies. Her concurrence was obtained only when I agreed to help her complete the household tasks she had already scheduled for that day, walk to the store to purchase the necessary currants, and participate in the baking and cleanup. Taking advantage of the thirty minutes that afternoon when Grandpa and I were alone in the house, I plied him with a plate of the baked delicacies, only to hear from him too that I was not yet old enough to know the reason we could not enter that church.

      Turning my attention instead to the first part of the clue Ina had provided, “self-made, others-destroyed,” on a walk home from our family bakery some days later, a loaf of warm bread in one hand and one of Grandpa’s big hands in the other, I learned only the meaning of “self-made” but received no confirmation that he was of that ilk.

      Just as I was beginning to lose hope that I would gain any further insight into the mystery until I was much older, a storm settled upon us. It arrived one hot and humid summer night. I lay on my side of the bed I shared with Ina, the length of which ran four feet away from our room’s only window, a tall but narrow break in the thick walls. The shutters, which had been closed over it earlier in the day, had been open since dusk. The window’s blind and sash were fully lifted and its curtains tied well back as we sought to permit whatever hot air could be ejected from the room to depart and to welcome in whatever cool air could be enticed. With a breeze just beginning to form, the room was only slightly cooler than it had been in the hottest moments of the afternoon.

      I lay on my back in my lightest cotton nightgown, my hair piled loosely on the pillow above my head, the top sheet and usual covers pushed down to my feet. Seeking only sleep to relieve my discomfort, I was irritated by Ina’s constant movement. She was in a miserable mood, but not because of the weather conditions, at least not because of the discomfort they produced. Her annoyance arose from a forecast she made earlier that day—one of her first—to which no one in the family attached much credence. It was impossible to know what caused her greater irritation: the skepticism of Mother and Grandpa toward her newly forming abilities or the fact that her forecasted storm had not materialized.

      Just as I was about to implore her to be still and quiet, a large gust of wind burst through the screen of our window, billowing the drawn-back curtains. As though in answer to its call, Ina leapt from her side of the bed and ran to mine. Squatting down, her elbows on the low window sill, she looked due north and uttered, “It’s coming.” Springing back to her side of the bed, she hastily donned the dress she had worn earlier in the day and which she had since strewn on the floor. After pulling it over her cotton nightgown, she opened the door to our room and hurried out without another word.

      It would have been better if I had followed her or called out to her or otherwise alerted the others in the house to her strange conduct. I confess that in my confusion as to her behaviour, I took none of those actions. Only when I heard the back door close minutes later and realized who had likely crossed its threshold did I react. Shortly, Mother, Father, and Grandpa were roused, the house searched, and those still within its walls assembled in the kitchen. It was 11:00 p.m. Of little concern to any of the adults was the fact that my fifteen-year-old brother Jim, who had been out with his friend Eddie earlier that night, had not yet returned. Of singular concern to all was the fact that twelve-year-old Ina appeared to have left the house, half-dressed at a late hour, with no one knowing her actual or intended whereabouts. Both on the original questioning and on the numerous examinations that followed, I imparted all that I could: she looked out the window, she said, “It’s coming,” she hurriedly dressed, and she left.

      “What’s coming?” Father asked as we heard rain begin to fall. Mother and Grandpa looked meaningfully at each other as they rushed to close the kitchen windows.

      “The storm,” Mother and Grandpa said in unison.

      “She’s gone to see the storm,” Mother declared.

      “See the storm?” Father cried. “Why the deuce would she do that?