The Innocent. Lynne Golding

squeeze. “You see. There they are and they are all fine—wet but fine. Let’s get you up to bed before they get in the house.”

      He carried me upstairs to my by then much cooler room, laid me on my bed, still swathed in the quilt retrieved earlier, said goodnight, and slipped downstairs to greet the returning drenched family members. I lay there for a long time considering what I had learned. Grandpa had suffered many setbacks: there was Nelson’s death, the requirement to give so much of his profits to the Duke, not being able to build the houses he really dreamed of and then having to give more of his profits to the farmer, losing his first sale, having his friend Cowan go into competition with him, and having Billy Judge ruin one of his houses.

      I wondered whether any of these incidents was the act that constituted “others-destroyed.” They represented setbacks created by others. But Grandpa seemed to have overcome all of them. Furthermore, at any of those points, had he yet been “made”? No, there was more to his story. The storm that I had only wanted to end two hours earlier, was, I then realized, too short. I would have to wait for another opportunity to hear more of Grandpa’s story.

      My father was downstairs, hollering at Ina. One by one, others escaped the uncomfortable though clearly justified outburst. I could hear Jim come up the front stairs and slip into his room, just at the top of the staircase. Grandpa followed Jim but turned right at the top of the stairs to walk to his room, just past mine. As he did so, I called out to him. He came and sat beside me on the bed.

      “Grandpa, I have just one question,” I said.

      “Just one?” he replied.

      “Just one, for now,” I amended. “What did the letter say? What were the eight words your sister wrote you?”

      “There weren’t eight words,” he said. “There were ten words, and it turned out they weren’t written by my sister. They were written by your grandmother.” I looked confused. “Not your great-grandmother—not my mother,” he clarified, “but your grandmother—my wife. The ten words were: ‘If you still love me, come and get me. Loui.’”

      “Louisa? She was your wife?” I asked.

      “Well, she wasn’t my wife when I left to get her, but she was by the time I came back. She had broken her engagement to my brother two years prior to that—almost immediately after she entered into it. Since that time she had tried to forget me, as I had tried to forget her, but neither of us was able to. We married in 1860 and had forty-five lovely years together. She was a wonderful woman. You were only two years old when she died. I wish you had truly known her.”

      “I do too,” I mumbled. “One day will you tell me the rest of your story?”

      “One day,” he said. He kissed me on my forehead and left the room.

Chapter 3

      The Sneeze

      Fortunately, we as children are not limited in the number of our desires. At the age of four, I held two most fervently. The first was a new desire: to understand my grandfather’s history and hence why my family was not allowed to enter the Presbyterian Church. I knew that this desire would require patience in its satisfaction. Thus, while it was always with me, it was not always top of mind. The second desire was much longer in standing: to gain a younger sibling who would be my true and faithful companion. That desire, I knew, could be satisfied more immediately. It required only the cooperation of my mother and our family’s physician, for every child in Brampton knew that babies were delivered to married ill women by Dr. Heggie from within his big black bag.

      Whenever my mother had the slightest headache or cough, sniffle, or sore muscle, I would implore her to call Dr. Heggie to our house for treatment. “Of course not, Jessie,” she would say. “If you’ll just run down to Stork’s and get me some Shiloh’s Cure, I’ll be as good as new by tomorrow morning.” Or, in response to the same appeal on other occasions, “Goodness, child. Why would I sacrifice a jar of my best mustard relish to have him tell me I have a head cold?” Mother was referring to the additional amount Dr. Heggie would charge to see his patients in their homes: three fresh eggs or a quart of milk or a bottle of Canadian whisky or, in our home, where none of the foregoing was likely to be available, a jar of whatever preserves he liked best from our cellar. Even when Mother was truly ill and needed to see Dr. Heggie, she would usually insist on walking to his office on Main Street South rather than calling him to our house.

      It is a delicate matter to pray that one’s dearest family member would become ill enough to necessitate a doctor being called into one’s house but not so ill that she would succumb to the cause for the summons. The creation of such a condition of poor health for my mother and greater wisdom regarding my grandfather were the subjects of my prayers throughout the summer of 1907. That July, both prayers were answered, though in neither case did I obtain what I actually sought.

      It started with a sneeze. It was a Thursday afternoon, Mother’s at-home day. Ina, Frances Hudson (my dearest friend), and I sat in my family’s sitting room while Mother entertained her last remaining guest—Frances’s mother—in the parlour beside us. Ina sat on the sofa under the window reading a book. Frances and I sat on the floor, dolls in hand. Frances’s doll beckoned my doll to look at the bird beyond the window, and so I happened to be looking at Ina when we heard a sneeze from the parlour. I saw Ina’s instant recognition of the sound and her immediate reaction as she slammed her book shut and jerked her face toward the parlour. The big pocket-sliding solid elm doors between the two rooms were nearly fully drawn, so although we could hear the sneeze, we could not instantly discern from whom it issued.

      On hearing Mother utter the customary “God bless you,” Ina breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned on Frances. In a tone a crown attorney might reserve for the examination of one accused of a capital offence, Ina demanded to know the nature of the illness from which Frances’s mother was suffering; the primary and secondary symptoms; the hour her mother had first detected them; the extent to which Frances was experiencing any of the same conditions; and why Frances and her mother had knowingly entered our home and contaminated our family. Frances denied any knowledge of ill health on her mother’s part. While she timidly confessed to sneezing herself just that morning at breakfast, she assumed it resulted from the pepper her father had liberally applied to his eggs. Her sheepish acknowledgement that she had given no thought as to whether she might on this day infect others brought both girls to tears. Frances flew to the parlour and into her mother’s arms. Ina, wrapping her baggy sweater tightly around her, ran to our bedroom, where she stayed for three days.

      They were a long three days. Though they began with Father’s reprimands uttered through the door regarding Ina’s treatment of Frances, they ended with entreaties for her to vacate the room. But whether those entreaties were expressed as a hopeful wish by Jim (who promised her an outing with his friends), a demand for access to my own room and belongings (resulting in an unceremonious dumping into the hallway of many of my worldly goods), a bribe by Mother of Ina’s favourite foods, or a demand by Father, Ina would not end her confinement.

      To be fair, the self-imposed internment might have ended earlier if the contagion that Ina so feared had not actually materialized. While Mother was, on the first day of Ina’s confinement, able to assure Ina that she felt perfectly fine, the next day, at the very moment that Ina took one of her three daily trips to the bathroom across the hall from our room, Mother had the misfortune to sneeze. The following day she woke with a sore throat and a congested chest. By that afternoon she had an earache as well. A fever set in that night, and the next day it was so high that Dr. Heggie had to be summoned.

      Dr. Heggie prescribed cold compresses, a special elixir, and plenty of bed rest for Mother. Having been apprised of Ina’s state, Dr. Heggie also prescribed treatment for Ina: a trip to Toronto for her and me, the duration of which was to last until Mother was well. He examined my throat and ears, ran a stethoscope over my back and chest, and repeated the procedure for Father, Grandpa, and Jim. Through the door to our bedroom, Dr. Heggie proclaimed us to be in perfect health. He then left our house with a jar of strawberry preserves in one hand and the famous black bag in the other. To my great dismay, the black bag was the same size and apparent weight when it left our house