The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Page 29

SPRING/SUMMER 1995
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
139
He never said much at all. Of the silent
family, he was the most silent. Lorna made
up for it; maybe that’s why he married her.
Not that she was what anyone would call
real talkative but she Filled in details for
Kate that no one else ever bothered about.
For her part Lorna must have had the pleas-
ure of questions and response from Kate.
One was never sure whether Hans heard
her or not, because he never replied and
never reacted, not in Kate’s hearing.
Sometimes Catherine finds herself do-
ing that, listening but not responding.
Thinking hard, she tails to answer. Her own
daughter finds this an annoying habit and
now that she’s older she demands a reac-
tion. Catherine is always surprised when
Anne does this and never knows what to
say, never knows which of her thoughts to
choose and spread out, to placate her
daughter with words. She can’t seem to
make Anne understand that the conversa-
tion has registered and that an effect has
been achieved.
“Tell me that you heard me,” Anne says.
“I did.”
“Say ‘oh’ then. Say something.”
Then Catherine feels apologetic and
somehow lacking, and the thoughts leap
up and flash in the shallows of her mind,
gasping for air, but none of them seem
worth throwing into the stream of conver-
sation. By this time she can see Anne is
exasperated with her, and who can blame
her, so she says, I’m sorry.”
Her daughter shrugs. “So?”
“So,” Catherine says, “I have a lot of
thoughts, but I can’t choose one to tell
you.” Anne turns away, feeling rejected.
That isn’t it at all, Catherine wants to tell
her, but she remains silent.
It’s worse now, the layers are worse, so
many memories layered over, and always
the fear lurking in the corners. Better to
be silent.
Like Uncle Hans. Sometimes Kate could
hear Lorna screaming at him before he left
for work in the morning. He never yelled
back. When Kate called on Lorna for her
morning chat, Lorna was always equable
and friendly, and her eyes were never red-
ringed and moist the way Anna’s were af-
ter a fight with Kate’s father. Looking back,
Catherine guessed that Lorna was just try-
ing to catch Hans’s attention.
She certainly had Kate’s rapt attention.
Lorna’s house was always a favourite stop
on the child’s morning rounds. Her aunt
would give her a large piece of cake or pie
and fill in the gaps of information that the
rest of the family didn’t even seem to think
were missing — all without being asked.
So the particular piece of information
Catherine is focusing on today was just an-
other in the range of material that Lorna
gave Kate every day, a gift among many
such gifts. This particular one, however, was
a mixed blessing, as it turned out. It con-
cerned Kate’s mother, Anna.
Looking back, Catherine decides that
Kate truly believed that her mother was
twenty-nine. That’s what Anna always told
Kate she was, every year. Occasionally, Kate
heard her father, Mark, teasing his wife
about being an older woman and Anna
would get mock angry and tell him to go
away.
“Your mother’s older than I am,” Aunt
Lorna was saying to Kate on that faraway
morning, “and I was thirty-six on my last
birthday.”
“Oh, no,” said Kate, “Mother’s twenty-
nine. She told me.”
“In a pig’s eye,” said Aunt Lorna flatly.
“She’ll never see twenty-nine again.”
Kate barely managed to get out of the
house before the tears came. Her mother
that old! Was she going to die? Old people
died, Kate knew that. If her mother was
older than Aunt Lorna and Aunt Lorna was
thirty-six, then her mother must be very
old, and therefore, very close to death. Kate
was frightened. She couldn’t eat for the rest
of the day.
Something else was bothering her, too.
Which one of the women was telling the