The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Side 30

140
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING/SUMMER 1995
truth? Was Aunt Lorna telling tales be-
cause, as Kate’s mother had pointed out,
she was jealous of her sister-in-law? Or was
Anna fibbing because she didn’t want Kate
to worry about her imminent departure
from life?
Kate couldn’t put her dilemma into so
many words. Catherine does, and more, as
she thinks about it now, looking back at her
small self’s perplexity and fear. At the time,
all Kate knew was that was that two grown-
up people had told her two different facts
about the same thing. Which one was the
correct one? When she tried to analyze it,
she realized that her mother had been
twenty-nine for several years. She tried to
recall exactly what Anna said every time the
subject came up.
Daddy always said that she looked
younger every year and one of these years
he’d catch up to her and Mom would say,
“You lie like a cheap clock,” and smile and
pat his hand or his cheek. It was years be-
fore Kate could figure out what a cheap
clock had to do with her father’s lying.
The possibility that her mother had lied
to her was frightening, though. If she had
lied about this, what else had she lied to
Kate about? Were there things Kate had to
unlearn and learn again correctly? Sud-
denly what had seemed solid had shifted;
essential facts were no longer valid, and
Kate was — frightened, that’s all.
That’s all. Grown-up Catherine reads
things into young Kate’s head. In her
memory’s eye she sees her mother’s red
hair gleaming in the lamplight as Anna
leaned over to kiss Kate goodnight. Her
mother put a slim, cool hand on Kate’s fore-
head. She had always had lovely hands.
“Are you all right, honey?” she asked.
“You didn’t eat your dinner.”
“I’m okay,” said Kate. She turned her
face to the wall and swallowed a sudden
lump in her throat.
“What’s wrong,” asked Anna. “There is
something wrong. What is it? You can tell
me.”
Kate always did — tell her mother.
Catherine still does, in spite of herself, in
spite of the countless times Anna betrays
her trust, though never to others.
Catherine has never stopped confiding in
her mother, till now. She has nothing to
confide, nothing to say.
Kate dragged her back: she burst into
tears.
“Aunt Lorna says...” She stopped and
sobbed, unable to continue. The dam had
broken. Her mother waited.
“Aunt Lorna says you’re older than she
is and she’s thirty-six. Are you going to die?”
Her mother had the grace not to laugh.
Indeed, Catherine seems to recall now that
Anna’s lips had tightened in anger at Lorna
for squealing on her, before she fully real-
ized what genuine anguish and fear her
daughter was suffering.
“I’m not going to die, Kate, not for a
long time.”
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