Page 7 of Home to Christmas Island
My mother loved that house. I loved that house. I still do.
My feelings of shame around losing it are so painful that it’s become its own kind of grief. So, in all these years, I hadn’t let myself wonder who lived there now. I hadn’t let myself wonder about it at all.
But surely this is some kind of sick joke. A thirty-something bachelor, asshole cop living in our house? I hadn’t noticed a ring on his hand when he pulled me over earlier.
I’m not sure what I would have pictured for someone else living in my childhood home, had I ever allowed myself to think of it, but it definitely wasn’t this.
Uncle Albie can sense whatever is vibrating off me. He puts his rough, calloused hand on top of mine and says, somewhat gently, He’s done a beautiful job with it, Flora, really. He’s—
Stop, I say, barely able to get the word out. I snatch my hand away, adding, I don’t want to know.
I need to leave, need to get out of here, need to stop myself from screaming at a man I don’t know. It’s also probably not a good idea to start yelling at a police officer in the middle of the bar. Especially not when he’s already written me one ticket today.
And especially not when everyone in here tonight would be witness to yet another Florence MacLeod breakdown.
I stand up abruptly and tell Uncle Albie I’ll be right back, darting for the bathroom. The regret is churning my stomach in a way that’s making me feel nauseous.
Alba finds me there a minute later, both of my hands braced over the sink trying to breathe.
What, so shitfaced you’ve got the spins already? She laughs and moves to put a hand on my back, but I whirl on her.
He bought the lake house?
She winces. I wonder if this is what I saw on her face earlier when I first brought him up—what she didn’t want to tell me. I feel angry at her for keeping this from me, from letting me walk in here so completely blind. Everyone in the bar tonight already knows that he's the one who lives in our house, everyone except for me.
Honestly Flora, he’s—
STOP! I’m half yelling, sounding panicked even to my own ears. I wave my hands back and forth, closing my eyes. I don’t want to hear it.
Alba looks at me with such sadness on her face, almost deflated.
She’d want you to know what he’s done with it, she says, and I know who she means. In fact, she’d want you to go over there and—
Alba, stop, okay? I don’t want to know.
In an instant, the look of compassion is gone, replaced with one of feral rage. Alba is an Aries and sometimes I forget until she’s fully popping off—which is what’s about to happen right now.
She wouldn’t want this for you, Alba snaps, all gentleness gone from her tone now. I’m used to Alba’s sudden bursts of anger, but I feel something like betrayal that she didn’t tell me about this. She wouldn’t want you never coming home and never talking about her or remembering her.
Some deeply buried part of myself agrees, knows that Alba is right. But I can’t handle it right now. I can’t bear to think about some asshole Scottish police officer guy living in the house we loved, the home where I grew up, and the place where I saw my mother alive for the last time.
As long as I’ve been on this earth, there has never been a man living in that house.
I’m not talking about this right now, I say firmly, squaring my shoulders and staring right at Alba. I’m trying to put up a fight, but it comes out in a half-whisper when I say to her, seething, I just got here, don’t you think I’m overwhelmed enough?
Those hazel eyes assess me, taking in everything. After a second she nods, but there’s no compassion on her face when she says, All right Flora. But we will be getting into it later. And with that, she storms out of the bathroom.
And that’s when I decide to get very, very drunk.
LATER, WHETHER IT’S TWENTY MINUTES or four hours later, I’m not entirely sure, I find myself with a delightful Christmas buzz going, fueled by several more cranberry Moscow Mules. In fact, I’m enjoying myself so much that I can hardly be irritated by The MacNeils & The McNeils.
It’s not that they’re really that terrible, necessarily. But it’s more that they were the only local band growing up here. When I was a teenager, I decided anything to do with my hometown was desperately uncool. I can be a little stubborn, so I’ve turned my nose up at them ever since. I much preferred the travelling groups that came through in the summer months. If I’m being honest with myself, though, I think I probably never even gave them a second chance.
After their cover of Green Christmas when we first entered the bar, they played White Christmas and Blue Christmas like some kind of Christmas-song rainbow. I managed to tune them out for a while after that.
I know that soon, they’ll move on from the holiday music and start playing some of Atlantic Canada’s finest: Mull River Shuffle, Barrett's Privateers, Heave Away and The Night Pat Murphy Died. These aren’t exactly songs you hear on a cruise ship, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, so I can’t help but feel a little excited at the thought.
But they’re starting the first few notes of Jingle Bell Rock when I feel it.
