Motherwild by Ken Rivard

Author:Ken Rivard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC048000, FIC043000
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2014-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

FORTY-THREE

NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS ON THE SECOND night, the Saturday night at the Lesage cottage, except that Celine leaves her boyfriend alone to sleep in his own restless, Belmont Park song. When we wake up the next morning, my first thought is that I can’t wait to get back to my own bed on Dion Street. But I slow that thinking down by dressing quickly and going outside by myself before breakfast. I sit on the top step leading down to the water.

What a beauty of a morning! The river flows by on its own clock. Boaters whizz by sometimes alone and sometimes filled with waving passengers. In the distance, I see a lone fisherman trolling for fish not far from the riverbank. In the middle of the river, a water skier carves up the river’s language into swelling paragraphs. And yet the morning moves slowly, easily. After several minutes, I head back inside for breakfast. Everyone is up.

After breakfast, we clean up the cottage and then move down to the river for a final swim and the batting of beach balls back and forth. The morning goes by quickly. There is something about being silly that makes time move faster, especially on a river.

Right after lunch we all pack up and eventually stuff ourselves into Monsieur Lesage’s big taxi for the drive back to Montreal. The twelve to thirteen miles from St. Genevieve back to Montreal goes fast.

Back on Dion Street, we tug our suitcases out of the trunk and I run upstairs to apartment 109.

“How was your weekend, Joey?” Nila, Paddy, Ma, and Pa ask one after the other.

“Pretty good,” I finally say.

“How about you, Ma?” I ask as she follows me into my bedroom so we can unpack my suitcase.

When we’re alone Ma tells me that she thought of freeing herself from the entire family over the weekend. Right away I think that means that I’m to get out of the apartment immediately after unpacking and take a wild guess as to when it’s safe to return. Usually, this means that Ma has a hiding story to tell which she only did when we were alone..

“Did I ever tell you, Joey, about the time I couldn’t find a place to hide anymore?” Ma suddenly asks.

“No, you didn’t,” I say.

“Well, as a young woman, I thought I found the absolute best place to hide which was behind the furnace in the basement where we lived. I had a bottle of rye hidden down there, too. People searched all over the house but couldn’t find me. Then, I began singing and the family tracked me down to the furnace because my voice just carried through the floor vents like blasts of hot air. What a riot! I wanted to get caught. After that, though, I could never find an original place to hide anymore. Helluva thing this hiding!”

Yes, there are also some intriguing places to hide on or near Dion Street, like those cement ledges on the Bank of Commerce windows or up in that leafy maple tree near the front of the bank.

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