Safariright away and then he said that he knew you so I thought it was all right.”
“You should lock your doors . . . he said he knew you from before.”
“I’m sure I haven’t met him. He said he met me at the bird barns but I’d remember. How many mutes do you meet in your life?”
“Jo says he can talk. I don’t like him walking in.”
“It’s a question of style. Do you lock your doors?”
Of course not. So I let it go. If he helped her pass the time then he was a welcome visitor.
She amused herself with the revolving door of nurses for whom she had three categories: talkers, tidiers and tea-drinkers. I loved the ones who cooked something for us and left it in the oven. Some of them wouldn’t come back because of the birds. That’s what they said.
“Are you instructing the budgies to dive at these women?” I asked after three complaints in three days.
She laughed and objected, “I have to survive!”
Her favourite was a woman in her sixties from England called Lottie who came regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was tiny with large, reddened gardener’s hands, wiry grey hair and a straight back. She didn’t need to work. The agency told me she only took on palliative cases. The first day Lottie said, “I know you artists, you just want to shock the rest of us.”
That pleased my mother.
“Come play chess with me, Lottie,” she said.
And the woman answered, “I don’t know about such things.”
“Well, I’ll teach you.”
So my mother taught her chess, and when I came in and they put aside the game, my mother said to me, “I whupped her again,” and to Lottie, “Now you’ll remember me when I die! You’ll say, ‘That’s the one who taught me to play chess.’”
“There! Is that the kind of good teacher you are? And in front of your own daughter! I haven’t a competitive bone in my body. Sophie, do you know what this bad woman did today? I said I couldn’t stand the smell of the birds and she took out a cigarette and smoked it in bed. How do you like that? Artists! Next time I’m going to get all those birds in their cage and open some windows!”
“It’s seven below.”
“I don’t care a bit. Do her some good.”
I wished Lottie could come every day. She had a gentle touch and she liked to cook. She managed to get someone in to clean, and room by room she aired out the house without losing a single budgie. Even Moore would come to her. On the days when my mother was very ill, she sponge-bathed her and sat quietly with her. They planned both their summer gardens together. She left seed catalogues strewn all over the bed, and she was the only one who ever gave me a hug when she left. Lottie always said, “Now you call if it gets too hard and I’ll just come along.”
When I was by myself, I brought the elephants to the back fence for my mother to see in the afternoons. She stood looking through the kitchen window, waving at all of us. I taught Saba to flick her trunk in a kind of salute. I asked the bird-keepers to come and visit. One of them came once, with some treats for the Grays, and told my mother how well she’d done with them. I brought her art books from the library and new recordings and looked for the old movies she’d always liked. She decided she was going to follow the politics in Quebec in French and ordered French magazines. Then she badgered me to discuss it with her. She asked me to play the recordings of the elephants I was making. When she had a little more energy she worked at a system of labelling and transcribing the sounds. It was painstaking work but she said that listening to their rumbles and infrasound made her feel very calm. It must have been true. I often found her asleep, the tapes run to the end.
One late afternoon as I left the barns, I could hear across the fields Arvo Pärt’s
Te Deum.
My mother was playing it full volume at the house, and the swelling chants of the bass voices and double bass,
Tibi omnes angeli, tibi
“You should lock your doors . . . he said he knew you from before.”
“I’m sure I haven’t met him. He said he met me at the bird barns but I’d remember. How many mutes do you meet in your life?”
“Jo says he can talk. I don’t like him walking in.”
“It’s a question of style. Do you lock your doors?”
Of course not. So I let it go. If he helped her pass the time then he was a welcome visitor.
She amused herself with the revolving door of nurses for whom she had three categories: talkers, tidiers and tea-drinkers. I loved the ones who cooked something for us and left it in the oven. Some of them wouldn’t come back because of the birds. That’s what they said.
“Are you instructing the budgies to dive at these women?” I asked after three complaints in three days.
She laughed and objected, “I have to survive!”
Her favourite was a woman in her sixties from England called Lottie who came regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was tiny with large, reddened gardener’s hands, wiry grey hair and a straight back. She didn’t need to work. The agency told me she only took on palliative cases. The first day Lottie said, “I know you artists, you just want to shock the rest of us.”
That pleased my mother.
“Come play chess with me, Lottie,” she said.
And the woman answered, “I don’t know about such things.”
“Well, I’ll teach you.”
So my mother taught her chess, and when I came in and they put aside the game, my mother said to me, “I whupped her again,” and to Lottie, “Now you’ll remember me when I die! You’ll say, ‘That’s the one who taught me to play chess.’”
“There! Is that the kind of good teacher you are? And in front of your own daughter! I haven’t a competitive bone in my body. Sophie, do you know what this bad woman did today? I said I couldn’t stand the smell of the birds and she took out a cigarette and smoked it in bed. How do you like that? Artists! Next time I’m going to get all those birds in their cage and open some windows!”
“It’s seven below.”
“I don’t care a bit. Do her some good.”
I wished Lottie could come every day. She had a gentle touch and she liked to cook. She managed to get someone in to clean, and room by room she aired out the house without losing a single budgie. Even Moore would come to her. On the days when my mother was very ill, she sponge-bathed her and sat quietly with her. They planned both their summer gardens together. She left seed catalogues strewn all over the bed, and she was the only one who ever gave me a hug when she left. Lottie always said, “Now you call if it gets too hard and I’ll just come along.”
When I was by myself, I brought the elephants to the back fence for my mother to see in the afternoons. She stood looking through the kitchen window, waving at all of us. I taught Saba to flick her trunk in a kind of salute. I asked the bird-keepers to come and visit. One of them came once, with some treats for the Grays, and told my mother how well she’d done with them. I brought her art books from the library and new recordings and looked for the old movies she’d always liked. She decided she was going to follow the politics in Quebec in French and ordered French magazines. Then she badgered me to discuss it with her. She asked me to play the recordings of the elephants I was making. When she had a little more energy she worked at a system of labelling and transcribing the sounds. It was painstaking work but she said that listening to their rumbles and infrasound made her feel very calm. It must have been true. I often found her asleep, the tapes run to the end.
One late afternoon as I left the barns, I could hear across the fields Arvo Pärt’s
Te Deum.
My mother was playing it full volume at the house, and the swelling chants of the bass voices and double bass,
Tibi omnes angeli, tibi
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