Distance

“I should come with you,” Helen said carefully, almost apologetically, as I told her where Robert and I were going later that morning.

I raised my eyebrows. “Why? I mean, you can if you want, but you know that they’re going to be excited to talk to me. Grandpa was really jealous when I left for Ireland. Imagine how happy he’ll be when I show him the pictures of his childhood home!”

Lenny bit down on her bottom lip, chewing it anxiously. Her pale eyebrows pulled together. She looked more than a little bit disturbed. I didn’t think I’d seen her like this since she’d scratched my favourite CD and had been afraid to tell me. She tilted her head forward so that a curtain of hair fell between me and her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. If her voice hadn’t been a dead giveaway on its own, I certainly would have noticed that something was wrong by the way that she wouldn’t look at me.

I sighed, knowing that she wasn’t going to tell me until it was too late to deal with anyway. “Fine, get in the car. You know how to get to the nursing home they’re in, right?”

She nodded, turning away and reaching for her jacket. “Yeah, I can tell you how to get there.” Though Helen was sixteen, she hadn’t gone to get her drivers license yet. When I’d been living here, I’d gotten roped into driving her around for six months out of the year when she felt it was too cold to wait for the bus.

Robert gave me a look of uncertainty. My little sister was so obvious when she was hiding something that even someone who knew nothing about her knew that she was keeping something important from me. I shook my head at him, indicating that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, and then the three of us headed out to the car, which was already idling in the driveway.

“Head south,” Lenny directed as she buckled herself into the seat directly behind mine. I backed out into the street and followed her directions.

Robert busied himself by punching buttons in the dash and searching for a radio station that he liked. I was genuinely surprised when he stopped on my favourite station in the city. He saw my shock plain as day in my expression.

“It has a good beat,” he said defensively.

“I’m not complaining,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just that you’ve listened to this same band on my laptop and you didn’t like it very much.”

“Did I?”

I nodded, turning from our residential street onto a more main road. I changed lanes to avoid a snow plow that was cleaning up the drifts along the shoulder of the pavement. “Yeah. It wasn’t this song, though. This is one of their new ones, and I only have their first CD.”

Robbie waved me off, as if he were reminding me that I’d told him our music preferences weren’t important. “So, Lenny, when do you finish high school?” He turned around as far as he could in the passenger seat while still being restrained by his seatbelt.

“I’m in grade eleven. So I have one more year after this.” I glanced in the rearview mirror to see that there was a light pink blush in her cheeks. Robert made her nervous. I found it funny, really. “Turn right up at those lights,” she directed me, sitting up a little straighter and pointing between the two front seats toward the windshield.

I followed her directions, guiding the SUV across the snow-covered lanes. “I can’t wait for your graduation, kiddo. I’ll never forget mine.”

“Are you kidding?” Lenny scoffed. “I don’t think you remembered it the next day. I’ve never seen you so drunk.”

I shrugged, grinning. “We had a limo. What was I supposed to do? Just ride in it without drinking? Where’s the fun in that?”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Lenny raised her eyebrows.

“Only if you get caught.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, my role model,” she slumped back against her seat as if I had disappointed her in some significant way.

“Sounds like a well fun role model to me,” Robert grinned back at her lopsidedly.

I fought back a smirk. “Come on, Lenny, I bet all your friends would kill to have an older sister like me.”

“Oh, yeah,” she snorted sarcastically. “Everyone wants a big sister that leaves behind the reputation that they have a liver made of steel.”

“The only thing I really took away from biology class was that the liver is the only organ in the human body capable of regeneration. You’re welcome for sharing that knowledge with you.”

“Go left here,” she grumbled, not bothering to point it out this time.

“No, that can’t be right. There’s no left turns at this intersection.”

“No, I swear, it’s this one. Aren’t we on one-eleven?”

“We’re on one-oh-six,” I told her.

She looked out the passenger window and stared at the buildings and landmarks as we passed them. “Oh. Well turn left on one-eleven, then.”

I switched lanes, rolling my eyes at her. Honestly, I was surprised she’d even taken the time to learn which street was which en route to the nursing home. Usually, she just memorized her usual bus stops. She nearly had a panic attack every time she had to bus to a new location. Lenny liked familiarity. She was safe and predictable. I liked it that way; I never had to worry about her getting into too much trouble. She worried about me far more than I worried about her. Probably with good reason.

I filled a parking meter with the change from my pocket after Lenny had directed us safely to the nursing home. Robert hunched his shoulders up around his ears, trying to shield himself as best he could from the cold. I followed Lenny up to the building, with Robert trailing close behind me. The automatic doors split apart as we approached, and a blast of hot air rained down on us from a fan in the ceiling. We all paused to take off our snow-covered shoes and put them up on a shelf that had been built into the wall for visitors to use. Lenny set off again. Robert and I went after her, ducking down a nearby hallway. Each door was marked with a small name plaque, reminding me of the offices that lined certain hallways in the university. But here they weren’t some professor’s area to hide away from the student body, they were somebody’s home. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt out of place here. It was too white and clean; it reminded me of a hospital.

Lenny knocked on the door that was labelled Neil and Margaret Donovan. I could hear the shuffling of my grandmother’s slippers across the floor on the other side of the door. The knob twisted abruptly, and in the crack of the opening a suspicious green eye blinked at us. Suddenly, the door was yanked open before us and my shrivelled old grandma smiled sweetly at my sister.

“Helen, dear, I was hoping you would stop by soon. But where are your parents? Your mother promised me an apple crisp.”

Lenny smiled back at her. “They’re at work today, Grandma. But Maggie really wanted to come and visit.”

Grandma turned then, noticing me there for the first time. Her eyes narrowed, and she took a step backward. Her warm, friendly atmosphere dissolved. “I’m terribly sorry, are you a friend of Helen’s? How rude of me. My name is Margaret. Come inside, I’ll put on some coffee.”

I stopped short, feeling absolutely blindsided. “What? Grandma, it’s me, Maggie.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes, Helen’s just introduced us, dear. Come along, we’re letting a draft in.”

Lenny grabbed me roughly by the arm, pulling me into the apartment behind her. “Just keep it together, I’ll explain after,” she hissed.

Robert closed the door behind the three of us after we’d filed inside. Grandma bustled around the kitchen, filling the coffee pot with water and getting a fresh filter from the cupboard. The room was decorated in pale green, from the paint on the walls to the faux stone countertops. The crisp white of the cupboards was evidence to how recently the elderly couple had moved into the self-contained unit. Lenny sat down at the small, round wooden table. She made eye contact with me, then jerked her head, indicating that Robert and I should do the same. When I sat, however, Robbie stood behind my chair and put a hand gently on my shoulder. The gesture relieved a surprising amount of my stress.

“So, Maggie, do you go to the high school too?”

“No, I,” I paused to gather my bearings. “I go to university. I’m actually studying abroad in Ireland.”

“Ireland? Oh, that’s exciting. Neil is from there. Neil is my husband,” she added for clarification that I didn’t require. “So if you don’t know one another from school, how do you know each other? You must be good friends, if she’s bringing you to meet her grandmother.”

“We’re sisters,” Helen supplied, sounding patient. “Remember, Grandma? Dad brought you her photo? You said you would put it up in your bedroom.”

Grandma stopped what she was doing and peered over at me. Her eyes were scrutinous, inspecting. “No, that’s not the girl. But you,” she looked up suddenly at Robert. “You’re that paperboy that we had back when our son was a boy, aren’t you? You used to bring him sweets. He liked you.”

“I’m afraid not,” Robert smiled politely, thought I could feel how awkward he felt in the way his hand tightened slightly on my shoulder. “Your son is a great deal older than I am. I am actually dating Maggie.”

Grandma’s eyes widened momentarily. “Your accent is quite lovely. Helen, honey, the coffee is on. I’m going to go and fetch your grandfather. Be a dear and get the cream out from the fridge, won’t you?”

When Lenny nodded her agreement, Grandma shuffled out of the room and into the bedroom next to it. She left the door open, so when I faced my sister I had to fight to keep my voice down.

“She doesn’t know who I am!”

“I told you I would explain later,” she snapped, pulling open the fridge and yanking out a small carton of half and half. “We tried, Maggie. It’s harder than you think when you’re not around.”

“So it’s my fault that my own grandmother seems to have forgotten my entire existence?”

“What do you want me to say, Maggie?”

“Neil, this girl says that she lives in Ireland. Maybe you’ve met her before.” Grandma’s voice alerted us to her return before the sound of her slippers on the tiled floor. My grandfather entered the room behind her. His shoulders were slumped forward. His plaid shirt hung loosely on his body, and his pants were pulled up far too high to be comfortable. He looked me over when Grandma pointed me out, and he smiled in a kind manner.

“Oh, hello there. It’s nice to meet you.”

I felt my chest constrict. I had really hoped that Grandpa, at least, might recall who I was. I gave him a defeated grin. “Same to you. I’m Maggie.”

Grandpa looked toward his wife fondly. “Margaret, she has the same name as you.”

“Yeah, funny how that happened,” I said softly. Lenny passed around mugs of coffee, but I found that I was in no mood for it. I pushed the cup away, toward the center of the table. Nobody made a move to retrieve it. Robert squeezed my shoulder again, but this time it was intentional.

We stayed for about half an hour longer, though it felt like an eternity. As soon as the door closed behind us, I rounded on Lenny.

“How could you do that? How could you let me walk in there totally clueless to the fact that they have no fucking idea who I am anymore? And why do they know who you are? Why are you so God damn loveable?”

“Because I go see them,” she shot back, her fear of confrontation dissipating as she shoved me back against the wall of the hallway. Taken by surprise, I shoved her back. “Jesus, Maggie, do you think I wanted to let this happen? I should have just waited until Mom and Dad got home. They would have taken you here, and I wouldn’t have had to deal with this.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?” I felt totally helpless. My breath caught and I had to take a moment to hold myself together. Grandma Margaret used to call me her little porcelain doll. Before Lenny had been born, I had been my grandma’s favourite person in the world. And Grandpa Neil, though he had been the strong, silent type, had always been quick to give me a hug or a kind word. Not to mention the pocketful of caramel-flavoured hard candies that he would constantly sneak over to me when he thought my parents weren’t looking. They had been such a huge part of my childhood. The knowledge that they probably never would be again broke my heart. I’d been so overwhelmed that I had completely forgotten to get the information that I’d needed. This whole trip had been pointless.

“When they first came here, the doctors thought it was acute dementia. It got worse really quickly. The Alzheimer’s had fully set in before anybody knew what was really happening. We’re here all the time, so they remember us. We brought them pictures of you and tried to keep reminding them, but when they don’t get to talk to you, it’s too hard.” Lenny chose to explain herself as patiently as she could. It was probably to prevent me from lashing out at her again. “I know how much you love them, Maggie. I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m beyond disappointed, Lenny. But it isn’t your fault.”

“I know that this is hardly the time or the place for this, but I think you guys need to talk to your dad.”

Both Lenny and I looked up at Robert in surprise. He shrugged his shoulders and pressed his lips together as if he were fighting to keep himself from laughing.

“I mean, really, he took sweets from the paperboy. Not to pass premature judgement here, but that sounds suspiciously like the behaviour of a paedophile to me.”

Despite the way I’d felt so unbearably hurt moments before, Robert had managed to make me laugh. I grabbed him and pulled him over to me, wrapping my arms around him. He kissed the top of my head as he returned the embrace.

“Oh, gag me,” Lenny complained loudly. “Come on, let’s go. Can we stop at the store on the way home? Our milk is expired. And someone,” she paused to glare at me pointedly, “ate all my cereal.”

I let go of Robert and gave her an innocent stare. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. But that’s not a bad idea. I need to get some better flavours of tea anyways.”

My little sister started walking away, heading down the hallway and back toward the front door. She zipped up her forest green winter jacket and flipped the hood up over her head in anticipation of the weather she was about to face. Robert tightened his arm around my shoulders.

“They seemed like lovely people,” he murmured. “I can see why you love them so much.”

I gulped, hoping that I didn’t appear as weak and hurt as I felt. “Once upon a time, that feeling was mutual.”

“Well maybe you’ll get back in their lives, and it’ll all come back to them.”

I forced a smile as I looked up at him. He was trying so hard to be supportive and optimistic. I appreciated his effort, but I knew that nothing but time could make this ache inside of me go away. I just had to get accustomed to the fact that these people who had once been such a huge part of my life were no longer aware that I was even alive. “I don’t think I’ll be around enough for that to happen. We’re going back to Ireland soon, and then I won’t be here again for four months. It’ll be okay, Robert. If I’d been prepared for that before we came here, then I wouldn’t have reacted as badly as I did.”

Cradling me closely against his side, he started walking after my sister. I didn’t want him to feel like he had to take care of me, but I loved that he was so quick and eager to help. I suddenly hated myself for ever letting Lenny put doubts in my head that morning. She didn’t know Robert like I did.

I heaved a sigh as we made our way back down the hallway. Today hadn’t turned out at all like I’d hoped. Maybe it was just time to go home and have a nap. The rest of this trip could only get better from here.