“She loved animals, especially rabbits. No idea why, they’re filthy animals, but she had about fifteen of them. I made her a dozen hutches and set them on the side of the house in two rows. She’d take you out there, Silvia, and you’d walk along between them, feeding all the bunnies one by one…”
Something flashed through my mind. It was a memory I’d always had of walking between what I had thought were fences, but they weren’t fences at all. They were small wooden doors covered in chicken wire. It was snowing outside, big, fat flakes falling from the sky and sticking to my eyelids. I reached up with my mitten to rub one off when something from behind one of the screens lunged at me and banged against the door. I screamed and turned to run away, but I lost my footing on the slick snow and fell flat on to my back. A woman bent over me and lifted me to my feet.
“Shush, Love,” She used the same words Oliver always spoke when I was getting emotional. I could hear her laughing gently. I could see her black Wellies and purple tweed coat as she lifted me into her arms, “It’s just Cottontail! It’s just a bunny! He’s not going to hurt you!”
“Cottontail?” I said aloud. “Oh, my God!” I slapped my hand over my mouth. I was literally gobsmacked. My whole body was electric as if I’d been plugged into a socket. Hot, stinging tears filled my eyes and rolled on to my cheeks.
”Are you all right, Silvia?” Dad asked sincerely.
“I’m fine,” I told him, still stunned, “I just….I thought I didn’t remember anything. I thought I couldn’t remember her, but I think I do. I remember a rabbit anyway. His name was Cottontail. I named him after that silly Easter song. I’d forgotten about the rabbits. I thought they were at Gran’s house. I thought they belonged to her.”
He laughed out loud, “No, she didn’t even like them! She agreed to take them, though, after Sharon died, because I couldn’t take care of them and you and Lucy, too.” He stopped and winced. “Just give me a moment,” He whispered.
“Please. Take your time. “
After a moment he began again. “She loved music as well,” He said, “Bagpipes! She loved bagpipes and pan flute! And had such a crush on David Bowie!” He laughed, “It made me so damned jealous!”
David Bowie. Another wave of heat and electricity washed though me. I had always loved David Bowie. I loved him with a dedication and passion that I’d never understood. I’d always felt like I somehow knew the man, as if he’d been a neighbour or an old sitter that had moved away and made the big time and I’d never seen again, but if I did the two of us would throw our arms around the other and be so relieved to be together after so long. Something about his voice, something in his face, in his eyes, had always made me feel safe. He was familiar.
I remember feeling like the room had suddenly disappeared and I wasn’t with my father any longer. I was in a different place all together. I was small, standing just in front of a doorway on a brown rug while a woman closed the door behind us. Sun was pouring in through one of the windows, filling the bed with a giant square of yellow against a grey-blue duvet. She put a record on a player. Above the bed was a picture of David Bowie in a frame. I climbed on to the bed and reached up with my little hand to trace the shape of his face with my finger. His eyes bored into mine. “Hello," I whispered, “How are you today? “
The woman lie across the bed on her side. Her red hair fall across her face. She reached out for me, “Come on, Silvia, lie down with me. We’ll have a little kip.”
I wasn’t tired, but I lie down and crawled up beside her. I put my hands against her swollen tummy. I could feel a baby move inside. Lucy. It was Lucy. I rolled away and stared at a dressing table, stained in a dark brown. It had a pink tea cup and saucer on top of it and a large mirror with a black and white photo of a man taped to it.
“Dad,” Suddenly back in the moment, I interrupted him, “I remember something. Tell me where this was.”
He nodded his head as I described the room. “That was her bedroom when she was a girl at your Gran’s house. The photo was of her father.”
I listened to him keep taking, telling me what she liked, what she ate, what her favourite colour was. I could finally see her. I still couldn’t make out her face, but I saw her body as she lifted me up. I could feel her. I could feel how soft her hair was as I buried my face into her neck. I could feel how strong her arms seemed as she cuddled me close. “It’s all right, Silvia,” She whispered, “They’ll be brighter days, Darling. Always remember that there will be brighter days.”
With a swirl of lavender and vanilla, sitting on a wooden chair next to my dying father, I remembered my mother. I heard her voice. I could smell her. I could feel her. Not just in a memory, but in the room with me, all around me.
Soon after, he drifted off to sleep again. It was all right. He’d given me what I had come for. I let him rest. I wasn’t angry anymore, not really. I’d never understand why he’d made the choices he had as a parent, but there was nothing either of us could do to change any of it now. After a time when he didn’t wake, I stood and kissed his forehead.
“Thank you, Daddy,” I whispered, “Thank you for giving her back to me.”
I drove back to my father’s house and told Oliver alone.
“She would have come back to you in your time, ,but I’m glad he reminded you” He told me, “The ones who share your heart never go very far, Sweetie. They never go very far at all.”
As before, Dad tried to send us packing. He was doing just fine, he told Lucy and me. We needed to go home, but every time he told us, his voice would be a little weaker, a little less convincing.
Finally, in the middle of the night, the hospital rang. It was a nurse doctor telling us that he’d slipped into a coma and it would only be hours until he was gone. The cancer had metastasized into his brain and it had taken him quicker than anyone had expected. Oliver and Alexander put us into Alex’s truck and we left off almost immediately.
Our father died at hospital less than three hours after we arrived.
It was so bizarre. Just bizarre. Lucy fell apart immediately, but I couldn’t even cry. My father had kept me at such a distance my whole life that his passing was almost a relief. I know how awful that sounds, but it’s the way I felt, like some sort of bondage had been lifted. I went home I made all the phone calls to my uncle and some of Daddy’s friends. Three days later, as he had made his own arrangements, Lucy and I buried him quietly beside our mother.
“I’m so sorry,” His friends told us, “You two were his pride and joy.”
I thanked them and told them truthfully that was a comfort.
Months after he left us, Lucy and I sat alone in the kitchen of the house where our father had lived for fifty years. Everything had been taken out of it, every corner had been scrubbed. It was ready to go on the market and I was ready to leave it behind. It wasn't any sort of home to me anymore. It was a place where I had lived, but without Dad there it was nothing more than an empty shell.
“It’s so strange,” Lucy told me, looking around the room, “Knowing that I’m never coming back here again.”
“Not to me,” I told her honestly, “I was never much attached to this place.”
She seemed surprised, “This was home.”
“For you maybe,” I looked at my sister, “I didn’t have a home until I met Oliver.”
“What?” She seemed offended. Her pale face was suddenly flushed, her full lips twisted sideways, “What are you talking about?”
“Dad never wanted me here,” I explained, still feeling the ice that surrounded his place in my heart, “He was always too busy to take any time for me.” I could feel myself becoming angry again and the look on her face, like she wanted to slap me, only made me angrier. She really didn't understand. She really didn't get it. He'd always treated her differently than he did me. Babied her. Spoiled her. Kept her close while he sent me away, “I just stayed here,” I continued, this time challenging her, “The same as I stayed at my schools. I wasn’t really wanted anywhere. Not until I met Oliver.”