Excerpt: Borrowed Memories

Excerpted with Permission, from 8th House Publishing

We arrive at the hospital just as a nurse is putting Horace to bed after some walking practice. I
run after the occupational therapist, a sporty looking blonde who is breezing down the hall with a chart, her ponytail flipping back and forth from the apparent wind. She probably drinks kombucha on her breaks and goes sailing at lunch hour. Mia catches up to us in time to hear that Horace is recovering well. In another week, he will be ready to come home. I should be happy, but my first thought is to wonder where Mia will sleep.

“Your father seems to think he’s going to drive himself home,” she says. “We’ve tried to
explain, but he’s not processing information very well.”

“This is normal, no?” Mia says. “Isn’t that why he’s here? His trouble is with the brain.”
The woman ignores Mia’s comment, smiles at me, and pulls herself up even straighter.

“If you think the driving will be a problem, we can ask the doctor to send a letter to the
ministry.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Mia grabs my arm on the way back to Horace’s room.

“I don’t like this woman. She has no heart. You don’t want to denounce him to the
government.”

Again, the edge in Mia’s voice. The same one I heard this morning when she asked me
not to report the caregiver.

“I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“She had you eating out of her hand. You’ll do what she wants.”

Mia pushes ahead, arriving back to the room a few steps in front of me. Aida is curled up
in bed with Horace, smothering him with kisses and promising to take care of him.

“How are you?” she asks him.

“I just told you.”

“We’d better leave Horace to rest now,” I say. “We’ll see him tomorrow. And he’ll be
coming home soon.”

“My God, you are such a control freak,” Mia says, hissing the words in my ear and
storming off.

Aida gives Horace another kiss, which he shakes off. At the door, Aida waves and Horace
calls me back.

“The next time you come, you don’t need to bring Aida.”

Mia is silent in the back seat all the way to the cottage, a forty-minute drive. I fill up the space
with commentary about the St. Lawrence River and the Thousand Islands, as if I’m a guide on
one of the boat tours. When we stop at a gas station, Mia buys junk food to help her pills go
down.

With the water shut down, we bring Aida to Margaret’s house for the bathroom, and she
stays for a visit. This is the first time Mia and I have been alone together during the day, and we
have only one hour left of sunlight. I’m wishing now I hadn’t put the shutters up yet because the
cottage looks so forlorn. The main patio is covered in more leaves and small branches nipped off
by the squirrels for the acorns. All the lawn furniture has been stored so she brushes off a spot on
the edge of the patio, sits down, and stares at the river. Her hand shakes. I stand off to one side,
pretending not to notice.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says. “I need to do some things in Montreal before my
flight.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t care if I go.”

In my head, I am already struggling to get Aida dressed in the morning and find the right
shade of lipstick. Without Mia, I will need to take her with me to the hospital, despite Horace’s
wishes. Without Mia, there will be no buffer when Horace comes home. But these are side
benefits of Mia’s presence. The real meaning of her departure is not something I am ready to
dwell on.

“Not true.”

“Tu ne veux pas parler en français un peu?”

We switch to French, and her words become more fluid and mine more deliberate. I don’t
mind. It’s easier to speak of difficult things in French. I don’t feel the words in the same way.
“Of course I want you to stay longer,” I tell her. “But you’ve got your own life.” What I
don’t say: we hardly know each other, but I want you to stay.

“You are too wrapped up in your parents,” she says, in English.

“They need me.”

A leaf falls in her hair, and she shakes it off.

“I hate nature.”

“Why did you want to come to the cottage?”

“To see it.”

I sit beside her on the patio. Our shoulders brush up against one another. If another leaf
falls it will hit us both at once.

She links her arm around mine, and I think: would it be so wrong to think of myself for
once? To kiss her, for instance. She has not been wearing perfume. I’m not sure if she’s adapting
to life in Riverton or is merely sensitive to the scent-free rules in the hospital. Maybe she’s just
run out. Yet sitting this close to her for the first time, I realize she has a scent all the same,
especially when she speaks, as if her words gain flavour in her mouth before they are released. I
sense her arm shaking, and she does as well, and she breaks away.

“Is something wrong?”

“If you want to know something important about me, ask about my films.”

We sit on the patio in silence, the cold stones and her flash of anger amplifying our
discomfort. I am about to ask about her films when Margaret approaches, arm-in-arm with Aida,
and I turn my attention to her.