Autumn, One Spring

By Patti Grayson

Every time Autumn Greene opens her mouth, an ugly, steaming pile of truth falls out. This hasn't changed in the six years since she fled her home town of Hematite, Ontario. Now that shes back, the truth-bombs are flying once again, exposing secrets and guilty agendas throughout the community.

Hoping for exoneration, Autumn returns unannounced and uninvited a few days before her big sister Christines wedding. In tow is the daughter she conceived in a one-time encounter with Christines ex-fiancé. Once burned, twice angry, Christine does all she can to make Autumn unwelcome. Despite her cool reception, Autumn discovers doors to new possibilities when she comes face to face with her high school crush.

Autumn, One Spring is a humour-infused drama that takes truthfulness in relationships seriously.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turnstone Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9780888015136

Patti Grayson

Autumn, One Spring is Patti Grayson's first novel. A popular book clubs selection, it was short listed for The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. Her short fiction collection, Core Samples (Turnstone Press, 2004), also garnered nominations for two Manitoba Book Awards. Patti has worked as a school librarian, advertising copywriter, puppeteer, and actor. She lives near Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Book preview

APRIL 28, 1986

Three days before the wedding

Chapter One

I ease my foot onto the brake pedal as we come over the big crest on the highway. There, at the bottom of the hill, is the cut-off sign for my hometown: Hematite 3 kms. The sign leans away from the asphalt, as if it has an affinity for the bulrush-crammed, stagnant pond next to it. On the opposite side of the highway is the rock cut where I once spray-painted A.G. LOVES G.A. in three-foot-high letters. If you know exactly where to look, you can still see a trace of them on the granite’s face. The gs appear to be written by two different people. I remember doing that on purpose. Even while I was clinging to the crevices in that rock cut with one hand and clutching the spray can with the other, I still managed to fantasize that G.A. was up there with me. It was not a long-lived fantasy. Shortly after that day of artistic endeavour, fate’s enforcers dangled me head-first over a precipice for a while; all my romantic notions emptied out of my pockets and smashed on the boulders below.

Too many metaphors, Autumn.

I turn the truck toward Hematite. We bump over the double railway tracks and I catch sight of the wood-carved voyageur statue, whose job it is to welcome the tourists to town. A piece of his nose is missing since I last saw him. You can’t tell if some punk axed it off or if nature’s cycle of freeze and thaw has wedged it away. Despite his breathing disability, he’s still mostly intact, poised under the weight of his pack, striding toward the bush. I should be inspired by his determined stance, but as I turn past the OPP station toward Main Street, I’m losing my nerve. Seeing my hometown again after a sixyear absence, I feel unwelcome. As if the town itself knows that my sister Christine has not invited us to her wedding. As if the town is yanking down its pants and beckoning me to kiss its naked, ironranged butt.

Sara sits in the passenger seat next to me and cranes her neck to peer over the dash of the truck. She doesn’t notice my reluctance— the fact I’ve slowed the truck down to a crawl. It’s her first real trip to anywhere. Excitement discharges from her like little campfire sparks.

Mommy, what was that? Where’s my grandma’s house? Where did you go to kindergarten? Why does everything look kinda red here?

Sara, haven’t you used up all your questions for today? I counter. She slumps in her seat and hugs her raggedy doll. Regret floods my arteries and pumps around for a while. I scan the main drag to point out something of interest to her—something to accompany my I’m sorry. She really has been such a good girl on this full day’s drive. But what can I show her? The derelict cars that litter the Hematite Repair Shop parking lot? Vehicles that have skidded into one of the rock cuts we’ve passed or collided with the broad flank of a moose. Of special interest, the battered stock cars in the back: demolition derby casualties from the Sunday night races at the gravel pit oval with their spray-painted numbers on the doors. I see there’s still a demand for spray paint in Hematite. I could point that out to Sara, and she could scrunch her nose at me and fake giggle, the way she does whenever she wants to pretend she knows what I’m talking about.

I focus on her final query: the seeing red question. At her age, I never questioned why every slushy snow bank, pothole puddle and stucco wall in town was tinged the shade of a henna gone wrong. That was just the colour of the place I lived. If I’d stopped to think about it back then, I might have imagined the rain collecting not in clouds, but in big, rusty gutters before it fell on Hematite.

Too much imagination, Autumn.

To Sara, I explain it properly. Everything looks red here because of the iron mine.

Oh, she says. What is that? She strains forward again and starts to watch for it as we drive down Main Street, but is sidetracked and exclaims, Look at the pretty store! She points to the rigidly posed, dressed-for-prom mannequins in the window of Mildred’s Apparel. They are the same three mannequins who modelled the latest in my day. The blonde one is still missing her baby finger: ZsaZsa. I named her two brunette buddies Thing One and Thing Two. Their wigs were Dr. Seuss horrendous. Still are.

Sara reasons aloud, Maybe that’s where my Auntie Christine bought her wedding dress.

Maybe, I answer. But your grandma probably sewed it for her. I clench and unclench my fingers from the steering wheel.

Back home in Winnipeg, I decided that not being invited to my sister Christine’s wedding was reason enough to attend it anyway. My motives for coming are more complicated than that, however. So complicated, I barely can think them through, but I do know that one of my reasons for coming was to exact revenge. I also know that if Christine had actually sent us an invitation, I might have RsvP’d that Sara and I would be attending … and then not showing up would be my revenge. But, there is also the need in me to make amends for what I’ve done in the past. Seek revenge. Make amends. Talk about a catchy bad rhyme and a split vote. If I’m totally honest with myself, I know my main motive for coming to my sister’s wedding lies just on the fringe of both these realms.

In the meantime, I’m here in Hematite. And now I believe I would gladly have stayed home if I’d known I’d be feeling this way when I finally arrived. During my time away, I developed a rosy, nostalgic picture of the place. I thought the town would have miraculously improved in my absence, but it’s the same old place.

As I approach the stop sign on Main Street, I’m willing to offer a long-term lease on my soul for a creamy-coloured envelope addressed in fancy script to Autumn & Sara Greene, nuptial summons enclosed. I would place it on the truck dash, stroke it for good luck, encourage Sara to try reading it aloud to me. But instead of an invitation, I have an anonymously-mailed newspaper clipping from the Hematite Prospect, circled twice in red pen, announcing the upcoming wedding of Christine Greene and Alec Vernon Minno.

I’m not sure what compels me to turn off Main Street and continue toward Mom’s house. I assume Mom mailed the notice to me without Christine’s knowledge, but that alone isn’t enough to keep me on course. Maybe it’s those little sparks shooting off Sara. How can I disappoint her? Or perhaps I’m continuing because just as we approach the high school where the land dips between two rock outcroppings, the sun is perched at the top of the evergreens, as if it’s waiting for us to pass by before it succumbs to its own weight and sinks behind the pines for the night. This specific, suspended, dusky light churns some hope inside me. It reminds me of the way Christine and I revelled in spring evenings when we were kids; the chance to play outside longer, the thawing damp earth smell, the stripped-off-parka shivers. Spring. If Mom had named me April instead of Autumn, would things have been different now? Would Sara and I have been asked to wear matching mint chiffon dresses and carry rosebud bouquets?

I stop the truck two houses before Mom’s. I peer at my childhood home before inching toward it. Nothing much has changed. The stucco is still neutral beige tinged with its permanent red dust stain. The window frames are six years further along in need of paint. Mom’s patchy front lawn is bare of snow and dull from the drawn-out winter. I’m surprised Christine hasn’t spent some of her time and money sprucing up the place, but for all I know she might be living in an apartment downtown, maybe even shacked up with her betrothed. Shacked up, that’s what Mom called it before Dad left us. She tried not to refer to such things afterward.

I shift the truck into park, smile at Sara and say, This is Grandma’s house. So you’ll wait here for a minute like we talked about, okay? And remember, don’t close your eyes. I know you’re tired, but I don’t want you to fall asleep now, you understand?

Sara nods. She tries to smile, but it’s clear she doesn’t understand why she can’t just burst into her grandma’s house and introduce herself. Lots of kids in our apartment building see their grandmothers every day. I smooth Sara’s hair away from her face and kiss her forehead. It’s all I can offer.

The paint on Mom’s back door is peeling. I smell the damp wood as I reach for the handle. The door squeaks open—a familiar squeak, rusty hinges, worn, warped wood rubbing against the door frame. I push it open, and as I step up into the kitchen, I call, Hello?

Christine and my mom, Joyce, are in the living room. I can see straight through the doorway from my vantage point in the cramped kitchen. Christine’s head darts up. At the first sight of me, she blinks and starts to sway, as if she might faint, but a second later, words spit out of her mouth. "What the hell are you doing here? You can’t— what the—you—slut!"

I stare back, unable to respond, taking her in. She is standing on a footstool, draped in her wedding dress. A wedding dress that incorporates every wedding-dress feature possible and then some: a three-tiered satin skirt, detachable train, lily point sleeves, scalloped neckline and a half-ton of beads bedecking the bodice. Christine looks like a triple-scoop, vanilla sundae princess with crystal sprinkles on top. My eyes jump from her glittery, ample cleavage to the bottom edge of her skirt, which Mom is hunched over pinning. Mom’s head swivels around and the pins that are clamped between her false teeth drop into the green carpet. She tries to stand, but crumples back down.

I guess I should have knocked. Or phoned first.

Had I expected them to welcome me? That’s what’s been playing in my head for the past week, if I’m willing to admit it to myself. The reunion. Tears and apologies. In all the scenarios I played out, Christine hadn’t called me a slut in any of them. It wasn’t like her to talk that way. I’d expected the silent treatment she had given me just before I moved out, but I was hoping for something more. Something like... "Autumn, you came! Your invitation was returned to us. We couldn’t reach you. Why is your phone number unlisted? I’m so grateful to you now: I’m getting married to the perfect guy! Mom, Autumn’s here! And Mom would just say, Autumn!"

The last part is partially right. Mom says, Autumn, but the way she croaks it out sounds more like, Poison.

Even so, it’s the moment for me to seize; it’s my window-of-apology opportunity. Instead, I say to my sister, It’s three days before your wedding and you don’t have your dress hemmed yet? Shame on you, Miss Home-Ec-Award-Recipient!

My sister charges at me. Mom is still holding her hem.

Christie! Mom warns and lets go.

Too late. Pulled off balance, Christine falls onto the arm of the couch. There’s a sharp ripping sound.

Christine starts wailing, Oh no, Mom, oh no! Where’s the rip? Arms flapping, she searches for the damage, pats her breasts, separates tiers, rubs her hands down the side seams, across her stomach and hips, then pats her breasts again.

I want to bolt out the door, but the weight of our past has me pinned: Autumn, the ultimate shit-disturber, strikes again.

It’s there, I say, gulping, stepping into the living room. The seam under the arm let loose. It just needs to be resewn. It’s not wrecked.

I try to show Christine exactly where it is. She swats my hand away, tears well up in her eyes.

Christie! Mom yells. Take the dress off before you water-stain the front, yet!

Christine unzips and shimmies out of it.

Gathering the wedding dress heap that threatens to swallow her, Mom turns to me and says, Oh Autumn, why did you come?

Just like that.

I don’t have a chance to answer before Sara’s voice cuts through the commotion. She’s standing in the kitchen doorway. Mommy, I still have to go pee, she says in a timid voice.

I forgot. Just before we turned at the highway cut-off, she told me that.

Christine’s hand jerks to her mouth. It takes what seems an eternity before she blinks and scrambles to cover her push-up bra with the terry cloth robe that’s flung over the couch.

Is that my grandma and Auntie Christine? Sara asks, coming to take hold of my hand, careful to stay behind me.

Yes, sweetie, I say, then turning to them, I add, And this is Sara.

Mom stares at Sara; her jaw starts working like a pastry cutter, sawing side to side, blending words that aren’t coming out. Her face drains to the colour of raw pie crust. Christine yanks the wedding dress out of Mom’s arms and holds it in front of her like a shield. Mom relinquishes it, not taking her eyes off Sara. Maybe she still imagines Sara as a baby. I sent her that newborn hospital picture and then a snapshot at two months. When I never heard back, I didn’t send any others.

Strange how we imagine people we haven’t seen for a long time to be preserved just the way they were when we saw them last, as if time hasn’t been passing where they are. And yet, stranger still, I expected the town to look different, but it seems unchanged. Mom and Christine have changed. The corners of Mom’s mouth sag downward with extra skin even though her collarbone protrudes from her thin neck and bony-point shoulders. Christine has gained weight, and there is the hint of a double chin that makes her look older than her twenty-seven years. I can’t help thinking that my boss, Dr. Jewel, could repair both their problems with surgical procedures, though I imagine neither of them will be calling our office to book appointments.

I wonder if I look different to them. If they notice my dark, unruly curls are trimmed shoulder length and finally in style. I don’t even need to pay for a perm; big hair is finally trendy. I expect I look like a real Mom in my stretch harem pants and sweatshirt—the after-work or stay-at-home uniform of the single mothers in our apartment block. I wonder if Mom and Christine can see that. The mother in me.

Listen, I say, and I feel myself gain some control over the nervous warble in my throat. Sara has to use the bathroom. I can be as angry as ever standing in the house I’ve grown up in, but I am no longer just the bad daughter, rotten sister anymore: I have my own child, and I can be effective when her well-being is at stake. It’s a relief to discover that, whether they can see it or not, I am a mother (maybe even a good one, or at least not a major screw-up one), standing in my own mother’s living room.

I march Sara down the hallway, shut and lock the door behind us. Sara yawns.

Are you tired, sweetie? I ask, taking a good look at her. I stare a lot at her since the diagnosis of her epilepsy a year ago. I’m always looking for signs, indications, of how she’s transformed from a perfectly healthy child to one with a condition.

Sara holds on to the top of her sweatpants and says, Mommy, I’d like some privacy.

Okay, okay, I won’t look. I’ll check out Grandma’s towels on this Johnny pole, I answer.

Sara senses she shouldn’t argue, What’s a Johnny pole? she asks.

It’s this thingamajig, I say, pointing. Johnny pole is what Grandma called it when I was growing up.

A towel rack is what it is. Mom kept a nickel and dime jar to save for trendy household items. She had a Slice ’n dice for coleslaw and Blue Mountain pottery ashtrays. I wonder if her purchases were disappointments in the end: by the time she saved enough to buy them, they were passé.

Can we get a Johnny pole for our bathroom? Sara admires everyone else’s belongings. The chrome and wood-grain plastic TV stand at her friend’s apartment impresses her as much as Dr. Jewel’s mahogany office desk, simply because they belong to someone else.

I reply, I don’t think they make Johnny poles anymore. Grandma must have ordered this from the Eaton’s catalogue. Are you finished? Wash your hands. Use soap.

I can hear Mom and Christine’s hushed, panicked tones outside the door, and I’m certain they’re not discussing the merits of the Johnny pole.

I lean against the bathroom door. What am I supposed to say to them next? Sara likes your towel rack. Can Sara and I remain behind the closed bathroom door until our lives are over?

There’s a quiet knock. Do you think, I thought, Sara, some orange juice, does she want some? It’s Mom. She’s put her words on high-speed blend.

Sara? I say.

Yes, please, she answers.

I open the door. Mom is still standing there, her face remains pale and she blinks hard as Sara comes out of the bathroom.

Go with Grandma to the kitchen, I say.

Christine stays put in the hallway. She has deposited her wedding gown elsewhere, and is still clad in the pink terry bathrobe. She waits for them to walk down the hall. She doesn’t look at me when she says, She has his red hair.

I glance at her. The lines around her mouth are tight. I run my hand through my own hair. Yeah, I say. She does.

Freckles too, she adds.

Observant of you, Christine, I reply.

Screw off, Autumn! she snipes through tight lips.

I stare at her.

She stares back. I should have said that to you six years ago. I can’t figure out why I never did.

I say nothing, although I’ve asked myself the same question.

Christine chews on the inside corner of her mouth, then sniffs and flicks her hair over her shoulder. She’s working up to say more. Just tell me one thing, Autumn, why did you come here?

It’s my second chance. Christine is giving me another opening, the opportunity to make things right. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me not to seize it. I shed maturity as easily as Dr. Jewel excises a small mole. I revert to what has been familiar—the bratty little sister role. I don’t know, Christine, I say. Maybe I just wanted to check out your new fiancé.

Christine’s cheeks deepen to near purple. You’re not going to come here and screw things up, Autumn! You and Keefe’s kid. Mom! she wails, then catches herself and says nonchalantly as she heads toward the kitchen, Autumn’s gotta go. Is Sara finished the juice?

Mom raises her eyebrows. They are plucked pencil-thin, but at least they exist. In the two years following Dad’s departure, she started plucking and wouldn’t stop until she smoked a half-pack of Matinées and her brows were depopulated. Brow-ocide. Every time she finished, she’d put her head down and cry because she didn’t have the self-control to stop.

Christine responds to Mom’s raised eyebrows and says, There’s no room here. The spare room is packed with our moving boxes and presents. The motels are booked solid for Alec’s family.

Mom makes another attempt. What about Sugar’s B & B?

"You want them staying at the Bed & Gossip?" Christine demands.

Mom shakes her head in the negative. I suppose not.

Sara, her mouth full of cookie, pipes up, Are there any stables, Mommy?

What? I ask.

She swallows. Stables. You can stay in a stable when there’s no room in the inns.

I smile at Sara. At that moment, I want Mom and Christine to appreciate what a bright and sweet child I’ve raised. When I glance at Christine, she’s scowling. I wonder in which of her dresser drawers she’s locked her sense of humour. I imagine it trapped under a D cup or netted in her pantyhose.

Mom edges the cookie jar a little closer to Sara and answers her. No, we don’t have a stable, but it would be nice if we had somewhere… She rubs her arm and says quietly to Christine, What about Gabriel’s? Viv’s?

"Gabriel Ashton? I question. The English teacher?" Twice in one hour. This time, humiliation storms over me. There’s Mr. Ashton, G.A., at his desk, his lean, young face flushed, birchbark scrolls in his hand, and his eyes fixed on them as if he refuses to embarrass me any further by looking at me. His voice, normally mellow and mesmeric, has an abrupt edginess when he tells me I’ll have to destroy my verses and would I please refrain from writing any others in the same vein.

Too many idylls, Autumn.

Christine brings me back to the more serious matter. No! she insists. Not Gabriel’s. And you know Viv is still renovating.

Mom interrupts Christine. Well, but Gabriel offered… she begins.

Christine glares and answers, "But not for her."

Mom crosses her arms, holds onto her bony elbows, uncrosses them, tugs on her blouse, rolls the edge of her hem. Her jaw starts sawing side to side, side to side. Well, is all she says. She reaches for Sara, pats her hand, then adds, Maybe some other time you can come visit me.

I can see it’s easier for Mom to just give in to Christine. It’s always been that way, even though Christine saw it the other way around. If Mom ever forgave my bad behaviour, Christine was outraged. Christine, the good daughter, the responsible one. You always favour Autumn because she’s the baby. She gets away with everything even when she’s really bad.

Sara looks at the expression on my face, and then she looks at her cookie and puts it down on the kitchen table.

A million thoughts are running through my head. I want to demand, So, you’re throwing me out again? Just like that? But another bell in my head is clanging, Don’t give them the satisfaction. Find something else to say. From the doorway I ask Christine, Since when did you become friends with Mr. Ashton?

She shrugs, her mind elsewhere.

I reach for Sara’s hand. Okay, sweetie, we’re going now. Auntie Christine and Grandma are really busy.

Mom follows us to the door, her eyes fixed on the top of Sara’s head. She says, Gabriel is Alec’s best man. The bridal party is Christine’s curling team. They won the Club’s Mixed Championship this year. She swivels around to the kitchen counter, grabs her purse and rummages through it. She dredges out a dollar bill and hands it to Sara. Here’s something for you. Buy yourself an ice cream.

Thank you, Sara responds. She looks at me to make sure it’s okay to take it. I nod. Sara’s face brightens. Bye, Grandma.

I shut the door quietly behind us. It’s nearly dark outside; only a smidgen of half-light remains. The backyard butts up against the bush. There is a sorry excuse for a trimmed lawn and then nature takes over. A tall evergreen marks the transition; not a groomed, blue spruce yard tree, but a naked-from-the-waist-down Jack pine escapee from the wilds, imprisoned there. The air smells like moist cedar, chilled from the surviving patches of snow. I’ve forgotten how close nature can encroach in places like Hematite, having lived in a city apartment block since Sara’s birth.

I swing Sara into my arms. Pretty soon, I’m not going to be able to carry you, you’re getting so big, I say to her, my voice too cheerful.

She doesn’t answer, but snuggles against me, her chin on my shoulder, her fist wound tightly around her dollar. She shivers against the darkness.

Remember, I say, I didn’t know how things would work out because we were surprising them? Sometimes surprises backfire, remember I said that? Anyway, it sounds like Grandma wants to visit with you another time, eh? When things aren’t so hectic with the wedding.

My words are useless. The stupidity of the adult world can’t be explained to my five-year-old.

I start the truck and rev the engine. It never fails me at forty below, but it falters in damp air. Half of Hematite is built on swamp and cedar bog, soggy and damp. Don’t stall now, I mutter, as we pull away. The engine coughs down the road. I turn directly toward the highway, and we pass an expansive new building: the Hematite Curling Club. Blue metal-clad, it stands overlooking the Keeping River which bursts through town in the spring and lazes through it most summers. When we were kids, the site was overgrown with willow bushes, and Christine and I built secret forts there. The bushes are gone now. They’ve been cleared to make room for ice and granite rocks. It’s the only real change I can see in Hematite. For some reason, it makes me long for the touch of pussy willows against my cheek.

Chapter Two

My high beams illuminate the sign at the Pine Winds Resort— CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. It’s the last resort in a string of three boasting cozy cabins. They are all closed. The end of April is too early for fishermen guests. I am twenty kilometres out of town, and those resorts are the only accommodations I know of in the direction of home for about three hours. Back in town, only the Range Hotel had a vacancy. We could return to it and sleep on mattresses that old men have pissed on in drunken stupors, or drive all night to return home. It should be an easy choice, but it isn’t. The desolate highway stretches into sad blackness ahead of us, as if it yearns for the diesel howl of pulp trucks, the metallic clank of boats on trailers, and the anaemic whine of foreign compacts. The only other vehicle we’ve encountered so far is an OPP cruiser headed back into town for the night.

Sara needs to settle into a bed and sleep. The neurologist Dr. Jewel recommended had a theory that Sara’s epilepsy might be connected to her biorhythms, that routine bedtimes and uninterrupted sleep could be an important factor in reducing the number of seizures. He said there was cutting-edge evidence that medication wasn’t necessary for Sara’s form of epilepsy—an epilepsy of childhood, the seizures mostly nocturnal—experts in the field were referring to it as benign, and he was willing to delay prescribing medication if her seizures didn’t increase in number or duration. That suited me just fine. To me, the side effects of the drugs were almost as terrifying as the seizures themselves.

I run the neurologist’s words through my head. For a moment, I imagine the spikes in Sara’s brain waves as out-of-control Jet Skis on whitecaps. My heart starts to pound. Should I drive all night back to Winnipeg and let Sara sleep fitfully in the truck without a seat belt? What if I can’t stay awake and drive into a rock cut? With darkness tamped down and the trip here a definite bust, the question of what to do next becomes more of a dilemma than the decision to come here in the first place.

Too much dithering, Autumn.

I’m five kilometres further down the highway before I pull onto the gravel shoulder.

Why are we stopping, Mommy? Sara asks.

I just have to think a minute, Sara, I say and reach over to kiss the top of her head. I let my cheek rest there for a moment and wonder if I can sense any undercurrent of electrical impulses.

With my head tilted like this, I can see the half-moon through the corner of the windshield. Half-moons are so pitiable. They have neither the