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Mom was a little narrow wisp of a woman. You wouldn’t have thought to look at her that she could move a card table; even for me it was sometimes hard to believe the ease with which she could shove around an entire family. Often I tried to explain her to myself. She had been brought up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. I wondered sometimes if the scenery down there had rubbed off on her — all those granite rocks and fogs and screeching gulls, the slow, labouring springs, and the quick, grudging summers. And then the winters — greyer than doom, and endless.

I was the oldest. I was around that house for five years before Maudie came along. They were peaceful, those five years, and even now it’s easy to remember how everything seemed calm and simple. But now I know why. I was a conformist and malleable as early as three years old; I didn’t buck the system. If Mom said, “Hurry, Adelaide!” I hurried. If she said to me, at five, “Fold that laundry, now, Adie, and don’t let no grass grow under your feet,” I folded it fast. So there were very few battles at first, and no major wars.

Dad, now, he was peaceful just by nature. If a tornado had come whirling in the front door and lifted the roof clear off its hinges, he probably would have just scratched the back of his neck and said, with a kind of slow surprise, “Well! Oho! Just think o’ that!” He had been born in the Annapolis Valley, where the hills are round and gentle, and the summers sunlit and very warm.

“Look at your father!” Mom would say to us later. “He thinks that all he’s gotta do is be. Well, bein’ ain’t good enough. You gotta do, too. Me, I’m a doer.” All the time she was talking, she’d be knitting up a storm, or mixing dough, or pushing a mop — hands forever and ever on the move.

Although Mom was fond of pointing out to us the things our father didn’t do, he must have been doing something. Our farm was in the most fertile part of the Valley, and it’s true that we had the kind of soil that seemed to make things grow all of their own accord. Those beets and carrots and potatoes just came pushing up into the sunshine with an effortless grace, and they kept us well fed, with plenty left over to sell. But there was weeding and harvesting to do, and all those ten cows to milk — not to mention the fifteen apple trees in our orchard to be cared for. I think maybe he just did his work so slowly and quietly that she found it hard to believe he was doing anything at all. Besides, on the South Shore, nothing ever grew without a struggle. And when Dad was through all his chores, or in between times, he liked to just sit on our old porch swing and watch the spring unfold or the summer blossom. And in the fall, he sat there smiling, admiring the rows of vegetables, the giant sunflowers, the golden leaves gathering in the trees of North Mountain.

Maudie wasn’t Maudie for the reasons a person is a Ginny or a Gertie or a Susie. She wasn’t called Maudie because she was cute. She got that name because if you’ve got a terrible name like Maud, you have to do something to rescue it. She was called after Mom’s Aunt Maud, who was a miser and had the whole Bank of Nova Scotia under her mattress. But she was a crabby old thing who just sat around living on her dead husband’s stocks and bonds. A be-er, not a doer. Mom really scorned Aunt Maud and hated her name, but she had high hopes that our family would sometime cash in on that gold mine under the mattress. She hadn’t counted on Aunt Maud going to Florida one winter and leaving her house in the care of a dear old friend. The dear old friend emptied the contents of the mattress, located Aunt Maud’s three diamond rings, and took off for Mexico, leaving the pipes to freeze and the cat to die of starvation. After that, old Aunt Maud couldn’t have cared less if everybody in the whole district had been named after her. She was that bitter.

Maudie was so like Mom that it was just as if she’d been cut out with a cookie cutter from the same dough. Raced around at top speed all through her growing-up time, full of projects and sports and hobbies and gossip and nerves. And mad at everyone who sang a different tune.

But this story’s not about Maudie. I guess you could say it’s mostly about Albert.

Albert was the baby. I was eight years old when he was born, and I often felt like he was my own child. He was special to all of us, I guess, except maybe to Maudie, and when Mom saw him for the first time, I watched a slow soft tenderness in her face that was a rare thing for any of us to see. I was okay because I was cooperative, and I knew she loved me. Maudie was her clone, and almost like a piece of herself, so they admired one another, although they were too similar to be at peace for very long. But Albert was something different. Right away, I knew she was going to pour into Albert something that didn’t reach the rest of us, except in part. As time went on, this scared me. I could see that she’d made up her mind that Albert was going to be a perfect son. That meant, among other things, that he was going to be a fast-moving doer. And even when he was three or four, it wasn’t hard for me to know that this wasn’t going to be easy. Because Albert was a be-er. Born that way.

As the years went by, people around Wilmot used to say, “Just look at that family of Hortons. Mrs. Horton made one child — Maudie. Then there’s Adelaide, who’s her own self. But Albert, now. Mr. Horton made him all by himself. They’re alike as two pine needles.”

And just as nice, I could have added. But Mom wasn’t either pleased or amused. “You’re a bad influence on that boy, Stanley,” she’d say to my dad. “How’s he gonna get any ambition if all he sees is a father who can spend up to an hour leanin’ on his hoe, starin’ at the Mountain?” Mom had it all worked out that Albert was going to be a lawyer or a doctor or a Member of Parliament.

My dad didn’t argue with her, or at least not in an angry way, “Aw, c’mon now, Dorothy,” he might say to her, real slow. “The vegetables are comin’ along jest fine. No need to shove them more than necessary. It does a man good to look at them hills. You wanta try it sometime. They tell you things.”

“Nothin’ I need t’ hear,” she’d huff, and disappear into the house, clattering pans, thumping the mop, scraping the kitchen table across the floor to get at more dust. And Albert would just watch it all, saying not a word, chewing on a piece of grass.

Mom really loved my dad, even though he drove her nearly crazy. Lots more went on than just nagging and complaining. If you looked really hard, you could see that. If it hadn’t been for Albert and wanting him to be a four-star son, she mightn’t have bothered to make Dad look so useless. Even so, when they sat on the swing together at night, you could feel their closeness. They didn’t hold hands or anything. Her hands were always too busy embroidering, crocheting, mending something, or just swatting mosquitoes. But they liked to be together. Personal chemistry, I thought as I grew older, is a mysterious and contrary thing.

One day, Albert brought his report card home from school, and Mom looked at it hard and anxious, eyebrows knotted: “Albert seems a nice child,’” she read aloud to all of us, more loudly than necessary, “‘but his marks could be better. He spends too much time looking out the window, dreaming.’” She paused. No one spoke.

“Leanin’ on his hoe,” continued Mom testily. “Albert!” she snapped at him. “You pull up your socks by Easter or you’re gonna be in deep trouble.”

Dad stirred uneasily in his chair. “Aw, Dorothy,” he mumbled. “Leave him be. He’s a good kid.”

“Or could be. Maybe,” she threw back at him. “What he seems like to me is rock-bottom lazy. He sure is slow-moving, and could be he’s slow in the head, too. Dumb.”

Albert’s eyes flickered at that word, but that’s all. He just stood there and watched, eyes level.

“But I love him a lot,” continued Mom, “and unlike you, I don’t plan t’ just sit around and watch him grow dumber. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna light a fire under his feet.”

Albert was twelve then, and the nagging began to accelerate in earnest.

“How come you got a low mark in your math test?”

“T don’t like math. It seems like my head don’t want it.”

“But do you work at it?”

“Well, no. Not much. Can’t see no sense in workin’ hard at something I’ll never use. I can add up our grocery bill. I pass. ‘That’s enough.”

“Not for me, it ain’t,” she’d storm back at him. “No baseball practice for you until you get them sums perfect. Ask Maudie t’ check them.” Maudie used to drum that arithmetic into him night after night. She loved playing schoolteacher, and that’s how she eventually ended up. And a cross one.

One thing Albert was good at, though, was English class. By the time he got to high school, he spent almost as much time reading as he did staring into space. His way of speaking changed. He stopped dropping his g’s. He said isn’t instead of ain’t. His tenses were all neated up. He wasn’t putting on airs. I just think that all those people in his books started being more real to him than his own neighbours. He loved animals, too. He made friends with the calves and even the cows. Mutt and Jeff, our two grey cats, slept on his bed every night. Often you could see him out in the fields, talking to our dog, while he was working.

“Always messin’ around with animals,” complained Mom. “Sometimes I think he’s three parts woman and one part child. He’s fifteen years old, and last week I caught him bawlin’ in the hayloft after we had to shoot that male calf. Couldn’t understand why y’ can’t go on feedin’ an animal that’ll never produce milk.”

“Nothing wrong with liking animals,” I argued. I was home for the weekend from my secretarial job in Wolfville.

“Talkin’ to dogs and cryin’ over cattle is not what I’d call a short cut to success. And the cats spend so much time with him that they’ve forgotten why we brought them into the house in the first place. For mice.”

“Maybe there’s more to life than success or mice,” I said. I was twenty-three now, and more interested in Albert than in conformity.

Mom made a “huh” sound through her nose. “Adelaide Horton,” she said, “when you’re my age, you’ll understand more about success and mice than you do now. Or the lack of them.” She turned on her heel and went back in the house. “And if you can’t see,” she said through the screen door, “why I don’t want Albert to end up exactly like your father, then you’ve got even less sense than I thought you had. I don’t want any son of mine goin’ through life just satisfied to be.” Then I could hear her banging around out in the kitchen.

I looked off the verandah out at the front field, where Dad and Albert were raking up hay for the cattle, slowly, with lots of pauses for talk. All of a sudden they stopped, and Albert pointed up to the sky. It was fall, and four long wedges of geese were flying far above us, casting down their strange muffled cry. The sky was cornflower blue, and the wind was sending white clouds scudding across it. My breath was caught with the beauty of it all, and as I looked at Dad and Albert, they threw away their rakes and lay down flat on their backs, right here in the front pasture, in order to drink in the sky. And after all the geese had passed over, they stayed like that for maybe twenty minutes more.

*  *  *  *  *

We were all home for Christmas the year Albert turned eighteen. Maudie was having her Christmas break from teaching, and she was looking skinnier and more tight-lipped than I remembered her. I was there with my husband and my new baby, Jennifer, and Albert was even quieter than usual. But content, I thought. Not making any waves. Mom had intensified her big campaign to have him go to Acadia University in the fall. “Pre-law,” she said, “or maybe teacher training. Anyways, you gotta go. A man has to be successful.” She avoided my father’s eyes. “In the fall,” she said. “For sure.”

“It’s Christmas,” said Dad, without anger. “Let’s just be happy and forget all them plans for a few days.” He was sitting at the kitchen table breaking up the bread slowly, slowly, for the turkey stuffing. He chuckled. “I’ve decided to be a doer this Christmas.”

“And if the doin’s bein’ done at that speed,” she said, taking the bowl from him, “we’ll be eatin’ Christmas dinner on New Year’s Day.” She started to break up the bread so quickly that you could hardly focus on her flying fingers.

Christmas came and went. It was a pleasant time. The food was good; Jennifer slept right through dinner and didn’t cry all day. We listened to the Queen’s Christmas message; we opened presents. Dad gave Mom a ring with a tiny sapphire in it, although she’d asked for a new vacuum cleaner.

“I like this better,” she said, and looked as though she might cry.

“We’ll get the vacuum cleaner in January,” he said, “That’s no kind of gift to get for Christmas. It’s a work thing.”

She looked as if she might say something, but she didn’t.

*  *  *  *  *

It was Boxing Day when it happened. That was the day of the fire.

It was a lazy day. We all got up late, except me, of course, who had to feed the baby at two and at six. But when we were all up, we just sort of lazed around in our dressing gowns, drinking coffee, admiring one anothers’ presents, talking about old times, singing a carol or two around the old organ. Dad had that look on him that he used to get when all his children were in his house at the same time. Like he was in temporary possession of the best that life had to offer. Even Mom was softened up, and she sat by the grate fire and talked a bit, although there was still a lot of jumping up and down and rushing out to the kitchen to check the stove or cut up vegetables. Me, I think on Boxing Day you should just eat up leftovers and enjoy a slow state of collapse. But you can’t blame a person for feeding you. It’s handy to have a Martha or two around a house that’s already equipped with three Marys. Albert was the best one to watch, though. To me, anyway. He was sitting on the floor in his striped pajamas, holding Jennifer, rocking her, and singing songs to her in a low, crooning voice. Tender, I thought, the way I like a man to be.

Albert had just put the baby back in her carriage when a giant spark flew out of the fireplace. It hit the old nylon carpet like an incendiary bomb, and the rug burst into flames. Mom started waving an old afghan over it, as though she was blowing out a match, but all she was doing was fanning the fire.

While most of us stood there in immovable fear, Albert had already grabbed Jennifer, carriage and all, and rushed out to the barn with her. He was back in a flash, just in time to see Maudie’s dressing gown catch fire. He pushed her down on the floor and lay on top of her and smothered the flames, and then he was up on his feet again, taking charge.

“Those four buckets in the summer kitchen!” he yelled. “Start filling them!” He pointed to Mom and Dad, who obeyed him like he was a general and they were the privates. To my husband he roared, “Get out to th’ barn and keep that baby warm!”

“And you!” He pointed at me. “Call the fire department. It’s 825-3131.” In the meantime, the smoke was starting to fill the room and we were all coughing. Little spits of fire were crawling up the curtains, and Maudie was just standing there, shrieking.

Before Mom and Dad got back with the water, Albert was out in the back bedroom hauling up the carpet. Racing in with it over his shoulder, he bellowed, “Get out o’ the way!” and we all moved. Then he slapped the carpet over the flames on the floor, and the fire just died without so much as a protest. Next he grabbed one of the big cushions off the sofa, and chased around after the little lapping flames on curtains and chairs and table runners, smothering them. When Mom and Dad appeared with a bucket in each hand, he shouted, “Stop! Don’t use that stuff! No need t have water damage too!

Then Albert was suddenly still, hands hanging at his sides with the fingers spread. He smiled shyly.

“It’s out,” he said.

I rushed up and hugged him, wailing like a baby, loving him, thanking him. For protecting Jennifer — from smoke, from fire, from cold, from heaven knows what. Everyone opened windows and doors, and before too long, even the smoke was gone. It smelled pretty awful, but no one cared.

When we all gathered again in the parlour to clear up the mess, and Jennifer was back in my bedroom asleep, Mom stood up and looked at Albert, her eyes ablaze with admiration — and with something else I couldn’t put my finger on.

“Albert!” she breathed, “We all thank you! You’ve saved the house, the baby, all of us, even our Christmas presents. I’m proud, proud, proud of you.”

Albert just stood there, smiling quietly, but very pale. His hands were getting red and sort of puckered looking.

Mom took a deep breath. “And that,” she went on, “is what I’ve been looking for, all of your life. Some sort of a sign that you were one hundred per cent alive. And now we all know you are. Maybe even a lick more alive than the rest of us. So!” She folded her arms, and her eyes bored into him. “I’ll have no more excuses from you now. No one who can put out a house fire single-handed and rescue a niece and a sister and organize us all into a fire brigade is gonna sit around for the rest of his life gatherin’ dust. No siree! Or leanin’ against no hoe. Why, you even had the fire department number tucked away in your head. Just imagine what you’re gonna be able to do with them kind o’ brains! I’ll never, never rest until I see you educated and successful. Doin’ what you was meant to do. I’m just proud of you, Albert. So terrible proud!”

Members of the fire department were starting to arrive at the front door, but Albert ignored them. He was white now, like death, and he made a low and terrible sound. He didn’t exactly pull his lips back from his teeth and growl, but the result was similar. It was like the sound a dog makes before he leaps for the throat. And what he said was “You jest leave me be, woman!”

We’d never heard words like this coming out of Albert, and the parlour was as still as night as we all listened.

“You ain’t proud o’ me, Mom,” he whispered, all his beautiful grammar gone. “Yer jest proud o’ what you want me t’ be. And I got some news for you. Things I should a tole you years gone by. I ain’t gonna be what you want.” His voice was starting to quaver now, and he was trembling all over. “I’m gonna be me. And it seems like if that’s ever gonna happen, it’ll have t’ be in some other place. And I plan t’ do somethin’ about that before the day is out.”

Then he shut his eyes and fainted right down onto the charred carpet. The firemen carted him off to the hospital, where he was treated for shock and second-degree burns. He was there for three weeks.

*  *  *  *  *

My dad died of a stroke when he was sixty-six. “Not enough exercise,” said Mom, after she’d got over the worst part of her grief. “Too much sittin’ around watchin’ the lilacs grow. No way for his blood to circulate good.” Me, I ask myself if he just piled up his silent tensions until he burst wide open. Maybe he wasn’t all that calm and peaceful after all. Could be he was just waiting, like Albert, for the moment when it would all come pouring out. Perhaps that wasn’t the way it was; but all the same, I wonder.

Mom’s still going strong at eighty-eight. Unlike Dad’s, her blood must circulate like a racing stream, what with all that rushing around; she continues to move as if she’s being chased. She’s still knitting and preserving and scrubbing and mending and preaching. She’ll never get one of those tension diseases like angina or cancer or even arthritis, because she doesn’t keep one single thing bottled up inside her for more than five minutes. Out it all comes like air out of a flat tire — with either a hiss or a bang.

Perhaps it wasn’t growing up on the South Shore that made Mom the way she is. I live on that coast now, and I’ve learned that it’s more than just grey and stormy. I know about the long sandy beaches and the peace that comes of a clear horizon. I’ve seen the razzle-dazzle colours of the low-lying scarlet bushes in the fall, blazing against the black of the spruce trees and the bluest sky in the world. I’m familiar with the way one single radiant summer day can make you forget a whole fortnight of fog — like birth after a long labour. You might say that the breakers out on the reefs are angry or full of threats. To me, though, those waves are leaping and dancing, wild with freedom and joyfulness. But I think Mom was in a hurry from the moment she was born. I doubt if she ever stopped long enough to take notice of things like that.

Albert left home as soon as he got out of the hospital. He worked as a stevedore in Halifax for a number of years, and when he got enough money saved, he bought a little run-down house close to Digby, with a view of the Bay of Fundy. He’s got a small chunk of land that’s so black and rich that it doesn’t take any pushing at all to make the flowers and vegetables grow. He has a cow and a beagle and four cats — and about five hundred books. He fixes lawn mowers and boat engines for the people in his area, and he putters away at his funny little house. He writes pieces for The Digby Courier, and The Novascotian, and last winter he confessed to me that he writes poetry. He’s childless and wifeless, but he has the time of day for any kid who comes around to hear stories or to have a broken toy fixed. He keeps an old rocker out on the edge of the cliff, where he can sit and watch the tides of Fundy rise and fall.