Her annoyance arose from a forecast she made earlier that day—one of her first—to which no one in the family attached much credence. It was impossible to know what caused her greater irritation: the skepticism of Mother and Grandpa toward her newly forming abilities or the fact that her forecasted storm had not materialized.
Just as I was about to implore her to be still and quiet, a large gust of wind burst through the screen of our window, billowing the drawn-back curtains. As though in answer to its call, Ina leapt from her side of the bed and ran to mine. Squatting down, her elbows on the low window sill, she looked due north and uttered, “It’s coming.” Springing back to her side of the bed, she hastily donned the dress she had worn earlier in the day and which she had since strewn on the floor. After pulling it over her cotton nightgown, she opened the door to our room and hurried out without another word.
It would have been better if I had followed her or called out to her or otherwise alerted the others in the house to her strange conduct. I confess that in my confusion as to her behaviour, I took none of those actions. Only when I heard the back door close minutes later and realized who had likely crossed its threshold did I react. Shortly, Mother, Father, and Grandpa were roused, the house searched, and those still within its walls assembled in the kitchen. It was 11:00 p.m. Of little concern to any of the adults was the fact that my fifteen-year-old brother Jim, who had been out with his friend Eddie earlier that night, had not yet returned. Of singular concern to all was the fact that twelve-year-old Ina appeared to have left the house, half-dressed at a late hour, with no one knowing her actual or intended whereabouts. Both on the original questioning and on the numerous examinations that followed, I imparted all that I could: she looked out the window, she said, “It’s coming,” she hurriedly dressed, and she left.
“What’s coming?” Father asked as we heard rain begin to fall. Mother and Grandpa looked meaningfully at each other as they rushed to close the kitchen windows.
“The storm,” Mother and Grandpa said in unison.
“She’s gone to see the storm,” Mother declared.
“See the storm?” Father cried. “Why the deuce would she do that? What does she need to see? And why can’t she see it here?”
“She’s been talking about wanting to see one at a high vantage point for some time,” Mother said. “You yourself offered her the attic view.”
“I did,” Father conceded. “But we’ve checked the attic, and she’s not there.”
Mother and Father rushed to dress. As they returned to the kitchen to pull on their old shoes and jackets, I heard them listing the tallest buildings in the town: the Dominion Building, the fire hall, the bell towers of nearly every church, the top floor of the Queen’s Hotel, the upper floors of some of the larger Brampton residences. My anxiety rose. I was worried for Ina being out alone in the dark rainy night, but I was petrified at the thought of Mother going into it as well. My lone pleas for her to stay behind, my declared confidence that Father alone could find Ina, my efforts to physically hold her back, were all in vain. Mother and Father told Grandpa where they would start and where they would end if every site in between required investigation and stepped out of the house, Father muttering all the while that Ina was too much like his mad sister.
From the parlour, I watched them run down the street toward their first destination: the bell tower of the fire hall on Chapel Street, next to the site of the new library. The two human images, barely perceptible in the gas-lit streets through the tears in my eyes and the rain around them, soon faded from view. I cried out of fear for the safety of my mother, my sister, and my father, and when I remembered that my brother Jim was also out there, I cried even harder. Grandpa’s big, warm arms and his repeated mutterings of “it’s just rain” had begun to stem the tide of tears when we heard the first groans of thunder off in the distance. My wailings reached a new crescendo.
Seeing the futility of theory on the subject (“thunder never hurt anyone”), Grandpa chose physical proof. He wrapped me in a quilt and carried me onto the big swing chair on the verandah. Under the verandah’s large roof, we were sheltered from the rain and the mounting wind. We sat there a long time, gliding gently as branches blew and rain pelted everything around us. Just when my tears stopped, when my breathing returned to an almost even rhythm, the thunder that had rumbled closer and closer was joined by a bright display of lightning.
As I began to quake again, the storm raging around us, Grandpa decided to pursue a different tack to calm my fears: diversion. “Jessie,” he said, his big arms and the soft quilt wrapped around me, “is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
Despite my extreme anxiety for the safety of my family and notwithstanding the concern I felt for my well-being, I was able to recall the one thing I wanted to discuss with Grandpa. My throat sore from sobbing, my words barely comprehensible for the little gasps that followed each syllable uttered, I managed to ask, “Grandpa, are you self-made?”
“Yes, Jessie, I guess I am.” He began to tell me how that came about.
* * *
My grandfather, like so many immigrants to the New World, came to this land with only the clothes on his back, the skills of his trade, and a driving ambition to succeed. He was born on Christmas Day, 1835, in Wiltshire, England, the third of three children born to Joseph and May Brady, a working class couple. He had no formal education, but with the assistance of an older sister and the family Bible, he learned to read and write. All the arithmetic he needed to know he garnered in the course of his training to join his father in the masonry and building trades. As a child, he learned to count the nails and the pieces of brick, slate, and stone that had to be obtained at the beginning of a day and that which was left at the end. Later, as his father’s assistant, calculating the number of six-foot scaffolds required to build a one-hundred-foot-high belfry, he learned multiplication and division. Later still as his father’s partner, he learned the most important mathematical lessons of all, calculating the amount to charge a customer for a project, considering the cost of materials and labour and including a generous amount for profit. Jesse learned these lessons, and he learned them well, for unlike other students whose mistakes might cost them a mark on a test or even a grade at the end of term, Jesse Brady knew that his mistakes might cost his family members their meals for a time or his father his reputation more indefinitely.
As Jesse grew older, the late-night hours that he formerly spent learning to read were spent sketching designs for large projects he and his father would one day undertake. He dreamed of futuristic building styles and revolutionary methods they would bring to their craft. He imagined the zeal with which he and his father would convince customers of the advantage of their designs and the effort they would take preparing drawings, assembling different tradesmen, ordering supplies, and executing their plans.
The dreams rarely involved Jesse’s older brother Jack, who, though also trained as a mason and builder, shared none of Jesse’s enthusiasm for the trade, Jack preferred to spend his daylight hours being specifically directed in the next stone to chisel, brick to point, or lath to plaster, never taking the initiative in any such matter.
Jack’s evenings, on the other hand, were devoid of any direction save that which polite society demanded, as he spent nearly all of them in the parlours of Wiltshire families with eligible daughters. Eventually, when Jack was twenty-four years of age and Jesse twenty-two, the many parlours Jack formerly frequented were reduced to a single one, and after three months of near-nightly visits to that specific parlour, an invitation was proffered to its owners and their family to take dinner with the Bradys after church the following Sunday.
Knowing how important the first meeting of the two families would be to Jack, the Bradys spared no expense in preparing for the occasion. Jack and Jesse’s mother selected the best loin of pork,
