twenty yards away, an elderly woman – tiny and grey-haired, possibly Asian – was watching the horses through a set of opera binoculars. At her side stood a man in a grey overcoat and dark sunglasses, even though the sun wasn’t out. They made for an odd pair.
‘They can’t hear us,’ I said.
Jake got out his crumpled pack of Du Mauriers and tapped one free. Lighting it, he blew a plume of smoke into the morning cold, and nodded slowly, as if in understanding.
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got cold feet.’
‘I’ve got cold everything. It’s madness, man.’
‘It’ll feel a lot better once we’re dancing.’
It was something Sandy used to say to us, as a joke, when one of us – usually Jake – had gotten into trouble or screwed something up. But it was a cheap trick to use under these circumstances, and I just shook my head.
‘I’ll come see Ma with you,’ I told him. ‘Then you’re on your own.’
He reached over and grabbed my bicep. ‘Here she is,’ he said.
He pointed to the far side of the enclosure. It’s a moment I remember well, and not just because of all that came after. She seemed to emerge from the mist, on account of her being entirely white. Even her mane was white. She had a long stride and drifted over the ground towards us, swift and effortless. The guy atop was just along for the ride. She flew down the straightaway and soared past, her head straining at the reins. Then she was gone.
‘Hell,’ I said.
I knew nothing about horses, but I could tell she was really something.
‘Morning spirit, or spirit of morning,’ Jake said. When I looked at him curiously, he explained: ‘That’s what her name means. Shenzao.’
‘And she’s valuable.’
‘She’s rare,’ Jake said. ‘There aren’t any white racehorses.’
‘I’ve seen white racehorses before.’
‘No you haven’t.’
‘How do you know what I’ve seen?’
He held out his hands, as if gripping an imaginary box, and moved it up and down. It was a gesture he used when explaining something that he thought was very simple.
‘You’ve seen grey horses that look white. She’s actually white.’
‘Like an albino.’
‘It’s called Dominant White. And a potential winner – unlike most of these nags.’
She was across the paddock now, floating like a phantom through the mist. Just beautiful. The elderly woman was slow-tracking her progress through the binoculars.
‘What the hell do the Delaneys want her for, anyway?’
‘Ah hell,’ he said, and kicked the bottom rung of the fence with his boot. The timber reverberated ominously.
‘You said you’d be straight with me.’
‘They honestly didn’t tell me.’
‘But you have an idea.’
He dropped his smoke in the dirt, and checked his watch. ‘We better get a move on. I told Ma we’d swing by at eleven. You know how she is.’
‘Jake.’
‘I’ll tell you after, okay?’
‘No more bullshit.’
The horse was coming back. This time the jockey had slowed her to a canter. In passing the elderly woman, he tipped his cap, and she clapped vigorously, almost comically, the sound echoing across the enclosure. Shenzao carried on, high-stepping and tossing her mane. As she got closer she tilted her head to look at us sidelong, and snorted dismissively – as if she already suspected that we were up to something, and that it involved her, and that the result would be no good for any of us.
Our mother opened the door to her apartment and smiled, or partially smiled. Half of her face still drooped, lopsided and permanently saddened, but the effect was no longer so strange or disconcerting. We’d grown accustomed to it. It had been like that since the day Jake found her, sitting at the kitchen table in our old house in Lynn Valley. She had been glass-eyed and slack-jawed, with a dribble of milk and Rice Krispies leaking from the corner of her mouth. At first he’d thought she might be dead but when he came into her field of vision her eyes reacted and seemed to register his presence, though on a distant and dimmer level.
She had recovered a lot of mobility and some awareness but still needed assistance, so we’d sold the house in the Valley and paid off the mortgage and with the remaining money rented her a one-bedroom apartment on Lower Lonsdale, four blocks up from the Quay and Sea Bus terminal. We paid a local company – Helping Hands – to send somebody for an hour each day to check in on her and bring her a hot meal and do her chores. She had a microwave and an electric kettle but not a stove. A stove, we’d been told, was a bad idea. Our mother was not quite herself, or not quite the mother we’d known, but she was still our mother.
‘Boys,’ she said, slurring the word slightly. ‘Come here, boys.’
She got up to hug us fiercely – me first, then Jake. Physically she was still pretty good, pretty strong.
‘We brought Timmy Ho’s,’ Jake said, shaking the bag of doughnuts.
‘Oh,’ she said, and clapped her hands. ‘That’s wonderful. Let me put on the kettle.’
She shuffled through to her kitchen, walking with a slight limp. It was one o’clock and she was still wearing her bathrobe. She was also wearing a shower cap. Not because she had just gotten out of the shower, but because this was something she had taken to doing. It kept the bugs out, she said. It made her look a little like a prep cook at a fancy restaurant.
Jake and I sat down to wait at the dining table. The table was from our old house, as was the majority of her furniture and decorations. She’d wanted to keep as much as possible. The items were familiar but the arrangement was bewildering and of course the space was diminished, cramped. It felt like entering a museum, filled with the paraphernalia of our past. She had put up so many paintings and old photos that they completely obliterated the walls, in an overwhelming collage. Most of the paintings depicted the prairies, where she had grown up, and the photos were of us: family shots of when our father was still alive, and later ones with just the four of us. After Sandy, there were no more photos.
Our mother filled the kettle and set it to boil and while she did this she chattered to us excitedly. She was having a good day and remembered I’d been on the boat and asked about the herring season, and also asked about Tracy, who she called such a nice girl. She hadn’t seen Jake for months but she didn’t question his absence, just as she hadn’t fully registered the time he’d been
