Mae Ellerson is retired from a career as a high school administrator. She’s a brisk, no-nonsense kind of woman whose steel-gray eyes have probably seen just about anything teenagers could possibly dream up. But I’m not here to discuss her career. No, I’m interested in hearing about how she raised her niece, Emma Raymond, who you might know better as the musician Emmeline.
“Hello, Mae. Thank you for joining me here today.”
“Hello, Annie. I’m happy to meet you. You want to talk about Emma, right?”
Mae pats her lap and a fluffy white dog bounces up, turning to settle chin on paws and gaze watchfully my way. “This is Maxie. She’s friendly, but it takes her a minute.”
I love dogs (as you know), so I’m willing to give Maxie a minute or more. “Hey, Maxie. Thanks for letting me visit your mum.”
Mae scoffs. “I’m not this dog’s mum; maybe more like her auntie. She belongs to Emma and her best friend Lily. When they were sixteen, they decided to get a puppy together, without letting any adults know.”
“No kidding. How did that work?”
Mae shrugs. “Well, you see I’m here holding the dog! But I don’t really mind. Lily’s still in Frederiction and Maxie spends half her time there.”
“And Emma?”
“No, Emma’s away.” Mae’s face grew serious and she suddenly looked older. “I”ll be frank with you. I haven’t heard from Emma for some time. I’m not sure Maxie would even recognize her at this point.”
Her sadness was palpable. “Are you worried?”
“If I let myself worry, I’d be sick,” she said shortly. “No, I had the RCMP check her out, and they said she was okay, still at the same address, and that it’s not a crime to ghost your family. But we have such a history…”
“History?” I am trying to prompt but without being too intrusive. It’s not easy to find a balance.
“So you wanted to know about Emma’s early years, I think. That’s history, and to get the whole story, we have to go back before Emma. Way back.”
“How far back?”
She was clearly pondering. “How much time do you have?” A quick smile, then she went on. “No, let’s just start with this. My younger sister, Sarah, was widowed when her only child was twelve. That was, let’s see….” she gazes off and her hands still on the dog. “In 1990. So Sarah and her girl, Eloise, came here to live with me.”
What did I know about the 1990s? It was hard to imagine – no cell phones, no online anything, paper magazines, those old cars…But Mae was going on.
“Sarah’s dead husband had played guitar with a country band, and he nurtured Eloise’s musical talent. When he died, they were so lost, but I did my best to help Eloise keep up her music. She was a natural performer, loved being in front of an audience. So she was out, playing gigs when she was just a teenager. She got to do more than I thought was right for most high schoolers, but we were convinced she was special. Different.”
“So that’s where Emma’s musical talent came from? Wait, was Eloise Emma’s mother?” I’m surreptitiously counting on my fingers. I knew Emma was nearly thirty.
Mae pushed Maxie lightly to the floor and stretched. “Yes, Elosie was Emma’s mother. Eloise was seventeen when Emma was born.”
That tallied with my fingertip arithmetic. “That’s pretty young.”
“It sure is. And Eloise was completely unprepared for motherhood. My sister, Sarah, was too depressed to be any help, and so the job was to try to keep Eloise in school, keep baby Emma alive, keep me at work so we could all eat, and somehow have a life.”
“Wow, Mae. What a lot of things to juggle.”
“Yes, but the baby was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened.” She looked twenty years younger as she broke into a beatific smile. “That child…she was the happiest baby. Even though we were all scrambling all the time, stress levels at an all time high, the baby was delighted and delightful.”
She reached for an album on the side table and flipped it open to show me baby pictures. Emma, all soft ginger curls, in a fluffy bunny suit, in a dress with shiny shoes, even though she probably couldn’t walk at that age, standing, wobbly, in overalls and adorable little sneakers.
“She was cute,” I agreed.
Mae, still smiling, closed the book. “Right after her second birthday, Eloise was killed. In a car crash.”
I knew the outlines, of course, from reading press releases about Emmeline, but it was very stark to hear it from Mae. “I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing.”
“Truly. She was drunk. Impaired. On her way home from a gig, and only nineteen years old.” Mae’s face was old again. I was struck by the burdens this woman had carried, none of which had she chosen.
“Sarah – my sister, Sarah, had never been well. She became so depressed she required hospitalization. So it was Emma and her aunt Mae for the first ten months after Eloise died. “
I couldn’t imagine. “How did you cope?”
“I took a leave from work. Stayed home with the baby. Well, not a baby, not really. Decided that my job was to give that little girl the happiest childhood I could. It wasn’t her fault she was born into a family with so much sadness.”
“How do you do that? How do you manufacture a happy childhood?”
“I don’t like that word, manufacture. You make it sound like I was fakiing it.”
“Well, a lot of tragic things happened. You might have had to fake it for awhile. I don’t see anything wrong with that. You know, fake it ’til you make it.”
……more to come in our next installment………
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