“So I was thinking you could use some help,” said Trevor. He put his other hand on the mower, crowding out mine. “Let me do this, then we’ll have a cup of tea.”

I sat beside Kelli in the other plastic Muskoka chair, watching Trevor push the mower in expert rows across the lawn, breathing in the smell of freshly slaughtered grass. Across the street, a white-haired neighbour pulled into his driveway and raised a hand to Trevor as he got out of his car — I see you are mowing your lawn, sir; I salute you. Trevor raised a hand right back. Who, I wondered, had done this for my mother when she was alive? Was there a neighbourhood boy? Or some retired gent with a ride-on mower down the street? As the daughter who lacked a mental disability, it had been my responsibility to inquire about such things. Who mows your lawn, Ma? How are you keeping yourself fed? A responsibility I mostly shirked, and that my mother mostly encouraged me to shirk, right up until those awful, final days. Because my mother always insisted she was fine, and for the most part she always was. Over the decades the cancer would poke its head out, take a few experimental nibbles, before she would just seem to shoo it from her body, like a horsefly. She didn’t have time for such nonsense. So who was I to question such a woman’s self-sufficiency? She had always been the force of nature, the monster of competence, the nice fuckin lady — who harangued government agencies and spearheaded bake sales and dominated town council meetings.

And hadn’t I always been the disappointment who would never understand? Who cared for only your own comfort? Who would have to be a mother to even begin to grasp et cetera? And we all knew that wasn’t going to happen, didn’t we? Because, let’s face it, by the time I turned twenty I found that I’d done enough caregiving to last a lifetime. And let’s just say I made that known.

· · ·

once the lawn was mowed, I made us all tea.

“What’s the plan, Miss Karie?” Trevor asked after a few sips. He had flecks of green all across his bristly hairline, where flying grass particles had stuck to his perspiring brow as he mowed.

“I guess Seaside,” I said, intuiting what he meant. “Did you like Seaside, Kelli?”

“Like Seaside,” Kelli agreed absently. But I knew it wasn’t a fair question. Kelli liked pretty much anywhere she was taken. She enjoyed outings, full stop. Be they to the mall, the doctor’s, Tim Hortons. I might as well have asked her if she liked the ocean. She did, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend her life in it.

“It’s not a bad place,” said Trevor.

I glanced up at him. “But not great?”

“Well, there’s other places I know,” said Trevor. “Some more expensive than others.”

“I guess we should shop around,” I said, flinching inwardly — and outwardly too, as far as I knew — at the words as I said them. Not just the soul-withering “shop around” but the stupid irony of “we.”