Claire's Head by Catherine Bush Page A

Claire laid her hand on the door. She pressed her ear to its mute, painted wood.
    One night at dinner, the year Claire turned fourteen, Rachel (who would have been eighteen and on the verge of heading to university) asked Hugh, their father, Why didn’t you stick it out at medical school? We could certainly have used a doctor in this family. They were, as Claire remembered it, all five of them atthe kitchen table, not in the dining room, which probably meant a Friday night. Perhaps Rachel was teasing him, being mouthy rather than accusatory. Without saying a word, Hugh screeched back the legs of his chair and left the room.
    â€œJeez,” Rachel said.
    â€œNothing you can joke about,” Sylvia said. That was all she said.
    â€œClearly,” said Rachel.
    â€œRachel.”
    â€œForget it,” Rachel said and stormed out.
    What they knew, what Claire understood then, was that as a young man, not long after Rachel’s birth, their father had dropped out of medical school. He had not flunked out, he had simply decided not to go back for his final year. There was no indication that Rachel’s birth had in any way provoked his decision. He had simply decided that medicine was not for him. His first love was, had always been, mathematics. He would teach. Claire was not certain why, if his love was pure mathematics, he didn’t go to graduate school and consider a research career instead of hightailing it to Addis Ababa, with Sylvia and six-month-old Rachel in tow, to teach in an international school.
    He needed money. A job. Still.
    They understood, if not then, then a little later, that by abandoning medicine he had become a disappointment to his family, to his parents who had wanted him to become a doctor, who had uprooted themselves from London’s East End and come to Canada in order to give their children, Hugh and Al, but especially Hugh, the oldest, the brightest, the scholarship student, the opportunities they did not think he would have inEngland. He was sixteen when they emigrated. All the rest of his large family – his uncles, aunts, all his cousins, his grandparents – remained behind.
    He was a gifted teacher, from all reports, whether or not he had sensed this talent in advance. His math whizzes, whom he coached for national and international competitions, loved him, as did the students who only came to love math through the flare of his teaching, his conviction that mathematical skill was not innate but could be taught. He won teaching prizes, ran a math club for hours after school. At home, they saw glimpses of his galvanizing light, never more so than when they asked him for help with mathematical problems. Then he came to jumpy life, gesticulating, leaping up from his chair, urging them onward, although it was clear to all of them that they were not, and never would be, in the league of his best students. Some of these came in quiet, nerdy clusters to the funeral. He and Sylvia had flown to Frankfurt for a conference on math pedagogy – they were to rent a car, afterwards, and travel south towards Strasbourg – when they were killed.
    In late spring of the year Claire turned fifteen, their grandmother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. As soon as the school year ended, Hugh returned to Victoria to help out his father and brother, who lived only a ferry ride away in Vancouver, with her care. The cancer was terminal but his mother was not immediately dying. Gruelling though her treatment was – radiation, chemotherapy – she appeared to be responding to it.
    When he came home to Toronto, late in the summer, Hughannounced that they should all think of moving to Victoria, or perhaps he alone should do so, if only temporarily, although after that one night, to Claire’s relief, the idea was never mentioned again. Occasionally morose before, he was more so now, even sulky. Sometimes, out of the depths of his fatigue, he would stare at Claire as if he barely