Free Burden of Memory by Vicki Delany

2000. Her family was of Irish ancestry. She liked the old Irish names. I can well imagine that my father had to put his foot down to avoid a son named Liam or Sean. But he didn’t have much interest in the girls, so she named us as she liked.
    “I never remember a time when I got on well with my mother. My father, as suited our class and times, was a distant, almost mythical figure. What could I be but difficult? Sandwiched between Ralph, the sacred male child, and the beauty and the artiste.”
    A frisson of excitement crawled up Elaine’s spine. She had taken this job for the chance to start a new life, get away from the city and the memories and the familiar haunts. Her career that once blazed with such promise had flat-lined, leaving behind it not the faintest signs of a pulse. She’d hoped that helping a rich old woman write her boring memoirs would give her a chance to breathe new air and come to some decisions. But maybe there would be a story here, after all.
    Moira switched tracks so quickly Elaine almost fell off. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be growing up between the wars. In the fabulous twenties. The strong, healthy child of a rich family. Only years later did I come to understand that not everyone lived like us. Or even like our servants, whom I did think of as part of the family, in my patronizing little way.”
    Elaine thought of the difference between how Moira talked to Ruth and to Lizzie and herself, and that perhaps some things hadn’t really changed at all.
    “Those years were simply absolutely, fabulously magical. Despite all the usual childhood fights and tantrums and bickering. We came up here every summer, immediately after Ralph arrived home from school, and we stayed until Labor Day. I was born in 1914, so I was a girl and then a young woman, what today they call a teenager, through the twenties. The best of all times, I often think. The twenties I mean, not my youth.
    “Then came the crash of ’29. It scarcely made a ripple in our lives. We were all right. The family industries were diversified enough that we escaped the worst of the Depression. But all over the lake places were sold or closed up and neighbors and good friends never seen again. I had a dear friend, Lorraine Hamilton. The summer of 1929 we were all of fifteen. Surely the most perfect and innocent of ages. At least it was in our time, although I suspect it is no longer. We swore our undying friendship to each other, like Anne and Diana. We had simply devoured the Anne of Green Gables books that wonderful summer. When I wrote to her at Christmas she never answered and come the next season, their cottage was boarded up so tightly a cockroach couldn’t have found a way in. I never saw or heard of Lorraine again.”
    She paused for a breath and looked around her in some confusion. “I seem to have misplaced my water glass, dear. And I am getting quite parched, all this talking. Could you call Lizzie and ask for a cup of tea. Push that button here and someone should answer.”
    Elaine did as instructed and in the time it took a kettle to boil, Lizzie was kicking the door open, laden tray in her arms.
    The cook poured. This time tea was served in thick mugs, one of which was a souvenir of Niagara Falls, and the other a testament to the World’s Greatest Aunt.
    Lizzie noticed Elaine reading her mug with a disappointed frown. “Good cups and silver are for afternoon tea. This is morning tea. No ceremony.”
    Moira gripped her mug as she thanked Lizzie. The tips of her fingers turned white and her arthritic hands shook, but she raised the quarter-filled cup to her lips and took a tiny sip.
    “I can’t tell you, dear, how horrible it is to grow old. Helpless as a blind kitten is bad enough, but it is knowing that things will only get worse that is hardest.”
    Elaine swallowed. “My mother always said that getting old is hard, but the alternative is worse.”
    Moira threw back her head and laughed. Elaine was so