“Aren’t you the romantic.”
They move closer to the water, on boggy clay, amongst horsetails and a crop of white daisies. They have to watch their step. A beaver dam explains the slow-moving water. She pulls out her scissors again. “I want the best daisies I can get. Here let me hand them to you.”
They move further down to where larger rocks create a gentle rippling in the water and flat rocks invite them to walk across to the other side. “Shall we try it?”
He hears movement in the bushes. Some small creature. It causes him to pause.
“Come on. Don’t be shy.” She heads across the water.
He lurches after her and slips, losing balance, his arms flying with daisies in one hand, his legs slashing the water, his bottom suddenly resting on the rocky bed.
“Are you all right?”
“Jesus,” he replies.
She sounds like a pan flute when she laughs.
He pulls himself out of the water, holding the sopping daisies up to dry air. “Here, come and get your flowers.” He is looking full of mischief now. Egging her on.
She reaches for the bouquet while he takes a step away. Her foot slips, just as his had, and she takes the plunge. They giggle like teenagers and splash each other with uncoordinated swipes. Daisies float in all directions.
“Hey, what about our lunch?”
“Oh yeah,” he replies. “Better save it.” And he gives her one last dose of water in her face. “Here, take my hand. I’ll help you out.”
“No way!” She scrambles out herself. Her clothes cling nicely.
They move to higher ground.
“So much for daisies.” He smiles and takes off his shirt. His khaki pants cling heavily to his legs. “Well, enough of this.” He takes off his pants; his boxers are still dry in places. “Feel free to do the same.”
“No, that’s all right. The sun will dry me.”
He hangs his pants over a branch and clenches his arms in a body builder’s pose.
“Oh you.” She zips open the backpack and pulls out the bag of food. “It seems okay.”
They sit side by side and look back across the creek to the steep banks. It is like someone with a giant knife has sliced straight down, revealing layers of clay and rock and coal and eroded soil.
“It must have been a deep river eons ago,” he says.
A bird interrupts, horning in on all the others with two clear long whistles followed by three quarter notes. It repeats itself.
“You hear that?”
“What?”
“That whistling?” He whistles out the tune.
“White-throated sparrow,” she says. “Dear old Canada Canada Canada, he’s saying.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Positive.”
He smiles to himself and listens some more. “Could be saying dear old America America America you know.”
“Absolutely not. Too many syllables.”
“Hmph. And I suppose you want to look for daisies again.”
“I am counting on them.”
“Or counting them. Isn’t that what you do? Count daisy petals? He loves me, he loves me not.”
“Ha. Actually those aren’t really petals. Each white so-called petal is an individual flower, and the yellow center is made up of tiny florets that contain both stamens and pistils. When you pick a daisy you pick a bouquet.”
“Just the same. I’ll bet you’ve done that.”
“Well, sure, when I was young. Until I learned that, like many things, it can be fixed.”
“How so?”
“There is usually an uneven number of white petals.”
“I thought you said they weren’t petals.”
“Just for the sake of communication.”
“Fine.”
“As I was saying, there is an uneven number, so if you start with ‘he loves me’ you end up with ‘he loves me.’ Kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?”
“Well I wouldn’t be counting on that sort of thing anyway. How about you? Any big romance in your life? Seems a woman like you…”
“Want to know more about daisies?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“The name comes from ‘day’s eye,’ because a particular English variety closed at nightfall and opened again at sunrise. It was also called ‘thunder flower’ because it was always around during spring showers and was thought to be protective. People hung daisies indoors for protection from lightning.”
“Thunder-flower. I like that. Now I know why you’re really collecting them.”
“Definitely. Protection from any storm. You might want to take some home for yourself.”
“Oh ho. You think my home life is stormy? You think I’ll be struck by lightning?”
“Perhaps.”
Time shifts in unknown currents. Memory, caught in a sluggish pool, is suddenly released. Visions of Grace with her tender eyes and ephemeral embrace flash uninvited. Grace, his mother, appears like lightning. This is simply trumped up memory, he thinks. Childish wishful thinking. He is not taken in by it. Truth trickles like water down the creek, sometimes resting stagnant in a pool, sometimes bubbling into eddies and ripples of light, always on the move.
She smiles and looks somewhere far away. “A little bit like heaven here, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” he whispers and turns his head away. A tear drop is forming unannounced. He quickly wipes it away.
“Something on your mind?” she asks. “Anything I can do?”
“Nah.”
She offers another forget-me-not that she has plucked from the grasses just within her reach. “There’s another story. You might like it better.”
“And what is that?”
“It’s an old German folk tale. A young man spots a little blue flower in the mountains. He veers from his path to get it, and he finds himself at the entrance of a cave full of treasures. As he stuffs his pockets full of gold and jewels, a beautiful woman appears. Why she has to be beautiful is beyond me. However, she warns him by saying, ‘Forget not the best.’ He, of course, leaves the little blue flower, the forget-me-not, behind, not realizing it is the best treasure of all. As he leaves the cave, rocks from the mountain come crashing down, killing him and closing up the cave forever.”
“Well that’s very uplifting.”
“You talked about Plato’s cave in your class. Consider it another cave story.”
“Hah.”
“I really would like to get more of those daisies since they are in such good form right now.”
They gather up the remains of lunch. Andrew pulls his pants back on even though they are still damp, and they head back to the creek, moving in unison, offering a hand when it is needed, reaching and clipping and gathering day’s eyes in abundance.
They head to the white shed, the one with the turquoise trim, with daisies peering out of their open backpacks and cradled in their arms. It is cool and shadowy inside. The windows are shuttered but some light manages to creep in. Along the walls flowers are hanging upside down from protruding nails, bundled together with twine.
“Here, bring those over here.” She sets her daisies down on an old chrome table. “I need to prepare them for drying right away. Have to preserve the freshness.”
“Kind of contradictory, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“Drying to preserve freshness?”
“Well, nothing lasts forever. I’m just preserving something at its peak.”
“Is it really the same though?”
“Of course not. But it has its own beauty. When you think about it, books preserve someone’s ideas. Even if they become outdated they can still illuminate a certain truth. It’s all fleeting, but some moments in life just need to be preserved.”
“Getting philosophical?”
“Here, you. I’ll put you to work.” She demonstrates the trimming of stems and the binding together of small bouquets with twine for hanging from the ceiling. “See? You just clean off the lower part.” She holds a daisy up for him to see, her eyes searching his.
He must make a move, but he feels short of breath, a little tipsy. He is nervous but he can’t figure out why. “I’m going to have to run,” he says.
“Of course,” she replies. “I’ll open up the gates.”
He plays Arrowsmith’s “Dream On” as he makes his way back to the city. Steven Tyler is singing his own lyrics and Andrew tries to sing along.
At night he dreams that he is at a restaurant with Eddie. The restaurant has private booths laid out in labyrinthine fashion. They choose a booth that is isolated from both customers and staff. There are copies of The Republic of Plato at each table. The brothers seem to be waiting for someone. They have not ordered any food. A woman finally arrives and focuses her attention on Andrew, although she remains standing closer to Eddie. As they talk the woman becomes more and more like Rosemary. She is Rosemary. Suddenly Andrew realizes that she has arranged to meet Eddie, not him. Then Eddie asks, “Are you my mother?” Andrew realizes, with clarity, what he should have known all along. This mother abandoned Eddie and now has agreed to meet him again. “I’m so sorry,” says Andrew. “I didn’t realize that you have been without a mother all this time.”
He wakes up with the strangest feeling. The picture book, Are You My Mother? is on his bedside table. He read it to his children the night before. The little bird, who had fallen out of his nest and become separated from his mother, went around asking the strangest characters, both animate and inanimate, “Are you my mother?”
It becomes an ear worm, like a pop song being recycled on the radio. He makes a game of it in an effort to control his thinking. Like the little lost bird, he chooses the strangest objects and says under his breath, “Are you my mother?” He asks the Manitoba maple at the end of his driveway, the neighbour’s pregnant Irish Setter who had been taken out for a short morning walk, the girl pumping gas at Turbo on the boulevard, the poplar being pruned in front of St. Anthony’s, the traffic light at the intersection, and the gas light on the main drag with its never-ending flare.
He listens to certain predictable melodies of Mozart and Haydn to drown out details of the dream, but it persists and haunts him for several days.
Was it was all a mistake, dallying with a student, even if she was mature and had simply audited his time? He had easily had affairs in the past, but this time it remained platonic. For days in a row, tears appear at the oddest moments, making his behaviour unpredictable. He finally decides to revisit Rousseau and Kant with his summer students, perusing the notion of self-contradiction. Rosemary does not attend the class. At the end of the day, as he heads to the parking lot, he stops to observe skittery sparrows as they fly out from green hedges, down to patches of water and back up again. And a white-throated sparrow, which he now can identify, whistles Rosemary Rosemary Rosemary. He is certain of that.
Snipe Hunting
THE MOON HOVERS over Jarvis Hills and the scent of sun-dried hay mingles with evaporating manure. In the farm yard Toby bounds in circles around Ellie while the black lab and the bloodhound bark at her like inquisitors before jumping at her chest and slobbering on her shoes.
“Ooh! Get down!” she says, warding off the dogs with one hand and shielding her hair with the other. Earlier in the afternoon she put rollers in her hair according to illustrations in Mademoiselle, teased and combed it out to look like Sandra Dee, and then kept her head from resting in the car all the way from Calgary.
“Stop that. Down boys. Toby, get over here,” says Uncle Alec. Toby, the favourite, obliges his master and wags his happy tail. The other two dogs sit by the wooden steps to guard the house. “They won’t hurt you. They just get excited. Pretty young lady like you.”
Maybe it’s true. Perhaps she does cause excitement. Her parents are spared the rambunctious pawing as they follow her out of the white sedan and wave. Aunt Helen, a dish towel in her hand, smiles from the doorway like a deaf angel welcoming them to heaven.
Ellie’s cousins, Todd and Gary, come up from the barn and shake hands with her father, kiss her mother on the cheek, and nod “hi” to Ellie. The boys seem shy at first, but Gary smiles easily, as if he is about to tell a tall tale, and his voice crackles when he turns to Uncle Alec and says, “By the way, we found more gunny sacks.” He sounds like Troy Donahue in A Summer Place, talking about some hideaway to share with Sandra Dee.
“Good, we can use them all.” Uncle Alec winks at Ellie’s father; the two men are cousins, but they bonded like brothers while growing up on adjacent farms.
“We need more flashlights,” says Todd. “Is Mr. Stadel bringing his over?”
“Better call and make sure,” says Uncle Alec.
Aunt Helen intercepts, her hearing restored. “They said they were bringing extras and so are the Johnsons, so don’t worry. Come, supper’s ready.”
It is already eight o’clock. They sit at the oak table and pass around fresh buns, roast chicken, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots cooked in cream, and last year’s corn relish. “So you’ve never been snipe hunting, Ellie?” Uncle Alec waves a leg of chicken between mouthfuls to accentuate his enthusiasm. “It’s a perfect night for it, full moon and all. Makes it easy to spot them when they run into the open. Your dad and I first went hunting for snipe on a night like this, over on Peter Hansen’s farmstead.” He prods Ellie’s father. “Remember that?”
“Sure do,” her father replies. “Old Peter came up from South Dakota. Said snipe hunting was the unofficial sport down there. Decided to pass the tradition on to us since he never had kids of his own.”
Gary and Todd smile at each other and roll their eyes.
“Hey Ellie, I’ve got the wishbone,” says Aunt Helen. She holds it out for Ellie to grasp. “Come on now, make a wish.”
“I’ll bet she bags a snipe first time out,” says Gary as he winks at Ellie.
“Yep. I can see luck, like a halo, circling that pretty head,” Uncle Alec adds.
“Let her make her wish,” says Aunt Helen.
Ellie stares out the kitchen window, over the red barn and the rusty windmill, to see a moon that is ready to burst. She foresees massive fireworks, iridescent pastures, and blackened poplars. Male snipe perform aerial dives, with their tail feathers spread in a rainbow of colours, and carry ladybugs in their long pointed bills to the females waiting in the marsh below. She looks back at Gary and Todd and can’t decide. “I don’t know what to wish for,” she says, even though she knows this is only half true.
“How about that bike you’ve been wanting?” says her mother.
Ellie shakes her head. Her face flushes red.
“It has to be a secret,” says Todd in her defence. Todd has dark hair and a glint in his eyes that says he could suddenly turn and sing “There’s No Such Thing,” the way James Darren did in Gidget.
“Yes!” she replies then quickly makes her wish. She grasps the free end of the delicate looking, v-shaped bone and snaps her piece away from Aunt Helen. She holds it up, the largest piece, and smiles at Todd.
“I knew it. She’s our lucky charm tonight,” says Uncle Alec.
“I’m sticking with Ellie,” says Gary.
“Come on Helen,” says Ellie’s mother, “let’s get this cleaned up. Ellie and I will help with the dishes while the men finish up outside.”
The two women commune, their voices rising above the clatter of plates and cutlery. They speculate about Helen’s sister, Freda, who is getting a divorce. Ellie inhales the air of disapproval without hearing much of what they say. She is intent on tracking Gary and Todd as they pass back and forth by the kitchen window before disappearing into
the dusky night, down around the barn. They might leave her behind with women who have no intention of joining the hunt.
“Come on Ellie, get that tea towel wet will you?” says her mother.
Pickup trucks and a blue sedan arrive in the yard. Aunt Helen’s sister Freda, Mrs. Johnson, and Mrs. Stadel walk into the house unannounced while the two little Stadel girls run right back out to find kittens in the barn. Men and boys have already bypassed the house in favour of barnyard shadows. Ellie hovers around the window and the door. “Maybe I should go.”
“Don’t you worry,” says Aunt Helen. “They’ll be a while yet. Oh, Karen, what lovely earrings,” she says to Mrs. Stadel. “Now where did you find them?”
“But they might forget me.”
“Of course not, Ellie dear. Pardon me, Karen. In Red Deer? At Mitchells?”
“Who cares about stupid earrings,” mutters Ellie.
“What’s that, Ellie?”
“Nothing.”
“Well how’re the ladies?” Uncle Alec strides in and takes off his cap. He puts it on Mrs. Stadel’s head, provoking giggles from the others.
“Are we going soon, Uncle Alec?”
“Soon as those boys have everything ready. You’d better put a jacket on. Gets cool out there this time of year and you still might get eaten by mosquitoes. Besides, if you don’t cover up the coyotes will get romantic and start serenading you. Might want to steal you for their own. I already heard some howling out there.”
“You are funny,” says Aunt Helen. “Did you notice Karen’s earrings under that cap, smarty Alec?”
“Yes, it’s Helen’s birthday coming up,” adds Freda. “Hint hint.”
“Let me see.” He stands close to Mrs. Stadel and fingers her ears, then snatches his hat back. Her ears turn red.
“They’re just regular gold earrings,” mutters Ellie.
“Ah hah. So there!” says Uncle Alec. “Just your ordinary, everyday gold earrings.” He tugs Ellie’s ear. “I think, ladies, I’d better get back to the hunt. Come on, El.”
Dear Hearts Page 4
