The Spectacular

by Zoe Whittall

  I pulled the music magazine out of the bag. I stared at the brash young woman on the cover and tried to reconcile her with the child I had left behind at Sunflower, blond blunt-cut bangs and cotton dresses, singing “You Are My Sunshine” and playing the ukulele.

  I flipped to the article on the Swearwolves, skimming through to the passages about my daughter:

  It’s clear from the way she interacts with the rest of the “wolves” that Alamo is the sun they orbit around, even though Billy is the enigmatic front man. “She’s a bit of a feral child,” says Tom, the drummer. “And he’s the dad!” Missy quips, while cartwheeling through the open dance floor during sound check. But the feral child persona holds some truth, as Alamo, née Melissa Wood, was raised on a commune in rural Vermont, where she had more freedom than most in the Reagan era of stranger-danger hysteria and yuppie parenting.

  In fact, the one ballad on the album, “Not Looking for You Anymore,” is written by Alamo about her mother, who abandoned the family. “No one knows where she is, including Missy,” confides Tom, when Missy is out of earshot. “But Missy’s not afraid to talk about it, she’ll tell anyone if you ask her.” He blushes.

  And so I do ask her. After the show, I wait for Alamo and newcomer fiddler Jared Keenan to finish playing an extended cover of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the parking lot under the full moon as the gear is loaded. Alamo is hyper but charming, the kind of person who, when asked about her missing mother, might look mournful for a few flickers, then jump on your back and demand a piggyback ride around the parking lot instead of answering.

  Finally allowing me to put her back on the ground, she puts both hands on my face, looks deep into my eyes in a way that feels moderately discomfiting and certainly unprofessional, and says, “Some people are meant to be mothers, and some people are meant to be free.”

  I knew I had no right to be hurt by that, but I felt deeply wounded and misunderstood. Maybe she would get it if she ever had her own children. Maybe she said other things, but the writer just emphasized the most salacious bits. And as if she were raised like a feral child—I spent every day of those thirteen years making sure she was safe, warm, fed, and listened to. No parent is perfect. She wasn’t wandering the forests with the wolves! But perhaps the reason I felt so wounded by it was because it was true. I wasn’t meant to be a mother if I gave up. Even if she didn’t remember how I was a good mother for so many years, there’s some absolute truth to that, even if I can’t bear to look at it.

  I thought about how I described my own parents when asked: my mother was remote and demanding; my father, violent and selfish. But they were more than that, too. Of course they were. My mother was smart, cunning, organized. My father could be joyous and impulsive, with a sharp mechanical mind. But in conversation, I always reverted to the short form, the negative. Why do we do that? Why is it important to us to mark our families by their faults? We can’t control how our children think of us, how they remember the worst most of the time, how they reflect ourselves back to us in ways that force us to reckon with truths we’d rather push aside. I make a note to introduce this line of inquiry in a future Helping Your Self seminar at the centre, one of a few that I lead from time to time.

  That first time I left Sunflower, after elbowing Bryce, I had been so lost, in a state of pure panic and rage. I drove until the anger subsided into a slow, syrupy sadness. I went across the Canadian border, toward my sister, Marie. By then, she lived in a small Quebec town that wasn’t a town really, but rather four houses on the side of a two-lane highway, like they all ran out of gas there and just decided to build houses out of detritus lying about. You could easily miss the sign that read SOUTH BROCKTON if you didn’t happen to glance up. And there was no Brockton to be south of, but no one seemed to mind. Two of the houses looked as if they were about to fall down, with plastic stapled over windows, tarpaper exposed where pieces of the siding were missing, and like a patchwork quilt on otherwise metal roofs. There were wheel-less cars in the yard, and scatterings of junk, as though maybe no one had cleaned up after a tornado. But people still lived there, you could tell by the signs of life apparent through the mess: the clothes on the line, toys scattered in the grass, rows of ripe tomato plants, kids getting off the school bus and wandering up the drives.

  My sister had met a man named Gareth through AA who was born in South Brockton and now managed a small convenience store on the first floor of one of those houses. They lived in the basement apartment below it. It looked like a good place to rob. You could run for miles in any direction and only come across some deer, maybe a farm or two. But Marie seemed happy with Gareth. They’d both spent a year following the Grateful Dead, had done too many drugs and lost themselves in it. They were eccentric in complementary ways, and being away from others kept them from falling off the wagon. She’d planted sunflowers all around the outside of the store, to obscure the crumbling facade. She hauled all the old junk the previous owners had left behind—a children’s wagon with one rusted wheel, dented buckets, ancient beer bottles, half-stuffed armchairs, old mayonnaise jars—and piled it neatly on one side. The man who owned the building lived upstairs and was too old to do much physical labour anymore. Gareth was hopeful he might will them the house when he passed. They’d never seen any family around.

  The ragged-looking cluster of houses sat among bucolic meadows of wildflowers, rolling hills that seemed to go on forever unless interrupted by equally pastoral forests. I stood beside the truck in the store’s tiny parking lot and thought briefly that I could buy some land here, build my own house. I could get a trailer, or build a yurt or a lean-to and live simply. The rain had just stopped, and a mist hovered around my bare feet, soaked into my nightdress, the smell of cedar and rich, wet earth. I could live alone.

  Or sort of alone.

  If my instincts were right.

  I found Marie watching Days of Our Lives on the small black-and-white TV behind the counter. I stared at her for a moment before she looked up and noticed me.

  “Jesus Christ! Ma belle! You finally left the hippie farm.”

  She gave me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the machine by the candy and gum and looked me over. We hadn’t seen each other since our parents’ funeral. There had been so many cops, and I couldn’t handle their show of sorrow. Marie, still pregnant then, had pulled me out of the handshaking line after I kept leaning in to every man in uniform to say, Thank you, but you know he killed her.

  “They’re going to put you in an asylum,” she’d said, holding me in a trembling hug in the church hallway. “And what is it going to accomplish? We can’t put him in jail, he’s dead, too.”

  We packed up the house and sold it, but there wasn’t much left after we paid off my father’s substantial debts. Turns out he had taken out a second mortgage and gambled away much of what could have been their nest egg. I was able to buy the secondhand pickup truck for Sunflower, but that was it. My father working his whole life had resulted in this one truck. Marie had paid off Gareth’s credit card.

  Since then, Marie and I had been talking on the phone more, thwarted attempts to grieve.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  She pointed to a door with a sign on it that read NO ENTRY. “Go downstairs and take a nap. The baby should sleep another hour. I’ll be off work at three.”

  I’d never seen her apartment before, and it was so much like our parents’ place I felt instantly sleepy. She’d taken most of the furniture from their house. Even the mug I took from the cupboard was once my mother’s. As soon as I saw it, the yellow flower decal, I shuddered into a sob. This had happened to me often since their death. An otherwise ordinary day and then a smell, or the sight of someone who looked like her, and my whole body would come undone. It would pass quickly, and then I would feel numb, a sort of ghost of grief following my body for the rest of the day. I buried my nose in the flower mug and took a deep whiff, trying to find anything on the earth that was still of her. Nothing. Lemon-scented Su
nlight dish soap, her faithful brand, was a small consolation.

  Marie had made every excuse for our father’s bad behaviour before he died, and her choice of boyfriends usually somewhat resembled him, though Gareth looked like a gentle, shy bear of a man. I hadn’t been around long enough to know if he was similar when they were alone.

  She had my father’s black-and-green standing ashtray and the matching sugar bowl and creamer set that my mother had been so proud of, the overstuffed leather couch scratched along the bottom from two long-haired tabby cats who napped in the shallow windowsills that met the ceiling. Even with all the lights on, I was aware they lived in a basement, and what might have felt sad in another moment felt comforting, like a warm cave, a place to fall into.

  I peeked at the baby, sleeping in a cradle in the living room. He was so beautiful, peaceful. I wanted to pick him up and hold him to my chest. My heart filled with longing. Perhaps I could be a mother. His curled hands, his little sighs. I had the odd urge to put his tiny toes in my mouth and nibble them.

  Perhaps it was just Sunflower, the endless collective meetings and ever-evolving dynamics, maybe that was the problem, not having a baby. Maybe it would be okay if we could smooth out the gender dynamics at Sunflower. I stood and watched him for a long time, letting the sight of this new life soothe the grief I felt clawing at my chest. Then I sat down on their couch and considered the future. I stared at the framed photo of my parents on the wall. Bryce was nothing like my father. He couldn’t even kill a spider. And his optimism! His hope. That would be a good thing for a child. I felt a little better before I dozed off on the couch.

  I woke up when I heard my sister shuffling around in the kitchen area behind the couch. A few minutes later Marie placed a small plate with a piece of raisin toast in front of me, bumps of butter still too cold to melt on either side.

  “Did you finally leave Bryce?” she asked, placing a cup of tea beside the toast.

  “No, well, not really. It’s just—well, it’s too soon to really know, but I think I might be pregnant. And I just couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand him,” I said.

  She picked up the baby and handed him over.

  “I’m scared,” I said, staring into the baby’s eyes. He stared back, which felt both otherworldly and like I was in a horror movie.

  “Let’s just say, if you are pregnant, it’s nothing like you expect. It’s both better and worse than everything you can imagine.”

  I looked into his little face. He was old enough now to hold up his head by himself, and was making a funny little smile. I sat down on the couch and stared at him as he grabbed my hair and necklaces.

  “What didn’t you expect?”

  “Well, I didn’t expect my vagina to look like a ripped seam for months. Still can’t take a shit without crying.”

  “Oh my god, that is so gross.”

  “Yeah, well,” Marie said, lighting a cigarette.

  “You’re still smoking?” I asked. “You know they say that’s not good for children.”

  “Do they now,” she said, taking another pull on the cigarette. “We survived, didn’t we?”

  “I guess.”

  “You’ll give up all that hippie bullshit once you have a kid, mark my words,” she said. “I use a bottle, and I don’t care for the guilt other moms give me. They can fuck right off. You do what feels right, don’t listen to everyone else. They don’t know. They’ve all got money, for one. And we don’t,” she says, gesturing to their modest surroundings. “Well, Bryce does, doesn’t he?”

  “Not really.”

  “But his mother does.”

  “I guess. I just don’t know. I don’t know about anything. I don’t know how I feel, what I want. I was so excited when we talked about building a family, but now that it’s maybe happening I’m completely lost.”

  “That’s normal. You’re scared. You’ll be a great mom. You were a huge pain in my ass growing up but you stopped me from getting killed numerous times. You’ll be better than our mom.”

  “Hey, Mom tried her best, given what she was working with,” I said. Back to the normal routine of me defending Mom and her defending Dad. “I know I was always mad at her, but I miss her,” I said.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “I guess I miss Friday-night Dad,” I said. “Sometimes.”

  Friday-night Dad was always so happy, a six-pack under one arm, and some treats from the corner store. Mint chocolate ice cream in the soup bowls.

  “I miss Mom, too,” Marie says, stubbing out her smoke after one last puff. “It’s hard sometimes, I want to call her when the baby has a fever. And Gareth’s mom is a bitch. She’d leave the baby in the yard for hours if I didn’t watch her every minute. I don’t trust her.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t visited. You could always come stay with us.”

  Marie snorted. “I’m not bringing a baby to your lunatic farm.”

  “But you want me to raise a kid there? It’s not a lunatic farm, it’s an intentional community. Our principles are based on love, compromise, active listening—”

  “Spare me, Carola.”

  “Juniper.”

  “Whatever. You hang with hippies and you’re weird and all that but underneath you’re still the girl that organized all the jars in the pantry alphabetically.”

  “I object to the word lunatic is all. That word would describe our childhood more accurately, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh my god, you’re so melodramatic. Our family was normal. All families have their issues. People aren’t perfect. All fathers drink.”

  “Normal fathers don’t murder their wives. And aren’t you an addict?”

  “There wasn’t a language for it for his generation, is what I’m saying. Men have it harder when they quit. They don’t know how to feel their feelings.”

  The baby started to cry, as if willing us to change the subject.

  A few hours later, after we’d been poring over old photos and sitting with the baby, Gareth came down from the store.

  “Oh hey,” he said, giving me an awkward half hug.

  “Hey, Gareth.”

  He settled into the couch and I realized I’d clearly interrupted their routine. It was close quarters. The baby started to cry again. I handed him back to Marie and decided to go home.

  She lent me an old sweatshirt with a Rolling Stones logo on the front, and some flip-flops. As I pulled on the sandals, she presented me with a small velvet box and opened it up like we were on a soap opera. We used to do it as little kids, pretend to propose to each other like we’d seen on TV. It was a necklace I remembered Mom wearing every Christmas.

  “You loved this when you were a kid, remember? It’s a ruby.” Before I could answer, she turned me around and did up the clasp. I touched the stone and remembered how it sparkled when I would fall asleep in Mom’s lap at midnight Mass.

  “It looks great,” she said, nodding. “I think she’d have wanted you to have it.”

  I got back in the truck. I turned the engine over, fiddled with the radio dial until I found a clear station. “Love Will Keep Us Together” was playing. I pressed my fingers into the loose tobacco in the ashtray between the seats, a habit, and rolled the window down. Though it was a hit song, and I’d heard it playing almost everywhere, I took it as a sign. I started to feel a rush of love for Bryce, for his calm and consistent love, his excitement about life. I imagined his clear eyes and the way he felt when I cuddled up against him at night. A baby could be good, I thought. This would be great. My sorrow was replaced by a kind of manic energy. I wanted to be home immediately, not in five to six hours’ time. I drove over the border as it was getting quite late, and I didn’t usually travel the back roads much after dark. I got turned around a few times. At one point, it was too remote for me to get a consistent radio signal, and I stared up at the full moon as I drove, no other cars on the road, absorbing the quiet, the blanket of stars above me.

  I reached up to touch the ruby pendant around my ne
ck, and as I did, it fell off the chain and into my lap. I slowed down to find it, and as I gripped it victoriously in one hand, I peered up just in time to see a deer jump over the hood. I slammed on the brakes. If I’d been going slightly faster, the doe certainly could have killed me.

  I clutched the stone, breath ragged, and pulled the truck over to the shoulder. I needed to catch my breath. I sat there quietly for long enough that three baby fawns ambled up out of the ditch and crossed the road, over to their mom who was waiting in the first layer of trees. I got out and looked at the hood of the pickup for dent marks; there were none. The mother appeared to be walking fine. A second earlier and this would’ve all been different.

  “Thank you, Mom,” I said out loud, and looked up at the knotting of stars where I imagined she’d been watching, finally protecting me.

  Now you just stop yer snivelling and go home, she would have said.

  A few hours later, I pulled up to Sunflower and parked the truck between the tractor and Chris’s beat-up VW van with the perpetual flat tire. I was still wide awake from the near miss. It was two in the morning and I realized there were lights on in the barn, and so I went to shut them off. When I did I heard Bryce’s voice call out, “Hey, I’m still in here!” in the dark. I flipped the lights back on and found him inside the pen.

  We regarded each other for a moment, acknowledging that I’d been gone.

  “What’s wrong with the lamb?” I finally said.

  “We have to feed this one, the mother rejected her. I asked Arnie next door what to do.” He was holding her in his arms and feeding her with a repurposed beer bottle affixed with a long rubber nipple.