The man’s jaw opens wide, as if wired on a flat hinge. His laugh comes out of the hole at the back of his mouth in rough, breathy gasps.
“Leave the kid alone, Clem.”
“No. That’s great. I think that’s great. Who taught you to say that, kid? That’s great,” Clem says, between breaths.
Mumma feels her throat constricting against the bottom of her jaw. Dad smiles at the men, and says, “That’s my boy. Yeah. That’s my son. They’re all my children,” he says.
“Well there sure are enough of them mister,” Clem replies.
“Yes,” Dad says quickly, “and all of them good. Nice to spend some time with my family. We’re on vacation. Drove through some tar back on the highway. Any of you fellows know what takes tar off a car?”
Dad notices the men being gentlemen to each other, lots of eye contact. Expressionless.
“Sorry,” Clem says, not looking at Dad, “Don’t know.”
“Well nice talking to you,” Dad says, tipping his forefinger off the brim of an imaginary hat.
“Watch out for goofs on the road,” Clem says to no one in particular, as he moves his coffee cup to his mouth, “Too many goofs on the road these days. Goofs and kooks.”
When the hamburgers arrive, Mumma takes the pickles and tomato out of the bun and nibbles on them until the men vacate the adjacent table.
After lunch, the kids rotate through the bathroom. Dad goes to talk to the proprietor standing by the cashier who refuses to take Dad’s money. Dad presses some bills into the palm of the proprietor, who follows Dad out, showering the family with a blizzard of dialogue.
“It wasn’t really a case of food poisoning. More of a home poisoning? I don’t know. Would you call that spring tonic, food? Which food group?”
“You’re not stuck on this still, are you?”
“Well, yes. I am. We wouldn’t have to drive there. I can understand, that association. We can fly into, I guess, Regina or Saskatoon, and get a u-drive.”
“You sound more interested in pursuing my family history than I do. You want to seek out my roots, my bamboo shoots? It’s not just the driving.”
“I’m interested because of you. I want you to have this. I want you to know your father better. You were his baby, and you were so close, but you didn’t really know him.”
“Stop.”
“But this way, you can keep getting to know him, get closer. It’s the only way.”
“Don’t you think I have enough? I can barely handle what I do know. Do I want to know more about an eight-year-old-boy, the English words learned first, in school, a parochial school oh God is great, his first English words in the world, ‘heathen Chinee’. What more is there to know? Names can hurt like sticks and stones, and memories can break your bones. Don’t know that version, do you?”
“You only see the worst. You need the whole story.”
“ ‘Tell me your whole story, but leave out the bad parts.’ Is that what I should say? ‘Tell me your story, but watch out for my heart. It’s a family weakness.’ You go too far.”
“You don’t push yourself hard enough.”
“You standing there, telling me where to draw the line. Telling me I need the whole story, when you don’t even know what that story might be. That’s rich. Go discover your own roots, Mr. Columbus. I’ve been to Saskatchewan before, you know.”
“Well, there isn’t a shoe store anyway.” Dad realizes that, with lunch, and with the time change, they have lost the beginning of the heat of the day, great, but precious time, as well. “People buy their shoes by catalogue here. Draw their feet onto card-boards and hope for the best.” Dad shakes his head.
They sit in the car, the windows down, the baby drifting off to sleep in the front seat. Mumma’s lids feel heavy too, the children usually not ill in such rapid succession. Dad turns the ignition key and slowly moves the car away from the curb.
“How many more miles from here, Mumma? I don’t remember.”
Mumma runs the fingertip of her ring finger along her eyebrow. “Let me look at the map.” Mumma spreads open the road map of Saskatchewan and pretends to study, the costume of the navigator weighing heavily upon her.
“Where are we?” Mumma asks.
“What do you mean? Battleford, we’re in North Battleford, and right up ahead, there’s the highway. Going to White Rose through Saskatoon.”
“We’ll get there, Dad.”
“I know that, but when? How far?” Dad eases back onto the highway, and turns his head towards Mumma, his eyebrows arching in the middle of his forehead like a temple roof.
“Well. Let’s see. This far.” Mumma moves her hand from the map, and raises her fingers in front of Dad’s face, her thumb and forefinger spanning an invisible line of about four inches.
“How far?”
“Like this, Dad.”
Gravel pops like machine gun fire as Dad pulls onto the shoulder. “What do you mean, like this?” he says, mimicking Mumma’s hand gesture.
“That’s how far it is to White Rose. That’s what the map says.”
“Oh,” Dad says, his icy calm blanketing the car. Dad floors the gas pedal, obscuring the back windshield with dust. As suddenly, he brakes, sending five bodies forward and plastering them back into their seats. “That far, Mumma?”
“I quit,” Mumma declares. “We never should have come here. If it’s so important for you to read this country,” she says, throwing the map into Dad’s lap, “Go right ahead.”
The kids have an image in the rear view mirror of Dad’s eyes growing wider and wider as he studies the map.
“We’ll never make it,” he says, in disbelief, “We will never make it. It’s too far.”
Mumma rolls her eyes. “Then just call the man. Tell him we got delayed. Tell him we won’t make it until tomorrow.”
Call God, Dad thinks. Ring God up, and tell him we’re running a little late. Tell God to please wait on his sickly family, with the tarry car, and the throw-up runners. No bloody way. We may be many things to God, things that he’s wrong about, but we are not going to be late.
Dad turns off the car and pockets the keys in his hand. He opens his door and walks toward the back of the car. Five heads follow his progress, Where will he will stop? He opens the trunk and removes the two suitcases. He hands one suitcase into the back, the other one to Mumma.
“We’ll change on the way. Everyone, we’re going to see Him.”
“This Father Brady, he was held up to us by Dad when we were young as a definitive moral yardstick. ‘What would Father Brady say?’ ‘Father Brady wouldn’t be pleased to hear you did that.’ On and on. The principal of the only school in the area, and that’s who taught Dad how to speak English. Your principal is your pal, some bloody spelling lesson. My dad left school in Canada after completing only one year. That’s why all of us wallowed in university so long. Still, Dad was so much brighter, more intelligent than all of us put together, and just so determined. I don’t know what happened, why he left school. He always said he had to help his father and uncles in the restaurant, but now everything he told me, I wonder. It wasn’t until I was older that I knew more of that Father Brady story, that heathen Chinee business. Wicked old fart.”
No, not really, not a flash before your eyes, Mumma thinks. She concentrated on whether or not her neighbours, Eileen and Sally, and her sister Moe would have thought any differently of her, going through her house afterwards. She had washed the floors, but if she had it all to do over again, she definitely would have found the time to clean the oven. Mumma’s legs bend jointless as she leans on the side of the car, retching beside the front tire.
Dad has ducked behind a tree to change into his blue worsted, with the vest. Lizzie has pulled a turquoise rat-tail comb out of her purse and combs all the other kids’ hair. They stand in a row, as Dad demanded. Fresh from flying over several swells in the asphalt, the kids all have flushed cheeks. They try to give Dad some privacy, but their attention keeps going
back to the tree. The kids assess the school grounds where God lives to be pretty average.
Dad emerges from behind the tree, running a comb quickly through his hair. When he sees Mumma wiping her mouth with a Kleenex, Dad decides not to insist that she change into her blue dress with the matching cropped jacket.
He sits in an office sucking a wet stubby end of a cigar that even the baby notices has gone out, long extinguished. Pink capillaries network across the bulbs over his nostrils. On His walls, a gallery of engraved wooden plaques surrounds Him like mosaic tiles. He invites Mumma to sit in the only other chair in the room, and nestles his buttocks further down into the chair behind his desk. Dwarfing him are haphazard mounds of paper on his desk and the floor. Most of the ash from his cigar rests in the crevasses of his black-panted lap.
He doesn’t remember Dad.
“But I came to your school. Many years ago. You taught me.”
“Been a lot of students through here you know.” Father Brady speaks to the ascending heads standing in front of him. Dad can’t help but wish Mumma stood beside him, to ensure their perfect, sloping wedge.
“But I was here. Nineteen twenty-one.”
He pulls a book off a shelf behind Him, and leafs through its pages, slows at one section of the book and stops to read an entry. “Oh, by God. Yes, you were. That’s you is it? Lee?”
The kids stare at Him. At him. He doesn’t look anything like the legend they’ve heard about all their lives. [Note: There should be a word that means this: I didn’t have a specific picture in my mind, but seeing you now and all the myriad details that culminate in you, all these aspects of you may come the closest to the dead-on picture of what I never could have imagined you would look like.] To start with, the kids never ever thought he could have ashy pants.
“And Lee, I presume Mrs. Lee and the family.”
“We drove all day to see you. I wanted the children to meet you.” Dad’s so relieved that He doesn’t stand up and see the children’s shoes.
“Well, they’re fine-looking children,” Father Brady says, dropping his wet stub into a tarnished metal ashtray of stubs, “and the first thing you have to do, you must teach these children how to speak English.”
Wing’s shoulder blades fall back against the office wall as if he’d been pushed. Aghast, Wing Lee tries to translate Father Brady, His face, His. . .those words. Mumma raises herself up in her chair, feels the bones of her back stack up one on top of the other.
“These children. Our children speak perfect English,” she says, standing up, asserting her gentlewomanly eye contact and extending her hand confidently. “A pleasure to finally meet you, face to face. Children, we will be leaving now, please say your goodbyes.”
Without asking, the kids line up still in that perfect wedge from Jane, Tom, Pen and Lizzie. Dad’s shoulder blades come off the wall to support his squared shoulders. He cups Mumma’s elbow, as he stands beside her, watching his children shake hands with him, firmly and business-like, and don’t forget eye contact like you really see the person, exactly as Dad has taught them all.
As they pull out of the parking lot, the kids giggle uncontrollably. “He was so dirty. . . Wow did you see those ashes on his lap. . . What a turkey. . . ‘These children must learn how to speak English’.” The voice is so well imitated, Dad laughs, and turning his head to the back seat, he wags his haha-naughty finger.
“Now you kids,” Dad says into the rear-view mirror.
The fin-tailed maroon Pontiac turns onto the highway, in search of a clean unit with a kitchenette.
“Please, Dad? Can we find a motel with a swimming pool? An outdoor swimming pool?”
“Well sure. Let’s look for one Mumma,” he offers, gently grasping the hand of his navigator.
Author’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Places, characters, names, and events described (or noted as something that would happen in the future) formed in my imagination, or are presented fictitiously — you can read more about that at the front of the book. And yes, there is such a thing as coincidence, where fictional stories about fictional people, places, and events resemble only by coincidence whatever we may conceive of as real, or actual, life.
I am not an expert in anything, so nothing in this book should be taken as professional advice. It is not the function or intention of this book to encourage or discourage anyone from seeking advice (including professional advice) on any subject. This book is fiction, makes no representations on the value of expert opinions, and should not be used to replace or interpret expert opinions. That all being said, in my humble opinion, there are better things you could do for yourself than sitting on the toilet to read. Consider a new place to love reading. Seriously.
The locations of some former places of business in my beloved home province of Alberta may not be geographically accurate, especially in relation to one another, and what a shame if municipal history aficionados are disappointed. Please bear in mind, I was a kid when I observed some of these places and I still have a sense of direction that could use a little improvement.
Finally, so there can be no misunderstanding, the fictional Lee family is not the family into which I was born. Mumma and Wing are not my parents, Moe and Li-Ting are not my aunts, Paul is not my cousin, Don is not my second cousin, and Jane, Lizzie, Pen, and Tom are not my siblings and myself. While the people in my birth family were and are all amazing characters in their own right, they are not the characters in these stories.
Acknowledgments
A previous version of “Number 88. Spicy Beef in Lettuce Wraps” appeared in Boundless Alberta, published by NeWest Press and edited by Aritha van Herk.
I want to thank the good people at NeWest Press who said Yes to this book, and those who worked so hard to bring the book to life. I acknowledge the amazing gift that saying Yes means to me, and will always mean to me. And in the process of publishing the book, for a while, Paul, then Matt and Claire at NeWest were unfailingly cheerful, easy to work with, optimistic, and fun, and made this adventure a true joy ride. Thank you.
The word has not been invented to properly express my gratitude for all the energy and focus, time, brilliance, encouragement and shelter that the editor of this book, Nicole Markotić, gave to this manuscript. Thank you, Nicole. If I know one thing that’s true, it’s this: this collection of stories finally grew up and left home to become a book because of Nicole.
Many years ago, I took writing classes in the English department at the University of Calgary for three years, and it was in that workshop environment, that I travelled with this ever-changing, talented community of people who were simultaneously discovering the joy and aardvark (hard work) of sitting quietly to craft a story. While we dispersed back to our lives, you are never far away in my mind, and neither are your characters nor your stories. Thank you. I will never stop hoping for the realization of your dreams.
No community thrives without exceptional leadership, and I acknowledge receiving the patient and profoundly gifted guidance, instruction, and inspiration from my teachers at U of C, Professor Aritha van Herk, and Professor Nicole Markotić, gifts that never end. Thank you.
Life has graced me with friends and family whose constancy, support, encouragement, and cooking have fed me over countless years. I am humbled by their kindness and love. However, rather than naming the generous, caring people who made me laugh, never gave up hope, and gently but firmly aligned my wheels — you know who you are, I know who you are, and I thank you very much.
And to my husband, Mike, who bears all things. This book could not have happened without you. Thank you.
Permissions
IT’S MY PARTY
Words and Music by HERB WIENER, JOHN GLUCK and WALLY GOLD
© 1963 (Renewed) CHAPPELL & CO., INC.
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC
You Call Everybody Darling
Words and Music by Sam Martin, Ben Trace and Clem Watts
(c) 1946 (Renewed) EDWIN H. MORRIS & COMPANY, A Division of MPL Music
Publishing, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
“I Enjoy Being a Girl”
Copyright © 1958 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Copyright Renewed.
Williamson Music (ASCAP), an Imagem Company owner of publication and allied rights throughout the World. All Rights Reserved.
¶ This book was set in Carat and Equip, both designed by Dieter Hofrichter at Hoftype.
Lauralyn Chow was born, raised, and educated in Edmonton, Alberta. Her first summer job was at a radio station and she later worked as the first in-house lawyer for the Calgary Board of Education (the public school board). She has a B.A. in Psychology, minoring in Sociology, and an LL.B. from the University of Alberta. When she visits Hawaii, which she does frequently, she is often mistaken for a local and once won an air ukulele contest during the Aloha Festivals. She currently resides in Calgary, Alberta.
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