by Barb Howard
Jonathan’s chair scrapes when he pushes away from the table. As he turns to look at the damage he’s done to the hardwood floor, something outside seems to catch his eye. He stands, presses his face against the glass door.
“Dad, I think Barclay’s out there again.” Bob gets up, joins Jonathan at the sliding door, and squints through the glass into the dark. “Hunched, maybe a porcupine or raccoon.”
“Why don’t you go outside and get a good look?” I suggest from my chair.
“Dad, I think it’s Barclay.”
Bob reaches for the switch beside the door and flicks on the outside lights. Barclay, caught in the light beam on the lawn, perks his ears. His tail, stiff and curved like a hockey stick, jerks up and down while he pumps a dump onto the grass. He stops, peeks behind him, kicks back a little dirt, and trots onto the deck.
“He wants in,” Jonathan says, grabbing the handle of the sliding door.
Bob takes a deep breath and holds it before he says, “I don’t think Barclay’s an indoor dog.”
“Sure he is,” I say.
“Dad?”
Bob goes to the sideboard, pours a tumbler of Scotch. I empty the last of the second bottle of wine into my glass.
“I don’t care,” Bob says to the ceiling. “Take him to the basement.” Before Jonathan scuffs out of the dining room, one hand on the piece of rope dangling from Barclay’s neck, the other hand gently patting Barclay on the head, Bob adds, “And get some pants that fit.”
Cheryl brings in a special pot of tea for the grandmother and pours coffee for me and Bob.
“What are you hoping for?” I ask, pointing at her belly.
“Oh, a girl would be nice. You know, one boy, one girl. That would be perfect.”
The grandmother farts. A real long pu-pu-pu-pu-pup. Cheryl wipes vigorously at the glass on the sliding door with her turkey napkin. She complains about fingerprints.
While Bob and Cheryl move dishes to the kitchen, I pour myself a little Grand Marnier from the sideboard and think of how, when I was a kid, Mom and I would throw the football around on Thanksgiving. She was a big woman and could catch and pass as good as anyone. She’d have me running patterns right through dusk and, sometimes, depending on the brightness of the sky, into the night. Mom played in a dress—a housedress, she called it—with a pair of my sweatpants pulled up underneath. She always licked her fingertips before placing them across the laces on the ball.
“Say, Bob,” I call into the kitchen, “you play football?”
“No,” Bob yells back, as though he is scolding a dog.
“Bob!” Cheryl says. The kitchen tap is turned on.
The grandmother rattles her teacup in the saucer. I top her up with Grand Marnier. The outside lights are still on. I watch the deer, the same three females as before, approach the feeder, tentatively pulling some hay from the hammock. Dishes clatter in the kitchen. Bob enters the dining room, flicks off the outside light, grabs the Grand Marnier from in front of me and puts it on the sideboard.
“Got some deer out there again,” I tell him.
“I’ll take that coffee mug for you.” Bob clears my place. My mother played football with me right up to her final Thanksgiving. She could still throw a spiral over the gravel pile, but by then, I didn’t very often return her throws. I ran it back. She kept our football pumped up tighter than a rock and I was afraid I’d break her hands if I fired the ball into her. Not that her hands were fragile, or even small.
Cheryl helps the grandmother up from the table.
“Maples,” the grandmother says to me, still holding a tissue to her eyes, “you can’t imagine the Moncton maples this time of year.”
“Mom’s off to bed,” Cheryl says as she steers the grandmother towards the door.
“Goodnight,” I say.
“Goodnight, sweet prince,” the grandmother calls happily over her shoulder.
Bob shrugs, pours only himself a drink, even though I push my glass towards him, and tells me, like he always does, that he’s so sorry, really sorry, about how close he built to my house. I never reply because, as my mother used to say whenever I goofed up, saying “sorry” doesn’t make things right.
Bob built last year. He’s got a full six acres but dug in right beside me, he claims, to get a flat septic field. (I know about septic, and I know about septic fields, and I know he’s pushing my property line, another inch and he’d be offside, so that he can subdivide someday and sell to more Bobs and Cheryls.) After losing mother and my job and all, I had been keeping myself in the house a lot. But once I heard the backhoe digging Bob’s foundation, I brushed off my old porch chair. I watched their six-bedroom house being built and I watched them move in. Cheryl and Bob, in their crisp sweatshirts, directing movers all morning and spending an entire afternoon arranging their bent-willow patio furniture. And all the while, thank goodness, Jonathan at the side of the house, lighting his cigarettes with a torched-up butane lighter. Later, Bob came up to my porch and asked me over for a drink. A welcome drink, he called it. As though I was the newcomer.
Cheryl returns from putting the grandmother to bed.
“Mother went down easy,” she says to Bob. They both look at me.
“Better round up that dog before you go,” Bob pushes back his chair.
I fold my napkin into a tiny square, wipe crumbs from my place, smooth the tablecloth. In the end, I follow Cheryl and Bob to the basement, where Jonathan and Barclay are lying on the couch watching television. Barclay sits up, scratches behind his ear, misting the area about him, including Jonathan, with coarse black-tipped hairs.
“Gotta go,” I say.
At home, I undo my shirt and flick on the kitchen light. Barclay whines at the dog food cupboard, so I get his dish (my mother’s old porridge pot) and fill it up with dry pellets. When I set it on the floor, Barclay’s tail droops between his hind legs. He looks up at me.
“Nothing special on that tonight, old buddy,” I say, “even if it is Thanksgiving. But tomorrow, tomorrow we celebrate with all the fixings, just like always, including giblets and gravy for you.” He cocks his head and so, to make him understand, I open the refrigerator and let him sniff our butter-basted twelve-pound turkey that I bought at the A&G grocery earlier in the day. I sure do appreciate family traditions.
PORCH JOCKEY REVIVAL
Our cabin at Happy Sands Resort is pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Small, two bedrooms, a combined kitchen and sitting area, a musty bathroom with a powder blue bathtub, sink, and toilet. The toilet has a wooden seat that my husband Geoff and my sixteen-year-old son Alistair say is warm and comfortable. Me, I work with people’s bodies. I’m a massage therapist; I know the kind of detritus people shed. Give me cold porcelain any day.
Almost everyone calls me Chiquita even though my real name is Tracy Johnson. Back in elementary school, my mom packed a banana in my lunch. Kids started calling me Chiquita and it has stuck for forty years. I’ve always liked Chiquita because it makes me sound exotic. In reality, I have white skin, bordering on purple in the winter months, big hands and forearms, and greying auburn hair, usually in a ponytail. In truth, I’m more of an eggplant than a banana.
There is one person at Happy Sands who doesn’t call me Chiquita. I don’t want you to think she’s a senior citizen because I call her “Mrs. Edwards.” She’s only about fifteen years older than me. Not even sixty yet. But she insists that most people call her Mrs. Edwards—especially people who work for her, like me.
Mrs. Edwards says “Chiquita” suggests insignificance, that it is a derogatory and demeaning nickname. I’ll tell you what’s demeaning: having to call her Mrs. Edwards.
Speaking of demeaning, Mrs. Edwards has two black porch jockeys at her cabin. The jockeys are three feet high, wearing red caps, red vests, and white jockey pants. One extends a lantern in his right hand; the other extends a lantern in his left hand. They are strategically placed on each side of her cabin door to light the threshold at night. Mrs. Edwa
rds says they are historical artifacts, and that they are “cute.”
This afternoon, Mrs. Edwards is on the deck of her cabin, freshening the paint on the jockeys. She does that every summer—makes the whites of their eyes really white and the black on their faces really black. I know by the way she’s stooped that she is going to hurt her back and will need a massage. Happy Sands is a working vacation for me. Especially when Geoff is depressed, because if he doesn’t blow off the depression by the time we get home, he’ll need a leave of absence from his job and we’ll be short income.
“How’s the painting going?” I ask Mrs. Edwards.
“Fussy,” she says.
“That’s not a great position for your back,” I say.
“I can feel it already. I should book a massage.”
“Tonight?”
“You always talk me into it.”
Typical Mrs. Edwards comment. How did I talk her into it?
On the way back to my cabin, I pass in front of Kathy’s place. She’s a single mom who lives just twenty minutes away from Happy Sands, but rents a cabin for her two-week summer vacation. She has four-year-old twins, Tara and Todd. I wonder if she regrets starting both their names with T’s. She must. Especially since her ex-husband’s name is Terry.
Kathy waves at me. Tara and Todd run out of the cabin in their bathing suits, holding swim masks and snorkels. “Chiquita!” they scream.
“Tara! Todd!” I yell back. Which frightens them because I pack a large voice, but then they laugh. Todd throws his plastic face mask up in the air, landing it on the roof of the cabin. Kathy takes a deep breath.
“Massage?” I ask Kathy.
“Book me in,” she says, as she lifts an armload of bright towels and a mesh bag of beach toys from the step.
“I’ve got the lovely Mrs. Edwards tonight. She’s gonna be sore after repainting the racist figurines. How about tomorrow?”
“I’ll survive until then. Can Alistair watch Tara and Todd?”
“You bet,” I say.
In previous summers, my son Alistair has cheerfully babysat Tara and Todd. He used to smile and be able to engage with all ages. But, as I walk back to my cabin, I’m thinking that Alistair is not going to be pleased that I’ve committed him to an hour of pro bono babysitting. I’m imagining the pout that I kept catching in the car on our drive to Happy Sands. Bottom lip turned down, zero eye contact, heavy sighs. You’d think there’d been a death in the family. Tough. An hour of babysitting won’t kill him. Might even help him. Kathy works twice as hard as anyone I know, especially Alistair who, earlier this summer, found his summer job of pumping gas so thoroughly exhausting that he cut back to three days a week.
It’s dark inside our cabin, even though the sun is blazing outside. The curtains are closed. Alistair is watching TV. He’s a tall, skinny kid—an ectomorph like his dad, his huge feet hanging off the end of the couch. It is the world’s most uncomfortable couch, basically a park bench done up with orange upholstery, and Alistair’s angular body makes it look worse. Having tried to stretch out a few times myself, I know that couch is more punishing than relaxing. Why doesn’t Alistair move? Why doesn’t he lie on the chaise lounge at the beach? Teenagers make no sense.
“Hey Alistair,” I say, walking over to the window, “I told Kathy you’d watch her kids for an hour tomorrow.”
“Forget it. Those kids are dinks,” Alistair says.
“Let the sun shine in,” I sing, as I pull apart the curtains and crank open the window.
“I’m too tired,” Alistair says.
“Now, honey,” I say, “babysitting Todd and Tara couldn’t possibly be as hard as pumping gas.” I pat his head several times for emphasis. “Could it?”
I walk into the bedroom where Geoff is sleeping. Or should I say, “sleeping,” in quotation marks, because this “sleep” is closer to a malfunctioning cyborg state. A blank face, closed mouth, eyes open. Maybe he’s not eating enough protein. I wish it were that simple.
“Happy hour,” I say. “Do you want a beer?”
“Chiquita, I’m…” he says. And then nothing. The unfinished sentence. The sure sign his inner black dogs have found us on vacation. Somebody should euthanize those beasts. They’ve wrecked a lot of summers.
I don’t have a drink since I still have to work on Mrs. Edwards, but I put The Waifs’ Sink or Swim on the CD player, barbecue a few chops, and mix up a salad. Geoff and Alistair decline dinner. I eat on the deck, resentful of the fact that, because Geoff and Alistair aren’t eating, I feel piggy eating a regular dinner at a regular time.
From the deck, I watch Kathy lifeguarding her kids down at the beach. Tara and Todd play king of the air mattress. They can both swim fairly well, but the air mattress keeps drifting away from the beach and then Kathy has to holler at them to come in closer to shore.
I have a cup of tea. Put the leftover dinner in the fridge in the hopes that Alistair and Geoff will eat later. I don’t know what they run on. The two of them are skin and bones. Their Adam’s apples stick out of their throats like pebbles.
Mrs. Edwards prefers her massages right after dinner, even though I think that is probably not the best thing for digestion—hers and mine. But a job is a job. I knock. Smile politely at the porch jockeys. Mrs. Edwards, wearing a kimono-type robe, opens the door. I grunt as I squeeze myself, the Moroccan tote bag on my shoulder, and the massage table through the doorway.
Even late in the day, it’s still twenty-five degrees outside, and even warmer inside Mrs. Edward’s cabin. I push the furniture in the sitting area to one side and unfold the table. Fitted sheet, pillow for under the knees, flat sheet, flannel cover on the face cradle. Then I go stand in the bathroom (she’s got a baby blue toilet with a wooden seat, too), so Mrs. Edwards won’t feel like I’m staring at her while she disrobes and climbs between the sheets on the massage table. It’s a manners thing; I’m going to see most of her nude body anyway. And, honestly, I couldn’t care less how Mrs. Edwards looks in the raw.
“Tracy, I’m ready for you now,” she calls from the main room.
Yahoo, I think.
Mrs. Edwards is trim but weak. She’s the type who will soon have trouble opening jars. She has a flat bum. No glutes to speak of. Lots of people are like this: trim but gooey. You don’t have to touch them to know. Mrs. Edwards keeps her underwear on. People are funny that way. I mean, underwear is far more revealing than a bare bum. Mrs. Edwards is sporting a high-rise pair of cotton panties. Plaid. Surprisingly jazzy.
I start on the left side of her neck. Mrs. Edwards has typical middle-aged woman woes: sore lower back, tight scalenes and curved posture—probably brought on by unnecessary stress—lack of muscle tone and poor kinesthetic awareness. I’m the same. Except I have more muscle mass.
I work my way down the sides of her spine until I encounter plaid, which prevents me from doing much work on her lower back and hips. I try my best. I fold her underwear down a bit but the elastic flips it back up with a snap. I focus on her trapezium and finish with a scalp massage, which I haven’t tried on her before, because I usually save it as a bonus for people I like.
“I’m not sure I enjoyed whatever you were doing to my head. Pushing your fingers around in my scalp like that,” Mrs. Edwards says after her massage, as I pack up my table.
“That’s good to know,” I say. “Everybody’s different. I won’t do it next time.”
“I feel a headache coming on.”
Me too, I think as I stand at the door, waiting to get paid.
“I’ll bring your money down to the fire tonight,” she says. “I can’t find my purse right now.”
I’m thinking that she didn’t appear to look at all, for even one second, for her purse. But I don’t care if I get paid now or later tonight.
“Sure,” I say as I heave my stuff out the door.
Almost every night at Happy Sands, someone lights a bonfire in the pit near the lake. Tonight, whoever built the fire has disappeared. Maybe one of the
Alberta families with all the kids had a wiener roast and then went to town for ice cream. There are a few tiny lights on the opposite shore, car headlights as a few vehicles travel on the other side. The lake is dead calm, not even the occasional lap of waves, and the warm air is still rising off the beach. I breathe in the heat, along with the summer smells of pine trees and smoke and water. Maybe, I think, Geoff will come for a skinny dip with me.
Geoff is alone in the sitting area of our cabin. “How’s the bonfire?” he asks me.
A good sign. A complete sentence.
“No one there,” I say. “Mrs. Edwards never showed with my money.”
“Predictable,” Geoff says. “She likes to yank your chain.”
“Skinny dip?” I ask.
“Maybe tomorrow night. I’m tired.”
“Nudity might energize you,” I say, reaching out, giving his shoulder a rub.
I turn to see Alistair staring at me from the kitchen. He must have been there the whole time, watching.
“Oh, hi, Al. There’s leftovers in the fridge,” I say.
“Would you just go for a skinny dip with her, dad?” Alistair says. He walks into the bathroom, slams the door, and Geoff and I sit in silence, listening to the water filling the bathtub.
Nights are seriously dark at Happy Sands. There are no street or footpath lights. Only tiny yellow bulbs above each cabin door and, of course, the jockeys’ lanterns at Mrs. Edwards’ place. The lights inside the cabins filter hazily through the few windows. Most nights, darkness falls hard, and sounds become exaggerated. Tonight, as I lie in bed, I’m sure I hear an animal, probably a deer, walking near our cabin, the sounds of a television from another cabin, kids laughing at the beach.
I give Kathy her massage the following afternoon. She usually pays me in baking, since she doesn’t have much spare cash. I see a chocolate cake on her counter and think I’d better give her an extra-special workover. Including a scalp massage, which I know she loves.
