by Ingrid Betz
“I’ve got a job.” He was officially employed by a firm that repaired farm machinery.
“Ha! Just an excuse to jaunt around the countryside meeting lonesome women,” she’d yell and they’d be at it, hammer and tongs.
Today she wore a yellow linen skirt with a pleat that flounced open to her thigh as she perched on the arm of the sofa. She wasn’t finished with her father. “So do your shirts. Smell,” she said. “I do the laundry for this family, remember?”
“I know. And I’m grateful.”
She gave him a vindictive look. They were covering old ground. “Dr. Wong can’t be happy with your smoking. Don’t you have an appointment coming up? For your ulcer, or whatever it is.”
Now was his chance to tell her, he thought. But how could he get the words out when her tone made it clear she suspected him of malingering? His glance turned to the computer screen; the schedule was due in by the end of the week. “I’m busy, Elaine. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I’m coming to that. It’s not as though I haven’t warned you, Dad. Either you get him under control, or you’ll be picking him up at the police station.”
“Donny, we’re talking about?”
“Of course, Donny. Who else? Didn’t you notice how hyped up he was this morning? The principal was very lenient, considering. He could have expelled him on the spot. I told him you’d drop by after school to discuss it.”
Drugs, thought Borrowman, she must mean drugs. At thirteen? The pain nudged for attention and beads of sweat broke out on his back. Not now, he prayed to whoever there might be. Had he missed something at breakfast? It was mid-June with still a week of school to go and, as far as he could recall, the scene at the kitchen table had been much as usual. Donny’s sunny curls shaking with mirth over something on the screen of his cellphone, while fifteen-year-old Raymond hummed snatches of Anton Webern’s horn concerto, the score of which he had propped against the milk carton. Some mumbling and elbow-poking, but his mind had been on a blog he was writing about the Toronto sit-in. Even when he paid attention, half the time he couldn’t make out what the boys were talking about. Kids today spoke an alien language.
“Discuss what exactly? What is it Donny’s supposed to have done?”
“Oh, Dad, really! You don’t know? He only took half a dozen cans of Moosehead beer to school this morning. Sold them out of his backpack at recess. One of the other kids posted the whole thing on YouTube.”
“Beer?” Borrowman felt relieved. Not drugs, thank God. Not yet, anyway. “I didn’t know we had any in the house.” He hadn’t touched alcohol since Alex Wong’s diagnosis two months ago.
“There’s some left from…” Abruptly Elaine broke off, her face flushed, and Borrowman cursed himself for being obtuse. Moosehead was Asher’s brew of choice. “Anyway. That’s not the point,” she snapped.
“No. You’re right. I’m sorry.” The weight of an immense tiredness pressed down on him. He glanced again at the computer. “I don’t suppose you could…”
“No. I couldn’t. And it’s not fair of you to ask me. I’m not Donny’s parent.”
Her skirt flounced into place as she rose. “I do what I can, you know that. More than my share. What is it with this family? Everybody thinks they can just bail out when they’ve had enough. First Mum, swanning off to Toronto to make a career for herself. Now Asher, the bastard. You, half the time present in body but absent in spirit.” Her voice kept rising, brittle and accusing. “Why not? Elaine’s here—she can look after things. When is it going to be my turn, I want to know?”
Tears spurted from her eyes. He should have realized, he should have seen this coming.
Borrowman stood up, his hands making involuntary calming motions. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry, Elaine. Please.” He advanced around the desk and took her in his arms. She was his daughter. She had talent; she had wanted to get her BA in music only some family crisis or other always intervened.
“Of course I’ll go,” he said. “It’s my responsibility. I’ll talk to the principal.” Maybe he could phone him—what was the fellow’s name? Put him off till tomorrow.
“Never mind.” Elaine gulped righteous sobs. “Forget I said anything. I’ll talk to Mr. Faber. Might as well. I’ve got the shopping to do anyway.” She held herself erect, unyielding as a plank in Borrowman’s embrace. Sometimes he didn’t blame Asher for leaving. “Unless you’re offering to do that as well?”
He was hopeless in a supermarket and she knew it. He mumbled defeat and she moved away, removing her glasses and dabbing a tissue at her eyes with her graceful pianist’s fingers.
“You’d only end up making excuses for Donny. Letting your guilt over Mum leaving us do the talking.” She blew her nose and tossed her hair. A smile like splintered glass flashed across her face. “Go back to your computer, Dad. Smoke your cigarette. You look as if you need it.”
Borrowman waited until the door closed behind her before he took out a cigarette and with shaking hands lit a match to it. He stood by the window, dragging smoke into his lungs. The geraniums on the sill needed watering. Or else he’d watered them too much. He could never decide which it was when the leaves turned yellow. Confrontations with Elaine always ended like this. She had a knack for exposing everything about him that was inadequate. Like her mother before her. Even though he still missed his wife, and no doubt always would, in a way her departure had been a relief.
The window was what architects referred to as a bow window, not quite as curved as a bay. They’d been fond of them in 1892, the year the house was built for his great-grandfather. William Borrowman had made his money manufacturing pianos. The factory was gone now. By the time his father took over the business, cheaper Japanese imports were flooding the market. Only the love of music survived, running like a thread through successive generations of Borrowmans. Diamond panes with bevelled edges rose toward a stained glass frieze of crimson and rose and peacock blue across the top. People had confidence in those days that beauty would last.
Borrowman stubbed out his cigarette in a metal lozenge tin he kept for the purpose and cranked open a section of the window to air the room. The pain in his abdomen was easing, thank God. He was given to moods of self-abasement, not only about his smoking, but about all the other things in his life he couldn’t seem to control. The house he lived in was one of them. The over-sized Victorian pile with its cargo of leather-upholstered furniture had been passed on to him, innocently enough, by his father. Once while Elaine was vacuuming, he’d tried to make her understand how it was wrong, in a world of diminishing resources, that people should sit on the skins of dead animals and sleep in hothouse temperatures in a ten-room structure that devoured energy like a bus terminal.
That was the winter Margaret had left them and Elaine, who’d just turned nineteen and seen her hopes of leading an independent life fading into some unknowable distance, existed in a state of permanent rage. She hadn’t bothered to switch off the machine while he talked. “Get real, Dad!” she’d yelled. “What would you do with the furniture instead? Give it to the homeless to sit on? Burn the house down so we can all freeze in a tent?”
Why was it, he wondered, that the solutions were so often more complicated than the problems?
Outside, the garden trailed off into the sunless afternoon. Not much remained of his great-grandmother’s carefully-tended perennials. Already in his mother’s day, the delphiniums and hollyhocks, and in spring the drifts of forget-me-nots, were left pretty much to fend for themselves. His mother had been a librarian, more at home in the world of books than in the real one. He himself was always too busy to do more than take a few perfunctory swipes at the lawn with the push mower, and getting the boys to pull their weight was equivalent to harnessing a team of house-cats to a cart.
Only Elaine, conscientious to a fault, made any real effort. Every Victoria Day weekend, she planted a border of annual
s—impatiens usually, or begonias, something that could withstand the shade of the old trees—and at the back of the house, between the reoccurring chives and ragged basil, she set out half a dozen listing tomato plants. Two or three times a summer in a fit of resentment, she’d drag on a pair of gardening gloves, jam an old straw hat of Margaret’s onto her head, and attack the weeds with a blunted trowel. At the end of the afternoon she would come in, dishevelled and hot with her manicure ruined, and throw together an inedible supper as a form of revenge. On her family, or on life, Borrowman was never sure.
He returned to the desk and looked at the name scribbled on the parking notice. Marigold Green. If it really was a Chinese business behind the poaching, they’d be after more than just bears. If they were planning to harvest bile commercially, they’d need a base for their operations. Buildings in which to house the bears and process the raw bile. He reached for his cellphone and pressed St. Denis’ number.
“Paul? John again.”
“What now?”
“There’s something else I need you to do for me. Check with the local realtor … ”
“Who? Sacre bleu, John! Can’t hear you….” Kids squealed and water splashed as St. Denis barked an order about life jackets.
“The realtor,” shouted Borrowman. “Mike Landesberg—the fellow who sold you your place? Find out from him if anybody’s bought property recently in the vicinity of the Park.”
“A Chinese company, you’re talking?”
“Or it could be a numbered company. Some place large and secluded.”
“Anything else? You realize I’ve got an effing business to run here.”
“An extra fifty.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” growled St. Denis and hung up.
A light tapping sounded on the pane. It was starting to rain. Borrowman got up and closed the window. The Rose of Sharon bush was in bloom. A fine misting drizzle blurred the lavender blossoms and it struck him with the force of a sharp blow that this was the last time he would see them.
6.
“MUSHROOMS.”
“Mushrooms?” St. Denis’s voice over the phone sounded incredulous. “You’re kidding! A Chinese business bought the old Keller mine to grow mushrooms?”
“That’s the plan. The Happy Long Life Mushroom Company.”
“But that mine is way back in the bush. Miles from nowhere.”
Mike Landesberg laughed. He straightened the MLS listings on his desk. “And then some. I thought it was a joke when they first told me. But no, the name’s on the deed of sale. All legal and official.”
“Funny it hasn’t been in the local news.”
“They didn’t want it spread around. Not until they’ve got the place up and running.”
“Makes sense, I suppose. If they don’t want to be a laughingstock. When was this, in the spring?”
“May 24th. It’s not a date I’m likely to forget. Biggest sale of my life. I don’t mind telling you it happened just in time to save my bacon.”
“How about if I call you next time I’m in town?” said St. Denis. “We’ll go for a coffee and you can tell me about it.”
“Look forward to it, Paul.”
Mike Landesberg hung up the phone, smiling broadly. Talking about the sale did that to him. Hell, even now a month later, just thinking about it made him grin.
He remembered the day hadn’t started off well. His mother, shuffling around the kitchen, had been more cantankerous than usual that morning.
“Go on, dear. Leave. I can tell you’re dying to.”
“Not till I see you eat breakfast and take your pills.”
“Why should it matter to you?” she said in a voice querulous with accusation. “Shined up like a groom at a wedding.”
“It’s only a new shirt, Mom.” He smoothed down his collar and settled the knot of his tie in place. “I told you. I’ve got important clients today. Here. Let me pour that for you.”
His mother waved him away from the counter. “Stop fussing. Go sell your house or whatever.”
He watched while she tipped the electric kettle over her cup with a trembling hand. His mother was wearing her old flannel dressing gown, the one with the scorched sleeve and the button missing and egg stains down the front. Her scant white hair still had the imprint of the pillow on it and the first rays of sunlight filtering through the net kitchen curtains made her scalp show pink.
“It’s a mine, Mom,” he said. “The clients are from China and they want to buy a mine. Why aren’t you wearing the dressing gown I got you for Mother’s Day?”
“A mine! Don’t they have enough of those in their own country? Always being killed in mine cave-ins. Thousands of them every year. It was on the CBC just the other day.”
“Coal mines. This one’s different. It’s an old gold mine. Here, let me.” He attempted to wrest the kettle away from her to replace it on the stand but she resisted. She had surprising strength in her arthritic fingers.
“I can do this myself, dear. The new dressing gown scratches, is why.”
That was the first he’d heard of it. He was about to argue the point when he thought better of it. Surreptitiously he looked at the clock while she fumbled a slice of bread out of the wrapper and dropped it in the toaster. He’d been too keyed up to do more than gulp down a cup of coffee himself. Not that skipping a meal would do him any harm. Always a big man, the mirror told him he’d been adding extra girth around the middle lately. It was nearly eight thirty. Five more minutes and he’d have to be out of here. Sales had been slow over the winter and now with a chance at the biggest sale in years he was not going to screw it up. His mother caught the impatient movement of his head out of the corner of her eye.
“You’re hovering,” she said, plunging the toaster lever down. “I hate it when you hover. Darn thing’s broken,” she announced, straightening up with a theatrical sigh.
“Nothing’s broken.” Reaching past her, he slotted the plug into the outlet and the machine hummed to life. “The Helping Hands people are sending somebody around at nine,” he said. “Try not to antagonize them this time.”
She gave him a sharp look. “When have I ever done that?”
“Mom, listen. You need to have somebody in the house with you. It may be late before I get back. This mine is way up in the bush. I’ve even had to charter a plane.”
“That’s good, dear. Last week they sent somebody foreign. She was fat and smelled of garlic. I couldn’t understand a word in three of what she was saying.”
He groaned inwardly. It had taken him a good five minutes of grovelling and cajoling to get Helping Hands to give his mother another chance. Huntsville was a small town and he’d been through all the other agencies offering home care for seniors. He carried her teacup to the table and set it on her placemat, next to her blue pill and her two white pills, alongside the morning’s Globe and Mail and the mobile phone he’d laid in prominent view.
“I asked for a different person this time. They promised they’d send somebody nice. Somebody… ” He hesitated. He shouldn’t be pandering to his mother’s prejudices like this. When had she become such a racist? He couldn’t recall her being one when he was a child. Of course, there’d been fewer immigrants around in those days, or if there were, they were of a colour and background that blended in with the home-grown population. “Somebody Canadian,” he finished, giving in. For all the good it did him.
“And you believe them? Ha!” The toaster pinged. She clawed the toast onto a plate and dabbed margarine on it. Her bony shoulders stood out under the threadbare fabric of the dressing gown and he made a mental note to have the garment disappear the next time she wasn’t in it. “It’s tasteless, this stuff. Why can’t I have butter? They lie, you know,” she said.
“You heard what the doctor said about your arteries. Who lies?”
“Helping Hands. A
ll the agencies do. They tell you who they’re sending and then when you open the door, it’ll be somebody else on the doorstep. Somebody black as night in a coat closet. Or muffled in a headscarf and jabbering in Mongolian.”
“I’m not listening to this. Promise you’ll let her in? Whatever she looks like or talks like?” He tried not to sound exasperated; he tried to remember that she was eighty-seven and diabetic and she’d had at least three small strokes that the doctor knew of to start her down the slippery slope to senile dementia. “Mom, if you don’t promise, I can’t leave for work.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she squinted ruminatively at his tie. Her eyes were a pale blue echo of his own between the wispy lashes that had once been thick enough to bedazzle Bert Landesberg as a young man. Eyes that could bring a class of thirty fourteen-year-olds to heel with a single flash, his father had been fond of recalling, as he pored boozily over old photo albums from the wheelchair that had put an end to his job as foreman in a lumber mill.
“You’re sure you want to wear that tie? It makes you look like a salesman.”
“That’s what I am, Mom. A salesman.”
Pat Landesberg had wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer or at the very least a school-teacher, like herself. But he hadn’t had the marks to pass the entrance exams. Instead he’d drifted into real estate, just to tide him over until something better came along. That was twenty-five years ago. He hadn’t married a woman his mother approved of either, nor had he produced the type of grandchild she’d wanted; he’d been a great disappointment to her all around.
He opened his briefcase and checked to make sure he had the topographical map and copy of the surveyor’s report he’d picked up yesterday at the land registry office. Strapped under the lid was the silver flask he’d refilled last night with Crown Royal. Insurance in a bottle, he told himself, and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. No matter what these people decided, it would ensure he got through the day on an even keel.
