by Tina Chaulk
Carrie looks right at me. “You’d better leave,” she says in a voice that seems soft despite the force behind it.
I turn to leave immediately. I know what they are going to do and I don’t want to see it. It’s bad enough that I hear Nan screaming “no” and “stop.” I fight back the same tears I see Mom struggling against.
“Oh, Jennifer,” Mom says out in the hall. She turns and looks me straight in the eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“She just had a rough night. She’ll be okay,” I say, trying to keep my voice stronger than my emotions are.
“I don’t mean her. I know she’ll be … fine. I’m talking about the restaurant.”
“Mom—”
“I just want to be happy,” she says and looks away. “Just for once in my life,” she whispers.
“What?” I say. My voice echoes down the hall, the loudness of it startling me.
“I just want to be happy,” she repeats, her eyes wide.
“For once in your life? What’s that supposed to mean? Does that mean you’ve never been happy? Not once in your entire life? So you were never happy with Dad?”
Or me? The words sit on my tongue, burning it as I want to say them but can’t. I remember the way she looked at me most of my life: with something other than love, something I never understood. I always assumed it was disappointment. I never liked the girly clothes she bought me, didn’t play with the dolls she gave me, refused to join her in the conversations about womanly issues she always wanted to share with me.
“Your period is the beginning of a new part of your life,” she told me the day I got embarrassed by the red stain on my jeans. “Today you are a young woman. This is all about the blossoming of who you are.” Her smile was so bright, so hopeful. “Every month your body releases an egg and your uterus—”
“Ewwwww. No! No uterus. No period talk of any kind,” I screamed with my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to be a young woman. No eggs. Ever.”
The way she looked at me in that moment, that face I took as disappointment, had been there every time she looked at me ever since.
“I’m sorry,” Mom says to me, as Nan’s screaming gets louder when a nurse opens the door to her room. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Well, you can’t unsay it.”
“Of course, I was happy,” Mom says. “We had money and a good house.” She smiles as tears rim her eyes.
I can’t find the words to ask what I want to. I can’t even muster breathing very well. Nan is screaming in the background and I have a million questions and a thousand things I long to say, but none of it goes anywhere as I turn and walk away, hoping Mom won’t follow me.
The elevator opens the instant I push the button. I rush inside, pressing the Close Door button repeatedly, but Mom is quick and gets in before the door shuts.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats.
I stare at the closed elevator door, willing the contraption to move faster so I can get out.
Mom gently grabs my shoulder, then stands in front of me. “Say something,” she says.
I shrug and look away. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m not dating Petch. He hasn’t asked me out. There is nothing there. I just want you to know that I intend to be happy. I’m not sure how, but I want to be happy.”
The door opens and I run out into the lobby, then outside, running to my car as Mom calls behind me. I’m inside the car when Mom catches up and knocks on my window.
“I’m sorry,” her muffled voice says through glass. I drive away. I don’t ever want to stop the car again.
I arrive at the cemetery just before seven. The traffic on the way out Kenmount Road is slower than usual, people probably just going for a drive, trying to drag out the remnants of a wet Sunday. I sit in the car for a long time before I get out. There’s a light drizzle now that makes everything look slick, but I’m pretty sure it would take a long time to make me feel wet.
I’m not sure what to say or do. Does Dad know about my fight with Mom, about her admitting to never being happy with him? Does he know about her unhappiness already? Was it all shown to him in one flashing moment after his death when all was revealed to him? And should I say anything or just ignore it, pretend it’s not happening?
I decide that ignoring it is the best idea. No need to get into heart-to-hearts we didn’t have while he was alive.
“Hi, Dad. I saw Nan today. She was having a rough day. She remembered you as a baby and was taking care of you. I wonder how it feels to hold a pillow and think it’s really a baby. The brain is pretty cool to make that into something sweet for a bit.”
A car stops in the parking lot and two people with flowers get out. A man and a woman. I’ve seen the man here before many times, but the woman doesn’t come here very often. At least not when I’m here. Out of the corner of my eye I watch them walk to a headstone with a metal sculpture tricycle next to it. The man takes her flowers, bends down and places them on the grave. She remains standing, looking everywhere except at the grave.
The drizzle is heavier now and I put the hood up on my jacket. I pull it back a little so I can watch the woman without turning my head. I can’t take my eyes off her.
“Me and Mom went to a book launch. Some book about someone around the bay a long time ago, fishing and stuff. I think the woman read about twenty minutes on a description of a boat and the lobster pots in it. And the lobsters they caught and about how they’d cook them. Made me feel envious of the lobsters. But Mom seemed into it. She said afterward that it was vivid imagery. More like all style, no substance to me. All icing, no cake, like Pop used to say.”
The man over at the other gravesite is rubbing the woman’s back now, but she’s still not looked down at the grave once. She moves his arm away and turns around, walking slower than I’ve ever seen anyone walk.
“We’re all booked up tomorrow. Wouldn’t have time to put a new spark plug in if someone wanted. I suppose Jamie could do it. If someone drew pictures for him and wrote down specific instructions and stood over him telling him what he was doing wrong. He thinks he’s a big help when we’re busy but I keep telling him he’s not, that it takes a man or woman away from the job to have to stand with him and teach him. Well, takes a man away because I’m definitely not going to show him anything. It’s hard enough not to get him to bend right over into the car and slam the hood down on his head.”
I think of Dad’s obsession with safety in the garage, of making sure everyone followed all the rules, ever since John Carrigan lost his eye when he was chiselling a bearing race off a hub and a piece of metal went in his eye because he wasn’t wearing his safety goggles.
“Not that I’d really do that, Dad.” I think about it for a minute. “Wouldn’t want our insurance to go up.”
I leave the cemetery after my goodbye. No mention of Petch or fighting or anyone’s unhappiness. I think, maybe like the woman who was at the other grave, that some things are better left alone.
5
FOR MY SIXTEENTH birthday, Mom threw a big party with a few good friends and lots of family. While BJ, Michelle, my friend Karen, and I sat in the corner, Mom passed around finger sandwiches, meatballs, and cookies, smiled and made small talk. Dad and Bryce smoked cigars downstairs in the rec room, where I made my way before long.
“Hey,” Dad said. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Really?” I said. “Can I have a cigar?”
“Ladies don’t smoke cigars,” Bryce said with a smile then puffed the cigar, a cloud of smoke forming around his head.
“I’m not a lady.”
“A lady is the one who’s going to get my surprise, so I guess you can’t have it.”
“Okay, I’m a lady. But it better not be a dress.”
Dad grinned, stood up and told me to close my eyes and open my hand. When I did I felt something metal and something round. I opened my eyes and blinked twice. I stared at Dad, my mouth open, unable to find any words.
>
“Say something,” Dad finally said after a too long silence.
“Ahh.” I shook my head and fought back tears. “I can drive her?”
“She’s yours.”
“But, no one can even—”
“Yours,” he said.
In my hand was a key and a crystal ball key chain. The key chain and the key were a legend in my house. It unlocked what Dad frequently referred to as his second favourite girl, winking at me when he said it. A powder-blue 1956 Chev Bel Air named Bessie sat in our house’s attached garage, the only car allowed inside there. Dad and Bryce spent hours doing her up while I watched and bugged them with questions. They’d heard about the car from an old buddy of Pop Collins and drove to Coley’s Point to pick it up then towed it on the back of a trailer truck Dad borrowed from Bryce’s brother-in-law. The car wasn’t much more than a rusty shell that had been left to rot in the garden of a saltbox house, but over many hours, days, months, and years they fixed up the car to make her something fantastic.
Mom hated the car and said so many times. Dad spent almost all his time at the garage as it was and whatever leftover time he had went to fixing up Bessie. I liked it because I got to watch and sometimes I got to help out too. But mostly I got to spend that time with Dad. I always toted tools to him and brought small parts over. All while Mom watched TV or stayed in the kitchen baking or did the dishes. Mom seemed to take hours in the evenings doing the dishes. On Tuesday nights Mom went to bingo with Mrs. Murphy. That was the night Dad and I ate fast food in the truck on the way home and went straight to work on the car.
Dad had never taken a vacation before he got Bessie. But in the six years it took to fix her up, he took three weeks each year. Every day of it was spent with Bessie, except one day in the second year when Dad wanted to take me fishing. Mom was invited to come but decided against it, sighing when she said, “It would be nice to do something as a family while you’re on vacation.”
“This is a family trip,” Dad said, touching Mom’s arm, an act as affectionate as I’d ever seen between them. “If you come with us.”
“I don’t like fishing,” Mom said, pulling her arm away. “And you know it.” She went to their bedroom, shutting the door with a firm bang. Not a slam so much as an aggressive close.
The next day Dad told me we weren’t going fishing. We were going to drive to Butter Pot Park with Aunt Henrietta’s fold-down camper trailer to camp for the whole weekend.
We didn’t last one night. At about three in the morning we drove back to St. John’s. A small tear in the mesh around the trailer had allowed entry to tiny visitors. I awoke to a nightmarish choir of hundreds of whining mosquitoes and the feeling of them biting into my flesh. I started to cry. A rain that could soak you in seconds had started so Dad took me out of the trailer and into the truck in a garbage bag with holes cut out for my head and arms.
Mom and Dad were dripping wet on the ride back, the silence in the car broken only by our incessant scratching and the monotonous sound of the windshield wipers that lulled me into a restless sleep full of insect nightmares. When I was settled into my bed at home, calamine lotion on my numerous fly bites, I heard them first talking, then yelling, the sounds of their anger muffled by the walls between us.
On that day of my sixteenth birthday, I squealed in the rec room. As we were leaving to go to the garage, Mom came in and asked if everything was okay.
“Mom, look what Dad gave me,” I said, my voice trembling with excitement.
“Wow, he’s going to let you drive it. He’s never even let me drive it.” She smiled at me then looked to Dad where her smile faded.
“No, no, Mom, he gave her to me. Bessie is mine.”
She stared at the key in my hand until finally she reached over, kissed me on the cheek and whispered, in a dull and breaking voice, “That’s wonderful. Happy birthday.” She turned and walked out, not even looking at Dad before she left.
“You didn’t tell Mom?” I asked, knowing that it didn’t seem right to make such a large decision without her input. Bryce followed Mom outside and I heard them whispering in the hallway.
“Your mother don’t bother with stuff like that. I’d say she’ll be happy that the old car will belong to someone else. I think she might be a bit jealous of the old girl,” he said with a wink.
Dad’s words didn’t change what I felt. As much as I wanted to get behind the wheel of that gorgeous old blue car, I saw something in Mom’s face, a sadness I wanted to make better.
“Mom,” I called out after her.
Mom poked her head back in and I saw the remnants of tears in her eyes.
“Want to drive her first?”
I didn’t look at Dad, didn’t want to see how he might feel about what I was doing with this very generous gift. I just looked at Mom and saw her face fill with a broad smile. I don’t think I’d ever seen her look so happy and so sad all at once.
“You go ahead. Maybe another time,” she said, her voice thick with uncried tears.
My father beamed at me as I pulled the gearshift on the side of the steering wheel down into reverse. As I backed out, I saw a figure out of the corner of my eye. It was Mom, standing inside the garage, arms at her sides, shoulders slouched. The look on her face stopped me for a moment, long enough to smile at her then watch her as we left the garage. I didn’t recognize it then, still not sure I know what it is now, but I’ve seen it in the mirror from time to time in recent months before the Bacardi makes the look go blurry first, then fade completely.
As I drink my supper that night, feel its warmth make me feel something better than awful, I try to get the picture of Mom’s face those years ago out of my mind, try to wash it away but it’s too fresh and easy to find in my memory because it was the same look I saw today, as I drove away from the seniors’ home, leaving her standing in the parking lot.
On Wednesday morning, I go to work early. Sleeping hasn’t been easy the past couple of nights since I fought with Mom. I’ve managed to avoid her since I don’t normally see her. But for two evenings I’ve gone home to find messages from her on my answering machine. She wanted to talk. I didn’t return the calls.
Wednesdays are no different than any other day to me but sometimes I hate them. Even more than Mondays. They sit there in the middle of my week, boring and usually not as busy as other days. Mondays are busy. Fridays can be too as people think they better get their cars fixed before the weekend. But somehow people seem to think they can put things off on Wednesdays.
The only job I’ve had this morning is done, returned, and paid for when the customer who owns the car asks for the mechanic who worked on it. I wash my hands, walk out to him and make my mouth smile, extending my hand the way Dad taught me to do.
“Hi, I worked on your car. Is there a problem?”
The man’s eyes twinkle for a second before he laughs out loud, his jowls shaking. The bad toupee on his head shifts a little as he moves.
“What?” I ask, confused by his sudden outburst.
“That’s a good one, little lady. Now, go find the mechanic that worked on my car, will you?”
I’ve been fighting the assumption that I can’t do this job my whole life, starting with Nan.
“Jack, why in the world did you take that child to the garage?” Nan said to Dad the weekend after my first visit to Dad’s work. “Just because you wanted a boy, you can’t make her into one.” She said this at the dinner table when we had our bi-weekly Jiggs dinner at Nan’s house.
“Because she wanted to.” Dad shrugged. “She kept on and on. I figured she’d hate it, to tell the truth, but she didn’t. She seems to like it.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke, just at Nan.
“Well, still, I hope you won’t take her again.”
“I want to go to the garage. I love being with Daddy.”
“My lover, you can be with Daddy somewhere other than the garage, I suppose,” Nan said. Mom looked at Nan with a tired question on her face.
“But
that’s where he lives,” I said. Mom’s mouth held the trace of a smile. “So that’s where I want to be.”
“He don’t live there. He don’t sleep there so he don’t live there,” Nan continued to argue. “It don’t matter anyway. A garage is no place for a lady and it never will be.”
“Well, I’ll never be a lady.” I folded my arms and put on a practiced pout while Nan ended the conversation with a tsk.
No matter what Nan, or anyone else, said, I didn’t doubt I belonged in the garage. Even the fact that I never saw another woman work in Dad’s, or in any other garage, wouldn’t make me doubt that I could do it. That would change when I was twelve years old and Dad hired a mechanic named Jed Cleary.
Jed Cleary was in his early twenties and seemed old to me at the time. He had dark hair, a dark moustache and brown eyes. He was Tom Selleck, right there in Dad’s garage, and my young hormones, just finding their way to places I had yet to fully discover, told me I liked him. A lot.
His first day at work was in the summer, when I worked pretty much full-time in the garage. He saw me in the office, work order in hand, and asked me to give it to him.
“What?” I asked.
“The work order.”
“It’s mine. I’m working on it.” I smiled. I remember the pride I felt at that moment.
“Enough playing around, little girl,” he said, raising his voice. “ It’s mine,” I said, sensing an emotion creeping toward me but not yet sure what it was. “I’m going to change the spark plugs on this car. I wrote the work order.”
He grabbed the work order from my hand, tore it, so I was left with the torn corner in my hand. I looked down and stared at that small piece of ripped paper, mouth open.
“I don’t have enough time to play around with little girls. This is a man’s job. Go play with your dolls or something.”
I looked up to tell him that I didn’t play with dolls, but the man standing behind him, the four men, with arms crossed, stopped my voice.
“Take your toolbox and go home,” Dad said to Tom Selleck.
