Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  A baby. Crying. The muscles in her stomach contracted sharply, yanking her upright. Listening. She’d heard something. A cry. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and sat on its edge, bathed in the light from the window. Perspiration trickled down between her breasts. The barn-like taste of boiled eggs clung to her tongue. She swallowed and felt that little click of hysteria in the back of her throat. Wait, she told herself. Think. You could have been dreaming. It could have been, what? The coppery-haired woman drenched in sweat, moving beneath her husband’s body, arching to his minnow swimming up the canal. The cry, she’d heard it before. While sitting on the beach in Hawaii with Brian, she’d heard that cry rising above the sounds of water and the multitude of voices blending together in the heat, the whine of power boats. It sent a shock through her body, sent her scrambling awkwardly to her feet to shade her eyes and search the water. What is it? Brian had asked, peering up at her from the crook of his arm. I don’t know, I don’t know, she said. Maybe someone was drowning. She looked for activity around the lifeguard station. She paced the beach, the cry echoing in her breastbone. Sit down for God’s sake, Brian said. People are staring at you. What should I do? she asked. Would you rather I not go to the beach at all? What she camouflaged with scarves and A-line dresses overflowed on the beach. Don’t be silly, Brian said, flicking her bottom with a towel. I like getting back a good return on my investment.

  Truda sat on the edge of the cot, fighting the desire to get dressed, to walk to the telephone booth on the corner. What would she say? That when she’d sat draped in towels beneath the oversized straw hat, watching him playing tennis, she hadn’t noticed the strange pleasure in his face when he introduced her as his wife? Pleasure at their surprise, the sudden covering up of astonishment. That when she’d stood at the window watching him as he walked down to the beach, his strong tanned back squarish and set, she’d suddenly realized that they would never have children. He never intended they would. All this waiting to build the house and a patio, to take the vacations had been a lie. She couldn’t forgive him, not for that. During their perfect vacation, the second honeymoon, standing in her queen-sized bathing suit, she was quietly sorrowful, listening to something inside herself cracking open, a sluggish, deadening feeling creeping into its place.

  Truda wiped her face on her nightgown, lay back, sighing. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she could make out the swirls and wing-like patterns on the wallpaper. Above the apartment block a nimbus cloud banked evenly across the sky. Was he homosexual? Had he taken a lover? There was never any hint of either. She couldn’t see the Chinese student but she knew he was there in the window, thinking, reading, oblivious to the rising and falling sounds of traffic, the rattle of the blind in the veranda. A thud against the side of the house. The children. Were they returning to spread more garbage? Would they crawl through the basement window and creep up the narrow stairs and, goddammit. That’s it. Truda got up swiftly, shed her nightgown and slipped back into her dress. She squeezed swollen bare feet into her sandals. Knees trembling, guided by the grooves in the broadloom, she groped her way through the darkness, out to the veranda. Before her, the Chinese student worked over his books. Look at me, she urged. Lift up your head for once. The door slammed shut behind her as she stepped out into the blue-black night. Look at me. The student wrote notes in a notebook.

  Earlier, she’d seen a drugstore on a corner. Perhaps it would be open and inside there would be people. She began walking towards Notre Dame Avenue. As she turned the corner, fear prickled the hair on her arms. This was not the broad busy Avenue the way she’d remembered, but dark and narrow, heavy with the cloying smell of petunias, peonies. Overhead in the trees, shadows roiled, stirred by the wind. She’d taken a wrong turn. Move lawnchairs around and watch Truda get lost in her own backyard, Brian said. Brian! Her breath came quick and shallow, making her feel lightheaded. Drunk. She turned and began walking in the opposite direction, ahead, a squat-shaped house and welcoming yellow light beating through all the windows.

  She leaned against the fence and waited for her breathing to grow calmer. Someone is following me. A telephone. I have to use a telephone. Just as she was gaining courage, the door opened. Two short dark men walked down the sidewalk towards her. She stepped from the shadows. As though she were invisible, they brushed passed her, silent, sombre. At the bus depot, too, she’d had the feeling of being invisible as she’d watched families gathering around huddles of luggage, talking, excited. Behind the men, holding the railing for support, an old woman’s stiff arthritic movement as she came down the stairs.

  “Pardon me. But I wonder, could I use the telephone?”

  The woman’s hands twisted and fluttered and white scales dropped from her fingers and floated to the grass. Petals. Her gnarled fingers plucked, tearing apart a large flower. As she drew closer Truda saw in her face a look that matched the anguished twisting of her fingers. Thick white eyebrows drew together across her sharp nose as she turned and glared. “Why are you here?” she hissed. “What has this got to do with you?”

  The short dark men returned, stumbling as they approached the house. Between them, a glint of metal, and then the moon moved out from behind the clouds and Truda saw the tiny white coffin.

  “I’m sorry.” She turned and ran down the street. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Freed of the girdle, her flesh jiggled and slapped against itself as she ran. She wound her arms around her belly to hold it still. She was a mound of jelly which strained her lungs as she ran, slowed her down, kept her from doing all the things other people did. Trapped her. What has this to do with you? Nothing. She would never have children. She would be content to be the Aunt, the bearer of gifts, the one who staged the baby showers. Never the bearer of a tiny white coffin.

  She walked as in a trance, finding it easily, it was only just one turn around the corner, back to the house. She climbed the stairs into the veranda. As she passed through the doorway, the light string slid across her shoulder. God! she thought. A spider, a web, a hand, and grabbed at it, yanking the chain and flooding the veranda in white light.

  The Chinese student lifted his head, flicked hair from his eyes. His bony shoulders bunched up sharply as he pushed his chair back, rose and came over to the window. The sudden bright light pained her eyes. She raised her hand to gesture to him, felt foolish and let it drop to her side. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the sill, and stared across the distance between them, their eyes meeting beneath the canopy of silent elms.

  Go to sleep, Truda instructed herself as the student raised himself and returned to his table. She turned out the light. But she knew sleep wouldn’t come now. Not until she’d finished crying. Ahh, she said later, this is silly and smiled in the darkness. Tomorrow, she’d find a store and buy cleaning supplies, something to bleach away the stain of bitterness. She sat in the wicker chair and listened for the voice which would cry out again in the strange subdued house behind her. But as the minutes passed, all she heard was the traffic on Notre Dame Avenue, funnelled into Toronto Street, rising and rising, a rhythmic swelling of traffic sounds, water rushing beneath trees and occasionally, the peppery sound of a motorcycle breaking the monotony of the rising hour.

  THE BIRD DANCE

  Dear Andy,

  I am writing to you because I have no one else to write to. I try and talk to my friends at school but they aren’t interested in other people’s problems. And how many of them do I help? They come to me all the time for cigarettes and advice. I hate this school. I want out!! Sometimes I think it would be interesting to plant a bomb here (just kidding).

  You don’t know what it’s like to live at home right now. You’re lucky. Be glad you don’t have to live here. I don’t think it’s fair that I have to. Certain people are very ignorant and I can hardly keep from hitting them when they come near me.

  Andy, this is why I’m writing. I want you to do something, talk to Mom, because she listens to you. Larry (as he is not my father anymore!) is com
ing over here almost every day. At first it was just to use the shower, right? And then he started bringing along a bottle. One morning when I got up, there he was asleep on the couch. I can’t stand it. He goes into the fridge and eats our food without even asking!! Everything is fine until the minute he steps in the door. How are you doing? he asks, pretending he is interested but all the time with that sick-dog look in his eyes, trying to make us feel sorry for him. What a suck. She falls for it and lets him in and then magically, he produces a bottle (even though he is supposed to be broke) and they get drunk while I sit and watch TV. Sometimes he comes downstairs and watches with me and asks a bunch of stupid questions about the program, trying to make me talk. I see right through him. I can tell what he’s thinking. “I can’t let him drive home drunk,” Mom says. It’s just an excuse. I am thinking of calling the police when he leaves here. It would pay him a lesson to get arrested. Boy, what if I tried that? Wouldn’t he scream if I started drinking!

  Guess what? I’m in love. With Rick Savage. When Def Leppard comes here I’m going to meet him. It’s meant to happen. Rick says he wants me with him in England. Brenda and me have planned how we’ll let them know we’re in the crowd. Mom won’t like this but we’re going to throw our panties on stage!! God, I pray every night that we’ll be able to get tickets when they go on sale!

  Andy, another thing. Mom says I have to stay in this school. Don’t you think I should have the right to decide which school I’m going to?? She’s in no shape to tell me anything right now. I’m looking after myself so why should I have to listen to her? Mom is a mess. I wish she’d get a job like normal people or at least go bowling or something like other mothers do. I know what she’s thinking. She’s afraid that she won’t get another man. She thinks having Dad around is better than nothing. Last time we went to the bookstore, I found a book I wanted her to read. It was about why women feel that they are nothing without a man around. And she wouldn’t buy it. She said it makes her disgusted to think that people make money writing that s—t. Write me and tell me what to do. I’m desperate.

  Your adorable, attractive sister (eat your heart out).

  Me.

  Dear Andrea,

  It’s Autumn, today I noticed. I used to look forward to the seasons changing because at the house there always seemed to be something to compensate for the change. Each season had its blessings as in fall in the spatters of colours in the back yard reminding me of when you were all little and we did those things, the toothbrush dipped in poster paints, a piece of window screen, and splatters of paint outlining a leaf, giving shape to something invisible.

  And in the winter, the sight of the houses across the street, the coloured lights strung along the eaves and rooftops coated all in snow, made me feel enclosed, at peace. You could tell which houses were insulated by the amount of snow on the roof. Insulation: the new status symbol in River Heights. And gradually, as energy consciousness spread, more and more rooftops were thick with snow all winter. Except ours of course.

  If you can imagine, what attracted me to the house in the first place was sunlight. Your Dad and I had been looking to buy for several months and as soon as I walked into the house, I knew it was what I wanted. It was near the end of June and I was smitten by the sunlight on the hardwood floors. The woman had painted the walls a soft gold and the effect was, I don’t know, after the traffic and sheer grit of Selkirk Avenue, it was restful, quiet. And so I didn’t want to notice that the kitchen was too small, or the cracks in the basement walls. The strategy of boxes piled up in front of the cracks. I’m too easily influenced by sunlight. And then what did I do? Painted everything in the house pale blue and white to give the place an airy and cool feeling. In search of the ethereal, I lost the warmth. I bought that “Falling Leaf” poster, that depressing thing that lacked substance, all mushroom and mauve and beige, and wouldn’t admit that I hated it. Your dad, being more of a calendar above the kitchen table type, a leaping trout or an antique car, didn’t appreciate the poster. The basement, he planned to convert into a kind of beer garden. None of his ideas suited my shades of blue and white. He was right about the kitchen in the end, it was too small. I lost all interest in cooking.

  Well, here in this new place, I don’t know yet what compensations there will be for the hot and cold of the seasons or how many kids to expect for Halloween. These are important considerations. There is not much to learn from the apartment block behind me about the changes the seasons will bring. In the front, there are possibilities in the houses across the street. But there are no trees. I have noticed an abundance of trees on my walls since I’ve moved. It’s happened unconsciously. The silk screen your friend did for me is on the wall in the bedroom. I bought a piece of batik at the Folk Festival for my workroom but when Dee started to pin all her Def Leppard and Bowie posters all over the walls down there, I decided to put it in the front window. It makes up in a small way for no trees on the front street.

  Now that I’ve arranged the furniture and cupboards I have time to think. And I never thought that I would have to get used to living in another place. I’d hoped we’d make improvements to the house. Finish the basement. I had resigned myself to a lot of things by then, including the beer-garden approach to decorating. I wanted to enlarge the kitchen for when you kids got married and I would rediscover the joy of cooking. The only move I ever looked forward to was if by some miracle, we got our dream house beside the river. But eventually I gave up on that, too, although we continued the ritual, the driving around on Sundays searching for the perfect spot. When things began to go the way they did, I narrowed down my expectations even more, and all I wanted to do was just be able to hang on to the house we had. It was like peeling an apple down to its core.

  Anyway, here I am, living in an apartment for the first time. It’s a four-plex, but to me, an apartment nevertheless. It’s different for you. You’re just beginning, but I’m halfway through when it’s supposed to be the time to grow little soft bellies of opulence or mild complacency. At least a bigger car. Or a few trips here and there, winter in Florida, etc., polyester pantsuits, stretchy to allow for the opulence. But not this, eh? I’m running three miles a day, flexibility exercises, in weight training for singlehood. Being flat broke without a job, starting over at forty. And it seems, too, that not only must I become used to being single, but all the other changes as well, the changes of the age, unfulfilled expectations. Things we were taught would happen as a matter of course if we followed the recipe.

  How am I doing, you ask? I suspect Dee has written to you on the side. Is Dad still coming around to see me? Yes, he is. Dee is angry about that as well. But it’s my choice, too, so don’t be hard on him. I tell myself it’s because I can’t stand the thought of his being one of those people you read or hear about on the news. Like last week, on the radio, the police discovered the body of a man about 53 years old, burned to death in his car which was parked downtown somewhere. He lived in the car, it seems. Close to hooker city. Fell asleep in the back seat with a lit cigarette. I stood there crying my guts out over a man of no fixed address. Your Dad is sleeping down at the garage but often I can’t reach him there and so I don’t really know where he is most of the time. I suppose after what we’ve been through that this seems strange to you, but I want to know is he sick, hungry? Do his pants need pressing? To keep on saying to you and Dee that you can’t know what it’s like to have been married twenty-three years and then suddenly to be single isn’t enough. Let me try to explain.

  Last spring. Around the time you left. You and I went for a walk and it was drizzling, icy and cold. I was hanging on to you, I think I was drunk. Anyway, both of us were in shock over something. What was the situation that time? Situation, such a nice calm word. It seemed at that time every day held a fresh pain, coated in ice, magnified and distorted. I could examine the tiniest line in it but could not comprehend the whole of it. I think it was the day you broke a window. An unaccustomed raging, it left us numb to see your ange
r breaking loose like that. I hung on to you, my feet wouldn’t work the way they were supposed to, I blamed it on the ice, and you were crying. I consoled you, said not to worry. I did a good job because soon you were telling me that I was courageous, patient, and wonderfully full of insight. We snapped the icicles free from the eaves. And then you left.

  Once you left, your Dad began what seems to be his life’s work in earnest, and strange people began to drop by at all hours to drink with him. Where was Dee at that time? I don’t remember except for those cryptic notes left on my pillow.

  “Dear Mom, check one box only. I hate it when people try and teach me lessons. Life is not school. Do you promise not to try and teach me lessons anymore? Yes ___ No ___”

  During this time, I’d come home from work at night or up from the basement during the day and meet face to face either the old man and his fat dog, or the man across the street who worked the night shift, or that madman, Fritz. The others were only a nuisance, Fritz frightened me. I was reading The Tin Drum and it seemed that the book oozed and the house contained some energy of it, bizarre, off-centre, evil. I couldn’t sleep. I imagined the air above the bed fractured and about to fall apart. I discovered gargoyles in the “Falling Leaf” poster. I imagined the word “Kill” was woven into the drapes. I’d wake up with cold sweats and pray like crazy or recite the 23rd Psalm. What scared me about Fritz was his rheumy unfocused eyes, the way he punctuated his stories with a fist slammed into his palm. As in: “Yes sir (slam), I tell my wife, bend over the kitchen table (slam) and I lift her skirts and boy, oh boy, I give it to her like that (slam, slam). She not walking very good after that.” One morning I opened the basement door and there he was, standing on the other side of it, breathing heavily. It was a tense moment. That was when I decided to move out.