by Iain Reid
“Here, what do you think about the marine museum? It looks kinda cool. Or the woodworking museum?” Each of my offers was met by an unreliable “Sure, we could do that.”
That’s when I had my idea.
I told her my plan about going to Wolfe Island and was waiting for balloons to drop from the ceiling when Grandma asked what time the ferry left. On the half-hour, I told her. We had eighteen minutes.
The ferry leaves every hour. And it is on the half-hour. But that’s in the morning. It shifts to on the hour after lunch. We missed the last ferry by five minutes. We could see it pulling away. The sky was just starting to sprinkle when we jogged out to my car. It’s raining harder now.
“Do you want to go back home?”
“Seems a shame when we’re already out.”
We’re only ten minutes from home. There are limited options for things to do in Kingston on a weekday morning.
“Yeah, I guess so.” We could always go back to the café.
She brings her hands together on her lap. I sense Grandma has her own idea. “Is there a liquor store nearby?”
“Pardon?”
“Just curious if there’s a liquor store. We could kill some time there.”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me. It’s not a terrible idea. “Actually, there is. Just about a block away.”
“Let’s go,” she says, definitively.
OUR DOWNTOWN LIQUOR store is a one- or two-minute drive from the ferry terminal. I’m usually there with expediency as my aim, to run in and out, to grab a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer. It’s a large store, with lots of varieties of wines and spirits. I’ve never just wandered around inside before. The store has never been a means to me. Just an end. But Grandma and I have time to kill.
Usually the few parking spots come at a premium. At peak hours, between 4 and 6 p.m., it’s unheard of to land a spot. At this time of day, when alcohol is rarely a priority, there are no cars at all. The grocery store lot across the street isn’t even half full. Grandma chats as we walk in under the umbrella. We are getting used to the small space underneath the ripped nylon.
“The last time I was in the liquor store back home, I was very embarrassed,” she’s saying. “I took a young guy aside and asked for a bottle of Crest sherry. He couldn’t find it. I was adamant. I said I knew they had some because I’d bought it there before. So he had to go and get their ordering sheet and bring it out, and we tried to find Crest sherry, which is my favourite. Anyway, it finally dawned on me. Crest is my damn toothpaste. The sherry is Croft.”
We’re just inside when Grandma finishes her toothpaste story. She’s winded from the stroll, and giggly. The store’s only just opened. Customers are clearly unexpected. Apart from the two employees on shift, we’re alone with all the glass and booze.
One worker is standing at a cash register. The other is handling a mop in the sparkling-wine aisle. He stops his mopping as we stroll by. He nods hello, but his expression is one of surprise. Yet again, seeing an old, small, white-haired lady accompanied by a (much) younger, bespectacled, bearded guy has surprised an onlooker.
Liquor stores like this are built to accommodate large crowds. They aren’t meant for two people. We both know we aren’t searching for anything specifically. Neither of us knows much about wine.
We start our ramble in Australia. I tell Grandma I’ve tried the Little Penguin Merlot before. That’s the only one I’ve sampled. Next is New Zealand. We make our way over to France, and then Italy. I point out the Pinots like they’re somehow significant. We stop at any oddly shaped bottles. We point out the whimsical or gimmicky names to each other. “Sibling Rivalry,” says Grandma. “Have you ever tried that?”
I shake my head. “Only the real thing.” She doesn’t hear me and continues along. She half hums, half whistles, faintly.
With her a few steps ahead, I can discern she’s still favouring her left leg. This is the first time I’ve had this perspective, a couple of steps behind. I thought maybe she’d been limping worse this morning, but haven’t been able to confirm it until now. She never lets on if asked directly. It must be that sore knee still bothering her. The one from her fall.
Our voyage continues along the wall of whisky, a soft spot for Grandma. Scotch of all varieties, blends and single malts, acknowledges us from the shelves as we pass.
“Maybe we should get a small bottle, Grandma. You still like the odd pinch of single malt, don’t you?”
“Oh, well, sure. Grab one. I was just thinking, I can still remember the first time I ever had a drink. It was a week or so before Christmas. I’d been out babysitting for a neighbour.
“When the parents got home from their party, they’d been drinking and were feeling good and offered me a glass of wine. My mother wasn’t a drinker at all, so when I got home, I remember rushing in and going right up to her and just breathing in her face. She could smell it on me, all right.”
With the store empty like this, it’s like we’re in a museum of sorts. Not one advertised in any of my pamphlets, but a museum of our own reflections. Each bottle is holding a liquid memory. At least for Grandma.
“I can’t remember my first drink,” I tell her. “I don’t think it would make much of a story, anyway.” I have a cloudy image of shotgunning a warm king can of Milwaukee’s Best behind the sheep barn at my parents’ farm.
We continue along to the clear spirits. “Now you should get something for yourself. You like gin, don’t you? I’m buying, my treat.”
“I thought I was buying.”
“No, no, dear. Let me treat you.”
“I feel like you’ve been doing all the treating.” I’m unequivocally certain she has.
“No, I want to get this,” she says. I oblige and pick a small bottle of gin to go along with our Scotch. “And what about a nice bottle of wine for supper?”
“What do you feel like?” I ask.
“Whatever you want, dear.”
I jog back to the nearest region, France. I haven’t had Beaujolais in a long time. I should have grabbed a basket when we came in. I didn’t know we’d be buying so much. When I get back to Grandma, she’s distracted by another bottle. It takes her a few seconds to intuit my presence.
“I can’t believe this,” she says without looking up. “I haven’t seen this in years and years.” She holds up a plastic mickey of Southern Comfort.
“Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever had that.”
“It was one of the first drinks I had with George. Neither of us had tried it before. We hadn’t known each other very long, only a few weeks, and we decided, I can’t remember why, but we decided to take a little trip for the weekend. You see, we were always doing that. So we went down to the States. I can also remember how his sisters really didn’t approve.”
“Oh?”
“Well, we didn’t know each other very well yet, or for very long, and of course we weren’t married. That was a no-no.”
“But you went anyway?”
“Of course. We’d decided to go away and we did. Anyway, that’s what they served us, wherever we were, I can’t remember. We even bought a bottle when we got home. Although we never really drank it. It was more for the memory.”
“Do you guys need a hand finding anything?” It’s the guy with the mop.
“Actually, I think we’re fine, man. Just on our way to the cash,” I answer. Grandma smiles at him. He carries his filthy mop back to his bucket of water.
Walking to the car, I stop. “Here, take the keys and I’ll meet you in the car. I’ll be right back.”
I almost slip when I catch my foot on the curb, jogging back into the store.
1:38 p.m.
THE SKIES HAVE opened.
It’s raining harder now than it has at any other point of the trip. It’s raining harder now than at any time in my life, or human history.
Not drops but beefy, biblical sheets of water are falling on the windshield.
Without the wipers (even the one that’s not broken), visibility would be nil. There are two cars in front of us. Four behind us. To our left is the high grey metal side of the ferry boat. To our right is another car, actually a truck that is at least two or three feet higher than my low-riding Toyota. Even without the wind and rain our visibility would be nil. We are sardined into place.
“It’s so fun to be on a ferry,” Grandma’s insisting, “out on the water like this. It’s just so fun.” Irony and sarcasm don’t suit Grandma, so I’m taking her comment at face value.
“Yeah, well, it’s not really what I pictured when I had the idea. I was kinda hoping we could actually see things.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the lake for one.”
“It’s still fun,” she says.
I brought some more tapes out to the car with me this morning. I slide one in the deck: a homemade Woody Guthrie mix. Twenty or so seconds in, I switch it off abruptly, turning toward Grandma. “We could go up to the observation deck. We’d need the umbrella, but at least . . .” As I’m suggesting it, I catch the absurdity. Neither of us wants to be out in this storm. And that’s what it is — it’s a full-blown spring storm.
Grandma has started her tuneless humming again. I’m watching an elderly fellow exit the indoor seating area. He looks around and walks out into the rain. He moves past a few cars, walking purposefully down the middle aisle. He’s not dressed to be out in the rain.
He shuffles between the two cars in front of us, squeezing by the side mirrors. He’s standing right outside Grandma’s door now. He’s drenched. There’s a firm tap on her window. She looks at me as if to say, What the hell? I shrug my shoulders. She lowers her window. Instantly her forearm is soaked.
The man doesn’t waste any time, gripping the half-opened window and bringing his face into the car. His bushy white brows look like carports for his eyes. Grandma leans away from the window, from him. He’s staring directly at her when he poses his question. “Have you seen the Amish girls?”
Grandma stares back. She swivels her head to me. I answer for her. “Sorry, what’s that?”
“Have you seen the Amish girls?” This time he sounds more aggravated than curious. Again Grandma and I look at each other. I know we’re both thinking the same thing. Who, pray tell, are the fucking Amish girls? Is this some musical theatre performance on Wolfe Island? Maybe he’s trying to sell tickets — a Gilbert and Sullivan I’m unfamiliar with?
“I’m not sure,” says Grandma.
He’s getting more flustered and wet. He seems angered by our lack of concrete response. He’s ignoring the rivulets of water flowing freely down his wrinkled face.
“Sorry, but no, we haven’t seen the Amish girls.”
He shakes his head in disgust, releases his grip on the door ledge, and is gone. He waddles back to his shelter without stopping at any other cars.
“What was that?” asks Grandma, when the window is back up.
“I have no idea, very weird. I think he was asking about, uh, Amish girls.”
Grandma just smiles. “I told you it was going to be a fun ride.”
Ten minutes later, we’ve docked. We’re waiting for our turn to accelerate off the boat. Our row is last. It’s Grandma who sees them. She taps my arm and points to the top of the ship. There are four girls distinctly dressed in Amish attire. They are wet and look doleful.
“Well, those are the Amish girls,” says Grandma. “But I don’t know what happened to our friend.”
I see the man in the car to our right for the first time as he moves past. He’s wearing armless sunglasses, like Morpheus in The Matrix. He grins at me and points at my broken licence plate. There have been no Daliesque melting clocks. Regardless, this has been a surreal boat ride.
Surreal, weird, wet. Hardly fun.
JUST LIKE AT the liquor store, we’ve found ourselves in another empty lot. Mine is the only car here. The painted yellow lines marking each allotted space are faded from weather, I imagine, not use. I pull into the spot right in the middle, facing the water. Lake Ontario lies calmly in front of us.
“I can’t believe the rain has let up; it’s almost stopped. It was so heavy before. And it almost seems like the clouds are clearing, too. You can see so much farther out to the lake now. We might even get some sun.”
“That would be something,” I say, stepping out of the car, stretching.
We’ve decided to get some lunch before we explore further. We leave the car and walk across the street to a restaurant.
I packed some sandwiches, but something went wrong. I’d put the peanut-butter-and-jellies in my bag, but when I retrieved my water bottle from the bag on the ferry, I caught a whiff of something horrid. Once inside the bag, the sammies took on an entirely new smell. Outside of the bag they were fine, but after the bag smell, I was done. I told Grandma we’d better just have lunch at a restaurant.
We enter one large, open space with wooden tables and wooden booths along the windows. There’s a hardwood dance floor and a large bar in the corner to our left. It, too, is made of wood.
None of the tables is occupied. Seated at the bar are three men wearing sweat-stained ball caps. They’re drinking coffee (presumably) and don’t seem to be talking much. Or moving. Or breathing. Every so often, one of them brings his cup to his mouth and may or may not sip. Like everything else, they also might be made of wood, except their hands, which look like uneven balls of clay. They aren’t holding their mugs with human appendages but with gnarled fingerling potatoes.
We wipe our wet feet on the frayed blue mat. Before we reach our table, Grandma informs me she’s in the mood for soup. I confirm I could also consume some hot soup. The bartender arrives with menus and tells us he’ll also be our waiter.
“It smells so good in here,” says Grandma.
“Do you guys have any soup?”
“Yup, still a couple bowls left. It’s cream of asparagus. It’s delicious. That was my lunch, too.”
Grandma insists I get something else. Soup won’t be enough for me. I tell her a dense cream soup with bread and butter probably will be. Her eyebrow shoots skyward. I ask for the menus back.
We each decide on an order of fish and chips. “Homemade beer batter,” he tells us, “really delicious. I had some earlier.”
I come close to ordering a club sandwich (that I won’t eat) just to see if he tells me it’s delicious and that he also had it for lunch.
It doesn’t take long for the soup and fish to arrive at our table. The soup is steaming and the fish is golden brown and glistening with that inviting blush of grease.
A few spoonfuls into our soup and bites into our fish, he’s back at the table. He’s just topped up the farmers’ cups. He’s holding the coffee pot casually at his side like a top hat. “So, where are you guys from?”
Everyone always seems to know we’re on vacation. Sometimes they want to chat. This is rare when I’m out somewhere eating alone. Usually I’m just left to consume in private. I wipe some tartar sauce off the corner of my lip. “Ottawa,” I say. “Well, I live in Kingston now. But she’s from Ottawa.” Grandma points to my nose and makes a wiping motion. I wipe my nose, too.
“What are you guys doing on the island?”
“We’re on vacation,” says Grandma, setting down her cutlery. She picks up her napkin off her lap and wipes the corners of her mouth daintily.
“Cool. I grew up on a farm near Ottawa. But now I’m trying to make a go of it around here. It’s a nice area. I’m loving it.” He talks quickly.
“Have you been on the island long?” wonders Grandma. Grandma’s genuinely engaged; she’s interested. Whereas I’m just impostering someone who isn’t more concerned for his cooling soup and haddock.
“On
ly two weeks. And I like it.” He lowers his voice. “But it takes a while to get to know the locals.” He motions toward the farmers. “It’s nice to be working here, near a kitchen. I’d like to work as a chef one day.”
“That’s wonderful. Iain here also loves to cook. He could be a chef one day, too. He’s been making me some amazing meals.”
“Well,” I say, “I mean, I’m not sure . . .” I don’t think there’s a booming demand for a toast-and-cheese-only restaurant.
He sets the pot down on our table and pulls up a neighbouring chair to my right. “Do you ever watch the Food Network?”
“Oh, we were talking about that. Iain loves the Food Network. You’re always watching it, aren’t you?”
“Well, I mean, sometimes I might . . .”
“Really, eh? Yeah, I love it, too.”
“I always want to watch the hockey,” Grandma’s admitting, “but I get the feeling Iain would rather be on the food channel.”
“Ha, I’m like that, too. Amazing! I’ll take Bobby Flay over Sid Crosby any day.”
Have you ever watched tartar sauce congeal? I don’t mean see it once it’s reached room temperature. I mean actively observe it as it warms. I don’t recommend it. It’s a wretched evolution. It not only congeals but changes colour. It starts out chilly, white, and appetizing when it arrives fresh from the fridge. Then it becomes yellowish, sluggish, as you leave it be.
“So is this a quiet day for you guys?” asks Grandma.
“It’s been like this most days since I’ve been here. I guess last year there was a real boom on the island. Our restaurants were filled pretty much every day. It was because they were building the turbines.”
“We can see those wind turbines from Kingston,” I say. “I wondered when those went up.”
“The island was full of contractors and builders. They had to eat. It was great for business but I think tough on the residents, who are used to the normal pace of island life. For the most part that’s what they like around here. Can’t blame them, really.”
