Waiting for Joe

by Sandra Birdsell

  “Well, you did good,” the young clerk remarks cheerfully. “Is this the first time you’ve been here?”

  “It’s the first time I’ve been to Regina. My husband and I are travelling and we decided to stop here for a few days.” Laurie suddenly feels the weight of her words come to rest on her shoulders.

  Joe’s gone. The thought is a dart flying across the room and lodging in her chest. A sudden outburst of laughter from the dressing rooms is like a rain of pebbles thrown against the window. She has just lost Joe.

  “I hope you enjoy the rest of your visit,” the clerk says as she pushes the large plastic bag toward her.

  The bag knocks annoyingly against the side of her leg as she walks out the door, and immediately she feels chilled. It’s not Joe who’s gone, she reassures herself, zipping up her sweat jacket. It’s Alfred she’s missing. She woke up mornings still expecting to hear him moving about in his room.

  Getting downtown is one thing, but getting back will be another. Her body is beginning to feel the lack of food, the early morning workout in bed, the walk. Pointless, she thinks, when she comes upon yet another strip mall that houses an insurance broker, a hearing aid store, and a florist. Within moments she’s inside and ordering flowers to be sent to Deere Lodge. And then she’s outside, her thoughts churning as she wonders how to go about telling Joe that the last of their credit is gone. Laurie, you are such a fool, she tells herself. Then she squares her broad shoulders and retraces her steps to Clara’s Boutique.

  The women in the store are startled by her abrupt entrance, her grim impatience as she waits for the clerk to be finished with the woman in front of her.

  “I want to return what I’ve just bought.” Laurie plunks the bag on the counter, as though the clerk is somehow responsible for her impulses.

  “You’ve read our return policy?” the clerk replies carefully. She gestures to a sign on the wall behind the counter. “We don’t refund cash, but we’ll be happy to give you a credit. You have six months to spend it on anything in the store.”

  “I’m not from here, and so I won’t have a chance to use the credit. Couldn’t you take that into consideration?” Laurie feels the women listening.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t make an exception,” the young clerk says.

  “Pardon me for asking.” Laurie turns away, and when she wrenches open the door, the bell above it jangles sharply.

  She takes off at a brisk walk down the street, her stride made long and quick by anger, the bag thumping against her leg. Within moments the shopping centre comes into sight and with it, the motorhome, and her anger turns to relief. The Meridian’s silver length is interrupted by whirlwind swirls of purple and white, and by the slide-outs jutting from its sides that allow space for the queen-sized bed and a drawer chest in the bedroom on one side, and the dinette suite on the other. She’s grateful for its relative spaciousness. She’s grateful that the owner gave Joe a break on the rent, otherwise they might be living in a smelly and rusting dinosaur. Otherwise, they might be homeless.

  As she steps inside she’s enveloped by the almost overpowering odour emanating from the Formica and carpeting, the maple veneer and pressboard of the cupboards, closets and storage spaces. She drops the bag on the floor and sinks down into the leather lounger. The wine glass with its bridal etching is in the cup holder in the lounger arm, its rim printed with the boysenberry shape of her lip. The empty wine bottle and Joe’s glass are on the dinette table, as are the postcards she bought when they arrived, intending to send one a day to Alfred.

  At the sound of voices she gets up and slides in behind the dinette table where she can look out the window. Coming across the parking lot is the woman she saw on the apartment balcony earlier in the morning, wearing the long beige tunic and the head scarf. A little girl in a pink sweatsuit lags behind, her dark hair shining as though lacquered. She’s trying to take in all the sights at once, as her mother tugs at her hand to hurry along. As they pass by the motorhome, the girl peers up at it, her eyebrows scrunched in concentration. A gust of wind plasters the woman’s skirt against her body, revealing the outline of her long slender legs. She’s wearing orange plastic clogs, a surprising shot of colour.

  They continue on toward Walmart, the girl walking backwards now to stare at the Meridian. Although Laurie is certain she can’t be seen at the window, she feels the power of the child’s scrutiny. She lowers the blind and goes over to the media centre above the cab of the motorhome where she keeps a folder and returns to the dinette with it. She takes out her notebook, and a bundle of photographs secured with a red ribbon slides out onto the table. She opens the notebook. Postcards, $18.49, Walnut Crest, $11.95, are the last entries she’s made. Beneath that she writes, Clara’s Boutique, $88.87.

  Her eyes stray from the page and come to rest on the bundle of photographs. On top is a picture of her grandmother with Joe’s mother, Verna. Pals forever, someone wrote in black ink across the bottom. They pose in front of a café in winter in the small northern town where they grew up. Her grandmother’s hair is curly, like her own, while Verna’s hair is stiff and blunt, cut in a style that makes her look like a sphinx. Her grandmother was already a widow when the picture was taken. She’d been left to raise Laurie’s mother alone before Verna was even married. When Alfred returned home from Japan, he’d come upon Verna and Laurie’s grandmother having a coffee in that same café, and Verna swept him off his feet, according to the story he liked to tell.

  Laurie unties the ribbon and shuffles through the pictures, finds the one she’s looking for and cradles it lightly in her long fingers as though it’s brittle and in danger of crumbling. Her mother, Karen Rasmussen. While Laurie doesn’t often contemplate her future, she does contemplate her past, the young mother she never knew, her sliver of a smile like a new moon suggesting there’s much more to her than what meets the eye. In the photograph she rests a drinking glass on top of her pregnant belly, her long fingers, like Laurie’s fingers, wrapped around it.

  It’s the only picture she has of her mother and herself. Verna took it on the veranda steps of the house on Arlington Street, the day Laurie was born. The day her mother, and Verna, also died. In the picture, her teenage mother looks as untroubled and unsubstantial as a paper doll, although only minutes after it was taken she went rushing off toward the river—and Verna went rushing off after her.

  All three women are gone now. Laurie’s grandmother, who raised her, struck down by a terrible stroke several years ago while still living in her cramped three-room house in the northern town, collapsed on the kitchen floor. The neighbours found her when Laurie alerted them that she hadn’t answered their usual Sunday afternoon telephone call. Verna drowned trying to rescue Laurie’s mother after she fell from the train trestle bridge. Fell, Laurie’s grandmother preferred to say, although it was well known around town that Karen Rasmussen had got herself pregnant, been sent to a girls’ home in Winnipeg where she threw herself off a bridge. On the twenty-seventh day of July, 1967. The year Trudeau proclaimed the government had no business being in the bedrooms of the nation, people still thought they had the right to know the business of pregnant unmarried women.

  The newspaper account of Laurie’s rescue is near the bottom of the stack of photographs. She unfolds it and begins to read, although she knows by heart how the class of graduating nurses were having their picture taken on the lawn of the Misericordia Hospital when they heard her crying. They followed the sound down to the riverbank and saw her mother lying on the small island. Soon after Laurie was rescued by the river patrol who found her cradled between her dead mother’s legs. The island she was born on, and where her mother bled to death, is within walking distance from Arlington Street, and when seen from the height and distance of the train trestle bridge, it looks no larger than a doormat.

  Her hands tremble when she folds the clipping, gathers the photographs, her meagre history, and binds them once again with the red ribbon. Such a small bundle of pictures culled from
the albums days before they left Winnipeg. She gave the albums to her friend Sandra, for safekeeping. Albums filled with pictures of Alfred and Joe taken throughout the years. Alfred and Joe, her linchpins.

  She awakens hours later, sunlight flooding the bedroom’s west-facing window. When she stretches to ease the tension in her body, the heat and movement releases the odour of their lovemaking from the sheets. She realizes she’s hungry. Avocado and Melba toast. All the necessary building blocks her cells need for healthy and normal reproduction. Yes! she says, in the unlikely event that cells respond favourably to a positive frame of mind. Divide and conquer. Ha, she says, and grins.

  But when she gets up and sees the plastic bag lying on the floor, she groans, then grabs it by the bottom and upends it, her folly dropping in a crumpled heap. What possessed her to buy the clothes? And where will she put them? The closet and drawer under the bed are already jammed; some of the clothes have never been worn, a blazer, blouses she’d bought on sale at Jones New York still have the price tags attached. Sell them. Take them to Clara’s Boutique. The idea, at first startling, begins to grow. Of course. She could end up with more money than what she’d spent.

  The silver fox, she thinks, as she rifles through the closet. She hasn’t worn the fur jacket for years, given that fur is fur, and it makes her look like a bloated marshmallow. It was one of Joe’s first real gifts, followed by the blue leather parka he paid too much for in an Edmonton leather store, and which she has also seldom worn because it’s too heavy, like lugging a pregnant walrus around on her back.

  In her search she comes across the fern-printed sundress and remembers the bolero she bought. She takes the dress out and drapes it across the bed, then quickly strips. When she reaches for the bolero on the floor, she sees herself in the mirror closet door.

  She straightens, runs her fingers across the scar, the silver ridge on the bronze geography of her abdomen, silky smooth to the touch. What kind of mother would she have been? She thinks of the three shoppers in the second-hand store, the forbearance and generosity of the two older women toward the youngest. She remembers Joe standing at the foot of her hospital bed, white-faced, his lips moving as he prayed silently while Pastor Ken and Maryanne prayed aloud that her hemorrhaging would stop. They read from the Bible of the miracles performed by Jesus, including the one of the woman who had bled for twelve years, and who believed that if she only touched the hem of his garment, she would be healed. Thy faith has made thee whole, Jesus told her, and she was.

  But Laurie’s bleeding didn’t stop and they lost their baby. And soon after that she lost her uterus, and the question: What kind of mother would she have been, had been answered for her. Oh ye of little faith. The Lewises were a constant reminder of her failure, and she was relieved when they left Winnipeg.

  She returns the sundress to the closet without trying it on, then slips into a sweater and jeans, thinking that they’ll soon need to find a laundromat. When she goes into the bathroom, the air is heavy with the incriminating smell of hair colour. She’d meant to take out the garbage after clearing it from the bed, and forgot. She reminds herself to do so now as she fills the sink with water, then dabs gingerly at her face, yearning for a stream of hot water against her skin. She’s craving protein; perhaps if Joe is on to more lucrative work, dinner tonight will be more substantial. Seafood, or a thick rare steak at Montana’s. Perhaps they’ll celebrate with a bottle of their house wine, the Australian shiraz.

  She unhooks the key lanyard from the drawer knob in the kitchen and loops it about her neck, carries the garbage can outside, weaving among the parked vehicles and over to the barrel set against the light standard. The lot is almost full now and like a circus the way people hurry toward the mall as though afraid they’ll miss something. She takes the garbage can back inside, thinking that although Joe has his own set of keys, she doesn’t want to go far, or for long. She’ll browse her way through Walmart to the mall and to the food court, where she’ll read.

  She follows the people streaming toward the entrance, entire families, she notes, and realizes that it’s Friday. There’s a sudden pounding of feet behind her and several young men go galloping past, whooping loudly, all of them wearing tank tops and shorts, their flailing limbs startlingly white. Several people around her laugh, and she shivers for the half-dressed young men. She stops to feed coins into a newspaper box at one side of the entrance and tucks the Globe and Mail into her tote. Moments later the doors swing open before her to a collage of colour, a welcoming draft of heated air, and the tall white-haired greeter vibrating in a red vest and cobalt blue shirt.

  “Welcome to Walmart,” he calls out.

  “Thanks,” she says knowing that she’s not expected to reply, but she likes the way his mouth turns up at the corners when she does, and is surprised now when he doesn’t smile.

  He sounds less chirpy too, as though he knows that she’s come with no intention to buy anything. Rather she intends to wander among the aisles and continue to be disconcerted by the low cost of various items, and the fact that the quality seems to be almost as good as what she often paid twice as much for elsewhere.

  “Are you returning something today?” The greeter has stepped directly into her path and holds up a little gun with a roll of green stickers attached. She sees his watery eyes are intently fixed on the tote bag at her side.

  “No,” she says. He’s clearly reluctant to let her pass without being able to peer inside it, but he calls out, “Have a good day,” as she goes past him. The words are like a finger counting the vertebrae in her spine.

  Soon after, she’s in the food court and feeling fortunate to have gained a table under the skylight, given the crowd. She sips at a smoothie. The long mid-morning sleep left her feeling wobbly inside and she’s hoping the potassium in the banana smoothie will balance her electrolytes. She takes her notebook from the tote bag and writes: Smoothie, $5.25. Newspaper 2.00. Picture frame $7.99. Glue $2.95.

  She bought the picture frame and squeeze bottle of white glue believing she would make a collage of the postcards to give to Alfred when she sees him. It will add colour to his otherwise drab and small room. When next she sees him. Which may be never.

  I will make a collage, Laurie vows, even as she admits to herself that likely she will not. It’s not something Alfred would want, and yet he’d make a big show over it, knowing that she was hungry for his approval. She looks up at a loud sizzling and sees the cloud of steam rising from the grill at Edo, the people there lined up waiting to order food. Saliva fills her mouth. While the smoothie is filling, she craves the saltiness of a bowl of hot yakisoba noodles.

  She sees the woman from the parking lot then, with the girl in pink. The woman moves away from the lineup at Edo carrying a tray of food, looking out of place in the dark head scarf, which narrows her features and turns her complexion sallow. When she reaches the edge of the food court, she hesitates as she looks about for a place to sit. The young girl darts off and quickly finds a vacant table and calls out to her mother, her voice sharp like a sparrow’s, piercing the din of adult voices. When she sees a couple hovering nearby, intent on gaining the same table, she scrambles up onto one of the seats, leans forward and spreads her arms across the table, leaving no question that she’s claimed the space.

  An outburst of laughter draws Laurie’s attention to a group of people across the food court. Seniors, she realizes, people years older than the woman who has parked her cleaning cart on the periphery and goes among them, clearing and wiping tables. In comparison, the seniors look youthful with their winter tans. Snowbirds. They’ve just returned from Arizona and Texas and are reconnecting now in the food court. Joe’s clientele included people like them, women who often possessed a self-congratulatory air at having made it to their retirement with their health, marriage and funds intact.

  She takes the newspaper from her bag and unfolds it. A square-jawed and sullen man glares at her from the front page. A pedophile, with a record of sexual assa
ult on boys. Police in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan are hunting him, hoping to apprehend him before he harms the boy he’s abducted. He’s had the poor kid for two days now. Don’t go there. She doesn’t need to stick her nose in excrement to know how awful it smells.

  “That’s gross,” she hears someone exclaim loudly.

  “I know, but I can’t help it,” another person moans.

  Laurie turns to see a couple of teenage girls nearby, colas and cartons of NY fries in front of them. Their attention is fixed on the hands one of them has spread across the table.

  “If you don’t do something about them, I’m not going out with you tonight. That’s obscene.”

  The girl with the hands moans again. “Don’t be mean. It happened before I knew what I was doing.”

  “You’ve got to go to the Nail Place and see if you can get in,” the scolder says. “If you can’t, I’m not going to be seen with you. That is, like, just so gross.”

  Laurie notes their low-rise jeans, the expanse of exposed skin, the wide studded belts that make them look as broad as hippopotamuses. One day they’ll be going through pictures of themselves and screaming, how could we?

  Beyond them, the woman wearing the hijab has been joined by other women similarly dressed, although their tunics are more colourful and of a lighter material. The woman is animated now as the women lean toward one another, gesturing as they talk, jostling small dark-haired babies on their laps. Behind them is the security office, where a uniformed man in the doorway speaks into a radio while he looks across the food court in the direction of the Dollardrama Store.

  Laurie follows his gaze and sees Pete, the man Joe is working with at Canadian Tire, the man he was supposed to have gone off with on a job. Another security man in the Dollardrama is hustling him over to the counter where Pete opens the store bag wide and holds it up so the clerk can look inside. Then he plunks it down hard on the counter to free his hands, fumbles in his vest pocket and brings out a bagel, unwraps it and makes a point of taking a huge bite, as though to prove that indeed, it is a bagel, before stuffing it back into his pocket. He then produces what is likely a sales slip from another pocket. The security man studies it, then indicates with a stiff smile and wave that Pete is free to go.