by Kat Cameron
Sitting at the Value Village table, its surface splashed with white and green paint, she half-listened to the familiar complaints: Sue, her mother’s sister, is stealing her money, the bank is sending threatening letters. Nobody cares about her now.
“Have you seen your doctor this week?” Rachel asked. She’d learned to switch the subject whenever her mother became too worked up. She would speak slowly, one topic at a time. Her mother had already forgotten about the cranberry glasses, long broken. She’d forgotten about the golf clubs, gathering dust in the closet under the basement stairs.
After her mother finally hung up, Rachel ticked off each item on her list of chores. She’d worked her last shift at work, paid her roommate her share of the rent, and packed her clothes and books. Tomorrow morning, she was driving to Canmore for a day at the Folk Festival. Then Kelowna for the third time this year.
The last time she’d been at her mother’s house, she’d spent a day cleaning the kitchen.
The Fridge
Ham slices, green with mould
Opened cans of beans with jagged lids still attached
Rotting heads of brown lettuce
Expired salad dressing and mayonnaise
Frozen meat encrusted with ice crystals
She’d emptied the fridge, scrubbed it, and then sorted through the unopened bills stuffed in the bread box and piled on the ironing board. Some of the bills went back six months.
Things to Do
Pay the electricity for May and June
Cut up VISA card / Check about $3100 unpaid balance
Phone life insurance / Find out why Dad’s claim hasn’t been settled
Talk to CPP about early withdrawals
Did her mother have enough insurance money to last for the next twenty years? She hadn’t worked for over thirty years. She wasn’t eligible for OAS for another five years. Would she agree to sell the house?
Lying in bed, her eyes closed, Rachel added up the numbers. Working full-time at the Diner Deluxe for the spring and summer, she’d made $7,000, but most of it went to bills. If she moved to Kelowna, found a job, and lived with her mother, she could save money.
Budget for July
$600 for ½ the rent
$500 utilities and food
$300 insurance and gas
In Bowness, she picked up Jazz, who worked with her at the diner. Rachel had mentioned she was going to the folk festival, and Jazz offered a tent in return for a drive. She was waiting with two other people in a yard thick with dandelions.
“This is Vikki and Joe.” Vikki had spiky blonde hair and a jewelled belly ring glinting between orange tank-top and combat pants. Joe’s chin sprouted a scruffy brown tuft, like a goat’s beard. Rachel hadn’t expected two extra passengers. The trunk was full of her stuff. Joe and Vikki had to squish into the back seat with the tent and luggage. They discussed Greg Brown and Janis Ian as Jazz leaned over the seat to talk to them.
In Canmore, Rachel dropped the others at the campground and left the car, walking over to Centennial Park to join a crowd of teenagers in hip huggers and white T-shirts; well-aged hippies with matted braids framing seamed faces, looking like Hollywood extras from a Woodstock reunion; tanned hikers pulling huskies and labs. The park smelled of sun-warmed grass, fried doughnuts, lamb curry, and roasting coffee. Poplars glowed yellow in the August sun.
Once through the gate, she hurried for the right side of the stage, a cooler in her right hand and the tarp under her arm. Then her foot hit a tree root and she fell, sprawling, the tarp unfolding, the cooler falling on its side, spilling ice and bottles of water. A pratfall joke out of a silent movie.
“Jeez, there’s ice all over my tarp.” A woman spilling out of a wrap-around skirt and a volunteer’s lime-green T-shirt glared at her.
Her right knee was bleeding. She’d bit her tongue, which felt swollen. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she picked scattered bottles out of the pine needles.
“My blanket’s all wet.”
“I said I’m sorry.” Rachel slammed the lid shut, scrunched the tarp into a ball, and stood up. Blood trickled slowly down her leg as she limped away.
Blue and orange tarps dotted the area in front of the Stan Rogers Stage; low lawn chairs sprouted like mushrooms. Retreating into the trees, Rachel spread the tarp on a lumpy spot of dirt and pegged down the four corners. The acrid smell of pot drifted from a group clustered near a clump of pine trees.
A couple of girls in long skirts began an impromptu dance, arms weaving patterns. A tiny woman, white-haired and bent, stood up. Rachel watched as the woman imitated the girls’ moves, an old oak trying to sway with saplings in the breeze. Then the woman laughed and looked at Rachel, her eyes as bright blue as stained glass.
We had dances every weekend in the community hall. A French fiddler played reels. I was the best dancer. I could dance until dawn. All the men wanted me as a partner.
“Hello, Canmore.” The voice boomed from the loudspeakers. Looking over at the stage, Rachel saw the woman in the skirt and lime-green shirt holding a microphone.
“How’re you all feeling?” the woman bellowed. People whooped and clapped. “All right! Let’s get ready to party.”
The old woman spun around one more time and then smiled. In the old days, everyone was happier.
A chilly breeze blew over Rachel’s shoulder. She shivered, wishing for a warm body beside her. Someone to lean against.
Two years ago, at the Vancouver Folk Festival, she and her ex had cuddled under a sleeping bag, sharing a thermos of Irish coffee, thick with Baileys and cream. Suddenly she longed for that smooth sugary taste
Standing in a long line for coffee, Rachel felt someone crowding her. Turning, she saw the woman in the lime-green shirt. Up close, she looked about forty-five, with the smooth skin of the overweight. A long braid of grey hair fell over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry again about your tarp,” Rachel said.
The woman put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s too beautiful here to be unhappy. Of course,” she laughed, “I bought my condo before the boom. Paid a hundred thou and now it’s worth three. Make your own luck, that’s what I say.”
Make your own luck was one of her mother’s sayings. Count your blessings. She’d always worn rose-coloured glasses. Look what happened with rose-coloured glasses.
“My father died of a stroke last year,” Rachel said flatly. “He was fifty-nine. Did he make his own luck?” She didn’t want sympathy. She just needed to say the words.
Back at the tarp, she sipped her coffee, listening to a woman with an acoustic guitar and songs about relationships gone bad.
“I overheard this one in a New York coffee shop. Hope I don’t jinx this great weather by singing about the rain.” Chords rolled like water over stones in a deep creek. “The rain is always falling, falling, falling.”
Rachel wiped tears away with the back of her hand. For the past two years, she’d been falling.
A voice harsh with cigarettes and age rasped in counterpoint to the music.
I was born in Kiev in 1930. I couldn’t get no damn job. Not easy like it is now.
She cupped her ears, trying to block out the old man’s grumbling.
We make everything for the mine. Haul timbers with a horse. No fancy equipment. We rent our house from the mines for fifty dollars a month. Only four rooms.
Rachel turned to glare at the old man sitting in a lawn chair behind her. The old man glared back. His forehead, crinkled like corduroy, was surrounded by a wisp of white hair. A belt with a silver rodeo buckle held up his pants.
This town has gone to hell. All strangers. Once I could walk down the street and say hello to ten, twenty people. Not like today. I thought I could start over.
In Centennial Park’s public washroom, Rachel splashed water on her face, trying to reduce the puffiness of her eyes. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, throwing stark shadows in the hollows by her nose. Despite the fat settling on her hips and stomach, her face was a
ll sharp planes, discontent thickly etched from nose to mouth, as if someone had stretched the smooth skin of her twenties into a charcoal Picasso caricature. Sometimes she felt far older than thirty-two.
She left the park at midnight and walked back among crowds raving about reggae riffs. Amazing. You could hear the Coltrane influence. Passion. Intensity. What she’d lost.
At the campsite, her blue Nissan Sentra was gone. She’d given Jazz the spare key.
Crouching down, she unzipped the tent flap. Jazz looked up from a tangle of sleeping bags, her eyes bleary with sleep.
“Where’s my car?”
“Joe took it.” Jazz yawned, unconcerned.
“Did you give him the key?”
“Yeah. Vikki wanted to see the lake at the top of the mountain. They’ll be back soon. Don’t look so freaked. Nothing will go wrong.”
Rocking back on her heels, Rachel gripped her knees to her chest, her whole body shaking. All her belongings were in the trunk of the car. She couldn’t afford a new car. She had $1,600 in her bank account. She couldn’t afford more problems.
Possessions that Fit in the Trunk of a Car
Two suitcases of clothes
Laptop and printer
A box of books
A box of dishes, pots and silverware
She stood up and walked away. Leaving the Wapiti campground, she came to the walking trail, a spine bisecting the town east to west. The trail paralleled the railway tracks, which smelled of creosote-soaked timbers. A train sped by, the heavy rumble of a hundred railway cars heading east. The horn blared, startlingly loud. Rachel kept walking, trying to escape her anger.
She passed several hotel parking lots full of cars, finally arriving at Railway Avenue, which turned right towards the town centre. Rachel stopped. Tears blurred her vision. The false-front buildings of Main Street faded like a bleached sepia photograph. Voices called out of the darkness. In the old days, everyone was happier. Make your own luck. I thought I could start over.
If only she could start over. Two summers ago, back in Canada after teaching ESL for five years in Korea, she’d met a man with silver hoops in his ears at the Vancouver Folk Festival. She’d been planning to go to grad school with the money she’d made, but it seemed like a good idea to stay in Vancouver and pick up six-month ESL teaching contracts, ignoring her lack of job security. Then her contracts ended, her rent increased, and the man walked out.
The moon was full, its glow illuminating the peaks covered with snow. Headlights flashed by, exposing her for a moment and then moving on. She turned left and crossed the overpass, stumbling occasionally in the dark, not sure where she was going. Below her, a red stream of tail lights headed for Calgary. To her left, she saw the Holiday Inn, the green H lit up, and behind it three hoodoos, dark spurs of rock like outthrust fingers. There was no sidewalk, so she trudged in the ditch beside the Palliser Trail. She couldn’t afford a $400-a-night hotel room. She had nowhere to go. Then she saw the arched sign of the graveyard behind the Holiday Inn.
She turned down a gravel road that led to the graveyard, surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Pushing open a gate, she passed neglected graves feathered by tiny poplars. A spruce had toppled over, exposing gnarled roots. A white cross leaned crookedly against a fence. Rachel reached over and brushed her fingers against the peeling paint.
Gravestone Inscriptions
Anna Mather, Age Sixteen
Viktor Prystawa Gone Home
Safe at Rest
Herbert and Mabel Craig
September 26, 1918
Exhausted, her feet aching, Rachel sat down in the corner by the cross. Leaning against the fence, she listened to the shush of lodgepole pines swaying in the wind until she fell asleep, waking in the pre-dawn chill, curled on the grass, her fleece damp with dew.
The rising sun cast a red glow over the triangular peaks. Retracing her path, she left the graveyard, limping slightly. A blister rubbed on her left heel. Stones crunched under her hiking boots. She crossed the overpass, turning down Railway Avenue towards the town centre. Wandering down a street, she paused at a bridge to look down into the Bow River, dark green reeds streaming like a drowned woman’s hair.
Chalets of glass and grey rock crammed the streets. Scattered between these mansions were tiny bungalows with front gardens full of old-fashioned flowers: blue bachelor’s buttons, peonies, and sunflowers. On Eighth Avenue, at a white frame house with a garden full of hills of potatoes, stalks of corn, and feathery carrot tops, an old man in a fedora was picking raspberries. He came over to the fence and offered Rachel a white bowl heaped with red berries.
“Have you lived here long?” she asked, tasting a raspberry, sweetness on her lips.
All my life. Everyone else is down in the graveyard by the hoodoos, all but me. Son of a bitch, it was a good life.
“Were you happier then?”
I’m happy now. It’s how you look at things. He tipped his hat.
She walked back along the road to the campground, breathing the chilly morning air. The fatty smell of bacon drifted from a propane stove where a woman in red shorts was cooking breakfast at a picnic table.
Her car was back. Rachel circled it, checking for damage. Long scrapes scored the paint on the passenger side. The front bumper on the same side was slightly crumpled, but she could drive.
Condensation fogged the windows. Peering in, Rachel saw Joe and Vikki curled up like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle, their legs awkwardly tangled.
Opening the front door, she tapped the horn twice. “Rise and shine.”
Vikki pushed herself up on her elbow, peering around blindly. Her back and shoulders looked exposed against her white bra. Her fine fair hair stuck up in tangled tufts on the left side. She groped around and pulled on her tank top. Fumbled with the door handle and spilled out of the car.
Wearing only baggy jeans and socks, Joe climbed after her. He stank of alcohol. Legs shaking, he lowered himself to the grass.
“What did you hit?” Rachel asked.
“We were on a gravel road,” Vikki said, “and we, like, went in the ditch. There were some bushes, I think.”
Rachel reached onto the floor of the back seat, extracted a pair of pink flip-flops, and dumped Joe’s knapsack on the road. Unlacing her hiking boots, she pulled off her socks, wrinkling her nose at the stale smell, and slipped on her sandals.
“I want my key back.” Standing over him, she held out her right hand. Joe looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. Then he pulled the key from his pocket and dropped it into her hand.
Jazz had crawled out of the tent, wrapped in a red-checked sleeping bag. She had the anxious yet anticipatory look of someone watching a couple fight, unsure whether to step in or let the whole thing blow over.
Rachel climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car, and then rolled down the window. “I’m leaving. Find your own ride back.”
“Wait a sec.” Jazz hobbled over, barefoot, wincing at the sharpness of the gravel. “What’s your problem? He brought it back. No big deal.”
“Do you see the scrapes on the passenger side?”
“So we’ll pay you for damages.”
“Right,” Rachel said flatly.
Jazz hesitated and then shrugged. “Whatever. We’ll get home somehow.”
Rachel sprayed gravel pulling out of the campsite. At the Trans-Canada, she turned west, cranking the radio — k.d. lang singing “Constant Craving.” Once, she’d been an anticipation junkie. Anything could happen. Now the thought was terrifying.
Near the Crowsnest Pass, she heard a hideous squealing noise, like a pig being killed. Rachel pulled onto the shoulder and pounded the steering wheel several times.
“What the fuck!”
She got out and checked under the hood. Everything looked normal. She tried driving forward on the shoulders and the hideous squealing started again. What did she know about cars? Nothing. She had an AMA membership her dad had bought her, saying, “Better safe than sorry.” Maybe
it was still good.
A hot wind whipped her hair as she stood on the shoulder, wondering what she would do next. An hour later the tow truck arrived. The sandy-haired AMA mechanic took off the front tire on the passenger side. “Here’s your problem. There’s a rock between the brake pad and the dust shield. You got lucky this time.”
Aphorisms
Whatever
It’s how you look at things
You got lucky this time
Rachel drove west.
Searching for Spock
THE YEAR KALLA WAS TWELVE, her grandma walked out the front door and didn’t come back.
“What could I do?” Kalla overheard her mother say a few days later. Kalla was lying on the living room sofa, reading Little Women. Her mother was on the phone. “I told him he couldn’t bring her here. But he showed up at the front door. I couldn’t turn them away.”
She was speaking about Kalla’s grandfather and his new girlfriend. Girlfriend. The word was somehow wrong for this heavyset woman in her fifties, with short dark hair and hand-sewn peasant smocks. Her sixty-five-year-old grandfather, with his white beard and long white hair brushing his shoulder, seemed far too old to have a girlfriend. He smelled of peppermints, mothballs and wool, and walked with a slight limp, the after-effects of a car accident he’d suffered three years earlier when his pelvis was shattered after another driver ran a red light and T-boned his car.
Her grandma had lived with them after the separation, sleeping downstairs in what had been the TV room. Kalla and her sister shared a bedroom upstairs, their canopy beds with the flowery purple and light blue bedspreads filling the square space.
Every morning at five, she heard her grandmother climb the stairs and light up the first cigarette of the day. Then she would start baking: cinnamon buns with raisins and icing, loaves of bread, ginger cookies, deep-fried donuts. By six, the kitchen smelled of crystallized brown sugar and yeast with a bitter overlay of smoke. Pans of baking covered the stove, and her grandmother would be soaking dirty dishes in a sink full of sudsy water. In six months, Kalla gained fifteen pounds on her five-foot-two frame, transforming from a slim child to a pudgy adolescent.
