A Year of Lesser

by Bergen, David

  Though Chris was not touching her now, she could sense him behind her. He carried on his body the odour of ten thousand chickens, of all those eggs. An egg had a scent which reminded Loraine of the bottom of a china teacup. Chris’s fingers were smooth at the tips, the heels of his hands had minute ridges, so imperceptible as to be only discovered by microscope. To Loraine’s mind, these ridges were like deep gouges. They pressed her skin, heightened her pain, distracted her. During the last flow she pushed Chris back so that he stumbled. Loraine fell to her hands and knees, the knot of her hanging low. She howled.

  It was only later, perhaps the next morning, that she recalled that pushing-off moment as if Chris were land and she the boat. And she remembered too the texture of the rug like hot wax on her knees, her black panties crumpled on the floor, three holes—how odd, and, Oh, yes, she thought, for two legs and a waist. Mine. She saw, stuck in the matting of the rug just at the edge of the box spring, a toothpick, and remembered a time long ago when her husband still lived, and they had eaten pasta and salad on the bedroom floor and Jim chewed a toothpick and later they had made love on the rug, which was a novelty for Jim. Still, he said, he preferred the bed. Loraine, a week after the birth, thought of that toothpick and crawled over the floor looking for that shard of wood. But she did not find it.

  Chris was hurt. He sat on the bed and observed his mother as she lifted her head and looked behind her. “I’m sorry,” she said. She could say no more. Chris’s feelings were unimportant now. “I’m going to start pushing,” Loraine said. “You’ll have to catch the baby.”

  Loraine knelt by the bed, her head on the mattress. She directed Chris to take up a position behind her. “Don’t be frightened,” she said again. “Look at me as a machine.”

  Chris nodded, all obedience. Loraine, during the next drawing together of her uterus, cried out as she sometimes did when she was with Johnny, only this cry was harder to understand; it grew from some place that she could not call her own and when she spit it out the walls shuddered and she cared not a bit that she was pouting her rear end at her son’s face and bellowing at the ceiling.

  The knot loosened. It always did. One of the women at Claire’s party had suggested to Loraine, “When you’re having this baby, imagine yourself floating on water, travelling from one place to another. See it as a passage.”

  Loraine couldn’t quite manage this image. Instead, her body felt as if it were a tangle of rope that, in order to be freed, required a certain trick. She sensed that she had little say in this process. Her body was being turned inside out and she was flagging, weary.

  She reached down between her legs and touched. She held her air and her head swelled. Chris called to her from the far shore. And then quickly the baby was born and with the tearing of her body Loraine sensed that she had both lost and found something. She looked back over her shoulder. Chris was holding the child as if it were a precious glass vase. Loraine pushed herself off the bed. Delicately, slowly, she lifted her left leg up and over the baby’s head and lowered herself to the floor. She sat, legs spread, and, “Oh my,” she said. “Oh my sweet sweet thing.”

  The purple baby offered a vacant O for a mouth and finally croaked and then wailed. “Look at her,” Loraine whispered. “Are you cold, little girl? Oh my, Chris, it is a girl, isn’t it?” A rooting then, mouth grasping, and then the first pull at her nipple.

  Chris crouched beside his mother. Loraine became aware of her bare shoulders, the coolness of the room, her son at her side. She asked for a blanket and, later, she cried out several times before standing and delivering the placenta on her own, hating that part, the unrewarding pain.

  Perhaps she slept then, she was not sure, but suddenly the doctor was present, prodding and poking, taking the baby from her. Claire was there too, beautiful and shiny behind the doctor’s shoulder. Loraine was so proud; of herself, of Chris.

  Johnny arrived at her side later in the morning, about nine. He appeared with an open mouth, wide eyes. He absolutely filled the room. Took up the space, swallowed all the oxygen so that Loraine had to breathe more quickly, greedily, as she confronted the father of the baby. Johnny was rumpled, his hair tangled and dirty. He bent to kiss her and his taste was of the leather in his car, cigarettes, eggs, and something else hidden there, the hint of another woman. Loraine stored this information, saved it for another day. She pulled the baby, its mouth surprised, from her breast, and handed the bundle to Johnny.

  “See?” Loraine said.

  Johnny’s eyes were wet. He was blubbering. Loraine’s chest heaved and fluttered.

  Loraine loves her fingernails. Works hard at keeping them perfect. When she planted the garden she observed the advice offered in her cookbook: Stuff small pieces of absorbent cotton in the fingers of your gardening gloves to prevent fingernail damage! Loraine is impatient with Johnny and Chris, who nibble at their nails and spit the shards onto the floor.

  Her fingers, the tips of her nails, smooth down Johnny’s clothes now as she lays them in the dresser drawers and hangs them in the closet. She’s given him the top two drawers: underwear and socks in one, T-shirts and jeans in the other. It’s already the Wednesday after the long weekend and Loraine’s had to finally go out to the little room beside the barn, pack up Johnny’s stuff, and haul it in boxes across the yard and up the stairs to the bedroom.

  “Chicken shit,” she mutters. He’s frightened of what this all means. But, finally, it means nothing. He can always leave again. Loraine’s not like Charlene; she won’t kill herself, burn the house down. Not for Johnny.

  Johnny’s got three extra pair of cowboy boots. Loraine tries on a black pair with white stitching. She stands by the full-length mirror and walks like a duck. Claire hollers from downstairs; she’s come out from the city. Light footsteps and then she’s in the doorway, laughing at Loraine.

  “Did you ever imagine,” Claire asks, “having a guy who wears those?”

  “They’re not so bad,” Loraine says. She swivels. Kicks up a heel.

  Claire sees the open drawers.

  “I’m moving him in,” Loraine says.

  Claire is disappointed. She doesn’t understand who Johnny is.

  “He’s got it too easy out there,” Loraine continues. “Comes knocking for love, then leaves. Ha. Time he got to know his baby.”

  The baby squeals and Claire scoops her up and noses her brow. Kisses her ears. “Wonderful,” she says. “So fresh.” Then, “I’ve got some soup and bread downstairs. Homemade jam.”

  Over lunch Claire asks if Loraine’s been for a check-up yet.

  “Why?” Loraine asks. “I feel good. What can a doctor tell me?”

  “True. Every time I went for a check-up after a birth,” Claire says, “the doctor wanted to know if I’d had sex yet. I always lied and said yes.”

  Loraine’s got some soup on her chin. She dabs it away. “I haven’t allowed Johnny yet. He’s disappointed. But I’m not ready.”

  Claire laughs, “Men are always disappointed.”

  Loraine remembers those winter nights. Running, violent with desire, across the yard, snow bright with moon, falling all over Johnny, and then returning, her body sore, to her own bed. She wonders if Claire has known that kind of desperation. If it matters.

  “When Johnny’s not here,” Loraine says, “when he’s left for work, I think about him. I try to remember his face, his mouth, the soft underarm skin. I do that and then I get desperate and want to see him.”

  Claire offers a brief, humouring smile.

  Loraine blushes. This preoccupation with the body that she has. Claire is blessed, always has been; even as a child she was favoured by uncles and aunts. Bounced on knees, offered candies, while Loraine sat quietly on the sidelines. Loraine doesn’t resent this, simply wonders at the forces that shaped their lives. Claire doesn’t understand. Never has. Like way back, Claire was interested in the cellophane-wrapped peppermint while Loraine was fascinated by the up-and-down movement of the uncle’s knee
on Claire’s tiny bum. Loraine, remembering this, experiences a glow of guilt, a quick watering at the edges of her tongue. She butters more bread.

  Johnny doesn’t like this new arrangement. Loraine’s not sure if she does either because Johnny sleeps right through Rebecca’s cries. Loraine ends up elbowing and pushing at his big body until he grumbles and groans and thumps to the crib and returns, spilling the squalling baby into her arms.

  Rebecca feeds for twenty minutes on each breast while Johnny snores, one hot leg touching Loraine’s hip. By morning the bedroom is littered with dirty diapers, breast pads and burp rags coated with dried milk. Loraine listens to Johnny tread that messy maze and then the shower erupts and Loraine sleeps a delicious late-morning sleep, Rebecca a light bundle at her side, having found her way to the bed sometime during the night, Johnny being too tired to return her to the crib.

  She and the baby awake together. A stirring, a squeak, and Loraine opens her eyes to discover the milky blue of Rebecca’s stare. She misses Johnny then and wonders where he is, whose farmhouse he’s sitting in, what long thin highway he’s coasting down. He is not a happy man these days. He helps her with the eggs, the feed. Even organized Chris’s friends to empty the barns of the old chickens one night. Then brought in the new batch and helped stuff them in their little cages, three to a wire house; clean white new layers all set for a year of producing. Still, he’s a dog scratching at the door, waiting to be set loose. She tries to hold him back, rubs his neck in the evening and says that this is a phase. “This too shall pass,” she whispers.

  He disappears some evenings. Takes his car and just goes. Not a word. These silent departures touch Loraine in a deep way. It seems, on those particular evenings, that Rebecca is colicky and demanding. So, Loraine rocks her and watches TV or she paces the bedroom, shushing her child. There are things she should be doing, she thinks, a garden to tend, ironing, laundry, or a simple act like showering and washing her hair. Impossible. So, she rocks. Rebecca squirms and cries. Loraine cries too, her face hot and wet, until, finally, the child sleeps.

  Two days after the birth, when Loraine’s breasts were as hard as the rocks that lay beside her fallow garden, Johnny sat at the edge of her bed and asked her about names.

  “How about Rebecca?” Loraine said.

  Johnny stroked the baby’s head. “Well, it’s your baby,” he said.

  “I asked Chris,” Loraine said. “He said okay.” She paused, then added, “It’s our baby. I had an aunt named Rebecca. I liked her. Everyone called her Becky.”

  “It’s old. Solid,” Johnny said. He smiled and cupped Loraine’s bare breast.

  “Don’t.” She pushed him away. “We’ll call her Rebecca.”

  “Fine.”

  Loraine watched Johnny’s eyes, saw in them a disappointment, in her, the baby. As if he were accusing her of grinding him into the earth, giving him roots. She roused herself, hard breasts knocking, leaving Johnny with the baby. She showered, expressing milk that rolled down her belly and between her legs. She returned to find Johnny treading the green rug, a tiny head laid in the crook of his arm. Loraine towelled her hair, conscious of Johnny studying her bum, her loose stomach, her blue-veined breasts. She ignored him and dressed in loose pants and a large T-shirt.

  Later, after the baby was sleeping and they were in the kitchen, Johnny wanted to hold her. She let him. Felt him play at her hair, her neck, her ears. His hips were hard. He’d lost weight.

  She patted him away, sat down, and said, “You’ve never asked about the birth.”

  “Hasn’t been time,” he answered.

  He had no idea. None. He claimed to be looking for miracles but he’d never find one; he was blind. Still, Loraine wanted to talk to him, explain how helpful Chris was, how the baby arrived, as if she’d just knocked on the door one night and demanded entry. Loraine wanted to speak of the peace she felt as the baby crowned, of the immense pleasure of leaning on Chris’s shoulders, of the boy’s particular fragrance, the pressure of his shirt buttons on her bare skin, the lack of shame in her nakedness and how that was a revelation to her, as if from then on she would never again be ashamed of her body.

  Listen to me, Johnny, Loraine wanted to say. But she didn’t. Instead, she claimed the bitterness Johnny was offering her and said, “You like to kill things, don’t you?”

  Against her own wishes, Loraine finds herself doing her grocery shopping in Lesser; the baby is too demanding to travel all the way to Winnipeg. She shops at the Solo Store, picks up her mail at the post office, even has her hair done at Agnes’s. She usually ends up talking to someone about the baby and the birth. This she does without haste, with a particular joy. It’s her story and most people seem willing to listen.

  One morning she meets Avi Heath just outside the entrance to Bill’s Hardware. Loraine’s going out, holding a brown bag of washers, Avi’s entering. They stand off to the side, in the shade of the awning. The baby is sleeping in the stroller and Loraine has an irrational fear of something unnamed; that her breasts are leaking through her shirt, or that Avi is that shadowy woman she tasted on Johnny the morning after the birth.

  Avi, long shiny legs in shorts, has a youngish manner, though Loraine notices her neck, when tanned, looks older than it should.

  “I’m on a break for four months,” Avi says. “I’m being awfully decadent. Travelled out to the East Coast and up to Cape Breton. Michael and I plan to spend the last three weeks of August in Europe.”

  Loraine nods, smiles. Europe. For a second she has a glimpse of Avi lying topless on a European beach. Avi’s breasts, which are quite heavy and sack-like, would flop sideways if she were on her back. Loraine wonders if Avi likes the tickle of Michael’s beard on her nipples. Michael must be hairy all over; like sleeping with a baboon.

  “Michael doesn’t really want to go,” Avi’s saying, “but I told him he’d be back for hunting season.” Her eyes roll. Avi stoops to the baby now, almost touching Rebecca’s brow.

  “Lovely,” she says. She stands, rising above Loraine. “In fall,” she says, “we’re continuing our book club. Perhaps you’d like to come.”

  Loraine feels she has been offered something both precious and poisonous. “I don’t read much,” she says.

  “That’s okay,” Avi responds. “We’re doing Madame Bovary the first month. If you’re interested, I’ll get you a copy.”

  Loraine wonders what it would be like to replace a dead woman; as if she would have to somehow assume Charlene’s role. She wonders who Madame Bovary is. There’s a speckling of sweat on Avi’s nose; Loraine would like to reach out and dab at it. “Maybe,” she says. And then adds, “So, you’re enjoying Lesser.”

  Avi’s forehead pushes up searching out an important thought. “What I wanted when I moved out here was a sense of village, of ritual. Meaning. The city is full of indifference. Lesser isn’t.”

  “Exactly,” Loraine says.

  “You’d like to escape?” Avi asks.

  “My husband, Jim, chose this place. The farm. Ever since his death I’ve considered moving.” It is obvious to Loraine that Avi is in love with the sensations of Lesser. “Wait for the Lesser Fair,” Loraine says. “The parade itself is a wonder. Tractors, Model Ts, kids on bicycles. And the contests. Best pie, bread, jam. Even best eggs.” She laughs, remembering her own participation one summer, long ago. Her perfect white eggs laid out in a basket, a clean white tea-towel beneath them.

  “Best eggs?” Avi says. “Based on what?”

  “Oh, texture, colour, weight, size. Health of the yolk.”

  “See,” cries Avi. Her eyes gleam.

  Avi’s not really a part of this life, Loraine thinks. She’s just playing, an outsider trying to lap up the good things, sifting through all the rubble and hoarding the gems. Loraine is annoyed by Avi’s pleasure. Annoyed too by her loping body, by the fact she has time to chat.

  “I had the baby at home,” Loraine says as Rebecca purls and stirs.

  “I heard. Mus
t have been frightening.”

  “Not at all. Dogs, pigs, horses, cats. They all manage. Why not us? Another form of village life.”

  Avi’s neck stretches. Her eyes widen. She doesn’t respond.

  This angers Loraine, flusters her. She bends to pick up the baby. Uses the child as a shield. “I’m bursting,” she says. “Gotta get home and feed the baby.”

  But she doesn’t make it home. She has to stop the half-ton, pull over onto an unused driveway, unbuckle Rebecca and offer her the breast. The window is half down and across the field comes the mumbling of a tractor pulling a seeder. The earth all around is black, newly turned. Rebecca slurps. Loraine thinks about Avi’s thighs clamping Johnny’s head.

  SUMMER

  TONGUES

  For the summer Johnny has managed to find Chris work as a ‘gofer’ at OK Feeds; Johnny drives Chris to and from work. They don’t talk much. Usually the windows are wide open and the air claps at their ears and cheeks and makes speech pointless. However, one morning in mid-July it is raining and cool; the car is sealed and musty. Johnny turns on the air-conditioning and asks, his voice dropping from the sky, if Melody is still around. “Haven’t seen her at the centre lately,” he says.

  Chris is working his nails, fingers at his mouth. “Oh,” he says, “you’d like this. She’s gone charismatic. Hangs out with Barkman’s group. She’s living there.”

  “Really?” A small squeeze of panic in his stomach encourages Johnny to reach for a cigarette. He lights up and asks, “Where?”

  “At Phil’s. With his family.”

  “She told you this?”

  “Early June. Last time I talked to her.” Bile in Chris’s voice here.

  “Does that make sense?” Johnny asks. “I mean, to you. The religion, living with Phil and Eleanor?”

  “Sure,” Chris says. “I don’t know. Why not?”