by Jan Redford
Jim and Geoff launched into a discussion about some mountain and I tuned them out and stared at my feet. They were now bare. I’d danced my stockings to shreds, and what remained of the nylon fluttered below my knees in long runs. My shoes were under one of the tables somewhere and my feet were starting to freeze on the hard wood. Winter had finally come to Calgary.
Climbing chatter was to be expected at a Mountain Club party, but I didn’t need to be reminded that while Grant was off to Nanga in the spring, Geoff would be on a neighbouring mountain, Ama Dablam. Yet another potential dead friend in my future.
“So what does your wife think of your climbing?” I said.
I looked up into Jim’s craggy face, my anger burning through me like acid. His handlebar moustache went still as he stared back.
At his slideshow, Jim had included a photo of his home in California, a trailer he shared with his wife and young son. They’d gotten married when she found out she was pregnant.
“She hates it,” he said evenly.
“So how can you do that? How can you just leave her like that, with a kid, in a trailer while you go off and try to kill yourself on some fucking mountain?” The tears were flowing again and my voice was loud in the lull between songs. A whole table of Mountain Club members looked up from their conversations and watched me.
“What gives you the right to go off and die?” I sobbed.
Jim crossed his arms and looked at Geoff like he wanted to say, Where’d you dig up this lunatic?
The DJ put on a Buddy Holly song, interrupting my tirade, and then Saul was hauling me back to the dance floor. I stood there crying till he grabbed my hands, pulled me toward him then pushed me away, twirling me, forcing my feet to move to the music.
* * *
—
“Don’t worry about it until we have to.” Grant didn’t look up from his climbing magazine.
I sat hunched in a ball with my arms wrapped around my knees, rocking back and forth, as close to the small portable heater as I could get without burning myself. Footsteps passed overhead. Mike, my roommate. He had the two bedrooms upstairs, the heated ones, and I had the two downstairs. I had to move the heater between my office and bedroom. The living situation wasn’t ideal, but we were close to the university, the rent was cheap, and except for the dirty dishes he left in the sink, Mike was a good roommate.
A happy couple on the box of a pregnancy test smiled up at us from the floor. A pregnancy stick lay on a piece of Saran Wrap beside it. It had a blue tinge to it, but the picture in the instructions showed a definite blue. A person couldn’t be a little pregnant. I looked at my watch. Seven more minutes.
To get As in my classes I’d been living on coffee, very little food, and four hours of sleep. I’d lost so much weight my clothes hung off me. I vibrated with stress. How could any sperm in its right mind fertilize an egg in this environment? But my period was a week late, and my boobs were so sore I was wearing two sports bras.
Grant, who had refused to discuss the possibility of my being pregnant until we had solid proof, flipped through his magazine, completely calm, just like I imagined he’d be thousands of feet up a mountain, hanging off his tools on thin ice. I wanted to be like him but my emotions were all over the place. My mind, my emotions and now even my body were betraying me.
“Could you at least talk to me?”
“I’m trying to read.”
I looked at my watch. Five more minutes.
It would be karma if I were pregnant. Punishment for being with Grant. A blasphemy to Dan’s spirit, was what one of our friends had called our relationship. When Grant had tried to explain that Dan would have wanted him to look after me, that friend had replied, “Look after her, maybe, not fuck her.”
Four minutes.
There was a dream I’d been having over and over. Dan had survived the avalanche, made his way home and found out I was already with someone else. His climbing partner. The look on his face woke me every time.
What if he came back after six months to a pregnant girlfriend?
The second hand ticked by. I’d been working so hard in school. I’d gotten As in geography, English and sociology, and a B in French. I’d decided to go into geography and be a cartographer, travel around up north. Back to the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Back to my roots. Live alone in a cabin somewhere. I couldn’t do that with a baby. And I couldn’t stand the thought of the alternative.
Two minutes.
What would I tell my poor mother? She kept accepting collect calls from California, Indonesia, Fernie, Banff. She’d been so relieved when I started school. None of her training as a psychiatric nurse would have prepared her for this next bit of news.
I watched Grant, engrossed in his magazine. I wanted to crawl onto his lap and force him to pay attention to me. The more he distanced himself, the more I wanted him. The less he talked, the more I talked. The more stoic he was, the more emotional I was. If I had a baby with him, he’d have this control over me forever.
A few weeks ago at a pub in Canmore I was crying into my beer over Dan, yet again, and Grant said what I needed was to be alone, no boyfriend, until it hurt. It sounded like we were breaking up and I panicked, but he never mentioned it again. I knew he was right. This need for Grant felt like an addiction. I was going to suffer one loss after another if I couldn’t learn to survive on my own. If I could glean anything positive from Dan’s death it would be self-reliance. That was why I was in school. That was why I had to stay in school. That was why I could not be pregnant.
When the last seconds had ticked by, I stopped rocking and picked up the wand, compared it to the example of a positive test in the instructions.
Grant finally lowered his magazine.
The wand was a brilliant, unmistakable blue. A perfect match.
18
PINK WEDDING DRESS
At seven o’clock, the sun started to poke around the towel pinned over the window. I still hadn’t slept and in six hours we were meeting Sarah, the marriage commissioner, on the banks of the Bow River. The front door slammed. I sat up. It was Grant. I could hear his body ricochet off the walls down the hallway toward our room.
“Shut the fuck up!” Jerry yelled from the bedroom next to ours.
I wouldn’t miss our roommates when we moved out at the end of the month. Yesterday, I’d pulled my Häagen-Dazs ice cream out of the freezer and discovered someone had eaten it all and put the empty container back. None of the guys would own up but I knew it had to be Jerry. I was so pissed off I threw the carton against the wall. But it wouldn’t be long before we had our own place. After the wedding, we were moving into Sharon’s basement suite. It would be all ours. I was planning to buy a crib, make curtains, knit miniature sweaters.
Grant stumbled into our room. I lay still on our foamy, under the covers while he crouched in a corner with his head in his hands and started to groan. I regulated my breathing, tried to still the movement of my eyeballs under their lids, then realized he probably didn’t even know I was three feet away from him.
Grant’s three brothers had flown in the night before, and even though Grant had already had his stag, they’d decided to throw him another one. I’d met them only once, at Christmas, four months earlier in Montreal, and that one supper together had been enough to make me realize they were the absolute last people my future husband should hang out with the night before our wedding.
In a few minutes he lay quietly, his unshaven cheek flattened into the carpet. His muscles convulsed a couple of times as he slipped into sleep. I relaxed and drifted off.
At least he was safe.
* * *
—
Three hours before the wedding the alarm hauled me out of sleep. I propped myself up on the foamy, feeling hung over even though I hadn’t touched alcohol in months, then noticed Grant, curled in a ball, fast asleep on the floor.
“Oh, shit,” I said, and crawled over to him. “Grant, wake up.” I shook his shoulder.
He groaned.
“Grant. Wake up. We have to go to brunch.” The wedding wasn’t until late afternoon, but we had a brunch planned with his family. My parents had bowed out. My father was experimenting with sobriety. He’d already lost over ten pounds.
He grabbed my arm, hard. “Don’t ever leave me. I love you,” he said, then curled back into a ball.
A little flicker of pleasure broke through my irritation. This was the first time he’d told me he loved me. Maybe alcohol brought his real feelings to the surface. But I didn’t have time to savour it; we had to meet his family at the restaurant in ten minutes.
I shook him harder. “Grant, everyone will be waiting for us.”
“Oh, fuck, I’m sick.” He stumbled to his feet and ran to the bathroom.
Grant was a lightweight compared to his brothers. My own brother, before he’d quit drinking, could polish off a dozen beers and a mickey of rum in a night. And who knew how much Scotch my father could drink. I was relieved Grant didn’t have the same insatiable appetite for alcohol.
As I dressed, I tried to ignore the sounds coming from the bathroom. I pulled my black wool tights over my beige, above-the-bellybutton, control-top underwear—one of my future mother-in-law’s contributions to my pregnancy. I’d bought the tights half price. There’d only been one pair left, size large, so they bunched at the ankle and puffed at the knees. I buttoned up my pink embroidered blouse from the church thrift shop. I hated pink but it seemed to be a common colour in second-hand clothing.
The shirt hung to mid-thigh, my attempt to hide my burgeoning belly. I was too short to pull off this pregnancy gracefully. At five months, I’d gained twenty pounds—and only one pound was attributable to the baby. I lay awake at night imagining my final metamorphosis.
I checked my teeth in a hand mirror, smeared some Chapstick on my dry, peeling lips. That was it for makeup. I tried to smooth down my thick, black hair, but it sprang back up, coarse like a horse’s mane. I gave up and left to face my future in-laws. Alone.
* * *
—
The Sherwood House was a rustic log building in the middle of town where I had just finished working as a waitress. Grant and I had figured that his family, being from downtown Montreal, would enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of a climber, skier-type hangout. I pushed open the door and saw right away that the place was hopping. Cameron rushed by, balancing a tray of drinks, pausing long enough to roll his eyes behind his large wire glasses.
“You’re lucky you quit. I’ve got a table full of morons drinking double Caesars for breakfast.” He headed up the stairs.
A voice bawled from above. “Garçon!” The French was abysmal, the “r” anglicized and the “n” distinctly pronounced. No nasalization to speak of. Following the command came peals of laughter. I recognized Grant’s younger brother’s voice, Nate. I followed Cameron up to the loft, telling myself they probably hadn’t slept yet, so technically they weren’t really drinking in the morning. They were extending the night.
* * *
—
Grant’s family found my soon-to-be-husband’s absence amusing. His mother, Dorothy, laughed and said, “Boys will be boys!”
Grant was eight years older than me; he had just turned thirty-five.
Dorothy sat at the head of the table, nearest Nate, her favourite, and farthest from the eldest, Garth, her least favourite. Grant and these two brothers could have been their long-dead father’s clones—blond, tall and slim with square jaws and dazzling blue eyes. Perfect pools of ice.
Greg, the second oldest and second favourite, was the polar opposite of his brothers—short with dark hair and a moustache. He was strategically placed on his mother’s other side, beside a woman with very stiff blond hair. “Bonjour! Comment ça va? You haven’t met Angie, my fiancée.” Greg must have remembered I was studying French. He was the only one who was bilingual. The rest of them got by in downtown Montreal with no more vocabulary than “Bonjour” and “le ketchup.”
Angie smiled and extended a small, manicured hand. I tried not to squeeze too hard. Her lips were glazed a brilliant red, her skin concealed under a thick layer of beige foundation. Her soft green cashmere sweater looked very expensive.
I sat at the end of the table, facing my future mother-in-law, flanked by Garth and Angie.
The seating arrangement took me right back to Munster. My father at the head, my mother at the other end, and us kids spaced as strategically as Grant’s family, my brother alone in his own little world of misery on one side, my sister close to my mother for protection from the males, and me, closest to my father, my job being to appease him with my charm.
“Let’s get her a drink! Garçon!” Garth waved his hand in the air. I wanted to say, His name is Cameron, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Garth, she’s pregnant!” Angie shot him a scathing look.
Dorothy said, “You must be excited.” She was tastefully dressed in a silk pantsuit of varying shades of beige. My harshly contrasting pink nylon against black wool seemed garish.
“Yes, I am,” I said, though she didn’t look very excited herself, and I wasn’t sure if she meant about the wedding or the baby.
Angie scooped up my hand. “You must be Irish with that dark hair and blue eyes. This baby is going to be just lovely with that yummy husband of yours.”
Yummy. Weird choice of words, but it was true. Once, we’d passed by a bum in Calgary who asked Grant for a cigarette, then said, “Hey, you look just like Robert Redford.” Grant got that all the time. His climbing friends sometimes called him Robert to bug him but I thought he secretly liked it.
“So Grant tells me you’re a climber too.” Garth leaned toward me, over Grant’s empty seat. He looked good for a guy in his mid-forties. I could imagine him in his pilot’s uniform with the flight attendants hanging off his arm. Seemed like aging well ran in this family.
Before I could answer he added, “Guess you won’t be doing much of that anymore.” Garth had barely said two words to me at Christmas, probably assuming he’d never see me again. Now I wished he’d put the muzzle back on.
I stared at him coldly. “I should be back on the rock by next summer, I figure.”
Garth smiled like he knew something I didn’t, took a swig of his Caesar. His first marriage had also been shotgun, but if that was what this family thought I was up to, I could give them an earful. If I’d gotten pregnant to snare a man, I sure as hell wouldn’t have targeted a destitute climber who would most likely be on Everest when I was popping out his baby.
My future mother-in-law homed in on me. “I told Grant at Christmas, a baby is a big responsibility.”
At Christmas, she had also approved wholeheartedly of our original plan: an abortion. Grant had no interest in becoming a father, and I didn’t think I could raise a baby on my own. Dorothy must have wondered why I had suddenly changed my mind, but all along I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go through that again. I’d shown Grant pictures of the growing fetus so I wouldn’t be the only one to suffer, and as the day of the procedure loomed, we’d discovered the baby had fingernails and could even be sucking its thumb. When the operation was postponed for a day, then cancelled due to a nurses’ strike, I was too far along to try to reschedule in another province. After the shock wore off, I was ecstatic. I knew this baby had to be born. I think Grant, secretly, had also been relieved. We’d just needed the decision to be made for us.
“What about Everest? He has to go to Everest.” Dorothy had photos on her walls in Montreal of Grant climbing.
“We’ve told everyone back in Montreal.” Angie clapped her hands excitedly—Everest had that effect on people—then her smile disappeared and she dropped her climbing groupie persona, grabbed my hand again.
“I’m sure he’ll be just fine…” She gave me that look I’d become so familiar with since Dan’s death. Pity mixed with fear and relief. Fear that death was contagious, relief that she was not me. “He’s lasted this long, hasn’t he, l
ove?” She patted my hand. Her South African accent was soothing.
I forced my lips into a smile. I’d spent many hours trying to change Grant’s mind—pouting, cajoling, threatening, begging. But mostly blubbering. Just like I’d done with Dan before Alaska. I should have understood, since I was a climber too, but all I knew was that the old saying about lightning not striking twice did not apply to the climbing community. I couldn’t go through it again, not with a baby.
Cameron appeared at the top of the stairs with a tray laden with steaming plates of grease: burgers, fish and chips, onion rings. My stomach turned.
“Ah, here it is. It’s about time.” Garth held up his empty glass and Cameron nodded, set up the stand, passed out the food, then headed back downstairs for more drinks.
“You must be so excited! Tell me about your dress!” Angie brought my attention back to the wedding.
My dress. Oh, Christ. I’d checked every second-hand store in Calgary and couldn’t find anything that hid my body without turning me into a circus tent, so my mother had given me a dress I vaguely remembered her wearing twenty years ago in Whitehorse. Fuchsia-pink silk. Not the elegant raw silk of Dorothy’s pantsuit, but the shiny, fluttery kind. Its only redeeming feature was that it was 1920s style, tight at the hips with billows of material to conceal my rolls of baby. To hide the dress, I’d accepted the loan of a jacket from my friend Barb.
Angie hadn’t noticed my hesitation and just barrelled on, barely touching her salad. I could tell she was way more into this bride shit than I was.
This whole wedding had blown up in our faces. We’d originally planned to get married with one witness each, then quietly slink back home—no fanfare, no fuss and especially no family. Our union wasn’t exactly the result of some magical alignment of the stars. But when Grant’s brothers heard the news they invited themselves, which meant everyone had to be invited. My parents paid full fare from Ottawa, while Grant’s family had flown first class with their airline passes. It had been too short notice for my brother and sister to come from Ontario. I couldn’t believe I was getting married without Susan.
