by Jan Redford
“You’ll be just gorgeous. We’ll just touch you up with a wee bit of makeup, fix up your hair…”
When I heard the word gorgeous in relation to me, I almost started to cry. Even though I had a beautiful baby to look forward to, I still disintegrated just about anywhere, anytime. I just needed to keep the tears plugged up long enough to get through the ceremony. Maybe a bit of makeup would help. Grant kept telling me I looked fine but he hadn’t touched me in weeks.
“So, Grant tells me you’ll be moving to Golden soon.” Nate stuffed an onion ring into his mouth.
I almost choked on my toast. Where the hell did he get that idea? Golden was a small town a couple of hours away, just over the border in BC, where Grant was logging. I used to kayak there with Brad—the Kicking Horse River—and we’d drink afterward in a pub with dead animal heads on the walls and crack jokes about how the town was straight out of the movie Deliverance.
I took a sip of water and the toast finally scraped down my throat. “Actually, I’m going back to university in a year so we have to stay close to Calgary. We’ll both be commuting.”
I had quit school partway into the second semester. I’d finally reached my limit. Only six months had passed between the phone call from Alaska to the pregnancy test and in that time I’d gone to Dan and Ian’s memorial services, picked up a new boyfriend, guided cadets while popping Valium, moved to Calgary, started university, and then gone to another memorial, this time for Steve Devine, the guide who’d taken me under his wing at cadet camp, knowing I needed to be guided more than the cadets did. Now I was getting married a month before the first anniversary of Dan’s death.
“Who’s going to look after the baby?” Dorothy and I eyed each other from our own ends of the table. “It’s a full-time job, you know. I looked after my husband and children without complaining. That’s just how we did things in those days. Then after Bill died, I raised four boys by myself.”
“Mum, they’ll figure it out. Don’t get worked up,” Greg said. “It’s a good idea to have a degree.” Greg was the only one in the family who’d gone to university.
“Who’s going to look after Grant? A man needs hot meals,” Dorothy muttered angrily.
“He’ll be in camp, Mum. He’ll have lots of hot meals.” Nate was a bush pilot, so he was fully aware of the life Grant led while logging.
I pushed the eggs around on my plate, my appetite gone. Golden. He’d need a straitjacket to get me to that little redneck hole. I couldn’t breathe with the cloud of perfume and cologne hanging over my new family. The blond brothers lit up cigarettes and I imagined my baby mutating inside me, screaming for oxygen.
I stood up too quickly, swayed a bit and grabbed the edge of the table. Greg and Angie jumped up from their chairs. Angie put her hand on my arm to steady me.
“I’m okay,” I reassured them, then cracked a joke about having to drag Grant out of bed. They laughed politely.
I escaped down the stairs and had almost reached the door when Cameron cut me off. He leaned down and hissed into my ear, “If you marry into this family you’re out of your fucking mind.”
“Right, like I’m going to cancel two hours before the wedding.” I forced a laugh as I pushed by him and out the door. I crammed my fingers into my worn-out tear ducts to postpone the flood, stumbled down the street. Yesterday, after the Häagen-Dazs debacle, I’d gone to my parents’ hotel and told them I couldn’t marry Grant. My father had said, “Jesus Christ. Now’s a fine time to figure that out.”
He was right. There was no way I could send everyone back to Quebec and Ontario with their wedding gifts. The hall was booked for a huge potluck tomorrow night. My dad had told me he loved me, had even shed a tear when he gave us a wedding cheque that would get us through the next couple of months. Even Dan’s parents had sent us a cheque, and their blessing. My mom had shown up with a whole suitcase of gifts and a wedding cake, and she’d bought my bouquet; it was irreversible. Besides, Grant was nothing like his family.
I took the long way home along the Bow River. The frozen ground crunched under my hiking boots and the wind blew right through my knitted tights. The hairs on my legs stood up, a reminder that I’d better shave before putting on white nylons.
I stopped at the mound of gravel by the bridge where we would have the ceremony in two hours, found a bench and leaned back to dry my face in the sun. My hand instinctively crept to my tummy. I was going to rub it raw if I wasn’t careful. I sometimes wondered if this baby was Dan’s soul trying to come back. My dreams about him were still so vivid that when I woke up I could feel him in the room with me.
A reflection of the peaks of the Three Sisters wavered in the water and the cool breeze purged me of the perfume and second-hand smoke. The April air was cool and crisp, but it was the first sun we’d had in weeks. It had to be a sign of something.
* * *
—
Back at the house, Grant was still comatose. He looked vulnerable lying there, like our little fetus. I wanted to protect him, make up for all the hurt he’d suffered when he’d lost his dad. I knew he was damaged. I was going to be the first person to stand by him through anything. Through thick or thin. Our families would go back to where they came from, we’d move into our new home, he’d come back from Nepal and start work and look after me and the baby, and everything would be fine.
I lay down beside him, curling into his back and passing my hand over the veins in his forearms. Two months ago, when the abortion had been cancelled, he’d said, I guess we’ll have to get married, and I’d felt such a surge of love and relief my legs had almost buckled. We’d gone ice climbing up Grotto Canyon that day and I couldn’t stop smiling the whole time. I knew what most of our friends thought, but my romantic side wanted to believe that no ordinary lust could be so intense. There had to be a deeper reason why we were together. Even if it was just so this baby could be born.
“Hey, you want to get married?” I poked him, tried to tease him awake. Sometimes if I acted perky and optimistic, I eventually felt it. Fake it till you make it.
He let out a long moan and shook me off. “Not today. Tomorrow.”
I sat up, pushed harder on his back, no longer playful.
“Sarah can’t marry us tomorrow! You’ve got to get up!”
“Someone clean the goddamned bathroom! I’ve gotta take a dump!” a voice roared from the living room.
“Didn’t you clean the bathroom?” He pushed himself up on his arms and looked at me, the sky blue of his eyes peeking through narrow slits.
“Are you serious? I’m not cleaning your fucking puke.” I pulled away from him. He was joking. He had to be joking. But he wasn’t smiling.
“Great. That’s real supportive. Nice way to start a marriage.”
I gathered up my trousseau: the startling pink dress, the jacket, the silver ring I’d bought downtown for thirty bucks, the white, polka-dotted nylons, the worn-out beige sandals I’d bought years ago in Indonesia—the only footwear I owned that wasn’t designed for hiking, biking, climbing or skiing.
“You can have the shower. I’ll get ready at Mom and Dad’s hotel. Angie’s going to try a bit of makeup on me.”
“No. No makeup. You don’t need it. You look good natural.”
Standing in the doorway, I smiled. I liked that he liked me the way I was. I decided to take a risk. “I love you,” I said casually, as though it were an afterthought. I’d never told him that before. I missed how Dan and I had said it every day.
I couldn’t tell if Grant had heard me, so I said, “Do you love me?” My voice sounded high-pitched, babyish, and I told myself, This is stupid. I should just go get ready. He’s already said it, even if he doesn’t remember.
“Well, it’s not that simple,” he started. “We don’t even know each other yet. We’ve only lived together three months.”
I could tell he thought I was going to disintegrate again, because he quickly added, “People grow to love each other over the years.”
<
br /> The wedding was in less than an hour, so that would have to be good enough for now. I’d soften him up. And if I couldn’t, a baby would. I shrugged. “See you in a bit.” I headed out to shave my legs and don my fuchsia-pink wedding dress.
19
THE WAITING
Heading through Calgary from the airport, I aimed for the Rocky Mountains, still patched with white in late May. Concrete became suburbs, then flat brown fields, then rolling foothills. While I drove west, Grant was up in the sky somewhere, on his way to Pakistan to climb the biggest mountain face in the world, the Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. Gone for two whole months, possibly three. Then after a two-week rest at home he would be off to Everest. The baby was due in early August. I had a two-week window between Nanga Parbat and Everest to give birth.
At the airport, while we were saying goodbye, Barry had given me a big bear hug and said, “Don’t you worry about him. That man’s a machine.” And Grant had said for the umpteenth time, “Don’t worry, I’m coming home,” but as Grant, Barry, Kevin and Marc went through the gate, I was back with Dan and Ian all over again in Seattle, one year ago, watching them race to the plane, not knowing they had only five days left to live. The Himalayas were more serious than Alaska. And Nanga Parbat was nicknamed “Killer Mountain” because it had claimed fifty climbers.
By the time I turned off the highway and drove through the almost deserted main street of Canmore, it was dark and I was dehydrated. I pulled up in front of our new home, turned off the engine. Sharon looked out the brightly lit upstairs window, waved. My former roommate was now our landlord. Her speaking engagements about her Everest expedition had proven lucrative. The first North American woman to the summit. When her basement suite had become available we’d jumped at it. It was small and dark, but it was all ours. No more climbing roommates. We’d moved in three weeks ago. Three weeks before that was the wedding. I’d been a married woman for six weeks.
I heaved myself over the stick shift and skootched across the seat to crawl out the passenger door of Ian’s old blue Honda Civic. Someone had bashed in the driver’s side door and at six and a half months pregnant, I could no longer slip through the window.
I fumbled through the side door, down the stairs, through the laundry room, pushed open the door to our suite and stared into darkness, listening. Nothing but Sharon and her partner Chris’s muffled voices, the squeak of floorboards above. I flicked the switch and light spilled into the long, narrow room.
Keeping all the lights and TV on, I slid into bed wearing one of Grant’s unwashed T-shirts. Buried my nose in his smell, just like I used to wrap Dan’s navy pile jacket around me, the one that still had his blond hairs woven through the fabric of the collar. A hollow ache burrowed into me, an ache that marriage, changing my name, and growing a little person was supposed to have erased.
* * *
—
Dan sits beside me on the edge of the bed. He is so beautiful. He smiles, revealing the tooth he chipped in hockey. His blue eyes crinkle, as though he were squinting into the sun. He’s wearing his navy fleece jacket with the collar turned up. I say, “I miss you so much,” and he says, “I miss you too,” and he holds me. My yearning is a physical pain that reaches into every part of my body. He isn’t acting angry or betrayed. I’m simply the girl he was going to marry, not the pregnant wife of one of his climbing partners.
* * *
—
My pillow was drenched when I woke up. I curled around my baby, heaving. Dan was still right beside me. I could feel him. My dreams were always of Dan, never Grant. Maybe that meant Grant would be safe.
It was day one of a minimum sixty-day wait.
* * *
—
The first letter arrived after only three days. I ripped it open in the post office, scanned the heading—May 22 – Over Manitoba. He’d started writing the same day he left. His words were big, loopy, as if he couldn’t keep his excitement off the page. He was so happy. He was finally headed for the biggest mountains in the world. He felt alive. He really wanted this. His joy rubbed off on me and I started to perk up, until I got to the part about how he hoped I could be happy for him, how he had an obligation to his climbing. As I read, the baby kicked hard, right into my bladder as if to say, What am I? Chopped liver? I quashed my irritation, squeezed my thighs together to keep from peeing. I suspected the obligation he felt was more to Dan and Ian than to his own climbing. He had to keep climbing hard to honour their memory.
I kept reading till I got to the last paragraph where he admitted in ink what he hadn’t yet said out loud—that he badly wanted to raise a family, that it was miraculous our child was alive inside me, and that he didn’t want to miss any of it.
Caressing the hard bump of my belly, I whispered, “You hear that, baby? He wants us!” If I could have bent in half, I’d have kissed it.
* * *
—
Five days later, Grant called from Pakistan. They should have been in base camp by then but they were still in Rawalpindi. There were permit problems and the roads were closed due to heavy fighting between the Sunnis and Shiites.
“There’s about a thousand dead. We won’t get out of here for at least ten days.”
He sounded so far away. He was so far away. I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. “But my due date’s the middle of August.” Two and a half months away. “You said there was lots of time.” What was wrong with me? Worried about my due date while terrorists were massacring people.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before the baby.”
He described the city, the women covered from head to toe in black, people and animals everywhere. So much noise. The smell. Sewage running down the ditches. He just wanted to get going. He was homesick. He missed me and loved me.
He loved me! I couldn’t savour his words after he’d hung up because I was late for my night shift at work. I pulled off my jeans with the big stretchy belly panel and pulled on the first skirt I’d owned since my blue tie-dyed wrap-around from my hippie days. My boss, Candace, was a tall, slim Mrs. Cleaver type who wanted me to be “presentable,” even though the Parks radio I manned was in a little back room and none of the rangers cared what I wore. She endured my Birkenstocks.
Anxiety niggled away at me as I headed outside into the fading light. The guys could end up surviving the biggest mountain face in the world only to be shot dead by a bunch of rebels. And even if they did survive the mountain and the rebels, he’d likely miss our baby’s birth.
I crawled into the car, turned the key. The click, click, click of an impotent battery was the only response. “Shit!”
I tried again, got the same clicking. Then again. And again. Pounding the dashboard I screamed, “You bastard!” and I knew I wasn’t talking to the car.
* * *
—
The next letter didn’t arrive for two weeks. With the music from my soap, Days of Our Lives, blaring out of the TV, I eased myself down on the couch, onto my pillow arrangement. Five pillows. That’s how many it took now to ease the tension in my back. I was getting so big so quickly the doctor thought I might be farther along than we’d thought. I unfolded the crinkly airmail paper, started reading greedily, inhaling his words. The letter was from Rawalpindi, dated June 5. He’d gone jogging at four that morning in the smog, then for a bike ride to a shanty town on the poor side of town. He was dying in the over 100-degree heat.
He was dying? At least he could jog and mountain-bike. He should try gluing a medicine ball to his gut and waddling through an Alberta heat wave, see how that felt. Seven and a half months pregnant and I’d gained twenty-five pounds. At this rate, I was going to be the size of Nanga Parbat by the time Grant got home.
The more I read the crankier I got. There was another road closure until June 7 because the Sunnis and Shiites were still fighting each other in Gilgit. He was “heavily bummed” because it seemed to be an expedition just getting to the mountain.
So when he wrote thi
s letter they hadn’t even left for base camp. The expedition was now at least two weeks behind schedule, which put it that much closer to monsoon season, and that much closer to my due date.
The baby shifted, ramming a body part under my ribs so I flipped up my shirt to let my big white belly emerge, smooth and hard. Beautiful.
I am not going to cry.
Some of the women in my Lamaze class played classical music to soothe their little fetus. I just cried all day. What was that doing to my baby?
“Hey, little one. Your daddy will be home soon.”
Maybe if I said it often enough and with conviction, I’d make it happen. That’s what it said in the book I was reading about the power of positive thinking. But my thoughts were normally so demented that if the book was right, if my brain really was that powerful, everyone around me would be dropping dead like the Sunnis and Shiites.
A loud knock on the door made both the baby and me jump. I pulled my shirt down just as Niccy popped her head around the corner from the laundry room. Her round face was flushed and beaded with sweat.
“Hey, thought you could use some of this. Pretty hot out there.” She held up a jar of pickles and a bucket of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. She’d shown up with the same offering when I was three months pregnant, just after my news had leaked out. It seemed her way of saying she didn’t judge me.
I winched myself off the couch. I could live without the pickles, but Häagen-Dazs ice cream was my staple, which could explain the weight gain.
