by Jan Redford
The last thing I needed was a long, nasty fall on low-angled limestone when I was trying to get my head back into leading. Falling didn’t seem to deter Niccy. She’d had a spate of bad ones lately, including a thirty-foot screamer on her first guide exam, which was why she’d failed.
I dipped my hands into my chalk bag again, perched my fingers on small, sloping holds, then placed my foot on a little edge.
“Have fun!” Barb said.
My feet were above my friends’ heads when I started to look around for somewhere I could place gear. Nothing.
“This doesn’t look good.”
“Just keep going. You’ll find something.”
Another body length up the rock, I stopped, looked around. Still nowhere to place protection. I looked down. If I fell, I’d hit the ledge. But fifteen feet wasn’t really that far. People survived that all the time. Or became paraplegics.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Jenna’s little face appeared before me. She smiled and showed off her new teeth. My foot started to shake.
“I really don’t like this.” There was that snivelling whimper in my voice, the one I usually reserved for guys I was sleeping with.
“Remember it’s just 5.8,” said Barb.
“I can die as easily on 5.8 as 5.10!”
I pulled my body up another move, looked down again. Big mistake. Niccy and Barb were getting uncomfortably far away and the bolt was still more than ten feet above me. That would have made it a very long fall to the ledge. We were definitely getting into quadriplegic territory. What if I never see Jenna again?
My leg started to shake wildly, like it had some kind of palsy. I shook it out, looked down at the ledge. I couldn’t downclimb without falling.
I pulled on another hold and stepped up on an edge less than an inch wide. There was a flake of rock at eye level, and a small space behind it that might take a piece of protection. Maybe enough to slow a fall.
I groped at my rack, unclipped the tiniest piece I had, an RP, and wedged it into the space. The pebble-sized metal plugged up the crack. When I yanked to test it, it held. It was only psychological protection—it probably wouldn’t have held a fall—but the feel of my rope running through the carabiner was reassuring.
The bolt was only five more moves away. If I could just get to it, I’d be protected from hitting the ledge. Dan’s voice sprang out of nowhere: Fake it till you make it. Yeah, right. And look where that got you.
Dan had come to me before on a climb, a few months after his death. I’d been on Yamnuska, that fin-shaped mountain of crumbling limestone. I couldn’t get any protection in and I’d frozen, hundreds of feet off the ground. All of a sudden I’d felt his presence. It had been unmistakable. Just like when he used to walk into a room and change the whole atmosphere with his big personality. He’d been right beside me, urging me on, till a calm flushed through me and I started climbing with a confidence I couldn’t attribute to myself. He’d stayed with me until I’d reached the anchor, then slipped away.
Niccy yelled up, “Hey, Jan. Think of the cold beer in the reservoir!”
Obviously it was only me who thought I was on the verge of death. They assumed I’d make a few moves, clip the bolt, make a few more moves to the anchor, and bring them up. They still considered me a climber.
With my eyes closed, I pushed every negative thought out of my head, pushed away the sounds of Niccy and Barb’s chatter, the souped-up motor of a diesel truck way down below on the road. Pushed away the images of Jenna.
I’m a climber.
My feet stepped up. Now I was only three moves away. I didn’t look down and I didn’t look past the bolt to the rest of the route. I found my next handholds and pulled up. Only two moves away. I pushed thoughts of the growing distance between me and the ledge out of my mind. Just focused on the narrowing distance between me and the bolt. Breathed in and moved upward. Breathed out. Breathed in and moved again, until I was finally there. I clipped a quickdraw into the bolt, slipped my rope through the carabiner. Allowed myself to look down. A good forty feet to the ledge.
I climbed past the bolt, the rest of the way to the anchor, with another long run-out, but not a hint of paralysis, like some guardian angel was guiding me up the rock. But it was just me.
“Good job!” Niccy rubbed her neck and shrugged the kinks out of her shoulders.
A few minutes later I reached the bolts. “I’m secure!”
Leaning against the rock, I soaked up the view, the deep blue reservoir, Chinaman’s Peak wavering in the heat, the three emerald-green spots of Grassi Lakes.
I’m still a climber.
* * *
—
“I led the second pitch of Die Young, Stay Pretty. It was great. I had so much fun!” The memory of my terror had curiously dissolved, like the pain of childbirth.
Grant grunted but didn’t look up from the television. I snuggled into his hard body, slipped my hand through his arm. It was already nine o’clock, Jenna was asleep and Grant was still awake. A rare occurrence on his first night home from logging camp.
“Aren’t you proud of me? It’s good that I’m getting right back into leading.”
“Yeah, it’s great.” He wouldn’t look at me, but he shouldn’t have been pissed off. He climbed at least a day every weekend.
I leaned back on the couch and studied his profile. He was almost back to his normal weight after Nuptse but he couldn’t seem to shake his depression. I tried to keep my expectations low on Friday nights, just like Yolande had advised me to keep my expectations low after expeditions, but sometimes I couldn’t hold back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He took another swill of beer.
“I know something’s bugging you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, reaching for his cigarettes. “Why do you always think something’s wrong? I’m just tired and I want to watch TV.”
He pushed himself off the couch, slid open the patio door and stepped onto the concrete pad to have a smoke in the backyard.
I tried to watch the movie but I couldn’t keep track of who was shooting whom and why. After another car chase, I headed into the kitchen. Sauce from the sweet and sour ribs was still stuck fast to the casserole dish like dog shit to a Vibram sole, even though I’d been soaking it for two hours.
I squeezed out more dish soap and started scrubbing. I knew what was wrong. Grant was turning back into a logger. I’d tried to convince him to go to carpentry school now that we were so close to Calgary. I told him I’d even put off university if he’d go, but he kept getting drawn back to the bush. He wanted to become a faller, because fallers made more money. But I was starting to think he was drawn to the suffering, like he was drawn to the suffering of alpine climbing.
A couple of nights ago I’d called my mother and complained about our weekends, how I was walking on eggshells, scared to open my mouth. Rather like living with Dad. She had told me how, now that my father was retired and they’d moved to Victoria, he was softening up, getting a bit easier to live with. So it was possible. If my prickly father could become a relatively pleasant human being, anyone could. I just didn’t know if I could wait twenty-five years.
* * *
—
Sunday night, I slipped out of my clothes, crawled into bed and snuggled against Grant’s back. Ran my hand down his biceps. All his muscles were tense so I could tell he wasn’t asleep. I moved in closer. I wanted him to touch me so badly. My body felt good these days: strong, bursting with energy.
“You asleep?” I whispered.
“Not anymore I’m not.”
I draped my arm over him but he rolled away onto his stomach, let his arm hang off the bed. We’d put the mattress on a slab of plywood and raised it with milk crates so he could hang his right arm over the side. It went numb in the middle of the night from the vibration of the chainsaw.
“I have to get up in five hours,” he mumbled into the pillow.
On Mondays, he l
eft at three in the morning to make the two-hour drive to Golden to meet his crew at Humpty’s Restaurant. Then they drove another two hours out to the block. He was scaling and bucking—measuring the logs and cutting them the right length, then cutting off the branches. It was the first step toward becoming a faller, and he’d be a lot happier as a faller. He’d told me the best thing about that job was everyone had to stay two tree lengths away from him. But it meant he had to buy a chainsaw for seven hundred dollars. A year’s tuition.
I rubbed his back for a couple of minutes to help him sleep, rolled onto my side away from him and wrapped myself around my pillow.
* * *
—
Jenna’s screams started at one in the morning. I groaned and pushed the covers off. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept through the night.
“I can’t sleep with that kid wailing all the time,” Grant said as he sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
“She’s teething.”
“She needs discipline. You’re coddling her.”
“She’s only a year old! You can’t coddle a year-old baby.”
We were just like my parents: my mother waving her Dr. Spock parenting book around, my father waving his dad’s old cane.
“Fuck this.” He stood and pulled his grey Stanfield’s undershirt over his head, tugged up his faller pants, dragged the orange suspenders over his shoulders. The smell of Christmas trees and chainsaw fumes filled the air.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing? Going to Golden.”
“It’s only one o’clock. You don’t have to leave for two hours.”
“You can sleep with Jenna.”
A few minutes later, with Jenna sucking her fingers contentedly in my arms, I watched out the window as my husband backed the truck out of our parking spot and drove through the complex toward the road.
* * *
—
When the ultimatum came, the next weekend, I still wasn’t prepared, even with all the warning signs.
“I can’t keep commuting eight hours a weekend. It’s killing me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my head down, kept washing the dishes.
“We’re going to have to move to Golden.”
“Golden?” The slippery casserole dish slid out of my hands and sank in the soapy water. I turned to face Grant, who was sitting in the tiny alcove of the kitchen at the table. Beside him, Jenna finger-painted with her creamed corn on the tray of her high chair.
“I can’t move to Golden. It’s too far away from the university!”
“I work five days a week, drive four hours, climb one day, see my family one day, then drive another four hours. I can’t even train for a big climb. Barry wants to do the North Twin with me but I can’t get in shape in time.” He pushed away his plate of half-eaten apple crumble. “I can’t believe we’re playing the same game our parents played. I’ve avoided this all my life and now look at me.”
“But I’m already signed up for all my courses!”
“And how the hell do you plan to pay for these courses?”
I hadn’t figured that out yet. The price of tuition had gone up in the past two years and we’d just depleted the account to buy my friend Geoff’s Subaru.
“It’s only two courses.”
“Jan, I can’t climb and log. I’m exhausted.” He put his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. I could see the exhaustion in his shoulders, hear it in his voice. I took a step toward him.
He looked up. “And you knew I was a climber when you married me.”
His words were a rock wall erupting from the floor between us. I wanted to scream: What about me? I’m a climber too! But I wasn’t an alpinist. A Himalayan climber. A “real” climber. I still shit myself on easy pitches of rock.
“And you knew I wanted to go back to school when you married me,” I threw back.
“Well, how ’bout you just tell me where to send the money.”
Jenna looked up from her messy art work, swivelled her head from Grant to me.
A familiar panic tightened around my rib cage like a muscle spasm and shallowed my breathing. What if he left us? Even though I often toyed with the idea of leaving him, I knew I never would. I had no money. I couldn’t haul Jenna around in her baby backpack while I ski-patrolled or taught climbing, or drag her off to a pesticide-laden tree-planting camp. I could waitress, but I’d probably make more on welfare once I factored in childcare. I didn’t want to be a single mom on welfare.
Grant’s voice broke through my panic. “You can do distance courses. Then when Jenna’s older you can go back to university. She only just turned one. She needs her mother.”
As he talked my heart stopped racing. He wasn’t planning to leave us. And it was true. Jenna was still just a baby.
I slumped against the counter, stared down at my bare feet. They were getting tough and calloused again from my climbing shoes. “But we just bought this place.”
If we moved again, this would be the fourth house I’d cleaned for the next occupants. Just like my mother, following my father all over Canada, leaving clean houses in her wake. I’d sworn I’d never end up like her, just like Grant had sworn he’d never end up like his father, and here we were, sixteen months into our marriage. We’d had our first wedding anniversary in April, while he was on Nuptse.
I looked around my house. The first house that really felt like mine. There was so much space. A stream going by in the backyard. A university an hour away. Here, I could be a student. I had a babysitter. Here, all our friends were climbers. Grant was a climber. In Golden, Grant would turn into a logger, and I’d turn into a logger’s wife.
“I hate this house!” The harshness was back. “You tricked me into it. I couldn’t see straight when I signed those papers.”
“Mama!” Jenna stood in her high chair, put her arms out for me. Grant lurched toward her—she’d tumbled to the floor once—but I reached her first. I scooped her up and propped her on my hip, let her wrap her arms and legs around me tightly.
I turned my back on Grant, tried scouring the casserole dish with my free hand but it kept slipping away from the scrubbie.
Golden. The only people I knew there were Ted and Diane, Grant’s friends. He and Ted used to climb together and now Ted was a logger too. He worked in the bush and Diane stayed at home with their two kids on a property south of town. She cooked and cleaned and made his lunches, but she seemed happy.
Grant took Jenna out of my arms. “We’ve got to be realistic here. I’m a logger, and the work is in Golden. And we could buy a whole house on a big piece of property. Real estate is so cheap there. You could have a huge garden. We could get a dog.”
In Canmore so many of our friends were professionals: doctors, physiotherapists, psychologists, teachers, university professors. We didn’t measure up. In Golden, maybe I could be like Diane, happy to be a mother and wife.
I started scrubbing harder. I had to fight this urge to turn back the clock to the 1950s. If I moved to Golden it would be like giving up the sharp end of the rope. I’d be following again. I had to go to school.
When I didn’t respond, Grant added, “Let’s just try it for a year. One year. We don’t have to sell the townhouse—we can rent it out.”
I stopped scrubbing and stared into the bubbles I’d churned up. “I’ll think about it.”
23
YODEL VILLAGE
Bent over a tape deck, I sat cross-legged in our makeshift front yard—a ten-foot-square section of sod thrown down at the end of our dusty driveway. I strained to understand the garbled Acadian French. The narrator—an old man from New Brunswick—stared up at me from my textbook. His face was shrivelled like a dried-apple doll; he didn’t seem to have teeth. No wonder he was unintelligible.
This was my very first university distance course. When it had arrived in the mail, about the same time we’d moved to Golden in the fall, it had been like unwrapping a Christmas
present. Every day, all winter, stranded here in yet another, bigger, Bumfuck, BC, I’d waited for Jenna to nap so I could squeeze in some precious time on the next lesson. At this pace it would take approximately thirty years to get a degree.
Grant had been excited to move here to Yodel Village, as he called it. It had seemed fitting for us, being climbers, to live in a house built in 1911 for the original Swiss mountain guides, but the novelty of an eighty-year-old home had worn off quickly. The bugs were the biggest problem. Dormant flies that crawled all over the carpet every time the weather heated up, and worse, squiggly stunted wormy things that popped up everywhere, even in the bed. I’d taken one in a mason jar to the landlord, Al, and he’d said, “Those are cupboard beetles. Everyone has cupboard beetles,” and looked at me like I was on something. Or from the city. Soon after that I found empty shells everywhere, like tiny snake skins, and suddenly there were brown beetles in the flour, the cereal, everywhere. Not just the cupboards.
A semi roared by on the TransCanada below, drowning out the dialogue, and I had to rewind the tape. The house was a few hundred feet up a hillside, just above Golden, and sounds rose, something I hadn’t known until after we’d moved in. So did smells. Whenever the mountain passes on either side of town were blocked by avalanches or landslides, semis lined up on the highway, engines idling for hours, sometimes days. The exhaust—mixed with emissions from the lumber mill and smoke from the wood stoves—flowed up and into our house.
A scream pierced the highway rumble. I wrenched my eyes off my work. In the sandbox a few feet away, my friend’s daughter, Tanya—her white-blond head submerged under a bucket-shaped pile of sand—turned toward me. Her little pink tongue darted in and out of her mouth, pushing out black, gritty saliva. Jenna was holding an empty plastic bucket.
We were in the throes of the terrible twos and our kid wasn’t even two yet. Last week Jenna had pushed another little friend down three stairs and I’d automatically slapped her hand. Me, who’d always sworn I’d never hit my kids, slapping my twenty-month-old’s hand. I’d tortured myself, imagining her following me into therapy when she grew up, or writing a mountain version of Mommie Dearest. So now I had a stack of books on parenting on my bedside table along with my books on creative visualization and relationship rescue.
