by Jan Redford
Jenna chatted away with Grant at the table. “Can I have more juice in my pwincess cup?” Grant’s mother had given her a Cinderella cup with glitter floating in water between double walls of hard plastic.
“It’s not ‘pwincess,’ Jenna, it’s ‘princess,’” Grant corrected her. His deep voice was rough with irritability. He wasn’t pissed off at Jenna, though she wouldn’t know that; he was pissed off at me. Again. This time it was because the Forestry office had called. I had my job back. I would start in May, two months from now, and I thought he would be celebrating, not kvetching. Over the winter we’d decided to take turns working and looking after the kids. But I’d made that deal with the climber, not the logger, and earlier today, the logger had said, What kind of mother leaves a five-month-old baby?
Grant’s seesaw routine was making me feel like I was losing my mind. It took me right back to Munster, to my “breakfast” dad and my “after work” dad.
“That’s how Haley says it,” Jenna said.
“Yeah, well, that’s not how you say it,” Grant replied.
Many of the kids Jenna played with couldn’t pronounce “r,” and Grant wasn’t convinced they’d grow out of it. Jenna could pronounce the “r” when she wanted to. She was just toying with him. The other day I’d passed by her bedroom and overheard her talking to herself. She’d said “fwog” and then immediately admonished herself, “No, no, Jenna! It’s ‘frog’ not ‘fwog,’” in the exact same tone Grant had just used, then she’d giggled.
Jenna’s kitty, Gus, sauntered by me, rubbing up against my shins, then walked to the oversized, now defunct speaker, stretched out his grey body to place his paws near the top, and dug his claws through the blue material.
Something blurred through the air like a missile and exploded into sparkling pieces against the speaker. Gus ripped across the carpet, up the stairs, and Jenna launched herself at me, sobbing, “My princess cup!”
Sam popped off my breast, stared up at me, his mouth forming a tiny “o”.
“What the hell?” I said, looking over at Grant.
“That goddamned cat.” Grant pushed back his chair, grabbed his coat and headed outside, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
—
The next morning, the sun hadn’t yet risen when Grant sat up in bed and reached for the lamp. Harsh light flooded the room. He could have found the bloody door in the dark; it was three steps from the base of the bed. This was his way of saying If I suffer, we both suffer. I did it all the time myself. Passive-aggressive, the new counsellor at the women’s centre had called it, then rambled on about the importance of using “I statements” with Grant. “Like, ‘I hate you’?” I’d asked her, only half joking.
I sank the tip of my cold nose into the duvet, then pulled my pillow over my head. The wood stove had gone out in the middle of the night.
“Did you make my lunch?” His voice was gruff.
I’d glanced at his metal lunch box as I’d carried my daughter, sobbing over her princess cup, up the stairs, but that’s as far as I’d gotten.
“No. I did not make your lunch.”
“Again?”
He didn’t know it, but I was weaning him off my lunch-making. I couldn’t come right out and tell him because it didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t I make his lunch if he was working in the bush and I was at home with the kids? But I found it degrading. Now that he wasn’t in camp, every night he would sit with a beer or tea in front of the TV while I seethed over the kitchen counter slapping corned beef into buns, hacking up banana loaf, cramming pickles into a tiny Tupperware container, knowing damned well Gloria Steinem would sooner put her head in an oven than do what I was doing.
Part of the reason I wanted to go back to work was so I could feel justified not making his lunch.
I rolled over and watched his lean back as he sat on the edge of the bed. Wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist. Each muscle clearly defined, maybe 5 percent body fat. I’d look more like that if I could get out of this goddamned house and get some exercise. Instead, I looked more like Jenna’s Mrs. Potato Head.
Grant grabbed his work clothes and headed down the hall, stomping like an Irish step dancer right past the kids’ room. I turned off the lamp, but moments later light streamed up through the cracks between the floorboards from the bathroom below, slicing through the darkness.
Grant banged around in the bathroom for a while, then moved to the kitchen and banged around there. Only after the front door had closed and I knew he was out in the shop waiting for the Crummy did I sit up. The duvet might as well have been wet cement; I could barely dig myself out of bed. But there wasn’t much point in trying to sleep now.
In the hall, I leaned over the railing and looked down into the living room at the wood stove. We’d been so busy battling last night we’d forgotten to bring in some wood, and there was no kindling.
I slipped into the kids’ room. A tangle of blond hair spilled out from under Jenna’s ragged blanket, covering Gus, who was curled into the side of her head. I pulled the blanket off her face and tucked it under her chin. Between the cat and that blanket, I was terrified she’d suffocate in the middle of the night.
Sam was splayed out on his back in his crib, his chubby hands curled by his ears. I rubbed the backs of my fingers across his cheek: such soft, rubbery skin. His lips sucked instinctively at the air and I felt my milk drop.
Maybe Grant was right. Maybe I was being selfish. Unmotherly. Jenna had been almost three when I’d gone to work last summer. A little girl. Sam would be only five months old. He hadn’t even taken a bottle yet. What if I caused lifelong damage?
But I couldn’t imagine not working with my big group of silviculture women. They all knew what I was up against. They all had kids. They’d all expressed milk into logging slash. They’d all fought their husbands and their debilitating guilt to stay in the bush. And they were all encouraging me not to give up on university. They said it was easier to pick up little kids and take them with you than school-age ones. Most said it was too late for them, except for Laura, who was whittling away at her forestry degree while working full-time, year round, with two kids and a grumpy husband who hung out at the Moberly Pub. She made me think anything was possible.
The other day I’d found myself flipping through university calendars at the library while Jenna was at story-time. After spending a winter with a three-year-old, a new baby and a dried-up well—hauling drinking water from town, showering at friends’ houses, using the outhouse, making lunch for a cranky logger—I was starting to dream about life as a single mom and full-time student in a city as if it were a vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico.
My bare feet were silent on the wood as I tiptoed down the steep stairs. Chaba padded across the gold linoleum from his blanket in the corner of the kitchen to greet me as I pulled on my rubber boots and a jacket, then headed outside, closing the thick wood door softly behind me. He flopped his gangly blond body down the steps ahead of me.
The snowy peaks were soft pink in the early light, floating on a sea of valley fog. The only sound was the crunching gravel under my feet as I headed down the driveway, past my gardens. The melting snow had revealed a gloppy mess of weeds in each of the six raised beds. My rows of raspberries were tangled, bent over. Working in the bush, I hadn’t had much time for gardening last year. I wouldn’t have any if I went back to work with two kids.
I cut across the stiff grass to the woodshed, grabbed a piece of birch and balanced it on the chopping block. I swung the maul over my head and it sank into the wood with a hollow thud, stopping at a big knot. I wrenched it out, took two more thwacks at the wood before giving up and throwing the maul on the ground.
My breasts tingled then went rock-solid. Milk started to leak into my pajamas. I slipped my hand under my clothes and felt my belly, still soft and stretched in spite of four months of interrupted sessions in front of The Firm aerobics video with Janet Jones Gretzky. I wanted m
y body back. Not this one with the jiggly belly and boobs that spewed milk into the air like geysers. I wanted to hike up and down steep logging slash all day with the girls, bombing around logging roads in a four-by-four, picking huckleberries on our breaks. I knew my muscles would reappear—I’d reappear—if I could just get back to work.
I picked up the axe and started splitting cedar into kindling. An earthy sweetness released into the air, the same smell that hit me each time I opened our front door.
When I heard the sound of crunching gravel, my gut tightened with a fight-or-flight kind of feeling. Grant walked toward me down the driveway, crossed the little plank of wood over the ditch and leaned against the woodshed.
“I forgot that.” He nodded toward the jacket I was wearing.
I’d thrown on his rough wool plaid jacket when I left the house. I loved the smell of the bush in the material: the sap, the newly cut timber, the needles. I even liked the smell of the oil and gas from his chainsaw, the faint smell of cigarettes.
“Looks better on you anyway.”
I could tell he regretted our fight.
“Why don’t you just take the summer off, go back next year? When Sam’s older.”
“You know why.” If I lost my seniority, I lost my job.
“Just explain the situation.”
“You promised you’d look after the kids.”
“Jesus. I can’t talk to you when you get like this.” He picked up the maul and balanced my pain-in-the-ass piece of birch on the chopping block, took one swing and split it down the centre. “I wasn’t thinking straight when I said I’d quit.”
“I need that job. I need to save up for school.” Just mentioning school to Grant was like prodding a grizzly with a red-hot poker.
Grant threw the maul to the ground. “Do what you want. You always do.” He started loading wood into his arms. “I’ll make the fire.”
“How the hell am I supposed to work twelve-hour days in the bush with you in camp? I don’t know if Kim will even babysit. She has her own kids to look after.”
We could see Kim’s house down on the Blaeberry River from our window. Her daughter, Haley, was Jenna’s best friend, and her new baby, Ocean, had been born two months after Sam.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He headed back toward the house, his arms loaded with wood.
* * *
—
The house was quiet except for the occasional pop in the wood stove, and CBC Radio on low in the kitchen. Jenna crawled up on the couch beside me, where I was nursing her brother. She was holding the doll my mother had bought her. Kali Jean—which would have been Sam’s name if he’d been a girl—was made of soft, spongy rubber. She felt almost like a real baby, even peed like a real baby when you gave her a bottle, and she’d helped Jenna finally accept the fact that Sam was a Sam, not a Kali. For the first month Jenna had told everyone she had a baby sister, and referred to Sam as “she.”
Jenna pulled up her shirt, crammed Kali’s face against her smooth chest. While her doll nursed, Jenna popped her thumb and the corner of her blanket into her mouth.
The phone sat beside me on the couch, stretched to the end of the cord. I had a call to make, either to the Forestry office to turn down my job or to Kim to see if she’d babysit for four months. If I went to work my kids might end up in therapy for the rest of their lives, but if I stayed at home I might end up on the psych ward or in prison for committing mariticide.
Gus jumped up on the couch and flopped against Jenna, bits of multi-coloured glitter in his grey fur.
28
FRACTURED
Our Forestry truck bounced over the wash-boarded logging road as we passed the white kilometre marker on the tree. Sixty-five.
Nona grabbed the mic and pushed the transmit button. “Loaded pickup, B65.” Now anyone barrelling toward us around the blind corners would be alerted to where we were on Big Bend Highway, at kilometre 65, and what direction we were headed. Toward town. Finally. It was already almost six. The last block had been thirty hectares and we’d worked overtime so we wouldn’t have to come back tomorrow.
“Kleenex?” Nona passed me a baggie full of tissue.
I looked down at my chest. It looked like I’d attached a water hose to my boobs and turned it on. Even though I left full bottles for Sam at home, I usually had to express milk into the trees a couple of times a day, but today we hadn’t even stopped to eat. I took the Kleenex and stuffed a few pieces under my shirt.
The first two weeks had been the hardest. Leaving my baby had been worse than losing a limb; more like losing a torso. Grant had looked after the kids for the first ten days but Sam wouldn’t take a bottle, so Patty and Kim had to wet nurse a few times. I came close to quitting every single day. When Grant went back to work and Kim started to babysit, things finally settled down. But Grant’s moods had remained black. We barely talked to each other these days, no mean feat in a thousand-square-foot open-concept house.
But there was no way I would quit. Missing this season meant I’d lose my seniority, which meant I’d lose my job, and I could not let that happen. Grant and I had started to discuss separating. In the past, when we’d thrown those words around, they’d served more as a threat, but this time I’d gone so far as to check out the rental situation in town. He said he’d never give up the house.
“Loaded pickup, B55,” Nona said into the mic. We were the only female voices on the radio, so even without Nona’s heavy Spanish accent, everyone would have known it was those damned Forestry girls again. Grant had told me the loggers laughed at how often we gave out our location, but we were cautious for good reason. One time a logging crew had screamed around a corner and almost forced us off the road. When Nona lit into them, not bothering with radio protocol, the idiot had replied, “Gave you a bit of a scare, did we, ladies? Maybe you should learn to drive.” We’d both said, “Fucking loggers,” at the same time, though not into the mic, then burst out laughing when we remembered we were both married to loggers.
The radio crackled, then the voice of the dispatcher at the Forestry office broke through.
“Nona, Jan’s with you, right?”
Nona unhooked the mic. “She’s right here.”
Even before the next words, fear flashed through me, right to my fingertips, like tiny shocks. My kids! I should never have left my kids!
“Jan, Grant has had an accident.”
Relief flooded through me, as though I’d been on death row and given a reprieve, but it lasted only a split second. I grabbed the mic from Nona, my hand shaking. Pushed the button.
“What happened? Is he okay?” I wanted to say, “Is he dead?” but I couldn’t say that word. My knuckles were white around the mic. This was my punishment. I should never have gone back to work. I should have been happy with what I had.
Nona’s head swivelled from the road to me and back to the road.
“I don’t have the details, Jan. They’re taking him to Calgary by ambulance right now. Just get back to the office as soon as you can.”
Nona took the receiver out of my hand, slipped it on the hook.
An image of Ted in his wheelchair flitted through my mind, his body useless from his armpits down, his hands curled and his atrophying legs pressed together at the knees.
* * *
—
I speed-walked down the hallway of the Calgary hospital with Sam on my back. His breath was sweet and warm on the back of my neck and he was blowing spit bubbles near my right ear. He and Jenna had been born on the floor above, on the maternity ward. Now we were back to visit their father lying in one of these rooms with a mangled leg.
When I got to Grant’s room, I peered in before entering. There were four curtained-off sections, and I didn’t want to stick my head into the wrong one, but Sam gurgled loudly and Grant’s voice came from behind the furthest curtain. “I’m over here.” At least he had the window, even if it was facing east, not west toward the mountains.
He was lying w
ith sheets and blankets tucked up under his chin, his bare leg raised by a pulley off the bed. It was a swollen mass of colour—purple, pink and red—spreading from a line of black stitches and coagulating blood where the bone had broken through. Metal bolts protruded from the sides of his knee and ankle. A compound tib/fib. He’d had the first operation that morning. He needed one more.
Before I left for Calgary, Grant’s boss had explained how the roots of the tree Grant had been bucking rolled right over him and pinned him. They’d had to cut him out with a chain saw, close to his leg, wedging the tree so it wouldn’t shift and squish him. It had taken a long time.
I forced myself to look up from his leg, into his eyes. Shiny blue. What would I do if he cried? He cleared his throat.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he whispered hoarsely. His wall was gone, replaced with a naked defencelessness I saw on the kids’ faces when they were scared or hurt.
This is how he’d looked when we’d discussed splitting up. I’d tried to picture him living all alone, without his family, and it was worse than the thought of me and the kids in a trailer court in the toxic fallout of the lumber mill.
I squatted by the bed and took his hand. It was cut and scraped, like he’d ripped it apart in a hard crack climb. “Of course I came.” My throat closed as I pressed his rough hand against the smooth skin of my cheek.
We didn’t speak for a few moments, until Sam grabbed two handfuls of my hair and I had to let go of Grant’s hand to unfurl tiny fingers.
“When I saw that log coming at me, all I could think about was Ted in his wheelchair,” Grant said.
“Yeah, I thought the same thing.”
After I’d dropped Jenna and Chaba with Kim, I had too much time to think on the four-hour drive to Calgary. While I thought of Grant and how close he’d come to having a life like Ted’s, I’d also realized how close I’d come to having a life like Diane’s. Washing and feeding a quadriplegic, emptying his catheter and bowels. Diane had wanted to go to school too, but now she never would.
