by Jan Redford
“I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching in the past few hours,” Grant said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ve got to get out of logging. This is my wake-up call.”
I took his hand again. Smiled. I’d always known that Grant the logger was not the same as Grant the father and climber. I knew we could make it if I could just convince him to get into carpentry or mountain guiding. But each time he was on the verge of change, he’d be drawn back to falling—the risk, the physical exertion, the mountains, the money.
He looked at me. Really looked at me. “We’ve gotta make some big changes.”
* * *
—
The next day, Grant was sitting up in bed when Sam and I arrived.
“There’s my little family!”
“Wow, you’re sure perky,” I said.
Sam picked up on his father’s energy and wriggled on my back, growling. It was his new form of communication. I extracted a handful of my hair out of his fingers.
“Morphine.” Grant grinned drunkenly and pointed toward his IV. “Nothing better than morphine.”
“I got you a book.” I handed him a paper bag.
A few months ago, Grant had drawn my attention to our bedside tables. On mine, a teetering stack of self-help books—The Dance of Anger; An Adult Child’s Guide to What’s Normal; Co-dependent No More; Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus; Relationship Rescue; and on his, The Truck Trader. We’d laughed, but I’d found it more sad than funny.
He pulled the book out of the bag. Iron John: A Book about Men.
He flipped it over, read out loud: “Get in touch with your masculinity. The wild man sleeping inside of us wakes up for good and helps us make peace with the dark and bright sides of our psyche.” He flipped the pages, breathed in the smell of new book. “Cool. My very first self-help book.”
* * *
—
“I’ve been thinking. I’m going to quit smoking. I already have a head start.” Grant had made it through the second operation, they’d replaced the morphine with Demerol, and even though he was in pain, he was optimistic.
“That’s a great idea.” I thought of the money we’d save. No lung cancer. No cigarette breath.
“And I’m going to quit drinking.”
I tried not to smile too hard. “It sounds like you’ve been reading your new book.” Iron John was still on the bedside table.
“Not yet. I can’t concentrate. I’ll start it when I get home.”
I handed him a bag of muffins from the bakery, a climbing magazine, the Calgary Herald. I had to drive back to Golden. I had to get back to work and bring Jenna home from Kim’s. If she even wanted to come home. She’d told me she wanted Kim to be her mommy, wanted Haley and Ocean to be her sisters. I got it, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. She was fantasizing about a stable family, like I used to, not one that alternated between screaming at each other and freezing each other out. But if Grant could get out of logging, we could be a normal family.
“Also, I’m starting to think it’s a good idea for you to go to school. Why don’t you stop at the campus on your way home? Check out the rental situation there.”
I wasn’t sure if I should speak. I didn’t want to break the spell. “Are you serious?”
“I could work at some crap job and look after the kids, or start apprenticing for carpentry. We have to get out of Golden. That place is destroying us. Logging is turning me into someone I don’t want to be.”
This was what I’d been waiting for. For him to see what logging was doing to us. I threw my arms around his neck, almost grateful for the accident.
“One more year of logging. Save up a bit of money, then we’re out of there,” he said.
* * *
—
Walking through the university family housing complex was like walking through a red brick maze. With Sam growling and trying to launch off my back, I wandered out of one court and into an almost identical one, then another and another. In each court, about twelve townhouses faced a grassy, treed yard with a big sandbox at one end that seemed to be party central. Mothers mostly, but some dads, sat on the concrete edge, and little kids of all shapes and sizes and colours flipped sand with shovels, pushed trucks and made sand castles, while older kids did laps on the pavement on bikes. I reached behind me, grabbed Sam’s hand.
“What do you think, Sambones?” I said, using Kim’s new name for him. “Wanna move to the city?”
With his feet on the frame and his hard little toes poking into my back, he bounced like he was in the jolly jumper and squealed.
Finally we found the housing office.
“You understand the wait list is long. At least a year. Sometimes two. People don’t realize that. They come marching in here, asking for a unit just a month before their classes start. I hope you weren’t planning to go to school this fall.” The woman in the university housing office gazed at me over her reading glasses.
“No, no,” I said and pointed to Sam on my back. “He’s only seven months old. It’ll be a year.”
A whole year. Would Grant still want to come to Calgary in a year? And could I survive another winter alone in the Blaeberry with the kids while he worked one last season in the bush? Especially if the well dried up again.
“Good, good. When your name comes up, as long as you put down the deposit, we’ll hold a unit for you. How many occupants? Just you and your baby?”
I looked at my ring-free hand. I rarely wore my silver ring. It made me feel like a possession.
“Four of us. My two kids and my husband.”
“Great. That’s wonderful. Wonderful.”
Was it my imagination, or did this woman just suddenly start treating me like an adult? An adult with a real family. Not just some thirty-year-old single woman with a baby.
“Just sign here.” She handed me a pen with University of Calgary stamped in gold letters.
As we wove back through the maze, I took a closer look at the units. Each had a living-room window, a tall narrow window by the front door, and two upstairs bedroom windows. Most were stuck to neighbours on both sides and at the back, and had a “private yard” consisting of a six-by-six-foot entrance area at the front door, enclosed by brick walls. No ten acres of trees, no garden, no picture window with a mountain view, no big deck.
Grant was going to hate this place.
29
PLAYING DEAD
A cloud of dust followed the car as I drove down the dirt road toward home. Sam faced backwards in his baby seat beside me gumming an arrowroot cookie, but I knew it wouldn’t occupy him for long. He was staring at my chest and drooling. He’d only take the bottle if I wasn’t around. His thick eyelashes were dark with tears because I’d only nursed him for a couple of minutes at Kim’s before Jenna had started whining for supper. She was lying in the back seat, covered in grey silt from the pond, with her bare feet stuck out the window, munching on a granola bar.
My stomach growled. Nona and I had worked an eleven-hour shift in muggy heat, fighting mosquitoes and black flies, so I knew how the kids felt. But now I had two flex days. This was my Friday. For the next four days I could work in the garden, get the house liveable again, take the kids for bike rides in the trailer.
When I pulled up to our green metal mailbox, dust billowed in through the windows. I pulled out a stack of mail and flipped through bills and flyers. There was a big shiny brochure. I flipped it over. It was addressed to Grant.
We bumped up the driveway, then, with Sam on my hip and Jenna straggling behind me with her blanket, I climbed the stairs into the house. Grant was lying on the futon with his leg propped up on several pillows. He had a beer in his hand.
“Where’d you get the beer?”
“Dale popped in to see how I was doing.”
“Should you be drinking with codeine?” Suddenly I was so exhausted I felt like I’d been hit by a logging truck.
“A couple beers never hurt a guy.”
&nb
sp; Maybe it was a good thing he was drinking. Put him in a better mood. The first few days back from the hospital had been fine; he’d been happy just to be home. Then boredom had set in. Then crankiness. Sometimes I wondered if that had anything to do with being taken off Demerol and morphine. He’d been on one or the other for three weeks. I dropped the stack of mail on the futon beside Grant. “Still no cheque from Compo.”
The dirty dishes from last night and this morning were still piled up on the counter, so with Sam still perched on my hip, I started the hot water to get them soaking in the sink. Grant could hobble around enough to get to the bathroom or grab a beer, but not to cook or clean.
“I’m hungry.” Jenna pulled at my dusty work pants. A tantrum was brewing.
“I know, baby. Why don’t you play with Daddy while I nurse your brother?” Sam started to cry and bang his head against my chest.
“I don’t want to play with Daddy. I want to eat.”
“Oh, Christ,” I whispered under my breath. Every time I swore in front of the kids I thought of my poor mother locking herself in her bedroom to curse us while my brother and sister and I listened quietly outside the door, thinking this time she was going to leave. How she had survived was beyond me.
I opened the fridge. Almost no food. I hadn’t been able to take the time to go to Overwaitea after work. Kim had my two kids, along with her own two, for ten to twelve hours as it was, and I certainly couldn’t expect her to feed them dinner. She must have been looking forward to Grant taking over for her in a few weeks, as soon as he could get around more easily.
I slapped together a peanut butter sandwich and milk for Jenna to hold her off until dinner, then sank into the couch to nurse Sam.
“What’s that?” I asked. Grant had the large brochure I’d thought was junk mail in his hand.
“A photography school in Calgary. I’m thinking of applying.”
“Photography school? What, like an evening class?”
“No, full-time.”
“What are you talking about? What about carpentry?”
We had it all planned out. In Calgary next year, he’d either do a job as a labourer so he could be around to help with the kids, or we’d both get loans and he’d retrain as a carpenter.
“I thought if I have to get retrained I might as well do what I love,” he said.
“Is this a joke?” Sam sensed my tension. He looked up with wide eyes and kneaded my skin harder as he nursed.
“I thought I’d log for another year then go to photography school. When I’m finished, you can go to school.” He held the brochure up in front of his face, signalling the end of the conversation. He was using his ultimatum voice, a cue for me to shut up. He reached for his beer and it disappeared behind the brochure.
Rage rushed through me with such ferocity I was sure it would contaminate my milk. I stared at Grant for a few moments, the anger ramming against the back of my teeth, wanting to spew out of me like lava. But I kept my voice steady. “There is no way you’re going to school before I do.”
Grant lowered the brochure. His face was flushed. “You’ve been nagging at me for years to get out of logging. So now I’m planning to get out and this is the support I get? Fuck it. I’ll just keep logging.” He reached over and turned on the TV.
I popped Sam roughly off my breast and plunked him in the baby backpack. He stared up at me but didn’t cry. I swung him onto my back. I needed to take a walk down the driveway to clear my head, get my heart rate down. But Jenna was about to freak out and I had to get her fed before she had a complete meltdown.
I pulled out the carton of eggs Jenna had collected from Anne and Burl’s chickens. My hand shook as I passed one to her. I tried to keep my voice calm, motherly.
“Let’s scramble some of your eggs. You can break them.”
Jenna took the egg from me. I could tell she sensed the change, that she realized she had to be good.
When the kids’ food was ready, Jenna spooned Pablum and puréed carrots into her brother’s mouth between her bites of scrambled egg. As I broke the eggs for an omelette, I felt a prickliness on the back of my neck. I turned around. Grant was staring at me, an odd smile on his face.
“What? Why are you staring at me like that?” I’d had no intention of talking to him for the rest of my life, but it looked like he was ready to apologize.
“I’m just enjoying myself.”
“What are you talking about? You enjoy watching me get run off my feet?” I poured the eggs into the pan. They sizzled and spluttered till I adjusted the flame.
“Yeah, I do. In fact, I get a lot of satisfaction from it.”
I turned back toward him. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“If you hadn’t gone back to work, I wouldn’t be lying here. You might as well have picked up a maul and broken my leg yourself.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Well, think about it. I got hurt because I had to help you with the kids and around the house. I was exhausted.”
I stared at Grant, his skinny white legs sticking out from baggy, worn red nylon shorts, the broken one—bruised, swollen and powerless—propped up on a pillow. This was the guy I’d let be the boss of me. Where to live. How to live. Whether or not to go to school. For four years.
The omelette started smoking. I pulled it off the heat, dumped it out of the pan with my lips pressed tight. If I opened my mouth, what would spew out would certainly not be an “I statement.”
* * *
—
“How can everything crap out like that?” I half-whispered into the phone. “It was going so well and then—poof! We’re right back where we started.”
I looked out the window of our shop, across the dark yard to the lit-up window of the living room. The kids were asleep, but Grant was still awake. When I talked to my mother, I was always terrified he’d listen in on the other phone.
My mother murmured soothingly on the other end from Victoria and I was transported back to Whitehorse, Mom sitting on the edge of my bed, singing, “Que sera, sera.”
“What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy with my little family and my gorgeous house?” I tried to rub the knots out of my neck. I couldn’t turn my head in either direction more than about three inches. “Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. Making it all up.”
“If everything was working in your life, you wouldn’t have this turmoil. People don’t feel this way for no reason.”
“I’m so angry I could scream. Or murder someone. It feels like a cancer growing in me.” I paced to the end of the phone cord, spun and paced back.
“Anger can be a good thing. It doesn’t have to be a cancer. It can be a motivator. Help you push for change. When you’re ready.”
When I’m ready. But when would that be? Would I ever be ready? Or would I follow in my mother’s footsteps to the bitter end. Settling, for the rest of my life.
“But why does it keep surprising me, every time he changes his mind?”
My father had done the same thing, back and forth, making promises, taking them back, and it had caught me by surprise every time. But my dad had been a drinker, my dad had had blackouts. It was different with Grant.
Before I phoned Mom I’d had one more brief conversation with Grant, probably the last one we’d have for a while. I reminded him that he’d agreed to my going to university in the fall, even suggested it, and he replied, “The only reason I said yes was because I didn’t think you’d really go.”
“Jan, you might not want to wait until he lets you go to school. You might never get there,” my mother said.
“I don’t think I can do it alone. Just working full-time with two kids is grinding me into the ground. I can’t imagine school.”
“Don’t underestimate yourself, kiddo.” She paused. “I’ve been thinking. I’d like to put a bit of money aside for your tuition. It won’t be much, but I can give you a hundred dollars a month. I wish I could do more.”
“You do
n’t have to do that, Ma.”
“If it gets you one step closer to university, it’ll be worth it.”
I looked at my watch. It was getting late and the kids would wake me at five.
There was a click on the phone. I looked out the window, my pulse thudding against my temples like someone was hammering to get out. Has he been listening? Guilt settled over me like a burka. Grant was lying there, all cut up with a broken leg, in pain, bored, unable to do anything, and I was in here as usual, complaining about him.
Another click and I realized it was probably the party line.
“I should phone you sometime when Grant’s being nice so you’ll realize he’s not always a schmuck.”
“Yes, that’s a wonderful idea. Why don’t you?”
“Probably because it never lasts long enough for me to get to the phone.”
We had a little chuckle. I felt better. It was handy having a mother who volunteered for a crisis line when your own life was one big crisis.
Another click on the line. Seashell noise, like someone was listening in. Click, and they were gone. Definitely the party line.
“I’ve gotta go, Ma. Someone’s trying to use the phone.”
I choked up saying goodbye. For me and my mom. She deserved a better life than the one she got.
* * *
—
“I have a really shitty feeling about this block,” I told Nona as I stepped out of the truck and peered into the heavily overgrown bush.
We knew the contractors’ camp nearby had been destroyed over the weekend. Metal siding ripped off the trailer, the fridge stripped down to its insulation, windows smashed, puncture marks in cans of food. It must have been the problematic silvertip grizzly the Banff wardens had relocated to this area.
“We just have to do a quick walk-through,” Nona said.
