“Oh yeah, shit, Kris, I totally forgot.”
She ground the last remaining fries into the soup of ketchup and vinegar on the tray. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t expect you to remember, it was utterly forgettable. No big deal. It got better, that’s the important part.” Krista looked up at me as she put the fries in her mouth.
“So, it’s good with Mike?”
She nodded, chewed. “Yeah, most of the time,” she said through the remnants of a mouthful, then swallowed, continued, “I mean, I can’t even feel the rug burn when we’re going at it on the floor, that’s how good it feels.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She looked at me. “Oh. Well, I don’t know what else to tell you. I haven’t had any spiritual insights, if that’s what you’re after.” Krista got up from the table quickly and told me to meet her at Rim Rock Records at five-thirty. She left the tray behind and I tipped it toward and away from me, watching the ketchup and vinegar slide across the plastic.
Later that afternoon, on our way to Therese’s car in the parking lot, I saw them, a trail of women and children from the Free Church coming out of Kmart, a bantam parade of noise and colour. Two young women pushed children balanced in the seats of grocery carts. One had a baby strapped to her and kids skipped and jumped around the rattling freight of cleaning products, large boxes of food, and plastic bags of diapers.
“Sylvia!” Becky from the Free Church said, her baby strapped to her facing outward, blinking and pumping its limbs like it was emerging from her chest. The other woman, Wendy, smiled slightly and looked over her shoulder. The four of us stood like that, without speaking, until Becky went on, “We sure would love to see you two back at service.” Wendy nodded in agreement.
“Uh, yeah, maybe –” I said, my voice trailing to a silent point, thankful when one of the kids started shaking the metal frame of a cart, causing the baby in the seat to wail. The women tried to keep up some kind of meagre conversation but the children tugging, crying, and vying for attention made it impossible. Therese drove the car up beside us and honked once, quickly. We said goodbye to the women and I felt sombre, though I couldn’t imagine why. There was no reason to be – I had left behind the possibility of becoming one of those women, cloaked in children and groceries, pushing loads through cold, wet parking lots.
When we were almost back at their place, Therese started in, “All right, Harper, you little devil,” winking at me in the rear-view mirror as if to signal she wasn’t serious, though I would’ve known. “Tell me. You up and ran off to a hippie commune. Your poor mother must be shittin’ bricks, pardon moi Franchais.”
“Therese, it’s not a hippie commune,” Krista said. “It’s a – what is it, Harper?”
“An arts community.”
“Well, all righty, then. Sounds like a commune to me. Bunch of long-hairs and draft dodgers, ‘farming’ as they call it – Harper, did I ever tell ya how close I was to going to Woodstock?” We had pulled into the carport and Therese yanked on the emergency brake.
“Only about a million times, Mom – Therese. Harper doesn’t want to hear about it again.” Krista got out of the car, slammed the door and went into the house.
Therese just looked after her, and continued as we both got out of the car and went in. “So, I get stuck in New York City. Heard the Stones were playing. I’d take seeing the Stones over standing around topless in a muddy field any day. Course, we never did find them. They were probably up in Woodstock, the jerks, but, oh, Mick Jagger – what I wouldn’t give! Those skinny little hips – oh, can that man move.”
We were in the kitchen and Krista joined us there, saying, “Uh, Therese, fascinating as this is, Harper doesn’t want to hear it.”
“Mouthy little wench, isn’t she? Harper, pull up your jeans, let me see your legs.”
“Mom, come on!” Krista said.
“Harper doesn’t mind, do ya?”
“Nah, I don’t mind.” I lifted a leg of my jeans. I knew what Mrs. Delaney was checking for.
“Attagirl, still smooth. Don’t let those hippies convince you to stop shaving your legs. I don’t care what anyone else says, men do not like women with hairy legs, not even those longhairs out there. If they tell you any different – the men, I mean – they’re lying.”
“Therese, you are an absolute font of knowledge,” Krista said to her mother.
“And you, my darling daughter, are an absolute font in the ass.” I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Mrs. Delaney beamed back at me.
Krista said, “Harp, I don’t know if we can hang out tonight. I have an essay due for English.” She turned away from me before I could say anything, and asked, “Therese, can you give her a ride home?” When she left the room, Therese looked at me and shrugged before picking up her keys again from the kitchen table.
That evening, when I returned, I joined Gabe in the workshop half of the shed. A guitar was in pieces on the drafting table and he was measuring each one, laying them on partially unrolled spools of paper.
I stood by the table, touching the edge lightly with my fingertips and shifting my weight, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, I asked, “Can I help?”
Gabe looked up, blinked, and I was sure I caught the beginning of a grin. “You want to help?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, well, um. You’re probably good at sketching, huh?” I nodded. “Why don’t you sketch a piece. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but as close to what it actually looks like as possible, okay? And if you figure out the measurements, you can write them alongside, or I can tell you what they are.” I nodded and picked up the face of the guitar. It was curved and wouldn’t lie flat, but I placed it on a piece of paper, traced the curves, with a pencil, then followed these with a compass carefully, while I tried to remember what to do from there.
At some point I asked, “What’s the story with Thomas?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, where’s he from, how’d he get here …”
“I don’t know much. I know he moved here years ago, when my parents did. He was with someone then. I don’t think it was his wife but, you know. I think she died in childbirth.”
“Childbirth? I didn’t think anyone died in childbirth any more.”
“Yeah, well, I guess someone did. I’m not sure though, something like that. He never talks about her and I don’t ask.”
By the end of the evening, I had sketched the front, back, and neck of the guitar. I had given up on the equations of figures, leaving that to Gabe, and made alternative versions of each piece. The first sketch would be the bare outline, in proportion. In subsequent drawings I would elaborate, add the grains of wood, the notes that would reverberate from the strings.
After a couple of weeks, I suddenly felt as though I wanted to see Nick, as if to find some connection to a place I’d been before. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him at school. Granted, he was in grade eight, skinny, and awkward. Boys like him must have willed themselves invisible. Either that or they were still outside playing like they had in elementary school. I wouldn’t have known. I preferred parking lots and streets leading away from the school to fields.
Then, I remembered. Nick was a skinny boy who smoked dope. He would probably be with the other skinny boys who smoked, outside the back door to the metal workshop, the one that opened onto a loading zone and a couple of dumpsters. I had to go into the parking lot to access the concrete and chain-link yard that smelled of sawdust, metal filings, garbage, and cigarette smoke. There he was, not with the headbangers but with a couple of lean geeks, squatting, handling dice and cards. It was still January and the temperature hovered around freezing, if we were lucky. It felt colder.
“Hey, Nick,” I called out, hoping my tone conveyed a kind of casual authority. He looked at me, back to his friends and rolled his eyes, then shuffled over. We walked to the chain-link fence separating the loading zone from the field and both seized it with ungloved hands, stared
outward and both leaned back, pulling the links. The fence was so cold it burned. I turned around then, bounced my back off the fence.
“How’s it going?” I asked, not knowing how else to start.
“All right. Nice hair, Harp.”
“Yeah, thanks. Nice life.”
“You’re one to talk. You still at that commune?”
“It’s not a commune. It’s an arts community. How are things at home? Miss me yet?” I rubbed my hands together, looked down at them.
“Yeah, right.”
“How’s Mom?” I rubbed my hands slowly. They felt unnaturally smooth in the cold, unreal.
Nick stared at his feet as he spoke, kicked at lumps of unrecognizable material – snow, dirt, sand, something for it all to cling on to. “She seems a little, like, sad. People have been talking about how you’ve been deceived, that they’re brainwashing you up there, that they’re a New Age cult and you’ve been, you know, taken by sin, that you’ve – what’s that word? summoned? to temptation.” He looked up at me quickly, then away again.
“Succumbed.” I pulled one of the unrecognizable lumps toward me with the tip of my shoe, then punted it skidding across the pavement lot.
Nick watched its progress then turned to me. “So, you going to come back?”
“I don’t know, Nick. Not now anyway.” I bounced off the fence and stood upright, groping in jacket pockets until I found a small piece of paper. “Here’s my number, though, you can call, although I don’t know why you’d want to.”
I already had the number written down. I was going to give it to the first friend of Nick’s I saw, if I didn’t find him. He took the piece of paper and stuffed it in his jacket pocket and we both stood rubbing our hands together. Nick looked over at his friends again and I knew he wanted to go. “See ya,” I said, not moving.
“See ya, Harp.” He twisted his mouth in a way that could have been a smile and turned to walk back to his friends. I watched him, his gait awkward and self-conscious, chin stuffed into the collar of his jacket.
I knew Nick would never call me at the farm but suddenly he was the person I loved most in the world. That must be the way it is with siblings. You might not have much in common with them. You may hardly even talk, but suddenly a love can rise up in you for them that is so strong and clear that it can make you believe all those sayings about blood and water and the way they both flow.
GABE
In a few months, the visits taper off until there are only phone calls a couple times a week, people checking in to see how everything is going. Everything is not going well but there’s no way to say this. People don’t want to hear it so you tell them that you’re all pulling through.
You have thought about Anise’s kiss, her darting tongue, since that night. She was a better kisser than any of the girls you’ve been with and it disgusts you that you are even able to think that. Anise is wearing fewer and fewer clothes around the house, even though it’s getting colder, and sometimes she looks straight at you when she crosses and uncrosses her legs. The girls mimic their mother. The heat is cranked up so the four of them can walk around the house in T-shirts and underwear, eating and watching TV in Anise’s bed together.
You were going to wait until the house sold and they found another place but you know now that you are going to have to leave soon. You have no idea what Anise is going to do and this unpredictability scares you. First, she will have to find a much cheaper place to live in with the three girls, then she will have to find full-time work. She’ll visit her husband in jail and become a single mother, after eleven years. It all sounds like more than one person can take, especially if that person is Anise, and you had assumed that you would stay and help. Much as you like to believe that you raised yourself, she was always there for you, after all.
It takes you a few days to get a hold of your mother, Susan, in British Columbia. When you hear her voice over the phone line, she sounds like a stranger, which she is. You have only seen her four times since you were six. Twice you stayed for a couple of weeks. The other two times, you stayed the entire summer, learned to ride a horse, put up a fence and use a swede saw. You could probably count the times you’ve talked to her if you tried. Susan sounds tired and resigned when you talk to her on the phone, says, “Sure, of course, come on up. Won’t be able to help you out with cash, though, but you know that.”
You tell Peter before Anise. You no longer have to talk to him on the other side of glass, so you walk around the fenced yard together. When you tell him, your father stops walking, looks through the wires out into the trees and tells you he understands. When he turns back to you, there are tears in his eyes and he tries to smile. You don’t think you’ve ever felt a true emotion before this moment. The sadness that you feel burns through every organ and cell in your body, feels like weight and heat and sharp pain at once.
A couple of weeks later when they say goodbye at the Greyhound station, the girls each give you a gift. The oldest gives you a traveller’s journal, complete with a lock, and is proud of her choice. The middle girl stares at her feet and thrusts a drawing at you. It is of the three girls, Anise and Peter, all standing on the back deck, waving. You are in the picture too, the back of your head in the lower right-hand corner, your hand raised in a wave. You can tell that she had trouble drawing the hand, the paper is thin and balled there from being erased several times. The youngest gives you a shiny, purple stone. When the bus comes, you hug the girls, then Anise, who holds your face in both of her hands and shakes her head from side to side slowly.
With what little money there is, Anise bought you a ticket for the entire trip but after a night on the bus, you get off and hitchhike. As a single young man, you are picked up by a succession of freaks. No one hurts you, but one man asks politely if you’d like to blow him, then simply smiles when you refuse, slips a John Denver tape in the deck and sings along, something about filling up his senses. Another drives with one hand on the wheel, the other either reaching for a can of beer, lifting it to his lips, or throwing an empty out the window. You didn’t know people like this actually existed. With each ride you feel your childhood strung out behind you, a trail of exhaust.
It all goes well until you hit Kelowna, in the interior of British Columbia. After that, no one slows down except to glare at you. Twice, men in pickups give you the finger. After spending an unprecedented six hours by the side of the road, you walk back to a minigolf course and phone Susan. “Welcome to the Bible belt, sweetie,” she says. The minigolf course is open late enough that you can wait there while someone drives the hour to come get you. On the course, you try to launch a ball into a castle and hit the moat every time. Later you shoot at things in the arcade until you are confusing sound and colour and have to get some fresh air.
Thomas comes to pick you up. He may or may not be the man from your first memories, the man that you and Susan stayed with in the coldest months of the winter while Peter slept in the shack. You know he’s been around the farm for years but was always working out in the bush when you came up those summers. He laughs and nods his head when he sees you. “Gabriel Miller. Gabe Miller,” he says and shakes your hand.
Once you get into the truck, Thomas says to you, “That’s rough about your old man.” You tell him that Peter may be out soon, that he has some friends pulling strings back in the States. You don’t know why you say this. It’s a lie. Peter’s friends have no strings but it’s as though you want to impress Thomas. This is when he tells you about the money – that Peter has been sending up a bit here and there for Thomas to put aside for you. He’s opened up an account in your name in Canada and, though you’re by no means rich, you’ll have a bit to live off for a few months.
“No offence, but why you? I mean, why not Susan, or I don’t know … Why didn’t he tell me?” you ask. Even after such a short absence, your father is seeming more and more like a stranger. Peter never disclosed what he did for a living and now you find out that he was feeding a trust fund
off that money, and not telling you that either, not even during those last times you saw him. Thomas speeds up to overtake a car, then mutters about slow drivers in the passing lane. He doesn’t answer your question and you don’t repeat it.
You get to the farm after midnight. Susan is up, drinking coffee and smoking in the cookshack. She cracks a grin that cleaves her small, taut face when she sees you. You greet her with feigned nonchalance and, for the first time, when you hug her, you have to bend down. Susan looks older than you expected. Her hair and her skin look thin, her eyes huge, the rest of her features receding. She puts out her cigarette when you come in but lights another one soon after, coughing between the two like someone who has been smoking for years.
As you walk back to her place she tells you that she is sorry about what happened to Peter. She says his name quickly, non-committally. She lives in an A-frame cabin now. After you and Peter left, she built and wired it herself. “Well, not entirely myself. Took me three years and as many men to get this thing off the ground,” she jokes. “I’ve set up the spare room for you, for now, but we’ll get you set up in another space on the land. I’m sure you didn’t come up here to live with your mother.” Susan laughs lightly and you join her, wonder who she is saying this for, you or herself. It’s true, you don’t think you came here to live with your mother, but you may have come to escape your stepmother, the uncomfortable things growing between her and you. You’ve come to forget everything you’ve left behind.
Susan helps you carry your things into the spare room, then leaves you alone. The room has a bed, a desk piled with books, old newspapers, and shoeboxes, an open trunk full of balls of wool, and everywhere photographs of you. Some are framed, some are pinned to the wall. One of Susan holding you is blown up on thin paper and hangs above the bed. There are several of you as a baby and toddler, barefoot and in overalls, the standard uniform for children of your generation. A few look like they were taken shortly before you left, doing boyish, farmish things – sitting on the horse-drawn plough, chasing a goose, standing on top of a stump. The rest of the photos are from one of four ages – eleven, twelve, thirteen, or fourteen – the years when you visited. In each you look even more awkward and scrawny than the last. As you get older, you look away from the camera and your mouth betrays smiles pulled down in embarrassment.
The Sudden Weight of Snow Page 19
