“Wait,” Krista opened her backpack. She had an old beach towel wrapped around bottles. She spread it out for us on a makeshift porch of flats and plywood and we sat on the pattern of black palm trees against fluorescent lines of setting sky. “Here,” she said and handed me a beer. “Don’t drink it all at once, we need them for chasers.” I looked at what Krista was pulling out of her bag: a mickey of gin, four beers.
“Krista, I can’t drink gin. It’s gross, I’ll hurl.”
“Sorry, Harp, tonight you’re drinking what I say you’re drinking.” Krista tightened her jaw and stared straight at me, daring me to cross her, then she threw back a gulp of gin, chased it down with beer. I followed but when the alcohol hit the back of my throat, bile rose up. As I tried to wash it away, I choked on my beer, forcing it out my nostrils.
“So,” I said when I had regained some composure. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me,” Krista answered.
“I don’t know what I can tell you. Things weren’t working out at the farm. Gabe doesn’t seem the same, but I don’t know if it’s that. Maybe I’m just seeing things differently. It’s not like we were fighting or anything but –”
“Men,” Krista started. “They just don’t know how to be in relationships – most of them are convinced that they should be living in a cabin in the woods hunting their own game or blasting around in some sports car getting a blow job but, come on, like most of them could pull off either of those things successfully.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that. I don’t know if I can have a normal, relaxed relationship with anyone. And the farm – as different as it was, it seemed like people couldn’t just be honest there either, and that’s exactly what I was trying to get away from. But what, do I just go home and call it a day?”
We kept going without talking, pouring drinks down our throats and controlling gag reflexes, until we were both red-faced and dizzy. It started to get dark. “Okay, your turn,” I said. “What’s going on? With you this time.”
Krista stopped drinking, then looked straight ahead for a long time before saying, “What if I told you that I did invite Mike and Rob that night, that I invited them so I’d have someone around when you abandoned me for Gabe, or Thomas, or whoever?”
“I don’t know,” I said, then, “Why didn’t you tell me you felt like that?”
“We didn’t seem to be telling each other much of anything any more.” Krista held a nearly empty bottle out in front of her and peered through it. “There’s something else.” She paused, then said quietly, “You know how I was crying that day in the church?”
“Yeah?” I chided myself for not asking sooner.
“Well, oh, God – well, okay, so one night about a week before the fire we do shrooms, Mike and me and Rob. We’d also had a lot to drink and, well … Mike and Rob disappear for a while and I’m left watching some dumb movie by myself – that one about the girl and the horse, she becomes a champion, horse dies, you know the one – in the basement. I keep drinking, ’cause you know how that makes you feel less stoned sometimes?” She stopped and took a drink, then said, “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, so they come back and, before I know what’s happening – I mean, seriously, I really didn’t know – Mike’s holding me down on the floor and Rob is on top of me.” I was silent, staring straight ahead, unable to feel anything but hatred toward Mike. “At first I think it’s some kind of joke and I’m like, ha ha, Mike will you get this guy off of me, but then I realize they’re serious and, and Rob – well – and then Mike gets on me and – you know.”
I clenched my fists to feel my nails dig into my palms. “He never should have done that to you, Krista.”
“Then Mike tells me, when he’s done, that he’s sorry, that Rob was supposed to just get me ‘ready’ for him, he promised he wouldn’t actually do it. He kept apologizing and apologizing and saying how drunk he was and how it wasn’t supposed to happen that way and, I don’t know, it’s like – I don’t know what it’s like.”
“And you stayed with him after that?”
“That’s the worst thing. It’s like I had to see him hurt someone else, commit arson, before I could convince myself to ditch him.”
“What he did wasn’t your fault, Krista.”
“I know, it’s just that sometimes –”
“It wasn’t.”
We were quiet then, passing the bottle back and forth until we had finished all the alcohol. Then, I moved toward Krista and held her while she shook. When both of us could stand, we threw the bottles from the porch into the orchard and wove our way back to Krista’s, stopping to rest several times. I stayed on the back step when we got there. I wanted to find a steady place where the world would stop spinning. When it wouldn’t, I went inside. The bathroom light was on at the end of the hall. Krista was sitting on the edge of the tub, head between her knees. I gripped the counter to maintain my balance. Krista lifted her head and pointed to the toilet with a wan smile. “Be my guest,” she said. I puked up gin, beer, and what appeared to be strawberry ice cream while Krista crawled into the hall.
When I was finished, I tried to wipe down the bathroom, misting disinfectant and air freshener to try to get rid of the smell, then made my way into the hall and dropped to the floor beside Krista. At some point, encouraging each other, we dragged ourselves into her bed. I remember a moment of throbbing pain in my head as I laid it on the pillow, a fleeting thought that I should seek water. I couldn’t move though, and as I began to fall asleep I thought of my own bed, a place where I could sleep alone, spread myself until my limbs met every edge. No fear of meeting another body in the night and not knowing in that state of sleep whether it was known to me or not.
The next morning, Krista and I missed the bus. We slept in until our hunger led us to the kitchen where we ate sugared cereal and drank instant coffee. I was hoping that Gabe would have called the night before, but there were no messages on the machine. When Therese discovered us, she gave us a ride to school, Krista and me pale and shaking with hangovers.
“I don’t even want to know what you two were up to last night,” Therese told us as she backed out of the carport, adjusting both the rear-view mirror and the sunglasses she wore for driving.
“Ditto,” groaned Krista from the back seat. “We’re not interested in what you did either.”
Therese looked at me and said, “Harper, tell me honestly, did I give birth to this monster? I mean, where did this smartass come from?” She motioned with her chin toward Krista.
Krista had given up sitting straight and was trying to lie down, wrapping her arms around her stomach and moving her torso slowly towards the seat. As she did, she said, “Look in the mirror, Therese. I sprang from your very own sweet loins – and can you not take the corners so quickly? I’ll puke, you know.”
“Loins!” Therese laughed. “Is that what kind of language they were teaching you in that holy-rolling church – please tell me you two aren’t going back there now, are you? Christ – loins, my ass.” With this, Therese turned up the radio and started singing along to an ancient Tammy Wynette song, pounding the steering wheel for emphasis. I opened the window in an attempt to swallow air and release some of the noise.
“Mom!” Krista said. “Can you turn that down? You are such a bitch.”
“Not my problem you two are hungover,” Therese answered but she turned the volume down. “I’m sorry, Harper. I just like to take the piss out of her, sometimes. Has to learn she can’t get through life so lippy, eh?”
I sleepwalked through all my classes, numb with too much sugar, not enough sleep, and something that seemed to be akin to grief, or some experience of loss. I spent the class after lunch crouched on a toilet in a stall in the girls’ restroom. I had taped an Out of Order sign to the door, but it wasn’t the most conducive space in which to formulate clear thoughts. I thought about calling Vera, if only to have her say, “It’s okay, swee
tie, everything will be okay,” but I didn’t know if she would and didn’t want to find out.
It takes Jim a couple of weeks to tell Vera he’s lost his job. He is still getting up early, taking the lunch she packs for him, but instead of going to work, he ends up going to the Legion. When she finds out, instead of yelling, she calmly tells Jim she’ll leave him and take the kids if they don’t get out of Fly Hills.
Jim complies and we move into a rental in Edmonton. While Jim continues to collect unemployment insurance, Vera gets part-time work at the library. I sit with other kids on a carpet and listen to my mother read, so proud that I actually live with the Story Lady, I think I’ll burst. She gets more and more hours and Nick and I go to a daycare in the same building, one with primary colours everywhere and stuffed cubes for chairs. We hear the fighting at night, fragile things hitting hard surfaces and the sound of glass splintering downstairs. Nick and I share a room so I get out of my bed and comfort him, my hand touching his hot head, the hair stuck there. Furniture is put out with the trash – an end table, a coat rack, small broken pieces.
While Nick and I finger paint, stack blocks, and eat snacks at a low circular table in the daycare, Vera talks with the other librarians about how she will leave her husband – the hushed tones, the quiet of the library making everything serious and peaceful at once. And she does leave. When she decides that she’s talked herself hoarse trying to be understood, that she doesn’t have the energy to throw one more plate, Vera packs the van with some of our things, straps us in and drives away, talking to Nick and me the entire time about how Mommy needs some time away from Daddy, Mommy needs some time to think.
We move into Auntie Al and my uncle’s house, along with their three teenage kids and my grandmother. I worship the teenagers. They seem far more savvy and smart than the adults. They have quick retorts, can disappear in an instant, and have more subtle, convincing ways of getting me to do what they want than any parent, aunt, or grandparent. The adults’ world is louder, more rushed – aunt, uncle, and mother passing plates of food, car keys, coats to one another in the kitchen. Baba is a formidable woman, and even as a small child I realize that she’s not the same as the rest of us. It’s been explained to me a few times that she’s not from here. Our grandmother comes from a place very far away called the Old Country. Sometimes she even thinks she’s back there. The teenagers live in a subtle world of secrets and exhilaration, Baba in the Old World, and Nick and I aren’t sure where we belong.
The Saturday afternoon that we sell most of our things in the driveway of Auntie Al’s house, I feel rich and important. People keep coming and buying our belongings, giving us money. I know, because Vera has explained it to me, that this money will help us get away and start a life on our own. I say goodbye to my cousins, my idols. It will take me a few years and a few summer visits to realize that they aren’t teenagers any more. They are nice enough adults but they will never be teenagers again.
We spend our last night in Edmonton at my father’s small apartment. Nick and I have been staying with him every weekend and we know how to help fold out the couch. Jim snaps the sheets over us and laughs as he unfolds them and then stays to tuck us in after he’s made the bed. “Last night on your old man’s couch for a while, hey?” he says and reaches out to touch both of our heads, holds his hands there for a long time. We want stories, not our father’s silence, so Jim stumbles through one, never telling it as well as Vera, then kisses us each on the forehead before he turns out the light. Later, I wake up and hear them. My parents are talking and laughing in the next room. That muffled sound in the dark makes me so happy that I rub my feet together under the blankets. I want to go see them in there, to lie between them and listen to them laugh. I am afraid that I will ruin it though, that if I go into the room, they will remember that they don’t get along and they will stop laughing. Perhaps if they get along again, we can stay.
Nick and I wake almost on top of each other, forced into the sagging middle of the mattress by the sheer will of the fold-out couch. We are grumpy and tired and we don’t know where we are going. Vera mutters about the lack of breakfast food in Jim’s kitchen while he sits in the living room and tries to talk to us. He asks if we are excited, if we will miss him. We don’t know what to answer so we nod and look at our feet. He tells us not to worry, and promises that we’ll see each other all the time.
Vera comes into the living room with peanut butter sandwiches already made and sealed in plastic. We’ll eat them on the road, she says. We have to get going. When we have gathered our things and hugged him goodbye, my father freezes in the middle of the room and starts to cry. They are frightening, those huge, racking sobs. He doesn’t even sit down like most people do when they are crying. My father just stands in the middle of the room, shaking, covering his eyes with his hands. It is mid-morning; I remember the light. I stand in the hall and watch him, watch how the bright light shakes with his silhouette. None of us say anything, not even Vera. She reaches out and touches his arm and Nick and I stand side by side, uncertain, then we just turn and leave, closing the door gently behind us.
It had taken us three weeks to drive to paradise. We stopped often, Vera insisting that we look up and take in all the beauty around us whenever we did. Each time, I wondered, is this where we will live now; is this where we will start our new life? We kept driving. We sang and took turns telling jokes or we would make up stories together, each of us saying one sentence and then passing it on. We patched together narratives from Vera’s logical sentences, my flights of imagination, and my little brother’s nonsense. One night when we were falling asleep on the foam mattress in the back of the van, Nick and me on either side of her, my mother said, “We’ve had enough of this, haven’t we?” I didn’t know what to say but it didn’t matter. She continued, “We’ve had enough moving around. Won’t it be nice to stop?” I answered by shifting closer to my mother on the mattress, finding a place to rest my head against her arm, and falling asleep. When we got to Sawmill Creek, we stopped.
GABE
You believe that beauty is in the details. So you make a list of things beautiful: Peter’s knuckles, tensed over wood and blade; Anise’s slender fingers around the globe of a wineglass; the pale skin of Harper’s scalp appearing between the slide and catch of scissors.
You make a list of beautiful things while you start the truck and warm it up. It doesn’t take nearly as long for the engine to warm as it did even a month ago. New Year’s Eve, how long did the truck take to stall while you and Harper ran through the snow and into the forest? That is one of those things you can’t know, like a tree falling in the forest and how much noise it makes. You mark these two things down on your mental list: a truck stalling in the snow, a tree falling in the forest, the silence that follows. You decide that silence is another beautiful thing, though not a detail. Details can’t be quite so all-encompassing.
Now is the time in this story when you start to go. When the engine is warm and you leave in the truck. You think briefly of notions of leave-taking and quickly surmise that things can’t leave unless they have first arrived, can’t wither before they have come bursting through soil like the plants on a science film you once watched on your own, a sped-up version of growth and decay. In that short reel, plants grew and bloomed, underwent the force of weather patterns, then wilted and died while a disembodied voice explained what was happening. This is how you see yourself going – like things unfurling, bursting open, and sloughing away: all as functions of the same force.
You always liked to drive. It was Anise who taught you. With Peter, tension would build with each word spoken, each instruction given, until the car was skidding sideways along back roads, your fingers going white around the bones from the force of your grip on the wheel, your feet mad with the uncertainty of gas pedal and brake. When Peter tried to give you lessons, things in the car seized up, both of you included. It was a dangerous situation for everyone, and neither of you wanted to endanger passersb
y. Anise employed the tactics of a true teacher. She brought along things that she knew would help, or at least hinder your propensity for speeding headlong into danger. She brought small pinches of pot as rewards for you to enjoy later, still oblivious to the fact that you skimmed off her supply all the time. She brought your sisters, lined them up in the back seat, their blond heads in the rear-view mirror the opposite of blind spots – you could always see them, reminding you to drive safely. Anise reassured you that you were doing just fine.
You had always liked to drive, liked the swift confidence in the execution of shifting the gears. There is something both calming and exhilarating about transferring smoothly from one gear to another, as though each transition lets you know that you are a master of your own fate, moving effectively on your course.
You shift into reverse, back the truck away from the shed. Shift into first, begin to move forward out of the yard. You stay in second on the road out. The thaw has begun urgently and awkwardly, as it does some years. The snow melts but frost still covers the ground at night. The sun yanks it off in the morning so the dirt roads are pocked with holes and even pavement heaves a bit, cracks. On the road, you shift into third, fourth, take on the corners like a personal challenge to your driving ability, pleased with your precision. You cross the centre line. Not because of a loss of control but because you can.
You want to climb and then come down. You are familiar with the jump in your groin that happens when you drive over a rise in the road quickly, descend just as quick. A little thrill there, like so many other shivers, shudders, and stabs of pleasure. You drive up switchbacks, wanting to take on an entire mountain. To come down from it in one extended leap of sensation. Like other things, you want the feeling to last.
The Sudden Weight of Snow Page 26
