Road to Thunder Hill

by Connie Barnes Rose

  “Here I was, not knowing what the hell she was up to because I could hear her thumping and banging around so much. But then she comes down with this book, and makes me swear I’ll read it.”

  I shake my head. “Who makes someone swear to read a goddamn book?”

  “I thought she was going to ask me to rub her feet, but no, she just handed me the book.”

  “Close call,” I say. “I hope you ran as fast as you could.”

  “Oh, I would have rubbed her feet too. And knowing Olive she would have cooked me up a lemon pie in two seconds flat. You know she makes them from real lemons. Oh man, I wouldn’t mind one of those now.”

  He must have noticed the look on my face because he quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, I enjoy feet. I think they’re so expressive.” he says, pressing on the pad of my big toe, which makes my back arch. “They really appreciate a good rub.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I gasp, as his fist pushes into my arch. His face seems entirely focused on my feet now, the way his eyebrows furrow and his teeth press against his lower lip. I give myself up to his magic fingers. Outside, the storm keeps raging and for the first time all day, I couldn’t care less.

  It feels like a ton of time has passed since Olive showed up in my yard. Could it have only been this morning? And it was only yesterday that she phoned to tell me her daffodils were popping up through the mulch.

  “How I would have loved to have painted the scene outside my window this morning,” she’d said. “I was bursting to share it with someone!” She went on about the contrast between the fresh green grass and last year’s worm-infested leaves, and how it might inspire an interesting oil experiment in colour and texture.

  “And the little Glories in the Snow!” she went on. “Those little pokes of blue are sure signs of spring.”

  “So, why don’t you paint them?” I asked, trying to think of what the hell Glories in the Snow are. I know better than Olive about what flowers come up in spring, but I don’t always know the name for them.

  I’d been out raking the yard when I heard the phone and had to dash into the house to answer it. In the mirror above the sink I’d noticed flecks of rotted leaves stuck to my hair.

  She said, “Well, I can’t paint it today because it’s Kyla and Kira’s ballet recital tonight and I’m making cloud costumes for their class. We were hoping you all could come to see them. There’ll be about forty little ballerinas.”

  I closed my eyes and said, “Uh, well, I’m not sure what time Ray is getting home tonight. It could be late.”

  “But you and Gayl could come for 7:00, couldn’t you? Your mother is coming and it would be so nice for the girls to have their auntie and favourite cousin there too.”

  I waved frantically at Gayl, who was waxing her legs. On the stove sat a small pot of wax from which she was dipping and now smearing up her thigh.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, we can’t. Um, Gayl already asked me if she could borrow my car. She’s going over to the Four Reasons because Alana’s doing a reading for her tonight at seven. Right, Gayl?”

  Gayl tossed me a “don’t get me involved” look.

  Olive was saying, “Gayl could still borrow your car and you could come with us into town to the recital.”

  “Actually, I’m getting a reading done too,” I said, pulling the phone away from my ear.

  “You are?” Olive screamed.

  “You are?” Gayl shrieked, at the same time as she stripped away the wax.

  My face grew hot as I told Olive, “Everybody says I should try it some time.”

  Olive said, “But you told me you thought Alana was a quack!”

  “What?” I practically yelled. “I never said that. I would never say that.” But knowing Olive she could have twisted something I had said like she always does. Like maybe I rolled my eyes one time when we were talking about how Alana was getting regular customers, but I never once called her a “quack.” In fact, I’d be the first to say Alana had a special talent for guessing the sex of a baby or predicting bad weather. But ever since a customer from further down the shore pulled away from the pumps and she’d had a bad feeling about him and then learned he was killed in a car accident two days later, she thought she should take this predicting stuff more seriously. So she visited that psychic who lives in a lighthouse over on the other side of Thunder Hill. The psychic said that she had a gift and that she should share it. But not for free. It had something to do with people more apt to have faith in her if they had to pay. So Alana drove down to Halifax twice a week for a year until she earned her Psychic’s Certificate. Now she’s got people, mostly women, coming from all over to learn if they’ll meet the man of their dreams. She even admitted to me that half the time she’s making stuff up that she knows people want to hear. But then she stopped talking to me about it at all, so I stopped asking. Customers keep rolling in to have their fortunes told, so I figure she must be making them happy.

  “You said you’d never go to one of Alana’s readings,” Olive was saying now.

  I frowned at the phone. “I meant I doubted if Alana could do a reading on me, seeing as she knows me too well.”

  “I see,” Olive sniffed. “Well, you must tell me how it goes.”

  As soon as I hung up, Gayl said, “I didn’t know you were getting a reading done too.”

  “Oh, I’m not really going to ask Alana to do a reading,” I said. I glanced over at Gayl whose jaw was dropping way further than was necessary.

  I said, “I wanted to be home when your Dad gets home tonight, that’s all. But in order to do that I have to come up with a story. A person shouldn’t have to do that just because they don’t frigging feel like going to a recital. And pick up your hairy strips off the floor!”

  “So what do you suppose this teaches me? That it’s okay to lie?”

  “No, it’s not okay to lie,” I said, pointing to a strip she’d missed under her chair. “But sometimes a person has to bend the truth so nobody’s feelings get hurt.”

  “So how come you gave me shit that time Olive asked me to baby-sit and I told her I was grounded?”

  “Probably because she asked me what you were grounded for and I had to come up with a lie to protect your lie.”

  “But this lie is okay, right? Because if she asks me how your reading went I’ll have to lie too!”

  I sure don’t remember doing this to my mother. But then again, I don’t recall paying that much attention to the way my mother handled things, period. In fact, when I was Gayl’s age, I tried to avoid both my parents as much as possible. But kids today? They’re in your face holding you accountable for every frigging thing you say and do.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Gayl,” I said. “Except don’t look at me as your role model, okay?”

  “Pfff, don’t worry,” she said, as she flounced out of the room. “I stopped doing that when I was ten and I saw you smoking dope up at Bear’s.”

  “You did?”

  And here we’d tried to be so careful.

  I am so relaxed right now I could go to sleep. I am slouched down in the chair with my legs resting along Bear’s thighs. I never knew how much a person’s feet could enjoy this sort of thing. When I hear this low moan, I figure it’s coming from Clayton over there on the couch, but it doesn’t look like he’s moved an inch since he passed out. That means the moan must have come from me. This makes me feel panicky. I know all too well what that kind of moan means. Does Bear know what it means? Ray would. Ray. I try prying my feet away from Bear’s grip, but he decides to tickle my toes. I don’t know which is more embarrassing, the shriek or the moan. At least the shrieking gets him to stop. All I need is for Ray to hear some story about Bear making me squeal like a pig over at Hog Holler.

  If Bear has a sense of how I’m feeling, he’s not letting on. In fact, he’s humm
ing a tune and stroking my feet like he’s thinking about something else entirely, so I find myself relaxing once more. What’s a foot rub between friends? It’s only a foot rub.

  Alana didn’t seem the least bit surprised when I showed up with Gayl on Friday night. Sometimes I really do think she’s psychic. But then she said Olive had dropped by on their way to the ballet recital and mentioned I was coming over for a reading.

  “Don’t worry. I pretended I knew all about it.”

  “Oh great,” I said. “Now she’s checking up on me.”

  “You should have heard Ma, Alana. She lied!” Gayl said.

  Alana gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth.

  I shook my head at the two of them. “Give me a break. It was a very small lie.”

  They decided the only way we could all live with clear consciences was if Alana actually did a reading for me. I had my doubts, but they told me to stop being so negative. We tossed a coin to see who’d go first and I won. So, I pushed aside the red curtain leading to Alana’s little closet behind the cash register. She lit a candle and we sat down on the two tiny wooden benches. The walls were draped in orange fabric so I felt like I was sitting in a pumpkin shell.

  I said, “There’s nothing you don’t already know about me.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said, handing me a crystal and telling me to hold it close to my heart. Then she swished my tea leaves and held my hands. I felt more than a little silly. Alana was my best friend in the world, but we have never held hands.

  “Well?” I said when she didn’t answer and I wondered if I was about to die. Or worse, that something bad would happen to Gayl or Ray. What a price to pay for not going to the ballet recital.

  She pressed her lips together and said, “I’m thinking of how to put this.”

  “What is it?” I laughed. “Are you about to tell me that Ray really does have a hot one down in Newville?”

  “What I see is a warning,” she said. “Strange things happen to women in their forties.”

  “They do?”

  “They sure did for me. Don’t you remember? The way I was drinking?”

  “Alana, you still drink.”

  “Yes, but remember the night I climbed on top of the gas pumps in the pouring rain?”

  “It hadn’t rained in twenty-five days and all the wells were going dry. We were all celebrating.”

  “Naked?”

  “Why get your clothes wet?” I reasoned.

  “Nobody else took their clothes off.”

  “But we thought you were just being brave.”

  “You’re right,” she said, letting go of my hands. “I can’t do this with you!”

  “No, please,” I said. “Tell me what crazy thing I’m about to do. So I can at least shave my armpits before it happens.”

  Alana peered into my cup again. “It’s not the future you need to worry about. It’s the past that’s staring you straight in the face.”

  As if I’m surrounded by anything but the past, I thought, as Gayl and I drove home last night. Through my rearview mirror I caught glimpses of the streetlight at the foot of the lane to Kyle House where I spent all my childhood summers. Further ahead on Thunder Hill Road was the home where Ray and I have lived our entire lives together. This means that each and every day I’m staring at the past as well as the present. Is that what Alana was talking about?

  “So what did Alana have to say in your reading?” I asked Gayl, who was fiddling with the radio dial.

  “The usual stuff, I guess.”

  “What’s the usual stuff?”

  “Ma, it’s not the kind of thing you talk about.”

  “Why not? I don’t mind telling you what she said about me.”

  I beeped my horn and waved at Courtney Small who was standing by the road waiting for us to pass.

  “She’s getting her mail awfully late in the day,” I said.

  Gayl said, “Boy, she’s due any minute, isn’t she?”

  “Alana told her to be ready to go in next Tuesday.”

  “Then she probably will.”

  “You have a lot of faith in what Alana says, don’t you?” I said, glancing at Gayl. “Do you really think she can read your future?”

  “I think Alana reads people the way they want her to read them. Like I know she told Karen Hastings that she used to be a handmaid for one of Henry the Eighth’s wives. Karen just laps that stuff right up. But that sort of bullshit doesn’t interest me.”

  “Then what does interest you?”

  “Oh, just talking about stuff.”

  “About what stuff? Your family? Do you tell Alana things about your father and me?”

  “This may come as a shock but we actually talk about me.”

  “Still, we’re a big part of you.”

  She seemed to think for a moment before she said, “Seriously, Ma? It’s none of your business what Alana and I talk about.”

  My hands gripped the wheel as we took a curve. Last year’s dead grass along the shoulder of the road glowed a sickly yellow in the headlights.

  “There are things about your family that are none of Alana’s business, either.”

  “Like what?” Gayl picked at a loose thread on the seat. “She knows everything about us.”

  “No, she doesn’t know everything. There are lots of things she doesn’t need to hear.”

  “You mean like the time Dad locked the bedroom door to get away from all your nagging and you went at the door with the axe?”

  I sighed. Gayl had been about eight and it had only happened that one time, but to her it must have looked like I might murder her father. So I can see where it might stand out in her memory, especially since there’s still a gash in the door. I considered it a battle scar of marriage.

  I said, “Alana knows about that time.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. She knows everything about us.”

  “No, she doesn’t. There are things that are none of her business, or anybody’s business.”

  “You mean like you and Dad breaking up?”

  I looked at her so sharply that one of my front wheels hit the shoulder and I jerked the car back onto the road.

  “Whoa, Ma,” said Gayl.

  “Where in hell did you get such an idea?” I shouted. “Did Alana say something to you?”

  “Why don’t you give me some credit for knowing what’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on. Your Dad and I are fine. In fact, things are really good between us right now.”

  “Pfff, yeah, right. He hasn’t been home in three weeks. Is that what you mean by ‘good?’”

  “Well, he’s coming home tonight. And even if what you say is true, it sure isn’t Alana’s business.”

  “Why not?” Gayl said. “I thought Alana was your best friend.”

  “Stop picking at that seat,” I shouted, knocking Gayl’s hand away from the growing mess of unravelled threads. “This whole ‘reading’ thing is getting way out of hand. Next thing you know she’ll be calling herself a qualified psychic therapist.”

  “Psychotherapist.”

  “Same thing.”

  “Um, not quite, but I bet she’s better at it than the real ones,” Gayl said, propping her feet up on the dashboard. “A lot cheaper too. You should think about seeing her, regularly I mean.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Maybe she could help. You know, to deal with how you feel about Dad and everything.”

  “Once and for all, I … don’t … need … help … dealing with your father.”

  “Ma,” she said, in that mothering tone I can’t stand, as if I’m in denial.

  “Put your feet down,” I said. “Remember how Kenny Briggs got his pelvis smashed in an acciden
t?” That’s the thing about Gayl and me. One minute I’m thinking we can talk to each other, and then the next she acts like she’s about two years old.

  That’s how it is with Ray and me too. One day I think we’ll make it and the next I’m sure we won’t. When we turned down our lane last night I saw right away that Ray’s truck hadn’t arrived, meaning he hadn’t driven home from Newville like he said he would. I wondered if he’d changed his mind about coming home after all. But then I saw that he’d left a message on the phone saying he’d really had some overtime work and he’d be heading out in the morning. So everything felt safe again until this morning’s dream about that toothless slut going down on him got me going all over again.

  So here I am on Saturday night shivering in Hog Holler with a certain Bear James, who has abandoned my feet and is now dealing out cards. Had Ray even planned to come home this weekend at all? What if the storm was just another excuse? He hadn’t sounded all that sad about it. When he moved to Newville last year, and I thought we were through, I’d gone nuts trying to keep track of him. I’d phone the rooming house only to be told he was out. I’d call the salt mine, but he wasn’t at work. When I started asking him questions, like where were you on Tuesday night around ten, he told me point blank, “Look Trish, let’s face facts. We don’t live together any more and since I don’t ask you what you do all week, you can’t expect me to report back to you.”

  “You don’t need to ask me what I do all week,” I protested. “You could ask anyone in Thunder Hill and they’d be only too happy to tell you where I was on Monday night, and Tuesday, and…”

  “But I don’t want to ask,” said Ray. “And you know why? Because it’s none of my business what you do.”

  “I see,” I said. I remember thinking that he really had left me. In his heart, I mean.

  I found myself craving him like I never had before. How different this feeling was from how I felt years ago when one night I’d woken up to his penis bumping against my lips. The nerve of this guy, I thought. The light from a full moon poured through the window into our bedroom. Even when I turned my face away, it kept following my mouth like there was some chance I’d change my mind.