by Claire Tacon
“You can’t go soft on mildew,” she’d said. It wasn’t criticism, just dedication. She looked up at me, smiling. “You need the toilet?”
Looking at the moulding wall, I’m relieved Richard isn’t here to witness the house’s decay, this lapse in my mother’s competence.
3
THREE DAYS IN and the rain hasn’t let up, so I’ve been rooting through the basement for any surviving diversions from my childhood. We’re steadily dog-earing an old deck of cards with rounds of Go Fish and Cheat, and we’ve played so many games of Trouble that the Pop-O-Matic bubble cracks and we have to drive into town for dice.
When it first came up, I didn’t think that coming out here would be any different from visiting Terrence. We might as well be on the moon. There’s no computer, which for Stephen is something out of the Stone Age. Luke’s adapted better to the slower pace out here, but Stephen’s annoyed that he hasn’t been able to check his MySpace or log into IM. He reminds me several times a day that people are trying to get in touch with him. Twice, I’ve broken down and let him use the cell to text his friends, despite exorbitant roaming charges.
There’s also the problem of the TV. Yesterday was the FIFA final and Stephen’s stopped finding the lack of technology funny.
We’ve got to find him a soccer league quickly.
It’s what I propose first thing Monday morning. Within fifteen minutes, he’s showered, dressed and ready for breakfast. The cereal is down his throat before it has time to settle in the bowl.
“You know I need to sign up for the under-fifteen, right?”
“Wasn’t it the under-fourteen?”
“Back home, it’s a crappy team. The coach put me in the better one.” His reproach hangs in the air.
“Maybe it won’t be a crappy team out here.” I swing open the fridge door to replace the milk carton. There’s a flash of red and purple next to the lettuce. The tongue of a shoe is pressed against the underside of the glass shelf. Luke’s sneakers are wedged in the crisper, next to the greens. The leather’s cold as the ketchup bottle. They’ve been in the fridge all night.
My first thought is Stephen. He’s by the sink, rinsing the orange pulp out of his glass. Oblivious. I hold up the sneakers.
He glances at the shoes, surprised as I am.
“I’ll go ask your brother.”
I trudge upstairs to give Luke a talking-to, wondering if I should keep it quiet from my mother. It’s part parental embarrassment, part not wanting to hurt her feelings. For Luke to act up like this is a shock, especially since he’s been steadily warming to his grandmother. In fact, he’s been demonstrative, leading her by the hand into the living room to show off his somersaults or to play “I spy.” If anything, he’s tiring her out—she’s been napping for a few hours each afternoon.
Luke’s fishing through the suitcase for a T-shirt. I wait for him to finish getting dressed, then hand the shoes over to him and ask if there’s anything he wants to tell me.
It’s easy to tell when he’s lying. He isn’t. When I think back, he fell asleep on the couch last night, watching the Sunday Night movie on CBC. He still had his sneakers on and my mother took them off as I carried him upstairs.
There used to be a shelving unit where the fridge is now. After doing yardwork or puttering in his shed, Dad preferred to come into the house through the kitchen. He’d stack his boots in the cubbyholes next to the door and hang his coat over the corner. It was a sore point between them—the dirt inevitably tracked in. One day they had a blowout fight and he tore the unit down, repurposed the lumber into the hall bench that’s still in the front entrance. He started bringing home rejects from the tire plant and jimmied them into a giant welcome mat that ran four feet down the hall. Once a week, he’d haul it outside and hose it off or rub it clean in the snow. It was one of the only things my mother got rid of when he died.
It’s possible she was tired and got confused. A colleague of mine walked into the kitchen one Thanksgiving to find her mother-in-law drinking tea out of a gravy boat. It could just as easily have been me. Still, I knock on her door to check on her. She’s brushing her hair, watching her reflection in the bedside vanity. The swing of her arm is laboured.
“Stiff this morning?”
“What?”
I touch her shoulder and she shakes her arms like chicken wings to get me away.
“I’ll be down soon.” She’s rarely this cranky. I don’t ask her about the shoes because it’s so preposterous.
Downstairs, Stephen’s giving Luke the silent treatment, thinking his brother’s in trouble.
“I don’t know who did it,” I say before they start squabbling. “Maybe I was sleepwalking. Maybe your grandmother did it by accident.”
Luke takes his sneakers straight over to her when she comes down. “Good joke, Grandma.”
“What is it, dear?”
“The shoes in the fridge.”
“Good idea, stop them from smelling.” She has no idea what he’s talking about, but Luke thinks she’s hilarious.
Stephen discreetly circles his index finger around his ear, crazy.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to make a doctor’s appointment.
At the New Minas rec centre, there’s a spread of six soccer fields interrupted by a few outbuildings. Two are just school portables but there’s a larger, brick Lego block one field over with boarded up windows that doubles as a snack bar. Through a screen door at the back, we can see there’s a meeting in progress. A group of eight people are moving neon photocopies around a giant white board. We linger, unsure about entering, until a blonde in a fleece vest notices us and props herself between the door frame, concealing the progress behind her. “Are you here about the tournament?”
“Just trying to get my son into a soccer league.”
She narrows her eyes a bit. “Leagues started in spring. They put the notices through the schools.”
“We’re just back for the summer, staying with my mother. Maybe there’s a league we could fit him in?”
Nothing about her expression softens. “How old’s he?”
“Thirteen.”
“Under fourteen’s our biggest league.” She turns back into the room. “Rick!”
“Ya-llow.” Rick joins us at the door opening, a stack of cue cards in his hand.
The woman in the vest makes just enough room for him to squeeze one shoulder through to shake my hand. “These people want to join the soccer league.”
“Too late in the season for that. We’re already organizing the August tournament.”
Stephen interjects. “In the city I play in the under-fifteen.”
“You live in Halifax?”
“No, Toronto.”
“Not gonna happen. You can try Kelsey Johnson. We call her Doc Soccer in these parts. She’s up at the main office.”
They stare as we walk away. I realize for the first time since arriving that everyone here is white.
Stephen and I trudge up the trail towards the next building. There’s no shade on the path and I’m sweating through my shirt.
“If I can’t get into a league—”
“Let’s not worry about that until we know.”
“—I’m going to be pissed.”
Doc Soccer is easily identified by the three lanyards around her neck, each with its own whistle and a jersey with the slogan “New Minas is the soccer capital of Atlantic Canada.” Her hair’s chopped into severe salt and pepper bangs, clipper number four on the sides. She still has the tanned, lean physique of an adolescent rower.
“We’re all booked up,” she says, not bothering to look up from the letter she’s opening. “Tryouts are in the spring, so it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids.”
“What if he could be a kind of swing player, for when the other kids are away? I’m willing to pay the full registration fee.”
Doc Soccer puts her hand on her hip, creasing the letter. “We’ve never done that before.”
“Can I leave our
name and number in case a spot comes up?” The words are soaked with desperation.
The Doc glances at the receptionist. “Leave it if you want. We can’t make any promises.”
“Thanks for your time.” I nudge Stephen.
“Thanks,” he mumbles.
The best thing to do would be to call Richard. It’d mean serious pride swallowing, but he’d be able to suggest another tack—a pick-up league, maybe. At the very least, he’d be able to console our son. Stephen’s so angry that he catches his head against the door frame as he slams into the car and refuses to acknowledge the injury.
Richard, however, is on a plane to Calgary. He won’t be in Banff for another seven hours.
“I’m still going to work something out.”
Stephen doesn’t respond. There’s a quarter-sized swelling over his temple. A good mother would have let him stay in Toronto.
A trip into Halifax is the only way to salvage the rest of the day. The whole drive in, my mother grips her armrest, nervous about the highway.
I scan the radio for channels, hoping music will relax her. As I’m fiddling with the speaker balance, a row of three transport trucks approaches us and my mother gasps as they pass. “They shouldn’t be allowed to drive at the same time as regular vehicles.” She’s recovered her verve since this morning’s strangeness.
I ask if she’s been feeling more tired lately, hoping to ease into a medical discussion.
“No more than usual.”
“Have you had a checkup?”
“Ellie, you don’t fix something that isn’t broken.”
There’s a slow car in front of us and plenty of room to pull out and pass but my mother clucks her disapproval when I overtake the vehicle. “If this is about the cleaning, you didn’t give me much warning.”
It’s been years since I’ve been in Halifax, but the geography comes back as we pull into downtown. I catch myself taking the right turn without thinking, the city remapping itself like a language I’d half-forgotten.
Parking is in an overpriced lot down by the water. We stroll along the boardwalk, the boys running ahead to check out the ships and peer over the edge into the harbour. The water is murky with floating debris. I shepherd the boys past a fist of algae-covered condoms. Stephen smirks, but Luke’s too absorbed by the boats to notice. We grab some BeaverTails and rest at the giant wave sculpture. There’s already a handful of kids trying to mount the crest, which looks as much like a tongue as a wave. Most only make it to the halfway point before losing momentum and sliding down. There are warning signs, of course, but no one pays attention.
At least Stephen asks for permission. It’s a six-foot drop onto concrete if you overshoot the top, but judging by the other kids, Luke won’t make it up. “Be careful,” I say. “Watch your brother.”
Let them burn off some of their cabin fever.
“Did you get him on the team?” my mother asks.
I shake my head.
“You should call Jason McInnes.”
It’s like the quick drop of an elevator. Hearing that name brings me right back to seventeen. Jason’s the younger brother of Bernie McInnes, my best friend from high school. We haven’t stayed in touch since my first year of university.
“Jason’s running the autobody in Canning.”
I can’t make the connection with soccer.
“The shop sponsors some of the teams.” My mother never knew about the rift with Bernie and must think this’ll give me leverage. It was a painful split—a dog you don’t just leave sleeping. A rabid dog. Old Yeller better out of its misery.
Stephen backs up several meters before sprinting up the wave. He falters near the top, but digs in with his toes, scrambling to right himself. He makes it to the crest and waves for me to snap a picture. It’s a nice shot, Stephen holding his arms up in victory, the mast of a tall ship behind him. Luke still can’t reach his brother. Stephen plants himself at the top and lets his legs hang down so that Luke can grab on. It makes me nervous, but as soon as I take another picture, they slide back down and join us. I hope this means I’m forgiven. Either way, I’m going to have to throw myself on Doc Soc’s mercy.
My father died in September, the third week of school, and it sparked a brief rise in my popularity. I’d had friends before that, but I’d always been on the periphery. When Dad died, I became that girl, the one all on her own with her mother. I got invited to birthdays, to people’s houses for dinner—my whole first term was flooded with social interaction—but I didn’t really make friends. I’d go to events but always felt like I was in a fish tank, on display and inaudible through the water and plate glass. Over the Christmas holidays, people lost interest and there were new things to talk about when we got back to school in January.
It was only Bernie McInnes who stuck with me. In grade eleven, Bernie would grow to be one of the tallest boys in the class, but in grade eight he was a squirt. His folks were farmers on the far side of the school’s catchment area. It took twenty minutes to drive between our houses, but his folks would often pick me up or drop me off so we could spend time together. His mom lost a parent young too and I think she made a project out of me.
Bernie had about a million cousins and the house was always full. I remember loving going to Bernie’s for dinner—the chaos of it—boys wrestling each other against the cupboards, the dog barking under the table and Bernie’s dad snapping at it but feeding it scraps. Someone always spilled something, someone got told to shut up and someone would fart discreetly at the table and wait until someone smelled it before claiming the stink as their own. Bernie’s mom would wrinkle her face in disgust and say, “You’re all pigs, the lot of you. Eileen Lucan, I’m glad you’re here—you’re about the only dime in the dung heap.” At home, dinner was me, my mother and the radio, all failing to fill the quiet that had set in.
Bernie was never going to leave the valley. The first time I came back after Stephen was born, I wondered if I’d run into him at the farmer’s market or out walking along Main. I think if I saw Bernie now, it would be like looking straight back to myself at fifteen, all those years I’ve spent evolving instantly erased. Beneath that, however, there’s the deeper fear that Bernie’s changed. That I’ve changed. That if we did meet on the street, we’d pass without recognition.
“There’s nothing wrong, Ellie.” My mother’s voice a stage whisper that fills the narrow doctor’s waiting room. She repositions her hip, cramping herself against the vinyl backrest, trying to get comfortable. It’s futile. These chairs came off the line before ergonomics were invented. “If I were feeling unwell today, then fine. This is just silly.”
It’s tempting to remind her that she’s the one who made the appointment. After our Halifax excursion she was too exhausted to get up until past lunch. This morning, however, she’s blaming it on our choice of restaurant—a novelty Tex-Mex outfit, where even the salad came on a deep-fried tortilla.
“It could just be a vitamin deficiency,” I say, hoping it sounds non-invasive.
“Oh, they’ll find something.” My mother relaunches her invective. “You look hard enough, you find anything. Fools down Bridgetown found the Virgin Mary on a scallop.”
The medical centre has been converted from one of Kentville’s Victorian estates—wedding cakes of houses sliced into office space and student apartments. Upstairs, there’s a dental practice and the whirr of drills overlays the classical music playing from a radio on the receptionist’s desk. The phone rings frequently, a full old-fashioned tremolo, and the receptionist answers loudly, muffling my mother’s complaints.
There are only two other patients—a teenager with rainbow streaks in her hair and a woman about my age with a six-month old baby. She gets called in first and tries to squeeze the baby back into the stroller but gives up as it starts to fuss.
The girl tells her to leave the gear. She’ll watch it. The woman drops the diaper bag and I wonder which of us she’s supposed to protect it from.
I ask my
mother if she wants to go shopping after this.
She clutches her purse tight against her stomach. “Ellie, I don’t need your help with the shopping.”
“I didn’t mean that. It might be nice. We can go to the mall and grab a coffee.”
The girl glances over. “There’s a sidewalk sale today.”
My mother nods at her curtly.
“I work at the record store across from the Northern Reflections. They’ve got fifty percent off.”
“Thanks.”
“Sometimes people do their Christmas shopping at the sidewalk sale.” She scratches at a scab on her knee, right below her leggings. “Lots of stores put out their stuff. Even from way back in storage, just to see if it sells. Last year I got my Christmas cards 80% off.”
This rouses my mother into conversation. “Ellie doesn’t send Christmas cards.”
“Last year I didn’t send them out. I got caught up with exams.”
My mother harrumphs. “Two years, Ellie.” She keeps a record in her address book of each card she receives, a different colour ink for each year. She bumps everyone who’s missed three consecutive Christmases.
“I post-date them,” the girl says. “I start around Halloween.”
“Very sensible. Ellie loves email. Doesn’t send letters or cards, but always tells me how backward I am because I don’t have email.”
The phone rings, but this time the receptionist conducts the call at half-volume. “No, we don’t do that here. You’ll have to go into Halifax or try the hospital.”
The girl catches my eye and mouths the word “abortion.”
The physician’s younger than I expect, with an auburn bob and toned muscles that wouldn’t be out of place in a Yorkville Pilates studio. Back home, I bristled at that class of woman. Uniformed in lululemon racerbacks and New Balance runners, in perpetual training for half-marathons. But here her polish relaxes me. Next to the receptionist’s ancient toffee-coloured set curls, Dr. Archibald seems like a beacon of modernity.
