by Claire Tacon
Even if we’d started going together, there’s no way Bernie and I would have lasted throughout my undergrad. There was a tangible divide between Wolfville town and gown. What would he have done, come to residence parties and tried to blend in, smoking up with the philosophy majors in Members Only jackets?
Bernie showed up at my dorm in late September and asked if I’d like to go for a drive. It was already nine-thirty.
“Where?”
“Don’t know. Just thought we could go for a ride.” He opened my door first, then walked around to his side, whistling.
“How’d it go at the hatchery?” I’d heard through my mother that they were starting on turkeys.
“Got about a hundred chicks. Ten extra for insurance.”
“How’s it going working with your dad?”
“Sure,” he said, not elaborating further. We rode in silence for a while, neither of us wanting to bring up the last time we were in this vehicle. “You happy at school?”
“I guess.”
“You’d better be, all the money you’re paying.”
“I’m on scholarship.”
“It’s not just the money you’re spending, it’s also the money you’re not making.” He turned up Ridge Road and we drove past the old Rotary park. “Even if you’re not losing money, you’re still losing pay.”
“I just want to get a degree, Bernie.” I was surprised at his lecture. He’d never really pushed me about anything before. “I need it to get the kind of job I want.”
“Like what?”
“You can’t just get a job as a scientist.”
“What about in Halifax?”
“Not out of high school.”
“Good thing I’m a farmer then.”
Good thing. I rolled down the window to get a breeze in the cab. It was too cold, but the hum of the wind distracted from the conversation.
Bernie and I’d never had trouble finding things to talk about in high school, but now it felt like we were on a terrible first date.
“You been to any parties lately?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“You don’t have parties at school?”
I shrugged.
“Heard you broke up with Chuck.”
We were way up in Gaspereau now, the roads twisting along the river. Bernie pulled a hard right into a driveway and parked a little way up. I could see an abandoned wooden house outlined in the headlights.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what I’m looking at.” There were toys scattered throughout the yard, including an old swing set and seesaw with moulded lamb heads for the handles. The house paint was weather beaten and from what I could see of the roof, it had a swayback worse than glue horses. It wasn’t anywhere I could imagine living.
“It’s my uncle’s old place. He’s got a new house out closer to the farm, so he sold it to me cheap. Going to fix it up myself. All goes well, I’ll have it renovated by the time you get done school.” He slid over and put his arm around me. “It’s only twenty-five minutes from your mom’s.”
I must have guessed his meaning, but didn’t know what to say. “I don’t have a car.”
Bernie brushed his stubble against my cheek and tried to turn my chin up to kiss him. I let him at first, but then he started feeling me up, trying to unbutton my jacket.
I wasn’t about to lapse into quick fucks in the back of a truck.
He backed off right away, retreating to his corner of the cab. He sat there in the dark, his hands on his thighs, unsure where he’d gone wrong. Then he sprung out of cab and came round to my side, opened the door and lifted me out, like a groom at the threshold.
I squirmed until he dropped my legs, my feet hitting the weeds on the overgrown drive. He grabbed my hand and led me around the back of the house. “I’m going to dig a ditch around this side so the water drains better. That way we can extend the cold cellar, maybe put the laundry machines and a workshop down in the basement. Over there’s a good patch for a garden.” He pointed out a mound of dirt that had been banked up near the swings. “Barbecue can go right here, and I’ll cut another door out of the kitchen, put in a deck.”
Bernie’d figured it all out—the walls he’d tear down to expand the master bedroom, the best way to lay the plumbing, the cabinet he’d build for the stereo. I got a picture of us twenty years down the road guessing along with Pat Sajak at the vowels in a Before & After puzzle. This life he was planning had nothing to do with me.
He led me back into the truck and waited for my reaction.
I sat, worrying a small hole in the upholstery. “I don’t know when I’m going to be done school.”
“It’s just four years. You could come up on weekends.”
“If I do grad school,” I trailed off. “I don’t know where I’m going to be.”
“Like Halifax?” He reached over to squeeze my hand. “I can’t leave the Valley.”
“Toronto. Vancouver, maybe.”
Bernie looked at me hard and kicked his leg against the inside of the door. “Maybe you and Chuck aren’t done with each other after all.” He reversed out of the driveway and started speeding towards Wolfville, dropping me at the base of the hill, nowhere close to my residence.
After six years of celebrating at the McInneses’, I spent Thanksgiving with my roommate’s family in Halifax.
The highway to the airport is completely clear. It’s easy to play and replay the scene at Three Pools, fixating like a school kid on her first kiss. It’s a movie spooling in slow motion and I’m watching from an editing booth, trying to pinpoint the exact frame where everything shifts. The loop is so incongruous from the rest of the film. It feels like footage from a separate reel, something easily excised, something with no bearing on the present story.
Richard’s flight has been delayed forty minutes. I try calling my mother on the cell, but there’s no answer and she doesn’t have a machine. It doesn’t matter; we’ll make up the time on the way back.
I wait by the baggage carousels, looking through the glass wall to arrivals. Richard’s one of the first people down the escalator, his khakis and salmon button-down wrinkled from the flight. He’s grown his goatee again. It’s always suited him, shown off the geometry of his jawline.
Neither of us knows how to act when he reaches me. He awkwardly wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. He’s wearing the aftershave the boys gave him last Christmas.
We move out of the way of the other passengers. The kids in the family next to us are holding cardboard signs with “Welcome Home” spelled out in glitter letters. The father’s got a camera in one hand and a camcorder in the other. The mother’s carrying a bouquet of flowers. We wander to the other side of the baggage conveyor and watch them swarm an elderly couple in matching CN Tower T-shirts.
“Stephen and Luke wanted to come to pick you up.”
Richard puts one foot up on the rim of the carousel and we wait for the blinking light to turn on. There are only a handful of other visible minorities in the room, a fact that only bolsters Richard’s argument. It’s a quick out, leaving. For a moment I consider caving straight away, never mentioning last night’s lapse.
A warning buzzer sounds and bags start to funnel through the flaps at the far end of the belt. We wait in silence as people crowd around us, lunging at their suitcases, until Richard’s red hard-case finally arrives.
Normally Richard likes to drive, but I get in the car before he’s finished closing the trunk. I take a different turn at the 103, heading west towards Truro, because I’d rather take the 14. It’s a winding patch of asphalt, running through forest and pasture and it’s twenty minutes longer than the freeway.
He asks if we usually come this way.
“Scenic route.”
Richard nods vaguely and stares out the window. Neither of us wants to be the first to start the fight.
There’s construction on the road just past the turnoff and a line-up of stopped cars
curl all the way over the next hill. It’s harder to ignore each other without passing scenery. Richard drums his thumb against the inside of his knee. Other than the tic, he acts calm.
My façade is less successful. When I check the rear-view, I realize I’m squinting, my eyebrows pulling my forehead into deep lines, my jaw clenched. Waiting for the traffic to progress, my stomach goes into spasm and I’m distracted from deciding whether or not to tell Richard about Bernie by the fear that I’m going to need a bathroom. I conduct a desperate scan of resources, Kleenex in the glovebox, no tree cover in sight, an old barn a half-mile off.
“There was a great seat sale,” Richard says. “Monday’s the Civic Holiday anyway.”
“Is that how long you’re staying?”
“I haven’t booked a return-ticket yet.”
The traffic is starting to move and we coast forward a half-kilometre, within sight of the flag turner. If I’m going to stop at the barn, I’m going to have to park the car now.
“Stephen told me that you asked him to keep the visit a secret.”
Richard braces himself against the handbrake and leans against the door frame. “Stephen also said that you’ve been impressing the faculty at Acadia. That’ll be a hell of an expensive commute.”
“I guess that depends on the point of origin.” Richard twists his head to see if I’m being serious. “I haven’t been offered a job.”
“Thank, Christ.” He slouches into the seat.
“Did you think?”
So that’s what this is about. Stephen must have misinterpreted Marc’s comment about bringing me on staff. Acadia’s a small school—I’d be stunned if they had the budget to hire another sessional, let alone a tenure-track professor. “You should have confirmed with me before booking a ticket.”
“You weren’t willing to talk about coming home.”
“That still doesn’t excuse—”
The flag girl smiles and nods as we pull through. I smile back, as if even though our lives have only collided for a few seconds, I’m obliged to keep up appearances.
The clot of traffic fans off after a few minutes. The abdominal cramping’s subsided but I still keep my eye out for exits.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Are you just here to scoop us up?”
“I want us to go home together.” Richard lays his hand on my thigh. It’s a tender gesture but it irritates me. I’m not ready to be soothed.
“There’s my mother, there’s Stephen’s soccer.”
“I’m not going to lie. What happened on the field really shook me.”
“What if you stayed out here with us?”
He shakes his head. “The BBC article.”
Now’s the time to tell him, to explode the whole damn thing and clear the air. The spasms start again, this time more insistent. Shifting position doesn’t help.
Richard stays silent for a long time. “If this is about earlier—you don’t break up a family over a job.”
Of course he’s right, but the comment strikes me as absurd.
“It’s not the job,” I start to say.
I find a spot twenty metres ahead—a field access road that’s concealed by trees. I winch the car into the lane and the tears roll through me. Richard reclines his chair and takes off his shoes, waiting it out. He looks tired, the fight already drained out. I reach over and hold his hand. He strokes the skin over my knuckles.
We don’t say anything for a long time and several cars pass us on the road.
“Fifteen years,” he says.
I don’t know where we go from here.
“I’m sorry.”
When I lean over, it’s like kissing a stranger, filled with the same charged unknowing. He pulls me onto his lap.
With one hand he grabs the back of my head, working my ponytail undone, twisting my neck so he can kiss where it meets my shoulder. At the argument’s impasse, it’s as if only our bodies are capable of communication. We bite and scratch each other out of our clothes. Before, he’s always screwed me like something delicate, something he has to take care not to crush or break.
Once it’s over, the conversation stalls again.
I get us back on the highway. Richard stretches his legs and whistles a few bars from a jazz ballad I can’t quite place. This time it’s still light when I drive through Windsor but the tide’s in, so I can’t see the mud flats clearly.
“Do you want to stop for food?”
He shakes his head. “Whatever you’ve got at the house is fine.”
“My mother’s cooking chips and fish sticks.” I expect him to groan but he doesn’t. I ask again.
“Your mother’s cooking won’t kill me.”
It’s almost eight-thirty by the time we drive through Port Williams and Richard straightens out his clothes in preparation for seeing the boys. We only have a few more minutes to ourselves but neither of us wants to launch into another discussion. There’s a tacit agreement to get home and deal with this later.
Fifteen years. One night out of fifteen years. We’re better off striking it from the record.
My mother’s house is obscured from the road by a tree break, a line of poplars at the end of a field two properties over. It gives me a rush of anxiety and relief when I spot it, knowing we’re so close. At the last stop sign on the concession I squeeze Richard’s knee and ask if he’s ready. He nods and rolls up his window like we’re on a plane and he’s making the final preparations for landing. Outside, it smells like one of the neighbours is having a bonfire. We slow as we reach the trees and I flick on my indicator, the metronome click amplified by our silence.
The house snaps into view as soon we pass the trees. Bernie’s truck is in the drive. There’s a police cruiser in behind. George, the RCMP officer from down the lane, is taking notes on the cruiser’s trunk. There’s no ambulance, but no sign of the boys either. I misjudge the distance and have to brake too hard to turn into the drive, jolting us forward. Richard grabs my forearm and points at the house. Thick bands of soot streak the walls. The living-room windows have blown out. There’s no sign of the boys. There’s no sign of my mother.
Burnt plastic, burnt synthetics, burnt wood. There’s an undertone of something off and sulphurous, like the stench of burning human hair. Some Smokey the Bear voice plays in my ear, Stop, drop and roll. I stumble across the massive tire treads plowed by the fire engines. Richard stops my fall. We look at each other. Neither of our voices is working. Let Stephen and Luke be okay, I plead, racing over to the officer. Let them be okay, whatever’s happened to my mother. The house is still standing. They must have gotten out. The PSA starts again, In a fire, the smoke is as dangerous as the flames. Let them have gotten out in time.
George drops his pen and papers.
Already my heart is thudding in my ears.
Richard restrains me so that I can’t run into the house, grappling both arms, holding me tight against him. My hands lock onto his wrists, needing every point of contact while we get the news.
George raises his arms to stop us. “The boys are fine. They’re in the truck.”
I jolt forward, desperate to see them. Richard holds me steady.
“Lynne was using a pan to deep fry,” George explains. “She had her scanner on and a car crash got called in—a couple died on the 101. She tried your cell but couldn’t get through and panicked. Your boy said when the grease caught fire she tried to pick up the pan and burned her hands on the metal. The fire spread from there.”
George pauses, letting it sink in. “She’s got second and third degree burns on her hands and the hospital’s keeping her in overnight because of the shock. The paramedics said she was lucky the oil didn’t spill on her.”
There’s nothing he’s saying that I can grab onto. It all slides away, slippery and surreal.
“Your son called 9-1-1 right away. They were able to put the fire out. Bernie was going to bring them back to his place.”
“Do they know we’re okay?”
“They haven’t released the ID of the victims but we found out an hour ago that they were both Caucasian.” George nods at Richard as though he’s apologizing for bringing it up.
Richard leads me to the truck cab. Luke’s sobbing against his brother, who’s got his arms wrapped around him. As soon as Stephen sees us, he starts to cry himself. He bolts from the truck and throws his arms around his father. I reach in and pull Luke out and hold him while he cries. Richard strokes the back of our son’s head. “We’re fine, we’re fine.”
Bernie opens the front door, carrying the boys’ backpacks. “Ellie, Jesus Christ.” He jogs across the lawn and draws me into a hug, Luke between us.
“Bernie.” I wipe my eyes. “This is my husband, Richard.”
Bernie’s got soot on his hands and streaks of it all the way up his cheek. He nods at Richard. “You’d better have a look.” The fire department escorted him through before they left so that he could grab a few things but they don’t want much traffic inside until the building inspector can investigate.
Richard loosens Stephen’s grip. He asks if I want to go inside with them.
I can’t. Not tonight.
“Is there anything you want us to get out?”
None of the stuff that we’ve brought is worth saving. It’s the tin of photos of my Dad that my mother keeps in the basement that I want. We’ve never had much money, so there aren’t any heirlooms. All we’ve got to remember Dad by are those pictures and the house itself, the details he put so much work into. I tell them where to find the boxes. As they’re heading in, I call out, “And my mother’s crocheted blanket from the bed.”
The two of them leave me with the boys. Luke has his face pressed into my neck, sucking on my shirt collar, like he used to when he was little. Stephen slumps against my side, holding onto my waist. I kiss his forehead over and over.
“You called the fire department?”
Stephen nods, his chin rubbing my shoulder.
I nuzzle the top of his head, trying to reassure myself he’s safe.
George paces back over to us. “I called the hospital. They’ve told your mother that you’re fine.”
“Can we see her?”
