The Dancehall Years Read online

  The Bones of My Wedding Dress

  36.

  October, 1970

  Over at Scarborough, a waterlogged sofa and boxes of rose hips sag on the back porch of the peeling farmhouse; hammered driftwood replaces the old front verandah railing and a mess of morning glory trails over a mound of sacks. Between the house and beach, tiers of gardens and pens are held in place by wedges of upended rock. There’s a shed with the chalked sign: ALWAYS SECURE DOORS AGAINST BABIES PLEASE. The chickens live in a kind of adventure playground: their shingled house has round doors, turrets and a bird-bath. Masses of marigolds border the vegetable garden on the next level. A man in a flannel shirt, blonde beard and sloped moustache whips a glance up and down the beach to see how much seaweed the storm’s brought in as two-year-old Annabelle waddles onto the back porch; her stiff plastic bib has a turned up lip that’s supposed to catch porridge, but hers hasn’t. A ring of white hair circles her head like a nimbus. Derek hoists her into a pack on his back, clumps toward the shore with a sack hooked on his thumb like a jacket. Sitting back in the classic tai chi position, he stops at the herb garden planted in the shape of a zodiac to kick straw over the thyme. Pushes a few sticks of wood under a small outbuilding where the hams and bacon are smoking. The waves are almost big enough to crash over the piles of sea lettuce, unusual for the protected Sound. He piles mounds of dulse into his sack, then the wheelbarrow before heading back to dump it in the compost. In the kitchen he stands his daughter on a chair and together they pour rosehips onto cookie sheets, slide them into a dryer lit by an electric bulb.

  This time of year the kitchen is crammed with food on the way to storage. A person needs to have six hands: two to hang the cheesecloth plum pulp bag on a doorknob to drip, two more to carry the canner over to the sink to drain the salt mixture from the piccalilli—the sour of the pickles infusing the sweet of the simmering plum—two more to heap mounds of blackberries into a pot. The berries ripen in waves across the farm from east to west; in June, the strawberries in the fields near cedars marching down the hill, the loganberries before the raspberries up by the cornfield, then the blueberries on a sunny spot over in the meadow. Finally, the hedge of blackberries in the west where boards are thrown to break a path. He’s put paper collars around the bases of the cabbages to stop them getting root maggots; the ones that survived the attack are enormous, and the Samson has certainly lived up to its name. For a buck, visitors to the fair in the old number four picnic grounds up by the falls can guess the weight and win the cabbage. He hates cabbage.

  He grabs a wrench from its outline on the wall of the shed and goes out to bleed the brakes on his truck. Flapping onto a dolly, he slides under the vehicle headfirst, legs akimbo like a crab’s. The wrench is the wrong size. He won’t be able to deliver the vegetables over to the fairgrounds if he can’t get some goddam brake pressure. The second wrench is the right size, but the cap sticks. Out again for the liquid penetrant.

  A lot of apples have fallen on the roof of the house and turned black; the orchard floor is covered with them. Lily sashays down through the orchard from the bus, her waist so narrow he wants to pick up the end of her skirt sash and twirl her out across the yard. The school bus in the back field is an a eyesore, even if Lily insists on letting old George Fenn park it there for the duration. The old man figured he’d have the bus on hand when the resident population got beefed up now that there’s a ferry: a bit of a bus service to supplement his taxi business, but what with one thing and another, the moss and mildew took over, Lily started using the bus as an office, then extra sleeping space, and well, he didn’t want to think about the rest.

  What was it, three years ago Derek had seen her in front of the Shack café bulletin board sign fingering a phone number fringe? You interested in that job, too? he’d asked, stirring his coffee.

  It’s my notice. I wanted to see if any numbers had been taken, she said. I’m looking for a caretaker.

  He held up the slip he’d torn off.

  She peered at him through her rimless glasses. Are you Derek? It is you. I’m Lily. You came when it was the war and slept upstairs with my brother.

  She reminded him of a woman in a war poster he’d seen: a graceful young mother sitting under a tree with a ghost outline of Hitler whispering in her ear. Don’t do it, Mother. Leave the children where they are. Far be it for the mothers to leave the children in London or wherever else they belonged. Instead, he’d been billeted with a family near Blackpool where the sheets smelled wrong, barbed wire lined the beach and encircled the Ferris wheel. On the beach, he’d found a piece of blubbery human flesh.

  Lily needed a caretaker because she was totally involved with a raft of sea otters that were about to be shipped down from Alaska into B.C. waters. Without otters, the population of sea urchins gets out of hand because guess who eats the urchins? No more sea otters, and the sea floor is a mass of spiky shell doorknobs.

  Lily’d written to her sister—Gwen, did he remember Gwen—well, turned out lucky that Gwen was living in Big Sur, California, where she could observe one of the only living groups of sea otters in the world. They’re listed as nearly extinct, but a few have survived and reproduced up north away from the eyes and ears of the rest of the world. There’s a new sanctuary in the Aleutian Islands. Gwen had written to ask if Lily knew there’d been a nuclear test under the sea floor near Amchitka Island in the Aleutians and a much larger one planned for the near future, so the sanctuary was hardly safe. Well, of course she knew. That’s why they’re planning the Checleset Bay relocation. She was about to join the group of biologists heading to the west side of Vancouver Island to try to find a put-in place for the, well, raft, in a word.

  Derek tried not to show his irritation at the compulsive way she talked, as if she were overcompensating for something and had no idea what. When he tried to change the subject—he’d heard some gestalt therapy people were looking for a place to do group, and shouldn’t they consider the possible rental money—she made an effort to take an interest in what he was saying—that made him like her again—but kept slipping down the interference of the new topic, grabbing at words like roots to hand herself back up to stable ground.

  Did he know the most common cause of death in sea otters?

  Life? he’d said.

  Tooth decay. You’d think hypothermia, but no. They’re one of the few mammals that chew their food. Have to groom themselves to get the air back in their fur every time they dive down for a bite. They crunch so many shells their teeth give out. No fat on their bodies to speak of. Not like all that blubber you’ve got on your seal population. A layer of air trapped in their fur is all they have to keep them warm.

  Whatever, he felt like saying but didn’t. Later, when they were no longer roommates, he’d call her from Vancouver and ask her to say “blueberries” because he loved the way her lips moved when she said the word.

  She’d arrived home from that first expedition discouraged as all get out because, in spite of the great location of the Bunsby Islands—you’ve got your shallow waters, seafood smorgasbord spread on the sea floor—the animals had arrived in piss-poor shape, and they’d found them huddled in a corner, matted in their own excrement. They must have kept them too long on the airport tarmac or something, she said, in tears, baseball cap pulled down over her eyes.

  Have some pigs’ feet, Lily, Derek said. She thought he said ears, pigs’ ears, and didn’t take any.

  There’s never anything to eat in this place, she complained. Except kale and millet.

  If you want something else to eat, grow it for christsake. We’ve got rakes. We’ve got shovels.

  Instead, she sat down on the beach turning her hands over and over like a piano player who’d broken them.

  Now here she comes down through the orchard, her long skirt brushing the ground. You’d think she’d pick a few to put through the cider press, but no. Want to go get the new porkers with me, Annabelle? Derek says, carrying his little girl to the truck. He roll
s down the window as Lily sways up to it and touches Annabelle on the tip of her nose. Hello, tiddlywink, she says.

  You going to do some apples today, Lil? Derek’s glance never lingers when you have business with him. He never flirts. Instead, he lowers his gaze as soon as you’re listening, looks away. If he were a gas station attendant, he’d pluck your credit card from your hand without looking at you. People mistake his shyness for brusqueness. He is brusque in a way, but not cold.

  Don’t keep her long, okay? Lily says. I’ve made arrangements for Will to see her at the fair. I’ve got to head back to Checleset to try to locate any survivors. You’re tied up on that Tunstall Bay job.

  I can’t believe this, Lily.

  It’s not otters she cares about, Derek thinks as he guns the truck up the driveway, it’s getting her own way. It hadn’t taken long to see that she wasn’t interested in him anymore that way, as people said. They’d given it the old college try (she said), but it was more the place and Annabelle binding them together than anything else. They were mainly friends. It’s been months since she started sleeping in the school bus again, himself in the goddam upstairs front bedroom.

  If you ever end up going to bed with someone else, he said when they first got together, I don’t want to know. Instead, she insisted on being up front, giving him a blow by blow about how lonely she’d been after she moved up to the bus, the rain dropping every day in sheets. She lifted her arm in front of the mirror, convinced moss had started to grow in her armpits. She’d only had a couple of one-night stands with Will; her bond with Derek was worth its weight in gold compared. Did he think of Scarborough as almost their child the way she did?

  He did not. And with Kayak Will of all people. He hated the show-offy way he walked around with his fiberglass kayak on his arm like a lobster claw so he could pop his boat in the water any time. Did odd jobs to keep body and soul together like a lot of other men on the Rock. Spent hours at the dump going over items people brought in for the used goods shelf, turned product around at the Saturday market. Lives God knows where. Something about his house getting struck by lightning, which he took as a sign he wasn’t supposed to have a house, so he moved into a hollow tree. That’s the myth anyway.

  He can just see the way their long white limbs would fit one another’s. That’s the trouble. The more Kayak Will’s features and pale colouring appear in Annabelle’s face like a photograph emerging from a rinse bath, the more determined he’s been not to say a word. How could she not see the implications of letting him assume pride of place?

  The stronger the evidence grew, the harder it was to bring up the subject. Either we’re a family, or I work for eighteen dollars an hour, he said. Fair enough, she’d said. I get it. But she didn’t. Can’t she hear how hackneyed her point of view is, spoken without inflection no matter who she’s talking to, the way she sweeps critical elements under the rug, and makes a federal case out of the trivial. An earth-shaking fuss about whether Annabelle gets commercial cream of wheat rather than seven-grain organic for breakfast but prepared to endorse an out-and-out betrayal like this. Lots of kids have two fathers these days, she says. How could he have allowed himself the luxury of believing his construct had significance to anyone but himself? That if Will got involved, he himself would be in a position where he would be overcompensating in even his smallest gesture. What’s she going to call Will? he asks.

  We’ll have to see what she calls you both.

  Oh fuck that.

  None of this stops him from loving Annabelle. Night after night when she’d been colicky, he’d draped her over his shoulder, slept on his feet even when she wouldn’t. Stiff as a board, she’d scream and wail while Lily slept on behind her earplugs. In desperation, he’d put her in the truck and driven her up and down the Government Road. Washed her diapers in the wringer washer because he didn’t want her in plastic Pampers. Lily hadn’t objected one iota when he said he was going to write his parents and tell them they had a grandchild. The three of them called on Percy and Ada, wouldn’t it be grand to be young enough to be able to sleep like that, he and Lily lecturing them about how proud they were to be able to live off what other people threw away. Percy and Ada sat there astonished. Wasn’t progress that people didn’t have to do that anymore?

  What he needs is a lake up north where no one could find them. Set out for Hope one day and keep going, the telephone poles locking behind him like the teeth of a zipper. He pulls over to let the ferry traffic pass. Someone might not see his turn signal; he’s not ever taking chances with Annabelle in the car. She wails her blue-skinned cry, wispy pale hair so thin her skull doesn’t have any protection. He himself looks as if he’s been in an accident. Someone should get a blanket and cover him up.

  Later that afternoon, strips of late sunlight shimmer between cedar branches where the waterfall splashes under the remains of the white picket bridge over Bridal Falls. Pickups park behind the old hotel site where the greenhouse used to stand. Stalls are set on makeshift platforms resting on the cement foundations that used to support the curved alder fence on the Bridal Path up the side of the falls. Half of today’s profits are going to augment the LIP grant for the fish ladder fund: the hope is to build steps up the side of the lagoon causeway and the balcony side of the falls. Once the new fry are released from the new nursery, the islanders may yet see a coho return.

  Derek sets up his annual tequila and haircut bar behind a rock halfway down the falls and tries to ignore the way Lily’s able to wrap her head in a scarf so her high cheekbones reflect the light from the falls, dammit. Annabelle climbs down from her mother’s hip, up the ladder of a slide made from a hollow log carved to look like a dragon, pulls herself out its mouth, goes around, climbs up and slides down again. When Kayak Will arrives, their two heads blend like dandelion puffs. Derek lets the tequila burn a slow line into his stomach when the only person in the world who belongs to him goes off with his enemy. Maybe she’ll start screaming and he’ll have to rescue her, but no, she trundles off with her biological father, holding his hand without a backward glance.

  37.

  When Gwen shows up at Scarborough, she has Maya on her back and Jenny by the hand. Derek’s in the yard chopping wood. Good to see you, Gwen. Jenny, Maya. He pushes his toque onto the back of his head.

  The house is even more run-down than when Flora and Lyndon lived there. At least the wallpaper’s been stripped and one wall of tongue and groove restored. The table’s a door laid on sawhorses. The cuckoo clock is still there. In the kitchen, Derek pushes a brain of sausage around in the frying pan. Want some? he says. Jenny nibbles a piece, heads off for the beach, comes back with a jar of shells as Lily flies in, Annabelle an expressionless burl on her hip. Gwen. Good to see you. Jenny. Are you some kind of grown-up niece or what?

  I’m going out to harvest some onions, says Derek. He always leaves the room when Lily comes in, but Gwen doesn’t know that yet.

  Later, Gwen makes up foamies for Maya and Jenny on the floor of what used to be the dining room. The way Annabelle reminds her of someone but she can’t think who is like having a word on the tip of her tongue. There’s still enough light to see the slanted trail to Pebbley, so she takes a walk to the beach and up the road to find the hotel pulled out like a massive tooth, a split-level ranch house in the middle of the tennis court. The old corner Deluxe moulders at the edge of the overgrown lawn bowling green. Where’s the monkey tree?

  She climbs the rickety stairs of the Deluxe and finds the floor littered with beer bottles. If they don’t want her to go to the cottage, maybe she could put in an airtight, fix it up and bring the girls here. Then she could still be part of things at Scarborough, whatever things are. If she rented a house in Vancouver, she’d have to get a job to cover the overhead. Then what? If the girls are only going to have one parent, they’ll need more of her, not less.

  At the village office, they tell her they plan to demolish the last cottages but not right away. She could rent one, but there’
s no question of a lease. A few days later, there she is in overalls stirring gallons of white latex, listening to Morningside on CBC. It can’t be all bad if you’ve got Peter Gzowski to listen to in the morning. Someone said if you want to put in a window, you have to tap along the wall with a hammer until you hear a thud.

  As autumn turns into winter, puddles fill up with fir needles and rain. The mountains and the sea blend into the same dull grey. She stirs more latex, sets more mousetraps. Hammers two-by-fours to build bunk beds.

  Let’s say we have a cabin in the forest, she says to Jenny.

  We’re not going to sleep here? There aren’t any beds.

  I’m building some.

  Are we camping?

  That’s it. We’re camping.

  I don’t like camping.

  Fine, let’s say the old lawn bowling green is our house. The cottage is our bedroom. The sky’s the ceiling.

  That’s not funny.

  They hang framed prints from the thrift store on the cedars lining the path to the outhouse. What’s this supposed to be, a corridor to the bathroom? Jenny says morosely.

  You’re supposed to hang pictures at eye level, did you know that?

  Whose eye level? Jenny says with her adult frown.

  Yours. We can move them up next year.

  We’re not going to be here next year My dad misses me.

  He does miss you. Come here, sweetheart.

  In the mornings, Gwen wakes up in the Scarborough bunkhouse, hoping she’ll have worked her way back to solid ground, but outside the mud shifts under her feet like a loosened bank lipping over a river. Before she left Blenheim St., she told her mother that what she needs to do is find herself as a person. I can’t help you there, her mother said. I’ve never thought of myself as a person. I’m just somebody making a custard.

  Painting the Deluxe walls the next day with Maya playing in the yard, Gwen caves into her loneliness, lies down and pulls back the edge of her panties. At the crucial moment, the silence is too silent. Races out to where Maya’s playing, and she’s not there. A voice whispers, now he’ll have to come. She couldn’t have thought that, but she did. Then, there’s her baby under a plum tree across the wrecked lawn bowling green. I lost you once at the Bay, and they found you outside sitting on the curb. What was I doing? Looking around. Only when she hears the guilt in her mother’s voice does Maya start to cry.