The Dancehall Years Page 23

  40.

  Later, Eugene is walking Maya up and down the driveway holding her upraised hands. When Gwen comes out with dark circles under her eyes, he goes over to sit beside her at the outside table. I know this sounds self-serving, he says. But I think what you need to do is put down roots here and really, I mean really, hang on.

  She pushes a maple leaf around with her toe. It’d be a whole different thing if you’d said that when you wanted me to be with you.

  I know.

  You’re only saying that to get rid of me. Is she sleeping in my bed? I can’t stand it if she’s sleeping in my bed. She’s not sleeping in your bed.

  So there is someone! She shoots bolt upright as if she’d surfaced in her starry bathing suit and her parents weren’t there after all. People didn’t say cheating in those days; strong attraction was more often spoken of as undeniable.

  You’ve got to settle down, Gwen. The kids shouldn’t see you this upset. She wants to fling herself at him and hang on for dear life. But she doesn’t do that. She does not do that.

  Instead, she tears down the road past her pathetic attempts at refurbishing the Deluxe, hurls herself across the causeway over to her own concrete stairs above Sandy. For years to come, the mistakes she’s made with him will be soft craters on the inside of her lip she’ll keep biting down on by accident. Until the children are grown up, she’ll dream of him almost every night, trek endlessly up the narrow hall of their apartment to find him in bed with someone else. Hauling herself back from repeating the endless ways she wants to connect with him will be like holding back a child from crossing a busy street because there’s ice cream on the other side. Sometimes she’ll give up trying and let her mind jerk back and back to what he might be doing, the way you’d let an encrusted pot soak for a few days before you tried to scour it.

  When she goes back to the house, Eugene’s in his sports jacket and is packing. Jenny’s lined up the kitchen chairs beside Annabelle who’s sitting on a tarp, filling an egg carton with dirt. I’m going to put you in jail, Jenny says, lifting a chair over her cousin’s head. But kids don’t go to jail. They go to Courtenay. It’s a long way, and you have to go on a road that makes you carsick. Then she bursts into tears. Don’t go, Daddy. Eugene crouches so their eyes are at the same level. It’s only for a little while, Jen. I love you so much. I have to go to work. You can come on the plane, or I’ll come back on the plane. Annabelle sits under her chair, calm and stony-eyed.

  Is there something I can do? says Lily.

  You could drive me to the ferry.

  Why doesn’t he ask Gwen to drive him to the ferry? She plain can’t bear it.

  As Lily and Eugene head up the driveway, the pain in Gwen’s ovaries and uterus clenches and releases. Blood pours from her as if her waters have broken. She rushes to the toiletless bathroom, aching from her waist to her knees, bleeds through a thick sanitary pad in ten minutes. She’s not menstruating, she’s hemorrhaging. Back in the kitchen, old George Fenn, who’s come with a load of firewood, picks up Annabelle whose weight sinks into his chest as his face softens with belonging. It’s all right, I’m here, George says, as if he’ll never move again.

  Ready for lunch, sweetheart? Gwen asks Jenny who’s huddled on the kitchen couch. We have airplanes, honey. It’s a short trip to see your dad. Let’s set the table for lunch. We should wash these knives and forks. She pulls up a stool, runs water and squirts detergent. Jenny sticks her hands angrily in the suds. These man knives are at the beach, she says furiously. Looking after the lady forks. The dad dives in the water and swims to the mom. She picks up two teaspoons. These are their children who are almost drownded.

  They’re not drowning, Gwen says matter of factly. They’re here lying on the beach.

  Do you know how to play Chinese checkers, Jenny? asks George. I’ll have a game with you.

  When Gwen goes to the garden to pick spinach for an omelette, she finds herself squatting on the ground, stuffing leaves into her mouth the way pregnant women with calcium deficiency lick plaster walls. A last few Brussels sprouts knot on their bolted stalks. The firs careen as if someone’s holding them at the base and swinging them like a bouquet. Your skin is so soft. How do you keep it like that? You don’t have to answer.

  Then Lily’s back from the ferry, standing at the edge of the garden. Why are you holding your stomach like that, Gwen? She takes her sister’s elbow and helps her up. I don’t know what’s going on. You’d better tell me.

  It’s over. My marriage is over.

  Are you sure?

  I’ve been told that. He’s gone.

  I’m sorry I’ve been so preoccupied, I…

  He’s gone for good. Gwen’s jaw drops, and she can’t stop crying.

  Back in the kitchen, George has Jenny and Maya and Annabelle on pillows and booster seats at the trestle table jumping marbles on the game board. Lily touches his shoulder, leads Gwen into the group room where she helps her up on the massage table.

  Is it here where you’re hurting? She places her palm on her belly.

  From my waist to my knees but mostly there.

  Lily circles her fingers around the ankle bone, feels for the acupuncture point where the ovaries meet the instep. Presses as if taking a pulse. The ache deepens into bruised tenderness.

  Crying is good, she says. It’s all right.

  But it’s not all right. Crying makes her bleed harder.

  41.

  Thanksgiving is awfully darn early in Canada. Twist those cranberries through the grinder while I’m getting dressed, will you Lil? says Gwen. Zest the orange. The spinach only takes a minute to wilt if you use the last clean rinse water.

  I know it only takes a moment to wilt. I live here.

  Fine.

  It’s all a commotion though, because it’s Kayak Will’s day to do the wheat run: a group of them have negotiated the franchise to clean out the bottoms of the boxcars at the downtown station, which gives them free flour for a bit. There’s one truck between them so they take turns. Sometimes it seems there’s one twenty-dollar bill that gets passed around the cove all winter. Derek’s looking for the keys to go fetch Ada from the four.

  Will’s got them, says Lily. He’s doing the wheat run.

  Oh shit, and you didn’t bother telling me! I’ll have to get George to pick up your mother, and he’s getting too old for all of this.

  Worse, it looks like the turkey’s done too soon. The vegetables should not be ready, but they are. They’ll have to keep pans of hot water under them. Poke the sweet potatoes. Thaw the frozen pesto. Grate the precious expensive Romano. Changing upstairs, Gwen hears Ada arrive. That loose Afghan tunic thing should be pretty enough for dinner but comfortable enough to cook in. Her mother will be in her camel-hair coat, her face powder pale. It’s a good coat, she’ll be thinking, too good for this place. George Fenn has been such a help, he’s staying for dinner too.

  Let’s see if we can wiggle this leg, Jenny, Gwen says. Stick a fork in the breast, see if the juices run clear. Do men call women birds, she wonders, because they think of their own palms supporting curved feathered vaginas? The wetted brown paper covering the bird has started to smoke, and the roasting pan has gritty handles, the sides full of dents. Dad should be here to make the gravy, says Jenny. Dad always makes the gravy.

  You let the flour soak up the fat and start adding milk, honey. It’s not hard.

  Jenny whisks fiercely like a propeller on an outboard.

  Slowly, dear. Gently.

  Fine, gently.

  You should have phoned me, Gwen, says Ada, looking at the chair as if wondering whether she should put her napkin down and sit on that. I would have brought the good roasting pan. Her look of tired disappointment says it all. I’m willing to look after the children so you can go back to school, Gwen. I’ve said so a thousand times. That condemned Deluxe you’re planning to have your daughters sleep in? It’s a fire trap. You people don’t have to live like paupers over here. Derek could find a job.
Ada’s never liked coming over to camp after Labour Day. She’s told them that.

  The gravy’s good. Everyone says so, even if the zucchini relish is served in a saucer whose cup is broken. Jenny climbs into her grandmother’s lap and pats her face.

  Look at this. A lovely granddaughter in my lap. How lucky can you get?

  I don’t know, says Jenny.

  Why are they having Thanksgiving in the kitchen again? Oh right, the girls are still sleeping in the dining room. An hour ago, the greying tongue and groove walls looked comfortable to Gwen, but as soon as Ada came in, they looked dirty and dismal. Gwen bends protectively over the bird as she carries it to the table. Platters pass from stove to hand. Ada smiles at Derek as he crisscrosses the carving knife with the sharpener.

  So, you children? she says. What’s new and different?

  Where’s Dad? says Lily.

  He’s at home.

  Why’s he at home? He’s supposed to be flying. Why didn’t he come here if he didn’t go flying?

  You know how he gets when he’s depressed. He sits in his chair and stares. He’s lost his pilot’s license.

  No. When? Lily stops chewing.

  Oh no, says Gwen.

  He’s got a bit of a heart murmur, high blood pressure. It’s not serious, Ada says to their alarmed looks. It’ll be all right. They won’t give him a clean bill of health, though, which he says is like being a little bit pregnant. Flying up north is what’s kept him going this last while.

  Good dinner or not, Gwen feels as if she’s going to faint. Suddenly she can’t bear her shapeless dress with a button missing. The blanched tomato skin of her own appearance slips from her shoulders, useless as peoples’ clothes when they take them off to make love. It seems like her outfit was chosen by someone she liked yesterday but doesn’t today. The afghan print is a book brought along to get through a night in a strange hotel, but when she opens it, it’s one she’s already read.

  A truck whooshes down the hill. The door opens, and Kayak Will comes in. Grey hair mixed with premature white—his face longer, teeth more feral. Suddenly the person Annabelle reminds Gwen of is no longer on the tip of her tongue.

  Jesus, man. The truck’s in the ditch. You kids leave the pigpen gate open? The porkers raced right across my path. I had to slam on the brakes, but there weren’t any. Goddamn truck, excuse me ma’am. I thought you fixed the brakes, man.

  I did fix them, Derek says. It must be the master cylinder.

  When Will passes behind Annabelle’s chair, he cups his palm over her head, but she ducks as if his hand is a hat she doesn’t want to wear.

  You remember Billy Fenn, Mother? says Lily.

  Of course I remember you, Billy. Will now is it? You’ve changed.

  Haven’t we all, says Billy Will, as he sits down and pours himself a glass of blackberry wine.

  42.

  Later, Lily’s gone out to do a massage, and Derek’s in the kitchen playing solitaire. After Gwen gets the children down, she sits across from him. Picks up a placemat and puts it down. I don’t think Lily knows how hurtful she can be, Derek, she says. She smashes a lot of corn stalks trying to pick more ears than anyone else, if you know what I mean.

  I do know what you mean, he says, But it’s not going to get me anywhere. Who else but George Fenn would have put the old school bus up in the orchard, come to think of it? Maybe it was bait for his grandson. At dinner, a cruel glint had flashed in Will’s eyes as he pointedly rolled up one of Annabelle’s sleeves while Lily rolled up the other.

  Annabelle loves you, she says.

  Lily told you, did she?

  No, I saw.

  Jenny needs something to get her mind off her loss, so Gwen signs her up for soccer even though her daughter says she doesn’t like doing things where she has to change her clothes. If she has to go to soccer, all right she’ll try out for goalie. That way, she can kick away anything she doesn’t like coming across the field.

  At the first break in the rain, they head to the waterfalls picnic grounds, now a soccer field. Gwen’d gone to Park Royal and spent her last fifteen dollars on goalie shin pads. Applied for welfare for a couple of months to tide her over. These Americans, coming up here and going on our welfare system, said someone in the mail queue. I won’t dignify that with a response, she thinks. Kneeling in front of Jenny, she fastens the Velcro on her goalie shin pads as if girding her for battle. When we go back to San Francisco, I want you and Dad to see each other every day, Jenny says as she heads out to the field.

  Maybe Gwen’s stood up too quickly because she’s so dizzy her pad’s soaked through; when she makes a dash for the outhouse built from the shack that used to house the generator, canoes spin like clock hands. Inmates in grey hospital gowns and paper slippers shuffle down the hall. Yarding out words and words like a net. She has him. She has him. He gets away. Maybe if she turns with the spinning rather than standing still, she and the numbers on the clock will stay in the same place. The game’s just started. The game is over. Discharging gobs of coalesced blood thick as chocolate pudding, she manages to get back to the field to help Jenny takes off her goalie padding.

  Homesick is when you want to be somewhere else, Jenny says.

  The next thing she remembers is waking up in a clinic, a queasy nurse lifting blood-soaked pads from her crotch as if pulling prints. Your blood count’s gone from fifteen down to seven. We’re giving you a transfusion now. Strange blood seeps into her body like oil that doesn’t mix with water. Whose blood is this? she calls out. I don’t like this blood.

  It’s this blood or dying, Mother.

  Oh well then.

  Derek waits out in the corridor until they let him in to see her.

  Where’re the girls?

  I have them. Don’t worry.

  I don’t have any money, Derek, she says. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I could start a daycare, take on a few more kids. I could do that.

  You relax and get better, Gwen. Don’t worry about anything right now.

  A doctor in a white lab coat standing by her bed tells her that, unfortunately, she’s going to need a hysterectomy. Nowadays they can reverse uteruses back through the vagina, but she has too much scar tissue and leakage from her womb to sustain that procedure. Likely they’ll have to perform the operation the old-fashioned way, but at least the cut will be on her bikini line. She’ll have part of an ovary and her own hormones.

  Small mercies, she mutters.

  Out the window of the hospital—UBC actually—there’s a swimming pool to the north, lights on the Grouse Mountain chairlift to the east. How are you today, Mrs. Killam? the doctor says the day after the operation.

  Ms. Killam, Gwen says. Mrs. Killam is my mother. Achy. Not great.

  Down on all fours, are you? He smiles. A hysterectomy is major surgery. If you rest for the next six weeks, your pelvic floor will build a foundation to support you for the rest of your life. Otherwise… He makes a steeple with his fingers, collapses them.

  How can I do that? I have two little kids.

  I understood your parents live nearby.

  They do, but I don’t want to impose on them.

  Do you have a choice?

  Of course I have a choice. I’ll go back to Scarborough.

  Maybe, when you’re stronger, but in the meantime, there’s a colleague of mine I’d like you to have a word with.

  A few days later, a resident shows her into an interview room in another part of the hospital. At least they’ve given back her jeans and sweater so she doesn’t have to shuffle down the hall in paper slippers. Inside the small room, the wall to her right is a mirror. Is this a oneway mirror? she asks. It’s not for you to see, says the resident. Yourself, I mean. The psychiatrist needs to see how I’m doing. I’ll take you around behind and show you.

  They’re about to investigate—she’s expecting a booth like a technician’s sound studio—when a tall balding man who must have been behind the mirror joins them. Solemn, with a slow candor, th
e sort of person who might take a long time to answer a question, but his answer would be worth listening to.

  This is Dr. Merrick, says the resident.

  Why are you here? the psychiatrist asks once he’s sitting down.

  I had a hysterectomy.

  No, I mean, why did you agree to come to see me?

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m hallucinating. They thought the blood transfusion would help, but it hasn’t. I have to get back. Derek can’t cope with the children by himself, and Lily’s gone back to Checleset.

  Who’s Derek? Who’s Lily?

  When she explains, he and the resident get up and leave. Is this where you go out of the room and vote? she asks.

  It’s okay, he says. I’ll be back.

  Why does it make such a difference, his saying that? But it does. When they come back, they say they think she should stay in the hospital for a bit.

  So you think I’m crazy?

  We think you’re a very tired human being. It’s going to be okay, the doctor says softly, and she hears him in a spot at the base of her brain that hasn’t been touched for a long time. The water wants to hold you up. There’s nothing else for it to do.

  43.

  January, 1972

  At Gwen’s second interview, this one in Dr. Merrick’s comforting oak office, he says he’d be willing to “work with her” if she’s prepared to give up intimate relationships. Ones that count. He doesn’t mean for a month or two either. He means for a long time. He sounds as if he’s draping sheets to expose a surgical site.

  Why? she says alarmed.

  You’re all over the map. He doesn’t mean to sound patronizing, but any gardener worth his salt would start with a bit of pruning. If you want to strengthen your base, that is. Get back to where we can take a good look at the roots of the problem.

  I’m a woman, not a garden.

  Still, he says. It shouldn’t be this bad. If you want to deal with this, we’ll have to go back a very long way indeed.

  The truth is I’d do almost anything to have my husband back in my bed.