The Dancehall Years Read online

  68.

  Back in Silverdale, the work on the asphalt road outside Gwen’s unit never stops. Intermittent beeps herald yet another sander or grader, snowplow or gravel mixer. Living alone, at least you can come home and put on something really ugly. Kiss the pictures of your children on the fridge if you’re feeling lonely. Play your answering machine message and imagine how it would sound to someone else. You get: concentration, the dry pleasure of predictability. Comfort in routine. On Saturdays, you can make time for writing instead of marking. Write when your students are writing, the way you nap when the baby’s napping. Her manners go down the tube, so used to double-dipping at home she does it when she goes out. It’s Friday, she’s exhausted, maybe there’s a decent Masterpiece Theatre, even if the Gainsborough landscapes and period dress are all starting to look the same. Fractals. Leo’d be interested in this. Another channel shows a herb farm down south where a few pairs of women’s hands dart in and out preparing a salad. Wonder why they’re using sage? Sage is too strong for a salad. Oh it’s just the flower.

  The next time she goes out to Taylor Lake, she finds junk piled all over the floor of the lakeside warming cabin. Stuffing pulled out of the sofa, the hinge with the padlock yanked out of the door. The picnic table at her campsite is smashed and burned. A black bear lumbers across the trail. It’s late fall; he should be down. She starts to sing the way she’s been told, expecting him to run into the bush, but instead, he turns around and pads back. She backs slowly toward the cabin, her heart beating high in her chest like a trapped bird. Would it go for the back of your neck and put you out of your misery quickly? There’s a tape doing the rounds of a poor soul getting killed by a griz, and the screaming goes on for over ten minutes.

  But the bear finally turns and leaves. She strikes the tent—she’ll sleep in the cabin tonight—and is spreading it on a picnic table when Garth pulls up in his truck and comes to help. They each take one end of the tent and walk toward the other as if they’d laundered it. Maybe he liked your song, he says, stepping back and forward to match tent sides with her. Clouds spread to let in a flight of geese. The east ridge pales as if it’s dawn. The geese honks grow faint as they fly farther away until they look like a swarm of no-see-ums above the flank of the mountain.

  What an awesome hunting week we had, me and my dad, Garth says. We came up the Caledonia road to the tree line on the mountain. Know how elk can get their antlers locked at mating season? This male must have got tangled up with another one because he was dragging part of the carcass from his antlers. We did him a favour putting him out of his misery. My dog here? He pulls the black lab’s head against his knees. Know what he did? Took sections of the hide where we’d skinned the elk, brought us each a piece and dropped it at our feet.

  Sharing with the pack, eh? Gwen asks. Sounds like a bit of a stretch, but what does she know? When she tries to lift the package of broccoli from the ashes, the pot holder catches fire. She sticks it in a can of water where it flares and dies.

  I know the kids who trashed this cabin, Ms. Killam, Garth says. Maybe we could get them out here and my dad and some of the other people who helped build it and do one of those, what do you call them things?

  Those? she asks gently.

  Right, those.

  Conflict resolutions?

  Yeah, them. He sketches two overlapping circles in the dirt, says the middle of the Venn diagram could be used to record common ground.

  A few days later she takes her Elevens and Twelves out to the lake where they sit on stumps and folding chairs. The trashed cabin is with them as well, undisturbed evidence like the scene of a crime investigation. The consensus at the hardware store was that there’s no point repaning the windows, they’d only get broken again. Might as well put plywood over them and be done with it. This time it’s the grown-ups who built the cabin who are being bullied, eh? she says to the group. Nils sits quietly with his lean face and square gold-rimmed glasses. The place was a mess, he says. Dirty dishes, no wood brought in. That’s why I put a lock on the door.

  That’s the way we liked it, the kids say. We felt hurt because it’s our place too. It made us mad when there was a lock on the door. The lock did it. It’s the lock’s fault. Do you have anything in common? Mutual interest? Gwen asks. What do you want, Nils?

  I want the cabin to be used properly and respected.

  What do you people want?

  We want to be trusted with the place and people stop being so fussy.

  So everyone wants to see the cabin enjoyed, right?

  Right.

  Is it because of the fire and losing everything you’d worked for all those years that made you want to make sure this place was secure, Nils?

  He looks up, nods slowly. It was, you know. That was part of it.

  They’re good kids. They hear him. There’s the teaching window. A touch of understanding filters through the air that seems to free something in Nils. She doesn’t know what, but something. He doesn’t look so alone for a moment.

  The first suggestion is that they remove the lock; everyone helps clean up, and they promise to leave it in better condition from now on. Two, give them a key. Three. No teenagers. Everyone votes for the first.

  69.

  A few days later, Lily calls to say she’s in Terrace doing some research and wants to stop by Silverdale on her way back to Port Renfrew. When she arrives, she sits on a stool in the kitchen, unhooks a dangling earring. Her cheekbones are still there. Where else would they be? Her skin is perfect, her hair cropped short and curly around her ears.

  Dad didn’t deserve to be wiped out like that, she says. He was looking forward to his retirement. I miss him. This is nice. She takes in the galley kitchen. You’ve done a lot with it. Remember last summer when I had a hard time getting Mom to wear a hat in the garden. There’s nothing wrong with the sun, she kept saying. How can there be anything wrong with the sun?

  Lily, I didn’t want to get into it when we were trying to help Dad, but has Isabelle been in touch with you?

  No. Why do you ask?

  And Mother hasn’t said anything?

  About what?

  About the fact that Isabelle has found her daughter. She didn’t even know her daughter was alive.

  I didn’t know Isabelle had a daughter.

  None of us did. And you know her as well.

  I do?

  It’s Shima.

  Shima? But she’s Japanese.

  Only half.

  Oh, I get it. What’s with Mom then? Why hasn’t she invited her over?

  I hate to say it, but I’m afraid she’s being racist.

  When the phone rings, it’s Nils calling her at home for the first time. When Gwen presses the phone to her cheek and turns away, Lily sits up straight. My sister’s here, Gwen says, looking at her. We’re going out to Taylor Lake for a picnic. Do you want to come? That was a dad, actually, she says when she hangs up. Lives way the heck out in the bush. He’s a back-country trekker, walks miles and miles out there. An hour later, the doorbell rings and Nils comes softly down the corridor. Shakes hands with Lily.

  Out at the lake, the reflection of Mt. Abelard darkens in the water. It’s only when the four-wheelers arrive that the lake spirits get scared away. Nils would understand; she likes their bond being unspoken, that they know they belong to the same place. Sometimes people don’t have to be together to be together.

  Are you cold, Nils? Gwen asks. He’s only wearing a fleece.

  When he nods, Gwen goes over to her car and gets her camp overcoat, an ancient tweed affair she’d found in the bedroom above the kitchen at Scarborough. Wearing it, he looks contentedly homeless. In the car going home, Lily stares ahead with a serene air as if the lake now belongs to her as well. Stretches up to check her face in the rear-view mirror. What a nice man, she says, settling back. At home, Gwen opens the fridge to put away the leftovers. I need to tell you, Lil. I might have made a friend here. I mean really a friend. And if his wife wants him, I w
ish she’d come back.

  Maybe he already has someone else, says Lily.

  If there’s a chance to throw her off-balance, Lily will take it. If she were trying to walk a tightrope, her sister would pick up the end and shake it.

  Gwen goes down to the basement when it’s hot or she needs to ground herself. In Dr. Merrick days, she’d marked the occasion of giving up lovers by taking the loop out of the G in her signature. Has never again telephoned anyone while she was sitting in bed. But now she drags the phone cord into the basement, curls up on the bed and dials Nils. He picks up right away. Did you get home okay? he says softly, as if he knew she’d call.

  I did. Did you?

  Just.

  Just is a lot.

  She hears him smile over the phone. I know this is a personal question, Nils, but I have to ask. Did your wife leave you because you have someone else?

  My wife hasn’t left me.

  Oh well, then.

  I want you to tell me why you’re living like you are, he says. Like a nun. You’re not built to live like that.

  No one has spoken to her that way for so long she wants to weep. It’s a long story, she says. It would take too long to explain.

  Could you try?

  Maybe someday, she says. But not now.

  Lily calls down the stairs that she wants to use the phone. She should call Annabelle. Gwen comes back upstairs, hands it over. She’s still upset about Dad, Lily says, punching numbers. Hello, sweetheart, she says when she reaches her daughter. I know you’re sad, Annabelle, but you have all of us and you have Billy Will. He loves you. More than loves you.

  Was it too delicate a subject to talk about over the phone maybe? Gwen says when her sister hangs up.

  Maybe Lily should stick to otters.

  The next morning, Lily has made coffee and is having her breakfast when Gwen comes down. What are you going to do today, Lil? Gwen says gathering up her school stuff.

  I think I’ll call Nils and take him up on his offer to show me the mountain.

  He offered to do that? When was that?

  Out at the lake.

  I guess you’ll need his phone number then.

  Those moments, eh? She manages to write it down and hand it over. Once more into the breach, she says to herself in the staffroom and heads to her first class. Nils isn’t there, so Lily must have reached him. Garth notices right away that the subject-verb agreement tests marked out of forty were supposed to have been out of twenty. She apologizes and collects them to mark again.

  Dilemma. What does that word mean again, Ms. Killam?

  No matter which way you turn, you’re going to lose something.

  The intercom announces that it’s skittles, licorice and cake on sale in the foyer at recess.

  After school, she sits in her car, bracing herself to face her sister, the way in Dr. Merrick days she used to struggle to compose herself before going into Blenheim St. Fifth position, she called it, the most difficult one in ballet where you bend your right foot directly in front of your left so they’re facing opposite directions. Last night, Lily asked if she knew that northern seals have to spend all winter nibbling at their breathing holes in the ice to keep them open. No, she said. She didn’t.

  At home, her sister meets her at the door quivering with excitement. She and Nils had driven quite a ways up the mountain. Up the Caledonia Road, then onto a sort of trail. They didn’t find any caribou, but they did see some elk and deer. She took a picture of Nils. A good one, she thinks. He looks a lot like Dad, doesn’t he?

  Oh, please.

  She’s never thought of words as plumage before, but maybe she can read something particularly beautiful in class tomorrow. Maybe even something of her own. The next day, Nils arrives early and sits in the back of the classroom, forehead resting on the tips of his fingers. She goes up to his desk.

  Thanks for showing Lily around, she says.

  I did it so you could get some breathing space. I want to take you up the mountain. Tears pull into her nose, her knuckles push her lips to one side. Before the kids come in, he holds the back of her hand to his cheek.

  That night Lily says she thinks the two of them have a lot to offer each other.

  You mean me and Nils?

  Of course I mean you and Nils.

  Find a recovering alcoholic, any recovering alcoholic, offer her a drink. A family member’s approbation is such a powerful green light, her sister’s seal of approval immediately affirms what she’s been trying to deny for weeks. This is where she has to fight for it. Who is this woman, what is she about? Okay. Lily’s probably trying to make amends because she feels guilty for moving in on her. She did say once that she doesn’t intend to take a back seat to her sister. Well done.

  What I’m saying is that I don’t want you to miss out, Lily says as she gets in her car to leave.

  I’m not missing out, Lil. I like my life.

  That evening, after she’s gone, Nils calls. Are we seeing each other on Sunday, he asks. Are we going up the mountain?

  I don’t know, Nils.

  What if she ends up on the other side of the river and someone’s moved all the trees? She packs for the hike with him anyway. In September, when she’d gone to school at the day of the equinox, her Twelves were coming out the front door. Where are you going, people? We have a class.

  Did you forget to turn your clock back, Ms. Killam?

  When she opened the door to the classroom, every piece of furniture in the room had been reversed; the desks were switched to face north instead of south. Her desk as well. Even the filing cabinet and the lectern had done an about face.

  Later, she tramps around the lake, a stick of bear mace in her back pocket. Nils had told her how moose sometimes stumble onto the track in front of the train when it’s hurtling through the valley. They think it’s a corridor for travelling. One driver had to quit because there was nothing else for the train to do but bear down on the panic stricken animal.

  For her, it feels like the end of a drought, a soft rain begins to fall. All she’s doing is going over and over the content so she won’t have to take responsibility for the decision she knows is the wrong one. She can’t go up the mountain with Nils. There’s too much between them already.

  At home, she drags her backpack into the basement. Puts the fruit back in the bowl. The Kahlúa back on the shelf. When she starts to sort some of her papers as a way of re-occupying the space, she finds herself going through the letters her mother wrote during their trip to Mexico.

  Dear Gwen, We’re having quite a time. Dad has the airports marked all the way down through the States. We can only fly each day as far as the fuel will hold out. At the airport where we landed in the Yucatan, we didn’t see anybody. We had no idea where we were going to sleep, so we started down a road in the jungle and came to a village where people offered us a bed. In the morning light, we could see the road better, which made it easier to walk back to the plane. It’s fun to be adventurers again the way we were on our sailing honeymoon. Did I tell you Dad and I raced each other up the Sound in separate boats and how exciting it was because we didn’t know whether we would meet up at night or not? We always did.

  The phone rings in the middle of the night. Are you sleeping? Nils asks.

  Not very well. It’s a long night. Are you?

  No, I’m waking up every two hours thinking about you.

  He phones again about noon.

  We can’t go up the mountain, she says. It’s too late. We’d have to stay over and that’d be too much to ask of ourselves. Sounds like we have an agreement, he says.

  He says he’s coming over, even if they’re not going up the mountain. Maybe they could drive to K’san in Hazelton. He sits on the stool where Lily sat. After the war, I heard my mother say if only I had a piece of butter, he says. Then all you Canadians came and freed us. That’s why we’re here in this valley, us Dutch. I nearly starved to death in the war.

  You were hungry?

  I w
as very hungry.

  When he chews, he keeps the food in the front of his mouth for a long time to make it last. It’s a beautiful day. They should get going. She’s put the foamie and tent in the car and taken them out again four times. The encased tent sits beside the car like an outsized boot. She carries it back to the basement. This is being dressed for the bush? he asks.

  He sits beside her, not wanting to drive. Her wrist hurts from all the writing and marking she’s been doing. She rests it in his palm. How far out of town do we have to get before you take off that terrible hat? she says. He lets go her wrist, tosses his baseball hat in the back seat, picks up her wrist again, circling it with his thumb and forefinger like a bracelet. He’ll hold it all the way to Kiyah Wiget, immobilized between his two hands like a newborn kitten. When they get to the other side of the blue bridge that isn’t a blue bridge, she pulls off the road. I forgot the wine, she says.

  They sit there. We’ll get some in Smithers.

  It’s Sunday. I forgot the food too.

  We’ll go back for it. It doesn’t matter what we do.

  On the second try, they make it up and over the hill. The mountains take on more distance, and the valley spreads below them. Sections of torn truck tires are wrenched to the side of the road like giant ravens’ wings.

  The mist on the river makes it look as if it’s on fire. She’s never seen the mountains so beautiful; spoons of wind blow off the peaks. Crater Lake is a deep ache on Dzilh Yez, the glacier a perfect white filling. They sail by. The crevices take on new diamonds minute by minute. As they pass Kyah Wiget, the river flips alongside the station wagon like a long silver tail.