The Dancehall Years Read online

  One of them keeps saying it’s going to be all right, as if the one who isn’t speaking is being rushed to emergency. A life can be born and lived and end in half an hour. She said the same thing to me, he says when she tells him about Lily saying they had a lot to offer each other. They turn off the highway past a statue of a logger lassoing a tree, round a few more curves past Hagwilget, then stop at the bridge to wait for their turn to cross.

  Hello, my beauty, my love, she says to the most stunning mountain of all.

  As soon as I saw that mountain, I knew I was staying, he says.

  Me too.

  Stegyawden does seem to stand as alone as its name suggests, a pyramid of multiple crags and crevices that look impossible to climb. On the point, the campsites are separated from each other by cotton-woods. When the river’s running low, there’s a long walk over smooth stones to the water. When it’s high, the point is a narrow footpath. Snarled pieces of river debris wrap themselves in the trees like birds’ nests.

  Yesterday she was old. Today, she turns up the collar on her jacket and feels chic. In the summer, the cottonwood storms thicken like eagle down. When stones begin to cascade down the opposite slope, desire strikes them like lightning. She leans against the car fender as he sucks his tongue into a tiny point and pushes it between her teeth. No one’s kissed her like that before. She instantly loses five pounds.

  How do you do it, Gwen? It’s what I wanted to ask you the whole time.

  Do what?

  Live like you do. The way you’re so self-contained. I need to be with someone who knows how to do that.

  It’s a strange drive home. She’s tired and wants him to drive, but he doesn’t offer. It’s better she’s been put in her place. It’s easier in a way. Just before Round Lake, the sky darkens with that eerie blowing light when the sun sneaks in and lights the hills and trees from the side. Tomorrow he’ll be on Mt. Abelard by himself. When he phoned the other night, he didn’t like hearing noises other than her voice.

  Is there someone in your house?

  It’s the news. I’ve got the radio on.

  Can you cook and talk on the phone at the same time?

  I was a single mother for a long time. Where would we be if I hadn’t been able to do at least two things at once?

  How’s the food?

  It gets exhausting, all this sublimation.

  The next morning, her carefully constructed armature lies smashed on the floor beside her bed. Wedges of frozen flesh heave inside her like ice breaking on the river. Something vast has happened inside her. An enormous hand lays itself on the mountain, which rises to it like bread.

  At recess, she walks around the track, her hands feeling softly at the silence behind her. Back in her room, Garth is standing by her desk. Your marks are up, Garth. You have a good chance of being accepted at UNBC.

  I would go but… he says. It’s my dad. I can’t leave him. I promised my mother I wouldn’t leave him until she came back.

  Should you think about whether that’s fair to yourself, Garth? Your dad will be all right. He’s a survivor.

  70.

  On her next visit, notes are pinned up all over Blenheim St. The one on the front door says not to open it to any stranger who doesn’t have identification. Oh, did I tell you, Gwen? says Ada. I do not want any homemakers in. It’s payback time, she says, sitting down with her toast. It’s because of what we did to Grandma Flora that you’re after me to have someone in. We should have let her stay at the Scarborough house until she died. I did the wrong thing, and now they’re punishing me. Those kids came again in the night. If you go down the basement, you’ll see that the Christmas ornaments are smashed on the playroom floor. Oh, I meant to tell you. If I ever sell Blenheim St., Lily gets the grandfather clock.

  May I have the dining room table?

  Why would you want the dining room table? It’s gone to rack and ruin.

  I’ve always thought it was special.

  Down in the playroom, the decorations are where they’ve always been, wrapped in tissue paper and packed in a box.

  The boy must have brought them back when I wasn’t looking, Ada says when she goes back upstairs. The one who keeps coming to my door. Where’s Leo? I haven’t seen Leo for ages.

  Leo came out and looked after you these last few weeks, Mom. He bought you a microwave.

  It’s not there now. Did you cancel the homemaker?

  I did because you made a dentist appointment the day she was coming over to meet you.

  When Dr. Enright comes in, she strikes her Sweetheart of Sigma Chi pose, bright and pretty. Of course, if I get really old, she says, I can move to somewhere smaller.

  Do you think you’ll do that?

  Only if I can’t manage. I’m managing fine now.

  Perhaps, he says gently, kneeling to examine her swollen knees.

  Going upstairs, Ada grabs the arm rails of both stairs, pulls herself back like a slingshot and aims for the first stair. Whoever designed this house must have known someone was going to get old in it, she says. Putting railings on both sides like this. I go up and down these at least ten times a day. How else do you think I’ve kept my figure? This time, though, because of her poor sore knees, she can’t do it. It’s terrible for her, out there by herself, intruders behind her, and she has to turn and see they know she won’t make it.

  Finally, she gives in and admits it might be best if the door isn’t locked when she’s in her bath. There’s a long silence without a splash. I guess you’re going to have to come and help me, she says. She’s managed to swing her feet into the tub but is sitting on the lip. Gwen sits on the toilet seat behind her. Her mother’s hips form a curved heart from the small of her back to the tips of her buttocks and gravity pulls furrows of dry skin toward her knees. How about stretching your arms along the sides, shuffling your feet forward and sliding down the slope? she says.

  It’s too steep, Ada says. She tries but can’t bend her knees, lands hard on her tail bone.

  Oh dear, they both say.

  The next night, she lets Gwen hold her from behind to ease her body down the tub. I’ll never get there, she says. Yes, you will. From behind her shoulder, Gwen can look at her deep breasts as long as she wants because her mother can’t see her and ask what she’s staring at. When they get her out, she reaches out her hand to be steadied—she hates it—but lets Gwen dry her. She doesn’t turn away, not wanting to be touched; she simply stands there, a woman in her own body. With the towel wrapped around her, she bends one knee into the slight curve of the other, the way she does when she’s having her picture taken.

  Oh Mom, Gwen says softly. You’re so pretty.

  Thank you, her mother says matter of factly, as if used to being told her whole life she has a lovely figure. If someone seems to think she’s getting old, she hasn’t noticed. Don’t any of you take my money, she says. You can have it when I’m dead. There’s a door from the bathroom to the master bedroom and another one from the hall. If her door’s been left open in the night, she wakes up and says anxiously, Is that you, Gwen? As if anybody who could be there in the night couldn’t possibly belong. Worrying her own breathing might be keeping her mother awake, the silence in the house frightens Gwen into thinking it’s her mother’s lack of breathing that’s alerted her. Striding across the hall, turning on lights as she goes, slow motion now—running, lurching, falling her way into her parents’ bedroom, she almost stumbles over her mother lying on the floor, her mouth silently opening and closing. Gwen slips her arms under her knees and shoulders, lifts her into bed. Dials 911 and, in a few minutes, the ambulance’s siren is the only sound for miles in a deafeningly silent Kerrisdale.

  71.

  In the next few days, they’re told—Leo and Lily by phone—that their mother’s suffered a small stroke and shows signs of the onset of dementia. Gwen visits her every day until she’s well enough to move to Brighton Manor and Leo puts the house up for sale. When she gets back to Silverdale, there’s a Ch
ristmas card and letter from Isabelle waiting for her. She’s been planning to head up to the alpine cabin on Mt. Abelard for the holiday and decides to wait and read it there. At the helicopter office, they say they’ll charge her $350 for the round trip; she should get herself over to Reach Communications, and rent a radio phone or a cell. A cell might not work up there. Better get a radio phone.

  Before she leaves, she calls her mother to tell her she’ll be away from her usual phone for a few days and not to worry. That Leo and Lily will be there for Christmas. I won’t, she says. Why didn’t someone think to bring some clothes out to wherever I am now? The last thing I remember was grabbing the bedroom doorknob, then I woke up in the hospital.

  You’re not in the hospital any more, Mom. You’re in Brighton Manor. You’re going to have people to talk to. It’s going to be better. What about the turquoise polka dot?

  Dear knows where the turquoise polka dot has got to.

  It’s probably in your cupboard. Why don’t you look?

  I could do that. Hang on a minute.

  While Gwen’s waiting, the van with the dining room table arrives. Leo’s had it shipped to her. The moving men unload it, leave the chairs in the yard while they set up the table in the front room as a desk. Finally her mother comes back on the line. I’m wearing it, she says.

  What’s that?

  The turquoise polka dot.

  That would explain it. I love you, Mom.

  I love you too.

  The table is wonky on its central pedestal; it must have been damaged in transit. A few evenings later, she looks up to see Nils standing at the door. I can’t stand to see you writing on that table, he says. I’ll take it to my place and fix it for you. She already knows that he’ll return with it hoisted on his shoulder, kneel to lay it at her feet like an outsized wooden bouquet. His head against her hip, her hand in his hair. She’ll close her eyes and touch his shoulder, as if changing film under a heavy cloth. He’ll leave, bent over his erection as if he’s been shot.

  The trip up to the cabin only takes fifteen minutes once they’re clacking in the air. The land tips in as they veer into the meadow, wait for few minutes after they’ve landed for the blashing blades to stop. The pilot light on the stove doesn’t catch even when the gas has been turned on. Looks as if the tank’s empty. She tromps around the back to switch to the other one. Before you go, let me test the phone, she says to the pilot.

  At Reach Communications, someone at the other end is saying hello over and over. The louder she shouts, the more the clerk doesn’t hear her. I can hear her, but she can’t hear me.

  If you climbed up on that ridge, it would probably work.

  If I have a broken leg, that’s not going help. When you get back to town, would you tell them that if they get three repeat calls and no one’s there, that it’ll be me and please send help.

  Good idea, he says and leaves.

  Once he’s gone, it’s so still you can hear the snow thaw and freeze again. A ptarmigan darts white on white like a blown piece of snow. The snow she loads into a pot on the stove to melt for drinking water has to be cut into smaller pieces with the egg lifter. A moose plods into the meadow, his widespread antlers like a tray. Lift, lope. Lift, lope. A female comes into the clearing; she stands around for a few minutes, turns and walks back the way she came.

  People have left comments in the guest book. This place is the Taj Mahal. The chairs are thrones. We were waist high in the snow the last hundred yards. Our felts froze inside our boots. After she spreads her sleeping bag on the upstairs foamie, she climbs back down the ladder, sits at the table, and reads her aunt’s letter.

  Dearest Gwen,

  How are you getting on up there? Well, I hope. Sorry it’s taken me such a long time to write to you. You must be wondering why I haven’t been in touch with you or your mother. When you and I met again, the Scarborough house was the only issue I had with your parents, but that was only the beginning, Gwen. I have to tell you that Ada has always known about Shima. She was with me when the baby was born, bribed a hospital orderly to help get me back to Laburnum St. when I was still drugged from the birth. She told me that Shima died. She asked Lottie Fenn to take care of adoption arrangements, but Lottie took matters into her own hands and raised Shima for the first three years of her life before Takumi found them. I didn’t know any of this until I heard Shima talking to Eugene in your grape arbour. That’s when I left to confront Ada. I have lived without my daughter all these years because of her.

  I know this is going to come as a shock, and Shima and I are wanting to come to see you so we can talk more about it. It won’t be for long because I’ll have to get back to Jack, but we’re hoping you might know somewhere isolated and quiet where we might have a little time to get to know each other.

  Shima sends her love.

  All my love,

  Auntie.

  Oh no. Poor Auntie. Poor Shima. Poor Takumi. How could her mother have done that? That afternoon, she puts on her skis and side steps carefully down the bank into the meadow, crying for all of them. The wind reddens her face as the snow eases into a low curve. It’s softer down there like corn snow; she starts to slide sideways, not realizing the slope is a stream bed. She edges her skis and steps back up.

  That night in the loft, she dreams her mother is sleeping on a cot in the cottage attic, her legs open like scissors. A thunk wakes her, snow slides off the roof. A scratch on the porch, a scuttleflash. The marten probably. She bangs on the wall with the broom. Back in the dream, dirt is matted on the tongue and groove walls. We can’t stay here, Mom. It’s like a greenhouse. I like it here, she says. I hope I’ve done the right things, Gwen. Who do we have?

  We have Evvie and Leo and Lily and Annabelle and Jenny and Maya.

  That’s quite a lot.

  It is.

  The next day, when she skis out into the field again, her steps lengthen and perforate like Morse code. Every day she traverses farther down the meadow until she’s marked a large rectangle the size of a soccer field. She finds snow gullies where before there were burls. Sounds are more recognizable; the throaty glug downstairs is a heap of snow melting in a pot on the stove. The cabin log says the marten stole a skier’s steak while he was out. The grain of the wood on the table has golden motes like the eyes of a ptarmigan.

  After three days, the snow patterns in the lodgepole pines form tall wiry creatures like hooved and clawed Giacometti sculptures, clumps of snow sealed to their tops like hats. Their presence wakes her earlier and earlier in the dark. She takes her candle and climbs the stairs. When the wind comes up, the tin roof rattles. A cloud passes over the hills and it’s so quiet you can hear candle wax dripping into the saucers. Their reflections look like candles on holders decorating the branches on the outside trees. She blows out the candles as the sky lightens. The image of the candles on the tree boughs pales with the dawn.

  The next day, Gwen gets up at four AM and begins to pack. At five AM, it’s snowing furiously; there’s no way the helicopter will get in. As she turns over to go back to sleep, there’s a wild clacking overhead and then the chopper is on the ground hurling snow in all directions. The pilot rushes into the cabin, starts throwing her things in the back. There’s a ten minute window, he shouts. Let’s go.

  As they lift up across the corner of the meadow-sized rectangle, Gwen is fastened in her seat like the eye of the helicopter bird. They fly along Silver Creek and over the Caledonia Road. Ten minutes later, she’s in the Honda and heading out the Silverdale Road to Nils’ house. It’s very early; she’ll ski up the river while she waits for him to wake up. Turning her skis to sidestep over the snow-covered beaver dam, she’s so unevenly balanced she takes her skis off, climbs over the dam, puts them back on and continues. Up a bank, she sees a small cross by the side of the road. The way they do in Mexico. Was that what Nils meant when he said that’s where his wife had gone?

  He’s standing on the deck watching her come back. You’ve been gone a while,
he says. How did you get over the beaver dam?

  I took off my skis.

  You can’t do that. Oh well, you can swim.

  Under the ice?

  He takes her parka and leads her into his shop where he’s polishing her table.

  I have to tell you something, Nils. Something I learned on the mountain.

  You were on the mountain?

  That’s not my table, she says. Now that it’s beautiful again, it can go to the person it belongs to. She’s coming to see me.

  Tell me something, Gwen. Do you think I could get you to rest for a while if I thought your arm was getting too tired?

  You’d have to do something amazing to my hand, she says.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to my parents, Bill and Irene Haggerty; my brother and sister, Michael Haggerty and Robin Pretious; my cousins, Rosalyn Hood, Sharon Haggerty and Maureen FitzGerald; my nephew, Steve Pretious; my children, Justine Brown, Thomas Schmitt and Eli Matson. Much appreciation to Kimyio Kamimura for her advice regarding the Yoshito family; to Lee MacKay, Heather Sosnowski, Ingrid Klassen, Claudia MacDonald and Maureen FitzGerald for their early reads.

  The diligence and generosity of my editors has been invaluable. Erin Kelly gave her heart to this novel over a decade ago and has been tuning it up ever since. Pearl Luke’s gentle, indefatigable questions and exacting cursor brought the characters, situations and language into far greater relief; and Mona Fertig painstakingly tracked down both line and content edits that were waiting for us in the wings. Judith Brand provided the final copy edit and Mark Hand the book design. Robert Amussen, my former editor and publisher, supported this project from the outset. Dr. J.S. Tyhurst, and later, Dr. Tom Strong, provided much personal encouragement. Linda and Fred Hawkshaw, Jane Watson, Harm Dekker, David Mio, Hank Bull, Glenn Lewis, Tanis Layzell and Linda St. John assisted with the research; Alison Spokes, Dave Stevens, Peter Haines, Erin Kelly, Kara Knight and Matthew Peeters contributed their important technical expertise. Thanks to Cathy Ford for introducing the work to its publisher.