As a Thief in the Night (6 page)

"I will, God being my helper," they answered together.

The mouth speaks, but the soul still slumbers, and for the dream it is dreaming it collects the nourishment it craves from the dark soils of the waking world so that when the flower of its direction bursts forth, its colors contain traces of each touch that has changed us, each moment that has stung the psyche, and each liquid image and word that has coursed through the carnal channels the soul has molded for its purposes.

That season Ezra was forced to move up an age category and weight division, which meant that he would be with coach Griffin again. The other boys, having already taken those first few awkward steps on the path to manhood, had caught up to and surpassed the natural height advantage he had had over them in previous years. Their chests and arms had grown thicker, as his had remained thin. Their voices had deepened, and among them, his grew silent. And now, completely out of the reach of Gord's rather large ears, the favoritism the boys had suspected the previous year became an outright accusation. To them, the success he had had was a lie, simply a privilege given him out of prejudice. Gord watched sadly, evening after evening, looking on at the boy as he walked slowly to the other practice field as if headed up a staircase to a room he was being sent to as punishment.

Several of the other players bullied and pushed him around. They called him names that he had no reply for, and the rare attempts he did make to strike back were invariably met with laughter and left him feeling even more awkward. He did not start a game the entire season, which made it all the more clear to the others that his successes during the previous year had been the result of him being deployed in the right situation at just the right time. If he had really been a superior player, how could he possibly be failing so miserably just one year later?  And the coaches were not wrong in their decision to sit him on the bench: either he was failing, or his confidence was failing him. It was not until the post season playoffs that the boy who played in front of him, a boy named Josh Southworth, a boy that Ezra despised, was injured. 

On the way to the game he and Layne sat in the backseat of the Old Beaumont with their equipment on. The harvest had taken place in the days just before and his unwashed hands were still stained purple around the fingernails with the juice of the grapes. It had been a poor harvest, and once the wine was bottled, Elsie predicted that she would only be able to bring half of what she normally brought to the Parnassos restaurant. Ezra looked down at his hands and began to hum, and then to sing along with the song that was playing on the radio. It was a song about a car—a car in which the woman singing wanted to escape. There was a man that she wanted to escape with, too. Her own mom had run away, and she could no longer stand the place she was living and the people that looked down on her. The song was about the feelings she'd had as she'd made her getaway. Now, new thoughts raced through her head; the man held her, and things would be different where she was going, things would be different and she would belong.

Ezra memorized the chorus and continued to sing it to himself even after the song had ended. Even as they warmed up for the game, and in between plays after it had started, he sang.  He mouthed the words so no one else could hear them, and before long the music began playing him.

Ezra led his team in tackles the day that he sang to himself. As he mouthed the words he stretched his hands out underneath his face mask, palms down, and looked at the grape juice stains on them.
  On two consecutive plays at the end of the third quarter he stopped the opposing ball carrier on the one-yard line, avoiding scores that would have put his team behind. Moving sideline-to-sideline, and feeling as if he were in pursuit of the fame that was rightfully his, he had eight solo tackles, two sacks, and one fumble recovery.

In the days following the game there was a short respite from the self-doubt he had felt pressing in on him all autumn long. When the final whistle blew his coaches and teammates looked at him again, he imagined, like he was one of them. Gord beamed at him when they met on the field. He would not have to be propped up or consoled today. Elsie told him that coach Griffin had written him up as one of the game's top players and that his name would be in the paper. He carried this victory, arrogantly, like a banner into practice the next week, only to have it burned.

Before the practice began he walked up to a group of his teammates that were standing together, and, in an obvious and awkward attempt to force the news of his long deserved glory into the conversation, interrupted one of the other boys who was talking about a girl he liked. The boys exchanged knowing smiles in the awkward silence that followed Ezra's boasting, and Mark Loft, usually the only other boy on the team he could count on, postured in front of the others.

"What are you talking about?"

Realizing now that he had made a mistake, Ezra tried to recover. "You know how they write about us in the paper every week?  Well, this week me, and you, and Thad are gonna be in.  You guys for offense and me for defense." He looked nervously over at the boy who had been speaking and tried to place himself into the conversation. "Anyway, who's this girl?"

But Josh Southworth would not let him get away so easily. "Doesn't your aunt give those names to the paper?" Ezra's face flushed and he looked at the ground.

"Yeah"

"Why don't you live with your parents?"

Ezra felt tears coming to his eyes but held them back. His face burned and he moved back and forth uneasily. The other boys, realizing a line had been crossed, squirmed uncomfortably in Southworth's obvious cruelty. Ezra stammered, "My mom...she..." and then the whistle blew for the warm-up lap.

All that summer he thought about how to fix his problems at school. He thought mostly about mistakes he had made with his clothing, mistakes Elsie had helped to create through the silly shirts and pants she had chosen for him. They had teased him for wearing the old vineyard t-shirts she had made up years ago. Those shirts were ugly and too big for him and he wouldn't wear them anymore. He made his new choices based on what he had seen the other kids wearing.

Just before their Labor Day weekend trip to Sarah's cottage he had been allowed to buy his first two cassettes: RUN DMC's
Tougher Than Leather
and Def Leopard's
Hysteria
. He had decided that he would always bring his Walkman and headphones to school. Other groups of kids walked around the school in groups with ghetto blasters, but he did not have a ghetto blaster, and was not convinced that anyone would have walked with him even if he had had one. The key thing was that he had gone out with Olyvia to buy white hi-top running shoes. Then he had had an idea that pleased him: on one shoe he used red laces, while on the other shoe he used black ones. Jenna Ricketts had seen him wearing those shoes on the first day of school, her first day of high school, and she had complimented him. That, of course, had been enough.

They played football at recess. There he had prowess, despite the problems he was now having on his team, to always stand out. That, combined with his new clothing and the strides he had made concerning what was expected of him by his peers, allowed him to move through the wolfish pack of children at his school. He replaced his failures on the field with accomplished lies, and buried his blemishes there with false pride.

This year the boys had begun grabbing at the girls in school. Ezra and a group of the other kids had begun watching. Timid, and with their drives still lacking the strength to overcome their inhibitions, they participated vicariously in the bolder adventures of their classmates. Every Friday a bus came to take them to another school for shop and home economics. During these rides some of the kids on the bus began playing a game called "Chicken" with one another. "Chicken" went like this: A boy would place his hand on a girl's leg just above her knee. Using his fingers to walk up her thigh he would take a step, stop, and then make eye contact with her. If she said "go", then he could move up the next step; if she said "chicken" (as in I'm too much of a chicken to let you go further), then he had to stop. After she had said "chicken", she would take a turn with him. There were three boys that had let girls go all the way down inside their pants, and the girls bold enough to do this were not shy about telling the others what they had found. 

On the way in from recess Ezra saw Rob Duke jump upon a girl's back and make thrusting motions with his hips into her backside. This filled Ezra with an overwhelming sense of fear and embarrassment, and though the girl had laughed and did not seem to mind, he felt badly for her. His unconscious belief in the absolute innocence of the girls did not clash with the overt liberties they allowed the boys to take, or with the truth that they had begun doing the same things themselves. Rumors began to circulate about things that had happened in the back corner of the schoolyard, sometimes between whole groups of his classmates, while they lay crouched and hidden on the far side of a deep ditch that bordered a farmer's field. The boys began to talk about which girls had breasts and which ones did not, and judged them accordingly. A group of about four or five of them began to smoke.

Football season came to an end and Ezra felt only relief. Both his and Layne's teams had won league championships, but this gave Ezra no satisfaction because he felt as if he had not contributed in a meaningful way. During the final game he'd lost "contain" on a kickoff and allowed the ball carrier outside him for a big gain. Coach Griffin had screamed at him on the sidelines, and Ezra had started to cry.

In the other division, Layne had won the "Defensive Player of the Game" award and was later chosen as the "Defensive Player of the Year". True to form, Layne didn't seem to think it was too important.

Autumn slipped into winter. The leaves fell off the vines, and from time to time Ezra helped Elsie and his aunts with the maintenance. He and his classmates began to look forward to the graduation trip that the school took to Boston each year, and he worried about whether or not his aunt and uncle would be able to afford to send him on the trip. As a family they went up the hill each Sunday for dinners at the Parnassos Restaurant as partial payment for the wine they provided each vintage. Gord and Elsie planned possible renovations to the old schoolhouse and began making arrangements with the bank for a loan. They hoped to extend the front of the house and make use of the attic that had previously only been used for storage. Gord's brother, who had served in the Canadian Army, had hidden two guns in a shoebox up there. Ezra hoped and waited in vain for the first signs of puberty—the first crack in his voice, the first bit of hair. 

He trudged through the snow and slush to the churchyard and the oak tree. The split in the trunk was more pronounced when the tree had no leaves. Under the low clouds of December he sat against the church wall upon a garbage bag he had found. From out of his backpack he pulled a pouch of small round stones he'd gathered and some markers wrapped in a thick elastic band. Slowly, one by one, he decorated the stones then placed them back in the pouch.
Leonard didn't come to church anymore.

C
ontinual financial stress was like a virus that had begun to attack the other aspects of Elsie and Gord's marriage. Their vehicles, always on the verge of ruin, were not reliable (wake up on a cold winter morning: "Will it start?  Will it start?"), and forever seemed to be on their last legs. The septic system of the old schoolhouse was always broken, particularly in wet weather, and there were intervals when the toilet could not be flushed for days at a time. They would have to trudge out into the snow or rain to one of the two old outhouses on the property. In fact, the septic system had had to be dug up on two different occasions, and they had needed small bank loans for each repair. Added to this was the fact that their one bathroom had been under renovation for over two years. Elsie habitually wrote cheques at the market for groceries on Wednesdays, praying that they would not be cashed until Friday. But for Gord, as long as the car ran today, as long as the toilet flushed and the phone was connected, as long as there was food on the table, all was right with the world. Gord's undaunted attitude finally exasperated Elsie beyond all tolerance; she could stand no more of it, and her attacks became spiteful and without mercy.

Layne and Ezra had changed, too. When they were younger, they had been enough for her. Her satisfaction and sense of fulfillment had come from caring for them. A deep sense of service had attended each morning as she woke up, and the day's purpose had been their development, and their healing, and fulfillment had come for her each evening in a satisfied sigh after they had fallen asleep. But they were growing up now and they no longer needed her the way they used to.
 

Elsie was only twenty years old when she'd become pregnant, and she had spent the two years after her child's death in a state of grief that often reached inconsolable depths. She stayed in her bed, nearly catatonic at times, lost much too much weight, and grew her unwashed hair into long tangled knots.

Then, one day, she looked out at the long, wide front lawn, and a strange thought occurred to her. With no plan and no real idea of what she was doing, she got out of the bed that she had come to see as the grave that fate had prepared for her, and went into town to purchase cuttings from which she intended to plant grapes in the front yard.

That evening Gord had come home from work and found her digging. He had not seen her outside in months, and without even asking what she was doing, he got a shovel for himself and joined her.

During those first years, once they had established themselves, the vines had covered perhaps a fourth of the property, and Elsie had spent her evenings meticulously tending them. Slowly, with the maturation and health of these vines, she had found her own vitality again—a gift we can receive when we nourish the life and intelligence of plants, a gift that the celebrated German poet Goethe had understood, which was why he became a botanist as well as a poet. In the years that followed, the acres that Elsie and Gord owned surrendered to the vines; Elsie had a new job,
and
a new hairstyle. And just as her hands had finally stopped trembling at the death of her own child, two new children had been placed in them for care.

As girls, Elsie and Moira had been the closest of all the Mignon sisters, yet Elsie had not grieved when her sister died. Immediately after Moira's death, though, an almost impossible number of tasks had been laid before her, and upon these tasks the practical, efficient and tactile parts of her personality went directly to work. She had felt somehow responsible for her child's death, though of course she was not, and this had crushed her, but now she felt responsible for Ezra and Layne's life, and that raised her up. Right after Moira's funeral Olyvia had disappeared again, and Sarah had almost no capacity for functioning in difficult circumstances, so it was up to Elsie to sort through Moira's few but precious possessions.

And of course Ezra and Layne's father had to be found. With some help from his past employers Elsie learned that he was living in Alberta. She spoke to him coldly as she told him what had happened. He would not be coming back, he told her. Ezra and Layne could live where they wished.

Then let it be known, she informed him, that she wished for them and they for her.

As Ezra and Layne became part of their family, and with all the challenges and potential they brought with them, Elsie and Gord drew closer together again, the presence of the two boys acting as a healing influence after the division that the grief over the loss of their own child had caused. But as the boys grew and became less dependent, the sharp differences of perspective between Gord and Elsie emerged again. The differences between them were several, but almost all of their problems came down to Gord's satisfaction with their present circumstances, and Elsie's ambitions for a more stable future. Neither could meet, nor even see the other's point of view. Gord was dismayed by Elsie's frustrations, and she was infuriated by what she saw as his apathy and lack of planning or direction.

Lately the conflicts had escalated. They fell further and further behind on their bills, missed mortgage payments, and struggled to keep gas in the car. Elsie said that Gord spent irresponsibly and without considering their finances. But paying attention to such details, in a day-by-day way, seemed beyond him. They screamed and cursed at each other in front of Ezra and Layne. When Elsie threw a mustard jar at Gord it missed and exploded on the wall behind him. Some of the mustard landed on Ezra and he was surprised at the way it burned his skin. Elsie accused Gord of not following through on the promises he had made to her. He told her that she was crazy and acting like a child, and this brought her fury to an entirely higher pitch.
  Ezra and Layne retreated into their bedroom to listen from behind the closed door. Each of the four understood in his way that things could not go on like this.

Gord came into the kitchen, the largest room in the small house, after the boys had gone to sleep. Elsie was sitting at the table reading and did not look up at him. As he leaned against the counter she felt his eyes but ignored them.
 

"Ted came into the office today to see me," he started, breaking the heavy silence. She finished the sentence she was reading and looked up.

"Yeah?"

Gord raised his eyebrows slightly and nodded as if to indicate that it was over something important. A panicked stab stuck Elsie in the stomach; she was afraid he had lost his job. "Well, what did he want?"

He paused and scratched the back of his neck. It seemed like it took forever for him to get anything out. "He wanted to talk to me about a job."

Relief washed over her. She took a deep breath and laid her book face down on the table. "What kind of job? On the docks again?"

"No, it would be a manager's job." He stopped there, looking for a sign that she might be impressed.

"A manager's job?
  Where?"

"It's in Windsor, Elsie."

"Windsor?" she said, shocked. 

He pursed his lips. "Yeah, Windsor."

She was confused. "Where did all this come from?  Is this the first you've heard of it?"

"No. Things have been going pretty well for a while. A couple of months back we all learned that the company was going to set up some sort of operation down there. I went to see Ted about the job and told him I was interested. I didn't want to say anything until I knew."

"And now they've definitely offered it to you?"

"Yes."

"But that would mean moving."

"It would."

"To Windsor?" she raised her voice.

"I've thought a lot about this, Elsie. If you'll just hear me out, I think it makes sense for us."

"What about the house?  My vines?"

Gord inhaled deeply as if preparing to lift a heavy object. "I don't want to give up the house either. I don't think we'll ever find another like it, situated the way it is with the chance to improve on it and the chance for you to continue growing. The thing about the Windsor job is that it probably wouldn't be a permanent thing. Three or four years down the road it's likely that a management job will open here. Lou just turned sixty, and Windsor would be a stepping-stone into his spot. We would rent there and keep this place."

She placed two fingers on her temple and turned her head. "And how would we be able to afford the mortgage here while we pay rent there?" 

"We could rent out this place."

"Rent it out?" she came back quickly, as if he had lost his mind. "To whom?  Who do you think we could find to take care of all those grapes? There's ten years of progress and hard work spread out underneath that soil—my hard work, Gord. I can't just let that go."

He looked at her cautiously. "What if someone moved in who was willing to keep it up the way you wanted?"

She squinted at him in disbelief. "Who's going to be interested in doing all that work for as little profit?"

"Olyvia."

"Olyvia?" she asked, as if she hadn't heard him right.

"Yeah. As I thought more and more about it, it just makes sense. She and Ted have been together for more than a year now. They're talking about moving in together anyway, and you've got to admit that she's doing better. She's over at his place all the time already. I talked it over with her a few times during the last month or so, and as long as the bathroom's finished she's all for—"

"Wait a minute," Elsie broke in with a raised voice.  "You've already spoken with her?  Before we discussed it?"

"I wanted to come to you with a solid plan of how we could make it work."

She stood up from her chair. "So you went to my sister without asking me and asked if she and her boyfriend, whom we barely know, wanted to move into
my
house?"

Gord was a little confused. "I talked to her
because I—"

"You son of a bitch!"

He clenched his teeth. "So now you're pissed off because I finally did plan something?"

Elsie stormed past him and out of the kitchen. He followed her.
  She had always been able to walk away from arguments with him, detach herself, and go about her business as if nothing had happened, whereas for Gord, if things were not right between them, then nothing was right with the world.

She closed the bedroom door in his face. Raising his hands, which matched only his ears in size, he held onto the top of the doorframe and rested his head against the six-panel door.
  He shut his eyes, exhaled deeply, and then went to sit on the couch by himself.

Half an hour later he walked into the darkened bedroom. Elsie lay on her side with her back toward him, but he knew she was still awake.
 

"You're right. I should have spoken to you first, and I understand why you're mad that I didn't. I just got excited about the idea, Elsie. You're right to be angry, but I want you to think about what my intentions were in doing what I did. Maybe I went about it the wrong way, but just think about whether or not it makes sense. It wouldn't be permanent, and I could take some of my holidays at vintage every year so that we could come up and make sure everything goes okay. Just three or four years, and there's a big pay raise. It would make a big difference for us.
  We could come back and put the addition on the house. And there's a house in Orlando that the Campbell's own that we would have access to for ten days or so during the winter months. All I'm asking you to do is take a fair look at it." He left the room, shut the door behind him, and fell asleep on the couch watching TV.

He asks her! The way he looks her over sometimes—I see it. He doesn't think I notice, but I do. What an idiot! Anyone else and I wouldn't care. Funny how jealousy falls away with time—matters less and less and finally doesn't seem to matter at all. Don't go numb—not that again, and not over him. He's a lot of things, but I don't think he'd ever... But—and there's always a but—they say you never really know someone... Still, it would be nice to have the money. Would she take all the credit? Go about with false pride all over her face saying silently, "These are my grapes; wine bottled by me; taste the change I bring forth from the earth; deliver the wine as if it would be water if not for her? Olyvia and that man living here, eating here, sleeping here... Could I stand it? Women marry men hoping they'll change; men marry women hoping they never will... Don't judge so harshly; he's a good man. The way that he is with the boys, without having had his own... But then there's other things: plus and minus, plus and minus. Is that all it is? There's much worse out there—the way dad treated mom... Children are supposed to surpass their parents. And a new house: how would I feel inside it? How would it look? How would the schoolhouse look when we came back? As if hundreds of years had passed, ivy having overgrown it: the way that shed she crashed into looked. New schools, but kids make friends fast. Ez would start high school without knowing anyone. How would he feel the night before? Layne would be fine: water off a duck's back... But it might be good for Ez to be away from this place; maybe it would put an end to those awkward questions. I worry that they are symptoms of something worse, but don't push him too hard. Is she watching me with her boys? What does she think? Imagine what she might say, what she would like and what she wouldn't like... Plus and minus, plus and minus: I can't escape. But it would be nice to see him doing better, surpassing his father; that's his passion and his fear. All men trip there. Their feet stick in the mud. The old man's footprints out in front of them... But I see the way the addition might look, if we had the money... I'll be thirty-nine in five years. Age is changing how I look with each passing year now. I look for wrinkles around the eyes—everyone has them when they smile... In five years I will be just seven years younger than mom was when she died. But I've got to settle down, or I'll never sleep. It's his fault for making me so angry. Is she prettier than I? Rank us girls from the prettiest to the ugliest—a senseless thing to do really, but I still do it. Everyone keeps that side of himself hidden. She's always had the good looks. Oddly, she never really cared. Most women who have great looks just say they don't care, but she really doesn't care. In a weird way, she's always been too self absorbed to even notice. I wonder how many times he's spoken to her about it, this little secret that I wasn't let in on... Was she eager to live in my house? She's never stayed in one place for very long. What if it doesn't work out with Ted and we're left paying both rent and the mortgage here? We'd sink fast with no help, and I would be the one to deal with it. But at least I could trust her—all the damage tenants can do—because she would take care of the vines. She knows the vines. He's snoring out there on the couch. I like sleeping alone anyway. Does he have a blanket? A grown man...And if that makes me a bad wife, so be it. Peace comes with acceptance. Apathy, too... Too much to think about while I'm feeling this angry... My legs tighten up; they're still pretty strong. I thought about smacking him as I walked past. I won't sleep unless I settle down. Sleep comes harder and harder as I get older. I need more rest but get less. Forgot to make lunches; what's in the fridge? Another thing to do in the morning... It gets dark so early now. There used to be more snow when I was a girl. I watched it fall from my bedroom window, Moira tracing flowers in the frost on the pane. Certain memories stay with you even though they didn't seem to be important when they happened. I must have been younger than Ezra is now—maybe the same age as Layne. Too much to think about so late: let go; let go. Walk past him without saying anything; that's the only thing to do, really. It's not so bad. It's a cold world out there. But I'm in here, safe and warm under my covers and clean sheets. Tomorrow will take care of itself. And the icy flowers she'd etched in the frost....