Bobby’s rifle nuzzles against his slim hip like a lover, its metallic glint running harsh and unforgiving at the edge of the photo. Its echo runs parallel in her father’s cane. She shifts the photos, covering Bobby. Scarcely able to deal with one of their images, she has no strength for two.
It’s ironic, she thinks, how she never wore the green dance dress again after the photo was taken. Never worn for the purpose it was created. Never really worn at all, it still hung somewhere in the back of her closet, brand new yet old, carefully hidden behind layers of cast-offs. Her father hadn’t exactly been opposed to the idea of her taking dance lessons. He simply did not care one way or the other. His only concern in the whole matter had been about the cost. He had refused outright to forward one cent toward it, and so Victoria had worked out an arrangement with her dance teacher, sacrificing three days after school and part of her weekends to look after her teacher’s four children in exchange for lessons. Her mother had enlisted her help with getting the dress. Or rather, she’d persuaded her to tell her father that it was a hand-me-down from her dance teacher.
It wasn’t lying, her mother had explained. It was the only way they could get a new dress for the dance competition that was coming up in the city. And her mother had saved the money herself a bit at a time over the last nine months, pilfering it from her grocery allowance. It was an important competition. The biggest one of Victoria’s life, and if she danced well, really well, she had a chance at being offered an opportunity to dance in the city. She was a brilliant dancer. She knew it. Her teacher knew it. The whole damn town knew it. If anyone bore the chance of slogging free from the suctioning mud of Hinckly, it was her.
For some inane reason her mother had assumed she would be allowed to accompany her daughter for the weekend and watch her compete. When she began making noises in that direction, however, her husband had glowered her into silence.
“Whadda ya mean you’re going along? Whadda ya
;
spect me to do? Ya think I’m gonna work all day an then come home an start fixen’ my own bloody supper? Bloody hell, woman . . . that what you bin thinkin? Huh? Ya thinking I’d be fixen’ my own supper? Well, ya never was much bloody good at thinkin’, was ya? Was ya? Was ya?”
And he kept roaring at her until she began to shrink, shaking her curlered head vigorously and pleading with him to lower his voice. “No dear . . . course not. Don’t yell, dear. Please don’t yell, someone might hear. I’m sorry, don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I just plain wasn’t thinking.” And on and on it went, her pouring out slop and him devouring it to fuel his rage.
Later that night a fight broke out. Victoria knew it would. They always started over anything and nothing. Potatoes mashed instead of boiled. Something said or not said. It didn’t matter what it was, it was as inevitable as the thunder after the lightning. But all that mattered to Victoria that June night when she was seventeen was that she’d had enough of his voice pounding into the floor of her upstairs room. The scene still ran across her mind’s eye in vivid colors and staccato, slow-motion images; the scent of lilacs floating preposterously through the air as her father lurched through the kitchen dragging her mother by his black belt looped tight around her throat.
Victoria stood transfixed between time as the figures again performed before her, and again she wondered at the gleeful snarl on her father’s face, glittering excitement in his dark, green eyes. Her mother’s hair tumbled askew from blue and pink curlers as he hauled her, bawling like a bull into the living room. Strangled squawks emanated from the peach satin nightie that bumped along behind him, and Victoria remembered with disgust what had so repulsed her that night. The nightie had fallen down over one shoulder, and her mother’s breast had slipped out, saggy as a deflated pink balloon.
She had been startled to hear her own voice, shrill and foreign shouting at them to stop.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you both!”
The bellowing abuse had abruptly ceased, her father fixing her with a genuinely shocked stare.
“No, Poppy I’m sorry,” she’d cried out remorsefully. “I don’t hate you. I don’t. I love you, Poppy. You know I do.”
She had not returned the look of her mother who lay on the floor hacking up phlegm.
A stranger’s eyes lock with her own in the mirror, fixing her with a cold, critical stare. She is disturbed to see how time has altered her face. Shallow lines, dry riverbeds, travel to obscure destinations, each uninvited one making itself more and more at home. Though not deeply set, they offer an unwanted glimpse into the future. Hair whispered with silver falls forward around her face, and she peers out like a child from under a blanket.
Turning away abruptly, she flows through the trailer into the living room in search of her car keys. Stepping over the dieffenbachia spread prostrate across the rust carpet, she adjusts the rabbit ears on top of the television in a futile attempt to clear the reception. She despises living in the trailer. Despises living on a farm that provides an abundance of nothing except dust. Some days the wind churned so furiously that the trailer simply disappeared, swallowed in it. And when the wind finally stopped, the dust settled back over everything like a dirty white death shroud.
Bobby got really frustrated with her efforts to have houseplants. Said it was a plain waste of money trying to keep them alive in the sunless trailer. She knew that. She’d been trying for almost twenty years. But something in her couldn’t quit. Each time the space under the window sat empty, a raw unsettledness gnawed away at her until she filled its void with another glossy green offering.
He used to laugh at her. Laugh at her and call her crazy. But over the years he’d quit laughing and now he didn’t say much of anything to her at all. Just looked past and mumbled how he didn’t understand her. He was right about that. He didn’t understand her. She couldn’t hold it against him though. How could she expect him to understand her when she didn’t even understand herself? She picked the limp plant up and sat down on the sofa. She could offer it no miraculous cure or healing touch, and when it fell back to the floor she didn’t try to stop it. Her attention was diverted by a pile of record albums stacked against the wall. Pushing the plant aside, she pulled the albums into her lap. Slowly she slid the top record free and traced the shiny circles with her finger. A thin scratch ran raggedly across its black face.
Giselle.
The collection had been a Christmas gift from her dance teacher, and this had been her favorite. The rest of the cases were empty. Bobby and his friends had decided one drunken night that they would make good discs for skeet shooting and had taken the whole collection outside where one of them had spun the records into the sky while the others opened fire with their shotguns. Even drunk, they were not bad shots and several of the albums were blown to smithereens. The few that landed
safely
were scratched beyond use on the gravel driveway. Somehow, this one had suffered only slight damage, and Bobby, feeling remorseful, had offered it back to her like a peace offering the next day, along with assurances that he would replace the others. But he never did replace them, and the incident was never spoken of again.
She put the albums down and walked through the trailer searching for her keys, flutters beginning in her chest as her keys were nowhere to be found.
“Damn you,” she exhaled quietly. Had he taken them again? Hid them from her as punishment for some supposed injustice? It wasn’t beyond him, although she used to believe his wide-eyed innocence as he claimed he hadn’t realized he’d thrown his coat over top of them or had them in his pocket. The sun had come out fighting that morning, and his plaid jacket hung unneeded in the porch. Her hand dove into the pocket, recoiling quickly as it collided with cold metal. Nerves jolted, she swore silently. How many times had she asked him to keep that thing in the case with the rest of his collection? He was proud of the gun, cherished it like a family heirloom, even though his father had picked it up at a yard sale for ten bucks and a pack of cigarettes.
She reached in again, carefully, withdrew Bobby’s old Enfield revolver, dug out her keys and his Swiss Army knife. Replacing the gun, she walked back into the kitchen, opened the middle drawer and deposited the knife underneath the stack of dishtowels.
The telephone rang sharply behind her and without thinking she grabbed it, then cursed herself for doing so as Bobby’s mother’s voice grated like grit through the line.
“Is Bobby there, dear?”
“Oh, hello . . . mother,” she tacked the word on awkwardly; it still felt false coming from her lips. She would have much preferred to call her mother-in-law by her first name, Helen, but Bobby wouldn’t hear of it. He felt it sounded offensive. That his mother might be hurt.
“Bobby’s not in right now. He went out early this morning. Can I take a message for you?”
Victoria recited the words without intent as she glanced at the wall clock. Both women knew that after spending the better part of her life on the farm herself, Bobby’s mother was more than aware her son wouldn’t be found in the trailer at mid-morning. It was loneliness alone that drove her to call her daughter-in-law for a small bit of company, although her staunch pride prevented her from admitting even to herself that this was so.
“Oh, no dear. That’s not necessary. I’ll just tell him myself when he next comes for a visit. I don’t suppose he’ll be by yet this week?”
“Umm. Not sure. He’s pretty busy with the farm right now.” Victoria ground her teeth. She loathed getting trapped in these nonconversations between Bobby and his mother.
“Well,” the older woman sighed. “That’s okay. So busy that boy. Always helping somebody with fixing something. Not that they ever help him back, mind you. Tsk. You really should try to get him to slow down. You don’t want him to end up having an accident like the one that took his father, do you?”
“No. Of course not,” Victoria replied, offended, but having learned early on that silence was her best defense.
“Well,” another sigh, just slightly more pronounced. “Maybe you could find time to come by for a visit then.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe, I’ll try to get in next week, okay? I could set your hair for you again, if you’d like.” Victoria didn’t particularly enjoy doing her mother-in-law’s hair, but she knew the older woman liked having someone make a bit of a fuss over her. Every couple of weeks Victoria tried to take the time to visit her, curling her stick-straight hair into gentle waves and painting her brittle yellow nails a soft pink.
“All right. But just remember that Tuesdays I like to watch my shows and Wednesday mornings are no good either because we have crafts to do. Maybe come on Thursday. But not after 2:00 because I like to rest then. And if you come in the morning, remember I won’t be in my room. I like to go down to the activity center then and sit by the window. I’ve got to go early now because that Babs Johansen keeps trying to steal my spot. No one likes her much around here except Jake Woods, but everyone knows he’s crazy as a crackerjack. She’s always stirring up trouble like that, Babs is, but Sara Friesen and me don’t reckon she’s gonna last too long anyhow. Skinny as a runt pig you know and always sick with one thing or the other. Just like that Mr. Hall’s wife, and she didn’t last long neither once they put her in here, just six months. I thought she’d go sooner, but Sara guessed it just about right on the button. She’s got a way with these things, Sara does—”
“Umm. Look, I’m running a little late. Maybe I could phone you back later.”
“Oh, yes well of course. Don’t let me be keeping you. Got plenty to do myself today.”
“Hmm. Okay. Maybe I’ll try to call back later on.”
“Well, not around dinner. Dinner’s at five and if I don’t get down there by ten to that Babs Johansen sneaks into line and gets herself into first place. I suppose you heard about Joe Dempsey then?”
“Who?”
“Joe Dempsey.”
“No, I didn’t hear about Joe Dempsey,” Victoria replied, biting her lip in aggravation. Not only did she not have time to hear about Joe Dempsey’s problems, she had no idea who Joe Dempsey even was.
“Yes, well, it was awful. Just an awful, awful thing. And it should have never happened in the first place. Tsk.”
“Mmm.”
“And now he’s dead. Poor Joe.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. Well, so was I. Always such a shock these things. Tsk. And such an awful way to go too. Just awful.”
“Yes, that’s too bad,” Victoria agreed, inching her purse toward herself and searching out her lipstick.
“It was supposed to be locked you know.”
“What was?” she asked, carefully tracing a perfect pink
M
onto her top lip.
“Well, the door of course,” she was answered peevishly.
“Ahh.”
The old woman’s voice croaked off to a scrappy whisper. “The night nurse left it open. There was a sign right on it too, clear as day it was. Said, make sure to keep that door locked. But she left it open, that nurse did. Doesn’t make you feel very safe that kind of stuff happening. Sara Friesen and me think she should lose her job. Well? Don’t you think she should?”
“Uh-huh,” Victoria agreed as she took a tissue from her purse and smacked it with a bright pink butterfly kiss.
“Sara Friesen started a petition and I signed it too. Most everyone did. Even Berty ’cept he didn’t know what it was cause he still ain’t right in the head. You remember Berty don’t you? He had that gibbled up boy remember? Or was that a girl? Tsk, such bad luck that family—”