“That's fine,” I said, tossing a tea towel. “But it seems to me that when you lost the school bus job, heaven help anyone who went around acting too cheerful then, right?”
“It's hardly the same thing.”
“You're right mister, because when you're freaked out about something, I don't turn into your fucking enemy! No, when Ray's fucked up, everybody better be careful or he'll run off to town and get so stupid drunk he ends up in jail, or somehow finds his cock in Rena Dickson's mouth.”
I knew I'd just trodden into dangerous territory by digging up something that happened almost two decades ago, but the picture I have in my brain of walking into a bathroom one night at a party and seeing Rena Dickson on her knees in front of my boyfriend has never quite left me.
Maybe it's not fair of me to dredge up something he claims he's been paying for our whole lives together, but still I wasn't prepared for him to grab me hard by the shoulders now and spin me around to face the mirror. “You know who your real enemy is? Look! You see how bitter she is?”
There was a freshly opened can of tomato juice on the table. That can was in my hands for only a second before it flew through the air and hit him squarely in the chest. The juice splashed upwards to his face before the can clattered to the floor, sending rivers of thick tomato pulp across the linoleum.
Isn't it amazing how life can change in an instant? Looking back, I could have apologized right there on the spot. For a second neither of us spoke, but, as I stooped to pick up the can from the floor, he threw up his hands and said, “That's it, I'm done.”
I stood there with the can in my hand while he walked right out the porch door.
I could tell from the sudden silence in the living room that everyone had heard. I knew they'd be drifting in at any moment. I looked down at the pool of red liquid, which had already started to seep under the wainscoting. I pulled on my rubber boots and ran after him.
“Hey!” I shouted as I struggled up the lane through the mud. It felt like running in a dream when you use all this energy but don't get anywhere. “I'm sorry, okay?”
Ray wheeled around and held his hand straight in front of him. “You stay back, Trish! Just keep away from me.”
I did what he said, halting right in my boot tracks. I called out, surprised at the plea in my own voice. “Don't do this today, okay, Ray? It's Gayl's birthday?”
Ray paused at Gayl's name but then kept walking. I shouted, “This is just stupid!” I watched him, hoping he'd turn around. When he disappeared behind the spruces at the top of the lane, I started back to the house and must have been in such a stunned state I didn't hear Alana's car until it was right behind me.
“Hey, we just saw Ray hitchhiking,” Alana said, rolling down the window. “He was getting into Whitey Forbes' truck. Is everything okay?”
“Why, sure,” I said. “Everything's a birthday party, right?”
Danny leaned towards me from the passenger side. “Hey, is that blood?”
I looked down at the tomato juice all over my shirt and it could have been blood the way I stared at it.
“Oo-kay,” Alana said, raising her eyebrows at me. She put the car in park and opened the door. Without a word, Danny slid over to the driver's seat.
“Oh God,” I said, when Alana and I were alone there in the lane. “I don't think I can go back in there right now.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I let her take my arm because my knees felt too weak to stand. I may not be psychic like Alana, but I knew a real bad thing had just happened to Ray and me.
5. Alana Who Knows Everything
A
LANA HAS ALWAYS BEEN
one step ahead of me. When I first met Ray she was already pregnant with Kim. By the time I got pregnant with Gayl, she was the mother of a four and five year old. She knew everything about babies and I knew nothing. So when Gayl had a high fever and then a convulsion, Alana happened to phone right then and she talked me through it. “She'll be okay,” she said calmly. “Lay her down and rub her arms. Say soft things to her. Do it now, while we're on the phone.” I did what she said, and Gayl came out of the convulsion looking rested and none the worse for wear. Alana's Kevin had had one when he was two so she knew exactly what I was going through.
“Maybe this explains why you were crying over your icing,” she'd said there on the lane, after I told her about my fight with Ray. “Your own psyche knew something bad was going to happen.”
When she called earlier to see if there was something she should bring to the party I'd told her about the silly tears over the boiled icing. Adolescence was also her specialty, so she had a theory about that. “Of course you were crying. You probably don't remember the hell I went through back when Kim turned nineteen.”
Alana was wrong. How could I forget the day a few years ago that marked the end of what Alana still calls her “prime time?” And when hers ended, so did all of ours. We were driving along Thunder Hill road towards town in the back of Bear's Rover one day in early September and I was noticing how everything we passed seemed to sparkle and not just the water out in the strait. I mean everything, like the leaves on the quaking aspens, the cornstalks or oats in the fields, even the spruces high up on Thunder Hill shone bright in the late afternoon sun. Up front in the Rover, the boys were yakking about music or boats, and suddenly I noticed that beside me, Alana was crying. I don't mean she was bawling her eyes out, but her eyes were glassy with tears and she was sniffling. When I pressed her about it she blurted out, “You know, it's not like I'm jealous because I've got this beautiful daughter whose function it is to replace me as a baby maker. Hell, I went through all that when she turned fifteen and men were staring at her and not at me.” She'd paused here and shuddered. “No, I think what's getting to me is that as of today she's old enough to get into bars.”
“That's why you're crying?”
“I don't know. Maybe it's just a premonition, but I just have this feeling that nothing is ever going to be the same after today.”
Alana was right. I can even pinpoint the exact moment our lives changed because when it happened later at the Roll-a-Way Tavern, I was dancing with Danger Dave, who everyone knows is anything but, and we were goofing around to the music, slipping into old dance steps like the “Funky Chicken” and the “Frug.”
The dance floor of the Roll-a-Way Tavern was bouncing so hard you could see it move. The Roll-a-Way used to be a bowling alley. The dance floor was laid right over the lanes, which made our footsteps all that much louder and springier too. Danger Dave and I were laughing and I suppose my eyes were closed, my elbows and knees flapping to the music. I was working up a buzz from the rum, as well as the vibrating floor, when I suddenly realized the floor had stopped moving under my feet. I opened my eyes and talk about embarrassed. I was the only one still dancing. Danger Dave was shouting in my ear. “Isn't that Alana and Danny's daughter?”
There stood Kim in the doorway, her black hair shimmering around a turquoise dress. I watched Alana rush to her daughter and link arms with her. She steered Kim to the bar to buy her first legal beer. When Kim touched the bottle to her lips, this big cheer came from the crowd and everyone toasted her on her birthday. Then things turned quite comical, when, instead of Danny dancing with the prettiest girls in the place, as he usually did, he spent the whole time with his arm fixed around his daughter's shoulders. We even spotted him trying to cover her up with his jacket.
But the real clincher came when it was time to slip outside for a toke with the gang. I gave Alana the signal to follow us, and she nodded. But after waiting and shivering in the alders surrounding Emily's Pond, Danger Dave went ahead and lit the joint without Alana. I kept an eye on the Roll-a-Way entrance but Alana never came. Maybe this was what Alana had meant about nothing ever being the same again. But when we went back in, there was Alana wheeling about the dance floor with her head tossed back and her arms out to her sides like always. I joined her up there on the dance floor and everything seemed normal enough until I noticed Kim and her friends smiling at us like we were the cutest little kids. I knew right then our days at the Roll-a-Way were coming to an end. We kids were being replaced by our kids.
Now, for the third time today, I'm watching someone drive up my lane and out of my sight. My own almost grown-up kid. Gayl has had her license for almost a year but I have never let her drive in real weather.
I watch the Toyota bounce up the lane. Gayl reaches her arm out the window to snap the ice off the windshield wipers. That snow has now turned to freezing rain. Earlier, I'd told her it was too messy for her to drive, but she'd held her ground and said, “You've driven in way worse weather than this.”
“But I've had almost twenty-five years of experience driving in this kind of weather,” I said, knowing full well I was about to lose this one.
“And how am I supposed to get
my
experience? You want to tell me that?”
“Just be careful. Gayl, I mean it,” I said finally. “And call me when you get to Gran's.”
“Okay, Ma. I got it,” she said, slamming the door on her way out.
Now that the fog has moved in, I can barely see the Toyota's taillights. I listen for the horn to toot before she turns onto Thunder Hill Road. It was Alana who started doing this tooting of the horn business but it has since become a custom and now just about everyone toots their horn as they leave my lane. Maybe everyone has a different reason for doing this but Alana told me it was to let me know that just because I was out of sight, I wasn't out of her mind.
When I finally hear Gayl's beep, I can't help but think she's sounding it more as a good riddance.
6. Flue Fire
T
HE BATHROOM IS SO
cold, steam rises from the tub as I take off my clothes. The sight of me shivering in the mirror behind the door makes me think I'd like to get rid of it. The mirror I mean, not the body. That I still need. But does a barely forty-year-old woman always need to be reminded of how she looks? I pull my shoulders back and when I tilt my pelvis forward like I learned in that aerobics class I started in town last fall, I don't look quite so bad. Alana's right that I've lost lots of weight since Ray first left for Newville. I run my fingers up through my hair, holding it behind my head. I wonder how it might look cut really short. Maybe I'd look like those snooty university types Olive and Arthur have as guests over at Kyle House.
Normally, it is Gayl who stands in front of this mirror looking this way and that. It's my daughter's turn to be young and pretty, I remind myself when I see her posing. Just like it's my turn to be, what? A middle-aged woman? What's so good about that?
Then there's Olive who goes on about a woman's forties being the most productive time of her life. “Time to kick ass,” she says.
No wonder Olive says that. The year she turned forty was when she took possession of my father's house and moved her own ass down here.
And I'm here looking at my ass in the mirror and wondering how far it will have dropped by the time I'm fifty. Fifty! Fuck.
I wince when I step into the bath water, water that feels slightly less than boiling. I wait until my feet get used to the temperature before I lower the rest of me into the tub. I'd rather feel like an ice-cube slowly melting than a lobster in a pot.
If it was summer, a bath would be a whole other story. On really hot days I often climb the path behind my house up Thunder Hill through raspberry brambles scratching at my legs and cobwebs draping my arms like silk. By the time I make it to Bear's cabin I've worked up quite a sweat, and then I have to scramble even higher to the enamel tub perched on a rocky ledge.
Bear has figured out a way to divert a spring so that it flows into the tub. As soon as the water fills the tub, he re-diverts the spring and the sun warms it up. Warms it up to just above heart stopping cold, that is. I'm the only person I know who'd work up a sweat just to cool off in that tub when everyone else is making for the beach. But that's because the tub is one of Bear's coolest creations and if I didn't use it he'd neglect it and it might fade into the landscape.
If Bear isn't home, I go straight to where I hang my towel and clothes on a branch and grab the bio-degradable shampoo Bear makes me use. The tub is long enough to float in so I do, staring through the trees to the clouds, feeling like there's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be. The spring water on my skin feels way softer than well water.
Sometimes, if Bear happens to be home, I'll first share a toke with him before confiscating his binoculars. I do this partly because he's a guy but mostly for the view to be had from the tub. Farms and fields stretch toward summer cottages strung along the red shoreline. I can't see my own house from here, but the Four Reasons is in plain sight and sometimes I can tell who has stopped there for gas. Further up the coast, where Thunder Hill Road turns sharply toward town, Kyle House stands nestled under two giant elms. I can practically scope out the county and if I look down to Bear's cabin and he happens to be working on his deck or yard, then I take a peek at him too. No beer belly yet on that boy.
Funny where the mind drifts, I'm thinking, home in my own bathtub, surrounded by the sight of blackened grout and cracked tiles. This bathroom needs fixing, but I've resisted my mother's offer to pay for it. Because then I'd need to get someone in to do the work and she'd start asking questions about why Ray can't do it on one of his weekends home and I don't want her to think he has left me again. And besides the bathroom's not so bad if I keep my eyes closed.
Lately, the idea of a hot bath is the only thing that keeps me going after a day of standing on the cold cement floor of the factory. No matter how many sweaters I wear, the chill stays even after I blast up the heat in the car on the drive home. But once I'm in my bath my mind can drift to the hottest places. For years, the big crush I had on Kelly, my boss, was enough to keep me warm. But then one day Kelly came really close to my ear and asked me to stay after work. I wondered if I'd finally get to act on the fantasies I'd had about him. Like the one where he looks over his glasses and asks me to lock his office door. Without another thought everything on his desk goes flying off, including the picture of his wife, Jilly, and his children, and then we're both crashing and banging away on his desk or else I'm bent over the same desk staring at the picture of Jilly and the children while he's busy filling me up from behind. I've often wondered about women who fuck their bosses. I suppose nothing ever works the same between them after that.
Alana didn't know about my fantasies, but she sure knew about the crush. She thought it was healthy. “Look,” she said. “First, you invest enough into it to keep your imagination alive when you're having the same old, same old, with your real man. Second, when your man is being a real asshole, which, face it, they all are, it's nice to know someone's out there who thinks you're pretty cute. Fact is, it's much easier to get out of bed in the morning when there's someone to look forward to seeing at work.”
So imagine where my head was at that day after work and I stepped into his office. I sat across from his desk, flipped back my hair, which was longer then, and certainly a lot less grey. Mind you I was fatter then too. But in my daydreams, he raves about my roundness.
“Been doing some thinking,” he said, looking at me all earnest like. He tapped a pencil on the notepad in front of him. “It's nuts on my part really, that it's taken me this long to realize this. And on your part, well⦔
“What?” I licked my lips then, and realized I was starting to shake like I had a fever. “On my part what?”
“Irresponsible. On your part, downright selfish for not coming forward with ⦠your ⦔ The phone rang then. By the way he was talking, I guessed it was Jilly on the phone. When I got up to leave, he raised a finger to keep me there. I could feel my heart race.
What was it Alana had said about actually seeing a fantasy through? Something about it usually not living up to the billing. I thought at the time to ask her how she had come to know this, but the subject had somehow changed before I'd had the chance.
“Earth to Trish, earth to Trish.” Kelly was smiling and snapping his fingers at me. The phone was back on the cradle.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “Did you say something?”
“I was saying that Jill sold a crib for a hundred dollars at the school bazaar.”
“A hundred dollars is great.”
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Wherever you were a minute ago looked a lot more interesting.”
I cleared my throat. “So Jilly's at the big bazaar right now?”
He nodded and stared straight into my eyes. “Uh huh.”
So this was why he chose this day to invite me into his office. The question was, would I risk my marriage to make love to this sexy, but more than that, one of the most decent and fair men I have ever known? It crossed my mind that if he were to actually make a move, I might be forced to change my opinion of him. Meanwhile I couldn't help but think ahead to going home right after doing the desk thing with Kelly, and how I'd need a shower because Ray is sensitive to smell and he can always tell when I've snuck a cigarette or even eaten a piece of licorice.
“I want to ask you something,” Kelly was saying. “And I don't want you to answer right away, okay?”
“Okay.” I whispered.
He took his glasses off. “You know how we've been having problems with defects lately, especially with key-rings?”
He must have thought my silence meant I was interested instead of feeling confused because he went on about the time I discovered the tiny but sharp filament jutting out from the side of the mold. When the entire quality control team hadn't been able to figure out why there were so many complaints of pricked fingers! Would I consider becoming his Production Co-coordinator?
“I ⦠I ⦠you know, I pricked my finger while I was handling it and that's how I found it.”
“Now stop being so damned humble, I've also noticed how much your co-workers like and respect you. How many people can claim that? Take me for example,” he joked. “No-one around here has neither respect
nor
admiration for me. So let me tell you, I am always impressed when I discover those qualities in someone else.”
“Don't be silly,” I said, “Everybody loves you.”
“You see? You even know how to butter up the boss!”
I laughed. “This may be true, but what does that have to do with production co-ordination?”
People skills, he told me. It always boiled down to that. Then he went on about getting workers to take pride in their productivity by appealing to their team spirit, their sense of community. I sat there wondering how I could have been so wrong about everything. I used to think I could read men's signals.
He winked. “And if that fails, then you offer them shares in the company. So how about it, Trish?”
“Well, can I think about it?” I said.
“Sure you can. Take all the time you need.” He leaned back in his chair again and folded his hands in his lap. “Okay, time's up. Seriously Trish, this would be a great opportunity. So just say yes.”
“Yes, okay,” I almost looked around to see who could be so rash as to say yes without even talking this over with Ray.
“Great!” said Kelly, standing up to shake my hand. “Let's get you started next week.”
I drove the whole way home in a total daze.
As soon as Olive heard about my promotion, she invited us to supper to celebrate. “It's not that big a deal.” I told her over the phone.
“It's not every day one lands a big promotion! We'll expect you at seven.”
A big promotion. All that it meant, I tried to convince myself in the middle of the night, was that my duties would shift a bit.
A bit?
I'd be responsible for products traveling as far away as California. England, even. And I might even have to go to these places too.
The next day everyone lifted their glasses to toast my success.
“England, you say?” said Arthur, in the British accent he and Olive seemed to acquire whenever they drank.
“How much of a raise will it be, Patricia?” Olive said, looking up from slicing a leg of organically grown lamb.
I stared at the knife. “I don't know, probably not that much. Actually, we didn't talk about that part.”
“You mean you didn't discuss a raise?”
“No.” I reached for the Swiss chard.
Olive was staring at me in disbelief. “How can he do that? I can't believe the nerve of people who come into depressed areas and take advantage of their workers.”
Ray said, “Foghorn Pewter pays decent wages. Eight dollars an hour.
Olive waved the knife in the air. “Perhaps for unskilled labour, but Patricia is no longer unskilled. She has just been promoted to management, which carries far more responsibility than merely working on the line. In fact, the success or failure of the whole operation falls squarely upon her shoulders. Isn't there something like seventy families depending on their jobs? Seriously. And her boss doesn't bother to mention a raise?”
“Workers of the world unite!” Arthur said, standing suddenly, and almost losing his balance in the process. “Olive, I do believe you've found your true calling.”
Olive gave Arthur a look that might as well have been a push, the way he fell back into his chair.
She continued, “Well, at least Patricia won't have to actually work with pewter now. I can't get over these companies who expose their workers to health hazards they wouldn't get away with in a more environmentally conscious area.”
“What's wrong with pewter?” said Ray.
“Lead!” Olive practically shrieked. “Don't you know how much lead is used in pewter? Look at your wife's hands. Patricia, show Ray how rough your hands are.”
I put my hands behind my back. “Ray has seen my hands for almost twenty years, so I don't know why I should have to show them to him now.”
I didn't sleep at all that night. The next morning I knocked on Kelly's door and told him I couldn't accept the promotion, that all I needed was a change from pouring molds. Maybe I'd buff for a while, and then move on to picture frames. I hadn't yet poured picture frames.
He held up his hands. “Look, I thought you'd do well at it, but hey, you don't need to explain.”
But explaining was all I seemed to do for the next while.
“When do you start the new job, Trish?” said just about everyone.
“I decided not to take it after all. Too much stress for one thing, and not enough pay for another.”
Only to Ray did I confess I couldn't handle the responsibility of being in charge. I couldn't take the blame if things went wrong.