by Vicki Delany
It was now mid-December. More than two months had passed since Joanna’s arrival in Hope River. A few small jobs had come in from her old contacts in the computer business. A friend of Elaine’s had hired her to design a web page for his cycling club. And a bit of work from the locals continued to trickle in. But nothing substantial, nothing large enough to support her through the winter. The first part of Fred’s project was finished and ready to be presented to the executives. She was desperately hoping that it would lead to something more.
As before, Fred received her with much enthusiasm. He ushered her to an elevator and into the boardroom. She was pleased to see that, this time, the remnants of the morning’s previous meetings had been cleared away. She idly wondered why it mattered so much to her.
A young man carefully dressed in a conservative blue suit, crisp white shirt and nondescript striped tie stood as they entered. He approached Joanna and held out his hand, bowing ever so slightly. They get younger every year.
“Francis Fukuyama, Joanna Hastings.” Fred made the introductions.
Joanna took the offered hand enthusiastically. “We have met many times, already,” Francis said, smiling at her, “but this is the first time, face-to-face.” Joanna smiled back. She and Francis had put in some long hours on the phone, discussing the project and she had enjoyed working with the bright young man very much. His enthusiasm was contagious, always the best kind.
A PC was set up on the board table, per her request, with a large display screen so arranged to give every chair in the room a clear view. Joanna and Francis set up their equipment quickly.
They were soon joined by a small group of executives and the presentation got underway. Unexpectedly, Joanna was nervous. She tried not to wipe sweaty palms on her best suit. Of the five people in her audience, not counting Fred or Francis, she recognized only two from her days as part of the company, a mere three months past.
But despite her nervousness, the presentation went well. The equipment didn’t break down and she didn’t forget anything too important. Francis stepped in twice to offer thoughtful and enthusiastic commentary.
Then it was over. She thanked everyone and gratefully sat down. Questions were brief and to the point. Francis helped her field them.
“I like it all very much, Ms. Hastings.” Morris Lipton, the Senior Vice President of Client Relations nodded at her through his coke-bottle-bottom glasses. He sported a hideous comb-over, which served only to emphasize the scarcity of his hair and the greasiness of the few remaining strands. Joanna stared at it. Why do men insist on wearing that ridiculous style. Don’t they know by now that women universally hate it?
She pulled herself out of her fascination with the hair sculpture in time to hear him say, “I think we can definitely agree on something more.”
Joanna let her breath out slowly. She hadn’t realized that she had been holding it in.
“I’d like Mr. Fukyiama here to take me through it all again, at my own slow pace. But for now, I like it very much.” He stood up and gathered together his papers. “We’ll be in touch soon.” He shook Joanna’s hand and left the room, the rest of the executives nodding and following in his wake.
Joanna and Frances beamed at each other. “Al-l-l-l right.” They raised their hands and high-fived. Francis helped Joanna pack up, then Fred walked her to the elevator.
“A good job, Joanna,” he said.
“They seemed to like it,” she replied. “But I was surprised that you didn’t introduce our proposal for the rest of the project. When do you think we can get together again to go over that?”
“Well, uh. Not too soon. Don’t want to rush things with this bunch. I’ll call you.”
The elevator arrived with a ping and Joanna got on. Fred smiled and raised his hand as the doors shut in his face. It was lunchtime, the elevator stopped at almost every floor on its way down. As more and more people crammed themselves into the little space and Joanna was pushed further into the back corner, she thought about Fred. He hadn’t seemed at all pleased by the success of her presentation. A massively overweight man stepped on her toes as the crowd shifted again to let more passengers on. He mumbled an apology, but she was too deep in thought to reply. They reached the ground floor and a stream of lunchers burst from the elevator banks and through the security gates like school let out for summer holidays. Joanna was the last to leave.
She stopped at the main desk and flicked through the office directory. Pulling the desk phone over, she rapidly punched in the numbers.
“Mr. Lipton,” she said, “Joanna Hastings here. I’m sorry to bother you right at lunchtime, I understand how busy you are, but I’m still in the building and I was thinking that if you have a half hour to spare I’d like to discuss some more ideas I have about client training. No, I have no plans for lunch. I’ll wait right here.”
She smiled to herself and placed the phone down gently before taking a seat in the lobby to await her lunch date.
It was late in the afternoon when Joanna joined the stream of traffic escaping Toronto. As she drove, the traffic declined steadily. An hour and a half to Barrie and north, then she was one of the few cars left on the road. The weight of the city dropped from her shoulders and she enjoyed the dark panorama of the northern woods at night. Her headlights cut through the inky blackness and she thought she was the only person left in the world. It was a good feeling and she was glad, again, that she made the move to Hope River.
Her presentation had gone extremely well. Even better, she and Morris Lipton had enjoyed a pleasant lunch at a very exclusive restaurant. She outlined her ideas for a totally comprehensive training plan, including manuals and documentation, classroom courses, web based interaction and sales plans for the staff who would be charged with selling the product. Morris asked her to get started on a design that he could look at after the New Year, with particular emphasis on the Internet portion. He was very interested in how training could be conducted through web pages, reducing both the cost of paper and transporting staff and teachers to and from the training site. He told her that he would be spending the holidays at his family cottage in Quebec and was greatly looking forward to her plans when he got back. He invited her to call on Francis Fukuyama for any assistance that might be needed. After lunch he invited her back to the office and had his secretary type up a contract.
But what good was all this excitement, the thrill of success, if she didn’t have anyone to tell all about it? To go over every detail, to discuss what everyone said and how they reacted, the brilliance of her presentation, and particularly how enthusiastic Morris Lipton sounded about Joanna’s ideas and how shockingly betrayed Fred Blanchard would be when he found out. Wendy and Robert were in Montreal, hopefully having a better visit than Wendy appeared to be expecting. Elaine was also out of town this week, on vacation in Barbados.
The drive up had been long and tiring, but easy. The roads were clear and the moonlight bright. But as she approached Hope River, the snow stared to fall. By the time Joanna reached her cabin she was driving through near-whiteout conditions. Spotting her property she swore loudly. Her driveway, perfectly shoveled that very morning, was once again knee-deep in the white stuff. To make matters worse, the ever-efficient snowplow had been by, leaving a small mountain of tightly packed snow squarely blocking the entrance.
She pulled her car over to the side of the road and dragged the snow shovel out of the trunk. Still dressed in the “dress-for-success” suit, ever so smartly accompanied by thick, salt-encrusted winter boots, she began to dig. The snowfall was very wet, she felt every shovel-full up her arms and into her back.
At long last enough of a path was cleared that she could get the car off the road and nosed into the driveway. The rest of the job would have to wait until morning.
She returned the shovel to its place in the trunk and pulled her briefcase out of the car. A thick bank of clouds covered the moon and it was very dark. The single strong light left on over the porch door reached out
of the darkness to welcome her home. As she fitted her key into the lock a slip of paper fluttered in the doorframe. Joanna pulled out a crisp, efficient business card. The insignia of the OPP was printed on one corner; Inspector Erikson’s name and rank filled the other.
Joanna turned the card over. “Call me. Immediately.” Joanna tossed the card onto her desk. Tonight she was in no condition to engage in a battle of wits with the inspector. She could only fight one fight a day.
Instead she called Scott. It was very late but she had to share her excitement with someone. He was still up, or so he said, and sounded happy at her news. They made a dinner date for next week. As she hung up, Joanna congratulated herself on being a single woman in a time when it was acceptable to phone a man, and dragged her tired body off to bed.
Chapter 19
“A baby! You dare to tell me a daughter of mine is having a baby!” the man screeched, a thick red haze descending behind his eyes. With one quick gulp he downed the last of the beer and threw the bottle across the room at his wife. Well-practiced, she ducked and it missed her to fall harmlessly to the floor, cracking apart in a spray of beer-soaked glass shards on the worn and dirty linoleum.
“Yes, a baby, you drunken fool,” his wife hissed, as she grabbed the straw kitchen broom and waved it in front of her, whether to sweep up the glass or to defend herself no one could tell. “And if you didn’t come home from O’Reilly’s bar pickled every night you would have noticed months ago.”
The boys gathered silently at the kitchen door. Their eyes glowed with excitement. This was news: even the youngest of them knew what it meant for an unmarried girl to have a baby. Total disgrace at the absolute least.
“Why didn’t you tell me, woman?” The man sprayed spittle through stained and broken teeth. “I have a right to know.”
She summoned what little bit of courage she possessed. “You have no right to know what you’re too blind drunk to notice.” He pulled his arm back and she flinched, ready for the blow that was sure to follow. But instead of lashing out, his arm fell lifelessly to his side. “I wouldn’ta known, but for John telling me hisself. John knows what a son’s duty is to his father.” He glared at the circle of boys as he dropped into a kitchen chair. Even through his drunken haze he remembered, or maybe it was force of habit, to balance slightly to the right to counteract the wobbly left chair leg. He would fix it tomorrow-tomorrow, for sure. He parted his legs and scratched his crotch.
The oldest boy, John, preened before his brothers. He was in his da’s good books now, for sure. The other boys had better watch out. John knew he could do no wrong, for a while anyway, at least until their da found another grievance with the boy. Another fault, real or imagined, it made no difference.
“So now you know,” the woman said, brushing absentmindedly at a bit of long-dried baby vomit on the shoulder of her worn dress. It had been a nice dress, once-full of flowers, trimmed with bits of lace, with a generous full skirt and scooped neckline. Once, when the dress was brand new out of the charity box in the church basement, the design of the flowers danced in the blue of her eyes, those eyes the exact color of the cornflowers in the soft fabric of the dress. A long time ago the color washed out of those stunning eyes and she gave up trying to keep the dress mended. A seam under her arm gaped and the hem sagged loosely at her knees.
She waved her hands at the huddle of boys standing at the kitchen door. “What you all staring at, looking like a bunch of donkeys in the barn? You got nothing else to do? Ray, you go look for your baby sister, watch that she’s not into no trouble.”
The man spat on the floor. “You stand right there, boy. Looking after babies is women’s work, you all know that. Ain’t no son of mine doin’ no women’s work.”
Ray crossed his arms over his chest and planted his legs further apart. He grinned slyly at his brothers. He was a small, thin boy with scrawny, knobby knees and exceptionally bad eyesight, which forced him to squint most of the time. All too often his father’s ridicule came crashing down upon him. It was nice, very nice, to be singled out as one not deserving of women’s work.
The woman shrugged and picked up her broom. She placed it back in its place beside the sink and moved toward the kitchen door, to see what the baby was up to out in the yard.
“She’s a whore. Just a common whore. And she has to be out of this house. Ain’t never had no whores in this family. I ain’t having it start now.” The man rose to his feet and crossed his arms tightly. “You hear me, woman, you hear me? You tell the filthy whore she ain’t having no baby in this house.” He scratched his crotch once again.
She stood still, frozen in her path to the door, her back to the room.
“You hear me, you hear me, woman? She is to be out of this house tomorrow,” he announced in a deep voice, as he imagined the old prophets they learned about in Sunday School many, many years ago, must have sounded. A belly-shaking belch ruined the effect. “I want the whore out of this house tomorrow.”
The woman turned slowly. From the yard, they could all hear the thin cry of a toddler who had fallen over a rock or a rusty garden implement and scraped her knee. No one moved. “But she has nowhere to go. Nowhere. You can’t throw out your daughter, your own flesh and blood.”
The man bent over and took another beer out of the icebox. It was the last one; he would have to go to town tonight. Good thing he still had some money left from that job he did clearing land for the Thompson brothers. The crack in his butt peeked over the rim of his soiled pants. The boys elbowed each other and pointed, but they knew better than to laugh. The man fumbled through the kitchen cabinets for the bottle opener. He frantically tossed spoons and knives out of the way onto the floor, and at last he located his prize. With a flick of the wrist he cracked open the bottle and took a long, satisfying slug. The opener he threw over his shoulder. His wife stepped forward to catch it before it hit the ground.
The woman slowly lowered herself to her knees and started picking up the cutlery. As she stretched out almost flat to get at a spoon that had bounced under the icebox her dress rode up exposing a flash of gnarled white knees and thick thighs criss-crossed by purple stretch marks. The boys grinned in their embarrassment and shifted from foot to foot, elbowing each other once again.
“Ain’t no whore gonna live in my house,” the man said to his wife’s rear as she scrambled under the table. “I don’t teach her what’s right, how’m I gonna look any man in town in the face ever again? The whore.” He spat. “Who knows who she opened her legs for. Every man in town gonna be panting around here like a hound dog after a bitch in heat, word get out about this.”
His wife crawled backward out from under the table. As she rose to her feet, she smoothed her dress over her hips, the dress that once had beautiful blue cornflowers and a light trimming of lace, and placed the cutlery carefully back into its place.
The sobbing baby clambered up the back stairs to the kitchen door and howled to be allowed in. The woman scooped her daughter up into her arms and held her close. Her little face was a mask of dust and dirt through which bright blue eyes and white teeth still shone. A thin trickle of blood ran down from her right knee-an old scrape had reopened as she fell into the puddle of mud lying in wait at the bottom of the steps. The thick smell of ooze mixed with a well-soiled diaper assaulted the woman’s nostrils. She brushed twigs out of the soft blond hair and rocked the baby to her chest. The youngest boy stepped forward and wordlessly plucked the now-howling girl from his mother’s arms. His eyes caught hers’ for an instant, then cooing softly, he took the baby into the back room for a wash and a change of clothes. Everyone pretended not to notice them leave.
The man finished his beer and looked at the empty bottle in disgust. He threw it into the sink. “I’m going into town, I gotta get more beer. John, get the truck out, I’m going into town.”
John didn’t know what to do. It was a rare privilege to be allowed to drive the old pickup truck up to the road, but he didn’t want to miss
anything exciting. His father staggered into the front room and plucked his old plaid working jacket off the coat hook by the door. “What you waiting for, boy? You want me to get one of your brothers to go for the truck?”
“No, sir.” John leapt out the front door and flew down the porch steps. Halfway down a tread cracked under his weight and he stumbled, but he quickly corrected himself and raced across the yard, his brothers’ mocking laughter following him.
The woman ran after her husband and plucked at his arm. “You can’t go into town, now. What’s to become of my daughter?”
“Your daughter’s a whore, plain and simple. I know my Christian duty. I’ll give her some money for the bus to Toronto. Lots of whores there, I hear. When she’s had her whelp she can come crawling back. Not before.” He slammed the front door behind him. He tripped over the newly loosened step, but not as agile as his son, he fell into the yard in a tumble of waving arms. No one dared to laugh.
The remaining brothers looked at each other in dismay. Fun was fun, they would all agree, but maybe, just maybe, this had gone a bit too far. Not one of them wanted to see their sister thrown out of the house.
Once again Joanna was instantly awake. No light permeated her bedroom. It was still the dead of night. She lay in the dark for a long time staring at the ceiling. She thought she heard the lonely howl of a wolf far out over the lake, but she couldn’t be sure. It might be some drunks shouting at the moon. She was still awake as the first feeble streaks of watery daylight broke through her bedroom window.
The day passed slowly. She should still be elated, flushed by yesterday’s success, at her own audacity in snatching victory from the very jaws of defeat. Instead she prowled the cabin, beginning small housekeeping tasks and then abandoning them half-finished. She picked up books and magazines and tossed them down a few minutes later, into a growing pile on the floor. She considered going for a walk to enjoy the pure new snow, but only got as far as pulling on her boots before deciding that it was too much effort.