by Vicki Delany
Wendy brushed snow off her shoulders. “That won’t be necessary. I am going with him. I will finish my thesis by correspondence. In fact, I might start it all over again, ‘The effects of long-term sun deprivation on the human psyche,’ or something similar. What do you think?”
“What do I think?” Joanna struggled to keep her voice under control, although the words still came out harsher than she had intended. “I think you’re nuts. You almost have your PhD in Psychology and you are about to throw it in and move to the Yukon, of all the Godforsaken places.”
“I am not throwing anything in, Mother, I think that this is a great opportunity for us both. Robert needs a chance to prove himself, you know.”
“But what about you? What do you have to prove to yourself? You’re so close to getting your degree, what you have always wanted. Are you prepared to start it all again?”
“Look at yourself, Mom,” Wendy said. “You have given up everything to move to this backwoods nowhere. People told you that you’re crazy, but you went ahead and did it anyway.”
“This is different.” Joanna carved an ever-increasing series of circles in the snow with her boot. “I’ve put in my time, I’ve paid my dues. Now I want to do something for myself.”
“Yes, it is different, we’re still young. We have time to make mistakes, Mom. If this is a mistake we can go back to school or find new jobs and start all over again. You can’t.”
Wendy’s logic was like a physical blow to the stomach. Joanna knew that her daughter was right. In her late forties, she was, quite simply, too old to make life-sized mistakes. She had cashed in a large portion of her retirement fund to make this move and start up on her own. There was no time left in her life to start saving again.
At that moment a long-legged, brown-speckled deer, as delicate as a teacup made of the finest bone china, burst out of a thick clump of bushes and bramble and crossed the road with one majestic leap. It was gone in an instant, barely making a sound and leaving not a trace behind, save for a cluster of hoofed footprints in the snow.
“Oh, my goodness,” Wendy gasped, her eyes wide with astonishment. “Did you see that?”
“Oh, yeah,” Joanna replied with an air of total nonchalance that covered the depth of awe she felt at the appearance of the majestic animal. “See them all the time around here.”
“That is so fabulous. Maybe there is something to be said for living up here, after all.”
Joanna laughed. “Maybe there is indeed.”
Wendy grinned and they continued their walk.
The appearance of the deer put everything into perspective. She was disappointed that Wendy was breaking off her studies. It is a rare person who is able to pick up again once they leave university. But it did happen and living in the far north would be the experience of a lifetime, and there was no point in arguing against it, anyway. The young couple had made their decision.
She could only hope that her daughter’s marriage would be strong enough to cope with the isolation of that Arctic community, the harshness of its life and in particular the long, never-ending winter nights. It would be all too easy for Robert to get wrapped up in his job. No doubt he would spend a great deal of his time traveling, and would fail to notice (or not want to notice) if his wife was lonely and depressed, away as she would be from friends, family, city-life and the university she so loved. Joanna hoped that their marriage would be strong enough, but she doubted it.
“I have sort of wondered lately, how things have been going with you and Robert,” she asked hesitantly. “Is everything okay? You seem to have been a bit off lately.” She cast her eyes downward and stared intently at her boots as they crunched through the packed snow, leaving Wendy to answer as, and if, she wanted.
Wendy bent down and scooped up a handful of fresh snow from the side of the road. She formed it thoughtfully into a ball and tossed it several times into the air. In a flash, she assumed a baseball pitcher’s classic stance, shifted her position a few times and threw the ball straight at her mother’s head. Years of being the star thrower of the local girls’ league softball team paid off handsomely, and the ball sailed by Joanna’s ear, exactly where Wendy had aimed it.
Joanna shrieked and leapt out of the way. Whirling around, she faced her attacker who was now helpless in the center of the road, doubled up with laughter.
She waited for Wendy to recover. Chuckling they linked arms once again.
“Everything is fine, Mom,” Wendy said. “It has been a tough decision for us to make and I think we were getting a bit short with each other over it all. Robert is very worried about going so far away from his mother. She hasn’t been well lately at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What does she think about this job and the move and all?”
“Actually, he hasn’t told her. When we went up to Montreal last time he was going to tell her, but she was so sick that he never got around to it. He won’t say so, but I think that he thinks that it won’t really matter if she believes we are still living in Toronto. It seems closer to her, but she will never come and visit so it doesn’t really matter where we are.”
Joanna walked in silence. It seemed so sad, Robert’s mother not even knowing where her son was living. It’s a mistake, she thought, not to tell. Robert’s mother was much older than she herself, Robert being the youngest of ten children, but young people often underestimate the ability of their elders to handle change and disappointment. After all, they had plenty of practice. Listen to me, Joanna thought, I sound like someone’s great-grandmother myself. When did I start including myself among the old people?
“I’m getting cold,” was all she could say. “It’s time to turn back.”
They enjoyed an enormous breakfast Christmas morning. Wendy and Robert scattered the remains of whole wheat toast and pancakes onto the front porch and spent a good deal of time exclaiming in delight over the number of birds and small mammals who crept up to the cabin in order to partake of a Christmas treat.
After breakfast, they opened their gifts and then Joanna moved into the kitchen to begin slicing onions and celery and mushrooms for the stuffing. From the kitchen window she and Wendy could watch Robert chopping wood. There was a great deal to be done, and since the death of Luke she had not found anyone else to come out and do the job for her. Her pile of stove-ready logs was getting very small indeed.
“I spoke to Dad the other day,” Wendy said tentatively, exploring the waters with care as she peeled potatoes over the sink.
“Umm,” Joanna listened with only half an ear. She was debating whether she should add just a touch more sage to the stuffing. It was an incredibly big turkey for a mere three people. She would be eating turkey sandwiches for a month. Not that that was ever a problem.
“He went to California in the beginning of December.”
Sage forgotten, Joanna stopped slicing. “Oh,” she said stiffly. “Why would he do that?”
“You know why, Mom.” Wendy put down the potato peeler, placed her hands in a firm grasp on her mother’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. “He wanted to see Alexis.”
“And did he?” Joanna was immobile under her daughter’s grip.
“Yes, yes he did. But it didn’t go very well.” Wendy released her mother and picked up another potato. She examined it closely for eyes and bad spots. “She saw him for only a couple of minutes. There were two people there all the time, listening to every word. Dad said that it was awful, he said it was like she was in an aquarium, one of those in which you watch sharks and whales and big ocean fish swimming around in circles. It felt like he was trying to touch her through a pane of glass six inches thick.”
Joanna sunk into a kitchen chair. She could hear the steady thump of Robert’s axe hitting the old, scarred chopping block.
Wendy crouched in front of her mother. “She told him that she was happy living there, that she didn’t want him to come and visit her again, that she wanted us all to stop writing her letters, that she had a n
ew family now and she was happy with them.”
Joanna groaned.
“So Dad left.”
“He left!” Joanna shrieked. “He just left her there?”
“What else could he do, Mom? What else could he do? He couldn’t force her to come with him.”
“Well he should have, he should have.”
“Boy, it’s sure cold out there. How about a cup of hot chocolate for an old working man.” Robert threw open the back door and stood in the kitchen stomping his feet and rubbing his gloves together, cheeks flushed with the cold, eyes bright from the unaccustomed physical work.
Wendy shot him a sharp glance and shook her head vigorously.
“Uh, maybe I’ll work for a bit longer before having that hot chocolate, if it’s all the same to you.” He backed out of the room in a flurry of embarrassment, closing the kitchen door softly behind him.
“Why doesn’t she want us, what did I ever do to make her hate me so?” Joanna moaned, oblivious of Robert’s interruption.
“Stop that, Mom,” Wendy hissed. “Don’t talk like that. We’ve been all over this before. It’s not your fault.”
“But it is, it is. I must have done something wrong.” Joanna put her face into her hands and let tears flow.
“Why don’t you go and lie down, Mom.” Wendy tugged her mother’s arm, trying to raise her from the chair. “You go and have a nice little nap.”
“But the dinner,” Joanna protested through her tears. “The turkey has to go into the oven soon.”
“Robert and I will take care of it. Don’t you worry. You go and have a nap now, and we’ll talk again when you get up.”
Despite her misery, Joanna cracked a small smile. “Robert will get the Christmas dinner?” Both women knew that as the youngest in a family of ten children, Robert didn’t know much about looking after himself, and certainly nothing about cooking.
“I’ll tell him what to do.” Wendy hustled her mother into her room. “He’s very good that way. He doesn’t know any better, so he just does as he’s told.”
Joanna slipped off her sweater and slippers and socks, and slid under the covers as Wendy switched out the light and softly closed the door.
Chapter 22
It seemed as if the day she turned thirteen Alexis departed her body and an invader from outer space took possession. The light-hearted little girl, the one who was always the happiest, always the one laughing the loudest, was gone and in her place stood an angry, resentful teenager. Perhaps she was all the more bitter because she really had nothing to rebel against.
Everyone told Joanna that it was only a phase. “She’ll grow out of it,” they all said. But she never did.
Grade eight was the last grade Alexis passed. Into high school and her marks fell off the chart. She was caught skipping class time after time. She endured her in-school suspensions and as soon as they were over, she skipped class again. At first the principal and the teachers kept Joanna apprised of the situation. But gradually their calls dried up, as one after one the school staff gave up on her daughter.
Alexis’ childhood friends stopped coming around. Joanna would see them in the mall sometimes, and they would nod and slink away. Alexis found a new group of friends, young people with numerous piercings, and strangely cut and dyed hair. Many nights Alexis came home late, very late, staggering and incoherent.
Joanna was beside herself with grief. They went to counseling, government funded and private, both together and separately. Sometimes the entire family went. Nothing helped. Alexis attended the sessions without too much protest, sat quietly and nodded at the therapist’s suggestions and went right back to the streets with her new friends.
At work, Joanna’s performance suffered. She came in late, red-eyed after driving around the neighborhood half the night looking for Alexis or waiting up until the wee hours for the sound of the front door slamming, and left early hoping to get in before her daughter got home from school (assuming that she went) and then went out again for the evening. When she was at work her production dropped down to practically nothing. One day she was going over her notes and reviewing her slides for the presentation she was about to make to a prospective client when the school called to say that Alexis had slashed her arms with a razor blade in the girls’ washroom and was on her way to the hospital. It was the Friday afternoon before a long weekend and most of her colleagues had already left. Before she flew out the door, the only person in her department Joanna could find was a co-op student. She thrust the slide folios and the text of her talk at the surprised young woman and was gone. To her astonishment they got the contract, mainly on the strength of the product, not the quality of the presentation. The co-op student was offered a full-time position and it was politely suggested that Joanna take some time off.
Wendy and James were not immune to the storms whirling through their lives. They were supportive of both their mother and younger sister for a long time but as the rebellion on Alexis’ part, and the despair on Joanna’s, grew they retreated into separate worlds of their own interests and friends.
Joanna’s ex-husband blamed her for all of Alexis’ problems. “If you were a better mother,” he shouted at her on one occasion. “If you weren’t so messed up, all this wouldn’t be happening,” was his opinion on another. Eventually Alexis packed her bags and went to live with her dad and his new family. She was back within a week, leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone and hitchhiking across town. Belinda had some problems when Alexis tried to teach her seven-year-old how to smoke.
Joanna crumpled the duvet under her chin and sobbed silently into the fabric as the memories came flooding back. Outside her room Wendy paced anxiously, unable to help, not knowing what to do. Robert’s arms were about to fall off, but he kept swinging the axe and cutting more and more firewood as the cold crept into his city boots and through his thin gloves.
The school took Alexis to court several times for truancy. Joanna had to stand in front of the judge and say how she tried to make her daughter go to school. Alexis was fined a small amount, small enough that she could pay it herself, and a few months later was back in court again. After she was hospitalized for cutting herself the truancy officer told Joanna that he wouldn’t charge Alexis again.
Brushes with the law escalated. Alexis got off with a warning after her first shoplifting incident, and after she was found drunk and disorderly in a public park. Each time Joanna took time off work to go to court and each time as they left the courthouse Alexis sneered at her mother and refused to account for her behavior. One of her friends, Joanna suspected that he was Alexis’s boyfriend although Alexis never brought him around to their house, was sent to jail for taking a swing at the arresting officer during the public park incident. Although she was unwanted, Joanna insisted accompanying Alexis to court for his trial. She was there, but the boy’s parents were not. He told the court that his father was on a business trip and his mother didn’t want to expose his younger sister to the trauma of the courtroom.
Alexis was arrested once along with a girlfriend who was selling drugs. She was lucky to be released because she didn’t have any of the drugs on her, and said she didn’t know what was happening. The friend got a year in juvenile custody. Alexis never mentioned her again.
Joanna lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling. There was too much light in the room to sleep. She crumpled her sheets into balls in her fists and remembered.
“I hate you, you fucking bitch,” Alexis screamed. “You’ve messed up my life. You should never have been allowed to have children.”
The front door slammed as James abandoned his homework and scooted out of the house. Wendy had already left.
“Look, Alexis, Aunt Jackie and Uncle Dave are only in town for a couple of days and I want us all to have a nice dinner together, please, can’t you stay home this one night.”
“You fucking bitch,” Alexis repeated, “you can’t control my life.”
“I don’t want
to control your life, I am just asking you to stay and have dinner with us, this one night.” Joanna didn’t know why she was pleading with her daughter. In fact, it would be better for everyone if Alexis wasn’t here. They could relax and have a nice evening without worrying about what Alexis would say next. But she was compelled to keep on fighting.
Suddenly Alexis reared back and spat right in her mother’s face. Joanna was so shocked she just stood there. Sensing her advantage Alexis spat again.
Joanna wiped her face carefully. “Oh, all right,” she sighed, giving in. “Do what you want.”
Alexis continued screaming abuse at her mother. Sobbing, Joanna fled to the bathroom and locked herself in. Alexis pounded on the door. Eventually the house fell silent and she slowly opened the door and stepped out into the hall.
The blows came out of nowhere. Joanna covered herself with her hands as Alexis rained feeble punches all over her head and shoulders. She shoved Alexis across the hall into the wall.
“Fucking bitch, I hate you,” the girl screamed once again.
Without stopping to think Joanna ran into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. She dialed 911. “I’ve been assaulted by my daughter,” she gasped. Alexis stared at her, unbelieving. She turned without a word and left the house.
While the police were on their way, Joanna called her sister and apologized for canceling tonight’s dinner. A sudden migraine, she explained. No, she was sure it was nothing serious. Lie down for a while and it will pass. You know how these things are. So sorry about the evening.
Joanna sat on the bench by the front door sobbing while the fresh-faced young police officer listened to her story. It broke her heart as he called in on his radio and described Alexis to all listening as “the suspect.”
There was nothing he could do other than call in a report, because Alexis was not there. The officer left a number for Joanna to call once her daughter returned home. A few minutes after he drove off, Alexis marched through the front door. She had been watching her house from the shadows of the neighbor’s backyard.