Extensions

by Myrna Dey

  myrna dey

  EXTENSIONS

  a novel

  NEWEST PRESS

  COPYRIGHT © MYRNA DEY 2010

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE USE OF ANY PART OF THIS PUBLICATION REPRODUCED, TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, RECORDING OR OTHERWISE, OR STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE PRIOR CONSENT OF THE PUBLISHER IS AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE COPYRIGHT LAW. IN THE CASE OF PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHER REPROGRAPHIC COPYING OF THE MATERIAL, A LICENCE MUST BE OBTAINED FROM ACCESS COPYRIGHT BEFORE PROCEEDING.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  DEY, MYRNA, 1942–

  EXTENSIONS / MYRNA DEY.

  ISBN 978-1-897126-68-4

  I. TITLE.

  PS8607.E9848E98 2010 C813’.6 C2010-903639-5

  EDITOR: ANNE NOTHOF

  COVER AND INTERIOR DESIGN: NATALIE OLSEN, KISSCUT DESIGN

  COVER IMAGE: UNTITLED TWINS, 1992, toned silver print by DAN ESTABROOK

  AUTHOR PHOTO: CEDRIC DEY

  PROOFREADING: PAUL MATWYCHUK

  NEWEST PRESS ACKNOWLEDGES THE SUPPORT OF THE CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, THE ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, AND THE EDMONTON ARTS COUNCIL FOR OUR PUBLISHING PROGRAM. WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA THROUGH THE CANADA BOOK FUND FOR OUR PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES.

  # 201, 8540 – 109 STREET

  EDMONTON, ALBERTA T6G 1E6

  780.432.9427

  WWW.NEWESTPRESS.COM

  No bison were harmed in the making of this book.

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10

  To the memory of my parents and brother, Gil, Marian, and Warren Williams, for their love of words and of me

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Acknowledgments

  Myrna Dey Bio

  I ONLY SPOTTED THE PHOTO because Gail stopped to talk to her son’s hockey coach. He was a moose of a guy, like one of our regulars in cells who required three men to restrain. Or, as the joke goes, one woman.

  While they discussed Mighty Mite registration, I busied myself in a dark corner of the garage. A shoebox full of pictures was going for three dollars — cheap gold plastic frames with calendar prints of kittens, flowers, babies, plus the one that caught my eye. It was an old sepia photo of twin girls, about four or five, dressed for a formal pose in long ruffled dresses with big bows in their ringlets and black lace-up boots. It looked exactly like one my grandmother had given me of her and her sister. Hardly possible coming from a home here in rural Saskatchewan, but I couldn’t resist the urge to compare them.

  “I just want the one picture,” I said to the large woman sitting at the cash table. “Here’s three dollars for it.”

  “Three dollars for the whole box.”

  “I don’t want the whole box.” I thought I was doing her a favour by allowing the box to sell twice, but her expression told me I knew nothing about garage sales.

  Seeing us, Gail pulled away from the hockey coach and came to my rescue. “She’s flying, Joyce. She doesn’t need any more baggage. This is my friend Bella from Vancouver — Constable Dryvynsydes. She and Monty trained together.”

  I winced that Gail had to work in the “Constable,” but kept a friendly smile on my face. Joyce nodded without returning the smile. When she accepted my three dollars, I felt I had cleared customs with an undeclared pair of shoes on my feet.

  “Whose stuff is this?” Gail asked.

  “Multi-family, looks like Cindy Mingus,” said Joyce, distracted by a woman behind us who seemed eager to transfer a Crock-Pot and an armful of jigsaw puzzles to the table.

  Gail and I moved out of the garage and down the driveway as fast as we could, leaving the carton of gilt-edged pictures behind. Before we reached the safety of Gail’s minivan, Joyce bellowed, “Don’t forget the bake sale!”

  Gail let out an exaggerated sigh. “You didn’t have to buy anything. I just wanted to give you a sample of local colour. What we do for recreation here in the boonies.”

  I studied the picture again. “I wanted this. It looks like one Sara gave me — you must have seen it. The only evidence she had of a twin sister. I’ll dig mine out when I get home, if I can ever find it.” I stared at the bows on the girls’ heads — one straight and neat, the other floppy. Sara said her floppy bow was the only way she could tell herself from her sister. “But there’s no way they could be the same. Sara’s was taken in Nanaimo.”

  Gail nodded. Old friendships spared a lot of explanations. She had known my grandmother since we started kindergarten together in Vancouver and, like me, had called her Sara. All through elementary school, Gail and I were known as the Gold Dust Twins because of our fair hair, but in Grade Seven the nickname ended when my hair darkened to khaki brown. At the same time, I shot up like a space needle and Gail grew curves. By the time we graduated from high school, I had come to rest at 5'11" and had a few mounds of my own. Gail never did make it past 5'2", but she stayed blonde and was always the cutest in any group. When she came to visit me in training at Depot in Regina, Monty, one of my troop mates, fell in love with her at first sight, and not much later, she reciprocated. I had to sign a prenuptial agreement promising, for my part in this match, to visit them in whatever isolated place Monty ended up. Willow Point, Saskatchewan, was the third such outpost, but his corporal’s hooks came with this move, an impressive promotion for someone with his years of service. All the while, I was swallowed up in the lower mainland, where the RCMP acts as the municipal force for several cities surrounding Vancouver. I served with the Burnaby detachment and rented an apartment on the Vancouver side of Boundary Road. It could have been worse — I could be working in Surrey.

  Gail pulled into the driveway of their grey vinyl-sided, split-level home. It was more or less like their other quarters provided by the RCMP, and more or less like all the houses on the short crescent. Monty greeted us with baby Macy in one hand, a barbecue brush in the other, and their son Clancy whooping around him.

  “What do you think of our town — enchanté, non?” Monty grinned, as Gail took Macy into the house, Clancy following. Monty’s grin had won over everyone at Depot, staff and recruits alike. Back then, he had a Québécois accent, now almost extinct under Gail’s influence. He must have inherited his sense of humour from his mother who named him Montcalm and his twin brother Wolfe.

  “Terrific place. For sure you’ll want to retire here.” I followed Monty to the deck where spicy meat cubes were cooking on skewers.

  “Put your feet up.” He gestured toward a chaise lawn chair and handed me a glass of cold beer. “This is recuperation time for you.”

  The best mirror is an old friend. That line was used to introduce one of the many eulogists at Mom’s funeral, and never had anyone confirmed it more than these two. Here they were propping me up again. Macy was b
orn six weeks before Mom’s crazy death on Valentine’s Day, but that didn’t stop Gail and Monty from flying out for the funeral. I raised my glass. “Here’s to your new home.”

  Monty raised his bottle from the barbecue. “Life can start for us now that you’re here to baptize it. How are you? And your dad?”

  “Confused. Both of us. Six months haven’t made it any more real.

  Dad’s still at a loss. He’s practically given up golf without her, and crosswords just don’t fill the days for him. I think I’ve persuaded him to take a course in cartoon drawing.”

  “Cartoons?” Monty almost lost a mouthful of beer.

  “He needs a project and has always been creative. Even though Mom was the art teacher, he was the one who drew the most wonderful comic strips for me as a kid. Great fantasy stories, lovable characters. He even made up songs for them to sing.” Monty smiled, sliding the kabobs easily from their skewers into a stainless steel bowl. Whenever I tried that, they ricocheted into the barbecue lid. “And I might take a history course. Get started on the academics both my parents wanted me to take instead of becoming a cop. Aren’t I contrary? Now that Mom’s gone, I’m ready for the course she would have died to have me take.”

  Mom and died. I still could not speak that combination of words without a choking feeling starting in my throat and ending up in my eyes. I saw death regularly and remember my first next-of-kin notification two weeks into the job, when I had to tell a mother her sixteen-year-old daughter had been killed in a car accident. Tears fought to get out then, but within a couple of days, more sad files had pushed that memory aside. I could not bury my mother’s file so easily. I was barely getting used to the idea that Sara was gone and that was already seven years ago. Dying seemed such a secretive betrayal, a covert operation. Each on her own, no consultation with Dad or me.

  Monty shook his head. “I still can’t believe it. I’ll never forget Retha jiving with your dad at our wedding. She looked like a teenager.”

  “How do you think it felt being mistaken for sisters when your mother is in her fifties and you are a teenager?”

  Not that we looked alike. I was a Dryvynsydes in height and fine hair, whereas the petite Retha had a thick, manageable blonde bob all her life. Her size four had not changed since she was fifteen, even after she had me at age thirty-six. In her fifties she started running, first half marathons, then full, always ending up in the top ten for her age division. Perfection did not stop with her body. She regularly won awards for imparting a love of art and music to her students in an innovative way. To which could be added: first-class hostess, patient mother, uplifting wife. After Dad retired as high school principal, she made sure they took at least one enlightenment trip a year — a museum tour of Spain and France, an archeological dig in Egypt. She would never go for the idle beach vacation in Mexico or Hawaii, though she did accompany Dad on a golf holiday to Palm Springs every year, and learned enough of the game herself to challenge him on the odd hole. Efficiency on every front. Her supreme act of efficiency was to outrun, outexercise, and outstep old age by dropping dead on her treadmill just after she turned sixty-seven. The only role Superwoman Retha Dryvynsydes could not have played was a feeble old lady, so she added an early death to her list of achievements. Congratulations, Retha.

  “You ready with the meat, honey?” Gail bounded onto the deck with two bowls of salad and a basket of rolls, Clancy behind her. Two sweeps of her arms and the cedar picnic table was transformed into something out of Chatelaine — fruit-spangled tablecloth, glasses, plates, and napkins in assorted solid fruit colours. By the time the adults sat down, Clancy was eating quietly and neatly at one end of the table, and Macy was cooing contentedly on a blanket nearby.

  “You’re another Retha,” I said.

  “I wish,” said Gail, “but not with these thighs.” Monty gave her bare tanned legs an approving pat.

  “So how’s Willow Point so far?”

  “Pretty quiet at work,” said Monty. “A few impaireds, B&Es, gas theft from farms, vandalism. Hey, it’s a service town for farmers — the better criminals go elsewhere. Last week we got called to get a cat out of a tree.”

  Gail shook her head as Monty spoke. “That garage sale is about as lively as it gets. Maybe once Clancy is in school and I start teaching skating, I might find some kindred spirits tucked away. So far it’s only been hockey mothers — Joyce was one of those. As usual, I’ll end up on more committees than I want, because there are too few women to go around.”

  I thought of Gail and me as teenagers, both of us privileged — no, make that pampered. She concentrated on figure skating and I spread myself thin into everything. As an only child I was encouraged to sample both parents’ passions: dancing, figure skating, piano, art, sports, along with decent grades, which I barely and lazily maintained. In our own ways, Gail and I had both rebelled from a life where rebellion was not necessary. Though never forced upon us, a university degree was certainly encouraged, so what did I do? Waited tables at the Cactus Club for a couple of years while waiting for my acceptance into the RCMP, which, after waitressing, was the second most unexpected line of work either parent would have considered for me. And Gail’s parents, both pharmacists, had envisioned a profession for their daughter in pro skating, journalism, or pharmacy, where bake sales, hockey camps, and community skating lessons were on the edge of a rewarding career and family life, not the focus. Not that they were disappointed with Monty as a son-in-law, but they had not expected Gail to find him so soon.

  “We won’t be here forever, thank God,” said Monty, helping himself to a second plate of food.

  “If we ever get close to a large centre again, I’m going to take some courses.” Had Gail heard us talking? She had started an arts degree before she got married. “In journalism. Amazing how raising a family brings out the urge to do something for your own development. Seems you’re always tending to someone else’s needs.” She wiped Clancy’s face with a napkin and released him to play in the back yard.

  Monty escaped from this discussion into the house for more beer. RCMP spouses make as big a commitment to the force as the members, and he knew it.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I said.

  “No one setting your heart aflutter?” Just as Macy was about to fall forward on her face from a sitting position, Gail scooped her up and plunked her on her knee.

  “Only as in ‘How do I get rid of this loser?’ There are lots around, and I could be a magnet if I don’t watch it.” One way I had not let my parents down was in marrying too early. In four months I would be thirty-one and had lost my only prospect.

  “Is Ray still on your mind?”

  “Yeah, with all the other creeps. He doesn’t stray into my good thoughts anymore, but he has left me with a healthy suspicion of his gender.”

  Ray Kelsey was my first and only love. In high school I hardly dated and like to think it was because I was too tall for all the boys. Ray Kelsey was 6'4". He came to my rescue when I was a rookie cop going to court for the first time. He was a rookie Crown Prosecutor and helped me through my jitters. We did not get together then because he was going out with a woman he had met in law school. Too clingy, he told me when they broke up. “What I like about you, Arabella, is your independent spirit.” Three of the best years of my life later, my future was all planned in my head. We had even lingered at the ring section in jewellery stores not long before he dropped the bombshell about the blonde bombshell in his office. “The problem with you, Bella, is that you’re too independent.”

  Monty reappeared with two bottles of beer. “Spoke to Chad Simmons last week. He got a corporal’s posting in Porcupine Plains. Asked how the best-looking member of our troop was doing.”

  Trust Monty to give me a lift.

  “Your best-looking troopmate bought something at the garage sale today,” said Gail.

  “What could Willow Point offer a woman from Vancouver?” asked Monty, then looked at Gail and wished he hadn’t.


  “An old photo. It looks identical to one I have of my grandmother and her twin sister.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “How could it be? She told me her mother had it taken when she and her sister were four. It’s the only picture of them in existence. Just before their mother died of the flu, she gave them each a print. The girls were only eight and were sent to live with different relatives. Her sister died of the flu a year after that.”

  “It still could be a match.”

  I shook my head vigourously. “What are the odds of that? Both sisters ended up with aunts who didn’t want them, so there’s little chance either would keep a photo of a dead girl. These were poor families. Besides, this all happened on Vancouver Island, around Nanaimo. Almost a hundred years ago. This is Saskatchewan.”

  “You’re talking in terms of odds. I took a course last month in Regina on the patterns of criminal behaviour. There are a few maybe, just enough to confuse you. More weird things happen than anyone could ever make up if he wrote a book. I guess we need guidelines to get our leads, but at the back of my mind I’m always thinking, the solution to this case is going to be something we least expect.”

  “So that’s why you’re such a young corporal.”

  Macy had fallen asleep on Gail’s knee, and she rose carefully to slip into the house with her.

  “You’ll get there,” Monty said.

  “I’m not sure I want to. I’m not sure about anything anymore.” I had written the corporal’s exam and my mark was mid-range, like all the other marks in my life. The next step was to apply for a corporal’s position when one became available. Experience, references, and other qualifications played as much a role as exam results, but I was still missing one important requirement: the motivation to put my name in.

  “Then you’re headed in the right direction.”

  “Seriously. I often wonder what I’m doing on the force. Lately I feel the way I did on the basketball court in junior high.” Gail returned with a tray of strawberry shortcake and whipped cream just as Clancy arrived panting at the deck. “Gail can tell you about that. The coach made me centre, captain even, because I was so tall. I was terrified when the ball came to me, because I didn’t know what to do with it. Possession of the ball brought the opposing guards, waving their arms in my face, threatening me with B.O. fumes, trying to freak me out. Finally, I pretended to be busy guarding someone whenever I thought the ball might come my way. My back was always to the passer. I should never have been there in the first place.”