We come around the last bend before their place. I can see the house looking dark on the white land. Not many lights. I’m trying to see if his truck’s gone.
Something moves in the laneway. Somebody walking. Weird hump on their back. I’m in that state of mind where you expect to meet something out of a nightmare. The deformed frog that lives in Tammy’s basement and gets beat every day and just crawled out now because the door was standing open.
Oh! It’s a youngster with a backpack hiking out of the lane. Thank you, Jesus!
Tammy cranks the window down. “Melissa!”
Lights behind us show up in the mirror.
Melissa the babysitter’s in. And Marg, she’s gunning it again, going straight for the main way into town this time. Leaving whoever it was way behind.
Melissa says, “Everybody left. What’s going on? I called my mom but my brother said she went to the store.”
At the town limits, Marg’s old car starts coughing. Marg shoves her foot down. “Come on, baby, sweetheart! You can do it! Frigging Piece of Crap! You can do it, Old Lady!”
Ten-fifteen, we come rattling up to the front of the women’s shelter, thank God for it!
Tammy and the kids were took upstairs. Tammy in her bare, red feet, carrying her wet socks. Matthew with his lizard margarine tub in both hands. Young Meghan hadn’t never said one word the whole ride. I watched her walking upstairs. Small for her age. Coat too big on her. Long dark hair.
Rest of us slumped in the kitchen while the kettle boiled. The one woman asked Marg for her keys. She’d go put the car out of sight.
Marg said, “Keep your foot right to the floor while you crank her.” Then she looks at us two and her voice goes quavery. “Can’t believe we done that!”
Sally went and found a blanket. Draped it around Marg’s shoulders. Marg’s brave as bears when she has to be. We sure seen that. But it takes a toll afterwards.
Melissa got a hold of her mom and she come to pick her up. We could hear the shelter woman (my old friend, Pam) out in the hall, telling her not to let her daughter go to that house again, ever.
We got thinking about what Josie was going to make of this when she heard about it.
“Never mind hotelkeepers,” I says, “she’ll be telling us we’re going to be like a SWAT team! Call us for your hostage incidents.”
Marg’s voice is shaky but she says to Sally, she says, “Better get sewing parachutes!”
I phoned Dave. Could have stayed where I was. Didn’t like to bring him out in the cold, this time of night. But he says no problem.
Sally and Marg, they didn’t say nothing but I could see them wondering what man is anybody’s first choice over a nice cozy women’s shelter? The two of them sat there warming their hands around their tea mugs, looking at the steam. They wished they believed in my little fairytale lasting.
Driving home, I told Dave our night’s adventure. He kept saying, “Holy jeeze!”
At home, coming up the stairs behind me, he says, “I don’t want you taking them type of chances no more, okay?” He says. “And don’t you go trying to play the sheriff with that old man of Marg’s, neither, will you? He’s a bad bugger, from what I hear.”
Dave wanting me safe, caring about me. It was like floating me up the stairs.
I tried to picture any one of my old boyfriends talking like that. Could hear what old Donny would’ve said: “What did you want to put your nose in that shit for? You’re stupid as a box of rocks.”
That’s the type of compliment he liked to pay me. Gary would’ve just laughed. Darrell would’ve got mad. Wouldn’t have liked me interfering in another man’s home. A home was a man’s, the way he seen it. And so was everything in there: woman, lawnmower, kids, chairs.
That’s going through my mind, and at the same time I can hear Dave behind me on the stairs, saying, in this worried voice, like it really mattered, “You could’ve got hurt, Rosie.”
That right there was the minute I become sure that Dave was different. With him, I was somewheres I never been in my life before. I was with somebody that would care if I got hurt.
First time! Think about that. First time you’re with somebody that would care if you got hurt is supposed to be the day you’re born. That’s what your frigging parents are for. Right? The parents are supposed to provide physical and emotional safety. It said that on the paper.
I turned around to face him at the top of the stairs. He was a couple of steps down so his honey brown eyes come right level with my own eyes. I had a strong feeling in my chest and throat. Aching. Wanting to cry. It was good. But it hurt. At that time, I did not know the name for what that feeling is. Brand new to me. I put my hand on his warm, sandpaper face.
He says, “Promise me you won’t go messing in nothing dangerous like that again.”
I wanted to say, “And you promise you’ll stick to fixing chimneys and never mind selling dope.” That subject hadn’t came up yet, though. And this didn’t feel like the time to start in on it.
I says, “Okay, Dave.”
When I went to draw the blind, I could see snow coming down again, making a clean, white, cotton-batting wonder out of this dirty old world.
8.
WENT TO THE HOSPITAL to see Josie the next day after work. Took down a Santa that was bugging her. She was glad to see me. Said nobody’d been in or phoned since Monday.
“That’s good about Tammy,” she says.
I wasn’t used to Josie yet. I stared at the white bed cover. It had lines wove into it, white on white. If she didn’t talk to nobody yesterday…
“How do you know about Tammy?” I said.
Josie, she shrugged.
Friday night, I went to get Jenny, to stay over. Jenny, she was four by that time. Little spark of pure sunshine. She got a big kick out of Josie’s dog that was still at our place. Wanted to brush it. I give her an old hairbrush. She worked away. Dog laying there patient.
I says, “Well, don’t he look good!” The dog gets up, walks over and puts his feet up on the window ledge.
Jenny says, “He wants to see the reflection of his hairdo.”
I laughed, said a dog don’t understand. But I hadn’t got to know that dog yet.
Jenny loves to cook. We were getting out the bowls and spoons, bags of flour and sugar to make Christmas cookies, when Dave come in. I figure Dave will turn around and go out with the guys, but Jenny says he’s to help with the baking.
I says, “No, now, sweetie. Dave’s been working hard all day putting up drywall. He wants to sit down with his friends, take it easy.”
But Dave, he gives me a wink. Says he’s right ready to make him some cookies. That’s what he was hoping to do tonight, he says. He rolls up his sleeves, washes his hands, and lets Jenny boss him.
Cutest thing you ever seen, that man taking orders from short-ribs there. She’s standing on a chair, my apron tied around her neck, telling him, “Mix it thoroughly.” She gets all these words off the cooking shows. Jenny loves cooking shows. And big words.
Dave, he mixes away and he says, “How ‘bout that there? Is that about mixed thoroughly now, would you say?”
“It needs to have a thinner consistency,” she tells him. “Add milk.”
Dave’s face is all concentrating while he pours in another little dribble of milk. “How’s that look?”
“Ann Toes, we need eyes, noses, and buttons.”
“We’re good for all that. Look.” I show her the little bags of dried fruit and candy that I got for her at the bulk food. She lights up.
“We’re making gingerbread men,” I fill Dave in.
He gives my shoulders a squeeze. Says, “You know what, Miss Jenny? Ann Toes takes pretty good care of us, don’t she?”
Jenny thought so too.
What I thought was that her and Dave just didn’t kno
w what a piece of shit I really was.
Well we rolled our dough and cut our gingerbread people.
Jenny says, “They’re not all men.”
“How can you tell?”
Dave’s grinning but nothing like my father would. Not at all sexual.
Jenny, she tells him. She says, “The girls are going to have silver buttons.”
“What?” says Dave. “No fair!”
“It’s fair,” Jenny tells him. “The boys get raisins.”
“Raisins!” Dave lets on that he can’t live with that. “The guys get raisins and the girls get silver!”
“Because the girls are princesses.”
“Well, then how come the boys ain’t kings?”
“They’re princes,” says Jenny. “Princes get raisins.”
You can’t win an argument with Jenny.
So there’s Dave with these tiny little silver ball candies in his great big fingers, trying his level best to put buttons on the gingerbread princesses. He’s trying not to dent them in with his fingerprints. And there’s Jenny, with this look on her like she’s doing the final exam in brain surgery, putting chocolate sprinkles on the gingerbread people for hair.
I can hardly stand what I’m feeling. I almost want to kick Dave out so I won’t have this feeling no more.
That feeling like last Tuesday on the stairs. So good but pretty near too strong for me, aching in my chest, scaring me, making me want to cry. And I didn’t even have a word for it, back then. Which is pitiful when you come to see that the word for it would just be love.
I kept a hold of myself, looking at the two of them, out of the corner of my eye, while I peeled the carrots.
I can still walk past a bakery now, get a whiff of ginger cookies baking and I’m right back there, when Jenny was little and the feeling for Dave was new.
Later, when Jenny was sleeping, face on her like an angel, I went and sat by the fire. Dave’s there, munching a gingerbread prince, reading his adventure book. He tells me, “They’re out of food. They can’t shoot nothing or they’ll start an avalanche. Plus it’s forty below and, see, up where they are, the air gets thin….”
I start crying.
Dave’s getting good at this. He marks his place with a screwdriver that’s laying there, puts his book down. He hugs me and tells me, “It’s okay.”
I have to just shake my head when I think about where I was at that time. Nothing wrong with me but love. And it’s so new and so weird that I’m bawling. Needing somebody to tell me that it’s okay.
In the morning, we didn’t get to sleep in, the way we normally did on a Saturday. Little miss, she’s up wanting to know when we’re going out shopping. I told her we’d go get presents for her mommy and Ian today.
Dave wasn’t allowed to come. He says, “I don’t get to hang out with Ann Toes, eh? Just you get to have her?”
“I had her first,” Jenny tells him.
Dave winks at me as if to say, she’s so quick!
Jenny’s holding my hand and we’re looking in all the store windows, picking out what we’re going to buy each other when we’re rich. I says, “Look at them royal blue ones. They’d look good in your castle.”
“My castle is going to have yellow towels in its bathroom and a yellow flag on its tower,” she says, “with a hand-writing J on it for my name. Not a printing J.”
I get feeling how precious she is and squeeze too tight on her hand. She wiggles it free. I say, louder than what I mean to, “Hold my hand.”
She holds her hand, in the little fuzzy mitten, out to me again. “Don’t crush my bones,” she says.
I can’t even hold somebody’s hand right. I tell myself that I’m not meant to be happy. What am I doing walking around holding hands with a good guy or a sweet little girl? He’s not my husband. She’s not my kid. I’m a wannabe.
We got green bath beads for Jenny’s mom.
For her mom’s boyfriend, Ian, Jenny wanted to get a doll with blonde pigtails.
I says, “I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t think most grown-up guys play with dolls so much. What about a nice pair of warm socks?”
She said something then, I wished to God I’d’ve paid more attention to. She said, “Ian would play with her. She looks like me.”
That was a clue. Plain as day. But back then I was not clued in.
When we were done shopping, I was in the Christmas spirit. Made up my mind to go over to Darlene’s place. Cheer her up with the sight of Jenny. Figured I should try harder to make friends with Darlene.
There’s her little green eye peeking out between the vertical blinds. She let us in and Jenny petted the cat.
I says, “Darlene,” I says, “how are you doing? Have you got food left?”
“At least I’m not starved the way they are some places. I seen on the news…”
Her cat was meowing, circling around.
“What’s that cat want?” I says. “Give me your mailbox key. Your cheque should be there. We can get you some food.”
In that town where we lived, back then, there was no mail delivery door to door, see. You had to go get your mail at the post office. So me and Jenny went and got Darlene’s mail. She signed over the cheque, and we got her some groceries and cat food.
I asked her why the frig she hadn’t came to Group for so long. Darlene said that Group wasn’t doing nothing for her.
We’re carting the grocery bags through to the kitchen. I says, “Well, how can it, if you won’t go? And even when you did go, you didn’t do the work?”
Darlene said Meredith ought to get her some pills. I asked her what was wrong with her that she needed a pill for. She’s in pain, she says. She wasn’t talking about a pain in the elbow or nothing. She meant emotional pain, like what we all got. She’s already on a lot of stuff for that.
I says, “You don’t need no more pills. You need to get out to Group and do some of this work they got us doing. They say that’s how you get to feel better. I think it might be starting to work on me.” Very first time I ever said it. Group might be starting to work.
But Darlene, she just kept whining. She was in pain. Somebody should up her dose. Her dose, I heard Darlene say before, is already high as the doctor would let her have.
I says, “Darlene,” I says, “they will try and help you, if you let them. You got to do something for yourself. You got to come out to Group. And try.”
“Them exercises are for babies.”
“You got to try them for a while before you make your mind up.”
“I done their stupid fear pictures.”
“You wouldn’t let Meredith fish out of you what it was all about. And you never done another thing since. We’re on some question sheets now that are not for no babies.”
“I’m having a bad day, Rose.” She pulls back away from me like I’m going to jab her or something.
“How come that lady’s scared?” Jenny asks me when we’re walking away from Darlene’s place.
“Something happened to her a long time ago that scared her bad.”
Jenny says, “Why is she still scared now?”
I took my time on that one.
The sun’s shining, eh. It’s a real nice, sparkling blue-and-white winter day. The dockyards across the way are all quiet, and the ice is froze way out so it’s this pure white, level. There’s Christmas decorations on the balconies. And Jenny’s waiting for me to tell her what a grown-up person is scared of right here and now.
“She don’t see today,” I says. “She’s looking at some other day.”
Jenny didn’t say nothing else. Skipped along beside me halfway across town before she says, “We should go back and tell her.”
“Tell who what?”
“Tell the lady with the white kitty that it’s today.”
“I will,” I s
ays. “Next time I see her, I’ll tell her that from you.”
“She’ll be scared all the rest of today and at night when she goes to sleep and when she wakes up in the morning, if she thinks it’s a scary day.”
Nothing would do but I had to promise to tell Darlene, today, that it was today. And that today was not a scary day. I said I’d phone.
I did, too. After my sister come and picked Jenny up, I called Darlene and tried talking to her. I says, “Look Darlene,” I says, “you and me both, it’s high time we were taking some steps, here. Face our pain so we can go forwards.”
“I don’t know how you call that going forwards. What they want us to do in Group, it’s more like going backwards. Digging back down into all that shit from the past.”
“That’s what I said too, when we were starting out. But that’s the thing of it, eh. You got to go backwards first. So you can turn around and go forwards. That’s what I hear them say.”
She says, “It’s upsetting, Rose. Thinking about that old stuff.”
“You’re telling me!”
She says, “I don’t see a point in it.”
“Well, I can’t say that I do neither. But I think we got to trust them people and give it a try. There’s no bullshit to the helper there, Frances, anyways. Have you tried talking to her?”
“I don’t want to talk to nobody.”
“Look, what else are you going to do?”
“I want some more of them pills that makes you feel better,” Darlene says.
“We been over this. You got all the pills you can use. They can’t give you no more.”
“I want enough so I don’t feel nothing.”
I tried to get her to say that she’d come out to Group. Darlene wouldn’t promise nothing. She just told me, before she finally hung up on me, that I was a good person.
Maybe that’s what she thought.
Monday, Ken at work got me in a corner outside when I went out for a smoke towards the end of the day. He tells me he wants me to move in with him.
“Get in the car,” he says. He’ll show me the nice place he’s got. He took a hold of my arm, tight, and there wasn’t nothing I could think to do. Now, I’d know something to do, but back then I’m in his car before I know it and he’s driving through town with the radio on loud. What was that song what’s her name was always yelling? It’s quite a few years back, now. Something about getting it good.
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