Falling Backwards: A Memoir

by Arden, Jann

  Sue and I got beer from Gene once in awhile. He charged twenty bucks for a case of beer, which was outrageous back then. It was more than double what a case of beer went for in town, but he knew he had you over a barrel. By the time you were buying liquor from Gene Fullerton, you were probably half in the bag and desperate to keep the party going. Sue and I would buy a case, go down to the river and laugh our fool heads off. We certainly didn’t drink an entire case, but we’d each have a bottle and maybe split a third. The rest we hid in the bushes for the next time we were down there. Somebody always found those bottles of beer and drank them and we were pretty sure we knew who it was: the Fullerton boys.

  We occasionally played spin the bottle with one or two of the Fullerton boys. They were always up for anything so we figured, why not? They were kind of cute when they were young. They had pretty good teeth, too. Why kissing anybody on the lips for a one-one thousand count was such a big deal, I will never understand. There certainly wasn’t a tongue in sight, so it was all pretty tame. We’d watch the river gurgle past us and sit around a bonfire kissing each other or daring each other to do silly things. We’d become bored of it all fairly quickly and just move on to skipping stones or melting the bottom of our shoes on the fire. I still enjoyed a good fire.

  Sometimes Sue and I would take some of our bootlegged beer and go to dances at the Bragg Creek community hall, where we’d see Theresa and our other friends. (I may have stolen change from the bottom of my mom’s purse from time to time to do this.) My parents didn’t know if I was out late because I was staying the weekend in Bragg Creek with Sue’s family and they knew that Sue and I were harmless—which we were—and that we didn’t go out of our way to find trouble. Sue’s parents didn’t have a curfew of any kind and maybe didn’t worry about us because the community hall was a thousand yards from their front door. Sue was very much like me, and I think that’s why we got along so well. We were mischievous, not stupid.

  There was always a live band playing bad country songs at the community dances. Everybody knew everybody so we were pretty much assured a fun night. All the dancing enticed everybody to drink their body weight in beer. It was fun watching people whirl around the worn-out hardwood floors, drunker than skunks and dancing with such reckless abandon. Dancing makes people thirsty. It never failed that they would run out of booze before the dance came to an end, and that caused problems. The organizers always seemed amazed that people could drink that much and still be standing. There would most certainly be a fist fight or two and then handshakes afterwards implying that there were no hard feelings. It was usually the Fullertons punching it out with each other anyway.

  I wasn’t much of a dancer, not that anybody ever asked me to dance. I pretty much stood by the wall watching everybody else stumble about. Theresa would usually be the one to rescue me from my “wallfloweryness.” She was wallflowery herself. In a pinch we would dance together. Sue was always asked to dance. The boys were crazy about her and I could see why. She had a face like a cherub and her freckles were like stars on her face and she was confident. She had the fellas lined up all night long. She was like cute little flame holding court with a bunch of homely, hairy moths.

  At the end of the night there were always four or five busted-up chairs and a couple of broken tables. There were broken windows, broken bottles and puddles of vomit scattered about. Someone always seemed to back into the hall with a pickup truck and take off a good chunk of the wood siding. We didn’t miss very many dances, or “dos,” as my mom would call them. The community hall threw them every three or four months. It took them that long to make the various repairs on the building.

  Of course everybody got into their trucks and drove off with one eye shut to make sure they were on the right side of the road. I think drinking and driving was what pretty much everybody did back then. I don’t think I’d heard of a DUI until the eighties. It wasn’t a big deal, although it should have been. Nobody I knew was ever pulled over for drinking and driving. I am amazed that my dad was never pulled over. I am amazed that I was never pulled over. Well, sort of …

  One night when I was tipsy and driving home too slowly, probably swerving back and forth (ever so slightly), I did in fact get pulled over. I saw the red and blue lights crawl up beside me and I thought my heart was going to explode. I had been drinking but I didn’t think I was too drunk to be driving. (Everybody thinks they’re fine to drive.) The officer asked me how much I had had to drink and I told him the truth—that I didn’t exactly know. It was probably a couple of glasses of draft beer. I don’t remember him asking me for my driver’s licence or anything like insurance or registration. He told me that I probably shouldn’t be driving around this late at night by myself, that it was dangerous. So believe it or not the police officer drove me home! There I was, in the back of an RCMP police cruiser, heading towards the open arms of my understanding, loving parents. God help me.

  We left my locked car sitting on the side of a gravel road. The cop told me to make sure I picked it up the next morning, because he did not want to drive down that road the next day and find it still parked there. I told him that, yessir, the car would not be there! I prayed that he wasn’t going to talk to my mom and dad. So far I had gotten away with near murder. I knew they would be asleep but my mother could be awoken by a bird on the windowsill so I knew I needed a miracle—another miracle.

  I made small talk all the way home about the dance and who was there and how much fun it was. I don’t think I ever shut up. The poor guy just kept saying “Uh-huh” and “Oh yeah?” I was probably driving him crazy. He brought me right to our front door and said, “There you go.” There you go? I just hopped out. He told me to have a good night. It was twenty after two in the morning. Good grief, I thought to myself, as I crept in through the unlocked back door as quietly as humanly possible. Inside everything was dark and still. Would I be ambushed by my mother shining a large flashlight in my face, and questioned until sunrise? I couldn’t believe my luck—my parents were actually sound asleep.

  The washer and dryer were right at the door when you came in, so I took off all my smelly beer clothes and washed away any evidence of a good time. I felt so relieved and so guilty all at once. My parents never found out about that little incident, thanks be to God, the giver of all miracles. I might well have been killed if I’d ended up in the slammer. In fact, the slammer would have been my preference over facing the wrath of my father. My experience with the police was obviously a lot different from my older brother’s. They drove me home but they ran him over.

  Sue’s folks used to let us sleep outside in a tent near the side of their house. Even in the summer the temperatures would drop enough to leave you shivering half the night. It was always so exciting to be out there in a tent, but frightening too. I was always scared of that bear showing up or, God forbid, one of the Fullerton boys coming to harass us. We’d lie there with flashlights and bags of chips and just chatter the hours away until the sun started coming up, and then we’d finally nod off for an hour. When I could hear the birds chirping and we finally did get up, I could hardly think, I was so exhausted. We’d go rushing into Sue’s log house, where her dad would be sitting and smoking his pipe, and brush our teeth, make our lunches, change our clothes and head for the yellow school bus, our own private taxi.

  I loved going out to Bragg Creek—and it was probably nice for my mom not to have to drive me around those weekends—but I was always so glad to come through our back door and be home. I was happy to be the only daughter again after a weekend with Sue and all those sisters!

  One year Sue didn’t return to school in Springbank. She just seemed to disappear into thin air. I don’t know where she went. So many things could change in a single summer. She was a dear part of my childhood, and I missed her a lot as the years went by. People come and go, I was learning that more and more. Maybe Sue thought I was the one that went somewhere.

  I was by now a seasoned country girl. I had earned my strip
es, as it were. I had the world’s best dog, Aquarius. I had peed outside, slept outside, shot and killed small animals, built tree forts and rafts and ridden the school bus long enough to be considered a “Springbanker.” I could hardly remember ever having lived in the city. My parents had slowly but surely finished our house, and we had all settled in to our new lives. Well, we thought we were settled. It’s easy to mistake a sandbar for solid land if you’re not paying close attention.

  Complex undercurrents kept trying to pull us apart. Mom and dad were the ones mainly feeling the strain. It wasn’t anything you could put your finger on, but the atmosphere was getting thicker as the days were getting longer. I felt the undercurrents at night under the bed, reaching up to grab an arm or a leg. I hated having my arms or my feet hanging out of the covers at night. I felt I was inviting big, creepy trouble by having them stark naked right out there in the open. I often tried convincing myself that I was not afraid of the dark and that there was no such thing as demons. It rarely worked. (As I got older I always kept a night light on for protection. Demons are deathly afraid of night lights.) Then I’d fall asleep due to a lack of oxygen, since I’d be underneath my blankets hyperventilating most nights.

  My dad came and went and came and went, and my mom kept shuttling us around to all our activities, trying to keep us as busy as possible. We seemed to keep just busy enough to ignore what was actually going on. My parents were definitely not getting along. I would often hear raised voices after I had gone to bed at night. I’d lie there and try to make out what was being said, but I never could. It was muffled and fragmented. The one thing I could make out was my mother saying “Keep your voice down!” which seemed somewhat ironic. It must have been hard for her to deal with him coming home late after he’d been drinking.

  Looking back, I wish I could have carried some of that weight. I knew there were things going on that weren’t good, but I kept so busy that I didn’t give myself a chance to worry. I talked myself out of a lot of what I witnessed going on between my mom and dad. I suppose part of me was scared to death of the possible outcome of their discontent. I could tell that his behaviour was wearing her out. She’d pack us up and take us to gram’s house once in awhile for sleepovers. Mom probably needed a break from the constant arguing.

  My gram was one of seventeen children. She was born on a small farm that one of her nephews runs in southern Alberta. It’s hard to fathom that my gram’s mother had so many kids, especially knowing that they were all born into such hard times. You’d think it would have been in everybody’s best interest to stop at two, but my mom told me that people back then had to give birth to their own labourers. Every kid worked on the farm; that’s the way it was.

  Apparently my great-grandfather was nothing short of a bastard who never let up on my great-grandmother, and that in and of itself was the main reason they brought seventeen beings into the world. My great-grandmother was never not pregnant. My mom tells me her grandfather was a drunken, dirty old man. He exposed himself in front of his own children and grandchildren many times. My gram’s sister, Ern, told him on one of those occasions that if she ever saw him pull out his penis again she’d cut it off. I guess that scared him enough to stop whipping it out all the time. It’s hard to think that man is part of me and I am part of him. Genetics are bizarre.

  Gram’s mom died during childbirth at forty-six from a massive hemorrhage. I think about that all the time. I have seen one picture of my great-grandmother, from when she was about thirty-six years old. She looked so much older than that. Her lips were pursed and her eyes looked like the light had left them. They were sunken into her head. People didn’t smile for pictures much in those days but even still, she looked worn out and defeated.

  Even though my gram had a terrible childhood, she was a delight to be around. She was altruistic, kind and funny, helpful and full of goodness. She was little when her mom died, maybe seven or eight. She could have turned out to be a bitter, cranky woman, as a few of her sisters did, but she was an angelic human being. We all adored her. She loved to have a cold beer and a laugh. I wouldn’t say she was a smoker by any stretch of the imagination, but she enjoyed a few puffs here and there on a weekend. I remember her letting me roll her cigarettes in one of those weird little tobacco machines. It was so much fun. I made a huge mess and ruined hundreds of the filter tubes, but she never got mad at me. She was so patient and tender. I never heard her say a discouraging word about anyone or anything. She liked everybody and everybody liked her.

  When mom drove us to gram’s house to stay for a few nights, I was relieved somehow. I knew it would be a welcome break for my mother—a chance to think and breathe and regroup. I didn’t know exactly why we had to stay there, but it didn’t matter, I was happy just the same. It felt like a holiday. My gram always had ice-cold milk in the fridge and a jar full of peppermints by her couch. She was so good to us. She and my mom were so close, they were like the same person. They talked effortlessly. They were bound by some wonderful bit of heavenly, golden thread. I think my gram saved us many times.

  Most days my dad would be gone before I got up in the morning. He was working long hours, and mom was so frustrated with him. There were countless ultimatums that were never acted upon. She couldn’t seem to follow through on any of her threats and I don’t blame her for that. Nobody wanted to break up our family, least of all her. I didn’t know how close she was coming to running out of options. You can only take your kids to sleep over at your mother’s house so many times and then something has to give.

  I don’t think we were unlike most families. Most families are complicated and hard to understand. My mom would always tell me that we weren’t the only weird family out there, as if she was trying to convince herself. I was happy to hear it coming from her mouth, anyway. I knew families who ran over bunnies and had them for their dinner. I knew families who hung pigs in trees. By all accounts, we were as normal as normal could be.

  I was glad to have my weird little family. I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about them even if God had given me the option to. (There were worse things out there than brothers—those things were called sisters.) But I felt that because I had a brother who was always in trouble, it put extra pressure on me to be good. And it wasn’t always easy. I felt like I couldn’t do anything to rock the boat because my parents wouldn’t be able to stand another thing going sideways. Not that I wanted to do anything bad and not that I was bad, it just made me very aware of what I was doing at all times. My dad’s temper helped keep me on a fairly straight and narrow road too. When he yelled my heart just about stopped. It was that loud and that ferocious. Half the time I wondered if he knew what he was so bloody mad about. My mom would tell us that he was just like his mother. That made him yell too.

  Patrick seemed to get along with everybody. He had such an easygoing nature. He was so smart and empathic—a sensitive boy with a really great head of hair! He would feather it to near perfection every morning using a blow-dryer that could have started a forest fire. It had one setting: atomic. If you weren’t careful with that crazy thing, you’d burn an ear off. He spent more time in the bathroom than any of us. He was the only one who seemed to really care about how he looked for school every morning. It took him hours to decide on an outfit. He worried about having everything perfect. He put a lot of pressure on himself, which I didn’t realize until many years later. He’d be so nervous about getting on the bus every morning he’d almost make himself physically sick. All his worries and troubles paid off academically. Thank heavens my parents had one child who would bring home a really great report card twice a year without fail.

  Patrick had not yet outgrown his asthma and was riddled with symptoms every spring, but he was game to play all the sports right along with the other kids. It was hard on his lungs to keep up with all the cardio required for football and track and field. He spent most of his time just trying to breathe. I remember seeing him in his oversized football uniform. His legs were
so skinny and his shoulders were so hiked up around his jaw line he looked like a grasshopper. It didn’t help that the school uniforms were green. He looked so proud to be in that uniform. He never stopped trying to be just one of the gang. Everybody deals with shadows in their own particular way. Patrick’s way was to be as close to perfect as he could be.

  Duray was smart, but he didn’t care about being perfect. He didn’t care about how he looked. He was one of those guys who could get up in the morning and splash water on his face and be ready for the day. He didn’t agonize over little things like his clothes or his hair. He made everything look so easy and so hard all at the same time. He could have slept through math class and still received a good grade if he’d shown up to take the tests. He was strong and athletic despite his pot smoking and his gas huffing. He would outrun everybody at school track meets, with no training or practising or anything. He was always good at running away from life.

  My dad showed up to watch him run one year. Out of the blue he came and sat with the rest of the crowd and watched Duray compete at the track meet. Duray always talked about that. He was so proud that dad had taken time from work to sit in the bleachers and watch him race. Dad talked about it too. He’d often tell the story of Duray being half a mile ahead of everybody else in the race, that he couldn’t believe his eyes. Dad told us that nobody else stood a chance, running against Duray. Knowing he had made dad proud of him, Duray’s face would beam with pure happiness.