Falling Backwards: A Memoir

by Arden, Jann

  My mom was at home, pacing.

  Looking at the clock.

  Worried.

  I was relieved when I finally saw him coming towards the car with a big smile on his shiny, red face.

  “I’m gonna be a little bit longer, but here’s twenty bucks for you three to go to the arcade,” he said. That seemed reasonable. It was twenty bucks, after all. The arcade was across the other side of a very busy road called Macleod Trail. It had three lanes going in each direction and it was always bustling with heavy traffic. There was a decent stoplight and a crosswalk, though, and I figured we’d make it in one piece if we hurried. Maybe this wasn’t going to be that bad after all. I watched him walk back through the glass doors of the hotel and, without another glance at us, disappear inside.

  We took our windfall and raced across the road, weaving through the traffic to the mall, where we headed straight for the Orange Julius stand to buy drinks and hot dogs. We had enough money left over to play the pinball machines and the electronic Ping-Pong thing that was all the rage. We were all so happy to be in the arcade and not sitting in the parking lot at the Tradewinds. We stayed as long as the money lasted and then we figured we’d better go back to the car.

  We thought we’d be in trouble for sure, as we’d been gone at least an hour and a half. We walked as fast as we could back across Macleod Trail to where the car had been sitting all afternoon in the sun, convinced my dad would be standing there beside it with his hands on his hips, tapping his wristwatch. He wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere in sight. It was starting to get dark, and I was feeling more and more unsure of what to do. Sue and Patrick and I got back in the car and waited. We didn’t know what else to do. The sun seemed to be giving up too.

  My mom was frantic.

  She stared out the window at the road.

  Every car that went by she thought, maybe it’s them.

  We had been gone five hours.

  Patrick was beginning to come apart at the seams. He didn’t do well with any kind of stress, and this was stressful to all of us. He wanted to go home. He’d been crying quietly to himself for the last half-hour. I don’t blame him—I wanted to go home too. His tears were heartbreaking to both Sue and me. We didn’t know what words we should be saying to him. We’d eaten all our candy and drunk all our pop. Time was scraping its nails on the roof of the car. My mother was going to kill us all. My dad had never left us like this before—ever. I decided one of us had to go into the Tradewinds and fetch my dad out, and it was going to be me. I knew they didn’t allow kids in a place like that, but they were going to have to make an exception.

  I went in through the glass doors and was instantly engulfed by grey clouds of cigarette smoke. It was dingy and dark in there—filled with men drinking glasses of lukewarm draft beer and engaging in clumsy, droning conversations. I went on a hunt for my dad. No one seemed to notice me at all. A girl wandering around in a bar filled with drunk people was invisible, apparently, which I found hard to believe. I walked around tables covered in empty glasses, looking for my dad’s corduroy pants. I walked down the long bar, gazing up at all the talking heads bobbing back and forth like those plastic dogs stuck in the back windows of cars. I finally spotted him sitting at a table with men I’d never seen before; he was laughing and carrying on like he didn’t have a care in the world. When he finally spotted me, he looked shocked. He excused himself from the table and asked me what the hell I was doing in there.

  I told him we were tired and cold and that we wanted to go home. I told him he’d been in the Tradewinds long enough and that mom would be really worried by now. I told him we’d spent all our money and that it was time to go. I was scared of him and I didn’t want him to be mad, but I was willing to take that chance. I needed to get Patrick home. Sue and I could have managed, but Patrick was little. Enough was enough. I don’t know if he heard one word I was saying, he just muttered something and threw some money on the table where the strange men were sitting.

  He looked madder than I’d ever seen him, but then he caught himself. It was like he had a moment of clarity. I was relieved. He came out with me to the parking lot and got into the car, started it up and drove us home.

  My mother didn’t say a thing when we drove up.

  She just looked at us with a thousand pounds of relief.

  She looked at my dad with complete and utter disappointment.

  He looked at the ground.

  Mom and I drove Sue home to Bragg Creek. I was sad that my sleepover had ended the way it had. I am pretty sure we stayed at my gram’s house the rest of the weekend.

  My mom was so busy trying to shield us from dad all the time that it was taking a toll on her well-being. I knew she was anxious even though she pretended not to be. She worried constantly about what she should do about his drinking, because he didn’t seem too worried about what he should do about his drinking. I don’t think he saw it as any sort of a problem, and that was the problem. My dad wasn’t used to anyone telling him what to do so it was hard trying to convince him he needed to make some changes in his life. And he needed to make quite a few.

  The options for my mom were becoming fewer and further between. We were in a holding pattern, like a plane trying to land in a storm. We were circling the runway, hoping somebody would tell us we could land. Eventually you run out of fuel and crash.

  Me and my brother Duray in 1962.

  Me and my little pal Shelly in 1964. Notice how my shins are covered in bruises while Shelly doesn’t have a mark on her. We look like a before-and-after poster for hemophiliacs.

  Me and my mom in 1965.

  Duray looking happy in 1964. That’s me on the left.

  Me and Duray, pleased with our new little brother, Patrick, 1966.

  Me and my dad riding a moped in 1967. Obviously I am beyond thrilled.

  Gary and me at my house in town on Louise Road, 1966. One thing is for sure: Leonard and Dale would have eaten him alive.

  Leonard and Dale: playmates, wilderness guides, cousins.

  My grade one class in 1968. I am third from the left in the front row.

  A family photo op in my gram’s garden, 1971.

  My magical fourth-grade teacher, Judith Humphreys. This photograph was taken on a school trip to overnight camp.

  Me (on the left) and Sue McLennen at about the age when we were attacked by a bear. We didn’t have photo booths in Bragg Creek—we took this in the city, so it was kind of a big deal!

  Me, Dad, Pat and Duray in the mid-seventies doing yard work (apparently). I look thrilled.

  My gram, 1998. She loved a good joke and had the most wonderful laugh to go along with every punch line.

  Me and my half-blind, half-deaf grandmother Richards.

  Entertaining in the inaccurately named “coke machine room” of my high school.

  Duray in Dad’s chair, having a cigarette during one of the rare times when he was at home in the late seventies.

  With my grad date Stuart in 1980. I still had my awful perm but my mom took me to the hairdresser to blow it out for one night only.

  It was a truly awful perm.

  Me and Theresa on our first big trip abroad, 1980. Hawaii felt very far away from Springbank, Alberta.

  I played my guitar on the beach in Hawaii, got sunburned and was sick for two days.

  Patrick, me and Duray at Christmas in 1981. I was becoming fashionable by the looks of my hair—I cut the perm off!

  A rare performance in our living room in 1981, after my grad debut.

  Making myself useful around our property in 1982. I would have been just about to get my pacemaker.

  Norman Earl, on his mystical, magical salmon trawler. I think I probably gutted five or six hundred fish a day. (Used with kind permission of Norman Earl’s family.)

  My family in 1983. We all look homeless because we’d spent the whole day outside working in the yard.

  Mom in our infamous video store, Fairview Video, in 1987.

  I captured my
family at the dinner table and that “look” on my dad’s face, 1986. From left: Duray, mom, dad, gram and Pat

  My dad and me, 2002. I don’t know where we are but the plastic cups sure say “formal.”

  chapter nine

  I SWEAR ON THE ORANGE BIBLE

  I wanted to learn how to play the guitar just like my mom, but I didn’t want anybody else to know—not my mother, not anybody. For some reason I felt embarrassed about it. It seemed like such a serious thing to do, and I wasn’t a serious girl. I was a funny girl who wasn’t really passionate about anything in particular. I liked doing everything, but I didn’t know what being passionate was. Sue was passionate about skiing and Sue’s mom was passionate about painting, so I knew what passion was but I didn’t know what mine was. I guess I was waiting to see what I’d be good at but it just hadn’t happened … yet. My mom was always telling me that I was good at everything I tried, but moms are supposed to say that. Being good at something doesn’t mean you’re passionate about it. I loved watching Star Trek, but I was pretty sure that didn’t count as a passion.

  I didn’t think anybody would understand the sudden interest I had in learning an instrument; I certainly didn’t. How could I possibly tell anybody that singing pulled at me like a giant red magnet? It seemed so detached from my goofy personality. I didn’t dare hope that I was even the slightest bit musical but I must have decided at some point in my heart that I was willing to give it a whirl. It was going to be my secret, and a tricky one to keep.

  What if I picked the damn thing up and couldn’t make it play one simple chord? I’d seen enough people playing guitar on TV to sort of know how to hold one, but not really. If it was too big for my mom, it was going to be even bigger for me. When I finally strapped it on to my shoulder and placed my arms over it, I felt like I was trying to strum a canoe. It seemed impossible. Maybe I was crazy to think I had a hope in Havana.

  For the first time in my life, it felt like I was experiencing a grown-up desire. I felt like I was falling in love, whatever that meant. I would even go as far to say that it was an awakening of sorts. I was waking up (and I wasn’t really a morning person at all—my mother would have to bribe me with cartoons and cereal to get me to come downstairs and get ready for school). This desire was a new feeling for me. It stood on my shoulders and yelled “amen!” at anything that moved. Desire took up a lot of space in my head. It was like God saw me standing there in the middle of my bedroom and he handed me a silver bolt of lightning and said, “Here, put this inside your heart.” I don’t know how else to explain it.

  After my mom finished her own practice sessions and put the guitar away in its case, I would find a way to fish it out and drag it down to the basement. I’d listen carefully to make sure nobody was going to come down the stairs to surprise me. I knew every single creak in the floor, so that came in very handy in establishing each separate individual’s whereabouts upstairs. When everybody was accounted for, I had some time to be alone and begin to figure this thing out.

  I opened up her big orange song bible with all the songs in it and flipped through every page, looking for a song I knew. The first one I recognized was Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen.” I started with that one. I had that record so I knew how it was supposed to sound. (I couldn’t have chosen a more difficult song to learn if I tried. To this day, I cannot play it properly.) I became convinced, after having tried to form the first chord on the chart, that Ms. Ian had seven fingers on each hand.

  There was an illustration on the very first page of the binder that basically showed you where to put your fingers on the strings to make the various chords. The fingers were labelled one, two, three, four and five. That made sense so far … The C chord had three numbers, which meant that there would be three fingers on three strings, and so that’s where I began. That first attempt was nothing more than a buzzing mess of noise that didn’t sound like anything at all. It was so disappointing. I expected something to ring out into the air that sounded like angels singing. I kept trying and kept trying and kept trying until finally the buzzing stopped and something that sounded like a note droned past me towards the rust-coloured brick wall in front of my face. I was giving myself a headache and I had to remind myself to breathe. It was only music, after all.

  I must have spent at least three hours trying to make one chord sound decent before I was forced to quit. My fingertips had divots in them and were close to splitting apart. I had never had anything hurt quite as much as this. Theresa used to sneak up on me and crack my knuckles when I wasn’t watching, but not even that hurt as much as learning to play guitar.

  For the next few months that was all I did. I didn’t care how much it hurt. I ran off the bus right after school, snatched my mother’s guitar from her bedroom closet and practised for hours in the basement. I was usually alone in the house after school. It was just me, Janis Ian and a big orange binder full of songs to tackle. The first few weeks were hard, but after three or four months I had mastered five or six chords and was able to play almost every song in the binder. I was amazed with myself. I couldn’t read music, I just knew the finger charts and had memorized their corresponding positions to make the chords, but that was almost like reading music, wasn’t it?

  The only chords I was having trouble with were the bar chords, which involved having one of your fingers lying flat against all the strings to cover them up entirely while using your remaining digits to form a chord higher up the neck of the guitar. I still had hands the size of golf balls, so it was next to impossible for me to make bar chords. But it didn’t take long for me to learn that I could make up my own techniques and it would still sound like something. If it sounded like music, chances were that it was. That was my motto. I loved every second I spent in the basement all by myself. The rest of the world disappeared and my soul soared around my head like a meteorite.

  I had managed to teach myself the guitar and learn how to sing along without anybody in my house knowing. I don’t know how I kept it a secret but I did. Nobody would have a clue about my hidden talents until I performed at my high school graduation ceremony, six years after first strapping the thing on.

  Upstairs, my parents were struggling to get Duray back on the right path but trouble followed him wherever he went. They put him into counselling and enrolled him into a new school with tutors that they couldn’t afford. They enrolled him in Cadets, which he actually attended for awhile. They tried tough love. They tried to get him involved in sports. They tried bribery. Nothing worked. My dad tried yelling a lot, but that only seemed to make things worse. Duray’s troubles were getting bigger and bigger and they took up all his time and stole his happiness. You could see his troubles perched on his shoulders, chuckling to themselves, and now they invariably involved the police in some way, shape or form. The long arm of the law reached into our house in Springbank and wrapped itself around Duray’s throat.

  He was now headed towards jail time—no more slaps on the wrist. There were court appearances and probation things and sentencing things. There were people he had to report to now, and there wasn’t a thing any of us could do about it. Duray was in his very own version of hell, complete with demons and wicked temptations. (At least he had a constant flame burning so he could fire up a joint whenever necessary.)

  My brother was this guy who came to our house once in awhile to change his clothes and rummage around for change in the bottom of my mom’s purse. (We all did that, though; it wasn’t just Duray. I think my mother would have been a millionaire had she been able to keep all the coins we stole.) I never really saw him anymore; not around the house, not at school, not anywhere. Maybe he was around somewhere, but I don’t remember him. He wasn’t even in his room downstairs anymore. I know that because I was in the basement all the time.

  After I tore through my mother’s orange binder of songs, it dawned on me that perhaps I could make up my own songs. If John Denver could make up a song, well, by hell, so could I! “By hell” was one of my dad�
�s favourite curses.

  “By hell, I’m gonna ring your neck!” he’d holler. (He never really rang anybody’s neck.) Sometimes “by hell” was a good thing. Like if the Stampeders, Calgary’s beloved football team, happened to win the Grey Cup, my dad would yell, “By hell! They did it!” It was a very versatile curse.

  I remember gazing at the back cover of Janis Ian’s album Between the Lines and reading with much amazement that all the songs—words and music—had been written by Ms. Ian herself. I was in shock sitting there thinking about what that meant. It had never occurred to me that somebody had to write the music that was on the radio every day. It had never crossed my mind. I also couldn’t believe that Janis’s real name was Janis Eddy Fink. I had read that in a Tiger Beat magazine. I assumed that all singers must have to change their names to make themselves sound more professional, but I wondered why Janis’s parents thought it would be a good idea to call their daughter Janis Eddy Fink. It might have had something to do with Woodstock.

  My friend Michelle, who had all the Tiger Beat magazines, was also the only person I knew lucky enough to have her own record player. It had detachable speakers that she had spread out on her dresser. Michelle loved music too, and she took great pride in playing all her favourite songs for me. She had a lot of records I had never heard of. She played me songs by a band called the Runaways that was made up of all girls. There wasn’t one all-girl band in my entire record collection, so this was truly an incredible discovery. As I pored over the liner notes on the back of the Runaways album, I found more proof of people—girls—writing their own music and playing their own instruments!