by Jan Conn
Yeah, Stacey said. That’s what it is.
But really she wanted to have a nap in the afternoon to bank sleep in the daytime and stay awake late enough when Santa came. Tommy told her once that there was no such thing as Santa. Yet each year he ate the cookies they left out for him, or partly ate them, and this year she wanted to get Santa’s autograph so she could shut Tommy up once and for all, but that wasn’t her entire quest. She wanted to know if Santa took his boots off when he walked through the house. She thought he must or her mother would have noticed.
It snowed on Christmas Eve, a snowfall that continued for two days straight, and because he had four days off in a row, Sage didn’t bother to shovel the snow out front. The whole neighbourhood stayed huddled in snow-bound houses, and Della immersed herself in the Eudora Welty novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, that Stacey had bought her on the bookstore’s recommendation. Everything had worked out as well as could be expected. Everyone in the Howard household deserved to sit back and reflect on all they had.
But Sage found it difficult to sit back at any time. His life, over the last several months, had been chaotic and stressful, but exciting and new. On Boxing Day, he poured himself a rum and coke and reread last week’s newspaper. He met up with Hart, and the two of them sat in the woodshed and smoked and watched the snowflakes continue to pile up while Hart went on and on about the three pairs of argyle socks he got for Christmas. Later Sage lay on the couch, and Stacey sprawled out beside him and read him the middle chapters of a Bobbsey Twins novel until he fell asleep, but Stacey didn’t notice and kept on reading until suppertime, then they ate turkey sandwiches from the leftovers. The scene could have been one portrayed in a Norman Rockwell painting, a different print from the one that featured a boy and his dog fishing that now hung in the living room, a present to Sage from Della at Christmas.
The clock made the only sound in the house past midnight. Sage put his coat and toque and boots on and slid out of the silence into falling snow, a frenzied and hectic spectacle that tricked the mind into believing in an even deeper silence. He walked to town, a town that had most of the roads ploughed but in the middle of the night, two days after Christmas, looked and felt like a place abandoned by humanity. He walked up and down the streets several times, as if lost or deranged, someone with no destination in mind. The walkway that ran along the back of the bar had been shovelled during the day but was filling with snow once again. Sage put a gloved hand into his coat pocket and confirmed that the small box he had wrapped earlier in the week remained there. He hadn’t added a bow or card of any kind, but the box contained an expensive pearl necklace. He’d thought about Selma often for months now and of her being alone in her apartment with no family around over Christmas. It was a gesture, he told himself, something he would drop off with well wishes and then be on his way.
From where he stood on the landing, he couldn’t determine if Selma was home. He listened at the door and thought he heard something, but maybe not. He knocked lightly, and when he didn’t get a response, he pushed his shoulder against the door and entered a room with one small light on behind the couch. In front of it stood Selma, naked, tending to a young man Sage had never seen before. The man had an unbuttoned shirt on but nothing else, and Selma turned away from her kissing when the door flew open. What the fuck? the man said, but Selma turned his head back toward her and continued with her lovemaking.
When Sage stepped outside and closed the door behind him, he didn’t move at first, just stood there on the landing, processing as best he could what had happened. He walked down the snow-littered steps and spilled onto the soft snow of the sidewalks, walked through town and down to the river and stood on the bank for a long time before he reached into his pocket for the small box that he threw with all his might into the cold and indifferent river, a river that didn’t care, one way or another, that Christmas had come and gone.
13
Daily, sometimes twice a day, Della wrote in her journal with a medium-tipped pen, slowly, so that the carving of every letter felt like a revelation. Sage had garnered more than his fair share of attention in her writing, and sometimes she reread what she’d written in an attempt to see the shape of her life. September 15. Sage has been acting funny lately. Always out of the house for some reason or other. He always has a reason. Today I found out what it is. He’s into selling again. He was selling when we first got together, and I told him to stop. Now he’s at it again, and he says it’s to earn enough money to buy the house. Every night when he gets home, I look out on the street, and if there are no cops tailing him, I say to myself, that’s one more day gone by. If he gets caught, he’ll lose his job, and who would bring their kids to be babysat at a druggie house? He’s not afraid to make things happen, I guess that’s one thing I can say. Not the kind of man my dad was.
She’d been doing that a lot lately: comparing her life with what she remembered growing up. She liked the way Sage always had a bike of some sort for Stacey to learn on. Della had learned to ride her friends’ bikes and didn’t get her own until after her thirteenth birthday. Her dad had been a low-level civil servant who earned one promotion in thirty years, one who enjoyed licking envelopes and keeping files of important information, most of which he didn’t take the trouble to understand. For years they didn’t own a car, and when they finally got one, her dad wouldn’t use it except to buy groceries. Della’s mother finally got her driver’s licence, and once a month, she packed Della and her younger sister, Sadie, into the back seat, and they tootled around the country and stopped for a picnic lunch. Sometimes their dad would come, and when he did, he sat in the front seat and looked out the window wistfully, thinking the few thoughts that tended to occur to him, like about his small stamp collection that he stared at for hours on end. Some people don’t say much most of the time, and when they do, what they say is worth noting, but Della’s father had rarely said anything anyone could remember.
Della’s mother had been flighty on occasion. Della remembered a few times when she was fall-down drunk, but most of the time, she sipped on stashes of gin she kept in her dresser and in the kitchen and down in the bowels of the basement, a place no one went to except to do laundry. Her mother would sometimes go for a walk in the middle of the day and forget to come back in time to make supper. She would arrive and explain how her feet were sore and swollen, while Della’s dad warmed something sprinkled with Hamburger Helper on the stove for them to eat. She would do exciting things, like dress up even more extravagantly than Della or Sadie did on Halloween. She painted the inside of the house at least once a year. She’d come into Della’s yellow room and ask her if she was tired of yellow yet; did she want to consider a pink room because she’d read in a magazine that pink helped your imagination, though it could raise your blood pressure at the same time. Little kids don’t need to worry about high blood pressure, she said, so if you want a pink room now’s the time to get it.
If Della’s dad was like the ancient fir tree that stood rooted in the backyard, her mother was like a dandelion weed that popped up where you least expected it.
In grade six, Della and her friend Marcy read the Nancy Drew series and decided they should open up their own investigation bureau because no one suspected kids of being detectives and because of this they could get away with things that others could not. For several weeks one summer, they spied on their parents, mostly when they took turns sleeping over. They pretended to fall asleep, keeping their talk to a whisper, then waited until their parents went to bed and crouched down by the door to listen to what they were saying. Marcy’s parents would talk for at least an hour before falling asleep, and they talked about things they’d heard on the news or some rumour about someone in town, topics they might have discussed in broad daylight. One night a gem surfaced when Marcy’s father mentioned that Bert Turnbull had been charged with manslaughter and released on bail. They both knew Rachael Turnbull, who was a year behind them in school, and they set out a plan to start playing w
ith Rachael and get inside the house to see if they could unearth evidence that might be useful in the court case. If they could do that, they would have a detective agency people would know about, and they could start charging for their services and not have to worry about having enough money when the next book in the series came to the bookstore. They tried spying on Della’s mother and father too, but soon after the girls retired to bed, Stacey’s mother would busy herself reading a magazine and her father would only snore rhythmically.
They took turns asking if Rachael could sleep over, thinking the offer might be reciprocated, but with events in her house as they were, Rachael wasn’t allowed to go anywhere.
When Della thought about those years, so filled with adventure, she often wondered if Stacey hid behind their door listening for gems of her own. Likely not, but Della refused to talk about Sage’s business when in the bedroom just in case.
As the eldest, Della had tried to do the right thing. She didn’t notice at the time, but looking back, she had always tried to tame her younger sister who, the older she became, patterned herself after her mother. Although nearly two years younger than Della, by the time Della had graduated to drive-in movies and sharing popcorn and a few fond kisses with Cody Renton, Sadie wanted to stay up long into the night describing what a hassle it was to help a guy put a safe on in the dark in the back seat of a car, or how important it was to have a couple of towels handy the first time. But it was worth it in the end, she said. Sadie often dated two or three boys at any given time, and it wasn’t until years later that Della contemplated the destination of her mother when she wandered off in the middle of an afternoon.
It would be ideal if Stacey had a sister of her own, even a problem sister. Della was content to have at least one daughter to raise, though she had mentioned to Sage the idea of adopting a second child. The question was a mistake. In his stay-at-home-drinking mode the night she asked, and depressed for some reason, she thought the question might spark some new direction, but instead Sage said if she thought he was going to drive back to the town of Hope and scour the fairgrounds for another kid she had something wrong with her. Della started to cry and went to bed early. They had a happy family, and they were giving Stacey a good life, so it hurt that Sage would bring up a history she worked so hard on a daily basis to forget.
In town all the snow had turned to water, and like every year hope was in the air. Sage wanted to fish in his spare time. He went out with Bart Sanderson a few times and picked up some pointers, but he preferred to fish on his own. When he spent the day with his office manager, all conversations eventually led back to Bart Sanderson: the fish he’d caught, the things he’d done, the people he knew. Everything Bart said to him felt exaggerated, like a fishing tale. When he claimed to have shaken the hand of John Wayne on a movie set in Wyoming, Sage was tempted to ask him how this happened, but chances were Bart would have to make up an even larger tale to make it seem real. The little time Sage spent with the man convinced him that if someone like Bart could be part of the management team, there was no good reason he couldn’t do the same, so despite his yearning to spend time on the river alone, once a month he agreed to go with Bart Sanderson so he could pick up a few ideas about how he might get promoted.
Fishing felt like an extravagance since they had officially bought the house. The house had suited Della to a T when they were renting, but now that they owned it, she regularly found issues that needed tending to, and if Sage didn’t know about them, Della was quick to inform him.
The first week of his vacation, he replaced the roof. Emery helped him for one day, but the rest he did on his own. Sage said he planned to go fishing for a few days, but Della insisted it was time they had a family vacation instead, so they ended up camping at Whiteswan Lake where Stacey and Della tried to keep a fire going and Sage went off by himself to fish. They slept in an old army tent borrowed from Molly and Hart. By the end of the first day, Stacey had all their supplies organized inside and outside. She saw only a few kids at the campsite to play with, but she tried hard to like camping. Dirt everywhere was hard to get used to, and Sage insisted they keep all their food locked in the trunk of the car at night because of bears. Stacey felt certain her dad was kidding, but on the third night of their wilderness vacation, they woke in the middle of the night to the clanging of pots and pans from somewhere down the lake. A few minutes later, thanks to the silhouette provided by a three-quarter moon, they could see and hear and smell a bear investigating their side of the campground. Stacey started to cry, and Della held her close to her chest to muffle any sound that might draw attention. Eventually, the bear moved on, but Stacey couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
The water was cool for swimming, though Stacey didn’t mind it. Some fellow campers told them about Lussier Hot Springs, so Della and Stacey drove there for the day and stayed until dusk. They wore their bathing suits and watched people coming and going until eventually they had the pools to themselves and skinny dipped until the stars came out. They invited Sage the second night, but he said he wasn’t interested in sitting in hot water unless it was in a bathtub and said he’d prefer to stay behind and drink beer. Their last night at Whiteswan, the moon shone close to full, and Della and Stacey returned from their nightly spa feeling carefree with their towels draped over their shoulders.
I don’t want to go to bed yet, do you?
No, Stacey said. I’m still too hot.
Della spread both towels on top of the picnic table. Here, she said. Climb up and we’ll lie under the moonlight until we cool off. The moon glowed, so far out in the wilderness, and its powerful cone of light glistened across the still lake.
It feels good not to wear clothes, Stacey said.
It does doesn’t it. It’s difficult to get away with this in the city. My sister and I used to swim naked all the time growing up. That wasn’t all we did naked. I remember those times like it was yesterday.
How did you get to do that?
Well, for a few years my parents belonged to a nudist colony. You wouldn’t think so if you knew my dad, but it was his idea. My sister was young then, but I remember we stayed for a whole weekend sometimes.
And everyone was naked?
Absolutely naked. You’d feel out of place if you weren’t. Some adults just wanted to sit around in the sun, but the kids were always playing something. I liked the pool the best.
Why did you stop going?
I’m not sure. My mom didn’t like it at first, and then she wanted to go any chance we got, and it might have been my dad that resigned. I’m not sure what happened. I was pretty young then.
So why don’t we belong to one of them?
Well, they aren’t around every corner for one thing. In a place like Fernie, you need to go off in the woods and find a place like what we have here. I thought back in the days we lived in Vancouver that your dad might like that, but he wouldn’t discuss it.
How long would it take to get a tan from the moon? Stacey asked.
Well, it might take a long time. I think the key is to lie still and close your eyes and let the light soak into your skin. Della thought about the good times she had growing up. Her mother didn’t know how to swim, and her dad said he could, but she’d never seen him swim once. Most of the time, she and Sadie went off alone, inventing their own fun. She wasn’t sure if she should regret that or embrace it.
Della fell asleep lying there, and when she woke, she saw Stacey asleep with what looked like a smile on her face. She didn’t want to wake her to hobble twenty feet to the tent, so she woke Sage instead.
Stacey is fast asleep on the picnic table, she said. I need you to help me get her to bed without waking her. Sage didn’t know how long he’d been asleep or what time it was. He remembered hearing their voices outside the tent, and then he’d started dreaming. He wandered to the side of the campsite and peed at the base of a tree, then returned to see Stacey bathed in mellow light, her skin radiant. He slid his arms under the towel and
picked her up. It had been a while since he had carried her, and he couldn’t believe how heavy an eight-year-old weighed. He crouched at the entrance of the tent and slid her beside Della under the blanket they used to cover the large double sleeping bag. Stacey stirred but stayed asleep, and she turned toward Sage and wrapped herself around him. Della laughed but Sage didn’t say anything. She thinks you’re me, Della said. Don’t move for a while. You’ll wake her up if you do.
14
Hart took down the small replica of a fort he had built in his backyard and moved the teeter-totter to the Howards’ backyard. Hart had bigger plans, he told Sage one night when they sat in the woodshed, sharing a smoke. He planned to construct a much larger building, a replica of Fort Whoop-Up near Lethbridge, Alberta. The house Hart and Molly owned had a double lot, with no garage or shed in the back like Sage had. Such a building would easily fit, though it would have to be smaller than the real Fort Whoop-Up that Hart said he’d visited twice over the years.
You should see the artifacts they have there, Hart said. Guns, trading supplies, a blacksmith shop and a bar. Everything like it was in the old days. I spent an entire day there last time, and if I could live there and still sell insurance, I would have never come back home. I’ll set it up like a small museum of the West. I have quite a few items already, and once I get the building finished, I plan to buy more. Picture this, Hart said. Right above the fireplace, a full-spread buffalo hide.
Sage listened to all Hart knew about the place, which was plenty. He looked at the sketch of the four-room version of the fort Hart envisioned, a complicated endeavor, and to Hart’s credit, he had thought through many of the details. Already he had a small delivery of logs in the backyard, but he said he would hold off on construction until he dug a well.
Are you allowed to dig your own well in the city? Sage asked.