by Jan Conn
The kids under Della’s safekeeping didn’t receive the mothering care she usually provided that day; in fact, she knew she had been impatient with all three of them.
After supper she wasn’t in the mood to sit around watching TV and went for a walk to the river, something Sage did often. The cold weather compelled her to keep moving. It had only recently become her practice to smoke outside the house, why she wasn’t sure because no one cared these days, but she chain-smoked as she walked. At a corner store on the way home, she bought two Sweet Marie chocolate bars, one for herself and one for Stacey. She worried about Stacey. She was growing up fast and resisting her mother more and more. Della feared that she would think all men acted like her father, and all women, or at least the most alluring role models, acted like Sadie. What did Stacey see when she looked at her mother? Was it too much to ask that she might find her mother’s life worth aiming for? These were questions Della was willing to ask but not keen to answer.
Della went to change the bedding after supper, but Stacey told her not to bother. She wanted to sleep in the bed just as Sadie had left it, the closest she would get to her aunt for eight long months.
He looked the part dressed up in his navy blue sports jacket and red tie, but his lack of sleep festered under his chipper exterior. The office manager in charge of personnel had retired. Sage was the preferred candidate, and his bosses clarified they wanted things done differently because, assuming that nothing alarming happened, once an employee took hold, the company was stuck with them. The new hiring process would be much more onerous, designed to hire only those who could manage the jobs available, often jobs with little excitement or creativity, but jobs that needed reliable candidates. Kaiser Resources had been bought out, and procedures needed to change. The model the company adopted came from other industries in an age where people expected more out of employment than just wages. The process involved a battery of tests to identify aptitudes, acquired skills, health history and expectations. Those with a passion for life outside of work looked promising, on the premise that some of the mundane jobs available didn’t need to provide life-fulfilling gratification. He would give a seminar-style presentation to six or eight applicants, even if the company had only one or two jobs available, followed by one-on-one interviews. Sage needed to ask certain questions to expose applicants that might not fit the company profile a few months down the road. The meeting room had an air of excitement and an electricity Sage embraced. The plentiful information about the new model flooded his mind, forcing him to stay alert and proactive. He drank coffee all day, laughed when everyone else laughed and responded to everything presented as if it were a strategy long overdue. The company favoured married men and considered them more stable as a rule, but it occurred to Sage that were he to apply to the company under the suggested regimen he wouldn’t stand a chance.
The company meeting moved to a restaurant for supper and a back room afterwards before they settled their business close to nine o’clock. Sage didn’t want to go home right away, and with Hart likely home in bed already, he couldn’t go to Fort Whoop. He stopped in at his favourite pub, and a new waitress, much older than Selma, served him. The waitress, dressed as if she were about to duck under a car and do an oil change, was efficient at her job.
What happened to Selma? Sage asked.
Her husband showed up two weeks ago and took her away. Funny thing was she left with wages owing and no forwarding address. You don’t know where she might have gone, do you?
I don’t have a clue, Sage said. Was she happy her husband showed up?
She didn’t look happy or sad. She looked like she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
He didn’t want to get drunk. He nursed a third beer and left. The neighbourhood was quiet and somber, and he found himself in the back of his woodshed where he smoked to even things out. He thought about what the waitress had said. He didn’t believe it. There were always choices.
Stacey had fallen asleep with her San Francisco compendium open to a picture of the Walt Disney Family Museum. She was dreaming of a summer in her future when she stayed with Aunt Sadie. She knew her aunt had more money than her family, and going by the pictures of apartments she found in the book, she imagined her aunt living in an upper-level apartment with one bedroom and fantastic views looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge. She could sleep on the couch if she wanted, but Aunt Sadie suggested she might want to take up half of her queen-size bed, so when she woke in the morning, she would see the city coming alive. That’s what she waited for in the dream: the city to come alive. Her aunt had told her she could stay as long as she wanted. She had nothing to worry about.
She felt the tips of fingers tracing the roundness of her shoulders, and she remembered her mother doing the same thing when she worried as a child and couldn’t sleep. Then she felt the silky sensation of lips on the back of her neck that forced her into an altered state in her dream, not the thinking a pleasurable dream demanded. The dream ended in a sudden wakefulness, and she turned around and screamed. Sage fell off the bed and hit his head on a table on his way to the floor. Stacey screamed again, and then Della stood at the door and the overhead light revealed everything.
What the hell are you doing in here?
Sage knew his wife had asked him an important question, but Stacey at first thought her mother was yelling at her.
Get the hell out of here. Get out of this house. You bastard. You sorry-looking bastard.
Stacey heard the back door slam. She fell into her mother’s arms, crying hopelessly. It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Everything will be all right. Della rubbed her hand over Stacey’s head, hard, as if to rub her reassuring words into a safe place. Stacey spasmed in her mother’s arms for a long time and finally got control of her breathing. Della brought her a glass of water and told her again that everything would be fine. Della knew they should both get up and move around. Drink some hot chocolate maybe. But she didn’t want to move, she only wanted to hold her daughter in her arms. Stacey didn’t say anything for a long time, and Della didn’t expect her to.
When she spoke, she barely whispered: I didn’t do anything wrong.
He shouldn’t have done many things, but the last one he shouldn’t have done was leave the house. He left and got in the car and drove down to the river, only a few blocks away, and shivered in the dark. He could have got a motel room, but in a small town, there would be questions, and he didn’t feel like driving an hour out of town for the few warm hours of sleep it would provide. He couldn’t afford to miss work, not now, with his being under a microscope for the management position he’d worked so hard to qualify for. He wasn’t sure he was the ideal specimen they were seeking, but it was now or never. Soon after the sun filtered through the tree line, he ate breakfast at BJ’s, a place popular with truckers who came through town. He had bacon and eggs and three cups of coffee, tried to ignore the boisterous comments of his fellow patrons, then headed to a garage convenience store and bought a razor and shaved in the washroom. He looked like hell and felt like hell, and he wore the same clothes as the day before. If anyone mentioned it, he would say he was superstitious and the previous day had gone so well he didn’t want to risk changing things up.
He would get through the day somehow, and when it ended, he would return to the house and explain to Della that he had been sleepwalking and half drunk and half stoned and hadn’t known what he was doing. All night he’d replayed what had happened and how he had climbed into Stacey’s bed to find Stacey asleep instead of Sadie and how he hadn’t noticed the difference. At the time, everything had felt exactly the same. Even with his daughter lying there, the bed had smelled exactly the same.
Sage felt the burden of the unreasonable power he held over his wife. Without her having to say so, he knew that if they were rich she would have taken Stacey and left him years earlier, but they weren’t rich, and her mothering instincts would not be tampered with. Della would do anything to stay in the house and raise
her daughter because the way she saw it, this was her purpose in life. She constantly wrote in her journal about their life, paltry as it was, and when he asked her what she was writing, she told him, and he didn’t care enough to worry about whether she told the truth. Once she was writing about her vision of Stacy’s graduation; another time she had imagined Stacey getting married in Hart and Molly’s backyard, in the summer, with Fort Whoop as a backdrop. There was nothing extravagant about the life they lived, but it was enough for Della.
When he got home, there would be a battle, but he would weather the storm, and things would be close to normal again. They would because his wife wouldn’t have it any other way.
Della lay awake most of the night, but Stacey finally fell into a deep sleep, the two of them lying side by side. In the morning, Della suggested Stacey stay home from school and she would write a note claiming illness. Stacey kept shaking her head and didn’t want to discuss what might happen during the day or in the evening when Sage returned, as they both knew he would. She packed her own lunch as usual and walked out the door without acknowledging her mother, only she didn’t walk all the way to school but walked down to the river and sat by herself, listening to the water that raced its way south toward Lake Koocanusa. She welcomed the cold air coming from the river, even when the ends of her fingers and toes felt numb. By the time the morning disappeared and hunger kicked in, she had decided what to do.
She went around to the back of the house and knocked on the door, but no one answered. She knocked again, and Hart showed himself.
Stacey, what are you doing here? Don’t you have school today?
She had prepared exactly what she would say and planned on a rational explanation that might make sense, and at all costs she would not get emotional. Despite her planning, she cried before she could formulate any words.
Why don’t you come inside, Hart said. I was about to make a pot of tea, and I’ll make enough for both of us.
Hart plugged in the kettle and handed her a box of Kleenex. He busied himself at the sink with the teapot and two cups and looked in the cookie jar but found it empty. Things aren’t going too well for you today, he said.
No, they’re not. I can’t tell you what happened, but I can’t live there anymore. I just can’t. I was wondering if I can stay at Fort Whoop for a while. Until I can figure things out.
Hart filled the teapot and brought it and two cups to the table. He wished Molly were home. She would know what to do.
I don’t mind if you stay there. Molly’s out right now, but as far as I’m concerned, you can stay. Do your mom and dad know where you are?
Mom thinks I’m at school. Dad left in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t care where I am or what happens to me. He’ll come back again, and I can’t be there when he does.
Were you planning to stay for just a few hours?
No. I need a safe place to sleep. I don’t want to quit school. I want to graduate and move to San Jose.
Tell me about it, Hart said. Tell me why you want to move to San Jose. He hoped if he got the girl talking, it would pull her away from her misery. If she talked long enough, Molly might come home. Stacey gave him some of her reasons, but there weren’t that many. Hart looked at his watch.
I’ve got two appointments this afternoon, and I’ve got to skedaddle. I’ll leave Molly a note and get you settled. Do you know how to make a fire? You know how to make a fire, don’t you? Come on. We’ll get you comfortable. Are you hungry?
I’ve got my lunch. I’ll eat that.
Hart showed her where he kept the newspaper, kindling and firewood and pointed to the matches. It took a while, but she got a fire roaring in the fireplace that soon made the main room of Fort Whoop comfortable. Cocooned within the logs and mortar, a picture of reclusion with no sounds or distractions, she ate half her lunch and lay down on the cot in the corner and fell asleep.
When she opened her eyes, the fireplace had filled with a healthy flame, and she thought she had dozed only briefly. She turned over onto her back and saw Molly the Nose sitting in a roughly hewn wooden chair, staring at her.
You probably feel better after sleeping, she said. Stacey nodded and sat up on the small cot. I heard some of what happened, and I’ve talked to your mother. She knows you’re here. She understands how you feel, but she wants you to come back home.
I’m not going back there. I won’t. I’ll figure something out.
Your mother said you’d say that. It’s okay if you want to stay here. Your mother said if you insisted, it would be okay. It’s not much, what Hart built here. But if it will do for now, and you’re welcome to it.
Thank you, Stacey said. That’s what I need. I need to be alone.
I’ll have supper ready in about an hour. You can come to the house then and eat with us. The door isn’t locked.
I’ll stay here if that’s okay with you.
Molly pulled her hands to her face and massaged, as if trying to rid herself of something deep below the surface. She looked at
Stacey who stared into the flames.
Very well. I’ll have Hart bring your supper over if that’s what you want. I’ll pack you a lunch for tomorrow. You plan to go to school tomorrow, don’t you?
Yes. I’m going.
Good. Your mother insisted on that. You can come into the house in the morning and shower before school. It will make you feel better.
That’s okay. I can shower at school. They have showers there.
Well, I’ll leave you be. You can change your mind any time. Hart and I often play a game of crib after supper. We can play three-handed crib. See how you feel.
From anything Stacey had observed over the years, Molly was not an affectionate woman, but she got up and walked over and put her hand on Stacey’s shoulder before she left, and when she left, Stacey cried all over again.
20
Sage spent the morning consulting and going over the new model of recruitment that made up the personnel manager’s portfolio. Sage wasn’t sure why this was necessary. He thought maybe they wanted to test him or trick him into not knowing what he knew. Because he was tired, Sage felt he successfully bluffed his way through the day, and then two things happened in the middle of the afternoon that made no sense. They invited him into the manager’s office, and he sat down on a comfortable chair (a chair that said this comfort might someday be yours) and looked out the large picture window at the steely grey sky that hinted at the first snow of the year. It wasn’t yet cold enough to snow, but when he looked outside, it felt like it could happen any minute.
The manager said that his interim status was over and Sage was now officially a member of the management team, and the manager reviewed the company’s expectations, not only the expectations of the newly designed job description but the company’s faith that Sage would fit the role impeccably. He heard the words that described his appointment as unusual, in that the company had brought him up through the ranks of construction and first aid attendant and how the move would offer inspiration to company employees across the board: if they worked hard and showed initiative, they too could ascend the hierarchy. But while Sage listened to the manager’s guarded welcome and what it would mean in terms of wages and benefits and holidays moving forward, he had a strange sense of not being in the room participating. His ears rang, and it demanded his full attention to comprehend the sentences floating about. He stared at the manager as he spoke and tried to smile, but he wasn’t sure he was smiling, and once or twice, while speaking, the manager looked at him as if maybe the pace of his verbal barrage needed to slow down. Sage’s right eye wanted to close, and for a minute it felt like he was staring at his superior with one eye only, and he reached up nonchalantly with his fingers to pry his right eye open.
Thank you, Sage said. Thank you for all of this. The words didn’t sound like they came out of his mouth, and his ears continued to ring.
I can see this is an emotional time for you, the manager said. You’ve had a lot
to take in over the last week. I’ll just get you to sign on here. The document lists all we have agreed to, and you will get a copy by tomorrow. The office you used last week is your office now. We ordered a nameplate, but it’s not up yet, and your business cards should be here in a few days. You can take the rest of the afternoon to organize your files and so on. Make things the way you want them. Once you’ve done that, you can make your way home to share the news with your wife.
Sage took the pen and leaned over the paperwork. The words looked fuzzy, and he wasn’t about to read through it all now. His arm and fingers tingled, and he scrawled something close to his signature at the bottom. The manager reached across the desk to shake his hand, and Sage complied, with fingers so numb it didn’t feel like a handshake.
Once Sage sat down in his own chair in his own office and looked out the window, a much smaller window than the one in the manager’s office, he felt better about things. His vision cleared up considerably, and he could endure the headache that felt thick in the back of his skull. The office secretary knocked on his door, congratulated him and asked if he wanted a coffee before they cleaned up the office pantry for the night. Sage said that would be a good idea. A strong coffee might temper his headache if nothing else.
He did his best to organize his files and focus on the details of his new job starting the next day. He had no idea when he’d taken refuge in his office or how long he’d been staring at the piece of paper in his hands.
Keeping that wife of yours in suspense a little longer, are we? The manager beamed at his office door, and Sage thought it was because he still sat at his desk, working. Everybody’s abandoned ship, the manager said. The janitorial crew don’t come until much later, so be sure to lock the front door on your way out.
I will, Sage said. He lifted his hand in a mock wave and turned back to the document he was concentrating on. He sat there waiting for something good to happen. His head ached more painfully than ever. Pulsating in the back of his head. His arm tingled again, and he stood, holding onto his desk, and stared out the window. The sky looked the same. No snow. No rain. A ceiling of threat. He got up and put on his coat, so dizzy that he traced the walls with his right hand as he headed to the men’s washroom at the end of the hall.