She stifles a rising panic as she gets up and hurries toward the mall entrance and the pay phones to call Steve, or Sandra, thinking that because the instant teller is open twenty-four hours she’ll be able to get into the foyer. But the door is locked and when she inserts her card in the slot, it doesn’t activate.
She returns to the Meridian, shivering at the thought of cold bedsheets. She plunges her hands into her jacket pockets to warm them, and feels something stiff and crumpled. A twenty-dollar bill, she discovers. Breakfast. She often came across coins and bills in the pockets of garments and she views this find as a good omen. She’ll run the generator and charge the batteries, turn on the lights, watch television, as if this were any other night when Joe is later than expected.
Hours later she awakens on the lounger to the sound of voices coming from the television. For a moment she imagines she’s on the fold-out couch in her grandmother’s living room, the voices coming from the bedroom, her grandmother and her boyfriend talking after having made love, which is sometimes only a gentle rocking of the bedsprings, other times a wrestling match. At which point Laurie would turn up the television, signalling that she’s pissed off. She wants to yell at them to grow up. Now, suddenly, her grandmother is present in the smoky sweet smell of cigarettes and perfume, leaning over her. You must have won the sweepstakes, TV, lights left on all over the house.
Laurie gets up and turns off the television, then feels her way toward the greenish light in the bedroom doorway. She lowers the blind, the light a laser thin line along the edges of the window. She goes to the closet and pages through the garments until she finds the fur jacket, and beside it, the leather parka. Tomorrow she’ll take them to Clara’s Boutique, tonight they’ll keep her warm.
She puts herself to bed fully clothed, arranges the jacket and coat over her body. Yes, I’ve won the sweepstakes, she repeats, and curls up beneath the weight of the garments, recalling her grandmother’s sudden spurts of extravagant affection, her largesse, after Laurie had left town for Winnipeg. Laurie had made a point then to call her grandmother weekly, and knew that when she sounded vague and distracted she was going through her usual boyfriend challenges. Talking to her grandmother during those times was like throwing jelly at a wall. Nothing Laurie said stuck.
Then, in the midst of one of those periods, a parcel would arrive at the bus depot without warning, filled with puzzling objects: a loop of ribbed rubber that was meant to unscrew stubborn lids from jars, economy packs of flashlights and batteries of various sizes, plastic mousetraps that looked like overgrown clothespins and were touted to be a gentler way to kill a rodent. So gentle, in fact, she never caught anything. The loud clattering in the cupboard kept her awake most of a night as the mouse pushed the trap about, turned it upside down and sideways to get the last bit of peanut butter.
Her grandmother had sent her and Joe boat-sized fuzzy rabbit and basset hound slippers, a Holly Hobbie doll she’d found at a rummage sale, still in its original packaging, and always there would be a tin of licorice allsorts, the candy Laurie wasn’t able to live without as a child.
The gifts were compensation for the fact that even when her grandmother was present she was away, preoccupied with untangling the snarls in her heart. She had loved her daughter, given the number of pictures of Karen in the box under her bed, along with the crayon drawings, the school yearbooks, the caption under the picture of Karen in the last yearbook saying she had wanted to be a nurse. And Laurie’s grandmother had also loved Verna.
Where were you when I was born? Laurie had once asked when she was still a child, but old enough to have wondered for a time, before she worked up the courage to ask.
“I was right here,” her grandmother said and pointed to the floor in the kitchen. “There were forest fires burning. Verna, God rest her soul, phoned me the day she died. There was this helicopter going over the house and I couldn’t always hear what she was saying. It was Parks Canada, keeping a watch for wild animals. All kinds of animals came out of the forest into town that year, deer, even a moose, as big as a truck, that got into the church.”
“And what did she say?” Laurie asked.
“Who?” her grandmother said.
“Verna Beaudry, what did she say?”
“Not much that I could hear. She said Karen was as big as a house, and it looked like she was going to pop soon. She wanted to know if I planned on coming, or should she sit with Karen, once labour started. I’d just got Laddie, and he wouldn’t trust anyone but me around him,” her grandmother said, referring to the stray dog she’d rescued when it came limping out of the bush one day as she was driving home from work.
“So you couldn’t go,” Laurie said, old enough to realize that her grandmother thought more about caring for a stray dog than she had her own child.
“Karen didn’t want me there anyway,” her grandmother said. “Your mother took to Verna, right from the start. She would have wanted Verna to sit with her.” The start, being when Laurie’s grandfather had been killed in a logging accident and her grandmother became a widow with a young child to raise. She’d needed to find work then, and Verna, who was already taking care of elderly parents, took care of Karen, more often than not.
“Who’s your daddy? I haven’t a clue,” Laurie’s grandmother had said then.
From the height of the train trestle bridge, the island she’d been born on looked like a bristly porcupine. Years and years ago when the neighbourhood had been sparsely populated with market gardeners and an ice harvesting company, one spring, during high flooding, a shed became lodged in the riverbed. And gradually debris snagged onto it, a rowboat, branches and lumber, straw; silt had collected and seeds sprouted. The small shed mired in the mud became an island. Just as she had, she’d thought when she saw all the goods that had become attached to her, spread about the yard at the garage sale.
I’ve won the sweepstakes, Laurie thinks again, this time wryly as she takes the twenty-dollar bill out of the pocket of her fleece and smooths it flat against her breastbone before setting it on the bedside table. Smitty’s, for breakfast, early, to beat the crowd.
An hour later she’s awake, sweating and clammy, angered by a dream. She and Joe were in a department store and about to enter a crowded elevator. Thinking he was behind her, she pushed her way through the people to the back of it, where she was pressed on all sides by strangers who suddenly seemed menacing. She discovered that Joe hadn’t got on the elevator. He stood beyond the doors, shoulders scrunched up and grinning like a boy about to play a trick. He would take the adjacent elevator and meet her on the next floor, he mimed as the doors began to close. The elevator rose, stopped, the doors opened and the people quickly went away. Instead of finding herself on another floor of merchandise, she was in the countryside, and beyond her stretched a seemingly endless and barren field. Joe was nowhere to be seen.
The feeling of betrayal fades as she listens to the night, expecting to hear the skateboarders, but except for the sound of a vehicle going by on Albert Street, it’s quiet. She gets up, pushes the blind aside to bare a crack of window and notices a small truck parked beyond the gardening compound, near the far perimeter of the lot that borders Albert Street. A blue light sputters on the ground, disappears and reappears, as though someone’s crouched and moving around it. She notices the cabana on the truck and realizes that it’s Pete. Hurriedly she jams her feet into running shoes and goes outside.
When she draws near she sees the frying pan on the camp cookstove. Pete sits on the edge of the lowered tailgate, his body curled, hands at his mouth as though playing a harmonica. He starts when he sees her, gets up from the tailgate, his body rigid with wariness. As she moves out of the shadow of the truck, his eyes widen.
“You,” he says. He lowers his hands and she sees the hotdog in one of them. He looks across the parking lot at the Meridian, the swirls sweeping across its side suggesting speed and flight.
“That your RV?”
“Yes,” she sa
ys. Yes, but. It is and it isn’t, she wants to explain. Always feeling the need to do so, to give away too much. Steam rises from a saucepan on the tailgate, hot chocolate, she concludes from the sweet smell that instantly draws attention to her hunger. It’s hunger that’s awakened her.
“Isn’t that something,” Pete says, and for a moment he looks as though he wants to say more. Then he says, “I see you found a use for the chair.”
Him? The surprise is not an entirely pleasant one. “So I have you to thank.”
“I guess that guy of yours hasn’t showed up yet.”
Laurie hears an accusation, and it stings.
The faint sound of a siren rises from far across the sprawling city. Something’s happening out there. Something is going on, while here there’s an eerie quietness in the absence of traffic, the amber lights at the intersection flashing caution, the street beyond the lights dropping off into darkness.
“There was this man at Robin’s Donuts. I take it he’s your friend. He said you and Joe were away on a job. What happened?” Laurie asks.
“Yah, well, one of us was on the job. I guess Joe wasn’t interested in making some pretty good money.” He goes over to the tailgate and takes a long drink from the saucepan, then bites into the hotdog, his cheek bulging with bun and wiener as he chews.
“Excuse me, I only just finished work, and this here is my supper,” he says speaking around the food. “I’ve got to get it into me. This is what happens when I don’t eat in time.” He holds out his hand to show her its pronounced tremor. His puffy fingers are dark red and sore-looking.
“Do you know where Joe might have gone?”
He shrugs. “He made a phone call, and took off. You and him have a fight?”
She doesn’t reply, thinking that the telephone call Joe made was to the Lewises. And that he knows now that she didn’t relay Maryanne’s message. She’s about to return to the Meridian when Pete suddenly starts to curse. She sees what he sees, two burly security men hurrying toward them from Walmart, one of them breaking into a trot.
Pete stuffs the remainder of the hotdog into his mouth, then quickly folds up the camp stove and takes it and the fry pan to the truck where he loads them into the cabana. He flings the contents of the saucepan across the parking lot, the splash of hot chocolate steaming as it meets the asphalt. He throws the pot into the cabana where it clanks noisily as it hits something inside. The two men part to skirt the puddle of chocolate; slow down now and advance with caution.
“Okay, okay, I get the message,” Pete calls out. He shuts the cabana door and slams the tailgate into place. Then he comes round the side of the truck and instead of getting into it, he crosses his arms and leans against the door. His narrow face, the way the tip of his tongue worries the space between his front teeth make him look like a desert lizard.
“Move that piece of junk,” the largest of the two men calls out, his voice is a smoker’s voice, dull and raspy.
“Don’t sweat it, I’m leaving,” Pete says. “But not before you guys tell me, how come it’s okay for her to park here, but it’s not okay for me?” He motions in the direction of the Meridian.
The two men turn to look beyond Laurie at the motorhome. Walmart encourages boondocking, Joe said. The presence of RVs meant that should anyone be intent on theft and vandalism, there were extra pairs of eyes watching.
“Look, all I know is that we’re given the licence numbers of vehicles that are allowed to be here overnight. And yours isn’t one of them. It’s not our job to decide who gets to park,” the smoker says.
Laurie turns and heads back to the Meridian, feeling their eyes on her. As she goes up the steps she hears Pete’s truck start up. Once inside she kneels on the lounger, raises the window blind in time to see him drive past the recycling bins toward the back of the parking lot and the exit there. The two security men watch for a moment, and then they both turn at once and look in her direction. She thinks they’re about to come over, but they return to the office.
Until the adrenalin rush subsides she won’t be able to sleep. When she switches on the light above the dinette, her eyes come to rest on the postcards, glossy and bright with primary colours. The collage, she reminds herself, and goes to the bedroom and returns with the manicure scissors and wearing the silver fox jacket, telling herself, yes, as she feels instantly warmer.
Within moments curled hard bits of images are scattered across the table. She looks about for something more, the label on the wine bottle, the newspaper spread open on the lounger. Then she remembers the bathroom garbage she’d emptied in the can outside, the embossed packaging, tissue paper, the various manufacturer’s tags on strings.
It’s as though the short distance between the Meridian and the garbage can is a stage—she feels watched as she crosses it. Grasping the rim to brace herself, she leans deep inside. Although it’s near to being empty and lined with a plastic bag, the stink of decay and rust is almost overpowering and she holds her breath as she quickly plucks up the packaging and flings it over the side. There are crumpled serviettes, several plastic store hangers, McDonald’s hamburger wrappers, the gloves she used to colour her hair. Then she snags onto something that feels alive. She tries to shake it off and it flaps against her hand, flaccid and clammy. A tape worm. She bolts up from the can and when she sees the condom hooked about her fingers she swears, and frantically flicks it loose.
She goes back to collapse into the lawn chair, leans over her knees, forehead pressed against them, gasping with the effort to keep the imaginary jars on the shelf from toppling and crashing down on her head, to suppress the large cracking sobs she won’t be able to crawl out from under. This is what she’s left with. Herself. In a Walmart parking lot, waiting for Joe who, she knows, has long since stopped loving her. She’s stranded on a raft that’s been swept out to sea. “Oh my God,” she says, the words a spasm heaved up from her stomach.
There’s a sudden clash of noise and she looks up to see a small hooded figure going across the Safeway lot, collecting stray carts. What would a kid be doing working this late at night? she can’t help but wonder, and as she watches his dogged, almost robotic movements, her breathing steadies.
The garbage lies scattered about on the tarmac, metallic blue and white embossed flattened boxes, like seashells. She thinks of a night on the beach near Varadero, the sun already set. She recalls the eerie phosphorescence of the pounding surf; seeing the shapes of overturned boats, like large beached fish, and drawing Joe over to one. Taking his hand to show him she wasn’t wearing panties. She remembers the air being humid and thick with the smell of the ocean and humus in the wild growth near the fishing boat, Joe’s groan of desire. It was the last time he’d made love to her with any passion.
She collects the packaging and is about to return to the Meridian when she realizes she forgot the tissue paper. She dumps the material onto the lawn chair and returns to the garbage can where she plucks it up, and when she sees the pizza box at the bottom of the can, she hesitates. They always order a larger pizza than they need to, and usually there’s some left over, and usually they pitch it out, as neither of them care for reheated pizza.
The weather has been cool most of the day. Feta and spinach, there was no meat that might have gone rancid. She looks about. Except for a single lit window near the top floor of one of the apartments, all the windows are dark. She rises on her tiptoes, the rim of the garbage can cutting deep beneath her ribcage as she retrieves the box and comes up with it, gratified by a heaviness sliding to one side. The cardboard is soft and stained by moisture, but the box is tightly closed.
It’s as though she’s on stage, and in the audience at the same time, seeing herself, a forty-one-year-old woman heavy around the waist and wide in the hips. That fact made more pronounced by the snug-fitting jeans hugging her thighs and flaring out across her running shoes, the scroll of embroidery and sequins running down the sides of her long legs failing to reduce the swell of her stomach. An overweight woma
n in a silver fox jacket, diving for food.
Seven
IN THE FAR DISTANCE a vehicle approaches, its headlight a single white beam that wavers and pokes at the darkness, as though testing it for depth. It grows near, and the beam becomes two lights steadily and swiftly bearing down on Joe where he stands on the shoulder with his arm raised. When the vehicle rockets past he’s submerged in the sudden dark that follows and it takes time for his eyes to adjust, for the land to emerge, the colour of ashes.
The traffic is light now and his chances of being picked up are slim. He should have tried for a lift at one of the gas stations along the service road in Medicine Hat, found someone who was going straight through to Calgary. As it is, the first ride took him only as far as a hamlet, a half hour away.
A dog barks, a large one from the sound of it. He turns and looks at the house he just walked past, its lights glancing through tree branches stirred by the wind. The animal has only caught scent of him now. Just what he needs, an angry dog challenging his right to be here. He scans the edge of the ditch for a stick, or a good-size stone, and is relieved a moment later when the barking stops.
According to the young man he talked to when he paid for his meal at the restaurant in Medicine Hat, Calgary is less than three hours away. If he got an early start from there first thing in the morning, he could be in Fort McMurray by the end of the day. He turns to look at the shimmer of Medicine Hat on the horizon, a long walk back, but the alternative is getting off the highway to find someplace sheltered to sleep. He’s in a barren and exposed stretch of country, and his face feels scoured and hot from the wind that rose shortly after he set out. He doesn’t relish more of this.
Waiting for Joe Page 14