Mother Love

by L. R. Wright

  He didn’t make any money—but he didn’t lose money, either—and as Belinda liked to say, the store kept him off the streets. She helped him out sometimes, on the weekends, and he hired a couple of neighborhood teenagers, too.

  It was two o’clock by the time Belinda had cleaned up the back lawn and walked through the village to the store. On the way she greeted several people she knew and was struck again by the smallness of the place. It was beautiful, Sechelt, sure it was—but it was also killingly small.

  Inside the Jolly Shopper, sunlight streamed onto the black-and-white-tiled floor and slid along the aisles, which were unusually wide. Wooden signs hung from the ceiling—“Cleaning Supplies,” “Canned Goods,” “Magazines”—written in the same flowing script as “The Jolly Shopper” sign outside: Belinda’s father had had them done by an acquaintance, now retired, who used to teach shop at the local high school. They were carved, polished, and laminated.

  He was behind the counter, talking quietly to a small woman wearing jeans and a white sweater who was listing to her right side because of an enormous denim bag that sagged from her left shoulder.

  “Okay then, well—you tell me,” the woman said. Belinda’s father removed several items from the red wire basket that was sitting on the counter between them: cigarettes, a bag of chips, a copy of the National Enquirer.

  “That’s it?” said the woman.

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay then.” The woman pulled a string bag from her pocket and packed it with the items that remained in the basket. Belinda saw cans of vegetables go in, and a loaf of bread, some tins of tuna and salmon, a carton of cottage cheese.

  She studied her father carefully while he wrote in the credit book. He was definitely aging. The skin of his neck was loose. Behind his face lay the shadow of the crumpled face he’d wear ten years from now. His fringe of dark hair had become almost completely gray. His shoulders were slightly bent, he had no waist, and there was a plumpness upon his once elegant fingers that caused her particular sorrow.

  The woman left the store, carrying the string bag in her right hand and listing considerably less.

  Belinda’s father turned his smiling blue eyes upon her. “What are you staring at?” He said it good-humoredly, though. He was used to Belinda’s gaze, which she knew others sometimes found intrusively direct.

  “Nothing,” she said. “You need to get some exercise.”

  “I do. In my garden.”

  “No, I mean seriously.”

  “So do I.”

  Her father perched on the tall stool he kept back there and rested his feet on the top rung. On a shelf below the counter, out of sight, a radio tuned to the CBC’s FM station played softly. There was no one in the shop but Belinda and her father. He was gazing at her expectantly, but now that she was here Belinda was reluctant to tell him her news.

  She leaned on the glass counter and looked through it at a neat display of gum, chocolate bars, and candy. “It’s a good thing you didn’t have this place when I was a kid.”

  “You want a chocolate bar?”

  Belinda shook her head. “Dad—how come you didn’t have any other kids but me?”

  Belinda knew exactly what would happen now. Her father lifted his left hand and smoothed it over his head, carefully stroking front to back, over the bald spot and down across the fringe, and then he grasped the back of his neck and kneaded it. Performing this action required him to look down, away from Belinda.

  “We were afraid we might not get it perfect twice in a row,” he replied, as he had every one of the dozens of times she had asked the question. There was some weariness in his voice.

  Belinda turned her head to look out the window. A feeling of unutterable melancholy had seized her. It was sickening, how profoundly life could change. It had been like having a volcano or a tornado happen. A natural disaster of some kind had picked her up, held her upside down, shaken her energetically, and then dropped her on her head. The world had not been the same since.

  “You have to put it behind you, Belinda,” said her father softly.

  “I have. I did. But it keeps coming back.”

  Belinda could see an inch of white, almost hairless skin between the gray sock on his left foot and the bottom of his pant leg. There wasn’t a similar gap on the right leg.

  “I’m pregnant, Dad.”

  A look of awe blossomed on his face. He slid off the stool and reached across the counter to take her hands. It was a completely spontaneous gesture, so tender, so uncharacteristic, that Belinda, laughing, began to weep.

  “Oh, honey,” said her father. “Sit down.”

  “Where?” Belinda laughed again. “Dad, look at me.” She freed her hands and held her arms away from her sides. “I’m as strong as a horse. Listen. I haven’t told Raymond. I don’t know if I’m going to have it.”

  He seemed bewildered, as if he hadn’t understood her words. And then he did understand. “Belinda,” he said urgently. “Please quit your job.” He kept on talking, raising his voice over her protests. “Nothing has happened the way it was supposed to.” He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead as if he were sweating, but the day wasn’t warm enough for that. “Nothing. Nothing!” He ignored Belinda, who was shaking her head, having heard this before. “You weren’t supposed to end up answering phones in a damned hospital,” he said. “You were supposed to go to university. And then you got married. Far too young, far too young, and you married beneath you.”

  “Oh, Dad,” Belinda said impatiently. “Don’t be silly. I don’t deserve Raymond, for heaven’s sake. He’s too good for me.”

  “Now—at least do this thing right, Belinda.”

  “It’s all this—stuff.” She felt so strong, outside. Yet inside, she was all mush. “This leftover—crap. I’m not ready to be a mother.” She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s totally ridiculous.”

  Her father came out from behind the counter and put his arms around her. She rested her cheek against his shoulder and let her eyes close. She put her arms around his middle, resting them where his hips ought to have been. She could have counted on her fingers the number of times in her life that her father had hugged her. “You haven’t put it behind you, either, Dad.”

  “I’ve started to.” He pulled away. There was eagerness in his face and a freshness that made Belinda resentful and surly. “I’ve been thinking about taking some action,” he said. “And this news of yours—”

  He looked at her curiously, with busy eyes. His cheeks were flushed. Trepidation stole over Belinda, and she wanted to go home.

  “Come on,” he said abruptly.

  He led Belinda through the shop and into the sitting room. There was a sofa in there, and two chairs, and a desk and a filing cabinet, and a worktable. On the table were several of the cardboard cartons upon which years earlier he had wielded a savage felt pen: they were labeled “chest of drawers,” “night table,” “closet,” “desk.”

  “I thought you’d gotten rid of this stuff.” Belinda was surprised that she could speak: her throat had closed at the sight of those boxes.

  “Couldn’t. Wasn’t ready.” His eyes were blazing. “But I’m ready now.”

  Belinda stared at the boxes. She almost expected to be able to see right through the cardboard. She remembered a soft white sweater with pearl buttons. Black ankle boots. A green-and-black-plaid woolen scarf.

  “Dad.” Belinda’s heart began to hammer in her chest. She put her hands over her mouth.

  “I’m going to go through them all,” he said. “Every single box.”

  “Dad.” She thought—inexplicably—of the garbage strewn across the lawn.

  “And then I’m going to find her.”

  Belinda moved to stand face-to-face with him. “Dad. No.”

  The bell over the front door jangled as someone came into the shop. Belinda’s father nodded, affirming his decision, and left to wait on his customer.

  Alone with the boxes, Belinda was para
lyzed with fear. She struggled, broke free, and backed out of the sitting room.

  “Belinda!” called her father at the edge of her vision, but she hurried past him, her eyes fixed on the street beyond.

  ABBOTSFORD

  Maria Buscombe knelt again in front of the doll. I have nothing to lose, she told herself. It was a brand-new thought.

  She took her rising excitement into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee.

  She saw herself as radioactive. Potentially contaminative. So she would have to be fastidiously cautious.

  But she could do it.

  Twenty thousand dollars a year for ten years, in exchange for her absence. That was the agreement.

  Only seven years had passed.

  But Maria was opting out.

  Chapter 2

  THE SECHELT PENINSULA lies along the southwestern flank of British Columbia, sheltered by the coastline against which it nestles on one side and by the lumbering presence of Vancouver Island to the west. It is almost completely surrounded by the waters of the Pacific Ocean, linked to the mainland at its center by a strip of land less than a mile wide. Here the village of Sechelt is located, halfway along the stretch of shoreline that is known as the Sunshine Coast. It is bracketed by the waters of the Strait of Georgia to the south and Sechelt Inlet to the north.

  The highway that passes through Sechelt ambles northeast to the end of the peninsula, where a ferry travels across Jervis Inlet to Powell River, and southwest through Gibsons to Langdale and another ferry route, this one to Horseshoe Bay, near Vancouver.

  Autumn sunshine glints from the red bark of arbutus trees, strikes sparks from the blue sea, and bathes the islands dotting the Strait of Georgia in a dreamlike haze. The days grow shorter, their summer-warm afternoons sandwiched between suddenly cool mornings and evenings. But gardens continue to produce tomatoes and roses, zucchini and chrysanthemums, cucumbers and dahlias: the fruiting and the flowering won’t stop until frost, which might come in November, or in December, or not at all.

  Chapter 3

  KARL ALBERG WAS thinking about early retirement that Wednesday morning. Sometimes, like now, these were cheerful thoughts. Having a whole lot of spare time, for travel and... whatever; it might not be so bad, he told himself, pulling away from the RCMP detachment. As he passed the Jolly Shopper it occurred to him that he might even get himself a second career, like the schoolteacher. Maybe he’d open up a ship chandlery somewhere. Not here, though. As Alberg drove along the highway next to Davis Bay, he tried not to admit how difficult it would be, after twelve years here, to leave the Sunshine Coast.

  ***

  It was midmorning when Alberg and Cassandra Mitchell, on the Queen of New Westminster, wrapped their jackets around themselves and went out on deck. The mountainous coastline and the hilly islands thrusting skyward were swathed in green that held glimpses of red and gold, and a shallow fog bank skimmed the surface of the sea.

  Alberg put his arms around Cassandra and rested his chin on the top of her head. He felt protective of her, and for the moment she was allowing this. She habitually stood closer to him, now, than she used to, which both pleased and worried him.

  From Horseshoe Bay the highway wound southeast toward Vancouver, passing north of the city through the municipalities of West Vancouver and North Vancouver. It crossed Burrard Inlet as the Second Narrows Bridge, bisected the city of Burnaby and skirted New Westminster, then swept into the Fraser Valley.

  Alberg and Cassandra were on their way to Calgary. They were driving a rented car, which they would leave at the Calgary airport on Sunday. Cassandra wasn’t looking forward to the flight home—she would feel claustrophobic, she knew it. But at least it was only for an hour.

  In the valley, a median separated the east- and westbound lanes, a wide strip of rolling land, elegantly treed, where daffodils proliferated in the spring. It was nearing noon. They had driven forty miles inland. The mists had evaporated, the sky was a deeper blue, and the sun was hot.

  They edged past the towns of Langley, Fort Langley, Aldergrove, and Abbotsford, and Alberg peered with new interest at what he could see of each place. Could he and Cassandra live here? he wondered. Or there? They were pretty towns. He tried to imagine them occupying one of the houses that sprawled up the mountainside near Abbotsford. But couldn’t.

  On the way to Chilliwack Cassandra gazed out the window at fields of corn and blueberry bushes and expansive dairy farms. The land stretched rich and languid to the mountains, fertile land where once had sprawled an enormous lake.

  From Chilliwack the highway ascended and for the first time looped close to the Fraser River, wide and silver, and then it veered away at the town of Hope and offered drivers a choice among the Fraser Canyon Highway, the Coquihalla, or the Hope-Princeton.

  Alberg chose the Coquihalla, which soared and swooped northeast through the mountains, traveling high. Halfway to the town of Merritt, Cassandra spotted in the rapidly approaching distance a small bear standing transfixed by the side of the freeway; by the time they reached him he had turned and run, and as they sped past he was scrambling up the mountainside, displaying, thought Cassandra, the traction of a small tank. From Merritt they continued on to Kamloops, a small city on the Thompson River surrounded by brown hillsides and sagebrush, where they would spend the night. Alberg had been posted there before getting the Sechelt assignment. His marriage had ended in Kamloops. It seemed like another lifetime.

  They found a motel room that had glass doors opening onto a grassy bank from which they could look down upon the river, and after dinner they sat out there, on lawn chairs provided by the management.

  “This is good,” said Alberg, his hands behind his head. “This is very good.” He knew he would miss the sea, but maybe a river would do. Or a lake. He’d learned to sail on a lake, after all. Admittedly, that was Lake Ontario, which was damn near big enough to be called an ocean.

  His left arm was burned, Cassandra noticed, despite the sunblock. “Have you decided on a present yet?” she asked him.

  Alberg sighed. “Nope.”

  “Karl. For God’s sake. The wedding’s in three days.” It was the wedding of his elder daughter, Janey. He opened his eyes to gaze at the river and the rapidly darkening western sky.

  “Did you talk to Maura?” The name of Alberg’s ex-wife felt awkward in Cassandra’s mouth, like a foreign phrase she wasn’t sure how to pronounce.

  “Something’s come over Maura,” said Karl regretfully, “since she got married again. She’s not as nice as she used to be.”

  Cassandra laughed.

  “How the hell am I supposed to figure out what to get for them?” Alberg complained. “She’s marrying a total stranger.”

  It became very hot in Kamloops in the summertime. It had been very hot that day, in fact, even though it was late September. But now the air had cooled, and Cassandra smelled autumn. “I think I have to go inside, Karl.” It was a request. She could not yet bear to be alone.

  He stood immediately and pulled her to her feet. He put his arms around her and held her close. She knew that he took it for granted, now, that they’d be getting married eventually. She wondered if this was true.

  They went inside together. Cassandra closed the door and pulled the curtains, and Alberg turned on the television.

  “Maybe you should give them silver,” she said.

  Alberg looked confused. “Silver?”

  “Flatware. Knives and forks and spoons.”

  “Do people do that anymore?” he said doubtfully.

  “I think so.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and thought about it.

  “It’ll be from the two of us, of course,” she said. “I’d like to pay half.”

  “You mean, in a wooden box?” Where the hell had that come from? he wondered. And then remembered such a box sitting on the buffet in his parents’ dining room. In fact, it still sat there. Only it was just his mother’s dining room now.

  “Maybe,” said Ca
ssandra. She was bent over slightly, arranging things on her night table: her diary, the special ballpoint pen she used to write in it, the three books she’d brought from the library.

  “Did you check those books out on your card?” said Alberg curiously. “Have you even got a library card?”

  She shot him an indignant glance. “Of course I have.”

  “I thought it might be a perk,” he said. “I thought maybe you got to sashay out of there with any book you wanted, whenever you felt like it.”

  “Fix your mind on the subject at hand.” She straightened and ran her hand through her short, curly hair, and Alberg smiled at its springiness and the silvery glints in it. “How about it? Flatware. What do you think?”

  Alberg tried to imagine Janey and the musician years from now, having a house, and a dining room, and family gatherings. Having kids. He and Maura hadn’t had any silver. “I don’t even know this guy she’s marrying,” he grumbled.

  “I’m becoming impatient with you,” said Cassandra. She gathered up her nightclothes. “I’m going to have a bath.”

  She hesitated, and he smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here.” He would make a point of calling out to her, casually, every so often, so that she would know that he was there, and she was safe.

  As he prepared for bed, Alberg was pleased with himself. Seldom that day had he thought of work. It would be difficult to leave, sure. But not impossible. Here he was, hundreds of miles away from the detachment and perfectly happy. Of course, he knew it was in good hands. And there wasn’t much going on, at the moment. Although the vandalism bothered him. That’s why he’d gone in that morning, before he and Cassandra headed for the ferry. He’d been thumbing through the reports when Sid Sokolowski had loomed into view in his office doorway.

  “What are you doing?” said the sergeant, exasperated. He had recently acquired reading glasses and enjoyed peering over them. He was peering now, and an expression of disapproval was establishing itself firmly on his face.