by Dani Couture
The week before, instead of going to gym, Ferd’s class had been made to watch several snow safety videos. Even the most innocent act had been made lethal. Snowballs harboured slivers of ice and broken glass that could take your eye out. Go sledding and find yourself impaled by a tree branch. Build a snow fort and it could collapse and suffocate you. Play outside too long and a doctor would have to amputate your cold-blackened toes. Ferd had had nightmares for days after watching a dramatization of a snowplow clipping the legs off a dummy dressed in dark green snow pants like his own. He could not get the blue flashing light or the sound of the metal scraping along asphalt and ice out of his head.
“You go camping. I’ll just stay here and guard the house,” Ferd said.
Gaetan walked out of the bedroom. It was his day off. “What’s this about camping?” he asked. He rubbed his sleep-crusted eyes with the palms of his hands.
“We’re going camping. Pack up what you need. Bring a book, some extra socks.”
“Algoma. Hon. There’s at least three feet of snow out there.” He looked outside. It was snowing again, large fat flakes. She’d finally snapped, he thought with a degree of relief. It was like an elastic band that had been aimed at his face for months had finally been released.
“We’re not going ‘out there,’” she said. A small smile played across her lips. “We’re camping here. In the basement. Just like before.”
Gaetan leaned against the side of the fridge. He watched his wife as she packed an odd assortment of food into an open cooler. Jars of pickles and beets, oatmeal, Cheez Whiz, sugar, tinned crab, and canned sausages. She reached blindly into the cupboards and packed whatever she pulled out.
She sing-songed everything she said. “Pack up, pack up, pack up.”
Gaetan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “Why am I going to ‘camp’ in the basement, when I can sleep in my own bed, eat at my own table?”
“You just are,” she said. Her eyes were flat now, her lips tightly pursed together.
Gaetan backed away from her slowly, as he would from a badger, allowing her a wide berth.
Worried that her family was slowly and irreversibly falling apart, Algoma knew she needed a plan to pull them back together, to learn to be a family of three now, not four anymore. The dynamic now shifted and reduced.
They had always camped together. Every summer, the Beaudoins camped at provincial parks or on crown land. They spent weekends and extended vacations with dirt under their fingernails, their hands calloused from canoeing and kayaking, mouths hungry for more fire-split hotdogs. She would draw on those rituals to bring her family back together and the best part was that they wouldn’t even have to leave the house this time.
Once Algoma had packed all the essentials, she consulted her checklist. Tent. Water purifier. Hatchet. Cast iron pan. Sleeping bags. A deck of cards. Candle lantern. Flashlight. Batteries. Flint. Every item checked off with erasable marker on her laminated list. The ghost checks of past trips had stained the plastic. Nothing was ever entirely gone.
The gear was packed into three large canvas backpacks, the kind meant for mountaineering, not weekend car-camping excursions. The smallest of the three packs was meant for Ferd, although it was still large enough to topple him. Every kind of weather had been accounted for, even though they were going to remain indoors. The bags were stuffed with raincoats, sweaters, and shorts. Long johns, bathing suits, and fishing hats. This time, she was prepared.
Gaetan reappeared behind her, holding an unopened beer bottle like a flashlight, pointing it at the packed bags.
“What, are we going to toast marshmallows in the basement or something?”
Algoma held three peeled sticks in one hand as she walked down the basement stairs, Gaetan and Ferd single file behind her.
“We’re here!”
She threw down her pack and set about untying the tent from the bottom of it. “Ferd, you start putting your tent up. Get your dad to help you if you need to,” she said.
Gaetan was already digging through the cooler, between the cans of tuna and frozen bag of peas, for something good to eat and finding nothing. “I have to work tomorrow. How does that fit into your camping schedule?”
Algoma struggled with a clasp. “You’ll just come back to the site after work.”
“It’s cold down here.”
“I turned the furnace off.”
“What? The pipes will freeze.”
“Build a fire if you’re going to complain,” she said, pointing at the wood stove.
Gaetan sighed and gave in. It was easier. He dug through the kindling bin for some good starter sticks.
“Why don’t you show Ferd how to build a fire?” Algoma asked. She was working on the second clasp now.
Ferd already knew how, but Gaetan, again, agreed. It felt like Algoma was sleepwalking and that waking her could be dangerous. He nodded. “Sure. Get over here, kid.”
Gaetan opened the heavy cast iron door of the wood stove and raked out the mountains of ash he’d meant to remove last week, or the week before, he couldn’t remember. Inside, he made a small tepee out of the kindling. “Get me some newspaper,” he said, his hand stretched out, waiting.
Ferd grabbed the business section from the kindling pile, pulled off the first sheet, and crumpled it in his hands.
“No. Not like that. Remember? We shred the paper, we don’t crumple it.” Gaetan grabbed the crumpled ball out of Ferd’s hands and flattened it out on the floor. He folded the newspaper in half and tore off pieces in long thin strips that curled up at the ends and then threaded the paper curls through his kindling tepee.
“And you keep one for yourself to get the fire going.” Gaetan held a limp strip of newspaper and lit the bottom with his lighter. He quickly tossed the lit paper onto the tepee, where the other paper and tinder caught flame. “Now blow on it.”
Ferd crouched down in front of the small flame and blew on it until he was dizzy and ready to pass out. The smallest pieces of kindling caught fire first, then the larger ones. Once the fire was burning steadily, Gaetan added a quartered birch log to the mix. The white bark sizzled and crackled like chicken skin.
By the time the fire was roaring, Algoma had finished setting up the main tent, an old canvas military affair that took up half of the basement. The other tent, which had not been used since Leo’s accident, was a newer piece of camp architecture. It was bright blue, complete with screened windows, proper venting, and a vestibule, so the boys would not have to bring their dirty shoes inside. A feature that had cinched the purchase for Algoma.
While Gaetan and Ferd admired their fire and tried to warm up in the steadily cooling basement, Algoma unpacked the camp cutlery and plastic plates, arranging them carefully on a beach towel she’d set out on the carpet.
“I need a nice low fire, boys,” she said. “We’re making chili.”
She pulled out two ancient cans of Manwich that Ferd recognized from the cupboard. He was sure the cans had been in the there since before he was born, maybe even before his parents had been born. When his father had tried to throw the cans out last year, Algoma had resisted. “It’s emergency food,” she’d said, holding the cans to her chest, refusing to acknowledge the well-passed expiry dates. “It’s still good. I know it. Those dates are just to get you to buy more. It’s marketing. A scam.”
Ferd looked at the tins. Maybe this was the emergency she’d been talking about.
Just as they sat down to their dinner, there was a knock at the side door.
Gaetan stood up to answer it; however, Algoma stared him into submission. He sat back down and spooned another mouthful of metallic-tasting food into his mouth. They sat in silence for a few moments. The doorbell rang next.
“Are we going to get it?” Ferd asked, looking back and forth between his parents. Algoma shook
her head and Gaetan shook his, but not in response to Ferd’s question, rather at the entire situation. He felt defeated, things were out of control. He’d been sure that Algoma wouldn’t be able to maintain the game through dinner, but she had.
The visitor knocked on the door one more time and then there was silence.
“There,” said Algoma. “That’s better.”
She smiled and gathered the dishes to wash them in the laundry tub.
The basement was gloomy, darkness falling fast. Ferd looked up and saw the light bulbs had been removed from the light fixtures. When had she done that? He shrugged his shoulders and picked up a flashlight and went into the wood room. Algoma whistled in the background as she washed the dinner dishes. Ferd could already taste gritty detergent on his tongue.
At the end of the third day, Sunday, Algoma stood over the wood stove as she prepared a dinner of pancake and Vienna sausage sandwiches.
“You will eat it,” she said to Ferd when he whined about what was for dinner. “Pancakes are bread and Viennas are meat. It’s just like a regular sandwich. Don’t act spoiled.”
Ferd sat cross-legged in the vestibule of his tent with the screen zipped up. He stared at his mother, bored holes into the back of her skull. He was tired of this game—the bizarre meals, endless games of cards, and exercise sessions. He wanted to go upstairs, open the fridge, and have a real meal. He wanted French fries and hunks of marble cheese. He didn’t even need to slice the cheese, he’d just eat it out of the package. The whole thing. All of it in one shot. Anything but this.
“I think there’s meat in the fridge upstairs,” Ferd suggested. “It’s just—”
“It’s just what, Ferdinand?” she said without looking at him. “It’s just that you want to eat old lunch meat that needs to be thrown out? You’ll get botulism.”
Ferd looked at the clock, but it read, as it had since they had arrived in the basement, three o’clock. Either it had died, or his mother had taken out the batteries, so she could control time as well. I wish I could take the batteries out of you, Ferd thought.
Algoma turned and proudly handed Ferd a plastic plate with three blackened Vienna sausages sandwiched between two enormous undercooked pancakes.
“Do you want mustard with that?”
Ferd could barely watch his mother eat her “sandwich.” She used a plastic knife and fork to cut it into small squares. Her face was soft and relaxed. She seemed happy, at least. That was something.
When she wasn’t looking, Ferd slid his plate into his tent. He was looking forward to going to sleep soon, which was a first. By the time he went to sleep and woke up again, his dad would be home. If Ferd was lucky, Gaetan would have brought treats—jerky, peanuts, and pop—back with him, in secret, as he’d promised the night before. Real food, not the patchwork quilt of canned food and dry goods his mother kept pairing together with unbearable enthusiasm.
With every meal they ate in the basement, the recipes got worse. More inventive. Ferd opened up the lid of the cooler to see what was left: one can of flaked tuna, a milk chocolate bar, a single package of Saltine crackers, mustard, marshmallows, and a can of sardines. He shuddered thinking about tomorrow’s breakfast. Maybe he would make a break for it during the night.
The next morning, Ferd woke with his face pressed into his cold leftover pancake and Vienna sausage sandwich. He fisted the dried mustard off his cheek, scraped bits of sausage off his neck, and tossed his plate, complete with destroyed leftovers, onto the carpet outside the tent. He knew what the day held already. It would start with jogging on the spot for half an hour and then move on to playing cards, which lasted until lunch.
He lay back down and wondered when this would be over. His father had told him that it would only be a few days and that, on the other side, his mother would be better, more capable. Whatever that meant. Gaetan had made Ferd promise that he would not go upstairs for anything—the illusion had to be maintained—however, with all his writing supplies up in the living room, it was difficult. It had been days since he’d written to Leo. How would he explain that he was being held hostage by their own mother and her terrible cooking? Every hour that passed put more distance between him and his brother. Without the letters to keep them tethered to one another, there was only cold, empty space.
Ferd looked forward to school. The water fountain beside the gymnasium. The janitor’s sink in the utility closet. The stream in the woods behind the school, even though it would be buried under the snow. That it was all there comforted him.
Ferd sat still and listened. Everything was quiet except for the buzz saw of his father’s snoring. His parents were still asleep. He quietly unzipped his tent and crawled outside. Beside his door, he found the dinner he’d tossed out and a plastic bag his father had dropped off when he’d returned home in the early hours.
“Awesome,” he whispered. Ferd tore the bag open and chewed on a piece of jerky that was inside. He would wait until later to open the can of pop, in case the sound woke his parents. It was still dark outside, still early. He reached for the tin of peanuts, ripped off the lid, and ate them a handful at a time.
When the family had gone camping for real—packing up the car and driving for hours on end—Ferd and Leo had always been the first ones up. They liked to make breakfast, thinking their parents couldn’t hear their stage-whispered instructions to each other. The memory gave Ferd an idea. He pulled the Saltines, chocolate, and marshmallows out of the cooler and unwrapped the previous night’s horrifying leftovers, so that he could use the tinfoil.
Using the top of the cooler as a counter, Ferd assembled a half dozen improvised S’mores. He carefully placed the squares on the tinfoil, which now smelled like Vienna sausages, and wrapped it up carefully. Within minutes, he was able to coax the embers in the wood stove into a roaring fire. He touched the top of the stove to test the heat and burnt his finger.
He yelped and sucked on his finger, sure he’d woken up his parents, but they remained asleep.
Ferd sucked on his burnt finger and tossed the tinfoil package on top of the stove. He’d never made S’mores before, only seen them on television. He estimated that it would take about ten minutes for the chocolate to melt. By the time he took the packet off the stove, everything inside had melted into a chocolate soup. Undeterred, he carefully opened the tinfoil packet and scraped the melted chocolate, marshmallow, and burnt and broken crackers into a plastic bowl. He added two spoons and stood at the front of his parent’s tent and yelled: “Breakfast!”
A smudge of chocolate still at the corner of her mouth, Algoma waved to Ferd as he ran to school. He didn’t look back once. She went back downstairs to where Gaetan was still sleeping in the tent, his sleeping bag pulled up to his chin.
“Gae, go sleep in your bed,” she said. “Go upstairs. Everything is good. It’s all good. Everything will be all right.”
FEBRUARY
4:47 p.m. -12°C. Dead calm.
Mannequin dressed in tuque and wedding dress.
Sometimes when Ferd skipped school, he went to his mother’s work. She never faulted him for wanting her company, even if it was a school day. He could learn in the classroom, or he could learn on the floor. It didn’t matter to her. When the school secretary called about his absences, Algoma always covered for him.
“He had an appointment. You must have lost the note. Look again.”
She performed for the secretary so often that she began to believe her own stories. And soon, the secretary stopped calling.
While Algoma folded a pile of newly donated sweaters and Sandra was at the cash register, Ferd hid inside the warm centre of a circular clothing rack, a small woollen world all to himself. Some days, like today, he imagined the clothing racks were portals. He sat in the middle, imagined new galaxies, far-flung constellations. He could hear shoppers rifling through the clothes, circling like g
reat fleshy spaceships flying around him, looking for the right size or a particular colour. When a woman’s hand pierced the cotton barrier of his world, he imagined it was Leo’s reaching out to him, so he grabbed it. The woman screamed and wrenched her hand free and he was alone again.
Ferd hadn’t even made it out the door that morning before his mother had read his face.
“If you work on your homework, you can come to The Shop,” she’d said. “I’ll call in for you. A doctor’s appointment.”
“You told them I had one last week.”
“Dentist, then.”
The women who worked at The Shop, four in total, one or two at any given time, patted Ferd’s head whenever they passed by him. At The Shop, he had a handful of mothers, someone to turn to at every corner. Warm waists and strong hands. The store was the only place he let people hug him.
Ferd exited the clothing rack. The woman whose hand he’d grabbed was now trying something on in the change room. The thin curtain billowed every time she moved, exposing flashes of pale skin. He tried not to look at her bare feet on the stiff carpet. The sight, for some reason, always made him sad. The vulnerability, the clothing strewn on the floor.
He made a beeline for the housewares section at the back of the store. The shelves were full of pots and pans and jam jars filled with cutlery. There were baskets of linens, a cluster of stand-up fans, and a couch with a $50 tag pinned to one of the cushions. He walked through the layers of drapes that hung from the ceiling, hands dragging along the smooth fabric. They were like flags in a medieval castle, retired jersey numbers hung from the roof of a hockey area, a poorly built maze.
The drapes still swaying behind him, Ferd picked up an old space heater from one of the shelves. He set it on the ground and plugged it into an outlet in the wall. He sat down and positioned the heater in front of him, turning both the heat and fan on high, and enjoyed the blast of a false summer breeze. The sound of the curtains rustling behind him was reminiscent of trees at the height of summer, or the sound of running water. He thought he could hear Leo speaking to him from across the river. He closed his eyes and tried to listen harder to make out the words, but nothing came.