She says now, “Forget the baby. Let’s cut up Johnny. I’ll take the head, you can have the body. I like to pull at his eyebrows with my teeth, roll my tongue on his eyes. His mouth is best, I like to sit on that sneer.”
Loraine is giggling, holding herself as if she may pee. “Oh, that’s bad.” Then, she says, “He’s got body odour, you ever notice?”
“Of course,” Charlene says. She feels as if she’s been drinking. She’s talking like a fool.
Still, Loraine’s playing along, her belly protruding, her hands splayed near her crotch now, mouth smiling. Charlene feels sudden revulsion for everything as Loraine says, “And always worried about his size. He says it’s because of his father, a death-sex thing.”
“He said that?” Charlene is hurt. Her eyes burn.
Loraine understands her slip, and says, “He’s not smart.”
“No, he’s not,” Charlene agrees. “Phil Barkman’s smaller, that’s what Johnny said.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he saw him at the baptism. Funny, coming home from your baptism and talking about the size of the preacher’s prick.”
“Huh.”
“I got my period last night,” Charlene says. Loraine takes this in, her mouth moving; the house is talking as the wind blows. Charlene watches Loraine’s mouth and thinks how things go round in circles. Johnny on Loraine’s mouth, then on Charlene’s, back to Loraine’s, mouths on bodies, the transmission of germs and saliva and body fluids. Charlene’s never really thought about it till now but she assumes Loraine is healthy. It’s Johnny they have to worry about. “I don’t know why I said that,” Charlene says.
“It’s okay,” Loraine says. She lifts her small shoulders as if shifting an uncomfortable load. She pulls her coat up over her back. It is chilly in the house; there is nothing left to say.
Charlene offers more tea but Loraine declines. Their parting is pleasant, they even hug carefully, as if they were hesitant lovers. Charlene tells Loraine to come again and Loraine says she will. After Loraine is outside, Charlene stands and watches for her car but it’s blowing snow so she sees only a flash of a red light and then nothing. It feels like a blizzard. She stays by the kitchen sink for a long time, facing the window, looking past the lace curtains she sewed; looking out into the darkness.
At one point she realizes she is crying but doesn’t know why, she is not sad, not angry. The clock shows 8:00 p.m., still early. In the fridge she discovers some wine, and drinks that; holds a glass by the stem and takes large gulps. The chill of the wine hurts her teeth. Her throat aches. Later, she scours the house for more liquor but the bottles are all empty. She sits at the table and smokes, then remembers the little bottle of cognac, Hennessy, that she took from the hotel room in Kenora. She drinks that quickly, not bothering to pour it into her glass. She sits for what seems a long time and enjoys the warmth inside her, wishing for more.
She remembers Johnny pointing out a place in Île des Chênes that sells liquor. An old man and his daughter who make a living at this. She pulls on her coat, goes outside and starts the half-ton. The snow is hard and thick and swirls around the truck. At the gravel road Charlene turns right towards the 312. She shouldn’t be out in this mess. She wonders if Johnny will make it home tonight. The store is closing as Charlene pulls up at the centre of Île des Chênes. She scrambles up the step and bangs at the door. An old man in a camouflage jacket lets her in. Charlene knocks snow from her jacket and says, “Thank you.” She asks for two bottles.
“That’s fine,” the old man says. “That’s fine.” He wants to talk but Charlene ignores him. She pays and wades her way back to the truck. She drives slowly, hugging the shoulder. At one point, a semi blows by and Charlene moans, lost for a moment. Back on the 312 she feels safer, and actually takes a second to wonder why she is so desperate, as if there were a cliff edge somewhere up ahead and she were running pell-mell for it.
She can’t see anything on the gravel road. The world beyond the windshield is a dark blanket. The headlights are useless, they pick up driving snow. The half-ton crawls. A few times Charlene stops, gets out and walks out onto the road to feel with her feet where the ditch begins. She’s wearing little cotton gloves and her hands are numb. Finally, like a lighthouse warning boats from rocks, she spies the timid and cloudy yard-light of her farm. At least, she thinks it’s her yard.
The truck slides into the ditch as Charlene attempts to find the driveway. As if it had been invited, it settles carefully into the snow at a slight angle. The engine sputters and dies. Charlene gathers her bottles and purse and strikes out for the house. People die doing this, she thinks; they just crawl up to the door and die. She finds the house and shoulders her way into the front room. Though the wind still howls at the windows and knocks at the roof, the silence of the house is shocking.
It’s cold. Charlene brushes off her clothes, turns up the heat and stokes the wood stove. When her hands have warmed, she takes a glass and pours herself a drink. She swallows, her throat burns, her stomach jumps, and she wonders what inspired her to risk a trip like that. Then she remembers Loraine standing in the kitchen. Like a young girl she was really, flagrantly peeling up her blouse, or did Charlene do that? But, still, Charlene’s not angry, just disappointed, and that’s why she’s bowing before this golden liquid.
Charlene thinks about her own life. She refuses to be beaten down. Even now, with this turmoil in her life, she’s risen above the people of Lesser. Still, they see her as a joke; she’s the fool. Everyone looks at her when they do their banking. The men smirk as if she’s easy now, a fine target. They think that if Johnny’s doing it, she should want to even things out. Just last week Mr. Hamm asked her if she believed in equal rights. Charlene smiled and pretended not to hear. “Will that be all, Mr. Hamm?” she asked. He looked at her breasts then and Charlene reddened, her neck hot. She didn’t mind Mr. Hamm, she talked to him sometimes, but he had no right to stare at her breasts.
Charlene hates her breasts. Thinks they’re too large. She lifts a hand now and cups one through her sweater. Too heavy and full. By fifty she’ll be sagging to her navel like her mother. She finishes her glass and pours some more; a little spills onto her lap. Half the bottle’s gone. It’s eleven o’clock.
That’s the thing about Loraine. She’s so small. All over. But her breasts especially. Perky little things. Nipples not too big. Johnny must love them in his mouth. Nausea hits her. Charlene folds herself at her stomach. She swallows. The phone rings, a sharp clanging that circles around the room and lands on Charlene’s head. She tries to remember where the phone is. She stands, wobbles, and laughs. The kitchen. The damn thing is so loud. She’s wanted to get a pulse phone, but Johnny likes the noise; his hearing’s going on him.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.” Charlene isn’t sure if she’s counting her steps or the number of rings. My, that bottle had some strong stuff. She’ll have to be careful. She winces, draws a breath and lifts the receiver.
“Charlene, it’s Johnny.”
“Hi, Johnny.” She’s concentrating, inching out her words, working at the syllables.
“Where were you? I’ve been trying to phone. You had me worried.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just ploughs ahead. “I’m staying at the centre tonight. We’re locked in because of the blizzard. A few kids are here too. We’re going to wait it out.”
Charlene pulls back from the phone and looks around the room.
“Charlene?”
The phone goes back. “Yeah?”
“You all right?”
“Fine, just fine.” She has this sense of always talking on the phone with Johnny and him asking if she’s okay. “Are you okay?” she says.
“Yes. You drinking, Charlene?”
“No. Loraine came by tonight.”
“She did? Why?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? We’re friends.” Charlene waits, listening to Johnny breathe. “I don’t know,” she says finally. “I don’t know.” Then qui
ckly, she adds, “Johnny, do you like my breasts?”
“Of course.”
“I wish you were here, Johnny, you could do me right now.”
“Charlene, you are drunk.”
“So?”
“Listen, Charlene,” and here Johnny lowers his voice, “I’d love to be with you right now, I really would, but you have to put the bottle away. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“And don’t go outside. Turn up the heat. Crawl into bed and I’ll be there in the morning.”
“I got my period, Johnny. Last night.”
Johnny’s lost. Charlene can almost hear his mind grappling with this comment. “Is it bad?” he asks. “Different?”
“No, the same.” Charlene pours herself another drink. She hopes Johnny can hear the splash though she knows he won’t. She’s being spiteful. She says, “You see, I wanted to have a baby.”
“You did?” Johnny says.
Charlene laughs. He’s so stupid. “Yeah, except my timing was off. I should have aimed for the week before.”
“Listen, Charlene, I’ve got to phone other people. Parents. But, we’ll talk about this. We can have a baby.”
“Really, Johnny?”
Charlene pulls away and pours another glass, but when she tilts her head back to the phone and listens for Johnny it’s too late, he’s gone. She makes it back to her chair, opens the stove door and leaves it ajar. She moves in closer to the heat, throws in two more logs, lights a cigarette and closes her eyes. Perhaps she should have asked Loraine to stay the night. They could have slept together in the big bed upstairs. Would be lovely to have that swollen body close to hers. Loraine’s not a bad woman. Good to see and touch her. Nice to touch people. Very. Loraine must feel the same because she didn’t seem to mind being stroked. Johnny’s a lucky man.
Charlene wonders what it must be like to be a man and make love to a woman. She cuddles her drink and thinks about Loraine’s body, about her knotty shoulders, the fine-balled tightness of her stomach. Full of baby. Charlene remembers playing with this neighbour boy, Ronald, when she was young. Charlene was the man, Ronald was the woman, and he put a pillow under his T-shirt for a baby and Charlene would put her hands up inside and pull the pillow out and spank it and hand it back and say, “It’s a boy.” One time she undressed Ronald and he undressed her and he tried to stick himself inside her but he was too young for an erection. Charlene liked the secrecy; whispering with Ronald behind the garage in the damp coolness of the fort they had built. A dirt floor, a rickety shelf holding seashells and a chipped ceramic tea set. A reed mat laid out. Ronald on his knees, Charlene on her back. Ronald’s chest pale in the light. His eyes dim. And later Charlene telling him that she was going to have many children. “I want to be a mother,” she said.
It’s cold. Too cold. She stands, catching herself on the arm of the chair. She couldn’t find her slippers. The place is a mess. She’s been meaning to clean it up, not vacuum or anything, just tidy, but time is short and she keeps finding other and better things to do. Loraine must have thought Charlene was a slob: dishes everywhere in the kitchen, Johnny’s boots and shoes scattered, a fried egg abandoned on the stove. Loraine is neat and tidy. Her house must be like that too. Her farm, her barn. And sex. Is that tidy too? Johnny likes it messy, Charlene knows that. She can’t imagine Loraine going down on Johnny. That pretty mouth, the lipstick just so, those hands that Johnny loves, so perfect; do those hands go everywhere? But then, the most unlikely people are wild in bed. Like Nancy Stone from the book club. She used to drop hints about her sex life. Made a reference to anal sex once and everybody was grossed out. Charlene wonders about Johnny. He’d like that. If Charlene did it for him, maybe he’d stay.
She’s surprised to find herself on her knees. She’s facing the shelf which holds knick-knacks and family photos and the few books she and Johnny own. There’s Johnny’s Bible. It’s got a leather front with gold lettering. She pulls at it. Opens it. This Bible belongs to Johnny Fehr, she reads. “Belongs?” Charlene says. She shakes her head. Fans the hundreds of pages. When she was a teenager she tried to read the Bible all the way through. She got stuck in Leviticus. Ridiculous. Whoever thought all those men’s names were important? She leaped to the Gospels then. She remembers reading and waiting for a light or a voice, something that would let her know who she was, or who she should be. Her mother had been so proud of her. “My daughter Charlene is reading the Bible from beginning to end,” she would tell her friends.
Charlene puts her nose inside the pages and smells. She breathes again. There are some things she likes in here. What Jesus says is good. Especially those words about faith and hope and love. Did Jesus say that? Charlene thinks those are probably the most important words in the Bible. She once told Johnny this and he nodded seriously and agreed. There’s more though. Stuff about a noisy gong and tongues ceasing. She should tell Johnny this too. No sense chasing after tongues. All that fades in the end. Everything fades. Even Loraine will eventually fade. When Johnny tires of her and the baby. The baby will interfere with their time and Johnny will be impatient and then he’ll come back to Charlene and Charlene won’t say, “I told you so,” she’ll just take him back and think how predictable he is, like the little boy she never had. She wonders if Loraine and Johnny talk about her, or if Johnny compares the sex and tells Loraine about it. Do they talk about God? About Johnny leaving Charlene? Charlene wants to ask Johnny these questions. She could phone now. No, Johnny said he was busy. Leave him be. Tomorrow.
Charlene reaches out and touches the stove. Burns herself. She sucks on her fingers. Takes the bottle of whisky and drinks. She has a thought. She giggles and takes Johnny’s Bible and carefully rips Leviticus from its centre. She throws it into the stove. Johnny won’t notice. Like Phil Barkman and Melissa Emery and the Bartel brothers and all the others, Johnny gets by on a New Testament diet. That’s what’s important. Except for the Creation story; Johnny likes that one. God snapping his fingers. Magic.
The stove needs wood. Birch. Birch burns the best. “Cadillac of firewood,” Johnny calls it. Charlene fumbles with the wood, it tears at her hands. Stoke. Stoke. One log bangs the edge of the door, flames slide across it and the log drops to the floor. Oh my. Birch bark burns so quickly. So sweetly. Crackles, like bacon frying. Can write letters on it too. Letters to Johnny. Love letters. She remembers writing Johnny little notes, just after they were married, and leaving them lying around for him. In his boots, his jeans’ pocket. Once she wrote something lusty on the toilet-paper roll. Johnny liked that. He called her from where he was sitting and then he stood and held her, his pants at his knees, and laughed and said, “You’re a horny, silly girl.”
“Am I?” she asked, looking up at his chin, her hands fisted at the small of his back.
Charlene, on her knees, reaches out and pushes at the sparking log. It skitters across Johnny’s mother’s rug and halts at the edge of the couch; can’t quite reach it. The flames die, she thinks. This braided rug. Charlene recalls being here with Johnny, seems so long ago. He laid her out, ass against the braids, fingers kneading her breasts, and she cried out some foolishness. Johnny with his leaping tongue. Stubby Johnny. Light in his eyes, darkness at the edges, like if you didn’t stay close enough to the heat, you’d get lost.
Where’s the bottle? On hands and knees she moves across the floor. Bottle’s tipped over, little bit of rye that’s left soaking the rug. Beautiful colours. “The rug is on fire,” she says. “Too bad.” She stands and stomps with her stockinged feet. She laughs. “Fuck,” she says, “this is not good.” She stands there, looking for a blanket, a jacket. “Should smother it,” she says. She can’t see anything. The phone. She must find the phone but she can’t remember where it is. She wonders if her mother will call. She usually does on a Friday night. Though it’s late, isn’t it? Her mother will be sleeping. That’s better, anyway. Hate to have to fake being sober.
“A bucket,” she says. “There’s a hole …” And t
hen she’s on her stomach and the walls are brightening and there’s a grey creature creeping across the rug. On hands and knees she moves towards the kitchen, manages to stand and grab the phone. She dials the centre but it’s busy. She tries her mother’s number. A man answers. Up from the depths of sleep. Wrong number. She tries again, directory assistance. She tells the woman, “My house is burning,” and then she hangs up.
Outside. She should go there. Out there. But her coat’s missing and she’d freeze and a clarity comes to her through the haze of smoke and alcohol and she sees two choices and they are freezing or burning and though the machine shed is a haven across the yard she’d never make it in her condition.
She wets a rag and holds it across her mouth. She’s not too drunk to reason, she thinks. Johnny would be proud of her. “Get down,” she tells herself. She does this. Lies on the kitchen floor, curled up against the far cabinets. She faces the beige wall. Finds herself staring at the grease and dirt that has collected over the years. A bit of a crayon drawing. Old. Probably Johnny’s creation from way back. A brief sentence too. Charlene’s face is wet. She is crying. Everything’s come loose now. This is a dream, she thinks. That’s good. Yes. A dream. She licks her tears and realizes they taste real. She cries harder. Johnny as a young boy. Right here. Touching the purple letters with her fingers. She’s never seen this before. Wishes she’d known about it. Like finding his childhood gum under the old table; she takes it as a message or something. He must have been learning to print. Excited by it. Wanting to try it out everywhere. Johnny gets so excited about things. It’s easier to breathe now. Maybe the fire’s dying out. Nothing to feed it. She wishes she had Johnny’s enthusiasm. A while back he tried to get her to pray with him. “Fine,” she said, and she even kneeled beside him but the hollowness made her giggle, like they were playing a game and Johnny wasn’t even aware how silly he sounded. Perhaps she should pray now. Beg forgiveness. She calls out, alternately, “God, Mother, God, Mother,” but there is no answer, only a growing heat at her back. She wishes she weren’t so drunk. Then she could save herself. She decides suddenly that she should confront the danger. Easier that way. She turns onto her other side, her back to the wall now, and lies there, knees up at her chest, rag at her mouth, sobbing, “Oh Jesus, save me.” And then, in the background, faintly beyond the roar, she can hear the telephone ring, and she believes, heart fluttering with relief, that she has been saved.
A Year of Lesser Page 10