A Year of Lesser

by Bergen, David

  Michael doesn’t get to answer. Avi shakes her head and says, “This isn’t fair to Loraine. She’s worked hard at the meal and surely doesn’t want to suffer through descriptions of muons and superstrings.” She pronounces these words carefully, with familiar distaste.

  “But it’s fine,” Loraine says. “Really.” And then she pours Michael more water and says that if she weren’t raising chickens she would study math because playing with numbers has always struck her as a way into another life. “All those theories,” she says, and rubs her hands together. Johnny is amused by her girlish excitement. She appears quite taken with this professor. She tucks her fists under her chin, rests her elbows on the table, and says, “Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Theories.”

  “Sure,” Michael says. “But theories give us our truth, as close as we can come to it anyway.”

  “You have something you follow then?” Loraine says.

  “Theory of Everything,” Avi breaks in.

  Michael looks at her, clears his throat, and says, “Yes, but I can’t adhere to it completely.”

  Johnny wants to laugh. Melody, bored now, whispers something to Chris and they disappear.

  “Oh,” Loraine says, and before she can continue, Michael says, “If we believe the cosmos is rational then we should be able to assign a graspable logic to our world, that is, we should be capable of taking the forces and particles of physics, as well as the structure of time and space, and blend them into a single mathematical plan.”

  Johnny isn’t really listening. Everything is nonsense, gobbledegook, even this “Theory of Everything.” It strikes him as contrived and desperate, as if Michael the physicist were an elevated form of Johnny Fehr the feed salesman, both of them striving for illumination—one through molecules and mind, the other by praying and running his nose along the base of a woman’s spine—yet, for all their trying, they are both worming around in a primal soup, somehow failing, eyes staring up into a blackness that is like pitch. Johnny wants to tell Michael Barry one thing he has learned: look for everything and you’ll end up with nothing.

  After dinner Loraine apologizes and says she has to gather eggs. Johnny wants to help her but Avi jumps in and says the men can do dishes while the women work in the barn; she seems excited by the prospect, so Johnny lets her go. He is standing at the sink, hands deep in water, as Loraine and Avi walk out across the yard. Avi is wearing a green parka that is too short in the sleeves, and big white boots. Johnny watches her throw her wide forehead up at the sky and shout something. Loraine turns and smiles and Johnny thinks how it is impossible to really know someone, even if you live with that person, sleep beside her, and enter her body now and then.

  It’s his fault that Charlene died. He lacked the imagination to find the other Charlenes hidden somewhere beneath her dull skin. He has sinned. He admires these young people from other countries who are thrown into arranged marriages and learn to love their partners. He thinks that that is wonderful and he hates the craving in his own life, in the lives of the people he sees around him.

  He turns to Michael now and asks, “You and Avi. You live in the same house?”

  Michael looks surprised, but not unwilling to answer. “Yes,” he says, “we do.”

  Johnny says, “I like living with a woman. Though I’m not terribly good at it.” He laughs and then stops, because he’s close to crying. “Living by myself now, most of the time at the centre, I’m lonely and I start thinking that I’m full of boring chaos, like a dripping tap.” Johnny doesn’t know why he’s telling Michael this. He doesn’t really like the man, though at this moment Michael seems gracious and willing to listen.

  Michael has nothing to say so Johnny keeps going. “What I find amazing,” he says, “and you understand that I’m not laughing, is how people like you spend your lives looking for order, even arranging it, but you wouldn’t have shit to say to someone who’s grieving. I’m a Christian, you see, born again many times, and I’m at a loss. Sometimes I think God has really screwed up. Not that that stops me from believing. No point in that. I like the feeling. Do you believe?”

  Michael has a way of pointing at the air as he speaks. It makes him look silly, as if he were stabbing at dust motes or invisible rings. He says, “You’re right. I have nothing to say to you. About Charlene. A priest would do better.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” Johnny says.

  Michael is thinking. “Maybe those who accept mysticism to ex plain the unexplainable are deluding themselves. And maybe the more comprehensible we make the world the more pointless it all becomes. Maybe.”

  Johnny thinks the man is full of crap. Still he likes him a little bit now. He’s not jumping all over everybody; perhaps because Avi’s not around.

  Later, when Avi is back in the kitchen, talking and laughing about all the eggs she broke, Johnny passes by her and a shiver skips across his back. She’s a mixture of cold air, ammonia, perfume, and the tiniest trace of sexual heat, as if she were hungry for Michael, or someone else. She crosses her legs and says, “It’s odd, to be stealing eggs. I feel so guilty.”

  Loraine looks at Johnny and closes her eyes. She is tired; Avi has worn her out. Michael senses this too and suggests they go. Loraine doesn’t argue. She asks if they could drop off Melody at home. “Chris needs a ride too,” she says. “He’s sleeping at a friend’s in town.”

  When everyone has parted and the house is quiet, Loraine stands in the middle of the living room and tells Johnny he can stay the night if he likes. He’ll have to sleep on the couch though. The blankets are in the hall closet.

  “I’m tired,” Loraine says. “I’m gonna shower, scrub off the turkey, and then go to bed.” She walks over to Johnny, leans down to him, and kisses the top of his head. “Thanks,” she says and strokes his face.

  He keeps his hands at his sides. Her knee touches his, one of her hands rests on his head.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  He nods.

  “Good night, then.”

  He lies on the couch and listens to her bathe and then the house is silent, and Johnny is by himself, thinking about Loraine, who will still be damp and fresh smelling, her bum warm from the bath, a red line marking her skin where the hot water lay against her body.

  In the morning, before the winter light creeps in through the windows, Loraine wakes him as she climbs under his covers. She wraps her legs around his hips. Her body is fierce but her voice is tender as she says, “Love me, Johnny.”

  It is nice to be surprised. To have it swoop down and claw at you. Johnny, holding Loraine, is surprised. He feels as if he has been offered an unexpected present, and gently, gently, he unwraps it. Loraine is urgent, but Johnny takes his time. He lays his head on her stomach. He bows down before her, kneels on the rug beside the couch, his legs bare and chilly outside the blanket, but he doesn’t notice. He talks and prays to this woman. “You are good,” he says. “Good.”

  Loraine reaches down and pulls him up so they can share mouths, and eyes, and noses, and tongues, and Johnny would swallow Loraine whole if he could. There is nothing else he wants. He has everything.

  BLISS

  In early February Loraine phones Mrs. Krahn and asks about Melody. “Has she been any different lately?” she says.

  “No, not really,” is the answer. “She knows we don’t approve of her crowd, but, well, we are limited, you see.”

  “Yes, we all are,” Loraine says, and then adds that Melody and Chris are having sex.

  It’s quiet for a long time and finally Mrs. Krahn says, “Oh. Oh, my. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Loraine says, “I’m sure.” She does not explain that she was shopping in Winnipeg on a Thursday afternoon and returned to find Chris and Melody in her son’s bed. They were both naked, on top of the covers. Loraine hadn’t known they were there when she opened the bedroom door and discovered the rounded whiteness of Melody’s bum and Chris’s foot, an innocent and vulnerable limb. Loraine slipped downstairs and m
ade a big to-do about her next entry, banging the back door, shouting out Chris’s name.

  Later, when her son appeared, Melody at his side, the two of them were pulled together, but seemed somehow puzzled, as if they were descending from a mountaintop and were sobered by the common sight of Loraine unpacking groceries.

  That night, Loraine asked Chris if he and Melody were having sex.

  He looked up from his math homework, surprised. “What if we are?” he asked. “You gonna stop us?”

  He was like a rat, Loraine thought. She disliked what she was doing. She poked at some plants, talked into the dirt. “It’s supposed to be fun,” she said. “I mean, if you are having sex, and I’m not saying you are, age has something to do with how comfortable you feel. Like, will she get pregnant?”

  “We’re not stupid,” Chris said. “Not like you.”

  Loraine expected this; she was quick with her response. “It’s never occurred to you that I wanted this baby, has it? I’m thirty-six. How old are you?”

  Chris snarled and thumped upstairs. Loraine sat at the kitchen table, cleaned the dirt from her nails, and felt washed over by helplessness.

  Funny thing, on the phone now, Mrs. Krahn wants to know Chris’s age too. “How old is he?” she asks.

  “Fourteen,” Loraine says.

  “Melody’s sixteen.”

  Loraine waits, expecting some logic. Then Mrs. Krahn says, “She just got her driver’s, last week.”

  “Yes, she told me.” It sounds, though Loraine can’t be sure, as if Mrs. Krahn is crying. There’s a whistle in her voice, a quick intake before she speaks, and then a shakiness.

  “I said to Leonard, just last night, that Melody was scaring me. He agreed. So we’ve stopped her using the car. She just can’t have it. This made her angry of course. She hates us.”

  This sounds like a pathetic confession, something Loraine might say. Mrs. Krahn is surprising Loraine. She anticipated anger and outrage, not sub -mission and helplessness. The kindness in her voice is perhaps the veneer of a pastor’s wife: the woman must take care, be generous and forgiving.

  Loraine becomes careless. “I suppose you could blame Chris,” she says. “He’s a little out of control lately.”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Krahn says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

  “Is she using any protection?” Loraine asks.

  “Sorry?”

  “I was thinking. We can’t forbid them to see each other, short of chaining them in their rooms, so I wonder if Melody’s on the pill or something. I know I’m gonna give Chris condoms. Even so, Melody’s the girl. She’s got to look out.”

  “See,” Mrs. Krahn says, as if aiming a finger over the phone, “Leonard wouldn’t have it. You know. It’d be like condoning it.”

  “How ’bout you?” Loraine asks. She’s getting a feel for this small woman. She’s only seen her once, in the aisles of the hardware store, and there she seemed cowed and timid, not at all the mother of colourful Melody.

  “Of course,” she answers, but she stops, as if what she desires and needs is far from the core of her real existence and in the end, denied. She breathes quickly, a slight rattle in her throat. Loraine listens, thinks of dry seeds, and Mrs. Krahn says, “You’re expecting.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hnnnh. When?”

  “Late April.”

  “Melody told me. She said you were happy.”

  “I am.”

  “It will be a change, won’t it?”

  “Of course, but we’ll manage.”

  “The father will help?”

  “You mean Johnny?”

  “I suppose. Is he?”

  “He is.”

  Mrs. Krahn doesn’t say much else, though it seems she wants to. Loraine thinks, just before hanging up, that if she could look into the other woman’s eyes, she would discover there the cold ashes of a fire long dead.

  And then one day, upon Loraine’s suggestion, Johnny packs up his few belongings, says goodbye to his sister’s basement, and moves into the room connected to the barns at Loraine’s farm. It’s a place Jim built before he died; for the hired help who never materialized. It’s small but there is space for a single bed, a hotplate, a dresser, and a shelf. The shower and toilet are accessible via the refrigerator room so Johnny’s got all he needs.

  When Loraine makes her offer she also says, “I would even consider letting you live with me if it weren’t for Chris.”

  “Well, what’s he gonna think, I’m a boarder in this little shack?”

  “He’s naive enough.”

  “Marry me,” Johnny says. On this particular day they’re painting the little room bright yellow and when Johnny says this Loraine’s paintbrush stops moving. She waits for Johnny to speak. He has specks of yellow on his nose and forehead from painting the ceiling. He says again, “Marry me.”

  “No.”

  “So, some day then?”

  “Sure, some day.”

  Johnny eats his meals with Loraine and Chris. He uses the washer and dryer. He gathers eggs in the morning and cleans out the barn on schedule. He is like the hired hand. Chris accepts his presence grudgingly, Loraine loves knowing he’s near. Sometimes, late in the evening, she stands by the kitchen window and looks across at Johnny’s window and she gurgles and smiles, holds her belly and sighs.

  Lately, she feels the baby pressing her pelvic floor. Her crotch itches, her vagina squirms. She scratches wildly at herself but this brings little relief. She thinks maybe it’s the hair of the baby’s head making her itchy. She believes, too, that she’s carrying a boy because her testosterone level is up: she’s horny. She felt this way when she was carrying Chris. There is nothing romantic about her feelings. Some days she feels she could rip a chicken from its cage and stick its head up inside her. She both loves and despises this lust. She asks Johnny if this is how he feels all the time and he smiles, shakes his head, and says, “Not all the time.”

  She goes to him. Late at night, after she is sure Chris is sleeping, she creeps from the bed, her body throbbing, and she scrambles into clothes—one time she throws a coat over her naked body—and flies through the winter into Johnny’s shed. She wakes him and wordlessly rides him, clutching at his shoulders, her head thrown back, a silent howl floating upwards. The little electric heater clicks. The room is musty and close.

  Once, Loraine finds herself kneeling on the floor, her head resting on the linoleum, her belly nestled in her thighs, her bare bum in the air, and she says, “Come, Johnny. Do it.”

  Johnny crawls up her back and blows in her ear. The linoleum is cold on her knees. Their bodies slap. When they are done she trudges back over the hard snow and she feels spent and a little embarrassed, though not sorry.

  Loraine likes to sit by the kitchen window. Sometimes she remembers Charlene and how it was before Charlene died and Loraine allows herself the prick of pleasure in feeling guilty for being here, for holding this chipped mug and staring out across the fields.

  Johnny no longer speaks of his dead wife. Once, he mentioned the life insurance, a fairly large sum, and said, “I really don’t need to work.”

  He talked about selling his land, about leaving Lesser. Moving to the southern states, Florida.

  “No,” Loraine said, “I couldn’t.”

  “You love your chickens,” he said, and again he broached the subject of marriage, said it didn’t have to be a white wedding, in fact Phil Barkman could marry them in the barn.

  “Really?” The idea, for a moment, appealed to Loraine. Then, she grew serious. “I don’t trust you Johnny. I like you. I love to have you close, but there’s something about us I don’t trust.”

  “I can understand that,” Johnny said, too easily. Loraine took his hand and kissed it, saying, “My sister wants to have this party for me. A weird one. Some Indian custom thing. Navaho. That’s just like Claire. We’ll all sit around and eat millet.”

  “Am I such a bad man?” Johnny asked.

  “
Sometimes. Sometimes.”

  All her life Loraine thinks she’s been looking for something. It’s as if there is a slot inside her, like a keyhole, and ice and wind and dread and pain blow through that hole, and then Johnny comes along and he slides himself like a key into her and he opens her up, climbs in, curls his warm body up inside her, into that hole the size of Johnny.

  This is why, these days, Loraine can sit at the kitchen table on a cold winter’s day in February, spin a mug in her hands, and wait. She’s planted geranium seeds in tiny humus trays and the little green shoots are appearing. She talks to them, pours water at their feet. The cat rubs against her legs. The baby knocks at the wall of the uterus. Last night she risked staying with Johnny till morning. At one point he held his head against her belly, exclaiming at each blow, each rubbery extension of the stomach wall. “Great,” he said, waking her in the morning blackness, dressing her under the blanket, first sliding on her panties, then sweater, then pants and socks. He slid his rough palms under her T-shirt and shaped her breasts. She took his head and tangled his hair in her hands and yanked fiercely, pulling his head to her mouth

  “I could weep,” she said.

  He stood her up and wrapped her parka around her. “Go,” he said, “back to your nest.”

  Now, as she sits in the kitchen, talking to her plants, she remembers the smell of Johnny’s hair, the texture of it, like coarse string. Then he is there, stepping out of the barn, knocking a boot against the door, popping in the latch. He crosses the yard, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the sky and then down at his feet. He sees her in the window and smiles; doesn’t wave, just smiles and looks as he keeps coming. His exhaled breath rises and disappears above his head. Loraine thinks that if she were to fall, she’d want Johnny to catch her.

  Loraine’s sister, Claire, has chased the kids out with their father for the afternoon and there’s a circle of women sitting on the floor, Loraine in the middle. Incense is burning, Loraine is holding a cup of scalding tea between her palms, and there’s a round-faced woman called Prue brushing Loraine’s hair. Prue brushes and hums a soft tune, over and over again. At one point she leans forward and whispers past Loraine’s ear, loud enough for all to hear, “You will have a beautiful baby.”