A Year of Lesser

by Bergen, David

  This is like a spiritual gathering, Loraine thinks. A meeting of witches. She loves the feel of the bristles in her hair, the pressure of Prue’s fingers on her shoulder. Meryl, a good friend of Claire’s, reads a poem and then plays a song on a recorder. While she plays the women look at their hands or their feet. A few watch Meryl’s wet lips on the mouthpiece. When the recorder is silent, the women do not speak. Finally, Claire says, “I have this for you,” and she hands Loraine a copper bowl, the size of her cupped palms.

  “You made this?” Loraine asks.

  “Yes.”

  Loraine leans over and kisses Claire on the mouth. Claire is her younger sister. She has lived a happy life—three children, a husband who did not die; her life is organized, pulled together, easy. Her mouth is full and generous, like her life. She is more beautiful than Loraine. Tall like a tree, Loraine thinks. She smells something green and leafy. It is the incense.

  These women who surround Loraine are practically strangers. Still, they are kind strangers. They do not care where Loraine comes from, who the father is, or why she is having this baby. They know nothing about Johnny or the fire or Charlene and the guilt that flows and ebbs, flows and ebbs. Even Claire has only a vague notion of Loraine and who she is. These women are present because Loraine is about to give birth. They are celebrating.

  All afternoon people touch Loraine. She has her feet massaged. Kaye, a midwife with round oily eyes, asks if she can touch the stomach. She lifts Loraine’s shirt and places warm hands on Loraine’s skin. The baby’s head is found, a foot, an elbow. Kaye lays her ear on the bulge and rises, eyes shining. “You’re so tight,” she says to Loraine. “Like it’s your first.”

  “It’s been fourteen years.”

  Loraine closes her eyes, imagines herself a queen bee surrounded by drones. Kaye’s eyelashes are tiny wings brushing her navel. Like Charlene’s fingers; her kneeling before Loraine on that kitchen floor. Loraine shudders and starts.

  “Easy,” Kaye says, pushing her backwards, one hand resting under her neck.

  There is a difference, Loraine thinks, between a man and a woman. With Johnny a lot is external, as if when she finally gets close to him she needs to scrape her skin against his. With a woman like Kaye it’s as if they are together in a warm field that goes on forever and ever, no edge, and so there is never any fear of falling. Loraine opens her eyes. Kaye is eating date cake, there are crumbs on her lips. Claire is talking about having a baby at home.

  “No doctors, no nurses, no intrusions,” she says. The women nod.

  Loraine sits up, adjusts her top, and says, “I couldn’t do it. I’d be thinking about my chickens.”

  Kaye laughs. “Arrange all that beforehand.”

  Meryl says, “I was tortured in the hospital. They pinned me down and tore the baby out. I swore, never again.”

  Loraine doesn’t remember it being so awful with Chris. Just fast. She says this. “With my boy it wasn’t bad. He was quick but the doctor was great. And I like hospital food and they keep your baby for you at night. What can I say?”

  The women smile. Claire takes her hand and squeezes it. “I’m going to be with Loraine. We’ll be fine.”

  Loraine feels as if she’s erred in some way, said something wrong. The women are still warm but it’s as if messages are being passed to and fro and Loraine is missing them. She holds Claire’s hand and takes a piece of cake. She is disappointed. Not terribly, but still there’s a small twinge in her throat. At least with Johnny the pain is massive and she knows what’s happening. Not here. She doesn’t get it.

  The day ends well though, with Kaye promising to drive out and see her on the farm. They all kiss and Loraine generously accepts these intimacies. Gifts are also given: canned apples, home-baked buns, the copper bowl, and two books, Natural Ways of Childbirth and The Prophet.

  Claire says she will attend the refresher course with Loraine. Her children have returned and she’s standing in the foyer hipping her two-year-old. Looking at Claire, Loraine feels huge, like a holstein.

  “You look great, Claire,” she says. She kisses her nephew, who ducks and bobs. “So thin.”

  “You look great. I love a pregnant woman.”

  “So does Johnny. He’s living on the farm now. Not in the house, I was worried about Chris, but in that little room Jim built next to the barn.” Loraine says this quickly, wanting to give Claire some glimpse into her life. She never visits. Rarely asks about Chris.

  “You like him then?” Claire sounds surprised. She’s met Johnny once, by accident, when Loraine and Johnny were having dinner together in the city and Claire was in the same restaurant. That was four years ago, back when Loraine and Johnny were tenuous, still gaping at each other from a distance.

  “Yes,” Loraine says. “We’re going to marry.”

  “No.” This is a squeal, a bark of amazement and disbelief. “Well.” Claire shifts the baby to the other hip, pushes back her hair. Her elbows are dry. The winter air has done her some damage. This is comforting to Loraine. Elbows and knees, they’re hard to keep looking young.

  “Well, we’re not gonna marry right away,” Loraine says. “Johnny was devastated, you know, by Charlene’s death. It sounds kind of screwy, I know, but we’re good together.” Loraine wants to leave now. She’s sounding all wrong and the impression is one of desperation. She is not desperate. She doesn’t know why she talked about marrying Johnny, although now that the words have rolled around in her mouth she almost likes their taste and feel. She grins. Leans once again into Claire and kisses her jaw, just below the ear. “Bye, thanks,” she says.

  Johnny is amused by the two books. “Oh, my,” he says, “Gibran. We had a high school teacher who liked to read this to us. Put us all to sleep. And, what’s this?” He picks up the birth book and cracks it open. “Pretty graphic,” he says. He flips pages and Loraine watches him. He is impish tonight; his ears are red and he has a looseness to his body as if he were a puppet or rag doll. Loraine comes up behind him, leans over his shoulder, and lays her cheek on his.

  “You smell good,” she says.

  “Really?”

  She touches his hair. “You showered?”

  “Just finished in the barn.”

  Loraine breathes deeply. “See that,” she says, pointing, “In a tub. France. It figures.”

  Johnny says, “These women are pretty easygoing with their bodies.”

  “European,” Loraine says. “It’s not supposed to be a turn-on.”

  Surprisingly, Johnny is embarrassed. “I know that,” he says. “It’s curious. That’s all.”

  Loraine punches him. Sucks on his earlobe. “My feet are swollen tonight. I gotta sit down.”

  “Here.” Johnny pats his lap and pulls Loraine around and plunks her down. “Elephant,” he says. He slips his hand inside her top and plays with her belly.

  “Claire was talking about this massage I should do,” Loraine says. “The perineum. She gave me a bottle of vitamin A liquid and said to try it.”

  “Perineum?”

  “Hmm, like at the base of the vagina. Claire says if you massage, you won’t need an episiotomy.”

  “I could do it for you,” Johnny says.

  “Sure you could. But I think I’ll handle that. Did you see Chris today?” she asks.

  “He was around and then Melody came by with her dad’s car. Picked him up.”

  “That’s odd. Mrs. Krahn said she was grounded.”

  “She probably begged and lied,” Johnny says. “Kids are good at that. Especially lying.”

  “They’re having sex, you know.”

  “I figured,” Johnny says.

  “Oh, you figured. What makes you so clever?”

  “I work with kids,” Johnny says. “I know when they’re sleeping around. Or think they’d like to. Sometimes it’s the most unlikely ones. Like us, huh.” He laughs. Loraine doesn’t.

  “They’re too young,” she says. “I think there should be a law that you can’t
have sex until you’re ready to look after kids.”

  Johnny draws a finger along the inside of Loraine’s arm. “So soft here. Like your thighs.”

  “I told Claire we were gonna get married,” Loraine says. She stares past Johnny’s chin and listens to him breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

  He says, “So, you were fooling around, making a point.”

  “Sort of.”

  “But there was a part of you that said yes.”

  “I guess.”

  “How big?”

  “Like this?” Loraine holds up a little finger and touches Johnny’s nose.

  His voice is slow. “That’s big.” He pulls Loraine’s head down and puts one of his earlobes against her eye. Rubs it around.

  “I drove by your old place today. On the way home,” Loraine whispers.

  Johnny takes Loraine’s ear now and traces it.

  “I hadn’t driven by there yet,” Loraine continues. “I always go around. But today, I did. Everything’s gone. The house, the tree.”

  “I hired Hank Birton to raze the place.”

  “So, clean slate,” Loraine says. “Pretty easy.”

  “Not really,” Johnny says. His hand goes up and scratches his jaw. “I’m gonna sell.”

  Loraine feels Johnny’s heat, the hardness of his chest, the sharpness of a hip. She gets off his lap and takes a chair across the table from him. She waddles these days. Like a goose. Her hips are spreading, they move as if almost detached and she feels she could pull them from their sockets. She misses her pre-pregnancy body. Johnny’s smoking. Loraine looks at him. “Will anyone buy?” she asks.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Loraine knows now why Johnny seems so young and springy tonight. He doesn’t care. Chris is like this a lot. Hands twitch and play. Eyes roam all over, never resting on one thing. Loraine begins to feel that Johnny could run tonight. She’d just have to say the word and he’d walk out that door, hop in his car and go. She wonders if she should let him, if she really wants to spend the next years of her life looking around corners for Johnny Fehr.

  Of course, she’d just have to say, “Come here, Johnny,” and he’d do that. He’d never say no. And there’s something disgusting in that too, makes her feel lousy and cheap. Loraine doesn’t know what it is, perhaps the time with Claire, looking at her sister’s life and the easy flow of it, but at the moment she dislikes Johnny. He’s eating bread and peanut butter now. The cigarette’s smouldering in the ash tray. He gets whatever he wants.

  She wonders who Johnny really is. If he could be violent. Hit her. “Did you ever hit Charlene?” she asks.

  Johnny looks surprised. “What a stupid question,” he says finally.

  “Just curious.”

  “You think I did?”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s just men are strange. I know a woman whose husband took her to bars. He made her wear a trench coat with no clothes underneath.”

  First Johnny says, “And she did it.” Then, he says, “That’s sick. I’m not sick.”

  “You’re right. Not like that.”

  “How then?”

  “It’s more subtle. Like maybe you think you’re better than me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Maybe you are.”

  “Well, maybe.” Johnny’s trying to be funny but it’s not working.

  “Like, your religion,” Loraine says. “You’ve got me beat there.”

  Johnny doesn’t answer. He slides out another cigarette and says, “It’s like any discovery. When you see it you can’t believe how you lived without it all your life.”

  “Why can’t you show me?”

  “You’d just make fun of me.” He’s still moving weird. He puts a foot on a chair; his socks are dirty. “You’ve got nicer teeth than me,” he says.

  “Ahhh.” Loraine looks at Johnny and imagines him talking about her, about her tits and so on. It happens. Some men do that. She remembers how it first was with him. Like jumping. As if she’d be high up somewhere, and she’d jump and he’d catch her. Jump. Catch. Especially the sex made her feel this way. She wanted to steal him, was fascinated by every little bit; the gaps between his toes, the hair of his knuckles, his odour. She would clamber all over him, sniffing like a furry animal and it was everything: funny, sad, desperate, pleasing. But it was the sadness that made it so rich. Like maybe this would be the last time.

  Loraine focuses back on Johnny across from her. He’s talking, about money and bonds and his land. Then he’s telling her about Phil Barkman and the healing power of his hands. He holds his own hands up as he speaks, spreads his fingers, and Loraine can see the flesh bulging around his ring and she feels old. She wants to go back to how it was before; she wishes it were possible to stop the movement of the clock. She wants to tell Johnny this but she isn’t sure he’d understand.

  She opens her mouth. “Come here,” she says.

  SPRING

  METHODS OF TORTURE

  Living with her.

  Loraine at the kitchen table, buttering toast. Her knuckles white where bent around the knife. Her tongue curling out, touching her top lip. It is spring, and warm; she is wearing a tank top, purple, and she hasn’t shaved for a while. The sight of those bristles as she stretches the knife across the table makes Chris stoop to his shoelace and from this position he looks up at the armpit of his mother: concave, the beginning of her breast like dough rising, the light blue vein along the inside of her arm.

  He has forgiven her. All those grievances of the past, those hateful words, his own disgust for her—this is gone. It is as if he has had a grey film peeled back from his eyes and he now sees clearly. These days she seems so easy. She has pulled the rocker into the kitchen and, when she is not eating at the kitchen table, she rocks herself into a trance, her legs up, her gaze focusing on some small spot on the ceiling. Or, she pages through these books she picked up in Winnipeg, at the public library. Books on childbirth. There are pictures of women: big, naked, standing in profile or facing the camera, mess of bush, breasts sloping and then turning up at the tips, hands usually clasped under the belly, supporting the load. There is one of a Danish woman. Her long hair covers one breast, her eyes are dark and mournful, her hips are narrow, her shoulders thin; it seems to Chris, who has only really seen Melody naked and even that has been hasty and unstudied, that this is a girl, much younger than his own mother, and that she has been surprised by the growth of her belly, as if the fetus were an unwanted limb. Her thighs do not touch; Chris can see right through the gap.

  Chris likes these pictures. They make him want to be near his own mother, to sneak looks at her belly, her legs, her breasts, her neck and ears, the top of her head. She has become, since about the fifth month, a boat sitting lower and lower in the water. He would like to stow away on her, enter a deep and inner hold, and lay himself down and ride her with the swell. Sometimes, when she has discovered the spot on the ceiling, he approaches her from behind, leans in until they are almost touching, and breathes deeply.

  On Sunday mornings he brings her breakfast in bed. He makes toast and juice and climbs the stairs to her room and lays the tray on her lap, his hands brushing lightly at her thighs.

  “You’re so sweet,” Loraine says. “Thank you.” Her voice is a whisper, as if she were leaning forward and telling him a secret.

  Chris’s neck tightens. He is embarrassed, though he cannot help himself. He sits at the edge of the bed and watches her chew. Her cheeks are rounder now, her chin double. The backs of her arms shake when she laughs, though she doesn’t laugh much. One of these mornings, weeks before the baby is due, he says, “You should laugh more.”

  Loraine is wary, one eye half-closed, her brain still groggy, “Oh, I should? Give me a reason.”

  “The baby.”

  “Ah, yes. Do you want to feel?” She pushes aside the tray, lifts her T-shirt, and takes Chris’s hand and lays it on her tummy. “Sometimes it kicks, really hard. There. Feel that?”

  “Yes.
” Her skin is hot. His hand burns.

  “Here, lower,” and she guides his fingers lower. She is smiling. “That’s its head. It’s dropped. A few weeks before the birth it engages and gets ready.”

  Chris looks at his hand. At hers. She is sitting up now and a shoulder brushes his ear. He looks up at her face and she asks, “Are you scared?”

  “No, are you?”

  “Kind of. I forget what it was like with you. Except the speed.”

  Chris wants to touch his mother’s lips. He thinks what it is like to kiss Melody. Melody is hard and thoughtless; greedy. This woman here, this big full-of-baby woman, is the best: like a tub of warm milk.

  “Do you want some more toast?” he asks.

  She looks at him, frightened by his kindness. “Are you sick?” she asks.

  Sometimes, he is burdened by shame. He does not want it to be this way, in fact, he is unsure when this compulsion began. There is a clear memory of an early morning, back in February, when he stumbled to the bathroom and lifted the toilet lid. His mother had not flushed, which was not unusual these days; she was absentminded. Chris stooped to the bowl. Her shit was long and thick and lay perfectly coiled like a snake as if Loraine had laid it down with her own hands. All one piece. Chris was repulsed. He was aroused. It was like coming upon his mother naked in the bath. It had the same effect. He had discovered the wonderful torture of desire.

  Back in February, when Johnny moved into the little shed across the yard, Chris knew what his mother did at night. He heard her creep downstairs and from his bedroom window saw her run across the snow to Johnny’s beacon of light. She disappeared and Chris waited. Occasionally he saw shadows beyond the curtains of that tiny window and he imagined they were talking and drinking tea.