“You still feel that way?” Johnny asks.
“No. This is me.” And she slithers another piece of pizza onto her plate and burps loudly.
Johnny doesn’t know if it’s the grass she smoked still seeping around in her brain, or the anesthetic, or just the relief, but Melody appears to want to show her gratitude because she says, “Thank you, Johnny,” several times and touches his hand, his forearm, leaving tiny cool spots there.
Melody, when she’s finished her meal, says, “You’re going to be a father soon, aren’t you?”
Johnny runs an eye down Melody’s nose, past her belled mouth, her chin, along the veins of her throat, the bones at her collar, to her breasts which are small and hidden by the mass of her sweater. “Three weeks,” he says, and he remembers as a child, the feel of a wishbone in his fingers, not quite dried, springy like this girl’s body.
Since he left Lesser with Melody at his side he’s experienced a sense of freedom and risk. His life lately has been encircled by work and eggs and Loraine and the centre. This wonder he has been feeling with Melody—a breathless, wrong-headed, and lovely need to run—has been absent from his life. He is relieved that Melody is not blubbering and all broken up. That could have been awful, a scene full of panic and accusations. Instead she sits, her thin wrists crossed, her chin brave. The two of them could be anywhere, be anybody. Up to this point Melody has been like a lover. In the dark and unacknowledged corners of Johnny’s mind, it is as if Melody has cornered him, touched his chin with a fingertip, and whispered in his ear, Come here, Johnny.
And so the mention of this inevitable baby is like a quick sharp tug, as if Johnny were a kite being hauled back into captivity. One side of his mouth goes up. “Funny,” he says, and he points at Melody and then back at himself and the word comes out with an effeminate lilt, so that he has this image, seen through the eyes of Melody, of a man who is hiding his true identity. He laughs. Waits for Melody to join in. She doesn’t.
“You wanted that baby?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“And you’re a Christian, right? Like, born again?”
“Many times.”
“At what point does that become a joke?”
Johnny is solemn now. He cares deeply for this subject. “I’m beyond that,” he says. “Really, Melody, I’m lost. I have no chances left.”
There is, Johnny believes, a brief shadow of fear in Melody’s eyes. Her voice is hard though. “You’re joking.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“I’m confused, really. I’ve been raised on the shit you’re talking about. It’s a mind-fuck. I heard someone say once, and he was a lot older than me, that we have to stop looking outside ourselves for salvation. In fact, he cursed salvation. Called it fake. What we need is awareness, you see?”
“Sounds mystical,” Johnny says. “Airy-fairy.”
Melody takes a cigarette and sucks on it deeply, as if thinking that were she to let go it would disappear. Johnny is smitten by this girl’s intelligence, her ability to argue, to speak. She’s smooth: a beautiful girl full of doubt and cynicism who laughs, Ha, Ha, from deep in her throat and then lifts her eyebrows as if to ask, Who laughed?
“We should go,” Johnny says. They do.
It’s past eleven. The night is colder now. In the distance, across the prairie, an April storm is approaching.
“Smells like rain,” Melody says, hand on the passenger door.
And then they’re driving and Melody sleeps a bit, jumping awake at the border, then trying to sleep again but not succeeding. Melody and Johnny don’t talk much. The barriers that fell away as they headed south are now fitting back into place as Lesser approaches. Johnny breathes with great difficulty. He whistles something, then stops. Melody finds an FM station and they listen together.
The lights of Winnipeg begin to glow. Johnny eats an Oh Henry: The King of Candyland, the wrapper says. He dislodges a peanut from his tooth and says, trying to crowd out the music, “Sweet Marie just doesn’t match up to Oh Henry. This one’s bigger, chewier.”
Melody turns and stares at him. She is weary.
Johnny takes the St. Adolphe bridge, planning to circle back along the gravel roads, following the river and then up the 312 and into town. Through the back door. He is listless now, aware of a bitter taste in his mouth, left there by overexcitement, too many cigarettes, sexual fatigue. Crossing the river into St. Adolphe, the lights of the bridge slip by. Johnny looks over at Melody. She has her eyes closed. Her neck lies back against the leather headrest. She is frightfully young. A pain, like a sharp needle, passes through Johnny’s temple and out his eye. He pulls at a fistful of hair, trying to relieve the smarting.
Close to town Johnny shuts off the air-conditioning and opens his window. The smell of Lesser, a mixture of diesel and grain, clover and rain, wet dust and a sour hint of garbage, floats into the car. Melody sits up, alert.
“To Carrie’s,” she says.
Johnny obeys. They sigh through a silent sleeping town. Carrie’s house is located at the south end, in Lesser’s only real suburb tucked away behind the high school. Johnny stops the car a block from the house. An upstairs light glows.
“That’s Carrie’s bedroom. I’m supposed to throw a rock at the window.” Melody has the door open, one foot already on the street before she thinks of something and stops. She tosses her head. “Hey, Mr. Fehr. Thanks.” She stretches across the seat and pecks Johnny on the cheek, her bottom lip the tiniest bit wet.
“Yeah, well …” Johnny begins, but she’s gone. The car door slams and then there she is, outside, cutting across lawns, legs twinkling, a soft shadow slipping under the moon. Johnny imagines he can see her in the darkness along the edge of Carrie’s house, though he is not sure. The side door finally opens. A strip of light. A figure slipping in. The door closes.
In the morning, after spending the rest of the night at the centre, Johnny eats breakfast at Chuck’s. He arrives early and sits in a booth by himself. His head aches this morning. He should call Loraine but hasn’t quite found the courage. He’s not sure if he wants to rediscover her yet. He’s poking at an egg when Eric Godwin, Loraine’s neighbour, finds Johnny, points a finger at him, and bellows, “You little son of a bitch you. Hok-ey. Goddamn. Congratulations.”
Johnny studies the grinning fool.
Godwin’s voice gets louder. “What? Where’ve you been? Out all night? Wow. You’re a father, Johnny Fehr. Wife tells me it was a girl. Blue eyes. Everything’s great. Good God, man. Home with you.”
But Godwin needn’t have offered this advice. Johnny’s already out the door. He’s gone, his Olds a black arrow carrying him back to the nest he left a day earlier, out on a mission that would eventually bring him, sullied and older, back to the bedside of Loraine, his lover, the mother of his child. And when he arrives, Loraine smiles a radiant and tired smile, lofty, and holds out the little prune for Johnny to see. “Here,” she says. “Ours.”
And Johnny takes that infant, and he weeps.
IN
On the May long weekend Loraine asks Johnny if he wants to move in. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, gnawing at a rib of celery. Loraine’s spinning her lettuce in the clothes washer; a tip she got from a cookbook: If salad greens are wet and you need them right away, place in a clean pillowcase and spin dry on gentle cycle in your automatic washing machine for a few seconds. This hint is especially good to know if you are serving salad to a large crowd! Johnny, Chris, and her, not a large crowd but the idea appeals to Loraine.
Johnny’s hard to read. He doesn’t speak, just nods. Strange, how the thrill of being near this man still touches at Loraine, like a warm breeze across the skin.
“I talked with Chris and he didn’t seem to be against it,” Loraine says. “He’s preoccupied these days. Melody still.”
“A woman’ll do that,” Johnny says.
Loraine swivels, hands on hips. “A woman’ll do that,” she mimics. She stops and for some reason
remembers the morning after the birth. She asks, “You still mine?”
Johnny snorts, touches his ear, “Naww,” he says. He stands and backs her into him so Loraine can feel his belt buckle, the metal pressing through her shirt. He touches the flab on her belly.
“Fat,” Loraine says.
“Ummm.”
“You’ll get less sleep, you know, sleeping with me.” She senses a certain direction in his thoughts and corrects him. “Rebecca, she’s up three, four times a night.”
“Oh.”
“So, you can fetch her. Bring her to me.”
The baby’s upstairs now. Sleeping. Really, her motivation for asking Johnny to move in is fear. She has felt, since the birth of Rebecca, a slipping away of this man, as if they all were on ice and playing Crack the Whip and Johnny was at the end, spinning wildly, going faster and faster. One of these days he’s going to lose his grip and fly away. She wants him close. Wants to hold him, tie him up.
“Silly,” he says now. “In the washer.”
“But see,” Loraine answers, holding up a leaf to his cheek, “perfect.” She smells his neck and vows that one of these days he will hear all about the birth. She will tell him everything.
It was a Tuesday morning and Loraine was thinking that this was the day the baby would come. Not that she’d been experiencing any unusual movements or pain or spotting. The baby had been quiet for several days, pressing down on her pelvic floor.
Lying in bed, listening to Johnny leave—he didn’t say goodbye to her which was surprising and disconcerting; even this lack of affection on his part struck Loraine as a sign—she thought she should call Claire just to make sure she stayed available that night. She didn’t call though and by noon had dismissed the notion of an early birth. Still three weeks left. Don’t be foolish, she cautioned herself.
Before supper she hung out in the barn with Chris. She counted flats and he delivered carts stacked with eggs. Chris was brooding, silent. Later, while they lifted flats and counted, Loraine tried to talk to him.
“How’s school?”
“All right.”
“Homework tonight?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You still seeing Melody?”
Chris’s eyes went up to the ceiling. He attempted indifference but his face fell apart. He pushed his chin into his far shoulder and hid. His crying was quick and hard, his neck moving like a dog who was bolting food.
Loraine didn’t speak. Didn’t touch him. She kept counting, lost track, then started again. She would have liked to wring her hands. Pat his shoulder. See, she said to herself, didn’t I predict this?
She tried the obvious. “You broke up.”
Chris’s shoulders hunched and dropped. Loraine wanted to throttle Melody. Call her up right then, make her ears ring. Little princess.
“I don’t know,” Chris said. His face was less twisted now; a quick spurt of grief. He cradled an egg. “She won’t talk to me.”
“Won’t? You tried talking to her?”
“Aw, Mom, forget it. Doesn’t matter anyway. I’m only fifteen. It doesn’t matter shit.”
“Maybe she’s pregnant.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“It’s happened.”
“We don’t sleep together any more.”
“Really.” Loraine was pleased. In fact, the idea that Chris would no longer spend time with Melody filled Loraine with hope. The girl was both sweet and cold, as if all that religion she’d suffered had split her heart in half: one side sunny, the other full of gloom. “Since when?” she asked.
Chris watched her, no answer. His look was curious. Sometimes when Loraine caught him staring like this at her she felt her son was far away, perhaps in another house across the way from hers, and he was staring with binoculars out a window, searching for her. She was uncomfortable then, acutely aware of her own body and of what she was wearing, of how she sat, and the way her chest rose as she breathed. Loraine shivered now, lifted a hand. Chris’s eyes widened and dropped.
“You’re young,” Loraine said, heaving herself from the stool.
“That’s what I just said,” Chris responded. He turned away. Loraine, walking back to the house, wondered if it was possible for a son to lust after his mother. Funny thought. Sick.
Loraine’s water broke in the kitchen. She was experiencing what she thought was a minor tightening of the uterus; a Braxton Hicks, she thought, they’d been playing with her all week. But then, with a whoosh, just as she was sinking her hands into hot water, a massive contraction clawed at her, forcing her elbows to the counter and wobbling her knees. She gasped, moaned, closed her eyes, and breathed through her mouth, fire dancing along the spine of her belly. Then, somewhere below her, there was a faint pop: a cupful of warm water had been poured between Loraine’s thighs. “Oh shit,” she said. She put her hand inside her panties, pulled it away wet, and eyed her fingers. The liquid was clear. “Good,” she said. She straightened and looked at the clock. Seven. Chris was still in the barn.
Loraine panicked slightly, aware of how quickly she laboured, of her distance from the hospital. She resented—it was like a slight stitch in her side—Johnny’s absence. And then as another contraction bent her earthward she understood that she would have this baby alone. Johnny would be off meandering the countryside, chatting it up with farmers and their wives, sipping tenderly at bitter coffee while she, Loraine, braced herself for the passage of their baby.
She moaned lightly, thinking how like the wind she sounded. Finally, at rest, she picked up the phone. The Godwins didn’t answer. Loraine, breathing loudly, tried the neighbours further west, the Loepkys. No answer. She would have to call 911. Her body was folding back into itself. According to the clock the contractions were coming every three minutes. Too fast. Too furious. Through the kitchen window she could see Chris walking across the yard to the house. She closed her eyes, her cheeks expanded. Chris was behind her, standing in the doorway. “I’m having the baby.” She was talking into her breasts.
“No,” he said. “It’s not time.”
“I’m having it now,” Loraine said. She checked the clock. “My water broke already,” she announced. “I tried Mrs. Godwin and Mrs. Loepky. No answer. I’m going to go upstairs. You listen for me, meanwhile try to call Claire and tell her. Ask her if she can come here.”
“Here?” Chris was circling Loraine, pulling at his fingers.
“I’m not driving anywhere,” Loraine said. “St. Pierre, the closest, is too far.” She lurched left, moaned, and lassoed her son’s neck. She yanked him close and laid her face on his neck. One of her fists burrowed into and pulled at his hair. In the distance, like a dull echo, Loraine heard, “Mom, that hurts.”
She leaned hard into Chris’s body. He stumbled, then held her. “Like that,” she said, and it was oddly comforting to smell the boy, to inhale him. She felt safe. Finally Loraine straightened and let out old air.
“I’m scaring you,” she said.
Chris shook his head. Loraine left him by the phone and made her way up the stairs to the bedroom. She took off her clothes, methodically, ecstatically: blouse, sweatpants, bra, panties, socks. She went to the bathroom and stood there naked, muttering her way through another contraction. In the mirror, when she opened her eyes at one point, she observed the shape of her belly as it squeezed the baby downwards: the roundness disappeared and her stomach shuddered into a misshapen oval, like a rubber ball pressed between two large hands.
She ran a hot bath and sank into the water. Chris appeared at the door, hesitant, eyes slipping sideways towards the wall, saying that Claire was on her way. She would also call Dr. Pitt.
“Fine,” Loraine murmured. “Get a pitcher, would you? Don’t be shy.”
The boy reappeared and Loraine, arms propped at the edge of the tub, advised him to pour bathwater over her stomach during the contractions. She had read about this in one of those books, about it making you relax.
“How do I know when?” he asked.
He was kneeling beside the tub, head bowed.
“You’ll know,” Loraine gasped.
Chris dipped and poured, dipped and poured. Loraine dug her nails into his free wrist. “I wanna push,” she said.
“Shouldn’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She felt again with her hand on the other side of the hill and said, “I don’t know if I’m fully dilated.” She paused, wiped at her face with a washcloth, and said, “You’re a brave boy, Chris. You’ll help me do this, won’t you?”
“Sure,” Chris said. He was afraid.
Loraine, after several more hard contractions, wanted to exit the tub. “To the bed,” she said, taking Chris’s arm. Between the contractions, when the baby was like a sliver fluttering just above her body, she seemed clear-headed and hopeful. Her manner was even jokesy, as if she and Chris were lovers come together for an afternoon tryst.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said to Chris, tipping a hand at her body and then back at him. “I guess I should cover up but I can’t stand the feel of cloth on my skin. Good education for you,” she grinned, and the grin seared down into a grimace.
She attempted lying on her side on the bed. “This,” she said, her mouth full of the rough grain of the bedspread, “is too uncomfortable.” Next, she stood, her hands turned inward, pressing down onto the dresser. She directed Chris to stand behind and support her. “Your arms here,” she said, and brought his biceps under her own arms and locked his hands at her chest, just above the gap between her breasts. He held her then and she groaned and ground downwards. For some reason, she wanted to be good at this, to be full of grace. This was a test, she thought, and if she passed, she would have a long and beautiful life. Her baby would be healthy. Johnny would stay with her.
A Year of Lesser Page 18