by Lisa Hannett
“Enough showing off,” Mamma always snapped too soon, shooing Bets out.
“Let her stay, Gayle,” said the Aunties, but by then Bets was already gone. Back down the hall, back to her books and paints. Back on her lonesome.
* * *
The cinder shovel’s small but sturdy, the worn handle a good fit for Bets’ grip. The blade’s got some new notches and the shaft is bending, but it’s holding up, keeping pace. Shunt, spill, shunt, spill, shunt, spill. Bets grunts as she digs, conserves energy by tipping the dirt gently beside her instead of tossing it like a stupid cartoon character. Folk who don’t turn soil for a living have some highfalutin notions about work like this--suburbanites and city slickers pay top dollar to visit hobby farms, to crouch in their chinos and pull weeds for a spell, to shove their manicured hands in manure for a weekend and call it a Zen experience. Being in the moment. Focusing on the now.
Horseshit, Bets thinks, shunting, spilling. There’s nothing relaxing about the pain in her lower back, the crick in her neck, the afternoon sunlight glaring off the dregs of water left in her bottle. With every spadeful, she’s time-travelling. Imagining herself elsewhere. The past. The future. Anywhere but the present.
Anywhere but here.
There had to be someplace to start, she’d thought. Some first step she could take. Some way to catch a break.
“Maybe I could get a gig at the Sugar Spoon,” Bets had suggested after dinner one night, when Mamma was mellowing on the couch with a cigarette and a bit of cross-stitch. There’d been an ad in the paper the day before, a local ragtime band looking for backup vocalists. Black and white, no pictures, the opportunity had been crammed in a few lines of text, printed between a psalm and a call for pageant judges.
She’d run the idea past Nanna Teenie that morning; the old ghost had nodded, squeezed, flapped her mouth enthusiastically. No harm in trying, Bets believed Nan’d said. So she’d dusted off the grave-dirt, gussied herself up, gone down to the saloon and auditioned before she could overthink herself out of doing it.
This time Bets performed the song she’d intended. Start to finish. And she’d done all right, maybe more than all right, her voice trembling only when she wanted. They said they’d call her tonight or tomorrow.
They’d smiled and said she was good.
Every time the phone rang, her belly squirmed.
“I hear they might be looking for singers,” Bets had said, aiming for aloof, managing something more like half-contained fidget. Now that she’d already gone and done it, it was safer to broach the topic. Mamma couldn’t ruin it after the fact. “Maybe I could try out,” she said.
Mamma had tied off a thread, then reached for her smoke, balanced it between her needle-fingers. She took such a long drag, her chest rattled.
“Be reasonable,” she’d said, squinting, exhaling clouds. “This ain’t but another whim. Ain’t it. When’s the last time you picked up a pencil? Or played that keyboard of yours? This ain’t no different. You ain’t no singer, Bets. It’s just a phase.”
“But,” Bets had begun. Stopping as the phone rang.
“Get that,” Mamma had said, getting up. Heading off to the john. “I’ve had so much tea tonight my back teeth are floating.”
“Got it,” Bets had replied. Reaching over to the side table, she’d laid her hand on the receiver. Didn’t pick up.
* * *
She isn’t asking much. Not some round-the-world cruise on a ship bigger than Napanee County. Not a million dollar lotto win. Not to be fawned over in fancy-girl dress shops like those snobby ladies did Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman--a film Bets had adored, immediately and profoundly, and was foolish enough to say so. While the credits rolled on their TV, she’d sighed happily, hand fluttering up to her heart. “That was so good.”
“Bets is found herself a new calling,” Daddy had said from the recliner, loud so’s Mamma could hear it from the kitchen. “Fancies she’s gonna be a hoor.”
She can still feel the heat of that flush. The lump jagging in her throat. The teary anger at being so misunderstood.
“It’s just a movie,” Daddy had said, laughing, clicking those damn silver teeth of his. “And you ain’t got the figure to make that kind of money.”
All Bets wants is to live a while in the city. Downtown. In an apartment. A sleek one with granite countertops and stainless steel fittings, picture windows without curtains, and halogen bulbs inset in white ceilings, beaming down like alien spotlights. She wants a place with no yard.
She thinks about the type of someone she’d have to become to match those upmarket joints. A catalogue model. A regular guest at the Grand Ole Opry. A rich man’s wife.
Nope, Bets thinks, digging, digging. Scratch that last one.
If she can’t find her own shine, she might as well stay home.
Shunt, spill. One little dig after another, accumulating, really gets her pulse going. She braces herself against the mound as the ground shifts beneath her feet. The crest is rising up fast in front of her; if anyone looked out the kitchen window right about now, they’d glimpse her blonde bangs over the ridge, her hair teased up in a wave that’s beginning to droop. They’d see the cool arcs of brows she’s spent hours upon hours plucking. Pale green eyes that blink too much, fluttering to shut out a world that doesn’t yet match the one hidden behind her lids.
Although this third grave’s much smaller than the one Nanna Tee’s in, it’s still big enough to swallow a heavy duty Silverado whole. From chassis to skylight, quadruple headlights to a tray that can haul over 3000 lbs, the pickup’s well and truly covered. No sense burying nothing useful, nothing valuable, Mamma insisted. Sink rustbuckets instead of good timber.
Always was so practical, her Mamma. Never did nothing without a solid reason. Never acted on a whim.
Bets straightens up, cuffs the sweat from her brow. Pauses to take in the familiar view one last time. The flag jutting out from the house’s back gable, parachute fabric snapping in the breeze. All those red and white lines pointing nowheres, those jagged stars fading to nothing. At the end of the driveway, the rickety toolshed. She won’t miss its oil stink, its spiders, its stubborn door. By the stoop, there’s the swan-shaped planters Mamma bought at a flea market, cracked from too many cold snaps. The bleeding-heart bushes have grown wild around them, weird flowers bobbing in grass that was overgrown long before winter, and has now sickened into a yard of pukey yellow-green. Phlegmatic. That’s another word Bets once looked up: means apathetic, unflappable. Literally, she thinks, looking at that useless lawn. So heavy and dull, even the wind can’t budge it.
Nothing shiny round here, Bets knows, but what’s underground.
Singing low, she keeps digging until she hits some.
* * *
Soon as Bets strikes metal, she tosses the shovel and starts using her hands instead. She’s not worried about damaging the truck--the thing was a piece of shit long before it was buried--only, she wants to reach the cab without having the whole damn thing cave in. Between each scoop, she packs the dirt walls around and above her, suddenly grateful for the ground-freeze keeping the mound’s earthen lid stiffly in place. The sloping tunnel is now twice her width and half again as tall. Cursing Mamma’s stubbornness--it’d be so much easier if the pickup had been parked inside a cavern, the way Winston’s jalopy and Nanna Tee’s Buick were--Bets crouch-claws down to the bottom. Does her best terrier impression. Sprays soil up and out the hole behind her.
Luckily, her aim isn’t too far off target. A window’s topmost edge is poking up from the ground in front of her: not the windshield she’d expected, but the driver’s side door. Scraping her fingers raw, she cleans the glass bit by bit, wiping away grime and the fog of her breath, until the pane is mostly clear. A ragged circle of light filters in over Bets’ shoulder, reflecting grey on the panel’s upper right corner. In blue shadows inside the truck’s cab, a slight figure is buckled behind the wheel, dressed in her Thorsday best. Lace-gloved hands folded in her
lap. Permed head bowed as though praying. Refusing to look up.
“Open up, Mamma,” Bets says, knuckles rapping on the glass. “Don’t make me break in.”
Mamma’s gaze flicks to the door, then back to her knees. Slowly, she bunches the lengths of her black skirt up onto her thighs, twisting the fabric around a glint of silver. Patting it in place, she straightens her shoulders. Rearranges her tarnished necklace, nestling the cross between ruffles on her blouse. Tilts the rearview mirror and fusses a minute with her hair. Acts like she’s alone. As ever.
“Come on,” Bets snipes, knocking harder. “Mamma.”
The ghost rolls her eyes, unrolls the window. Soon as it’s cracked an inch, a dank gust of air whooshes out, reeking of smoke and tar and hospital-grade antiseptic. All the stinks of life that led her into death, clinging for eternity. It wasn’t dramatic, Mamma’s end. It was efficient. Expected. Not trusting anyone else to get the details right, she’d made all the arrangements herself. Hedging bets, she’d asked Reverend to send her off, ashes to ashes and all that jazz, then invited the Lady’s diner sect to drive her into the ground.
That’s my girl, Daddy had said proudly, before Mamma went and stole his smile for good. Keeping it for herself.
“Got my license,” Bets says, talking fast so Mamma won’t interrupt. “And a spot on the bookmobile’s roster. From next week, I’ll be driving the Napanee--Athabaska route. It’s not much, but ... ”
Bets stops, swallows. Keeping her gaze down--if the gods are watching, they’re watching, whether she’s under wide skies or close earth--she wriggles onto one elbow, reaches back with her free hand. Paper crackles as she drags the map from her pocket, then smooths it between filthy palms. Scrawled on a scrap torn from an old sketchbook, the road-lines are messes of crayon, the landmarks smudges of multicoloured chalk, the street names and compass arrows scribbled in illegible marker. No matter which way it’s held, the thing’s damn near impossible to read. A kindergarten kid could’ve done better, no doubt about that.
Good thing you’re set on broadening your horizons, girl, Daddy’d said when Bets showed it to him yesterday. Most Wheelers know these roads inside out, but this ... He’d shaken his head, turning the map this way and that. If you ain’t inherited my sense of direction, well, you’d better ask yer Mamma for the next best thing. Reckon she’ll give it to you easier’n she will me.
But Bets knows Mamma never gave anything so easily as she did criticism, followed by her own--the only--opinion. Death won’t have changed her mother that much.
She’s counting on it.
Steeling her resolve, Bets holds out the drawing, keeping her hand flat and low, close enough for Mamma to lick. It really is the worst piece of art she’s ever crafted, as appalling in the gloom as it is in full bright, but Bets yammers like she has so many times before when showing off what she’s made. Too quick, too eager for approval.
“The bookmobile stops in the city twice a month to restock,” she says, pointing. “Here and here and there. Don’t know exactly where else I’m headed, but probably we’ll follow the river,” she wags her finger at a splotch and a purple squiggle, “then motor alongside the canyon a whiles.” Brown penciled nonsense cuts across the page, so ugly Bets can hardly bear looking at it. “Reckon this map’s going to lead me on some grand adventures, don’t you?”
Chin lifted, Mamma rolls her eyes at the thing.
Don’t hold back now, Bets thinks, suppressing a grin when Mamma uncrosses her arms, snatches and crumples the page.
How will you ever get by, the ghost’s blue sneer seems to say. Magnanimous, Mamma fumbles at her skirt, freeing Daddy’s silver-toothed map from the wool’s dark folds. With a huff, she tosses it up into the dirt tunnel. Don’t let me stop you.
“Oh,” Bets says, smiling at last, running a thumb over the mouth-piece’s worn ridges. A new song tickling her lips. A coal of certainty burning hot in her belly. “I won’t.”
Surfacing
Dot remembers that pond better than ted does.
The July water, warm and waist-deep. Clear as summer wine if they’d stood still long enough, toes touching, feet sinking in the clay; churned to cloudy cider if minnows had nibbled, if sunk branches had scratched, if milfoil had brushed her shins. Any excuse and she’d squealed, jumped into Teddy’s arms, kicked up silt. Any excuse and he’d lifted her, held her right close, goosebumps roughing his skin despite the afternoon heat. Dottie with no varicose veins, no cellulite. The red floral maillot Mama had bought her cupping and accentuating, not digging in. Teddy trim from a season’s planting up north, muscles lean from all that hoeing. The two of them, sun-glazed but shivering. Curved hardnesses pressed against soft.
Dinner bells had rung while they swam, crickets droning around them in the long grass. Poplars had rained yellow-green. Old man willow had averted his gaze, bowed his head to the shallows and wept. Teddy had teased and tickled and pinched. He’d hauled Dottie underwater to keep the horseflies from gouging chunks out their scalps. Only then, her squeal had been genuine; all that time spent curling, pinning up her hair, all that wasted effort. They’d emerged gasping, sputtering, speckled with leaves. Teddy had brushed maple keys from her shoulder blades, called her angel as the little green wings spun free. She couldn’t help but smile.
A fine screen of reeds had spiked the banks, long stems broken where retrievers had ploughed through chasing ducks. In Dot’s mind, those shoots are still tall and swaying and backlit, black dusted with gold. She’d been fifteen when they’d splashed into that darkness together, that first time, on Teddy’s birthday. Fifteen when she’d torn the leg elastic on her new swimsuit, pulling the fabric too quickly aside. The ripping high-pitched, a whip-crack that had stopped Teddy’s clumsy prodding. He’d stopped and looked at her. Waited for her say-so.
He’d waited.
It’d been all the comfort Dottie needed.
Don’t worry, she’d said, teeth chattering between kisses. Keep going.
She’d bled for him in that pond. Without worrying too much about love or marriage or what Mama would say when she saw what Dottie’d done to her new suit. She didn’t care about all the possible thens; she was focused on now. On Teddy. On not getting caught.
The reeds were magic camouflage, hiding their bare nethers from all but Jesus’ sight. They’d kissed in the shade, lips bluing. His thighs beneath hers strong but so cold. She’d flinched as his chill pushed its way up and in. Freezing her from the inside out.
It’ll get better, Dottie had told herself, tasting salt and iron. Hang in there.
The water had roiled painfully between them for a couple of minutes, and then it was still. After, Teddy explored Dot’s smoothnesses and nubs, places where she was now slick or tender or numb. He’d blushed and fumbled to re-lace his trunks. “Here,” she’d said, taking the strings, double-knotting them. Tugging to make sure the bow would hold.
Laughing, the bold Teddy she’d always known had returned, replacing the shy. With a wink, he’d clasped her shoulders, puckered for another kiss. Dot had leaned in--and Teddy heaved, dunking her head-first. Water simmered past her nose and ears, fizzing like popping candy. The world was muted, a shimmer of light above the murk. Holding her breath, Dottie had stayed under. Listening to the hollow thump of Teddy’s feet running away. Squinting against the grit. Exhaling bubble by bubble. Sinking deeper, into silence.
Her lungs burned by the time she’d heard muted sloshing, Teddy’s trophy-winning stroke pulling him smoothly back. A few seconds later, his shadow sailed over her. He’d kicked carefully, arms scooping, reaching down. Grinning, she’d dodged his hands. Made him squirm a bit before surfacing.
* * *
They’d taken their honeymoon in a tent by the pond’s shores. Drifted their summers away on orange air mattresses. Swam through the sadness after one Baby Boy and two Baby Girl Brantferds were born quiet and blue. They’d gone there so much over the years, Ted used to joke, their skin hasn’t grown old--it’s just permanen
tly water-wrinkled.
But this new puddle on their front lawn, this mattress-sized pool trenched between the begonias and the curb, this is not their pond. Theirs was filled with concrete thirty-odd years ago. Capped with a drive-in, then a parking lot, then a discount outlet mall. Theirs is cement supporting cement, smoothed without a ripple.
This one is all wrong, all Ted’s.
A lace of white cloud scudders overhead, as if God’s drawn Chantilly across His window this morning. Sunlight filters through the gaps, bright but not all that warm. In frost on the porch railing, Dot’s handprints melt into her husband’s as she huffs down the steps. Slowly, slowly, she follows his trail to the water. It’s deep green, impenetrable, black where muck meets grass. She shudders, seeing the night sky trapped in its surface; thousands of stars glinting between ghosted branches of elms, larches, pine. There are no crickets chirping here, no sunny birdsong, just a low-level electric hum. The shore is fringed with ferns, not reeds. Around it, the air smells like rain.
Ted’s been gawking at the thing, on and off, for days. Gaze unfixed. Arms crossed or hanging listless. Sometimes rocking gently, squelching from heel to toe, sometimes barely moving. That’s how Dot finds him now, standing right where her marigolds and peonies should be, a lone sentinel planted in the embankment. Barefoot and still wearing the same overbleached boxers he slept in. The knobs of his spine showing through a thin undershirt, hardly any meat left on him. She used to love running her hands up under Teddy’s work shirts, feeling the heat of his skin, the ridged muscles, the fur on his solid belly--but Ted’s mostly wisp now. If Dot scratched his back the way she used to, he’d probably catch under her fingernails, crumble, and blow away.
“Where’s your housecoat, love? Where’s your shoes?”