Catch Me When I Fall

by Westerhof Patricia

  Catch Me When I Fall

  Patricia Westerhof

  For my parents.

  What you see

  is one version of love, but there are many.

  —Diana Brebner

  Contents

  Unfailing Mercies

  Holy Earth

  You in Your Small Corner

  How Lovely Are the Feet of Them

  God’s Laughter

  The Whole Field

  Probability

  Shepherd’s Pie

  Killdeer God

  Love’s Austerities

  Poplar Grove

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Unfailing Mercies

  GRIPPING HIS NEW cordless microphone, the minister stood in front of the pulpit and hollered, “CHRIST ROSE FROM THE DEAD!” his voice as gleeful as if he had just won the Stanley Cup. “HOW DO WE KNOW? BECAUSE OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SAW HIM.”

  A lot of people believe they’ve seen Elvis too, Sarah thought, though her fellow congregants seemed rapt. Behind her, Marisa DenZeldon grunted approvingly. Sarah leaned over the purse on her lap, nudged her wallet and a new pregnancy test kit to the side, found some peppermints and unrolled one.

  “THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB. THE APOSTLES. EVEN THOMAS BORE WITNESS WHEN HE SAW THE HOLES IN CHRIST’S HANDS.” Reverend Dykstra held his palms out as a visual aid. They were hole-free.

  Sarah moved her purse to the floor. Reverend Dykstra, still sounding like a Hockey Night in Canada announcer, called out, “NOW SHAKE HANDS WITH YOUR NEIGHBOURS, SAYING, ‘THE PEACE OF THE RISEN CHRIST BE WITH YOU.’” The congregation looked at one another uneasily. Mr. Kemp, on Sarah’s left, crossed his arms and shifted slightly away. Reverend Dykstra was new to them. He was from PEI, a very friendly province if you believed their travel ads. Sarah did, because Reverend Dykstra got his high expectations from somewhere. Asking Albertan farmers and farmers’ wives to greet one another in warm evangelical language—well, he might as well ask them to clean the church toilets.

  Sarah especially didn’t want to wish such a mouthful on Marisa DenZeldon. Not today.

  They stood up slowly, bums and backs rigid. School-photo smiles. Sarah greeted Helena Steenstra to her right and the Bouwens in front of her. Their son, Danny, still seated, was drawing a creepy-looking bird of prey on his bulletin, and he reluctantly proffered his hand when his mom jabbed his shoulder. Sarah turned and waited while Helena, who had her two-year-old daughter, Zoe, balanced on her hip, took Marisa DenZeldon’s hand as if it were a potato bug—she’d been wound up since Marisa sorted the nursery toys and threw out Zoe’s favourite tractor. “Marisa’s not even on the nursery committee,” she’d complained before the service.

  “Since when would that stop her?” Sarah had asked.

  Marisa, legs planted like stone pillars, leaned toward her now and reached with barbeque-tong fingers. “Peace,” she said.

  • • •

  Sarah used to believe she became a Christian because of Marisa. Marisa lived on a pig farm down the road—you could smell it when the breeze was from the east. The two girls played together a lot, especially in the summer when they’d ride their bikes out of the calling range of their mothers, who had overflowing buckets of peas for them to shell and oceans of beans and lettuce to weed. One sunny August day they cycled to Gull Lake. Although prohibited from swimming without an adult, they dug trenches on the beach and climbed the monkey bars and bought Popsicles from the general store by the cabins.

  As they pedalled home past canola and barley fields in the slanted late-afternoon sun, Sarah heard a metallic crunch and her bike lurched to a stop. “Chain’s off,” she yelled to Marisa, who was ahead of her. She pulled the bike far over on the dusty gravel shoulder close to the barley, in case any traffic came along. Sweating, she struggled to tug the chain back over the sprockets.

  Marisa, tall and sturdy at ten with dark brown curls and wide cheekbones, had wheeled her bike back toward Sarah. She watched for a while, then said, “You should pray for help.” Even then, her manner was imperious.

  “But my family—we don’t really believe in God.”

  “Oh, Sarah. You don’t have to believe what your parents believe. Do you want to go to hell when you die?”

  She wanted to get home by suppertime. “What do I say?” The only prayer she knew was Marisa’s dad’s, spoken in a rush before meals: Fatherwethankyouforyourunfailingmerciesandforthisfoodamen.

  “You just talk. God can hear you wherever you are. Like this.” Marisa folded her hands, bowed her head, and closed her eyes. Looked pious and devout, like the Precious Moments figurine in her living room. “Dear Father in Heaven,” she said, “Sarah’s chain fell off and we can’t get it back on. Please help us.”

  She glared at Sarah. “Did you have your eyes closed?”

  “I will.” She folded her grease-stained hands and closed her eyes tight.

  “Pray.”

  Sarah hesitated. “Father in Heaven. We thank you for your unfailing mercies and for you to put the chain back on.”

  “Amen,” Marisa prompted.

  “Amen.” Sarah opened her eyes and eyed the bike. “Chain’s still off.”

  “God doesn’t do it for you.” It was her you-are-an-idiot tone. “Let’s try again.” She held the bike up, and Sarah clutched the slack section of chain. She yanked it up from where it had fallen between the gears and the frame and carefully arranged the top part of the chain over the teeth. She’d already tried this three times, and each time the chain tripped off when she’d turned the pedal, falling next to the frame, limp as a cooked noodle.

  “Okay. Lift up the back wheel,” Sarah said. Marisa did, and Sarah gingerly turned the pedals forward. This time the chain rotated smoothly, aligning itself perfectly over the teeth as it travelled. “Wow,” Sarah gasped.

  Marisa looked smug. She set the bike down and wiped her hands together, although she hadn’t come in contact with any grease. She said, “See what God can do?”

  • • •

  Marisa found Sarah in the foyer where she was pulling on her coat after church. She grabbed her arm. “Russell didn’t make it for Easter?”

  Sarah stalled, fumbling with a button. Her husband, Russell, had been driving truck for an oil company since mad cow disease and tumbling beef prices. She’d told him to stay—“Not good timing this weekend,” she’d said on the phone. They were trying to get pregnant.

  “He’s home next weekend.”

  “Oh.” Marisa looked impatient. She grew up large—one of those towering Dutch-Canadian women with a sturdy trunk and powerful limbs like a discus thrower. She favoured large floral prints that made her look like a walking sofa. Her nose flared briefly, then she flicked her trowel-sized hand. “Listen, Sarah. You need to make a decision about becoming a GEMS leader. Janice Kemp’s baby is due in less than a month, so we need a replacement for her—pronto.”

  She stopped, looming forward expectantly. Sarah moved back a step, feeling a pang at the mention of Janice Kemp’s pregnancy. Maybe there was something wrong with her own body. She pulled her focus back to GEMS, and that caused another pang. If Marisa knew Sarah’s thoughts during the service, if she knew the doubts Sarah harboured, Marisa wouldn’t be asking her. “I’m not sure—”

  “C’mon. What else are you doing on Wednesday nights?”

  “I don’t know if I’m the right person.”

  “Of course you are. You like kids, you like crafts, you can read Bible stories.”

  “Well, I—I’ll think about it. I’ll call you this week.”

  She hurried to the parking lot, glad that her denim skirt and down-filled coat hung wide enough for striding.

  • • •

&n
bsp; When she was ten, it was GEMS—Girls Everywhere Meeting the Saviour—that gave her official status as a convert. GEMS was a Christian version of Girl Guides, close enough and bland enough that her parents said she could go. She liked the crafts a lot; they made sailboat pictures by pounding in nails on a board and winding string around them in a careful pattern; they assembled Christmas wreaths out of wire clothes hangers and cellophane.

  Each meeting started with a Bible story and a short lesson about living as a Christian. The morals weren’t that different than the ones her parents had taught her—be nice, don’t steal, don’t lie. But there was one big difference that drew her.

  “You should try not to sin,” said Joyce, a favourite counsellor. Her eyes smiled even when her mouth was straight. “But you won’t be able to live without ever doing anything bad, because we’re all human.” Sarah fixed her eyes on Joyce. At home, when she spilled something or forgot to make her bed, her mother would flinch, then freeze, her thin body poised for emotion and action. Sarah wanted to run, the way she did outside when she saw tight black clouds barrelling toward the still-blue sky above her. “Sarah Thomas,” her mother would say, her voice a thick rumble. Sarah flinched when her mother’s hand stung the side of her face, a sound like her father whacking jackfish to death at Buffalo Lake. Afterwards, her mother would wait for Sarah’s father to come in from milking and then she’d cry as he washed up on the porch. “Ron, I’ve had it. I’m up to here with them!” Her arm punched upward on the “here” and then jabbed in their direction—Sarah’s baby brother, who hadn’t done anything wrong, and Sarah. “I can’t cope anymore!”

  “Lena, Lena,” he’d soothe. Eyes tired, he’d pick up the baby and send Sarah to her room, where she’d sit on her bed, listening to the call and response of this dance of theirs—her shrill complaints and his low-pitched replies.

  “Even if you’re bad,” Joyce said, “with God, you can know that He loves you anyway. Just as much as if you were perfect.”

  • • •

  At home she checked for eggs in the chicken coop. It was an especially wintry Easter this year, with big flakes falling and a temperature of minus eight. If it snowed enough, her neighbour, Jacob Boss, would plow her driveway. She trudged inside and changed into jeans and a turtleneck. Later this afternoon, she planned to visit Russell’s parents in Leduc.

  As she made herself a fried-egg sandwich, she considered this morning’s service. She felt a kinship with Thomas, the disciple who wouldn’t believe till he saw with his own eyes. Once, he was her namesake—Thomas the doubter. But when she married Russell, she went from Sarah Thomas to Mrs. Uittenbroek. Not a name you find in the Bible.

  She toasted some bread and buttered it. What would she tell Marisa this week? The truth? Marisa would back off. Badger someone else. If she told Marisa that she spent the long nights without Russell stewing, mulling, thoughts twisting as if she were wringing out a tea towel, Marisa would find another GEMS leader. But she’d return and try to scold her back into believing. Sic the minister on her for a “pastoral visit.” Tell the Women’s Prayer Circle about her. And if none of that worked, if it didn’t make her faith bloom anew, Marisa would treat her like chaff among the wheat.

  Sarah ate her sandwich and washed the plate, utensils, and frying pan. She watered the spider plant and the African violets. Then she strolled to the shelf where she kept her weather records, a slowly growing collection of books in which she recorded each day’s statistics, just as her mother had been doing for fifty-five years. This year’s book was easy to spot among all the older ones, all ordinary notebooks bound in cheap vinyl. A misprint from a small publishing company, her current book sported a glossy cover—God’s Plan for the Ages by Hendrik Mellema. Because of whatever had gone wrong in the printing process, the pages inside were all blank. She found it on a remainder table at a Christian bookstore where she’d been shopping with Marisa for Sunday-school supplies. Striding up beside her and nosing over her shoulder, Marisa had said, “That’s terrible. Irreverent. They shouldn’t sell that!” Sarah had been thinking the same thing until she spoke.

  “Maybe it’s God’s joke.” She sounded belligerent. “Who is Mr. Hendrik Mellema to presume he knows God’s plan?” Then—she didn’t know what got into her—she said, “If there is a plan—”

  Marisa slapped her hand, in the middle of the Blessed Assurance Book Store. “You don’t say things like that,” she said. “You don’t mean it!” Her face all flushed and mottled, she marched away.

  Sarah opened the book and filled in yesterday’s date. March 22. She looked back at the glossy letters on the cover, thinking about how easy it had been to believe when she was ten. She swallowed everything Marisa and the GEMS leaders told her, and in turn got swallowed up—out of the turmoil of her parents’ world and into the benign arms of the congregation. She liked the consistency and the sense of belonging. In time she joined the youth group, met Russell there, and married him. She entered the fold, bought the whole field.

  Sarah knew that people believed in all kinds of nonsense—in righteous wars and bigamy, in veganism, and Wicca. Last year, an oil company executive from Calgary drove out in his Lexus to pick out the cow he wanted for his freezer. Said he could tell from looking which one had the right aura to make superior meat.

  She continued writing—High temp: 1. Low temp: -10. Precipitation: 12 mm—and then returned the book to the shelf, pushing the book spines into an even row. She wouldn’t make a good GEMS counsellor right now. Not without conviction, without faith. But Marisa was a bulldozer, and Sarah was afraid. She knew how things were here, with culture and religion as intertwined as beaten eggs. She gave herself good advice. Keep quiet.

  • • •

  Except for a few short breakups early on, Sarah had been with Russell since she was sixteen. That was the summer they both worked at the herbarium. They traipsed through pastures and bushes and fields to find weeds that weren’t already mounted on Bristol board at the research station. They pressed them and labelled them with their botanical and common names, wrote down when and where they picked them. It was hard to find anything new—the herbarium’s collection went back to 1932. “Oxeye Daisy,” Sarah said one day, picking it, even though it was common as barley. She methodically pulled off the petals, silently reciting, “He loves me, he loves me not.” “Do you remember its category?” she asked aloud. “Invasive, noxious, or nuisance weed?”

  “Pretty,” he said.

  “Not a category.”

  “It’s people who decide these plants are weeds,” Russell said. “Farmers. My mom grows those in her flower garden.” He grinned at her just as she reached the last petal. He loves me.

  On the August long weekend, she went camping at Gull Lake with Marisa and their friend Helena. They returned from a late-evening swim to find a note, the words squeezed out in ketchup on their picnic table: Russell was here. Ants marched through the sticky letters. Later, they found their sleeping bags full of corn flakes. “This is your fault,” Marisa screamed at Sarah. She backed out of the tent, dragging the sleeping bag, and she shook it madly. Helena and Sarah giggled. Sarah loved that summer. She was home only to sleep. She spent Monday to Friday at work, Saturday with friends at youth group events, Sunday at church. She went to both services to see Russell, maybe sit next to him in the pew. One Saturday night, there was a youth group picnic at Ryders Park. Russell was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom. They stood under a tree and kissed for a long time. Later, at the campfire, they held hands. Brad Bouwen played guitar, and they sang camp songs and Beatles songs and church songs. “‘I’ve got the peace-that-passes-understanding down in my heart,’” they sang. Ellie and Helena called, “Where?”

  “‘Down in my heart to stay.’” Sarah felt it. She believed it. She thought it was there to stay.

  • • •

  By May she was still not pregnant. She leaned against the headboard, her long, slim arms clasped around her knees. Eleven unsuccessful mon
ths. She picked up the plastic tube that confirmed the bad news. The doctor had told her that after being on the pill for four years a pregnancy might not happen right away. Be patient, he’d advised. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser: the thick, wavy brown hair, the oval face, the sad hazel eyes, the shapely lips that Russell loved to trace with his finger. She turned her gaze to the window and watched the cold sleet fall outside. Eventually she called Russell.

  “No luck this month.”

  “Oh.” There was a moment of silence. “Should we see the doctor soon?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m not home on any weekdays till June. Can it wait till then?”

  “Sure.” The cold rain slid down the window. Her voice sounded as sluggish as the spring.

  “It’ll happen, hon. You just need to stop worrying about it. How’s work?”

  “Same old.” Nothing much ever happened at the Co-op farm supply store. If she didn’t get pregnant soon, she was going to have to look for a more interesting job. Russell was in a chatty mood—he told her stories about the Newfoundlanders he was working with and the rich oil executives who didn’t know how to change the oil in their own cars. After a while, the timbre of his voice with the drone of the rain began to comfort her.

  “I should go,” he said. “Anything else?”

  I’m not sure I can go to church anymore, she wanted to say. I’m not sure what I believe. And the longer you’re gone, the more I fret.

  “Come home soon. I miss you.”

  After she hung up the phone, she stared at the single pink line on the test stick, then threw it into the wastebasket. If there was a God, she thought, he wasn’t one who cared about her.

  • • •

  Marisa called shortly after. “You weren’t in church this morning.”

  “I’m a little under the weather. A cold or something.”

  “Probably because of the weather. Virus weather. We haven’t been able to get into the fields at all yet.”