Catch Me When I Fall

by Westerhof Patricia

  Ruthie hadn’t written back. The envelope containing the July 1 bulletin and a pamphlet titled Yes You Can Change from another organization was returned marked “not at this address.” “Well, that makes sense,” Alida said, shuffling the envelope from one hand to the other. “She was renting that house with a whole group of students. They’ve probably gone their separate ways.” But which way did Ruthie go?

  No card came at Christmas. Or the next Christmas. Not even to let them know she was safe.

  Alida did her crying alone, in the late afternoons when Klaas was milking. Dinners were strained on those days. Alida served the roast, beans, and potatoes, and their forks clinked uneasily. Klaas tried to think of some news from the barn to tell her—a cow ready to calf, something the milkman said. She responded with trivia about their granddaughters—there were five of them now. The talking eased the pain, but it didn’t cancel Ruthie’s silence.

  Tonight Alida said, “Madison starts figure skating lessons on Saturday.”

  “Oh. Nice. Which arena?” He didn’t care much for figure skating. The women looked graceful and lovely, and it probably took a lot of training to manage those jumps. But watching it bored him. Madison’s interests tended to be fleeting—maybe she’d quit figure skating before Alida dragged him to her programs.

  “That one near Sylvain Lake. Early morning practices. The hockey players get the good ice time.”

  Ruthie had played hockey. He still hoped one of his granddaughters would take up the sport. He’d cheer at all her games. But it didn’t look likely. The girls now ranged in age from two to ten and a half, and they resembled the girls their mothers had been—beautiful, long-haired creatures who liked dolls and crafts and made him put the worms on the hooks when he took them fishing. Even Sarah, the most daring of the bunch, made disgusted “ewwww”s and plugged her nose when he cleaned the fish.

  “Madison gets up early anyway.”

  “It’s not Madison I’m worried about. It’s Elizabeth who has to drive her.” Alida handed him the Today devotional. He opened it and read aloud the short passage without taking much in. Something about God speaking not only through Scripture but through history. Alida stacked the plates and took out Tupperware for the leftovers. Klaas thumbed through the devotional booklet and thought about fishing. Ruthie had loved fishing. One overcast day in early June when he had fieldwork to do and Ruthie should have been in school—she must have been in grade ten or eleven that year—he told Alida a half-lie. “I need Ruthie’s help this morning with the calves.” Alida left for her part-time job in the church office, and he and Ruthie had all the calves moved to their new quarters by 10:30 AM. “Time for fishing?” he said.

  “Yes!”

  He remembered her grin. Her wheat-coloured hair had been long then, usually tied back into a loose ponytail. She wore blue jeans and T-shirts on her sturdy, compact frame. No makeup. To him she looked capable. An uncomplicated woman—someone you could rely on. As his older daughters had gone through their teenage years, he often pitied their various boyfriends, even as he scrutinized them for potential vices or failings. His girls were handfuls. Spirited and skillful at getting their way. But Ruthie was different. Maybe a bit sulky around her mother, but calm and down-to-earth with him. Practical. He thought she would make some guy a great wife. Maybe she didn’t have her older sisters’ allure, but she would be a genuine helpmeet and companion.

  Now he suspected he just hadn’t understood her. She was a completely different person than he’d thought. With secrets she hid from him, not trusting him. He stood, shoving the devotional booklet into the kitchen drawer with the others.

  “Want to play crib?” Alida asked. She was running the cloth over the already gleaming countertop, watching him.

  He had chosen well, he thought. “Sure. I’ll set up the board.”

  • • •

  The phone rang at lunchtime on Saturday. Alida picked it up. “Hello?” Klaas watched Alida’s face flatten.

  “Where are you now?” Her voice was pitched high, the words squeezed out, the way she’d sounded during labour.

  “Just a minute. I’ll ask your dad.” She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Klaas with dazed eyes. “Ruthie’s here. In Poplar Grove. She wants to come over. And to bring someone.”

  He frowned and mouthed, “Who?”

  Alida uncovered the mouthpiece. “Who is with you?” She listened a moment, then covered the mouthpiece again. “She says, her partner, Beth.”

  Partner. The word was foreign; it twisted his tongue.

  “She’s at Eliza Zylstra’s.” Alida’s eyes held his and pleaded. He knew what she meant. Eliza Zylstra was kind but not discreet. If he said no, soon everyone would hear it. And judge them.

  “Okay,” he said.

  • • •

  His heart wrenched as he watched Alida speed through the living room. As if the premier were coming over. She picked up stray stuffed animals left by the granddaughters, smoothed the crocheted afghan over the couch, ran a dust rag over the coffee table, moved the morning’s newspaper to the mudroom.

  “I don’t have any fresh baking,” Alida said as she dashed back into the kitchen where he was finishing his ham sandwich. She looked distraught.

  “Take something out of the deep freeze and microwave it,” he said.

  “I will,” she said. “But if I’d known she was coming, I’d have made the peanut-butter bars she likes.”

  “Well, she didn’t give us any notice.”

  • • •

  There was more news to absorb when Ruthie took off her coat. Alida sucked in her breath. Audibly. “Well,” said Klaas, staring at Ruthie. He had meant to hug her, but now he held back. He stuck his hand out toward the other woman. “Beth, right?” She was tall and dark with a prominent nose and a large, attractive mouth.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. The words must have come out louder than she intended—she immediately lowered her voice. “Ruthie talks about you a lot. She misses this place.” Beth glanced around curiously. Klaas looked back at Ruthie’s belly. Six months along maybe?

  Alida led them to the kitchen table, not the living room she had prepared. He turned to Beth. She looked . . . Italian? Olive skin and shiny, straight hair that was almost black. “What’s your surname?” he said.

  “Dekker.”

  “Dekker? That’s Dutch!”

  “Yes.” She smiled almost mischievously. “There’re two of us,” she said, looking over at Ruthie, who shook her head ever so slightly.

  Ruthie looked terribly strained. Klaas felt compassion that he thought probably only another father might understand. An urge to fix things, to transform the anguish on her face to relief. It’s fine—no big deal, he wanted to say, the way he did when one of the older daughters—which was it?—had come home weeping from a camping trip, a large dent in the new Honda’s front bumper. But this wasn’t a dented car. He turned to Beth. “Where are you from? Are you related to the Edmonton Dekkers?” Strange to be doing what Alida called Dutch bingo with his lesbian daughter’s partner.

  “No. All my relatives are in Saskatoon—and Holland. But I’ve been living in Calgary for six years. I’m doing a master’s degree in sociology.”

  “You met at university?” Alida asked. Klaas glanced at her. When Ruthie first told them she was gay, Alida had asked Klaas whether they should have steered Ruthie away from a secular university. Should they have made her go to King’s College in Edmonton or Dordt College in Iowa?

  “Yes. At the Campus Christian Fellowship, actually.” She looked at Ruthie again, smiling widely. Ruthie moved her head in vague acknowledgement.

  “Really?” Klaas met Alida’s surprised eyes. Ruthie still attended church?

  “Yep.” Beth smiled at him. He found himself liking her. Her large features seemed designed to curve into smiles.

  After some tea and defrosted boterkoek, some strained chitchat about the granddaughters and the road conditions along Highway 2, Beth excused herself t
o use the washroom. “So when are you due?” Alida asked.

  “Three months.” Ruthie looked like a barn cat cornered by the grandkids.

  “How did it happen?” Klaas couldn’t help himself.

  Ruthie picked up a spoon and stirred her tea, though she drank it black. Eventually she said, “It was planned. It was—clinical.”

  Artificial insemination then. But where had the sperm come from? He couldn’t ask. The whole thing was abhorrent. Wrong. He looked at Alida, her face tight, her shoulders drawn up. He rose and poured his tea down the sink. “And you’re planning to keep—to raise—this child?”

  “Yes. With Beth.”

  Alida’s fingers twirled and spun in her lap, knitting without needles or yarn. Klaas’s sigh hurt his chest. “We’re glad to know you’re safe, hon—Ruthie. But nothing has changed.” He looked over at Alida again, and she nodded faintly, her face pale. “We aren’t able to welcome you here as if this is all—fine.” His voice sounded a hundred years old. He felt even older. Defeated, though he was pretty sure he was doing the right thing.

  “Time to go,” Ruthie announced with false cheerfulness when Beth returned to the kitchen.

  • • •

  During the early summer, when friends and neighbours asked about Ruthie, Klaas and Alida would simply say, “We don’t know” in a tone that dissuaded further inquiry. Yet Klaas found Ruthie on his mind often—in the early mornings as he sprayed down the milk house and during the long afternoon hours in the field. Probably the baby would be a girl—his family ran to daughters. Would the other granddaughters ever meet their cousin? Should they? Would the little girl be raised as a Christian? Was there a church anywhere that would allow her to be part of it? With parents like that? His own church wouldn’t. Reverend Dykstra had taken him aside one day in the parking lot after the morning service. “It’s a hard thing, Klaas, to do the right thing when our children stray. Sometimes we are called to practise tough love.” Klaas had nodded, though he found himself wondering what the minister—whose children were just two and four years old—knew about tough love.

  • • •

  The note arrived in mid-August, and they opened it together over their lunch of chicken sandwiches and coleslaw. Hi Mom and Dad. Just wanted to let you know that the baby arrived and we are all doing well. His name is Isaac Kemp-Dekker. You can visit if you want. There was an address in the University Heights area of Calgary, and she signed it, Ruthie.

  A boy. Klaas reread the message, doubting the words. Yes. A grandson. Isaac. He felt hot, then cold. Then hot again. Did Ruthie know what that name meant? Klaas did. God’s laughter. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was Ruthie making some point? No, it wasn’t her way to be subtle or indirect. Maybe God was trying to tell him something? If so, he didn’t understand. He couldn’t condone this birth. Or feel good about this child. He said so to Alida.

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.” She turned on the tap and let the water run for a long time, kettle in hand.

  “I think it’s hot, dear,” he said.

  She remained still. “Do you think they have enough money?”

  “I don’t know.” He fingered the note, ran his thumb over the word Isaac. “Maybe we could send a little.” He watched her profile as he spoke. “But with a note that we won’t be visiting.”

  “Yes.” She turned and smiled with relief. “That’s fine.” She filled the kettle and turned off the water. “How much shall we send?”

  It was a tricky thing. He didn’t want to lose control of the situation. But a child cost a lot. And he wanted to be fair. He had paid for his other girls’ weddings. Given them some money when they’d bought their first houses. Slipped each of his sons-in-law a couple of hundred-dollar bills when there was a new baby in the family. Just to help.

  “Housing is expensive in Calgary,” he said. “Beth is still a student.”

  “Ruthie probably gets some maternity benefits, and Beth mentioned a part-time job. In social work though.”

  “The pay can’t be much.”

  Alida put the kettle on the stove and sat down across from him. “I wonder if they’ll get any hand-me-downs. The older girls got boxes of baby stuff from church friends. Ruthie might have to buy everything new.”

  They looked at each other. Alida tugged at her lip and Klaas stroked his sideburns. “Let’s think about it,” he said. “It’s not sitting easy with me.”

  “Susan DeBeer helped raise her daughter’s child.”

  “Yes, but that was a different situation. A single girl who made a mistake. Let’s wait. Think on it.”

  “I’d like to help,” Alida said. She laid her hand over his. He stroked her fingers with his thumb and played absently with her wedding band while the clock ticked and the kettle sputtered.

  • • •

  Later, as he lathered his body in the shower, he wondered if they’d know how to take care of him. To look after a boy. Ruthie had no brothers, nor had she babysat for the neighbours as the other girls did. While he scrubbed his skin, the worries chafed. Ruthie could teach him to throw a ball; she was athletic. And who knew? Maybe Beth was good at that sort of thing too. Ruthie might even take him fishing, although there wasn’t any good fishing in Calgary. The Glenmore Reservoir didn’t count. A stocked pond. Buildings all around it. Maybe Ruthie would take him camping in the Rockies. He found himself imagining fishing with the boy. No Couldn’t happen. He wrung out the washcloth.

  What about when the boy reached adolescence? Who would tell him about the changes he could expect? How girls addled your brains. Wet dreams. Or maybe he would turn out gay like his mother. Or if not gay, peculiar, with only women raising him. Klaas felt cold in spite of the warm, almost hot, water falling on him.

  • • •

  On Sunday after the service, he saw Harvey VanEng and old Reverend Post, the retired minister, lighting their cigarettes in the parking lot. Klaas strolled over. “What do you think of tough love?” he asked Reverend Post.

  “Yah,” said Reverend Post in his heavy Dutch accent. “I tink it is tough to luff.” He leaned forward and laid his hand on Klaas’s forehead. “A blessing for you,” he said. He ambled off with his cigarette.

  Harvey VanEng tossed his butt onto the pavement. “Think he’s losing it?”

  “Maybe,” Klaas answered, feeling oddly lighter. “Or maybe he’s never heard of tough love.”

  • • •

  Klaas walked to the car with his second-youngest granddaughter, Lexi, holding his hand tightly. She was singing a Sunday-school song. “‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.’” She stopped suddenly. “Do some children come in red and yellow?”

  “What?”

  “You know.” She sang, “‘Red and yellow, black and white, they’re all precious in his sight.’” She gazed at him, waiting.

  “Not really,” he said. “Those are shades, not colours. You know, like a reddish shade of beige, or a yellowish shade.”

  “Oh. And Jesus loves all the shades. Jesus likes colours. That’s why flowers come in colours. Can we look at the kittens when we get to your house?”

  “Yes, but remember they’re not tame,” he said. “They’re just barn cats.”

  “What colours are they?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Different colours.”

  “Are you going to drown them?”

  “No.” He looked at her, confused. He’d never drowned barn cats. Even when the population was embarrassingly large, he couldn’t do it. He was too soft. He hid the weakness by telling his hired men he liked fresh batches of kittens for the grandkids.

  “My dad says you should drown some of the cats.”

  His mouth twitched. “What did you say?”

  “I couldn’t say anything because I was supposed to be in bed, not listening in the hallway.”

  He smiled down at her. “I don’t mind the cats,” he said. “I don’t think I could drown any.”

  Alida strolled ove
r in her flowered Sunday dress and white sandals, and they climbed into the car. As they drove homeward, Lexi sang in the back seat: “Grandpa loves the little kittens, all the kittens in the world . . .” Amusement spread through him and turned, unexpectedly, to joy. It began in his chest, uncoiled the rusty conviction he’d been holding there, and radiated outwards. What if he had things skewed? What if what he saw as weakness was actually strength?

  • • •

  In bed that night, he turned to Alida. He was nervous—would she feel the same? “You know that money we talked about sending each month?” She shifted her foot from off his leg where she had laid it companionably a moment before, and he sensed her body stiffen. “Have you had second thoughts?” he asked.

  “No. Have you?” She seemed to be holding her breath.

  “No. In fact—” He stopped. He hadn’t felt this apprehensive since the day he’d asked Alida to marry him. Or when he’d held his first child, bloodied, crying, tiny in his hands. And yet he was sure he had felt divine grace in those moments. Felt God’s hand nudging him forward.

  “I wonder,” he said, pausing to clear his throat, “if we should just bring it each month rather than sending it.” In the dim light from the moonlit window he watched her and waited.

  She moved her foot back over his. “I think that would be good,” she breathed. “Bring a meal or two. See how they’re coping.”

  “Exactly.” He reached for her hand. “Maybe next week?”

  “That sounds fine.”

  They lay in silence. It was a gift of God to have a spouse, he thought. Someone to share your life. Who understood you, often without words. He squeezed her hand, a hand he knew as well as his own and loved more. “Sleep well, dear.”

  “You too.”

  The Whole Field

  “HOW WOULD YOU describe yourself as a mother?” Dr. Maas asked. She sat with her legs crossed, one foot jiggling.

  “Pretty normal, I guess,” Valerie said. A failure. But maybe that was normal.

  Dr. Maas waited, her eyes fixed on Valerie, a twitchy cat at a mouse hole. Valerie sat rigid. How could someone so fidgety help Danny? After a moment, Dr. Maas cleared her throat. She closed her yellow steno pad and tapped it with her pen. “He’s maintaining his weight so far, and the meds will keep his anxiety down. But he needs to learn to monitor his stress level. It will be easier for him if you and your husband support him.”