When I was a kid I used to love sleeping over at Kristy’s house. Her pesky sisters, the clutter, the noise. Setting the kitchen table with six of everything. “Forks on the left,” said Mrs. Meijer. She sat down last, in the chair nearest the stove. Mr. Meijer presided over meals from the head of the table, his daughters and me his courtiers. He was tall, with broad shoulders and an outside voice, even indoors. He gave me a smidgen of applesauce with his knife. “That’s all you want, right?” he’d bellow. He’d lift his bushy eyebrows one at a time, and Kristy’s little sisters would squeal. “Helena, my dear, what nefarious schemes are you hatching for this evening?” he’d say. That’s the way he talked to me. I’d blush and squirm, but his attention was as delicious as the roast and potatoes on my plate.
I liked Mr. Meijer so much that I based my picture of God on him. It started the day after I kissed Jakey Burke. He was the dumbest boy in our grade six class, with a narrow weasel face and thick and rubbery lips. When I confessed the kiss to Kristy in her room after supper, she didn’t believe me. “When? Where?”
“Recess yesterday. Behind the gym.”
“Why would you do that?”
I felt a shivery pinch of delight. “He had the new Madonna CD—The Immaculate Conception, and he said he’d trade it for a kiss.”
She turned her back on me to look out the window that faced the barn. “You couldn’t just buy it?” She sounded neutral, but her back was as stiff as the window frame.
Later, as I lay in my sleeping bag on her floor, I felt uneasy. I’d expected more support. What if God were mad at me too? Maybe I should pray for forgiveness. The God my mother taught me to believe in, a stern and towering being, was good at disapproval. But there was also the Sunday-school God, whom my teacher described as a devoted father who loved children a little more than he loved adults. I decided to address him. I closed my eyes tight and pictured him. I made him look a lot like Mr. Meijer, although bigger and without Mr. Meijer’s off-centre nose. “I feel kind of icky about kissing Jakey Burke,” I whispered.
“Helena, my dear,” God said in Mr. Meijer’s voice, “it didn’t harm anyone. Is it a good CD?”
I thought about that. “Yes.”
The Mr. Meijer-God in my head nodded tolerantly.
The next day at church I joined my mother in her pew near the front. “You didn’t wash your hair last night,” she said. When I listened closely, I heard Mr. Meijer’s strong, deep voice many pews behind us booming the hymns: “How blest are they whose trespass has freely been forgiven.”
I imagined it was God himself singing.
• • •
That’s why it took me so long to figure things out. I missed all the clues. Like the morning I said, “Let’s ask your dad if we can help milk the cows.”
“No.” Kristy closed the bathroom door, leaving me in the hallway.
I walked into the kitchen and asked Mr. Meijer, “Can I help with the milking the next time I’m here?”
“You’d like that?” He glanced at my body like he was sizing me up. I pulled back my shoulders and tried to look tall and strong. Kristy strode into the kitchen with an expression I couldn’t read. Almost angry. She did chores with her dad whenever their hired man had a day off, but she’d told me she hated the barn. The smell. “Not this week,” said Mr. Meijer, watching his daughter. “Kristy has some things to learn yet.”
The next summer Mr. Meijer made plaster casts. He had built a little workshop in the back of the machine shed where he experimented with art projects and installations. First he made a cast of Mrs. Meijer, and then one of Kristy, who was twelve that year. She didn’t want to talk about it. Just said it felt gross. When Kristy’s little sister told me you had to be naked to have a plaster cast made of your body, I shrugged. I didn’t have a dad—he died of cancer when I was two. Probably, I thought, it was normal to be naked around dads, especially dads who were artists.
Kristy changed in grade ten. On the way back from Ski Day she sat at the back of the bus with Luke Ross, and everyone was still talking about it on Monday. “What’s wrong with you?” I said. She was staring into the magnetic mirror on her locker door.
“Wrong with me? What about Jakey Burke? Remember that?” She flicked her long, nut-brown hair behind her shoulders and pulled out her lipgloss. With her heart-shaped face and smoke-coloured eyes, Kristy looked glamorous with or without makeup. I looked like the farm girl—chubby and plain. I felt hurt, but not surprised, when she found a new set of friends, a partying group, none of them Christian, none of them Dutch.
I prayed for her those years. By then I kept my distance from Mr. Meijer, but the God I appealed to still resembled him. “Keep her safe,” I begged. I thought of the dangers I knew. “From drunk drivers. And the wrong kind of guy.”
• • •
Now, I thought of visiting Kristy. We would have more in common now that we were both moms. But she hadn’t invited me, and the two-hour drive with kids in the back seat seemed too hard. I made do with the news that Mrs. Meijer passed along at church.
“I’d love to see her,” I said.
“Me too,” said Mrs. Meijer. “I ask her over and over. I tell her I’ll send money for the trip—her dad and I don’t like driving in the city—but she just makes excuses.” Mrs. Meijer pushed out her bottom lip and blew up at her wispy grey bangs. “I guess I’ve got to let her live her own life.”
Then, in April, the Meijers showed up at church with a little boy in tow. “Joe’s in jail,” Mrs. Meijer murmured to me, while the grave-looking child, dark-haired and beautiful, gazed up at her. “Kristy’s looking for a job, and I’m taking Kyle for a while.” Mrs. Meijer looked down at her grandson, who continued to stare at her with Kristy’s sorrowful eyes.
The eyes followed me in my imagination that week. Had there been reproach mixed with the sadness? I should have stayed in better touch with Kristy. But a marriage, a new farm, and two children all within six years was a lot to manage. And what would I have said to her if I had visited? Was there comfort or advice I could have offered her? When I talked to my mother about it, she said, “‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” My mother nods when she quotes Scripture, as if she is agreeing with God, or as if she imagines God agreeing with her.
“I can’t get Kristy out of my head,” I told my husband.
“You’ve got enough to deal with here.” He motioned toward our fussing toddler in the high chair. Bending toward the floor, he retrieved her soother from a puddle of spilled pea soup. I picked up her overturned bowl and dropped it into the sink.
“I’m going to check on that heifer tonight yet,” Lawrence said. “May have to call the vet.” He strode out the side door. He returned in less than ten minutes. “Where’s the phone?” I handed it to him. “The calf’s breech, I’m sure,” he said. “I’m going right back out. Don’t wait up for me.” He punched the autodial, then grabbed my arm as I turned away. “If you really think Kristy’s in trouble, maybe you should go find her,” he said. “Your mom and I can manage the kids.”
• • •
On a Friday, I packed my bag and drove to Edmonton. Following Mrs. Meijer’s directions, I pulled up in front of a small run-down apartment building. The dirt beds that bordered the little pathway to the entrance held patches of gritty snow and the drooping remains of last summer’s weeds.
I climbed to the third floor. The stairwell smelled of onions. I knocked loudly on number 304, until a woman from the neighbouring apartment stuck her head out her door. “You looking for Kristy?” she asked. She had grey roots in her crimson hair, and she coughed between words. “She’s in Fort McMurray. Went there on Friday. You can probably find her in one of the bars, looking for some work. Weekend work,” she added with a sharp little nod.
This was one of those truths like a bad piece of mail that you shove aside to read later, the message on the answering machine you put off returning. You know what the news is, but you pretend it hasn’t yet shattered your ea
se. I called Lawrence and started the five-hour trip to Fort McMurray. It was mid-April and most of the snow had melted. The road was clear, the traffic sparse. Still, I drove slowly, not wanting to make too much headway in case I decided to turn around.
It was early evening when I arrived. I checked into the Nomad Inn and ordered some chicken soup and a grilled sandwich in the lounge. It was packed, and I seemed to be the only one there alone, so I gulped down the food, paid my bill, and scooted out to my car.
You’d think I might have enjoyed a little time to myself, away from potty training, board books, cutting up grapes, and folding laundry. But as I drove through the city, my imagination played out the scenarios from the kinds of emails my sister-in-law sends me, stories about rapists in the back seat and criminals impersonating police officers. Pickup trucks jammed the roads and the parking lots I passed. Restaurants, a Walmart, and a casino whizzed by. Help Wanted signs hung in every storefront. I saw only one church. Its message board read: MY LAST NAME IS NOT ‘DAMN.’ SIGNED, GOD.
I stopped at a half-dozen restaurants, all of them too fancy to be the likely place I’d find Kristy. I checked inside each, asking to look at a menu. As I held it, I scrutinized the bars and tables. What would she look like? How would she be dressed? I gave up and drove back to the hotel.
After a restless night in my beige room with its beige painting of the Alberta badlands bolted to the wall, I spent a dull, lonely day wandering through a shopping mall and watching TV in my hotel room. I dreaded nightfall. What was left to search were the kinds of bars Christian girls didn’t enter; at least that’s what my mother would say.
Around 8:00, I pulled a loose sweatshirt over my blouse and headed downtown. I wished I had told my prayer circle at church about my mission. I felt like I could use more help.
The fifth bar I visited was The Loose Tire on Franklin Avenue. Loud country music blared from cheap speakers, an old Patsy Cline hit that was a lot older than I was. I wove my way to the bar, past tables of rough-looking men, some ogling me despite my baggy clothes. I’ve kept a few pounds from my pregnancies, and I’m stocky to begin with, but I got the sense that extra weight wouldn’t deter these men.
I saw Kristy before she saw me. She was sitting sideways on the last barstool, leaning forward in quiet conversation with the bartender. She looked great, like a Hollywood celebrity on a photo shoot. Her figure was still willowy and her light brown hair fell in big waves. She turned her head to scan the bar and caught sight of me. The light was dim, but she looked horrified.
I stood beside her. “Hi there!” I sounded like a hospital volunteer.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. I—met your son a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to see you.” My mouth was dry and my palms were wet. “Kyle. He’s beautiful.”
“Can I get you something?” the bartender asked. He looked about fourteen.
“Yes,” I said with relief. “A diet Coke, please.” I looked back at Kristy, who rolled her eyes. “Do you want to sit at a table?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
I paid for my Coke and we moved to a booth in a dim corner. “You don’t look like a prostitute.” Stupid, I said to myself. That’s a stupid thing to say.
“A Working Girl,” she said. She had a remote look in her grey eyes, and her voice was scornful. “I’d get arrested if I looked obvious.”
I looked down at her black jeans and gauzy turquoise blouse. Not church clothes, but passable. The boots though—black platforms with corset ties. My mother’s God kept talking in my head. I tried to shush him and find my Mr. Meijer-God instead. Even he was having trouble with the boots.
“You seem . . . different,” I said.
Her eyes were opaque. Up close, she seemed brittle, as if veneer or varnish were coating her face. “I am different,” she said. She lit a cigarette. “What do you want?”
“How could you have changed this much?”
She shook her head. “Forget it,” she said. “You don’t know me anymore.” She let out a long breath of smoke and avoided my eyes. I breathed a prayer for patience. It had been a long way to drive for silence.
“What about your son?” I said. “Don’t you want to be with him?”
“Here?” She waved her hand toward the smoky tables around us. A loud and distorted version of “Rhinestone Cowboy” crackled through the speakers. Kristy leaned toward me and spoke in a voice harsh and defensive, but without scorn. “Listen, I just need to earn enough so that I have first and last month’s rent for a new apartment. And enough money for groceries and daycare for a few weeks. Then I can hunt for a real job.” She leaned back against the torn vinyl bench. “But you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never had to manage on your own.”
• • •
As I drove back to my hotel, I thought about her eyes. They reminded me of saints or martyrs; they looked like eyes from those cracked old paintings where the perspective is all wrong. But those eyes had brimmed with private knowledge and sorrow. If you knew what I knew, you’d understand.
When my cell phone rang a few hours later, I was surprised to hear Kristy’s voice. In the bar, when I’d scribbled my number on a napkin, she had blown smoke in its direction and then looked away.
“You really liked my father, didn’t you?” she said. The din of the bar and tinny pedal steel whined through the receiver, and her voice was unsteady. Loud.
“He was always really nice to me,” I said.
“Sure. He liked little girls.” She sounded drunk; her words blurred and pitched. “You do know about him, right?”
“I guess I have some idea.” I sat up and turned on the bedside light.
“You have no idea.” The words sliced through the roar of the background noise. She made a sharp sound, a bark of laughter or pain. “So I’m going to tell you.” I moved the phone back an inch.
Later, what stayed with me was what she said about the cows. Her humiliation at the cows watching.
• • •
I left the hotel at dawn and drove home fast, pulled by a vision of my waiting children. I needed to hug them, to pull their little bodies close to mine, to centre myself in my role as mother. To return to the routines: mealtime, playtime, bathtime, and bedtime.
My mother was reading The Christian Courier when I arrived. Lawrence had gone into town, Jonah was at pre-school and Zoe was down for her afternoon nap. I sat down and poured out my story. I told her about having seen Kristy and what I now knew to be true about her dad.
“He’s a rat bastard, all right,” my mother said when I’d finished.
“Mom!” I had never heard her use such language. She still rates movies by the number of “swears” in them. I pushed aside the Co-op catalogue on the table and let my head sink onto my folded arms. “Where was God when it was happening?”
Mom said nothing. I looked up. “Do we tell someone?”
“Did Kristy ask you to?”
“No. But how can we keep going to the same church as him, acting like we don’t know? I never want to see him again.”
“I don’t blame you. Or Kristy.”
That was as unusual as her bad language. When she hears something uncharitable, my mother barks Scripture or doctrine in response. She halts conversations with her pronouncements.
I balanced my chin on my forearm, my head heavy. “Aren’t we supposed to love everyone?”
My mother stared at the Delft plates on the wall behind me, her back straight as always. “I’ve never understood God loving everyone. To me it seems like a failing of his. A lack of discernment.”
She saw my incredulous expression and folded her hands. “I don’t really mean that, of course. Who are we to know the mind of God?” She began nodding, and I put my head back down and closed my eyes. “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” she said, “but then we shall see face to face.”
When I tried to pray that night, I found I couldn’t. My picture of God had shattered.
&n
bsp; • • •
I stopped attending church. Mrs. Bouwen brought me a saskatoon berry pie. She patted my cheek. She said, “God will hold tight on to you, Helena, when you can’t hold on to God. But that pie is two days old already, so you should eat it soon.” She meandered back to the car where her son was waiting to chauffer her to her weekly visit to her husband’s grave. My prayer-circle friends phoned. “We prayed for you last night,” Eliza said. “I hope you feel God’s presence.”
“Well, I can’t seem to shake him,” I said.
• • •
On Saturdays I continued to tend the little flowerbeds in front of the church, a job I’ve had for years now. One morning in June, a grader and a roller were working in the old gravel parking lot, readying it for paving. After parking as far from the workers as I could, I stepped out of the car. A piercing cry sounded overhead. A killdeer. I recognized it first by the plaintive sound, “kill-deah,” and then, when I spotted it swooping back and forth on the edge of the lot, by the black bands across its chest. I walked nearer. It fluttered to the ground as I approached, nursing a suddenly broken wing. I knew this trick, and I looked around for its nest.
It took me a minute to find it, a mere depression in the gravel. But instead of stone-coloured eggs, the nest held bits of greyish spotty shell and slimy membrane. A worker’s shovel or a heavy foot had crushed the eggs long before they were ready to hatch. I backed up several steps, and the bird soared into the air again, crying its piercing lament. It must have had a mate nearby—I was pretty sure that with killdeers, both birds tended the eggs. Was this the male or the female? I couldn’t tell.
My ears throbbed from the keening. Bereft I am bereft. The bird’s cry pulsed with sorrow. “Go!” I said to it. “Do something! Fly at the worker. Beat them with your wings. Peck at their eyes.” The bird swooped again over its piteous nest.
• • •
I haven’t returned to church. But last night I prayed again. I prayed for Kristy. “Mother-God, shelter her under your broken wing.”
Catch Me When I Fall Page 10