Catch Me When I Fall

by Westerhof Patricia

  Love’s Austerities

  “YOU’RE ASKING ME to put my father in a home?”

  “We can’t manage him.” Harvey nudged the crib board to the centre of the coffee table. His frown deepened the lines on his face; they looked rigid as tree bark. “We’ve got enough strain on this family.”

  He shuffled the cards, split the deck, shuffled some more. Divided them. I listened to the mantel clock ticking its loud, mechanical tchot, tchot. Another voice grating in the room. It had been a wedding present—from Dad, brought with him from the Old Country. Winding it seemed an act of loyalty, so I let it clatter the seconds.

  Harvey placed the deck on the table and reached over to stroke my cheek, flashing his movie-star smile, dazzling on his craggy face. It usually worked—bent my way of thinking toward his, like a powerful gush of water drawing a smaller stream to join it. “Vicky. Sweetheart. You don’t really want him living here, do you?”

  My spine tightened. “He’s family.”

  Harvey picked up the cards. “Your deal.”

  • • •

  When I was five, Oma told me a story about the war and about my father when he was a boy. January 1945—the tail end of the Nazi occupation and one of the coldest winters in Holland for many years. No electricity. You couldn’t find coal; there was no more firewood. My grandmother had already burned a ladder, the extra milking stool, and even—on a terribly cold night—one of the chests of drawers. At dawn, my father, dressed in patched coat and too-short pants, crept outside, snuck past the school where the Nazi soldiers slept, and stole down the road to the village square. There, axe sagging in his thin six-year-old’s arms, he chopped down a sapling.

  A village policeman stopped him as he dragged it homewards. “Ben je gek? ” Are you crazy?

  “Nee, Meneer,” he said. “Moe is koud.” No, Sir. Mother is cold.

  I understood. This is what Oma had to pass on to me. The silver candlesticks, the heirloom jewellery—her pearls and the gold ruby ring—had been stolen by the Germans before I was born. She, her husband, and their five children arrived in Canada like so many other immigrants, gaunt and exhausted. They brought the clothes they wore, a family Bible, and the clock. A slip of paper with a name to contact when they got to Alberta. Destitute—except for the richness of their principles: their faith in God and the catechisms that had protected them in occupied Holland.

  Love, she taught me, is not a feeling. It is an austere and practical discipline. A service. It demands loyalty, devotion, and self-sacrifice.

  I accepted her wisdom, polished her precepts like heirlooms; I wound them in my heart like I wind the family clock. Even today, “I love you” seems glib, a throw-away phrase appropriate in very few contexts, like at the airport, between, “Have you got your passport?” and “Have a safe trip.” Or the phrase you start with when you discipline your teenager—“I love you, but I’m disappointed in you.”

  • • •

  “Rodney,” I said to my eldest son, “you’re going to have to share a room with your brother for a while. Grandpa is going to stay with us.”

  Rodney let his hockey bag drop heavily to the kitchen floor. Seventeen years old, going on two. “What the hell? I don’t want to share with Jeff.” He slammed down the milk glass he’d been drinking from and it clattered on the tile countertop. “Why can’t Uncle Bill look after him?”

  “Watch your language. Why not us?”

  “Because you’re always inviting people here! Like Mrs. Van Harn for Christmas. Whether we want them or not. Or you make people meals—sick people and stuff, but you make me deliver them.” His thin goatee, reddish-blond and recently grown, wagged up and down like a scolding index finger. “Let someone else help for a change.”

  Harvey walked in from the barn, bringing a gust of wintry air from the unheated porch. Rodney edged past him, kicked the door open and slammed it shut, the sounds the expletives he didn’t dare say with his dad present. “What was that about?” said Harvey. He strode to the sink.

  “Just Rodney.”

  Harvey gave a one-shoulder shrug and turned on the water. I watched him scrub his hands. Rodney’s behaviour—it was just a phase, I hoped. Because if it wasn’t, I had failed in some way, and lately this notion was like a groping hand inside my gut. Motherhood was my main job, my only job.

  “Hopefully he’ll outgrow this soon,” I said.

  “Been going on a long time now.” Harvey turned toward me, his eyebrows high.

  “I guess.” Actually, I could pinpoint the start. A morning last July. Early, the light still pale. “Shall I call him again?” I had asked Harvey when he sat down to eat the eggs I had scrambled. “I heard him come home last night—it was late.”

  Harvey kept his eyes on Farming for Tomorrow. “Yep,” he said, sounding absent-minded. “Man at night, man in the morning.”

  I had opened Rodney’s door a crack. A mix of smells wafted out—familiar odours, like his dirty socks and the cologne he used, a sharp, tinny scent that reminded me of the freezing solution at the dentist. And a new odour, the yeasty smell of stale beer. I stepped backwards. “Rodney, your eggs are cold. Time to go to the barn.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Rodney!”

  “Fine.” He pulled the pillow over his head. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Do you think he’s been better or worse lately?” I said to Harvey now as he dried his hands on the tea towel.

  Harvey looked half amused and half annoyed. “Well let’s see, Vicky. He drinks. His report card was crap. He grumbles about chores and does a lousy job.”

  “Yeah.” I pulled the cutlery compartment from the dishwasher and methodically sorted its contents into the tray in the drawer. To myself I completed the list. Sneers at his brother and sister. Refuses to come to church. Swears and talks back to me. Or doesn’t talk at all.

  “Maybe having his grandfather around will be good for him.”

  The sound from Harvey’s throat conveyed skepticism and scorn. “I guess we’ll find out.” He strode past me to the living room and turned on the TV.

  • • •

  “Dad?”

  My father’s fingers clutched the doorknob as he let the frigid wind rush into the kitchen. The February sun beamed cold light. I wrapped my fingers around my father’s veined hand and pulled the door closed again. “It’s winter, Dad. You need boots, and a coat, and gloves. Do you want to go outside?”

  “I want to go outside,” said my daughter. “Grandpa and me can go sliding.”

  “You’re going to school today, Laura. Hurry up—the bus will be here in” —I glanced at the clock— “six minutes. Dad—” I pushed between him and the door, and he backed up a step, the corners of his mouth curling into disapproval. My stomach clenched, the hand inside groping. Maybe I was developing an ulcer. I looked into my father’s bewildered eyes. “I’m dropping in next door to check on Cora after the kids leave for school. Do you want to come along? You remember Cora Van Harn?” I pointed toward her house.

  Dad cleared his throat noisily. “I’ll shovel the driveway,” he said.

  “It’s way too long, Dad. Harvey will clear it later with the tractor.”

  “I’ll get started.”

  I handed him his coat and gloves. I found his boots for him. I got Jeff’s and Laura’s lunches out of the fridge and called Rodney to hurry up. I rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. Wrapped a boterkoek in foil for my friend Cora who lived alone now and put on my own coat. “Come on,” I said to the kids. “I’ll walk with you to the road.”

  A new layer of snow—maybe four centimetres—glimmered in the bright, winter sun, and our property looked like a strange geometric quilt. Elongated shadows interrupted wide stretches of glistening white. The poplar trees with their sparkling white coats, the telephone poles that lined our driveway, the hydro poles, and the two silos cast long, slender shadows, dark ribbons stretching across the landscape. The house and barn made wider shadows, inky awnings
the colour of the early morning sky. Dad was a tiny blot on this wide canvas, shovelling steadily. His path wobbled along the front of the house toward the snowy garden. “Bye, Grandpa,” my two younger kids yelled. Rodney, headphones on, shuffled behind us, silent and morose.

  • • •

  We sat in the living room, Harvey watching TV, Dad paging through the Red Deer Press. He paused at the obituaries page.

  “Leonard Veenhof died yesterday,” I said.

  Dad cleared his throat.

  “Leonard, who went to your church.” I paused, waiting for the clouds in Dad’s eyes to clear. “He farmed a section of land just a few kilometres from you. Served with you in the Consistory. I could take you to the funeral if you wanted.”

  Dad closed the newspaper. “That’s the last of them. The Veenhofs.”

  “That’s right. Was it three years ago that Gerrit died?”

  Dad looked at me silently.

  “Yes, I think three years,” I said, sounding lame. With Dad around, I was realizing how much of our talk involved getting others to verify details. That was conversation here—remembering who did what when. Dad rarely participated, just moved restlessly in his chair and cleared his throat.

  “Harvey, do you remember?”

  “Three years.” He kept his eyes on the TV. The crib board rested on the mantel next to the clock. We hadn’t played in more than a month, but I kept it dusted.

  “And Marieke, their little sister,” said Dad.

  “That’s right,” I said, surprised. She had died a long time ago. “Oma told me about her. The one who was always sick.”

  Dad opened the paper again and examined the obituaries from the top. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Yeah, she was,” said Harvey. He turned to look at me, his face all rigid crevices. “Your oma thought she was a hero.”

  “Well, she probably saved those men’s lives,” I said, keeping my tone mild.

  “At what cost?” said Harvey. He turned up the volume on the TV.

  • • •

  Marieke, Oma had told us, had been a scrawny child, thin and pale. Back in Holland, her family had hidden two men, Jews, in their house during the war. They discouraged German visitors by placing a large sign in their window: QUARANTAINE! If a reckless or desperately hungry soldier hammered on their door in spite of the sign, demanding eggs, milk, potatoes, or just entry, the family brought wan little Marieke to the window. Made her press her face against the glass. “TB,” they mouthed at the soldier.

  So she did her best to look ill. People’s lives depended on it. The Jewish men would be shipped away or shot if she failed, perhaps her father too. The Nazis, Oma explained, thought nothing of murdering someone if they thought he was withholding something—information or food. Or harbouring people—Jews, resistance fighters, able-bodied men. So Marieke was obedient and brave.

  When Oma died, old Mrs. Bouwen told me the rest of the story. On the boat, on her way to Canada, Marieke got sick. By the time her family arrived in Alberta, she had pneumonia. She recovered but developed chronic bronchitis, then more serious lung problems. She died in her twenties—of obedience, maybe, of duty and loyalty.

  • • •

  “Mom, can you come here?” my daughter, Laura, called. She was supposed to be changing sheets.

  I found her in Dad’s room. The bedspread and blankets were in a heap on the floor. She pointed underneath the bed. “Look,” she said.

  I got down on my hands and knees and pulled out half a loaf of bread, green with mould. Laura pinched her nose shut. Guilt slithered through me as I hauled out the lunch container I had lambasted Jeff for losing, and the gloves Rodney had accused Jeff of taking. I discovered Harvey’s watch, which he’d concluded he’d lost out in the snowy pasture while fixing a fence. I slid my arm under as far as I could and netted three forks, two plates, and Laura’s French textbook.

  “I’ve been looking for that.” Laura grabbed it from me. “Why would Grandpa take my book, Mom?” Her voice held bewilderment and hurt.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. Should I defend him? Or should I find him and demand an explanation? Tell him to keep his hands off my kids’ things? Whose side was I on? Whose side was I supposed to be on?

  “Please don’t touch the meat, Dad.” I took the cubes of beef I had been slicing for stew from him and handed him a cloth. He held it in one hand while he examined the bloody juice on his fingers.

  “Remember Father’s suitcase of meat, Wim?” he said, looking at Rodney who sat at the table with Jeff, both of them stuffing bread and cheese into their mouths.

  “That’s Rodney. Your grandson,” I said. Wim was Dad’s oldest brother, dead three years. Rodney rolled his eyes and tore off another bite of his sandwich, a snack before hockey practice. “You look like Grandpa’s side of the family,” I explained to Rodney.

  “But you remember the story,” Dad said to me. Sadness floated in his voice, a desperation turning to despair. He was a man erroneously in prison, pleading, But don’t you know who I am?

  I nodded. “The suitcase of meat. Wipe your fingers,” I said, motioning toward the cloth still in his hand. He swabbed at the bloody juice, cleared his throat, and looked at me expectantly.

  “It was 1944,” I said. “March, I think.” I glanced at Dad for confirmation. He shrugged, and I tucked away some more sadness of my own. I should have asked him long ago. Should have written down the details. I was losing more of him, and of my past, every day.

  I settled myself on a chair across from Jeff and pulled out a chair for Dad. “Everyone was hungry. The people in the cities were starving. Eating whatever they could scrounge—potatoes, onions, even tulip bulbs. Your father—my grandpa—still had a few goats left. But the farm animals—they were there to provide food for the German soldiers. Milk and such. You couldn’t slaughter them—your own animals—unless the meat was for the Germans.” Dad nodded. I couldn’t tell whether he remembered or was just approving of the story itself.

  I looked at the boys. Both of them had stopped eating and were waiting for me to continue. I addressed my father. “Your dad had heard from his mother—your grandmother. She lived a hundred kilometres to the north. She was fine, she said, but so hungry. So, in the evening, Opa placed all five of his children—including you, Dad—on lookout around the farm. You were to run and warn him if soldiers were coming. You watched from behind a stand of trees. The windbreak. But you were lucky that night. No one came. Your father killed a small goat, and your mother wrapped the meat in newspaper and placed it in a little brown suitcase.

  “In the morning, he and the suitcase got on the train. They travelled north to your oma’s village—I don’t remember where she lived.” I paused, but Dad stayed silent. Another fact lost.

  “What happened?” said Jeff.

  Dad folded his arms around himself. Did he remember? The self-protective gesture suggested that maybe he did. I said, “A German soldier demanded to see what was in the suitcase. He pointed his rifle at your father.”

  “Always they were pointing their rifles at us,” Dad muttered.

  “Your father had no choice. He opened the suitcase.”

  Dad got up abruptly and left the room. I heard the television turn on in the living room.

  “Doesn’t he want to hear the end of the story?” Jeff said.

  I twiddled with my rings, looking at his empty chair. His behaviour was getting more erratic.

  “So what happened?” Rodney sounded belligerent.

  With effort, I turned my attention to the boys. “This is all just hearsay—I wasn’t there. But this is how the story goes. The soldier was very young—Dad told me that at the end of the war, the Nazis were conscripting boys and old men—anyone who could carry a rifle. So, your great-grandfather dared to argue with him. A boy pointing a gun at his chest. He said, ‘The meat is for my mother. She’s old. She’s starving. You have a mother. What would you do?’”

  “What happened?” Jeff said.

&nbs
p; “The soldier let him go. He delivered the suitcase of meat.”

  “Wow,” said Rodney. He picked up a crumb of cheese and put it into his mouth. “Some legacy you have, Mom. He risked his life.” I couldn’t tell if Rodney’s tone was admiring or scornful.

  • • •

  “Can you two watch Dad tomorrow while I take Jeff and Laura to do some errands in Red Deer?” As I spoke I realized I was wringing my hands. I pulled out the breadmaker and began measuring ingredients and dumping them in.

  “I’m out of here as soon as I’m done milking in the morning,” said Rodney.

  “Not me.” Harvey’s face stayed behind the newspaper. “I’ve got some cattle to deliver to Edmonton.”

  “How come you never told me?” I asked. Rodney was watching us, so I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. The hurt. Usually, I went with Harvey to Edmonton—I did some shopping while he took care of the business.

  “What difference would it make? You couldn’t come. Who would babysit?” His voice was bitter as bile. So much for protecting Rodney from the tension. “By the way,” he added, looking up, “I found your dad naked in the hallway yesterday.” He glanced uncomfortably at Rodney. “Touching himself.” Rodney’s eyebrows arched upwards, and his face flushed begonia pink.

  “He can’t help it,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t know—”

  “Of course he can’t help it!” Harvey’s voice was loud. “That’s why he needs help! What is it going to take for you to see he needs help we can’t give?” He rose, and his chair scraped loudly, wobbled. Rodney reached out and stabilized it, avoiding my eyes.

  • • •

  I peeled potatoes loudly, bouncing them into the sink, scraping the skins off with harsh strokes, and sloshing them into the pot of water to boil. My thoughts, as I worked, were loud and agitated too. What to do? What to do? Stay-at-home mothers were almost extinct, as quaint and old-fashioned as homemade socks. But I was one, and I had duties. It wasn’t just the family legacy, at least I didn’t think so. I had a calling. To look after my family, in its broad definition. My relatives, my neighbours, the church community. So I acted out of belief, out of principle. I brought casseroles to people who could use them—the ill, the widowed, the bereaved. I visited old Mrs. Bouwen. I invited Cora Van Harn for Christmas, even though she criticized my kids’ clothing and their choice in music. I made my kids write thank-you notes, bring their teachers Christmas baskets, even the high-school teachers, and we gave the minister chocolates and a handmade card on his birthday. And I kept my father in my house, although he brought nothing but tension and upheaval.