A MEDICAL REPORT
ALL BETS ARE OFF
Big Marjorie died in 1948, age 48. Alice didn’t attend the funeral.
In the early 1950s, we moved from Egypt to Calgary, following Bert’s astute business advice to get in on the ground floor of the oil business there — Imperial Oil had made its Leduc Number 1 discovery in 1947 bringing oilmen from around the world to make their fortunes in Alberta.
When Bert unexpectedly died in 1954, age 53, Alice and Ted rushed to Montreal to collect their inheritance. There was nothing! It had all been spent on the family’s show-off lifestyle. A shock more than a surprise to find expectations wrongly counted on.
According to Ted’s calculations, all bets were off! The Tylers had not lived up to their end of the marriage bargain and now he wasn’t obliged to live up to his end. He was free to do as he pleased. Which he did.
With the little money Alice received from her father’s estate she bought a farm in Springbank overlooking the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary, and built a house.
I was ten and my father sensed that I had him figured out. He went from mostly ignoring me to harassing me, smacking me when I was daydreaming, taking away what he called privileges — no more reading books all afternoon. There are tasks waiting outside for you. He knew my weak spot — my mother. Somehow my mother falling down the stairs was my fault, my black eye. For the rest of my life, all he had to do to stick a knife in me was shake his head sorrowfully and say, “You’re going to kill your mother if you keep that up.” I heard that a lot.
At Springbank, with Ted enjoying his privileges elsewhere, Alice’s drinking began sliding from the fun and exciting stage to the problem stage. To her credit she recognized what was happening, as she wrote a friend:
I have been through one crisis after another and all because of damned alcohol. At last I have the problem licked but must continue to work at a program. It may sound grim to you but I am happier, healthier and wiser than ever before. You should see me ski now. — Fantastic. And I am never tired or bored any more. Ted is not too pleased as I am extremely active. It is the only way that I can find peace. Hopeless when I fuss around the house day after day.
Despite her best intentions, she could never quit drinking or smoking. Later, the scarring to her lungs from breast cancer radiation (age 53) would diminish their already tobacco damaged capacity so much that she would become reliant on supplementary oxygen whenever she was tired or stressed — both of which increased in frequency as Ted found new ways to humiliate her. For the last few years of her life she lived with her “friend” — an oxygen machine who pulsed constantly by her bed. She had another friend to accompany her — a portable machine — when she left the house. As much as she tried to laugh this dependency off, it would twist my heart to see the once strong Alice stumbling from the doorstep to the street.
Worse for her was her almost paralyzing lack of energy — the soul destroying symptom of polymyalgia rheumatica. Her fast jumping mind would battle physical fatigue every day, leading to frustration and more drinking. The only exercise she could handle some days was pouring a drink.
For Ted, Alice’s progressing illnesses and drinking were the perfect excuses to seek solace for his burdens in the arms of other, more sympathetic women.
AN ALICE AND TYLER STORY
THE HANGMAN'S NOOSE
Too hard to bring this letter written by you to a friend. I read it an evening alone at the Eden Brook gate and drive home.
Dear ——
I am so sorry if I sounded upset on the phone this morning. It just seems Ted has piled so much on me & you called when I felt I couldn’t bear another problem. You called when I really needed you. I must find a way — really a place — where I can escape from him for periods of time. Really this man can upset people so badly and enjoys doing it. Now he is very happy with himself.
These days I feel I have been given a second life [after a breast implant] and not even Ted is going to spoil that. I guess the girl in Paris made a hell of a scene. Her name is R——. She flew over to London — Can you imagine?! Ted had given her ——’s phone and address and even he was involved. It is so degrading to all of us. I am so disappointed in —— but I don’t think he had much choice. Ted just dragged him into the whole mess. You can’t help wondering if he has just come home to restore himself for the next one. I have lost faith and trust and respect for him.
We sit forward on the downstairs couch. You are unleaning back very calm. You know what I think about Ted. You know I don’t want to talk about it anymore. But there we are, side by side, and you say you have something to show me.
A white cut-out cardboard figure the size of a playing card dangling from a hangman’s noose. The limbs connected by threads. When you hold it up to show me the limbs jerk just like the last breath spasm legs and arms of horse thieves strung up by vigilantes.
One of Dad’s girlfriends sent you this.
You put it away and then tell me Dad is being blackmailed with photographs. Rather than pay the blackmail this time he has shown you the photographs.
You say you have the divorce papers this time but can’t go through with it. You pay as you always have and not just with money. You won’t break up the family.
And in the fading light at Eden Brook’s gate, I still marvel at the love it took to break me out.
AN EDEN BROOK STORY
PREDNISONE AND VODKA
It has been a month since I last brought this suitcase overflowing with you to Eden Brook. I see from your father’s letter it took you a much longer time to die than your mother who dragged it out for 13 years:
There is not much more for me to say — I love you all and it will take a long time for me to get over this shock although it is not really a shock as I have been living under this sword for exactly 13 years. Don’t worry about me — I will be alright.
You hung on for over 40 years, and every year celebrated what might be — you never know — your last birthday. Towards the end you didn’t leave your room except for parties requiring an entrance. A handful of Prednisone, a shot of vodka, two shots of vodka, three shots of vodka, and we’ll put “my goddamn friend” in the car. “I’ll be the life of the party.” Or the corpse. A drunk on steroids.
P and V you call it. You look full of Piss and Vinegar you would say as I rode from the cabin. P and V.
Now it’s Prednisone and Vodka.
Between your perennial Might Be Last Birthdays and Last Christmases on Earth I’d stop by to say hello.
I open the front door quietly, hoping you are sleeping. Climb the carpeted stair, say hello to Thomas Samuel Trafford, Dad’s moustached 17th century progenitor hanging like a guilty conscience above the stairs. His noble legacy reduced to this. I stop momentarily to smile at the repair in the canvas where you slashed it with the ceremonial sword that authenticates the Trafford family legend of once being held in high esteem by people who mattered. Important people. Royal people. Good for you giving the pompous Thomas Samuel something factual to reconsider his descendants by. He commissioned several portraits to ensure his immortality. Over the years I noticed somebody had switched one intact inheritance for the one you slashed. Maybe it never happened. Like the women that never happened. That thought finished by the top of the stairs. Truce. Stop. Look and listen. Like a careful child crossing a street. Not the way you raced me across Eighth Avenue to the Bay. Not the little girl Alice you told me about who got lost in downtown Montreal and was taken to the police station and given ice cream. No, that child said when her mother came. She’s not my mother. Is there more ice cream? We watched the grizzlies behind the cabin tearing up our garbage. Nothing to worry about you told me. Aren’t they gorgeous? Craziness.
You make more sense to me asleep so I go slow down the hall to your room, hoping you are in bed, curled on your right side. Your painful left arm on a pillow. A New Yorker folded beside you. The TV on.
You are the lone survivor of a high speed cancer alcohol
and polymyalgia rollover. Casual paramedics say to me we’ve done this before. Poke tubes in your nose filtering oxygen into your radiation and nicotine burned lungs. Your left breast sliced off by the windshield. I’m the boy standing by the roadside. Left behind as they rush you to the Holy Cross. Your fight flickering down like the fading siren.
They cut away everything better to be safe jagged steering wheel operation tearing out the lymph glands so your arm is permanently swollen like a fat person’s jellied thigh bulging below tight underwear. Better than dying too soon. Polymyalgia jams you into passive tired low gear. An insurance write-off. Prolong life. Throw a handful of steroids in the vodka and your cylinders fire cursing anger. Revived but your drunk driving brain wiring too tangled for repairs. No turn signals. No brake lights. Short circuits. Accusations. You’re awake now. Where are you going? Who are you so mad at?
Staggering from your bed to your bathroom to your recliner. Dragging your plastic oxygen tubes. Living on hidden chocolate and vodka. Your belly sagging more each day.
I sit on the straight back chair and you wave me closer. They have stolen everything from me the vodka says.
What does it matter Mum? Be like Santiago and fight the sharks the best you can. They cannot steal love. Nobody can steal love. Only trinkets. Scarves. Rings. We had 13 years of good weather Mum. We know love is always on the platform waiting for the train to leave. We find it at the Mount Assiniboine horse camp. It lives in the Dolly Varden we caught in the Bow River. Nobody can steal a truly big fish. Even if it is only a small boy’s small fish. Nobody can steal love.
Live with forgiveness now. Let them steal it all. Make it a gift. No thank you expected.
XXX OOO
Tyler
A GOODBYE MOTHER STORY
PARADE DAY
You are always in my best childhood days. Like the blue sunshine sprinkling through summer poplar leaves. I lay back on the Eden Brook lawn, hands beneath my head, and the warm splash of you soothes all my too lates away.
When Dad’s oilman’s office was in the Wales Hotel I leaned as far out the windows as I dared and waved my cowboy hat and shouted Up Here as the Stampede Parade passed below. Every year I’d go down to the fairgrounds and you’d lead me through the barns to where chuckwagon drivers tapped hard fingers on tobacco cans and tucked a pinch of black chew under their lips. Looking at you under their hat brims. Beautiful. Strong too, I would send back to them their horses dozing in the sunlit dust of the barns and alleys.
We’d wander the rabbits and chickens and ducks and jams and pies and vegetables and bundles of wheat. We’d watch the farm kids milk the cows and drive teams of black tail swaying Percherons not scared at all. Whoa they called leaning back on the wagon seat to stop the team at the door. They kicked the brake down and jumped off while dads helped them unhitch.
Behind the chutes the rodeo cowboys warmed up their roping horses swinging loops back and forth cantering circles. Blue jeans spurs leather boots straw hats smokes hanging from their lips. Bronc riders and bull riders sitting on their heels along the fence. I wanted to be a cowboy with a lariat and hear the announcer on the loudspeaker as I backed my horse into the chute: Tyler Trafford from Calgary Alberta on Gold Dust.
Gold Dust was my Springbank horse. A blonde chestnut with a silver mane and tail. I had plans for us. She argued about everything.
At night the Stampede fireworks would boom over the fairgrounds and when we got home I wouldn’t even try to sleep this dream. I couldn’t stop thinking about all I could be.
Then I was eleven and a lot bigger. Almost grown up and you let me be my not sleeping dream for a morning. There was an accent voiced horse trainer you knew. Rolf. Where did you meet these Montmartre cowboys? That summer he said he would ride in the parade. He didn’t have anything parade fancy. A yellow slicker. Hat. Boots. He was just going for the ride. No ribbons. And you said I could go ride too even though Dad had tasks lined up for me.
Rolf came early that morning in his fender dented pickup and we jumped Gold Dust in beside his black. Everybody was asleep but you. I remember you waving goodbye from the driveway and saying you would watch for us in the parade. I leaned out the truck window and waved back as we turned the corner.
Rolf drove us to the end of Ninth Avenue and unloaded the horses. He helped me on and said go find some kids your own age to ride with. When the parade’s over meet me back here. I rode up Ninth Avenue until I met some other kids riding horses and as soon as there was a break in the floats we trotted in and joined the parade.
We whooped and hollered all the way, waving our hats to everybody. And we got lots of cheers. The other kids had more cowboy stuff. Slickers and saddle bags and vests with pearl snaps and string ties. I just had the stuff I always wore but Gold Dust looked real good all brushed and eyes wide open when the fire crews blew their sirens.
Afterwards I rode through the streets to find the truck and wait for Rolf. He shows up an hour later and almost falls off his horse. He slurs about meeting some other cowboys and I could tell they’d had a wild Stampede time. Me too.
As soon as I got home I asked if you’d seen me in the parade and did you get a picture of me. No you said. Things came up and Dad decided not to go.
I felt genuine cowboy even if I didn’t have a yellow slicker tied on my saddle. You listened for more than an hour while I talked about me and my exciting life.
I was too young to know I should thank you for giving this life to me. Then, but not now.
FAMILY HISTORY
THE INHERITANCE TABLE
Fighting back begins with a Cambridge Grace. Benedictus benedicat. May the Blessed One give a blessing.
You goddamned cheating English bastard you shout throwing the silver pepper shaker. It misses Dad, skims the glass doors of the china cabinet and breaks against the wall.
The silver pepper shaker is part of his inheritance and engraved with a family crest. Your arm is still good. You missed intentionally.
The battle zone is a long mahogany table inlaid with thoughts like I hate you and you made another great throw between the heavy Corinthian candlesticks. In the night I see the kitchen lights of Springbank farm families passing the mashed potatoes and gravy.
Eight of us sit at Dad’s inheritance table on Sunday evenings for Family Dinner. You make roast beef, roast potatoes, peas, creamed onions, and salad. Dad carves the roast in the kitchen while we stand in line until he is ready to assign the slices. No greediness. Go wash your hands. Then we sit down and wait. You and Dad at the ends, three children on one side, three on the other. Teddy away. We can’t pick up our knives and forks until Dad picks up his.
Sit up straight. Knife in your right hand, fork in your left. Don’t talk with your mouth full. If it’s not offered don’t ask for it. Line your knife and fork up in the centre of your plate when you are done. Don’t ask for seconds. Wait to be asked.
Dad’s family ring on his little finger taps the table. His only sign of nervousness. Don’t make a scene he says.
You goddamned cheating English bastard. Is this what they teach at Cambridge?
Silence. Just the tapping of a family ring on a mahogany table. A table where nobody remembers anything. Nobody says they are sorry. This is the scripture of the family table.
You lean back in your chair. Her name dances on the table. The others eat with eyes nowhere to look. Dad eats as slow as ever. Always the last one finished. He meets my eyes. “You’re an aggravating son of a bitch.” I don’t look away.
Nobody wants a second helping. Who dares? Later we will creep down the back stairs for a peanut butter sandwich. Now we wait. Knives and forks lined up in the centre of our plates. He stands, his chair scraping on the blood red tile floor.
That’s right run off you say.
Whose task is it to do the dishes? he asks ignoring you.
The corporate hierarchy is posted in the kitchen. Name ordered by age. Task. Time to Complete. Clear the table. Rinse the dishes. Load the dish�
�washer. Empty the dishwasher. Clean the counters. Clean the table. Set out the breakfast dishes. You need to learn responsibility. Your mother needs your help now. We can’t hire help when your mother is like this. It is her fault. Now set an example. Time to be a man. I’m eleven years old.
In the night Geoff and Billy make sandwiches and chocolate milk. I go down the dark stairs to the long cupboard in the basement where more of Dad’s ancestral proof is stored. It smells of damp newspaper. Inlaid wood chests from Natal. Leather boxes locked. Shotguns, riding boots, cigarette cases, Bibles, chocolate boxes of letters, hand mirrors. This silver framed photograph is his parents. Edward and Sya. Edward like Dad and like Teddy. We’re not allowed in here. I remember when this inheritance arrived at the train station. I remember the carpenter building this long shelved cupboard. Upstairs the men delivered new old dressers and chairs and the dining-room table. Everything is Dad’s and now he’s not like everybody else. He’s not ordinary. Look at the engraving on this tray. Superior. Appraised. Important. Valuable. Insured. Mum’s got no inheritance. None of this is hers. No family table. No ring that taps between the silences. No heavy leather book of proper English family history.
You are asleep on the couch and I can’t wake you.
I want to tell you I don’t care about any inheritances, not if they make the room smell of damp newspaper and make Dad a cheating English bastard. Family crest. Family ring. Family Dinner. Family table inlaid with thoughts like I hate you.
It always ends with a Cambridge Grace. Benedicto benedicatur. Let praise be given to the Blessed One.
AN ALICE AND TYLER STORY
THE WRITING DESK
I am watching you at your elegant, glass front desk, writing letters non-stop, page after page. I am sitting quietly and watching, memorizing your intensity. Wishing now I could fit your desk into Alice’s Suitcase.
I see the bookcase top with a double curve over two glass doors where you lined up your hardcover editions of Browning, Defoe, Carlyle, Tennyson, and a collection of anthologies, notably the English Romantics (William Blake, our visionary!)
Almost a Great Escape Page 15