Real Life

by Sharon Butala

  “Nothing happens, sweetie,” she said. “You just go to sleep. You don’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh,” Jason said. After a moment, he said, “But, Mom, when I stay out too long and my toes get cold, they hurt—they hurt a lot.” Bonny said, “But you couldn’t feel your nose that time when you froze the end, could you?”

  The heater kept only the centre of the windshield ice-free, she had to lean forward to see out, and even in her heavy boots her toes were stinging with cold. The kids sat huddled against each other to keep warm, despite the blanket she’d insisted they keep over their legs. She thought, I shouldn’t have taken them out in this cold, but knew that if Jason had missed the game, Ross would have been angry. Ross thought that Jason was NHL material, that any day now his natural talent would surface. Ross’s attitude made Bonny despair since it seemed clear to everybody else that Jason had no talent, and besides, didn’t really like hockey, was far too dreamy a kid for such rough-and-tumble stuff, would rather be at home reading a book or watching television.

  Pam was the one with the talent. But whenever she pointed out how quickly Pam learned the figures, how easy it all was for her, Ross would agree, then promptly forget or discount it. Figure-skating lessons weren’t cheap, although cheaper than hockey, another thing that she couldn’t get Ross to see, and she just prayed she could get enough shifts at the nursing home—the care centre, she was supposed to call it—to keep Pam enrolled, since if there wasn’t enough money, it would be Pam who would have to quit.

  They were pulling into the yard when Pammy said, “Look! the lights are on—Daddy’s home!”

  “Yay!” Jason shouted, wide awake now.

  Ross was in the kitchen, heating a plate of leftovers in the microwave. He hugged the kids, asked Jason how his hockey game had gone.

  “We lost,” Jason told him, studying the floor.

  “What are you doing back so soon?” Bonny asked quickly, kissing Ross’s lean, bristly cheek. He’d gotten thin over the winter and it worried her. He peered into the microwave.

  “The truck I was supposed to work on didn’t come in. Too cold, I guess. So I came home.”

  “I’ll make coffee,” she told him, reaching for the pot with fingers still stiff from the cold. The kids sat at the table, one on each side of Ross as he ate, and chattered away to him, and she leaned against the counter, listening, while she waited for the coffee to finish dripping through its filter.

  “Your mother has invited us for supper tomorrow night,” she told him, keeping her voice neutral.

  “Oh, yeah?” he said, then, glancing up at her, “We won’t stay late.”

  Later, after the kids were asleep, and she and Ross had gone to bed, made love, and now were lying together talking softly, she said, “Honey, do you think that next year we should maybe all go to Swift Current for the winter? I mean, so we wouldn’t have to be apart?”

  “No!” he said, too quickly. “We’ve been over this and over it. You know I can stay with Uncle George and Aunt Rose for nothing, but we can’t all do that. We can’t afford to rent a place, besides, it would look to everybody like we’d given up.”

  “It’s just so lonesome without you,” she said. “And you’re missing jason’s games and the ice carnival is coming up—”

  “If we get a crop this year,” he said, “next winter I can stay home.”

  “We’ve got enough snow,” she said. “There should be lots of runoff—”

  “It’s too early to tell—it could all go in one February chinook.” This was too pessimistic, but she said nothing, knowing he wasn’t really talking to her. “I figure by the end of March I should clear maybe twelve thousand—”

  “Where will we put it?”

  “Jeeze,” Ross said, taking his arm out from under her neck, and moving to a half-sitting position, “on the way home I was figuring and figuring. There’s last year’s taxes, there’s the tractor payment, there’s the fuel bill and the chemical bill—Steve won’t wait for his chemical payment—”

  Bonny said, “Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t do any good and we should get some sleep.”

  “Taxes first. We’ve got to hang onto the land—what’s left of it.” Last fall the bank had seized a quarter section. In the darkness she fumbled for his hand and grasped it in both her own.

  “If they take the tractor, we’re sunk too,” she said. His hand lay limp in hers, as if he hadn’t noticed she’d touched him.

  “Chickpeas,” he was saying. “It’s the only crop that’s paying right now—”

  “But the seed, I hear it’s really expensive—” She’d let go of his hand and pushed her pillow up so that she was half sitting up as well.

  “I’d only seed maybe eighty acres. Or only fifty. You got to treat the land first, fifteen bucks an acre for chemical, and Steve won’t give me any more credit—”

  “Maybe try the Pool?”

  “I’ll ask Uncle George for a loan. I know he’d give it to me. Give him a share of the crop.”

  “If we get a crop.”

  “Crop insurance covers good on chickpeas.”

  “Really?” She felt a little stir of hope. “Sounds like the way to go then,” and slid over against his warm body. Then she remembered the envelope in the drawer in the kitchen, and her little kernel of hope quivered and vanished.

  When they drove into Ross’s mother’s yard they saw that Audrey, Ross’s sister, and her husband Dwayne and their kids had already arrived. As they made their way into the house Bonny steeled herself.

  “Ross!” his mother said, as eagerly, Bonny thought, as if he’d been away with the French Foreign Legion. She hugged her son, then her grandchildren, and finally, her tone changing, greeted Bonny.

  “Hi, Ruth,” Bonny answered. “I brought a jar of my strawberries.” She knew better than to try to hand them directly to Ruth, who would turn away from Bonny’s outstretched hand as if she hadn’t noticed, leaving her standing there with the jar thrust into empty space.

  “I always freeze any extras,” her mother-in-law told her. “They taste better than the canned ones.” Bonny repressed a sigh. And yet, if she showed up with nothing, Ross would hear how bad-mannered she was.

  The kids had gone to the basement rec room to play with their older cousins. She could hear Max, her father-in-law, booming about the coldness of the winter to Ross in the living room, and she hoped he’d stay off the topic of their money situation. Ross’s dad mustn’t know Ross was going to borrow money from Max’s older brother. He had none left to give them himself, and Max would be furious if he thought his brother knew this. She pitied Ross: Max made it a regular practice to remind him what an incompetent he was for being in financial trouble. Never mind that it didn’t have anything to do with Ross’s skill as a farmer, or with bad decisions, or that they spent money like drunken sailors as he sometimes accused them. Max knew perfectly well everybody was in trouble.

  She followed Ruth and Audrey into the kitchen. In the first year of her marriage, whenever she’d gone into the kitchen and said politely, “Can I help?” meaning, to get the meal on the table or to clean up and wash the dishes, her sister-in-law and mother-in-law would say, “Oh, we’re okay,” not meeting her eyes, deliberately leaving her to stand there doing nothing while they worked and chatted to each other. It was unheard of to go sit in the living room with the men. Finally, she’d stopped offering, had begun joining them in the work without asking. At first they’d tried to ignore her, but eventually even that dropped away. Bonny saw this, glumly, as her only victory.

  At dinner, feigning interest, she asked Audrey, “How are Jade and Ellen doing?” Jade was at university in Regina and Ellen in nursing in Calgary.

  “Oh, good, really good,” Audrey replied. “Ellen’s in pediatrics right now and she really likes it. She always was good with kids.” Ellen, picking up on her mother’s disapproval of Bonny, used to tease Pam and Jason until they cried and one of the adults had to intervene.

  “Nursing i
s a good profession,” Bonny murmured noncommittally, accepting the bowl of steaming carrots.

  “There’s such a shortage,” Audrey said. “They have to work such long hours and they get treated so badly, on their feet all the time …”

  For the first few years of her marriage Bonny had smiled all the time when she was with Ross’s family, and had agreed with everything either her mother-in-law or sister-in-law said, until she saw that whenever she agreed with them, they would promptly switch sides as Audrey had just done. While she poured gravy over his potatoes, making sure Jason didn’t spill anything on Ruth’s tablecloth or she’d never hear the end of it, she was thinking, Why did you tell her to go into nursing then? Why are you so proud that she’s going to be a nurse? There would soon be a dig at her, who could only work as a housekeeper at the nursing home, not having gone to nursing school.

  “Yes,” Audrey finished. “If she’s going to work in a hospital, at least she’s a nurse and not down on her hands and knees scrub bing the hospital floors.” She dug vigorously into her slice of roast beef, sawing away, as if she didn’t hear the sudden silence that had fallen over the table. Bonny wanted to say, It was your brother got me pregnant when I was only eighteen so I couldn’t go to nursing school. But they all believed she’d trapped Ross, instead of the other way around, Ross pursuing her until she’d begun to fall for him. Not that she had a second’s regret about marrying him—except for his family, that is.

  The worst of it was that Ross seemed oblivious. When she complained he would say, “Aw, Bonny, she didn’t mean anything,” implying that this was only the silly squabbling of women that men could safely ignore. It was the one incurable in their marriage, which after years of quarrels that had grown steadily worse, by mutual agreement, they now avoided ever mentioning.

  But riding home in the freezing darkness, Jason asleep on her lap and Pammy against Ross’s shoulder, she said, “I can’t understand why they’re so mean to me.” Ross let air out through his lips noisily, turned his head away from her and then back again, but didn’t speak. “I mean, you’d think they’d be happy that you found a wife who takes good care of the kids and looks after you and …” Her voice trailed away. “They just don’t seem to know how to stop,” she said, puzzled. “Like their meanness just got away on them.”

  Ross still didn’t say anything, and she forced herself not to go on. Instead of speaking, she lifted her hand to scrape away a patch of frost from her window so that she could peer out. It was forty below now, even the newer truck they were riding in creaked and groaned against the cold, the tires squeaking on the road so cold that it wasn’t even slippery any more. There was no moon, the sky was dark as ink and full of stars, even the most distant ones that you never saw otherwise showing up with a faint silver light.

  “Did you hear about the Native men they found frozen to death in Saskatoon?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Drunk, I guess. Or doped up on drugs.”

  “Didn’t you hear?” she asked, surprised. “The radio said that two policemen had taken them out to the country and left them to freeze to death—they even took their jackets. At least, that’s what they’re accused of doing.”

  “Do you believe that?” he asked, as if he found her naivete amusing.

  “Don’t you?” She could feel him shrug. “Jason keeps asking me about it,” she told him. “Tonight when I went to the bathroom he caught up to me in the hall and asked me why the policemen did it. His eyes—” She stopped. “I told him it’s probably not even true.” She’d bent and held Jason tight against her chest.

  “I’ll sure be glad when this cold spell ends,” Ross said. “I should have a talk with Art about playing Jason more.” Now it was her turn to turn her head away from him in exasperation. Poor Jason, she thought, and would have tried one more time to persuade Ross that Jason wasn’t very good as a hockey player, but gave it up before she began—it never did the slightest good. Casting about for something to say that would be on neutral ground, she told him about the women and Denise McKenzie at the rink on Friday night.

  “I can’t figure out why they pick on her,” she said. “She seems nice to me—at least as nice as they are—and she keeps the kids clean and nobody ever said she’s a bad housekeeper—”

  “Women gossip,” he said, as if this was something she ought to know without him having to tell her. She wanted to protest that the men were just as bad—what about coffee row—but once more held her tongue. They rode the next couple of miles before Ross broke the silence. “We’ve got this guy at work, Winston. Not too smart. The boss gets half his wages paid by the government. He sweeps the shop floor, takes out the garbage, washes parts—that kind of thing.”

  “Oh? Can he do the work?”

  “Sure,” Ross said. “It’s all stuff you don’t have to be smart to do. Hell, he’s so eager it’s pathetic.” A kind of growl had entered his tone.

  “Oh,” she said, understanding, “and the men tease him.”

  “One especially,” Ross said. “Won’t leave him alone. Made him cry yesterday.” She waited, knowing he was holding something back. “That’s the real reason I came home last night. I told the boss if he didn’t do something about the way Chuck is always after Winston, I’d do something myself. Then I walked out, came home. I’ll be lucky if I’m not fired.”

  “You did the right thing,” she assured him.

  “It won’t be so right if I don’t have a job.”

  For a second a chill of sheer terror entered Bonny’s heart: they’d lose the farm, they’d have nothing to eat; there was still the envelope from the bank to be opened.

  “I don’t care,” she said, through clenched teeth. “It was still right.” Jason stirred and she cupped her hand over his cold cheek. She wondered suddenly if Pammy were really asleep or just pretending.

  Bonny woke, thinking, Sunday morning, too cold to go to church, and was glad that today they’d all be together at home. Tomorrow morning Ross would be gone by six in order to be at work by eight. She put her hand out to touch him and encountered only a wrinkled sheet, then remembered that Sunday morning was when he looked at the week’s mail, and she threw back the covers, got up quickly, sliding her feet into her slippers and pulling on her robe.

  In the kitchen, Ross had started the coffee and the radio on the counter was playing softly. He was seated in his usual place at the end of the table, his back slumped, his elbows resting on the table, his head in his hands. The opened mail sat in a pile in front of him. She went straight to him, put her hands gently on his shoulders, and bent to rest her cheek for a moment on the top of his head. He didn’t respond, she could feel an odd current running through him as if all his muscles were tightened, ready to spring, and straightening, she saw that he was staring down at the letter from the bank. He moved his hand as if to tell her to read it.

  “What does it say?”

  “They’re taking another quarter.” Bonny gasped. “I was going to plant chickpeas on that quarter,” he said, turning to look up at her, his voice plaintive as a child’s.

  She pulled out a chair to sit beside him as, at the same moment, he rose abruptly, his chair scraping backward with a harsh squeal.

  “Jesus Christ!” He picked the chair up by its back and threw it across the kitchen where it came to rest, upright, against the far wall. “Goddamn—” He grabbed the chair that sat by the door leading into the hall and threw it, too. It struck the wall by the back door, bounced off, and skittered on its side across the well-polished vinyl floor back toward his feet. Bonny jumped up.

  “Ross! The kids!” She hurried to the door into the hall and closed it quietly. Ross gripped the waist-high counter with both hands, facing the cupboards, his shoulders raised awkwardly. She reached out to touch his rigid back, but he released his hold on the counter and pushed her hand away roughly. She stood quietly for a moment, waiting for him to break down, to begin to cry, but instead he spun away from her and kicked the chair that lay on its
side on the floor. Bonny backed away, went back to the table, and sat down where she’d been before, her back to him. She could hear him beginning to pace, taking long strides, kicking the chair away again and again, cursing under his breath.

  She would wait until he’d calmed down and then she’d start making suggestions: Talk to the banker; tell him we’ll plant chickpeas so we can pay some of our debt. See if the Pool will give us more credit. She tried frantically to think of other possibilities. Behind her, Ross was still pacing, although he’d stopped kicking the chair every time he passed it.

  “Can’t they see how much they need us?” he asked. His voice had gone high; it vibrated with tension. “Why are they doing this to us? Why doesn’t the government do something?” She didn’t try to answer him—nobody knew the answer to those questions, except that it seemed that the wealthy and powerful, whoever they were, wherever they were, cared only for their own wealth and power, and spared no thought for the people whose lives they destroyed.

  Now Ross began telling her his plans—already he’d begun to make the plans that would surely save them—but she knew what he would say before he said it, having thought of all these things herself.

  “Listen, Ross,” she said. Her voice reminded her of the school principal both she and Ross had once had, and hated, but she didn’t try to modulate it. “Listen to me!” He stopped pacing and she turned to face him. He was gazing at her out of eyes that, dark as they were, blazed, but in a way that struck her with fear, although not for herself. She almost faltered, but caught herself in time and went ahead anyway, even as she knew what she had to say would be futile, that in his outrage and his refusal to face that they were done, finished, he might even strike her.

  “We should put the farm up for sale right now,” she told him. “Just keep the home quarter while we make our plans to leave. We’ll go to the city—you’re a good mechanic, you can get a good job.” Ross took a step backward, not taking his eyes off her face, but she could see the colour leaching out of his cheeks and forehead. “Listen, Ross,” she said again, urgently. “Listen to me. I’ll go back to school, get a nurse’s aide certificate so I can get a proper job. We can wait till fall to move so the kids can start the year in their new school.” Ross had backed away as she spoke; he was at the back door, pushing his feet into his boots now, reaching for his parka. She raised her voice, calling to him to listen to her, “Summer holidays we can come back here to the house—”