The smell of frost rose up from the grass, and Val breathed in deeply, savouring the nip of cold air in her throat and lungs. In the streaky January sky were the remnants of a sunset. On the bare maple in front, a crow sat unmoving, its wings held close, its shoulders hunched. Her glass was soon empty, and she stood up to refill it.
On the other side of the door stood Joan, meticulously dressed in a cashmere sweater and plaid skirt, holding the baby and gazing evenly at Val through the glass. Val pulled her milk-stained robe closed and slid her left slipper behind her right to hide the hole over the big toe. She patted the tangle of hair at the back of her head but there wasn’t anything she could do to fix it. She dropped the empty sherry glass behind her onto one of the chairs.
When she opened the patio door, Joan smiled at her. “The door was open, so I walked in. You should lock that, you know.”
Val stared at Dawn, whose eyes were wide open and fixed on Joan’s pearl necklace. Dried tears stained her cheeks, but she appeared calm, happy even, as Joan rocked her slowly from side to side. “She settled right down when I picked her up. It’s like she already knows who I am.”
In the shadows of the living room stood Peter, his doughy body skulking and blending with the gloom so that he seemed to be a more substantial shadow than the ones surrounding him. He nodded at Val, his face unsmiling.
“I tried calling, but I think you must have ignored the phone,” said Joan. “Understandable, of course, when you have to deal with this new baby all by yourself.”
Val couldn’t move or speak. Her palms rested on the cool glass of the patio door behind her.
“What did you name her, Val? You never phoned when she was born.”
“Dawn,” she croaked and then flinched at the unused sound of her voice.
“Dawn? That’s a modern name, isn’t it? Don’t you think, Peter?”
Peter nodded again and clasped his hands behind his back.
“You look tired, Val. How about I stay for a few hours so you can get some rest?”
Val slumped a little. Her bones felt so full of exhaustion that they were threatening to buckle under the weight of her skin and flesh and hair.
“I can even spend the night, and Peter can pick me up tomorrow on his way home from work.” Joan watched as Val dropped onto the sofa by the window. “It’s settled then. Peter, why don’t you run to the grocery store and pick us up some baby formula? And get a couple of pork chops and maybe some bread and broccoli as well. I’ll make supper before he has to drive home, Val. Don’t you worry.”
That night, Joan arranged extra sheets and pillows on the couch and moved the crib to the living room. She tucked Val into her bed, pulling the covers right up under her chin and smoothing Val’s hair away from her face before silently backing out and closing the door softly behind her. Val waited for the sounds of Dawn’s crying to burst through the wall, but heard only the padding of Joan’s stockinged feet as she moved through the apartment. Slowly, she fell into a dreamless and unmoving sleep.
When she woke up, Joan had cleaned the apartment and dressed Dawn in a pretty little pink dress with a white collar. “I brought it with me,” she said proudly. “Of course, I didn’t know if she was going to be a girl or a boy, so I brought a little blue sailor outfit too.” Joan laughed and the trill filled the room; Val winced.
But she felt good. Better than she had in a month. Her joints didn’t feel as if they were grinding together, bone on bone. She was aware, again, of her whole body—the way her legs moved and her neck swivelled—instead of just the soreness in her breasts. At Joan’s suggestion, she drew a hot bath and soaked until lunchtime, when Joan made sandwiches. Dawn slept peacefully, cried out briefly when she was hungry or wet, and settled down again as soon as she was satisfied. Val watched Joan, her serene face, the light way she caressed the baby’s cheeks, the brightness of her eyes when she held her. She was suspicious, but forced herself to think Joan knows how much I did for her baby, and now she’s trying to make up for it. That’s all it is.
The next week, Joan came again. Peter held the baby, and even Val could see that his face softened when he looked into her blinking eyes. Peter—that hard-shelled, incomprehensible man.
Joan made Val a pot of tea and sat with her on the balcony, even though a cold wind was beginning to swirl around them. Inside, Peter sat with Dawn. Val could hear him singing to her, a strange, off-tune version of “Rock-a-bye Baby,” but she didn’t turn to look.
“You’re alone here too much.” Joan’s voice, as always, cut through the air—unmerciful, unlovely. She continued, “I’m alone too, most days.”
Val looked down and pulled at the fabric that bunched over her stomach.
The teacups rattled as Joan shifted in her chair to face Val. “Come home with us. I can help with the baby and we can be company for each other again. It’ll be fun, like when we were little girls.”
Val remembered the river. The way it smelled at the height of summer. The muddy banks where the bodies of fish that had died in the winter were exposed to the hot sun. The saltiness of eelgrass. The faint smell of chemical sewage from the paper mill upriver that was usually hidden by fog and rain the rest of the year. The rumble of trains speeding past every other day. Val and Joan, one small and the other smaller, sitting with bare legs on the steps of their back porch, sniffing the warm wind blowing up from the water and through the bush. Val never loved their house, but the river was something else altogether. It churned with the scraps of canning and logging, yet it still reflected the blue sky on sunny days and winked at Val if she watched it long enough, her chin resting on the rickety railing outside, her mind empty of all the debris from village gossip or a bad day at school. The river could be lovely. You just had to be patient.
As if Joan could hear Val’s thoughts, she said, “Our house isn’t so far from Burrard Inlet, you know. There’s a beach there. Dawn would love it.”
Val met Joan’s eyes and nodded.
Val felt puffy with rest. She woke up before anyone else, her body jerking through the last cobwebs of a dream she couldn’t remember. The baby wasn’t crying yet. The early winter rain dripped off the eaves and onto the wide driveway lined with miniature spruce trees. It was still dark and the warmth of the bed cocooned her. Puffs of down-filled comforter formed in the crook of her elbow and the curve of her waist. Val fell asleep again, dozing as the overcast sky brightened. She was half aware of the wind shaking the Japanese maple on the front lawn, of cars slowly backing out of garages and heading toward the highway.
When she awoke a second time, she sat up stupidly at the sounds of Dawn whimpering in the next room. Val threw on a robe and slipped out of her bedroom, padding into Dawn’s nursery, which, at the last minute, had been decorated by Joan with just a crib and a white dresser. As Val crept closer to the baby, Dawn began to wail. She kicked out her legs and stiffened her back when Val reached in to pick her up. Val changed her, tried to feed her, even held her to the window, whispering that this same type of tree lined the road where Val and Joan grew up. None of it made any difference. Finally, she screamed over Dawn’s cries. “What do you want? I don’t understand!” She leaned against the wall, too tired with the effort of shrieking to even cry herself.
Joan strode into the room and took the baby from Val. “What are you doing? Shouting at an infant like that,” she scolded. Val stared as Joan wiped Dawn’s face with a tissue from the pocket on her slacks and brushed her pinky against her mouth. Dawn’s lips parted and, as she sucked on Joan’s finger, her eyes closed and Val thought she heard her release a quiet chuckle.
“My car keys are on the hall table. When the store opens, you’ll have to go and buy a soother.” Joan turned toward the window and Val saw that, this time, Dawn opened her eyes wide and stared at the trees outside.
Weeks later, Val kneeled on the floor by her open bedroom window. No sound outside, not even the bang of a garbage can lid. If she listened hard enough, with her head craned to the right, sh
e thought she could hear the swish of the highway, the sound of tires speeding through the rain. But she couldn’t tell if what she was hearing was real or if she was making it all up because, otherwise, she would go mad, choked by Joan’s wall-to-wall carpeting.
There was no music in the house, only a television in the family room that Peter turned on to watch the news. Dawn was asleep. To fill the silence, Val began humming a tune. Soon, her bare feet were tapping the carpet, and she stood up, twisting her hips, her arms above her head.
She closed her eyes, saw pin dots of light underneath the lids that she could trick herself into believing were stage lights, or the lampposts on Granville Street that glimmered yellow in the dark.
Val began to dance by herself every night after Joan and Peter and Dawn had gone to bed, her nightgown billowing around her legs. Her body remembered her old moves: the spin that helped unwind her skirt, the shrug that slipped one spaghetti strap down her arm. She opened the window as wide as it would go, and, as she twirled, the sharp air brushed past the hair on her arms and worked its way between her toes. Branches rustled together in the wind, and she pretended it was the sound of a rowdy crowd, cheering and clapping at every kick, every arched eyebrow. The rest of the house slept while her body vibrated, awake.
Val dressed carefully, sorting through her clothes until she found the right outfit, a grey day suit with navy-blue piping around the lapels and sleeves. She found Joan and Dawn by the living-room window, the baby nestled into Joan’s lap.
“I’m going into town today, if that’s all right,” Val announced, fiddling with the clasp on her purse.
“Oh?” Joan didn’t even look up.
“Yes, I thought I’d go and check on the apartment, maybe bring back a few things that I forgot to pack.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Since it’s such a long drive, I thought I might stay overnight and come back in the morning. There doesn’t seem to be any point to driving into town just to drive right back again.” Val smoothed down a pleat in her skirt to hide her shaking hands.
“That’s probably a good idea. Pick me up some magazines, will you?” Joan bent down to kiss Dawn on the forehead, her pale lips on the baby’s white skin.
Val brushed her hand over Dawn’s fine, floating hair. She swallowed hard and then marched out the door.
In the driveway, Val breathed in the cold suburban air, which smelled like frost. When she was on the highway, she could almost feel the heat from the electric lights on her head and the rise and fall of cracked sidewalks under her high-heeled shoes. The downtown streets were no place for a baby, of that she was certain. She pressed down harder on the gas pedal and smiled as the car surged forward.
The pounding of the drum was undeniable, and it bore its way into her body until her heartbeat was forced to keep pace. Val’s blood rushed upward in waves, and she breathed hard as her fingers, sticky from a puddle of spilled beer, tapped the table-top. Around her, groups of men and women smoked cigarettes in long holders, shouted over the music to the waiters and lifted their drinks in a pool of light so warm that it seemed improbable it could be winter outside, where freezing rain hurled itself downward with such ferocity that it hurt to stand unprotected in the night.
The dancer onstage untied her gingham blouse and shook her breasts in their gingham brassiere at the audience. She wore a straw hat and freckles drawn in pencil on her cheeks. Val smiled. Milly the Country Girl. Young, with a rounded body. The men watched her sling her bra into the wings, wiggle her backside as she walked to the left to pick up a banjo. The band stopped, and she played “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” singing so sweetly Val forgot that her breasts, except for a pair of pasties, were bare, white and full in the spotlight, and that her denim shorts were cut so high the curve of her ass hung past the frayed hems. The crowd stopped talking, their eyes on Milly.
A voice whispered behind her, “Val, is that you?”
She turned around in her chair and saw the manager of the supper club, sleek in a tuxedo, squinting at her through the shadows.
“Jim. Nice to see you.”
“Everyone’s been asking about you. Tell me you’re back on the scene.”
Val laughed and looked down at her hands. “No, honey. Just back for one night of fun.”
An idea flashed across his face. “Come backstage with me. I’ll get you a costume. We can set up a special performance. One night only with the Siamese Kitten!” He took her hand and pulled it in the direction of the stage.
Val remembered the wrinkles in her belly, the loose skin that sagged over the elastic of her underpants. She hadn’t looked at her naked body in a mirror in months and knew the dimples in her bum from touch. Had she even shaved her legs? She pulled her hand back.
“I can’t, Jim. I’m not ready. I haven’t done anything to prepare.”
“Come on, no one will know.”
“Under those lights?” Val pointed at the spotlights and the bright white circles that swirled over Milly’s body onstage. “They’ll see everything.”
Jim stood with his hands on his hips. “How’s this? You come back tomorrow night. We’ll set it up. That way, you have time to do whatever it is you girls do to look pretty.”
“Tomorrow?” Val felt the itch in her legs, the gooseflesh that could only be dissipated by the eyes of men watching her shimmy and grind and strut. “I’m supposed to be somewhere tomorrow.”
He waved his arms around the club. “What could be more important than this?”
She could already hear the suspension of breath, the way a full room shimmers with silence when a crowd waits for something it has wanted for a very long time. She saw the sliver of light between the curtains and felt it slice through the darkness of backstage and burn as it touched her skin. She blinked.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be here.”
It was too easy. Val called Joan and told her that she needed to stay an extra day or two to sort out some financial matters she had forgotten about.
Joan didn’t ask, perhaps because the baby was fussing, or perhaps because she recognized the lie in Val’s voice, the same tone she used whenever she phoned home while on the road. “You can come back whenever you want,” Joan said. “We’re fine by ourselves.”
She returned to the stage that night. Jim introduced her.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a real treat for you tonight. A special one-night-only event. Please welcome the incomparable Siamese Kitten!”
Men jumped to their feet and whistled. Even the women sat up straighter in their chairs, peering over heads for a better view of the stage and the inevitable spectacle of Val’s return.
Before she stepped out through the curtains, she held the palm of her hand to her stomach, felt her breath coming sharp and fast. This was a borrowed costume with a swath of transparent fabric hastily sewn over the belly to conceal the marks her pregnancy had left behind. It had been over a year since she last danced in public. Everything could go wrong. She might ruin her flawless reputation.
She heard the audience fall silent. No impatient hissing, not even the shifting of legs or arms in boredom. No, they wanted her. Only she could deliver what they were expecting. She stepped through the curtains and waited a half-second before the applause started up again and enveloped her. It crawled over her skin in that singular way she didn’t know she had been missing.
When she returned to Joan and Peter’s house three days later, Joan proudly showed her how she had redecorated Dawn’s room.
“Do you see the pink curtains? They’re made of this new fabric, you know, and won’t ever wrinkle. And I couldn’t resist this little table-and-chair set. I thought Dawn could use it for tea parties.” Joan laughed and picked up a tiny cup and saucer. “Who she’ll invite to these parties, I don’t know, but it was all so cute. Oh, and look. I thought we could use a good rocking chair by the window here, for night feedings. I always feel so comforted in a rocking chair, don’t you?”
&nb
sp; “It’s beautiful, Joanie, really. Thanks so much.” Even as the words left Val’s lips, she wanted to run from this pink and frilled room to somewhere more familiar, somewhere with sticky floors and hard bar stools that made her ass cold and achy. When they went to the living room, she reached for Dawn, who sat solidly on the sofa, propped up with cushions, but the baby cringed and her lower lip began to tremble. Val pushed her hands back into her pockets and didn’t try to touch her again for the rest of the day.
It didn’t take long for Val’s old agent to find out about her performance at the Cave, and he started phoning the house every day. “You’ve got to come back to the circuit, Val. Burlesque needs you. If you don’t come back, we’ll be drowning in these girls with no skill whatsoever. All they do is strip. You, my dear, have a show.”
Val whispered into the receiver, turning her back to Joan, who listened with her arms crossed in front of her chest, her eyes gleaming palely in the winter sunshine. “I can’t. I told you before: I have other things to do. I can’t travel like that again.”
“You could stay in Vancouver! There are plenty of clubs here. You’d be like the grande dame of burlesque, the resident queen of the strip. Come on, Val. You know you want to.”
And she did, but she couldn’t say it. “No. I can’t.”
“You can’t stop me from phoning again. You’ll rue the day you ever went back to the Cave,” he said, with a note of amusement in his voice, before hanging up.
The Better Mother Page 24