by Krista Foss
“It can’t be true,” she says, shaking her head, becoming more shrill. “It can’t be true. Stephanie hates her brother. She’s jealous of him. And Peg is getting back at me.”
“Stephanie does not hate her brother,” Mitch says quietly. “And what’s true or not true doesn’t really matter, Ella. We have to act or lose everything.” Mitch feels his throat, still tender, and wonders if there will be an opportunity to mention it to Ella.
“It does matter what’s true, Mitch. It’s the only thing that matters.”
He looks at her angrily, his right arm extended. “Out,” he says, pointing, pushing her towards the patio door with his left hand. “I won’t have this conversation here.”
When she steps under the pergola, he keeps pointing, past the backyard gate, beyond the earshot of neighbours at their barbecues or weeding around delphinium borders. Ella marches away from their property into the rows of tobacco. The dusk-lit sky is worthy of a Flemish painter, Mitch thinks. And he yearns for a moment of repose, a quiet walk with his wife under its mauve and smoke. When she turns, he sees that she belongs in the painting: a flame-cheeked fishwife with a cudgel-like tongue. Beautiful and ferocious in the same moment.
“You, this is your fault! You spoiled Stephanie. You let her feel victimized by Las’s achievements. She took up with that native boy to spite us. And now these unseemly accusations, this fantasy!”
Mitch grabs his wife’s shoulders so they are eyeball to eyeball. He has never understood how a mother could not adore her own daughter. It’s the single thing about Ella he finds repulsive. “Do you have any idea how insane you sound? Stop talking about her like that or I will shut you out, Ella. I will deal with Peg and her silent partner myself. And I will keep you a hundred miles from the action. Do you hear?”
Ella slumps into the tobacco, her face in her hands.
“This is about Las,” Mitch says.
“You’ve never been kind to him,” she says in a biting whisper.
“Whether he has done something or nothing at all, we can’t let people talk, Ella. We won’t have a future in this town. Those boys are always together. The fucking tires on that cretin’s truck—”
She starts to sob. The tobacco plants beside her shiver. Mitch searches his mind for a soothing blandishment, something that will make this day end sooner. “I’m going to make everything okay,” he says.
A cricket lands on her shoulder, and when he reaches to brush it off, Ella wraps her arms around his knees so tightly that the wetness on her face soaks through his cotton pants. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know my own kids.” She reaches her hands up to his thighs, grabbing handfuls of his pants’ thin, inelastic fabric, yanking the waistband to his hips. “Have I been a good mother, Mitch? Tell me I’ve been good.”
She is pleading, and Mitch’s eyes well up with his own doubts and regrets. “Yes, Ella, you’re a good mother. You’re too good. Nobody could have done better, could have given more.”
She pulls him down to the ground and he is dizzy, feeling anew the rawness of his throat, the hugeness of what lies ahead. What he didn’t expect was desire, but here it is, an untimely gift. His wife helpless in his arms, her body ransacked by emotion, the violet sky and the balm of loamy smells rinsing him of sweat and soured Scotch, his own long hours of desperation. His hands slide up the outside of her thighs. He kisses her hurriedly, fumbles sloppily with her buttons, as if the smallest hesitation will make him stop. Her skin is clammy and pimpled in the evening air.
“You are the best part of my life,” Mitch says. He holds his breath, and then Ella holds on to him, with her pelvis, her mouth, her hands. Mitch makes her pant and cry out for him, for the idea of themselves that neither can give up.
CHAPTER 22
Joe Montagne thinks the guy walking towards his smoke shop looks like a federal spook, or one of those plainclothes RCMP officers who think that a shiny suit is going to make you blend in, look like a regular freakin’ Joe. Nice car, that’s for sure. Snub-nosed and silver, convertible top; Joe thinks maybe it’s an Audi. But shit, he can never get those city cars right. The guy, though, he’s got him figured. Something about his face that’s already working overtime. Man’s gotta be five metres away and already his smile is blazing like a casino entrance. Wants something, Joe thinks, and I don’t suspect it’s smokes.
“Hey, there,” the man says. A large palm, bright as the inside of a seashell, slices through the air towards him.
Joe stays put in his lawn chair. He doesn’t reach for the extended hand but lifts his coffee cup in greeting. “How’s things?” he says.
The man gestures towards the lawn chair that Coulson has been sitting on for a week of sunsets, now folded and leaning against the back of the Ford.
Joe shrugs. “I’m guessing you’re not here for rollies.”
The man in the shiny suit unfolds the chair and laughs a bit nervously, then sits and leans forward. “You’re a smart man,” he says.
Joe doesn’t even lift his eyes. “No. No, I’m not,” he says. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Saj Vinay,” he says. “I’m with a law firm called Krantz, Russell, Simpson.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Joe says, raising the pitch of his voice in mock defence.
“Are you able to talk privately, Mr. Montagne?”
“You see anybody else here but us?”
The lawyer wears a gold chain bracelet on one wrist, an expensive watch on the other. Light bounces off the man. It makes Joe’s eyes smart.
“I was so sorry to hear about your daughter,” he says.
Joe stands abruptly. The lawn chair falls back hard, makes the sound of a crunched pop can. He drops his coffee and it splashes the lawyer’s shiny shoes. “What the fuck do you know about my daughter?”
He looms. His shadow dulls the lawyer’s sheen. But the shiny man is not rattled. He stands too, picks up the fallen chair, and places it so that it’s facing his.
“Sit down, Mr. Montagne. I have something to say that might be very profitable for you.”
Joe does not like this perfectly groomed person. Still, the word profitable has a sound he cares for and that makes him curious. The man is too calm, too certain he has something Joe wants. It can’t hurt to find out whether he’s right.
Ten minutes later he’s holding Mr. Vinay’s business card so tightly it’s already damp and creased. That’s some kind of Indian, he thinks. And that’s one shitload of money he’s wanting to give away. The amount makes Joe jumpy. He repeats it over and over his head. Even as he folds up the lawn chair the lawyer helped himself to, he’s dividing the money, quartering it like a freshly felled buck, a season’s worth of meat. One piece to pay off his loan from that asshole Barton. One piece to Helen Fallingbrook, because she’s bailed him out more times than he can remember. A trip to the dentist – he’d get a whole mouth of new teeth. A big chunk for Cherisse. He could send her away to an aunt across the border, maybe even put her through school – she’d make a good nurse. Pays well. Or she could record an album; that would make her smile. They could take a trip to the Dakotas, have a house that’s not a trailer, a big-ass four-by-four … hell, he could lease a Hummer for that coin. Never have to sell another rollie again, and he’d still have money for Rita when she called, her voice ever huskier and more remote. He’d do right by his women, for sure.
But some of it is meant for him, the lawyer made that clear. If he gets an agreement. If he gets on it fast. Oh man, he wishes he hadn’t spilled that coffee. He feels like he should just take a second, a moment to get it all sorted out.
We’ll need to hear from you no later than the end of this week, after you’ve talked to your daughter, the lawyer said. I’ll deliver the money order myself. But it’s time-sensitive, you understand. And we’ll need papers signed by both of you.
Joe nodded his head, his thoughts shooting in a hundred directions like a video game.
I could drive you to the hospital right now, Mr. Mon
tagne, even wait in the lobby while you discuss matters with your daughter, bring up the papers and the money straightaway. Git ’er done, as they say.
Joe didn’t like that. Who the hell says git?
I’ve got my smoke shack open, mister. I’d have to close up for the day or get somebody to take over for a few hours. Not likely. Plus I got my own ride right here. Joe patted his truck as if it were the flank of a strong horse.
The lawyer squinted, surveyed the vehicle in a manner the older man didn’t appreciate. And then, with a bounce of his head, a point at his cellphone, Mr. Vinay turned and left so fast the gravel dust curtsied behind his shiny silver car.
Now Joe watches it become a silver termite nibbling away at the horizon and he thinks, I should have asked for more money. Fuck! I could have asked for way more money. There was something too smug about the way the coffee-coloured man turned on his heel, jabbed at his phone, made his wheels fishtail on the embankment as he sped away. Yeah, the bugger was probably having a big old laugh at Joe’s expense right now.
His tooth starts hurting again. Joe kicks the tires of his truck. There’s something he hasn’t put together. According to the lawyer, there are things his daughter can never talk about. Such as who messed her up. He looked hard into Joe’s eyes as he said it, as if he were simple, couldn’t understand. Joe just nodded. Of course, of course, he said. But now he sees the lawyer’s advantage: that little man from the big city knows who attacked his daughter, while he doesn’t. And who is certainly important, who has to be someone with connections and money for a lawyer sleek as this dude. Who is the price setter.
Joe isn’t a bad man. The image of his daughter’s face, dented and split like thrown fruit, is all he can see when he closes his eyes at night. It makes him sad. It fills him with rage, makes him want to kill someone. Yet her beauty has been both bounty and burden to him. Certainly it’s sold more cigarettes than he could alone, but every time he looks at her, he feels anxious. She is almost too much for this place, her quicksilver spirit too hard to contain. The two beautiful runaways of his life – his wife, his daughter – have unmade him, turned him into a man with no dreams other than keeping them at home. A little broken, a little frightened, even perhaps a little less pretty, Cherisse might at least stick around for a while, need him close. He feels bad for thinking it, even if its truth is plain.
And now there could be money. Joe starts to load his cigarette inventory from the stand into the back of the truck. The thing he hasn’t told the lawyer is a niggling detail: Cherisse is no longer in the hospital. She is sequestered with strong women, and that’s a harder set of doors to get through than what the hospital can throw between them. She won’t want to see him. He’ll have to find the words to unlock Ruby’s bolted heart.
Something good waits for you, he’ll yell out to Cherisse. Just give me five minutes. She and him aren’t given to talking personal, but he’ll find a way to get it out of her. Who did this to you? He practises asking it straight like that in his head. Part of him doesn’t want to know. But that information means freedom. They’ll come up with a figure together. They’ll create a different life for themselves.
Joe hums to himself, pats the pockets of his jean jacket, and looks over to the tobacco fields. He sees the backs of men leaning off the harvester, the sweat on their bare shoulders catching in the sun. The harvester moves like a hungry slug through the east fields, which means it will be another few days before they’ll be working up the rows to where his shack stands. He’ll be long gone by then.
As he surveys the green tremble of the plants, the beginning splashes of harvest sepia on their lower leaves, the sun feels good against his neck. The money might change everything, he thinks. That has to be a possibility. He packs away the smokes in the back of his truck and drives off, leaving behind two empty lawn chairs turned towards each other.
Federal negotiator Antonia Taylor’s Buick Regal is parked beyond the sightline of the blockade, where the highway gently curves. Shayna looks over her shoulder, feeling traitorous as she walks towards it. It felt odd to get the message from the negotiator, and more so when she called back and Ms. Taylor herself picked up on the first ring.
Private tête-à-tête. Friendly and unofficial. Can you give me twenty minutes? Keep it under wraps?
Shayna hasn’t told anyone about the meeting, especially Helen, who wouldn’t approve of its terms. A negotiator who hand-picks whom she negotiates with is a colonialist, she’d say. Or a terrorist. You choose. Shayna passes Joe’s temporary smoke shack at the edge of the tobacco fields, smiles at this evidence of Coulson’s good nature, and notes that it’s deserted, Joe’s truck gone. She’s relieved there will be no one to witness her slipping into the back seat of the negotiator’s car.
I looked you up, Ms. Fallingbrook. Impressive start to your law career, the negotiator said at the end of their phone call. Shayna could tell the comment was bait, an appeal to her vanity, which made it no less satisfying. Earlier that morning she slipped home for a quick shower. She painted her fingernails, a habit she’d abandoned after Pete-Pete was born, because it seemed impractical and fussy. In the very back of her closet hung what remained of her lawyer clothes. She fished out a scoop-necked white cotton blouse that was shirred along the placket and button edges. Paired with her new jeans and ankle cowboy boots, the blouse made her feel uncharacteristically pretty when she saw her reflection. There was a half-second in which she hesitated. Then she rummaged in a drawer and pulled out Rick’s old watch, wrapped it around her wrist, using the last hole to fasten it, before she drove back to the barricade. The watch hasn’t worked for years, but it doesn’t matter.
Ms. Taylor’s driver hops out and opens the back door for her, and Shayna ducks her head inside. The negotiator’s expensive perfume, the sodium glow of her titanium-coloured laptop command the space. Shayna regrets her girlish blouse.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet,” Antonia Taylor begins. She snaps shut her laptop and slips it into a bag at her feet. Her tone is warm but authoritative. “I know you are a woman in a position of leadership, so I won’t waste your time.”
She draws in a long breath, and Shayna sees that, up close, she is more feminine than her boxy jackets and long face suggest from a distance. Her fingers are exquisitely thin, breakable even; one is encircled by a showy cluster of diamonds. The crinkles around her eyes, the deep commas at the corners of her lips hold some kindness, the tension of private sufferings. Shayna wonders how many compromises she’s made to survive in a world governed by rules that are broadly interpreted and wildly manipulated, and always in flux.
“The blockade has to come down,” Antonia says with a loud exhale. “It’s as simple as that. The negotiations won’t restart unless that blockade is dismantled. My bosses are digging in their heels on this one.”
Shayna smiles. “So this tête-à-tête is not so friendly after all, eh?”
The negotiator twists in her seat; her body turns, makes soft little ripples in her cream silk blouse. She looks powdery up close, as if she could easily disintegrate.
“Can we talk frankly? Woman to woman?” Antonia says. Shayna wonders if there is more than one way to answer that question. She stares back wordlessly.
“You strike me as someone who’s taken a bit of a detour from a promising career. Love, loss … doesn’t matter. You’re still young. And you clearly have a lot of respect in your community. My guess is that you can leverage this bit of celebrity to do something important, to really make a difference on these land claims issues. And in the process relaunch yourself, your own dreams.” She takes in another breath and looks directly at Shayna. “If you want to make a difference, Ms. Fallingbrook, as you know, good intentions are no substitute for results. Whatever you do next will be easier, more productive, vastly more meaningful if you walk away from this protest with a victory.”
She looks down, and then smiles as if sharing a joke with herself. Her eyes soften. “If I’m being perfectly honest, I too n
eed a success. My bosses are a little less than pleased with the headway I’m making here, especially now that the opposition are having a field day in the press about my fees.” Antonia Taylor reaches out one of her delicate hands to Shayna and lays it on her forearm. “But, unlike you, I cannot relaunch myself after this. This is the wind-down of my career. I wouldn’t mind making a difference myself, getting some results. And if you can trust me, I can use my experience to ensure that we do achieve something important here.”
Antonia lifts her fingers and Shayna pulls her forearm away.
“And that starts with me telling my people to go home?”
“Not home. Off the highway. Get them off the highway, keep your protest within the boundaries of the development for now, and negotiations can start again. In return we will drop the requirement about negotiating with elected officials, deal directly with your group – I have secured Chief White’s support for you – and dive right into the issues of treaty disputes, broken covenants, and so on. No waiting. No delays.”
The car goes silent.
Antonia Taylor sinks back into her seat, pulls a bottle of water from a polished leather valise. “Would you like some? My driver has a cooler in the front seat.”
Shayna shakes her head.
“We have the potential to set a precedent here – for the kind of negotiating we do, the agreements we make,” Antonia continues between sips. “I’m excited by that. As women, there’s so little turf left to call our own, and yet the things we get done are extraordinary.”
Women. Shayna feels collected on the term’s mantel, like some prize from a fall fair. They are both women for sure, but she feels no us with Antonia. Shayna wonders if the negotiator has any children. Pregnancy has a way of interrupting extraordinary, precedent-setting acts, Shayna thinks. She considers her own ring-less fingers, the inexpertly applied nail polish. At the pub she was aching to have Coulson relieve her loneliness. Yet the minute he wrapped her protectively in his arms, she wanted that loneliness back for just a little bit longer – an unclaimed universe that was all her, the planet of her body, whatever grew inside.