He chortles and says, without the slightest variation in pitch or tone, “Very clever, Lourdes. You’re going places aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, he says, “I’m not big on long-distance and/or occasional relationships. I’d be perfectly happy with a permanent, monogamous relationship. You wouldn’t know of anyone who might fit that job description, would you?”
Now, is that a pick up line or what?
“And in answer to your question,” he says, “There’s no woman in any port. And I currently have a vacancy for that permanent relationship.”
Yeah, right, a line and a half then. And a relationship as permanent as this cigarillo. “No, I don’t know of anyone.” She stands up, finishes her smoke, and drops the butt in a nearby disposal bin. “I have work tomorrow.”
Lee stands also but keeps his distance. “Can I attend you to your room?”
Attend? Wow. This guy’s growing corn now. “No thanks. I know the way.”
“Well, goodnight then,” he says, his voice not modulating even slightly.
She marches away and hears the strike of a match. He must have relit his forgotten cigarillo. He calls to her, “Maybe I’ll still see you at breakfast.”
“Maybe,” she replies over her shoulder without turning. She has housekeeping duties in the morning and won’t be near the restaurant. She crunches driveway gravel under her feet.
After a couple of tries to get her key in the lock, she hazards a quick glance toward the picnic table. Lee’s back is toward her once again. A cloud of smoke billows upward.
She heads directly for her laptop and opens her journal file. She tries to write about what just happened. A summary is easy. Putting down her feelings is not. She can’t come up with anything creative. Abandoning the laptop, she decides to go for a run. If Lee is still out there when she leaves, let come what may. She puts on her sweats, running shoes, and reflective windbreaker. After stretching, she ties her hair back in a tight ponytail, secures her key to her wrist with a key-coil, and exits her room running. Her door slams behind her.
He is gone. Fine. I need to run and don’t need the distraction.
She jogs out of the parking lot, crosses the highway and runs toward the mine, facing oncoming traffic. Feeling the cool night air on her face, she inhales deeply, smelling the nearby flax fields. She catches a whiff of algae and stagnant water as she jogs down the incline toward Liverwood Creek. To her right, behind the motel, is her hollow in complete darkness. She spreads her crow wings but stays with the rhythm of her feet on the pavement, gets the scent of the prairie with every breath. Surrounded by the dark, she marvels at the bright stars so far above her. She watches the mine’s plume drift lazily overhead. Her feet know the way and her body knows the rhythm. She doesn’t need to think and she won’t think of Lee.
After an hour’s jog, she returns to her room, takes a quick, cold shower and crawls into bed.
Edna is not in her dream. Lee is there instead. He grows gigantic, grabs her by her hands and lifts her over the brown field of dead thistles. The gigantic Lee makes her feel like a shrimp. He puffs a Cuban cigar and blows smoke in her face. She chokes and looks down to see the seedpod slithering along the ground, searching.
There is no baby’s cry when she blinks awake and she feels as empty as that barren field.
On autopilot, she completes her morning rituals and steps through her outside door. She needs some fresh air before starting work.
A business card flutters to the sidewalk. It must have been lodged between the door and jamb. She picks up the card and shivers, but not from the creep factor of someone lurking around her door sometime in the night. In a precise and blocky print on the back of the card is written: Our meeting means a lot to me. I’d like to see you again — only if you would like to, of course. Lee. His name is in a flowing script.
Work. She has to work. She hurries through the main entrance of the motel. No one is at the front desk so she is able to get to the utility closet in her quadrant without talking to anyone. Here, she focuses on her cleaning routine and, before she realizes the passing of any time, she is in the restaurant preparing for the noon rush, focusing on her server duties. However, she finds herself expecting, maybe hoping for, Lee to show up. She watches for him each time she hears new customers come in the restaurant entrance.
He won’t come back. He is at the mine site.
So what? Why would he want to anyway?
The rest of that day and the next are a blur. She keeps feeling the nearness of his arm to hers. The Old Spice smell that reminds her of her father seems to permeate everything. Only Gus’ pies can overpower that smell.
Lee doesn’t call nor does she entertain the idea of calling him. She wonders if she should send a short note to the email address on the card but rejects the idea. Reaching out seems too much like chasing him. Too much like something Edna would do. She decides to leave it alone. If he’s interested, he’ll get back to her. If he doesn’t, then all of his talk was just bluster and merely intended for that night’s entertainment. She is certain a man like Lee flirts with every waitress in every “port.”
Who’s interested in damaged goods anyway?
By the end of the second night, there is still no word from him. When her shift ends, she steps outside for another cigarillo. Gus and his damn pies. She lingers over her smoke and watches the vacant picnic tables. She finishes and disposes of the butt. She rubs her arm and then brushes her hair behind her ear before turning to trudge back to her room. Strange little shadows dance in the contours of the sidewalk cement under the orange glow of the halogen parking lot lights. She slows to watch a water beetle scuttle out of her way.
Reaching her room, she has the head rush — as if hanging on the crow’s branch by her knees and swinging backwards; she feels the call of her hollow and its peace: stuck between the door and the jamb is another of Lee’s business cards. Hey you. Room 105 — only if you’d like. She has to steady her hand while fumbling with her key.
She dashes into her room. Slams the door and leans against it. Eyes closed, breathing deeply, she controls her rapid gasps as if she is running hard. Room 105 is across and down the hall and if she goes around her end of the motel, she will gain strength by walking close to the comforting darkness of her hollow.
Resolved, she steps back outside with her breathing and heart rate under complete control. She is only going to see this man to get him out of her system once and for all. He’ll see her in her work clothes, smell her with the stink of a whole workday on her. Nothing can possibly come from this, so relax.
She raps on Lee’s door three times and steps back a pace.
The door opens instantly, as if he is just leaving or is possibly waiting right on the other side. Not waiting, don’t be ridiculous. She waves his card at him and says, “Hey, yourself. What are you doing here?”
“Hey, you,” Lee replies. Grinning, leaning against his doorjamb, and crossing his arms over his chest, he speaks with the slightest amusement and without hesitation. “Well, I was called away first thing that other morning to an emergency system board failure at the Cory mine in Saskatoon. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you know or say goodbye.
“Then I had to stay in Saskatoon until this afternoon. I intended to drive back to Regina. But what do you know? I zoned-out or something and must’ve driven here on automatic pilot. And now that I’m here, obviously it’s too late to drive home but too early to go to sleep. So, I was thinking maybe a nighttime smoke or walk is a possibility, but I don’t want to do that alone, so I was wondering . . . ”
Her resolve is displaced like earth chewed by a boring-machine. Her control falters and her knees nearly buckle. She says, “Are you going to let just mosquitoes and moths into your room? Or can I come in too?” Her attempted sarcasm fails with the traitorous croak in her voice.
Lee, the bemused tone gone, says, “Of course, how thoughtless of me. Please come in.”
With two giant steps, she is inside the room and Le
e closes the door. The only indication that the room is occupied is that smell of Old Spice. She turns to face him and stares at his shirt. She knows she wants this man, desperately, but she doesn’t know what to do now, trapped in the room. She must flee to her hollow. Her crow wings propel her to the corner of the ceiling.
While she watches, she has an immediate sense of how the Treadwells share thoughts. Lee steps forward and wraps her in his arms. Lourdes collapses like a water-bearing formation bursting through the mine’s shaft and lets her unrealized need overwhelm her.
They’re undressed. Lourdes lies crossways on the bed, Lee is on his knees. She can’t hover up here in the corner while Lourdes writhes and burns. With a sudden arch of her back she is in her body and feels a flood of relief like coming into bright light from underground. Then, she feels nothing but Lee on top of her, pressing her, pressure building and building, until, again there is that bright light, and then she feels as if she should sleep and sleep when Lee gasps, moans, and falls limply on her.
She clings to him, pressing him down on her. She is in the hollow under the shady comfort of the trees. Cool, damp air clings to her skin, as tactile as mist rising from water. She thinks, did this really happen? But the tenderness inside her is real and confirms the physical reality. Lee’s muscular body is against hers. Yes. It really happened.
They find their way under the covers and she lets desire for sleep take her down into the blackness of an unlit mine where the dreams cannot follow.
A short while later there’s a yellow glow around the room; the bedside lamp is on and Lee is lying on his side, facing her. His head rests on his biceps, with his forearm bent so his hand can caress her hair. He takes long strands and lets them run through his fingers; his other hand is gently splayed over her tuft of pubic hair.
He opens his eyes when he feels her stir and says, “Hey, you.”
“Hi,” she replies, and strokes his jaw.
“Thank you,” he says, and leans forward, lightly kissing her lips.
It’s not quite a recoil, but she stiffens. Yes, this really happened but what does it all mean?
“What’s wrong?” he asks, that bass voice of his so soothing.
“Why did you want a fat thing like me?”
He replies immediately, without taking a breath to think. “One, there’s no ‘did’ about it. I still want you. And two, you’re not fat.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.” This is not a time to flee. It is a time to take a stand.
Lee pauses for a long time. He continues to let strands of her hair fall from his fingers. She waits and studies the shadows on the ceiling, searching for where her wings brushed the stippling and knocked it to the floor.
He eventually says, “I get what you’re trying to ask. But believe me, this isn’t meant to be a one night stand. That’s the last thing I want with you. From that first moment I saw you at the restaurant, I felt this vulnerability about you. I’m not feeling sorry for you nor am I trying to rescue you. Because I also sense strength and intelligence. You’re after something, there’s a — desire, or maybe a need, for lack of better terms. As corny as this sounds, I’d love to be a part of that journey with you. Only if you’d like to, of course.” He pauses and takes a breath.
She says nothing. There is no stippling knocked off the ceiling, but she does think of the dead female crow, inert and cold on the ground under that birch tree.
Lee continues, “I never felt so low as the other night at the picnic table, when you walked away from me. I’ve had serious trouble focusing on my work. But then you were here at my door tonight. I may not have shown it, but when I saw you I flew with the birds.” He rubs his forehead. “Wow. How’s that for a load of corn?”
Her pair of crows from long ago flew into danger every time they left their nest. Eventually, the male with the purple sheen headed out on his own. That’s life, isn’t it? Her father once told her that bad things happen, yes, but nothing will ever happen if you do nothing.
For the first time since she came to live with the Treadwell’s, her heart feels tender. So tender that she feels she can trust this man; feel safe with him.
Taking a chance, she tells him her story.
I lost my virginity to a boy named Barton just before turning fifteen. Before that I was popular because everyone thought Edna, my mother, was so cool. She could play a mean Madonna and other top 40 songs by ear on our electric piano. She drank like the men and she made us kids laugh until the booze eventually got the better of her. A girl named Susan was my best friend at the time. Her family had immigrated from Serbia when she was five and she spoke with a bit of an accent. I was the only one who was nice to her. Puberty struck us both like an air-launched missile. My coordination tanked with the coming of these honking big boobs. I lost all ability at sports and started to gain weight like Dad. By that time, too, Edna’s reputation preceded her everywhere and friends started to shun me, no doubt at the urging of their parents.
It was then that I vowed never to be like my mother. I quit drinking, not that I ever drank much, and stopped going to parties. And what is there to do in a small town if you don’t drink and can’t do sports anymore? I focused on my school work, read as much as I could, and tried to record everything in my journals. I became a total geek.
Puberty was good to Susan though, giving her one of those fashion-model bodies. She was on the cheerleading team and became the star volleyball player. Barton was her male lead. He played hockey in winter and football in summer and curled whenever he could. Of course he excelled at all three. Those two were the match of the century at school while I pined away in Edna’s trailer.
Then Barton came knocking on the door one night. Edna was off partying in the Steak House and he said he wanted to check up on me. Check me out more like.
It felt good to have him pay attention to me. To me. He said Susan wasn’t putting out like a real woman should. He’d only gone out with her because it was expected at school. But me on the other hand . . . and I couldn’t help myself.
We’d read Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel in school, and Hagar, the story’s main character, said her first time “hurt and hurt.” It didn’t for me. It felt really good. Even though it was quick and messy. Barton knew enough to put towels down that first time. I burned them in the leaf barrel afterward.
He kept coming around and I gave in every time. After all, it was me he loved, he said. He only kept going out with Susan to get help with school work. He intended to marry me when we finished school, just so I knew. He wasn’t really clever, especially when he was drunk. He said he’d pull out in time, every time, if he wasn’t wearing a condom. Long story short, I found myself pregnant. When I told him, he simply said, “We’ll have to do something about that. Let me check it out.”
Susan showed up the next night. She’d been crying. Her face was streaked with mascara and that exotic, beautiful black Romani hair of hers frizzed out like a frayed rope. She accused me of coming on to Barton. He’d told her to tell me to stay away from him.
She was still my friend. By then my only friend. When she looked at me with her stunned, brown, cow eyes brimming with tears, my guilt felt like those endless heaps of tailings at the mine.
I told her it was one of Edna’s men who got me pregnant. I wasn’t coming on to Barton. I was only asking him for help. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. He must have misunderstood.
Susan actually squealed with relief. She lunged at me, hugged me and burst into tears. As an afterthought, just as she was skipping out our trailer door, she said, “Oh, we’ll find some way to help you with you with your little problem, too.”
I lost Susan as a friend, but Barton and I were best buddies after that night. He said he’d do all he could to help me muddle through my problem, to keep my chin up. That’s when I really started to eat. To smother my guilt. To smother my despair. When Edna asked how I could let myself get so fat, I said, “I’m not fat. I’m pregnant.”
She was quiet for a long time, then said, “How the hell could you let that happen? I don’t know how you’re going to deal with it, but don’t come crying to me.”
I said it was her fault and called her a slut.
She was on me then, punching, slapping. I went for her throat but I was so gawky and clumsy that I tripped and ended up flat on my stomach.
There was a warm gush between my legs and then a horrible, stabbing pain all across my abdomen and I shit myself.
Edna shook me and yelled was she supposed to clean this mess up? and I threw up on her and she dropped me like a sack and I curled into a ball right on the floor. Weird — I remember there was some comfort in the warmth of the liquid soaking through my pyjamas.
The next thing I remember is waking up in the Yorkton hospital.
Two nurses held me down. The doctor used forceps. My baby came out in a red lump and made only one sound. Kind of like a crow does when it’s all by itself . . . makes that single croak. She died right in front of me and they took her away.
Lee holds her tight. She feels smothered and wriggles out of his grasp. Sitting up cross-legged beside him, she is self-conscious about her bare breasts and covers herself with her pillow.
“My god, Lourdes,” he says, “you told me all that with such dispassion.”
“That was years ago, Lee,” she says, annoyed. “I’ve stored all of that slag deep underground. It’s over and done with.” Except during those uncontrolled moments between dream and waking . . . Stop it.
“Okay,” he replies simply, quickly. “Would you like to tell me what happened after?”
“I spent a couple of days in the hospital. I was told I could never get pregnant again.
“Then I had to name my little girl for the Statistics Department and some sort of death benefit because she was alive a moment.” I named her Mary. ‘Middle name?’ They asked. ‘Bliss,’ I said. Bliss because it was over. I didn’t say that part out loud. They wrote her name down and left.
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