by Lee Kvern
No lingering thoughts of Sylvie. Sylvie is wholly unharmed, thriving even in her private child’s life at Michener—Michener no longer the dire institution of Lesa’s early memory. Lesa realizes only now, her parents’ heart-rending decision to have Sylvie committed was not as black and white as she thought. Not simply a case of a difficult child, of a mother’s Wednesday gone horribly awry. But full consideration given by her parents for all of them: Sylvie, Nate, Clare, Lesa too. The water already under their bridges, a possible lifetime of bridges in need of constant repair, the reason matters not, what matters is that Lesa gets home in time for the monument of her mother’s memorial dinner before she inflicts further damage.
She drives in the fast lane, passing a line of army trucks. The khaki-clad drivers honk and wave as she blurs past them before they turn off at Penhold. Then car after car after pickup truck until soon she’s solo on the highway for as far as she can see on the wide-open prairies. She keeps her eyes alert for wayward coyotes. Olds, Didsbury, Carstairs; approaching Crossfield she scans the side of the road for her Superwoman boots, doesn’t see them, hopes the waitress rather than the wilful October wind got them. She relaxes into the rhythm of the tires on the smooth asphalt, rips freely along hampered by nothing more than her want/need to see her mother.
On the outskirts of Calgary, past the line of available gasoline stations around Airdrie, two suburbs out from her mother’s neighbourhood, her mother’s car shrugs and stutters, refuses to accelerate. Lesa comes to a rolling stop on the shoulder, scans the dashboard for the emergency lights, sees the fuel gauge on empty. She hadn’t noticed.
She climbs out of the car, the wind gusting, swirling grey road dust, carrying precious topsoil across the barren prairie. She retrieves her purse, her silver cigarette case from the front seat, the half-smoked joint inside that she considers seriously before flicking it off into the ditch below. Locks the car door, then she slides down on the passenger side of the car, shelter from the unceasing wind, pulls blue-suit man’s vomit bag out of her purse. Folding the bag into a neat origami Air Canada airplane, she raises her hand up, allows the pulling wind to take it. She watches the paper plane lift and swoon for a moment, riding the extraordinary invisible waves, the plane swelling high, higher on the October air. Then the plane loses momentum, comes crashing down onto the stubbed remnants of last year’s wheat.
Protected against her mother’s car, Lesa smokes a cigarette in the tempest wind, weighs her gasless options. She could flag someone down. She could find a pay phone. She could call her brother, Nate.
She won’t do any of those things.
A cluster fuck of God-given karma—Lesa knows it.
No more, no less. Reparation.
She stands up, begins the long walk toward her mother’s house.
Wednesday, July 1961 » Jacqueline, age 27
Jacqueline wakes in the black of her own bed, can’t immediately recall how she got there. But here she is in their marital bed, strangely fresh, alert at—she rolls over, squints at her Timex watch on the nightstand—3:35 AM. She reaches her arm instinctively across the double bed. No Lloyd. The house is deathly quiet; are her children sleeping?
Programmed, her body leads her down the dark hall first to Sylvie’s room. She peers inside, sees Sylvie uncovered, coiled as she always sleeps at the foot of her single metal bed. Jacqueline tiptoes in, guides Sylvie gently up to the cool pillow, pulls a light sheet over her body curled like the fetus in Jacqueline’s womb, like the circles Sylvie draws so flawlessly. She smoothes her hand over Sylvie’s face, traces her finger lightly if only to soften, ease the jagged scar across Sylvie’s pink lips. The nutty scent of peanut butter on Sylvie’s skin. She checks Sylvie’s arms and legs, mostly washed clean by the thunderstorm, although there are still clumps of peanut butter still in her black hair, the least of her concerns after this nightmare of a Wednesday.
She watches Sylvie’s small chest breathe evenly, in and out, in and out, strong, smooth, involuntarily. There is a quiet strength in children that Jacqueline never noticed before, at least not consciously, not determined by straight or jagged, skewed or unskewed, but some thing intrinsic, innate, built-in. Beyond Sylvie, beyond Jacqueline even. Jacqueline can feel the metal burrs beneath her skin disband, disperse, released by the enormity of this simple understanding. So much so that she wants to roust Sylvie, pull her close, whisper in her faultless ear that she’s lovely, she’s wonderful, she’s strong—a perfect girl in a defective world. Sylvie is everything she needs to be.
But Jacqueline doesn’t want to wake Sylvie from the rare ease of her sleep. Instead she gets up, lingers another moment watching Sylvie from the doorway, then goes down the quiet hall.
In the other bedroom, Jacqueline finds Nate sprawled on his back, his toddler face flushed from the heat. Jacqueline slides the window open; the next day’s air skims in cool, fresh, unsullied into her children’s room. Lesa’s asleep on the other bed, changed out of her wet skort and blouse into one of Jacqueline’s T-shirts, far too large for Lesa’s five-year-old body. Jacqueline leans close, pushes Lesa’s strawberry hair off her freckled cheeks, tries to smooth out the perpetual rat’s nest at the back of Lesa’s head. She can’t do it now, but come morning, Jacqueline knows that she owes, bare minimum, she owes Lesa a shampoo and a bubble bath. She keeps her hand on Lesa’s sweltering back until she feels the heat release.
Then she gets up and wanders down to the living room. Startled to find Lloyd bowed and pressed against the hard curve of their red and black tartan chesterfield. She doesn’t know when or how he got there without her hearing him. He’s here, alive, still in uniform, flat asleep. She sits down beside him. His skin emits the stale scent of alcohol: warm, sweaty, musty. Does he smell of other women too? She’s not sure, just knows in some warped way that she needs him. No, he’s not what she bargained for, not nearly as perfect as Sylvie’s circles, but as time will inform her, things seldom are.
She watches the sharp line of his face, the same rise and fall of his chest, as Sylvie’s, as her own. She lies down in the small, yielding space of him, slides back into the skin of herself too, also, for better or worse. She’s in it for the long haul, she always has been.
Wednesday, February 1973 » Lloyd, age 40
Relieved of the weight of Jimmy Widman, Corporal Lloyd walks out into the cold air. He looks across the sprawling grounds of Michener, can see a teeter totter submerged in the snow. A metal slide coated in hoarfrost, the steep crystalline length of it, the white jagged edges. An empty swing set motionless in the dwindling light. He rolls his head side to side. He’s tired, so goddamn weary-dreary, he’d like to curl up in a snowdrift and give into his fatigue. Relieved but not released. Not enough yet, but soon, sooner than he thinks.
If he could see through the jumbled scatter of poplar trees
in between, past the naked winter forest in front of him, he’d be able to see the north side where Sylvie resides. The low, flat-topped brick buildings in strict rows, as if to bring order to the chaos within. The barred windows that make his chest seize, his throat knot. The live wire beneath his skin more alive then ever. He breathes consciously in and out, his breath tangible in the air. He can see it as clear as Wednesday. He zips up his RCMP parka, strides across the lot to the orange Camaro, gazes once more through the trees. He’ll walk instead; the cutting air feels good on his face. In fact, he requires it.
The straight road that connects Michener south to Michener north has yet to be plowed. Lloyd follows the road, wades through the deep snow, glad for his knee-high Strathconas. His one gloved hand warm, the other he stuffs into his pocket, the car keys metal-cold to his touch. Beyond the forest, the frozen grounds stretch well off into the distance, farther than he can see. Territory he’s not familiar with, some unknown ground he’s not stood on. The muted light is growing grey over the horizon, darkening not only for dusk, but something else too? Snow perhaps, thinks Lloyd, pulls his parka closer around his body, the temperature droppin
g with the light. The weight of his leather boots, the heavy snow reaching his knees at points, the pending snow in the western sky.
His overwhelming fatigue as he traverses the wide-open space to the brick buildings, the precision of their rows reminding him of the row housing he and Jacqueline initially lived in. The row of houses adjoined, identical on the outside, though none housed anything inside like theirs: his uncontrollable, often inconsolable Sylvie, his island-stranded wife, who needed him then, not necessarily now, his children he missed, still misses.
He feels his body growing weak, though he’s reached the broad sidewalks on the north side, which are shovelled clear, but still his body weak. He notices his ragged breath, edged like the hoarfrost on the metal slide. He spots a bench outside the first building, not Sylvie’s, he knows. Her building is farther along, somewhere in the middle, not sure of the number, he knows it’s across from a small canteen.
He sits down on the bench; the cold sneaks up beneath his pressed shirt, beneath his undershirt, under his skin, finds his core. His arms, legs feel useless, exhaustion hitting him like a two-by-four, a brick wall he’s run up against. He doesn’t know if he can even stand at this moment, let alone stride through the maze of brick buildings in his stiff boots, find his Sylvie, look into her skewed face. He takes a shallow breath in the bitter air. Could it be the result of a long, difficult Wednesday? Why he’s so tired, so weak? He doesn’t know. Though he suspects it goes further, like the grounds he can’t see past. Like his life past, his future, the road that lies ahead.
When enough is enough?
He tries to breathe more fully, revive his failing body, his struggling mind, but the cold air is useless to him. Lloyd looks up at the sky, the light almost gone now. The black seeping over, the few streetlamps along the sidewalk have blinkered on, throw a muted yellow on the frozen ground. Large white snowflakes are floating down from the dark sky. A group of caregivers in the distance, their voices growing louder as they approach, nine or eleven of them, Lloyd guesses. As they draw closer, he sees not all of them are caregivers, some are the clients they care for. He can tell by the peculiar gaits, the odd hunch of shoulders, the ill-fitting clothing, the herky-jerky motions of hands and bodies forever busy with their surroundings, their inner worlds, not aware of what’s around them. He watches the group make their way to the building next door, the outside light of their two-storey brick home burning brighter than any streetlamp could.
The caregivers stop, mill about the lit entrance before going inside. Lloyd can see the burning red embers of the caregivers’ cigarettes in the dark. Small talk, laughter from the caregivers, the patients themselves waiting, some wandering in circles, most content enough to be outside in the dark, in the falling snowflakes. One of them lies down in the snow drift piled high from the shovelled walks, the building light illuminates him or her. He can’t tell. A small man? No, Lloyd thinks, not male, but female, a young girl, surely by the pink parka she’s wearing. A male caregiver goes over, stands beside the girl on the ground.
“You all right down there?” the caregiver asks the girl.
She doesn’t answer. The caregiver glances over at Lloyd on the bench.
“You all right?” he asks.
Too weary to make conversation, Lloyd nods.
“Business?” The caregiver spots the RCMP insignias on Lloyd’s parka.
“In a matter, yes,” Lloyd says.
The caregiver raises a brow.
“Good business,” Lloyd reassures him.
The caregiver goes back to the business of the girl on the ground. She sticks her tongue out to catch the drifting flakes of snow. And without asking, without the caregiver saying her name, Lloyd knows. The visual clues: the glint of black hair in the yellow light, the skewed face, her pointer finger jabbing pointedly at the sky, the snow, the blue halo around the streetlamps, the sheer excitement of being out at night, likely. But even more, Lloyd knows by the tightening in his paternal chest, the live wire coursing fully through his body now, electrifying.
Of course it’s Sylvie. His Sylvie, like a paradoxical gift from heaven, like the falling snow, the blackening night, his growing strength, his failing body—his fate folded up in his back pocket. He sits up, watches her intently. She’s older by twelve years. Her teenage face the ghost of his four-year-old daughter, but present at his feet, alive, a shimmer in the cold light he’s been missing: Sylvie, not four feet away, her arms and legs swimming X, making angels in the snow possibly for him?
Lloyd makes no move to get up, traverse those four crucial feet across the frozen ground. So close, so far, too much, too little his strength. He doesn’t know if his trembling legs can bear the exhilaration, the tangibility of this beautiful moment. Everything he’s lived for, everything he’ll die for, here and now, present, accounted for, accountable. Almost enough.
Not now, he decides on this fleeting Wednesday. He’ll be back—that he knows, so that he’ll have something precious to hold on to.
Too little, too late? He doesn’t think so.
He watches the snow float down from the black sky glinting like fallible stars when they catch the streetlamp. Sylvie sprawled on her back, arms and legs in constant motion, catching the yellow lights on her tongue.
The caregiver finishes his cigarette, crushes it out on the sidewalk beneath his rubber heel. He guides Sylvie gently to her feet, brushes the snow off her back, her pink parka.
“Let’s get you inside, Ms. Sylvie,” he says, nods at Lloyd.
Lloyd smiles in the dark. The live current coursing through him warms his weary core.
The caregivers round up the wandering patients, cajole, shepherd them kindly toward the low-slung brick buildings. Sylvie’s soft, ceaseless chatter in the quiet dark. The straight line of her delicate shoulders as her caregiver soothes her, steers her toward the open door. Sylvie’s dark mouth catching the snow one last time before she goes inside, looking back, laughing, pointing, waving, watching the man on the bench (him) while Corporal Lloyd watches her disappear down the long narrow corridor.
This picture he’ll file away along with the living faces of all his children. Sylvie’s shimmering hair, her face alight, excited, oblivious of who he is, but content enough he sees. He’ll carry this image in his head like placing a photograph in an album that he can refer to later on, when he lies eleven years from now in a colourless hospital bed identifying his tinted past so acutely, so vividly, so bright, so dim, fast, slow—a silent private movie intended just for him. So that when he’s finished, when his past catches up to his present moment, then he’s done enough.
Corporal Lloyd stands up in the black night, the yellow light, the white falling snow melts on his face. He looks at his watch, thinks of Jacqueline’s violet eyes in wait of him, he hopes. He’s a man of some luck. He knows it now. If he hurries he can make it home before midnight, before he misses yet another Wednesday.
Wednesday, October 1987 » Lesa, age 31
She arrives late at her mother’s house, well past dark, well past the time of her father’s memorial, her mother’s dinner. Doesn’t bother ringing the bell or knocking, she knows the front door is unlocked, now that Sylvie no longer lives at home. Before she goes in, Lesa stands on her mother’s front step gazing at the sky, no stars, no moon, no light. No lights on in the house either. Has her mother gone to bed?
She opens the screen door, pushes hard on the wood door that normally sticks, but releases easily this time with a silent whoosh. Her mother must have gotten it fixed since she was last home. Perhaps other things have changed over the course of her absence? A good thing? she wonders. No that’s a bad thing, she hears Barb’s pointed words in her head. She draws a sharp breath to steady her nervous stomach, takes her tennis shoes off, places them neatly aside the welcome mat. When she rises she sees the red burning ember of a cigarette in the dark of the living room. Not Nate, he doesn’t smoke.
“Mom?” she asks but knows instinctively the breadth of her mother’s smoking
, the same measured pause and ensuing hesitant quiet when her mother calls long distance, smokes on the other end of the receiver. Lesa waits in the living room for her mother’s inhale, the exhale, the quiet, but nothing comes after.
What can she say? How can she explain? She can’t. She’s here. Better late than never? Possibly better never? She doesn’t know. Her mother is hesitant. Lesa traverses the lightless room she knows so well, takes a seat on the sofa across from her mother who sits in the familiar/familial green chair. The synthetic fabric of the chair looped in so many tiny razors that cleaved into their predisposed skin over the years like finely honed tools of torture. The same torturer’s chair her father used to sit in late at night. The same chair her mother is sitting in now.
“Mom,” Lesa says, wishing her mother wasn’t in that chair.
Lesa hears her mother’s uneven, ragged breath in the dark. Her mother doesn’t answer. The darkness prevents Lesa from rising up, going across the carpet to her mother, throwing her arms about her, inhaling the strong scent of Chanel No. 5 her mother wore like a sheltering moat amid the rank of her father’s cigars.
No rising, no arms tonight, no perfume that Lesa can discern, only the indiscernible silence, the dark room. Lesa watches her mother’s inert cigarette, no doubt the ash growing long, the red glowing ember waning in the blackness in danger of burning out entirely.
Without permission Lesa reaches across the fake wood coffee table, turns on her mother’s imitation Tiffany lamp. The light is minor, slight, without fortification. Lesa can’t bring herself to look at her mother’s face. Not yet. Looks instead at the dining room table. Her mother has gone to the trouble of using the white crocheted tablecloth Lesa’s grandmother made, the matching stiff-starched swan in the centre holds the last remaining chrysanthemums from her mother’s garden. Her best silver, her Noritake China, the black and white picture of her father in his RCMP dress serge rests against the white swan. Two candles untouched, unlit. One place setting remains. Her mother has pulled out all the stops: dead fathers, departed grandmothers, declining flowers. Nate’s likely gone back to Ottawa. Lesa’s missed him, her mother’s memorial dinner. The memory of her father lies in the room like fall frost. She wraps her arms about her body for warmth. She’s sorry now, so sorry for those years of defiant rancour, her stubborn daughter doggedness, her mother’s solitary grief, her father’s regrets, the complicated matter of Sylvie.