by Daniel Perry
Territory
THE ANSWERING MACHINE light is blinking again and I know it’s my father. He keeps after me because, too happy to think straight one Sunday after our youngest had finally started talking, I recorded, Hi, it’s Claire, then Brad said, and Brad, and the boys said together Christopher and Thomas before we all chorused, leave a message! We should have left it the way it was, just the number in Brad’s voice, You’ve reached four-one-six ...
At first, when Dad would just hang up, I hoped it was because he didn’t recognize my voice. Two million people live in Toronto and I’m not the only Claire Burford in the phonebook. I checked.
I breathe in and press play. His monotone is measured as always.
Hi Claire, if this is you, which I’m pretty sure it is ... It’s your father. Please call me.
I should have taken Brad’s name.
I LEFT HOME a little more than ten years ago, 1976, which was about 1956 in Currie Township years. I had just turned eighteen and gotten my licence, and though Mom and Dad had thought sixteen too young for a girl to drive they’d had no problem letting me work the last two years, after school and weekends at the MacKinnon County Public Library in Currie. Dad would drive me in from Waubnakee on Saturdays and usually just putter around town during my shift — until the day he followed me inside and spent the four hours proving wrong something I’d said on the ride in, when we had been speeding along County Road 17 in his Nova. We were late because I’d gotten caught up in a book again.
“You’ll lose your head in those things,” Dad said.
“But they take you places you’d otherwise never go,” I said. “There is no frigate — ”
He snorted.
“What’s a frigate?”
“It’s a boat, Dad — there is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.”
“You shouldn’t go anywhere unless you can afford it.”
My small laugh slipped out.
“This traverse may the poorest take, without oppress of toll ...”
“Books are a waste of time.” He took his eyes off the road and turned to me. “And time ...”
I finished his sentence in a mutter: “ ... is money.” Dad wasn’t a stock trader, though, or in business of any kind. In fact, as a cop, I doubt he’d ever had reason to say this. He must have heard it on TV. I’d never seen him pick up even a magazine.
“Okay,” I said. “If books are so bad, why are there so many in schools?”
“Don’t know,” he said, smirking. “I was never much for school, either.”
“I bet you can’t even read,” I snapped.
He leaned over the steering wheel and narrowed his eyes. I slid toward my window. The engine’s pulse quickened. He said nothing until he brought the car to a jolting stop at the library, when instead of idling and letting me out on the street he swung into the parking lot and chose an angled spot. He opened his door and slammed it and led the way to the building. As I followed him in I gave a sheepish smile to Lori-Ann, my supervisor. As usual she didn’t look up from her reading, The Collected Emily Dickinson, again. I edged behind the counter while Dad walked to the first shelf he saw, alphabetically last but closest to the door. At random he pulled a hefty book from the middle and brought it to Lori-Ann.
“I’d like this one,” he said.
She sniffed and said, “All right,” then marked her place with the checkout card — a practice she discouraged among patrons. As she walked to the counter she adjusted her glasses and said, “I just need to see your library card, please.”
“I don’t have one,” Dad said.
Lori-Ann reached beneath the counter for a form. She handed it to him. “Fill this out.” Her eyes darted back to Emily.
“Why?”
She sighed. “So you can check the book out. You can borrow it for a week, and you can renew it once if no one else in the county is holding it.” I stifled a laugh. Other than Lori-Ann and me no one requested specific titles — even the schoolteachers made straight for Romance and Mystery, making off with armloads of books identical to each other right down to the full-cover author photos on the backs.
“Nah, that’s okay,” my father said. “I’ll just read it here.” He held the book up so that I could see it past Lori-Ann: The Grapes of Wrath. “This one any good?” he asked, too loudly. Lori-Ann swallowed hard and glanced back at me before answering.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s a good one.”
My father leaned to one side to see past her. His smug eyes met mine.
“Well, what do you know,” he said. “Your ol’ Dad’s not so dumb after all.” He sat down at a table in the centre of the room and he stayed there long after Lori-Ann left, flipping the pages furiously until I told him it was time to shut out the lights. He was halfway through, at least. On the way home he asked if I had read it.
“Grade Eleven English,” I said. “Everyone has to.”
He smiled and said, “I must have missed that day.”
A silent moment passed before he asked, “How’s it turn out?”
“You’ll have to get to the end,” I said.
I DIDN’T LEAVE home because my father didn’t read — I left because he started. He followed me into the library again the next Saturday and he signed up for his card and checked out The Grapes of Wrath. He finished it at Don’s Breakfast, where I can only imagine how many times he was asked, “What the hell you readin’ for?”
When my shift ended he picked me up and as we drove home he told me about his parents living through the Depression, and his father and his Grandpa Burford and jack drives, these mass hunts for rabbits in the woods behind their fields. Southwestern Ontario didn’t seem so different than Oklahoma, he said — everyone in Currie Township planted vegetable gardens and hunted or raised the meat they needed, planning always to sell the excess though there never was any and no one had money, anyway. He exhaled at the end and said, “I wonder why my parents never went west.” I looked at him as he went quiet and I didn’t know what to say. “It just seems like so many people put so much into getting out there ...” He trailed off and thought a moment. “But Burfords, we just stuck around here. I mean, there must have been work somewhere we could have left for — forests up north, or mines in Quebec, or — ”
“Did your parents speak French?”
“Maman did,” he said. “Her family was from Pierre, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Pierre. Another go-nowhere town along the Waubnakee River, this one settled by some Tremblays. At five hundred, its population was twice Waubnakee’s. All the towns in Currie Township were shrinking as people left for London, or Toronto, or beyond, but my younger sister Susan had decided to stick around and was already working twelve-hour days at Vaughan’s Bakery. Her future was sealed and mine seemed to be, too, with sixteen hours a week at the library and a promise from Lori-Ann of more when I graduated. I had the marks, but no one expected I’d go to college. The few times I mentioned it I was asked the same questions: “Since when do you need a degree to speak English?” or “What’ll you do with that?”
In Currie Township, I read in public only in brief stretches, and usually on benches outside structures bearing Centennial plaques to commemorate the one year there was federal money, the granting program that built the ball diamonds in Waubnakee and the hockey arena in Currie and come to think of it, the county libraries, too. If someone approached, I’d say I was waiting for a ride, refuse the inquirer’s offer to take me home, then race to the end of my paragraph before standing up and leaning against the wall, hiding the book in my purse and trying to look like I was just hanging out and hoping to throw off any suspicion I’d been stood up. I had found out it could be dangerous to stay in one place too long one summer night when Dad forgot to pick me up and Art Rummel, the boys’ phys. ed. teacher at Currie High School, came by and offered to drive me. He insisted — No trouble at all — and took back roads the whole way, telling me how beautiful
I had become, that I was a woman now and this town was too small for me. He lingered at every yield sign where two dirt roads met and placed his hand on my thigh, pointing out the sunset on the horizon over the nothing but farm fields. We both knew no other cars were coming, but Art stared extra long in the passenger direction anyway. It was dark when he finally dropped me off and it brought Dad to the front door, where he presumed the worst as Art’s Monte Carlo pulled away. After that, suddenly, it was time I took my driving test.
LORI-ANN WAS actually waiting for someone to take her away: a visiting agricultural engineer or even a hockey dad if he were from a town where books mattered. My ticket out was Scott McLaren, who had straight dark hair almost overgrown enough for a ponytail under the battered grey ball cap he always wore and was finished high school — or finished with it, anyway — and worked for Herm Mueller, who paid him mostly in parts for his rusty VW bus. I don’t remember exactly how it started with us, but Brewskie’s has always been the only bar in Currie and it’s always let you in well before you were of age.
We spent most of our time just riding around, and though in a lot of ways I became the new accessory for his Kraut Kan, this didn’t mean I hadn’t learned to drive. On the way to work at the library, Dad was my passenger now, and he followed me into the building on every trip to make increasingly flirty small-talk with Lori-Ann about Steinbeck. I had read East of Eden and Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men and even The Moon is Down, but Dad never asked me what I thought of them, he just went on and on in the car about how well-written the books were, an observation he was incapable of elaborating on and which didn’t actually mean anything — and how would he know? The victory for him was just in getting to the end, book after book after book, never talking about the story or the characters or any of the things they did. Did he sympathize with them? Question their motivations? Did the story even seem believable? The whole charade was just so that I’d see him reading, or so I thought.
It got worse the day he brought home a typewriter.
THE POLICE STATION in Currie was on a corner lot, with ten parking spaces and a two-door garage. Dad’s cop car had long been the only one in the township, and the second bay was occupied by Gord MacIntyre’s junk shop, a heap of trinkets the poor fool had mistaken for antiques. The typewriter had sat atop the front pile for years, in plain view when the door was up — which was almost all the time — and on another crimeless day when Currie had Dad just bored enough, he bought it. He started coming home at irregular hours in the evening, stopping first for a coffee or three while he read at Don’s, and after dinner he’d retire to the garage and peck away. I honestly think it was about the noise for him: a payoff for every little movement of his fingers and a counterpart to Mom’s constant knitting. In her case, her half-finished sweaters were in plain view, piled ever higher beside the living room sofa and armchairs, but I never knew what Dad was writing, never even saw him bring home paper.
IT GOT TO be six-thirty, seven, seven-thirty the night Scott and I left. Dad had promised me the Nova but he hadn’t come home yet. Tonight was my first turn to drive Scott anywhere, and Dad had seemed excited for me. I closed the book I was re-reading, Huckleberry Finn, and I got off the porch swing. I called Don’s from the kitchen, and though crotchety Marlene Simmons seemed to always be at the counter, it wasn’t her that picked up, but Don himself. In his raw voice he told me that Dad wasn’t there. I slammed the receiver down then picked it up again to dial Scott. After that I started packing my suitcase — Mom’s suitcase — with as many clothes as would fit and of course, my favourite books.
When Scott pulled in he still wore his greasy work clothes. I climbed into the passenger seat and tossed the bag on the bench behind. I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“First, you’re going home to shower,” I said, touching my index to the tip of his nose. “And then, I reckon, we’re lightin’ out for the territory.”
HUCK FINN WAS the only school book Scott had read. He was proud of it, though not as proud as he was of his van. He had never been into sports or the trivia team or students’ council, and shy in all the right ways, he was an ideal first boyfriend — everything happened on my terms.
We crossed into Michigan from Sarnia and took I-75 south all night and into the next day. We didn’t have much money and we didn’t buy a map; we just expected we’d hit Route 66 for California somewhere. Where we finally stopped for breakfast, a dingy diner outside Knoxville, we asked the waitress and learned we were fourteen hours’ drive east of the turn-off we’d been looking for. I weakened after Scott’s third coffee refill and called home from a payphone. On the other end Mom’s voice quivered.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Where has he taken you?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
Deep breath.
“I’m far away, and I’m never coming home.”
Mom sighed.
“Well,” she said. “I didn’t expect you would.”
Her dismissal stung.
“You know, you don’t have to live there, either,” I said. “Where does Dad even go in the afternoon? He wasn’t at Don’s last time I called — and neither was Marlene.”
She exhaled and said, “I took a vow, Claire.”
SCOTT AND I ran out of money in New Mexico, mercifully in Albuquerque and not on some stretch of desert road, out of gas, too. We spent the last bit on a motel room and two bottles of cheap wine, and that night we made love three times. In the morning Scott walked until he found a service station, and he struck a deal almost as good as the one at Mueller’s: work till you drop, parts at cost, cash under the table.
In the motel office was a Help Wanted sign, so that was the job I took. We got a one-room apartment and I went to secretarial school for a while. The weather was always warm with convertibles always passing through, and their drivers whistled and yelled about my legs. Some did so with their wives in the front seat. I haven’t quite dropped the weight from having Thomas yet, but Brad says I’m the same sight for sore eyes I was when, just out of med school at the University of Toronto, he checked into the Pueblo Motor Inn. He was confident he had passed his exams and was driving to Vegas to meet an old friend and celebrate. He grinned with perfect white teeth as he told me. I counted my week’s pay from the till the morning he checked out, after I’d snuck away from my night shift and knocked on his door, and I handed my key ring to my supervisor before leaving in the shiny red convertible. We stopped a block from Scott’s garage and I walked the rest of the way, finding him still baggy-eyed and pale-faced after waking up and finding me not home yet. He opened his arms and strode toward me but I showed my palms and stopped him. He was covered in grime.
“Thanks for everything,” I said. “I won’t forget it.”
He tried to hide them, but tears welled in his eyes. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. I reached into my purse for my dog-eared Grapes of Wrath and handed it to him.
“It won’t be different when you get there,” I said. “Just go home.”
SUSAN MAILS ME pictures every Christmas of her and John and the kids, Mike and Nancy, with a letter noting somewhere near its end that Mom and Dad say hello. I call her in the morning after the boys open presents, and though they’re still too young to know who they’re talking to, Brad and I make them say Merry Christmas into the phone. Susan tells me all about Mom and Dad’s year, and about Dad still banging at his typewriter, writing his life story or whatever. She asks if I’ll get home next year and I say I’ll think about it. Then I put it out of mind for three hundred days, until the phone rings and corners me again the next fall and the messages start piling up on the machine. Lucky for me, Brad closes his practice every year and takes care of gift shopping while I drink wine and ask myself why I don’t just answer. When I’m about to crack I think of Dad at the library, grabbing at the bookshelf the way dogs piss on fences, and it strengthens my resolve for another year.
&nb
sp; I know. I could call him and everything could be normal, but that would mean adopting and civilizing. I’ve been there before, and I can’t stand it. We’d have to talk every second Sunday or once a month or something; to stop him calling all the time, I’d have to let him call all the time. Today is Thanksgiving, and here goes the phone again. I snatch up the handset and shout: “What do you want!?”
“It’s Susan,” the voice on the other end says. “I’m at Mom and Dad’s.” She clears her throat. “He died.”
I set the receiver down. My throat lumps. My eyes burn but no tears come. Susan sounds far away.
“Claire ...? Hello? Claire ...? Are you still there?”
I don’t say anything. Her shuffle-click-hang up takes forever. Silence, then beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep — I re-cradle. My shoulders slacken and my jaw relaxes and I hate myself for feeling a release. I lift the receiver again and push the first digit tentatively. I gain force with each one until I pound the tenth. I hold my breath and listen to the rings. Susan answers but she doesn’t speak. Her breaths are short gasps.
“So when should I come home?” I ask.
Five Stages of Sorry
THE BUNDLE IS light, ten or twelve pages at most, and tied together with old baler twine that secures a pale pink note: GARBAGE. Claire jerks her head back, flicking dark hair from her eyes. “The one thing Mom ever decided to throw away,” she says, fanning herself with the papers and surveying the dusty junk piles in the stuffy attic. She sits down lightly on a worn cardboard box, one of what seems to be hundreds overflowing with things, buried under thousands of other things. Already we’ve unearthed a black trash bag worth of half-knit sweaters; most of our favourite toys; leashes for long-dead dogs. She raises her eyebrows and softens her tone to mimic Mom: “Everything in this house is a piece of history.”