Prerequisites for Sleep

by Jennifer L. Stone

  He spent the whole day out on the property, finally but reluctantly groping his way back to the house when he could no longer see due to the absence of a moon. Stepping into the front hall, he switched on the light and looked up to see the picture of lilies on the small wall in front of him. The photo was faded from hanging every day in the path of the sun’s rays that shone through the rectangular window of the door. The three washed-out blossoms of the triangular composition appeared to have once been a vibrant orange. He stared at them, tilting his head, first to the left and then to the right, and wondered how long they had been there.

  Knowing

  On a morning when half the bridge was missing, I dropped a token into the basket of the tollbooth and watched the light turn green. Drivers proceeding onto the span were required to take a leap of faith as they drove through the dense fog, trusting that they wouldn’t encounter a severed end of asphalt and steel and plummet into the harbour below. Suppressing the urge to shift into reverse, I turned up the volume on the radio and sang while my wipers stuttered over flecks of moisture on the windshield and my feet, left on the clutch, right on the brake, pivoted on the heels of my shoes to move the car forward in a start-stop fashion.

  Shortly after turning twenty-three and marking my one-year anniversary working at a jewellery store, I enrolled in the business program at the community college in Halifax, with much encouragement from my co-workers, anxious older women, who, like my mother, feared I lacked purpose. Copies of my application forms were tucked in a brown envelope under my purse on the passenger seat, along with the letter that notified me of my entry interview scheduled for 9:15. After crossing the bridge, I made a left on Gottingen, a right on Cornwallis and another left onto North Park, then continued to zigzag my way through the city streets until I pulled into the college parking lot at five past nine, just enough time to find a washroom and tame the frizz in my hair before I checked in.

  The interview took place in a vacant classroom with chalk dust still heavy in the air. A panel of three people, two women and one man, sat across from me at a large table and asked questions while they reviewed my application and made additional notes. “Is there a specific reason why you want to take this course?” one of the women asked. She rested her chin on the back of one hand, and balanced a black pen like a cigarette between two fingers of the other while she waited for my answer.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not sure what I intend to do once I complete the program, but I believe the skills I acquire will enable me to find a better job.” This must have been close to what she wanted to hear because I was immediately accepted into the program.

  On the first day of classes, I noticed a familiar face in the room, a pretty redhead who, although not a friend, was an acquaintance from high school. Both of us were from the Dartmouth side of the harbour, a situation that produced a similar bond to one created when two Canadians met while travelling Europe. Her name was Sheri. We quickly became allies, sitting next to each other in every course and developing a bit of a reputation for pushing the limits. We especially enjoyed flustering our accounting instructor, a small man who was not much more than five years our senior. This we turned into a competition to see how quickly our remarks would cause him to blush or remove his glasses and wipe the perspiration from his forehead. Of course, in the keeping of books, debits and credits line up in their proper places, columns are totalled, and numbers are either black or red; so no matter how disruptive we were, Sheri and I made excellent marks.

  We attended the college dances, usually arriving in my beat-up car that occasionally left us stranded if the alternator went or the battery died. That’s how we met Brian. He gave us a boost when the car refused to start after stalling at a light. It was late November, cold, windy and dark. We stood next to my brown and rusted Acadian, its flashing amber lights reflecting off the wet pavement, shivering while irate drivers pulled out around us, and giddy from the litre of wine we had finished while parked behind the Canadian Tire store.

  He pulled up in an old Toyota that looked no better than my Acadian. “You ladies need some help?”

  Ladies! Sheri and I made eye contact, then quickly looked away for fear we would burst into laughter and scare him off.

  “I have cables,” I said, the wine making my voice louder than usual.

  “Good, I’ll just turn around up here then.”

  Brian manoeuvred his car so that our front bumpers almost kissed. I popped the hood before retrieving the cables from the back hatch. He wiped the battery terminals with a rag that looked like it might have been a pyjama shirt several years earlier. As he attached the cables, I slipped in behind the steering wheel.

  “We should invite him to the dance,” Sheri said, leaning in the open window.

  At the same moment, I heard Brian’s okay and turned the key. The engine coughed a few times, so I pressed the accelerator and it started to idle. “Go for it,” I said. “He’s pretty easy on the eyes and he thinks we’re ladies.”

  “Can I follow you ladies somewhere to make sure you arrive safely?” he asked.

  There was that word again. It was difficult to stifle the urge to giggle.

  “We’re going to the dance at the college,” said Sheri. “Would you like to come?”

  He introduced himself and tagged along. When we arrived, we dragged three empty chairs up to a loud table at the back and sat down. Pint bottles slipped out of denim jackets to offer us sips of premixed drinks, and we settled into the wildness of the event. By the time the night was over, I had allowed myself to be picked up by a senior from the drafting program, and Brian, obviously smitten with Sheri, offered to drive her home.

  After that, Sheri and Brian started seeing each other on a regular basis, while Sheri and I continued our day-to-day antics without interruption. She never really said much about him, other than that they’d gone to a particular movie or for a drive down the shore on the weekend. I would see him when she brought him to a dance, or when I met them somewhere for a drink.

  Right before graduation, Sheri and I went out together for the last time. We went to The Villager, a Dartmouth pub known for live music and cheap draft. People filled the tables and crowded the bar. Most were our own age, or slightly older; many we recognized as regulars. Cigarette smoke coiled towards the ceiling like unfinished thoughts, while a cover of Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” vibrated four-foot speakers. As usual, the dance floor was full. Within minutes of finding a seat, both of us were asked to dance.

  “What’s your opinion of Brian?” Sheri asked when we found ourselves back at our table together.

  “I think he’s nice, but I don’t know him the way you do. Why?”

  “He is nice, and my parents really like him. They think I should marry him.”

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  She didn’t answer me. She was asked to dance by one of the regulars and said yes to him instead. I sat watching her, how whenever she stepped under the blue spotlight, her hair turned crimson. Then a plaid shirt blocked her from my view. I looked up and smiled and was escorted to the floor. By the time we were together again, our mood was celebratory and the unfinished conversation was abandoned.

  I didn’t see much of Sheri after graduation. Both of us fell into routines that involved new jobs and different people. I wasn’t surprised, several months later, when a wedding invitation arrived with her return address on it. Not until I opened it. She was marrying someone named Carleton Baker.

  “I’m pregnant,” she confided, looking slim and white on her wedding day.

  “Well, you could have fooled me.” We were in the kitchen of the reception hall. I was downing a glass of wine, and she was sipping ice water.

  “We’re both very excited,” she continued, “and glad to be starting our family while still relatively young.”

  I had recognized Carleton from The Villager, had probably danced with him myself
on numerous occasions. I was still wondering what had happened to Brian but thought it best not to ask too many questions.

  A few years later, while walking on Granville Street, I ran into Brian. He greeted me with a large smile, and we decided to have lunch together. Holding pizza slices on paper plates, we strolled among the crowds of the busker festival taking place on the Halifax waterfront. A man with a diamond earring and dark hair tied back with a leather thong juggled torches of fire while standing on another man’s shoulders. Afterwards we walked over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and sat facing the harbour. Brian told me he worked for the provincial government, and I sheepishly had to admit that I was on my third job since finishing college.

  At the time, I was sharing a house with two guys, one an electrician, and the other a carpenter. Both of them had a bit of a thing for me, and I had a bit of a thing for the carpenter, who had an on-again-off-again girlfriend. We were all blatantly obvious, although none of us made a move, preferring instead to exist playfully in the midst of the sexual tension. When Brian asked me out that afternoon, I accepted.

  We began dating, neither of us mentioning Sheri or what had happened between them. On weekends, we liked going to bars where we could dance. Other times, we would either go to a movie or rent a video and watch it in his small basement apartment, on a sofa bed covered with a chevron afghan that was a nubby orange and green. When I stayed the night, Brian was always careful, using condoms even though I told him I was on the pill.

  Mostly, we rented romantic comedies, forgettable paint-by-number stories of couples falling in and out and back in love again, stories that ended without a need to know what comes after. “You choose,” Brian always said. Since I didn’t care for violence or car chases, and movies requiring too much concentration had a tendency to put us to sleep, romantic comedies, as shallow as they were, were my preferred option. We must have watched hundreds of them by the night Brian started talking about marriage. It wasn’t as if he was proposing, just prioritizing his dreams and stating a game plan. The apartment still smelled of the popcorn we’d made earlier. The credits rolled, and the movie theme played in the background. “I don’t think I want to have kids until I can afford a house,” he stated, turning the volume down on the television.

  “How long do you think that will take?” I had the notion that Brian was feeling me out. Marriage and children were not things I had previously given much thought to. My sister had been the one who dressed up as a bride and played house with dolls and dishes. I was the one who bombed train cars with mud balls one day and imagined being a movie star the next. I slipped into the concept, picturing a sequined gown and four-inch heels, and allowed myself to get hung up on the details of the shoes before Brian responded.

  “Another few years,” he said. “That’s why I live here, to save money. I already have a sizable down payment. I don’t want to be a slave to a high mortgage, and my wife can stay home after the kids are born.”

  “But what if she wants to work?”

  “She won’t need to. My salary will cover everything. Don’t you think it’s better for the kids?”

  I was holding a brown plastic bowl still half full of popcorn and set it on the coffee table. “But what if she wants to work?” I asked again.

  He hesitated and appeared to struggle with the question. When he did respond, his voice was weary. “I would never expect her to stay at home if she really didn’t want to. I was just thinking about having kids.”

  I carried the popcorn bowl to the sink and asked him to drive me home. He did and, as always, walked me to the front door. Then he leaned in to kiss me. What I did was involuntary. Something inside me had shifted, as if smelling an odour so vile that my stomach turned. Just as his lips touched mine I retched. There was the tightening in my throat and jerking motion of my head, which alone I could have probably explained. But the offensive noise that accompanied them could be nothing other than the sound of a gag. It was dark. I didn’t see the look on his face when he pulled away from me and turned around. Neither one of us said a word.

  I slept with the carpenter that night, maybe to convince myself that I was still desirable. I sought him out, offered him the bottle of Southern Comfort I grabbed from the fridge, and used my body as a chaser. In the morning, after vomiting any remnants of the syrupy liqueur left in my stomach, I told him not to ditch his girlfriend for me because I was leaving. I couldn’t stay — the electrician would never forgive me.

  Not only did I leave the house, I also left my job and the province. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time. I moved to Toronto, where I flitted between jobs. Then I attended university, where I flitted between majors until I couldn’t afford to go anymore. I was working at a temp agency and living with an engineer when I decided to return home for a visit. The excuse was to see my parents. The actual purpose was to create some space so I could plan my eventual escape from Toronto. Although I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what it was I needed to get away from, I had to leave the city.

  For the first weekend, I spent all my time with my mother and father. We visited my brother and sister and their families and ate out at an Italian restaurant that was the newest dining spot in Dartmouth. My mother said that the building used to be a gallery, and before that, it was a residence, one of the older homes in the area. It was moved up Main Street to its present location after the old property had been purchased to build a strip mall. I told her I had no recollection of the building or what was once in the spot where it now stood. “You were never one for such details,” she said before gushing over the warm tones of the decor.

  I wanted to ask her what she meant but decided not to, aware that she would turn it into something bigger than a discussion about an old house. All our telephone conversations carried the same undertone, as if she wanted to hear words other than those I delivered. “I’m thinking of moving back,” I said to change the subject. “I was wondering if I could live at home for a bit until I got on my feet.”

  The two of them glanced at each other, passing a look between them before my mother responded. “Your father and I will certainly be happy to have you home, and we have no problem with you staying with us for a bit, but what about that guy you’re living with? Where does he fit into all this?”

  On Monday morning, after my parents went to work, I lounged in my housecoat, eating cold cereal and flipping through The Chronicle Herald. I don’t normally read the business section, preferring the lighter fares of lifestyles and entertainment, but something caught my eye. A face in a photo on the section’s front page, the woman projecting such confidence that the camera lens was able to capture it the way it captures sunlight or snow. It was Sheri, standing next to Carleton. I skimmed the article that summarized how they owned and operated the fastest-growing financial planning franchise in the city. It mentioned the many charities they supported and how they balanced their lives to afford their children, twelve and fifteen, the quality time they deserved. I don’t know why it never dawned on me before. I’d always thought that what had happened to Sheri was unfortunate, not realizing until that moment that getting pregnant by Carleton, and I had no doubt it was by Carleton, was not an accident.

  Several days later, I decided to put on my favourite outfit and go to the mall. I had purchased the floral red dress in a trendy boutique in Toronto, then splurged on matching shoes. I felt as though I was making a statement that flaunted my future independence. I enjoyed the turning of heads as I paraded through the corridors, my heels click-clicking on the tiled floors. I relished the idea of returning to live in the area.

  After a brief snack at the food court, I went to The Bay and began rifling through sales racks. I heard a child laugh and looked up. Brian was there, corralling a rambunctious toddler. I had forgotten what a small place Halifax-Dartmouth could be, how easy it was to collide with the past. Next to him was a woman pushing a stroller draped with several garments to pu
rchase or try on. The boy, a miniature version of Brian, giggled and veered between racks while his father gave chase. Neither of them noticed me. For an instant I was beset with an avalanche of emotions. Longing. Remorse. Claustrophobia. Then I quickly stepped out of their path and was about to turn away when the woman glanced up and caught my eye. On her face, I saw the look of someone who knew exactly what she was doing, staring at someone who never would.

  Stepsister

  In my mind, I pictured my father, large, in a red plaid shirt of wool — the stereotype uniform of all woodsmen — his orange hair and beard matted with sweat and crumbs of leaves. At least, that’s how I thought of him as a child. I don’t actually remember the colour of his hair. I was barely two when he disappeared, my sister only a baby. It is possible that he was the victim of a forest creature, mythic or otherwise. Perhaps a wolf swallowed him whole, like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. All he needed was to be set free. We waited years for him to return, until my mother moved us to the village and got a job at Frank Rella’s pub.

  Mother soon married Frank, who had a daughter of his own named Sydney. My sister Josephine and I took his last name, preferring it over ours, which was Smith. We moved into Frank’s cottage, located on a cobblestone side street a couple blocks north of the pub, a nice neighbourhood of Tudor residences with fenced-in yards.

  Frank was a sipper and would nurse the same mug of ale for an entire evening, saying that he preferred to keep his head clear to run the business and take care of his family. He loved being surrounded by adoring females and was never short on compliments — one of the reasons my mother fell in love with him.