What Can't Be Undone

by dee Hobsbawn-Smith

  The engine’s gears revved as she shifted on the winding road along Shuswap Lake. Cornering, lake visible beyond, she glanced at him. He was no more than sixteen. Stocky. Tanned. A thick fringe of bleached blond hair hung over his eyes, the rest buried beneath the bandana. The white wires of an iPod dangled from his hoodie’s neckline, and a well-creased topographical map, its black lines concentric s- and omega-curves, protruded from the hoodie’s kangaroo pocket at the wire’s end. For as long as it took her eyes to flicker from the road to his face and back to the road, she imagined Ryan lounging in the seat, his favourite position on their trips for summer fruit, sandaled feet up on the transom, long brown hair tossing as he turned his head to study the landscape. Joanna blinked the image away.

  The boy slept while she gassed up in Three Valley Gap, slept during the long climb into Revelstoke, woke as she approached the high curved bridge above the gorge outside of Golden. Joanna heard him shifting on the seat beside her, but the overpass held her gaze. A lot of her inner attention had been focused on death the past few years, but not hers, and not here. Confronting the possibilities, of gaping space beyond the tiny and totally insufficient safety rail, of riding a diving, twisting wreck from such a height, was graphic enough, doubly so now that she had some other mother’s son in the car.

  “Where are we?” He sounded as rusty as she was at talking to teenagers.

  “Golden. Near the border. A map’s in the glovebox.” He didn’t bother looking, just stretched, the slight pop and crack of his vertebrae drowned out by the growling of his stomach. “You hungry?” He nodded. “There’s a case of peaches and a cooler behind you. Can you reach either? Help yourself.”

  He swivelled within the embrace of the seatbelt. His groping fingers emerged from the cooler’s depths clutching a tub. “What’s this stuff?” Joanna, risking another glance, saw forearms, tanned, muscular, blue corded veins tensing in the backs of his hands. For half a heartbeat, she wondered if she had made a mistake in breaking her own cardinal rule of travelling alone — no hitchhikers, ever — but the look of gratitude as he straightened in the seat reassured her. This was a kid who needed feeding, no rapist, no threat at all. And hadn’t she been pushing weights and taking fitness classes all her life? Surely if anything happened, she could defend herself against a hungry kid. She shook her head in amazement. How’d she get there so quickly? From pity to self-preservation in half a blink. Whoa, Jo.

  “Curried chicken. Try it. What’s your name?”

  “Bobbie. Bob.”

  “I’m Joanna. Where’s home?”

  “Lethbridge. Going back to my Granny. Been gone all summer.”

  “Doing what?” Granny. Not Mom. Or dad, either. Joanna felt like a dentist, extracting chips of old molar and prodding at invisible cavities. Having this lad in her car tipped her straight back into parent mode.

  “Tree-planting.” Half a pause as he tipped his head north. “I look older than I am.” He sounded defensive.

  “I’m going as far as Calgary,” she said, then directed him to a plastic plate, fork and napkin in the cooler’s saddlebag. The muffled sound of eating. Maybe days since he’d eaten last. Joanna remembered Ryan’s prodigious appetite before his illness, the plateloads of pasta at supper, how his upper body would disappear into the fridge two hours later, then emerge and straighten, smiling, hands full. She’d shopped for apples by the case, cheese by the wheel. Then nearly overnight, nothing she’d cooked interested him, his body fading, skin paling, then headaches that he’d said were cracking his skull from the inside. Thinking back, she recalled her own youthful hitchhiking expeditions, filled with hunger and heat, the long hot wait in dust for the hiss of airbrakes and a ride home. It had felt like a safer world then. Or she’d been lucky.

  She gestured at the water bottle by the boy’s knee. He nodded, swigged, offered it to her.

  “Calgary,” she said, renewing the conversation. “I can drop you at the bus depot.”

  His face coloured. “I’ll just hitch,” he said. “Cheaper.” He was asleep again within ten minutes, the bottle rattling in the footwell by his knee.

  Joanna drove through the evening, her window cracked partly open. She leaned her head on the glass and counted the tunnels as they unzipped around the car, gorges falling away to the valley far below. No matter how many times she drove this road, it still caught her breath. Something about the explorers. David Thompson. Simon Fraser. How had they found their way through this narrow high pass? Just dumb luck? Following rivers or native guides? Or did they imagine the maps before they drew them, the valleys opening into the unfamiliar? That was difficult to conceive; she could never see what was coming, hadn’t suspected the worst until she walked cold and unsuspecting into her son’s hospital room to hear his doctor’s verdict. A fever, she’d thought, the flu. How quickly his body had shut down. Weeks. Invaded by the unknown.

  Twilight faded into blackness. At the Continental Divide, she cranked open the sunroof. Above her head, stars twinkled like handfuls of gemstones. A few miles later, a glimpse of the eerie dancing of the northern lights. Beside her, the kid slept, his left arm twitching in a dreamer’s trance, his head tipped back against the headrest.

  No other cars were on the road. She pulled over and stopped, reached for a peach from the full case on the back seat. She glanced at the boy, wondering if he looked like his mother. If she missed him. Surely. The borealis leaped from sky to windshield, the sky baroque and wild and beautiful. The boy slept on, his head rolling, unaware of Joanna beside him, her head thrown back, looking and weeping for what she could never hold again. When her eyes dried, she tossed the peach pit, released the brake, let out the clutch, eased back onto the road. For the first time in nearly two years, she wondered where Stuart was. The divide between them had unobtrusively widened, and when her husband packed his bags and moved into an apartment Joanna had barely noticed.

  It was three AM when they crossed Calgary’s city limits. Joanna thought again about the bus depot. It would be bright, glaring with fluorescent lights and the dark smell of lateness and hard travel. Strangers would be milling at the doors, smoking, hanging out, suspicious. And here she sat, worrying about this unfamiliar child, someone else’s child. Not her dead son.

  The kid stirred. Joanna saw tree saplings in the curve of his cheek and new leaves in the flutter of his eyelashes, and wheeled her car through the sleeping city to her front yard.

  She reached out, hesitant again, then tapped his shoulder. “We’re home.”

  He fumbled with the car door and his pack while Joanna quickly moved past him and unlocked the bungalow. In the hall, she opened a door. “You can sleep in here.”

  Ryan’s room was as he had left it when he took that final trip to the hospital, robin-blue paint chipping beneath the corners of his Davie Bowie posters. Just seeing the chips brought back the ache. Not tonight. No unpacking those memories. How many things did she avoid thinking and feeling this way? She never did unpack them. It felt safer to keep the trunk locked, the key safely out of sight, and when tomorrow arrived, she invariably tucked the memories behind the day’s doings. Keeping busy filled days she didn’t want to count. Eight months after the funeral Stuart had gently suggested another baby, but Joanna had shivered, cried and pushed him away. No one could replace Ryan. She didn’t understand how he could carry on as if nothing had been lost. As if the world hadn’t fallen off the map, into the realm of the unimaginable.

  “The bathroom’s down there. There’s a spare toothbrush in the drawer.” The kid blearily stumbled into the bathroom, the door closing on his small night noises.

  Joanna collapsed on her own bed, her body slowly letting go of car springs and the roar of air through car windows. She lay still until she heard the bathroom door squeak, then decided against flossing and fell into dreamless sleep.

  Joanna woke early. The boy’s face appeared through the kitchen door as she drank her first coffee.

  “Your son. He been gone long?”
/>   “Almost three years. He was about your age. Leukemia.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. I still wake up thinking he’ll be at the breakfast table.”

  The boy ducked his head. She set out cereal, sliced peaches, bowl and spoon, milk. He ate without another word. She ate yogurt and peach slices, finished her coffee. Phrases rolled like guttering bowling balls. “Did you finish your algebra? Don’t forget your trumpet, band class today. How about we make chicken cacciatore again for supper?”

  Joanna flipped on the computer and checked the Greyhound schedule. “If we leave right now, you can just catch the nine-forty. Can you manage?”

  His face reddened as he shook his head. “I thought I’d hitch.”

  “The trip’s on me.” She angled away slightly as he muttered his thanks. “It’s okay. Time to go.”

  No talking as they got in the car. It was late August, the sun already high in the sky at nine AM. The street under her car’s wheels sang, the clear note of summer passing at each corner she crossed, the roads opening into other possibilities, other lives. She could smell the trees through the window, their arms bright and pale green like naiads along the riverbank. The heavy wetness of earth and water, the solid, unwavering line where they met. Here, there. Before, now.

  Joanna handed him two peaches when the car stopped rolling in the parking lot. “Take these for the trip.” She led the way down the stairs into the bus depot. “One way to Lethbridge. Student, right?” She laid her credit card on the counter and gestured at the boy. He fumbled in his wallet, found his student ID card.

  “Listen, thanks, eh.” He was standing at the door into the bus barn. She couldn’t follow.

  She nodded, grabbed his wrist briefly, shouldered away, left him framed by the high light of morning as she headed to the stairs.

  On her way out of the parking lot, the car pointed west along the river, she saw the back of a denim jacket and began to brake. As she rolled past, she swivelled her head and stared.

  He was standing in the median, a brunet, like Ryan. Long hair tipped in gold, the ends visible under his straw cowboy hat. Red sleeve, the edge of his Smithbilt, stained. And the sign in his hands, half visible past the intercepting light standard. She strained to read the word in the morning light’s glare. Change?

  She gunned the motor and spun gravel as she drove past. Change. It came whether you wanted it or not, often bitter, only occasionally sweet, rarely controllable. A map taking a blind, unexpected turn.

  She could smell the perfume of the ripe peaches in the back of the car. Why had she bought an entire case?

  When Joanna reached the house, she carried the case of fruit into the kitchen, then slowly walked the hall into Ryan’s room, opened the closet, stood staring at the empty boxes stacked on the floor, his clothing undisturbed, shirts hanging, sleeves in straight creased drops from sloping shoulders. Jeans. Hoodies. A photo album in a cardboard banker’s box caught her eye, the mattress yielding beneath her as she pulled the book free, pages falling open in her hands. Ryan’s face, his long limbs, his gut-busting smile. The strange boy’s face reflected in the bus window, safely turned toward home and his Granny. Ryan’s face again. She wanted to recall everything about him, then and there, keep it all clear, his lifeline from birth to death.

  She set the album on the dresser and picked Ryan’s favourite red shirt from a hanger. Folded its arms, slowly, one then the other, across the breast of the faded fabric.

  Needful Things

  WHEN THE SEWING MACHINE’S NEEDLE BROKE for the third time, Susan dug around in the bulky corduroy with her pliers, grumbling as she searched for the tip. Cutting down the jacket was proving more trouble than it was worth, but the young horsewoman who’d brought it to her had insisted. A gift from her brother, she said. And now Susan was late getting it done.

  Each morning, Susan lay in bed and counted the flocked lilies on the wallpaper and considered the temperature of the linoleum. Wondered if she wanted coffee or tea. But she didn’t want anything, so each morning she stayed under the duvet. Counting wallpaper flowers. Even her appetite stayed dormant. Eventually, it was her body’s discomfort that drove her out of bed, not the urge to step into her day, not the tedious job of re-sizing a jacket.

  What was it this jacket reminded her of? Nothing stayed with her for long these days. Not even her garden, where she and Peter had spent their summers. As his health had declined his energy slipped too, but he’d still loved mornings ensconced in a deck chair, watching her dig.

  She should finish the damn jacket. If she had to endure one more call from Lauren without new income to report, she might as well stay in bed permanently. Go to sleep for good. Not that she hadn’t considered that already. A few extra sleeping pills and some vodka to smooth the way. That she had considered, on some lonely Sunday evenings. The daily phone calls didn’t help. Prying about money. Her health. Even suggesting Susan see a shrink. “There’s no cure for widowhood,” she’d told Lauren curtly. “Kindly let me be.”

  What was the name of that movie? Diane Keaton’s vests and neckties. Woody Allen as a morose comedian. Movie nights with Peter on the couch beside her, hogging the popcorn bowl. His absence was an ache that all the daughters in the world couldn’t bridge. If she moved to Calgary, she could watch movies with Lauren. She pursed her lips and bent to the sewing machine. Would she take this reliable old Elna Supermatic with her, her last vestige of independence? Even asking the question made her stomach heave. What was left for her here? Her business worn threadbare after ten years of caring for Peter. The neighbours had stopped visiting when she abandoned their weekly coffee klatches. Even Peter’s school colleagues had fallen by the wayside.

  The doorbell rang just as Susan stabbed the thread through the needle’s eye.

  “Dammit! Get that, Peter, would you?” Almost said it out loud. She listened for the sound of slippers scuffling down the hall. The house was silent.

  She caught herself, cursed, got up to answer the bell. He’d been dead three years.

  “Good afternoon. I understand you are a seamstress.” A voice flowed from the porch, from a shivering woman clutching a tote bag. Beyond her, the delphiniums craned downward; beyond them, the dishevelment of the last poppies and bachelor buttons.

  “Yes, yes, I’m a seamstress,” Susan said, pointed at the framed fabric sign Lauren had made. A fanciful thing, hand-quilted treadle with embroidered needles as vertical bars in each letter. The woman hesitated. “Come in then.” Susan ushered her in, then stepped back for a quick appraisal. She was shorter than Susan, elliptical, brown-skinned, a thick black braid, a trench coat snugged high, a pink and orange silk scarf peeking from the neckline. “Take your coat?”

  “No, thank you.” The woman clutched it. “I don’t think I will ever get used to how very cold it is here.” She placed her palms together. Bowed. “It is good of you to see me without an appointment. I am Yasmina Singh.”

  “Susan Luckett.” Susan snatched her hand back from open air, rubbing her palms. “Yasmina. Pretty name. Sounds like jasmine.”

  “Exactly that, yes.”

  “Right. What can I do for you, Jasmine? Here, sit down.” She grabbed several blouses and a sweater from the couch. Yasmina unbuttoned her coat, perched on the edge and surveyed the room. The scent of roses drifted from her body. Susan winced as the woman’s face registered heaps of DVDs, a clutter of used mugs on the coffee table, and beyond the hallway door, dishes overflowing the kitchen sink. She’d gotten used to eating in front of the television since — since when? Since Lauren grew up and left home? Since Peter’s death? Since doing dishes no longer seemed important. The room felt empty, echoing.

  “I need a new suit. May I show you?” At Susan’s nod, Yasmina opened her purse and pulled out a folded paper, gold and red jewelled bangles tinkling at her wrist. “Here is a photograph.”

  Susan unfolded the paper and studied the picture. “I don’t know any of this.” She looked at the clothing visible throu
gh Yasmina’s gaping coat. “But you’re wearing western clothes. This is special?”

  Yasmina smiled. “Yes. I’ve been in Canada for over twenty years. But these clothes — salwar, kameez, and a dupatta, the scarf — this is traditional Indian clothing. I will wear them in the Gurdwara.”

  “What’s that, the Gurdwara?”

  “The temple.”

  “Hmm. Those clothes look comfortable. Pretty, too. Hmmm. Maybe you can find someone else. Alterations, now, or a hemming job, I could help you with.”

  “I am remarrying.”

  Susan flinched and handed back the photograph. “I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’d not want to let you down for such an important day, Jasmine. Sorry.”

  “But my cousin insists that you are very good. The best seamstress in town, she said. The best with silks. Of course it is unlikely you would remember her, she hired you some years ago.”

  Susan shook her head, halfway to opening the door when a flood of fabric tumbled through Yasmina’s hands. Green. Utter green, forest, then jade. Gold threads caught and glittered as the light shifted. Purple glowed along the weft, a hint of rust hiding in its depths.

  “Oh my,” Susan breathed. “May I?” She gestured toward the fabric.

  “Yes, please.”

  Susan plunged her hands into the run of colours and sighed. When she looked up, Yasmina was watching her, amusement crinkling the faint lines beside her eyes. Brown, shot with amber and gold. Unusual eyes. “What exactly do you need?”

  “A suit, as I said. Two pieces. And a long scarf to cover my head.” Yasmina held out the photo again. “In joyous colours, as you see. Remarrying is sacred, but meant to be a celebration.” She watched closely as Susan studied the garb in the picture.