Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  Reaching the highway I walked briskly, following the smell from the oil refinery. With any luck I’d arrive before the tow truck. A woman with a row of baby seats in her van slowed and waved. Sandi, her name was; she’d been traipsing up the street with a gaggle of toddlers the morning our moving van pulled in. She lived around the corner on Sea Fury (or maybe it was Spitfire). On Family Day, after our chopper ride, she’d invited me for coffee.

  I waved back—a ride would’ve been great, but she was in a rush. Watching her drive off made me walk faster and I passed a row of spruce trees, the only greenery for miles. The petroleum smell got stronger, and the blue and red signs for the Superstore loomed closer, almost wavy in the heat from the pavement. Just ahead on the roadside sat the Dodge—baby-poop brown, Sonny called it—its Beautiful B. C. plates looking exotic. A guy in a ball cap was hitching it to a truck.

  “You the owner? Jump in.”

  It wasn’t the transmission, but a belt. The car was sitting in the driveway by the time Charlie got home, and supper was waiting. Chicken picked up on the fly, and frozen fries. It was sticky and warm in the house. “What’s the temperature?” Charlie asked, as if I should know.

  Sonny wolfed his food down, then took his dodge ball outside. Charlie ate without talking, afterwards changing into sweatpants and his favourite T-shirt, the one that said Gravity is for sissies across the front. When he flopped in front of the TV, I took his glass in to him, half a beer he’d left on the table.

  “Oh—thanks. Sweetie.” He barely glanced from the screen. There were voices outside and sliding past Charlie’s chair I peeked through the sheers, which, just out of a box, needed ironing. Sonny stood in the driveway hugging the ball while a swarm of boys swooped around him on bikes. He was a chunky kid, big for his age, not exactly shy but not great at making friends either. The ball was a magnet; how else had the kids found our place, with its picture window and walk and patch of lawn like everyone else’s? Maybe Sonny’d met them at school.

  I sat on the couch, deciding to leave the dishes—there weren’t many—and during a commercial asked Charlie about work.

  “Busy. Fine. The usual,” he answered, cutting things short when the program resumed. A nature show about the Australian outback, it kept flashing back to some guy wrestling a crocodile.

  “Sonny should see this,” I said, stretching my arm along the back of the couch. I caught a glimpse of him outside. One of the kids, a scrawny blond boy, had grabbed the ball and was bouncing it off Sonny’s butt. I went to rap at the window.

  Through a mouthful of beer Charlie murmured, “Leave him be. Last thing the kid needs is his mom treating him like a dweeb.”

  “Did you find anything today?” I asked. Charlie looked up, baffled. “That exercise—it looked like a blast.” It was meant as a joke: I knew why he’d joined the military, and it wasn’t to clean runways.

  “How many times have I told you,” he said, setting his glass on the rug. “It might seem like crap to you, but it’s serious business, Willa. People’s lives depend on it.” He glanced around. In the TV’s glare his face was almost the same sallow green as the walls. His eyes had a pleading look. “There’s more to things than fun, you know. You might try the same approach to, I dunno, vacuuming.”

  We’d just moved in and already there was dust, true enough. I tried keeping things tidy for him and Sonny, I really did. People like my father said: Get a man to put a roof over your head. No one said you had to keep a sterile zone underneath it: a home like a runway, dirt and hazard free. If we’d stayed anywhere long enough, I’d have got a job, a real one, and paid someone to clean.

  “I know, I know,” Charlie waved at the TV. “No one likes grunt work.”

  “But we all have to do things we don’t like,” Sonny brayed from the entry, bouncing his ball up the stairs.

  And who would give a damn fifty years from now if our house was clean? I wanted to say, but, as Sonny flopped to the floor between us, I rose instead to straighten the kitchen.

  “You got homework?” I heard Charlie asking him, and the usual reply: “Nope.”

  “Sure? You check this guy’s backpack?” he hollered to me. Hanging up the dishtowel, I didn’t answer, just slipped out the back way to take a walk.

  Already it was dusk. From the street you could see inside other living rooms identical to ours—the same greenish walls and square, overhead light fixtures. TVs in one corner, the same jumpy glow. I could picture the husbands inside, like Charlie, slumped in La-Z-Boys; the backs of their cropped heads, and moccasins on tiled floors. A couple of places had boxy couches like ours, and others, pictures and plates too high up the walls, the odd formation of Blue Mountain geese.

  Rounding the curve and crossing onto Sea Fury, I picked out Sandi’s house, notable for the ride-on toys piled outside. Marching past, I imagined the echoey sound of TVs up and down the street, bouncing off walls and ceilings. It should’ve been a comforting thought, the repetition of rooms and voices, TV voices, and silence as people tuned in to their shows. But tonight, in this sticky, unseasonable warmth, it wasn’t.

  At least from the sidewalk you couldn’t see the dirt inside, if there was any; or smell what they’d had for supper—onions, I imagined, hamburger, Ragu sauce. Outside a couple of places you could hear babies crying and little kids having fits, which cheered me up considerably, spurring me into a power walk. At least I was past that, Sonny being older. The most anyone would hear passing our house, in the daytime anyhow, would be the radio. I slowed down again. Too often airwave voices wooed me from the sink, the suds going chilly; or from laundry balled up on the bed, or rings on the furniture.

  Gazing in at those living rooms, I felt a bit like a sightseer. Like someone who had followed signs, even got the trip mapped out by the CAA, yet missed a turn, ending up in a place that should’ve been familiar but wasn’t.

  Ahead of me, something shambled from under a parked car. A cat, I thought, but it was a raccoon. I tiptoed closer and made kissy noises. Across the lawn, a face bloomed in the window—a little girl in pyjamas. For a second I saw myself there. This small white face, the last time my mother had come home from the hospital, when I was three or four. The little girl stared, but I didn’t wave. Instead, I turned and headed home, steered by the fence and the black stretch of water.

  2

  CURRENTS

  Sandi phoned again to invite me over, this time for coffee and a stitch-and-bitch, or that’s what it sounded like, above the squall of children. At ten o’clock in the morning? I yanked some burger out of the freezer, contemplating the hours ahead, and thought of my dad—whom I hadn’t thought of in ages—how he’d taught my brother to fling fish sticks in the oven when our mom wasn’t there to cook any more.

  “What can I bring?” I asked Sandi, pinning the phone with my shoulder. Don’t let her say Phentex.

  “Just yourself,” she said, and I pictured an infant in her arms, clawing her mouth. The image opened something else inside me, also remote, but fresher. The miscarriage I’d had before our second-last posting. I’d only been a few months along. The fetus was miniscule, but it was a girl. A girl, Charlie had marvelled, which sharpened the disappointment.

  I took my time getting ready and arrived around eleven. Sandi greeted me wearing Reeboks and pompommed socks and a sweatshirt with cuddly looking animals on the front. Dread nipped at me as we moved to the kitchen.

  She introduced me to her friends, four or five gals sitting around the table perusing catalogues. Babies gummed toys at their ankles. Their names flew out of my head the instant Sandi spoke them; these women did seem awfully alike, with their curling-ironed hair and sooty-looking eyes. A couple of them I’d seen by the school pushing strollers, wearing tights that showed heavy thighs and knobby knees. The strollers were the kind with umbrella handles that looked as if they’d fold with the baby inside, like sandwiches made of squishy bread. (A Fluff sand
wich, Sonny might’ve argued, in the same breath asking why he couldn’t have one.) It’s bitchy of me to say, because we were probably the same age, Sandi’s friends and I—thirtyish—but having an older child plus losing a baby made me, well, different, didn’t it? If not smarter, then wiser.

  “Where’d you get your Snugli at?” someone asked, ignoring me.

  “Same place I got the Jolly Jumper. When Donnie’s away I go nuts, you know.”

  “People ask what I do and I tell ’em: I shop.”

  “You’re new, aren’t you?” someone interrupted; she might’ve been a Debbie. “What’s your name again? Willa?”

  “That’s different.” The woman who said so smiled at me.

  “Oh—oh, girls! Did you hear the latest Sharon, Lois & Bram?”

  “Well. Don’t quote me. But I heard the Elephant—you know, the Elephant?—is a frigging tyrant.”

  “Marsha!”

  “It’s okay—isn’t it, Taylor?” The woman shrugged, stroking her child’s hair. “It’s not like she talks yet.”

  “Joshie does. Don’t you, bud? Say ‘da-da’ for Auntie Sandi—you can do it. Come on, for Mommy ...”

  Plunking a mug in front of me, Sandi shifted the catalogues to make room for some cookies. A toddler clung to each of her legs.

  “Have you had her to the doctor? I mean, at eighteen months she should be talk—”

  “Donnie called last night. Says not to worry; she’s saving it for when he comes home.”

  “Dads, right?” They all snickered, and I couldn’t help thinking of my father and Sharla, the woman he’d married. “Don’t call me dad,” he’d said at their wedding. Joking and slapping Charlie on the back. “Taking care of my girl, eh? Now she won’t need to worry about the old man any more.” It’d been almost two years since I’d seen Don’t-Call-Me. He and Sharla golfed a lot. I was glad for him, though. He deserved to be happy, after raising Jason and me on his own all those years.

  “Donnie’s back when?” someone piped up.

  The coffee was bitter but I drank it anyway, flipping politely through a catalogue of lingerie with Irish lace.

  “When?”

  “Oh. Same as Jarrett. Six months.”

  “Sex months, was it?”

  Cartoon laughter rattled from the living room, and there was a mushy sound—a child in a playpen? I put down the catalogue and steadily sipped coffee, ignoring the Care Bears on the cup. The smell of Similac was making me queasy. That whole family thing: it was like the elastic in underwear that got stretched so much everything dangled. My brother Jason was somewhere up north. People have lives, right? I had Sonny and Charlie to worry about.

  “Yeah, right. With Petie in our bed every night,” this woman was saying.

  “Oh, he’ll outgrow it.”

  “In time, you think?”

  “Hope so, eh. I could send him to my mother’s. Hey, Sandi—where do you order this stuff from, again?”

  “Nursery supplies?”

  “Accessories. You try those Velcro diapers yet? Look, they’re a dream.”

  “Nothing like ’em.”

  “I hate that effing Elephant, myself.”

  “Sandi—you on a diet or what, girl?”

  “Diet cookies—right, Sandi?”

  “Don’t laugh. I lost two and a half pounds last week.”

  “Get out.”

  “I’m aiming for twenty, by the time Donnie gets—”

  A splutter erupted from an infant in a moulded seat, and I thought back to when Sonny was that age.

  “Oh frig. Marsha, could I bum some wipes?”

  All those infant needs and taking care of them. Being someone else’s lifeline and food source: their oxygen, really.

  “Stay put—I’ve got some.” Sandi scurried from the room. When Sonny was a baby, life had been all about needs. When he’d napped, Charlie and I would rush to bed, not even bothering to draw the shades. We’d do everything in fast forward; never mind that I’d felt like a walking breast.

  I stared at the clock by the fridge and stood up. “Sheesh—lunchtime already.”

  “Oh my God, is it?”

  “Your little guy’s in school, right? How’s he like it?”

  It sucks, I felt like saying, but smiled. “Oh, we’re adjusting.” Sonny better than I, perhaps. His being at school left me more time to think, and seeing him off in the morning made me feel as if I’d neglected something, like when you grocery shop and return home only to realize that the item you’ve forgotten had been the reason for going in the first place.

  “Donnie keeps talking about home-schooling—”

  “Oh GOD! Don’t mean to interrupt, but did you hear about the poisons in apple juice?”

  I pointed to the clock and mouthed: “Tell Sandi thanks so much but I had to run.”

  There was a knock. Sandi intercepted me at the door. It was Joyce, the woman who’d done the Family Day hot dogs; she had brownies with her, and an envelope.

  Sandy tugged at my sleeve. “Oh, but we’re just getting started!”

  “It’s been lovely, really,” I said, “but Sonny—Alex—will wonder where I am.”

  Joyce opened the envelope and pushed something at me. It was a snapshot showing Charlie, Sonny, and me squinting at the camera. My face ashen, Sonny’s jubilant. His look was vaguely like my father’s, the sort of resemblance only I would notice. I turned it over. F. D., October 1986, she’d penned in.

  Outside, the day opened again, the cracked grey street before me with its pastel houses and the ruffled harbour for a backdrop. In the distance, up beyond the school and the runways, was a pencil line of woods. Overhead, you could hear the beat of rotor blades, a helicopter circling in, preparing to land. It was close enough that I spotted the starboard door opened wide and two men up there, like tiny G. I. Joes in helmets and headsets, their legs dangling over. One of them waved.

  I wondered if it could’ve been Sandi’s husband returning from a mission, mistaking us for each other. My jeans for leggings, my straight brown hair for her highlighted perm. Guinea pig chip hair, Sonny called it, when we’d run into her at the grocery store. Charlie was off getting himself a doughnut. Sandi had smiled distractedly, peeling her baby’s fingers from a bag of Oreos. Her smile had brightened a bit when Charlie ambled up, tossing something into the cart. “I’d like you to meet my hus—” I’d begun, as her little boy made a grab for some Coco Puffs. Before I could finish the introduction, she was off chasing him.

  “Who was that?” Charlie had wanted to know, his mouth full of fritter.

  “A mom from around the corner. Air force.”

  Who knows why he asked. A new place, fresh faces? There’d been a hundred Sandis on each base we’d known. Seeing her chase the toddler made me feel odd, deflated. As if I had a pair each of perfectly useful hands and feet—but for what?

  ***

  After the coffee party, the rest of the day I amused myself sorting through boxes in the basement, jumbles of stuff packed in a hurry, non-essentials. The sort of stuff you could lose in a fire and not miss. There was a framed photo of my father and his new wife, Sharla.

  The last people in the house hadn’t been too tidy; the storage space was so cobwebby I put on a bandana to do my work. It reminded me of a neighbour on our last posting, a woman who cleaned each Tuesday, a pillowcase over her mop like the head of a condemned man.

  By the time Sonny got home I had half the stuff sorted—a teapot located, winter clothes put away. There were still books and cassette tapes and kitchen gadgets. But then I stumbled across some photo albums, shots of Sonny taken over the years. Sonny as a baby, gumming a teether in his high chair, crawling across various floors, and, later, winging a ball at his dad, starting school—in all the various places we’d lived. I looked happy in the ones of me, in a tired, delirious way. Happy, distracted. Ex
cept for the last place—on Vancouver Island—the backgrounds had a sameness, one blurring into another. I was trying to remember which living room was which when Charlie arrived home from work.

  “Hey!” I said, running upstairs. The burger wasn’t quite thawed, sitting in the sink. He was getting a Pepsi from the fridge.

  “Where’s Alex?” he wanted to know, unzipping the top of his coveralls.

  I had to stop and ask myself the same thing. Charlie stood there drinking, looking kind of disgusted. “What’s wrong, hon? That thing wrapped around your head too tight, or what?” I pulled off the bandana. Even being funny, Charlie could be like a burr, so prickly around the edges it was sometimes hard to credit what was inside.

  Sonny was in his room, of course. A poster of Hulk Hogan glowered down as he kneeled on the carpet playing with Lego. He’d gotten so big he almost looked funny bent over the spaceship in his hands. My boy, who teachers said couldn’t sit long enough to learn multiplication. Who still had trouble writing his last name legibly: Jackson. Jackass, some kids in his last school called him, when I was right there picking him up. It was a hard thing to watch, your kid being teased, like a bear suffering wasps. Especially when you knew what was inside him, what he was capable of.

  Charlie had built him a special table for his Lego—the airstrip and hangar and spaceships and jets he’d brought all the way from B. C., mostly intact. Charlie hadn’t seen the little Tupperware container of people, though. Dozens of tiny yellow bubbleheads, torsos with the arms and legs nipped off. “Boys,” he’d said, when I showed him. “That’s what they do.”

  To his credit, he’d gone out one evening and bought Sonny a bike with a light, saying a ride after supper might be good—better than dodge ball.

  “But with a ball, we know where he is.”

  “For God’s sake, Willa. He’s nearly nine years old. You can’t put him in a bubble. He has to make his own way.” Fine for him to say, when I was the one who saw Sonny getting teased, on whom Sonny vented. What kid wouldn’t act out, wearing Sonny’s shoes? “How’re his marks?” Charlie changed the subject, and I said it was too early to tell.