by Claire Tacon
“You been out here before?” Bernie asks Luke.
Luke doesn’t answer, just scoots onto my lap.
“Shy. So where were you working this afternoon?”
“Over at the fields near Evangeline Beach.”
“How many acres you working these days?”
“About 250—there’s the fields around the poultry op, the ones out by the beach and we inherited sixty acres from my uncle a few years ago. Linda’s got some cousins we’ve got an arrangement with—so that’s another eighty.”
“What are you growing?”
“Corn mostly and rotating hay through.”
“Grain or fodder?”
“Feed corn.” The sun is in Bernie’s face, his hand a visor over his eyes. “You want to know what seed we use too?”
The ref whistles—Kentville’s offside. The coach nods to Stephen for the free kick. There are a couple of Kentville kids in front of him and Stephen pauses, rolling the ball back and forth under his foot, unsure where to aim. He fakes to the side and gets the ball up and out.
“Nice one,” Bernie calls out, clapping. Linda’s friends make eyes at each other. One of them points her finger down her mouth, pretending to gag.
Bernie ignores them. “Now you’re a teacher, then.”
“Yeah, now I’m a teacher.”
A few feet over from our bleachers, the Kentville parents are as menacing as the kids. There’s one father who keeps screeching out directions to his son Brad, a freckled kid with a headband, waving him over to instruct him on plays. It’s irritating the coach. Brad isn’t a particularly talented player but you can tell he’s doing his best.
Kentville scores another goal. Stephen’s team manages a few shots, but only one of them connects. Our cheering section sags into silence for the remainder of the game. I expect Stephen to be disappointed by the loss, but when he jogs over with Max, he’s in a good mood. Max’s just as fanatic about the sport and the two of them are instantly at ease with each other.
Bernie suggests we all go to the Pizza Delight in New Minas. Linda’s face sours and my instinct is to decline. Max, however, mentions that they have a sundae bar and the boys look up expectantly. It will be good for them to spend time with other kids.
Bernie offers to give Stephen and Luke a ride in the back of the truck and they jump at the chance. Linda shifts her weight to her left hip and snarls up at Bernie. “Going to be a packed ride.”
Bernie suggests that she ride in the car with me. It reeks of a set-up.
“Sure,” I say, playing nice. “Plenty of room.”
Linda gets in the back seat, behind my mother, and scratches her nail along the upholstery. “How long you had this for?”
“Four years.”
“Thought it looked older. Looks like my dad’s old one.”
My mother grabs the headrest and cranes around to face her. “Max is pretty sharp on the field, goes right for the ball.”
“He’s scrappy.”
“You ever play sports?”
“Sure, volleyball up until grade eleven when I dropped out.”
“I tried to get Ellie into sports, but it never took. Which high school did you end up at?”
“Horton.”
“Been redone, hasn’t it?”
“Looks like a mall now.”
“Same with Cornwallis, that’s where Ellie went.”
“Yeah, Bernie mentioned that.”
“It’s funny,” I say. “How much Max looks like Bernie, even though he’s not his.”
Linda rolls down the window and spits her gum out. “Oh, they’re his kids all right, even if it’s not by blood.”
“Hard raising them on your own,” my mother says.
“What do you know about it?” Linda snaps.
“My husband died when Ellie was thirteen.”
Linda nods. “This guy split after Lisa was born.” She pulls her cigarettes out of her purse. “Mind if I smoke?”
My mother answers for me. “Just keep the window down.” We’re close enough to the restaurant that I don’t feel like protesting. “Of course,” she continues. “You bring them up and then they fly the coop. That’s hard too.”
Linda takes a deep suck on her cigarette and exhales out of the corner of her mouth, so most of the smoke funnels out the window. She looks at me in the rear-view, catches me eyeing her. “Yeah,” she says. “It’s a sin.”
My mother’s family was from Dartmouth. Dad’s was from Digby. They settled in Canning because it was a few hours away from both of them. Dad didn’t want the daily interference of living in the same town as his in-laws, but wanted to be close enough to drive. They’d thought there’d be regular visits when they had kids, but both families expected Mom and Dad to do the travelling. One Christmas, we wiped out driving from Digby to Halifax in a blizzard. After that we only visited for funerals.
When my move to Toronto became permanent, Mom didn’t want the same estrangement. Shortly after Stephen was born, she arranged to take a month off from the grocery co-op to come live with us. She’d packed her suitcase full of baby essentials—onesies, cloth diapers, jumbo safety pins and a large tub of Zincofax cream—as if she’d been worried they didn’t stock them in Ontario.
Richard and Terrence had both taken time off work too and I could tell that their presence put her on edge. My own father had gone back to work the day after my mother came home from the hospital because they needed the income.
Terrence had also missed out on raising a newborn so he was eager to help change diapers and do bottle feedings. My mother didn’t mind sharing at first, because Terrence was so charming to her and deferential—he let her demonstrate how to fasten the pins, how to cradle the baby’s head. My mother didn’t want me to have to keep up with the housework so she did all the dishes, kept a pail of bleach-water by the backdoor for soaking diapers and did all the laundry, separating everyone’s out in crisply folded piles and leaving them on our respective beds.
It made Richard uncomfortable. He said it was like having a nanny, which he vehemently disagreed with. Years later we’d have a cleaning lady and he wouldn’t complain, but being a father was new and precious and he wanted to do everything himself.
My mother indulged my breast-feeding for a week, but then started preparing infant formula and using it whenever she fed Stephen. I wanted to continue on the breast exclusively but when she’d had me, the nurses told her that formula was more nutritious. She took offence when Richard showed her articles about the importance of breast milk.
Then the Trinidadian cousins and aunties started coming over to meet the baby. We only saw the extended family at big holidays or at Caribana, but it was important to Terrence and I didn’t mind. They always brought sweets and curries and the conversation was full of banter, especially when the older folks came over. It didn’t take much to get someone keening into an old story, or singing to the baby. It reminded me of when I’d have dinner at Bernie’s—the same boisterous exuberance I’d wished I’d belonged to all the time.
My mother never said much when the relatives were there. She was shy; they all knew each other. She’d never said anything negative about my marrying Richard, but I don’t think she’d realized he came with a family. She kept pulling me aside to ask, “How are there so many of them?” Back home, everyone she knew was white. Most of her friends had never travelled outside the province or lived in a city and they held to the same fixed ideas as their parents, grandparents. Coming to visit was the first time my mother had ever taken an airplane.
By the end of the second week, tensions were frayed. My mother asked if we might have a few days to relax, just the two of us and the baby. Richard was angry at being excluded, but he knew that accommodating my mother was important to me. Once everyone left, however, we didn’t have much to say to each other.
Dad was the talkative one in my parents’ marriage and I often wonder what our family would have been like if he’d survived. I took after my mother, quiet. People
like us need someone else to prod us along, open up the doors to social contact. Without it, we clam up. I’d never doubted the current of attachment between my mother and me, but our communication had calcified over the years.
For the three days, all I did was give Stephen every other feeding because my mother wanted to take care of everything. Enough was enough. I told Richard we should all go to a baseball game and Terrence got us cheap seats in the nosebleed section of the Skydome. The men drank beer and ate unshelled peanuts and my mother fretted the entire time that a stray ball was going to kill her grandson. She took the train home four days earlier than planned. Richard didn’t hide his relief on the way back from Union Station and I couldn’t blame him. Part of me was equally relieved to be back to our family unit, but the other part was angry with myself. I should have been more patient. I should have found a way to make her feel like she had a place with us. On the surface, her goodbye was as it should be, but something had changed between us.
We offered to fly her in for Christmas. She said she couldn’t afford the time off.
5
IT’ S ONLY QUARTER TO TEN when I hit Wolfville, far too early for my meeting with Marc Morris. The waiting cranks my anxiety and I kill time driving around campus. The conference was over three years ago and we only spoke briefly. He’d mentioned in his presentation that he’d grown up in Sheubenacadie and we’d chatted about the connection. At the time he was doing research on grass hybrids for wetland soils but I don’t know what he’s working on now.
Acadia’s changed so much that I barely recognize my old residence at the top of the hill. The exterior’s been reskinned, but it’s still the same five brick towers connected by concrete hallways. The campus makeover’s followed the Georgian style of the older buildings, which is lucky. It could have gone the other way and skewed towards the boxy ‘60s monstrosities like the Vaughan Library.
Marc’s office is on the third floor of the Huggins building, at the end of a hallway lined with student posters. A lot of the names on the doorplates haven’t changed since my undergrad. Through an open door, I think I see Marc hunched behind a laptop but I’m not sure. At the conference, I could have sworn his hair was blond. Now it’s dark and clipped tight to hide a thinning patch on top. He catches me hesitating in the doorway and rises, sliding his black wireframes up the bridge of his nose.
We are wearing his and her versions of the same outfit—khaki pants, white shirt and a Mountain Equipment Co-op fleece. It breaks the tension immediately.
On the walk to the new botanical gardens, Marc tells me he’s only been with the university about four years. “There’s talk of amalgamating with geology to become a giant Earth Sciences department.” He looks over his shoulder as he says it, but the only other people around are school kids in bright T-shirts—day campers. “A lot of the old guard are changing.”
“I noticed that Schaffer is still around.”
“Don’t get me wrong, but we’re trying to take the department in a new direction. Start bringing in grad students, generating more research. What’s it like at Guelph these days?”
“Competitive.” I skate past my recent layoff. “You know how it is, some of the branches get hot and the others scramble to preserve their budgets.”
“We’ve had that problem here—constant pressure to water down first year courses to inflate enrolment.” He rolls his eyes. “Rocks for jocks.”
He opens the door to the Irving Centre and I’m shocked by the span of the place. We veer right in the foyer to a little café. Marc hands over a travel mug and introduces me to the attendant, one of his undergrad honours students. “This is Dr. Ellie Bascom. She’s a visiting scholar.”
The girl flusters, keen as I was at that age, doesn’t charge for my coffee.
I fumble for change to tip her.
We stroll out to the public greenhouses just off the main entrance. They are so bright, white and clean it gives the impression of a plant hospital.
“I was really excited to get your email because we’re going to try a pilot agroecology course next year—upper-year seminar and labs,” Marc says. “I’m still developing the soil unit. I’d love to pick your brain about it.”
“How long a unit are you planning?”
“Only about a month and a half.”
I offer to walk him through some soil profiling and sampling labs.
“I’ve got a couple of grad students around for the summer and I’ve still got some discretionary funds. If you’re interested, I could bring you in for a few hours as a consultant.”
Marc fiddles with the key chain carabiner on his waistband. “We’re doing some tests on soil contamination in the experimental garden, but I really want to branch into agroecology. There’s the college in Truro, but—we’re the biggest school this side of Halifax, we’ve got the Kentville Agriculture Centre down the road, we’re surrounded by farmland—why shouldn’t we be leading the research?”
Exactly.
“What are you working on at Guelph right now? I looked up the website, but couldn’t find your page.”
When I tell him, Marc seems genuinely concerned. “Where are you in the fall?”
“Still determining that.” I study the terracotta planter across from me and wait too long before answering again, the silence choking the earlier familiarity. When I do speak, I gesticulate with my hands like a bombing vaudevillian trying to rouse the audience. “I’d been investigating applications for poultry manure fertilizer and soil conservation best practices.”
“So we’ve caught you as a free agent.” Marc smiles, unfazed. He surveys the near-empty room. “It’s never this quiet. I should have been coming here all spring.”
“I think that every time I get down to the beaches in Toronto.”
“I never made it past YYZ. You like the city?”
“We’re in a nice neighbourhood. But it’s good to be back.”
“My wife, Margie, and I always thought we’d settle in Halifax, but I like the pace here.”
He leads us out to the formal gardens, which are spectacular. Looking towards the treeline, there’s no sign of the town behind, as if this really were the lawn of some grand English estate. If I worked on campus, I’d teach every class out here. This is what I can never articulate to Richard, who thrives on the constant abutment of city-life—buildings on top of buildings, growing out of one another like nurse logs. He doesn’t understand how it can be exciting to be silent, to be small, to be surrounded by green.
Bernie’s found a good deal on a small forklift out by Peggy’s Cove and calls to see if the boys want to come along for the ride. My mother already has plans to take them into Wolfville for Mud Creek Days, but Stephen’s iffy about it, worried he’s going to be the oldest kid there. When I ask him if he’d rather hang out with Bernie, Stephen pulls a face. “He’s such a hick.”
“I don’t want to hear that word again.”
Luke diverts the argument by asking his brother what he should get the face-painter to draw—koala or giraffe?
Stephen decides he’d rather not stick around doing kid things after all and my mother offers to take Lisa to the fair along with Luke.
Bernie’s other errand is delivering a puppy from the neighbour’s litter to one of Linda’s cousins. It’s a squirming sandy-brown thing—part lab, part shepherd. Stephen and Max sit in the back of the truck cab, trying to get it to sit still in its cardboard box.
Stephen wants to know if Max gets to keep one of the puppies himself.
“Ask Bernie.” It’s the first time I’ve heard Max call Bernie by his first name. I wonder if Linda’s asked him to call him Dad.
“It’s your mother you’re going to have to convince.”
“She’ll say yes if you do.”
“No way is Linda going to let a mutt mark up her floors.” Bernie swivels around to Stephen. “We got a couple more—you could take one home.”
Stephen picks up the puppy and arranges its front paws over the seat back.
He ducks down and moves the dog’s legs like a marionette, his voice part Scooby Doo, part urchin. “Say yes! Say yes!”
“Your father’s allergic.”
“Can’t you get shots?” Max asks.
“Get shots! Get shots!”
I lie. “Richard has a thing about needles.”
We drop the dog off at the cousin’s then get the forklift. The seller’s got a crane at the back of the house and he uses it to hoist the machine into the pickup. The house is run down—a squat wooden rectangle with a sagging shingle roof. There’s a bigger garage where the construction equipment’s stored, but it’s also ramshackle. There’s a Hustler calendar next to the light switch that’s still displaying Miss April 1983’s plentiful bush. Stephen glances at it and quickly looks away, jamming his hands in his pockets.
Max is used to all the machinery and gets right in there, helping tie down the straps and opening the truck gate. The seller even calls Max over and lets him operate the crane levers. Stephen and I stand back, watching. I can tell he’s nervous. He’d thought Bernie was rough around the edges, but it’s nothing compared to the forklift owner’s seedy beard, his white T-shirt yellowed with sweat.
“I saw a crane get stuck in the mud when I was growing up,” I tell my son. He’s scanning the scene in front of us, half-apprehensive, half-entranced. “One spring at Bernie’s place. It was so muddy that the treads just made a big rut in the ground. They used to get tractors stuck in fields all the time if the thaw came too quick.”
“How’d they get it out?”
“Usually had to wait until the ground drained and hardened. Sometimes you could wedge a plank or something underneath.”
Stephen hasn’t spent a lot of time outside the city, except for a weekend or two at a friend’s Muskoka cottage. “I can’t believe you hung out on a farm.”
“I practically lived at Bernie’s.”
“How come I’ve never heard of him before?”
It’s a fair question and I want to answer it honestly. “We grew apart for a while.”