Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  Open them again. Look. Lumpy oatmeal and crimson plaid fabric, shabbier than ever in the morning light. Vintage 1970s with its low back and rectangular arms, the chesterfield’s sat in that exact spot under the picture window its whole life. Dad’s chair is much older, made of oak and leather. The end of each arm flares out and curls down, the wood dark where his hands rest. The feet look like claws. Not bird claws, some mammal’s. ‘A carnivore,’ I told Dad when I learned the word, something sinewy, ferocious. But the rest of the chair has stout curved legs and tapered spindles, a plump brown leather seat.

  I’m tight as a fiddle string by the time he’s lowered himself back into the chair.

  He looks straight at me. “Meg. I don’t know how to make this any easier. It’s going to be a shock.” There’s something almost pleading in his eyes. “You’ll think I should have told you. And perhaps I should. But your mother ...”

  “Dad, I want to know.”

  “It happened long before you ...” He stops.

  “Please, Dad. I want the truth, whatever it is. I need the truth.”

  His forehead furrows. He looks confused but then he nods. He’s making himself look at me, his shoulders rigid. “Meg, I’m not who you think I am.”

  It’s my turn to stare at him. He’s going to tell me he’s my real father. My blood father.

  “Go on.”

  “I’m ... I’m not a man.”

  “What?”

  “Meg, I’m a woman.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not a man.”

  “You want to be a woman?”

  “No, I am a woman.”

  “You’re ... you’re transgendered?” The word is as incongruous as a nose stud. Nipple ring. Dildo.

  “No. Not.” He stops, lays both hands palm down on the arms of his chair. “Meg, I was born a woman. By an accident, a chance, I, it’s ... I can explain how later. I had reason to pass myself off as a man and I did.”

  “You’re not a man. Everyone thinks you’re a man but you’re not.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s crazy.” He’s crazy. He’s making it up. Why? The tips of his fingers are white, pressing against the oak. He doesn’t lie. His eyes are on my face. Worried. For me. Why is he doing this?

  My father. Who outlived all the other ranchers. The men. My unusually old father who hasn’t lost any of his hair. Who was blonde and not very hairy but Cree men aren’t particularly hairy either. My oh-so-modest father who never swam. “No tight jeans for you, eh?” It’s crude, insulting, my voice. “You and Mum. Ben and Polly. Mum going to that church and all the time ...” I begin to laugh but it’s crazy laughter.

  “It’s a shock, I know,” he says. She says. Same light voice, gruff but not deep. Same wiry body. Flat-chested. Not even old man boobs. Course if I was that thin ...

  Dad takes his hands off the arms of the chair. They hold each other, big, sinewy, sun-spotted hands.

  “Mum knew?”

  He takes a ragged breath. “Of course, she knew.”

  “She wouldn’t set foot in my house because I was living in sin and all the while ...” I look at him. Her. “Why now?”

  Violet shadows in the back of his eyes.

  “Your mother didn’t want anyone to know. Ever.”

  “And you did?” As the retort snaps out of my mouth that last word of his sinks in.

  He shrugs, opens his mouth, but I cut in.

  “How were you going to manage that? Keep it a secret in the funeral home? ‘That old fella, he’s not ...’ ” I tail off because Dad’s nodding, because it’s crazy and every direction I look it’s unfolding into bizarre complications.

  “We had a plan. But we assumed I would go first.”

  “Because men die before their wives?”

  He gazes at me for a moment and it’s the old steady blue-eyed you know what’s right, you know what’s wrong, you know I love you look and I’m twelve and I want to lie about something and he’s there waiting for me to do the right thing and when I do, however careless or unkind or stupid the thing I’m confessing, his eyes will be glad and I’ll want him to be glad even though I hate the drag of the tether he’s put on me and later I’ll kick and buck and race away as far and as fast as I can from those eyes. It all twists up in me, sitting there, his eyes steady on my face. He was lying. She. She was lying.

  “I was eleven years older than Polly. Of course we thought ...” He swallows.

  Deep breath. “What was it, this plan of yours?”

  “I’d go the way I always wanted to go. In the mountains.”

  I stare at him. “So, what? One day you were going to stroll into the wilderness, die of exposure. Conveniently, nobody would find your body. What was Mum going to do? Claim she didn’t notice you were gone, that’s why she didn’t report you? No wait, I know. The Cardinal Divide. Today’s the day, you say. Mum drives you there, drops you off. Goodbye, you say, and march off into the wilderness. Then what?”

  He’s studying me the way he used to, waiting for me to figure something out, and I do and feel sick because of course he’d take his gun, put himself down the way he put Moss down when the cancer drained the light from his eyes. The way he put down the colt with a broken leg. He’d do the job. Unlike my sloppy efforts at self-immolation. Tan pants, red braces, battered khaki hat, shot gun slung over his shoulder, he’s walking up a narrow valley, wolf willow, sedge, the mountains clambering skyward. He’s getting smaller and smaller. Even at ninety he could walk five miles. His ninetieth birthday, and his ninety-fifth, we drove up to the Divide, rambled over the thin turf, him pointing out the gouges where grizzlies had been digging for glacier lily bulbs. A thermos of tea and bacon sandwiches, triple-wrapped, in his old grey canvas knapsack. “Don’t want to smell too good to the bears,” he said, winking at me. On cue Mum looked around nervously. Christ. I look at him. Her. “I suppose you’d have filled your pockets with bacon sandwiches.”

  “Garlic sausage, I thought. More tea?”

  He’s holding up the pot but he has to use both hands to do it.

  “Dad.” I stop. Close my eyes. Hear him set the pot down.

  “Meg, can you imagine what it would have been like for your mother, to lose not just me but her whole world? For it to crack apart. She wasn’t strong. Not in herself. She needed her world to be her skeleton. Rigid, perhaps, but”—he lifts his shoulders—“it let her live a good life.”

  “Pretending to be something she wasn’t.” My voice isn’t hard now. I’ve never, ever heard him talk like this.

  “She was a woman married to a rancher living a quiet, God-fearing, hardworking life. All that was true.”

  “And her church’s little campaign against homosexuals?”

  He shrugs.

  Another vista of strangeness opens up. “What about medical care?”

  “I’m not the only one around here who doesn’t hold with doctors.”

  “Yes but lately, didn’t you ...?”

  “Meg?” His voice. Her voice. “Is this really what you want to talk about?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you have to drive back tonight?”

  I stare out of the window. The sun hasn’t even set behind the mountains.

  “I’m sorry, Meg.” His voice is so soft it takes me a moment to parse the words. “You’ve every right to be angry and confused. When you were having such a difficult time, I used to wonder if this was a part of it. If somehow you knew and it confused you, added to the distrust.”

  “You wondered? Your life was a lie. That was your choice. But I didn’t have a choice, did I? You preached honesty and all the while ...” A black wave slams around inside my skull. “You lied. It was all a lie.” It’s getting clearer now, everything’s lining up. “Why are you telling me this? Because you need me to drive you to the mountains when it’s time. So you can die with your little secret intact and everyone can be sad Ben and Polly are gone and they’ll put your name on the grave in the cemetery nex
t to Mum’s and you’ll have won. You’ll have put one over on everyone and you can die laughing in whatever cave you crawl into with your shotgun and your fucking garlic sausage. It’s all about fucking power. The rest of us, we thrash around with what we’re given but you, you can make things be what you want. Well, you better get someone else to drive you. Hey, take a cab, because no, the answer is no, I won’t play along.”

  “Are you done?” Dad’s voice is cold.

  “I’m done.” I stand up. My temples throb. My hands are in fists. I stumble on the table leg, brush past his hand. He reaches out. Suddenly I want to cry. I grab my coat from the hook. Don’t look back. Turning into the driveway I almost clip Manfred Hetzl chugging along on the old Allis Chalmers. He raises a hand as I roar past. I drive too fast down the dirt road. Like a brushfire smouldering in the roots, it flares again. Acrid in my mouth. Smooth burn, going down. Sliding down, warm in my gut. That’s Scotch. A dragon roar, out of nowhere. Scotch. My fingers tighten on the wheel. Christ. Hold on.

  Chapter Five

  FIVE HOURS. FIVE hours ago, I thought my father was about to tell me where I came from. Who my people were. So I’d have some ground under my feet. However shitty it was, the place I came from, I’d know.

  A few heads turn when I slip in late, look around for a seat. I don’t want to be here. Doesn’t matter. Take your disease to a meeting. I sit with the restless in the back. Couple of old clients recognize me, nod. One looks away. Val’s reading Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Tall elegant woman, slash of pink lipstick, café au lait skin. Large hands. I close my eyes, try to let familiar words wash me down. It is like a hangover, the chemical trace of rage. Sober, at least I know what I did. Slashed at Dad, who is a tired, old ... woman. Fuck.

  A burst of clapping jolts me. Joe. His 29th anniversary. His sponsor’s up there, telling stories on him. People laughing. Joe shaking his shaggy head. Big walrus moustache.

  “Hello friends.” Thick Newfoundland accent though he’s been here longer than he’s been sober.

  My 20th anniversary in two months. Me standing there. ‘Hello everybody. Well, it’s been a busy year. My boyfriend and I finally called it quits so I’m single and not doing anything about it. Instead I make bread which might or might not be a healthy alternative.

  ‘My mother died almost a year ago and I still burst into tears at odd moments.

  ‘I quit my career to work a low-paid but socially useful human services job for an organization that’s at least as impaired as its clients.

  ‘I developed a need to find out more about my birth family even though it seems unlikely I’ll find out anything I’ll be glad to know. Actually, at this point, it seems unlikely I’ll find out anything at all.

  ‘But the big news is my father’s a woman. Not my biological father, the man who raised me. Isn’t.

  ‘So, like I said, it’s been a busy year. Wishing you all another twenty-four hours of sobriety, I’ll take one for myself.’

  Clapping. Or not. No, they’d clap. ‘Thanks for sharing,’ someone would say as I walk back to my chair.

  “You okay?” Val asks after the meeting.

  I shrug. Don’t remember a word anyone said. Passed when it came to me. If I talk I’ll cry. I’m like the river at spring break-up, all jammed up, more and more stuff stacking up behind.

  Home. My home. This is my home. I’m forty-two years old. I own my own house. Unlock the door, punch in the alarm code. Flick on the lights. Coffee pot with an inch of coffee. Fill a glass at the sink. Gulp it down. Go through into the living room. Turn on all the lights, take off my coat. Chesterfield, armchair, coffee table, TV. The little round pine table by the picture window, two wooden chairs. Something should be different. Walk in the bedroom, the bathroom. Turn on those lights. I did this the day Bill moved out. My doll’s house. What the realtor called it. Perfect for one. Tight for two. I like living alone. Except in my head I keep telling someone. Who would I tell? The therapist I fired? The sponsor I don’t have. Friends I had, my old job, ten years we worked together. We met for dim sum in Chinatown one Saturday a couple of months after I quit. Without the office there wasn’t much to talk about. Besides they live such straight lives. ‘Hey, my father, turns out he’s a woman.’ Yeah, right.

  I’m in the living room, every light in the house blazing, eleven o’clock at night and I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t even want to make bread. I don’t want to drink. Or smoke. Or get high.

  Sit down. The armchair sags. Farm cast-off. Mum finally screwed herself up to buying a new one. Mum and Dad. Keeping the secret. House not much bigger than this. My modest father. Bolt on their bedroom door. Why they built that bedroom. Not so I could have a room of my own. So they could keep their fucking secret.

  Fuck, I’m mad.

  The dubious luxury of ordinary men.

  Fuck AA.

  Whoops.

  Resentment gets us drunk.

  More Gospel.

  Okay, okay.

  Why am I so mad?

  Three of us living there. Two in the know. Me, left out. Kept out. What else?

  Dad lying.

  Suddenly I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. I turn out the lights, tug off my clothes. Climb into bed, lie in the dark. Somewhere a thousand questions wait, like black flies clinging to a window screen.

  Then he was a she. Lazy, taunting voice. Lou Reed. Club in Gastown, barman loved that song. Take a walk on the wild side. Doop de doop de doo. Decadent. Annie and me, we used to shoot up, have sex. Six, seven hours at a time. It was fantastic. Morphine. Back in the day. Jay told me that. Summer evening, clients playing softball. Me trying not to look shocked. Nothing shocks Jay.

  I must have slept. Wake up, get up, try to do my routine. My father told me ... Stop. Look. Early sobriety, my head a highway with no rules, somebody told me, Don’t think, just look.

  Yesterday the river was a glassy expanse of green water. Today it’s dotted with lily pads of ice, each rimmed with white crystals like fur trimming the sleeves of a fancy coat. Look. Keep looking. They glide along, the pads of ice, current carrying them wide around the bends in the river. From a distance they look separate, serene. But walking out onto the footbridge I hear them, a shushing, granular sound, distinct above the distant throb of traffic. Each ice pad has a skirt of submerged crystals. The drowned skirts brush against each other as the pads turn and turn. My father told me ...

  For as far as I can see they’re drifting toward me, serene and ruthless. I want to look away, to look up to where the glass cliffs of the city will be gleaming orange in the morning sun but my eyes are locked on the ice pads sailing toward me. They’ll sail like this forever. Not true. Ice will sheet out from the banks, the pads jostling against each other in a narrowing channel until, one clear night, cold will weld them into a single plate. In the morning tracks will lead from bank to bank: coyote, fox, deer.

  Dad loved the first snow. He’d take me with him to the cottonwood stand. We’d read the writing from the night before, paw prints, the brush of belly hairs. They were all around us, the invisible ones. Like the golden light that poured down through the leaves a few weeks earlier, so thick and rich you could feel it on your skin, I could feel it, the life around me which was the life in me, through me. We never talked about it but I knew he felt it too.

  She.

  Upstream a siren blares, loud, louder, then a second starts up, crossing the Capillano Bridge. And a third, same cadence but tentative, like a fiddler tuning up. It’s coming from the trees across the river, growing louder.

  When the sirens have faded into the distance, the coyotes fall silent too. Before the pulsing hum of traffic spreads back across the river valley, there’s a moment of silence. The water between the ice pads shines turquoise and copper.

  Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I turn to face downstream, close my eyes, feel the sun on my skin. It’s not that big a deal. He’s the same person. She. I open my eyes. Sunlight glitters on the refinery stacks. T
hey’re strung with sodium lights. At night, they twinkle, cellophane orange, a city’s worth of lights. At night, flames climb the sky, lick away the stars. Of course it matters. I look down at the ice pads sliding out from under the bridge. He lied. He lied to me every single day.

  Chapter Six

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING ABOUT aftercare?” Tanya is on one side of the desk in the office, Cathy on the other.

  “We’re working on designing a better program.”

  “In the meantime what are we supposed to tell clients?” Tanya’s lips curve down to match the long curves of her cheeks, the hook of her nose. I’ve never seen a face that’s all scowl.

  Cathy draws herself up to her full five foot two. “I’ve told you all that I’m at liberty to say.”

  “Ah,” Tanya says as if she has received a precious gift of enlightenment. “I’m sure they’ll find that helpful.”

  Cathy stalks out, all of us watching her go.

  Heather says, “He left them all his contacts, told them to use his ideas, even though they fired him.”

  “With Georgie, it was never about him.”

  “More than you can say for the lovely Miss Brenda.”

  “Or Scratch-My-Balls Bob.”

  “Or Hapless Howard.” Heather glances at me. “Brenda’s glorious predecessors.”

  “It was better when I was here, as a client, I mean,” Tanya says.

  “Or you thought it was,” Jay says. “How much do the clients know?”

  “More than we imagine,” Heather says. “They’re not stupid.”

  “They’d be dead if they were, most of them,” Tanya says.

  “What do you think?” Jay asks, turning to look at me.

  I shake my head. Everyone waits.

  After a long beat Jay asks, “Who wants to do the welcome?”

  Tanya’s voice echoes through the building as I head for the back door. “Welcome meeting in ten minutes in the Riel room. Please return boom boxes and table tennis bats now.”

  It’s cold and dark and the wind is roaring in the poplar trees but the clients—hatless, in skimpy jeans, the young ones anyway—smoke and kid around. I nod and keep going around the corner of the building. I’m the only one who ever walks the perimeter. I read it in the list of duties when I was hired. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Tanya said, the first time I wrote it in the log. ‘But I like doing it.’ She raised her eyebrows. The Bloods are like the Cree, you’re not supposed to tell people what to do. Expressing silent disapproval seems to be okay.