Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  ‘Sharecroppers,’ Manfred said. ‘We’ll be sharecroppers.’ He grinned so cheerfully at this prospect that I couldn’t help smiling too.

  ‘Too good to be true,’ Bill said when I got home.

  ‘Half of nothing’s nothing,’ I said, ‘They probably don’t know how to grow a radish. But they seemed nice.’

  ‘It’s your inheritance.’

  They really haven’t given me any reason to worry. The opposite, in fact.

  If I did move out there I’d have to quit Dreamcatcher. Too far to drive. Closer to Firestick.

  I should have taken that phone number.

  Oh, really?

  Leaving aside the ethics of taking confidential information from a client’s file, what exactly would I say?

  ‘Hello. You don’t know me but people say I look like someone who was born on your reserve. No, she didn’t live there. She left when she was a baby. She was adopted. So was I. More or less. Only later. I was wondering, um, if you might recognize me. Or someone might. Or I might recognize them. Except I don’t remember the first ten years of my life. No, I don’t know that I came from your reserve. It’s just ...’

  The phone rings. Jesus.

  “Meg? This is Cathy.”

  “Hey Meg,” Doug smiles at me from by the coffee maker.

  “How’s it going?” Jay asks.

  Cathy’s clicking open the gate behind me. She brushes past, sheets of paper clutched in both hands. “Reworked schedules.” She waves them around. Doug retreats into the back closet. “Meg’s filling in. Tanya had an emergency.”

  Jay shakes her head at Doug who’s looking alarmed.

  “Silly me,” Cathy says, staring at the pin-board. “I must have forgotten to print out one sheet. Back in a minute.”

  Once she’s gone Jay says, “Doctor called to say they could fit Tanya’s mom in this afternoon.”

  Doug nods. “She’s lost more weight. We talked about taking her to Emergency but it’s such a zoo. Anyway Ruth put her foot down.” He glances at me. “Tanya’s mother.”

  “Who is a force to be reckoned with.” Jay shakes her head. “You think Tanya’s got the look, you should see her mother. Funny though. The jokes she tells. Make a baboon blush.”

  “Here we go.” Cathy rustles back in. It’s not that she wears particularly noisy clothing but somehow you can always hear her.

  Jay looks at Doug.

  “Cathy,” he says, “would it be possible to ask Emmett to come in and talk to the clients?”

  “Is there a problem?” Cathy asks, broad forehead furrowing.

  “Homophobia,” Doug says. “It’s making life hard for Geoffrey. And it could get worse.”

  “Warren’s a powder keg and Joey and James want his approval,” Jay says.

  If I were Cathy I would not appreciate the tone of her voice.

  After a moment Cathy says, “I don’t see why not. Of course it’s important the protocols are followed.”

  “Of course,” Jay says solemnly.

  Cathy bustles off.

  Jay looks at me. “You ever heard the talk?”

  I shake my head.

  “I think you’ll find it very interesting.” Her eyes rest a little too long on my face.

  “I’m sure I will,” I say.

  Jay raises her eyebrows, not missing my tone. I don’t care.

  Doug stands up. “I’m going for a walkabout.”

  Julie must smoke a couple of packs a day. Last thing at night is the only time I’ve found her in the room. Danielle’s sitting on her bed as usual. She’s wearing a pale pink cashmere turtleneck. Designer jeans. Somehow you can tell they’re not fake.

  “How’s it going?” I ask.

  She wrinkles her nose.

  “What’s up?”

  “My counsellor. Angela. She’s ... she’s not very friendly. Not like you. It’s easy to talk to you.”

  I shouldn’t be pleased. “She’s a good counsellor,” I say. “She’s been doing this a long time.” I don’t add that she scares the shit out of me, yellow-eyed glare, skin leathery as a coyote carcass hung on a fence all summer,

  Danielle says, “I just need to talk. Get it off my mind, you know.”

  “Stuff from childhood?”

  She shakes her head. “Shit that happened after I got here. Canada, I mean. Well, Firestick.”

  I lean back against the door jamb. “How was it, going there?”

  “You got a minute?”

  I nod.

  “My aunt picked me up from the bus in Edson. I spent the first day with her. Judy’s cool. Her house isn’t much but she looks after it, you know. A couple of her kids used to live with her but she made them move out because they wouldn’t stop using. She got clean and sober four years ago. She was so happy to have me there, being clean too. She said I was a sign from the Creator. She wants me to help her bring healing to the reserve. When I’m finished here. To make it a clean reserve like the one they made the movie about. Something Lake. It ... It all seemed real hopeful even though I was bummed about my birth Mom. Who’s Judy’s sister. She had me when she was fourteen. The nuns persuaded her to give me up for adoption. She didn’t want to but they persuaded her. After that she just started drinking all the time. Then she hooked up with a trucker and they drove around a lot but she would come back to have her babies. My grandmother looked after them but she died last year.” Danielle’s staring down at the bedcover, dark hair hanging forward, covering her face.

  “And your mother?”

  “She lives on the reserve.”

  I wait. At last Danielle lifts her head and looks at me. “I put together sixty days in jail, didn’t pick up through the whole deportation thing. Even when I went to my Mom’s trailer and her boyfriend was drunk and she was smoking fucking crack—excuse my language—even then I didn’t want to pick up but when I met my brothers ... I have three brothers and two sisters who didn’t even know I existed until my aunt told them I was coming. When I met my brothers and they were shit-faced on a Thursday afternoon, I just ... I just felt like, who am I to think I can be any different? This is who I am, you know. I wanted to know where I came from and this is it.” She starts to cry. “I never fit my adopted family and here is why. That’s what I kept thinking. This is who I am. A drunk, junkie whore.”

  Tears trickle down her cheeks like rain on a windshield.

  “You didn’t pick up,” I say, “You came here instead. You’re changing your life. That’s what counts.”

  “I prayed. I went in their bathroom which stank of beer piss, you know? Piss and puke. It smelled like a bar room bathroom nobody cleaned for a hundred years but I went in there and I kneeled down and prayed God to keep me sober and He did. I know if I do that every day I’ll be okay, it’s just ...”

  She reaches for the box of tissues by her bed and blows her nose with a loud snort.

  “It’s just hard, eh?”

  She nods. I hesitate. “Feel free not to answer,” I say, “but how was it, meeting your mother? I mean I know she was high but ...”

  “She ran around screaming ‘my baby.’” Danielle’s voice is flat. “Then she asked if I had any money, then she passed out.”

  Chapter Twenty Five

  “THE BROTHERS WANT to talk to me about something.”

  “Mm.” Dad’s sitting in his chair, sun so low in the sky now it slants through the window an hour after noon.

  “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “They haven’t said anything to me.”

  His eyes wander off to the mountains. I can’t make out his expression at all.

  “Is it working well for you, having them here?”

  “Very well.”

  “How was the visit to the doctor?”

  Something flicks across his face. Surprise?

  “Routine,” he says.

  The word Victor used.

  “I was thinking I should have the name and number of your doctor, just in case.”

  “Of course,” h
e says. “I’ll get it for you.” He doesn’t move.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, standing up, looking expectant.

  “Bring me the address book then.”

  In the little wooden box by the phone is the neat pile of scrap paper Mum cut up for notes. A lifetime supply. Pens and sharpened pencils in the pinch pottery mug I made in Grade Six. The black leather-bound address book is on the shelf under the phone, gilt letters almost worn away.

  Dad opens it with his gnarled hands, marks the spot with the little ribbon, passes it over.

  Gazing down at the page of Mum’s precise copper plate I smell gravy but only for a moment. The doctor’s name stands out in Dad’s slanting scratch. Dr. Edith Nesbitt 780 682 4340.

  I look up. “Your doctor’s in Edmonton?”

  “Victor and Manfred don’t mind. They say they always have errands to run.”

  “They’ve been driving you into Edmonton for doctor’s appointments? You could have told me you were in the city.”

  “I don’t like to intrude.”

  “You wouldn’t be intruding,” I say but I know it’s not quite true. I didn’t really mind that Mum wouldn’t set foot in my sinful house.

  Dad spreads the blanket over his lap then reaches for his mug.

  “This doctor knows?”

  He nods.

  I’m trying to picture the scene. The first appointment. “And she’s all right with ...”

  “Yes.”

  Eventually I ask, “How did you find this doctor? I didn’t know they’d take patients from outside the city.”

  “It’s time for my nap,” Dad says.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  SMOKE RISES FROM the rusty chimney then bends to the ground. I knock on the flimsy storm door. Manfred opens it. His smile spreads to his brown eyes. I hold out the paper bag.

  “Thank you, Meg. Come in.” He stands aside, bulky as a hand-knit sweater where Victor is slight. With grey eyes and darker stubble. A twist in his sharp nose. They’re both wearing jeans with black belts and big silver buckles. Manfred’s gut strains his flannel shirt. Not the full rancher’s paunch but it’s grown since they moved here. They’re in their fifties, I think. A faint air of tragedy clings to them. As if they once had everything—families, cars, houses of their own—but then whatever it was happened and here they are, making the best of things. Clean shirts, plaid, red or blue, are folded neatly on the bench along one side of the built-in table. A pile of socks, rolled. Two pairs of jeans, one larger than the other.

  “Laundry day,” Manfred says, scooping up the shirts and jeans.

  I scoot along the bench while he makes coffee and look out the picture window. Like the house, the trailer’s sited so the window frames the mountains. I reach for the sugar as Victor puts a mug in front of me. The brothers’ coffee is tar strong and bitter. Manfred stirs three spoonfuls into his.

  I look around. “I can’t believe how much better this place looks.” I stop.

  “Than when we brought it here?” Manfred’s grinning. “I remember your face. And you were right, it was a dump.”

  “Price was right.” Victor slips onto the other bench.

  “Yeah, the guy even let us use his flatbed to move it.”

  “Wanted to get it out of there.”

  “I just remember it being brown inside,” I say.

  They’ve painted it butterscotch yellow.

  “Salvation Army,” Victor says, nodding at the curtains which are acid green with white wiggly stripes. “Cheap and cheerful.”

  “It looks great.”

  We sip our coffee. After a minute I say, “I had no idea you were driving Dad all the way into Edmonton for his doctor’s appointments.”

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Victor says at the same time as Manfred says, “We’re glad to do it.” They have that Manitoba lilt.

  “He’s a lovely man,” Manfred says.

  Victor deals three plates around the table, sets the bread board, loaf and knife in the middle. “More coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  He adds a dish of butter, a pot of honey. “Store bought. But next year perhaps we’ll have our own.”

  I feel a little sag of relief. “Dad would like that.”

  “It’s good for the system, raw honey,” Victor says. “And if we want him to live to a hundred and ten ...”

  “Where did you learn to cook?” I ask.

  The knife slicing into the loaf stops. They glance at each other. Victor says, “From TV.”

  “Butter?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Do you like the heel?”

  “You take it, if you like it.”

  “Manfred does.” Victor butters the heel meticulously and passes it to Manfred then picks up his own slice. “Your health,” he says, waving the slice my way and biting into it. Manfred and I follow suit. All three of us chew thoughtfully then swallow.

  “It’s good,” Manfred says.

  “Very good,” Victor says. “Just the right amount of rye.” They’re looking at each other. Manfred gives a tiny nod. “Why we wanted to talk to you,” Victor says. “We like it here. This place. The land.” He nods toward the window. “We like growing things just as much as we thought we would. It was a trial, this summer. Now we have an idea. But. Well, it’s an investment, this idea.”

  Shit.

  “We want to raise organic wheat. Alberta grown organic. Nobody’s doing it. We think there’s a market.”

  “Local food. Slow food.” Victor tips his head at the TV. “It’s coming. Even here. Your father has the equipment. It’s old but Manfred can fix anything. The land along the river. That’s good soil. Thanks to Ben fallowing the land between crops. Farming organically, you’ve got lower inputs but ...”

  Here it comes: the pitch.

  “But it’s a commitment. Takes three years to get certified. We’d need ... Well, we’d need to know we could go on, even if your father. Even if your father passed away.”

  “Oh.”

  “A lease. Or something. Which depends ...”

  “On your plans. If.”

  “When.”

  They look at me, heads tilted to one side, two eager dogs.

  “Have you talked to Dad?”

  “Not yet. We knew ...”

  “Thought ...

  “He’d like the idea. But it would only work if you ...”

  “We didn’t want to put you in an awkward ...”

  “Position.”

  The hell with Bill, I think, touched.

  “We’re not expecting you to answer right away.”

  I look down at my plate, blinking, thick white china, a band of red diamonds blurring around the rim.

  “Are you alright?” Victor’s brow is creased. “Did we upset you, talking about ...?”

  “About after ...”

  “You didn’t do anything.” I stand up. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll think about it, okay?”

  Dad shakes his head. “Won’t work. Not if they want a premium for organic. Have to sell to the Wheat Board. They set the price.” His face brightens. “Unless they mill it themselves.”

  Dad and his schemes. Most of the land here wasn’t good enough for grain. Hence the livestock experiments. Sheep when everyone else ran cattle. For a while he was going to make socks. He’d even found a special sock knitting machine. Mum figured out what it would take to wash and card and spin the wool. Nipped that plan in the bud. Around us the farms got bigger and bigger, farmers deeper and deeper into debt. Mum would never have that. Truth to tell she was just as determined to make the place pay, and just as willing to work dawn to dark. She always had a part-time job off the farm. On the cash register at the Co-op mostly.

  Dad’s looking at me, waiting for something.

  “Sorry. What were you asking?”

  “Did you find anyone selling fresher flour?”

  “No but I haven’t looked very hard.”

  “So what do you think?” He sounds oddly casual.r />
  “About?”

  “Leasing land to Victor and Manfred.”

  We both know that’s not the real question. “Sun’s setting,” I say. Dad turns to watch. The peaks bite into the orange globe. When it’s down to a slim rind and the sky is indigo, I say, “I can’t imagine selling this place. But then I can only just believe that Mum is gone. There are moments I don’t believe it.” My voice goes shaky.

  “I know.”

  “What would you like me to do?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s your decision.” He reaches for his cane. “Excuse me.”

  When Dad has made his way back to the armchair I ask, “How did you meet the brothers?”

  “They must have heard about my situation.”

  “They were looking in this area?”

  “I suppose.”

  I know the set of his mouth. ‘He makes rock look chatty,’ Mum used to say. It wasn’t a criticism. He just was, the way the mountains are. “Have they ever asked you for money?”

  He glowers at me. At last he says, “No, they have not. Quite the contrary.”

  “They don’t have access to your bank account, anything like that?”

  “That boyfriend of yours, I thought you were done with him.”

  I stare at him. He never makes reference to my personal life, least of all in that pointy, sideways way. “What’s Bill got to do with it?”

  “He called me up, asked me those sorts of questions.”

  “Bill did?”

  “I told him he was damned impertinent.”

  “Bill called you and asked you ...” I shake my head. “When? He never told me.”

  “I sent him off with a flea in his ear.” Dad’s accent gets more British when he’s angry.

  “The sneaky, condescending bastard,” I say, “going behind my back.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  “DID YOU GET out to visit your father?” Doug asks. He waves a mug my way. I nod and he pours fresh coffee. “How is he?”

  Jay’s eyes rest on me just long enough to catch the tiny shake of my head.

  “Good,” I say. “Amazingly good. He’s a hundred and there’s nothing wrong with him health-wise other than a bit of arthritis. He’s just slow. Not his mind, how he moves. Everything takes forever. And he falls asleep a lot. But he still enjoys things. Goes for a walk most days.”