When he gets there Victor says, “His hearing is remarkable. It’s better than Manfred’s. Too much banging and clanging.”
“He really did work on the railway?”
“Oh yes. Thirty years with CN.”
“And you, after the sausage shop?”
“Worked in restaurants. Owned my own for a while. The recession in the early nineties.” He shakes his head. “Catering after that. Until Manfred could retire. I didn’t have a lot to show for all that work. Never owned a place in Vancouver. Rents kept going up. Neither of us wanted to end our days in the city anyway.” He glances at me. “We did both grow up in Manitoba, just not in the same town. Never could get used to the rain in B.C., eh? Give me a dry cold.”
We both hear the toilet flush.
“I know I need to answer your question,” I say. “I’m just not quite there yet.”
“It’s not as if we’ll be sowing seed any time soon. But the sooner we start the paperwork certification ...”
“I understand,” I say, opening the fridge door to hide my irritation.
“I’ll leave you to your supper,” Victor says. He pulls on his coat and toque and steps into his boots. “Front door’s drifted in,” he says, opening the backdoor. Snow hurtles sideways in the lamplight. “Manfred will plough in the morning when the wind drops.”
Why am I such a jerk? “Thank you,” I say, “Victor. Really.”
He nods and shuts the door behind him.
I’m so cranky these days.
Not enough meetings.
Meetings aren’t the answer to everything.
After we eat I’ll call my voicemail again.
And lying about the phone number, what are you going to do about that?
Dad comes out of the washroom. “Victor gone already?”
“Yes.”
“I’d be the size of a house if I ate like this all the time,” I say, wiping up the last of the nutty, savoury juice with a crust. The tang of the kimchee-kraut lingers in the air.
Dad’s eyes are closing. Time for the postprandial nap. I’m eighty now. I’m allowed a postprandial nap. Dad when I was newly sober. I came home to make amends but I wasn’t ready. Got in a huff about him saying he had a right to a nap. As if he was somehow criticizing me. I couldn’t walk down the street without picking up a resentment. A man from New York City said that at a meeting one time, early on. Got a good laugh. Uneasy, in my case. Almost twenty years ago. Maybe I should resurrect the acceptance project. Work on being grateful for what I have. I like pottering about in the kitchen, washing up while the kettle boils. The curtain-less window reflects the lamplight, the chrome legs of the Formica table, the wooden cat-shaped clock on the wall, my own broad face. I look like a woman at home. Nothing complicated. The kettle boils and clicks off. I listen. There’s the purr of the gas heater, the tick of the clock. Outside there’s nothing but wind and snow. This is what I miss the most, I think, in the city. The absence of noise. But it isn’t just an absence. I wonder if Dad could describe it. I tried to say it to Bill once, the feeling of a waiting emptiness, of something like welcome in the silence.
In the living room Dad snuffles and yawns. The armchair creaks.
“You awake?” I ask.
“Mm.”
“Want some tea?”
“I’ll join you in a pot of that peppermint. Shall I go on with my story?”
“Let me just call home. Check my messages.”
I stand on the other side of the bookshelf, my back to him, as if he’s going to hear whatever’s on my voicemail. Punch in the numbers. My fingers miss the slinky coiled wire on the old phone. It hung on the wall by the front door. I used to drive Mum mad, stretching it out, letting it snap back. One new message. Breathe. It’s Val, calling to see how I’m doing.
“Now, where were we?’
“Nineteen twenty eight. Two more years.”
“You’re going to be disappointed.”
I wave him on with my hand.
“Very well. It was 1926 when I met Georgina. The slump that followed the war was over. So was the drought. Times were good for farmers on the prairies.” He shakes his head. “Always the same old story, farming. At a dollar sixty a bushel, everyone piled in. Good weather on top of that and you had too much wheat. The 1928 harvest wasn’t all sold by the time the next one was coming in. Price of wheat dropped. Whole thing was coming unwrapped even before the stock markets crashed. The boss had borrowed money to buy more trucks. But with wheat down to thirty-two cents a bushel, farmers dusted off their wagons, started hauling their own grain to the elevator. The bank took most of what he had and by the next summer I was out of a job, along with half of everybody else. I had some money saved and a friend who was in a similar situation. Mary Fraser. She’d been engaged to be married but the fellow changed his mind.” He smiles, looks over at me. “Secretly I was glad. I didn’t admit that, even to myself, but I remember the spring in my step after she told me.
“We bought tickets to Edmonton, third class. Train was all men but us. A couple of them appointed themselves our protectors, kept the rest at bay. They flirted but they were respectful. It was late when we pulled in. We thought we’d find a cheap hotel but it was like being a couple of pigeons surrounded by hawks. They were recruiting all right. Anything female would do. They even had women who’d come in the ladies’ waiting room where we were huddled up. Telling us they had a nice clean place for us to stay. We didn’t know who to believe. Finally the ticket collector told us he was locking up for the night. We asked him to lock us in but he wouldn’t. Mary started to cry. He told us the YWCA would be our best bet. If we waited a few minutes he’d walk us there.
“Whoever said there was work to be had in Edmonton was dreaming. Neither of us could stand dribbling away the precious bit of money we had on the YWCA. Plenty of people were sleeping out in the river valley. Mostly men. Some women but not by themselves. I’d camped out all over the West with Dorothy, driving the bus. But that was in the bush.
“We were walking along the bluffs not far from where you live, Mary and I, looking down at the camps.
“‘Nobody would bother you if you were with a fellow,’ I said. Mary looked at me strangely. ‘Well they wouldn’t.’
“‘You couldn’t. You wouldn’t.’
“I stared at her. She was examining me, head on one side. Suddenly I knew what she was talking about and I knew that I’d do it. ‘Just until we get on our feet.’
“‘Your hair.’
“‘It’ll grow back. What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll keep to ourselves.’ She thought she ought to talk me out of it but I could tell she was relieved.
“We went back to the YWCA. I put on Mary’s spare clothes which looked quite funny, her being six inches shorter and several inches more on the front. We packed up and checked out. There were any number of characters selling second-hand clothing. We exchanged all my clothes except my underwear for a pair of trousers, two shirts, an undershirt, a jacket, socks, a pair of boots and a couple of blankets. Then we went down to the river. We found a spot in a thicket of willows near the bridge. Mary sat me down on a stump, cut off my hair with a pair of nail scissors. I shook my head. It felt as if it would float up off my neck. I ran my fingers through the sharp hairs at the back of my neck, over bones in my skull I’d never felt before. She went back out to the track, made double sure no-one was around. I changed into my new outfit.” He shakes his head, smiling. “Woman went into the willow brake, came back out a fellow.”
“And you never ...?”
“One thing led to another.” He shrugs. “It was never the right time.”
“Seventy years and it was never once the right time?”
“Polly and I met, bought this land, built the house. It’s just who we were by then.” He gazes back at me.
His eyes are turquoise, the rings around the irises dark. For a moment it’s easy to believe his hair is blonde again, thick and brushy. Freshly cut.
“So y
ou see, it wasn’t very dramatic.”
“And you never told anyone except Mum?”
“Strictly speaking, I didn’t tell her. She knew.”
After a while I say, “Mum told all the stories, growing up. I thought that was just you. That you didn’t talk much. But all the time you had these other stories in your mind.”
Dad waits to make sure I’m finished. “They were there,” he says slowly, “but it wasn’t until ... It was so unexpected, Polly going first. A few weeks later I woke up in the night thinking, ‘I have to tell Meg.’ The two thoughts hit me together, that I could tell you now and that I must tell you.”
“Mum wouldn’t let you?”
Dad looks surprised. “I never asked her. It was unthinkable, that I would do that to her.”
“Do what? Tell me?”
“Tell anyone.” He reaches for his cane.
“So you didn’t. But what about you? What did you want?”
“I made my choice.”
“And that’s what it was? A choice? A matter of convenience. For seventy years?”
He eyes me. At last he says, “I don’t know how to answer that. But I do know it’s time for bed.”
Chapter Thirty Six
I LIE IN bed, the wind a giant blundering about in the dark. Images string themselves together. Charlotte driving the ambulance. On the little station platform, head thrown back, gazing at the prairie sky. With Dorothy, repairing the Sunday School van. Charlotte and Georgina riding out across the prairie. Charlotte and Mary on the bluffs in Edmonton. Then Charlotte goes into the willows. Out comes Ben in his men’s clothes, his short hair. He strolls off into the future without a backward glance.
A woman went into the willows ... Gleaming like a pelt among brittle leaves, that coil of hair, abandoned but strangely alive.
‘What did you do with the hair?’
It’s like waking up from a dream. A voice so clear in my head. ‘What did you do with the hair?’
Questions pile up like snow against the door.
When I wake again, the wind has dropped.
I’m up before Dad, before light, out in the iron cold, shovelling snow. The drifts against the door stand, sculpted, more stone than pillow, peaks and ridges inhospitable, remote. I carve a path through. Wind scoured the top of the car clean but in the lee the snow lies soft, smothering. I shovel the car free. Shovel fast. I’m sweating. The stars are fading. When lights come on I go inside. My skin burns in the warmth.
We eat breakfast in silence. Dad casts the odd puzzled look my way but I’ve got no words for any of it, and if there’s one thing we know, the two of us, it’s how not to talk.
When I’ve washed up and called my voicemail, I sit down again. He raises an eyebrow at me.
“You became a man just like that?”
“I was ready for a change.”
“It can’t have been that easy.”
“People see what they expect to see.”
“Except Mum. She knew. Somehow.” I look at him.
“I don’t know how. She just did.”
“And everybody else took you at face value.”
“It really was easy.”
“Right from the start?”
“The first day was a bit nerve-wracking but nobody gave me a second look. Well, except for a couple of girls. That was a bit of a surprise.” He grins. “We walked around for a while. I watched how men moved. Mary watched me. Corrected me when I was womanish. I changed how I walked.”
“More strut, less sway?”
“Exactly. Stiffened up my shoulders. When I was ready I gruffed my voice and we bought canvas and some rope. A hatchet and a Billy-can.
“People were camped all the way down the river valley. Some had even carved caves into seams of coal. We found a site up a little side ravine. I’m not sure either of us got a lot of sleep that first night. Over the next few days it got easier and easier. It was fun, actually. The wall that cut the world in two, men on one side, women on the other, turned out to be no more than a stage curtain. That’s how I felt, anyway. Mary though, I’d catch her stealing little looks at me. The more confident I became, the more uneasy she was. The whole idea was for people to assume we were a couple but I don’t think she liked it much when they did.”
“For some reason.”
“I was just playing a part.”
“A part that came naturally?”
“Mm.”
After a moment I ask, “What did you call yourself?”
He looks surprised. “Ben.”
“From the beginning?”
“Mary wanted to call me Charles. She thought she’d be less likely to slip up. I remember saying to her, ‘It’s not as if you get a chance to choose your own name very often.’
“She said, ‘When I find a husband, I will.’
“That was a moment when I felt ...”—he hesitates—“relief. As a girl the only thing people seemed to care about was who I would marry. Marriage didn’t interest me at all. It never had. So I always felt ... out of step. But as Ben”—he shrugs—“I could just be myself.”
“So you weren’t attracted to men?”
“No. Was I attracted to women? I’d say so now. At the time I had close friends.”
“But you never ...” I stop. This feels too weird.
“Your mother was ...” He nods.
“And by then you were, you were Ben. Was that ...”
“The reason I stuck with it?” He studies me. “I did what I did and life unfolded. Could I have chosen a different path? I didn’t. Would I have chosen a different path if it had been acceptable to be gay? Would I have chosen a different path if I were a different person? More inclined to confront than avoid. Possibly, but I wasn’t.”
“That’s it? “
He shrugs.
“But Dad, what did you do about papers? A birth certificate, all that?”
“Those were simpler times.”
“And the war? The Second World War. They had conscription?”
“I was too old by then. And a rancher. Which meant I was exempt.”
“Why Ben Coopworth?”
“I like the name.”
“But it wasn’t your name.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“So where did it come from? You can’t just make up a name and, and buy land, get a driver’s license, get married. Did you get married? Legally?”
“Yes.” His eyes have the icy glitter. We both hear the rumble of the tractor. “He’s got it running like a Porsche.” Dad nods in the direction of the sound. “He’s more of a mechanic than I ever dreamed of being, Manfred is. I preferred horses, really, but it wasn’t practical.”
“Dad.”
“I think that’s enough for now.”
I take a deep breath. “I should get on the road then.”
Dad shakes his head. “They’ll have cleared 22 by now but I doubt they’ve ploughed out the side roads.”
“So what are you willing to talk about?” I’m embarrassed as soon as the words come out. “Sorry.”
Dad’s face softens.
There’s a knock on the front door. It’s Manfred, stamping snow from his boots and swinging his arms.
“Thought I’d let you know the plough came by just as I was cleaning out the head of the driveway.”
“Great. Thank you,” I say.
“Saw you’d shovelled out your car already. Thought you might be in a hurry.”
I’ve got hours until work tonight but I’m only going to get into trouble here. “I’ve got a bunch of shifts in a row,” I say. “It’ll be a while before I’m back out.”
“Let me know you got home safely,” Dad says.
“I will. I’m just going to get my sweater.” Making the bed the view snags me. Mountains gleam under the morning’s newly scrubbed sky. Mountains wrapped in blankets of fresh snow. Between here and there, Firestick.
Turning away from the window, Wheat and Woman catches my eye. I pick it up, take it downsta
irs.
“Mind if I borrow this?”
“Not at all. Drive carefully.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
“WHAT’S THIS?” TANYA jabs her finger at the schedule.
“The new aftercare component.” Cathy, trying to sound casually assertive.
“And I’m supposed to do what?”
“Teach the clients relaxation techniques. It’s easy.”
“No.”
“Really. There’s a tape ...” Cathy takes a deep breath, flicks the hair back from her face. “This is not optional. Brenda says ...”
“Instead of helping clients find housing we’re going to teach them to relax about being homeless?”
“You’ll have to take this matter up with the Executive Director.” Cathy turns to stalk out of the room, catching several sheets of paper and a can of hairspray on the way.
When the gate clicks shut Tanya looks around the office, eyebrows raised.
“Brenda will get you for this,” Jay says.
Tanya shrugs. “I’m not qualified to teach”—she drags the words out—“relaxation techniques.” Her face breaks into a smile.
“Fuck ‘em, eh?” Jay says.
“Dumb as my arse,” Heather says. “That’s what our Cathy is.” She looks at Jay and me, shaking her head, red lipstick lips pursed.
I take a deep breath. “I can’t help it,” I say. “I feel sorry for her. Stuck between us and Brenda.”
“She took the job,” Jay says. “And don’t forget, she’s John Paul’s plant.”
“That’s right. She was working for him over at Métis Child and Family Services.”
“He took over the board here, saw we needed supervising and snapped his fingers. She does what she’s told.” Jay’s looking at me.
“Like the good soldier she was,” Heather says. “Johnny boy loves his soldiers.”
“He and Bob were military buddies, weren’t they? At least Brenda’s better than Bob.”
“Not a high bar. Brenda actually works.”
“Mm. I don’t think our Brenda’s shown her true colours yet.”
I feel like a kid listening to the grown-ups talk. “Think I’ll do a room check.” Walking down the corridor to the bedrooms I can’t help wondering what they’re saying about me. ‘Even more out of it than usual, isn’t she?’
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