Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  “Finally it was the end of August, fresh snow on the peaks already. Harvest in. We’d dug a root cellar, filled that to the brim. We’d levelled off the spot for the cabin. Hauled good flat stones for the corners. I was set to fell the first tree. Polly came out with me. I picked up the axe. I was feeling excited as a child and solemn at the same time. She said, ‘Don’t cut that tree.’

  “‘Why not? We don’t have much time.’

  “‘Because I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  “‘A surprise?’

  “‘It’s coming on the train.’

  “‘What surprise?’

  “‘Guess.’

  “I hefted the axe. I was annoyed, truth be told. She knew I was worried about getting a roof on before winter. She didn’t seem to take it seriously enough.

  “She came and stood between me and the tree. ‘There’s a house coming, Ben. A kit.’

  “I let the axe back down, rested the head on the ground.

  “‘Everything we need. Floorboards. Even the nails.’

  “‘Have you gone mad?’

  “She was laughing. I was scared as well as angry now. ‘I’ve got trees to fell or do you want to freeze this winter?’ I lifted the axe again.

  “‘Ben, Ben, I’m not joking. I’m not mad.’ She took my arm. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll explain. It’s a kit. It’s already paid for.’

  “‘How?’

  “‘When you went to the feed merchant the other week I went to the bank.’

  “‘You borrowed money? Are you mad? But they wouldn’t ...’

  “She was shaking her head. ‘No, it was my money, set aside.’

  “‘What money?’

  “She leaned over, kissed me, which didn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like any of it. That she hadn’t told me. That she had money hidden away. That we weren’t going to build the house we’d talked about. That all the times we’d sat up in bed talking about what we’d build, how we could add on later, she’d had another plan going.

  “‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked her.

  “She leaned back. ‘Because I wanted to make sure you were the good, solid, hard-working husband you seemed to be.’

  “‘Fine, but where did you get the money for a kit? That’s $400 at least.’ I stared at her.

  “‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  “I could never stand it when she cried. But I was still angry. Counted to ten, then twenty. When I could speak normally I asked, ‘How much was it?’

  “‘$488. Freight included. And a dollar back for every knot you find in the wood.’

  “‘Where did that money come from?’

  “‘I saved it.’

  “‘How?’

  “‘None of your business.’

  “She glared back at me. I knew the glitter in her eye. She always did have a temper.”

  There’s a knock on the door. I jump.

  “It’s me.” Victor’s voice.

  “Come on in,” Dad calls.

  I look across at the clock. It’s only 11:30.

  “Hello Ben, hello Meg.” Victor’s head pokes through the kitchen doorway. He smiles uncertainly at me. “I brought soup for you to heat up. Potato and kielbasa with kale. Throw the kale in at the end. Cook it for less than a minute. I shaved it really fine so it stays crunchy. That’s how they do it in Portugal. Sort of Portuguese-Polish. The Portuguese add olive oil at the end but with the kielbasa ...”

  “Victor, stop. I’m sorry I was so abrupt yesterday. With Manfred.” He looks at me, clear grey eyes. “I really do appreciate everything you do here.”

  Dad’s looking at me too.

  “Well, you’re welcome. I have to go. Manfred’s got a dentist’s appointment.”

  “Hungry?”

  Dad shakes his head. “They’re good men, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s all right,” he says. “Take your time.” His eyes roam the room.

  “A kit?” I look around too.

  “Pieces came already cut. Numbered. A picture to follow.”

  “I always thought you designed it yourselves. I thought it was a perfect expression of the two of you.”

  “Perfectly square, you mean?”

  “Why didn’t she tell you?”

  “She liked to have the edge. Know a little more than you. Didn’t matter mostly. But.” He shrugs. “We were equal,” he says, “until then. A team.”

  “You never found out where it came from, the money?”

  He shakes his head.

  My mind is spitting out questions but I don’t say anything. After a minute he says, “I always did want to build that log house. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. I’d been thinking about it ever since Dorothy and I drove all over Western Canada. Imagining the choices I’d make, if ever I had the chance.”

  “Perhaps I should build myself a log cabin here. You could design it.” The words slip out. He looks as startled as I feel. And pleased. Which he carefully smoothes away.

  “Nice and dark and low to the ground,” he says. “Moss to pack in the cracks forever. Spiders. How the spiders loved those old log homes.”

  “Like the trapper’s.” I’m back there on the bed, half asleep while they talk, the glow of pipes in the shadowy room. “It was like a cave. I felt safe. It might have been the first time I felt truly safe.”

  “At Moira’s?”

  “Falling asleep. I’ve always remembered that. I went to sleep under the blanket of your voices. Nothing could carry me away. I was always afraid. To go to sleep. When nobody was watching I could be taken away.”

  The words sink in like water into sand.

  Finally he says, “You were always watching, weren’t you?”

  “I was always afraid. But less. After that visit. I went to sleep so softly and when I woke up you were still there, talking, and you were glad I was awake. It was like waking up in a shaft of sunlight, the two of you glad I existed.”

  “Ah Meg, we were always glad, beyond glad, Polly and I.”

  I nod but I want to cry. It wasn’t with Mum I felt that ease. Mum who cooked and cleaned and asked me questions after school. Because she never had that easiness. Dad is like the mountains. He’s here. Mum, she was always proving something.

  I drop the bundle of finely-sliced kale into the boiling liquid, stir it once then ladle it into the bowls I set out.

  We’re silent for the grace Mum would have said, pick up our spoons at the same time.

  “Mmm,” Dad says after the first mouthful.

  “Mmm, mm. I never thought I liked kale.”

  “No,” Dad says with feeling. Mum grew it for a couple of years. Limp, brownish and tasting of old cabbage, it was a completely different beast. Perhaps she didn’t like it either because it slipped off the menu.

  “Whole wheat or rye?” I ask. “To go with this? Not that I have either here,” I hasten to add, seeing Dad’s hopeful look. “I haven’t felt like making any lately. I suppose with all the potato it doesn’t really need bread.”

  “Reason not the need,” Dad says.

  “King Lear. Lear speaking, I think.”

  “Correct,” he says.

  It’s a game we used to play the other way round. I’d bring home whatever play we were studying in English, read a phrase. He could almost always identify the character. Often he’d carry on the speech or the dialogue. Lear and The Tempest he knew word for word.

  “I read Twelfth Night again the other week. Manfred and Victor said you recommended it to them. I was curious. Was it all the gender bending stuff or was there something I missed?”

  “No, mostly it amused me. When I was alone, prospecting, I’d read it at night by the fire. I was ... Well, I was quite lonely in those days.”

  “After you’d become a man?”

  “And before I met Polly.”

  “I can’t really imagine what it was like, to live with that sort of secret. Because you were afraid, weren’t yo
u? When you talked about Mum coming into the clearing, you said it was the moment you’d dreaded.”

  “Mm. What I dreaded was that I’d fall in love with someone. And then what?”

  “Were you in love with Mum? Before she followed you?”

  “Oh yes. But so were half the fellows. They were good-natured though, when Polly made it clear she favoured me.”

  “The one who gave you birch syrup to make your life together sweet?”

  “Jean. Yes, he was one.”

  Dad’s smiling as he spoons in the last of his soup.

  Washing up while Dad takes his nap, I think perhaps I’ll stay tonight as well. Leave early enough tomorrow to catch the Mustard Seed at noon. I’d have a couple of hours at home before work. Which reminds me I haven’t called my voicemail today.

  There are two messages, the first from Val. ‘Just checking up on you. Give me a call sometime.’ Then Judy’s voice wheezes down the line. ‘Call me, Meg. There’s someone you should meet.’ Pause. ‘Just a lead. Not ... Don’t get ...’ She coughs hard. ‘Excited. But call me. He’s only here today and tomorrow.’ She left the message at eight o’clock last night.

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  THE FORESTRY ROAD goes on and on, lodge pole pine and spruce to either side, now and then a clearing surrounded by chain-link fence. A pump jack, some pipes and valves, or a compressor station. No views of the mountains here. It might have been quicker to go up to Drayton Valley but my hands turned the car south toward Rocky Mountain House. One way or the other you have to backtrack once you’ve crossed the river. The reserve is only forty clicks as the crow flies. Three times that far to drive. And it’s not easy driving, the last half, dirt road rutted from logging trucks. My car doesn’t exactly have a lot of clearance. But then nor does Judy’s boat of a Buick.

  He. A ‘he’ who is only here until four today. I wasn’t thinking of a ‘he’.

  The car jolts into a pothole and out again. They’re getting deeper and more frequent. Hard to spot, too. No shadows under a gunmetal grey sky. Finally, the road branches. Five corrugated minutes later I’m outside Judy’s trailer. First house you’ll come to on the right. The tidy one. Looking across the road it’s not hard to see what she means. There’s an old van on blocks in her yard too but it’s tucked behind a little shed. Otherwise the space around the house is clear. Smoke snakes up from the chimney in the middle of the trailer. The drive’s already full of dented trucks and one sleek black rental car. The whole journey’s been like this, my mind busy with details. Should I have brought Judy tobacco too? Today could be the day. I look down at my jeans. Clean enough. Angle the rear-view mirror so I can see my face. “This could be the day.”

  I knock on the flimsy aluminum storm door. The inner door opens and a blast of noise greets me. Judy waves me in. “Turn the volume down.” She tries to yell but doesn’t have the wind. I step right into the living room, every seat occupied by an array of dark-haired men, except for the Lay-Z Boy with the oxygen tank parked next to it. A couple of the men glance my way. Mostly they’re staring at the screen. The room smells of cigarettes and aftershave and detergent and, under that, a slant of sage and sweet-grass.

  The noise stops. Judy, standing by the TV with her sparse brown hair and round face, waits for the complaints to fade. “Leroy, Shawn, Paul,”—she gestures to the three young men squashed together on the chesterfield—“this is Meg. Meg, these are Danielle’s brothers”—they all duck their heads—“and this is Roger, Danielle’s uncle.” Hair cropped so close it’s almost shaved. Military? Fifty-ish. The rental car driver. He actually meets my eyes. “Meg ... well, why don’t you explain?” She’s looking at me.

  What? Shit. Before I can start Paul says, “Turn the sound up, auntie. Come on.” He’s got the longest hair and the pudgiest face. I can see Danielle in him easily enough. When I look more closely, the other two have the same shaped faces. They all look bleary but I can’t smell any booze.

  “Nope,” Judy says.

  “Where’s the frigging remote?”

  “Go watch the game somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, where we can drink our frigging beer. Let’s go.”

  They all heave up out of the chesterfield at the same time.

  “Take your coat off,” Judy says to me as they migrate to the door. “Have a seat. Want some tea? Coffee? Soda? You hungry?”

  “No thanks. I’m good.”

  “See ya.” The door closes behind the three younger men.

  Judy collapses into her chair, her face grey. She reaches for the oxygen tube, fits it to her nose. There’s something intimate and desperate in the way she inhales. I look away.

  The uncle is a jowly man with a hooked nose, meaty arms. His eyes are on the screen. Men armoured like insects run around for two seconds then everything stops. It’s not even hockey. It’s American football.

  “Roger,” Judy says. Reluctantly he looks at her. “Meg might be your niece.”

  Brown eyes examine me for a moment then swing back to her. “Could be,” he says.

  “Your niece Theresa.”

  He doesn’t react.

  Theresa?

  Judy looks at me. “Roger’s brother Dan was Danielle’s father. You’re what, nineteen years older than Danielle?”

  I nod.

  “Dan was married to a woman called Lisa back then. They had a daughter who’d be your age now. Who nobody has seen since Dan and Lisa split up.”

  Roger’s eyes have drifted back to the TV.

  Theresa. For years I tried out names on myself. I’m not sure I ever thought of Theresa. Nothing in me answers. Not to the name, not to this man who seems as tightly stuffed as a sausage and about as warm as the day outside.

  Judy’s watching me.

  “How long ago did they split up?” I ask.

  “Roger?” Judy says.

  The screens fills with the image of a bottle of Molson, sweating lightly.

  He looks at Judy. “Got to be thirty years.”

  Thirty years ago I’d have been twelve. Give or take.

  Roger’s scratching his chin, a rasping noise that crowds my ears.

  He snaps his fingers. “He got a job at the Luscar mine the year I joined the service. 1969.”

  “The mine in Cadomin?” I lean forward.

  He nods. “They’d split up by then, him and Lisa. They had been living in Whitecourt. She and the kid moved to Winnipeg. That’s what he said. He didn’t keep that job long.” He shakes his head, glances at me. “He never could settle to anything, Dan.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Died five, six years ago.”

  “And you never saw the daughter again? What about her mother?”

  “Never saw either of them again. Nobody did. No word, nothing.”

  “Do you have photographs of any of them?”

  Roger shakes his head. “Dan looked a lot like me except not so handsome.”

  I try for a smile.

  “Everyone called him Rabbit. On account of his eyes were kind of far apart.”

  Judy says, “He drove a truck for a while. Up and down to the States.”

  “That’s what he was doing when he and Danielle’s mother met?”

  “They’d known each other their whole lives,” Judy says. “But it’s what he was doing when they got together. Jenny always said she preferred men who wouldn’t clutter up her house and steal her booze.” Judy sighs.

  “Would she have a photograph of him?”

  “If she did, Danielle has it now. She was all over everyone, Danielle was, when she first got here. Photos, stories, anything.”

  “Well,” Roger says, glancing at his wrist.

  Shit. “Before you go, can I write down some information?”

  I get the pen and scrap paper I put in my jacket back at the farm. “So it was Daniel ... Laboucan?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was he born?”

  “October 24th. He was ten years older than me. 1936.”

 
“Where?”

  “Just up the road.”

  “And Lisa, were they actually married?”

  He nods. “She got pregnant and they tied the knot. The way you did, those days. I was twelve, thirteen.”

  “So that would have been 1958, 1959? Do you remember her maiden name?”

  He shakes his head. “Some Ukrainian name. They weren’t best pleased with her, her family. Getting knocked up by an Indian.”

  “What did she look like?”

  He eyes me. “Lot like you. Brown hair, wide face. You know.” He looks at his watch again.

  “What about their daughter? Theresa.”

  He shrugs. “She was just a kid.”

  “Did they have any other children?”

  He shakes his head, stands up and holds out his hand. “Glad to meet you, Meg.”

  After a momentary manly grip he turns to Judy. “Don’t get up. I’ll let myself out.”

  Judy looks at me when we’ve both listened to his car drive away.

  “It could be,” I say.

  Judy waits. When I don’t say anything else she says, “It could.”

  “You met her? Theresa?”

  “Dan was here a few times with Lisa and their girl. For the holidays. They liked to party. Everyone did. Dan and Roger’s parents, they’d be leading the pack, eh? There was always a parcel of kids running wild. Theresa was one of them.”

  Things are colliding in my chest. I stand up. “I need to get something from the car.”

  When I come back in Judy’s leaning back in her chair, inhaling oxygen. When she’s done I hand her the photograph in its wooden frame. She looks at it and me and it again. Dad’s squatting by the water’s edge, head turned to face the camera. I’m standing in the rippling stream, eyes wide, about to freak.

  “When was this taken?”

  “Nineteen sixty nine. About nine months after I got there.” I’m on the cusp of puberty in the photograph. My limbs have stretched, my face has lost some of its childish roundness, but I don’t think I look that different.

  Judy shakes her head. “I’m sorry. It’s possible. But I can’t swear to it. She was one in a parcel of kids. And I was heavy in my own addiction then.” She hands me back the photograph.