Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  “Open up a bakery?” Jay asks.

  “No. I’d sell it at the Farmer’s Market in the city.”

  Doug’s studying me. “Where would you set up?”

  “My Dad’s farm. I could rent out my house in the city, use that to live on. Borrow against the house to buy equipment. If it all worked out, I’d sell the house, pay off the loan.”

  “You’ve really thought this through,” Heather says.

  “No, I really haven’t. It just came out of my mouth.”

  “But it sounds good,” Jay says.

  “I’ve seen the money people are charging for food at the Farmer’s Market,” Tanya says. “City’s changing, eh?”

  I look at Doug. “What about you?”

  “I like working with leather. Plenty of people buying acreages. I’ll be good until the next bust. Might even learn to make boots. Cowboy boots for the well-heeled. Underwrite my unpaid activities.” He smiles at me. “I watched my Dad try to make a go of farming. People pay more for the things they don’t need.”

  “Proves you’re a member of the leisure class,” Jay says. “And you, Heather?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve got my pension but ...” She shrugs. “I was at a meeting last night. Somebody asked if I’d heard about the new treatment centre for women with eating disorders. Thought I might contact them. Of course I could go on a Caribbean cruise. But I think I’d rather talk to someone about throwing up, you know?”

  Chapter Eighty Nine

  I RINSE THE soap off a plate. “So when was this house built?”

  “Nineteen seventy eight. The old place burned down three years after my brother died. I thought it would kill my mother but in an odd way it seemed to help. They sold most of the land. Dad’s heart wasn’t in it. He was already working another job to make ends meet. They built this with some of the money. Plus the insurance.”

  I hand him a plate and he wipes it dry, looking around at the varnished logs.

  “The house I grew up in, it was a plain little hip-roofed prairie house, not that different from your Dad’s place. Before the addition. Which is, by the way, very cool. This place, it’s somebody’s idea of a log cabin.” He shrugs. “It’s an imitation of a real thing, you know? But I love the land. I love the smell when the sun touches the grass in the morning. The colour of the earth. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  I hand him another plate and take a deep breath. He looks as if he’s about to say something but I need to do this. “Doug, you’re not gay, are you?”

  “Me? No. Where did you get that idea?” His eyes narrow. “Wait. Tanya told you.”

  “Not directly.”

  “But you believed it?”

  “I didn’t have any reason not to.”

  He gives me a long look.

  “Well, why wouldn’t I? Everyone looked to you to talk to Geoffrey. When James was being a jerk. And the others. You stood up in front of everybody. You said ...” I squint, trying to bring the words back, Doug standing there, head swivelling, hooded eyes ... “You said, ‘It’s nobody’s business what he is, what I am, who we love. We all deserve the same respect.’”

  “You never heard of solidarity?”

  “And then you gave me that whole spiel about keeping people guessing. What was I supposed to make of that?”

  “It seems I succeeded.” He tips his head to one side, a funny look on his face. “What else?”

  I probably shouldn’t say this. “You’re too sensitive and emotionally smart to be a straight man.”

  He stares at me then he starts to laugh.

  “And anyway, I’d never have invited you to my place for coffee.”

  He stops laughing.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Come on. I just made an idiot of myself.”

  “I was starting to wonder if maybe you were a lesbian.”

  “Me? What made you think that?”

  “The way you talked about the land. When we were up on the Divide.”

  “I have had women lovers but ...”

  “And when you invited me back to your place the first time we went out, then you pretty much pushed me out of the door ...” He shrugs. “I figured one way or the other you weren’t interested. Easier on the ego if you’re gay, I guess. Same reason Tanya decided I was. And you do treat me like a brother.”

  “But you never flirted with me.” My face gets hot.

  “I wanted to but then you were ...” He stops.

  “Too fucked up?”

  “Too vulnerable.”

  “Oh.” He wanted to.

  “On Sunday, when I brought the pho, I told myself it was now or never because, once we left Dreamcatcher, I was afraid we wouldn’t see each other.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was going to ask you out on a date date. Then there you were, all dressed up. You were even wearing perfume. But ...” He shrugs. “It went in another direction. I had been thinking about how you got to the farm. I just wasn’t necessarily going to bring it up then.”

  “But once again I was a basket case.”

  He’s standing there, dishcloth dangling from his hand. He’s waiting for me to meet his eyes. They’re golden brown with darker rays.

  “Meg, you’re a brave woman.”

  “Brave? I hardly ...”

  “Brave. To let it come, the old pain. I spent years running from it. It ran my life, fear of what I felt. Until one day I did what you did the other day.”

  I’m watching his lips move. Soft, rosy lips above the jut of his chin.

  “It changed everything. My moment of liberation. It was so simple. But it took everything it took to get there. To be willing. To accept.” He smiles a crooked smile and my heart squeezes. “Not that everything was right, proper, God’s will, all that. Just that it was what it was and there I was, big enough to feel it.”

  “The other day,” I say slowly, “was a kind of liberation. That’s a good word. But I have another question for you.”

  “Okay.” He looks wary.

  “Do you still want to flirt with me?”

  Like a gust of wind reaching across the surface of a lake, a grin wrinkles his face. “Maybe.”

  “I’m not very good at it.”

  “I’m kind of rusty myself.”

  “So there’s no one else?”

  “No. You?”

  I shake my head. “We could practice.”

  “I know,” Doug says, putting down the cloth. “Why don’t you come and sit on the chesterfield with me?”

  “I could do that.”

  So I do. I like the smell of him but I’m twitchy as a mouse.

  “You don’t have to,” Doug says.

  “It’s not that.”

  “It was easier when I was gay?”

  “Mm. Are you laughing at me?”

  “With you. I’m laughing with you. I’m nervous too.”

  “And I have kind of a disastrous track record.”

  “I consider myself warned. Besides I’m not so good myself at the relationship thing.”

  “How come? Sorry, that’s not exactly a sensitive question. But I’m surprised.”

  “Maybe I like being by myself too much. I like to play my fiddle, ride my horse, eat, walk, think, make stuff. I love Mina and Lorraine but I’m not a family man, you know? I never felt a burning need to have kids of my own. I don’t like noise and TV and parties and sports.”

  “Not even hockey?”

  “Definitely not hockey. Ping pong maybe.”

  “You don’t have much to prove.”

  “The older I get the clearer it is that very little in life is about me.”

  “That’s what Dad says too.”

  “I’m not that old.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Forty nine. You?”

  “Forty two. Ish.”

  He studies me a moment. “I’ve tried to imagine what it’s like to be in your shoes, but I di
dn’t even think of that. Not to know your own birthday.”

  “Mum and Dad always celebrated the day I came to the farm.”

  “And you?”

  “I did too. We decided I turned ten that day. It’s even my official birthday. On my driver’s license.”

  “What day was it?”

  “The sixteenth of September, 1968.”

  “Do you still celebrate it?”

  “Yes, and I always have a hard time on that day. But ...” I shrug.

  He reaches an arm around my shoulders. I lean into him. There’s a new smell like the yeast on wild berries, and then there’s something strange and sweet, like the incense that spreads through the air first thing in the spring when the buds on the balsam poplar grow sticky with resin. It makes you lift up your head, flare your nostrils. His eyes are two suns shining on me, so much light I almost have to look away. I stare back into them and I’m going in and in. Room opens onto room.

  “Doug.”

  “Mm.”

  I’m lifting my face and he’s coming to meet me.

  Chapter Ninety

  THE SILVER APPLE of the moon, the golden apple of the sun.

  Waking, those words drift through my mind. And an image. A low doorway. Moss covered shingles.

  I’m glad I didn’t stay last night. Though I wanted to. Silver bubble in my chest the whole drive home. It’s still there.

  He adores you.

  Maybe.

  You’re not the beggar at the feast. Old Lip-tooth. Me and my scarcity mentality.

  Okay, so I’ve known Doug for ... He started working at Dreamcatcher when Danielle arrived. A week after Geoffrey came. And Geoffrey should be leaving this coming Wednesday. So forty-nine days minus twelve days. Equals five and a half weeks. That can’t be right.

  We didn’t make a plan. For when we’ll see each other. Because we’re taking it slow. Like mature adults.

  The phone rings. I grab it. Drop it. Shit. “Hello?”

  “Meg. How are you?”

  “Good. Happy to hear your voice. Um, how about you?”

  “Really good. I was, well, I wondered if you wanted to go for a drive?”

  I look out of the window. It’s grey and windy. “That would be lovely.”

  “I know it’s not exactly ...”

  “We could go and visit Dad again. He asked me to bring you.”

  “I’d like that. Plus ...”

  “A chaperone,” I say.

  “Exactly.” I can hear the smile in his voice.

  “So the guy was a filmmaker.” We’re in the jeep, headed south on 22. “That means something to you, doesn’t it?”

  “Mum and Dad only ever took one photograph of me. When I heard the shutter click I lost it. Started shaking and hyperventilating. I was standing by a river. The North Saskatchewan, up where it rises. All the rocks looked glassy. In the water. I don’t know how to explain it. Like they were separate and I could crawl in between them. Disappear. That was what I wanted. More than anything in the world. I wanted to disappear. Dad tried to put his hand on my shoulder. I shook so hard I felt as if my teeth were rattling. I had that metallic taste in my mouth.”

  “Adrenaline.”

  “And then I was just panting. Nobody moved. Dad was by the water with me. Mum was further up the bank. I don’t think they knew what to do.

  “After a while my breathing slowed down and Mum said, ‘Come here, you’re freezing.’ I couldn’t stop shivering. She wrapped Dad’s sweater around me.” I shrug. “Maybe there’s no connection. I don’t know. It’s not as if it was a movie camera. But my mind went right there when Dad told me the man made movies.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this last night, or any of the other stuff you and your father talked about.”

  “I really, really didn’t want to be a basket case again.” We’re passing Mum’s church. “Hey, slow down. Actually, would you mind backing up?”

  He pulls over and backs up.

  Read the Bible. It’ll scare the hell out of you.

  He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

  “They changed the sign. This is the church my mother belonged to.”

  “Nice. What did the sign read before?”

  “To get to heaven, turn right and go straight.”

  “Somehow I missed that last time.”

  “It was dark when we drove past it. Oh, by the way, I did tell Dad that you know about him and about the brothers.”

  “Was he okay with that?”

  “Mm. I told him I told you when I thought you were gay but now I wasn’t sure.”

  “Ah.”

  “But Manfred and Victor know you’re not. Turn right at the blue thing.”

  “What is that, anyway?”

  “The hood off our old Chevy.”

  “No, I mean, what’s it supposed to be?”

  “An ostrich.”

  “Ah.”

  “One of Dad’s less successful schemes. He wanted to get rid of it, the sign, but Mum claimed to like it. It’s possible she was rubbing his nose in it. He was always coming up with schemes. She was the one with some business sense.” I shrug.

  Doug glances across at me. “Are you really all right, with the stuff you found out about her?”

  “Oh, I’m still digesting. But it does make sense. Finding out Mum was an alcoholic was more of a shock. Now, the idea of Dad having the ... well, there’s no other way to put it, the balls to go and hang out in a brothel ...”

  Doug grins. The trailer comes into sight, smoke drifting from the chimney. “How did they know?” he asks. “That I’m not gay.”

  “Victor and Manfred? Something in the way you look at me. Which apparently I hadn’t noticed.”

  His smile broadens.

  Chapter Ninety One

  NOBODY ANSWERS WHEN I knock on the door. And I don’t smell pipe tobacco anywhere. We walk around the house anyway then knock again. “He’s probably asleep. Let’s go in.”

  He’s not there.

  “Might he have gone for a walk?”

  “I’ll check the brothers’ place first.”

  Victor opens the door before I’ve even knocked. “Meg, how nice to see you. You too Doug.”

  “Um, have you seen Dad?”

  “He’s not in the house?”

  I shake my head. My temples feel tight.

  “Where does he like to walk,” Doug asks, “when it’s not too cold?”

  Victor’s face clears. “To the bench by the river. That’s where he’ll be.”

  We hurry out past the machine shed and across the field then through the scrim of poplars and shrubs. Doug slows his pace. A moment later I catch a whiff of tobacco. When we reach the edge of the little hollow Dad’s head swivels our way. His eyebrows look particularly springy today.

  “Meg, Doug, what a nice surprise. Have a seat.”

  Doug selects a sandy hummock. I take the other half of the bench.

  Dad tips his chin at the mountains. “See that?”

  The mountains have disappeared behind a wall of cloud. Overhead the sky is thickly quilted. The wind is weirdly warm.

  “We don’t get many here,” Dad says to Doug, “not compared to Calgary. Always makes me restless.”

  “The horses too.”

  “You have horses?”

  “Just the one, but I stable a neighbour’s horse with him.”

  Dad nods. “I kept a couple of donkeys with my horse. Good guardians for the sheep too, donkeys. I miss riding out early in the morning. Or at dusk. I loved to be out at dusk. That moment when the colour drains from the world and the birds fall silent.”

  “In Celtic lore the veil between the worlds is thin just then.”

  Dad smiles and draws on his pipe. I look at Doug sitting there, so easy among the yellowed fronds of wild asparagus, his knees sharp in their soft jeans, eyes brown and friendly. Dad’s not even wearing a jacket. His sweater swells out. I try not to stare. He’s gained a little weight. So of course he’d put it on there. ‘Wa
tching his figure’ must have been easier with Mum’s cooking than Victor’s. Or is he doing it on purpose?

  “Old Hal,” Dad’s saying, “he lived to be thirty-two. I rode him until the end. We’d both slowed down by then. I knew I wouldn’t get another horse”—he shrugs—“but I miss the company. Dogs and horses. My wife felt that way about her hens. She could watch them by the hour.”

  Must have been after I left. The devil makes work for idle hands was Mum’s motto when I lived here.

  There’s a little silence then I say, “Dad, I had an idea. I’d like to make and sell bread using locally grown organic wheat. And maybe other things that grow here. Sunflower seeds. Saskatoons even.”

  “Where would you do it?”

  “Well that’s the thing. I could try to set up in the city but I’d rather do the baking here. If you were okay with that.”

  “Where would you sell it?”

  “At the farmer’s market in Edmonton. If people are buying croissants and baguettes I bet there’s a market for local organic. Nobody else is doing it. Not yet anyway.”

  “So if Manfred and Victor ...”

  “Exactly. You couldn’t get any more local. The thing is, I think I’d need to live here. I don’t know if you could stand that, for me to move in.”

  He looks more thoughtful than overjoyed. Doug is studying the mountains. Shit.

  “I wouldn’t have to be here full time. If I get E.I. I wouldn’t need to rent out my house right away. I could ...” I stop. I’m just digging myself in deeper.

  “Well,” Dad say after a moment, “Manfred’s using one end of the machine shed, but you might be able to take the other end. It’s got a good concrete floor. And power. Or there’s the big chicken house.” He wrinkles his nose.

  “Hold on. What about me moving in here with you?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Dad, seriously, are you sure? I might drive you crazy.”

  “This is your home.”

  A shadow crosses his face. “What is it?”

  His eyes flick toward Doug who’s gone to stand on the lip of the bluff, looking down toward the invisible river. The wind whips his hair back off his face. In profile he looks like a brave among the buttes in some old Western.