Sleepers and Ties, page 10
Then, a call in the night from the neighbour Shirley had invited for dinner, and the letter. A one-way conversation that I am obligated to listen to now.
I refill the teapot with hot water and read the headlines of the newspaper that has been slipped under the door. The Mendel Art Gallery is going to put on an addition and the permanent collections are going to be put into storage. The Joni Mitchell permanent collection. I think I’d like to see that. Perhaps a half-day to gain some perspective.
I hum one of her tunes.
When my cell phone rings, I think it will be Hetty continuing to bulldoze her way. I take a defensive tone. ‘Yes?’
‘Oh,’ Massy says. ‘It’s me.’
‘Sorry, I thought it was my boss. I’ve just had the most irritating phone call.’
‘I probably had too much wine last night,’ Massy says. ‘I didn’t say a proper good-bye. What are you going to do today?’
‘I was going to go and check out the Joni Mitchell self-portrait at the Mendel.’ I don’t have the nerve to tell her that my boss has changed my plans.
‘There are two now. The Van Gogh, she-cut-off-her-ear spoof, and the Hoppers Nighthawks imitation of herself at the bar.’
Helnwein’s poster of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams had hung in Shirley’s bathroom. The sale’s agent asked if I could leave it. ‘Part of the staging.’ The painting with James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and Elvis behind the bar. On one of the nights I’d stayed over to clean up Shirley’s place, after five trips up and down the elevator to the recycle bins, I had taken a long bath and lost myself in the painting. The empty street, the five bar stools with no customers, Phillies bar, endless cups of coffee, the only woman at the bar. Shirley would have spent hours looking at the work. Had she felt like one of those at the bar. Wondered what her legacy would be? The buyers asked if it could stay with the place. I had fallen back on ‘take what is needed.’
Shirley had had a succession of boyfriends over the years, a few better than others. I’d assumed she was happiest on her own. She had a good job, had worked her way up to an assistant deputy in the Ministry of Housing. When the rare opportunity for a lateral move had presented itself, she had moved herself and Mom to Vancouver.
‘If she won’t come back to us, we will go to her,’ Shirley had joked. ‘Those boys need their grandmother,’ she had convinced, when Mom at first refused to leave her prairie home. And so, somehow together, they had made a deposit on a condo, and I had helped pay for their move.
When they were young, she’d taken my boys for the weekend, bought them new outfits and anything else they wanted; video games, the latest sneakers, skateboards, and then they’d come home to me, the mom who told them they had to make do with the jeans they had, that homework came before hanging out with friends. The one thing that I did find in her condo, which I wouldn’t share with anyone, was a series of rejected adoption applications.
‘You don’t understand how some things are for her,’ Mom had once said, refusing to elaborate. I had always assumed that Shirley had everything she wanted.
‘It’s really only her,’ Massy says.
‘Her?’
‘The take on Hoppers Nighthawks. It always reminds me of the other painting, you know, the one with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. Anyway, I just wanted to say it’s good to have you back here, and I hope I didn’t go off on some rant. You really can stay with me, you know.’
I can’t bring myself to say that it felt strange waking up in Stan’s house. I’d driven away seeing Massy and our long friendship fading down the years in the diminishing exchange of Christmas cards.
‘Thank you,’ I tell her. ‘I might just do that. And, we had just the right amount of wine.’
I take a deep breath and look at my speed dial. Out of guilt, I almost call Hetty back. I am getting nowhere. I might as well be back at the museum. My eye catches the list I scribbled on the note pad a few days ago. Ashes.
Maybe I can’t build a railway, but as soon as I get home, I’ll find the box containing the black Alaskan diamond and it will be going into one of the museum’s displays. Surely Isabel should be able to locate a copy of the Sterling wholesale catalogue.
12. BRANCH LINE
I telephone Jake.
‘What do you think?’
‘Do you really want to know what I think?’
We don’t talk about cruises or investments. He mentions something about Toronto. I forget to tell him I am looking into changing my flight.
I doodle again on the hotel notepad, draw arrows every which way. Write, Shirley’s money + savings account > donate funds? charity. I turn to her ashes. She would have been properly fed up with my stalling.
‘Which prairies?’ I ask.
Plover Lake comes the answer. Of course, it makes perfect sense. Dad driving down to the lake, the two of us in bathing suits sticking to the plastic front seat and eating penny candy. Window down, sun hot, music loud. Dad singing along with Roger Miller’s ‘King of the Road.’
The prairie fields surround the lake, seagulls and pelicans will fly overhead and perhaps the odd sailboat will appear. Why hasn’t it occurred to me before? The prairie of Plover Lake will be Shirley’s final resting place. If I have to get back to the museum, I’d at least better get on with this duty.
As I am getting myself organized, Hall calls.
‘Have you come to a decision on the fifty acres?’
He has driven out to Plover and vicinity on business and taken a look at the trust land. He hesitates. I wonder if there is something he is unwilling to share, but he only says, ‘Check your bank account tomorrow. All of Shirley’s money, your money, will be transferred over to the account set up in your name only.’
‘Thank you. I’ll confirm in the next day or two.’ I don’t add that I’m pretty sure I’ll be submitting the last fifty acres to the whole of the land trust property.
He is getting to be like one of these mosquitos, I say to myself, as I scratch the bites on my arms and the back of my knees.
I try to call Massy and invite her to a final supper in the city, but there is no answer. Probably out doing some chore. I leave a message that I am driving out to the lake. Who knows when we will see each other again, once I’ve finished my duties in Saskatchewan. I am scheduled for another museum conference abroad next year and the year after that.
I turn off the GPS, certain now, having been back and forth to Plover, that I can find my way. About forty minutes into the drive, my cell phone rings. At first, fearing it might be Hetty, I ignore it, but it keeps on, and I pull over to a farmer’s roadway and answer.
‘Mom, Mom, where are you?’
‘Ryan?’
‘Finally bought a mobile, Mom. How are you?’
His voice fades in and out. I step out of the car, circle-8 my phone through the air, as if some passing satellite might improve the connection.
‘I miss you,’ I shout. ‘Where are you? Is everything okay?’
‘Fine. I just wanted to tell you that I got a job on a film set, here in the Lake District.’
‘Lake District. In England? Last postcard was from Prague.’
‘That was weeks ago. Anyway, we met this film producer. He’s my age, and he said he had this project about to start and if we were interested—’
‘Are you acting?’ I think of my youngest son, how he had wanted a video camera in high school so that he could film his friends for a school project. I’d said no, but of course Shirley had promptly presented him with one. He had even cast his grandmother as a wealthy recluse. She had taken to the part, sitting in her Queen Anne chair, arms on the rests, improvising scripted reminiscences like a tsarina.
‘Just a bit part. Have to learn how to hold a cigarette like a soldier in World War I, but I’m not really supposed to give out any exact details. We took the train up from Euston Station. I was thinking about Auntie Shirl the whole time, and how she once told me about taking the train from there when she was my age. You and Dad have got to get back over here.’
I catch the enthusiasm in his voice and I try to picture the station. It makes me happy to hear that in the midst of his travels, he’d thought of the aunt who’d loved him so dearly. I almost mention that I am going to spread Shirley’s ashes, but choose not to dampen his mood.
‘Well, gotta go. Tell Dad I emailed. We’ll probably stay on until Christmas, and then you could come and visit. By then, I’ll know my way around and can give you a tour.’
‘I love you, Ryan. Take care.’ I want to ask after his girlfriend, and how he is fixed for money, but he has hung up.
I get back into the car and onto the road. I feel a rush of excitement at my son experiencing the green hills and dry-stone walls of England. He will have seen the lights on Tower Bridge, heard the bells of Westminster, drunk bitter in a rowdy pub. Christmas he said. Yes, I’d like that. I look to the ashes next to me.
‘That was Ryan.’
I park the car at the top of a hill, very near where we used to park the car when Dad took us down to the lake. I am a little hesitant, all by myself, with no one around, but I rationalize that being alone is better than coming upon some stranger. We had always planned to walk east to west, from Plover Station around the lake and up to the farm. If we’d followed the railway tracks, as Dad had always wanted us to do, we could have walked directly to it. Adam made the journey on the jigger, inspecting the tracks, hundreds of times.
When I open the car door, I am pleased with myself for recognizing the wild garlic that Massy pointed out. I pinch the leaves and squeeze them between my fingers, rub them back and forth, taking in the scent. If I look, I might be able to find wild sage and mustard too.
I unlock the trunk, place the ashes carefully inside. I’ll come back for them once I’ve located an appropriate spot. I grab my bottle of water, pull a granola bar out of my purse, and in a city gesture of precaution, throw the purse in the trunk too. I make sure the car windows are turned up in defense against mosquitoes and slam the door shut.
As I walk along the stubble of last year’s crop, the resting field scratches my shins. How many cycles have there been of waist-high wheat to summer fallow and stubble? I consciously plant each foot into the earth, thinking of the Yoga practice I’ve neglected. ‘Root to rise.’ Closer to the lake now, the sun shines down and the lake glistens silver. I have never been to the Sea of Galilee, but I imagine it looking like Plover Lake does just now, calm, a surface deceptively willing to be walked upon. As I make my way through the aspen and birch, the soil turns to fine gravel and then loamy sand as I come out onto the shore of the lake. A red-winged blackbird whistles overhead and flutters off. I inhale deeply and take in the length and breadth of Plover Lake. A perfect lake, and yet neither a boat nor fisherman in sight.
In the years Dad was the station agent, and Mr. Novakovsky the hotel owner, a small sailing club had discovered the lake, and the town’s business men proposed that regattas on the lake would turn Plover into a booming summer town, be a reason for the railway to keep the station open. Of course, that never happened. How many other seaside, or lakeside towns and villages had visitors arrived in by way of train? How many places had dreams of prosperity until the trains stopped?
There is a small bay down along the shore. I walk back and forth, assessing its suitability as the particular place to leave Shirley. I can’t bring myself to say the words sprinkle or scatter. Scatter especially sounds chaotic. A couple of gulls glide overhead, their breasts glowing an iridescent white. There is no one else here to witness this end of the line, and so I begin to organize my thoughts to say a few gentle words of farewell. Words feel inadequate. The song of the lake and the whispers of wind are the praises and prayers attending the vignettes of Shirley down the years. I thought I was finished with tears.
I think of phantom limbs, the sensation of something still being there when it isn’t, and in a way, this is what I am most afraid of, that soon I will never remember what it really felt like to have a sister, only the knowledge that it had once been so. Someone occupies a space in your life for a time, and then they don’t. I’ve carried on without father, mother, but Shirley’s going leaves a wound that may never completely heal. Lost, a chum, a confidant, and yes, at times an adversary. Someone with whom I shared a genetic code, so that at times simply by looking across the room we would know what the other was thinking.
The lake is tranquil, with only the occasional brush of wave against the shore. The water reaches for the toe of my shoe. I crouch and take in the peace all around me. A fine spray of mist caresses my face. I inhale the lake. A wave suddenly slaps the shore, and an urge comes over me. I want to be in the water—I need to be in the water—to know again what it feels like to float in the alkaline.
I scan the hills for tractors or farmers, but everywhere is deserted. With seeding finished and haying just starting, it is an in-between time for farmers. They are tending to machinery, buying hail insurance. No farmhouses, no people. It is secluded and private. Who will pay any notice to a 50-year old woman? I’ll be so quick, it won’t matter that I don’t have a bathing suit. I haven’t looked at myself naked in a mirror in ages. I shaved my legs in the hotel this morning. My hair is short now, it will dry quickly. From afar, I might be mistaken for a heron.
For God’s sake, would you just jump in. Shirley’s words.
There is no one to see me. This is Plover Lake, where I learned how to swim, where we buried each other in the sand, and once dug up what we thought was a Bison’s skull. If I don’t do this, I know I’ll regret it when I get home.
I carefully remove my shoes and socks. The sand is warm. I glance over both shoulders, remove my sweater, then pull off my T-shirt. I step out of my trousers and underwear in one motion, unclip my bra, and place everything on my sweater on a nearby rock.
The water is cool—‘huh’—but not as cold as the ocean. I breathe in the brackish water, not entirely dissimilar to Pacific low tide. Blue dragonflies dart over the surface. Arms wrapped over my breasts, I wade out into the shallow water for a long way, then, fearful of a sudden drop, I get down on my knees, touch the lakebed, lean forward and slip my chest under the water. My chin skims the surface. At first, out of habit of ocean swimming and watching for jellyfish and rogue waves, I keep looking away from shore, facing potential waves. But this isn’t the ocean, and the only fish that have ever been here were called whitefish. Once oriented in the cool water, I flip over, spread my arms, and lay my head back.
I wait for it, and then exhale a giggle at my buoyancy.
The water reflects the dome above. Seagulls appear, and one after another plop down on the water, not far from where I float. This close, they seem massive, these descendants of small flying dinosaurs. A few ducks bob on the surface near the shore, unbothered by my sudden appearance. I reach down, pull up some mud, and brush a smudge across my cheek, wonder if it might have anti-aging properties, like those I’ve seen in infomercials of the black mud of the Dead Sea.
As I float, the temperature of the water changes, warming in intermittent sloshing. I frog-kick, but that makes for too much splashing and drives the birds away. When I lie still and breathe in, my breasts and stomach rise above the surface of the water. I close my eyes and let my arms go until I can’t sense their presence at my sides. I let my legs drop down, touch the floor of the lake, and then, ten feet from shore, my bottom hits a sand bar, and when I stand, the water level drops to my knees. The air is chilly. Much warmer to be in the water. I dive into the lake and dog-paddle back and forth, parallel to the shore. Jump up, and fall backwards. When we were kids, Dad would bring us here during his lunch break, or after the station office shut for the day. He loved the water as much as we did. And when it seemed the station would close permanently, I suppose he needed to float weightless on his back too.
A pair of whooping cranes settle at the shore briefly, and then take off. The sun glares off the water and I look towards the silvery bay. If this is where I am going to leave Shirley to rest, it is the right place.
I get back onto my knees, throw some water over my shoulders to try to wash away the salt, and pull up handfuls of lake-bottom mud and throw them away into the lake. They break across the water in small pellets. I look back to shore, half expecting all of the townsfolk who had once played here to come running into the water. I swirl the surface in small arcs of sprays, stare into the distance, and then, when it is just too cold to tolerate, hug my arms close again and scamper across the sand to where I’ve left my clothes. I dry myself off with my T-shirt, put on my bra and panties, and then sit down on the rock. I brush my feet back and forth through the coarse sand, rubbing one over the other, to remove the lakebed mud. Now I know, in some esoteric impression, what it will be like for Shirley to be joined to Plover Lake.
There is a loud rustling in the tree line down the shore. I spring up expecting a fox or coyote. I look to where I’ve parked the car, and wonder if I should dash up towards the hill, when, from the bushes, a man emerges with a branch as a walking stick, and a backpack over his shoulder. I quickly pull on my trousers and sweater.
He looks harmless, but still I calculate how long it will take to run to the car. He is jotting something on a notepad and seems completely unaware of my presence. As he comes closer, his dark green hunting vest stands out. Could he be a park naturalist or inspector? No name tag or pin. A bird watcher? Might he be Massy’s birdman? What is his name?
He calls out in an English accent. ‘Hello there. I hope I’m not intruding?’
Has to be him.
‘No, no, not at all. I was just uhh,’ I mutter, gathering up my socks and shoes. ‘Are you by any chance the British ornithologist?’ Surely, it would be crude to say, ‘birdman.’
