Surrender

Back from her usual morning jaunt around the neighbourhood, she wiped perspiration from her forehead. Hating how it stung, running into her eyes. She lifted her long hair at the nape of her neck, to find some relief from the oppressive heat. Should have remembered to tie it back before setting off.

She wasn’t sure what proportion of blame to apportion to her physical state; the high humidity, even at this time of the morning, or her incessant bouts with those bloody damn hot flashes. She eats and drinks soy-derived products, she takes Evening Primrose, and she’s susceptible to all kind of advice from other women who’ve gone through the cycle of menopause. Preferring to ignore the opinion of her next-door neighbour, that none of what she’s doing will be actually helpful; it’s only the placebo effect she feels, convincing herself that they help. Some people just know it all.

“Lose twenty pounds”, Edouard said, looking at her critically. Instinctively she took a deep breath, drew in her stomach. No use, there was no drawing in her stomach at this stage. The pounds had just crept up. She never thought of herself as fat, just more than a little overweight. It was clear he thought otherwise.

“You’ve got too much fat on your body”, he continued. “That’s your real problem. Lose some of that and you’ll feel a lot better.”

She’d feel a whole lot better, she thought bitterly, if he would just keep that kind of advice to himself. She didn’t, after all, tell him to straighten his back and walk properly. He was only in his mid-fifties, and already he looked much older. Drawn to his full height he would look much better, his physique even notable. As it was, with his grey, balding head sunk into his turtle-neck, his back arched, his gait shuffling, he looked pitiable.

“You’re not the girl I married”, he would say mournfully. No response from her. Though she repeated it to her best friend, Helen, who despised him. You’d think, she often mused to herself, that she would resent Helen for her attitude toward Edouard. Who was, after all, her husband. But she didn’t. It gave her an oddly vicarious sense of satisfaction to know Edouard was loathed by Helen.

That happened from the very first time she had met him. She had described to Helen this new guy she was dating. Whom she’d met at the dental office where she worked at the time. She knew little about him, other than noting his carriage, his sense of awkward formality. He was anything but cordial, but he did present as respectful of her. And he was her age, and attractively masculine, she thought.

And when, after a few appointments to have his teeth cleaned and cavities filled, he gleaned she was single (she did have a tendency to talk a lot, couldn’t help it, it was her gregarious personality, she knew that) he had asked her out for a date.

It was after they’d been going out sporadically for a few months that she had introduced him to Helen, when they’d gone out, despite his initial reluctance, on a double-date. Helen had called him ‘Eddie’, in a misguided attempt at chumminess. Edouard had frozen, a frown swept his handsome face, and he stiffly corrected her. That had set the tone of their relationship.

Good, she said to herself, poking her head around her son’s bedroom door. Still asleep, his long legs wound about the top sheet, head still buried beneath his pillow. She had ample time to get his breakfast ready. At least she didn’t have to think about Morgan, long left for her summer job as an arts-and-craft instructor at the community centre. It wasn’t Morgan, in any event, who was demanding. Her brother had always emulated his father; demanding, curt, dismissive. Something else she had always mentally shrugged off.

That same neighbour always lingered on that, her personal feeling that the boy was never disciplined for anything, allowed to go about doing whatever he wanted, unaware of common social courtesies, oblivious to the need to curtail his nasty, base instincts. None of her damn business anyway, she was only a neighbour. Even his aloof father hardly took notice of what his only son was doing, how he was behaving. Still, they had him well in hand, now he was fifteen. He had agreed to take piano lessons, like his sister, if they would agree to signing him up for a soccer league.

To their general surprise, he did well at both. As for his sister, she had finally given up her obsession with horses. For years she had been emotionally invested in horse-back riding. There were stables operated not far from where they lived, in the city suburbs. At one of those stables where riding lessons were offered, Morgan had become a familiar presence. After awhile, as she had gained confidence, Morgan had traded her work on week-ends mucking out the stalls and dressing the horses in exchange for riding lessons. She prided herself on her daughter’s initiative and accomplishments.

She had been kept busy -- still was -- driving them both everywhere, although Morgan now had her own driver’s license and made use of the van from time to time. Jeffrey now consumed most of her driving time. Driving him back and forth to soccer practise, soccer games, in town and out. When it was out of town, Edouard would accompany them. She always worried about driving on highways, and Edouard had encouraged her, instructed, that she stay off them. Safer, he told her. He said she should concentrate her driving in the closer general area, and she felt comfortable herself, with that restriction. Most women, he loved telling her, didn’t know how to drive properly on a highway anyway.

Now that Morgan’s interest in horses and horse-back riding had abated, she had become involved in theatre arts in her third year of high school. That was more than a little interesting. The transition from horses with all the psychological connotations of young girls’ hormonal maturity substituting an overt attraction to boys to a subliminal one for the symbolism of muscular horses.

Morgan, she acknowledged to herself, hadn’t been rewarded handsomely by her genetic inheritance, the intermingling of her father’s sperm with her mother’s ovum. Where she herself was a good-looking woman with generous features, and so was Edouard -- when he was young -- their daughter was fairly close to homely.

But theatre arts it was, and she encouraged her daughter, and was enthusiastic about turning up for school plays, and took huge pleasure in viewing her daughter’s easy camaraderie in exchanges between the other students with whom she shared a passion for the floorboards. She could recall taking part in a high school play herself, in her younger years, some unnoticeable tertiary role she could barely recall, in a Shakespearean play; but dredging her memory she could not even identify which of the Bard’s plays she’d been recruited for in her then-dramatic-arts class.

She hoped Morgan would be a ‘normal’ kid, wouldn’t turn out to have friends who got themselves involved with street drugs. Unpopular girls, girls who weren’t beauty queens often went out of their way to ingratiate themselves with boys, hoping to be noticed, to be invited to become part of the crowd. She hoped that the values she had ingrained in her daughter would create enough self-respect and self-confidence to insulate her from committing errors she would regret later.

Which stirred within her memories she had long ago shelved in areas of her consciousness so remote from easy access that when they surfaced, she almost went into a state of existential panic. Older than her daughter, much older, she had been certain she was destined for spinsterhood. They didn’t even use that word any more. Women took pride now, so many of them, in being free from intimate encumbrances; they lived a kind of life traditionally secretly prescribed for men. They were self-absorbed predators, using men as men had used women.

She wasn’t certain what she thought about that. It was all right, she supposed, just wasn’t for her. Her generation hadn’t even remotely thought of any kind of social upturning so radical in nature, where women would think themselves entitled to the same kind of non-committal relationships that men did. Easy, casual sex, no strings attached, no expectations, just one-night stands. Men had become as expendable to a woman’s satisfaction in life as some men always claimed women were to theirs. If men could always brag why buy a cow when you could get milk at the corner store, women were now proving that they could lasso the bull to their personal convenience.

Even if she’d been born to a later social era, even if she had been involved in the women’s liberation movement from its early days and taken its messages seriously, she’d never have been able to subscribe to them. She couldn’t, for herself, imagine life without a male companion. Although she often thought wryly to herself that she was delusional, there was little in the way of companionship between herself and Edouard. And then, to reassure herself that she had done the right thing, she thought of their children -- her children. Her life now revolved around them, but then it always had, from the moment they were born.

She had been bemused and a little upset when Edouard had distanced himself from his own children. He would never think of picking up a crying infant, of soothing the child, walking a dark bedroom late at night with a feverish child. For that matter, even simple things like feeding a child. Changing a diaper was out of the question. He would call out to her, “The baby stinks to high heaven!” But change a diaper, never. It offended his sense of personal propriety that he, a male, would descend to such a menial, trivial task.

Well, he was a good wage-earner. They had a lovely home. They had two vehicles. He gave her a more than adequate household allowance to pay their expenses, do the food shopping. She had an acceptable allowance as well as pocket money for herself.

There were some strictures placed upon her. She was allowed to use the Internet now, and she could prowl around on it to find products that piqued her interest, and she could order them, but only through one of her friends who would use her credit card. And then she would reimburse her friend. Her friend.

Her friends. She saw them often enough, and when she did, she relaxed, she was herself, her gregarious, fun-happy self. Not the subdued middle-aged woman she was with Edouard. Her friends had agreed among them, she knew, to keeping their comments to themselves. None of them, the married, the divorced, the single, would ever, she knew, commit to continuing a marriage like hers. Let alone leaping into a marriage-compact with someone like Edouard.

But she did love him when they were married. She loved how he looked, how he looked at her. He wasn’t non-committal then, he wasn’t about to degrade her self-regard then by observing unpleasant things about her. Of course, she wasn’t overweight then, she was, as they used to say back then, nicely stacked. And then some. And she was easy to get along with, still is, since that’s her personality.

Odd how opposites attract sometimes, she often thought to herself, trying to make some sense out of the trajectory of her life, so unlike what she had imagined. But then, not so odd in the sense that sometimes when someone is desperate, as she had been for someone to cherish and to love and to hold her and to want to live his life with her, she saw in him the answer to her dreams of achieving wife-hood.

That was funny. She was the last one of her group of girlfriends to marry. When most of them already had babies she was still single. They’d gone out of their way trying to introduce her to prospective boyfriends. She’d gone out on all kinds of blind dates, and nothing had ever clicked. Until, out of the blue -- at least out of the dentist’s office -- along came Edouard.

After they married they decided to see a bit of the world. They were both fairly mature, in their mid

-to-late-thirties, (she and he respectively), had both good-paying professional occupations, and had both saved assiduously. Which was about all they really had in common, she thought sourly, much later.

They’d gone to Italy, to Spain, to France, toured around Mexico. And then got tired of it all. And still had plenty of savings to burn. So they decided to do the practical thing and they bought a house. For first-time buyers they had enough cash to amaze the realtor with whom they dealt. And they chose their house carefully, with an eye to the future, since they had agreed they would have children, at least two. It took them no time at all to pay down the mortgage completely.

She could hardly believe how much time had gone by. They’d been married for over twenty years. Edouard still embarrassed her socially. He was as curmudgeonly as ever. He was as different from her as it was possible for two human beings to present. To her cheerfulness, generosity and outgoing charm, he presented as socially hostile, would go out of his way to avoid having to acknowledge the presence of a neighbour he’d known for decades.

Other neighbours would speak routinely to one another, through a passage of cordial relations, but not Edouard; he kept himself sequestered in the house, rarely to be seen publicly. She coped with that by suppressing resentment. By reminding herself that she had everything material she would ever need. And she had a companion.

He worked hard. He had a bad back. That bad back was in evidence on occasion when something had to be done around the house. The routine things like disposing of household waste, mowing the lawn, gardening, painting windowsills, fell to her. Otherwise they wouldn’t get done. If anyone ever made mention of her doing things that most husband would make it their choice to perform, she would just respond that everything would change when he retired. Then all the plumbing would be fixed, and they’d get the house interior painted, and the driveway would be refreshed, and the exterior windows washed. All in good time.

They had early agreed that once the children came, she would remain at home, a full-time mother for them. She was happy about that. As her mother still said, he was a good provider. They managed very well indeed as far as their finances were concerned. Another thing they agreed upon. She always had her little ‘efficiencies’, looking for approval from him, because he was abstemious in his spending proclivities. Where they could ‘save’ money, they would, and she became accustomed, and proudly so, to hanging all their laundry out on a revolving clothes line, the only one in the neighbourhood to do so.

“It’s so much extra work!” her girlfriends shrieked, when she told them of her resolve. And she smiled, because they had no idea how smug it made her feel. They worked out of the house, after all, while she did not, and she had ample time…

“But you’ve got all that work looking after the children!”, her mother objected, and she smiled again, so pleased with herself and her life. She was a positive thinker, and prided herself on that. All the things that would bother other people, just did not faze her. Not worth the effort. His sullen, withdrawn, morose and socially awkward persona was for others, not her. He was relaxed with her, open and pleasant. Most of the time.

She liked to tell people he was her best friend. And she had plenty of friends. He was furtively secretive, had no friends, not even workplace acquaintances to warm up to. He eschewed them all, declining to admit anyone into his inner life. But her. And, she sighed, all things are relative.

She recalled with wistful pleasure their early sex lives, and a warm, moist glow crept over her. This time, the deep, penetrating, pleasurable heat she felt invade her body had nothing whatever to do with Menopause.

That time she recalled represented episodes, whenever they could plan them, when they bedded down together. Those hot, frantic nights transformed them both, made their relationship solid, memorable, swollen with expectation. The first time, she instinctively knew it was his first time, and said nothing to abuse him of the notion that it was hers, as well.

It became a little game of theirs, to wind up somewhere interesting where they could end the evening with sex. And then she began to think he was taking her for granted. Enjoying her, but making no commitment. She most certainly enjoyed him, even his awkwardness. His hands cherished her body, and she loved every bit of it.

She was so assured at one point that he would never be able to face a future without her. She was certain on so many occasions that he was on the cusp of telling her that. She thought she could dimly recall, but wasn’t at all certain, that at one time he had gasped that phrase she waited to hear, that he loved her. Once, never again. Finally, he had her on tenterhooks, waiting for commitment. Her parents kept asking her. It was awkward.

Worse, the uncertainty upset her dreadfully. She imagined at one point that he would tire of her, amble off, never to repeat his experiment with another woman, content, once he had experienced what sex was like, to forego it thereafter.

And when he finally, gravely, explained to her that he thought it was time they stopped these furtive encounters and made a life together she could hardly believe her ears. She had flung herself at him, flushed and ecstatic, and it was one of the very few times she had ever seen him taken so utterly by surprise, a wide grin crossing his normally taciturn face. She loved him at that moment with a passion that was never repeated. She thought her heart would never stop clattering against her chest.

Well, time was a-fleeting, as her grandmother used to say. Edouard planned on an early retirement. He had determined that by age 58 he would retire. He had all the requisite numbers to enable him to do that on a full, generous government pension, nicely indexed to match inflation. He had everything figured out down to fewer expenses and great flexibility in their finances.

What, she thought helplessly, would she do, with him home all day? Her time would no longer be her own, he’d be looking over her shoulder endlessly. Complaining, directing, recommending and sternly insisting.

Where would she find her equilibrium. Retrieve herself? 

 

 

Suddenly Exuberant!

 

Expectation flings itself into the
very air we breathe as we set out
into a woodland ramble. The ineffable
fragrance of spring tantalizes our
winter-wan sensibilities. Even those
prevailing winds, so cuttingly cruel in
dark months of bitter cold, ice and the
gentler persuasions of snow covering
the landscape has recalibrated
its ferocity, become even-tempered.

Snow is fast escaping into melt,
funnelling down hills into the valleys
hosting rivulets, creeks and streams,
all rushing pell-mell into rivers and lakes
and ultimately the seas themselves,
succumbing toward a gentler, kinder
atmosphere we dream of in dark months.

The bare limbs and branches of
deciduous trees recall their spring
and summer glory of green canopies
and sap begins to stir from roots to
trunk. Maple trees invite gentle
taps in exchange for sweet syrup.
Small, furry creatures rejoice,
abandoning winter shelter to
seek more clement pastures.

Migrating birds infuse the newly
receptive arras with their transcendent
spring trills. Spare pickings at
first of dried seeds, cones, berries
and haws, but a finer feeding theatre
awaits on the near horizon of time.

We watch chickadees hesitate,
swoop low on branches in response
to our quiet shhshhshh, anticipating
the seeds and nuts we leave behind.
Those that descend condescend to claim
then take flight treasure firmly secured
in tiny beaks. All others destined to
become the prized possession of grey,
black and red squirrels, chipmunks.

Where snow and ice have receded
bright green moss and ferns
celebrate their release. Lichens, grey
and green, tan and pearl, stipple, patch
and decorate tree branches. Conifers
hold aloft their brightly needled flags.

The clamour of silent cheers that
infuse all living things as nature
progresses toward Spring Equinox
enlivens these days of ever-fresh
anticipation; from subdued to
suddenly ebulliently exuberant!

 

Flogging Golf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s his style. His personality. Just jump in. Spontaneity, that’s what he responds to. Don’t even think about it. Seldom was he left without a response. Optimistic invitation to discourse, as much a personality imperative as was inhaling oxygen to fuel his mechanical bodily functions. He was gregariously inclined, open to every opportunity to communicate.

Confoundingly, he was also a cynic, clearly recognizing the base as the basis of most basic human emotions when people were pressed for personal advantage. Within him, the two polarities struggled to compete for ultimate advantage, one capitulating to the other.

So when he pulls up in front of the antique mall, taking care to park as far as possible from the sign in its large raised-bed structure, he is automatically responding to a previous incident he was exposed to.

Two rough-looking men on their way to the entrance of the mall were perfect foils for his exhilaration on arrival, his anticipation. As he exited the driver’s seat, he engaged them immediately and their disinterested surly faces turned friendly and amused by his description of misadventure.

“You were that excited?”

“Yep. Backed right into the bugger. Didn’t even see it.”

“You must’ve got some bargain!”

“Not that, just so pleased at finding good stuff. And you’re right; good price, too.”

They laughed, looked over at the offending structure.

“Dented my back-side door. I had to wrestle the bumper back straight on. Kind of soured my mood.”

“Yeah, it would”, they agreed, suddenly good fellows, making their way to the door, waving to him.

In the group shop, he adjusted his expectations, reminding himself of the majority of annual visits where he had found nothing worthwhile. His other side nudged another memory, of porcelains and clocks and paintings he had ‘discovered’ at various dealers’ stalls over the years. He moved slowly from one large glassed-in shelving unit to another; perusing, evaluating their interiors. Some half-intriguing objects, the majority representing bits and pieces of unadulterated junk.

The unfamiliar face he had greeted on entering, sitting behind the front desk had eyed him curiously, returning his greeting. Halfway down one case of glassed-in junk a voice floated over to him.

“Those fires out yet?”

What? He turned, called back, “not sure”. Wondered if this was someone who improbably recalled seeing him in previous years.

“You from Montreal?"

“Nope, not Montreal. I’m Canadian, though. From Ottawa.”

“Oh. Saw that logo on your tee-shirt. Thought you’d be a McGill alumni.”

Ah. “No”, he laughed. “Just wearing the shirt.” Second-hand; whoever had originally owned it likely had been to McGill, but not him.

“It was the smoke. From those Quebec forest fires.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, my wife woke up last Monday, said it smelled like someone had a wood-fire going. Not likely, in that heat and humidity, let alone that time of day. Then she said she thought it might be from the forest fires.”

“We had the same experience over here. You wouldn’t believe it, at this distance. Boston had it even worse. There were air quality alerts. People told to stay indoors."

“Sure, in Ottawa too. We had health alerts, people with asthma, the elderly. We heard the smoke had gone as far as Boston. Couldn’t believe it.”

“Believe it, I was there. Though we had it as bad here. Guess it was the way the wind shifted. Scary stuff. Especially for all those people they had to evacuate, I guess.”

“Yep, for sure. Reminds you of the Icelandic volcano spewing carbon all over Europe; flight chaos”, he responded, pleased with the analogy.

“Hell, no! Bostonians don’t miss a beat. It’s the American way“, scoffed the other. “Visibility was bad, you could hardly see the skyline. But all the boaters got their sailboats out on the Charles River. Nothing daunts them. All the runners were out jogging.”

He shrugged, grinned, agreed it would take a hell of a lot more than charred wood violating U.S. airspace to hinder life and recreation here. Went on nosing about the pathetic offerings, heavy on the ‘collectibles’, light on the ‘antiques’, despite the pride of signage.

He moved on to other aisles with shelving holding even less desirable offerings. But you never know, he always told himself, hope springing eternal in the expectations of an ‘antique hunter’.

Most group shops like this had their more authentic, pricey, 'desirable' items out front, closer to the front desk, and the entrance. The further into the interior the poorer the quality. And those establishments that boasted ‘three floors of antiques!’ had their dealers, obviously charged commensurately less for less desirable space, purveying ever more degraded-quality junk. Crap, he called it.

Toward the back of this vast, one-story building with its scores of dealers hawking hopefully, unrealistically priced items (on the obvious theory that there’s a buyer for almost anything) that never distinguished themselves by even notional quality of design, fabrication, creativity or material composition at absurdly inflated prices, he noticed an attractive young woman holding and closely examining an old golf club. Beside her, an old golf bag with a few other clubs within.

He approached, expressing mild admiration for her find. She looked at him gratefully, breathlessly confessing she was considering buying the bag and contents as a gift for her father’s birthday.

“Tell you a little story”, he said. “Interested how golf got its name?”

“Why yes, certainly I am. I’d like to hear that”, she responded, turning fully toward him.

“Scotland, that’s where golf was first played. The national game there”, he said knowingly.

“I think I may have heard that before”, she smiled.

“Sure you have”, he said. “But here’s how they named the game. The Scots were always fiercely militant. They originally used clubs like that to knock hell out of one another. Clan warfare. Kilts and clubs, that’s the Scots.”

She nodded gravely, listening carefully. He liked that. Playing homage to the distinguished-looking stranger’s obvious knowledgeability.

“Eventually they decided”, he continued, “to be more civil. Decided instead of bashing one another insensible with those clubs, they would whack at these hard little balls, the winner would lead the way to the clubhouse bar, loser would pay for all the evening’s rounds.”

“Neat”, she cooed. “That’s cool.”

“Wait, I’m not finished”, he admonished, trembling with delight. “You see, with those clubs they ‘flog’ that ball. Remember, they used to flog one another with those clubs? Before they decided it would be more fun to drink one another under the table than bash one another’s brains into jelly? They simply -- some genius among them -- decided to take the word ‘flog’ and symbolically turn it around See, ‘flog’, becomes ‘golf!”

“Well, hey, that’s terrific”, she enthused. “I really, really appreciate you telling me that. I love getting to know these things!”

He nodded, smiled graciously, quite smitten with his own erudite, spur-of-the-moment brilliance. And he responded in kind when she called after him “you have a good day, now!”

Peoples’ gullibility never failed to amaze him.

And damn, he would find nothing but crap here, this time. 

 

 

On The Cusp Of Spring

The trees stand forlornly deep
in water, like small shallow lakes
their roots uncomfortably immersed
in melted ice and snow. Yesterday's
all-day rain and this day's sun with
mild temperature has transformed
into a vast marsh on the forest floor.

Crows, restless with the seasonal
nesting urge, gather and rise to
naked treetops, hoarsely, coarsely
call their intentions, then disperse,
roost momentarily, re-gather in a
flapping mass of dark wings over
the pellucid blue sky. Gulls, high on
the crests of wind-powered waves
call a far different tuneful arrival.

Through the masts of old pines
the wind moans, clangs and rubs
trunks of trees in an uneasy alliance
of propinquity, creaking, swaying
an agony of flexible strength. Wasted
limbs that had clung stubbornly aloft
descend to ground, clanking reproach.

The brilliant carmine head of a
pterodactyl-like Pileated woodpecker
peals its presence, the great bird
lifting wide wingspan to inspect huge
fallen logs green with moss, rough with
grey lichen; seeking rewards to be
had under rough-splintered bark.

On the hillsides, the receding snow
has left a patchwork quilt of white squares
and dun-green alternates. Rivers of
melt-water stream down natural gullies.
Where the sun's warming rays cannot
penetrate, thick frozen tongues of ice
resist imminent departure.

There are few haws left on hawthorn
trees; newly snow-freed ground reveals
still-green apples under wildly unruly
apple trees. Birds have puckishly picked
apart bitter-root berries and red Sumac
candles. Wild strawberry plants thrust
themselves into green assertiveness.
We stand on the cusp of Spring.

 

What If?

It was the colour that grabbed her eye. That bright, yet muted, subdued shade of green. On a portion of the metal handrail beside the short set of steps leading to the cottage. Then her eyes focused more clearly on the extraordinary shape and she drew in her breath in disbelief. Clearly, the largest winged insect of its type she had ever seen, with a wing span of at least five inches. What kind of exotic butterfly might it be? If indeed butterfly it was. It just stayed there, alive yes, but still, too. Only its long and delicate antennae moving fractionally. She ran back to her own cottage, grabbed her digital camera, and returned. Still there. The long, black, silky filaments of her hair kept slipping annoyingly over her forehead, wisps across her eyes, as she assumed various and awkward positions, attempting to secure better advantage to photograph the creature. Wished she had tied her hair back into a ponytail, earlier. But how could she have foreseen this?

Finally, after a succession of shoots at various angles she felt satisfied she had captured what she could. Could be, she told herself, the recent weather events had taken its toll on the exotic creature, imagining it had been blown off course from its true destination by insistent, wayward winds. Instead of a tropical, even a semi-tropical destination, it had gained access to back-country New Hampshire. Where last night’s series of rolling thunderstorms had drenched it, and the following cold chasing out the previous warm front had obviously beset it with conditions detrimental to its existence.

An hour later, as dusk began settling in, she prepared to return. Remembered she had ventured out earlier with the intention of flicking on the cottage interior lighting. Already, because of its set-back into the enveloping woods behind the cottage, the interior was dark. She had meant to avoid that. Forgotten, when she had seen that creature, now nowhere to be seen. Plenty of ambient light elsewhere, including the interior of her own cottage, but not in this one. A real nuisance.

The proprietors of the cottages had urged them to move to one of the unoccupied cottages. Burton thought that was a good idea. She hadn’t. She liked the one they were in, a nicely-appointed, well-equipped housekeeping cottage in the Waterville Valley.

“Hey, let’s just do it”, Burton urged.

“Not interested”, she responded. He shrugged, left it to her. Always did.

The problem was, staying there meant no hot water. Walter, the owner, tried to re-light the burner, but had no luck. He could see the spark, he explained to them, but the pilot light just refused to take. He was confident he would succeed, he said, next morning. In the morning, he tried again. Sitting in the cottage, having their breakfast, they heard a loud bang, thought Walter had slammed the door (with anger) under the cottage floor where the utility pilot was located.

He explained sheepishly, a little shaken, his normally ruddy face looking pale, that the bang they’d heard was a blowback.

“Never experienced anything like that before”, he said to them, wiping the back of his dirty hand across the forehead of his broad face. “Not about to experience it again, either”, he grinned nervously.

“Never seen anything like that sheet of flame reaching for me. Scary as hell. Look, I’m still shaking.”

They commiserated. Felt a little alarmed themselves about their proximity to this flaming beast. He assured them it hadn’t lit, there was no danger. They could stay there, if they insisted, he reassured them.

They weren’t all that desperate for hot water, they said. Best wait, after all, for the utility company to send along a worker. Too bad the light to the hot water tank went on a week-end. And no, really, they were all right. They’d stay right where they were. And just, as was recommended, take their shower in the closest unoccupied cottage.

It was irritating, but these unanticipated, awkward things happen. The same inclement weather that had clearly devastated the physical resources of that remarkable flying creature had obviously snuffed out the gas pilot light of their cottage hot water heater.

The very thought of re-packing everything, moving it all from their current cottage to another one had no appeal to her. Come Monday, Tuesday at the latest, the utility company would have returned the hot water heater to functioning capability.

They had driven into the Franconia Notch that day. Climbed up to Eagle’s Cliff, felt confident enough in the weather and their energy levels, to go on to climb Mount Lafayette. They were young and in good shape. Enjoyed the challenge. And challenge they found it to be.

The ascent demanding, but intriguing. From the moss-filled granite grottoes to the steeply narrow ledges with their wire handrails, the planked ‘bridges’ over the black-bogged areas, and the steep uphill scrambles over the huge tossed boulders on the trail. By the time, three hours after they had left the trailhead, they had reached the bunkhouse cabin close to the summit they were tired. They were grateful for a proffered cup of hot tea.

And then on to the final thrust well above the tree-line, to the summit. Where, every few feet on the exposed rock-face there were stones piled for the express purpose, a sign told them, of taking cover, if the winds were too high and threatening. They were hot and perspiring heavily, requiring frequent spurts of flagging energy interspersed with panting stops, to make the summit, but they succeeded.

They rested a short while, appreciative of the sharp cool breeze drying their shirts. Amazed at the flying insects that were pushed skyward by that same breeze, seemingly helpless to deflect themselves from its insistence. They would surely die up there, those insects, at a height beyond their normal habitat, and with only sparse bits of alpine growth to sustain them.

They sat there, recovering their strength, grateful the sun was in, the sky well covered with lowering, but white clouds. Bushed, but triumphant.

The descent represented a relative breeze. They could hardly credit that some hardy mountaineers prided themselves in actually running the ascent. As they descended, their legs felt wobbly, their knees and their toes feeling cramped-achy and sore. But for those runners, achieving record-time was the motivating force. They must have been, they said to one another, in amazing physical shape. At the time that the hut above the tree-line was built, much of the building materials had been brought up on the backs of volunteers. Now, such materials would just be dumped as a helicopter load.

They felt pretty good about themselves. And thought they would try another, less physically-taxing summit the next day. Maybe Mount Pemi. It was invigorating, physically exacting, but worth it.

After dinner, he flaked out on the little sofa in the living room, which was simply an extension of the cottage kitchen. Television set on, a channel featuring old re-runs of NYPD.

She texted a few of her friends, bragging about their exploit. Then she realized twilight had set in. Gathered body wash, shampoo, body lotion, and a change of clothing. Reasoning she would feel better showering while it was still light; would change into night clothes later, as she’d done the night before.

She thought about waking him, asking him to walk her over, wait for her. Thought better of it. What was she, a little kid, afraid of the unknown? She’d felt the same way the evening before, thought it was kind of creepy, being alone in that cottage, closing herself into the bathroom, having her shower, speedily drying herself, fleeing with her bags back to her own cottage. Later, feeling very childish about her unreasonable fears.

Already, it seemed like a routine, second-time-around-process. Except she had forgotten, earlier, to flick the light switch. Pushing open the screen door, letting herself into the cottage, she groped for where she thought the switch was, on the wall. Found it, and light flooded the combination kitchen-sitting room. Similar to their own, but a slightly different layout in back, where the bathroom and bedrooms were located.

She looked about nervously. What if someone was already in here? She turned the lock. Berating herself for being pretty stupid about something so unremarkably routine. She locked the door to ensure no one might accidentally enter while she was showering. There was no one present other than herself. No one other than she had any reason to be there.

The light was dimmer as she proceeded down the hall. First, the larger of the two cottage bedrooms, with a full-size bed, dressers, night tables and lamps. Then the door leading to the bathroom. Beyond it, the second bedroom with its twin beds and dressers. She glanced perfunctorily into each, turned back to the bathroom door. Feeling as though, if someone was watching she must look very uncertain of herself.

She felt awkward, child-like in her sensibilities. Not a grown woman, married a dozen years, a woman with a career, an assured woman with a wide circle of friends. How utterly absurd, she thought. How an innocently untoward event can disturb one’s equilibrium, bring uncertainty, interrupt maturity, recall vulnerabilities reflective of a child’s world view.

She opened the bathroom door, was greeted by a dark, yawning space where she could make nothing out. She drew herself halfway around the door, felt for the switch and was rewarded by the now-familiar sight of a generous vanity and sink, toilet and shower-bath She felt suddenly angry, impatient with herself.

The removal of her clothing, placement of her toiletries took a nano-second in her efficient determination. She cranked shut the tiny window looking out, at eye level, to the dark woods beyond.

Ah, the water was hot, cleansing, refreshing, just perfect. She assiduously soaped, vigorously massaged her scalp with the flower-petal-fragranced shampoo, and glanced down to see a frenzy of foam gushing into the drain.

Her hands, scrubbing her hair, pulling long gathered strands under the hard spray of soft water, wandered to her face. And suddenly those hands felt different. Larger, tougher, as though they were masculinely calloused, more brusquely intimate than her own. Whose hands then, were they?

Her chest felt suddenly tight, her heart began thumping as she thought to herself. What if these are not my hands?

This is sheer, unadulterated lunacy, she shrilled at herself, while suddenly becoming aware of a high-pitched scream of sheer terror, surrounding her, seeming to come from somewhere very close.

 

Winter Day

Crows, black arrows in the pewter
vault of the winter sky, angrily
circling far-off pinnacles -
masts of snow-laden conifers
their rough caws circling the
frigid winter air. An hapless owl
no doubt, whose quiet predatory
presence insults the murder's
singular territorial imperative.

The knife-edge of icy wind
sharpens upon our bare cheeks.
The trail we crunch through
bristles with the windfall of
twigs, branches. A veil of
ectoplasmic-like snow lazily
descends, resembling a
ghostly presence, revealed by
the unwonted presence of an
interloper, in a haunted place.

This has been an unproductive
year for seeds and conifer cones.
Birds struggle in their search for
winter sustenance. Yet glaring-white
shards of tree, chipped relentlessly
by the ram-hard head of a pileated
woodpecker informs not all are
affected by a rogue season's lack.

Beams of light begin to creep
tentatively through tree branches
even while flurries dot the landscape
gently falling around us. Above, a bright
halo attempts to forge its presence
through the clouds. The creek,
released from icy bondage, runs
silently along snowed banks.

Where tracks of forest creatures
intrigue toward speculation.

 

 

Travel, Broadens the Mind

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looked the same as it did every year. The huge viburnum was in bloom, so too a pale-striped-leaf dogwood. The viburnum’s flowers were on the fade-end of bloom, the dogwood’s just starting. It was always cooler there, set on a rise where the wind blew incessantly. The greensward had been freshly mowed very short and recently. Despite which, embedded with the grass, clover, buttercups and thyme were all in bright pink, purple and yellow flower. They could smell the herb-sharp fragrance of the thyme as they walked upon the grass.

Far more insistently pungent, the odour of cow manure, wafting on the wind from the farm sitting right adjacent the rest stop, nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont. As they walked, a leash held by each of them, man and wife, glad to be able to stretch cramped limbs and get their little dogs to do the same, the shared ritual of admiring the specimen-quality oaks, maples and ornamental crabs commenced. He conscientiously scooped up into a small plastic bag the equally small deposit their very small female black dog rid herself of. The little male was content to lift his tiny back leg proprietorially at every tree trunk they passed.

Really, the stench of cow offal was overpowering, she remarked to her husband. Who smiled indulgently at her, a ‘city girl’, who had never experienced living and working summers on a farm, as he had.

“I rather enjoy it”, he said. “Brings back good memories. Doesn’t bother me at all.”

A trifle smugly, she thought. “I know you do, don’t, respectively”, she sniffed.

The day was warming considerably. Usually, early June, it was much cooler up here, and often enough drizzling. No fear of that this day. They would eat their take-along brunch at one of the handily-placed picnic tables.

“I’ll just be a minute” he said, handing her the second leash. The little dogs made to follow him. She tugged lightly, to hold them back, seating herself on the bench-seat of the closest picnic table. The little dogs wandered as far as their leashes permitted under the table, crossing leashes. And she testily unravelled them.

‘Just a minute’, she knew from long experience, would be an interminable stretch, and she resigned herself to a considerable wait. She felt irritated by the heat, and the pestiferous presence of black flies and deer flies now revealing their presence, as she sat there, offering up her tender flesh. You’d think, she said to herself crankily, that the wind would keep them away. She kept flailing at them, on her neck, behind her ears, at her face. Thought how foolish she must appear, should anyone be watching.

It was a busy place, cars coming and going. People using the convenient presence of clean washrooms, picking up state-issued maps, tourist brochures. Doubtful, she said to herself that the drivers of those trailers, semi-trailers, tractor-trailers, would be interested in tourist brochures. The coffee however, that would be another matter. Her husband swore by the quality of the coffee there. She detested coffee. Her husband enthused, it was Green Mountain coffee; your choice of decaffeinated, regular or hazelnut-flavoured. Not my choice, she responded dryly. She would make do with the thermos of hot tea sitting in the trunk. Her cup of tea, as it were.

A line of heavy trucks sat beyond the area where cars parked. Huge metal beasts, some carrying immense pieces of machinery, others logs, idled loudly, spewing carbon and rattling the air.

She had appreciated the brisk bonhomie of the young uniformed customs-immigration official -- although they called them border inspectors now -- at the Darby Line crossing who had casually screened their passports, questioned their destination, their origin, glanced into the car interior, noting the little dogs, scrutinizing their proffered documentation. A far cry from the usual rudely dour uniforms who so often screened them. She had leaned forward on her seat to view him more clearly and thanked him for his ‘refreshing’ attitude.

The young man had barely paused, beaming back “Have a good trip!”

He deposited the little plastic bag into the waste container sitting outside the doors to the tourist rest area. As he entered, he casually vetted the interior; unchanged from their last trip. A very young woman, pretty, delicate of build and wearing, he noted -- for he was a conscientious people-connoisseur -- a very brief, very tight pencil skirt, and improbably teetery high-heeled shoes. He noted also that a metal circlet of heavy keys dangled from a belt at her waist. He smiled directly at her. It was what he did.

Immediately the thought flashed his mind; she was exiting the ladies’ washroom, an inauspicious time to have one’s presence acknowledged. She scowled back at him, before peremptorily turning directly for the door, heels clicking angrily, imperiously he felt, on the stone floor. Before she left, taking no notice of anyone else in the chamber, not the genial woman standing before the enquiry desk, nor the tourists milling about, nor yet the young man she passed entering as she exited, the impression he garnered was complete. He was also a casual student of human psychology and he put that little performance down to an uncertain person's self-conscious display of psychological self-defence; a distancing from any who might find question in her appearance. Nothing needing defence there, he mentally shrugged.

He certainly had other things to think about. His wife’s unwillingness to embark on the trip, for example. Her seemingly growing frailty, sudden spells of dizziness, flashes of temper, fears and uncertainties. Her willing admission to him that she was herself puzzled at the fear that seemed to envelop her, looming seemingly out of nowhere. Her lack of energy, however, she tended to laugh off as “sclerotic old age”.

He hoped getting away would be good for her, take her out of her brooding moodiness. Despite her lack of enthusiasm for this trip he counted on it having an enlivening effect on her. Her usual exhilaration at being in the out-of-doors, away, the change of scenery and surrender to the pleasures of mountain trails would do it for her. It always had. She had a deep-seated need that way. He should know, he had ample opportunity to observe her over the years. Since they were kids, growing up together. Her mood would be rejuvenated, her energy and enthusiasm restored. He believed that.

He was not certain, but thought it likely that the woman sitting at the information counter was the very one he had spoken with last year at this same time. Effusively pleasant, eager to talk, generous with her smiles. Bored, no doubt, sitting there for long hours, he surmised. She informed him breathlessly that it was a wonder they still had brochures left for the taking. Two full busloads of high school students had come through that very morning, from Montreal. Rambunctious and excited, on their way through to a week-end in Boston. Polite kids, she hastened to assure him, as though they were his.

His wife decided she would move to another table, see if she could escape the black flies. Perhaps right where she was sitting, that was the problem. She gathered the little dogs, moved off to another table much closer to the building. Predictably, it made little difference, and she resigned herself to the nuisance, awaited her husband’s re-appearance. Many people passed through the doors; her husband not among them. She sighed, not in exasperation, not entirely. She was glad he enjoyed speaking with people, did not begrudge him any such opportunities, however fleeting -- he was that gregarious.

She noted a young woman whom she had seen earlier enter, exit, and repeat this several times. Their eyes caught and they exchanged smiles. Her back to the parking lot, facing the greensward and the farm beyond, the mountain tops further still, she heard an odd, rhythmic clattering, idly wondered what it might be, but was constrained by not wanting to appear nosy, from ostentatiously turning around to determine the source.

She became aware of an audible intake of breath, a giggle, and did then turn to her right, to see the same woman, dressed in knee-length twill shorts, a brightly patterned three-quarter sleeve tee-shirt, rapidly approaching her.

“Did you see that?” she demanded.

“Did I see … what?” What was it I should have seen, she wondered, looking at the other woman’s bemused, hugely amused countenance.

”That woman! She just came out of the building.”

“No, I wasn’t looking in that direction.”

The woman looked disappointed. “You didn’t see her?” she asked, incredulously.

“Why no, I did not. Why? Why are you asking?”

And it came bubbling out, brimming with mirth, with glee, with what -- admiration?

“This woman, delicate, slightly built, young, long blonde hair. Wearing a really short black pencil skirt. She was wearing black stiletto heels!”

“Oh.”

“Well, no, that’s not all”, the excited woman before her gushed. “I watched her cross over the tarmac, headed for where the rigs are parked. You know, those big tractor trailers?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I thought, you know, kind of like reasoning to myself, guess some long-distance driver picked himself up a juicy away-from-home prospect. You know, for a ‘casual companion’?”

“Oh!?”

“Well, that wasn't it! I watched her, in that skirt, those stiletto heels. She clambered up into the cab. On the driver’s side. There’s no one else in there. Just her! Look, there she goes, she’s pulling away!”

She turned herself awkwardly, yanking at the little dogs' leashes in the process, to look in the direction the woman was pointing. Yes, the largest of the lot, pulling out, pulling down the ramp, stopping at the confluence of the highway, then off and away.

She turned to look at the woman standing beside her. Felt the same goofy grin paste itself over her own face, to match the other’s. And they chorused a good, loud chortle: Hey there, girl! 

 

 

Greg Said It Would Be Fine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greg said it would be fine. The place was perfect for us. We would be sharing it - co-tenanting, he called it -- with people we know. He knows them, anyway. They weren’t exactly friends. More like casual acquaintances. But they were nice. Older than her, but then Greg’s a whole lot older than her, too. Oh, not a whole lot, but older. Let’s see: he’s eight years older than her. That’s kind of a lot, at the age they are. But she likes it that he’s older. He’s had experiences she has never had. Wouldn’t ever, anyway, since they’re mostly guy experiences. But she really didn’t like the guys around her age. They were like kids, juvenile delinquents for the most part, that’s how she thought of them.

When she first met Greg she could hardly believe he would be interested in her. But he was. A little like a big brother at first. He kidded around a lot. But there was something about him, something that told her that he felt there was more to her for him, than that kind of relationship. It took long enough to get going, but it did. She happened to see a lot of him because she happened to be over at her friend Yvonne’s place a lot.

So when Greg said that the house was perfect for them, it was. They had the ground floor, Edith and Robert had the top floor. He would help her start a nice garden, he said. When she felt she had the time. Not just yet. He knew how involved she was, just getting used to having a baby. It was as though he could understand how she felt, as though her life had been ambushed by events that just seemed to happen before she even realized they were happening.

She felt swept along by everything, as though she was somewhere else, not in her body, like those out-of-body experiences she had read about, when people died, and their spirits floated above their body and they observed what was happening, with people mourning their dead body. And then something happened and the spirit slipped back into the body and they were somehow saved from death. They saw a blinding light, something like that. They were given another opportunity to live.

She wasn’t sure she believed anything like that. That it could happen like that. But she could imagine it, in a way. And it’s possible that thinking of that made her feel as though something similar had happened with her. As though somehow her life had taken a turn and she was unable to do anything about it, just accept what was happening. As long as she had Greg, really, she didn’t mind. He makes her happy. And he knows that. He told her time and again how much she means to him.

She depends on him, on his judgement. He knows so much that she has no inkling about. Just living with him is an experience in educating herself about so many things. He always seems to know the right thing to do, somehow. And she respects that in him. She always waits for his advice, to hear from him how he thinks about things before she makes up her mind. He’s always telling her she should have more confidence in herself, in her ability to work things out for herself. She’s intelligent in her own right, and she should recognize that in herself, he says. There’s nothing whatever wrong in her ability to discern things.

Well, when she had been cautious around the two dogs from upstairs he had gently taken her in hand, shown her how quiet and non-threatening they were. Two huskies. You’d think with two dogs Edith and Robert would prefer to live downstairs, not up on the second floor. Easier access to the outside with the dogs, that kind of thing. They really doted on those dogs. And, she learned, it was true, they were quiet dogs, never bothered anyone. She would often be startled though, feeling that someone was in the room with her - the kitchen, for example - and she would turn around and there they would be, looking in at her from the doorway, watching her, their alternate blue-green eyes focused on her as though they were interested in what she was doing.

She never wanted to encourage them. So she would turn her back and ignore them, and they would quietly pad away, back upstairs. They weren’t supposed to come down to their part of the house. They sometimes did, anyway, when Edith or Robert were careless, not aware of where their dogs were. Greg said not to mind, just to think of them as kind of phantom presences. They made little sound, no bother to them.

**********************************************************************************
 

And they were used to us, to seeing us around all the time, in any event. We often invited Edith and Robert to dinner, and they reciprocated. Sometimes we’d have a barbecue and invite other neighbours over, too. It’s a nice street, with nice houses and nice people. Lots of small kids around, too.

There’s an elementary school only a street away. It’s where we plan to send our own kids, when we have them, and when they are old enough. And that might be a good time for me to return to school, to do a little catch-up. Because I would like to finish my Grade 12. Greg thinks I should, he says it’s a good idea. Just to have the paperwork because, he says, I’m smart enough and know enough and can pick up enough on my own. He says I should consider life itself an ongoing education. He’s that smart. It works for him, although he’s got a university degree.

“You keep selling yourself short”, he keeps telling me. “You’re a whole lot more intelligent than you think you are, and I should know”, he says.

“If you say so”, I tell him.

“I do!” he always says, hugging me. I love it when he does that. Not telling me I’m smart, but when he’s so impulsive, when he grabs me, and hugs me, and kisses me, and holds me close. I just adore it when he does that. He cherishes me, he says. Imagine that, being cherished. I told my mother that once, what he says to me. And she laughed.

“That’s nice”, she said. “We’ll see how long that lasts, before everything gets to feel kind of stale, and you along with it.”

I was really offended. “That’s an awful thing to say!”

“Well, honey-child, awful it may sound to you, but it’s the truth. You’re just a kid, it’s puppy-love.”

“Greg’s no kid. He’s pretty adult, he’s a mature adult, and he loves me and doesn’t mind telling me that.”

“Yes, you’re kind of lucky, that way. It’s always nice to hear. Good for the old ego. But trust me, I’m your mother, I’ve seen a whole lot you couldn’t ever begin to imagine. I’ve had the experiences, I know what it’s like once the bloom of an early marriage loses its appeal. Best to know, better to be prepared, than to have it hit you in the face.”

“Mom! What you’re saying happened to you, it isn’t going to happen to me!”

“You think so? Well, you’re not alone, you’ve got plenty of company. Things always start out sweet and cozy before they begin to deteriorate, and once that happens, the relationship degrades so fast your head will spin.”

“Why are you telling me these things? Why are you speaking about these things to me? My relationship with Greg is on firm ground and nothing is going to change that. I don’t challenge him and berate him and blame him the way you always did with Dad. I don’t make his life a living misery!” I didn’t want to say those things, but I felt I had to, to defend myself, and to defend Greg too, for that matter.

Mom shrugged. Sometimes she knows when she’s gone too far. After that she was non-committal, non-confrontational.

Not long after that my pregnancy was over. In the sense that our baby was born. I could hardly believe it. For that matter, nor could Greg. He didn’t care that we had a baby girl, it was just the same to him. He was thrilled, out-of-his-mind happy. We had agreed I’d stay home for the baby. At least for a while, maybe until she is two or three, he thinks. Longer, if I want to. It’s up to me, he says. He would be happy if I wanted to just stay at home, look after the baby for as long as I want to. Our baby.

And, he said, there might be more, more kids if I’d be agreeable. He would like a family of at least a few kids. As for me, I’m not sure. What I want, I mean. I mean, in a sense I’m still just a kid myself. That’s what I meant, when I said I felt as though I’d been ambushed. Ambushed right out of my teen years, is what I meant.

But on the other hand, I guess you could say I went into this with my eyes wide open. I’m no dunce, I know about restraint and contraceptives, all of that. But when I’m with Greg, it’s like that’s all I want out of life. He’s considerate and sensitive to my feelings, and I have complete trust in him. We talked about all of this, beforehand.

So it’s something we both wanted, a baby, a child we would love and share. It’s just that, sometimes, I think it’s too much, too soon. Oh, I know my mom had me when she was 18, so I’m kind of a year and a little more ahead of her. I know, because she has told me so often, that she resented me coming along, as though I had anything to do with it. I will never, ever feel that way about Melody.

It’s true I’m feeling really tired all the time. But what else to expect, she’s only six weeks old. She has needs that I’ve got to tend to, because I am, after all, her mother. But it is tiring, and it’s a lot to get used to. There’s so much to think about, to remember to do, looking after her. Greg is good, he helps whenever he can, when he’s home from work, and on the week-ends. But I don’t like to ask him to do things that I can do, after all he works hard, too.

Anyway, Melody has changed a whole lot of things. There’s no more spontaneity, about anything, anything at all. We’re disciplined now in a way we’ve never had to be. In observation of her schedule. And we worry about her all the time. Any sounds she makes that we’re not familiar with, and try to interpret. If she’s eating all right, and, you know, the other stuff; changing her diaper constantly. Diaper rash, that’s another thing to look out for.

My breasts are swollen, and my nipples are sore. She’s emphatically taken to nursing. I have experienced none of the problems I’ve read so much about. She latched on without much prompting on my part. She can find her own way around the landscape of my upper body. She sucks, and the milk flows.

Her tiny fists clench themselves into hard little balls of determination. Greg adores her. She’s healthy and that’s so important to us. We want her to have every opportunity that life can offer her. She’s such a teeny, tiny thing, yet Greg has talked about university already. He thinks she could be a scientist, a lawyer, anything she wants because she’ll have the brains and we’ll stimulate her to think for herself and be ambitious to achieve anything she aspires to.

**********************************************************************************

I don’t quite know what to do. Everything seems utterly pointless. As though the future has simply evaporated into nothingness. It all seems so black, so bleak, without any hope. And I don’t know how to console Glen. Even though my heart feels as though it’s been torn out of my chest, and my head won’t stop aching, he seems more inconsolable than me. He just sits there. He won’t do anything, nothing at all, won’t move from where he sits, mourning. It was hard enough, the funeral, her little casket, holding whatever was left of her tiny frail body, so dependent on us, on me. We got through that. I’ve no memory of it, actually. People were kind. That dimly penetrated. Hushed, whispered sounds, little else.

 

***********************************************************************************

I am awfully tired, but I know this is a tight spot I’ve got to get over. It’ll get a whole lot easier as she gets a little older. It’s this first bit of her existence, our little girl, when her mother is still groping around for self-assurance, responding to those demanding needs. The insecurity will pass, I know, partly because Greg encourages me to believe that, and partly because I know it will, and then I’ll be more confident, less stressed, less tired.

Getting up in the early hours of the night and morning is difficult, but that won’t last, either, as she matures and her feedings become a little more regularized, organized, less time-sensitive. I know that, because I’ve read it in some really good baby books. That’s Greg again, anxious for me to be reassured, to have all the information I need. He knows how much of a reader I am, omnivorously reading everything I can get my hands on, just latterly diverted to reading books like this. And barely having the time, now, even for that.

When my mother came over late last week, she fussed a bit over the baby. Actually, it was only the second time she saw Melody. The way she took to her almost made me warm entirely to my own mother. To edge slightly beyond the emotional gulf I’ve always felt that strained our relationship.

She watched while I nursed Melody, and said how old-fashioned I was. I just shrugged, changed her diaper, got her ready for sleep. It’s the best nutrition a baby could have, the most natural, and it brings us both, I know, emotional fulfillment. I can’t say that to my mom, she would just raise her eyebrows as she always does, and express that gruff, cynical laugh of hers. We just don’t think alike, strange as that is.

She picked up her purse and I knew exactly what she planned to do.

“No smoking here, Mom.”

“Aw, forgot. Well, how about we go out to the deck, I can smoke there, can’t I?”

“Sure, Mom, go ahead.”

“Well, c’mon, I want you to come with me. The baby’s been fed, she’s sleeping, and secured. Just leave her there, and come on out with me. So we can talk.”

Talk, I wondered. What about? Anything and nothing. Mom likes to talk. Mostly about herself. I just shrugged, made sure Melody was fastened into her car seat securely, tucked the blanket closer around her, set the car seat on top of the table, leaned over to kiss her moist little forehead, and followed mom out the sliding door. The deck is right alongside the kitchen. I left the glass door slightly ajar.

“I’ve moved back in with Jack again”, Mom announced. “I think he’s learned his lesson. He begged me to come back. I’m easy.”

She’s a great one for teaching high-decibel “lessons”. My childhood years were fraught with the fall-out of those lessons. Directed toward Dave, my dad, and me as well. High-pitched declarations of being fed up with being hard done by. Nothing anyone ever did, around her seemed to satisfy her. She found fault with everything, and her screams would echo throughout the house, deafening us, as we cringed helplessly under one assault after another. I wasn’t sorry to leave home.

“How long is that supposed to last?” I asked, recalling the succession of men she has lived with since the final separation from my dad. I’ve lost count. One relationship after another, all of them collapsed. Emotional investments gone awry.

She shrugged. “As long as it does”, she responded. She liked to talk about how abusive men were, how much she had put up with trying to find the perfect mate, someone who would respect her many endowments, someone she could rely upon. She had no problem netting men. They were always attracted to her good looks, sharp wit, her dramatic flair. And no mistaking her qualities as far as her professional work ethic and capabilities. She always brought home the bacon; her salary level far exceeding that of the men she took up with.

She always said how disappointed she was that I had interrupted my education, that she anticipated more intelligence from me. In a sense, I regret that too, but I do intend to remediate the situation as soon as I can, return to school, and then enroll in college courses. I can do it, I know I can, and I will.

We talked, she smoked her cigarette and I made to return to the kitchen, but she held me back. “Relax” she said, “for God’s sake. Take a break from that routine of yours. The baby is sleeping soundly, just sit there and take it easy.” She had another cigarette.

When, some 20 minutes later we returned from outside it was to find a silent chaotic scene of pure hell. Silence screamed. The dull, heavy thud of my life collapsing fell over me, and I almost evaporated at the sight of evil. The sinister, blood-curdling scene of a dog slinking out of the room, silently padding away, leaving its prey, my baby, half consumed, unrecognizable from the beautiful tiny human that I had left, become an object some lunatic hand had fashioned out of dead clay, with a swirling display of garish bloody guts spilling from its interior; a model for medical science to teach its practitioners the inner mechanism of a human body.

I felt my mother’s arms pulling me, one of her hands open, clasping my eyes so I could no longer see. I heard a horrible keening shrieking sound, and wondered why my mother was screeching so horribly, since no one had done anything wrong. I felt myself fall, while being supported, and then there was nothing more to feel, to hear, to see, to acknowledge.

I read the headlines later, much later. I don't know who had saved them, carefully cut them out, and set them away for, presumably, later scrutiny. They went something like this: "Excellent mother" charged in death"; "Quebec teen found her baby mauled by dogs". I have been arraigned in a youth court on a charge of manslaughter.

Greg is frantic. He got me a lawyer. In court, the lawyer said "She lost her baby yesterday and less than 24 hours later she is arrested and charged. She found her baby dead, devoured by a dog. It's a sight she will surely never forget."

The Crown prosecutor explained to the media that the manslaughter charge stemmed from my failure to provide "the necessities of life" to my baby, resulting in Melody's death. 

 

 

The Homework Kid

 

Well, that’s it. I am pissed. I am really pissed. My mom says I should just let it go, and be thankful things turned out that way. All of us should. Take advantage of the break. There’ll be more than enough challenges, she said, next year, when I start high school. I know all of that. I know more or less, what to expect there. Things will be different, for sure.

But I’m still here, in elementary school, most of the way through Grade 8. I know I used to grit my teeth and say I can see it through. Meaning to the end of the school year. Meaning having HER ride on my back, driving me nuts with her screeching. No, not just me, everyone. All of us. Which gave us a lot to talk about, didn’t it? Having a teacher who we couldn’t respect.

You could say that everyone going into her class kind of knew what to expect. She had a reputation, and not a good one, but then hardly any teacher in the school has a ‘good’ reputation, if you know what I mean. Maybe the primary-grade teachers do, but not the others. Some of them aren’t bad, some of them are pretty awful. You could say Mrs. McVetty’s was about as bad as they get. I had a friend at school a grade above me, a really good friend. We used to spend a lot of time together in the schoolyard, and after school. She would tell me about the things McVetty used to do. She hated her.

My mom said I should give her a chance, not rely on gossip. It wasn’t gossip, it was friendly advice. But you know, when September came around and we were first in her class, I thought what the hell! I wondered what all the fuss was about, because she seemed really good. I mean she explained things, it seemed as if she cared about whether we understood subjects like math, and she’d seem to be extra careful to see that everyone knew what was happening before she moved on to higher levels.

I really appreciated that. It helped me a lot, it really did. I felt pretty good about stuff, especially math and science, not my best subjects. That lasted for the first two months. And after that, wow, you wouldn’t believe the kind of atmosphere around our classroom. Not, as my mom said, conducive to learning. Because this teacher just kept going off the rails. Seems she couldn’t control the class, and she couldn’t control her reaction to the class.

Yep, some of us were kind of noisy and we didn’t like being told not to be. She began to move us all around the place, making us sit here and there and everywhere but where we wanted to, to get us away from one another. That only made things worse; because we were further apart from the people we really liked, we just upped the activities that got her mad. We were louder, we were sneakier when she wasn’t looking, some of the guys began to airplane notes and the place went wild.

If you think we were loud, that was nothing compared to her. I mean she went berserk, completely nuts. She would screech at us like she was out of her mind. My mom said she could understand that; I drive her crazy, too. She said all of us should give a thought to the difficulty of teaching 24 hormone-charged obstreperous kids (her words). Tough, I said, other teachers do it and they don’t blow like Mount Olympus.

Funny thing about that, my mom’s sympathy for Mrs. McVetty, it just didn’t last. She stopped telling me to try to tone things down and set an example for the other kids once I told her that my teacher criticized my mom. My mom was shocked. Criticize her? What for? Well, Mom, I said, remember all those evening school events we usually don’t attend?

“Those useless non-events? That’s what she’s criticizing me for, for not hauling myself out in the evening after working a day job, working at home, looking after you and wanting nothing but to get into an early bed? That’s what’s wrong with me?”

Yeah, Mom”, I laughed "that’s what’s wrong with you".

“Hey, remember, chum, this was a mutual decision. After the first few we went to, we both decided it was a waste of time.”

“Yep. I remember. You don’t get any complaint out of me for bypassing them. I’m just telling you what my esteemed teacher said.”

“She said... What did she say?”

“That you’ve got your priorities screwed up.”

“She said that? Who the hell does she think she is, anyway?”

“Don’t get mad at me, Mom, I’m just telling you what she said. I don’t think that way. In fact, I felt really bad, insulted that she would even mention you. You are none of her business. I just walked away from her.”

“Oh.”

After that Mom didn’t have too much to say about Mrs. McVetty. Although I gave her plenty of opportunity. It was like, every day coming home from school she’d ask how was school and I’d tell her how awful it was. Because of our teacher.

Like, what kid wants to go to school to be screamed at every damn day? And she picked on me a lot. No, not just me, most of the other kids got it too, but me especially. That’s my opinion.

She’d get this idea that you were doing something you weren’t supposed to and she’d keep going at you until you were ready to scream. Even about who your friends were. A teacher is supposed to teach. She hardly does that, most of the time. You don’t expect a teacher to be a social worker, to get herself all worked up about the kids in her class having friends. Some kids don’t deserve to have friends. They turn on people who are decent to them. That’s what happened to me.

There’s this girl, Shawna, not Shawna MacDonald, Shawna Boyd. Everyone likes Shawna MacDonald. Shawna Boyd, well everyone just kind of ignored her. I thought she never did anything to me, why should I ignore her? So I didn’t, I spoke to her, and she kind of matched herself up with me, and it was annoying because I didn’t always want her around, but there she was, always in our group.

The other girls would glare at her and that made me include her more, but I resented doing it, kind of. She kept text-messaging me outside school, and I responded, always, but she was kind of a nuisance, know what I mean? And then I found out that she had lied to me, telling me that one my friends said horrible things about me. And then I found out it wasn’t true, and I had it out with her.

Now, I don’t exactly ignore her, I speak to her, but I don’t let her hang around anymore. That’s just the way it is. So Mrs. McVetty gets on my case and wants to know all about it, what happened and why. She has no right to do that. I just told her ‘nothing, nothing’s wrong’.

Holly and Morgan can’t stand Mrs. McVetty, they’re worse than me about her. You can bet we have lots to talk about, and none of it very flattering to Mrs. McVetty. Come to think of it, there weren’t many kids in the class who even liked her, although a couple of kids did defend her reputation. They thought she was all right. Good for them. They were her little class pets, so it’s hardly surprising they would come out on her side. She never yelled at them. Well, hardly ever.

Like, it’s crazy, she gives us new math work, writes on the board how to understand the stuff, tells us here’s some homework, and anyone who doesn’t get it can ask her for special help. I was stupid enough to go to her a few times and ask for help. I know I was stupid, because she as much as said so. And instead of helping me she was really sarcastic, so I would never ask her for any help again. I managed to figure things out for myself anyway, because I’m really good with homework. Matter of fact, my friends ask me to help them mostly. Not that I‘m the smartest kid in the class, I’m not.

There’s a couple of kids who are good at everything, sports, math, science, history, geography. Art, too. I can’t draw anything to resemble what it’s supposed to be. I’m not bad at athletics, but not good, either, although it’s kind of fun. I am pretty good at writing. When we get assignments to write poetry or book reviews, or history reviews, I write the longest reports and reviews, and when I read my poetry in front of the class everyone listens and I get a huge applause. But Brian’s a much better poet than I am; he can write poetry like it’s nothing. I’ve got to feel really upset about something before I can produce a poem, and I don’t know why.

Anyway, all of us were really getting fed up. Not only did we have to put up with all this screaming abuse day after day, and listening to our teacher accuse us of being ignorant little brats and worse, but she kept assigning all kinds of homework. And tests, day after day, one test after another. The good thing about the tests, though, is that she said anyone who didn’t get a mark they were proud of, would be allowed to do the test over. I took advantage of that opportunity all the time, a lot of the kids didn’t bother. But I figure, anything that helps pump up your marks at the end of the year is worthwhile. Besides, I know if you keep doing things over, like repeating things, they eventually stick with you.

I know I do a lot of complaining about the homework, because there’s so much of it. But even though I do complain a lot, I don’t really mind it all that much. I guess I’m pretty organized, that way. Besides which, I don’t get out all that much, since we live in the country. It’s not like I can just go for a walk somewhere, other than on our property, all six acres of it. No thanks, really.

I used to invite my friends over and I’d go over to their places quite a lot. We used to sleep over all the time, for the entire week-end. I don’t do that so much anymore. Don’t really know why, just don’t. I do a lot of reading though, a whole lot. I treasure my books. Don't like to lend them out to anyone, because none of my friends are careful enough with books. I hate dog-eared pages, it's horrible that anyone could do that with a book. So I do a lot of reading, and sometimes I even read some of my favourites over again. Sometimes I get bored, but even though my mom says invite your friends over, I won't.

Anyway, we see one another all the time at school. Sometimes, for some of us, it’s enough. More than enough, since some of the girls are really irritating sometimes. The guys not so much, because we don’t really hang out with them. I heard once, someone told me about a school that decided to separate the boys from the girls, and kept them in separate classes, so they could do an experiment that organized classes to be taught in a way that the teachers thought would be better for the boys, and the same for the girls. I think that sucks. It’s much better when the guys and the girls are together, in one class. It’s far more interesting. With the guys around you never know when something really funny is going to happen.

Yes, I’m kind of off track. I was explaining, or I meant to explain, how kind of mysterious it is that all of a sudden, Mrs. McVetty isn’t there any more. I don’t mean upstairs, in her head, we’re kind of convinced she’s not all there, actually. I mean for a few days last week we had ‘spares’ come in. When that happens, it’s guaranteed to be a boring day. They don’t teach, they just depend on you to do work that’s been assigned by your normal teacher. And if there’s no work that’s been assigned, the spares just look at what Mrs. McVetty has written down for them, and tell us to get on with things that way. Couldn’t be more boring. We learn nothing, nothing at all. That really, truly bugs me.

And then last week this guy came in. Said he’d be around awhile. He’s a new teacher, looks like he’s around 26, or something. I doubt he’s had all that much experience, although he told us he has. He said he’d be filling in for Mrs. McVetty for the rest of the year. We’ve got almost two months left in the school year, and she’s opted out. She said nothing to us, nothing at all. She did say, at the start of the school year, she said it was a pledge: she would do everything necessary to completely prepare us for high school. She promised. And then what did she do? Bog off, that's what. That really burns me up.

Seemed at first it would be a big relief. No more headaches, no more having to stick our fingers in our ears while she screeches at us, telling us we’re the worst class she’s ever had, absolute morons. She didn’t use that word, but it was what she meant.

This guy is okay. I don’t think all that much of him, actually. Just another teacher, certainly not the best I’ve had, but not the worst, either. The worst is no longer in our classroom. It’s too early, I guess, to see whether he’ll be any better than her at teaching us stuff. But already we can see he’s not into all the stuff she was, assigning us poetry and book review studies, and math and geography and science. He’s a bit of a wuss, we all thought.

I asked some of the guys what they thought of him. Shrug. You’d think they might be more interested, kind of, because he’s a guy and they’re guys, but it doesn’t seem like they’re reacting that way at all. It’s just kind of as though they’re disinterested.

Guess Mrs. McVetty knocked the stuffing out of all of us. He’s got his own take on the curriculum, and classes aren’t slopping over any more. We hardly get any homework. You’d think I’d be happy about that, but I’m not. I miss the homework, I really do.

And, guess what? I actually feel a little cheated about not having homework to do after school. It’s like I feel my academic credentials will be plummeting, I won’t be learning as much as I need to know, and that really, truly sucks. If you’d asked me a month ago if I’d be feeling like this I would never have believed it.

I mean we really had an awful load of stuff to get done, every day of the week, and week-ends no exceptions. It was a miserable burden, even if we did get used to it. And now, all of a sudden, nothing. Okay, maybe we should just kind of adjust, coast on the fact that we’ve got it easy now for the rest of the school year. But it just doesn’t feel right.

So, we should celebrate because we don’t get headaches any more being exposed to some adult who isn’t capable of mustering enough internal resources to calmly teach and discipline the people in the class who are always out of line? You’d think so. I’d have thought that way.

Okay, the same kids are still acting up. At first this guy, Mr. Masterson, just calmly put them in their place. And they shut up. Then that didn’t work any more. And he began yelling. It was different than what Mrs. McVetty used to do. This is a guy, and he raises his voice, and it’s loud and strong, not shrill and excited. Just a big, surprising blast. And everyone shuts up.

He yells “I don’t have to take this crap!” And everyone shuts up.