The Prairie Bride

Chapter One: The Black Dress

I had no idea how I was going to support myself. But supporting myself wasn’t the thing I was worried about. It was Rose. Rose was the one on my mind as I packed the old leather trunk which would always smell like Grandfather and which would be a reminder of him for the whole of my life.

The old trunk wasn’t a good choice. It was heavy and awkward and vulnerable. I knew it was not the trunk it had once been. I knew it was not a trunk to be dragged or thrown about. It was a trunk to be carried on a cart pulled by a young man who would receive a generous tip when the trunk and its owner arrived at their destination.

However, I was well aware that there would be no cart and no young man and no generous tip as I carefully selected what would go into the trunk of my escape. Escape might seem like too dramatic a word, and maybe it was. But a need to escape was what I was feeling.

When Mom married Roy there was just no space for me. Not space, actually, but air. Not enough air to breathe. The air seemed pregnant with too much of us when the three of us were together and so I knew I had no choice but to leave.

I chose a night when they were out hunting houses for Roy to snatch up, as he’d say, snapping his fingers as he did, for effect. Roy considered himself quite a dandy. Mom and I both thought he permed his hair, but we weren’t sure, even though they were married. Roy was a secretive kind of guy. He talked loud and open, but it didn’t seem real, at least not to me, it didn’t.

Roy had an eye for finding a house that he could buy cheap, fix up and sell at a good profit. It made me sad. Folks who could no longer afford their houses had bought them when they were filled with hope and plans for the future but had been unable to pay the mortgage. Those folks would sell the houses and then months later they might walk by and see their old homes filled with new lights and fresh paint, made beautiful with new shutters and a once straight path that now curved around newly planted shrubs.

Mom didn’t seem to think of how sad it would be to see your dreams turn into someone else’s realities. I guess love does that to you. She just saw how good Roy was at all the things needed to fix up an “old beater”. He could do the plumbing, the electrical work. He could build anything.

Mom was in charge of decoration. She would collect paint samples and wall paper and swatches of cloth the way she had collected shoes when I was in grade school.

Sometimes I longed for those days. The days when Mom dressed up like a movie star and made the nuns crazy. As hard as it was to take their harsh judgment at the time, now it seemed almost comical. And a blessing. Their cruelty about my mother’s “wicked ways” had led me to my best friend, Dickey. Dickey’d been there, thrusting his small brave spirit between me and the nuns. He’d been there when I’d lost Tom, the horse I loved like a brother, and he’d been there when we sold over a hundred rabbits as pets to save them from becoming Sunday dinner.

Thinking of Dickey was making me feel sad. He had moved out on his own, had left town and now I was moving out of Rose’s home. Nothing ever seemed to stay the way you wished it would. And even when you wished them sometime the wishes themselves went wonky. I’ve had a few wonky wishes in my sixteen years. More than you can imagine.

Leaving home wasn’t a wish. I wasn’t like, “oh, I wish I could live on my own, have my own place”, imagining friends and sleeping late and having all the pets you wanted. And never having to leave them behind. Never having to love them and then leave them because you couldn’t live with them any more. That had happened to me. It was the worst thing that had happened to me in my whole life. It was so awful, I can’t even talk about it. Not yet, anyway. Maybe one day. Not today.

It wasn’t the wishing of far away places and strange adventures. It wasn’t like imagining yourself in a country cottage raising wild flowers and roses and selling them at a local grocers. No, this leaving wasn’t a wish. It was a reality. I had to go. I knew it deep in my heart. I knew things would go wonky if I stayed. They would go wrong. Terribly wrong.

The first thing I put in the trunk was my grandmother’s quilt. It was like packing my Mom’s whole family, all her brothers and sisters. Grandmother had made that quilt out of remnants of clothing from each one of her eight children. All of my aunts and uncles were in that quilt. Even the baby who had been still born and wrapped in the blanket made of soft flannelette.

Grandmother had been alone at the farm when that baby was born still and silent. She had been in labor for five days, when the sound of her cow forced her outside into the cold Saskatchewan night, had her bring that cow into her own kitchen.

And she milked the cow, hers and the cows eyes wide with pain. Already the baby was dying inside her. The baby was named Marie. Marie is the name on her little gravestone. Marie Hoffman, born Nov. 7, 1929. I’d seen the gravestone. It was strange to see a grave stone with only one date on it as if the spirit inside were floating somewhere, looking for someone, something, searching for a life she’d never had.

Somehow as I stared at the date with my name, Maria, on it, I felt overwhelmed. I’d fainted. I hadn’t known before that day that I’d been named after a dead baby. I hadn’t known I’d be living a life for someone else.

The day changed me. It gave me a special purpose, an awful responsibility and sometimes, when I least expected it, it gave me an unknown and very special power.

It was the power of knowing when something was going to happen; the power of sometimes even making it happen.

Today the power wasn’t working very well. Today I was packing to leave and I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do once I got there.

I put in my most essential clothes, my picture album, my five favorite books and my life savings, three hundreds dollars and seventy-five cents. And for some reason, I put in my mother ‘s portable sewing machine.

It was a Singer. She never used it. She hated sewing. Her sister had given the sewing machine to her in a bit of a hostile attempt to make my mother more domesticated.

Domestic was not a word that came to mind when anyone thought of Rose. Lilacs, music at midnight, patent leather high heeled shoes and bracelets that jingled as she walked. And taking wonderful care of others. Those are the words you thought of at the mention of my mother. Canned soup, wash machines, ironed table clothes, alarm clocks, none of those words suited her and I don’t think I’d ever heard her even say one of those words.

So, in went the sewing machine. There wasn’t room for another thing.

I didn’t want to explain my leaving to Mom and Roy and I knew they wouldn’t want to hear me try. The reason was one of those unspeakable invisible things that haunts like a ghost no one believes in but everyone is afraid of.

I wrote a note. “I took Grandma’s quilt. P.S. And the sewing machine. All my love, Marie”. I had given myself a “Maria” name, once, when I was seven. But Mom didn’t like me to change my name. I was, after all, named after my grandmother’s stillborn baby. I didn’t really have a right to change my name. So back to Marie, I went.

I stared at the note. It was awful. What would my mother think when she read that note? I started to cry. I pushed the trunk under my bed. I was still crying when I heard Mom and Roy come into the house. I heard them fix drinks, eat sandwiches. I heard Roy ask where I was. I heard my mother say nothing. I imagined her pointing upstairs. I heard them walk up the stairs, go into the shower.

I knew they were making love. I knew Roy was the one who wanted to make love in the shower because he didn’t want me to hear. I wondered what my mother thought about that. I fell asleep wondering.

I didn’t move the trunk or myself the next day or the next. It was the imagined look on my mother’s face as she read the note that stopped me. My mother couldn’t stand anyone being sad, including herself.

But I didn’t unpack the trunk, either. Having it ready gave me a strange feeling of reassurance. I knew I could go at anytime. I tried to imagine what circumstances might make it easy to go. I couldn’t imagine any. But I wished for something, whatever it would be, and I wished it would come soon.

Roy was having a buying/selling frenzy. Lots of city folks were moving out of the crowded towns in the East Coast to be closer to the earth. The prairies were perfect. The prairies were all about earth, about farming, and old-fashioned ways. Uranium was being mined, jobs were plentiful. The sixties were about to explode on the world, and Saskatchewan was ready for it.

Roy came home grumbling. He had bought a fixer-upper and the people who sold it to him refused to remove a small camping trailer that sat on the property. He was going to have to pay to have it hauled to the dump.

“Can I see it?” The words popped out of my mouth bypassing my brain.

“What for?”

“Maybe we can fix it up.” Those words from my mother’s mouth.

“I doubt it. It’s in pretty rough shape”. Roy looked at me, added, almost casually, the words clearly passing through his brain before he said them. “I’m going out there this afternoon. Marie can come with me, take a look.”

“I’ll come, too.” A bit too quickly. From Mom.

“No need.” Still too casual.

Mom’s face reddened. “I’d like to come.”

“Come, then.” Roy threw the words across the room. They hit my mom in the chest. I could hear the words hit.

“You two go,” I stammered.

“Oh for Christ’s sake, forget the whole thing.” Roy was putting on his coat. He was about to leave. Mom and I stood staring stupidly after him.

“You go,” Mom said.

The trip to the property took us twenty miles out of town. Roy’s mood had cheered considerably. He suggested we stop for a snack along the way. The best snacks were at Bell’s Beach. The Bells were locals who were teachers by day and musicians by week-end. Their place was a combination cafe, gas station, dance hall.

It felt kind of creepy to be there in the middle of the afternoon. The space was so big, tables along one side so that folks could eat as they watched the dancers. Roy ordered chips and gravy and a rye whiskey. “Want a beer?” he asked me. Was he nuts? I didn’t drink beer. My high school teacher owned the place. He wasn’t making any sense. I just shook my head a short, ‘no’.

“You’re almost old enough. Almost a woman.”

“You have to be twenty-one,” I reminded Roy. “I just turned sixteen.”

“Sweet Sixteen and never been kissed,” Roy said cocking his head as he looked at me. He looked like some kind of bird. For the first time I noticed his neck was too long for his body.

“I’ve been kissed,” I said, sorry I had the minute the words raced across the table towards Roy’s skinny neck.

He looked shocked, then interested. “Tell me,” he coaxed.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Not ‘till you tell me.”

I would have my tongue out before I’d tell Roy about the mystery and promised beauty of my first kiss with my best friend, Dickey LaFleur.

Roy jumped up and dropped a quarter into the jukebox. We were the only ones in the dance hall. The attendant was out pumping gas into a huge logging truck. Roy grabbed my arm, held firm. “Tell me or dance with me.” He pulled me to the floor, knowing as I did that I’d never tell.

He pulled me onto the floor and began to twirl me around. There was sawdust on the floor. I had no idea why. Roy had been a dance instructor and knew at least ten different dances. That’s how he had met Mom. At a dance. She loved to dance. All the men in her life were good dancers. Even Dan, who had only one foot was a good dancer.

We never spoke as we moved like silhouettes in a shadow play. Roy guided me so that somehow I followed his moves, skating smoothly, twirling, dipping as if we had done this a thousand times.

I don’t think I breathed through the whole dance. My heart was beating and my fingers were cold with frightened sweat. I kept my eyes glued to the walls desperate never to let him catch my gaze.

The attendant came in just as we were finishing. Roy almost pushed me away form him. “That’s all the lesson I’m giving.” He said it more to the attendant than to me. “Boy, once anyone knows you’ve given lessons.” He made a sort of “oh god” face. He headed for the door. We hadn’t even paid for our chips and gravy and his rye.

“You coming?” he almost shouted at me.

Then he must have remembered the bill and he hurried back and threw twice as much money on the table as the stuff cost.

The attendant watched, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He just watched us leave. We drove for the next ten miles in silence.

The trailer was a mess, but it wasn’t really ruined. The people had used it as a sort of storage and had left all their useless junk behind. You know, the kind of stuff we all save and never use, but just can’t bear to throw away. Until we move, that is. Then we are all too eager to leave it behind.

The trailer had a tiny red arborite table at one end and a fake leather couch that pulled out into a bed at the other. It was a miniature house, kitchen, bedroom, living room, all in one. There was a sink and miniature fridge and a propane stove. There was even a tiny bathroom with a shower the size of a fat banana. Honestly, it was skinnier than a person.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. I smiled at Ray forgetting the awful loneliness of the dance, the silent angry drive to the property. Roy softened. “Women,” he said as if that explained everything.

On the way home Roy only said one thing. “I wouldn’t tell Rose about your wanting a dance lesson. She’d probably get jealous. You know how she likes to dance.”

I didn’t bother to answer him. I concentrated on the trailer. On where we could move it. I knew there was a trailer park the other side of town. It was the Pines Trailer Park. It was in the Pines. Saskatchewan is famous for them. If you have never seen them, it’s hard to imagine. Rows and rows of Christmas trees. Can you imagine living right in the middle of that? Can you imagine the smell? I concentrated really hard on imagining that smell all the way home.

Mom and I worked on the trailer. We cleaned and painted and added checkered curtains. We never discussed why. We never suggested it would be sold. We both knew it was for me. Roy was the only one who had no idea.

“Wow!” he said when we were done. “We’ll make a bundle on this.” From the looks on our faces he got it. It wasn’t for sale. His face reddened. That night he and Mom argued.

“She’s too young.”

“Too young for what?” Mom’s tone was harsh.

Roy knew he would not win. “It’s a fool thing to do.”

“She can always move back.”

How about school?” Roy asked. It was a raw question. It was one I had wondered about myself. I loved school.

“There’s always correspondence. Kat’s smart. She can do it a million ways.”

And that was that. I began life on my own in the Pines Trailer Park, living in a shroud of Christmas trees, a smart school drop out.

Mom and Roy paid for six months rent and filled my little fridge with food. But I knew that I had to figure out some way to make it on my own.

“On my own”. The words suddenly sounded so cold, so lonely. Scary. Stupid. What had a done? I had completed only one month of grade ten. I was an uneducated moron. I was living in the middle of a forest.

I pulled open my trunk and began to unpack. I pulled my grandmother’s quilt over me and fell asleep. And in the morning I knew what I was going to do. I was going to be a dressmaker!

I made a bunch of posters and put them up all over town. I told the world I could make baby clothes and men’s shirts and women’s dresses. I told them all sorts of lies. But Mom always said that if you had to, you’d rise to the occasion. I had the sewing machine. I knew I could do it.

I started out by ripping up some of my favorite blouses and making patterns out of them and then sewing them together again. It wasn’t bad. I had three patterns and the blouses didn’t look much different after I sewed them back together. A little pucker here and there, but nothing serious.

I know it sounds nuts, but I felt my grandmother guiding me as I sewed. It was as if my fingers knew how to cut the newspaper I was using to make the patterns, that my fingers knew how to fit the pieces of cloth together. The sewing machine sang as I fed the cotton into its little silver feeder. We were a unit, the three of us, grandmother, the sewing machine and me.

I started to get brave. I began to invent patterns of my own. I made a baby jacket out of a big beach towel. A full circle skirt out of some black felt. I even cut out a black poodle and stitched it to the skirt. I loved sewing. I loved to imagine the clothes, what they would look like and how people would feel wearing them.

As I worked, I would talk aloud to myself. I would say, “Now the collar goes here, this way. Now that sleeve. Ease in the sleeve, don’t let it pucker. Lots of pins.” And I’d make gathering stitches and ease the sleeve in until it was perfect. I had no idea how I knew how to make a gathering stitch. I just did. It all seemed to make so much sense to me. It all felt so natural.

People began to buy my things. Soon I had money to purchase real material. I made a blouse of yellow silk. Yellow tassels adorned each sleeve, pearl buttons wound their way from the waist to the throat. It was a glamorous cowgirl shirt. It sold for thirty dollars. I was going to be rich. I was going to be famous. I began to imagine myself in Toronto, in Montreal. I began to buy fashion magazines.

On Sundays, I’d go home for a visit and to have what Mom called a home cooked meal. That was quite funny because Mom wasn’t really a home cooked meal kind of person. She was good at three things; stew, soup and apple pie. Now that sounds really home-cooked and it was. And they were all delicious. I have never tasted any better. She grated the apples and added just a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg and the pie just melted in your mouth. The stew and soup she made in an old pressure cooker that threatened to blow up the house each time she used it. She put root vegetables in both the stew and the soup. Potatoes, carrots, a bit of parsnip, a bit of turnip, lots of potato. As long as her frozen peas lasted, we had those too. Everything came from the garden.

But that was it! Nothing else. She never ventured beyond those three. All else was bacon and eggs, in all kinds of combinations, by favorite being Denver sandwiches, bit of friend bacon and onions, fried up, with eggs poured over and stirred, served in toasted bread with ketchup. We usually ate what most would consider to be either breakfast or picnic. It didn’t matter if it were hot or cold, summer or winter, breakfast or supper. What matter was how Rose felt. “It’s a picnic kind of day,” she’d say and we’d know that meat slices were on the list – ham slices, salami slices, pickles, bread, cheese. Of course, we loved the home cooked days the best. Rose tried to make Sundays when I visited a home cooked day.

I could smell the pie that she’d cool in the little cupboard Roy had built for the milkman. The cupboard had two doors in it, one for the outside, where the milkman could open it and put in the milk and cream. Then Mom could open the little door on her side and take it out. It kept the milk cool and Mom didn’t have to answer the door or go outside to get the milk. Mom liked to sleep in. She hated getting up to the ring of a doorbell. So Roy created the little milk door and that’s where Mom cooled her pie.

Things went pretty well the first two Sundays. We were all glad to see one another and we all loved the stew and pie. Then I made the great announcement about wanting to go to the big city of Saskatoon. I was sure there were more opportunities in the city. Mom was encouraging of course, her lovely red mouth in a smile of pride and joy for me. Not Roy. No smile there. A snarl almost. Angry. Mocking. I felt stupid. How could I think I could do such a thing. Why had I opened my big mouth.

“Just once I get myself set up. I mean, people really like my stuff. It could take awhile. Not right away, I didn’t mean.”

“A man’s reach must exceed his grip or what’s a heaven for?” Mom was always quoting. She usually got one or two words a bit mixed up.

“Grasp, Rose,” Roy said as if he were angry with her. “Exceed his grasp”.

“You know what I mean.” Mom hated details.

“I know it’s damn stupid business,” Roy said. “Damn stupid.”

“Pie?” Mom liked to change the topic. She hated fighting. I was glad the dinner was almost over. That old feeling of being trapped was coming back.

“It’s bad enough she stays out there, that God forsaken place with all those losers.” Roy didn’t want to let it go. He hated trailer parks. He hated my being there.

“Lucky she hasn’t been, been…”

“What?” Mom didn’t like his prejudice. She liked the people in the trailer park. Most were old, grew roses. “They grow roses for god’s sake,” she said, thinking of the roses at the same time as I did.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Roy wasn’t on our roses wavelength. He was thinking of the families on unemployment, the young guys who had the odd job here and there, who drank beer and played guitars in their trucks. He glared at them whenever he was out there.

“I’m fine. I lock my door.”

“Oh that makes me feel better,” Roy said with a look of total exasperation. If one of those guys decided to…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. I had an image of one of them huffing and puffing and blowing my door down. It made me laugh.

“So now it’s funny?” Roy was getting really mad.

“Who wants pie?” Mom was handing a piece of her wonderful grated apples in a perfect crust pie when Roy grabbed it so violently it actually slid across the table and landed upside down on the floor.

“Roy!”

“It’s bad enough that she’s out there. Why does she want to leave? We’ll never, we’ll never…..” Roy couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. He started to pick the pie up with his fingers and put it back on the plate. He started to cry. “No more, no more pie,” he said, stupidly. “If she goes you’ll never…”

Mom put her arm around him. “I’ll make you pie,” she said, softly. “I’ll still make you pie.”

I drove home in Mom’s old Chevy, my piece of pie wrapped in waxed paper. I told them I had a shirt to make for the next day. I had to leave early. No one argued. No one wanted to talk. No one knew what to say about a man who started to cry because his wife wouldn’t make pie anymore if his step-daughter left town.

I didn’t go back the next Sunday and no one came out to get the Chevy. I stayed home all day that Sunday, just in case, but nothing. I guess we all needed a little space. The next Sunday I didn’t feel as if I wanted that much space. I was feeling lonesome, almost scared. I didn’t feel so much like someone who was going to get rich and famous. I felt like a sixteen year old who had left home and dropped out of school and lived in a dumb old trailer park.

I was listening to some music on the radio when there was a knock at the door. I opened it, hoping it might be Mom when I saw him standing there. He wore a green sweater, the sleeves not quite long enough. The sweater stopped at his waist. He wore a belt with the letter “E” in gold. He had long legs, Charlton Heston shoulders. His eyes were green, as green as olives growing on a tree in the Mediterranean. He was so tall he couldn’t get in without ducking his head. He put his arm up against the wall and smiled down at me. His hair was a sandy blond. It fell in wisps about his forehead.

I fell in love with him before he got in the door. I fell in love with him and knew I wanted to marry him. The thought scared me so much I slipped under his arm and went outside. God, what did I do that for? Now he was in and I was out. He laughed. He stepped outside with me.

“You must be Marie,” he said. “My name’s ‘E’.” He held out his hand. It was big and strong. His nails were broad and clean. They looked polished. I shook his hand. It was warm and dry.

“Marie,” I said.

“I heard you make shirts.”

I nodded.

“I need one.” He held out his long arms, the sleeves of the green sweater crawled up. The hairs on his arms were light, sandy, a bit curly. I imagined them to be soft.

“Long arms,” I said.

“Well, will you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Oh yes.” I imagined a white veil.

“Well, good.” He laughed again. “What do we do?”

“Measurements,” I stuttered. “We take measurements.”

“Out here?”

I was so nervous measuring his chest, his neck, his arms, his wrist in the hallway of that small trailer. I had to do everything twice. I’d measure and by the time I’d go to write it down, sliding away from his body so close to mine, I’d forget what the measurement was. Then I’d have to take it again and say it over and over so that I could get I right.

“How’s your short term memory?” he said.

“Good. It’s good.”

“Right.”

Finally I was done. He headed for the door. I had to stop him.

“Wait,” I said. He turned and faced me. “When…when are you coming back?”

“When should I?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You’ll be done tomorrow?”

Oh god. It was five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. How could I get it ready by tomorrow. I couldn’t even buy any fabric until tomorrow.

“The pattern,” I said. “The pattern will be ready tomorrow. To make sure it fits.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” He got into a Ford Fairlane. It was shiny and pink. The chrome shone. You could tell from its perfect shape that he loved this car and that he didn’t always drive it. It was special.

He showed up about the same time the next day. He got out of his beautiful pink car. He had some beautiful white cotton with him. I took the material and placed it on the table. I had the paper pattern ready. I pinned it on his body. He smelled like a mild vanilla. I had never noticed anyone ever smelling like anything before, unless it was cologne. I could barely breathe. My fingers trembled, burned with embarrassment. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. But I sensed he was aware, aware and amused.

When he left he said, “I need the shirt for Friday – there’s a fish fry and dance at the Fish and Game League. I’m sort of in charge. Wanta’ come?

“Friday,” I said. “Sure.”

I sewed like a maniac. His shirt was perfect. I hand stitched the collar and cuffs. I made French cuffs, I made French button holes. It would be a shirt to end all shirts. And for myself, I had to have the perfect dress. I poured over my fashion magazines. There was one dress I just couldn’t resist. It was just a drawing. A tight fighting dress, hugging the waist and hips all the way down to the knees. There was a flare at the back of the knee that trailed to the ground. The bodice was almost strapless, except for a ribbon like piece that went under the bust and around the neck. It was the sexiest dress I’d ever seen.

I made it out of a heavy brocade that had iridescent green and pink and gold threads running through it. Today it would be considered garish. I guess back then it was even garish. But not to me. Garish was not part of my vocabulary just the way canned soup wasn’t part of my Mom’s. I loved things that sparkled and shone. I was in love with shimmer.

If it wasn’t garish for the time, it certainly wasn’t appropriate. A black evening gown for a Fish and Game League dance. But appropriate didn’t occur to me, either. Common sense was just not something I had a lot of.

E showed up a bit early to change into his shirt. I couldn’t believe it. He stood in the hall of my trailer and took off his T shirt and put on the white shirt. He grinned. I knew he was pleased. He gave me twenty bucks. I felt shy taking it.

“Let’s go.”

“I, I have to change,” I said. He looked surprise.

“You look good to me.”

I was wearing slacks and a sweater. “I, I made a dress,” I explained.

“I’ll wait outside.”

I struggled into the long gown. I almost caught my skin in the long zipper the dress fit so tight. I slipped into my high heels. At 5’6” I could wear heels as high as I wanted and E would still be so much taller than I.

I piled my hair into an upsweep, sprayed like crazy, smeared on lipstick, and I was ready. It was the most grown up I’d ever felt. I sized myself up in the mirror. I thought I looked about twenty. I always looked old for my age. As I stared in the mirror, I felt that a woman was staring back.

I stepped out of the trailer. E was waiting. He actually gasped when he saw me.

Oh god. What had I done? I felt like a four year old in her Mom’s dress up clothes.

“Let’s go,” he said. He headed for the car. I tried to walk down the step onto the ground. I couldn’t get down. I couldn’t take anything but little mincing steps. The dress was so tight to my knees that I couldn’t walk in the damn thing.

E turned around and saw exactly what was happening to me. He picked me up and placed me softly to the ground. “Quite a dress,” he said.

I wiggled and minced over to the truck. Now there was a worse problem. I couldn’t get into the truck. I couldn’t pull my dress up to give me enough room to move. I had made it just like the girl in the magazine. I guess models never sit down. I just hadn’t thought about moving. Even when I had tried it on, I hadn’t thought about moving. I hadn’t sewn all the pieces together for a last try on. And now I was trapped in a dress that made me out to be a first class nut.

“Want to change?” E asked me. The look on my face must have suggested that I didn’t. I had made this dress, imagining E dancing me across the floor, imagining everyone looking at us, wondering who that date was, and where she got that beautiful dress.

“Can we walk?”

E didn’t answer that.

He looked at his car. He picked me up again and carried me back into my trailer.

“You stay put.” And he was gone.

He returned ten minutes later driving a pick up. He simply picked me up and put me in the back of his truck. I road back there, wind whipping my hair, flecks of dust settling on my make up. E drove slowly, trying to protect me from the wind, the dust. I wondered what he was thinking.

When we got there, I must have looked a mess. My hair was askew and my face felt dirty. I think I had smeared my lipstick when I’d tried to brush some hair out of my face. A few couples were getting out of their cars. They stared at me standing in the back of the truck like a horse or pig or some farm animal.

E jumped out of the truck as if fetching his date out of the back of a truck was something he did every day. He opened the tail gate, I stepped forward and he lifted me down as though I were made of feathers. He half carried me as we glided into the hall.

All eyes were on us. “This is Marie,” he announced as if that explained everything. The music began to play. “Step on my shoes,” he whispered. “We’ll do small steps, I’ll lift you when we have to turn. I kicked my heels into the corner and did as he ordered. We began to move across the floor as if we were one.

As if we were one.

Chapter Two: The Red Dress

Roy jumped out his Oldsmobile and pounded on the door of my little trailer. It was early. I wasn’t even dressed. I was having a leisurely breakfast of my favorite snack – boiled wheat and apples and pecans and poured cream from the farmer. It felt so wholesome. It tasted so delicious. It was earth itself. Nuts from trees in Florida. Apples from trees in the Okanogan, cream from the woman next door whose son owned a milk farm and the wheat from my uncle Henry who grew the stuff. You had to simmer the wheat for a long time, cooking like porridge, but taking hours.

Mom wasn’t with him. I threw on my siwash sweater over my PJs. I opened the door. “Where’s Mom?” “What happened?” I was sure something bad had happened to my mother.

“What were you thinking?” Roy was furious.

What had I done? “Mom,” I repeated, scared now, “Where’s Mom?” What had happened to Mom?

“Home. Shut up,” he said. He grabbed my arm. I had never seen Roy so mad. He’d scared me before, but not this way.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he repeated.

I stared at him stupidly. What was he talking about? “What?” “What?” I said, getting mad myself.

“Going to that dance dressed like a whore?” He let go of my arm as if I were something dirty, soiled, not to be touched. “You couldn’t even walk in it? Had to be driven in the back of a truck like somebody’s garbage.” He glared at me. “That’s what he thinks of you. That you are a piece of garbage.”

Roy jumped in his car and drove away spitting gravel and dust as he did. Several people had come out of their trailers to hear him tell me I was a piece of garbage. I didn’t know what to do. I shrugged as if I didn’t understand what was happening and went inside feeling sick.

I got dressed and went to the main office where there were big showers and a coin laundry and a pay phone. I called Mom. When she answered she sounded as if she had been crying.

“Is Roy there?” I asked.

“No.”

“He came to see me.” I waited, wondering what she would say if I told her what he’d done. Questions raced. Did she know? Why had he come alone, was she mad, too?

“Did he tell you?” she said, her voice breaking down.

My god, she was upset about the dress too? I couldn’t believe it. “Yes. He was upset. Uh, who told you?”

“Henry. He still has friends in Cudworth.”

My Uncle Henry found out from someone who lived 50 miles away? This was stupid.

“What the hell business is it of Uncle Henry’s?”

Now it was Mom’s turned to have a surprised silence. “Marie. He knew your Uncle Ted, too.”

“Who?”

“Didn’t Roy tell you? He said he was going to tell you.”

“What. What Mom?” But I knew. My voice went empty. I was talking to Mom but my mouth was so dry no words came out. Something awful had happened, but no one was telling me. I hung up the phone. I had to see Mom. I had to talk to her. I hated phones. I hated the way you couldn’t see anyone’s eyes. You couldn’t really tell what was happening on a phone. A phone was no way to communicate.

I called a taxi.

Mom was in a dither. My father’s brother was dead. I had never met any of my father’s brothers. We kept far away from the family. Except for Grandfather. Grandfather had lived with us. But he had passed. And now there was no connection, really. Why was Mom so upset?

I was sure Mom had known all the brothers and sisters. They had grown up together. They had gone to school and church together. I guessed she wanted to go to the funeral. But no. She said she didn’t want to go. I couldn’t believe it.

“Dad might be there,” I said. “We could see Dad.”

Saying that sure helped. Mom began to cry in big gulps. Her face was a pinched and white. She was afraid. She looked at me, and I saw something I had never seen before. Shame. It startled me. My mom was never ashamed of anything. She held her head high. She was her own person. She wasn’t the kind you thought of as carrying secrets of shame.

“What?” I put my arms around her. She felt like a frightened child, soft and yielding and hoping for forgiveness.”

“I’m just not going,” she sobbed and I could tell it was useless.

I wanted to know more about my uncle, the one I had never met who was now dead. Mom wouldn’t talk about him. “Don’t go, Marie,” she said. “Please, just don’t go.” The more she told me not to go, the more I wanted to. I felt strongly that I needed to go.

Mom took out a bottle of rye and began to drink, no mix, from a water glass. I’d seen her do it before. She was going to drink until she passed out, there on the kitchen table.

Roy walked in. He saw the two of us sitting there, Mom drinking, me watching her. “Nice!” he said and went to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

That night, alone in my trailer I thought that I partly understood her being afraid. I was afraid, too. I didn’t want to go alone. I didn’t want to face all my relatives. I didn’t want everyone staring at the weird kid Eddie had left behind. The weird kid who lived in a trailer, who didn’t even finish high school.

Yet, yet, I had to go.

I searched my trunk for material. It had become the storage for my material now that I was becoming the dress maker. I found some soft red wool with mohair running through the fiber. There was enough fake leopard to make a jacket and purse and belt. If I had to go to this funeral alone, I would go the way my mother would have gone. I would go looking my best. I would go wearing red. Not floozy red. Classy red, Audrey Hepburn red, with a smart short jacket, a sophisticated clutch. They’d notice me, but they’d be talking about my outfit. They’d ask me where I got it. And I’d tell them I designed it. I’d tell them I was a dressmaker.

I pulled out the red wool. That’s when I saw it, stuffed in behind some other material. Black material, shiny, with threads of gold and green and pink running through it. My black dress, cut in pieces. Someone had come into my trailer and cut up my dress. The dress that was my showpiece. The dress that E had told everyone about at the dance as he twirled me around.

“If you want to look like this, get Marie to make you a dress. She made this dress.” And everyone had looked, and everyone had clapped. Several people asked for orders. I was on my way. The black dress that fit like a glove and wouldn’t let me sit down was going to make me a real dressmaker. And all because of E.

And now it was in shreds. I had planned to put that dress on a manikin when I had my own shop. That was going to be the dress that would have greeted people as they came in to order dresses for their weddings and graduations.

Who would have done this? Before I even answered the question, I knew who and I almost knew why. Roy. Roy had done it. He knew I’d know it had been him. And he knew I’d never tell. Not Mom. Not him. Not anyone. Ever.

I put the bits of black dress in a bag and carried it to the garbage. I didn’t want to think about it any more. Thinking about it just made me sad. I went to sleep listening to my favorite music, Mozart for the piano. I wished I had a dog. I wished I had a horse. I wished I had a farm. I wished I wasn’t all alone in my little make over trailer. But what option did I have? None that I could see.

I woke up early, before light and began to work on the red dress. I wanted it to hang, not cling. I lined it so that it would hold its shape. I had to make it fit perfectly. I lined the jacket with the dress material. I was sure I could make the right impression with this outfit.

Truth was I was scared to death. I had often imagined myself visiting my father. I had imagined him the way my mother had described him, living in Edmonton, alone with a woman and her seven kids. My father had never had children of his own. Except me, of course, and I’d only seen him once, when we were living at the L. It seemed so long ago. It seemed to me that the one afternoon spent with my father, the father I had lied about to everyone, the father I had insisted was at a war that had ended two years before he came home.

In my imagination, I’d go to Edmonton to find my father. He would be living in a shanty part of town. He’d be wearing overalls, the kind men who run trains wear. But one button would be undone and the bib part would partly reveal gray hairs in a chest gone flabby and unhealthy looking from too much drink.

His wife would answer the door. She’d slam it in my face, saying, “We don’t need nothin’.”

But I’d knock again, and say before she had a chance to close the door, that I was here to see my father.

“Eddie,” she’d scream in an awful voice, a voice you’d hope never to have to hear more than once, a voice my father had to listen to all the time. A voice I knew I’d never hear again. “Eddie, someone here to see you.”

My dad would come out and he would look annoyed. “Why are you bothering me would be written all over his face?” He’d look at me, but with not enough interest to really see me.

It wouldn’t be what I expected. It wouldn’t be what I had hoped for. I’d hoped for some sudden recognition, some falling into one another’s arms, some moment of hope and love.

“You told me not to forget you, and I haven’t,” I’d say.

But he’d forgotten me.

I’d seen pictures, sent by my Aunt, the one full of Catholic righteousness, full of the determination to stress my mother over the great sin of divorce. I would know my father anywhere. Wouldn’t it be reasonable he’d know me?

But if he didn’t; I’d tell him and when I’d tell him who I was he would begin to cry. He wouldn’t say anything, he would just stand there, tears running into the crags of his ravaged face. “It’s too late,” he’d say, “too late for anything.”

And then he’d walk away, leaving me standing there. I’d go home alone on the train. I’d never tell anyone what I had done. I’d continue to lie to anyone who asked. I’d tell them that my father was living in Edmonton with his new family. He was a carpenter and a musician. He played in a Jazz band every Saturday night. He’d invited me to come to hear him, and soon I would. That’s how I imagined myself lying. I’d be convincing as I told everyone that it wouldn’t be too long before I’d go to visit my father and hear him play his saxophone.

But now I wasn’t going to see my father. I was going to see his dead brother. I was going to see his family. I was doing it to honor my grandfather who’d died when we still lived at the L. My grandfather, such a sweet man. He’d tell me stories about my father, stories that made me yearn for a time to be with him, stories that made me know there was a lot of good stuff flowing in my father. A lot of good stuff that was only hiding under all the drinking and wayward ways.

I’d try to remember his stories but they would vanish in the fantasy of my visiting my father. In my fantasy, the reality of his absence, the reality of his never contacting me, the reality of my mother’s sadness would take over and I would be left standing at the door alone.

When things got bad between Roy and me and Mom, I’d wish for a dad so hard that I thought my back would break. If a dad had stayed with us, there would be no Roy. If a dad had stayed I would be going to school and living at home. If a dad had stayed, I wouldn’t be going alone to pay respects to an Uncle I’d never met and who had died.

I tried to explain to E why I wanted to go. He had asked me to a movie, but I had to say no. It was strange, but I almost didn’t say no. I almost gave up going to the funeral to go to the movie with him. That sounds so stupid. What was wrong with me? It was my uncle’s funeral and I had only been out with E once and I was ready to abandon my family to go to a stupid movie. Well, not the movie. To be with E. I would have gone to anything, whatever he would have suggested would have been ok with me.

“I’m going to a funeral,” I explained.

“I’m sorry. A relative?”

“My dad’s brother, uh, my uncle.”

“Were you close?”

“I never met him.”

E looked confused. I had no way to explain it to him. I couldn’t really explain it myself.

“My father,” I tried to tell him that it was a way of being close to my father. Even though there was no way of knowing if my father was even going to be there. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t go.”

“Of course you should.” He sounded so certain it made me feel more certain, too.

“Going with your mom?”

“She won’t go.”

“Want me to take you?”

No wonder I loved him. No wonder I would rather be with him than anywhere in the world.

We drove slowly. We didn’t talk much. E knew how to get to Cudworth. It wasn’t far from Wakaw, the little town where E had been born. Imagine, my father and this man driving me to my uncle’s funeral had been born about twenty miles apart.

That shouldn’t have been such a big deal. We were all born within twenty, forty miles of one another in the little towns of Saskatchewan. But to me, it was something like an omen, a sign. It was a sign that E and I were meant to be together.

“You make that dress?” E asked.

“I did.”

“It’s red.” He didn’t say anything else.

“Think I shouldn’t be wearing a red dress?”

“It’s a funeral,” E said, simply, in a matter of fact voice. And suddenly I realized that it wasn’t right to wear a red dress to a funeral. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Black. People wear black to a funeral.

“I didn’t know my uncle.” As if that explained everything.

“You look nice in that dress.”

We stopped talking for a while again. I was worried about the red dress. I thought he might say he was sorry for mentioning the red dress, but he didn’t. He just let it go.

We could see the church up ahead. My mouth was dry. I tried to say something, but no words came out.

“You nervous?”

I nodded my head.

“Want me to go in with you?”

I shook my head. I had to do this myself. I didn’t want to explain E. I didn’t want to be noticed. And I wanted to be noticed. It was so confusing.

“Phone me when you want me to pick you up. I’ll be at my Mom’s. Here’s the number. It won’t take me long. Half an hour.”

He handed me a piece of paper. I stared at it. I stuck it in my purse. I knew I had to get out of the car. But I didn’t really want to. And I did. Yes, no. In, out. Go, stay. What a mess I felt. A big mess in a red dress.

E kissed me softly on the cheek and half pushed me out the door.

I sat at the back of the church, in the place designated for people not close to the relatives. Would I have been considered close had I been a part of this family? Would I be up there next to the woman in the black dress weeping, the tall thin man supporting her? Was that my uncle’s wife? Or was he her son? Brother? I could see no faces, only backs, heads bowed, arms supported. But even if I could see faces, I wouldn’t know them. All of them were strangers. None of them cared about me, who I was. What had brought me here? What stupid need had brought me here?

After the service, the priest announced that the Lady’s Catholic League was holding a reception at St. Mary’s school. He was inviting everyone over there. People began to mill out. I knelt down, buried my head in hands folded in prayer. I did not want to be recognized. I did not want to be seen. It had been a mistake to come.

Once the church was emptied I went up to the front where the Body and Blood of Jesus sat in a tabernacle on the altar. There had been a time in my life that I would faint when I received Holy Communion. The thought of Jesus actually being inside of me so excited and overwhelmed me so much that I lost consciousness. But those days were gone. At least, I thought they were.

Approaching the altar gave me a weird feeling of otherworldliness. I became a little girl in a Communion dress. I was approaching the priest, all in black and white and gold, all huge and shining and holding up the host, in his hands, over the chalice, the host, the Body of Jesus over the Blood of Jesus. I almost fainted just remembering. The floor began to lurch towards me. I grabbed onto the altar to keep myself from falling. I stood still, regaining my balance. And I stared into the casket. I stared at the beautiful and dead body of my father.

I fainted.

When I came to I was in the arms of my father. I must be dreaming, I thought. An awful dream where I went to my uncle’s funeral and saw my father in his place. But now, now, I felt so awake. I felt as if I really was in my father’s arms. I felt as if he were walking me out of the church. I felt as if he were walking me to his car, holding the door open, helping me in.

But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. My father was driving a car. And I was sitting next to him. He was alive. He was alive?

“You deserve an explanation,” he said, his voice soft and full of that determination when something isn’t going to be easy, but it must be done anyway. I wanted to put my hand over his mouth. I didn’t want him to speak. I didn’t want to know.

We drove through the little town of Cudworth. “Your mother and I ran that butcher shop.” He pointed out a small corner store. “Until I stole $2,000.00 from the grocer. We shared the shop, shared the till. I guess I thought it was my money, too. I guess I thought I could just put it back when we sold enough steaks. But he charged me. And I went to jail.”

Jail? I didn’t know that. Why was he telling me that?

“Why did you need the money?” It seemed important.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Your uncle did, and I didn’t want to make the family mad. So I gave it to him.”

“And you went to jail for some money you didn’t even keep?”

“It was money I took. It wasn’t mine.”

“This is where we got married. We were married four years before you were born.”

“Why did you wait so long?” I knew I’d want a baby right away. I felt stupid after I’d said it. What right had I to question when my parents decided to have a baby. Maybe he was in jail. I hardly heard what he was saying when he answered me. I was so busy bawling myself out.

“ We couldn’t, I, I wasn’t able to produce babies. An old injury. From a horse. A damn horse kicked me in the balls when I was a kid. And. … no babies. Or maybe it was the mumps,” he added. He laughed. “I prefer the horse story. More interesting.”

“Until me.”

He didn’t answer. We just drove silently through the little town as the day left us and night fell slowly over the prairies, dusting the land, the sky in tones of lavender.

He took a turn off the main road. We traveled through the fields of grain that were not yet harvested. I could hear the grain swish swish against the bottom of the car.

We stopped in the middle of the field. A field that had once belonged to my grandfather. It felt like a sacred place. It felt like a sacred time. My father got out of the car. He came around to my side and almost lifted me out. His arm around me, helping me out, was like the touch of a lover, shy, hesitant, hopeful, respectful. A touch so delicate it was almost not a touch. I felt as if I were made of air. I felt as if I were made of light.

He reached into the backseat and took out a Saxophone. Standing tall and handsome in the moonlight, my father played, the saddest song. It was a song of a man begging for forgiveness.

I wanted to throw myself into his arms. I wanted to tell him I forgave him. I just stood in awe. He was so beautiful. And I was part of him.

On the way back he did not say a word until we reached the little church. “We have to go in,” he said in a tone I could not dispute.

“I, I thought it was you,” I explained. “In the coffin. I thought it was you.”

I didn’t want to go in.

“We have to,” he repeated.

He held me by the hand. This time it was not a lover’s touch. It was a man on a mission. It was the touch of a man who was determined to go through with something he should have dealt with a long time ago.

We stood, his hand firm on my arm and stared into the coffin. We were staring at the spitting image of my father.

“We’re twins,” my father explained.

It was a shock. No one had mentioned twins. No one had ever told me that my father’s dead brother was his dead twin brother. In my whole sixteen years of life, and all the hundreds of questions I had asked about my father, no one had ever told me he had a twin brother. Not even Grandfather. I was stunned. Why had this been such a secret?

“I didn’t . . . no one told me.”

“We were always messing around,” my father was telling me, ignoring everything, just staring at his brother, holding me tight, and telling me what he was determined I should know. ”We were identical. Even our voices. No one could ever tell us apart, so we just got used to doing it.” His voice went soft when he said that. I thought that might be the end of the story.

“What? Used to doing what?”

“Tricking folks. Pretending we were each other.”

“I’d love that.” I thought it would be fabulous to have a twin. It would feel like never being alone. It would give you such a power, such a sense of being more than you were.

“One night we were all out, drinking and we decided to play a trick on your mother. Would she be able to tell? Could she know her husband from her brother-in-law?

“Did she?”

“No.”

“Was she mad when you told her?”

“We didn’t tell her. Not for a while. And then we had to.”

I was confused. Eddie put his arm around me and led me to a pew. It was as if he had to sit down to finish the story. The story of how they’d tricked my mother. How things had gotten out of hand. Of how my father’s brother had made love to my mother. Of how they’d had to tell her when it was discovered that she was pregnant.

And suddenly I knew what he was telling me. He was telling me that he was not my father. He had never really been my father. The man lying in the coffin was my father. The man I never knew. Would never know.

“Things were never the same after that. Your father was so ashamed. He didn’t want you to know. We all agreed to live the lie. But Rose just couldn’t forgive the trick, the lie. We all sort of fell apart. We all went our separate ways.

I went back to the coffin. I touched his face. It felt like cloth. I had never touched my father. I had never heard his voice. All the lies I had told about my father were nothing compared to this lie. This was the biggest lie of all. And everyone, Mother, Grandfather, everyone had been in on it. I felt empty.

I turned and saw him standing in the doorway. Light was shining on him from the cross above the church entrance. He seemed bathed in light. I ran into his arms.

“Take me, take me away,” I sobbed.

“You didn’t phone, so I came.”

“Take me away,” I repeated.

We got in the truck. “Want to talk?’ he asked me.

I crawled into his lap. He almost drove off the road. I began to unbuckle his belt. I was unbuttoning his shirt.

“Ssh, wait, stop, Marie,” he tried to calm me.

“Please,” I sobbed.

“Let’s go someplace.” He pulled the car off the side of the road. We drove across the field of grain. I heard it whish, whish, against the truck. He stopped, pulled on the brake. He turned on the radio.

Chapter Three: The Wedding Dress

I knew I was pregnant even before I missed my period. There was no such thing as pregnancy tests at the local drug store back then. It wouldn’t have made any difference if there had been. I would have been way too shy to go and purchase one.

Telling Mom was going to be tough. I knew she believed in abortion. I knew she’d had one when I was in grade school. But I wanted this baby. I’d wanted a baby all my life. There was no way in the world I was going to kill it.

Telling Roy was going to be worse. I could just imagine the things he’d say to me. I could have taken the easy way out. I could have told Mom. Mom would have told him and then he’d go nuts on her first.

Why shouldn’t I? She’d lied to me. She’d lied to me all my life.

I stayed away for almost a week. Mom would phone and ask me about the funeral and I’d say it was sad.

“Well, it was a funeral.”

“I know.”

“Did you talk to anyone?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And?”

“And what?” I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. I knew she was afraid I’d found out something. Actually, I didn’t know how to tell her what I’d found out.

“I have to go now. Someone’s at the door.”

I kept up like that for as long as I could. Then I guess she knew I’d found out, or someone had told her. Maybe it was Eddie, the man I thought was my father. Maybe he had phoned her and told her the whole story. Anyway, there she was, those blue eyes all full of sadness, old rye and recent rye whiskey on her breath. That happened more and more often.

She was wearing a pair a blue slacks and a white angora sweater. She looked like a teenager. My mom was such a knock out. She had the most vulnerable look about her. You wanted to put your arms around her and protect her.

“You know?”

“He told me.”

“Let’s walk.”

We walked around the trailer park. We left the main area and went into the woods. The pines smelled so fresh with a hint of spice. I could see why people made imitation pine things to hang on their car mirrors and in their toilets. Pine is the most fabulous smell. But no one can make that smell, except the pine trees. They do it best.

“It was no one’s fault,” Mom was saying.

“It was.” I wasn’t going to let it go. It was all of you. All of you were part of it. And all of you lied to me.”

“We, we thought it best. It was such a stupid, such an awful thing.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I honestly didn’t. But I should have. Maybe if I hadn’t been drinking, I would have. But we were both drunk.”

“Him, my father. He couldn’t have been that drunk.”

“He was always a little jealous of Eddie.” My mom stopped talking. She wasn’t sure what to say. She waved her hands about as if they might say the words for her. A branch hit her in the face, grazed her eye. She just pushed the branch away. A bright red mark began to appear above her eye. I knew it must have hurt. But she didn’t say anything.

“Things just got out of hand. Nobody planned, I mean, I’m sure Eddie never dreamed. … but he should have . . .” Mom was struggling with her thoughts. “I think he was mad at me. It was all so stupid. We were all so stupid.”

“Were you mad at him?”

“Of course. At first I just felt guilty. I kept it a secret. But then, when I was pregnant. I felt so awful. He confessed he had set it up. They had set it up together. A game.”

“No, I mean, before. Were you mad at him before? Was that why, maybe, you didn’t know, didn’t want to know. Maybe you knew.”

I couldn’t believe my mother could make love to her husband’s twin brother and not know. If E had a twin brother, I’d know. I’d for sure know.

“It was all such bad business. We were all so stupid. And then…. Then…we all just couldn’t stand ourselves or each other.”

Mom threw herself on the floor of the forest. She just half fell, half plopped down. The ground was soft, littered with pine needles. Mom was crying. She sat there, looking more like a puppet than a person, her arms loose at her sides, her head straight, her mouth open, harsh sobs coming out of that perfect red mouth.

She rubbed the tears away, smearing her mascara, smearing her lipstick. It made her look wild, out of control. I wanted her to stop, stop crying, stop telling me. Nothing she was saying was making it any better. All of them were so stupid. How could they have done such a thing.

I suddenly got so mad at my mom I began to kick dirt and pine needles on her white angora sweater. “He’s dead. I never ever saw him. I never ever said one word to him. Not one goddamn son of a bitchin’ word.” I never swore, but I needed swear words. I needed to hurt her. I think if I would have had a gun, I would have shot her. At that one moment, I think I would have shot her. I felt so completely helpless and betrayed.

Now there were bits of dirt in her hair, on her face. It made me even madder. She hung her head. I wanted to chop it off. I wanted to take a big sword and decapitate her right there in the woods. The worse she looked, the worse she felt, the madder I got. There was a rage in me I couldn’t understand, couldn’t control. I just screamed at her, “You, you, you.”

And then I was done, too. I was emptied out. I plunked down beside her. We sat there until, you won’t believe this, until we both fell asleep. We were leaning against one another, asleep in all our rush of sadness and anger. That used to happen to me a lot, I’d fall asleep at the worst times, the most unlikely times. Here we’d both done it.

We helped each other up. We brushed each other off. We began to walk back.

“Can you ever forgive me?” she asked as we approached the trailer.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. How could I know? “I don’t think you should be asking me that right now.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry sorry sorry sorry.” She’d had enough. We’d both had enough.

“You’d better go, Roy’ll be waiting.” The way I said it, the tone in my voice, the bitter sarcastic tone shocked her. It shocked me, too. I think it was the worst thing I’d ever said to my mother. I think she would have preferred a shot in the back or a sword to the head.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t start hating me.”

I just went into the trailer and closed the door. I was shaking. I wanted a bath. A long hot, hot bath. A bath like the kind I used to have when we lived at the Ranch. A bath where you could leave the water drip, drip, hot for hours, until you were red and wrinkled. But I couldn’t. I lived in a trailer that barely had a shower. The shower was a trickle in a cubicle. The water was barely warm. I crawled into bed and fell asleep under Grandmother’s quilt. I tried to imagine my grandmother ‘s arms around me. I tried to smell the baby powder she always wore. But I couldn’t make it happen. All I could think of as I fell asleep was, “Did she know? Did my grandmother know, too?”

Mom kept inviting me over for supper and I kept refusing, until, of course, you know who had to come over to give me shit. I was in no mood to deal with Roy.

He banged on the door. “Get out here, Missy,” he yelled up at my window. I opened the door and tried to look casual. “What is the matter with you?” he said.

And out of nowhere, the words popped, slapped him right in the face. “I’m pregnant,” I said.

That was a shocker. Even Roy didn’t know what to say. He stepped back, half staggering down the steps, got into his car and pulled out so fast he drove over my garden hose, flattening the nozzle.

That solved the problem of how to tell Mom. I could imagine the scene. I wanted to hide. I wanted to hook my little trailer up to a big truck and get the hell as far away from there as I could. Except for, except for E. I didn’t want to leave him. But I didn’t want to tell him I was pregnant either. God, what a mess.

The phone rang. Mom. Of course. All secrets were out. It was like Pandora’s box. It was like a poison in the air. Everyone was getting sick. Everyone was turning blue.

“You’re pregnant? You’re really pregnant?” Was she hoping I was or wasn’t? I couldn’t really tell from her voice. Her voice didn’t even sound like her voice. It was a stranger calling me trying to imitate my mom’s voice.

“I’m, well, I think so. I haven’t gone to the doctor.”

And then the question came. The question that made her voice so strange, almost not her voice. “Whose? Whose baby is it?” I knew, I knew what she might be thinking. I knew how the question was killing her. I wanted to go back into the woods. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to love her again.

“The boy. The boy at the dance.”

I could almost hear the release in her body. I could feel the fear and pain drain away. I think it was the nicest thing I had ever said to her. In the course of a few days, I had said the worst and the nicest things to my mother. Life was moving around us like a cold wind. We were blowing in the cold, uncertain wind. Anything was possible. We had no idea what would come next.

I could hear her telling Roy. “It’s the boy, the boy at the dance,” she was saying, half crying, half laughing. “The boy who liked her black dress.” My mother was acting like a crazy person. It was suddenly a big joke. She was really laughing now. I heard Roy slap her, hard. I heard her drop the phone.

“Stupid bitch,” Roy said to someone. Her? Me? And the phone went dead.

I expected a furious visit from one of them, both of them. What a week. Excuse me, I’m not your father. This is your father. He’s my twin brother. But he’s dead. Excuse me, your pregnant. Mother finds this hilariously funny and step-father goes nuts. What next?

Next was my Mom on a motorbike going like a bat of out hell. “Roy’s got a gun. He’s going to shoot that boy. He’s got the keys to my car. Get on”.

This was my family? Roy was going after E with a gun? E didn’t even know I was pregnant. We’d dated twice. I got on the little motorbike and promptly threw up all over my mother’s hair and jacket. She just kept riding. Neither of us wore helmets.

I prayed we wouldn’t fall off. I prayed that nothing would hurt my baby. I prayed that Roy hadn’t shot E.

When we got to the highway, we heard a police car. E lived just across the river in the real part of town. The siren was heading in that direction. We followed the sound. “Oh my God!” I heard my mother say over and over again.

What if he had shot E? What if my baby was going to suffer the same fate as I had. What if she would never see her father, never hear his voice? I imagined E lying there, in the dirt, blood coming from his chest. I imagined myself holding him as he died in my arms.

The police car beat us to the house. Mom pulled up on the sidewalk. We ran towards E’s place. He rented a back room in the house. The landlady did his washing and let him make his own breakfast in the room. The landlady was standing on her porch. She had her arms crossed. She was not pleased. E was standing in the yard. He was holding a gun. I figured it was Roy’s gun. It might have been E’s. They could have both had guns. A shoot out.

Where was Roy? Was Roy the dead one?

E came over to me when he saw me. He put his arm around me. “You should have told me,” he said. I wanted to melt in his arms. “You should have told me.’ Oh God. Someone sane. Someone who cares.

The policeman came up to us. He took the gun from E. “Want to press charges Mr. Torchinski?” E looked at me. He looked toward the police car. Roy sat in the back seat. His face was red.

“No, no one was really hurt,” E said.

“I think his arm’s broke,” the cop said.

“I had to take the gun away. He was a little crazy.” E explained.

“You could press charges.”

“No. Just get him out of here.”

Roy was driven home in the police car. Mom followed on the little motorbike. She looked awful. She smelled awful. She had tried to wipe the vomit away, but the smell remained. She was getting a black eye where Roy had hit her. There was that red mark over her eye where the branch had hit her. Where I had let the branch go just a bit too early, letting it hit my mother in the face as she followed me through the woods, trying to explain why she had lied to me about my father.

I should have felt sorry for her. Normally, I would have felt sorry for her. Normally, I would have run after her and done anything to make her feel better. But too much had happened. Too much had happened too fast. I was too tired to do anything but stand next to this young man who had just learned he was the father of my baby.

He took me to a Paul Anka concert in Saskatoon. It was such a big deal. Paul Anka sang “Put your head on my shoulder”. E held me throughout the whole song. At the break, he went and got hot dogs and cokes. He handed me a hot dog. “Want mustard?” he asked. I nodded, he handed me the one with mustard. Then he added. “Wanta’ marry me?”

“Yes, yes, of yes, I do.” We ate the hot dogs, drank the cokes and listened to Paul Anka sing “Lonely Boy”. It was a perfect day.

I wasn’t nervous about meeting his parents. Nothing could compare with the fiasco we had over meeting mine. It was his dad I was especially looking forward to meeting. A real dad. A dad who stayed at home.

Except he didn’t. He and Mrs. Torchinki hadn’t talked in ten years. Not one word. E’s dad would leave for work around ten, after the mother had gotten up, put breakfast in the warming oven and left the house; usually to work in her garden. I don’t know where she went in the winter. Maybe she hid in the shed. And then he’d come home around midnight, after she’d gone to bed. He’d sit alone at the table eating the meal she had left for him in the oven.

Mrs. Torchinski was a big woman, short but more than chubby. Her hair was permed and her eyes round and bright like a bird’s. There was nothing soft or yielding about her, though there should have been from the size of her. There was something suspicious about the way she talked. Suspicious and critical. I hadn’t been in her house for more than twenty minutes and I was dreading the day she and my mom would get together. Oil and water.

She had prepared a large meal of borscht and perogies and garlic sausage. She questioned me about my cooking skills. “I have a small trailer,” I said, trying to explain why I had none.

“Hmpfh.” she said. Clearly a statement of disgust. “What can you cook?”

“Fudge.” I could make fudge. So long as I had a candy thermometer. That was about it. Fudge. Chocolate fudge. She wasn’t impressed.

We sat down to eat when a young woman joined us. She looked a bit oriental, her eyes were almond shaped. Her face was round and when she smiled she was shy and open like a flower who had never bloomed in front of people before. She looked at me and patted my head. “Good girl,” she said in a husky gravely voice.

“Maybe you’d like to eat in your room, Sandy,” Mrs. Torchinski said. E threw his mother a harsh look. I assumed it meant that she shouldn’t have said that.

Sandy responded with a loud, “No,” as she plunked herself down beside me, looked up at me and smiled that endearing smile. A sideways smile. A smile that melted my heart.

Sandy’s presence seemed to make everyone uncomfortable. When she ate her tongue moved in and out as if she needed it to push the food down. Her mother shook her head, trying to get Sandy to stop. But Sandy couldn’t stop. That’s how the food was forced down her throat. Sandy put her hand up to her mouth as if to hide what she was doing. It only drew more attention to it. It didn’t bother me a bit. I reached over and took Sandy’s hand away from her mouth. I let it rest in her lap. “It’s okay,” I said and that was the last word spoken for the rest of the meal.

Wedding plans proceeded in a flurry. E’s older sisters were to act as bridesmaids. I was to make all the gowns. I wanted long gowns, soft pink satin for the girls, white satin covered with layers of tulle for me and a long veil. I knew exactly which one. I wanted to wear the veil my mother had worn at her wedding.

Mrs. Torchinski was sweet enough to tell me that pregnant brides should not wear white and I was tough enough to ignore her. She also insisted that the girls should wear their old graduation gowns. Why waste the money? I ignored that suggestion, too.

We were all doing a fitting in the Torchinski living room when Sandy came over and tried on my veil. Her mother snatched it out of her hands. “Not for you,” she snapped. “For the bridal party.” The sadness that saturated Sandy’s body was painful to watch. It was as if in that moment she realized all that was denied her and all that would forever be denied her.

“I’ll make you one,” I said. Sandy looked at me, not quite comprehending. “A dress,” I said. “You can be the flower girl. You can carry the basket and throw the flowers.” E was Greek Orthodox and they had a lovely tradition of throwing a path of flowers for the bride and groom. And gold crowns. Crowns for them to wear. It was very regal. Gorgeous.

“Of course not,” my mother-in-law-to-be snapped. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I always thought it was up to the bride to choose her bridesmaids,” I said in a voice much more casual than I felt. I knew I was beginning a war with a woman who kept a grudge, with a woman who hadn’t talked to her own husband for ten years. But I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t push my new almost sister-in-law out. I just couldn’t do it. It was that simple. The look E’s mother gave me when I challenged her frightened me. And in that moment I decided I would never let my child alone with this woman. Never.

I had to make Sandy’s dress in a hurry. There was no time for try ons. I felt pretty confident. It was a short dress, a pink taffeta, stiffer than satin, to hide any bulges, with loose elasticized waist that would fit her comfortably. There was enough material for her to feel feminine. It would swish when she walked. She would be able to feel the lovely taffeta against her hands as she carried the basket of flowers. I made some matching flowers for her hair.

I hadn’t actually faced Roy since I’d watched him being taken away in a police car. Mom thought it best to let him cool down a bit. I worried that the longer we waited the worse it would be. Things would build. Mom and I were in the kitchen discussing the wedding and of course, the day of the shooting came up. “Why don’t we just forget it happened,” I suggested. “Why not act as if he didn’t go nuts.”

Roy walked in just as I said that. Mom and I both worried he had heard me. If he had, Roy didn’t comment on my saying he had gone nuts. Instead he suggested we go into the living room. He had something to say.

Explanations, more like speeches were in order. Roy had one all prepared, I could tell. I was forced to listen, on the couch, him standing, pacing as he talked. “I was just so disappointed in you, what about your schooling, how are you going to support yourself, you didn’t even know that boy.” Not one word of truth in it. Not one word about how he really felt. But I was beginning to understand that we were becoming a family good at lying.

“It wasn’t the right thing to do, we all know that.” Mom said in as matter of factly way she could.

“What wasn’t?” From Roy.

“Getting pregnant?” From me.

“No, I, uh, meant you going after the boy with a gun.” Mom tried to save the day, only digging herself in deeper. “But it was just because he cares so much about you, honey. It’s so nice that Roy cares so much.”

Who was this person? What had happened to my mother? Where had she gone? It scared me when she talked so stupid. My mother wasn’t stupid. She was dead smart. She got things. She was smart and brave and beautiful. And here she was saying something so stupid that even Roy blushed.

It was as if this marriage, her third, had to work. She was out of trying. She either stayed with Roy, or she lived alone. My mother was not the kind of woman who did well alone.

“I think Marie’s right,” he said. “I think we should pretend it never happened.”

“Ok. Ok. It never happened.” Mom was eager to agree with anything he said. He had heard me say he was nuts. He recognized it was the truth.

When it was time to go home, Roy followed me to the door. “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. We’d help you. You could move back home.”

“Thanks, no.” I hurried down the steps.

“Marie, please,” he said. He was begging me not to marry E.

“I’ve already made the dresses.” It was a stupid thing to say. But it was all I could think of.

“Oh. Oh of course.” He walked back into the house and softly closed the door.

Roy was a model of the perfect step-father at the wedding. He stood ready and proud to walk me down the aisle. Mom sat in the front pew, all by herself. She wore the pink suit I had made for her. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a movie magazine. God, she could make herself look good. Her hair, that shade of red that is so rare, so rich. She did look like Mareen O’Hara. All eyes were on her as she walked down the aisle to take her place at the front.

Opposite were my mother and father-in-law. Nini, that was her name. It must have stood for something else, but I have no idea what. Nini wore an ugly brown dress. It was too short and too tight. It had a fake fur collar. Brown. To her son’s wedding. She had refused to waste money on a new dress. She had refused to let me make her one. Boris, her husband, looked tall and very much like a Russian warrior, dark and swarthy. He looked the way I knew E would some look some day.

I watched from the back of the church in the little area set aside for brides and bride’s maids. The girls were late. Where were they? Finally the taxi arrived and E’s sisters tumbled out of the car. They had to pull Sandy out. She didn’t want to come.

I went to the rescue, went to tell her it was okay, that I so much wanted her to be my flower girl. I went to tell her not to be shy, not to be afraid. But it wasn’t fear or shyness that held her in the car. It was fury. It was disappointment. Sandy did not like her dress. She did not like the flowers I had crafted for her. She had been promised a veil. She had been promised that she would be a bride.

I coaxed her into the back of the church, into the little area set aside for us. I knew everyone was waiting. I knew Mrs. Torchinski was furious. Her daughters were late. I could imagine her victory when she saw the fuss that was going on.

I didn’t know what to do. Sandy was unwilling to settle down. “Veil,” she sobbed. “You promised me a veil.”

My mother’s lovely hand woven lace veil hung from my head. It trailed down to the floor and spread out creating a train of the most elegant, delicate fabric. I had designed my dress around that veil. I carefully loosened the veil from my hair. I asked for a scissors. The nun who looked after the priest’s clothes brought a huge scissors for cutting the felt that went under the lace cloths on the altar. The scissors looked like something out of a horror show.

As I snipped into the fine Italian lace the nun gasped. One third of the veil fell to the floor. I pinned the veil to Sandy’s hair with bobby pins, arranging the flowers into the netting. Sandy beamed. “Nice, nice,” she said.

“Very nice,” I said.

Sandy led the way down the aisle. She scattered the flower petals. She made happy noises. “Nice, nice,” she’d say to the guests along the pews.

Roy and I followed. Roy had been a bit shocked when I cut into my mother’s veil. But he was pleased as I pinned it to my little sister-in-law’s thin hair. “You’re something, Marie,” he said and I knew it to be the sweetest compliment. “Don’t worry. When I tell your Mom, she’ll agree,” he added.

I hoped he was right. I wasn’t able to see her face when she saw the veil half way down my back, not falling in perfect grace over the gown designed to showcase the veil my mother had saved all these years, a veil that had come from Italy before she was even born. I thought I heard her gasp. Maybe I made it up.

I didn’t really understand one word of the marriage ceremony which was in Russian. I was told afterward that the priest was praying for fertility. Right. It wasn’t the romantic moment I had dreamed about. No vows that we repeated. No perfect words. A foreign language that sounded rough and almost angry. Finally, in English, he asked me if I, Marie Hoffman, would take this man, Ihor Torchinksi to have and to hold, to honour and obey, till death do you part.

“What? What did he say?” In his broken English I found it hard to understand him. Ihor? Who was that? Did he mean E? To obey?

The priest was looking at me. The whole church was quiet. Es face was getting red.

“I guess,” I stammered. “I mean, yes, yes, I will.” I was still confused. “Marry you. I will.” I looked up at E. “That’s what he asked, didn’t he?” Someone in the church broke out into a laugh. Then the whole crowd started to laugh and giggle. God what had I done? E’s face was really red.

The priest started to ask E if he would take me as his lawfully wedded wife. But folks were not really paying attention. There was some commotion going on in the corner. Sandy was doing a little dance for some of her cousins. She was lifting her skirts and showing her bum. Then she’d turn around and see the look of surprised pleasure on their faces. She’d lift her skirt again, show them her bum again. Then she’d clap her hands. She loved being the bride.

Mrs. Torchinski surged out of the aisle, almost knocking me over as she grabbed Sandy by the arm and pulled her hard onto the seat beside her. Sandy screamed her outrage, but didn’t move.

E said, “I do,” but I’m not sure anyone heard him. All eyes were on Sandy and her mother. E’s sister and his best friend, Mike, came with us to sign the registry. To sign as man and wife. I thought it would be one of those moments you never forget.

I stared at the sheet and saw E’s name. Ihor Torchinski. Ihor? My god, I was marrying a man and I didn’t even know his name. I thought I was going to faint. I could hear Sandy and her mother scrapping behind us.

“Sign it for God’s sake,” E said. I signed. He signed. His sister signed. His friend signed. We had all signed. It was done. I hadn’t even had the “kiss the bride” moment. Didn’t these guys say, “Kiss the bride.” I wanted that moment. I had wanted the church to go silent in anticipation. I had wanted Paul Anka’s voice to ring in our ears.

We turned to walk back down the aisle. We could see Sandy and Mrs. Torchinski fighting in the pew. E bent down and hissed into my ear. “See the mess you made? Why the hell did you have to include that goddamn kid. She’s an imbecile. Can’t you tell?”

I walked down the aisle beside my new husband. I walked down the aisle a married woman. The words rang in my ears, “till death do us part,” and I hoped I’d last out the day. I’d married a man and there was more than his name that I didn’t know about him. A lot more. And I knew deep in my heart, that I would be learning all about it, and not all of it would be good.

Sandy escaped her mom’s grip and ran toward us. I pulled her into my arms and gave her a big kiss. “You were so pretty,” I told her.

“Go see Mamma,” E told Sandy and almost pushed her away from us. Obey? Obey? Had the priest told him to obey me? From the look in Es eye, I kind of doubted it.

People snapped pictures. They threw confetti. I threw my bouquet. I threw it right at Sandy. And she caught it. The look on her face as she caught it.

Chapter Four: No Dress at All

“These would be dangerous around a baby.” He grabbed my hand with its long painted nails. He took out a strange looking scissors. It had a hooked handle and a bit of a hump at one end. I found out later it was a nurse’s scissors, the hump protecting the skin, if one were cutting off a bandage, for example.

Snip. Snip. Snip. Red rounded pieces of nail flew about my hands. I had lovely nails, strong, rounded. I always polished them. I never cut them with a scissors, only filed them carefully in the same moon shape as my lunula. I knew the names of things. I loved words. I loved how they looked and sounded. I loved the exactness of them. I loved to study their origins. So the name lunula was one that came easy to my mind, even now, even in this office.

Here was this stranger, this doctor, cutting my nails. I should have drawn my hand away. I should have left. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what else to do but submit. I didn’t know anyone in Shellbrook. I needed a doctor. And this one, this tall blond with the steely blue eyes, with the almost golden hairs on his arms, who had a grip on my hand and was butchering my nails was the only one in town. “You won’t need these anymore anyway,” he said. “You’ve snared your man.”

I was used to the doctors at the Community Clinic. Prince Albert was the home of socialism and Medicare. Doctors there didn’t talk to you like that. Doctors there wouldn’t assume you would stab your child. I’d had long nails for four years. Ever since I had become a teenager. I had never once stabbed anybody.

I retuned to the trailer feeling frightened, naked, abused. Not my trailer. Not my little fixer-upper. God no, this was a rectangle made of grey wood, with brown linoleum and make-shift furniture. It was designed for men who worked hard all day, played hard all evening, fell into a bunk for a few hours sleep, then off to work again.

This trailer was designed for four men to sleep in and that was about it.

I could have stayed by myself in my own little trailer. But a wife should be with her husband and if her husband gets called to build roads near a gravel pit just outside of Shellbrook, well, that’s where she goes.

When we set sail in E’s truck, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea the rugged living conditions the Department of Highways expected their men to endure. But more, I had no idea of the culture of a group of men living and working hard, living together in a semi-isolated state. I had no idea of the competition, the sparring, the cruel joking, the comradre, the drinking, the hunting, the gambling, the late nights, early mornings. I had no idea of the way they talked about, treated women. There, in their world, their man’s world. It was no place for me.

But I hadn’t understood that. I had no idea of that way of being. I thought my place was next to my husband. We were married. Where he went; I went. Where he went, I wanted to be.

And this time, it was in a man’s camp just out side of Shellbrooke, Saskatchewan in the end of the summer of 1961.

E and I slept on bunk beds. Each bunk bed had a thin mattress and a flat pillow. The walls of the trailer were cold to the touch, it was almost September and evenings were already getting cool. I’ve always been a poor sleeper. But this was the worst I’d ever slept. It was almost impossible to relax.

There was a smell of diesel that lingered in the trailer from the many machines that the men started in the morning as they went out to build roads. That smell made me sick way beyond morning sickness. I felt sick all the time. I’ve always been pretty skinny, but pregnancy in a trailer that smelled like diesel was making me skinnier. The smell never went away. It was always there.

Because I didn’t sleep, I tossed and turned during the night. Tossing and turning in that bunk bed was not a good idea. If you tossed one way, you hit a cold wall, a wall made of some kind of plastic wood that often had beads of sweat that made it clammy, cold. Almost like a ghost or someone dead might feel. If you tossed the other way, you would fall on the floor. I slept on a bottom bunk. So did E. He slept on the bunk opposite me.

At first, I thought that might be kind of nice. I could imagine him reaching across, offering me his hand. I could imagine me taking it, crawling out of the bunk, curling up next to him, his strong body protecting me from the ghostly walls; his strong arms protecting me from the cold floor.

But he didn’t do that. He usually crawled into the bunk, late, tired, half drunk, smelling of cigarette smoke and rye whisky or beer.

After work, the boys went to one of the trailers and played poker and drank and smoked until at least 2 in the morning. Because they usually started work at 6 am, that didn’t give them much time for sleeping.

My husband was home for about 6 hours in the middle of the night. The rest of the time, I was alone. I begged him to bring the boys over to our trailer to play cards.

“You’re the only woman here.” It was a statement that somehow was supposed to explain why it was out of the question.

“I know,” I said. I was starting to cry.

“I’ll stay home,” he offered.

“You don’t have to, that’s not. .”

“It’s okay, I’ll stay.”

“You can teach me to play cards.”

“Tonight,” he promised.

I couldn’t wait for five o’clock to come. E would come home and we would have supper together and then we’d play cards. I got ready for the evening as though it were a date. I listened to all the channels on the radio, trying to find one that might play romantic music. I walked to the store in the little town and bought some candles, scented candles that might disguise the smell of diesel and would cast warm shadows on the walls. There was a pull down table at one end of the trailer. I used one of my scarves as a tablecloth. I tried to make the trailer look like a home.

It was only noon. Five hours to go. There was so little to do in the trailer. There was no running water. And no bathroom. I would have loved to have had a shower. I would have loved to have sat in a bath-tub. Oh to sit in a hot bath, the water drip drip dripping.

There was a little gas oven and a two burner stove in the trailer. I warmed some water on the burners and carefully washed my whole body. I started with the hair. When the water got cold, I would put the little basin of water on the burner and warm it up again. The last thing I did was soak my feet in the water. I closed my eyes and imagined that the little basin was a big bath tub and I was soaking in it. I imagined the water covering my legs, my swollen belly. I imagined slipping down into the water, letting it soothe my back. I had never had pain in my back before. The pain worried me. Did it mean something was wrong with the baby? I was afraid to ask anyone. There was no one to ask. We had no phone. My mother was miles away. And the doctor in town terrified me.

I dreamed away a good hour imagining myself soaking in that hot tub. By the time I came back to reality, the water in the basin was cold and my feet were wrinkly. I dried myself off and sat out on the step of the trailer. I wouldn’t look at the clock. Looking just made time go slower. I’d wait until I heard his truck turning into the big driveway. Then I’d go into the trailer and put on a can of soup. It would be ready by the time he washed up. I had a basin of clean water on the hot plate. I’d have hot water and hot soup and me, smelling like lilacs. He’d be glad he had come home. He’d want to come home all the time.

I heard the truck turning into the big driveway. I dove into the trailer, turned both burners to high. The smell of Campell’s Chicken Noodle Soup filled the trailer. I tried not to let it make me nauseas. I heard footsteps come up the wooden platform in front of our trailer. But something was wrong. They weren’t the footsteps I was used to. They were the footsteps of some one who, who didn’t walk the way E walked.

E was a big man. Three inches over six feet. He had broad shoulders and long legs. Strong legs. Legs that let him walk the way an animal might walk. Almost silent. Never noisy. Sure footed. When E sat beside you on the couch, he never fell into the cushions. He let himself down slowly, weight on his legs. The couch never moved. E was the most graceful man I’d ever known. The man running up the steps was not graceful. He did not move like an animal in the forest. The man knocking tentatively at my door was not my husband.

It was Byron. “Ihor has to work,” he explained. “He sent me.” Byron grinned at me. I couldn’t be mad. Byron was a sweetheart. He cooked for the men and did errands. He was like a big brother. He wore an ear-ring in his left ear and he drove an old pink Cadillac. The men called him a poof. But it wasn’t mean the way you’d think. It was a strange term of affection, and from these card-playing, beer-drinking guys who thought Elvis Presley was a pervert and Tommy Douglas was a communist.

I didn’t really understand it back then. I’d never heard the word gay before and if you’d asked me if I’d ever met a homosexual, I would have probably said, “No.”

Byron stayed to eat the soup. We didn’t play cards. Byron didn’t like cards and actually, neither did I. He was just staying to be nice, to cheer me up. He and I went through this book of names, looking at all the names we liked for boys and girls and then making fun of some of the names that seemed weird to us. Laura was a really popular name, but E had dated a Laura once and I sure wasn’t going to name our baby after someone he’d gone out with. I wouldn’t want him thinking of her every time he looked at our baby. It would have spooked me.

I didn’t want to name the baby Ihor if he were a boy. Ihor wasn’t really a name I liked. It sounded brutal and loud. I confessed to Byron that I’d really like to name our baby after my grandfather. My grandfather, Joe. Joe was a nice name, short, honest. Joey if you were feeling sentimental.

Byron left and I went to bed thinking about naming the baby Joe.

When E came home, almost at dawn, he threw a hundred dollar bill on the table. “A hundred bucks,” he said, proud, and excited. “I skunked those guys.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t mention that he had promised to come home and teach me how to play cards. I didn’t ask him how he could have won that money working late. I just lay there and pulled myself into the middle of the bunk, not wanting to touch the wall, the cold air.

E took off his clothes with the silent stealth he usually did. Drunk or sober, it didn’t matter, he was always graceful and noiseless. And then he carefully crawled into my bunk bed. His body was warm. I could smell the cigarette smoke in his hair. It was not the smoke of one man, it was the smoke of many men puffing on different brands in one small enclosed space. It was the smell of sweat and excitement and sex. That smell men have when they are interested in you. I knew that smell. Dogs know it, too.

Honestly, they recognize that smell. And they act strange around it. They try to protect you, they growl, and scratch. Sometimes they will actually try to urinate on the man. You may not believe it, but I’ve seen it.

The first time I met Roy I was with Willey. Willey is the neighbor’s cocker spaniel. The neighbor has to work long hours and Willey would sit hour after hour in a quiet room waiting for his master to come home. So, I sort of baby-sat him. I’d take him for walks; I’d make him his favorite food; I’d massage his sore neck. He’d been a rescue dog. Someone had hurt Willey when he was very young. And now he had aching shoulders, a sore neck. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. And so I massaged and he almost moaned in pleasure. He’d push against my hand, getting just the right pressure.

It was such a gift having Willey in my life. I missed my own dog so much. I missed my horse and the time we had on the property. But that was gone, and that whole part of my life seemed over forever. That part was like a wound that would never heal, or an amputation. So when Willey became part of how I lived each day, I felt healed. I felt worthwhile and protected all at once. Holding his little chest in my arms, against my body was the best feeling. We loved it. We could sit leaning into one another, saying nothing, for hours.

“What are you doing?” Mom would say.

“Holding Willey.”

I don’t think Mom understood, not how holding him was doing something, something almost extraordinary. But she understood my feeling of loss. She understood about my missing our old life. She felt guilty sometimes, as if it were her fault. But it wasn’t. Things happen. People can do terrible things. People can come and go. Homes can come and go. God knows, mine did. I’d lived on a farm with my Grandmother, in a house shaped like an L with my dad’s grandfather. And best of all, I’d lived on a property with my horse and dog and Mom and her second husband, Dan.

And then we moved to the apartment in town, back to Prince Albert, where I baby sat Willey and where Mom met Roy. Mom and Roy were sitting in the living room, having drinks and listening to the radio when Willey and I came in from a walk. Mom introduced us and Roy stood up. He stared at me and the way he did it, that very first time I met him, made me blush. It was as if my blouse were undone. As if he saw something he shouldn’t be seeing. It felt as if I were doing something bad. He reached out and shook my hand.

His hand was warm. It enveloped mine. He held it rather than shook it really. That’s when Willey did his thing. He growled a little, and scratched the floor the way dogs do sometimes when they are making a bed in a rug. Mom calls it nesting. She says it’s a throwback from when they made beds in the grass, when dogs ran wild and lived outdoors.

Willey moved in a circle, scratching and growling and then he did it. He ran over to Roy and peed right on his shoe. Roy pulled his foot back as if it were set of fire. “Jesus Christ?” he said, as shocked as all of us.

“You scared him,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say. But the word scared jumped out of my mouth. It was how I was feeling.

“Take him out,” Mom said. She was embarrassed. I was afraid Roy would make a big fuss. But he didn’t. He just laughed it off.

“I have that affect on dogs,” he said. “They just don’t like me, I guess.”

I took Willey outside. And I somehow forgot how Roy’s hand had made me feel.

Until the first time we were alone in a room. Mom was whipping up a snack. Roy was pacing around the room. He had a nervous energy. Mom poked her head into the room. “I need some fresh bread,” she announced. “This is moldy.” And with that she was out the door, leaving us alone.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But the way Roy responded made it huge. He stopped pacing. He looked at me, as if he had a question to ask.

“Your mom’s something,” he said. “Leaving us like that.”

Like what? I wanted to say. “Bread,” I said instead.

Roy sat on the couch. “I guess we’ll just have to wait,” he said.

Saying that made me so aware of time and space I could hardly breathe. We sat in the room, waiting, not speaking, Roy, usually so active, so nervous, just sitting and me, just sitting too. I tried to think of something to say, but nothing would come.

Then the doorbell rang. I wanted to kiss the person at the door. It was the neighbor, Dyonna, with Willey. I did kiss her. I took Willey in my arms. He was too heavy and it was a silly thing to do. I almost dropped him. And he almost lurched out of my arms towards Roy. He growled. And sure enough, he headed right for Roy’s foot. We both knew he was going to pee on him. Roy leaped to his feet.

“Willey, come,” I said as I opened the door, inviting him to follow me. Willey hesitated for a moment. I think Willey actually wanted to pee on Roy. He wanted to make a statement. He wanted to tell Roy that he knew that the room was filled with the smell of desire. And he wanted to tell Roy to stop.

Willey and I didn’t come back until Mom had been home for a few minutes.

“Leaving Roy all alone like that, Marie, shame on you!”

“Sorry.” Willey looked at Roy. He didn’t growl. He didn’t head for his feet. The smell was gone.

That same smell, full of tension, was mixed in with all the other smells that were in E’s hair. I was surprised. Men, only men, in a room, playing cards, drinking, smoking, laughing, swearing, competing. Was this sexy to them? Did it in some way arouse them?

I felt confused. Almost frightened. The world of men was a mystery to me. I’d never really had a father, not for any period of time. No brothers, except a step-brother, again, for a short period. And he had tortured me. He had killed my horse. My dog. Would I ever really understand men? How would I ever know what to expect? How would I ever know how to act?

E circled me with his arms and pulled me into him. And suddenly I didn’t care about anything else. I didn’t care about his lying to me. I didn’t care about the mystery. I let myself dissolve into the warmth and strength and comfort of his body and I fell asleep almost instantly. It was heaven.

The next day E didn’t get up early to go hunting. He must have felt guilty about lying to me because he said, “We’ll be meeting here tonight, right after work. Make some sandwiches.”

Here? Our place. I was having company. I was so excited. I would make something special. Something wonderful. I imagined canned lobster on mayonnaise and white bread cut into circles with a water glass. Mom made those on really special occasions.

I checked my purse. Eighty cents. No way I could make lobster sandwiches with that. Not even cheese. Maybe bologna. I didn’t want to serve bologna to my first guests. I wanted something really nice. I took my purse and went to the market. September, the end of the gardening season. There were beets and parsnips. Not much use to me. Potatoes. I actually loved potato sandwiches. Mashed potatoes on bread with butter and ketchup. But probably not everyone liked that.

Then I saw them. Dark green. Darker than leaves. Shiny, almost like wax. With prickles on the skins. Cucumbers. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Grandma always made cucumber sandwiches for me when we played party together. I say always, but it couldn’t have been too many times. My grandmother died when I was very young. But we did it often enough for me to remember. The sandwiches on home made white bread, cut thin. The cucumbers almost shaved, soaked in salt water to make them crisp and tangy. Soft butter smeared on the bread, crusts removed. Each sandwich cut into six perfect pieces.

I was so excited I could hardly wait to get home. It took me over an hour to slice the cucumbers. I cut each sandwich into six perfect pieces. I stacked them carefully on two plates. Then I had an even better idea. Radishes. I had fifty cents left. I raced back to the store and I sliced the radishes the way I had the cucumbers. I used a razor blade. The radish sandwiches were my idea. I could imagine their spicy taste, the crunch, the salt. They’d be perfect with the cucumber. I placed them amongst the cucumber sandwiches.

And then I waited.

The men came in, one, two at a time. Pretty soon seven of them were hard at it. The little trailer heated with their presence. They were nice men. Strong. Mostly unmarried. They were respectful of me. Of my being pregnant. They didn’t swear. They opened a window to let out the smoke. They called me Mrs. Torchinski.

God, I wanted them to have a good time. I wanted them to relax. I wanted them to want to come again. I tried to join in. I tried to make the odd comment about the cards, ask a question. They answered, but I could sense it was not what they wanted. Then a stupid thought flashed into my head. It happened to me a lot, when I got nervous, or felt judged, I’d get stupid, stupider, and inappropriate. The thought I had was that from time to time E would tell me a joke that someone had told him, so that’s what I’d do. I’d tell a joke.

It was a horrible joke about this man with a wooden eye who went to a dance and asked a woman with a cleft palate if she wanted to dance. She replied, “Would I? Would I? and he, feeling insulted yelled, “Hairlip, Hairlip”.

The men stared at me for a moment as if they hadn’t quite heard. Then they broke out into laughter. They laughed and laughed and they turned to a man who sat at the end of the bench. I hadn’t really noticed him before. He was a bit smaller than the others, and blonde. The men patted the littler man on the back. “Wanna dance?” they laughed. The man tried to laugh too, but I could tell he was embarrassed. That’s when I noticed. The man had a cleft palate.

I looked at him, my face red. My eyes trying to say I was sorry. He tried to continue the joke. “Would I? Would I?” he said. I didn’t know what to do. I was so embarrassed. I was so ashamed. How could I have not noticed? Whatever possessed me to tell that awful joke? How did I think that would make me “fit in”? Whatever possessed me to tell a joke at all. I was afraid to look at E. I could feel his eyes on me.

I would have done anything to change it. I took out the sandwiches carefully stacked on two plates. I placed them on the table in front of the men. “Sandwiches?” I asked as I carefully lifted the wax paper from the plates.

The men reached over for the sandwiches. They hesitated. Tiny little sandwiches. No crusts. The big hands took two, three, put some back. They didn’t know what to make of the sandwiches I had made. E took one, opened it. “Cucumbers?” he said. He stared at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Cucumbers?” he repeated. He looked as though he were going to hit me.

“It’s ok,” the blonde man with the hair lip said, trying to save the awful situation. “It’s ok.” He took one and bit in. The other men followed suit. No one said anything.

“Let’s go.” E said. “Let’s go get something to eat.” He headed for the door. The men followed him, thanking me as they left. Some had a small sandwich still in hand. “On me,” E promised.

After all the men were out, E came back in. He closed the door behind him. I didn’t move. “Are you really that goddamn stupid?” he said to me. And then he was gone.

He didn’t come back for two days. I thought perhaps he had left me for good. I thought I’d die. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go home. I ate all the cucumber sandwiches. I ate all the radish sandwiches. I got horrible heartburn. I really wanted some milk, but I had no money. I had spent it all on cucumbers and radishes.

I considered trying to find Bryon, but I didn’t know which trailer he stayed in and I knew that if E found out I went about knocking at trailer doors, he’d be furious. Then something quite amazing happened. A woman moved in with what could have been a grandchild, but turned out to be a nephew. A woman and a kid! They moved right into one of the empty trailers. I watched from the window. I was thrilled. Neighbors.

The woman must have been in her late sixties, maybe even early seventies. The boy about seven, or maybe even eleven, but he was awfully small for eleven. But then he looked old for seven. They spoke French most of the time and because I had attended a Catholic school, I could understand what they said. We’d always had Catechism class and French class in French.

“We can live here,” I’d heard the woman explaining to the boy. He wanted to know if it was safe and she assured him it was. I wondered, “Safe from what or whom?”

I wouldn’t have said it was safe. There was something about living there that I haven’t told you. It’s kind of hard to talk about. It’s important though. In fact, it is so important it almost cost me my marriage.

It was the fact that there was no running water in the trailer. No toilet. We had to use an outdoor toilet that was located quite far from the body of trailers. It was located in the woods. It was dark in the woods. The toilet stunk. It had two big holes. You could look down into the holes and see the poop and paper. It was revolting.

You might wonder why someone would look down there. Well, I was looking for snakes. I had myself convinced that there were snakes in the toilet. I just couldn’t make myself go out there and sit on the toilet seat that was nailed to the boards that protected you from falling into the pit of poop. I would crawl up on the boards and sort of crouch over the hole. Still I would peer down, afraid that the snake would leap up.

I told E about the snake, but he said, “Garter snakes don’t live in shit, for Christ’s sake.”

I didn’t know how to tell him it wasn’t a garter snake. I couldn’t tell him it was a python or a cobra. Something deadly. Something foreign. Something that normally does not live in Saskatchewan.

It sounds crazy, but years later, I read in a newspaper that a python was actually found in an outdoor toilet in Saskatchewan. It had escaped from someone’s house. It had found it’s way to the toilet and it had died in there.

But my snake was not dead. And it was waiting. For me. I knew it. The snake terrified me. I wouldn’t go unless I had to. I’d hold it all night long. I’d only go in the daytime when it felt safest. I’d go when no one was around, so I could hold the door open, so I could escape easily.

Peeing, I did in the woods. I would never risk the snake over a pee.

I doubted the new neighbors knew about the snake. They must have been afraid of something else. I learned later that it was her brother, the boy’s father they were running from. I learned he beat the boy. So his aunt stole him and together they escaped to Saskatchewan. The father still lived in Quebec. He had no idea his sister whom he would have considered way too old to raise a boy, had taken his son. He was sure it was the boy’s mother. But the boy’s mother had already run off with her new boyfriend. She hadn’t it in her to get the boy. The aunt was the one with all the moxy.

I was still watching them move in when I must have fallen asleep at the window. It was morning. E came home just in time to tell me he was going hunting. He would be going hunting every morning from now on. It was duck season. He said it as if it were a punishment for the cucumber sandwiches.

“That’s good,” was about all I could muster. I almost didn’t care. Things were just not working out for us, and I was prepared to just let it go. What was happening was happening and I didn’t seem to have much say in it. Hunting, not hunting. It was all the same. It was all lonely.

But, not as lonely as it had been. My neighbors became my obsession.

I loved the old woman. She was big and loud. She sang in a huge voice. She sang the songs of Edith Piaf. She taught me how to knit. And to crochet. I couldn’t sew out in the trailer. I couldn’t make anything, not even a baby dress. But now I was learning to knit sweaters and crochet hats. It was fabulous.

Her name was Manon. That means beloved. And she was, my beloved. She told me so much about babies, and how to feed them and hold them and burp them. She touched my stomach and said I was going to have a girl. She told me the baby would be born late, and that might frighten me, but not to be scared. She told me women had to be brave to raise children.

It worried me that she said, “to raise children”. I wished she had said, “to have a baby.” I sensed that the raising would be harder than the birthing, and I wondered why. But I didn’t ask. I was too afraid she’d tell me and I didn’t want to know.

Her nephew was very shy. It took a whole week before he would even come out of the trailer. One of his arms was twisted. His father had injured him as a baby, and the arm had never grown straight or strong. The boy’s name was Armand, which means bold. But bold he wasn’t. He was such a nervous little thing that he burped a lot.

I could really identify with that. I burped when I got nervous. Not as much as I used to, but I still did it. Once Armand got to know me he would crawl into my lap and rest against my growing breasts. I would pat his back and he would burp. Every time he did, he would lift his head and say in a soft voice, “Excuse, me, honey, I’m a pig.”

I would laugh and say, “No, no,” and kiss the top of his head. I don’t know if he said the “Excuse me, honey, I’m a pig,” because someone had called him a pig, or because he felt it was the right thing to say, or because he knew I’d say no and kiss the top of his head. Whatever the reason, he said it every time. We got so used to it that we hardly noticed. It was almost a ritual. A sweet ritual. I was practicing motherhood.

I’m not sure E really noticed that things had changed for me. He kept up his hunting for the whole fall. It was getting colder. Soon it would be time to leave. I hated the thought. I didn’t want to leave Manon and Armand. I wanted her to be there when I had my baby. I wanted her to take me in the way she had Armand.

“Perhaps I could stay here with you,” I told her.

“Ma petite, pauvre little petite,” she said and shook her head, no, because she knew it wasn’t possible. I knew it, too. I wasn’t a child. I was a woman, a wife, almost a mother.

As if to prove the point, fate had E come home from hunting on a Monday morning carrying three ducks which he tossed down on the porch. “I’d like those for supper,” he said. “Roasted would be great, but fried will have to do.” It was a clear order. He left giving me a kiss on the cheek.

I looked at the ducks. There was blood spattered on the brown feathers. One had blood coming from its flat peak. I touched the head, green, shining. The eyes were closed. I touched the webbed feet. The skin was soft, like human skin. Touching those feet, so real, soft, affected me so I began to weep. I had never seen a duck up close before. I had never touched one. They were beings, beings who could fly and walk and talk their own language. And now three of them lay at my feet, killed. And I was supposed to cook them.

I went inside, leaving the ducks. Time passed. I checked the propane tank, hoping there would not be enough gas to fry a duck. But the tank was almost full. My little hot plate stared at me. It looked almost human. It felt sad about the ducks. Jesus, I was feeling a kinship with a hotplate.

I went out and looked at the ducks again. I had seen my aunt clean a chicken on the farm. I knew the feathers had to come off. I knew the intestines had to come out. I pulled a feather. It didn’t come out easily. I grabbed a handful and pulled harder. A huge bug crawled out of the duck. A huge water flea. I screamed and dropped the duck.

I went back inside and came out armed with a soup ladle. I would use it to get out the guts. I wore a pair of oven mitts. I could not bear to touch the duck with my hands again. Manon came over. She was laughing so hard she was holding her sides. Armond was with her. He was laughing, too.

“Mon dui, mon dui,” she said and took the ducks out to the field. Feathers and guts flew. Armond and I watched. She rinsed the ducks with the water from the communal tap. And she roasted them in her oven. The smell filled the whole trailer. It smelled delicious. I had never tasted duck before, but I wanted to now. I even forgot about the duck feet that reminded me of human skin.

Five o’clock. No sign of E. Six, seven o’clock. He had ordered the duck and now he hadn’t bothered to come home. Manon was getting mad. She insisted we eat. We ate two of the ducks. She had roasted potatoes and parsnips around the duck. I had never tasted anything as good. I ate like a pig. I stuffed in the last bite of parsnip, rubbed my tummy and burped. “Excuse me, honey, I’m a pig,” I said and we all laughed as if it were the funniest joke in the world.

I was so full I went to sleep without worrying about where E was. Out with the boys. In another trailer. Gambling, drinking, talking about the hunt. Sometimes he was so tired, he just fell asleep. They all did, not undressing, not really going to bed, just falling asleep sitting up, then going to work at day-break. The life of men working together. Men who were proud and stubborn. Men who didn’t eat cucumber sandwiches or bring their young pregnant wives with them to live in a camp.

I woke at about midnight with terrible pains in my stomach. I really had to go to the bathroom. But the snake. I tried to go out. I walked about three feet toward the woods, toward the outdoor toilet. I couldn’t do it. I thought of asking Manon to escort me. But it was late. I walked up to her trailer. I could hear her snoring. I went back to our trailer. Surely E would be home soon.

It was cold outside. The short walk had got me to shivering so hard I just couldn’t get warm enough to relax. I was going to poop in my pants. I jumped out of the bunk and pooped right into a paper sack. I put the sack into another sack. I rolled the opening up tight and stuck it outside the door. I’d throw it into the toilet in the morning. I went back to sleep.

What happened next is too funny to tell. And too awful. E came home early in the morning. Too late to go to bed. He must have seen me lying there, asleep. He must have seen the paper sack on the porch.

He must have, because when I woke up, it was gone. He must have thrown it in the toilet for me. I spent the rest of the day feeling pretty good. It was nice of him to do that. Maybe things might get back to the way they had been before we ‘d come here. Maybe it would be like when he brought me to the dance in my too tight black dress. Maybe it would be like when he understood about my dad.

When E’s truck drove up into the yard, I almost ran out to meet him, to open the door of the truck and give him a kiss right in front of everyone. He jumped out of the truck before I had a chance to open the door. Maybe he was as excited to see me as I was to see him.

He grabbed me by the arm. “You little bitch,” he snarled. I cried out in pain. “I’ll teach you.” He started to push/pull me towards our trailer. I screamed in fear and protest.

“What? What did I do?”

“Fuck you,” he said.

I was terrified. I cried for help. And help came in the form of a huge French woman named Manon.

“Let go of her, you son-of -beech,” Manon said in her best English.

It startled E so much he stopped in his tracks. “Who the hell are you?” He hadn’t noticed that we had neighbors?

“I’m the woman what damn well stop you from hurting that fille.” She slipped into French. “She do notin’ to you, but wait.”

“She fed me shit,” he said. And suddenly I understood. The bag outside the door. He thought it was lunch. He must have taken it to work. He must have reached into the bag. He must have gotten a big surprise.

I started to laugh. I started to cry. They both stood there. Neither could understand.

“You want to come wit me, you can,” Manon said. “I’ll take you. It is rien. Noting. Just like dat. We go.”

E looked at me. He looked at the woman. He dropped my arm. “Please,” he said. “Stay.”

And I did.

Chapter Five: The Baby Dress

I woke in a sweat. “Gills,” I sobbed. “Fish gills. And a donkey’s tail.”

“Ssh, honey, quiet, it’s only a dream”.

It was a dream I’d been having a lot. That our baby would be born with something akin to gills on the side of her neck, and a tail, a donkey’s tail. E tried to console me. He insisted that young mother’s often had bad dreams. It was a hormonal thing.

I didn’t believe him. I knew something would be wrong with our baby. I knew that Manon had known it, too.

I went into labor on November 11, Remembrance day, as the doctor’s ordered. But I didn’t actually deliver the baby until December 1^st, also as Manon had predicted. I wasn’t in labor all that time. I just kept going into false labor. It was as if the baby just didn’t have enough nerve to enter the world. She’d start to, then change her mind.

The moment she was born, I examined her. I hated to do it in front of the nurses, but I couldn’t help myself. I was sure there would be gills, a tail, webbed fingers. I checked. None of these things were there. Ten fingers. Ten toes. There were no gills where the ears should be, just tiny ears, small, perfect. She was perfect. Perfect.

As soon as I checked her I fell into a deep sleep until they woke me to feed our daughter. They placed her in my arms. I put my breast to her mouth. And I waited. I expected a flood of love. It was that motherly love thing I had read about. Surely, I would feel it. Surely it would be warm and sweet, like syrup and butter on hot angel food pancakes. I waited. She sucked at my swollen breast, eager for the milk. It hurt. I tried to relax. The milk began to flow.

The baby finished and I gave her back to the nurse. I was a failure. I wasn’t fit to be a mother. I had felt nothing. No warm buttery sweetness. No warm flush to my face. No fast beating of the heart. I began to cry. I cried myself back to sleep.

When I awoke, the doctor was there with E. They looked serious. How could they know? How could they know I didn’t feel the love this small bundle of nerves and bones and soft pink skin deserved? How could they tell?

The doctor’s voice interrupted my thoughts. We think she has some auto-immune deficiency the doctor was saying. I didn’t understand. “She has no immune system,” E was trying to help me to understand. They kept saying the same words, immune, no defense, germs, infection, but I couldn’t make sense of it. She was normal. I’d seen her.

“She’s not alright?” I finally managed to ask. They stared at me. “No, no she’s not,” the doctor said. “I’m so sorry.”

Mom came to visit. Roy came too. They brought flowers. They tried to console me. But I couldn’t be consoled. It was my fault. It was because I had no love in me. Babies die without love. I knew that. Everyone knows that. Even rats die without love. And now my baby was going to die.

But she didn’t. Everyone said it was a miracle, but she didn’t die.

We couldn’t name what was wrong, but we could see it, feel it, and we had to find a way to live with it. All we really knew was that we had a sick little girl who was fragile, vulnerable to any kind of contagion that came her way. For sure we knew that living in a trailer in the woods with no running water was out of the question.

Roy, surprisingly enough, came to the rescue. He was doing an apartment sale for a client. He gave up his commission for a six-month low rent deal in one of the furnished

basement bachelor units.

We moved in and I began a war against germs. Germs were the enemy. I boiled everything that touched her. Her nighties, her blankets, her diapers, the can opener that opened the baby food, her spoon, whatever might touch her. I rubbed my breasts with alcohol until they were raw. I asked visitors to wear masks and gowns. I never took her out. And slowly, slowly, she began to gain weight. By three months, she had had pneumonia and bronchitis, had chronic coup, and every mucous membrane had been infected, but she was alive. She was alive! The doctor’s had predicted she would never survive her first month. But each time she got sick, she got stronger. Each time a germ attacked her, she began to develop an immune system.

As I bathed and boiled and rocked and wept and worried, I fell in love. Deeply, totally, passionately in love. With this child, this fragile small pink baby whose life depended upon my being able to keep her alive. I didn’t actually realize I had, not consciously. I was too busy.

I became devoted to the life of Sarah. Everything else paled in comparison to the enormity of this task. I began to make clothes for her, to knit and crochet and sew gowns of the softest, most comfortable flannel. I couldn’t do enough for her. Some might say I became a little obsessed.

Mom said it was a natural reaction, to be so focused on your first born, especially when she was sick. She told me how as a child I had twenty dolls and I’d line them up on my small bed at the farm and I’d sleep on the floor so they could be comfortable. I actually remembered doing that. I was the nurse. I had to make sure they survived. They had been wounded in the war.

Actually, my situation was a bit like that. Sarah had been hurt in the war of life and it was my job to make sure she survived. Only, Sarah was not a doll; she was my daughter, my own flesh and blood daughter. And suddenly I realized it had happened. The warm butter of motherly love; the sweet syrup of a passion more fiery than anything I could have imagined.

I was so happy. It was an omen. For sure Sarah would live now. For sure she would be all right. My love would guarantee that. When E came home from his week in Shellbrooke, I told him. He hardly had his coat off when I blurted out the great news. “I love her,” I told him. “I love her so much I could die. I love her more than anything in the world.”

I knew it was the wrong thing to say. I knew it before I saw the flash of anger in E’s face. I knew it before a hint of sadness was replaced with a smirk and a “Good for you.”

“I don’t mean. I mean, I love…”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waved off my apology, my clumsy attempt to tell him I didn’t mean that I loved her more. Not more than I loved him. Different. Way way more than I loved life. How could I explain it? Didn’t he feel it?

But I knew. I knew like you would know a knife stabbed to the foot or hand. A knife you could see go in, could feel enter the flesh, the sinews, the bones. I knew it like a knife that could pin you to the spot, force you to stay put, imprisoned by the blade and your fear of more pain. That’s what the realization was like. No, he didn’t feel it.

I knew it the way he looked at her, sighed when she cried. I knew it from his resistance to holding her, saying her name. I don’t think I had actually ever heard E call Sarah by name as she became part of our family. Why? Did saying her name make her more real? Would it make losing her more painful?

Or was it jealousy? All the attention I gave to her?

Was it shame, that Roy had to find us a place, that my young husband couldn’t really take care of his own baby girl, find her a home that was safe and secure. That he had to rely on a man who obviously disliked him, who could hardly stay in the same room with him.

Yes, it was. It was all of those things. But more. It was one thing more. It was that she was not perfect. He liked things that worked. He was tall and handsome and could hunt and fish like a native. Everything he did, he did well.

He told me once that there was no real word for “handicapped” in Russian. That in Russia there were no handicapped signs, no special places to park or sit. The way he told me, I knew he thought it was the right thing to do. They way he told me I knew he thought it was as it should be.

He was fascinated with perfection. He knew the scores for the man who hit the most base balls, who had the lowest score in golf, who ran the fastest, swam the longest, endured the most.

But bums, war veterans with missing limbs, the sick, the aged, the infirm, these made E uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he would ever be cruel to them. It wasn’t like that. It was that he didn’t ever want to be around them.

He avoided his sister. And now, his own daughter had become one of them. One who was ‘other’. One who was not perfect.

The knife thrust of that realization happened so fast it caught me off guard. I stumbled to the couch and fell asleep. It was something that happened to me when I was really upset. My body would just shut down.

When I awoke, E was gone. Sarah had been crying for God knows how long. And for one moment, I hated him. I hated the man I had married. I hated him for his inability to love her. I hated him for his ability to leave her. It was as if he were a threat to her. Something in me felt I had to protect her from him. It was an awful feeling and overwhelmingly powerful.

There was no one I could talk to about this feeling. It was confusing and filled me with shame and sorrow and worry. I wanted to tell Mom. But how could I talk about protecting your child. How could I bring up a subject that neither of us dared to mention since she’d married Roy.

Mom had been awful fragile after Dan had left us. Dan had been a good man. I missed him. But he just couldn’t stand living with what his son, my step-brother Arnold, had done to us. I couldn’t even talk about it. The fire. The fire set by Arnold. We’d lost everything. Our home. Our barn. Tom. I’d gone a bit crazy after that. There were months I couldn’t remember. I don’t want to remember. Even now. The worst and best time of my life.

And now, it felt as if it were happening again. The worst and best thing. How many best and worst things can happen to a person? I guess only one real worst. One real best. But, I’m telling you, at the time, they sure feel like the absolute best; or the worst of all times.

Sarah. She was the best and the worst. The most wonderful thing in the world was holding her in my arms. The worst was seeing her face twist in pain, a pain we couldn’t cure, because we couldn’t name it.

Those few months, and for years afterward, doctors tried to name it. Called it all sorts of things. Tested and retested. . Cystic Phybrosis, Leukemia, Celiac Disease, Kawasaki’s Disease. Words we didn’t understand, words we feared, words that chased E away from the small bundle of child that cried in fever and pain for her first three months of life.

As Sarah gained strength and weight and my love, E moved further and further away. At first he had made a real attempt to be the dutiful father. He was gone during the week; but on week-ends, he tried to stick around. But he was restless, bored. The baby’s crying made him nervous. He began to drink more and more. He began to bite his nails.

I knew, deep in my heart, if he began to take care of her he would fall in love as I had. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You do it better.” And he’d just watch, or read the paper. And eventually, he’d go out for cigarettes, drop in at the beer parlor. And then he’d go away for the whole week-end.

I had longed for the coldness of winter, the end of the hunting, the fishing, the lonely days and nights. But I had been wrong. Duck season gave way to deer season. Beautiful animals lay in a pool of blood, their throats cut for better eating, brought home in the back of the truck that once had carried me proud and excited to the fish and game league in my too tight black dress.

I couldn’t bear the sight of them, eyes still open, staring, pools of brown, the light gone out. I could imagine the doe walking in the woods, tentative, stepping lightly, reaching up to nibble a leaf. I could imagine her hearing the break of a branch, sense danger, run through the woods, heart beating. I could imagine the hot sting of the bullet, the tearing of flesh, the panic in the eyes, the scream of pain, the last fierce rush to escape, the drop.

Was she still alive when he pulled his knife across her throat?

I never ate the sausage he made, the steaks he fried himself with onions and bacon. The smell sickened me. I could not get the moment of death out of my mind. I could almost feel the pain of the bullet, the hot flush of blood and the life leaving with the flash of the knife.

But I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t say how awful it was. How awful it made me feel. It seemed that there was less and less that I could tell him. He wouldn’t understand. He would feel awful. He would stay away even more.

I couldn’t tell him, either of my worry over Sarah. My fear for the future. My needing to hang on to each day as if it were our only day. And when I couldn’t talk about these things, the things that mattered most, it seemed impossible to talk about anything else. Simple things, things young couples might talk about weren’t there for us. Words felt false, fake, forced. And in time, in very little time, we grew silent.

I thought of his parents, of how they hadn’t spoken to one another for so many years. They’d even had a child without speaking. I remember thinking what an awful life that would be. But here I was living it.

She was almost six months old when doctors decided they needed to do a new test on Sarah. She needed to be in hospital for four days. I was terrified. Hospitals are not good places for people who have weak immune systems. Even I knew that. I tried to discuss it with E. “For Christ’s sake Marie, you can’t attach her to yourself. She needs to go for the test. Don’t you want to find out what’s wrong with her?”

The question was like a slap. I lashed out. “I know you don’t. You couldn’t care less. I don’t think you even like her.” It was that day that I learned that E was not one who liked to lose. I was no match for my husband. He could outwit and out hurt me in a heartbeat.

“Sometimes I think you like her sick. Makes you important, doesn’t it?”

We didn’t discuss it any more. Sarah went to the hospital. I was allowed to visit for two small hours a day, not on the week-end at all. E went fishing. Ice fishing. Crouching under a small tent, in the cold, over a hole in the ice, smoking his cigarette, waiting to see the Pickeral circle the bait, grab the hook.

I had gone with him once, trying to find a way into his life. We’d left Sarah with Mom. On the way, I’d imagine how things would be. I’d imagined we’d be huddled together under a small tent, cuddling against the cold, laughing at how silly it was to cut a hole in the ice. I had imagined my being afraid the ice would crack; E would assure me, tease me, protect me.

But when we got there, E made one small make shift tent for each of us. They were smelly tarps over two poles really, to keep out the sun, to permit peering into the cold lake.

When the pickeral came near, when it took the hook, I was supposed to reel the fish in. A fish swam by, took the bait. I began to reel and then it seemed as if the fish were charging out of the water, charging for me, its mouth open, its rows of sharp teeth ready to slash my arms, my face.

I leaped to my feet, tearing the tent from its stakes as I ran screaming across the ice, the fish trailing in tow behind me. Once I stopped, I could hear E and his buddy Frank Zeller laughing their stupid guts out at me.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a fish in water, or if you’ve ever seen a pickeral’s open mouth. But the sight is pretty terrifying. The water magnifies the fish and the mouth is open and full of rows of sharp teeth. It is worse than any horror movie. And you feel, deep in your heart, that the fish has the perfect right to rip your arm off. You are, after all, trying to kill it.

I never went ice fishing again. It just wasn’t for me. I know E was glad. I was a bit of a nuisance and certainly an embarrassment when I wept over the fish, flipping its tail on the ice, its gills moving slowly, its mouth open gasping for breath, until finally, it froze to death, or suffocated, I wasn’t sure which. I wanted to put them all back. But that would have been stupid. They were dead.

“You should take her to a slaughter house,” Frank Zeller had said.

“God, no, I’d never get spare ribs again.” They’d laughed about that. They did like my spare-ribs. But I knew about slaughter houses. My dad had worked next to one when I was a kid, before he left me and my mom. I don’t know why I wasn’t a vegetarian. I felt like a hypocrite. I guess I could eat something if I hadn’t seen it die. It wasn’t right. God, the whole thing just made me feel awful.

So, anyway, here I was all alone in our little apartment, with Sarah in the hospital and E off fishing. I busied myself making her a welcome home dress. She had so many clothes I thought I might be ready to actually take some of the clothes to a shop that sold home made sweaters and stuff. Maybe I would get into the baby clothes making business.

I could imagine myself making clothes for Sarah as she grew older. Each age, I would focus my sewing on that particular kind of clothes, baby clothes, clothes for toddlers, school clothes, clothes for graduation, for dating. I could see Sarah going through the stages of growing up. I could see it so clearly and as I did, I felt with a certainty that it would happen. That Sarah would grow up. That we would find what was wrong with her and that she would not die as the doctors had predicted.

Imagining things had worked for me before; it was going to work for me now.

It was the second time I had felt that Sarah would live. The first time was when I knew I loved her. But this was even stronger, more specific. The clothes were so real. When I knew that I loved her, the feeling was that she would not die. But this was a feeling that she would live, live for a long time. Long enough to fall in love.

You may not think my feelings about the future always worked. I mean, I did think she was going to have gills and a tail. When Sarah was twelve, the doctors discovered what had made her so ill all her life. Turner’s Syndrome, a missing chromosome. But Sarah was a mosaic Turner. She had a little piece of her missing chromosome. She had enough to keep her from some of the tell tail signs of the syndrome. She did not have the flap of skin that grew at the neck and had to be surgically removed; she did not have the webbed fingers or the hair that grew like soft down on her back.

When I finally learned all this, I remembered my dream. But that was yet to come. That was part of my future. At the present, I had just had the best feeling of security. I would make a dress for my daughter’s graduation.

I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to rush to the hospital and tell Sarah. “You’ll be all right, my little darling,” I wanted to assure her. “Don’t be afraid. You’ll be all right.” I wanted to tell the doctors. I wanted to tell the world.

I was so filled with my vision of a future for us that I barely heard the knock at the door. It came louder, more insistent, the second time.

“Come in,” I said, not looking up from my sewing machine. I figured it must be Mom, knowing I was alone, knowing how I hated being alone.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” It was a man’s voice. Strangely familiar.

Dickey Lafleure was standing in my doorway, a vacuum cleaner in tow. Dickey Lafleure, my childhood hero, the boy who had given me my first kiss, the boy who had helped me to find my beloved Tom. Dickey, Dickey, Dickey.

“Marie?” He dropped his bag, his upright Hoover. He held out his arms and I went into them with a gratitude I hadn’t experienced in a long time. It was as if I were eleven again. I had once again found the friend of my childhood just when I needed him most.

“You’re not living with your mom anymore?” he asked.

“I live here. For awhile.” I looked around at the sewing machine, the pile of baby clothes. “I’m a seamstress.”

“Like my mom.” He smiled. Actually it was Dickey’s mom who had taught me to sew. She had sewn things to make ends meet.

“How is she, your mom? How are you? Your dad? Tell me everything.”

Our conversation moved so fast, with Dickey doing most of the talking, that somehow I didn’t get a chance to tell him that I was married, that my husband was ice-fishing and my daughter in the hospital. I don’t think I consciously concealed those things, but somehow the truth of my life never came out.

Dickey’s life seemed to be in a mess. His dad had gone completely bonkers. Dickey had quit school to help out his mom. But he couldn’t get a decent job. Now he was selling vacuum cleaners.

“I’ll buy one.” I said and we both laughed knowing full well I had no more money to buy one than the man in the moon.

We went out for a walk. We walked and talked and laughed. The day flew by. I almost forgot about E murdering fish in the ice; I almost forgot about Sarah lying in a hospital bed. I didn’t want to think of them. I wanted to be here, now, a teenage girl with the boy who had been her best friend, with the boy who had been the first to touch his lips to hers.

I remembered that kiss when I looked at Dickey, when his lips moved. He must have known what I was thinking because he reached over and pulled me to him and kissed me again. Again, the soft kiss of innocence and uncomplicated desire.

I spent the night in his house. I didn’t sleep with him. I slept in the spare room, the one which housed the washing machine. Dickey’s mom was so glad to see me. She made her spare ribs. It was the only recipe I really knew. She had taught me how to make them, with canned pineapple and tomatoes and hot chili peppers. They melted in your mouth.

His dad recognized me, which made everyone happy. We all stayed up until 3 am talking about the olden days, the day I pushed Betty Lou into a locker; the day I won the house at the fair, the day we sold all the rabbits and found Tom. We had such history together. This was my family. This felt so much like home.

We avoided how that story had ended. No one wanted to go where I could not bear to be.

I slept like a person without a care in the world. In the morning, Mrs. Lafleure made pancakes that tasted like angel food cake. She separated the eggs and whipped the whites and folded them into the batter. They were my favorites. They are a prairie thing. My grandfather could make them, too. Mrs. LaFleure had strawberries from her garden that she had frozen and these she thawed and served with the pancakes. We drank hot black coffee. I felt old and young all at the same time. I felt like a grown up because she served me black coffee.

Can you imagine that? Here I was a married woman, a mother of a 6 month old baby and I felt grown up because someone served me black coffee? God, I was a lunatic.

Mr. Lafleure was watching me all through breakfast. He wasn’t saying anything, just watching me. It made Dickey and his mom a bit uneasy because they figured he was losing touch with reality again.

It made me uneasy because I thought he was very much in touch with reality. More in touch than anyone. I had always found him to be that way. He may have been shell shocked. He may have been paranoid and nailed his windows shut with two by fours, but he had a sixth sense that was uncanny.

I had just stuffed a huge hunk of pancake, wet and warm with hot sweet strawberries into my mouth when Mr. Lafleure, still looking at me, said in a quite matter-of- fact way, “When you have a baby?”

I spit out my pancake. Bits of strawberry spattered. “Six months ago.” I said, wiping my mouth, my sweater, mopping up bits of pancake and strawberry with my napkin.

There it was out. All of the truth followed. Leaving home, the trailer, my father dying, E, living in Shellbrooke, the baby. It all poured out in a big jumble, not in the right order, probably not making much sense, but letting them know I was the married mother of a sick baby and a husband I was sure didn’t want to be with me anymore.

When I was done, Mrs. Lafleure put her arms around me, “My poor little Marie,” and she rocked me as if I were the baby.

Mr. LaFleure was agitated. He didn’t like it that the baby was in the hospital. He didn’t trust hospitals. He wanted us to go and get her. He was acting as if Sarah were his own grand-child. Dickey had to promise we’d leave to get the baby. Mr. LaFleure almost pushed us out the door.

We left with our false promise. Dickey hadn’t yet said anything. We walked around, not talking. He broke a branch off a tree and cracked it into smaller and smaller pieces. “The baby clothes? They were hers?”

He was remembering my lie of omission. I was remembering it, too. How did it happen? How did I let it happen? Was I just going to go on with the lie until when? The week-end was over?

“I was so glad to see you.” I said as if that explained everything. And yet it seemed to. He seemed satisfied.

“Come away with me,” he said. What was he thinking? Come away with him?

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Away. We’ll get Sarah. We’ll find a place. The three of us.”

What he was saying was ridiculous. It was impossible. And yet. Oh, my god, and yet.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes.”

We had a plan. E would come home on Sunday. And on Monday, he’d be gone again. I’d act natural, and tell him Mom would come with me to pick up Sarah. But it wouldn’t be Mom. It would be Dickey. We’d pick up the baby and then we’d go. We’d have to take E’s car. I felt badly. E’s pride and joy was that pink Fairlane Ford. He covered it with a tarp when he wasn’t using it.

“When we get to where we’re going, we’ll send him a note. He can come and get the car.” Dickey agreed that that would be a good idea.

But things didn’t quite work out. E didn’t go back to Shellbrooke on Monday. He had decided to take a few days off and help me with the baby. He was worried that the news might be bad and I might be in a state.

His doing that threw me into a state all right. It was the kindest thing he had done since we’d married. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did love the baby. Maybe he did love me.

When someone knocked at the door, I knew it was Dickey. E answered before I could get there.

Dickey figured it out right away. He pulled a great cover-up, asking if I were still interested in the vacuum cleaner. I said no and he left.

“I know that guy,” E said. “I’ve seen him before.”

My heart was pounding. I had so many pictures of Dickey in my scrap-book. Dickey and the rabbits. Dickey and Tom. Dickey at the church. Dickey and me when we tried cooking some clams we’d gathered at the river’s edge. They’d tasted like mud and were tough as rubber. His dad had taken a picture of us pulling the clams from away from our mouths, the little gray masses tight in our teeth. The gray shells open and gritty. We’d looked like aliens. I remember that Dickey had pulled so hard the clam had snapped back, leaving a sharp cut across his nose. His dad and I had laughed. It seemed such a funny thing. We’d just laughed and laughed. It didn’t seem funny now as I remembered it. But at the time we were in stitches.

“I knew him when I was a kid,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “There’s pictures.”

E and I both went to pick up Sarah. The doctor sat with us and explained that the test had proved inconclusive. They did not know what caused her immune deficiency. They had discovered her blood pressure was terribly high. They didn’t know why that was happening either. Her heart seemed normal. There would be more tests.

“I think she’ll be fine,” I said to E. He looked surprised. I couldn’t explain about my premonitions. I couldn’t explain how that if I imagined something, wanting it really badly, it often came true. I couldn’t explain that when I pictured myself making her clothes as she grew older, I was living a bit of my own future, and so many of my fears had vanished.

I’d still worry. I’d still be the mother of a sick child. But a child who would get better. A child who would live, at least to graduation.

Dickey phoned the next day. E was still home. He answered the phone. I don’t know what Dickey said, but E invited him over for a drink. “I invited him over for a drink,” E said to me. “I know you’ve been lonesome.”

Dickey came over and we looked at the pictures. We told E the stories of our childhood. E watched and listened. I chatted like a magpie. Sarah slept, exhausted from her stay at the hospital. Dickey was charming as always. He seemed so at ease.

The next day E left for Shellbrooke. He seemed in a good mood. Dickey must have been waiting. He came in just minutes after E left. “I’ll need to get some stuff,” he said. “Some supplies.” He seemed anxious, nervous. I was, too. And I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do now. Why was this happening? Why was it playing out the way it was?

I felt that I was just going along with something I had no control over. Dickey had come into my life and now we were leaving together. Two days ago, I was so sure of that. Today, today, I didn’t know.

“Where are the keys?” he asked. The keys to the car. To E’s pink Ford Fairlane. To the car he covered with a tarp when he wasn’t using it. I got the keys from the cupboard where all our keys were located. I placed them in Dickey’s hand.

“I won’t be long,” Dickey said.

But he was. He was long. One hour went by, then two, thee, four. I panicked. I called Mrs. LaFleure. “Was Dickey there?” I asked her.

“Why? Why? Did the police call?”

Police? Why was she talking about the police? Had E guessed what we were thinking of doing? Had he called the police?

But it wasn’t E. E had nothing to do with it. Dickey had robbed a gas station. He had robbed it the day he’d come over to sell me the vacuum cleaner. He’d been selling vacuums to get enough money to get out of town.

And now he was gone and he was driving E’s car. He was driving E’s Ford because I had given him the keys so he could get the supplies that would take us away.

I had to tell E. I had to confess everything. But, how? I couldn’t go to him. I couldn’t phone. He was out in the middle of the bush in a trailer peeing in an outdoor toilet infested by snakes. I decided to tell Mom.

Mom wasn’t home, so Roy was the one I told. I hated telling him. He didn’t like E. Yet, in this case, in this particular bizarre case, it was is if he felt sorry for E, as if suddenly both he and E were on the same side. I was on the other side. “I’ll drive you out there,” he said.

“What made you do it?” he asked in the car.

“I just felt happy for the first time in a long time,” I tried to explain. And I wanted to feel happy.”

“That’s all we all want, kid,”

Roy waited in the car while I went in to give E the news that my old friend had stolen his car. Roy was watching Sarah who had fallen asleep in her car seat. It was the one place where she fell asleep, in a moving vehicle. She had yet to sleep through the night.

“You gave him my car?” E cried, his voice high and shrill and out of control. It was a way I had not heard it before. His face was very red. He was standing over me. He looked enormous.

I couldn’t explain. I just started to cry. I was acting like a person who had murdered someone. I felt as if I had murdered someone. “I’m so sorry,” I kept mumbling between sobs. My nose was running. My mouth was running. My hair was even getting wet.

“He stole my car?” E repeated, a bit calmer now. “Your friend stole my car?”

“It was all my fault. I was, I was. . . .” E put his hand over my mouth.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. “Don’t tell me.”

“The car,” I said. “I, I don’t want you to call the police.”

E looked at me, so sad. His eyes filled with tears. I thought my heart would break. “I’m so sorry,” I begged.

“I knew you two had something going,” he said. “ I could tell.”

“Are you going to call the police?” I asked. But what I really wanted to say was, “Are you going to leave me? Are you ever going to forgive me?”

“If that’s all it takes to get rid of him is a Ford Fairlaine E said, “He can have it.”

And once again, I fell in love with my husband.

Chapter Six: The White Dress

“This is worse than the trailer in Shellbrooke,” E was shouting into the phone.

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll hate it.”

“I promise, I won’t”.

“Do what you want. I know you will anyway.”

“Do you want me, do you want me to come, “ I whispered. But he had already hung up.

Mom and Roy had been listening. Roy looked uncomfortable. I guess it was obvious to him that my husband had told me to stay home. But I had no home. The lease had run out. I had moved in with Mom and Roy. It was for sure the last thing I wanted to do. But it was winter, the project in Shellbrooke was over and E, basically unemployed, was attending Department of Highways School in Regina, Saskatchewan.

What could be worse than the trailer park and the cobra filled outhouse? I wanted to be with my husband. I belonged with my husband. Separation had not been good for us.

And so, I begged Roy to drive me to Regina on a cold Sunday morning, and he did.

The road was like glass. I’ll never forget it. The sky was clear and glaring with white light. The highway from Prince Albert to Regina was almost a straight flat line of prairie.

Roy was wearing sunglasses against the glare. He kept on testing the breaks to see how fast he could stop in an emergency.

He was driving about thirty miles an hour. I had never seen him drive that way. It was making me crazy. It would take us two days to get there. What if we had to spend the night? I was starting to panic.

“Slow and easy does it,” Roy insisted. “Can’t risk an accident.” He nodded towards Sarah. It was as if her presence made the thought of an accident even more horrific.

“I’d like to get there before he goes to bed.”

“Don’t worry about it.’ Roy just clenched his teeth and continued to drive slowly. Sarah woke up and began to fuss. She cried and I rocked her. It seemed silly, but the car itself didn’t seem to have the rhythm to put her to sleep. That’s how damn slow we were going.

As if the ice weren’t bad enough, it began to snow. We could see about two feet in front of us.

“I can’t see a fucking thing,” Roy said. He glanced at Sarah. “Sorry,” he added as if she would be offended by his swearing.

It was ten o’clock when he pulled into a motel.

“We can’t stare here,” I said it, my voice high with emotion.

“This place is good as any other. I’m tired.”

“We have to go on.”

“In the morning. He doesn’t know you’re coming.”

“No!” I was becoming frantic. I wouldn’t get out of the car.

“Get out, Marie.”

“I won’t go in there. I won’t go with you.”

Roy’s face got very red. He left me and headed for the office. He came out with two keys and threw one into the car. “Stupid girl,” he said. “What makes you think….” He didn’t finish the sentence.

I waited until he was inside his room before I carried Sarah into the room next to Roy’s. I felt like an idiot. Had he meant to get us two rooms all along? Why had I made such a fuss?

I lay on the bed, Sarah lying beside me and watched the TV until the test pattern came on. I watched it go off and the screen fill up with snow and the sound of ghostly electricity. I didn’t want to get up out of bed to turn it off. I preferred the sound of the TV to the silence that would have to fill the room. I opened my purse and ate a candy bar. It made me feel nauseous. I looked at the letter E had sent.

Hi Marie. It’s damn cold here. I wish I could send you some money. School is easy, but I don’t like it much. I’ll come to see you and Sarah as soon as I can. Hope you are ok. Luv, E.

I read the letter over and over convincing myself that the letter was a secret invitation to come and stay with him. He wanted to be with me. He didn’t have bus money. So I was coming to him. He’d be happy once I got there. He was telling me not to come because he didn’t think I would be comfortable staying in a motel. He was wrong. I had spent part of my childhood in a house shaped like an “L”. I wouldn’t mind at all. I would be near him. We would be a family. I fell asleep with the letter in my hand.

When I heard Roy start up the car, I jumped up. The TV was back on. It had come up at 6 am. Roy honked twice. That honk told me he was still mad at me. I rushed to get ready, not stopping to pee or comb my hair or anything. I wrapped Sarah in her bunny bag. I had made it out of an old fake fur coat. You could lay her in and zip her up and she was warm and roomy. I didn’t put in arms because I wanted to be able to get her ready without waking her up if she were sleeping. It worked like a charm.

I could have used a real fur coat. There are tons of them in Saskatchewan. But I hated fur coats. I hated the thought of an animal being trapped in iron jaws, bleeding, starving, afraid, in pain. I didn’t want to place my baby into the dead skins of animals who had suffered like that.

We didn’t speak all the way to Regina. It was about 10 am when we pulled into the city limits.

“Where do I drop you?” Roy asked. It was the first thing he had said since he’d called me stupid.

I searched around for the envelope I had in my purse. Oh no! I had left it in the hotel room. Along with E’s letter. When I had rushed out of the room. I stared at Roy. I started to cry.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Now what?”

“I left the address in the hotel room.”

Roy almost hit me. He roared the engine and headed for a pay phone. He wasn’t afraid of the ice any more. He just wanted to get rid of me. He phoned the hotel and stood in the phone booth waiting for the manager to go and look for the envelop with E’s address on it. I could tell he was cold. He was moving from one foot to another. It was easily 40 below. He started talking again. He didn’t look pleased. He put more money into the machine. He waited some more.

What was happening? Finally he took out a piece of paper and scribbled something on it. He walked out of the booth and glared at me as he headed toward the car. His head was white with snow.

“The maid had to look through the garbage for this. Thanks to you. It’s time you grew up, Marie. You’re a mother now.”

We drove to the address. A motel on the outskirts of town. It was painted white. There was a neon light with a horse riding, riding, riding, never really getting anywhere. The motel was called the Horseman. Seeing that horse made me so sad. I couldn’t tell you why.

Roy pulled up to Number 7, a room right in the middle of the unit. He didn’t turn off the car. “I have to get back,” he said. He meant for me to get out. I left Sarah in the front seat as I gathered up all our stuff from the back seat and the trunk of the car. I had brought her carriage and her clothes. I had a suitcase for myself and some books. Roy didn’t make a move to help me. It was a real struggle getting the carriage out. It doubled as a bed. The bed was in once piece, the wheels and gear collapsed. But it was still awkward and hard to maneuver.

I piled the stuff in the driveway. It was covered with fresh snow. I reached in and gathered Sarah into my arms. She was crying from the cold that had blown into the car while the door was open.

“Thanks,” I started to say.

“Right,” he said and left me standing there in the drive-way, my baby in my arms and all our stuff piled around me.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I went to number seven and knocked. There was no answer. I hadn’t expected there to be. I was pretty sure E would be at school. I went to the office and asked to be let into Mr. Torchinski’s room.

The manager told me he couldn’t do that.

“I’m his wife,” I explained. I was holding Sarah in her big bulky bunny bag. “We came to live with him.”

“Nobody told me that.”

“I’m going to surprise him.”

The manager only smirked. He nodded. He went to the back. I was sure he was getting me an extra key. He came back with a newspaper and sat on a stool behind the desk and began to read the cartoons. He laughed as he read them.

“I need to get in,” I said. I hadn’t peed since the night before. I had to pee really badly. Coming into the warm room wasn’t helping. Feeling so nervous wasn’t helping.

“He stays here doesn’t he?”

“Can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

He just stared at me then went back to reading the newspaper. He was following some rules. He was sticking to those rules.

My stuff was still piled out in front of room 7. “My stuff.” I pointed to the pile of stuff.

“Nobody’ll steal it,” he said. “No babies around here.” He went back to reading. He snorted when he laughed.

“Is there a bathroom in here?” I was feeling so desperate.

“Not for public consumption,” he glanced my way and laughed at his own joke. “But you can use it. In the back.” He handed me a key.

I ran to the washroom. I had to put Sarah down in her fake fur bunny to pee. I had to lay her right on the floor. It wasn’t very clean. But I had no choice. There was nowhere else to put her. I peed a little in my pants as I tried to pull them down real fast. It felt so good to pee.

I pulled up my pants. They felt yecky, wet with pee. I was afraid I’d smell, so I took off my jeans and panties and ran the panties under the hot water tap and tried to dry them on the paper towels. Then I put them back on and slipped back into my jeans. It felt even worse, but maybe at least I wouldn’t smell like pee. I took Sarah’s bottle out of my bag and gathered her up in my arms.

I fed her sitting on the toilet. I didn’t know what else to do. I had no place else to go. There was no rotunda in the motel. No place to sit and chat with your neighbor and have morning coffee the way folks do in a hotel lobby.

I looked around the bathroom. It was painted a mustard yellow. The floor was cement. The garbage pail, huge, industrial gray was actually overflowing with paper. I figured it hadn’t been emptied in months. Weren’t there some rules about that? Didn’t that manager have rules about emptying the garbage? He had rules about everything else. I wanted to go into the office and tell him about the garbage. But, of course, I’d never do that. I was a big talker, in my own head.

Sarah had just drifted off to sleep when I heard a knock on the door.

“You ok in there?” It was the manager.

“Fine.”

“Thought you must a died.” He waited for me to say something. “What you doin’?”

“Waiting,” I said. He found that funny. He laughed the way he had when he had been reading the cartoon, making snorting sounds with his nose.

“You can wait in the office,” he said.

When Sarah and I followed him to the office, he pulled out a chair from the back and offered it to us. I sat down, grateful for the warmth and comfort of the offer. I watched the clock. It was only noon. What time did E usually get home? Five? Six?

The Manager who told me his name was Ronald, turned on a black and white TV. It flickered and every few minutes he would bang it. It would startle Sarah, but thank God, she didn’t cry. It was a miracle, but she didn’t cry. I think the oddity of our situation had dawned on her. She looked more amazed than anything.

At one o’clock the manager opened up a bag and took out two egg sandwiches. The eggs weren’t hard boiled and chopped with onion and celery and made into a spread with mayonnaise. No, they had been fried over easy and slipped between two slices of brown bread.

He offered me one. I tried to tell him no, but he just pushed it my way as if he were offering the gift of the century. He was trying to be nice. But the truth was I hated eggs like that. I didn’t like the white unless it was all mixed up with the yolk. And I didn’t like the yolk unless I could dip hot buttered toast into it. Cold fried egg on a slice of rye bread made me almost gag.

But I took it and bit in. The cold runny yolk filled my mouth. I closed my eyes and swallowed. Somehow I managed to eat the whole thing without throwing up.

It was seven o’clock before E got home. I had been watching out the window and saw him get off a city bus and walk quickly towards the hotel. I loved to watch the way he moved. So graceful, so unaware of his body, yet so careful with it, too. So careful not to jar or make noise. He stepped like the animals he loved to shoot. He moved like an elk. He moved like a panther.

I rushed out of the motel office with Sarah and almost fell on my keister. Unlike E, I did not walk with the grace of a wild animal. I was clumsy and fell a lot. I bumped into things and made too much noise. I almost skidded into E’s arms. Luckily, he caught me.

You should have seen his face! I was right. He wanted me to come. He broke out into the most wonderful smile. He laughed and twirled us around in his big strong arms. He kissed my face, my lips and nose and chin and forehead, the top of my head. “You little monkey! You sweet silly little monkey.”

We gathered all my stuff and headed for the room. The manager apologized like crazy, but those were the rules.

“You made her wait in there all day?” I saw E’s face go red. The manager stepped back. “The rules,” he mumbled. “You let a kid and a baby sit in there all damn day?”

“You should have told me,” the manager countered. “What if she stole your stuff.”

“What stuff? Jesus.” And with that and a shake of his head, E ushered us into his room.

I changed Sarah, E fed her some squashed bananas, she fell asleep and we made love.

Afterwards, E got up and rolled himself a cigarette. I had never seen him do that. It gave me an uneasy feeling, but I wasn’t sure why.

“You hungry?” I wanted to know.

“God, you haven’t eaten.”

It was late but there was an all night diner not five blocks away. Five blocks may not seem like much. But when it is as cold and windy as it is in Regina, Saskatchewan in the middle of winter, five blocks feels like the other side of the world. By the time we got there I was shaking.

E ordered me a cheese burger and a coffee for himself. “I already ate,” he said. “At the school. Meals included.” Another uneasy feeling swept over me. How much were they paying him, I wondered.

I cut my hamburger in half and put it on a napkin. “Please.” He ate it in two bites.

“Where is Roy?” E wanted to know.

“Home. Well, on the way home. The way he drives. It might be tomorrow before he gets there.”

“He went all the way home?”

“Where, but, …..” I didn’t quite know what E was asking.

“How long are you staying?” he asked.

“Six weeks, I guess.” The question confused me.

E’s face went white.

I don’t think that sense of dread ever left him. The whole time, we struggled. Me, pretending that I just loved staying in a motel room in the most desolate part of a windy cold city, surrounded by trucks that came and went all times of the night; by the odd industrial building where something or other was manufactured.

I pretended I loved the part of his meal E brought home for us. I pretended cold pork chops and mashed potatoes and canned peas and carrots were just as good as a meal in a restaurant or, better yet, a home.

I could imagine E’s embarrassment as he saved part of his meal, wrapped it in a paper napkin, put it in his pocket for the wife he couldn’t afford to feed. When I’d come to stay with him, I hadn’t realized E was not being paid a salary, that while he was going to school, they fed him in the barracks where the classes were held; they housed him in the motel. No money for a wife; for a baby girl. For himself.

Any money we did have came from E’s bartending at the Friday night dances. That amazed me. Not that he bartended. But that the Department of Highways didn’t pay the men who went to school; but put on Friday night dances.

Many of the men attending the school lived in or around Regina. Most were single. But not E. E, proud, Russian, six foot four, handsome, with a body to die for was married with a baby and had to stuff bits of food in his pocket to feed his family.

I could understand his resentment. And I tried in every way to make up for it. I developed a nervous, fake laugh that kept escaping from my mouth. It was a startling sound, too loud, too unexpected. I made love to E when I didn’t feel like it. I faked my pleasure. I hid my loneliness. I talked all day with Sarah. I played all day with Sarah. But when E came home, I tried to ignore her. I tried to lavish my attention on him. It confused her. I grew frantic trying to move my attention between them.

I’d walk E out to the bus stop in the morning, trailing behind him through the crusty, dirty snow banks. The wind blew cold and relentless down the street. The bus stop had no form of shelter. There was a sign, indicating the times the bus came and went. Four times a day. One to take him to school; one to take him home. He had to leave a good hour early to catch that bus. I wondered if the school was open when he got there. I was afraid to ask.

“For God sake, Marie, stay in the room.”

“I like waiting with you, for the bus.”

“Don’t be nuts.”

The fierce sudden laugh burst from my lips. “I do.”

“Go back. I want you to go back.”

But I didn’t. I stayed. Just before he got on the bus, he bent and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. E was shy about affection. He wasn’t the type to kiss in public. I knew he did it for me. I watched him get on the bus. I waved good-bye. I stood until the bus was out of sight. And then I’d turn and go back to the room.

Fridays were the worst. I’d see him off and know he’d be home late, after the last bus. Sometimes he’d get a ride with one of the boys; sometimes he’d have to walk.

His having to walk in the cold was awful, I was sure. But that wasn’t what made it so bad for me. What made it so bad was that I was jealous. I didn’t want to be. But I was. The thought of E at the dances, with couples, with single women, women who would like his broad shoulders, his green eyes, his easy smile, made me crazy.

I imagined him serving drinks, laughing, being asked to dance. I imagined him holding a stranger close, pressing her into his strong firm body as they moved about the dance floor. I imagined a stranger resting her head on his shoulder. I imagined her laughing and looking up into his face. I wanted to die.

I was so lonely and so jealous and so confused. I couldn’t ask him to stop bartending; it was the only money we had. It was bus money. It was food for Sarah.

But more. It was the only fun he had. I knew it. I could tell from the way he prepared for school on Fridays. He’d shower and shave and put on Brut cologne on the soft blondish hairs of his arms and chest. When I watched him do that, I’d almost run up to him and slap and kiss him and beg him not to go. I felt so sad and angry and lonely all at the same time. He’d wear his good black slacks, a white shirt and a green knitted vest. The green made you think he’d been born in the waters of the deepest sea in a land where the sun shone all day and the moon all night. I imagined him a God of the Sea. I even thought of cutting that vest up. Snipping it with scissors so he could never wear it again, could never show off his sea green eyes.

But I didn’t. Instead, I washed it by hand in the small sink in the bathroom of the motel room. I hung it to dry in a small clothes line E had fashioned over the bath tub. I washed out all the stale cigarette smoke from the week before. Two weeks, two Friday nights. Four more to endure. I hated myself for thinking about it. But I just couldn’t stop. It just added to my desperate loneliness.

When Lindsay took lodging in the room next to us, I was so excited. I watched her and her husband move in with their young son. He was about nine months old. Fat and strong; not weak and pale and diminutive like Sarah. A healthy, robust baby. I was amazed at the carefree way she slung him on her hip, not worrying that his head was bare, that the wind was blowing bits of snow into his face. She held him on one hip and lugged a big suitcase with the other.

A cigarette hung out of the side of her mouth. Her lips were red with a bright lipstick; her hair, dyed blond, was pulled up into a fancy pony-tail held in place with a pearl comb. She looked tough, she looked sweet, she looked like someone I could really like. In a way, she reminded me of how I imagined my mom might have been as a young woman.

I waited for a chance to meet her. It came that same afternoon. She made her way to the coin laundry situated at the back of the motel. Women with babies always have washing to do. I threw on a sweater, wrapped Sarah in her fake fur bunny bag, grabbed some of Sarah’s diapers and nighties and rushed to the laundry. I slowed down just before I went in, trying to act casual, calm.

What if she didn’t want to talk to me? What if she didn’t want to make friends?

“Hey, I saw you watching me move in. You were so cute, hiding behind that plastic curtain. My name’s Lindsay.” Blushing at what she’d said, I stuck out my hand to shake hers. She just waved my way, and talked, the cigarette still hanging out of her mouth.

“Don’t worry, kid,” she said. “I’ve been in a few rough spots myself.”

I couldn’t believe it. It was as if she had known me all her life. We hit it off like gang busters. And we made a deal. She would go to the Friday night dance one week, and I’d baby-sit; I’d go the next week and she’d baby-sit.

Oh my god. I would be there. I would show everyone I was his. His wife. It would be me in his arms, it would be me resting my head on his massive chest, laughing up into his face.

I was dying to go first. I was dying to show everyone that he was married; that he was mine.

“I’ll go first. Get a lay of the land,” Lindsay said so casual that I just agreed. Sarah seemed to like having another baby in the room. They played and touched one another’s hands and gooed and fell asleep. Somehow, knowing that Lindsay and her husband would be at the dance made me feel a bit more at ease. Somehow, I told myself Lindsay would be a reminder to E that I was at home. Somehow, I believed it would stop E from dancing with a stranger, or worse, with the woman I had created in my mind who had danced with him each of the three nights he had been there.

The next week was mine. I prepared like a lunatic. Lindsay came over about four o’clock. She and her husband had had a big blow out. She couldn’t baby-sit. She had to go with him. “He’ll kill me if I don’t. He don’t like to go alone. He’s kinda’ shy. Next week, I’ll get him prepared. But he needs the money too, kid.”

What could I do? Lindsay had a way of saying things that made them sound so final. Made them sound as if you had already agreed.

Two weeks left. Just two.

E knew I was disappointed. He knew I wanted to go. “She’s no good, Marie. She’s using you.” I wouldn’t hear of it. All week, E tried to act more cheerful. We played solitaire and watched the flickering black and white TV and held hands. We made love and I didn’t have to pretend. I honestly felt like making love. Even Sarah seemed to settle down. She hadn’t had a cold in weeks.

We were all lying on the bed together, talking the way I imagined families do, when E announced that there was the big final dance in two weeks. “It’s a sort of graduation party”, he told me. Four of us are bartending. I’ll have lots of free time.”

A graduation. Oh my god! I hadn’t graduated from high school. I’d never been to a graduation. My first graduation. E smiled at my excitement. “You’re such a kid,” he said, but he said it in a nice way. A loving way.

Then my mind went to counting. Two weeks! If I went to the dance this Friday; it would be Lindsay’s turn next week. It would be Lindsay’s turn for the final dance, the graduation dance. My heart raced and I began to scheme. I practiced in my head what I might say to Lindsay.

But I didn’t have to say anything. She was putting streaks in my hair. She had taken a hairdressing course after high school. She was pulling strands of hair through a bathing cap that she had punctured with about thirty holes. She was using a crochet hook to pull the hair. It hurt like the dickens. My eyes were tearing up.

“Beauty must suffer.” She laughed and pulled another long stand through. “And you need to be extra beautiful for the graduation dance.”

I thought I’d made it up. I thought I must be imagining it. I gasped.

“Don’t’ have a bird,” Lindsay said. “You watch the kids this Friday and you can go to the graduation.”

“I love you,” I said and hugged Lindsay coming dangerously close to getting bleach on her black sweater.

“Love hurts,” she said and pushed me back down into the chair for more torture.

I had to have something to wear. Something nice. Something special. Lindsay rummaged around in what she called her tickle trunk and brought out scarves and a skirt with yards and yards of fabric and fringes. I felt like a kid dressed up like a gypsy. It wasn’t the feeling I wanted to create. I wanted elegance. I wanted to be sexy. I wanted to be a woman.

“I’ll make a dress. I’ll take apart the skirt and I’ll make a dress.”

“You got a machine?” Lindsay wasn’t sure.

“ I’ll sew it by hand. I’ll make tiny stitches. I’ll make it look like a million bucks. Oh, Lindsay, thank you.”

It was a sunny day. It felt warm. The snow was actually melting on the sidewalk. Sarah and I set out to walk to town. I was going to try on dresses in fancy shops on Hamilton Street.

I walked in trying to behave as though I could afford anything the store had to offer.

The lady behind the desk rushed over as I headed for the special evening gowns, the ones wrapped in bags to protect them from dust and dirty fingers.

“May I help you,” she asked, her voice alive with distain. She could smell poverty all over me.

“Perhaps,” I said. “If I can find what I want.”

I didn’t know I had it in me. I was acting like someone with more money than manners. I was trying to push her away. I was trying to buy time to study the dresses, to memorize the lines, to imagine myself making the dress out of Lindsay’s gypsy skirt.

I zipped open several of the protective bags making the clerk crazy. An elderly woman came into the store and took some of the attention away from me. I unzipped like crazy.

Sarah started to fuss and the woman came over to coo coo her. I didn’t want the attention. I wanted her to be over at the other end of the store, keeping the clerk away from me.

“Little baby,” she said in a loud voice. I noticed her hair was dyed a silver that looked more blue than silver or gray. She was a big woman, at least two hundred pounds. Her fingers were adorned with heavy rings. Her fingernails were curved and painted a hot pink. I almost choked on her perfume.

“I’ll try this one,” I said to the clerk. I pushed Sarah toward the change room.

“I’ll watch Baby while Mommy tries on the dress,” the blue haired woman said.

I wanted to protest, but I also wanted to try on the dress. I left the curtain a bit open so I could keep an eye on the woman. Something about her made me uneasy. I sensed her attraction to us. What was it? Did she want to steal Sarah?

The dress was stunning. White, with a tight inset midrift, a slight gathering in the front of the skirt and strapless. When I stepped out into the light of the tall mirror I couldn’t believe a dress could look that good.

The older woman whistled. My mom was a great whistler, so hearing a woman whistle shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. Then she laughed. “You know when you look like that in a dress you can’t afford it; and when you can, you look like me.”

I wanted to choke her. Of course she was right. The dress cost almost a hundred bucks. But I could make it. Not of chiffon. Not pure white. Not with imbedded rhinestones. But the style would be the same.

I went inside to change.

“I suppose you want me to wrap it up?” the clerk said to me.

“I, I don’t think it quite fits,” I said, not nearly as cocky and sure of myself as I had been when I’d come in the door. I wanted that dress so badly. I knew she knew. The wind was out of my sails, as my mom would have said. Flat out.

When I came out, back in my jacket and jeans, the blue haired lady was gone. The clerk was tying a string around a huge grey dress box. She looked up at me and said, not pleased, but not angry, either. More surprised. “For you,” she said and shoved the box my way.

The lady had bought the dress for me. She did not know my name, and she would never see me again. But she had bought me this beautiful dress. She was the most generous person in the world.

Lindsay couldn’t believe my luck. She acted kind of weird about it. Maybe she was mad that I wouldn’t need to use her skirt. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. “Admit it, kid,” she teased. “You stole the damn dress.”

“She gave it to me.” But when she accused me of stealing, I did blush. I had to admit I’d thought of stealing it. I think I would have if I could have thought of a way to get it out of the store without getting caught.

The day of the dance I set my hair in rollers as soon as E left for work. Lindsay promised to backcomb it into big curls. She was going to lend me her pearl combs. I bathed Sarah and I pained my nails. I hung my dress in the bathroom when E had his shower so that any wrinkles would fall out.

By noon, I was ready for the dance. Lindsay came over and wondered if I would babysit for a few hours. “Why not?”

I decided to read one of the library books E had brought home for me. They had a big library at the school. It was all about rocks. I wasn’t crazy about rocks, but I thought it was a good idea to know something about the work E did.

Sarah and Buddy were playing on the couch beside me. When I picked up the book, Buddy looked scared. He started to cry. I put the book down and rocked him. Then I reached over to read to him and Sarah. I often read out loud to her. I’d read poetry mostly, when I had poetry books. I thought it would make her love books.

But it sure didn’t make Buddy love books. When I picked up the book he began to cry again. So I just sat and rocked, waiting for Lindsay to come back.

Two o’clock. Three o’clock. Five o’clock. No sign of Lindsay. I was getting frantic. E came home to pick me up. He wanted to take me to the dance himself. A real date.

I was in my housecoat. My hair was still in rollers. I was really nervous. Lindsay was late. Buddy had been crying all afternoon and now Sarah was fussing. She sensed his upset. And god knows I was upset. Where was Lindsay? I could tell from the look on E’s face that he didn’t think Lindsay would come back in time. He didn’t trust her. He didn’t like her.

“She’s sure to show up,” he lied. “You sat for her every damn week since she got here.”

“Don’t go.” I begged. “Don’t go until she gets here.”

“I’m up first,” E said. “I took first turn, so’s we could have the rest of the night.”

“They’ll know. Someone else will take your place. Stay, please. Wait.”

What I meant was, “Don’t go if Lindsay doesn’t come. Stay here, with me. Don’t go.”

But he did go. He combed his hair and put on his Brut and his white shirt. And I walked him to the bus stop, my hair still in curlers, my white dress still hanging in the shower.

I made up my face. I combed my own hair. I put on my beautiful white dress, the dress that made me look like a million bucks.

It was seven o’clock by the time Lindsay got to the motel. I’d been crying. My make-up was a mess. Lindsay knocked at the door with her little rat a tat. She popped her head in, cigarette hanging as usual. “You did your hair!” she said.

No mention of being late. No mention of my worrying myself sick.

“I’ll take the kids,” she said. “You fix up a bit. Doug’ll drive you.

All fears vanished. I began to pack up Sarah. As I did, I told her about Buddy’s not feeling well. “I was going to read,” I told her, “but when I did, he started to cry. I didn’t mean to scare him.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You didn’t. He hates books. I always give him a wrap with a book when he’s bad. He just knows what’s coming.”

I stopped putting Sarah’s things into the bag. “You hit him with a book?” I asked, not believing.

“When he deserves it,” she said, getting her back up right away. “He isn’t the easiest kid.”

She had Buddy in one arm. “Here, I’ll take the bag. You bring Sarah when you’re ready.”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hand her the bag. She tried to take it. I just hung on. She gave the bag a yank. “Marie!”

“I, I don’t feel well,” I lied. “I don’t think I’ll go.”

Lindsay just glared at me. She knew what was going through my mind.

“Suit yourself,” she said and left without closing the door.

Sarah and I sat into the night, listening to the radio. I think Sarah knew I was sad. She held my finger and put it to her mouth. Did she have any idea how much I loved her? I thought of Buddy and Lindsay’s hitting him with a book. It made me want to cry. I held Sarah close and rocked her and I was filled with a feeling of wanting to protect her from the world.

I heard a knock at the door. Oh no. Lindsay had come back. What was I going to say?

But, it wasn’t Lindsay. It was E. His turn at bartending was over. When Doug arrived and told him I wasn’t coming, E had come home. He had come home to be with me.

The Platters were singing “Only You” on the radio. E turned off the lights. He took me in his strong arms. I rested against his chest. We danced and without warning the most horrible thought flashed into my brain.

I should have been the happiest girl in the world. E had come back. I was in my beautiful white dress and I was dancing to the Platters in a darkened room, bits of moonlight visible through the window and instead of feeling safe, I felt the worst pang of fear.

“Only you can make my dreams come true,” crooned on the radio and this thought ran through my stupid head: “Is there only one person in the world you can love? Is there one person in the world just right for you and for no one else? And what if, what if you marry the wrong one?”

‘Am I,” I whispered, looking up into E’s face. “Am I the only one?”

He held me close. “I love you, girl. Don’t you know, I love you.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard him say it. Actually say it out loud. I needed to hear it again.

“Do you, do you?” I pleaded.

Ssh,” E whispered into my hair and we danced even after the song had stopped playing.

             The End.