Part 2 (1/2)
”Adults do learn to drive, Kyra. Of course, some effort's required.”
”It's her birthday! Can't you think about anyone but yourself?”
Turning away, she switched to the handhold across the aisle.
Maeve relaxed and happily crawled further into dream. She drew on a year of life to create peac.o.c.k-blue fantasies that swirled, clouded, then broke into the gold stars her dad had shown her through the apartment window.
Norman travelled too, riding the Number Five up up and away into the brightness over English Bay, past the Planetarium and south to Pacific Spirit Park. Here the bus landed by a trailhead. Easily, he stepped off to walk into the forest smelling of warm resin, bark, earth, leaves and needles, animal scat. Nearby sounded dropping water. In all the green, the only noise. No birds. What made birds fall silent? He knew he knew, but couldn't say till he saw the little merlin on a swaying cedar branch. Her beak, such a curve! Sharp, to rip. All the other feathers in the wood folded down still, still, while she stared. At him? No, at a world hard to live in.
At the beach, Norman insisted they have their picnic by a bench.
”Why not sit on the sand, like everyone else?”
”If I go down that far I'll never get up. Is that what you want?”
”Can you at least get our lunch out? Find the bottle-opener?”
”I don't see any pickles.”
”They're in the fridge. You know, in the kitchen?”
”It hurts me to walk, remember?” Norman waved his crutch.
”So. I'm to spend all afternoon trudging about with her.”
They ate.
Then Maeve smiled at the slos.h.i.+ng noisy blue as her mother applied sunscreen to the exquisite skin. Eased the child into her yellow bathing suit. Set on a floppy hat. Kissed her.
”The water looks great. Wish I could wade!”
”Whose fault is that?”
When Kyra shed her dress, her bikini (black and white stripes, unfamiliar) enabled the sight of many k.n.o.bs. Her spine, a bony snake. Did humans have three hundred bones? Two? In wrists and knees alone, dozens. Norman had broken his tibia and fibula, fibia tibula, whatever. How had he ever desired her? If he tried to remember the afternoon when they'd made Maeve (enchanting sweetness), his p.e.n.i.s shrank.
Her cheeks shone. ”I try to look nice.”
With the baby in her arms, his wife walked into the ocean. A Teacup Yorkie barked angrily at the waves, and Maeve laughed.
Unable to sketch a scenario in which his wife would drown but his daughter survive, Norman turned to memories of his skiing accident. This video now slid by as if professionally directed. On the mountain. A last run, maybe the last of the season. Late afternoon, still bright, no, not too late, and just ahead something broke the smooth dim white, what, how? Lurch, tumble. Bone-crack, snowy echo.
An abandoned ski pole.
”It shouldn't have been there.”
”You shouldn't have been there.”
Kyra repelled all attempts to edit that dialogue.
Norman gritted his teeth. Tomorrow he'd be back on campus. Hours of solitude. New hearers for his tale.
Smiling, he saw on the ocean Maeve's yellow b.u.m. Alongside floated the hat. Where was Kyra?
How did Norman stumble across the collapsing sand and wade through loud water, cursing brandis.h.i.+ng his crutch shouting their names?
His wife stood up. G.o.d but she looked tired. Mother and baby kissed, giggled. He fell on them, full of tears. Through the wet bikini Kyra's b.r.e.a.s.t.s were warm. Other bathers helped them to sh.o.r.e, brought their gear to the curb, phoned for a taxi. The pain was huge. Maeve stopped howling.
His wife sniffled, wringing out the hat. ”I will learn to drive.”
”My leg, my fault.” He patted a red frill. ”It's been hard for you.”
Thus they spoke, helplessly wound in and wounded by these early attempts to manage, make a meal of it, articulate the bones, marry.
Blue Clouds OFTEN NO ONE NOTICES THE PROBLEM, the pattern till a man's in his thirties or even forties. By then he's had several-serious relations.h.i.+ps, the comrades say. Serial monogamy, the coms say that too. If his teens were examined there'd be no surprise finding he'd favoured girlfriends with dear little sisters, but here at the hall people mostly arrive in their twenties. Their time before the movement is hidden, except what they pick to tell, and telling is cleaning.
Back up.
Such a man, when he falls for a woman she has a daughter. Maybe two. Could be sons also, but he's not aiming for importance in the life of a small man. It's the small woman he wants. Oh, not to rape, though maybe a hug she'll remember on a birthday, or when she's back from summer camp. No, he wants to implant his image, so if she thinks Man it's him. He puts his arm round her mother, tongue-kisses, turns to smile. This is how it's done. Your mum likes this.
An offer to babysit-heard it, seen it. Smiling, the young mum goes off to her CR group. This guy really wants her to be liberated! He plays with the little girl, helps with homework, is fun with her friends, and if she's in her teens lets her know sideways that boys haven't much to offer. He and she chat about how immature they are, she deserves better.
Then, always, he's suddenly charmed by a fresh girl/woman combo.
Break-up, stale mother alone again, seen that too. A child who misses him can be comforted, but a teen turns sour, specially to revolutionary mum.
Exceptions, yes. Roy's a carpenter, in his late forties. On him, those years look good. He and Marion and her daughter came to Vancouver from the Calgary branch ten years ago. At the Friday suppers R and M are side by side at the big table. They dance, they picket and poster and go to conventions. Marion's a lifer at the post office, friendly, considerate. Not much for theory. Jennifer just finished high school. Hasn't joined the Youth. Comes to the Oct Rev and May Day banquets, that's all. Sullen.
I asked the old one, ”Who's her dad?”
”None of your beeswax,” she told me.
The true sign of no nastiness with Roy? He and Marion and Jennifer don't live together. To be under the same roof, that's what the girl-hunters plot, but this mum and her daughter keep their own place.
Enough chit-chat.
The bathrooms at the movement hall are Monday. The Youth can't manage booze, not only them either, so after every weekend there's vomit. The divided bucket has cleaning solution one side, water the other, so hot it hurts. Dip mop, use the side-press wringer, repeat. Repeat. Disinfect the wheezing toilets. Rub abrasive cream on porcelain. Shake deodorizing powder on the floor, sweep.
Done, the bathrooms don't look like ads, but they're better than the Cavalier's. Monday's next job that is, down the street. Pub washrooms take twice as long to clean. Shovel, more like. Stinking loops of paper that never reached the bowl, condoms, underpants, b.u.t.ts, c.o.ke, b.l.o.o.d.y pads draped over the pedal-cans, smashed gla.s.s, the red crushed wax of lipstick.
N.
THE PROBLEM OF THE STRONG WOMEN IS DIFFERENT.
The old one's in her sixties. Pushy as h.e.l.l to survive and support her girl (near forty now) and do the political. Husband? AWOL decades back, couldn't manage her. Such a life, rebelling through Depression, War, Cold War, struggling for abortion and birth control. Still at it. Startled and happy to meet today's young libbers. Hardworking beyond hardworking. Known to every lefty in the city, admired.
”No point any man sniffing around thank you very much. I like my independence.”
Used to be, her typewriter rattled on for hours. Arthritis now. Hates help.
Her daughter's the opposite. When she comes round, not often, always for money, the old one's sad after. Stays a long time in a bathroom to re-braid her hair, the tiara brown still with grey woven in. Out again. Slam. ”Jake, you call this sink clean?”