Twenty-Six November 1, 2023
CRYSTAL’S DEAD husband left dirty fingerprints all over the workshop.
Before moving her stuff in, Elsie wiped them off the windows, the workbench that would be Elsie’s kitchen counter, the mini-fridge under it, the door handle to the small bathroom where John showered after a day of work to rinse away the wood dust that made Crystal wheeze.
His unfinished kayak hangs over her head.
Elsie is leaving it there as an art piece, mostly because she, like Crystal, has no idea how to get it down.
Elsie doesn’t have much furniture to fill the workshop space.
It only took minutes for Travis and the sisters to haul her bed, her dresser, her desk and her mother’s vanity inside the workshop, before Travis returned to Ladysmith, leaving Bailey there to unload Elsie’s things from her own tiny car.
Now Elsie’s few possessions surround her, reduced to a handful of boxes and a suitcase.
Like she’s hardly lived. When her mother died, Bailey and Elsie spent days sorting, boxing and hauling her stuff to the thrift store, to the dump, and to a storage unit where it stayed until Bailey rented her house and they moved the remainder of her mother’s things up to the attic to save a few bucks.
Elsie starts with her desk, positioning it to look out the window. She unloads the contents of the box into the drawer and places the atlas on the desktop so it doesn’t get lost in the mess or, worse, damaged in the chaos of moving in.
Bailey pushes through the door carrying a box. She’s dressed in her workout gear for the move, as Elsie is. “Where do you want this?” Bailey asks.
“Anywhere, on the floor.”
“I think that’s the last one.”
“Thanks so much for your help moving in,” Elsie says as she plugs in her monitor, bringing it to life.
Bailey wraps an arm around her sister, squeezing her shoulder. “You’ll always have a home with us if you need it, though, you know?”
“I know.” But Elsie has her own place now, her own life, or at least the start of one.
Bailey leans against the desk next to her sister. She picks up the atlas and opens it. “The Ninth House: Adventure,” she reads.
“The moon transited into this house this morning,” Elsie says, “so I can go to the location and open it any time.”
Bailey taps the central map. “Where is it?”
“The Victoria airport.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Bailey grunts out a laugh. “If any of this makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ninth house rules the big stuff, spiritual and mental growth. Higher learning, philosophy, religion, travel. Is the date on the chart for the future?”
“My birthday, 2053.”
“Your birthday! You’ll be, what, sixty then?”
“Fifty-eight.” Elsie takes the atlas from her. “Come with me? I mean, to the airport.” She can’t face another one of these trips alone. “We’re picking up Dad from the hospital tomorrow anyway. We can go early, stop at the airport first.”
“Sure. I’d like to see that disappearing act again.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Crystal steps in carrying a bottle of white wine and a loaf of bread. Her warm, doughy face. When she smiles, her eyes all but disappear. “Brought you a housewarming gift,” she says, holding both items out.
As she takes them, Elsie says, “Wow. I don’t know what to say.
” And she really doesn’t. The woman’s unexpected kindness makes her unaccountably weepy.
Why is she so emotional today? Maybe it’s just the excitement, the hope she finds here in moving into her new place.
After all she’s been through, it feels momentous, on par with her first driving lesson, her first car, her first day at university.
She puts the bread on the counter. It’s still warm, heavy, whole wheat, filled with seeds.
“Made it myself,” Crystal says.
Elsie thinks of those Sunday afternoons in the kitchen with her mother when they made oatmeal and peanut butter cookies, ginger snaps. She can almost smell them now, or perhaps it’s the bread. “You’ll have to show me how,” Elsie says. “I’ve always wanted to make bread.”
“I will! You can count on it!” Crystal appears so excited at the prospect that Elsie’s sure she will.
It occurs to her that, after her husband’s death, Crystal has likely been as lonely as she has.
How old is she? Elsie wonders. About the age her mother would be now, if she’d lived.
A tingling sensation of longing, of grief runs through her, and she wraps her arms around Crystal, her head on the woman’s shoulder.
“Oh, well,” Crystal says, surprised by the hug.
When she steps back, Crystal points at the wine. “Drink it now. It’ll make unpacking less painful. It’s what kept me going as I took out John’s stuff.” She surveys the room. “The workshop seems so much bigger now, without his tools and workbenches.”
Elsie stares up at the kayak hanging from the ceiling. “I think it’s actually bigger than the basement suite.”
“I love the floor,” Bailey says, tapping it with the toe of her shoe. Hardwood, stained with grime and oil, but washed now. Elsie gave it a once-over before hauling in her stuff.
She unwraps the newspaper from a couple of wineglasses and blows the dust from them. “Care for a drink?” she asks Crystal.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Elsie holds up a glass to her sister. “How about you, Bailey? Or are you leaving right away?”
“I’ll stick around for the evening, help you unpack.” She pinches her fingers together. “But just a little. I’ve got to drive home.”
Elsie searches the boxes for a corkscrew. She opens the bottle and pours Crystal and her sister each a glass, then recorks it.
“You’re not drinking?” Crystal asks her.
“No, I’m good,” she says.
“Pour a sip, at least,” Bailey says. “For a toast. We’re christening your new place, your first—” Her sister pauses. “Apartment.”
But Elsie holds up a hand, declining the empty glass Bailey offers her.
To be on the safe side, in case she is pregnant and decides she wants the baby.
(Elsie always thinks ahead. Maybe too far ahead.
In kindergarten, on a field trip to a police station, Elsie, then Ellie, refused to have her fingerprints taken in case she committed a crime in the future.)
“I don’t want a drink right now,” she says.
“What are you, pregnant?” Crystal asks, laughing.
“No!” Elsie says. “No.” She shakes her head. “No.”
Bailey squints at her sister, and Crystal’s eyes dart between them.
“On second thought, I think I should head out now,” Crystal says, leaving her glass of wine, undrunk, on the counter.
She points a thumb at the heap of her dead husband’s things on the lawn next to the workshop as she backs her way to the door.
“Got to cover up the yard sale before tonight’s rain.
But you two come over to the house when you’re done unpacking, and I’ll make you dinner.
” Crystal leaves the workshop without waiting for the sisters to accept or reject the offer.
Bailey puts her hands on her hips. “You saw yourself with a baby, didn’t you, in one of those time-travelling trips?”
“It’s just a possible future,” Elsie says. “I think.” One she’s already trashed.
“When?” Bailey asks. “When did you see yourself giving birth?”
Elsie hesitates. “In about nine months.” She looks around. “Here, in this workshop. It was a home birth.”
“Is that why you rented this workshop?” Bailey asks Elsie. “You want to have a baby?”
“I want a family someday,” Elsie says. “But I’m not sure I’m ready for that now.”
“Have you tested yourself?” Bailey asks.
“No.” Marcus used protection, and it was only a one-night stand. What are the odds she’s pregnant? (Close to zero, it turns out, if that condom was used properly and wasn’t out of date.)
“Period late?” her sister asks.
“No.” Elsie thinks about that a moment. “No.” But then, she really hasn’t been keeping track these last few years. There’s been no need.
Her sister puts her glass of wine down. “The father would be Marcus, though, right? Not Zander.”
“Zander and I haven’t slept together.”
“Well, shit.” Bailey gulps back her wine and grabs her purse from the kitchen counter. “I’ll be back.” She strides out of the workshop, letting the door bang shut behind her.
But Elsie opens it again. “Where’re you going?” she calls out. “You shouldn’t drive.”
Her sister responds as she breezes down the pathway. “I’m walking.”
Crystal, bent as she ties a tarp in place over her husband’s things, looks up at Elsie. “Everything alright there, Honey?”
Elsie, halfway to tears, throws up her hands. “I don’t know.”
Crystal stands straight. “Trouble with a boyfriend?” she asks.
“I guess you could say that.”
She steps over a shop vac. “Maybe I will finish that wine,” she says. She follows Elsie back inside and reclaims her glass. She watches Elsie slump down on her desk, rub her face. “Pregnancy scare?” she asks, swirling her wine.
Elsie looks up at her, between her fingers.
“I had my share of those,” Crystal says, “when I dated, before I met John.”
“What did you do?”
Crystal shrugs. “Most of the time they were just that, scares, and nothing came of it.”
“Most of the time?”
“I had a decision to make, once.” She sips her wine. “It was John’s baby. We decided to keep him. Our son, Oliver. He lives in Kelowna now. Works for a tech company there.”
“Is that why you got married? Your son?”
“That’s why we ended up living together, to create a family. The wedding came later. John and I had almost thirty years before he passed away.”
Thirty years. From Elsie’s perspective, a lifetime. “You were happy?” Elsie asks.
Crystal laughs. “Not at first. We were still fairly young when I got pregnant, and we had to learn how to take care of a baby, run a house. It took us ten years to figure out how to live together. We yowled and scrapped like cats. But we stuck it out and things smoothed over.” She lifts her glass.
“That’s the problem most couples have. They don’t stick it out long enough to get to the good stuff.
They think that after that first glow of falling in love wears off, that’s it.
But that’s not love. That’s just chemicals.
Love isn’t what you feel as much as what you do. ”
Unaccountably, Elsie begins to cry. Maybe she is about to have her period. That emotional storm she feels each month.
Crystal puts down her glass and offers Elsie another hug. She smells of rose water. “Whatever happens, it’ll all work out,” she says. “You’ll see.” Elsie hangs on and Crystal lets her. In that instant, it almost feels as if Elsie is hugging her mother.
Crystal pats Elsie’s back as she steps away. “Well, I better finish up out there. Those clouds look menacing.” She drinks the last of her wine and flutters her fingers at Elsie as she steps outside. “See you at dinnertime.”
As Elsie waits for her sister, she sweeps the dirt they tracked in, puts sheets and blankets on the bed.
Fluffs up the pillows. While she had the use of Travis’s truck, she bought a clothes rack on wheels to hang up the clothes she’s recently purchased: lemon-yellow wide-legged capri pants; a tie-dyed blouse; a pair of indigo blue balloon pants; a blue-green sequined tank top that scatters light, banishing John’s ghost. Elsie spins a circle in the glitter, taking in the workshop. Her workshop. Her home. Hers.
But then her stomach clenches as Bailey returns carrying the white reusable bag she keeps in her purse. She pushes through the door without knocking, shoves the bag into Elsie’s chest. “Here. Go pee on a stick.”
Elsie opens the bag. Inside, there are three packages, each containing two pregnancy tests. Bailey had made a run to the pharmacy for them. Always taking care of business, taking care of her.
“Go on. See how much trouble you’ve got yourself into.”
“Isn’t it too soon?” she asks. It’s been nine days since she slept with Marcus in that hotel room.
“They’re early detection tests,” Bailey says. “You can test six days after conception.”
“Isn’t one test enough?”
“Not with your future riding on it.”
Elsie takes the bag into the bathroom and opens one package, skimming the instructions, which say, pretty much, to pee on the stick.
She pees on the stick.
Then she washes her hands and hides the rest of the tests in the small plywood cupboard for a later crisis. She checks the time on her phone. Waits.
When the three minutes are up, she reads the test and drops it into the garbage, then puts down the toilet lid and sits with the knowledge for a while, weeping silently, thinking of that lovely little girl named Luna, the scent of the baby in her arms.
Bailey knocks on the door, making Elsie flinch. “Are you done yet?”
“Just a minute.” Elsie flushes the toilet, although she already flushed. Washes her hands, though she already washed. And pats cold water on her face.
When she opens the door, Bailey says, “Oh.” And Elsie thinks for a moment her sister is about to cry.
“It’s negative,” Elsie says.
Bailey spurts out a laugh, hugs Elsie. “Oh, thank god.”
“I guess.”
“You’re disappointed?”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling.” Relief. Grief. She sits on a box of extra bedding, but the box gives way, and she loses her balance, tips sideways to the floor. She doesn’t try to get back up. Instead, she pulls their mother’s quilt from the box and hugs it.