Twenty April 1998
TWENTY
As a way to process the unwanted visit from Kenneth, I concentrated on doing things around the house.
I practised making the recipes that Kiju had left me for teas and ointments.
Susan and Miriam became my first customers.
I gave Susan tea to help with her perimenopausal hot flashes that was made of red raspberry leaf and made an ointment for Miriam, who was experiencing the first pains of arthritis.
I tended to my pig and a few hens, a rooster and so many chickens.
I had built a coop in September after my chicken wire fence proved to be no deterrent for a clever fox.
As Kiju had so wisely advised me when I was a child, I refused to name them, since they would soon be my food.
I didn’t even get to name a stray dog I picked up from the SPCA soon after Kenneth had shown up at my door.
He turned out to be a terrible guard dog but that didn’t matter.
I wanted my child to be surrounded by love, and there is hardly a love stronger than that of a dog.
He was a small, shaggy thing of indeterminate breed.
His name was Bingo and I didn’t have the heart to change it. It was what he knew, who he was.
While I easily took to the care of the animals, the garden proved to be more of a challenge.
With each bend to release the first weeds of spring from the ground, I felt my age and my pregnancy, from a hand on my lower back encouraging my body to straighten, to a twinge in my arm when I pulled too hard.
I had a new respect for Kiju, who had never complained about the work; she was only thankful for the things the garden provided.
William called every third night at seven o’clock exactly to inquire about my health.
I found I enjoyed his calls and started looking forward to them.
I also think we got to know more about one another in those long-distance calls than we ever did in the short time we’d spent together. It was a comfortable friendship.
I tried to occupy every moment so I would have no time to think about what Kenneth had said, but still there were moments, like when I was drifting off to sleep, where I could hear his voice tell me a truth I wanted so badly to be a lie.
I needed to talk to Ben, but it was hard, knowing that this person I had trusted my whole life might have been keeping a secret from me about the one thing I wanted to know about the most. I feared, down to my very core, that if what Kenneth said was true, my love for Ben would be tainted, maybe even destroyed.
It was easier for me to be mad at Kiju since she wasn’t there, and every once in a while, on a clear evening, I would look up to the stars and curse her.
Then quickly apologize. But I knew I needed to talk to Ben before my own child was born.
I could not bring her into this world with these questions hanging over me.
With five weeks left in my pregnancy, my feet swollen and my sleep almost non-existent, I set out for Ben and Sally’s.
After a breakfast of toast and tea, I locked up the house, hollered for the dog and got into the jeep, ready for the drive that when I was young seemed to take forever and now, with the new highway that cut through farmlands, took less than two hours.
I arrived just before lunch and Bingo jumped out of the car and headed straight for the river.
Sally would be annoyed when he came back wet, but he just loved the water so much.
I would take the lecture from Sally later, when she would tell me how dogs are made for the outdoors and people for the indoors.
“I thought I heard someone drive in.”
Ben and Sally rarely left home anymore. Especially after Ben had his heart attack.
Sally was convinced he was going to give up the woods and the fishing, but he did neither.
They stuck close to home, where they had all their kids and a few grandkids now who required the doting of fiercely loving grandparents.
When they did come to visit me, maybe once a year, they spent the day with me; at night they stayed at the motel.
They liked the two double beds, one for each of them.
I hollered for Bingo and he came running.
“You better not think that dog is coming into my clean house and smelling it up.” Sally was holding the door open for me.
But Bingo ran past her and into the front room that once was a store but now had an old sofa, a few comfy chairs, a tall lamp, and shelves of books and board games.
Bingo jumped up on the sofa and curled up in a ball, closed his soft brown eyes and fell asleep.
Sally didn’t say anything and let him stay.
“Stand back now, let me look at you. That nice round belly looks good on you, Aliet.” She tried her best to put her arms around me in a warm hug. “So, how’s the house? How’s the roof holding up?”
“It’s good. Keeps the rain out.”
“Well, I guess that’s good,” she said with a laugh.
Sally turned around from the sink, where she was peeling apples, just as Big Ben walked in through the back door.
“Hey there, girl, it’s good to see you.” He gave me a hug and went to the fridge for a beer.
Ben popped open a can as I followed him into the front room. The sun was just creeping over the top of the house, making the daylight soft enough to enjoy. Big Ben sat on the couch beside the dog and scratched the top of his head. Bingo never moved.
“So, what brings you down this way?”
“I thought I’d go fishing with ya sometime. Grab some to take home and freeze ’em.”
“I don’t go out on the boat no more. Sally was getting at me, telling me I’m too old for that nonsense.
Can you believe it, me too old? And Kiju would come back and kill me herself if I let you and that baby on a boat just as you’re about to pop.
” His belly, bigger each time I saw him, jiggled with his laughter.
Sally brought me a glass of cold water and reproached Ben for not asking if I needed anything.
“We can go out to the wharf and fish off the end if you want. I still get good bites there, and I go out all the time. Faye comes sometimes. The boys are never really around. They’re always working and taking those four-wheeled things out into the woods to get muddy.
I don’t understand it, but it makes them happy, I guess.
” While Faye had been Sally’s prayer, a girl amongst all those boys, in the end she turned out to be a daddy’s girl.
Sally told us lunch was ready, and we both got up and headed out to the kitchen.
“We’ll go tomorrow morning first thing, before all the others get out there. They talk too much, scare the fish away.”
I slept like the dead that night, the window open and the fresh, cool nighttime air billowing in. It was the first time in ages that I woke feeling rested. Sally let me bring Bingo into the bedroom with me as long as I laid a towel down at the foot of the bed and made him stay there.
Ben woke me with a shake before the sun was up.
Bingo stretched, turned and lay back down as I got up and pulled on my clothes.
I met Ben downstairs and he had already packed a few muffins and apples and a thermos of coffee.
We drove through the small village, the headlights carving a path through the last hour of night as Ben led us to the new wharf.
There was something almost holy about being out in the world while everyone slept.
I closed the truck door quietly and neither of us spoke as we carried the fishing rods, food and two little stools out to the edge of the wharf.
Ben placed the thermos and a paper bag with the food beside the container of worms. We had both cast our lines before either of us spoke.
“Ben.” I stopped.
He turned his head, waiting for what was next.
“Can you tell me about my mother.”
He shook his head and smiled. “I always like talking about your mother. She was my best friend in the world. What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Your first memory of her, what her laugh sounded like, was she happy? What was her favourite colour? Who was her first love?”
Ben sat for a minute, playing with the line and thinking. I held my rod between my knees and took a sip of the hot coffee.
“Well, my first memory, I guess, is of her getting into trouble. I was at the fields with the other apple pickers and my mom and dad. Dad was out in the orchards and my mother was cooking up some supper. I remember there was a chill, a good fresh October chill. You know the ones.”
He stopped and I nodded.
“I was playing with something, I don’t remember what.
I was about six or seven. I heard your Kiju cry out from way across the road.
” He started to laugh at the memory. “My mom grabbed my hand and we took off toward your grandmother’s house, your house.
And there was your mother, her head down, getting a talking-to about not using the hatchet to cut the potatoes.
Apparently, she had almost cut her own fingers off, using a small hatchet instead of the knife to cut the potatoes for supper.
She thought it would be more efficient. She was a character, your mom. ”
We sat for a bit while Ben remembered. I could see Kiju, I could see Ben, and even Ben’s mother, who died when I was old enough to remember her. But up until recently I could never see my mother; all I could conjure was a slightly darker version of myself.
“Ben.” I stopped and took a big breath in. “Are you my father?” It was a strange thing for me to ask when I already knew the answer, but I hoped against irrational hope that it was anyone but Reg, and Ben was my best bet.
Ben didn’t look at me, he stared straight ahead as if fascinated by the tiny waves. I started to fear that I had said something I shouldn’t have, that I had ruined one of the only lasting relationships I’d ever had. And then he spoke.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask that for a very long time. Only Sally ever did. She thought I was for sure.”