Real Life (21 page)

“Cut that out!” Bonny shouted, moving her head closer to
the radio. “Police say they are looking into the freezing deaths of two aboriginal men whose bodies were found on the outskirts of the city near the Queen Elizabeth power plant. Aboriginal leaders—”

She could see through the window above her sink that already the shadows were growing longer, turning the shining hills a mile away across the snow-covered stubble field a deep blue. Such a cold January, a record breaker. She remembered the sink, pulled the plug, and let the water drain. The radio was still playing, but she couldn’t make sense of what the announcer was saying, and after a pause, during which she held her hand an inch from the knob, listening and frowning, she snapped it off.

She dried her hands rapidly on the tea towel, went to the back door, and pulled on her boots and parka to run outside and start the truck so it would warm up before she drove them into town. Jason had his snowpants and boots on, and was searching for something in his hockey bag. Pammy was rubbing intently with a moistened finger at a spot on the boot of one skate. Too bad Ross would miss Jason’s game, but there was no help for it. Without his job they couldn’t pay their bills; without her part-time work at the nursing home, they couldn’t even buy groceries.

Her boots squeaked on the packed snow as she hurried across the yard to the shed that in winter housed the truck. She held one mittened hand over her mouth as she ran; the air was too cold to breathe it in directly. She couldn’t get the block-heater plug to separate from its connection, had to pull off a mitt for a better grip, and her fingers stung where they touched the freezing metal. There was no place at the rink in town to plug vehicles in and she worried that she’d have to let the truck run during Pam’s practice and Jason’s game. But with the price of gas—I’ll just have to go out and start it every half-hour or so, she decided.
What a nuisance—but it was the only way to keep the motor warm so the truck would start when it was time to go home. Now, even plugged in and in the shed, the motor turned over reluctantly and, huddled and shivering behind the wheel, she had to keep playing the gas pedal until it was running smoothly.

Thank God, Ross would be home in the morning. His being away all week was part of what made the winter so long; at least he didn’t leave me with animals to look after, and before she could squelch it, maybe next year we should all move to Swift Current for the winter; then, no, better to wish our bills were paid so none of us have to go to Swift Current. This reminded her of the mail waiting in the drawer for Ross to deal with. There was an envelope from the bank, probably another statement; she never opened the ones from the bank, and dreaded the moment when Ross did.

The older boys were just finishing cleaning the ice as the three of them made their way into the rink. Jason immediately dumped his hockey equipment on the bleachers and hurried back to the lobby with a few boys from his team to play a noisy game of tag until the girls’ practice was over and their game would start. As he ran away, Bonny called to him, “Stay out of trouble,” as much for the benefit of any adults around as because she thought Jason, who, thank heaven, wasn’t a problem kid, might get into something he wasn’t supposed to. She finished lacing Pam’s skates and went to join the other mothers where they sat snuggled together on the wooden benches. Pam skated out to join the other girls who crowded around their teacher and her assistant at centre ice. It was much colder than usual in the rink, and instead of their usual practice outfits of very short skirts and tights, most of the girls were wearing heavy sweatpants or ski-pants and light jackets.

“Ross back yet?” Colleen asked.

“Tomorrow morning. He’s working too late tonight to come back.” Rita and Irene arrived, every breath making small white clouds, and the line of seated women slid down to make room for them.

“Brrrr, it’s cold,” Irene said, taking off her glasses and using her thumbnail to scrape off the frost that had formed on them. The others mumbled agreement. On the ice the girls had divided into four groups, each group skating off to a corner. The club’s star, Tammy Jo, was practising spins at the blue line on the women’s left. Pam’s group had gone to Bonny’s right on the far side of the ice. There they had joined hands and were skating in a circle, halting, and skating back the other way, trying, but mostly failing, to keep synchronized. With the carnival only a couple of weeks away, they’d have to keep at it until they had it right. Pam’s group’s skating was still jerky, lacked the grace of the older girls, except for Pam who was a little sprite on skates and, as usual, led them as they snaked out of the circle, reversed in synch, and stopped in a wavy line that was supposed to be straight, the little one on the end stumbling and almost falling.

Bonny was about to ask Colleen about the home-and-school meeting when she noticed that Denise McKenzie, carrying her baby bundled in blankets and her toddler at her side, had entered the rink near where Pam and the other girls were practising, and stood watching them. Bonny said, nodding her head in Denise’s direction and laughing, “She’s getting that little one started early.”

Colleen said loudly, “It’s too cold for her to be out with that baby! She’s not a month old!” Irene, using the same disapproving tone, said, “I saw her at the bake sale on Tuesday and she put that baby on the bake sale table and changed her diaper! Can you imagine?”

“In the grocery store?” Bonny asked. “Where else would she put her? On the floor?”

“Such a bad mother,” Annette said sternly, puffs of white spurting with each word. Bonny had been about to point out how Denise took her children with her everywhere and the baby never fussed and the toddler didn’t run around like a little maniac as most of the other kids did. How Denise spoke quietly to them, her voice full of warmth, not screaming like the other mothers so often did. But now the rest of the women were joining in, and the conversation went on around her, all of it negative, while Denise stood on the other side of the rink watching the girls falling down and getting up again, oblivious to the fact that she was the object of such nastiness. Bonny gave up trying to defend her, or even listening, and transferred her attention to Pam.

It was after eight when she turned the key in the ignition and after a few seconds of growling the engine putted, then rumbled into life. She’d insisted that Ross take the newer truck to work, he’d offered to leave her the better one, but she knew men and their vehicles. They felt shamed if they had to drive an old clunker, it was worse if everybody knew you had money trouble, and she didn’t want Ross going through that. But nobody remarked on it if the women drove the clunkers—most of the staff at work did.

They rode in silence, the two children tired and beginning to drowse. The coach hadn’t played Jason much, but as long as Ross wasn’t there to see it, Jason didn’t care. Now, as if he knew she’d been thinking about him, he stirred, and asked in his high voice, “Mom, what happens when you freeze to death?” Startled, she turned to him. Had he heard that report on the radio? Had the kids been talking about it?

“Nothing happens, sweetie,” she said. “You just go to sleep. You don’t feel a thing.”

“Oh,” Jason said. After a moment, he said, “But, Mom, when
I stay out too long and my toes get cold, they
hurt
—they hurt a lot.” Bonny said, “But you couldn’t feel your nose that time when you froze the end, could you?”

The heater kept only the centre of the windshield ice-free, she had to lean forward to see out, and even in her heavy boots her toes were stinging with cold. The kids sat huddled against each other to keep warm, despite the blanket she’d insisted they keep over their legs. She thought, I shouldn’t have taken them out in this cold, but knew that if Jason had missed the game, Ross would have been angry. Ross thought that Jason was
NHL
material, that any day now his natural talent would surface. Ross’s attitude made Bonny despair since it seemed clear to everybody else that Jason had no talent, and besides, didn’t really like hockey, was far too dreamy a kid for such rough-and-tumble stuff, would rather be at home reading a book or watching television.

Pam was the one with the talent. But whenever she pointed out how quickly Pam learned the figures, how easy it all was for her, Ross would agree, then promptly forget or discount it. Figure-skating lessons weren’t cheap, although cheaper than hockey, another thing that she couldn’t get Ross to see, and she just prayed she could get enough shifts at the nursing home—the care centre, she was supposed to call it—to keep Pam enrolled, since if there wasn’t enough money, it would be Pam who would have to quit.

They were pulling into the yard when Pammy said, “Look! the lights are on—Daddy’s home!”

“Yay!” Jason shouted, wide awake now.

Ross was in the kitchen, heating a plate of leftovers in the microwave. He hugged the kids, asked Jason how his hockey game had gone.

“We lost,” Jason told him, studying the floor.

“What are you doing back so soon?” Bonny asked quickly,
kissing Ross’s lean, bristly cheek. He’d gotten thin over the winter and it worried her. He peered into the microwave.

“The truck I was supposed to work on didn’t come in. Too cold, I guess. So I came home.”

“I’ll make coffee,” she told him, reaching for the pot with fingers still stiff from the cold. The kids sat at the table, one on each side of Ross as he ate, and chattered away to him, and she leaned against the counter, listening, while she waited for the coffee to finish dripping through its filter.

“Your mother has invited us for supper tomorrow night,” she told him, keeping her voice neutral.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, then, glancing up at her, “We won’t stay late.”

Later, after the kids were asleep, and she and Ross had gone to bed, made love, and now were lying together talking softly, she said, “Honey, do you think that next year we should maybe all go to Swift Current for the winter? I mean, so we wouldn’t have to be apart?”

“No!” he said, too quickly. “We’ve been over this and over it. You know I can stay with Uncle George and Aunt Rose for nothing, but we can’t all do that. We can’t afford to rent a place, besides, it would look to everybody like we’d given up.”

“It’s just so lonesome without you,” she said. “And you’re missing jason’s games and the ice carnival is coming up—”

“If we get a crop this year,” he said, “next winter I can stay home.”

“We’ve got enough snow,” she said. “There should be lots of runoff—”

“It’s too early to tell—it could all go in one February chinook.” This was too pessimistic, but she said nothing, knowing he wasn’t really talking to her. “I figure by the end of March I should clear maybe twelve thousand—”

“Where will we put it?”

“Jeeze,” Ross said, taking his arm out from under her neck, and moving to a half-sitting position, “on the way home I was figuring and figuring. There’s last year’s taxes, there’s the tractor payment, there’s the fuel bill and the chemical bill—Steve won’t wait for his chemical payment—”

Bonny said, “Let’s not talk about it. It doesn’t do any good and we should get some sleep.”

“Taxes first. We’ve got to hang onto the land—what’s left of it.” Last fall the bank had seized a quarter section. In the darkness she fumbled for his hand and grasped it in both her own.

“If they take the tractor, we’re sunk too,” she said. His hand lay limp in hers, as if he hadn’t noticed she’d touched him.

“Chickpeas,” he was saying. “It’s the only crop that’s paying right now—”

“But the seed, I hear it’s really expensive—” She’d let go of his hand and pushed her pillow up so that she was half sitting up as well.

“I’d only seed maybe eighty acres. Or only fifty. You got to treat the land first, fifteen bucks an acre for chemical, and Steve won’t give me any more credit—”

“Maybe try the Pool?”

“I’ll ask Uncle George for a loan. I know he’d give it to me. Give him a share of the crop.”

“If we get a crop.”

“Crop insurance covers good on chickpeas.”

“Really?” She felt a little stir of hope. “Sounds like the way to go then,” and slid over against his warm body. Then she remembered the envelope in the drawer in the kitchen, and her little kernel of hope quivered and vanished.

When they drove into Ross’s mother’s yard they saw that Audrey, Ross’s sister, and her husband Dwayne and their kids
had already arrived. As they made their way into the house Bonny steeled herself.

“Ross!” his mother said, as eagerly, Bonny thought, as if he’d been away with the French Foreign Legion. She hugged her son, then her grandchildren, and finally, her tone changing, greeted Bonny.

“Hi, Ruth,” Bonny answered. “I brought a jar of my strawberries.” She knew better than to try to hand them directly to Ruth, who would turn away from Bonny’s outstretched hand as if she hadn’t noticed, leaving her standing there with the jar thrust into empty space.

“I always freeze any extras,” her mother-in-law told her. “They taste better than the canned ones.” Bonny repressed a sigh. And yet, if she showed up with nothing, Ross would hear how bad-mannered she was.

The kids had gone to the basement rec room to play with their older cousins. She could hear Max, her father-in-law, booming about the coldness of the winter to Ross in the living room, and she hoped he’d stay off the topic of their money situation. Ross’s dad mustn’t know Ross was going to borrow money from Max’s older brother. He had none left to give them himself, and Max would be furious if he thought his brother knew this. She pitied Ross: Max made it a regular practice to remind him what an incompetent he was for being in financial trouble. Never mind that it didn’t have anything to do with Ross’s skill as a farmer, or with bad decisions, or that they spent money like drunken sailors as he sometimes accused them. Max knew perfectly well everybody was in trouble.

She followed Ruth and Audrey into the kitchen. In the first year of her marriage, whenever she’d gone into the kitchen and said politely, “Can I help?” meaning, to get the meal on the table or to clean up and wash the dishes, her sister-in-law and
mother-in-law would say, “Oh, we’re okay,” not meeting her eyes, deliberately leaving her to stand there doing nothing while they worked and chatted to each other. It was unheard of to go sit in the living room with the men. Finally, she’d stopped offering, had begun joining them in the work without asking. At first they’d tried to ignore her, but eventually even that dropped away. Bonny saw this, glumly, as her only victory.