The Sudden Weight of Snow (18 page)

Five elementary schools are funnelled into the junior high,
including the one you left in the sixth grade. All the kids from one grade go to sex ed. together in the auditorium. Most of the sexual educating is done by pointing projectors at a screen. Two gym teachers, a man and a woman, stop the films every once in a while to see if students have questions. They also read the anonymous comments from slips of paper, questions that everyone laughs at, like “Do Smurfs have sex and, if so, isn’t Lady Smurf sore?” and “How do you dislodge an Oscar Meyer from an orifice?”

This is a big mistake, you know this is a mistake. You enter the auditorium shortly before the lights are dimmed but with enough time for kids to see you, for you to see other kids. You see kids lean into each other and whisper. You recognize quite a few of them from your old elementary school and you think they must recognize you too – it’s only been two years and it’s not like you left the country – but no one greets you like they did back then. No one calls “Hey, Mouse-Man!” or giggles “Hi-i, Mou-ouse.” As you walk by, peering into the crowd for a lone seat, a couple of the girls smile at you. They do so with slightly pleading, apologetic smiles. You understand. You have become worse than the Marty Cruickshanks and the Brabra Sanduccis. At least they served some role within the group. You have become something else, someone on the outside. The screen fills with the image of a baby being pushed out of a woman, bloody and covered in pus. The woman on the screen roars with pain and then laughs hysterically. You don’t think you will ever be let back in.

T
he last day of the year seemed like a time to look for signs – where we had come from, where we were going – or, at least, that was the popular rhetoric. I, for one, was too exhausted from steeling myself against the Week of the Word to think of much more than setting myself free and celebrating. The sky was murky that morning, clouds lying low on the fields. When I woke, I fought through the last remnants of sleep, then went downstairs to where Vera was leaning over a crossword puzzle, a coffee beside her. I asked if I could go to Krista’s for the day, then to a party that night.

“Whose party?” Vera didn’t look up as she asked, tracing the crossword clue with her pencil.

“You remember Gabe? Well, kind of like his family’s, the people he lives with, party.”

She pencilled letters into squares before she looked up at me, then took a drink of her coffee. Finally, she said, “I presume you mean the Pilgrims Art Farm?” Before I could answer she
continued, “Well, I guess if it’s not that party, it’ll be another one. I suppose you can go. Just be careful.”

When I got to Krista’s, she warned me that we had to walk lightly, her father was asleep in the basement.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me. Mom’s going by ‘Therese’ now and Dad’s basically been hanging out in the basement since Boxing Day.”

We were in the kitchen for a couple of minutes before Krista’s mother came in wearing a hot pink night shirt that said Wash Me Please, I’m Dirty and what appeared to be plush bunnies on her feet. She already smelled of perfume but she wore no makeup and her permed hair was matted to her head. The baseboard heaters were pumping out air in waves, the house so hot it was nauseating. “You two want me to mix you up a glass of Slim-Fast?” she asked, smiling.

“Yeah, Mom, like we want a glass of Slim-Fast. Thanks, anyway.”

“Don’t knock it,” Therese said, mixing powder into a pintsized glass until it frothed pale pink. “These things are shock-full of nutrients.”

“That’s chock-full.”

“Yes, exactly. Your loss. Or not – you two aren’t going to lose any weight eating the crap you do.”

“Did it ever occur to you that we don’t want to lose weight, Mom?”

“That’s
Therese
, honey – did she tell you, Harper? I am no longer answering to ‘Mom’ like some kind of robotic maid. I am now Therese – and a woman can always stand to lose a few.
You don’t see those pounds now, girls, but I’m telling you, they’re there, laying in wait. When you’re twenty-one, twenty-two, those pounds are going to come creeping out and you’ll have no idea where from. ‘I used to be so blippin’ skinny,’ you’ll say. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With this, Therese took a long drink from the foamy cocktail and smiled at us, teeth gleaming from beneath a pink moustache. She then glanced around the kitchen as though she had just noticed where she was. “Harley’s been up here. He’s such a goddamn slob,” she said and slammed back the rest of the Slim-Fast, turning to place her glass, unwashed, in the sink.

“Can’t you at least call him Dad?” Krista asked.

“You call him Dad, for all I care. He’s not my father. Try to clean up a bit in here, okay? You too, Harper.” With that, Therese winked at us both and left the room.

We spent the afternoon in sweats watching videos and eating popcorn sprinkled with ranch dressing powder. Upstairs, we could hear Therese rotating Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Loverboy albums as she conducted her own spa treatment. Every once in a while, she would descend, toes splayed with cotton balls, polish hardening, or hair smeared in an odd-coloured treatment and covered with a plastic bag. She would perch on a chair to watch the TV, look at us with disdain and then return upstairs.

Following a series of yelps, Therese came downstairs in a T-shirt and panties. Her legs were red and raw-looking from ankle to knee where she had just waxed. From knee to crotch she was pasted in cream bleach, rank with the smell of chlorine
and ammonia. She couldn’t sit down like that so she stood and stared at Krista and me while we attempted to ignore her. We had moved on to eating marshmallows, expanded and browned in the microwave.

“You girls really are disgusting. Not only is that fattening, it’s zit-producing. And sweatpants? No woman should ever wear sweatpants. Even at the gym, there are far more flattering things to wear.”

“Yeah, like spandex, eh, Mom?” Krista took a marshmallow, placed the whole thing in her mouth, then displayed it for her mother. Therese looked genuinely saddened and left the room, stiff-legged.

“Where are your parents going tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think Harley’s going anywhere. Who knows where she’s going. It’s so embarrassing. Just be thankful your mother isn’t so embarrassing.”

As far as we knew, Mr. Delaney hadn’t come up from the basement the entire afternoon. We could hear the TV down there emitting cheers – there were only two channels in the basement, but each of them had been broadcasting playoffs of some sort all day.

Therese finally emerged, free of treatments and bleaches, reeking of imitation designer perfume. Her hair was sprayed into a wall that rose from her forehead and her eyes were lined cobalt blue to match the metallic blouse that hung low and clung to her propped-up, unnaturally tanned breasts. She wore a tight black skirt and high heels. She paused at the top of the stairs to the TV room and frowned toward the kitchen. “Eating
again?” she asked. “You two had better clean that up before you go out.” She then swept down the three steps into the TV room and leaned over gingerly to place her cheek first on Krista’s, then on mine, kissing the air around us like she was suddenly European. Straightening up, she adjusted her breasts, then smiled at us with her head cocked, as though we had endeared ourselves to her over the course of our afternoon on the couch.

Krista had told me some of the things that she knew about her mother’s past. Tammy, as she was once known, had grown up in the Fraser Valley on a dairy farm where Krista’s grandparents still lived. She had left the valley with a leather jacket and a duffle bag full of hip-huggers and halter-tops, and she had straddled the backs of motorcycles that took her south, then east, as far away from B.C. as she could get – we had imagined her chasing heady, drug-charmed nights, desert stars on acid. We couldn’t figure out what had made her return. But she did, and shortly thereafter married Krista’s dad, Harley Delaney, who we knew from the photographs of him, with side-burns and tight faded jeans, must have been a catch then, though this thought repulsed us.

The newly married Delaneys moved to Sawmill Creek for the reason most people had at one point or another – Harley had gotten work at the mill. They lived at first in the trailer park that is still across the highway from the plant. Harley likes to remind Krista and her mom how much money he once made – how much everyone in forestry was making – in their first few years here. Mrs. Delaney told us about her days before Krista was born, when Harley assured her that she didn’t have to work, the long summer evenings spent on makeshift patios
with the girls, passing around magazines, cigarettes, and beer. We knew from the old photo albums that in the summer they hitched a small motorboat to the back of the truck and went fishing. In the winter, they snowmobiled up into the mountains, across frozen lakes to cabins. We imagined that they both loved to be outside, going fast. That they enjoyed beer around a campfire or Scotch by a wood stove. This, Mrs. Delaney had made clear, is where Krista slipped in, somewhere between a forgotten birth control pill and a couple of drinks.

The forestry market never did quite pick up, and the day she dropped Krista off at kindergarten, Mrs. Delaney enrolled in a small business program at the community college satellite campus. By the time Krista was in grade two, she was spending her afternoons in the back of Rim Rock Records, colouring books and crayons fanned around her. This is a point of pride for Mrs. Delaney and I have heard her remind Krista on several occasions that it’s because she had the balls to start her own business that they live in this house and that Krista and I are allowed the luxury of watching TV all day, brushing food off our laps and onto the carpet in their rec room.

Later that evening, while Therese was getting ready, we suspected Harley was drunk in front of the TV in the basement. We imagined that the sound of her clicking heels coming though the ceiling above him would let him know when Therese was about to leave. When she was finally ready, she yelled, loud enough for him to hear, we thought, “Bye-bye, girls. Have a great night. Don’t do anything I would do!”

We called out our goodbyes to her, then Krista and I tried to figure out how we’d get to the farm.

“Didn’t you make arrangements with Gabe?” Krista asked.

“Um, no, not really. I just said we’d come. Can’t we take the truck?”

“I don’t want to take the truck. I can’t drive the truck and drink – it’s New Year’s for crying out loud, there’ll be roadblocks. Call him.”

I had to call back a few times to get someone coherent on the phone. The first person who answered yelled, “Whah?” repeatedly, even when I was not saying anything, then hung up. The second prattled an incoherent joke, half in and half out of the receiver. I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or at someone on the other end of the line. Finally, the third person was able to understand me. “Just a minute, I’ll find him,” she said in a way that restored my faith in the ability of human beings to communicate over small distances.

“Yeah?” Gabe answered and I got caught on my own words, then was able to ask if he could come pick us up. “Um,” he hesitated, “Sure, yeah, of course. I’ll be there in a bit.”

Pilgrims Art Farm on New Year’s Eve was everything the Free Church hadn’t been all week – hot, loud, crowded. The crush of bodies when we entered the cookshack made me feel strangely secure. I was anonymous there as I couldn’t be anywhere in Sawmill Creek. We pushed ourselves through banks of revellers. The smell was unfamiliar. Smoke, definitely, but other smells – something spicy, something that smelled like the
dark, moist dirt washed off potatoes, something that might have been sweat but was sweeter.

“Come with me.” Gabe leaned into my neck, his breath hot on my ear. I turned and raised an eyebrow at Krista, a motion to follow. He led us through the crowd and pulled back a curtain to a side room that appeared to be a pantry. “You can leave your coats here.” He motioned to the deep freeze. Krista and I took ours off, spread them over the bluff of coats already there. When I turned, Gabe caught me between his body and the freezer, pressed the fabric on my shirt to my arms as his hands travelled from my shoulders to my hands. When he met my palms, he joined his thumb and forefinger around my wrists.

Krista laughed, said, “Okay, then,” and turned to leave the pantry. When she did, Gabe took my hand, and we followed her out.

“I want you to meet my mother,” he said.

“Sure,” I said, feeling my hand in his. His skin. Near the wood stove people played fiddle, banjo, and guitar while others clapped and spun around. Children wove in and out of legs, stopped to regain their balance or to hiccup. I lost sight of Krista, then recognized the other man I had met the first night, Thomas, sitting across the room on a bench, a woman perched on his knee.

Gabe and I walked toward them. “Susan, this is Harper,” he said to the woman when we were in front of them. His hand loosened and I let mine drop from his hold.

“Oh, hello – she’s beautiful, isn’t she, in a slightly unusual way.” Gabe’s mother said, speaking in third person but directing
the words straight at me. Then, “Hi, Harper, welcome to the farm.” She didn’t smile, didn’t lift her hand to shake mine, just stared. Susan was very thin, her cheek bones cutting sharp angles into her face, giving it the appearance of an inverted triangle. Her eyes were large, like Gabe’s, and webbed with fine lines.