Waiting for Joe (26 page)

“I think it’s obvious Joe would rather I don’t come,” she says and holds her breath while she waits for his reply.

If you ever think about leaving Joe, I want to be the first to know
, Steve once said. In the bar at the Ramada Inn where they met whenever he was in town. Where they’d spent long afternoons eating one another up, the sex hot and hard, and sometimes she was left with bruises on her breasts, and a soreness down there. She wonders now if too many years have passed. If Steve even remembers having squeezed her hands, not letting go of them until she had promised.

After a moment, Steve says, “Look, you get here, and then you and Joe can figure things out. I don’t like to see you stuck like this, Laurie. But I’m staying clear of whatever’s going on between you and Joe. Dakota and me, we’ve got something going for us and we have a deal that we both keep away from trouble.”

“I understand,” she says.

She’s a source of trouble he wants to avoid.

At Smitty’s she sips at coffee, the remains of breakfast set aside, surrounded by the din of happy people; the waitresses scurrying by, some of them stopping to chat with customers. Beyond the window, an elderly couple make their way across the parking lot, the woman holding back for the sake of the man using a walker. Alfred was right, she thinks. There’s just no way a person can use one of those and look dignified. But he’d taken to the Yak-Traks quickly enough, they were the cat’s meow he’d said, and had lifted his feet at the door for her to stretch them onto his boots. And he liked the ski pole she’d given him to poke his way along the icy walk, while linking his other arm through hers. She smiles at the thought of his strategic stops along the way to point something out, giving himself a moment to rest, to swipe at the briny icicle drip at the end of his nose.
How’re you doing, Dad? Had enough, Dad? Should we turn around now, Dad?
Sometimes she suspected she had married Joe so she could claim Alfred as her dad too.

She feels winded suddenly, remembering how Alfred had struggled to be free of her and Joe as they’d dragged him across the yard. Pleaded with her not to let Joe do this, while Joe fought to pry his hands from the door frame of the Explorer and wrestle him inside. Joe, shouting for her
to get behind the wheel when Alfred made a lunge for the other door in an attempt to escape.

She snatches up the receipt the waitress left on the table and her tote from the seat. As she slides out and up from the booth the bag hits a glass of water and sends it flying. She’s aware of people staring, the water streaming over the edge of the table, a young waitress rushing toward her with a cloth. To hell with Joe, to hell with Steve.

The Meridian starts immediately and she adjusts the seat, the steering wheel, still feeling the heat of anger as she eases out into the traffic lane and drives toward the lights at Gibson Road. Beside her is the silver fox jacket and parka crammed into the oversize bag from Clara’s Boutique. Although she knows the right-of-way lane is wide enough for the Meridian, her palms begin to sweat as she inches into it, then waits to check for oncoming traffic, her view obscured by a tour bus making a wide turn at the intersection from Gibson Road.

She’s vaguely aware of people at the bus windows, seniors from an assisted living complex, she guesses, being taken out for a morning of shopping. There’s not as many fender-benders when some of them come on the bus, the woman at the information desk said. You would not believe the parking lot on seniors’ day, you’re taking your life in your hands. Only last year someone got run over, was dragged under the car up and over the median before the yelling of bystanders registered in the old man’s brain. By the time he stopped, the woman was dead. The woman being his own wife. Apparently his bowels were loose, he was anxious to get home and took off before she was fully inside the car. She hung onto the door, then fell.

Pride, the last thing to go, Laurie thinks. Like Alfred, stuffing his soiled Pampers behind the bed, thinking she wouldn’t notice. The bus makes the turn, and the long line of cars waiting to gain entrance to the mall begins to move forward. The food court and washrooms will be busy all day.

When there’s a lull in oncoming traffic she turns onto Gibson Road, and in anticipation of having to turn when she reaches Albert Street she forgets to signal, cuts into the outside lane to the immediate blast of a car horn. A moment later the car swerves round the Meridian and guns on past. No giving her the finger, though. Good morning to you too, she mutters, aware that her foot has begun to tremble on the accelerator.

She’s never driven anything this big and had been taken by surprise by the responsive steering. Now, as she approaches the lights at Albert Street, she’s surprised when she barely touches the brakes and the motorhome lurches to a dead stop and sends the bag flying from the passenger seat onto the floor. The light changes and she eases forward more carefully. Only several blocks down the street she nears the strip mall, and next to it, Clara’s Boutique. The motorhome lists to one side, as she glides up onto the uneven curb and stops.

The brass bell tinkles when she steps into the store. There’s a fustiness to it she hadn’t noticed yesterday. A different woman is behind the counter, a middle-aged woman with a pen tucked behind her ear, dark short hair framing an angular and unsmiling face. She glances at Laurie briefly, looking business-like in a grey pantsuit and white blouse. But Laurie notes her tie, red with yellow palm trees and an elephant.

“I’m not quite opened yet. But go ahead and have a look around,” the woman says.

“I’m not shopping today.”

“Okay,” the woman says carefully and takes in the huge bag at her side.

Laurie hefts it onto the counter and the woman cannot conceal her interest. She sucks at her bottom lip when Laurie holds up the fur jacket and lays it out on the counter. Then Laurie pulls the blue leather parka from the bag and drapes it on the counter beside the fur. The softness of the leather brings on a twinge of regret that she didn’t wear it more often.

“They’re both like new,” she says.

“But they’re not new. And not in season, either, unfortunately,” the woman says, calculating their worth. She peers at the label on the parka, then fingers one of the toggles.

“That’s deer antler,” Laurie says.

“I’d have to store them for months. But they
are
in pretty good shape,” the woman concedes, then she picks up a binder beside the cash register and opens it, plucks the pen out from behind her ear.

“Your tie is great, by the way.”

The woman feels for it, then looks down. “Oh, that. It’s my party tie. I just couldn’t seem to get going this morning so I decided to wear it.” When she smiles, her angular severity is gone.

She lifts a section of the counter and comes out from behind it to reveal her whole self, holds up her foot to display her ankle boots, obviously hand-painted, grey, with red tongues, pink laces and a pink and orange sunset on the sides, framed by palm trees. “Someone brought these in a
week ago and I couldn’t resist.”

Nor would Laurie have been able to. “Wild.”

“I have to fight with my daughters to get to wear them,” the woman says and laughs and ducks back behind the counter, her attention focused on the silver fox now as she runs her hand across it.

Laurie glances about the store to gain courage, noticing that the display on the far wall has been changed since she was in, the pantsuits gone. In their place is summer wear, shorts and tops, sundresses, straw hats. “How much will you give me for the jackets,” she asks.

“Oh,” the woman says, her lightheartedness fading. “You must not have an account with us.” She shuts the binder and puts it back beside the cash register and then leans forward on the counter and clasps her hands.

“It works like this. If you want me to sell the jackets you have to open an account. We take clothes on consignment. If they sell, we’ll give you a credit and you can use it to shop in the store. If they don’t sell within six months, we donate the clothing to charity. That’s the agreement. How does that sound?”

“At this moment the last thing I need is more clothes. You wouldn’t be hiring, would you?” she hears herself ask, her voice gone hoarse.

The woman is startled, and looks down at the jackets for a moment, glances at Laurie, then away.

“I’m running a family business here,” she says finally, as though entering midway into a talk she’s been having with herself. “My daughters work for me. I wouldn’t make anything if I had to employ outside help.” After a pause she says quietly, “Do you need to find a job?”

Yes, she
wants
to find a job, Laurie realizes. She wants to do something other than wait for Joe as she has throughout the years, doing nothing of consequence behind the reception desk, except be there, a pretty presence trying not to notice the pile of growing unpaid invoices. Staying after work with Joe to help clean and assess the damage and restoration of a used motorhome he’d bought for less than nothing and planned to resell, though he never got around to it. The most taxing part of her job had been payroll, the government forms that needed filling in at the year end.

So far, the friendliness of the people in Regina is appealing. Even at Walmart, no one came to physically haul her out of the washroom and hustle her through the door. No, the woman said, go to the service desk and ask for the manager. That man, Pete, leaving the lawn chair just in case she could use it. Maybe she’ll stay on here, disappear in the crowd at the food court, be immersed and carried along with the chatter of recipe sharing, the comparison of physical ailments and treatments, places to stay down south. She’ll learn to gripe about the price of oranges at Safeway. And of course, line up along with everyone else to buy a lottery ticket, her retirement savings plan. Stay for a time, anyway. Until Joe realizes he can’t live without her and comes looking for her and the Meridian. She’ll need to find another place to park it, hook it up to services. Perhaps a trailer court on the outskirts of the city. Maybe she will. And then, she cannot hold back her tears any longer.

Clara, proprietor of Clara’s Boutique, takes Laurie to a room at the back of the store and she’s seated on a plastic lawn chair now, explaining her circumstances, a mug of coffee in hand. Her tremulous voice is muffled by the racks
of winter coats and jackets, the shelves lined with boots and shoes. Clara fusses about clearing away the hill of coffee whitener from the small round table in front of Laurie, and then the scatter of it across the floor. Laurie shook the can of whitener too vigorously and sent the powder flying everywhere, apologized too profusely, too loudly, and with so much anxiety that Clara set her hands on her shoulders and steered her over to the chair saying, “It is not a problem. You don’t know how many times I’ve done that.”

One by one, Laurie takes the jars down from her shelf and opens them, begins by telling Clara of having to sell Alfred’s house. It never was her house, she knows that now. As much as Alfred tried to make her think it was, there was always the ticking of Verna’s damn mantel clock, that perpetual reminder of the sacrifice she’d made while trying to rescue Laurie’s mother from drowning. But the largest of her regrets is that Alfred will be forced to live the remainder of his life in that confining room in Deere Lodge.

She tells Clara about Joe’s growing aloofness, his anger, his smashing things. Joe, Joe and Joe.

“I think he’s been sleeping around,” she says finally.

Clara has listened without speaking the whole time, arms crossed over her party tie and leaning on the small refrigerator. Now she plucks several tissues from a box on top of it and drops them into Laurie’s lap.

“Men,” she says as though this is the sum total of Laurie’s lost life. She says it without bitterness or wry humour, but with resignation.

“I know there’s a trailer park somewhere, but not exactly where. I can find out,” Clara says when Laurie asks. “And
if you’re serious about staying, I do know someone who
is
hiring.”

When the brass bell tinkles from the front of the store she touches Laurie on the shoulder lightly. “Stay put. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Laurie was always certain Joe didn’t suspect anything about her and Steve’s periodic leaps into bed. But she wonders, now. Perhaps the same evidence that caused her to suspect him had given him reason to wonder—absentmindedness, aloofness, the vagueness of his explanations for being away for long periods of time. But she doubts that. From what she’s learned of men, most are clueless about anything that goes on beyond a three-foot radius from themselves.

When Clara returns moments later she has a city map that she spreads across Laurie’s knee, shows her the route she’s already marked in red, the way to get to Value Village in the north end. The manager, Tracy, is expecting her.

“I called,” Clara says. “If everything works out, you could do your orientation today and start work tomorrow. Tracy’s always looking for someone reliable.”

Then Clara gives Laurie a piece of paper with her address and telephone number. “I live just around the corner from here, only two streets away. You can park in the driveway for now.” With a wave of her hand when Laurie tries to thank her, she says again. “It’s not a problem. My daughters’ boyfriends will just have to park on the street.”

When Laurie gets up to leave, Clara studies her for a moment. “Have you ever shopped at Value Village?”

V V Boutique is what Sandra calls the chain of secondhand stores, of which there are several in Winnipeg. Wives
of doctors and lawyers shop there, Sandra said. They bring their own bags, with the names of exclusive shops on them, so no one will know.

“Yes, I have,” Laurie says. She’d gone once with Sandra, and hated every minute. The clawing through other people’s cast-offs. The types lurking about in the store, entire families of carb-enriched people waddling about, Goths and some theatre students, but mostly the overweight, the grungy, the poor. It takes time to find the good stuff, Sandra said. Take all the time you want, Laurie said, and waited for her in the car.