A Rhinestone Button (36 page)

There was the moment the month before when he soaked in the claw-foot bath, up to his chin in the orange-scented bubbles Liv had filled the tub with. Liv was in the bathroom with him, dancing to the Mozart that played on the boom box she had carried into the room, her bracelets and earrings jangling. She grabbed handfuls of bubbles from the bath and blew them into the air. The clouds of bubbles hung suspended, as if time had stopped, as if they were held aloft by nothing.

There was the moment last November when Job and Liv and Jason took a walk down what had been Bullick’s long driveway, to take a gander at the unfinished houses of the new subdivision. A day sparkling in hoarfrost. Every tree and bush was frosted white and glittering like coloured Christmas-tree lights under a clear blue sky. Job turned to look behind him, at their footprints on the snowy road, at the line of frost-coated poplar the Black Friday tornado had miraculously left standing. The hoarfrost, just starting to melt in the morning sun, drifted across the road and floated down on them. Grace and her four teenaged tabbies followed in a row behind them. The snow was so dry their tiny feet squeaked when they walked
in it, a sound that had once produced for Job a cloud of transparent blue.

There was that moment just the day before when he was in the kitchen, near closing time, wiping down his prep table. The smells of the day were still in the air: hot cheese from the tuna melts, the lunch special; sauerkraut from the grilled Reubens; the tang of homemade tomato soup; the sticky sweetness of cinnamon buns. From the tea room the clatter of Ben collecting dishes in a tub and Liv moving chairs and wiping down tables. The snap of fresh tablecloths. Sounds that had once produced, for Job, splashes the corrugated beige of fossilized wood that was churned up in the fields; a rain the metallic blue found on a tree swallows back; honeycombs the red-bronze of a salt lick. But he heard no colours now. No invisible glass egg from the hum of the vacuum cleaner as Liv cleaned up under the tea-house tables. No tumble of sparkling blue spheres from the gravel that hit the undercarriage of the truck. He no longer lost himself to the voices in a church choir, and never would again.

But he would have these moments. Job had tugged his apron off, and tossed it into the basket of whites by the washer, then pulled his blue T-shirt over his head and wiped his face with it before tossing it into the basket of colours. He spooned a cinnamon bun from the pan, cut it in half and bit into it. The kitchen window reflected his image, caught in the afternoon light. His mass of damp curls. The smooth, nearly hairless skin of his arms. And in his face an ease, a happiness, had crept in. If he saw that man on the street, he’d want to know him. Count him as a friend. A tingle of recognition ran through him. This was where he wanted to be, in this moment.

Job collected moments like these, noting the colours in the ducks’ wings, the smell of thawing earth, the cool of the beer in one hand and the warmth of Liv’s hand in the other. Because if Liv could love him, just as he was, knowing all his foibles and fears, if he could catch his reflection in a kitchen window and like the man he saw, then who knew what else this world might offer him if he was attentive to its details. He might find eternity in the spin of a tractor’s wheel. He might lose himself, expand into an arching prairie sky as he drove the paved roads. He might feel the blood thumping through his veins as he watched northern lights pulse across a night’s sky. And it might be that God was found, not in a church or some hazy hereafter, but in the tart taste of a beer, in the warm hand of a lover, on the whistling wings of ducks flying low overhead.

The catskinner brought the loader up and lifted the base of the silo. There was a great
woomph
as the silo toppled like falling blocks, heaving up a great cloud of dust and a flurry of escaping pigeons. Jerry’s dog barked and leapt into the air. The junk party hollered and clapped, and Job clapped with them. The ease with which the structure fell, as if it had been made of cardboard. As if it hadn’t stood for thirty years. Then the Cat ate into the second silo. Another
woomph
. A cloud of dust. More startled pigeons. And Liv shouted, “Hallelujah!”

As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and it certainly took one to bring this baby into the world. While I don’t have the space here to acknowledge the great many people who contributed to the creation of this novel, I would like to thank my husband and research assistant, Floyd Anderson-Dargatz; my Canadian editor, Diane Martin, and my British editor, Lennie Goodings; my agent, Denise Bukowski; and my mentor, Jack Hodgins.

A number of books inspired me as I wrote this novel. The most influential were
Leaving the Fold
by Marlene Winell;
Bright Colours Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge
by Kevin T. Dann;
The Man Who Tasted Shapes
by Richard E. Cytowic; and
Synaesthesia, Classic and Contemporary Readings
by Simon Baron-Cohen and John E. Harrison. The quote from the Book of Job that opens this novel was taken from a translation by Stephen Mitchell. Other Bible quotes were taken from the
Thompson Chain-Reference Bible
.

GAIL ANDERSON-DARGATZ
is an award-winning Canadian author whose bestselling novels have been published worldwide. She currently teaches fiction at University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program and lives in the Shuswap Valley, the landscape found in so much of her writing.