After River (3 page)

I
N THE GLOW
from the computer screen, I press the first speed dial on my phone. Jenny's home number.

‘Hello?' Nick's voice answers after one ring. Only a man will pick up the phone on the first ring. I haven't met a woman yet who won't wait until at least the second ring before answering. Is it because we can't shake the old notion of being thought too anxious, too available?

‘Hello, Nick. I hope it's not too late to call.'

‘No, of course not,' he assures me, then asks, ‘How are you, Mom?'

Mom, how easily he has taken to calling me that. We chat for a few moments with the small talk that is expected. Nick Mumford, my son-in-law of three years is much more at ease with me than I have ever been with him. But time has eroded my resistance–a resistance I felt before I even met him. Nick, whose grandfather was our family doctor when I was growing up, is one of life's little twists that show up with an ironic sense of inevitability. Just like the fact that Jenny chose to do her medical internship at St Helena's Hospital in Atwood. The moment she told me she was dating old Dr Allen Mumford's grandson, I knew she would end up with him. And I knew she would end up staying in the town I have spent most of my adult life avoiding.

‘Here's Jenny.'

‘Hi, Mom. How are you doing?' At the sound of my daughter's voice I am overwhelmed with how much I miss her.

‘I'm fine. I just talked to Boyer.'

‘Yes, I know. I saw him at the hospital earlier. I asked him to call you.'

I'm not surprised. Jenny is like a typical child of divorced parents; always trying to mend broken relationships. When it comes to her uncle and me, she uses every excuse to force us to talk to each other.

‘Jen, how is she really? I mean, how long—?'

‘It's hard to tell,' she says, the professional tones of a doctor's voice overtake her words as she relates the prognosis. ‘She's weak, but she could still rally or, well, we just don't know. Don't wait too long, Mom.'

‘I'm taking the six a.m. bus,' I tell her. ‘It should arrive at the junction at nine tomorrow night. Can you pick me up?'

The turnoff from the Trans-Canada Highway is thirty miles north of Atwood. The bus will only stop on that lonely piece of highway if someone is waiting for connecting passengers.

‘Of course I'll be there.' Jenny says. ‘We can stop in at the hospital and see Gram on the way home.'

‘Good,' I say then hesitate. ‘I'm going to stay in town at the Alpine Inn though.'

‘Why?' she asks. The doctor's voice is gone now, replaced by the whine of a daughter's hurt feelings. ‘We have lots of room in our new house, Mom. You haven't even seen it yet.'

‘I know, and I will. I will. It's just that I can walk next door to the hospital from the Bed and Breakfast.'

‘You can use one of our cars while you're here.' When I don't reply
right away she adds with an impatient sigh, ‘You can't even see the farm from where we've built our house.'

I know. I know exactly where her new house is.

‘Please. Please just understand for now, Jenny. I want to stay in town. Just pick me up, okay?'

‘All right,' she says with resignation. ‘We can argue about it on the drive into town.' There's a moment's silence on the line before she adds, ‘There's something else I need to talk to you about, Mom.'

My empty stomach lurches. I manage to keep my voice even as I ask, ‘What is it?'

‘Not on the phone.'

 

Back in bed I am unable to sleep. I am tempted to get up and read to pass the night away.
God, I'm finally turning into my mother
. I wish I had her faith at times like this. And her belief in the power of prayer. But I lost that a long time ago.

Beside me Vern's even breathing fills the quiet while I fight the images of my estranged family.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when I couldn't imagine my family wouldn't always be together. There was a time when all I wanted was to be with my oldest brother, Boyer, whom I idolized during my childhood. Back then, my favourite part of the day was sitting in his room playing ‘penny words'–a spelling game Boyer had taught me as soon as I was old enough to talk. And in the evening lying in bed listening to my mother playing my favourite song on the piano downstairs in the parlour.

When I was young I thought she had made up that song just for me. And whenever I asked her, no matter what she was doing, my mother would always, always, stop and sit down at the piano and play ‘Love Me Tender'.

I can almost hear it now as the north wind plays through the branches of the fir trees outside our bedroom window.

The alarm rings. As if he has been waiting for it Vern sits up. He pulls back the covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed with slow deliberate movements. I know he thinks I'm still asleep. This has become our morning routine, Vern getting up first and letting me sleep until after he takes his shower and makes the coffee.

‘There's a bus as six,' I say as I climb out of bed. I explain the schedule as I follow him into the bathroom. He offers once again to drive me.

‘At least to the Cache Creek junction,' he says as he glances up from the sink. ‘It will save you the wait there. This way you can get a few more hours of sleep before you go.'

I pull out my make-up case and begin tossing in toiletries. ‘I can sleep on the bus,' I tell him, but even as I say it I know it's not true.

Vern squeezes the tube too hard and white toothpaste spurts into the sink. ‘I want to be there for you, Natalie,' he says. ‘I'd like to meet your mother before she—' he bites off the word before it escapes from his mouth. ‘While I still have the chance.'

I stiffen. ‘There's lots of time, I'm sure. I'll call you when I get there. When I know more.'

Vern raises his eyebrows. ‘Promise?'

‘Promise.'

‘Stubborn,' he mutters with a mouthful of toothpaste. But his eyes smile back at me.

I stand at my sink and study him in the mirror while I brush my teeth.

We've been together for almost ten years now, married for seven of those years. He was the one who pushed for marriage. I resisted.
Given my track record, I warned him, I wasn't a very good bet. ‘If you don't get married, you don't get divorced,' I told him.

After two failed marriages I wasn't anxious to try a third.

‘You just hadn't met the right one until now,' Vern insisted. Eventually he wore me down.

We met while I was living in Vancouver. Early one rainy morning we ran into each other on the Stanley Park seawall. Literally. We were both about to pass slower joggers from opposite directions when Vern's elbow clipped mine and sent me sprawling onto the wet blacktop. After that we began greeting each other on our morning runs. Before long we fell into an easy routine of running together. That led to after-run coffees at Starbuck's on Denman Street and then to dating.

Besides running, we found we shared a passion for reading, sushi, and oldies music. Before long he infected me with his passion for fly-fishing.

Vern was a widower. He had sold his logging company on Vancouver Island to move closer to the clinic where his wife eventually lost her battle with breast cancer. Afterwards he remained in Vancouver to re-assess his life.

When we first met he was in the throes of starting his tree-planting contracting and consulting company.

‘It's karma,' he joked, ‘from forest-destroyer to forest-restorer.'

Now as I watch him brush his teeth, I am still taken by how handsome he is. Vern is five-foot ten, not much taller than I am, perhaps three inches at the most. At fifty-five he still wears jeans without embarrassment, although lately I have begun to notice a thickening around the waist. He blames it on his too-successful business, which requires him to spend more time in the office and less in the field.

His olive skin, thick dark hair, and black-brown eyes hint of First Nations ancestry somewhere back down the line.

‘When I retire, I'll take up genealogy and trace my roots,' he once said with his lop-sided grin.

Vern's mouth is asymmetrical. The thinner left side of his lip rises higher than the right and twitches when he is smiling. It can be difficult to tell if his smile is genuine, or if he is trying not to smirk. And it can be rather unnerving; it would be easy to doubt his sincerity–if it weren't Vern.

I think this little tic adds to, rather than takes away from, his rugged good looks. I can see that I'm not the only one who finds him attractive. Sometimes, when we meet women, or even men, for the first time, I catch that flicker, that what's-he-doing-with-her look in their eyes. Sometimes I wonder myself.

Vern says it was my independence he was attracted to. Now he calls it stubbornness.

He leans over the sink to spit. As he straightens up he catches me studying him in the mirror. ‘What?'

I open my mouth, a word or two away from giving into the temptation to accept his offer. How easy it would be to have him come with me, take care of me. But I have never burdened him with my past. It's too late to start now.

I reach up and stroke his cheek. ‘Nothing,' I say then turn away to switch on the walk-in closet light.

As I rummage through my underwear drawer I am suddenly startled by the thought of what to wear to a funeral.

My mother's funeral. Vern's unspoken thought is more reality than probability.

The idea of attending a ceremony in St Anthony's Church, of sitting in the front pew while a priest's monotonous voice chants
the ceremony and speaks of my mother's life, is almost too much. I stand in the middle of my closet, underpants in one hand, and bras in the other, and hold my breath to stifle the sneeze I feel building between my eyes.

 

At the downtown bus depot, Vern unloads my suitcase from the back of his pick-up truck. Pink light from the streetlamp filters down through the grey stillness of the early morning air. The smell of pulp, a rotten egg aroma, intensified by the heavy autumn mist, hugs our bodies. Long-time residents of Prince George seem to be immune to the pungent smell from the pulp mill; sometimes even I forget it. But on fall mornings when cold, dense air, presses down on the sleeping city, the odour is so thick I can almost taste it.

As if he has read my mind, Vern wrinkles his nose. ‘Mephitic,' he says referring to the noxious odour.

And as clearly as if I could turn around and see him standing in the morning fog, I can hear Boyer's youthful voice saying, ‘Well, there's a ten-penny word for you, Nat.'

Inside at the counter I ask for a ticket to Atwood. The sleepy-looking attendant wears a blue-striped shirt with a name embroidered in red on her pocket. Brenda.

‘Atwood?' Brenda repeats. It's obvious she has never heard of it. Why should she have? The old mining town, turned ski-resort, with a population of less than three thousand, is not exactly a prime destination. She punches the computer keys, her ink-stained fingers moving with a studied effort. Her eyebrows raise and I assume she's located it. ‘One way or return?'

‘Return,' I tell her.
Oh, yes, return. Soon, I hope
. Then I realize what soon could mean, and I feel the guilt of wishing to hasten my mother's demise.

‘One hundred and forty dollars,' she says and attacks the computer again. She is all efficiency now, back in familiar territory. ‘You have a two hour wait in Cache Creek…'

After I purchase my ticket I rejoin Vern outside. He has placed my suitcase in front of the only occupied bus stall. A young couple stands nearby, huddled in the cold, saying their goodbyes. White puffs of breath fill the air between them. The bus doors are closed and I can't see through the blackened windows. I hope the bus isn't crowded. I don't want to have to sit next to anyone and make small talk.

‘I want to be there for you,' Vern says again. He takes my hands as he searches my eyes. ‘At least promise me you will let me come down and get you.'

I slip the return ticket into my pocket as he takes me into his arms.

‘I feel like I'm losing you,' he murmurs into my hair.

‘I'm just anxious to get going,' I say and start to pull away.

‘Not just this morning,' he says. ‘Lately I feel like you're getting ready to bolt.' He releases me, then steps back with a crooked smile. He holds his arms out in an open-handed gesture of surrender. He won't keep me against my will, I know, but he'll do his best to interrupt this dance of leaving.

That is Vern. His strength is what has kept me with him this long, his strength in being able to let go. But he's right. It's just a matter of time. This is what I do. I run. I leave. He's the first man to recognize this, or the first one to place it in the light where we both have to look at it. And he's the first one who will not be surprised when I go.

The bus driver strides out from wherever it is bus drivers hide at these stops. He walks with the swagger of someone who, for the moment, has the destiny of others in his hands. The semantics of
his job pull him back to the reality of the morning as he lifts the sliding luggage compartment doors and begins to throw bags into the belly of the bus.

Behind me the bus doors fold open with a mechanical sigh. I put my arms around Vern for a final hug. He hangs on for a moment after I let go.

A part of me wants to tell him I'll call for him when the time comes. That I will cry on his shoulder, lean on his strong body. But we both know it wouldn't be true. Besides, I tell myself, there's no need for him to be there. He only knows my mother from what I have told him. And she doesn't know him at all. My mother gave up on the men in my life after my second husband. And for the last five years she's been too busy dying.