Algoma (16 page)

8:11 a.m. -3°C. Calm.
Tangle of hair caught in the drain.

The pressure from the shower head blew the plastic liner inward where it wrapped around her legs. Algoma reached down to peel the plastic from her calves and re-affix the magnets to the inside of the tub. She stood up and rubbed her pregnant belly, which was now hard like a gourd, but smoother.

With Ferd spending a significant amount of time out of the house, staying with his aunts, Algoma had less and less to do and no one to take care of, except herself and whatever child was adrift in her womb. She was out of work, both at The Shop and as a mother and wife. She felt like an incubator.

While The Shop was under construction in a new location, it was a slow process that was compromised by the delays that came with inclement weather and a lack of finances. Josie spent her days trying to barter for what she needed—the walls, windows, and doors—hoping for the deal that would salvage her livelihood. Algoma hoped the rebuilding wouldn’t take long. She was lonely and desperately missed the feel of fabric in her hands. The ka-chunk of the price gun she used to tag every shirt and shoe. She missed seeing Josie every day, her one constant in the past year. She wanted her life back, even if it was missing parts.

Still, there were times when she allowed herself to imagine a knock at the door, Gaetan arriving with Leo’s hand in his.

“I went looking for him,” Gaetan would say.

Leo’s head would poke out from beneath his father’s arm. He would say, “Hi, Mom.”

During her daydreams, Algoma felt her body’s chemistry respond to her imaginings, a soft electricity that ignited her fingers and tingled along her scalp. As soon as she opened her eyes, the feeling was gone.

The police had ceased any efforts to find Gaetan after Algoma received his letter. He’d written very little, saying only that he remained in the country and needed some time away from everything. He’d ended with a promise that he’d be in touch again, but not when. No return address had been included. The letter had left Algoma devastated, but she carried on with the hope that he’d return. She stored his letter with Ferd’s notes and washed Gaetan’s bedsheets every week, so they’d be fresh for when he came home.

Home.

Algoma now slept at the centre, on the couch, so she could see everything that came, everything that went. Nothing would escape her watch.

Her sisters had not been so agreeable about the idea of her husband’s return.

“You should have your locks changed,” said Cen. The constant protector.

“Your last name, too. Be a Belanger with us again,” said Lake.

Gaetan was no longer welcome in Algoma’s sisters’ lives. They’d cut him out as instantly and severely as he had himself.

After receiving the letter, Algoma had focused on Gaetan’s handwriting and what it might reveal. The deep ditch his pen exacted in the paper. The slant of his letters. How much space left at the top and bottom. She should have been paying attention earlier, before all this. There must have been signs.

Tired, Algoma sheltered her growing belly against the hard spray of the shower and hoped for a girl.

“You’re going to boil the baby,” Ferd said. He bit into an unripe pear and spit out the chunk into his hand.

Algoma had come out of the bathroom wrapped in an oversized robe, her face, hands, and feet bright red coals. As she walked into the kitchen, she tripped on the terrycloth hem.

“Be careful,” he said, pointing at her belly.

In Gaetan’s absence, Algoma had appropriated most of his wardrobe. At first it was just his robes (three of them) each floor-length and made of heavy, durable terrycloth. Gaetan had insisted on variety in colour and style for his morning wear. At the time, Algoma told him he was being extravagant, even if it was one of the few purchases he’d made during their marriage; however, when she’d pulled on one of his robes for the first time, she’d understood. It had felt heavy on her shoulders, like someone was standing behind her, a familiar weight on her shoulders and hips.

Soon, she found herself wearing pieces of Gaetan’s clothing to do errands, to drop Ferd off at school. Large and loose, his clothing became her pregnancy wardrobe. She wore his oversized plaid shirts unbuttoned over her own tank tops and T-shirts and completed most of her outfits with an ankle-length denim skirt, so that no part of her was exposed or vulnerable.

“Breakfast for two?” Algoma asked, patting her modestly distended belly. “Well, two and a half.” She tried to look capable around Ferd, even happy, but he eyed her with suspicion. “Just give me a second to get changed, okay?” Within several minutes, she returned wearing a new assortment of odds and ends.

Even though his mother now dressed in more clothing than she ever had, Ferd thought she looked smaller. Her belly was the only place that he could hold on to and she held it every moment her hands were free, as if she was afraid she might lose it. The rest of her seemed as fragile as a bird skeleton, hollow bones ready to blow apart under a hard wooden wheel no one could see coming.

Algoma took a carton of brown eggs out of the fridge. “Eggs?”

Everything had become a question. She didn’t trust herself anymore.

Ferd nodded and Algoma cooked.

At the table Algoma leaned over her plate of heavily peppered scrambled eggs and buttered toast. “This was a good idea. Don’t you think, Ferd?”

Ferd mashed his eggs with his fork and took a sip of his orange juice. “Sure,” he said. He sounded unconvinced. Eggs were all they ate anymore. Easy, inexpensive, familiar. And boring. He wanted to tell her that they weren’t dead. Instead, he put down his fork and watched his mother eat. He was confused by her new habits: how she carefully piled a forkful of egg onto her toast and ate an equal portion of bread and egg with each bite. She was so consumed with her rituals, she didn’t notice him staring. If she finished her toast before she finished all her eggs, she would put another slice of bread in the toaster before taking another bite. She sought balance, equal input on every front.

“Festival of the Nations 1994,” he read off her T-shirt. “Come taste the world.” The world map on her T-shirt stretched tautly across her stomach, most of the borders disfigured.

Algoma finally realized Ferd was staring at her.

“Are you thinking of a name?” she asked.

He shoved another piece of toast into this mouth. “No.”

“Well think of one. Without your father around, I need your help.” There was no skirting Gaetan’s absence. He had been there one day, gone the next. Even Ferd’s notes to Leo had begun to chronicle the details of his father’s absence: Have you seen him?

Ferd poured another glass of orange juice. “Leo,” he blurted out.

Algoma breathed a deep and heavy sigh. “I think it’s a girl.”

Ferd slammed his fork down onto the table. “It’s not,” he yelled.

Startled, Algoma dropped her fork. “We can talk about this another time—”

But Ferd ran down to the basement and slammed the door behind him. Pictures rattled against the wall, a puff of plaster dropped from the ceiling. He’d grown.

Ever since Algoma had announced her pregnancy to him, he’d seemed unhinged, and the frequency of his note-writing had increased ten-fold. It took a great deal of work for her to ensure she’d collected them all, at least the ones that were in the house; there was nothing she could do about the others. When the school had called to discuss the matter, she’d simply hung up the phone. Algoma had hoped that word of a new baby would have put an end to it, but it had only been the beginning of something else.

“Will Dad come back now?” he’d asked, hopeful. “I mean, to see the baby and all.” His dark brown, almost black, eyes had bored holes into her trying to extract the answer he wanted.

Algoma had turned away guiltily. She had no answer.

From that day forward, Ferd was fascinated by her growing belly and her well being, constantly asking her if she needed anything, if he could do anything for her. He started making his bed in the morning and doing the dishes before she asked him to. Even his nails were trim and clean.

“What does it feel like for the baby inside,” he asked her one night. He poked her belly with his finger half expecting it to pop like a balloon.

“Like a pool of warm water.”

“Like at the Community Centre?”

“Yes, but with less chlorine.”

Her joke missed its mark. Ferd mouthed the words, mentally taking a note: Less chlorine.

She would later realize that water had been the wrong answer.

He was sure the baby was a boy. He was sure it was his brother.

After a months-long campaign of notes and letters, Ferd believed that Leo was finally coming back to him. He had no doubt and began to plan for his brother’s return. Leo would have to grow up and learn everything all over again before he could tell him what had happened in the year after he had gone through the ice. Ferd promised himself that he would be a better brother this time, or try to be. At least he had a chance of being a better shot.

Ferd read Algoma’s baby books like they were user manuals. Before bed, instead of allowing his mother to read to him as he sometimes allowed in his weaker moments, Ferd read chapters of the baby books to her.

“You need more folic acid. You shouldn’t let it sleep on its back. You could use cotton diapers.”

After the initial outburst, Algoma rarely had the heart or energy to correct Ferd, to tell him the baby was not Leo, that it couldn’t be, that it was a girl. With the exception of her sons, girls were all her extended family produced. So many girls, her mother had joked that they might run out of girls’ names and would have to start dipping into the boys’. Or at least another shipping company.

Algoma got out of her chair and put another piece of bread in the toaster. She was not going to let Ferd’s unfinished eggs go to waste. She glanced at the clock on the stove. It was almost time to go to Josie’s.

There was a trick to entering Josie’s driveway, a long, narrow gravel road that suddenly opened up into a large space the size of a grocery-store parking lot. In the past, the lot had been used to park farm equipment, but now it was mostly empty except for her pick-up truck. The entrance to the driveway was flanked by two deep ditches that visitors drove into from time to time, despite the reflectors she’d posted on each side. The front ends of their cars smashed, foreheads bleeding, tow-trucks called. Inspired, Josie had come up with a simple solution: she’d painted two antique milk canisters bright orange and posted them on either side of the entrance. Visitors were so scared about scratching their cars on the cans, they took their time coming in. No one had landed in the ditch in months.

The house was large and old, but well cared for. Even if there wasn’t a new coat of paint on the wood siding—ancient white paint curling up to reveal a dark green past—the porch was swept clean and the sidewalks shovelled. The focal point of the backyard was a huge bonfire pit that was surrounded by a triangle of church pews Josie had scored a few years back when a church two towns over had been decommissioned. Once a summer, everyone from The Shop and a few of Josie’s best customers and traders came over for an all night bonfire. They’d arrive early and put their tents up on the lawn, break out the coolers of beer and wine, and not leave until the following evening. Breakfast would be made in huge cast-iron pans over the remaining embers. For those who were invited, it was one of the highlights of the year.

Josie took a small key out of her pocket and unlocked the padlock on the barn door that led to her workshop. She’d purchased the property because of the barn, so she could store all her larger barters, the things she didn’t take directly to the shop for Algoma to sort through and clean. Things she knew would be worth something to someone someday. Today it was worth something to her. Just as she walked inside, she heard someone coming up the driveway, the pop and crunch of gravel beneath car tires.

Algoma.

Josie and Algoma manoeuvred their way past the antique furniture and mysterious shapes that were covered in faded moving blankets and old quilts.

“I didn’t think I’d be having any more kids, so I donated all of their baby furniture.” While her mouth was upturned in a smile, her eyes were flat and expressionless. She peeked under one of the blankets and quickly dropped the corner of the blanket back down again, a cloud of dust colouring her jacket.

Josie tried to think of something to say. “Well, there’s enough stuff here that you’re set even if you have quintuplets.”

Algoma laughed sincerely. “I’m not a cat, Jo.”

“We’ll it’s a good thing because a litter of kittens can have more than one father,” Josie said, proud as ever of her random trivia. “More than two and I’d be suspicious.”

“You’re so full of it.”

“I’m serious. You come take a look at my two cats and tell me they came from the same father. I’m thinking of hitting up one of the barn cats for child support.”

By the time they left the barn, Algoma had settled on a set of matching white baby furniture that had been stored in an old goat pen. Josie carefully loaded up the pieces into her truck and followed Algoma home where she unloaded the pieces and then said she was off to check on how construction on The Shop was coming along.

After Josie left, honking her horn as she turned the corner, Algoma and Ferd set about wiping down the furniture with a mixture of white vinegar and water.

Since Ferd had slept on the pullout couch in the basement for the past year, his and Leo’s old room had remained relatively untouched except for when Algoma slept in it. When the boys were born, Gaetan had painted the walls dark yellow, the colour of late season corn left to stand against grey winter. Algoma had asked for something brighter, but Gaetan had insisted they’d grow into it.

In the room were two single beds separated by a large wooden dresser pushed up against the wall opposite the door. Above the dresser was an antique, oval mirror Algoma had rescued from a neighbour’s trash bin. Any image reflected in the middle of the mirror warped, so the boys had only been able to see their reflection along the beveled edge, a sliver at a time. Along the inside of the door frame were two lengths of masking tape. Once a month, Algoma had asked her sons to stand up straight and put their heads back against the tape where she measured their heights and wrote it down. Most times, the lines she drew for the two boys overlapped one another. She had stopped the ritual after Leo died. The twins’ heights remained a matching three feet and four inches tall. Drunk one night, Gaetan had used a black marker to measure his slumped height, a man reduced.