Prerequisites for Sleep (4 page)

 

Thomas woke up on a Tuesday morning to find a woman in his house. She was standing at the counter in his narrow kitchen with a spatula in her hand, flipping pancakes in his electric frying pan. He nearly bumped into her, not being fully awake and, of course, not expecting a person, let alone a woman, to be blocking his path to the coffee maker. He couldn't entirely recall the previous evening to provide an explanation for her presence. His memory offered only vague glimpses of a barbeque with a horseshoe pit and chests of beer on ice. She gestured towards his table, squished against the wall at the far end, where there was a place set with a fork and knife, a mug of coffee and a glass of orange juice. Easing around her, he sat in his chair, picked up the glass of juice, and downed it in two gulps while she placed a plate in front of him stacked with several pancakes that appeared to have had thin wedges of apples pressed into them before they were flipped. He ate the way hungry men do, concentrating solely on the food and the travels of the fork from the plate to his lips. Afterwards, eyeing the woman over the rim of his coffee mug, he decided that it was good. It being the food and the preparation of the food and the woman standing in his kitchen.

She liked to do things. Clean windows. Make curtains. Hang pictures. She had two large photos of lilies, one with yellow flowers, one with orange, nicely matted and framed, and decided that one of these should hang in the front hall, on a particular wall that faced the entrance and was about four feet wide. She picked the yellow one, lilies the colour of sunshine, and centred the frame horizontally on the wall, placing it at eye level and holding it there with a hook and picture wire. Three little taps with a hammer, that was all it took. Then she stood back and looked, tilting her head, first to the left and then to the right, trying to decide if it worked. For three days, every time she walked past the yellow lilies, she stopped and looked. On the fourth day, she took them down and hung the orange lilies up in their place. The orange was crisper and more vivid, but again she hesitated every time she happened by. After two more days, she turned the picture from landscape to portrait, causing the three large blooms to form a triangle the shape of a female's pubic area. The largest flower, positioned on the bottom, was angled in a way that was both daring and inviting. Then she stood back, palms together in front of her with her fingertips resting on her chin, and nodded her head with approval because now she was sure that the photo called out for attention.

There was property, several acres, that went with Thomas's house. She decided to put in gardens, starting small at first, with a few plots of vegetables and some flowers and shrubs around the building's foundation. Slowly they grew, not just the flowers and vegetables but the actual size of the planted fields, until almost every square foot produced something. Something to harvest.

And harvest she did. She set up a market at the side of the road next to the house, and sold tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, asparagus, kohlrabi, carrots, and beans. And bouquets of lilies and gladioli and mixtures of coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. In October, her pumpkins were much in demand. Come November and December, her preserves and wreaths and sprigs of holly became seasonal favourites.

When Thomas went to work, his co-workers would often approach him at the water cooler or the urinal to deliver compliments. “Her vegetables are some good,” a co-worker would say, “had some with my supper last night and they were some good.” Or someone else would say, “Took a drive out your way the other day, Thomas. It was our anniversary, and I had to pick up a bouquet of her flowers for my wife. They are considered second to none, ya know.” Thomas would wipe his mouth with the back of his hand or fumble with his fly front before nodding and smiling with agreement. He enjoyed this attention and upon returning to his desk would sit idle for several minutes, basking in the success of the woman's harvests.

Hummingbirds were attracted to her bee balm and monarchs to her milkweed. Other birds also found things to their liking, and soon, species considered rare for the area were stopping by while in migration. Bird-watchers and naturalists would pull over in their vehicles to scan the area from their car windows with binoculars in hand. The woman noticed this and, knowing that she had plenty of room to do so, created paths that curved their way through the various plantings to enable the enthusiasts better access. She edged them with stones and filled them with pea gravel, the tines of her rake making a musical sound as she spread the tiny pebbles that were delicate shades of pink, grey, blue, and taupe. She set up benches and enclosures the size of small bus shelters in case of rain, then added birdbaths and feeders and little hand-painted signs to identify plants and indicate points that might be of interest.

When people came to visit, they told their friends, who told more friends, and before long, there were lineups of vehicles on the shoulder of the highway. The municipality, recognizing that these people purchased gas and ate at local establishments, widened the shoulders, but they had a tendency to erode every winter so they built a parking lot on county land across the road. They placed two billboards advertising the property at each end of their jurisdiction and included it in all their tourist literature.

“Your property has become a destination, Thomas,” one of his co-workers said one day while handing him an article snipped from a magazine. “Look at this. People are coming from all over the country to see it. Who would have thought?” Thomas glanced at the article and smiled, then pinned it up on the bulletin board next to his cubicle so everyone could see and comment on it. A large photo showed his house and the market and the acres that stretched out behind. An inset showed the author, no one he recognized, pointing and holding up a guidebook. The bulletin board became crowded with such articles. Sometimes co-workers would give them to him personally while making complimentary comments about the feature. Other times he would arrive at work to find another one added to the collection, the bright white of new paper catching his eye. When they told him his property was on the national news, Thomas was a little disappointed, as he always went to bed before the news, and he had nothing tangible to pin up on the bulletin board.

One day a man arrived. He walked the property in awe, delighted with every twist and turn of the path. “This…” he said, hesitating because he couldn't find the right words, “I could spend every day here. Do you mind if I help?” So the next morning he arrived, dressed in light clothes and a straw hat to cover the bald spot on his head, his body pale from the lack of sun. For days, he followed the woman around the property, watching her movements until he felt sure of what to do. Then he began on his own to weed and hoe and water and compost, not harvesting until verifying with the woman that her crop was ready. They worked acres apart and side by side, sometimes in silence, other times engaged in enthusiastic conversation. Soon, he looked like her, his arms and legs a maple-syrup brown, his muscles taut and shiny with sweat. But it was the expression on his face that had changed the most.

Soon others came, men and women who arrived every morning to stay for the day. Together they dug a small well and installed water features to erase the ever-increasing noise of traffic. They created evergreen hedges that encircled the property and hosted songbirds in both summer and winter. Thomas would arrive home from work just as these people were leaving. He would hear their bantering as he walked from the car to his front door. The man who had come first was always the last to leave. He would wave and smile at Thomas, and Thomas would smile and nod his head because his hands were full, carrying the newspaper and his keys and his briefcase and the lunchbox that the woman packed fresh for him every morning. Thomas liked the idea of these people enjoying the property, and the fact that they were helping to make it into a destination. But what he liked more were the meals that the woman would make for the two of them, the fruit and vegetables of the season prepared and served in their prime. Sometimes raw, sometimes cooked, they were nature's bounty at its best. He considered himself fortunate to be the recipient of such fine food.

It was on a Saturday morning that Thomas woke up to discover the woman gone. He searched the house, but found only her slippers under a stool in the kitchen and her bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. He continued to look for her outdoors, where he wandered the curved paths and planted rows of the property until he was overwhelmed. Never before had he fully explored the garden or understood the enormity of the accomplishment as a whole. Previously he might have considered a single tomato or a serving of beets to admire their healthy perfection and, while eating, savour their flavour. But this was different, something that was much greater than the sum of its parts. For hours he roamed the property, sometimes stopping to sit on a bench or observe a goldfinch busy at a feeder. He watched other birds, ones that he didn't recognize, eat red currants from a bush. And saw butterflies land on the flat surfaces of large petals and remain quiet and still for indeterminable lengths of time. He listened to the trickling of water running in streams that he hadn't known existed. At one juncture, he could smell peaches so strongly that his mouth watered. Around another bend, a scent of lavender that took him back to his childhood and his mother's dresser drawers. He wanted to share these revelations with the woman but found he had no words in his vocabulary to describe his feelings. He had never been a man who made speeches. Or a poet. Or a reader. He tried to remember if and when he had experienced similar emotions in the past, thinking that maybe, if she returned, he could explain with comparisons. Surely she must know already, but still he wanted to tell her how moving it all was. If, he thought, if she returned, suddenly aware that the word “if” was highly unreliable. His eyes watered and his breath caught in his throat as he choked back a sob.

He spent the whole day out on the property, finally but reluctantly groping his way back to the house when he could no longer see due to the absence of a moon. Stepping into the front hall, he switched on the light and looked up to see the picture of lilies on the small wall in front of him. The photo was faded from hanging every day in the path of the sun's rays that shone through the rectangular window of the door. The three washed-out blossoms of the triangular composition appeared to have once been a vibrant orange. He stared at them, tilting his head, first to the left and then to the right, and wondered how long they had been there.

 

On a morning when half the bridge was missing, I dropped a token into the basket of the tollbooth and watched the light turn green. Drivers proceeding onto the span were required to take a leap of faith as they drove through the dense fog, trusting that they wouldn't encounter a severed end of asphalt and steel and plummet into the harbour below. Suppressing the urge to shift into reverse, I turned up the volume on the radio and sang while my wipers stuttered over flecks of moisture on the windshield and my feet, left on the clutch, right on the brake, pivoted on the heels of my shoes to move the car forward in a start-stop fashion.

Shortly after turning twenty-three and marking my one-year anniversary working at a jewellery store, I enrolled in the business program at the community college in Halifax, with much encouragement from my co-workers, anxious older women, who, like my mother, feared I lacked purpose. Copies of my application forms were tucked in a brown envelope under my purse on the passenger seat, along with the letter that notified me of my entry interview scheduled for 9:15. After crossing the bridge, I made a left on Gottingen, a right on Cornwallis and another left onto North Park, then continued to zigzag my way through the city streets until I pulled into the college parking lot at five past nine, just enough time to find a washroom and tame the frizz in my hair before I checked in.

The interview took place in a vacant classroom with chalk dust still heavy in the air. A panel of three people, two women and one man, sat across from me at a large table and asked questions while they reviewed my application and made additional notes. “Is there a specific reason why you want to take this course?” one of the women asked. She rested her chin on the back of one hand, and balanced a black pen like a cigarette between two fingers of the other while she waited for my answer.

“No,” I replied. “I'm not sure what I intend to do once I complete the program, but I believe the skills I acquire will enable me to find a better job.” This must have been close to what she wanted to hear because I was immediately accepted into the program.

On the first day of classes, I noticed a familiar face in the room, a pretty redhead who, although not a friend, was an acquaintance from high school. Both of us were from the Dartmouth side of the harbour, a situation that produced a similar bond to one created when two Canadians met while travelling Europe. Her name was Sheri. We quickly became allies, sitting next to each other in every course and developing a bit of a reputation for pushing the limits. We especially enjoyed flustering our accounting instructor, a small man who was not much more than five years our senior. This we turned into a competition to see how quickly our remarks would cause him to blush or remove his glasses and wipe the perspiration from his forehead. Of course, in the keeping of books, debits and credits line up in their proper places, columns are totalled, and numbers are either black or red; so no matter how disruptive we were, Sheri and I made excellent marks.

We attended the college dances, usually arriving in my beat-up car that occasionally left us stranded if the alternator went or the battery died. That's how we met Brian. He gave us a boost when the car refused to start after stalling at a light. It was late November, cold, windy and dark. We stood next to my brown and rusted Acadian, its flashing amber lights reflecting off the wet pavement, shivering while irate drivers pulled out around us, and giddy from the litre of wine we had finished while parked behind the Canadian Tire store.

He pulled up in an old Toyota that looked no better than my Acadian. “You ladies need some help?”

Ladies! Sheri and I made eye contact, then quickly looked away for fear we would burst into laughter and scare him off.

“I have cables,” I said, the wine making my voice louder than usual.

“Good, I'll just turn around up here then.”

Brian manoeuvred his car so that our front bumpers almost kissed. I popped the hood before retrieving the cables from the back hatch. He wiped the battery terminals with a rag that looked like it might have been a pyjama shirt several years earlier. As he attached the cables, I slipped in behind the steering wheel.

“We should invite him to the dance,” Sheri said, leaning in the open window.

At the same moment, I heard Brian's okay and turned the key. The engine coughed a few times, so I pressed the accelerator and it started to idle. “Go for it,” I said. “He's pretty easy on the eyes and he thinks we're ladies.”

“Can I follow you ladies somewhere to make sure you arrive safely?” he asked.

There was that word again. It was difficult to stifle the urge to giggle.

“We're going to the dance at the college,” said Sheri. “Would you like to come?”

He introduced himself and tagged along. When we arrived, we dragged three empty chairs up to a loud table at the back and sat down. Pint bottles slipped out of denim jackets to offer us sips of premixed drinks, and we settled into the wildness of the event. By the time the night was over, I had allowed myself to be picked up by a senior from the drafting program, and Brian, obviously smitten with Sheri, offered to drive her home.

After that, Sheri and Brian started seeing each other on a regular basis, while Sheri and I continued our day-to-day antics without interruption. She never really said much about him, other than that they'd gone to a particular movie or for a drive down the shore on the weekend. I would see him when she brought him to a dance, or when I met them somewhere for a drink.

Right before graduation, Sheri and I went out together for the last time. We went to The Villager, a Dartmouth pub known for live music and cheap draft. People filled the tables and crowded the bar. Most were our own age, or slightly older; many we recognized as regulars. Cigarette smoke coiled towards the ceiling like unfinished thoughts, while a cover of Bob Seger's “Night Moves” vibrated four-foot speakers. As usual, the dance floor was full. Within minutes of finding a seat, both of us were asked to dance.

“What's your opinion of Brian?” Sheri asked when we found ourselves back at our table together.

“I think he's nice, but I don't know him the way you do. Why?”

“He is nice, and my parents really like him. They think I should marry him.”

“Do you want to marry him?”

She didn't answer me. She was asked to dance by one of the regulars and said yes to him instead. I sat watching her, how whenever she stepped under the blue spotlight, her hair turned crimson. Then a plaid shirt blocked her from my view. I looked up and smiled and was escorted to the floor. By the time we were together again, our mood was celebratory and the unfinished conversation was abandoned.

I didn't see much of Sheri after graduation. Both of us fell into routines that involved new jobs and different people. I wasn't surprised, several months later, when a wedding invitation arrived with her return address on it. Not until I opened it. She was marrying someone named Carleton Baker.

“I'm pregnant,” she confided, looking slim and white on her wedding day.

“Well, you could have fooled me.” We were in the kitchen of the reception hall. I was downing a glass of wine, and she was sipping ice water.

“We're both very excited,” she continued, “and glad to be starting our family while still relatively young.”

I had recognized Carleton from The Villager, had probably danced with him myself on numerous occasions. I was still wondering what had happened to Brian but thought it best not to ask too many questions.

 

A few years later, while walking on Granville Street, I ran into Brian. He greeted me with a large smile, and we decided to have lunch together. Holding pizza slices on paper plates, we strolled among the crowds of the busker festival taking place on the Halifax waterfront. A man with a diamond earring and dark hair tied back with a leather thong juggled torches of fire while standing on another man's shoulders. Afterwards we walked over to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and sat facing the harbour. Brian told me he worked for the provincial government, and I sheepishly had to admit that I was on my third job since finishing college.

At the time, I was sharing a house with two guys, one an electrician, and the other a carpenter. Both of them had a bit of a thing for me, and I had a bit of a thing for the carpenter, who had an on-again-off-again girlfriend. We were all blatantly obvious, although none of us made a move, preferring instead to exist playfully in the midst of the sexual tension. When Brian asked me out that afternoon, I accepted.

We began dating, neither of us mentioning Sheri or what had happened between them. On weekends, we liked going to bars where we could dance. Other times, we would either go to a movie or rent a video and watch it in his small basement apartment, on a sofa bed covered with a chevron afghan that was a nubby orange and green. When I stayed the night, Brian was always careful, using condoms even though I told him I was on the pill.

Mostly, we rented romantic comedies, forgettable paint-by-number stories of couples falling in and out and back in love again, stories that ended without a need to know what comes after. “You choose,” Brian always said. Since I didn't care for violence or car chases, and movies requiring too much concentration had a tendency to put us to sleep, romantic comedies, as shallow as they were, were my preferred option. We must have watched hundreds of them by the night Brian started talking about marriage. It wasn't as if he was proposing, just prioritizing his dreams and stating a game plan. The apartment still smelled of the popcorn we'd made earlier. The credits rolled, and the movie theme played in the background. “I don't think I want to have kids until I can afford a house,” he stated, turning the volume down on the television.

“How long do you think that will take?” I had the notion that Brian was feeling me out. Marriage and children were not things I had previously given much thought to. My sister had been the one who dressed up as a bride and played house with dolls and dishes. I was the one who bombed train cars with mud balls one day and imagined being a movie star the next. I slipped into the concept, picturing a sequined gown and four-inch heels, and allowed myself to get hung up on the details of the shoes before Brian responded.

“Another few years,” he said. “That's why I live here, to save money. I already have a sizable down payment. I don't want to be a slave to a high mortgage, and my wife can stay home after the kids are born.”

“But what if she wants to work?”

“She won't need to. My salary will cover everything. Don't you think it's better for the kids?”

I was holding a brown plastic bowl still half full of popcorn and set it on the coffee table. “But what if she wants to work?” I asked again.

He hesitated and appeared to struggle with the question. When he did respond, his voice was weary. “I would never expect her to stay at home if she really didn't want to. I was just thinking about having kids.”

I carried the popcorn bowl to the sink and asked him to drive me home. He did and, as always, walked me to the front door. Then he leaned in to kiss me. What I did was involuntary. Something inside me had shifted, as if smelling an odour so vile that my stomach turned. Just as his lips touched mine I retched. There was the tightening in my throat and jerking motion of my head, which alone I could have probably explained. But the offensive noise that accompanied them could be nothing other than the sound of a gag. It was dark. I didn't see the look on his face when he pulled away from me and turned around. Neither one of us said a word.

I slept with the carpenter that night, maybe to convince myself that I was still desirable. I sought him out, offered him the bottle of Southern Comfort I grabbed from the fridge, and used my body as a chaser. In the morning, after vomiting any remnants of the syrupy liqueur left in my stomach, I told him not to ditch his girlfriend for me because I was leaving. I couldn't stay — the electrician would never forgive me.

Not only did I leave the house, I also left my job and the province. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time. I moved to Toronto, where I flitted between jobs. Then I attended university, where I flitted between majors until I couldn't afford to go anymore. I was working at a temp agency and living with an engineer when I decided to return home for a visit. The excuse was to see my parents. The actual purpose was to create some space so I could plan my eventual escape from Toronto. Although I couldn't put my finger on precisely what it was I needed to get away from, I had to leave the city.

For the first weekend, I spent all my time with my mother and father. We visited my brother and sister and their families and ate out at an Italian restaurant that was the newest dining spot in Dartmouth. My mother said that the building used to be a gallery, and before that, it was a residence, one of the older homes in the area. It was moved up Main Street to its present location after the old property had been purchased to build a strip mall. I told her I had no recollection of the building or what was once in the spot where it now stood. “You were never one for such details,” she said before gushing over the warm tones of the decor.

I wanted to ask her what she meant but decided not to, aware that she would turn it into something bigger than a discussion about an old house. All our telephone conversations carried the same undertone, as if she wanted to hear words other than those I delivered. “I'm thinking of moving back,” I said to change the subject. “I was wondering if I could live at home for a bit until I got on my feet.”

The two of them glanced at each other, passing a look between them before my mother responded. “Your father and I will certainly be happy to have you home, and we have no problem with you staying with us for a bit, but what about that guy you're living with? Where does he fit into all this?”

 

On Monday morning, after my parents went to work, I lounged in my housecoat, eating cold cereal and flipping through The Chronicle Herald. I don't normally read the business section, preferring the lighter fares of lifestyles and entertainment, but something caught my eye. A face in a photo on the section's front page, the woman projecting such confidence that the camera lens was able to capture it the way it captures sunlight or snow. It was Sheri, standing next to Carleton. I skimmed the article that summarized how they owned and operated the fastest-growing financial planning franchise in the city. It mentioned the many charities they supported and how they balanced their lives to afford their children, twelve and fifteen, the quality time they deserved. I don't know why it never dawned on me before. I'd always thought that what had happened to Sheri was unfortunate, not realizing until that moment that getting pregnant by Carleton, and I had no doubt it was by Carleton, was not an accident.