Where we live, p.27
Where We Live, page 27
He has known these guys for years, from the café. They would do anything for him. They helped him move, after Veronika moved out and he had to sell the townhouse.
Ken had come over and fixed some things around the apartment. He’d got some double-faced tape and stuck down the gaping carpet seam, where the wheelchair got stuck, replaced a fuse in the old range and some burned-out bulbs, got some drapes from someone’s garage sale and hung them up. He drops by often to see if there is anything he can do for Cliff.
Anyway, the guys at the coffee shop just like to talk. They are smarter than Cliff; they know more than him. Once or twice he’d questioned them about things that didn’t make sense or sound right, but they are always able to point out facts he didn’t know.
They point out things for him to read on the internet.
I tell you what, Pete says. The coloured races, they are always inferior to the white. It’s scientific fact. They are lower on the evolutionary scale.
Evolution! Ernie says. That’s another damned liberal lie. I read that it’s all bunk. Someone found a leaf wedge in a piece of rock that supposedly had layers dating back billions of years. One leaf, cutting through all of those layers! Now doesn’t that disprove it?
Are you saying you don’t believe in evolution? Cliff asks, forgetting to lie low.
He hasn’t really listened before. He has not thought about the rift between what the guys have been saying and what the world is like to him, Cliff. If there’s one thing Cliff knows, it’s how the earth formed and grew, how the billions of creatures on it have come to be. He hasn’t just read every book he could find and watched every nature documentary made. He has felt it, in his observation of growing plants, in the way leaves uncurl and flow into being; in the way the earth tilts and wobbles and creates time and climate; in the way the soil holds a megacity of microbes all interacting with one another and the fungi and nematodes and earthworms and the roots of the plants that it anchors.
He thinks of Maria and Delores, the Filipina women who look after his mom, Crystal. They’re sisters; they share a house in Powell River and look after each other’s kids and take turns driving or bussing the long route into Butterfly Lake. He’s watched them with Crystal, seen how they treat her. They care.
And then suddenly he has had enough. Enough for one day. He can’t listen to their talk anymore. It has soured his stomach; it has soured the day.
Maybe more than the day. He wonders why he keeps meeting with them. There is something wrong with their talk, he can see that. It’s sour. It’s like sour soil: nothing can live or thrive in it.
They are souring the world, these men, with their ugly talk.
He starts to push to his feet.
You ready to go? Ken says. Wait, I’ll come with you.
No, Cliff says; no, I’m okay. He has parked his truck a little way down the plaza lot, but he can make it now, going slowly.
Ken gets up and stands by Cliff’s chair, as if to give him a hand. Then he takes off his hat, suddenly places it on Cliff’s head.
Cliff gets up, using his knees, as the physiotherapist has been nagging him to do. He straightens his back. Oof. Oof. The cramping pain shooting from his back muscles throughout his body. The wrench of nausea in his gut. He breathes through it. He grips the table and breathes.
When he’s on his feet he lifts off the hat and holds it politely toward Ken. No point in not being polite, is there? Then he turns, carefully, and begins the walk away from the table.
The Mounties had given him the name of a forestry consultant based in Powell River, and he calls her to come in, assess the damage, make suggestions. When she arrives, he sees that she’s a woman of about his age. She says that she grew up just outside Powell River, that she has two children, in their teens, that she has recently moved back to the Sunshine Coast. She and Cliff talk for a long time, in the raw clearing of Cliff’s forest. Elise, her name is. She’s tall, a little taller than Cliff, with a long heavy braid of hair, nut-brown threaded with some silver. Her face is free of makeup; she’s wearing real jeans, not the skin-tight kind, and boots, and a grey-green T-shirt that matches her eyes, with a plaid flannel shirt over it.
She says: I think you can let it become meadow. That will be a sort of natural progression. You’ll get some Ribes moving in;— that’s currants and gooseberry;— and some hazel. And then some alder and fir. The cedar will come back, but not for a few years.
She stands by the bier of toppled yellow cedars and seems to mourn them, as he does.
She says: You need nurse logs, but not five of them. You might as well sell them on. Or donate them, if you like. There’s a project building houses, on Musqueam land.
He thinks he would like to donate the trees, yes.
She says: There’s some damage you should mediate, so you don’t get a monoculture of fireweed. You’ll want to go in with a hand shovel, break up the soil where the heavy equipment has compressed it. Take out the cedar chips and trimmings, as they’ll inhibit your growth. If you have the time and patience, you could transplant some native species individually from more abundant spots, dig them in.
He thinks he might have the time and patience.
She says: This is a sweet piece of forest. It would be so good to leave it as it is. Home to a complex ecosystem, a web of trees and other plants, of fungi and animals from the microscopic to the large and charismatic. She says it’s a connective piece between two much larger forested areas;— a channel so that animals can move from one place to the other.
Cliff feels, talking to her, that something long asleep in him is awakening. He thinks of the nature documentaries he used to watch; of the small pieces of land he had always tried to protect, when he had his own landscaping business. Of the small perfect forest that he had tended on a client’s land, noting the wildflowers and shrubs, the mosses and ferns, that grew and receded and grew again.
He needs to be healthy again, to find a way to get back to work, to persuade the Singh brothers that he can do something useful. His affinity for plants is rising in his veins; it’s sending tendrils through his arms; pushing at his fingertips. He wants to be working again. No, he wants his own business, in which he can do something different. No lawn mowing; no hedge-trimming, but rather, gardening solely with indigenous plants. Restoring ecosystems in yards large and small, all over the city. Inviting back the rainforest that once covered that western point of land.
37
The first thing Olivia says is: I’m not staying.
What?
I’m only here for a week, to help you get the house ready to stage. Then I’m going back to Toronto.
Have you got a job?
It takes ages, Olivia says, to get a job in environmental economics.
So what are you going to do?
I’ll find a job. Retail or whatever. For the time being.
Okay, Cleo says. But you could do that here. And in Toronto you’ll have to pay rent.
Yes, but I wouldn’t be living with you, in your apartment, would I? Olivia says. So, I’d have to rent anyway. And it’s my decision.
Have you got a place to move into? I thought you were shipping things back?
You don’t need to worry about it, Olivia says. You don’t need to make a big deal of it.
Am I making a big deal? Cleo asks.
Olivia says, Yes, you are.
They are in Olivia’s big downstairs bedroom. Cleo has provided a number of large containers;— big plastic tubs, packing boxes;—as well as packing tape and labels and big black garbage bags for Olivia to use to sort her belongings. She has helped Olivia pull her stuff out of cupboards and closets, and now Olivia sits on a step stool surrounded by it all;— the material stuff of her childhood. Storage tubs spill out spangled dance costumes, mounds of stuffed toys, childhood books, dolls and puppets and building toys, sheaves of notebooks and birthday cards and journals and scrapbooks and artwork.
The evidence of a privileged, enriched childhood.
She has asked Olivia to sort out her things, because there is quite a lot, more than they probably want to store, and because it seems respectful to let Olivia do it herself. But now her daughter sits there, scrolling through her phone, texting, and not making any headway. They have had a little nostalgia-fest, looking at Olivia’s tiny dance costumes, starting from her preschool years;— the neon Lycra jumpsuits, the tulle and ribbon roses and marabou-decorated velvet. Olivia has pulled some rather battered stuffies from a tub and held them up critically. But now she is stalled.
Do you need help? Cleo asks. She herself works best alone, especially when doing things like sorting, but she knows Olivia works best collaboratively. She likes company, interaction when she has a chore to do;— even one that would seem to require a lot of concentration, like essay-writing.
No, Olivia says.
It’s a surprise, Cleo says, trying to keep her voice light, casual. You told me you were planning to move back to Vancouver after you defended your thesis.
Maybe you just assumed that?
I don’t think so, Cleo says. I think we had several conversations about the summer, and specifically, a month ago, you asked me to transfer money to your account to pay for your plane ticket and shipping your things back.
A month ago, yeah, maybe, Olivia says. Anyway, it was the same price basically for the round trip, so I got that instead. I’ll pay you back when I get a job, if the money is important to you.
I doubt you’ll have anything left after paying rent from a minimum wage job, Cleo says.
I’ll manage, Olivia says.
There’s something in the way Olivia says the word manage. A slight hesitation, an infinitesimal catch.
Olivia’s pronunciation of that one word would have told her something was up, if she hadn’t already been alerted by the gratuitous rudeness.
But Olivia won’t tell her the truth at this point. The aggression and defensiveness tell her that.
She says: You might have let me know. I thought you would be here for the fall, and looking for a job here, and I made plans around that.
I never asked you to.
Cleo is pretty sure that the conversations had been clearly based on the premise that Olivia would be moving in with Cleo for a while, until she had a job, was able to get a shared place, at least. Even an entry-level professional job wouldn’t pay well enough to cover Vancouver rents, but they had talked about Olivia finding work, probably in the investment arm of a bank, and then looking around for a roommate with whom to share. In the meantime, Cleo had said, Olivia could have her spare bedroom in her new condo. The condo she will buy, once she has sold her house. She has already rented a large storage unit, so that Olivia can have the space.
She has explained all of this. They have discussed it.
I don’t think you listen very well, Olivia says, now.
Cleo holds herself still for a moment, does not answer. It is true, perhaps. Not in the way Olivia means it, but true that she is not good at hearing what Olivia is saying, behind her hostile back-talk, her anxiety-driven accusations.
She says, only, I wish you were staying for more than a week. I miss you. I’ve hardly seen you, these past six years.
I made so many trips back here, Olivia says.
Very short ones, Cleo thinks, but she says, only: I miss you.
You are always busy, anyway, Olivia says.
Is that what this is about? Is Olivia angry because she feels Cleo is pushing her out? Pushing her away? But Olivia is always the first to take her leave. If Cleo books time off, clears her agenda in anticipation of Olivia’s visits, she’s left with blank time while Olivia goes out with friends.
She feels she must correct Olivia’s statements. She has not been an absent or distant mother. That is one thing she has not been, and it’s unfair to be accused of it, as well as disturbing to think that Olivia has that misconception. But if she contradicts what Olivia says, their argument will just escalate. She will not do it, this time. She will not participate in letting the conversation escalate to a full-blown argument. She will not.
They are too fragile, both of them; the moment is too fraught. Something might break, irreparably.
She averts her face, blinks back tears.
I need to go out soon, Olivia says, abruptly.
But we need to get the sorting done, Cleo says. You’re only here for a few days, you say. And the Realtor is coming next week.
Olivia says, abruptly: Throw it all out. I don’t want any of it.
Cleo sighs. Of course they aren’t going to throw it out. All of Olivia’s keepsakes, her childhood treasures.
I’m serious, Olivia says. I don’t want any of it. I’m not taking it back with me. I’ll never have enough space for it.
I said I would store some of it, Cleo says. A reasonable amount. That’s what parents do. I just won’t have space for a dozen big boxes.
I don’t want any of it, do you understand? Just throw it all out.
No, Cleo says. No. We can’t do that. You’ll want some of these things. You’ll value some of these things, when you’re older.
I have nowhere to put it, Olivia says. I’m not carting it around, when I’m basically homeless.
Oh, for goodness’ sake, Cleo thinks.
And here’s Sam, now, coming home from his job, slinging off his backpack as he starts across the room. She’ll have to get Sam to pack up, too, but there’s still time.
And Sam will be easy, as he always is. He’d been a difficult child: over-sensitive, clingy, fearful, until his teens, and then had become the dream son. He is practical, considerate, reasonable. He does not make her guess what he wants.
She and Sam can say anything to each other, and not be misunderstood. And he never asks for what is not possible to give.
Sam picks up one of the scruffy plush toys from the overflowing tub. Hey, it’s Georgie, he says.
The past floods the room: Georgie, the stuffed otter without which, for many years, nothing happened, neither sleep nor car trips nor daily routines.
Olivia snatches it from him. Don’t touch that!
Sam holds his hands up, palms out. I know, I know. He’s laughing, and then Olivia laughs, too.
Cleo smiles. Olivia, she is about to say: Olivia, you’re not going to toss Georgie away, are you? But she doesn’t say it. She holds her tongue. It is not necessary to say it.
She says, instead: Who’s hungry? Should we get some takeout, tonight? Should we do that? A big load of dishes from Sula?
She doesn’t get up or bustle for her phone or the menu, when she says it: she sits where she is, on the small stool she has carried downstairs for the purpose of sitting and sorting items. She remains where she is, on the little stool, looking up at her tall grown children. Should we order in a feast? she asks.
And they look at her, and say yes, Mom, let’s do that. Yes. And between them they decide on the food; they order it themselves; they pay for it themselves; they drive to the restaurant to pick it up.
They will survive, she thinks, while they are gone. They are grown, now: almost twenty-five and almost twenty-two. In spite of their reluctance to take on certain adult behaviours that she would expect, they are grown.
She remembers, now, Olivia’s birth: how Olivia had fought against the contractions that would expel her into the world. How in the middle of one fierce contraction Cleo had looked down at her own naked swollen belly and had seen the outline of Olivia’s back pushing up against the taut skin. And then how Olivia’s pulse and oxygenation levels had dropped, dangerously, and how the nitrous oxide that was supposed to carry Cleo through the crushing pain of back labour could not help her; how she dropped to the bed and cried that she could not do it anymore. How Olivia had fought being born. And yet, they have photos taken minutes after her birth, in which she is gazing up at Trent, who held her first, and smiling placidly.
It’s like there is something sticky, web-like, enveloping her and Olivia. Something that needs to be cleared away before Olivia can see her as just another human being. She can sense that Olivia feels that too;— is fighting something she’s not completely aware of. That Olivia’s hostility is both a rude cry of her anxiety, of her fears of being unwanted, and at the same time the noise of her trying to break free of her role as daughter, as child.
Cleo wonders when Olivia will reach that magical age at which daughters are supposed to achieve emotional separation;— are supposed to stop projecting all of their unhappiness onto their mothers, and move toward a friendly, adult relationship with them. It doesn’t seem close to happening.
She wonders if there is something she has forgotten to do.
She hears the car in the driveway, the door opening, her children’s voices. She climbs the stairs up to the living level, where her children have brought the food into the kitchen, the cartons and foil pans redolent with ancient spices, with bread and herbs, rice and pulses and meats. She moves, smiling, to the table, and waits as they hand around the placemats, the plates, the utensils, the warm steam-filled vessels of food.
Maybe it’s something about the containers of richly sauced, spicy Indian food, the plenitude and comfort of it. Or maybe the beers they are all sharing, or the music that Sam has put on: eighties pop, which she had played for her children, danced to with them, when they were very young. Most of her music collection had been acquired in the 80s, when she was in her teens. The three of them sprawl now on the oversized orange sectional sofa, Olivia’s feet in Sam’s lap, her head on Cleo’s lap, listening to (singing along with) Bonnie Tyler and Wham! and the Pointer Sisters. It’s silly: none of them, Cleo suspects, would be caught dead doing this outside of this room, this circle of the three of them. Maybe it’s that feeling of mutual silliness, mutual safety.
