I trot past the church and the manse and up the hill to our place where I grab my bike from the garage. Yesterday’s skirt and blouse are stuffed in a grocery bag on the rear wheel rack. I put my right foot on the pedal and push, then swing my left leg over. I am pumping before I hit asphalt. My neck aches, my throat is raw and my ears plugged at the damp cold on the first hill. By the time I reach the Ford Road it’s like sailing with the rosy-gold sun on the back of my head, but it isn’t enough. The dreams swarm over me and I let them.
1
I am on a train in a compartment with six others who are speaking French. I try out my voice. Softly, to myself, when the others are asleep. The commotion of machinery is loud but consistent. If I could find its rhythm, I might sleep. I do not fit the seat, and pain stabs my shoulders. The man beside me speaks another language than French, maybe German. He has made it clear he wants nothing to do with me.
2
Mid-morning. By myself. Blue seats. A new train. The backsides of factories pass, breaking up long stretches of yellow-green fields. The leaves are polished browns, not the thrusting reds and oranges of home. I am in France. Mother sits five rows ahead. From the beginning Mother has refused to sit beside me. The possibility of her arm jostling mine or her bare knee grazing my unshaven one disturbs her, arousing Mother to the point of fear. I watch the back of Mother’s head, content.
The cook is the only one in the main lodge before me. I turn on the hot tap, swishing the water around each stainless-steel sink. I like to hold the spout so the water hits the side of the basin and spreads into one flat stream. At this hour, the water takes at least five minutes to come out hot so I let it run, and squat to get bleach, J-Cloths and SOS pads from the cupboard under the sink. I have my own set of yellow rubber gloves with M.B. written inside the cuffs in black magic marker.
When the water is steaming, I plug the centre drain and add three capfuls of Javex.
My body vibrates as if I have just stepped off a train. The Mother in my dream preoccupies me. That Mother is odd, nothing like Sylvia, but she is mine. My heartbeat is relentless in my ears, neck, chest. The dreams fill me with a strange happiness, maybe because they are set in France. French is my favourite and best subject in school. My last teacher gave slide shows on Fridays, serving croissants and cocoa. I feel closer to Sylvia than ever before.
When the middle sink is full, I swing the tap over the third sink and fill it with plain water. Then I turn on the cold. When I am able to hold my hand in the water, I squirt a circle of Sunlight into the first sink and fill it.
Sam writes messages to Sylvia on lined paper torn from pocket notepads bought at filling stations. He leaves these notes wherever they occur to him: his work table, the toaster oven, his dashboard. Every so often he collects the scraps in a handful and stuffs them into a Black Cat cigar box on his dresser.
Sam’s messages to his wife turn up between lists of chores and sundries jotted down in spidery capital letters:
CLEAN OUT EAVESTROUGH
3 BAG MILK
YOU ARE MINE SWEETHEART
CARTON EGGS
SIGN REPORT CARDS
26 RYE
MON — FILL TANK GAS ($13)
STAPLER BACK TO WORK
YOU ARE SOMEWHERE. I AM
SEARCHING. WHEREVER YOU ARE.
SHARPEN KNIVES
MINUTES LAST CLUB MEET
CLEAN GOOD SHOES
LET ME CALL YOU BABY. I’M THE ONE
FOR YOU. WAITING.
ROTO-TILL
After nearly five years with Sylvia gone, Sam’s box is full of these absent-minded notes. I found them years ago and read them often, savouring the odd lines to my mother:
I WILL MAKE YOU MINE WHEN YOU
RETURN TO ME LOVE.
YOU ARE THE MOST AND DON’T I
KNOW IT.
HANG IN THERE DARLIN I’M RIGHT
HERE YOURS.
They are like Hallmark cards but not as poetic though Sam’s words do hold a sombre hopefulness more appropriate to true love. I read these lines as if they were written to me, as if I am the one who left a lover yearning in our empty bedroom. I’ve believed that when I am a lover, the desperation and utter faith behind these lines will be my right. After Rick, I am no longer so sure.
This evidence of Sam’s unfaltering belief in my mother’s return comforts me. I’ve never thought about my parents loving each other. They’ve been apart since I was twelve and I’ve spent more time thinking about my mother’s love for me than her love for my father. That Sam’s love is obvious is good. I sit cross-legged on his pine bedroom floor, my toes falling asleep under the weight of my knees, my head dizzy from bending my neck, and let myself trust in the Sylvia of my father’s urgent lines, a Sylvia certain she is loved but busy with important work.
For long moments, I can forget my body and believe in a distracted and vital Sylvia who writes intense, soothing, unsent replies to Sam. That Sylvia is on her way home.
Then the truth hits again, seething through me like acid released by a dam. Sam is wrong. Lovers are supposed to be together and if Sylvia reciprocated his love she would have made her way to him by now. It is easier to believe the romance: Sylvia in the clutches of another more possessive lover, unable to return to where she is loved the most. Sylvia is crazy; she could have wandered off and been picked up on the road by dangerous people.
I keep a folded newspaper clipping behind my bulletin board:
SAN FRANCISCO —Kidnapper caught. Linda Smith, 15, was kidnapped after a Nasty Matters concert Feb.12 at the Filmore East. Smith claims the kidnapper used cigarettes and candle wax, among other things, to torture her. “We went for drives and walks all the time but I was too scared to escape. When he went into the washroom at a Texaco I knew I had to run.” Mark Weiss of Palo Alto will appear in court Tuesday.
Sylvia could be with a man like that, or a husband and wife, or even a biker gang. Maybe she is too crazy to get away.
My mother’s clothes still hang in her closet; Sam has never remarried or even dated. Sylvia must have made a life away from her husband and children. A life important enough to run to. I tuck in my chin at the thought. Maybe that other life is my mother’s due but I can’t help but feel I deserve it too.
The only dishes at this time of morning are coffee cups and dessert plates stained with strawberry juice and dried cream. I put my gloves on and drop each dish into the soap sink.
In her new life my mother could be speeding around France on a moped, eyes goggled, hair and neck swathed in chiffon, a dusky Grace Kelly. Anything is possible. What is also possible, if Sylvia has escaped, if she is alive and free to choose, is that she might return to Apple Ford. Sam is ready, Nicky too. Me, I’m not so sure.
2 Walking Like an Indian
The summer I turned twelve Sylvia gave up. She was through being a mother and a wife, had done it well over the years but no more. She spent her days on the couch, moving to the kitchen to smoke when we came in from school. She tapped her nails on the table and stared out the window, waiting for Sam. When he got home, she rolled her eyes at him and went back to the couch. Often a few tears leaked out as she flopped onto her stomach and pushed her head under a throw pillow,