Catch Me When I Fall (2 page)

As she made herself a fried-egg sandwich, she considered this morning's service. She felt a kinship with Thomas, the disciple who wouldn't believe till he saw with his own eyes. Once, he was her namesake—Thomas the doubter. But when she married Russell, she went from Sarah Thomas to Mrs. Uittenbroek. Not a name you find in the Bible.

She toasted some bread and buttered it. What would she tell Marisa this week? The truth? Marisa would back off. Badger someone else. If she told Marisa that she spent the long nights without Russell stewing, mulling, thoughts twisting as if she were wringing out a tea towel, Marisa would find another
GEMS
leader. But she'd return and try to scold her back into believing. Sic the minister on her for a “pastoral visit.” Tell the Women's Prayer Circle about her. And if none of that worked, if it didn't make her faith bloom anew, Marisa would treat her like chaff among the wheat.

Sarah ate her sandwich and washed the plate, utensils, and frying pan. She watered the spider plant and the African violets. Then she strolled to the shelf where she kept her weather records, a slowly growing collection of books in which she recorded each day's statistics, just as her mother had been doing for fifty-five years. This year's book was easy to spot among all the older ones, all ordinary notebooks bound in cheap vinyl. A misprint from a small publishing company, her current book sported a glossy cover—
God's Plan for the Ages
by Hendrik Mellema. Because of whatever had gone wrong in the printing process, the pages inside were all blank. She found it on a remainder table at a Christian bookstore where she'd been shopping with Marisa for Sunday-school supplies. Striding up beside her and nosing over her shoulder, Marisa had said, “That's terrible. Irreverent. They shouldn't sell that!” Sarah had been thinking the same thing until she spoke.

“Maybe it's God's joke.” She sounded belligerent. “Who is Mr. Hendrik Mellema to presume he knows God's plan?” Then—she didn't know what got into her—she said, “If there
is
a plan—”

Marisa slapped her hand, in the middle of the Blessed Assurance Book Store. “You don't say things like that,” she said. “You don't mean it!” Her face all flushed and mottled, she marched away.

Sarah opened the book and filled in yesterday's date.
March 22
. She looked back at the glossy letters on the cover, thinking about how easy it had been to believe when she was ten. She swallowed everything Marisa and the
GEMS
leaders told her, and in turn got swallowed up—out of the turmoil of her parents' world and into the benign arms of the congregation. She liked the consistency and the sense of belonging. In time she joined the youth group, met Russell there, and married him. She entered the fold, bought the whole field.

Sarah knew that people believed in all kinds of nonsense—in righteous wars and bigamy, in veganism, and Wicca. Last year, an oil company executive from Calgary drove out in his Lexus to pick out the cow he wanted for his freezer. Said he could tell from looking which one had the right aura to make superior meat.

She continued writing—
High temp: 1. Low temp: -10. Precipitation: 12 mm—
and then returned the book to the shelf, pushing the book spines into an even row. She wouldn't make a good
GEMS
counsellor right now. Not without conviction, without faith. But Marisa was a bulldozer, and Sarah was afraid. She knew how things were here, with culture and religion as intertwined as beaten eggs. She gave herself good advice. Keep quiet.

•  •  •

Except for a few short breakups early on, Sarah had been with Russell since she was sixteen. That was the summer they both worked at the herbarium. They traipsed through pastures and bushes and fields to find weeds that weren't already mounted on Bristol board at the research station. They pressed them and labelled them with their botanical and common names, wrote down when and where they picked them. It was hard to find anything new—the herbarium's collection went back to 1932. “Oxeye Daisy,” Sarah said one day, picking it, even though it was common as barley. She methodically pulled off the petals, silently reciting, “He loves me, he loves me not.” “Do you remember its category?” she asked aloud. “Invasive, noxious, or nuisance weed?”

“Pretty,” he said.

“Not a category.”

“It's people who decide these plants are weeds,” Russell said. “Farmers. My mom grows those in her flower garden.” He grinned at her just as she reached the last petal.
He loves me.

On the August long weekend, she went camping at Gull Lake with Marisa and their friend Helena. They returned from a late-evening swim to find a note, the words squeezed out in ketchup on their picnic table:
Russell was here
. Ants marched through the sticky letters. Later, they found their sleeping bags full of corn flakes. “This is your fault,” Marisa screamed at Sarah. She backed out of the tent, dragging the sleeping bag, and she shook it madly. Helena and Sarah giggled. Sarah loved that summer. She was home only to sleep. She spent Monday to Friday at work, Saturday with friends at youth group events, Sunday at church. She went to both services to see Russell, maybe sit next to him in the pew. One Saturday night, there was a youth group picnic at Ryders Park. Russell was waiting for her when she came out of the bathroom. They stood under a tree and kissed for a long time. Later, at the campfire, they held hands. Brad Bouwen played guitar, and they sang camp songs and Beatles songs and church songs. “‘I've got the peace-that-passes-understanding down in my heart,'” they sang. Ellie and Helena called, “Where?”

“‘Down in my heart to stay.'” Sarah felt it. She believed it. She thought it was there to stay.

•  •  •

By May she was still not pregnant. She leaned against the headboard, her long, slim arms clasped around her knees. Eleven unsuccessful months. She picked up the plastic tube that confirmed the bad news. The doctor had told her that after being on the pill for four years a pregnancy might not happen right away. Be patient, he'd advised. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser: the thick, wavy brown hair, the oval face, the sad hazel eyes, the shapely lips that Russell loved to trace with his finger. She turned her gaze to the window and watched the cold sleet fall outside. Eventually she called Russell.

“No luck this month.”

“Oh.” There was a moment of silence. “Should we see the doctor soon?”

“Maybe.”

“I'm not home on any weekdays till June. Can it wait till then?”

“Sure.” The cold rain slid down the window. Her voice sounded as sluggish as the spring.

“It'll happen, hon. You just need to stop worrying about it. How's work?”

“Same old.” Nothing much ever happened at the Co-op farm supply store. If she didn't get pregnant soon, she was going to have to look for a more interesting job. Russell was in a chatty mood—he told her stories about the Newfoundlanders he was working with and the rich oil executives who didn't know how to change the oil in their own cars. After a while, the timbre of his voice with the drone of the rain began to comfort her.

“I should go,” he said. “Anything else?”

I'm not sure I can go to church anymore, she wanted to say. I'm not sure what I believe. And the longer you're gone, the more I fret.

“Come home soon. I miss you.”

After she hung up the phone, she stared at the single pink line on the test stick, then threw it into the wastebasket. If there was a God, she thought, he wasn't one who cared about her.

•  •  •

Marisa called shortly after. “You weren't in church this morning.”

“I'm a little under the weather. A cold or something.”

“Probably because of the weather. Virus weather. We haven't been able to get into the fields at all yet.”

“I know.” Sarah hoisted herself off the bed and wandered to the dresser. “I wear barn boots to walk from the house to the car—the driveway's like gumbo.”

“Look, can you drop by tomorrow morning? You weaseled out of
GEMS
, so I hope you can find time to help organize the church rummage sale. Help me sort the donations. I've got garbage bags full of stuff already in my garage.”

Sarah picked a dead flower from the crown of thorns in the bedroom window. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

•  •  •

That night she woke to loud barking—though they didn't have a dog. The cows in the pasture nearest the house were lowing uneasily. She scurried out of bed and pulled on her robe and rubber boots. She remembered a coyote had raided the VanEngs' chicken coop the week before. Grabbing a broom to use as a weapon, she opened the door to darkness as black as the soil. Flicking on the yard light, she crossed the muddy driveway and turned toward the coop. Something lunged at her. Startled, she slipped in the mud and fell down hard as she screamed at the animal and slashed the broom in its direction. It backed up, barking fiercely, sharp white teeth visible in the dim light. Still swinging the broom, she clambered back up and flailed through the mud to the house. She opened the door, plunged inside, and slammed it. She grabbed the .22 from the mudroom—why hadn't she grabbed it before? She checked to see that it was loaded and lurched out the door. The beast barked, still in the yard. She aimed at it and fired once, twice. She heard a loud yelp and fired again. Had she killed it? She listened, hearing only the wind in the poplars and her ragged breath. She fetched a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, beginning to feel the pain in her wrist from the fall. She shone the light into the yard and saw the dark bushy shape slumped on the ground. A dog. It was a dog. Her wrist was throbbing. She went back inside and wrapped a bag of frozen peas around it. She climbed back into bed, shivering.

The next morning, after she had dragged the carcass behind the wood pile with her good arm, she called Marisa to cancel their meeting. “You should get an X-ray,” Marisa said. “I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes.” Sarah was too sore and tired to protest.

“Looks like Pete Kruger's dog,” Marisa said as she drove toward Red Deer. “Big, mean critter. Likes to wander. Killed two of our chickens last fall. Bram told Pete he'd shoot the dog if it ever showed up on our property again. He'll be glad to hear you did.”

“Hope Pete doesn't sue me.”

“As if. The dog attacked you! Good thing you did something.”

They watched some morning talk show on
TV
in the waiting room until the nurse called Sarah. The doctor said it was a sprain, not a break. She bandaged the arm, gave Sarah a sling, and told her not to use the arm for a while. Afterwards, Sarah and Marisa walked through the rain to the parking lot, where someone had placed miniscule flyers, like the scraps of paper in fortune cookies, under all the windshields. A few skittered across the pavement. With her good hand—the left one—Sarah picked one up and read,
God holds you in the palm of his hand.
Sarah laughed. Folding it, she dropped it into her purse.

“Just a sprain. Could be a lot worse,” Marisa said.

•  •  •

At Marisa's house, Sarah slumped at the kitchen table, feeling bleary from painkillers and lack of sleep. Marisa deposited two mugs of tea on the table, turned her chair backwards, and sat legs apart, elbows on the back of it. “You okay?”

“Sure.” She took a sip of bitter, lukewarm tea. “You wanted help with the rummage sale?”

“First we need to decide where we'll send the proceeds. So we can make a bulletin announcement and a flyer.” Marisa took a long slurp of her tea and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What do you think? The World Bible League? The Back-to-God Hour? Our missionaries afield?”

Sarah adjusted the spoon in the sugar bowl near her.
Missionaries afield
. That was one of many strange phrases she learned when she joined the church. Spoken with solemn reverence, as if you were referring to the recently deceased. She shook her head to clear the wooliness. “How about a women's shelter in Red Deer? Or a food bank?” She leaned forward. “I don't know if you've been reading the newspaper”—Marisa did not read newspapers; her world stretched to about a twenty-kilometre radius of Poplar Grove and included only churchgoing Dutch Canadians—“but there's need nearby. You don't have to go to foreign countries to find abused women, homeless people—”

“Whoa! You don't have to get your panties in a knot!” Marisa shook her head. “You're right. We should ‘act locally.' I saw that on a bumper sticker, and it makes good sense. Maybe we could support some of those programs that Cora Van Harn's son was involved in.”

Sarah was surprised into silence. Marisa didn't notice. “I've been meaning to do something about Cora lately anyway. She looks terrible. Maybe she'll get involved if we're helping one of those places. Like that rec centre Samuel went to.”

Sarah had been worried about Cora as well. Since Cora's son, Samuel, died late last summer, Cora's face was a ghost town. Her body too—less substantial each time Sarah saw her. “That's a good idea. Will you check it with the church council?”

“Yep.”

“Great.” Sarah got up and collected her purse from the floor. “I'm not going to be able to sort stuff today. Next week?”

“No problem. I can help Bram poison gophers this afternoon.”

•  •  •

When Sarah made her Profession of Faith, just before her wedding, she remembered thinking briefly about the enormity of what she was doing, what she was promising. How casually she had drifted into the faith, agreeing to believe. She stood at the front of the church, facing the congregation. Her parents sat in the second pew, uncomfortable, ill at ease, there only because she'd pleaded with them to come. Russell beamed at her from the front pew. In his murky Dutch accent Old Reverend Post had intoned, “Sarah Thomas, do yu prromise to do all yu can, with de help of de Holy Spirit, to strengzen your luf and commitment to Chrrist by sharing faithfully in de life of de shurch?” She'd felt an urge to laugh. And then, for a split second, she felt panic. But her voice—where had it come from?—surprised her. It was clear and steady. “I do, God helping me.”