February (18 page)

And balance table the other side, the instructor says. And they extend one arm and one leg. Helen’s left buttock bunches tight, all knotted and achy. Her arm begins to tremble. The high school boy is whistling softly. Just part of a phrase, something she actually recognizes, from Nirvana.

Keep your tongue pressed to your palate, breathe through your nose, open your chest and offer your heart, the instructor says. You’re going to offer your heart.

Helen is grateful for every one of her children. But she is most grateful, at this moment, for Gabrielle. Her youngest daughter is coming home for Christmas. If John buys the ticket. They sell out, those tickets. She had been after him. Remember to get your sister her ticket.

And Helen thinks of the crib. She’d had to put a crib together—Gabrielle’s crib—and she was alone and had jammed the skin between her thumb and index finger in the sliding metal thing that allowed you to lower the side, and she could not turn off the mobile that played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Something had caught in the winding mechanism of the mobile so it played on and on.

The crib would not go together—the piece labelled A did not attach to the corresponding latch that was also labelled A—and she took a hammer to it and bent the metal slot just slightly and then she kicked the shit out of it.

She kicked until she was certain she had broken a toe, and then she leaned the railing against the door frame and jumped on it so two wooden bars splintered, and then she threw the mobile at the wall and this somehow slowed “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” so that each note came out sluggishly.

It was the father’s job to put the crib together, it was Cal’s job, and now she didn’t have a crib. She was on her knees, bashing the thing with her fists, screaming at it, Cal’s job! She threw the hammer at the wall and it made a hole in the gyproc. She learned not to throw a hammer at the wall. It was one of the things she had learned and was grateful to know.

She stood in the corner of the bedroom looking at the broken crib with she didn’t know what kind of expression. Perhaps the same expression she wears now, the twisted silent yowl of stretched stomach muscles.

Helen is grateful her girls are honest with her. Her daughters tell her everything. They tell her because she does not judge. Helen has always let them do what they like. She doesn’t want them to be careful, but they are careful. It is the sinister calmness they can muster when they are all in the kitchen together that causes Helen to doubt herself. They worry over her and she does not like it.

Spread your fingers, the instructor says, so you have a strong foundation. We are going to move on to the warrior poses. For those of you not ready for the warrior poses, just follow as far as you can.

I am ready, Helen thinks, for the warrior poses.

Keep your back long, the instructor says. Lulu and Cathy are taller than Helen and they took jobs during high school without her telling them to do so and gave her money for rent. They waitressed or they babysat. They worked at the Newfoundland Hotel. They had uniforms and made excellent wages and it was their own business what they did with the rest of their money. They went to university. They had developed pragmatism about higher education; it would get them places. They hadn’t needed to know what they wanted to do; they were willing to do what everybody else was doing, but they kept an inner eye on a kind of anarchic wildness.

When Cathy was in high school, a policeman had knocked on Helen’s door and there was Cathy, so drunk she could hardly stand. A young cop holding Cathy up, and the cherry sending out streaks of red and blue for all the neighbours to see. And all Helen could think: Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Four in the morning and she had walked every street, going into the bars, wearing a cardigan that drooped below her ski jacket and sweatpants, seeing the crowds, everybody young and drunk and sexed up and sullen looking, and she had felt as though she were wearing a sandwich board that said
Somebody’s Mother.
But Cathy was not among them. Helen had made phone calls and walked in the bitter cold, and the stars were out and it was snowing.

And then the police car, and Helen was certain . . . because she’d had news before and it had felt like this, the gelid air, the brightness of the fluorescent light in the kitchen, the vaulting horror . . . but Cathy got out of the back of the patrol car more or less on her own; she was drunk and the knee was torn out of her jeans but she was alive.

She was asleep in a snowbank down by the harbour, the cop said. Helen held Cathy up by the shoulders of her jean jacket: her daughter’s pale skin, her black hair, her torn jeans, how comical it all seemed now that she was safe.

Thank you, Officer, I am certainly grateful, Helen said. The bloodied knee, streaks of mascara on her fifteen-year-old daughter’s pale freckled face. This was the daughter with the bluest eyes and an uncanny aptitude for math. A fierce intelligence she could mislay like an earring or a key.

The event flooded with its own ending. It was over. Cathy was safe. It was already mawkish and laced with the spice of a near miss, already converted into a story they would tell later on, chuckling: And that poor young police officer, the look on his face. And your mother, then, walking into that bar, Helen imagined herself saying later on. Down the road she could hear herself saying at a family dinner, referring to herself in the third person: And your mother, then, going into the bar in her sweatpants all in a panic, frightened out of her wits, and next thing there were the cops and all the neighbours up to the windows, getting a gawk.

Let’s get my little girl to bed, Helen thought. Cathy’s forehead hit Helen’s collarbone. They were swaying gently. Or the ceiling light, which hung on a chain, was swaying. Cathy raised her head and there were those eyes, and Helen knew before Cathy spoke.

I’m pregnant, Cathy said. And Helen slapped her face. The print of her hand.

The girls left hair on the sink and in the drain, and they shaved their legs and left a ring of grey scum around the bathtub, and they talked on the phone, and the parties they threw, the cold smell of cigarette smoke in the morning and beer and all the windows open, the freezing air coming in.

And they fought with each other, her girls; they bickered. A hairbrush hit the wall, someone borrowed someone’s something or other without asking. Where’s my new sweater? She took my sweater.

But just let someone outside the family make a disparaging remark. Just let some outsider say something about one or the other of the girls and see how they flew together, ready to defend. They took care of one another. There was the worry of them driving with drunk boys, the worry of illness or no date for the prom, or they wanted expensive things for Christmas or their birthdays, or there was some injustice with a teacher, some threat of expulsion, or they wanted a job or someone wanted to marry them. And then, without warning, they were gone. They had all grown into their own lives, and it was very quiet. Helen had thought she would have to claw her way out of that quiet, and then, very soon after, she was grateful for it.

Bring your awareness to your abdomen, the instructor says. Relax the lower ribs. Slowly curl your tailbone. Inhale and arch up. This exercise is designed to unite the mind and body and spirit. It encourages deep relaxation. Remember to offer your heart on the exhale. This pose is about a vital force rather than a brute force. It is a key that can unlock who you are and make you grateful for all you have, with the added advantage of strengthened abs. And breathe.

. . . . .

Broken Glass, 1987

HELEN GOT A
call from the hospital when John was fourteen, and they asked was she John O’Mara’s mother and she said she was. They said it was the Janeway Hospital calling, and John was fine but he’d suffered some cuts and the doctor was just stitching him up.

Quite a few stitches, the nurse said, huffing after Helen as she half-ran down the hospital corridor. John had been to Zellers on Topsail Road with his buddies Neal Yetman and John Noseworthy, and they had decided to steal some cassette tapes, which they’d put in the hoods of their jackets, and John, her John, was stealing little chocolate Easter bunnies. He’d stuck them into his socks and a security guard was on him in a second, and he ran down the aisle and turned the corner. There was a security alarm pealing out through the store and security guards coming from all sides, three or four of them, and at the very last second they were shouting in a different way, their voices sounded different, or they were saying something different, but John didn’t catch it. He was going so fast and full of thrill, and he ran right through a plate-glass door.

He just bashed through, and triangles of glass burst into the sky and somersaulted all around him, and they caught the sun and flashed and bounced on the pavement on their sharp points, and then each giant jagged piece split a thousand times more and John had terrible gashes under his arm and on his legs but it looked worse than it was, the nurse said, just a few scratches really, the nurse charging after Helen as she flew down the corridor—It looks a hell of a lot worse than it is—but his face was okay, thanks be to God. He had passed through that plate of glass and had not done any damage to his face.

After that John mowed lawns. Helen made him mow. And he painted fences. He mowed every lawn she could think of.

The girls didn’t give her any trouble and they covered for John when they could. The girls lied for him and lent him money, and they snuck out at night to bring him home if he was drunk, so Helen wouldn’t have to worry, and they cleaned the house if John had a party, and they did his homework for him, and still John never gave Helen a moment’s peace.

. . . . .

Visitor, June 2008

IF YOU LOOK
at it, Helen heard John say. He was home between trips and he was reaching for a puff pastry. There are safety protocols designed, John said, so the men don’t think. They don’t have to think.

John, Cathy said. This was a party at Helen’s place, to celebrate her granddaughter Claire’s high school prom.

It was just yesterday, John had said earlier. He had showed Claire how big she was the day she was born, with his hands held apart like you’d measure a trout.

No bigger than a minute, he’d said.

Get in the picture, Cathy said to John. She kicked John and hip-nudged him until she knocked him off the kitchen chair. There was a big spread in the dining room. John had done the cooking. Puff pastry with caramelized onions and apple and Brie. He had the fattest scallops he could get his hands on wrapped in prosciutto. He’d cut miniature beets in half and put ricotta in the middle. He’d wanted to do rabbit but his sisters wouldn’t have rabbit, so he’d let Helen do the turkey.

Someone was talking about sodium in the diet of the average Newfoundlander.

I’m just saying, Cathy said. Look at John going with the salt.

Boiled vegetables without salt, Cathy said. She rolled her eyes. They were all crowded in the kitchen because Claire was going to come down in her prom dress. Cathy’s daughter Claire, graduating from high school already.

Timmy and Patience were out playing street hockey and the front door kept opening and slamming and there was the smell of fresh air.

Helen pinched the rubber bulb on the baster and drew up the bubbling fat and squirted it out over the turkey. Her glasses were steamed. She shoved the roaster back into the oven and lifted the screeching oven door with her foot.

I’ve got a carpenter coming, she said. To do the floors, and I’m getting the place painted.

Mom, Lulu said. That’s fabulous.

Helen smacked the rims of the pots with the stainless steel spoon after she stirred, and she turned to face her children, navy and silver oven mitts on her hands. I want something called Sail White for the trim, and for the dining room a colour they call Latte, she said.

The thinking has changed, Claire said, on salt. There she was, in the doorway. She was wearing pink with a shiny bodice, and the skirt was full of layers and sheaths of different pinks, and there was glitter. She was unsteady on the new heels. Helen gripped her hands together, still in the oven mitts, to stop herself from clapping.

I’m not liking the lipstick, Claire said. She twisted her mouth up.

Oh, you have to wear lipstick, Cathy said. Wear it for me.

I don’t want to.

Finishes it off, Cathy said. A little touch of colour.

You’re beautiful, Helen said.

Isn’t she something, John said.

Cathy slapped her hand over her mouth. How did this happen, she wailed. How did you grow up so fast?

I’ll wear the lipstick, Claire said. For some reason Mom’s gone all apeshit about lipstick.

Cathy started to cry and hustled out of the room with her head down, hunched and trotting. They heard the bathroom door upstairs slam. The door opened and Cathy screamed down to them, I just want her to look nice. Is that a crime? And the door slammed again.

I’ll wear the lipstick, Claire yelled at the ceiling. A toilet flushed and it sounded doleful. They were quiet in the kitchen. Helen had turned off the pots on the stove and even the sound of boiling water had gone quiet, and they could hear some kind of bird chirping in the backyard.

Cathy came back into the room and drained the potatoes and started with the masher. She pounded the vegetables. Lulu handed her a foil-wrapped stick of butter.

I’m just so proud of her, Cathy said. Her grade average.

I know, Lulu said.

She graduated with honours.

You told us.

I don’t know where she gets it.

I know where she gets it, Helen said.

I don’t care, Cathy said, about the Jesus lipstick.

I’m wearing the lipstick, Claire said. Mom? See? I’m wearing the lipstick.

There was a thump of silence while they took in the seventeen-year-old, while they allowed her beauty to radiate through the room. They all took in the moment and they could feel how it was portentous. And in the swollen beat John brought it up again about the oil patch.