Prerequisites for Sleep (5 page)

Several days later, I decided to put on my favourite outfit and go to the mall. I had purchased the floral red dress in a trendy boutique in Toronto, then splurged on matching shoes. I felt as though I was making a statement that flaunted my future independence. I enjoyed the turning of heads as I paraded through the corridors, my heels click-clicking on the tiled floors. I relished the idea of returning to live in the area.

After a brief snack at the food court, I went to The Bay and began rifling through sales racks. I heard a child laugh and looked up. Brian was there, corralling a rambunctious toddler. I had forgotten what a small place Halifax-Dartmouth could be, how easy it was to collide with the past. Next to him was a woman pushing a stroller draped with several garments to purchase or try on. The boy, a miniature version of Brian, giggled and veered between racks while his father gave chase. Neither of them noticed me. For an instant I was beset with an avalanche of emotions. Longing. Remorse. Claustrophobia. Then I quickly stepped out of their path and was about to turn away when the woman glanced up and caught my eye. On her face, I saw the look of someone who knew exactly what she was doing, staring at someone who never would.

 

In my mind, I pictured my father, large, in a red plaid shirt of wool — the stereotype uniform of all woodsmen — his orange hair and beard matted with sweat and crumbs of leaves. At least, that's how I thought of him as a child. I don't actually remember the colour of his hair. I was barely two when he disappeared, my sister only a baby. It is possible that he was the victim of a forest creature, mythic or otherwise. Perhaps a wolf swallowed him whole, like Red Riding Hood's grandmother. All he needed was to be set free. We waited years for him to return, until my mother moved us to the village and got a job at Frank Rella's pub.

Mother soon married Frank, who had a daughter of his own named Sydney. My sister Josephine and I took his last name, preferring it over ours, which was Smith. We moved into Frank's cottage, located on a cobblestone side street a couple blocks north of the pub, a nice neighbourhood of Tudor residences with fenced-in yards.

Frank was a sipper and would nurse the same mug of ale for an entire evening, saying that he preferred to keep his head clear to run the business and take care of his family. He loved being surrounded by adoring females and was never short on compliments — one of the reasons my mother fell in love with him.

We girls bonded instantly, calling ourselves the Rella sisters — Flo (short for Florence), Jo, and Syd. In appearance, we were as different as the herbs that grew in the back garden. I was tall, much too tall, and awkward, constantly bumping my head on chandeliers and archways when I would forget to duck. Syd was curvaceous and beautiful — eye candy, but with brains. As smart as she was, she never clued in to the fact that she was a head turner. Jo was the girl next door, always smiling, covered in freckles. If you looked close, you could see how they clustered together to form what appeared to be a heart-shaped birthmark on her right cheek.

We idolized the three musketeers, who frequented Frank's pub and were described as witty and handsome by our mother. Not allowed inside, we spied on them through the alley window by secretly venturing from our cottage after dark. Later, in our bedroom, we would strip down to our bloomers and have sword fights, using feather dusters for weapons, each of us taking a swooning shift as the maiden in distress, all of us preferring to brandish the dusters.

Mother worked in the pub alongside Frank. She was a big woman with a big laugh. The patrons enjoyed her sense of humour and loved her meat pies, which were the best in the land. Her list of secret ingredients included hot sauce and tarragon. News of these delicacies had travelled far and wide. The king himself, disguised as a peasant, visited The Glass Slipper Pub twice a year for one of my mother's meat pies, which she always served with apple chutney. She would recognize him by the ring on his left hand that doubled as his royal seal. No one could figure out whether he stupidly forgot to take it off, or deliberately left it on. Star-struck, my mother was unable to speak in his presence, denying him the anecdotes and jokes he would no doubt enjoy as part of the peasant experience. “Cheap bugger,” she would say after he was gone. “He never leaves a tip.”

Mother and Frank were generally at the pub, so Syd, Jo, and I did most of the household chores. Once a week we would get into our grubbies, our term for the tattered clothes we worked in, and clean the cottage from top to bottom.

It was a Tuesday, not too hot. A breeze travelled through open windows from east to west, carrying fresh air and the bustle of the street into our rooms. We placed shoes as stops against inside doors to keep them from slamming shut. I was busy sweeping cobwebs and picking bats and other vermin out of the thatched roof. Jo was sorting laundry in the upstairs hall, while Syd scoured the kitchen. To this day, I find it hard to believe that a rabid dog managed to get inside the house. Later we discovered that we had left the garden gate open when we returned from our wanderings the night before. At some point, we must have left the back door open as well. Syd shrieked when the creature crept out from behind the stove with strings of saliva hanging from its teeth. Then she panicked and ran, with the mangy dog following, out the front door and into the street. From my vantage point in the upstairs bedroom window, I saw the shocked looks on the faces of those who watched Syd sobbing in her threadbare clothes.

Things quickly became distorted, as things tend to when the rumour mill runs amok and the local papers only get half the facts. The next day's edition ran an engraved-plate image of Syd in her cleaning attire, along with a sensational headline and quotes from the neighbours about how wicked and abusive her step-relatives were.

Someone called Child Welfare. Their mediaeval representative made a surprise visit, only to find Syd dressed in a lovely peau-de-soie pinafore, her feet resting on a tasselled stool. She was reading — a pastime considered inappropriate for young girls of our time. They would have preferred her to be tatting lace or eating curds and whey. Mother was severely lectured for this, after which the ill-treatment-of-Syd matter was dropped. A retraction was printed on page eleven of the paper, a single paragraph lost in columns of jousting scores.

People looked at us differently after that. Unless Syd did the shopping, we received the worst cuts from the butcher and sour milk from the dairywoman's cows. Business at the pub slowed for a while but fortunately not for too long. The competition, a fast-food-ale joint lacking in decent cuisine and atmosphere and a seedy inn several kilometres out of town, didn't satisfy the hearts and stomachs of the local male population. They had stopped frequenting The Glass Slipper to appease their wives, then realized that the women didn't have the luxury of free time for drinking ale and eating meat pies and would never know they had returned.

Several weeks later, after most of the ruckus had died down, notices appeared, tacked to all the wooden doors in town, announcing a dinner and dance to be held at the castle. The parchment specifically stated that those arriving in business-casual attire would not be admitted.

We immediately dug into our trunks to retrieve our gowns, which were refashioned on an annual basis with new ribbons, silk flowers, glass beads or pearls. My gown required lengthening, as I had grown three inches since I'd last worn it. This, we decided, could be accomplished with a flounce. Jo was pleased to find that hers fit perfectly. It had been sloppy the previous year, constantly falling from her shoulders, so that she had to spend most of her time with her arms crossed or discreetly sliding the neckline back in place. Syd's curves got the better of her and proceeded to burst from the seams. The dress had been altered twice; no fabric remained hidden inside to let out.

Mother called every seamstress in town, only to be informed they were booked solid. How unusual, she thought, that not one of them was able to accommodate her. The household was in a state of panic. It's not as if a Gowns R Us outlet could be found in the market of our village. Then mother remembered Mrs. Godparent,
wearily retired after thirty years of making gowns for primping, self-absorbed females. Promises of brandy and meat pies, as well as assurances that Syd was not the primping, self-absorbed type, secured her services.

By the afternoon of the event, Syd's dress had yet to be delivered. Mrs. Godparent sent a carrier pigeon with the message that she was running a few hours behind. There were no mice and no dramatic scenes where Jo and I tore apart a secretly constructed gown. I don't know how that silly rumour began.

“Go, go,” Syd said, “or you'll miss the dinner. The food is always the best part. I'll catch up with you later.”

The meal was over when Syd arrived. Most of the guests were outside on the patio, catching a breath of air while waiting for the musicians to begin playing. My sister was strategically positioned on top of a cartload of pumpkins, wildly driven by Mrs. Godparent. The old woman's silver hair had escaped from its usual bun and whipped around in a state of frenzy, sending dandruff flying in all directions that resembled fairy dust in the harvest moonlight. Through it all, Syd remained composed and beautiful. Jo and I watched, listening to the cooing of oohs and ahhs around us as though the fireworks had begun.

The prince, who had been exchanging pleasantries with a couple of dukes and the Duchess of Everafter, stood mesmerized, unable to move until Syd had gracefully climbed the stairs and curtsied apologetically before him. He had a slight lisp and kept pronouncing Sydney as Cindy. My sister was much too polite to correct him. They waltzed throughout the evening until Syd discovered she had to leave because she started her monthlies and had forgotten to slip some rags into her evening bag. Such explicit details could not be spoken to a prince. Instead she rushed past him, calling out, “I had a wonderful time, but I must go before it's too late.”

Who is the mysterious Cindy? Syd, Jo and I, as naive as we were in thinking that it would all blow over, couldn't help but chuckle over the tabloid story and engraving that accompanied that headline. The entire town was buzzing. It's a small village. Everyone knows someone, and someone eventually directed the prince to The Glass Slipper, where he professed his undying love for the owner's daughter. A beaming Frank brought him home, forgetting that it was Sydney's day to clean the kitchen.

When the shocked prince proposed to a filthy Syd, it effectively placed her between a rock and a hard place. It is bad protocol to refuse a prince, and common knowledge that, in doing so, a girl would give the impression that she thought she was too good for one. I could tell Syd felt she had no choice. Under the circumstances and given the times we lived in, I would have probably done the same thing. I didn't get the chance to tell her, though. Sid was whisked away to the castle, for her own good, before we could speak again.

The second-last time I saw Syd was at her wedding. We did go to the wedding, relegated to the table of the town's assorted evil relatives. I was surprised to be in the company of so many and wondered if they were as bad as they were made out to be. Syd was almost in tears when she tracked us down. She said she had nothing to do with the seating plan. The queen had made all the arrangements, right down to choosing her pretentious wedding dress and ridiculous shoes. She lifted her dress to show us her feet, red with blood from where the crystal pumps were cutting into her skin. We searched our purses for hankies and mother gently padded them under the sharp edges.

After the wedding, the image of Syd in her tattered clothes appeared in the paper next to the official wedding engraving. The corresponding article served to propagandize the event as a valiant rescue of an ill-treated maiden by a noble, but perhaps starry-eyed, prince who could be forgiven any future transgressions.

A few months later, Jo reverted to Smith and took off with an artist who delighted in connecting the dots of her freckles to form constellations. The two of them run a travelling tattoo parlour. Her letters say she misses us but enjoys the anonymity of her lifestyle. Within two years, Mother died of a mysterious illness that I can only attribute to depression. She bequeathed to Frank her secret recipe.

There have been many times that I have thought about visiting Syd, just as I am sure that she has frequently thought about visiting me, both of us deterred by the fact that getting in and out of the castle alone is a bureaucratic and security nightmare that only a select few know how to navigate. I know her only through castle proclamations of births and visiting royalty. Poor Syd. I feel that she, stuck on the inside without an ally to escape with, as the three of us did when we braved the night to spy on the musketeers, is unable to navigate alone and spends her days treading water.

A few years ago I married Dwayne, the dragon master. He fell in love with me upon discovering that I could stand, look the creatures in the eye and they would allow me to wash behind their ears without breathing fire. He is a giant of a man and we are equally matched. Last week at our fundraising dragon wash, the proceeds going to the castle upkeep fund, since chivalry is now dead and tourist numbers are down, I saw Syd again. She was accompanying her children on an outing to see the dragons. She had miscarried four babies and laboured over five princesses before the obligatory prince was born. It is said that her husband no longer visits her at night. Frank often sees him at the pub. He doesn't hide his identity and he's not there for meat pies. Syd's father, and the only father I have ever really known, does not go in for gossip. If he makes a statement, it is true. It obviously pained him to make this one.

The dragons were uneasy with so many children about. Two things you can't trust together are dragons and children. Dwayne double-checked the cable fencing that kept the spectators at bay and filled buckets of water on standby. Sydney approached with my nieces and nephew, all holding white-gloved hands, from smallest to largest. From under the velvet of the girls' dresses came the rustling of crinolines and petticoats. Crystallized sunlight reflected from the tiaras in their hair and the jewelled buckles of the prince's shoes. When they stopped in front of the pen, the air was still, except for the occasional snort of a dragon. The crowd was silent. Waiting. Expecting.

I noted that Syd had acquired a couple of rolls around the middle. She took in the crow's feet that now radiate from the corners of my eyes and the chiselled lines at my mouth. I saw the edge of her lips twitch on one side as if she was about to break into a giggle, then her eyes moisten as if she was going to cry. We remained there, the thick wire of the pen between us, two women quietly acknowledging the fact that we were still sisters and friends, until the dragons and the children became restless.