Prerequisites for Sleep (7 page)

You find him charming and think the daughter has married a man much like her father.

“Do you happen to cook?” you ask.

“We both do,” he replies.

Across the room, you notice this man and his daughter sharing a laugh with his ex-wife, her mother. The woman has a presence. People hover around her like electrons. Someone wants a picture and the three arrange themselves for the camera. You look at the composition, the father on the right, the daughter on the left, both with their arms around the free-spirited-mother-ex-wife-artist in the middle. That's when it begins, the feeling of being faded, overexposed, and no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to shake it.

 

Diane tilted her head downwards and glanced over her sunglasses to check whether they were exaggerating the autumn colours. She did the same thing every time she saw a tree that looked bright red or neon orange, or a cluster of hues so intense that she thought they couldn't be real. She had forgotten how beautiful fall was out east. The quantity and variety of trees made the difference, and the lack of industry and dust. The drive through Ontario and a large part of Quebec had been uninspiring. It wasn't until east of Quebec City, nearing Rivière-du-Loup, where nature began to hug the edges of the highway, that the season surrounded her, providing a spectacular show before the day turned dark, offering her something to look forward to in the morning.

Yesterday she had left Toronto and driven to Edmundston, stopping only to grab a bite at a cafe in Drummondville. It was possible to complete the trip non-stop if she drove all night, especially with the newly widened highways through New Brunswick. But Diane was not in a hurry, and Edmundston had always been the halfway point whenever she drove down with Blaine, or with him and the boys. This was the first time she'd travelled east on her own in over twenty years. Twenty-four, to be exact, she reminded herself. The divorce papers confirmed the fact. The last time she'd driven east was two years ago, right after she and Blaine had separated. The boys were with her. She and Liam had made plans to take the trip before Liam headed to university in the fall. Then Sheldon showed up, out of the blue, which was always his way, and they begged him to join them. They were surprised when he said yes. They had made the drive into a real vacation, taking several days and detouring to stop at all the tourist destinations that they usually skipped, staying only two days with her parents, then driving back through the States to do more sightseeing. Although Sheldon was quiet for most of the time, both she and Liam were glad he was there. It was the last time that the three of them had been together. Sheldon left again the day after they arrived home.

The border was ahead, easily identified by the hydro and radio towers that skirted the marsh between the ocean and the highway on the isthmus that tacked Nova Scotia to the rest of the country. The place where the map ended in her grade-four drawings, the ones that always had Cape Breton looking like a lobster claw on one side. She pushed the power button on the radio and was greeted with static, then hit the seek arrow in search of a local station. Rap, heavy and disquieting, filled the car. She touched the button again and heard The Eagles singing “Take It Easy,” like a piece of sound advice from the past. It was easy to get seduced by the classic rock, which to most people her age represented some sort of idyllic youth, somewhere between angst and responsibility. Diane didn't want memories to sing along with, or lyrics to get stuck in her head for days. She just wanted a presence. She pushed the button once more and landed on a call-in show, advice for genealogy buffs on the
CBC
. She let it stay as she cruised by the Welcome to Nova Scotia sign.

Several kilometres past the border, she encountered a row of pylons. A flashing amber arrow directed vehicles into a single lane, and Diane geared down. After the traffic merged, she found herself inching along between two tractor-trailers that roared and groaned and smoked like dragons being pressed into service against their will. For twenty minutes she moved in this fashion, her feet, adept from years of Toronto congestion, automatically finding the perfect balance between stop and go.

She wondered about Sheldon. Was he hitchhiking or hopping trains? She knew he had done both in the past. Thoughts of Sheldon were never far from her mind, always lying in wait just below the surface of everything else. He had been gone seven months this time. She still scrolled through the history on her cell phone every couple of days, thinking that perhaps she had missed an incoming call that could have been her son. It was a habit that both she and Liam had acquired over the last few years. Not that Sheldon owned a phone, but every time he came home, Diane made a point of writing their numbers down for him. Afterwards, she would watch him fold the piece of paper in half and in half again and tuck it into the pocket of his jeans. Now that Liam was in university, Diane called him whenever Sheldon arrived, then left the room while he talked to his younger brother. Where Sheldon was concerned, Diane and Liam had a similar approach. When he came home, they were relieved and happy to see him. They tried to show him how much they loved him, hoping that it would make him stay. Blaine, on the other hand, was always frustrated. He wanted answers to questions that he was afraid to ask. He wanted everything to be fixed, to be their old definition of normal. Even when Sheldon wasn't there, Blaine could no longer move about the house without slamming and banging things.

The highway opened up again, and Diane signalled and pulled out around the rig in front of her. The truck let out a disgruntled snort as she accelerated past, and she held her breath against the odour of spent diesel fuel while glancing up to watch the vehicle shrink in her rear-view mirror. From here, she was pulled along by the familiar and before long was exiting the highway, preparing to merge onto Main Street. This was a part of Dartmouth that was seedy and resisted change. Diane took in the pavement in need of repair. The strip club, located just a couple of buildings away from the music store and conservatory where countless numbers of children were deposited daily for lessons. The tavern with another new name. McDonald's and the Dairy Queen. The empty lot with a truck selling mackerel. The lot had been vacant since Diane was a child. Vacant yet not, because there was always someone parked there selling something.

When she heard the siren, Diane glanced down to see that she had been doing sixty-eight in a fifty-kilometre zone. She pulled over across from an old church that was now a karate studio and watched in the side mirror as the police officer parked and got out of his car. Vehicles slowed and detoured around them; drivers checked her Ontario licence plates then offered a serves-you-right look. Diane turned off the radio and put down the window.

“Licence and registration please, ma'am.”

Ma'am. The word made her cringe. “Right,” she said, retrieving her licence from her wallet and her registration from the glove compartment. She handed them out the window and scrutinized the officer for the first time.

His face took her back. It was almost the same as it had been when she'd last seen him, but filled out enough to erase the scrawny features of a teenager. Contrasting with his ruddy tan, the few wrinkles visible on his forehead and around his eyes looked like fine lines drawn in chalk. They reminded her of how he used to squint whenever he was concentrating hard on something. Ethan had aged well. He didn't appear to recognize her, but then why would he? Her hair was now blonde and she wore contacts and had gained about thirty pounds. She had also changed her name when she married. There was absolutely nothing left to tie her to the kid who'd sat across the aisle from him in grade twelve English. She wrestled with the idea of saying hello and identifying herself, perhaps arranging to meet him later.

When he took her papers, she noticed his wedding ring. A plain gold band, scratched and worn and looking as if he had never taken it off. Well, at least he's not alone, she thought, not single for life as she had imagined him being so many times. No use stirring up lumps in old porridge. Her grandmother's saying. Diane could almost hear the old woman's voice dispensing words of wisdom between sips of brandy-laced coffee.

“So what brings ya to this part of the country?” Ethan was studying her licence. Along with a slight twang, there was an air of confidence in his voice that hadn't been there in his youth.

“Just visiting,” Diane said, relieved that she had picked up a different dialect over the years.

“How long are ya planning on staying?”

He stared at her with a look that she couldn't decipher. She shifted in her seat and pressed her back into the lumbar support. “A week, maybe a little more.”

“Enjoy your visit,” he said, handing back her papers, “and do me a favour, slow down.”

“Thanks. I'll do that! Not enjoy the visit. Well, yes, I'll try to enjoy the visit too, but I meant I'll slow down.” God, she thought, I sound like an idiot. “What I'm trying to say is that I really appreciate this, and I'll be more careful.”

“That's all I ask,” he said, then turned and walked back to his cruiser.

Pulling into traffic, Diane considered what would have happened if, instead of babbling, she had let Ethan casually fall into place after thanks. Thanks, Ethan.

 

Diane parked on her parents' street and sat studying the details of everything in view. The houses were mostly small bungalows. One had been renovated to add a sunroom and larger kitchen. Another had ventured upwards to create an entire new floor, but most had remained the same for forty years, with the exception of new windows or siding to cover the original cedar shakes. After several minutes she reached for the keys and her purse and opened the car door. Traffic noise from Main Street filtered through the yards. Starlings jostled and bickered on the hedge. Somewhere there were wind chimes, the kind made of various lengths of pipe. The kind that clanged instead of tinkling.

“Diane!” Her father opened the door with a broad-faced grin and scooped her into a hug. “What on earth are you doing here, girl?”

“Just felt like coming for a visit.” She nestled her face into his shoulder and inhaled the familiar smells of his shampoo and shaving cream, along with something new. Body wash. One of those clean, manly, almost sexy scents that made her think of an athlete in street clothes; certainly not one that she would have ever associated with her father.

“How long are you staying?”

“Maybe a week, I don't know for sure.” She let him usher her inside, then stepped back to survey his appearance. “So, how come the door was locked?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” he said, trying to disguise the look of helplessness that had momentarily appeared on his face. “Can't trust anyone these days. And with them always letting people out of the Burnside jail by mistake, a person doesn't feel safe in their own home.”

The toilet flushed and her mother stepped into the hallway, closing the bathroom door behind her. “Too many people in that jail, and too few guards. That's what they say, anyway. Shouldn't have jails so close to communities, in my opinion. Did I hear you say you were staying for a week?”

Doris never changed. Her dyed hair and pencilled eyebrows had been part of her public persona for as long as Diane could remember. That and a brusque demeanour that Diane suspected her mother no longer dropped for her father, like she used to when they were younger and in bed and Diane could hear them through the adjoining wall.

“Something like that. Hope you don't mind that I didn't call?”

“We'll have to get some groceries, that's all. We don't keep a lot in when it's just the two of us. I see you came on your own. Surely one of the boys could have driven down with you.”

“Liam is in university. And Sheldon couldn't make it either.” Diane couldn't bring herself to say that Sheldon had disappeared. She hadn't told them when he had disappeared the first time, when he was fifteen and she and Blaine hardly slept for three months. That time, he had left a note. Mom, Dad, I'm just going away. Don't worry. It was the only time that he had left a note. Every time after, he was just gone. She never told them.

“Well, get yourself settled in. Your father and I will make a trip to Sobeys. Find your keys, Bill. I'll get my purse.”

Diane unpacked the charger and plugged in her cell phone. Then she wandered through the rooms, all dark from blind slats angled partially closed under her mother's mandatory three-to-one ratio of gathered sheers and half-drawn insulated drapes. She returned to her own room to push back the curtains and raise the blinds. Opening the window and leaning on the sill, she peered out, searching the far corners of the backyard to pick out the mock orange and snowball bushes she had helped her father plant the summer she turned eight. Towering between them was the variegated maple. Somewhere, she recalled, there was a photo of Liam and Sheldon eating hot dogs while sitting in its branches, their bare legs dangling just out of her reach.

 

“I bought a turkey,” her mother said when they returned. She was carrying two Sobeys bags, reusable green totes with pictures of enlarged blueberries on the side. Her father followed with two more bags. These ones had pictures of artichokes on them.

“Mom, I really don't want you to go to a lot of trouble.” Even as she said it, Diane knew that things were already in motion and picking up speed.

“Nonsense, everyone was coming next weekend for Thanksgiving anyway. We're just moving the date up.”

For the rest of the afternoon, her mother bustled happily around the kitchen with an upgraded sense of purpose. Diane and her father donned sweatshirts and sat on the deck drinking beer. For dinner, Diane talked them into ordering takeout by insisting that she was craving a donair. Her parents preferred pizza, so she picked up a medium with everything except black olives for them. While she was out, she rented a movie, a family flick with a kid and a dog. By ten-thirty, they were all in bed.

It was after eleven when she strolled into the kitchen the following morning. Her mother was already filling the turkey with handfuls of stuffing.

“What can I do to help?”

“Get yourself some breakfast, then start the vegetables. We'll all be wanting to shower later, so we need to do the dirty work first.”

Diane put the leftover pizza in the microwave and poured herself a glass of milk.

“You're eating like a teenager,” her mother said.

“No, I'm not. If I were a teenager, I would drink from the carton.”