The Better Mother (23 page)

Joan walks in with a tray of glasses. As she passes them to Val and Danny, she says, “Grapefruit juice and soda.” She eyes Val suspiciously. “I think it’s a bit early for anything stronger.”

“Joan, you’re a miserable bitch.”

Danny squirms in his seat.

“Did you come here to pick a fight, Val? Or is there something else?” Joan stands in the middle of the room and sips her drink, staring out the large picture window. The back deck is bordered by potted plants. A finch stands in the middle of a faux-marble bird bath.

Val leaves her drink untouched and looks at her sister. “I came to pick up those boxes I left here.”

“Boxes?” Joan’s voice is light and noncommittal. “What boxes?”

“You remember. Before Kelly was born I brought all my old costumes and things here. I never did find an apartment that could fit it all.”

“Ah, those boxes. I hate to tell you this, Val, but we had a flood in the basement some years ago, and I had to throw them out.”

Val’s face grows pale under her makeup. “You didn’t.”

“Well, I had to. They were going to get mouldy.”

Danny swears he sees a fragment of a smile on Joan’s lips, but her face soon resettles into its powdered serenity.

“Joan! You could have told me!” Val clenches her fists.

“I don’t remember exactly, but it’s possible the flood happened when you were off somewhere, and I couldn’t reach you. I haven’t always known where you were, Val, and that was entirely your choice.”

“I haven’t left Vancouver in years. You’re lying.”

Joan laughs. “Now, why would I do that?” Her eyes travel slowly over Val’s painted-on eyebrows, the gloss on her lips.

Val stands and turns into the hall. “I’m going to look for myself. It would be just like you to hide my things and then lie about it.”

Danny hears a door slam and the sound of high heels hurrying down a set of stairs. He wipes his hands on his pants, reaches for his drink, but then retracts his hand, remembering the white carpet between him and the coffee table. Joan sits still, one leg crossed over the other. He stares at her trim body, the clear skin of her cheeks, and thinks,
A woman with a face like that either never worries or she buries the worry so deep inside that she’s forgotten it even exists
. He wonders how long they can sit like this, each pretending that the silence is comfortable.

“Have you known Val long?”

“No. I met her at the wedding,” he mutters. “Well, actually, I first met her when I was a little boy, in Chinatown.”

Joan’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? I never spent much time there. Not like Val.”

Silence.

Val storms into the living room, a small purple suitcase in her hand. “I found this, at least,” she snaps, waving the suitcase in Joan’s face.

“I guess that’s one of the things that didn’t get wet.”

“Or you missed it when you threw everything else out. I found it wedged behind the hot-water heater.” Val winks at Danny. “I think we all know that she got rid of the boxes on purpose.”

Joan stands up and collects the almost untouched glasses. “I really do have to get back to work. Kelly and Derek will be here tonight to pick up the rest of her clothes.”

Val grasps Joan’s elbow with her hand. “Why don’t you ever say what you mean?”

Joan tries to pull her arm away, but Val tightens her grip until Joan’s skin grows white between Val’s fingers. “I don’t choose to broadcast every thought I’ve ever had to the entire world, that’s all.”

“Tell me the truth, Joan. Did you purposely throw out my boxes?” Val stares at Joan’s now watery eyes.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Joan wrenches free and says quietly, “I don’t want to talk about this now, with him here.”

“Loosen up, for Christ’s sake. He knows I was a dancer. He’s hardly a wide-eyed innocent.”

“Fine. If you want to air our dirty laundry in front of strangers, then that’s what I’ll do.” Joan picks up the tray, holding it between them like a shield. “I didn’t want Kelly to know. She grew up thinking you were a real dancer, Val, the kind who dances in musicals and at Radio City Music Hall, the kind you and I once wanted to be, remember? We agreed, years ago, that only you and I would know about the clubs and the circuit. We kept it from everyone, from Mum and Daddy. Everyone. What would happen if Kelly came across those disgusting costumes? How would I explain them, Val?” She starts to walk into the kitchen. “Now, you have to leave. When I come back from washing these glasses, I expect to see an empty house.”

Danny picks up the suitcase and takes Val’s hand before she can say anything. They hurry to the front door and out.
Thank Christ
, he thinks.
I could barely breathe in there
.

He starts the car and looks over at Val, who sits with her hands in her lap, her purse thrown haphazardly by her feet. “Where to now?” he asks.

“Any place,” she says, “where I can see the water.”

He drives north toward the eastern edge of Burrard Inlet, where it meets the narrow waters of Indian Arm. In the distance, he sees a tree-covered mountain. Even here, the wild landscape is dotted with electrical wires strung from tall steel towers.

He turns onto an unpaved road and follows it until they reach a small parking lot. They walk across grass, past picnic tables and groups of children playing on blankets, until they come to a narrow, rocky beach. Val walks straight to the water’s edge and stops, squinting at the ocean. It winks in the light, churns around rocks. To the right, trees have rooted precariously on tall stone cliffs.

“I’ve never been here,” she says, bending down to dangle her fingers in the water.

“I took some wedding pictures here once. Whenever I’m out this way, I try to stop here.”

“I don’t get out to the suburbs much, you know. I mostly stay in the city, any city, really.” She looks around and begins to walk back up to the grassy area. “We should find a place to sit.”

She settles herself on the grass under a tree and smoothes out the wrinkles in her cotton pants. Her toenails, visible in her black sandals, are painted coral. Patting her hair, she leans her head against the trunk and folds her hands on her stomach.

Danny is grateful for the absence of city noise—the screeching brakes, the hum of air conditioners, the chimes from doorbells, the buzzing crowds.

Until now, he wouldn’t have cared about anything other than the spinning spotlights, the hiding and revealing of fabric and skin, the way a dancer captures the attention of an entire room of men and plays it like a violin. But he thinks of the photographs he has left drying in the studio, of dancers looking simultaneously like the children they once were and the women they have become. He wants to know how the feisty little girl who lived on River Road transformed herself into the Siamese Kitten and then became a woman who rummages through basements for scraps from her past.

Val tugs on her earlobe and frowns. “I haven’t said much to anyone about the circuit in a very long time. When I die, Joan will keep it to herself. And when she dies, there won’t be anybody left to remember. Except for that suitcase, everything I had is gone.” She turns to Danny, her eyes round like a trapped child’s. “It never bothered me before—being forgotten.”

“What changed?”

She wraps her arms around her body. “I don’t know. Maybe I had to meet the right person. It’s like you’ve been a part of my life since the very beginning, even before I met you in that alley.” Val’s laugh subsides. “Maybe you’re the one who deserves to know.”

PART FOUR

THE CAFÉ
1947

Val stood in the café window, watching as the men left work, locking doors behind them, folding their stained aprons and tucking them under their arms. The streets of Chinatown, like they did every evening, would soon transform. The drab fish shops and diners would be abandoned, making way for the preternatural colours and sounds that unfurled in the night. Red-clad prostitutes leaning against doorways. Men, their faces hidden by brown brimmed hats and a navy darkness, scuttling through doors that went unused during the day. Music spilling out of the neon-lit clubs in booms and tinkles. Val slowly turned back to the empty restaurant and began stacking the chairs on the tables so that Mr. Chow could mop the floors.

One by one, the cooks left, nodding at Val as they walked out the door. Suzanne was the last of the waitresses to leave. A scarf covered her curly hair, and she winked at Val as she hurried through the room. “Hugh’s taking me out again tonight. Wish me luck.”

In the back office, Val took off her apron and hung it on a hook. The floor, wet with soapy water, shone in the light like the slick of sweat on hot skin. She looked down at her brown skirt and picked off a crumb clinging to the rough fibres.

As she pulled her handbag from a shelf above the desk, Mr. Chow walked in, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his apron balled in his hands. Val felt caught, like he had disturbed her while she was changing her stockings. She clutched her bag to her stomach, wanting an extra layer to hide behind.

Mr. Chow looked equally startled. “I’m sorry. I thought you had left. Am I interrupting something?”

“No. Not at all. I’m just leaving.” The office was small, and Mr. Chow was standing in front of the door. His broad chest and the light-blue checked pattern on his shirt seemed to fill the room.

It was like the pure, bright crash of lightning, that moment when Val understood there was nothing she wanted more than to taste this man and feel his body on hers. She might pant from the heat seeping outward through her skin.

When he placed his hands around her waist, she tilted her head up and stared at the stubble on his chin. His lips were parted the tiniest fraction of an inch. She closed her eyes long enough to let out a small, barely there breath. She knew he could feel her exhale on his neck, trailing around his Adam’s apple like a finger on fire. Funny how the smallest movements can churn the depths of a body.

Their lips together blew a wind through her, a wind flecked with the dampness of their tongues, a wind that shot straight from her throat and arched her back. She reached for the tail of his shirt and pulled it from his pants. When he touched the backs of her thighs beneath her skirt, she shuddered at the jolt. This was the simple feel of body on body, when she could be rewarded by the goosebumps on the side of this man’s neck as she brushed him with her hand.

He smells like pancakes
.

The desk rocked as he lifted her onto its edge and steadied himself. His hand was between her legs, pulling at her underwear and skirt and she thought,
There
. She unbuttoned her blouse and he licked her nipple, a long hot graze that left a damp crescent on her skin. His eyes simmered like hot tar under an unforgiving sun. He pushed into her, the desk banging against the wall, his shoes slipping on the wet floor. She was being torn in half, but she pushed back in a rhythm that made no sense to anyone but them. Val cried out, clenched her teeth, and Mr. Chow, his hair now fallen forward over his eyes, pulled away from her, shuddered and spoke one word: “Christ.” She looked down at her warm, wet belly before he collapsed against her, his pulse pounding like a snare drum against her skin.

Val wanted to say something, wanted to whisper words that he would remember for the rest of his life, but she knew “I love you” was wrong and, in some ways (but not all), untrue. She sucked in the smell of them together—rust and breakfast and the earthiness of moss. The silence grew thicker.

Mr. Chow zipped up his trousers and tucked in his shirt. Val cleaned her stomach with a paper napkin and re-buttoned her blouse, her eyes staring at her shoes, still tied securely to her feet. She was afraid to look up in case she saw disgust or shame or disappointment (yes, disappointment would be the worst) on his face. She wondered if she should leave, even run.
This silence
, she thought.
Lord help me
.

“My first name is Sam.”

Val looked up. He gazed steadily into her face, the lines of his jaw set.

“You can call me that if you like. But not in front of the others, if that’s all right.”

Val smiled, took his square hand in hers. “Sam,” she said, “I’m hungry.”

Every night, Val waited with a cleaning rag in her hand for everyone else to leave the restaurant. After locking the door behind the last employee, she met Sam in the office. There, his brown eyes travelled over her body as she undressed. Afterward, they clung to each other as if they depended on the weight of each other’s body for survival.

She stopped going home for dinner, telling Joan that the café was now providing an evening meal for any staff who helped close up. Sam cooked for her, using the leftovers in the icebox for simple sandwiches and warming up soup. After a few weeks, Val asked him to cook Chinese food, the kind that he remembered his mother making. And so, in the dark restaurant with a single candle burning on their table, Sam brought her stir-fried greens, pork short ribs in black bean sauce and buckwheat noodles tossed with soy sauce and green onions. She ate it all as Sam smiled at her from across the table. When she was full, he massaged her feet, rubbing out the stiffness from the long day.

Late at night, through the windows of the café, Val watched the streams of people walking from club to gambling den to brothel, mostly stumbling men with half-closed, drunken eyes, or sober ones with a speeding walk who focused their eyes straight ahead, perhaps concentrating on the possibility of arousal and the give of soft flesh under the thumb. But she saw the women too. The dancers walked with their
overcoats tied tightly around them, but the sequins and glitter still peeked out from underneath hems and around collars.

One night, a trio of black women hurried through the wet street, their heads lowered against the rain that fell in heavy drops.

“They’re dancers from the all-black club around the corner.” Sam’s voice made her jump. When she turned around, he was standing in the dark, holding a steaming bowl of chicken congee. “We could go, if you want. I know you’re bored staying in the café all the time. I’m sorry my room at the boarding house is so small.”