We enter the local pharmacy and Barbara says, “If you need to buy condoms, don’t buy them here. They like to gossip.” Her voice carries from the neon “open” sign at the entrance all the way to the locked medical shelves at the back. This will surely be one of many attempts to humiliate me throughout the day. My homecoming must be marked by some disgrace. The heavy-chinned woman behind the counter greets us with a sideways smile.
“Starla Martin, I haven’t seen you since your high school graduation. I’m Tamara Matveev’s mother.” She eyes our purchases before shoving them into a plastic bag.
“You remember Tamara Matveev,” says Barbara. “She’s still here, too.”
“Yup. Still here,” tsks Tamara Matveev’s mother. “For now, anyway.”
Barbara perches her elbow on my shoulder, tugs a lock of my hair playfully. The two mothers grin at one another—a parental understanding passes between them. Somehow this is even more uncomfortable than when she forbade me to buy condoms. “Still here,” was Barbara’s wording, as if I’ve been sponging off her this whole time. Still here. I haven’t even been home twenty-four hours.
“I’m going to get this one a job at the Fort Erie library. Then we’ll live together and work together,” says Barbara. A sour taste percolates in the back of my throat. When did I agree to take a job at the library? “Maybe we can find a handsome, wealthy father and son to go on double dates with.”
The two mothers laugh. Theirs is a joke that can only be laughed at—the comedy of adult children still living with their parents, and the crack about the wealthy prince who will one day ride up on his steed.
My guts churn as she leads me back to the car, aches as I fasten the seatbelt. Can anyone feel fully grown when sitting in the passenger seat while a parent drives?
“I don’t expect you to pay rent,” Barbara tells me as we speed down Garrison Road into Fort Erie. Fort Erie, parent town of Crescent Park, Ridgeway, Stevensville, and Crystal Beach. The houses grow a little taller the further east we go (some a whole three storeys high), the lawns slightly more manicured. Fort Erie has a strip mall and strip clubs, a horse racing track and a golf course, a few Chinese restaurants and greasy-spoon diners, one barber shop with an old-fashioned red and white pole and one hair salon with a sun-blanched poster of Debbie Harry in the window, and a library—where my mother has worked for the last sixteen years. “Just get your debts under control,” Barbara tells me. “How the hell did you …”
Barbara’s greatest, and perhaps only, asset is her lack of debt. Buying her washer and dryer through Sears layaway is the closest she’s gotten to a loan.
“I mean, that amount of debt is horrendous …”
Her house was bought by Raymond Brock, my estranged father. Brock got our then-unwinterized beach bungalow for the dirt-cheap price of $18,000, cash up front, in 1969. A draft dodger, dropout, and “Richie Rich”—as Barbara calls him—my father installed a furnace, had some insulation blown in between the walls, laid hardwood parquet flooring, planted a lilac bush in the back yard. Barbara has toured me through Raymond’s handiwork many times, pointing out, “This was him,” and, “that was him.” Raymond moved back to the USA a couple years before President Jimmy Carter promised to pardon draft dodgers. I was barely walking then, so everything from the herringbone pattern of our parquet floor to Carter’s electoral campaign promises are nothing but Barbara’s say-so. I must have inherited my small hands and feet from the Brock bloodline. Barbara wears a size-nine shoe. I have her big nose, though, and the trademark Martin gap between my front teeth.
“And that’s why I never pay with credit. Never.”
I might bear a grudge or suffer lost-daddy issues, but instead I think of him as a donor, twice, literally. Before leaving, Raymond signed the house over to my mother. The house is in Barbara’s name and only her name. Likewise, my birth certificate lists no father. Occasionally Barbara claims she’ll go after him for child support, that she was owed a big paycheque from a rich family like his. “But who needs ’em, the fatheads” is her credo of independence. Instead, Barbara applied for the Ontario Mother’s Allowance program and lived welfare cheque to welfare cheque. When I was in grade school, she took a part-time job as a book shelver, then a library assistant, and eventually—with a few night school courses under her belt—a small-town librarian. Barbara struck waste-not, want-not balance. She maintained the house and raised a kid without a lick of help—not even a nearby grandparent to babysit. Her financial life, like her romantic one, was always made known to me.
“Money troubles will ruin your life …”
For this reason, when the ATM sucked up and refused to spit out my first Visa card, I kept it a secret. When the manager at my bank told me my account was frozen until I paid my minimum, another secret. I didn’t tell her my student loan defaulted because I dropped one course and failed another. I concealed my ever-mounting money troubles until I owed a total of $48,290. I’m a fairly skilled liar, and even better at keeping secrets, but $48,290 is my confession price. When I confessed to Barbara, I imagined I would expire. The light in my Toronto apartment grew darker, the air more heavy and humid. I hoped I would implode over the shame of being a bad daughter. But here I am, standing before the brick, boxy, one-storey town library.
So now, what is left to do but hold my chin up as I hold the heavy glass door open for my mother and march in behind her? What is left to do but smile as she introduces me to her co-workers? To shake hands with a solid grip.
“Take your time with the application,” Barbara instructs me as she hands me a clipboard and pen. “I’m not the only one making the hiring decisions. And don’t be too clever. Got it?”
The beanbag chair in the nearby kids’ story pit looks like a cozy and ironically appropriate seat, but I sit at the grownup work desks. The application asks standard questions: education, former employers, acquired skills. I write: University of Toronto Bookstore, file clerk and cashier, September 1986 to January 1989. The phone number I remember off by heart. My old boss should give me a glowing reference since I slept with him four times—about once for each year of employment. Plus, I never argued when I was stationed at the widely despised returns desk. If anything, I found solace in the scores of other students who were dropping classes and returning textbooks within the first few weeks of each term.
Then there are the qualitative questions: Why do you want to work at Fort Erie Public Library? And: Summarize one of your favourite books in fifty words or less.
I write: I love books! At University of Toronto, I studied a breadth of history, anthropology, and literature—from Greco-Roman mythology to Victorian novels to art history to science fiction. (I failed to declare a major.) I am familiar with Dewey Decimal Classification. I have worked with microfiche and aperture cards and enjoy helping others with research or school projects.
I write: One of my favourite books is Life Before Man by acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The three characters, Elizabeth, Nate, and Lesje, are each trapped in their own way by societal expectation and unhappiness. Like many of Atwood’s novels, the connections between past and present, gender roles, and death are the main themes.
I do not write: I never understood why Elizabeth and Lesje didn’t get it on. Or: I own a signed Canadian first edition. I paid fifty dollars for it at a rare book auction.
“Give it at least a week,” Barbara says as she takes my application. She’s wearing her nametag now: ASK ME. I’M A LIBRARIAN. I bite back the urge to tell her that, actually, a librarian is someone with a degree in library studies. “You’ll have to start with weekend shifts. The one to nine p.m., Fridays and Saturdays. Bookshelvers start at five dollars an hour, so you might want to look for something else too. There’s a help-wanted section on the bulletin board by the magazine rack.” I stare just past her shoulder to a display of bestsellers. Library visitors can add their names to the wait list for copies of The Stand by Steven King. My stomach gurgles again. I spot a copy of Medicine River by Thomas King, which I had started to read in a Literary Anthropology class before I dropped out. I also snap up a copy of The Complete Poems: 1927–1979 of Elizabeth Bishop.
“Can you check these out for me?” I ask Barbara.
“You just got here, but don’t go burying your head in books. You get so reclusive. You have to get out there, get work lined up now before the high school kids are out for the summer. Check the Fort Erie Race Track, maybe. I bet the beer girls at the golf course make decent tips. You get the regular paycheque coming in, and I’ll show you how a payback plan works. Deal?”
“Yes, I’ll keep looking,” I choke out my words. “I’ll be working in no time.”