We were all going. Lish, Alba, Hope, Maya, Letitia, Dill and me. Lish had made arrangements with Rodger to use his old van and we were all going to Denver to find the busker.
A few weeks before we left Dill had croup. For babies, it is a bad thing to have. All you can do is sit in the bathroom with the door closed and all the taps running hot water so there is steam everywhere. The steam loosens up the chest and allows the baby to breathe normally. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen. I read this in my Benjamin Spock book which I kept under my bed so people like Terrapin wouldn’t see it. They didn’t believe in doctors, especially male ones. Anyway, so that’s what we did, Dill and I. I turned on the sink tap and the bathtub tap full blast and then I sat on the floor, leaning against the tub, with poor Dill on my lap. It was one of the worst nights of my life with Dill. I was afraid he would die. I phoned the hospital and told them how Dill was coughing. They told me to continue doing the steam thing. They said there was no reason to bring him in to the hospital because there was a three-to four-hour waiting period and by then the attack would be over. Attack. They told me my son was being attacked and I would have to wait four hours for them to help him! They told me to relax. As if. Why didn’t I just invite a few friends over for movies and popcorn while I was at it?
Dill and I sat in the steam. He coughed and coughed. I took off his undershirt and he sat in my lap in his diaper. I tried to nurse him. He coughed and cried. I cried and hoped that the hot water would not run out. I sang songs. I listened closely to his cough. Was it getting a bit better? Little beads of sweat were popping out on Dill’s head. I noticed how tiny Dill’s chest was. I noticed how I hadn’t been cleaning the bathroom floor very well. I didn’t want to call Lish. Or Teresa. Or Mercy. Or Terrapin. Or Sing Dylan. Or any of them. I wanted to handle this. Then I wanted my mom. Then I looked at Dill and thought, oh my god, I’m his mom. And then I wanted my mom even more. Finally Dill fell asleep in my lap. The attack was over.
I was so tired I fell asleep right there on the bathroom floor. I had a dream that I was in Venice, Italy. All by myself. I was standing by some water and I had a camera around my neck. Suddenly two huge polar bears came out of the water and one took a big bite out of the other one and then they disappeared. Then two huge whales did the same thing. And then two other animals I couldn’t exactly identify. All this time I didn’t take any pictures, even though I had a camera around my neck. I decided to leave Venice but as I turned to go my mom appeared beside me and said, “Don’t worry, we’re really not picture people.” She took the camera from around my neck, and it blew away and disappeared. Then she and I sat down. And that was the end of the dream.
We couldn’t leave right away like Lish wanted because Hope and Maya refused to miss any school. We would have to wait until the end of June. This was a good thing anyway, because there were a lot of details to work out. When you’re on welfare, you are not allowed to leave the province. Everyone does from time to time, but you have to make sure you’re covered in case your dole worker decides to surprise you with a home visit or if one of your appointments falls into the period of time you plan to be away. Also, Rodger was going to do some work on the van, make sure it would get us to Denver and back. And we wanted to find a tent and sleeping bags somewhere, maybe a pawn shop, because we couldn’t all sleep in the van and we certainly couldn’t afford motels. We couldn’t even afford the gas to get us there, but Lish said she had a plan.
So in the meantime, all we had to do was get through the rain and the bugs for two more weeks until school was out and we had come up with the extra cash to get us to Denver. Lish’s parents had to come to Winnipeg on some business. Her mom phoned and said they’d be staying at the Four Seasons with the rest of the conventioneers, but they would try to make it over to Lish’s place at least once over the weekend. Her mom told her it was important for her to be in Winnipeg as well because it was a kind of cosy spousal convention, where her absence would be noted and all sorts of rumours would fly and Lish’s dad’s job might come into question because of his questionable stability and marital standing.
Later we were sitting around at Lish’s place, drinking coffee and eating lemon loaf, burning patchouli incense and talking. We agreed we would never act like Lish’s mother: not trying to see our kids when they were only a few blocks away and we hadn’t seen them in six months and some man forbade it, some man trying to get a promotion.
“Would you like a beer?” asked Lish. She wandered over to her fridge and took out two bottles. “Glass?” she called from the kitchen.
“No, thanks,” I said.
She handed me the beer and sat down with her own. “What the hell,” she said.
We were quiet for a while. Lish drank her beer in about three minutes and went to the fridge to get another one. She held one up and looked at me. I shook my head. She came back and sat down in her big brown chair and flipped her legs over one of the chair’s arms. “You know,” she said, “I’m a lot like him in some ways.”
“Like who?” I asked.
“Like my father,” she said. She had a sip of her beer. “He’s never come here to visit us. He’s never called to say hello. Years ago, when I told him I was pregnant with Hope, he said, ‘I expected more from you.’” Lish had another sip.
I grinned. “More kids?” I asked.
She smiled, and sighed. “We both want what we want, he and I,” she said. “So fucking badly.”
“And what would that be?” I asked.
She paused. “Another beer,” said Lish. “Yourself?”
“Half,” I said.
Suddenly Lish blurted out, “That’s it. I’m going there. I’m taking the girls to see them. And Lucy, you and Dill are coming along! GIRLS, WE’RE GOING TO SEE GRANDMA AND GRANDPA AT THEIR HOTEL!!!” she shouted. And so we did. Lish told the girls to dress up, and because Lish did not believe in telling them how to dress, they put on bizarre outfits, too small, too big, clashing colours, discarded costume jewellery, and, of course, garish face paints in place of real make-up. Hope made a fake cigarette out of rolled-up paper and put it behind her ear. Lish put on a black sequined dress she had picked up at the Junior League, and her long square-toed shoes. She polished her spider and put it on the lowest part of her brim so it looked like a third eye. She doused herself with patchouli oil and rose water. She put on all her clanging bracelets and a ring on each finger. She tossed the rest of the lemon loaf in a Safeway bag to bring to her parents. I changed Dill’s diaper, gave him a cracker to chew on, and we were out the door. The twins in the wagon with Dill sandwiched in between, the older girls dancing along behind it, Lish, bent over in her sequined dress and square-toed shoes, and me, taking turns lugging the wagon to the Four Seasons Hotel. It was only sprinkling outside, and besides, Lish said she didn’t give a flying fuck if we got soaked. She had a plan.
The doorman of the Four Seasons was not sure what to do with the wagon when we got there. He held the door open for Lish and the girls and at the same time tried to help push the wagon over the door stoop. It was harder than he thought, and he let go of the door. The door swung back into Lish’s face. The wagon perched in between the doors. Hope and Maya started pushing it from the back and the twins began to laugh. The doorman stood up and looked at Lish for guidance. She said, “Look, just everyone let go of the frigging wagon. I’ll do it myself.” She backed out and tried the revolving doors. This time the wagon wedged itself into one of the sections and wouldn’t move. Lish told the girls to get out and squeeze through the space. The older girls stood outside helplessly. “Go through the door, Jesus,” muttered Lish through the glass pointing to the non-revolving door. The doorman ran to that door and pushed. Hope and Maya were pushing too. “For Christ’s sake . . .” Lish moved the doorman away from the door and Hope and Maya burst into the hotel and fell on top of each other.
“I hope you’re not expecting a tip,” said Lish to the blushing doorman. He laughed, and Lish rolled her eyes at him, straightened her hat and told her girls to follow her to the elevator. The man behind the front desk leaned over its marble surface. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
“What.”
“What are you going to do with your wagon? And who are you looking for?”
“Mom, the wagon’s still stuck. You can’t leave it there. Geez.” Maya looked disgusted and straightened Hope’s cigarette.
“I am not going to do anything with the wagon. The doorman—” Lish stretched this word out and paused briefly after saying it—“will somehow remove it and put it in a suitable place until I come back to get it. I, we, are going to the convention in the ballroom on the sixth floor. Is there a problem with that?”
“Well, are you a member of the convention or . . .”
“Yes, I am.” Lish put one of her hands into the other one and cocked her head. Dill had fallen asleep on the way to the hotel and I stood beside Lish holding him over my shoulder and shifting around from one foot to the other, trying to assume a confident stance like Lish’s, but thinking I looked more like a refugee at an appeal hearing. Please sir, I felt like blurting out in broken English, grant my infant son and me asylum at the Four Seasons Hotel.
“Are you sure, you don’t—”
“I don’t have a sitter, you’re right,” said Lish. “This convention came up out of the blue and I didn’t have enough time to get one. Fortunately, my girls are used to this type of thing. They come out for every Kids at the Office Day and are very well-behaved.” Alba was grabbing her crotch, desperate to pee, and Letitia had pushed every floor button of the elevator. Hope and Maya were chasing each other around the potted trees in the lobby. Lish went on, “I really must go. I have an 11:30 presentation to make on Bank Security Measures.” Lish grabbed Alba’s hand away from her crotch and called to the others, “Girls, time to go.” The front desk guy pursed his lips and started clacking away at his computer.
Lish spotted her parents in the ballroom immediately. John was holding forth on some hot banking news. He had a sharp dark suit on. He was talking very loudly. As a child Lish could never lose him because of his booming voice. The men he was talking to were inches shorter than he and they gazed up at him while he boomed. John glanced around the room, looking over and around their heads. Lish’s mother smiled demurely at his side and picked a piece of lint off the back of his jacket.
I wandered over to the buffet table and lay the sleeping Dill on the floor underneath it. He was getting very heavy. I stood and looked over the trays of food and kept my eye on Dill while Lish went over to talk to her parents.
“GRANDMA GRANDPA GRANDMA GRANDPA!” The twins sprinted to their grandparents. The look on Lish’s mom’s face was one of pure surprise and delight. The look on John’s face, one of pure horror.
“Girls, oh how wonderful, I’m so glad! I was going to call you to see if we—”
“How the hell did you get in here, Alicia?” John still had a big smile on his face but the words were forced through the spaces between his teeth.
Lish stood there and smiled. She straightened her hat and readjusted her bracelets. Alba leapt at her grandfather and smeared yellow face paint all over his dark suit jacket. People were beginning to stare and raise their eyebrows.
“Hi Dad, hi Mom.”
“Alicia, collect your uh . . . children . . . and come with me. Mary, did you invite them here?”
“Dad,” said Lish, “there’s something I need to ask you.”
“Alicia, dear, I’m so glad you’re here,” said Lish’s mom. “And the kids, oh you precious girls, come here and let me hold you. Oh John, isn’t this wonderful?”
One of John’s friends strolled by. He was holding two drinks in his hand and had loosened his tie. He smiled at Lish and said, “Well, well, who have we here?”
“Hello, I’m Lish, this is Alba and Hope and Letitia over there and Maya.”
“How do ya doo. My name’s Howard Bloethal, I’m very happy to beat you and your famlay. Whaddaya do uh . . . uh . . .”
“Lish. Nothing. I’m on social assistance.”
“Well, isn’t that great, you must be very happy and whadbeeyoodivul girls I gotta go now ggg goodbye.”
John said, “Thank god he’s too drunk to notice anything. My god, is that a spider Alicia?”
“It is,” said Lish, “but Daddy, can I talk to you for a sec—”
“Look,” he interrupted her, “come with me, all of you. We’ll sort this out.” He spoke in a loud whisper, “Why are you doing this to me, Alicia? It’s not fair, showing up like this out of the blue. Everything I do I do for you and your mother. I’m trying to do my work here. I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”
Just then two more suits walked up and slapped John on his back. One asked, “Who’s the pretty lady, John?”
“My name is Lish. I’m John’s daughter and these are his granddaughters. That’s my friend Lucy over there, and her son Dill.” She turned and waved and I forced a weak smile. I glanced at John and he appeared to be tearing the skin off one of his thumbs. He looked up at the ceiling and for one second I felt I knew what he was going through. Help, his look said, and I thought, fellow refugee.
Mary was hauling treats from her purse and passing them out to the girls, hugging and kissing them. They were all talking at once. Mary asked them if they’d like to visit the buffet and have a snack. They wanted to show her their wagon stuck in the door and perform a play for her. They wanted to know why was Grandpa mad? He wasn’t, Mary told them, he’s just busy and doesn’t handle surprises well. Would they come over? Well . . .
Lish tried to move closer to her father, but one of the men standing around decided to strike up a conversation with her. He asked, “So your father tells me you’re in business for yourself? Working out of your home?”
“Ha ha ha, yeah, you might say that.” Lish looked at her father.
“Mmmm, what’s that smell?”
“Oh, my patchouli, or it could be this lemon loaf.” Lish swung the Safeway bag around. The men nodded, clued out.
The conversation between Lish and John’s buddies was picking up. John stood to one side, smiling, tearing at his thumb.
“What does your husband do, Lish?”
“Oh, well, I don’t have one, thankfully, I already have four children ha ha ha.”
She looked over at me for confirmation, but I snapped my head away from her glance, toward the buffet table, and crossed my fingers. Dill was making noises under the table and I could smell his diaper.
“Oh, well, is their father helping you out uh . . . financially, or . . .”
“Not really. The father of the older two lives in his van or at his mother’s and is a poet. The father of the twins doesn’t know he is, and can’t come to Canada because of a drug charge, although I’m planning to go to Colorado to find him and show him the girls, you know, have a little fun . . . he’s a fire-eater . . .”
“That’s it. Alicia, come with me now.” John steered Lish towards the giant doors of the ballroom. Lish tossed the Safeway bag with the lemon loaf at John’s friends and said, “Here, just for you.” Outside in the hall, John practically slammed Lish into the wall. His face was a deep shade of red and looked like dried fruit. Before he could bring himself to speak, Lish said calmly, “Give me a thousand bucks and I’ll leave.”
I could hear John yelling. “COMING IN HERE LIKE THIS WITH YOUR RAGTAG HER OF KIDS DRESSED UP LIKE TARTS ASKING FOR MONEY WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE—”
“I’m your daughter, John.”
So that was it, John wrote Lish a cheque for a thousand bucks. Then he got his dark suit and his dried fruit face back into that ballroom, in a hurry to explain all to the boys. Mary walked Lish and the kids to the lobby and they had some of the free coffee and doughnuts and talked. Mary wanted to get a cab for Lish, but Mary never really had money of her own. Mary said she would try to make it out to Winnipeg soon to visit Lish and the kids, but she had a sad look on her face when she laughed. In any case, they were coming out for a niece’s wedding in the fall and they’d see each other then. She did like Lish’s outfit. “Leave it to Lish,” she said, and she said the girls were gems. Lish told Mary that she intended to use the money to go to Colorado to find the twins’ father, and Mary wished her well. She apologized for John and gave each of the girls another candy and a big wet kiss and a hug. She agreedwith the girls that the wagon must certainly have been stuck but now it sat outside the hotel on the sidewalk tucked behind one of the fat pillars. The front desk clerk looked anxious to see it go.
On the way home I asked Lish if she was okay. She said, “What do you think, Lucy? Do you think I’m okay?”
I said, “I think you might not be.” She looked at me. She was crying. I took her hand and we walked home in the rain.
So we had the cash, the van (just about fixed) and the destination. All we needed was to fix welfare, make sure we wouldn’t get caught leaving the province, let alone the country, and wait until Hope and Maya got out of school.
Lish had decided not to tell the girls about the busker actually being their father unless we found him. Until then he’d just be a friend we were trying to locate. I felt like my life had just lurched involuntarily into fourth gear. Maybe chasing after the busker wasn’t the best thing for Lish to be doing and for me to be encouraging. But I just wanted what was best for her and the kids. I wanted her to be happy. And at least we’d be getting away from Half-a-Life for a while. That could only be a good thing, regardless of where we went or what we found. Or didn’t find.
My dole appointment was coming up again. I needed to postpone it a bit, otherwise my next one would fall somewhere in the time when Lish and I had planned to be in Colorado. I decided to phone Podborczintski and lie. It was something I was getting pretty good at. I made the call at 9:10 in the morning and was on hold until 9:55. The whole time their muzak played Billy Joel’s “Honesty.” Not too subtle.
“Hello, Mr. Podborczintski?”
“Case number please.”
That was charming. Welfare language meaning Hello. “Uh, 5040388920.”
“One moment while I punch you in.” On hold again with “Honesty.” “Yes, Lucy Van Alstyne. How may I help you.”
“Uh, yeah, I have an appointment with you for June 21st and I’m going to have to change it, like move it up, because I have a funeral to go to on that day.”
“Whose funeral is it?” I guess he wanted a case number and a computer printout in front of him.
“Well, it’s my mother’s funeral.”
“I see. Unfortunately, I’ll need a death certificate to prove she’s dead and a letter from the person officiating at the funeral to prove that her funeral is indeed on June 21st. What time is the funeral?”
“Oh, it’s in the afternoon. Two o’clock.”
“Well, your appointment is for 10:15 in the morning. Technically you’d be able to make it for your appointment and still get to the funeral for the afternoon. I realize you’re distraught; however, my hands are tied with regards to policy.”
If I had been Lish I would have reacted differently. I would have started to cry or been outraged. I would have demanded to speak to his superior, threatened to contact my MP, take it to the press, insisted on proof that this was indeed policy. I would have made a scene.
“Oh, well fine then, see you June 21st.”
“Very well, June 21st it is, and uh . . . I’m sorry about your mother. I lost my mother to cancer only six months ago, so I know what you’re going through.”
Interesting. I should have asked to see old Mrs. Podborczintski’s death certificate. Well, so much for that. I’d have to go for my appointment now and call from somewhere on the road with an elaborate story about why I couldn’t make it for my next one. Lish would be with me. She could help with the details. I could picture it in my mind. Some phone booth in Wyoming, maybe, all five kids running around squawking, Lish trying not to laugh, saying, “Tell him that . . . Tell him oooh . . . ha ha ha.”
Mercy had a job working for the Disaster Board. She had been transferred over there temporarily from her other government job because she was so good at organizing files and receipts and complaints, separating the genuine from the bogus. Lish and I watched her leave one morning, mosquito netting and bike helmets on both her and her daughter’s heads, reflectors on the bike and on their rain jackets and on Zara’s backpack and Mercy’s briefcase. We marvelled at her routine. The truth was, most of us in Half-a-Life were afraid of jobs, so our feelings for Mercy were a combination of jealousy and disgust. We’d all had jobs at one time or another. Most didn’t last long. We had a problem with authority. Maybe we were lazy. A lot of people figured we were stupid. But even being on the dole was better than working. We didn’t want to leave our kids at a daycare or with a sitter. Some of us wouldn’t have been able to maintain the schedule, up at dawn, home at dusk, bed by 9:30, do it again the next day. I think a lot of us lacked confidence, too, in ourselves and in our ability to stick with a job and do it well. Having children was easy. There was no choice: we were stuck with them and this worked out for us, more or less. And besides, being on the dole and having children at the same time was a job. Who says we didn’t earn our money?
But to get back to Mercy: at precisely 5:10 she and Zara would be back at Half-a-Life. She might visit with one of us briefly before making supper for Zara and herself. Zara would be in bed by seven o’clock sharp, otherwise she’d have a fit, according to Mercy. Zara had to get up at six every morning to make it to daycare on time for Mercy to make it to work on time, so it made sense. Mercy would then clean up from supper, re-arrange her tiny apartment, do laundry, maybe some paperwork. By 9:30 she was in bed. The next day they’d do it again.
During one of her brief visits, Mercy told us Bunnie Hutchison, the Minister in charge of Welfare, had applied for flood disaster relief money from the province. On her form she had said she didn’t have insurance and needed money for damaged carpets, lifting tiles, shifting foundation, loss of clothing (including numerous fur coats left in a cedar closet in the basement), loss of television, VCR, CD player, stained cedar wood from her sauna, fridge (from mini-bar), ruined leather from the mini-bar, pool table, bathroom cabinet, washer, dryer, motors, tools (belonging to her husband), and a two-thousand-dollar aquarium which housed eight exotic South American piranhas who died when the aquarium’s climate control was altered by the cold rain water splashing up against it.
Mercy told us she had done a routine check of Bunnie Hutchison’s city tax bill and found out that she did indeed have insurance that covered flood, sewage and any other type of natural disaster. How odd. Must have been an oversight on Bunnie’s part, thought Mercy. When she showed the file to her supervisor, he took it and said, “Oh, that’s fine, I’ll handle this.”
I realized later that Mercy was trying to tell me something about Bunnie Hutchison, but at that point I guessed that Mercy was merely talking about her day at work, and pointing out that even provincial government ministers make mistakes. That evening I lay down with Dill. I sang to him and he fell asleep with his arm around my neck. From my bedroom window I could see more rain clouds puffing up, getting ready to dump their load. I thought of the clothes I’d pack for Dill and me, I thought of the games and food we could bring for the kids and the tapes we’d bring to listen to. I didn’t think about the real reason why we were going. For Lish this adventure had a purpose, an end. For me, it was just an adventure.
That evening I watched Joe deliberately smash his 1976 Dodge Dart into a pole in the Half-a-Life parking lot. The next day he’d report it as a hit-and-run accident and claim the insurance money for it. He and Pillar would be able to buy another week’s worth of groceries and when they were flush they’d buy another beater for a hundred or two hundred dollars.