Class #5 – Goodnight

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Feb-05-08

For this class we were given a random picture and asked to write a story within the setting. 

“Hello! Is anyone around?  I need help. My car’s broken down and my cell phone’s dead.  Hello?”  Nothing.  “… and these heels are killing me”, Susan added into the still emptiness.  From the look of the two enfeebled farm buildings in front of her, Susan wasn’t honestly expecting an answer.  The idea for the short cut seemed good at the time.  The sooner she was home and this afternoon was over, the better.  Even on the drive, she kept thinking ahead to getting off these painfully fashionable shoes, taking off the respectfully somber charcoal outfit she had on, turning on the sound system and sinking into the jacuzzi with a glass of Chardonnay and the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.  The outfit seemed like a good idea at the time.  Considering her present circumstances, something more functional might be more in place.  “Yes, like an apron and a pitchfork”, she mused.  

She could almost make out the steam rising out of the car hood if she looked back over that last hill.  The BMW was just over the second ridge … or was it the third?  All these hills seemed to look the same after awhile.   Miles and miles of rippled green topped with oak and birch.  At first, she had had to cross a large field of corn. Nothing but vast fields of pastoral stalks, like a giant country shag carpet.  If she remembered correctly, they would be harvested in the next couple of weeks.  It’s destination, undoubtedly some road side shelter with the sign that read: 

Corn $4/doz

Blueberry Pies

Fresh Vegetables

 She had left her car sweating on the side of the gravel road, politely called RR#4.  She hadn’t seen a single vehicle for hours, that last one, just before she turned off the paved road and decided on this ill fated cross-country shortcut.  It was supposed to take at least an hour and a half off the trip and at the time, a choppy twenty minutes seemed like a reasonable price to pay for an earlier bubble bath.  Now she was going to need more than just a bubble bath.  “I’ll have to call and make an appointment with the RMT for a massage, after this … and probably the hairdresser”, she sighed, as her hair grow limp and the perspiration made it stick flattened against her scalp. 

Her Mother would have laughed at the sight of her now.  Well, perhaps not laughed at her, as gentle a soul as her Mother had been, she would never have found humour in someone’s misfortune.  She would have just smiled and said something like “my big city girl is back in the country, I see”.  ‘Big City girl” Her Mother always used to call her that and somehow it always made her feel a little of that old burden.  Like in some ways it was Big City versus country goodness.  It was always said with affection, but Susan felt that there was a little sadness associated with it as well.  Like her Mother knew how distant she felt from her country roots.  How, although she never would admit it, she felt better than the rest of the family and most of her friends who had stayed behind. “Why would you ever want to live in the city?” they had all asked naively.  “All that noise, and the cars and the smog.  So crowded!  And the traffic!”   

Yes, so crowded, she had thought to herself, and so alive!  She could walk down Yonge Steet in downtown Toronto at any time of night, and there were people around, coming out of clubs, going to all night coffee shops, hopping into cabs or just hanging around.  What would she be doing here on a Saturday night?  Probably sipping the last of her chamomile tea before bed, maybe a game of Canasta with the distant neighbours, or perhaps just outside at a place very much like this one, watching the stars and listening to the crickets chirp.  She had to give the country credit for that, at least, you could really see the stars out here.  But what did she need with stars when she had the lights? 

The things she found in the city that made her alive were the very things her Mother could never relate to.  She and Dad had tried to visit from time to time, of course, but never for too long.  Susan always made sure the visits couldn’t last too long.  There was always work to do, or a function to attend.  An afternoon visit, perhaps a dinner, was about as much as she could handle.  Each minute she spent with them seemed forced and the more forced it was, the further she pushed her feelings inside.  How cold she must have seemed.  Would it have taken that much from her to spend a little more time with them?  Perhaps, try to share with them the side of the City that captured her, maybe they’d understand why she couldn’t live anywhere else.  But no, she just didn’t have it in her and every time they left, almost resigned that they had received all the affection they were going to receive, there was the usual “don’t forget to call” and “we love you” or “we understand how busy you are, but if you could make it up for Christmas this year, that would be great.  Aunt Jean asks about you all the time”. 

Well, there would be no more Christmas’ now.  “Susan?  It’s about Mom” her bother had started the call four days ago, his voice cracking on the phone, “she’s gone.  Heart attack, they think, right in the middle of making dinner”.  The rest of the conversation had been a bit of a blur.  Details passed back and forth, arrangements made, polite condolences shared.  Dad had gone ten years earlier, way too young at 58.  Cancer.  Now she and Ted really were orphans.  Putting the phone down, she could barely move.  An almost nauseous wave swept through her, and she had to go sit on the couch, envelop herself in the cool calm of zero degree emotion.  Holding it tight, like a clenched fist around her eye ducts, she sat like that for minutes, until she was sure that she had pushed everything back down deep.  Calmer, she occupied herself with making arrangements for someone to keep an eye on the condo, made a few calls to close friends and then started to pack. 

The drive up had been impatiently long.  Each kilometer a test of her endurance, each the last leg of a marathon.  Along the ten lane 400 series expess to the four lane highway to the two lane rural route gently rolling over small hills, her car looking like a miniature sailboat cresting the waves in a pool, she continued on.  The funeral had gone as expected.  She had made her appearance, accepted the familial comfort from relatives she could barely remember and stayed long enough that she could use the excuse of the long drive home to leave.  Even so, it felt to her that wrapped in the kind words of comfort and “it was so lovely to see you, do you have to leave?” was the disapproving tone asking her “Where have you been?  This was your Mother.  How can you be so heartless?”  Maybe it was just her imagination or perhaps, her own guilt.  Either way, she had said her goodbyes and returned to the car, gripping the steering wheel as she abandoned the funeral parlor. 

And now here she was, in some ways home, and yet as far away from what she considered her home as anyone could feel.  They’d had buildings like this on the farm where she grew up.  Structures held together with cut trees, rusty nails and clay for mortar.  The one of the left was just a small single story, probably used at one time for supplies, feed, various assortments of small implements, hoses hanging from large hooks on the walls.  The hostas, she hadn’t forgotten everything, she knew they were hostas, grew all around the base of the building, like a wreath. The plants were of all varieties, Large variegated leaves of different green hues, sometimes yellow, sometime white, adoring the shade offered by the wall at this time of day. 

The other building, about a hundred feet further across a small field of flat unruly grass, was two storey.  That one, with its large double doors and second story exit, would have been used for larger equipment, tractors, motors and filled to the rafters with hay, likely.  She decided to head towards that one.  At least it would offer some respite from this damn blazing heat.  If she wasn’t going to be lucky enough to have at least a little breeze, the best she could do was find some shelter in the shade.  It would give here a chance to relax for a bit and have to time to consider her options.  Taking off her shoes, her feet sinking into the thick grass like she was putting on slippers, she walked across the yard to the tall double doors.  

Yanking the door with all her strength, and even then, only managing to open it wide enough to fit her still slim figure through, she was instantly overwhelmed with the essence of the place.   Parched hay filled her senses, mixed with old oil, leather harnesses and dried animal manure.  The air was heavy and stale, sealed in and built up from the summer’s heat.  The scarred wood rafters and beams, forming elongated ‘A’s above her head, appeared brittle, like arthritic bones.  Other than a few bales of hay left in the centre, the hard clay-like floor was empty.  As she stepped further inside, the dust rose from her footsteps, seeming to fill the air with a gentle arid mist.  Light streaming in from small holes in the mortar seemed to pick up the airborne particles, pulling them gently, but insistently, upwards. Taking off her sunglasses, her eyes followed the same path, finally noticing the loft above. 

The loft space was covered in loose hay, some hanging over the edges like ivy.  Unconsciously, a small smile reluctantly loosened her resolute lips.  She had spent many an afternoon playing in just such a place.  Throwing herself haphazardly through the air to land in a pile of soft hay, acting out battles of epic proportions, imagining tales of love and rescue and handsome princes.  Sharing secret passions with those special intimate friends, other times, just imagining by herself what adventures life might bring.  Her first kiss had happened, nestled into a secret refuge just like that.  It hadn’t been a prince, of course, but a rather homely Billy Martin, a barely pubescent childhood playmate from two farms over.  It had been awkward and disappointingly wet, their awkward tongues and his new braces dampening whatever passion she might have imagined. When did it happen, she wondered? 

When did she go from the playful girl who parachuted from rafters and harassed reluctant boys into sloppy puckering to the girl who wouldn’t’ say good night anymore, the one who didn’t kiss her parents before bed because she was too ‘old’.  When did the hugs become forced, the space between conversations, measurable gaps?  When did she begin to wear a layer around her, like a parka in the winter keeping out the cold? In this case, it wasn’t the cold she was protected from, but the warmth she rejected.  Maybe it was natural, she mollified herself.  That when a girl reaches a certain age and begins to think of herself as a woman she pulls back, wanting to define herself in her own way and by her own rules.  Now here she was, standing alone in this empty barn without even an echo for company. 

She’d always remember that one particular night.  Her Mother had come up to her room, as always before bed, to kiss her goodnight.  Susan had turned out the lights earlier and rolled over in bed.  She could hear her Mother open the door, felt her standing there watching the apparently sleeping figure.  Susan had clenched her eyes even tighter and seemingly tried to will her Mother to leave, the presence she felt in the door pressing a mixture of guilt and resentment and shame into her like a weight.  Finally, her voice shaky, she had heard her Mother say “I guess you can’t even say good night anymore”.  It wasn’t a question, but rather a resigned acknowledgement mixed with regret and lack of understanding and pain.  Her Mother had gently closed the door then and thereafter, she had never again been obligated to say goodnight and kiss them before bed.  She’d won, right?  Right? 

The mist had begun to settle as she’d stood there, tiny flecks landing on ebony cotton.  Attracted to the new source of moisture, the particles gripped the streams of saline flowing down her cheeks, or fell along with them to the thirsty dirt below.

 “Mom?  Good night.”

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