God's Country (fiction)

We’re sitting on my couch and it’s getting late in the evening. We’re feeling a little philosophical, a little nostalgic, a little introspective, or at least that’s how it would appear on the surface. Perhaps below the surface, if you scratch just a bit, you’ll see that the more fundamental base feeling is that of guilt. Guilt that we’re sitting here doing things that others can’t. Some people have a propensity to seize such moments as though in some triumphant, silent yell that says, “la chaim!”. For some reason we don’t do that very often.

* * *

She knew it was Wednesday. They served cinnamon apple oatmeal for breakfast on Wednesdays. She neither liked nor disliked the oatmeal, she did find it a tad sweet, but it was significantly better than their cold, tasteless scrambled eggs.
After breakfast she stared out of her bedroom window for a long, long time. It was spring and she could smell the greenness in the air. The fragrance of fresh cut grass and damp cherry blossoms and wavering, sunny daffodils permeated the air. She loved spring. Spring came late to the Crowsnest Pass when she younger, and even when it did come it took a while to thaw Blairmore out from another snow-laden winter. Halcyon days. Hot summer days when they would pack a picnic and take their girls and Wimpy the dog to fish and dip their toes in the glacier fed rivers and streams that wound their way down from the Rockies. There wasn’t ever enough room for Wimpy to fit in the car, and that damn dog mastered the art of riding on the running boards of their Model T Ford. Not a lot of people in Blairmore had a car in those days, she remembered proudly.
They did well. They had a good life: Des provided for them. They had enough so that, during the Depression, she had been able to give boiled eggs, sandwiches, hard rolls to the out of work boys that jumped off the train looking for work, for any kind of work.
They did well enough to entertain from time to time. They would have dinner parties that would last late into the night, as they ate, drank wine, listened to the gramophone, pushed furniture out of the way and danced. She was beautiful and she liked to have fun. Des loved to see her have fun.

* * *

“I don’t know what she does all day. I can’t stand the thought of her sitting there, all alone. What does she do?” he pleads.
I shake my head; I don’t know what to say. All I can offer is, “Maybe she loses track of time. Maybe she’s not unhappy.”
“We all end up alone,” he says firmly.
We don’t have to, I want to scream. But then I remember my grandfather, alone in the hospital. Wandering away from his hospital bed to be found gazing at the newborns in the maternity ward. Mistaking the nurse for me, obviously in the hopes that I would come and visit him one last time, but I didn’t.

* * *

Her daughter bought her some books. Books with large print so she can read them quite easily. It’s true; she’s been reading the same page over and over for the past twenty minutes quite easily. She’s sort of lost track as to what this book is supposed to be about, so she turns it over to take a look at the cover, to try and deduce something from the artwork, but there isn’t anything. Danielle Steele. The name rings a bell: she’s sure she’s read something by this woman before.
Suddenly she’s tired. She rests the book in her lap and looks outside again, to see a cat mincing across the fresh-cut lawn. The overgrown thatches of grass – prime mouse-hunting spots – have been shorn. She reckons he’s heading the general direction of the bird baths.
She dreams she is in their house in Penticton with its meticulously maintained weed-free lawn, with its shady back porch and the segment of the kitchen floor that has too much give and needs to be repaired. Des is outside, lavishing love on this year’s tomato crop and she’s writing letters to old acquaintances. There’s a knock at the front door and it’s her daughter, Madeleine, coming to drop off a casserole she’s made for dinner. “Stay for a while”, she invites her daughter, pushing the pen and the stationary to one side. Happy to see her daughter and desperate for an interlude of any sort.
“Where’s dad?” her daughter asks, her eyes already glancing through the sliding glass door to where she knows her father is, hunched in rapt attention over an Early Girl or a Crimson Fancy. Madeleine slides open the sliding glass door and steps out of the stuffy house and into the cool shade of the back patio. “Hi dad!” she calls. Her father doesn’t have his hearing aid in, so she tries again, more loudly this time. Her father, with some effort, turns around to see his daughter standing on the porch.
“Hey you”, he says, struggling somewhat unsteadily to get to his feet and making his way over to her.
“I brought over some dinner for you and mom”, Madeleine says.
“Eh?” he responds, fumbling to adjust a hearing aid that’s not there, and then mumbling its curses under his breath.
“I came over to have a glass of sherry with you and mom,” Madeleine tries again.
“Sherry, eh?” he grins, climbing the steps into the house, leaving Madeleine to wonder if he’s selectively deaf.
They sit, the three of them, having a sherry. And then there’s another knock at the front door and it’s her daughter Eileen come to visit with her husband Ron, and they’ve brought with them her other daughter Fay, who she didn’t even know was in town.
Suddenly they’re no longer in Penticton, they’re back in their Calgary house and everyone is there: her kids and their husbands and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren, so many beautiful offspring, and they’re all having a huge barbeque and laughing and talking long into the evening and she’s spry again, in this late spring evening. It's been a very long time since she's held a baby. She doesn’t have liver spots on her hands and her husband is dashing and she’s surrounded by her family and she feels such love and unparalleled happiness and she thinks of what a blessed life she has had.
In her sleep she is smiling.

* * *

He says, “I’m always afraid the last time I saw her will be the last time.”
I think, the last time you see anyone could be the last time.

* * *

She awakes from her dream that is too close to reality, too close to the memories that are slowly ebbing and being erased, with a feeling of happiness, but it dissipates as she glances around her austere room to find that, once again, she is alone.
Her daughter is coming though, today. Her daughter is coming to take her home, back to her house and to Des. She pushes herself out of her chair, looking once more out the window. There is a young man gardening outside and she watches him for a while. She wonders what he thinks of this place. Does he think of it as a jail for old people? Does its overall sadness and whiffs of loneliness compel him to visit his own aged relatives who are stashed away in places like these? Is this property by far the most depressing that he must visit? Surely the gardening demands at the hotels, at the private estates can’t be as intimidating as this.
She slides her suitcase out from underneath her bed and proceeds to remove her clothing from the chest of drawers.
She looks at the photos on her bureau. Pictures of her daughters with their husbands, poised, smiling endlessly back at her. A picture of her own husband, his arm around their granddaughter, both beaming proudly. It’s been a long time since she’s seen Des and she’s grateful to be reminded what his face looks like.
She continues to pack, placing the thin, nondescript garments which cover her small, fragile body into the case. She’s slightly mad: they shouldn’t have left her here for as long as she did, though she’s not entirely sure how long she’s been here. It seems that she’s entitled to more than chewy bran muffins, and movies played at incredible levels to pander to the near deaf, and endless games of scrabble and outdated magazines. Besides, she’s not as old as any of these people anyways. These sad waifs whose families never visit them, who push their walkers aimlessly around as though actively seeking death, or simply stare off into space. There’s no one here to talk to. There’s no one here with whom she wishes to share the rich tapestry of her life. There’s no one here that understands her.
She places the photos of her daughters into her suitcase. She takes down the photo of Des and looks at it, at him, remembering.

* * *

Later that evening Madeleine’s phone rings: it is her sister Fay calling from Invermere.
“Did you see mom today?” Fay asks.
Madeleine says yes, she did, as she studies the myriad of photos pinned up on her fridge. Photos of her, of her six children and ten grandchildren. Photos of her mom and dad.
Fay can tell she’s upset. “How is mom?”
Madeleine pauses, takes a deep breath and slides a photo of her mom and dad out from underneath a magnet. “She still wants to come home. She still has her bags packed every time I go to see her. She still demands to see Dad: she’s mad at him for leaving her there for so long.”
Madeleine laughs, sadly.

* * *

"You're going to have to go through this one day."
"I know," she says.