Algoma (13 page)

In the background, the woman heard her name called by an impatient nurse. She dropped the note back into the fountain where it spun in circles as the water emptied down the drain.

Algoma rummaged through the stack of board games she had stored in the front closet. The doctor who’d treated her at the hospital had suggested she stay up for the next twelve hours.

“Just in case,” he’d said.

Worried that people would think she was cursed with bad luck, Algoma kept her hospital visit to herself and didn’t call any of her sisters. When the doctor had asked if she had someone to stay with her, she had said “yes.” With no word from Gaetan, she relied on Ferd to keep her awake.

Algoma looked back over her shoulder. “What game do you want to play?”

“All of them!” Ferd had forgotten why his mother had to stay up. He was just excited to be the centre of her attention.

After their fifth game of Sorry!—four to one for Ferd—and before they had set up the Monopoly board, Algoma called the bar again.

“Well, where did he go?” she asked, on the verge of tears again. Gaetan was always reachable at the bar.

Daniel mumbled incoherently on the other end. “Yeah, soon I’m sure…”

She pressed the receiver hard to her ear, so that she would be able to hear what he wasn’t saying. In the kitchen, Ferd poured his fifth glass of Coke. The foam overflowed onto the counter and he wiped it up with his sleeve.

“He said he was getting some smokes or a sandwich or something. I’m sure everything’s fine, Al.” The line crackled.

“Sure, thanks,” Algoma said, not believing a word of it. She’d packed Gaetan’s lunch (ham on rye) and he’d picked up two packs of cigarettes the day before. There was nothing else he needed, she thought, no reason to leave the bar. Something had to be wrong. She pictured him face-down in a snowbank, the victim of a hit and run.

Nervous, Daniel rambled on: “You want to come over for a drink? It’ll calm you down. You can bring the kid, too. It’s no problem. Nobody’ll say anything and you’ll be here when Gaetan shows up… I mean gets back.”

Algoma carefully replaced the receiver on the cradle. Ferd was counting out brightly coloured Monopoly money, carefully tucking each money pile under the lip of the board.

Algoma sat down at the table. “I want to be the old boot.”

______________

7:12 a.m. -16°C. Winds from all directions, raw.
Broken tree branches littering the snow.

Thin rays of winter sun filtered through the living room window and illuminated the vase of plastic tiger lilies on the coffee table. The bouquet with its sharp and vibrant petals looked like a nesting bird. Algoma’s eyes fluttered open. Her head throbbed a deep bass line. She reached up to touch the source of her pain and felt a crisp railroad of stitches across the back of her head. Confused, she sat up too quickly and a constellation of black dots speckled her vision. She tried to stand, but a wave of nausea overwhelmed her. She reached for the worn arm of the couch for support.

Ferd crested the basement stairs and found his mother on her knees, cleaning something up beside the couch. The smell in the air unmistakable.

Hearing his footsteps, Algoma stood up. “Hi,” she smiled weakly, wiping her mouth with the back of her shirtsleeve. “Just excuse me for a minute.Stay over there. Okay?” She scrubbed the carpet a little more and then disappeared into the washroom, her face green-tinged.

Ferd went to inspect the shoe rack beside the side door. His father’s boots were not there.

Algoma came out of the washroom, her face now dishwater grey. “Breakfast in a minute?”

Ferd nodded, “Sure.”

But first she went into Gaetan’s bedroom. She stared at the bed. Its tightly tucked corners were unchanged from yesterday and the decorative pillows she’d placed there were still in their careful arrangement. She sat down on the bed.

The Shop. Ferd. Stitches. Gaetan.

It all came flooding back to her at once. Nausea rippled through her body. She could hear Ferd rummaging through the pots and pans in the kitchen. He had been allowed to make breakfast for himself since he was eight. Unlike Leo, Ferd was a careful cook; he made precise measurements and movements. He navigated the kitchen with confidence. Most importantly, he always remembered to turn off the stove.

Algoma worried about fire almost as much as she worried about money. Before she left the house each day, she checked to make sure each element on the stove was turned off, the coffee pot and toaster unplugged, and the iron cold to touch even if she had not used it in weeks. Every morning, she toured the house and touched each item: Off, off, off. On busy days when she forgot her ritual, she was consumed by worry that she would return to find her house in ruins, her life in ashes. She sometimes pictured the entire neighbourhood burnt down to the foundations. Every last photo album, house pet, and fifty-year-old recipe card incinerated by her forgetful hand. However deep her paranoia ran regarding her home, the same care did not extend to The Shop—that was Josie’s domain; however, she would never forgive herself for not checking everything before she’d left the night of the fire. She was sure she must have left a light on, maybe the radio plugged in, a loose wire that had sparked the flame. Somehow, it had to be her fault. She felt responsible for every bad thing that happened around her.

Algoma’s stomach growled. The house now smelled of fried bacon and fresh coffee. She listened to the muffled thump of dishes being placed on the tablecloth, the splash of coffee being poured.

The side door creaked open. Algoma stood up too quickly, nearly falling over from dizziness.

“Hello?” she said, louder than she’d intended. Her voice echoed inside her skull.

Cen and Steel stood in the doorway, identical in appearance and demeanour. Long and lean like goal posts.

“It’s Aunt Cen and Aunt Steel,” Ferd said, his face breaking into a big grin. He dropped the spatula he’d been holding onto the counter and ran to hug Cen.

“Well, hello there.” Cen’s voice was deep and soothing.

“We heard about your fall,” Steel said to Algoma. She put a cotton bag overflowing with groceries on the kitchen table.

Algoma shot a look at Ferd, who then hid behind Cen.

Steel walked over to Algoma and gently touched the side of her youngest sister’s head. “Really, I just don’t understand how you—”

“—always manage to get in trouble, Al,” Cen finished.

Algoma smiled half-heartedly at her sisters in a weak effort to offer them some sort of assurance that everything was alright. Steel had let her straight blonde hair grow long until it was a pale cape across her narrow back. Cen, in an effort to be different, had cut her hair into a sharply angled bob. Still, it did little to separate them. They could not change their features. They shared the same wide-set almond eyes that seemed to take in every detail, long delicate noses, wide generous mouths, and high foreheads with only a small map of wrinkles. Elizabethan, Cen had said after learning the word in her high school English class. After that, their father had referred to them as his Renaissance girls, which pleased them as much as it did him.

Steel unpacked the grocery bag, placing canned goods down on the table. Algoma immediately recognized the ingredients for her favourite dish: mushroom and wild rice casserole. “How did you find out?” she asked, rolling a large white mushroom between her palms.

“This morning from Bay who heard it from—” Cen looked over at Ferd. She picked up a can of cream of mushroom soup. “If we had known, we would have been there for you, you know. You don’t have to always do that kind of thing on your own.”

Algoma rolled her eyes, an old habit that still surfaced when her two eldest sisters were around. Steel grabbed Algoma by her shoulders and turned her around, her hands delicately searching Algoma’s body head to toe for injuries. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Algoma said. “Just a few stitches.” She ran a finger along the crisp ridges. “Do you think I’ll have to go back to get these taken out, or will they just dissolve?” She hoped they would dissolve and not have to be ripped out of her scalp like twine out of a roasted turkey. She couldn’t remember what the doctor had said.

“At least it’s not on your face,” Steel said touching Algoma’s cheek.

Algoma brushed her sister’s hand away. “Stop touching me. I’m good. Really.”

Amid the concerned chatter, Ferd had finished eating the bacon and eggs he had cooked, put his dishes into the sink, and gone to the basement to write. The eggs, bacon, and dry toast he’d made for his mother sat cold on the table.

Steel and Cen worked on the casserole in tandem. While one opened the cans, the other emptied them out into a bowl. While one washed the vegetables, the other chopped. An endless partnership. It was no wonder they’d never married, Algoma thought. There was no room between them for anyone else.

“Oh, we should be quiet,” Cen stage whispered. “Gaetan’s sleeping, right?”

All six sisters accompanied Algoma to file the missing persons report. They ascended the steps of the police station with their arms linked, a solid front.

“Just give it a couple more days,” Algoma had begged, but her sisters ignored her, as they always did. “He’ll turn up. He has to. He has kids… kid, a kid.”

Inside the station, Cen pointed out the duty sergeant and guided Algoma to his desk. He looked up from his paperwork. Algoma studied his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, his face grey and wrinkled. Sloppy origami. In that moment she decided he wouldn’t be able to help her and tried to walk away.

“No you don’t,” Cen said, blocking her way.

“Yes?” the officer asked, twirling a blue pen with his right hand, although his eyes conveyed a profound boredom.

Algoma began to arrange the things on his desk, something she did when she was nervous.

He grabbed the snow globe from her hand. “Yes?” he asked again, drawing out the word.

“Someone is missing,” she said.

“Tell him who,” Cen pushed.

“My husband.”

After an hour, Algoma had provided the sergeant with all the information he needed—physical description, clothing, routines—and made him promise he would follow up on it.

“We’ll do everything we can,” he said, sounding unsure.

The Belanger sisters gone, he looked at the photo of Gaetan that Algoma had given him, with the promise that he would return it. The photo showed the missing man standing in two feet of snow. Peculiarly, he was holding a length of green hose in one hand and a rake in the other. It looked like he was gardening in the middle of January. The officer shook his head. Gaetan’s face was too obscured by his parka hood to be of any real help. If the man was still missing in a couple of days, the officer would call the wife up and ask for a better photo, but he was fairly certain he wouldn’t have to.

______________

7:34 a.m. -16°C. Wind W, calm.
Birdbath buried under snow.

Gaetan woke up early the morning of the twins’ fifth birthday. He looked over at Algoma who remained fast asleep beside him, her mouth slack, her hair a bird’s nest. She always slept on the half of the bed closest to the window because she said it was colder. She liked the draft on her bare feet, which poked out from beneath the comforter.

The work clothes Gaetan had taken off only four hours before lay in a heap on the floor. He pulled them back on, a yeasty smell of spilt beer with a top note of cigarette smoke and stale drug store cologne greeted him. It was like he’d never left.

Outside, he held his steaming mug of instant coffee to his lips and took a sip. The coffee was cheap and bitter, but he could already feel the caffeinated rush coursing through his veins. He looked up and could see the topmost part of the gas station’s bright yellow and green sign through the trees. With the exception of the opening to the woods behind the house, the hedges were so thick that no one could easily enter or leave the yard, although last summer the boys had found a weak spot in the branches and had burrowed a tunnel to the neighbour’s yard. Even the square of white lattice the neighbour had tucked into the branches to block the hole couldn’t keep the boys out or away from his above-ground pool. The last time they’d jumped in, fully clothed and muddy, he’d threatened to empty the pool and fill it with cement with them in it if they ever came back.

Half the backyard was taken up by Algoma’s garden. Even though the growing season was relatively short, Algoma made the most of it and managed to grow an assortment of vegetables. The radishes were Gaetan’s favourite, salted within an inch of their lives. The boys were partial to pulling carrots out of the ground, but not to eating them. The food Algoma grew dominated their summer and fall meals.

From the beginning of his adult life, despite the incongruous world around him—the electronics and gadgetry—Gaetan had vowed that his future family would be able to provide for themselves, as he had been taught, and his father and grandfather had been taught. Algoma gardened while he took Leo and Ferd out into field and forest to harvest animals for their dinner table. Why should they rely on the pale and fatty meats of the grocery store when they could have fresh hare and lean venison? Just because it was easier to cruise through a grocery store with a silver cart, did not mean his family would do it. Not in my world, he repeatedly told anyone who would listen.

Gaetan’s grandfather had hunted or fished every day of his life until he succumbed to a stroke when he was just fifty-three years old, poorly constructed hearts being also part of their heritage. Gaetan was not ready, nor did he think he ever would be, to modernize his life. He could handle the questions, and even the criticisms from his wife’s family and friends over his hunting, and how he taught his children at an early age to handle firearms properly. “Better they know than not,” he’d argued. “No more dangerous than riding a bike or driving a car.”

In the middle of winter, the garden did not produce, it was just another place for snow to accumulate. It had been a year of impressive snow storms; there were no signs of the pumpkins from last fall. Algoma had grown so many, they hadn’t been able eat them all and the neighbours had only taken so many for their Halloween exploits, so the rest had been left to rot. “Mulch,” Algoma had defended.