Western Alienation

Jude Klassen

I dedicated my story collection, Toxic Shock and Other Family Gatherings to my beloved parents who gave me the freedom to write by not reading my work -- even when they were alive. I wrote Western Alienation in 2007, inspired by a parental visit, and took the cover photo of the filthy dollhouse around that time. They are both gone, and the family home sold, and every anticipated emotion felt.

Toronto, 2007

            Through the screened kitchen window, Kerry looks down at her parents drinking cocktails with her husband on the shady back deck of her Toronto cottage. Her mother, Dollie, sips her G&T and absently buffs the tabletop with her serviette. Kerry’s father, Matt, a retired surgeon, nurses a Scotch. Simply by his posture—shoulders thrown back, legs apart—Kerry can tell he has a buzz on and is happily winding up for one of his King of the World rants.

            After decades of scrolling through a multitude of overtly left-wing boys, Kerry has pleased her father (and relieved her mother) by settling down and actually marrying a man. Strapping, dark, and confident, Andrew looks good uncorking wine and manning the barbecue. And although he doesn’t watch sports, go grouse hunting, or open beer bottles with his teeth, his amusing stories of uncles harvesting squirrels for pies and raising trout in swimming pools have earned him entry into the club.

            Before she returns to the back deck, Kerry cranks the Frank Sinatra CD playing on the kitchen stereo. Maybe her dad will be distracted and burst into song, forgetting to continue verbally disembowelling David Suzuki. Just maybe, Old Blue Eyes will also save her from having to defend all the usual suspects: the environment, same-sex marriage, the separation of church and state. It’s all become a little draining. Her parents are old. She knows she should probably just shut up and let the esteemed doctor light his tire fires and go harshly into that good night.

            Although it is still early June, a heat wave hit them the day her parents arrived from Abbotsford, rumpled from the red eye. They are on day four of their seven-day visit, and each morning has begun with gorgeous late spring light and a smog warning. Kerry slides back into her chair in time to hear Andrew apologize for the air quality.

            Her dad sips his Scotch and grimaces. “I guess it’s all that global warming.”

            “Of course,” says Kerry, her fingers stiff around the stem of her wineglass.

            He grunts. “Wasn’t serious.”

            “I was.”

            These short bursts have replaced the passionate arguments. Instead of attacking, Kerry smiles and imagines a single-panel comic strip. In it, a cartoon version of her dad stands surrounded by rushing water. Fires blaze behind him, a tornado sweeps in from the left. His grandchild dangles limply in his arms, a gas mask strapped to her ashen face. The caption reads, “There’s no such thing as global goddamn warming.”

            Kerry’s pretty sure that given the chance, her dad would have been one of those cocksure corporate spokesmen in the fifties who cheerfully swilled nuclear waste to prove it was safe. Safety: her mother has Catholicism, her father has the Fraser Institute, and although it is cowardly, Kerry cools her own heated head by reminding herself that nothing will matter to her in fifty-odd years. Of course, placating herself this way worked better before she procreated. Now she has a child, perfect pale Katerina, the unexpected gift of beauty.

            Kerry imagines decades from now, describing her own youth to her incredulous daughter. You could swim right in the lake. You could leave the house without carrying a canister of oxygen. Even when you were a small child we had real birds flapping around our backyard. We had a birdbath—remember? There was a cardinal that attacked his own reflection in our window—you screamed with laughter. Already her stories of four-wheeling with illiterate boys, buying acid from strangers in downtown Vancouver, and slathering herself in baby oil while sprawled in the midday sun seem psychotic to Kerry. And they certainly lack charm when contrasted with her grandmother making her own hats and sausage, or her mother “fighting the good war” by drawing stocking seams down the backs of her legs and jitterbugging with men in uniform.

            Kerry watches a maple key spiral into her dad’s heavy tumbler of Scotch. She inherited a whole set of the impressive glassware from her mom’s only brother, Uncle Piotr, and it strikes her that perhaps Uncle P. is taking aim at his old opponent’s drink from wherever decent, angry people go after they die.

            Matt glares at the mammoth maple tree shading the small glass table. “Messy bastard.” He plucks out the maple key and snaps it over the edge of the deck like a beer cap.

            Kerry looks around. The deck has an unkempt sticky look she didn’t notice before her parents arrived. A pink plastic dollhouse flags the otherwise invisible drop-off between the two levels of deck. The dollhouse is filthy; Kerry refuses to scrub its many fussy little rooms, particularly the yellow faux-tile bathroom, as grim as any toilet in an auto body shop.

            Kat doesn’t notice the squalor. She’ll happily move her grinning blonde doll family from room to room, shove the husband into the bathtub with his apron-clad wife, upend the baby in the grimy sink, or wash the cocker spaniel by repeatedly ramming his plastic head into the toilet bowl. And so what? She can build up her immunity, and it’s not as though she risks being stabbed with a dirty needle.

            “Yeah, we like it in The Beaches, the big trees cut at least some of the pollution.” Kerry cringes. Wrong word. 

            Matt blows air through his lips. “Those old growth forests don’t provide as much oxygen as new growth. New trees create oxygen as they grow.” He tosses back his remaining Scotch and crash-lands the tumbler on the glass table.

            Kerry snaps. “Who imparted that bit of wisdom, Frum and Frummer?”

            Andrew interjects. “Even if that were true, there are species that depend on old growth habitat for their survival.”

            Matt snorts. “I’d wipe my arse with a spotted owl.”

            “Nice.” Kerry doesn’t bother looking at Andrew. She knows this line will be added to her dad’s greatest quotes list. It’s the kind of line that used to crack her up, the kind she waited for. Now it just flattens her. Depressing, like the smog and the dirty dollhouse: her father, Kat’s Grandpa, wiping his ass with a spotted owl.

            The next morning hits hot and grey, as wholesome as breakfast at Wal-Mart. Andrew slumps past, eyeshades pushed up against his dark hair like an absurd headband. He looks out the window and smiles tightly. He doesn’t need to explain why they have to live here. No need to remind Kerry that Vancouver is a beautiful tight-fisted bitch who charges five hundred bucks just to let you crash on her futon, while Toronto, the dowager aunt, might chain smoke while you eat, but at least she gives you a job.

            Kerry is past caring. She only wishes she had some kind of special suit, the sort of thing an astronaut might wear. Something lightweight and protective she could easily slip on herself and her daughter, so they could comfortably play on the moon.

            Because of Katerina, Kerry is actually awake before her father. She has always been an excellent sleeper—in fact, her ability to sleep like a champion kept her looking deceptively fresh. But since giving birth, she is dumbfounded to discover stiff strands of grey hair, a furrow of concern in her forehead, and a small roll of lethargic flesh slumped above her low-waist jeans that no amount of yoga can eradicate. Apparently there is even a name for this: a pooch. Hideous. Some old prick came up with that one, some old prick with hair on his ass and a twenty-year-old on his arm.

            “What?” Andrew pauses at the bathroom door.

            “I didn’t say anything.”

            “You look upset.”

            Kerry knows he really wants to say you look angry. She can feel the buzzing in her jaw she gets from clamping down on all that empty space. “Just tired.” Christ, that’s attractive. She tries again, “Just need an espresso. I feel kinda stunned.”

            A flash of sadness passes over Andrew’s face as he ducks into the bathroom. What does he see? His wife, this burnt-out brunette, standing at the sink. The same woman he once brainstormed with late into the night, the same woman he tipped back a dozen Malpeque oysters with as they swilled cava at sunset. The same woman he used to fuck on the staircase because they couldn’t wait to make it three more yards to the bedroom. Kerry stares at the closed bathroom door: the faded paint, the fingerprints, and across the bottom, a streak of what might be spaghetti sauce or red crayon. She stares until the door is a soft white blur and the red slash a knife wound.

            Matt thumps up the stairs from the basement guest room, singing. His voice is deep and resonant, and the hymn is something Mennonite, heavy, triumphant. The singing cuts through it all: the morning smog, her lumpen thoughts, the slippery crust that seems to be on everything from her eyes to the ancient appliances. Kerry knows that someday not far in the future, she will be unable to withstand certain music, her father’s music: Charlie Rich, Tommy Hunter, Mahalia Jackson. Even the What’s New Pussycat man, Tom Jones, will knock her to her knees—and not because she’s tearing off her panties.

            The past and the future have become warring factions, and Kerry must arm herself against their propaganda. Small skirmishes break out constantly, the past lobbing images, sounds, smells: her mother’s perfume, the Sunday roast, her father and her uncles harmonizing to How Great Thou Art, their clear serious voices betraying the hold of that old-time religion. Cottonwood trees, candle wax, her brothers laughing in the backyard, her sisters snapping tea towels, her childhood dog snatching an ice cream cone from her hand. The future is their absence felt. As the youngest, she will likely be the last to go.

            Her mom and dad are able to accept it all: the death of their parents, their siblings, their friends. Dollie will call Kerry to tell her that an octogenarian pal has had her driver’s license revoked, a doctor Matt practiced with has golfed his last game, a family home has been sold and its contents auctioned off. Her mother will softly sigh, at peace with the inevitable.

            To Kerry this news is jarring, particularly the stripping and selling of the family homes. With a Victorian mansion, or even a cottage from the thirties, this process seems natural. But a rancher built in the sixties, some suburban B.C. family pad that has been home to shag carpeting, avocado-green appliances, and Pudding in a Bag? It strikes Kerry that she has weirdly assumed that the places that have witnessed her history will somehow be exempt. The rain-rutted dwellings that have seen the evolution of wild western politics. The wood-paneled caverns filled with cigar smoke, pungent with beef slowly turning on the spit. Caves filled with newly wealthy men giving their past the finger, stoked to have beaten their way, starving, ferocious, out of the Depression, determined to slam the shiftless into action. Determined to run the commies out of town.

            Despite their politics, their mindless, milky sexism, it devastates Kerry that those cowboys in leisure suits are now old or dead. That their tolerant women have followed, those lovely cosseted servants in gold lamé hot pants, their hard dark lipstick possibly still embedded on the rims of a thousand martini glasses.

            Matt hefts a leg over the baby gate at the top of the steep staircase leading up from the basement. “I’m going to have breakfast at that place where they give you the three eggs. Where’s my angel, still in the sack?”

             “Dad, don’t… look, I’ll show you how to open the gate.”

            Matt shoots her a fierce look. She knows that he sees her step over the gate all the time, usually juggling her laptop and a load of laundry. But the old man has forty years on her even if he is a powerful Mennonite farm boy who still skis in the avalanche zones. Kerry can’t help it, she fears excessively for those she loves. Besides, she doesn’t want to have to someday tell her daughter, Grandpa died climbing over your baby gate, honey. Of course, Matt would be down with that. He wants to go out with a big bang. No wasting away, no oxygen tanks, no toothless doddering. No time spent being spoon-fed. No time spent being useless.

            “You guys need anything? Let me buy supper tonight.”

            “Sure, Dad, that’d be great.”

            He looks intently at Kerry for a moment. She wonders if he just noticed that his baby has a few strands of grey hair, the baby of all his babies is fading. She wishes she could spare him this cruel early morning view. It can’t be easy.

            Kat, stripped down to Elmo underpants, leaps into the kitchen stretching out her arms. “I’m a super squirrel, I fly!”

            Kerry tackles Kat and tickles her daughter’s belly. Kat screams with pleasure, “Stop, I-I-I’m a-a-a squirrel! Stop, Mommy!”

            They tussle on the sticky kitchen floor until they are exhausted. Kerry blows a raspberry on Kat’s stomach, extracting a final shriek, then looks up at her father. He stares down at them, a look on his face Kerry has not seen before, a look both raw and quiet. It’s all there in the set of his mouth: he will not live to see Katerina become an adult.

            “I know I haven’t set the best example, but you guys should take that girl to church. Religion never hurt anyone.”

            Kerry laughs. “Jesus, Dad.”

            “What?”

            “Oh, gee, I dunno. The Crusades, the choir boys, the car bombs—residential schools!”

            Her father stares her down. Then slowly, as though speaking to a halfwit, he says, “It’ll give her a moral compass.”

            “OK, we’ll check out Buddhism, but don’t be disappointed when the vegans show up for Christmas dinner.”

            Dollie emerges from the basement, her wisp-thin hair damp from the shower. Kerry’s schizophrenic sister Lydia can’t keep her hands off their mom’s vulnerable little scalp. She runs her big raw mitts over Dollie’s head, chanting little wren, sweet little wren. Their mother rears back from this, a head-shy horse petted and whipped by the same hand. Kerry must constantly fight the impulse to also be oppressively affectionate. Their mother’s straight-ahead sweetness combined with a cool reserve has made even the so-called sane ones in the family crazed with devotion. Dollie is baffled by this neediness, this loosely reigned-in passion that rears up at the slightest opportunity. She fidgets with the baby gate. Kerry rushes over to open it. Dollie pushes her away. “I want to do it.”

            Kerry watches her mother struggle with the awkward wooden lever, determined. It strikes her that the gate is just as effective at keeping the seniors corralled as the toddlers. Diapers, walkers, baby gates—we all return to our infant state.

            Matt pulls on his shoes in the small foyer. Kerry hovers, worried about him taking one of his long walks in this heat and smog. “If you want to try something different, there’s a breakfast place just a few blocks north on Gerrard.”

            Matt squints at her. “You sure that’s north?”

            “The lake is south. Down south, up north.” Kerry repeats her Toronto mantra, amazed to once again feel self-doubt creeping in. Her father can cause her to question her ability to form a sentence, operate a vehicle, a toaster. She knows he will do exactly the opposite of whatever she suggests.

            “Do you want to look at that map again?” Kerry searches the sideboard, a once-elegant piece of furniture now a landing pad for bills, flyers, receipts, Kat’s artwork, finger puppets, and a forgotten plate stuck with ancient crumbs. Her mother’s home was crawling with children, yet it never descended into chaos. Kerry’s sure her father must think that this is what she should be competent at, the smooth running of a pristine household. She grapples with the confusion of paper, desperate to unearth the map: proof that she is clever enough to find her way.

            Kat blasts up and down the hallway in a small pedal car, laying on the horn. In the living room, Dora The Explorer bleats self-affirmations. Kerry turns off the television set. Kat wheels into the room, pulling up to the big screen in a rage. “I want, I want, IIIIIIIwantttt!” Her face swells red, she chokes on her words: such is the enormity of Kerry’s crime.

            “But sweetie, you weren’t watching it.”

            Kat throws herself from the small car. She hammers her fists on the floor, screaming in pain and surprise. “My hands. I hurt!” Her wailing intensifies. She pounds her fists again and gyrates as if a thousand volts of electricity are slamming her small body.

            Kerry sighs and sits down. “Is that working for you, Chicken?”

            Dollie walks carefully into the living room. She places her hands on her knees and beams down at her frothing granddaughter. “Good morning, Sunshine.”

            “Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

            Kerry crouches and opens her arms. “Come here, Sweetheart. Come here, Poodle.”

            Kat’s eyes roll back. “I’m Katerina! I’m NOT POODLE.” But she lets Kerry hold her and kiss her sweaty head.

            Kat is peaceful now, using her mother and her grandmother as a human hammock, legs stretched out across mom, her head in grandma’s lap. Kerry sips her espresso and holds it away from Kat’s immaculate skin.

            “So, being a former nurse and all, what do you think is worse for our sweet baby, the toxic smog or the radiation coming off the television set?”

            Dollie gives Kerry a sad smile. “Oh, honey, Kat’s fine.”

            “The crappy thing about being broke is you can’t afford wooden toys. The good thing is the second-hand plastic ones have already off-gassed.”

            “Oh, you nut.” Dollie shakes her head, likely wishing her daughter would talk about fashion, food, or anything that made a bit of sense.

            Kerry wonders why she doesn’t stop herself. Why torture her poor mother? Why inflict her dark, possibly insane thoughts on this sweet woman who has gone through so much and manages to live without bitterness? Her mom doesn’t bother trying to save Kerry anymore. She doesn’t throw the afterlife preserver into her daughter’s murky swamp. They no longer have the conversation that ends with Kerry saying, “Don’t you think I’d believe if I could? Don’t you think I’d opt for simplicity, happiness?”

            Kerry watches her mom run her fingers gently through Katerina’s hair. Dollie’s expression is tender. Her voice, when she speaks, is bright and delicate, like a snowflake. “So thick. Yes, you have pretty, pretty hair. Your mommy was bald until she was two.”

            “Does she really need to know that?”

            Dollie laughs. “You had a sour-smelling head, but you were cute.”

            “Great, I reeked of yesterday’s boiled cabbage.” 

            “You were cute. You had that one dimple. Your dad is still so upset that he never had time to hold you. He loves babies. Always loved the babies.”

            “How could he not have had time to hold me?”

            “Honey, we had so many of you, Dad was always studying and working at the hospital. He would be on night shift in Emergency for weeks at a time. He worked so hard for you guys, we rarely saw him. By the time he came up for air, you were already two years old.”

            “But still bald. I could have passed for a baby. Did he hold me then?”

            Dollie smiles. “I’m sure he must have.”

            If Dollie was asked to write a scene-by-scene account of her life, she could probably do so. Not just the big strokes but the details, the colour, the texture. Kerry has been listening to her mother’s stories for so long that they come to mind more readily than her own. Dollie’s stories are achingly wholesome. She divulges nothing unseemly. Kerry suspects that when you follow the rules laid out by, say, Catholicism, you can probably give your life a nice, homely G rating.

            Her mother has only been privy to snapshots from Kerry’s life—a life that if shown in full, would definitely be banned in many parts of the United States. Occasionally Kerry is tempted to blurt out some X-rated scenario from her past, some wild and filthy episode she can barely believe occurred. She searches for the point: to bond, to shock, to confirm that ditching religion at fourteen led to drugs, empty sex, and a tiresome load of angst? So Kerry lets her mother do the revealing. She listens to the clean, well-worn stories in which even death has a happy ending, full of white light and loved ones.

            They approach the Gardiner Expressway. Andrew is at the wheel, Matt is in the passenger seat, and Dollie and Kerry flank Katerina in the back. Kerry imagines her parents are somewhat relieved to be fleeing the big stinky city and heading back to their lush Fraser Valley. Wedged between the door of the small car and Kat’s baby seat, Kerry feels appropriately straight-jacketed. The air outside is leaden and thick. Every so often an electronic billboard blinks: “Smog Warning!” When Kerry and Andrew first moved to Toronto, they’d laughed about how the signage was the moralistic voice of the province. A wagging finger to warn of drinking and driving, speeding, being a bad citizen. Kerry wanted to erect one that simply said, “And another thing …! ” 

            The final drive to the airport is always disconcerting, and the older her parents get, the more oppressive are Kerry’s emotions. Last chance to duke it out, last chance to thank her folks for having the devotion to make the long trip. Last chance to convey her conflicted love. If her father refrains from punching her buttons, if Kerry can lay off his, if they can steer clear of anything of interest, the trip will have been a success.

            Dollie, wedged on the other side of the baby seat, holds her granddaughter’s hand. She breaks the silence. “This reminds me of when I was pregnant with Jack.”

            Kerry looks at her mother, wondering what about this situation could bring back Vancouver in the late fifties, her mom’s then-young body heavy with her first child.

            Matt drums his fingers on his thigh. “Those were good times. Great times.”

            “We had that little apartment, and we could walk to Granville Street. I couldn’t afford to buy anything, but I loved looking in those windows.” Dollie breathes deeply and slowly exhales, a small hum in the back of her throat.

            Matt turns to look at his wife. It is a look Kerry has seen periodically over the years: her father slightly taken aback, as though he has been splashed with ice water and can suddenly see clearly. A look that says, I picked a winner; I did pretty damn good.

            Her mom basks in this moment of intimacy. “Remember you had that crazy bet going with Reg over whose wife would be the first to give birth?”

            Matt chuckles. “Twenty bucks.”

            Dollie smiles at Kerry. “Your dad won the bet. Iris gave birth an hour before me, but I had the boy!”

            Kerry and Andrew exchange a look in the rear view mirror. And it was all going so well.

            At Pearson airport, Matt pushes the luggage cart briskly through the crowds. Kat charges past them, thrilled to see an escalator up ahead. Kerry chases her daughter, annoyed that a large wooden advertisement blocks the leg holes in the child seat of the cart. She grabs Kat just before she reaches the escalator, prompting a series of outraged shrieks.

            She whispers in Katerina’s ear, “If you’re quiet until Grandma and Grandpa leave, we’ll get you a treat.”

            Kat stops shrieking immediately, a quizzical look on her face. Kerry has read that using food as a reward can lead to an unhealthy relationship with it, but right now she is pretty much willing to hand out deep-fried baby Tylenol if it will stop the screaming.

            She looks back to see Andrew unloading her parents’ carry-on luggage from the cart. Dollie has a small suitcase. Matt has a bulging briefcase and a gym bag. Her father says something to Andrew that Kerry can’t make out. Her mom gets a distressed look on her face. As they approach, she hears her father say, “That’s not true; Mulroney was a great guy, better than the scandal, better than the Liberal dictatorship.”

            Andrew shoots the cart to the right so it nests inside of an abandoned one. “Yeah, great guy. He sold Pearson airport to his buddies, and when Chrétien cancelled the deal, we had to pay forty million bucks to Mulroney’s cronies.”

            Matt snorts. “Well, I don’t believe it. That’s just bullshit drummed up by our socialist media. You kids are all brainwashed from piss-pot to grave.”

            Katerina runs over to her grandpa and holds her arms up. He smiles with delight, puts down his bags, and lifts his granddaughter. She wraps her arms around his neck and whispers, “I’m getting a treat!”

            “You are, are you?” He puts his forehead against Kat’s and closes his eyes. Dollie languidly strokes her granddaughter’s spine. There is nothing but this for a long perfect moment as the four adults find ease in the reprieve from opinion: this window in the life of a human being when love is uncomplicated. When rage is quickly forgotten. When the truth is simple and painless.

Toxic Shock and Other Family Gatherings is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble (paperback and ebook). Available via Draft2Digital (ebook only) at: Smashwords, Apple, Gardners, Odilo, Everand, Tolino, Vivlio, Fable, Baker & Taylor, Overdrive, cloudLibrary, Hoopla, Kobo, Palace Marketplace, BorrowBox.