The older girls, Maya and Hope, I didn’t know as well because they were in school all day and had many friends in the block with whom they were always hatching plans that would terrify and infuriate Sing Dylan. “Bloody hell,” he’d say in a clipped way, “Bloody hell.” They were nine and ten. Lish hadn’t wanted them to go to school. She didn’t trust schools and knew that she could do a much better job of teaching her kids herself. This she would do by filling the apartment with books, art supplies, fresh vegetables and soul-stirring music, by visits from local artisans and writers, by naps after lunch, by evening walks and bike rides. At night the girls could release all the energy of the day and dream and rest next to Lish and the twins.
But Maya and Hope were just like their mother. They needed an audience and loved to talk and laugh with other girls their age. And the boys at school held a special appeal their own household lacked. Nothing Lish could say could keep them from going to school, and as each year passed their love for its comforting routine grew. Every morning Lish shook her head and looked desolate as Maya and Hope scrambled around the apartment gathering their books and lunches, not even trying to conceal their excitement. And every morning Lish would mutter as she covered them with kisses and hair, “Don’t take any shit, my sweet petunias. Remember you can quit any time and return to the land of the living.” And off they’d run, laughing and screeching.
I tried to console poor Lish. Maybe Alba and Letitia would stick around and let Lish teach them at home, but the way they followed Maya and Hope with their eyes down the street and beyond the giant BFI containers until they were out of sight, it wasn’t likely.
two
Lish reminded me of my mother. When I was young she’d pull me out of school, actually out of my bed, and announce that we were taking the train to Vancouver to visit her sister. Or that we must hurry to the airport to catch a plane to Grenada or wherever. I only realized later that these spontaneous trips always followed confrontations with my dad, where he sat in furious helpless rage and my mother tried to get him to talk to her. My mother was indifferent to school and never forced me to go or questioned my grades or really showed any interest in it whatsoever. The only course she insisted I take was typing. She said it would serve me well.
If I got into trouble at school, which I did frequently, I’d regale her with the whole story and she’d laugh in collusion, slapping her thigh in appreciation of my rebellious spirit. My dad, a geology professor, would sit silently and occasionally twitch his mouth as he sipped his black coffee from a tiny cup. My mother drank from a big ceramic mug, at least fifteen cups a day.
Throughout my life I have tried to make my dad laugh or shout, to get a rise out of him, as my mom said. Once, on one of his up days when I was about twelve, he invited me into his classroom and asked me what colour he had just painted the supply counter. I thought hard for a moment and then said, “Rose.” That made him so excited he actually jumped up off the floor, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, which is one eighth of a ton, and whooped like Dill does when he’s in his Jolly Jumper. He grabbed my hand and shook it and then pulled a fiver out of his wallet and pressed it into my other hand. I guess he hadn’t wanted me to say plain ordinary pink. Maybe he was concerned about his masculinity or maybe as a child he had had an argument about the colour with an adult who had laughed at him and walked away, and now, finally, was his chance to be vindicated. But then again, what did I know from pink? Since that episode I have given him books with rose covers, sport shirts with rose buttons, and offered to paint his picnic table rose, wink wink, but he either doesn’t remember or doesn’t want to be reminded of that day he got excited and shook my hand.
Sometimes I get this image in my head of thousands of fathers rubbing small peepholes on frosty windows and standing in snow and looking into warm houses, watching their families inside. Well, in our cases, mine and Lish’s, there weren’t any fathers looking in, more like us, at least her, looking out wondering where in the hell they could be. Or who they could be. Or where that one, that dark-eyed, sinewy, rogue magician, had disappeared to.
Hope and Maya’s dad was a long-haired musician who wore round glasses and worked in a book store part time. He’d frequently stop in and visit his daughters, and occasionally take them over to his mom’s place where they’d play Clue and eat Fudgee-Os, a rare treat. He and Lish had no hard feelings toward one another except that Lish wished he’d live in a building instead of his vw van, the location of Maya and Hope’s conception, so that Maya and Hope could stay with him when they needed a change from Half-a-Life.
Not all the women in Half-a-Life had friendly relationships with their exes. No sirree. When I heard their stories I was glad I didn’t know who Dill’s dad was. I was amazed that love could turn so rotten. Lish’s second cousin, Naomi, for instance, was involved in an endless battle with the father of her second child. The father of her first choked on his own vomit and died one snowy evening when Naomi was out working. He had been a really nice guy, but a notorious drunk. When Naomi returned home, she found Tina, the child, sitting on top of Rob’s cold body watching TV and drinking apple juice from the box. In shock, Naomi married the first man to come along, a firefighter with a soothing voice and a sympathetic ear and a genuine interest in Tina. Not until it was too late did Naomi discover his interest in Tina was sexual and his hatred for Naomi boundless. He turned out to be one of those creeps who prey on single mothers as a means of getting to their kids. Lish warned me never to get involved with a man who was immediately crazy about Dill. She said it takes a normal man a bit of time to warm to somebody else’s kid, that is, if it ever happens at all. All this after Naomi had fallen in love with him and given birth to their son, a child he found irritating and time-consuming. Believe it or not, it was months before Naomi could act upon her discovery. One night while the guy slept, Naomi silently stuffed her kids into their snowsuits, packed a bag of diapers and crackers and toys and slipped away. She carried both children and the bag and walked, bare-headed and without gloves, for a mile before stopping to rest in a snow bank. There she considered falling asleep with the children, peacefully slipping away into another place and joining Rob, a man she had always taken for granted, not knowing any others.
But just then Tina woke up and complained of hunger and the boy opened his eyes and grinned at the snow around them and Naomi decided to get focussed, as Lish put it. They had a snack of crackers in the snow and then Naomi told Tina she would have to walk and carry the toys. She threw the rest of the bag’s contents in the snow, heaved the boy over her shoulder, and together the family trekked across town from their comfortable suburb where split-level homes with Christmas lights lit the night sky, to the shabby front door of Half-a-Life and up four floors to Lish’s open arms. Hell, said Lish, she had let enough men live with her expense-free, why not Naomi? They lived with Lish and her two daughters (this was before the twins arrived) for three weeks until housing authorities found out and forbade that many people in a two-bedroom apartment and commissioned Sing Dylan to spray for roaches in number thirty-four and help Naomi move in. Lish had pulled a few strings to get them their own spot in Half-a-Life. One of her skinny tubercular lovers was the son of the chairman of the board of Manitoba Housing.