Endangered Species - Judith Pond

Endangered Species Judith Pond A RYGA CHAPBOOK

Endangered Species Judith Pond “Judith Pond has been publishing sharp, perfectly rendered lyrics for years – her book Lovers and Other Monsters is a beautiful exploration of the difficulty of negotiating the boundaries of self while remaining open to the people we are closest to. The multiple voices and allegiances that are contained in every single person are represented formally in Pond’s story by its constant movement between speech, thought, textual references and parenthetical asides. We feel the uneasy insinuation of a Grace into her quirky new family. What makes “Endangered Species” exceptional is Pond’s affection for each character. Though the young woman, Grace, is the protagonist, each character is generously drawn in this short story. Somehow, in this short space, we know them all, though Grace remains the centre, and we secretly hope she’s not tamed.”

– from the introduction by   Judith Pond’s fiction and poetry have been featured on CBC Radio and in a range of Canadian literary magazines, including Malahat Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, and Event. With Oberon Press, Ottawa, she has published fiction (Coming Attractions) and three collections of poetry. She is currently completing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and working on a collection of short stories. She teaches English in Calgary.

A RYGA CHAPBOOK Published by Ryga: A Journal of Provocations Okanagan College, Vernon BC in association with the Okanagan Institute Limited edition of 100 copies. $5 Also available online at www.ryga.ca

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Endangered Species Judith Pond A RYGA CHAPBOOK Okanagan College & the Okanagan Institute 2009

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Our Secret Hope Judith Pond has been publishing sharp, perfectly rendered lyrics for years – her book Lovers and Other Monsters is a beautiful exploration of the difficulty of negotiating the boundaries of self while remaining open to the people we are closest to. The multiple voices and allegiances that are contained in every single person are represented formally in Pond’s story by its constant movement between speech, thought, textual references and parenthetical asides. We feel the uneasy insinuation of Grace into her quirky new family. What makes “Endangered Species” exceptional is Pond’s affection for each character. Though the young woman, Grace, is the protagonist, each character is generously drawn in this short story. Somehow, in this short space, we know them all, though Grace remains the centre, and we secretly hope she’s not tamed.

– Sean Johnston

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race and Brian the newlyweds take the bus from Kingston to St. Catherine’s to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with Brian’s parents. They’re both still in grad school, and some home-cooked meals and a weekend out of the apartment are nothing to sneeze at. Brian of course brings work; he’s careful about his thesis deadlines. Grace says screw that.

They get there on the Friday night, it’s hot as summer, the dust in the Greyhound parking thick as nylon stockings swaying in the air. A cab takes them from the bus station out to Brian’s parents’ neighborhood, which is prim and stately, the raked lawns still perfectly green, and barred with long slants of evening sun.

Riding with the windows down, to get the air.

Grace : What’s that manure smell?

What manure smell?

Don’t tell me you can’t smell it!

That’s the grapes. Is that what you mean.

What grapes?

They grow them here, all around. The wineries. We’re in grapegrowing country.

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What do they stink for?

Grace, grapes don’t stink.

Yes they do, they do so, these ones.

The cab slows, speeds up, heads down a long narrow country road with low crumbling stone walls either side. Mourning doves cooing. Vines everywhere you look.

Brian: Grace, you know how some things, before you know what they are, they smell like something else?

Yeh, I guess. Eggs. Socks. Your socks.

And you’re such a rose. Well that’s how it is with grapes.

Pause.

Now that you know what they are, what do they smell like.

Grace smells harder.

Like poop.

If you can’t say anything nice, Grace, don’t say anything at all.

Cab slows for real.

Here we are, then.

They stop in front of a well-kept brick bungalow with a dainty black deacon’s bench, flower beds, a handsome red door. Out trot the parents, John and Ilene, John folding his Globe and Mail, Ilene untying her apron with one hand and waving with the other. Her iron gray hair.

(What did you say he wrote his book on, when he was a professor?)

(Dad? Virginia Woolf.)

(Cripes.)

• They sit in the living room after the bags are taken down to the granny suite, everybody all smiles. John in his sock feet, concentrating on his new Rubik’s cube he got for his birthday. Planning to

Judith Pond Endanged Species

figure it out if it’s the last thing he does, there’s a trick to these things, there’s always a trick. Ilene scurrying back and forth offering a few bits and bites she’s thrown together, nothing special: dilled salmon roll-ups. Warm Brie baked in phyllo. Smoked oysters. Twelve-yearold port. Grace, scandalized by the oysters, smiling steadily at the book shelves. Brian piling his plate like he hasn’t seen food since the last time he was home.

John to Brian: Take two, they’re small!

Grace to Ilene: This is lovely Ilene, you really shouldn’tIlene: Oh, dear, it’s not much-just a few of our family favorites!

And we’ve got Brian’s favorite trifle for dessert, so save room!

Brian: My trifle! (his long lost trifle) Ilene magnanimously to Grace: And what are some of your family’s favorite snacks?

(Why does Grace feel like she’s in trouble? Like she’s been caught in the act. Of something. She does, though. How are you supposed to tell such a nice lady one of your family’s favorite treats is getting out of each others’ road? Which it is.)

She thinks hard, says: Mum makes great cinnamon toast.

All continue smiling.

John jovially to Brian: Here, have another-might as well be sick as the way y’are!

To the Lighthouse fanning open on the arm of his chair.

Grace sees: Someone had blundered.

• It’s all windows in that house, and they all are for something. The kitchen one is bowed, with binoculars and Birds of North America on the sill. You sit at the sunsplashed breakfast nook with your brewed coffee and gourmet waffles and Saturday crossword, study the nuthatches and what have you, and make conversation:

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Ilene: How was your night.

Grace: Oh it was – Ilene: Was the bed alright.

Brian: Out like a light.

John (steaming past with the coffee pot): Fear no more the heat o’ the sun! More coffee, anyone?

Brian: God, Dad – Ilene: We’ve had the two pileated woodpeckers this morning so far, and one grosbeak, and while you’re here I want you to clean out all that old stuff in your bedroom closet. From high school and whatnot. I intend to make a sewing room in there.

Brian: Soon as I have my coffee I’ll get at it.

Ilene: Long as you don’t forget. She chews her pencil. What is a ten-letter word for tight.

Brian (to the window): Can you believe he’s still reading that.

(The living room window is bowed too, and big as life. You go in there after dinner, or more precisely: you retire. You carry your coffee, and dessert is wheeled in on the trolley, your pie and your ginger pears, and petit fours. And don’t forget the port. Everybody sitting and conversing with the fire going nicely behind its glass doors, all the little pretend panes making a distant green puzzle of outdoors.)

• Grace in the kitchen with Ilene, stacking the dishwasher, a dangerous job. There’s an exact place for each and every fork and plate and whisk, there’s certain things that go on the bottom rack and certain other things that go only on the top rack, and they’re not to be confused. Not the regular dish soap that’s in the top cupboard, the powdered, under the sink, unless you want to fill the house with suds?

Just a teaspoon, that’s right. No! Not the whole Wash and Rinse cycle, that’s a waste, the Water Miser, it does just as good a job and

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saves valuable water. You can get more in than that, look. There that’s it. (Grace sweating with good intentions and alarm.) Then you can polish the flatware. What? I mean the silver. In the dining room.

Over there in that square box, on the sideboard. Yes, over there.

Through the open window, the companionable sounds of Brian and John strolling down the garden, John showing Brian all the hard work and money that’s been put into the deck and the retaining wall and the orchard since he was home last. See the composter, see the railroad ties (a hundred dollars a piece) for bordering the vegetable garden, see the Mighty Mack (worth its weight in gold!), behold the shiny new plum trees. (The gentle autumn air, the silver afternoon light resting on their hair.)

Another burst of male-bonding laughter.

Ilene cocking her head. Giving a sympathetic chuckle. There they go, beating the bounds.

Beating what?

The bounds. The boundaries. Same as the animals do but more, you know, polite. You go around all the boundaries of your turf and put your scent on it, and give the bushes a whack to make sure there aren’t any strange animals lurking about.

Thinks Grace: If I were one of the men, or one of the neighbors or the neighbors’ dog, just momentarily glancing over from the safety of home. Or maybe a rabbit or any stray cat, just some unknown thing crouched safe under the great neutrality of a rhubarb leaf, watching the big feet pass. To be resting invisibly there, hearing the industrious chatter, the domestic clatter with utter indifference. She thinks there would be such innocence in that. One thing is certain: there is no innocence in being a woman in another woman’s kitchen.

She says: They pee? Out there?

Ilene: They better not! Did you think I meant that? Dear. It’s just an expression. What I’m saying is they’re just going around making sure everything’s in good shape and no funny business, just touching

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base. It’s one of our family traditions, that’s all.

The dish washer gurgling into gear.

Ilene clattering through a hefty chest of silver. Her appraising hand, lifting a vegetable server: And what are some of your family traditions?

Grace puts a clammy hand through her hair, thinks frantically.

Traditions. Traditions. Dad’s case of weekend beer? The annual visit from the dog catcher? The April blizzard? She says, Oh sometimes we’ll go for a walk down the dirt road. Me and Mum. For the blackberries. She feels a pang thinking that. Sees in her mind the red road and the dusty berries, the far glint of the river, and her not there.

• They all troop down to the family room after supper. Brown and yellow seventies’ ranch-style furniture. John’s treadmill and barbells lined up in front of the picture window-might as well be fit as the way I am! On the wall an arrangement of African tribal masks (from our trip to Ghana), their exaggerated faces, long or bloated, their sewn-shut eyes, black lips pulled back in ecstasy or death, it could be either. Their crackles of straw hair. Grace thinks of back home, where walls are decorated with macramé plant holders and farm calendars, looks from the masks to the phone, discreet on its small table in the corner.

The T.V. comes to life with a hiss and a blur of color.

They take in a scientific program on endangered species. The four of them on the couches and recliners in the flickering dark, watching while leopards, eagles, toads, and tigers succumb to the march of time. Whales and pandas vanishing. Water holes turning to dust.

Whole habitats becoming history as they sit inhaling Ilene’s homemade nuts & bolts, the announcer comparing this devastation in its range and ruthlessness to the ice age, with its killing glaciers and

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doomed monsters, its long skirts of permafrost. (Grace the whole time desperate to use the toilet but too private to use the downstairs one and too embarrassed to go all the way back upstairs, with them all knowing why.) Ilene steadfastly munching, her head shaking at nature’s demise.

• One thing Ilene insisted on when they were drawing up the plans for this house was lots of cupboards. Houses never have enough cupboards, don’t you find? Now this one, thanks to her careful designs, does. There’s dish cupboards and spice cupboards. And pot cupboardsnot the higgelty-piggelty kind Grace is familiar with, but handsome compartments that roll out authoritatively on silent ball-bearings, revealing acres of serious looking tools: magic bullets, processors and pressure cookers, Ilene’s specialty is food preparation, she calls it that, she went to school for it. And there’s not just the usual kinds of cupboards, there’s plenty of those, but then there’s long skinny ones for sliding your trays into, and tall deep ones with racks that slide right out, for hanging your tea towels in. There’s a milk door and a dumb waiter and an industrial sized dishwasher, an ironing-board closet, dear God, there’s a laundry chute. They’ve even got a special drawer just for maps, they’re mad for maps in that house, can’t stop poring over them and working out superior routes and pointing out where the road jogs, the quickest way from A to B, the smartest shortcuts.

Where Grace comes from, if you can’t find it by just getting in the car and going, you don’t go. The maps and their language fill her with dismay.

Ilene to no one in particular: I’m going on my errands. Running up to Prudhommes to buy pumpkins for a pie. And the peaches are coming on, I’m picking up a few quarts to ripen.

She’s got on a snazzy peacoat and professional lips, prescription

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clip-ons. Her hair coiffed to a gray crown. Anybody want me to pick up anything?

And she’s gone. You can feel the house let down.

• John in the living room, watching out the big bow window. Seeing her back the Peugeot out of the garage, roll down the drive, the way she sends the garage door down, imperiously, behind her. Its subservient clangs and closures. How everything obeys her! How everything defers!-and here he thinks, as so often now, of the waste of years and the perishing of the stars. A final grind of gravel. A flashing signal, a no-nonsense honk. Then birdsong...and a spot of rum. Hum hum hum...ah, that smell of wood, of resin, and the good long burn in the throat, the way it warms you from head to foot. He’d give his eyeteeth to meet the genius who invented it.

(For this is the best part of the day, herself away and him stretched out on his back in bed, his nip of Appletons balanced on his chest.

Ah yes, this is a bit of the best.)

He falls asleep so fast it is a plummeting, a dizzy hurtling down the rabbit hole-and then: he is in a field and it is long ago, and he is young and golden, he is free and “floating in fields of asphodel.” Who else is there? Of course, it’s Franny, the little one, the one who died, she always meets him here. She is running through the long grass and black-eyed Susans, her smocked dress billowing behind her, her legs sweetly sunburned. And she is holding out her hand and though he cannot see her face, he knows it wears that private smile, the one she smiled only for him, the one he remembers, has always remembered! But he cannot catch her. Has never been able to catch her, not since then, not ever since then. He runs harder, just like always, and as always at this part of the dream the grass gets longer, thickens ‘round his waist, twists into knots at his feet: wait! Oh wait!

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She turns, and this time has a different face. She turns and he sees: Grace.

• Grace walking by Brian’s old room. As promised, he’s in there crosslegged on the floor, fondly going through piles of his childhood stuff.

Old books, old shirts, old toys. Old socks that never got darned. But never chucked, either. Old Chinese checkers.

Brian: Look at this. Tenderly lifting up a box containing what look to be dog turds, dried and long and whitened by time. A rancid shortening smell in the air.

Grace: Pew God, what is that?

Brian: Grace, there’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain.

A long silence.

Brian quietly: Well it was my chocolate cigars.

Oh for God’s sake. Chocolate what? What’s the matter with them.

I got them for Christmas the year I was ten.

God! Well they weren’t like this. I put them away. So they’d last. See Grace, if you just gobble treats down all at once the way you do, first thing you know, they’re gone. It’s better to spend them out gradually, just a little bit each day, that way they last longer.

Like your cigars here.

Grace. It’s just I forgot about them. After I put them away.

Why the devil didn’t you throw them out then? When you found them the first time, I mean.

I just thought I’d keep them. You know. For a souvenir.

Of what!

Oh Grace, I don’t know.

You know what? Let’s fuck.

Shh! Somebody could hear you, and watch your language! What?

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What do you mean?-(his voice a squeak)-Here?

Yes, here. Where else. No they won’t. You’re Mum’s out. Your dad’s napping. Or we can go downstairs if you want. Brian, we should.

Why? Grace, I don’t know.

I need to, that’s why.

She’s climbing on the bed, unbuttoning, tossing clothes. Her bra’s off. Panties in the air. Grabbing the quilt and riding it on her nakedness for the dance of the seven veils. A home-made peep show just for him.

Grace! Grace oh, for Heaven’s sake, stop!

Genuine bloody fear on his face.

Grace standing on one leg, flushed and half-draped. Her hair all over.

Well. What?

Brian: It’s-it’s just that that’s a family heirloom! Grannie Warren made it, it was a wedding present for Mum and Dad. (Lifting it away from her thigh and lovingly tracing the webs of small brownish stitches with one long finger, holding it to the light, making sure.) Once this one’s gone there won’t be another, Grace, don’t you see?

• In bed that night she sees. Layers of quiet dark falling away, drawing her back through time. Remembers being four, or maybe three. Lying in bed beside her own grandmother in the little room at the top of the stairs, putting herself to sleep by filling the dark with imaginary rings, emeralds, rubies, on twinkling gold bands. The way they sparkled, beckoned, rode the ashy air. And her reaching out to them.

How, just as she reached them, just as she was about to slip them on her fingers, they always melted away.

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Ilene doesn’t mind errands. Though she prefers to call them messages, the British way, it’s so much nicer. Going on my messages.

Such a lovely morning, the sun reddening in the vines and the doves cooing; you couldn’t imagine anything being wrong in the world on a morning like this. Where do you s’pose that word came from, messages, it’s so dainty, so cheery. There’s old Mr. Porter, standing at his door getting some sun. She hopes he has dinner plans with someone.

It has a kind of mysterious, happy feel to it, that word, doesn’t it. Oh and she should check the oil. Meant to do it the other day, but what with the kids coming and the rooms to ready and of course the food preparation, she forgot. And still she has the pies to do and the silver to polish, and the stuffing to make. But isn’t it lovely, making a big meal for the family again, it seems so pointless when it’s just the two of them. Let’s see, has she remembered everything: • • • •

• • • •

Peaches. Go to Wismers’ stall, theirs are usually best.

Onions. Not the big ones, the pearl, for that lovely sauce, the one with the tarragon.

Parsnips. They’re a bit expensive, but they’re at their best right now, and so good roasted with the turkey.

Grace. She didn’t know what to make of the oysters last night.

Poor child, they were probably the first ones she’d ever seen in her life. Didn’t touch one, did she. Oh and the way she sat blinking when asked about her own family’s favorite treats. As if she’d just been slapped.

Lord.

Oh yes, and a bit of parsley, her own grew so poorly this summer.

Note: grow Italian next year.

But really, the girl is a bit unusual. She’d be much better called Audrey, Odd for short-Grace hardly suits such a creature. Doesn’t have a clue how to navigate in a kitchen and she jumps so! Like some little wild thing that got in. Makes a person nervous with

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• •

• • •

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those great staring eyes! And doesn’t she seem glum.

And of course you can’t get a thing out of Brian, everything’s alright with him, that boy’d be happy down by the river in the wintertime.

Well. It’s none of her business, is it.

White wine, and red, maybe some of that nice Australian Shiraz they’ve just got in, and a bit of rum, John likes his Appleton Estates-she noticed it was getting low the other day-oh that John, since he’s retired he’s forever taking a nip here and there. She must watch him.

Better pick up some tarragon, just in case.

Do they even know how to copulate, the two of them? They’re both so bookish it’s painful to imagine. No point bothering them about grandchildren...if only her own dear one, the little girl, had lived.

That old question. That ancient pain.

Beeswax candles. They’re expensive but they burn with a steadier flame.

And corn plasters, these feet never give her a moment’s peace.

(Did you see the ones on Grace, sunburned and slim, and soft enough to kiss.) Oh to be young again.

Anything else?

Ah yes, pop down and pick up the mail, forgot that too, yesterday.

Ah, there really is nothing else to compare with making a special meal. It’s like a kind of symphony, and herself the conductor. All the flavors and textures and condiments and sauces, the lovely wines and desserts ... perhaps it would be nicer to have something a bit out of the ordinary tomorrow, maybe she should rethink the pie, do that ginger-caramel macadamia tart she saw in this month’s Gourmet instead? And then the table-the linen and silver, the candles, the

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heated plates. The hushed moment when she herself gives the downbeat to begin. And all the praises and the groans of delight. The way they all, just for that moment, love her-have no choice but to love her-when their appetites meet with her roast beast and her shrimpand- watercress salad and her giblet gravy, her Italian chard, and lemon relish, her baked sweet potatoes and roasted chestnuts, her fruited pies, glazed to a gleam and-oh yes-her dollops of cream.

• • •

Now to get the mail.

But still and all. She is an odd girl.

Well.

• There’ll be no going to the lighthouse today, Brian standing in the big bow window, thumbing through the little book left on the arm of John’s chair, seeing the old-fashioned words, seeing his father, standing ... lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, the way he inspected him at breakfast, kept him ramrod-straight in church, towered over him at the piano, his great square professor’s hand whacking the air, “Count, count you bugger, can’t you see that’s a four-beat bar?” Might as well be sick as the way y’are! Himself slaving over scales hour by hour until the night he couldn’t take it any more-and oh, here’s the worst part, here’s the unforgiveable part: even at anger he’s an obedient failure! What did he do, instead of talking back, finally, to his father?-If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all-Oh, what did he do? He went out to the back yard and broke up a bunch of boxes that needed to be flattened anyway, he went out and broke and flattened them, and stacked them like a good boy, neatly, by the wall.

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You can hear her through the walls, the weight of her makes the house tremble, and the import of her chores, you can follow her progress by the creak of the floors. And everywhere is evidence of her industry, her force: the piles of laundry mounting by the board (never iron a crease into a shirt sleeve, pull it over the end and iron it round), the canner stacked with its army of jars, her gardening gloves and gleaming secateurs, the peaches ripening, relentlessly, in quart baskets, on the stairs. Below which Grace waits out the daytime hours, beneath which Grace, waiting, hears: the creaks of the house and its whispers, its ancient rumors.

What if?

If only!

That old question‘We perished, each, alone ...’

All this Grace, hiding out in the grannie suite, sheltering in its cool twilight like a minnow, a leaf, a trout resting from the day’s heat, hears.

• Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone dressed up and seated ‘round the festive board. Serviettes heavy as dentists’ aprons, Classics Top 40 on the stereo. Serious candles. In the middle a decoration of Indian corn and gourds.

Grace, in her mind seeing those three little words...

John carves, Ilene serves, you don’t just grab what you want and say pass the salt and pepper. Which isn’t in shakers, it’s in “cellars,” a new application of the word for Grace. Back home the cellar is under the house, has a mud floor, and is called “the sullar.” Go down sullar and get me some potatoes. You two keep that up, you’ll be spending the night down sullar. With the spiders. These cellars are Bohemian crystal and have diminutive silver spoons in them. How would you

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manage not to spill? Grace decides she can live without salt and pepper.

Ilene could be happier. Not just the dessert, the whole meal is out of Gourmet, she’s worked on it for two solid days, the vegetables were perfect ten minutes ago, thanks to the rest of them not having the courtesy to arrive at the table the minute she rang the dinner gong. The least they could do. Grace would have been on time but she’s never heard a dinner gong, she thought it was the doorbell and went to answer it. But there’s no excuse for Brian and John. ...Someone had blundered.

Never mind, Ilene serves: Traditional herbed turkey. Traditional mashed and sweet potatoes. Traditional pickled beets and jewel onions on the traditional (formerly heated) Wedgewood plates. Well, she must buck up.

A moment of silence while the heaped and fragrant plates go ‘round, and all prepare to enjoy.

Then: And what are your family’s Thanksgiving traditions, Grace?

A beat. Grace taking a good long look at her flatware, a fortifying gulp of her wine: Let me see... Dad gets drunk. Usually sometime in the afternoon he’ll take off up to see my uncle, he lives up the road?

He used to live with Gram and Gramps but they’re dead now and Vern’s up there alone. Doesn’t do anything much but drive the snowplow in the winter and collect pogey in the summer-and he makes homebrew. Beer, wine, rum and all that. He’s got his own still up there, everybody buys from him, even some you wouldn’t expect.

And then the pair of them get into the sauce, and by the time Dad shows up home he’s feeling pretty goodBrian: Grace. (A nervous hand nearing her arm) Grace flinging it off: Then Somebody pretty much always starts a fight, usually it’ll be Dad, but Mum’ll do it if she’s mad enough, oh she gets right ugly when he’s drinkin.’ Then Mum yells we’re all hopeless and my brother? He’s mongoloid? He starts his stuff, his cack-

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ling and farting and what have you, and he gets smacked and sent to his room, and the cat gets a swift kick, and I pretty much head for the woods. Got a nice little spot up there where I like to sit when things get livelyIlene’s good hostess smile tightening into a totemic glare, the serving spoon a silver question mark suspended in midair.

Grace: I just love these parsnips. Would that be orange rind that’s on them?

• Riding the bus back home next morning, a smoldering argument about endangered species beginning to take fire.

A lot of that’s bogus. It is.

No it’s not. Grace I study marine biology, I should know.

And what’s wrong with letting me say what I think just for once.

Well you sure said what you thought last night.

And what’s that supposed to mean.

You know what it’s supposed to mean. Right in the middle of a very special meal my mother slaved over.

Excuse me: she pointed, I slaved-while you were wafting about praising the improvements!

All this crap about your family having a still and fighting and all that, just what did you mean by telling all that in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner!

I meant what I said, that’s what I bloody well meant, Jesus, somebody around here needs to!

And so on, all the way Kingston, the turning leaves sailing by, unseen.

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And things are different when they get home. They are. There’s a certain privacy, a new reserve. Grace sleeping in the living room for her insomnia, Brian letting her. And a briskness in the kitchen. Any coffee? On the stove. I’m off now. Have a good one. And everything nicely put away. (The apartment gets very organized, very tidy, after a fight, everybody respecting everybody’s space, as polite if they’d just met. Which is interesting, in a wintery sort of way.)

Brian burrows further down into his thesis.

Grace gives hers a miss.

Instead she rides the ferry over to the island, then rides it back again. She buys a bag of licorice pipes and eats every single one. She thinks she might join a choir. Maybe she’ll color her hair. She’s considering dropping out of grad school and taking up real writing instead of this academic crap.

She believes she doesn’t care.

Neither one of them imagining for an instant that this stiffness, this chilliness, this interesting distance won’t pass.

After all. It’s just a cold spell, a temporary frost. It’s not the first time it’s happened. It won’t be the last.

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Copyright Š 2009 Judith Pond All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author.

A RYGA CHAPBOOK This chapbook is an excerpt from Issue 1 of Ryga: A Journal of Provocations published as part of the Ryga Initiative of Okanagan College, Vernon BC in association with the Okanagan Institute.

Also available online at www.ryga.ca COLOPHON

Edited by Sean Johnston Designed by Robert MacDonald EMGDC, and printed at Okanagan College.

Published November 2009 in a limited edition of 100 copies numbered by the designer and signed by the author.

This is copy number

Judith Pond’s fiction and poetry have been featured on CBC Radio and in a range of Canadian literary magazines, including Malahat Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, and Event. With Oberon Press, Ottawa, she has published fiction (Coming Attractions) and three collections of poetry. She is currently completing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and working on a collection of short stories. She teaches English in Calgary..