Sticks and Stones Read online

  The two were definitely gaining in the best cottage competition, but they weren’t quite there yet, and they really wanted to win this year.

  They had started wearing make-shift costumes in the hope that visitors would take more photographs of them in front of their cottage. Tom had a grand billowing cape made from a discarded boat sail and Michael had made a helmet from a discarded sap-tapping bucket. It had been punctured to make large irregular holes for his eyes and nose. The pink toilet bowl brush jammed onto the top added a certain regal flourish. When the clouds parted, the boys would freeze-frame. Posing as memorable lawn ornaments, the cameras were clicking.

  Meals on the property were an informal affair. Philip always had enough food in the two refrigerators in the main house. Rules were simple. The boys could eat whatever and whenever they liked, but the last eater always had to leave enough for the next food marauder. No one was to ever go short. It was understood. The boys had to replace the empty milk pouch in the plastic canister with the next one and clip open the top. They had to close the lids properly on the hamburger or hotdog toppings, unwrap the butter pound and put it on the dish, and wipe up any spills anywhere. They all had to do their own dishes. And they always had to leave enough of the fresh poppy seed buns for the weekend breakfasts of their guests.

  It worked out well enough.

  Puzzler, tangentially, was a very happy dog.

  On the tourist-time weekends, when the farmhouse was filled with his boys and the cottages were filled with eager and inquisitive visitors, Philip would continue to write his inventive poetry. Sitting on the sofa in the screened-in verandah, he would sit pensively and tie words together. While his boys ransacked the house and the new guests settled in for their short stays, he would twirl tongue teasers within his second language. There would be interruptions: lost keys, car problems, tourists needing directions, instructions or counseling and comforting. Philip found that these constant interruptions enhanced his poetry-making experience. He enjoyed the intrusive non-sequiturs coming in from all angles. When whatever issue or problem had been satisfactorily sorted, he would return refreshed to his quiet nook and continue tinkering away, creating new visions linked to new sounds. He always kept a scratch pad and ball-point pen handy on the verandah sofa and just kept adding bits when it moved him. He had nearly 70 pages scribbled down at the moment, and the season was still young.

  It was only mid-June.

  The telephone rang. Anders picked up the phone in the kitchen. It was another reservation for the up-coming weekend from a Miss Lucille Towe. She explained she was coming from Kingston, had never been to the region before. She had received a good recommendation to stay there from Alec Demur, the Finnish poet from Vancouver, affectionately nick-named ‘The Rowdy Acquiescent One’ aka T.R.A.O, (spoken as Trao), who had visited two summers ago. Trao had suggested she try for the ‘Peach Pod’ cottage.

  “Unfortunately,” Anders explained, “‘Peach Pod’ is reserved this weekend. All that’s available is shared accommodation in the ‘Apple Shack’ with another female tourist, Susie LaFleur from Montreal.” He added that there was quite a substantial savings in the rates if the two ladies shared. Almost half. Only $90 CDN each, per night.

  There was a long silence from Lucille.

  Philip could hear Anders starting to oversell her. He reached over and picked up the phone extension in the verandah.

  “Hello?” he said, in his thick baritone accent, “Can I help you?”

  Anders interjected, “That’s my father. He runs the place. You can talk to him. Dad, Trao recommended us to her!”

  Anders hung up and finished preparing his turbo submarine sandwich of ham, turkey and beef. He gave a quarter of it to his younger brother, Tom, who was hovering nearby.

  Puzzler salivated at Tom’s elbow.

  Lucille asked Philip, “I’m sorry, but have you got anything cheaper? I’ll only be staying two nights, Friday and Saturday. I am attending an Ice Wine conference in Grimsby for most of Saturday. It’s really a business trip, not pleasure, as much as I am interested in the area.”

  Philip considered her voice. “Well, we really don’t have that much available here. We can only sleep six comfortably in beds. But I might be able to squeeze you in at $30 a night on a cot somewhere, if you are prepared to wing it.”

  Lucille liked the sound of his accommodating voice. “That sounds fine. I’ll fit in. I just need a pillow for the night.”

  Philip cheerfully replied, “Good! We’ll find a spot for you!”

  During that week everything went along as normal. The boys kept pretty much to themselves and their respective projects. Philip worked away on his poetry in the farmhouse. Thursday came and went, and then Friday arrived, bright and crisp.

  Philip awoke at dawn wondering where he was going to put Miss Lucille Towe. There had been no cancellations from any of the other reserved guests. All were coming. It was going to be another full house for the weekend. He drifted for a moment, thinking how he might plan a little extra entertainment for the group with perhaps a bonfire on the beach or a picnic at the back end of the orchard on Sunday. Then, he returned to the thought: where would he put her?

  At breakfast with the boys, he raised the issue. They had to make room for Miss Lucille Towe. After some creative banter, it was concluded that they could put a camp cot in one of the 8x12-foot sorting stalls in the empty peach shed. Everyone would contribute three items from their cabins to make her feel at home. There was a mid-sized window that faced north-east. She would be able to see a bit of the sun rising over the lake at dawn. There was electricity in there. Anders said he had a spare lampshade. They could hook up one of the orchard hoses to give her a wash-basin in one of the sap-tapping buckets. Miss Lucille Towe would need to come up to the farmhouse to share the toilet with them. Michael was given the job to clean up the bathroom.

  So, it was all decided.

  The boys put their carefully selected objects into the empty peach sorting shed stall before heading off late, again, to school. Aside from the lampshade, Anders took over his biggest trophy, his teak kayak paddle and a more-or-less finished vine mirror. Gilly tacked up his striking portrait of the poet Alec Demur, aka Trao, beside the window and he left a small blank drawing pad with a 3B pencil and pencil sharpener on the overturned bucket by the cot. Michael took over his well-thumbed copy of ‘A Natural History of Lake Ontario’ and put two of his favourite treasures on the window ledge: a flint-chipped arrowhead and a found coconut shell that must have floated up the St. Lawrence into the Great Lake from the Atlantic Ocean. Tom took over a cluster of his bulrush wands dipped in yellow house paint and arranged a dramatic bouquet in a discarded milk-can outside the front of the stall.

  In the middle of Friday morning, Philip added the finishing touches. He rolled open the small camp cot opposite the window so she could lie in bed and see the dawn. He turned the mattress over, punched down the lumps and bumps, and made up the bed with fresh flannel sheets. He threw on a fluffy floral duvet and stacked two pillows at the head. He then hung a hummingbird feeder off the peach tree branch just outside the window. He put Ander’s spare lampshade over the bare bulb hanging down in the middle of the room and quickly painted the naked metal light switch a bright fire engine red. He put out three large, clean, lime green bath towels with a new bar of hand-made organic mint soap beside the overturned bucket and the hose. He moved Gilly’s sketchpad, pencil and pencil sharpener onto a dusted-off stool that he’d found in another stall. He plugged-in the tiny but efficient space heater beneath Ander’s twisted vine frame. Double-checking that it worked properly, he made sure it was turned off before he glanced once more around the decorated stall. Yes, all was fine and welcoming. Then, he drove into the village to get more bacon for the two weekend breakfasts and a new batch of freshly baked poppy seed buns from the local bakery.

  By 6 o’clock, ‘Chez Nous’ was full.

  Six tourists were settling in for the weekend.

  Miss Lu
cille had just called saying that she was lost. She was up on the escarpment past the vineyards somewhere. She was phoning from the Esso station beside Carol’s Diner. Philip gave her simple turnaround directions and went back to musing over promising sounds on the veranda sofa.

  Michael, meanwhile, was tormenting Puzzler with a new harness contraption that threatened to involve his tail. Tom was cutting out banana blobs of felt to scotch-tape to his sail cape. On the front lawn, Anders was fidgeting with the brace on his new slalom ski, tilting back and forth in the foot-hold, swaying left and right. Unable to decide which was his stronger leg, he kept changing his forward foot. Gilly, seated on the front steps, was carefully sharpening his colouring pencils with an ancient Swiss army knife. He was making a delicate mound of spiral wood shavings on the center of the second step.

  The motorcycle was very loud as it rumbled slowly up the loose gravel driveway towards the front of the farmhouse. A pleasantly plump woman in a full-suit of shiny black leather turned off the engine and dismounted. She lifted off her helmet and put it over the handlebar. A voluminous cascade of ruby red hair fell to her waist and she began slowly striding up to the house. The leather squeaked with every step.

  All stopped what they were doing to watch this grand entrance. Philip put down his poetry scribbler and stood up in the verandah. As she passed by a speechless Anders, he gave her a great big grin. Nearing the front steps, she quietly said to Gilly, “I might upset your little pile there.” Gilly smiled kindly and said it was all right. The steps sagged ominously under her heavy foot. The pencil shaving mound remained intact.

  Philip opened the screen door as wide as he could.

  Entering, she introduced herself, “Hello, I am Miss Lucille Towe.”

  He responded with a friendly chuckle, “Welcome to ‘Chez Nous’, Miss Lucille Towe. Or, should I say – Mistletoe?”

  She erupted in a delighted giggle.

  The weekend had finally begun.

  JOJO’S MISTRESS

  Hello.

  I am a widower with two full-grown, married children - a son and a daughter - and I now have three small grandchildren.

  My kids say it is time for me to run this personal ad.

  So, I am going to give it a go ...

  My wife of 46 years died unexpectedly last summer.

  To give you some background, and to go back a bit, my wife and I were childhood sweethearts. In high school, I was President of the student council and she was Editor of the school yearbook.

  I will never forget that day when I walked into the classroom and saw her bent over those loose storyboards. The sunlight from the window gave her head a luminous glow. Corny, I know, but true.

  As she looked up at me, it was obvious that her mind was focused elsewhere. She was nonplussed.

  Girls generally found me attractive at that age, I was the Senior Class President after all, and to see that she didn't perk up like the other girls did, well, it kind of got to me.

  I spent the rest of that final term getting to know about her. I learned about her family, her friends, her haunts and her interests. The more I learned, the more I liked: she was a nice girl from a solid middle-class family. (Her father owned the local hardware store.) She was on the junior debating team, and she was reasonably athletic. She played on the girl’s field hockey team, left wing. Her friends were lively, flirtatious and normal. She liked to go to the cinema on discount-Tuesday and to the soda shop near the river after school on Fridays. She always spent the weekends with her family. I never asked her out on a date during that time because I knew she would have said no. But at the end of the school year, in my Valedictorian speech, I made a subtle but direct allusion to the importance of the yearbook, I said it was a valuable keepsake in the years to come - "a talisman of remembrance to share with our children".

  It worked.

  She came up to me afterwards and looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. She told me how much she enjoyed my speech. Her face was glowing, her eyes wide open. I asked her out then and there. She looked down, smiled shyly, and said yes.

  The rest, you might say, is history.

  We both went on to the same college. I took a business degree and she studied to be a librarian. We married in my graduating year and everyone we knew came to our wedding. It really was a wonderful occasion. My older brother, Harold, was my best man, and Jenny, her oldest friend, was her maid-of-honor. Jenny and Harold got married the following year.

  For our honeymoon, we went on a week-long canoe trip to Algonquin Park. At dusk we stood on the shore of the lake, and held hands in an old-fashioned kind of way. We called out to the loons. Those haunting love-birds called right back. She was afraid, she said, of the black bears in the night. I was too, but I never let her know that.

  I began to work as a junior accountant in the district branch of a large tax consulting office. I was quickly promoted to middle management and was asked to move to Toronto. At that time, my wife had just started as a high school librarian. I remember the morning that she told me that she was prepared to give up her first real job because she knew that our future in Toronto was going to get us further ahead. She was right of course.

  Our first apartment in the city was a size-6 shoebox in a run-down triplex, just two small rooms with a windowless bathroom. She soon made it comfortable and cozy. It was always a pleasure to come home, to know that she was there. She would cook up the most delicious hearty meals in that miniscule kitchenette on our meager budget. I would often bring home a bottle of cheap wine, and sometimes, flowers. On Sundays in summer, we would make up a large picnic hamper and take it over to High Park on the streetcar. At the pond with the long-necked swans, she would sit down in the long grass and carelessly flip off her shoes from her pretty little feet. She would curl her tiny toes around the cool blades of grass and swoon in pleasure. Her face was the picture of ecstatic contentment. I loved her more than ever then.

  Our first son was born in that little apartment. She woke me up and said, "I'm going to have the baby right now." I tried to help get her up and to the hospital but she just sat on the edge of the bed and said, "No. Here. I'm going to have the baby right here." I called the ambulance and sat with her as the contractions got closer and closer. To watch her in that pain was awful. That such pain could deliver such life was, and still is, a miracle to me. Anyway, the ambulance arrived and the paramedics took it from there. They cut the cord and spanked his bottom. He was a mighty yeller with a full crop of red hair and long nails. She was so happy she cried.

  When our son turned three, I was promoted again. I got a lot more money, much more travel, and greater overall responsibility. The CEO, at that time, said I could easily become president of a provincial branch someday. At first, I resented the continued loss of family time, but there were definite advantages that we both could see. I was able to put a significant amount of money aside for the purchase of our first home with a small backyard for the kids. And I was able to bring home items that I found while traveling that filled her eyes with pure delight.

  I remember when I brought back a small perfectly-torqued seashell that I had found on a beach in Vancouver. She loved it so much that she said she wanted to wear it. I secretly bought a gold chain for it and threaded the shell. One evening when she was standing at the sink doing the dishes, I gently slipped it around her neck. When she turned to hug me, the water from the sink sloshed all over the floor, my shoes and my new blue suit. But it didn't matter, her eyes were beaming.

  We had tried for a second child soon after our first, but the doctors had said there might be complications. Something about a scarred uterus. They had told us to wait for five years. We did, though it was very awkward. When the doctors told us it was safe, we tried and tried and tried. Some of those nights were tiresome chores let me tell you. It all became so scientific that the fun fell out of it. It became a really bad time for us. We got snappy and short-tempered with each other. I would take weekend sales assignments j
ust to get away. She would use our son as an excuse to make me come home again. It was a difficult thing to talk about. We both wanted the family, we loved each other and we loved our life together. We just could not adjust to the fact that life was not going to work on our schedule. Our second child, our daughter, was finally born at Christmas, a bundle of joy, with eyes and a smile just like her mother's. Truth be told, that sweet girl’s birth saved our marriage.

  We moved to Oakville in the fall of 1987. I bought a big clapboard house on the lake with a white gazebo and a dog kennel. We had two cars by then, and I bought a small sailboat. We called it ‘Joy' and christened it with a bottle of expensive champagne on a sunny day in June. I would take the kids out for a sail in the early evenings. As we tacked back and forth, we would watch the sun set over our new home. After dusk, my wife would stand on the dock and wave us in, holding the flashlight steady as we tied up.

  The kids were growing like weeds by then and she told me that she wanted to go back to work at the library a few days a week. She said she needed to keep her mind working. I didn't object. She soon organized a ladies’ book club. A clutch of intelligent women would come over on Thursday evenings on the third week of every month. When the ladies were there, I quietly slipped out to the golf club to swing a few clubs and have a few drinks with Harold and the boys. Our dinner conversations did get more interesting after that. We both became more interested in politics and world events. I was a small-c Conservative and she was a big-L Liberal. We’d often argue playfully. If it ever got too intense, we had made a pact to make up before going to bed. Neither of us ever broke that promise.

  Our son joined the debating team at his high school and our beautiful daughter began piano lessons. They were friendly, well-adjusted children and JoJo, our new black-lab puppy, became my wife's third child.

  Around that time, my knees started acting up and I had to hire a gardener to mow the vast lawn. My wife developed a large flower garden filled with peonies. She so loved their intoxicating aroma that every year she added a new patch. My big green lawn got smaller and smaller.