Failure always starts off small. It only takes a couple of reinforcements before it starts to snowball into something much bigger.
Poor Marisol had always been destined, I suppose, for a life of failure. Ever since the first time her father humiliated and abused her at the age of four years old, failure had been at the top of her list of things to do. And no wonder – there is little I can do with such a beginning as that. Try as I might, I could not alter the course of poor Marisol’s early life. Her dad’s sadism and her own personal grip on defeat proved too much for me.
You can call me cruel for letting him live, since he occasioned worse things than my Ellen has ever had to face. The reason I did keep Marisol’s father around was so that she’d have something to hate all her life. She needed a thing to focus on; otherwise, she might just go ahead and kill herself. And I wouldn’t stand for Ellen being a motherless child.
Marisol failed at almost everything, at her own insistence. She did eventually learn how to make a wonderful beef stew with dumplings and also sweet-and-sour spareribs with rice. She was also great at certain crafts like cross-stitch and knitting. Aside from that, she failed at working because she was always sleepy and depressed. Then, when she did finally obtain employment at Hudson’s Bay Department Store, she developed ongoing complaints toward her boss, her co-workers, the customers, and the delivery people (she was moved from home and bath to fashion to jewellery to finally appliances, where it was empty most of the day).
Everything was wrong, all the time; she was completely, even willfully, blind to my love. Her children, by turns, disappointed and appalled her. She could not put up with anyone, certainly not her own self.
The town, Howey Bay, swarmed with religious fanatics and dumb miners; there was no one Marisol could talk to, who might understand her. She was too smart, deep, and impressionable for the townsfolk and not prone to drunken debauchery, which is how the locals bonded with one another. The weather was always cold and horrible, except in summer and then it was too hot, with kajillions of mosquitoes and spiders to contend with. The trees were too small and the lakes were too cold and there was never, ever anything interesting to do.
But Marisol’s biggest failure was that she just couldn’t get Georgie to love her right. They’d gotten married for convenience, since his baby was in her belly. There was no diamond or declaration of love, just a “How ’bout it?” After spending ten years with him, bearing four of his children, and noticing repeatedly that he paid more attention to the food she cooked for him than to herself, Marisol finally resolved to leave him.
She squeezed her Christian beliefs about marriage, her kids, the pets, and everyone’s belongings into an old blue Dodge pickup truck, and they moved further into darkness. Lynn Lake was a whole day’s drive north of Howey Bay; it was another mining town piled with snow and rock, but Marisol didn’t mind. Her cheeks were rosying up with the thought of being free and on her own again, strong. She would get a job, meet the right man, buy a house, live long, die happy. She would not fail, this time.
On the way there, they passed through the flat fields of Manitoba, endless muddy stretches interrupted by snowdrifts and clumps of trees. Nothing had been planted yet; it was early spring. It felt good to be in another province, away from the boreal forests and rock cuts of northern Ontario. Ellen, who had just turned nine, sat in the backseat of the pickup making noise and song. She chattered incessantly.
“Mommy, I feel sorry for telephone poles. They must be jealous of the trees in the forest, standing so close to them. It’s like they’re being taunted.”
“Mommy, did you think a tree’s roots get tired of hanging on so tight? All that hanging on. I can’t even keep my toes curled for more than a minute. I just tried, and now I’ve got a cramp in my foot. Ouch.”
“Mommy, guess what I think? I think some people are just plain afraid. Afraid to admit that maybe, just maybe trees do have thoughts. I mean, what would that do to the world? No one wants a thinking chest of drawers. All that thinking furniture around us, in our houses, thinking thoughts about you and all of us.”
“Mommy, what if the trees planned a war against us? I mean, I’ve heard of studies where they stuck things on a tree, electrodes, I think, and then they stuck an axe in the trunk, and it was like the tree was screaming –”
“Mawmouth!” hollered Marisol, finally.
It wasn’t that the girl’s conversation lacked interest; it was just never-ending. “That’s what I’ll call you! Mawmouth,” announced Marisol.
Ellen fell silent.
“There is nothing you don’t say,” Marisol accused. “Nothing you keep to yourself. It’s like your mouth is a humongous gaping hole, everything spilling out and being eaten up at the same time, as you go.” Then she laughed shortly.
Just at that moment, they were passing by a dilapidated barn with a large window up top. Inside it was dark, and there was hay belching out over the sill. Ellen thought she must be like that barn window, opening into something dark, huge, drafty, and full of musty smells, all her thoughts belching out over the sill of her mind.
She tried not to talk anymore; she tried. When she started to speak of a thing that interested her, then she felt ashamed and forced herself into silence once again.
The whole move was a badly planned, abysmal failure. Of course. It was done impulsively, reactively, without care and consideration, although I suppose it had its purposes.
Marisol coasted with little resistance into being a welfare mom. All she had in Lynn Lake were a couple of friends who beckoned: “Here we are. We’ll help you!” Then, as women will do, they judged and gossiped about Marisol from the day she arrived in their small town. She fell into a great depression, cut all her hair off, and spent two months sitting in her bedroom alone like the hungry ghost she had become.
When she did venture downstairs, she talked to Ellen and Bonnie all about their father. “He is selfish and mean and doesn’t care about us,” said Marisol. “He is greedy and bad and has never loved me. He spends all the money on his own pursuits. He comes from a family that does not know how to feel. His parents never really loved him. And they don’t love you either. Nobody loves us.”
Bonnie agreed with everything Marisol said and began to hate her daddy. She slunk around repeating the mother’s words in her head. Keanan did not pay attention at all; he wandered around back alleys like a lonely tomcat, kicking tires and looking at the ground. Charlie did his best to get along with everyone, and read a lot of Choose Your Own Adventure books. He missed his father dearly, and was shell-shocked at the mere fact of this separation.
Ellen figured it all out for herself, as usual. She knew Georgie could fly into terrible rages; he also hoarded food. But then, he would sometimes tuck her into his side and feed her sips of diet Coke while they watched TV together. He had built her a beautiful white desk with carved curlicues in the hutch. And, he made sure the fire was going and the bikes were tuned up and the house didn’t fall apart.
“Daddy is one half of me,” she said. “And at least when he’s angry, it’s only for a minute. Mommy is scary all the time.”
Before Lynn Lake, Ellen had passed her whole life in the same two-toned brown house in Howey Bay which – though restless, angry and chaotic most of the time – possessed a yellow warmth and predictability that she counted upon in great measure. The living room and kitchen commanded the front of the house and a short hallway led to the bedrooms. There were Strawberry Shortcake bed linens and plenty of toys in her bedroom.
But that was not where she usually played.
Being only eighteen months apart in age, Ellen and Charlie spent a lot of time together, mostly in the basement and the tent camper out in the driveway. When she was six years old, he’d begun to show her a very special kind of attention. He loved her so much it was impossible not to touch her, loved her with a golden-eyed purity that was nearly forgivable. But not quite.
Ellen thought she was married to him; but as the years passed, she became vaguely aware that this was not a normal arrangement for brother and sister. She noticed that she never felt like telling Pammy this one particular secret. She started to think she might have strange memories when she grew up. He kissed her for long moments in the pantry under the stairs. He held her hand and led her into the forest, where he laid her down and tried things on her body. And sometimes when she was bored and lonely, she found herself instinctively going to his room and pouncing on him – it was the only trustworthy connection available.
One time, after he tried to push his big thing between her legs, she shied away and said she wouldn’t play lovey-dovey (which is what they called it) anymore. But he always caught her in the bath or in the basement. He would grab her arms and she’d slap him and sit on him and they’d be very angry with one another, and then they’d have sex the way young children do, without coitus, mimicking the positions in stray pornography photographs they’d found in the woods.
In her prayers, Ellen would sometimes ask Jesus if they were okay, the things she did with her brother. She explained that it was just their way of playing; she couldn’t imagine saying no, it would be like asking for a divorce. It would disappoint him so much.
In Lynn Lake, Charlie tried to continue the games. But, perhaps due to the difference in environs, Ellen found the wherewithal to fend him off. She grew stronger and more independent in this new place – even troublesome. She made no friends, she missed Pammy’s open face and easy laughter. She roamed the town, broke rules, and never felt any sadness that her mommy was upstairs in the bedroom and wouldn’t come down. She kept Leander in her sweater pocket when she went to school, wiping his piss away with paper towels. She stole candy from the local convenience store. She openly hated her classmates, ignored all the rules, and cheated on tests.
I was glad Marisol took the kids away from Howey Bay for that short period. It gave Ellen the balls to continue denying her brother’s advances, even after Georgie came to rescue Marisol and they returned to Howey Bay together. We all knew the marriage was not going to last, but – as is the nature of eternal unions – it would take a while to undo.
In the meantime, it was necessary for Ellen to stop her confused habit of making love with Charlie. Unfortunately it would mean losing her best friend. But the more she gave herself to him, the further she went from me. She knew this, deep down, but that knowing part was starting to bury itself already, as is the case with most people as they age.