Broke City Read online

  PRAISE FOR SANTA ROSA

  “The interplay between form and content is masterful.”

  — Rona Altrows —

  Alberta Views

  “McGrath handles the small child’s point of view skilfully.”

  — Donna Gamache —

  Prairie Fire Review of Books

  PRAISE FOR NORTH EAST

  “…crystalline moments of poetic clarity — it rewards contemplative reading.”

  — Jade Colbert —

  The Globe and Mail

  “…even as the memory of Santa Rosa seems at risk of disappearing from the city’s consciousness entirely, McGrath’s fiction provides a bolt of hope. Her trilogy, once complete, may be the most visible and lasting tribute this neighbourhood has left.”

  — Michael Hingston —

  Edmonton Journal

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication — reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system — without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Broke City / Wendy McGrath.

  Names: McGrath, Wendy, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190075090 Canadiana (ebook) 20190075104 ISBN 9781988732732 (softcover) ISBN 9781988732749 (EPUB) ISBN 9781988732756 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8575.G74 B 76 2019 | DDC C813/.6 — dc23

  Editor: Douglas Barbour

  Book design: Natalie Olsen

  Cover photo: Sonja Lekovic

  Author photo: Travis Sargent

  NeWest Press acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for support of our publishing program. This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada. ¶ NeWest Press acknowledges that the land on which we operate is Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground and home for many Indigenous Peoples, including Cree, Saulteaux, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, and Nakota Sioux.

  # 201, 8540 – 109 Street

  Edmonton, AB T6G 1E6

  780.432.9427

  www.newestpress.com

  No bison were harmed in the making of this book.

  Printed and bound in Canada 1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19

  For John

  Contents

  Prologue

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  prologue

  Jan grasps the shovel in his right hand. Raises it like a scepter and points its head toward the sky. Then he walks quietly and solemnly across his yard to the pine in the back corner. Its boughs reach over the fence into the alley and as he stands at the foot of the tree he is shrouded in cool darkness. The ground beneath him is a layer of needles and fallen cones that yields as he makes his way closer to the trunk. He looks up. The trunk is a tangled chaos of thin dry little sticks hanging from boughs stiff and brittle and grey. This pine is dying from the inside out. But the scent of pine is still strong and he breathes to reassure himself, not only of this tree’s presence but of his own presence. Reassuring himself and the old tree that shelters him and the box. See? We are still here.

  Jan buried the box at the foot of this tree. In this box is all of time, all of life, all of his life in his neighbourhood, Santa Rosa. The box is buried at the foot of this old pine tree that is dying from the inside in his backyard. The contents of the box will be his offering to Christine and Fergal, this grieving young couple. His sad promise. But, there is always hope.

  He steps on the shovel’s head pushing through the pine needles and then the soil underneath gives. Have I done this before? Was it real or was it a dream? Both, he tells himself. He pulls the shovel out of the ground again and pushes down shifting the head of the shovel to lift the cedar box from the ground. But the box resists in the way a sleeping creature might resist waking into sunlight and noise and the sadness of this world, resists leaving behind a cool and deep sleep in the earth under this tree.

  Jan smiles at the scent of the cedar box as he lifts it out of the ground. There is the smell of pine and peat and he sees the space left under the tree which he has disturbed and now the tree’s roots look like fingers reaching out and away from the fence and toward him.

  Still sheltered by the boughs of the pine, Jan sets the cedar box on the ground, brushes the dirt from the top and raises the lid. When he was little, the story of Pandora’s Box haunted him. He wants to rewrite the story. Pandora would release happiness into the world instead of sorrow and horror. He would give Pandora only happiness if he could. He would change the story. Instead of sadness, she would have the chance to get back what she had wanted most. Of course, that was impossible. Just as it was impossible for him to get back what he had lost, impossible for Christine to get back the baby.

  He lifts the lid of the box. He smells cedar and brandy. He had soaked clean white linen in brandy and wrapped the cake in a shroud before he put it in the box. The cake he made to divide and share with his children, sending it to them with his memories and theirs, is gone. What he had made and sealed inside has become something else. What was inside the box has changed. Jan realizes with a quick intake of breath that what is now in the box is not for him — it is for Christine. He straightens, still holding the shovel, and steps away from the box. There is nothing and everything in the box. He has released objects inside the box, but they are the objects of Christine’s memories not of his. Time has transmogrified and a simple cake has turned into something bigger than either him or Christine, but at the same time something that will always be a part of her, a part of Santa Rosa. He does not immediately recognize this collection of objects and yet some part of himself feels he knows these things or has a connection to these things. He knows they are connected to Christine. They disperse into the air, moving in cadence, a murmuration, separate yet part of a grand whole. They hover shining like stars so bright Jan can see them even in daylight.

  I

  PINE TREE

  The house smelled the way it did when the Christmas tree was in the living room. When it was in the corner and still. Frozen with no decorations or lights. It was as if Christmastime had made a mistake and come to the house in the afternoon, in summer when it was hotter inside the house than it was outside. That summer morning, when the house was still cool, Christine’s mother had poured the pine-tree-smelling liquid into a silver bucket half-full of hot water. Christine had seen the bottle under the sink and now she could read the label: Pine-Sol.

  Pine-Sol was gold and beautiful and when her mother had raised the bottle to screw the cap back on the sun shone through the glass and cast a golden beam of light from the window to the kitchen floor she was about to wash. This must be what heaven looks like, Christine thought. The smell of pine trees, gold shining on the green and grey tiles in the kitchen and the music playing. That song about golden silence was playing on the radio and Christine thought she might already be in heaven, but maybe no one had told her yet. It was as if pine trees were all around her: the smell of the trees at Elk Island Park on that day she had learned to swim and even her father had come along, and the pine tree in the backyard where she ran to bury the putty discs she had made. She had knelt under its branches then, and the ground was so cool. Christine remembered how it felt, how the needles poked through the thin cotton of her nightdress and stuck to the smooth skin on the tops of her feet and pricked her fingers as she dug in the earth. There was a pine tree in the neighbour’s yard
too, only the fence separated the two trees. Remembering that moment, it was as if her whole life of seven years had become a life of a hundred years and she felt old and young, and alone and part of her family, as if she were looking at her mother washing the floors through a window. Of course, she thought, this must be what heaven is like. She saw that between the two big yellow words Pine-Sol was a tiny pine tree. Pine-Sol. Pine trees were all around her it seemed, but she wasn’t afraid and didn’t want to get away. The bottle of Pine-Sol. Heaven could be this simple thing, Christine thought, the scent of the water her mother used to wash floors.

  Then the news came on the radio.

  The small community of Shell Lake, Saskatchewan is in shock this morning . . .

  Christine’s mother rushed to the radio and turned up the volume.

  ‒ What’s wrong Mom?

  ‒ SHHH!

  . . . as RCMP investigate the deaths of nine people. The victims, all members of the same family, were discovered at their home this morning by a neighbour. RCMP are treating these deaths as homicides. Shell Lake is 50 miles west of Prince Albert. We will bring you more details about this tragedy as they become available.

  Christine’s mother ran to the phone.

  ‒ What’s wrong, Mom?

  ‒ I’m phoning Gramma.

  ‒ Long distance? Christine was shocked. Her mother didn’t call long distance, especially during the day when she said it was so expensive. Christine’s mother dialed quickly, receiver to her ear, cigarette sticking up like an antenna. Christine watched their own phone number in the circle at the centre of the dial. Her mother had written the numbers in blue ink and each one was a character. The fours were like sails on boats and the twos were like swans on the water. Her mother’s finger would pierce the small metal circle inside the bigger metal circle, go half-way round the dial and return. Again. Again.

  ‒ What’s wrong, Mom? Do you know those people, Mom? Who are those people, Mom? Does Gramma know them? Christine thought about what they’d said on the news: “. . . the victims, all members of the same family . . .”

  ‒ Is it Gramma?

  ‒ No. No, I don’t know who it is.

  ‒ I’m scared, Mom.

  ‒ There’s nothing to be scared about.

  Christine didn’t believe her.

  ‹›‹›‹›

  Her mother had washed all the floors in the house. The green and grey kitchen tiles, the shiny wood floors in the living room and the bedrooms and tiny white square tiles in the bathroom. Christine stood in the middle of the living room floor watching her mother crawl with her scrub rag from room to room. She had a burning cigarette between her lips. The wood felt sticky and hot on Christine’s bare feet. She stepped back and watched as her footprints disappeared on the floor’s surface. She could remember something like this from before. When? She remembered small diamond shapes on the side of a man’s socks and how his own footprints followed him from the living room to the kitchen. Was it a dream? Where was her mother in this dream? Christine thought she remembered being in the living room in the little pink house. Her mother had told her to stay there and be quiet. She was afraid to move. She couldn’t move. She heard her mother and this man in the kitchen talking, whispering. She didn’t move and didn’t speak until the man left. Don’t move. Don’t talk.

  ‹›‹›‹›

  ‒ Mom, if I showed you a picture of a pine tree would you know what I was talking about, what I mean?

  Her mother stopped scrubbing the floor, and still on her hands and knees, turned her head toward her daughter. Christine saw a tiny bead of water trickle down the side of her mother’s face as her mouth tightened around her cigarette. She took a drag from it, held it between two wet fingers and flicked the ash into the metal ashtray beside her knee.

  ‒ Don’t talk nonsense.

  ‒ No, Mom, if there weren’t words, how would we talk to each other? Would we just draw each other pictures or something?

  ‒ I s’pose.

  Her mother wiped the sweat from the side of her face with the inside of her wrist, bent to keep the burning end of the cigarette away from her hair.

  ‒ But, Mom, if there were no words how would we tell each other what the pictures would mean?

  Her mother motioned with a flick of her head.

  ‒ Go, go find something to do, I want to get the house cleaned up. I hate coming back to a dirty house.

  Her mother made her way to the bathroom, taking the bucket and the bottle of Pine-Sol with her. She set the bottle down beside the toilet and emptied the bucket in the bowl. The toilet gurgled and sputtered like it was flushing itself with no help from anyone else. Christine watched quietly and her mother set down the bucket, sprinkled Comet around the toilet bowl and scrubbed it with a rag made from one of Christine’s father’s old, worn-out work shirts.

  The shirt was green and black plaid. Christine remembered thinking that when her Dad had worn that shirt the pattern was like roads going over and under each other. Roads going to Saskatchewan and back to Edmonton were the only long highway roads she knew. Christine and her family had made that trip so many times . . . they would go again as soon as her father got home from work. He was taking time off and it was summer, his busiest house-building time Christine was told, so this must be a special trip.

  ‹›‹›‹›

  Christine had left her mother be for a time and now quietly watched her from the bathroom door waiting as her mother squeezed out the rag over the toilet bowl. Christine thought it looked as if she was really trying to hurt something. Her mother stopped and looked up. Christine thought her head looked like an egg in an egg cup.

  ‒ Mom, see that picture of a pine tree? If I just showed you the picture would you know what I meant? Christine asked.

  ‒ No, I don’t know what you mean.

  ‒ If I didn’t say anything, if I just pointed to the pine tree on that bottle, would you know what I was talking about?

  ‒ I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about half the time. You think about things too much. It’s just a bottle of Pine-Sol.

  Her mother poured some of the golden liquid into the bucket and the pinging sound and the smell made Christine taste metal. Intense pine, the half-filled bucket, the water. In that moment, she was lifted up and, with her eyes closed, she hovered over the pine tree in the backyard. She could see herself and her mother talking, having a conversation about . . . she knew there was something she wanted to share with her mother, something she had to ask her but couldn’t find the right words. Her mother started scrubbing again.

  But hadn’t she already washed this floor?

  ‹›‹›‹›

  The little green pine tree dangled from the rearview mirror of their light green Galaxie 500. The little green tree bobbed when the car hit a bump or a pothole and it would swing back and forth as they drove out of the city and down the highway.

  ‒ Did you bring the beer? Where’s the 26? Her father asked quietly and he leaned toward Christine’s mother, a lit cigarette already in his mouth.

  ‒ Yep, the answer stopped in her mother’s throat as she inhaled her cigarette at the same time. But, maybe . . . I don’t even think . . . we shouldn’t be going with what’s happened.

  ‒ Christine, keep that blanket over the beer.

  ‒ Can I put my feet on top?

  ‒ Yes, just don’t move the blanket off the beer.

  ‒ Are you hiding it?

  ‒ No, her father said. Just keeping it cold.

  Her parents looked at each other and smiled. Maybe things were okay. Her sister sat on the other side of the backseat with her blanket and stuffed dog. Her nose was running and she sniffled every now and then.

  ‒ Did you give her the Gravol? Christine’s father turned from her sister to her mother.

  ‒ Yep, just before we loaded up the car.

  The cardboard pine tree swung back and forth from the rearview mirror. Tick tock. Tick tock. Her father had bought the pine tree
when they stopped for gas on the way out of Edmonton. The gas station on 118th avenue had a sign that was easy to read: B A . The B in a green tear and the A in a red tear and they fit together to make a circle. Through the window, Christine drew around the outside of the tears and around the whole circle with her finger and said words in her mind: balloon bakery banana barrel bank. She had heard her father one morning before he went to work, when her parents thought she was still asleep.

  ‒ You’ve got me over a barrel . . . laughing all the way to the bank.

  But her mother wasn’t laughing.

  ‒ We don’t have anything in the bank . . .

  Christine stayed under the covers. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound. She thought about this past winter when that man dropped off a box at their front door. He had thumped on the door and it sounded so loud in the house. Her mother invited him in and left the door open, letting the smell of the winter inside the house. He wore a green uniform.

  ‒ Are there toys in there, Mom? Christine asked.

  ‒ No. Meat.

  ‒ What kind of meat comes in a box?

  Christine was making a joke. She thought it would make her mother and the man in the uniform laugh. It didn’t. Her father was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, pretending not to see the man in the uniform.

  ‒ It’s SPAM, her mother said looking from the man in the uniform to her father. The city’s giving people a box of SPAM.

  ‒ For Christmas? Everyone’s getting a box of SPAM for Christmas?

  The man in the uniform tried not to look at her mother and then asked her to sign a piece of paper.

  ‒ No, people who have no work in the winter, the city’s giving them a box of SPAM .

  The man in the uniform made sure to ask for the pen back. He wore a badge that said: CITY OF EDMONTON. Those words were easy for Christine to read now. The man turned from the door and he seemed to move through the cold as if it had weight to it, as if it pressed around him and his green uniform as he shuffled back to the still-running van. He got in behind the wheel, wrote on a clipboard on the dashboard and drove away.