The Complex Arms Read online

  The girls gyrated their hips, slid their butts against the two performers, ignited dormant passions. Then they lunged for the duo, teasing them with sweaty dollars peeking through revelations of Wonderbras and fancier Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Jan, too, rode the crest of a fantasy — inebriated, loaded, stoned, smashed, drunk, bombed out of her mind on too much wine and maybe life. The doorbell had mercifully silenced her fears this one time, giving her permission to fly.

  Jan was spinning in the air. If she stretched her arms upward, she could touch the ceiling. One of the young men had lifted her, securing her pelvis against his cheek, and now she was whirling in space, a frenetic dervish, her hair combs come undone.

  “Put me down,” she lashed out in a sudden panic of nerves. “Put me down.”

  Her kicking tipped their balance, and both collapsed on the floor.

  “You’re one sexy babe,” he flirted, and he held her with a tight grip, pressing his lips against her throbbing heart.

  Her husband had been the only man she’d ever slept with, so she didn’t know how it was supposed to be. It was never gentle. He’d twist her arms behind her back, hurt her, and when he was done, he’d take a shower and leave for work. As far as he was concerned, Jan had fulfilled her duty as his wife. She, instead, craved tenderness, to be smothered in soft, loving kisses, and this young man was about to satisfy her wishes.

  “Aren’t you glad you stayed?” Vera wiggled by singing a duet with George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.”

  “I’m a married woman, and my husband is a very jealous man.”

  “That’s what they all say,” he laughed.

  The distant relentless ringing. Insistent. Incessant. Unceasing. Unnerving.

  “Will someone please get the phone!” a voice shouted above the din.

  And then.

  “Jan. It’s for you.”

  Something pierced her heart, jolted her nervous system again, and then came the tiny voice outside the bedroom now, “Mommy, when we going home?”

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Suddenly sober, Jan fastened her hair combs back into place, gathered Nina in her arms, and ran for the door.

  “Jan. Jan. You forgot your jacket.” Even Vera couldn’t catch her attention.

  “Oh God. Oh God. What have I done? Oh, Nina, he’s going to be so mad at us. Oh, Nina!” And she smothered the child against her chest, rushing out of the house and into a drizzle of rain, running the four long blocks back to the Complex Arms, Nina wailing, both stumbling, faltering on slippery pavements, plunging into puddles, scraping knees and elbows, Nina still wailing, Jan now crying, both uncertain where the tears ended and the rain began. A borderless pain.

  He wouldn’t let her in. She rang the doorbell with frenzied fingers, yelling into the intercom until her shouts became sobs. “Please, please. I’m sorry. Sorry.” She pounded the double glass doors, pushing more buttons helter-skelter. “Please, please.”

  “All right. All right. I’m coming.” Adeen poked her head out her apartment door, saw Jan, and buzzed her in.

  “Forgot your keys?”

  But Jan had gone deaf to any voice but her husband’s. She poured into the lobby in a torment of tears, Nina still wailing in her arms.

  “Jan, wait! What’s the matter? Jan!”

  No time for explanations. Nina hung on to Jan like a precarious dishtowel swinging on a clothesline in a wild wind, the two tripping over frantic footsteps.

  Adeen stood on guard outside her apartment, listened until she heard the slam of a door. Then there was nothing except the music from Cody’s oddly retro record collection drifting out of his apartment and into the corridors. “You Really Got Me,” the Kinks staccato tribute to love. But then, a thunder of ugly swearing: Slut. Whore.

  Later Adeen would berate herself for not doing anything. She, against her better judgment, had ignored her intuition, didn’t go upstairs to check; instead, she had hesitantly locked the door behind her. For once she’d followed Frosty’s advice: None of your business.

  He was waiting for Jan, still dressed in his security guard’s uniform. “A uniform makes a man,” he had once told her. “People respect you.” He wanted to join the air force but had failed the written exam. This was the next best thing.

  Dawn was breaking. His shift was over. The day was the start of his night. Had she stayed at Vera’s shower too long? She faced him.

  “YOU.” He stabbed his finger at her. “YOU —”

  Nina scampered behind the couch.

  “— ARE DEAD.” He whipped out his billy club and lunged toward her. “I’ll teach you to disobey me!”

  What was this inner strength that now impelled her? Was it the image of Vera, sitting in that armchair surrounded by dreams that reminded Jan of an earlier time when she, too, believed in fairy tales? She wanted to reclaim that woman. After all, she was entitled to some joy in her life. Nina’s childhood memories shouldn’t begin and end with the fear of coming home and seeing her mother beaten by a madman. She and Nina deserved more than this. If for no other reason, she would do it for Nina.

  Jan dashed into the bedroom and locked the door. She was leaving. She could hear his threats, feel his ugliness flowing under the door sill like red-hot, toxic lava. She gathered only what they both needed — a change of clothes, underwear, toothpaste, and toothbrushes — enough to fill a shopping bag, enough for a day’s stay at the women’s shelter. And then she lay on the bed.

  Catatonic.

  She stared at the peeling white paint on the ceiling, studied its cracked surface, dissociating herself from the ranting in the living room.

  “Whore! Whore!”

  It was Nina’s scream that roused her, and a savage howl sprung from the very core of her body.

  “Don’t. You. Dare. Touch. Her.”

  Jan flung the door wide open and pounced on him, positioning herself between her daughter and the billy club. The sight of Nina lying on the floor kindled a fury in her, like that of a mother bear protecting her cubs. There was Jan growling, snarling, biting, kicking, scratching, thrashing. Her books and spilled photos from family albums were hurled from shelves. A life erased.

  “You little whore. Who do you think you are?” And the billy club smashed down on Jan. She crumpled to the floor with a scream, tried to secure her footing, but the club came down again, again, again, on her ear, her jaw, her stomach. She lay there, blood framing her.

  “You try leaving me and Nina goes over.”

  “Hey, what’s going on up there? Hey.” Adeen barged up the stairs; other tenants peeked through half-chained doors.

  Jan was disoriented but managed to roll onto her side. She could make out the blurry images of greyness against the balcony railing — he, leaning over the edge holding a rag doll. She tried to lift up off the floor, but her legs failed her.

  Adeen knocked on the door. “Open up or I’ll call the cops.” Bang, bang, bang.

  “Give her to me. Give her to me, you bastard.”

  Jan managed to crawl on her hands and knees to the balcony, reaching it just as Adeen finally succeeded in ramming the door open.

  The rain had stopped; only a scatter of drops, the crack of lightning and thunder a faint rumble.

  “If you try to leave, I’ll kill you both, you and Nina. You and Nina. I’m warning you, Jan, I swear. I swear.”

  What power again reinforced her, drew her up, pulled her to the railing? “Give me back my baby, give me back my baby, give me back —” Her last susurrus mantra. And then she reached out.

  There is a woman in the air. She seems almost as if she were afloat, suspended above the city. She clutches her three-year-old daughter in one hand, and with the other she clings to her spirit. For a moment she is suspended, drifting in slow motion, her gauzy summer dress billowing open like Mary Poppins’s umbrella, the wind propelling her to remain airborne. She has lost the combs that had kept her waist-length black hair neatly in place. Long strands now tumble about her face.

  In the mornin
g the bus passes in front of the building and we crane our necks to point and whisper, “There, there is the balcony. There is where she fell.”

  Neighbours light candles and plant wooden crosses on the spot where she came to rest; strangers decorate tree branches with black satin ribbons; the media pay attention; her friends and colleagues pray for a life cut short; a parish priest performs the last rites; a mother weeps for a son’s misdeeds; another buries a daughter; a child misses her mother; and he, he covers her grave with miniature white roses.

  Every day.

  JULY 1987

  ADEEN

  So it happened first day of summer. That’s how I’ll always remember Jan. Summer solstice girl. Stopped raining after that night. It usually pours like a broken water main out here every June. Everyone else’s April showers are Alberta’s June showers. But not a drop after that.

  In my years of managing the Complex Arms, and all the times I’ve lived in apartments — and I’ve been in a few — I’d never experienced something like that. I mean I got the drunks and pretty party animals, but to throw your wife and child over a balcony? When I burst into the room, he was just standing there with weird vacant eyes, like he was possessed. Possessed of a devil’s temper for sure. “She fell,” he kept babbling. “She fell.” Just that. His voice had this tone of disbelief. I called emergency right away and they arrived in minutes, as though they were expecting my call from that number. She was dead, of course, but Nina survived. Thank God for small mercies.

  Jan never mentioned any problems with her marriage … although on occasion I could hear shouting matches between them, and that first week when they moved in they had a doozy of a fight. I suspected the usual arguments between a man and his wife and that was all, but nothing like … like what happened. We used to go for strolls in the fields nearby, me and Nina. She never said a thing. Kept it a secret from me. Sometimes I would bring my little girl, Irene, who always liked to push Nina in her stroller. Those times were really special. Sometimes we would stop and rest on the scratchy grass, have a picnic of sandwiches and lemonade, the usual stuff. I felt like Jan was the daughter I should have had.

  I still can’t believe it. Still have nightmares. If you saw them together, you would have sworn they were the most romantic couple since Love Story. It’s always like that, isn’t it? You just never know. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch for. They hide their bruises well. Smile in the face of pain. That was Jan.

  Anyhow, that’s the story there.

  ALBERTA

  Adeen carried her curiosity with her when she arrived in 1982. She learned that Mill Woods was named after the Mill Creek Ravine, the little valley that cuts through the northeast portion and into the woods nearby, home to a First Nations reserve. It was no surprise to learn that once settlers decided they wanted the land for themselves, the Indigenous people on the reserve were evicted and split up, forced to move elsewhere. The province acquired possession and Edmonton created a blueprint for its use: cheap starter homes were to be built on the swampy, unstable soil where nothing grew except prairie weed.

  As soon as the general public learned that the city was going to develop Mill Woods — and that the lots were to be sold for only one hundred dollars — crowds camped outside the sales office. It was a crazy time, reminiscent of the gold rush. Speculators bought up the neighbouring farmlands, hoping to cash in when the municipality decided those properties were needed also to accommodate the ever-increasing population. Over time, apartment buildings like the Complex Arms were added to the housing mix.

  The city planners said Mill Woods was “an experiment in community living, an inclusive neighbourhood for a diversity of cultures, languages, and incomes to thrive, where everyone is welcome.” Adeen didn’t fall for all that marketing drivel, of course, but after she moved there she did eventually grow to love the neighbourhood — so unlike where she had grown up in the grimy streets of Montreal’s East End, the slummy part of town.

  Adeen knew that Mill Woods certainly wasn’t the only place people flocked to. Easterners, Maritimers mostly, forced from their homes because the fish were dying from oil spills in the Atlantic, were settling in the satellite towns around Calgary and Edmonton, portaging to their jobs wherever they were assigned, joining the husky farm boys on the rigs up north in Fort McMurray, or Fort Mac as it was commonly known.

  Hired on as welders, pipefitters, and ironworkers, the new residents tramped through the land to install and maintain the pumpjacks, build the refineries, flush out the soil’s riches, construct new towns. Like Adeen, many settled in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital, a blue-collar city with a track record for wealth: a truck and van in every two-car garage, the attached house almost an afterthought. Those who could afford to live on acreages, with space to spare, inevitably acquired adult toys: a motorcycle, boat, camper, or quad parked inside a Quonset, waiting for a vacation. A hot tub usually graced a large three-tier deck; maybe an above-ground swimming pool in back just for the hell of it. No sales tax in Alberta: the Canadian dream.

  Frosty would tease these outsiders, with their quaint dialects and choppy accents. “You talk funny. You from Newfunland?” They sent cheques home, sealed with oil-stained fingerprints, bragging about their newly furbished riches: an Arizona condo for the winter months when temperatures dipped below freezing; the Sunday brunches at the Hotel Macdonald overlooking the North Saskatchewan River, and, of course, the eighth wonder of the world — the West Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world. It even had a roller coaster, an indoor artificial ocean, and an ice rink. People could enjoy the mall, any time, any season.

  Adeen had to admit that, although the consumer was king in the city, it wasn’t all about money, at least in Edmonton. It had seemed unlikely to her at first, but Adeen discovered that the city was a haven for the arts. She didn’t get to enjoy any of it, unfortunately, but she was comforted by the knowledge that her new hometown provided sanctuary to artists, writers, theatrical types, poets, and musicians who devoured the scene on Whyte Avenue, with its quaint bars, restaurants, bookstores, and art galleries, shades of New York’s Greenwich Village. It seemed that whatever stirred the creative soul was acceptable.

  Naturally, like everyone else in the city, Adeen was keenly aware of the rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton. The oil barons had transferred their wallets, bulging with hundred-dollar bills poking like hankies from Hugo Boss suit pockets, and relocated their offices to Calgary. Adeen had to laugh — on weekends you could see these cowboy capitalists pretending to be the romantic heroes of the westerns everyone loved in Alberta. They sent their business suits to the dry cleaner to be pressed and dug out their weekend garb: oversized cowboy hats and matching boots; a bandana to shield against gusts, rain, and sunburn; and chaps for good measure, protection against imaginary cacti as they rode the plains on their horses, one of their new hobbies. Edmonton might be the capital, but — the oil barons sneered — Calgary was where the money was; Calgary was where dreams came true.

  It was certainly not Adeen’s vision of an ideal city, but it did offer both a pioneer and urban sensibility, fossilized in its cowboy trails and canyons where dinosaurs once roamed. If you took a road trip to the tiny hamlets or villages scattered around the province, you’d discover folks stuck back in the past: Saturday night bowling, pool hall shenanigans, a movie maybe — Fatal Attraction, or some other Hollywood flick — a stopover at the A&W, and a quick fuck in the woods en route home — standard behaviour under a midnight dark.

  Between the towns and villages, though, there was the wide-open space, the vaulted heavens that the literary types wrote about until they ran out of superlatives. The sky merged with the land at the horizon and the weather was a constant and persistent elemental force. Truly awe-inspiring, those brutal winters and menopausal summers, overwhelmed with both hot and cold temperatures.

  Whatever part of the province she visited, Adeen observed how everyone did their best to ignore the Indigenous people. Let the Natives fend for t
hemselves seemed to be the popular sentiment. Governments broke their promises, their treaties. Politicians pretended amnesia. The problem existed back in Quebec, too, she knew, but it seemed worse, or at least more visible, in Alberta.

  And then there were the poor. The homeless camped in cardboard boxes along the river valley or slept stretched out in bus shelters close to the food bank. It broke Adeen’s heart.

  When she mentioned any of this to Frosty, he would ignore the problems she pointed out and declare with pride, “Alberta, it’s mah lafstyle; Edmonton, it’s mah home.”

  ADEEN

  I didn’t want to come to Alberta, but my best friend, Mona, was already here and convinced me this was the place to be — a place with a future, a place for Irene to thrive. So I came.

  Mona and I would take these Sunday drives. We’d zip through little hick towns, more like villages: Hanna, Millet, Killam, Stettler. I noticed a pattern that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Every main street dead, like its citizens stayed indoors preparing for an invasion of aliens; everyone in church if it were Sunday, or tending to the fields the rest of the week. Teenage girls with bellies out to there. Should have been in school, but there they were, loitering outside the pool hall or bowling alley waiting for their boyfriends, or you’d see them walking along the gravel sidewalk pushing hard on strollers, usually in twos, as if they belonged to an exclusive club for teen moms. I’d watch them. I know what that’s like. Guess there’s not much else to do but fool around in a four-by-four town. I swear, every place had a bowling alley, a pool hall, and a Chinese restaurant — always a Chinese restaurant — and, oh yeah, a post office. Sometimes there’d be a hobby shop stuck out amid all the quaint buildings, where grannies bought their wool to knit afghans or socks or where they’d learn to quilt. And all of these places carried an identity. Enter Mundare, and a large Ukrainian sausage greeted you; Vulcan, with its nod to Star Trek, displayed a flying saucer; and Vegreville boasted a humongous pysanka — an Easter egg, if you’re wondering. I guess even towns need an identity, recognition. The cemetery is the most interesting place. There is history on those tombstones.