Lena Scholman 2019
Valley Hardware
Sharanne is taking her time with his hair, shaving the same straight edge at the base of his neck over and over.
“What’s on your mind?”
“How do you always know?” she sighs.
He looks at her in the mirror over the counter, where a mason jar filled with blue antiseptic holds her combs and picks. Neither of them have changed their hairstyle in years; they still look like the teenagers they were on their wedding day.
“Did Ella tell you about basketball tryouts?”
Lorne tries to remember what he’d asked his daughter that morning, as she gulped down her cornflakes with alarming speed. They’d stayed up late watching a sitcom about four friends in New York City, which Ella loves and Lorne can’t stand, yet he watches it every week because more and more Ella wants to hang out with her friends and buy jeans that look like they’ve been pre-loved by a drywaller. He catches himself patting the couch cushion, like she’s a pet and he wants her to sit, stay. And he does. He’s afraid she’s slipping away.
“She was cut after the first round,” Sharanne says.
Lorne steals a glance across the street. He needs to open up. He can’t let the post office open first; it’s one of his rules. Private enterprise should always be more ambitious than government institutions. His philosophy of ‘good business’ is mostly a collection of half-baked superstitions, but he doesn’t care, so long as he can provide for his family.
“She didn’t practise much, did she?” Sharanne has stopped and has her hands on her hips, like she does when they need to have a full-blown discussion.
He wonders if it’s true. Maybe Ella practises on the new cement driveway Sharanne’s husband poured last month. He bets there’s a net on the garage already. That would be Chuck’s style.
You should get your lane done, Lorne. My guy’s got great rates – he buys surplus from the county.Lorne thanked him for the suggestion, as he always does when Chuck advises him on some improvement the shop could use. For a lawn-care expert, Chuck seems to know a lot about retail. Occasionally he takes his advice, as a gesture, no hard feelings. Or something.
Sharanne puts the razor down and brushes off his shoulders. “Gel?”
He shakes his head. She always overdoes the gel. He has to unload a container of pruners later and he doesn’t want Sharanne’s potions leaking into his eyes when he starts to sweat. He shrugs his coat on. She doesn’t charge him for a trim; he pays her in lightbulbs and brooms and whatever else she puts on her account across the street.
“Lorne. Why is she biking to school early if she didn’t even make the team?”
They would be together on Friday. He’ll ask Ella what’s going on then.
“We’ll talk to her,” he promises.
“We don’t want to corner her.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Lorne rubs his hand around his neck. “Thanks for the haircut.”
Two minutes later, Lorne crosses the street and unlocks the front door of Valley Hardware. He hauls a steel sandwich board onto the sidewalk. “Boot sale”, the sign reads. He isn’t planning on selling many boots this year, most farmers still buy their boots and coats at the Co-op, the sale is more a habit than anything else. When Sharanne wrote to him at school, all those years ago, it was autumn. Valley Hardware was having a boot sale and she was pregnant.
He turns on the CBC and slits open the first box of pruners. He’ll call up the local orchardists and let them know he has the special Japanese instruments back in stock. Years ago, he’d been sent to pick them up at the cargo docks in Malton; The boss didn’t want to wait for delivery and sent Lorne in his old van.
In those days, Airport Road was a two-lane highway that meandered through farmland until it delivered you abruptly into a concrete jungle of warehouses. He’d thought about calling his old roommates for a drink, but they were writing midterms while he was building a crib. He drove home that afternoon thinking he could take correspondence courses after the baby arrived. He imagined he’d get up at night and read textbooks while he wandered around the apartment above the shop juggling a little bundle in his arms.
He would have finished his degree by the time the baby was in pre-school, and taken his little family back to the city. But when he got back to the store that evening, everything was strangely quiet.
He unloaded the heavy crates into the storeroom by himself and went upstairs to find Sharanne. The television cast a blue light on his wife fast asleep on the couch. His mother-in-law had dozed off beside her in an armchair. Sharanne’s dad, the owner of Valley Hardware, was nowhere in sight.
Lorne had the good sense to head downstairs first.
* * *
Lorne has always thought of himself as an adventurer, a spontaneous man. But the truth is, he loves routine. In the fourteen since they buried Sharanne’s father, he’s closed Valley Hardware at exactly six o’clock, spending twenty minutes at the small wooden desk behind the cash, a small pencil tucked over his ear, tallying the day’s accounts.
Monica calls to say she’ll be home late; an older gentleman had a spell that afternoon and she was meeting with the family.
“Will you walk Knox and Wesley?”
“You bet.”
Normally, they’d share a nip of whisky before dinner, and head towards the river to walk the dogs. Maybe he’ll take them to the park instead. While he’s debating what to make himself for dinner, the door bells chimes.
“Sorry, I’m clo… oh. It’s you.”
Sharanne sits down opposite Lorne at the cash. “Let’s follow her tomorrow and see what she’s up to.”
Lorne scratches his head. It’s creepy to stalk your own kid.
“Won’t she notice?”
“We could take one of Chuck’s vehicles?”
“I suppose your Mom could open up –”
“I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.” Sharanne strides out of the shop, gets into her new Corvette and roars up the hill out of town.
Knox, the older of the two dogs, looked at him suspiciously, as if to say:you’re a silly man, Lorne. A silly man who can’t talk to his daughter.
“You don’t have to rub it in.”
***
For a kid, Ella is a pretty fast cyclist. Lorne and Sharanne are driving so slowly a tractor overtakes them on the sideroad.
“Why are we doing this exactly?” Lorne said.
Sharanne is quiet. Sitting in her red vinyl chair people tell her all their secrets. He isn’t sure that’s always a good thing, knowing so much.
“What if it’s some boy?”
“You think?”
“Why else would she be sneaking around?”
Lorne couldn’t recall ever waking up early to meet a girl, but his teen years seemed like a long time ago. Maybe kids have changed. Possibly she was meeting someone who could only steal a few moments early in the morning, because he has a job. Lorne grimaces. If the boy has a job, he’s probably older. This was going from bad to worse. Did they go off and neck behind the greenhouses? Probably no-one said ‘neck’ anymore, but he doesn’t care. His imagination is giving him a headache.
“Where’s she headed now?” Lorne mutters. Ella veers off the main road onto a path leading to the creek.
They park behind some cedars and tiptoe closer. Ella lets her ten-speed drop to the ground even though Lorne has installed a two-pronged kick-stand so the chain won’t get dusty. She’s in a hurry to get something out of her backpack.
“Is she dealing drugs?”
“Shhh,” Sharanne hisses.
Lorne can see from the way she’s pursed her lips she’s never been as curious about the contents of a backpack before either.
After emptying her binders, lunch and water bottle beside her, Ella finally extracts a pair of binoculars and a notepad, and sits down on the grass looking up towards a row of birch trees.
Lorne looks at his ex-wife and they edge back towards the car.
“Is she for real?” Sharanne mouths, relieved.
“What a nut,” Lorne says, shaking his head.
“Do you think she even tried out for the team?” she asks.
Lorne shrugs. “How much did Chuck spend on that cement pad?”
Sharanne groans. “Don’t even.”
He puts the car in reverse, “C’mon. I’ll buy you breakfast. Let’s get out of here before she catches us in her crosshairs.”
***
Lorne understands not all families are able to come back together after divorce, but he’s grateful for the arrangement he and Sharanne have cobbled together. Monica would say, “it’s the grace of God.” Chuck would say, “it is was it is.” But Lorne credits the weekly fish fry at the Legion.
Every Friday they sit and eat together and no one has to do the dishes. They are at their usual picnic table, Lorne, Sharanne and Ella. There’s room for Monica and Chuck, too. Lorne has learned– and this is not a superstition– that dragging another table closer will almost always make life better.
After dinner, they leash the dogs and head out for a walk along the river. Ella walks ahead, and Lorne notices binoculars draped around her neck. She stops abruptly and motions for everyone to be quiet. She’s spotted something in the crook of an enormous beech tree.
“Dad, Mom,” Ella whispers. “Come see this.”
High on a silver branch is a saw-whet owl. “Is it asleep?” Lorne asks.
He sits down on a large rock and his daughter nestles beside him. “Have a look, Dad.”
Sharanne sits on the other side of the rock and they take turns looking at the owl.
“Mom, Dad. I’ve been meaning to tell you guys something,” Ella begins.
Lorne and Sharanne exchange a look over Ella’s head. They’ve agreed it’s not safe for her to be alone by the creek so early in the morning. What if she were accosted by some weird fisherman? What if she twisted her ankle and no one knew where she was? What if she fell in the water? They’ve both been waiting for the chance to say, I’ll go with you.
“I’d really like to get a better camera,” she says. “With a zoom lens.”
Sharanne blinks.
Lorne feels the fried fish churning in his stomach. They should confront her. She’s watched too many nature documentaries. She should be playing basketball, Lorne thinks. It’s anti-social, crouching over a tri-pod in the bushes. He doesn’t like to think of her alone, all grown-up. Like she doesn’t need either of them around.
“I’ve got about a hundred bucks saved up, but maybe I could work in the store and earn the rest?”
Sharanne is shaking her head. She spent her entire adolescence behind the cash at Valley Hardware. She wants Ella to have options. This is the side A of Sharanne’s life record. It’s important for women to have options, Lorne.
Lorne pushes away the thought that Chuck would go out and buy the damn thing tomorrow if he heard she wanted it. He’dlike to buy his daughter a new camera.
“A few shifts here and there would help me out...” He tries not to sound too hopeful, but he’s already imagining how much better the store would be with his daughter in it.
“Mom?”
Sharanne is watching Chuck lecture Monica about dogfood while they throw sticks for Knox and Wesley. He doesn’t own a dog anymore, but he has a buddy who makes organic kibble, and he’s been proselytizing for weeks now. It gives them so much energy!Monica is nodding politely because that’s what she went to school for.
Sharanne looks at Lorne and smiles. “I suppose it can’t hurt to have your dad looking out for you.”
Lorne nods.
He’ll order in some bear spray in case she gets into trouble down there by the creek. When Ella gets up to give Chuck a turn with the binoculars he has to stop himself from calling out.
Sit, stay.