The Western Alienation Merit Badge

Chapter 1: Emergency Helper

Frances called home as soon as she got the letter, but Doris had been dead five weeks by the time she reached her dad. She could hear Bernadette in the background, all despair: “Dad, you can’t just shake your head. Frankie can’t see your face. Use. Words.” She sounded ready to blow.

Frances unfolded the letter, sent by her stepmother on July 19. It was written in Doris’s perfect script on both sides of a single page.

Dearest Frankie,

I’ll be brief. I’m afraid everything has taken a turn for the worse and the doctors haven’t given us much hope. I worry about your dad, how he’s going to cope after I’m gone. He’s very sensitive and he misses you terribly. He’s too proud to say so, but I know it to be true.

Bernadette has been a great help driving me to chemo when your dad has had to work, but believe me when I tell you that things have gone from bad to worse. Your dad was laid off. They gave him two weeks and a small package. To be honest, they’ve done the best they can and let your dad go so Brian, who still has three children living at home, can continue to work. Your dad and I both understand, so many people are losing their jobs, we’re lucky he was able to get what he did. He’ll have my pension, but it’s not much and he’ll still have to make mortgage payments. I suppose we should have thought about insurance but we just never did. We just didn’t expect something like this so soon.

I know that I’m asking so much of you and I know you just want to be out in the world. And you deserve to be out there being young and free, but I love your father and I think he’s going to need you when I’m gone. I wish you would consider coming home. I can’t make you return and I wouldn’t want to, but I am going to ask you to look into your heart and do what you feel is right.

When you consider what I am asking of you, think also of this: I don’t know what the Lord’s great plan is, but I believe He has a rationale for everything he puts in front of us. Remember, God doesn’t make mistakes. I trust in God’s will, and I trust you too, Frankie, to do the right thing.

I am so grateful to have had any time at all with your dad, and with you and Bernie. It’s been an absolute pleasure, Frankie, thank you. Don’t be afraid to pray for my soul, I’m sure I can use all the help I can get.

With much love and a willing heart,

Doris xo

As if Frances could stay away after that letter, let alone the b****y phone call with her dad all catatonic and Bernie so irate. The letter had taken nearly two months to reach her in Sagres. Working under the table, serving the endless stream of Brits that frolicked on the Portuguese shores had been fun. “For once,” she muttered.

“What?” Reena turned her head toward Frankie. She’d been staring listlessly out the window, a cigarette burning between her fingers. Reena refused to stay in Portugal without Frances, refused to let her make the trip back to Gatwick on her own, but had barely spoken to her since she’d made the decision to return to Calgary.

“I’m not angry, Frannie,” she’d said. Then she’d kissed Frances and pushed her onto their small bed. “I’d just rather not talk.” And so they spent their last night together f*****g and drinking sangria. It was a splendid finish to the Algarve, before the long journey by bus, train and ferry back to Gatwick for Frances’s flight home. Except now Frances was hungover and ravenous; Reena was chain smoking and punishingly silent, but not angry.

“Nothing,” Frances said. “Just talking to myself.”

Reena took a drag from her cigarette then crushed it into the ashtray.

“s**t got better when Doris came into the picture,” Frances said.

Reena nodded and lit another cigarette.

Doris was into peace and no nukes; she loved Dorothy Day and liberation theology. She even got Frances to read The Long Loneliness, hoping, Frances guessed, that it would turn her back into some kind of good Catholic. “But you quit the convent,” Frances would argue. “I quit the convent, not God,” Doris would say. Then Frances would say, “Well, I quit both.” They had that circular argument more than a few times.

Well Doris was dead now and, according to Bernie, their dad was drinking himself into a nightly stupor and crying whenever Magnum P.I., or even an ad for Magnum P.I., came on because it had been their favourite.

“You’re going to run out.”

Reena shrugged.

The train lurched northward.

On the Channel crossing they sat on the outside deck and Reena started to cry.

“Bugger it,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Frances said.

“Well I’m not,” Reena snapped.

They parted awkwardly at Victoria Station. Reena wrote down Frances’s Calgary address and barely promised to write. They hugged briefly and separated. Because what else could they do? Then Frances was taking off and then the 707 was taxiing toward the Calgary terminal.

Frances glanced out her window, dark construction cranes stood in front of the Calgary Tower, hooks dangling. Red Square her dad and his cronies called it. So she was back, whether she wanted to be or not. Safely landed in Calgary, with its newly bankrupt oil barons, out-of-work rig hands, jobless heavy-duty mechanics and unemployed secretaries. Yippee yi yo kayah.