After You've Gone Read online

  We’d been pals before, too, in school. Or the last one I was in, anyway. Not the best of friends, but we ended up with each other, because the other girls stayed away from us. With me, it was because I was the new kid. I was always the new kid, moving around so much, from house to house, from school to school. When I did stay at one school long enough to make friends, my family would just move anyway, usually on the spur of the moment, and that would be that. Sometimes, they wouldn’t move too far and I’d stay in the same school. That was how I had a chance to become friends with Darlene. At first I figured the other girls didn’t like her because they were jealous of her, being so pretty and all. That might have been part of it, but I got to understand after a while that there was more to it. Maybe they’d heard something I hadn’t, but they all seemed to know there was something wrong with her. Sometimes I could see it. Darlene looked like Jean Harlow with her blonde hair, tight skirts, no underwear, her brows plucked almost right off. She wasn’t like the other girls and she wasn’t interested in what they thought of her, spent most of her time with a crowd of older guys who smoked cigarettes and cut classes. In a way, I admired her courage, admired that she wasn’t afraid to be herself. She didn’t have many friends, and I didn’t either. So it was natural, maybe inevitable, that we’d become friends.

  And much as I sometimes hated it, I was mostly glad to be working at Darlene’s Dad’s hotel, The Belleville, downtown. I’d been there three years, since I was fourteen. I worked as a chambermaid and Gus let me board in a little room in the basement. It was okay, it had a window and all. It was a damn sight better than what I had at home, actually. There would have been no way anybody in my family could have had their very own room.

  After three years I was used to being out on my own, didn’t really think much of it. Things had been hard for my family for a long time, but got worse when my pop died.

  Pop was a tall, lean man, dark-haired with a thin moustache and almond-shaped amber-coloured eyes. He worked as a bricklayer mostly, though he did whatever work he could get. When he wasn’t working, he loved to sing, and to tell stories. And to drink, he loved that, too. He had many friends in Regina’s Romanian community, and friends he’d made in the Regina Rifle Regiment when they were stationed in France during the Great War. He was hit by a truck one morning in February of 1931. It was a cold morning, but a clear one, and the sun was already up. The truck driver said Pop stepped out in front of him, didn’t even look, and he tried to swerve but it was just too slippery. I remember the police coming to the front door as Steve and I got ready for school.

  “Mrs. Koudelka?”

  “Yes,” Ma said uncertainly. Her tired, round face was a mask, but I’m sure she was thinking What now? What’s he done?

  “Your husband is Josef Koudelka?”

  “Yes.” She stepped past us onto the step outside and closed the door behind her, so we wouldn’t hear, I guess. But in a moment her cries pierced the door. Steve and I stood on the other side of it and stared at each other, and trembled. We didn’t end up going to school that day.

  Things were never the same for my family after that. I was almost thirteen and my sister Maria was eleven. My oldest sister Lena, at seventeen, had already been Mrs. Jurgen Koznotski for almost a year. Steve dropped out of school and went to work not long after Pop died, when he was fifteen. The first job he had was working for Gus Klein, as a matter of fact. Gus had been a drinking buddy of my Pop’s. When he heard Steve was looking for work, he took him on. Steve did all kinds of things at the Belleville: general labour, cleaning, repairs, whatever Gus needed help with. It was a relief to Ma to have him steadily employed. Ma’s English wasn’t all that good and she would have had a tough time finding a job, especially the way things were in 1931. She was able to take in laundry, though, and did sewing sometimes when she could get the work.

  Beneath all the things I felt in the weeks, months, and even years after Pop died — grief, bewilderment, anger — was a deep sense of shame. I didn’t really understand it at the time, but I guess shame was my response to the way people at school, the other kids and the teachers, avoided me after it happened. Not that I was ever anything like popular before. With my family moving all the time, and changing schools all the time, I was perpetually the odd one out, anyway. But now I was the one with the dead father, and while officially it was an accident, people talked. He was drunk, they said. It was suicide, they said. Whatever the circumstances of his death were, it didn’t seem to bring out sympathy in anyone. It just seemed to confirm their ideas that we were strange people, perhaps dangerous or defective, and best kept away from.

  As we ate supper one night two years after Pop died, Steve mentioned that he’d run into Gus that afternoon. He’d quit working at the Belleville after six months to apprentice for a bricklayer friend of Pop’s, but had been laid off a few weeks earlier. Funny, Steve looked so much like Pop as I passed him the bread that I blinked, unsure who I was seeing before me.

  “I asked Gus if he might have any work for me and he said he didn’t. But he did say he was looking for a chambermaid. Said I should mention it to you, Ma, before he put up a help-wanted sign, in case either of the girls were looking for work. He’ll have the job filled right away if he advertises it.”

  Ma looked at me as she sipped a mouthful of chicken soup. For some reason I noticed right then that there was much more white in her hair than there used to be.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, Maria’s too young. But you’re fourteen, now.”

  “What about school?”

  “What about it? You’re in Grade Nine. How much education do you need? Your brother only went until Grade Ten. Steve, did Gus say how much the job would pay?”

  “He said it wouldn’t pay that much, only a dollar a day or so. But he could offer room and board.”

  Ma put down her spoon. “A dollar a day. And room and board. That’s a pretty good offer, Lita. I don’t know if we can pass it up.”

  I just looked back and forth from Ma to Steve, tried to think of something to say. I should have seen it coming, I suppose. Lots of kids I knew at school, and Steve, too, had quit early to go out and work, when they could find work. I guess it just never occurred to me that I’d be one of them. Maria flashed her dark eyes at me, didn’t even try to hide the smirk on her face.

  “I’m going to call Gus after supper and tell him you’ll take it,” Ma continued.

  “But, Ma,” I protested. “I can’t quit school now.”

  “Yes, you can. There are all kinds of people out there with more education than you have, missy, who would love to take this job. And it’s going to be a lot easier for Steve and Maria and me to stay afloat if we don’t have you to support, too. That’s just the way it is, Lita.”

  I left the table and went into the little room Maria and I shared, slammed the door. My first thought had been to play guitar, but I was too upset, angry, shocked. I had no choice. Tomorrow, my education was ending. Tomorrow, I would be leaving home and moving into the Belleville Hotel. And I had no say in the matter. My life was changing and I had no say. I was powerless.

  Gus had asked Ma to send me around to the hotel after school. I went to school in the morning to tell them I was leaving, clean out my desk, get my books to give to Maria. I came home at noon and had an almost silent lunch of cold sandwiches with Ma, who told me to grow up and stop acting like a baby. After we ate, I packed. I wanted to leave before Maria got home from school. I didn’t need to see her smirk at me again.

  Ma gave me a stiff hug and a peck on the cheek on the front step.

  “Be a good girl, Lita. I know you will,” she said.

  “Goodbye, Ma,” I said. I picked up my suitcase and guitar and started off to the Belleville.

  When I got to the hotel, Gus showed me around, gave me an idea what I’d be doing as a chambermaid. He said Darlene would train me the next day. Darlene was the same age as me, fourteen, still in school. At home I’d had my share of chores, a
s well as schoolwork. It had always been hard to find any time to play guitar. Sometimes, in the summer, I’d wait till everybody else was asleep and sneak out to the shed to play. Or I’d play in the back alley, out of sight. At the Belleville, I did my job, and the time after that was my own. Gus didn’t pay much, but with room and board taken care of I had a little left over for clothes, strings, sheet music, the odd book. There were always newspapers around the hotel. So I had time to read, and I played quite a bit, and nobody minded about the noise. My room was an old store-room with a bed, closet, a little window, a table, a chair, and a beat-up radio. It was right under the kitchen, so I could play late into the night, and usually did.

  That first night I didn’t play guitar at all. I sat alone in the kitchen and ate a sandwich after Gus told me to go get something to eat. Then he gave me the key to a room on the second floor where he said I could sleep until he had a room downstairs cleared out for me. Couldn’t have a chambermaid in a room that customers might want, he said. I wasn’t so sure about sleeping in the basement at first, but later figured I couldn’t have played guitar in any of the upstairs rooms, anyway.

  I listened to the radio in the strange, empty-feeling hotel room for a while before I got ready for bed. Jack Benny was on, and usually I thought he was pretty funny. But that night I didn’t crack a smile. I wasn’t even really listening, and after a few minutes decided to switch off the radio and the lights.

  I got into the bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin. Outside my window the hotel’s orange neon sign glowed through the thin curtains. Sleep didn’t come for a long time. What had happened in the last couple of days? I kept wondering. All of a sudden here I was with a job, living away from home. Now I was an adult, or I’d have to become one pretty fast. Would all of this have happened if Pop hadn’t died? But I guessed that didn’t really matter. It did happen and I had to deal with it. I knew one thing, though: I’d had no choice in any of this. I’d had no control over what had happened to me. I swore to myself, as much as it was possible, I was not going to let that happen to me again. I would not be powerless again if I could help it.

  But how? How could I be sure I wouldn’t be powerless? I knew one thing — one way people have power over you is when you love them. I loved Pop, and when he died it hurt more than I knew anything could hurt. I loved Ma, and she pushed me away, gave me no choice. Maybe the best thing would be not to love anyone again, I decided. Maybe if you don’t love people, they don’t have power over you. And if they don’t have power over you, they can’t hurt you. That made sense, I thought as I drifted off after my first night in the Belleville. A lot of sense.

  Three

  Elsa

  Regina, Saskatchewan

  April 1983

  I DECIDED TO TELL MOM THE news just after I put Bill, who was about six months old, down for a nap, in hopes it would keep her volume to a minimum. I had a feeling she’d lose her mind when I told her about Mark and I moving to Seattle. Even before she said anything, her face flushed and the roots of her sandy hair looked white. It was no accident Lita was around when I broke the news. We had talked about it the night before, had it all figured out. That made it a lot easier for me. “The winters alone are reason enough to leave this place,” she’d said. “Seriously, don’t get stuck here the way I did.”

  Mom cleaned her glasses on her sweater a couple of times, fussed with the plate of cookies and the tea cups. “You’re going to take that baby to a strange city? A strange country? Have you thought this out at all?”

  “Yes, of course we have. Mark’s sister and her family live in Seattle. Mark’s got a visa, and there’s a job waiting for him — ”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Dispatcher at his brother-in-law’s courier company. Just to start with, you know. Mark’s going to get a new band going, and the bassist from Speed Queen is coming with us, so we’ll get a new rhythm guitarist and drummer, should be no problem.”

  I watched Mom’s eyes dart from my bleached blonde hair to my earrings to my tattoos. We’d argued about all those things in the past, and I’d always ended up going ahead and doing what I wanted anyway, making her mad in the process. And here we were, at it again.

  “And what will you do with Bill while you’re out playing music at all hours?”

  “Oh, Mom. Don’t worry. There’s Mark’s sister, Bonnie, and her husband, Dave. They have two teenage daughters. Besides, Mark and I won’t always be playing the same nights.”

  I could’ve cheered when Lita broke in with, “And Sarah, I left you with your father lots of nights when I was playing and it didn’t seem to hurt you.”

  “Not when I was a baby, you didn’t! You didn’t go back to performing until I was in university. That’s completely different.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “But I know one thing: there were a lot of times when you were young that I was itching to get out there and play and didn’t because I thought as a mother I shouldn’t. I didn’t realize then that I could have done both, that keeping up my music wouldn’t have made me a worse mother. In fact it would have been good for all of us, but I didn’t know any better then. Now I can tell you there’s no reason Elsa’s life has to come screeching to a halt because she has a baby. Babies are pretty flexible, you know.”

  “But why Seattle? What’s wrong with staying here, with Bill’s family?”

  I sighed. Anyone who knew anything about the music scene wouldn’t have to ask a question like that. “We can’t stay in Regina and make anything of ourselves. There are no opportunities for musicians here. There’s not many opportunities for anything here. We only have 150,000 people. In Seattle, there’s half a million.”

  I could hear the exasperation in Mom’s voice. “But why move to such a big city? Think of the traffic. Think of the crime. I keep saying you should get a job with the provincial government, like your cousin Debbie did. And then you can make a good, secure living and still have lots of time for hobbies. What’s wrong with that?”

  I dared to share a long glance with Lita and she smiled faintly and raised her eyebrows a little when Mom wasn’t looking. You’d think that my mom, both the child of musicians and the mother of one, would have a little more understanding of us than she seemed to. Or would admit to. I had had this conversation with her many times: music was not a hobby to me. It was my passion. It was what I wanted to spend my life doing. It wouldn’t endanger Bill if I continued at it.

  “Mom, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of life. But it’s not how I want to live. And besides, we’ve made up our minds. We’re doing it. We leave next month.”

  Bill’s sudden and insistent wailing put an end to the conversation, and I went into the bedroom to feed him. But as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over anyway. Mom wasn’t happy, but she rarely seemed to be happy with anything I did. No surprises there. I would have been surprised at any other response from her.

  Mark and I were still in high school when we started seeing each other, not long after my band Speed Queen opened for his band Third Class Relic at the bar at The Schnitzel Haus. The Schnitz, everybody used to call it. There were only a few places in Regina that booked punk acts then, mostly The Schnitz and the Student Union Building Hall at the university. For a while it seemed like the dynamic duo of Speed Queen and Third Class Relic played one of those venues every weekend.

  I walked into The Schnitz with my guitar that first night we played with Third Class Relic and he was leaning up against a wall, watching me come in. He caught my eye the minute I saw him. His smile was wide and open, his dark hair was cut close to his head, his grey eyes were set deep. We shook hands and he seemed to hold onto my hand a little longer than necessary.

  “Hello. You’re with the band?”

  “I am. I’m Elsa. And you are . . . ”

  “Mark. I play bass in Third Class Relic. Are you the singer for Speed Queen?”

  “Yeah. I play guitar and write the songs, too.”

 
“Cool. Hey, you want me to carry that guitar for you?”

  I laughed. “No. Thanks. I’m good. Can you just show me where we can stash our stuff?”

  “Yeah, of course. Over here,” he said, and showed me to a table beside the tiny stage area. We seemed to talk all night — well, all the time our bands weren’t playing. He gave me and my guitar a ride home after The Schnitz shut down and we must have talked in his car for close to an hour before I actually went inside. I don’t remember what time it was, but the sky was starting to get light already as I tiptoed inside. Holy shit.

  I’m afraid we got serious pretty fast. Mom thought we were too young, thought I should meet some “other people outside my group of friends.” I knew what she meant by that — I should meet someone besides a musician, someone with some prospects. Could be that she was right, but it seemed to me once Mark and I started talking, that was it. And then when I got pregnant with Bill, well. Really, I thought she was going to have a fit.

  “Oh, Elsa,” she started, after I blurted it out to her one night in my bedroom. She paused for a bit, weighed her words, took a breath. “Are you and this Mark going to get married, then?”

  She had always referred to him as “this Mark” or “that Mark.” I was never really sure why. He was the only Mark we knew. Somehow it seemed to denote some of her contempt for him.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I mean, that was his first reaction, but I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that one of you has some sense. What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I just don’t know. I’m having the baby, if that’s what you mean. And keeping it. What I don’t know is whether I want to get married or not. I don’t want to ruin our lives.”

  “You think getting married will ruin your lives? What about trying to raise a child by yourself?”