capable hands as he milked Donna Summer and Julian of Norwich, George’s two best producers, whose yield of high-butterfat milk sometimes bordered on the amazing. Long ago, George and I had established that the goats tended to give more milk if you sang to them while milking—a phenomenon that wouldn’t stand up in a lab study, perhaps, but certainly proved itself when we experimented, logging the daily production carefully and noting which songs affected which goats in a positive way. Eddie sang a Hawksley Workman tune to the goat named Donna Summer, and Julian got “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. I joined in on the gospel tune in harmony, and old Julian, cavernous of belly and hairy of chin, gave us almost two pounds of milk. Eddie had a pleasant tenor voice and wasn’t shy about using it, unlike most teenaged boys.
“Are you planning on breastfeeding?” Eddie said as we carried the full milk pails up to the dairy house. I almost swallowed my tongue. Not, I would venture, a remark that Eddie Schreier would come up with unless his inhibitions were altered. However, it wasn’t as if he was asking out of prurience—he seemed genuinely interested.
“I haven’t really thought about it much,” I said, “but I probably will. Breastfeeding makes sense—I mean if the body produces the stuff, it seems a shame to waste it, hey?”
“It’s just that the Family Studies teacher was talking about it the other day,” he said. “She said that kids who are bottlefed end up getting earaches and stuff because there’s, like, natural antibiotics in mother’s milk and not in formula. Just thought you should know.” I was amused by his concern, and rather touched. This was something I did know, actually—during the first few days after a goat bears her kids, her udder is full of rich, yellowish colostrum—chock full of antibodies and nutrients that milk-replacer doesn’t have. That’s why George always let new kids nurse for a couple of weeks before starting them on the instant milk-mix. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, though, that I, being a mammal, would be manufacturing colostrum myself. I had a sudden and profound flash-forward, imagining a heavy, warm bundle in my arms, its lips suctioned onto my nipple. It was weirdly sexual, and I could feel myself blushing.
“Hey, Polly, you want me to come sing to you when it’s feeding time?” Eddie said, leering and waggling his eyebrows. “It might boost your yield, eh?” Yep. Definitely stoned.
I cuffed him across the head with my free hand, almost spilling the bucket of milk.
“That’s exactly why some people call it dope, Eddie,” I said.
Three
Plan any holidays or trips well in advance and try to avoid long-haul flights in the second half of pregnancy. Planes can be very cramped, and the pressurized cabin can cause swollen feet and discomfort even in non-pregnant passengers.
-From Big Bertha’s Total Baby Guide
I joined Susan, George and Eddie for dinner. Becker was still away in Calgary, and I had not heard from him directly, except for a brief message sent to Susan’s email account from an Internet café.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Pls. Fwd to Polly
Date: October 25
Dear Ms. Kennedy,
I would have called, but there was no point, as Polly doesn’t have a phone up in her cabin, and I didn’t want to put you to the trouble of trying to find her. My father passed away yesterday, and the funeral is on Saturday. Please tell her I will be back in Laingford on October 31.
Sincerely,
Mark Becker
How’s that for a nice intimate note? Second-hand, no less. “Have some compassion, Polly. He’s just lost his father,” Susan had said, seeing my reaction.
“It’s not that I don’t sympathize with him in his grief,” I had said. “I just wish he’d sent something a little more personal, that’s all.” Anyway, I asked Susan to send a message back with my condolences, which I assume she did.
I would have liked to have met Becker’s father. What’s that Oscar Wilde line? “All women become like their mothers, that’s their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” That may very well be true, but I’d never had the chance to check it out, as Becker’s mother had died three years previously. Now that Becker was an official orphan, like me, his resemblance to either of his parents, in terms of temperament, could only be a matter of hearsay. However, I suspect that many men resemble their fathers to some degree. Becker hadn’t talked about either of his parents much, and I hadn’t felt comfortable pressing him on the subject, as I’d made it quite clear that I wasn’t interested in discussing my own. I’d made a careful study of his parenting techniques, though, the previous summer, when his son Bryan had stayed with him for a week while his ex was away on a trip. I wasn’t pregnant at the time, but I was considering marrying the guy and had put him under the powerful lens of the Polly-scope.
Bryan was a cute kid, as kids go, and obviously devoted to his father—almost pathetically eager to please him. Becker had appeared to be a loving father, too, but there was a hard edge to him in his dealings with his son—a kind of no-compromise sternness that made me wonder if his own father had been a trifle strict. What I did know about Becker Senior (Edward) was that he had been born somewhere in England, the only son of an air force captain. He had been evacuated to Canada during the Second World War and sent to live with a family on a farm near Calgary, which was where he met Becker’s mother. I figured that if Edward had undergone the trauma of being sent away, alone, at a tender age, to a foreign country, it might well have left him with some parental/abandonment issues and rendered him undemonstrative.
There you go—a canned psychological assessment of a man I’d never met, patched together from scant information extracted from his son. Edward might have been the most doting, adoring father in the world, of course, but now I’d never know. Becker hadn’t appeared terribly eager to take me out to Calgary to meet him. He’d said it was because his father had never forgiven him for divorcing Catherine, Bryan’s mother, and still treated her as his daughter-in-law. “We’ll have to ease him into it,” Becker had said. “It would help if I could introduce you as my fiancée, and not just my girlfriend.” Which, as you can imagine, had turned into a bit of a tiff, as that felt an awful lot like pressure from my perspective.
It was Eddie’s night to cook. He was pretty good at it, having been in the culinary arts program at Laingford High since Grade Nine. Susan, George and I sat in the living room, enjoying the scent of frying garlic emanating from the kitchen. He was bashing around in there, singing a Shepherd’s Pie tune and obviously having a great time. I know what that’s like—cooking when you’re slightly stoned is wonderful fun.
George was sitting in his favourite chair next to the woodstove, puffing on his pipe and scratching the tail feathers of Poe, his pet raven. Poe had been around forever—a massive creature, far more intelligent than Lug-nut could ever hope to be. The bird perched on the armrest of George’s chair, emitting little croaks of pleasure as George fiddled with his nether regions. Poe would never let me do that. The bird was picky when it came to human contact. He obviously considered George a kind of honorary raven, but the rest of us were roadkill as far as he was concerned. He had perched on my shoulder a couple of times in the past, a distinction
