then,” she told me, “you should have no problem finding your purpose. Just ask. I’m sure at least one of them will tell you.”
✴
NOVEMBERS WERE DISAPPOINTING. My father was gone, running his seafood stores or selling Christmas trees. My birthday passed while he worked, and that Friday, at school, the kids sang “Bonne Fête à Toi,” though I wouldn’t actually turn nine until Sunday. As they yammered, I mourned the few remaining weeks of salmon season. The teacher told the class my age, and they all asked, as they did each November, why I was a year younger than they were. I explained how my mother had thought kindergarten was a waste of time and made me go straight to first grade. They told me kindergarten was fun, and I said it was for slow learners, which she’d also said, though from what I’d heard, it did sound fun.
The next morning, when my father was saying good-bye to my mother in the kitchen, I grabbed my book on fish and ran downstairs.
“The salmon runs are going to end,” I whined and showed him the dates. “Can’t we go for my birthday? It’s tomorrow. You were going to forget it. You always do.”
He finished putting on his rain gear by the door and said, “We can’t go fishing, but how about I take you to work for your birthday? There’s a spare bed. I’ll bring you back tomorrow.”
“Sure, okay,” I told him, though I planned to harass him about salmon fishing and make him feel bad. On our way into the city, as I tried to bide my time, we passed a shallow river where Native people stood in the current, spearing salmon that splashed between the rocks. My father had long ago explained why they were allowed to fish this way and catch as much as they wanted, and I’d been jealous. I couldn’t help but mutter, “I wish I was Indian” as we drove past.
My father sold Christmas trees near downtown Vancouver, on a parking lot rented from the Pacific National Exhibition, which had closed its rides for the winter. He’d put up fences and turned the space into a maze of pine, spruce, and fir, and he slept in the mobile home that served as an office and a warm-up place for his employees, the young men who hauled trees and flirted with Helen, a pretty blond with fringed bangs who ran the till. She played Christmas music over the speakers until the last customer left, and then put on the Eurythmics or Duran Duran as everyone gathered in the cramped living room to drink beer and rum and coke, the trailer floor creaking.
Though his workers all had yellow rain jackets and pants, my father wore green, as if it were a general’s color. Yellow was ugly, he told me, and he pointed out that you called cowards yellow. In green, he blended with the trees, so that sometimes I didn’t notice him watching. I would be wandering, talking to myself, and then I’d see him, his eyes as still as unlit windows.
Though I was actually proud of going to work with him, I couldn’t stop worrying about the salmon runs. Each time I reminded him, he said, “Okay. I’ll think about it,” or “Stop asking, will you?” Then he went back to speaking with customers or giving commands.
By that night, I was starving. On the couch, I huddled in my jacket, trying to read Mystery of the Fat Cat, wishing I had enough friends to form a gang or that I lived someplace with interesting creatures like rats and cockroaches. My stomach clenched and gurgled, and I pictured myself sinking my teeth into Helen’s arm, like a famished rodent. I never used to worry about food. I feared I might cry, and this made me angrier. I threw down the book and went outside.
Misting rain drifted over the lot, gauzy halos shining around the hanging colored bulbs. No one stood near the trailer, the music turned low, Perry Como crooning softly as if from far away. Pine needles covered the asphalt, and I walked into a row of trees, hundreds tied in twine and leaned against two-by-four supports. Voices reached me, rising and falling, like the ocean from a distance. The corridor of trees became so gloomy that I froze, my senses overpowered by the smell of pine sap.
“André …,” I called. My voice broke, and I swallowed and tried to make my throat work. “André!” I shouted. Footsteps scuffed past beyond the trees and stopped.
“Hey, André!” a man barked. “Your kid’s looking for you.”
The footsteps scuffed off, and I pictured big rubber boots on indifferent feet, dragging through pine needles.
“Where?” my father shouted.
“Just over here,” the man said. “Over there.”
My father called my name, sounding tired. His silhouette appeared at the end of the corridor, his sou’wester gleaming faintly. He didn’t drag his feet but stepped quietly until he stood before me, his eyes lost beneath the rubber brim.
“What is it?”
“I’m hungry,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control, though it sounded whiny and on the verge of tears.
“It’s late. You should’ve told me before.” He spoke slowly, holding back his anger, and I forced myself to answer calmly.
“I didn’t know. I just realized.”
Hazing rain gathered on my face as I tried to read his expression.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll order you a pizza.”
I followed him back between the trees, and in the space before the trailer, with the colored lights and chrome coffeemaker, the music and the blue tarpaulin tied up above the door, he shouted, “Helen, order Deni a pizza.”
“What kind does he want?” she called through the slit in the sliding window.
“Whatever. He’ll eat anything.”
He tried to smile and said, “Why don’t we get your room set up?”
We went inside, down the narrow hall of fake-wood paneling, to a flimsy door. A mattress lay on the floor, an upside-down plastic milk crate next to it, a lamp on top. He flicked the space heater on, and its front began to glow red. The air smelled of burned dust.
“Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You can read in here. Helen will bring your pizza. Then you can sleep.”
“Okay,” I told him, concentrating on keeping my voice steady.
He stared down, not into my eyes, but just seeing, as if I were something he’d found on the roadside. Then he forced a big smile.
“Goddamn it!” he said with the exaggerated enthusiasm he used when he flashed money or bought employees beer. “We should decorate your room, shouldn’t we?”
In the closet, on a shelf, he found a battered magazine. He opened it, and a long piece of paper, with the picture of a woman, folded out from the middle.
“Why is that page so long?” I asked, and took an easy breath, feeling that he might be normal again, that we were about to do something fun, and that if I were patient, there’d be another chance to ask about going salmon fishing.
“It’s called the centerfold,” he said and pulled the page free, the paper popping off the staples. There was a nail in the wall, and he pressed it through the top of the centerfold and stepped back.
A dark-haired woman wore only a long blue shirt. It was
