“Really?” Buddy asked, turning left off Pine onto Maple. “Do I want to live here?”
Looking round, he’d noted a preponderance of grey hair and wrinkled faces. I’d fit in that way, he guessed. But do I really want to?
Might he miss the urban energy of Victoria, not ever having lived in a small town like Chemainus? You could get used to it though. “Maybe a slower pace is exactly what you need right now?”
Besides, I’ve become a voyeur in Victoria, an old guy watching from the sidelines. Leanne was always getting on his case about that. Complaining about their sedentary existence. “We never have any fun. Cooking, cleaning, watching TV, reading the newspaper, mowing the lawn—we might as well live in suburbia.”
He laughed. She’d said it like Suburbia was a nation.
He drove on slowly, like a prospective home buyer checking out the neighbourhood. “Naw!” he shook his head. At best, Chemainus would be a stopover. Not that the mishmash of cottages, bungalows, and redoes lacked charm. They were the makeovers of a mill town gone bust that had remade itself into a tourist attraction and seniors’ haven. You couldn’t appreciate the place without considering its history.
Its proximity to Victoria appealed to him. Close enough, yet far enough away. “That’s good.”
If he wanted to visit Robbie and Gloria, they were just an hour and a half drive over the Malahat. Hardly more than a morning commute for most people. As for Leanne?“We’ll see,” he winced, the prospect seeming unpleasant, if not impossible. In the meantime, he’d found a refuge where he could power off her tirades.
Pulling up to the Sanderson’s, Buddy sat parked for a while, taking in the setting. There were kids in Chemainus after all, he noted, watching a tribe of preschoolers running, sliding, and swinging in the playground kitty-corner to the house. And the place was part of a greater world, he figured. Beyond the park’s boat launch and an islet with its lighthouse-shaped beacon, a gigantic freighter was moored out on Stuart Channel. It had swung south on the incoming tide, ready to set a course for any port. The very idea that this neighbourhood of quaint cottages, tidy B&Bs, and suburban catalogue homes with boats and RVs in their driveways was somehow linked to Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong intrigued him.
Still, he felt out of place, an intruder. A tourist. “Don’t be so picky,” he grunted, shoving open the Matrix door and stepping out onto the uneven pavement. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Besides, he thought, I don’t want to be in the place I’m meant to be! I’ve escaped the place I’m meant to be!
The Sanderson’s house struck him as a comfy, ordered hodgepodge of rust-coloured clapboard and white trim. Buddy found himself smiling again.
Shake the fairytale sentiment, he refocused, slamming the door a little more decisively than he’d intended. The three peaked roofs of the house pointed like arrowheads into the blue yonder: one over a small porch, with flower boxes attached to its railing and a sign proclaiming the spot as VORLand’s End hanging from its beam; the other capping what he figured must be the living room, or should I call it the drawing room; the third over what was obviously an addition to what had once been a mill-worker’s cottage.
VORland’s End? he wondered. What’s that mean?
He bounded up the path and porch steps with exaggerated enthusiasm—the kind he condemned in door-to-door sales representatives—pushed the button, and waited, feeling more and more like the man, still dripping after stepping out of the shower, who’d just discovered there was no towel to hand.
“Coming,” an ancient voice trilled after what seemed an absurdly long delay. “I’ll get there eventually.” A few seconds later, the knob twisted, and the door opened a crack. “You must be Mr. Hope,” Bernice Sanderson greeted him cheerfully. “Come in! Come in! Don’t bother taking off your shoes; you’ll only get your socks furry,” she advised. “Our best friend, Mr. Beasley, has been banished to the backyard, but the evidence of his existence is everywhere. He’s an adorable nuisance. I don’t think Harry—that’s my husband’s name, not an adjective describing the state of an old man’s ears…” She laughed at her own jest… “Anyway, I don’t think Harry could abide my company without the mediating consolations of Mr. Beasley. He’s a good dog. I’m sure you’ll become more attached to him than his fur.
“That is, if you decide to stay?
“The kitchen’s this way. It will be more convenient if we sit there, don’t you think? I can make you a coffee if you’d like, and we can have a chat. We don’t use the living room much ourselves, except when we have company, or when we want to watch the television, or when we want to put our feet up and doze for a bit… Come to think of it, we do spend quite a bit of time in there, but it’s too formal for our present purpose. Well, not so much formal as unfamiliar. Kitchens are much more familiar places, aren’t they? Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Hope?”
“Yes… Please.”
“Good! I’ll make a pot. Harry will join us shortly. For now, he’s banished to the backyard, too. Well, not so much banished as languishing in self-imposed exile. I have to be honest with you, Mr. Hope…”
“Buddy, please.”
“Hope is what we need, but a buddy will do, I suppose… Please forgive me. I like playing with words, Mr. Buddy.”
She turned and looked at him, smirking triumphantly, until they had to laugh, the two of them. Kitchen laughter, he would recall when he had a moment. Real. The kind that discharges all the tension in a room and leaves you relaxed—pleasantly exhausted.
Why do I like this magpie woman so much?
“So,” Bernice said, their banter having faltered while she made the coffee and placed a plate of cookies on the table. “I’d like to get to know you better, Buddy. Tell me about yourself. You needn’t start from the very beginning—how your parents’ gametes met is no business of mine. I’ll simply assume yours was not a miraculous conception, and we can progress from there, starting at any point you feel most comfortable, or relevant. I find it annoying when people ask you to tell your story, then insist on telling you where to begin, don’t you?”
Buddy wondered if he could somehow tell her to shut up, perhaps in a joking tone. Would she be offended? Does she come with an on-off switch? “I think it might be best if we start at the end and work back from there,” he suggested tentatively. “You okay with that?”
Bernice nodded, silenced at last in anticipation.
Next: Nutshells