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It's what that spring day did. It flirted with the promise of summer,
played tricks with the temperature, tilted reality. I headed down to
the sanity of the library, to its empty aisles and loaded shelves.
Jonathan Bennett's Verandah People was at the top of my reading list.
And there I was facing the Bs, my back to the Fs, already losing my
focus.
As my eyes scanned the sections, another cerebral layer skipped to
the divisions we construct in remembering our own histories: when I
was a kid, before we moved to BC, after I had my own kids. My eyes
still followed the order-Bansford, Barnett, Barrington, and I noticed
most spines on this shelf were beige, white, a few blue or red. I
remembered a book store that divided books by colour to achieve a
yellow wall, a red wall. It was a visua-literary adventure, full of
pleasure and surprisingly good finds.
Drawn by the eye, I reached for a bright touch of turquoise, pulled
it out. The author's name was my own maiden name. I half-wished it was
a mystery cousin, some insight into my vague family heritage. The book
was a pleasant size, not too cumbersome, the worn cover still lovely,
an abstract silhouette of a woman's neck and shoulder, pale peach, and
the barely hidden outline of a face just turned away, tips of long
hair grasped in her hand to be examined. The title read Split Ends.
The author's first name was the same as mine.
I searched the back for more information. There was a photo. It could
have been a younger me but with shorter hair than I have ever worn.
"Well researched, quietly compelling, sharply observant" was a quote
from the Winnipeg Free Press. Another said "A story about coming of
age in the heart of the Canadian Prairies and the exquisite bonds" . .
. a bend in the cover obliterated the rest.
I flipped to the bio for clues. She was born in my hometown of six
thousand people. I thought, just for a moment, that someone had stolen
my story but realized, of course, I had no story to tell. She had
graduated from the University of Manitoba and spent years up north in
the Pas and Flin Flon, reveling in the natural and the north. Well,
that was definitely nothing like me. There had to be a rational
explanation.
Sinking onto a three-wheeled-step stool, I moved into the chapters,
flipping, reading snippets, searching simultaneously to connect and
refute.
"Five minutes to closing," I heard someone say at the end of the
aisle. The air was heavy, still, expectant.
I mentally snatched landmarks and descriptions randomly from the page
and the scenes constructed were the history of my memories, impossible
for anyone else to display with such intimate clarity. This author
spoke with the experience of comfortable familiarity about the details
of a life that had been mine.
In Chapter One there was prairie winter, tongue touched to a frozen
doorknob, any kid's anonymous tongue but with striped mittens knitted
by my grandmother. Then on through an anxious scene of blizzard
driving, wipers pounding against mesmerized front seat muffle moving
endlessly into the white streaked tunnel of night outside Winnipeg.
In Chapters Three and Four she wrote of fishing in frigid lakes for
striped perch and heftier pickerel. There was the naïve joy and
satisfaction of bait fishing; hauling up the tiny four-pointed nets
bulging with the flash of a hundred sleek minnows, two hundred
hook-target eyes heading for the family freezer. I could hear the
crunching demolition as we marched over thousands of resigned
fishflies drifting across the road, only a few left to flutter in your
face or hang in precarious clumps on the street lights downtown. The
clincher for me was an episode of getting a hook caught in my
sunburned ear. Yes, it was my ear. And my freezer. And my crunching
feet. I claimed them for my own.
But in Chapter Eight we shared nothing I recognized. Later in the
book came strangers and a hint of despair. The split must be in the
chapters between.
Now I have always been curious about the choices rejected, the paths
not taken and the events and repercussions left in the wake of our
small existence - the split ends discarded while one hair continues to
grow only to split off again. I half expected the book to disappear
into the too-warm library air as I heard the voice again, "The library
is closing." Clutching the book I approached the front counter.
"Have you read this?" I asked, holding out the turquoise book to the
librarian, half hoping for recognition. But she was ready to go home.
She took my card without seeing me.
"Yes. There are others, as well. But we really have to close."
"I think this is me . . .was me . .It could have been. . .my life."
"Maybe mine too," she laughed. It was a flip answer, refusal to
engage, while the clock was running.
I was too confused to explain. I felt anchorless. I wanted the other
books. I had to get some air.
"I'm sorry. We really do have to close. Enjoy that one though," she
said as she ushered me out the door. A low-sun cool made me shiver as
she continued, "It's the last she wrote before she died. She was only
thirty-one."
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