Can Madness Be Far Behind?

By Roy J. Challis

After her husband disappears leaving her penniless, Cheryl, a mother of one, returns to a hometown that she had left shortly after graduating from high school. Mayhem ensues taking Cheryl on a journey that makes Alice's trip down the rabbit hole a walk in the park.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781648957963

Roy J. Challis

Roy J. Challis is a retired teacher, actor, director, playwright who lives with his wife of 55 years on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River in West Central Canada.

Book preview

Return to Perspective

The car was a reluctant child. As each finger drift caught the wheels, Cheryl’s pulse rose, her heart the car’s motor, her blood the fuel that powered the four pistons harder until the wheels broke free of the clutching snow. Occasionally, the wind lifted the snow from the too-full ditches and threw it at her windshield. Saskatchewan in March. She had forgotten.

Are we there yet?

Her eyes left the road momentarily as she glanced at Ryan and saw the smile in his mischievous eyes belied the mock concern on his face, then returned in time to see the taillights of the semi loom out of the gust of snow. No, but it won’t be more than twenty minutes or so.

She pulled out to pass the semi and cursed the eighteen-wheel blizzard and the uncivilized nature of a Trans-Canada highway that still wasn’t twinned in spite of the number of elections that had been won on the promise to do so.

You owe my curse box a loonie.

I’ll pay you when and if we get to Gramma’s house.

The view cleared as she drew abreast of the cab of the semi; she was relieved to see no oncoming traffic and let up on the accelerator. The needle read 140, and she wasn’t sure the car would take that punishment for long.

Why haven’t I seen this gramma before? Ryan asked.

It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime. In the meantime, you need to know that she may not be too happy to see us.

Why not? Grammas are supposed to love their grandkids, aren’t they?

She might be a little surprised to know she has a grandkid. I never told her. Cheryl gripped the steering wheel hard. Her knuckles turned white.

That’s part of the long story I suppose…If she doesn’t love us, can we go live with Gramma and Grampa Tuttle?

No. She battled another finger drift. This one was big enough that she heard it scrape the side carriage violently.

How come?

You ask some tough questions. You deserve answers, sweetie, but Mummy’s not able to answer right now. I have to concentrate on my driving. She turned her attention to the road while her mind grappled with his questions. The Tuttles, did they blame her for the breakup? She hadn’t had time to ask. She simply dove forwards without Tom. No plan except to escape. Fight or flight. Not even that choice. Flight, definitely flight, but to where?

Did you see that sign?

"It was all covered in snow except for ELL."

Grenfell. Won’t be long now. Her stomach tightened at the thought. Her return had been a long time coming. Eleven, no, thirteen years, fourteen years since she had thumbed her nose at her mother and the town in which she’d been raised and took a ride to Calgary in the September morning twilight. Fourteen years…so much had happened—Ryan had been born, she’d earned her degree, Tom had been met, bedded, married, and divorced…Well, not divorced actually, but…

Life plays with us like a cat with a mouse…The secret is to keep the mouse half alive. She had read that somewhere but couldn’t remember the source.

Mom! Ryan’s scream pulled her out of her daze in time to avoid the car stopped on the road. A quick check in her rearview did not reveal anyone in the car.

Keep your eyes peeled for someone walking. Without further incident, ten minutes later they entered the town of Perspective. She left the highway, crossed the railroad tracks, turned right, and followed Railroad Avenue until she got to Main Street. She stopped at the lights.

So some things do change. The traffic lights were new. The Esso station where she had picked up her ride to Calgary was all boarded up. The Empire Hotel had an electric sign: Exotic Dancers Every Thurs, Fri, Sat…Girls, Girls, Girls. That was certainly new. Cheryl wondered which came first, the sign or the girls?

The light turned green, and she turned left down Main Street. A block and a half later, she slowed in front of Irma’s Clip and Curl, but she did not stop. Traffic was light; a few half tons parked in front of the co-op, the same at the IGA. The Perspective Department Store, a going concern when she was young, now had two stores, one for men and another for women. Both of them looked as if they’d seen better days.

She pulled a U-turn at Third Avenue, ignored the wave of Pastor Williams standing on the steps of Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, and headed back along Main Street. We don’t want to surprise Gramma while she has a customer. The shock might cause a cosmetic disaster.

Why don’t we go to her house? Ryan asked.

We used to live at the back of the hair salon. I imagine she still does.

She pulled the car into a parking space in front of the Perspective Department Store for Women. Let’s go here and look around.

The wind, which had hampered their travel since Medicine Hat, was strong and full of spring promises and brought forth memories to Cheryl of her youth. She looked up and down the length of the street and saw herself and Mary Shields as they giggled their way into the Bluebird Café where they would tease Charlie Tahn as they ordered glayvee and flies. Not politically correct these days, particularly with COVID-19 being called the China virus by the former US president, but true in her youth, and Charlie had always laughed with them, insisting that he didn’t talk rike that. Simpler times.

Mum, why are you crying? Are you okay? Mum! Ryan’s scream brought her back to now.

It’s just the wind. It makes my eyes water. Let’s go into the store.

The woman behind the counter looked like she had just stepped out of Cosmopolitan. Her hair, her make-up, and her clothes were en vogue but as out of place in Perspective as a cat in a dog kennel. Hi, can I help you?

She spoke the words through teeth clenched to prevent her chewing gum from becoming ballistic. They were the right words, but there wasn’t a hint in neither her manner nor her tone to suggest she was interested in helping anyone.

Cheryl replied, No, we’re just looking. Thank you.

Cheryl had worked for Mr Prentiss, the owner and operator of the Perspective Department Store, and sometimes had performed odd jobs around his yard in the summertime. Does Mr Prentiss still own the store?

He’s in the Men’s Store, the clerk said. Do you know him?

I used to work for him. Of course, there was only the one store then. Cheryl finger combed her hair and let it fall to her shoulders remembering simpler times, again; she felt her shoulders fall as she relaxed for the first time in several days.

Yeah, he built this one when he married my mum. He lets us run it. What brand of hair colour do you use? I like that shade of red.

Cheryl laughed. Genetics.

Is that a new Redken product?

It’s natural. Cheryl wasn’t sure if she would have to explain further when the clerk finally got it.

Oh yeah.

Well, Ryan, I guess we’d better get next door.

The clerk blurted out, You got an appointment? Ol’ Irma gets bitchy as hell if people don’t have appointments.

It’s a bit of a surprise. We’re relatives. Cheryl moved to the other side of the rack to look at some blouses. Maybe we should get her a little gift.

Oh, where are you from?

Cheryl stared intently at a blouse that looked like it at had been at war with a paintbrush.

Ryan was staring intently at the clerk’s green stockings. Calgary, he said as he reached out to touch her stocking. He had seen that colour once before, in the Calgary Zoo. A fish, he remembered, that lived so deep in the ocean that sunlight didn’t reach it, so it would give off this green glow to light its way. He wondered if her stockings would feel like fish scales.

Hey, kid, hands off the merchandise! Lady, is your kid some kind of pervert? Putting his hand up my skirt.

Cheryl looked at her coolly. There isn’t room for a hand up your skirt. Ryan, come. And she walked out of the store with Ryan in tow.

Once outside, she said to Ryan, What were you doing putting your hand on that woman’s leg?

Ryan explained about the fish. Satisfied that he was not developing, at too early an age, a curiosity about the female anatomy, she straightened his hair and made mental preparations to meet Irma Lowry, mother and grandmother and sole operator of Irma’s Clip and Curl.

Inside, Rose Block admonished Irma, Here you are spraying that hair spray all over and smoking that cigarette. It’s a wonder I don’t go up in smoke like that tarantula in that movie the other night. Did you see that? Damn thing crawled into her tent, and she just picked up the hair spray, flicked her Bic, and presto instant flamethrower. Fried that sucker right before your eyes.

Who says smoking is dangerous? Without her lighter, she’d have been ravaged by that giant spider.

Irma struggled to find a chair, finally sat, and tried desperately to recover her breath. A cigarette dangled from her brightly painted red lips. If not for the carnival red of her hair and the garish glow on her lips and cheeks, she might have been mistaken for a war-camp survivor. Her eyes were deeply set, made to look more so by the purple mascara. Her cheekbones, hidden beneath layers of Max Factor, lay beneath the skin stretched like hide on a drum except around the mouth and neck where folds of skin hung like the deflated outer shell of a hot-air balloon.

Thanks to those dingbats in Ottawa, got so’s a person can’t smoke nowheres, no more. Irma screeched, trying to finish her curse before the onset of the inevitable coughing jag. Damn hair spray is what gets me, not the smoking. I swear they’re puttin’ somethin’ in that hair spray that makes a body cough. I never used to cough like this.

The bell tinkled as the door opened.

Sorry. We’re closed. This is my last customer. She gulped for air. You shoulda booked an appointment. She stared at the young boy who stood wide-eyed beside his mother. Her eyes did not need to travel to the face of the lithe redhead who stood beside him. She saw her in the face of the boy. When she did finally take her eyes off the boy, she immediately recognised Cheryl. She had changed very little. A little leaner, a little more class, a little less girl.

Rose leapt to her feet. Irma, it’s Cheryl. She threw her arms around Cheryl and gave her a big hug. And who’s this little tyke?

Ryan clutched his mother tighter, afraid that this bear of a woman was going to hug him. His eyes were on the other woman, the one he thought was his grandmother. She looked like every witch who had haunted his every nightmare. Her voice grated his spine.

I know who the hell it is. You think I wouldn’t recognise my own kin for Christ’s sake. And the little tyke is obviously her brat. Now get back in the chair so I can finish your hair.

Cheryl had not expected a warm welcome, but she had hoped, for Ryan’s sake, that her mother would be friendly.

Mum, was Gramma always mean?

No, she just has difficulty showing her love. She did tell us to make ourselves at home.

Home, if you gotta goes there, they gotta takes you in. A wall plaque from somewhere had impressed her obviously. She thought about her mother’s coughing, nothing unusual; Irma had always coughed. It had been Cheryl’s alarm clock for as far back as she could remember. A deep-racking cough that seemed to start in the ankles and slowly work its way up her body until it had her bent over and stomping her feet. At last, red-faced and watery-eyed, Irma said, Christ, I needed that. Nothing like starting the day with a good cough.

Ryan interrupted her memories. Yeah, but there’s no milk in the fridge, only beer. I don’t think ‘make yourself at home’ means I should have a beer.

No! Cheryl giggled at the memory of a sleepover, which featured sneaking beer into her bedroom. Mary had tipped her bottle too fast, causing the beer to foam. When she clamped her mouth over the bottle so it wouldn’t spill on the carpet, the beer came out her nose. Too much giggling, too little bladder control. Off with the wet clothes and into bed, giggling all the while. Two teenage girls naked in bed together giggling their way through an experience that provided more enlightenment than any sex ed class. Have a glass of milk.

There is no milk, just beer. Are you laughing at me?

No. No milk, you said that already, didn’t you? She held out her arms, and her son snuggled into the safety and warmth of her offer. I grew up here. There are memories in every corner. When I think about them, they make me laugh. She kissed him on his forehead. She tried not to think about the memories that would make her cry. Not all her ghosts were happy ones.

Later, as she helped her mother with the supper dishes, she asked, Mum, do you think we could stay here for a while? I have to get Ryan into school.

I guess, as long as you pay your way. What happened in Calgary?

Cheryl reluctantly offered, The usual things, budget cutbacks, downsizing, school closures. I was out of a job. Tom and I thought we’d be okay until I got another one. But he got another woman instead. A little white lie. Tom had disappeared before she lost her job, and she had no evidence, only a suspicion, that a woman was involved.

"You should get the house and support. Whoopi was talking about just that on The View the other day. Take the bastard to court."

It’s not that easy. She stroked the plate vigorously with the dish towel, forcing the tears away, forcing her voice into the lower register.

Of course, it’s not easy. Never was. Her voice softened.

Cheryl was aware that she had never heard her mother speak softly. She saw for the first time the pain her mother had hidden from her for all those years.

When your dad ran off, I felt like killing myself, but I had to look after you, so I started the shop. It’s never easy.

Tom just disappeared. Five years of marriage down the drain. He had sold the house without my knowledge and disappeared into the sunset. Then my job disappeared, and I was left with no place to live and no money. He must have been planning this for some time for it to happen so quickly, so deliberate. I thought about contacting his family, but I had never been really accepted by them. I was the mother of their ‘foster’ grandchild.

The silence that followed filled the entire house. Irma did the math. Fourteen years ago Cheryl had left. Today she shows up with a thirteen-year-old son who is referred to as a foster grandchild by her husband’s parents.

The dishes were finished without further comment by either of them, dried and placed in the cupboard—dishes on the bottom shelf, cups and saucers on the second shelf, mugs on the top. That’s how it was fourteen years ago, and that’s how it was today. In Irma’s house, things had a tendency to stay the same.

Irma’s head dropped to her chest; she coughed and said, Pass me a cigarette. I’m heaving up a lung here, give me a goddamn cigarette.

Not this time, Mum. You are really choking!

Irma’s body shook. Her breathing was gasps, exhaled but little inhales, followed by more gasps, wheezes, and gasps. Ryan, call 911.

Irma sank to her knees, still gasping, her face paled, her eyes glazed over; she collapsed face down on the kitchen floor. Cheryl dropped to her knees. Mum! she screamed as she cradled Irma’s head on her lap. Ryan had picked up the phone. A lady’s choking. Please send help.

At the hospital, Cheryl asked, Do you want a Coke?

Sure, Ryan replied. Cheryl deposited the necessary coinage, then moved to the coffee dispenser.

Ryan grabbed his Coke, and then walked slowly behind his mum. She’ll be okay, won’t she?

We’ll have to wait and see. I was very proud of you. The way you handled the phone call. You behaved very maturely. She took a sip of the coffee, and her lips recoiled; it was too hot. We’ll register you for school in the morning. And I’ll see about getting myself on the sublist. We’ll probably live at Gramma’s for a while longer whether we want to or not.

And so it was that these two people, woman and son, like many people the world over, through no fault of their own, were stuck in a place where they didn’t want to be, with no means of escape.

Spring in Saskatchewan Maybe

Several weeks later, a noise probed Ryan from sleep—a strange noise yet not scary, a familiar noise but somewhat vague, a pattern: dop, dop, dop, rhythmically like a drumstick on a tom-tom. The last vestiges of sleep that refused to leave tried to drag him back to that dream. But then the dream was gone, forgotten as if it hadn’t existed, yet there, just out of reach, and then the noise again, dop, dop, dop. Water. He jumped from his bed and looked out onto a sunny day.

He opened the window wide. The air was fresh but warmer than yesterday; the wind was restless but gentle as it tugged at his hair. Melting, then, dop, dop, dop, still there; of course, it was the snow melting and dripping from the roof, creating huge icicles and small pools beneath, dop, dop, dop. Spring.

Unlike Calgary, where winter was often softened by Chinook winds blowing off the Rockies, here winter was hard and cold and long. But it was definitely spring. He could smell it in the air. The gentle breeze brought promises of soft green grass, of flowers painting the yards with splashes of colour, a welcome reprieve from the vast whiteness of winter.

When he arrived downstairs, his mother was at the stove, not yet dressed; like many women her age, she enjoyed the freedom of wearing a long T-shirt and panties around the house, cooking pancakes. The smell of bacon filled the kitchen and embraced the coffee aroma that would have met his mother when she had come down from her bedroom. A cup of morning coffee before anything else was routine for Cheryl. The last thing she did before retiring for the night was to prepare the automatic coffee maker so that she would be met with that refreshing wake-up aroma of very strong coffee. She was not as sensitive to caffeine as some people. So it had become for her the last thing before bed, the first thing before the day’s hectic activities.

And so here she was on her third cup as she prepared breakfast for the two of them. Dressed, as we said previously, in an oversized T-shirt that hung almost halfway down her well-toned thighs, oblivious to the fact that her son, in the beginning stages of horny adolescence, was increasingly aware of a warmth in his groin as he watched her flip pancakes; her every move magnified by the clinging tee as she manipulated the fry pan to catch the wayward pancake. She laughed, satisfied as she caught it, and then bent towards him. Good morning, sunshine, one or two?

He blushed and turned away, hoping to hide the developing stiffy from her. Two and bacon, lots of bacon.

Eggs too?

Do you mean two or also? he replied, holding up two fingers.

Two eggs too. They laughed together as she returned to her cooking.

After breakfast, he went outside to play. It was warmer, but after a while, the wind and the wet from the melting snow began to eat at his fingers. He knew he couldn’t complain to his mother, who would chide him for not wearing his gloves and scarf even as she undressed him as if he were five years old. So he stuck his hands inside his pants as his dad had taught him to do. Warmest part of a man’s body is his groin. Just be careful you don’t touch your pecker with those cold hands…it might drop off.

Ryan smiled at the thought of his dad, then a tear formed and spilled down his cheek. He missed his dad, and his mom hadn’t given him a really clear picture of what had happened. Their arrival here had given his gramma a stroke, or so he had thought. The doctor had explained to his mum that he had been warning his gramma for years to stop smoking, and so his mum made a point of explaining to Ryan why he should never, ever take up smoking instead of explaining, as she said she would, why they were here in this place at this time.

Two weeks later the snow had disappeared except for some spots along the north side of the ditches and hills. Ryan walked from the school to his gramma’s home. He marvelled at how so many of the homes looked the same. There were some with a different kind of fence or different colour paint. Occasionally he would see one whose shingles were not the same dull brown as all the others. Even the flower beds were similar, placed at the same location in the yard, planted with the same species of flower. And everybody seemed to have a hanging plant on their front porch placed so that the postman had to manoeuvre around it. Until on the last block, in fact, the last house just before Gramma’s place was Gramma’s neighbour, he thought, but had not acknowledged until now because of the empty lot between them and the oversized yard of this neighbour’s house. The house that was smaller than the others, but gardened so spectacularly that Ryan stood astonished by the myriad of colours so early in the season. There were bright reds against deep purple, a shock of yellow highlighted by dark-green foliage and bluebells.

Beautiful, isn’t it? The voice echoed in his ears, a voice that had been honed by years of practice, sonorous, almost baritone, and every consonant clearly clipped and vowels as round so that it didn’t sound from here, didn’t have that flat uninflected rhythm of rural Saskatchewan. But a voice that attracted Ryan, held him spellbound as he watched the man’s lips, teeth, and tongue work in such unison the voice moved on, but Ryan couldn’t hear, or rather Ryan’s hearing seemed to fluctuate. Works very hard…greenhouse…would you like some tea?

I’m sorry. Did you say tea?

Yes, but perhaps lemonade would be more appropriate. You’re new, aren’t you?

Not really, thought Ryan. I am thirteen years old actually. But his mother had taught him to be respectful among his elders, and so he stammered, Yes, I live next door. He pointed to his gramma’s house.

Of course, you’re Cheryl’s boy? Well, I’ve known your mother since the day she was born. I baptized her, in fact, in that church right there behind the garden. She used to come over for milk and cookies almost every day. She played with my son Bryan. They were inseparable when they were younger. Say hello to her for me. I’m Reverend Jones. Come meet my wife.

Reverend Jones opened the gate and ushered Ryan in to the yard. As he came around the corner of the house, he saw a woman on her knees digging in a flower bed. Dear, look who I’ve brought for tea. This is—

"Bryan! Oh dear, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Come in, come in. Oh my, not tea. Bryan doesn’t like