The Wards

By Terry Doyle

***2022 BMO WINTERSET AWARD – LONGLIST***

***2023 NL READS – FINALIST***

The Wards are a working-class Newfoundland family on the cusp of upheaval. The children are becoming adults, the adults are growing old, and the new dog was probably stolen. When a sudden illness forces the Wards together, can they finally learn to be close-knit? 

This unsettling, at times hilarious novel explores the instability of nuclear families and the depths of dysfunction.

Family is family—you don’t get to choose.

So what, exactly, do you get to choose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781550819366

Terry Doyle

Terry Doyle is a writer from the Goulds, Newfoundland. Winner of the 2017 Percy Janes First Novel Award, and finalist for the 2017 NLCU Fresh Fish Award, his work has appeared in Riddle Fence, Papermill Press, and the Newfoundland Quarterly.

Book preview

Part 1

THE MAN AT TABLE SEVEN WITH THE FANCY EYEGLASSES WAS eating with a small boy and the boy’s name was Poseidon.

Poseidon.

Give me strength.

Gloria Ward had taken the job waiting tables not long after Al started working at Voisey’s Bay. She was tired of being alone in that house while he was away for fourteen or twenty-one days at a time, and while they didn’t really need the money, she had to find something to be at.

Yes now, knows buddy didn’t order the white meat, she said, mostly to herself.

She hated the job. Couldn’t even bring herself to eat there anymore. The smell of Chalet sauce turned her guts. But it was better than being home. Sometimes.

It wasn’t just Al either. Dana was off at the university now, living down in Rabbittown with lord knows who. But Gussey was still at home. On the EI. Sleeping all day, out gallivanting around all night. Those squealing tires you hear at night when you’re lying in bed? That’s him. That’s Gussey. If it had been up to Gloria they never would have co-signed that lease for him. Imagine, a grown man, living at home, bumming gas money off his parents so he can cruise around all night. It’s shocking. And then he goes and gets brought home by the cops.

Gloria punched little Poseidon’s order into the computer terminal and stepped outside the loading bay doors for a quick smoke—which she only ever did at work, and with the everlasting intention to soon quit. She scratched at a dry gravy stain on her slacks and thought about the dog. She had a roll of twenty twenty-dollar bills wedged into the waistline of her slacks and her nerves were gone with anticipation. It was still hard to believe she’d called them. Especially after what happened with Prince. It was only the year before that they’d got a little pup from up Labrador someplace—half wolf, they said. But what a gorgeous little dog. Three months old when he arrived, then three months later he was gone. She’d named him Prince and she’d brought him in to get neutered and the vet said come back in three hours and when she did the dog was dead. They’d fucked up his anesthesia. Gave him too much. Then had the gall to blame the wolf in him.

No, she didn’t think she could go through that again. But then Dana had found the ad online.

Mom, what happened to Prince isn’t going to happen again.

How do you know?

Why don’t you adopt an adult dog?

A what?

That way you won’t have to do surgery or anything like that. And it’d probably be a lot cheaper.

I don’t know.

Dana had said, What about this? and then read out the ad: Two-year-old pug for sale. $400.

Oh, I don’t know, Gloria said.

Do you want me to call them?

She was smart, Dana, no doubt. The kind of smart you could be proud of. But then the last time she was home for supper they’d argued about queers. Not even anything specific, just the words Al and Gloria used at the table. That was all it took for Dana to climb up on her high horse, like she’s better than her own mother now, just because she’s at the university.

Gloria took one last drag on her cigarette and snuffed it against the brick wall, right into a nest of baby spiders, which went tumbling down the wall in a cascade of wriggling innocence.

Spiderlings, Dana would correct her if given the chance: not baby spiders, spiderlings.

Gloria had asked Gussey to come with her to get the dog. But he’d said he was busy, so she’d arranged to meet the seller in the parking lot, when her shift ended.

After her smoke break she spilled a glass of Pepsi all over the table of an old couple eating with their grandchild, and she brought out the wrong side on two separate orders—a mistake she never usually made. She watched the parking lot, eyeing the arrival of each new vehicle, waiting to see the little dog emerge or maybe stick its smushed face out a window. When her final table finished dessert and paid their bill—three men in suit jackets who tipped Gloria three dollars seventeen cents—she hurried out by the loading bay, sucked back another cigarette, then went out front and stood near the entrance. The sky was dark with racing grey clouds, and the wind blew the smell of chicken.

A grey Impala pulled up and the tinted driver-side window descended.

You Gloria?

The man wore a ball cap and a goatee. When Gloria confirmed her identity, his window went back up and a woman in braids and a jean jacket stepped from the passenger side.

You got the money? she said.

Gloria showed her the roll of twenty twenties, which she’d spent the entire shift patting to ensure it was still there, safe in her waistline. Satisfied, the woman opened the back door of the Impala, Gloria moved around it, and there, sat shivering on the seat was the sweetest sight she thought she’d ever seen. The dog wore no collar and was hesitant to move, but Gloria crouched and in a baby voice said, Come here my little angel, come to Momma, and the pug cautiously approached. It was a bitch, and its nails had recently been clipped. Gloria scooped it up into her arms, and as the dog licked her face she asked its name.

For four hundred bucks it’s whatever you wants it to be, missus, the woman said. But we gotta do this now.

Gloria held the dog out, away from her body and turned it, looking it over as if she might find some visible flaw. The cream-coloured fur and flattened black mask. A tiny little nub of a tail. Perfection.

Going out of town tomorrow, the woman said.

Gloria happily handed over the roll of bills. The woman got back into the car, the engine turned over and they pulled away quickly. The dog sniffed the air suspiciously.

Maybe I’ll call you Angel.

TELL YOU WHAT, IF IT WAS MY CROWD AT THAT I WOULDN’T be long straightening them out.

This was Paula, Gloria’s sister, talking. When Gloria arrived home from work and wanted to show off the dog, she carried it to Paula’s, on the other side of the cul-de-sac. Three nights ago, Paula had come over immediately after the cop car had left, but Gloria turned her away. Now, forget the dog, this was Paula’s first chance to talk about Gussey and she was giddy with the salaciousness of it. She would bring this up from now until eternity.

I’d redden his arse, Paula said.

He’s twenty-three years old.

Well he don’t act like it, she said. Go getting on like a child, get treated like a child—that’s what I says.

Paula had two children of her own, Barry and Ron, who both worked up in Alberta, in the oil sands. Their absence was like a hernia she’d have to nurse forever. She rarely ever heard from them, and Gloria pitied her sister for this—being so far from her children. But she would never say so out loud.

Paula, it could be said, was an unrepentant malingerer. She’d been on one form of disability or another since Barry and Ron were in junior high. Her most trusted lie was about her back. It was impossible to disprove and easy to understand. A leather satchel sat at her bedside, full to the brim with prescription pill bottles. Painkillers of every imaginable sort. She rarely took them. Unless she was having trouble sleeping, then she might swallow one of the little yellow houses with a glass of Pepsi.

Al thinks we should toss him out, Gloria said.

Out of the house?

No, out of a moving train. Yes, out of the house, b’y, what do you think I meant?

Paula clicked her tongue.

When the cop had shown up with Gussey in the back of his cruiser Gloria was horrified. Can’t you turn the lights off? she’d asked, searching the neighbours’ windows for pushed-aside curtains. The whole cul-de-sac would be talking about her now—talking about Gussey. Then he climbed out of the back seat with his hands behind his back. Like something off the TV. Bad boys. The cop had uncuffed him, his head hanging the whole time, and he’d slunk past her, up to his room before the constable explained what happened. Parking meters. Al rotated home the following day, and she knew it was best to keep the two of them apart, so she hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Gussey yet. She knew one thing though. She wasn’t going kicking him out.

DANA WARD WAS IN THE STUDENT CENTRE, SUSPENDED ABOVE the parkway, eating lunch with her two roommates, Krista and Tom. She complained about her math teacher.

I can’t understand a word he says. I’m falling behind.

Krista and Tom both laughed.

They were a year older. In September she’d seen a hand-written note posted to a bulletin board in the tunnels beneath the university, torn the email address from the bottom, and moved in with them the following weekend.

What’s so funny?

Teacher, said Tom.

What?

"Prof, Krista said. You’re in university now, he’s your professor."

Dana was eating celery and raisins and planned to buy a coffee later. She didn’t particularly like coffee, but felt a slight pressure to cultivate a taste for it. She went heavy on the cream and sugar. Both Krista and Tom were eating lunches purchased there, in the student centre—they did so every Wednesday. Krista had moved to St. John’s two years before, from Pasadena, and Tom at the same time, from Trepassey. They’d saved Dana from having to live at home with her family, and quickly became her closest friends. Her old friends from high school still occasionally contacted her, even invited her out or over to their place on a Friday evening, but Dana had increasingly been finding excuses not to see them. Not because she liked them any less, or because they’d done anything wrong, but because she was focused on immersing herself in her new life, and inevitably when one of them reached out she felt a stab of fright, as if she might be dragged backward in time, back to her old bedroom, her father’s halitosis, her mother’s nagging, and her relative lack of autonomy.

Krista and Tom, on the other hand, had come to represent something exciting and new. They attended the MUN cinema series—screenings of films that bored Dana but she understood to be important—and they ate sushi. They walked around the apartment in their underwear or even occasionally semi-nude, with no apparent shame about their bodies. And they were openly physically affectionate with each other, despite the platonic nature of their relationship, which for Dana had taken some getting used to. The way they cuddled on the futon while watching reruns of Drag Race or sat on the side of the tub sharing a joint while one or the other bathed. Dana was at once thrilled by and scared of their openness. She could feel a crack forming in the shell of her childhood and because of this she could not look back, could not bring herself to answer even the most cursory of text messages from her old friends. They must have thought she’d become a giant snob. But okay, fine, whatever. It was a small price to pay, she reckoned.

THE PARKING METERS BEHIND THE DELTA HOTEL HAD BEEN coated in tiny bubbles of drizzle and Gussey Ward didn’t have two screwdrivers. He had two butter knives with blackened tips. He’d taken them in his jacket pocket from Mark Lovey’s basement apartment. Mark was laughing uneasily and following Gussey down Casey Street from a short distance. This was three nights ago.

I was only joking, Mark said.

But Gussey needed gas money, because his fucking parents had once again refused to give him any.

Earlier that morning, after Gussey complained about the eggs his mother had cooked—he preferred runny yolks, but his father liked them scrambled and Gloria was in the habit of doing things Al’s way—she had tossed the hot frying pan into the sink with a clatter and taken a deep, dramatic breath. Gussey had added more salt to the scrambled eggs and asked for twenty dollars.

For what?

Gas.

Ask your little buddy to chip in, she said.

Who? Mark?

He got a job, don’t he?

Would you frig off about the job! Gussey barked, rising from the table and storming out of the kitchen, back upstairs to his room. The whole no-job thing was a sensitive subject. But later, when he reached Mark’s place, as they stood before the stove with the two knives wedged into the glowing element, he did ask Mark to spot him a queen.

Wish I could, but I’m tapped out too, Mark said. That hash wasn’t free. And you still owe me.

I should siphon some out of Al’s truck.

You ever done that?

No.

It seemed simple enough. You stick a hose in, you suck on it, eventually you get a mouthful and then you got gas. But Gussey could remember his parents arguing about his cousin Barry—Al condemning and Gloria defending—after Barry had been caught huffing gas, years ago. Gussey wasn’t sure, but he thought it could kill you. And he didn’t want to know how it tasted.

I heard a fella at work say all those parking meters downtown can be popped open with two screwdrivers, Mark said.

What?

Few bucks in each of those, I bet.

Later, Mark tried to persuade Gussey to reconsider, pointing to all the windows, and the unseen eyes behind them. But once Gussey had a mind to do something he was like an old dog— forget the fact that he lacked the proper tools for the job, once he had decided, there was no stopping him.

He located two indentations on the head of the nearest parking meter, stuck the two butter knife tips in and pried the meter open like the pod inside a Kinder egg, the two halves separating with a smooth, mechanical perfection. Inside, quarters and loonies, enough to weigh his pockets down. For a moment he thought he should have brought a bag, and he had a flash of imagining a white sack with a drawstring and a green dollar sign painted on its side.

I’m out of here, Mark said. Fuck this.

You’re bailing?

Man, I gotta work tomorrow. I can’t be at this.

Gussey turned away and popped the next meter.

Go on then, he said, see if I care.

He popped three more meters, filled his pockets and was a block away from where he’d parked his car when the cop stopped him. Gussey was holding his pants up with one hand, the weight of the coins pulling them down, rattling, tattling.

The cop, who wasn’t much older than Gussey, made him count the coins on the back seat of the cruiser, so that his written report would be accurate. Just under seventeen dollars. About eleven litres of fuel, if he had made it. But he didn’t. As the handcuffs were snapped over his wrist there was a brief sense of accomplishment. How many people go through their lives without feeling this?

It was no small mercy that Al was in Voisey’s Bay when the cruiser pulled up in front of the Ward home. The look on Gloria’s face had been the one moment when Gussey felt a flash of remorse. But as he climbed the stairs to his room he heard the cop say he wasn’t pressing charges. It’d be up to Gloria to discipline him. Which meant the consequences amounted to fuck all. Once Al rotated home Gloria kept him busy, planned a trip to the cabin, and told Gussey to make himself scarce.

SATURDAY MORNING AL WARD HAD THE TRUCK AND TRAILER packed and ready to go before the sun was up. Reg Noonan was losing it all to the bank and selling off everything he could before the appraisers arrived. Cash only. Gloria knew they had everything she might need at the cabin, but still she packed a bag, slowly and forgetfully, running back into the house three times, once for keys, then for the jujubes and Angel’s kibble, then once again for keys, getting Al all worked up. They hit the highway in a fog of historical silence; there was already so much said and unsaid between them. Sometimes the silence could be welcome. The dog was asleep and its snores made a comforting rhythm. There had been a short exchange about Gussey and the parking meters, but after voices were raised they agreed to not let Gussey ruin their trip to the cabin, and they dropped it. It wasn’t until they left the Trans-Canada and made their way along the Road to the Shore that either of them spoke again.

Too friggin early for bakeapples.

What? Al said.

It’s too friggin early in the year to be picking all the bakeapples but I guarantee you Doreen and Kev will be there at the lookout already.

So what.

She shouldn’t be at it.

Al changed the radio station. Gloria opened the glovebox and took out the bag of jujubes, handing Al a green and a red one. Neither of them liked the black ones. The bag was mostly black ones, she knew, which was why she’d gone back for a new bag.

Says she got migraines, Gloria said, chewing, but then she’s in over the barrens picking berries? Migraines my foot.

Al couldn’t help himself. He said, You’re one to talk.

Excuse me?

Your sister, with the back on her.

What about her?

Don’t hear you pissing and moaning about her, so why you so concerned about Doreen?

Of course Al knew why Gloria disliked Doreen. Doreen and Al had been a couple, thirty-odd years before.

Pissing and moaning am I? Am I? Well. Good. Fine.

Come on now, Gloria.

No no no, that’s fine. Pissing and moaning.

A spruce tree with old, salt-crusted teddy bears tied to its branches sat close to the road. It marked the site of a crash where years before a young girl had perished. Gloria always crossed herself when they drove by it, as if passing a church. But not this time. She was too rotted.

When they reached the pond Al swung by Reg Noonan’s first. Reg had both garage doors open and a group of four grey-haired men were already stood around under the door frames with beer cans pressed to their chests. Al stopped the truck and for a moment considered asking Gloria to take it on ahead to the cabin, but then thought better of it.

He put his window down and shouted, Hope you kept your receipts, Noonan!

All four heads turned toward him, but no one laughed. Reg raised his beer can and gave a shy smile. Al put the truck in gear and hurried to the cabin so he could get back and join the other men.

GUSSEY’S PHONE WOKE HIM. A TEXT FROM HIS SISTER, DANA.

Hey, Shitstain, I heard you’re a vandal now. Good job. Keep making us proud!

He did not text her back. Instead, he lay in the bed, considered masturbating, but then didn’t. He reached for his computer on the floor, opened it, and filled out his unemployment report for the next two weeks. No, No, No, Yes, No. Then he went downstairs to eat, discovering a note from his mother. She and his father had gone to the cabin. They’d be back Sunday afternoon.

He was free. For twenty-odd hours. The possibilities opening up in front of him like an unrolling carpet. But he was shagged, because he had no money. While frying a whole pound of bacon he texted Mark, who worked construction, and Saturdays were overtime, meaning if he could be, he’d be working. Gussey was sitting down in front of the TV in the living room to eat when Mark texted back.

At the school. Come by.

Gussey owed Mark around two hundred dollars, for pot he’d fronted him and the two times Mark had spotted Gussey a queen for a drop of gas. Mark worked as a flagperson for Ellsworth Construction. Standing in the road, turning his sign, and getting paid sixteen dollars an hour. Well above minimum wage. Construction was where the money was to. Mark had been promoted in May, briefly, to the line-painting crew. Until one Monday when they were dispatched to a job at a new fast-food joint and Mark had misspelled Drive Thru in paint. Had laid the giant plywood stencils down, lined them up perfectly and then sprayed a thick, sickly yellow paint, spelling it Drive True. The b’ys had a good laugh about that. And worse, when Mark got home that day not only had he