Mother's Song in the Deer Tracks

Condensation slowly rises to meet my waist in the windowpane where the blinds used to sit. Late January evening in the Eastern Townships. Quebec is still, and there is no sound except for the faint rumbling of the train heading West through town toward Sherbrooke. The deer tracks on the street are quickly being filled in, but I don’t know if the snow is heavy or light, dry or wet. The weather is kinder than my crutches.  

           Mother once told me that some people have never seen snow and others close the curtains when it falls, thinking of tomorrow. “Garde toujours tes yeux ouverts le soir, mon chèr. Les chevreuils aiment le silence.” I wonder how she’s spending the gentle hours of the evening, if she’s looking out of her window too at the faintly lit ski trails, grey hair strung across her shoulders. I shift my weight onto my right heel, weary so as not to move too abruptly, the floorboard wanting to creak, the deer outside perhaps fleeing. She was never concerned of the long drive to school in the early hours of the morning. The buses would surely be delayed, the kids excited, and the alarm clocks set an hour earlier to shovel, but she only looked upon the evening.  

           Mother used to stand above my bed and ask me whether I was really sick, or if I just wanted to play outside. On snowy nights I’d peer through the blinds to see how much snow was falling. The smell of the blinds got sweeter as it got colder outside, like a clove for the orange. I’d wait to find a falling star in the snow, and wondered if my twin brothers, rooms on either side of mine, looked out too. Our rooms cast no flake of light down below. Perhaps if I woke before the plough or the sound of dad shovelling the driveway I’d be able to see a star. But no, one shouldn’t mistaken the scintillating snow with those of the heavens, nor should a child stay up so late reading beneath the bed sheets, she would say with a smirk, standing above me. She’d glance at the window, noticing the crack in the blinds and the clear mark of my fist in the condensation. Dad was already at work, he didn’t have to know whether I stayed or not. He hated shovelling as much as I love it now.

           Mother still tells me that she likes when the branches of pine trees hold pillows of snow after the first snowfall, singing early morning lullabies as she did when we were children. “En route vers l’école je pense toujours à toi. Dans les champs il y a des chevaux, et à la récréation les enfants roulent dans la neige comme tu faisais avec les jumeaux quand vous étiez petits.” I open the window slightly and the cold air leaks inside my room. The lucky kids at her school might head to Mont Sutton to ski. But for me, there is no skiing this season. These crutches are my poles, and should I go outside and the deer wander close, I’m worried to hobble beside them ungracefully. No swooping turns with these—nothing smooth, nothing wide, no mark. Just sweat and bruised armpits.

           Mother broke her leg once too when she was in university. Standing by the window as kids, she’d tell us to be quiet so as to watch Lawrence and Louis—two robins—chase each other in the air and cut shapes in the languid snow, swooping up and down and across the yard until we lost sight of them, then emerged from behind the thick maple trunk and jetted into one of granddad’s bird houses that lined the wooden fence. We looked intently on them without a sound, four thick lily pads forming before our mouths on the windows, waiting for them to come out and flutter back up into the sky. When she stood on her crutches, the robins also never had snow on them. How they managed to keep it off, none of us knew. But there are no birds this evening. Three loud hoofs from the warped wood of the train tracks rise into the still night like a pebble into a lake, and ripple across town to me, hanging there for me to hold onto, a faint calling from yesteryear. I wonder if she’s in the window, hearing it too, and reaching out.  

           Mother wouldn’t laugh tomorrow morning if she were to wake me for school, seeing me with this cast on, leg raised, book in hand, and a filled ashtray by the bedside. I don’t lower the blinds anymore. No more fist in the clearing and thermometers on snow days. In mid-July the humidity seemed to suck up every ounce of youth from her pores. She was no longer married and the twins and I left home—them to the big city and myself across Seymour’s valley. Dad went to where it was hot all year round. No more shovelling for him. I sigh unexpectedly and tighten my grip around the crutches. I can hear her whispering, “Je vais toujours être dehors, sous la neige ou la pluie, dehors.” I carefully hobble toward the front door, lace on my right boot, and crutch down the creaking staircase toward the street.

           The deer emerge from the neighbour’s yard and stand beneath the streetlight, snow on their coats. Mother’s voice is getting closer, somewhere above the thin sheet of ice beneath the snow. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to slip and slide, to follow tracks, to track the snow, to look for nothing and hear everything. The train is long gone and the three dark pair of eyes look at me, invitingly. I follow them down the street, dim lights behind us. Mother’s voice sounds like it’s coming from just around the bend in the road, from a body clad in green heavy woolen trousers and thick scarf swung over a shoulder. The deer are picking up their pace and my foot begins to glide steadily, side to side on the icy street, crutches like poles and pine needles for a plank beneath my foot, slashing through the mounds of snow on the side of the road.