Nova Scotia Love Stories
Copyright © 2016 Pottersfield Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used or stored in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying – or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems shall be directed in writing to the publisher or to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1E5 (www.AccessCopyright.ca). This also applies to classroom use.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nova Scotia love stories/Lesley Choyce.
Short stories.
ISBN 978-1-897426-80-7 (paperback)
ISBN EPUB 978-1-98826-06-8
1. Love stories, Canadian (English)--Nova Scotia. 2. Short stories, Canadian (English)-- Nova Scotia.
I. Choyce, Lesley, 1951-, editor
PS8329.5.N6N68 2016C813’.01089716C2015-907586-6
Cover design: Gail LeBlanc
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
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Printed in Canada
For Linda
Contents
Introduction
Maureen Hull
Have a Little Faith
William Kowalski
Some Girl I Met at a Party Somewhere
Carol Bruneau
The Vagabond Lover
Jim Lotz
A Marvellous Living Side by Side
Bruce Graham
A Child of Two Mothers
Budge Wilson
Mr. Manuel Jenkins
Jon Tattrie
Black Snow
Sheldon Currie
Lauchie and Liza and Rory
Michael Ungar
A Following Sea
Lindsay Ruck
A Love that Stands the Test of Time: Joyce and Calvin Ruck
Don Aker
What You’re Given
Chris Benjamin
Operation Niblet
Steven Laffoley
The Only Way Home
Harold Horwood
Music at the Close
Marjorie Simmins
Forever Worlds
Silver Donald Cameron
Meeting Marjorie
Lesley Choyce
Dance The Rocks Ashore
Biographies
Introduction
When I first set foot on Nova Scotia soil somewhere around 1969, I fell in love with the place. I knew I would someday live here and make it my home. Does passion for a place increase one’s other passions? Well, yes, maybe it does. The rugged coastline, the salty air, the wind in the straggly spruce trees, the wild boggy woods, the glacier-delivered boulders – all seem romantic to me.
People fall in love everywhere on the planet. Yet I would argue that there is something geographically special about every situation. Just think about it. Where was it that you fell in love? What special feelings are now attached to that very place? Nova Scotia is certainly as good as any place on the planet to fall in love but, for the sake of argument, what if we said it is one of the best places to fall in love. When the conditions are right, it can be as romantic – or more romantic – than Paris or Venice or any other place that Hollywood can persuade you is the right venue for love to emerge.
When I first thought about pulling together a collection of Nova Scotia love stories, I actually didn’t have a good idea of how it would take shape. I figured there might be a few traditional romantic stories, but I had a hunch that each of these gifted Nova Scotia writers would bring some surprising element into the mix. And I was right.
The stories that follow are both fact and fiction and a few are a mix of each. I courted several of this province’s finest writers to come up with a “love story” for this book, not knowing what sort of tale would find its way to me. I guess I began with a notion of a traditional love story: boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, some impediment gets in their way, but then miraculously heaven grants them a happily-ever-after sort of life, probably settling somewhere romantic like Lunenburg or Chester and raising a gaggle of kids.
Well, that just didn’t happen. Instead, I was delivered a wide range of the most intriguing stories involving love in all its various guises. There is young love (and falling in love, of course), mature love, caring and nurturing as well as unusual but deeply personal and insightful tales of the complexity of love.
I guess I was originally thinking this would be a book of short stories – fictional romances – but I soon realized that some of the best love stories I had heard or read were about real-life people. So this book is a fine mix of true stories and fiction. And then, as it turns out, there are stories here based on real lives where the author has added artistic elements so, as they say in the movies, they are “based on a true story.” To be fair, the short introductions will give you the reader a heads-up as to where there is truth and where there is art. But then, in real life, how often do we take our own love lives and craft them in story: beautiful tales of how and when and, of course, where?
The where is Nova Scotia. This province of sea and forest and city and farm and fishing village. As many of us have discovered, it is a great place to begin a romance and to nurture a future together with someone you love.
Since these are tales of the twentieth and twenty-first century, you’ll soon discover that there are a variety of versions of what a love story is. None, as it turns out, are simple tales of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl and lives happily ever after, although there are happy love stories here mixed with some somber stories as well.
In the end, these Nova Scotia authors shaped the book into a varied compendium of artistic accounts of love, relationships and the complex chemistry of emotion, circumstance and geography that often shape our destinies.
Lesley Choyce
Lawrencetown Beach
August, 2015
Have a Little Faith
Maureen Hull
Here is a story about how falling in love can change the course of a life. Miranda’s life plans (become a famous costume designer, work in Toronto, New York, London) are about to take an abrupt left-hand turn when she meets a lobster fisherman from Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Miranda hammered on Reeve’s door.
“I’ve broken up with Alex and I need to sleep on your couch.”
Hal made her a rum toddy while Reeve cleared their clean laundry off the couch and made up a bed with his best sheets. Then he stroked her hair until she stopped sobbing and fell asleep.
Miranda spent the rest of the winter and early spring sleeping nights on Reeve’s couch. She went home before work to feed her cats, water her plants, and change her clothes. Going to work at Neptune Theatre was easier when Alex finished up his play and went to Toronto, but she still didn’t want to go home.
“Are you sure I’m not in the way?”
“Of course not, sweetie.” Reeve hugged her. He and Hal spent most nights at Hal’s place, anyway. “But I’m giving up this apartment as soon as we find a place big enough for
both of us. You’ll have to go back sometime.”
“But not this minute. Not today. And not tomorrow, either.”
“Soon, though. Why don’t you find another apartment? This one, maybe, when I leave.”
“I don’t want another apartment. I love the one I have. I just don’t know how to make it mine again. I’ve cleaned it, I’ve moved the furniture around. It’s still full of goddamn Alex and it depresses me to be there.”
“You need to bring a new man home. Have sex on every piece of furniture. That should clean up the atmosphere.”
“And that was such a help to you every time your heart got broken.”
“You have to keep trying until you get it right. It’s like buying lotto tickets. If you don’t play, you can’t win.”
“It’s nothing like buying lotto tickets. That’s a stupid analogy.”
“Celibacy is making you cranky as hell. You’re too skinny. You don’t eat enough.”
“Coffee every morning, with a Danish. Cornflakes and gin for supper. Every day.”
“No healthy green things? Your mother would not approve. I don’t approve.”
“Green olives in the gin.”
“I’m taking you to my favourite paint store, right now. We’re going to paint your apartment – I get to pick the colours. Then we’re throwing out half your furniture – I get to take the pieces I want. Then we’re going to crash and burn your credit card buying you stuff Alex would never dream of sitting on. We’re going to eat Thai takeout while we paint, lots of good green veggies, and then, when your apartment’s done, Hal and I will find you some new men.”
“Some?”
“To choose from. Hal and I will never agree on who’s best for you.”
“You’re going to corral a bunch of guys and herd them on down for me to pick and choose from.”
“We’ll hand them over like a big testosterone bouquet.”
“You can’t pick my men. And you certainly can’t pick my colours.”
Miranda, Reeve and Hal painted her apartment walls peach, white, and pale grey. They painted the window frames cobalt blue. Miranda gave half of her plants and three chairs, a coffee table, and several paintings, gifts from Alex, to Hal and Reeve for their new place.
“Hang them in Hal’s workroom, so I don’t have to see them when I come visit,” she said. The guys working in the props department at the theatre, happy to see Miranda smiling again, bringing homemade cookies to work again, made her a collection of faux Nova Scotian folk art and a set of shelves to display it. Some of it was wood, some of it was painted Styrofoam. There was a village of tiny houses, a family of sandpipers mounted on a shingle, an old woman peeling apples, a fisherman hand-lining from a green Lunenburg dory. They were particularly proud of the weathervane: a little man who dropped his drawers for a pee whenever the blades of the small windmill above his head turned. Miranda positioned him in front of an open window. The breeze blew in, the pants dropped, the little wooden dick stood up.
“It’s a classic,” said Reeve. “There’s a place to attach a hose from your kitchen sink if you want special effects. You’re going to have to hook him up for the party.”
“What party is this?”
“Housewarming. Paint warming? Think of it as an early midsummer night’s eve party. Tomorrow. Everyone’s been invited, and it’s potluck and BYOB so you don’t have to worry about a thing. Hal and I will bring mix and munchies and fill your tub with ice. All you have to do is get a haircut.”
“You’re saying my hair wants cutting?”
“Wants cutting, wants salvaging, wants mercy. A manicure and facial wouldn’t hurt, either.”
“Shit, you’re bringing the testosterone bouquet.”
“Just a small sample. A very small sample. The merest posy.”
“Two guys, nice guys,” said Hal.
“Mine’s nicer,” said Reeve.
The party was noisy, and fun. There were pots and bowls and trays and platters of food. There were guitars and two mandolins, a banjo, assorted drums, several tin whistles, a clarinet and a baritone saxophone, and a set of bagpipes that were quickly stuffed in a closet.
“You can play it later, on the roof,” Miranda told the offended musician. “That’s an outside instrument.” She handed him a double scotch, and he grudgingly agreed that it was.
The little wooden man peed and peed. Hal put a bucket under him and it only got knocked over once. Miranda ate more than she had in a month. The guy Reeve selected for Miranda hit on Hal and Reeve threw him out. The guy Hal selected spent the evening in a corner with Anna, the crew chief.
“They’re really hitting it off,” observed Miranda.
“I don’t get it,” said Reeve. “Your hair is gorgeous.”
By midnight, Miranda had had enough fun. She climbed out the kitchen window, down the fire escape, and onto the neighbouring roof for some fresh air. Jewelled streets ran down to the harbour and the water sparkled back. She checked her pockets: a ten-dollar bill and seventy-six cents. She climbed down a second fire escape and went around the corner to the nearest quiet bar for a drink. Two guys were playing darts and three middle-aged women in a corner were snickering over some pictures. The loser at darts came over and sat next to Miranda at the bar.
“Buy you a beer?”
“Already have one.”
He ordered two anyway, one for himself, one for Miranda for later.
“Do you like lobster?”
“I love lobster.”
He pulled a cooked lobster out of a small cooler he’d stashed by his feet and began to shell it for her.
“Hey,” said the bartender, “you can’t do that here. If you want to eat something, order from the menu.”
“Come on,” said the guy, who’d introduced himself as Trip. He stuffed the lobster back into the cooler, chugged his beer, and discreetly stowed Miranda’s “for later” beer under his shirt. He pulled her to her feet and led her out the door. “Know a good place we can eat these?”
She led him around the corner, up the fire escape, and onto the roof.
“I think I spilled most of your beer. Nice view.”
“Sit down. Wait right here.” She climbed one flight, ducked in her kitchen window, grabbed a couple more beer and some napkins, and climbed back down again.
“Is there a party in there?” he asked. “You know those people?”
“Most of them. Did you get these from the fish market?”
“Caught ’em myself.”
When they had finished the lobster and the beer, Miranda bade him good night. He backed down the ladder.
“Do you want to go to a movie tomorrow night?” he asked, his head sticking above the roofline.
“Which one?”
“You pick.”
“You’ll have to buy me lots of overpriced popcorn.”
“As much as you want.”
“And you won’t get laid.”
“Good to know where I stand.”
“Pick me up downstairs at six-thirty. Have you got a car?”
“A truck.”
“Can I drive it?”
“Sure. It hasn’t got much for brakes, though.”
“I can’t believe you,” said Reeve. “We go to all this trouble and you wander off to a bar and pick up a total stranger. A fisherman, for God’s sake! With no brakes!”
“He’s not a total stranger. He grew up sixty miles from my parents’ place. We were probably at high school hockey games together. He played defence. I cheered. Not for his team, of course. I probably threw frozen squid at him.”
“That doesn’t make him the boy next door. He’s still a stranger. Fraught with danger.”
“Notice I didn’t invite him in,” said Miranda in self-defence.
“Notice there were forty drunks in your apartment.”
“He goes around with cooked lobster in a cooler. How dangerous is that? He shelled me lobster with his bare hands. He didn’t even try to make a pass. Just talked about fish
ing, and how beautiful it is out on the water. His total exposure to the theatre was when his high school class took a school trip to see a matinee of Hamlet. He skipped out with his buddies during intermission and went down the street to shoot pool. Got a C in English.”
“There’s a recommendation. Hal and I are going to follow you all night to make sure he doesn’t leave you strangled in a dumpster.”
“The hell you are.”
“We’ll be right up your ass the whole time.”
“Who are those guys and why are they following us?”
“My cousin and his boyfriend.”
“Do you owe them money?”
“They’re misguidedly protecting me. In case you’re a serial killer.”
Trip pulled over and signalled to Hal to do the same. He got out and walked up to Hal’s grey Volkswagen. He rapped on the window and when Hal lowered it an inch, he held up his driver’s licence for inspection. “My name’s Harold Ross, but everybody calls me Trip. Maybe you’d like to join Miranda and me, so you can keep a better eye on me.”
“Love to,” said Reeve.
After the movie they went to Miranda’s neighbourhood bar for drinks.
“Which one of you put popcorn in my hair?” Miranda fished out several pieces.
“So, how come ‘Trip’?” Reeve changed the subject.
“Couldn’t keep my laces tied when I was a kid.” Trip pointed out several scars: a small one on the bridge of his nose, his chin, both elbows. “Velcro saved my life. Your hair looks great with popcorn.”
“Should have seen it before Frannie put her scissors to it. The rat’s nest from hell.”
“Shut up,” said Miranda.
“Can you do anything about her mouth?” asked Reeve. “She’s got a foul mouth, from hanging around thespians. Rinse it out with cod juice or something?”
At midnight, Trip stood up. “Thanks for the date, folks. I’ve got to get back to Caribou. My boat’s tied up there and we go fishing in four hours.”
They were suitably appalled. “When do you sleep?”
“I’ll nap on the boat for a bit before we leave the wharf. Take a nap tomorrow afternoon when we’re done. I’ll be back next Saturday afternoon.” He looked at Miranda. “Can I take you out again?”