Sourdough
by Shauna Checkley
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 4 |
part 3
At breakfast the next morning, they all sat at the table and sampled the sourdough biscuits from the night before.
“Are they a little hard?” Jasmyn queried.
Gordie shrugged his shoulders. Munched. “Taste same as ever to me.”
“I don’t like sourdough, only the pancakes, that’s it,” Petra said. Her child’s verdict deep and damning as ever, that familiar sweeping, litany of opinions, preferences and tastes.
“Well, just drink your milk then,” Jasmyn instructed her daughter, who then promptly downed it in one gulp. Then burped. Petra giggled while Jasmyn frowned.
“Say, excuse me,” Jasmyn said. “Now go brush your teeth.”
The child left the kitchen.
It was Saturday morning. A day off for everyone, except for Jasmyn who would escort her daughter to her swimming lessons later.
“So what’cha doin’ today?” Jasmyn asked Gordie.
“Haven’t quite decided yet.” Not even looking up at her, Gordie continued to talk as he slathered butter and Saskatoon berry jam onto the biscuit.
“Might blast out the garage... It’s really getting to bug me again. Or I might go with Drew and get season tickets, since I haven’t been able to get through online. Might be better to just go down there, I think,” Gordie said, weighing his options aloud.
By season tickets, she knew Gordie meant hockey or football. Though they did go to the occasional cultural event, it was never enough to warrant his seeking season tickets, just the odd evening out, that’s all.
I have enough to do around here anyway, Jasmyn thought. Petra alone seems to keep me going non-stop! Swim lessons! Gymnastic lessons! Sunday school! Play dates! Such are the life and times of a modern urban child. But I need to be a good mother to her, Jasmyn thought. That’s the main thing I need to do.
Still there were times when Jasmyn experienced an emptiness, a yearning, an ache for deeper, more expansive relations. Was it for a lover? A friend? She didn’t know. But she did wonder if that’s where Reid factored in? Probably... Though Jasmyn knew that now that Karli was gone, she felt that void more keenly than ever. Though Jasmyn did have coffee with her other friends sometimes, Wanda and Laurel, it didn’t appeal to her as much because of their low-brow drama, pill addictions, weight afflictions, and the like.
They sometimes seemed to her like toned-down female versions of Neville, an emotional U-turn she’d rather not take again. Still, they were her support system as of late. One that she still turned to sometimes but sparingly at that. Jasmyn missed having a good, solid female friend like Karli. But she promised herself, It’ll come again in time. Maybe when I get back working or something?
Gordie looked up. Goo was trickling down his chin. She saw the offending birthmark by his ear again. He grinned. Then he said in his usual affable manner, “What would you like me to do today?”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Jasmyn said.
The goo ran like a drop of dark, purple blood then stopped at the base of Gordie’s chin. She was tempted to point it out to him. But suddenly she didn’t feel like she had the energy to do so. She felt lifeless, as though she were formed from dough batter or was one of the edible characters from Petra’s storybooks: Muffin man, Gingerbread boy, something like that.
“Hey, then I think I’ll phone Drew then. Wanna make sure we get good seats,” Gordie said.
Jasmyn grunted. Gordie continued to eat heartily, working his way through the plate of biscuits, buttering and lathering one after the other. That’s probably why he’s getting such a gut, Jasmyn judged, noticing his paunch again.
Such trivialities hadn’t seemed to bother her in the beginning. In fact, she would have labelled it as nit-picking in others. Give the guy a break, she could hear herself say. She had said as much to others, to girlfriends with offending spouses, uncouth partners.
* * *
The truth was that she was grateful to connect with Gordie; good, reliable, stable Gordie after the disaster that was Neville. He picked up the pieces, namely Petra and her, and literally saved the day. Gordie helped the two of them and their cat Mao escape from the drug-crazed Neville and the suite they had been living in. The place where the phone, power, and cable had been cut off due to a backlog of unpaid bills. The place where mother and child cowered in the bedroom while Neville ranted and raved and partied.
The increasingly paranoid Neville, a crack head, had started not to allow Jasmyn out of his sight, except to go to work. But this was just when Gordie switched shifts with a pal at work and pulled up in his Jimmy truck and got them out of there and into the safety of his own suburban home.
Thankfully, Neville managed to fall off their balcony while on a high and likely hallucinating. He was hospitalized for days, giving mother and child and cat ample time to disappear. And the rest was history. A polite courtship, a reverential deference to the mother and child bond until it was understood that they were indeed a full-fledged couple that an intervention of sorts had led to a friendly pairing and then finally to romance.
But it had never been a passionate coupling. Just a reasoned, necessary settling-in of sorts, and it made sense for all parties involved. Jasmyn and Petra received a stable figure, and he found a suitable partner, one who could help the aching Gordie fill his big, lonely, empty house. No one spoke aloud of this arrangement. Yet it worked remarkably well for the most part. They were quite compatible. They gave one another the necessary freedom and space.
Next to Jasmyn’s best friend, Karli, Gordie honestly seemed like the easiest person to live with or be with. There was nothing dark or difficult in his nature. Unlike Jasmyn herself, Gordie didn’t harbour secrets or whims or surprises. Rather, he rose predictably every morning and just carried out what needed to be done. Work. Chores at home. Honey do. Honey do anything for us...
Yet, the crown of unruly waves and the roundish, ruddy face and that large, unsightly birthmark left Jasmyn unmoved. Even more puzzling, though, was the fact that Gordie’s kindly, obliging nature often irritated her for some reason. But she wasn’t sure why. He was nice. He was a good man. Why couldn’t she just appreciate it? Gordie had aided her in her darkest hour when there was no one else there for them. Wouldn’t loving him be the sane thing to do? Jasmyn believed so.
But that was five years ago. Though not a huge passage of time, it still didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. The edge of Jasmyn’s fear and desperation had long since lifted and been replaced by a keen sense of place and propriety. She was relaxed in her surroundings. Once again, she felt like venturing forth, living, exploring, breaking free of the confines of expectation and embarking on her own revolutionary road, her very own path. Would it be with Reid? Or just what form would things take? Still, she wondered...
“Am I bored? That’s probably it,” Jasmyn told herself. “But I could get a job or something to distract me, just like working at the bakery when Petra started pre-school. That year, I was too busy to fret like this. Yes, I’ll walk over later and see if they’re hiring, that might be the answer for me. Maybe Joann, my old manager, will still be there.”
Feeling a strong surge of resolve fill her, flood her like an activating agent, she hoped that this was the necessary, missing ingredient that she had been looking for. Maybe this will help get me off Reid. He’s likely just another Neville, she decided. another bad choice, though i fear Reid has me hook, line, and sinker.
As Gordie stuffed the last piece in his mouth, he looked up at Jasmyn and smiled. She pointed to the jam on his chin, and he quickly wiped it away with a napkin.
She poured them each a coffee. They sipped in silence. Until finally Gordie said, “We’ll have to go out again soon. Its been a while since we had a date night, eh.”
“Sure,” Jasmyn mumbled.
Shifting in his seat, Gordie observed “You’re always so busy on the computer on the weekend. Never hardly see you anymore.“ She studied him. Just what is he getting at? Have I been found out? Is he onto me? Like a cake that crumpled in the oven, Jasmyn fell with fear.
But Gordie shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “To each his own, I guess,” he said.
* * *
As he re-shelved the trolley full of books in the prison library, Reid felt unusually at peace. He carefully returned each book to its proper place. Then he went on to the next until he had an easy, mindless rhythm going. It was a mind-set that had him fully in the present moment. Like the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Reid observed, like all that kind of stuff I’ve been reading.
It amazed him when he caught glimpses of the spiritual dimension. It had been completely unknown to him before his incarceration. And it was a foreign concept inside prison as well, with only a handful of others awakening and then usually embracing only distorted, fundamentalist versions of their respective religions. Like their inner spirit had soured, shifted somehow.
Reid kept his views to himself. In fact, he had been careful to keep pretty much to himself entirely, not wanting to appear vulnerable or as an object of derision to Colton, his cellmate, or any of the others in fact; he just read quietly.
Yet, all the while he read about love and forgiveness, he felt eyes bore holes through his soul. Eyes flick like blades. Mouths open and shut like fists. All an abyss around him. Colton. Everyone, almost. Yet, he felt grounded in his studies. Probably the safest he had ever felt in his life. For even when he felt the relative security of his mother, when he had tiny arms snug around her torso, Reid still sensed her readiness to take flight, to escape into drink and impromptu outings, flings unbound. He sensed her sudden ability to change.
Diary of a Mad Housewife... The Good Mother... Hmm, the fiction section, Reid thought. He tossed both tomes to the bottom of the trolley for when he wheeled it to those shelves.
When he was finished, Reid went and joined Zane behind the big front desk. Zane was an old hippie complete with a Grateful Dead tattoo, wild whiskers and a long, gray ponytail that resembled a bristly horse’s tail. Eagerly awaiting his pension cheques, Zane counted the days and months down like a child awaiting Christmas.
“Only two months and four days,” Zane grinned, with tobacco-stained teeth that made him appear like someone with oral cancer or at least a plea for proper dental care. “Can’t wait, dude,” Zane added.
“I bet,” Reid agreed.
Smiling broadly, Zane said “They tried to deny me. But I fought ’em tooth-n-nail, and now they have to give me my pension.“
“That’s good,” Reid affirmed.
Nodding, Zane broke into cackles of laughter. Next to the prison chaplain, Zane was one of the few non-threatening presences at the penitentiary. Zane was a person with whom Reid could relax, trust and be himself, and even occasionally discuss spirituality, even Christ. That’s when Reid could get a word in edgewise.
Zane was just an old stoner, harmless enough. Though he tended to preach, expounding about all things hemp and marijuana, smoking weed, growing weed in elaborate grow-ops and hydroponic settings. He also spoke of selling weed and much more. He gave detailed accounts of the recent legalization in Canada and of independent stores’ bursting forth — much like weeds — in nearly every strip mall.
Droning on and on, Zane spoke of the pros and cons, 420-day paraphernalia and hemp shops, overseas cafes, prices and geopolitics, decriminalization versus the status quo, festivals, medicinal versus recreational, even in prison gossip, which was like an overflowing pan of juiciness. All of Zane’s own personal misadventures in places as far-flung as Amsterdam and Tijuana, too. He was a preacher of sorts.
Reid often found himself drifting off, no longer hearing any of it but rather noticing random, fading smudges and plaster over holes on the wall, the pattern of dots in the tiles on the fading, graying floor, Zane’s strange unibrow, his yellow-stained and blistered fingers.
Reid didn’t have the heart to tell Zane, one who was such a die-hard enthusiast, that he had never been much into weed. Sorry dude, but I was more a wild man drinker than some mellow deadhead, Reid thought but opted not to say. Instead, Reid just allowed the charade to continue unabated.
But when Zane launched into a long account of the latest harvest of B.C. bud in the interior of the province, more prison intel, Reid felt his attention wander to his latest interlude with Jasmyn the day before. What happened? Reid wondered. Why did it end so abruptly? Was it something I said? Or were we found out at last?
Trying to recall exactly what was said between them was difficult. But Reid remembered that after the initial pleasantries, he started to tell her about the books he has been reading and that’s when the screen went blank. Nah, it couldn’t have been me. So then maybe she finally got caught. Hope she’s okay though. Wonder what happened?
It’s gotta happen sooner or later, Reid knew: getting caught. As all cycles and circles run their full course, so, too, will this end someday, he believed. Yet he enjoyed having a contact on the outside, a woman who seemed like she would burst right through the walls of Hell itself to be with him. Reid would miss her if she did go. The attractive form, the kindly, interested presence, all working to fill a void in him, this woman. Jasmyn.
Still, he was worried that Pastor Rob might figure out that Jasmyn isn’t his old girlfriend but a married woman. Of course, that would put an end to the whole arrangement, maybe even his study time online.
But Reid felt guilt about it as well. He felt it was wrong, because she had a family. Still. unhappy was unhappy, and unfulfilled was unfulfilled. God knows he knew enough about that... But he remained very conflicted about the whole situation. He enjoyed having Jasmyn for himself. Yet he knew it was wrong, and his emerging spirituality seemed to shout this at him louder and louder, an inner voice that couldn’t be silenced or quelled anymore.
What would Pastor Rob say? God has the final word, of course. Should he finally confess the whole thing to the Pastor? Reid had been tempted to, before. But he just hadn’t had the courage to tell the fresh-faced chaplain the downside to his awakening.
But maybe the time had finally come? Reid mused: “I’ll just have to wait and see... Maybe if she’s been caught now, I won’t have to fess up. Maybe it will all go away on its own accord. Maybe she’ll just stop contacting me and disappear. Who knows? It could be for the best. Nip it in the bud before things get way out of hand...”
Reid had always both hoped and feared that she would show up again some day. It was an unlikely scenario, though; Jasmyn lived in the next city over. Still, when he closed his eyes in bed at night, he fantasized about her. Reid imagined just this: visitor day, and there she was, out in the foyer, awaiting him, bright eyed, fragrant, and in the flesh. He would be just like all the other guys then.
God knows he had been popular with women but never a real player or anything. Women had just hung onto him, clung to him. But he was never mercenary enough to just ditch them, though he had been tempted to do so at times. Still, he had managed to enter Ridgemont Max penniless and friendless. Once incarcerated, everyone and everything seemed to dwindle right away. His social scene imploded on itself; it mutated and was gone.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Shauna Checkley
